St. Basil's Monastery

St. Basil's Monastery of the Donetsk Diocese grew up in the village of Mykilske, Volnovakh district in the Donetsk region, on the site of the former village parish of St. Basil¹. In 1912, at the expense of parishioners and benefactors, a stone church was raised here in place of the old wooden one and consecrated in honour of St. Basil the Great¹. In 1954 the badly damaged church was rebuilt - with a single dome and a bell tower - and from then on it was never closed again¹.

Soon after the October revolution a tradition took shape in Mykilske: when a monk came to serve in the church of St. Basil, two monastic houses would open here¹. Hieromonk Savvatii, the future schema-archimandrite Zosima (Sokur), arrived in Mykilske to a half-ruined church without an iconostasis and to a burnt-out shed in place of a priest's house¹. The sources give the year of his arrival differently: the house's own history says 1986¹, the Donetsk Diocese says 1987².

According to the diocesan account, the authorities sent the priest to this village precisely because it stood out of the way; and when people came to him all the same, even the bus services to the district centre began to be cancelled². The same account writes that in place of the churches built before the revolution, ruins stood on the site². Through the labours of hegumen Savvatii the church was restored, a baptistery with the superior's quarters and a pilgrims' hostel with a refectory were built¹, and before long churches, chapels, a refectory and a House of Mercy rose on that abandoned bare ground².

In 1990 hegumen Savvatii was raised to the rank of archimandrite, and in 1992 he was tonsured into the schema with the name Zosima¹. As the number of those wishing to serve God under his spiritual guidance grew, a brothers' block was built and an almshouse was set up - a House of Mercy for the care of the infirm and the elderly¹.

Schema-archimandrite Zosima founded two monasteries here, one for men and one for women². On 21 December 2001 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having considered the report of Metropolitan Ilarion of Donetsk and Mariupol, blessed the opening of a men's monastery in honour of St. Basil the Great in the village of Mykilske, Volnovakh district, Donetsk region³. The house's own history dates the registration of St. Basil's Monastery to 2002, and until his own death in August 2002 the superior of the monastery was schema-archimandrite Zosima himself¹; the elder was 58 years old².

A connoisseur of church art, schema-archimandrite Zosima gathered particles of holy relics, icons and church plate⁴. With his blessing the first brethren of the monastery, besides prayer, services and the obediences they owed, took up handicraft: the brothers restored old icons and made new icon cases for them, decorated with woodcarving⁴. In time workshops took shape in the house - sewing, embroidery, gold embroidery, icon painting, ceramics, candle making, joinery and woodcarving⁴.

The principal church of the house became the Dormition Cathedral, built after the death of Father Zosima according to his testament as an exact copy of the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin¹. The monastery's churches also included the stone church of St. Basil with a tented bell tower over the entrance, the refectory church of All Saints who shone forth in the land of Rus, built for the 2000th anniversary of the Nativity of Christ, and the gate church of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God with a bell tower¹. In 2004 a house church in honour of St. Sampson the Hospitable was opened in the almshouse¹.

The house also owned the stone church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker with a bell tower over the entrance, built in 1910 on the opposite side of the village: for a long time it stood closed and was used as a store, workshops and a slaughterhouse¹.

On 31 July 2009 the rite of the lesser consecration of the Dormition Cathedral was performed at the monastery, which the Holy Synod of the UOC recorded in the journal of its sitting of 9 September that same year⁵. The Ukrainian register of monuments Pradidivska Slava describes the complex under the name of the Dormition Mykolo-Vasylivskyi Monastery and publishes photographs of its Dormition Cathedral taken in 2007⁶.

One of the brethren of the house was Oleksandr Dmytrovych Bondarenko, the future schema-archimandrite Alipiy, a native of Donetsk born on 2 February 1947⁷. He trained as a decorator, worked 25 years in a construction organisation, and in 1977 was introduced to Father Savvatii⁷. When the priest was transferred to another parish in 1986, Oleksandr followed him and, having buried his relatives, settled at the monastery⁷.

There he took a direct part in the restoration and adornment of the church of St. Basil and was a witness to the emergence of the two houses⁷. On 21 August 1992 schema-archimandrite Zosima tonsured him a monk with the name Alipiy, in honour of St. Alipiy the Icon Painter of the Caves, and on 10 April 2001, on Great Monday, into the great schema⁷. An icon painter and restorer, he painted and restored icons and adorned them with enamel crowns and reliquaries⁷.

On 4 October 2013 schema-archimandrite Alipiy, superior of St. Basil's Monastery in the village of Mykilske, died^{7, 8}. On Sunday 6 October, after a hierarchical service, the monastic rite of burial was performed in the Dormition Cathedral by Metropolitan Ilarion of Donetsk and Mariupol, concelebrating with four bishops and numerous clergy, and Father Alipiy was buried in the second chapel before the Dormition Cathedral, near the chapel of schema-archimandrite Zosima^{7, 9}. On 12 November 2013, on the fortieth day, a requiem liturgy was served in the Dormition Cathedral and a panikhida at his grave⁹.

Writing about the December service of 2013, the Donetsk Diocese noted that the copy of the icon of the Mother of God of the Sign, which had been kept in the house for many years, was especially venerated by the founder of the monasteries, schema-archimandrite Zosima¹⁰.