Raifa Bogoroditsky Monastery

The Raifa Bogoroditsky Monastery is the largest active men’s monastery in the Kazan diocese, located twenty-seven kilometres northwest of the city on the shore of a forest lake. Its whitewashed walls, domes and bell tower, mirrored in the water amid a pine forest, have made it one of the most recognisable places in Tatarstan.

The monastery was founded in the seventeenth century by the hermit Filaret: after giving away his property following the death of his parents, he took monastic vows at the Chudov Monastery in Moscow and then set out in search of solitude in the lower Volga region. In 1613 he settled on the shore of Lake Sumskoye, later renamed Lake Raifa, where he built a cell. People wishing to share his strict monastic life began coming to him, and in this way a hermitage grew up. After Filaret’s death in 1659, the Metropolitan of Kazan blessed the transformation of the hermitage into a monastery, named in memory of the wilderness of Raithu in Palestine, where, according to church tradition, Christian monks were killed by pagans.

Until a fire in 1689 the buildings remained of wood; the stone ensemble took shape at the turn of the eighteenth century, when crenellated walls and towers more than half a kilometre long were built, giving the monastery the appearance of a fortified town. Later additions included a cathedral by the architect Mikhail Korinfsky, the diminutive Church of St Sophia, which holds no more than ten people, and a gate bell tower roughly sixty metres tall, popularly nicknamed the “Raifa candle.” In the early twentieth century the Trinity Cathedral was built in the Russian style and became famous for its unusual acoustics: according to legend, the monks’ singing inside it could be heard for several versts around.

After 1917 the monastery was closed, and in 1930 its last remaining monks were shot on charges of anti-Soviet activity; decades later the Church canonised them as venerable martyrs. From the 1930s onward the grounds housed a prison for political detainees and later a juvenile colony, while the surviving churches were used as workshops. Revival came only in 1991, when the monastery was returned to believers and its principal relic — a copy of the icon of the Mother of God venerated as miracle-working, brought here back in 1668 — was returned from Kazan.

In the years since, almost the entire ensemble has been restored and monastic life has resumed; the brotherhood today numbers around thirty monks. A shelter for boys has operated here since 1994, the well-known vocal quartet “Pritcha” sings at the monastery, and since 2008 pilgrims have been accommodated at its own guesthouse. The monastery has been visited twice by primates of the Russian Orthodox Church — Patriarchs Alexy II and Kirill — and in 2005 it was featured on a commemorative silver coin issued by the Bank of Russia.

Raifa is associated with a well-known legend: the loud croaking of frogs on the lake is said to have disturbed the monks at prayer, and after a collective appeal to heaven the amphibians fell silent for good — according to the story, even frogs brought here deliberately stop croaking as long as they remain on the monastery grounds. Today the monastery is surrounded by an area of pine forest that was declared a nature reserve back in 1960, and it remains not only a spiritual centre but also a picturesque natural corner on the outskirts of Kazan.