KHOLM, THE LOST ATLANTIS

Throughout the centuries the Kholm region [today: Chelm, Poland] was historically linked with the western Ukrainian lands, sharing in their cultural and religious life in the face of every adversity. Everything changed after 1795, when the Rzeczpospolita was carved up. First a border was drawn along the Buh River, separating Austria, which temporarily gained control over Zabuzhia (the territories beyond the Buh River: Kholmshchyna, Southern Pidliashshia, and a small part of Berestia province), Russia (which obtained Volhynia and Berestia province), and Prussia, which occupied right-bank Northern Pidliashshia. Soon Zabuzhia was annexed to the Warsaw Principality, and after 1815 it became part of the Polish Kingdom.

Political changes also affected the boundaries of the Kholm Eparchy, then called “Greek-Uniate” (in these parts the Orthodox church was known as “Greek-Russian”). It lost part of its territory east of the Buh River, but acquired parts of the eparchies of Przemysl, Volodymyr, and Berestia (part of Pidliashshia), and metropolitan Kyiv (Belarusian parishes in what would later become Suwalskie province), which were located on the territory of Warsaw Principality and later became part of the Polish Kingdom.

The Kholm Eparchy, which was based in Poland and thus part of the Russian Empire, nevertheless enjoyed broad autonomy, which was abolished only after the January uprising of 1863. However, its existence in Poland intensified the dual processes of Polonization of the Ukrainian population and Romanization of the church rite. The Roman Catholic clergy also managed to win over Uniate believers, which often resulted in the abolition of entire Uniate parishes. Between 1819 and 1875 the percentage of Uniate believers in the Polish Kingdom dropped from 8 to 4 percent of the population. Over the same period the total number of Uniates rose from 228,000 to 260,000.

The situation was further aggravated by the fact that during this period the Ukrainian population of the Kholm Eparchy did not experience the kind of social, cultural, and political changes that laid the groundwork for the Ukrainian national revival in neighboring Galicia. This was largely due to political and legal differences between Austria and Russia. The latter’s autocratic and bureaucratic system prevented the free development of national initiatives. Paradoxically, Russian officials were the only real force that could ward off Polonization in this situation. However, the measures that were undertaken by Russia, often involving violence, to eliminate Polish and Latin influences on the “Russian” population of Kholmshchyna (Lublin province) and Southern Pidliashshia (Siedlce district) and eventually ensure their total Russification, led to the acceleration of adverse processes. In his 1872 article “A Trip to Ukrainian Pidliashshia,” published in the Lviv-based weekly Pravda, Ivan Nechui-Levytsky, then a teacher at Siedlce High School, describes the national situation and Russia’s meaningless policy in Pidliashshia: “On arriving in the town of Mezhyrichia I found myself among our Ukrainian folk. I could see our Ukrainian peasants at the railway station and near the shops, dressed in tall black hats, traditional mantles, and even bast shoes, walking and riding on horseback to and from the town. It was summertime, and many people wore the kind of hats you can see in Ukraine. [...] On entering Mezhyrichia I saw that Poland was doing a good job of managing our towns! There are many Jews in Mezhyrichia, much like anywhere in Pidliashshia, two Uniate churches and one Catholic church. There are more Ukrainians in the town than Poles. [...]

“Put plainly, the spirit of Ukraine is here. Unfortunately, in the town you won’t hear a single Ukrainian word from the Uniates. Only Jews can speak Ukrainian. In the Uniate churches everything seems to be done our way: they read and sing just like in our churches. But after stepping outside, all you will hear is Polish. [...]

“I encountered the same situation in the town of Bila. The town reeks of Polishness: the local Uniates speak Polish and go to the Roman Catholic church. Ever since the Russian government started harassing the Uniates for their Polish ways, this has caused them to abandon their Uniate practices even further. [...] Bila has a classical grammar school, where one-half of the student body is Ukrainian Uniates; there are teacher-training courses where the children of our peasants study to become village teachers. [...] The language of instruction at such schools is now the Great Russian language, which has been introduced with the intent of expelling the Polish language from this land. Where does it leave our national identity and language?

