The Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo

Archpriest Kirill Kaleda, the son of a secret priest and grandson of a New Martyr, talks about the New Martyrs of Butovo firing ground, and the people who executed them.

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It can be said that this interview began with the Divine Liturgy in the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church at the former Butovo firing range in Moscow. The words of prayers were the “epigraph” to it. The rector of this church, Archpriest Kirill Kaleda, delivered a sermon on Hieromonk Pavel (Troitsky; † early November, 1991)—the spiritual mentor of his grandfather, Hieromartyr Vladimir Ambartsumov († 5.11.1937), who was slain here in Butovo. Fr. Kirill’s father, Archpriest Gleb Kaleda (1921–1.11.1994)—a secret priest who later began to preach openly and chose the difficult path of prison ministry. Fr. Kirill himself sought counsel of Elder Pavel, who had gone through the prisons and labor camps:

“Fr. Pavel did nothing without prayer. No matter what he was asked about, be it having a cup of tea or something that required spiritual discernment. He would step aside, pray and then give an answer. And he could literally reply that there is the will of God for someone to do such-and-such a thing.

Hieromonk Pavel (Troitsky)

“Like many of the brethren of the Moscow St. Daniel’s (Danilov) Monastery, Hieromonk Pavel (Troitsky) was arrested and exiled. In prison, when Fr. Pavel was in a state of complete exhaustion and dying, one of the prison wardens found an opportunity to release him. When one of the prisoners died just as his release papers had arrived, the warden simply swapped their documents.

“Fr. Pavel returned to his native Tver region and spent the rest of his life in seclusion. He hardly contacted anyone, only corresponding with some of the clergy.

“There were many cases of Fr. Pavel’s clairvoyance. Here at the former Butovo firing range rest the relics of his spiritual son, Hieromartyr Vladimir Ambartsumov. In 1937, before his arrest, his son Yevgeny asked Elder Pavel, ‘I was offered to go on an interesting folklore expedition to the north under the guidance of a famous scientist…’ For a young man who was entering the Literary Institute it would have been a unique trip. But Fr. Pavel suddenly replied: ‘No, you shouldn’t go. Stay at home!’ And by obeying the elder, Yevgeny had the opportunity to spend his last summer with his father, because he (Hieromartyr Vladimir) was arrested in September…”

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Such was the eve of “the Year of the Lord”—Liturgy in the Butovo wooden Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, with a sermon about Hieromartyr Vladimir Ambartsumov’s last summer before he was slain here in Butovo. Then Fr. Kirill arranged a tour around the territory of the former Butovo firing range for all those who had prayed at the Liturgy, all the while answering their questions.

—Fr. Kirill, why is it easier for our contemporaries to comprehend the sanctity of the first martyrs who lived many centuries ago than that of the New Martyrs who are close to us in time?

—I think it is because, among the New Martyrs are mostly ordinary people. Even among the hieromartyrs there are many simple rural priests who served somewhere in the country’s backwoods, in small parishes. Each of them had some everyday problems of their own: a cow would be stolen, then something else would go wrong… And then he was interrogated, endured—and became a saint! On the face of it, there was nothing special in his life: he was an absolutely ordinary person. But he endured the trial and became a saint! This is the story of almost every new martyr. How many ordinary laymen and parishioners were among them! A person lived a simple, unremarkable life, tried to avoid sins like everyone else—nothing extraordinary… And suddenly he or she became a saint. This is why it is difficult for many to venerate them.

Hieromartyr Constantine Uspensky

Unfortunately, we don’t know much about the lives even of the canonized New Martyrs. But sometimes there are such touching stories! In Butovo, for example, Fr. Constantine Uspensky was executed by firing squad († 25.11.1937). He served in the Orekhovo-Zuyevo district near Moscow. He was charged with treating parishioners to apples from his orchard on the feast of Transfiguration of the Lord. On icons painted of him, he holds a basket of apples in his hands.

