Holy New Martyr Protodeacon Sergii Stanislavlev passed away on this day in 1942. Like Holy Patriarch Tikhon and many other “Russian Levites” (clergymen from the clerical estate and their families), Fr. Sergii did not expect that the Russian Empire would ever collapse, just as I, along with many people of my generation, never anticipated the collapse of the USSR. However, like Patriarch Tikhon, Fr. Sergii had to find a way forward in the new circumstances. One notices a certain pattern in his life. The future Fr. Sergii was born into a priest’s family in 1884. He graduated from Moscow Theological Seminary, but initially did not get ordained and worked as a teacher. The saintly bishop Metropolitan Trifon (Turkestanov) ordained him in 1910 and assigned him to St. Mary Magdalene church in Sergiev Posad. In 1913, Fr. Sergii was transferred to Moscow and to the church of St. Mary Magdalene, which was part of a charity house looking after the elderly widows of former state functionaries. In 1917, this institution was closed down, and Fr. Sergii was assigned to Holy Ascension Convent in the Moscow Kremlin. At that time, Fr. Sergii had two sons. And one sees a pattern: Fr. Sergii had been transferred from one Church of St. Mary Magdalene to another, and now he was transferred to another Holy Ascension Church in the Klin District of Moscow Region. From there, Fr. Sergii was drafted into the Red Army in 1918. Only in 1921 did he return to his ministry. This time, it was at the Church of the Nativity of Most Holy Theotokos in Vladykino, a suburb of Moscow. It is there that he was arrested in 1937. A witness, a certain Mr. Zhmurov, testified that Fr. Sergii had expressed a wish to exterminate the Soviet leadership. Another witness, Ms. Pliukhina, confirmed that the clergy of the church in Vladykino had organized a criminal anti-Soviet group. In 1939, Zhmurov rescinded his claims, and Pliukhina attested in 1955 that an investigator had made her sign her libelous statement under duress. As a result of their denunciations, the parish rector, Archpriest John Khrustalev, was executed, and the cantor Nikolai Nekrasov and Fr. Sergii were sent to the GULAG. Fr. Sergii was sent to the Amur Correctional facility in Chita Region. In the spring of 1939, he submitted an appeal, from which we learn that he was sent to the correction camp without even being tried. Fr. Sergii found out about his trial in absentia and the verdict (10 years of hard labor) only after arriving at the camp. As a result of Fr. Sergii’s appeal, the witness Zhmurov was interrogated and revoked his previous statements that had resulted in Fr. Sergii’s arrest. Nevertheless, Fr. Sergii was not released. On this day in 1942, he died as a result of extreme exhaustion. In 2007, the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified Fr. Sergii in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Russia. |
