On January 26 and 31, 1918 (according to the old style) in Kyiv, after the city was captured by the Bolsheviks, mass killings of officers occurred. About two thousand officers who came for "registration" were brutally killed with sabers.

Among them was Lev Platonovich Stefanovich, born in 1872. He was a colonel, a staff adjutant, participated in World War I, and commanded the Life Guards Horse Grenadier Regiment. On January 26, he was arrested and killed the same day in the park of the Mariinsky Palace.