Alexander Parusnikov

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Parusnikov (1879 to 1938) was an archpriest in the village of Troitsko-⁠Ramenskoe, in the Moscow region, a father of ten children, and was shot on 27 June 1938 at Butovo. He is commemorated on 27 June, on 29 May with the new martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September with the saints of Moscow.

Family and calling

He was born on 13 October 1879 in the village of Troitsko-⁠Ramenskoe, Bronnitsy district, into the family of the priest Sergius Alexeevich Parusnikov, who served at the church of the Holy Trinity by Lake Borisoglebsky. The church had been built in 1852 at the expense of the merchant brothers Malyutin, owners of the cotton mill. The father, born in 1831, had been ordained by Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, who also raised him to archpriest; from 1864 he taught the children of the mill workers to read free of charge, and the parishioners loved him so that at twenty-⁠five years of service they gave him an icon of Saint Nicholas. His parents, Sergius and Alexandra Gerasimovna, had thirteen children; Alexander was the twelfth. The mother died of tuberculosis at forty-⁠six, and the eldest sister, Olga, helped their father raise the little ones.

In 1895 Alexander finished the church school on the Don, in 1902 the Moscow seminary, but, not intending to be a priest, in 1903 he entered the Imperial Technical School in Moscow. In 1908 his father told him that he wished to retire and asked him to receive the priesthood and take his place; Alexander agreed, in obedience to his father and to the Church that had educated him. Shortly before ordination he met at Ramenskoe Alexandra Ivanovna Pushkareva, born in 1886, whose father had died early. Helped by the Malyutin family, she had finished the teachers' seminary for girls in 1906 and taught at the school in Klishevo. He had difficulty persuading her mother to give her daughter in marriage, but the priest son-⁠in-⁠law became her best friend. They had ten children. On 6 May 1908 Metropolitan Vladimir ordained him priest at the church of the Holy Trinity, where he served until his arrest; from 1909 to 1911 he taught religion at the school in Klishevo and at the girls' gymnasium of Ramenskoe.

Under persecution

The parishioners loved him for gentleness, kindness and indifference to wealth. When he served, deep silence reigned in the church. He was a man of wide learning, and young people often came to talk with him, most of all about faith and God. With children he was gentle and never punished them, he only said: "Do not quarrel." With the coming of the Soviet authorities, the priest's family lived hard, and without the parishioners' help would not have survived; all were deprived of civil rights and of ration cards. Once, on Christmas Eve, there was not even bread in the house; when Father opened the door to the porch, he found two sacks of bread, groats and potatoes: "Here is your feast," he said to his wife. At the end of the twenties half his house was taken, and the chief of the local militia, sick with tuberculosis, moved in, who walked about the house and spat, and said: "Priestly trash must die." The children began to fall ill with tuberculosis one after another; not a year passed without the priest's wife seeing someone off to the cemetery. The children were persecuted at school too as priest's children. Once, walking along the street with his daughter, people turned and spat after the priest; the daughter gripped her father's hand harder, and he said quietly: "It is nothing, Tanya, all this goes into our treasury." When the authorities took their cow, Father said: "Let us serve a thanksgiving prayer service to Saint Nicholas. God gave, God took." From then on every day a basket with a bottle of milk and two loaves appeared on the porch, but no one ever learned who brought them. At night he was often summoned to the NKVD, where he was told to leave the church for the sake of his children; he answered: "I serve God and I will stay in the church to the end of my life." He was raised to archpriest and rewarded with the mitre.

Martyrdom

At the end of the thirties all the priests of the church were arrested one after another; the last, on 24 March 1938, was Father Alexander. Beforehand false witnesses had given testimony against him. On 26 March the chief of the district NKVD questioned him: Father said that priests and singers had often gathered in the church lodge and spoken about matters of the service and sometimes about the politics of the day; he denied having made counter-⁠revolutionary statements, and about those arrested he said that he could not tell enemies from good people. On 13 May he was questioned again and confronted with witnesses; he rejected all the testimony and said that he had held no counter-⁠revolutionary conversation. On 27 June 1938 he was shot at Butovo.