Stephen Kuskov

Holy Venerable Martyr Stephen Kuskov was a hieromonk in the Tver region and was shot on 17 September 1937 for having gone with the molieben to the homes of believers. He was canonized in 2000.

Stephen (Stepan Ivanovich Kuskov) was born on 10 December 1870 in the town of Vyshny Volochyok, Tver province, in the family of the owner of a turner's workshop. After school he entered a monastery, where he did the obedience of a singer, and in 1898 he received monastic tonsure. The upheavals after 1917 found him in Petropavlovsk; cut off from the Tver diocese by the front line, he served as psalm-⁠reader at the church. The city was taken now by the Reds, now by the Whites; some priests left with the Whites, others were killed by the Bolsheviks, and priests were lacking; the monk Stephen was ordained hieromonk. After the Whites left he moved first to the Kuban, then returned to the Tver diocese and was sent to the church in the village of Nikolskoe, Belo-⁠Omut district. Persecution intensified. In 1934, after Pascha, he went as usual with the molieben to the homes of believing peasants; until then the authorities had not objected, but now the village council threatened him with arrest. In 1936 Soviet power began a new persecution aimed expressly at the Orthodox Church; many bishops and clergy were struck from the register, and Father Stephen lost his place at the church.

He was arrested among the first, after the state decided to destroy the Orthodox priests. The next day, 7 August 1937, the investigator questioned the landlady with whom he lodged: she stated that she had heard him complain of present life, saying that the authorities mocked the people, forcing it to work day and night, worse than at forced labour. The second witness was the chairman of the village council in whose area the church stood, who said that the priest went around houses on religious feasts, though it was forbidden to him, and that he was probably carrying on anti-⁠Soviet agitation. At the interrogation Father Stephen answered that he had indeed gone about the yards to hold services, but had carried out no agitation about a coming war and the fall of Soviet power and did not admit guilt, and of a counter-⁠revolutionary organization led by former landlords he knew nothing. The same day the investigator wrote that the priest "conducts insurrectionary agitation". On 13 September an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 17 September 1937 he was shot.

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