In the last days of November a meeting took place in our convent, of those responsible for working with monasteries in dioceses. The event was held within the framework of the regional subdepartment of the “Ancient Monastic Traditions in Modern Conditions” Department of the Thirty-First International Christmas Educational Readings entitle, “Orthodoxy and National Culture: Losses and Gains of the Past and an Image of the Future”. Abbess Anna (Morozova), the mother-superior of St. Nicholas Convent of the Donetsk Diocese, spoke about the life of the convent in the military conflict zone. We offer readers her report.
Abbess Anna (Morozova)
Our Holy Dormition Monastery of Sts. Nicholas and Basil the Great, founded by Schema-Archimandrite Zosima (Sokur; 1944–2002), is situated in the village of Nikolskoye not far from Donetsk. Hieromonk Savvaty (the future Schema-Archimandrite Zosima) came to Nikolskoye in 1986 to the dilapidated St. Basil’s Church without an iconostasis and to a burnt-out shed instead of the priest’s house. Soon, through his efforts, the church was restored, and a baptismal chapel with priest’s quarters and a small hotel for pilgrims with a refectory were built. In 1992, Archimandrite Savvaty was tonsured into the schema with the name Zosima.
In the 1990s, Fr. Zosima was already widely known as a spiritual elder and a zealous man of prayer. Many people, both laymen and clergy, flocked to him for spiritual counsel and guidance. Batiushka, who was seriously ill by that time, would receive twenty to thirty people a day. Among his visitors were both ordinary villagers and people from the upper classes. The elder spoke to everyone in their own language, and people left him comforted and inspired. People who gathered around the elder wanted to serve God under his spiritual guidance. In 1997, the church community leased a “Temporary Residence” from the village council in the area adjacent to the church, where an almshouse was set up to care for the infirm and elderly—a “House of Mercy”. Batiushka was happy to be able to provide good care for his aging “myrrh-bearing women”, as he called all the self-sacrificing women who followed him to all places of his “exile” (the authorities transferred Fr. Zosima from parish to parish many times, trying to break the “insubordinate” priest). Nikolskoye, according to the elder, became the place of his “last exile”.
In 1997, Schema-Archimandrite Zosima suffered a clinical death. When he recovered, he became more actively involved in the construction of and setting up the monastery, saying that he had little time left. Over the years, a whole group of monastery buildings was built with several churches, chapels, living quarters, workshops and hospital buildings, with a total area of over 8000 square meters (c. 86,000 square feet). The monastery was officially registered in 2000.
St. Nicholas Convent
Batiushka loved the beauty of the church services, collecting spiritual treasures bit by bit throughout the Orthodox world. The distinctive features of the services of Jerusalem, Holy Mount Athos, the Kiev-Caves Lavra, and Optina Monastery filled the space of the monastery Typikon. Batiushka loved the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God the most, and on the second day of this feast in 2002, he passed into eternity.
After the elder’s repose, according to his will, the magnificent Holy Dormition Cathedral was built, which is a replica of the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. It became the visible embodiment of his love for the Most Holy Theotokos, the Russian land, and its spiritual heritage.
In 2009, the cathedral was consecrated by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, as predicted by Fr. Zosima. What a surprise it was for everyone when the Patriarch himself came to our remote village, far from civilization! Batiushka’s prophetic words were fulfilled, although initially we didn’t believe him.
Fr. Zosima was distinguished by a very reverent attitude towards everything genuinely Russian. Understanding Holy Rus’ as the foundation that keeps the world from apostasy and degeneration, the elder realized clearly that Russia has two wings: Orthodoxy and culture—and only by keeping our faith pure and protecting our culture can we preserve the historic memory and our Russian identity—what distinguishes us from other peoples and makes Rus’ holy.
He was well versed in Russian history, literature, painting, and music, and urged us not to be ignorant, but to cherish our roots and our shrines, to know and appreciate our culture.
Foreseeing future events many years earlier, in the early 1990s he would say that the division of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus into independent states had been artificially initiated by the West, which throughout history had been dreaming of destroying the spiritual unity of the Russian people and subjugating our country to its (the West’s) interests. Seeing how intensively aggression against everything Russian was being imposed in Ukraine, the elder used to say with great regret that such actions would certainly sooner or later lead to bloodshed, war, and persecution of the Orthodox Church.
