Michael Vinogradov

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Vinogradov, a priest, was born on 6 May 1873 in the village of Staraya Sitnya, Belopesotsk volost, Serpukhov district of Moscow province, to the priest Nikolai Ivanovich Vinogradov. In 1887 he finished the Donskoe school, and in 1895 the Moscow theological seminary. Between 1896 and 1902 he was teacher at the two-⁠class parish school at David's Hermitage of the Ascension in the Serpukhov district; between 1902 and 1906 he was reader at the church of Saint Elisabeth at the Dorogomilovo cemetery in Moscow. In 1906 he was ordained a priest for the Zosima Hermitage (of the Holy Trinity and the Hodegetria Mother of God) in the Vereya district, and from 1911 he was religion teacher at the Arkhangelsk zemstvo school, near the monastery.

In 1930 he was moved to serve in the village of Lisintsevo, Naro-⁠Fominsk district, at the church of the Sign (Znamenskaya), beside which three sisters of the Zosima Hermitage lived. On 22 May 1931 Father Michael and five sisters of the Zosima Hermitage, who lived in the village of Lisintsevo and the neighbouring village of Lukino, were arrested. The same day witnesses were questioned, the former chairman of the village council and the chairman of the collective farm at Lisintsevo, who said, "Thanks to the systematic anti-⁠collective-⁠farm agitation of Vinogradov and the nuns, the village of Lisintsevo is collectivized only to 85%, and in Lukino a collective farm still cannot be organized." "The priest, according to the believers, often gave sermons in church at which the believers often wept; what sermons he gave I do not know, but I know that after the services the anti-⁠collective-⁠farm mood among the individual peasants grew."

After two days the investigator questioned Father Michael. "Among the peasants I carried on no agitation against Soviet power, nor against the collective farms," said the priest. "As for discontent with Soviet power, I did express it, but only in the presence of the nuns. The nuns, for their part, said that perhaps God would send war, and then there would be a change of life." The next day he was charged with having "systematically carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation aimed at wrecking the measures of Soviet power in the village". On 25 May 1931 the OGPU troika of the Moscow region sentenced him to five years of exile in Kazakhstan, and he was sent to Alma-⁠Ata. The priest Michael Vinogradov died in exile on 31 May 1932 and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 31 May, 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) and with the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, on 5 September (a movable day).