[000:00:00;00] the village of vytachiv in the kyiv region is unique in particular because it is mentioned in byzantine annals as one of the largest ports of the then kyivan rus. if the tour guides are to be believed , then not only did seagulls come and go here , large seagulls came and went here, but the princes of that time met here and decided the fate of ukraine . to talk, we have gathered here because today is a great holiday, today is the day of statehood - this holiday is celebrated for the second time, it is extremely important right now, when ukraine is choosing its statehood through such a difficult and bloody struggle chooses its independence well, and its right to remain the great state that we are used to accepting them ukrainian statehood day is a holiday that we celebrate together with the baptism of russia day why we celebrate the day of ukrainian statehood together with it baptism of russia what is the history of the ukrainian church during the last thousand years and what importance and influence

did the ukrainian church have on the development of the state and in general what influence did the ukrainian church have on the history of the whole of eastern europe and why is the true history of the ukrainian church so moscow and russia are burning and we are talking in our on our on our improvised platform with er guests this is andriy rukas candidate of historical sciences associate professor and teachers of shevchenko kyiv national university and andriy kovalev is candidate of political sciences religious scholar spokesman of the general staff of the armed forces of ukraine friends welcome you slava thanks to ukraine , mr. two andrii, then we will use the english patterns to speak mr. and the last name mr. kovalev, i have a question for you, the day of the ukrainian statehood as an initiative in general to celebrate at the national level was discussed by the initiative group, and back in 2018, the speaker of the verkhovna rada, andriy parubiy, was in this initiative group. you were then. well

, in general, you were andriy parubiy's adviser on church issues, and then already in 2021. this initiative was discussed by the initiative group it turned into the fact that president volodymyr zelenskyy determined by his decree that on the day of ukrainian statehood we celebrate with the day of the baptism of russia, what is the idea of ​​combining these two such iconic events, you know for fate the ukrainian people experienced an extraordinary number of warriors of trials. i very often like to say that god does not send such trials to a weak nation, he only sends them to a strong nation such as the ukrainian one , and in our history there are several important dates for the restoration of ukrainian independence. statehood by the fourth general of the central council in january 1918. then the restoration of ukrainian in the form of carpathian ukraine in march 1939

, on march 15. later, this restoration of the ukrainian state on june 30, 1941 and eventually the restoration of ukrainian statehood on august 24, 1991 and so in many european countries that experienced a similar fate to ukraine and the ukrainian people in lithuania, latvia, estonia , finland, there is an independence day or a statehood day the day of the restoration of statehood is coming, when these countries finally broke free from the chains of the empires of ukraine, we already counted how many 4-5 such days a year ago, it is clear that there should be some central day of statehood that would talk not only about restoration of modern independence and in general about the idea of ​​our thousand-year-old statehood because, in particular, the russian occupiers are waging war in a hybrid way and on the historical information front they

have been trying to steal our history for centuries , to say that ukraine is part of russia , the ukrainian people are part of the russian people and that is why it is important for us to show to the whole world, to the whole free world first of all, that ukraine is about a thousand-year civilization, it is at least a continuous civilization of state-building, and in this at this stage, we are obviously talking about the beginning of this statehood from the time of the christianization of our people, because it is precisely the people of many nations, and the hungarians and poles, they count the time of their modern statehood precisely from the time of christianization, rather, this tradition politically goes back to the times of the byzantine empire, when byzantium divided the entire the world to the universe , i.e. those states that are part of the christian world and to all other barbarians, i.e.

stateless peoples. and what did the church bring to state places if we are talking about baptism russia, as such a countdown to the development of the state, and i can ask you to also add it. how do you combine these two holidays? well, this holiday is young . it is clear that for me they may not have started yet. i know my personal calendar, especially since we celebrate this holiday for the second time and the second both years are years of war and it is clear that military events replace our holidays , but it is a very good idea to establish a holiday of ukrainian statehood and to choose the starting point from the moment of baptism, because i am different now, when this question was sounded, i myself i thought to myself, what could be another starting point for counting our statehood and probably a better point than the date of the baptism of russia, st. volodymyr's day, by the way , today is the day of the foundation of the university of kyiv university, so for me there is also

