Andrey Yurash: We gave St. Sophia Cathedral to the UOC-KP because this Church performed commendably on Maidan

Such brilliant idea, born out of the functionary’s mind and flanked by other not less brilliant theses of director of the Department for Religions and Nationalities Andrey Yurash, was voiced on 24 February in Oles Doniy’s program “The Last Barricade”.

The program, as you might guess, was dedicated to discussing a scandalous decision by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine as regards transfer of the “Smaller Sophia” for the UOC-KP disposal. However, instead of the anticipated discussion (given that the issue has caused quite a powerful response from the public at large), the program delivered an insipid product of propaganda which, as it was intended by its authors, had to convince a regular viewer that the decision approved by head of the Ministry of Culture V.Kirilenko (who happened to become a member of the UOC-KP Supreme Church Council) was sensible and faithful. The fact that this program served as a forum for trivial advocacy and promotion of the decisions in favor of the authorities can be proved by the careful selection of guests, their sweet unanimity, and a well-drawn line of the topic discussion.  

The following guests were invited to the program of Alexandr Doniy on that evening:

Andrey Yurash – director of the Department for Religions and Nationalities of the Ministry of Culture;

Vladimir Bondarenko – politician;

Viacheslav Kornienko – deputy director of “Kiev Sophia”;

Sergei Shumilo – director of the International Institute of Athonite Legacy in Ukraine.

All the people above, except for Sergei Shumilo, had their functions distributed, and each of them, to the best of their aptitudes, tried to maintain the so called teamwork.

Vladimir Bondarenko who was invited as a representative of the old power (to be noted though not as “criminal” one) was supposed to narrate the viewer how the Kiev Patriarchate used to be discriminated and humiliated, whereas the lands and churches used to be given solely to the Moscow Patriarchate. His task was simple but important: to make the viewer believe that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church being “anti-Ukrainian” wasn’t worthy at all of the right to serve in such national sanctity like St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev. Thus, there was prepared and fertilized a “seedbed” for further solo of A.Yurash. As for Mr.Bondarenko, his speech had a see-saw success, to tell the truth.

Viacheslav Kornienko’s function was to agree to the statements of the other guests (except for Sergey Shumilo) and the program host. His frugal smile embodied an unquestionable unanimity of Sophia Reserve administration with any decisions of the Ministry of Culture. His did his task excellently.  

Andrey Yurash as an indisputable leader had a total freedom of speech and actions. He performed in an enthusiastic, elated and inspired way. Probably, this explains why he came up with some eccentric ideas.

Oles Doniy’s task as a host was to coordinate words and actions of the attendees. Besides, he reminded now and then that though he is “a man of the world” he dislikes the Moscow Patriarchate.

After a short while Sergey Shumilo who in this company tried to defend his own vision contrary to that of the rest, wrote about this meeting: “It was planned there to have two viewpoints vis-à-vis two opposite ones… I offered, for a change, to invite another independent expert Timur Bobrovskiy or head of the Custody Council of Kiev St. Sophia Reserve Fedor Zernetskiy, but there came instead the Reserve’s deputy director who though being respected by me, is on the payroll of the Ministry of Culture ))). Therefore, I was alone against the four…”  

It’s no secret that until today St. Sophia Reserve in Kiev has been a symbol of neutrality in relations between the state and all Ukrainian confessions. Despite repeated appeals of the Churches to make churches of St.Sophia complex available for worships (it’s known, in particular, about the letter of the UOC Primate to President Yanukovich in 2010) the authorities invariably turned them down. During the independence years representatives of various denominations came with the same request to the state power, nevertheless, never ever has Kiev Sophia been allowed for use to any of the Churches in Ukraine. That’s why not surprisingly that the attitude to this national sanctity became the litmus test for fair and parity-based treatment of the state with regard to all Ukrainian denominations.

As the current state power flagrantly violated this parity, it should have presented before the Ukrainians rather convincing arguments in favor of the decision it had made. In the first line, it is Andrey Yurash who should have done it as a person to speak on behalf of the state regarding all issues which are related to the church life of the country.  

Current director of the Department for Religions has always revealed his “bias” for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, therefore it’s not surprising that all his rationale was confined to the rant how much the UOC-KP is more decent, patriotic and authoritative than the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. 

Yurash: The issue of preserving “Smaller Sophia” is dismissed, there is nothing to preserve there. Now we are discussing the fake.

In the course of the whole program Mr. Yurash expressed six times an idea that the decision to transfer the “Smaller Sophia” to the UOC-KP has nothing to do with certain ideology; the problem is to be approached beyond any ideological constituents.  

