Toplovskiy St. Parasceva's Convent

The Toplu Convent of the Great-martyr Paraskeva stood by a spring in the Toplu tract, later renamed Uchebne, in the Bilohirsk district of Crimea - on land that Empress Catherine II had granted, already in the eighteenth century, to her chamberlain, the Greek Zakhar Konstantinovich Zotov¹. In the 1850s a Bulgarian hermit girl, Konstantina, from the neighbouring village of Kyshlav settled in a dugout by this spring¹.

In 1858 a community arose here "under the guise of a cenobium" in the Feodosia district of the Tavrida province, and in 1864 that community was turned into a monastery².

In 1863 a stone church of St Paraskeva was built on the site of a chapel and was consecrated, before a great gathering of people, on 26 July of that same year by Bishop Aleksy (Rzhanitsyn)¹. On 1 August 1864 the Highest permission was received to establish a women's cenobitic monastery at the spring of St Paraskeva, and it was opened on 25 September of that same year¹.

In 1882 the spring of St Paraskeva was faced with stone¹. In 1888 a chapel of Paraskeva of Rome was built, and in 1897 a heated house-church of St George the Victorious¹. In 1887 the house laid a new two-storey cathedral in honour of the Life-Giving Trinity, to the design of the architect V. A. Feldman - the building was never finished¹.

The monastery held particles of the relics of the Venerable-martyr Paraskeva and of the Great-martyr and Healer Panteleimon, together with a particle of the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, received from the Athonite monastery of St Panteleimon¹. In 1890 Count N. F. Heyden gave the house a Kazan icon of the Mother of God adorned with pearls and diamonds, with which a cross procession was held every year to Feodosia, where the monastery held a dependency at a Kazan cathedral that lasted until 1919; a further dependency stood in Simferopol¹.

In 1917 the house held 241 nuns¹.

In 1919 the monastery was plundered, and these holy things were lost¹. In the early 1920s the house was turned into the agricultural artel "Zhenskiy trud" ("Women's Labour"), and on 7 September 1928 a decision was taken to liquidate it¹.

In January 1929 NKVD troops forcibly evicted all the nuns - against a signed undertaking that they would be allowed to return to their former place of residence¹. The priests and many of the nuns who had run the monastery's economy were arrested and perished in the camps¹. At the same time the unfinished Trinity cathedral was blown up, and the state farm "Bezbozhnik" ("The Godless") was set up on the grounds¹.

Hegumeness Paraskeva (Rodymtseva) headed the house from 1889 and died on 3 December 1928¹. In 2009 the Simferopol diocese numbered her among its locally venerated saints, approving an icon and liturgical texts in her honour³.

During the Second World War a garrison and the staff of an infantry division were stationed at the monastery¹.

On 8 August 1992 the first Divine Liturgy since the monastery's closure was celebrated at the former house, and on 8 July 1993 the Council for Religious Affairs under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine registered the charter of the Toplu Convent of the Venerable-martyr Paraskeva¹.

The 2003 academic gazetteer of the Bilohirsk district lists the former house, dated 1864, among the architectural monuments of that village⁴.