Pochaiv Lavra

A first record of the monastery in Pochaiv dates back to 1527, although a local tradition claims that it was established three centuries earlier, during the Mongol invasion, by several runaway monks, either from the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves or from the Holy Mount Athos. The legend has it that the Theotokos appeared to the monks in the shape of a column of fire, leaving her footprint in the rock she stood upon.[4][5][6] This imprint came to be revered by the local population and brethren for the curative, medicinal properties of the water that issued from it.

In the 16th century, the abbey was prosperous enough to commission a stone cathedral and to host a busy annual fair. Its standing was further augmented in 1597, when a noble lady, Anna Hoyska, presented to the monastery her extensive lands and a miracle-working icon of the Theotokos. This image, traditionally known as Our Lady of Pochayiv, was given to Hojska by a passer-by Bulgarian bishop, and helped to cure her brother from blindness.

In 1604, the monastic community was joined by Ivan Zalizo, a well-known champion of Eastern Orthodoxy in union with the then newly recognised Muscovite patriarchate Russian Orthodox Church and was a vocal critic of the Union of Brest. Formerly associated with the printing house of Prince Ostrogski, Zalizo established a press in Pochayiv in 1630, which supplied all of Galicia and Volhynia with Ruthenians Orthodox theological literature. The press continued to function until 1924, when it was taken first to Czechoslovakia, then to Munich, and then, in 1946, to the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York.

Zalizo received the monastic name of Job and was elected the monastery's hegumen. Job introduced strict discipline and other reforms of monastic life. During his time in office, the monastery had to fend off incessant attacks by Hoyska's heirs, notably Andrzej Firlej, Castellan of Belz, who sued the monks over his grandmother's bequest. In 1623, Firlej raided the monastery, taking the holy icon with him and keeping it until 1641, when a court decision finally returned the icon to the monks. Job of Pochayiv died on 25 October 1651 and was glorified as a saint soon thereafter.

View of Pochaiv in the early 1800s

During the Zbarazh War of 1675, the cloister was besieged by the Turkish Army, who reputedly fled upon seeing the apparition of the Theotokos accompanied with angels and St Job. Numerous Turkish Muslims that witnessed the event during the siege converted to Christianity afterward. One of the monastery chapels commemorates this event.

According to some sources, Feofan Prokopovich, a Ruthenian reformer of the Russian Orthodox Church, took monastic vows in Pochayiv; he subsequently visited the monastery with his sovereign, Peter the Great, in 1712.

After 1720, when the monastery was given to Greek Catholic Basilian monks. The process was reversed due to a seemingly miraculous occurrence. In 1759, a coach of Count Mikołaj Bazyli Potocki capsized near the monastery walls. In a fit of anger, Potocki fired at his driver three times, all without avail. Attributing this failure to the divine intercession, Potocki settled in Pochayiv and started to lavish gifts upon the cloister.

In 1773, Potocki (who was originally a Roman Catholic, and later became Greco-Catholic) petitioned the Pope to recognize the Pochayiv icon as miraculous and St Job as a Catholic saint. Only the former petition was accepted. Upon Potocki's death in 1782, he was interred at the Assumption Cathedral whose construction he had subsidized.

The Virgin of Pochaiv, 1840. Ivan Honchar Museum.

In 1795 in result of the Third Partition of Poland, Volhynia became a part of the Russian Empire. Although a reversion of Greek Catholics to Russian Orthodoxy began, the Russian Imperial authorities did not immediately push this to confiscate the property of those who chose not to do so. Moreover, the typography and religious schools in the monastery continued to use Latin whilst the main language of communication was Polish. Nevertheless, the first Russophilic tendencies demonstrated themselves at that time.

Within thirty years of the division of Poland, the Orthodox Bishop of Volhynia, Stephan wrote to Emperor Alexander I seeking to have the Pochayiv Monastery turned over to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1823, but his request was initially overruled. However it was only nine years later, in 1831, after the Greek-Catholic support for the November Uprising, that Nicholas I of Russia ordered the cloister be given to the adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church. The monastery was reconsecrated as an Orthodox entity under the communion of the Moscovite Patriarchy on 10 October 1831, ending 110 years of Greek-Catholic monastic life.

