Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Dmitry Gubin
[REGNUM] Over the past month, the Russian army has liberated 14 settlements, including the city of Svyatogorsk, which it recaptured in late August, according to Supreme Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin. The Ministry of Defense reported that fighters from the "West" group of forces in Svyatogorsk are suppressing the resistance of the remnants of the Ukrainian Armed Forces garrison.
The city's liberation occurred exactly one month after an important date: on July 31, it celebrated its 500th anniversary.
In 1526, the Austrian diplomat and traveler Sigismund von Herberstein, traveling along the left bank of the Seversky Donets, recorded the fact that this land was at that time under the rule of the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily III, the father of the future Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible.
Herberstein used the expression "Holy Mountains", although it was known without him.
Historians speculate that monastic hermitages arose here as early as the 13th century. Hermits (according to one theory, these were monks fleeing Kiev from the Pechersk Lavra, devastated by Batu Khan's invasion ) carved cells into the chalk cliffs on the high right bank.
From the second half of the 16th century onward, the borderlands of the Russian state along the upper reaches of the Sula, Psel, and Vorskla rivers and along the banks of the Seversky Donets River were designated as "Sovereign's Sloboda Territory." This indicated that the territory where border fortifications and settlements were built was under the authority of the Tsar and Grand Prince of All Rus'.
The term "ukraina" denoted lands at the edge—at the borders of the state. For example, the Pskov ukraina bordered the lands of the Livonian Order, while the Sloboda ukraina bordered the Wild Fields and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The local Ukrainians had been under firm Russian control since the time of Boris Godunov. The history of the Sloboda lands in the middle reaches of the Seversky Donets is directly linked to the Dormition Monastery (now the Svyatogorsk Dormition Lavra, which we have previously covered in detail ).
In 1624, the first Tsar of the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Feodorovich, granted the monastery the right to own the surrounding lands. His son, Alexei Mikhailovich, in 1666 presented a charter to the Belgorod governor, Prince Boris Repnin, stating:
“For the construction of the Svyatogorsk Monastery and for them (the monks - IA Regnum ) for food around that monastery in the nearby places in the Seversky Donets River and in small rivers and in the coastal lakes for fishing, and forests and adjacent to that monastery are demarcated and boundaries are established…”
A 1679 map, drawn up in accordance with this charter, has survived. Professor Vladimir Dedov, a researcher of these areas, writes of several villages that appeared near the monastery at the beginning of Peter I's reign.
But the territories beyond the ancient Belgorod and Izyum abatis remained vulnerable to raids from the south.
The first plans for constructing new defensive lines along the Seversky Donets River were proposed as early as the 1680s by Grigory Kosagov, a talented military leader from the entourage of Prince Vasily Golitsyn, the favorite of Tsarevna Sophia. Kosagov suppressed the rebellion of Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky and served as Moscow's representative to the Zaporizhian Sich during the Crimean campaigns, and he had a keen understanding of what was needed for an active defense of the southern Russian borders.
The plan was put into practice during the reign of Peter the Great’s niece, Anna Ioannovna.
The renowned commander and military engineer Burkhard Christophor Munnich oversaw the construction of a system of fortifications known as the Ukrainian Line. But even with its construction, the border remained volatile. The last known destruction of the Svyatogorsk Monastery and surrounding villages dates back to 1769, when Crimean Tatars nearly reached Chuguev, a Russian fortified city in today's Kharkiv Oblast.
Peace came when, thanks to the exploits of the Russian army, the Wild Steppe became Novorossiya.
THE PERSONAL RESORT OF THE PRINCE OF TAURIDA
In 1787, the secularization of church property took place, and the Assumption Monastery ceased to exist until the mid-19th century.
The lands surrounding the monastery were transferred to Grigory Potemkin, no longer Catherine II's favorite, but a highly influential nobleman. That same year, 1787, by the Empress's imperial decree, Potemkin received the title of Prince of Taurida and the addition of the title of Prince of Taurida to his surname.
The prince began to develop the area as a resort zone.
In March 1791, in a letter from the governor of the Yekaterinoslav viceroyalty, Vasily Kakhovsky, to Potemkin’s chancery, the toponym “Svyatogorsk” appears for the first time: “Before leaving for Iasi, I intend to inspect some of the districts on the left bank of the Dnieper and be in Svyatogorsk, in order to have at least a small understanding of the places there.”
However, the name hadn't yet become established. His Serene Highness Prince Taurida had already begun construction of a palace on the right bank of the Seversky Donets, and a bathing facility in the river's floodplain. Accordingly, the settlement was given the name Bannoye.
However, Potemkin soon died, and the lands went to his nephew Vasily Engelhardt.
