Michael Boldakov

Holy Martyr Michael Boldakov (Mikhail Orestovich Boldakov) suffered in 1929. When the authorities ordered the closing of the church of the Transfiguration in Kimry, the parishioners refused to submit, set a watch around the church and would not let in the commission of the city soviet that came to inventory the church property.

Michael Boldakov was not a parishioner of this church. He lived in Kimry and his brother served there as a reader, but he did not attend the church and was seldom in the town, being busy with market gardening in the Kaluga region. He was not in Kimry even in the days of the disorders. In May 1929 he was arrested together with the rector, Father Theodore Kolerov, and others, and sent to Tver. In the "trial of the churchmen of the Transfiguration" nineteen accused were brought to answer. From Tver they were carried by barge to Kimry for a show trial, which began on 20 October. At the trial Boldakov was called a "big kulak with nine hired workers".

On 26 October 1929 the district court of Kimry sentenced him to death. The lawyers appealed, and the condemned were taken to Moscow, to the Taganka prison, while the appeal was heard. On 20 November it was announced that the sentence was confirmed. He was shot on 29 November 1929 in Moscow, together with Archpriest Theodore Kolerov and Ananias Boikov. The funeral service for the slain new martyrs was held in the cathedral of Kimry, before a great crowd of the faithful.

In 1997 he was canonized as a locally venerated saint of the Tver diocese, and in August 2000, at the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, he was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, for veneration throughout the Church. He is commemorated on 29 November, the day of his death, 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 Tver, on 18 July (a movable day).