Nova Vyzhva: Rise and Fall

A most common Polissian village. And, like every village, it has a past full of more that the romanticism of first collective farms. All you have to do is make an attempt, rummage through books, and look into not only the

History of the Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR. Then, on the basis of dust-covered documents, accidental (and, hence, sincere) stories of old-timers, and flint fragments (which the majority treats, unfortunately, as unnecessary and uninteresting stones), you can try to compose a solid picture of the past, that is, of history. If you succeed, the picture can be gripping and radiant. There is enough material, from which to compose the picture. What is lacking is builders.

People have settled here from time immemorial. They left flint tools, still found on the village outskirts. While area researchers are still racking their brains in the disputes over the first record of the Stara Vyzhivka township, with 1099 being one of the probable dates, the village of Nova Vyzhva has a precise date when it was first mentioned in written sources.

“BY THE GRACE OF GOD”

In 1508 the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Zygmunt I gave Vyzhva to the princes Sangushko and allowed them to found a city in the place; the Sangushko family built a township with a castle and a church, which later became the district center. The Vyzhva district included the villages of Bridky, Hrydky, Krasna Volia, Mostyshche, Sekun, Stara Vyzhva, Khotyvel, and Shushky. In 1521 Prince Vasyl Mykhailovych Sangushko, then the sheriff of Lutsk, granted 98 desiatynas of land to the Church of the Transfiguration of Christ. And on May 25, 1532, the prince granted a deed whereby the priest and his successors were allowed to possess all the income of the Transfiguration Church with two altars: of Patron Saint Michael and of St. Simon the Lithuanian Guide.

THE LEGENDARY QUEEN

Following a dispute with the neighbors, Prince Vasyl exchanged his Kovel estate, including Vyzhva, with Queen Bona Sforza for property in Belarus. To revitalize trade and increase her Vyzhva incomes, the queen granted the town the Magdeburg Law. Queen Bona vested the Vyzhva citizens with the right to set up inns and sell vodka, as well as to levy a bridge toll as well as taxes on individuals and wax. She ordered the Kovel sheriff not to prevent Vyzhva dwellers from making use of their incomes. Week-long markets and fairs before and after Christmas were allowed. The deed issued on January 19, 1548, recorded suburban residents as Vyzhva citizens, granting them the same rights and duties. Another deed relates Bona’s order to the leaseholders of the local villages Sekun, Susek, Hrydkov, and Horodyshcha to send some of their people to repair bridges near the town of Vyzhva.

Such measures, no doubt, promoted the town’s development and improved the citizens’ welfare. This must have been the reason for the queen’s growing popularity. The years 1557 and 1558 were significant for Vyzhva residents with two events: land reform and the queen’s death.

Estates were being handed over to new owners, while the plight of the peasants only worsened. And although the land reform was being carried out irrespective of the queen’s being alive or dead or whether or not she possessed the estates, we can suppose that the people’s imagination binds these two points together. Hence the queen began to be considered a benefactor.

Zygmunt II’s mother, Neapolitan Princess Bona Sforza, left Poland in 1556. One could almost write her life as a detective story. Bona took to Naples a part of her late husband Zygmunt I’s treasury. Out of this money, she lent 430,000 ducats to Spanish King Philip II, but she died in 1558, never receiving the debt. Military failures in the Livonian War put her son Zygmunt II on the brink of a financial disaster. He remembered his “Neapolitan legacy” and demanded that Spain return the debt. A part of the debt returned to Poland in the shape of Spanish dollar and half-dollar coins.

It is not known for certain if Queen Bona had ever been to Volhynia. But she very often features in the popular legends as visiting our area. Many of these legends were recorded at the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century by such well- known researchers of Volhynian distant past as Teodorovych, Tsynkalovsky, and others. Even now some old residents of Polissia can tell stories about Queen Bona.

One was told me by my grandmother Mariya Tsekhosh, resident of the village of Nova Vyzhva. A legend thus explains the name of this village: “When the queen was passing by, she gave names to many settlements. She was blind, but when she washed her face in a well near the village, she regained vision and said: ‘Here is vydva.’ That meant she could see. This is where the village’s name, Vyzhva, came from.”

