Sabbas Suslov

Holy Venerable Martyr Sabbas Suslov, a monk of Optina, was born on 20 September 1873 and was shot on 5 December 1937, together with the monks Eutychius, Abenir and Mark and the layman Boris Kozlov.

In 1937 came the last period of destruction of the Russian Church by the power of militant atheists. It touched also the Optina monks who were still at liberty and lived in Kozelsk, the city nearest to their beloved monastery. Sabbas was called Sergius in the world; he was born in the village of Kamenevo, Livny district, Oryol province, in the family of the peasant Andrew Suslov, and attended the village school. In 1900 he entered Optina, where at first he was a tailor in the vestry. On 19 December 1910 he was tonsured a monk and given the obedience at the candle desk, then helped the sacristan, and in 1916 he was moved again to the vestry. After the closure of Optina he settled in Kozelsk, lived by tailoring, lived in prayer and went with the remaining brothers to the town church.

He was arrested with the monks of Optina on 30 October 1937 and imprisoned at Sukhinichi. Interrogated the same day, he said, in brief, that he had served twenty-⁠seven years in the monastery; that after its abolition he had worked as a tailor in houses, without the right to vote; that monasticism had not taken part in political life; that he told people that all authority comes from God and that one must believe in God; that he had not spoken against Soviet power and that he had not paid taxes for lack of means, sometimes living without bread. He had known well the elders of the monastery: Joseph, Nectarius, Theodosius and Barsanuphius, all reposed.

Arrested with him were Eutychius Didenko (born in 1870), Abenir Sinitsyn (born in 1879), Mark Makhrov (born in 1875) and Boris Kozlov (born in 1886), a peasant of Kozelsk, a former churchwarden, who sang in the choir at the Annunciation church. The witnesses on duty accused them of doing nothing useful, going about the houses, praying and not going to the electoral meetings. On 21 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced them to death. On the feast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple, 4 December, they stayed in prayer in prison, and the next day, 5 December 1937, they were shot and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 5 December, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 31 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kaluga and on 24 October in the Synaxis of all the Saints who shone at Optina, in the new style.