New Martyr Mikhail Novoselov: The ‘Compensating Link’ by Natalia Vashchina

Icon of the New Martyr Mikhail Novoselov The Lord has arranged the universe wisely, from the most microscopic to the most gigantic forms.

In October 2022, an article entitled, Scientists Discover a Mechanism for Repairing Damage to the DNA Chain, was published on the website of Lomonosov Moscow State University. The article described how, thanks to the observation method, scientists had seen the process of “patching a gap” in the DNA molecule, inherent in the molecule itself. In this regard, interesting is a statement by Olga Sokolova, a Ph.D in Biology, Professor of the Department of Biology of Moscow State University, Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who participated in this scientific work: “DNA damage leads to the accumulation of mutations, and, as a result, death or disruption of cell function.” It follows from this that in the absence of such a compensating mechanism, the entire body can be very seriously affected. But God provides for everything. From the same article: “Every day, ten to 100,000 such ruptures occur in human cells because of external influences and internal processes. Most of them are corrected with the help of special proteins, the so-called repair system… For a cell to function, ruptures must be repaired in time.”

Very often in our daily lives we can see work of this “repair system”: not at the molecular level, but quite visibly and clearly for us, even on a historical scale. When circumstances or other people compensate for the “ruptures”, mistakes made by someone else.

But let’s return to Mikhail Novoselov. The Novoselov family of priests (yes, dear readers, that’s right; virtually all of New Martyr Mikhail’s ancestors, with the only exception, were priests) dates to the seventeenth century. The originator was named Afanasy Stepanov. The Novoselov family has had this surname since the eighteenth century, after the village where they served as priests.

This pious tradition of the priesthood continued until the mid-nineteenth century. Something “broke” on New Martyr Mikhail’s grandfather, Grigory Alekseevich Novoselov. No, he didn’t cast prudence to the winds. Like his pious ancestors, he graduated from a theological seminary and served as a priest for forty years. He was the head of a deanery, received high State awards, which eventually gave him the right to become a member of nobility. But a “rupture” happened in Grigory Alexeyevich’s worldview. How could this happen? What was the cause? God alone knows.

But if we read Time to Read (or Reread) DostoevskyThe details of all his characters, their mannerisms, their actions, their thoughts and words, even their names, all paint individual pictures of the human condition in relation to God and the devil—pictures that don’t fade with time, and are applicable in any culture.

“>Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky carefully, namely his novel Demons, we can see a brilliantly described picture of the stupefied fascination of all strata of Russian society in the mid-nineteenth century (except among the common people) with revolutionary liberal ideas.

Grigory Alexeyevich Novoselov was carried away by the ideas of Count Leo Tolstoy—A Mirror of Russian Doubt”To the attentive reader, several Tolstoys exist: in Chertkov’s publication we see the accuser, the struggler against monarchy. Another Tolstoy is the doubter, the truth seeker, and that is the image which the modern reader has yet to rediscover.”

“>Leo Tolstoy. The principle of “non-resistance to evil by violence” is still being chewed over in our society by some individuals. But it is still not the essence of Tolstoyism. This is what Priest Sergei Bulgakov wrote about this phenomenon in his work, A Handbook for Church Servers and Clergy: “In his teaching, Tolstoy not only betrays the foundations of the Orthodox Christian faith, but also of every religion… If we summarize Tolstoy’s ‘faith’, it appears that it is a bizarre mixture of all the wrong beliefs of our age coming to us from The West and adopted by him during his life, namely: rationalism and the so-called ‘negative criticism’, then atheism or, at least, pantheism, Buddhism (in his teaching on morality and, in particular, non-resistance to evil), cosmopolitanism and even nihilism and anarchism (in the sense of a negative destructive principle), where he mercilessly condemns and denies the existing social order and preaches universal revolution and the destruction of this order.”

