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An Orthodox Christian missionary publication incorporuting 'Word of the Church - The English Edition'
Volume 9 Number 9 (106) June 2010

New Martyrs of Our Times Evgeny Rodionov the Warrior 1979-1996

Shoulders back, chest out, the young soldier
stands as if on parade in his camouflage fatigues - his boots polished his rifle at his shoulder, a halo around his head. His face is the blank mask of a man for whom duty is life. It is not easy being a soldier. Portraits of this young man, Evgeny (Eugene in English) Rodionov, are spreading around Russia - sometimes in uniform,

sometimes in a robe, sometimes armed, sometimes holding a cross, but always with his halo. The portraits are iconographic, venerated in homes and churches where Private Evgeny Rodionov has become the focus of popular veneration in post-Soviet Russia and beyond. He is Russia's new unofficial saint, a casualty of the war in Chechnya and of Christianity's continued defence against the false religion of the Muslims, who has been glorified not by the Russian Orthodox Church but by a
groundswell of popular devotion.

Evgeny Rodionov was born on the 23'd of May 1979. He was baptised as a child - not because of any strong faith on the part of his parents, but because his mother was afraid for his health. A common superstition was to have a child baptised to ensure good health. His parents were typical Soviet citizens and thought rarely about God. In 1989 when he was 10 years old Evgeny put on

his baptismal cross and never took it off again. His mother said to him "Maybe you should take it off in public so that no one should see you wearing a cross."
Evgeny responded, "Never say such things mother." ln his childhood years and youth he was strong and healthy, finishing his ninth year at High School. He u'as hterested for a while in boxing, even winning sec-

The New Martyr Evgeny Rodionov the Warrior 1979-1996

ond place in a competition, but later quit after having doubts about such a sport, saying, "I camot hit a person

il

the face."

After finishing his schooling, he found work at

furniture factory, where he made more money than his mother who was forced by their modest circumstances to work three jobs. Evgeny attended church services in an outlying

The Voice

Moscow suburb called Podolsk but it is not known to

whom he confessed. In 1994 the family moved into a small 2-bedroom
apartment.

serted and this lie u'as repeated in letters to the missing soldier's families. Chechen rebels had in fact forcibly abducted Evgeny and his comrades from the checkpoint, They had commandeered an ambulance, which

1995 Evgeny was called up to serve in the army. The Russian armed forces require all young men to serve a period of time in the armed forces. He followed an ancient pious Russian custom of wearing a belt ernbroidered with Psalm 90, and wore this when he

In

entered the army.

His mother, Lubov Vasilielara, recalled that Evgeny did not want to go, but felt that it was his duty to serve his country. He and his friends understood that there are things in this life that you do not want to do but have to do, and
they had no thought

of

evading their military duty. His letters home

were
poetry.

affectionate,
and

they drove up to the unsuspectilg voung soldiers, and then the armed rebels had leapt out. forced the conscripts into the ambulance and drove them off into captivity. A later army irivestigation rer ealed signs of a struggle and blood stains at the checkpoint. and as a result it was decided to upgrade >ecurin'b1 moring the post away from the roadside and issurng \\eapons to the soldiers who manned it. Upon capture the -voune conscripts u' ere held rn the cellar of an abandoned house for 100 days as ransom demands were sent to their lamr lies. Kidnap-

filled with love

ping and demanding

ransom u as aLmost a cottage industry- in
Chechnr

Upon induction into the army, Evgeny was allocated to the Border Guards whose main responsibility

a dunng

that

Thel kept Ergenr hangrLrg br lls

tLme.

urists

il

a basemenl.
Lum.

was border

security,

staned and beat

and found

himself,

Rodionor's

ransom
(

with other young conscripts, sent to serve in the Russian republic of Chechnya where the Russian Army was fighting a long running war against Mos-

lvas reported to be 50

million roubles

1.6
-

million US dollarst
port
sa1-s

at the time an rmpossible sum. Another re-

been
US$

it

lem separatists. The

conduct of the leader-

10.000 range. Whatever it was. the

fansom was not met. his parents did not
money.

in

mav

ha., e

the

ship

of the Russian armed forces in this

conflict has been severely criticised for its ineptitude, lack of
planning and failure to
provide even basic equipment for their troops. On the night of the 13th of January 1996, Evgeny and some other young soldiers were posted, unarmed, to a checkpoint 200 metres from their base near the mountainous border between the republics of Chechnya and

have that kind of

Evgeny was held cap-

Ingushetia. The checkpoint, a control and registration post, was a small hut with no electricity and no method of communication back to their headquarters. It was situated on a road which was frequently used by terrorists and criminals for smuggling weapons, ammunition' captives, drugs and so on between the two republics'
They disappeared.