a double holiday, and that's why it's the best date for us in my opinion, what is enough of the church, and it is not in vain. when volodymyr became the prince of kyiv , he began to carry out a whole series of reforms , legal reform, introduced for the entire great state a single report of laws , administrative reform, when he eliminated local tribal principality, instead planted his sons in different lands and kept the state in the same hands and it was owned by one family, and he began to introduce religious reform. at first, he experimented with the request to create a single pagan pantheon, but very quickly abandoned this idea introduced christianity as the state religion because christianity was not something new for russia, well, christianity penetrated at least 100 years earlier than the official, even 150

years earlier than christianity became the state religion for a large united state, which consisted of a whole conglomerate of east slavic and not only east slavic tribes, to cement the union it is very important to have a single common religious ideology, this is the first and second thanks to this, russia entered the circle of european nations interbred with other royal monarchical dynasties and became an equal member, let's say so, of the european civilizational community . volodymyr the great, he started reforms of a legal nature, then also christianization. and what the church itself brought to the development of the volodymyr state, we can count by points writing, culture , literature, art, and in the history of description , we are talking about nestor the chronicler, he was a monk of the kiev-pechersk lavra, and medical

knowledge it also belongs to the ecclesiastical sphere , it resembles the rudiments of scientific knowledge, it also originates from the ecclesiastical sphere, that is, in fact, what we today call humanitarian information policy, then this role was performed by the church then there was no tv, internet, or newspapers, the church performed the informative function, the church performed the propaganda function, the church performed the scientific function , in fact, the church then was not at all like the church. today, it was more multifunctional, we wanted to add to andrei's opinion about the fact that volodymyr brought christianity there , there was no christianity in kyiv , christians lived in kyiv even before volodymyr, there were churches in kyiv , in particular, in the naboroch toku on the modern post office square, where the christian temple stood before the baptism

kievan rus-ukraine should be reminded of what we have begun to forget . the ukrainian old world orthodox church highly respected the oskold baptism. about askold mykola, he first baptized the people of kyiv , but then it became a state religion. olga was baptized and tried to baptize the people of kyiv, but she also did not make it the state religion . the key is that volodymyr and his merits today vladimir's memorial day is the last time we celebrate it according to the ilian calendar, then we will determine it according to the new ilian calendar, so vladimir was able to make it the state religion, the state ideology and the key friend of the christian church, later the orthodox after the division into western and eastern christianity -

this is precisely the cementing of the unification, the church in the russian rus of ukraine was able to make christianity a national idea, a state-building idea, besides , sir, we are still getting used to the new holiday , as you rightly say, we insert it into our we are filling the calendar with meanings now even our church is so divided i want to understand this if we have a separate state, a separate church separately or a church that we will not put in place in any way we see another fortune-telling country, how can we make this holiday so that it all comes together as you say again there was a single holiday that unites both the state and the state, and with some meaning, for example, well , i personally separate these two holidays for myself : the national holiday, the statehood day, and the religious holiday, the day of st. rivan , the apostolic vladimir, the day of the baptism of russia a i.e. it seems to me that at this state level of unification, it must be such a consolidating beginning, a consolidating beginning, today is the

day of ukraine's statehood, after all , let's say that on this day more than a thousand years ago, a great state was launched, which today it is called ukraine, if any religious communities at this time celebrate different religious holidays according to their church calendar, this is all beautiful and this holiday has a certain historical and precondition connected with a certain religious event, that is, i am a person i am a secular person, not an ecclesiastical person, that is why i look at it first of all through the prism of ukrainian state day, let's see from the other side, friends, first of all, maybe i will disappoint someone july 28 is the day of memory of volodymyr, it is not the day of the baptism of rus-ukraine, the historical old world , our ukrainian orthodox church remembered the baptism of kyivans, and hence the baptism of rus-ukraine, er, on august 1 according to the novillian

calendar or according to the julian calendar , august 14 is the feast of the fair trees of christ, or the memory of the makovian brothers and it was on this day, according to the annals, that the baptism of the people of kyiv took place, and later on, kyiv, a century later, remembers this day, because on this very day kyiv day was celebrated, the day of the baptism of kyiv was kyiv day in medieval kyiv - this is an amazing parade , all shops, all the city councilors, all the representatives of the city gentry, the merchants, all marched in a big parade from the center of podol to where our old magdeburg was located , where the city hall

of the city hall was located. now marked by a monument the column is often called the column of the magdeburg right and it was a huge huge parade this parade was accompanied before the service in the main cathedral church of that time in ukraine , which was the dormition cathedral, which we now know as the dormition by pva cake i would like to make a remark right away well, if we have such a great tradition is connected with the day of the baptism of russia, you say that the people of kyiv remembered this event for 600-700 years, connected this event with him in kyiv, all this is connected with the name of one person , grand duke volodymyr, we have forgotten it how did you react when you saw the monument to volodymyr in moscow ? well, it's clear that this is an attempt by the russian occupiers to steal our history once again. and what is written in london, the ruler of russia-ukraine is written in london, volodymyr is written on

the monument to volodymyr, sooner or later , moscow will no longer be the capital of the modern russian empire of the future russia - this is exclusively the collapse of russia. and that's only the memory of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of volodymyr once baptized those peoples and brought the light of the gospel to those places that are now called moscow, nothing else obliges them. and this is all just an attempt to steal everything from vladimir to ours, well, this is an attempt to steal vladimir's civilization for sure. it seems to me that the most important thing is that not only an attempt to steal volodymyr and together with volodymyr an attempt to steal the foundations of our statehood in order to make it our own it is absolutely correct to drag those foundations onto yourself and lay those foundations under the history of moscow, but you can look at this monument in a different way change the plate and there will be a monument of ukrainian domination in moscow, just like the monument to yaroslav the wise in yaroslavl

, this is our kiev prince who founded once , far, far, long ago, this city, which today belongs to russia, but later, uh, this monument will be rethought and there is this monument to the prince of kyiv on modern russian lands, i understand correctly that now this holiday is once again ukrainian statehood gaining its relevance because it helps us, well, firstly to explain to our descendants and secondly to explain to the whole world what from where it started yes, there, unfortunately, where does it come from? and you are right in saying the historical parallels, anyway, later we will remember what happened in kyiv, and this holiday supports the point of reference, well , absolutely true, the most important thing is, you know, a great value is the presence of our own state, and that’s actually today we and we talk about the state as the greatest value, because there is no ukrainian in another state and there cannot be. this is probably the main idea. and the fact that this day was tied to the day of the holy level of the apostolic volodymyr

. well, what else could it be? to do and put a certain historical basis under it in this way. it seems to me today that it is worth talking about the ukrainian state as a great value for which dozens of generations of our predecessors fought for it, who gained it, lost it, fought again and again gained it again and lost it and finally, today we have a ukrainian state that asserted itself, which defends itself, fights successfully and which has already been for more than 30 years, they said correctly and continues the bloody struggle, actually it is to show the words of andriy eh why is the ukrainian state so important to us, well, in fact, our a political choice to be ukrainian and we can be harmoniously ukrainians to speak the ukrainian language to defend our ukrainian rights exclusively in the ukrainian state and many millions of ukrainians who were forced to leave ukraine understood that it is natural to be ukrainians so that their children receive a ukrainian education to live in the ukrainian tradition

they can only in ukraine only the ukrainian state can protect ukrainians , no country in the world is interested in protecting ukrainians anymore and this is quite normal , you know, i want to recall oleg's words here olzhycha, which he wrote in a poem to an unknown soldier - in 1940, a state is not created in being, nor a state is being built now, these people are turned into steel, lights are turned, these people are like blocks of stones , very symbolic words, the state is being built and , first of all, it is protected by our my brothers , my posts on the front line and eye- obviously, now the taste of this statehood is felt much more acutely and much more symbolic . when we can lose it , let's move right to modern times and about and to this moment when, after all, russia convinced the world and twisted the story that

the baptism of russia is their story about the fact that our princes of kiev, it is their story that the russian empire was formed , which collapsed as a result of the first world war, but then such a paradox occurred that the russian empire collapsed, but the russian orthodox church continued its existence, and these are all the priests of the russian orthodox church they did not go anywhere from the ukrainian territories, where the new state of the ukrainian people's republic was formed, and mr. andriy, my hands for you as a researcher of this period of ukrainian of the people's republic, such a question, how did these priests of the russian orthodox church, nurtured in this ideology of the russian world , then treat this idea of ​​ukrainian independence, the idea of ​​the ukrainian people's republic, how did they behave in relation to the representatives of the ukrainian people's republic, to the representatives of the those russian white guards with whom we had conflicts then, and how they are behaving now , unfortunately, we see a question because the priesthood

