Ekaterinburg, July 8, 2026
Photo: ekaterinburg-eparhia.ru
The Church-on-Blood in Ekaterinburg marked its feast day on June 14 with the glorification of a newly canonized New Martyr of the Russian Church, bringing the number of names in the Synaxis of Ekaterinburg Saints to 75.
The saint glorified was Monk-Martyr Vladimir (Elizarov), a monk who was shot in 1930 after resisting the closure of a church in the Urals. His Eminence Metropolitan Evgeny of Ekaterinburg and Verkhoturye led the service, reports the Ekaterinburg Diocese.
St. Vladimir was canonized by the Russian Synod on May 14. The glorification took place on the Sunday of All Saints of Russia, which the Church-on-Blood observes as its feast day.
According to the Synodal decision, his feast day will be observed on February 7/20, the date of his execution, The Synod also directed that his name be added to the previously established Synaxes of Ekaterinburg and Perm Saints.
An icon of the new martyr, completed the day before, was brought to the Church-on-Blood on the morning of June 14 and placed for the veneration of the faithful.
Met. Evgeny led a prayer following the announcement of the canonization, after which clergy and laity sang a hymn of praise to the new saint.
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According to an account of his life read out during the service, St. Vladimir was born in 1877 in the village of Bykova in Novgorod Province to a peasant family. He fought in the Russo-Japanese War from 1904 to 1905, then worked as a laborer at the Solovki Monastery from 1907 before becoming a novice at the Belogorsk-St. Nicholas Monastery in the Perm Diocese in 1911.
He was drafted to serve as a private in field artillery on the front lines of World War I from 1914 to 1917, after which he returned to the monastery. On June 1, 1919, the novice Vasily was tonsured a monk and given the name Vladimir.
He remained a member of the Belogorsk-St. Nicholas Monastery until its closure in 1923, when he was arrested. He was released on October 15 of that year, after nearly seven months in detention, under a written pledge not to leave the area.
After the monastery’s closure, Fr. Vladimir worked as a watchman at the Church of the Ascension in the settlement of Mikhailovsky Zavod, now the city of Mikhailovsk in the Sverdlovsk Province. He was arrested again in January 1930 after actively opposing the planned closure of that church.
A troika of the OGPU Plenipotentiary Representation for the Urals sentenced him to death on February 16, 1930, and he was executed on February 20 of that year. He is believed to have been buried in a common grave near Ekaterinburg, on the grounds of an OGPU shooting range.
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