On the issue of the foundation of the St. Alexander-Athos Zelenchuk male hermitage and its role among the monasteries of Stavropol and Ekaterinodar diocese

As part of the strategic planning to ensure the national security of the Russian Federation, the President has declared the priority and protection of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values, culture and historical memory. In the context of this approach, the issue of concretizing important events in Russian history and preventing the falsification of historical events of our past, especially the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, the church-monastery system and ministers of worship, is particularly acute.Duplicating some areas of work, the monasteries were centers for the preservation of cultural and historical values of the Russian people. In the development of the outskirts of the empire, they became a spiritual force, and acted as part of the policy of "soft power". Through familiarity with monastic asceticism and monastic life, different peoples joined the Orthodox spiritual ethics, and this process was not always safe for the inhabitants of the monasteries. As centers of Orthodox faith, they contributed to the spread of the rich spiritual culture of the Russian people and the smoothing of fanatical religious confrontation.The special significance of the St. Alexander-Athos Zelenchuk Desert was that the monastery was located on the site of the Nizhne-Arkhyz settlement, where the residence of the Alan metropolitans was in the Middle Ages. His discovery represented the restoration and continuity of the Christian tradition in the gorge of the Caucasus mountains. Based on the data already collected, it can be argued that Christian life, on the site of the preserved ancient temples on the territory of which the monastery was founded, existed at least 1500 years ago, i.e. no closer than 600 years before the baptism of Russia. Thus, the St. Alexander-Athos Zelenchuk Desert not only preserved the most ancient temples of our fatherland, but also at the beginning of the XX century gave new strength to the Orthodox faith in confronting the impending catastrophe of the renovationist movement, not only in the Caucasus, but throughout Russia as a whole.