Michael Kosukhin

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Kosukhin, a priest, was born on 7 January 1858 in the village of Yarenskoe, Kalyazin district of Tver province, to the priest Alexei Kosukhin. He graduated from the Moscow theological seminary and was ordained a priest. In 1907 he was appointed to the church of the village of Dymtsevo in the Bezhetsk district and served there until his arrest.

In the 1930s his only relatives were his brothers, of whom one lived in Poland and the other was a priest in the Tver region, and an unmarried daughter, who helped her aged father. Until 1929 Father Michael had a farm with a horse, a cow, three desyatins of land and fifty families of bees, but that year the whole farm and property were taken, his house was taken, and he and his daughter settled in the church watchman's hut. The priest was not arrested then, since the authorities reckoned that, being over seventy, he would soon die or be unable to serve, and the church would be closed anyway.

It did not happen so: the priest went on serving, and his old age and nearness to death gave him still more resolve and boldness. He let no opportunity for preaching pass. For this zeal for God and for the salvation of the souls entrusted to him, the parishioners loved him and were always ready to come to his help. Seeing his resolve, the authorities began to persecute him. The watchman's hut stood outside the church fence, and the executive committees of the district and region decided to move him out and give the building to a veterinary clinic. The chairman of the village council demanded that he leave, but Father Michael answered each time that he would in no circumstances leave the church building. Then, on Sunday, 25 March 1936, the chairman ordered the window frames to be taken out of the hut, hoping that since it was still cold the priest would leave on his own. But he did not. The same day, after the Sunday service and sermon, Father Michael said that the village council had taken the frames out of his house and asked the parishioners to request the authorities to give them back, since it was still cold outside. About a hundred and fifty people were in the church and all of them went from there to the village council. The chairman, frightened by the crowd coming, locked all the doors and hid. The people walked round the house and shouted to him to give the frames back, but they received no sign of life and in the end had to disperse.

The frames were not returned, but Father Michael did not leave. He told the faithful, "I shall go nowhere from here, I am old and fear nothing." The local authorities did not dare to put him out by force, and he went on serving and preaching with the same fearlessness. At Pascha of that year he received from the bishop the pectoral cross for his service.

Only a year later, with the general persecution, he was arrested and imprisoned at Bezhetsk. He had recently turned seventy-⁠nine; he was gravely ill and for several months had not risen from his bed, moving only with his daughter's help. The NKVD men took him by the hands and feet and threw him into a car. The doctor called to examine him found myocarditis, swollen legs, a total lack of teeth and senile infirmity; he judged him unfit for physical labour. At the interrogations he said that he had often preached to the faithful, but had said nothing of Soviet power and politics. He related that on 25 March he had preached in the church, and after the service told the faithful that the village council had taken out his frames and asked them to request it to return them, since it was still cold. He did not admit guilt.

On 2 August the inquiry was ended, and on 10 August the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Whether because of the investigator or because of the hard conditions of the overcrowded cell, the priest had a broken left thigh and could not walk, so that he could not have reached the place of execution. On 16 August, by order of the prison administration, he was moved to the town hospital at Bezhetsk, where he lived, under sentence of death, twenty-⁠nine days, and died on 13 September 1937. He is commemorated on 13 September, 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 18 July, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver (a movable day).