On August 30, 1937, the life of Priest Sergei Vozdvizhensky—one of the numerous holy New Martyrs whom we have no right to forget—was cut short at the Butovo firing range.
In the nineteenth century, there was a village called Ivanovskoye in the Podolsk district of the Moscow province. In the first half of the seventeenth century, these lands were owned by Prince Fyodor Andreyevich Telyatevsky, a Russian military leader and statesman, a rynda (a Tsar’s bodyguard), table layer, cup bearer (both were high and honorary posts at the court responsible for serving the royal table) and regimental commander under Tsar Michael Feodorovich. In 1644, the village was bought by Prince Fyodor Odoevsky, a city mayor, military commander and governor-general. In 1674, his son Prince Vasily, a table layer, a wine steward (also a very high rank), and Patriarch Philaret’s great-grandson, built a wooden manorial Church of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple in Ivanovskoye. In the eighteenth century, it was rebuilt in stone, and the Odoevsky family burial vault appeared there too. The church with four altars had a bell tower and a refectory.
Ivanovskoye cemetery, the Church of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple, a drawing
Afterwards, the village of Ivanovskoye was divided: one part of it was given to the Imperial Philanthropic Society, the largest charity in Russia, and the second went to representatives of the Trubetskoy family.
In 1895, the village was mentioned as Ivanovsky parish with the old Church of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple and a churchyard around it. There was also a house for clergy on the church land. The parishioners of the church were residents of six nearby villages. From February 3, 1869, Archpriest John Vozdvizhensky was the rector of the church.
On June 16, 1885, the son Sergei was born to his family and was baptized at the Church of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple. That year was significant: a bell weighing about 2.5 tons, donated by the Moscow merchant N. P. Sokolov and his sons, was raised up to the bell tower of the church. Four children grew up in the closely-knit Vozdvizhensky family: two sons and two daughters.
Fr. John also served at the Church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Chernevo, which was attached to the Church of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple from 1827.
Sergei Vozdvizhensky received his primary education in his native village, at an elementary school of the Ministry of Public Education. At the school they taught Russian, penmanship, arithmetic, the Law of God, Church Slavonic, and church singing. After four years of study, with his parents’ blessing, Sergei decided to continue his education at seminary in order to become a priest, like his grandfather, father and elder brother Vasily. However, his path to the church ministry would be long.
His sister Claudia became the wife of Nikolai Mikhailovich Vorontsov, a graduate of the Moscow Theological Seminary, and from 1906 was the rector of the Church of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple and the Church of the Nativity of Christ attached to it.
In 1902, Sergei Vozdvizhensky entered the Moscow Theological Seminary and studied there for four years. That education corresponded to a gymnasium (classical school) course, which conferred the right to enter a secular higher education institution or enter the civil service. In 1906, Sergei Ivanovich obtained the position of a teacher and devoted sixteen years of his life to teaching.
After the October Revolution, Vozdvizhensky was drafted to the Red Army. From 1919 to 1921, he was a teacher in the Red Army. His place of work was Red Army “elimination of illiteracy” (“likbez”) schools in the 1st Rifle Brigade of the Moscow Rifle Subdivision (marching companies), formed in August and sent to the Southern Front in October 1919. That’s how Sergey Ivanovich ended up in the city of Rostov-on-Don.
At that time, according to the decree of December 26, 1919, the “Likbez” educational program (on the elimination of illiteracy) was launched in the Soviet Union. This was the mass education of citizens aged eight to fifty who could not write and read. As for adults, the task was primarily to teach reading and writing to Red Army soldiers and conscripts, whose ranks were being replenished by peasants, collective farmers, Komsomol members, and trade union members. The educational process took place in “elimination of illiteracy points”, and the first textbooks were printed, for example, a primer for adults by Elkina, Boguslavskaya, and Kurskaya. In the second edition of this book, the phrase that went down into history, “We are not slaves—slaves are not us”, appeared.
But it was an absolutely different school, not the one Sergei Ivanovich Vozdvizhensky was used to. Red Army soldiers struggled to master any learning. They lacked the strength and time, and often the desire. It was common to see a guard at the classroom door, in order to prevent students from escaping from the lessons. They held talks with their students and read newspapers together aloud. In addition, sheets of paper with letters and relevant slogans were attached to the backs of the cavalrymen, which could be read by other soldiers.
Perhaps the bloody scenes of the Civil War and the Soviet Government’s calls to believe in a “bright future” were a turning point in Sergei Ivanovich’s life.
Fr. Sergei
Sergei Ivanovich returned from Rostov-on-Don to Moscow and was ordained priest in 1922. Prior to this event, Vozdvizhensky had married the daughter of Priest Dimitry Malinin, who until the end of 1919 was rector of St. Nicholas Church in the village of Nikolskoye-Kolchevo on the Oleshenka River of the Podolsk district of the Moscow province. The Vozdvizhenskys took up their residence in the Malinins’ house at St. Nicholas Church. Fr. Dimitry no longer served in the church, because he was arrested in December 1919 after being falsely denounced for “involvement in the deserters’ uprising” in the Podolsk district. In January 1920, he was sent to Moscow and convicted of “counterrevolution and helping deserters.” At that time, the priest had to support his wife and an eleven-year-old orphan girl who under his care.
