Deacon
Hieromartyr Alexander Medvedev was born in 1889. He studied at the Yekaterinburg School for Psalm-readers but did not complete it. Alexander began serving in the Church early, first as an acolyte, and from 1 July 1910 he was permitted to perform the duties of a psalm-reader at the Church of St John the Forerunner in the village of Bolshoye-Trifonskoye of the Irbit district. Shortly before the Revolution Alexander Nilovich was ordained deacon. Until his martyrdom he served in Bolshoye-Trifonskoye.
Most residents of the village had well-established households and lived prosperously. The October Revolution did not evoke sympathy among them. The Committee of the Poor, created by the Bolsheviks to carry out various measures (such as requisitioning food and property), met with resistance from the main body of villagers. They refused to obey the committee or to give up their grain and property for the needs of the Red Army.
The Bolsheviks considered clergy responsible for the peasants’ refusal to accept Soviet power and strove in every possible way to undermine the Church’s authority in the eyes of the people, declaring that religion was unnecessary, calling it an opiate that stupefied popular consciousness. Everywhere churches were being desecrated, and clergy were being subjected to violence.
The twenty-seven-year-old Father Alexander continued his diaconal ministry in Bolshoye-Trifonskoye despite the reprisals against the clergy that continued incessantly throughout the summer of 1918. He served together with Priest Petr Snezhnitsky, who likewise did not abandon his parish in that terrible time. On 28 August / 10 September 1918 Deacon Alexander Medvedev was killed without trial or investigation by Red Guards at the Yegorshino station: he was cut down with sabres.
By decision of the Holy Synod on 17 July 2002, Deacon Alexander Medvedev was glorified among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