Well, Andrey Yurash apparently has his own, deeply sovereign vision of the “ideology” term, and the idea he expressed that representatives of the UOC-KP throughout all Euromaidan events behaved “exceptionally decently” and thus deserve Sophia more than anyone else, is definitely not related to ideology. However, this thesis obviously needs to be perfected which Mr. Yurash failed to do, perhaps, due to the inborn courtesy. For according to elementary logic, if the UOC-KP is worthy of Sophia because it performed decently on Maidan, then the Ministry of Culture ignored the UOC namely because of the indecent behavior of this Church. In other words, appeals of the Kiev Patriarchate to step up protests on Euromaidan – that’s a Christian way, while the attempts of the UOC monks and clergy to halt an escalating forcible conflict (when they took a stand between “Berkut” and activists on 21 January 2014) – such behavior cannot fit into the concept of church “decency” in Yurash’s understanding. 

Not less surprising is a statement of the civil servant about that the UOC-KP “has the highest confidence level in general as well as in the Orthodox environment”. Who exactly Andrey Yurash meant by the words “orthodox environment” remained an unriddled puzzle. Did he associate his statement with Patriarch of the Serbian Church Irinej, who unambiguously said about religious dissenters: “The dissenters who belong to the so called Kiev Patriarchate were long ago rejected by the Orthodox Churches and just nominally relate to the Orthodoxy”? Or did he recall the words said by Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church Neofit: “the so called UOC of the Kiev Patriarchate – is not recognized by any of the Local Orthodox Churches in the world". Or, perhaps, Yurash meant the Synaxis of the Orthodox Primates in Chambesy to which the Kiev Patriarchate’s representatives were not invited at all, and at which the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was called the only canonical Orthodox Church in Ukraine? 

A. Yurash: The President of Ukraine realizes that he belongs to those 20% who are formally there, but in real…

Yet one may guess that Andrey Yurash meant the results of sociological studies carried out in April 2015. According to the poll, 40% of Ukrainians believed they are affiliated to the Kiev Patriarchate, while only 20% – to the UOC. Consequently, referring to what Yurash said there is “a crucial discrepancy between the statistics and real expectations and positions of the faithful”, i.e. the UOC-KP churches purportedly cannot room all those who want to come there and thus need the public assistance to broaden its sphere of influence.

However, there aren’t any data on the recent rise of the AMOUNT OF PARISHIONERS IN THE CHURCHES of the Kiev Patriarchate. The UOC-KP churches are hardly overcrowded. Being a religious expert, Andrey Yurash cannot but know that the absolute majority of the respondents enter a church once a year at best – to have their Easter cakes sanctified, identifying their affiliation to the given Patriarchate by the programs and publications of “fair and unbiased” Ukrainian mass media, such as the “Last Barricade” program. To prove this thesis, it’s sufficient to refer to the results of the poll in 2010, when media actors did not rely on hard-and-fast patriotic lines to gauge the country’s church situation. According to the information of the company “Research & branding group” 62% citizens of Ukraine believed Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kiril to be Ukrainian, while 49% of the faithful of Kiev Patriarchate did not even know the name of the organization they belong to. 

The most simple and viable way of finding out the actual number of the Orthodox believers was suggested by Deputy Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the UOC protopriest Nikolay Danilevich. According to his calculations, Orthodox parishes have about 150 persons. Respectively, multiplying the number of parishes by the average number of parishioners, we get more or less precise figure.     

With respect to the UOC (Ukrainian Orthodox Church): 12741 х 150 = 1 911 150, i.e. nearly 2 mln. people.
With respect to the UOC KP (Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate): 4700 х 150 = 700 000 people.
With respect to the UAOC (Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church): 1400 х 150 = 210 000 people.

Hence, the amount of the UOC parishioners turns out to be 20%, not 4,5% as it was erroneously stated. Simultaneously, the number of the KP believers makes up to 1,6%, and cannot be 40%!   

Still even overestimated figure of 40% seemed small to A.Yurash; for some reason he decided to unite parishes of the UOC KP with those of the UAOC (!) given that recently there has been announced an Address of the UAOC Hierarch Assembly and Patriarch Council, wherein it was particularly stated the following: “The present state authorities deliberately and artificially divide the Ukrainian citizens into “insiders” and “outsiders” and “reveal contemptuous and cynical disregard” towards the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church”. It is to be reminded again that Yurash is No 1 representative of the power in relations with the Church!   

