Alexander Zverev

Holy Hieromartyr Alexander Zverev, archpriest, was born on 8 August 1881 in the village of Faustovo, in the Bronnitsy district near Moscow, and was shot at the Butovo firing range on 16 November 1937. He was numbered among the new martyrs of Russia by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on 6 October 2001, for veneration throughout the Church. He is remembered on 3 (16) November, in the synaxis of the new martyrs of Russia and in the synaxis of the new martyrs of Butovo.

Family and studies

He was born into the family of Priest Alexander Grigorievich Zverev and was baptized on the same day in the church of the Holy Trinity at Faustovo, by the priest Fyodor Bazhanov, who was also his godfather. His godmother was the priest's daughter, Lyubov Petrovna Magnitskaya. He studied at the Donskoy theological school in Moscow (1897) and at the theological seminary in Moscow (1903). From October 1904 to January 1906 he was supervisor at the Moscow seminary. In 1909 he graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy with the title of candidate in theology and entered as assistant inspector at the Bethany seminary. In those years he became a spiritual son of the elder Alexei (Solovyov), a hieromonk at the Zosima Hermitage near Smolensk.

In 1910 he married Maria Alexeyevna Lebedeva, daughter of the archpriest of the church of Saint Nicholas in Zvonari, on Rozhdestvenka. From September 1912 he taught literature and the history of Russian literature at the Bethany seminary, also as class tutor. On 7 June 1912 a son, Seraphim, was born to him. On 16 February 1913 he was ordained priest and received the epigonation. In the summer of 1913 he was appointed member-⁠secretary of the building commission for the repair of the Bethany seminary buildings, and the work was brought to a good end. On 6 June 1916 he took part in the farewell on the entry into seclusion of his spiritual father, the elder Alexei of Zosima. At this farewell, which had not been announced beforehand, only four clergy were present.

Service in Moscow and the arrests

In 1918 he was appointed assistant head, and from the autumn acting head, of the pastoral and theological courses of the diocese of Moscow. From February 1919 he was rector of the church of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker in Zvonari, in Moscow. In 1922 the first arrest took place. From 1929 to 1931 he was dean and spiritual father of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), the deputy locum tenens. In 1933 he was arrested again and released in February 1936. From May he was a priest at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Vozmishche, in the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow region.

Arrest and martyrdom

He was arrested on 22 September 1937 and imprisoned at Volokolamsk. At interrogation he answered that he had carried on no counter-⁠revolutionary anti-⁠Soviet activity. He was told that in the summer of 1937, in the church watchman's lodge, he had held counter-⁠revolutionary talks about the policy of the Soviet government and the new constitution, in the presence of the priest Pavel Andreev. He denied it, except for a conversation in the summer of 1937, in his own room, about the reinstatement of the teacher Pokrovskaya, of which a report had appeared in Pravda. He drew Andreev's attention to it and said how much the government's policy toward people of religious conviction had changed, but not in a counter-⁠revolutionary sense, as an observation tied to the constitution. At all the later interrogations Father Alexander did not admit guilt either.

On 14 November 1937 the troika of the NKVD for the Moscow region sentenced the priests of Vozmishche Pavel Andreev, Alexander Zverev and Dimitry Rozanov to be shot. On 16 November 1937 Father Alexander Zverev was shot at the Butovo firing range. He was canonized on 6 October 2001. On the website of the Moscow diocese there is a sermon of his on the icon of the Mother of God called the Unburnt Bush.