Hieromartyr
Hieromartyr Basil Smolensky
1869 — 12 июня 1942
Also known as: Сщмч. Василий, пресвитер (†1942), Василий Петрович Смоленский, протоиерей Василий Смоленский
A village priest near Moscow, exiled in 1929–1933, who was arrested in 1942 for having resumed services at Kholmets during the German occupation and died in the Taganka prison hospital on 12 June 1942.
Hieromartyr Basil Smolensky was born in 1869 in the village of Savelyevo, Moscow province, the son of a psalm-reader. After graduating from the Moscow Theological Seminary in 1891 he was ordained priest of the church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in Lamishino.
Arrested on a false denunciation in 1918, he was released after a week. In October 1929 he was arrested again on the testimony of local Komsomol members and sentenced to three years of exile in the Northern Territory (Onega). On his return in 1933 he was barred from living within 101 km of Moscow and served at the St Nicholas church in Kholmets; in 1934 he was awarded the mitre.
When German troops occupied Kholmets in autumn 1941, he resumed services in the church on 26 October. After the Red Army returned, he was arrested on 2 March 1942 at the age of 73, charged with aiding the occupiers, and held in Moscow's Taganka prison, where he denied any treason. He died in the prison hospital on 12 June 1942 and was buried in an unknown grave; on 15 July 1942 the NKVD Special Board sentenced him to death posthumously. He is commemorated on 30 May (12 June) and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.