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This text initially appeared on: Russian Religion, a brand new web site with information concerning the Christian renaissance in Russia. See their introductory video at finish of article
Lemko (Rusyn) ladies in nationwide costume. Lemko’s are a Carpatho-Russian tribe from Western Ukraine.
Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from era to era.
The Nice Doxology (a part of a Russian Orthodox Morning Service).
O God, give me the energy to dwell by means of this present day and assist me to outlive on this overseas land the place they’ve introduced me and my youngsters…O Lord, give my youngsters the knowledge to seek out their manner again to the place of birth of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers to honour their graves, their church buildings and their religion.
Kateryna Rusyn
“Not all those that wander are misplaced”
J.R.R. Tolkien
As soon as when the American pop-artist Andy Warhol, was requested the place he got here from, he answered: ‘I come from nowhere’. In a single sense he was proper, for his actual identify was Ondrej Varchola, the son of Carpatho-Russian immigrants to Pittsburgh within the US in 1918. It’s no good trying on a map – you’ll not discover Carpatho-Russia. It exists, and but it has by no means existed, it’s ‘nowhere’. No marvel that some have referred to as the Carpatho-Russians ‘the Kurds of Europe’. Who’re they and the place is Carpatho-Russia?
Maybe a extra widespread identify for Carpatho-Russia is Ruthenia. Nonetheless, we should always use this identify ‘Ruthenia’ with care, for, simply as Greeks don’t name themselves ‘Greek’, so ‘Ruthenians’ don’t name themselves ‘Ruthenian’. This Japanese Slav folks, who dwell in and across the Carpathian mountains, converse a language which resembles Ukrainian, and but which is distinct from it. For nicely over fifteen hundred years, they’ve lived in these Carpathians, the unique house of all of the Slav peoples.
The Carpathian Mountains are really a spot of magnificence. Try this text a few martyred Rusyn Priest for extra beautiful photos like that.
Earlier than the Russian Revolution, most Carpatho-Russians lived scattered throughout a thousand villages within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, many in a area referred to as Galicia, the place they have been sorely persecuted and Uniatized. After the break-up of that oppressive Empire, the true ‘jail of the peoples’, most Carpatho-Russians discovered themselves residing in Poland and Slovakia.
Since 1945, when Stalin took an jap slice of Slovakia, most, over 600,000, have lived in what’s now the Ukraine. Others nonetheless dwell in north-east Slovakia north of Presov, and within the south-east nook of Poland. Nonetheless, there are additionally smaller teams of Carpatho-Russians in Hungary, Serbia and Romania and elsewhere, and in addition a really giant emigration, primarily from 1880-1914, within the USA, particularly in Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and in different international locations of the New World. (One among these Carpatho-Russians, Sgt Michael Strank, was the soldier who raised the celebrities and stripes at Iwo Jima, thus figuring in probably the most well-known images of the 20 th century).
Typically referred to as ‘rusnaks’, within the Ukraine the Carpatho-Russians are sometimes referred to as ‘Transcarpathians’, in Poland as ‘Lemki’ and in Slovakia they’re referred to as ‘Subcarpathians’. Lecturers often time period them as ‘Carpatho-Russians’ or ‘Carpatho-Rusyns’. Nonetheless, they name themselves ‘Rusyn’.
With their emigration, the Carpatho-Russians quantity nicely over a million souls, maybe as many as one and a half million. By folklore and customized the Carpatho-Russians resemble very a lot the Slovaks, Ukrainians and Poles, with influences from the Austrians and the Hungarians. Nonetheless, by faith, and that is what defines the Carpatho-Russians, they’re all Orthodox-rite.
Palanok Fortress, Ukrainian Transcarpathia
Lower than one third are literally Orthodox, and over two thirds, because the compelled ‘Unia’ of the top of the sixteenth century, are nominal Greek-Catholics or Uniats. No Carpatho-Russian worthy of the identify, is a Latin Catholic or Protestant. Furthermore, in the event you discuss to such unusual Greek-Catholics, most of them will let you know, they usually consider it, that they’re in truth ‘Pravoslavny’ – Orthodox – such is the deception and trickery performed on the straightforward by the clerics of the Vatican.
Transformed to Orthodoxy by Sts Cyril and Methodius, historically within the yr 863, for hundreds of years the Carpatho-Russian folks survived as Orthodox, exterior the safety of any Orthodox State, and plenty of nonetheless accomplish that in the present day.
Beneath their beloved Patron, St Nicholas the Wonderworker, they’ve survived innumerable persecutions and massacres, significantly from Catholic Poles, Hungarians and Austrians (at their infamous Thalerhof focus camp), then Czechs, Fascist Germans and Slovaks, then Communist Poles and Ukrainians and now Slovak Uniats.
Catholic Uniates stole many Orthodox Church buildings and transformed them into Catholic church buildings just like this one in Lvov.
Over 100 years in the past, hunger and persecution led lots of them, almost half one million, to to migrate to the USA. Right here most of the Greek Catholics amongst them, persecuted by Latin Catholic bishops, reverted to Orthodoxy. They got here to type the spine of what has now grow to be the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). Different Orthodox, shaped the fifty parishes, now underneath Metropolitan Nicholas of the Carpatho-Russian Diocese (at current within the Patriarchate of Constantinople).
Some others belong to the Russian Orthodox Church Exterior Russia (ROCOR), just like the [then] current head of ROCOR, Metropolitan Laurus [now diseased]. Certainly, earlier than the Second World Struggle, the Carpatho-Russians have been a lot helped by the ROCOR monastery in Ladomirova in Carpatho-Russia, which revealed a journal, ‘Orthodox Carpatho-Russia’. After that warfare the printing press and monastery moved to Jordanville within the USA and the title of the journal modified to the current ‘Orthodox Russia’.
Ladomirova Monastery of Saint Job of Pochaev
Of their homelands, Greek Catholic Carpatho-Russians, persecuted by the Communists, at the moment are reviving. Sadly, fanatical Ukrainian nationalist sentiment, initially an anti-Russian software invented by Austrians and Hungarians, has currently been a lot exacerbated amongst them by the Vatican. Within the final fifteen years, these Uniats have been taking revenge for Communist persecution on the Orthodox, inflicting appreciable issues by means of their aggression and stealing many of the outdated picket Orthodox church buildings in Slovakia from the Orthodox.
As regards the Orthodox who stay within the homeland, they belong to the Orthodox Church buildings of the Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland. Within the Ukraine there are some tensions between Ukrainians and the Carpatho-Russians. They primarily dwell round Uzhgorod, close to the border with Slovakia, to which State this area belonged till 1945. Certainly, Uzhgorod is the actual capital of Carpatho-Russia.
As regards the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, it’s in truth divided into three ethnic dioceses, one for Czechs, one for Slovaks, and a reinvigorated one, the actual Metropolitan centre of this Native Church, in Presov, for the Carpatho-Russians, the Rusyny of ‘Presov Rus’ (Priashevskaya Rus’).
The Polish Orthodox Church is in truth largely composed of Ukrainians and to a lesser extent Belorussians, with only a few Poles, however it additionally consists of Carpatho-Russians, Lemki, trustworthy like most Orthodox Rusyns within the homeland, to the Orthodox calendar.
Within the Diocese of the Polish Church bordering Slovakia, underneath Bishop Adam, there’s a explicit revival, which has come about partly because the canonization in 1994 of the Priest-Martyr Maxim, slain by the Latins in 1914. In 2003, one other confessor, St Alexis (Kabaliuk) (1875-1947), ‘The Apostle of Carpatho-Russia’, whose relics have been discovered intact in 1999, was canonized within the western Ukraine – Carpatho-Russia. He not solely resisted the Austro-Hungarian persecutors, however later additionally the corruptions of the modernist improvements of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and located safety for his folks within the Russian and Serbian Church buildings.
We now give the Lifetime of the Holy Martyr Maxim, which explains one thing of the background to the sufferings of the Carpatho-Russian folks.
Try this nice article about Father Maxim to be taught extra about his wonderful life and brutal martyrdom by the arms of Austrian Catholics.
Orthodoxy in Carpatho-Russia has deep roots and the notorious ‘Unia’, or union with Rome, didn’t start with the widespread folks. Actually it was imposed by the machinations of the city service provider class and a small minority of the clergy who desired the identical feudal rights as their Catholic counterparts. Thus, these two courses of individuals betrayed their Orthodox princes and the trustworthy. The 2 religions struggled and even after the ‘victory’ of the Unia, Orthodoxy was not forgotten.
