Sergius Konstantinov

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Konstantinov was an archpriest in the Tver region and died in a camp, of heavy labour and hunger, on 26 November 1941.

Family and priesthood He was born on 15 August 1877 in the village of Rogachevo, Dmitrov district, in the family of Archpriest Vyacheslav Konstantinov, who taught at the ecclesiastical school, and his wife Helen. He graduated from the Bethany Seminary in 1900 and became a teacher at a factory school in Yakhroma. In 1906 he married Antonina, daughter of the deacon Basil Smirnov, a graduate of the Philaret school and a home teacher; they had ten children, three of whom died in infancy. In the same year he was ordained priest for the church of the Resurrection in the village of Voskresenskoe, and from 1911 he served at the church of the Holy Trinity in Yakhroma, where he became rector and archpriest. The church had been built beside the cotton mill of the Pokrovskaya Manufactura company. Until the persecution began he was director of the school and taught the Law of God; those who knew him remember that he was strict but just.

The persecution With the persecution his house was taken, a heavy trial for a large family. He rented a room in a neighbouring village, then borrowed money and bought a house in the village of Leonovo. At the end of the twenties, in the time of dekulakization, officials often came to take his "surplus", which at times meant five kilograms of groats, the whole food of the family. In 1930 the church was closed, after its bells were removed; the priest wept at the barbarity. In the same year Archbishop Thaddeus (Uspensky) of Tver appointed him rector of the church of the Ascension in Kimry, where he served until his arrest.

Arrest and death He was arrested on 13 November 1937 and questioned the next day, then held at Kashin. He rejected all the charges of anti-⁠Soviet agitation, and "duty witnesses" signed the false testimony the inquiry needed. The inquiry closed on 22 November, and on 2 December an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp. He passed through the prison at Kashin, the Smutikha colony near Kosova Gora station, the prisons of Bezhetsk and Zubtsov, and a colony near Lykoshino station. From the camp he wrote his wife letters full of love; in 1940 he asked the prosecutor for a new inquiry, but the request was refused, and the re-⁠examination of September 1940 left the sentence in force, since the witnesses could say nothing of weight. He was then moved to the camp at Nilova Pustyn on the island of Seliger, and on 6 September 1941 to the colony on the edge of Kovrov in the Vladimir region. He died on 26 November 1941 from labour beyond his strength and hunger, and was buried the same day in the camp cemetery near the village of Sergeytsevo, in grave number 226.

He is commemorated on 27 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, on 18 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow and on 1 October in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of the Vladimir land.