On October 9 (September 26 on the Julian Calendar) we commemorate Saint Athanasius Dokukin, priest and martyr under the Communist yoke, who reposed in the Lord in 1937.
Hieromartyr Afanasy (Athanasius) was born on January 18, 1899 in the village of Verkhniy Lyubazh, Fatezh district, Kursk province, to the family of a peasant, Vasily Dokukin. When Afanasy was fifteen years old, he lost his father and mother and went to live with his aunt. After graduating from a second-grade school, he began serving as a psalm-reader in one of the churches of Fatezh district, Kursk province, in 1914. In 1923, Metropolitan Nazary (Kirillov) of Kursk and Oboyan ordained him as a deacon to the Church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Lintsy, Fatezh district, and in 1925 as a priest to the Church of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple in the village of Kochetno, Lgovsky district.
In 1933, the authorities arrested Father Afanasy for tax evasion and sentenced him to three years in a labor camp. Released in 1935, he was sent to serve in a church in the village of Starikovo in the Taldomsky District of the Moscow Region, and in August 1936 he was transferred to the Nikolskaya Church in the village of Nikulskoye, where he served until the day of his arrest.
On September 3, 1937, an NKVD officer interrogated one of the false witnesses, a shepherd from a local collective farm, and he agreed to sign the testimony required by the NKVD. On September 4, Father Afanasy was summoned to the local police station for interrogation, but since all the NKVD officers were busy, he was interrogated by a passport officer, who asked him questions of a biographical nature.
On September 11, the priest was arrested and was initially held in prison in the city of Zagorsk. On September 14, an investigator interrogated him.
Accused Dokukin, do you plead guilty to spreading anti-Soviet rumors about the war, as well as to conducting anti-Soviet activities and agitation?
- I do not admit guilt in carrying out anti-Soviet activities and anti-Soviet agitation, since I did not carry out anti-Soviet activities and did not engage in anti-Soviet agitation. I have nothing more to show.
On September 15, the investigation was completed and Father Afanasy was transferred to one of the prisons in Moscow. Here, on September 22, he was interrogated again.
Who in your family was dispossessed, deprived of voting rights, or given a firm assignment?
- I received a firm assignment in 1932, since 1919 I was deprived of voting rights, in 1933 the farm was dispossessed.
Do you admit your guilt in the counter-revolutionary work you are carrying out?
- No.
At this point the interrogations were over. On September 26, the NKVD troika sentenced Father Afanasy to be shot. Priest Afanasy Dokukin was shot on October 9, 1937 and buried in a common unmarked grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.