To counterbalance Catholic affect and to additional deceive the folks, the Uniats fastidiously preserved the purity of the Japanese Orthodox ritual, contemplating {that a} coverage of sluggish and gradual Latinization can be way more profitable in the long term than one in all outright imposition of the Roman ritual. But the cultural inclination of the Carpatho-Russian folks in the direction of the Russian mainstream, which expressed itself in undisguised sympathy for Orthodoxy, couldn’t be silenced. Within the eyes of most distinguished Carpatho-Russians, the Unia was however the instrument and means employed to sunder the one Russian household they usually directed their gaze in the direction of Orthodoxy as the traditional and unique religion of their folks when Holy Rus had been one.
This inclination, which was distinctively Russian, was a vital aspect within the Carpatho-Russian response in opposition to ‘Ukrainianism’, artfully contrived by the Germans and Austrians as a weapon in opposition to the pan-Slav motion that threatened their domination of the world. Even among the many Carpatho-Russian Uniat clergy, who perpetuated the thought of the union, there have been sympathies in the direction of Orthodoxy. These sympathies have been so intense that the very idea of ‘Catholic’ was thought of a kind of heresy. Certainly, their idea of the union was decreased to a purely jurisdictional recognition of the primacy of the Pope of Rome.
Orthodox sympathies have been attribute of the folks of Carpatho-Russia. Alarmed by the expansion of those sympathies and concluding that this development was being directed towards rapprochement with Russia, from about 1900 on, the Austro-Hungarian authorities started to persecute. Unprecedented repression was imposed on Russophile clergy, each Uniat and Orthodox. The realm teamed with informers. Not solely the gendarmes, village clerks and sheriffs, but additionally academics and a few clergy denounced their neighbors. It reached the purpose the place, in some areas of Carpatho-Russia, your complete educated class – clergymen, attorneys, judges, academics, highschool and college college students, in addition to peasants – have been subjected to mass arrests. The prisons overflowed with these accused of treason. One in 5 Carpatho-Russians was imprisoned.
Lvov, Ukraine, one of many locations the place Father Maxim was imprisoned.
In accordance with a directive issued from Vienna, the Uniat Metropolitan of Lvov, threatened by the expansion of Orthodoxy, rapidly shifted his coverage to one in all isolation from all that was Orthodox. A Ukrainian Uniat ritual was concocted, which differed considerably from Orthodox ritual. The names of saints particularly revered in Russia have been deleted from the calendar. The veneration of wonderworking icons of the Mom of God which had appeared in Russia (e.g. the Iveron, Kazan and Pochaev icons) have been proscribed. The phrase ‘Orthodox’ was changed within the divine companies with ‘Catholic’. Candidates suspected of harbouring Russophile sympathies have been refused admittance to Uniat seminaries, acceptance being restricted completely to these admittedly Ukrainian in outlook, who have been ready to submit a written oath of hatred for Russia.
All through the Carpathian area an amazing upheaval shook the parishes. Uniat clergymen of Russian persuasion have been pushed from their posts, their households have been forged out into the streets, and few have been the brave souls who dared to defy the authorities by sheltering the homeless. The parishes have been then turned over to newly-ordained clergymen who had acquired their schooling by the hands of the Jesuits of the Basilian School. The imposition of the brand new Ukrainian Uniat ritual was entrusted to the Jesuit-educated monks of the ‘Order of St. Basil the Nice’. But when life had grow to be tough for the Uniat Russophile clergy, it was far worse for the few Orthodox clergymen and their households in Carpatho-Russia and Galicia. Allow us to look at the case of 1 such priest, Fr. Maxim Sandovich, of blessed reminiscence.
Fr. Maxim was born in Galicia, the son of Timothy and Christina Sandovich of the village of Zdyna.
His father was a affluent farmer, who additionally served as choir director within the native parish church. Having accomplished 4 years of examine at the highschool in Novy Sanch, Maxim stole throughout the border into Russia and have become a novice on the nice Pochaev Lavra in Volynia.
