Alexander Krutitsky

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Krutitsky (1898 to 1938) was a priest in the village of Khomutovo, in the Moscow region, and was shot on 1 July 1938, at the Butovo firing range. He is commemorated on 1 July, on 29 May with the new martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September with the saints of Moscow.

He was born in 1898 in the village of Saltykovo, Bronnitsy district, into the family of the psalm-⁠reader Sergius Matveevich Krutitsky. His mother died when he was an infant, and his father when he was fifteen, and he was taken in and raised by his father's sister, Elizabeth Matveevna, his godmother. He finished the church school at Perervino and entered the Moscow seminary, but could not finish it because of material hardships and the revolution, and in 1917 he served as psalm-⁠reader in the place of his late father, at the Dormition church in Saltykovo. On his godmother's advice he married Pelagia Tsyganova, of the village of Obraztsovo, from a large peasant family, accustomed to hard work; Pelagia served the Lord by singing in the choir to the end of her life. They had three children, two sons and a daughter.

In 1917 he was ordained deacon and assigned to the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Obraztsovo. In 1929 he was arrested on a charge of obstructing agricultural deliveries, but was acquitted by the court and released. Despite the growing persecutions, resolving to devote his life to the service of God and the Church, he petitioned his bishop and in 1933 was ordained priest at the church of the Protection in the village of Khomutovo. The parishioners loved him for his gentle and unselfish nature. In the village lived three widows whose husbands had died in the First World War; the priest always helped them, and before ploughing his own land he ploughed and sowed theirs.

He was arrested at one o'clock in the night of 3 March 1938. He was prepared for arrest and received the lot awaiting him calmly. At the search they took not only books but also things which in the eyes of the NKVD had some material value: from the priest's wife, Pelagia, they took one earring out of her ear, and tore out the other. First he was held in the detention cell at Shchelkovo, then in a prison in Moscow. On 5 March the charge was brought that, "being hostile, he carries on counter-⁠revolutionary activity among those around him". Reading the document, he refused to sign it, saying that he did not agree. Asked in what year he had been deprived of the vote, he answered that it was in 1918 and that it had not been restored even now; he said that his household had not been seized as that of a "kulak" and that none of his relatives had been repressed. Asked whether he admitted guilt of anti-⁠Soviet activity, he answered: "No, I do not admit guilt." With this the investigation ended.

On 14 June 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Father Alexander Krutitsky was shot on 1 July 1938 and buried in an unmarked common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.