Two years later, in 1833, the Russian Church accorded the status of lavra upon the monastery, even though it had been a lavra during the time of the Basilians.[7] It also beacem the summer residence for the Russian Orthodox bishops of Volhynia. Towards the end of the 19th century, Pochayiv became a mecca of Orthodox pilgrims from across the Russian empire and the Balkans. Its politically symbolic image as a western forepost of imperial Orthodoxy (being only several kilometres from the Greek-Catholics in Austrian-ruled Galicia) was widely used in propagating Pan-slavism.

During the first days of World War I, thousands of Galician Ukrainians paid pilgrimage to the Lavra and some converted to Russian Orthodoxy, after the Russian imperial forces had swept over much of Galicia Battle of Galicia - some of the Slav elements in the Austro-Hungarian armies surrendering to the Russians (cf. Russian occupation of Eastern Galicia, 1914–1915). In 1915 the Lavra, along with the whole of Volhynia, became a front-line between Austria and Russia Great Retreat (Russian). However the looting by the Austrians in 1915 was just the start of its long journey into the 20th century.

After the Russian October Revolution of 1917, another looting by Bolsheviks, the short-lived Ukrainian movements, and the Polish–Soviet War in 1920, western Volhynia was transferred to Poland under the terms of the Peace of Riga. In 1921 the Lavra found itself on a crisis state with little food and much physical damage caused by nearly a decade of unrest. The most worrying factor for the monks however, was the ecclesiastical link to whom it should submit. Like most Russian Orthodox communities that found themselves outside the USSR, and thus outside any possible ecclesiastical control from the persecuted Russian Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople agreed to take over Moscow's role and the Lavra became part of the Polish Orthodox Church in 1923.

Until the end of the 1920s the Lavra was a peaceful place and repaired many of its damaged buildings. It was the first complete monastery to have its own electricity. In 1929 after the Polish Republican decree on the protection of Ruthenians ceased the Roman Catholic Church immediately began to exploit this. The Lavra received more than a hundred accusations against it and demanding the Orthodox to transfer the cloister. Despite numerous allegations, the Lavra survived them all and in process once again became the most visible Orthodox centre in the Second Polish Republic.

Pochayiv Lavra had an indirect influence on Orthodoxy in the West. Archimandrite Vitaly (Maximenko), the director of the monastery’s printshop, evacuated the monastery’s printshop following the Russian Revolution. He then fled to Czechoslovakia, where he started a new brotherhood and resumed publishing. This new St. Job of Pochaev Brotherhood moved from Czechoslovakia to Germany and eventually America, where it joined the Holy Trinity Monastery near Jordanville, New York, with now-Archbishop Vitaly becoming its abbot. Holy Trinity Monastery thus carried on the publishing legacy of St. Job of Pochaev.[8]

In 1939, under the terms of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's Secret protocol, Western Volhynia was annexed into the Ukrainian SSR. Part of the local population viewed it, at least initially, as a form of liberation from Polish rule. However the Soviet governments' anti-religious stance became the new source of oppression, although the Ukrainian form of this persecution was somewhat less rigid than in that of the Russian lands in the early 1920s. The Lavra self-transferred to the Moscow Patriarchy, during this time thousands of Orthodox pilgrims, from all over the USSR, at their own risk, took the chance to pay a visit to the cloister that they feared would share the fate that of all others in the USSR. It was not to be, although the Lavra was thoroughly searched, the monastic livestock, orphanage and other communal services which it provided to the local community were promptly confiscated, the sheer numbers of visitors prevented the Soviets taking immediate action against a place that once again had become a refuge for Orthodoxy.

