KYIV – In the heart of the run-down Podil district, surrounded by 19th- century townhouses and Soviet trams, a small gem of an anachronism has appeared. A Byzantine church so rosy pink and spanking new it appears to have been transported whole from the golden age of the Kyivan Rus.
Next to the monstrous Soviet-era Foreign Ministry, another miracle. A many-storied baroque bell tower steadily rising from a tangle of scaffolding.
They are the realization of a Ukrainian dream to correct the barbarous mistakes of a Soviet past. The Bohorodytsy Pyrohoschy, or Madonna of Pyrohoscha church in Podil, and Mikhailivsky Zolotoverkhy or St. Michael’s of the Golden Domes in the upper town, survived for nine centuries only to be unceremoniously demolished in the 1930s. Now they are being reconstructed by the Kyiv City Administration and the national Oles Honchar Foundation, which is charged with restoring historical monuments.
Built to glorify the Christianity embraced by the powerful Kyivan Rus empire, these churches fell victim to an atheist regime.
Now a reconstruction effort marshalled to celebrate a renaissance of Ukrainian culture has fallen prey to the schisms among the nation’s Orthodox believers. The great churches of the Kyivan Rus are being fought over by rival sects before they even open their doors at the end of a millennium whose start they so splendidly marked. The Oles Honchar Foundation was established in 1995 by presidential decree to support the renovation, and in some cases the rebuilding, of Ukraine’s neglected national heritage. Of 506 sites of unique historical importance listed by UNESCO worldwide, Ukraine can lay claim to only one, even though the distinction actually covers two sites: St. Sophia’s Church and the Pecherska Lavra monastery complex, both in Kyiv. While St. Sophia’s has survived the centuries relatively unscathed, the centerpiece of the Pecherska Lavra, the Uspensky (Assumption) Cathedral, is now little more than some moldering foundations. The biggest project of the Honchar Foundation is to rebuild it by the year 2000.
Members of the foundation say they want to atone for the sins of their forbears.
‘It’s a matter of repentance,’ said spokesman Vadim Finadorin.
Some have waited a long time to realize this dream. Petro Tronko, the foundation’s chairman and head of the department of local history at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, has spent his life championing Ukrainian culture; for 22 years during the Soviet era he headed a society of lovers of Ukraine and published 26 volumes of Ukrainian history.
The 83-year-old takes an especially personal interest in the Uspensky Cathedral, which he once ran away to see as a schoolboy. A native of Kharkiv, he skipped classes and took a train to Kyiv to see the great church, to which his grandmother had twice walked on a pilgrimage all the way from Kharkiv.
The second time he saw it, he was a Red Army soldier liberating Kyiv from the Germans in 1943. By that time, the cathedral was a ruin.
‘I never dreamed then that one day my duty would be … the reconstruction of this cathedral,’ he said. The Ukrainian writer Oles Honchar, whose name the foundation honors, died before he could see how his novel ‘Cathedral,’ written in 1968, would influence the restoration effort. The book’s central theme of a church embodying Ukraine’s spiritual renewal is the cornerstone for the foundation’s work.
‘These cathedrals and churches are a symbol of the Ukrainian mentality, and the Orthodox Church was always a unifying force in Ukraine,’ said Finadorin. No longer. In 1990 the Ukrainian Orthodox Church split into two main rival factions, one loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow and another one with its own patriarch in Kyiv. The two have waged relentless battles over church property and adherents. The churches slated for restoration are among the most tempting of war trophies. The Honchar Foundation has washed its hands of the competing claims, taking responsibility for the actual reconstruction and leaving open the vexed question of who will benefit.
‘Of course we are concerned, but it’s not within our competence,’ said Finadorin. ‘Unfortunately, we can’t unite all these confessions that can’t come to an agreement. That’s why we are focusing only on helping the country to restore these sites.’
The ultimate decision rests with the government bankrolling the work, and it has not yet taken sides. Meanwhile, the two Ukrainian Orthodox Churches are already confident of a favorable outcome.
