Basil Smirnov

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Smirnov, a priest, was born on 29 March 1870 in the village of Kazanskoe, Bogorodsk district, Moscow province, in the family of the priest Paul Smirnov. In 1890 he finished the Moscow seminary and was sent as a teacher to Count Orlov-⁠Davydov's Spasskaya parish school in the Bronnitsy district. From 1892 he was psalm-⁠reader at the church of Nicholas Zayaitskaya in Moscow, where he taught religion from the founding of the parish school on 1 October 1901, and in several other parish schools, mostly without payment. On 11 March 1907 he was ordained deacon, and on 28 December 1914 priest for the same church. He received the kamilavka in 1921, the pectoral cross in 1924 and in 1927 the rank of archpriest. In 1929 he was appointed rector of the church and served there until it was closed in 1933. From 1933 until his arrest he served at the church of the Sign Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Znamenskoe, Kuntsevo district.

On 16 March 1938, at the demand of an NKVD officer, a neighbour testified against him, saying that the priest celebrated services in his apartment, that he said Soviet power persecutes religion and arrests the Orthodox, and that he assured the women gathered at his home that they must hold to faith in God and that Soviet power could not last long, since the Bolsheviks had taken power by force. On 21 March a deputy head of the Moscow NKVD signed the arrest warrant. The next day Father Basil was arrested and held in Taganka, and interrogations began at once. He was asked whether people had come to him to subscribe to the state loan, and answered that they had, but that, because of his difficult material situation, he never subscribed. Then he was asked whether he had said that the newspapers lie when they write that there is plenty, that there is plenty only for communists, while workers stand in queues all day.

He was sentenced to death and shot on 1 July 1938 at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.

He is commemorated on 1 July, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, all in the new style.