New Martyr Basil Sitnikov the Deacon

Life and Ministry

Basil Sitnikov completed three classes at a religious school and began serving as a Reader in 1885. He was ordained to the diaconate in 1898.

His first assignment was to the Saint John the Baptist Church in the village of Izyeduga, in the Shadrinsk district of the Yekaterinburg diocese. He subsequently served at the Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos in the village of Baklanskoye, in the same district.

On November 5, 1913, he was transferred to the Saint Nicholas Church in the city of Dalmatov, where he served as deacon until his death.

Martyrdom

In 1918, the priests Vladimir Sergeiev and Alexander Sidorov, with whom Deacon Basil served, were arrested. Following their arrest, Basil began openly to reproach the atheist authorities for plundering the property of the arrested clergy.

Deacon Basil Sitnikov was killed on June 28, 1918, the day after the two priests with whom he served. He is commemorated as one of the New Martyrs of the early Soviet persecution; his glorification is modern, and the surviving record gives only partial detail of his life.

Historical Context

Dalmatovo, in present-day Kurgan Oblast east of the Ural Mountains on the north bank of the Iset River, originated as a settlement beside the Dalmat Assumption Monastery, founded in 1644 by a monk named Dalmat. The town was among the first centers of Orthodoxy, literacy, and Russian culture in the Trans-Ural (Zauralye) region in the early 18th century.

The province of Perm historically encompassed the broader Ural region. Basil Sitnikov served first in the Yekaterinburg diocese, in the Shadrinsk district, before his 1913 transfer to the Saint Nicholas Church in Dalmatov, which by that period fell under the Perm ecclesiastical jurisdiction.