Catholic Religious Minorities in the Times of Transformation (European Studies in Theology, Philosophy and History of Religions) [New ed.] 9783631770405, 9783631783382, 9783631783399, 9783631783405, 3631770405

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Catholic Religious Minorities in the Times of Transformation

EUROPEAN STUDIES IN THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF RELIGIONS Edited by Bartosz Adamczewski

VOL. 21

Magdalena Zowczak (ed.)

Catholic Religious Minorities in the Times of Transformation Comparative Studies of Religious Culture in Poland and Ukraine

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

The research was funded by the grant “Religious culture in the face of social changes. A comparative study of local communities” (Poland - Ukraine), awarded by the National Science Centre of Poland (Project no. 2011/03/B/HS3/00341).

Printed by CPI books GmbH, Leck Cover images: Photo from the left: The late Baroque-style Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak, 2012. Photo from the right: The Greek Catholic Church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biały Bór (designed by Jerzy Nowosielski in co-operation with Bogdan Kotarba, 1992-1997). Photo by Jacek Wajszczak, 2015. ISSN 2192-1857 ISBN 978-3-631-77040-5 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-78338-2 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-78339-9 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-78340-5 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b15348 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2019 All rights reserved. Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Contents Part I Religious Culture in a Comparative Perspective Magdalena Zowczak Introduction. Comparative Studies on Religious Culture ................................

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Elżbieta Przybył-Sadowska The Term “Religious Culture” in Religious Studies Research in Poland .......  61 Magdalena Zatorska Comparison in Contemporary Anthropological Practice ................................  77 Marcin Skupiński Religion and Identity in the Post-socialist Landscape: A Comparative Perspective ..................................................................................................................  97 Part II The Confessional Minorities of Murafa and Biały Bór. The Case Studies: In the garden of our Lady of Murafa Marcin Skupiński Через наше село ішла Божа Матір (the Virgin Mary walked through our village): Public Religion and enchantment of the world in Contemporary Ukraine. The Case of Murafa and Klekotyna Villages in Vinnytsia Oblast ...................................................................................................  129 Maria Sokołowska Language and Identity: Murafa’s Catholic Population on Language Changes in the Church .............................................................................................  149 Katarzyna Kaczmarska Narratives about the Pole’s Card and Its Impact on the Identity of Murafa’s Residents ....................................................................................................  167 Jan Wawrzyniec Lech The Sounds of Chaos: The Liturgical Music Situation in Murafa’s Roman Catholic Community ..................................................................................  191

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Magdalena Zatorska Christian-Jewish Relations in the Antagonistic Tolerance Model: From Religious Communities to Communities of Memory ...............  211 A People Without a Homeland. “Mother of Exiles, Do Not Let Us Perish!” Iuliia Buyskykh Confessional Communities as Communities of Memory: The Greek Catholics of Biały Bór and the Orthodox of Włodawa .....................................  245 Urszula Rukat The Role of Priests in Shaping the Religious Culture of the Uniate Parishes in Kostomłoty and Biały Bór ..................................................................  277 Jacek Wajszczak Jerzy Nowosielski’s Church in Biały Bór: Reception and Cultural Contexts .......................................................................................................................  293 Tomasz Kosiek When “the Other” Becomes Someone Close… Ethnological Selfreflections on Functioning in a Ukrainian Community in Biały Bór ............  339 Magdalena Zowczak The Locals (Tutejsi) and the Exiles: The Modernisation of Religious Culture in an Ethnographic Collage .....................................................................  361 List of Photos ..............................................................................................................  417 About the Authors .....................................................................................................  425

Part I  Religious Culture in a Comparative Perspective

Magdalena Zowczak

Introduction. Comparative Studies on Religious Culture Abstract: As the research project’s author, I present the context of the religious culture’s changes during the systemic transformation period in Poland and Ukraine against the setting of the Second Vatican Council’s resolutions. I discuss the project’s main theoretical assumptions and its phenomenological inspirations as well as the basic concepts applied in the analysis and the model of comparison of cultural forms. The paper explains the reasons and circumstances of the choice of the two Catholic confessional minorities living in the Ukrainian and Polish provinces and discusses their characteristics related to their history, heritage, systemic transformation changes’ impact on them as well as confessional and ethnic relations and identity construction processes. I also describe the nature of the ethnographic research conducted in 2012–2016, the monograph’s concept as well as introduce the participating researchers – authors of the presented texts. Keywords: anthropology of religion, Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine, Catholic Church of the Byzantine-Ukrainian Rite in Poland, political transformation, ethnography, phenomenology, Murafa, Biały Bór

The Catholic minorities of Murafa (Ukr. Мурафа)1 and Biały Bór, which are the focus of our comparative research on religious culture, construct their identities on the basis of their professed religion, in close connection with the Roman Catholic Church and Greek Catholic Churche respectively. Although they differ in terms of their rites, liturgy is the main embodiment of religion for both communities, while musical expression is a particularly important aspect of their religious culture and a form of expression of their identity. Their religious lives are centred around their churches, which, with the benefit of hindsight, I see as metaphorical for both communities’ history and culture. The Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Murafa,2 a village in central Ukraine, is situated between two Orthodox churches and dominates the wave-like Podilia landscape. Along with the rectory, it comprises a late-Baroque style post-Dominican monastic complex, finished in 1786 and surrounded by a high wall, which was part of the town’s former fortification system. The church’s founder was a former Polish noble who owned the town of Murafa’s land, Joachim Karol Potocki.

1 In Polish also known as Morachwa or Murawa. Polish historical names are used according to Słownik Geograficznego Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Vol.1–15 (Warszawa: Filip Sulimierski and Władysław Walewski, 1880–1914). 2 Parish church in Kamianets-Podilsky diocese, Vinnytsia Oblast.

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Photo 1: A map. The distance between Murafa (Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine) and Biały Bór (West Pomerania voivodship, Poland) in a direct line is 974 km; the distance by car is 1232 km, the travel time is 16 hours and 21 minutes. The source of the map: https://www.dystans.org/. Picture by Magdalena Zowczak.

The church towers over the village, shining from the top of the hill with its white slender steeples over the village’s thoroughfare and the Murafa River, which flows through the extensive valley. Until recently, it was the only building in the village that was lit at night and thus served as the village’s main orientation point. Several times a day the church bells’ chimes mark the time with traditional Polish Catholic songs’ melodies. The church’s light, high-walled interior is brightened by sun rays, which come in through colourful stained-glass windows. The church itself and the miraculous image of Our Lady of Murafa on its main altar are objects of pride for the local community. Catholicism in Murafa, despite being a minority’s confession, is deeply rooted and considered local (Pol. tutejszy).3 This can be confirmed by the account of a meeting between a Murafa local with an Orthodox priest (batiushka, Ukr. батюшка) from Zaporozhe and the

3 Translator’s note:  tutejszy in Polish or in тутешній in Ukrainian are a selfidentifying category of people living in culturally and linguistically mixed areas of Central and Eastern Europe.

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Photo 2: A view on Murafa’s centre from the side of “Macedonia” (a district of Murafa). Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Photo 3: The late Baroque-style Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

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former’s unconstrained self-presentation. The way a member of Murafa’s Catholic parish introduces herself to an Orthodox priest, surprised by her Roman Catholic confession, as well as the mode in which the local women travelling to a market “chat” about the Bible present us with a good illustration of Murafa’s traditions. And I was asked by an Orthodox batiushka; we were going to Kyiv with my sister and were taking my calf for sale, once in the autumn. And the batiushka [joined us – MZ]; we were chatting away with women regarding that I read the Bible a little; there were me and my sister and two other women. We were chatting away about the Bible and God and this and that. And a man joins us and listens, listens until the end, and finally asks me, where are you from? I say, from Murafa. What religion are you? I  say, Catholic. And why not Orthodox? I  say, because it is inherited in our family, passed from grandmother to grandmother to our fathers, so it is ancestral (потомственно). And there is no Orthodox church? I say, there are two Orthodox churches. Our Catholic church is between them, and two Orthodox churches are on either side (…).4

Meanwhile, the Greek Catholic Church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biały Bór5 in north-western Poland was built by the town’s Ukrainian population in the 1990s, away from the historic centre, on the opposite side from the town’s two Roman Catholic churches. The author of the church’s design and its icons was Jerzy Nowosielski, an Orthodox artist and mystic. It is a small, architecturally postmodern church, built in a style inspired by early Christian basilicas. Due to its unique character, one of the tourist guides referred to it as “a church of the future”. Built in the vicinity of new housing developments, it is hidden behind the Taras Shevchenko school complex. When riding a bus along the local thoroughfare, one

4 A forty-eight-year-old woman (born in 1964), Murafa, Trawna, 2012. The original quotation goes as follows: “І мене розпитався православний батюшка, “ми такою їздили в Київ, з свою сестрою і так своє телятко везли продавати (...) Так і в осени везли і батюшка якось, ми з жінками розговорилися. Я ніби трохе Біблію читала, і так ото ми сидемо з сестрою і дві жінки сидять. Ми розговорилися про Біблію і про Бога, і про це всьо. Ми ніби по Бібліі розказуєм, і якийсь чоловік сідає, главне слуха, слуха до последня, туди питає, ви звідки? Я кажу - з Мурафи. Ви якої релігії? Я кажу, католіческої. А чо не православні? Я кажу, бо у нас потомственна від бабки передавалас до наших батьків і нам так і наше потомственно. А церкви нема? Я кажу, є в нас дві церкви. По середині костьол, а по бокам дві церкви (…)” The interview was conducted by three students: Rafał Bieryło, Yevhen Boyko and Yanina Sobolevska. 5 Biały Bór’s parish church belongs to the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Wrocław-Gdańsk founded by, by Pope John Paul II in 1996, and was built in 1992–97. Jerzy Nowosielski worked in cooperation with architect Bogdan Kotarba.

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Photo 4: A view on Biały Bór’s centre. The centre is dominated by the early 20th-century neo-Gothic building of the town court. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Photo 5: The Greek Catholic Church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biały Bór (designed by Jerzy Nowosielski in co-operation with Bogdan Kotarba, 1992–1997).

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can just catch a glimpse of it, shortly before the bus arrives to the historic centre of Biały Bór, formerly known as Baldenburg. Although the Drawsko Lake District’s landscape, where Biały Bór is located, is hilly, the church was built on flat and empty terrain. When we approach it from the side of the road, walking along Akacjowa Street, it suddenly emerges from behind a colony of small detached houses and shrubs. The simplicity of the church’s exterior is striking; the façade bloc is crowned by two asymmetrical domes and furnished with two rounded gables. The main nave is below the side naves’ level, where parishioners sit on low benches as if in an amphitheatre. It is relatively dark inside due to the walls’ and vaults’ emerald green, and the black columns that separate the naves. The central dome’s interior features a well-lit image of Christ Pantocrator (Christ the Almighty). Two rows of small round and square windows let perpendicular rays of light in, bringing out the deep red of the royal and deacon’s gates and the tetrapod. The church is rather small, as a result, during larger celebrations, the public part of the liturgy moves to the outside terrace. The triple gates in the front wall repeat the church’s interior structure, and the icons painted between them create an external iconostasis. The location of the Greek Catholic church on Biały Bór’s outskirts and the lack of typical onion domes (which has been an object of criticism on the part of traditionalists) was specifically commented on by one of my Ukrainian interviewees, a supporter of Nowosielski’s design project. “I’d say, honestly, one of the reasons is not to tease the eye. I mean, when someone passes it by, he cannot see onion domes, so he does not know what’s inside, right?”6 I was surprised by this parishioner’s wish that the church should not attract strangers’ attention, as well as the expressed need to hide it from unwelcome gazes. Especially that this interlocutor  – one of the village’s well-known and respected local residents – claimed that as a Ukrainian in Biały Bór he had never experienced any harassment. This account is characteristic for the identity of Biały Bór’s Greek Catholics:  the Ukrainians who, seventy years after being deported from their homes on the opposite side of the country in south-eastern Poland, still feel as exiles. Quite differently, Murafa’s Roman Catholics are predominately Ukrainians “of Polish descent.” The settled community, culturally close to their Orthodox neighbours, the faithful of the Moscow Patriarchate Church, first and foremost are the tutejsi, local Ukrainians. Their religious life has been shaped by the wall of the local church, present in the village for the past three centuries. Biały Bór’s

6 A male born in 1950, Biały Bór, 2015. The original quote goes as follows: “Powiem pani, że – prawdę mówiąc – moim takim trochę uzasadnieniem jest, żeby też i nie drzaźnić oka – to znaczy, ktoś przejeżdżając nie widzi bani, więc nie wie, co tam jest – nie?”

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Greek Catholics, in turn, have just recently built their church, giving it a shape that surpasses traditional tastes. The churches’ location and design can be seen as the expression of both religious minorities’ conditions as well as their relations with their neighbours:  the Orthodox in Murafa and Roman Catholics in Biały Bór.

Catholics of the Two Rites during a Time of Systemic Transformation Conflicts and social divisions, both in Poland and central-western Ukraine, are manifested in various forms of religious or para-religious expressions. The Christian tradition’s language of symbols, even when removed from religion, remains a means of social communication, as well as a main source of moral discourse.7 In Ukraine, the 2014 Euromaidan events in Kyiv and subsequent war with Russia have strengthened the link between religion and politics, intertwined with national discourse, in particular in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s case. On the other hand, confessional divisions vis-à-vis the faithful of the Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox Church, often running within families, have deepened. In Poland, the link between politics and Roman Catholicism, the religion of the majority, has also been recently growing stronger, in particular after the electoral victory of the Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, also known as PiS) in 2015. As a result, inter-confessional conflicts, in particular those underpinned by ethnic divisions, have become more pronounced. These changes were taking place during our research, and we present the results in this book. Our goal is to describe the current state of religious culture in the context of political transformations, as well as the anthropological interpretation of religion’s role in selected Catholic communities in Ukraine and Poland. We also discuss its role in constructing a contemporary, expressive agency as well as the sorts of context in which it promotes or hampers democratic changes’ permeation into the lives of local provincial communities.

7 In Ukraine, Greek Catholics in particular use Biblical symbols when referring to their national history: e.g. the Blessed Metropolitan Archbishop Andriy Sheptytski is called the Ukrainian Moses, who led his people out of slavery, when “The Church had to express the nation’s soul”, “He was a saint and he goes beyond national, historical or confessional boundaries”. Or “He is a symbol for our Church”, as Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Patriarch Svyatoslav Shevchuk said in one of his interviews, “Metropolita Andrej Szeptycki – ukraiński Mojżesz…”, Grekokatolicki Dekanat Sanocki portal, http://dekanatsanocki.blogspot.com/2012/07/metropolitaandrej-szeptycki-ukrainski.html, 09 April 2018. Moreover there is a two-volume biography by Ольга Михайлюк, entitled Мойсей українського духа й культури (Lviv: Артклас, 2015).

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Considerable differences in terms of the Catholic church’s status and social position already existed between the post-war Poland, where despite an ideological fight against it, the church organisation remained active and continued catechisation, and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, where there was a full ban on the young generation’s catechisation or even contact with the church organisation. In the latter case, while the construction of “political religion”8 relied on Christianity’s organisational patterns and sometimes symbolic structures, it also aimed to monopolise life and completely eliminate any religious or ideological competition. However, since the identity of the majority of the Ukrainian population was closely linked with religion, this aim was hard to reach. This fight resulted in the domestication9 of religion in Ukraine, the withdrawal of its practices from the public sphere and its takeover by the laity. As time went by, new hybrid forms appeared, based on a crosspollination between “political religion” state practices that often presented communism as an ideology associated with early Christianity, and traditional religiosity. As a rule, a higher level of education among Soviet citizens was associated with a higher level of atheisation. Religions, which were “domesticated” in rural areas, with the help of political ideology, became to a large extent associated with ignorance and superstition. The atheisation policy was alternately intensifying and weakening to the point of complete disappearance in somewhat dissimilar rhythms in the Polish People’s Republic, where the Catholic Church of the Latin rite remained the only mainstream organisation that counted in the public life, otherwise controlled by the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR). In the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, meanwhile, the Catholic Church’s organisational structures were almost completely destroyed. Although the Catholic Church of the Eastern rite (the Greek Catholic Church) was not formally liquidated in the Soviet Union, thanks to a campaign aimed at uniting it with the Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate after the so called Lviv Council of 1946, it existed in practice only in clandestine forms within a climate of increased repression. As a result, Greek Catholics’ religious life took place either within the Orthodox Church (many Greek Catholic priests became Orthodox), or underground in the privacy of the faithful’s homes. The residents of Lviv and other big cities took part in liturgies celebrated at Roman rite Catholic churches’, while the remaining few faced repressions and limitations against their practices.

8 I define “political religion” after Jacques Ellul, Les nouveaux possédés (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1973). 9 Cf. Tamara Dragadze, “The domestication of religion under Soviet communism,” in: Socialism. Ideals, Ideologies and Local Practice, ed. Chris M. Hann (London and New York: ASA Monographs 31 and Routledge, 1993), pp. 148–156. The differences between the forms of domesticated religion in Murafa and the South Caucasus, discussed by Dragadzie, are examined in this book by Marcin Skupiński in his article “Religion and Identity in the Postsocialist Landscape”.

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In Ukrainian Podilia, the region at the focus of our research, situated east of the Greek Catholics’ main area of activity, the Uniate Church, created as a result of the Union of Brest (pol. Brześć) in 1596 during the times of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,10 was abolished as a result of its “voluntary unification” with the Russian Orthodox Church. In Soviet times, during the 1930s in particular, repressions against Roman Catholic Church priests and believers were particularly drastic. After the Second World War, these were similar to the repressions experienced by Greek Catholics in Western Ukraine. In the Vinnytsia Oblast (located within Podilia), in 1951, only one priest performed pastoral duties among 63,111 Roman Catholics, according to official statistics; the number of registered active churches was 13.11 Meanwhile, in the post-war Polish People’s Republic, communist authorities implemented minority assimilation policies, as was the case in the whole Eastern bloc. Lemkos, Boykos and Ukrainians, Greek Catholic and Orthodox populations from south-eastern Poland, were resettled to the Soviet Union in 1944–46.12 Those who remained were deported from their homes to the so called “Recovered Territories”, while its native German population had been resettled to Germany, in its turn. Greek Catholicism was rightly perceived by the authorities to be a Ukrainian identity stronghold; for this reason they attempted to eliminate it altogether immediately after the deportations. The abandoned churches were devastated; some of them were given to Orthodox or Roman Catholic communities. 10 Bogumił Szady writes that the boundaries of the Uniate Church’s presence in -southwestern Ukraine, between the Dniester and Dnieper rivers, which is our territory of interest, were “the most unstable and fluid. It [this territory] was conditioned by Muscovite-Turkish competition regarding influence over these lands, which translated into an unending string of wars and conflicts in the 18th century. The subject literature usually defines this territory, colloquially known as the ‘wild fields’, as a buffer zone between Polish, Muscovite and Ottoman influence, rather than a ‘borderland’ or ‘frontier’. This is also true within the religious and confessional dimensions. The Uniate Church structures met here with the Orthodox Church, predominantly in Zaporozhe (between the Buh and the Dniester rivers) and with Islam, predominantly in the Crimean Khanate (in the passage between the Buh and Dniester rivers).” Geografia struktur religijnych i wyznaniowych w Koronie w II połowie XVIII w. (Lublin: KUL Publishing House, 2010) p. 185. 11 Józef Szymański, Kościół katolicki na Podolu. Obwód winnicki 1941-1964 (Lublin: Norbertinum, 2003) p. 49. The only priest was Marceli Wysokiński, a Polish Jesuit born in Siedlce in 1884. 12 About 480 thousand people were deported, including two Greek Catholic bishops Josaphat Kotsylovsky (Ukr. Йосафат Коциловський, Pol. Jozafat Kocyłowski) and Hryhoriy Lakota (Ukr. Григорій Лакота, Pol. Grzegorz Łakota) as well as Przemyśl Greek Catholic Church elders. Both bishops died in Soviet camps and were beatified as martyrs by John Paul II during his pilgrimage to Ukraine in 2001. Greek Catholic clergy remaining in Poland were imprisoned in Jaworzno Central Labour Camp, which was liquidated only in 1949.

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Photo 6: A monument to the metropolitan Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky as the Moses of Ukrainians (Yavoriv, Lviv Oblast). Photo by Magdalena Zowczak, 2007.

The religiosity of Catholics from both rites, Latin and Greek, was dominated by the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’s “political religion”, and survived mainly thanks to direct transmission, often in the form of clandestine resistance practices. Children and youth were banned from churches. Religious education became the domain of retired people, the pensioners (Ukr. пенсіонери), who did not have to fall into line vis-à-vis party authorities out of the fear of losing their jobs. The domestication of religion pushed the Ukrainian Catholicism, rooted in tradition, to the peripheries, strengthening selected religious cultural elements and promoting their persistence,13 as well as adjustment to 13 Protective rituals and domestic prayers gained significance. Sometimes they were modified to correspond with the local tradition context, including apocryphal

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the local life’s conditions and context. The sacred sphere (sacrum) was losing its social and public character. Forbidden practices, such as christenings, first communions and weddings, which took place in secrecy and often away from one’s home town, family and neighbours, changed their meaning. From being a social and public initiation they turned into secret mysteries experienced within an atmosphere of anxiety and fear. The religious life of Ukrainian Roman rite Catholics often took place in cemeteries, which became the religious communities’ only remaining possessions after the disappearance of churches, which were destroyed or transformed into warehouses, sports halls or clubs. In the absence of priests, their roles were often taken over by organ players, who conducted liturgies without sacraments. The beginnings of the religious revival were associated with the celebrations of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Poland in 1966 and the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Kyivan Russ in 1988,14 which the communist authorities decided to politically exploit, giving these events an international dimension. Another factor contributing to the religious revival was the election of a Pole, Karol Wojtyła, as Pope in 1978. He proclaimed the Lviv Council to be canonically invalid, and emphasised the continuity of the Brest Union tradition in his work. These events contributed to the liberalisation of social life through the promotion of individual autonomy as well as community practices which shaped social collaboration capabilities. They were also ahead of the political change and systemic transformation that occurred in Poland in 1989 and in Ukraine in 1991, the year in which Ukraine gained its independence. This was the time of the so called “Autumn of Nations” in Central and Eastern Europe, the time of jumping over walls and tearing them down. During 1989–1991, the partial legalisation of the Catholic Church of the Ukrainian-Byzantine rite took place in Ukraine, which made the return of Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky15 to Lviv and his embracing of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s leader’s position possible. As a result of the political breakthrough, churches and religions were granted full public rights and started to gradually introduce changes to their faithful’s domesticated religious culture in order to give it a more canonical character. In Poland, it was the period of carnival which saw the evolution of the “Church of the People” to the “Church of Choice.”16

elements; while theological knowledge declined. The Bible was usually not available, and its role was taken over by prayer books and devotional prints. Children learned the Polish language and prayers from the surviving prayer books published in the early 20th century or from even older ones. 14 In 1988, the Soviet Council of Ministers’ Religious Council registered the first Greek Catholic communities in the western part of the country. 15 Ukr.: Мирослав Любачівський, Pol.: Myrosław Lubacziwski. 16 Władysław Piwowarski, ed., Socjologia religii (Lublin:  Wydawnictwo KUL, 1996) pp. 265–279.

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The revived Greek Catholic Church’s first bishop’s synod met in Lviv in 1992. Pope John Paul II, a participant and co-creator of the Second Vatican Council, cleared the way for the modernisation of religious life. The religious services he delivered in Warsaw in 1979 and Lviv in 2000 gathered crowds of faithful and became ground-breaking events in their religious lives. Post-Second Council Catholic Church teaching, which reached not only Ukraine but also Poland with delay, could finally be transplanted to the local ground, integrated into the small communities’ religious lives. In this context, the ideas of aggiornamento as well as sensus fidelium, adjusted to local community life and believers’ subjectivity, as well as liturgy reforms and openness towards ecumenical dialogue, were able to be applied. Has that happened? We will attempt to answer that question here.

The Time of Carnival For Catholics, the period of John Paul II’s pontificate was an epoch when the intelligentsia’s or small social groups’ earlier spiritual searches17 started spreading among the “people” or the majority of believers. The churches’ return to public life meant that revitalisation, evangelisation and religious revival was taking place as a backlash against the earlier impairment and marginalisation of religion. During this communal period of mass services and joyous enthusiasm, Catholics could freely draw inspiration from various sources, construct their identities in an atmosphere of social liberalisation, including the selectiveness and subjectification of the religious self-construction.18 An interest in other religions, folk religiosity and/ or Christian apocrypha was strengthened and soon dominated by Western popular cultural influences. As a result, religiosity was liberalised and became yet another source of consumption. Young Polish priests going to work in Ukraine represented that liberal, expressive religious cultural type, which collided with local domesticated pre-Council provincial traditions.19 The older generation associated the practices they were introducing with the practices of Shtundas or Protestant groups, and could not understand why a Catholic priest would address them in broken Ukrainian. Even if they did not speak Polish, until then they had used it as the language of the sacrum, of home prayer and liturgy and communication with the priest. Some rejected the new style and abandoned the newly regained

17 Cf. Mirosława Grabowska, “Ruchy odnowy religijnej przełomu lat siedemdziesiątych i osiemdziesiątych: społeczne przyczyny i konsekwencje” in: Pokolenie JP2. Przeszłość i przyszłość zjawiska religijnego, ed. Tadeusz Szawiela (Warszawa: SCHOLAR, 2008), pp. 22–49. 18 Dorota Hall, New Age w Polsce. Lokalny wymiar globalnego zjawiska (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne, 2007). 19 Zuzanna Mitręga, “Wspólnota tradycyjna a katolickie ruchy religijne. Moment konfrontacji – nowe oblicze religijności,” in: Podole i Wołyń. Szkice etnograficzne, eds. Łukasz Smyrski and Magdalena Zowczak (Warszawa: DiG, 2003), pp. 115–128.

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Photo 7: A Greek Catholic member of the Pope’s guards from Biały Bór next to Pope’s throne in Koszalin, John Paul II’s pilgrimage to Poland in 1991. Photo by unknown photographer.

and rebuilt Church. However, they, unlike children and youth, were not the main catechisation target group anyway. Meanwhile in Poland, after a period of openness and liberalisation of religious life, and the resulting acceptance or even enthusiasm for changes associated with the Second Vatican Council, at the end of the 1990s, local Church representatives’ critical attitudes, strivings to purify the faith, became more prominent. The process of progressive subjectification began to slip out from under the Church, transforming religion into an individually and ad hoc constructed spirituality, tailored to its own design. This resulted in the particularisation and polarisation of religious life, manifested not only in laity movements within the Church, but also in the clergy’s progressive differentiation. A good example of this process could be the half-joking division between the traditionalist Toruń Church, and the progressive Łagiewniki Church,20 popularised by the media. 20 Toruń is the site of Father Tadeusz Rydzyk’s activities. He is the creator of Radio Maryja and the founding father of a Catholic university. The Divine Mercy Sanctuary in Kraków the neighbourhood of Łagiewniki is a place of worship dedicated to the Divine Mercy of Jesus and is the resting place of Saint Faustyna Kowalska. The sanctuary was built during John Paul II’s pontificate and is closely associated

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The Return of Traditionalism and Ethnic Religion In this atmosphere, 2010 marked the start of a period of Lent, manifested in a retreat from the ecumenical opening and progressive integrationist tendencies. This process could be observed both within the Church’s organisational global level as well as in the local religious life’s atmosphere. The removal of the anathema from Lefebrist leaders (2009), who question the Second Vatican Council’s decisions, calling it a Freemason success, and consider ecumenism a sin, seems symptomatic here. Other signs of recent changes include the return to pre-Council traditions in papal and liturgical rituals (as part of so-called continuity hermeneutics), and apocalyptic attitudes gaining more prominence among believers and some of the clergy, accompanied by exorcism fads, the rejection of cultural innovations (crowned in Poland by the “war on gender”) and spiritual consumerism (believed to be inspired by the unholy powers). The period of Lent, the time of asceticism and stigmatising sinners, as well as demonising New Age practices and popular culture products such as horoscopes, fortune-telling and amulets, has arrived. In the spirit of national Messianism, the war against magic, manifested, for instance, in the Harry Potter saga or Hello Kitty children’s gadgets, has been proclaimed. In Ukraine, the Catholic Church’s purifying catechesis predominantly targeted domesticated religious folk practices accused of magic ritualism (e.g. healing by prayer) or against the inclusion of alcohol as a permanent element of religious practices (e.g. during night wakes at the deceased’s home). In both countries, reform activities unleashed traditionalists’ resistance:  as their first step, they rejected ecumenism, proclaiming war against “church freemasonry” and returning to pre-Council religious practices. In its extreme form, the “church of the people” means the revival of national Messianism (e.g. the worship of Christ as “the King of Poland”), which also translates into “confessional nationalism” also known as “ethnic religion.”21 Backlash movements, forming in protest to modernisation or generally towards changes in the official Churches, came to the fore in the early 2010s. The Polish branch of the Lefebrists started collaborating with the so called Pidhirtsi fathers, a group of priests excommunicated in 2008, who established the Ukrainian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in 200922 and have been functioning outside of the official structures. This community, also known as Dohnalivtsi, named after its Czech founder, Antonin Dohnal, has become famous for organising manifestations with him; it is currently overseen by the Pope’s former secretary, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, who is the Kraków Archdiocese’s senior archbishop. 21 According to Danièle Hervieu-Léger, the association of ethnicity with religion is performed on the basis of postulated genealogy, which on the one hand is naturalised (connected to blood and soil), and on the other symbolised (referring to myth or the Genesis narrative); Cf. Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, trans. Simon Lee (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000). 2 2 From Pidhirtsi, a village in Lviv Oblast, Ukraine, where the movement started.

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Photo 8: The knights of Christ the King and Father Natanek in Warsaw, 2016. Photo by Rafał Bieryło.

and processions in Ukraine’s largest cities. In Poland, the return of pre-Council religiosity, coupled with national martyrdom symbols and Messianism, can be observed in the activities aimed at crowning Jesus as king of Poland. One of the most prominent examples here is a community which already exists outside the Church’s structures, Niepokalanów Hermitage, established in Grzechynia in southern Poland by the charismatic Father Piotr Natanek. He was suspended in 2011,23 but has not stopped his activities, and his popularity has only grown since. He uses internet television to proselytise,24 and has gained support from Poles living in Western Europe and the United States. Similarly to the Pidhirtsi fathers, this movement organises spectacular street actions in various Polish cities,

23 Moreover, the Episcopal Conference of Poland’s Permanent Council issued a statement on January 16th, 2012, stating: “Holy masses celebrated by a suspended priest are reprobate and sacrilegious; absolution is invalid.” http://episkopat.pl/oswiadczenie-rady-stalej-konferencji-episkopatu-polski-wsprawie-ks-piotra-natanka-i-jego-zwolennikow/ 12 Feb. 2018. 24 ChrystusVincit-TV, Społeczny Ruch Zapotrzebowania Wiary z Siedzibą w Norwegii Filia Pustelnia Niepokalanów Księdza Piotra Natanka w Grzechyni) http://christusvincit-tv.pl/ 30 April 2014.

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in cooperation with communities active within Church structures. Processions of the faithful dressed in long red coats with Christ the King and cross patterns, carrying holy images, feretories and pennants have even reached the European Parliament.25 Some community members’ attires, modelled on the Old Polish nobility’s dress, coupled with sabres on their sides, demonstrate the disappearing border between religious practices and historical reconstruction, taking the form of public spectacle. It can be interpreted as a manifestation of cultural fundamentalism,26 rather than ethnic religion. A similar phenomenon in Western Ukraine has been described by Vlad Naumescu,27 who discussed the example of Father Vasyl Kovpak’s community. Father Kovpak is the former administrator of St. Peter and Paul’s Church in Lviv; he is also a Lefebrist and founder and prior of the Priestly Society of Saint Josaphat Kuncewicz. Father Kovpak was excommunicated in 2007.28 The brotherhood can be characterised, according to Naumescu, as a nostalgic concentration in the Underground Church tradition. This translates into a refusal to respect liturgical reforms that order abandoning such popular practices like the Way of the Cross and rosaries, the removal of monstrance from liturgy (typical elements of Latin rite Catholicism), and the change of the liturgical language from Old Church Slavonic to Ukrainian (similarly to the return of Latin in traditionalist Roman Catholic movements). What is characteristic of these communities, apart from attachment to the old rituals and liturgical language, is the rejection of ecumenism as contemporary heresy, hostility towards “Moscow’s” Orthodox Patriarchate and proselytising attitudes towards its faithful. Although these groups are relatively marginal, their activities 25 The atmosphere of holy masses celebrated by Father Natanek in front of the European Parliament is well reflected in a film entitled Ks. Piotr Natanek - Bruksela ODBIJAMY EUROPĘ  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3QImEYR4QA 12 February 2018. 26 This, according to M. Herzfeld, is understood as the essentialisation of culture based on applying common sense knowledge and supporting it with elements from old ethnographic works, giving it transnational meaning. Cultural fundamentalism is closely associated with the naturalisation of xenophobia, which produces and justifies violence and hatred towards concrete groups (Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology. Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2001)). 27 Vlad Naumescu, “Continuities and Ruptures of a Religious Tradition: making ‘Orthodoxy’ in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church,” in: Churches In-between. Greek Catholic Churches in Postsocialist Europe, eds. Stéphanie Mahieu and Vlad Naumescu, Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia, Vol. 16, (Berlin-Münster-Wien-ZürichLondon: Lit Verlag, 2008), p. 161. 28 This first saint originating from the Uniate Church conducted unmitigated proselytising activities among the Orthodox. He was also murdered in 1623 by Orthodox townspeople from Vitebsk (now in Belarus). Due to the fact that he received his formation in Vilnius’ Basilian monastery, he has become their special patron.

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Photo 9: The Way of the Cross in Sharhorod (Vinnytsia Oblast), 2013. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska.

have a divisive character and are dangerous for both Churches, which fail to properly limit these groups’ influence. Integrist tendencies have intensified in the face of increasingly liberal marriage and/or abortion laws in the West, as well as the current migration tendencies as well as thegrowing Islamophobia after the WTC attack on September 11th, 2001. (This event is widely interpreted by many Podilia Orthodox and Catholics alike as punishment for the above-mentioned liberal innovations). One could identify rough caesuras defining the turning points of the epoch of the Carnival and “patchwork” identity and the current religious culture’s Lent and sanation (moral purification) in the local Polish sphere. These have been Poles’ two collective experiences, the breakthrough moments of the post-Soviet transformation period’s social drama. The first one, which I consider to be a consolidating one in the sense of Turner’s communitas, was the period of John Paul II’s dying days. This was the so called Vigil Weak (April 1st–8th, 2005).29 The second was the 29 Magdalena Zowczak, “Collective religious experience and contemporary cultural practices. The Week of Vigil,” in: Exploring home, neighbouring and distant cultures, eds. Lech Mróz and Aleksander Posern-Zieliński (Warszawa: DiG, 2008), p. 23–40.

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period of collective trauma associated with the Smolensk plane crash of April 19th, 2010, interpreted from the “people’s church” perspective as yet another Polish historical sacrifice placed within the old Messianic myth structure. Moreover, these dramatic national events have fitted into the global processes taking place within the Church. In this context, the research project analysing the religious cultures of the two Catholic minorities has focused on the attitude towards tradition in the framework of three tendencies: the globalisation of religious transmission and the prevailence of popular culture; the individualisation and diversification of religious expression, also related to believers’ emancipation; and the nationalisation of religion and its entanglement in national politics of history. In Poland, the initial period of the transformation, marked by the enthusiasm inspired by the immediate post-Soviet tide of change, saw the prevalence of the first two tendencies, accompanied by ecumenical attitudes inspired by the Second Vatican Council’s decisions. During the last decade, however, we have been able to observe the development of various forms of ethnic religion, including martyrology practices related to the sacralisation of the nation and collective traumas, reconstruction of historic events, the multiplication of memory sites and memorials and militarist discourse, strongly present e.g. in Father Natanek’s homilies. The progressive overlapping of religious and national ideology discourses and the forms of expression typical for them in the public sphere have also been notable. In Ukraine, particularly in its western part, similar phenomena can be observed since its independence. However, these were confronted with opposing tendencies, dominant in the country’s centre and east, where they were rather negatively perceived. In Kyiv, during independence day celebrations, groups of Stepan Bandera and UPA supporters and their opponents, who accused them of fascism, used to demonstrate side by side. However, ethnic religion forms have intensified and spilt over during the Euromaidan events, the so called Revolution of Dignity, and in particular in response to the Russian invasion of early 2014. As a result, religion appears to be giving way to the already discussed cultural fundamentalism. In both Polish and Ukrainian traditions, it is constructed on the basis of the Biblical notion of one’s nation as the chosen people. The effect of these processes has been aptly referred to in a Polish ethnology classic written by Jan Stanisław Bystroń as national megalomania.30

Religious Culture Studies – Aims and Methodology The study of religious culture represents a complementary approach to religious studies. It concentrates on the believers’ religious lives and aims to grasp their religious experiences “from within”, while scholars of religion instead focus on canonical religion and theology from a historical perspective, which often go beyond 30 Jan S. Bystroń, Megalomania narodowa (Warszawa, 1935).

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ordinary believers’ knowledge and interests. For this reason, the collaboration of scholars observing religion from both sides appears to be indispensable. In order to clarify the project’s key concepts, I  asked religious studies scholar Elżbieta Przybył-Sadowska to provide a commentary on the term “religious culture” and its usefulness.31 In what follows, I will present my own anthropological interpretation of its meaning. Religious culture is a term introduced in the 1930s by a Polish sociologist closely associated with the French sociology school, Stefan Czarnowski;32 and it refers to the way religion is adjusted to a concrete community’s life and how it functions within it. Every religion, in a particular time and place, has corresponding practices which are specific for a given community and adjusted to its way of life. These include the community’s common-sense knowledge, heritage and historical memory, which define its values orientation. The term religious culture combines a structural aspect (the history of the longue durée33 meaningful elements) with its functional current meaning. Currently it may appear to be too static and limiting particularly at the times when anthropologists, following Lila Abu-Lughod, write “against culture” appropriated by political scientists, the likes of Samuel Huntington,34 while cognitivists perceive “religion” as a more intuitive rather than scientific term.35 Many scholars would see “spirituality studies” as a more attractive term, due to their coinciding with cultures’ individualisation. However, they do not exhaust the spectre of the phenomena we are interested in. Declarations of the end of religion have been premature, similarly to the statements about the end of nation-states. Despite Francis Fukuyama’s globalist thesis, history did not come to its end with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Charles Taylor’s diagnosis appears to be much more accurate; he predicted the persistence of “neo-Durkheimian identities”, the intermingling of confessional identity with the sense of belonging to a group, when collective history’s moral issues are phrased in religious categories. NeoDurkheimian identities compete with the new post-Durkheimian order that frees the stifled identity from the social frames of faith.36 In our observations and conversations about the religious life of the two selected Catholic minorities, we tried to understand how the political transformation 31 Cf. Elżbieta Przybył-Sadowska, “The term “religious culture” in religious studies research in Poland,” included in this volume. 32 Stefan Czarnowski, “Kultura religijna ludu polskiego,” in: Kultura, Stefan Czarnowski (Warszawa 1958), pp. 80–99. 33 Fernand Braudel, On History, trans. Sarah Matthews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 34 Ulf Hannerz, Transnational Connections. Culture, People, Places (London and New York: Routledge 1996). 35 Agnieszka Halemba, Negotiating Marian Apparitions. The Politics of Religion in Transcarpathian Ukraine (Budapest-New York: CEU PRESS, 2015), p. 6. 36 Charles Taylor, The Varieties of Religion Today (Vienna: Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, 2002).

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processes have impacted local communities and caused internal divisions and conflicts; as well as how these processes break down or intensify in the context of the local community’s religious culture. Has their religious culture become saturated with national ideology, heading towards ethnic religion? Has the increasing individualisation of culture and its associated divisions been accompanied by the progressive “disenchantment with the world”, the fall of ritualism and the final disintegration of domesticated religion’s symbolic microcosm in which Biblical history is mixed with local mythology?37 Or rather, do traditional forms of expression and their symbolism co-exist with new ones, creating more complex, global types of religious culture? As our ethnographic research’s guiding principle, we adopted reflexivity, which assumes the exchangeability of the researcher’s perspective, and that of the researched community members, and a dialogue between them. This “reciprocal reflection” is associated with the unavoidable relativisation of cognition, which enables cultural distance formation, essential in ethnographic research. This relativism has defined boundaries, as it is impossible to avoid some forms of metanarratives. After the postmodernist turn, an anthropologist’s task appears to be to reconsider epistemic perspective’s meaning and construction, which enables the juxtaposition of ethnographic research results from various cultural contexts. While I  fully embrace the voices critical of the categories in question, I adhere to the religious culture concept, which I understand not so much as an organised “system”, but rather as interconnected longue durée cultural institutions in the process of change resulting from the clash between the state’s and Church’s organisational strategies and the believers’ tactics. In my description of the phenomena belonging to the religious culture concept, I would like to avoid the static connotations of the term “system”, since it belongs to the Catholic Church organisation that also undergoes changes. I would like to demonstrate the tendencies that can be observed in religious culture as diversified and often conflicting. They may exist in opposition to the dominant cultural trend, or to popular culture, or even be in permanent confrontation with it in order to simultaneously fit into it in some respects. All too often a form into which we try to force the described phenomena, after closer observation, may turn out to be hiding something new, just as, for instance, Easter mysteries may turn out to be a certain performance, a popular historical reconstruction.38 The love for historical reconstructions and the theatralisation of life is an unquestionable feature of contemporary Poles and Ukrainians, the communities we describe in this book.

