The Tragic History of Ukrainian Churches

Magnificent church structures have long graced the cities and villages of Ukraine. Erecting temples with great mastery, Ukrainian architects put in the stone and wood the experience of generations of creative church builders. On completion of the inner decoration and consecration, the majestically built structure would become a particular and unmatched creation of the Ukrainian national spirit.

The construction of church-type buildings is gradually gaining wide currency. Churches grew both in terms of architectural and artistic finesse and in number. Very often, even small Ukrainian towns had several. For example, there were six functioning churches in a small town of Lysianka, Zvenyhorod district, Kyiv region, in the seventeenth century: St. Michael’s built in 1723, of that of the Transfiguration (1730), Ascension (1730), St. George’s (1723), St. Nicholas’s (1718), and of the Assumption (1720). A Roman Catholic cathedral was also built in Lysianka in the nineteenth century. The latter was attached to a Franciscan monastery until 1832, and in 1861 a new third class stone church with 119 desiatynas of land was hallowed (a desiatyna was 2.7 acres — Ed.).

Most widespread on the territory of ethnic Ukrainian lands were Orthodox churches the names of which cover a wide spectrum. In particular, in the nineteenth century, the area of Lysianka povit, Zvenyhorod district, had six functioning churches named one of the Holy Veil, three of the Holy Virgin, two of the Assumption, two St. Michael’s, two of the Trinity, as well as the churches of the Ascension, St. Nicholas, Raising of the Cross, the Divine; still others bore the names of the Archangel Michael, Joseph Obruchnyk, martyrs Oleksandra, Paraskeva, great martyr George, and St. Basil, bishop of Pharos.

Much to our regret, Ukraine’s history has repeatedly seen the destruction of church architecture: as long ago as in 1169, Volodymyr Monomakh’s grandson Andrei Bogoliubsky (the Lover of God) seized Kyiv, robbing and destroying historic church property; in 1240 Khan Batu literally reduced many churches to ashes; church culture also suffered during the Ruin of the late seventeenth century, when Orthodox churches were destroyed under Polish oppression; during the Haidamak (poor peasants —Ed.) uprising in 1768 the insurgents ruined hundreds of Greek Catholic churches. Finally, churches suffered a true havoc in the period of Soviet power.

When the Soviet Union was formed in 1922, Soviet power, which fought against any religion, was forced to preserve the Russian Orthodox Church because the latter supported the making of a new Soviet state. Yet in 1930, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was destroyed, for the idea of church independence was based on the idea of an independent Ukrainian state.

From the very beginning, under resolution No. 10. of the higher school department at the People’s Commissariat of Education, signed by the department chief Nazarov and secretary Fridman, the new authorities withdrew throughout Ukraine such religious symbols as icons, censers, images of saints, etc., from higher and secondary schools, and transfered them often incompletely to the nearest churches and temples, soon to be ruined and sacked. Historical and religious research institutions were renamed as higher schools, thus falling under the jurisdiction of this resolution.

The implementation of the decree on the separation of church from state by Soviet authorities upset the organic development of Ukrainian rural areas. Religious structures began to undergo barbaric destruction. We can see this from the example of the Lysianka district, a small part of Kyiv oblast (now in Cherkasy oblast). Historical studies testify that a church in Lysianka district was struck off the list in 1935 and used as a warehouse in the village of Smilchyntsi. In 1939, in the village of Khyzhyntsi, the same district, a village club was set up in the place of a church. The Pochapyntsi Church of the Trinity was closed in February 1936. We find in the transfer report that, when being reorganized into a club, the church had its copper and copper-silver alloy bells removed, the iconostasis broken, and numerous icons destroyed. The crypts with the tombs of the noble Chetverykov and Presnukhin families in the church basement were plundered, and the remains were thrown away. The trees surrounding the church (age-old lime trees, maples, aspens, and firs) were felled both by order of the local authorities and by will of ordinary individuals residing in the village of Pochapyntsi. Such measures were massive throughout Ukraine.

In general, over the fifty years from 1919 through 1969, the authorities of what is now Cherkasy oblast closed about 700 Orthodox and five Old Believer temples, ten Catholic cathedrals, and about six synagogues, many of which were destroyed mercilessly. The destruction of architecturally valuable temples went hand in hand with reprisals. Stubborn attempts were made to use the church as an instrument of geopolitical change, which resulted in its decline and fall.

In the Lysianka area, churches were closed and converted into warehouses in the villages of Yablunivka and Zhurzhyntsi. A hoary Polish Catholic cathedral was ruined in Lysianka in the 1930s. Churches were turned into warehouses in the villages of Chaplynka, Vereshchaky, and Repky, in 1960, 1961 and 1959, respectively. St. Michael’s Church in Lysianka was closed in 1961 and was then gradually being destroyed on the initiative of the local authorities until it ceased to exist in the late seventies.

What we seem to have forgotten is that these structures were of great architectural, artistic, historical, and cultural value, being gems of civil construction and historical memory. They played a significant role in the making of our national culture and were associated with our most important historic events.

After the proclamation of Ukrainian independence in 1991, the situation has changed somewhat. We have seen gradual normalization of the state-church relationship, the creation of conditions for the normal functioning of religious organizations, the beginning of a burgeoning process of religious renaissance and restoration of architecturally valuable cult structures.

In particular, on the territory of this same Lysianka district, under the Ukrainian SSR law On the Freedom of Faith and Religious Organizations of April 23, 1991, Cabinet of Minister resolution On the Transfer of Cult Structures to Religious Organizations of April 5, 1991, and presidential decree On Measures to Return Cult Property to Religious Organizations of March 4, 1992, as well as by decision of the Pochapyntsi village council, the Holy Trinity Church in the village of Pochapyntsi was handed over to the Holy Trinity congregation of the Kyiv eparchy in December 1993. And in the fall of 1995 the renovated and revived Pochapyntsi church opened the doors to parishioners. Also functioning now are churches in the villages of Vereshchaky and Zhurzhyntsi, and the majestic domes of the restored Orthodox St. Michael’s church have soared aloft over the old Ukrainian town of Lysianka.

№46 December 14 1999 «The Day»
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