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CONCERT-REQUIEM
in Memory of the 90th anniversary of the shooting of the Russian Royal Family

Part one

90 years ago the Last Russian Emperor Nicholas II was shot. Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna, his wife, Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia, his daughters, and Alexei, his son, were also executed. On the following day the Grand Duchess Elisabeth, the empress’s sister, was buried alive in Alapaevsk. Today we commemorate the Royal martyrs and all other innocent victims who suffered from the hands of Godless at that terrible and tragic historic period of our history.

Memento (5:00)

From the Gospel according to St. Matthew (24:1–13):  And Jesus being come out of the temple, went away; and his disciples came to shew him the buildings of the temple. And he answering, said to them: Do you see all these things? Amen I say to you, there shall not be left here a stone upon a stone that shall not be destroyed… For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And there shall be pestilences and famines and earthquakes in places… Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name's sake; and then shall many be scandalized and shall betray one another and shall hate one another… and because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.

Chorale, St Matthew Passion 17 (1:00)

Royal Family: Way to Golgotha

 The Golgotha of the Royal Family started from the moment Emperor Nicholas II abdicated on March 15, 1917. The fourth year of war was underway. Russian troops suffered great losses at the German theatre of war. The war exhausted the country, Petrograd suffered from unrest that ended with an armed rebellion.

The Manifest of Abdication was signed at the Dno station near the city of Pskov where the Emperor’s train returning from the High Command Headquarters to The Tsarskoe Selo was detained. Petrograd was in the hands of insurgents and the Tsar faced the necessity to abdicate in order to conciliate the country and prevent revolution. The Duma and High Command insisted that Emperor do it.

The Tsar wrote the following in the Manifest of Abdication:  “At the time of great struggle against our exterior enemies who have been trying to enslave our Motherland for three years, God send us a new ordeal. The internal disorders threaten to effect further warfare… At this decisive time for Russia it is obligation of our conscience to ease the unification of our population for the fastest achievement of victory and in line with the decision of the State Duma and for the public weal we decided to abdicate Russian throne and lay down the sceptre … God save Russia.”

 In that evening the Tsar put down in his diary the following:  “At 1 o’clock in the morning I left Pskov with a sense of heaviness. Betrayal and cowardice, and deception surround me!”

The abdication was a desperate step but the Tsar took it with the hope that his sacrifice would help save the country. The reverse thing happened: the fall of monarchy led Russia to the chaos of revolution and civil war. The Pro Tempore Government came to power but it was helpless in the face of revolution. The influence of the Bolshevik party grew every day. The country approached the fatal line.

Fugue A-minor, CO (Christmas Oratorio) 3 (3:00)

Returning to the Capital the Tsar and his family were arrested; and twenty-four-hour guards were placed in his palace.

From the memoirs of Pierre Gilliard, the tutor of the heir to the throne:  “Despite the rare ability to control feelings the Tsar couldn’t conceal his shock but he recovered fast being with his family…. He was not allowed to go to the park but could have a stroll around little garden near the palace surrounded by a chain of guards. Emperor took all restrictions calmly and obediently. He did not utter a single word of reproach. One feeling mastered his mind and it was stronger than his devotion to his family – his love to the Motherland. He was ready to forgive everyone who humiliated him if they could save Russia.”

The Beatitudes, SMP 14 (3:00)

In early August of 1917 under the decision of the Pro Tempore Government the Royal Family was sent to Tobolsk. At first the life of the family was peaceful and calm. Every morning The Tsar was at books with his children, in the afternoon they went for a walk, in the evening they read the Holy Bible. Their days started and ended with prayers. The family members often went to church, confessed and received Holy Communion.

The Tsar was deeply distressed for the failures of the Russian Armed Forces and for revolutionary events. At the same time his mind always returned to his abdication. Again and again was he asking himself whether the abdication had been a mistake. Everything could have been done in a different way. But his sequacity to God’s will and firm hope for God’s mercy did not leave The Tsar. On May 15, 1918, the 1st anniversary of his abdication he wrote in his diary:  “I remember these days in Pskov and in the train last year! How long will our Motherland suffer from enemies from within and from without? Sometimes it seems that I can’t stand it any longer and even don’t know what to wish and for what to hope? And yet, there is no one like God! Be his will blessed!” Several days later the Tsar wrote:  “Today is the anniversary of my arrival in Tsarskoe Selo and arrest in the Aleksandrovskiy Palace. Unwillingly I remember this difficult year! And what is to come? Everything is in the hands of God! My only hope is he.”

Aria of bass, D-minor, SMP 22 (3:00)

When the Bolsheviks came to power the custodial control of the Royal Family toughened. In the spring of 1918 the family was evacuated to Yekaterinburg. The Ipatyev house, private house in the heart of Yekaterinburg, was the final resort of royal prisoners.

The Holy Week of 1918 started. Earlier the Royal Family always visited Holy services but this time around they didn’t have a chance to take part in church service. Services were substituted by the reading of the Gospel about Christ’s Passions. On Holy Thursday the Tsar wrote in his diary:  “I kept on reading the Holy Bible… At the strikes of bells it was sad thinking that Holy Week has come but we are deprived of opportunities to participate in services and even cannot keep fasting!.. In the evening we, the lodgers of four rooms, gathered in the hall where… we read the 12 Passion Gospels.”  On Great Friday the Tsar put down:  “In mornings and evenings I read corresponding Holy Gospels aloud in the bedroom.”

From the Gospel according to St. Mathew (27:27–31): 27 Then the soldiers of the governor, taking Jesus into the hall, gathered together unto him the whole band 28 And stripping him, they put a scarlet cloak about him; 29 And platting a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand. And bowing the knee before him, they mocked him, saying: Hail, King of the Jews! 30 And after they had mocked him, they took off the cloak from him and put on him his own garments and led him away to crucify him.

Let all flesh be silent, SMP 28 (4:00)

Clouds over the Royal Family were gathering. The number of The Tsar’s confidants gradually decreased: some were shot by Bolsheviks, others were exiled. At the moment of death there were only four devoted people, including Doctor Botkin, who were with the Royal Family. Not long before the end doctor Botkin, one of the four, wrote to a friend:  “My voluntary imprisonment is not limited but my natural life is limited. In fact I’m dead – I’m dead for my children, friends, business... I didn’t hesitate to leave my children fatherless to fulfill my medical duties till the very end as Abraham didn’t hesitated to sacrifice his only son upon God’s will. I believe that as God saved Isaac he will save my children and be their Father.”

In early July the White troops approached Yekaterinburg. The commandant of the Ipatyev house and Yakov Yurovsky, local chekist, received the order not to let the former Tsar come to the hands of the White.

The priest invited to a service in the Ipatyev house on July 16 remembered the following:  “I entered the hall, then came deacon and Yurovsky. At the same time Nicholas Aleksandrovich appeared with two daughters… In front there already was Aleksandra Fyodorovna with two other daughters and Alexei Nikolaevich who sat in a wheel chair dressed in a coat... He was pale… According to the order of the service it was necessary to read a prayer but deacon began singing instead of reading. I also began to sing … As soon as we started singing I heard than the Romanovs knelt... When I was leaving … it seemed to me that I heard the deafly heard word: “Thank you”… Deacon and I silently approached the building of the Art School and he said to me: “You know, father, something happened there”… I stopped and asked why he thought so. “Well, — deacon said, — they are different, no one even sings.” And indeed, during the service… none of the Romanovs sang with us for the first time.”

Rest with saints – male choir, C-minor (1:20)

It was the last service in the life of the Royal Family. As though they foresaw their death the royal prisoners knelt in singing “Rest with saints.” Three days prior to his death The Tsar stopped his diary that he had been keeping for many years. The Empress kept her diary till the last day – July 16. She put down that day:  “Everybody went for a half hour walk, Olga and I stayed. We prepared medicine. Tatyana read spiritual literature, then they left. Tatyana stayed with me, we read the book of the Prophet Amos and the book of the Prophet Obadiah.”