—And he was canonized among the hosts of the New Martyrs right on the feast of the Transfiguration in 2000!¹

—Correct. In fact, Russia especially demonstrated its holiness at the moment when Orthodoxy was persecuted and not when Orthodoxy was considered the State religion. It was when the Russian Church found itself on the brink of destruction that Russia shone with special power! This is the greatness of the podvig of the New Martyrs. We cannot perform such podvigs as did for example St. Paul of Thebes, the First Hermit. Who among us can live in the desert for ninety years? Who of us has such strong faith that a raven will bring us food every day? And who of us are such great fasters that we can live on a few crumbs of bread? Well, we’d last in solitude for a few months at most, and then run back headlong.

—How did the New Martyrs endure all that satanic malice, torture and mockery?

—In order to understand this better I’ll make the following comparison. Having fallen between the grinding stones of the system (which sooner or later happened to most of them), many of the Bolsheviks and Cheka² officers broke down immediately because they didn’t understand what was happening. Imagine: A communist gets caught on the “conveyor belt” heading to an investigator. He thought he was fighting for the communist “bright future”, but he’s suddenly seized and declared an “enemy of the people”! In a sense, it was easier for believers to endure all this. Because the inner meaning of what was happening was clear to them. Some simple illiterate old woman would show much more courage in a secret torture chamber. Isn’t it amazing! She simply understood what was happening, what she was being tortured and murdered for. Maybe she wasn’t rejoicing—she’s also a human being. She felt pain—even if not physically (when they didn’t apply torture) but inwardly—because of what was happening, and her heart was sinking and bleeding. To rejoice when tortured is the next stage—that of the blessed. And there were many such people. In any case, those who understood what was happening bore their cross with dignity. Even if they fell under its weight, they would rise again and walk on…

—They walked on towards God. If it is in the Light of Christ that the religious meaning of suffering is revealed, and the New Martyrs displayed this Light at their Golgotha, did it touch the hearts of any executioners? Has the Church canonized at least one repentant persecutor among the multitudes of the New Martyrs?

—We, the Church community, haven’t yet attained such a level of love for love our persecutors as to canonize a repentant executioner who sealed his repentance with blood. Although there were cases when a person who had taken an active part in the Revolution repented sincerely and became religious. A striking example is Nikolai Evgrafovich Pestov († 14.01.1982).³

Just one amazing case…

—Have you ever spoken with any of the former Butovo NKVD⁴ officers?

—When in the mid-1990s an attempt was made to find out where the executions had taken place in Moscow, a man who in 1937 had acted as commandant of the NKVD Economic Administration in Moscow and the Moscow region was still alive. He confirmed that Butovo was indeed the main site of executions for Moscow and the Moscow region, and that the executioners who had signed the sentences of capital punishment for the 20,760 people found in the archives, had indeed “worked” at the Butovo firing range. So it became possible to determine that those people were shot in Butovo. In the overwhelming majority of other places, there is no such clear link. For example, there are a lot of questions regarding the burials in St. Petersburg; it is not clear who was killed in Levashovo and who was shot at the Rzhev firing range. That man left the Soviet agencies during World War II. He was a “manager” by nature; During the Civil War he ended up in the communist agencies as a teenager. He may have participated in something despicable—it was customary for NKVD members to “smear” all of their colleagues with blood. But, in any event, during WWII he left the system, and in the 1960s he worked as the director of what is now called the “ice show”.

An astonishing fact in that man’s story is that his second wife’s surname was typical for priests’ families! A year ago, his granddaughter, an Orthodox icon painter, came to visit us in Butovo. Two months before coming here she had learned that her beloved grandfather (whom she had actually considered a dissident) was what he was in the 1930s. It was easier for me to show President Putin around the former firing range than her. It was clear what I should say to the President, but it was absolutely unclear how I should speak with this poor woman.

I also saw a man from a neighboring village who had worked as a driver in the NKVD after the war.

By the way, “mobile gas chambers”, or “murder buses” (“dushegubki” in Russian)—vans in which an exhaust pipe was directed inside to the passengers, poisoning the condemned on the way so that by the time they arrived at the place of execution, they would too weak to offer any resistance—in fact weren’t invented by the Germans (as we were taught in Soviet schools). They were invented here, by Isay Davydovich Berg, who was responsible for carrying out sentences. And until the early 1950s, the above-mentioned driver from a neighboring village would bring the corpses of those who were shot or otherwised died in Moscow prisons. Therefore, far more than the 20,760 people we know of are buried in this place. Perhaps there were twice as many, but in any case at least 30,000 victims may lie here.

