the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

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In 1927 the large, majestic, three-altared church dedicated to the
Annunciation in the village of Kiknur was divided between the renovationist
Fr. Paul and two truly Orthodox priests, Fathers Ioann and Nicholas, who
served at the altar of St. Elijah. The two Orthodox priests were soon
imprisoned. Then the faithful went to a small wooden church eight kilometres
away, which was served by Fr. Peter Shudnsky, who had been transferred
from the village of Shudin to Chernushka, and then to Nezhnur. Fr. Peter did
not recognize the declaration, and was soon arrested. Nobody knew anything
about his fate until, about fifteen years later, a letter arrived from him to
Nezhnur from the north. That was the last anyone heard about him.
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Fr. Peter’s place in Chernushka was taken in 1928 by Fr. Sergius
Sukhorukov. He was born in the village of Shanyrikha, Vasilsursk uyezd,
Nizhegorod province. He served in the tsarist army as an under-officer. As a
priest, at the end of the 1920s he served in the village of Chernushka, then in
Sheshurga, and from 1930 – in the village of Lom, Yaransk uyezd. He was a
zealot of piety, and said from the ambon that the declaration was apostasy
from the Orthodox Church and that those who accepted it were betraying
Christ as did Judas. Vladyka Nectarius transferred Fr. Sergius from church to
church, perhaps in order that his fiery sermons should be heard everywhere.
In 1930 he was arrested for refusing forestry work and sentenced to two years
in the camps and three years’ exile, but the sentence was not confirmed.
Fr. Sergius’ church warden was Isaiah Yakovlevich. Once, at the end of the
1920s, he was summoned to the village soviet, where they tried to force him,
as church warden, to sign the declaration. He refused outright: “We are not
servants of the atheist power, we submit only to Christ…” While the
president was drawing up an act for him to sign, Isaiah recited Psalm 90, “he
that dwelleth in the help of the Most High”. He refused to sign it, and the
president, exasperated, at length shouted: “Are you a magician, or what? Go
home!”
People used to come to Isaiah for advice, and he always filled them with
courage. His face shone like a priest’s. Once on December 18/31, 1930 there
was a meeting of the parishioners at Lom to decide what to do. They included
Fr. Sergius, Isaiah Yakovlevich, another trustee Alexander, who later hid for
ten years, James Stepanovich Oshaev, who had been a trustee of the
destroyed church at Kiknur and who later received a martyr’s crown. This
was Fr. Sergius’ last supper with his parishioners. James’ Stepanovich’s
daughter, Matushka S., remembers some words of his relayed to her by her
mother: “Preserve the Church by going up to Soviet power? But what will
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