Citation

Menkova IG. Christianity in the Middle East 2020; 2020(4): 111-178.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020)

DOI

10.24411/2587-9316-2020-10030

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Seventeen years ago, the consideration of the Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints was offered a biography of the priest Michael Kritskiy, who was shot by a guard. But since there is a version according to which the priest tried to escape, Father Michael was declared a suicide and was not numbered among the holy martyrs. Over the following years, a lot of materials were collected about his life path and death, completing the initial information. Father Mikhail belonged to the family of hereditary rural priests, who were well aware of the problems of the material and spiritual condition of the peasants. He also saw how they affected the attitude of the people to the Church, he knew that the clergy led at times a beggarly existence. All this did not stop Mikhail from choosing the path of life. Having assumed the priesthood, he was called to help these very hardened people, now entrusted by the Providence of God to his spiritual care. The priest was an ardent man, faithful to God to the depths of his heart. Together with his parishioners, Father Mikhail went through the most difficult periods in the history of the Russian state and the Church at the beginning of the 20th century. His selfless pastoral care for people in an atmosphere of spiritual mortification, bitterness, and sometimes aggression, his labors to improve the moral state of the people and the churching of fallen parishioners were a daily feat. State and church events soon demanded a wide participation of the clergy in public life, and Fr. Mikhail was involved in educational and anti-schismatic activities, which he conducted with considerable success. The priest turned out to be a talented preacher. He was also elected a deputy of diocesan congresses. Then, for the first time, his spiritual gifts manifested themselves: the ability to foresee future events and control what was happening at an unattainable distance, which the priest covered with some foolishness. The decree of the Soviet government on the separation of church from state became an incentive for an all-Russian church pogrom. The property of the Church, deprived of the rights of a legal entity and, consequently, of all civil rights, was plundered, and the clergy were destroyed by lynching. During this period, the inhabitants of the Diveyevo Monastery, deprived of the opportunity not only to use the fruits of their labors, but also bread and water, suffered greatly from the unrestrained and cynical arbitrariness of the authorities. Father Michael could not remain indifferent. Being a beggar himself, he collected alms for the sisters in the villages, for which he was arrested, and after the second imprisonment he was shot by a guard along the way. The article uses materials from the State Archives of the Russian Federation, Nizhny Novgorod archives, historical and local history works, as well as the personal archive of Priest Georgy Pavlovich* © 2020, Evgenii Palamarenko. All rights reserved.

Language: ru

Keywords

political repression; Orthodoxy; Avtodeevo; church-state relations; Diveevo; Great terror