Basil Preobrazhensky

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Preobrazhensky, a priest, was born on 23 January 1876 in the village of Krutets, Dikushinskaya volost, Poshekhonye district, Yaroslavl province, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Konstantin Preobrazhensky. He studied at the theological school; in 1916 he was called into the army, where he was a clerk until 1917. In the years of persecution he wished to become a priest, was ordained and served at the church of the Nativity of Christ and Saint Nicholas in the village of Verkhovye on the Yug, Ermakovo district. In 1937 the church was closed, and he moved to the village of Pokrov-⁠Roguly, where, living in the house of the church warden, he baptized, heard confessions and buried in people's homes.

On 28 December 1937 he was arrested and accused of disrupting a meeting on the elections to the Supreme Soviet, of slandering the policy of the Soviet government and of anti-⁠Soviet agitation. The father, aged sixty-⁠two, was so worn out by the persecutions of the previous years that the prison doctors had to attest his physical weakness, saying that he "cannot do heavy physical work". The investigator reproached him that in August 1937 he baptized a four-⁠month-⁠old child in Bashkirova's home and carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation there. He admitted the baptism but denied the agitation. He also denied having gathered the church "twenty" and gone round their homes to invite them to the meeting, in order to disrupt the election meeting. He did not admit guilt. On 16 June 1938 he was sentenced to ten years in a camp. He died on 14 June 1940 in a colony in Yaroslavl region and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 14 June, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, and on 11 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vologda, all in the new style.