Hippolytus Krasnovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Hippolytus Krasnovsky was a priest in Moscow and then a prisoner in the labour camps of the Far East, where he was shot in 1938 together with Archbishop Onuphrius of Kursk and other clergy. He is one of the new martyrs of the Russian Church.

Youth and priesthood

He was born on 3 August 1883 in Moscow, in the family of Fr Nicholas Anikitich Krasnovsky, of the church of the Resurrection on the Taganka, and his wife Vera Efimovna. In 1897 he graduated from the Zaikonospassky church school, in 1904 from the Moscow seminary, and in 1909 from the Moscow Theological Academy with the degree of candidate of theology. In 1910 he was ordained priest for the Resurrection church on the Taganka and appointed head and teacher of religion at the parish Sunday school and elementary school. In 1911 his father died, and he became rector of the church.

In 1914 he was appointed teacher of religion at N. F. Gorbachev's commercial school and elected to the council of the deanery. In 1921 he received the pectoral cross, in 1924 he was raised to the rank of archpriest and named acting dean, and in 1927 he was honoured with the golden pectoral cross with ornaments. In 1928 he was relieved of his duties as dean.

Arrest and the camp

On 19 September 1930 he was arrested and imprisoned in Butyrka. He was accused of keeping ties with a wide circle of clergy and of reading and keeping handwritten church writings about the church life of the time. The OGPU troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp and sent him to the construction of the White Sea-⁠Baltic Canal. In 1933 the camp was replaced by exile to a fixed place. He chose Kursk, where he arrived shortly before Archbishop Onuphrius (Gagalyuk) was appointed bishop of the city. The archbishop knew him and at once gave him a priest's place; they often served together. At the archbishop's request Father Hippolytus served molebens and guided spiritually the archbishop's mother, the nun Natalia, and when the archbishop went to Moscow for sessions of the Holy Synod he kept the diocesan records.

On 23 July 1935 the NKVD arrested the archbishop and Father Hippolytus, accused of delivering anti-⁠Soviet sermons. At the investigation he said that his sermons explained the essence of the Christian faith and that when he spoke of patience he had in mind the personal sorrows of the faithful. He also said that he had told the clergy to prepare for exile, after the deportation of people from Leningrad and other cities, and that he himself would be glad of it, because it would fulfil his wish. In a statement to the investigator he wrote that in his sermons he had set out only the inner side of the Christian religion and that toward Soviet power he had always been loyal. At the closed sessions of 8-9 December 1935 of the Special Collegium of the Kursk regional court he said that he did not admit guilt, that his sermons spoke of love and of sufferings, and that on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross he had spoken of the sufferings of Christ. On 9 December 1935 he was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment and sent to the camps of the Khabarovsk territory.

Martyrdom

Archbishop Onuphrius was sent in March 1936 to the Far East and came to a farm camp in the Amur region. In his letters to his mother he mentions Father Hippolytus, who laboured with him in the same camp. In a letter of May 1937 he writes that the priest is well and works little, as an invalid, and in December 1937 that he is still with him, though an invalid.

In February 1938 a new case was opened against Archbishop Onuphrius, Bishop Anthony (Pankeev), Father Hippolytus Krasnovsky and other clergy in the camp. Witnesses ready to sign false depositions said that the priests gathered in a tent and held services, put on cassocks on Sundays and read prayers. On 17 March 1938 the NKVD troika condemned them to death. On 1 June 1938 Archbishop Onuphrius, Bishop Anthony and the priests Hippolytus Krasnovsky, Mitrophan Wilhelmsky, Alexander Yeroshov, Michael Deyneka, Nicholas Sadovsky, Basil Ivanov, Nicholas Kulakov, Maxim Bogdanov, Alexander Saulsky, Paul Popov and George Bogoyavlensky and the reader Michael Voznesensky were shot and buried in an unmarked common grave.

He is commemorated on 7 February (a movable day), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 1 June and 1 August, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk, on 5 September (a movable day), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and on 10 December, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Radonezh, in new style.