Restoration of liturgical activities at Ferapontov Monastery in the late 1980s and early 1990s (based on the materials of the Vologda Diocesan Administration Archive)

Abstract

The article presents a reconstruction of the events that accompanied the revival of liturgical activity in the Ferapontov Monastery of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the Vologda Diocese. It was restored as an Orthodox parish in the late 1980s. The empirical basis of the study is unpublished documents stored in the Archives of the Vologda Diocesan Administration. The information contained in them and concerning the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods of the history of the Ferapontov Monastery is introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. It was found that the initiative associated with the opening of an Orthodox parish in the village of Ferapontovo was shown by local residents back in 1986. Based on archival information numerous difficulties encountered by those who made efforts to resume liturgical activities in the Ferapontov Monastery are reflected, including those associated with the joint use of church premises by the Orthodox community and the museum complex. During the period under review, these were very acute, since the experience of such cooperation between a religious and state organization in the country was, in principle, almost absent. As a result of the study, the period of the history of the Ferapontov monastery, coinciding with the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, was reconstructed in detail. A list of rectors of the Epiphany parish in the village of Ferapontovo of
that period is provided. The circumstances accompanying the participation of state authorities in the process of transferring church premises for lease to the Vologda Diocese are reflected. Until 2017, the Nativity of the Mother of God Monastery in the village of Ferapontovo functioned as a parish. But the first steps to restore the Orthodox monastery were taken back in the early 1990s.