At the end of 1915, Leonid was tonsured a monk of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra with the name Lev, and ordained hierodeacon and later hieromonk;[2] in the same year his brother Vyacheslav took monastic vows with the name Gurij.
After the beginning of the Renovationism movement, inspired by the Soviet authorities, and of the 1922 seizure of church valuables in Russia campaign, hieromonk Lev was arrested (June 16, 1922) and subsequently deported from Petrograd.
He served almost two years of exile, first in the Orenburg province, and then in the West Kazakhstan region near Lake Elton.
Then hieromonk Lev was elevated to the rank of archimandrite and in March 1926 was appointed a dean of the monastic town residences in Leningrad.
In October 1926, archimandrite Lev was appointed rector of the Feodorovskaya Icon Cathedral in Leningrad.
[5] Despite its virtually illegal existence, under the leadership of Archimandrite Lev the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood continued social and charitable activities,[6] which were strictly prohibited by Soviet laws.
The camp authorities accused the archimandrite of counter-revolutionary agitation among prisoners, and a special commission of the OGPU decided to transfer him to a punishment cell for a period of 2 years, and an NKVD troika increased his term of imprisonment in a forced labor camp by 2 years.