the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

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freedom of conscience. To their great annoyance, the Financial Committee
was forced to back down.
On May 3 the Spiritual Consistory came to the Sviyazhsk monastery to
investigate the disturbances. Vladyka Ambrose was completely vindicated.
On June 6/19, Vladyka was again arrested, this time for refusing to allow
the authorities to have offices in the monastery. At about the same time seven
marauding Bolsheviks had been killed in Raithu monastery, and Vladyka was
accused of having incited this act. Vladyka was placed in the same cell from
which two White Guardists had just been taken out to be shot. He stayed
there for five days. However, through the intercession of Bishop Anatolius
(Grisyuk) and Fr. Nicholas Troitsky, and after the workers of the Alafuzovsky
and Porokhovoy factories had threatened to go on strike, Vladyka was
released from prison on June 11, the Day of the Holy Spirit.
For a time Vladyka settled in the Kazan Spassky-Transfiguration
monastery ruled by Archimandrite Joasaph, but he soon decided to return to
the Sviyazhsk monastery.
There exist three versions of the martyrdom of Vladyka Ambrose.
According to the first, which was contained in a report by Archimandrite
Theodosius to Bishop Anatolius, on July 26 (old style) some soldiers came to
the monastery to requisition bread. Vladyka came out, evidently in order to
stop them, and was immediately arrested. He was taken to Sviyazhsk station,
where he spent the night in a carriage. The next day, at 7 in the morning, he
was seen kneeling and praying with uplifted hands in a field near the station
while a shallow grave was being dug for him. Then he was shot, dragged into
the grave and covered with earth.
According to Protopresbyter Michael Polsky, the Red Army had just
entered Kazan and it was Trotsky himself who ordered Vladyka's execution.
He was arrested in the monastery and taken together with his cell-attendant,
Hierodeacon Job (Protopopov), to Tyurlema station on the Moscow-Kazan
railway. There, from the headquarters of the Fifth army, in the carriages of
Trotsky's train, Vladyka was taken into a field while Fr. Job was forbidden
from following. A few hours later, Fr. Job found him face down with bayonet
wounds in his back. For the next twelve years Fr. Job paid the peasant who
owned the field not to touch the field near where the body of the hieromartyr
was buried in a shallow grave.
According to a third version given by the inhabitants of Sviyazhsk (one of
whom claimed to have been an eye-witness of these events), Bishop Ambrose
was subjected to a terrible trial before his death: he was tied to the tail of a
horse which was released to gallop round the island. Then the bloodied but
still living bishop was shot somewhere beyond the town.
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