Holy Martyr Vladimir Damaskin

The persecution of Soviet power to the Russian Church was such that it was not to say about their faith, but even silently follow it as a feat. The new martyrs and confessors, glorified in the face of the saints did not come: believed, prayed and meekly went to their Calvarys.

“Polit.ru” recalls those who gave their lives for faith and by whose prayers the Russian Church is alive - even if almost nothing came to us besides the name.

Publications were prepared by Kirill Kharatyan (included by the Russian authorities in the register of foreign agents).

Holy Martyr Vladimir Damaskin

Vladimir Damaskin is the son of a psalmist from the city of Torzhka Tver, the Tver province. Soon after the ordination of Fr. Vladimir was sent to the temple of the village of Ostrovno, Udomolsky district, where he served most of his life. During the persecution in 1930, local authorities arrested the 60-year-old father of Vladimir, but, having kept two and a half months in prison, released, and he again began to serve in his temple.

In August 1937, denunciations appeared, as if about. Vladimir collects the signatures of believers, hoping to defend the temple from closing and, walking around the villages, says that the created collective farms are a bondage for peasants, and collective farmers will be blocked in hunger. They reported that back in 1932 Fr. Vladimir, under the guise of church service, gathered peasants in the temple, who then in the amount of three hundred people went to the village council, intending to expel his chairman. They wrote that the priest was engaged in anti -Soviet activities, which consisted in the fact that he walked around the villages and coped the services in the huts, “as well as demonstratively, in complete vestments, walked along the village street following the coffin of the deceased peasant”, that the priest, having learned that at one of the collective farm meetings, was decided to close the temple, gathered the church twenty, to discuss with it, as to discuss it as it. Defend the church. On behalf of the twenty, a fifteen -year -old teenager was sent along the villages with a signature sheet, who entered the names of those who were illiterate and could not sign (that the authorities tried to interpret as falsification of signatures). “At present, an important issue is being posed,” the chairman of the village council reported in his statement, “on the twentieth anniversary of the anniversary of the Great Proletarian Revolution to end the processing and delivery of flax fiber to the state. Vladimir Nikolaevich Damaskin sets his own business to disrupt this important question. On October 31, he announces in the church so that the Orthodox come to the temple, where until November 7 the service will be carried out three times, thereby he distracts the mass from flax processing. I believe that it is necessary to take appropriate measures to Damaskin as an anti -Soviet element. ”

On December 22, the priest was arrested and imprisoned. He was old, almost blind due to carats; The medical examination carried out the next day established a heart disease, pulmonary emphysema, and the doctors were forced to admit that for health reasons he was a disabled person. On the same day, witnesses were interrogated, some of them wrote previously complaints and reports on Fr. Vladimir. In the evening, the acting chief of the Udomolsky UNKVD interrogated the priest. The interrogation took about an hour, it took so much time to fill out a sheet of interrogation with questionnaires and write down answers. The investigator asked:

- The investigation is known that, living in the village of Ostrovno, for a number of years, anti -Soviet agitation among the population has been conducted among the population. Do you confirm this?
- No, I do not confirm, I did not behave any anti -Soviet agitation and I do not find myself guilty of this.
- The investigation is known that back in 1932 you gathered believers in the church and then arranged a rally near the village council with a demand of tax cancellation. Do you confirm this?
- No, I do not confirm, I did not collect believers and did not suit any rallies.
- The investigation is known that in August of this year, during a sermon in the church, you said that the time will come when the farm system will be introduced, which the key is the war with Japan. Do you confirm this?
- No, I do not confirm that I do not read the sermons and I never led anti -Soviet agitation in the church.
- The investigation also knows that, visiting the collective farmers, you said: "The Soviet government should soon collapse, and then we will show the communists how to mock us." Do you find yourself guilty?
- No, I do not admit to myself guilty, I have never had such conversations with the collective farmers.
- You are accused of systematically conducted anti -Soviet agitation among the population and called him to overthrow the Soviet regime. Do you find yourself guilty?
- No, I do not find myself guilty of this.

On the same day, the investigator compiled an indictment in which all perjury were repeated. He himself compiled it, he himself decided to send the investigation into the three under the UNKVD, he himself agreed with such a decision. It was a time when the supreme authority demanded to perform such affairs with naive cruelty. A few days later, December 27, the Troika of the NKVD decided to shoot a priest.

Priest Vladimir Damaskin was shot on December 29, 1937