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Located within a 3 minute walk from my dorm was the Donskoi Monastery. This is the Great Cathedral of the Don Mother of God, which was completed in 1698. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the monastery was closed down and a Museum of Atheism was opened. During the purges of the 1930s, thousands of bodies were trucked during the night from Lubyanka (secret police headquartes) to the crematorium on the monastery grounds.