From the book of the Prophet Amos: “And on that day,” says the Lord GOD, “I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10 I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation… I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day. 11 Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord GOD, “when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. 12 They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it (Amos 8:9–12).

Fugue, C-minor, SMP 47 (2:00)

Shooting of Royal Family

In the evening on July 16 royal prisoners went to bed at half past ten. At midnight Yurovsky woke them up and ordered them to go down to the main floor. The first one to go downstairs was The Tsar who carried his son in his hands: both were dressed in military uniform with headgears. They were followed by Aleksandra Fyodorovna, then the daughters, doctor and servants. They came into a basement room. The Empress and the heir sat down on chairs, the rest stood up. Yurovsky entered the room, other executors followed him. They had agreed, whom each of them would shoot at. Coming close to the former Emperor Yurovsky said:  “Nicholas Aleksandrovich, your relatives tried to save you but failed. And we have to shoot you.”  And he shot at The Tsar and then at the heir. Random fire started, horrid yells sounded, women rushed about the room. The room filled with smoke, the executors started blind fire. Then Yurovsky ordered his men to cease fire. When the smoke cleared away, the heir and two daughters turned out to be alive. They were “reshot” and stabbed. At last everything abated. The bodies were thrown into the truck, taken to the forest, disjointed, poured over with sulphuric acid and burnt.

Singing to you, SMP 35 (4:00)

At the moment of shooting The Tsar was 50, Empress 46, Olga 22, Tatyana 21, Maria 19, Anastasia 17. The heir to the throne was to have been 14 in several days.

From the memoirs of Pierre Gilliard: “The Emperor and the Empress believed that they were martyrs and died for their motherland… Their true dignity came not from their their Royal blood but from the moral level they had managed to gradually achieve… And in their humiliation they were the manifestations of their clear souls where any violence and hatred were powerless and which triumphs in the death.”

Grand Duchess Elisabeth

Grand Duchess Elisabeth was 8 years older than her sister, Empress Aleksandra. Born Hessian Princess, granddaughter of the British Queen Victoria, Elisabeth married Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich in 1884, brother of Emperor Alexander III. In 1905 the Grand Duke was killed by a terrorist bomb. Hearing the explosion the Grand Duchess ran out of the palace and saw that the carriage went to pieces as well as his body. She rushed to collect what remained from her husband.

Shocked but not broken down Elisabeth devoted the rest of her days to acts of mercy. She founded a convent on Bolshaya Ordynka in Moscow named after Martha and Mary. The sisters helped the sick, the poor, prisoners and the dying. The convent included a hospital, ambulatory, pharmacy where some medicines were free of charge, orphan asylum, soup-house and a lot of other entities. After the beginning of Russia-Germany war the convent was primarily occupied with helping the wounded people. The Grand Duchess did dressings with her own hands and took part in the most difficult operations as a nurse.

When the Bolsheviks came to power the convent faced bad days. On the third day of Easter in 1918 the Grand Duchess was arrested and taken to Perm and then to Alapaevsk. The Grand Duchess wrote to the sisters of the convent:  “Unite and be as a single soul, all for God, and say as John Chrysostom: Glory to God for everything!”

And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. 28 But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children, 32 And there were also two other, malefactors, led with him to be put to death. 33 And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. 34 Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots (Luke 23:27-28, 32-34).

You atoned our sins, SMP 33 (2:00)

The last days of her life the Grand Duchess spent in prison in the school building in the outskirts of Alapaevsk. Several other members of the Romanovs were brought there – Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich and his secretary Fyodor Remez, Grand Dukes Ivan, Konstantin and Igor Konstantinovichi, Duke Vladimir Paley.

