Kyiv Entry of the Mother of God Monastery

The community was founded by Matrona Oleksandrivna Yehorova, the widow of an officer of the Crimean War². She was born in 1810 in Silistra on the Danube, was married in Bessarabia to Captain Ivan Yehorov, and during the Crimean War the couple found themselves among the defenders of Sevastopol: her husband was killed, while she served as a nurse, was wounded by shrapnel in the shoulder and the head but did not leave the front line, and was later, among sixty-eight women, awarded the soldier's medal "For the Defence of Sevastopol"². Having settled in Kyiv, between 1860 and 1876 she bought, with benefactors' donations, almost a whole block of houses on the corner of Rybalska and Moskovska streets, and during the war of 1877-1878 she gave one of them over to a military hospital².

On 27 June 1877 Yehorova submitted to Metropolitan Filofei (Uspensky) of Kyiv a petition to found a community: she asked for a shelter for thirty-three of the poorest aged widows, and for herself only a small room in that same community². In December 1877 Metropolitan Filofei forwarded the petition to St Petersburg, and on 4 March 1878, by a decree of Emperor Alexander II, no. 58251, the community was founded de jure^{1, 2}. Five days later, on 9 March 1878, the founder died in St Petersburg; on 21 July of that year an imperial decree permitted her body to be brought to Kyiv, and on 8 August 1878 the burial rite of the nun Dymytra was performed in the community she had founded¹.

In the main building of the community a church of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple was set up, consecrated on 14 November 1878, and in the basement beneath it a church of the great martyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki with the founder's crypt, consecrated on 17 June 1879; both were consecrated by Metropolitan Filofei^{1, 2}. The first head of the community was the nun Yevfaliia (Lebedeva), transferred from the Desiatynny monastery of Novgorod^{1, 2}. On 28 November 1900 the head of the community, the nun Kleopatra (Ponomariova), petitioned for the community to be converted into a monastery - by then there were more than a hundred sisters - and on 30 April 1901 the Holy Synod granted the petition: the community became a coenobitic monastery of the same name^{1, 2}. In that same year a free parish school for girls was opened at the monastery².

From 1913 until her death in 1926 the community was governed by the nun Feofaniia (Shyshova); under her the monastery was temporarily registered as the Kyiv-Vvedenska religious and market-gardening community². Its property was taken away step by step and the bell tower was demolished^{1, 2}. The community's own two web pages give different dates for its closure - 1930 and 21 April 1935^{1, 2}. In October 1941 the monastery was revived, but it did not last long: in 1960 it was abolished a second time, and a hundred and thirty sisters were moved to the Florivsky and Pokrovsky monasteries^{1, 2}.

In 1992 the Vvedenska church was handed over to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and on 15 June of that year the first Divine Liturgy after the interruption was celebrated in it². On 1 August 1993 an imprint of its image not made by hands was found on the glass of the icon of the Mother of God "Look upon the Humility", kept in the community, the glass not touching the icon; by a decree of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of 22 November 1995 this image was recognised as wonder-working^{1, 5}. On 8/21 August 1996 the relics of the nun Dymytra were returned in procession from the Zvirynets cemetery to the lower church¹, and on 6 December 1996, by a decree of the Synod, the Vvedenska parish was converted into a men's monastery^{1, 2}.

On 22 November 2000 the Holy Synod blessed the opening of a men's monastery of the Deposition of the Robe of the Mother of God at Blachernae in the village of Tomashivka, Fastiv district, Kyiv region - a community raised by the brethren of the Vvedensky monastery^{3, 2}. On 18 April 2008 the Synod blessed the local glorification of the founder, the nun Dymytra (Yehorova), and approved her iconographic image and the draft troparion and kontakion⁴. Every year on 13 July a procession sets out from the community through the village of Bilohorodka to the Deposition of the Robe skete at Tomashivka⁵. On 29 September 2020 the six hundredth anniversary of the appearing of the icon "Look upon the Humility" was marked at the monastery⁶.