Michael Deyneka

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Deyneka, a priest, was born on 7 November 1894 in the town of Borzna in Chernigov province, to the cobbler Foma Deyneka. After the parish school he attended reader's courses at a monastery. From 1917 to 1921 he was a reader in churches of Kharkov province, in 1921 he was ordained a deacon and in 1924 a priest. He served first in the diocese of Kharkov and then, on the recommendation of Archbishop Onuphrius of Kursk, was received by Bishop Anthony into the diocese of Belgorod. On 22 February 1935 he was arrested.

Asked by the investigator whether he had collected money under the guise of donations, he answered that he had, with a special plate, during the service, and that he knew from Bishop Anthony and from the dean of Vilgelm that these donations went to the Patriarchate. Of the testimony that he had urged the faithful in his sermons to attend churches and not to go to work, he said that it was an invention, that he had never said such a thing and that all the faithful could confirm it. At the court session he said that he did not admit guilt.

On 11 September 1935 the sentence was read: Bishop Anthony and the dean Mitrophan Vilgelmsky received ten years of imprisonment, the priest Alexander Yeroshov and the reader Michael Voznesensky five years, and the priest Michael Deyneka three years. They were sent to the Far East, to the same camp in which Archbishop Onuphrius (Gagalyuk) of Kursk was held, condemned together with the priests Victor Karakulin and Hippolytus Krasnovsky.

In March 1938 the arrested bishops and clergy were moved from the camp to the prison at Blagoveshchensk. On 17 March 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced them to death. On 1 June 1938 Archbishop Onuphrius, Bishop Anthony, the priests Hippolytus Krasnovsky, Mitrophan Vilgelmsky, Alexander Yeroshov, Michael Deyneka, Nicholas Sadovsky, Basil Ivanov, Nicholas Kulakov, Maxim Bogdanov, Alexander Saulsky, Paul Popov and George Bogoyavlensky, and the reader Michael Voznesensky were shot and buried in an unknown common grave.

Michael Deyneka is commemorated on 1 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) and, on 1 August, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk.