Dorotheus Klimashev

Holy Martyr Dorotheus Klimashev was born on 22 June 1869 in the village of Polukhtino in the Kasimov district of the Ryazan province, in a peasant family. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting in December 1937. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the twentieth century.

Dorotheus Alexeevich was a middling peasant, an independent craftsman, and he practised the trade most needed in a village, that of shoemaker. The village of Polukhtino belonged to the Pogost parish, and he was a member of the church council. Besides his craft he had a small farm: a horse and a cow. In 1932, for failing to meet a fixed delivery quota, all the property of his family was taken into the collective farm.

In the family there were also his wife Vasilisa, his son Basil and his daughter-⁠in-⁠law Maria, who after the dispossession were forced to work on the collective farm. The chairman of the village council, seeing the deep religious feeling of the simple village shoemaker, described him in a certificate for the NKVD as a man hostile to the authorities, who allegedly spread provocative rumours against the leaders of the state and slandered the new constitution.

Dorotheus was arrested and interrogated on 27 September 1937. At the interrogation he denied everything and did not say a word against any of the other accused. On 6 December 1937 the NKVD troika of the Ryazan region sentenced him to death by shooting, together with other defendants.

He is commemorated on 23 December (new style), on 23 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, and on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.