Zaporozhian Sich Delegates Visit Solovki
A group of officials of the Nikopol’s District department of culture, along with local history experts, recently visited the Solovets Islands in the White Sea at the initiative of Volodymyr Yevtushenko, head of the local state administration. The islands are popularly referred to as Solovki, while under the Soviets the area was officially known as the Northern Special Camps, for “enemies of the people” – counter-revolutionaries, kulaks, later Soviet citizens fleeing Nazi concentration camps, and still later, political prisoners. The visitors from Ukraine wanted to collect information about one of the inmates of the Solovets Monastery [one of the largest in Russia, founded in the 15th century on Solovets Island. In 1974 the Solovets Islands were designated a state historic and nature preserve], the last Koshovy Otaman Zaporozhian Cossack leader Petro Kalnyshevsky of the Lower Dnieper Reaches, banished to the monastery by Catherine II of Russia.
The reason for the visit was the Nikopol authorities’ intention to establish a Kalnyshevsky memorial, marking the 200th anniversary of his death (considering that the territory under their jurisdiction had once accommodated five of eight Zaporozhian Sich Cossack encampments) as part of an historical-cultural landscape preserve.
“While at the Solovets Monastery, we tried to find the Koshovy Otaman’s grave,” says Anatoly Saliuk, one of the visitors, a leading specialist with the district culture department. “He must have lived there for 28 years and died at 112 years of age, on October 31, 1803. Regrettably, all the gravestones had been removed and transferred to one of the courtyards in the 1930s, when the place accommodated the notorious Stalinist prison camp. But we were lucky to ascertain that Petro Kalnyshevsky’s grave was beside that of the noted Russian columnist Avraamy Palitsyn – except we weren’t sure whether it was on left or right side. This is still to be established by archaeologists. So we filled a capsule with earth from that grave and took some bricks from the wall of the cell in the Golovlyov Tower where the Cossack leader had spent so many years in utter solitude. These relics are at the Nikopol local history museum.”
The visitors also photographed Petro Kalnyshevsky’s huge gravestone to make an exact replica at home and install it at the memorial.
Mr. Saliuk says that their expedition to the Solovki, after having studied archives, also established a number of interesting facts from Petro Kalnyshevsky’s life at the monastery. Thus, contrary to a generally accepted story, his monastic custody as a “privileged inmate” was anything but horrible. Whereas a rank-and-file Solovets monk received 9 rubles a year, the Koshovy Otaman was paid 365 rubles, quite a sum at the time. Also, he remained a hermit even after leaving the cloistered community.
Anatoly Saliuk recalls that they were accorded welcome in Russia, particularly by the personnel of the Solovets historic and nature preserve; everybody was willing to help, “the more so that we were the first visitors from Ukraine after a number of years; we signed an agreement to perpetuate the Cossack leader’s memory in view of his 200th jubilee. I might also point out that the residents of Nikopol regard the memorial project at Pokrovske as not only a matter of honor, but also as another step forward in implementing a program aimed at reviving the historical memory of the Zaporozhian Cossacks – and this task is personally handled by Volodymyr Yevtushenko, head of the district state administration. Four years ago, he was elected Koshovy Otaman, like Petro Kalnyshevsky had been, hundreds of years ago, of the Lower Dnieper Reaches.”
In fact, Anatoly Saliuk is also Otaman, but with the Mykytyn Sich. Quite a few Cossacks work at the district state administration. Far more are eager to get registered as Zaporozhian Cossacks, but the selection rules are tough and every applicant has to pass a 6-month trial period.
