Victor Basov

Holy Hieromartyr Victor Basov was a priest in the Nizhny Novgorod region and was shot on 15 September 1937 in the Karaganda region, where he was serving a camp sentence.

He was born on 29 October 1892 in Gorodets, Nizhny Novgorod province, in the family of a deacon. After the seminary he was a psalm-⁠reader for several years. In 1918 he was ordained deacon and in 1925 priest. He served in a village of the Arzamas district and from 1931 at the church in the village of Efimyevo, Bogorodsk district.

On 17 April 1935, on the denunciation of a villager, he was arrested and held at Gorky. He was accused of speaking against the collective farms, of giving "anti-⁠Soviet" sermons and of helping peasants write complaints against unjust taxation. At the session of the special panel on 1 June he said that he did not admit guilt and held firmly to the rule of not speaking against any government. He was sentenced to five years in a camp.

On 30 August 1937, while in the Karlag camp, he was arrested as a follower of the "counter-⁠revolutionary group" of Bishop Damascene Tsedrik. The pretext was that he had sung "church songs" (the Paschal Canon) together with Hieromartyr John Melnichenko. He did not admit guilt. The troika of the Karaganda regional NKVD sentenced him to death on 10 September, and he was shot on 15 September 1937.

He was glorified by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in 2000. He is commemorated on 15 September and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 12 September (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Nizhny Novgorod Metropolis.