But he feels free not just to juggle with numbers. He has such a huge self-authority that he dares give advice to the President of Ukraine regarding the confessional preferences of the latter: “The President realizes he belongs to those 20% who are formally there but in fact…”

Eventually, having run out of the agitation depot and feeling tired, the functionary just said: “The decision (to convey Sophia) was not made. It was a thought which was hovering in the air, as ancient philosophers put it, and we just caught it!”

V.Bondarenko: I am happy that those who were battered during the funeral of Patriarch Volodymyr, can feel finally satisfied.

There is no doubt, Andrey Yurash was a solo singer in this program. However, this solo wouldn’t have been so vivid unless it had been set off by the back singers: a severe “prosecutor” Vladimir Bondarenko, a mysteriously smiling Viacheslav Kornienko, and, of course, the airtime host – “secular man” (as he described his position himself) Oles Doniy. 

It’s necessary to say that in the present Ukrainian society, despite rigorous de-communization, there has survived an absolutely similar manner to the USSR times: one is better off calibrating his/her views to the “party line” in order to pursue with his/her career. Even though in the Soviet times it was socialism, now it is called nationalism-patriotism. Undoubtedly, among all guests at the program Vladimir Bondarenko looked most experienced in terms of political maneuvering. Having held for 10 years komsomol-party posts, he, like anyone else, knows when something should be passionately lobbied and something – indignantly exposed.     

Bondarenko is neither a church expert nor a historian. In fact, he would have nothing to do at this program. His role consisted in voicing false negative sentences towards the UOC: “We have now two different denominations which practise a totally different attitude to our state and our symbols. Look at how there has changed the amount of parishioners in the Kiev and Moscow Patriarchates”.

The only difference between ‘then’ and ‘now’ is that one could denounce something in the Soviet times continually without thinking, however, one can be caught red-handed now.  

For instance, being affected by condemning mood, he declared: “I attended a hospital for disabled war veterans in Pushcha. There is no burial ceremony there, no prayers for Ukraine, for our state. They pursue with the information campaign as if they do not admit the fact of our waging war with Russia”.

As the UOJ managed to find out, Mr. Bondarenko probably meant a hospital-based church named after Great Martyr Pantheleimon. We were able to meet with its senior priest Alexandr Kolesnichenko who told us that over the last year nobody has requested him to hold a burial ceremony (the church lodging together with the altar looks like a small 17 sq. m room). As for church services, the priest prays for everybody whose names are written on small paper to be passed to the altar and does not refuse anyone. Yet, if Mr. Bondarenko visited a church at least sometimes, he would know that in any UOC church at each liturgy they pray for the country, its authorities and its army.

Besides, one can give examples when the priests in other military hospitals regularly hold the lity for the dead Ukrainian warriors, Holodomor victims, sacrament for the hospital’s patients.

Is it really worth saying that the last maxim of Mr. Bondarenko finally shed light on his position concerning the topic in question – revenge and malicious joy.  

In this context a phrase of Andrey Yurash is recalled: “We proceed from unequivocally universal principle: all religious organizations are equal before the state and treated on equal terms”. Still – are they actually equal? Judging from the fact that Yurash accepts with gratitude awards from one denomination, and at the same time doesn’t find it disgraceful to label the other as the FSB agent, – it’s not quite equal. Watching the director of the Department for Religions skillfully spread untrue, to put it mildly, information about the UOC, аnd swiftly transfer the national sanctity to the Kiev Patriarchate, one can arrive at the conclusion – Yurashesque idea of parity is hardly adequate. For some reason a quote from George Orwell’s dystopian novella “Animal Farm” has crossed my mind: “All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than the others”.

As it is known, if the stars light the sky, then somebody needs it. The fact that Sophia was given away namely at this moment is not a coincidence. Patriots who felt frustrated after the meetings in Chambesy and Havana, when the Kiev Patriarchate was explicitly ignored not only by the Orthodox hierarchs but also by the Pope, had an urgent need for the powerful charge with positive emotions. May all the Ecumenical Orthodoxy dissociate itself from any manifestations of the nationalist schism in the church life – the authorities in Ukraine will stand up for the church structure which supports them so actively!

“The less Moscow Patriarchate is left on our land, the better it will be”, – that was the concluding remark at the “Last Barricade” program voiced by its founder, host, and concurrently, MP of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Alexandr Doniy who also added to that: “It was a program about culture”.            

Generally speaking, in the above cited phrases Mr. Doniy set out not only a concise content of his one-hour program but also the current creed of contemporary Ukrainian commissioners of the Ministry of Culture with regard to the Ukrainian Orthodoxy: “A course towards the state’s pocket Church”. 

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