Paul Dernov

Saint Paul Dernov, hieromartyr (1870 to 1918), was an archpriest at the Saviour Cathedral and at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the town of Yelabuga, killed by a Bolshevik detachment in the night of 26 to 27 February 1918, together with his three sons. On 15 October 2018 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to number him, with his sons, among the new martyrs and confessors, and the glorification took place at Yelabuga on 27 February 2019, the day of his commemoration.

Family and ministry

He was born into a family of priests from father to son, that of Alexander Athanasievich Dernov, in the village of Pishtan (today Nikola, Kirov region), the seventh child. Four of his brothers were priests; the best known is Protopresbyter Alexander Alexandrovich Dernov, rector of the Peter and Paul cathedral in Saint Petersburg. He finished the church school at Yaransk (1884), the seminary at Vyatka (1890) and the Theological Academy at Kazan (1894), with the title of candidate of theology. In the same year he was appointed teacher of religion at the real school in Yelabuga. He married Anna Arkadievna Lazhenitsyna. On 2 October 1894 he was ordained priest for the Saviour Cathedral in Yelabuga, and on 30 November he was appointed rector of the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, at the town's girls' gymnasium. In 1906 he was raised to archpriest. They had five children: Boris, Gregory, Semyon, Varvara and Sergei.

Martyrdom

In November 1917 the congress of peasant deputies at Yelabuga decided to pass power to the Soviets, and their leadership began to plunder the population under the pretext of nationalization. On 22 to 23 January 1918 the 230th infantry regiment, stationed in the town, rose up, and the new leaders fled. One of them, Gassar, summoned from Sarapul a Bolshevik punitive detachment, commanded by Yefim Kolchin, known for cruelty. In January 1918 Patriarch Tikhon had issued an epistle to the faithful, with an anathema on the new authority. The priests of Yelabuga decided that Father Paul would read it on 23 February 1918, after the Liturgy, in the Saviour Cathedral.

The next day the town was occupied by Kolchin's detachment, and terror and arrests began. On 26 February his house was searched and an old empty machine-⁠gun belt was found. Father Paul was arrested and killed in the night of 26 to 27 February, outside the town, on the ice of the river Toima, at the Moralevskaya mill. In the morning, when the news had not yet reached the family, his three sons went to look for their father and were arrested on the spot by soldiers. While the widow, Anna, with the help of her father, Protodeacon Arcadius Lazhenitsyn, searched for her husband and managed to bring his body home, the sons were taken out under a dike, to a place called "Ryazhi", and killed with explosive bullets. According to eyewitnesses, the killers, drunk and enraged, fired at the young men at random and then finished them with bayonets. Anna learned of her sons' death from her father and, sitting by her husband's coffin, said: "Thy will be done". Father and sons were buried in the Trinity cemetery of Yelabuga; in the 1930s the graves and the cemetery were destroyed.

Veneration

In 2010, after ninety-⁠two years, with the help of descendants and the special labour of his granddaughter Anna Sergeyevna Filippova, a gravestone was restored on the presumed burial place. In 2014 Alexei Komissarov's book "The Life and Spiritual Legacy of the Priest Paul Dernov" appeared. On 15 October 2018 the Holy Synod decided to enter him and his sons, Boris, Gregory and Simeon, in the Synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors, and on 27 February 2019, in the Saviour Cathedral of Yelabuga, the solemn Liturgy with their glorification was served. The commemoration is on 27 February, the day of the martyrdom.