And this is what Leo Nikolaevich himself wrote, responding to the decree of the Holy Synod on his excommunication: “It is said that ‘he denies God worshipped in the Holy Trinity, the Creator and Protector of the universe; denies our Lord Jesus Christ, God-man, Redeemer and Savior of the world…; denies the immaculate conception of the Lord Christ as man, and the virginity before his birth and after his birth of the Most Pure Mother of God.’ That I deny the incomprehensible Trinity; the fable, which is altogether meaningless in our time, of the fall of the first man; the blasphemous story of a God born of a virgin to redeem the human race—is perfectly true… If one is to understand by life beyond the grave, the Second Coming, a hell with eternal torments, devils, and a Paradise of perpetual happiness—it is perfectly true that I do not acknowledge such a life beyond the grave… It is also stated that I reject all the Sacraments. That is quite true. I consider all the Sacraments to be coarse, degrading sorcery, incompatible with the idea of God or with the Christian teaching, and also as infringements of very plain injunctions in the Gospels.”¹

​L. N. Tolstoy. 1908     

In the writer’s view, the Church has ceased to be the spiritual guide of society and has only “misinterpreted the metaphysical teaching of Christ, so that it cannot prevent people from living the way they lived.” Tolstoy believed that “all living things have fallen away from the Church and all the churches and live their own lives independently of the Church”, and religion was used to justify social evil and the existing State order. This last maxim was later widely used by the Bolsheviks in their satanic struggle against Christ and His Church. And all these false beliefs found a place in the heart of the venerable Archpriest Grigory Alexeyevich Novoselov…

It is no wonder that Grigory Alexeyevich’s son Alexander flatly rejected the possibility of serving the Orthodox Church as a priest. He graduated from St. Petersburg University, married a young lady from a family of the same liberal views, worked all his life as a school principal (that is, he spread his liberal ideas among the masses of students, presenting them as an axiom) and taught ancient languages.

In 1864, Alexander Novoselov’s son Mikhail was born. He would become the very link that would rectify the errors in the chain of his once pious family. But it wouldn’t happen right away.

Endowed by God with a pure, sincere and merciful soul, but raised in a family infected with liberalism, young Mikhail embraced the ideas of Tolstoyism with enthusiasm. However, not those ideas that Bulgakov exposed in his work, but the external side of Tolstoyism: “a peaceable disposition”, romanticization of peasant life, and the “joy” of communal living. By that time, his father was close to Tolstoy, and his grandfather, Grigory Alexeyevich, would send his greetings via Mikhail to Leo Nikolaevich and his joy over Tolstoy’s struggle with the institution, “which he despises from the bottom of his heart”—the Orthodox Church.

After graduating from school, Mikhail wanted to get a medical degree: he had the desire to help the suffering. But his father opposed this and demanded that Mikhail become, like him, a teacher of ancient languages. The young man’s tact is amazing: “I can’t say that I agreed with him, but to go against his will and insist on money from him for further education… I did not consider it appropriate.” So he obeyed his father’s decision. When Mikhail was twenty-three, his father died. After graduating from the teachers’ seminary, the young man did not return to his original choice, but continued his studies to become a teacher. He entered the Department of History and Study of Languages and Literature at Moscow University. Mikhail dreamed of teaching history, “so that the past life of mankind could give students ideas about the people and their actions from the perspective of their approaching to or distancing from the teachings of Christ.” Conscience, the voice of God in the human soul, did not allow liberal teachings to parasitize Mikhail’s worldview. For him the most important Figure in human history was Christ.

​Pokrovka Street. High school for boys no. 4, 1900-1905. Pastvu.com     

Mikhail was maturing and now he started asking Tolstoy extremely uncomfortable questions: “Why do you use the very money, the lawlessness of living off which you openly acknowledge? Why do you and your family surround yourselves with splendor and luxury and participate in pagan meals? Why all these togas, which are so repulsive to Christ?…”

But the culmination of these doubts, which led to Mikhail’s sobering up and break with Tolstoy and Tolstoyism, was a statement by Leo Nikolaevich himself during a private talk in a company of like-minded people. This is how Mikhail recalled it: “I was sitting with Tolstoy and someone else, and they were enumerating the great founders of religions: Buddha, Confucius, Lao Xi, Socrates, and so on. At some point one of them said that it would be nice to see them in person. He asked Tolstoy which of them he would like to meet. Tolstoy mentioned someone, but… not Christ.” Then Mikhail asked Tolstoy: “Wouldn’t you like to see Christ, Leo Nikolaevich?” He replied bluntly and firmly, “‘Certainly not. I confess, I would not like to meet Him. He was a very disagreeable Gentleman.’ It was so unexpected and appalling that everybody fell silent…” Then Mikhail broke up with Tolstoy and wholeheartedly converted to Orthodoxy.

