Michael Agaev

Holy Martyr Michael Agaev was born on 13 October 1875 in the settlement of Drezna, in the Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo district of Moscow province, into a pious family: his father, Evgraf Agaev, owned a teahouse, was a parishioner of the church of the Holy Great Martyr Paraskeva Friday and, being well off, supported the church choir. After his death Michael became the owner of the teahouse and went on supporting the choir, in which he was the regent.

In 1918 Soviet power took the teahouse, made it first a canteen and then a teahouse again, and Michael remained its manager. When new persecutions began against the peasants and all former owners, he took work as a watchman at the factory in Drezna. He was chairman of the audit commission of the church and sang in the choir at services. The parish priest, Sergius Skvortsov, was his friend.

In 1937, as the persecution grew fiercer, Michael Agaev was arrested on 29 September. At his interrogation on 3 October he said that he worked on the audit commission, that he no longer led the choir and that it was true the Church had had more income in the past; he denied slandering the condition of Soviet workers. The secretary of the village council was summoned and said only that Agaev was a churchman and had contacts with clergy. This was not enough for an accusation, and the investigator wrote in the record that he had spoken ill of the Communists; the secretary refused to sign, but, persuaded by the investigator, gave way and signed the false testimony. Michael was sent to the Taganka prison in Moscow, where on 15 November another investigator questioned him again, and he said that he had carried on no counter-⁠revolutionary propaganda and did not admit guilt.

On 17 November 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a labour camp, and he was sent to Taishetlag. There he died on 15 February 1938 and was buried in an unknown grave. He is commemorated on 16 February, in the new style, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (a movable day) and with the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow (5 September).