On May 29, 262 people were shot at the Butovo firing range in what is now Moscow. Among them was Hieromonk Vikenty (Shulenin). It is our right to know this. It is our duty to remember all of them and pray.
Birthplace. Cathedral Church of the “Hodegetria” Icon of the Mother of God
Tula province in the late nineteenth century. The village of Novinka (Novaya, Alkhov Kolodez) of the Venev uyezd (district) had About 200 residents. Lake Markovo and orchards adorned the village. Here, in 1881, a son was born into the family of a local peasant called Maxim Shulenin. The boy was named Vikenty (Vincent), which means “conquering”.
Photo: Sobory.ru
The village had no church, and its inhabitants were parishioners of the Cathedral Church of the “Hodegetria” Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Gorodenets seven miles away. This church was ancient and unique in its own way. It was first mentioned in the thirteenth century. The name of the village reminds us of the existence of a fortress and the town of Novogorodensk on this site, destroyed by Batu Khan. There used to be seven churches in that town, of which only one had survived—in honor of the “Hodegetria” Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos. According to ancient tradition, Batu Khan stationed his cavalry in it. The church was rebuilt several times. In 1640–1650, it was reconstructed again with money from the wealthy Zasetsky family, who owned local lands.
In the description of 1858, compiled by Priest John Myachikov, the church was five-domed. Another cupola adorned the side-chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, two more over the sanctuary, and another cupola sat on the bell tower, where hung the bell, cast in Stockholm back in 1645. Vikenty Shulenin was baptized in this beautiful church.
Zemstvo School
From 1885 on, there was a Zemstvo school1 with a three-year course in the village of Gorodenets, which became a school for reading and writing in 1894, and in 1916 it was listed as a parochial school. At the age of eight, Vikenty Shulenin was sent to the Zemstvo school. Of all the subjects taught there, he liked the Law of God the most. At the lessons, they studied the basics of the Orthodox faith and worship, and were introduced to the Holy Scriptures. They were also taught Church Slavonic and church singing.
Of all the joys of life, the boy was most attracted by one: inspired prayer in church. His all-conquering love for God determined his life path and cross. He would ultimately choose to serve God as the supreme good.
The Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra
In 1900, Vikenty left home for the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra to prepare for monastic life and adapt to the life of labor and prayer at Russia's largest monastery. At that time, the Lavra had a huge farm, which included land, the St. Paphnuty orchard beyond the fortress wall, workshops, and charity organizations: an almshouse hospital with a pharmacy, a hospice, and the Sts. Alexander and Mary care home. The monastery had a stable, a water pump, a timber warehouse, a hotel, a diocesan painting school, tenement houses, a printing house, and much more. But the most important thing was the soul of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra: its churches, icons, relics of saints, and the ceaseless prayers of the monks and pilgrims.
Vikenty Shulenin spent the ensuing sixteen years of his life in labor and prayer. In 1918, Vikenty was tonsured a monk and ordained hierodeacon.
The October Revolution: into the Future with Your Eyes Closed
A year after the October Revolution, the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra received the legal status of a workers’ cooperative. But monastic life did not stop there until October 1919. A month later the monastery would be closed. In the spring of the same year, the Moscow Theological Academy was also closed. The monks were ordered to leave the monastery and move to the Chernigov Skete about two miles away from the Lavra.
The Chernigov Skete of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra. Photo: Stsl.ru
In April 1920, the Lavra became a strange place: a museum, a “communal apartment block,” an area for household needs... The relics of the saints became an “exhibit” of the museum opened in the monastery. The St. Sergius Church would become home to a shooting gallery.
On May 31, the last service was celebrated at the Holy Trinity Cathedral. Nine painful years would follow, and the Soviet Government would also put an end to it: the Monastery’s sketes would be closed, and the monastery's bells would be sent for melting. Laypeople would live in historic buildings in the monastery’s area, and the Zagorsk State Teachers’ Institute, founded on the basis of the Technical College named after the October Revolution, would open. The cause of the Revolution was sweeping away history and memory, stamping out spirituality and the continuity of generations, compelling us to “move forward” with our eyes tightly closed.
