Vasily Dmitrievich Kolmykov

Born in 1866 into a merchant family.

On January 2, 1913, he joined 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 as a deacon.

From February 5, 1914, he served as a psalmist at the church in the village of Chernovinskoye, Zmeinogorsk District.

On March 12, 1914, he was transferred to the church in the village of Chernoluchinskoye, Tyukalinsk District. Father Vasily and his wife raised an adopted daughter.

In 1916, he was ordained as a priest and appointed rector of the church in the village of Meshchanskoye, Zharkent District, Semirechensk Region (Turkestan). Father Vasily's parish included residents of nearby settler villages: Karkara, Vladislavskoye, Novo-Kievskoye, and Okhotnichye.

In July-September 1916, a Kyrgyz uprising occurred in Semirechye, claiming the lives of thousands of locals. In August of the same year, Kyrgyz detachments, having finished with the Issyk-Kul area, moved east from Przhevalsk and attacked Russian villages in Zharkent District on August 12. Priest Vasily showed true heroism in saving his parishioners from the rebels.

In a letter to Innocent (Pustynsky), Bishop of Turkestan and Tashkent, he described these events as follows:

"On the morning of August 12, around 4-5 o'clock, I was awakened by cries: 'Father, save yourself, the Kyrgyz are surrounding us. They will kill and slaughter everyone.' When I got dressed and went outside, I indeed saw a mass of armed people on horseback, shouting and descending from the surrounding mountains (about ten thousand). There was a terrible commotion: the cries and weeping of women and children, chaotic running, but thanks to the organization of Captain Mikhail Kravchenko, everything calmed down, and the attack was easily repelled. Measures were taken to transport food products to warehouses to sustain the people. The transportation of products was entrusted to me. At my request, to prevent looting, Mr. Kravchenko allocated a detachment of 30 mounted men to save the residents of my parish... If the detachment had been delayed by 10-15 minutes, it would have been over. The Kyrgyz were burning houses; the prayer house was looted and set on fire. I called the people, and we rushed to put out the fire, saving the house from complete destruction. Everything that could be saved, I packed into a broken chest and later took it to the city of Przhevalsk.

When I came to my house, I saw only smoking ruins; church books, documents, and money either perished in the fire or were stolen. I was left with my family in what we were wearing: a torn cassock and a summer riasa on me, and my wife in a torn dress and coat. How many tears and complaints... God forbid anyone to hear."

After these events, Priest Vasily Kolmykov was transferred to a new place of service in the village of Podgornenskaya.

In 1918, as the new power was being established in Semirechye, a detachment of Red Army soldiers entered Podgornenskaya. The first to be arrested by the commissars was Father Vasily, followed by church warden Zosima Funtikov, who was searched, and church wine and money were confiscated, and he was arrested. Then 13 more Orthodox Christians were arrested.

All the arrested were taken to the village cemetery and executed by machine gun fire. Before the execution, the martyrs were beaten, and some had bags placed over their heads. The Red Army soldiers did not allow the burial of the martyrs. A machine gun was set up on the hill opposite the cemetery, preventing anyone from approaching the executed. At night, villagers - Cossacks, including the sons of warden Zosima, secretly came to the cemetery and began digging a common grave. The machine gunner, hearing sounds from the cemetery, occasionally fired, sweeping the cemetery and surrounding area.

Having dug the grave, the Cossacks laid Priest Vasily, warden Zosima, and the 13 murdered villagers into it. For more than 80 years, local residents cared for the grave. Over time, a small chapel was erected, where an unextinguished lamp burned. Often, especially on memorial days, their fellow villagers came to the martyrs' grave to pray and light candles. Although during the Great Patriotic War the chapel was dismantled for firewood by Uyghur peasants who had settled in the area (the Russians had left the village and returned to Russia), the memory of the martyrs survived to this day. Their grave, surrounded by a simple fence and topped with a dilapidated wooden cross, remained a place of veneration for many years.

Priest Vasily Kolmykov was rehabilitated under the law of the Republic of Kazakhstan on April 14, 1993.

By the Episcopal Council of the Russian Orthodox Church on August 13-16, 2000, he was canonized as a New Martyr and Confessor of Russia for general church veneration.

The relics of the holy martyrs were discovered on April 26, 2002.

The relics of Hieromartyr Vasily, presbyter of Zharkent.