On September 28 (September 15 on the Julian Calendar) we commemorate Saint John Ilyinsky, Priest and Martyr of the Communist Yoke, who reposed in the Lord in 1938.
Archpriest John (John) Evfimyevich Ilyinsky was born in 1846 to a sexton. Growing up in a believing Orthodox family, John, like his parent, decided to dedicate his life to serving the Church of Christ. In order to receive a spiritual education, in 1864 the future pastor entered the Simbirsk Theological Seminary. His father, a simple village clergyman, not even ordained, but who worked all his life at the church altar, saw in his son the one whom the Lord had chosen to serve His Church. And therefore, although not having much wealth, Evfimy Ilyinsky made every effort to ensure that his son John received a decent spiritual education. The parent's hopes came true, and in 1870 John graduated from the Simbirsk Theological Seminary with a 2nd-class certificate.
However, after completing his studies, the young graduate John did not immediately decide to apply for ordination. Moreover, taking the choice of a companion for his entire future life very seriously, he was in no hurry to start a family. That is why, not burdened by marriage, he first worked as a zemstvo teacher for three years immediately after graduating from the seminary. And his diligent service to the cause of public education, to which he devoted all his strength, knowledge and all his time, did not go unnoticed. For his successful and diligent performance of the position of a rural teacher, he was repeatedly noted and encouraged by his superiors, receiving three awards from the Ministry of Public Education during this time.
In 1873, John finally met the one with whom he would live in love and harmony for 45 happy years. That year, he was married to 18-year-old Shurochka, the future Matushka Alexandra. In the same year of 1873, John Evfimyevich's cherished wish came true - he was ordained first as a deacon by His Grace Bishop Evgeny (Sakharov-Platonov) of Simbirsk and Syzran, and a short time later as a priest and sent to serve in the village of Tomylovo in the Sengileevsky district, where he served for 45 years until his martyrdom.
The village of Tomylovo was quite large - in 1913, it had 285 households and more than three thousand residents. In addition to the zemstvo school, there was also a ministerial school. From the first day of his appointment as rector of his first and only parish, Father John worked as a religious teacher at the local village school. His tireless efforts to teach rural children the Law of God were again noted - in 1880, for his successes in public education, Father John was awarded the gratitude of the diocesan authorities. It should be noted that Father John enjoyed unquestionable authority among his fellow priests. From 1895 to 1899, the priest was a member of the deanery council, and from 1886 for 14 years he was a missionary of the deanery district. From 1911, Father John was a missionary for the Simbirsk and Buinsk districts.
The latter position of Father John was very significant. In the area where the priest served, there were many schismatic priestless people, as well as pagans from the Chuvash and Mordvins. Therefore, the work of the deanery missionary, returning the lost people of God to the bosom of the Orthodox Church, was very important and equally associated with numerous difficulties. From 1901, the priest was a teacher of the law in the church literacy school. From 1893 to 1897, Father John served as a teacher at the Tomylovo missionary school for four years to prepare his parishioners to fight the schismatic groups. During his many years of service at the parish in the village of Tomylovo, Father John was awarded the following church awards: in 1884 he was awarded a nabedrennik, in 1887 - a skufia, in 1894 - a kamilavka.
For teaching children the Law of God in the church parish school and adults in the literacy school, the priest was awarded gratitude from the authorities of the Kazan Educational District. For converting 50 people from schism to Orthodoxy, he was awarded a second time. For the assistance he provided to parishioners during the year of crop failure, he was awarded the blessing of the Holy Synod in 1901. In 1903, Father John was awarded the Order of St. Anne, 3rd degree, and in 1906, a pectoral cross. In 1904, Father John received gratitude from the Simbirsk Missionary Society. In 1913, in honor of forty years of priestly service, he was elevated to the rank of archpriest.
Father John and his wife Alexandra had six children. According to the priest's service record for 1915, three of his sons took part in military operations on the fronts of World War I: the eldest, Vladimir (born in 1875), was a doctor and by profession operated in front-line hospitals, Alexander (born in 1887) fought in the rank of ensign, and the youngest, Nikolai (born in 1890), graduated from the Kyiv School of Ensigns in 1915.
Father John's daughters continued their father's work in the field of public education: both the eldest, Antonina (born in 1877), and the youngest, Alexandra (born in 1892), became rural teachers, and the middle daughter, Vera (born in 1878), was the wife of a parish priest.
