Michael Pyataev

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Pyataev, a priest, was born in 1891 in the village of Machkasy, Kuznetsk district of Penza province, to the peasant Maxim Pyataev. After the village school he studied in Moscow, then moved to Saratov, where he taught Russian language and literature. At Saratov he met his future wife, Euphrosyne Frolovna, from a Saratov merchant family, the Ivanovs, who had barges on the Volga. Her father, a man of strict rules, gave education only to his sons, while the daughters he taught housework.

At that time the imperial government, developing the reforms of Stolypin, was energetically occupied with moving Russian peasants east, to Siberia. With the peasants priests, teachers, doctors and craftsmen moved to Siberia. So Michael Pyataev came with his family to Omsk. At first he went on teaching, then resolved to devote his life to the service of the Lord. In 1917 he entered the cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross at Omsk as a reader, so that later, if it were God's will, he might be ordained. The merciless civil war began. In 1918 the city was occupied by the Reds; the Red Guards, fallen from the faith, rode into the cathedral on horses and began to smash everything that came to hand. Soon after these events, in 1918, Archbishop Sylvester (Olshevsky) ordained him a deacon in the same cathedral. Until 1921 he served as deacon at Omsk, then asked the bishop to move him to a village, since with his large family it was hard to feed himself, and he was sent to the Epiphany church in the village of Malokrasnoyarka. The place was remote, far from large towns and railways, but the people were pious and well off; in the village lived several merchant families. Before the Red Guards entered the village, the heads of families left to escape reprisals; of all the merchants only Vasily Sevastyanov stayed at home, saying, "Why should I flee from my native village?" The Red Guards seized him, set his wife and children before him and cut off his head on a block before their eyes.

In 1923 the deacon Michael Pyataev was ordained a priest. Father Michael loved his parish dearly. For the poor he performed baptisms, weddings and funerals without payment. People came to him from other parishes too, not so much for the free services as because they had come to love the zealous and educated pastor, always ready to help any sufferer. The gifts that wealthier parishioners brought he gave to the poor. Many of the poor found support and food with him. For this he caught fish himself and gave out most of it to the poor and beggars. Once, having caught fish, he froze it, put it in a sack and left it in the entry. Suddenly he heard from the entry a suspicious noise; going out, he saw two beggars who, having stolen the sack, were fighting over the fish. Caught by surprise, they were frightened, and one said, "Father Michael, forgive us." "Well, Vasya, I forgive you, but it is not to be done so, it is a sin; I would give it to you anyway." The priest led the beggars into the room and told his wife to feed them, because they were frozen. Euphrosyne Frolovna set cabbage soup and other food on the table.

The church at Malokrasnoyarka had two priests' posts, and in 1928 a second priest was appointed, Father John Kuminov. Holy Hieromartyr John was born in 1865 in the village of Kulikovskoe, Tyukalinsk district of Tobolsk province, to the peasant Ivan Kuminov. In 1877 the family moved to Omsk. Here Ivan Ivanovich graduated from the teachers' seminary and, after an examination at the classical gymnasium of Omsk, was appointed inspector of folk schools of the Tara district. In this post he remained until 1922, when he was ordained a priest. He served in the churches of the Omsk diocese, and in 1928 he was sent to the Epiphany church in Malokrasnoyarka.

The end of 1929 brought collectivization to Siberia, and with it arrests and deportations of peasant families and arrests of clergy. Only seven years had passed since the seizure of church valuables in 1922, and already a new persecution of the Church was rising. At the beginning of 1930 the churchwarden of the Epiphany church, Pyotr Borodin, came to the office of the district administrative department with a petition for permission for the procession to the "Jordan" at Theophany, 19 January, as always. The petition was not written in proper form. The clerk gave him a model. Borodin answered that he understood nothing of it and the priest should come. Coming after a time, Father Michael asked for the bulletin with the instruction on the rights and duties of religious associations, so as to be guided by the law. The clerk asked about the newspaper Izvestia with the decree of the Central Executive Committee, and he answered that they received the newspaper. He also asked the head of the department for permission to hold a meeting of the members of the community on 5 January, for re-⁠elections. The head gave his consent and offered himself to inform the village council, to send a representative. The same day, three hours later, the priest brought back the bulletin and said that he had copied the instruction.

