George Yurenev

Holy Martyr George Yurenev was a layman and died shot on 20 November 1937, in Kazakhstan. He was numbered among the saints by the Russian Church in the year 2000.

George Nikolaevich Yurenev was born on 8 December 1887 in Vitebsk, in a noble family. In 1910 he finished the law faculty of the University of Saint Petersburg. He was secretary of the district court of Vitebsk and was elected city judge. In May 1920 he was arrested by the Soviet authorities and driven out of Vitebsk. He settled at Tver, called between 1931 and 1990 Kalinin, and, since legal activity was closed to him, worked as a statistician-⁠economist in the city health department.

On 15 March 1936 he was arrested again and imprisoned at Kalinin. On 8 May he was charged with participation in a counterrevolutionary church organization and with thwarting the measures of the Soviet power. He did not admit guilt. On 27 August 1936 he was sentenced by the Special Council of the NKVD to three years in a camp and sent to the Karaganda camp, where he worked as an economist. In early September 1937 he was arrested and charged that, serving his sentence in Karlag, he had belonged to a counterrevolutionary group called the True Orthodox Church, had taken part in the periodic gatherings of the group, had spread provocative rumours among the prisoners and had made counterrevolutionary propaganda, performing rites, among them memorial services for Nicholas Romanov. On 20 November 1937 the special troika of the NKVD Directorate of the Karaganda region sentenced him to death, together with the holy hieromartyrs Archbishop Sergius Zverev of Yelets, the priest Basil Krasnov, Archpriest Nicholas Romanovsky and his son Anthony. He was buried in an unknown common grave. He was glorified by the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Church in 2000. He is commemorated on 20 November.