Many of the firing range employees themselves were imprisoned or shot; most became alcoholics, and some ended up in psychiatric hospitals. But I know of an amazing case when one of them repented and received Holy Communion on his deathbed.

—Fr. Kirill, I understand that this might be a rather seditious idea, but it is precisely in the context of the experience of the New Martyrs that much is being revealed in the present day: Why for example His Holiness Patriarch Kirill strongly urges monastics not to shut themselves up behind the monastery walls, or the clergy and laity behind the church walls. Wasn’t the experience of persecution, in a certain sense, an “apostolate” allowed by the Lord? It is known, for example, that Archimandrite John (Krestiankin) gained from his prison camp experience the opportunity to find a common language with criminals. He converted many not only in the camp but also later, in his cell. How did Fr. Gleb set out on the path of prison ministry? He wasn’t imprisoned, was he?

—No, my father was never imprisoned. He was a rather cautious person. Even some of his close friends laughed at him a little: “Well, Glebushka [a diminutive form of the name Gleb.—Trans.] is organizing a conspiracy again.” Although I doubt that they would have dared to do what my father did. And the truth was not hidden from us children, although it was dangerous.

We were aware that our grandfather Vladimir was a priest and had suffered for his faith. We prayed that the Lord would reveal the circumstances of his death to us. It was not until 1989 that we learned that he had been executed by firing squad; and only in 1994 did we learn that it had happened at the NKVD firing ground in Butovo. We children also knew about our father’s secret priesthood.

And my father began to engage in prison ministry, as he himself said, almost by chance. By the time he began to serve in the Church of the Prophet Elias at Obydensky Lane in Moscow, one of its parishioners, Sergei Khalizin, had already visited the prisons several times. Some clergy were invited to prison, but each came once and never returned. My father was invited as well. He was relatively free and didn’t refuse.

Fr. Gleb had a lot of experience working with people. He gave lectures, was a good speaker, a lively conversationalist, and he knew how to build a dialogue with an audience. But his first visit to the prison was the only time in his life when he didn’t know what he would say to people. Nevertheless, having come and established human contact with them, he managed to talk to them and became filled with compassion for them, realizing that he was needed there. So he began to visit the prisons, although there were no decrees or orders from the Church hierarchy.

Archpriest Gleb Kaleda

—What helped Fr. Gleb find a common language with prisoners?

—Apparently, an incident at Stalingrad, when the “Not a step back” order was signed and he was almost shot, helped him understand those condemned to death. He interceded for his companion in arms. The officer started accusing his companion of something, and my father said that that wasn’t the case. “What? Kaleda, you say the officer is wrong, that he’s telling a lie?” the officer came down on Fr. Gleb like a load of bricks. “No, I didn’t say that,” my father replied. “But Malyshev [as I remember, this was his companion’s name.—Fr.K.] did not do what you’re accusing him of.” “So you’re going against a Red Army officer?!” the commander wasn’t going to calm down. And Fr. Gleb was taken to the edge of a ditch, stripped of his uniform, and a pistol muzzle was pointed at him.

When we were children, our father didn’t forbid us, his sons, to play war, and we had toy soldiers made by our older brothers. As a child, Fr. John¹ made us wooden toy guns. I remember playing and aiming at someone, when my father said to me: “Never point a weapon at anyone, not even a toy one. Because you don’t know what it’s like to have the barrel of a gun pointed at you.” I didn’t understand him back then. Fr. Gleb spoke much about the war, and we loved his stories. But he once told that episode in more or less detail to our mother, and then, shortly before his repose, he told it to me. He didn’t share it anymore.

My father’s comrades later told us that only his composure had saved him. My father prayed. But when the worst was over, he couldn’t put on his uniform. His hands were shaking so much that he couldn’t get them into the sleeves. I believe that after the incident with the officer, Fr. Gleb was able to understand death row inmates.

