Russia as USSR Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Series: Architectural Monuments of Russia The Alexandro-Svirsky Monastery, Staraya Sloboda village 2010 Proof Silver 25 Roubles 60mm (168.00 grams) 0.925 Silver (4.9962 oz. ASW) Reference: Y# 1225 ДВАДЦАТЬ ПЯТЬ РУБЛЕЙ БАНК РОССИИ • Ag 925 • 2010 г. • 155,5 ММД •, Emblem of Russian bank: two-headed eagle. СВЯТО-ТРОИЦКИЙ АЛЕКСАНДРО-СВИРСКИЙ МОНАСТЫРЬ, Architectural ensemble of the Alexandro-Svirsky Monastery: in the foreground – the Transfiguration Com-plex, in the centre – the forest , in the background – the Trinity Complex.
Coin Notes:
The Alexandro-Svirsky Monastery, located on high picturesque bank of Roschinsky Lake, contains two complexes – Transfiguration and Trinity ones which are the entire monument of architectural objects of the XVth -XVIIth centuries. The most part of them have survived till our days: the Intercession Church with the Bell-Tower and Refectory (1533), the Transfiguration Cathedral with the Saint Alexander Svirsky Side-chapel (1644), the Trinity Cathedral (1791), the Saints Prophet Zakharia and Elizabeth Church (1685) and others. Date of issue: 01.02.2010
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Alexander-Svirsky Monastery (Александро-Свирский монастырь) is a Russian Orthodox monastery situated deep in the woods of the Leningrad Oblast, just south from its border with the Republic of Karelia. The golden age of this cloister was in the 17th century. It boasts one of the few preserved three-tented belfries and medieval clock towers in Russia.
The abbey was founded in 1487, when a monk of the Valaam Monastery, named Alexander, settled between Roshchinsky and Holy lakes, 20 km to the east from Lake Ladoga and 6 km from the Svir River. During his life in the woods, he had a vision of the Holy Trinity who ordered him to build two oaken chapels dedicated to the Trinity and the Saviour’s Transfiguration. These churches gave birth to the twin Trinity and the Transfiguration cloisters, collectively known as the Alexander Svirsky Monastery.
The monastery’s founder died on August 30, 1533, and was buried at the Transfiguration cloister, which still serves as a burial place for the local monks. 12 years later, his disciples recounted his life in a biography. The church synod of 1547 canonized Alexander of the Svir, and the new saint became venerated throughout Russian lands. One of the chapels of the famous Saint Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square, for instance, was consecrated to him.
The Russian tsars bestowed many important privileges on Alexander’s cloister, including the right to appropriate taxes from the Svir Fair, which was held annually under the cloister walls. During the Time of Troubles, the Swedes sacked and burnt both hermitages on three occasions, and yet the monastery continued to prosper. After the Russian-Swedish border was delineated west of the Svir River, much of the trade between two nations had to pass through the Svir Fair, further augmenting the monastery’s importance.
This renewed prosperity was reflected in the monastic structures erected in the 1640s. In 1644, when the five-domed Transfiguration Cathedral was finished, Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich presented to the monks a golden ark for keeping St Alexander’s relics there. A belfry of the Trinity cloister was built in three tiers and crowned with three tents in 1649. Most of the monastic cells date back to the 1670s. The roomy Trinity Cathedral was completed by 1695. The last structure to be erected within monastery walls was the hospital chapel of St John of Damascus (1718).
The vast lands of the Alexander Svirsky Monastery were secularized during Catherine the Great’s ecclesiastical reform in 1764. The Transfiguration cloister continued as a seat of the local seminary and a residence of the Olonets archbishops, who rebuilt much of the monastery structures for their own needs.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the monks were imprisoned and then executed by the Cheka after trying to resist Bolshevik forces. The relics of St Alexander were desecrated and put on a public display in Leningrad. The medieval monastery buildings housed an infamous gulag known as Svirlag. They were further damaged during World War II. Restoration did not commence until the 1970s.
As of 2005, the Transfiguration Cloister is the home to the local monastic community, while the Trinity Cloister still houses a mental asylum instituted in 1953. The monastery has a subsidiary chapel in St Petersburg, situated some 260 km to the west.
Russia (Russian: Росси́я, tr. Rossiya), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is a country in Eurasia. At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth’s inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 144 million people at the end of March 2016. The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern; about 77% of the population live in European Russia. Russia’s capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world; other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa and Kazan.
Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait.
The East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus’ ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states; most of the Rus’ lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic Golden Horde in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities, achieved independence from the Golden Horde, and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus’. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east.
Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s first constitutionally socialist state. The Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, and emerged as a recognized superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world’s first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the world’s second largest economy, largest standing military in the world and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, twelve independent republics emerged from the USSR: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Baltic states regained independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; the Russian SFSR reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation and is recognized as the continuing legal personality and sole successor state of the Soviet Union. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic.
The Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russia’s extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. It is permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as a member of the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as being the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and one of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), along with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
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