St. Anastasia the Great Martyr's Monastery

In the Crimean mountains, in the Kachi-Kalyon ravine near the village of Pereduschelne, Bakhchysaray district, a cave men's skete dedicated to St. Anastasia the Great Martyr stood among the rocks¹.

The founding date of the cave monastery is unknown; most researchers place it in the eighth century, on the evidence of carved Greek crosses in the caves characteristic of that period¹.

By the house's own tradition, the rule of monastic life reached here through the correspondence of St. John, Bishop of Gothia, with St. Theodore the Studite, who died in 826 and was a renowned defender of icon veneration¹. That Theodore the Studite corresponded specifically with the clergy of Crimean Gothia is confirmed by a separate academic publication of the Chersonesus Museum-Preserve - it names the addressee of one of his letters as the archimandrite of Crimean Gothia, without, however, naming this house specifically².

By tradition, the monastery had long been honoured by the Russian tsarist court as well: under Tsar Boris Godunov's 1598 charter, alms were granted to the church of St. Anastasia, and Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich also gave the house money¹.

By the eighteenth century the monastery's buildings had fallen into disrepair, and only a single hermit-monk remained at the skete¹. In 1774 Crimea was declared a state free of the Porte with the right to elect its own khans - this event became the first and main cause of the Crimean Christians' departure into Russia¹.

The spiritual head of Crimean Orthodox Christians in these years was Metropolitan Ignatius (Gozadino), who headed the united Crimean eparchy of Gothia and Kaffa; on learning of the planned departure of the Christians, the Tatars began pursuing the metropolitan to kill him. The bishop hid for a month and a half in the Kachi-Kalyon ravine itself, sheltered and fed there by a Greek hermit¹.

The Christians' departure passed through the Kacha valley: having venerated the house of St. Anastasia, which had sheltered their bishop during the persecution, the departing settlers took with them the wonder-working icon of the saint and left Crimea. The holy house stood empty, and the church and monastic buildings gradually fell into ruin¹.

The skete's revival became possible in the nineteenth century thanks to Archbishop Innokenty (Borisov) of Kherson and Tavria, who held that see from 24 February 1848 until his death in 1857³. In the autumn of 1849 he wrote a "Memorandum on the Restoration of Ancient Holy Places in the Crimean Mountains," in which he proposed the Athonite skete model of monasticism for Crimea; Emperor Nicholas I personally approved the memorandum for execution, and in 1850 monastic life was revived at the skete of St. Anastasia¹.

On 13 August 1850 Archbishop Innokenty visited Kachi-Kalyon and the spring of St. Anastasia and consecrated a second altar in the church, dedicated to the Strastnaya icon of the Mother of God¹.

In 1888, pilgrim nuns of Moscow's Strastnoy convent, who had long made pilgrimages here, funded - with the participation of nuns of that same convent - the restoration of a second, ancient church carved from a stone that had fallen from the cliff, dedicated to the holy martyrs Sophia and her daughters Faith, Hope and Love; small, no more than 4 by 2.5 metres, it stood 350 metres from the church of St. Anastasia, by then already ruined¹.

On 20 June 1932 Minutes No. 9 of the standing commission on cult affairs under the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the Crimean ASSR ordered the monastic metochion and church liquidated "at the demand of the working people of the surrounding villages," and the metochion and church handed over to farmstead No. 2 of the "Comintern" state farm for cultural purposes; the decision was carried out, the church property confiscated, and the fate of the evicted monks remained unknown¹. Soon afterward the church building and the monastery's cells were blown up and dismantled almost to their foundations - allegedly for the construction of a road that in fact was never built there¹.

The skete was revived for the last time in 2005: Hieromonk Dorofei, of the brethren of the Bakhchysarai Dormition men's monastery, came here with the blessing of its superior, Archimandrite Siluan, and within two to three months the first fellow residents gradually began to appear; 28 May 2005 is reckoned as the day the revived skete was founded¹.

The beginning was difficult: water had to be carried a kilometre and a half over mountainous terrain in a canister on one's back, the monks lived in dugouts, and building materials had to be carried up the mountain path by hand and shoulder; during construction a fragment of a cross was found in the ground¹. Gradually prayer began to sound in this holy place, a community formed, pilgrims started coming, and on the skete's grounds another spring of drinking water was found and consecrated in honour of Holy Sophia, the Wisdom of God¹.