Hieromartyrs Of The Crimea And Taganrog

When Yalta was taken by the Bolsheviks in April, 1919, their first act was to deal with the local priest, Fr. Nicholas, who was greatly respected in Yalta and was well known for his sermons against Bolshevism. Fr. Nicholas had been warned to leave the city before the arrival of the Bolsheviks, but he had refused to leave his flock. He was arrested and hanged in the city garden.

(Source: Ikh Stradaniyami Ochistitsa Rus', Moscow, 1996, p. 55)

The priest Fr. Michael Chafranov, from Sebastopol, was killed by sailors for no other reason than that he gave Holy Communion to a man who had been condemned to death by the Bolsheviks. He was dragged out of the church and shot on the porch. The priest's body was not found. It was probably thrown into the sea. He was officially glorified at a funeral liturgy celebrated by Patriarch Tikhon on March 31 / April 13, 1918.

The priest Fr. Basil Uglyansky, from Simferopol diocese, was killed. He was officially glorified at a funeral liturgy celebrated by Patriarch Tikhon on March 31 / April 13, 1918.

Early in 1918, a group of Red Army soldiers burst into a church 20 versts from Simferopol, mockingly asked why a ribbon on a lampada was green and not red, and then dragged Fr. John Uglichsky into the courtyard of the church and shot him.

The priest Fr. Paul Voinarsky from the village of Yurevka, Berdyansk uyezd, Tauris diocese, was shot eleven times, and given several bayonet wounds. Together with him were killed the brothers Paul and Alexis Kiryan.

Protopriest Fr. Andrew Kosovsky, the superior of the St. Catherine church in Sarygol, was killed, as were 63 other priests in Feodosiya.

In the town of Stary Krym, Feodosiya uyezd, the superior of the Trinity church, Fr. Boris Kotlyarevsky, was shot.

(Source: Vladimir Rusak, Pir Satany, London, Canada: "Zarya", 1991, pp. 21, 26, 34, 38, 40)

Protopriest Nicholas Bortovsky was born in the 1860s in the south Ukraine. In the 1890s he was serving in the church of the village of Peschany Brod in Elisavetgrad province. Then he served in church in Sebastopol and Simferopol. He was a fine preacher and conducted missionary work among the Crimean Tatars and Karaites. In 1920 he was arrested in Simferopol and died in prison, supposedly of typhus.

(Source: Za Khrista Postradavshiye, Moscow: St. Tikhon's Theological Institute, 1997, pp. 186-187)

In Yalta, the popular priest Fr. Sergius Shchukin was savagely killed by the Bolsheviks (no further details known).

The former protodeacon of the church in Livadia, Fr. Sergius Aronsky, disappeared without trace from Krasnoyarsk prison.

A band of Bolsheviks seized three priests in the Crimea, Fathers Nicholas Popov, Agathon Garin and Alexander Kazanchev, and killed them after long tortures and humiliations.

In 1922, 44 clergy of various ranks from the Crimea were killed by the Bolsheviks in connection with the confiscation of church valuables. In the neighbouring province of Taganrog, 36 clergy were killed.

(Source: Protopresbyter Michael Polsky, Noviye Mucheniki Rossijskiye, Jordanville, 1949-57, part 1, pp. 210-211, 213, 214, 216)

Protopriest Andronicus Kokhno joined the Russian Church Abroad in 1990. He was killed by a KGB co-worker in the Crimea in 1992.

(Source: "Noviye Mucheniki Gonimoj Rossijskoj Tserkvi", Vertograd-Inform, NN 8-9 (29-30), July, 1997, p. 7)