Alexis Drozdov

Holy Hieromartyr Alexis Drozdov, a protodeacon, was born on 5 October 1883 in the town of Buy, Kostroma province, in the family of Alexander Nikolaevich Drozdov, secretary of the town administration. He reposed in the camp on 14 July 1942, after being unjustly arrested in 1937. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs and Confessors.

He finished the spiritual school at Galich and three years of seminary at Kostroma, then taught at a parish school in the village of Sudai. On 22 October 1904 he was ordained deacon at the Ipatiev Monastery, for the church of Saint Nicholas in Nikolskoe-⁠Goritsy, by Bishop Visarion of Kostroma. From 1906 he served in several churches: at Krasnoe, at the Lysva works in the Perm province, at Chetvertinovka in Podolia, and from 1916 at the cathedral of Saint Michael in Olgopol. From 1917 he served at Ruza and Serpukhov, from 1922 at Buy, from 1928 at Ivanteevka, from 1930 at the church of the Annunciation in Moscow, and from 1933 at the cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo. For his service he received the double orarion in 1929, and in 1930 he was raised to protodeacon. In August 1937 the dean who was leaving the cathedral wrote him a letter of thanks for his devout service and good order.

His life was divided between the services and the care of his gravely ill family: his wife, Nadezhda Afanasievna, had a heart defect, his elder daughter, Angelina, fell ill with rheumatism in 1932 and from 1935 never rose from her bed, and the younger, Nadezhda, fell ill with epilepsy in 1936. He had to be both father and nurse to them all.

On 17 November 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned at Taganka in Moscow. Two women of the cathedral, summoned as witnesses, said that they knew him only from the services; the investigator, however, wrote that he had carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation and gave them the records to sign, and they, out of weakness, signed. The protodeacon rejected all the charges. After three days, on 21 November 1937, the NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a labour camp, and he was sent to the Suslovo section of the Siblag camp in the Kemerovo region, where he arrived on 18 December. On 14 April 1939 he sent a petition for review of his case, saying that he had a sick family to care for and had had no time to talk with people; the troika's decision was nonetheless left in force, and in the camp he received a bad character report as an "active churchman" and one who refused work.

Protodeacon Alexis Drozdov reposed in the Suslovo section of the Siblag camp on 14 July 1942 and was buried in an unknown grave. His family did not know; on 10 May 1943 his daughters wrote to the NKVD, in a letter full of sorrow, asking for his release, explaining that their mother had died on 7 February 1943 and that they were left alone and helpless. He is commemorated on 14 July, and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, the Synaxis of the Saints of Kuzbass and the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints.