Gregory Samarin

Holy Hieromartyr Gregory Samarin was a deacon of the Russian Orthodox Church, born on 9 January 1893 in the village of Salmanovka in the Penza province and died in a camp on 11 July 1940, near the station Izvestkovaya, in the Jewish Autonomous Region. He was numbered among the saints of the Russian Church in 2002, as a holy martyr venerated throughout the Church. He is remembered on 28 June (11 July on the new calendar).

Youth and service

He was born into a peasant family and attended the school in the village of Salmanovka and the theological school in Penza. After finishing it, in 1914 he was drafted into the army and sent to Central Asia. From 21 October 1914 he served as a psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Holy Archangel Michael, whose clergy cared spiritually for the soldiers of the 11th Turkestan Rifle Regiment in the town of Kerki. He was demobilized in 1918.

After the army he moved to the town of Verny (now Alma-⁠Ata), where he met Deacon Vasily Gorbachev, with whom he formed a friendship of many years. In October 1919 he was appointed psalm-⁠reader at the Church of the Intercession in the village of Vysokoe, in the Chimkent district. On 9 February 1920 he was ordained deacon. On 27 September 1922 he was appointed deacon at the Joseph-⁠George cathedral in Tashkent. From 3 August 1923 he served at the church of the Archangel Michael in his native village, Salmanovka, and on 9 May 1925 he was moved to the Ascension church in the town of Spassk, Penza province.

On 9 July 1931 he was appointed a cleric of the church of the Holy Martyrs Adrian and Natalia in Losinoostrovsk, near Moscow, his family living at Kolomna. On 26 August 1933 he received the double orarion. On 20 April 1935 he was moved to the Peter and Paul church in Kolomna, where he met Priest Vasily Gorbachev again. The faithful loved and respected him, and remembered with what reverence and inspiration he sang and recited the litanies at the services.

Arrest and the camp

On 10 August 1937 he was arrested, together with a large group of Kolomna clergy, in the case of a "counter-⁠revolutionary church monarchist organization", which, according to NKVD reports, numbered up to fifty people, among them clergy, former notables, dispossessed kulaks and active churchgoers. At his arrest his pregnant wife and five children were not allowed to say goodbye to him. He was placed in the Kolomna prison, then moved to the Taganka prison in Moscow.

Several people gave testimony against him. The dean of the Kolomna churches declared that Deacon Gregory had said that the Bolsheviks wanted to make of the Russian people a will-⁠less slave who would obey them in everything. Father Gregory did not admit guilt and declared that he had belonged to no counter-⁠revolutionary organization and had carried out no anti-⁠Soviet activity. On 9 October 1937 he was sentenced by a special troika of the NKVD for the Moscow region to ten years in a labour camp. Most of those accused in this case who admitted guilt were sentenced to death and shot.

He served his term in the Bureya labour camp. His wife, Olga Mikhailovna, asked the NKVD to review the case. In 1939 the case was reviewed, but the complaint was left without result, as its grounds were held to be unfounded. He died on 11 July 1940 and was buried in an unknown camp grave near the station Izvestkovaya. Shortly before his death he wrote his children a letter from the camp, in which he urged them to read soul-⁠profiting books, to study and to help their mother.

Rehabilitation and canonization

In 1957 he was rehabilitated. The investigation revealed gross violations of the law by the Kolomna NKVD officers: people arrested without grounds, prisoners forced to sign invented testimony, and those who refused subjected to uninterrupted interrogations lasting several days, with insults, threats, hours of standing and beatings.

By decision of the Holy Synod of 7 October 2002 he was numbered among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia, for veneration throughout the Church. He is remembered on 28 June (11 July), in the synaxis of the saints of the Birobidzhan diocese and in the synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church.