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New Martyr20th century

New Hieromartyr Vladimir (Moshchansky) of Tver

20th century

Also known as Vladimir Moshchansky

A priest of Tver who suffered in the modern persecution of the Russian Church.

August 25New Calendar
Feast Day
September 7Old Calendar
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Life

New Hieromartyr Vladimir (Moshchansky) of Tver was a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church who is numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, the clergy and faithful who suffered in the Soviet persecution of the twentieth century. He is commemorated on August 25.

Almost nothing of his life is recorded. The Orthodox Church in America's synaxarion lists his commemoration but states that no information is available, giving neither his dates of birth and death nor any account of his priestly service, arrest, or martyrdom. He belongs to the obscure tail of the Russian New Martyrs whose names are preserved in the calendar even where their biographies have not survived in accessible record.

Troparion1 hymnReadHide
TroparionTone 4

By sharing in the ways of the Apostles,
you became a successor to their throne.
Through the practice of virtue, you found the way to divine contemplation, O inspired one of God;
by teaching the word of truth without error, you defended the Faith,
even to the shedding of your blood.
Hieromartyr Vladimir, entreat Christ God to save our souls.

Text used with permission of the Orthodox Church in America (oca.org).

Contributions & Legacy

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Sources and the Limits of the Record

The Orthodox Church in America's calendar entry for August 25 names "New Hieromartyr Vladimir (Moshchansky) of Tver" and confirms his rank as a New Hieromartyr, but the biographical page explicitly records that no information is available at this time. No corresponding article exists on Wikipedia, OrthodoxWiki, or other commonly accessible reference sources, and Russian-language hagiographical databases could not be reached to recover further detail.

What is known is therefore limited to the calendar: his name, his title as a martyred priest, his association with Tver, and his feast on August 25. His designation as a New Martyr places his death within the Soviet persecution of the Russian Church in the twentieth century.

Historical Context

The following describes the general setting of the Russian New Martyrs and is not a record of this saint's own life, for which no detail survives. Tver, the city with which he is associated, was renamed Kalinin in 1931, and the surrounding region was the site of intense anti-religious activity in the 1930s: the city's principal seventeenth-century church was demolished in 1935, and the Saviour Cathedral, the last vestige of the pre-Petrine epoch, was destroyed in 1936.

The persecution of the Russian Orthodox clergy reached its height during the Great Terror of 1937 and 1938. Church records of the period report that some 168,300 Orthodox clergy were arrested and that 106,300 of these were shot, while the number of functioning Orthodox churches in the Russian Republic fell from nearly 30,000 in 1927 to fewer than 500 by 1940. It was within this campaign that the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, among whom New Hieromartyr Vladimir is numbered, gave their lives.

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Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia
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Sources: OCA Synaxarion (oca.org), Lives of the Saints