Goritzy, the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery and a Russian School

Sunday, May 14, 2017

By the time we got up this morning, we had arrived at the village of Goritzy (population 600).  After a presentation on 20^th century Russian history, we spent some time on our own walking through the town.  We were headed to a large church/monastery complex situated alongside the river and en route we passed typical wooden homes, some intricately decorated, most with vegetable gardens and large stacks of split wood for burning; some of the properties included small outbuildings housing banyas, the typical Russian saunas. The largest church at the monastery is being extensively reconstructed, but we were able to peek in a tiny church, wander around the monastery farm, along the riverfront, and past a row of attached homes within the complex.  A few local families and groups of older children were headed to the shoreline on this beautifully clear Sunday morning, and they were eager to try out their “hello” greetings on us.  We also visited a small market and a war memorial in Goritzy.

This afternoon, we traveled a few miles by bus to the town of Kirilov to visit the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, founded in the late 14^th century by St Cyril of Beloozero.  Enclosed by white walls and towers on the shores of Lake Siverskoye, and entered through the “Holy Gate” covered with frescoes, the monastery is the largest in Russia.  The monastery once housed 600 monks, and contains eleven churches dating from the 15^th – 17^th centuries.  Most of the churches are now museums, and the active monastery is down to ten monks, but we were able to enter the only church in the complex that is active and open for services to “outsiders.”  It contains the tomb of St. Cyril and a series of icons similar to the beautiful originals we saw in one of the museum buildings.

We were also able to visit the local school in the center of the town of Kirilov.  Though there are no classes on Sundays, several high school students were there to give us a tour and an opportunity to ask questions about their experiences and the educational system in general.  A couple of costumed teenage girls sang for us, and another displayed dolls, paintings, and other craft and art projects produced by students as part of their extracurricular activities.  Schools typically house students from first through eleventh grades and the required curriculum includes foreign language, a sequence of science courses, math, history and Russian language.  Most of the 800 students at the school we visited go on to some type of higher education, either technical or vocational school, or university.  Student population has decreased and there is a program of government incentives (including monetary (about $9000 for a second child) and a real estate grant for the third child) to encourage families to have multiple children.

While we were on shore, the ship traveled on a bit and we met up to re-board at the end of the afternoon in the tiny port at Kuzino.