Michael Voskresensky

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Voskresensky was a priest of the Russian Church, killed in 1918 near the village of Bortsurmany, in Simbirsk province. He was born in 1883 or 1886 in the village of Teply Stan, in the family of a district police officer. In 2000 he was included in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. His commemoration is on 27 August by the old calendar (9 September by the new).

In 1900 he entered the Nizhny Novgorod seminary, which he finished in 1906. In June of the same year he was appointed by Bishop Gury of Simbirsk and Syzran to the post of psalmist at the church in the village of Mitin Vrag. After half a year, on 24 February 1907, he was ordained priest by Archbishop Jacob of Simbirsk and Syzran for the Dormition church in the village of Bortsurmany. From March 1907 he was head and religion teacher at the parish school in Yagodino and at the district school in Bortsurmany. In the same year he was appointed missionary dean. From 1915 he was a member of the Kurmysh district branch of the diocesan school council. In 1917 he was elected dean of the first district of the Kurmysh district. He received the epigonation in 1912 and the skufia in 1915. With his wife, Maria Ivanovna, he had four children: Nikolai, Sergei, Ivan and Lyuba.

At the beginning of September 1918 the inhabitants of the town of Kurmysh raised an anti-⁠Soviet revolt. From Simbirsk a detachment under V. I. Garin was sent to suppress the revolt. Entering Bortsurmany, the Red Army men detained several local people, among them Father Michael. They were accused of having ordered the bell to be rung, of sympathizing with the revolt and of expecting the detachment of Kolchak. In the village it was announced that those detained were being sent to Kurmysh for trial. On 9 September a column of arrested men, under guard of armed Red Army soldiers, did set out toward Kurmysh. But about five kilometres from the village, at the Stepanikha ravine, the arrested men were shot. That evening those killed were buried by local people in the cemetery of the village of Bortsurmany, and a cross was later set up at the place of the shooting.

In 2000, by decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church, on the proposal of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese, he was included in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.