Turkestanskaia eparkhiia i narodnoe pravoslavie: sluchai Zhivonosnogo istochnika

The construction of the church of the Icon of the Mother of God “The Life-Giving Spring” was completed in 2008. The construction was carried out next to a small spring, venerated by the local population since the 19th century. In the spring was discovered a large quantity of coins from the 19th and 20th centuries. They serve as evidence of continuous veneration of the spring from the period of the Russian Empire and throughout the Soviet period. In the 19th century, the official Church deemed it essential to exert control of the practice of Orthodox Christianity among the settler population. But, by the beginning of the 20th century, the Turkestan Diocesan Committee resolved to recognize and endorse the traditional veneration of this spring. A church was built on the site in 1909, and then destroyed by the Soviet authorities sometime in the 1920s. Yet, the broader history of the spring and those who venerated it bear witness to the survival of folk Orthodoxy despite the regulation of the Tsarist regime, and persecution by the Soviet regime.