“To raise the spirit of our folk in Pidliashshia, to convert the townspeople of Bila and Mezhyrichia from Poles [back into Ukrainians], we must rekindle in their hardened souls their Ukrainian identity; we must open Ukrainian schools for peasants and townspeople and get them to read Shevchenko, Osnovyanenko, Kulish, and Marko Vovchok. Shevchenko alone can do what Russian schools won’t accomplish in a century. How can those Polonized Ukrainians possibly become Great Russian patriots? What miracle will it take to turn a Polonized Ukrainian into a Ukrainian, not to mention a Russian? The government wants to create a miracle, but the time of miracles is long past. Proof of our words is Galicia, where Polonized Ruthenians are rising from their graves, resurrected by Shevchenko, not Gogol, or Pushkin, or a Great Russian education. We dare say that all of Great Russia’s efforts in Pidliashshia are in vain without the Ukrainian identity. The Great Russian language and soldiers will never awaken the national spirit, which would make the townspeople, peasants, and clergy alike different from Poland and all things Polish, which they would view as their enemy, not their friend.”

Apparently, Russian officials were incapable of including the Ukrainian factor in their policies in Kholmshchyna and Pidliashshia because it contradicted the very foundations of the tsarist regime’s national policy in Imperial Russia, which at the time was based on such documents as the 1863 Valuev Circular, the law envisioning major wage increases for officials in all departments engaged in “Russification,” and the 1876 Ems Ukase.

The abolition of the Uniate Church in 1875 and the encapsulation of Orthodoxy in a Russian linguistic and cultural shell resulted in a final and irrevocable split in the Ukrainian community in Kholmshchyna and Pidliashshia beyond the Buh. When the so- called Tolerance Decree was issued in 1905, a large number of formally Orthodox former Uniates joined or were forced by Polish landlords to join Roman Catholic parishes (60 percent in Southern Pidliashshia and 20 percent in Kholmshchyna). Even though to this very day the older generations of Catholic peasants speak Ukrainian in many villages, especially those in Pidliashshia, the religious and political factor overwhelmed the ethnic factor, and the basis for the Ukrainian national movement, which started to flourish after 1905, was formed almost exclusively of Orthodox. At the time this community was estimated at a little over 300,000 (close to 80,000 in Southern Pidliashshia and 230,000 in Kholmshchyna).

World War I, the 1915 evacuation of the Orthodox population to Russia, as well as the activity of the Roman Catholic clergy and Polish government, which took over Orthodox churches in Kholmshchyna and Pidliashshia, struck further blows. Whereas before 1915 there were 416 active Orthodox churches on this territory, only 76 remained by late 1929. The remaining churches were destroyed (35), turned into Roman Catholic churches (164), dismantled (30), adapted to serve nonreligious purposes (19), or simply boarded up (92). In 1938, parish or affiliated churches without administrative permits and other premises used by the population for religious purposes were dismantled on administrative orders.

The Nativity of the Virgin Mary Cathedral on Kholm Hill shared in the fate of this land and its Ukrainian population. After the Uniate Church was abolished in 1875, the cathedral was remodeled according to Eastern church canons. Photographs from this period show a multistory iconostasis and murals. The cathedral’s facade was rebuilt to match church architecture in so-called Western Russia. A belfry was built next to it in 1878. In 1915 the Austrian army took over the cathedral and used it to store weapons and ammunition. In 1919 the Polish government handed the cathedral over to the Roman Catholic Church as post-Uniate, and hence Catholic, property, and its former baroque appearance was recreated.

During the entire period between the two World Wars Ukrainians from the Kholm region and Southern Pidliashshia fought for their national rights. The Ukrainian revival first appeared here under Russian rule as a result of the liberalization of sociopolitical life in the Russian Empire, which came with the revolution of 1905, creating more favorable conditions for national self-expression. In 1907 Prosvita [Enlightenment] societies were founded in Hrubeshiv and Siedlce, and the Taras Shevchenko Educational and Economic Society opened in the town of Kobyliany Nadbuzhni. The Prosvita Society in Hrubeshiv started publishing popular brochures in Ukrainian and even tried to set up an editorial office for the magazine Buh, which was never published because of a crackdown by the Russian police. The first issue was destroyed and the magazine’s chief editor was deported to Siberia.

Afterwards, more moderate activists rallied around the Popular Enlightenment Society of Kholm Rus, headed by the Kholm-based teacher Mykhailo Kobryn. Tolerated by the government, this society published the weekly Bratskaya Beseda [Brotherly Conversation], which featured both Russian-language materials and works by local Ukrainian authors, the most popular being Vasko Tkach (the peasant teacher Vasyl Ostapchuk). Ukrainian poems predominated in the collection Zavety Rodnoi Stariny [Testaments of the Native Land], which this society published in Kholm in 1907.