Many years later, in 1901, Mikhail Alexandrovich would write a letter to Tolstoy following the great writer’s excommunication: “I am taking up my pen under the impression I have on reading your response to the Synod’s resolution of February 20-22. I did not find anything new in your answer; nevertheless, I felt an urge to say a few words to you about your fresh confession… I have read this brief ‘creed’ of yours several times, and each time I have always had the same wistful, oppressive feeling. The words are all good: ‘God’, ‘Spirit’, ‘love’, ‘truth’ and ‘prayer’, but after reading them the soul feels emptiness. There is no life in them, no breath of the Spirit of God… Your God, Spirit, love and truth are lifeless, cold and rational… I have been praying for you and for your loved ones ever since, having broken up with you, I returned to the bosom of the Church of Christ after long wanderings on the paths of sectarianism.”

Returning to the bosom of the Church, which patiently awaits any person in delusion, Mikhail chose worthy mentors for himself. He was pastored by St. John of Kronstadt and the elders of Zosima’s Hermitage Convent. Mikhail’s friend, the philosopher Vladimir Kozhevnikov, wrote about him: “Straightforward and unshakeable, He was on the Patristic path with his whole being.”

St. John of Kronstadt in the garden of his house, 1899     

Now Mikhail Alexandrovich set vigorously about fighting against heresies. Inspired by missionary endeavors, he published educational pamphlets and books, known collectively as the Religious and Philosophical Library. Thirty-nine general-purpose books plus twenty publications dedicated to special issues were released. No one even counted the published bulletins of the Religious and Philosophical Library. A contemporary commented on the Library as follows: “It was as if living water had been sprinkled onto dry theological diagrams and a stream of fresh and clean air had suddenly burst into the stuffy atmosphere of scholarly, abstract theological and philosophical thought.” For his efforts in the field of education, Mikhail Alexandrovich was elected honorary member of the Moscow Theological Academy.

Highly educated, an intellectual with a soul imbued with Patristic teachings, he perfectly understood the consequences of the 1905 Revolution for his Motherland. In October 1905, he wrote to a friend: “Now it seems the situation of the Russian people is getting worse in all things. ‘Freedom’ has created an oppression surpassed only during the Tatar yoke. And most importantly, lies have so entangled the whole of Russia that I can’t see a glimpse of hope anywhere. The press acts in a way that deserves to be whipped, not to say guillotined. Falsehood, insolence, folly-–everything has been mixed up in suffocating chaos. Russia has disappeared somewhere, and I can hardly see it. If not for faith that all this is the Lord’s judgments, it would be hard to survive this great ordeal. I feel that there is no solid ground anywhere, volcanoes are everywhere, except for the Cornerstone—our Lord Jesus Christ. I place all my trust in Him.”

Together with like-minded people, Mikhail Alexandrovich set up the Circle of Those Seeking Christian Enlightenment in the Spirit of the Orthodox Church of Christ. He did not stop his educational activities, publishing works and books. He did not abandon them even when all the spiritual and moral foundations that had developed over the centuries in Rus’ were swept away by the revolutionary storm of 1917. He called on the faithful children of the Church to stand up for it and protect churches from Bolshevik raids.

