On the evening of November 18, 2015, the attendant's deskMOE in the city of Ivanovo received an alarming message - the Uspensky Church was lit up, which is one of the oldest surviving monuments of Russian wooden architecture. When firefighting arrived at the scene, the flame spread across the entire roof of the building, so there was a danger of its collapse. All efforts to save the unique construction were in vain, and the Assumption Church (Ivanovo) was destroyed by fire.
The Assumption Church in Ivanovo, in the place of whichtoday there were only scorched logs, was built in the late 16th century. The construction of the building was based on a wooden frame-crate, which gave grounds to modern art historians to attribute it to temple buildings of the cage type - a term used in the history of architecture. In the old years, the same buildings as the Assumption Church in Ivanovo were widely distributed throughout the region.
At the place where today is located the cityPalace of Arts, five centuries ago was Pokrovsky Monastery. On its territory, and this church was built, only it was called then Trinity. The first mention of it is found in documents relating to 1632, that is, to the times of the reign of the first tsar from the House of Romanov - the sovereign, Mikhail Fedorovich.
In 1815 the monastery began the construction of a newa stone church, and the Trinity Church, after dismantling it, was transferred to the territory of the Uspensky cemetery, which was nearby. There, at the end of November 1817, after the completion of the assembly work, it was consecrated in honor of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is why it was named Ouspensky.
After serving in the new place more than six dozenyears, the church became dilapidated, and divine services in it were stopped. Restore it did not try, because on the graveyard by that time a stone temple had already been built. So with time the church disassembled by the residents for firewood would disappear, but the local admirer of the past-the manufacturer who founded the city museum, DG Burylin-intervened.
On his initiative, the building was again dismantledand transported to another city cemetery - Novo-Posadskoe. Here it was not only harvested in its original form, replacing the decayed logs with new, but also attached to it a bell tower. In January 1906, in the presence of a large number of parishioners and all the famous residents of the city, the church was solemnly consecrated.
After the Bolshevik coup, the Assumptionthe church (Ivanovo) was placed at the disposal of the Renovation community - a schismatic movement within the Orthodox Church that advocated the democratization of governance, the modernization of worship services and in everything that supported the new government. However, no matter how the Renovationists tried to enter into interaction with the Bolsheviks, in 1935 the church was taken from them, the services were terminated in it, and the museum of the city of Ivanovo was opened in the building.
Parishioners, though grieved for the loss of theirancient, many generations of a namolennoe temple, but thank God for the fact that the Assumption Church (Ivanovo) was not destroyed, and hoped that one day they would hear the sound of her bells again.
But before that it was still very long. And in 1939, the authorities committed the usual blasphemy for those times - they set up an anti-religious museum in God's temple, sending the former expositions to another room. It existed until the war - when bombs began to fall on Russian soil, the authorities did not become atheistic. It is known that in order to raise the spirit of national self-awareness among the people, Stalin went on some indulgences towards religion.
The Assumption Church in Ivanovo was transferredOld Believer community, it registered a church council, but regular worship services were resumed only in 1946. Since that time the temple officially belonged to the Belokrinskaya Old Believers hierarchy. It was again consecrated, this time in honor of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God. Until the last day, the Assumption Church (Ivanovo) belonged to the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Eparchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, as a co-religion of the old rite.
The fire in the Assumption Church in Ivanovo occurred inthe period of restoration work carried out in it, started as early as in 2013. In the process of restoring the interior of the premises under the layers of old plaster, the masters found fragments of the ancient mural, of the existence of which nothing was known. For a detailed study, the findings were suspended, and they were not supposed to continue until 2016. However, the tragedy that took place on the evening of November 18, 2015, crossed out all plans.
The fire in the Assumption Church in Ivanovo completelydestroyed the building, excluding the possibility of its restoration. Today, the city authorities together with the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church plan to erect an exact copy of the lost temple. It is even supposed to use the surviving fragments of the burned church while building it, and those that are unfit for installation in their condition will be left as sacred objects of the future church.
The investigation conducted by the specialists of the Ministry of Emergency Situations cameto the conclusion that the Assumption Church (Ivanovo) burned down due to the closure of the electrical wiring, but the version of deliberate arson is not excluded. The work of the commission is not yet complete, and the final results of the investigation have not been published. However, regardless of its conclusions, it should be noted with bitterness that the fire that occurred in Ivanovo caused irreparable damage to the historical and cultural heritage of Russia. The Assumption Church was not only a cult building, but also a unique historical monument of federal significance.
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