Beginning soon after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Orthodox priests, monks and lay church members began to be brutally persecuted for their faith. By the late 1920s and the rise of Stalin, many were forced to find safe haven in Serbia and Czechoslovakia. And when, toward the end of World War II, the Red Army began sweeping into Eastern Europe, many clergy were again forced to flee, this time to Western Europe and the United States.
It became crucial that a Russian Orthodox Church refuge be established in the U.S. The project was spearheaded by Hieromonk Panteleimon, a far-sighted young Russian Orthodox Church priest. He scoured the American countryside in search of a site on which to build a monastery, and in 1928 selected idyllic Jordanville, in upstate N.Y., because it so strongly resembled the Carpathian Mountain region.
With the blessing of then-Archbishop Apollinary, Father Panteleimon made a $25 down payment toward the $5,000 price tag for 300 acres of farmland. Construction of the Holy Trinity Monastery began after World War II; the arrival of Orthodox monks from Europe, China and Manchuria soon followed.
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