Michael Razhkin

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Razhkin, a priest, was born on 1 October 1871 in the village of Yelan, Saratov province, to the peasant Stepan Razhkin. The family later moved to the town, and Michael finished the fourth town school. It had long been his dream to serve the Church, and on 26 June 1901 he was appointed reader in the stanitsa of Kopanovskaya, Yenotaevsk district of Astrakhan province. From 12 June 1903 he was reader in the village of Proleika, Tsarev district, and on 22 June 1904 at the Kazan church in Astrakhan. On 20 October 1908 he was reader at the church of the Archangel Michael in Vladimirovka, Tsarev district, on 18 October 1910 in the village of Nikolskoe, and on 12 August 1916 in the village of Kharabali. From 1924 to 1930 he served as reader in the village of Verkhny Baskunchak.

In 1930 the hieromonk Melchizedek (Drozdov), who served in the village of Kosiki, fell ill, and Bishop Andrew (Komarov) of Astrakhan ordained the reader Michael on 18 February 1930 a priest for that church. The parish was so poor, however, that it was very hard for a priest with a family to support himself, and Father Michael had to write to the bishop. He told him that the hieromonk Melchizedek had recovered and could again fulfil his duty, that the parish had only 220 households, so that it was very hard for a priest with a family to live, especially after a poor harvest, and that the inhabitants themselves wondered that he had come with his family and goods to Kosiki. He concluded that at Kosiki a monk or a widowed priest without a family would be more suitable, and that he submitted beforehand to any resolution, as a son of the Orthodox Church and of his beloved archpastor.

Despite his material hardships, he was a zealous pastor and preacher and preached at every service, which the authorities viewed with displeasure. In the autumn of 1930 the priest was asked to pay a new tax, and non-⁠payment meant the closing of the church. He proposed to the faithful a meeting of the church community, which took place on 2 November 1930. Father Michael said, "If you want to have services, give money for the payment to the state insurance fund." The community resolved to collect voluntary donations to pay the tax, so as to avoid the closing of the church. The decision did not suit the authorities, and on 15 November 1930 OGPU men arrested the priest and the most active parishioners and imprisoned them at Yenotaevsk. On 22 November the investigator questioned him. The priest said, "I preached every Sunday that you must go to church, pray more to God. The Lord will forgive your sins and give you everything. At the end of August or the beginning of September I met young people in the street... and told them to go to church, to pray to God."

On 26 November the village council gave the OGPU a certificate about the priest, in which it was written that Father Michael "was noticed in anti-⁠Soviet statements", that he urged the believing youth not to go to the people's house, that he had been seen in groups of women in the street in the evenings, speaking about God, and that he had held an illegal meeting of believers about the self-⁠taxation, which showed an anti-⁠Soviet element, requiring to be isolated from the working masses. The bill of indictment of 29 December said that in church he was supposed to have said, "Orthodox, tell your husbands, brothers and wives and sisters to repent at last," and that in September in a sermon he had said, "Why do you help Soviet power, bring bread, money, and for what; they say they are building factories, they have everything, yet they take more and more from the peasant; you must give them nothing, let them demand, they will get nothing, they will drag you about a little and settle down, as they took me several times to the GPU, but I still hold to my word: you must not go to the people's house, to listen to all sorts of tales, but go to church, pray to God, perhaps He will forgive our sins. I shall serve with you about a year, I shall set the people right, for they have begun to forget the church. I fear nothing; wherever they exile me, the sun shines everywhere." On 3 February 1931 the OGPU troika sentenced him to five years in a concentration camp.

Returning from the camp in 1936, he settled in the village of Nikolskoe in the Yenotaevsk district. The church in the village had been seized by the Renovationists, and the Orthodox served in a chapel. Father Michael performed the services asked of him. On 27 February 1937 he was subjected to administrative exile, with the obligation to live at Astrakhan, without the right to leave and to report monthly to the NKVD. He moved to Astrakhan, where only one church remained open, that of the Protection of the Mother of God. He sang on the church's choir and sought food for himself and his family as a beggar at the church porch. He was arrested a second time on 20 January 1938, in the time of the mass persecution at the end of the thirties. A standing witness, the deacon of the Protection church, said that he knew him as "a man hostile to Soviet power", who in 1937 had systematically carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation among the parishioners of the church, spreading slanderous rumours that Soviet power oppressed religion and mistreated the ministers of worship, and that the country had been brought to ruin, which was not so under the tsar. On 8 February the investigator questioned him. Father Michael answered that he had done no anti-⁠Soviet activity. The same day he was confronted with false witnesses, whose testimony he categorically rejected.

On 13 February the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The priest Michael Razhkin was shot on 8 March 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave. He is commemorated on 8 March, the day of his death, in the new style (a movable day), with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (a movable day) and, on 24 May, with the Synaxis of the Saints of the Astrakhan Metropolis.