Basil Pokrovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Pokrovsky, a priest, is remembered together with the priest Emilian Kireev. Basil Pokrovsky was born on 16 December 1879 in the village of Baevka, Sengiley district, Simbirsk province, in the family of Archpriest Andrei Pokrovsky. He finished the Simbirsk seminary and in 1903 was ordained deacon for the village of Alovo, then priest for the village of Arkhangelskoe (Kuroedovo). In 1904 he was moved to the village of Dady, in 1912 to Andreevka, and in 1917 to Promzino, Alatyr district.

In 1929, for non-⁠payment of taxes, the people's court sentenced him to two years in prison, which he served. From 1938 he was rector of the field church in the city of Alatyr, where the priest Emilian Kireev also served. In 1940 both were arrested for non-⁠payment of taxes and sentenced by the people's court of Alatyr to six months of corrective labour, but were acquitted. In 1941 the authorities of Alatyr resolved to close the last church in the city by every means. The pretext was the impossible tax laid on the priests of the field church, which they could not pay. The arrest of the priests followed. On 24 July Father Basil's house was searched and he was arrested; on 25 July came the first interrogation, on 3 August the second, in which he explained that the priests had been given a tax beyond their means, had asked the faithful to collect money, but could not pay the tax for 1941 and still owed more than three hundred thousand rubles. On 4 August, at the third, he was accused of having carried on, with the priest Kireev, organized counter-⁠revolutionary agitation against the measures of the party and government and of having urged believers not to join the collective farm. He did not admit the accusation and admitted only that when he was taxed beyond his means for 1940 he had spoken and written a complaint. About sermons he said that he did not preach, but that at confession he told the faithful that some say there is no God, but each has a head and a mind, and should judge who tells the truth. He said also that discontent with authority is sin, that every authority is from God and must be obeyed.

The investigation ended on 23 September, and on 30 October the trial took place, in which the priests courageously rejected the charges. The prosecutor asked for death for a third accused, Podrezov, and ten years for Pokrovsky and Kireev, but the court sentenced all three to death, and the appeal was rejected. The priests Basil Pokrovsky and Emilian Kireev were shot, by the testimony of one of the guards, on the evening of 26 December 1941, on the right bank of the river Sura, near Alatyr. The priest Basil was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the Holy Synod on 27 December 2007.

He is commemorated on 26 December, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 3 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Simbirsk, and on 11 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Chuvash Metropolia, all in the new style.