The attainment of autocephaly by the Orthodox Church of Ukraine intensified the religious transitions of parishes that were preceded by individual parishioners’ switches. The highest dynamics of such transitions occurred in the Volyn Region in the north-western part of Ukraine. These transitions refer exclusively to a switch from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine without affecting other religious communities. Most of the population supported the autocephalous status of the Orthodox Church of (...) Ukraine, for they consider granting autocephaly as a major historical event for the Ukrainian nation. The process of active religious transitions was primarily determined by the aptness of each parish community and political climate on a national level. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine was able to maintain its high regard, but with the change of political power in Ukraine in 2019, it lost political support. The process of religious transitions dwindled. (shrink)

The article highlights the role of the clergy in the Ukrainian-Polish discussions on the evaluation of the Volyn tragedy in 1943.

The paper reviews historical and regional studies publications of Volyn periodicals in the 19 th -20 th centuries, which covered the Ukrainian-Polish-Russian relations. Their key theme lines are indicated, specifically a socio-economic line which addressed social inequality problems, enslavement of Ukrainian peasants by Polish gentry at the time when some Ukrainian regions were a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; a religious line which covered consequences of Polonization, threats to Orthodoxy, feats and courage of its defenders; an ethnographic line which (...) attempted to describe the history of origin of nations and the specifics of their national self-identification. It is shown that all these lines of publications featured different ideological tendencies. Thus some articles from ‘Volynskiye Gubernskiye Vedomosti’, ‘Pochayevskiye Izvestiya’ and ‘Volynskiye Yeparkhialniye Vedomosti’ were analyzed, which allowed to trace propaganda of the Russian Empire in the spirit of Russian monarchism and chauvinism spreading via press. Those processes had a rather negative impact on social and interethnic moods of the Ukrainian-Polish-Russian relations in the imperialist context. By contrast with the above, journalists of the democratic newspaper ‘Vestnik Volyni’ advocated the Polish and Ukrainian self-identification. (shrink)

The article analyses the contribution of Ukrainian National Council in Petrograd - plenipotentiary representative body of Ukrainian Central Rada in the capital of Russia, created after the February Revolution in 1917 under the heading of O. Lototskyi and P. Stebnytskyi - in the facility of helping refugees and evictees from Galicia, Volyn and Kholmshchyna during the First World War. Individual letters of evicts from Ukraine have been published V. Rozvadovsky, the assistant professor of the university and the professional gymnasium (...) in Stanislaviv I. S. Demianchuk, etc.), which came to the address of Ukrainian National Council. There were analyzed lists of Galician settlers, which had to live in Tashkent, on the Russian territory, in Voronizh, Kazanska, Enyseiska and other provinces). It was proved, that in the period of functioning of Ukrainian National Council the help to refugees and evictees from Galicia, Volyn and Kholmshchyna was focused in the frame, allocated by researchers second stage of the solution of the refugee problem - preparing to reevacuation, initiated in times of Ukrainian National Council. The practical contribution of Ukrainian National Council in Petrograd was in the collection of statistical information about evictees, submission to higher government institutions of appeals and petitions regarding the improvement of their living conditions and providing of material assistance, returning them to the territory of Ukraine, appealing to charitable organizations and patronage volunteers requesting assistance to war prisoners and evictees, involvement in law-making practice, directed to facilitating the fate of this social category. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to systematize and generalize information about the political right-conservative movement in modern Poland. In the course of the study, the potential for support for right-wing parties exists in every society. It can grow due to two groups of factors. The first concerns issues related to the difficult economic situation, the modernization of societies or cultural aspects, which are called demand-related in the literature. The second large group consists of supply factors: factors of possible political (...) success (structure of political opportunities), electoral rules, inter-party competition, the role of the mass media, the structure of political divisions or the role of the winning ideology. Polish right-wing conservatism and nationalism is characterized, both in the past and in the present, by a powerful influence on the social and political life of the Republic of Poland, acting as a fundamental element of the unification of the Polish people. This movement retains its traditional features, which are reflected in the ideology of the Polish ruling party “Law and Justice”, which adheres to a national-conservative orientation with elements of clericalism, maintains close ties with the Catholic Church and organizations close to it. In the period after coming to power (2015), “PiS” slowly but steadily lost its Christian-democratic character and evolved into a conservative political force. This allowed “PiS” to win elections for a long time, and in 2023, it allows it to maintain leading positions in public opinion polls regarding support for political parties. In the field of international relations, supporters of “PiS” operated with judgments that expressed the ideas of nationalism, presenting the Poles as a strong nation that should occupy an important place among other countries. The process of creating right-wing conservative political parties and associations in Poland continues on an ongoing basis. The strengthening of nationalist movements in Poland takes place with the support of the state authorities of the Republic of Poland and is accompanied by a gradual shift of emphasis on controversial historical issues in the direction of nationalist ideology. Despite official Warsaw providing political support to Kyiv in the international arena in connection with the Russian military threat, the authorities of the Republic of Poland have no intention of blocking anti-Ukrainian activities carried out by Polish national-patriotic right-wing movements. This is due to the preparation of the ruling elite for the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the tragic events in Volyn in 2023, as well as the parliamentary election campaign. In the future, the activation of radical right-conservative formations on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth may lead to protest actions in Poland, the purpose of which will be the dissemination of information unfavorable to our state in the Polish information space, which will have a negative impact on the formation of the foreign policy vector of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Ukrainian direction. (shrink)

