Chervone Nativity of Christ Convent

The Chervone Nativity of Christ Convent stands in the settlement of Chervone in the Zhytomyr region, in a former neo-Gothic castle-palace built in the mid-nineteenth century^{3, 5, 6}. According to a tradition drawn on by two independent sources, the settlement of Chervone itself was founded in 1624 by Jan Tyszkiewicz, voivode of Brest-Litovsk^{3, 5}.

The neo-Gothic castle-palace was begun on commission from the Polish nobleman Adolf Grocholski, a member of the Polish Sejm who owned the village; construction was left unfinished when Grocholski died in 1863^{3, 5, 6}.

Sources disagree on which member of the Tereshchenko family acquired the estate afterward, and on what exactly he built. According to the eparchy's website and both independent local-history sources, Grocholski's widow, Wanda Radziwill, soon went abroad and sold the unfinished estate to the magnate and patron Mykola Tereshchenko, who only rebuilt the existing building^{3, 5, 6}. The monastery's own website, by contrast, names the buyer of 1868 as Artemii Yakovych Tereshchenko (1794-1877) and credits the construction of a new Gothic-style palace to his grandson Fedir¹.

The rebuilding - an added floor and a winter garden - gave the building an irregular shape^{3, 5, 6}. The estate was surrounded by a park of 58 hectares with old lindens, oaks and chestnuts, two ponds and a gazebo^{3, 5, 6}.

The new owner's grandson, Fedir Tereshchenko, opened an aviation workshop on the estate in 1909, where he himself designed and test-flew aircraft together with aviators he invited; from 1913 the workshop built military aircraft. In 1914, as the front of the First World War approached Chervone, Tereshchenko evacuated the workshop, and in 1917 he emigrated to France, where he died in 1950¹.

After the 1917 revolution the palace was looted for the first time³; the following year the estate was declared state property, and the offices of the local sugar factory moved into the former palace¹. In the early 1920s the building housed an institution for homeless children, whose careless behaviour caused a fire there³; according to another source, a fire in 1928 significantly damaged the building - its exterior was later restored, but the interiors were lost for good⁵.

Later a factory-training school for sugar-industry specialists, with a two-year course, was opened on the estate and then turned into a vocational school of the sugar industry³; according to the monastery's own website, it operated from 1944 to the early 1990s¹. In the mid-1990s the building was looted a second time, far more severely than in 1917, and in that derelict state it passed to its next occupants³.

On 20 September 2000 the Zhytomyr diocesan administration of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the joint-stock company Chervonskyi Tsukrovyk concluded an agreement for the free transfer of the ruined estate to the diocese; the premises were taken onto the diocese's books in a semi-ruined state, without windows or doors³. That same year, in October, a skete of the Zhytomyr convent of the Venerable Martyr Anastasia the Roman was established on the estate^{1, 3}.

On 21 January 2001 a house church in honour of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers was consecrated in the former palace, and regular services began there³.

The next day, 22 January 2001, by Journal No. 2 of its session, the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, on the report of Bishop Hurii of Zhytomyr and Novohrad-Volynskyi, resolved to bless the opening of the Chervone Nativity of Christ women's monastery in the settlement of Chervone, Andrushivka district, Zhytomyr region^{3, 4}. On 24 April of the same year the State Committee of Ukraine for Religious Affairs registered the charter of the newly formed community, and the skete became an independent monastery of the Nativity of Christ^{1, 3}.

Today the monastery keeps two patronal feasts - the Nativity of Christ and the memory of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers².