Ukraine and the Past

In order to understand how people pray and what visitors experience at the shrines in Ukraine, it is essential to look back at its secular and religious history.

The nation's modern history

The territory of Ukraine was a center of the medieval East Slavic civilization, founded by Scandinavians in the 9th century: known as Kievan Rus' (Ruthenia). It became the largest and most powerful nation in Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries, but disintegrated in the 12th century.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, Kiev was dominated by the Mongols. The higher Mongolian power was known for its cruelty. From the 14th century on, the Poles and the Lithuanians fought the Mongolian invaders and eventually all of septentrional Ukraine passed under the authority of Poland and Lituania.

During this Polish-Lithuanian domination ("commonwealth"), around the 15th century, the Cossaks started to emerge as militaristic communities of Orthodox peasants who rejected serfdom and the assimilation to Catholic Poles. They were tolerated by the Kingdom of Poland. In the middle of the 17th century an autonomous Ukrainian State was born, but in the 18th century the Empress of Russia Catherine the Great dismantled it.

By the 19th century, the largest part of Ukraine was integrated into the Russian Empire, with the rest under Austro-Hungarian control. At this time Ukrainian culture enjoyed a revival and an ephemeral independence in the years 1917-1920. After this chaotic period of incessant warfare, following World War I and the Russian Civil War, Ukraine emerged as one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union.

Under Stalin, a famine was artificially induced by the forced collectivization of the peasants and the requisition of the majority of their harvests, which took 3 to 7 million victims in the Ukraine in the years 1932-33. The Ukrainians call this dark time "Holodomor" or "extermination by hunger." All the Soviet republics experienced this artificial famine but the Republic of Ukraine, mostly rural, was particularly hit. Many historians consider this famine as genocide of the people of Ukraine.

The Kremlin, which extolled State atheism, attacked all religious symbols and destroyed more than 250 edifices. Executions and deportations (of Ukrainian nationalists or believers) were orchestrated during ethnic cleansing from 1937-1939: millions of Ukrainians were executed or sent to Soviet labor camps.

In the spring of 1941, Ukraine was rapidly invaded by the German troops. For 2 years, Nazis exactions were terrible. In the ensuing debacle more than 220,000 Ukrainians joined the German forces. In 1944, the Red Army reconquered the major part of Ukraine. At the end of the war Ukrainian losses were counted at 8 million people. In 1954, the head of the Soviet Nikita Khrouchtchev arranged the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR.

The Independence of Ukraine

In 1989 political detainees were freed. The Ukrainian Parliament adopted, on July 16, 1990, the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine. The independence was complete on August 24, 1991, when it was officially proclaimed and established and finally confirmed by referendum on December 1, 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

A quick overview of the religious history

Vladimir the Great, grand prince of Kievan Russia from about 980 to 1015, was baptized in the year 988 with the nobles and townsmen, by missionaries from Constantinople (Byzantium).

At that time, although Christianity had an Eastern character in relation to Byzantium and a Western character in relation to Rome, but these two sensibilities were not a cause for division in the Church. However, after 1054, the Byzantine Church and the Roman Church did gradually drifted apart.

At the Synod of Brest-Litovsk (1596), almost all the bishops of the Ukrainian and Bielorussian territories chose to reunite with Rome, while conserving the Eastern rites and customs distinctive of the Greek Catholic Church.

In the 20th century this Church was strongly persecuted

The persecution of Stalin, in 1931-1933, caused 7 million dead, and in 1934, the systematic annihilation of the elites: 500,000 dead.

The ecumenical problem was joined to a national one: Ukraine is an ethnic group, a nation. It tried to regain its independence at the time of the German invasion in 1941. The Germans who hoped to annex Ukraine, organized massive executions. After the war, Russian Ukraine and Polish Ukraine were reunified and integrated in the Soviet empire.

In 1946, Stalin deported 2 million Ukrainians to Siberia and intensified Russification. He had infiltrated the Orthodox Church to his serve his ends, but the Greek Orthodox Church, still faithful to Rome, was his pet aversion.

The pseudo-council of L'vov proclaimed the integration of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church into the Patriarcate (Orthodox) of Moscow; at the same time Stalin was organizing the destruction of churches. Cardinal Joseph Slipyi spent 18 heroic years in labor camps.

During this time Our Lady of Sorrows (Skorbna Maty) accompanied the martyrs and infused courage in them along with hope in the resurrection.

________________________________________

Wikipedia.org.

Attilio GALLI, Madre della Chiesa dei Cinque continenti, Ed. Segno, Udine, 1997.

Laurentin, Comment la Vierge Marie leur a rendu la liberté, ŒIL, Paris, 1991.