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Thursday, November 12
Prophet Ahijah the Shilonite
Sinaxarion

Hieromartyr

Athanasius Kislov

Archpriest of Tver

Archpriest born in 1880 to a peasant family in Pskov province, who died a martyr in 1937 at Tver.

Feast
August 10old style August 23
Reposed
193720th century
Place
Tver
Order
Martyrs

Life

Saint Athanasius Kislov, hieromartyr, was an archpriest in the Tver region and was shot for his faith on 23 August 1937, in the NKVD prison of Tver. The Russian Orthodox Church numbered him among the saints, the new martyrs and confessors of Russia.

He was born in March 1880 in the village of Taraskino in the Sebezh district of the Pskov governorate, into a Russian peasant family with many children. After the death of his parents he was raised, together with his sisters, in the family of Archpriest Joseph Nikanovich, the parish priest. After training as a psalm-⁠reader (1908 to 1910) he was appointed psalm-⁠reader at the Dormition church of the village of Yasluyzhi (Aizkalne), in the Preili district of the Vitebsk governorate. In 1910 Bishop Seraphim (Meshcheryakov) of Polotsk and Vitebsk ordained him deacon. He served as deacon in the church of a large parish in the village of Sirotino, in the Vitebsk governorate, and from 1918 as deacon in the church of the Ascension of the Lord in the village of Khvoshchno, in the Vitebsk region.

In 1924 he was ordained priest and appointed rector of the church in the village of Rudnya, Mezhansky district, in the diocese of Vitebsk. In 1930 the Kislov family moved to the Sebezh district of the Pskov region. Father Athanasius registered as priest of the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Prikhaby, in the Sebezh district.

On 13 August 1937 he was arrested. The special troika attached to the NKVD of the USSR for the Kalinin region accused him of having systematically conducted counter-⁠revolutionary agitation against Soviet power and the building of collective farms, and of having spread provocative rumours about war and the downfall of Soviet power, and sentenced him under article 58-10 of the criminal code to the highest penalty, shooting. On 23 August 1937 Father Athanasius Kislov was shot in the cellars of the inner NKVD prison of Tver. No information about the place of his burial exists.

His memory is kept on 10 August by the old calendar (23 August on the new), the day of his death.

Commemorated the same day August 10