Adrian Vozhakov of Oleksandriia

Archpriest Adrian Ivanovich Vozhakov (1887-1937) was the rector of the Protection church in Oleksandriia and was shot in 1937. He was glorified locally as a hieromartyr in the Oleksandriia diocese (Ukrainian Orthodox Church) by decision of the Synod of 5 January 2013; he is commemorated on 22 August (4 September by the new calendar), together with Priest Dimitry Surmeli.

He was born on 25 August 1887 at Dobrovelychkivka, Yelisavetgrad district, Kherson province, to Ivan Grigorievich and Lukeria Pavlovna Vozhakov, and was baptised in the church of Saint Nicholas, where the wonderworking Revutsky icon of the Mother of God was kept. In 1904 he finished a two-⁠class ministerial school. From 1906 he was a psalm-⁠reader and at the same time a teacher, the title he received in 1908. In 1909 he was transferred to the Protection church in Lysa Hora, where in 1910 he married the teacher Elena Afanasieva; they had a daughter, Valentina, born in 1914.

On 20 May 1915 he was ordained priest. He served at the church of Saint George in Andrusivka, Oleksandriia district, then was rector of the church of Saint John the Theologian in Halahanivka. On 20 March 1923 he was appointed dean of the Hlyns'k district and opposed the Renovationist movement, remaining faithful to canonical Orthodoxy. On 29 April 1926 he took the parish of the Protection church in Oleksandriia and, after it was closed, went on serving and tending the faithful. He was raised to archpriest on 6 February 1931.

He was arrested several times: in 1919 at Chyhyryn, but released; in 1924 by the GPU, to three months in prison; in 1931 and 1934, under charges of counter-⁠revolutionary activity. On 11 September 1937, on the feast of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, he was arrested again. The charge: counter-⁠revolutionary propaganda, services in private homes, resisting the closing of the church, and spreading provocative rumours about war and famine. On 2 November 1937 the NKVD troika decided on his execution, and the sentence was carried out on 25 November 1937. The place of his death and burial is not known. He was rehabilitated in 1989.

The canonization commission of the Oleksandriia diocese gathered archive materials on his life, service and death. On 5 January 2013 the Synod numbered Archpriests Adrian Vozhakov and Dimitry Surmeli among the locally venerated saints of the diocese, approved their icon, troparion and kontakion, and ordered their commemoration on the day of their glorification. His name is entered in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Oleksandriia land.