The Morning of 9 September 1990

Men left his house at Semkhoz early on the morning of Sunday 9 September 1990 to walk to the railway platform, take the electric train to Novaya Derevnya, and serve the Liturgy. On the path he was struck from behind on the head with an axe or a comparable heavy implement. He was able to make his way back toward his own gate, and died of blood loss. His briefcase was gone. He was fifty-five.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Moscow Patriarchate)

The Sequence

The essential facts are reported consistently across Russian and Western sources.

The date and time. Sunday 9 September 1990, early morning; the Russian crime reporting places the attack at around 6:30 a.m. (Komsomolskaya Pravda, “Почему убийство священника Александра Меня за 35 лет так и не было раскрыто?”, 2025).

The place. A footpath at Semkhoz, then a settlement in the Zagorsk (now Sergiev Posad) district of the Moscow region, between Men’s house and the local railway platform (Lenta.ru, “Сионисты, алкоголики и фанатики…”, 9 September 2020; English Wikipedia, art. “Alexander Men”). Men lived at Semkhoz and commuted by suburban electric train to his parish at Novaya Derevnya, near Pushkino — a journey he had made for twenty years.

The purpose of the journey. He was going to serve the Sunday Liturgy (Orthodox Encyclopedia, art. “Мень Александр Владимирович”: struck by an unknown assailant while walking to the station for the Sunday service).

The attack. He was struck from behind on the head. The Moscow Patriarchate’s own encyclopedia is careful to say “presumably with an axe”; the Russian press reporting likewise records that the weapon was an axe or a shovel or comparable heavy implement, since the weapon was never recovered and the identification rests on the wound (Orthodox Encyclopedia, art. “Мень”; Komsomolskaya Pravda, 2025). The popular literature says “axe” flatly; the forensic position is less certain than that.

What followed. Gravely wounded, Men turned back and made his way toward his own house, bleeding heavily; he reached the vicinity of his gate. He died of blood loss (English Wikipedia, art. “Alexander Men”; Lenta.ru, 9 September 2020). [Disputed: the accounts differ on where he died. Several state that he reached his cottage and that his wife took him toward hospital, where he was pronounced dead or died on the way; the Russian crime reporting states that he died at the scene near his house from blood loss. All agree that he was conscious enough to move a considerable distance after the blow, and that no medical intervention could have saved him in the time available.]

What was taken. His briefcase disappeared and was never recovered. So was the weapon. This is one of the few pieces of hard evidence in the case, and it is the fact on which the “documents” theory of the murder rests (Lieutenant General Vyacheslav Pankin, quoted in the summary of the investigation: “the briefcase with the priest’s vestments also disappeared”; Lenta.ru, 9 September 2020, on the missing briefcase and the never-recovered weapon).

What He Had Been Doing the Night Before

Men had lectured in Moscow on the evening of 8 September 1990. The lecture was titled “Christianity,” and it was the inaugural lecture of the Open Orthodox University he had founded that year (Open Orthodox University of Alexander Men, notice on the 8 September 1990 lecture; see The Public Lectures and Television).

He therefore spent the last evening of his life telling a Moscow audience that Christianity had taken only its “first, timid steps in the history of the human race,” and was dead within about twelve hours.

The Funeral

Men was buried on 11 September 1990. The funeral service was celebrated within the enclosure of the Sretenskaya (Meeting of the Lord) Church at Novaya Derevnya by Metropolitan Yuvenaly (Poyarkov) of Krutitsy and Kolomna, the ruling hierarch of the Moscow diocese, and Men was buried beside the church he had served for twenty years (Православная энциклопедия, art. “Мень Александр Владимирович”).

Two things about this deserve notice, both of them relevant to the later argument about his standing in the Church.

The rank of the celebrant. A metropolitan of the Moscow Patriarchate, the diocesan hierarch, buried him. This is not what happens to a priest under a canonical cloud. Whatever was said about Men before and after, the Church of which he was a priest buried him as one of its own, in the person of his bishop.

The date in the calendar. 11 September in the Church calendar is the feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. The coincidence was noticed at once and has been remarked on ever since, most often in the form used by OrthodoxWiki: that Men had been “a voice crying in the wilderness” and was buried on the day of the Forerunner’s beheading (OrthodoxWiki, art. “Alexander Men”).

That resonance should be handled with care, and this collection handles it as follows. It is a real coincidence of the calendar and it moved people at the time; it is not evidence of anything, it is not an ecclesial judgment, and it does not make Men a martyr in the Church’s technical sense. The habit of reading the calendar as commentary is an old and legitimate Christian instinct, and it is also the exact mechanism by which popular veneration outruns ecclesial fact. Both should be said (see The Question of Glorification).

The Site

A church of St. Sergius of Radonezh was subsequently built at Semkhoz on the site of Men’s death, together with a chapel; the Liturgy is served there, and commemorations — including the marking of the eightieth anniversary of his birth in January 2015 — are held in it (RIA Novosti, “Память протоиерея Александра Меня почтили в Сергиевом Посаде,” 22 January 2015; Orthodox Encyclopedia, art. “Мень,” recording that a chapel was later erected at the site of his death).

The dedication is apt in a way that is probably not accidental: Men was baptized in secret at Zagorsk, the town of St. Sergius, and was killed within the same district fifty-five years later, and the church that stands where he fell is dedicated to that town’s saint.

What the Facts Do and Do Not Support

It is worth ending this file with a plain statement of the evidentiary position, because the next file deals with theories and the boundary should be drawn first.

Documented: the date, the approximate time, the location, the direction and purpose of his journey, a blow to the head from behind with a heavy implement, movement back toward his house, death from blood loss, the missing briefcase, the never-recovered weapon, the funeral of 11 September by Metropolitan Yuvenaly, the burial at Novaya Derevnya.

Not documented: the identity of the assailant or assailants; whether there was one or more than one; the motive; whether the attack was planned or opportunistic; whether the taking of the briefcase was the purpose of the crime or an afterthought.

Everything in the next file falls on the second side of that line.

References

Православная энциклопедия [Orthodox Encyclopedia], art. “Мень Александр Владимирович” (pravenc.ru/text/2562996.html). (Struck “presumably with an axe” by an unknown assailant on the way to the station for Sunday services; funeral 11 September at the Sretenskoye church by Metropolitan Yuvenaly; burial beside the church; a chapel later erected at the site of the death.)
Lenta.ru, “Сионисты, алкоголики и фанатики: 30 лет назад убили одного из главных священников России — Александра Меня. Дело так и не раскрыто,” 9 September 2020. (The attack near his home at Semkhoz; death from blood loss; the stolen briefcase; the never-recovered weapon.)
Komsomolskaya Pravda, “Почему убийство священника Александра Меня за 35 лет так и не было раскрыто?” (kp.ru, 2025). (The time of the attack, c. 6:30 a.m.; the fatal blow “allegedly from an axe or shovel”; the missing briefcase and weapon.)
English Wikipedia, art. “Alexander Men.” (The walk from the cottage at Semkhoz to the train for Novaya Derevnya; the blow from behind; the return toward the house; death from blood loss.)
OrthodoxWiki, art. “Alexander Men.” (The funeral falling on the feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, and the comparison drawn from it.)
RIA Novosti, “Память протоиерея Александра Меня почтили в Сергиевом Посаде,” 22 January 2015. (The Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh built on the site of his death at Semkhoz; the eightieth-anniversary Liturgy there.)
Open Orthodox University of Alexander Men, notice on the lecture of 8 September 1990.