Simeon Dernov

Holy Martyr Simeon Dernov was the son of the priest Paul Dernov and was shot at Yelabuga on 14 February 1918 (27 February in the new style), with his brothers Boris and Gregory, for confessing the faith.

Simeon was born on 1 February 1901 and managed to finish only the real school at Yelabuga. His brother Boris was born in 1897 and finished six classes, then entered the Institute of Railway Engineers in Saint Petersburg, and Gregory, born on 23 January 1899, entered the Technological Institute in Petrograd. In 1918, when a punitive detachment of E. Kolchin took Yelabuga, terror began in the town. After his fiery sermons, the reading of the message of Patriarch Tikhon in church and his reproach of those who had defiled the church, Archpriest Paul Dernov was presented by the punishers as the chief organizer of an uprising. His house was searched on 12 February 1918 (old style), he was arrested, and drunken soldiers led him onto the ice of the river Toima and shot him in the night of 13 to 14 February.

On the next morning, 14 February (27 February, new style), when the news of the father's death had not yet reached the family, his three sons went to look for him and were arrested by soldiers. Witnesses say that on the way to the place of execution they confessed the Orthodox faith aloud. The Dernov brothers were taken beneath the dam and shot with explosive bullets; the punishers fired at random at the young men and then finished them with bayonets. He was canonized together with his father and his brothers.

Simeon is commemorated on 27 February (14 February in the old style), on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 17 October in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kazan, in the new style.