This image is now in the Novo-Diveevo women's monastery, near New York City. It is closely linked to the era of the devastation of Russia and of Russian Orthodoxy.
When, in 1923, the Optina Hermitage was being ravaged, everything in it was being subjected to desecration. Icons were taken from the churches and piled up on the ground to await destruction. Among the women who stood tearfully watching was Schema-nun Evdokia, who managed to take away the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God. She knew that this image was among those icons which had formerly been in the cell of the famous Optina Elder, Saint Ambrose.
After the Bolsheviks attempted to obliterate Sunday, making of it an ordinary work-day, it became the practice in Kiev to serve very early liturgies, beginning at 5:00 AM, on Sunday. At the direction of Father Michael Edlinsky, a noted spiritual ad-visor to clergy in Kiev, Father Adrian Rimarenko would serve akathists to the Vladimir Mother of God in the Saints Boris and Gleb Church following the very early liturgies.
At Father Michael's request, Father Adrian asked the monastics who had been driven from the Optina Hermitage and who were temporarily in the city of Kozelsk to transfer to Kiev one of the Vladimir icons of the Mother of God which had come from Optina. In response, the very icon of the Vladimir Mother of God which had been rescued from the devastated Optina Hermitage was transferred to Kiev. It should be noted that in those years, when Russia had taken from it the recently elected Most Holy Patriarch Tikhon, the people's reverence for the Vladimir Image of the Mother of God greatly increased. This may stem from the fact that, just as in ancient times, at the time of the selection of Patriarch Tikhon, a lot bearing the name of one of the three candidates who had received the most votes at the 1917 All-Russian Council was drawn before the Miraculous Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God in the Dormition Cathedral within the Kremlin. When Russia found itself bereft of Patriarch Tikhon, all of the prayers and hopes of the orphaned people of Rus', asking for help for nation and Church, turned to the Holy Image of the Vladimir Mother of God.
Subsequently, when most of the churches in Kiev were shuttered, this image of the Vladimir Mother of God, which had been rescued from the destruction of Optina, was preserved in the Rimarenko household. During World War II, the image was taken out of Russia by Archpriest Adrian Rimarenko (later Andrew, Archbishop of Rockland). During the war, the holy image was in Berlin, then in Westerheim and in Weidlingen (Germany), where it preserved Father Adrian and his people: The house in which they were located caught fire during a tank battle between American and German forces. Then, Father Adrian, followed by several dozen Orthodox people with him, squeezed together between the flames, lifted the Image of the Queen of Heaven over his head, dashed forth across the field on which the tank battle was taking place, and crossed between the two opposing forces unharmed.
It was with this icon that Metropolitan Anastassy, the now-reposed First-Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, blessed Father Adrian and his co-strugglers on their journey to America. Since its passage to the United States, the Holy Image has rested in the women's monastery of Novo-Diveevo, in Spring Valley, New York.
"Parish Life", June 1997