Apollon Babichev

Saint Apollon Babichev, new martyr, was a psalm-⁠reader of the Russian Church and was shot on 23 November 1937, in the Tula region. He was numbered among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia by the Council of Bishops of August 2000, for veneration throughout the Church. He is commemorated on 10 (23) November, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ivanovo and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.

He was born at Kaluga on 30 March 1874. After finishing the city school he served as psalm-⁠reader at the church of Saint George in Kaluga until 1937, when he was arrested in the wave of repressions of that year. The arrest took place on 16 October 1937.

Although he took a firm position at the interrogations (Babichev insisted that his answers be recorded exactly and put his signature after each answer), he was accused of counter-⁠revolutionary and anti-⁠Soviet activity. Records of his interrogations have survived, in which he categorically denied active ties with the counter-⁠revolutionary element among churchmen and holding anti-⁠Soviet conversations with citizens, and refused to name persons from his circle hostile to the Soviet order.

On 19 November 1937 the special NKVD troika sentenced Apollon Babichev to death, together with his accomplices, Archbishop Augustine (Belyaev), Archimandrite Ioannicius (Dmitriev), Archpriest John Speransky, the psalm-⁠reader Alexei Gorbachev and the church council member Michael Arefiev. The sentence was carried out on 23 November 1937. Apollon Xenofontovich Babichev was buried in a common brotherhood grave.