Michael Kiselev

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Kiselev (Mikhail Petrovich Kiselev), an archpriest, was born on 21 October 1855 (the page gives the year 1856 elsewhere) into an archpriest's family. In 1877 he graduated from the Perm theological seminary and from 1877 to 1885 was a teacher and religion teacher in the people's schools of the Cherdyn district. On 17 November 1885 he was ordained a priest by Bishop Ephraim (Ryazanov) and appointed rector of the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Kylasovo, Kungur district. His father, Archpriest Pyotr Kiselev, had been entered for personal merit, with his wife and children, in the book of the hereditary nobility of Nizhny Novgorod province, and Father Michael received "for his father's merits" the Order of Saint Vladimir, fourth class, and was entered in the same nobility.

In 1890 he moved, at his own request, to the church of the Maikor works in the Solikamsk district and was appointed religion teacher at the Nikitinsk boys' school, where he remained until 1896. He was rewarded with the epigonation, the violet velvet skufia, the kamilavka and a golden pectoral cross, and on 7 April 1905, by decision of the Holy Synod, with the rank of archpriest. He also received the Orders of Saint Anne, third class (1909) and second class (1911). From 2 October 1895 until 11 July 1917 he was dean of the second Solikamsk district, and on 1 August 1917 he received the thanks and blessing of the archpastor for his long and fruitful service.

In the night of 20 December 1918, at the age of sixty-⁠two, Father Michael was seized and taken from the Nikitinsk works by retreating bands of the Red Army. With him were taken the priest Alexander Fedoseev of the Epiphany church, his son, a clerk of the works, and the works superintendent Leonid Petelin. A "contribution for their lives" of ten thousand roubles was demanded of Father Michael. The family gave all its savings, four thousand roubles, but it did not help: the victims did not return. The Siberian army occupied the works and began to search for those taken away. On the fifth day the bodies of the martyrs were found near the works, under the snow, on a meadow. All had been pierced with bayonets; on the body of Father Michael eighteen wounds of ramrods were found. He had been rector of the Maikor church for twenty-⁠eight years and had earned the respect and love of his parishioners. Many begged him to hide while the Reds were retreating, but he wished to remain at his post to the end, and received a martyr's death. Those slain were buried before a great crowd in a common grave in the church enclosure. The page also gives, in a brief summary, the execution as taking place in the night before 3 January 1919.

The Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church of the year 2000 numbered him among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He is commemorated on 21 December, that is 3 January in the new style, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (a movable day) and, on 14 February, with the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis (a movable day).