Kyzyltash St. Stephen of Sourozh's Monastery

The Kyzyltash St. Stephen of Sourozh's men's monastery arose in a picturesque gorge of the Crimean Mountains (Kyzyl-Tash means "red stone" in Tatar) near Krasnokamyanka Village in the Sudak district, within the Feodosiya Diocese. Popular tradition linked these places with Archbishop Stephen of Sourozh, who led his flock in Sourozh (present-day Sudak) in the eighth century and died around the year 750: according to tradition, he liked to withdraw for prayer to a grotto beneath the reddish cliffs of Kyzyl-Tash^{1, 2}.

In 1837 the Crimean researcher Pyotr Keppen, passing by these places, described a cave seventeen paces deep in the Kyzyltash cliff that already drew pilgrims at that time; deep inside the cave, on a stone ledge that served as an altar, lay a fragment of white marble bearing the face of an unknown saint^{1, 2}. Researchers identified the remains of a foundation of unworked stone at the cave's entrance as the remains of a medieval Christian church attached to the cave, which probably served it as an apse^{1, 2}.

According to tradition, around 1825 a Tatar herdsman from Otuzy, sheltering in the grotto from bad weather, found an icon of the Mother of God painted on a board in the waters of the spring; he passed it to a Greek merchant, Plastaro, who took it to Archpriest Iosif of Feodosiya, who mounted the icon in silver and placed it in the church dedicated to St. Stephen¹. News of the miraculous find spread through the district, and pilgrims began to gather at the spring, which was regarded as healing among people of various faiths^{1, 2, 3}.

Around 1850-1851 two wandering pilgrims, Andronik and Panteleimon, came to Kyzyltash and built a modest dwelling and a mud-brick chapel by the spring, becoming the first residents of the future house^{2, 3}. In 1853 Archbishop Innokentiy of Kherson and Tavrida (Borisov) visited Kyzyltash: he inspected the pilgrims' dwelling and blessed them to set up a cenobitic community^{2, 3}. Well-off residents of Feodosiya and Sudak petitioned the archbishop to open a cenobitic monastery at Kyzyltash, and noblewoman Ekaterina Vinogradova, at Innokentiy's personal request, donated three desyatinas of forest to the community². However, the Crimean War and the archbishop's own death (†1857) delayed the fulfilment of this undertaking^{2, 4}.

In 1856, by decision of the Holy Synod, a men's cenobitic monastery was founded at Kyzyltash; Hegumen Arseny of the Balaklava Holy George Monastery became its first superior, and eleven monks gathered under him^{1, 2, 3}. They built a small house and four earthen dugouts, and Father Arseny consecrated the mud-brick chapel set up by the first residents in honour of St. Stephen of Sourozh^{1, 2}.

The fates of the first settlers turned out differently: Andronik left for Mount Athos in 1857, and no further record survives of his life, while Panteleimon remained at Kyzyltash, took monastic vows with the name Pakhomiy and lived there for twenty-five years; two years before his death he took the great schema, and he died in 1874, having, according to tradition, foretold his own death three days beforehand^{1, 2}.

The house's real building work began with the appointment of Hieromonk Parfeniy, transferred from the same Balaklava monastery, as its superior: two sources place his taking charge of the community in 1858 (one of them gives the exact date - 20 August), a third in 1859^{1, 2, 3}. He personally worked as an architect, mason and carpenter, and under him most of the monastery's buildings were built³. A contemporary, the writer and traveller Ye. A. Markov, described him as a man who turned a desolate spot into "a well-run, abundant household," working from dawn to dusk on his own land¹. Hegumen Parfeniy died in 1866^{2, 3, 4}: according to the guidebook, he was killed on a forest path between Taraktash and Kyzyltash by three Tatars for revenge, and his body was burned in a remote ravine to hide the crime, but a chance witness reported it to the police³. A memorial marker was later placed at the site of the murder, and in 2000 the hegumen was canonized³.

