John Aleshkovsky

Holy Hieromartyr John Aleshkovsky, a priest, was born on 13 February 1888 in the village of Novoe Rakitino in the Lebedyan district of the Voronezh province, in the family of the priest Gregory Aleshkovsky. He finished the seminary in 1909 and was ordained deacon, and in 1915 priest and sent to a parish in Finland, where he served until 1918. After Finland separated from Russia he returned to his homeland. He was first arrested in 1929 but soon freed. That same year his house and all his property were taken for unpaid taxes.

In the 1930s he served at the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Malyshevo, in the Ramenskoye district of the Moscow region. Two priests questioned by the NKVD on 20 and 21 January 1938 signed, as false witnesses, statements saying that the father had systematically carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation and was ready, in case of an overthrow in the country, to shoot the Communists. On 26 January he was arrested on a charge of counterrevolutionary activity and imprisoned at Taganka in Moscow.

The investigator demanded that he speak about the agitation and the intention of taking repressive measures against the Communists. The priest answered that he had carried on no agitation and had thought of no such measures. Asked in what he disagreed with the measures of the party and Soviet power, he said that he disagreed, first, because their children were not given equal rights in education, and second, because he considered the isolation of the clergy unlawful. On anti-⁠Soviet agitation, he said that he did not admit guilt. On 11 February 1938 the NKVD troika condemned him to death. The priest John Aleshkovsky was shot on 17 February 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.

The Church commemorates him on 17 February, the day of his death, in the new style, and also on the movable days of the synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and of the Saints of Moscow, on 23 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Lipetsk, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.