Gennady Letyuk

Holy Venerable Martyr Gennady Letyuk, a hieromonk, in the world Gregory Lavrentievich Letyuk, was born in 1874 in the village of Belovody in the Mariupol district of the Kharkov province, in the family of a Ukrainian peasant. He died in prison on 18 December 1941.

In 1889 he finished the zemstvo school, and in 1895 he entered the Monastery of Saints Peter and Paul in the Chernigov province as a novice. In the same year he was called up for a month in the rear militia, then transferred to the Belogostitsy Monastery in the Yaroslavl province, where he later received monastic tonsure with the name Gennady and was ordained. From 1928, after the closing of the monastery, Father Gennady served as priest in various parishes of the Rostov district. In 1929 he was arrested on a charge of counterrevolutionary activity, but, since the charge was not proved, he was soon released. After that he served in parishes of the Rostov district, and from 1938 he was rector of the church in the village of Petrovskoe in the Yaroslavl region, today the settlement of Petrovsk.

On 19 February 1941 he was arrested and charged with discrediting the existing order and slandering the Constitution and the leaders of the party and the government. He refused to confirm the charge. On 9 May 1941 he was convicted, under articles 58-10 and 58-11 of the criminal code, as a participant in an anti-⁠Soviet group of churchmen, to eight years in prison. On 9 June 1941 he wrote an appeal against the injustice of the sentence, in which he repeated his innocence; the same day article 58-11 was removed from the sentence, but the condition of the convict did not change. Interrogations and imprisonment undermined the health and strength of the sixty-⁠seven-⁠year-⁠old hieromonk, who died on 18 December 1941 in the Yaroslavl prison. The place of his burial is not known. He is commemorated, according to the Azbyka page, on 5 June and 18 December.