The now lost Orthodox church, located in Karelia, was an outstanding monument of Zaonezhsky wooden architecture, an object of the republican cultural heritage. The Assumption Church was located in Kondopoga, in the historical part of the city.
Once upon a time here, on the shores of Lake Onega, there was a village of the same name. Among the numerous hipped wooden churches, it had no equal in beauty, although experts did not note any fundamental differences.
Temple History
The end of the 16th century for the Russian North became a difficult time of intervention: the Livonian War was lost, the Swedes ruled in the Karelian district. The cadastres of 1582-1583 contain information about the murders of local peasants and the burning of the Assumption Church.
Two years later, a new temple was built on this site with three altars and a tent rising up. But this church was also destroyed by fire. And again it was very quickly restored from the ashes. In the land annals of 1619, a new temple in Kondopogawas described as a warm church with an iron-clad roof and a refectory.
The Fourth Temple
The fourth Assumption Church in Kondopoga was erected in 1774. By the time of the consecration of the new temple, images for the iconostasis were prepared. Especially for this church, a list of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God was written, which became an exact copy of the miraculous image.
In the beginning, the iconostasis was table, but then it was covered with carved structures, which was made in the style of Catherine's baroque. The walls of the new temple were decorated with images from the iconostasis of the demolished previous church. The builders invested in their brainchild all their skills, soul and knowledge, which they adopted and absorbed from their fathers and grandfathers. They were taken into account and skillfully used by the builders of the Assumption Church in Kondopoga.
According to visual impressions, the building was very elegant, light and even, strange as it may sound, it seemed miniature. Most likely, this is due to the fact that the builders managed to apply the principle of proportionality in its construction.
In the second half of the 19th century, a whole temple complex was built around the unique Assumption Church in Kondopoga. In addition to the Assumption Church itself, it included a hipped bell tower with six bells and a winter church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The five-domed Church of the Nativity of the Virgin was boarded and painted white.
Temple after the revolution
In accordance with the Decree on the separation of church and state, as well as the instructions of the People's Commissariat of Justice and the department for museum affairs, all the property of the AssumptionChurch was transferred to the Department of Museum Affairs. The bell tower in the temple complex stood only a hundred years after construction. It was barbarously destroyed in the thirties. By the time it was destroyed, she had already lost her voice - five out of six bells disappeared without a trace, and the last one was taken to the barnyard.
In the Warm Mother of God Church in Soviet times, grain was first dried, later a collective farm club was set up, which bore the symbolic name "Culture". The church has never been rebuilt, but restoration work was carried out in 1927, 1950 and 1999.
In the summer of 1960, the Assumption Church in Kondopoga (Karelia), by decision of the Council of Ministers of Russia, was taken under state protection. For some time the temple was a branch of the local history museum of the city. In recent years, the church building did not belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. Divine services were not performed in it, the last priest, Father John Lyadinsky, was shot in 1937.
Architecture Features
Assumption Church was a hipped wooden church. The main volume consisted of two octagonal figures, which were placed on a quadrangle, with an altar rectangular cut and two unusual hanging porches. The height of the frame of the tower and the tent, a quadrangle and two octals, was in a ratio of approximately 1:2.
The roof above the altar was oval, above the porch - gable. It was possible to enter the temple from the north and south sides, along the porches, each of which had eighteen steps. All proportions, repeated several times in the church, made the building complete and unified.
Interior decoration
The old faces of the saints met the parishioners and all visitors already on the porch. Climbing up it, they got into a rather simple, but very spacious refectory. Benches stretched along its walls, and a low ceiling rested on two powerful carved pillars, similar to statues, which held the ceiling on their “hands”. Massive poles were tied with carved ropes-intercepts in three places. A little higher than the second of them, figured semicircular brackets departed from the pillars to the ceiling.
Iconostasis and sky-ceiling
Before the terrible tragedy, when a fire broke out in the Assumption Church in Kondopoga (Karelia), it kept a unique iconostasis made in the Baroque style, as well as an icon-painted ceiling.
The sky in the Church of the Assumption was the only example of the composition "Divine Liturgy" in the current church. In its central medallion one could see the icon "Christ the Great Bishop". Christ was surrounded by seraphim with cherubim, located on 16 faces and on the frame of the central ring, angels dressed in deacon's clothes, holding liturgical attributes in their hands. This composition seemed to emphasize the unity of the earthly and heavenly liturgy.
