the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

348
honoured protopriest. People of all classes came to him for confession. He
was an unacquisitive lover of the poor, with a wonderful simplicity and a rare
gift for preaching. He taught the Law of God without pay in many parish
schools, and this in spite of the fact that he had ten children to look after in
addition to his matushka.
After the revolution Fr. Constantine spoke boldly from the ambon against
the excesses of the atheist authorities, who planted atheism in the souls of
children in schools and poisoned their consciousness with propaganda of
unrealisable promises of peace and land, and who had plunged a vast and
prosperous country into a terrible age of medieval terror and civil war.
When Trotsky entered Sviyazhsk in July, 1918, the 64-year-old Fr.
Constantine was accused of shooting from the bell-tower of the Sviyazhsk
cathedral from a machine gun when the Red Army approached. His son tried
to intercede for him, for which he was immediately shot. Then the protopriest
was bayonetted to death. This took place on July 25 / August 7, the feast of St.
Anna. The bodies of father and son lay on the city square for two days. People
feared to approach them for fear of being shot for showing simple human
compassion.
*
Priest Orestes Konstantinovich Alexandrov was born in 1863. He finished
his studies at a theological seminary and in 1885 was ordained to the
priesthood. In 1908 he became superior of the Trinity cathedral in the city of
Spassk and teacher of the Law of God in the parish school. He lived very
simply, in a one-storey house with a garden, a kitchen-garden, a cow and a
horse, although he had, in addition to his five sons and daughters, several
nephews to look after and a poor orphan called Lilya. Fr. Orestes loved the
poor and never refused anyone anything. He was greatly revered in Spassk.
On July 31, 1918 a Red Army soldier came secretly to Fr. Orestes and
warned him to flee, since he had heard that he would be arrested the next
day. However, Fr. Orestes decided that he could not forsake his flock. The
next day he was arrested together with two other citizens (one a merchant)
and taken to the commanding officer's residence. The Latvian soldiers took Fr.
Orestes into a separate room, sat him on a chair and mocked him. Then they
danced around him, spat at him, pulled out his hair and threw him to the
ground, where they trampled on him. When Fr. Orestes' matushka Lydia
could not find him near the commanding officer's residence a boatman came
up to her and told her that the Latvians had taken the three prisoners down
river. Together with the boatmen, matushka found the bodies, which were
barely covered with branches. All three had been tortured and then shot in
the back of the head. Batyushka was buried in the city cemetery, which has
now been drowned.
348