Ten New Hieromartyr Priests of 1937

This entry commemorates a group of ten priests of the Russian Orthodox Church who were put to death in 1937, during the height of the Soviet persecution of the Church, and who are commemorated together on September 4. The synaxarion records them by name as Paul Vasilievsky, John Vasilevsky, Nicholas Lebedev, Nicholas Sretensky, John Romashkin, Nicholas Voshtev, Alexander Nikolsky, Peter Lebedinsky, Michael Bogorodsky, and Elias Izmailov. As with many of the New Martyrs gathered into a single day's commemoration, the surviving record preserves their names and the year of their death more fully than the particulars of their individual lives.

Their deaths fall within what is often called the Great Terror of 1937, a year in which the arrest and execution of Orthodox clergy reached its peak under the Soviet state. The ten are numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, the great host of clergy and laity who suffered for the faith under the godless regime. They are commemorated on September 4 together with other martyrs of the same year who share that date, and within the wider Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia they are remembered on the Sunday nearest January 25.

Because the entry gathers ten distinct priests under one commemoration, it follows the synaxarion's own grouping rather than separating them. Each bore the rank of priest and died as a hieromartyr, the title given to ordained clergy who are martyred for Christ. The precise circumstances, places of ministry, and manner of death of each are not detailed in the common commemoration, which preserves the company as a single witness of the persecuted Russian clergy of 1937.