Alexander Tetyuev

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Tetyuev (1879 to 1937) was a priest at Cherdyn, in the Perm province, and was arrested on 5 August 1937 and shot soon after. He is commemorated on 3 October, on 7 February with the synaxis of the new martyrs, and on 14 February with the saints of the Perm metropolis.

The priest Alexander Pavlovich Tetyuev was born on 10 March 1879 in the village of Saltanovo, Cherdyn district, Perm province, of a line in which all his forebears were clergy: his great-⁠grandfather Sabbas Ioakimovich served at the beginning of the nineteenth century, his son Stephen Savvich, born in 1825, was a deacon, and his son Paul Stefanovich, born in 1853 at Solikamsk, was a priest at a church in Solikamsk until his death in 1916. Alexander entered the town school in Solikamsk, which he could not finish. One day he resolved, with his friends, to play a prank: in one night they swapped almost all the signs of the town, the sign of a second-⁠guild merchant onto a cobbler and the reverse. Father Paul looked sternly at the prank and resolved to punish his son: he took him from the school and gave him to the Holy Trinity monastery in Solikamsk for correction. Two years Alexander was a novice, latterly with Archimandrite Chrysanthus Klementiev. Monastic life did him good: he studied zealously, passed the school's examinations externally and gained the right to teach in village church schools. In 1901 he entered as teacher at the church school in the village of Moshevo, and after a year as assistant teacher at Ust-⁠Nyrob, where he married Claudia Alexandrovna.

Archimandrite Chrysanthus advised him to leave teaching and blessed him to become a priest. In 1903 he was ordained priest in the village of Lekmartovo, then moved to the Resurrection cathedral at Cherdyn. At that time Cherdyn was famous for many outstanding people, priests among them. When the Bolsheviks came, many clergy were tortured at once, and very cruelly: they were doused with icy water in the frost until they died. The first time Father Alexander was arrested was in 1920 for refusing to cooperate with the Cheka; he sat about a year in the Cherdyn prison. The second time they arrested him was in 1929, for resisting Renovationism. In that year the Renovationists were making great efforts to seize the Orthodox churches; they took the Resurrection cathedral by force, hoping that Father Alexander would continue to serve in it and so join the Renovationists. But he categorically refused to serve with the Renovationists and moved to the Dormition church, which had remained Orthodox, and all the parishioners followed him. The Renovationists protested and asked the GPU for help; Father Alexander was arrested and accused of having brought division among believers. He sat in prison at Usolye, in a building that had once belonged to the Church, where all his brothers and sisters had been born. Released, he returned to Cherdyn and went on serving. The persecutions did not lessen but increased, and the priest, so as not to expose his wife and children to harassment, blessed them to move to another city, from which they came to visit their ascetic father. In 1936 his relatives began to urge him to leave the priesthood and take civil service, and even bought him a suit, but he categorically refused. All his life he had loved above all the Orthodox Church, Orthodox Russia and the Russian people. He said: "I believe that, despite all the persecutions, the Orthodoxy that the Russian people profess will not be destroyed." He was arrested on 5 August 1937 and soon shot.