Basil Kolosov

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Kolosov, a priest, was born in 1891 in the village of Spas-⁠Doshchaty, Zaraisk district, Ryazan province, in the family of the priest Alexei Kolosov. After the Ryazan seminary, which he finished in 1915, he was psalm-⁠reader until 1927 at the church of the Entrance in Podlesnaya Sloboda, Moscow region, and in 1927 he was ordained priest for the same church. At first he often preached, but when he learned that some sermons were being interpreted as anti-⁠Soviet, he fell silent. In the village, of only three hundred houses, lived many communist activists and militant atheists, ready to twist any word of the priest, for to them he was an enemy not only religious but political.

In December 1929 the OGPU arrested several peasants of the village, accused of agitation against collective farms. The authorities taxed the priest, and when he paid three hundred rubles with difficulty, they reckoned another income, of 1,800 rubles, and demanded another three hundred; on 27 January 1930 the village council took part of his property. On 30 January 1930 the chairman of the council testified against the arrested peasants and the priest that he carried on agitation, predicting that those left without land would be enslaved in the collective farm and that the end would soon come. Father Basil was arrested the same day and admitted that he had expressed discontent with the taxes, but denied any word about the collective farm. Taken to the prison in Kolomna, his case was joined to that of the peasants. On 3 March 1930 the OGPU Collegium sentenced him to five years in a camp, and nine peasants to various terms, with exile of their families to the north and confiscation of property. The condemned sent a petition to the prosecutor's office showing that their families were not kulaks, that the accusation rested on an unreliable record of a meeting and that the village itself had acknowledged the mistake. On 13 August 1930 the exile of the families was cancelled, but the condemned were sent to the camp.

In 1934 Father Basil returned home and was sent to the Transfiguration church in the village of Strupna, Zaraisk district, where he served until the new wave of persecution. He was arrested on 27 September 1937 and held in the Kolomna district; the next day he denied any counter-⁠revolutionary activity. False witnesses signed statements, and on 3 October the investigation ended. On 13 October 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp and he was sent to Bamlag. In 1939 he was moved to a camp in Sverdlovsk region, where he suffered his last torments. The priest Basil Kolosov died in custody on 22 May 1939 and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 22 May, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 23 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, all in the new style.