Sergius Gusev

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Gusev was a priest in the Klin district near Moscow and was shot at Butovo on 31 October 1937.

He was born on 5 July 1886 in the village of Gorbasyevo, Klin district, in the family of the priest Peter Gusev. In 1906 he finished the diocesan school of icon painting, and from 1907 he was a teacher at a parish school. In 1914 he was sent to the front, and in 1918 he was mobilized into the Red Army and served in the Caucasus as head of a bath and laundry detachment. Demobilized in 1921, he became psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Holy Trinity in Birevo, and on 19 March 1922 was ordained deacon for the same church. In 1927 he was moved to the church of the Resurrection in the Nikolo-⁠Zhelezovsky churchyard, and on 24 September 1934 he was ordained priest for it.

In the autumn of 1937 NKVD officers began to gather material for his arrest. Some witnesses stated that he had said the rich harvest of 1937 owed nothing to the new economic order but to God's mercy, who had seen the people hungry and sent them a crop. Others said he often visited believing women who lived in the barracks of a bread factory. One representative of the authorities, who hardly knew him, could say nothing about him, so the investigator filled in the record himself, and the witness was persuaded to sign it.

Father Sergius was arrested on 8 October 1937, imprisoned at Taganka and questioned daily for five days. He rejected every accusation and did not admit guilt. The inquiry ended on 13 October, on 25 October an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 31 October 1937 he was shot and buried in an unknown common grave at Butovo.

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.