Alexander Tsitserov

Holy Hieromartyr Alexander (Alexander Mikhailovich Tsitserov) was an archpriest, born on 25 August 1884 in the village of Povodimovo, Alatyr district, Simbirsk province, and died on 9 September 1939 at Izvestkovaya station, in the Russian Far East. The Russian Church glorified him on 16 July 2005 and numbered him in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow. His commemoration is on 9 September and on the days of common commemoration.

He was born into a peasant family. In 1903 he finished the Apsharo church teachers' seminary and was a teacher. He was a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from 1904 and, at the time of the revolution of 1905, an agitator. When the Simbirsk party cell was broken up (1906) his house was searched. Later he withdrew from political activity. In 1913 and 1914 he studied at pastoral and missionary courses in Moscow and in 1914 was ordained priest. He served in the village of Ostashevo, in the Bronnitsy district, where most of his parishioners were workers of the Sadkovskaya manufactory. He organized in Ostashevo an agricultural cooperative, of which he was chairman for two years (1914 to 1916).

In 1916 he left the Bronnitsy district and the post of chairman of the cooperative and was moved to serve at the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Nikolskoe, in the Zvenigorod district, Moscow province. He served twenty-⁠one years at the church of Saint Nicholas. In 1926 he received the pectoral cross, and in 1932 he was raised to the rank of archpriest and appointed dean of the Zvenigorod district of the Moscow diocese. He was a talented preacher, loved by the local peasants, known for his long (up to two or three hours) and vivid sermons. He worked in the fields together with the peasants. As a priest of the white clergy, he was married and had sons.

In January 1937 he was appointed rector of the church of the Transfiguration (of the Godunovs) in the village of Bolshie Vyazemy. The reason for the move, as the previous time, may have been the popularity of the rector, which aroused fears, and the support of the parishioners. After a year of service at the Transfiguration church, in November 1937 he was arrested. He was held first in the Zvenigorod prison, then in Taganka in Moscow. He did not admit guilt. On 3 December 1937 he was sentenced by the NKVD troika to ten years in camps. He served the sentence first in the town of Svobodny, in the Khabarovsk territory, in the Amur railway camp, then in the Bureya labour camp at Izvestkovaya station, where he died on 9 September 1939.