—Soviet society, in a sense, could be understood as a synonym for a prison, a concentration camp.

—Our parents taught us to remember all the time that we are Christians. For example, in the fifth grade I was sent to a forest school for the winter season where for three months I would have to be in a non-Orthodox environment. Before my departure, realizing that I wouldn’t be able to pray openly (it was 1968 or 1969), my father exhorted me to make the sign of the cross in the evenings before going to sleep, covering myself with a blanket.

—Everyone agrees that all those Soviet trappings—the Mausoleum, stars instead of crosses, portraits of communist leaders instead of iconostases—was an anti-Christian obsession.

Archpriest Vasily Evdokimov

At the same time, the New Martyrs showed love for fierce and brutal persecutors, and people of the following generations could go into repeat offenders’ cells unaccompanied. Why do we now have an “autonomy of everyone from everyone” and atomization in society, even in the Church community?

—I was privileged to speak with Priest-Confessor Vasily Evdokimov († 18.12.1990). He told me: “Kiryusha [a diminutive form of the name Kirill.—Trans.], you can’t even imagine how happy life was in Russia before 1917.” “Why?” I asked. “What was so special about it?” “People trusted each other,” he replied. And now this can’t be found even within the Church community—we are really disunited.

Back in the 1990s, my father used to say that perhaps it was easier to live in the time of the New Martyrs than it is now. Even during those years of persecution, everything was clear: You were either a believer or a non-believer. Either for the sake of benefits, in order to get into a prestigious university or travel abroad, you joined the Komsomol (the Young Communist League) and the Communist Party, or you didn’t compromise your conscience and were deprived of something in life. I still have a blank application form for joining the Komsomol in my desk. In order not to join the Komsomol, we, the children of a secret priest, went to different schools so as not to draw attention to ourselves. What kind of family was it if no one was a Komsomol member? I was interested in history, but father told me, “This is an ideological sphere—this door is closed for you.” I entered the geological department. Soon they announced that they were gathering a group for practice in Germany. “Just submit an application to the Komsomol and then you’ll go.” I still stumble on it among my old papers. I’ll probably give it to a museum some day.

And now everything is blurred. And there are increasingly people not only of completely different views, but also migrants around us. Our grandfathers and fathers were able to preserve the faith in those harsh conditions. They showed us an example. And what about us? The experience of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church is absolutely vital for us today—how they formed communities, and what was called “their own circle”. If we don’t learn to do the same, we will disappear in a non-Orthodox environment and die out.

— Fr. Kirill, what could we learn from contact with those who went through the prisons and camps?

Maria Nikolaevna Sokolova (nun Juliana; † 16.02.1981)

—Here is the story of Fr. Vasily Evdokimov. He was born before the Revolution, in 1902, in the town of Kozlov² in Tambov province—one of Russia’s backwoods. He was subjected to persecution and arrests. He was the cell attendant of Vladyka Hieromartyr Dimitry (Dobroserdov; † 10.21.1937), who was shot in Butovo. Fr. Vasily was a spiritual son of Hieromartyr Sergei Mechev († 6.01.1942), who at the end of 1941 blessed him to marry one of St. Alexei Mechev’s spiritual daughters. At that time, Fr. Sergei was living secretly in the Yaroslavl region, somewhere near the town of Tutayev. Suddenly Fr. Sergei said, “Come to me on the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, and I will marry the two of you.” They realized that the Nativity of St. John the Baptist falls during the Apostles’ Fast [when Church weddings are not performed.—Ed.], but Fr. Sergei had given his blessing… Maria Nikolaevna Sokolova (nun Juliana; † 16.02.1981) painted an icon of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist for their wedding day… At the last minute, Fr. Sergei told them not to come as he could see that the situation was getting worse. And indeed, on the day of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, Fr. Sergei Mechev was arrested and later executed by shooting on the Eve of the Nativity of the Lord (January 6, 1942). Tatiana, Fr. Vasily’s wife, gave me that icon later, because I was born on the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. It was Fr. Vasily who subsequently blessed the opening of the Church of St. Nicholas at Klenniki on Maroseika Street in Moscow.

