Michael Abramov

Saint Michael Abramov (1885-1937), hieromartyr, was an archpriest in the Dubna area and received the crown of martyrdom on 29 November 1937, when he was shot at Kalinin. He was glorified in 2000 among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He is commemorated on 29 November (16 November by the old calendar).

Youth and priesthood

He was born in 1885 in the village of Rogovoe, in the Pronsk district of Ryazan province, to a peasant family. In 1897 he entered the church school at Skopin, finishing in 1901, and then the Ryazan seminary. In 1907 he was appointed psalm-⁠reader and religion teacher at the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in Pronsk, and in 1908 Bishop Nikodim of Ryazan sent him to the church of the Entrance into the Temple in the village of Chulkovo, where on 3 August he was ordained priest.

In 1912 he was moved to the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Mostya, where he also taught religion, and in 1913 he received the sash for diligent service. In February 1914 he went to the village of Bogoslovo in Tula province, where he succeeded his father-⁠in-⁠law, the priest Andrei Golovin. In May 1916 he was rewarded for the labour of organizing a day nursery for children in wartime. His wife, Evdokia, born Golovina, was a graduate of the Ryazan diocesan school, and they had two sons, Vladimir and Leonid.

Persecution and martyrdom

After the revolution of 1917 he suffered, like most priests, deprivation of civil rights and enormous taxes. In 1928 he was arrested and served a year in prison in Tula, from January 1929 to January 1930. From 28 December 1930 he served as priest at the church of the Praise of the Mother of God in the village of Gorodishche, now in the town of Dubna, where he was raised to archpriest. In 1934 he was arrested a second time and sentenced to three years of exile for anti-⁠Soviet agitation. At the beginning of 1937 he returned to his church.

On 13 November 1937 he was arrested again. According to the case file, at the interrogation the investigation had no evidence of anti-⁠Soviet activity. Later a certificate from the village soviet appeared in the file, claiming that he systematically agitated against the collective farms. On 27 November the NKVD troika of the Kalinin region sentenced him to death, and on 29 November 1937 the sentence was carried out in the NKVD internal prison. His grave is unknown. He was rehabilitated in March 1989 and glorified in 2000, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, as a hieromartyr.