Alexander Lebedev

Alexander Lebedev was a priest in Voronezh province and ended his life as a hieromartyr in the Siblag camp in the Kuzbass region, shot in 1937. He was canonized by the Bishops' Council of the Russian Church in August 2000.

He was born in November 1878 in the village of Rozhdestvenskaya Khava, into the family of the priest Kapiton Lebedev. He graduated from the church school (1894) and the Voronezh seminary (1901), attended the theological academy for a time without finishing it, married Anna Ivanovna and had a daughter, Natalia. He was ordained deacon in 1904 and priest in 1905, served in several villages of the district, and from 1934 was archpriest and dean at the Protection of the Mother of God church at Kashirskoye.

On 6 March 1936 he was arrested; a large number of religious books were found at the search. He was sentenced to five years of camp for counter-⁠revolutionary agitation and sent to the Suslovo section of Siblag, to cut timber. In the camp he was accused in a new case, with Archbishop Seraphim (Samoylovich) and other priests, of taking part in a "counter-⁠revolutionary group", and he did not plead guilty. The NKVD troika of Novosibirsk sentenced him to death on 28 October and he was shot on 4 November 1937. He was rehabilitated in 1961. He is commemorated on 4 November (new style), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kuzbass (last Sunday of August), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Voronezh and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.