This article off ers a pioneering ecofeminist study of Viktor Ivchenko’s Lisova pisnia and Yurii Illienko’s Lisova pisnia. Mavka, two Soviet Ukrainian film adaptations of Lesia Ukrainka’s eponymous fairy-drama. It focuses on the interrelated depiction of gender and nature along with the drama’s ideological and material aspects: androcentrism and deforestation. The production of both fi lms coincides with, and arguably refl ects, what Marko Pavlyshyn describes as “the emergence of a conservationist consciousness” in the USSR in the 1960s. The article’s (...) goal is therefore twofold – to bring new ecofeminist insights into Ukrainian fi lm studies and to raise eco-awareness about the Volyn Polissia, which provides the setting for Ukrainka’s drama and its adaptations, and currently faces environmental devastation from illegal amber mining. (shrink)

The international scientific conference under this name took place on June 6, 2007. to the 70th anniversary of the Lutsk Church Congress in 1927. The Ukrainian Association of Religious Studies, the Lutsk City Council, the Volyn Regional Museum of Local Lore, the Volyn State University named after L.Ukrainka, the Republican Christian Party were the co-organizers of the conference.

Hasidism is a religious-mystical trend in Judaism that arose in the first half of the eighteenth century. among the Jewish population of Volyn, Podillya and Galicia. The emergence of a new movement in the Orthodox Jewish religion was driven by changes in the socio-economic and political status of Ukrainian Jews during that period. Cossack uprising under the leadership of B. Khmelnitsky 1648 - 1654, Gaidamachchyna and other national disturbances of the XVII - XVIII centuries. greatly undermined the well-being of (...) the Jewish population, led to a deepening of property and social stratification within communities, a weakening of intra-community discipline, a decline in the authority of religion and the prestige of rabbinic science. In Volyn, Podillya and Galicia, most affected by hostilities, the overall cultural level of the people is significantly reduced, Talmudic science is declining, and schools are being closed. (shrink)

The article studies the Jewish cemetery which provides a significant amount of historical information about various aspects of the life of the Jewish community which have long been out of focus. The objective of the research lies in proving the relevance of marginal culturally significant objects in the context of postmodern philosophy, as well as explaining and analyzing the compositional ways and peculiarities of plastic images of the facades of the gravestones in Kremenets, one of the Volyn areas of (...) the Jewish culture in the 18th century – the early 19th century. The article focuses on the most common method of studying the monuments of Jewish gravestone epigraphy. The methodology of the research is based on the regionalist approaches to the problem and the application of culturological, retrospective comparative-historical methods and the use of critical analysis. For the first time, the artistic and style peculiarities of the memorial plastic arts of Jewish cemetery in Kremenets are analysed and the historical factors that influenced them are explicated. It was proved that the historical and cultural value of the Jewish necropolis in Kremenets lies in its originality. The cemetery is one of the oldest in Europe and contains unique information on the history, customs and culture of the Jewish people. It can become a promising object of visit for postmodern consumers, interested in unpopular and marginal tourist artefacts. (shrink)

