On July 1, 1938, the lives of 162 people were cut short at the Butovo firing range. One of them was Hieromonk Daniel (Knyazev). He came into this world to serve God and sow goodness, and so he always instructed people to live in unity, go to church, and pray.
Patriarsheye village in the Zadonsk district of the Voronezh province
There is an ancient village with a remarkable history on the Studenets stream in the Voronezh province (now the Lipetsk region). In the early sixteenth century, it was the boyar Romanovs’ family estate, and later Patriarch Philaret (Romanov)’s patrimony. The rivulet gave the large settlement the name Nizhny Studenets, but between 1633 and the first decades of the twentieth century it was also called Patriarsheye (“Patriarchal”).
Map of the Zadonsk district, ca. 1800. Starye-karty.litera-ru.ru
Here, on September 15, 1888, a son Dmitry was born in the family of a state peasant named Yegor (George) Knyazev. His Baptism took place at the village Church of the Theophany, which by that time had been rebuilt in stone. Side chapels of Sts. Mitrophan of Voronezh and Tikhon of Zadonsk and the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos were built in it. The church was also famous for its library.
In the village of Patriarsheye (now Donskoye), where there were brick factories, a hospital, and stores, a parish school was set up in 1884, for which a separate building was constructed. Dmitry’s parents sent their son to this school. In 1900, at the age of twelve, he successfully completed his studies. And then, at the insistence of his pious parents, he made his only life choice that he would never betray afterwards: the decision to dedicate his life to God by becoming a monk was conscious and according to the young man’s heart. He would go to golden-domed Moscow.
St. Nicholas-Ugresha Monastery
St. Nicholas-Ugresha Monastery was founded by the holy Prince Dimitry Donskoy in 1380 on the site where he had seen an icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker on the eve of his battle against the horde of Khan Mamai.1 For centuries this holy place has been filling the hearts of all who enter it through its holy gates to pray fervently with Divine warmth. The question of why Dmitry Knyazev came here will always remain open. One of the possible reasons was to study at the school for peasant children, opened in 1866 by St. Pimen, who for many years served as the illustrious abbot of the monastery. Arithmetic, penmanship, history, catechism, basics of drawing and other subjects were taught there. There was also a house church with a bell tower at the school.
At St. Nicholas-Ugresha Monastery, Dmitry was tonsured into the mantia and received a new name—Daniel. Nine years later, he was ordained hieromonk.
St. Nicholas-Ugresha Monastery, ca. 1873. Pastvu.com
It was a tough time. The worst had already happened for the country. In 1917, the October Revolution broke out. In 1918, the persecution of the Church was unleashed. In 1919 came the height of the Red Terror, the Decree on the Nationalization of Church Property, the opening of holy relics and their transfer to museums. In general, the implementation of measures “for the complete eradication of the Church” was gaining momentum. The Soviet authorities came to the ancient monastery as well.
In 1918, the abbot of the monastery, Archimandrite Makary, was arrested and then released. He was arrested again in 1922. In 1918–1922, a colony of the People’s Commissariat of Finance was set up in the monastery and the village of Ugresha, and in 1927 on the initiative of F. E. Dzerzhinsky it was transformed into an OGPU Labor Colony for Homeless Children. For this purpose, the monastic cells, the monastery hotels, hospital, almshouse, prosphora bakeries, hostels for strangers, farmyard and other buildings were confiscated. This is how a “specialized settlement” appeared.
Strangely enough, there were still elements of religious education in the colony, and teenagers attended the monastery’s churches. Meanwhile, there were fewer and fewer monks left at the monastery. In the summer of 1925, there were only forty of them, with Hieromonk Daniel among them. By comparison, before 1917, over 150 monks had lived at the monastery. However, on the feast of St. Nicholas, pilgrims still flocked to the monastery with reverence.
In 1925, a children’s center appeared in the monastery for 950 children from four orphanages. There was not enough space for them, so, with the permission of the city administration of Moscow, the monastic buildings were taken away and the active churches were closed. That year, the Churches of the Dormition and St. John the Baptist, along with the Transfiguration and St. Nicholas Cathedrals, were closed. The community could only hold services at the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, which was soon closed as well.
Thus the ancient monastery was completely ruined. Together with other monks, Hieromonk Daniel left St. Nicholas-Ugresha Monastery.
Troitskoye-Ramenskoye village, the Holy Trinity Church at Lake Borisoglebskoye
Hieromonk Daniel found refuge in the village of Troitskoye-Ramenskoye (now the town of Ramenskoye)—at the beautiful and magnificent Holy Trinity Church, standing on a high hill near Lake Borisoglebskoye. He got a job as a caretaker and a prosphora baker with a salary of fifty rubles and lived in the church caretaker’s lodge, which has miraculously survived to this day. He seldom served in church, but as a priest he often went to the homes of parishioners to hear confessions and give them Communion. It was also a way of earning money, which helped the Holy Trinity Church pay the huge taxes imposed by the Soviet Government. He also had to visit the hospital at the Krasnoe Znamya Factory, the nationalized Ramenskoye Paper Mill. The Holy Trinity Church had been rebuilt in stone precisely through the efforts of its former owners, the Milyutin brothers, with the participation of Princess Anna Golitsyna (1739–1816).
Fr. Daniel often visited the sick to support them with kind words and prayer and give them Communion. This happened with the permission and approval of the chief physician of the Ramenskoye Hospital, which was founded back in 1871. The new authorities were not pleased with the priest’s involvement in the private lives of factory workers. At first, a condemnatory note appeared in a newspaper, and in 1926 (according to some sources, in 1928), Hieromonk Daniel, the Holy Trinity Church’s caretaker, and the reader Polyakov were arrested; but fortunately, they were soon released. Life went on.
