Basil Gorbachev

Holy Martyr Basil Gorbachev was a priest and icon painter, born on 4 April 1885 in the village of Naryshkino, Saratov province, and shot on 26 February 1938 at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. He is commemorated on 26 February and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church. Our sources do not show the date of his canonization.

He finished the parish church school. In 1905, not wishing to marry, he entered the church of the Passion of the Lord in Saratov, then for eight years was a chanter in the choir of the Saint Daniel Monastery in Moscow. In 1913 and 1914 he was steward at the house of Bishop Innocent of Turkestan and Tashkent, in Verny (now Almaty). From 1914 he was psalmist at the Alexander Nevsky seminary church in Tashkent. In 1915 he was mobilized and served as psalmist at the field church of a regiment. In 1917 he escaped by a miracle being shot by bandits.

In August 1918, after his marriage, he was ordained deacon. In 1923 he returned to Saratov province, but could not be reconciled with his father, who was displeased with the path of service in the Church that his son had chosen, dangerous in those times, and with the son's wife, who was unskilled in peasant labour. Father Basil left with his family for Saratov and served as deacon at the cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. In the early 1930s, because of the famine on the Volga, he moved with his family to the Moscow region, to the village of Markovo, then was appointed to the church at Ilyinsky Pogost, Kurovsky district.

In 1936 he was moved to the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Parfentyevo, Kolomna district, where, besides serving as deacon, he busied himself with restoring the wall paintings. In the autumn of 1936 the rector of the church was arrested, and the church was to be closed. At the request of the parishioners, Basil was ordained priest. In early 1937 the church was closed all the same; on 13 January 1938 Father Basil was appointed to the Transfiguration church in the village of Bolshie Vyazemy, Zvenigorod district.

On 15 February 1938, on the feast of the Meeting of the Lord, he was arrested; the search turned up nothing. He was held in the prison at Mozhaisk and at the interrogation did not admit guilt of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and of spreading slander against the Soviet government. On 19 February 1938 the three-⁠man tribunal of the political police sentenced him to death and he was moved to the Taganka prison. He was shot on 26 February 1938 and buried in an unknown grave at the Butovo range. His wife was named Vera Trofimova, and his children were Taisia, Elizaveta and Viktor.