Pavel Gruzdev

Archimandrite Pavel Gruzdev (1911-1996) was a priest and elder in the Yaroslavl region, a confessor who passed through prison, camp and exile. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.

Childhood and youth

He was born on 3 (16) August 1911, or by other accounts in 1910, in the village of Bolshoi Borok in the Mologa district, to a peasant family. When his father was taken to the war the family fell into poverty, and in 1916 Pavel was sent to his nun relatives at the Afanasiev Convent in Mologa, where he tended poultry, cattle and horses and sang in the choir. Patriarch Tikhon, who lived there for a time, blessed him to wear the cassock from the age of eight. After the convent was closed he went in 1930 to the Khutyn Monastery near Novgorod, where he was clothed as a rassophore with the blessing of Bishop Alexy Simansky, the future patriarch. When this monastery too was closed, in 1932, he returned to his native region; his village was flooded by the Rybinsk reservoir, so in 1938 he moved the family house to Tutaev. There he sang in the choir and was sacristan at the church of Saint Leontius.

Prison and exile

On 13 May 1941 he was arrested with Hieromonk Nikolai and a group of eleven others, in the case of Archbishop Varlaam Ryashentsev of Yaroslavl. He was held in the prisons of Yaroslavl, for long in isolation, and was tortured under interrogation: nearly all his teeth were knocked out and he was beaten until his sight began to fail. Hieromonk Nikolai was shot on 3 September 1941; his words to Pavel, that God was, is and will be, stayed with him all his life. The others were shot, and Pavel received six years of camp, served at Vyatlag in the Kirov region between 1941 and 1947 as prisoner number 513. He endured hunger, cold, beatings and, once, being tied barefoot to a tree in frost; he survived. Eventually he was made inspector of a narrow-⁠gauge timber railway and was allowed to leave the camp unescorted.

After the war he returned to Tutaev, but in 1949 he was sentenced again in the same case and exiled to Kazakhstan, where he worked as an unskilled labourer at Petropavlovsk and was typikarios and reader at the cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. He was released on 20 August 1954 as innocent. Back in Tutaev he worked in construction, sang in the choir and helped in the altar at the Resurrection Cathedral; two petitions for ordination were refused because of his conviction. He was rehabilitated on 21 January 1958.

Priesthood

On 9 March 1958 Bishop Isaiah of Uglich ordained him deacon, and on 16 March priest. In August 1961 Archbishop Nikodim of Yaroslavl tonsured him a monk. He served at Borzovo and then, from 1960, at the Trinity church in Verkhne-⁠Nikulskoe. He became known far beyond the village: pilgrims came to him for comfort and counsel. He taught Christian love through parables and stories from life, some of which were written down and later printed. He lived in complete poverty and gathered nothing for himself. He was hieromonk from 1962, hegumen from 1966 and archimandrite from 1983.

In June 1992, ill, he moved to Tutaev, to a room beside the Resurrection Cathedral, because he had no means to buy a dwelling. Blind and gravely ill, he went on serving, preaching and receiving people. He died on 13 January 1996 and was buried by Archbishop Michey of Yaroslavl, with 38 priests and 7 deacons, at the Leontiev cemetery in Tutaev, beside his parents. His grave is honoured by the people; pilgrims come from all over Russia and memorial services are served there continually.