Kholm region celebrates Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s 140th birthday

September 21, on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrations of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s 140th birthday will begin in St. John the Baptist’s Church in Kholm with a solemn requiem after the festive liturgy. Together with Taras Shevchenko and Ivan Franko, this outstanding historian, civic figure, and politician belonged to the “great trinity” of giants of the Ukrainian renaissance of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Heading both the Ukrainian Central Rada and, briefly, the Ukrainian National Republic, he concluded this first, somewhat romantic and hopeful, stage of building the modern Ukrainian nation.

The future scholar and politician was born on Sept. 29, 1866, in Kholm, a city founded by Prince Danylo Romanovych Halytsky. In the 1860s it was the principal town of the Russian-controlled Lublin gubernia, with a population of 4,000. In 1865-1869 Hrushevsky’s father, who traced his roots to Chyhyryn, was a teacher at the newly-founded Russian gymnasium for the local Greek Catholic population and the director of the new pedagogical courses.

Mount Kholmska, which in those days towered over the town as it does today, was crowned by the magnificent cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although it was the cathedral of the Greek Catholic bishopric, Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s baptism on Oct. 28, 1866, was presided over by Yakov Kroshanovsky, an archpriest of the Orthodox Church of St. John the Theologian, built a dozen or so years earlier to serve the local Russian military unit.

Yulia Lebedyntseva acted as Mykhailo’s godmother. Lebedyntseva, who was from the famous Hryhorovych-Barsky family of Kyiv, was the wife of Teofan Lebedyntsev, the director of public schools in Kholm and an acquaintance of Shevchenko. His brother, Rev. Petro Lebedyntsev, presided over the poet’s funeral service in Kyiv’s Church of the Nativity, when his body was transported to Ukraine. After his return to Kyiv, Teofan Leebedyntsev became the first editor in chief and publisher of Kievskaia Starina in 1882-1887. Yulia Oleksandrivna (1839-1868) is buried in the land of Kholm together with her two young sons, which is confirmed by stone plaques on the walls of St. John the Theologian.

The Kholm period of Hrushevsky’s life was brief and did not have a significant impact on the formation of his personality. Nevertheless, Kholm, a Ukrainian city with a great, although somewhat neglected, historical past, is very symbolic as the birthplace of this outstanding Ukrainian historian. As one of his students, Vasyl Herasymchuk, said, “[Hrushevsky] explained our national ‘I’ to ourselves and delivered our people from the twilight of doubts and uncertainty about their origins, and with his History of Ukraine-Rus’ gave our nation the certified right to its rightful name, to independent citizenship in the world.”

Today the state of Ukrainian affairs in the city and region of Kholm is much worse than in the days when the young Hrushevsky took his first steps as a child. But the inhabitants of this small corner of Ukraine (smaller even than the one Vasyl Stus wrote about in his poem about Alla Horska’s death) which has been preserved in the city and region of Kholm become surer of themselves whenever they remember their great countryman. Throughout his life Hrushevsky, the historian, journalist, and head of the Central Rada, never forgot that the natives and inhabitants of Kholm-Pidliashian Zabuzhia are legitimate members of the Ukrainian nation to which he devoted his entire life.

The celebrations in Kholm will be very important for all Ukrainians in Poland. The program for Sept. 21 includes laying flowers at the memorial plaque to “the most distinguished Ukrainian historian, the first president of the Ukrainian republic” at 8 Senkevych Street, and a soiree at the Kholm House of Culture, featuring Ukrainian and Polish folk groups from Kholm and Lutsk. Academician Mykola Zhulynsky, the head of Ukraine’s National Presidential Council on Culture and Spiritual Matters, is scheduled to give a speech.

On Sept. 22-23 the reading hall of Kholm Library will be the venue of a scholarly conference entitled “The Kholm Region at the Crossroads of History.” The conference will be divided into three sections: “The Kholm Region in the Age of Mykhailo Hrushevsky,” “The Kholm Region in the First Half of the 20th Century,” and “Mykhailo Hrushevsky and His Scholarly Heritage.” Nearly 30 researchers from Poland and Ukraine will take part in the scholarly meeting. At the same time celebrations will be held, marking the 10th anniversary of neighborly cooperation between Kholm and Kovel.

The celebrations are organized by the Ukrainian Consulate-General in Lublin, the Ukrainian Honorary Consulate in Kholm, the president of the town of Kholm, and the Ukrainian Society in Kholm.