Peter Lebedinsky

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Lebedinsky (Pyotr Ivanovich Lebedinsky), a priest, was born in 1881 in the family of a priest. He served in the village of Sorochki, Gagino district, Nizhny Novgorod region. In 1935 he was arrested for a sermon and sentenced to two years of exile. He was arrested again on 8 September 1937 in the village of Sorochki, charged with having organized on 6 July 1937 a solemn service which drew peasants away from work on the collective farm. He was sentenced to death.

With him ten people from the Gagino district, priests and laymen, were arrested. No one admitted guilt. The service of 6 July, in which four priests and many believers had taken part, was counted as an anti-⁠state action because it drew peasants from work, although after the service no political sermon was given. On 17 September 1937 eight of them were sentenced to death and shot: the priests John Dmitrievich Romashkin, Nikolai Alexandrovich Khvoshchev, Alexander Semyonovich Nikolsky and Peter Ivanovich Lebedinsky, and the peasants of the village of Pokrov Alexander Ivanovich Blokhin, Peter Vasilievich Lonskov, Stephen Semyonovich Mityushin and Vasily Kireevich Yezhov. Peter Lebedinsky received martyrdom on 17 September 1937. He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in August 2000.

He is commemorated on 17 September, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 12 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Nizhny Novgorod, in the new style.