Understandably, because of pervasive censorship all these publications had to display “Little Russian” loyalty to the tsar. The literati of Kholm could, however, express their “seditious” thoughts in Galicia. One of them was Antin Liutnytsky, author of the book Ruthenian Ukrainians in Kholmshchyna and Pidliashshia, published in Lviv in 1909 by the editors of the magazine Hromadsky Holos [Vox Populi]. Liutnytsky’s assessment of Russia’s educational policy of the time is worth citing: “Schools in Kholmshchyna, much like anywhere else in Ukraine, are neither Ukrainian nor national but tools of Moscow’s Russification policy.

“School inspectors, who focus most of their efforts on preventing anything Ukrainian from finding its way into schools, are a major impediment to genuine national education. Examples are legion where teachers were sacked for possessing Ukrainian translations of books that were otherwise approved by censors.

“Is it surprising that tens of thousands of people have switched to the Polish side? By force of circumstances natives of Kholmshchyna are more familiar with Polish than Russian, which is why their choice of Polish is understandable.

“Indeed, we boldly reproach the Russian government for helping the Poles to reap such rich harvests as they have in the past few years in Ukrainian Kholmshchyna. It helped them by persecuting our native Ukrainian language in every place. The only benefit of the Russian school is that it has taught many people to read. If only our political horizon, overcast with black clouds, would clear up just a little, with literate folk we would be able to use books and newspapers to dispel this darkness that still grips our unfortunate Kholmshchyna in its savage claws.

“Lately, the demand for books, newspapers, and the printed word in general has grown significantly. Often you will meet groups of villagers who chip in to buy a newspaper subscription. Incidentally, Ukrainian newspapers, books, and magazines are very eagerly welcomed by the people of Kholmshchyna.”

Mykhailo Panas, a graduate of the Kholm Teachers’ Seminary, writes in his memoirs: “Shevchenko’s ‘Haidamaky’ were the favorite and most read book. No less popular were Zavety Rodnoi Stariny with Ukrainian poems... and Zbirka, a collection of Vasko Tkach’s poetry, as well as his Essays on Kholmshchyna and Pidliashshia.”

Aside from books, especially the classics, Kholmshchyna received such Ukrainian periodicals as Literaturno-Naukovyi Visnyk, Hromadska Dumka [Civic Thought], Promin [Sunray], Ridny Krai [Native Land], Moloda Ukraina [Young Ukraine], Selo [The Village], and Slovo [The Word]. Thus, even though the Russian administration fought the Ukrainian revival in Kholm no less viciously than it did in Kyiv, here also a conscious Ukrainian community was established.

During World War I, the overwhelming majority of the Orthodox population was evacuated to the east in what was officially called a “refuge rescue operation,” whereas the Austrian occupational government, which had established control over Kholmshchyna, pursued a pro-Polish policy in view of the Polish question in Galicia. After the collapse of the tsarist regime, a favorable atmosphere appeared for Kholmshchyna refugees, who submitted numerous requests in 1917 for Kholmshchyna to be annexed to Ukraine. The Congress of Kholmshchyna Natives, held in Kyiv in August 1917, approved a decree to this effect:

1. The people of Kholmshchyna recognize themselves as part of the Ukrainian people.

2. It must share a common fate with all Ukrainian people.

3. For this reason Kholmshchyna may in no case join the Polish Kingdom, but must be annexed to Autonomous Ukraine.

The annexation of Kholmshchyna to the Ukrainian National Republic was envisioned by Ukraine’s peace treaty with the Central Powers (February 9, 1918). However, since Austro-Hungary, pressured by the Poles of Galicia, did not ratify the treaty until its disintegration, this agreement was never implemented. Therefore, conditions for organized Ukrainian activity in Kholmshchyna were created only in the early 1920s, when most of the refugees returned home.

Already in June 1920 the first issue of the weekly Nashe Zhyttia [Our Life] was published in Kholm. After the Polish police arrested its editors in August 1920, the weekly was relaunched in September 1922 during the elections to the Polish parliament. In these elections Ukrainian candidates from what was then Lublin province won four Polish mandates: three representing Kholmshchyna and one representing Southern Pidliashshia. The cultural and educational association Ridna Khata [Native Home] with close to 70 territorial branches was also headquartered in Kholm. The Ukrainian peasant movement was also strongly represented in Kholmshchyna and Southern Pidliashshia, in the association Sel-Soyuz [Peasant Union] and subsequently Selrob [Peasant Worker]. The Ukrainian National Democratic Association also gained supporters. However, at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s administrative measures led to the abolition of all kinds of legal Ukrainian activities on this territory. They would not be revived until Poland’s defeat by Nazi Germany.

