Sergius Krotkov

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Krotkov was an archpriest and former regimental chaplain, and he was shot at Butovo on 1 July 1938.

Life He was born in 1876 in the village of Podlesnaya Sloboda, Zaraisk district, Ryazan province, in the family of the priest Michael Krotkov. His father died when he was three, and he grew up with relatives who were well off, but he kept hard memories of those years. He finished seminary, taught the Law of God at a parish school, married Maria, daughter of Archpriest Palladius Afanasievich Orlov of Lukhovitsy, took his father-⁠in-⁠law's place, and in 1903 was ordained priest. In the First World War he was priest of the 139th Morshansk Regiment on the Austrian front, and for his blameless service he received the Order of Saint Anne, third class, and the Cross of Saint George and was raised to archpriest. After the regiment was disbanded he went to Voronezh province as rector in the village of Valuychik. Before leaving the front he had been advised by Bishop Dionysius (Valedinsky) of Kremenets not to return to a Russia ruled by the Bolsheviks but to settle in Europe, but he refused.

In 1922 he was named rector of the church of Saint Nicholas in Tsarevo, Dmitrov district, where he served until 1930, in hard times when pastoral work meant confession of faith. Stripped of his rights, he received no ration cards for food and no firewood; looking for wood, he would plunge into the icy water of the river Talitsa after the heavy logs and say, "What grace." Parishioners loved him for his piety and the way he served; he was even-⁠handed with all, believers and unbelievers, helped the needy, at times with his last money, and took nothing from those without means. His church was among the best attended of the district, and this brought him trouble: the priest Nicholas Veselovsky of Nagornoe, coveting his place, won over two singers of the church and obtained the appointment. From 1930 he served at the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in Pokrovskoe while still living at Tsarevo; the journey was hard, by train and on foot, often on open platforms. He served there seven years. A parishioner remembered that he took no money for services, and if a person was poor, he served without payment.

Martyrdom At the end of 1937 the authorities decided to close the church. In February 1938 he was called to the NKVD and told that it would be closed and that he might be arrested, but he decided not to flee, telling his family that the parishioners would come to pray and he would be a deserter who had betrayed God and his flock. After the Liturgy on 2 March 1938 he was taken by an official coachman to the NKVD and then to Taganka. Asked about fighting against the Reds, he said that his regiment had been moved against the Red troops near Petrograd, that he had sided with the generals, but the soldiers had become Bolshevized and the regiment was disbanded. To the charge of counter-⁠revolutionary activity he answered that all his counter-⁠revolution had been the church service, that he had been raised in the faith from childhood, and that he had only expressed discontent at the hard life and the taxes. On 14 June 1938 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 1 July 1938 he was shot and buried in an unknown common grave at Butovo.

He is commemorated on 1 July 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.