At the night from 17 to 18 July the arrested were taken to derelict mine. There the convoy beating the prisoners with butt stocks threw them into a deep mine. The first was the Grand Duchess who said:  “God forgive them for they do not understand what they are doing.”  Then the other martyrs were thrown and then grenades were thrown into the mine. Sergei Mikhailovich tried to resist but he was shot and his body was thrown into the same mine.

Not all the executed died immediately. Later it was discovered that Elisabeth and Ivan Konstantinovich did not fall to the bottom but to the shelf that was at a depth of 15 meters. They were seriously wounded but remained alive. To ease the Duke’s sufferings the Grand Duchess tore a piece of cloth and did a dressing.

A peasant who incidentally passed by heard the sounds of a Cherubic hymn from the depth of the mine. Dying of wounds, thirst and hunger the Grand Duchess and her companion who had not died immediately consoled each other with a church song.

Cherubic hymn, Liturgy 17 (3:00)

Two years prior to her martyrdom the Grand Duchess Elisabeth wrote to Emperor Nicholas II: “The time spins away and one distinguishes neither days nor years; everything merges into one moment of prayer and mercy... Today is twenty years since I joined our beloved Church... Everything merges into deep gratitude to God, our Church and noble examples that I had seen in truly orthodox Christians. I feel so miserable and unworthy of God’s love and the love that surrounded me in Russia, — even minutes of bitterness were sacred by the consolation from above … I can say one thing: Glory to God for everything, for everything!”

Part Two

Revolution and Church

The shooting of the Royal Family was part of the Bolsheviks program to destroy everything connected with “former Russia.” On the way to “bright future” there were many obstacles. The main obstacles were religion and the Church. Systematic persecutions of clergy, mass destruction of churches and monasteries began after the October revolution. Representatives of different religious confessions were executed and exiled. However, it was the Church to which the majority of population belonged that suffered more than others.

Dreadful persecutions of the Church began on October 31, 1917, when the Petersburg priest Ioann Kochurov was killed. His death opened a tragic list of new Russian martyrs that included tens of thousands of clergy representatives and hundreds of thousands of laypersons.

Executions of clergymen were conducted with special refined inhumanity: they were dug alive, poured over with cold water up to complete icing, boiled in water, crucified, lashed to death, and killed with axes. Many clergymen were tortured, some were executed with their families, or in front of their wives and children. Churches and monasteries were destroyed and plundered, icons were outraged and burnt.

“Holy Lament,” SMP 1 (4:00)

Patriarch Tikhon

At that difficult time the Holy Patriarch Tikhon was the Church’s leader. On January 19, 1918, during the civil war the patriarch issued an epistle anathematizing all those who spilled innocent blood, the Bolsheviks first of all: “Come round, madmen, stop the massacre… By God's power we prohibit you to come to the Christ’s sacrament, we anathematize you if you still have Christian names and belong to the Orthodox Church by birth.”

On October 26, 1918, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Bolsheviks’ rule, Patriarch Tikhon addressed the Soviet of People's Commissars about the adversities that occurred to the country, people and Church:  “You divided the people into hostile parties and involved them into unprecedented fratricide. You substituted hatred for love to Christ and started class struggle… No one feels safe; everybody lives under the fear of search, robbery, exile, arrest, and shooting. Hundreds of helpless people are detained and have to live in prison for months, or even executed without trial and investigation… Innocent bishops, clergymen and monasstics are executed… We address to you who use power to persecute and kill innocent people and ask you: celebrate the 1st anniversary of you coming to power by releasing prisoners, stopping blood, violence, devastation and persecution of faith… Otherwise you will be returned any righteous blood that you are spilling and you will perish from sword that you have taken.”

Soon afterwards Patriarch Tikhon was arrested and a new wave of persecution started.

