If you ask people a very simple question: who spent the longest time in the Gulag during Soviet times, how many years exactly, and for what? – I'm sure very few would be able to answer.
That man was Mikhail Vasilyevich Yershov. A man of unbending will, a kind of unattainable courage that drove his persecutors and tormentors into uncontrollable rage.
Mikhail Yershov was born on September 17, 1911, in the village of Mamykovo in the Kazan Governorate, to a family of farmers. Ordained a hierodeacon in 1928, he was repeatedly arrested for short terms for blasphemous sermons against those who persecuted the Church. But in 1931, he was arrested on a more serious charge – anti-Soviet activity – and sentenced to eight years in a labor camp. His sentence was later extended for an additional three years. After serving his sentence, he was sent to a settlement, but in 1943 he was arrested again and sentenced to death on the same charges.
Six months later, the death penalty was commuted to 15 years in a labor camp. After serving his sentence, he was released, but was immediately arrested again, and in 1958, sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp.
The total sentences totaled 51 years.
1958!!! This so-called Khrushchev thaw, with its amnesties, retrials, and de-Stalinization, yet Yershov's sentence was longer than Stalin's – 25 years! For what?
He was hated by investigators, prosecutors, judges, guards, and camp commanders. And the reason for this hatred was only one: all those years, years of torture and beatings during the investigation, the torment and suffering he endured in the camps, from hard labor for 12-18 hours a day to being forced out of his barracks into forty-degree frost—they hadn't broken him. During every interrogation, he invariably called Lenin and Stalin beasts, and the state they created bestial.
Here are a few excerpts from the trial transcript for the final charge:
"You are impious communists, lawless ones, antichrists. Why should I pay attention to the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, if all lawlessness originated from them..."
In the near future, Russia will be deformed, the communists are holding the final circle, the last line will be drawn, and there will be no communists on earth. "I fight communism..."
Those who interrogated and judged Mikhail Vasilyevich were terribly irritated by such words, spoken directly to his face. Filled with anger and hatred for a man who dared to call white white and black black, they took revenge on him, using the most vile slanders and the most brutal methods of incarceration in the camps. But despite all the oppression, Mikhail Yershov continued to defend his principles and his faith. His courage was legendary in the camps; many prisoners sought to be in the same unit or at least in the same camp with him. In the camps, he also met priests and bishops of the Catacomb Church, who secretly consecrated him as a bishop.
Mikhail Yershov was unable to serve out his final sentence of 25 years. He died in the camp in 1974, suffering from unbearable hardship and extreme deprivation. At 63, he spent over 40 years in the camps, enduring death row, torture, beatings, and abuse. But who remembers him today? Who knows of his personal heroism?
The period Mikhail Yershov spent in the camps under his final sentence will be described as the Soviet Union's greatest achievements—the first satellite, the first cosmonaut, flights to the moon—but not a word about this man and the suffering he endured defending his right to live without lies.
That's why he's not included in today's history textbooks, but precisely why he must remain in our memory.
And that's why our museums will soon have an exhibit dedicated to this man, reminding visitors that truth must be fought for. Yes, to the best of one's ability and capabilities, but to defend it by all available means, and not to tolerate lawlessness and lies.
He passed away UNDEFEATED.
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His brief biography:
https://orthodoxyforall.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-life-of-st-michael-yershov-1977.html
Video footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcKdSNk7EUs
His full biography in English: https://www-apologetika-eu.translate.goog/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3027&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
His full biography in Russian: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U1sVG3k5986F_laq1Lzfv5xI33-2L6zj/view?usp=drive_link