Sergius Lebedev

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Lebedev was a priest in the village of Altufyevo near Moscow and was shot at Butovo on 31 January 1938.

He was born on 16 September 1895 in the family of the priest Peter Mikhailovich Lebedev of the church of the Annunciation in the village of Salkovo, Podolsk district. He graduated from the Donskoy ecclesiastical school in 1910 and the Moscow Seminary in 1916, and then, because of the war, was mobilized and stayed in the army until 1917. In 1920 he was ordained priest. His father served at the church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Altufyevo; when he died, in 1927, the son took over the service. In 1929 his household was listed as kulak and his property requisitioned, but after petitions it was returned.

In 1937, with the NKVD order launching mass repression, an officer of the Mytishchi branch began to prepare the papers for his arrest. In December 1937 and January 1938 he summoned several witnesses; the records were written in advance and they signed them without reading, as they did against other villagers as well. Father Sergius was arrested on the very feast of Epiphany, 19 January 1938, and imprisoned at Taganka. The next day he was interrogated, and then for two more days without pause. The investigator reminded him that his brother had been tried in 1930 for an attack on the chairman of a village council, that he had visited a forbidden zone, and that he had spoken slander during the elections to the Supreme Soviet. The priest answered that he had heard of his brother's case but could confirm nothing, that he had only taken walks in the forest as the doctors recommended, and that he had never made any counter-⁠revolutionary speech. The inquiry ended, on 26 January 1938 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 31 January he was shot at the Butovo range and buried in an unknown common grave.

In August 1938 several officers of the Mytishchi branch were arrested for the unlawful methods used in their inquiries, and the officer who had handled his case shot himself at his arrest.

The saint is commemorated on 31 January and, in the new style, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.