St. George's Convent

St. George's Convent stands in the village of Kocherzhyntsi, Uman district, in the Cherkasy region, on a tract of land the locals have long called Levada^{1, 2}. The present house is the second on the site - the first, a men's skete, arose at the beginning of the twentieth century and was destroyed under Soviet rule^{1, 2}.

Its beginning is bound up with a vision. At the end of the nineteenth century Mytrofan Kolenchuk, a peasant of Kocherzhyntsi, still a boy pasturing horses at Levada, twice saw a pillar of fire reaching from the earth to the sky; by his own account an elder who appeared to him three times in dreams told him to dig a cave on that spot^{1, 2}. The story survives in the life of Igumen Manuil compiled by Sergei Nilus².

The digging did not go unnoticed. On a denunciation Kolenchuk was tied up, taken to Uman, declared insane and sent for treatment to the Kyrylivska hospital in Kyiv; a medical commission found him entirely healthy and released him home².

On his return he conceived of something larger than a cave. Two peasants of Kocherzhyntsi and twelve of Uman gave part of their land, about 9 hectares, for the house to come². In the spring of 1907 Kolenchuk went to Kyiv to look for a monk who would undertake to build a monastery, but the plots offered were too small and no one in the Kyiv houses was willing; the elders of the Kyiv Caves Lavra advised him to turn to the superior of the Skete of the Most Pure in the tract of Tserkovshchyna¹.

That superior was Hieromonk Manuil (Kivsh, 1850-1920), a disciple of St Jonah of Kyiv, appointed to the Skete of the Most Pure in 1902; from 1911-1912 he was an igumen, and from 1919 the schema-igumen Serafim¹. The Skete of the Most Pure itself had been founded in 1900 on the site of the ancient Hnyletsky monastery, and until 1918 it was subordinate to the Kyiv-Bratskyi monastery¹. Having heard Kolenchuk out, Fr Manuil at first also hesitated for want of means, but after consulting the superior of the Kyiv-Bratskyi monastery he agreed to help the peasants¹.

The money came unexpectedly. In 1908 the peasants found a large and convenient plot by the railway station in Uman, collected part of the price and asked for help, while the seller was leaving in haste for Siberia and could not wait. Together with the telegram about this there arrived at the Skete of the Most Pure a notice of a money transfer from Harbin: the gift of a mortally wounded soldier who, on the advice of a nursing sister, divided his savings between Athos and the skete¹.

On 23 April 1909 the superior of the Kyiv-Bratskyi monastery, Bishop Feodosii of Uman, vicar of the Kyiv diocese, came to Levada and consecrated the site for a house of prayer in honour of the Holy Great Martyr George the Victorious^{1, 2}. At about the same time the peasant Tymofii Yurchenko gave the house a pond with a mill, and the total area of the donated holdings reached 26 desiatynas².

Building at Levada, however, proved impossible: in the spring of 1910 Anton Kolenchuk, who had also promised to give his plot, suddenly changed his mind, and his land blocked the approach to the house¹. The work was moved to the Uman plot, and in 1912 a block with a two-storey house church was put up there^{1, 2}.

On 10 January 1913 the lower altar and the house church were consecrated in honour of the icon of the Mother of God of Unexpected Joy; by the house's own explanation the name was given in memory of a healing that had occurred shortly before at prayer before that image in the chapel of the same name at the Skete of the Most Pure^{1, 2}. So many people gathered at the feasts that there were up to one and a half thousand communicants, and on 26 October of the same year a second altar was consecrated - of the Holy Great Martyr and Healer Panteleimon².

In the spring of 1913 Anton Kolenchuk was struck down by paralysis. He repented and bequeathed his plot to the monastery: the will was drawn up on 9 October, and on 20 October Kolenchuk died^{1, 2}.

At Levada the work went ahead: the church of St George the Victorious was assembled from the old oak church of Kocherzhyntsi, which the peasants had bought². On the evening of 5 July 1914 a solemn service was held in the open air, and on the morning of 6 July the church was consecrated; Prince V. Zhevakhov was present at the celebration^{1, 2}. There were then 66 residents in the St George Skete: 1 schema-hieromonk, 5 hieromonks, 3 hierodeacons, 2 novices and 55 lay brothers².

The First World War began. 1 novice and 8 lay brothers were taken from the skete into the army, and in 1915 Fr Manuil's cell-attendant was killed at the front, from whose notes most of this history is known². By 1917 the brick churches both at Levada and in Uman had been raised to window level². The inventory of 1918 gives 26 desiatynas of land, a pond with a water mill, two wooden brick-faced house churches 43 metres long each, two hostels, a smithy and stables, and a brotherhood of 8 hieromonks, 4 hierodeacons, 3 novices and 80 lay brothers².

