Transcarpathia still has 118 wooden churches that were built over the past five centuries. Forty-eight of them are registered as architectural monuments. By contrast, Slovakia has only 27 wooden churches, but they all function normally and are reliably protected by the state. In Transcarpathia dozens of wooden churches are in deplorable condition. The area’s cultural figures and journalists, who have created the Cultural Brotherhood and New Form civic organizations, and professors from the Uzhhorod College of Arts claim that the regional authorities’ campaign called “Save the Wooden Churches of Transcarpathia,” which was launched three years ago, has boiled down to holding run-of-the-mill concerts and failed to provide at least minimal protection for these holy places. Activists are now drawing up a message urging President Yushchenko and the new prime minister to adopt a government program to preserve and restore hundreds of old wooden churches in the Ukrainian Carpathian region.
The regional Cultural Heritage Conservation Department has begun to certify and register wooden churches in Transcarpathia. There are still about 70 non-registered, mostly Orthodox, churches in the area, built in the 1920s. The cash- strapped department has to beg national and foreign charities for funds to renovate and restore them. A few local masters recently helped launch the production of roofing shingles. Hennady Moskal, former head of the oblast administration, helped to repair the roof of a church in the village of Huklyvy.
The Museum of Transcarpathian Folk Architecture and Folkways recently managed to acquire a six- sided Hutsul belfry from Rakhiv district. It now stands near the Shelestiv church, the area’s only classic Lemko church that dates back to the 18th century. The museum has also been trying to move an old chapel from Mizhhirsk district to Uzhhorod, but the village parish keeps setting new financial conditions, although the chapel has long been closed. In many Transcarpathian villages wooden churches become redundant once a new brick church has been commissioned. In Kobyletska Poliana parishioners simply burned down the wooden church. In Neresnytsia and Steblivka a bolt of lightning struck a couple of wooden churches, while in Vodytsia and Kostylivka they were simply dismantled. In the years of Ukrainian independence, ten ancient temples have vanished in Transcarpathia. This type of sacrilege must stop, says Milan Shashyk, the new bishop of the Mukachiv Greek Catholic Diocese, who is a citizen of Slovakia. Restoration work will start in the coming spring at the Strukove church in the village of Yasinya, where 14,000 shingles have already been delivered.
Transcarpathia has five styles of wooden churches: Lemko, Boiko, Hutsul, baroque, and Gothic. The oldest ones are 15th-century churches in Serednie Vodiane and Kolodne. Art specialist Mykhailo Syrokhman told The Day, “Several churches badly need funds for renovations from this spring onwards: a church in the village of Roztoka, Mizhhirsk district, and one in Kolodne. The latter is in appalling condition: the wood is rotting and the frescoes and wood paintings are severely damaged. There are only ten churches in all of Ukraine that have interior wood paintings, and five of them are in Transcarpathia.”
