Sergius Mikhailov

Holy Martyr Sergius Mikhailov was a peasant and church warden in the Ploskosh district of Tver province, and he was shot on 7 October 1937, together with the priest Andrew Bystrov and two other peasants.

On 3 July 1937 Stalin sent the regional party leaders an order to arrest and shoot, through troikas, those regarded as enemies. Against this background, on 22 July the head of the Ploskosh NKVD branch drew up a note for the arrest of the priest Andrew Bystrov and the peasant Basil Vinogradov, and on 3 August another for the peasants Semyon Nikandrov, Sergius Mikhailov and Spiridon Savelyev.

Sergius was born in 1882 in the village of Yurino, in the family of the peasant Michael Mikhailov. He finished the parish school, was a soldier from 1903 to 1905, and in 1931-1932 was church warden of the church where Father Andrew served. He had a large family and a farm; in 1932 he joined the collective farm and had to give up part of his property, keeping a cow and two sheep. On the collective farm he was a brigade leader, and in 1935 he was sentenced to a year in a camp because three calves had died while he was cattle keeper. At his interrogation he rejected the charge of agitation, said he had not been in the house of Anisim Lozgachev since 1932, and had been to Nikandrov twice in June to get a piece of harness, since Nikandrov was the saddler on the collective farm. On 20 September the indictment was drawn up, though there was no evidence, and on 3 October an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was shot on 7 October 1937, with Andrew Bystrov, Basil Vinogradov and Spiridon Savelyev. Semyon Nikandrov, aged sixty-⁠seven, received ten years in a camp.

They were canonized in August 2000 at the Jubilee Council of Bishops for veneration throughout the Church. The saint is commemorated on 7 October and, in the new style, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 18 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver.