Vladimir Moshchansky

Holy Hieromartyr Vladimir Moshchansky was an archpriest in Tver province and died in the prison of Vyshny Volochyok on 7 September 1938, at the age of seventy-⁠two, after his arrest in February.

Family and ministry

He was born on 15 June 1866 in the village of Zaborye in the Vyshny Volochyok district, in the family of Archpriest Dimitry Konstantinovich Moshchansky, who served first at Zaborye and then at the church of the Prophet Elijah at the Pyatnitskoe cemetery in Vyshny Volochyok. His mother, Anna, a priest's daughter, was early widowed; very devout, she fed all the poor, and at her death they all came to see her off. He finished the Tver seminary, married Eudocia, daughter of the priest John Dmitrievsky, and was ordained deacon at the church in the village of Rogachevo, Rzhev district. They had a daughter, Olga, and three sons, Vladimir, Alexander and Nicholas; Eudocia died at the birth of the last child, and her unmarried sister, Alexandra Ivanovna, helped raise them. Then he was ordained priest at the Dormition church in the village of Spasskoe, Kashin district, and later raised to archpriest, and served there until the persecution.

His parishioners loved him for gentleness, generosity and care for the needy. Despite poverty, he gave to the destitute, sometimes his last coin. When he later came to Vyshny Volochyok and lived beside the factory workers, they, after spending their wages, came to borrow from him; Alexandra Ivanovna said they would not pay it back, but he gave all the same. He spent his life in prayer and fasting. In the morning, when there were no services, he prayed for a long time, and in his free time he read Scripture. In his years of illness the doctors gave him a medicine to be taken with milk, but on Wednesdays and Fridays he would not take it, so as not to break the fast.

In Vyshny Volochyok

In 1924 the authorities closed the church at Spasskoe and took the parish house. The last service was served, with the church full, all kneeling, many weeping. The whole parish accompanied him thirty kilometers on foot to Kashin. From there he moved to Vyshny Volochyok, into the house of his father, who had died in the meantime. His children begged him to stop serving, for fear of persecution, but he would not. He served at the Winter Cathedral and walked about the town in his cassock. On Tuesday the akathist was read at the Kazan cathedral, on Wednesday the akathist of Saint Panteleimon at the Holy Trinity church, on Thursday that of Saint Nicholas. He missed none of them. When age and illness kept him at home, he went out into the street with his granddaughter Olga, who had come to live with him at eight after her mother's death, and said, listening to the bells: "That is ringing at the Kazan, that at the Holy Trinity, that at Saint Nicholas." He himself taught the girl, the prayers first. When Olga came home from school with a mocking rhyme about priests, he said only: "Did you think, Olya, that your grandfather is a priest?", and she fell on her knees and asked his forgiveness. On Saturdays of the dead he served a memorial service at the Pyatnitskoe cemetery, but first he went to another place, as yet without graves, as if it had been revealed to him that he would be buried in a prison grave.

The arrest

In 1937-1938 the harsh persecutions came. Before the feast of the Meeting of the Lord, on 13 February 1938, three men of the NKVD came to his house, searched it and arrested him, taking small silver spoons, a watch, a gold bracelet and crosses. In prison the doctor found, at seventy-⁠two, sclerosis of the heart and senile weakness. "Duty" witnesses, among them a Renovationist priest, said that he was not registered, served only on great feasts, called the constitution a deception and spoke mockingly of Soviet scientists. At the interrogation the priest denied any counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, admitted only a conversation in which he defended his opinion about one scholar, not with a political aim, and refused to admit guilt. He died in prison on 7 September 1938 from the harsh conditions.

The saint is commemorated on 7 September and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 18 July (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver.