Vyacheslav Kosozhikhin

Holy Venerable Martyr Vyacheslav Kosozhikhin was a hieromonk of the Belogorye monastery, called the Athos of the Urals, and he was killed by Red soldiers in August 1918, together with his elders and brethren.

The missionary monastery on the White Mountain, in the Osa district, Perm province, had grown up around Venerable Barlaam (Basil Konoplev), born in 1858 into a family of Bespopovtsy, that is, Old Believers without priests. After a long search for the truth he joined the Orthodox Church by chrismation in the 1890s, together with his father, his brothers and part of his family, nineteen people in all. He received tonsure in 1893-1894, was ordained hierodeacon and then hieromonk, and led the community that gathered around him. He restored the services according to the typikon, valued preaching, and was a sought-⁠after spiritual father in the whole province. For a quarter of a century the monastery comforted the suffering, and at the beginning of June 1917 its cathedral was consecrated, at a celebration which many pilgrims and Bishop Andronicus of Perm attended.

In August 1918 the Bolsheviks took possession of the monastery. They tore up and defiled the altar of the cathedral, made a latrine of Archimandrite Barlaam's cell and a theater of the icon workshop, where the boys of the choir were made to sing frivolous songs. On 12 (25) August they arrested Archimandrite Barlaam and shot him on the way to the town of Osa. Many monks were tortured and killed. The names of the slain have been preserved: the hieromonks Sergius, Elijah, Vyacheslav, Joasaph, John, Anthony; the hierodeacons Micah, Vissarion, Matthew, Euthymius; the monks Barnabas, Demetrius, Sabbas, Hermogenes, Arcadius, Euthymius, Marcellus; the novices John, James, Peter, James, Alexander, Theodore, Peter, Sergius, Alexis. Their graves were hidden by the authorities and are unknown. They have been honored as locally venerated saints of the Perm diocese since 1998, and in August 2000 were numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors, for veneration throughout the Church.

Saint Vyacheslav is commemorated on 25 August (12 August old style) and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 14 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis.