Sergius Bazhanov

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Bazhanov was a priest in the Kolomna district near Moscow and was shot at Butovo on 31 October 1937, having already passed through a labour camp.

The priest He was born on 3 February 1883 in the village of Sandyri in the Kolomna district, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Peter Bazhanov. He completed three classes at the Moscow Theological Seminary and was ordained deacon for the Dormition cathedral of Kolomna. In 1918 he was ordained priest at the church of the Holy Trinity in Troitskie Ozerki, in 1923 he was moved to the church of Saint John the Forerunner in Gorodishchi, and from 1930 he served at the church of Saint Nicholas in Gorodnya, Lukhovitsy district. He received the epigonation and the skufia as awards, and in 1928 Bishop Theodosius (Ganetsky) of Kolomna gave him the kamilavka.

The persecution On 8 March 1930, in the midst of the campaign to store seed grain in common barns, he was arrested. A peasant and the church watchman stated that he had said Soviet power was flaying and strangling the peasantry, that seed should not be handed over, and that he complained of a tax of 500 roubles and a further 300 roubles of self-⁠taxation. Father Sergius answered that he knew of no guilt and had only voiced his displeasure at the weight of the taxes. After his arrest several village women went to the village council to learn why he had been taken, and a member of the parish council testified that he had always advised them to submit to the authorities. On 3 June 1932 an OGPU troika sentenced him to three years in a camp, on the construction of the White Sea-⁠Baltic Canal at Medvezhyegorsk. Returning from confinement, he served again in the same church.

Martyrdom On 14 October 1937 he was arrested again and imprisoned at Taganka in Moscow. At his interrogations he denied any agitation against the collective farms or any counter-⁠revolutionary speech. An NKVD troika sentenced him to death on 25 October, and Father Sergius was shot on 31 October 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range near Moscow.

He is commemorated on 31 October and, in the new style, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.