After that the record breaks off. In 1919 Levada suffered an armed attack in which several residents were killed¹; on 10 July of that year the surviving monks submitted a statement to the military commandant of Uman about the murder of two clergymen by an unidentified detachment². In 1924 the house had about 60 residents, 16 of them tonsured, and in the year 1926 a further 53 monks were moved here from the closed Talianky monastery, 20 of them elderly or disabled².

In 1927 the churches and premises of both settlements were taken away¹, and in 1928 the monastery was closed: the hostel in Uman was taken by the railwaymen, the remaining premises were handed to the district agricultural station, and a shelter for homeless children was set up at Levada². The old buildings of both properties have not survived¹.

The last superior of the St George Skete was Igumen Rafail Dobromyrskyi. After the closure of the house he went on living in Kocherzhyntsi until 1930 and serving in the surrounding villages; in April 1930 he was arrested and sentenced to 5 years of corrective labour, and nothing is known of his fate thereafter². The last superior of the Uman dependency was Hieromonk Sofronii, who together with Hierodeacon Feodosii lived on into the 1970s².

The revival began in 1998. The clergy of the Uman deanery, on the initiative of Archpriest Ioann (Zhyhylii) and with the blessing of Archbishop Sofronii of Cherkasy and Kaniv, together with parishioners dug out the little cave and cleared the ground at Levada: they sank a holy well, set up a railway carriage and welded together a chapel of St George the Victorious². In 2001 the building of a church of St Sofronii of Irkutsk was begun¹. On 27 December 2002 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church resolved to open St George's Convent, and on 25 November 2003 its statute was registered^{1, 2}.

Under the first superior of the revived house, Abbess Yevseviia (Sushkova), in 2004-2006, the church of St Sofronii of Irkutsk was completed, along with a residential block for 6 sisters, a cowshed and a gatekeeper's house².

In the spring of 2008 the Cherkasy diocese was divided in two and the monastery passed to the Uman diocese: on the eve of its centenary the house found itself once again, as it had been a hundred years before, under the authority of an Uman bishop⁴. The synodal documents bear this out: the acts of 2004 and 2006 call the monastery part of the Cherkasy diocese^{11, 12}, and from September 2008 part of the Uman diocese^{13, 14}.

In 2007, on the second day after Pascha, the monastery's only working church, that of St Sofronii of Irkutsk, burned down in an act of arson³. The ruling bishop gave his blessing not only to restore the burnt church but also to begin building a new monastic block with a refectory complex, two churches, cells and workshops; the work began in July of the same year^{3, 6}.

By the design, the basement floor was to hold a refectory church of St Panteleimon the Healer, a refectory, a kitchen and a bakery, the eastern wing a church of the Holy Great Martyr George with a choir gallery on the upper tier and a belfry, and the western wing cells, a library and workshops⁶. In the spring of 2011 the walls of the church of St George were rising above the basement floor⁶.

Under Abbess Rafaila (Horban), superior from 2006, the foundation and basement floor of the monastic block with its two churches were built, a total of 1,550 square metres, together with a bus stop with a monastery kiosk; a feed shop and a second storey for a dormitory were added, further cells were fitted out in the attic of the sisters' block, a shelter and guest house was established in Kocherzhyntsi, and a water tower with a well and an irrigation system was put up on the monastery gardens².

The house marked its centenary in 2009 with a festal Liturgy in the unfinished basement floor of the new block, with 18 clergy taking part⁵.

On 23 January 2011 the schema-hieromonk Amfilokhii (Mykola Fedorovych Trubchaninov), spiritual father of the sisters of the house, departed this life; he lived 93 years and is buried behind the altar of the cathedral in Bila Tserkva⁷.

The burnt church was missed for a long time: in 2014 pilgrims who came for the patronal celebration found the service held in the open air, because the old church had burned and the new one was not yet built⁸. A description of 2015 gives the house thus: Liturgies are served daily except Monday, pilgrims spend the night in the cottage of the former forester, a bathing place has been fitted out by the well, and the caves over which the church of St Sofronii of Irkutsk is being built are shown to guests⁹. The cleared ancient cave is at the house to this day¹.

On 4 April 2019 the schemanun Dosifeia (Kovalchuk), one of the first sisters of the revived monastery, departed this life¹⁰.