Michael Borisov

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Borisov, an archpriest, was born on 7 January 1866 (by other data in 1876) in the village of Sukhaya Niva in the Demyansk district of Novgorod province, to the deacon Konstantin Dmitrievich Borisov. His father served the Church for forty-⁠eight years, forty-⁠three as a reader and five as a deacon, and was a sturdy man with a powerful voice who read and sang with understanding.

Service

In 1888 Michael graduated from the Novgorod theological seminary and was appointed reader at the Protection convent in Zverin. On 17 September 1889 he was ordained a priest for the newly built church in the village of Kipino, in 1891 he was moved to the church of Saint Paraskeva at Stroilovo, in 1902 to the Dormition convent at Polnovo, and in 1906 to the church of Saints Boris and Gleb in Novgorod. He had many obediences: he was teacher of religion in several schools, he founded a church school for girls at Stroilovo, he was for ten years dean of the first Demyansk district, a deputy to diocesan congresses, for three years a member of the board of the Novgorod seminary, and from 1909 a member of the diocesan missionary council. He received the pectoral cross in 1906 and the rank of archpriest on 30 July 1917.

On 6 June 1917, at a meeting of clergy and laity of Novgorod, he gave an address on parish reform, in which he said that the aim of parish life is to lead a person to Christ and to eternal salvation, by services carried out in good order, conversations, schools and sisterhoods, not by the right of election or the management of property. Those close to him remembered that the parishioners loved and respected him, because he always helped them gladly.

Persecution

After the godless came to power he was arrested in 1926 and spent twenty days in prison, and in 1931 he was put out of his house with his family. In April 1933 the OGPU in Novgorod opened a case against the religious and labour Brotherhood of Bishop Macarius (Opotsky), who was living in the city in exile. The Brotherhood was unofficial and numbered a little over twenty members, who prayed with the bishop, did their obediences and gave part of their earnings to the poor and the imprisoned. On 20 April 1933 all the members were arrested, and many respected priests of the city, among them Archpriest Michael Borisov, then close to sixty-⁠eight.

At his interrogation on 3 May 1933 he said that he was hostile to Soviet power because it persecuted religion and burdened clergy with taxes beyond their strength, and that he had said so in sermons, calling this power the power of the antichrist, which sooner or later must be replaced by the power of God. He added that as dean he had collected money from the parishes and sent it to Metropolitan Arsenius, exiled in Tashkent, and that he had helped exiled clergy. On 19 May 1933 the OGPU troika deprived him of the right to live in the two capitals and their regions. He moved to Uglich, in the Yaroslavl region, and served at the church of the Ascension of the Lord, where he also received the palitsa. His parishioners wrote to congratulate him, saying that the palitsa was the spiritual staff in his hands, guarding his flock. In November 1933 his wife asked that the aged priest be allowed to return to Novgorod, so that two sick old people should not die far from each other, but the request was refused.

Martyrdom

The new wave of persecution in 1937 found him at Uglich. He was arrested on 28 October 1937 and questioned the same day. Accused of being a member of a counter-⁠revolutionary church and monarchist group, he said that he had belonged to no group. On 5 November the NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in prison, but because of old age and infirmity he was kept in the labour colony in Yaroslavl. Archpriest Michael Borisov died in the colony on 4 June 1942 and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 4 June, 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), on 5 June with the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, and on 11 July with the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod (a movable day).