Sergius Kazansky

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Kazansky was a protodeacon, a former officer and singer of the imperial chapel, who was shot at Torzhok on 3 November 1937.

He was born on 23 September 1879 in the village of Ivanovskoe in Yaroslavl province, in the family of the priest Alexei Kazansky. He completed two courses at the ecclesiastical school of Yaroslavl, but, not wishing to serve the Church, went to Saint Petersburg, graduated from a military school and became an officer. He had an exceptional singing voice and was invited into the imperial chapel, where he was presented to the imperial family, who sometimes invited him to Livadia. It seems that at this time he was ordained deacon and raised to protodeacon, the rank he bore until his martyrdom.

In 1932 he was arrested and sentenced to five years of exile, and so, driven out of the diocese of Saint Petersburg, he came to the town of Rzhev in the Tver region. In July 1937 he moved to Torzhok and served at the Nikolo-⁠Pustynsky church. On 17 August a regular police informer was called in and signed what was put before him. On 21 August the protodeacon was arrested and imprisoned at Tver. The "duty" witnesses stated his closeness to the tsar's family, that before the revolution he had sung at the Anichkov Palace, that he praised life under the tsar and said that under Soviet power people were worn out and the Church was given no peace because of taxes. At his interrogation he rejected all the charges, including that of speaking in favour of Germany, Spain and Japan. An NKVD troika sentenced him to death on 1 November, and on 3 November 1937 he was shot.

He was canonized in August 2000 at the Jubilee Council of Bishops. He is commemorated on 3 November and, in the new style, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 18 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver.