Michael Bukrinsky

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Bukrinsky, a priest, was born on 19 November 1869 in the village of Bulygino in the Zaraysk district of Ryazan province, to the psalm-⁠reader Alexei Bukrinsky. In 1890 he graduated from the Ryazan theological seminary, and in 1894 he was ordained a priest for the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Zimenki, in the Zaraysk district.

At the Trinity church he served forty-⁠four years, and his whole life was bound up with this parish. He saw off on their last journey the elders with whom his ministry had begun, and watched a new generation of parishioners grow up. It was hard to see with one's own eyes with what fury and pitilessness the godless, once in power, destroyed the very foundations of the people's religious life.

In 1929 he was given a delivery of farm produce to the state that he could not fulfil, and for this he was sentenced to three years in prison. He appealed in court and the sentence was replaced with a fine. In 1930 and 1931 he was fined again, then again sentenced to three years of exile, but the sentence was annulled. In February 1938 NKVD officers questioned the chairman of the village council and the director of the school, who said that in 1934 the priest had urged the people to defend the church in the district centre against closure, saying that the Bolsheviks would tear it down. In July 1936, they said, he had called on the people to leave the work of the fields and go out to the field to hold a service of supplication for rain. Part of the collective farmers did not go to work but gathered by the church for the service. The chairman of the village council then summoned him and warned him, and the priest told him that the new constitution speaks of freedom of worship, that they were distorting the laws and deceiving the people, and that he would not submit but would do as becomes a pastor.

On 2 March 1938 Father Michael was arrested and questioned the same day. He said that he had carried on no anti-⁠Soviet activity, but that he held Stalin's constitution to be "docked", because it states one thing while another is done: it speaks of freedom of faith, while the Bolsheviks close churches, forbid prayer, and arrest and exile priests. He also said that he had never urged the people to demand the opening of a church: believers had asked him to intercede, but he had refused and suggested that they take the trouble themselves. Asked in what he thought himself guilty, he answered, in nothing.

On 7 March 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The priest Michael Bukrinsky was shot on 14 March 1938 and buried in the unknown common grave at the Butovo range near Moscow. He is commemorated on 14 March, the day of his death, in the new style, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.