New Martyrs of Butyrka

The New Martyrs of Butyrka are 218 prisoners of the Butyrka prison in Moscow, bishops, priests, monks, nuns and laypeople, who passed through this jail in the years of Soviet persecution and were glorified by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church as new martyrs and confessors of Russia of the twentieth century. The Council took place in August 2000, and their names are in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

The Butyrka prison

Butyrka was one of the best-⁠known prisons of Moscow, a place of transit and investigation for thousands of people arrested in the 1920s to 1940s. Most of the 218 were held here either during investigations or while awaiting sentence, and many were then shot, especially in 1937 and 1938, at the Butovo range near Moscow. Others received exile or camps and died much later, as confessors, in the 1940s, 1950s or even 1960s. The list shows that each is named with the rank the Church gives him: hieromartyr for clergy killed, venerable martyr for monastics, hieroconfessor or venerable confessor for those who suffered without being killed, martyr for laypeople, and holy hierarch for some bishops.

Who they are

The list includes great hierarchs: Archbishop Augustine Belyaev of Kaluga (died 1937), Metropolitan Anatoly Grisyuk of Odessa (1938), Archbishop Onuphry Gagalyuk of Kursk (1938), Archbishop Hilarion Troitsky of Vereya (1929), Archbishop Nikodim Krotkov of Kostroma (1938), Metropolitan Peter Polyansky of Krutitsy (1937), Metropolitan Seraphim Chichagov (1937), Bishop Seraphim Zvezdinsky of Dmitrov (1937), Archbishop Juvenal Maslovsky of Ryazan (1937), Metropolitan Cyril Smirnov of Kazan (1937), Archbishop Prokopy Titov of Odessa and Kherson (1937), Bishop Anthony Pankeev of Belgorod (1938), Archbishop Demetrius Dobroserdov of Mozhaisk (1937), Bishop Ignatius Sadkovsky (1938) and Bishop Ephraim Kuznetsov of Selenga (1918).

Among them are also confessors who survived the persecution, such as Saint Luke Voino-⁠Yasenetsky, Archbishop of Simferopol (1961), Saint Nicholas Mogilevsky, Metropolitan of Alma-⁠Ata and Kazakhstan (1955, who was in Butyrka in February 1923), Saint Athanasius Sakharov of Kovrov (1962), Saint Basil Preobrazhensky of Kineshma (1945), Archimandrite Gabriel Igoshkin (1959) and Venerable Nikon Belyaev of Optina, the last elder of Optina (1931).

Among the martyrs are many parish priests and archpriests, among them John Vostorgov (1918), Archpriest Alexander Khotovitsky (1937), Archpriest Sergei Mechev (1942), Fr Vladimir Ambartsumov (1937), the laymen Mikhail Novoselov (1938) and Vladimir Pravdolyubov (1937), and monks and nuns: Venerable Martyr Alexandra Chervyakova, schemanun (1937, Butovo), Venerable Martyr Anna Efremova, novice (1938), Venerable Martyr Evdokia Kuzminova, novice of the Marfo-⁠Mariinsky convent, arrested on 19 January 1937 and held at Butyrka (1938), Venerable Martyr Vera Morozova (1938) and the lay martyrs Anna Zertsalova (1937) and Elizabeth Kuranova (1937). Many of them were buried in common graves at Butovo, and their names are kept in the iconography of the church of the New Martyrs at Butovo.

Veneration

The Russian Church commemorates them on the days of their death, each by his own calendar, and with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. Each of the 218 has, besides this synaxis, his own life, written in the Church's books on the new martyrs.