Theodore Gusev

Holy Martyr Theodore Gusev was born on 22 April 1874 in the village of Sidorovskoe in the Zvenigorod district of the Moscow province, in the family of the peasant Fyodor Gusev. He died in a camp, on 1 February 1940.

He received basic schooling at the village school. As a man of great authority among the peasants, in 1912 he was elected village elder and held the post until the Bolsheviks seized power. His brother was a member of the church council and treasurer at the church of Saint Nicholas in Sidorovskoe. At the end of the 1920s, when the peasants were being driven into collective farms, Theodore's nephew became a brigade leader on a collective farm and, frightened, demanded that his uncle leave the church council; in his brother's place, Theodore Gusev entered the council in 1929. In 1933 he was called to account, with the priest of the church, on a false denunciation; the court rejected the charge. He was called to account a second time in 1935, for the disappearance of some church objects, and was given a suspended sentence of one year.

In the first half of 1937 it became clear that persecution was growing harsher, and his son urged him to leave the church, so as not to be arrested and not to put a "stain" on them. Theodore Fyodorovich answered that he would not leave the church and would not renounce God. In August 1937 NKVD officers came to the village and began to summon peasants and ask about Theodore Gusev. Most said they had heard nothing bad from him, but false witnesses were found, among them his nephew.

He was arrested on 21 August 1937 and held first in the militia lock-⁠up in Golitsyno, then in the prison in Zvenigorod. The references given by the chairmen of the village soviet and of the collective farm said that he was "steeped in religious spirit," an "active churchman," an "unchanging member of the council," who "works well on the farm, except on feast days." Questioned by the investigator, he denied any counter-⁠revolutionary activity. The inquiry learned of the Bogolyubskaya icon of the Mother of God in the church of Saint Nicholas, on whose feast, 1 July, many clergy and faithful gathered, and the clergy took their meal at Theodore Gusev's house, but he said no political talk had taken place. His relatives brought him food in prison. One day he told his daughters not to leave, because the prisoners were to be moved to Moscow. The daughters ran after the truck to the station and, when he was moved to another carriage, asked a militiaman why he had been taken. The militiaman answered, "Nowadays, girls, they imprison people for nothing."

He was taken to Butyrka, then to Taganka. On 11 October 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a labour camp. He was sent to Blagoveshchensk, where for a time he worked as watchman of the camp's vegetable garden. Theodore Fyodorovich Gusev died in Yugvostlag on 1 February 1940 and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 1 February (new style), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on 7 February and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow on 5 September, the last two being movable.