Alexander Vinogradov

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Vinogradov (1883 to 1938) was a priest in the village of Yurevo, in the Yegoryevsk district, and was shot on 10 March 1938, at Butovo. He is commemorated on 10 March, on 29 May with the new martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September with the saints of Moscow.

He was born on 30 August 1883 in the village of Staninskaya, Yegoryevsk district, Ryazan province, into the family of the peasant Feodor Vinogradov. He finished the church school and until 1910 worked as a weaver at Knyazev's factory in Yegoryevsk and, being near his native village, as a peasant. In 1910 he entered a church as psalm-⁠reader and until 1918 served as psalm-⁠reader at the Kazan church in Yegoryevsk. In 1920 he served as psalm-⁠reader at the church of Saint Sergius in the village of Ivanovskoe. On 24 December 1929 he was ordained deacon at the church of the Sign in the village of Aleshino, and on 18 May 1930 priest at the church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Yurevo, Yegoryevsk district, where he served until his arrest.

At Yurevo he suffered the persecutions that the Church's servants then endured. The secretary of the Yurevo village soviet characterized him in 1938, in a report to the NKVD, saying that Father Alexander "succeeded in agitating the backward collective farm workers, saying that life had become bad and there was nothing to eat, and the farm workers began to bring him milk, curds and eggs". When the tax was demanded of him, the priest managed to have it reduced, as for an elderly man, but the village soviet said that the priest was not yet sixty and demanded that he give sixty kilograms of meat as tax. On the day of the Nativity of Christ, 7 January, when more than three hundred people were in the church, the priest addressed those present, asking for help because he was smothered by taxes; he went round the church with a plate and collected five hundred rubles or more. When he was told that he had to pay the tax again, he is said to have come to the village soviet saying that under the new constitution he had the same rights as everyone and considered his family a Red Army soldier's family, because his son was in the army in the Far East. A witness said that when one of the churches was being demolished, Father Alexander had said that God would punish them for its destruction.

On 27 January 1938 Father Alexander was arrested and questioned. Asked what his attitude was to the Soviet authorities, he answered that he had a good attitude to them and was satisfied with them. Asked whether he had addressed the parishioners at Christmas asking for help, he said that he had asked permission to go round with a plate for needs and the believers had allowed it, but that he had not said he was taxed heavily so as to renounce religion. Asked whether at the demolition of the church he had spoken the words about God's punishment, he answered that he had said no such thing to anyone. Asked whether he admitted guilt of active counter-⁠revolutionary activity, he answered: "I do not admit guilt; I carried on no anti-⁠Soviet agitation." On 24 February the investigation was closed, and on 2 March 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The priest Alexander Vinogradov was shot on 10 March 1938 and buried in an unmarked common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.