Alexander Popov

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Popov (1869 to 1918) was a priest in the village of Travyanskoe, in the Kamyshlov district, and was killed by Red soldiers, together with eight peasants, in the summer of 1918. He is commemorated on 23 July, on 7 February with the synaxis of the new martyrs, and on 11 February with the saints of Yekaterinburg. He was numbered among the new martyrs of Russia on 17 July 2002.

He was born on 20 October 1869 in the village of Klyuchiki, Osa district, Perm province, into the family of a church servant. In 1884 he finished the church school in Yekaterinburg, and in 1890 the Perm seminary. In the same year he married and began to serve the Church as psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Brusnyatskoe, from 1892 as deacon, then as priest at the church of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple in the village of Travyanskoe, Kamyshlov district. This church remained his last place of service. Father Alexander was an active man: besides his pastoral duties he taught religion at the church school in the village of Bolshaya Gryaznukha, was a member of the society for mutual assistance of those teaching and who had taught in church schools, and a member of the Orthodox Missionary Society that worked with Old Believers. In 1897 he was moved to the first priest's place of the church. In 1904 he was confirmed chairman of the church board of trustees, and soon was appointed investigator for the second district of the Kamyshlov district, with twenty-⁠nine large villages. In 1910 he founded in his parish a temperance society, with three hundred and forty-⁠two members, and in 1912 was appointed catechist for the year 1913. He received the priest's hip-⁠cloth, the skufia, the kamilavka and the Order of Saint Anne, third class.

In the summer of 1918, as the White Army advanced, a Red detachment led by P. Podporin was withdrawing through the Kamensky plant, leaving behind the memory of dreadful reprisals on the peaceful population, especially the clergy. On 8/21 July 1918, in the village of Travyanskoe, the Red soldiers arrested the priest Alexander Popov and nine peasants and took them to the railway line, to a place called Polovinnoe. Here, releasing one of those seized, they began to torture the innocent people. Some villagers heard their cries and groans, but no one dared to come to their aid. Father Alexander's spine, arm and jaw were broken and his fingers cut off; then the mutilated priest was lifted on bayonets. The others were killed with no less cruelty. The bodies were thrown into a ravine, from which the villagers soon took them. On 15/28 July the priest and the parishioners were buried in the square before the church in which he had served for more than twenty-⁠five years.

On 16 November 2006 the sisters and staff of the New Tikhvin convent in Yekaterinburg set up a cross at the place of the holy martyr's death. The diocesan canonization commission established the names of the parishioners who died with Father Alexander and the place of their martyrdom, in the Polovinny forest, a kilometre and a half from the village.