More from Father Andrew:
On November 1st of this year the Orthodox world will be remembering
the 25th anniversary of the Glorification of the New Martyrs of
Russia. "With the appearance and consolidation of God-fighting
Communism in Russia, there began a persecution of the faith unheard
of in its cruelty and broad scale. As one Church writer has defined
it, Orthodox Russia has been on Golgotha, and the Russian Church on
the Cross ....The Russian Church and people have given an uncounted
multitude of cases of the martyric endurance of persecutions and
death for faith in Christ...not merely hundreds or thousands, but
millions of sufferers for faith--an unheard of and shocking
phenomenon!" (from the epistle of blessed Metropolitan Philaret
"Orthodox Russia" 6/14/81) (for the full epistle see http://www.roca.org/OA/11/11d.htm)
Our present work was begun in 1993, with the goal to catalog from
every region of Russia as many lives of these New Martyrs as
possible. It has been through numerous revisions as new information
and sources have either added to or confirmed previous material.
Several of the lives have been printed over the years in various
publications of the Russian Church Abroad. In 1999, the compiler
Vladimir Moss had given the rights and materials to Monastery Press
with the hope to see the entire work (which at present exceeds 6000
pages) published as a whole. During the entire process of getting
this work to print the compiler has been sending updated information.
Indeed, even the last week of pre-press work information was coming
in... the result is the most complete and up-to-date collection in
any language of the lives of the New Martyrs of Russia. As one
reviewer has stated to the literary announcement lists:
"The author, distinguished Orthodox Church historian Vladimir Moss,
assembled this account of Russia's new martyrs from primary sources
including interviews with relatives and acquaintances of the martyrs,
and from the martyrs' own conversations and writings. Much of this
material has never been published in English or Russian before.
The result is a moving and highly readable book that represents an
historic event in the documentation of Orthodox Church history and
the history of 20th-century Russia. The text includes an extensive
introduction and explanatory footnotes for the benefit of readers who
may not be intimately familiar with the historical background of the
new martyrs' stories.
For scholars, an especially valuable element of The Russian
Golgotha is the extensive bibliography, which provides a much-needed
listing of resources for research on the new martyrs and on Orthodox
Christianity in Russia during the Soviet years."
Finally, after so many years we are grateful to God to announce the
availability of volume one of The Russian Golgotha. To order your
first volume please visit our site:
http://www.monasterypress.com/russiangolgotha.html
