Mikheyev was born on 17 May 1942 in
Kandalaksha, Murmansk region, in a family of
Old Believers. His family has a history of clergymen, most prominent being his Peter Semenovich Mikheev, was dean of the Moscow region. In 1954 at the age of 12 he moved to the village of
Shuvoye in the
Yegoryevsky District of the Moscow Oblast, where his grandmother Varvara Mikhailovna lived. By his own admission: "After the war, in Shuvoy, my peers and I went to the temple. And we did not feel any particular persecution at that time. Perhaps the reason was that the chairman of the village council was an Old Believer at that time, and that all the inhabitants of the village were Old Believers or came from [Old Believers] families. And all supported each other. And the secretary of the village council generally helped my grandfather in his affairs, helped with certificates when he needed to go somewhere to make a request." At the end of high school in 1959 Mikheyev entered the Yegoryevsk
professional school where he studied the profession of
carpenter. He afterwards worked for several years at the factory in Shuvoy. Around this time he also visited Old-rite churches in Shuvoy and Yegoryevsk. ==Religious life==