Basil Shikalov

Holy Martyr Basil Shikalov, a church warden, by his full name Basil Yakovlevich Shikalov, was born on 12 April 1875 in the village of Bolshaya Dubrovna, Bologoe district, Tver province, and was a parishioner of the church of the Ascension in Voznesenye, where he had become warden. At the end of the 1920s, in the persecution of the laity, the authorities demanded of him an agricultural quota beyond his means, which he did not fulfil, and he was arrested and sentenced to five years in a camp with confiscation of property. In 1937 he was rehabilitated, but soon was arrested again.

In 1937, as warden, he bought for the priest of the church, Archpriest Alexis Uspensky, small crosses, prayers of absolution and icons in the large cities, since at that time they could not be found, and Alexis sent him to buy them. A denunciation drew the NKVD's attention, and on 2 September 1937 Father Alexis and the warden Basil Shikalov were arrested. At the interrogation of 6 September Basil said that, as warden, he had distributed small crosses to the people, and that he had carried on no counter-⁠revolutionary agitation by distributing prayers and crosses. On 19 September an NKVD troika condemned the priest and the warden to death. Archpriest Alexis Uspensky and the warden Basil Shikalov were shot on 21 September 1937. They were numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the Jubilee Council of August 2000.

He is commemorated on 22 September, 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.