New Martyr 20th century

Twelve New Hieromartyr Priests of 1937

died 1937

Also known as Ismael Kudryavtsev, Eugene Popov, John Popov, Constantine Kolpetsky, Peter Grigoriev, Basil Maximov, Gleb Apukhtin, Basil Malinin, John Sofronov, Peter Yurkov, Nicholas Pavlinov, Palladius Popov

Twelve priests martyred together in the Soviet persecution (1937)

Feast Day
September 10
Draft
Draft — pending review. Not yet verified for publication.
Commemorated as

The Twelve New Hieromartyr Priests of 1937

Life

The Twelve New Hieromartyr Priests of 1937 are commemorated together on September 10 as a group of Orthodox priests who were put to death during the Soviet persecution of the Church in 1937. They are numbered among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, the body of clergy, monastics, and laypeople who suffered for the faith under the Soviet state in the twentieth century.

Their commemoration falls within the height of what is often called the Great Terror, when arrests and executions of churchmen reached their peak. The year 1937 in particular saw enormous numbers of clergy detained and shot, frequently on charges framed in political rather than religious terms. The September 10 calendar of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia records this group of priests alongside other clergy and lay martyrs of the same period.

Because the commemoration gathers these priests as a collective, the database keeps them in a single entry rather than as separate rows. Detailed and reliably attested biographies of each individual are limited, and care is taken here not to assert particulars beyond what the sources support; the entry preserves the group's shared identity as priests martyred in 1937 and their place within the wider Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

Contributions & Legacy

1 contributions Read Hide

Historical context

The Soviet campaign against religion subjected the Orthodox Church to waves of repression from the 1920s onward, intensifying sharply in 1937 and 1938. Clergy were among the most heavily targeted groups, and many were executed at mass sites such as the Butovo firing range near Moscow, the largest known execution and burial ground of victims of the period, where numerous priests were shot.

The Russian Orthodox Church has since glorified large numbers of these victims as the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. The September 10 commemoration of priests martyred in 1937 belongs to this broader act of remembrance, which also names individual hieromartyrs and lay martyrs of the same year on the same date.

Commemorated with Read Hide
Notes

Among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia

Sources: Synaxarion