Presbyter
Saint Maxim was born on August 13, 1885, in the village of Borki, Tyumen district, Tobolsk province, in the family of a peasant, Peter Bogdanov. After completing three grades of rural school, he worked on his farm, and in 1924 he began serving in the church as a psalmist. In 1928, he was ordained a priest and served in the church in the village of Bugurtak, Kurginsky district, Krasnoyarsk region.
After the organization of collective farms in the early 1930s, the authorities began to demand that individual farmers who had not joined the collective farms fully sow the allotted land with the recommended seeds. Due to the lack of seeds, some peasants in the village of Bugurtak refused to sow their fields in the spring of 1933, which was regarded as an anti-state conspiracy. On April 16, 1933, Father Maxim and five peasants were arrested and imprisoned in the district jail.
The peasants admitted their guilt; however, the priest categorically stated that he did not consider himself guilty. On May 13, 1933, the special troika of the PPU OGPU of the ZapSib region sentenced the peasants to five years of imprisonment in a correctional labor camp, while the priest was sentenced to ten years. They were sent in a convoy to Minusinsk, where the sentence was read out.