S. Bulgakov, Fr. P. Florensky, M. Novoselov. 1913. Blog.predanie.ru     

It is unbelievable, but he, a frank, intelligent, ardent believer, a talented educator and missionary, was not touched in the first years of persecutions. The first search at his apartment was carried out on July 11, 1922. Fortunately, Mikhail Alexandrovich was away at that moment, so he was not arrested. But from that moment on he had to hide. At that time, Mikhail Alexandrovich published the work, Letters to Friends, where the author gives answers to pressing questions for Orthodox Christians and more subtle philosophical and religious questions. There are twenty letters in all, like kathismas in the Psalter. In a sense, Mikhail Novoselov, in those terrible times of doubt, loss of faith by the Orthodox, aggressive anti-religious propaganda, and violent methods of eradicating the Christian teaching on Russian soil, appeared in these letters like the holy Psalmist David, praising God and His Church. The first letter, dated February 24 / March 9, 1924, denounces the so-called “Living Church” (how relevant this is to modern Ukraine, where the canonical Orthodox Church is going through real persecution, and the dead structure called the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU) claims to be the only canonical Church! It is like a carbon copy of the “Living Church” in Soviet Russia in the early twentieth century). The final letter, dated December 31, 1927, begins with the praise of the Nativity of Christ and contains a number of subheadings: (“Church and History”, “Church and State”, “Church and Nature”), as well as a serious section, “The Church’s War with the Devil”. The subheadings are very eloquent: Mikhail Alexandrovich speaks about the meaning imperious to developing a stable Orthodox worldview.

Was it in demand? Yes. There were still an impressive number of highly educated people in the country, for whom proper and sober guidance in such matters was vital.

Mikhail Alexandrovich saw the causes of the Revolution in people’s falling away from God. “Russia has internally long begun moving away from the Church; no wonder the State has rejected, ‘separated’ the Church from itself and subjected it to persecution. The long-standing and ever-deepening many-sided departure of the people from the path of God could only bring Divine punishment, perhaps to save what could be saved from perdition through the purifying fire of trials.”

Mikhail Novoselov was first arrested on March 22, 1929. He was confined in the Butyrka Prison. The reason for his arrest was his Letters to Friends.

From the protocol of Mikhail Alexandrovich’s interrogation:

“I believe that the current situation is a test for the faithful, and for the past State system it is a punishment and the verdict of history… These views of mine are partly expressed in my Letters to Friends, of which I have written twenty. The two typed books of letters I am being charged for are precisely a collection of my Letters.”

He was sentenced to three years of imprisonment “in places subordinate to the OGPU,”²—that is, strict-regime closed prisons. He was sent to the Yaroslavl OGPU Political Isolation Prison (“Politizolyator”) to serve his term. Mikhail Alexandrovich’s health deteriorated significantly—he was plagued by bouts of hypertension and severe purulent inflammation of the eyes. Mikhail Alexandrovich’s condition was aggravated by the fact that he had no close relatives; he was not married and had no children, therefore he received no parcels with the most necessary things. And what was given out in prison was, to put it mildly, not sufficient for a normal existence.

​Korovniki Prison (from 1925: Yaroslavl OGPU Political Isolation Prison)     

Mikhail Alexandrovich’s letter to the head of the Yaroslavl Political Isolation Prison, written on March 13, 1930: “Since it is hard for me to walk in felt boots (valenki) due to the heavy snowmelt, and my lace-up boots let water in almost as much as do felt boots, I ask you to provide me with government-issued lace-up boots for a while, until I receive the galoshes I appealed to the Red Cross for about two weeks ago.” He had to write such letters all the time. He, a refined intellectual, a nobleman, and a great, intelligent man, had to beg the prison governor for the bare necessities.

Mikhail Alexandrovich, who had already been convicted, was again prosecuted on August 7, 1930. He was transferred to Moscow where he was often interrogated. The questions mostly concerned his convictions. From the interrogation protocol of April 9, 1931: “Regarding my attitude towards the Soviet Government, I must say that I am its enemy, because of my religious beliefs. Since the Soviet Government is godless and even anti-religious, I believe that, as a true Christian, I cannot support this power in any way, because of its, I repeat, God-fighting nature.”

