Maximus Bogdanov

Holy Hieromartyr Maximus Bogdanov, a priest, was born on 13 August 1885 in the village of Borki in the Tyumen district of the Tobolsk province, in the family of the peasant Peter Bogdanov. He finished three classes at the village school and worked on his own farm. In 1924 he began to serve in church as a reader, in 1928 he was ordained a priest and served in the village of Bugurtak in the Kuragino district of the Krasnoyarsk territory.

In the years of collectivization the peasants who had not joined the collective farm were compelled to sow all their land only with the crops indicated by the authorities and to buy the seed at their own cost. Knowing from earlier years that almost all the harvest would be taken from them, some peasants of Bugurtak refused to sow in the spring of 1933. The OGPU organs took this as a conspiracy against the state and decided to arrest the peasants and the priest. On 16 April 1933 Father Maxim and five peasants were arrested and shut in the district prison. The peasants admitted that they had refused to sow and signed statements saying that the priest had directed them and had spoken to them of former times, when people lived in plenty and now are robbed by taxes and endless demands. The priest said firmly that he did not admit guilt, not even at the confrontation with a witness, "since he had not been engaged in such matters".

On 13 May 1933 a special troika of the OGPU of the West Siberian territory sentenced the peasants to five years of labour camp, and the priest to ten. They were taken by convoy to Minusinsk, where the sentence was read before the gates of the camp. Father Maxim was among those held in the camps of the Far East, where Archbishop Onuphrius (Gagalyuk) and Bishop Anthony (Pankeev) were also held. On 30 July 1937 the NKVD issued operational order no. 00447 on the shooting of those held in prisons and camps, and in February 1938 a new case was opened against the archbishop, the bishop and several priests, among them Maxim Bogdanov. In March 1938 they were moved to the prison at Blagoveshchensk, and on 17 March the NKVD troika sentenced them to death.

On 1 June 1938 Archbishop Onuphrius, Bishop Anthony, the priest Maxim Bogdanov and other priests and a reader were shot and buried in a common unmarked grave.

He is commemorated on 1 June, the day of his death, in the new style, on 1 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk, and on the movable day near 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.