Stephen Preobrazhensky

Holy Hieromartyr Stephen Preobrazhensky was a priest in the village of Shustovo, Ivanovo region, and died in prison at the age of seventy-⁠seven, after the sentence of 15 November 1937.

He was born on 23 March 1860 in the Yurevets district, Kostroma province, in the family of the deacon Michael Preobrazhensky. He graduated from the seminary, was ordained priest and, in the thirties, though persecuted and old, went on serving at the church in Shustovo. On 9 October 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned at Vyazniki. The investigator asked whether he had gathered school-⁠age children and shown them a picture of the Last Judgment, and he answered that he had not. He was charged with anti-⁠Soviet agitation among believers; he denied it. The chairman of the village council wrote a character report, saying that the priest "had managed to draw the dark mass of collective farmers to the liturgy", had persuaded believing women to repair a house near the church and "gathered pre-⁠school children and told them of the torments and executions of those who do not believe in God." Witnesses stated that he said to the collective farmers that the communists mocked the priests, would impose a fine if they went about with the molieben without permission, and that they were forced to work beyond their strength and had all their bread taken. Summoned again for questioning, he rejected the charges one by one: that he had carried on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation at the sowing, that he had disrupted collective-⁠farm meetings when the closing of the church was in question, that he had gone without permission through the homes of believers and praised fascism. On 15 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp, at the age of seventy-⁠seven. The priest Stephen Preobrazhensky died in confinement and was buried in an unknown place.

He is commemorated on 5 April 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 20 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Ivanovo Metropolis.