the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

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hope that the latter, tormented by prisons and exiles, would make a
compromise. He even succeeded in persuading the metropolitan to take up
his post of locum tenens (he was the first candidate according to Patriarch
Tikhon's will). Metropolitan Cyril left his place of exile, but, on arriving in
Rybinsk, he stopped and sent his cell-attendant to an ascetic nun [Blessed
Xenia] living in Rybinsk, and asked her what he should do. She replied that if
he went to Moscow and accepted Tuchkov's offer, he would lose everything
(spiritual) that he had gathered throughout his life. And the metropolitan
went back into exile."
While he was there, in November, 1926, a secret ballot of 72 bishops elected
him as the best candidate for the patriarchate (Metropolitan Sergius received
not more than one vote). “And so,” writes a sergianist source, “Metropolitan
Cyril was elected Patriarch. But his enthronement did not take place.” For
almost immediately, on December 21, 1926, he was arrested in Kotelnich and
cast into the special isolator in Vyatka.
On March 28, 1927, in accordance with article 58-6, he was sentenced to
three years in exile in Siberia in “The Case of Metropolitan Cyril (Smirnov)
and Protopriest Alexander Agafonnikov, Vyatka province, 1927”. The OGPU
found that “Citizen Smirnov, while in Komi province in 1926 and later in
Vyatka province, had relations with church activists with the purpose of
consultation on church matters and exerting influence on them, while most
recently he contacted a group of blackhundredist bishops whose aim was to
give the Church the character of an anti-Soviet organization. Citizen Smirnov
was planning to head this latter group, summoning it to church activity and
bringing its anti-Soviet programme into life.” “The group of blackhundredist
churchmen, who are being investigated in case N 39960, headed by
Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky, the patriarchal locum tenens, decided
finally to give the Church the character of a definitely anti-Soviet
organization, and with this aim give it a patriarch as its head. They carried
out elections for him [the patriarch] and indicated as a candidate the person
who was the most anti-Soviet. The group set about the election in a very
conspiratorial way. Moreover, the voting by sealed ballots was carried out
only among the episcopate. A special ‘Address of the Orthodox Church to the
Soviet Government’ was worked out, which had a directly counterrevolutionary
and threatening character. This declaration was to be given out
in the name of the new Patriarch and under his signature. The group
indicated as their most desired candidate Constantine Ilarionovich Smirnov
(Metropolitan Cyril), and contacted him for this reason although he, from
1919 until the present time, with a few breaks when he was subject to
repressions because of his anti-Soviet activity, has been the most
blackhundredist and counter-revolutionary churchman. At this time Smirnov,
for the ending of his administrative exile, had been transferred to Kotelnich,
where he came into close contact with the local priest Agafonnikov… Cyril
and Agafonnikov, the first personally and the second in writing, received
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