Stephen Yaroshevich

Holy Hieromartyr Stephen Yaroshevich was a priest in the Vinnitsa region, later a prisoner at Karlag in Kazakhstan, and was shot on 15 September 1937 with Bishop Damascene (Tsedrik) and other clergy.

Stephen (Stepan Alexandrovich) Yaroshevich was born in 1883 in the village of Ostashkovo, Proskurov district, Podolia province, in the family of a psalm-⁠reader. He had a secondary education and became a priest. From 1930 to 1935 he served in the village of Goryachevka in the Vinnitsa region. On 7 November 1935 he was arrested and sentenced to six years in a labour camp; he served his term in the Koktun-⁠Kul section of the NKVD Karlag (Karaganda region, Kazakhstan), where he worked as a builder in the sixth sector. In August 1937 several arrests were made in Karlag and Father Stephen was arrested as well, in the group case "of the priest Basil Zelensky and others". He was charged with taking part in illegal prayers and "anti-⁠Soviet agitation", and above all with holding, after the shooting of the "enemies of the people" Tukhachevsky and others, a memorial service with Zelensky for those shot, calling them his people. He did not admit guilt; at the interrogations he answered briefly: "I said nothing, I know nothing. I know only Zelensky." On 10 September 1937 the troika attached to the NKVD of the Karaganda region sentenced him to the supreme penalty, and on 15 September he was shot.

He is commemorated on 15 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.