Relics of Hieromartyr Vasily, Presbyter of Zharkent

The relics of Hieromartyr Vasily, Presbyter of Zharkent, rest in the St. Elijah Church in the city of Zharkent, Almaty region. Along with the relics of Father Vasily, there are the remains of 14 Orthodox Christians who were martyred with him.

The discovery of the holy relics took place on April 26, 2002, at the cemetery of Podgornenskaya stanitsa (now Kurgysay village) with the blessing of Archbishop Alexy of Astana and Almaty (now Metropolitan of Tula and Efremov).

The relics rest in a carved wooden reliquary with a canopy. Above the reliquary is an icon depicting all 15 martyrs. Regular prayer services (molebens) are held at the reliquary.

Father Vasily Kolmykov was born in 1866 into a merchant family. On January 2, 1913, he began his service in the Omsk diocese as a psalmist at the church in the village of Yuzhno-Podolskoye, Tyukalinsk district. On January 20 of the same year, he was ordained a deacon. From February 2, 1914, he served as a deacon in the church of the village of Chernovinskoye, Zmeinogorsk district. On March 12, 1914, he was transferred to the church in the village of Chernoluchinskoye, Tyukalinsk district.
In 1916, he was ordained a priest and appointed rector of the church in the village of Meshchanskoye in the Zharkent district of the Semirechye region. His parish also included residents of the nearby settler villages: Karkara, Vladislavskoye, Novo-Kievskoye, and Okhotnichye.

From July to September 1916, a Kyrgyz uprising took place in Semirechye, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties. Priest Vasily, in his efforts to save his parishioners from the rebels, demonstrated true heroism.

After 1916, Father Vasily Kolmykov served in the stanitsa of Podgornenskaya. The church warden of this village was Zosima Funtikov, a hereditary Cossack originally from the Omsk province. A new Cossack stanitsa named Podgornenskaya was founded on the banks of the Kyrgyzsay River.

Over time, compatriots of the founders of the stanitsa began to relocate here, and as the settlement grew, the devout residents built a church. The most respected person in the stanitsa, Zosima Funtikov, who was known for his honesty, hard work, and reverence for the Church of God, was elected as the church warden. His spiritual disposition is demonstrated by a custom he and his wife followed in their later years. Remembering death, Zosima prepared two coffins for himself and his wife, which were kept in the attic of their house. Each autumn, after harvesting the new crop, the couple filled these coffins with wheat, and having lived safely through to Easter, they distributed this wheat to the poor residents of the stanitsa. Zosima also raised his children in the spirit of humility and adherence to Christian commandments.

There is no information about the exact year the first church in the stanitsa of Podgornenskaya was built or who the first priest was. It is only known that after the Kyrgyz uprising of 1916, when the Orthodox church in the village of Meshchanskoye was desecrated and looted, the houses were burned, and the residents were evacuated, Priest Vasily Kolmykov was transferred to a new place of service in the stanitsa of Podgornenskaya in the Zharkent district.

In 1918, when Bolshevik power was being established in Semirechye, a detachment of Red Army soldiers entered Podgornenka. The commissars first arrested Father Vasily, then went to the church warden Zosima Funtikov's house and conducted a search. They took the church's wine and money, and arrested Zosima. Subsequently, 13 other Orthodox Christians were arrested. They were all taken out of the village to the cemetery and shot with a machine gun. Before the execution, the martyrs were beaten, and some had sacks put over their heads. The Red Army soldiers did not allow the martyrs to be buried. They set up a machine gun on the hill opposite the cemetery to prevent anyone from approaching the bodies.

That night, villagers—Cossacks, including Zosima's sons—secretly went to the cemetery and began digging a common grave. The machine gunner, hearing sounds coming from the cemetery, occasionally fired bursts from the machine gun, sweeping the cemetery and the surrounding area. After digging the grave, the Cossacks placed Father Vasily, warden Zosima, and the 13 murdered villagers into it. For over eight decades, local residents cared for the grave. Eventually, a small chapel was erected there, with an ever-burning lampada. Frequently, especially on memorial days, locals would come to the martyrs' grave to pray and light candles.

Despite the chapel being dismantled for firewood during the Great Patriotic War by the Uyghur peasants who settled in the area (most of the Russians eventually left the former stanitsa and returned to Russia), the memory of the martyrs has been preserved to this day. Their grave, surrounded by a simple wooden fence and crowned with an old wooden cross, has continued to be a place of veneration for many years.

Priest Vasily was canonized among the holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia for universal veneration in August 2000 at the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. Currently, materials are being gathered for the canonization of the 14 Orthodox Christians who suffered alongside him.

In the St. Elijah Church, there is an icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, which belonged to the church warden of the village of Podgornoye, Martyr Zosima (Funtikov), and was given on the day of the finding of the holy relics by his granddaughter Vera Ignatievna Starikova. According to her, Holy Martyr Vasily (Kolmykov) always prayed before this icon, and thus Father Vasily's pectoral cross is embedded in it.

The memory of Holy Martyr Vasily is commemorated on September 16 (September 3, old style), as well as in the Assemblies of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and the New Martyrs and Confessors of Kazakhstan.