A view of Pochaev Lavra in the direction of Dormition Cathedral.
Subsequently he attended the Orthodox seminary at Zhitomir, and after marrying a younger Orthodox lady named Pelagia, was ordained in 1911 to the holy priesthood and returned to his homeland. His pastoral and missionary service was to not final for lengthy, for the militia have been ever vigilant; he was denounced by a Ukrainian trainer, a sure Leos, and the Austrian gendarmes carried him off in chains to a jail in Lvov in 1912. He was to languish in jail with out trial or inquest for 2 years, enduring indescribably horrible circumstances and abuse. Lastly, on the very eve of World Struggle I he was launched for lack of proof.
Fr. Maxim returned once more to his house within the village of Hrab, however was not fated to stay there lengthy. The primary pictures fired within the new warfare have been the heralds of a brand new repression of Carpatho-Russians. On 4 August 1914, the militia arrested the younger priest, his father, mom, brother and spouse and after a lot abuse dragged them off in shackles to the district jail in Horlitsk. The street was tough and the prisoners have been compelled to journey on foot, prodded on by the bayonets of the gendarmes. Phrases can’t convey the struggling of the harmless Sandovich household.
Gorlice (Horlitsk) then and now.
Two days handed in jail and Sunday 6 August dawned. Having risen from his bunk earlier than the sunshine of day Fr. Maxim learn his morning prayers and three akathists. Then he stood immobile, misplaced in thought, gazing out the little window of his cell, making an attempt to catch a glimpse of his spouse or one in all his family members. They’d all been imprisoned in numerous cells and have been denied permission to see one another. The silence of the grave lay on the gloomy constructing, however past the partitions the noise of a crowd might be heard.
What may this imply? May they’ve introduced in some new ‘spies’? Maybe that they had caught some new deserters the terrors of warfare for a lot of are onerous to bear. Out of the blue a loud thud on the jail’s black gates broke the priest’s reverie. It was not but six o’clock. A moustachioed German captain from Linz, Dietrich, a person with a popularity for cruelty and sadism, entered the jail compound with two troopers and 4 gendarmes. They have been adopted shut behind by the jail wardens, numerous civil servants, officers and a small group of curious women. This entourage was headed by Pan Mitshka, the pinnacle man of the Horlitsky District. The order was given for the warden to deliver Fr. Maxim forth from his cell.
Horlitsky District
Silence fell. Two troopers led the twenty-eight year-old Orthodox priest from the jail and out of the blue he realized the place they have been taking him. ‘Be so good as to not maintain me. I’ll go peacefully wherever you would like’, he stated humbly, and with the dignity that turns into a real shepherd of souls he walked to the sight of his ultimate torments. The murmuring of the gang and the venomous glances they threw the ‘traitor’ affected his brave bearing not within the least. He walked as befits a follower of Christ, calmly, with measured gait, to the fateful wall.
Once more silence reigned. An execution was to be carried out within the identify of the ‘apostolic’ Emperor – the execution of a Russian priest on Russian land! Captain Dietrich, the hero of the day, ripped the cross from Fr. Maxim’s chest, forged it to the bottom on the priest’s toes and trampled it underneath foot; he then tied the prisoner’s arms behind his again and certain his eyes with a black kerchief. ‘You do this stuff needlessly. I’ve no intention of operating away’. The captain laughed diabolically and with a chunk of white chalk drew a line throughout the priest’s chest on his black cassock as a goal for the riflemen. Then he organized the executioners – two gendarmes on both sides. The 2 troopers, closely armed, stood solely three paces from the defenceless man.
An much more profound stillness descended upon the scene. Mitshka took a blue paper from his briefcase and browse the loss of life sentence. A brief command was uttered by the captain; the sabre was raised; when it was lowered the rifles sounded. The pictures echoed by means of the again corridors of the jail, and once more the silence of the cemetery stuffed the jail courtyard.
Via this silence the voice of Fr. Maxim was heard distinctly: ‘Lengthy dwell the Russian folks!’ he cried, leaning his head in opposition to the jail wall. ‘Lengthy dwell the Holy Orthodox Religion!’ he continued, his voice turning into weaker. ‘Lengthy dwell Slavdom!’ he completed, barely audible. These have been his ultimate phrases. Wracked with the throws of loss of life, his highly effective body slid down the wall to the flagstones of the courtyard.
