New Martyrs Basil Peter, Stephen & Alexander (1937)

Basil Yezhov, Peter Lonskov, Stephen Mityushkin and Alexander Blokhin were four Orthodox laymen of the village of Pokrov in the Gaginsky district of the Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) region, executed during the Soviet persecution of the Church in 1937. They are numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and are commemorated on September 4. All four were peasants, and their names are recorded together as a single commemoration.

By the records of their case, the four laymen were arrested on September 8, 1937, together with several priests of the Gaginsky district. The principal accusation against them was that, on July 6, 1937, they had taken part in organizing a solemn divine service attended by several clergy and a large gathering of the faithful — an act the authorities treated as drawing peasants away from collective-farm labor. None of those arrested admitted the guilt with which they were charged.

On September 17, 1937, the four were sentenced to death and shot. They were glorified among the host of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000. Their martyrdom belongs to the wider repression of clergy and laity in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s, in which ordinary parishioners were prosecuted alongside their priests for continuing to attend and support divine services.