New Martyr Euthymius Kochev

Euthymius (Efim Petrovich) Kochev was a Russian layman who suffered death during the Soviet persecution of the Church and is numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He was born in 1867 in the village of Vilgort, in the Ust-Sysolsk district of Vologda province, in the region of Komi. By trade he was a craftsman and laborer, occupied with the making of birch-bark vessels, carpentry, and carting work.

Kochev took an active part in the life of his parish, the Sretenie (Meeting of the Lord) Church of his village, to which he gave generous donations, and in 1936 he was elected church elder. When, in June 1937, the civil authorities resolved to close the church, he went from house to house collecting signatures in its defense and sought to prevent the inventorying of church property. According to the account of his life, he was arrested after he refused to surrender the keys of the church to officials of the NKVD.

At his interrogation Kochev acknowledged that he had acted to defend his church but denied the charge of active counter-revolutionary activity. On September 16, 1937, a Special Troika of the NKVD of the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic condemned him to death. The sentence was carried out by shooting on September 18, 1937 (September 5 on the Julian calendar) at Syktyvkar, and he was buried in an unmarked grave. He was glorified among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church by decision of the Holy Synod on October 6, 2001.