IN CRAMPED SPACE

Word has been spreading around my native city for the past several weeks. At first it seemed a bad joke, but now it looks alarmingly close to reality. If so, it will be another capitulation of culture, and Ivano-Frankivsk will lose yet another very important part of itself. I do not know who will benefit in the end. Perhaps nobody except a couple of ranking bureaucrats (whose benefit will be illusory and short-lived).

The bad news is about the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Virgin Mary (also known as the Collegiata). Built in 1672—1703 in Stanislaviv (as the city was known then), this unique baroque structure went out of service as a house of God after World War II, when the city was taken over by the world’s most inveterate atheists, and when the local Roman Catholics found themselves sharply numerically reduced (courtesy the Red authorities). After that events took the usual Soviet course: divine relics stolen, burial sites and the altar vandalized, mummified remains of the Potockis taken away, the pipe organ taken apart and sold “retail,” Fabianski’s wall paintings painted over, the doors and windows eventually boarded up, the cathedral converted in a warehouse, still later into a local antiquarian museum with a collection of minerals until 1980 when the cathedral was made an art museum. In 1993, a handful of enthusiasts put together a singular permanent display of sacral art, called Halychyna, Fifteenth Through Twentieth Centuries. It was basically made up of old icons, including true masterpieces of the Dolyna and Rohatyn schools, done by pupils of Jow Kondzelewicz and Ivan Rutkovych, a restored baroque wood ensemble made by carvers from Thomas Gudder’s guild, sculptures by the brilliant Johann Pinzel and Matviy Poleyovsky, plus old printed matter and religious articles. Every item was placed to restore the original pious atmosphere as accurately as possible. So what will happen to this exposition now? Most likely, it will be taken away and stored in a makeshift totally unfit repository, of which there are so many in this unkempt city and country as a whole.

And all this because somewhere upstairs somebody decided to liquidate the museum. Supposedly, the cathedral will be handed over, sometime before Easter, to the “most legitimate Church of the State,” the problematical Kyiv Patriarchate. This will be done presumably because of a petition by the Patriarchate and in keeping with the freedom of conscience law. While it is true that everybody must abide by the law, in this particular case two considerations make it legally dubious: (a) the cathedral is in the state register of architectural sites (inviolable under the law), and (b) if it is to be handed over to a religious community, it would seem that the Roman Catholic is the only logical successor.

Personally, I see the whole affair as yet another instance of politicking, backstage arrangements, interfaith wheeling, dealing, and struggling for territorial influence. I am going to repeat a phrase which has made my readers ask for a commentary on more than one occasion this year: our culture is oppressed and our state without culture. What more can I say? Before our very eyes they are trying again to suppress Halychyna, ruining what is left there of European culture and mentality. Whoever is behind all this, sitting high and mighty in Kyiv, possibly thinking that this decision will benefit Ukraine, is very wrong. Although I don’t sincerely believe that the people in a position to make such decisions really care about Ukraine.

This will be a big personal loss for me. I will miss art shows and chamber concerts. This city’s cultural space is getting cramped, because they are making it narrower and narrower, obviously meaning to reduce it to zero. The art museum at the old cathedral was my favorite place, I always took visiting friends there. And don’t give me the stuff about satisfying religious needs! The place was much closer to the Creator when displaying canvases by Zalyvakha, Alla Horska’s prints, or Sorokhtei’s “The Road to Calvary.” If liquidated, the museum will leave a huge spiritual gap which is not likely to be filled by the “Byzantine rite.”