One of many gendarmes approached and ended the priest’s sufferings with three pictures from his revolver; the clergymen brains splattered in opposition to the jail wall. His aged father and mom each watched the heroic loss of life of their son in silence, however Pelagia, his spouse, wept inconsolably in her cell; and when the pictures that introduced an finish to her younger husband’s life rang out, she fell mindless to the bottom. Thus died Fr. Maxim Sandovich, a martyr for Orthodoxy.
The Tomb of Father Maxim
The Prayer of Kateryna
The persecution of the Carpatho-Russians didn’t cease after the First World Struggle. 1945 introduced nice struggling, firstly to these deported to the Ukraine. For different Carpatho-Russians in south-east Poland, the Lemki, in 1947 there additionally got here deportation, primarily far to the north-west, to Silesia, to the previous properties of deported Germans. This ‘Vistula motion’ of deportation by the Poles was meant to denationalize the Carpatho-Russians. Right here follows the prayer of 1 deportee, Kateryna Rusyn, taken away from Poland to the Ukraine:
O God, give me the energy to dwell by means of this present day and assist me to outlive on this overseas land the place they’ve introduced me and my youngsters.
O Lord, I pray and beseech Thee, let me not perish, nor my household, nor my folks, who have been late to sow the holy grain; for the corn will ripen in the summertime they usually know not when or how it will likely be gathered.
Beskyd Mountains
O All-Highest Lord, allow us to not neglect – neither in the present day, nor tomorrow, nor ever – and assist us to maintain alive in our reminiscence all the fantastic thing about our land, of the mountains, and of the wealthy, therapeutic and pure waters in our rivers: the Bystry, the Poprad, and the Syan; and allow us to additionally bear in mind the truthful and beautiful nation of the excessive pastures, and the woodland paths by means of the hills; allow us to not neglect the locations of lots within the forest the place the mushrooms develop, and the aromatic strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries, and the woodland clearings the place the cattle graze.
O God, allow us to not neglect our customs, the lilt of our mom tongue, our tales and our songs, our dances and our evenings collectively on holy days and workdays.
O Lord, give my youngsters the knowledge to seek out their manner again to the place of birth of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers to honour their graves, their church buildings and their religion.
O God, grant unto my youngsters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren all of the items of the Holy Spirit: knowledge, understanding, cause, braveness, data, piety, and in addition give them a very powerful of all human virtues – Religion, Hope and Love.
O Lord, bestow upon me and my youngsters the data to inform the distinction between good and evil, happiness and unhappiness, and provides me the knowledge to worth goodness and be pleased about good!
Grant me to know the right way to affect an enemy, give me the generosity to assist the poor, and in addition give me the understanding to persuade the wrongdoer of the evil of his methods, and to show those that have no idea. Amen.
Transcarpathian Ukraine
We’ve heard the voices of Orthodox Carpatho-Russia, calling to us from their highland properties. This little nook of Holy Rus’ has survived by means of a thousand years of oppression and persecution, exterior the safety of the Russian State. It may be stated that every one who confess Russian Orthodoxy, no matter our nationality and no matter language we use, belong to Carpatho-Russia. For, no matter our nationality, all of us dwell ‘past the Carpathians’, and although we don’t belong to the Russian State, in our Religion all of us belong to Rus’, to Holy Russia, a land a lot better than any mere State.
Scattered throughout the face of the earth, we dwell surrounded by Non-Orthodox, and endure, just like the Hebrews who of outdated wept in exile by the waters of Babylon. In struggling for Holy Orthodoxy, we too, just like the trustworthy Orthodox Rusyns, belong to Holy Rus’.
And in selecting up such fragments of Holy Orthodoxy throughout in the present day’s Non-Orthodox and anti-Orthodox Europe, in placing them collectively just like the items of a large jigsaw, we rediscover not solely ourselves, but additionally the entire image of a as soon as Orthodox Europe, and there uncover the Picture of Christ, Who has been right here on a regular basis.
Holy Hieromartyr Maxim and Holy Father Alexis pray to God for Orthodox Carpatho-Russia,
and for all us Orthodox past the Carpathians!
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