37 Magdalena Zowczak, Biblia ludowa. Interpretacje wątków biblijnych w kulturze ludowej (Toruń: Wyd. Naukowe Uniwersytetu M. Kopernika, 2013). 38 Cf. Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska, “How to present the Passion of Christ? Popular culture as a source of inspiration for Easter Passion Plays,” Ethnologia Polona, Vol. 28, 2007, pp. 47–60; Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska, Ukrzyżowani. Współczesne misteria męki Pańskiej w Polsce (Toruń: Wyd. Naukowe Uniwersytetu M. Kopernika, 2013).

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Coming back to the eponymous concept, I understand religious culture as the context of social drama (according to the meaning given to it by Victor Turner)39 that corresponds to political transformation; it has the form of loosely interconnected longue durée institutions. Since these include patterns of action, religious culture also co-creates social drama. The object of our research included collective and individual practices as forms of religious expression, interpreted in terms of their significance for individuals’ lives as well as the communities created by them. The concept of expression – the manifestation of the religious experience – is related to religious practices’ creative and aesthetical aspects.40 The longue durée institutions, including the patterns of action, are confronted with changes in believers’ everyday lives, accompanying top-down political transformation processes. Moreover, both concepts’ practice41 and expression, combine a performative aspect with a religious one (a semantic one), referring to the root religious experience shaped by Biblical messages, which are constantly read anew. The advantage of the term “religious culture” is the possibility of associating beliefs and actions and combining an analysis of the statements’ meanings with their performative aspect. It directs our attention to the body and unmediated multisensory experience, which is the source of believers’ engagement. And it simultaneously directs our attention to the common sense-body sense transmission which occurs in religious practices, as Michael Herzfeld concisely puts it.42 Our aim was to observe and interpret events of symbolic meaning for the community, such as the coronation of a miraculous image, a church patron saint’s day liturgy, as well as celebrations organised by schools on state holidays, in particular when accompanied with religious symbols. The performance category is helpful here; it refers to the believers’ active process of giving meaning to religious or para-religious practices. I also associate performativity with everyday repetitive practices, often performed in a mechanical way, such as the community-building practice of Rosary circles. Performance and various types of verbal and visual messages representing religious imaginaria43 do not need to mutually reinforce each other; they should be recognised as different and sometimes opposite types of expression. I assume that “the explicitness of the rules is always inversely proportional to the practical 39 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Aldine Transaction, 1995). 40 Bryant Keith Alexander, “Performance Ethnography: the Reenacting and Inciting of Culture,” in: The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3th edition, eds. Norman K.  Denzin, Yvonna S.  Lincoln (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi:  Sage Publications, 2005), p. 415. 41 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 42 Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture. 43 Charles Taylor, The Varieties of Religion Today.

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engagement involved,”44 which means that the interpretation of a concrete practice of performance by the actor, our interlocutor, although important, is not sufficient. Ethnographic interviews’ transcriptions and observation notes, along with other types of sources, create shared contexts of understanding of a concrete phenomenon, in this case religious expression. Jacek Wajszczak writes about our ethnographic practices in greater detail, referencing Jacek Olędzki, a champion of observation, an ethnographer from an older generation who conducted research on Polish Catholics’ miraculous sensibility in the 1970s and 1980s.45 The differentiation between religious institutions and organisations appears to be particularly important in the case of our research, conducted in the context of the former USSR territories’ transformation. This is due to the already discussed domestication of religion, which has adopted forms often considerably different from its official, organisational form. Organisations are here defined, after Agnieszka Halemba, as patterns of human behaviour that regulate social experience and actions, spheres of negotiations and redefinitions of roles and aims. Organisation, in contrast to institution, is simultaneously internally and externally objectified. While institutional roles are to a large extent concealed and need to be crystallised by the researcher on the basis of human actions, organisational roles are precisely defined and usually codified in writing.46 Social institutions include e.g. healing by prayer by a sheptukha (Ukr. шептуха, Pol. szeptunka),47 or the poroby (Ukr. пороби) i.e. the magical bringing of harm upon e.g. neighbours, well-known in Murafa. Organisations are mechanisms “structuring social action that are clearly identifiable for the involved actors and within which and through which particular norms of action are clearly and explicitly defined and can be enacted in practice.”48 They are perceived as agents. Although for anthropologists, “organizations are arenas of intense differentiation, struggles, networking, alliance formations, and so on, it is important to note that they are perceived locally as if they were actors – the university, the church, the school – are talked about us as if they were giving opinions, issuing decrees, hiring and firing, involving themselves in public issues, and so on. Moreover, organizations are objectified not primarily by researchers, but by the people involved in their operation.”49 Organisational roles may be questioned, challenged or ignored by various actors; in this way, social institutions enter into interactions with organisations and challenge them. Organisations may also produce institutions (e.g. Rosary circles,

44 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 22. 45 Cf. Jacek Wajszczak “Jerzy Nowosielski’s Orthodox Church in Biały Bór: Reception and Cultural Contexts”, included in this book. 46 Agnieszka Halemba, Negotiating Marian Apparitions, p. 10. 47 A folk healer, from Ukr. “шептати”, to whisper. 48 Agnieszka Halemba, Negotiating Marian Apparitions, p. 10. 49 Agnieszka Halemba, Negotiating Marian Apparitions, p. 10.

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which became rooted in Podilia Catholics’ lives despite state repressions against them during the periods of intensification of the war on religion). According to Halemba, the interaction processes between religious organisations and religious institutions, as well as “organisational embracement” and institutionalisation “generate some of the most important and pregnant questions concerning the ways in which religion is present in human life.”50 In our research, the strategies of the church and state represent an organisational aspect, whereas religious culture is manifested in institutional forms. An example of their collision is Murafa’s residents’ eschatological practices, who were stocking canned foods and candles for the predicted end of the world in 2012; this was criticised in a Sunday sermon by the parish priest, who chastised the parishioners for believing in media prophecies.51 The global product of popular culture, however, stroke the right chords with Murafa’s Catholics’ traditionalist proclivities. Another example here is the competition between the “Older choir” singing in Polish and the celebrant singing the same song in Ukrainian during Sunday liturgy.52 Whereas the exploitation of the Pole’s Card in Murafa is a spectacular example of the “interception” of a state organisation product within bricolage tactics.53 Apart from searching for the types of practices and expression which are characteristic for the two minorities, such confrontations between them and organisations’ strategies, perceptible in the form of resistance tactics (defined after Michel de Certeau),54 have become the object of our studies. Our research questions were directed towards understanding the role of religion in the ways of identity construction (both collective and individual) within the two compared Catholic minorities. This included relations between memory and heritage, associated with forms of religious expression, the meaning of liturgy and the language of prayer, the attitudes of priests and believers towards tradition and the priest’s status and authority within a local community. Which events are commemorated by believers in the public sphere and which – inside their homes? Do they keep the memory of their Jewish neighbours and the Holocaust? How do Roman Catholics in Ukrainian Podilia treat the heritage left by the Jews, and how do Greek Catholics in western Poland treat the German and Jewish heritage which has become their own? These questions gain meaning in the national ideology homogenisation context, which constitutes a significant element of both states’ current strategies. 5 0 Agnieszka Halemba, Negotiating Marian Apparitions, p. 4. 51 Marcin Skupiński discusses this in his article on public religion and the enchantment of the world, included in this volume. 52 Maria Sokołowska writes about this in her article “Language and Identity: Murafa’s Catholic Population on the Language Changes in the Church,” included in this volume. 53 Katarzyna Kaczmarska describes these practices in her article “Narratives about the Pole’s Card and its Impact on Murafa’s Residents’ Identity,” included in this volume. 54 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, pp. 17–42.

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Phenomenological Inspirations Our research project draws on some inspiration from phenomenology as a philosophical basis of the anthropology of experience. It also draws inspiration from the fundamental element of ethnographic practice, which aims to understand differences, and thus requires “suspending” our own beliefs and habits as part of the epoché, a temporary alienation from what is certain and obvious for the researcher. A  phenomenological perspective is combined with a hermeneutical interpretation’s constructivism and its central position in relation to religious practices. Ethnographic narrative interviews focus on the meaning of these practices for the interlocutors, who are also social actors, fellow constructors and guides within the studied cultural reality. In other words, I  interpret the ethnographic epoché as two alternating techniques:  the destrengement (making the unknown known) in relation to the observed phenomenon and the estrangement (making the known unknown) in relation to one’s own cultural equipment.55 The expected result is the description of local categories in the form of “second order” typological constructions, which should fulfil two conditions: be cohesive and be coherent with our interviewees’ knowledge.56 These tactics correspond with the ideation process that leads one from the juxtaposed experiences’ details to ideas that help one interpret them, in order to deepen a given experience’s interpretation. An anthropologist’s task is to recognise symbolic events that characterise a given community as well as the relations between these events, on the basis of the anthropologist’s own experience of them. In order to gain such an understanding in a phenomenological way,57 we search for adequate names for these events: by confronting them with comments from actors-participants of these events as well as with various available sources which may help us shed light onto the gained experiences’ meanings. This is both about the meaning (or rather meanings) of these events for the studied community, as well as about the interpretations external to them, performed from different perspectives. The interpretation of observed phenomena requires placing themin the historical context of inter-confessional and inter-ethnic relations, which shape the longue durée institutions. This refers to Poles’ and Ukrainians’ mutual perceptions, which are similar in many aspects to postcolonial relations, but also are mired by the ethnic cleansings and deportations of the 1940s. The historical domination of 55 Ilja Maso, “Phenomenology and Ethnography,” in: Handbook of Ethnography, eds. Paul, Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland and Lyn Lofland (London: Sage Publications, 2001), pp. 136–144. 56 Cf. Alfred Schütz, “The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 49, Issue 6, 1944, pp. 499–504; Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture”, in: The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 3–32. 57 Ilja Maso, “Phenomenology and Ethnography,” p. 136–144.

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the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Russia, and the following analogous postcolonial traumas of Ukrainians and Poles, also need to be taken into account. Poles, however, in contrast to Ukrainians, were not only the colonised, but also, in the more distant past, colonisers,58 which is still reflected in the “common sense knowledge” stereotypes. These stereotypes, thanks to the memory of the past domination of the Other, help create an ideal self-image, the national super-ego. Ukrainians, in turn, celebrate an image of an ethnos-victim that suffered at the hands of both Russians and Poles. For this reason, an issue of particular significance for the identity and religious culture of Catholics of both rites has been how to deal with the memory of Murafa’s and Baldenburg’s former residents, whose heritage they unpremeditatedly inherited.

On Comparison A critical impetus activated by postmodernism and its ethical and aesthetic postulates, including the rejection of metanarrative and epistemology, has questioned comparative studies’ rationale, putting it on a list of impossible tasks. Admittedly, the classics of anthropology were formulating a similar thesis from the start.59 However, Richard Rorty’s “intelligent conversation”, François Lyotard’s paralogy, the demonstration of cultural heteroglossia and the introduction of aesthetic criterion into the assessment of cultural reality have not been sufficient to make up for the endless deconstruction and relativism, and the resulting fragmentation of ethnographic research and its results. The description of human interactions, however, requires comparison and implies metanarrative elements, even if it only takes us to the construction of a simplified form of ideal types (in Max Weber’s understanding). Reflexively and rationally selected ideas and patterns of behaviour produce models – tools for describing the historical reality, in which one searches for the answer as to why these rational constructs could not have been implemented in real life. Weber assumed that rationality and cohesion of construction are possible only in case of a model, and not real-life actions, which often face various kinds of opposition (although the possibility that some religious virtuoso already realised or will realise them at some point remains).60 However, these models’ usefulness will be questioned by the postmodernist, who will challenge both the universal character of rationality and

58 This was very vividly painted in Daniel Beauvois’ book Trójkąt ukraiński. Szlachta, carat i lud na Wołyniu, Podolu i Kijowszczyźnie 1793-1914, [The Ukrainian Triangle:  Nobility, Tsarism, and Peasants in the Volhynia, Podolia, and Kyiv Region, 1793-1914, transl. Krzysztof Rutkowski] (Lublin: Wyd. Uniwersytetu Marii CurieSkłodowskiej, 2016). 59 Magdalena Zatorska writes about this in her chapter in this book. 60 Max Weber, “Intermediate reflections on the economic ethics of the world religions: Theory of the stages and directions of religious rejection of the World,”

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the justifiability of treating these models as cultural representations. “The truth is born within the discourses,” as Michel Foucault would have it said, and these are mutually incompatible. And yet ideal type and discourse have something in common; they present elements combined in a structure with internal logic. However, while in the case of discourse this relationship is only horizontal, ideal type can be constructed vertically, in a diachronic perspective. Moreover, we can find comparisons based on an ideal type in postmodernists’ texts: such as those of James Clifford, a historian, who has made a name for himself in anthropology thanks to his essay on ethnographic authority types, or discourses, within which the produced knowledge is adequate to power relations. Clifford avoided making value judgements about “colonial” and “post-colonial” types of authority, concluding that none of them should be rejected, because all are useful and open for changes. Not only because, as Paul Rabinow noted, he found himself in postmodern discourse’s notion of “in truth” (dans le vrai).61 Clifford most likely identified the trap many postmodernists have fallen into: the impotence resulting from the inability to compare, if we recognise only the pure “post-colonial” authority types: the dialogical and polyphonic ones. The first one, inspired by hermeneutics, assumes an equivalence between “my truth” and “the Other’s truth” in order to enable the dialogue that leads to broadening the epistemic horizon. However, it does not assume any concrete decisions. The Gadamerian “fusion of horizons” usually proves to be utopian. Polyphonic authority also leads rather to heteroglossia, since polyphony assumes harmony, which is a sort of metanarrative, in its turn. Consequently, in order to introduce comparison, required even for Cliffordian textualism, in the modified cultural context of the long prophesied increasing social atrophy,62 one needs to reach out for selected elements from the two earlier “colonial” ethnographic authority constructs: the experiential and the interpretative ones. In his essay “On Ethnographic Authority” from the classic Predicament of Culture collection, Clifford presented the French interwar period’s ethnology development within the ideal types construct, in which “ethnographic surrealism” was contrasted with “humanist anthropology.” These concepts are related to the changing historical borderline between science and art, portrayed within the process that starts from free, creative expression accompanying cultural revolt as well

in: The Essential Max Weber, ed. Sam Whimster (London: Routledge, 2004 [1921]) pp. 215–244. 61 Paul Rabinow, “Representations Are Social Facts: Modernity and Post-Modernity in Anthropology,” in: Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, A School of American Research Advanced Seminar, eds. James Clifford, George. E. Marcuse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 234–261. 6 2 Zygmunt Bauman, Freedom (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1988); Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Harvard: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992).

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as from ethnography’s and art’s mutual penetration. This process’s end point is the institutionalisation of a new discipline functioning within certain boundaries and within the framework of its own paradigm or specific discourse. As a system of knowledge in a contemporary state, it becomes subordinated to existing power relations. This chronologically presented change process navigates us between two metaphorical museums:  the Trocadéro and the Musée de l’Homme, opened on the eve of the Second World War at the site of the demolished “Troc”. They respectively represent, in terms of their programmes, collections, architecture and general atmosphere, two opposite situations. Trocadéro is a creative chaos, where various artefacts from different cultures inspire simultaneous cognitive and aesthetic practices without clear divisions between them. Musée de l’Homme presents systematically developed, well-organised collections, which, by their totalising order, reflect the new scientific discipline’s achievements in a specially designed, dedicated building. All types of human culture were presented there, with the exception of one, that of the museum’s creators. The latter was present only indirectly, in the order of Humankind arranged by them. The West’s identity and its humanism were not yet the object of museum expositions or anthropological reflection in the 1930s. Similarly to “ethnographic authorities”, Clifford demonstrates both phenomena’s strong and weak points in the context of their typical practices and effects, often unintended and sometimes even contrary to the programme. He constructs a certain scale, yet without an explicit hierarchy. Clifford’s conclusion avoids making value judgements; one should beware of hasty disregard for humanism. In the final section of his essay entitled “Culture/Collage”, Clifford claims that although his focus on ethnographic knowledge’s paradoxical nature translates into questioning the basic similarities between people, “[a]‌nthropological humanism and ethnographic surrealism need not be seen as mutually exclusive; they are perhaps best understood as antinomies set within a transient historical and cultural predicament.”63 Thus, anthropological humanism aims to make differences understandable and familiar through naming, clarification, description and interpretation. “An ethnographic surrealist practice, by contrast, attacks the familiar, provoking the irruption of otherness, the unexpected. The two attitudes presuppose each other; both are elements within the complex process that generates cultural meanings, definitions of self and other. This process, a permanent ironic play between similarity and difference, the familiar and the strange, the here and the elsewhere, is, as I  have argued, characteristic of global modernity.”64 This construct can be summed up as yet another anthropological representation of Nietzsche’s differentiation between classical drama’s two elements: the Dionysian (chaos, dreams and madness) and the Apollonian (order and form).

6 3 James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Surrealism,” p. 145. 64 James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Surrealism,” pp. 145–146.

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The association of Clifford’s typological constructs with Nietzsche’s philosophy does not appear here without reason. In his essay “On Ethnographic SelfFashioning:  Conrad and Malinowski”, this philosopher, the guiding spirit of postmodernism, is mentioned as the author of the relativistic conception of culture, a rival to Edward B.  Tylor.65 The comparison refers to the transformation process of two outstanding 20th century personalities:  Conrad and Malinowski, authors of original concepts of culture and language, “their difficult accession to innovative professional expression”66 existing outside their home culture and language. They represent, according to Clifford, “a new ethnographic subjectivity” resulting from “the condition of off-centredness in a world of distinct meaning systems”,67 which was slowly becoming the average Westerner’s experience during the 20th century. Clifford compares Heart of Darkness and Argonauts of the Western Pacific with A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. He juxtaposes both authors’ biographies in the context of their parallels, as he describes their experiences and literary fiction, which were rescued from the crisis associated with disintegrating identity. As his starting point, he establishes the cultural relation, both author’s difficult positions:  “both were Poles condemned by historical contingency to a cosmopolitan European identity; both pursued ambitious writing careers in England.”68 What is more, “the two exiles shared a peculiarly Polish cultural distance, having been born into a nation that had since the eighteenth century existed only as a fiction – but an intensely believed, serious fiction – of collective identity.”69 The cultural distance of both exiles, as Clifford called them, resulted from the difference between the bourgeois values dominant in Europe, and the “aristocratic values” obvious to all tiers of Polish society. This is an important observation when comparing the two Catholic minorities. Their current culture is rather constructed on the basis of “peasant values”, obvious for Ukrainians and their expression: vivid, rich Ukrainian folklore, ennobled to the rank of national culture by the young Ukrainian state. The term народний (narodnyi) in Ukrainian may refer to both “folk” as well as “national”. This is one of the key differences between the Catholics of the two rites, the protagonists of this work. In Poland, for ages village folklore has been perceived as the subservient culture’s expression, lower, primitive; this stereotype was also used by the Polish People’s Republic not only as a “divide and rule” political principle, but also as a way to promote rapid post-war industrialisation, accompanied by mass migration to cities. We will attempt to take

65 James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Self-Fashioning: Conrad and Malinowski,” in: The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988). 66 James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Self-Fashioning,” p. 96 67 James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Self-Fashioning,” p. 93. 68 James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Self-Fashioning,” p. 96. 69 James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Self-Fashioning,” p. 98.

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into account these traditions and their mutual relations in a way that draws upon the ideal type and the discourses associated with it.

The Selection of the Studied Communities Murafa’s and Biały Bór’s religious minorities, Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics also comprise minorities at Ukraine’s and Poland’s national levels, respectively. In Ukraine, according to 2010 data, 61 % of believers were Orthodox,70 8.5  % were Greek Catholic, and only 1.7  % were Roman Catholic.71 In Poland, the Catholic Church of the Byzantine-Ukrainian rite had 33  thousand believers according to the 2011 census (0.09 %, in comparison to 87.58 % Catholics of the Roman rite). According to the Central Statistical Office’s (GUS) data from 2015, however, it had 55 thousand.72 Researchers draw attention to two main challenges in regard to obtaining reliable data. One is the Greek Catholic community’s considerable dispersal around the country (which was Operation Vistula’s goal). As a result, the community had a limited access to their own churches. Moreover, there has been a considerablepost-Soviet inflow of a Greek Catholic population from Ukraine to Poland.73 The other reason is the complicated relationship between Poland and Ukraine, and the resulting unwillingness on the part of Ukrainians to openly declare their identity, which I already signalled above, when discussing my interviewee’s satisfaction with the new church’s inconspicuous location. Our research in Ukraine covered three localities in the Vinnytsia Oblast in central Podilia: the two neighbouring villages of Murafa (Ukr. Мурафа)74 and Klekotyna (Ukr. Клекотина), in which we were residing; Sharhorod (Ukr. Шаргород), the administrative centre of the Sharhorod region, located 12 kilometres away; and 70 This number includes the faithful of the three Orthodox Churches: Kyiv Patriarchate, Moscow Patriarchate and the Autocephalous Church. 71 The data according to Jason Mandryk, Operation World: The Definitive Prayer Guide To Every Nation, Completely Revised 7th Edition (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010), p. 644. 72 According to the Central Statistical Office (GUS), there were 55 thousand believers in 2015: Wyznania religijne w Polsce 2012-2014 (Warszawa: GUS 2016) p. 35. The situation was similar two years before: Wyznania religijne, stowarzyszenia narodowe i etniczne w Polsce 2009-2011 (Warszawa: GUS, 2013) p. 38 https://stat.gov.pl/cps/rde/ xbcr/gus/oz_wyznania_religijne_stow_nar_i_etn_w_pol_2009-2011.pdf 24 Feb. 2018. 73 Piotr Siwicki, “Grekokatolicy i prawosławni w Polsce w świetle wyników spisu powszechnego z 2011 r.” Ekumenizm portal, 26.07 2013, http://www.ekumenizm. pl/koscioly/wschodnie/grekokatolicy-i-prawoslawni-w-polsce-w-swietle-wynikowspisu-powszechnego-z-2011-r/ 07 August 2017. 74 In 1949–89 Murafa was named Zhdanove (Жданове) after Stalin’s close associate, Andrei Zhdanov. He was the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s secretary in the 1930s, responsible for the ethnic cleansings and terror of that time. Murafa’s population, according to official data, is about 2800 people; Klekotyna’s is less than 3900, and Sharhorod’s less than 7000.

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Uman (Ukr. Умань), a city located in the neighbouring Cherkasy region. The populations in all these places include Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox Church faithful and Roman Catholics, as well as small Protestant communities, Baptists and Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Sharhorod’s Jewish community is declining, whereas Uman is annually visited by Hasidic pilgrims who make their way to R. Nahman of Breslov’s grave and has an intermittent Jewish settlement which has been functioning since the 1990s. The idea of performing research in Murafa came to me during an earlier ethnographic research project in Podilia, conducted in the regional town of Horodok (Ukr. Городок).75 Horodok’s Poles praised Murafa’s community as a stronghold of Podilia’s Catholicism. Since Horodok’s Poles with their religious fervour, a newly built church, mercy houses and a seminary (under construction at the time) already appeared to be such a “stronghold”, their account of Murafa sounded intriguing. I  mention this because the knowledge gained during the earlier research was a starting point for this new project, the results of which are presented here. It also became a point of reference for the description of Murafa’s situation, which turned out to be considerably different from Hodorok’s, where my interviewees were “hard” Poles, descendants of Polish lesser nobility. According to the project’s goals, the comparative research was supposed to focus on the Polish minority in Ukraine and the Ukrainian minority in Poland. However, we soon realised that the majority of Roman Catholics in Murafa call themselves Ukrainian and are differentiated from the rest by their confession. They are locals (Pol. tutejsi, Ukr. тутешні) and thus Ukrainian. Despite mass labour and study migration to Poland, despite the Polish lecturers’ efforts at Horodok’s seminary in its early years, the local Catholicism has become tied to the Ukrainian identity. It does not have the radical national character typical of many Greek Catholics; rather, it has a status quo acknowledgement in terms of the local identity. The Greek Catholic Church’s influence in Podilia’s rural areas are very limited; or at least this was the case during our research. It has developed more in towns and cities. It is likely that this is another reason for the “localness” of Roman Catholicism here. Even though many Murafa residents possess the so-called Pole’s Card (a confirmation of a person’s belonging to the Polish nation that also gives its holder certain privileges,including the possibility to work and study in Poland),76 75 I conducted research with a group of students there in 1999–2001. The research results were published in a collective work titled Podole i Wołyń. Szkice etnograficzne, eds. Łukasz Smyrski and Magdalena Zowczak, (Warszawa: DiG, 2003). The summary of my research was presented in the article entitled “O długim trwaniu Polaków na Podolu. Imponderabilia tożsamości,” in this publication, pp. 9–76. 76 The Pole’s Card was introduced on the basis of 2007 legislation (that came into force in 2008), during the time in which Poland entered the Schengen Area. It grants its owners a number of privileges. Katarzyna Kaczmarska writes about it in greater detail in her article regarding the Pole’s Card and its impact on Murafa’s residents’ identity.

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they treat it pragmatically. During our research, there were no Polish classes at the local school or in any local Polish organisations. Some of Murafa’s residents claim, “when I go to Poland, I feel Polish”. One of the nuns half-jokingly gave a more sophisticated account, “I am an Orthodox Catholic, a Ukrainian of Polish roots.” Thus, I  decided to modify the initial project’s assumptions and conduct our research in Murafa. From an anthropological perspective, the contemporary cultural condition is better described by reference to various types of borderland identities, rather than ethnic groups. Moreover, the study was predominately focused on religious culture, and both pilot research as well as media accounts confirmed Horodok’s Poles’ opinions about the exceptional character of Murafa’s minority. Numerous priesthood callings testify to this: more than fifty active Catholic priests and nuns come from Murafa.77 The architectural and cultural heritage of Murafa’s Catholics is also rather exceptional:  their monastic complex with a miraculous image and full equipment survived the Soviet times. The church was closed for a short period of time (1937–1941), during the peak of Soviet atheisation policies. 19th century gravestones with Polish-language inscriptions have been preserved at the Catholic cemetery. For comparison’s sake, I will just mention the fact that the church in Horodok was demolished by the authorities in 1936 (a canteenwas put in its place, and the church’s stones were used for cobbling the streets). Until 1989, Horodok Catholics used to pray at the cemetery chapel, or rather around it, as it was too small to accommodate all the faithful. Many of Podilia’s churches and cemeteries suffered the same fate. The Soviet authorities were purposefully demolishing cemeteries until as late as the 1980s, sometimes building roads across them, and sometimes, creating rubbish dumps at their sites.78 The fact that Murafa’s Catholic

77 This was also confirmed by Polish authors who admired Murafa’s lively religiosity and the Polishness of its residents. Their source of information was most likely a report from the 1990s available on the internet: Marek Koprowski, “W podolskiej krynicy wiary i polskości dziennikarza i podróżnika,” Kresy portal: https://kresy.pl/ publicystyka/w-podolskiej-krynicy-wiary-i-polskosci/amp/ 10 June 2017. The Orthodox community’s well-preserved religious traditions have been emphasised by Ukrainian journalists, e.g. an article on Easter celebrations in neighbouring Klekotyna: Макс Левин, “От я не вірю, що наші політики вірують в Бога,” LB.ua portal: http://society.lb.ua/life/2011/04/25/93963_v_ukraine_prazdnuyut_pashu.html 18 Feb. 2018. 78 According to Father Dzwonkowski, who visited Podilia parishes in Soviet times to secretly help the local priests, the Catholic cemeteries were destroyed as “religious symbols and as monuments of Polish culture.” After 1793, when Russia took over these areas, the prosperous Polish gentry and noblemen erected artistically crafted tombs and monuments from expensive ores, richly decorated and with Polish inscriptions. Regarding Podilia’s cemeteries, as well as the Catholic community’s places of prayer and their fate, see: Jan Pałyga, Za wschodnią granicą 48

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Photo 10: The tomb figure of Zofia Lewicka born in 1890. “She went off on 2 November 1912 in Kopestrzyn.” “The maiden has not died, but is asleep.” The Catholic cemetery in Movchany. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

heritage survived can be seen as exceptional in this context, and most likely as not purely accidental; rather one might expect it to be the result of some sort of inter-confessional solidarity. The exceptional character of Murafa’s parish is also confirmed by official documents. In 1963, the Religious Cults Council’s plenipotentiary reported to his supervisors that on main holidays the church in Murafa (named Zhdanove, Ukr. Жданове, at the time) was attended by up to five thousand 1917-1993. O Polakach i Kościele w dawnym ZSRR z Romanem Dzwonkowskim SAC rozmawia Jan Pałyga SAC (Warszawa: Wspólnota Polska & Pallotinum II, 1993), pp. 233–237.

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Photo 11: A stone cross at the Catholic cemetery in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

people, relying on the parish committee leader’s numbers. “Murafa is the largest Catholic parish in the region; in 1964, during Easter, 4,800 faithful went to confession, 127 were baptised and 33 couples were married.”79 Murafa’s uniqueness is also manifest in the fact that its Jewish population survived until the early 1990s. Similarly to Sharhorod, it was a typical shtetl in the 18th century, called Mrakhve in Yiddish,80 in which three ethnoses, Poles, Jews and Ukrainians, functioned in a certain symbiosis. The term shtetl is defined somewhat differently by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, the author of a contemporary monograph devoted to it. “Today we readily call any locality in East Europe where Jews once lived a shtetl, although the Jews who lived there two hundred years ago called it a town and the Russian bureaucrats called it a mestechko.The shtetl thus absorbs various meanings and the tension between them: the Polish legal and economic private town, the Russian administrative mestechko, and the Jewish religious ‘holy community’. It was precisely the combination of these factors that created the triangle

79 The document from Vinnytsia Oblast’s National Archive was cited in Józef Szymański’s book, Kościół katolicki na Podolu. Obwód winnicki 1941-1964 (Lublin: Norbertinum, 2003), p. 271. 80 Вениамин Лукин, Анна Соколова, Борис Хаймович, 100 еврейских местечек Украины, Исторический путеводитель. А. Гершт, Санкт-Петербург 2000. Выпуск 2.: Подолия, p.

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Photo 12: Stara Wieś Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, Murafa. Photo by Rafał Bieryło.

of power, share by Poles, Jews, and Russians – that shaped the shtetl golden age.”81 This definition excludes Ukrainian peasants, who did not form part of the authorities; however, it would be difficult to imagine a shtetl’s rural-urban space, so different from Western European cities, without them. Petrovsky-Shtern notes the rural quality of the Jewish houses’ architecture, unique creations “at the crossroads of urban culture and rural nature,” fitted both these worlds and created bucolic idyllic places during their golden age.82 In 1941, despite the flight of many families, at least 800 Jews remained in Murafa. This territory was integrated into German-aligned Romania’s occupation sphere within the Transnistria Governorate. During the following two years of the occupation 4,000 Jews deported from Romania settled there. The war ended on March 19th, 1944, when the village was taken over by partisans, and the Red

81 Cf. Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, The Golden Age Shtetl. A new history of Jewish Life in East Europe (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2014) p. 25. Murafa came into Russian hands after 1931, when it was confiscated from its Polish owners, the Dobek family, for their participation in the 1830–1831 November Uprising. 82 Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, The Golden Age, p. 272.

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Photo 13: Former Jewish houses in Sharhorod, 2013. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Army division entered it the next day.83 After the war, Jewish residents migrated to cities and later abroad. The last of them left Murafa by the mid-1990s due to the economic crisis, as it is widely believed. They left their bucolic settlement in the centre, next to the cemetery, where the oldest matzevahs date back to the 1760s.84 Murafa’s prominent residents, according to the town’s Ukrainian Wikipedia web-page, have belonged to three ethnic groups: Ivan Sirko was a Ukrainian Cossack otaman, or military leader, a participant of Bohdan Khmelnytski’s 17th century uprising; Gersh Itskovich Budker was a Soviet physicist, born in 1918, who specialised in nuclear and accelerator physics; and Father Bronisław Bernacki is a Catholic priest, currently the bishop of the Odesa-Simferopol diocese. Today, apart from the hard to assess group of the oldest generation of Catholics, Murafa’s residents consider themselves Ukrainian.

83 Вениамин Лукин, Анна Соколова, Борис Хаймович, 100 еврейских местечек Украины, p. 217. According to a Ukrainian historian, April 19th was the day the Red Army entered Murafa, see: Анатолій Лисий, Нариси історії мурафського костьолу Непорочного Зачаття Діви Марії. 1625-2000 (Вінниця: A. Лисий 2000) p. 71. 84 Вениамин Лукин, Анна Соколова, Борис Хаймович, 100 еврейских местечек Украины, pp. 211, 219, 220.

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The relations between Murafa Catholics, who comprise almost half of the population, and the Orthodox community turned out to be more than politically correct. The clergy of both communities are not connected by close relations, they draw clear boundaries between what is Catholic and what is Orthodox; yet together they participate in official celebrations and otherwise stay out of each other’s way. This coexistence is sometimes disrupted by the senior priest, a bi-ritualist who likes to tease one of the Orthodox priests,85 and who even happens to criticise him publically. The most frequent reasons for embitterment are burials: when a family decides to bury their family member at a church different from the one attended by the deceased. During our research, we did not observe any conflicts between the two confessions’ faithful. Thus, I  decided to once again modify my research project and resigned from comparative studies regarding the Greek Catholic minority in eastern Poland, where the smouldering Polish-Ukrainian conflict has recently gotten worse.86 I did not want it to dominate the image of local religious culture. In this way we chose Biały Bór in Western Pomerania (in Szczecinek powiat), a town87 populated by new settlers after the Second World War. The new population included people who arrived there from the Mazovia region, the Poles “repatriated”88 from the Soviet Union and a considerable share of the Ukrainian population forcibly relocated by Polish authorities as part of Operation Vistula in 1947. Along with lone German autochthones, who survived the forced resettlement, they created the new post-war community of Biały Bór, formerly known as Baldenburg.89 95  % of the population deported to Western Pomerania were “peasant families that could survive thanks to their small farms.”90 The majority of them were Greek

85 He told us, e.g. how he “convinced local boys to put Papal flags around the Orthodox church when John Paul II visited Ukraine.” 86 I wrote about negative reciprocity in political interactions between Przemyśl and Lviv in “Antropologia pogranicza. Projekt i realizacja badań,” in: Na pograniczu “nowej Europy” Polsko-ukraińskie sąsiedztwo, ed. Magdalena Zowczak, (Warszawa: DiG, 2010), pp. 11–30. 87 Biały Bór’s population is smaller than Murafa’s (2127 residents in Biały Bór in 2006, 2739 residents Murafa in 2001). 88 The so called “repatriation” operation in fact meant the deportation of Poles who lived behind the new eastern border. They were relocated west as a result of the Soviet Union’s Teheran Conference decisions in 1943. 89 Krzysztof Myszkowski, “Sytuacja Kościoła greckokatolickiego w Polsce po przesiedleńczej Akcji „Wisła” w świetle dokumentów Urzędu do spraw Wyznań z lat 1950–1957,” in: Ukraińcy w najnowszych dziejach Polski (1918-1989), Vol. 2: Akcja ‘Wisła,’ ed. Roman Drozd (Warszawa: Tyrsa, 2005), pp. 101–104. The name’s change was endorsed by the National City Council only in 1947, according to Mirosław Słodziński, Biały Bór:  zarys dziejów (Koszalin:  Koszalińskie Tow. SpołecznoKulturalne, 1984), p. 87. 90 Maciej Hejger, “Problemy adaptacji ludności ukraińskiej na Pomorzu Zachodnim w latach 1047-1956,” in: Ukraińcy w najnowszych dziejach Polski (1918–1989), vol. 3.,

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Photo 14: The 19th-century Roman Catholic church in the centre of Biały Bór. Until 1956 the local Greek Catholics used it as guests of the Roman Catholic parish. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Catholics from neighbouring localities in Rzeszów voivodship.91 This fact alone already exemplifies the specificity of Bialy Bór’s case. While according to the instructions given under Operation Vistula, aimed at Ukrainians’ assimilation, the deported population was supposed to be dispersed in small groups to distant localities, in Biały Bór this group comprised more than half of the population. And in two neighbouring villages belonging to Biały Bór’s parish it even comprised 100 %. Greek Catholics did not have their own churches for a decade after the forced resettlement. Although this situation led to conflicts, they never decided to switch to the Orthodox Church, which received several former Evangelical (or Lutheran) churches in West Pomerania in the 1950s.92 Roman Drozd, ed. (Słupsk: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pomorskiej, 2007), p. 119. 91 60–70  % were Greek Catholics, about 25  % were Orthodox and the rest were Roman Catholics or belonged to other confessions; Andrzej Maciupa, “Początki działalności Kościoła greckokatolickiego w Białym Borze w latach 1957-1977,” in: Ukraińcy w najnowszych dziejach Polski (1918-1989), vol. 3., Roman Drozd, ed. (Słupsk: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pomorskiej, 2007), p. 134; Maciej Hejger, “Problemy adaptacji ludności ukraińskiej na Pomorzu Zachodnim w latach 10471956,” p. 119. 92 Andrzej Maciupa, “Początki działalności Kościoła,” pp. 170–171.

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The parish and the Ukrainian school, as well as the Ukrainian Social and Cultural Society, started their activities in Biały Bór in 1957, which is also exceptional at the national level. As part of the ongoing ideological thaw, Biały Bór’s Catholics were given the cemetery chapel, which they were able to turn into their own church. Although it was one of seventeen similar sites open at the time, it was the first one granted to Greek Catholics, thanks to which they were not at the mercy of the Roman Catholic parish priest anymore. “This small parish promptly became the centre of Ukrainians’ religious and cultural life in all of Pomerania,” wrote Andrzej Maciupa, a historian native to the region. “This was a place where Ukrainians scattered around the entire country would come to collectively make decisions about their existence.”93 Biały Bór has remained the Greek Catholic Church’s faithful’s main pilgrimage site; they come every year for the Birth of the Virgin Mary’s patronal festival celebrated on September 21st. The town gathers Greek Catholics from all over Poland and even from other countries. During the first patronal festival in 1958, about 5 thousand pilgrims came, and sometimes their number even reached 6 thousand. “Poles used to call this place the capital of Ukraine, and Ukrainians [called it] Biały Bór Calvary.”94 The Biały Bór Polish-Ukrainian community functions mostly without conflict. We have created this community here; it has been harmonious from the beginning. Never, despite various differences and diverse characters, did we have any nationally-motivated conflicts. I mean, a neighbour was fighting with a neighbour, because this was a regular thing at any festival, as they used to say. But it was never about that one is a Ukrainian, or one is are a Pole; so here there has been no such conflict from the beginning.95

Bicultural and bilingual Ukrainians, who are Greek Catholics without exception, comprise about one third of Biały Bór’s population, while another one third is comprised of Roman Catholics. The remaining third does not declare their religion unambiguously. The Greek Catholic parish has 480 members. There are many mixed marriages both in Murafa and Biały Bór, which were rare until the 1960s.96 9 3 Andrzej Maciupa, “Początki działalności Kościoła,” p. 192. 94 Andrzej Maciupa, “Początki działalności Kościoła,” p. 183. This is one of the many similarities with Horodok Podolski, mentioned earlier, also called “little Warsaw”. Catholic services celebrated at a cemetery chapel there even brought faithful from far-off localities. 95 A Ukrainian male born in 1950, Biały Bór, 2015. The original quote goes as follows: “Myśmy tutaj jednak stworzyli taką społeczność, współgrało od początku. Nigdy, pomimo różnych różnic i różnych charakterów nie dochodziło do jakiś takich zatargów na tle narodowościowym. To znaczy: bił się sąsiad z sąsiadem, bo to było na zabawie normalne, jak to mówią kiedyś, ale nigdy pod takim względem, ze ty jesteś tam Ukraińcem, albo ten mówił, że ty jesteś Polakiem – więc tutaj nie było takiego zatargu od nigdy od początku.” 96 Andrzej Maciupa, “Początki działalności Kościoła,” p.  184; Ірина М. Батирєва, “Етносоціальна структура населення с. Мурафа шаргородського р-ну вінницької обл. 1940-1950-х”, рр. 3–4, the author shared the article with me.

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Photo 15: A liturgy at the old cemetery chapel in Biały Bór, the feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Ukrainian-language inscription on the church says: “WHERE OUR CHURCH IS, OUR SOUL IS. AND OUR PEOPLE IS THERE TOO.” (1970s) The photo from our interlocutors’ archives. Photo by unknown photographer.

In Biały Bór couples were almost exclusively married in the Greek Catholic rite, only when both bride and groom were Greek Catholic. As a rule, couples were married according to the rite in which the bride was baptised. Greek Catholic priests rigorously followed the national principle. It was necessary in order to avoid the de-nationalisation of people who came here as a result of Operation Vistula.97

Roman Catholic priests in Podilia had a similar attitude to mixed marriages, which can be illustrated by a fragment of Father Józef Kuczyński’s memoir from the

97 Jadwiga Cembała, Parafia katolicka św. Michała Archanioła w Białym Borze w latach 1972-1999, MA thesis written under the supervision of prof. Lech Bończy-Bystrzycki at the University of Poznań’s Theology Department, 2003, pp. 35–37. During the period covered by the research, 161 (21 %) of couples were married in the Roman Catholic rite, and 29 (10 %) in the Greek Catholic one. The author presented this information on the basis of the parish books’ data as well as from an interview with the Greek Catholic parish priest in 2002.

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1960s, in which he criticises a Catholic woman who baptised her children at the Orthodox Church. Generally, many Orthodox people come to us through mixed marriages, although there is not a guarantee for the persistence of these marriages in our faith; it is hard to say which side will override. I  know a couple of examples when the Orthodox side became Catholic. I  also know a case of a Catholic woman who found herself in the Orthodox environment and did not have the strength to teach her children prayers and bring them to confession. The children were baptised in the Orthodox Church, married Orthodox people and she remained the only Catholic in her family. She wasted her life; did not achieve anything.98

In Biały Bór there is a clear indicator of acceptable boundaries of assimilation: the perekynchyk (Ukr. перекинчик) category referring to a person of Ukrainian origin who baptised their child in the Roman Catholic Church and/or sent them to a Polish school. We have not encountered a similar term in the context of Catholic-Orthodox relations in Murafa. In both communities, attending the other confession’s services during large family and church celebrations is a regular practice. However, only in Biały Bór did one such mixed family told me about a conscious practice of attending the Roman Catholic church’s Sunday Mass and in the Greek Catholic church’s liturgy alternately.99 According to the Roman Catholic parish vicar, about 10 % of Biały Bór’s faithful (this is the town’s share of mixed marriages, in his opinion) participate in the liturgy and take the Eucharist in both churches. He based his estimates on “body language”, in his own words. The studied confessional minorities represent two types of Catholicism, differing considerably in terms of religious culture and liturgy in particular. There are four types of liturgy in the Byzantine-Ukrainian Church, but the most frequently used one is ascribed to John Chrysostom. Though it is similar to the Orthodox one, it contains some Latin elements. Furthermore, the most visible differences are that lower level clergy are allowed to marry as well as that musical instruments cannot be played inside the church. Biały Bór’s liturgical language is Ukrainian. In Murafa, Roman Catholic Holy Masses are usually also celebrated in Ukrainian. An exception to this rule is the Polish-language Monday morning service, which brings together a handful of parishioners. On other days, the Polish language can be heard at the church between 7 and 8 a.m., when the grey-haired organ player, a Pole, supported by his “Older choir”, conducts the older generation’s prayers that precede the morning liturgy. So, the liturgical language in both minorities’ churches is the same.

98 Józef Kuczyński, Między parafią a łagrem (Warszawa: Editions Spotkania, 2017) p. 144. He was a parish priest in Bar, a town not far from Murafa in 1960. He was friends with Murafa’s parish priest, Father Chomicki, since they had both been deported to a camp in Vorkuta. 99 Both spouses are in their fifties, university educated.

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Photo 16: Common prayer for the deceased at the cemetery in Biały Bór (1 November 2015, photo by Urszula Rukat).

The fact that both minorities belong sui iuris100 to the Catholic community, headed by the same Pope, does not mitigate the distance between them resulting from ethnic differences and historical memory. Greek Catholics tend to emphasise their church’s independence and distinctiveness, while the Roman Catholics tend

100 Contemporary Church documents do not apply the old term “rite” when referencing Eastern rite churches. They instead use the phrase “Church sui iuris” (lit. “of its own right”), independent or autonomous Church. According to the Code of Canons of the Eastern churches (can. 27), Church sui iuris is “a community of the Christian faithful, which is joined together by a hierarchy according to the norm of law and which is expressly or tacitly recognised as sui iuris by the supreme authority of the Church”. While a rite is “the liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary patrimony, culture and circumstances of history of a distinct people, by which its own manner of living the faith is manifested in each Church sui iuris,” (can. 28 (1)), the legal entity and community to which a believer belongs to is thus the Church sui iuris, not the rite. One of such sui iuris churches is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. http://www.intratext.com/X/ENG1199.HTM 26 May 2018. From the perspective of believers and their religious culture, the rite is still its most significant expression. For this reason I adhere to this term.

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to emphasise both Churches’ unity,101 which is perceived by the former as a manifestation of domination, although, in my opinion, often results simply from lack of knowledge. Although there are no considerable theological differences between the Churches, they are not really decisive with regard to their faithful’s regular experiences. For this reason, the distance between the two Catholic communities is greater than that between the Catholics and the Orthodox in Murafa. In both cases, there is a strong connection between the church organisation (respectively the Catholic Church of the Byzantine-Ukrainian rite, meaning ”the greater archbishopric Eastern Church” under the Pope’s authority, or the Roman Catholic Church) and religious institutions (in Agnieszka Halemba’s understanding).This connection results from the fact that a number of priests and nuns originating from both parishes (especially in Murafa’s case) or from the neighbouring villages, who have been culturally formatted there during their childhood and youth, return to their places of origin after their official seminary education. This does not imply that all of them come back as parish priests or vicars, or as nuns. However, they visit their families and neighbours and impact the shape of religious life, demarcating the line between what is canonical and permitted and what does not befit a Catholic. This connection is based on (still relying on Halemba’s terminology) the adjustment of religious life (institutions) to the organising canon. Regardless of their later seminary or nunnery formation, it is difficult to eradicate the habitus intuitive way of abiding by the unwritten rules of life, resulting from initial enculturation. Their habits are thus expressed in aesthetic references significant for religious life, as well as in the musical and linguistic religious expression styles.

The Light and Dark Side of Transformation At first glance, one might think that the changes in religious life that accompanied the post-Soviet transformation have impacted Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic Ukrainians  – descendants of exiles who lost their small homelands as a result of Operation Vistula – to a greater extent than the Catholics in Murafa. Deported to an alien milieu during a time when better houses and farms had already been occupied, they were also deprived of their own church for a decade. Later, when the Greek Catholic church and a Ukrainian language school were already active, the Greek Catholic Church functioned within the

101 In Poland, the Catholic Churches of both rites function on the basis of the same legal regulations: the Concordat between the Holy See and Poland as well as the Law on the Relation of the State with the Catholic Church in the Republic of Poland. However, the Greek Catholic Church – in the light of the Polish law – is an independent Church, with a separate Metropolitan Bishop supervising it. He depends on the Greek Catholic Church’s Ukrainian Synod in terms of liturgy and ordination of bishops.

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Roman Catholic Church’s administrative structure.102 The Byzantine-Ukrainian Church gained autonomy in Poland only after 1989, and Greek Catholics’ religious life was finally able to become fully public. One of the factors behind these changes was the accelerated modernisation resulting from Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004. Yet, the situation of the settled Roman Catholics in the Soviet Podilia before 1991 was not much better, and the postSoviet transformation also turned their world upside down. Both communities have been struggling with the post-Soviet transformations’ effects. Privatisation brought about the collapse of local work places, active in the previous system (quarries, gravel pits, agricultural food processing plants and recreation centres). Unemployment appears to be a less challenging problem in Murafa, where local residents work in agriculture and have their own orchards and beehives. The Jewish population’s disappearance must have also transformed the local population’s life. The Jews created, or at least co-created, the local elite. Many of them were also craftsmen or salesmen; this was a mobile group involved in various types of exchanges. Until the 2014 Russian invasion,103 two migration destinations were popular for Murafa’s residents: Russia for men who sought work in the construction business, and the West, usually Poland, for women who took various seasonal agricultural or domestic care jobs. Three-month stays abroad were and still are separated by short breaks to visit home. An increasing number of young people are currently leaving for Poland to study, thanks to the Pole’s Card. Despite these seasonal migrations, Murafa’s residents usually declare their wish to return home at some point and invest their money locally. New houses and shops testify to the local population’s relative wealth. Traditionally large families are popular here, notwithstanding Ukraine’s rather negative demographic trends. During the by-gone era, Biały Bór was famous for its state-owned stud farm; its residents also subsisted from organised mass tourism:  organized, companysponsored vacations for workers and summer camps for children and youth. Today the town cannot compete with new recreation centres, so the town’s residents 102 After the bishops’ and Przemyśl curia’s deportation to the USSR in 1946, the Holy See bestowed the responsibilities of the Delegate for the Catholics of the Eastern rite upon the Primate of Poland August Hlond. After his death, the responsibilities were granted to Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. Part of the Uniate clergy resettled to the Western Territories started working in Roman Catholic parishes. They converted to the Latin rite, preserving the right (according to the principle of biritualism) to celebrate Uniate rite masses. In 1967, Primate Stefan Wyszyński established the General Vicar position for the Greek Catholic rite faithful. See Krzysztof Myszkowski, “Sytuacja Kościoła greckokatolickiego,” pp. 101–104. 103 It started on February 27th, 2014, when the Parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was occupied by assailants in unmarked uniforms. On March 21st President Vladimir Putin signed the act incorporating Crimea and Sevastopol into the Russian Federation.

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commute for work to nearby Szczecinek. The town has become famous in the national media for the efficiency of fines collection, thanks to cleverly located and extremely numerous speed cameras. In the 1980s, it experienced a wave of young people’s flight to the West, who simply never returned from their pilgrimage trips to Rome or Berlin.104 They mostly settled in Germany or Canada; sometimes they come for the church’s patron saint’s festival, but they are not willing to come back for good. The flight of a group of young entrepreneurial people has further contributed to Biały Bór’s stagnation. Currently, the town’s most popular labour migration destinations are the eastern German lands which neighbour Poland. Thus, both localities have become even more depleted due to seasonal labour migrations, losing considerable numbers of active, working-age members of the population. As a result, visitors to the towns, particularly if they arrive on weekdays to the town centres, get the impression of emptiness, strengthened by the presence of architectonic holes. In Murafa, a former manor house near the church as well as a 19th century inn abutting the church wall were demolished in the early 1990s. In front of the church, the abandoned Jewish quarter is turning into rubble. Biały Bór’s centre, empty due to the war’s destructions (80 % of buildings were burned down), does not remind one of the former densely-built housing which existed around Baldenburg’s market square. What has remained of it is a small, neo-Gothic red brick church, which used to be hidden behind the wall of the townhouses’ frontage.105 An old Evangelical church that used to stand on the market square was partly destroyed in the fire that consumed the town after the war,106 and was finally demolished in the 1950s. According to the oldest local residents’ accounts, its bricks were brought to help reconstruct Warsaw. In both localities, the demolished historic buildings were replaced by cheap shops in booths and one-storey barracks painted in vivid colours. From this perspective, the effects of the free market capitalist economy look exceptionally meagre.

104 Father Włodzimierz Juszczak stated in one of the interviews: “The largest number of our faithful left in the 1980s, when almost all the young Greek Catholics’ generation emigrated from the Western Territories – several dozens of thousands of people,” see “Kościół greckokatolicki w Polsce. Rozmowa z ks. Włodzimierzem R. Juszczakiem, wrocławsko-gdańskim biskupem Kościoła greckokatolickiego”, Nowe Życie, December 2005, http://www.nowezycie.archidiecezja.wroc.pl/stara_ strona/numery/122005/03.html 25 Feb. 2018. 105 Photographs of old Baldenberg can be viewed on German websites, e.g. http:// hoelkewiese.de/Nachbarorte/Baldenburg.html 07 Oct. 2017. 106 Biały Bór was located within the Pomeranian Wall, a system of fortifications on the Third Reich’s border, where fighting with the Red Army’s offensive took place. The town burned down two days after the front moved through it and the Germans evacuated it; the fire occurred as a result of the Red Army’s celebrations and shootings (Mirosław Słodziński, Biały Bór: zarys dziejów, p. 83).

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Photo 17: A fragment of the old Baldenburg: Czujna Street. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Research Teams and the Book’s Design We started our ethnographic research in Ukrainian Podilia in the summer of 2012 with a team of eight people,107 together with a research group from the Institute of History, Ethnology and Law of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky State Pedagogical University in Vinnytsya. This was done under the supervision of Dr. Iryna Batyreva,

107 The team included the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology students: Anna Ptaszyńska-Biały, Rafał Bieryło, Jędrzej Fulara, Katarzyna Kaczmarska, Jan Lech, Maria Sokołowska, Marcin Skupiński as well as the IEiAK’s graduates, and PhD candidates Magdalena Zatorska and Jacek Wajszczak. We were accompanied by Tamara Allina, a student from the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Polish Culture, who made a film entitled Pod płaszczem Matki Boskiej Murachowskiej (Eng. Under the Mantle of Our Lady of Murafa) and Iwona Kołodziejska-Degórska, whose suggestions were very helpful to me during our research’s initial phase. Information about the researchers and research can be found on this web-page: http://www.etnologia.uw.edu.pl/www/kultura-religijnaPolska-Ukraina  The accounts on the photo exhibitions regarding the religious culture of Murafa’s Catholics and Orthodox can also be found there.

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author of a number of publications regarding Murafa. During our following field trips we were accompanied by two Ukrainian students, Yevhen Boyko and Yanina Sobolevska who conducted their own research projects going beyond our research agenda’s scope. I considered their constant presence, their active participation in our activities and the friendly relations between them and our students a very positive aspect of our research activities. The articles comprised in the part of this book regarding Podilia’s Catholics are rather homogenous. Marcin Skupiński engages into a discussion with Western diagnoses on religion and religiosity in post-Soviet countries and presents his own interpretation of local cosmology and theodicy. He presents his interviewees’ views of the world as still enchanted, in the Weberian sense. Maria Sokołowska investigates how Murafa’s older generation of Catholics deals with the imposed change of the liturgical language, the language of the sacrum, and also analyses their domestic practices, where the interviewees can make their own decisions in terms of language use. The palette of their language choices is broadened with the media’s help, which broadcasts liturgy and rosary prayers in the language selected by the believers:  Polish, Ukrainian and/or even Latin. For younger generations, people born in the late 1980s and after, the presence of the Ukrainian language at the church appears to be much more natural. Although many study Polish, they treat it as a language of exchange that belongs to the profane sphere (profanum). At the heart of Maria Sokołowska’s discussion is the individual way of identity construction. As mentioned above, the style of musical expression publicly demonstrated during liturgy is almost of equal importance for Podilia’s Catholics as the liturgy itself. The clash of different musical styles in Murafa’s church is presented by Jan Lech as a meta-commentary on social changes. He emphasises the dissonances, emerging not only in terms of the musical traditions, but also their performances, e.g. the way the church space is used. At the end he arrives at a thesis regarding the link between musical performances and varying types of religious experience. Our research’s context would not be sufficiently depicted without a discussion regarding the Pole’s Card’s role and the consequences it has had for the researched population in Murafa. Katarzyna Kaczmarska describes the practices initiated and stimulated by the Pole’s Card, tied up with the stereotype of a Pole-Catholic. These practices often translate into the interception and modification of this state policy’s product by its users in order to make it fit their own needs (as mentioned before, this is an example of local practices response to states’ or organisations’ strategies). Kaczmarska did not limit her research to conducting interviews in Murafa, but continued it with Pole’s Card holders who moved to Poland. Magdalena Zatorska observes Murafa’s current population’s adaptation (in the public and private spheres) of the town’s Jewish heritage, in the contexts of the construction of memory, searching for continuities and the formation of identities, both collective and individual ones. She applied the terms religioscape and “antagonistic tolerance”, introduced by Robert M. Hayden, to discuss different types of memory (public, private and official) regardingof the town’s Jewish neighbours.

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Outside Murafa, Zatorska’s research covered Sharhorod as well as Uman in the neighbouring Cherkasy region, which is regularly visited by groups of Hasidic pilgrims. After two years of research in Podilia and summarising their results,108 we started the second part of our project, this time focused on Biały Bór in northwestern Poland. Unfortunately this research was not conducted by the same team. Only two people from the initial team, apart from the project’s author, continued until the end of the research project. Marcin Skupiński demonstrates analogies in the studied communities’ consolidation around their respective churches during the past period of oppression (including the role of old “true” priests) as a context for the different types of religious communities: the ecclesial one in Murafa and the national-religious one in Biały Bór. He presents the process of identity construction in relation to attitudes towards conversion as well as to other confessional groups. Jacek Wajszczak, a photographer, analyses Jerzy Nowosielski’s Biały Bór church design project and the faithful’s negotiation of its final shape, as well as the church’s meaning in the cultural landscape of Biały Bór’s Ukrainians. His description focuses on the aesthetic aspects of the interviewees’ experiences, relying on an ethnography model created by Jacek Olędzki, a master of observation from Poland’s previous generation of ethnographers. The team has been strengthened thanks to the participation of new researchers – ethnologists. Iuliia Buyskykh from Kyiv, an engaged and passionate researcher, turned out to be irreplaceable in our interviews with older generations of Ukrainians. In her article, she presents different types of contemporary identities and memories of Ukrainians in Poland, comparing her observations’ results in Biały Bór and Włodawa (in Lublin voivodship), where the Ukrainian community is strongly linked to the Orthodox Church. Tomasz Kosiek has conducted research on Polish-Ukrainian marriages for years, and through his own mixed marriage and conversion, he also represents Biały Bór’s community. He attempted to describe the situation of the “mixed” Polish-Ukrainian marriages from within, placing it in the context of the older traditions. Urszula Rukat, in her turn, has focused on the theological perspective to the greatest extent among all the authors, comparing two types of Greek Catholicism: the Byzantine rite of Biały Bór’s community and the Byzantine-Slavic rite of the unique neo-Uniate community in Kostomłoty (Lublin voivodship). She writes about the role of charismatic parish priests in the formation of Greek Catholics’ religious culture and develops the claims presented by Marcin Skupiński in his comparative article. I attempted to recapitulate the image of religious culture changes that emerged from the perspective of the four years of our research, as well as from all the above-mentioned researchers’ experiences and observations. I focused on the veneration of Mary in both studied communities (that unites the adherents of the Latin and Greek rites on a global level), in 108 Magdalena Zowczak, “Kultura religijna wobec zmian społecznych. Podole, Ukraina”, Konteksty-Polska Sztuka Ludowa, 2015, Vol. 69, No. 3, pp. 189–260.

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order to demonstrate how similarities may become sources of divisions and even open conflicts. The titles of Mary’s images considered patronal for both minorities and their unquestioned symbols have become the titles of two parts of the book in which we present our cases studies: the first is Our Lady of Murafa and the second is Mother of Exiles (Мати скитальців). The title of the second part (“Mother of Exiles, do not let us perish!”) is a line from the last verse of a poem devoted to the patron saint by Olga Uhryn, a Biały Bór local poet.109 This book is an ethnographic collage both in terms of the differences between the compared Catholic communities as well as the diversity of the authors and their perspectives. The communities of Biały Bór and Murafa are indeed united by a religious organisation, the community of Catholic Churches; but otherwise they correspond to Laura Nader’s two postulates on comparison in contemporary anthropology.110 They differ in terms of many basic features, including the meaning attached to Catholicism and Ukrainianness. What is more, they neither share the same genesis, nor influence one another. Therefore, these detailed case studies are preceded by articles discussing the broader context for the presented comparison.

Bibliography Alexander, Bryant Keith. “Performance Ethnography: the Reenacting and Inciting of Culture.” In: The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3th edition, eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005. Baraniecka-Olszewska, Kamila. “How to present the Passion of Christ? Popular culture as a source of inspiration for Easter Passion Plays,” Ethnologia Polona, Vol. 28, 2007, pp. 47–60. Baraniecka-Olszewska, Kamila. Ukrzyżowani. Współczesne misteria męki Pańskiej w Polsce. Toruń: Wyd. Naukowe Uniwersytetu M. Kopernika, 2013. Батирєва, Ірина М. “Етносоціальна структура населення с. Мурафа шаргородського р-ну вінницької обл. 1940-1950-х,” the article shared by the author. Bauman, Zygmunt. Freedom. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1988. Beauvois, Daniel. Trójkąt ukraiński. Szlachta, carat i lud na Wołyniu, Podolu i Kijowszczyźnie 1793-1914, transl. Krzysztof Rutkowski. Lublin: Wyd. Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2016. 109 “Всі йдем до тебе Божая Мати / Чи молодії чи то старі / В Тебе рятунку для душ благаєм / Тут в Білобірській святій церкві (…) „Не дай пропасти усердно просим / Чи молодії чи то старі / За весь наш нарід мольби заносим / Тут в Білобірській святій церкві.” 110 Cf. Magdalena Zatorska, “Comparison in contemporary anthropological practice” in this volume.

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Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Braudel, Fernand. On History, trans. Sarah Matthews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Bystroń, Jan S. Megalomania narodowa. Warszawa, 1935. Cembała, Jadwiga. Parafia katolicka św. Michała Archanioła w Białym Borze w latach 1972-1999, MA thesis written under the supervision of prof. Lech Bończy-Bystrzycki at the University of Poznań’s Theology Department, 2003. Central Statistical Office (GUS). Wyznania religijne, stowarzyszenia narodowe i etniczne w Polsce 2009-2011. Warszawa: GUS, 2013, https://stat.gov.pl/cps/rde/ xbcr/gus/oz_wyznania_religijne_stow_nar_i_etn_w_pol_2009-2011.pdf (24 Feb. 2018). Central Statistical Office (GUS). Wyznania religijne w Polsce 2012-2014. Warszawa: GUS 2016. Christus Vincit-TV portal, http://christusvincit-tv.pl/ (30 April 2014). Clifford, James. “On Ethnographic Self-Fashioning: Conrad and Malinowski.” In: The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988. Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988. Czarnowski, Stefan. “Kultura religijna ludu polskiego.” In: Kultura, Stefan Czarnowski. Warszawa: Znak, 1958, pp. 80–99. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall. Berkley: University of California Press, 1984. Dragadze, Tamara. “The domestication of religion under Soviet communism.” In: Socialism. Ideals, Ideologies and Local Practice, ed. Chris M. Hann. London and New York: ASA Monographs 31 and Routledge, 1993, pp. 148–156. Ellul, Jacques. Les nouveaux possédés. Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1973. Episcopal Conference of Poland’s Permanent Council. Statement. http:// episkopat.pl/oswiadczenie-rady-stalej-konferencji-episkopatu-polski-wsprawie-ks-piotra-natanka-i-jego-zwolennikow/ (12 Feb. 2018). Geertz, Clifford. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In: The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973, pp. 3–32. Grabowska, Mirosława. “Ruchy odnowy religijnej przełomu lat siedemdziesiątych i osiemdziesiątych: społeczne przyczyny i konsekwencje.” In: Pokolenie JP2. Przeszłość i przyszłość zjawiska religijnego, ed. Tadeusz Szawiela, Warszawa: SCHOLAR, 2008, pp. 22–49. Halemba, Agnieszka. Negotiating Marian Apparitions. The Politics of Religion in Transcarpathian Ukraine. Budapest-New York: CEU PRESS, 2015.

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Hall, Dorota. New Age w Polsce. Lokalny wymiar globalnego zjawiska. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne, 2007. Hannerz, Ulf. Transnational Connections. Culture, People, Places. London and New York: Routledge 1996. Hejger, Maciej. “Problemy adaptacji ludności ukraińskiej na Pomorzu Zachodnim w latach 1047-1956.” In: Ukraińcy w najnowszych dziejach Polski (1918-1989), vol. 3, ed. Roman Drozd, Słupsk: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pomorskiej, 2007. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle. Religion as a Chain of Memory. Trans. Simon Lee. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000. Herzfeld, Michael. Anthropology. Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2001. Hoelkewiese portal, http://hoelkewiese.de/Nachbarorte/Baldenburg.html (07 Oct. 2017). http://www.ekumenizm.pl/koscioly/wschodnie/grekokatolicy-i-prawoslawni-wpolsce-w-swietle-wynikow-spisu-powszechnego-z-2011-r/ (07 August 2017). http://www.nowezycie.archidiecezja.wroc.pl/stara_strona/numery/122005/03. html (25 Feb. 2018). Koprowski, Marek. “W podolskiej krynicy wiary i polskości dziennikarza i podróżnika,” Kresy portal, https://kresy.pl/publicystyka/w-podolskiej-krynicywiary-i-polskosci/amp/ (10 June 2017). Ks. Piotr Natanek - Bruksela ODBIJAMY EUROPĘ https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=s3QImEYR4QA 12 February 2018. Kuczyński, Józef. Między parafią a łagrem. Warszawa: Editions Spotkania, 2017. “Kościół greckokatolicki w Polsce. Rozmowa z ks. Włodzimierzem R. Juszczakiem, wrocławsko-gdańskim biskupem Kościoła greckokatolickiego”, Nowe Życie, December 2005, Левин, Макс. “От я не вірю, що наші політики вірують в Бога,” LB.ua portal: http://society.lb.ua/life/2011/04/25/93963_v_ukraine_prazdnuyut_pashu.html (18 Feb. 2018). Лисий, Анатолій. Нариси історії мурафського костьолу Непорочного Зачаття Діви Марії. 1625-2000. Вінниця: A. Лисий 2000. Лукин, Вениамин, Соколова, Анна, Борис Хаймович, 100 еврейских местечек Украины: Исторический путеводитель, Выпуск 2. Подолия (СанктПетербург: А. Гершт, 2000). Михайлюк, Ольга. Мойсей українського духа й культури. Львів: Артклас, 2015. Maciupa, Andrzej. “Początki działalności Kościoła greckokatolickiego w Białym Borze w latach 1957-1977,” in: Ukraińcy w najnowszych dziejach Polski (1918-1989), vol. 3., ed. Roman Drozd, Słupsk: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pomorskiej, 2007.

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Mandryk, Jason. Operation World: The Definitive Prayer Guide To Every Nation, Completely Revised 7th Edition. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010. Maso, Ilja. “Phenomenology and Ethnography,” in: Handbook of Ethnography, eds. Paul, Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, Lyn Lofland (London: Sage Publications, 2001), pp. 136–144. “Metropolita Andrej Szeptycki – ukraiński Mojżesz…”, Grekokatolicki Dekanat Sanocki portal, http://dekanatsanocki.blogspot.com/2012/07/metropolitaandrej-szeptycki-ukrainski.html (09 April 2018). Mitręga, Zuzanna. “Wspólnota tradycyjna a katolickie ruchy religijne. Moment konfrontacji – nowe oblicze religijności.” In: Podole i Wołyń. Szkice etnograficzne, eds. Łukasz Smyrski and Magdalena Zowczak. Warszawa: DiG, 2003, pp. 115–128. Myszkowski, Krzysztof. “Sytuacja Kościoła greckokatolickiego w Polsce po przesiedleńczej Akcji ‘Wisła’ w świetle dokumentów Urzędu do spraw Wyznań z lat 1950-1957.” In: Ukraińcy w najnowszych dziejach Polski (1918-1989), Vol. 2: Akcja ‘Wisła,’ ed. Roman Drozd. Warszawa: Tyrsa, 2005. Naumescu, Vlad. “Continuities and Ruptures of a Religious Tradition: making ‘Orthodoxy’ in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.” In: Churches In-between. Greek Catholic Churches in Postsocialist Europe, eds. Stéphanie Mahieu and Vlad Naumescu, Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia, Vol. 16, BerlinMünster-Wien-Zürich-London: Lit Verlag, 2008. Pałyga, Jan. Za wschodnią granicą 1917-1993. O Polakach i Kościele w dawnym ZSRR z Romanem Dzwonkowskim SAC rozmawia Jan Pałyga SAC. Warszawa: Wspólnota Polska & Pallotinum II, 1993, pp. 233–237. Petrovsky-Shtern, Yohanan. The Golden Age Shtetl. A new history of Jewish Life in East Europe. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2014. Piwowarski, Władysław, ed. Socjologia religii. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 1996. Rabinow, Paul. “Representations Are Social Facts: Modernity and Post-Modernity in Anthropology.” In: Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, A School of American Research Advanced Seminar, eds. James Clifford and George. E. Marcuse. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1986, pp. 234–261. Schütz, Alfred. “The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 49, Issue 6, 1944, pp. 499–504. Siwicki, Piotr. “Grekokatolicy i prawosławni w Polsce w świetle wyników spisu powszechnego z 2011 r.” Ekumenizm portal, 26.07 2013, Słodziński, Mirosław. Biały Bór: zarys dziejów. Koszalin: Koszalińskie Tow. Społeczno-Kulturalne, 1984. Smyrski, Łukasz and Magdalena Zowczak, eds. Podole i Wołyń. Szkice etnograficzne, eds. Warszawa: DiG, 2003. Szady, Bogumił. Geografia struktur religijnych i wyznaniowych w Koronie w II połowie XVIII w. Lublin: KUL Publishing House, 2010.

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Szymański, Józef. Kościół katolicki na Podolu. Obwód winnicki 1941-1964. Lublin: Norbertinum, 2003. Szymański, Józef. Kościół katolicki na Podolu. Obwód winnicki 1941-1964. Lublin: Norbertinum, 2003. Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Harvard: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992. Taylor, Charles. The Varieties of Religion Today. Vienna: Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, 2002. Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Aldine Transaction, 1995. Weber, Max. “Intermediate reflections on the economic ethics of the world religions: Theory of the stages and directions of religious rejection of the World.” In: The Essential Max Weber, ed. Sam Whimster. London: Routledge, 2004. pp. 215–244. Zowczak, Magdalena. “Collective religious experience and contemporary cultural practices. The Week of Vigil.” In: Exploring home, neighbouring and distant cultures, eds. Lech Mróz and Aleksander Posern-Zieliński. Warszawa: DiG, 2008, pp. 23–40. Zowczak, Magdalena. “Antropologia pogranicza. Projekt i realizacja badań.” In: Na pograniczu “nowej Europy” Polsko-ukraińskie sąsiedztwo, ed. Magdalena Zowczak. Warszawa: DiG, 2010, pp. 11–30. Zowczak, Magdalena. Biblia ludowa. Interpretacje wątków biblijnych w kulturze ludowej. Toruń: Wyd. Naukowe Uniwersytetu M. Kopernika, 2013. Zowczak, Magdalena. “Kultura religijna wobec zmian społecznych. Podole, Ukraina.” Konteksty-Polska Sztuka Ludowa, Vol. 69, No. 3, 2015, pp. 189–260.

Elżbieta Przybył-Sadowska

The Term “Religious Culture” in Religious Studies Research in Poland Abstract: The term “religious culture” has functioned in Polish academic literature in two forms: as a term reflecting the whole of relations between culture and religion, in particular when religion means a given confession, and in a narrower meaning, according to Stefan Czarnowski’s definition, as a local way of functioning of (lived) religious experiences contrasted with official religion. This chapter is an attempt to shed light on the contexts in which this term appears in Polish religious studies scholars’ writings. Due to its limited application, it also attempts to discuss the usage of other synonymous terms applied in its place. The analysis demonstrates that, depending upon the religious studies’ sub-discipline, the following terms may be also used: “religiosity” (within the psychology of religion, its sociology or history) and “everyday experience” or “everyday life” (found within the sociology of religion, its phenomenology or history). The latter term, borrowed from Alfred Schütz’s thought, was introduced to Polish religious studies by Włodzimierz Pawluczuk and has been so popular, in fact, that it has almost replaced the other synonymous terms (“religious culture”). This chapter also discusses Pawluczuk’s critique of Schütz’s concept. It suggests possible areas of cooperation between ethnologists and religious studies scholars in the study of religious culture. Keywords: religious studies, religious culture, everyday life, definitions, Poland

The analysis of the various applications of the term “religious culture” within studies on religion in Poland poses some difficulties. The most conspicuous ones include, on the one hand, the scarcity of publications that apply this term, and on the other, imprecise usage of the very term. Religious studies scholars, in particular those working in religious comparative studies, relatively rarely apply the term “religious culture.” If it appears in religious studies literature at all, it is usually thanks to anthropologists, cultural studies scholars, sociologists and even historians studying working on the study of religion, that is scholars representing related disciplines with whom we share the subject of study. A close look at the usage of the term (as well as its absence) in religious studies publications demonstrates, it seems, both an interesting illustration of mutual permeation as well as a complementarity of religious and anthropological studies. Within Polish source literature the term “religious culture” functions in two different ways. In a broader sense, it refers to the whole of mutual relations between religion and culture. In this sense, it corresponds to similar terms in other languages: religious culture in English, culture religieuse in French, Religiöse Kultur in German and pелигиозная культура in Russian. However, in most cases the term “religious culture” usually denotes what we could assume to be confessional culture, in other words, a culture shaped according to the principles of a selected religion (e.g. Buddhist, Christian or Muslim culture) and/or a confession (e.g. Catholic,

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Orthodox or Protestant culture). This ambiguous and imprecise definition of the term “religious” makes it a buzzword, useful in some ways, but also conductive to misunderstandings. This term may be applied without limitations both to religion itself and to any of religion’s socio-cultural manifestations. The classic text by Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,”1 is an interesting attempt to define this relationship between religion and culture, and consequently, to regulate the usage of the term “religious culture.” Of course, Geertz defined the concept of religion in his work, not the term “religious culture.” However, he did recognise it to be a cultural system manifested in symbols, patterns of meaning transmitted from one generation to another and inherited imaginings expressed in symbolic forms, thanks to which people transmit, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about life.2 By doing so, he inevitably defined what we can call religious culture. Many valuable elements of this concept have been introduced by an elaborate and in-depth criticism of Geerts’ definition by Talal Asad, who completely rejected the possibility of creating a universal definition of religion. In his book entitled Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reason of Power in Christianity and Islam he wrote: “My argument is that there cannot be a universal definition of religion, not only because its constituent elements and relationships are historically specific, but because that definition is in itself the historical product of a discursive process.”3 This unequivocal statement was preceded by his in-depth critique of Geertz’ definition. Asad’s starting point was to demonstrate the inconsistencies in the concept of symbols on which Geertz based his definition. Asad showed that Geertz sometimes recognises symbols as aspects of reality, while at other times as reality’s representations.4 In Asad’s opinion, by putting too much emphasis on the role of symbols, Geertz ignores the role of social reality in his definition, particularly religious practices and the relationship between religion and authority.5 He also noticed that the value of the definition proposed by Geertz considerably limits the possibility of embedding it within the Christian concept of religion based on the idea of faith as a state of mind.6 The power of this critique, as well as its directions, particularly the emphasis put on the absence of its embedment in social reality and the lack of references to religious practices, is very significant in the term’s (“religious culture”) context analysis. In the narrower meaning that functions only in Polish language literature, the term “religious culture” refers directly to local ways of religious functioning and 1 Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a cultural system,” In: The interpretation of cultures: selected essays, Clifford Geertz, (London: Fontana Press, 1993), pp. 87–125. 2 Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a cultural system.” 3 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reason of Power in Christianity and Islam, (Baltimore MA: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 29. 4 Talal Asad, “Antropological Concepcions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz,” Man. New Series, Vol. 18, No. 2, (1983), p. 239. 5 Talal Asad, “Antropological Concepcions,” p. 237. 6 Talal Asad, “Antropological Concepcions,” p. 247

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simultaneously is contrasted with religion as professed in its official version. Such a disambiguation of the definition was proposed by Stefan Czarnowski, who in his classic text entitled Kultura religijna wiejskiego ludu polskiego7 (Religious Culture of Polish Peasant Folk), published in 1935, wrote that the category in question means something different than religion understood as a recognised and codified system of beliefs. This was a certain abstract model defined by religious studies scholars of the day (e.g. William James, who Czarnowski directly referred to).8 Czarnowski contrasts these explorations with “a model that standardises the practice of different populaces and strata.”9 What is more, he explains, “this model allows for deviations and shortcomings, transformations dependent on the degree and character of the general culture.”10 According to Czarnowski, religious culture is what a given community has internalised from a given religion, transformed for its own use and “adapted to its own way of material and spiritual life.”11 We need to note that the scope of this term also encompasses “the representations, associated [by a given community – E.P.S] with names and objects’ terms present within it, its religiosity’s characteristics and manifestations.”12 There is a clear differentiation between religion understood as a superordinate idea and religious culture seen as its local application. The current research on religious culture initiated by Czarnowski, which understands religious culture as a model implemented in a concrete milieu, has found its continuation in different disciplines:  ethnology and anthropology,13 7 Stefan Czarnowski, “Kultura religijna wiejskiego ludu polskiego,” in: Studia z historii kultury, Stefan Czarnowski (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo PWN, 1956), p. 88. 8 Here Czarnowski is rather critical of the attempts to search for the essence of religion, in other words to produce its essential definition, an approach dominant in religious studies at the time, but abandoned later. 9 Stefan Czarnowski, “Kultura religijna,” p. 88. 10 Stefan Czarnowski, “Kultura religijna,” p. 88. 11 Stefan Czarnowski, “Kultura religijna,” p. 88. 12 Stefan Czarnowski, “Kultura religijna,” p. 88. 13 Cf. the works by Magdalena Zowczak, the majority of which, even if they do not have a direct reference to “religious culture,” deal with it. In particular, see: “Religious Culture and its Changes. A Symbolic Perspective,” in: Ethnology and Anthropology at the Time of Transformation. Poland at the 14th Congress of the IUAES, ed. Katarzyna Kaniowska, Danuta Markowska (Łódź: Wydawnictwo PAN, 1998), p. 77-80; “Kultura religijna polskiej wsi na Litwie. Raport z badań prowadzonych w rejonie wileńskim w lipcu 1990 roku,” Przegląd Wschodni, Vol. 1, No. 3, (1991), p. 527-555; “Kultura religijna jako kontekst dramatu społecznego. Podole, Ukraina,” Konteksty. Polska Sztuka Ludowa, No. 3 (310), (2015), pp. 189-205 (as well as a series of articles published in the same issue, which are reports on the research conducted under Magdalena Zowczak’s supervision, p. 206-252), and a collective work: W cieniu drzewa wiar. Studia nad kulturą religijną na pograniczach Slaviae Orthodoxae, ed. Magdalena Zowczak (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo DIG, 2009). With regard to works by other scholars, see: Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Obraz osobliwy. Hermeneutyczna

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sociology (in particular when it deals with folk religiosity manifestations14), history,15 literature studies16 and even musicology.17 Against this background Polish religious studies’ output appears, to put it mildly, rather meagre. As a matter of fact, this concept can be found in only one publication by Zbigniew Pasek, Kultura religijna protestantyzmu (Religious Culture of Protestantism). In the introduction to this work, the author refers to Czarnowski’s definition as well as to the following disambiguations by Magdalena Zowczak. Pasek recognises, however, that putting emphasis on religious culture’s local dimension and its relationship with a selected religious group’s everyday life, narrows the research field. He claims: “Zowczak’s emphasis on the local dimension results in losing sight of a different type of relationship, the one between religious ideas and the history of culture, which has a more global impact, independent from the ‘field’ and local cultural tradition.”18 It appears that the reservations voiced from a religious studies perspective with a focus on studying universal interdependences and great ideas are justifiable and lektura źródeł etnograficznych (Kraków:  Universitas, 2000); Ryszard Tomicki, “Religijność ludowa,” in: Etnografia Polski: przemiany kultury ludowej, Vol. 2, ed. Maria Biernacka, Maria Frankowska, Wanda Paprocka, Mirosława Drozd-Piasecka (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1981), pp. 29-67. The most recent ones include: Lipowanie: kultura religijna i tożsamość naddunajskich staroobrzędowców, ed. Wojciech Lipiński (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo UW, 2015). 14 For example, see: Hieronim Kubiak, Religijność a środowisko społeczne. Studium zmian religijności pod wpływem ruchów migracyjnych ze wsi do miasta (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1972); Władysław Piwowarski, Religijność wiejska w warunkach urbanizacji. Studia socjologiczne (Warszawa: Biblioteka “Więzi”, 1971). The more recent publications include Leszek Gajos, Kultura religijna w tradycyjnej społeczności wiejskiej: studium socjologiczne wybranych materiałów biograficznych (Rzeszów: Oficyna Wydawnicza Politechniki Rzeszowskiej, 2003). 15 In particular, see publications by Daniel Olszewski, Polska kultura religijna na przełomie XIX i XX wieku, (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo PAX, 1996); Szkice z dziejów kultury religijnej (Katowice:  Wydawnictwo Księgarnia św. Jacka, 1986). Moreover, see: Kultura religijna i społeczna Małopolski od XIII do XVI wieku, eds. Wiktor Szymborski, Janusz Kozioł (Tarnów Muzeum Okręgowe w Tarnowie, 2011); Animarium kultura. Studia nad kulturą religijną na ziemiach polskich w średniowieczu, Vol. 1, Struktury kościelno-publiczne, ed. Halina Manikowska, Wojciech Brojer (Wa rszawa: Wydawnictwo: Instytut Historii PAN, 2008). 16 Works focused on a single cultural milieu include: e.g. Hanna Kowalska, Rosyjski wiersz duchowny i kultura religijna staroobrzędowców pomorskich (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1987); Urszula Cierniak, Literacki wymiar kultury religijnej staroobrzędowców (Częstochowa: Wydawnictwo WSP w Częstochowie, 1997). 17 E.g. Współczesna polska religijna kultura muzyczna jako przedmiot badań muzykologii:  zakres pojęciowy, możliwości badawcze. Materiały z sympozjum zorganizowanego przez Instytut Muzykologii KUL 16-17 lutego 1989 r., eds. Bolesław Bartkowski, Stanisław Dąbek, Antoni Zoła (Lublin Redakcja Wydawnictw KUL, 1992). 18 Zbigniew Pasek, Kultura religijna protestantyzmu (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Libron, 2014), p. 9.

