Schiarchimandrite
Saint Eleutherius (Pechenikov) was born in 1870 in the village of Pripechino, Cherikov district, Mogilev province. In 1892, he was conscripted into the army and served as a private. From 1896, he became a monk of the Smolensk Trinity Monastery. On December 5, 1922, he was arrested by the Smolensk GPU as an opponent of the Renovationist movement and a supporter of Tikhon. On March 20, 1924, he was arrested again on charges of participating in a counter-revolutionary organization and was placed in a pre-trial detention house in Smolensk. On February 26, 1930, he faced a third arrest in the case of the Smolensk Cathedral Brotherhood, after which he was sentenced to 10 years in a concentration camp and served his term in the Solovetsky ITL, later transferred to Mankent. On June 23, 1937, he was arrested in the camp along with other clergymen, accused of counter-revolutionary activities. On July 26, 1937, he was sentenced to the highest measure of punishment and executed on August 27, 1937, in the Lisya Balka near the city of Chimkent, buried in an unknown common grave. Saint Eleutherius was glorified by the Archdiocesan Jubilee Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.
