Alexis Zinovyev

Holy Hieromartyr Alexis Zinovyev, a priest, was born on 1 March 1879 in the family of the priest John Zinovyev. He was shot on 16 September 1937 at Butovo, near Moscow, after some twenty years of service in the village of Storozha. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs of Moscow.

From 1898 to 1904 he studied at the seminary of Tula, then was ordained priest for the church of the village of Voskresenskoe, in the Chern district of the Tula province. In 1914 he was moved to the church in the town of Efremov. From 1917 he served at the church of the village of Storozha, in the Moscow province, where in thirteen years the faithful came to love the good and zealous pastor. When in 1930 he was arrested on the charge of having formed anti-⁠Soviet groups in the village, almost all the villagers came to the village council and demanded his release. The authorities did not release him and took him under guard to the prison at Efremov, where he stayed about five weeks; then he was nevertheless freed and returned to his service.

In the early thirties, with collectivisation and the taking of all grain, the peasants hid their grain so as not to die of hunger. The delivery plan exceeded their strength. When the authorities began general searches in the village, the psalm-⁠reader Fyodor Kananykhin begged Father Alexis to keep his grain and flour for the time being on the bell tower. The priest foresaw that he might be arrested, but could not refuse. In 1932 word reached the OGPU that at Storozha the grain collection plan was fulfilled only to 8.9 per cent and that the priest, the psalm-⁠reader and the peasants Ivan Popov, Vasily Razenkov and Andrei Beregovsky, who often went to church, were to blame. On 2 December 1932 all were arrested and imprisoned at Efremov. On 4 and 6 December searches were made in the church and two sacks of rye, a sack of millet and fifteen poods of flour were found, taken against the collection. On 19 February 1933 the OGPU troika sentenced Father Alexis to five years in a camp and sent him to forced labour at the White Sea-⁠Baltic Canal; the psalm-⁠reader and two peasants received three years, and Ivan Popov one year of forced labour. The heavy labour so ruined his health that he was declared an invalid and, after six months, released. He returned to Storozha and served again.

In 1935 the authorities seized the church and turned it into a granary, and Father Alexis afterwards served molebens in the homes of the faithful, until the new wave of persecution in 1937. On 24 August 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned at Taganka. He admitted that he had served in the homes of the faithful, but denied any anti-⁠Soviet conversation, saying only that life is hard, especially for him. On 15 September the NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and the next day, 16 September 1937, Priest Alexis Zinovyev was shot and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range. He is commemorated on 16 September, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints and the Synaxis of the Saints of Tula, on 5 October.