Seraphim Gushchin

Holy Venerable Martyr Seraphim Gushchin, a hieromonk, a monk of Optina, was born on 22 December 1872 and was shot on 23 November 1937, on the same day as Archbishop Augustine of Kaluga and Archimandrite Joannicius of Optina.

In the world he was called Stephen and was born in the village of Nagulino, Balakhna district, Nizhny Novgorod province, in the family of a small Volga shipowner, Gregory Gushchin. He attended school with a private teacher, and in 1888 he worked as a clerk at a railway office in Nizhny Novgorod. In 1893 he was drafted into the army and served as a non-⁠commissioned officer, and after service he returned to the railway office. In 1908 he left worldly work and entered Optina as a labourer. On 29 October 1911 he was received as a novice, and on 24 May 1915 he was tonsured a monk with the name Seraphim; for a time he had the obedience of keeper of the synodikon.

When the persecution began, Optina was gradually closed and its monks arrested. In 1921 the monk Seraphim was ordained hierodeacon and served with the hieromonk Nikon (Belyaev) in the Kazan church left to the monks by the authorities. In 1923 a cooperative of the monks was formed, but was abolished the same year, and in June 1924 the church was closed, and the brothers moved to Kozelsk, where the cathedral of the town was still open. In 1924 he was ordained hieromonk and served in the town of Likhvin, and from 1 January 1937 at the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in the village of Pokrovskoe, Peremyshl district, Kaluga region.

He was arrested on 7 November 1937, twenty years after the seizure of power by the atheists, and held in a prison in the Cherepet district. The witnesses on duty stated that he had told people, before the general census, not to write themselves as unbelievers, and that he had said to one witness that the chairman of the village council had asked him for whom he would vote. On the day of arrest he was interrogated and denied all the accusations: that he had had terrorist feelings toward the communists in July 1937, that he had slandered Soviet power, that he had agitated against the elections to the Supreme Soviet. He said only, in brief, that he did not intend to vote. On 11 November the file passed to the NKVD troika, which on 19 November 1937 sentenced him to death. He was shot on 23 November 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 23 November, 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.