St. Nicholas Church in the village of Nikolskoye-Kolchevo, ca. 1937. Nikolskoe-1685.okis.ru
Fr. Sergei did not begin his ministry at St. Nicholas Church until 1924. That year, his father-in-law was released under amnesty and lived in the village of Kryukovo near Moscow (now a district of the scientists’ town of Zelenograd, which became part of Moscow in the late 1960s).
On January 27, 1932, Fr. Sergei was arrested and tried by the People’s Court. His case was investigated for a month and he was convicted under Article 61, part 3 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR: “Refusal to perform duties, tasks, or productive labor of national importance.” During the period of collectivization and dispossession of kulaks (that is, wealthy peasants and farmers), clergy often fell under the category of kulaks and had to do the work of handing over agricultural produce to the State. In addition, priests were often punished for various “violations”, such as ringing bells, cross processions, and visiting parishioners at home. According to the verdict, Fr. Sergei had to pay a fine of 150 rubles.
In mid-March 1933, Fr. Sergei was arrested again. This time under Article 58–10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR: “Propaganda or agitation with a call for the overthrow, undermining or weakening of the Soviet authorities or for committing certain counterrevolutionary crimes.” During the investigation, Fr. Sergei did not conceal his attitude towards the new regime and declared his loyalty to the Provisional Government.
As a result, the sentence passed on April 22, 1933 by the troika (group of three) of the OGPU[1] in the Moscow region read: “Three years at the Svir concentration labor camp.” The camp was located in the Leningrad region on the Svir River in the forests. The buildings of the former St. Alexander of Svir Monastery, founded in the fifteenth century and closed by the Soviet Government, were adapted for it. In the 1930s, its prisoners were forced to collect firewood and lumber and take part in the construction of power plants and railways. With poor nutrition, unsanitary conditions, living in cold barracks, and lack of warm clothing, many prisoners were ill. Up to 10,000 of them died annually.
At that time, the authorities decided to close the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and adapt it to collective farm needs—that is, to use it as a granary. However, through the efforts of the parishioners, the church was saved.
The Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Nikolskoye (a modern view). Sobory.ru
In 1934, Sergei Ivanovich Vozdvizhensky’s sentence was reviewed, and he was released for health reasons. Fr. Sergei returned to Nikolskoye and had to join a collective farm in which his wife already worked as an accountant. At the same time, he continued to serve in the church. But the Vozdvizhenskys’ work in the collective farm did not last. Despite the fact that joining a collective farm was often forced, they were dismissed as representatives of a class “alien and dangerous to the proletariat and peasantry”, as those who had not given up their faith in God.
In February 1937, in spite of the protests of locals, the St. Nicholas Church was finally closed. But it was not destroyed afterwards; thanks to efforts by parishioners, the church interior was preserved. Moreover, funeral services were sometimes celebrated there. Later, the icons and church utensils were transferred to the Andrei Rublev Museum of Ancient Russian Culture and Art in Moscow and churches in the Moscow region. For some time, the ancient church housed a granary.
To provide for his family, Fr. Sergei took up beekeeping. A vegetable patch and an orchard were of great help. But no matter how quietly the priest lived, he always remained in plain sight. On August 16, the fifty-two-year-old Fr. Sergei was arrested and sent to the prison in the town of Serpukhov. He was charged under Article 58–10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR—anti-Soviet agitation. He never admitted his guilt.
The troika of the Moscow region’s department of the Directorate of the People’s Commissariat for the Internal Affairs (UNKVD) sentenced citizen Sergei Ivanovich Vozdvizhensky to execution by firing squad.
From Serpukhov, Fr. Sergei was transferred to the Butovo firing range, where the sentence was carried out on August 30, 1937. On November 17 of the same year, his childhood friend Archpriest Peter Ekaterinoslavsky, rector of one of the churches in the village of Dunilovo in the Shuya district of the Ivanovo region, was also shot in Butovo. Fr. Peter was a son of the reader at the Church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Chernevo, Podolsk district. The rector of the church was Fr. John Vozdvizhensky, the father of Sergei, Vasily and Claudia Vozdvizhensky.
Prisoner S. I. Vozdvizhensky
On December 1, 1937, the husband of Fr. Sergei’s sister Claudia, Priest Nikolai Vorontsov, the last rector of two churches—of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Chernevo and of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple in the village of Ivanovskoye, Podolsk district of the Moscow region—was shot at the Butovo firing range as well. The couple had five children.
On December 8, 1937, Fr. Sergei’s brother, Archpriest Vasily Vozdvizhensky, rector of the Holy Ascension Church in the village of Krasnoye in the Pereslavl district of Yaroslavl Region, was shot in Yaroslavl Region.
On June 16, 1989, Priest Sergei Vozdvizhensky was exonerated. On April 8, 1993, the 1933 case was reviewed.
Archival photo of Priest Sergei Vozdvizhensky
The best way to remember our holy New Martyrs is through our prayer and the restoration of churches. In 1996, the revival of St. Nicholas Church, the last rector of which had been Fr. Sergei, commenced. A year later, the first service was celebrated. Now the church has a dome, a bell tower, a refectory, a Sunday school building, a baptismal room, cells for receiving pilgrims, a library, a vestry, and icons in carved cases. A full-length icon of Sts. Cosmas and Damian is especially venerated. There is also a precious particle of the relics of St. Joseph of Volokolamsk, whose name is invoked in prayer for the confirmation in the faith, receiving the blessings of earthly and Heavenly life, and for protection from enemies. Everything is as Fr. Sergei might have dreamed.