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in accord with the classic perception of religious studies as a discipline studying religion in its global, rather than local dimension. In this way, the above quotation demonstrates very well the reasons why religious studies scholars have generally avoided the term “religious culture” in their works. Apparently, it has been perceived to be too embedded in the tradition of ethnographic and ethnologic research, focusing on concrete religions’ local traditions. While in the meantime, religious studies, from the start, have been supposed to focus on comparative studies of religions understood as universal systems, and thus, on comparing different religious systems in a global perspective. The most appropriate way of illustrating these differences might be to refer to the concept of the Great Tradition and little traditions related to it, proposed by Robert Redfield.19 In this light, religious studies would focus on the Great Tradition, and thus, on universalisms, holy texts, recognised commentaries and widely respected principles (including rituals). Whereas ethnology and anthropology, in principle, would focus on little traditions, on the local. Through this perspective, research on little traditions would mean studying religions in their cultural contexts through grasping religious life: religious phenomena embodied in real, live communities, patterns of behaviour and thoughts of people constituting them. “Academic” religious studies scholars would predominantly be interested in the study of Great Traditions and would construct their research instruments with that purpose in mind, while anthropologists have at their disposal research methods adequate for studying little traditions. In this way, we are faced with two ways of looking at religion:  the religious studies one that studies religion as a universal idea and the ethnological one that understands religion as a cultural system manifested in different local varieties. To put it simply, this bifocal approach boils down to the distinction between official religion, studied by religious studies scholars, on the one hand, and lived religion, explored by ethnologists and anthropologists, on the other. This also implies that we have two different ways of studying religion. Even though such a distinction into two separate research fields appears artificial and can be criticised against the background of religious studies as such (there is more on this bellow), it reflects the basic difference between religious studies and other disciplines that study religion. The aim of religious studies, from the beginning, has been studying religions as universal ideas. Redfield’s concept, as we know, met rather quickly with fundamental criticism both from religious studies scholars as well as anthropologists,20 who argued that the division between the Great Tradition and little traditions does not make sense,

19 Robert Redfield, “The Social Organization of Tradition,” The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1, (1955), pp. 13-21. I owe the reference to Redfield’s concept of relations between religious studies and ethnology, as well as its critique to Andrzej Szyjewski. 20 See e.g. Stanley J. Tambiah, Buddism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

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since we have religion as a single research field. The same argument could be used to criticise the artificial division of the research field between religious studies and anthropology. What is more, if the very term “religion,” fundamental for religious studies, is more and more criticised as an artificial and theoretical construct,21 it appears that the foundations of religious studies as a discipline that studies official religion are shaking and crumbling. In order to understand the reasons for the existence of this situation, one should bear in mind that religious studies is a hybrid discipline, established by combining different scientific disciplines sharing the same object of study. One can observe this by looking at the very structure of religious studies, which can be divided into many sub-disciplines, including the history of religion, its philosophy, its sociology, its psychology, its geography, its political science, its phenomenology, or finally, its ethnology and its anthropology. Each of these sub-disciplines has its own research instruments, designed on the basis of the disciplines they derive from. Thus, the sociology of religion relies on sociology research methods and instruments, etc. In this way, each sub-discipline follows the changes in research methods that occur within its “original” discipline. Moreover, the boundaries of religious studies as a science have always been rather fluid. Whether a given researcher is a religious studies scholar or rather an anthropologist, sociologist, philosopher or historian of religion is not dependent on the methodology of their research, since religious studies as a discipline has not worked out its own distinct research methodology. It is only the scholar’s in question own declaration as to whether he or she considers themselves to be a religious studies scholar or not that matters. What is more, it is not possible to apply a simple mechanism that automatically treats all scholars who work on universalist phenomena as religious studies scholars, and by default ascribes all scholars who work on local phenomena to other related disciplines. In his book Nauka wobec religii (teoretyczne podstawy nauk o religii), Andrzej Bronk poses a question regarding who can be considered a religious studies scholar and argues that The tendency to reserve the term “religious studies scholar” (“religiologist”) for more general interest in religion, such as comparative history of religion, phenomenology, typology and philosophy of religion is in conflict with the tendency of reserving it for scholars who do empirical research on religion.22

In his claim Bronk relies on J.  Waardenburg’s argument that when we apply a broad understanding of the term Religionswisschenschaft, we need to include in the scope of religious studies all the research that even only indirectly contributes to the understanding of religion, including linguistic studies on the meaning of words

21 This type of criticism was presented already in 1960s by Wilfred C. Smith in his book Meaning and the End of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1968). 22 Andrzej Bronk, Nauka wobec religii (teoretyczne podstawy nauk o religii (Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw KUL, 1996), p. 47.

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or biological research on some aspects of animals’ ritualistic behaviour. Quite obviously such an approach makes it even harder to distinguish religious studies from other disciplines that study religion.23 Taking a step forward, one could claim that the internal division within religious studies into many sub-disciplines leads to a situation where it is difficult to point to sensu stricto religious studies theories. What is more, the majority of theories applied in religious studies have been developed within related disciplines. In his book Seven Theories of Religion24, Daniel L. Pals discusses the most influential classic theories of religion, including the theories of Edward B. Tylor and James Frazer, Zygmunt Freud, Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Mircea Eliade, Edward E. Evans-Pritchard and Clifford Geertz. It may be surprising that in a publication like that there was no mention of Rudolf Otto, William James, Max Weber or Joachim Wach, yet it is hard not to notice that although the majority of these scholars influenced the development of religious studies as a separate discipline, they were in fact more closely related to other disciplines such as sociology, psychology, philosophy, ethnology and even economy, rather than religious studies as such. Probably the only exception to the rule is the recently heavily criticised theory by Mircea Eliade. The work of Jacques Waardenburg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Aims, Methods and Theories of Research. Introduction and Anthology25 presents us with an even more interesting perspective shedding light on the historical development of religious studies from Max Müller, believed to have been the father of religious studies, up to, more or less, 1945. Waardenburg’s book presents the concepts of forty one leading scholars, more than half of whom (twenty six, to be exact) were discussed in the chapters devoted to the links between religious studies and other disciplines. It should not be surprising, thus, that in the already cited book, Andrzej Bronk starts the chapter devoted to the methodological status of religious studies by stating that: A hundred years after scientific studies on religion began, their methodological status remains controversial: […] The field of religious studies demonstrates limited methodological coherence, while religious studies scholars dispute the nature of all religious studies disciplines.26

23 Jacques Waardenburg, “‘Religionswissenschaft’ New Style. Some Thought and Afterthoughts,” Annual Review of Social Science of Religion, Vol. 2, (1978), p. 190. 24 Daniel L. Pals, Seven Theories of Religion (New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 25 Jaques Waardenburg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Aims, Methods and Theories of Research. Introduction and Anthology (New York–Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999). 26 Andrzej Bronk, Nauka wobec religii, p. 45.

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These words complement another strong statement: In the history of religious studies, the discipline’s autonomy has been postulated more often than put into practice. The discipline has never become independent in the methodological sense, i.e. possessing its own object of study and its own methodology. The ongoing debates have demonstrated the difficulty and complexity of the task of practicing religious studies as a science separate from social sciences. For, according to what criteria could one separate scientific religious studies from other scientific studies? In what sense (and in what way) do religious studies’ explanations go beyond social sciences? Especially since, according to some of religious studies’ autonomy’s advocates, while this discipline cannot be reduced to one of the social sciences or a combination of several of them, we cannot uncritically ignore social sciences’ methods and results.27

Thus, the religious studies discipline, from the start, has been accompanied by debates on its very nature. And while some scholars, including Günter Lanczkowski, Ninian Smart, Theo P. van Baaren, Ursula King and Joseph M. Kitagawa, believe religious studies to be a separate autonomic discipline that applies the research results of other disciplines studying religious phenomena,28 others, including Jacques Waardenburg, Frank Whaling and Donald Wiebe believe the discipline to be “an inter- and multidisciplinary field of study, comprising a range of particularistic disciplines that share the same material object of religious phenomena.”29 According to Wiebe, religious studies is not a single discipline possessing its own methodology, but rather a community of different disciplines focused on studying various aspects of religious phenomena. This statement finally helps us understand why it has been so difficult for religious studies to produce its own theories. We may also realise why it has been so easy for religious studies scholars to implant theories and methods developed by other disciplines to their own field of study, thanks to which – despite the lack of their own theories and research methods – it can successfully develop. In this context the noticeable absence of the term “religious culture” – so significant for Polish ethnology – from the works of Polish religious studies scholars is even more striking. In the light of the presented analysis demonstrating that religious studies heavily draw on related disciplines’ methods and theories, it is next to impossible that religious studies has for decades systematically omitted religion’s local aspects. Since the term “religious culture” has been practically absent from these studies, it is necessary to see what synonymous terms have been applied in its lieu. In order to better understand this problem, we will examine the conceptual scope of the term “religious culture.” This will help us understand whether there is an equivalent to this term within the religious studies field. We will analyse the definition proposed by Magdalena Zowczak in the description 2 7 Andrzej Bronk, Nauka wobec religii, p. 49-50. 28 Andrzej Bronk, Nauka wobec religii, p. 51. 29 Andrzej Bronk, Nauka wobec religii, p. 51.

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of the research project entitled Religious culture in the context of social changes. A comparative study of local communities (Poland-Ukraine): The term religious culture refers to the way in which religion is linked to a given social group’s daily life, local community and historical memory. The group’s way of life gives a specific character to its beliefs and religious practices, partly reflecting the official form of the practiced religion, and partly being clearly distinct from it. Religious culture comprises worship acts and practices, in particular those not observed elsewhere, and the places where they are practiced, including their symbolism, as well as the language, ways of speaking about the sacred sphere, ways of constructing their world vision and their own identity, ethical sensitivity, expressive styles, including singing and music, and, finally, the religious life’s mood and atmosphere.30

One should notice that the definition offered by Magdalena Zowczak relies on a much closer relation between “religious culture” and “religion,” in comparison to Czarnowski’s definition, where the two terms, in a way, were placed in opposition to one another. In the definition proposed by Zowczak, religious culture can be understood as corresponding to religion when analysed from an anthropological perspective as part of culture, manifested in the material, social and spiritual dimensions. Thereby, this definition is much closer to the understanding of religion as a cultural system offered by Geertz. According to this perspective, the term “religious culture” has a meaning analogous to “legal culture” or “economic culture.” It exists within societies that have developed religious institutions. We can talk of religious culture in relation to them, just as we talk of legal culture in relation to legal institutions, or about economic culture in relation to economic institutions. From this perspective, religious culture becomes a particular reflection of religious institutions. It is a specific sort of reflection: it is neither a mirror’s reflection nor an exact one, but a reflection considerably modified by the social group and adjusted to its needs. “Religious culture”, understood in this way, serves as a sort of contextual definition of religion. It does not directly refer to religion as such, but rather to what “being religious” means in a particular context. Therefore, the most methodologically adequate equivalents of the term “religious culture” commonly applied in religious studies, whose definitional scope almost fully overlaps with the definition offered by Zowczak, are “everyday life” and “religiosity”. Both, in fact, are often used in the meaning close to their common usage, and thus refer to all forms of human action. Notably, the analysis of Magdalena Zowczak’s article Od Panienki ze Dwora do Sprawczej Feministki. Antropologiczne wymiary kultu maryjnego [From Manor’s Young Lady to the Can-do Feminist. Anthropological Dimensions of the Marian cult] allows us to 30 Pol.: Kultura religijna wobec zmian społecznych. Studium porównawcze społeczności lokalnych (Polska – Ukraina): 23 July 2016, http://www.etnologia.uw.edu.pl/www/ murafa-i-klekotyna-badania-kultury-religijnej.

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claim that, for this scholar also, the terms “religious culture” and “religiosity” can function as synonymous.31 The concept of “religiosity” may in this case be understood both in the sociological sense (as collective religiosity), as well as in the psychological one (as individual religiosity). In the sociological understanding, which appears to be closer to the term “religious culture,” religiosity is, to use Władysław Piwowarski’s definition: “a collection of institutional beliefs, values and symbols, as well as related forms of behaviour, shared and practiced by a group of people.”32 Irena Borowik, having emphasised “the imperfection of the concept itself” as well as its applications in empirical research, has outlined its following elements: ritualistic, experiential, community-related and consequential, i.e. related to the impact of religion on daily life.33 It is important to emphasise, however, that while Czarnowski was interested in religion as a cultural system, sociologists treat religiosity as a subjective element of religion, which may be objectified by the fact that it is shared by a group of people.34 It is worth pointing out that Polish scholars of religiosity35 believe its fundamental elements to be, after Urs Altermann, the following: religious practices (religious services and its forms, sacraments and their practice), customary forms of devotion, e.g. the veneration of the saints, pilgrimages, folk religiosity, as well as religious notions and views and morality reflected in behaviour.36 In this way, 31 Magdalena Zowczak, “Od Panienki ze Dwora do Sprawczej Feministki. Antropologiczne wymiary kultu maryjnego,” in: Magdalena Zowczak, Religijność na pograniczach. Eseje apokryficzne (Warszawa Wydawnictwo DiG, 2015), p. 73-92. 32 Władysław Piwowarski, “Teoretyczne I  metodologiczne założenia badań nad religijnością,” in: Z badań nad religijnością polską. Studia i materiały, eds. Władysław Piwowarski, Witold Zdaniewicz (Poznań: Pallotinum, Warszawa 1986), p. 65. 33 Irena Borowik, “Religia i życie codzienne jako przedm10iot badań,” in: Religia a życie codzienne, part II, ed. Irena Borowik (Kraków: Zakład Wydawniczy Nomos, 1991), p. 6. 34 Andrzej Szyjewski, “Religious Ethnology in Poland – The Issues of Folk Religion,” in: Ethnology of Religion. Chapters from the European History of a Discipline, ed. G. Barna, Académiai Kiadó, Budapest 2004, p. 225. 35 Sociologists of religion who use this term include Edward Ciupak, Religia i religijność (Warszawa: Iskry, 1982), Irena Borowik (e.g. Odbudowywanie pamięci. Przemiany religijne w Środkowo-Wschodniej Europie po upadku komunizmu (Kraków: Zakład Wydawniczy Nomos, 2000) as well as a collective work edited by her and Maria Libiszowska-Żółtkowska and Jan Doktór title Oblicza religii i religijności (Kraków: Zakład Wydawniczy Nomos, 2008), Maria Libiszowska-Żółtkowską (see e.g. Religia i religijność w warunkach globalizacji, which is edited by her, Zakład Wydawniczy Nomos, Kraków 2007), or Władysław Piwowarski (Religijność wiejska w warunkach urbanizacji: Studium socjologiczne). 36 Urs Altematt, Volksreligion – neuer Mythos oder neues Konzept? Anmerkungen zu einer Sozialgeschichte des modern katholizismus, in: Wiederentdeckung der Volksreligiosität, ed. J. Baumgartner (Regensburg: Pustet Friedrich KG, 1979), p. 105-124. In Polish, a chapter based on this text titled Codzienny katolicyzm ludowy. Mit, moda i nowa metoda was included in the book by the same author Katolicyzm a nowoczesny świat

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the scope of the meaning of the sociological definition of “religiosity” almost fully overlaps with the “religious culture” definition offered by Zowczak. The comparison of definitional scopes of the terms “religious culture” and “everyday life” appears to be even more interesting. Naturally we are interested first and foremost in its usage in the context of religious phenomena. Although, as mentioned above, this category has already functioned in sociological research on religiosity,37 its understanding within Alfred Schütz’s phenomenological sociology perspective deserves special attention here. The term was introduced to Polish religious studies by Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, who developed own concept of religiosity as “a way of being” on the basis of it (or in fact in opposition to it). Everyday life, according to Schütz, like religion, is one of the “fields of meanings,” which happens to be a privileged field, because it is the most real one (the least real field is the world of dream). This characteristic derives from the fact that it belongs to the world of action and full attention; as a result, all doubts regarding its reality are automatically suspended and parenthesised. The world of daily life, according to Schütz shall mean the intersubjective world which existed long before our birth, experienced and interpreted by others, our predecessors, as an organized world. Now it is subject to our experience and interpretation. All interpretation of this world is based upon a

(Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 1995, p. 95-111). According to Altematt, following the French Nouvelle Histoire school, we need interdisciplinary studies that should include social history, religious studies and anthropology as well as a focus on the history of everyday life: “The history of daily life is interested on the observations, impressions and experiences of common Catholics. The historian analyses the subjective, internal side of the historical reality and asks about the motives of human actions. But first and foremost, the history of everyday life focuses on Catholics’ moral and religious practices. At the centre of the analysis lies not so much the faith, but the Catholic way of life. The historian does not deal with the patterns of behaviour prescribed by Catechism, but rather reconstructs actions of common Catholics. […] The history of everyday life – which is a sort of transmutation of the history already known for a long time – deals with the practical side of Catholic life, the subjective traumas of Catholics, who in their daily lives expressed their experiences and impressions. The social historian of Catholic religiosity drafts new frontiers of the old discipline of studies on Catholicism, looks for new materials, formulates unconventional questions and uses a new language to describe the results. The history of daily life applies categories from social psychology, such as collective consciousness, mentality and sensitivity. The history of daily life prefers the micro-dimension of daily history and hence exposes those historical realities that macro-history tries too eagerly to ram into the schemata of a given epoch’s image. […] There is no need to emphasise that this type of history of culture remains closely related to other fields of social life. Those who are interested in daily Catholic religiosity cannot ignore Catholic folk culture”; Urs Altematt, Volksreligion, p. 66-67. 37 Irena Borowik, Religia i życie codzienne, p. 6.

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Everyday activity is here an organic part of meaning. First of all, it is always at hand and is a person’s orientation point in space and time. A person experiences the contact with the Other within the “world at hand,” which is a direct face to face communication that takes into account everything related to the context of speech (gestures, voice modulations, emotional tone, etc.) This creates “a specific form of sociality (the common intersubjective world of communication and social action).”39 The world of religious experiences, according to Schütz, is also a limited field of meaning, characterised by a particular cognitive style. Although this world is not created by the natural attitude resulting from the lack of doubt regarding its realness, it may attain such a characteristic. Włodzimierz Pawluczuk introduced Schütz’s concept to Polish religious studies, yet considerably distanced himself from it. He wrote: Contrary to Schütz, I see daily life not as a field of meanings, but as a way of being. I look for empirically useful theoretical constructs that would describe the subject’s situation in the world, its way of being, rather than separate semiotic systems, as Schütz would have it. […] By reducing the whole set of issues related to intersubjectivity to the way of being in the present, Schütz loses sight of the whole “metaphysical depth” of everyday life, its characteristically mystical dimension.40

Pawluczuk clearly opposes a sensualistic conceptualisation of everyday life, believing it to be an artificial construct, of little use for empirical research. The world as it appears in everyday life cannot be reduced to sensuousness. What is only sensuous is shapeless and empty, [whereas the world of daily life – note by E.P.S.] is an absolute, mystical reality that gains its shapes and colours through intersubjectivity. On the other hand, all that Schütz defines as fields of meanings that are not everyday life, such as science, phantasy, art and religion, possess their own everyday life, materialising in human existence in some way. Phantasy permeates all human reality, is present in work, particularly in creative work, art, religion, sciences, etc. Science is not just an abstraction free from concrete details, but also the “sensuous” daily life of a researcher or scholar. Religion is a prayer or ritual.41

Another of Pawluczuk’s objections regarding Schütz’s conception, equally important from the religious studies perspective, is the lack of differentiation between 38 Alfred Schütz, “On Multiple Realities”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 5, No. 4 (June, 1945), pp. 533-576. 39 Alfred Schütz, “On Multiple Realities.” 40 Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, Wiara a życie codzienne, Wydawnictwo Miniatura, Kraków 1990, p. 4-5. 41 Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, Wiara a życie codzienne, p. 5.

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daily life and celebration, and thus, lack of recognition of different models of reality. In his concept, he speaks of the different “ways of being of a human subject in the world and about the world’s ways of being towards a human subject.”42 He claims that the differentiation into everyday life and celebration has a more primary and fundamental character than the differentiation between daily life, art, science and religion, because well before these ways of being appeared, “celebration had already existed as a completely different way of being than everyday life.”43 According to Pawluczuk, a way of being is a way of orientation in the world, as well as a way of understanding and feeling the world at the level of sense, which shapes its image as a whole, with all its specificity and impacts the regulation and adjustment of behaviour towards it. Among different ways of being, Pawluczuk distinguishes prayer, celebration, worry, merry-making, art and philosophising.44 The way “of being” in this perspective, in any of its varieties, always implies reference to being in the world, and thus, to everyday life experience. The analysis presented above demonstrates that the absence of the term “religious culture” in Polish religious studies scholars’ works, contrary to expectations, does not mean that they have an exclusive focus on official institutionalised religion or that they ignore lived (or experienced) local religion. The latter is reflected in the research conducted mainly within the sociology and phenomenology of religion, which results in reliance on the corresponding terms within the scope of these disciplines. These terms – this needs to be emphasised – are synonymous with the concept of “religious culture” applied in ethnology. There are potentially two reasons for the very limited application of the term “religious culture” in the works of Polish religious studies scholars. The first one is more optimistic and is related to the fact that the term “religious culture” also has not been widely applied in the Polish ethnology. The term “religiosity” has instead enjoyed much wider popularity. The other possibility should be a reason for concern. It is related to the lack of close cooperation between religious studies scholars and ethnologists and cultural anthropologists, despite the strong emphasis on such cooperation made in the 1970s by Aleksander PosernZieliński.45 Such a state of affairs is much more worrying, because the conclusions 4 2 Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, Wiara a życie codzienne, p. 6. 43 Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, Wiara a życie codzienne. 44 Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, Wiara a życie codzienne, p. 10. As it was aptly noted by Henryk Hoffmann, Pawluczuk omits here a rather important element of daily life, which is work (Henryk Hoffmann, “U źródeł „morfologii codzienności” Włodzimierza Pawluczuka,” in: Światopogląd: między transcendencją a codziennością, eds. Irena Borowik, Henryk Hoffmann, Zakład Wydawniczy Nomos, Kraków 2004, p. 17). However its absence from the listed ways of being does not mean that it has been fully omitted. See the subchapter “Praca jako dziedzina codzienności” in the book entitled Wiara a życie codzienne pp. 21-33. 45 Aleksander Posern-Zieliński, “Interdyscyplinarna współpraca etnologów i religioznawców,” Euhemer – Przegląd Religioznawczy,” No. 3, (1977).

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following from it may negatively impact the development of religious studies in Poland. Since religious studies is a discipline that derives its methods and research directions from related disciplines, this absence may imply the weakness of the ethnology of religion as a sub-discipline of religious studies. This, in turn, may imply weakness of religious studies as such. Analyses characterised by a high level of generality, not supported by primary research, in particular by field research focused on local traditions, are often considerably detached from reality. The theories based on such analyses cannot be verified. Since in social sciences the ultimate criterion of verification is empirical research, such alienation may easily lead religious studies research astray.

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Geertz, Clifford. “Religion as a cultural system.” In: The interpretation of cultures: selected essays, Clifford Geertz. London: Fontana Press, 1993, pp. 87–125. Hoffmann, Henryk. “U źródeł „morfologii codzienności” Włodzimierza Pawluczuka.” In: Światopogląd: między transcendencją a codziennością, eds. Irena Borowik, Henryk Hoffmann. Kraków: Zakład Wydawniczy Nomos, 2004. Kowalska, Hanna. Rosyjski wiersz duchowny i kultura religijna staroobrzędowców pomorskich. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1987. Kubiak, Hieronim. Religijność a środowisko społeczne. Studium zmian religijności pod wpływem ruchów migracyjnych ze wsi do miasta. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1972. Libiszowska-Żółtkowską, Maria (ed.) Religia i religijność w warunkach globalizacji, Kraków: Nomos, Kraków 2007. Lipiński, Wojciech, ed. Lipowanie: kultura religijna i tożsamość naddunajskich staroobrzędowców. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo UW, 2015. Manikowska, Halina and Wojciech Brojer, eds. “Animarium kultura. Studia nad kulturą religijną na ziemiach polskich w średniowieczu,” Vol. 1, Struktury kościelno-publiczne. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo: Instytut Historii PAN, 2008. Olszewski, Daniel. Polska kultura religijna na przełomie XIX i XX wieku. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo PAX, 1996. Olszewski, Daniel. Szkice z dziejów kultury religijnej. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Księgarnia św. Jacka, 1986. Pals, Daniel L. Seven Theories of Religion. New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pasek, Zbigniew. Kultura religijna protestantyzmu. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Libron, 2014. Piwowarski,Władysław. Religijność wiejska w warunkach urbanizacji. Studia socjologiczne. Warszawa: Biblioteka “Więzi”, 1971. Piwowarski, Władysław. “Teoretyczne I metodologiczne założenia badań nad religijnością.” In: Z badań nad religijnością polską. Studia i materiały, eds. Władysław Piwowarski, Witold Zdaniewicz. Poznań: Pallotinum, 1986. Posern-Zieliński, Aleksander. “Interdyscyplinarna współpraca etnologów i religioznawców.” Euhemer – Przegląd Religioznawczy,” No. 3, 1977. Redfield, Robert. “The Social Organization of Tradition,” The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1955, pp. 13–21. Schütz, Alfred. “On Multiple Realities,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1945, pp. 533–576. Smith, Wilfred C. Meaning and the End of Religion. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1968. Szyjewski, Andrzej. “Religious Ethnology in Poland – The Issues of Folk Religion,” In: Ethnology of Religion. Chapters from the European History of a Discipline, ed. G. Barna. Budapest: Académiai Kiadó, 2004.

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Szymborski, Wiktor and Janusz Kozioł, eds. Kultura religijna i społeczna Małopolski od XIINNewgenI do XVI wieku. Tarnów: Muzeum Okręgowe w Tarnowie, 2011. Tambiah, Stanley J. Buddism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Tokarska-Bakir, Joanna. Obraz osobliwy. Hermeneutyczna lektura źródeł etnograficznych. Kraków: Universitas, 2000. Tomicki, Ryszard. “Religijność ludowa.” In: Etnografia Polski: przemiany kultury ludowej, Vol. 2, ed. Maria Biernacka, Maria Frankowska, Wanda Paprocka, Mirosława Drozd-Piasecka. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1981, pp. 29–67. Waardenburg, Jacques. “‘Religionswissenschaft’ New Style. Some Thought and Afterthoughts,” Annual Review of Social Science of Religion, Vol. 2, 1978, pp. 189–220. Waardenburg, Jacques. Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Aims, Methods and Theories of Research. Introduction and Anthology. New York–Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999. Zowczak, Magdalena. “Kultura religijna polskiej wsi na Litwie. Raport z badań prowadzonych w rejonie wileńskim w lipcu 1990 roku,” Przegląd Wschodni, Vol. 1, No. 3, (1991), pp. 527–555. Zowczak, Magdalena. “Religious Culture and its Changes. A Symbolic Perspective.” In: Ethnology and Anthropology at the Time of Transformation. Poland at the 14th Congress of the IUAES, ed. Katarzyna Kaniowska, Danuta Markowska. Łódź: Wydawnictwo PAN, 1998, pp. 77–80. Zowczak, Magdalena (ed.). W cieniu drzewa wiar. Studia nad kulturą religijną na pograniczach Slaviae Orthodoxae, Warszawa: DIG, 2009. Zowczak, Magdalena. “Od Panienki ze Dwora do Sprawczej Feministki. Antropologiczne wymiary kultu maryjnego.” In: Religijność na pograniczach. Eseje apokryficzne, Magdalena Zowczak. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2015, p. 73–92. Zowczak, Magdalena. “Kultura religijna jako kontekst dramatu społecznego. Podole, Ukraina,” Konteksty. Polska Sztuka Ludowa, No. 3 (310), 2015, pp. 189–205.

Magdalena Zatorska

Comparison in Contemporary Anthropological Practice There is only one method in social anthropology, the comparative method – and that is impossible!1

Abstract: Comparison is a central category in anthropology underlying the discipline’s foundations. At the same time, for decades anthropologists have believed that comparison is not possible. This tension has been exacerbated by the globalisation processes, both in terms of the phenomena studied by anthropologists as well as the changing position of anthropology in contemporary world. On the one hand, comparison has been interwoven into anthropological practice and explicitly and implicitly present in research projects. On the other, it is rarely problematised and treated as an analysis tool that needs to be defined. Drawing on several “anthropological” texts within the field of literary studies, I explore the political and ethical implications of comparison as discussed by scholars exploring such socio-political issues and processes as (post)colonialism, ethnocentrism, instrumentalisation, de-contextualisation, de-historicisation or de-territorialisation. Some of them decide to abandon comparative analysis altogether. Other scholars argue that comparison is an unavoidable research practice and the refusal to apply it is a political statement, which may also lead to violence. The solution to this dilemma appears to be conscious practicing of comparative research, accompanied by deep reflection on comparison and its various dimensions (cognitive, social and cultural imperatives; cognitive, methodological, epistemic dimensions). The need for a critical reflection on comparison is followed by positive suggestions rooted in methodology, including public responsibility, comparative consciousness, comparative conscience, juxtapositional model of comparison, the context theory and multilevel comparison. In the last part of the chapter I apply the discussed theoretical issues to my own research on the contemporary local communities’ attitude to Hasidic pilgrims as well as to the Jewish heritage in Poland and Ukraine. Keywords: comparison in anthropology, comparative research, comparative analysis, context, similarity, difference, the politics of comparison

Comparison is entwined into anthropological practice and is explicitly or implicitly present in research projects, on the one hand. On the other hand, it is rarely

1 Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, cit. after: James Peacock, “Action Comparison: Efforts Towards a Global and Comparative Yet Local and Active Anthropology,” in: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox (New  York, London: Routledge, 2002), p. 44.

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problematised as a tool that needs to be defined. As Susan Stanford Friedman writes:  “Those who compare, even in disciplines like comparative literature and anthropology, which are founded on the principle of comparison and are often engaged in self-reflexive assessments, seldom address these questions of the what, why, and how of comparison.”2 Explanations of the principle of comparison mentioned by Friedman – on which cultural anthropology rests  – can be found in works that define this field in a holistic, often “encyclopaedical” way, e.g. in handbooks. Thomas Eriksen in Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction To Social and Cultural Anthropology does this in the following way: A short definition of anthropology may read thus: “Anthropology is the comparative study of cultural and social life. Its most important method is participant observation, which consists in lengthy fieldwork in a particular social setting.” The discipline thus compares aspects of different societies, and continuously searches for interesting dimensions for comparison.3

Comparison is thus recognised as a central category in anthropology, underlying the discipline; it is always present in anthropological works and treated as something obvious, something that goes without saying. As Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox put it: If considered from afar, comparison seems to be the fundamental research tool it always has been, so self-evident that some scholars may not regard it as worthy of closer examination. But when comparison is exposed to close examination, a contradictory intellectual reaction often comes into play, and comparison appears not simple and self-evident but rather as a topic and a method impossible to think about, dissolving into dozens of other issues, pieces and fragments.4

Deep reflection upon comparative methodology and attempts to formulate replies to the questions regarding what, why and how we compare may often lead to epistemic impasses. Therefore anthropologists sometimes share the conviction that comparison is not possible at all. The starting point of this discussion on the significance of comparison in contemporary anthropology is globalisation processes. Globalisation is often seen as a factor that “opens” researchers to reflection on comparison and reminds one of the once central position of cultural universals in anthropology. Although the question

2 Susan Stanford Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” in: Comparisons: Theories, Approaches, Uses, eds. Rita Felski and Susan Stanford Friedman (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), p. 34. 3 Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (London: Pluto Press, 2001), p. 4. 4 Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox, “Introduction,” in Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox (New York, London: Routledge, 2002), p. 1.

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about universals is treated in these discussions as a wrongly formulated one, and the assumptions that it is based on have been discredited by postmodernist critique, contemporary processes related to globalisation force us to think about this question and also possibly formulate it anew. As Gingrich puts it: increasing global interconnectedness relates human beings with each other in new and complex ways. Whether the anthropological mainstream recognizes it or not, this growing interrelatedness renews scholarly interest in the fundamental questions raised by anthropology since its emergence as a discipline, but too often forgotten since then – questions like, What do humans have in common? and, How do they differ?5

Globalisation, perceived as a process that produces increasingly complex systems of interdependences between an individual and collectivity, encourages us to raise questions anew about different issues, including the human condition. Simultaneously, both anthropological interpretations of phenomena of supra-local or trans-local nature (including migration, famine, poverty and human rights abuses) as well as local responses to them increasingly gain significance.6 These global connections and the heterogeneous local responses to them legitimate a renewed comparative agenda for anthropology and related fields. If people all around the globe are increasingly reacting to comparable conditions, it becomes a more obvious challenge for scholars to compare how people react and what results culturally from their reactions.7

Michael Schnegg draws our attention to the fact that, due to globalisation, what was previously called diffusion in some anthropology currents and what was believed to have a regional dimension, today occurs between distant parts of the world. Simultaneously, global normative orders, including economic systems, social policies and religious movements, shape norms and practices in various places.8 According to Schnegg, awareness of these processes is of utmost importance for establishing the status of intercultural comparison. According to him, due to globalisation processes, including the development and formation of global complex networks, more attention should be paid to questions regarding our understanding of similarity in the context of anthropological research. In order to demonstrate the nature of this change, Schnegg brings up the so called “Galton’s problem”, which is well known in statistics. It is not a problem in a sense of

5 Andre Gingrich, “When Ethnic Majorities Are ‘Dethroned’: Towards a Methodology of Self-Reflexive, Controlled Macrocomparison,” in: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox (New York, London: Routledge, 2002), p. 228. 6 Andre Gingrich, “When Ethnic Majorities Are ‘Dethroned,’ ” p. 228. 7 Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 7. 8 Michael Schnegg,“Anthropology and Comparison: Methodological Challenges and Tentative Solutions,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Vol. 139 (2014), pp. 64, 70.

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descriptive comparisons; however it does pose a challenge to causal comparisons aimed at explanation.9 Galton’s problem refers to a situation where particular cases being compared in a given sample are not mutually independent in a statistical sense. This happens when similarities between them result from a common genesis or mutual borrowings. In this case, according to scientific standards they should not be treated as separate cases, but as a single one. The impossibility to prove the lack of interdependences between the cases makes analysis results questionable.10 According to Schnegg, Galton’s problem is subject to multiplication as a result of globalisation processes. As the author puts it: To meet this challenge anthropologists must distinguish more sharply in their research what makes two cases alike. I have developed an analytical framework, multilevel comparison, which identifies networks, contexts, and co-variations as three causes of similarity. Following this framework turns Galton’s problem into an asset and allows understanding three different processes that contribute to similarity or difference between ethnographic observations.”11

Since Galton’s problem undermines research based on statistical assumptions, today, Gingrich point out: “Galton’s problem is but one of several factors that place an ever-stronger emphasis on qualitative, rather than quantitative, approaches.12

Reflection on Comparison: Political and Ethical Implications Comparison assumes a level playing field and the field is never level...13

As Friedman emphasises, political and ethical implications of comparison are often the object of reflection by researchers writing on comparison (Friedman refers first of all to literary scholars and anthropologists). Gingrich and Fox also draw our attention to the political dimension of the anthropolitical discussions on comparison: Feminist, postcolonial and other critics inside and outside of anthropology have quite rightly pointed out that such cultural translation and accompanying anthropological comparison usually involve the negotiation of unequal power relations; the entire enterprise, after all, implies intellectual and academic hierarchies that are themselves situated in the wider world. The socio-political preconditions and contexts of such comparative activities therefore must be addressed.14

9 10 11 12 13 14

Michael Schnegg, “Anthropology and Comparison,” p. 63. Michael Schnegg, “Anthropology and Comparison,” p. 63. Michael Schnegg, “Anthropology and Comparison,” p. 70. Andre Gingrich, “When Ethnic Majorities Are ‘Dethroned,’ ” p. 232. Gayatri Spivak, cit. after: Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 35. Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 8.

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The political and ethical implications of comparison practices translate into comparative studies’ colonial dimension, related to ethnocentrism, and mechanisms of instrumentalisation and decontextualization, as well as dehistorization and deterritorialisation. R.  Radhakrishnan draws our attention to these issues in his text Why compare?: My point is simply this:  even when they are not overtly anthropological or colonialist in motivation, comparisons are never disinterested. That in itself is not a major problem. After Karl Marx and after Fredrich Nietzsche, it is almost a truism to claim that all epistemologies are perspectival with reference to their respective subjects: the classed subject, the gendered subject, and so on. But the plot thickens when it comes to comparison for the very simple reason that it is not clear who the perspectival subject of the comparative endeavor is: it is neither A nor B, as each existed prior to its interpellation by comparison. The epistemology of comparison is willed into existence by a certain will to power/knowledge. Such a will is never innocent of history and its burden. [...] Comparisons work only when the ‘radical others’ have been persuaded or downright coerced into abandoning their ‘difference’, and consent to being parsed within the regime of the sovereign One.15

The perspective adopted by Radhakrishnan translates into reflexivity issues in research practices in anthropology: In the 1980s this disciplinary self-inspection shifted its focus to the power of anthropologists, through their writings, to inscribe and fix other cultures, to the exclusion of indigenous representations (Clifford 1983; Clifford and Marcus 1986). Again, this critique regarded comparative methodologies as an especially dubious undertaking. For if anthropology’s presumed objectivity  – the objectivity that had validated cross-cultural comparison up until then – was in fact merely ‘science fiction’, that is, merely the anthropologist’s assertion of authority, then the legitimacy of comparison was undermined.16

The risk of ethnocentrism within comparison follows from the fact that it is difficult to keep a balance between compared elements: “Comparison assumes a level playing field and the field is never level... It is, in other words, never a question of compare and contrast, but rather a matter of judging and choosing.”17 This is related to the question of what becomes a “standard” in a given phenomenon’s description: “In political terms, comparison on a global landscape runs the risk of ethnocentrism, the presumption of one culture’s frame of reference as universal and known; the other’s as different, unknown, and thus inferior.”18 “The

15 Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, “Why Compare?” New Literary History, Vol. 40, No. 3 (2009), p. 454. 16 Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 2. 17 Gayatri Spivak, cit. after: Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 35. 18 Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 35.

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known then operates as measure of the unknown, standing in an unequal relationship to it.”19 The issue of instrumentalisation is presented by Friedman using the example of a working mechanism of metaphor. The literal topic of a metaphorical utterance (tenor) as well as the phrase used in a non-literal sense (vehicle) produce the sense of a metaphor as a result of their interaction. The mechanism of metaphor functioning is based on a comparison aimed at understanding the tenor, not the vehicle. “The image exists to serve the concept, which remains primary.”20 And furthermore: “In a world structured in dominance, why should one thing exist to explain another, instead of being seen as a thing itself.”21 Instrumentalisation is related to another dangerous implication – decontextualisation – as well as its accompanying dehistorisation and deterritorialisation mechanisms. It works in a different way than instrumentalisation does, being based on analysis, not analogy. In analytic as opposed to analogic terms, comparison identifies similarities and differences, commensurability and incommensurability, areas of overlap and of discontinuity. In so doing, comparison decontextualizes; that is, it dehistoricizes and deterritorializes. It removes what are being compared from their local and geohistorical specificity.22

In order to illustrate this problem, Friedman refers to Mary Daly’s work Gyn/ Ecology, in which the author compares “foot-binding in China and genital cutting in Africa as instances of universal patriarchy:”23 With her emphasis on similarity, Daly wrenched each so far out of its context that the meaning of both appeared inadequate; the nature, history, function, and even politics of foot-binding and genital cutting were distorted or at least inadequately understood in comparison. [...] Comparative analysis of similarities and differences goes against the grain of the ‘thick description’ required for the kind of ‘local knowledge’ Clifford Geertz advocates.24

Return to Comparison To refuse comparison in toto is to stick your head in the sand.25

The risks formulated above, characteristic of the practice of comparison, present arguments against using it, which are clearly expressed by Radhakrishnan’s 1 9 20 21 22 23 24 25

Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 34. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 35. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 36. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 36. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 36. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 36. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 43.

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question:  “Why compare?” Friedman turns this argument around, however, by posing a question: “What are the ethics of not comparing?”26 She emphasises that the refusal to compare is also a political act, which may have similar effects to the political abuses that result from comparison and which “can potentially reinstate the existing hierarchies by not challenging them.”27 We need, for certain, strategies of comparison that resist the politics of domination and otherness. We need, as well, greater reflexivity about the epistemology and practice of comparison. We should aim, in my view, for modes of comparison that work with the contradictions inherent in comparison, that expand the voices put in play, that creatively open up dialogue and new frameworks for reading and acting in the world.28

Friedman, in her argument for the need of comparison, distinguishes three imperatives:  a cognitive imperative to compare, a social or cultural imperative to compare and an epistemological-political imperative to compare. The first imperative refers to the basic principles of the human mind’s functioning, which learns on the basis of a comparison mechanism. The second one works on the level of identity, which “requires sameness in difference, difference in sameness  – in a word, comparison.”29 The third one is related to conceptual thinking, which transcends particularism and enables theory. “By ‘theory’, I mean the cognitive capacity to conceptualise, generalise, and see patterns of similarity as part of a broadly systematic form of thinking. Theory in this sense requires comparison.”30 Friedman defines an epistemological-political imperative, by exploring the comparison potential. The author claims that while the risk of comparison is based on the reduction of what is particularistic and nonnormative, the abandonment of comparison may lead to a theoretical impasse. “Comparison’s attention to the particular and the theoretical negotiates between the potential parochialism of the purely local and false universalism of the purely global.”31 The trifurcation of imperatives formulated by Friedman in 2013 has its equivalent in a work published eleven years earlier by Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox, although the author does not refer to it in this particular context. Gingrich and Fox, similarly to Friedman, define three dimensions of comparison. The typology put forward by them focuses on the types of comparison present in anthropological works. The first dimension, similarly to Friedman’s conception,

2 6 27 28 29 30 31

Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 36. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 36. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 43. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 37. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 37. Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 38.

