Alexander Medem

Saint Alexander Medem (1877 to 1931) was a believing landowner from the Saratov province and died in the prison of Syzran on 1 April 1931. He is commemorated on 23 November, on 7 February with the synaxis of the new martyrs, on 11 July with the saints of Novgorod, on 12 August with the saints of Samara, and on 12 September with the saints of Saratov.

He was born in 1877 at Mitau, in the Courland province, into the family of the senator Anton Ludvigovich Medem, who held high offices, among them that of governor of Novgorod; the people kept the best memory of him. In 1905, during the disturbances in the Novgorod province, he went without escort to the places of unrest, entered the midst of the rebellious crowd, bowed, took off his cap and began to speak quietly, and the crowd quieted and listened to him. Once he defended a widow whom a merchant had cheated, extracting from her promissory notes for a large sum: he asked the merchant for the notes and threw them into the fire, then told him that he had had no right to do so and that he could take him to court; the merchant did not sue and the widow was saved from ruin. In the 1870s Anton Ludvigovich bought an estate of six thousand desyatinas in the Khvalynsk district of the Saratov province; his son Alexander sold two thousand desyatinas of it to the peasants at the lowest price.

Alexander finished the gymnasium at Novgorod, then in 1897 the law faculty of the University of Saint Petersburg, but legal work did not attract him. From infancy he was attached to the land; almost no farm work was done without him. In 1901 he married Maria Feodorovna Chertkova; they had four children, a son and three daughters. The son emigrated to Germany after the revolution, and one of the daughters was shot in 1938. Until 1918 he managed the estate. After the Soviet authorities confiscated all private holdings, he rented a few desyatinas, as many as he could work himself. They lived poorly, often on borrowed money, which sometimes sufficed only for seed and the most necessary work. At times they had no horse, and the plot was thirty kilometres from town, and he went on foot or with passing carts.

The arrests

At the beginning of the civil war, Alexander and his two brothers agreed that, being Russians, they would not raise a hand against their own and would take no part in the civil war. In 1918 the Bolsheviks arrested him and sentenced him to death, but on the eve of the execution let him go home to take leave of his family; when he was preparing to return to the prison in the morning, the Whites drove the Bolsheviks out of the town, and the sentence lapsed. In the summer of 1919 he was arrested again and held at Saratov. Returning from prison, he said that nowhere had he prayed so well as in prison, where death knocks at the door at night and it is not known whose turn it is. In the summer of 1923 the OGPU arrested him again and imprisoned him at Saratov; the investigator asked him how he would organize a livestock farm, and he told him in detail; the investigator listened with interest and concluded: "I like people like you. But, of course, we will not give you any farm to run." At the end of October 1923 he was released.

His faith

Arrests and privations tempered his soul and strengthened his faith. In 1922 he wrote to his son Feodor: "In a few days it is your birthday; you will be twenty-⁠one, civil majority. I will pray warmly for you, my boy, that the Lord may help you to walk your earthly path honourably, to save your soul, give you strength of soul and body, courage and firm faith. Only the faith that all does not end here gives the strength not to cling at any cost to one's little-⁠valued life. Truly free can be only a deeply and sincerely believing man. Dependence on God is the only dependence that does not humiliate a man but exalts him. Believe firmly, pray always with faith, fear nothing but God and the conscience He guides; offend no one." In 1925 his wife wrote to the son: "Your father has grown unusually in morals in these years. Such faith, such peace and quiet of soul, such true freedom and strength of spirit I have never seen in my life."

Hardships, illness and heavy work, at times beyond his strength, forced him to give up working the land. He wrote to his children that he had been offered a post but could not serve those who plundered Russia and the soul of the Russian people: "It was not for this that the Lord kept me from hopeless situations, that I should betray my people by serving their destroyers. I cannot and will not serve; I would rather die of hunger." In 1928 he was arrested and held at Saratov. After the investigation he was sentenced to be barred from six large cities and settled at Syzran, near his native places; having become a widower, he went into exile with his daughters. In the autumn of 1930 he was arrested again. The investigator asked him what political convictions he held and what his attitude to the Soviet authorities was. He answered: "I have no definite political convictions, since I have not engaged in politics. My attitude to the existing order is loyal. With the programme of the Communist Party and the Soviet authorities I do not agree."

The last arrest

At the interrogations he bore himself with great restraint and dignity, though he had been suffering badly for several years from pulmonary tuberculosis. The investigator maintained that the arrested man was obliged to answer all questions, but Alexander Antonovich, a law graduate, held another view. Asked about his acquaintances in Syzran, he answered that he had none; of those he knew by sight he said that he could not name them, since he remembered them poorly and did not wish to present them as good acquaintances. At the end of 1930 the investigation did not reach the stage of a charge. At the beginning of 1931 his tuberculosis worsened because of the hard prison conditions, and on 22 February he was moved to the hospital ward of the Syzran prison. His daughters, learning of his condition, asked to see him; they were told to come the next day, but when they came they were told that their father had been buried the day before, without saying where. Alexander Antonovich died in the prison hospital on 1 April 1931, at half past noon. The funeral service was sung in absentia in the cathedral of Syzran.