Foundation and early history Although it is unknown when the monastery was founded, there are several different legends and stories about its founding. that it had been founded by the first
Metropolitan of
Kiev,
Michael, along with
Greek monks arriving from
Byzantium in 988
AD. The claim is likely spurious, since Mezhyhirya is not listed by modern authors among the monasteries of Kievan Rus'. In 1154, the Prince of Suzdal
Yuri Dolgorukiy divided the territory surrounding the monastery's grounds amongst his sons. His son
Andrey Bogolyubsky received the lands nearest to the monastery, now the city of
Vyshhorod. In 1676, the area was burned down after a fire started in the wooden Transfiguration Cathedral. With the help of
Ivan Savelov, a monk who lived in the monastery and later became a
Patriarch of Moscow, the complex was reconstructed. Two years later, with the help of the cossack community, the Annunciation Church was constructed near the monastery's hospital. In 1683, the
Sich Rada voted that the ministers in the
Sich's Pokrovskyi Cathedral (the main cathedral of the sich) should be only from the Mezhyhirya Monastery. File:Mezhyhirskyi Monastery by Vesterfeld, 1650s.jpg|The Mezhyhirya Monastery as drawn by
Abraham van Westerveld during the 1650s. File:Mezhyhirskyi Monastery by Shevchenko, 1843.jpg|A drawing of the monastery by Ukrainian poet and artist
Taras Shevchenko, 1843. File:Mezhyhirskyi Monastery, postcard.jpg|The monastery as seen on an early 20th-century postcard. File:Межигірський монастир. 1934.jpg|The Transfiguration Cathedral seen shortly before its demolition, 1934.
Decline and Soviet demolition A period of decline began with the abolition of the
Zaporozhian Host by
Catherine II of Russia. In 1786 the Russian Imperial government closed the monastery and confiscated its valuable treasures. The remaining Zaporozhian Cossacks soon afterwards left
Zaporizhia, and moved to the
Kuban region. There they founded the
Kuban Cossack Host, which still exists to this day. The cossacks were able to leave with some of the monastery's manuscripts, some of which are now kept in the
Krasnodar Krai Archive. In 1787,
Catherine II of Russia came to
Kyiv for a visit and wished to see the Mezhyhirya Monastery. She never got to see it, because the monastery mysteriously burned down the night before her arrival. During its existence, the factory produced a variety of crockery and ornamental vases and figurines. In 1884, the faience factory was closed down after it failed to bring any profit. In 1894, the Mezhyhirya Monastery was rebuilt and transformed into a women's monastery. After its reconstruction, the monastery was transferred to the authority of the Intercession of the Saints Monastery in Kyiv. After the Russian Revolution, the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's capital moved from
Kharkiv to Kyiv in 1934, and the city was in need of a suburban residence for government officials. Mezhyhirya was chosen as the site of the new government residence. The decision of the
Politburo in April 1935 ordered the
demolition of the whole complex. Before the scheduled demolition in 1936, the architecture and buildings of the monastic complex were photographed. There were speculations that the discovered books belonged to the lost library of
Yaroslav the Wise, or perhaps of a later period, during the times of the Zaporozhian Host. But during archaeological excavations from 1990 to 1994, neither the alleged basement nor the purported manuscripts were found. Before the
Second World War, the area served as a residence for Ukrainian Soviet leaders
Pavel Postyshev,
Stanislav Kosior and
Nikita Khrushchev. During the
German occupation,
Reichskommissar Erich Koch lived there. During the postwar era,
Leonid Brezhnev and
Volodymyr Shcherbytsky resided there. Following the
Chernobyl disaster, the residence was abandoned due to its geographical proximity to the accident site, and remained neglected until the early 2000s. ==Hegumen==