Basil Kandelyabrov

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Kandelyabrov, a priest, was shot at Tikhvin on 3 December 1937 together with Archpriest John Sarv, Hegumen Arsenius (Dmitriev), Abbess Joannicia (Kozhevnikova) and the priests Nicholas Pokrovsky, Emilian Panasevich and Nicholas Zelenov. The calendar says nothing else separately about him; it tells the fate of the group.

John Romanovich Sarv was born in 1867 in Livonia, in the family of a landless peasant. He finished the Riga seminary, became a psalm-⁠reader and soon a priest at Olgin Krest in the Gdov district. In 1896 he moved to Saint Petersburg, attended the Theological Academy (finishing in 1902) and taught religion in several schools. From 1904 he served at the Transfiguration church on Zabalkansky Prospect, from 1912 as rector and archpriest, until 1927, and led the Vonifatiev Temperance Society. At the end of the 1920s he was banished from Leningrad and moved to Tikhvin, where he continued his pastoral work and was dean. In 1934 he was arrested, refused to give any testimony, and was the only one of those arrested at that time in Tikhvin on church matters who behaved so. He received a suspended sentence and was released.

In 1937 a new wave of arrests passed through Tikhvin. Together with Father John fourteen people were put in prison: seven priests, the abbess of the Tikhvin Entrance Monastery and six laypeople. All were declared a single counter-⁠revolutionary group led by Father John Sarv, and the case was entitled "Sarv Ivan Romanovich and others". All the clergy in the case were shot, the others received ten years in camps. Five priests and the abbess Joannicia refused, despite torture, to admit guilt and to incriminate the others, giving a rare example of united Christian courage. They were shot at Tikhvin on 3 December 1937.

He is commemorated on 3 December, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 11 July (a movable date) in the Synaxes of the Saints of Novgorod and of Saint Petersburg, all in the new style.