Alexis Nechaev

Holy Hieromartyr Alexis Nechaev, a priest, was born in 1875 in the village of Rameshki, in the Bezhetsk district of the Tver province, in the family of the priest Ephraim Nechaev. He was shot on 27 November 1937. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs and Confessors.

After finishing the seminary he was ordained priest and served, in the years of persecution of the nineteen-⁠twenties, at a church in the diocese of Tver. In 1929 the authorities demanded of him a tax set at will, so large that he could not have paid it even by selling all his belongings. For non-⁠payment, on 31 October 1929 he was sentenced to three years in prison and sent to a labour colony at Nizhny Novgorod.

After his return he served at a church in Staritsa. On 20 November 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned at Rzhev. Two days later the investigator questioned him. The priest held so firm that it was clear he would never give false testimony in any circumstances, and the investigator had to be content with a formal record of questions and answers. Charged with counter-⁠revolutionary agitation in Staritsa, he said: "I, Nechaev, do not admit guilt." He admitted only that he had been tried in 1929 for non-⁠payment of obligations to the state.

The same day the investigation was closed, and three days later the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. After seven days in prison Priest Alexis Nechaev was shot on 27 November 1937. He is commemorated on 27 November, on 7 February and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, on 18 July.