‘I don’t think there will be great problems,’ said Metropolitan Volodymyr of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate). ‘These are national treasures and will be used by the all national, all Orthodox churches. Ours is the traditional, historic church.’ His opponent is equally serene.
‘I don’t think there will be much conflict,’ said Patriarch Filaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate). ‘These memorials of the Ukrainian people should belong to the Ukrainian Church, meaning the Kyiv and not the Moscow Church.’
While the Bohorodytsy church is approaching completion and Mikhailivsky’s bell tower is expected to be finished in time for Kyiv Days this May, work on the Uspensky Cathedral has yet to begin.
The history of the cathedral is less clear-cut than that of its sister churches. Historians are still debating whether it was blown up in 1941 by the retreating Red Army or later by the occupying German forces.
Its future is proving as contentious as its past. Repeated plans for rebuilding have so far come to nothing. The Honchar Foundation blames the ancient tunnels and caves that riddle the Uspensky’s foundations.
‘Rebuilding could tip the whole Lavra into the Dnipro river,’ said Valentyna Irshenko, the foundation’s executive director.
Others say the delay is political. Uspensky is the most anxiously fought over of the three churches because of its illustrious position. Its foundations sit in the upper Lavra, which is still a state preserve; the Moscow Patriarchate controls the lower Lavra. The latter would like to expand its control to the entire complex, while the Kyiv Patriarchate sees Uspensky as its own potential Lavra bridgehead.
‘All buildings in the complex should be used by one master,’ said Volodymyr. ‘The Lavra belongs to the Moscow Patriarchate and no other church can be here.’ ‘I truly believe Lavra will belong to the only, united, native Orthodox Church,’ rejoined Filaret. ‘The situation in which the Orthodox Church in Ukraine finds itself is not normal and is only temporary. There will be one Orthodox Church in Ukraine independent of Moscow. Then this question of to whom Lavra and Mikhailivsky should belong will not exist.’
The two churches’ animosity has deprived the foundation of a major source of financial support. The Honchar Foundation expects to spend Hr 36 million on the Mikhailivsky Cathedral’s shell alone, not counting any interior work. It has allocated Hr 200,000 just to survey the Uspensky Cathedral’s foundations. The cost of rebuilding the church is estimated at Hr 39 million.
While the government is shouldering a large part of the costs, voluntary donations are indispensable. The fund’s staunchest supporter is the National Bank of Ukraine, whose chairman, Viktor Yuschenko, is a foundation member and has encouraged his subordinates to contribute one day’s salary to the fund. Other financial support has come from the Ukrainian diaspora. But Ukraine’s Orthodox Churches have been conspicuously reticent in their contributions. Filaret donated only Hr 5,500, according to Irshenko, while the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) has given nothing at all.
The Moscow Patriarchate has already offered to rebuild the Uspensky Cathedral unaided in return for full control over the site.
The foundation has rejected the offer on the grounds that it is concerned with authenticity.
‘We don’t know how they would build it,’ said Irshenko. ‘They might build a church there, but we need to reconstruct exactly what was there before.’ That is less simple than it sounds. All three churches were erected in Byzantine style, but both Uspensky and Mikhailivsky Cathedrals were rebuilt or at least given an outer shell of Ukrainian baroque, while the Bohorodytsy church ended up neo-classical with a fringe of shops added onto its walls.
Unable to recreate the palimpsest of nine centuries, the foundation has decided to rebuild Uspensky and Mikhailivsky as they looked when they were demolished, in baroque style. The Kyiv City Administration, which started work in Podil before the Honchar Foundation got involved, preferred to start at the other end and has reconstructed the Bohorodytsy Pyrohoschy church in the pure Byzantine style it displayed before exposure to the whims of history and fashion.
Thus Ukraine’s history is being reconstructed, if not arbitrarily, then at least selectively. The foundation has more plans and projects throughout the country, and has even put up some more contenders for a UNESCO listing. Ukraine cannot make progress, members say, unless it works to fix the ravages of history.
‘If a country has no past, it can’t have a future,’ said Irshenko.
