# How Zhyrovichy Lives

- URL: https://syn.by/en/history/archives/how-zhyrovichy-lives/
- Published: 1924-05-22T18:20:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-10-22T14:41:44+00:00
- Section: Archives
- Language: en
- BE edition: https://syn.by/historya/arkhivy/jak-zhyvuc-zhyrovicy.md
- RU edition: https://syn.by/ru/istoriya/arhivy/kak-zhivut-zhirovichi.md

> The police and the local Polish Catholics are taking into their hands the land and buildings of the Zhyrovichy monastery, and Orthodox children from the orphanage are being led to the Catholic church. The Belarusian Club sent a senator to Zhyrovichy and submitted an interpellation.

![](https://syn.by/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/illustration-754-1024x585.webp)

The Zhyrovichy Orthodox monastery is one of the greatest shrines of the Belarusian people, and by its central position it even holds first place for Orthodox Belarusians. The founder of this monastery was Aleksander Sołtan, forefather of the Sołtan family, still quite well known in Poland, formerly Belarusian but now already Polonized. The monastery was built as early as 1470 on the spot where, as local tradition has it, the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God appeared. During the evacuation this icon was taken to Moscow, and at present only a copy is in the monastery. This shrine always gathered, and still gathers on certain days (23 April, 7 May and others), many people (as many as 10–12 thousand) to Zhyrovichy from almost the whole of Belarus…

At the beginning of the 17th century (in 1613) the Zhyrovichy monastery, like very many other Orthodox monasteries, was seized by the Uniates, in whose hands it remained until 1839. From that time Zhyrovichy again became a centre of Orthodox life in Belarus, for the see of the Orthodox metropolitan was here. The monastery was one of the centres of enlightenment from the earliest times, even before the Union. In the time of the Union a gymnasium was opened there, and then a theological seminary, which was moved only in 1845 to Vilnia, to the Holy Trinity monastery, and in its place a theological school was opened there. The population of the town of Zhyrovichy and of all its surroundings is purely Belarusian, and even purely Orthodox. Not counting the incomer element (police and officials, ten persons in all), in Zhyrovichy there are only four native inhabitants who are Catholics: one man and three women. In spite of this, after the war the local Catholic clergy took one church away from the Orthodox, and afterwards the local authorities took away and gave to the Poles for their use land, forests, kitchen gardens, one orchard, half of another, and the majority of the buildings. The building of the former theological school now houses an orphanage. The children in the orphanage were Orthodox, and in the previous year they were still taken to the Orthodox church for services and to confession. But since this year they are already being taken to the Catholic church, which was made out of the seized Orthodox church, and, as our people relate, all of them, except four or five of the older ones who still stubbornly hold to their faith, have been turned into Poles. The children are taught, of course, only in Polish.

The Belarusian population, both in Zhyrovichy itself and in the surroundings, is greatly terrorized by police oppression, even to the point that it is afraid to complain about the various abuses perpetrated against it there. Thanks to this, the tiny handful of Polish Catholics in Zhyrovichy rules there without any control, seizes as much monastery land and as many buildings as it wants, while to the complaints of the Orthodox the police refuse even to draw up reports. But all the same, love for their historic shrine and national, as well as religious, feeling compelled them to submit a complaint about the lawless seizures to the Belarusian Deputies' Club, which made an interpellation to the minister concerning these abuses.

On 2 May word reached the Belarusian Deputies' Club that the seizure of the second Zhyrovichy church was being prepared for 4 May. The Club immediately dispatched to Zhyrovichy one of its members, Senator Bohdanovich, who on 3 May made an intervention with the starosta of Slonim, and the latter promised to take certain steps to forestall the possibility of a seizure, and indeed sent his official to Zhyrovichy on 4 May. There was no attack on the church that day, but all the same, while the Orthodox service was going on and all the monks were in the church, several Zhyrovichy Poles with one officer visiting from Slonim, as witnesses testified, in the presence of 2 policemen and a priest, knocked the locks off 2 monastery gates, and began to arrest those peasants who happened to witness this, and did not arrest them only thanks to the presence and appropriate intervention of the senator sent by the Club. A report on all this was drawn up at the request of the monastery's superior, Archimandrite Tikhon, and Senator Bohdanovich. During the church gathering and the meeting held by Sen. Bohdanovich, the people complained greatly of oppression in the collection of taxes, especially in the assessment of land, and in relation to the church. For this reason everyone there lives in a certain fear of arrests, or beatings, or the confiscation of property. Among others, one of the young local inhabitants submitted a complaint that the police, compelling him to confess to what he had not done, tortured him badly.

V. B.