Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Simferopol

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is a cathedral in Simferopol, destroyed on the night of September 26-27, 1930 and is currently in the process of reconstruction. At this moment, during the destruction of this temple, the Komsomol leader, who dispersed all those staring at the explosion of the temple, was killed by a fragment from the explosion itself. (This was the only victim of the destruction of the temple on this site.)

The authorship of the idea of building a cathedral in Simferopol belongs to Catherine II, who visited the city in 1787. However, the death of Potemkin and the Empress herself delayed the start of construction. The temple was laid in 1810, but due to the Patriotic War of 1812 and structural difficulties, in 1816 I. Charleman and I. F. Kolodin developed a new project approved by Alexander I and received generous funding. The best masters from all over Russia were invited to build the temple. The solemn consecration of the temple took place on June 3, 1829. During its existence, the temple has changed significantly. In 1842, the western facade of the temple was enriched with a clock placed to the right of the entrance on one of the four small domes. In 1844, a major reconstruction of the temple was carried out. On the western facade, a refectory and a porch with a bell tower were built, a room for a watchman was arranged on the right side of the porch, in the left - the entrance to the sacristy and the bell tower. In 1869, the temple was enlarged with an extension of three altars and a gallery on the western facade. It is noteworthy that in 1891 as a handyman took part in the repair work of the cathedral young Maxim Gorky.

In January 1918, counter-revolutionaries entrenched themselves in the building of the cathedral, they installed machine guns on the bell tower. Revolutionary Black Sea sailors suppressed the firing point, severely destroying the bell tower and the building. In December 1922, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was closed and later turned into a warehouse of church utensils collected from other churches of the Crimea. In 1929, the bells of the temple were removed, and on May 30, 1930, a decision was made to demolish the cathedral, carried out on the night of September 27 - the temple was blown up. The place was cleared and destroyed by the square, in which in 1944 a tank-monument to the liberators of Simferopol was installed. In 1999, the Supreme Council of Crimea and the Diocese of Simferopol and Crimea decided to recreate the temple in its original place. Work on the reconstruction of the temple has been underway since 2003. The current project is very different from the original. On the repair work of the cathedral, a young Maxim Gorky worked for several days in 1891.February 28, 1911 in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral of Leo Tolstoy again, but posthumously, excommunicated from the church (liturgy with anathema). The exact description of this event was given by K. A. Trenev in the anti-church novella Vladyka (1912). Liturgies with anathema of Leo Tolstoy and his followers were served by Bishop Theophan Bystrov.