There was Popovka (later Pervomaiskaya) Street next to the church, on which stood the houses of the clergy, including Deacon Sergei Belokurov and Archpriest Alexander Parashnikov. Fr. Daniel often visited them. In the late 1920s, the Parashnikov family’s house was divided into two parts, and a high-ranking police officer was moved into one of them. He showed great interest in the priests’ conversations, considering them counter-revolutionary, and openly declared that “the bastard priests must die.” He did not like Fr. Daniel’s words about collectivization, the situation of the peasantry and its future. This became the pretext for his arrest on May 24, 1931 in the “Case No. 1470 against monks and nuns of the Ramenskoye district”, accused of “systematic anti-Soviet agitation against the activities of the Soviet Government held in the village.” Ten nuns from previously closed convents and Fr. Daniel were arrested and taken to the Ramenskoye Temporary Detention center. On May 27, the verdict was announced. In two days, the destinies of eleven people were decided.
Exiles
Citizen Dmitry Yegorovich Knyazev, who was not a member of the Communist Party and had only an elementary education, was found guilty under Articles 58/10 and 11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The punishment was five years at the Karaganda forced labor camp. So in 1931, Fr. Daniel ended up in the Akmolinsk [a former name of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.—Trans.] branch among the first exiles who were dispossessed peasants. He started working on railway construction. In 1929, the city of Akmolinsk became a major railway hub. From 1931 to 1936, the construction of the Borovoye–Karaganda line passing through the city was underway. The work quota on the railway was eight tons of soil, which was unbearable for people emaciated by hunger and the local climate.
No information about those years of Fr. Daniel’s life has been preserved. In 1933, he was detained at the railway station in the city of Karaganda. It is unclear why he was there. However, during the interrogation he admitted having escaped. A new prison term followed.
Hieromonk Daniel (Knyazev). Ugresha.org
In 1933, for attempted escape Dmitry Knyazev was sentenced to three years at the White Sea-Baltic forced labor camp. From Kazakhstan, he was transferred to the coast of the Kola Bay, to Murmansk, where he worked at a tar factory.
At that time, it was the beginning of the second “five–year plan” period in the country, and there were grandiose plans for the development of the city of Murmansk on a Soviet scale. And there was no longer a single active church in Murmansk, while before 1917 there were fifty-three churches, twenty-eight chapels, and the Monastery of St. Tryphon of Pechenga on the Kola Peninsula, which was ceded to Finland along with Pechenga. So there were no crosses for the prisoners—most of whom were “special settlers”—to cross themselves in front of.
On September 26, 1935, Fr. Daniel was released and headed to the town of Egorievsk in the Moscow region.
On arriving there, Hieromonk Daniel found a job as a fabric dyer at the cotton mill named after the “Chief of the Proletariat”, the former Khludov Brothers Paper Mill that was merged with Bardygin Factory. He moved into the house at 10 Nechaevskaya Street. The Church of St. Alexis of Moscow, the Wonderworker, stood here. At first it was a chapel built in the village of Nechaevskaya in 1904 by a local peasant, I. I. Akatiev, on the occasion of the birth of Tsarevich Alexei. Then it was rebuilt as a church and a bell tower was added to it. From 1933, the rector of the church was Archpriest Andrei Yasenev, head of the Egorievsk Deanery, with whom Fr. Daniel was on friendly terms. Of course, the priests guessed that they were constantly being watched by law enforcement officials, as well as some locals and factory workers.
A year and a half passed. It was the end of 1936. Fr. Daniel decided to petition Metropolitan Sergei (Stragorodsky) of Moscow and Kolomna to appoint him parish priest. The petition was granted.
On February 9, 1937, Fr. Daniel began to serve at the beautiful Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the village of Verkhny Beloomut in the Lukhovitsy district of the Moscow region. However, the church, which was first mentioned in 1616, had already lost its bell tower: the bells had first been thrown down from it in 1933 and then blown up. The local authorities considered the beautiful church building from a practical point of view, whereas the parishioners, together with the new rector, not only defended their church, but also were developing a plan for its major renovation. One year and a little more than a month passed. Fr. Daniel was arrested on March 24, 1938. Soon the Transfiguration Church was transferred to a leather factory and converted into a club.
Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Verkhny Beloomut, a postcard
On a chilly day in March 1938, Fr. Daniel, the rector of the Transfiguration Church in the village of Beloomut, was taken to prison in the town of Kolomna near Moscow. Interrogations followed with standard questions and notes with vile lies in the protocols. The priest was charged with counterrevolutionary activities, spreading counterrevolutionary slander against the ruling party and the Government. He was accused of calls to disobey the laws of the Soviet regime, and associating with counterrevolutionary elements. And he did have such contacts. In March 1938, Priests S. Belokurov and A. Yasenev, and in June, Priest A. Parusnikov, whom Fr. Daniel had known well, were shot.
Fr. Daniel (Knyazev) did not betray anyone and did not renounce his faith in God.
Sentence
On June 7, 1938, the judicial troika at the NKVD Directorate in the Moscow region sentenced citizen Dmitry Yegorovich Knyazev to execution by firing squad.
A month later, he was taken to Butovo near Moscow in a prison van, crammed with up to fifty people. Their photos were hastily checked in the barracks. Then: the edge of a huge ditch and a bullet in the back of the head.
The sentence was carried out on July 1, 1938 at the Butovo firing range (now within Moscow). The executioners signed the act.
The date of Hieromonk Daniel’s exoneration from the 1938 investigative case was 1989, and from the 1931 case—1990.
