Martyr
Martyr Simeon Turkin
1 февраля 1870 — 23 сентября 1937
Also known as: Мч. Симеон (1937), Семен Яковлевич Туркин, Семён Туркин
A peasant and churchwarden of the Dormition church in the village of Simbukhovo near Moscow, arrested with his parish priest, Hieromartyr Peter Yurkov, and shot at the Butovo firing range on 23 September 1937.
Martyr Simeon (Semyon Yakovlevich) Turkin was born on 1 February 1870 in the village of Simbukhovo, Vereya district, Moscow province, into a peasant family. He served in the army as a non-commissioned officer in 1894–1897, was briefly a rural police officer and later headed the local volost administration. In the 1920s he ran a building cooperative.
In 1933 he was elected churchwarden of the Dormition church in Simbukhovo, whose rector was the priest Peter Yurkov. Both were arrested on 8 September 1937 and held in Mozhaisk; witnesses accused them of anti-Soviet agitation and religious propaganda among collective farmers. Turkin denied any anti-Soviet activity and refused to plead guilty.
On 22 September 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced the priest and the churchwarden to death; they were shot the next day, 23 September 1937, and buried in a common grave at the Butovo firing range. Turkin was rehabilitated in 1998. He is commemorated on 10 (23) September and in the Synaxes of the Butovo New Martyrs, of the Moscow Saints and of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.