Anatoly Levitsky

Holy Hieromartyr Anatoly Levitsky, a priest, was born in 1894 in the settlement of Votkinsk Works, Vyatka province, in the family of the priest Athanasius Levitsky. He was shot on 3 November 1937, together with six other condemned men, in the camp, in the Kemerovo region. He was glorified by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church of 20 August 2000. Since 2018 he is numbered among the twelve saints of the Synaxis of the Saints of Udmurtia.

Votkinsk Works, born in the eighteenth century around an iron foundry, was a small industrial town of twenty-⁠five thousand inhabitants, with seven churches, in one of which his father served. He studied at the spiritual seminary in Vyatka, was ordained priest and for a time was dean of his district. In 1933 he was arrested and sentenced by the OGPU troika of Western Siberia to five years in a camp; he served the sentence in the Novoivanovo section of the Siblag camp. On 30 September 1937 he was arrested again, in the camp, together with Bishop Paulinus Kroshechkin and other clergy, on a charge of "counter-⁠revolutionary agitation". At the interrogation he confessed that with other clergy he had taken part in molebens in the camp, but rejected all the charges of counter-⁠revolutionary activity. He firmly denied the testimony of all the witnesses: "All the witnesses' testimonies I reject entirely, for they testify falsely against me." If the records of the interrogations of 1933 and 1937 are compared, they differ strikingly: in the last there is no discouragement, no attempt to justify himself, no names are named, no compromise at all. In the camp Father Anatoly seemed to have gained spiritual strength and firmness.

On 28 October he was sentenced, with the other accused, to the supreme penalty, and on 3 November 1937 he was shot with six others and buried in an unknown place. The fate of the eighth, unnamed, arrested man is not known. At the Council of Bishops of 20 August 2000 five clergy executed in the case of Archbishop Paulinus Kroshechkin were numbered among the saints, among them Father Anatoly Levitsky. He is commemorated on 3 November, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kuzbass and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Udmurtia.