(1889 - 1937) – Priest, Hieromartyr
Commemoration Day: September 15 (September 2 O.S.) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
Ioann Isidorovich Melnichenko was born on September 26, 1889, in the village of Ustye, Bershadsky District, Vinnytsia Region.
From 1917 to 1922, he was a teacher in a rural school.
He was ordained to the priesthood in 1922.
On September 5, 1935, he was arrested.
On December 14, 1935, a special board of the Vinnytsia Regional Court sentenced him under Article 54-10 of the Criminal Code to 7 years for "conducting counter-revolutionary agitation of a defeatist nature, expressing the inevitable downfall of Soviet power through intervention by capitalist countries."
He arrived in Karaganda Labor Camp (KarLag) on February 27, 1936, from Vinnytsia Prison.
In KarLag, he was arrested again on August 30, 1937.
The meeting of the NKVD Troika of the Karaganda region on September 10, 1937, decreed:
Melnichenko I.I.
To be executed by shooting.
The sentence was carried out on September 15, 1937.
He was buried in an unmarked mass grave.
He was glorified by the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000 as a New Martyr and Confessor of Russia.
Saints of Kazakhstan
