Lev

Lev Mikhailovich Egorov was a Russian Orthodox archpriest and hieromartyr of the Soviet era. He was born in 1884 in Saint Petersburg into a priestly family during the last decades of the Russian Empire. After receiving a theological education at the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, he was ordained to the priesthood and assigned to pastoral service in the churches of Petrograd. His ministry unfolded against the backdrop of war, revolution, and the establishment of an officially atheist state that viewed the Orthodox Church as a class enemy.

In the early Soviet years Fr. Lev took part in the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood, a network of clergy and laity associated with the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The brotherhood attempted to sustain catechesis, charity, and parish life after the closure of theological schools and the prohibition of much public religious activity. He remained with the canonical Church during the Renovationist schism of the 1920s and was connected with the circle of Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd, who was executed in 1922. Fr. Lev himself was arrested in that period in connection with the campaign to confiscate church valuables, but he was later released and resumed his duties.

Subsequent waves of repression in the 1930s again targeted remaining clergy. Archpriest Lev Egorov was arrested more than once. In 1937, as the NKVD carried out mass operations against former people, including priests, he was detained, tried by a troika, and sentenced to death. He was shot in Leningrad on 20 September 1937. Like thousands of others executed in the city that year, he was buried in an unmarked mass grave, the exact location of which has not been established in published sources.

The Russian Orthodox Church canonized him as a New Martyr at the Jubilee Bishops’ Council of 2000. He is commemorated on 20 September and in the synaxes of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and of the saints of Saint Petersburg. Surviving information about his personal life remains limited, consisting mainly of service records and material from Soviet investigative files; no detailed contemporary biography or extensive correspondence has come to light in standard accounts. His memory is that of a parish priest who continued to serve the Church in the former capital until he was killed in the Great Terror.