The New Martyrs Soviet Repression Could Not Erase

Central Asia was never a center of the Russian Church's life, which could be why so little of its history there is known. Bishops, priests, monastics, and laypeople from across the Soviet Union were deported there, and others were arrested where they lived, in the cities and villages of Central Asia.

The persecution began with the Bolshevik Revolution. In Kazakhstan, St. Bishop Pimen of Semirechye was murdered in 1918 after Bolshevik forces took Verny, present-day Almaty. Today, the Tashkent Diocese in Uzbekistan is collecting historical documents and parishioners' memories as part of an effort to identify additional victims of Soviet persecution. Near Shymkent, the ravine Lisya Balka became a site of mass executions and burial during the 1930s, claiming the lives of thousands, including Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov) of Kazan and other senior Church figures.