Gregory Dernov

Holy Martyr Gregory Dernov was one of the three sons of Archpriest Pavel Dernov of Yelabuga who were killed in 1918 together with their father, in the time of the Bolshevik persecution. The calendar commemorates together the hieromartyr Pavel and his sons Boris, Gregory and Simeon.

Gregory was born on 23 January 1899 in Yelabuga. He finished the real school there, with the additional class, and entered the Petrograd Technological Institute. His elder brother Boris, born on 17 May 1897, entered the Institute of Railways in Petersburg, and the youngest, Simeon, born on 1 February 1901, had time only for the real school.

In 1918, when Yelabuga was taken by the punitive detachment of E. Kolchin, terror began in the town. After bold sermons, the reading in church of Patriarch Tikhon's epistle and the denunciation of those who defiled the church, Archpriest Pavel Dernov was presented by the punishers as the chief organiser of the uprising in Yelabuga. His house was searched on 12 February 1918 (old style). He was arrested, drunken soldiers led him onto the ice of the Toima river and shot him the following night.

In the morning of 14 February (27 February on the new style), when word of the father's death had not yet reached the family, the three brothers set out to look for him and were arrested by soldiers. Witnesses say that on the way to the place of execution they confessed the Orthodox faith aloud. The Dernov brothers were led out under the city dam, to a place called Ryazhi, and shot with explosive bullets, and the punishers fired wildly at the young men and finished them with bayonets. All three were killed.

At the funeral of the father and of his sons Boris, Gregory and Simeon, a great crowd gathered, and not even the punitive detachment hindered the service. They were buried in the Trinity cemetery of the town, to the left of the church porch. In the Soviet period the cemetery was destroyed, the church demolished and the grave lost. Ninety-⁠two years after their death, on 30 September 2010, a gravestone was set at the supposed place of burial, with the help of the descendants and through the efforts of the priest's granddaughter, Anna Filippova.

He is commemorated on 27 February (new style, 14 February on the old style), on 17 October, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kazan, and on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (a movable day).