—What set those people apart from the others? What experience did they gain from all those trials?

—Now it may sound incredible, but they were all very cheerful people. They had such hard lives, but many of them just shone with joy! And we are driving ourselves into doom and gloom! Why? They truly lived a full life in Christ, were completely in the Church, realizing that this life on earth is ephemeral. Unfortunately, you can hardly find this today.

By their social status, education level and even Church ministry, they could be very different people. For example, I knew two nuns from Sergiyev Posad, one of whom was illiterate. And I knew one of the founders of the Moscow Psychiatric School—Dmitry Mikhailovich Melekhov. But they all clearly made up one Church at that time. When you saw those people, you understood that internally they were very close.

—How could you tell this?

—By their lively perception of Christ, and therefore a very joyful, grateful sense of life, in spite of any trials. In those days, even if you weren’t imprisoned, overwhelming anxiety and fear reigned in the country. And those people truly walked before the Lord! Clearly they didn’t ask for trouble, but at the right moment they could give a rebuff.

—Should believers rebuff the presumptuous?

—When a child is naughty, you can give him a smack, right? Our father told us a story from World War II. It was in the spring of 1945 in East Prussia. All was fine, but suddenly our soldiers broke into a run! The first echelon ran, and the second took off after it. And the running mass grew by several miles in fifteen minutes. They ran along the sea coast, over which a railway ran on the embankment. If Germans had seen that moving target, they would have killed everyone at once. How did the story end? The division headquarters was located six miles away from the front. Hearing the trampling, the officers came out and started shooting at the fleeing soldiers. Some fell. The rest sobered up, admitting, “Why are we running?” What else was to be done in this situation? How couldn’t the officers shoot?

The former Butovo firing range

—Unpunished evil tends to go on, become impudent, get out of hand, multiply and grow. The fact that in our country all this experience of blasphemy and persecution hasn’t been comprehended and condemned by society is simply a time bomb.

—We often say that the time of the New Martyrs and Confessors was the 1920s and 1930s, perhaps partly the 1940s. And what about Khrushchev’s persecution? Externally it was completely different, but its internal essence was also demonic and suppressive. Fr. Vasily Evdokimov, when he served in Osh as the head of the Deanery of Southern Kyrgyzstan, was simply dragged around the church by his beard.

I recall that once as a boy I wasn’t taken to the Paschal night service. And in the morning, when we came to the late Liturgy, on the Prophet Elias Church there were marks of stones that had been thrown at the Paschal procession. There were such huge depressions. This was in the early 1960s, in the center of Moscow.

Not so long ago, my cousin Maria Evgenievna, Fr. Alexander Ilyashenko’s wife, said that when in the early 1960s her father served in St. Petersburg as rector of the Holy Trinity Cathedral of the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra, before leaving for the Paschal service he would say good-bye to his wife in such a manner that everyone in the family understood that he might never return. It was the reality. Whether or not our history will repeat itself depends on our attitude towards it.

Our interview ended in the magnificent, white stone Church of the Resurrection of Christ, which embodies “the Year of the Lord” in its Paschal paintings.

—Our Lord Jesus Christ said to His disciples: “You will be witnesses of My Passion and My Resurrection” (cf. Jn. 15:27; Acts 1:8). And they went and preached His Passion and Resurrection all over the globe. Their followers, whom the Church called “witnesses” (from Greek “μάρτυς”, meaning “witness”), became martyrs, and they also testified to the Risen Savior. Likewise, the New Martyrs of our times are witnesses of the Resurrection of Christ! And the Russian Orthodox Church, which has recognized them as saints, thus testifies to its faith in the Resurrection of Christ at a time when most of the world is walking away from God!

“Faith in the Resurrection of Christ was the stone on which the New Martyrs stood and withstood,” said His Holiness Patriarch Alexei II, who blessed the consecration of the central altar table of the white stone church in Butovo in honor of the Resurrection of Christ.

Christ is Risen!