Kremenets raion offers visitors a walk

Marking Taras Shevchenko’s 200th birth anniversary, specialists of Kremenets Raion State Administration’s department of culture, tourism, nationalities, and religions have developed tourist trail Traveling around Kremenets raion in the Footsteps of Shevchenko. Tourists will be offered interesting stories about the brilliant Ukrainian poet and artist’s stay in the Volhynian Switzerland, as the raion is often called, and themed tours of the raion center and Pochaiv’s museums. When visiting Kremenets, Shevchenko was particularly interested in educational activities of Tadeusz Czacki, a founder of the Volhynian Gymnasium, whom he subsequently respectfully mentioned in his novella The Convict. Shevchenko described Joachim Lelewel, a Polish historian and public figure who once taught at the school, in The Artist, another of his novellas. Incidentally, Small Kobzar was published in Kremenets in 1922, financed by the town’s residents. A memorial plaque at 1 Slovatsky Street honors their deed. Another memorial plaque has been installed at Bishop’s Mansion in the Holy Dormition Pochaiv Lavra, where Shevchenko lived when working for the first Archaeographical Commission in 1846. Head of raion promotion and analytical and humanitarian programs department at Kremenets Raion Council’s executive office Mykola Matviiuk told The Day that Shevchenko had come to Volhynia and Podolia, two newly annexed provinces of the Russian Empire, with orders including a special assignment to take sketches of the monastery. He painted four watercolors then, depicting the Pochaiv shrine at different angles. Shevchenko collected a lot of folklore in the nearby villages. There he met with an old convict, the last surviving witness of the Haidamak uprisings in Ukraine. He started writing his novella in Kremenets, basing it on the eyewitness account and mentioning local place names such as Kremenets, Pochaiv, and Ikva River. According to Matviiuk, there is evidence that Taras Shevchenko met in the Holy Dormition Pochaiv Lavra the famous Polish violinist Karol Lipinski who once was Niccolo Paganini’s concert partner.