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is based on cognitive science. This is related to the fact that “humans always compare,” irrespective of their intention.32 As the authors put it: “Since anthropologists study humans and are themselves human, the question can no longer be whether or not anthropologists should pursue comparison. Rather, the question is what kind of recognition scholars give to this basic human activity.”33 Depending on the answer to that question, the two latter comparison dimensions – the methodological and epistemological ones – can be more or less developed. The methodological dimension of comparison is called the implicit or “weak” dimension by Gingrich and Fox (in terms of the language of philosophy). The authors argue that irrespective of the topic and place of the research work, anthropologists always compare at least at a minimal level. In our writing, speaking or filming about local or historical contexts, as anthropologists we always address others who come, for the most part, from different contexts. Even a confirmed relativist is involved in such elementary sociocultural translation, which usually involves the use of terminologies from both contexts; of necessity, such ‘translation’ involves a minimum amount of systematic comparison between them. The false ‘us and them’ dichotomy is no more than a bad caricature of these hierarchical, power-laden and partially intersecting double contexts of analysis and publication.34

The third dimension, the epistemological one, also called the explicit or “strong” dimension in a philosophical sense, refers to the clearly formulated research agenda, “in which a previously dominant, narrow (objectivist and universalist) paradigm has dissolved and become peripheral, while a broad new pluralism of qualitative methods is emerging.”35 The last two dimensions of comparison, the implicit and explicit ones, are relevant for anthropology. They differ but are not opposed to each other. They may even complement each other: Implicit comparison therefore leaves the task of explicit comparison either for a later time or for others – but it is not intrinsically opposed to explicit comparison. Likewise, explicit comparison is by no means dismissive of ‘weak’ comparison, but rather relies on it, requires it and tries to build on it. Without assuming to represent a superior or better path, explicit comparison, if successfully carried out, arrives at results that may yield additional, more extensive, yet complementary insights.36

The differences between these two approaches refer to the level of abstraction. In the case of implicit comparison, a certain level of abstraction is unavoidable; however, the aim is to emphasise the concrete context’s specificity, whereas

3 2 33 34 35 36

Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 20. Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 20. Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 20. Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 20. Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 21.

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comparison itself is not the object of reflection. Explicit comparison is of more abstract character. The greater degree of abstraction, however, if carried out in a careful and balanced way through explicit procedures, need not entail radical de-contextualization. On the contrary, this process of more extensive abstraction must go hand in hand with a corresponding self-reflexive theorizing of the very contexts out of which the abstraction is elaborated. This is why we suggest, in this volume, that ‘theorizing contexts’ is indispensable for any explicit comparison.37

The need for comparison, expressed in the imperatives which Friedman formulated, as well as the related dimensions which Gingrich and Fox defined, are followed by positive postulates grounded in methodological reflection. “The positive program” was formulated by Gingrich and Fox, as a collected volume comprising articles which present concrete methodological proposals (some of them will be discussed below). Gingrich and Fox postulate a rejection of objectification and a universalist understanding of comparison, which is characteristic of quantitative research as well as of older anthropological paradigms. The new, pluralistic and primarily qualitative conception of comparative methods in anthropology recognizes from the outset that asking fundamental questions about human commonalities and differences – now as well as in the past – always involves the negotiation of unequal power relations between and among the networks and processes of social actors under study, the author(s), and the audience or readership.38

Public Responsibility The approach proposed by Gingrich and Fox assumes departing from limiting and universalising perspectives and moving toward a methodological pluralism that takes differences and processuality into consideration. To speak of “the” comparative method in anthropology today seems to us just as myopic as we have indicated it was in the past. [...] Today, it is possible to move beyond the ruins of a monopolistic claim to one kind of comparison and beyond the stifling of intellectual competition it visited upon anthropology. Now, a rich plurality of qualitative comparative methodologies has emerged  – none claiming exclusive rights, each offering its insights and evidence.39

Part of this project is also an attempt to “address shared standards and public responsibility, instead of taking the status quo for self-evident and for granted.”40

3 7 38 39 40

Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 21. Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 19. Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 12. Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 19.

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Public responsibility as a goal of anthropology’s comparative practice was inherited from 1920s and 1930s. Gingrich and Fox, when explaining their understanding of the term, refer to figures such as Margaret Mead, who made critical comparisons of studied populations with American culture:  “These early practitioners were secure in their claim that anthropology could comprehend all varieties of social life, and they accepted without hesitation a public responsibility to make cross-cultural comparisons for the public good.”41 The responsibility translates into a necessity to precisely define comparative research’s political conditionings, as well as to formulate questions regarding goals put forward by anthropologists undertaking this type of research. This is followed by the questions: how we convey the topics and the results of these comparative activities to the public  – and to its hierarchies of power. Anthropologists who pursue comparison encounter all kinds of public demands, ranging from ‘accountability’ to ‘social awareness’. And public responsibility is by no means simply an external moral factor imposed upon anthropologists from the outside; rather, it is inherent in any such comparative project from the outset. We must, therefore, ask ourselves, what are the uses and purposes and the shared standards of comparative endeavours in anthropology?42

Comparative Consciousness Laura Nader’s proposal is often referred to by anthropologists who write about comparison. The reason for this may be that Nader’s perspective is closely related to the intuitions discussed above regarding the presence of comparative elements in any anthropological practice, which is pointed out by many scholars working on comparative theory. As Gingrich comments on Nader’s ideas: “anthropologists, like any other human beings, always compare, whether they like it or not. At the very least, they compare the networks and contexts of the peoples they study with their own intellectual, social, political and cultural backgrounds (if these two do not coincide).”43 The term “comparative consciousness”, proposed by Nader, suggests that people always compare things, even if they are not always aware of it. “Comparison is always part of the observational substratum.”44 The researcher calls for a more conscious reflection of the comparative dimension in research within the anthropological milieu. As the author puts it: With the influence of linguistics and componential analysis, and later of interpretive anthropology, interest in comparison waned. A positive value was placed on the

4 1 42 43 44

Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 2–3. Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” p. 9. Andre Gingrich, “When Ethnic Majorities Are ‘Dethroned,’ ” p. 232. Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness,” in: Assessing Cultural Anthropology, ed. Robert Borofsky (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), p. 89.

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unique and the particular, and there was a de-emphasis on generalizing. In addition, there were assertions as well as evidence that societies were not neatly bounded (and that maybe they had not been for centuries), indicating that the units under study were more dynamic and fluid than we had thought.45

According to Nader, rejecting generalisation and appreciating research practices that retreat from the idiosyncratic and particular involve a rigid understanding of comparison. Nader’s postulate, formulated in 1994, aims at breaking the impasse that has resulted from a narrow and “technical” understanding of comparison grounded in anthropology, shared by both comparative studies scholars as well as comparative studies’ critics. “The idea is to use comparison in its historical, contrastive, and controlled forms to break with the frameworks that are no longer yielding fruitful modes of thinking.”46 Nader also believes that reclaiming the value of comparison in the context of our current knowledge of the world, increasingly shaped by interdependences, requires breaking two conditions of comparison belonging to the comparative studies canon. The first one assumes that in order to make comparison possible the compared entities need to have some basic common qualities. The second one is related to the already discussed Galton’s problem. It amounts to making sure that compared entities are mutually independent:  they do not have a shared genesis and do not influence each other. As Nader emphasises: “These two methodological assumptions restrict research questions to those that can be phrased with neatness and with elegance, and, as a result, they have served to give rise to particularistic findings.”47 These conditions are impossible to meet “in a world that is increasingly characterised by interdependence, in the context of dynamic global power relationships, while also maintaining the integrity of the communities described.”48 Comparative consciousness enables comparisons “that are not only of dichotomous nature, comparisons that draw on the differences between us and them, but comparisons that indicate points of convergence and commonality.”49 A conscious application of different forms of comparison – historical, functionalist and contrasting – is supposedly: the solution to the predisposition against cross-cultural or controlled experiments, or a predilection for one particular kind of comparison (...). Composite approaches are never neat, and as compared to more orthodox positions do not attract a constituency. Yet to expand comparative consciousness that serves the universal challenge to anthropology is not to narrow or constrict the concept of comparison, but to enlarge its methodological scope and its intellectual style.50

4 5 46 47 48 49 50

Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness,” p. 93. Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness,” p. 93. Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness,” pp. 86–87. Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness,” p. 87. Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness,” p. 92. Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness,” p. 88.

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Comparative Conscience Building on Nader’s proposal, Kirsten Hastrup raises questions about anthropology in the debate on human rights and their implementation. She refers to the Vienna Declaration: All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.51

Hastrup argues that this article’s content may be the starting point for activities aimed at “transforming human rights from being primarily a linguistic phenomenon to being also lived experience and trusted ideas, cross-culturally.”52 According to her, the role that anthropology can play in this endeavour results from the possibilities that present themselves along with the comparative perspective and methodology. Hastrup treats it as anthropology’s “public responsibility”, which she formulates in reference to the “comparative conscience of anthropology”. Hastrup writes: “Anthropology still has an important contribution to make to this universal ethics by providing ethnographic substance to both the shared and the unique dimensions of lived experiences.”53 This imaginative contribution takes us away from basing human rights on a notion of an essence of humanity, and allows us to base it precisely on the fact that we are imaginable to each other and that we may conjoin in a shared standard of justice from diverse rationales; in short, that we are equally human beyond our diverse vocabularies.54

Juxtapositional Model of Comparison Juxtaposition as a comparison method as proposed by Susan Stanford Friedman, is an attempt to formulate an answer to the risks expressed by comparative studies’ critique. The starting point for Friedman is negating the simplified understanding of comparison as a “school” method of writing down similarities and differences in

51 Vienna Declaration of Human Rights, 1993, Article 5, cited after: Kirsten Hastrup, “Anthropology’s Comparative Consciousness:  The Case of Human Rights,” in: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox (New York, London: Routledge, 2002), p. 34. 52 Kirsten Hastrup, “Anthropology’s Comparative Consciousness,” p. 41. 53 Kirsten Hastrup, “Anthropology’s Comparative Consciousness,” p. 39. 54 Kirsten Hastrup, “Anthropology’s Comparative Consciousness,” p. 40.

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a table, which the author assumes is “essentially static, not sufficiently dialogic.”55 In its place the author suggests focusing on the tension, present in every comparison, between what is commensurate and what is incommensurate. She writes: In yoking together things that are simultaneously alike and unalike, comparison compels recognition of commensurability – likeness – but on the other hand, comparison acknowledges incommensurability – difference. (...) Comparison contains a contradictory pull between the particular and the abstract, between identification of parallels and insistence on contrasts. Comparison puts incommensurability and commensurability into dynamic interplay reflected in the slash that separates and connects: in/commensurability.56

This sort of juxtaposition may have the form of collision, cultural collage or cultural parataxis. “Collisional comparative methodology then sets in play different voices coming out of distinctive geohistorical and asymmetrical contexts. Comparison’s utopian potential emerges out of a commitment ‘to the effort to cohabit with, listen to, and consider alternate stories of those who are different.’ ”57 Cultural collage (or cultural parataxis) refers to modernism and currents such as the Dada movement. Juxtaposition of texts from different geographical, historical and cultural contexts allows each of their individual characters to be preserved. By rejecting hierarchy and instrumentalism it is possible to see what the texts share. A juxtapositional model of comparison sets things being compared side by side, not overlapping them (as in a Venn diagram [multiple overlapping circles used in the sets theory – MZ]), not setting up one as the standard of measure for the other, not using one as an instrument to serve the other. Juxtaposition can potentially avoid the categorical violence of comparison within the framework of dominance. The distinctiveness of each is maintained, while the dialogue of voices that ensures brings commonalities into focus.58 Put side by side, each in its own distinctive context but read together for their in/ commensurability, texts-in-collage produce new insights about each, as well as new theoretical frameworks. [...] Comparison through cultural collage enables the production of new theories.59

The juxtapositional model of comparison can also apply to the two mechanisms I  mentioned earlier when discussing the risks associated with comparative practices:  defamiliarisation and decontextualisation. The consequence of decontextualisation is recontextualisation, which may contribute to a better understanding and reconsideration of initial assumptions.60 Defamiliarisation, 5 5 56 57 58 59 60

Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 40. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 40. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 41. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 40. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 42. Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” pp. 38, 39.

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in turn, may bring about certain benefits thanks to undermining the dominant standards and demonstrating that they are not universal or natural. “This reciprocal defamiliarization unravels the Self-Other opposition that reproduces systems of epistemological dominance. Politically speaking, a defamiliarizing comparison can enhance reciprocal understanding and coexistence.”61 “To learn through comparison that others see things differently is to recognise the constructedness of one’s own frame of reference. Such defamiliarization of ‘home’ through engagement with the ‘other’ is often the cornerstone of transcultural political analysis. In other words, one effect of comparing cultures is to call into question the standards of the dominant precisely because it is unveiled as not universal.”62

The Context Theory As Michael Herzfeld puts it, what we do compare as anthropologists, are contexts. Rather than positing a set of conveniently countrylike ‘cultures’ with neatly drawn boundaries and countable sets of culture traits, we can thus more usefully focus on how discourses of common identity are used by social actors, to what ends, and with what effects. That is a fundamentally comparative project; it is not about fixed identities, but about the contexts in which they acquire significance.63

For Herzfeld, the question of comparison in anthropology is closely related to the problem of reflexivity. He argues that both these issues are key aspects of sociocultural anthropology. Starting with a similar assumption, Marit Melhuus proposes that reflection on comparison in anthropology should start with the question regarding anthropology’s role in the contemporary world. She distinguishes two ways of formulating this problem: On the one hand, the relevance of knowledge is framed in terms of utility, production and market mechanisms. Thus, some governments are increasingly demanding value for their money, a value that can only be measured in terms of productivity. Increasing pressure (in Norway and elsewhere) is brought to bear on academic institutions in order to ‘demonstrate their relevance according to market principles’, prompting ‘a major shift in the context in which anthropology operates, and particularly the way it is funded’ (Ahmed and Shore 1995b:  31; my emphasis). On the other hand, anthropologists who are concerned with the future of the discipline raise issues of relevance, questioning both whether and how anthropology can be relevant to the contemporary world. Thus, two currents of relevance are working at the same time: one

6 1 Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 42. 62 Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” p. 38. 63 Michael Herzfeld, “Performing Comparisons: Ethnography, Globetrotting, and the Spaces of Social Knowledge,” Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 57, No. 3 (2001), p. 268.

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pressing from outside the discipline, one from within. The two currents do not necessarily run in the same direction, either; their ‘relevant’ motives are different, as is the very understanding of the term. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile exploring these two trends, especially if they seem to be mutually reinforcing, stressing the sense of urgency that prevails: the feeling that anthropology is in some way at a turning point. The question is, What are we turning from, and where are we turning to?64

Melhuus encourages us to engage in a deep reflection on the concept of context in reference to anthropological practice. She argues that anthropology lacks the theory of context, despite the silent acknowledgement of its significance within anthropological practice. The term in itself is problematic and can be understood in at least two ways: as a concept or as a social phenomenon. We need to ask, what type of social phenomenon is a context  – beyond what is brought to bear in order to make sense of an event, person or thing? What is it that makes a context? What is it about the context that in a concrete case renders something meaningful and significant? Is there a difference between the context the anthropologist constructs in order to render phenomena meaningful and the context people themselves create? And if it is contexts we should compare, how can we go about establishing a framework of comparison? This question pushes the issue of comparison to another analytical level, at which we compare the processes of construction (...): in other words, how claims are made and how cultural interpretations are grounded. Such comparison points to the different ways in which contexts are made available, explicitly or implicitly.65

Comparative practice based on a nuanced theory of context, according to Melhuus, pertains to anthropology’s significance in contemporary social theory. Comparison depends on drawing boundaries, and drawing boundaries is intrinsic to establishing contexts. Ultimately, the relevance of social anthropology will be judged by the empirical knowledge it produces and the theories it generates. Anthropological contributions to social theory—such as exchange, notions of the person, ritual, the relation between individual and society—have all been made on the basis of a cross-cultural comparative perspective. The appeal of social anthropology, I think, can be attributed to the unique contributions anthropology has made to social theory based on a comparative method grounded in local knowledges.66

64 Marit Melhuus, “Issues of Relevance: Anthropology and the Challenges of Cross-Cultural Comparison,” in: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox (New York, London: Routledge, 2002), p. 74. 65 Marit Melhuus, “Issues of Relevance,” pp. 82–83. 66 Marit Melhuus, “Issues of Relevance,” pp. 87–88.

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Multilevel Comparison Michael Schnegg’s proposal puts emphasis on a deep reflection of what similarity is within anthropological comparative practice. Schnegg claims that anthropologists should pay more attention to methodological and theoretical reflections on what makes juxtaposed cases similar. The author proposes a multi-level comparison analytical framework, which defines three reasons of similarity: diffusion/networks, common origins/contexts and co-variations. As Schnegg puts it:  “following this framework turns Galton’s problem into an asset and allows understanding three different processes that contribute to similarity or difference between ethnographic observations.”67 The multi-level comparison framework relies on applying concepts and quantitative research techniques from other disciplines.68 The basic question Schnegg attempts to answer is what makes the two cases similar. The statistical perspective applies to multi-level analysis, within which “individual and group level effects on a dependent variable are analyzed at the same time. This allows recognizing if a relationship exists globally or only for specific contexts.”69 Multilevel comparison thus searches for effects on and between different levels or scales. Co-variations operate on the same scale and “within the case” (e. g. stratification and preference for certain institutional regimes in a community). Networks connect the case with specific other cases through dyadic relationships of the same level. In contrast, common contexts constitute a larger historical or thematic frame that operates on a higher level.70

Conclusion The methodological proposals discussed above, formulating postulates regarding comparative practice in anthropology and sometimes offering very concrete programs, represent only several concrete positions. All of them emphasise that comparative anthropological research is needed, despite the fact that it has been rejected, neglected or conducted without proper reflection for a relatively long time. The reason for this has been on the one hand the acceptance of postcolonial critique, which has discouraged comparisons due to the number of violence mechanisms within them.71 On the other hand, they have been discouraged due to a too narrow, “technical” and “positivist” understanding of comparative studies.72 The attempts to face the challenges related to both implicit comparisons in anthropological works as well as formalised comparisons pertaining to selected 6 7 68 69 70 71 72

Michael Schnegg, “Anthropology and Comparison,” p. 71. Michael Schnegg, “Anthropology and Comparison,” p. 57. Michael Schnegg, “Anthropology and Comparison,” p. 68. Michael Schnegg, “Anthropology and Comparison,” p. 66. Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, “Why Compare?” Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness.”

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methodological perspectives, lead us to the conclusion that the risk of violence may also be rooted in the rejection of comparison.73 Such an approach is associated with treating anthropology in public responsibility terms.74 Whereas deep reflection on the comparative dimension may result in a conscious application from the possibilities that it opens.75 This position results in an attempt to work out and broaden the diversified comparative methods toolkit,76 which, when used in a skilful and reflective way, taking into consideration the risks uncovered by postcolonial research, create the ground for theoretical reflection.77 The methodological proposals which I selected and discussed in the previous section point to the elements of comparative practice that, in my opinion, need to be taken into account when designing and conducting research. The first one is the broadly understood reflexivity that takes postcolonial critique into account78 and considers the role of anthropologists as both researchers and representatives of a concrete scholarly discipline79 that concentrates on the “human being”.80 The issue of reflexivity contains the previously mentioned problems regarding scientific decisions’ political character as well as science’s public responsibility. The second important element of comparative research is the theoretical analysis of the anthropological understanding of concepts such as context81, similarity82 and difference. These remarks lead to the conclusion that comparative practice is not just research reflexion and methodology, but also a well-thought, conscious construction of an anthropological text. It is accentuated by the multivocality postulate described by Friedman in reference to the juxtapositional model of comparison.83 This is also supported by the theory of context which Melhuus proposed, emphasising that it is contexts that we, as anthropologists, compare84. According to Melhuus, for this reason, we need to focus our attention on how compared contexts are created, how their construction processes go and how the boundaries of comparison are delineated and justified.

7 3 Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” 74 Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction,” Hastrup, “Anthropology’s Comparative Consciousness.” 75 Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness.” 76 Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness,” Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction.” 77 Michal Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” 78 Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, “Why Compare?” Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” 79 Laura Nader, “Comparative Consciousness,” Andre Gingrich and Richard Fox, “Introduction.” 80 Kirsten Hastrup, “Anthropology’s Comparative Consciousness.” 81 Marit Melhuus, “Issues of Relevance.” 82 Michael Schnegg, “Anthropology and Comparison.” 83 Susan Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” 84 Michael Herzfeld, “Performing comparisons,” Melhuus, “Issues of Relevance.”

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In my research, which concentrates on contemporary attitudes towards Jews in local communities (Jews as local minorities or pilgrims to these communities) as well as Jewish heritage in Poland and Ukraine, I would like to apply the comparativeperspective’s potential. I have conducted my research in several localities: Murafa, Sharhorod and Uman in Ukraine and Lelów and Leżajsk in Poland. In an attempt to translate the theoretical problems discussed in this article into my research, I would like to apply Schnegg’s multi-level comparison model. Analysis at an individual level is based on distinguishing co-variations. In my research’s case, it means distinguishing types of attitudes, ways of talking about Jews, practices and discourses that can constitute local typologies. Juxtaposition of different local typologies may encourage analysis at the contexts level (common origins), which in my case are shared historical contexts as well as common European memory policies. All studied locations are situated in the territories affected by the Holocaust experience. The memory of the Holocaust and its victims is marked with trauma and suppression. At the same time, all the studied towns and villages have been affected by cultural heritage and local (and historical) multiculturalism protection policies, as well as by Holocaust remembrance initiatives. The third level of the analysis, the network (diffusion) analysis, allows me to reflect upon the possible interrelation and mutual influence of the studied cases. In my research’s context, the issue deserving most attention appears to be reflexivity. First of all, there is the Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish triangle and its political contexts. Within this framework, the relations between the studied populations (comprising groups identifying with particular ethnic communities), the researcher (from Poland) and the study participants are forged. As Schnegg reminds us, identifying these levels and conducting the analysis of each of them separately enables applying the qualitative research potential to its fullest. Comparison which is “controlled” in this way makes the reconciliation between ethnographic fondness for particularisms and attempts at generalisations possible. This, in turn, opens up opportunities for theoretical reflection on ways of talking about the past in present times as well as on relations between such concepts as heritage (own/alien, material/non-material), tradition, memory and remembrance.

Bibliography: Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. London: Pluto Press, 2001. Friedman, Susan Stanford. “Why Not Compare?” In: Comparisons: Theories, Approaches, Uses, eds. Rita Felski and Susan Stanford Friedman. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, pp. 34–45. Gingrich, Andre. “When Ethnic Majorities Are ‘Dethroned’: Towards a Methodology of Self-Reflexive, Controlled Macrocomparison.”

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In: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox. New York, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 225–248. Gingrich, Andre and Richard B. Fox. “Introduction.” In: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox. New York, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 1–24. Gingrich, Andre and Richard B. Fox. eds. Anthropology, by Comparison. New York, London: Routledge, 2002. Hastrup, Kirsten. “Anthropology’s Comparative Consciousness: The Case of Human Rights.” In: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox. New York, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 25–43. Herzfeld, Michael. “Performing Comparisons: Ethnography, Globetrotting, and the Spaces of Social Knowledge.” Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 57, No. 3, 2001, pp. 259–276. Kuper, Adam. “Comparison and Contextualization: Reflections on South Africa.” In: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox. New York, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 143–166. Melhuus, Marit. “Issues of Relevance: Anthropology and the Challenges of CrossCultural Comparison.” In: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox. New York, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 70–92. Nader, Laura. “Comparative Consciousness.” In: Assessing Cultural Anthropology, ed. Robert Borofsky, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994, pp. 84–96. Peacock, James. “Action Comparison: Efforts Towards a Global and Comparative Yet Local and Active Anthropology.” In: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox. New York, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 44–69. Radhakrishnan, Rajagopalan. “Why Compare?” New Literary History, Vol. 40, No. 3, 2009, pp. 453–471. Schnegg, Michael. “Anthropology and Comparison: Methodological Challenges and Tentative Solutions.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Vol. 139, 2014, pp. 55–72. Strathern, Marilyn. “Foreword: Not Giving the Game Away.” In: Anthropology, by Comparison, eds. Andre Gingrich and Richard B. Fox. New York, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. xiii-xvii.

Marcin Skupiński

Religion and Identity in the Post-socialist Landscape: A Comparative Perspective Abstract: This paper offers a comparative perspective on two minority religious communities: Greek Catholics in Biały Bór in north-western Poland and Roman Catholics in the villages of Murafa and Klekotyna in central Ukraine. I conducted the research in both localities between 2012 and 2015. One of the paper’s findings is that in both cases there is an observable bond between religious affiliation and individual and collective identity, embedded in traumatic experiences of persecutions, in particular during the Stalinist era. Despite these similarities, however, there are important differences between the two communities, in particular, in terms of their respective understandings of key concepts of faith, religion and nation. These differences have translated in other significant divergences, namely in terms of the types of relations between religion and national identity that have developed within these two communities as well as in terms of the approaches to the church as an organisation. Key words: religion, national identity, Roman Catholicism, Greek Catholicism, minorities

The present chapter is an attempt to look at the material I collected during my ethnographic research in multi-confessional communities in Ukraine and Poland from a comparative perspective. In my research, I focused on the role of religion and confession in shaping local worldviews as well as their place and relations within a broader social context studied by ethnology. In the Ukrainian towns of Murafa and Klekotyn, the dominant confessions were Catholicism of the Latin rite, commonly called Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox confession represented by the Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate. In Biały Bór, situated in Pomerania in northern Poland, the studied population belongs to the Catholic Church’s Eastern rite branch called Greek Catholicism, even though the town’s majority population are Catholics of the Latin rite. In this chapter, I will discuss relations between confessions and group identity. History has left its deep imprint on both local communities, which has resulted in a specific relation between identity and confession. This relation has been strengthened by the traumatic experiences of both communities’ members. In both cases, the strong attachment to religious organisations is related to the priest-hero figure, who played a significant role in guiding the community through turbulent times. The two communities differed, however, in the ways religion functioned there, also when church organisations had not been in place. Of particular significance here are the differences in the relations between the reactivated church organisation and group identity in both cases. I intend to demonstrate that despite all the similarities between the two communities, the way the two populations

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define religion is diametrically different. Furthermore, the two communities also differ in terms of the type of identity related to belonging to one religious organisation or another.

Churches and the “Really Existing Socialism” – or a Short History of Religious Life in Two Towns From the very outset, I need to point out certain differences between the two communities which are compared here. The first difference is the history of settlement. Murafa’s contemporary Catholic population largely descends from peasants who were brought to Podilia’s uncultivated lands during the 18th century. I heard the account of the popular founding from one of my interlocutors, who associate the arrival of Poles with the building of Murafa’s Catholic church, which today towers above the village. The arrival of Poles is also associated with Count (Ukr. граф) Joachim Karol Potocki’s activities. Of course, not all of the forefathers of contemporary Marafa’s Catholics came to Podilia during Potocki’s times. The population movement from central Poland east, which included migrants of noble origins, took place both before and after this period, well into the 19th century. The oldest account available regarding Murafa’s population describes them as predominantly peasants, who “lost their language and dress completely,”1 having maintained their religion as the main indicator of their cultural distinctiveness. Interestingly enough, the author vividly describes the act of throwing donations in high amounts from the church choir, a tradition still practiced in Murafa which may indicate to be the genesis of some practices and attitudes I observed in the field. Biały Bór, in turn, was settled as a result of post-war migration and resettlement related to the change of Poland’s boundaries. The first wave of settlers reached the place in 1945. This was a predominately Polish population from overpopulated central Poland, who suffered from the war’s occupation, as well as from the borderlands. Soon after, as a result of the population exchanges between the USSR and Poland, Poles from former eastern voivodships arrived here. Poles replaced the German population, which was, with few exceptions, deported from the area. Some Germans stayed in their houses despite the Red Army’s and Polish Army’s activities, remaining in the village until at least 1947/48. However, they also decided to leave Poland during the following years due to various harassments perpetrated by both local authorities as well as by new settlers. Biały Bór’s second wave of settlers were Ukrainians, who my study focused on. They were forcibly resettled here as part of Operation Vistula, which consisted of massive deportations of Ukrainian, Lemko and Boyko populations from south-eastern Poland to the west, mainly to Western Pomerania and Lower Silesia. Biały Bór’s oldest population, both Ukrainians and Poles, are not tutejsi or local, and they remember the towns 1 “mowę i ubiór zatracili już zupełnie,” Edward Chłopicki, “Od Buga do Bohu. Wspomnienia z podróży,” Kłosy, Vol. 21, No. 547 (1875), pp. 410–412.

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Photo 1: A manuscript by an Older choir singer, Murafa. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

and villages they were born in. This is particularly important for the Ukrainians, for whom the memory of the resettlement and their places of origin are important identity elements which they often refer to. The memory passed on from generation to generation is an important element of the younger generations’ identity, who often “make pilgrimages” to their forefathers’ lands, which I will discuss later. The key category for understanding religion’s role in the described minority populations is the “domestication” of religion in the USSR, which is discussed by Tamara Dragadze.2 Although relations between religious organisations in the USSR with the Soviet government and those in the Polish People’s Republic with theirs were considerably different, the special treatment experienced by Greek Catholics in Poland during the Stalinist era allows us to make a comparison. Writing about the functioning of religious organisations in the USSR, Dragadze emphasises that, in the absence of priests and churches, religion was pushed aside to the private sphere, or domesticated. Paradoxically, this was related to the strengthening of religiosity among the lay faithful, who, under these conditions, felt responsible for promoting religious content. In contrast, in the 1980s’ and 1990s’ context of relative religious freedom, the previous process of domestication had consequences for such organised religions, including the role of women in a given community (because they were responsible for upbringing and for the transfer of religious

2 Cf. Tamara Dragadze, “The domestication of religion under the Soviet communism,” in:  Ideals, Ideologies and Local practice, Socialism, eds. Chris Hann, (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 150 – 151.

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Photo 2: An embroidery for the church in Biały Bór by a Greek Catholic parishioner forcibly resettled in 1947. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

content) as well as the low prestige of priests, who were perceived to be incompetent in comparison with local community leaders. In her article, Dragadze refers to examples from Transcaucasia, where the villages’ places of worship were totally destroyed and priests were either physically removed or were forced to go underground. The local populations were completely deprived of their religious organisation for several decades, and religious content was transmitted by local authorities at private houses. Murafa’s case was different. The period of complete disappearance of Catholic religious organisation was rather short, between 1935 and 1941. Throughout most of the Soviet regime, religious organisations were active in Murafa, even though their activities were considerably limited. Religious content transmittance after that period still took place in the private sphere; yet according to local residents’

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accounts, the priest and his closest allies were still catechising as well. Moreover, Murafa’s Catholic population never fully accepted the pushing out of religion into the private sphere. The fight to preserve the church in its sacral function united the local population both before and after the war. Greek Catholics in Pomerania experienced a much more complex situation, which was closer to the one depicted by Dragadze, even though in their case the period of full supersession of religion from the private sphere was shorter. After the resettlement, they found themselves in a new territory where there were no Greek Catholic churches. They also left their family cemeteries and chapels in their homelands, which usually played an important role for many communities deprived of their places of worship. This included Podilia’s villages and towns where the Soviet authorities destroyed churches, as Magdalena Zowczak described.3 What is more, the resettled Ukrainians became minorities in towns and villages colonised by Poles, predominately resettled from the east, whose earlier experiences made them rather hostile towards their Ukrainian neighbours. Finally, the resettled population remained under the surveillance of local security services for many years after Operation Vistula. For ten years, between 1947 and 1957, Biały Bór’s population did not have their own church, and the transmission of religious and patriotic content took place at homes. This pushing of religion into the private sphere was accompanied by the pushing of Ukrainianness into the private sphere as well. Many of my respondents emphasised that Ukrainians were afraid of further repression; for this reason they celebrated their holidays behind curtained windows. The domestication contributed to a closer association between the Greek Catholic liturgy and the Ukrainian people’s identity. As one of Biały Bór’s Ukrainian community leaders put it: You know, I  learned Ukrainian with my prayer book. I  did not go to a Ukrainian school, because there was no one (or none?). I learned the language at home and the prayer book served as my “ABCs”, where one learned the letters and got acquainted with everything, reading “Отче наш” and “Богородице Діво” (prayer titles)4.

The change in the Pomeranian Ukrainians’ situation took place after the so-called 1956’s “thaw”, when official minority organisations were able to be formed, including the Ukrainian Social and Cultural Association (UTSK). One could say that just as Murafa’s Catholics united around preserving their church, Biały Bór’s

3 Cf. Magdalena Zowczak, “O długim trwaniu Polaków na Podolu: imponderabilia tożsamości,” in: Podole i Wołyń. Szkice Etnograficzne, eds. Łukasz Smyrski and Magdalena Zowczak (Warszawa: DiG, 2008). 4 A sixty-year-old Greek Catholic male, Biały Bór. The original quotation goes as follows:  “Wie pan, ja języka ukraińskiego to się na modlitewniku uczyłem, nie chodziłem do szkoły ukraińskiej, bo nie było, tylko język wyniosłem z domu i to modlitewnik był takim elementarzem, gdzie na słowach „Otcze nasz” i „Boharodyco Diwo” uczyło się liter i oswajało się z tym”.

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Ukrainians united around the idea of building their religious and cultural life from scratch; this was epitomised first by the organisation of Greek Catholic religious services and Ukrainian-language education, and ultimately by the construction a new church. Priests in both Murafa and Biały Bór played an important role in consolidating the local religious community, assuming the duty of recreating the religious organisations after the hardships of war and persecutions.

On “True” Priesthood – the Role of Priests in Creating a Community Both in the Murafa’s as well as Biały Bór’ case, the local priests played a tremendous role in building the religious organisations’ authority and including them in the local communities’ identity. After the Stalinist period in particular, the priests had to work in extremely hard conditions and face many problems caused by the USSR’s and the Polish People’s Republic’s state organs respectively. Thanks to their hard work aimed at maintaining and developing their parishes, they have been remembered by the local communities as mythologised heroes and examples to follow for their successors. In Biały Bór, where the religious organisations’ prestige has diminished over time, some of my interlocutors differentiated between those “true” priests who were characterised by their mission and vocation which gave them the strength to face all the hardships, and subsequent priests who were too attached to earthly and comfortable lives. In Murafa, the story of priests and their authority starts with the arrival of the first post-war priest Father Martynian (Wojciech) Darzycki. Murafa was the first church where he served after his return from his exile.5 Although he is believed to be a very important priest for Ukrainian Catholicism, in Murafa he is remembered mainly by the oldest generation. He has become considerably overshadowed by the priest who followed him, Antoni Chomicki. The reason for this is that his service in Murafa was very short, between 1952 and 1957. According to one of my interlocutors, he was a “strong” and very conservative priest, who fought against any deviations from Catholic orthodoxy and broke off with practicing prayers at the cemetery in favour of “official” services at the church. Further development of Murafa’s church has been closely associated with the mitered prelate Antoni Chomicki. Born in Samułki Duże, Poland, he officially accepted Murafa’s priest

5 Aresztowany w 1945, w 1946 roku został przetransportowany do łagru w Kołymie, a po zwolnieniu z obozu przebywał w kraju Chabarowskim z zakazem powrotu do Ukrainy, uchylonym na mocy amnestii w 1952 roku. Por. Wanda Hryniewicz, “Parafia Miastkówka na Podolu i jej pasterz o. Martynian Darzycki OFM Bern. (19182009),” in: Wytrwać i przetrwać jak Bóg daje. Świadkowie Kościoła rzymskokatolickiego na Ukrainie Sowieckiej 1917-1991, ed. Józef Wołczański, Kraków: Wydawnictwo bł. Jakuba Strzemię Oddział w Krakowie, 2010), pp. 235–252.

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Photo 3: Father Antoni Chomicki, Murafa’s parish priest in 1961–1993, and his loyal friend, organist Eugeniusz Swarcewicz. Photo by unknown photographer.

position in 1960, although he had been serving as a de facto priest in Murafa already since 1958, and in 1955–57 he was a priest in nearby Shargorod (Шаргород). A. P-B: - Do you know how many boys go to [become] a priest in Murafa? And why? Interviewee 2: - Chomicki taught everyone. It’s Chomicki’s work. And now they go; now a youth from our village of Klekotyna has also gone to become a priest; he has finished school and has gone. T. A.: - And in what way was that Chomicki’s work? How did he teach? Interviewee 2: - He taught! He taught the youth to pray… He was a very nice priest!6

6 The original quotation goes as follows:  A. P-B: A wy znacie, bardzo dużo chłopców na księdza idzie, z Murafy. Dlaczego tak?