of the russian orthodox church during the break of the empire, the struggle for ukrainian independence was not homogeneous. if we talk about church hierarchs here in ukraine, yes, those people who led the dioceses were russians by ethnic origin , because such was the personnel policy of the tsarist authorities, to send ethnic russians here, of course, they did not feel those events that took place here, they did not support the ukrainian church movement, they protested against it, they did not cooperate , on the contrary, they went against the policy of the ukrainian people's republic. in ukraine, the authorities of the ukrainian people's republic were arrested there by metropolitan antony khrapovytskyi and vlogiy and many others , but on the other hand, we had priests or parish priests in ukrainian villages who were representatives of ancient ukrainian

priestly dynasties from great-grandfather and great-grandfather, and these people, on the contrary, perceived the possibility of e- e in the new conditions of freedom and democracy in the conditions of the birth of the ukrainian state proper to create their own ukrainian church and many such people joined the ukrainian church movement, many such people they went as military priests to the inert army, that is, against the antipriest, the army, the nerve, and pavlo pashchevsky, against the jews. pavlo pashchevsky was an ordinary parish priest, a priest of the russian orthodox church, but he was ukrainian, but why am i asking you? because i work in the archives, i came across such information that the russian white guards were coming , these are those who wanted to restore the persian system to them, those who wanted to restore the empire, which is falling apart, and there are priests on the ground in some places on the ukrainian territories who were in the russian orthodox church, they met them, they told people that they were our liberators, they were not ours. the liberators

of the ukrainian people's area , the priests led the insurgent movement. and in other areas, the priests helped the ukrainian insurgents or helped the regular troops of the ukrainian people's republic, joined military units spoke in general about all the priests of the rpc of the then rpc on the territory of the ukrainian people's republic, we can say that church she mostly did not perceive the hierarchs above this one, this layer. and if we go down to the parish priests, then it was very important to educate a person where she came from. about the bulgakov family and the entourage of this, let's say, the bulgakov family , they did not perceive it because they sent it here to strengthen the

personnel. this is their land, they have been there for hundreds of years , for 200-300 years they have been priests in the same village or in neighboring villages, they themselves were the same ukrainian peasants and my three sons helped me, that is, they differed from the peasants only in that he knew how to read, could read and had a certain, let's say , dedication. he led the service in the church, and so he was no different from the ukrainian hall among which he lived. andriy knows that the ukrainian church liberation movement of the 20s and 30s and after the ukrainian revolution, this is my love, i, uh, in my time, founded uh, such a public initiative, the history of the uapc, because this is an incredible story, after three hundred years of slavery in the russian empire, our people wake up in 1917 there is

an absolutely spontaneous uncontrolled movement because all the people are demanding from their priests we want to pray in the ukrainian language this is what is happening today we read in the ukrainian language and in fact i noticed that we ukrainians very often she simply saved russian arrogance, russian stubbornness and pride, because i just mentioned andrii er-e mikhail yermakov er-e and vlogia georgievskii and other metropolitans there nazariya blinova who said that there is no ukraine, there is no ukrainian language, ukrainian language bazarny cannot be prayed, and then the people simply carried out these moscow priests from the churches, and hundreds of thousands of ukrainian villages went to the ukrainian church, then in 1918, 19 , 20, and 21 years, meetings in the villages announced

the exit from moscow spiritual freedom. the quote is here in vytachev, where you and i are located in the nearby halep, in trypilla, in the 1920s, in the 21st years, parishes, transitions, the other day , a priest, father roman stripillya, turns to me, he says that people want to go to the orthodox church of ukraine, leave the moscow patriarchate, tell me some words that can strengthen them i say father roman i have copies of documents that in 1921 the vveden parish of trypillya already announced its withdrawal from the moscow patriarchate and it is surprising that until now the vvedensky parish in trypillya is part of the moscow patriarchate patriarchy, the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of those people who now live in ukraine 100 years ago made a civilizational decision for themselves that they do not want to be part of the moscow church, give moscow civilization or the moscow worldview, they want to pray in their native language, they want to live in their native ukrainian

