Basil Nikolsky

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Nikolsky, a priest, by his full name Basil Sergeevich Nikolsky, was born on 10 February 1898 in the village of Savtsino, Kashin district, Tver province, in the family of a priest; his father, Sergei Mikhailovich, was psalm-⁠reader at the village church of Saint Nicholas. In 1915, after the theological school in Kashin, he entered the newly opened seminary in Kashin, but did not get to finish it, for under Soviet power the seminary was closed. He entered a second-⁠grade school and received secondary education. In 1921 he married Varvara Feodorovna (1891-1962), daughter of the priest Feodor Rassudovsky of the village of Bykovo, Kimry district, and they began work as teachers at the school in Davydovo. In Bykovo their children were born, Sergei in 1922, and Boris. A priest in villages of the Tver diocese, before his arrest in 1930 he served in the village of Bykovo, Goritsy district.

In 1930 he was accused of "counter-⁠revolutionary propaganda" and exiled for three years. In 1934 he returned from exile and served at the church in the village of Ivanovskoe, Teblesy district. On 11 October 1937 he was arrested again, accused of "counter-⁠revolutionary agitation against the measures of the Soviet government", in particular that "on 27 September 1937, in order to disrupt the harvest campaign, he spoke actively for the keeping of the religious feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, as a result of which a part of the collective farmers, keeping the feast, did not work for two days". He did not admit guilt. He was shot on 3 November 1937 by decision of the NKVD troika of Kalinin region of 1 November 1937. He was glorified by the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in the year 2000.

He is commemorated on 3 November, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 18 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, all in the new style.