Alexander Parusnikov

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Parusnikov (1891 to 1937) was a priest in the villages of Bolshoe Ivanovskoe and Kuzminskoe, in the Moscow region, and was shot on 16 November 1937 at Butovo. He is commemorated on 16 November, on 29 May with the new martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September with the saints of Moscow.

He was born on 24 November 1891 in the village of Aleshino, Dmitrov district, into the family of the priest Nicholas Vasilievich Parusnikov. He attended the church school at Riga, and in 1907 entered the Bethany seminary, which he finished in 1913; on 8 May he was tonsured to the stikharion and soon ordained deacon and priest. Shortly before he married Alexandra, daughter of Archpriest John Muraviov, inspector of schools of the Dmitrov district, known for his charity. In 1914 Father Alexander was appointed rector in the village of Bolshoe Ivanovskoe, Bronnitsy district, where he lived ten years; his wife worked as a teacher, they had three children, and the nanny Praskovia, whom they could no longer pay after the revolution, said only: "It is not needed, only do not send me away," and stayed with the family. After the revolution, in 1918 to 1921, he was periodically taken for rear-⁠front labour, and in the early twenties he and his wife were deprived of the vote.

In 1924 he was appointed rector of the church of the Sign (with a side chapel of Saints Cosmas and Damian) in the village of Kuzminskoe, Mikhnevo district, where his parents also moved; there three more children were born to them. He was raised to archpriest and appointed dean of the district. In December 1929 he was arrested for counter-⁠revolutionary activity by the Serpukhov section of the OGPU and held a month. When collectivization began, although the family had been deprived of land, horses and tools, to the parishioners' questions whether to join the collective farm he answered that "one must live and work under any authority", and blessed joining. In 1934 the family was driven out of the house, which had become the property of the collective farm, first moved into the kitchen, then put out entirely; the parishioner Natalia Nikolaevna Demidova sheltered them for the winter, then they sold the cow and built a wooden house.

Father Alexander's service in the thirties can without exaggeration be called a pastoral feat: despite impossible taxes, persecution by the authorities and the lack of clergy (the only psalm-⁠reader, Alexander Vasilievich Protopopov, could not bear it and became a shoemaker), he went on serving, often alone in an empty church. In the thirties the church was robbed, and Father began to take the vessels home; in 1935 to 1936 its bells were thrown down. As dean he travelled much through the villages of the district, and since many churches were closed he shepherded those parishes spiritually too; so when in 1930 his friend Archpriest Paul Smirnov of the village of Ilinskoe was arrested, he began to serve there as well.

The wave of repressions of 1937 to 1938 could not pass by so zealous a pastor. Before the arrest the security organs wished to bring him to cooperation: two weeks before they summoned him to the NKVD and proposed that he become an informer. He refused resolutely, although he knew well what the consequences would be. When NKVD officers came with the warrant, they did not find him at home, because he had gone to take leave of his sisters; they arrested him the next morning, 30 October 1937, on the feast of the Holy Martyrs Cosmas and Damian. At the interrogations of 30 and 31 October and 13 November the investigators tried to obtain a confession of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and anti-⁠Soviet agitation. Standing firm, accusing no one, Father Alexander did not admit guilt on any point. On 16 November 1937 he was shot at Butovo.