Gavriil (Vladimirov)

In the world, Grigory Petrovich Vladimirov, born on January 14, 1873, in the village of Kotlyarovka, Opochka County, Pskov Province, in a peasant family.

After finishing rural school, he went to Mount Athos, where he labored in a monastery until 1914 and was tonsured a monk with the name Gavriil.

He was ordained a hieromonk, serving as a regimental priest of the 438th Okhtinsky Regiment, which was quartered in Novgorod at the end of the First World War. In 1918, the regiment was disbanded, and Hieromonk Gavriil joined the Novgorod military commissariat.

In 1920, he was arrested on charges of illegally issuing a pass to travel to Petrograd but was acquitted by the court.

Since 1920, he worked as a lecturer in the provincial department of national economy, giving lectures on agriculture. In 1923, clergy began to be dismissed from such jobs. Hieromonk Gavriil categorically refused the suggestion to renounce his rank. He was assigned to the Skovorodsky Michael-Arkhangelsk Men's Monastery of the Novgorod Diocese, serving in various parishes.

In 1924, he was arrested for illegally entering the border zone and was exiled to live in Novgorod. After the publication of the 1927 "Declaration" by Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), he joined the Josephites and went underground. From 1928, he secretly served in cemeteries, homes, and apartments of believers. In 1929, he traveled around villages in the Pskov region, offering to sign a petition to the authorities to open a prayer house, simultaneously serving prayer services and performing religious rites.

On December 6, 1929, he was arrested in Novgorod in the case of the "Leningrad branch of the True Orthodox Church," accused of "disrupting all cultural initiatives, collapsing collective farms, mass withdrawals from cooperatives, and parents forbidding children from attending school."

On December 8, he was transferred to prison in Leningrad. On August 3, 1930, the OGPU Collegium sentenced him to 10 years in the Solovki and Karelian-Murmansk camps of the OGPU (the term was reduced by 4 years due to disability). On September 24, he was transported to the Kem Camp Division of the Solovki Correctional Labor Camp. From September 24, 1930, to autumn 1932, he was imprisoned in the Solovki camp and then exiled to Kazakhstan.

On September 9, 1937, he was arrested along with a group of clergy and laity and imprisoned in the city of Chimkent. He was accused of participating in a "counter-revolutionary organization of clerics led by Metropolitans Kirill (Smirnov), Iosif (Petrovykh), and Bishop Yevgeny (Kobranov)."

When asked by the investigator, "Give testimony about your counter-revolutionary activities," he replied, "I did not engage in counter-revolutionary activities and have nothing to say on this matter." At the next interrogation conducted on the same day, upon being charged, he stated, "I do not plead guilty to the charges under Articles 58–10, 58–11. I was not part of any counter-revolutionary organization."

In the indictment, it was stated:

"The investigation established that the aforementioned individuals were part of a counter-revolutionary organization of clerics, led by a counter-revolutionary center represented by former Metropolitans Smirnov K., Petrovykh I., and Bishop Kobranov E., who were serving administrative exile and residing in the South Kazakhstan region until their arrest. To achieve success in the struggle against Soviet power and to unite all clergy on this platform, enmity among themselves based on their various church affiliations [the case included priests of the renovationist orientation] was ended, and active counter-revolutionary activities were carried out to prepare for an armed uprising, the overthrow of Soviet power, and the establishment of a monarchical regime...".

Based on the indictment, Father Gavriil (Vladimirov) was accused of: "being a member of a counter-revolutionary organization of clerics, an active leader of counter-revolutionary cells organized by the leader of the organization Iosif Petrovykh and under the leadership of Kobranov, with whom Vladimirov was connected in daily counter-revolutionary activities. He was a participant in a counter-revolutionary meeting held by Petrovykh and Kobranov to develop methods of conducting counter-revolutionary activities among the ignorant masses of the population in order to prepare them for an uprising against Soviet power at the time of an attack by fascist states on the Soviet Union."

On November 19, 1937, he was sentenced to execution by shooting by the troika of the NKVD in the South Kazakhstan region.

He was executed by shooting on November 19, 1937. Buried in an unmarked mass grave in the vicinity of Chimkent.

On June 12, 2000, he was rehabilitated by the prosecutor of Chimkent for the 1937 repressions.

He was canonized as a new martyr and confessor of Russia by the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000.