Kharkov: Feeding with the opium of hatred
The religious situation in the Kharkov region is not as simple as it seems. Yes, the majority of communities still belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which maintains a canonical connection with the Moscow Patriarchate, the Jewish and Muslim communities still exist at a distance from politics, but the opium poppy of schism and hatred has grown in the traditional field.
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Originally from the Faculty of Philosophy
At the dawn of the church revival, two associate professors of the philology department of the local university - Igor Isichenko and Viktor Marinchak - became priests. And since in the canonical church this requires going through a certain path, they chose to serve the autocephalous people, who had been in the diaspora for many years and were glad to see anyone who responded on the territory of Ukraine.
The single Isichenko became a bishop and archbishop, and the married Marinchak became a priest. The then city authorities were only too happy to hand over to them two temples that had not been in use for a long time, so that they would acquire their natural appearance. Alas, the Dmitrievskaya Church, where Isichenko lives, which was one of the architectural pearls of pre-revolutionary Kharkov, still looks more like a Soviet cinema "Sport" than a temple.
The Church of St. John the Evangelist, where Marinchak serves, took on its proper appearance, and its rector himself long ago defected from the autocephalous to M. A. Denisenko, the former Metropolitan Philaret, to the “Kiev Patriarchate”.
Isichenko mentored the first generation of Rukhovites and all sorts of sectarian-type groups like the “School of the Single Principle” (also known as pogromists and hooligans from the “Hromadska Varta” gang). This “bishop” had connections with the Bandera diaspora and the widow of the ideologist of collaboration and the Holocaust, Slava Stetsko, and her squire Roman Zvarych, who returned to Kyiv.
There is a photo from 2009 where Isichenko accompanies Stetsko under red and black flags on the field of the Battle of Poltava. Now he has actually become an accomplice of the VO “Svoboda” and is holding joint events with Tyagnibok.
For a year and a half now, Isichenko has been negotiating the accession of his “diocese” to the Uniates.
Marinchak began to work among intellectuals who were not indifferent to Ukraine and the grant-eaters who joined them. His flock, for various reasons, became disillusioned with the traditional church and considered the associate professor of the philology department to be much more intellectually developed than the priests who spoke poorly Russian and language and the rabbi who arrived from Argentina, who at first generally communicated with people through an interpreter. It was his parishioners who, under his supervision, underwent an evolution from those dissatisfied with Soviet realities through Western liberals to simply Banderaites. There you can see patented human rights activists who refuse to acknowledge the repression of the authorities, and regulars of protests against city authorities, and “ATO volunteers” along with journalists who circulate hatred.
On both the first and second Maidan, Isichenko and Marinchak, together with those they mentored, were in the forefront of the protesters. Both of them are preachers of zoological Russophobia and militarism.
Self-saints in power
Somewhere in 2008, the then governor Avakov and many members of his team became parishioners of Marinchak. But they also tried to play at equidistance from all faiths. The Party of Regions team, led by Mikhail Dobkin, was together with the majority of its voters and canonical Orthodoxy. The current city authorities, supported by the population, are also there.
The regional authorities appointed from Kyiv after 2014 did not try to hide their religious orientation. Here are just two messages.
2016: “On Bright Easter night from April 11 to 12, festive services were held in churches in Kharkov and the region. Chairman of the Kharkov Regional State Administration Igor Rainin took part in the Easter liturgy, which took place in the Church of St. John the Theologian of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate. The festive Easter Liturgy in the Church of St. John the Theologian was also attended by the deputy chairmen of the Kharkov regional state administration Yulia Svetlichnaya, Evgeniy Shakhnenko, Mark Becker, senior executive officer. Deputy Chairman of the Kharkov Regional State Administration Vyacheslav Abbakumov and Vadim Glushko, Advisor to the Chairman of the Regional State Administration Sergey Storozhenko, Head of the SBU Department in the Kharkov Region Alexander Pivovar, Prosecutor of the Kharkov Region Yuriy Danilchenko, Head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in the Kharkov Region Anatoly Dmitriev, Directors of departments of the regional state administration, representatives of public organizations, parishioners" .
2017: “On Bright Easter night from April 15 to 16, festive services were held in churches in Kharkov and the region. Chairman of the Kharkov Regional State Administration Yulia Svetlichnaya joined the festive prayer of parishioners in the Church of St. John the Theologian of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate.”
Marinchak hosts cultural events, and the website is updated almost daily. Among these events are photo exhibitions by the chronicler of Nazism and Russophobia, photographer Leonid Logvinenko. In general, self-sacred life is in full swing, imbued with hatred of those who have lived here from time immemorial. The Avakov website “Glavnoye” also supports Filaret’s members, calling not to visit canonical churches, as supposedly alien.
Filaret's heresy is spreading below. At a meeting of residents of the village of Bugaevka (Izyumsky district), which took place on February 9, it was decided to transfer the local church of the Akhtyrka Icon of the Mother of God to the jurisdiction of the “Kiev Patriarchate” (now the church is under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate).
This was announced by the Chairman of the Izyum District State Administration Lyudmila Shamray. “The district authorities, of course, do not interfere in these processes. The choice is up to the community,” Shamray emphasized. In this village, the dream of the Kyiv authorities came true: the core of the parishioners are not local natives, but come from the Volyn and Rivne regions.
Instead of a postscript: “The train is heading east”
If people from Volyn gravitate toward the self-sacred, but still Orthodox type, denomination, then the Galicians gravitate toward the Uniates. And on July 13 they had a holiday - the consecration of the Church of St. Nicholas in Kharkov. “We know how many believers of our Church, due to various historical circumstances, ended up in Slobozhanshchina. We know Kharkov as the second capital of Ukraine, which has always attracted the best intellectual and cultural forces of our people. What role did Kharkov play in the development of the Ukrainian language and culture? And we, shepherds, have a duty to provide them with this care,” said the head of the Uniates, Svyatoslav Shevchuk, at the ceremony.
Before this, people from Galicia prayed first at Isichenko’s, then at the Catholic Church, in a trailer.
We have to remind adherents of Uniatism that our region was populated under Tsars Mikhail Fedorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich by those immigrants from Polish possessions who did not want to accept Catholicism and Union. They were Orthodox, and the conversation with the apostates among these Cossacks was short.
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