Eleutherius Pechennikov

Holy Venerable Martyr Eleutherius (in the world Pechennikov) was a schema-⁠archimandrite of the Russian Church. He was born in 1870 in Pripechino, Cherikov district, Mogilev province, and was shot on 27 August 1937 at Lisya Balka near the city of Shymkent. The Russian Church numbered him among the saints in the year 2000.

He was born into a peasant family. In 1892 he was drafted into the army and served as a private. It is not known when he was ordained priest. He was a regimental priest. In 1896 he was appointed hieromonk at the Trinity Monastery of Smolensk, and later he became its deputy superior as well.

He was arrested several times. On 5 December 1922 the Smolensk provincial section of the political police arrested him as an opponent of the Renovationists and a supporter of Patriarch Tikhon; on 10 December he was released, on condition of not leaving the city, and was raised to the rank of hegumen. On 20 March 1924 he was arrested on a charge of taking part in a counter-⁠revolutionary organization and held in Smolensk; on 31 March he was released, and on 3 April the charge was dropped. On 26 February 1930 he was arrested again, in the case of the Smolensk Cathedral Brotherhood. On 28 May 1930 the Collegium of the political police sentenced him to ten years in a camp. He served his term at the Solovki camp, and in 1932 was moved to Mankent station in South Kazakhstan.

On 23 June 1937 Father Eleutherius was arrested once more, accused of being the head of a secret monastery in Mankent, where tonsures into secret monasticism were performed. He did not admit guilt. On 26 July 1937 the special three-⁠man tribunal of the political police of the South Kazakhstan region sentenced him to death, and on 27 August 1937 he was shot at Lisya Balka. He was buried in an unknown common grave. He was rehabilitated on 5 July 1958.

He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, for veneration throughout the Church, by the decision of the Jubilee Council of Bishops held in Moscow on 13 to 16 August 2000. He is commemorated in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Solovki, and on the day of his death, 14 August by the old calendar (27 August by the new).