Presbyter
The Hieromartyr Dmitry, son of the Cossack Konstantin Legeydo, was born on October 26, 1880, in the village of Bolshiye Sorochintsy in Poltava Governorate. In 1904, he graduated from Tiflis Theological Seminary and was ordained first a deacon and then a priest. He served in the church in the Cossack village of Neberdzhayevskaya. During the Civil War, in 1918, he intervened on behalf of a Red Guardsman who had been arrested and saved his life, regularly supplying food to prisoners.
In August 1931, he was appointed to serve in the Ascension Church in Gelendzhik. His active pastoral ministry drew the attention of the OGPU, and on April 21, 1932, he was arrested for anti-Soviet religious activity. During interrogations, the priest declared that the servants of Christ were being subjected to torment and that Judgement would soon come.
On November 28, 1932, he was sentenced to three years of exile in Kazakhstan, where he worked as a cash collector and bookkeeper. On September 11, 1937, the priest was arrested again and held in Chimkent Prison. On November 19, 1937, an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a concentration camp, and on January 21, 1938, he arrived at Bamlag.
On March 13, 1938, false witnesses portrayed Father Dmitry as someone who persistently refused to work. An NKVD troika sentenced him to be shot, with his execution scheduled for March 31, 1938. However, Father Dmitry Legeydo died on March 23, 1938, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
