Basil Alexandrin

Holy Martyr Basil Alexandrin, a peasant, by his full name Basil Afanasievich Alexandrin, was born on 8 February 1872 in the village of Vertelim, Insar district, Penza province (now the Staroshaigovo district of Mordovia). He was a thorough man in everything. Before the Revolution he had a large farm: ten hectares of his own and another seventy to eighty rented, plenty of livestock and two permanent workers, with ten to fifteen seasonal hands hired every year. He had a wife and three children. The villagers respected him, and in 1918 the parish assembly elected him psalm-⁠reader of the village church, and on 14 August he was confirmed by the Penza diocesan administration. Parishioners praised his kindness, diligence, sympathy and help. In 1929 the priest of the church, at the demand of the authorities, wrote of him that his conduct was excellent, he knew the service well, read and sang wonderfully, led the choir and came regularly to services.

Perhaps for this reason, in 1929 the village council not only dispossessed him and deprived him of electoral rights but decided to move him out of the village. Basil left on his own for an unknown place and returned only in 1932, when his rights were restored. In 1934 the authorities wanted to give the church building to a machine and tractor station as a smithy. The women of Vertelim said openly in the council that they would not give it up, and Basil became their firm defender. The church was left to the faithful, but the psalm-⁠reader, held to blame, was arrested and kept for a time. Released, he again carried out his duties at the church with care and was also invited to serve in the village of Shagaevo.

On 17 October 1937 he was arrested again, accused of "counter-⁠revolutionary activity and anti-⁠Soviet agitation". In the search sixteen religious books and a copper cross were found and confiscated. At the interrogations he conducted himself manfully, did not hide his convictions and did not blacken others. In December 1937 the sentence was ten years in a camp. From February 1938 he was in the Unzhensk camp, at Sukhobezvodnoe station in Gorky region, where he died on 26 August 1942, unable to bear the inhuman conditions of detention. He was glorified by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in the year 2000.

He is commemorated on 26 August and on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, in the new style.