Vasily Matveyevich Zelensky

Born in 1881 in the city of Lebedin, Kharkov Governorate. Before the October Revolution of 1917, he served as a priest in the city of Belopole, Sumy County, and then in the city of Kupyansk (until January 1, 1930), in the stanitsa of Mechetinskaya, North Caucasus region (until November 30, 1930), in the city of Pyatigorsk (until June 14, 1933), in the stanitsa of Kushchyovskaya (until February 1, 1934), and in the village of Krasnoye, Shteingartovsky District, Azov-Black Sea region. After the church was closed in 1935, Father Vasily collected signatures from the villagers for the return of the church to the faithful.

On August 31, 1935, the priest was arrested and imprisoned in the Novocherkassk prison. On November 19, by a special session of the NKVD, he was sentenced to 3 years of corrective labor for "provocative activities" and sent to the Karaganda correctional labor camp, arriving there on January 2, 1936. In August 1937, Father Vasily was arrested in the camp, accused of holding "illegal prayers" in the hills, erecting a stone cross at the graves of Cossacks buried in February-March 1937, conducting memorial services for the executed, refusing to participate in "shock work stacking hay," and "instilling faith in God and other saints" among the prisoners and "conducting counter-revolutionary agitation of a defeatist nature."

On August 19, 1937, he was interrogated. He did not plead guilty. On September 15, 1937, Father Vasily Zelensky was executed by shooting along with Hieromartyrs Feodot Shatokhin, Peter Novoselsky, Stefan Yaroshevich, and Nun-Martyr Xenia (Cherlina-Brailovskaya) by the decision of the NKVD troika of the Karaganda region dated September 10, 1937. The place of his burial is unknown.

Hieromartyr Vasily was glorified among the saints by the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.