Holy New Martyr Archpriest Anatolii Zhurakovskii was murdered on this day in 1937. I became an Orthodox Christian in 1985 in the Soviet Union. At the time, Orthodox books were not available for purchase. The Lenin State Library, which had been founded before the revolution as the Rumiantsev Museum, had a big collection of Orthodox pre-revolutionary literature, but anyone wishing to consult had to explain his or her reasons for doing so. A pass which I obtained with a referral from the Pan-Soviet Society for Preservation of Architectural Monuments (VOPIK) enabled me to read the Orthodox literature there. I remember going through the periodical Khristianskaia Myslʹ (Christian Thought) published by Professor Vasilii Ekzempliarskii (who, at the insistence of Archbishop Anthony Khrapovitskii, was fired from the Academy in Kiev for his analysis of Tolstoy’s moral teaching). In it, there were also articles by Fr. Anatolii. Then, I believe from Zoia A. Krakhmalʹnikova, I got a volume published by the YMCA in Paris and dedicated to the life of Fr. Anatolii. I was quite impressed by this book, which had been compiled by Pavel Protsenko, one of the last Orthodox prisoners of the Soviet regime. The future father Anatolii Zhurakovskii was born in Kiev in 1897 into the family of a teacher. As a teenager, he was influenced by Vasilii V. Zenʹkovskii, later Minster of Confessions in the Pavlo Skoropadsʹkyi government, Archpriest and professor at St. Serge Theological Institute in Paris. The fact that Anatolii decided to get ordained as a presbyter in 1920 shows that he knew what he was doing. He defended the Orthodox faith in various disputes and against Renovationist schismatics. He, along with Prof. Ekzempliarskii, separted from Metropolitan Sergii (Stargorodskii), after he, having been released from prison in spring of 1927, began to introduce new church policies. Fr. Antolii was in ecclesiastical communion with Metropolitan St. Joseph of Petrograd, who became a leader of those who ceased subordination to Metropolitan Sergii. All of them commemorated Metropolitan Sergii’s superior, Metropolitan St. Peter of Krutitsy. There are a number of new martyrs from this movement who have been canonized by the Russian Church, and I don’t understand why St. Anatolii has not been among them. He was murdered in a concentration camp in Karelia and canonized by the ROCOR in New York in November of 1981. Source:
Michael Shkarovskii, “Zhurakovskii,” Pravolsavnaia Entsiklopedia. | 