in the church, in fact, this is the way revival of the ukrainian church, he showed a great example of martyrdom because those priests and bishops who then rose up for the ukrainian church were practically all destroyed by the russian occupiers, metropolitan vasyl lypkivskyi imagine archbishop nestor sharyivskyi was simply starved to death in the center of kyiv in 1929, and such and such was the painful history of our church. therefore, now that our church has received the tomos, it is just a sign that without this martyrdom of our great church leaders of the 20s and 30s years we would not have received today's church , a wonderful paradox yes, we are saying the same thing as we are saying about today , you know your history, modern events with you , events that happened 100 years ago, no caused a déjà vu effect, well, there are definitely some parallels, but you understand. if then the russian orthodox church was largely

confused and, er, the russian church was undergoing its own internal, very serious processes related to the election of the patriarch and the vices of this patriarchate with whom relations did not develop bolshevik power, today's situation is different - it is a rogue vertical disciplined structure with a clear single principle of army discipline, and it is much more difficult to fight with such a structure than it was 100 years ago to fight a large in view of the confused undercurrent of the russian church in ukraine, a few clarifications need to be made here, first of all, the modern russian orthodox church is absolutely not related to the russian church that existed, or rather, the department of orthodox religion of the russian empire, this russian orthodox church was created by by the decision of the fourth and fifth of september 1943. believe me, even the modern residence of patriarch

kirill in moscow is the former german embassy that stalin gave to the russian orthodox church, so it is really with this it is more difficult for the russian orthodox church to resist in russian, because it is really a whole state apparatus, a state mechanism, but then in the 20s, very amazing things happened, but now, uh, some adapts of the moscow patriarchate firmly believe that there is still some kind of anathema to hetman mazepa, they pronounce anathema on hetman mazepa moscow patriarch tikhon canceled the anathema on hetman mazepa by his decision and by the way, russian hierarchs served memorial services in the 1918-19-20s at the request of ukrainian believers, they served a memorial service for hetman ivan maze, that is, the moscow patriarchate does not even know its own history and does not want to study it, there is nothing to do with the true history

, there is only distortion and that ideologeme that is now beneficial to the russian occupiers. maybe, i still cannot resist you as historians. on ukrainian territory well, everyone has one question : how to break this vicious circle and do you see the historical grounds for this? connections well, it seems to me that if this initiative will come from below and the parishioners in each specific parish will demand from their priest the transition to the orthodox church of ukraine, it seems to me that this will be the best way, in my opinion, in my opinion , the evolutionary way i know how slow this evolutionary path will be in the conditions of war. it seems to me that the war must radicalize the price of the stru and that is where this path would take a decade. and today it must take months. well, at the most, years

, because again, i am not sure. what is too much? strong pressure from the state will lead to the desired result, so that this church does not become encapsulated, does not go underground and does not start to harm even more, i am afraid of another option, that it will still remain in ukraine, there will be established stronger ties with moscow is more than camouflaged and it will do even more harm and will really turn into some sort of spying , subversive, intelligence agency. and there is a huge number of ukrainians, sincere, conscious ukrainians who, because of certain well, i don’t know their own world , not even worldviews, rather some of traditional beliefs, what is right, the church is wrong, our father is right and their father is wrong . maybe there will be some village quarrels there, and i may be harmed. if these people end up really a-a in very harmful and such valuable sextant organizations, thomas showed which father is right, which wrong, there is no question. as you can see, there are some

promising aspects of the future of the russian orthodox church in ukraine , and the tomos of the ecumenical patriarch and the synod of the kostopil patriarchate clearly do not exist. pointed out that and it is clearly written there that the only canonical orthodox church in ukraine and the orthodox church of ukraine cannot be all other orthodox churches, and therefore if people are really disciplined orthodox christians, they are obliged to bring their canonical status in accordance with the canonical tomos one aspect is the dogmatic aspect , that is, what we believe, we are talking about history, ideology, and now about the canons . and there is a dogmatic aspect, that is, what we believe, and dogmatics clearly affects salvation of the human soul, so from a dogmatic point of view, if you reduce what orthodox christians believe to one denominator, the answer is very simple. orthodox christians confess that they believe that salvation is possible only with