Alexander Vozdvizhensky

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Vozdvizhensky (1876 to 1937) was an archpriest at the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Novoe Zagarye, in the Moscow region, and was shot on 13 November 1937, at Butovo. He is commemorated on 13 November, on 29 May with the new martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September with the saints of Moscow.

He was born on 29 August 1876 in the village of Vedernitsy, Dmitrov district, Moscow province, into the family of the deacon Michael Vozdvizhensky. In 1892 he finished the church school at Dmitrov, in 1899 the Bethany seminary, and in 1901 he was ordained deacon. In 1903 he was ordained priest at the church in the village of Bogoslovo, Bogorodsk district, where he served until 1917, then was moved to the church in the village of Turovo, Serpukhov district. In 1931 he served at the church in the village of Kazanskoe, Pavlovsky Posad district, and in 1935 was moved to the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Novoe Zagarye, in the same district. In 1935 he was raised to archpriest.

In the second half of the thirties the godless authorities decided to begin the most merciless persecutions of all the twenty years of their rule; to be arrested, it was enough to be a servant of the church. On 7 October 1937 Father Alexander was arrested and imprisoned at Noginsk. The next day the investigator questioned him: he told him that he was hostile to the policy of the Soviet authorities and had systematically uttered counter-⁠revolutionary judgments on its measures. Asked about what he had said to the deacon about the constitution, he said that he had spoken several times with the deacon about the constitution, but had not said that it was "cut down"; he said that it was all-⁠embracing, so the deacon must have confused it. Asked about the fiscal policy of the Soviet authorities, he answered that he did not deny having said: "With taxes the Soviet authorities do not spare the clergy." Asked whether he had said that enemies were sought among the clergy but were to be found among the top of the Bolsheviks, referring to the traitor Tukhachevsky and others, he answered that yes, he had said so and did not deny it. Witnesses were questioned, but they said nothing convincing to prove any activity of the priest against the state. On 25 October the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Archpriest Alexander Vozdvizhensky was shot on 13 November 1937 and buried in an unmarked common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.