More than once I heard this story, but the queen’s personality did not attract me until I heard a new version of this legend from my grandfather Maksym. This in general resembles the one already mentioned, but it featured not the queen but a certain queen’s Bona. To all my further questions about who was that queen and where from, my old grandfather only shrugged his shoulders and could tell me nothing more. He only said he was retelling me what he had been told long ago.

“MACHTIT GELT? KUPCHI KNIPLAKHY DO MURNALIV”

Nova Vyzhva still retained the status of a town into the 1930s. In other words, the town and a the village existed separately. The town had a church, a school, a Jewish prayer house, and stores. Nova Vyzhva residents proudly called themselves citizens, in contrast to the surrounding villages’ inhabitants referred to as muzhyks. Besides being engaged in farming, the township’s dwellers did some tailoring. They sewed various garments. The high-quality Nova Vyzhva sheepskin coats were well known far beyond not only the district but even the region. One could even come across a Nova Vyzhva tailor in Warsaw.

Every master has his own secrets. And if it is a whole village of masters? And if each clearly tried to get the upper hand over the rest? Perhaps to preserve their professional secrets and be able to communicate with a fellow countryman abroad without fearing to be eavesdropped, the Nova Vyzhva citizens composed a unique language, a mixture of German, Yiddish, and other words cemented with Ukrainian grammar. Thus they would throw around words of the tailor’s language (even now so called by Nova Vyzhva residents) nobody could understand. And how could one get it if, e.g., a pie is a puyman, pears are pikuzy , a church is a galyly, a cat is a gatz, sausage is rakhmanka, a horse is a fert, and so on. Maybe, someone will guess that a bekavytsa is a sheep, and a gazda is an owner, but nobody will get the point of conversation in a never-ending flow of words like these. That the tailor’s language originally emerged for the needs of traveling tailors is evidenced by the fact that the tailoring vocabulary was most elaborately developed, with far from all words being translatable. Even now the oldest Nova Vyzhva dwellers will tell you the tailor’s words for clothes, threads, needles, patches, and textiles. “Machtish gelt? Kupchi kniplakhy do murnaliv” used to ring out in Krakow, Lutsk, and Nova Vyzhva. And the uninitiated would never have guessed that it was only a humble request to a friend going shopping: “Do you have money? Buy some buttons for my pants.”

THE LOST GEM

Centuries have passed. Only the old church and legends remains of the old fairs, castle, and town. However, the town existed as far as the 1980s. The Church of the Transfiguration is no more. And it would have only been left in the memory of Nova Vyzhva residents if something had not happened. In 1962 or 1963 amateur photographer Petro Lishchuk, not yet 20 at the time, was photographing the surrounding landscape and fixed the Transfiguration Church on film.

This Nova Vyzhva church, like many others, was planned to be torn down in 1984. As eyewitnesses report, they began to demolish the church much earlier. They fastened a rope around the dome and pulled it by a tractor. The dome cracked a little but did not fall. After this, the church long stood in this condition. The roof leaked, and the whole structure began to rot. The church stood like this until it was finally ruined. But before doing so, itchy-handed “businessmen” took away a mountain of ancient books in broad daylight before the eyes of peasant women working in the field.

Now there are only ruins where the church once towered — huge charred beams, which once served as foundation, the stones on which the belfry once rested, and a half-rotten dome lying in the ravine. All this reminds us of its past majesty, so far. A local fellow, grazing cattle where the church once stood, told me there had been the collective granary there. A church? Oh, yes, there was one. A nice one, they say. That’s all. No more, no less.

I only wonder what his descendants will be able to tell some odd visitors.

A new church was opened recently in the village. It was built at a new place (the old one is considered unlucky), but it is exactly patterned after the Church of the Transfiguration. Some of the parishioners kept drawings. What has been preserved is not only the drawings but also the desire to build.

I believe that visitors will be able not only to hear legends and the sounds of the tailor’s language but also see the church. The only thing is it is not of Transfiguration but of St. Gabriel.