Theodore Bakkalinsky

Holy Hieromartyr Theodore Bakkalinsky, a priest, was born on 8 February 1880 in the village of Zarudye in the Radomysl district of the Kyiv province, in the family of the church servant Paul Bakkalinsky. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 27 November 1937.

He completed four classes at the clerical school in Uman. From 1901 to 1903 he served in the army, as a clerk at an artillery depot in Chita. After demobilization he became a psalm-⁠reader in the church where his father served, and shortly after the revolution he was ordained priest. In 1935 Father Theodore moved with his wife, Alexandra Semyonovna, to the Tver region and began to serve in the church in the village of Stepurino in the Staritsa district. Their son Gennady, then twenty-⁠one, lived apart in Staraya Russa.

His service in this village was short. On 14 November 1937 the authorities arrested him and put him in prison in Rzhev. Interrogations began at once. The investigator told him that he had systematically conducted counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, slandered the Soviet government and spread provocative rumours of war, and that in July, near the church fence, he had mocked the constitution of the USSR. He was also accused of wandering through the collective farms, begging for food and conducting anti-⁠Soviet agitation. To all these charges he answered firmly that he did not admit guilt.

On 25 November he was sentenced to death, and two days later, on 27 November 1937, he was shot. He is commemorated on 27 November (new style), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on 7 February on a movable day, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver on 18 July on a movable day.