Mitrophan Kvanin

Venerable Martyr Mitrophan Kvanin, an archimandrite, in the world Mikhail Andreevich Kvanin, was the brother of two bishops. He was born in 1875 in the village of Gubkino, in the Maloarkhangelsk district of Oryol province, to a peasant family, and was educated at the village school. He began as a novice at the Holy Spirit Monastery in Vilnius. It is not known for certain where he received tonsure, but from 1914, at the monastery of Saint Nicholas in Samara, he was already a monk, by some accounts even a hieromonk. From 1917 he helped at the bishop's house in Taganrog, from 1920 he was a reader in the village of Bolokhovo in Tula province, and from 1923, as a hieromonk, he moved to Moscow and served at the church of the Holy Spirit at the Danilov cemetery. At some point he was raised to the rank of archimandrite.

On 23 February 1933 he was arrested as a member of a group of priests from the church of the Holy Spirit. All were tried in the same case, with different sentences. On 15 March the Special Council of the OGPU Collegium sentenced him to three years of exile in the Russian North. At the place of exile he settled at Kargopol (or, in another version, at the settlement of Kargapolye in the Kurgan region). When the term ended in 1936 he returned to Moscow, where he was arrested again. The new sentence: again three years, this time in Kazakhstan. For about a year he lived in the village of Borodulikha in the Semipalatinsk region. With other clergy he bore the hardships, praying to God; many were then to receive the crown of martyrdom. The servants of the Church in exile at Borodulikha were to pass through the group case "Archpriest Dmitry Kuklin and others".

On 22 November 1937 he was arrested. On the 27th of the same month the charge was drawn up: "he undermined the collective-⁠farm system, agitated for the forming of a group of believers, and carried on propaganda for keeping the fasts", and the final sentence was given: the highest penalty. On 2 December 1937 Archimandrite Mitrophan Kvanin, who never admitted guilt, was shot at Semipalatinsk. The place of burial is not known. He is commemorated on 2 December, 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).