Righteous Vasily (Basil) Aleksandrovich Sokolov

Hieromartyr Basil (Vasily Alexandrovich Sokolov) was born in 1868 in the village of Staraya Sloboda, Alexandrov district, Vladimir province, into a priest's family. He served as archpriest of the Moscow church of St. Nicholas "Yavlenny" on the Arbat and was dean of the Prechistensky deanery, known as a preacher, religious writer, and teacher in Moscow theological schools. In 1922, during the Soviet campaign to confiscate church valuables — officially to aid famine relief in the Volga region — Father Basil and his parish clergy urged the authorities to spare items essential for the liturgy, and were accused of resisting confiscation and anti-Soviet agitation. Tried together with archpriests Alexander Zaozersky, Christopher Nadezhdin, and other Moscow clergy in the 1922 "Moscow clergy trial," he was sentenced to death and shot on May 26 (May 13, O.S.), 1922, in Moscow. He was glorified among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the Jubilee Bishops' Council in August 2000.