Pelahiyivka St. Michael the Archangel's Convent

The village of Pelahiivka in the Mykolaiv region stands on the right bank of the Inhul², and it was named after Pelahiia Durylina: her husband, the first-guild merchant Isydor Durylin, bought five thousand desiatynas of land here in 1861⁵, in 1868 unexpectedly sold his mines and works, entrusted his share of the wholesale iron trade to his partners and settled in the open steppe⁶, and in 1875 founded a farmstead and named it after his late wife⁵. On the high bank of the Inhul he built a house, settled tenants, raised a mill and a smithy, and took up sheep-breeding and limestone quarrying⁶. An archival certificate issued on 4 March 1871 calls the merchant Isydor Kharlampiiovych and lists his four sons — Vasyl, Oleksandr, Mykhailo and Andrii⁶. In 1890 Durylin divided the lands among his sons, and Pelahiivka went to Andrii and Mykhailo¹ — on condition that they sell land to the village community and build a church in honour of Saint Pelagia⁵.

The three-altar church was founded in 1896, building began two years later⁵, and on 19 August 1904 it was consecrated⁵. How it rose was recounted by a 95-year-old villager, Matrona Tymofiivna Drondel: "the granite was hauled on carts a full 20 versts, all the way from Vossiiatske", the bricks were fired on the spot by the ford with charcoal and straw, hens' eggs bought up around the neighbouring farmsteads went into the mortar, and no more than six courses of brick were laid in a day; the largest of the twelve bells weighed 85 puds 18 funts and "could be heard fifteen versts away in Novyi Buh"; the church was painted by artists from Russia, while the architect was "sent for from Germany itself" and was nicknamed the Consul by the people, because he understood no Russian^{5, 6}. The local archives did not preserve that architect's name⁶.

Built of red brick, twelve-domed and forty metres high⁵, the church was designed in the style of seventeenth-century Moscow churches: mirrors were set into the crosses, the tiled iconostasis was ordered from Germany¹, and the altar, 52 square metres in size, and the royal doors were made of Meissen faience^{5, 6}. The side altars were consecrated in honour of the holy Archangel Michael, Saint Pelagia and the martyr Andrew Stratelates^{1, 4}. On the northern side a crypt was built, to which the remains of Pelahiia and of her son Andrii, who died in 1902, were transferred^{5, 6}. Beside it stood a house for the priest and the clergy and a parish school, which in 1906 admitted 52 boys and 20 girls from the neighbouring villages and farmsteads⁵. The first clergy were the 34-year-old priest Dymytrii Kostiantynovych Boichenko, a student of the Odesa theological seminary, the psalm-reader Anton Klymovych Lavrenko and the catechist Hryhorii Bobrovskyi; they received no state pay and lived on the income of 114 desiatynas of church land⁵. Three years after the consecration Mykhailo Isydorovych Durylin donated to the Kherson zemstvo 200 desiatynas of land, seven desiatynas of orchard and farm buildings for an agricultural school with craft classes⁶.

In 1924 the Odesa provincial administrative department registered the Orthodox community at the Archangel Michael church of the village of Pelahiivka, then in Pryvilnianskyi district, and its founders were obliged to sign an undertaking, dated 13 February 1925, to admit officials to all their meetings without hindrance^{5, 6}. Late one evening in the autumn of 1929 three officials in uniform arrived in Pelahiivka: they opened the crypt and threw the remains of the church's builders out into the yard, and a fortnight later cattle were driven into the church enclosure and a cattle yard was set up there^{5, 6}. In 1932 the last service was held in the church, and the parish was closed on the grounds that the community had lost the required number of parishioners⁶. A grain store was set up in the church, a grain mill was installed in the right aisle, two hundred wooden icons were burnt, sacks for grain were sewn from woven icons and banners, and the brick wall was taken down and carted away to build a horse-breeding farm at Barativka^{5, 6}. In 1934 the local league of the godless staged a show meeting and trial and promised 30 workday credits for every cross taken down — no volunteers came forward^{5, 6}. Eleven of the twelve crosses were nevertheless thrown down; the twelfth, on the belfry, remained — during the work two men fell from a height of thirty metres and were killed, and nobody dared touch it again. It stands to this day^{1, 5}. During the war a shell struck the building: it pierced the metre-thick wall but did not explode^{1, 5}. In the 1960s tourists began carrying off the faience icon cases as souvenirs, and on officials' orders attempts were made to scrape the images of the saints from the altar^{5, 6}; in the 1980s the unique altar was smashed and the Meissen faience was carried away^{5, 6}.

In 1992 the church was returned to the faithful^{1, 5}, on 25 April 1994 the first service was held¹, and journal no. 12 of the session of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of 29 July 1994 — on the report of Bishop Pitirim of Mykolaiv and Voznesensk — blessed the opening of the Saint Michael's convent in the village of Pelahiivka, Novyi Buh district, of the Mykolaiv eparchy⁷. The first sisters arrived on 3 October 1996: the nun Stefanyda and the novice Liudmyla⁵, and from 14 October of the same year, the day of the Protection of the Mother of God, daily services began in the community⁵. In the summer of 1997 water was brought to the monastery, by the start of winter the cells were heated, and during 1998 the former horse yard was restored and cows and poultry were kept⁵. On 1 August 2006 four golden domes were installed and consecrated on the church, and the crosses were made with mirror inlay, exact copies of the original ones⁵. In 2011 a building with the church of the Annunciation of the Mother of God was raised, consecrated in early 2012^{1, 4}; for the church's centenary, with the help of the eparchy and of benefactors, the belfry was restored and the single surviving cross was returned to its place⁵.

Among the community's holy objects are the icon of the Saviour "the Life-Giving Spring" and a copy of the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God³; since 2000, by the blessing of the ruling bishop, the feast of the Vladimir icon has been kept in the monastery every year on 6 July⁵. The sisters run a household — an orchard, a kitchen garden and an apiary^{4, 6}. Every Sunday buses with pilgrims set out for the community from the cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Mykolaiv⁴. Every summer holiday a camp of work and rest is held here for the children of the Sunday schools of Mykolaiv, and the community keeps up its links with the Novyi Buh boarding school and the Barativka home for the elderly⁵. The patronal feasts of the monastery are the Annunciation of the Mother of God, the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael, the commemoration of the miracle at Chonae, and the days of Saint Pelagia and of the martyr Andrew Stratelates^{1, 4}.