Zhukovsky Antony Iosifovich
A priest, administrator of the Catholic Church in Siberia from 1935 to 1937. He was executed in 1937.
Born in 1885 in Borisov, Minsk Governorate, to a Polish nobleman, Joseph Zhukovsky. He graduated from the Theological Seminary in St. Petersburg in 1909 and was ordained a Catholic priest. He was sent for pastoral service to Siberia. From 1909 to 1910, he served as a vicar priest in the cities of Blagoveshchensk and Tomsk. In 1911, he became the head of the Catholic parish in Barnaul. In 1920, during the Polish-Soviet War, he was arrested by the Bolsheviks as a "Polish hostage" and held in custody for eight months. In early 1925, he was forced to leave Barnaul and began serving in the village of Peremenovka, Omsk Deanery, and later in Novonikolaevsk, Tomsk Deanery.
In June 1925, he moved to Irkutsk, where he became the rector of a parish. In October 1926, by decision of the OGPU PP for the Irkutsk Region, he was sentenced under Article 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to three years in a forced labor camp. He was sent to Visherlag (in the Urals), from where he was released on August 17, 1928, and exiled to Syktyvkar for three years. On August 17, 1932, at the end of his exile, despite appeals to various agencies, he did not receive release papers. Due to the extremely high cost of food in Syktyvkar, he contacted the Polish Red Cross for financial assistance. On October 28, 1933, he was released from exile and left for Siberia. From 1934, he lived in Irkutsk, where he served in the church and also served other parishes left without a priest. In 1935, with the arrest of the priest I. Tserpento, he assumed the duties of administrator of the Catholic Church in Siberia.
In June 1937, at the request of parishioners, he traveled to Tomsk to conduct a church service. On July 14, 1937, while in Tomsk, he was arrested on charges of "creating espionage, sabotage, and rebel groups from among Catholics." He was transferred to Novosibirsk Prison for further investigation. During the investigation, he was forced to sign extremely serious charges against himself, including that he was a member of the underground counterrevolutionary "Siberian Committee," which allegedly trained rebel legions from among Siberian Catholics with the goal of organizing an uprising in Siberia and overthrowing Soviet power. On October 4, 1937, he was sentenced to death (PP OSO under the NKVD of the USSR). On October 12, 1937, he was executed by firing squad in Novosibirsk Prison.
Source and lit.: Archival and investigative case against A.I. Zhukovsky//Archive of the UFSB for Tomsk Oblast.; Book of Memory. Martyrology of the Catholic Church in the USSR. Silver Threads. M. 2000. pp. 73-74; Khanevich V. A. "Bialystok Tragedy" (from the history of the genocide of Poles in Russia). Tomsk, 1993. p. 108; Ibid. Siberian priests in the 1920-30s (On the history of the Catholic Church in Siberia) // Works of the Tomsk State United Historical and Architectural Museum. Tomsk, 1996. Vol. IX. pp. 192-209; Ibid. Z historii kościoła katolickiego na Syberii Zachodniej - księźa katoliccy w 20-30 latach XX w. // ZESŁANIEC. 1997. No. 2.S. 92-105; Poles in Tomsk (19th-20th centuries): biographies / Author-compiler V. A. Khanevich. Tomsk: Publishing House of Tomsk State Pedagogical University, 2012.Pp.
Дополнительные сведения и фото
Томский Мартиролог: Жуковский Антоний Иосифович
Documents (1)
Fund 002 / Inventory 003: Статьи / Case 045
001. Siberian priests in the 1920s–30s. (On the history of the Catholic Church in Siberia) / V. A. Khanevich // Proceedings of the Tomsk State United Historical and Architectural Museum / resp. ed. Ya. A. Yakovlev. - Tomsk: Tomsk University Publishing House, 1996. - T. 9. - P. 192–209
V. A. Khanevich's article examines the history of the Catholic clergy in Siberia in the 1920s and 1930s—one of the least studied and most tragic periods in the history of the Catholic Church in Russia. Drawing on archival materials from the FSB, regional party archives, memoirs of contemporaries, and published sources, the author reconstructs the scale and mechanisms of Soviet repression against Catholic priests and parishes during the rise and consolidation of the Bolshevik regime. The paper demonstrates that the policy of formally equalizing confessions after 1917, in practice, resulted in the systematic destruction of religious life, the forced secularization of church property, the fabrication of criminal cases, and the physical extermination of the clergy. Particular attention is paid to the fates of individual priests serving in Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, and rural parishes across Siberia, many of whom endured prisons, camps, exile, and even executions. The author traces the evolution of repressive policies from the localized persecutions of the early 1920s to the mass terror of the late 1930s, which led to the virtual destruction of the Catholic hierarchy in the USSR. The author concludes that the resilience of Siberian Catholics, who retained their religious identity despite the loss of clergy, churches, and organizational structures, paved the way for the subsequent revival of the Catholic Church in the region.
