Michael Eregodsky

Holy Martyr Michael Eregodsky, a reader, was born on 17 September 1878 into a hereditary reader's family, which led him, like his father, grandfather and great-⁠grandfather, to give himself to the service of God. His Grace Gabriel, Bishop of Veliky Ustyug, allowed him to fulfil the duties of reader in place of his father, who was ill. Those who give themselves to God and bring their lives into harmony with the Lord's commandments shine from within, and people remember Michael Eregodsky as a handsome, radiant man. His wife, Anna Artemievna, matched him, astonishing all by her beauty.

The pay from the church did not suffice to feed the large family, so the parents and their six children worked hard on their own land. One of the daughters, Elizabeth, remembered that, to make a vegetable garden, Michael Petrovich and his elder sons had to clear forest and plant potatoes and rye. The farm was sound, they had a horse and a cow, and lived in a big two-⁠storey house in which the main place was taken by the father's library. Despite all the hardships, Michael Petrovich knew how to break away for a moment from the bustle of every day and be a romantic: for his beloved daughter he always found daisies and gave them to her as a gift of the forest. He liked to talk with the village children and taught them church singing. In the village he was much respected, people asked him to write applications and petitions, and he refused no one.

The year 1937 was approaching and the life of the family was measured in hours. The large family was loaded with taxes it could not pay, and its horse and cow were gradually taken. Michael Petrovich was twice sent to forced labour at Koslan, each time for a year. The family was deprived of its house, leaving it only two small rooms, its arable land was taken to build a hospital, and in exchange it was given a patch of barren soil. The small children too were persecuted; the eldest, Vyacheslav, was given a place in an office on condition that he renounce his father, and he left home. The older children and relatives were forced to leave, escaping persecution: Vyacheslav to Leningrad, where he died in the siege, Peter to Sevastopol, and Vera, who had broken her leg at logging, was sent by her father to Arkhangelsk and never came back. His brother Georgy Petrovich begged him to leave with him, but Michael refused, saying that he would not abandon the place where his parents were buried. Only the daughters Liza and Zhenya stayed with him and Anna.

Even in these conditions Michael Petrovich found strength to help others. The villagers, who had been forbidden to go to church, were upset and did not know what to do, and he began to gather the faithful in his own house. They were followed, and the day after the meeting the head of the school summoned Zhenya and Liza and began to ask who had come and why; the girls answered, "We know nothing, we were asleep on the stove and saw nothing." A new shock for the people was the destruction of the church before their eyes. Michael Eregodsky was in the field at the time making hay, and the villagers ran to tell him. The church was beheaded, and the great bell fell to the ground. When he ran into the village the boards were already being torn from the church; Eregodsky pleaded and begged them to leave the building, which was guilty of nothing and could still serve the people. The young men did not listen, and he asked the villagers for help. Remarkably, the building was defended. Beside the church a great bonfire was lit, into which books and icons were thrown; the bolder girls snatched icons out of the fire before they caught and carried them home. The killers spared nothing holy: they went to the old cemetery and pulled the cast-⁠iron slab from the grave of Peter Alexandrovich, the father of Michael Eregodsky, and sent it with the bell for melting, but the cross from his father's grave Michael managed to hide.

The old world had been destroyed, and other ideas were being imposed on the people, but Michael Eregodsky stood in the way. It was decided to remove him. On 10 August 1937, as he and his wife were working in the field seventeen versts from the village, a messenger summoned him to the village council. Michael returned to the village alone, and in the night they came to search the house of his small children. He did not come back from the village council; in the morning his wife arrived, learned the news and could not believe it, wept long and said that he had been through three wars and stayed alive, and now they had taken him for ever. He was not allowed to say goodbye to his family; he was put on a cart with other men and taken to Koslan. The villagers learned of it and came out on the road to see him off; many wept, and some tried secretly to slip bread or money into his hand. The road by which the innocent condemned were taken is not overgrown to this day.

The children waited for their father to return, ran to the road and watched for a cart. All the Eregodskys' property was taken and their house confiscated, and compassionate villagers were not allowed to help the family of an "enemy of the people": whatever people brought was taken away the next day. The daughter Elizabeth learned more than thirty years later, from a stranger who came to the house, that her father had been shot right after his arrival at Syktyvkar. It later became known that Michael Eregodsky was arrested on 10 August 1937, on 29 August 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to the highest penalty, and on 31 August 1937 the sentence was carried out. On the basis of a law of 18 October 1991 he was rehabilitated. Only after that did Elizabeth begin to tell her grandchildren about her father. Her daughter remembered finding her mother very joyful one day: she had found in the forest the daisies her father loved, which had vanished with his arrest and reappeared after his rehabilitation. She moved the flowers and planted them beside the house. The building of the former church, once defended by Michael Petrovich, has survived to this day.

He is commemorated on 31 August, 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 11 February, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Komi.