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Priest Antoni Chomicki served as a priest in Murafa until his death in 1993. His service as a priest has influenced the role and position of the organised church in Murafa’s Catholic community. Because he was such a priest, such a priest! I say it this way; this was in earlier times when one could just hug him and kiss him and people were like friends, as a father with his children.7 M. S.: - And do you remember Father Chomicki’s sermons? Interviewee: - I remember! I remember them all! M. S.: - What were they like? Interviewee: - He was a great priest. Oh, he was a priest! He led many people to God. He was strong, two metres tall, strongly-built. He could lift cars, he was that strong. And he is buried there; there is a marble image of him. Father Chomicki’s, yes.8

In the last quote one can notice how the interlocutor transforms Father Chomicki into a local community hero. We also can spot similar trends in many interviews, in particular with older Catholics. His fight against alcoholism has become legendary. His authority and prestige within the church’s organisation is also significant:  he was considered someone akin to a bishop of Central Ukraine9. For Murafa’s Catholics, he was the priest who led them through the Communist period. During the entire period of his work in Murafa, the choir was led by the organ player Eugeniusz Swarcewicz. Religious instruction lessons were organised by the organ player’s wife Leonarda Swarcewicz, under Father Chomicki’s vigilant eye. Notably, one of the USSR’s religious policies’ effects was the increased participation of parishioners in their parish’s and church’s affairs:  the priest was

Interviewee 2: - To Chomicki wsich nauczył. To Chomickoho robota. I teper idut, teper toże molodioż z naszej Klekotyny piszla za ksiondzom, zakonczyla szkolu i piszli. T. A.: - A jak Chomickiego robota? Jak uczył? Interviewee 2: - Nauczał! Nauczał molodioż szob molilisia… Win duże bul prijemnyj ksiądz!” The interview was conducted by Anna Ptaszyńska-Biały (A. P-B) and Tamara Allina (T. A.) 7 A sixty-five-year-old Catholic female, Murafa. The original quotation goes as follows: “Bo to taki był ksiądz, taki był ksiądz! No ja tak mówię, tak było w pierwszych czasach, że jemu można było się rzucić na szyję i ucałować i tego, takie byli jak przyjaciele, jak ojciec z dziećmi.” 8 A seventy-year-old Catholic male, Murafa. The interview was conducted by Maria Sokołowska. 9 Even the Polish Wikipedia, without providing the source, claims that Chomicki was a de facto bishop, and that he refused the ordination due to his fears regarding possible limitations to his further activities. https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Chomicki (17.02.2017)

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hired and paid by a church committee (Ukr. двадцятка, from the number of its members) selected from among local parishioners. The scope and intensity of the priest’s and organ player’s activities, however, appears to prove that the local community’s help went well beyond the responsibilities stipulated by the decrees. For example, ministrations in distant churches demanded transportation assistance, whereas people offering their driver’s services outside the religious sphere could face drastic consequences, including being fired from their workplaces. Also, any church activities outside the scope of church services were illegal. According to my respondents, however, not only baptisms took place at the church during communist times, but also some form of underground religious instruction. Participation in practices deemed illegal by the authorities resulted in a certain identity fusion,10 or a strong, internal feeling of group membership that has also become a significant element of one’s individual identity. According to some theories, such a situation often may be the product of traumatic or unusual experiences shared by a small group of people. This phenomenon could be observed in some of our respondents’ narratives, where memories of e.g. a choir rehearsal in a dark cellar are more important than memories of one church service or another. Both the consequences of the priests’ activities as well as the faithful’s individual experiences have translated into an unwavering respect for the Catholic Church as an organisation as well as respect for the priests, which can still be observed in Murafa. Murafa’s Catholics, even in conflicting situations, preserve their respect for their priest, and I have never met with direct criticism of the Church on the part of those who identify as Roman Catholics. In Biały Bór, the priests’ organisational prestige is not currently as high as it is in Murafa. One of my interlocutors, closely associated with the parish council for many years, clearly distinguished between “true priests” who served because of their vocation and therefore were resistant to the hardships of the war and the Polish People’s Republic era, and Biały Bór’s contemporary priests. In Biały Bór, the priest who played a key role for the Greek Catholic community’s rebirth after the forced resettlement was Father Stefan Dziubina, referred to as the “first one” not only in a chronological sense, but also in terms of his authority. He was born in 1913 in Gładyszów near Gorlice, in what was then Galicia. He graduated from seminary in Przemyśl and started his service in 1938, just before the Second World War’s outbreak. Until 1947, he stayed in the Lemko Land. During his work there, due to his convictions regarding Lemkos’ Ukrainianness, he was engaged in raising their national awareness. As he wrote about himself: “I remembered the experience of Father Ardan, who could not do without the word “Ukrainian” and

10 Cf. William B., Jr Swann, J. Jetten, Á. Gómez, H. Whitehouse, & B. Bastian, “When Group Membership Gets Personal:  A Theory of Identity Fusion,” Psychological Review, Vol. 119, No.3, (2012), pp. 441–56: 02 Jan. 2017, https://www.icea.ox.ac.uk/ fileadmin/ICEA/ICEA_publication_pdfs/HW_Swann_2012_fusionPR.pdf

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could not win the favour of Zdynia’s biased population. I decided to work more cautiously instead and speak of “our”, “ours”, yet do the Ukrainian work.”11 Father Dziubyna managed to avoid forced resettlement to the USSR and later the Operation Vistula’s deportations. He was arrested in Gorlice, however, and was sent to Jaworzno’s Central Labour Camp in, where the People’s Republic of Poland’s authorities interned at least 3761 Ukrainians and Lemkos, including 22 Greek Catholic priests accused of cooperating with the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).12 After his release from the camp, Father Dziubina managed to reach Warsaw, where he was granted the right to conduct religious services in both Catholic rites. Quickly enough, probably due to the Security Service’s interest in him, he was forced to leave the capital, which in fact facilitated his previous plans. Already then, he was planning to work with Ukrainians in north-western Poland. Father Dziubina went to Słupsk in 1953, from where he visited Roman Catholic parishes with considerable populations resettled as part of the Operation Vistula. During that period there was no Greek Catholic parish in the so-called Recovered Territories. Priests administered guest services at Roman Catholic churches in the Eastern rite, which despite Cardinal Wyszyński’s support, was a source of conflict between Latin parish priests and Uniate priests. During this time, Father Dziubina visited many places populated by Ukrainians, including Biały Bór. In 1957 he received official permission to administer Eastern rite services in Biały Bór, where Greek Catholics initially shared a small Archangel Michael’s church with Roman Catholics. The church was a filial church of Brzeź’s parish. In the same year, after a bitter conflict with the Brzeź parish priest, Biały Bór Catholics received, with the help of the general vicar, the permission to consecrate the cemetery chapel, previously used by Biały Bór’s German Evangelists. M.S.: So Greek Catholics were going to a Roman Catholic church, right? Interviewee: To a Roman one, yes. And later, in ‘58, no, in ‘57, this Father Dziubina came and we had one Mass in that church and the parish priest agreed to that, but later he said: “what a stupid thing I have done! So many people came to his service and if he has his own church; all will leave me!” And he was a Kaszub, a German, that priest13,

11 Stefan Dziubina, I stverdy diło ruk nashukh. Spohady, Warszawa 1995, quoted after: Igor Hałagida, Działania aparatu bezpieczeństwa PRL wobec greckokatolickiego kapłana ks. Mitrata Stefana Dziubiny, in: Aparat bezpieczeństwa polski ludowej wobec mniejszości narodowych i etnicznych oraz cudzoziemców. Studia nad zagadnieniem (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009). 12 Kazimierz Miroszewski, Centralny Obóz Pracy Jaworzno. Podobóz ukraiński (1947– 1949) (Katowice: Wydawnicto Naukowe, 2001), p. 68. 13 The interlocutor has slightly misquoted the name and facts. In fact it was Wilhelm Luengen, born in Germany (Düsseldorfie) and not Pomerania. Cf. Diecezja Koszalińsko-Kołobrzeska: 04 Nov, 2016, http://www.koszalin.opoka.org.pl/new/a. php?m=4&p=k_zmarli

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and did not say ‘kapłan’ (priest), but ‘kaban’ (boar). And he started his sermon and said: “We, boars”, and we burst out laughing, in the church! And he gave us a look and after the sermon; ‘E!’; he always called me ‘master’, because I was an electrician, ‘master, come here. Sit down. Why were you laughing?’ And I said, because one does not say ‘kaban’ (boar), but ‘kapłan’ (priest)’. ‘And what is a kaban’?’ And I said in Russian it means ‘pig’. ‘Uuu, that’s why you were laughing!’ U. K.: - And where was this priest from? Interviewee: - He was from Bytów. He was a German. He spoke broken Polish. (…) But he collaborated with the Security Service and that’s why they kept him. Because he was an informer. He was an informer to the Security Service. They kept him for a long time. And finally he died and then others came. And we had our first service in ‘57, a Ukrainian [service] at a Polish church. And in the beginning he [said]: ‘So there are many Greek faithful? Greek, Greek?’ I said: G r e e k – C a t h o l i c s. ‘Well, Catholics are not important to me. Greeks, you are Greeks!’ That was such nonsense. And later at the cemetery there was a chapel, and that was where we had our church, in that chapel. And Father Dziubyna was there in Biały Bór for 17, no, for 22 years; he commuted from Słupsk. Father Madzelan came after him, and after him Father Ulicki; now he is in Gdańsk, this Ulicki. And later came Father Baran, with another one, Drozd. Drozd was a parish priest, and Baran was his assistant. But he got sick and the bishop took him to Wrocław, and Baran stayed here… The parish priest.14

14 An eighty-year-old Greek Catholic, Biały Bór. The original quotation goes as follows: M.S.: - I grekokatolicy też chodzili do kościoła katolickiego, rzymskiego? M: Do rzymskiego, tak. No i później, w 58, nie – w 57 roku przyjechał ten ksiądz Dziubina i myśmy zrobili jedną mszę w tym kościółku, to ten proboszcz się zgodził, ale potem mówił: ‘co ja za głupotę zrobiłem?! Tyle ludzi przyszło na jego msze, a jak on zrobi swoją cerkiew, to wszystko ode mnie odpadnie!’ A on to był takim Kaszubem, Niemcem był ten ksiądz, on to nie powiedział ‘kapłan’ tylko ‘kaban.’ On jak wyszedł na kazanie i: ‘My, kabani,’ a my w śmiech w cerkwi, kościele! A on tak patrzy, patrzy, wyszedł po kazaniu: ‘E!’ – on zawsze mnie nazywał majster, bo ja był elektrykiem – ‘majster, chodź no tutaj. Siadaj tu. A czemu to się śmiać?’ Ja mówię, proszę księdza, nie mówi się ‘kaban’ tylko ‘kapłan.’ ‘A co to jest kaban?’ Ja mówię, po rusku ‘świnia.’ ‘Uuu, to wy tak się śmiali dlatego!’ U. K.: - To skąd był ten ksiądz? M: - On, z Bytowa. On był Niemcem. On po polsku trochę umiał, to kaleczył. (…) Ale z nim tak było, że on współpracował z UB i dlatego go tu trzymali. Bo on wszystko donosił. Wszystko donosił na UB. To trzymali go tu dłuższy czas. No a później zmarł, to już przyszli inni. I my właśnie w 57 zrobiliśmy pierwszą mszę właśnie w tym, ukraińską w polskim kościółku. A on na początku: ‘To tyle wiernych jest greki? Greke, greke?’ Ja mówię: g r e k o k a t o l i c y. ‘A katolicy, to mnie nie ważne. Greki, wy greki!’ To takie bzdury byli. A potem to tam na cmentarzu to taka kapliczka była i tam żeśmy zrobili tę cerkiew, w

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Unfortunately, the account of the Brzeź parish priest’s snitching is not simply a narrative reflection of mutual hostility between the two priests at the beginning of the Biały Bór Greek Catholic community’s existence. It can be at least partially confirmed by church and state documentation collected by the National Memory Institute. Father Luengen made many complaints to church and state authorities about Father Dziubina’s activities. The latter, however, had by that time already accumulated considerable support among the Ukrainian community, which was, at the same time, strongly motivated to create decent conditions for practicing their culture and confession. And he was regularly dressed; he only had his collar. And he asked where I was from, and this and that. And I recognised him by his accent, that he was probably Ukrainian; that’s how you could recognize somebody! So I said “from Przemyśl.” And he said:  “Uuu! I  studied in Przemyśl! So I  know more or less what that’s about… So maybe we should open a church here in Biały Bór? Maybe that, maybe we could have services here…” And I said I could not decide on my own. I called my friend, because there were more of them, three brothers; and I  am a single child, and we started talking. But he said to pull the curtains on the windows, because that was not fully legal back then; everything was wiretapped. And we had to establish the Ukrainian Social and Cultural Association (USKT), because it did not exist yet then; the Ukrainian Social-Cultural Union or something like that. So I started canvassing, gathering members; I gathered 60 volunteers here. So we had the people. We had the USKT and started collecting signatures and then we sent everything to the office in Koszalin.15

kapliczce tej. No i tam był 17, nie, 22 lata, był ksiądz Dziubina tam w Białym Borze, dojeżdżał ze Słupska. Później po nim przyszedł ksiądz Madzelan, po nim ksiądz Ulicki, on teraz jest w Gdańsku ten Ulicki. No a później przyszedł ten Baran, jeszcze z takim jednym, Drozdem. To ten Drozd był proboszczem, a Baran był pomocnikiem jego. Ale on zaczął chorować i zabrał go biskup tam do Wrocławia i Baran został tu tym… Proboszczem. 15 An eighty-year-old Greek Catholic, Biały Bór. The original quotation goes as follows: “A on normalnie był ubrany, tylko koloratkę tak pod twarz sytuuje się. I się pyta tam skąd wy jesteście, a to, tamto. A ja tak po akcencie poznałem, że to chyba Ukrainiec jest, no bo tak się poznawało! No to mówię, z pod Przemyśla. A on: ‘Uuu! W Przemyślu ja studiowałem! Ja tak mniej więcej wiem o co chodzi… A to może byśmy tak tu w Białym Borze otworzyli cerkiew? Może tego, może byśmy tu odprawili…’ Ja mówię, że sam to nie będę tutaj decydować. Dzwonię do kolegi, bo ich było więcej, trzech braci, ja sam tylko, no i zaczęli my tam rozmawiać. Ale wtedy okna kazał zasłonić, żeby nikt nie podsłuchiwał, bo wtedy to nie było tak, że można było tak legalnie, wszystko było na podsłuchu. No to trzeba było założyć, jeszcze USKT, bo wtedy jeszcze to było, trzeba było założyć organizację USKT, Ukraiński Związek Społeczno-Kulturalny, czy coś takiego. No to zacząłem chodzić, zbierać członków, nazbierałem tu 60 osób chętnych. No to mieliśmy już to USKT i zaczęliśmy zbierać podpisy, tośmy wszystko wysłali do urzędu do Koszalina.”

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This account, as well as other accounts referring to the political “thaw” period, demonstrates the grass-root mobilisation of the resettled Ukrainians aimed at religious and cultural rebirth. The priest’s appearance (in another part of the same account, by teachers) was an undoubtedly important catalyser for the local community’s activities; this, however, would not have been successful without the grass-root movement’s determination. This equally refers to the rebirth of Ukrainian institutions during the thaw period in 1956, as well as to later initiatives, including the construction of a new church, opening of a Ukrainian lyceum and later that of a gymnasium (middle school). Priests in these accounts are again mentioned as spiritual patrons and initiators of activities; the respondents, however, also emphasise their own contribution: collecting money from their neighbours, diaspora and various organisations, as well as their own labour contributions. The cooperation was promoted by the priests’ attachment to Ukrainianness. Father Dziubina administered his sermons in Ukrainian, and introduced as many references to the resettled Ukrainians in his sermons as was possible during the Polish People’s Republic period. His followers in Biały Bór continued his work, and the church has permanently become an organised form of Ukrainian life in Pomerania. Apart from Father Dziubina, a priest that deserves the “true priest” title, in my interlocutor’s opinion, is Father Jarosław Madzelan, who served in Biały Bór from 1977 to 1990; after finishing his service, he permanently moved to Lviv. Both parish priests shared very close and friendly relations with their parishioners. The best testimony to that could be the fact that one of my respondents stayed at Father Madzelan’s during his visit to Lviv. As was the case in Murafa, the parishioners were considerably impressed by the amount of work invested by Greek Catholic priests into serving the Ukrainian populations scattered around Poland. Similarly to Murafa, relations between the parishioners and priests were strengthened by the trust built upon their traumatic experiences. Both Father Dziubina and his closest collaborators in Biały Bór, deacon Stefan Łajkosz, went through the Jaworzno camp. What is more, all Ukrainians, albeit to different degrees, experienced pressure from the Polish People’s Republic’s authorities and the Security Service. Greek Catholic priests often were under the local security service’s supervision; but despite that, they consistently represented the Ukrainian minority’s interests both vis-à-vis the state authorities and the Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchy.

Murafa: Community in Faith – Attitudes towards Other Denominations and Religions Malcolm Ruel, in his reflexive account of the meaning of “to believe” and “faith” notes that the meaning of these concepts has changed within the Christian tradition. According to Ruel,16 faith as an internal conviction deriving from a personal 16 Cf. Malcolm Ruel, “Christians as Believers,” in: A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. Michael Lambek (London: Blackwell Publishing 2002), pp. 102–107.

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relation with God is a concept introduced only during Martin Luther’s Reformation. Earlier, the dominant understanding of faith was the unequivocal recognition of the historical truth of a certain fact, that is, of Christ’s suffering and his Resurrection, as well as belonging to a certain community. The author quotes the Bible, which speaks of “believers” and “non-believers”, whereas the term “Christians” is mentioned three times as a term used by people to refer to those outside the believers’ community. And when the times of freedom came, I  see:  he is at the Roman Catholic church, at the front, puts his hands like that, and that’s all. Later he runs away from the church. There was this Rukh [a political movement].17 “What; are you there?” And he said: “yes, the truth is here, here is the truth!” Then the Jehovah’s Witnesses came, and he was already with the Jehovah’s Witnesses! This is this sort of person, he is spinning like a helicopter; that’s the way he is! (…) And there [in the Bible – M. S.] it was said that just before the end of the world there will be many pretending to be prophets and they will say: “here is Jesus, here is Jesus, here is our Lord, here is our Lord.” That’s it. And eventually it was said: “Be strong in your faith!” And I give it to him; look, there it is at the end: “Be strong in your faith!” I agree with you; if your mother gave birth to you among the Jehovah’s Witnesses and gave you this faith, then I agree with you. But if you found your faith in your own years, then I don’t agree with you! Because this is like… One goes from one faith to another, looking for where it is warmer.18

The quoted account demonstrates that, for the speaker, faith is not a matter of choice or internal conviction (“if you found your faith in your own years, then I  don’t agree with you”), but rather an identity that cannot be rationalised this way (“if your mother gave birth to you among the Jehovah’s Witnesses and gave you this faith, then I agree with you”). The faith inscribed into one does not allow for any conversion to be an element of religious experience, but it is rather an expression of belonging, inherited within a family from generation to generation. Being born into this world in a given denomination or religion translates into participating in a given community. The situation where the confessional boundary overlaps with a political community’s boundary is called by José Casanova19 a “community cult.” It is worth looking at another element characteristic of the community cult, which is the interlacing of religious identity with explicite political movements. The speaker presents being associated with one party, the Rukh, as a sort of conversion. This interpretation does not have to follow the interlocutor’s political views. The Movement, in this case the People’s Movement of Ukraine, was a moderately

17 People’s Movement of Ukraine (Ukr.:  Народний Рух України, Narodnyi Rukh Ukrayiny), a Ukrainian centre-right political party established in 1990. 18 A fifty-year-old Catholic male, Klekotyna. 19 Cf. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2011), pp. 44–45.

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Photo 4: A plaque in the centre of Murafa: “Murafa’s quarry,” 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

nationalist political party which had its apogee in the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. The party emphasised the issue of religion and established the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalic Church as a national church in Ukraine; the Rukh’s members actively supported the repossession of church buildings by the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalic Church or Greek Catholic Church that was being reactivated at the time. In the Rukh milieu, ideas even appeared about reserving the privilege to use sacral objects only by priests from these two churches.20 At the same time, the association between political associations and national community is not, 20 Cf. Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, Ukraina. Polityka i Mistyka (Kraków: Nomos 1998), pp. 147–149.

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Photo 5: A plaque in the centre of Murafa: “Murafa’s quarry,” 2017. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

in my opinion, that significant for Murafa’s population. Many of my interlocutors’ identities are based first and foremost on the denominational community criterion, where the terms Polak (Pole, Ukr. поляк) and Ruski (Rus or Rusian, Ukr. р уський)21 are used to refer to Catholics and the Orthodox respectively. Whereas, 21 Pol:. Ruski, Rus or Rusian (Ukr.: Руський) refers here the Eastern Rite (in Murafa’s case to the Orthodox confession, but in other contexts – also to Greek Catholic confession), and not to the ethnicity, or contemporary Russia or former Soviet Union. (In other contexts “Rusian” (Pol. ruski, Ukr. руський) and “Russian” (Pol. rosyjski, Ukr. російський, росіянин) may be used interchangeably by interlocutor. In particular, in Polish ruski is often applied as a pejorative terms to refer to “Russians” or collectively to Russian-speaking inhabitants of post-Soviet states.)

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“Ukrainianness” refers predominately to the Ukrainian state. Both Orthodox and Catholic residents of Murafa and Klekotyna, when asked about their nationality, usually answered that they are Ukrainian; yet the division into the two groups according to religious criterion has simultaneously been recognised and sustained. The “Catholic” identity is perceived as “Polish” and is related to the PolishCatholic stereotype (and sometimes that of a “master”). This stereotype is most vividly expressed in the language my interlocutors use, claiming that “the services are now administered in the Orthodox [language],”22 (meaning Ukrainian), or that “they used to speak Catholic” (that is Polish). Only a trick question as to whether all Poles are Catholic breaks this picture of cultural-religious unity and brings up the differentiation between “true Poles” (that is, people living in Poland) and Poles from Ukraine (that is Ukrainian Catholics). Interviewee: - When I was young, like you are now, we used to pray in church in Catholic; the service was in Polish. And now they are administered in Ukrainian, so that young people can understand everything well, all sermons, all catechesis. M. S.: - Do you believe that Polish is a Catholic language? I.: - Yes, yes! M. S.: - And here in Murafa it is still considered that a Pole is a Catholic? I.: - Yes, yes; we Catholics are Poles from generation to generation. M. S.: - Can one be a Pole and not a Catholic? I.: - Is a Pole a Catholic? M. S.: - Can a Pole not be a Catholic and still remain a Pole? I.: - But a Catholic and a Pole is all the same! They pray the same way; Catholics do not pray any differently; they pray the same way, Catholics and Poles! In Ukrainian they pray: “Отче наш, що є на небесах! Нехай святиться Ім’я Твоє. Хай прийде Царство Твоє, нехай буде воля Твоя як на небі, так і на землі. Хліб наш насущний дай нам сьогодні.” This is Ukrainian. And in Polish: “Ojcze nasz, któryś jest w niebie, święć się…” That is the way you also pray! Right? The same way! M. Sok.: - And can Poles be atheists? M.: - Poles and atheists? In Poland this is also present! Now I don’t know, but earlier… Earlier there were atheists in Poland. Well, didn’t there use to be Communist authorities in Poland? There were! Now I don’t know, but there used to be.23

2 2 The original quotation goes as follows: “teper w kostiele prawitsa prawosłwnuju” 23 A seventy-year-old Catholic male. M.  S.  – Marcin Skupiński, M.  Sok.  – Maria Sokołowska. The original quotation goes as follows: M: - Kiedy ja był młody, taki jak wy, to się modliło w świątyni po katolicku, po… no po polskiemu prawili. Po ukraińsku nie prawili Ofiary Świętej! A teraz odprawiają po ukraińsku, żeby dobrze młodzież zrozumiała wszystkie prawiła, wszystkie katechezacje. M. S.: - Uważacie, że polski to język katolicki? I.: - Tak, tak! M. S.: - I tutaj w Murafie mówi się dalej, że Polak to katolik?

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The division into “true Poles” and “Poles-Catholics” has also been mentioned by my respondents in another context worth mentioning here, namely, when they struggle with the external stereotype of the “Polish master”, popular among the Orthodox population, which is often referred to despite the local population’s predominant peasant origins. In response to the insinuations regarding ties with the “Polish masters,” Murafa’s Catholics reply that a long time ago Murafa was settled by “real Polish masters,” but contemporary residents have nothing to do with them. They are Ukrainians or Ukrainian Poles, and they speak of themselves as: “we are all Ukrainians” and refer to the information given in their old Soviet passports or the fact that they live in Ukraine. At the same time, the same people have no problem with presenting themselves as true-born Poles, when applying for Pole’s Cards. The comparison of these examples with the analysis of inter-confessional relations demonstrates that the organisational and institutional boundaries between the confessions are more important for Murafa’s and Klekotyna’s populations than national identities. My interlocutors’ attitude towards the Jehovah’s Witnesses living in the village or Protestant communities active in the region can be defined as lack of trust, if not hostility. According to some of my interlocutors, the intention to hurt Christians is a defining feature of new religious movements. “And the evil spirit works in order to divert religious people from their faith. That is the reason there are so many religious orders,24 to confuse and divert people! [from the true religion’s path – MS].”25 This negative presentation of Jehovah’s Witnesses and proselytising Protestant groups impacts the way people who decided to convert function in the group.

I.: - Da, da. Katoliki to, to, my jesteśmy Polacy s pokolenia. M. S.: - A można być Polakiem i nie być katolikiem? I.: - Czy Polak będzie katolikiem? M. S.: - Czy Polak może nie być katolikiem i być Polakiem nadal? I.: - A katolik i Polak to wszystko jedno! Modli się także samo, także samo modli się, katolik nie po drugomu, a także samo modlutsia jak katoliki tak i Polacy modlutsia! Po ukraińsku modlutsia: „Otcze nasz szo jestes na nebesach nechaj swiatisia imja Twoja, nechaj prijdie carstwo Twoje, nechaj budie wolja twoja jak na nebe tak i na zemli. Chlib nasz nasnusznyj daj nam siehodni”. Ce po ukraiński, a po polski: „Ojcze nasz, któryś jest w niebie, święć się…” Tak żesz wy modlicies’! Tak? Także samo! M. Sok.: - A czy są Polacy, którzy są ateistami? I.: - Polacy ateiści? W Polsce toże jest takie! Teraz ja nie wiem no później… Nie później a ransze. Ransze byli ateiści w Polsce, byli. Coż, ne było kumunistycznej wlady w Polsce? Była! Teraz ja nie wiem, a tedy była. 2 4 Here: in the sense of confessions. 25 The original quotation goes as follows: “I tak, jak wam powiedzieć, nieczysty duch pracuje, żeby ludzi wiernych odrzucić od wiary. Dlatego teraz jest dużo wszystkich zakonów religijnych: żeby zbić ludzi! [z właściwej wiary – MS].” A Catholic seventyyear-old male, Murafa.

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During our research in Murafa, we managed to interview the only Jehovah’s Witness in the village, who openly spoke of his conflict with the Roman Catholic Church and about slanderous rumours circulating about him in the village. Similarly, one of the few of my interlocutors who identified as atheist also spoke about his relationship with the Church in terms of conflict. In the case of Orthodox and Catholic populations, despite certain clear boundaries between the confessions, we can speak of a certain “imagined orthodoxy”26 which allowed their mutual functioning in the same community. Protestants and Jehovah’s Witnesses are located outside these boundaries; what is more, their intensive proselytising is considered a threat to the “Christian” community. Confession, according to Murafa’s population, does not belong to the sphere of worldviews, which can be chosen or changed depending on what we believe is “true”. Religion is understood by my interlocutors in terms of identity and group belonging. It is something a person is born and raised with, and similarly to family, one should not turn their back on it. Change of religion is not a rational choice, in the eyes of my interlocutors; rather, it is a manifestation of internal inconsistency and arouses distrust.

Biały Bór: Community in Nation – Religion and Nationalism My observations from Biały Bór considerably reinforce the stereotypical picture of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as strongly entangled with Ukrainian national identity. This tie was widely recognised by political forces in the 20th century and was the reason many decisions were taken at the crossroads of religion (e.g. the establishment of the Lemko Land Apostle Administration within the Catholic Church or the neo-Uniate action in the 1920s and 1930s) and politics (de-legalisation of the Greek Catholic Church in the Soviet Union and during the Stalinist era in the Eastern Bloc). I do not think it is an accident that the majority of the local parish’s most active members are also people strongly engaged in efforts aimed at sustaining Ukrainian identity. The majority of my respondents viewed an act of conversion first of all as a rejection of Ukrainianness. In contrast to Murafa, in Biały Bór’s case, Ukrainians’ Eastern rite Catholicism is almost an exemplary case of community cult. Although Greek Catholicism is not a state cult, the boundaries of the Eastern rite Catholics’ religious community correspond to the Ukrainian national community’s socio-political boundaries. As one of my interlocutors put it:

26 Cf. Vlad Naumescu, “Religious Pluralism.” and the Imagined Orthodoxy of Western Ukraine in Chris Hann and the Religion and Civil Society group.” The Postsocialist Religious Question: Faith and Power in Central Asia and East-Central Europe, ed. Chris Hann (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006), pp. 241–268.

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Photo 6: A procession around the church in Biały Bór on the patron’s fiest of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 2015. The icon of the Mother of Exiles is in the foreground and Jerzy Nowosielski’s icon (a fresco) at the church’s front is seen in the background. Photo by Urszula Rukat. We function in this certain triangle, you see? The Church, the Organisation [The Union of Ukrainians in Poland - MS], the School. These are the three institutional forms of our life here and the same people are in the Church, at school and in our organisation. And this cannot be divided, although some try that; even the priests try something like that, but that’s the way our lives look like.27

Being baptised at the Greek Catholic Church and attending its services is tantamount to an act of self-identification with the Ukrainian national community. Of course, this phenomenon is limited to the Ukrainian diaspora in western Poland’s territory and does not refer to the independent Ukrainian state or to numerous new Ukrainian migrants who have settled in Poland in the past several years or who have been coming to Poland as seasonal workers. The confessional situation 27 “My tu funkcjonujemy w takim trójkącie, nie?:  Cerkiew, Organizacja [Związek Ukraińców w Polsce - MS], Szkoła. To są trzy instytucjonalne formy naszego życia tutaj i te same osoby są w Cerkwi, te same osoby są w szkole, te same osoby są w organizacji. I nie da się tego rozdzielić, chociaż niektórzy próbują, nawet księża coś tam tego, ale to tak wygląda życie.”

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in Ukraine is considerably less unambiguous and has been well analysed by Vlad Naumescu,28 although Casanova, who saw the reflection of the American denominational model in Ukraine, was not too far from the truth either. In Ukraine, there are at least three churches competing for the status of state or national ones (the Greek Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church of Kyiv’s Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church). The situation is complicated by the fact that all the above mentioned churches have a smaller number of followers than the Orthodox Church of Moscow’s Patriarchate, which due to historical and political reasons, is excluded from the Ukrainian national project. In practice, Ukraine’s population navigates rather easily between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in their different variations (this does not refer to Protestant churches). And what is most important, one’s confession does not presuppose one’s national identity, although decisions about joining one denomination or another may have political underpinnings. The case of my acquaintance could serve as an example here: he justified his attendance of a Roman Catholic church by the fact that the priests used the Ukrainian language and due to his own “pro-Western” orientation. In practice, however, neither he nor another acquaintance raised in the Orthodox tradition had any doubts about their own Ukrainianness or their peers’ Ukrainianness. While Ukrainians who were relocated to Biały Bór originally came from different places, these were mainly located in Galicia, which implied a predominance of Greek Catholicism and relatively high level of national awareness among the population. After the forced resettlement, they found themselves surrounded by a Polish minority and without special contact with their compatriots from the Soviet Union (at least during the first decade following the resettlement). In these circumstances, the identity based upon the combination of Ukrainianness and Greek Catholicism was reinforced. According to this, a Roman Catholic is always a Pole, and an Orthodox believer a “Russian”; thus, both are certainly not Ukrainian. Taking into account to what extent the majority of Ukrainians identify themselves with one of the Orthodox Churches, it is interesting to see to what extent Orthodoxy is located beyond the scope of the imaginarium of Ukrainians living in Biały Bór. When I  asked about the nearby Orthodox churches, I  learned that it is Russians or Belarusians who attend them. Noteworthy is also the objection towards any attempt to purify the Greek Catholic liturgy from Latin influences. Such activities were perceived as “Russification” of their church. As a representative of the Ukrainian intelligentsia’s younger generation put it: Our older generation, in its turn, is afraid they will Russify us here. Because Orthodoxy is associated with Russia. It is difficult to explain to a Polish Greek Catholic, to a Ukrainian, that there are different types of Orthodox churches; the Kyiv one, the Moscow one… For them… Just consider how the priest during liturgy does not read “and all you”, but says “Christians”; he should be saying “and all you Orthodox

28 Vlad Naumescu, “Religious pluralism.”

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Christians”. He should say that because this formulation is in the liturgy book. A couple of times they tried to do that here in Biały Bór. Uuuu! Immediately there were visits to the priest. And in Bielica the local population turned it into a knife-edge situation: ‘if the priest will read it like that, we will lock the church and will not let the priest in. Because it is our church and not the priest’s.29

Although from a theological point of view the phrase “to all Orthodox Christians” may be acceptable in all Christian churches (because every church believes itself to be orthodox in the sense that it worships God correctly), the association of the word “Orthodox” with a concrete organisation evokes reluctance and even hostility. As we can see, parishioners in this particular case believe themselves to be more competent than priests. The Ukrainians’ political orientation had the last word in this dispute; the Church organisation had to compromise. In my research, when I asked Greek Catholics about issues related to confession, our discussions often enough went down the Ukrainianness route. M. S.: What are the places of pilgrimage here? I know that there is a church fair in Biały Bór, attended by many people; where do people from Biały Bór go? I.: Biały Bór is the pilgrimage site for this region of Poland. And where do people from Biały Bór go? Well, where they need to go. We go to our forefathers’ land every year. To the Bieszczady Mountains, to Lubaczów Land. In Lubaczów Land there is a congress in mid-August. Former residents meet there. And regarding pilgrimage sites, we have the Jarosław sanctuary with its Blessed Mary “Doors of Mercy” icon. And other places include Przemyśl, Mount Yavir, Mount Zyavlennya. So usually if somebody travels in that region in the summer, they try to participate there.30

29 “Z kolei nasi, to starsze pokolenie, boją się, że oni nas tutaj znowu zrusyfikują. Bo prawosławie to zaraz się kojarzy: Rosja. Trudno wytłumaczyć takiemu polskiemu grekokatolikowi, Ukraińcowi, że przecież są różne prawosławia, jest kijowski, taki, taki, moskiewski też… Ale dla nich to… Proszę zwrócić uwagę, że nie czyta ksiądz w trakcie liturgii, jak niesie dary, nie czyta ‘i wsich was’, mówi, ‘chrestyjan,’ a powinien ‘i wsich was prawosławnych chrestyjan’. Powinien powiedzieć, bo to słowo w książeczce do nabożeństwa jest. Parę razy próbowano to zrobić tu w Białym Borze. Uuuu! Zaraz były pielgrzymki do księdza. A w Bielicy to społeczność miejscowa postawiła sprawę na ostrzu noża: ‘jak ksiądz to będzie czytał, to my zamkniemy cerkiew i ksiądz nie wejdzie do cerkwi. Bo to nasza cerkiew, a nie księdza’ ”. A thirtyfour-year-old male, Biały Bór. 30 A sixty-year-old Greek Catholic male, Biały Bór. The original quotation goes as follows: M.S.: - A jakie są tu miejsca pielgrzymkowe? Bo wiem, że w Białym Borze jest odpust, na który dużo ludzi przyjeżdża, a dokąd jeżdżą z Białego Boru? I.: - Biały Bór jest miejscem pielgrzymkowym dla tego rejonu Polski. A gdzie ludzie jeżdżą z Białego Boru? No tam, gdzie kto ma potrzebę. No my to co roku pielgrzymujemy na ziemie ojców. W Bieszczady, na lubaczowszczyznę.

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The question I  asked this interlocutor brought about strong associations with Ukrainian identity. Pilgrimage is first and foremost a visit to the “forefathers’ land”, or to currently non-existent Beskid and Roztocze villages, formerly located in south-eastern Poland, where my respondents’ parents and grandparents came from. Visits to the preserved Greek Catholic sanctuaries happen when the opportunity arises, but are not a goal in themselves. Rather they are one of the steps in a homeland visit programme, not more important than visits to a native village or participation in a congress of resettled people from a given region. As follows from my interlocutors, and even from the Security Service acts on Ukrainians in Poland,31 a similar picture can be drawn in relation to the annual Biały Bór’s parish fair. The central role here is played by the “Our Lady of Exile”32 icon; yet, despite asking directly about its significance, I was not able to establish the reasons for its exceptionality in terms of religious experience. Many interlocutors, however, emphasised that the icon “has been with the community from the beginning” and “is our symbol”. One of my interlocutors, an elderly Ukrainian, despite his doubting the icon’s authenticity and value, put it aptly: “What is miraculous about it is that Ukrainianness has been preserved here probably thanks to it; people did not assimilate”. The truth is that the icon cult, promoted from the beginning of the Greek Catholic parish’s existence in Biały Bór, has played an important role in integrating Ukrainians from central Pomerania and even from entire Poland. The annual parish fairs organised to celebrate the Virgin Mary’s Birth have been particularly significant. Their central point is usually a procession with the icon. As early as 1958, the Biały Bór church fair gathered at least several hundred Ukrainians from Pomerania; according to the Security Service, there might have been even one thousand of them.33 With time, as a result of emigration as well as a greater consolidation of the Ukrainian community in Poland, the fair gathered together Ukrainians from all over Poland and even from abroad. In comparison with the Ukrainian Social and Cultural Society (UTSK), whose structures were strongly infiltrated by the Polish People’s Republic’s security services and whose activities were under the state’s control, the Church’s activities were considerably

Na lubaczowszczyźnie zawsze w połowie sierpnia jest taki zjazd. Tam się spotykają dawni mieszkańcy. A z miejsc pielgrzymkowych to Jarosław, tam jest sanktuarium z ikoną Matki Boskiej „myłosernych dweri”. No a inne miejsca to też Przemyśl, góra Jawir, góra Zjawlenija. Tak że zwykle jak ktoś latem jedzie w te regiony, to stara się tam uczestniczyć. A Greek Catholic sixty-year-old male, Biały Bór. 31 Igor Hałagida, “Działania aparatu bezpieczeństwa PRL wobec greckokatolickiego kapłana ks. Mitrata Stefana Dziubiny,” in: Aparat bezpieczeństwa polski ludowej wobec mniejszości narodowych i etnicznych oraz cudzoziemców. Studia nad zagadnieniem (Warszawa Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009). 32 “Мати Скитальців” in Ukrainian. 33 Igor Hałagida, “Działania aparatu bezpieczeństwa,” pp. 213–214.

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more autonomous, due to the difficulties that security service officials faced when trying to directly infiltrate the Greek Catholic priests’ milieu. The above quotation appears to best reflect the interrelatedness of religion and national identity among Biały Bór’s Ukrainian population. One can see the link often made by Biały Bór Ukrainians between loyalty to one’s confession and preserving one’s national identity. The same interlocutor during our earlier interview disputed the icon’s authenticity, with his scepticism being rather typical among a considerable share of my Biały Bór interlocutors. His crowning argument was that “they” (the greedy clergy) would never leave something as valuable on public display. I was also greatly surprised when one of my interviewees, a declared Ukrainian and Greek Catholic closely connected with the Church not only proved to be a person that would read the Fakty i Mity,34 but also made some very critical comments about commercialisation and greediness within the Church, which, according to him, is increasingly true also of the Greek Catholic Church. With an ironic smile, he commented on the degeneration of priesthood in Biały Bór. My other interlocutors associated with the Ukrainian intelligentsia are strongly involved in church life, often belonging to the parish council; the majority of them helped build the new church. When asked about religious issues, however, they often emphasised attachment to Ukrainian tradition and Ukrainianness, whereas the dogmatic issues were of considerably smaller concern to them. They also rely on the media’s authority related to the Catholic Church to a much lesser degree than Murafa’s Catholics do. Biały Bór’s Ukrainians are considerably more critical of church organisations than Murafa’s inhabitants, and they openly speak about what they do not like about the Church and about concrete priests. Biały Bór Ukrainians considerably more often have negative attitudes towards conversion compared to their neighbours of Polish extraction. However, this attitude derives not from the strength of their beliefs, but rather from their patriotism. The majority of Biały Bór’s population shares the understanding of faith and belief derived by Ruel from Luther and the Reformation, as a matter of internal conviction and a personal relationship with God. They do not negate the sacral character of the public sphere and see in it a space for various religions. As one of my interviewees put it: “We are not attracted to that side, but we also do not try to attract them to our side. So everyone functions in their own distinct community.”35 In this case, the differences between Murafa and Biały Bór can be noticed at first glance, so to say, if we take into account that the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall is located very centrally in Biały Bór. Currently, they are the biggest confessional community after the Roman and Greek Catholics. Earlier Pentecostals were also active in the area; however, they did not create any integrated community

34 A Polish weekly which is anticlerical in its outlook. After a conflict between the journalists and the Editor-in-Chief, it has been published under the title Faktycznie. 35 A sixty-year-old Greek Catholic male, Biały Bór. The original quotation goes as follows: “Nas w tamtą stronę nie ciągnie, ale też nie ciągniemy w naszą stronę ich. Więc każdy funkcjonuje w obrębie swojej społeczności.”

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in the gmina. As part of my research, I  visited the Kingdom Hall and talked to Jehovah’s Witness representatives, who emphasised that although not everyone is open to their activities, they also do not face any problems, and everyday relations between people are friendly. The Witnesses could remember only one incident related to their work on Sundays, as they themselves claimed it was the “radicals” who had stirred up disagreements. This opinion is reflected, in fact, as the police in that case was indeed called by a couple known for their deep engagement with church life. When asked about the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Biały Bór’s Roman Catholic population voiced mainly practical problems related to conversion. I1: - There is a girl in the third form who is a Witness. When there is a Christmas Eve dinner in class, she does not come to school. Or when it is somebody’s birthday, she does not attend. It is not that we snub her or anything; she does not attend out of her own choice. I2: - Because her religion does not allow her! (…) I believe it is a problem for a family, when say two people are believers and the other two are Jehovah’s Witnesses.36

In contrast to the attitudes expressed by Murafa’s residents, the above quotation exemplified the attitude of Biały Bór’s population, who did not voice the opinion that new religious movements may be a threat for one’s own religion or the fulfilment of apocalyptic prophecies. Even the communities closely tied to the Catholic Church, e.g. such as the Catholic Youth Association, with whom we conducted a group interview, when talking about the Jehovah’s Witnesses in a negative way, did not refer to theological or metaphysical concerns, but rather to secularised discourse on sects. But I believe that in the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ case, the material context plays a big role. They are more greedy about money. First they help a given family, you know, introduce it to the community; then, that may have different end results.37

The material and not the spiritual aspect of the Witnesses’ activities is emphasised. They are accused by the interlocutor of entangling their worshippers into financial 36 I1: A fifteen-year-old Catholic female. I2: An eighteen-year-old Catholic female, Biały Bór. The original quotation goes as follows: F1: - U nas jest w klasach trzecich taka dziewczynka, która jest świadkiem. To jak jest jakaś wigilia klasowa, to ona nie przychodzi do szkoły. Albo jak urodziny ktoś ma, to też nie przychodzi. Nie żebyśmy ją odtrącali albo coś, ona sama tak nie chodzi… I2: - Bo jej religia nie pozwala! (…) Ale dla mnie to jest na przykład krzywda dla rodziny, jak dwie osoby są wierzące, a dwie świadkami Jehowy. 37 The original quotation goes as follows: “Ale myślę, że świadkowie Jehowy mają to do siebie, że jest tam duże podłoże materialne. Że oni są na pieniądze bardziej. Najpierw wiadomo, pomagają danej rodzinie, wciągają w to świadkowanie, ale potem wiadomo, różnie się to kończy.”

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dependency. This accusation is difficult to unequivocally defeat or confirm due to the closed character of the Jehovah’s Witnesses as an organisation as well as due to numerous prejudices against them. Among my interlocutors in Biały Bór, however, I have not met too many people who share this opinion, whereas Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves rebuke these accusations for obvious reasons. Although many of Biały Bór’s residents believe themselves to be deeply religious people and are strongly engaged in religious organisations’ activities, there are also many people who speak with distance and antipathy about this issue. When I  was wandering around a housing estate looking for one of my interlocutors’ house, I met two men, one elderly and the other middle-aged, to whom I tried to explain that I do research on religiosity. In response, I heard: The best religion is probably Buddhism. Because there is no God there, and they pray to their teacher of sorts”. And the older male replied: “And I am too old for such things (other religions – M.S.). I have been going to church all my life, so it’s a bit too late to change anything now.38

These quotations illustrate the distance they feel towards the professed religion. Conversion or abandonment of faith do not surprise anybody in Biały Bór. Unlike in Murafa, they are not perceived as internal inconsistencies, but rather as acts of simple choice dictated by one’s conscience. As a local Roman Catholic parish vicar notes: This appears to be a feature of our times, however bad that may sound: religion is less and less experienced as a social phenomenon, but rather as a personal affair. And I believe in this kind of work it is more about every single little man, and not about some anonymous crowd coming to a church’s open gates. This is about concrete people who discover something for themselves, sometimes with considerable problems in a young person’s case.39

The priest talks here about “our times,” referring directly to Biały Bór, even though he would find many examples to illustrate his claim. The case of inter-faith relations as well as the way the local population speaks about religion demonstrates that it indeed appears to be a personal matter for them. In their majority, they accept a secular model of society, in which issues related to religion and confession 38 I1: No najlepsza religia to chyba ten, no buddyzm jest. No bo tam w ogóle Boga nie ma i oni do tego swojego jakby nauczyciela się modlą”. I2: “A ja to jestem za stary, żeby się takimi rzeczami (innymi religiami – MS) zajmować, całe życie chodziłem do kościoła, to już nie ma co zmieniać” 39 “To jest chyba taka cecha, jakby to źle nie brzmiało, naszych czasów, że wiara jest dużo mniej przeżywana jako zjawisko społeczne, tylko bardziej osobowo. I chyba w tej pracy też bardziej chodzi o każdego takiego małego człowieczka, a nie o jakiś anonimowy tłum, przybywający do otwartych bram świątyni. Tylko konkretne osoby, które coś dla siebie odkrywają, czasem z niemałymi kłopotami, jak się trafi na młodego człowieka”

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are neither a topic for conversation at work, nor a basis for evaluating one’s behaviour. With all certainty, however, Ukrainians demonstrate a greater attachment to the Greek Catholic Church, and the issue of conversion is not a neutral one. Indeed, those who go to the Orthodox Church are clearly Ukrainian. There are people of Ukrainian extraction in the Catholic church, but they do not feel Ukrainian, do not identify themselves with the Ukrainian community. Of course they can sing or say something in Ukrainian. But they do not identify themselves with the Ukrainian community or with the Ukrainian milieu. On the contrary, when one tells them that they are Ukrainian, they reply: “Of course, not,” just to make sure they are as far as possible from what one says. Nobody can force anybody to anything; if one does not have the need to be oneself, then he is what he wants to be.40

Separation from the Church is thus equivalent, according to my interlocutor, with denial of Ukrainianness, similarly to how participation in the Greek Catholic church is linked to belonging to the Ukrainian national community. Such an interpretation by my interlocutors has clearly been influenced by their personal historical experiences. In practice, in the so called Recovered Territories, the majority of conversions constituted the transition from the Uniate Church to the Roman Catholic Church. Roman Catholics, predominantly Poles, were the statistical majority in most places the resettled populations were sent to. In this context, the changes of confession were related to assimilation within the Polish community. The Greek Catholic Church, in its turn, has been an important space for highlighting one’s distinctiveness. Thus, conversion has been criticised by my interviewees as an act of abandoning one’s Ukrainian roots, accepting denationalisation.

