Ephraim Dolganev

Holy Hieromartyr Ephraim Dolganev, an archpriest, was born on 28 January 1874 in the small town of Petrovki in the Ananiev district of the Kherson province, and received martyrdom in 1918, before the death of his brother, Holy Hieromartyr Hermogenes, bishop of Tobolsk. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs and Confessors.

After the church school in Odessa he entered the Odessa seminary in 1887, finished it in 1893 with first-⁠class results, and wished to attend the Moscow Theological Academy. The family's hard circumstances made him doubt that he could study without a stipend, but his brother, Hieromonk Hermogenes, promised support, and Ephraim thanked him and entered the academy. At the end of December 1893 he came to Saint Petersburg and wrote to his brother how glad he was to have been at Kronstadt and to have seen Father John.

He did not want to burden anyone and earned a little on the Theological Messenger. After the academy, on 23 December 1899 he was appointed assistant inspector at the Vladimir seminary, and on 13 November 1901 teacher at the diocesan girls' school in the same city.

On 20 January 1902 he was married, in the church of the Winter Palace, to Varvara, daughter of Archpriest Sergei Ivanovich Preobrazhensky of the Peter and Paul court cathedral. On 28 January 1902 he was ordained priest at this cathedral. Taking his pastoral service seriously, a month after the ordination he wrote to his brother the bishop that he felt weak in faith and unworthy to celebrate the Holy Mysteries, and asked for his prayers.

His duties included services in the churches of Saint Nicholas at the Mariinsky Palace and of Saint Alexander Nevsky at the Anichkov Palace, and teaching the Law of God in the artillery units of the Petrograd fortress. On 22 July 1907 he received a gold pectoral cross, and on 8 May 1913 he was raised to the rank of archpriest.

After the February Revolution of 1917 he moved with his family to Tobolsk, where Bishop Hermogenes was serving, to an apartment given in the consistory building. After the bishop's arrest, Father Ephraim joined the diocesan delegation that pleaded for the release of the archpastor, together with Father Michael Makarov and the attorney Konstantin Alexandrovich Minyatov. The pleading ended in the arrest of Archpriest Ephraim, Father Michael and Konstantin, whose martyrdom came before that of the bishop, who was drowned on 16 June 1918.

A diocesan missionary from Yekaterinburg, writing about them, said that some notebooks remained from Father Ephraim and that he seemed to have been a rarely luminous soul, who had made his own chiefly the first beatitudes.

He is commemorated on 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (new style), as well as in the Synaxis of the Saints of Yekaterinburg.