In the spring of 1939, Kholmshchyna and Southern Pidliashshia, much like the Lemko and Nadsiannia regions, were part of Hitler’s General Government. Ukrainian aspirations, obviously limited to the questions of culture, education, church life, and cooperative movement, did not pose a threat to the German occupation government. Quite the contrary, these free concessions were designed to neutralize anti-German sentiment among the several hundred thousand-strong Ukrainian population and secure the population’s support for the German army in case of war with the Soviet Union. On the other hand, even the Ukrainian community’s minor accomplishments served to fan antagonism between the two subjugated nations, which played into the occupiers’ hands and soon led to bloodshed.

In May 1940 the Germans ordered the Catholic clergy to leave the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Cathedral in Kholm and transferred it to the Orthodox Church. In October 1940 it again became the bishopric of Orthodox Ukrainians in Kholmshchyna and Southern Pidliashshia. Archbishop Ilarion (secular name Professor Ivan Ohienko) the famous linguist, church historian, and author of the Ukrainian translation of the Bible, was elected to head the bishopric as its archpriest. Largely owing to him, St. Danylo’s Hill, as it was called henceforth in Ukrainian publications, became a center of the Ukrainian religious and national movement.

Today few Ukrainians in Kholm remember that period. One of them is Vira Wybacz, whose family moved in the 1930s to Kholm from Kryvoverba, Wolodaw district. She lived there during most of the German occupation, except for the two years she spent studying at the Ukrainian Trade School in Wolodaw.

“The cathedral’s interior was very beautiful,” Mrs. Wybacz recalls. “The whole church was fitted out in the Ukrainian style. Ohienko was a very wise and kind man, who was concerned about schools, education, and the Ukrainian language. He also published books. There was a splendid choir, in which I sang. The Nativity of the Virgin Mary was a very big holiday that drew thousands of people, way more that the present-day Polish congregation. A blue-and-yellow banner hung from the top of the belfry all the way to the ground. A lower church was open near the cathedral.”

Between 1939 and 1944 Kholm was home to the Ukrainian Assistance Committee, one of the territorial divisions of the Ukrainian Central Committee, headed by Prof. Volodymyr Kubijovych (similar committees existed in Tarnohorod, Hrubeshiv, Zamostie, Radymin, and Krasnostaw). The committee opened several Ukrainian schools in Kholm: an eight-grade grammar school, a technical vocational school, and a one-year school of housekeeping, as well as an Orthodox religious seminary. The cooperative movement was also developing.

The upsurge in Ukrainian culture and education in the Kholm region was made possible mainly thanks to the community of Ukrainian intellectuals from Volhynia and Galicia, who had fled their homes to escape Soviet reprisals. Among the refugees who settled in Kholm was Pylyp Pylypchuk, a participant of the Ukrainian liberation struggle, member of the government of the Ukrainian National Republic, and its prime minister in 1921-1922, who lived in Lutsk before the war. He died in 1940 and was buried in the Orthodox cemetery on the hill next to the cathedral.

Before 1915 this cemetery was primarily used as a burial site for Russian officials. Now the cemetery is rundown, with vandalized tombstones and burial vaults, and littered with trash. Some of the graves were destroyed by bulldozers, when part of the hill was turned into a park to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Polish People’s Republic. Many graves have been buried under construction waste from the renovations of nearby houses. In 1992 the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Church Art, headed by Bohdan Martyniuk, a Ukrainian resident of Warsaw, returned some semblance of order to the cemetery. But it quickly fell into disrepair, and now only a few tombs are in proper condition.

Although there is an Orthodox cemetery on Lvivska Street, it has been “overrun” by graves from the nearby Catholic parish. Now the few tombstones with Cyrillic inscriptions are fading into oblivion among today’s Polish gravestones. Hidden among them is the grave of archpresbyter Ivan Levchuk (April 3, 1869—Oct. 29, 1947). He was a member of the Temporary Church Council, created in Kholm in November 1939 on the initiative of Ukrainian activists and patriotically-minded priests. He headed the Church Administration that was formed by the council. Soon afterward Metropolitan Dioniziy appointed him as administrator of the Orthodox Church in Kholmshchyna and Pidliashshia. He served in this capacity until the appointment of Archbishop Ilarion.