Chorus “At Your Supper,” SMP 5 (4:00)

Church Values Seizure Case

Economic devastation as a consequence of revolution and civil war as well as the drought of the summer of 1921 led to hunger in the Volga region and several other regions of Russia. More than 20 million people had been starving by the May of 1922, more than a million died of hunger. The whole villages died out, children became orphans, and people were leaving starving regions and died on the way.

On March 22, 1922 Lenin composed a secret letter to the members of Politbureau where he suggested using hunger as the reason for the seizure of church values and crushing the church organization in Russia:  “Now and only now when in starving regions people eat people and hundreds and thousands of dead bodies lie on the roads we can (and that is why we must) seize church values with pitiless energy, not stopping at any resistance… We need to seize church values as fast as possible to get funds of several hundreds of million of gold rubles… The more representatives of reactionary bourgeois and clergy we shoot the better. We need to teach them a lesson in order to make them forget about any resistance for several decades to come.”

One of the arrested under the church values case was Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd: he and 85 other persons were convicted of inciting the religious people to resist the authorities. The trial was public and lasted for about a month, thousands of the people watched it. On July 4, Metropolitan Benjamin delivered his last statement: “I don’t know what verdict you are going to bring, life or death, but whatever is your verdict I will make a sign of the cross (at that moment he made a sign of the cross) and will say: ‘Glory to God for everything”.”

At the night from July 12 to 13 Metropolitan Benjamin was shot. Shortly before shooting he wrote to one of the Petrograd clergymen:  “When I was a child I was absorbed reading about lives of the saint and admired their heroism, their holy inspiration, felt sorry that the time has changed and I wouldn’t be able to live their life. The time has changed but there is still an opportunity to suffer for Christ’s sake. It is hard to suffer affliction, but at it we get the consolation from God… The sufferings have come to their highest point, but my consolation has also increased. I am glad and in peace as always. Christ is our life, light and peace. It is good to be with him everywhere and always.”

Aria “Absolving now,” CO 16 (4:00)

Death of Patriarch Tikhon

In 1922 under the case of church values seizure the Patriarch Tikhon was arrested. In the GPU prison at Lubyanka he was regularly interrogated and had to repent his anti-Soviet activities and declare that he was no longer the enemy of the Soviet power. After that the patriarch was released from prison.

On December 9, 1924, the Patriarch’s secretary Yakov Polozov was killed in front of the patriarch. After that the patriarch’s health went down. In early April of 1925 Evgeny Tuchkov, a GPU official responsible for contacts with the Church, demanded that the patriarch sign a letter of loyalty to the Soviet power and condemnation of emigrant clergy. The text of the letter was composed but the patriarch refused to sign it. On April 7 he died but didn’t sign the letter. The next day Izvestia published the text of this letter as if it had been signed by the patriarch. None of those who were close to the patriarch, including Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsy, dared to find out forgery.

From the Gospel according to St. John: Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! 27 Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home. 28 After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. 29 Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. (John 19:25-30).

Aria “My Son and My God,” SMP 38 (4:00)

“Solovetskiy Special Purpose Camp”

Solovetskiy Special Purpose Camp (shortly SLON) was established by a decree of the Soviet of People’s Commissars in 1923 on the territory of Solovetskiy Archipelago. The ancient monastery founded by saints Zosima and Savvaty turned into a GULAG subdivision. GULAG covered the whole territory of Russia with barbed wire. By the end of late 1930 more than 70,000 prisoners were there. Among them were academicians and professors, writers and poets, philosophers and actors, military men and polical activists, aristocrats and peasants, women and children, bishops and clergymen, Orthodox Christians and Catholics.

One of the prisoners of the Solovetskiy Camp was Archbishop Hilarion (Troitskiy), the closest assistant to Patriarch Tikhon. Being tall, with red hair, he attracted everybody’s attention by calmness, affability and resiliency. He had been very popular in Moscow. He liked church service and often took part in it as a simple monk.

