FORTRESS OF UKRAINE ON POCHAIVSKY MOUNTAIN YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW: CIRCUMSTANCES OF IVAN OHIENKO (METROPOLITAN HILARION) WRITING A STUDY ABOUT THE HOLY POCHAIV LAVRA, CONTENT DOMINANTS AND THE FATE OF THE MANUSCRIPTY

Abstract

The article traces the author’s motivation for creating his masterpiece and the fate of the manuscript from its conception to its implementation against the background of the historical era. The main substantive dominants of the research in the context of the meaning of existence and ideology of the Pochaiv monastery for more than seven centuries are revealed. The genesis, consequences and lessons of the Russification of the Pochaiv Lavra in modern times are outlined. The significance of this monastery for the modern Ukrainian revival is emphasized. No other work of Metropolitan Hilarion (Ivan Ohienko) has had such a dramatic publishing fate, which befell the «Holy Pochaiv Lavra». After it was published in Canada in the early 60s of the last century, several copies illegally entered the Soviet territory, it, among other works of this author, published both in Ukraine and abroad, was for a long time in the most remote hiding places of so-called special funds. Only one or two copies of all printed works were sent to these peculiar book concentration camps for control (others were destroyed). According to the leaders of the Soviet empire at the time, such books carried the danger of communist ideology in the vast expanses of the former USSR. This publication was not lucky even in the independent Ukrainian years. Dozens of its copies, sent by Canadian Ukrainians to their relatives in the Ternopil region, were burned on the territory of that Lavra by Moscow priests, in whose hands this Ukrainian shrine is still.