Sergius Znamensky

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Znamensky was an archpriest, a former missionary and regimental chaplain, and he was shot at Butovo on 27 November 1937, after years in prison and in camps.

Missionary and regimental priest

He was born on 10 April 1873 in the town of Chita, in the family of the priest John Znamensky. His father died early and he grew up in the house of his grandfather, a village psalm-⁠reader. In 1913 he graduated from the Kazan Theological Academy, married Maria Lukyanovna (they had two daughters) and was ordained priest for the cathedral of Chita, with the task of missionary among the pagan Buryats and Mongols. At the outbreak of the First World War he was sent as priest of the 234th Borisoglebsk Regiment and stayed at the front to the end of the war. He received two orders and the Cross of Saint George of the fourth class, and in 1917 he was raised to archpriest and received the cross with ornaments and the mitre. After the collapse of the front he set out for home, but the civil war stopped him at Simbirsk, where Archbishop Benjamin (Muratovsky) named him to the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Chufarovo, where his wife and daughter joined him. By his service, his sermons and the fact that he refused no one a service, he soon won authority.

Trials

Among the local communists, though, he had enemies, led by Stepan Sharagin, chairman of the volost cell, who had an interest in having the priest removed from the village, since he saw the plunder they carried out. The priest wrote to a party committee that for two years Sharagin had harassed him: he had wanted to make him enter the rear militia, then mobilized him for labour, then to the post of secretary of the village council, where what he found to be abuses in the grain levies led to his dismissal and to denunciations. In 1920 he was released by the Cheka with a certificate that he could not be arrested without its knowledge. On 12 March 1921 Sharagin nevertheless sent a denunciation, claiming that the priest had formed a church council of kulaks and gave long sermons against the communists. The faithful wrote to the tribunal in his defence, and the priest sent a telegram to Lenin; Lenin ordered an inquiry, but without effect. Father Sergius was arrested on 21 March 1921 at Simbirsk, and questioned, he denied that he had used mocking words about the communists in his sermons, that he had spoken of the coming of the Antichrist on account of civil divorces, or that Petrograd had been taken by the Whites. He admitted only that in October, angry, he had said a tactless remark about Sharagin and services.

On 20 April 1921 the provincial Cheka sentenced him to five years in a camp, and on 23 April he entered the forced-⁠labour camp at Simbirsk. On 22 February 1924 the commission on administrative deportations changed the sentence to two years of exile in the Zyryan land; after eight months he was released. Returning, he stayed at Vyatka and Bishop Abraham (Dernov) named him rector of the Dormition cathedral in Yaransk, where he served from 3 November, with sermons at every Liturgy and vigil. On 5 April 1925 Bishop Nectarius was arrested, and in October the archpriest was moved to the town prison of Vyatka; on 26 March 1926 the Special Council sentenced him to two years, and at the opening of navigation he was sent to the camp at Solovki. In 1927, at the end of his term, he was sent under supervision to Yekaterinburg, but was soon arrested again and sentenced to three years of exile in Uzbekistan.

Martyrdom

Returning from exile, he served at the church of the Holy Martyrs Florus and Laurus in Kashira near Moscow. In 1937 he was arrested on a charge of hooliganism, so absurd that the court was obliged to acquit him, but on 17 November 1937 the authorities arrested him again. At the interrogation he said that for a long time he had regarded the October revolution as a passing rebellion, and when pressed to be more precise, that his attitude toward Soviet power had been hostile, but that he had committed no open acts of hostility. On 25 November an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 27 November 1937 he was shot and buried in an unknown common grave at Butovo.

He is commemorated on 27 November and, in the new style, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 3 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Simbirsk, on 23 August in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Solovki and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.