The Bolshevik coup d'etat in 1917 and the fratricidal civil war that followed turned everything upside down in the once mighty Russian Empire. The God-fighting nature of the revolutionaries and rebels who came to power in Russia manifested itself first and foremost in their attitude toward both the Church itself and its ministers. The murder of 72-year-old Father John Ilyinsky was one of the first such tragic incidents in 1918 during the battles between the so-called "White Czech Army" and the Red Army.
The events that took place in Sengileevsky district at that time can be found in detail in the parish chronicle of the Mother of God of Kazan Church in the village of Kivat in the same district, which was kept at that time by the rector of this church, Archpriest Irakli Zhemchuzhnikov.
Here is the story:
The village of Tomylovo, where Father Ioann served, and the village of Kivat, where Father Irakli was rector, were located a short distance from each other, and therefore all the tragic events were described in sufficient detail in the aforementioned chronicle. Here is what the Kivat priest reported:
An army of "Czechs" stood against the Bolsheviks at Bezvodovka station (I don't know where this army came from or who it was made up of). When a company of Bolshevik Red Army soldiers arrived in Kivat... the chronicler (i.e. Fr. Irakli. - Fr. A.S.) was sentenced by the Red Army soldiers to be shot ... supposedly as a "kulak". But, it is true, "If God doesn't give you up, then a pig won't eat you" [a Russian proverb invoking divine protection]. Before shooting me, they almost universally questioned the parishioners whether I was really offending them, and when this was not confirmed, they left me alone.
The 16th and 17th of August passed quietly, and on the 18th an airplane flew by here at about 8 o'clock in the morning. Whose airplane it was - Red Army or Czech - none of us could determine. The Red Army observer could not determine it either. But only at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon did the alarm sound, and the soldiers began to prepare for battle. To the questions addressed to them, they answered: "The Czechs are advancing, hide in the cellars..." Indeed, soon armed soldiers appeared from the direction of Yedelev, from the mountain from Tomylov ..., advancing from three sides in lines, and in about a quarter of an hour the battle began, expressed in the shooting of rifles and several machine guns.
The chronicler with his family at this time hid in his garden in a winter house for bees. The shooting lasted no more than an hour, and the Red Army soldiers, taken by surprise, were forced to retreat to Chekalino.
After taking Kivati, the Czechs soon went back to Tomylovo, and the Red Army soldiers took up positions - partly in the oak grove, and partly in the cemetery forest. In this battle, a Red Army officer-observer was killed outright and one private was wounded, then finished off by the Czechs who had entered already on the street in Kivati itself. I performed the funeral service for the officer and buried him in the local cemetery, and someone buried the soldier without a funeral service.
The peace of Kivati, disturbed by the entry of soldiers on August 16, was restored only when the Czech troops retreated to Syzran, and the Red Army troops occupied Studenets (a village 20 miles away). This was on September 12.
So, on September 12, the Czechs retreated, and their troops moved towards Syzran. The headquarters of the White Czechs was located in the village of Tomylovo, next to Kivatu, in the house of the local archpriest, Father John. During the retreat, the headquarters first moved to the village of Studenets, and then, with the movement of the entire army, it was relocated towards Syzran. At the same time as the Czechs retreating from Tomylovo, the Red Army entered the village.
On September 13, Father John celebrated the all-night vigil in the church on the eve of the feast of the Exaltation of the Life-Giving Cross. After the service, he was invited to give last rites to a sick parishioner. Having donned the epitrachelion and cuffs, and reverently placing the monstrance around his neck, the priest left the church and headed to the home of his dying parishioner.
But as soon as Father John stepped outside the church gates, three Red Army soldiers approached him. One of them blasphemously tore the monstrance with the Holy Gifts from the 72-year-old priest and, saying, "Stop deceiving the people - you are under arrest," threw the holy relic away from himself.
Father John was not even allowed to take off his liturgical vestments or say goodbye to his household, and just like that, he was taken away under guard to the Bezvodovka station. He was then interrogated all night in the headquarters car located at the station. In the morning, at about 10 o'clock, the car was driven to a dead end, and the priest was taken out of it, and, accompanied by armed Red Army soldiers, led towards the forest. Here, a quarter of a verst from the railway line, on the edge of the forest, Father John was shot.
The murderers dug a shallow hole, threw the body of the martyr into it, and having barely covered it with earth, left it here without any burial. Most likely, the Red Army soldiers accused Father John of aiding the White Czechs, since their headquarters were located in the house of the archpriest's father. Thus, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, a zealous servant at the Throne of God ascended his Golgotha and received an incorruptible martyr's crown.
