Ambrose Astakhov

Holy Venerable Martyr Ambrose (in the world Alexei Anikeevich Astakhov) was an archimandrite of the Russian Church. He was born in 1860 in Tambov province and was shot on 21 October 1937 at the Butovo firing range. He was canonized in 2000 for veneration throughout the Church. His commemoration is on 8 October by the old calendar (21 October by the new), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo.

He was born into a peasant family. He served at the Kazan Monastery in Golovino. From 1930 to 1937 Archimandrite Ambrose lived in Khovrino, where he served as a priest outside the staff at the church of the Icon of the Mother of God of the Sign.

On 29 September 1937 he was arrested in the case of Archbishop Dimitry (Dobroserdov) and held in the Butyrka prison. At the interrogation the investigator asked who visited him at home and for what purpose. He answered that people who honoured him visited him and came for advice, which he gave only on matters of family life. The investigator said that the investigation knew that he worked on his admirers in an anti-⁠Soviet spirit, and he admitted that he had said that Soviet power was persecuting religion and the clergy and that he considered it the power of the antichrist, sent as a punishment of the people for their sins. He said that he had a hostile attitude toward Soviet power, which he regarded as transitory, that by his convictions he was a monarchist and that people in Russia who in their folly had overthrown the tsar were now repenting, because they saw much injustice from Soviet power, which there had not been in the time of the tsar.

On 17 October 1937 the three-⁠man tribunal of the political police for the Moscow region sentenced him to death, under article 58, points 10 and 11, for participation in a counter-⁠revolutionary group and systematic anti-⁠Soviet agitation. The document names the archimandrite Alexis, after his name in the world. He was shot on 21 October 1937 and buried at the Butovo range. He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the decision of the Jubilee Council of Bishops of 13 to 16 August 2000.