Reverend Ivan Levchuk nurtured the flame of church life in postwar Kholm after the departure in 1944 of Ilarion (to become metropolitan) and most of the Ukrainian activists, who fled to escape possible Polish reprisals. This flame gradually weakened because some people fled for their lives, some resettled in the east, while others were transported west in 1947. Wybacz recalls:

“There was no special Ukrainian life in the postwar years, as there was no one to organize it with. Among the older Ukrainians whom I remember, there was our family and the Galicki family, which was apparently Orthodox, but not aware of its nationality. There was nobody else. The parish still existed. There was an old priest by the name of Levchuk, who also suffered extreme harassment. He died immediately after being resettled.

“Various gangs appeared here after the war. They pronounced a death sentence on my mother. And if I hadn’t run for help to the municipal commandant’s office and returned with a soldier, they would probably have killed us. We experienced true horrors at that time after the war.

“There was no sight of the Ukrainian underground here. That is, they were here during the occupation, but not after the war. They had been chased down one by one and executed. There is a forest called Borok near the communal cemetery. Many were shot to death there. I know because my sister shared a prison cell with those underground fighters. They hunted down all of them, even those who were not involved in the underground.

“At the time a lot of people had moved east, while the few families that remained were dispersed during the Wisla Operation. In 1945 four of my sisters moved to Ukraine, while my younger sister Liudmyla and I remained with our mother in Kholm. We did not escape resettlement. We spent 10 years in Branew in the Mazury region, and returned in 1957. It took a lot of effort to get our land back: I traveled to all kinds of institutions and ministries to reclaim it.

“Before 1957 I traveled to Kholm only once, because we had orders never to go there. I even had an official letter banning us from going there. I came here only once in great fear. I knew two women here. They had fled to Kholm from a village near Hrubeshiv. Their father was killed, survived by his wife and her two daughters. Apparently, they were not on the list of Kholm residents, which is why they were not resettled. There was nobody else except them. Some people came back later, some of them returning to nearby villages.

“Nobody admitted to being Ukrainian. If they did, they would not get a job or education. When I went to a commission in Branew, which was accepting students for institutions of higher learning, I was told pointblank: ‘No Ukrainians.’ The commission’s chairman told me off the record: ‘Not a single Ukrainian. Since he has finished secondary school, let him go to work. Why do we need them? We have students of our own.’ Young people did not reveal their nationality in order to get an education or a job.”

Since the campaign to resettle the Ukrainians of Kholmshchyna continued for several years, the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Cathedral, the spiritual symbol of their presence here, along with the premises of the former Basilian Monastery (early 17th century), the bishop’s palace (early 18th century), and the church fraternity (late 19th century), were transferred to the Roman Catholics by 1944. They took great care to remove all the signs that were left from the time when the cathedral was run by Ukrainians. The Church of St. John the Evangelist was the only church in Kholm that catered to the small local Ukrainian congregation. Even though some of the Ukrainians who were resettled during the Wisla Operation started to return to their homes in 1956, religious life on this territory, which then belonged to the Warsaw-Belsk Eparchy, was very underdeveloped.

Accordingly, on March 1, 1989, the Orthodox Church Synod passed a decree to form a separate eparchy for Kholmshchyna and Southern Pidliashshia, the Lublin-Kholm Eparchy. It absorbed two deaneries that existed at the time: Biala Podlaska and Lublin. Archbishop Avel was appointed to head it. Before that he was archimandrite of Jableczna Monastery. This was his first residence, which was transferred to Lublin in 1990.

“As the saying goes, man proposes but God disposes,” the archbishop said in September 1999, the 10th anniversary of the renewed eparchy. “The evil human spirit wanted to sing ‘Eternal Memory’ on this site for local Orthodox Ukrainians, but God planned otherwise. And today many people who do not belong to our Church, those who witnessed the horrible events in this land from 50- 60 years ago, open their eyes and cannot understand anything.

“It appears that the numbers of the eparchy are not dwindling. Of course, this is not a structure on the scale of Northern Podlasie or Bialystok, where a single parish comprises several thousand people. In this eparchy we don’t even have 10,000. We do not keep any statistics, because that would be difficult to do in the diaspora. But it gladdens me that even the smallest parishes, like Hrubeszow, Nosiw, and Zamoscie have stable numbers of worshipers. Despite the fact that each year there are more funerals than baptisms, their numbers are maintained, replenished by new members who are joining the parish community.

