Michael Maslov

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Maslov, a priest, was born on 8 July 1874 in the village of Shcheglyatevo, Staritsa district of Tver province, to the psalm-⁠reader Grigory Maslov. He finished the parish school and attended the clerical school for a year, then helped his father on the farm. In 1895 he was called into the army and sent to Bialystok. After completing his military service in 1899 he returned home and served at the church in the village of Kozmodemyanskoe, Tver province. In 1907 he was ordained a deacon for the church in the village of Melkovo, where he served until 1924, and then he was sent to the church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Mikulino, Lotoshino district, Moscow region. In 1930 he was ordained a priest for the church of the village of Guryevo, and from 1935 he served in the church of his native village, Shcheglyatevo.

On 11 November 1937 the local Party organizer sent to the district office of the NKVD a report, in which he wrote that the priest Michael Maslov said that life under Soviet power and under the leadership of Stalin had become hard, that there was nothing, that the collective farmers did not even get a miserable potato, and when they did get one it was rotten. Of insurance of buildings he said that the Soviet power only wanted money, and if you burned down you would get a fig, and that one could not build anything, not even buy a few trees. Formerly, under the old order, the man burned out went to collect, and was given trousers, and shirts, and money, and food, and received more than he had lost.

On 1 February 1938 the chairman of the village council made out a certificate about the priest and sent it to the NKVD, writing that the priest influenced work discipline in the collective farm by talking with old women at windows and in houses, did not meet the state deliveries on time and was anti-⁠Soviet. The same day a witness said, "I know that Maslov urges the collective farmers to go to church and pray to God. To me personally he said to go to church, because God will give me health."

On 10 March 1938 Father Michael was arrested, held at Volokolamsk and questioned the same day. Asked, he answered that his anti-⁠Soviet activity consisted in being dissatisfied with Soviet power, and therefore he had said that under it there were no shoes and no clothes, that before, under the tsar, there was everything and cheap, and now there was nothing, that everyone had been made poor, and there was not even enough potato. The investigator said that during the elections to the Supreme Soviet he had agitated against the authorities, saying, "The Communists say that under Soviet power there will be democracy; it exists only in words, but in fact it does not exist; see how cleverly Stalin wrote that there are no longer people deprived of the vote, but in reality it is a living deception, there is no democracy under Soviet power and never will be." The priest answered, "I do not admit guilt in this. I can say nothing more."

On 15 March 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The priest Michael Maslov was shot on 22 March 1938 and buried in the unknown common grave at the Butovo range near Moscow. He is commemorated on 22 March, the day of his death, in the new style, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo (a movable day), with the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver on 18 July (a movable day), and with the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow on 5 September (a movable day).