Sergius Strelnikov
The Holy New Hieromartyr Sergius Strelnikov, Priest of Orshanka
New Martyr · Hieromartyr · Priest · b. 24 September 1887, in the village of Shulka, Vyatka province — d. 8 August 1937, shot near Yoshkar-Ola
Commemorated 26 July — Shot at Yoshkar-Ola, 8 August 1937 (26 July by the church reckoning)
Sergius Strelnikov was a village priest of the Vyatka country who served the church of St John the Forerunner at Orshanka, in what is now the Republic of Mari El, for more than twenty years. Deprived of civil rights and crushed with punitive taxation through the 1920s and 1930s, he kept serving; when the church was closed in 1936 he continued the services in his own house and organised the parish's petitions to have it reopened. He was arrested on 26 July 1937 on the standard charge of counter-revolutionary agitation, sentenced by an NKVD troika on 8 August, and shot the same day at three in the afternoon, his body thrown into a mass grave outside Yoshkar-Ola. He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the Holy Synod in 2005, and his relics were recovered later that year. His feast falls on the church date 26 July, which is the civil 8 August on which he died.
Vyatka and the priesthood
He was born on 24 September (7 October) 1887 in the village of Shulka in the Yaransk district of Vyatka province, in the clerical estate of that thoroughly ecclesiastical corner of the north-east. He completed the Vyatka Theological Seminary in 1911, and was ordained priest on 14 November 1912. After service in two or three parishes he was transferred in 1916 to the church of St John the Forerunner at Orshanka — a large village on the Mari side of the provincial boundary — and there he remained for the rest of his life, more than twenty years.
He taught the Law of God in the local schools while that was still permitted, and is remembered in the parish accounts as a priest who involved himself in the ordinary difficulties of his people: helping with the harvest, with disputes, with money.
Under the Soviet power
As a clergyman he was lishenets — formally deprived of civil rights, along with his household — and subjected to the escalating punitive taxes with which the state attempted to starve the parish clergy out of existence in the late 1920s and 1930s. He did not leave.
In 1936 the church of the Forerunner was closed. Sergius went on serving in his own house, and set about the legal remedy that a great many Russian priests of these years attempted: he gathered the signatures of the parish and organised petitions to the authorities for the church to be reopened. In the logic of 1937 this was itself the offence, and the petitions became the documentary basis of his case.
Arrest and death
He was arrested on 26 July 1937, at the height of the mass operation launched by NKVD Order 00447, which set quotas for the arrest and execution of "former people" — among whom the clergy stood first. The charge was counter-revolutionary agitation. On 8 August 1937 an NKVD troika convicted him and sentenced him to be shot; the sentence was carried out the same day, at three in the afternoon. He was buried in one of the mass graves in the woods outside Yoshkar-Ola.
The coincidence of dates is exact and is the reason for his feast: he was taken on 26 July by the civil calendar and killed on 8 August, which is 26 July by the church reckoning.
Glorification and relics
The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church numbered him among the Assembly of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia on 16 July 2005. In December 2005 his remains were identified and recovered from the burial site, and they now rest in the chapel of the diocesan administration at Yoshkar-Ola, where he is the principal local saint of the Mari El diocese.
Feast and commemoration
July 26 (church date; New Calendar civil July 26, Old Calendar civil August 8). The Russian Church keeps the Julian reckoning, so the commemoration falls on civil 8 August, the anniversary of the shooting. He is kept above all in the diocese of Yoshkar-Ola and Mari El, where his relics are, and at Orshanka; he is not carried by the Greek, Antiochian or Serbian calendars.
He is also named in the movable Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia (Sunday nearest 25 January).
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4
Sharer in the ways of the Apostles and successor upon their thrones, thou didst find in the practice of virtue the ascent to contemplation, O inspired of God; wherefore, rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst contend for the faith even unto blood, O hieromartyr Sergius: intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
Icons of the Russian new martyrs of the twentieth century follow a settled modern type, and Sergius Strelnikov is painted according to it: a priest in the phelonion and epitrachelion with the pectoral cross, holding the cross of martyrdom in the right hand and a Gospel-book or scroll in the left, the face taken from the photographs preserved in the investigation file or in family keeping — a man in his forties with a short beard and spectacles. In the great composite icons of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia he stands among the ranks of priests, identified only by his inscription; in the Mari El diocesan icons he is given his own place with the church of the Forerunner at Orshanka behind him.
All extant images are modern and the work of living iconographers, and none is stored. The photographs in his file are the primary visual record and are not icons.
Disputed questions
- What he actually said. The investigation files of 1937 record confessions and denunciations extracted under conditions that make their contents worthless as evidence of anything but the machinery. The charge of "counter-revolutionary agitation" describes the paragraph of the code, not the man. Nothing in this entry rests on the file's account of his opinions.
- Which feast day. Sources in civil reckoning give 8 August, which readers unfamiliar with the double dating sometimes take for a separate commemoration. There is one feast: the church date 26 July.
- The Synaxis. Like all the Russian new martyrs he is also commemorated in the movable Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, kept on the Sunday nearest 25 January (civil 7 February in Old Calendar usage). That is a movable commemoration and belongs to the movable cycle, not to this fixed day.
- The record is thin, and recent. He is a saint documented from a criminal file, a diocesan investigation and a rehabilitation dossier, not from a hagiography. This entry keeps to what those establish.