Michael Tverdovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Tverdovsky, a priest, was born on 20 October 1881 in Saratov, to the priest Konstantin Nikolaevich Tverdovsky (1849-1906) of the church of the Saviour's Transfiguration. Konstantin and his wife Anna Mikhailovna had five children: Alexandra, Pyotr, Michael, Nikolai and Anastasia. All the sons later chose the service of the Church and received the priesthood. In 1884 the family moved to the Serdobsk district of Saratov province, where Father Konstantin served at the church of the Panovo convent, and the family lived in the village of Davydovka. From 1891 to 1898 Michael studied at the clerical school of Petrovsk, and in 1904 he graduated from the Saratov seminary and married Olga Porfirievna (born 1886). In April 1905, by resolution of Bishop Hermogenes (Dolganev), he was appointed priest at the church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Vedenyapino, Kuznetsk district. In November 1906, at his own request, he became priest of the Kazan church in the village of Andreevskoe (Shilovka), Serdobsk district. He received from Bishop Hermogenes the epigonation (20 May 1911) and from Bishop Palladius (Dobronravov) the skufia (1 April 1916). He was religion teacher at the parish school and the village school.

After the October revolution the peasants of Shilovka, led by the future chairman of the local soviet, organized a procession with red flags, plundered the manor, pulled down the recently built chapel, and closed and dismantled the Kazan church. From 1927 the family lived in the village of Danilovka, where the Protection church still functioned (closed and demolished in 1934); in 1930 Father Michael lived in the village of Koleno, where he and his wife were deprived of civil rights. The last address in the Saratov region was the village of Belgaza. Then the family had to leave the Volga. He said, "In December 1932 I came to the Kolomna district of Moscow province from the village of Belgaza, Lower Volga region. I left there because of material hardship, since I was almost starving. We, the clergy, are given no peace at all, we are persecuted morally and physically, laden with taxes beyond our strength, sent into exile. In January 1933, after the service, they asked me why I had left home and how the people lived in my homeland. In our homeland there is a terrible famine, the people have become so poor that it is frightening to look at them."

From December 1932 he served at the Dormition church in the village of Andreevskoe, Kolomna district. On 25 April 1933 he was arrested and put in the Kolomna prison, on a charge of carrying on "systematic anti-⁠Soviet and defeatist agitation among the population, predicting the coming fall of Soviet power". On 27 May 1933 the OGPU troika of the Moscow region sentenced him to three years of deprivation of liberty, with removal to Kazakhstan. At the beginning of August he arrived at the disposal of the Aktyubinsk OGPU department, and on 19 August he was sent to serve his exile in the Ubagan district, Kustanai region. The conditions of the exile were such that, although at the arrest, according to a certificate, he was healthy, on 1 January 1934 he was declared an invalid, unfit for heavy physical labour, with chronic inflammation of the kidneys with oedema, arteriosclerosis and myocarditis. On 12 February 1936 the exhausted confessor was released and returned to Russia. In February 1937 he settled in the village of Zagorye, Maksatikha district, Kalinin region, and served in the wooden Transfiguration church.

The new arrest followed on 8 September 1937. The Maksatikha district office of the UNKVD placed him under guard on a charge of anti-⁠Soviet agitation, in the course of carrying out NKVD Operational Order no. 447 of 30 July 1937, which prescribed the shooting of a thousand people in the Kalinin region. At the search his family correspondence was seized. The next day he was questioned. Of his relatives he named his brother, the priest Nicholas Tverdovsky, and his sister Alexandra Konstantinovna Lebyazhieva, wife of the priest Alexei Ivanovich Lebyazhiev. To the question what counter-⁠revolutionary activity he had carried on among the population, he answered, "I, Tverdovsky, carried on no counter-⁠revolutionary activity among the population. I can add nothing more." Four days later, on 13 September, the investigator tried a second time to break him, with the testimony of three "witnesses" who had signed, as if under dictation, "confirmations" that he had carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation. In this record there is a single question: whether he admitted guilt. He answered, "In the charge brought against me I do not admit guilt, and I explain that, living in the village of Zagorye, I carried on no counter-⁠revolutionary activity." The same day the bill of indictment was drawn up.

On 15 October 1937 the troika of the UNKVD of the Kalinin region sentenced him to the highest penalty. Father Michael was shot at one in the morning on 17 October 1937 in the settlement of Maksatikha. He was glorified among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the Council of Bishops of 13-16 August 2000. His wife, Olga Porfirievna, had already died. They had three children: Konstantin (born 22 June 1908), an officer, who died in February 1942 in the region of Lake Ladoga, and two daughters, Olga (1917) and Alexandra (born 19 March 1919), of whose fate nothing is known.

He is commemorated on 17 October, 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 18 July with the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver (a movable day) and on 12 September with the Synaxis of the Saints of Saratov (a movable day).