Victor Kiranov

Holy Hieromartyr Victor Kiranov was an archpriest in Berdyansk and died in the camp of Temnikov on 30 March 1942, after years of investigation, beatings and imprisonment.

Life

He was born on 8 March 1881 in the village of Manuilovka in the Berdyansk district, Taurida province, in the family of the priest Michael Kiranov. His ancestors were Bulgarians who came to Russia in 1830 to escape the Turks; his forefather, the priest Protasius, who died in Turkey in 1773, had commanded his descendants not to shrink from the priesthood if they were called. He finished the Taurida seminary and in 1903 entered the University of Yuryev, but left after a year and served as psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Holy Trinity in Novoprokofievka. He married Antonina, daughter of the priest Peter Troitsky. On 30 October 1905 Bishop Alexis Molchanov ordained him priest at the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in Bolshaya Blagoveshchenka. In the early twenties he was raised to archpriest and appointed rector of the Ascension cathedral in Berdyansk, and after its closing, in 1928, of the church of the Protection, the only one in the city, and dean of the district. He gave shelter in it to priests left without parishes and set up a fund to help poor clergy.

The arrest

Archbishop George Deliev of Dnepropetrovsk, arrested in 1936, out of weakness accused the priests of Berdyansk, among them Father Victor, of having been drawn into espionage and sabotage. In 1936 the church of the Protection was threatened with demolition so that a school might be built from its bricks. Its three priests called the parish to a meeting, held on 8 January 1937, which nearly four thousand people attended. Many spoke against the closing, and one said that they would collect money for stone if a school was needed. Father Victor thanked him warmly. The church was closed all the same, and in the summer of 1937 the priests were arrested at Berdyansk.

False testimony was read to him: that he had ordered wells poisoned on election day and had given poison, and that he had given and received espionage messages for Bishop George. He refused to confirm it and was cruelly beaten, then interrogated day and night for thirteen days, with one break of six hours. After a month he signed false statements against himself, but the prosecutor found the investigation unsatisfactory, and Moscow sent the file back. At a confrontation with a priest who had cast off his rank, who said that Victor had spoken against collective farms and urged him to turn to honest work, he called him a "fool", which earned him ten days in the punishment cell. On 7 March 1939 he withdrew in writing his first statements, wrung from him, and declared that he did not admit guilt. He was sent to the prison at Zaporozhye.

The camp

From prison he wrote to those close to him that the way of salvation passes through suffering, then patience, then humility, and that he was innocent before the state but guilty before God for his sins. On 29 October 1939 an NKVD troika sentenced him to eight years in a camp, and he was sent to the Novosibirsk region, to Asino, and then, in 1940, to Temnikov (the former Sarov hermitage). From the camp he wrote that he had worked at felling timber, at sorting rotten vegetables, as a barracks orderly, wearing camp clothes and bast shoes, and in 1941 he was placed among the invalids, knitting nets. He received parcels from his family and thanked them with joy, but asked them not to seek a visit, so as not to bring tears and expense. After the war began the condition of the prisoners worsened and many died. Archpriest Victor Kiranov died in the camp of Temnikov on 30 March 1942 and was buried in an unknown place.

The saint is commemorated on 30 March and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 2 December in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Crimean Metropolis and on 28 December in the Synaxis of the Saints of Crimea.