Basil Yagodin

Holy Hieromartyr Basil (Vasily Alexandrovich Yagodin) was an archpriest, born in the village of Klyuchi, Kerensky district, Penza province, and shot on 22 December 1937 at the Butovo firing range. The Russian Church numbered him among the saints in 2000, for veneration throughout the Church. He is commemorated on 9 (22) December and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

He was born into a priest's family. In 1890 he graduated from the Penza seminary. He was appointed psalm-⁠reader and teacher at the parish school. He married Yulia Yakovlevna and they had three daughters. In 1891 he was ordained priest for the church in the village of Ilmino, Penza province. In 1895 he was appointed military priest at the fortification of Chikishlyar, in the Transcaspian region. From 1904 he was priest of the 221st Trinity-⁠Sergius infantry regiment in Moscow and dean of the 56th infantry division. In 1911 he was appointed rector in the fortress of Sveaborg in Nyland province (today in Finland) and in the same year Metropolitan Vladimir of Moscow raised him to the rank of archpriest. In 1918, at the request of the community, he was appointed to the church of Saint Chariton the Confessor at Ogorodniki, in Moscow. He received the palitsa in 1921, and in 1923 Patriarch Tikhon rewarded him with the mitre.

On 16 April 1931 he was arrested on a charge of anti-⁠Soviet activity and imprisoned in Butyrka prison, in the group case "Aleksinsky F. N. and others". After three days he was released because the charge was not proved. In the spring of 1937 he was appointed rector of the Epiphany cathedral at Dorogomilovo, in Moscow, in place of Archpriest Alexander Lebedev, who had been arrested.

On 11 December 1937 all the clergy of the Epiphany cathedral at Dorogomilovo were arrested, among them the rector Archpriest Basil Yagodin and Priest Alexander Buravtsev. To the statement of a false witness, Father Basil replied in essence that they were old men with little left to live, that the young must be brought up in the spirit of Christian truth and told of the great past of the Russian people, who would rise again as a great national power. He did not admit guilt of anti-⁠Soviet agitation. The NKVD troika for the Moscow region sentenced him on 20 December 1937 to death, under article 58, points 10 and 11, for "leading a counter-⁠revolutionary fascist group of clergy". He was shot on 22 December 1937 together with Priest Alexander Buravtsev and buried at the Butovo range.