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Hieromonk Metrophanes, in the world Michael Vasilyevich Vasilyev was born in 1876 in the village of Tipnery, Cheboksari uyezd. He finished four classes of the village school, worked on the land, and in 1904 entered as a novice the Hodigitria monastery in Belebejsk uyezd, Ufa province, not far from the village of Nikolayevka, Karyavdinskaya volost. This was a Chuvash community, which had been given the status of a monastery by the Holy Synod in 1901. Here Michael was tonsured with the name Metrophanes. In 1915 Bishop Andrew of Ufa ordained him to the diaconate, and in 1918 – to the priesthood. After the closure of his monastery in 1929, Fr. Metrophanes served in parish churches in the Ufa and Kazan dioceses. At the beginning of the 1930s he was serving in the village of Toisi, Tsivilsky region, and in the village of Pervoye Churyashevo, October region, in Ufa province.
During this period Hieromonk Gurias (Pavlov) was serving in the Shutnerovskaya church. In 1932 the two hieromonks were arrested almost simultaneously and accused of “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”, but were convicted in different trials. Hieromonk Metrophanes was sentenced to three years’ exile and sent to Kologriv in Kostroma diocese. In 1935 he returned to Chuvashia, and again met Fr. Gurias in the church of the village of Akulevka, Cheboksari region. The two priests then stayed together in Fr. Metrophanes’ house in Tipnery. Thereafter they frequently met each other, although both were forced to live the lives of wanderers. Fr. Gurias confessed with Fr. Metrophanes and later declared at his interrogation that Fr. Metrophanes was his spiritual father. In the summer of 1950 Fr. Metrophanes sent the Chuvash MGB a letter containing a brochure called “My Life in Christ”, with a very strong anti-soviet content. He was summoned to the MGB, and promised not to publish the text.
After signing this promise he repented, considering it a sin before God. Fr. Gurias relates that at the end of March, 1951 he met Fr. Metrophanes in a Chuvash village on the other side of the Volga not far from the settlement of Zvenigovo in Mari ASSR. They gave each other Holy Unction, confessed and received Communion. Then Fr. Metrophanes said that he had to cross the Volga. Fr. Gurias tried to dissuade him – it was the time of the spring thaw, and Fr. Metrophanes only had bast shoes. But Fr. Metrophanes was unbending. He gave his bronze icon of the Kazan Mother of God together with other holy things to Fr. Gurias and left. Towards the end of March Fr. Metrophanes arrived in Zvenigovo, where he stayed for a few days with the parishioner Gregory Ivanov. It was then that he told Gregory that he would soon die, and he wanted to die as a martyr. So he would soon go to the square and denounce the antichristian authorities. Gregory tried to dissuade him, but on March 26 Fr. Metrophanes gave a speech before the people against the atheist authorities and tore down a slogan with the name of Stalin from the wall of a shop, tearing it to pieces. He was arrested and sent to the Zvenigovo regional department of the MGB, where he continued to preach and tried to tear the portraits of communist leaders from the walls. Later Gregory Ivanov told Fr. Gurias about all this.
Fr. Metrophanes’ interrogation began on the same day. He openly rejected Soviet power, saying that he “hated” it and “completely” confessed to being anti-soviet. He also confessed to being a monarchist and rejecting the Moscow Patriarchate. However, he refused to give any information about other True Orthodox Christians. On April 7, 1951 he was convicted in accordance with article 58-10 part 1 and sentenced to ten years in the camps.
Beginning his sentence on July 14, he “showed himself to be a foreign element motivated against Soviet power”. On October 5, 1951 an anti-soviet letter was taken from him. On October 6 he tore up a portrait of Stalin in the cultural-educational section of the camp and broke a window in which the newspaper “Mariiskaya Pravda” was hanging. Nothing more is known about him. He is presumed to have died in the strict regime camp.

(Source: Lydia Sikorskaya, Taijnoj Tserkvi Revnitel’. Zhizneopisania i dokumenty, Moscow: Bratonezh, 1908;

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Source, Vadimir Moss