Alexander Pospelov

Holy Hieromartyr Alexander Pospelov was an archpriest and was shot on 26 December 1937 at Nizhny Novgorod. He was born on 21 March 1883 in the city of Vladimir, in the family of a state treasury official, Vasily Vladimirovich Pospelov. His father was widowed early and remarried; the family was large and lived in hardship, with hunger, and after the father's death in 1898 the children were raised by relatives, among them a priest uncle, Mikhail Antonovich Krylov. Alexander finished the theological school at Vladimir. In 1904 he was ordained deacon, then priest, and served in the village of Vaganovo, then at Teterino in the Suzdal district, where he met one of the cruellest persecutions in the history of the Church; to feed his family he also worked as an accountant for a cooperative.

In March 1929 he was invited to serve at Kiberghino, and the faithful, pleased with his services and preaching, asked for him as parish priest; the bishop of Ivanovo-⁠Voznesensk blessed his appointment. He was a wonderful preacher and a compassionate pastor: he prepared his sermons with care but delivered them without notes, and called the persecution by its name. The local communists opposed giving him land for a house, and on 21 May 1929, when workers came from the city to take the church bells, the peasants rose in protest. On 25 June 1929 Father Alexander was arrested and shut in prison at Shuya. On 3 November 1929 a special board of the OGPU sentenced him to three years in a camp and he was sent to Solovki. After his return he was raised to the rank of archpriest and, on 3 September 1932, appointed priest in the village of Bolshoye Pesochnoye, Vyksa district, Nizhny Novgorod region. His wife and children suffered hard want; the youngest son died at fourteen.

On 14 April 1937 he received the palitsa as a reward for his zealous service. In the summer of 1937 began the cruellest persecution of the two decades of atheist rule. On 21 November 1937 he was arrested and interrogated the same day; he denied all guilt. On 14 December an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was shot on 26 December 1937 and buried in an unknown mass grave at the Bugrovskoye cemetery in Nizhny Novgorod. He is commemorated in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Solovki.