Orsha. The Assumption Monastery.

The monastery was founded in 1631, 3 versts from the city of Orsha, in a ravine through which the Kuteenka River (Kuteinka) flowed, which flowed into the Dnieper River. The founders of the gentry Bogdan Stetkevich and his mother Anna, nee Princess Oginskaya, allocated land for the construction of the monastery and gave him the village of Svistelki, along with peasants and land (from the name of this village in some documents, the monastery is called Svistelsky). The donors bequeathed that the nuns and abbesses of the monastery should remain in the purity of the Orthodox Eastern Church and obey the Kiev Metropolis.

In addition to the cathedral stone church, in the Assumption Monastery there was a wooden warm church in honor of the Intercession of the Mother of God, a stone church in honor of St. Nicholas, a two-tiered gate bell tower, many residential and outbuildings, and a watermill operated on the Kuteinka River. The main temple was originally wooden, but it burned down in 1635. In 1655, a new stone Assumption Cathedral was erected instead of the wooden one, which was damaged by fire. In 1656, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich visited the monastery.

In 1648, 300 nuns lived in the monastery. The Assumption Monastery supported the newly founded monasteries by sending its nuns to establish monastic life. In 1655-1656, the nuns of the Kuteyinsky Monastery, led by Abbess Melania (Yerchakova), settled in the Moscow Novodevichy Monastery. For their relocation to Moscow in 1655, Abbess Melania needed about 100 carts, as their secular relatives and gentry depositors set off along with the nuns. Another part of the Kuteinsky sisters was transferred in 1663 to the Smolensk Ascension Monastery, from where "from the gentry life and the state of goodness" abbesses and intruders were taken to Novodevichy until the end of the XVIII century.

The monastery was closed by order of the Soviet government in 1918, the temple was used as a warehouse and smokehouse. The sisters of the closed monastery served in the Ilyinsky Church in Orsha.

The monastery resumed its activities in 1996 at the Orsha St. Elijah's Church, which was built in 1880 on the site of a burnt wooden church from the beginning of the XVI century. The church has been completely renovated, and a new two-storey building for the sisters has been built.

In 2001, a copy of the Orsha Icon of the Mother of God, decommissioned in the XVIII century, was transferred to the monastery from the Minsk Cathedral of the Holy Spirit. In 2014, the icon was moved to the Kuteinsky Monastery.

Construction was completed in 2006 and in 2007. The consecration of the Assumption Church of the monastery took place.