Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia

The Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia gathers the vast host of those who suffered for Christ during the persecutions that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917 — bishops, priests, monastics, and lay faithful put to death or broken by imprisonment, exile, and forced labor across the Soviet era. They are numbered in the tens of thousands, most of their names known to God alone; the Church commemorates the whole company together, together with those whose names have been recovered.

Their witness began almost at once. Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev was killed in 1918, the first hierarch to fall; the years of the Red Terror, collectivization, and above all the Great Terror of 1937–1938 filled the prisons, camps, and execution grounds — Butovo and Solovki foremost among them — with confessors of the faith. Some died refusing to renounce Christ; others wore out their lives in the camps as confessors who survived.

The Russian Orthodox Church solemnly glorified the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors in 2000, canonizing a great assembly by name and honoring the countless unnamed among them. Their common feast, kept on the Sunday nearest January 25, stands as a memorial of faithfulness under a persecution unmatched in the Church's history, and as an intercession for the persecuted in every land. This is an open synaxis — as the Church continues to glorify the confessors of the Soviet era, they are numbered among this company, and the roster below grows with them.