Killing of Priest Pavel Dernov and His Three Sons in Yelabuga in February 1918

Author of the Famous Book "Freemasons as Enemies of the Christian Church and State": Hieromartyr Pavel Dernov (1870-1918) of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.

Father Pavel Dernov was a priest, preacher, writer, regular contributor to the Vyatka Diocesan Gazette and tireless labourer in the cause of education, as well as instructor in religion at the Yelabuga Realschule. He came from a clerical family and served for many years in Yelabuga, in the small chapel of the gymnasium. Pavel Alexandrovich Dernov was the author of such books, articles and pamphlets as "A Historical Note on the State of the Yelabuga Realschule over the 25 Years of Its Existence (1878-1903)", "On the Liberation Movement in the World of the School" and "N.V. Gogol as a Christian in Life and in His Works".

When a mutinous infantry regiment overthrew Bolshevik rule in Yelabuga in January 1918, a punitive detachment of peculiar cruelty was sent to the town. A search was carried out at the house of Father Pavel Dernov, and in the attic an old, empty machine-gun belt was found. This served as the pretext for the arrest of the priest, who was soon afterwards, without trial or investigation, stabbed with bayonets and shot in the face in the night of 12 to 13 February 1918. The following morning his three sons, Boris, Grigory and Semyon, were arrested, shot with explosive bullets and then finished off with bayonets.

The Petrograd Church and Diocesan Herald carried a notice entitled "The Shooting of a Pastor and the Abuse of an Abbess", which reported: "Reliable information has been received in Petrograd of the shooting in Yelabuga of the priest Father Dernov and his three sons: two students and a schoolboy. The reason for the shooting was an Austrian machine-gun belt found at the late Father Dernov's, brought back from the war by a relative. The Yelabuga authorities, having shot Father Dernov, threw his body down by the mill. The arrested sons of Father Dernov, on learning of their father's tragic death, hurled a single word at the villains: 'Murderers.' And for this word, spoken in the heat of the moment, all three youths were led without any trial to the landing stage and shot there. Nor were the youths merely killed: they were brutally killed with explosive bullets... There have been terrible times, but never times such as these. Nor has there ever been such mockery of the clergy, and when it will end, the Lord alone knows."