Vladimir Ilinsky

Holy Hieromartyr Vladimir Ilinsky was a retired priest in Soligalich, Kostroma province, and was shot on 22 February (7 March) 1918, at the age of eighty-⁠five, after the suppression of the uprising in the town, together with Archpriest Joseph Smirnov, the deacon John Kastorsky and John Perebaskin.

Ilinsky was born in 1833, was ordained priest and served at the church in the village of Solda, Soligalich district, but in 1918 he had long been retired and lived at rest in Soligalich.

After the decree of 23 January 1918 on the separation of the Church from the state, processions of protest took place throughout the country. On 11 (24) February they passed through Soligalich as well. Archpriest Joseph Smirnov, Priest Vladimir Ilinsky, Deacon John Kastorsky and John Perebaskin, the supervisor of the theological school, took part. On 12 (25) February representatives of the Bolshevik Soviet came to the Theotokos-⁠Theodorovsky monastery at Ratkovo, near the town, and announced that on the next day they would take the grain, leaving fifteen pounds per person. The monastery's priest, Basil Ilinsky, the son of Father Vladimir, asked the town Duma for support. The next day several hundred faithful gathered at the monastery to defend it, and then a crowd went to the Soviet building. The answer was gunfire: one man was killed. The head of the Soviet, Vyluzgin, was wounded by the crowd and died at midnight in the hospital, stabbed by armed men. A week later a punitive detachment of three hundred and fifty Red Guards came from Kostroma, led by the commissar Zhurba; they arrested fifty-⁠two people, and ninety-⁠five were drawn into the investigation. No real inquiry was made; those deemed guilty were selected on the spot for shooting.

When the soldiers came to the monastery to arrest the nuns and Father Basil, Father Vladimir, retired and eighty-⁠five years old, came out in the son's place and was arrested. In the night of 22 February (7 March) he was shot, together with Archpriest Joseph Smirnov (born in 1864, for long rector of the cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God, confessor at the prison), the deacon John Kastorsky (born in 1848) and John Perebaskin (born in 1862, supervisor of the theological school and author of rules for the pupils). All were thrown at random into a pit, and the townspeople's request to receive the bodies was refused. On the site of the common grave a cross with a fence was set up, torn down in the thirties and restored in 1996.

The saint is commemorated on 7 March and, in the new style, on 5 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kostroma and on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.