Officers at the base later reported at an official investigation that they heard the young soldiers screulming, but did not investigate, and later falsely reported to the divisional commander that the missing men had de-

tive for three and a half months. The Chechens demanded that he remove the cross that he wore around his necli, denl hrs Christian faith and agree to become a \IuslLm to star alive. Evgeny refused to renounce hrs l'aith. Hartn,e suffered indescribable torlffes and torments. he did not beffay his Orthodox faith. but confrmed rt u rth his blood. Finally, on his 19m birthday. Ma-v the 23'd 1996 (new style), they sawed off his head. He proved that Russian Orthodoxy is still alive and that today, after many years of atheism, Russia still has the potential as it did before to beget martys for Christ. It wasn't until a month after the abduction, on the 16th of February 1996, that his mother received an official telegram notifying that her son had SIg!99from his military post - in fact while she ffii reading this
telegram his captors were torturing her son.

Vol. 9 No. 9 June 2010

Lubov, knowing her son, felt affronted by such of letters in reply to the Border Guard division trying to convince them that her son would never desert the army. She was not believed, and so she decided to journey to Chechnya to find out the truth of her sons disappearance. Upon meeting Evgeny's Lieutenant and the Commander she felt that they were indifferent to her anguish and the fate of her son. They recommended that she refurn home and not get involved. Instead, she ended up in the Russian region of lngushetia, attending an Orthodox Church where the priest, Father Basil, offered her accommodation near the parish church. Here she received Holy Communion as a believer for the first time. Lubov then set offtravelling throughout Chechnya searching for her son, showing his photograph,
an accusation, and wrote a number

asking questions and con-

which lasted for ten months as she chased

down leads and
ques-

tinually praying to God for help. Her journey,

bek!" The man's mother quietly replied, "It is better for you to die rather than be like this." Lubov found the breakdown of normal society in Chechnya had led to such a levels of comrption, that everything was decided on the amount of money one was willing to spend. In Septernber 1996 she finally met a Chechen rebel field commander named Rusland Haihoroev (also spelled Khaikhoroyev in some sources) who claimed to have knowledge of Evgeny. On first meeting him, Haihoroev told Lubov that her son had been killed during a Russian bombing raid. Lubov felt that he was lying, the man seemed very uneasy at her questioning, and he then told her that unless the Russians stopped their bombing, all Russian captives would be killed. Haihoroev later admitted that Evgeny had tried to escape but was unsuccessful, and that he had been given the choice change his faith and take of his cross, or die - but Evgeny had refused to remove his cross. Hai-

horoev eventually

be-

tioned anyone who would talk to her, led through minefields, aerial bombing, and the threat ofbandits. She met other Rus-

headed Evgeny with a rusted saw, an horrific

task that took over

an

sian mothers searching for sons who had been

reported missing in action or having deserted, or

been captured

by

hour to complete on May the 23'd, 1996 (his 19th birthday) near the settlement of Bamut. His body, along with those of three other young Russian pris-

the

Chechen rebels, and she met mothers of sons who had been murdered by
beheading.

oners, was placed in a bomb crater outside the village of Alexeevskaya and covered up with lime
and dirt.

