Alexei Sibirsky

Holy Hieromartyr Alexei Sibirsky was a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, born on 17 March 1870 in Kozlovo, Vyshny Volochyok district, Tver governorate, and shot on 13 November 1937 at Kalinin (Tver). He was canonized by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. He is commemorated on 31 October by the old calendar (13 November by the new), the day of his death.

He was born into the family of the priest Vasily Sibirsky. After graduating from the Tver seminary he married and in 1902 was ordained priest for the church of the Entry into the Temple of the Mother of God in his native village. Father Alexei taught the Law of God at the higher elementary school for peasant children in the village of Vladimirskoe, founded by Alexei Snazin. In the autumn of 1929 he was arrested for failing to fulfil the plan of grain procurement, because he had not managed to bring the grain to the collection point within a single day. The priest, nearly sixty years old, was sentenced to a year in a labour camp, with confiscation of property, including personal belongings, and two years of exile. He was sent to the Northern Urals. On the back of a photograph sent to his relatives from exile he wrote: With a firm spirit... Even in the North it is warm, and at the summits of the Urals it is not frightening...

Returning from exile, he was appointed priest in the village of Kozlovo and dean of the churches of the Kozlovo deanery. Despite the state's persecution of the Church, in the 1930s the church of the Entry was crowded on feasts. Father Alexei was then the only priest there and cared for all the surrounding villages. In those years it was forbidden to appear outside the church in priestly dress, but, according to the recollections of local people, the tall figure of Father Alexei in his cassock, with a large pectoral cross, could be met in the most remote villages. There were complaints that Father Alexei violated the decree on the separation of Church from state, because he prayed for the Stakhanovite spring; at the district administration of the NKVD the priest had to explain that he had prayed from the Service Book for the abundance of the fruits of the earth.

On 29 August 1937, during the service, soldiers burst into the church and arrested the priest. A parishioner recalled that the GPU came to Kozlovo, a service was going on in the church; they drove out the people, put the priest out too and began throwing icons; those who defended him were driven off with horses, and icons thrown into the street were trampled by the horses' hooves. She took three icons that had not been crushed; when an icon fell but did not break, Father Alexei said that it should not be touched and urged her to go; at once he was struck from two sides in the back with rifle butts, but he did not fall, taking two steps forward. Father Alexei was taken under escort to Spirovo.

In August and September all the clergy of the Kozlovo district and of the neighbouring Novokarelsk district were arrested. The priests were accused of belonging to an anti-⁠state organization. They were cruelly tortured, many did not endure, signed the records the investigators needed and accused themselves and others. Father Alexei did not consent. On 13 November 1937 the priest Alexei Sibirsky was shot and buried in a common grave whose location is unknown.