Leonid Lebedev

Holy Hieromartyr Leonid Lebedev, a priest (1884-1921), served at the Holy Trinity church in the settlement of Sannikovskoe, Akmolinsk district. His full name was Leonid Dimitrievich Lebedev. He was born in 1884 in the family of a priest. He completed the full course of the theological school in Yaroslavl, in the fourth class, in the second category. In 1901 he entered the Yaroslavl theological seminary, where he studied with interruptions, for unclear reasons, and was sent for re-⁠examination in several subjects, above all mathematics. At the beginning of 1908 he was on the list of pupils of the fifth class; of his studies after that nothing more is known. He married and they had two children.

On 30 January 1909 he was confirmed as a priest. On 20 or 27 October 1910 he was appointed priest of the Holy Trinity church in the settlement of Sannikovskoe, Akmolinsk district (now the village of Ulyanovskoe in the Karaganda region). The village arose in 1902 and consisted of settlers from the central regions of Russia; in 1917 it had nearly two thousand inhabitants. In 1910 a three-⁠class primary school was opened in the village, where Father Leonid began to teach religion. For his service he several times received awards from the local bishop. In 1912-1917 the Sannikovskoe church school was among the best in the Akmolinsk district. Father Leonid found funds to build a school not only for his own school but also for the one in the settlement of Dubovskoe. In 1916 he was appointed dean of the new deanery no. 36, with eight churches in the Akmolinsk, Pavlodar and Karkaralinsk districts. In Sannikovskoe a brick church was being built, still not consecrated in 1916; there were difficulties with the interior decoration of the iconostasis and of the whole building, and church vessels, fabrics, service books and priestly vestments were very scarce.

On 25 November 1919 the Red Army occupied the city of Akmolinsk (now Nur-⁠Sultan). The retreat of General Dutov's army passed through Sannikovskoe. At the end of November the priest Leonid Lebedev, with the clergy and the volost elder D. I. Moskvichenko, met General Dutov with the ringing of bells. In 1921 the Ishim uprising of the Cossacks broke out, whose centre was Karkalinsk. The rebel Cossacks were defeated. At the moment of the Cossacks' retreat, Father Leonid, as dean, was making the round of his parishes. On the way he met a Cossack detachment going toward Sannikovskoe and reached his village with them. Entering the village, the Cossacks asked Father Leonid to serve a prayer service, which he did. Then the Cossacks took reprisals on the local Communists.

Soon a detachment of Red soldiers entered the village. The relatives of the slain Communists pointed to Father Leonid as one who had taken part in their death, since they had seen him enter the village with the Cossacks. They also recalled to him the meeting of General Dutov. The priest Leonid Lebedev and the psalm-⁠reader Isidore Reshetkin were stripped naked by the Red soldiers and led to death on a hill behind the village, opposite the church. Father Leonid and the psalm-⁠reader Isidore joined their fingers for the sign of the Cross to cross themselves for the last time toward their church, but their fingers were cut off. Then they were hacked down with sabres.

The relatives were not allowed to take the martyrs' bodies for burial, and for ten days the bodies lay on the hill. Villagers went to look at them. The martyrs' heads were cut off, but not entirely, hanging by the skin, and their eyes had been pecked out by birds. After ten days the relatives took the bodies of the priest Leonid and the reader Isidore and buried them at the edge of the village cemetery. According to another version, the priest Leonid and the psalm-⁠reader Isidore Reshetkin were shot by the Communist T. Z. Magdalin, who commanded the detachment of Red soldiers and wished to kill them with his own hand.

The priest Leonid Lebedev and Isidore Reshetkin were numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000. Saint Leonid is commemorated on 7 February, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, in the new style.