The paintings were made on separate wooden icon shields, which were then assembled into cone-shaped ceilings.
Assumption Church in Kondopoga: who served in it?
At the beginning of the new millennium, services were still held in the church during the summer church holidays. Forthe services were formally appointed rector by a priest who served in another church in the city - Archpriest Lev Bolshakov. The last service was held three years ago.
The architectural monument had a director and two watchmen who were responsible for the safety of the museum property. Unfortunately, the watchman was not around during the arson.
Fire in Kondopoga
On August 10, 2018, the wooden Assumption Church burned down in Kondopoga. Only a small fragment and wooden blockages remained from it. The fire alarm went off at 9:28. The first fire truck arrived at the scene at 9:41 am. The 244-year-old church was destroyed by fire in less than an hour.
The first and to date the only version of the tragedy is arson. Along with the unique monument of wooden architecture, all icons were destroyed by fire, some of which were very valuable.
The culprit of the tragedy
The Investigative Committee of Russia for the Republic of Karelia opened a criminal case on the fact of arson of the most valuable monument of history, culture and architecture - the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin. Naturally, everyone is interested in who set fire to the Assumption Church in Kondopoga. According to investigators, he turned out to be a 15-year-old teenager who was vacationing with his grandmother. He was detained and is in the temporary detention center, which is intended for juvenile delinquents.
The fire in Kondopoga was a terrible shock for all believers. Assumption Church burned down almost to the ground. The first verdict of experts sounded like a sentence:not recoverable.
Restoration of the temple
Meanwhile, today the authorities of Karelia consider it possible to restore the Assumption Church in Kondopoga. The fact is that its restoration was scheduled for the coming years. All the necessary drawings and archival data were prepared, but funds were not allocated.
Specialists from the Moscow organization "Spetsproektrestavratsiya" began pre-restoration conservation of the church. Artur Parfenchikov, the head of Karelia, said that specialists have begun marking the surviving elements, taking measurements, disassembling and sorting the structures. The rubble was dismantled along the perimeter of the log house, the remaining parts of the church structures are stored in piles in the adjacent territory.
Arthur Parfenchikov added that all work is carried out on a voluntary basis, at the request of volunteers, on the basis of a permit issued by the Republican Department for the Protection of Cultural and Architectural Heritage. The Ministry of Culture of Russia believes that the restoration of the temple will require more than 100 million rubles.
"The Northern Spiritual Way" - a charitable foundation - announced the opening of an account to collect voluntary donations for the reconstruction of the Assumption Church in Kondopoga. To collect donations, a Board of Trustees was created, chaired by Metropolitan Konstantin of Karelia and Petrozavodsk. In addition, it included the abbot of the Valaam Monastery - Bishop Pankraty. And I must say that the first funds are already coming to the account. One of the first million rubles donatedHead of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov.
The brethren of the monastery on Valaam, led by the abbot, realizing their Christian duty and the complexity of the upcoming work, are ready to take an active part in such a good deed as the restoration of the burnt church, which was a unique monument of Russian cult wooden architecture. Members of the Spiritual Council of the monastery announced the transfer of a million rubles to the account. But donations from ordinary parishioners are especially valuable.
Interesting facts
- More recently, the Assumption Church was the tallest wooden religious building in Karelia: its height was 42 meters.
- The pillars inside the temple were connected to the ceiling with massive semicircular brackets. One got the impression that they symbolize a person who raised his hands to heaven in prayer. Most culturologists believe that these columns are a symbol of the Goddess Beregini. This is interesting because Bereginya is a symbol of the pagan world of Karelia, as it was before the advent of Christianity. Thus, it becomes obvious that the statues of the pagan goddess were in the Orthodox church. Disputes on this issue have not subsided between researchers so far: many disagree with this statement and consider the columns to be just an element of the interior.
- It is interesting that during the Second World War, when the city of Kondopoga, together with the main part of Karelia, was occupied by Finnish troops, services were regularly held in the Church of the Assumption, not only Orthodox, but also Lutheran. About the times of occupation in the military archives of Finland, many pricelessphotographs depicting the Assumption Church along with the five-domed winter church that survived at that time.
Like the vast majority of believers in our country, the parishioners of Kondopoga believe that they will be able to raise the necessary funds to restore the unique temple.