“Biala Podlaska is now the biggest center where Orthodox religious life can experience an upsurge. The largest number of parishes is in its vicinity, especially in the upper reaches of the River Buh. And most of those who leave these parishes settle down in Biala. There are also prospects for Lublin, which is an intellectual center with institutions of higher learning and a rallying point for young people from the Bialystok area and Przykarpacie. Here they establish ties with the church; there is an active fraternity that single-handedly publishes a monthly newspaper.”

An important event was the placement of the eparchy under the patronage of the Holy Martyr Afanasiy of Berest, the abbot of St. Simeon’s Monastery in Berest. A tireless champion for the rights of the Orthodox Church, in 1648 he was accused of having ties to Khmelnytsky and shot on orders of a Polish municipal court. In a solemn ceremony in 1996, a portion of the Holy Martyr Afanasiy’s relics was transferred to the cathedral in Biala Podlaska. The Orthodox Fraternity of Holy Martyr Afanasiy of Berest was founded in 1999 and is now seeking to become the ideological successor of the traditions of Orthodox fraternities that were active on this territory from the 16th century on.

“In my view, it was a natural thing to do,” says Archbishop Avel. “After all, when Holy Martyr Afanasiy of Berest walked from Berest to attend the parliamentary assembly in Warsaw, he sanctified this part of Podlasie with his feet. Meanwhile, the proximity of Terespol (the center of one of the eparchy’s four deaneries) to Berest is a constant reminder of him. When the question arose of choosing a patron for our eparchy, we had no doubt that it should be Holy Martyr Afanasiy of Berest. It is a good example for the people, serving as a mainstay and symbol of our Orthodox faith. It is especially important for us to show the heroic posture of the Holy Martyr now that the stronger side here, the Roman Catholic Church, is making a display of its martyrology.”

The rebirth of the separate eparchy for Kholmshchyna and Southern Pidliashshia came at a very difficult time. On the one hand, the change in the political system has liberated the Orthodox Church from communist control, which stymied its development. On the other hand, the new situation does not favor the spiritual aspect of social life. Tremendous interest from some people is matched by growing indifference from others, who are more interested in the newly discovered, colorful world than in traditional spiritual and national values. Perhaps this is why the small island of Ukrainism in Kholm is shrinking rapidly. The words of Marius Kawezki, who represents the generation born in the early 1960s, are proof of this:

“When I went to school, some 30 or 35 persons in my age group attended Orthodox religion classes. Now no more than two or three of them come to church. Meanwhile, conditions now are much better than they used to be. We have an eparchy. We can speak our own language. We don’t have to fear anything. There is freedom, but there is no longer any Ukrainism. When there was no freedom, there was Ukrainism. It is history’s joke.

“When I was a kid, we would meet at the church. In those days nobody said he was Ukrainian or Russian. We simply met in our milieu. As we grew older, we started to sing and participated in hiking camps, acquiring a kind of national perspective. We started to discuss the history of Kholmshchyna, its ancient heritage, and got all the way to its recent history, which is very painful. Nothing like this is happening any longer. Now young people who go to church simply listen to the divine service and return home. That’s all there is to it. There is no community life at all. Every once in a while somebody sells Nashe Slovo at the church, and that’s it. There is nobody even to talk to. Many people have left Kholm. Perhaps 5 to 10 people of my generation remain. The others have emigrated to Canada, Australia, America, or moved to Warsaw.”

The century in which the Ukrainians of Kholmshchyna lived under constant pressure and threat of reprisals merely for asserting their national aspirations is over. Today there’s no such threat, if only because the small community of Orthodox believers and even smaller group of people with a crystallized Ukrainian national identity do not present any real challenge to anyone. Moreover, the inevitable process of generational change has shown that the old principles of standing one’s ground are not always justified in the new situation. The generation of parents proved to be an abyss between the generations of grandparents and grandchildren, who speak different languages not only in the linguistic sense of Ukrainian vs. Polish, but also in terms of the substance behind their words. Throughout the centuries during which the Kholm region was under Polish political rule, both the Orthodox and Uniate churches served as a protective wall against assimilation. Now, however, Orthodoxy’s weak demographic potential in Kholmshchyna and the severing of the traditional bond between church and culture have chipped away at this wall to the point that it provides very weak protection. You could say that Ukrainian Kholmshchyna is now a kind of submerged Atlantis. All that remains of it is small islands that stand as testimony of its former existence.