Meletius Fedyunev

Holy Venerable Martyr Meletius Fedyunev, hieromonk, was born in 1871 in the village of Zanulye in the Ust-⁠Sysolsk district of Vologda province (now in Komi). In the world he was named Mikhail Mikhailovich Fedyunev. He became a hieromonk at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity and Saint Stephen in the village of Ulyanovo.

In the summer of 1918 four hundred poods of grain were taken from the monastery as a "surplus", and in the autumn the monastery was closed. In September and October its property was plundered by Red detachments, a state farm was set up in its place, but Father Meletius and other monks stayed on living in the same spot. On 18 September 1919 he was arrested by the Cheka of Northern Dvina province together with Abbot Ambrose (Morozov) and four other monks, on a charge of hiding five hundred poods of grain. They were sent to a camp, but soon the monks were released on a written undertaking to move to the town of Lalsk until the end of the inquiry. In November 1919 the monastery was taken by the Whites, and the monks were at the monastery of Saint John the Forerunner in Veliky Ustyug, where they were arrested again on 17 November and sentenced to a camp until the end of the civil war. By some accounts they were freed after a short time, by others only in May 1920.

Afterwards Father Meletius settled in the village of Kuzhba in the Ust-⁠Kulom district. He performed the necessary services in the village but no longer served in a church. In 1929 he was arrested again, on a charge of illegal currency dealings and of hiding church valuables, so absurd that he was never brought to trial. The case was reopened in 1932, but again it did not reach a judge. The last arrest came on 2 September 1937. On 21 September the NKVD troika of the Komi Republic sentenced him to death, and on 23 September he was shot.

He is commemorated on 23 September, the day of his death, in the new style, and with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.