Theodore Smirnov

Holy Hieromartyr Theodore Smirnov, a deacon, was born on 5 April 1890 in the village of Ramenye in the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow province (today the Shakhovskoy district), in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Vladimir Smirnov. He was shot on 5 July 1938, the place of burial being unknown.

In 1913 he finished three years at the Bethany seminary. He married Anna, daughter of the priest Vasily Ivanovich Orlov, whose brother, the priest Sergius Orlov, also suffered martyrdom in the time of the atheist persecutions. On 5 April 1913 he was appointed deacon at the Resurrection church in Ramenye and soon after ordained; until 1917 he was a teacher of religion in the schools of Mikhalevo and other villages. On 16 November 1917 he was moved to the church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at the Lazarevsky cemetery in Moscow. On 28 October 1920 he was awarded the double orarion. In 1932 the church at the Lazarevsky cemetery was closed by the authorities, and Deacon Theodore was moved to the church of the icon of the Mother of God "Unexpected Joy" in Maryina Roshcha, where he served until his arrest. Many years later his son recalled with great love his father, to whom he owed his closeness to the house of God.

Deacon Theodore was arrested on 10 December 1937 and held in Taganka prison. On 15 December the investigator asked him about his attitude to Soviet power; he answered that it was loyal. The investigator told him that he had spread counter-⁠revolutionary rumours about the persecution of religion and clergy and about the forced closure of churches, and that he had acted so as to disrupt the election campaign for the Supreme Soviet. He denied it. As duty witness the rector of the church where he served, Father Arkady Yankovsky, was called, and added testimony to the investigation. As if in confirmation of what the witness said, on 20 December 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced Deacon Theodore to ten years in a labour camp, and he was sent to the town of Lesozavodsk in the Primorye region, to the 19th section of Bamlag, where he met hunger, forced labour beyond his strength and inhuman conditions.

On 31 March 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced thirty-⁠one prisoners of the camp to death, among them Deacon Theodore, but the sentence was not communicated to them. For three more months the condemned continued to work. Deacon Theodore Smirnov was shot on 5 July 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 5 July (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.