Basil Izmailov

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Izmailov, a priest, by his full name Basil Vasilievich Izmailov, was born on 4 June 1885 in the town of Vyshny Volochyok, Tver province. He finished the Minsk seminary in 1905 and the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy in 1910 and was sent to teach literature and didactics at the girls' school in Parichi, Minsk province. On 7 December 1913 Bishop Mitrophan (Krasnopolsky) of Minsk asked for his transfer to the Minsk seminary, giving him an excellent character reference. On 15 January 1915 he was appointed professor of basic theology, dogmatics and moral theology at the seminary. It is not known when he was ordained a priest, but at the start of the persecution he was already serving at the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in the village of Sloboda-⁠Ozeritskaya, Minsk district. He was made an archpriest.

In 1927 he was appointed rector of the Holy Resurrection cathedral in Borisov, served there only a few months and was arrested on 2 June 1927. It was written of him that he had said, at the vigil and the next day, in the full church, that Bolshevik priests would soon come and take the cathedral to make it a club, that he called people to defend the church and said that religion is persecuted, that cold weather is sent by God as a punishment for the Soviet authorities' mockery of the Church, and that the rains show a great war near. They also wrote that his activity had stirred the crowd at the coming of the renovationists in March. At the interrogation he did not admit guilt and said the accusations rested on nothing. On 26 August 1927 he was sentenced to three years in the Solovki camp. Archpriest Basil Izmailov passed to the Lord on 22 February 1930 in the Solovki camp and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 22 February, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 11 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Belarus, on 23 August in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Solovki, and on 1 November in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Arkhangelsk Metropolia, all in the new style.