However, the Soviet Government could not prohibit the service of God to those who believed and who would never betray faith in God. In 1925, Hierodeacon Vikenty (Shulenin) was ordained hieromonk. He would serve until 1932, as indicated in his personal file, at the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra. In 1923, his native village of Novinka disappeared from the country’s map.
The First Arrest and Exile to Kazakhstan
The spring of 1932 did not bode well. The country was devastated by the consequences of collectivization and widespread famine, the introduction of passports, repressions, and the launch of the “Godless Five-Year Plan” announced by the Soviet Government’s decree. Churches and other places of worship were closed, bells were confiscated, and an official ban on bell ringing was announced in Moscow.
The years 1932–1933 saw one of the peaks of the repression of clergymen and monastics. Hieromonk Vikenty (Shulenin) did not escape arrest either. On April 23, 1932, he was charged under Article 58-10 of the RSFSR Penal Code. His “crime” was that during services Fr. Vikenty had commemorated so-called “enemies of the people” who had been shot for “counterrevolution”. He was sentenced to three years of exile in Kazakhstan with all the ensuing hardships: snowy winters and hot, dusty summers, starvation, typhus, and isolation from home and loved ones. There were thousands of displaced, deported, and dispossessed people among locals. All of them needed to live and work somewhere, and dress and eat somehow. They needed a roof over their heads, jobs, and rations. But how difficult it was to find all of these! As a result, there were numerous deaths that frightened even the organizers of these atrocities, with corpses lying on the streets of cities and towns, and even throughout the steppe. Unfortunately, there is no information as to which region of Kazakhstan Fr. Vikenty was exiled.
Return. The Town of Mozhaisk
But he survived, returning to his homeland in 1935 and taking up his residence in the Moscow region—in the ancient, glorious and centuries-old town of Mozhaisk, where as many as seventeen monasteries functioned in the seventeenth century. But the times had changed: the Soviet Government had closed the Luzhetsky Monastery of the Nativity of the Mother of God and St. Ferapont Monastery in Mozhaisk, and then the New St. Nicholas Cathedral, Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral in the Mozhaisk Kremlin, and the Ascension Church. The most honored relic of the locale—the icon of St. Nicholas of Mozhaysk—had been lost. But two churches remained active in the town—those of St. Elias in Ilyinskaya Sloboda (first mentioned in 1506) and of Sts. Joachim and Anna (first mentioned in 1504). Hieromonk Vikenty was supported by the clergy.
The Second Arrest and the Inevitability of Tragedy
Photo: Rusgolgofa.ru Former exiles were forbidden to live in cities of central Russia and in regional centers, as well as in the border areas. But a person could choose where he would like to live. The list of towns and villages was worked out by the OGPU.2 This repressive measure had an unofficial name: “minus.”
Thus, Fr. Vikenty could only visit Moscow secretly. The police detained him several times for staying in the capital illegally. Previously convicted under Article 58-10 of the Penal Code of the RSFSR, as a man “without any certain occupation,” he violated the passport regulations. On February 25, 1938, “citizen Shulenin” was arrested.
Three months later, the troika at the UNKVD (the Directorate of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) for the Moscow region sentenced “Vikenty Maximovich Shulenin” to execution by firing squad. The sentence was executed on May 29, 1938, at the Butovo firing range near Moscow (now in Moscow). For “violating the passport regulations,” he had to pay with his life. But that was just a pretext.
According to one version, the Lavra Hieromonk Vikenty (Shulenin) has not yet been exonerated; according to another version, his name is on the list of exonerated victims of political repression in the city of Vladimir. But how many such names there are, and how much pain... And the church where he was baptized lies in ruins as a silent rebuke, reminding us to pray and do good.
