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| St. Sergius Sidorov |
The childhood and adolescence of Sergius were spent in the small estate of Nikolayevka in Kursk province, and then in Moscow. Until the revolution he took an active part in the spiritual life of Moscow. Among his friends were Sergius Nikolayevich Durylin and Sergius Iosifovich Fudel, as well as the rector of the Moscow Academy, Bishop Theodore (Pozdeyevsky). With his friend Nicholas Chernyshev (later an artist, who perished in Stalin’s camps), he went to Optina Desert, where he met Elder Anatolius (Potapov), becoming his spiritual child until his death in 1922. He went to the Popova gymnasium in Kiev, the historico-philological department of the people’s university of Shinyavsky and two summer theological courses at the Kiev Theological Academy (in 1920-21). According to one source, he finished his studies at Moscow theological seminary and theological academy. In 1920 he married Tatyana Petrovna Kandiba, who was from a famous Ukrainian noble family.
In the spring of 1921 he went to Moscow and received the blessing of Fr. Alexis Mechev to become a priest. On September 21, 1921 he was ordained to the priesthood in Kiev and was sent to the village of Pochtovaya Vita near Kiev. In 1923 he was transferred to the church of SS. Peter and Paul in Sergiev Posad, where he took an active part in the struggle of the Sergiev Posad clergy against renovationism. In this period he was often with Patriarch Tikhon, who was very fond of him. He was raised to the rank of protopriest. On October 5, 1924 he was arrested and cast into Butyrki prison. He was released on November 30, and went back to serving in Sergiev Posad. On November 30, 1925 he was arrested again for “participation in a Black Hundredist monarchist grouping, whose aim was struggle with Soviet power”. He was in Butyrki prison until July 12, 1926. The investigators tried to force Fr. Sergius to confess that he knew of the existence of a letter to Metropolitan Peter saying that the patriarch’s will should not be considered genuine, and that he should betray the author of this letter.
Fr. Sergius suffered greatly in prison; his hands and legs were painful, as was an old wound in his spine. He was subjected to twenty-three interrogations, including the whole night of December 27. Physically and psychologically near to breaking point, he was greatly helped by the True Orthodox Archbishop Nicholas (Dobronravov), the future hieromartyr, who, seeing that Fr. Sergius was about to break down and slander both himself and others, said to the Bolsheviks: “I demand that you leave Sidorov in peace. I know that he is suffering from a nervous disorder.” “And you,” he said, turning to Fr. Sergius, “by my power as a bishop I forbid to say anything whatsoever to the investigator.” Fr. Sergius later wrote in his memoirs: “If my children and those close to me read these lines, let them bow down before the wonderful personage of Bishop Nicholas, who once within the walls of the GPU delivered me from greatest misfortune, from the sorrow of betraying my friends to the enemies of the faith and the Church.” On March 25 Fr. Sergius was taken to the prison hospital, and then returned to his cell.
On July 12, the day of the patronal feast of his parish, he was released from prison. In August he and his family went to Vladimir, which he had chosen as his domicile since he was not allowed to live in Moscow. (On November 5, 1926 he was formally condemned in accordance with article 68 to three years’ ban on living in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, Rostov-on-Don and their provinces, being confined to one domicile.) Before departing he went to say goodbye to Elder Alexis, who, on learning where he was going, said sadly: “Well, go to collect crosses in Vladimir.” Fr. Sergius served as a supernumerary priest in various churches in Vladimir province. From 1927 to 1928 he served in the village of Volosovo. However, the lack of a place to live, and the impossibility of feeding his family, which included three children, forced him to move in 1929 to the village of Vozdvizheniye (Lukino) in Serpukhov region, Moscow province. In the same year a fourth child was born to him. Life was very difficult, and to make things worse, on February 3, 1930, he was arrested again for “calling on believers not to fall away from Orthodoxy, and to go more often to church”. On February 23 he was condemned for his “corrupting influence on the population”, and for being “a socially harmful person”.
(According to another source, he was accused of being “a participant in the Moscow branch of the counter-revolutionary monarchist church organization, the True Orthodox Church”, and was sentenced to three years in the camps and sent to a camp.) In accordance with article 58-10, he was sentenced to three years in the camps and was sent to Penyug station on the northern railway line, 150 kilometres from Kotlas. There he was given very heavy physical work, cutting wood and trimming logs. In winter he was given easier work.
