The stories below offer us but a small glimpse of what millions of Orthodox Christians suffered
for refusing to recognize the renovationism of Metropolitan Sergius and his organization:
Fr. Seraphim Rose: "All those who protested against the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius were arrested by the Soviet regime as 'counter-revolutionaries'; they were shot or sent to concentration camps and exile. At interrogations the jubilant Chekist-interrogators with sarcasm and evil joy would prove the 'strict canonicity' of Metropolitan Sergius and his Declaration, which 'has not altered either canons or dogmas.' The mass executions, persecutions and tortures which descended upon the faithful of Christ's Church are beyond description."
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I.M. Andreyev: "...the Underground or Catacomb Church in Soviet Russia underwent her hardest trials after February 4th 1945, i. e., after the enthronement of the Soviet Patriarch Alexis. Those who did not recognize him were sentenced to new terms of punishment and were sometimes shot. Those who did recognize him and gave their signature to that effect were often liberated before their terms expired and received appointments... All secret priests detected in the Soviet Zone of Germany have been shot. All priests who did not recognize Patriarch Alexis were also shot."
"I knew priests of the official Church who, at home, tore their hair out, who smashed their heads making prostrations, begging forgiveness for their apostasy, calling themselves Cain—but nonetheless they did not have the strength to decide upon martyrdom. But even they spiritually did not recognize the Red Church."
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Protopriest Nicholas Dzhozovsky served as the rector of the church in the town of Datsk, in the
province of Kiev. In 1933 the sergianists seized this parish. Fr. Nicholas moved to the suburbs of Kiev, where his wife, Matushka Valentina, lived.
In 1934 he was arrested for not recognizing Metropolitan Sergius, and taken on foot through
the forest to Boyarka station, from where he was to go to Vasilkov. On the road, in the forest, he was tied to a tree, mocked and brutally tortured: the tormentors cut off his fingers, tore out his hair,
stabbed, cut, and finally shot him. Matushka Valentina died from hunger.
In 1934 he was arrested for not recognizing Metropolitan Sergius, and taken on foot through
the forest to Boyarka station, from where he was to go to Vasilkov. On the road, in the forest, he was tied to a tree, mocked and brutally tortured: the tormentors cut off his fingers, tore out his hair,
stabbed, cut, and finally shot him. Matushka Valentina died from hunger.
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The priest who served in their church was called Fr. Valentine. His father and grandfather had been
priests before him. In 1927 Metropolitan Sergius issued his "Declaration". Fr. Valentine signed it. When the chanters in the church heard about this, one of them - a bass, the cousin of Archippus Kuzmich - stood up and declared that the priest had renounced God.
Soon the authorities again brought Fr. Valentine papers to sign. But he tore them up - both the new
ones and the ones he had signed earlier. After this they took him away and no-one saw him alive again. In Fr. Valentine's place they sent a renovationist priest to the church and the church began to be
considered red.
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"My parents were persecuted and oppressed for being true to Holy Orthodoxy," reminisced Mother
Joanna. The godless authorities made her father, Athanasius Sanin, choose between recognizing
Metropolitan Sergius' 'declaration of apostasy', or face punishment. Athanasius Sanin, a man of great
Christian conscience and human dignity, chose to go to prison rather than betray his Church. He died in prison years later after suffering bestial tortures. Mother Joanna's mother, Anastasia, spent a quarter of a century in Soviet jails, but emerged unbroken.
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Archpriest Vladimir Zacharievich was the rector of the church in the town of Borovika (according to another account, Brovikhi) in the province of Kiev. In 1927 he was arrested and placed in solitary confinement in the Kornilov region; during interrogations they constantly demanded recognition of Metropolitan Sergius; when he categorically refused, his hands and feet were broken and he was thrown back into his prison cell overflowing with arrested people, where he died. His Matushka Susanna was not given his body, and it was buried in the local cemetery in a common pit with all those who had been shot.
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St. Basil, Bishop Of Kineshma refused to sign the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius and recognize it as Orthodox. At that the enraged torturers set about beating him with the buckles of their soldier's belts. But they could not shake his resolute, pure and Orthodox confession of Christ, which could not be deflected by any worldly enticement.
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When the future Fr. Gideon was still a child, a fool-for-Christ said about him: "Grisha will not
feed his parents with bread. He will" - at this point he began to chant - "Lord, have mercy!"
In 1931, Hieromonk Gideon and the priest Peter were the only two priests in their deanery who
refused to sign the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius. After the meeting, the Bolsheviks came to
take him at the house of his mother. His mother remembered his parting words for the rest of her life:
"Don't go anywhere, don't look for anyone! They've all signed! Fr. Peter and I were the only
ones at the meeting of the clergy who did not put their signatures to the dishonorable document of
apostasy. And now we await speedy arrest, imprisonment and execution by shooting!"
And a few days later, on Thomas Sunday, Fr. Gideon was taken away and shot. Fr. Peter
was taken a little later, but in the same year.