Summary In Murafa and Biały Bór, despite similar histories of repression against religious organisations, the relationships between group identity and religious organisations vary, due to differences in perceptions of faith and nation in the two contexts. In both cases, both lay believers and the church hierarchy’s members have experienced traumatic events, which have contributed to the consolidation of both communities around their respective religious organisations. In Murafa,

40 A sixty-year-old Greek Catholic male, Biały Bór. The original quotation is as follows: “Tak, tak. Ci co chodzą do cerkwi, to wiadomo jednoznacznie, że to są Ukraińcy. Są ludzie pochodzenia ukraińskiego w kościele, ale oni nie czują się Ukraińcami, nie identyfikują się ze społecznością ukraińską. Oczywiście oni po ukraińsku umieją tam zaśpiewać, powiedzieć. Ale oni nie identyfikują się ze społecznością ukraińską, nie identyfikują się ze środowiskiem ukraińskim. A wprost przeciwnie, jak ktoś im powie, że ty też jesteś Ukraińcem, to powiedzą: ‘Nie, ależ skąd’! Byle jak najdalej. Nikt nikogo do niczego nie zmusi, no to jak ktoś nie ma potrzeby być sobą, to jest tym, kim chce być.”

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the local community has developed in such a way that it has become an ecclesiastic, rather than a national community. This is related to the understanding of faith as belonging to a community, and religion  – as a public affair. Confession is the main criterion of identity to which my interlocutors refer and is open to negotiations to a much lesser extent than in the case of national or ethnic identity, which is much more fuzzy and context-dependent. Biały Bór’s Ukrainians also demonstrate a very strong attachment to their religious organisation, the Greek Catholic Church. They also do not consider their community’s member’s conversion a neutral act. I believe, however, a set of different motivations is behind such an attitude. In Biały Bór, confession is strictly related to a modern national identity. This can be partly explained by the fact that national awareness was widespread among a considerable part of the Ukrainian population during the forced resettlement, and partially because Ukrainians exiled to a foreign land and subjected to repressions faced a direct choice between assimilation and preserving their distinctiveness. Confession has thus become the key determinant of Ukrainianness, making the Church the central place in Ukrainians’ social life in Poland. Despite that fact, conflicts between parishioners and priests also demonstrate the strength of a community with a national character. This situation is very different from that of Murafa, where national identity and state organisations have been pushed to the side, and the ultimate authority is the clergy.

Bibliography: Chłopicki, Edward. “Od Buga do Bohu. Wspomnienia z podróży,” Kłosy, Vol. 21, No. 547 (1875). Diecezja Koszalińsko-Kołobrzeska: 04 Nov, 2016, http://www.koszalin.opoka.org. pl/new/a.php?m=4&p=k_zmarli. Dragadze, Tamara. “The domestication of religion under the Soviet communism.” In: Ideals, Ideologies and Local practice, Socialism, eds. Chris Hann, New York: Routledge, 1993, pp.148–156. Hałagida, Igor. “Działania aparatu bezpieczeństwa PRL wobec greckokatolickiego kapłana ks. Mitrata Stefana Dziubiny.” In: Aparat bezpieczeństwa polski ludowej wobec mniejszości narodowych i etnicznych oraz cudzoziemców. Studia nad zagadnieniem. Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009. Hryniewicz, Wanda. “Parafia Miastkówka na Podolu i jej pasterz o. Martynian Darzycki OFM Bern. (1918–2009).” In: Wytrwać i przetrwać jak Bóg daje. Świadkowie Kościoła rzymskokatolickiego na Ukrainie Sowieckiej 1917–1991, ed. Józef Wołczański, Kraków: Wydawnictwo bł. Jakuba Strzemię Oddział w Krakowie, 2010), pp. 235–252. https://www.icea.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/ICEA/ICEA_publication_pdfs/HW_ Swann_2012_fusionPR.pdf (02 Jan. 2017). Igor Hałagida. Działania aparatu bezpieczeństwa PRL wobec greckokatolickiego kapłana ks. Mitrata Stefana Dziubiny. In: Aparat bezpieczeństwa polski ludowej

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wobec mniejszości narodowych i etnicznych oraz cudzoziemców. Studia nad zagadnieniem. Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009. Miroszewski, Kazimierz. Centralny Obóz Pracy Jaworzno. Podobóz ukraiński (1947–1949). Katowice: Wydawnicto Naukowe, 2001. Naumescu, Vlad. “Religious Pluralism and the Imagined Orthodoxy of Western Ukraine.” In Chris Hann and the Religion and Civil Society group.” The Postsocialist Religious Question: Faith and Power in Central Asia and EastCentral Europe, ed. Chris Hann. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006, pp. 241–268. Pawluczuk, Włodzimierz. Ukraina. Polityka i Mistyka. Kraków: Nomos 1998. Ruel, Malcolm. “Christians as Believers” In: A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. Lambek, Michael (London: Blackwell Publishing 2002), pp. 102–107. William B., Jr Swann, J. Jetten, Á. Gómez, H. Whitehouse, & B. Bastian. “When Group Membership Gets Personal: A Theory of Identity Fusion.” Psychological Review, Vol. 119, No.3, (2012), pp. 441–56. Zowczak, Magdalena. “O długim trwaniu Polaków na Podolu: imponderabilia tożsamości.” In: Podole i Wołyń. Szkice Etnograficzne, eds. Łukasz Smyrski and Magdalena Zowczak Warszawa: DiG, 2008.

Part II  The Confessional Minorities of Murafa and Biały Bór. The Case Studies: In the Garden of Our Lady of Murafa

Marcin Skupiński

Через наше село ішла Божа Матір (the Virgin Mary walked through our village): Public Religion and enchantment of the world in Contemporary Ukraine. The Case of Murafa and Klekotyna Villages in Vinnytsia Oblast Abstract: The chapter discusses contemporary religious culture in Ukrainian Podilia. I start with a description of historical and cultural factors believed to have particular impact on the outstanding significance of religious institutions in this area. Religion in Murafa is a public, and not a private issue, both at the institutional as well as individual levels; it also is strongly correlated with identity, while conversions are extremely rare here. The second part of the article explains what is meant by the “enchantment of the world” in this context and how the world outlook of the interlocutors, irrespective of their confession, is different from what the author has been used to. The chapter is an attempt to undermine some claims widely accepted within the sociology of religion, including the one of the progressive “de-enchantment of the world,” as well as the descriptions of Ukraine’s religious context through the prism of Western concepts of secularisation and “religious services free market.” Keywords: public religion, “enchantment of the world”, cosmology, eschatological beliefs

The ethnographic research which the present chapter is based on was conducted within an ethnographic laboratory – an obligatory field traineeship at the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology. The setting of our field research concerning religious culture and religiosity in the specific context of cultural borderlands were two villages located in the historical eastern lands of Podolia, Murafa and Klekotyna, currently located within the Vinnytsia Oblast of Ukraine. These villages have a religiously mixed population that includes both Orthodox and Catholic communities, and until recently, a thriving Jewish community existed as well. Among Ukrainian Catholics, Murafa is famous for frequent vocations to consecrated life as well as its residents’ strong and active religiosity. In fact, during my field research, I  frequently encountered Murafa’s and Klekotyna’s local specificity which has become a significant challenge for me as a religious culture researcher. Therefore, this chapter’s main objective is to take the reader along my first journey of surprise to show how certain notions from the sociology of religion or post-Soviet studies turn out to be inadequate clichés in the face of actual field experience. In certain aspects, Murafa’s and Klekotyna’s communities strongly ascribe to what we already know about religiosity in Ukraine

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and other countries in the former USSR. In other ways, however, they significantly diverge from publications on the subject, which are popular even within academia.

Murafa and Klekotyna in the Light of Previous Research on Religiosity in Ukraine and the Former USSR Currently, we already have quite an abundance of literature concerning many aspects of life, including religiosity, in former Soviet countries, specifically in Ukraine. Many publications on contemporary Ukraine focus on its religious pluralism and openness to new forms of spirituality. Ukraine is sometimes described as “the largest religious market in Eurasia”.1 Within Poland, the situation in Ukraine has been described in more vague terms by Włodzimierz Pawluczuk: What constitutes pain, anxiety, subconscious destruction, postmodern destruction, a vague hint of mysticism and esoterica, postmodern philosophy, a question about meaning, a question about the future – all that comes to the surface in Ukraine and becomes the subject of its collective consciousness.2

Discourses about religion in Ukraine are described in a succinct manner by Vlad Naumescu: Advocates of modernity interpret this pluralism as a normal sign of democratic exercise in which a whole state guarantees freedom of religion and equal rights for all religious groups. Sociologists view it in terms of market-like competition, considering the Ukrainian case similar to the American denominational model.3

His standpoint’s main adherent is probably José Casanova. However, Naumescu, quoted above, does not agree with Casanova. He does regard religion in Ukraine as a relatively fluid issue, but in his view sudden changes are possible only within a specific group of denominations – in this case mainly the Byzantine rite’s churches. This point brings us a little bit closer to Murafa’s situation although Naumescu describes a confessionally mixed community, and what is more, one with frequent conversions to which his interviewees do not attach much significance. This situation is completely different in my research’s case:  such an attitude would be unthinkable in Murafa. Another very popular way of describing religiosity in the post-Soviet context refers to the ostensible ideological and religious void which allegedly occurred after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (and to a smaller extent in other “communist” 1 Vlad Naumescu, “Religious Pluralism and the Imagined Orthodoxy of Western Ukraine in Chris Hann and the Religion and Civil Society group.” The Postsocialist Religious Question: Faith and Power in Central Asia and East-Central Europe, ed. Chris Hann (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006), pp. 241–268, p. 265. 2 Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, Ukraina. Polityka i Mistyka (Kraków: Nomos, 1998), p. 263. 3 Naumescu, Religious Pluralism, p. 26.

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countries). A sudden disappearance of the dominant ideology combined with an often difficult economic situation and lack of organised religion supposedly drove people to their own spiritual search and ardent religious zeal. These processes supposedly impacted both the renaissance of traditional beliefs in a given area (as part of the search for one’s roots): for instance Greek Catholicism in Western Ukraine (researched by Naumescu), Buddhism in Buryatia (studied by Humphrey and Quijada) or Islam in Tatarstan. They also allegedly influenced the development of new syncretic or pagan religious and healing practices, like syncretic neoshamanism (Humphrey), magical practices in Moscow (explored by Lindquist) or cults and millenarian movements in Ukraine (studied by Pawluczuk). A slightly different point of view is presented by Magdalena Zowczak who writes about the “community of the cemetery”4 or by Tamara Dragadze in her paper on the domestication of religion in the Soviet Union.5 Both authors show in a convincing way how religion, under the pressure of atheisation policies, changed its forms of expression, but did not fade. In some places the exact opposite occurred: it solidified into a more traditional, local form. Furthermore, due to the lack of religious authorities, it developed into a form differing from the various processes of modernisation or purification religious orthodoxy was subjected to. I believe that we can speak about an enchanted reality in Murafa’s context, as opposed to the tendency of the “disenchantment” of reality conceptualised by Max Weber.6 For Weber, the disenchantment of reality is the consequence of the development of exact sciences and rational capitalism. It does not directly involve an individual’s better understanding of the workings of the world, but rather a belief in the principle of rational calculation as being the main matrix for interpreting reality. This principle dismisses previous convictions about the involvement of supernatural factors in everyday life, which place the metaphysical within a modern way of thinking yet beyond the world of our empirical experience. It is a very interesting idea, but it becomes quite problematic when adopted as the sole correct and obvious model of religiosity’s development in modern and late modern society. It is easy then to form the conviction that we live in an entirely disenchanted world where the confessional has been replaced by a psychoanalyst’s couch and that reality can be explained in a convincing way only by experts. Such an attitude easily reduces indications of the rebirth of religion or cosmologies other than Western rationalism to the rank of exotic phenomena which can be observed

4 Magdalena Zowczak, “O długim trwaniu Polaków na Podolu. Imponderabilia tożsamości,” in: Podole i Wołyń. Szkice etnograficzne, eds. Łukasz Smyrski, Magdalena Zowczak (Warszawa: DiG, 2003). 5 Tamara Dragadze, “Domestication of Religion under Soviet Communism,” in:  Socialism:  Ideals, Ideologies and Local Practice, ed. Chris Hann (London Routlege, 1993). 6 Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in:  Essays in Sociology, Max Weber (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946 [1922]), pp. 129–156.

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somewhere beyond the modern world’s borders. This approach is indefensible on anthropological grounds. I do not want to, and cannot, treat my interviewees’ religious culture within the categories of preserved tradition and peripherality. They are people who travel often (mainly within labour migration) and who are quite familiar with the reality of life in the city and abroad, mainly in countries like Russia or Poland. Max Weber himself found within his concept the way to the renewed enchanting of the world – when knowledge becomes so complex that it becomes accepted by faith by most.7 However, I can see another interpretation of the phenomenon of the enchantment of post-Soviet reality, deeply rooted in already classical works of anthropology. In his study on magic among the Azande (an ethnic group in North Central Africa), Edward E. Evans-Pritchard notes that the concept of magic or spells does not exclude the possession of purely technical knowledge. Azande are well aware of the fact that granaries collapse due to termites, but this does not explain why a given granary collapsed in a particular moment on the head of a particular Zande.8 Later works in the field of the anthropology of religion by Clifford Geertz supply my methodological framework with a very useful category, namely, theodicy. For Geertz, the main challenge man must face is the problem “with evil” to which religion responds by constructing, with the use of symbols, a world order that “explains and even blesses (…) puzzles and paradoxes which we observe in the human experience.”9 The concept of theodicy was further revaluated by Michael Herzfeld10 who considered it separately from religion, as one of the basic social mechanisms affecting our perception of the world, which consists of devolving the responsibility for evil from oneself to the Stranger (there is no significant difference whether it is Satan, a conjurer or a merciless official). In conclusion, religiosity, spirituality or even more broadly the “enchantment” of the world and scientific or rational discourse are not mutually exclusive. They supply the answer to the questions “how?” and “in what way?” (e.g. granaries fall down, hailstorms form, governments collapse), but it does not answer the question “why?” and “what is the point of it all?” (Why did hailstones the size of golf balls destroy Kryvyi Rih, and not another city?)

7 Sung Ho Kim, “Max Weber,” in: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, 27 June 2018, URL =  8 Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). 9 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 10 Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology. Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2001).

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Public Religion in Murafa As a researcher mainly interested in social change and the globalisation process, I soon had to face the apparent conservatism of Murafa’s and Klekotyna’s residents. Even during the initial stage of the field research in July 2012 I knew that within the two denominations traditionally present and dominant in the area – Roman Catholicism and Orthodox – it would be difficult to find new religious movements. For instance, the charismatic movement in the Catholic Church, very popular in the town of Vinnytsia, within the central part of the Oblast, is practically nonexistent in Murafa. I also quickly discovered that religion in Murafa is in no way a private issue. This refers not only, or primarily, to the Church’s social activity, but also to the impacts the perception and identification of individuals have. As a researcher, I sensed it very strongly, experiencing a kind of pressure to fit into the stereotype of a Catholic Pole which I came across there. However, I believe that to better present the role religion plays in contemporary Murafa, it is necessary to outline a particular historical perspective. Murafa’s current residents most probably descend from the settlers who were brought to the area to fill in settlement gaps after the 17th century’s wars. They were the so-called Masurians, i.e. peasants of Polish origin. Edward Chłopicki’s account from 1875 mentions Murafa people who kept traditional Polish clothes and their ardent Catholic faith but who did not use the Polish language anymore.11 Thus, we find ourselves on the trail of longue durée structures12 and 19th-century observations also seem to aptly reflect the situation I recently observed. Most of my interviewees identify as Ukrainians, often emphasising the issue of citizenship, the fact they reside in Ukraine or the nationality marked in their Soviet-era internal passports (personal ID cards). Therefore, even though most of Murafa’s and Klekotyna’s residents do not feel they belong to Ukraine’s Polish national minority, they have a strong sense of cultural identity separate from their Ukrainian environment and a close relationship with Poland. This sense of separateness is based primarily on their faith. The older generation regards Poland as the source of pure faith and religious education, even though this image is mostly a myth, which also oftentimes stands in stark opposition to my interviewees’ actual experiences.13 Until the collapse of the USSR, religious institutions in Ukraine were not free to operate, and most were subject to repression. Persecution strongly affected the Catholic Church, especially during the Stalinist era, but even until the 1990s the official functioning of church structures in Ukraine was made remarkably

11 Edward Chłopicki, “Od Buga do Bohu. Wspomnienia z podróży,” Kłosy, Vol. 21, No. 547 (1875), p. 411. 12 Magdalena Zowczak, “O długim trwaniu Polaków.” 13 A more detailed description of this relationship between religion and cultural identity can be found in Maria Sokołowska’s article.

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difficult. In many cases, religious practices were pushed to the domestic sphere or were practiced in cemeteries, often without the priest as an intermediary.14 During the wave of anti-Polish and anti-Catholic repression after the fiasco of Sovietising Ukraine’s Polish minority, Murafa’s parish priest was arrested in 1930 by the State Political Directorate and the church was closed in 1937. In 1941, when the village became occupied by Germans and then fell under the Romanian administration, the church resumed its operations (which, incidentally, some of the oldest residents remember and perceive as a positive aspect of Romania’s occupation). Nevertheless, even in the years when Murafa’s church did not function, the locals’ determination saved it from devastation. When asked about this period, interviewees often recall Mr. Bobrowicki, the chairman of the silrada’s (Ukr. сільрада, village council) then, who convinced the authorities to use the Murafa church as a granary, thus saving it from complete devastation. Residents, by storing their grain in the church, simultaneously took care of the building’s maintenance. Catholic interviewees emphasise that Bobrowicki wanted to protect the church despite being from an Orthodox family himself. Such a strategy of protecting a sacred place is not a unique occurrence in the context of the former Soviet Union. But the swift return of the church to its original function was quite extraordinary, especially in the context of anti-Catholic repression in the USSR. After the repression, Murafa’s church remained one of the few preserved churches with full furnishings, including paintings, votive offerings and an 18th-century organ. Active operations of Murafa’s Catholic Church, despite the Soviet Union’s repressive atheisation policy, are inseparably linked to the mitred prelate Antoni Chomicki who became Murafa’s parish priest in 1958. The arrival of Father Chomicki to Murafa was an important turning point for the local Catholic community, as he is universally associated with the return of religion to Murafa and remembered as a remarkable catechist, sometimes given the traits of a local hero. One of my interviewees even managed to disrupt the chronology by placing Father Chomicki within the period of Romanian occupation. All the accounts I have collected form an image of a parish functioning very efficiently, even in the face of problems with authorities. It is therefore no surprise that the church in Murafa quickly gained significance in independent Ukraine. Thus, Murafa did not find itself in an “ideological void” in the 1990s, but it witnessed a serious renaissance of religion which already existed in the local context. Today, the Catholic Church in Murafa is the main organisation that has replaced the state, which has withdrawn from its protective function. Nuns15 run the only kindergarten in the village, affiliated with the church. The church and its

1 4 Magdalena Zowczak, “O długim trwaniu Polaków.” 15 Służebniczki Starowiejskie, the Congregation of Servants of the Holy and Immaculate Virgin Mary from Stara Wieś.

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Photo 1: Father Antoni Chomicki’s gravestone at the Catholic cemetery in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

affiliated organisations take care of the elderly and organise an array of activities for children and youth, having taken over from the closed community centre. Furthermore, the parish is involved in an entire range of (unofficial or semi-official) activities, mainly related to facilitating travel for Murafa’s residents to Poland, which is very important in a place whose economy currently relies on migrant labour. José Casanova’s perspective, who sees the equivalent of the denominational system operating in the United States in Ukraine, even if not unfounded, falls apart in my research area, where religion is not a simple matter of identification even in a newcomer’s case, but turns out to be the subject of difficult negotiations with the local community. According to the conviction that prevails among my interviewees, one must not only believe in something, but also keep the faith

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inherited from one’s ancestors. Converts are often described in this context as unreliable, untrustworthy people. Both Orthodox and Catholic interviewees were in agreement that Shtundy16 are not Christians. It is also possible that the mistrust towards proselytising Jehovah’s Witnesses is reinforced by local churches, which might be indicated in the belief that materials distributed by Shtundy may contain poroby17 or unclean spirits. MS: What do you think about those Sztunda people that were here in Murafa? W: What do I think… I just didn’t listen to them, and that’s it! MS: Are they Christians too? W: No! They are some - God only knows who they are. They… I read one of their things; I didn’t want to read anymore. Then I was told that they might have left me something evil with this book. So I took the book outside and off it went. If you’re here, sit down! And I burned the book and that’s that.18

But the conservation of religion itself under the influence of long-term restrictions imposed by the state and the relative isolation of a minority community does not completely exhaust my experience in the studied area. A strong need to give meaning to the surrounding world accompanied not only Catholic and Orthodox interviewees, but also a small group that declared another religious denomination or lack of affiliation with any religion whatsoever. Even though Murafa’s specific religious situation determines a strong attachment to religion inherited by the family, the need to explain the phenomena of the world around us in a way that gives it meaning transcends borders between faiths and goes beyond my field of research.

16 Sztundy (Ukr. Штунди) is a colloquial Ukrainian term to describe members of one of Protestant Churches (without differentiating particular denominations). Also known as Shtundists, the term derives from the German word Stunde (“hour”), in reference to the practice of setting aside an hour for Bible study. 17 Poroby (Ukr. пороби) is an emic term for a curse, black magic performed by placing a cursed item (most often an egg or a coin) on a person. 18 A seventy-year-old female, Murafa-Trawna. The original quotation goes as follows: MS: А шо ви думаєте про цих штундів, шо вони були тут в Мурафє? K: А шо я думаю, я їх не слухала, і всьо. MS: А вони тоже хрестиянє? K: Нє! Оні якісь же, Бог знає, якіє вони. Вони, я одного прочитала там. Єдно я прочитала, більше не хотіла читати. Потом сказали, шо зе цею книжкою могли лешить злого. То я з цею книжкою на город ходила і гайда. Як ти тут, то гайда, сідай! І спалила цею книжку і всьо.

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Ends of the Worlds The motif of the impending end of the world often came up in Murafa’s residents’ statements. Our group’s second field trip took place during probably the most apocalyptic atmosphere, in November 2012, when a significant part of the world was expecting it to end in December. The fact that the world did not in fact end did not eliminate end-of-the-world narratives from my interviews—they remained a constant element. Among older interviewees (above the age of fifty) the conviction of the coming end of the world was very widespread, regardless of their religion. Interestingly enough, most end-of-the-world narratives were informed in a more or less obvious way by the history of the end of an actually existing world – the Eastern Bloc. The subject of the end of the world appeared for the first time in the conversation with the Orthodox female interviewee, when I asked her about the Jews leaving Murafa: They couldn’t afford to go, so they stayed. But they were sent money from there, from Israel, and they took each and every one of them. Yes, all of them. To the promised land! That’s what the scripture of their faith says. Our faith! That there is scripture, that God said I’ll scatter you all over the world, and at the end I’llgather you back together. These are End Times approaching.19

The exodus of Jews, and particularly the creation of the state of Israel, were facts often recalled to illustrate the thesis about us living in the latter days. It is connected to the belief that the Last Judgement is going to be held in the Valley of Josaphat. This belief is grounded in certain interpretations of Old Testament prophecies made by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In my interviewee’s narrative, Jews leaving Murafa were something more than just evidence of the change of a political system and the opening of Ukraine’s borders. An extraordinary experience, which was undoubtedly the exodus of Jewish neighbours, became inscribed in a global context alongside the creation of Israel. The concentration of the chosen people once again in their place of origin is a symptom of returning to the beginning time, matching the Judeo-Christian story of the end of the world, understood after all as the return to the lost original state – paradise. However, there are more signs of the end of days in the world around us.

19 A seventy-year-old Orthodox female; a sixty-year-old Catholic female, Klekotyna. The original quotations as follows: “Оні не імали за що єхати і оставались. Но оні висилали оттуда дзіенгі, з Ізраела і забрали всєх до однаво. Да. Всіх.Do obiecanej ziemli! Це так пісаніє пише в іх вєре. B нaшой! Шо пісаніе, шо сказал Бох, шо я вас розпрошу по вшем свєцє, а у кінця собіру вас. І то уже паслєдніє время пріходзіт.”

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Photo 2: Matzevahs at the Jewish cemetery in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. And now times have changed. The Lord allowed it at the end of the world, He allowed people to understand and read, and maybe some souls can save themselves. So that they know there is a God and that there will be an end of the world, so that all people… Nobody said they didn’t know, and everyone is to understand that it came, that all’s given. You can’t say you didn’t know or something. And the Lord has given everything, just look! If they didn’t know, or what, and now books, radio, TV… And we didn’t even have a book to pray; we had nothing to read. We copied, found it all in conspiracy. And now, however much you want, just know your God; if you want to you can learn everything. Right, son?20

20 A seventy-year-old Orthodox female; a sixty-year-old Catholic female, Klekotyna. The original quotations as follows: A сєйчас врємя змєнілося. Господ дал прі кінце світа, дал людьом поняти, шоби перечіталі і може каторая душа спасется. Так пише Пісаніє, што пайдзіот Слово Божиє по всєму світи, шоби кота душа спасьотся. Шоби знала, шо Бох є і шо має бути кінець світа, шоби всє людзє. Nikt nie powiedział, że nie wiedział, a każdy ma zrozumieć że przyszło to, że wsio jest dane.

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In this case, my interviewees’ opinions can be traced directly to the Holy Bible, in particular the Gospel of St. Matthew, where we can read: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come,” (Mt 24,14). Although freedom of religion is regarded by my interviewees as one of the few or only changes for the better resulting from Ukraine’s independence, in the broader context of cosmology and the divine plan, it constitutes a part of the end of the world scenario. When the Judgment Day comes upon us, no one will be able to say that they did not know the word of God. My interviewee also emphasised the role of the media  – religion is present on the radio and on TV; even if someone cannot read or write, they cannot say that they did not hear the teachings of Christ. And if someone rejects Christ, they do it at their own peril. In this narrative, the collapse of the Soviet Union becomes inscribed in the broader context of the end of the world; so it manifests itself as a historical necessity: not only as a political fact but also as part of the broader divine plan. During the aforementioned field trip in November 2012, buying out candles, often consecrated ones, became a local phenomenon. It was related to the preparations for the upcoming end of the world when (most probably, according to the information published by a local newspaper and disseminated throughout the region) all lights were going to go out. The mass scale of the phenomenon (candles quickly became a sought-after product, and in Szarogrod’s market they could be found in clothing or food stalls) merits the suspicion that another apocalyptic prophecy fell on fertile soil. The issue drew the interest of priests from the local Catholic parish. During the sermon, the parish priest mocked people who bought candles and who believed that the world would end on 12/12/2012, even suggesting that they were moving away from traditional Catholic doctrine, which was quite a serious accusation in the local, deeply religious community. Among these events, briefly, a conflict emerged between organised orthodoxy and the millenarist visions shared by both Murafa’s Orthodox and Catholic residents. Millenarianism in the context of Ukraine was described by Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, who saw in it the expression of the broader situation which society found itself in. At the same time, he underlined the collapse of Ukrainians’ traditional religiosity, especially the Orthodox Church’s faithful, i.e. the process which, as I  have already indicated, did not leave a mark on Murafa’s and Klekotyna’s communities. Nevertheless, in Pawluczuk’s words, residents of both villages and neighbouring dwellings were looking for “the return of sacrum to

Человек уже нє скажет, “я не знал, я не что”. А всьо, цо так Господ дал, бач як! Як не розрешалі, як не цей, а зара книжки, радіа, телевізор. А ми не мали книжечки, шоб помілитися, ми не али прочитати шо. Переписивали, начодзілі подполну, так всьо, о так. А сєйчас сколко хотіш, но знай за Бога, как хотіш, то всьо узнаєш. Так синок?

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history and everyday life,”21 i.e. the world which we describe in Weber’s term as “enchanted”. However, most of my interviewees practice this search within the dominant denominations of Catholicism and the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, the need to somehow explain the collapse of the Soviet Union and related transformation exceeds the framework of the discourse the Catholic faith is immersed in. This thread was also discussed by my only interviewee who identified as an atheist. I deliberately mention the issue of my interviewee’s identity, since his atheism was far from cold rationalism and scepticism. In his case, the priority was the need to introduce order to the world, and his beliefs formed a very cohesive, albeit at first glance exotic cosmology, in which the power of telepathy and mind control played a significant role. My interlocutor explained the collapse of the Soviet Union as an act of collective hypnosis that enabled the dissolution of “the country of soviets’” institutions with the approval of society and passivity of those in charge. The hypnosis was, of course, induced by the mass information assault, coordinated by the “West” through subliminal messages. I am under the impression that on the level of experience, my interviewee was describing the same situation that became the starting point for the essay and later book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More by Alexei Yurchak. In other words – there was an enormous surprise with the pace of change in the 1980s and 90s, when only a few years turned out to be enough for the majority of society to make peace with the political system’s change and the dissolution of the state which not long before had seemed to be an indestructible entity.22 But while a sufficient answer can be found for the Berkeley anthropologist in an abstract space of “culture” and “discourse”, the key for my interviewee was finding the culprit or at least the “agency” behind this event. Even though the collapse of the USSR could not be the result of God’s will for him or an element of the divine plan, it could be and has become an element of another type of cosmology. It supplies the answer to the question “why?”, no worse than other cosmologies dominant in Murafa which place God and his plan at the centre, or those described by Evans-Pritchard that look for reason in magic. For my interviewee, this force was telepathy and mind control. The limits of his beliefs are not marked by conservative Catholic or Orthodox doctrine, but rather by a certain form of spirituality which Włodzimierz Pawluczuk calls cosmism. And it indicates its source in the very approach to science adopted in the USSR, where, according to the author, “with research’s progress on the structure of matter, the cosmos and eventually paranormal phenomena, ‘matter,’ in the Soviet view, was becoming less and less ‘material.’ ”23 Yet another person who dissents from the simple division of village residents into Orthodox and Catholic faithful was the only Jehovah’s Witness in both towns.

2 1 Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, Ukraina. Polityka i Mistyka, p. 121. 22 Alexei Yurchak, “Soviet Hegemony of Form: Everything Was Forever, until It Was No More,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2005), pp. 480–510. 23 Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, Ukraina. Polityka i Mistyka, p. 195.

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In our conversation, I raised the issue of the end of days once more. I was curious what a member of a church which had already prophesised the end several times would have to say on the subject. My interlocutor mocked the panic and candlebuying in connection with the expected Armageddon, but he revaluated the idea rather than negate it entirely. “Ето не буде кінець, ето буде начало,” he stated. Even if it won’t be the end of the world as a natural disaster, a profound, comprehensive change will occur that he, as a Jehovah’s Witness, expects. Such a line of thinking matches the way Pawluczuk defined millenarianism, although it does not correspond entirely with what Catholic and Orthodox interviewees said; for them millenarianism constituted not only the promise of a new beginning, but also the explanation of many current problems, such as the exodus of Jews or challenges with youth. It does not mean, however, that I encountered a person who did not use religion as a key to interpret events in the world around us. My interlocutor’s narrative about filth can be used as a particularly vivid example of this: M.S.: Why is it so in Ukraine, and not in Finland? M.: Listen, Marcin, it’s not just Ukraine, not just Ukraine. Can you read Russian? M.S.: Mhm. [The interviewee indicates a passage in the Bible - MS] M.: Look here, fifth verse, after the seventh, here… Did you understand? M.S.: Yes. M.: If you understood then you know now in whose interest it is that people don’t likecleanliness.He is the main manager of this world. He created all political systems and religious ones too. And that’s why people in Poland like cleanliness a little bit, and in Ukraine, they don’t like it much. In Africa they don’t even know what it is. He is responsible for it, and the one who created us wanted us to stand out, above all, with our cleanliness. So that we cherish these virtues. And he makes sure that people don’t have these virtues. That we make a mess where we eat. He is of course more interested in spiritual purity, but if we are spiritually dirty, then we’re physically dirty as well. That’s why people in charge of the cleanliness of cities, in Warsaw, in Kyiv, they build factories nearby that pollute the soil. They create companies that devastate the entire region, make landfills where they shouldn’t. Even though people have good intentions, they go on TV and say that they fight for the cleanliness. Haha. So two-faced. And he would like it to be so. He even wanted Jesus to act this way. Now, Marcin, you’ve understood who has the biggest stake in the filth.24

24 A forty-five-year-old male, Jehovah’s Witness, Klekotyna. The original quotation goes as follows: M.S.: Но я хотел спросить, почему на Украиние так, а у финов уже нет?

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Although direct evil-doers, in this case responsible for pollution, can be identified and located, whether they are common hooligans or international corporations, just naming them is nowhere enough to answer the question “why?” The Jehovah’s Witness’ beliefs regarding other Murafa Christians seemed a lot more Manichean; people do not appear to be mere pawns in the divine plan, but rather they are deceived by false rulers, which is the devil’s work. In the quoted answer, another trait is clearly visible which I would like to point out, as it again concerns a very broad spectrum of my interviewees. Namely, the tendency to make a connection between the current political, social and economic situation with religion, or more broadly spirituality. Social and political problems, in this case pollution, simultaneously become ethical issues as the world around us seems to be the manifestation of the nation’s spiritual condition.

Murafa’s and Ukraine’s Place in the World Thus, we reach another interesting problem which will serve to illustrate the argument about the enchantment of my interviewees’ world. Namely, the place of Murafa and Ukraine in the world. This is an issue that goes far beyond geopolitics in my interviewees’ perspective.

M.: Ти вот слушай, Марцин, не только в Украине. Не только в Украине! Ти когда читаешь русский, хотошо понимаеш, да? M.S.: – ммм. M.: Вот смотри, пятый стих. Вот от-туда, по седьмой. Ты понял? M.S.: Да. M.: Но если ты понял, то теперь ты понимаешь, кто заінтересован в том, чтобы люди не любили чистоту. Он - верховный повелитель земли. Он - управляющий всеми политическими системамы, религиозными. А поэтому в Польше люди чуть-чуть любят чистоту. Чуть-чуть. А в Украине чуть-чуть не любят. В Африке вообще не понимают, что это такое. Он за это ответсвенный. Потому что тот, кто нас создал, он хотел, чтобы мы отличались именно чистотой. И отражали его качество. А этот заботится, чтобы етих качеств не было у человека. Чтобы мы, где вкушаем, там мусорили. Его конечно больше всего интересует духовная чистота, чтобы мы были грязными, а если мы будем грязными духовно, то будем и физически грязными. Потому что эти люди, которые в городе, в Варшаве, в Киеве, борятся за чистоту, то при них строятся заводы, которые загрязняют землю. Создают фирмы, которые уничтожают весь регион, создают там свалки, где их не должно быть. Хотя свиду люди были благочестивы, и по телевирозу выступают, что они за чистоту. Хаха. Лицемерие такое. А этот заинтересован в этом, чтобы так было. Он даже хотел, чтобы Йезус так поступил. Теперь, Марцин, ты понял, кто заинтерсован в грязи в первую очередь.”

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It was some Jew who said that Holy Mary had walked through our village. He said that nothing’s going to happen, that Virgin Mary shielded everything and everything would be fine. We all recall that a Jew said that. And he was a cobbler. People would go to him to fix their shoes. And he would talk. And maybe it is so, floods all around, thunders striking, or earthquakes, war, this or that… Sudden death sometimes… And here?”25

Murafa’s and Klekotyna’s religious culture is definitely characterised by a strong Marian devotion. Although it is directly linked to the holy painting of Our Lady of Murafa, it unites local Catholic and Orthodox communities. In Murafa’s case, the Marian devotion is strongly linked to the site itself. According to a conviction widely spread among my interviewees, the parish and its residents enjoy particular protection from the Virgin Mary. One of the respondents even mentioned a 30 km radius as the space covered by Mary’s special intercession, with the centre being, of course, the church in Murafa. Our interlocutors’ discourses mix traditionally Christian elements with more contemporary, scientific discourse present in the press and television; so they sometimes talk about the protection of the Virgin Mary’s Mantle, and other times about a special energy or force field spreading around Murafa. The contemporary media’s message, especially from television, does not spare us shocking and dramatic sensations. Among the flood of news regarding natural disasters, it is easy to decide that they are currently more frequent than they have ever been before. Murafa’s and Klekotyna’s residents, just like inhabitants of other Ukrainian and Polish villages and towns, spend a lot of their free time in front of their TVs. When discussing new media (especially television), my interlocutors’ narratives were commonly organised according to the city/countryside dichotomy. In certain contexts, the city manifests as a dangerous and demoralised place, where Satanic and other cults operate, where inexplicable crimes are committed. I also often encountered mentions of numerous natural disasters in the field. For my interviewees the fact that these problems do not concern them was a clear sign of Murafa’s divine protection, if not of entire Ukraine’s. Meanwhile, natural disasters themselves were often interpreted by interviewees as either “God’s punishment” or the sign of a looming apocalypse. Murafa’s residents are faced with the more serious problem of theodicy when a disaster hits Ukraine. During conversations with residents I made note of two particularly interesting statements that account for the problem in two mutually 25 A seventy-three-year-old Catholic female, Murafa – Trawna. The original quotation goes as follows: “То один єврей казав, шо через наше село ішла Божа Матір! То он каже, нічого не буде, Матір Божа всьо заслонила, і всьо буде добре. То ми всє шспомінаєм, шо так казав жид один. А він був сапожніком. До него всі носили взуття ремонтувати. То він розкзував це. І так може і є, кругом то альбо залева, альбо громи, а то землєтресенія, то война, то так, то так. Нагла смерть буває! А у нас?”

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Photo 3: Members of the Third Order of Francis are carrying the figure of their patron saint during the Corpus Christi procession, 2014. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska.

exclusive ways. The most exhaustive attempt to place Ukraine in the universe was achieved by a middle-aged gentleman whom I met in the marketplace on a market day along with my research group colleague. I  need to mention that our interlocutor (who was Catholic) was surely not an average representative of the local community; however, his way of explaining Ukraine’s current weak economic and political situation was interesting. In his case, religion also became the main tool for explaining the world, but as a foundation for a kind of historical philosophy, according to which a nation’s prosperity depends on the strength of its faith. According to our interlocutor, Russia’s current superpower status results from the long-standing alliance between Russian authorities and the Orthodox Church. Poland, in turn, owes its better economic situation and place in “Europe” to its citizens’ strong faith and respect for the Catholic tradition. Ukraine’s situation is much worse than its neighbours’ because historically religion was never strong in the country and Ukrainian people practiced magic (according to my interviewee they continue to do so). In his own words: “We only had Cossack soothsayers”.26 In Ukraine, the term “kharakternyk” (Ukr. характерник) was used to indicate those 26 “У нас були тільки козаки-характерники.”

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Cossacks or haidamakas who supposedly could avert bullets, were immune to weapons or used magical protection in battle. Although kharakternyks as described by Jan S. Bystroń (1980) are ambiguous characters, in my interlocutor’s narrative they are presented as unambiguously evil with powers coming from the evil spirit, not from God. The standard of life in contemporary Ukraine is therefore the consequence of Ukrainian ancestors’ sins. Our interlocutor wholeheartedly believed in divine punishment: in his opinion, Hurricane Katrina was sent to New Orleans as a punishment for organising a gay parade. The city’s residents were also punished for their sins. We could look for similarities between this and the previously quoted Jehovah’s Witness’ statement; apparently, the need to answer the question “why” transcends denominations. The world is equally enchanted for Murafa’s residents, irrespective of their confession. Another one of my interviewees sees Ukraine’s role in the universe differently. We spoke to him in his workplace, Murafa’s gas station. For him, Ukraine’s current situation, albeit lamentable, as he himself stresses (“When it comes to development we’re behind Angola!”27), can be explained in a broader context in a manner that boosts Ukrainians’ self-esteem. What helps him adopt this approach is the positive value ascribed to poverty and modesty in Orthodox, and to a certain extent, Catholic culture. Thus, he can describe Ukrainians as economically poor, but rich in spirit, living closer to God. When Ukraine is visited by natural disasters, such as, to quote my interlocutor’s examples, a hailstorm in Kryvyi Rih, they are a reminder rather than a punishment from God. Their purpose is to reinforce Ukrainians’ faith, since there is still hope of salvation for them. So Ukraine is placed in an almost Messianic position against Europe, as a country where the attachment to God and religion is still alive, as opposed to Western countries where prosperity and high living standards have led to the loss of religious values. And Ukraine can serve as their source of inspiration.