Eyewitness remembered:  “I wanted to go to church during the Hole Week. Several times I went to Sretenskiy monastery. I was attracted by Hilarion, not by his pontifical service but his participation in service as a simple monk. Once… he appeared in the monastery church in a simple monastic cassock without his episcopal encolpion… He went to the front… and started to sing ‘I see Thy bridal chamber, O Savior!’… His voice was pleasant, pure, melodic, young and high. Tenor. He sang… so touchy and sensitively that I have not heard such a singing of this wonderful song.”

Aria “I see Thy bridal chamber, O Saviour,” transcription for tenor, SMP 11 (2:00)

Under extreme conditions of the camp Archbishop Hilarion preserved presence of mind, monastic unmaliciousness and singleness. One of the eyewitnesses said about Archbishop Hilarion:  “He was accessible… it was easy to deal with him. Very simple looks – that is Archbishop Hilarion. But behind this common joyfulness one could see infant pureness, spiritual experience, kindness and mercy, sweet indifference to material benefits, true faith, authentic godlikeness, high moral perfection.”

After six years in Solovki Hilarion had to be exiled to Kazakhstan. However, on the way there he took typhus and died. Before he died he had his hair cut. Metropolitan Serafim (Chichagov) of Petrograd who was later shot at the Butovo polygon managed to get his body, dressed him into white clothes and laid him to the coffin. During the burial service one of the relatives fainted seeing him dead: in the coffin was piteous silver-haired old man and one could hardly recognize Hilarion. He was 43 when he died.

The Gospel according to St.Mathew: And when it was evening, there came a certain rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, who also himself was a disciple of Jesus. 58 He went to Pilate and asked the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded that the body should be delivered. 59 And Joseph taking the body wrapped it up in a clean linen cloth 60 And laid it in his own new monument, which he had hewed out in a rock. And he rolled a great stone to the door of the monument and went his way (Mathew 27:57-60).

The noble Joseph, SMP 43 (4:00)

“Godless Five-Year Plan”

In 1932 the “Union of Militant Atheists” planned a struggle against religion: according to the plan churches of all confessions were to be closed and clergymen exiled, and by May 1, 1937 the name of God were to be forgotten on the territory of the USSR.” Clergymen were not exiled: they were still taken to prison and shot. Unlike Lenin’s time, public trials were no longer conducted, and the verdict of a “troika” (three people) was sufficient for shooting. In the 1930s all clergymen without distinction were being arrested and shot.

The daughter of a priest shot in the 1930s says:  “When the wave of repressive measures against clergymen was initiated, some of my father’s friends who worked for NKVD said that on such-and-such day he would be arrested and he should flee and hide. My father and three other clergymen with a deacon discussed the situation and decided not to flee and instead to perform an Easter service though it was long before Easter… At midnight clergymen started singing: ‘Christ is risen’ and that Easter service started. I haven’t had such an Easter for the whole of my life. Such grace, peace and joy I had in my soul. The most wonderful thing was that we, who were going to see the last hour of our fathers, exulted during that service as though there were no nightmare around us…. The altar doors were opened but we thought Heavens themselves were opened: the faces of the religious shined ethereal light. Cries of ‘Christ is risen’ were far around, the temple was overcrowded…. Clergymen had communicated when the NKVD officers arrived and took them away… The service ended. Clergymen were taken to cars and brought to an open pit, where they were shot on the same night.”

Fugue D-minor “Arise, O God,” SMP 41 (4:00)

Great Terror (1937-1938)

In the class struggle the Soviet power made no exceptions: children suffered from repressive measures like adults. The heir to the Russian throne who was 13 was one of many children shot under Bolsheviks’ orders. In 1918 in The Tsaritsyno Engineer Alekseev was shot by Stalin’s order together with his two sons of 16 and 14. In 1935 the supreme power takes decision on allowability of death penalty for people starting from 12 years old.

