What will happen to the Ukrainian society, if it enters the globalized 21st century without self-identification? Although the European Union calls itself a unity of the democratic countries equal in rights, it cannot help us to preserve our uniqueness.
Volyn journalist Valentyna Shtynko along with the local historian Yevhen Kovalchuk started forming Volyn’s image for the Ukrainians without waiting for the large-scale state projects and populist initiatives of the politicians. On almost 300 pages of Volyn: Temples and People book they tell about the history of Volyn forests’ churches and people. The local historians tried to visit even the utmost villages to reveal the forgotten old icons, which are unique for the cultural heritage of the region. The most outstanding is the icon Our Lady of Kholm, which was lost during the wartime and accidentally found in the Horlytski family archives only in 1996. There is a story of Iov Kondzelevych, Volyn artist, and the detailed description of the temple in the Voloshky village, Kovel area (where Lesia Ukrainka worshipped). This temple was burnt to the ground once the journalists managed to write down and publish people’s memories about it.
The efforts of the local newspaper Volyn-Nova journalists resulted in the monograph. The newspaper has been publishing these sketches for many years. This initiative is symbolic for the regional press, which supposedly suffers from the lack of topics. Each village has its sacral heritage the contemporaries hardly know about. “The idea of the research appeared after the talk with a young village priest who had been serving for quite a long time in the parish but knew little about the church history. What can we say about the parishioners then?” Valentyna Shtynko asks, “Moreover, there are many examples how the temple decayed without the congregation. Those are mostly Catholic churches.” “Preserving the sacral heritage is the issue, in which we should not divide into the church and the state apart but become the united civil society,” she proceeds, “While preparing the materials we met careless attitude towards the icons, not really knowledgeable priests could repaint them or hold a totally unprofessional restoration of the churches. That is how the temples are being destroyed.”
The book will be interesting for the Volyn people first of all. “It is paradoxical that the closest things to home appear to be the furthest to heart,” Valentyna notes. The author also recommends this book to the experts, local historians, and students. “I dream that we would hear the reverent prayers of the young people in the described churches. Because of the internal controversies and conventionality our orthodoxy is declining as the youth comes to the church only on Christmas and Easter.”