After Fr. Gideon had been arrested, Schema-monk Mercurius settled in his house to look after his
mother. And then he, too, was arrested and disappeared without a trace in the camps.
"You will die a long, long way away!" a fool-for-Christ, Blessed Sergius, once said to him.
And he added: "Now everything is collectivized. And the priests have become collective farmers...
Don't go to them, they have the plague, a terrible heresy!"
In the same year of 1931, recounts a witness, Hieromonk Nicetas from Simferopol, and Hierodeacon Tiburtius, came to settle in our area. Fr. Nicetas served secretly from house to house. And Fr.Tiburtius said openly that the Antichrist was already ruling.
They were both betrayed and shot.
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The sick brother Sergius lay ill in bed, and until his last day, the day of his arrest, no one except his
mother knew that he was a monk. Everyone called him "Brother Sergius".
His whole life was spent in bed. In his childhood he contracted "child paralysis". And from that time,
from his twelfth year, he was bed-ridden. He could work with his hands, but his whole body was
paralyzed.
He was a fervent believer as an adolescent and he remained such as a young man. His illness only
strengthened this feeling. With time a gift of clairvoyance was revealed in him. People came to
see him from various parts. And he lay almost barefoot, in scandalous poverty. But he did not
receive some of his visitors:
"Mama," he said, "go, some people are coming to us. What have I to do with them? Feed them
and send them away!"
But he received others. Usually he spoke little, laconically. He did not always speak, but he gave
the person to understand.
"I'll go to Sergius, I'll go without fail, I'll show him," said a certain gossip to another. "Where did he get that from: 'you mustn't go to the church', he says?! How can one deny the church? You know, 'he who does not have the Church as his Mother does not have God as his Father!' But think of it - he says that we mustn't go to this church! But where will he get another church?! He should think a little. It's nice for him lying whole days in bed, it's alright for a corpse to think up such things. But if he lived with us and worked, then he would know what to say. But what's this? Some sort of heresy has really risen up amongst us?! I'll go without fail, I'll show him."
Thus did the gossip get worked up. And then with the other gossip he went to the sick brother Sergius. They entered, crossed themselves in front of the icons, greeted him and sat on the bench. And now let this ill-starred zealot of the "church" speak for himself:
"Immediately I entered and sat down, but it was as if someone had poured some boiling hot water over me. I was so stupefied. I couldn't say anything. Alexei Grigoryevich spoke and asked about his own personal affairs, but I couldn't utter a word. So I was like a dumb visitor in his presence and I went out with Alexei Grigoryevich. Then he asked me: 'Why were you silent?' But I simply couldn't understand what had happened to me."
Brother Sergius warned everybody, he explained to everybody and besought them with tears:
"Don't go into the open churches. They're not ours. All the priests serving in them have signed to be
obedient to the Soviet authorities in everything. You mustn't even step into the porch because you will hear the singing and reading and you will think: 'But it's all in the old style here!' And you will go in. And when you've gone in, that will be it. You'll stay there."
After the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius in 1927, many people were unsure: should they go into this "church" or not? Some would say: "Of course we must enter!" Others: "In no circumstances must we enter!"
One Kievan abbess was at a loss what to do. And she prayed fervently to the Lord to enlighten her. And it was revealed to her where she would obtain correct guidance. For this she was shown in detail where she had to go and was given the name of the sick Sergius. The abbess entrusted two faithful nuns with the task of going to this servant of God. They set off on the journey of some hundreds of kilometres on foot, as had been indicated to them, and they arrived without encountering any special obstacle.
Brother Sergius already knew that they were coming to him from a long way away, and was
waiting for them. When they entered his house he was the first to begin speaking:
"Tell Matushka Abbess: it is absolutely forbidden to go to this 'church'. Let her not to doubt or waver any more. There, in that 'church', is a terrible, horrific heresy. All the priests there have signed, have agreed and entered into complete obedience to the antichrist. Now we must live as in the last times.
We can turn only to those priests who have not signed allegiance to the antagonist of Christ. But
there are very few of them and they are persecuting and killing them. They will teach you what to do
and how to act."
One could say that this servant of God, the sick Sergius, prevented the whole region from accepting
sergianist renovationism.
The authorities soon began to stop the flow of people going to the sick man. They came and had a
look at him: terribly crippled, skinny, just bones, and around him - scandalous poverty.
One day in autumn, just before the feast of the Protecting Veil, he suddenly put on all his monastic
clothes. And late in the evening the authorities came to take him.
They put him in prison, in the prison hospital. A nurse who worked in the hospital thirty years said
of him: "Never in our hospital was there such a patient. Never has anyone spoken as he did!"
From the Protecting Veil until Pascha they kept him in the hospital. But on Holy Pascha they took him out of the hospital on a stretcher, loaded him in a car taking a spade with them. Then they returned the spade. It was covered in blood, the holy blood of a martyr of Christ!
Often his visitors used to say: "The Lord save you, Brother Sergius, for your dear, golden words. When you die, we shall come to your grave!"
"Oh no! No one will know my grave!" he replied.