Basil Agafonikov

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Agafonikov, a priest, was born on 5 March 1885 in the village of Medyany, Vyatka province, in the family of Vladimir Yakovlevich and Maria Andreevna Agafonikov. His father was a psalm-⁠reader at the Holy Trinity church in the village, and his mother, the daughter of a psalm-⁠reader, had fine hearing and a good voice and knew by heart some three hundred folk songs, which left a deep mark on him and on his elder brothers Nicholas and Alexander. A great influence on the brothers was the well-⁠known pastor and preacher Nicholas Mikhailovich Zubarev, godfather of Alexander and Basil, who insisted that Alexander be sent to his own parish girls' school, not to the zemstvo school, where, as in almost all zemstvo schools of the time, unbelief flourished. After Alexander, Basil too entered it, at six and a half.

After the Vyatka seminary he married Claudia Koshurnikova and was ordained a priest, first in the village of Melyanda, then at the church of the Entrance in Nemy, where he was also a religion teacher. In the summer of 1910 he was moved to his native village of Medyany, and in January 1913 to the Protection church in Sitma. In March 1920 he was appointed to the Annunciation church in Bobino, one of the oldest and largest villages of the district, with more than seven thousand parishioners. The church was closed in 1929, but through his efforts and those of his parishioners permission to serve again was given in February 1930. In 1929 he was raised to archpriest.

On 6 November 1930 Father Basil and five parishioners were arrested and held in Vyatka. Asked, he said that there had been no meetings except one in March 1930, with the authorities' approval, to elect the church warden; that in 1929 the church had been insured and could not pay by itself, so he asked the parishioners to help, and they collected money with a box during the service; and that his sermons were purely evangelical. He denied having slandered the Bolsheviks. The prosecution claimed that at the reopening of the church he had said "God did not allow the heretic Bolsheviks to close the church", that schools corrupt children, and that a group of kulaks led by him had carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation. On 29 December 1930 the OGPU troika sentenced him to five years in a camp. His service record shows that he was in the Usolye camp, in Transbaikalia, at Vladivostok, in Nagaevo bay and in the Sea of Okhotsk region, and from November 1934 he served as a priest in the village of Sushchevo in Gorky region, and from February 1935 in Ponyukovo, Moscow region. In his last years he served at the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Gubino, Mozhaisk district.

On 30 November 1937 he was arrested and held in Mozhaisk. The chairman of the village council wrote that he carried on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation among collective farmers and urged them not to take part in the elections, and the chairman of the collective farm asked that the "blood-⁠sucking priest" be removed, because he urged villagers to come to services, especially at sowing and harvest, and delayed work. False witnesses said that he went from house to house urging mostly the old women to go to church, and on 12 December, election day, to come to church. At the interrogation of 1 December Father Basil denied any counter-⁠revolutionary activity and any connection with the clergy of Mozhaisk and with another priest of the neighbourhood. On 3 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Archpriest Basil Agafonikov was shot on 9 December 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.

He is commemorated on 9 December, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and on 21 October in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vyatka, all in the new style.