Gregory (Lebedev) was a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church who served as Bishop of Schlüsselburg, a vicariate of the Petrograd (later Leningrad) diocese, and as superior of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Born Aleksandr Alekseevich Lebedev in Kolomna in 1878, the son of a protoiereus, he came to monastic life and the episcopate as a mature scholar, and in the years following the Russian Revolution he stood among the hierarchs who resisted full accommodation with the Soviet state. He was shot in 1937 during the height of the persecution and is numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
He was educated in the Kolomna and Moscow theological seminaries and graduated from the Kazan Theological Academy in 1903 with the degree of candidate of theology. Tonsured a monk with the name Gregory in early 1921, he was associated with the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, a centre of hierarchs opposed to compromise with the civil authorities. On December 2, 1923, he was consecrated Bishop of Schlüsselburg by Patriarch Tikhon; the tradition records that the patriarch spoke of him as a 'pearl' entrusted to the diocese. As superior of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in Petrograd he became a widely respected confessor and preacher.
When Metropolitan Sergei (Stragorodsky) issued his Declaration of 1927 pledging loyalty to the Soviet government, Bishop Gregory sympathized with the opposition associated with the Josephite movement, though he did not formally break communion. In January 1928 he ceased commemorating Metropolitan Sergei at the services and commemorated instead the imprisoned locum tenens Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky). Having left Leningrad in 1928, he withdrew from active administration and eventually settled in the town of Kashin, where he devoted himself to writing spiritual reflections on the Gospels and letters of guidance to his spiritual children.
Bishop Gregory was arrested several times — in 1924 and again in 1927 — before his final arrest in Kashin on April 16, 1937. Charged with leading a 'counter-revolutionary' organization, he was condemned to death and shot on September 17, 1937, at Kalinin (Tver). The Russian Orthodox Church glorified him among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in 2005, and he is commemorated on September 4 (Old Style), the date of his martyrdom.
