Kiewer Höhlenkloster
Born in the Maresevo village of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate in a peasant family. Married at the insistence of parents. The marriage was childless and Vasily in 1811 went on a pilgrimage to the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. As a passportless was arrested for vagrancy and exiled to Siberia. He began to wander, in 1814 he reached Irkutsk, and in 1820 he came to the slopes of the Chikokon Range and built a monastic cell near Urluk, becoming a hermit. Soon other people joined him and the brethren of the future Chikoy Monastery formed.