When Nazi Germany invaded the USSR on 22 June 1941, the Germans did not close the Lavra, but they did confiscate all that the Soviets could not get their hands on. During this time the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was formed. The Germans supported that church and forcefully transferred some of the Orthodox property to it. However, the Pochayiv Lavra refused to follow, what it called, a schism. Instead, in 1941 it became the center of the "Autonomist" movement, which claimed jurisdictional subordination to Moscow while at the same time being free to act independently of Moscow so long as the Moscow Patriarch was under Soviet control.[9]

During WWII the Soviet policy toward religion completely seemingly changed. Reestablishing the patriarchy, the Russian Orthodox church (MP) took a strong pro-soviet position against the Nazis and participated in the resistance on territories under Nazis. Whilst being a very visible centre of Orthodoxy prevented the Lavra taking such an active role as it potentially could, nevertheless it did provide refuge to the local population from Nazi persecution. In August 1944 the Red Army liberated Volhynia and it is said "this time the soldiers bowed to its mighty walls."

The monastery buildings were confiscated by the Soviets, and from the 1960s until 2000 the monks were required to pay rent.[10]

Following the war, the Lavra was situated on a territory which contained the largest concentration of Orthodox parishes in the USSR. Its position of a forepost of state-sponsored Russian Orthodoxy in western Ukraine was even more reinforced in 1948 after the Soviet state-organised Synod of Lviv, which terminated the Union of Brest and forcibly disbanded Greek Catholicism in Eastern Galicia by converting them to Russian Orthodoxy. However the post-war permissive attitude towards religion in the Soviet Union promptly ended with the new Thaw policy of Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s. During this time the Lavra came under extensive pressure from the Soviet government, subjected to regular raids and searches as well as constant monitoring. A museum of atheism was opened in one of the confiscated church buildings in 1959. Yet despite this pressure the Lavra survived closure, and by the end of the 1970s was the main theological centre of Moscow Patriarchy's Ukrainian Exarchate in the Russian Orthodox Church.

In the late 1980s, after the Soviet Union relaxed its restrictions on religion, the former Museum of Atheism was closed and was first turned into a theological school, which in turn became a seminary in 1991. Also at the same time the Byzantine Church, in Union with the Holy See of Rome, now the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, was revived, as was the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. The Lavra's community unanimously declined any sympathy to these newly restored communions, attributing their action partly to some of the more violent methods that were employed, aided by nationalist paramilitaries, against the parishes of Moscow's Russian Orthodox Church.[11]

In opposition a pro-Moscovite Cossack regiment was formed to safeguard Russian Orthodox parishes. Because the Lavra's rerise from Soviet persecution coincided with these events, its politico-historical position as a forepost of state-supported Moscovite Russian Orthodoxy in Western Ukraine was once again unveiled. Its militant Cossacks prevented seizure of Orthodox communities in Volhynia and in Ukraine by the Greek Catholic or Ukrainian Kyiv Patriarchate jurisdictions (the ambiguous position of Greek Catholic churches and property seized for the Muscovite Russian Orthodoxy remained unsettled.[12]

In 2000, Presidential decrees returned the possession of the Lavra to the church, and the monks were no longer required to pay rent.[10]

In 2002, the Ternopil Oblast Council established the Kremenets-Pochayiv State Historical-Architectural Preserve and declared the monastery to be part of it. However, in 2003, on the petition of the monks, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine took the historical buildings of the Lavra out of the Preserve and transferred them to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and the monks, subject to a lease for 49 years, running until 1 January 2052.[10][1]

In July 2014, the Ternopil Oblast Council initiated an appeal to Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to rescind the lease and to return the monastery buildings to the Preserve. In April 2015, the regional council voted to petition the Yatsenyuk, and his Cabinet to take the monastery out of the hands of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and turn it into a museum.[10]

In November 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ukrainian police, and the National Guard of Ukraine visited the Lavra to conduct counter-intelligence activities following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[13][1] This was part of more searches conducted by Ukrainian law enforcement at premises of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).[14]

In January 2023 The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church stated it wanted to obtain the right to hold services in the Pochaiv Lavra.[15][1]

In February 2023 the Ternopil Oblast Council created a working group studying the legality of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) leasing the Lavra complex.[1] The following month the Orthodox Church of Ukraine ask to allocate premises of the Lavra to them "for monastic life, liturgy and other religious activities."[1]