Constantine Lebedev

Holy Hieromartyr Constantine Lebedev, a priest, was born in 1884 in the Perm province. His full name was Constantine Nikolaevich Lebedev. He studied two years at the theological seminary in Perm; in 1909 he was ordained deacon and in 1912 priest. In September 1912 he was assigned to the church of the Holy Prophet Elijah at the Ust-⁠Utka landing, Verkhoturye district. Before the revolution he was transferred to the Saviour church in the village of Uetskoe, Kamyshlov district, seventy kilometres from Kamyshlov, near Poklevskaya station, on the left bank of the Pyshma river, close to Lake Uetskoe. The first stone church there was begun in 1807, in honour of the icon of the Mother of God "of the Sign", with the parishioners' money. In May 1863 a great fire destroyed almost the whole village and badly damaged the church, but the people, left without houses and property, collected money and restored it, with new wooden iconostases decorated with gilded carving.

During the revolution and civil war Father Constantine stayed to serve in his parish, even when the Red terror began. A wave of wild killings swept over the whole Kamyshlov district. The newspaper "Zauralsky Krai" wrote at that time that shepherds and the flock of Christ had suffered much from the Bolsheviks and that in the Kamyshlov, Shadrinsk and Yekaterinburg districts the clergy had been destroyed almost entirely. In the dreadful days of summer 1918 Father Constantine did not try to hide but went on celebrating the services.

On 8/21 July 1918, after the Liturgy, Red soldiers came to Father Constantine and demanded that he go with them to Poklevskaya station, to the Red Army field headquarters. Brought there, he was locked in a hut of the fire guard. In the night of 9/22 July the Red soldiers came to carry out his execution. Before death he was subjected to cruel tortures: his beard was torn out with flesh, the skin on his forehead was cut and pulled back, the soft parts of his palms were cut off and the tendons of his hands severed. A witness of the tortures was the night watchman, who heard Father Constantine asking his tormentors to kill him sooner. Death did not frighten him; it was for him rather a deliverance. The tormentors covered the priest's disfigured body with straw and manure. But the Lord, in the words of Saint John Chrysostom, clothed His servant in "the great burial shroud, martyrdom".

By decision of the Holy Synod of 17 July 2002, Saint Constantine Lebedev was glorified in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia of the Yekaterinburg diocese. He is commemorated on 22 July, the day of his death, on 11 February, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Yekaterinburg, and on 7 February, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, in the new style.