Presbyter
Saint Martyr Vasily was born on January 19, 1873, in the village of Varvarino, Moscow province, in the family of psalmist Ioann Kolokolov. After graduating from the Theological Seminary in 1898, he began working as a teacher. In 1900, he was ordained a priest and served his entire life in the John the Baptist Church of the village of Gribanovo, Volokolamsk district.
In 1922, he was arrested for the first time for the case of the confiscation of church valuables and was sentenced to eight months of conditional imprisonment. In 1929, for failing to fulfill grain procurement, he was sentenced to three years of exile, but the regional court overturned the sentence.
On October 17, 1937, during the height of the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church, he was arrested. During the interrogation, two false witnesses accused him of anti-Soviet agitation. Father Vasily denied the accusations, but ultimately admitted that he had spoken with counter-revolutionary slander against the Soviet government.
On November 11, 1937, the NKVD troika sentenced him to execution. Priest Vasily Kolokolov was shot on November 13, 1937, and buried in an anonymous mass grave at the Butovo shooting range near Moscow.
