Michael Kvanin

Holy Venerable Martyr Michael Kvanin, known in monasticism as Mitrophan, was an archimandrite (some sources call him a hieromonk) and died a martyr at Semipalatinsk, in Kazakhstan, in 1937. He is honoured among the new martyrs of the Alma-⁠Ata eparchy.

He was born in 1875 in the village of Gubkino, in the Maloarkhangelsk district of the Oryol province, into a peasant family, and was schooled in the village. He entered the Holy Spirit Monastery in Vilnius as a novice; where he was tonsured is not known, but from 1914 at the St Nicholas Monastery in Samara he already appears as a monk and, by some accounts, a hieromonk. He was the brother of two bishops. From 1917 he helped at the bishop's house in Taganrog, from 1920 he was a church reader in the village of Bolokhovo, in the Tula province, and from 1923 he served in Moscow, at the Holy Spirit church at the Danilov cemetery, where he became an archimandrite.

On 23 February 1933 he was arrested with a group of priests from the same church and on 15 March sentenced to three years of exile in the Northern Territory, where he settled at Kargopol. When the sentence ended in 1936 he returned to Moscow and was arrested again: he was given another three years, this time in Kazakhstan. He lived for about a year in the village of Borodulikha, in the Semipalatinsk region.

On 22 November 1937 he was arrested in the case of Archpriest Dimitry Kuklin and others. The charge, dated 27 November, said that he "undermined the collective-⁠farm system, agitated for forming a group of believers and preached keeping the fasts", and the sentence was death. He never admitted guilt and was shot at Semipalatinsk on 2 December 1937; the place of his burial is unknown.

He is commemorated on 2 December (19 November by the old calendar) and on the movable day of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.