On August 15, 1937, Head of NKVD Ezhov ordered that wives and children of those who were convicted of treason should be repressed. This monstrous document said:  “Those wives that were de jure or de facto married to prisoners should be arrested. Those wives that exposed their husbands and informed proper authorities of the facts served as a basis for an arrest should not be arrested. After an arrest and search the wives of the arrested should be convoyed to prison. The same order shall be applied to children… Socially dangerous children of the arrested… should be taken to camps and correctional labor colonies of NKVD or to orphan asylums of particular treatment. Wives of traitors to the country having infants should immediately be arrested and without taking to prison should be sent to camps… Infants should be taken to camps with their mothers and on reaching the age of 1 to 1.5 years old should be taken to orphan asylums. In the course of arrest of prisoners’ wives their children are seized with their personal documents.”

From the Gospel according to St.Mathew: Then Herod… was exceeding angry: and sending killed all the menchildren that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying: A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. (Mathew 2:16–18).

Aria “A voice in Rama was heard,” CO 24 (4:00)

Butovo polygon

A terrible monument of a terrible era is the Butovo polygon where thousands of people accused of espionage, counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet activities in the 1930s were shot. Here students and even pupils were shot together with adults and old men. The youngest among the shot were 15, 16 or 17: several dozens of them were killed here. Hundreds of those aged from 18 to 20 were shot.

Boys were brought together with adults in trucks of 50 people. Prisoners were taken to bunk houses where they were identified according to photos and possessed documents. The procedure of checking and roll-calling could take several hours. At dawn prisoners were brought to the edge of a trench; officers fired point-blank at prisoners. Dead bodies were thrown into trenches and bull dozers covered them with sod.

Rest with saints – E-minor, mixed choir (1:20)

Many of the shot were church people – bishops, clergymen, monks, nuns and laypersons accused of belonging to the “church-monarchy organization.” Most of those shot under that article belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church: among Butovo martyrs were six hierarchs, more than 300 clergymen, deacons, monks, readers and choir-masters. Among executed in Butovo for religious beliefs were old believers, baptists, two mullahs, one synagogue cantor.

The Butovo death factory worked continuously. Mass executions began in the August of 1937 and continued up to October 1938. As a rule, not less than a hundred people a day were shot; sometimes 300, 400, 500 and even more. On February 17, 1938, 502 people were shot, and on February 28 – 562. More than 20,000 people were shot for 15 months. Their bones are still at the Butovo polygon under a thin layer of soil.

Fugue, E-minor, SMP 27 (3:00)

In the summer of 2007, 70 years after mass shooting, a religious procession started from Solovki to Butovo in commemoration of repressed victims. At the end of the religious procession a 12-meter cross made by the monks of the Solovetsky monastery was set up in Butovo. The cross with the Crucifixion became a reminder of the two Russian Golgothas where thousands of people were martyred and executed. It is a reminder of that terrible era when all country was like a Golgotha, the era of mass repressive measures and mass heroism, the epoch of great crimes and greatest spiritual heroism.

We venerate your cross, O Master, SMP 30 (2:26)

All new Russian martyrs – both known by their names and unknown – are now canonized as saints. Among them are – Emperor Nicholas II, the Royal Family, Patriarch Tikhon, Archbishop Hilarion and thousands innocent victims. We believe that Russia today is recovering by their prayers, and faith is being restored on the whole territory of our great country.

From the report of the Synodal Commission on Canonization: Monstrous crime in Yekaterinburgis a pivotalevent in the Russian history of the twentieth century standing for the way of social catastrophe and ruination of culture, unprecedented persecution of the Church and terrible fall of human beings. Russian society in response to ordeals of the 1920s effected a wonderful confessing impulse towards Christ. The horror of all-nation tragedy couldn’t stop the hope for a breakthrough to light and inspired assurance that the triumph of evil was an ephemera, it will be followed by – bright future, spiritual self-perfecting, restoration and revival. The heroism of the martyrs of the twentieth century has a reflection of future Kingdom that is transfiguring everybody and everything to live in peace with Christ.

Come, let us worship, CO 1 (6:00)

50 minutes in total

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