On 3 January Timothy Melekhov came to Dorotheus Grishmanov, a former member of the church council, with the lists of believers for the re-⁠registration of the community, saying that Father Michael had given them to him. Instead of cooperating, Grishmanov went to the village council and said that on 3 January, at night, the priest Michael Pyataev had come to the village of Bolsherechye and had sent people for some registration without the council's knowledge. On 5 January the members of the council drew up an act: "Regarding the nocturnal visits of the priests as suspicious in connection with collectivization, and made without the knowledge of the council, we resolved to draw up this act to be given to the administrative department for investigation and bringing to account." At the Christmas service in the Epiphany church Father John Kuminov officiated and Father Michael conducted the choir. At the end of the Liturgy Father John gave a sermon in which he urged the young and their parents to go to church more often and to pray to God: "Send your children to church, and let them pray to God there. Do not listen to whoever tells you whatever, for you are already crushed with taxes beyond your strength and now they agitate and want to deceive you." Hearing these words, Father Michael felt that something bad might happen. So it was: a parishioner, Darya Barkova, going out of the church, began to tell everyone that Father John had given an anti-⁠Soviet sermon. The women urged her not to spread such rumours, since the priests could be arrested, but she did not stop. Later, called to interrogation, she testified falsely that "Kuminov systematically carries on anti-⁠Soviet agitation".

After the feast of the Nativity, an OGPU agent began to interrogate peasants. Most refused to lie against the priests. Testimony was given by the chairmen of the village council and the collective farm and their wives. Father Michael saw that the authorities intended to arrest him. He had a friend from childhood who worked in the Moscow militia; when the new power established itself as an anti-⁠Christian power persecuting the Orthodox Church, he wrote to him: "Michael, I am very sorry... you were a teacher, now you have become a priest. Do not think badly, I do not say this because I think ill of the clergy, but because this is not the right time for clergymen. I propose that you come to Moscow and take up work as a teacher again. I shall help you to find work and lodging." Two days before the priest's arrest his wife, Euphrosyne, reminded him of this letter and told him to go. "No, Euphrosyne," said Father Michael, "I am going nowhere, I took an oath. How can I betray God and the people? Never. I know that I am going to certain death, but such is the will of God. You will bring up all the children, and with God's help you will educate them, you will lose none." "But so many children..." said his wife. "Well, what can be done, you will bring them up... with God's help."

The priests were arrested soon after the feast of the Nativity of Christ and sent to the prison at Kainsk. In prison those under inquiry were cruelly tortured: teeth with gold crowns were pulled out of living men with pincers, they were beaten without mercy, so that many prisoners had all their teeth knocked out and their ribs broken. The OGPU investigator beat the priests without pity, and once he mockingly ordered the guards to pour the contents of a slop pail over Father Michael. But despite the torments the pastors refused to give false testimony, as the investigator demanded, forcing them to sign that the priests and members of the church council had been organizing the peasants in a struggle against the collective farms and Soviet power. Father Michael said to the investigator that he had served at Malokrasnoyarka since 1921, first as deacon, from 1923 as priest, and that with Kuminov they had taken part in nothing against the law, but had only done their religious duty; in the sermons he spoke only from Holy Scripture, while Father Kuminov preached more often, but also only from spiritual books, and never spoke about the authorities and their measures. Father John Kuminov said that the Christmas sermon had been devoted exclusively to the Nativity of Christ, with an addition on a sober life and going to church more often, and that at the end he had urged the faithful to obey the laws. On 7 February 1930 the prisoners were shown the bill of indictment: the priests had used the prejudices of the unenlightened peasantry and, with the support of the well-⁠off part of the village, carried on counter-⁠revolutionary activity, frightening them with provocative rumours of the coming fall of Soviet power, "on the basis of Scripture". Father Michael wrote: "I do not admit guilt. I was on a tour of the villages for two days. The lists of believers I made on the verbal order of the militia, for the re-⁠registration of the community. I went to Father John Kuminov's house only on church business."

On 21 February the OGPU troika sentenced the priests Michael Pyataev and John Kuminov to death, and their families to exile in the north. On 28 February Father Michael had a meeting, through a grating, with his eldest daughter Anna, who had come to Kainsk. He asked her, "Anna, give me your braid." She passed him the braid through the grating, and it was afterwards all wet with her tears. "Father, why are you weeping?" she asked. "It is very hard for me because there are so many of you and you are left alone." That night Anna saw in a dream the Mother of God giving Communion to Father Michael from a golden chalice. She woke with the thought that her father would be freed and ran joyfully to the prison with a parcel. "Pyataev?" asked the guard. "He was shot this very night."

The priests Michael Pyataev and John Kuminov were shot on 28 February 1930 and buried in an unknown common grave at Kainsk. He is commemorated on 28 February, 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), on 26 February with the Synaxis of the Saints of the Omsk Metropolis, and on 1 March with the Synaxis of the Saints of the Novosibirsk Metropolis (a movable day).