The Sviyazhsky Mother of God-Assumption Monastery, originally known as the Sviyazhsky Mother of God Monastery, was founded in 1555 simultaneously with the establishment of the Kazan Diocese. Its founder and first abbot was Archimandrite German Sadirev-Polev, who later became the second Archbishop of Kazan and was canonized as Saint German, the Kazan Miracle Worker. Since 1592, his relics have been the main shrine of the monastery.

This monastery served as the main Orthodox spiritual-educational and missionary center of the Kazan Diocese and the Middle Volga region in the 16th and 18th centuries. According to preserved records, under Saint German, a printing house was established in the monastery for printing the Holy Scriptures and liturgical books, which occurred earlier than in Moscow with Ivan Fedorov.

In the 16th and 18th centuries, the monastery was one of the wealthiest in the Middle Volga and ranked among the 20 richest in Russia. The archimandrite of the monastery held the 7th place in significance in Rus. Before the reform of 1764, there were 7,200 male peasant souls on the monastery's lands, as many as in all other monasteries of the Kazan Diocese combined.

According to the monastery reform of 1764, the monastery was elevated to Class I, the highest for monasteries in the Russian Empire. Until 1809, it remained the only first-class monastery in the Kazan Diocese, until the Kazan Mother of God Monastery received this status.

In the 19th century, due to the impoverishment of the town of Sviyazhsk and the secularization of church lands in 1764, the monastery fell into decline. The brotherhood, which once exceeded 100 members, shrank to 20-25 monks and novices by the early 20th century, and the monastery's income began to lag behind other monasteries in the diocese.

On August 9, 1918, Red Army soldiers brutally killed the last abbot of the monastery, Bishop Ambrose Gudko of Sviyazhsk, without trial, who was canonized in 2000 as a new martyr.

During the establishment of Soviet power, the monastery was closed and looted, and the relics of Saint German were desecrated by Red Guards. Later, they were hidden under the altar of the cemetery church of the Yaroslavl Miracle Workers in Kazan, and in 2000 they were returned to Sviyazhsk.

During the Soviet era, a psychiatric hospital was located on the monastery grounds, which was closed in 1994.

In 1997, the Sviyazhsky Mother of God-Assumption Monastery was officially revived.

On June 14, 2019, a memorial cell of the monastery's founder, Saint German Sadirev-Polev, was restored and opened in the monastery. On August 28 of the same year, Metropolitan Theophan Ashurkov of Kazan and Tatarstan consecrated the renovated Assumption Cathedral of the monastery. On August 20, a monument to Saint Sergius of Radonezh was restored in the monastery, created in the late 1990s by the blessing of Abbot Kirill Korovin, but lost during the reconstruction of the monastery. It was found buried near the altar of the Assumption Cathedral.