think that God was $'stghing over me. I was

walking along
mined

Lubov related "I

The Chechens preferred this atrocious method of execution because they

followed a local superstiLubov Rodionova, Evgeny's mother, who searched diligently to
recover her son's remains and return them for burial in Russia,

roads, but I did not step on a bomb. He protected

tion believing that a decapitated victim would

me from bombings,

He

did not let me die, because my duty was to find my son, to bury him on his native land, according to Christian traditions. I have realized that recently. When I was walking along those military roads, I just kept silence, praying to God in my heart." In one region of Chechnya with a group of Russian mothers, Lubov came across 55 Russian soldiers surviving out of a group of 150 held captive. But only nr,o of them had become Muslim to save their lives and they were now guarding their former comrades and beating them cruelly. One of the converted soldiers, surrounded by Chechens told his mother, "I have no mother. I have only Allah. I am not Kostya, I am Koz-

not come for the murderer after death. Such is their barbarity that the Chechens would often record the executions. There are at least over 400 hours of such recordings on the internet of Russians being beheaded by Muslim Chechens. Russian fioops occupied the village where Evgeny was murdered the day following the execution, too
late to have prevented the deaths.

Rusland Haihoroev told Lubov seventeen times over the course ofseventeen separate meetings, that she had born a bad son who refused to adopt Islam and join the separatists in their fight against Russia. "Your son had a choice to stay alive. He could convert to Islam, but he did not agree to take his cross off. He also tried

The Voice

to

escape once," said Haihoroev to Evgeny's mother. She finally agreed to pay Haihoroev some 100,000 roubles (about US$4000) to take her to his gravesite in the

forests outside of Alexeevskaya. This was money she did not have, so she had to sell her apartrnent to finance
the deal.

Chechens in Moscow handled the deal and when body was. There, late at night, with the assistance of the Rus-

all was done Haihoroev showed her where his

Haihoroev himself and his bodyguards were killed on August the 23'd. 1999 in a fire fight between his group and a rival Chechen band. The young soldier's fate u-ould have probably been forgotten, like countiess others rvho lost their lives fighting the Muslim terrorists if a Central TV film crew had not come to the rillage .,rhere Er'_eeny's relics now lie six years later to shoot a short reFlort on a cross being
raised to grace a cupola on a reslored church. Parishioners told the reporters about the hercic deed of the son

sian military, she was able to exhume his body. She found her son's headless body together with the cross he wore and died for among his bones and stained with small drops of blood. The head was discarded in another place. According to Ev-

and the courage of the mothen. trho ha,l buried him in his homeland. They filed the stotr-t' a-< a separate report which was broadcast and recelred ,.rrde coselg,se. A
1-ear later a huge devo-

geny's mother,
event took place

this
the

tion to Evgenv

had

in

following way: "'When I came to Chechnya in the middle of February, a living private cost ten million roubles. This price was 50 million in August. A friend of mine was told to pay 250 million roubles for her son, since

spread throughout Russia and the entire world. As his story has spread, pilgrims have begun appeanng in the small
r

illage just west of Moscou'. w-here his mother. Lubov, tends

his grave on an icy hillside beside an old

whitewashed church.
Some military veterans have laid their medals by his graveside in a gesture of homage. People in distress have left handwritten notes asking for his intercession. Aleksandr Makeyev, a paratroop officer who heads a foundation to assist soldiers, said he
had seen soldiers kneel-

he was an officer. It was night-time when I

and some sappers began

digging into the pit in which the bodies of four Russian soldiers

were thrown. I was praying all the time, hoping that my Evgeny was not going to be there. I could not and did not want to believe that he was murdered. When we were taking
out the rernnants,

ing in prayer before an image of Evgeny. "The

I recognized his boots. However, I still refused

to accept the fact of his

kids in Chechnya

feel

death, until

doned b-v ther commanders." he told the The two meter high grave cross erected over Evgeny's grave and paid found his cross. Then I for by public subscription. The inscription reads:"The Russian soldier ne\\'spapr Moskovsky fainted." Evgeny Rodionov is buried here. He defended his Fatherland and did Komsomolets. "They Lubov took Ev- not disavow Christ, He was executed on May 23, 1996, on the outskirts don't know who to appeal to for help, but geny's body away, of Bamut." This cross was later replaced by a larger memorial. they understand that along with the bodies of Zhenya is one of therq" he said, using Evgeny's nickhis murdered friends. She returned to Moscow with the name. "You can say he is the first soldier-saint." aid of the Russian Orthodox Church and buried him. Icons and pictures of this young man Evgeny Sadly her grief was compounded because when Lubov spread around Russia very quickly and he was hailed as Rodionova came back home, Evgeny's father died five a New Martyr for Christ. In these icons sometimes he days after the funeral. He could not stand the loss of his wears a uniform, sometimes a red robe (which is a way son. he appears in visions to the faithful, especially soldiers of posthumously the Order awarded Evgeny was and children), sometimes armed, sometimes holding a Courage by the Army. Lubov later retumed to ChechCross of martyrdom, but always with his halo. The picnya on a second trip and recovered her son's head.
someone

