Stephan Vasilievich Kreidich was born in 1874 in the village of Vavulichi, Bezdezh Volost, Grodno Governorate, into a Belarusian peasant family. From 1914 to 1918 he served in the army as a clerk at the headquarters of the military district in the city of Smolensk. Beginning in 1919 he served as a psalm-reader and singer in the church choir in the village of Rogovo (Ropovo), Bryansk Governorate; from 1923 he held similar positions in Smolensk, and from 1929 he again served in Rogovo.
In 1932 he was ordained to the rank of priest for the church in the village of Robchik, Bryansk Governorate (Smolensk Oblast).
In 1936 he was arrested and accused of “agitation against joining collective farms, gathering children aged 12–15 and instilling in them religious delusion, and expressing counter-revolutionary rebellious sentiments.” The Special Board of the Western Regional Court sentenced him to seven years in corrective labor camps. He was transferred to the Bidaik branch of Karlag of the NKVD.
On 7 September 1937 he was arrested in the camp in connection with the group case “The case of Metropolitan Evgeny (Zernov) and others, Karaganda, 1937.” He was accused of “not only failing to change his convictions, but also continuing his activity while in detention, conducting religious agitation among the prisoners and spreading provocative fabrications.”
During interrogation he stated: “I do not consider myself guilty; as for singing the Troparion of the Trinity, I believed I had the right to do so — it was not forbidden.”
On 20 September 1937 a troika of the NKVD Directorate for Karaganda Oblast sentenced him to be shot. The sentence was carried out. The execution date is not recorded in the case file. On 29 March 1990 he was rehabilitated by the prosecutor of Karaganda for the 1937 repressions.
He was glorified among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by decision of the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000.