Realizing that the Russian Orthodox Church is the last bulwark of the unity of the Slav peoples and the guarantee of stability in the entire Orthodox world, Fr. Zosima strongly denounced the perniciousness of the Church schism. He himself prayed fervently and called on everyone to pray for the unity of the Russian Church. “Everyone should sigh for the Church so that the Lord may preserve the One Holy Russian Orthodox Church for us. Not this schismatic, political one, which they are trying to impose in Ukraine and into which they are seizing churches and forcibly dragging human souls into lies and deception. But may God grant us to remain in the legitimate united Russian Church!” Fr. Zosima used to say.
Batiushka wrote in his testament: “Hold tight to the Russian Orthodox Church and His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. In the event of Ukraine’s breakaway from Moscow, whether the autocephaly is illegitimate or legitimate, communion with the Metropolitan of Kiev will automatically be severed. Stand firm for the canons of the Russian Orthodox Church. I foresee a radiant future of unity between Ukraine and Russia, which, I firmly believe, will inevitably come, with which I am passing into eternity.”
Schema-Archimandrite Zosima (Sokur) (in the center) with monastics
At that time, it was completely incomprehensible to us how such things could happen, how they could be fulfilled. And now we are living witnesses of the fulfillment of these words.
For almost two years now—since March 13, 2022—the convent has been subjected to massive artillery shelling by the Ukrainian forces. Unfortunately, these people have not been stopped, neither by the over 300 refugees with children who had taken shelter in our basements, nor by the elderly in our almshouse, nor by the fact that now about fifty monastics remain in the convent so that services can be celebrated and the icon lamps may continue to burn. These people [who shell the monastery] were driven by inhuman malice.
In the summer of 2022, the seriously ill and elderly residents of the convent’s almshouse were supposed to be evacuated. At the appointed time of evacuation, targeted shelling began. The convent was shelled continuously for five hours running: Grad (“Hail”) and Uragan (“Hurricanes”) shells, along with mines of varying caliber, exploded over the heads of those living at the convent. The refectory church in honor of All Russian Saints and the house of labor blazed up from high-explosive shells. In the late afternoon, with great difficulty the elderly were evacuated from the convent.
After a while, with the blessing of the ruling hierarch, Metropolitan Hilarion of Donetsk, some of the monastics left the monastery. Currently, the brethren [it should be noted that Elder Zosima founded two communities in Nikolskoye: St. Nicholas Convent for nuns and St. Basil’s Monastery for monks.—Trans.] live in the city of Makeyevka—at the monastery of St. John the Baptist. Seventy-five sisters from the almshouse live at the Convent of the Kasperovo Icon of the Mother of God (in Gruzsko-Lomovka). In the village of Andreyevka of the Snezhnoye district twenty sisters live at the Holy Protection Church. The sisters live as a monastic community, observing the monastic rule, supporting the convent’s activity on the front line.
As of today, not a single building remains whole in the convent, and the roofs of all the convent’s buildings are damaged. Despite almost total external destruction, the convent lives on.
All the communication systems in the monastery have been completely destroyed: There is no electricity, no water, no gas, no heating, no communication. The remaining brethren and sisters live in the basements. Most of the monastics live in the lower church. We worship there every day and cook food there on a gas stove. A gas cylinder is used for cooking. The life of the convent depends entirely on the generator. The road along which diesel fuel is transported to us is constantly shelled. People, risking their lives, deliver fuel, bread, and food to the convent. Many have been killed and wounded. Hieromonk Boniface, Schema-Nun Savva, Novice Monk Herman and others were killed on the convent territory. In total, eight people have been killed and ten wounded so far.
The brethren and the sisters serve, pray, and are inspired by the radiant hope that, like a phoenix, their beloved monastery will inevitably rise from the ashes and the triune Rus’ will inevitably be reborn in brotherly love and spiritual unity!
The mutilated Dormition Cathedral stands as a symbol of the violated but unbroken unity of Holy Rus’—the unity of the Russian Church and the unity of the fraternal nations of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, for which Fr. Zosima prayed so fervently, and with deep faith in the restoration of which he passed into Eternity.
