Alexander Organov

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Organov (1873 to 1938) was a priest in the Samara diocese and was shot on 14 January 1938, together with Archbishop Alexander (Trapitsyn) of Samara and other priests. He is commemorated on 14 January, on 7 February with the synaxis of the new martyrs, and on 12 August with the saints of Samara.

He was born in 1873 in the village of Tuarin, in the Samara province, into the family of the deacon Alexander Organov. From 1894 to 1898 he served as a private in the first division of the first Preobrazhensky regiment, then was appointed company clerk. After retiring he served as psalm-⁠reader in a church, and at the height of the post-⁠revolutionary persecutions he received the priesthood and then served in churches of the Samara diocese until his arrest in 1937.

In 1937 he was arrested together with the archbishop and other priests. Archbishop Alexander was accused of having "united at Kuibyshev all the priests without posts, especially those who had returned from exile, and given them authority among the believers as 'sufferers for the faith', which was used for anti-⁠Soviet agitation of an insurgent kind". Neither the archbishop nor the priests returned from exile and the camps admitted guilt, and they rejected all the charges. On 21 December 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced them to death. Archbishop Alexander (Trapitsyn) and the priests John Suldin, John Smirnov, Alexander Organov and Alexander Ivanov were shot on 14 January 1938. The other priests, Vyacheslav Infantov, Basil Vitevsky and Jacob Alferov, were shot on 8 February 1938. All were buried in an unmarked common grave.