Nicholas Lebedev

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Lebedev was a priest in the village of Russkaya Kosheva, in the Tver province, and was shot on 17 September 1937, at the age of seventy.

He was born in 1867 in the village of Loshchemli in the Vyshny Volochyok district of the Tver province, in the family of the priest Andrei Lebedev. After the Tver seminary he was ordained priest. In the thirties he served at the church in Russkaya Kosheva, in the Krasny Kholm district. He had a wife, Praskovia Ivanovna, two sons and two daughters, but at the beginning of the thirties the children had grown and gone to other towns. So as not to bring harm to them, Father Nicholas hardly wrote to them and did not give their addresses, saying that he had no contact. Even his wife did not live with him in the village, but at Bezhetsk. In 1937, when he turned seventy, it could be hoped that the authorities would not arrest him, but arrest and martyrdom have no age limit.

He was arrested on 8 August 1937 and imprisoned at Bezhetsk. After three days he was interrogated about the anti-⁠Soviet gatherings of the clergy held by Bishop Gregory Kozyrev. He answered that he had been once, at the bishop's name day, that the priests talked lively about various matters, but he could not say whether anti-⁠Soviet words were spoken, for he did not remember. Of a conversation in 1934 with the reader Funtikov he said that he had told him as news about the murder of Kirov and spoke of the start of free sale of bread, supposing that people would buy stores and the bread would vanish again. The faithful came to him with complaints about the lack of bread, the weight of taxes and asked whether there would be war; he showed sympathy and explained that the bread had gone partly to Spain and to the Red Army. He said that war was being prepared, but it was not known when. On 15 August he said that in his heart he was dissatisfied with the closing of the churches of Bezhetsk, but had done nothing to prevent it. He denied belonging to a counter-⁠revolutionary group of clergy. The investigators, displeased with the answers of the elderly priest, who would not sign false testimony, called him again and again; at the last interrogation, of 17 August, he repeated that he did not admit guilt. On 13 September an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 17 September 1937 Father Nicholas was shot. In August 2000 he was numbered among the saints by the Jubilee Council of Bishops.

He is remembered on 17 September, on 18 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.