Basil Smolensky

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Smolensky, a priest, was born in 1869 in the village of Savelievo, Serpukhov district, Moscow province, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Peter Mikhailovich and his wife Evdokia Alexandrovna Smolensky. He finished the Moscow seminary in 1891 and in the same year was ordained priest for the church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Lamishino, Zvenigorod district.

In 1918 he was arrested on a false denunciation and held in Zvenigorod, from where he was released after seven days, when the case was examined and he was found innocent. In September 1929 some Komsomol members called to an OGPU investigator testified against him: one said that the priest, meeting her, asked whether it was true that the Komsomol meant to stage a play on Great Friday, and, learning that it was, told her to think well of the consequences. She also said that many believers live in the district and that the priest enjoys great authority among them, which hinders the Komsomol's actions, but that no anti-⁠Soviet statement had been observed. On 19 October 1929 he was arrested and held in Butyrka. At interrogation he said that he had never carried on anti-⁠Soviet activity and that his sermons were purely religious. He was sentenced to three years of exile for "anti-⁠Soviet agitation", because he had urged the Komsomol members not to mock the Church's feasts.

After his return he served in the village of Kholmets near Moscow. In 1941, during the German occupation, he resumed services, which after the Germans withdrew was regarded as "collaboration with the enemy". He was arrested in March 1942 and at the interrogations rejected the charge of treason. He died on 12 June 1942 in the Taganka prison hospital, before a death sentence.

He is commemorated on 12 June, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, all in the new style.