The investigation lasted more than a year. On September 3, 1931, the sentence was announced: eight years in prison. Mikhail Alexandrovich was sent back to the Yaroslavl Political Isolation Prison. But this time the conditions were absolutely unbearable. The saint’s Life contains his request to be transferred to a solitary cell (which was refused). What did Mikhail Alexandrovich experience in the cell from which he asked to be transferred? A large number of inmates incompatible with the cell size? Lack of space to sleep? Abuse by fellow prisoners? We will never know—all of the above is possible, or maybe something else. In the end he was transferred to a neighboring cell for two.

It is impossible to explain with reasonable arguments what was happening in Soviet prisons in the 1930s. Inhumanity, cruelty, humiliation, physical abuse in various forms… It was satanism, a mockery of man as the image of God—there is no other explanation.

On December 4, 1935, the seventy-one-year-old Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov was refused white bread by the prison doctor. I’ll just say a few words: White bread saved prisoners from pneumonia and other lung diseases. In the letters of prisoners to their relatives of that period we often read requests to send them dry white bread (not rye bread, but white bread, as the camp physicians recommended). But here we see something totally different: the doctor forbids giving white bread to an elderly prisoner with poor health.

In 1937, Mikhail Alexandrovich’s term ended, but it was lengthened by three years. The sufferer was transferred to Vologda Prison, and maltreatment continued here. For speaking loudly, the inmates were forbidden to walk outdoors and to correspond with their relatives.

A photo from the investigation file of M. Novoselov. 1929. Missioner-tver.ru     

The warden’s shout: “Hurry up!”

“I’m walking as fast as I can,” Mikhail Alexandrovich replied.

“Not ‘as fast as I can’, but hurry up!”

This was classified as “loud talking, and coughing” and entailed disciplinary punishment.

Soon materials on Mikhail Alexandrovich began to be collected. They put their stool-pigeon into the cell who described Novoselov as “an ardent monarchist, a hopeless obscurantist, a religious fanatic, and a Russian.”

The stool-pigeon reported every word uttered in the cell. No matter how hard Mikhail Alexandrovich and his cellmates tried to control their words, they could not remain in such tension around the clock. Something would inevitably slip out—dissatisfaction with the prison regime, with the Government, and the situation in the country. As a result, the case materials were collected. From the prison description: “Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov, seventy-four, has been in prison for nine years now, has a higher ‘theological education’, and his worldview and political convictions are based on this ‘education’, expressed in his religious fanaticism and political obscurantism… He does not repent of his beliefs and is not going to—he has already resigned himself to the idea of dying in prison for his beliefs, especially since he has no relatives, and he does not want to bother his friends.”

The charge was naive and untenable: “Reading newspapers, he deliberately distorts the reported facts and slanders the internal situation in the USSR, spreading deliberate lies and slander for counterrevolutionary purposes, putting his cellmates under his counterrevolutionary influence and having a corrupting effect on them.” But in 1938 no one cared about the truth anymore. In order to deal with someone, his sincere faith in God and persistent and firm confession of it were enough.

The Icon, the “Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church”     

On January 17, 1938, Mikhail Alexandrovich was sentenced to execution by firing squad. The persecutors did not care that the sufferer was in his seventy-fifth year at that time. Satanic malice is insane—they couldn’t even wait for his natural death. The New Martyr Mikhail Novoselov was shot on January 20, 1938.

This is a lesson for all of us: how yielding to distorted ideas and the lack of seriousness of some become the cause of sorrows, confession and the feats of others.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov truly straightened the chain of his family, becoming its “compensating link”. But how high the price of this compensation is! The blood of the New Martyrs is the great price of the spiritual rebirth of Russia, just as the Blood of Christ once became for people the earnest of eternal life with God in His Kingdom. I would like to conclude with the words of His Holiness Patriarch Alexei II, which contain much pain, but also much light and hope:

“I sincerely believe and hope that in the depths of the consciousness of the Russian people, in our spiritual deserts, the roots of piety and genuine faith have been preserved. Watered with the blood of countless Russian New Martyrs, they are able to revive our Church vineyard, which, by the grace of God, is already beginning to flower—to which we are witnesses.”