Victor Ellansky

Holy Hieromartyr Victor Ellansky was an archpriest and a trusted helper of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev. He was arrested three times, passed through exile and camp, and was shot at Karaganda on 8 September 1937.

The priest

He was born on 16 September 1874 (by other accounts 1875) in the village of Ploskoe in the Oster district, Chernigov province, in the family of the priest Basil Ellansky. At eleven or twelve he entered the theological school of Chernigov, then the seminary, which he finished in 1894. In the same year his wife, Elena Ivanovna, a priest's daughter, graduated from the diocesan girls' school; they had eight children. On 5 February 1895 he was ordained priest by Bishop Anthony Sokolov and served in several villages of Chernigov, for a time also in the diocese of Turkestan, as teacher of religion and member of the deanery council. In 1910 he entered the Kiev Theological Academy, which he finished in 1914. For a short time he was inspector and teacher of religion at the girls' school in Smolensk, then at the teachers' institute in Vinnitsa (1915-1916). In Kiev he was one of the closest helpers of Metropolitan Vladimir Bogoyavlensky.

The arrests

In 1924 he was arrested and sentenced to three years of exile, which he served at Kozlov in the Tambov region. He returned to Kiev in 1927, was raised to archpriest and was rector of the church of Alexander Nevsky at Lipki. In March 1929 he was arrested a second time and spent more than half a year in Kiev, then was sentenced to three years of exile in the Irkutsk region, in the village of Privalikhino on the Angara, with a ban on living in twelve regions. A letter of December 1931 to E. P. Peshkova, who headed the Aid to Political Prisoners, shows how hard it was for him: he had been left without money, had to earn his food by gathering berries and mushrooms and fishing, had no warm clothes, and cleaned the ice holes for the cattle and the village water. His wife wrote, at the end of 1929, that the family had eight dependent children without shoes or warm clothing.

After the exile he settled in Michurinsk in the Tambov region. In 1934 he received the blessing of Archbishop Vassian Pyatnitsky to serve in the churches of the diocese and showed himself a zealous pastor, serving also in the surrounding villages. In 1935 he was arrested a third time, accused of anti-⁠Soviet agitation because he was said to have told the faithful that Soviet power would not last and would soon collapse. He answered that every authority is given by God and that he recognized it as such. In December 1935 he was sentenced to five years, and from April 1936 he served them in Karlag, at the Alikhan point, as an accountant. In October 1936, at the age of sixty-⁠three, he wrote to Peshkova that he felt exhausted, almost an invalid, without winter clothes and shoes, and asked her to plead that he might return to the family he had not seen for eight years.

His death

In 1937 he was arrested in the camp, accused of telling other prisoners that Soviet power would soon be destroyed by God and of holding services, gathering around him former priests; as proof of "religious fanaticism" it was cited that at Pentecost he had sung the troparion of the Trinity. He did not admit guilt. The troika of the Karaganda regional NKVD sentenced him to death on 31 August, and Archpriest Victor Ellansky was shot on 8 September 1937. In 1990 he was rehabilitated by the prosecutor's office of the Karaganda region, and in August 2000 the Council of Bishops numbered him among the saints.

The saint is commemorated on 8 September and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.