Sergius Stanislavlev

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Stanislavlev was a protodeacon at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Vladykino near Moscow, and he fell asleep in a camp, of exhaustion, on 16 November 1942.

He was born on 4 September 1884 in the village of Vanteyevka (now the town of Ivanteyevka), in the family of the priest Gregory Stepanovich Stanislavlev, who served at the church of the All-⁠Merciful Saviour from 1879 until his death in 1905. With his wife Elizabeth he raised four children: Nicholas, Constantine, Sergius and Elizabeth; the sons carried on the father's work of enlightenment. Sergius graduated in 1900 from the Donskoy ecclesiastical school and in 1906 from the Moscow Seminary, then taught for four years and married Alexandra Nikolaevna Petropavlovskaya, daughter of a priest of Perovo. In 1910 he was ordained deacon at the church of Saint Mary Magdalene in Sergiev Posad, and in 1913 was moved to the church of Saint Mary Magdalene on Kudrinskaya Square in Moscow. In the days of October 1917 the square was a centre of fighting, the church was wrecked and the services ceased. The family already had two sons, of six and of one. At the beginning of 1918 he asked to be moved to the Ascension Convent in the Kremlin, but in March the Bolsheviks settled in the Kremlin and the nuns had to leave. He then asked for a move to the Klin district, to the church of the Ascension. At the end of 1924 he was moved to the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Vladykino; the family already had three children.

For thirteen years the priest John Khrustalev and Deacon Sergius served together, performing all the services the villagers asked for. During this time he was raised to protodeacon. In 1937 the servers of the church were arrested; false witnesses said that the clergy had formed a criminal group to overthrow the government, and later the witnesses admitted that they had testified under pressure from the investigators. At his interrogation the protodeacon categorically denied guilt and asked what facts supported the charges; the answer was short: "The facts will be found." On 5 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp. The hard labour broke his health and he was moved to the ward of the invalids in the Amur Railway Camp, where he fell asleep on 16 November 1942, of exhaustion. Exactly fifteen years later, on 16 November 1957, the deputy prosecutor general of the USSR asked the Moscow City Court to cancel the troika's decision concerning Khrustalev, Stanislavlev and Nekrasov, for want of proof of the charges.

He was canonized by decision of the Holy Synod of 27 March 2007, for veneration throughout the Church. He is commemorated on 16 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 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.