Vladimir Dvinsky

Holy Hieromartyr Vladimir Dvinsky was a deacon at the church of the Prophet Elijah in Polonsk, Pskov province, and was shot on 10 September 1918, together with the priest Alexander Lyubimov.

Father Vladimir came from a line of servants of the Church; his father too had served at Polonsk, and the family lived in an ancestral house beside the church of Saint Elijah. Besides his duty as deacon, he worked for many years in the service of enlightenment: he was teacher of religion in two zemstvo schools. He had five children and tried to give them an education. In all he served forty years at the church of Saint Elijah, thirty of them as deacon. With Father Alexander, a priest born in 1884 at Polonsk, a graduate of the Pskov seminary and teacher of religion in four schools, he served for years, so that a spiritual kinship bound them together.

After the upheaval of October the two went on serving in the parish. When the persecutions began they remained faithful to their duty: they preached, explained to people what was happening and urged them to defend the property of the Church. On 10 September 1918 they were arrested on a denunciation. After a short questioning by the Petrograd branch of the Cheka they were condemned to death, and the sentence was carried out at once by a group of Chekists in a grove behind the churchyard of Polonsk.

The saint is commemorated on 13 September and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 11 July (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Pskov.