In the national historical science, despite the considerable number of publications, there is no comprehensive study of the charitable and cultural-educational activities of the Roman Catholic Church in Right-Bank Ukraine at the end of the eighteenth - early twentieth centuries. Modern Ukrainian historiography has a number of studies that have, to some extent, addressed the problem we have identified. In particular, G. Makhorin's dissertation traces the charitable activity of state structures, public organizations, individuals, as well as the fragmentary Roman Catholic (...) clergy in Volyn in 1793-1917. (shrink)

Recently, the scientific and journalistic heritage of A.Richynsky as an ideologist and organizer of the Ukrainian church-national movement in Volyn in the 20-30s of the XX century has attracted considerable attention of researchers. From this perspective, the most outstanding work of A.Richinsky's "Features of Ukrainian Religious Consciousness" is analyzed by scholars, though we admit that the theological and philosophical component in A.Richinsky's religious heritage remains almost unexplored. The article will trace the formation of A. Richinsky's teaching on the relationship (...) between the religious and ethnic in the Bible, in particular about the nation as established eternal reality. The basis for writing the article is the works of Arsen Rychinsky published in recent years. (shrink)

I am a person very far from the issues of religious studies. So I don't even know how to perform in front of such a solid audience. It turned out so much in my life that, as I see, a very famous person, even I did not know that she was so famous, Arsen Rychinsky was my godfather. The Rychinski family and the Pajewski family for many years, sometime in the 1920s, were as one family, that is, they were in (...) very good relationship with each other, as much as in the good ones that I will give as an example. My father, Denis Pajewski, lived in Volyn as an emigrant from the Soviet Union: in the 1920s he fled to the West and then returned to Poland. He was, by profession, a businessman. When he raised start-up capital and wanted to start a business, he did not yet have Polish citizenship. Therefore, he opened his company by registering for Rychinsky. The fact is that in Poland there was a temporary center, that is, for so many years it was necessary to be a resident of this country in order to obtain the right to open a company. (shrink)

The name of Arsen Rychinsky - a doctor, church and public figure, a prominent religious ethnologist - is being forgotten today. Arsen Rychinsky was born in the village of Tetilitsa, Kremenetsky district of the former Volyn province in a priest's family, studied at the Kremenetsky Pymnasium, and after graduating from Zhytomyr Theological Seminary. While studying at the seminary, Arsen Richinsky produced manuscripts and journals. A well-endowed young man searched hard for himself. Perhaps that is why in 1911 he became (...) not a priest but a teacher of the parish school of the village of Sidnyarka, Lutsk county. He taught Richinsky not for long, but his love for school, he kept his children for life. From September 1911 Rychinsky studied at the University of Warsaw, and from the beginning of World War I transferred to the University of St. Vladimir in Kiev. In March 1917 he successfully passed the exams and was approved "to the degree of a doctor with all the rights and advantages of the laws of this degree assigned.". (shrink)

The relocation of two Metropolitan Metropolitan Kirill II and Maxim to the North, to Vladimir above Klyazma, put the Galicia-Volyn state and the Ukrainian Church in a difficult position. While Kiev remained the actual Metropolitan Chair, the latter could stay in the northern Russian cities for a long time, without causing much anxiety or dissatisfaction in the South. However, with the relocation of Metropolitan Maxim to permanent residence in the capital of the North-Russian Grand Duke, the rulers of the (...) southwestern region of Russia realized that in this way they were losing significant spiritual and political power, which henceforth gave the North the advantage of the All-Russian genius. (shrink)

Orthodox church life in Ukraine from the summer of 1941 to the spring of 1944 was characterized by a sharp confrontation between two Orthodox churches, administrative centers of which were located in Volyn, in Lutsk and Kremenets. The Autonomous Orthodox Church was headed by an archbishop Alex. After his tragic death on May 7, 1943, the APC remained virtually without a chapter, since at this time the occupation authorities abolished the traditional system of church management. The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox (...) Church throughout its time was headed by an archbishop, and from May 1942 Metropolitan Polycarp. (shrink)

