Michael Berezin

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Berezin was a priest of the Russian Church. He was born on 13 June 1889 in the village of Maloye Karachkino, Kozmodemyansk district, Kazan province, and died as a martyr on 13 January 1938. In 2002 he was included in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

He was born into the family of Deacon Alexander Ivanovich Berezin and his wife, Evlampia Mikhailovna. After the clerical school at Cheboksary and the first class of the Kazan seminary (which he left in 1908 at his own request) he entered diocesan service. From 3 June 1909 to 9 March 1910 he served as psalmist at the church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Paygusovo, then was transferred to the church of Saints Peter and Paul in the village of Kuznetsovo. In the early 1920s he was ordained deacon, and on 7 August 1929 priest, by Archbishop Athanasius of Mamadysh. In 1933 he was awarded the skufia. He was married and had three sons and a daughter.

On 29 October 1936 an order for the arrest of Father Michael reached the Gornomariysk section of the political police, with the demand that the case be finished in eight days and that he be sent to Yoshkar-⁠Ola. He was arrested that same day, on a charge of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation. During the investigation he was interrogated seven times and denied guilt. He was held in the prison at Kozmodemyansk, and in December 1936 moved to the one at Yoshkar-⁠Ola. His case was heard on 20 January 1937 in a closed session of the special collegium of the Supreme Court of the Mari ASSR, and the sentence was five years of deprivation of liberty.

Until 23 June 1937 he served his term in the Vetluga camp (Nizhny Novgorod region), then was moved to the Antibes camp point of Siblag (Novosibirsk region). On 17 December he was arrested again, accused of taking part in a counter-⁠revolutionary Cadet-⁠monarchist insurgent organization. At the single interrogation, on 22 December 1937, he refused to give testimony on grounds of religious conviction. On 25 December 1937 the three-⁠man tribunal of the political police for the Novosibirsk region sentenced him to death, and the sentence was carried out on 13 January 1938. The place of execution is presumed to have been near the Antibes camp point or in the prison of the Siblag administration at Mariinsk.

On 17 July 2002, by decision of the Most Holy Patriarch and the Holy Synod of the Russian Church, on the proposal of the Yoshkar-⁠Ola diocese, Priest Michael Berezin was included in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.