Alexis Arkhangelsky

Saint Alexis Arkhangelsky, hieromartyr (1864 to 26 June 1918), was a priest in the Perm region, in the Shadrinsk district, shot by the Reds at Verkhnyaya Techa in the summer of 1918. He was canonized by decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of 17 July 2002, in the Synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors of Russia. He is commemorated (Old Style) on 13 June.

Life

He was born in 1864 in the village of Sazhinskoye, in the Kungur district, Perm province, in the family of the priest of the church of Saint Michael the Archangel in the village, Macarius Ilyich Arkhangelsky, and Maria Kirillovna; his brothers, Michael and Nicholas, also became priests. He entered the seminary at Perm, but because of his health had to break off in the third year. During the seminary he also worked as a teacher and received a certificate as teacher of a village parish school. He was appointed psalm reader at the Entry church in the village of Kamgort, then at the church of Saint Michael the Archangel in his native village; Bishop Cyril (Orlov), who was temporarily governing the diocese of Perm, ordained him reader; then he was psalm reader at the Holy Trinity church of the Verkhnyaya Techa convent. He was ordained deacon at the convent church, was teacher at the convent's parish school, and in 1891 permanent deacon. Bishop Athanasius (Parkhomovich) of Yekaterinburg and Irbit ordained him priest for the church of the Protection in the village of Koledino (Peschano-⁠Koledino) and teacher of religion at the people's school. He married Anna Efimovna Fedorova; their grandson, Nicholas Vasilievich Arkhangelsky (1921 to 1945), was a military pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Martyrdom

On 4 June 1918 the Whites occupied the village of Brodokalmak, and on 6 June the Red Petrograd detachment "Merciless", anarchist, reached Shadrinsk and was divided in two. One, of a hundred men, under Alexander Rumyantsev, was sent to Verkhnyaya Techa to reinforce the detachment of T. Anchugov. Among the Red soldiers drunkenness, robbery, abuse of the local people and requisitions for their own benefit were usual, and the locals were discontented. To restore revolutionary order, the commissar of the North Urals-⁠Siberia front, I. E. Georgenberger, arrived with a detachment of a hundred and fifty soldiers, twelve machine guns and a gun, and at his order arrests and executions were carried out.

On 26 June 1918 the Reds arrested Father Alexis and took him to the village of Verkhnyaya Techa. After a brief interrogation he was led to the bank of the river Techa and shot. About the details of the execution the "News of the Church of Yekaterinburg", no. 15 of 1918, wrote: before his death Father Alexis crossed himself and, with the words "I die innocent", fell, struck by bullets. The Red soldiers, throwing the body into a cart, took him to the village of Peschano-⁠Koledino, where he was buried by the parishioners in the parish cemetery. On 15 August 1918 the remains were moved to a common grave in the square by the church at Peschano-⁠Koledino, where nine other locals killed by the Reds were buried, after being tortured so badly that their relatives recognized them only by their clothes. On the same day, 26 June, the commissar Georgenberger reported by direct wire that he had "put things in order, shot three". In spite of the punitive measures he did not succeed in restoring the situation of the front: on 30 June Shadrinsk was taken by the Whites, and on 11 July Dalmatovo.