Alexander Tsitseronov

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Tsitseronov (1893 to 1938) was a priest in the village of Polivanovo in the Ryazan province and was shot in the night of 10 January 1938. He is commemorated on 10 January, on 7 February with the synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church, and on 23 June with the saints of Ryazan.

He was born on 15 August 1893 in the village of Popadino, Mikhailov district, Ryazan province, into the family of the deacon Alexander Andreevich Tsitseronov and his wife Alexandra Petrovna. Three of the deacon's ten children became priests, and three sisters of Father Alexander married future priests. At twenty-⁠one he finished the Ryazan seminary. While studying he met Evgenia Ivanovna Ivankova, a graduate of the Ryazan diocesan school for girls, daughter of Archpriest John Pavlovich Ivankov, who blessed the young people's marriage. He was first psalm-⁠reader at the church in Pechernik, then ordained deacon and later priest, and in 1914 was assigned to the parish of the village of Polivanovo, which also included the villages of Tarakanovka, Savinka, Studenets, Letniki and Bolshaya Khlebenka.

The young priest stood out for "very good conduct" and for his sermons. The aim of his life was to explain Holy Scripture as plainly as possible to adults and children; he did not bear the name Tsitseronov for nothing, being a wonderful storyteller and conversationalist. On the parish feast, the day of the Great Martyr Demetrius, pilgrims gathered in the village, and after the service tables were laid in the street; this custom continued even after the revolution, and not only believers but atheists came. God blessed Father Alexander and Matushka Evgenia with nine children. The priest's wife always sang in the choir and read the Psalter for the dead; the children knew from early years the morning and evening prayers and the troparia of the feasts.

The pastor of Polivanovo

Father Alexander was a kind and gentle man. Many asked him for money, and he shared his last kopeck. The parishioner Kachkin had nothing in which to lay his dead child in the coffin, and the priest gave his own son's shirt. The daughter of the widow Agrippina Koroleva remembered that in their hardest moments the priest would come with a bundle of food or clothes for the four small children. In the days of Pascha the father went round the most distant villages, walking five kilometres for each service. Anna Milyutina remembered how her mother, going to work, left on the table a three-⁠ruble note to be given to "the priest", and the priest came, served, caressed the children, and left on the table dyed eggs and ten rubles.

In 1918 Father Alexander, as a priest, was deprived of civil rights and the vote and had no passport. The first time he was arrested was in 1930, supposedly for non-⁠payment of taxes and keeping small change in the church. The people's court first sentenced him to ten years in prison for non-⁠payment of the tax, but then he was fully cleared; for keeping the small change he spent half a year in prison.

The arrest

The second time he was arrested was on 20 December 1937. He was going for water when the officials met him with a warrant. Entering the house, so as not to frighten the children, he said quietly to his wife: "Zhenya, they have come for me." The children heard and wept. The priest's wife set them all to prayer, that the Lord might strengthen their father and give them all firmness of spirit. The passport clerk Zhavoronkov demanded he hand over his weapons. The search began, the second confiscation: they took "thirty-⁠two assorted photographs", children's cots and clothing. The family of eight were left to live in a wooden annex, while in the priest's brick house a club was opened. His daughter Alevtina remembered: "The walls shook with weeping. Little sister Nina embraced Father's boots and cried: I will not let you go. Father blessed us all and said: Children, your father was an honest man. Love God, your mother, one another."

Martyrdom

Soon after the arrest the parishioners gathered signatures for a petition on behalf of their pastor, writing that Father Alexander Tsitseronov had served at the church of Polivanovo since 1916 and in twenty years had not had a single remark or reproach from the believers, that he took no bribes and did no wrong, that he helped the poor from his own means, that he had no personal wealth and enjoyed the respect and authority of the believers. Alevtina says: "Our mother died in 1993, aged ninety-⁠nine, never learning the truth about her husband. In 1946 a rumour spread that Father had been released and had died at once of a heart rupture. Then, in 1948, Mother was summoned to the militia and told that Father had died in 1944." Only at the end of the twentieth century did the family learn of the file that decided his earthly fate. In it, witnesses declared that in August 1937 the priest Tsitseronov had not handed over the keys of the church for the storing of grain, but had gathered the church council to obstruct the decision of the collective farm activists, and had carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation among the farm workers.

Father Alexander was held in the Ryazan prison. Questioned on 21 December, he answered no to all questions about anti-⁠Soviet agitation and did not admit guilt. On 22 December the indictment was signed, and the troika attached to the NKVD of the Ryazan region pronounced the death sentence on 26 December. The sentence was carried out in the night of 10 January 1938.