The Orthodox clergy of Volhynia played one of the major roles in the religious, cultural and political life of the region as part of the Second Commonwealth. Sacred authority, high educational attainment, and material support made him an influential social group. Depending on the corporate consciousness of the stratum, it would depend on whose ally it would act and whether it would promote a social progress, spiritual and national self-identification of the voivodship population. It should be borne in mind that (...) in the interwar period, the Volyn Orthodox clergy came in with appropriate ideological baggage and evolved over the course of twenty years. (shrink)

During the German-Soviet War and in the decades that followed, the Volyn Orthodox clergy functioned under a cohesive social ghetto, which was to ensure the gradual assimilation of the social group in accordance with the needs of the totalitarian regime. In this situation, the national self-awareness of a part of the sacred priests did not fit into the coordinates of the Nazi religious and ethnic politics and, later, into the process of creation of the Soviet people. The question of (...) national identity remains relevant, and now, when it is the basis of the newest Ukrainian state-making, it has caused division in the Orthodox field. The national consciousness of the Volyn clergy in the years of war and in the era of Soviet totalitarianism never became a topic of separate study. To date, scientists have only partially addressed the problem. Although in 1960, the head of the ROC Council, V. Kuroedov, said that the remnants of religious remnants contributed to preserving the bourgeois nationalist sentiment. The compilers of the first volume of documents and materials “Martyrology of the Ukrainian Churches” Osip Zinkevich and Alexander Voronin, analyzing the national composition of the bishopric of the Russian Church in Ukraine as of 1986, hoped that in case of revival of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, the origin of some of them role. (shrink)

On November 28-29, 1997, a conference meeting of UAR was held in Kyiv, in which representatives of 13 regional and 2 city centers took part. A report by the President of the Association was discussed and approved by the prof. A. Kolodny There was a fruitful professional work of Ternopil, Poltava, Sevastopol, Lviv, Sumy, Volyn and Odessa centers. At the same time, it is indicated on passivity in the organization of religious studies of Zhytomyr, Chernigov, Chernivtsi, Mykolayiv, and Kharkiv (...) branches and the loss of ties with the Board of the UAR of Transcarpathian, Donetsk and Vinnytsia cells. (shrink)

The monuments of spirituality of our people were and still remain chronicles, gospels, other liturgical books, in particular the Psalms, the Apostles, the Servants who were rewritten in churches and monasteries.At the same time, it should be borne in mind that until now only a fraction of their total number has come to this day. Among them, the most famous are the Galician Gospel of 1144, the Christopilian Apostle of the XII century, the Buchach Gospel of the XIII century. Until (...) our time, the monuments of secular literature of Galicia-Volyn's Russia have not been preserved except for the "Tale of blindness of Vasylko", although it is difficult to doubt them in their existence. To Galician scripts, individual researchers include, in particular, the "Teaching of Ephraim Syrin" from the collection of the Public Library. Saltykov-Shchedrin in St. Petersburg. We can confidently speak about the spread of the wives' epic on these lands. (shrink)

У статті охарактеризовано діяльність визначальних інституцій Західної України міжвоєнного періоду - греко-католицької і православної церков, які поряд із впливовими політичними партіями та товариствами помітно вплинули на функціонування тогочасної спільноти, виступали захисниками "українських інтересів", священики брали активну участь у громадському житті й були найбільш прогресивними та освіченими представниками народу.

У статті досліджується формування архітектурного ансамблю Почаївської лаври в 1831-1920 рр., якому в середині ХХ ст. надано статус пам'ятки історії та культури. На основі аналізу архітектурних проектів храмів лаври розкрито особливості архітектурних стилів споруд ХІХ - поч. ХХ ст. Відзначено, що розбудова лаври тісно пов'язана з творчістю видатних архітекторів, скульпторів, художників, різьбярів, будівничих. Показано, як на формування історико-культурного обличчя Почаївської лаври впливали різноманітні обставини, зокрема політичного, економічного, культурного характеру.