Since ancient times in Russia women played an important role in the political, economic and cultural life. Deep intelligence, insight and foresight, diplomacy, patriotism characterize high moral and business qualities of the best Russian women. The second half of XIX — early XX c. in Russia is a time of intense searching in terms of a controversial system of values
attributed to the activity of the women life position. Its vivid example is the personality, life span and fruitful activity of abbess Taisiya Leushinskaya (Solopova).
Abbess Taisiya (Mariya Vasilyevna Solopova) was born in St. Petersburg in 1842 in a pious noble family and received an excellent education and upbringing. Since childhood Ma-riya was more attracted to the spiritual side of life, and after graduation she enrolled in Tikhvin Vvedenskiy monastery. In 1881 she was approved of by the chief of the Leushinskaya community, and thanks to her diligent works four years later it was converted into a monastery, and Taisiya became its abbess. For thirty-four years abbess Taisiya ran this mon-astery which later became a large first-class monastery. Being a spiritual daughter and a close friend of St. Joann of Kronstadt abbess Taisiya on his blessing went into much trouble over the renewal of the abolished monasteries and the establishment of new ones in different provinces of Russia. She organized many monasteries, hermitages and metochions with independent economy. The multilateral activities of abbess Taisiya surprised many of her contemporaries and had a powerful influence on different aspects of social life. Clear evidence of this is the organization of schools for girls at the monasteries organized by Тaisiya. With particular zeal abbess Taisiya cared about the spread of literacy among children of the local population and worked hard on establishing good education and spiritually-moral education of the younger generation. Endowed with great literary talent, abbess Taisiya left a rich literary heritage. She is the author of many theological, historical and poetical works published including some works in several European languages. Taisiya proved to be a talented poet. Her poems have been widely published in periodicals. Many spiritual songs and romances were written on her poetry.
Taisiya’s life could serve to exemplify the idea of women filling the world with beauty and harmony and making it a better place to live. It can be assumed that women will increa-singly be given the role of social life custodians. At least, Taisiya’s was exactly the case.
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