they've been abandoned by the state and aban-

Vol.

No. 9 June 2010

ture distributed of him shows Evgeny wearing the cross around his neck for which he died. Miracles have been

far no official glorification has been authorised.

occurring in connection with Evgeny's relics as well. During a religious procession in commemoration of the New Martyr Evgeny on November the 20'h, 2002 an icon of the brave young soldier started secreting sweetscented myffh. Laminated cards bearing Evgeny's image have been mass produced and many soldiers carry them with them when they are deployed on active duty. The cards bear the words of a prayer, the troparion for a marfyr: "In his sufferings, O Lord, Thy mart-r.'r Evgeny

received an imperishable crown from Thee, our God; for possessed of Thy might, he set at naught the tormentors and crushed the feeble audacity of the demons. By his supplications save Thou our
souls."

Evgeny's biography, entitled The New Marer of Christ, Warrior Evgeny, written by the priest Alexander Shargunov, was published in a booklet n 2002. The fifth edition was blessed by His Holiness the late Patriarch Alexey. In pamphlets, songs and poems, in sermons and on Web sites, the young soldier Evgeny Rodionov's story has become a parable of religious devotion and Russian identity. "Nineteen-year-old Evgeny Rodionov went through unthinkable suffering," reads an encomium on one Russian Web site,

"but he did not

re-

where he

A sign in memory of the brave Evgeny was put at the entrance to the school

nounce the Orthodox faith but confirmed it with his martyr's death. He proved that now, after so many decades of raging atheism, after so many years of unreskained nihilism, Russia is capable, as in earlier times, of giving birth to a martyr for Christ, which means it
is unconquerable."

studied. There was also a documentary released about him. People's donations made it possible

Readers of "The
Voice" are
requested to add the name ol this new martyr, this brave

to

erect

two-meter
Cross

high Orthodox

on his grave which is located in the village near Podolsk, in the Moscow region. This was later replaced by a more substantial memonai. People come to visrt his grave from the

of

Satino-Russkoye,

young soldier, the warrior Evgeny (Eugene) to their cofilmemoration books, and to request their parish priest to serve an annual

panikhida (memorial
service) for the repose of his soul on the anni-

versary

his death each 70thl23'd of May.

constancy,

of

most distant parts of

Russia.

A WWII vetA close-up of the monument erected later over Evgeny's grave, Every day his grave is visited by pious Russians who ask his prayers, pray for his repose and leave written petitions with floral wreaths and bouquets,

May we, dear brothers and sisters, learn from

eran once came to visit Evgeny's grave and he

Evgeny's

took off his military decoration - the Brav-

dignity and bravery to

face and overcome our own daily temptations

ery Medal - and put in on the tombstone. The writings on Evgeny's grave cross read: "The Russian soldier Evgeny Rodionov is buried here. He defended his Fatherland and did not disavow Christ. He was executed on May the 23'd,7996, on the outskirts of Bamut." His own neck cross, the one that he refused to give up, his mother has donated to St. Nicholas Church in Ordinka, Moscow. Because of the huge devotion to the New Martyr Evgeny, the pious faithful have sought official recognition from the Moscow Patriarchal authorities but thus

to betray Christ. May we bear our cross daily and NEVER, EVER be ashamed to wear our baptismal
cross and be ready at all times to defend our holy Orthodox Christian Faith by living a holy life in accordance

with the commands of Christ.

Holy New Martyr Evgeny and all the Saints who have shone forth in the land of Russia, pray to God for us! firgr6t cacaca