List of persons mentioned in the text:
- Audor Ivan was a Catholic priest, priest of the Timofeevsky parish of the Barabinsky district, repressed in 1920.
- Baranovsky Leonty - a Catholic priest, an exile, served secret masses, died in the Narym region in 1930.
- Beletsky is an OGPU employee, investigator in the case of N. I. Mikhasenko.
- Benedict XV is the Pope who authorized the Catholic mission in Siberia during the Civil War.
- Brinchak Matvey - a Catholic priest, repeatedly arrested, exiled, died in Tomsk in 1936.
- Budkevich Konstantin was a Catholic prelate, convicted and executed in 1923 in Moscow.
- Bugenis Mykolas (Fr. Bugenis) - rector of the Omsk Catholic community, convicted, imprisoned in camps, and exiled abroad in 1934.
- Voinarovsky Maryan - former organist of the Tomsk Catholic Church, repressed.
- Vudtsan Sidor is a local party functionary and the initiator of the persecution of Fr. Grabovsky.
- Ganetsky Yakov – a figure in the Polish and Russian revolutionary movement, mentioned in the context of the events in Novosibirsk.
- Grabovsky was a Catholic priest who was repressed and executed in the early 1920s.
- Grechikho Pavel - chairman of the Novosibirsk church council, active parishioner, repressed.
- Yulian Mikhailovich Gronsky - Catholic priest, administrator of Catholic parishes in Siberia, convicted, and expelled from the USSR in 1934.
- Zhukovsky Antony - Catholic priest, administrator of Siberian parishes after 1935, executed in 1937.
- Zakovsky is the head of the OGPU plenipotentiary representative office in Western Siberia.
- Zerchaninov Alexei is a Catholic priest of the Eastern Rite (Uniate), one of the leaders of the Russian Catholic Church, an exile.
- Kazakevich Joseph - a Catholic priest, was in exile.
- Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, signed a decision to commute the sentence of Archbishop Tseplyak.
- Kolchak Alexander Vasilyevich - admiral, head of the White government in Siberia.
- Kretovich is a worker from Tomsk, the subject of a propaganda article against Catholics.
- Nikolai Krylenko - Soviet prosecutor at the Tseplyak-Budkevich trial.
- Lipnitsky Joseph - church organist, repressed and shot.
- Mikhasenok Nikolai Ivanovich - Catholic priest, rector of the Novosibirsk church, convicted, died in exile in 1933.
- Popalaigis was a Catholic priest from Tomsk who was subject to confiscation of his property.
- Pronsky Sigismund - acting chairman of the Tomsk Catholic community, executed.
- Romanov is an OGPU-NKVD officer, an investigator in the cases of Gronsky and Zhukovsky.
- Sikorski Władysław, Prime Minister of Poland, protested against the repression of the Catholic clergy in the USSR.
- Tomich Vanda - secretary of the Tomsk church council, repressed.
- Frizon Alexander - Catholic bishop, apostolic administrator of Crimea, executed in 1937.
- Jan Ciepljak - Catholic archbishop, convicted in 1923, sentence commuted to imprisonment.
- Tserpento Ieronim Ieronimovich - Catholic priest, administrator of the churches of Siberia, executed in 1938.
- Shabutsky Franz - guard of the Tomsk Catholic Church, repressed.
- Shvaros Marceliy - a Catholic priest, died in prison.
