Alexei Veselovsky

Saint Alexei Veselovsky, hieromartyr, was a priest of the Russian Church and was shot on 11 December 1937 at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. He was numbered among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia. He is commemorated on 26 November (11 December on the new style), the day of his death, and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

He was born in the village of Gubino, Mozhaisk district, Moscow governorate, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Alexander Veselovsky. In 1887 he finished the theological school at Perervino, and in 1894 the theological seminary of Bethany. He worked as a teacher in a people's school. In 1908 he was ordained priest to the church of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple in the village of Klementievo, Ruza district (now the Mozhaisk district), where he served until 1910. From 1911 to 1937 he served at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Staraya Ruza, Moscow region. In the 1920s he was deprived of electoral rights and dekulakized. In 1930 he was arrested for the first time and exiled from the Ruza district. After two years he returned and continued his service.

He was married, but at the moment of his arrest he lived alone; his wife had already died, and his three children had grown up and lived apart. He was arrested on 29 November 1937 on a charge of active counter-⁠revolutionary agitation. He was imprisoned in Butyrka prison. At the interrogation he named no one and did not admit the charge of counter-⁠revolutionary activity. By decision of the special troika of the NKVD for the Moscow region of 5 December 1937 he was sentenced to death. He was shot on 11 December 1937 at the Butovo range and buried in an unknown common grave.