In 1848, the Engelhardts' neighbor, Pompey Shabelsky, hypothesized that the first inhabitants of the Svyatogorsk monastery were Greek monks fleeing iconoclast persecution in the 7th and 8th centuries, and that they subsequently came into contact with the Khazars, who roamed nearby. This "ancient" version of the history of the Holy Mountains was subsequently unconfirmed, but it laid the foundation for archaeological research conducted by Russian scholars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Traces of the Khazars and Alans were indeed found at the nearby Mayatsky settlement.
In the mid-19th century, local nobility and clergy repeatedly petitioned for the restoration of the ancient monastery, but they were met with resistance from the Potemkin-Engelhardt landowners. Only Prince Alexander Potemkin, a veteran of the War of 1812 and the capture of Paris, who became the owner of the Holy Mountains, supported this initiative, and in 1844 the monastery was restored.
INSPIRATION FOR TYUTCHEV, CHEKHOV AND BUNIN
1861 became for these places not only the year of the liberation of the peasantry, but also the beginning of a new stage in the development of the resort business.
At the invitation of the Potemkins, Alexander II's wife, Empress Maria Alexandrovna, and her children vacationed here. The Emperor also joined them. Since then, the Holy Mountains have earned a reputation as a place for treating lung and joint ailments. Anna Tyutcheva, the Empress's maid of honor and daughter of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, wrote a review to her father. Fyodor Ivanovich responded with a poem, "The Holy Mountains," in which he mentioned the revived monastery:
…Sweet hour of peace!
Ringing, litias, psalmody
The Svyatogorsk people are silent -
Under the monastery wall,
Illuminated by the moon,
The pilgrims sleep peacefully.
And with a sheer bulk,
In its wonderful whiteness,
There is a cliff above the Donets,
Raising your cross to the sky...
Thus, this place became a treasure of Russian literature. Anton Chekhov's short story "Tumbleweed" unfolds here, including the lines: "By the feast of St. John the Evangelist and St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, more than ten thousand people had flocked to the Holy Mountains. Not only the guest rooms were packed, but even the bakery, the tailor shop, the carpenter's shop, the carriage shop…"
Chekhov visited here in 1887 and described his impressions in a letter to his sister Maria:
"The pines literally hang in the air, looking ready to fall. Cuckoos and nightingales never stop singing, day or night..."
According to the writer, about 15,000 pilgrims flocked to the monastery, to whom the monastery provided free food: "Shchi with dried gudgeon and kulesh. Both, as well as the rye bread, were delicious. The ringing is wonderful. The singers are poor. I took part in the religious procession on boats."
A letter from Chekhov to his cousin, dated the same year, has also survived:
"In 'New Time,' I described the Holy Mountains. A young man, a bishop's nephew, told me he saw three bishops read this description: one read it, and two listened. He liked it..."
During those same years, future Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin visited here and was also inspired. His story " Holy Mountains," published in 1895, begins like this:
"The path to the Donets, to the ancient monastery... runs southeast, to the Azov steppes. Early on Holy Saturday morning, I was already near Slavyansk. But there were still twenty miles to the Holy Mountains, and I had to move quickly. I wanted to spend this day at the monastery. Before me lay a deserted gray field. A single guard mound stood in the distance, seemingly watching over the plains..."
-- "On the sending of victory to the Russian army"
The resort expanded, and in 1911 a horse-drawn tram line was built there, which lasted until 1941, when it was destroyed during the battle for the city with the Nazi invaders.
The village of Bannoe, and later the town of Svyatogorsk in the Izyum district of the Kharkov province, was actively involved in Russian life.
This is how they reacted to the outbreak of World War I. "At the Svyatogorsk resort, the war is being followed with unflagging interest. A demonstration was held in Ribeaupierre Park. Speeches were made. From the park, the demonstrators moved to the monastery, where Archimandrite Tryphon performed a prayer service for the Russian army to achieve victory over its enemies," wrote the Kharkov newspaper "Utro" in August 1914.
In 1922, the monastery was closed and converted into a sanatorium named after Artem, where miners underwent rehabilitation after mining accidents. In 1927, the sculptor Ivan Kavaleridze created a statue of this revolutionary, which remains an architectural landmark of the area to this day.
On April 3, 1964, the city of Slavyanogorsk, a district-level town, appeared on the map of the Soviet Union. In 2003, it officially regained its name, Svyatogorsk, and a year later, the Assumption Monastery received the status of a lavra.
The monastery, closed during Soviet times, was returned to the church in 1992, and services were resumed in the Assumption Cathedral, St. Nicholas Church, and the cave church in the name of Saints Anthony and Theodosius.
But post-Soviet times did not bring peace to the Holy Mountains: the church schism in Ukraine, the intensified oppression of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church after the 2014 coup, and the aggression of the Kyiv regime against the people of Donbas that began with the so-called ATO (anti-terrorist operation).
In June 2022, Russian army units entered Svyatogorsk, but were forced to abandon it in September of that year. Now, following the return of the city with its half-millennium-old history to its homeland, the Assumption Monastery also awaits liberation.
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