Basil Malinin

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Malinin, a priest, was born on 30 December 1877 in the village of Patakino, Vladimir district, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Xenophon Malinin. After the seminary in Vladimir he was ordained priest and served at the church of Venerable Cornelius in the town of Pereslavl. In time he was raised to archpriest and received the mitre.

On 1 December 1936 an NKVD agent recorded, after questioning pupils in front of their teachers, that children from the settlement of Novy Byt came daily to Saint Cornelius church in Pereslavl, among them pioneers, with whom the priest Malinin and some former nuns talked. The report said that the priest lured them with pretexts, gave them three prosphora each, blessed them, told them about the feasts, Christmas and Easter, showed them the altar and asked them to come on feast days. A pupil pioneer, Kolya Ranetkin, was named as organizer of the children. The group fell apart, the children took off their pioneer ties.

On 18 October 1937 Archpriest Basil was arrested, held in Yaroslavl and interrogated the same day. The investigator found that he kept up relations with the dean and the priests of neighbouring parishes and told him that he was accused of being a member of a church monarchist organization in Pereslavl and of drawing pioneers' children to church for indoctrination. He denied it, saying that in 1936 some schoolchildren had come to church on their own. The investigation ended on 19 October, and on 28 October an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp. On 19 January 1938 he arrived in Bamlag, from which he was sent to a camp in the Far East. Archpriest Basil Malinin died on 10 April 1938 in a camp in the Far East and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 10 April, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, all in the new style.