There were many priests in Kotlas, and at Pascha they were allowed to leave their barracks and celebrate the feast in a fenced-off field. They had neither candles nor books… The priests served from memory; the guards stood silently around, and nobody interrupted the service. Fr. Sergius later said that he had been present at Paschal services in the Kremlin, in the Kiev Caves Lavra and in many monasteries, but never had he heard such wonderful chanting, such penetrating prayers as on that Paschal night in the camps. A year before his release Fr. Sergius was transferred to Siblag in Novosibirsk province. There he worked on building a railway in a boggy wood. He was very tired, undernourished and was waiting for a meeting with his wife. But she could not come to him. In the spring of 1933 he was released, and became rector of the church in Dmitrievskaya Sloboda in Murom region, Vladimir province. (According to another source, in the middle of the 1930s he returned from camp and exile and settled in the village of Vozdvizhenka, Serpukhov uyezd.) However, in 1935 the church was closed and in 1936 Fr. Sergius was transferred to Klimovo in Murom region.
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| St. Sergius Sidorov |
Life was difficult, but Fr. Sergius served beautifully and gave sermons that were listened to with great attention and appreciation by the peasants. Sometimes he had to go round the neighbouring villages to five Holy Communion to the dying.
Once he was going to such a person, but his horse took a long time getting through the autumn mud. On arriving, he saw a big crowd outside the hut and heard the terrible cries of the dying man. On seeing Fr. Sergius the dying man stretched out his hands to him and said: “Save me, batyushka, the accursed ones are attacking me, they’re taking hold of me, they’re terrifying me! Save me, I have no more strength.” Fr. Sergius confessed the man, gave him Communion and, taking him by the hand, prayed for him. He became calmer. “They’ve gone away,” he whispered. “They’re only threatening me in the corners, but they’re not coming up to me. Batyushka, sit beside me, don’t go away, otherwise they’ll try to get hold of me again.” And so Fr. Sergius spent the whole night holding the dying man by the hand and praying fervently. Towards morning he died peacefully.
Fr. Sergius more than once spoke of the activity of the dark powers and their influence on the moral life of man, and said that it was a great sin to depart from the bounds established by the Church and seek to get to know the world of invisible spirits that surround us by means of magical methods. We should resort for help only to the holy saints of God and our angel guardians. We must never resort to the dark powers, neither when we are in difficult straits, nor in order to learn something, nor simply out of curiosity. Yes, they can help us a little, but they bring with them an unbearable burden that lies on the soul of a man until his very death.
In Murom Fr. Sergius remained linked with the spiritual life in Moscow. Several times he secretly visited the city, staying with Sergius Vladimirovich Gruzinov or Lydia Dmitrievna Kozhevnkikova. In the last year he went to Maly Yaroslavets to Fr. Michael Shik, a Catacomb priest who led him to Archbishop Arsenius (Zhadanovsky). Both would be martyred together with the holy bishop…
Fr. Sergius knew that they would arrest him sometime, and spoke about it with his wife. His spiritual daughter said: “1937 has arrived. Arrests have begun. I told Fr. Sergius that I was frightened of prison and exile, and was expecting a rebuke. But Fr. Sergius looked gently at me and said: ‘I, too, am afraid. You cannot even imagine how afraid I am! It is not shameful to be afraid, we are all weak people. But it is wrong to become faint-hearted. After all, God is with us and He will never abandon us.”
Fr. Sergius loved his children very much. Once he was asked how, having a family, he had decided to become a priest, and to whom he would leave them in the event of his arrest. Fr. Sergius said: “To the Heavenly Queen! If I perish, it will be for her Son. So how can you think that in that case she would abandon my children? Never! She will save and defend them!”
Two months later, on April 13, 1937, Fr. Sergius was arrested for “active participation in the illegal monarchist organization of churchmen, the followers of the True Orthodox Church”. But his faith that the Heavenly Queen would save and defend his children was justified. They did not touch Tatyana Petrovna, and Fr. Sergius’ children did not grow up in a children’s home but next to their mother, a person of great purity and self-sacrifice.
Fr. Sergius was cast into Butyrki prison together with fourteen other people as a member of Archbishop Arsenius’ group. The formal accusation was: for “active participation in an illegal monarchist organization of churchmen – the followers of ‘the True Orthodox Church’ and leadership of its branches”. During interrogation Fr. Sergius did not deny that he belonged to the True Orthodox Church, and that he had criticized Soviet power for its attitude towards the Church, and for exiling Metropolitan Peter, the patriarchal locum tenens.
On September 26 he was condemned to be shot in accordance with article 58-10. The sentence was carried out on September 27 in the Butovo polygon, where he was also buried.