The Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God was laid down for construction in 1883 and, upon completion of construction in 1887, was consecrated by Bishop John of Poltava and Pereyaslavl. Its purpose is to be a cemetery church in a newly established cemetery around the same time.
Who served in the church before the revolution? Who was the first priest and subsequent ones? – unknown, since the archives have not been preserved. After the October Revolution of 1917, divine services were performed in the church until the year 27, according to the testimony of the oldest parishioner Verka Shkuratikha, who died in 1986.
In 1929, according to the decision of the local district council, worship in the temple was prohibited. The assets of the wagon plant, consisting mainly of young workers, began to dismantle the interior of the temple – the iconostasis, icon cases, as well as the liquidation of church property. Here, in the courtyard, the bells thrown from the bell tower were broken with hammers and sent to the factory for remelting. After that, in order for the temple to take on the appearance of more or less ordinary city buildings, the dome and bell tower were dismantled, large arched windows were bricked up and smaller rectangular windows were pierced.
After the temple was closed, there was a Soviet educational institution, the so-called workers’ faculty, in a complex with a school building. A gym was set up inside the church, and in the cellars, vegetables were salted for the needs of factory canteens. Large and small wooden barrels stood everywhere. This is the testimony of the priest’s grandmother, Fr. Vladimir Shestov, she herself personally produced pickles, working here from a wagon factory.
Old-timers say that before the church was closed, the following happened: from the road in front of the entrance to the courtyard of the temple there were arched brick gates, on which at the top in a niche was a large icon of the Assumption of the Mother of God, written on two boards. And so it happened, shortly before the closing, that one part of the icon noticeably and rather strongly darkened, while the other remained light and differed from the first by some strange reflection. People wondered: what could this mean? The parishioners of the church interpreted this fact in their own way, that when the dome and the bell tower were dismantled, half of the temple remained, as it were: the lower part was completely twisted beyond recognition and there was a gym in it, and the upper part disappeared, plunged into the darkness of history. (Testimony of parishioner Lyubov Glushko).
Thus, the church was used for other purposes, in fact, was closed until 1942. During the war during the German occupation, the local church community raised the issue of reopening, and the faithful were allowed to return to the temple and resume worship.
The first to enter the devastated building were Makogon Sergius, an old master builder who took part in the construction of churches even before the revolution; Grigory Klimovich local, resident of Kryukov, stonemason; Grigory Popenko, a Kremenchuk resident who made icon cases for icons. Among the women were Evdokia Reznichenko, Peschanaya Domnikia, and Ivanyuk Paraskeva from Maly Kobelyachok, Novo-Sanzharsky District. Later, Andreenko Efrosinia, spouses Luka Ivanovich and Elizaveta Markovna, and many others joined them as active parishioners.
The first serving priests since 1942 were Archpriests John Lazursky and Gregory, who came to serve here a little later.
The temple was a dilapidated building: in the eastern wall (altar apse) a huge hole was knocked out by a shell, it hastily been bricked up; there was hay in the altar, put there for some reason before the war, there was no iconostasis. In its place there was a plywood partition, in the temple itself there were sports equipment: ropes, bars, rings, etc. The under-dome space was covered with a low ceiling, which remained not dismantled until the 89th year.
After the war, in the 1950s, priests served in the Assumption Church in turn: Fr. Michael, who served here according to stories even before closing; further archpriests Sergius, Athanasius, Martin, Venedikt (until closing he served in the Kozelshchansky monastery.
Ivan Sergeevich Shkirko was the headman in those years, and his wife Polina Andreevna was the regent, who did a lot to create a church choir.
In the same 50s, the temple began to acquire a more or less original appearance. Under the leadership of Archimandrite Porfiry (Davidenko), a new era began in the restoration of the building. The old master Sergiy Makogon, according to the project and drawings of archm. Porfiry, a large wooden dome covered with iron was installed on the church, and a small dome with a matching cross was installed in place of the bell tower.
In the infamous Khrushchev 60s for the Church, when a campaign was carried out to close the churches that had survived under Stalin, the fate of the Kryukov parish was, as they say, in the balance of closing. The school, located next to the church in the former building of the parochial school, according to the logic of its director and teachers, experienced the harmful influence of religion and, therefore, should be closed. Archimandrite Porfiry did everything to save the church. The temple had water heating, he ordered to remove it and give it to the school. The temple was separated from the school by a high two-meter fence. The church without heating became damp, cold,
and in the winter it’s just cold. But the church persevered.
The beginning of the 1970s witnessed the flourishing of liturgical traditions and choral singing in the Kryukov church. After the death of Archimandrite Porfiry in 1968, Archpriest Vasily (Vasilenko) replaced him as rector, Father Yakov (Semibalamut) served as his second priest. The headman in those years was Ilya Ivanovich (surname unknown).
Fathers Vasily and Yakov had very beautiful voices. Both had tenors. Elderly parishioners recall: “How the priests would come out into the middle of the church, how they would sing the magnificence of the holiday or to the saint, well, like angels in heaven. They sing together, the church is full of the singing of many voices. (Testimony of parishioner Galina Efimovna Mina).
Then the church choir began to be famous for its good singing, the quality of the voices was high. Under the regent Grigory Trofimovich Shabelnik (he played the violin), the leading singers were the spouses Ivan Ivanovich and Margarita Nikiforovna Dovbni, Valentina Ivanovna Boldakova (a wonderful powerful soprano), Vasily Antonovich and Melania Zoty, Gerko Maria Petrovna (regent of the left choir from Kamenny Potok. Since the temple in Kamenny Potoky was closed in the 60s, then all the singers came to Kryukov and formed the basis of the left kliros.
Parishioner of the temple Sergey Ivanovich Voinakhovsky, a psalm reader who read akathists and lives of saints in the temple on holidays before the clock. He was a native Kremenchuzhan. For his father’s participation in the White movement – and his father was a hereditary nobleman, an officer in the tsarist army – he was repressed. Sergei Ivanovich was going to become a priest, the consecration had already been appointed, but in 1938 he was arrested and received ten years in the camps. Possessing natural intelligence, kindness and high prudence and not having any hierarchical rights (his ordination to the priesthood was never destined to take place again), he was a kind of parish elder-layman. Many listened to his advice, including the priests. On the day of his death, it was on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, he read the Akathist, the Hours, the Apostle, then, having communed, after the Liturgy, he sat down to rest and died right in the temple.
In the 1970s, Kononenko Nikolay Afanasyevich, now a priest in the Cherkasy region, was appointed headman of the Holy Assumption Church. He did a lot for the modern interior decoration of the church, what we see now. He built the current iconostasis and icon cases, purchased large chandeliers for the temple, and replaced the wooden steps to the church with concrete ones.
After the death of the regent Grigory Shabelnik, he was replaced in this post by Margarita Nikiforovna Dovbnya, who worthily continued the best traditions of church choral singing.
Yevgeny Ivanovich Vinnichuk, who worked as a headman from 1980 to 1986, also left a good memory of himself. Under him, the temple began to sign. The church was painted by artists Sergei Verein and Julius Rybakov from St. Petersburg.
Since 1988, the year of the millennium of the Baptism of Russia, the temple began to change its appearance for the better. The replacement of the old, by that time already dilapidated main dome, with a new, stone one, began to be carried out under the rector Fr. Petr Kucheruk and elder Balas Nicolae Andronikovich. Under them, bells were also purchased in Moscow.
The temple acquired its present appearance in 1996, when he was the rector of the priest Vladimir Shestov, when the bell tower was restored with the means and efforts of the car-building and steel works.
Mention should also be made here of a small, fragile woman, Tatyana Terentievna Samoylenko, a prosphora maker, who has been baking wonderful fragrant prosphora for worship for forty years. None of the priests served how long in this church, how much it worked. Not being a nun, she lives like a monastic. He bakes prosphora in the old way, with a lit lamp, in an oven and only with firewood, tirelessly reads the Psalter. Next to the church there is a necropolis where many Kremenchuk residents are buried, as well as parishioners who valiantly fought for the faith of Christ during the years of persecution of the Church. Here rest Natalia Bosaya (so named for the feat of walking year-round without shoes), fearlessly denouncing aggressive godlessness; Euphemia Panteleimonovna, who served her term in the camps of Akmolinsk and saved the temple from closing together with Archimandrite Porfiry; their associates Varvara Ivanovna and Marfa Nikolaevna and many, many others, their own names and souls are in the realm and light of God, and their spirit is present in the walls of the temple, which remembers their voices and their prayers.
Photo from the site http://gorod-kremenchug.pl.ua/