Parfeniy's successor was Hegumen Nikolai (secular name Ivan Levchenko), who led the house for more than twenty years. Under him, in 1870, a stone church with a bell tower was built and consecrated in 1871 in honour of the Dormition of the Mother of God - unheated, so services were held there only in summer; the icon found in the spring was placed above the Royal Doors². On the site of the original mud-brick chapel, a second, winter church in honour of St. Stephen of Sourozh was built in 1885².

A stone house for the superior, a refectory with a kitchen and prosphora bakery, a six-room guesthouse for pilgrims, five brothers' wings with separate cells, a workshop and outbuildings appeared on the house's grounds, and large crosses showing pilgrims the way were set up on the surrounding mountain peaks². The community received no state funding and lived by its own labour: its landholding grew to 227 desyatinas, including 157 bought from landowner Kashkadamov with money bequeathed to the house by Archbishop Innokentiy; income came from selling vegetables and fruit, some thirty-five head of livestock, carp raised in a pond, candles, books and icons, as well as collection boxes, bank interest and donations².

On 13 May 1894 Hieromonk Ilia, father-confessor of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, was appointed superior; under him further cells and a large three-storey building with a basement were added, and the sulfur spring was cleared, covered with a wooden structure, with a pond arranged next to it². That same year, 1894, sixty-five monks and novices lived at the house², and in 1906, according to the guidebook, the imperial family visited Kyzyltash³.

After the establishment of Soviet power, the monks formed a labour community and petitioned the commission for the separation of church and state at the Feodosiya Revolutionary Committee to hand over the Dormition and Seraphim churches to them for services; in 1921 the churches were handed over to the community, although Soviet documents already called the monastery "former"². That same year, 1921, a children's labour colony was set up at the community, and the monks were asked to lead its agricultural work².

On 5 October 1923 the Crimean Central Executive Committee of Peasant, Red Army and Naval Deputies in Simferopol resolved to liquidate the Kyzyltash monastery, and services in all its churches stopped; believers from the surrounding villages of Koktebel, Otuzy, Izyumovka and Karagoada repeatedly asked for the house's churches to be returned to them, but were refused every time².

In 1924 a labour colony named after Kalinin was set up in place of the children's colony, and the church building was converted into a club; when the colony broke up because of discord among its members, a new agricultural artel was created in its place in 1927, the domes were removed from all the churches, and the Dormition church became a dormitory for artel members². Father Sofroniy (Dubinin), who had led the monastery until its closure, was exiled to Chernihiv, where he died in 1928².

During the Second World War a partisan-detachment base was stationed at the house; despite fighting on its grounds, the buildings survived largely undamaged, which later allowed them to be used as a sanatorium^{2, 3}. In 1950 (1951 according to another source) the monastery buildings were demolished, and an arsenal for assembling and storing Black Sea Fleet nuclear warheads was created in their place, with tunnels driven into the rock; the whole area became a closed, closely guarded zone, inaccessible to believers, archaeologists, researchers and tourists^{2, 3}.

In 1992 the nuclear stockpile was removed from Kyzyltash, although a military unit remained on the site². As early as 1995 a chaplain-priest, Father Nikolai Demyanyuk, was sent there; later Bishop Lazar visited the place and, struck by the beauty of the setting and the neglected state of the once-known Crimean house, secured the military's handover of a small plot of land, on the site of the former monastery buildings, to the Simferopol Diocese².

On 15 April 1997 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Journal No. 15) blessed the opening of the Kyzyltash men's monastery in honour of St. Stephen of Sourozh and confirmed priest Nikolai Demyanyuk as its superior; in December 1998 Father Nikolai took monastic vows with the name Nikon². In 2007, when the house's founding one hundred and fifty years earlier was marked, a new wooden church began to be built on the old stone foundation of the former St. Stephen of Sourozh church - according to the guidebook, the first and, at the time, the only such church in Crimea².