Archimandrite Alexander (Grigoryev) – the tserkov rebel and victim of Stalinism. A timeline of his life and activity

Abstract

This is the first article in Poland on the life and activity of Archimandrite Alexander (Grigoryev, 1874–1938). He contributed significantly to the history of Russian translation of theological texts by introducing Posthumous Prophecies (1912), the writings of the Venerable Nil Mirotochivyi of Mount Athos to the Russians. Father Alexander also served as a senior member of the Clerical Censorship Committee in Saint Petersburg. Initially, he was a law-abiding monk and a zealous priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, however, he later became a rebel as he joined the post-Revolution (1917) Renovationism movement. Father Alexander was arrested multiple times, persecuted and imprisoned for years under wide-scale Stalinist purges. On 5 February 1938 he was executed by a firing squad in the Yenisei prison on the grounds of a case staged by Zelikh Rabinovich, a militsiya captain.