Theodore Chichkanov

Holy Hieromartyr Theodore Chichkanov, a priest, was born on 10 February 1884 in a small village of the Barnaul district, in a pious family, of Paul Vasilievich and Nadezhda Efimovna Chichkanov. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 22 November 1937, at Semipalatinsk.

Life

His father served as village scribe and psalm-⁠reader at the Pokrovsko-⁠Ilinskaya church, where Theodore was baptized. The pious parents raised their children in strict reverence. With a good voice, Theodore sang at the choir stand and loved to read in his free time. He studied at the clerical school in Barnaul and at the Tomsk seminary, which he finished in 1905. He worked at the Omsk Consistory until July 1909, where he met Lyubov Smirnova, whom he married in 1909. In 1912 a daughter, Nina, was born, and half a year later Theodore fell ill with tuberculosis and had to go to Crimea for a year. There he was confirmed in his wish to be a priest. On 22 July 1913 he was ordained priest by Bishop Andronicus of Omsk and Akmolinsk and sent to the church in Dolon, Semipalatinsk district. In 1915 he served in a church in Semipalatinsk.

In 1921 his daughter Nina, ten, Olechka, one, and the old grandmother Glafira Georgievna died of scarlet fever. In Father Theodore's family there was a good atmosphere and full understanding. He taught his children to live piously, with prayer and fasting, prepared his sermons from the books in the big cupboard at home, and in his free time mended the family's felt boots in winter and sewed slippers in summer. From 1917 the life of priests changed: the Church was separated from the state, and policy became ever harsher. On 27 November 1931 the Cathedral of the Sign was closed, and Father Theodore became priest at the Ascension Cathedral. The Church was put under a heavy tax, and the priest gave most of his salary month after month. Servants of worship were given no food ration cards, so Father Theodore also worked as an accountant. He was summoned to the NKVD and came back gloomy, asking his children not to question him. His daughter Antonina recalls that he once told her never to cry when she was hurt, but to tell it at home, or, if that was not possible, to tell her pillow and then cry.

Arrest and martyrdom

In 1937 a wave of arrests passed through Semipalatinsk in a church conspiracy invented by the NKVD. In August Archbishop Alexander Shchukin of Semipalatinsk and Abbess Catherine were arrested, then Archpriest Boris Gerasimov, Archpriest Nestor Panin, the priests Constantine Cherepanov, Andrew Gladkikh and others. The arrest was expected by all: the priest's wife, Lyubov, had prepared for Father Theodore bags of rusks and changes of linen. On 19 November 1937 they came for him too. His relatives learned nothing of his fate until in 1956 a paper came saying that he had died of hypertension on 22 November 1945. Only after the opening of the NKVD-⁠FSB archives in the 1990s was it established that by decision of the troika of 19 November 1937 Gerasimov, Panin, Chichkanov, Klimov, Gladkikh and Cherepanov were sentenced, as members of a church espionage organization, to the supreme penalty. The sentence was carried out on 22 November 1937 in the town of Semipalatinsk.

Veneration

By decision of the Jubilee Council of the Russian Church, held in Moscow from 13 to 16 August 2000, Archpriest Nestor Panin, Archpriest Theodore Chichkanov, the priest Victor Klimov and the priest Constantine Cherepanov were numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He is commemorated on 22 November (new style) and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on 7 February, on a movable day.