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| - The Novodevichy Monastery was founded in 1524 by Grand Prince Vasily (Basil) III in commemoration of the conquest of the city of Smolensk in 1514. It was built as a fortress at a curve of the Moscow River and became an important part of the southern defenses of the capital, a ring of defenses that already included a number of other monasteries including the Donskoy Monastery. When it was founded, Novodevichy Convent was granted 3,000 rubles and ownership of the villages of Akhabinevo and Troparevo. Ivan IV later granted a number of other villages to the convent. The nuns of Novodevichy were women from noble families. The convent was known to have sheltered many ladies from Russian royal and boyar families who had been forced to take monastic vows. These included Feodor I's wife Irina Godunova, Sophia Alekseyevna (Peter I's sister), and Eudoxia Lopukhina (Peter I's first wife). In 1610–1611, during the Time of Troubles, the convent was captured by a Polish unit commanded by Aleksander Gosiewski. Once the monastery was liberated, Tsar Michael supplied it with permanent guards (100 Streltsy in 1616 and increased to 350 soldiers in 1618) for defense. The first abbess of the monastery was Elena (Devochkina), a nun from the Intercession Monastery of Suzdal. In the mid-seventeenth century, a number of nuns were transferred from Ukrainian and Belarusian monasteries to the Novodevichy Convent. In 1721, some aged nuns, who had left the Old Believers, were given shelter at Novodevichy. In 1724, the monastery housed a military hospital for soldiers and officers of the Russian army and an orphanage for female foundlings. By 1763, the convent housed 84 nuns, 35 lay sisters, and 78 sick patients and servants. Each year, the state provided the convent with 1,500 rubles, 1,300 loaves of bread, as well as 680 rubles and 480 loaves of bread for more than 250 abandoned children under the care of the nuns. In 1812, after he had occupied Moscow, Napoleon's army attempted to destroy the convent on its departure, but the nuns discovered and extinguished the incendiaries and set fuses and managed to save the monastery from destruction. In 1871, the Filatyev brothers donated money for a shelter and school for orphans of "ignoble origins". Also, the convent housed two almshouses for nuns and lay sisters. In early 1900s, the Smolensky Cathedral was surveyed and restored by architect and preservationist Ivan Mashkov. By 1917, there had been 51 nuns and 53 lay sisters in the Novodevichy Convent at the eve of the Bolshevik revolution. In 1922, the Bolsheviks closed down Novodevichy Convent although the cathedral remained open until 1929, after which it was turned into the Museum of Women's Emancipation. By 1926, the monastery had been transformed into a history and art museum. In 1934, it became affiliated with the State Historical Museum while much of its facilities were turned into apartments, thus sparing the convent from destruction. In 1943, when Joseph Stalin began to make overtures to the Russian Orthodox Church as a reward for its support in defense of the Russian lands against the Nazis during World War II, he sanctioned opening the Moscow Theological Courses school at the convent. The next year the program was transformed and became the Moscow Theological Institute. Since 1980 The Novodevichy Convent has been the residence of the Metropolitan of Krutitsy and Kolomna. Although nuns returned to the convent in 1994, some of the churches and other monastic buildings are still affiliated with the State Historical Museum. In 1995, services resumed in the convent on patron saint's days.
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