For a long time, the family of the murdered priest knew nothing about the fate of Father John. And only in October, Matushka Alexandra managed to learn about the martyrdom of her husband and the location of his body. On October 25, 1918, the family of Father John appealed to the Simbirsk Provincial Executive Committee with a request to allow him to be buried according to Christian rites. However, the martyr's relatives did not receive any response.
On September 9, 1919, Father John's son Alexander again appealed to the authorities with a request to allow them to hold a funeral service for his father and give him a dignified burial, since his body "still lies buried no more than 2 quarters deep" (a little more than half a meter). The son of the murdered archpriest reminded the provincial authorities that the case of his father's execution had been under consideration by the authorities since October 25, 1918, i.e., for almost a year, but to this day Father John's family had not been able to obtain permission to bury the remains of the executed priest. "I ask the Provincial Executive Committee," Alexander wrote further, "to issue permission for my father's funeral in connection with his non-involvement with counter-revolutionaries (as the Chairman of the Investigative Commission Orlovsky verbally informed me)."
Unfortunately, no documents could be found that would indicate permission to bury the executed priest, or the place and time of its execution. One can only assume that such permission was nevertheless received and the body of the martyr was worthily buried in the parish cemetery of the village of Tomylovo.
The tragedy of Father John's murder was aggravated by the fact that after his death all of the priest's property was partially plundered and partially confiscated by the "Committee of the Poor." One cow from the priest's farm was taken to some yard, and the second was simply slaughtered. The priest's family also petitioned for at least a partial return of the stolen property, since after Father John's death his wife and daughter were left without means of support.
Only a year after the murder of the archpriest's father, on September 13, 1919, a meeting of the Simbirsk Revolutionary Tribunal was held, the agenda of which included the question "On the priest John Ilyinsky, accused of counter-revolution." The tribunal made the following decision:
"The Revolutionary Tribunal, having examined the case of the priest John Ilyinsky, accused of counter-revolution, and in view of the fact that there is insufficient material to accuse the priest Ilyinsky of counter-revolution, and also taking into account that the latter was shot by unknown persons, whose names could not be established, terminates the proceedings. The confiscated property must be returned to the family."
The punitive organ of the Bolsheviks, which the aforementioned tribunal was, a year after the martyrdom of Father John was forced to state the fact of the absence of any political motives that caused the execution of the priest without, as they say, trial or investigation. The tribunal had no "sufficient materials" or any other information about the counter-revolutionary activities of Archpriest John Ilyinsky. And there simply could not have been any. The elderly, honored archpriest, who had devoted his entire life to preaching the Word of God, love and peacefulness, had nothing to do with the political events that were shaking Russia at that time.
So why was Father John shot? The answer to this question is contained in the words of one of the Red Army soldiers who arrested the priest and desecrated not only the gray-headed minister of the Church, but, most terribly, the Holy Gifts with which he was heading to give his sick parishioner his last instructions and communion. "You've had enough of deceiving the people," said the soldier, infected with the ideas of demonic materialism. This was the entirely of the "guilt" of Father John - like the Jewish high priests who called the Son of God a liar before Pilate, the godless Bolsheviks accused the priest who preached the truth of Christ of lying. And, like the Jews possessed by the spirit of impiety and malice who demanded the crucifixion of the Savior, the Russian people who renounced the faith of their fathers and ancestors put to death the one who taught them to follow Christ.
Covering up the murderers, the members of the tribunal indicated that the father archpriest was shot by "unknown persons", although, of course, it was possible to determine with certainty which detachment of the Red Army unit occupied the village of Tomylovo in September, and who arrested the priest, and who mocked him in the headquarters car all night. Ordinary soldiers did not travel in such a car. This meant that the tribunal would have to name the high-ranking Bolshevik officials who ordered the execution of the martyred priest on the edge of the forest that morning. The death of the priest was not such a significant event for the communists that they would have to make a fuss about it and name the real killers.
Thus, the authorities acknowledged the illegality of the murder of Father John, but concealed the villains who committed this crime. Having failed to justify the execution of the priest even by the notorious "counter-revolutionary activity", the revolutionary rulers thereby confirmed that the martyrdom of Archpriest John Ilyinsky occurred only because of the service of this pastor to the Church of Christ, and the only guilt of the sufferer was his 45-year service at the Throne of the Lord in the same church.
The memory of the holy martyr John Ilyinsky, Archpriest Tomylovsky, is celebrated on September 15/28 and on the day of the celebration of the Council of New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.