Basil Sokolov

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Sokolov, a priest, was born in 1872 in the village of Lyubanovo, Vereya district, Moscow province, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Michael Sokolov. In 1895 he finished the Bethany seminary. He married but soon was widowed, with one son. In 1897 he was ordained priest for the church of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist in the village of Afineevo, Vereya district. In 1924 he was raised to archpriest, in 1927 he received the cross with ornaments, and in 1931 the palitsa.

At the beginning of 1932 the district plenipotentiary of the OGPU received a denunciation that the priest carried on anti-⁠Soviet and anti-⁠collective-⁠farm agitation, especially through solemn services and jubilees, at one of which he commemorated "the former tsar Nicholas". A villager said that Sokolov was hostile to Soviet power, that he had said that after everyone was driven into the collective farm they would be driven to work with a stick, and that some women came to ask him whether to join the collective farm, and he answered that he could not advise them. On 10 April 1932 Father Basil was arrested and held at Naro-⁠Fominsk. At the interrogation he said that he had not carried on agitation against the collective farm, that the commemoration of the tsar was due to an illiterate woman who took "Heavenly King" for a commemoration of Tsar Nicholas, but admitted that he did not like the policy of Soviet power toward religion and that his opinion would not change. On 8 May 1932 the OGPU troika sentenced him to three years of exile in Kazakhstan, with confiscation of property.

On his return in 1934 he served at the church of Saint John the Theologian in the village of Kameniki, Volokolamsk district, and in 1937 he received the mitre. In the autumn of 1937 a new case was raised on the basis of a statement of the Kameniki collective farm that he had stolen grass from the fields together with some nuns. He denied it, saying that he had helped an ailing nun mow and gather hay. The court fined him five hundred rubles, but he did not have time to pay, because on 27 November he was arrested again, eight days after receiving a new place of service at the church of the Nativity in the village of Veshki. He was accused of having gathered a church activist group around the church and sent them to learn what was done in the groups of ten households studying Stalin's constitution and to draw the collective farmers to church. Interrogated, he denied any counter-⁠revolutionary activity and said that he had known the nuns only since 1936. On 5 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 10 December 1937 Archpriest Basil Sokolov was shot and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range.

He is commemorated on 10 December, 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.