Holy Dormition Convent

The Holy Dormition Convent in the village of Prymorske, Vasyliv district of the Zaporizhzhya region, arose in 1994 at the village parish church of St Nicholas of Myra^{1, 2}.

The village lies on the left bank of the Kakhovka reservoir on the Dnipro¹. Zaporizhian Cossacks founded it in the eighteenth century, and until 1964 it was called Tsarytsyn Kut¹. The site for the convent was chosen on a rise from which a view opens over the river expanses¹.

The stone church of St Nicholas of Myra was raised in the village in the nineteenth century¹. By the convent's own account, St John of Kronstadt (†1908) visited that church and served in it¹.

In the 1960s the church was closed, and its dome and bell tower were dismantled¹. After the parish was revived in the 1980s the church was repaired and the bell tower raised anew¹.

On 4 October 1994 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having heard the report of His Grace Vasyl, Bishop of Zaporizhzhya and Melitopol, blessed the opening of the Holy Dormition Convent in the village of Prymorske, Vasyliv district of the Zaporizhzhya Diocese². For the new convent three village houses were purchased with funds of the Zaporizhzhya Diocese¹.

The first superior of the house was Ihumenia Iryna (Skotar); under her a house church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos was arranged in one of the convent's houses (1994-1995)¹.

New residential and utility buildings were then raised on the grounds, the Dormition church was enlarged (2002), its decoration renewed and the bell tower of the church of St Nicholas heightened¹. By 2006 a computer classroom had been opened at the convent's Sunday school¹.

The church affiliation of the house changed as well: on 14 April 2009 the Holy Synod removed the Vasyliv district of the Zaporizhzhya region from the Zaporizhzhya Diocese and included it in the Berdyansk Diocese³; together with the district, the convent opened in 1994 in that same district passed to the Berdyansk Diocese^{2, 3}.

In September 2013 the house named among its sacred objects an old icon of the Descent of the Holy Spirit and an icon of St Euphrosyne of Polotsk woven into a rug and brought from Polotsk in 2003⁴.