Father Dmitry Spassky

The first priest killed by the new government in Komi was Dmitry Spassky.

Here is a photo of him and his wife. Few people understood what kind of people suddenly came to power in Russia. Everyone still thought that it was better to live without a tsar, that any power without a tsar was good in itself. It doesn't matter who came. The main thing is that without a king. The civil war has not yet filled the country with blood. Still alive are those who, in the next 5 years of the civil war, will be tortured to death, drowned, hanged, frozen, beaten, burned alive, shot by both white and red terror. The gangster aspect of the new government is just beginning to emerge. Nobody knows anything yet.

And so on September 15, 1918, a detachment of Bolsheviks arrived in the Komi village of Ust-Nem. The village lives its own life, where the temple plays an important role. And Dmitry Spassky is a special priest. He conducted the service in the Komi language. Judging by his memories, he felt with all his gut that this power, terrible power and much more torment would be brought down on the heads of those he loved, on those he respected and knew, but he so wanted to believe in the good, in the fact that everything could change for the better and definitely change for the better. He reassured the villagers in his sermons, which were last heard within the walls of the Ust-Nemskaya church, asking them to believe that God would not leave and would soon reward the villains. The fact is that for the second day the Red Army soldiers were running around the village and robbing residents at gunpoint.

Temple in Ust-Nema. I took the photo here .

Father Dmitry was arrested, his wife and four children were evicted from the house. The Bolsheviks took Dmitry Spassky by boat up the Vychegda. According to his recollections, he was beaten, kept on a leash, and shot near the village of Pomozdina. A year later, near the same village, after cruel torture, Domna Kalikova was shot by white bandits.

I talked with Mikhail Borisovich Rogachev about whether it is true that Spassky was the first priest killed on Komi land during the Civil War. Mikhail Borisovich said that another priest was killed in the south of the Komi region, but the killing technology was exactly the same. Arrest, torture and execution, and all because the priest was talking to his flock about the robberies and murders committed by the Bolsheviks.

In today's hatred, we must remember that we in Russia were already once divided into two irreconcilable camps and believed that revolution, and then terror, would solve all our problems. Then our faith in a quick solution to problems spread through all our families, both white and red, and those who were repressed and those who repressed. The civil war still lives in us and we cannot escape its embrace. We must try to do this, we must try to stop hating and believe that there are quick solutions to problems. They don't exist and never will.

Here are more photos with father Dmitry Spassky.


Dmitry with his brothers and sisters. Koygorodok.


Fr. Demetrius (far right) with his father - Archpriest Vassian (far left) and brother - Fr. Jacob

A cross at the place where the body of the Holy Martyr was found. Dimitri.
To the left of the cross is the grandson of Father Demetrius;
far left is the great-grandniece of Fr. Dimitri with his son (in the foreground).

Photos and comments to them are taken here .

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