Michael Dmitriev

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Dmitriev, an archpriest, was born in 1873 in the village of Makkaveevo in Ryazan province, to an archpriest's family, of an old priestly line. After the Ryazan seminary he was a teacher in a parish school. In 1897 he married and was ordained a priest. In 1905 he asked to be appointed to his father's place of ministry in Makkaveevo and until 1913 he was rector of the Protection church in his native village. In 1913 he was appointed to the Protection church in the village of Selishchi in the Kasimov district, where he served until his martyrdom.

The church at Selishchi was small and wooden, and the parish was the poorest in the diocese, so that the diocese itself paid Father Michael the smallest stipend. The parish took in several villages with thatched roofs and with splinters for light in the cottages. A true pastor and labourer, Father Michael set about laying the foundation of the parish with energy: he organized the building of the parish school and was its head and teacher of religion, he taught also at the zemstvo school at Samuilovo, and he managed to build in Selishchi a spacious brick church. He introduced congregational singing into the church and gave much effort to teaching the people to sing. His daughter Nina remembered that her father loved church singing very much, moved the reader's stall from the ambo down so that the faithful could stand beside it and sing, and travelled through the villages gathering everyone willing for singing practice. Once, on the second day of Pascha, Bishop Arcadius, returned from ten years of exile, came through the people into the altar, and after the service he wept at the impression the congregational singing had made on him.

Every Thursday Father Michael took part in the conversations of the Kasimov clergy. A preacher and missionary, he knew Holy Scripture extremely well, went to the villages round about to speak with Baptists and sectarians, and made thematic extracts from Scripture, which he also gave to his neighbours in the parish. On the patronal feast, the Protection of the Mother of God, the priests of Kasimov and the surrounding villages gathered to serve together. Because the parish was poor, Father Michael worked his own farm: he ploughed, sowed and reaped, milked the cow, kept bees and bought every new piece of equipment. Early in the morning, before the service, he worked in his own field, and in secret he helped the widows and the infirm of the village; some learned only after his death who had helped them, because the help stopped with his arrest. In dry summers, when fires destroyed houses and whole villages, he organized a fire service in the village, built a watchtower, set up regular watches and took part in them himself; when a fire broke out he took all the buckets in his house and went to help, and the peasants said that if the Father came, the fire would soon be out.

In 1924 he received the rank of archpriest and became dean of the first Kasimov district. He firmly opposed the Renovationists; he was summoned many times to the OGPU and pressed to sign a written agreement with Renovationism. Once he was told he would not be let go unless he signed, and the priest agreed to "think about it". Soon an OGPU man came to him and asked, "Well, have you thought?" "I have thought... not to sign," answered Father Michael. The man ran furiously about the room, shook a revolver in the priest's face and shouted that he could kill him and nothing would be done to him, but Father Michael stayed unmoved and they gave up. His house was searched many times. At collectivization, the peasants of Selishchi declared kulaks were loaded with their families on barges and taken to the neighbourhood of Nizhny Tagil; many died on the way, and the parish was drained of strength.

At the end of 1929 he was arrested with many clergy of Kasimov. Crowds of peasants came to the trial to defend their pastor. Despite the verdict of guilt, the priest was soon released, through the efforts of many petitioners. But not long remained for him to serve in his parish. The persecutions did not cease: searches, the hunt for charges, false witnesses, summonses to interrogation. In 1935 they came to arrest him again. During the search Matushka Elisabeth Ivanovna was humiliated; after the nervous shock she did not live long and died in 1936. Father Michael was held in the prison at Kasimov, but the parishioners again interceded and he was soon released. After Matushka's death he served every day for a whole year. In 1937 he received a further church award, the right to wear the mitre at services, granted by Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) at the request of Bishop Arcadius (Ostalsky), who had visited him after release from the Solovki camp.

At the end of the 1930s the persecution grew fiercer. His eldest son urged him to go for a while to Moscow or elsewhere to avoid arrest, but Father Michael firmly refused, saying that he could not abandon his parish in so hard a time. In the night from Saturday to Sunday, 18 September 1937, after the Saturday all-⁠night vigil, Archpriest Michael was arrested and taken to the prison at Kasimov. At the interrogations he was fully tortured, but he accused no one and did not admit guilt. The death sentence was pronounced by the NKVD troika of the Ryazan region on the day of Saint Michael. According to a man who shared his cell, Father Michael did not lose heart, supported everyone, and was then called out with his things and shot in the night from 1 to 2 December, on the day of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow" and of Saint Philaret of Moscow.

He is commemorated on 2 December, 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 23 June, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan.