OPTINA PUSTYN'. - A Russian monastery near Kozelsk, in the province of Kaluga. Its uncertain origins date back to the fourteenth-fifteenth century. During the eighteenth century it declined, like many others, owing to the administrative measures of the State hostile to monasteries. The metropolitan of Moscow Platone (1775-1811) sent there the monk Avraamij, an ardent follower of the archimandrite Paisio Velickovskij, the great reformer of modern Russian monasticism.
This was the beginning of the spiritual rebirth of O. P., which became famous especially thanks to its starez (= elders +), monks esteemed as wise masters of spiritual life and expert directors of consciences, sought out by very numerous pilgrims from every social and cultural class. Among these starez, Leonida (d. 1841), Macario (d. 1860), and especially Ambrogio Gronkov (1812-91) distinguished themselves; he was visited and venerated also by the most eminent Russian writers contemporary with him, e.g., Kirejevskij, Leontjev, Tolstoj, Dostojevskij, Solovjev, etc. The monks of O. P. were also engaged in publishing ascetical and hagiographical works; latterly, about 300 lived there. The Bolshevik revolution put an end to the revived activity of O. P.