Shamordino Convent

The Convent of St. Ambrose and Our Lady of Kazan (Казанская Амвросиевская ставропигиальная женская пустынь) is a stauropegial Russian Orthodox convent in the village of Shamordino, Kaluga Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Seryona River, 12 km (7.5 mi) from Optina Monastery.

The convent was founded near the village of Shamordino in 1884 by Sofia Bolotova, a local noblewoman, with the blessing of Saint Ambrose of Optina. The monastery's churches were designed by Sergey Sherwood and Roman Klein in a peculiar brick version of the Russian Revival. By 1918, some 800 women lived in the convent and its sketes, making it one of the largest monastic establishments in Central Russia. In 1910, after leaving Yasnaya Polyana, Leo Tolstoy planned to go to Shamordino, where his sister Maria was living as a nun. The convent was shut down by the Soviets from 1923 until 1990.

The sisterhood of Shamordino Convent were imprisoned in 1923 at the closure of the convent by the Soviet authorities, first in Solovki prison camp, then the sisterhood was broken up and dispersed and, with the exception of one striking account by American prisoner John H. Noble that emerged following his release some 30 years after the nuns' disappearance, it is generally unknown, apart from scant references, what became of any other members of the sisterhood thereafter.

Account of I.M. Andreyevsky, Professor, Psychiatrist, Author, and Political Prisoner

The account in English of what was the immediate fate of the nuns was provided by I.M. Andreyevsky (Russian: Иван Михайлович Андреевский) in The Orthodox Word, a publication of monk Seraphim Rose and the Saint Herman of Alaska Monastery, which at the time of publication were under the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. The following points highlight their imprisonment: Under orders from their spiritual father, also imprisoned at Solovki, they were not to do any work for the Soviet regime because the system was actively dismantling the Russian Orthodox Church. As a result of their steadfast adherence to the vow of obedience they had all taken upon their tonsure, they refused to do so much as a single stitch with a needle in service to the Soviets. They were threatened, beaten, tortured, starved, all to no avail. Finally, as a last resort, they were divided up and sent to various locations of forced labour and imprisonment throughout the Soviet Union in the hopes that total isolation would break their will and that they should submit to their captors. Other than these main details, little else was known of them until some 30 or 35 years later when an American prisoner was released and published his account (cited below) of his ten years of imprisonment in the Soviet Gulags.

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