the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

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On December 22, 1913 Vladyka was “retired by reason of the weakness of
his health”. His place of retirement was, first, the Pochayev Lavra, and then
Optina Desert. He arrived in Optina on January 2, 1914, and lived there until
his arrest, together with Archimandrite Isaac (Bobrov) and the last Optina
elders. He was one of the spiritual directors of the community. In 1918 his
nephew, the lecturer in chemistry in Petrograd university, Andrew
Vladimirovich Alexeev, who had been his spiritual son during his studies at
the university, was shot without investigation or trial. Soon after their son his
parents died from grief.
On Palm Sunday, 1923 he was arrested together with Archimandrite Isaac
(Bobrikov) and many other Optina monks. He was in prison for a few weeks.
On his release he moved to Kozelsk, where he lived in a flat and served in the
Dormition cathedral. The fact that there were so few renovationists in the
town was owing to no small degree to the merits of Bishop Micah, who
received them into communion only through repentance. We know that he
rejected the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius because it is recorded in the
records of the trial of the Kaluga priest Fr. Alexander Brilliantov in 1930 that
when Fr. Alexander signed the declaration Bishop Micah called him “a red
heretic” and banned parishioners from entering his church. He rejected
renovationism and sergianism, and received renovationists into communion
only through repentance.
Vladyka Michah died on February 16, 1931, and was buried in the
Pyatnitskoye cemetery.
(Sources: I.K. Sursky, Otyets Ioann Kronshtadtsky, Belgrade, 1941, chapter 50,
translated in The True Vine, N 33, vol. 6, no. 3, 1994, pp. 53-54; M.E. Gubonin,
Akty Svyatejshego Patriarkha Tikhona, Moscow: St. Tikhon's Theological
Institute, 1994, p. 981; Monk Ambrose (von Sivers), "Istoki i svyazi
Katakombnoj Tserkvi v Leningrade i obl. (1922-1992)", report read at the
conference "The Historical Path of Orthodoxy in Russia after 1917", Saint
Petersburg, 1-3 June, 1993; Tsvetochki Oprinoj Pustyni, Moscow: Palomnik,
1995, p. 168;
http://www.pstbi.ru/bin/code.exe/frames/m/ind_oem.html?/ans)
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