Alexander Likharev

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Likharev (1876 to 1938) was an archpriest in the Moscow region and died in the camp in Siberia on 17 March 1938. He is commemorated on 17 March, on 7 February with the synaxis of the new martyrs, on 29 August with the saints of Kuzbass, and on 5 September with the saints of Moscow.

He was born on 22 January 1876 in the village of Sinkovo, Sofino volost, Bronnitsy district, into the family of the priest Peter Likharev. In 1896 he finished the Moscow seminary and entered as teacher at a parish school in the village of Islavskoe. On 5 May 1899 he was ordained deacon at the Tikhvin church on Berezhki in Moscow, and on 26 June 1920 priest at the same church. On 24 August 1928 he was appointed rector. On 22 July 1930 he was moved to the Epiphany cathedral at Dorogomilovo and on 25 March 1932 raised to the rank of archpriest. On 23 November of that year he was appointed priest at the church of the Mother of God of Vladimir in Mytishchi, and on 22 October 1935 moved to the church of Saint Nicholas in the settlement of Podsolnechnoe, Solnechnogorsk district.

On 27 November 1937 he was arrested, imprisoned at Taganka and questioned. The investigator said he carried on counter-⁠revolutionary activity; he answered that he did not admit guilt. A witness, a priest, said that Father Alexander had told him that the Soviet authorities had issued the Stalin Constitution, which should bring full freedom, but it turned out the opposite, especially regarding religion: priests were driven from one district to another, registered nowhere, one had been sent to a fifteenth place. On 3 December the investigation ended and on 5 December the NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a labour camp.

On 11 December all those investigated, many of whom expected after so short an investigation to be released or at least exiled, learned that they were sentenced to ten years of hard labour; they were loaded into wagons and taken to the Krasnoyarsk region. On 9 January 1938 they arrived at Suslovo station and some of the priests, among them Father Alexander Likharev, were sent to work at a pig farm of the Bamlag camp. Already on the way he fell ill; at first it seemed a simple cold, but at the place of arrival he lived in conditions so severe that the body weakened on the journey could no longer overcome the illness. All the prisoners were put in temporary dugouts; Siberian frosts raged, and firewood was not enough even to boil water. Soon an epidemic of dysentery broke out in the camp, there were not enough places in the hospital and many sick died in the dugouts. Father Alexander too fell ill with dysentery, and the priests in the same dugout asked that he be taken to the hospital. Archpriest Alexander Likharev died in the camp hospital on 17 March 1938. A priest imprisoned with him wrote to his children: "He was buried in a common grave, near the mill... your father has gone to another world, but he offended no one either in service before or in the camp."