Basil Kondratyev

Holy Martyr Basil Kondratyev was a lay believer of the Russian Church, born in 1887 and put to death in 1937. He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in the year 2000, for veneration throughout the Church, on the proposal of the Almaty diocese. His commemoration is on 4 October (21 September by the old calendar), the day of his martyrdom, and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

Basil Emelyanovich Kondratyev was born in the village of Iudino in the Sergiev district, Moscow province (according to other sources, in the village of Genutyevo in the Alexandrov district, Vladimir province). He had been a merchant and house owner, worked as a locksmith craftsman and engaged in trade. In the 1920s and early 1930s he lived in the town of Sergiev Posad. From 1925 to 1935 he was church warden at the All Saints church at Kukuevo, where Mavriky (Poletaev) served.

On 21 October 1935 he was arrested and held in the Butyrka prison. On 8 January 1936 he was convicted in the group case Case of the Clergy and Churchmen headed by Archimandrite Mavriky, Zagorsk, 1936. He was also accused of spreading rumours about war and the imminent end of Soviet power and of arguing that under the tsar the Russian people lived more freely and better. Basil Kondratyev did not admit guilt. He was sentenced to three years of corrective labour and served his sentence at Karlag (Kazakhstan, Karaganda), where he worked as a carter. There, on 28 September 1937, he was convicted in the group case Case of Archimandrite Mavriky (Poletaev) et al., Karaganda, 1937. A special charge was brought against Basil Kondratyev: that, being the right hand of the archimandrite, he distributed to the camp inmates handwritten copies of the Gospel and icons. He did not admit guilt. He admitted only that he kept a small icon.

On 4 October 1937 Basil Kondratyev was shot at Karlag, on the same day as Archimandrite Mavriky.