Conclusion The material presented illustrated the specificity of reading reality by Murafa’s and Klekotyna’s residents; a reality in which agencies that elude conceptualisation within the discourse of “Western,” post-Enlightenment rationalism still operate, although they are not necessarily mutually exclusive with scientific discourse or broader knowledge regarding the world. I believe that the tendency I observed in Murafa is not unique among other ethnographic works about post-Soviet areas. The observed enchantment of the world may simultaneously be the result of maintaining traditional religiosity in the face of persecution as well as the problem of theodicy in the post-Soviet world, explaining a reality which is complex and undergoing very dynamic and not always understandable transformations. In this context, Murafa’s and 27 “По развітію ми за Анголою!”

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Photo 4: The church in Murafa, the view from the east side. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Klekotyna’s unique features are the strong presence of traditional denominations (the Catholic and Orthodox confessions) and the local community’s members’ attachment to religion and confession as their identity’s marker. This stems from both a multi-cultural village’s historical context, where the issue of particular communities’ distinctions has been important, as well as the particular role of the Catholic Church in Murafa, which both during the Soviet era and in independent Ukraine has been a major alternative to the state, playing a significant role in the public sphere. Paraphrasing Chris Hann’s statement about Poland, religion in Murafa cannot be de-privatised, because it never really was privatised in the first place.

Bibliography Clifford Geertz. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Dragadze, Tamara. “Domestication of Religion under Soviet Communism.” In: Socialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Local Practice, ed. Chris Hann. London: Routlege, 1993. Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.

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Kim, Sung Ho. “Max Weber,” in: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta: 27 June 2018, URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/fall2012/entries/weber/. Michael Herzfeld. Anthropology. Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2001. Naumescu, Vlad. “Religious Pluralism and the Imagined Orthodoxy of Western Ukraine in Chris Hann and the Religion and Civil Society group.” In: The Postsocialist Religious Question: Faith and Power in Central Asia and EastCentral Europe, ed. Chris Hann. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006, pp. 241–268. Pawluczuk, Włodzimierz. Ukraina. Polityka i Mistyka. Kraków: Nomos, 1998. Weber, Max. “Science as a Vocation.” In: Essays in Sociology, Max Weber, New York: Oxford University Press, 1946 [1922], pp. 129–156. Yurchak, Alexei. “Soviet Hegemony of Form: Everything Was Forever, until It Was No More.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 45, No. 3, 2005, pp. 480–510. Zowczak, Magdalena. “O długim trwaniu Polaków na Podolu. Imponderabilia tożsamości.” In: Podole i Wołyń. Szkice etnograficzne, eds. Łukasz Smyrski, Magdalena Zowczak. Warszawa: DiG, 2003.

Maria Sokołowska

Language and Identity: Murafa’s Catholic Population on Language Changes in the Church Abstract: The chapter explores the changes in the sense of identity of the oldest generation of Murafa’s Catholics in the face of replacing the Polish language at the language of prayer with Ukrainian. In the first part of the chapter I present the linguistic situation in Murafa against the historical context. Next, I discuss the particularity of linguistic competences of the oldest generation and compare them with the younger generations’ competences, including the reasons for the differences in competences between the generations. I trace the changes in the usage of the languages during liturgy, initiated after Ukraine’s gaining independence and the parishioners’ responses to the changes. The analysis is based on the interlocutors’ narratives, their religious practices at home, including the choice of the language. An important role is played by the media, which offer a range of opportunities to shape one’s coherent identity reflecting individual religious needs. The local choir celebrates traditional cultural ideals; its activities not only serve as meta-social commentary (to use Geertz’ term), but also considerably contribute to identity’s preservation. The text also discusses the tutejszy or local identity, specific for the community’s robustness. Keywords: language competences, liturgy language, religion in the media, church choir, tutejsza local identity

When I set out for the village of Murafa in Podilia for the first time, I had some doubts as to whether I  would not be able to communicate with the local population in a foreign language. Yet, I  tried to calm myself down; after all, I  had finished a course of Ukrainian for beginners and besides, a group of Ukrainian students from Vinnytsia University was going to be there. Additionally, who knew: maybe the village’s older residents could still speak some Polish. Yet, the first days of “research” made me realise just how wrong I  was. The Ukrainian students, who accompanied me in the field, were taking over the initiative during our interviews. Yet their style of conducting interviews, closely following the printed-out questionnaire in the “researcher-informant” convention, rather than the “interlocutor-interlocutor” convention I had expected, made me understand practically nothing within these encounters. The language barrier seemed insurmountable. Soon after, however, we parted with the Ukrainian students, which became a milestone in overcoming this barrier. My following interviews with local residents were conducted without any mediators and, thanks to a mutual desire for understanding, I simply gradually acquired the Ukrainian language in the field. In all likelihood, this key moment in my research made me focus on the question of language in Murafa.

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Photo 1: An inscription at the front entry to the church in Murafa: “VENERATION AND GLORY TO THE ONLY GOD.” Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska.

Murafa is a village populated by Orthodox and Catholic residents, with a slight prevalence of the Orthodox population. This division has been consolidated by the local population’s colloquial self-identification as поляк (“a Pole”) and руський (“Rusian” or “Rus” or even “Russian”).1 Although all of them communicate with one another in Ukrainian, the Polish language has a particular significance there, especially for Catholics, since until recently it was their language of liturgy and prayer. This changed in the 1990s, when the Polish language started to be slowly pushed out from the church in accordance with the Second Vatican Council’s resolution to administer religious services in the national language. According to my interlocutors, the census was conducted according to the rule that “if you live in

1 Pуський (Pol. ruski) refers here the Eastern Rite (in Murafa’s case to the Orthodox confession, but in other contexts – also to Greek Catholic confession), and not to contemporary Russia or former Soviet Union. It does not refer to their ethnicity, Ukrainian or Russian, etc. Just as “Polish” here refers to being Catholic. (In other contexts “Rusian” (Pol. ruski, Ukr. руський) and “Russian” (Pol. rosyjski, Ukr. російс ький, росіянин) may be used interchangeably by interlocutor. In particular, in Polish “ruski” is often applied as a pejorative terms to refer to “Russians” or collectively to Russian-speaking inhabitants of post-Soviet states.)

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Photo 2: An inscription at Murafa’s church vault: “WE ARE PRAISING YOU, WE ARE PRAYING TO YOU, SAVE YOUR PEOPLE, OUR LORD.” Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Ukraine, you are Ukrainian;” the local population was thus not given much of a choice: all people were “registered” as Ukrainians. From a formal point of view, the national language issue at the church does not raise any doubts. However, the process of translating the liturgy from Polish to Ukrainian was met with resistance by some Catholics, and in particular by the oldest generation. In my observations, I have focused on the following particular part of the community: Roman Catholics aged above 60. My objective was to explore the consequences of these changes upon their sense of identity. My starting point was the narratives regarding the language and attitudes towards it in the face of the local church’s changes. The Polish language possesses not only a communicative, purely functional value, but also a symbolic one. It is perceived as a symbol of a greater whole  – a cultural identity.2

2 Anna Engelking, Ewa Golachowska, Anna Zielińska, “Tożsamość, język i pamięć w sytuacji pogranicza. Uwagi wprowadzające,” in: Tożsamość – Język – Rodzina. Z badań na pograniczu słowiańsko-bałtyckim, eds. Anna Engelking, Ewa Golachowska, Anna Zielińska (Warszawa: Instytut Slawistyki PAN, 2008), p. 8.

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In my interviews, the language issue has been a constant element of constructing identity narratives within the framework of the reflexive project of the self.3 The starting points of these narratives often were my interlocutors’ declarations about their identity. Notably, my interlocutors would initially refer to themselves as “we, the Poles”, but later would say that “Poles used to live here, but now it’s only Ukrainians.” Such a seemingly contradictory situation results from a multi-layered understanding of “Polishness”. Depending upon the context, Polishness could be related to Catholicism, Poland, the Polish language or being non-Orthodox. Reactions to my own self-identification were also very revealing. When I introduced myself as a Pole, it was predominantly met with warm reactions, which made it easier to build closer contact with my interlocutors. However, I was also immediately classified as a Catholic during these encounters. I never had to declare my confession, as it was immediately assumed by others. This assumption was clearly manifested by my hosts’ reaction to my faux pas: failing to cross myself before starting a meal. Our hosts intervened by explaining the obligations of a Pole to us in great detail, justifying their response by their care about our (the students’ from Poland) image in Murafa: “what would they say; what sort of Poles are you, if you do not cross yourselves. You have had your meals served and you did not cross yourselves.”

The Church in Murafa When one drives along Murafa’s main road, one passes by three functioning churches. The Catholic church is located in the very centre of the village, between two churches found within symmetrical distance from each other: one in Murafa and the other in Klekotyna. In Soviet times, Catholics experienced national and religious persecution. Despite (or maybe thanks to) that, they have preserved their religious zeal. The church, with an antique organ and a miraculous image of Our Lady of Murafa, has survived. As both Catholic and Orthodox local populations say, it covered the village with her Mantle, protecting everyone against misfortune. The church was closed from 1936 till 1941,4 and its protection against Soviet persecution has 3 The self-identity project, according to Anthony Giddens, is based on sustaining cohesive and constantly verified biographical narratives, see: Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). 4 The church was plundered in 1936 by the NKVD and later closed down. According to the village council’s head M. P. Bobrowicki, it became a grain storehouse. In 1941, under the Romanian occupation it became a church again. See: Magdalena Zowczak, “Z badań kultury religijnej wschodniego Podola. Refleksje wokół kościoła w Murafie,” in: Вінничина: минуле та сьогодення. Краєзнавчі дослідження. Матеріали ХХV Всеукраїнської Наукової Історико-краєзнавчої Конференції 11-12 жовтня 2013р. (Вінниця: Міністерство освіти і науки України, 2013), pp. 224–240.

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become a constant part of the local residents’ narrations presenting a picture of the local Catholics’ unconventionally strong faith. Their memory reflects the activities of the local priests, who enjoy the greatest authority and respect here.5 With particular pride, local Catholics emphasise that more than fifty priests and nuns come from Murafa’s parish.

Collective Memory According to Barbara Szacka’s definition, collective memory is the perception of one’s own group’s past, constructed by individuals based on remembered information coming from different sources. This information is perceived, selected and transformed according to one’s own cultural standards and worldview. These standards are socially produced; they are shared thus by a community’s members, resulting in the uniformity of these images of the past and allowing us to speak about a group’s collective memory.6 From this perspective, my interlocutors’ description of the past creates a certain nostalgic picture of their youth’s religious culture that formed well before the language changes had been introduced. These narratives usually focus on comparing previous and current situations. The picture of religious culture as painted by my interlocutors usually had much to do with the special atmosphere of holy Masses conducted in Polish, lost forever with the translation of prayers in Ukrainian. The very sound of the liturgy in Latin and Polish elevated the soul, as they would emphasise. (As one of my interlocutors, a 64-year-old male, put it: “I am for the Polish language, for it to be in Polish, because it sounds better, sounds holy. […] the Polish language seemed to adorn the rituals with its beauty”).7 Moreover, holy Masses used to be longer, lasting for up to two and a half hours; sermons used to gather crowds. While today they are only fortyfive-minutes-long.

The Specificity of Language Skills My interlocutors often encouraged me to speak Polish to them, as they emphasised that they knew the language. Whereas I encouraged them to reply in the language they felt most comfortable speaking. Irrespective of a conversation’s selected language, both parties, on many occasions, inadequately nodded in reaction to words unfamiliar to them. The problem with my Ukrainian skills (which in my

5 Magdalena Zowczak, “Z badań kultury religijnej.” 6 Barbara Szacka, “Pamięć zbiorowa,” in: Wobec przeszłości. Pamięć przeszłości jako element kultury współczesnej, ed. Andrzej Szpociński (Warszawa Inst. im. Adama Mickiewicza, 2005), pp. 17–30. 7 A sixty-four-year-old male, Murafa. The original quotation goes as follows: “Ja za polsku, żeby to było po polsku, to lepiej wygląda, po świętemu wygląda. […] polski język jakby pięknością ozdabiał rytuały te.”

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Photo 3: The lyrics of a song about souls suffering at the purgatory, hand-written by one of the interlocutors and a keepsake of the confirmation by Father Antoni Chomicki in 1963. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska.

perception were at an elementary level) was that I had learnt “handbook” phrases which do not function in Murafa’s language. At the same time, my interlocutors heard words in Polish from me that they simply did not know. The Polish language for them is first and foremost the language of prayer, and in a broader sense, the language of religion. Earlier, besides praying in Polish at home, children were also taught to at least read in Polish by their grandparents. Mastering these skills was a precondition for the First Communion. When I  visited people’s homes, I  was often shown old Polish prayer books, worn out by constant usage, rewritten by hand. Thanks to this exercise, my interlocutors, local Catholics’ older generation, all too often had much better developed reading skills in Polish than in Ukrainian. At the same time, few interlocutors could remember people who spoke Polish on an everyday basis at home. During the repressions, teaching Polish was very risky. Parents were equally keen on having their children learn the language appropriate for their confession as well as on making sure that any unfriendly people never learnt about that. The First Communion was received individually, in great secret and with full awareness of the associated risk. I was initially surprised by my interlocutors mentioning the Polish ABCs book called Elementarz as a teaching resource used to teach the Polish language. After

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all this book was not available locally. However, as I learnt, people who travelled to Poland would usually bring books, both religious books and works of fiction. I have been told stories about smuggling prayer books tied to the waist, which was very risky: “If they found a prayer book in Polish, they would make one disembark and take it away.” In Catholic homes, books were an important source of contact with the Polish language’s written form and have been a constant element of a home’s interior up till now. However, although books in Polish are present in the majority of Catholic homes I visited, these are predominantly religious books. One of my interlocutors remembered that her mother used to travel to Poland and spend her entire money on books. However, when I asked about her favourite book, she replied: “Now, a Polish one? Oh, no, child… I pray a litany; to Jesus Christ’s Heart. To the Virgin Mary… And that’s it. We do not have favourite books.”8 The teaching of the Polish language has been closely associated with religious culture from the start, and its usage is almost exclusively limited to this sphere. Language teaching was accompanied by a focus on national awareness. I was surprised to hear my interlocutor reciting a sixteen-line version of a well-known children’s poem “Kto ty jesteś? – Polak mały” (“Who are you? – A little Pole”). This version also contained a version for a girl associated with Marian symbolism: “Kto ty jesteś? – Lilia Biała”, (“Who are you? – A white lily”). I was very impressed by this, as I myself do not remember more than this poem’s first four lines, standard for all Polish ABCs, whereas this seventy-year-old woman could recite it at full length, very fluently, as if she was saying a prayer. The fact that Polish language learning was strictly associated with religious culture was also reflected in the passive way it was taught. It was mainly the learning of prayers, reading and rewriting of prayer books, singing from song books and listening to sermons. As a result, local Catholics find it very difficult to freely construct sentences in Polish, although understanding a spoken language does not pose any difficulty. As one of my interlocutors explained: “We understand Polish, but we cannot speak it.”9 Constructing a sentence in colloquial Polish requires reflexion and focus. Many Catholics from the older generation are very aware about their language skills’ specificity and define it simply: “We read in Polish and pray in Polish, but we cannot speak Polish!”10

8 The original quotation goes as follows: “Зараз, тоді польских? О нє, детино... помолила літанію до Серца Пана Йезуса... До Маткі Боскі... на цєму конєц. Книжок любимих у нас немає.” 9 “To my ponimajem polski, tilky ne możem howoryty!” 10 “Czytamy po polsku, modlimy się po polsku, a mówić po polsku nie umiemy!”

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The New Role of the Polish Language Currently, the Polish language is still taught in many homes; however, the motivations and teaching methods have changed. Parents do not put strong emphasis on the knowledge of prayers and catechism any more. The fact that young people predominately speak Ukrainian has been accepted by the local community as a norm. The younger generation has contact with the traditional form of prayers thanks only to their grandparents. These days, however, grandparents have considerably less influence on their grandchildren’s religious education than they used to in Soviet times. With the Polish language disappearing from the religious sphere, the new reasons of its functioning in Murafa have become increasingly visible. These are purely practical issues. In Murafa, there are no jobs for young people, and the closest university is in Vinnytsia, which is located seventy kilometres from the village. Young people often decide to leave their village, frequently to go abroad, including to Poland. Learning Polish in this context is treated in pragmatic terms. Polish language skills constitute the first step towards acclimatising in the new environment. Thus, one should not be surprised that parents are so keen on their children learning Polish. Those who have had encounters with Polish themselves (through seasonal work in Poland) can help their children to learn. But young people also increasingly rely on extracurricular educational initiatives, including additional language classes offered at the local school, language classes organised by a Polish teacher in a nearby village or language lessons offered by several visiting Polish students at the local church, which are attended by both Catholic and Orthodox children. The vision of practical benefits encourages young people to learn Polish. Their peers’ accounts of their trips to Poland serve as an additional motivation for them. In Poland, according to my interviewees, Ukrainian students are depreciated because of their “Eastern accent.” Good knowledge of the languages becomes particularly significant for those whose only perspective is emigration to Poland. In sum, while the Polish language is still taught at Polish homes, the purpose and methodology of the language instruction has changed. During religious repressions, children learnt a “religious” language, whereas now they learn a language for practical skills. Besides, the focus was formerly put on reading; today, communicating in the language is much more important.

Language in the Context of Church The official Sunday programme includes three services in Ukrainian (at 8 A.M., 10 A.M.  and 4  P.M.) and one in Polish at 12 A.M. In my interlocutors’ opinion, however, this division was not so clear-cut, in particular with regard to the noon service. Accounts are conflicting: some claim that the language is “mixed” without clear rules, others that the Mass is in fact administered in Ukrainian. My observation was that the priest could fluently change from one language to another, while

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Photo 4: Organist Eugeniusz Swarcewicz presents a song book re-written with his own hand. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

the faithful could spontaneously adjust to the changing language of prayers and liturgy formulations. According to many of my interlocutors, the only truly Polish element of the service is the Polish songs. The parishioners have the opportunity to enjoy traditional Polish songs through an extraordinarily beautiful rendition sung by the choir and conducted by organist Eugeniusz Swarcewicz. Advocates of having the Mass in Polish treat the choir’s performance as their last chance to preserve the religious service’s traditional character. The Polish language in Murafa is the basis of the Catholics’ tradition. According to Giddens’ definition, tradition produces a feeling of the constancy of things, while the epistemic aspect is usually mixed with the moral one.11 At the church, we can observe a split between the parishioners in regard to their attitudes towards tradition. Such a split may lead to the community’s collapse. The group of Catholics who do not accept the changes acutely feel that the language they are attached to is being pushed out from the church. They believe that the church, in this way, “is not fulfilling its function”. The service in Ukrainian, from their perspective, becomes invalid. As a result, the commandment to “remember and keep 11 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity.

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the Sabbath day holy” is perceived to not be observed. They claim to feel as if they did not participate in a real service at all. In this context, in the face of external violations of certain constant elements of one’s identity, an individual feels a certain discontinuity in experiencing time and a lack of biographical continuity as a result. The experienced time may acquire the form of disconnected moments, each of which separates previous experiences from the following ones, so that experiencing a continuous “narrative” becomes impossible.12 Thus, the identity becomes weaker. Such a situation leads to some local Catholics’ alienation from such an important sphere as the Church. The interlocutors’ accounts paint a picture of the language practices as a potentially strong source of conflict between the clergy and the faithful. The authority of the priests in Murafa is, however, unusually strong. It derives from the clergy’s commune with the sacrum, reinforced by local history: many priests have made significant contributions to developing and preserving the church’s religious life. On many occasions, I was shown impressive albums filled with photos of priests, while my interlocutors told me heart-moving tales about them. Local residents also take pride in the fact that a considerable number of priests originally came from Murafa. The strong influence of authority associated with the priests’ very strong social position inhibits active opposition towards unfavourable changes in the church: disputes are only possible between parishioners. As a result, the opposition towards the linguistic changes is also not directed against the local priests; rather, there is a tendency to defend them and justify their position by recalling that orders “come from the top.”

The Domestic Sphere as the Sphere of Choice In this context, the domestic sphere – which, as opposed to the church, is a space for the language of choice according to one’s individual needs – is worth taking a closer look. My interlocutors (except for the youngest generation) when asked about praying at home, declared that they always say their prayers in Polish. Those same prayers which are said at church in Ukrainian function in their traditional form at home. And in fact, a number of my interlocutors have not managed to learn the new translated versions for years. There are prayers… say… three prayers. And I know the Lord’s Prayer and Apostle’s Creed, for example, in Ukrainian. But the Ten Commandments, the five Commandments of the Church or the seven deadly sins; I don’t know these in Ukrainian. I pray in Polish.13

1 2 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity. 13 A seventy-year-old Catholic male. The original quotation goes as follows:  “Jest modlitwy… no, ja wiem… trzy modlitwy. Ot, Ojcze Nasz, Wierzę w Boga  — ja znam po ukraińsku. A już dziesięć przykazań, pięć przykazań kościelnych, siedem sakramentów, siedem grzechów głownych — nie wiem po ukraińsku. Ja modlusja po polsku.”

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The exercise of individual choice regarding the language of religion is also apparent in the use of the media. Radio Maryja14 (the Ukrainian branch), available in Murafa for the past two years, has enjoyed great popularity. My interlocutors often refer to this station with great emotion. In many homes it is on all the time, but particular attention is paid to programmes which broadcast choral chaplets and church services. During my visits to some Catholic homes, my attention was drawn to the fact that the radio plays a very important role in the domestic sphere’s religious practices; it organises a family’s time via certain programmes (choral chaplets and holy Mass broadcasts), which take place at regular hours. Significantly, particular programmes are always broadcast in the same languages at regular hours. The interlocutors could distinguish the presence of three languages (Ukrainian, Polish and Latin), which are familiar to them due to the local church. An important difference from church services is, however, that a particular programme’s language is pre-defined and predictable and does not change according to unknown circumstances. Praying the chaplets fulfils the integrating function; they gather all household members together in front of the radio set, while chaplets ordered by radio listeners from other regions of Ukraine also unite people into a pan-local community. Moreover, the practice of listening to the broadcast church services is wildly spread among the older generation. This is a very popular phenomenon, particularly in regard to services from the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw. Many interlocutors emphasised that listening to it gives them a sense of fulfilment, a liturgical mood, usually provided by participating in a church service, in other words. Anthony Giddens notes the fact that the sense of familiarity accompanying a mediated experience may be responsible for the wide-spread perception of “reversing the orders,” when events that have been actually experienced or other things appear instead of their media representations.15 In this case, the key role is played by the language; the church services broadcast in the right language. Despite the fact that they are transmitted through the media, they are not perceived to be devoid of the church’s mood due to the Ukrainian language, the way they are at the local church. Broadcast church services do not constitute an alternative to going to church, but appear to play an important complementary role to religious practices. Another important field of observation of the local Catholics’ religious culture’s language specificity is rosary circles. There are many of them in Murafa and every Catholic belongs to one. Men’s circles meet at the church and women’s ones at the members’ homes. I personally participated in one such meeting. This meeting

14 Radio Maryja is a socially conservative religious and political Polish radio station founded in Toruń, Poland in 1991 by the Redemptorist priest Tadeusz Rydzyk, also known as “Father Director.” 15 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity.

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was an intergenerational one, where the youngest participant was twenty years old and the oldest one was eighty. For this reason, rosary prayers were said in two languages: Ukrainian and Polish. The smooth transition from one language to another was rather striking though; there were no distinct rules or regularity to it. The women justified the prayers’ bilingualism by aiming to satisfy all participants’ needs in the shared prayer. However, the experience of the prayer’s progress demonstrated a certain specificity of the local religious culture. The observation of religious practices within the domestic sphere may point to the fact that despite the change of the language of liturgy at the local church, supported by the priests’ authority, and not met with particular opposition on the parishioners’ part, the top-down transformation is not a barrier for the Polish language. The attachment to Polish as the language of religion is reflected in private practices. This is always an individual choice, and thanks to this the Church does not have to struggle with parishioners leaving the faith.

Language Stereotypes Language stereotypes have proved rather telling, in my perception. I define a stereotype after Zbigniew Benedyktowicz’s definition, as a secondarily rationalised, reversed symbol. A symbol serves closeness and gives sense to social life; a stereotype contributes to strangeness and difference.16 A  stereotype in this understanding can be treated as a tool for predicting my interlocutors’ perceptions of the conflict within the church. Representatives from the older generation of Catholics rarely presented the church’s situation in terms of a conflict. Their narrations on language, however, were full of language stereotypes. The most fundamental one is the association of languages with pre-defined spheres: Polish is the language of the sacred sphere, and Ukrainian is the language of domestic use. Their descriptions of the Ukrainian language often contained references to the language’s very aesthetics: it is hard and indelicate. A shared negative association feature was “pollution,” “something that was not in its rightful place.” The usage of Ukrainian at church may be treated as a sort of profanation. Apart from connotations with the secular and domestic spheres, there are also associations with the Orthodox Church. Ukrainian is an “Orthodox” language, whereas Polish is “Catholic”  – which, according to my interlocutors, should be reflected in the respective churches’ service languages. As far as the Ukrainian language at the Orthodox church is concerned, there are no negative connotations regarding its un-aesthetical sound; on the contrary, famous Orthodox songs have been mentioned as one of the confession’s positive features. However, according to my interlocutors, Ukrainian just does not befit Catholicism. The usage of the

16 Zbigniew Benedyktowicz, Portrety „obcego”. Od stereotypu do symbolu (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2000).

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Photo 5: And old print from 1763 from the Murafa’s church’s treasury. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska.

“Orthodox Church language” at a Catholic church brings about a feeling of dissonance; it becomes “neither an Orthodox church nor a Catholic one.” The process of translating prayers (and songs, in particular) into the Ukrainian language is perceived as doomed to failure, or even as having grotesque effects due to the language’s features, making it unsuitable for the sacrum sphere. Such a perspective is well reflected in one of my interlocutors’ comments: You cannot do that in Ukrainian. The Ukrainian language is not suitable for that. This is like crossing oneself. The Ukrainian language is not appropriate for that. People often say that it’s like saddling a cow. (Do you know what a cow is? The one that gives milk). A horse can be saddled, but this does not look right… A horse is suitable for riding. A cow is not suitable. That’s the way this looks.17

17 A sixty-year-old Catholic male. The original quotation goes as the follows: “To tego na ukraińskim języku niemożliwe. Język ukraiński nieprzysłużony do tego. To tak samo wygląda, jakby przeżegnania, da? Ukraiński język do tego nieprzystosowany. Często mówią, że to jakby krowa (wy znajecie krowa? ta co daje mleko) położyć

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The Local (Tutejszy) Identity The widespread self-identification as Poles and Ukrainians/Russians may bring about associations with national identity. In the local context, however, the “Polish” identity has a distinct colloquial meaning. These terms are used to distinguish people in reference to others, but they are not permanently linked to national identity. The two levels of an individual’s identity, the cultural and national ones, function alongside each other but do not have to coincide. Despite the widely used terms Pole/Ukrainian, the majority of my interlocutors who were asked about Poles in Murafa answered that there are no Poles here, because all have been “registered” as Ukrainians. Few of my interlocutors identified themselves as Poles in the national context. The awareness of having Polish roots is a relatively new phenomenon, associated with the possibility of having a Pole’s Card issued to them. For many people, this is a pretext to look closely at their own families’ history. Paradoxically enough, the people who manifested their Polish national identity most did apply for this document. In this context, it is rather the local or tutejszy cultural identity that is very strongly emphasised: being a Murafa local, a “decent” and religious person. Young girls claim that they look for their life partners among locals, “their own.” Such “localness by choice” or conscious refusal to self-identify in supra-local categories18 may also be the result of the experience of encountering Poles in Poland, where people from the east are pigeonholed as “Russian.”

Local People of Authority in Response to the Conflict of Interest in the Church Adherents of the old order of the service see the local organist (the already mentioned Eugeniusz Swarcewicz) as the only person who effectively defends their common interest. Mr. Swarewicz, a Pole from Belarus and fluent Polish speaker, has been the choir’s conductor for the past thirty years. My interlocutors emphasised that, thanks to his activities, the faithful enjoyed remarkable aesthetic and spiritual experiences. The Polish songs performed during a Sunday Mass in front of the crowds of faithful are an exceptionally moving experience. The choir’s activities can be interpreted, following Clifford Geertz, as a social ritual that expresses a meta-social commentary.19 It is a celebration of traditional cultural ideals and siodło. To konia osiedlają, to nie wygląda... no koń przystosowany do jazdy. A krowa nieprzystosowana. Tak samo i tu wygląda.” 18 Anna Engelking, “Tożsamość „tutejsza” na wielojęzycznym pograniczu. Spostrzeżenia na przykładzie parafiii nackiej,” in: Język a tożsamość na pograniczu kultur, eds. Elżbieta Smułkowa and Anna Engelking (Białystok: Katedra Kultury Białoruskiej Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, 2000). 1 9 Cliford Geertz, “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in: The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz (New York, Basic Boook), pp. 412–453.

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provides a context for their discussion. An elevated spectacle presented by the choir, apart from spiritual experiences, serves as an identity preserving practice. The organist himself appears to manifest his views on the desired order at the church by constructing such a spectacle. This manifestation gains particular expression by the contrast between the Polish songs and the Ukrainian versions of the prayers initiated by priests. There are two authorities at work on the church space’s symbolic stage. What differentiates them can be defined, according to one of my interlocutors, as an “action vector.” I: A man needs to develop individually on his own. A man needs to develop in his faith. Because a man is just like a member of an orchestra. All orchestra members need to keep to their notes. And the conductor is also important. If there is no conductor, there is no orchestra. And it is the same with the church. A priest is just like a parish conductor. And all have some internal…. thoughts, well… MS: Reflections? I: Reflections, yes. And the church should take care of a man, to give him energy. Because, if a man does not have a conductor, there won’t be an orchestra; he will disappear. And the same is true for the church. And if I  play according to some notes, and the conductor plays differently, there won’t be anything. What is my stake here? That people will develop in a progressive way. We, as Catholics, should always look in the direction of Rome. And we Poles; we need to direct our eyes in the direction of Rome. The Pope. Because that is our centre. We can have some political centres, some positions different from the state. And man should always move in the direction of progress. And if this progress is so secular, well, he will end up like myself. The time of retirement has come and I left that path. I could have been some sort of activist, but I do not listen to that sort of idea… But spiritual progress, developing in that direction, so that your spirit would elevate you. But in order for the spirit to elevate a person, praying is not enough. One needs to receive some energy from the Church. The sermons need to be very encouraging. Like St. Peter. He, remembering his denial of Jesus, had trails of tears till the end of his life. Now they have dried; people do not know what it means to cry at church.20

20 “AC: Człowiek musi rozwijać indywidualnie sam. Człowiek musi rozwijać sam w wierze. Bo człowiek to tak sam jak członek orkiestry. Wszyscy członkowie orkiestry trzymają nuty. No jest jeszcze dyryżor. Nie ma dyryżora, znaczy orkiestry nie będzie. Bo on trzyma orkiestrę w jakimś porządku. Tak samo kościół. Ksiondz to taki dyryżor parafii. A wszyscy mają jakieś takie wewnętrzne... myśli, nu... MS: Refleksje? AC: Refleksje, da. A kościół powinien człowieka, nu podpikać, to znaczy po polsku, no dać jemu tej energii. Bo człowiek, jak nie będzie dyryżora, to orkiestry nie będzie, zginie. Tak samo Kościół. Ale jeżeli ja będę na jednych nutach patrzeć, a dyryżor będzie po innemu, to też nie będzie. Na co ja tu robię stawkę. Na to, że ludzie powinni się rozwijać progresywnym kierunku. My, tak jak katolicy, my zawsze powinni patrzeć w stronę Rzymu. I my Polacy.

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The consequences of individual revisions of Catholic identity in the face of changes are multiple ways of seeking a new order. Nostalgia for a time when community spirit was wide-spread and its activities’ effects were visible is the dominant element of the narratives as well as of the practices of those who experience the church’s transformation most acutely. My observations have painted a picture of the oldest generation of Catholics’ identity crisis, brought about by the language changes at Murafa’s church. This topic, brought up in parishioners’ private discussions, raises strong emotions. Their vision of “how things should be at the church” does not correspond with the younger generations’ vision, who express the need to function at the church with their language of everyday use. The changes at the church do not determine, however, the complete supersession of Polish as the language of prayer, which by individual choice can still function in the form the faithful are used to. An important role here is played by the media, which supplies a number of opportunities to individually shape a coherent identity according to one’s religious needs. The identity construction is shaped by many factors, as a consequence; an individual’s religious practices do not follow the same patterns. I  believe that, thanks to this, the tutejszy or local identity has been preserved; indeed, it’s often emphasised constituent element, religiosity, is what I would consider Murafa’s particularity.

Bibliography Benedyktowicz, Zbigniew. Portrety „obcego”. Od stereotypu do symbolu. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2000. Engelking, Anna. “Tożsamość „tutejsza” na wielojęzycznym pograniczu. Spostrzeżenia na przykładzie parafiii nackiej.” In: Język a tożsamość na pograniczu kultur, eds. Elżbieta Smułkowa and Anna Engelking. Białystok: Katedra Kultury Białoruskiej Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, 2000.

My powinni kierować swoje poglądy w stronę Rzymu. Papieża. Bo to nasz center. My możemy mieć jakieś tam polityczne centry, jakieś inne strony, od państwa... To człowiek powinien zawsze patrzeć w stronę progresu. A jeżeli ten progres taki świecki, to on skończy się, no, kim by ja był, przyszedł czas pensji [emerytury – MS] i ja zstąpiłsja z tej drogi. Ja mógłby być jakimś tam działaczem, ale ja tak już nie sluchaju... a duchownyj progres, to znaczytsa, rozwijać się w tym kierunku, co ciebie będzie podnosić twój duch. A dlatego, żeby duch podniosłsja duchowno, to za mało modlitwy. A trzeba żeby człowiek otrzymał jakąś energię ze strony Kościoła. A jaka to może być energia ze strony Kościoła. Silne powinny być kazania zachęcające. Jak święty Piotr. On pamiętając, że zaparłsja Pana Jezusa, to całe życie były u niego briozy [bruzdy – MS] od łez. Teraz u nas one wysuszyli, ludzie nie wiedzą, co to znaczy płakać w kościele.” (A sixty-year-old Catholic male).

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Engelking, Anna, Golachowska, Ewa and Anna Zielińska, “Tożsamość, język i pamięć w sytuacji pogranicza. Uwagi wprowadzające.” In: Tożsamość – Język – Rodzina. Z badań na pograniczu słowiańsko-bałtyckim, eds. Anna Engelking, Ewa Golachowska, Anna Zielińska. Warszawa: Instytut Slawistyki PAN, 2008. Geertz, Cliford. “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” In: The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz. New York, Basic Boook, pp. 412–453. Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. Szacka, Barbara. “Pamięć zbiorowa.” In: Wobec przeszłości. Pamięć przeszłości jako element kultury współczesnej, ed. Andrzej Szpociński. Warszawa Inst. im. Adama Mickiewicza, 2005, pp. 17–30. Zowczak, Magdalena. “Z badań kultury religijnej wschodniego Podola. Refleksje wokół kościoła w Murafie.” In: Вінничина: минуле та сьогодення. Краєзнавчі дослідження. Матеріали ХХV Всеукраїнської Наукової Історико-краєзнавч ої Конференції 11–12 жовтня 2013р. (Вінниця: Міністерство освіти і науки України, 2013), pp. 224–240.

Katarzyna Kaczmarska

Narratives about the Pole’s Card and Its Impact on the Identity of Murafa’s Residents Abstract: In Murafa’s local context, Polish identity is unmistakably associated with the Catholic faith. The source of the Polish identification has been the religious tradition, with the Polish language as the language of prayer. After the Pole’s Card Act entered into force in 2008, many Murafa’s residents have been granted this document. I analyse three main attitudes to the Pole’s Card, strongly correlated with age group, that can be found among Murafa’s Catholic population. For representatives of the older generation, having a Pole’s Card is not important and is not associated with their sense of Polishness. Representatives of the middle generation mainly focus on its considerable practical value. It gives them better access to seasonal jobs in Poland. The younger generation – people below the age of twentyfive – have a very pragmatic attitude towards the Pole’s Card, as it gives them an opportunity to receive free education in Poland. Keywords: Pole’s Card, Polish visa policy, inter-generational relations, economic migration, PolishUkrainian relations, identity construction

Going to Murafa for the first time, I  knew that I  wanted to research narratives about the identity of local Poles or Ukrainians of Polish descent. But I did not want to conduct my research exclusively among the older generation; I  also wanted to include in my research representatives from the younger generation who feel they are Ukrainian. Simultaneously, I  was interested in issues surrounding the Pole’s Card, a document introduced four years earlier. I  found the subject to be exceedingly intriguing, as it combines elements of discourse analysis, as well as issues regarding nationality, international politics and migration. I  decided that it would be interesting to confront the Pole’s Card’s ideological premises with its practical application among Eastern Podilia’s residents. I thought it would allow me to look at the attitude of Poles in the East towards Polish identity and PolishUkrainian relations from a broader perspective. I was wondering what motivated Murafa’s residents to apply for the Pole’s Card. What are the meanings ascribed to this document? Do they identify more strongly with their Polish nationality after having received the Card? Or perhaps does such an identification not occur at all? How does holding the Card impact their functioning within the local community? I went to Murafa with the assumption that receiving the Card must have boosted and reinforced its holders’ sense of Polish identity of and made them feel, even if only partly, Polish. My research consisted of four field trips: two in July and November 2012 and two in June and July 2013. Furthermore, in December 2013 and January 2014, I conducted interviews with young people (three women and one man) originating

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from Murafa who had Pole’s Cards and studied in Warsaw. Almost all of my interviewees were Roman Catholic and they, or members of their families, were Pole’s Card holders. Paradoxically, the only Orthodox holder of the Pole’s Card whom I interviewed, a student at a university in Warsaw, was simultaneously the person who had his Polish origin best documented. His great-grandfather came with his wife to Kraków before the revolution to assume the post of an estate’s administrator; this estate belonged to a Polish landowner from a nearby town. All of my interviewees knew Polish to some extent. It quickly turned out that for many of Murafa’s Catholic residents, speaking about religiousness or zarobitki (Ukr. заробітки, work) is easier in Polish than in Ukrainian, and sometimes they were glad to have the opportunity to speak in Polish and they even encouraged me to relinquish my attempts to express myself in Ukrainian.

The Catholic Language – Polish as the Language of Prayer In local discourse, Polish identity is inextricably linked to the Roman Catholic denomination and such words as katolik (Catholic) and Polak (Pole) are still interchangeable. Orthodox residents to this day are still called Ruski (Rusian).1 Many of my interlocutors say straight out that Polish means the same as Catholic. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches definitely divide the Murafa and Klekotyna community. Within local understanding, being Polish is synonymous with the Catholic faith and affiliation with the Catholic Church community. To be able to call oneself Polish, one must be Catholic. The idea of a non-religious Pole from Murafa is completely rejected by my interlocutors who at the same time indicate that within Poland it would be possible, but in Murafa it is not. However, among local Catholics, descendants of the impoverished Polish nobility and peasants brought from Masovia by Podilian magnates, Polish did not survive as the language of everyday life, remaining only as the language of prayer. Even the oldest among my interlocutors do not recall homes where Polish was spoken. The only exception to this rule is the aforementioned Orthodox interviewee studying in Poland, whose great-grandparents left Poland when it was under Russian imperial rule and who recalls that his grandparents sometimes talked at home in Polish to one another. But they did not pass the skill on to their children. In the 1930s and right after the war, as a consequence of the anti-Polish policy carried out in these lands, authorities refused to register Polish nationality

1 Pol:. Ruski, Russian (Ukr. Руський) refers here the Eastern Rite (in Murafa’s case to the Orthodox confession, but in other contexts – also to Greek Catholic confession), and not to the ethnicity, or contemporary Russia or former Soviet Union. In other contexts “Rusian” (Pol. ruski, Ukr. руський) and “Russian” (Pol. rosyjski, Ukr. російс ький, росіянин) may be used interchangeably by interlocutor. In particular, in Polish “ruski” is often applied as a pejorative terms to refer to “Russians” or collectively to Russian-speaking inhabitants of post-Soviet states.

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Photo 1: Corpus Christi procession in Murafa (2014). On the procession feretory, there is an image of the Madonna of Częstochowa and an inscription: “TAKE THE WHOLE PEOPLE UNDER YOUR PROTECTION” (a line from a popular Marian song). Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska.

in internal passports (identification documents), and when imperial documents were replaced by Soviet ones, the Polish nationality was changed to Ukrainian. The language of social communication in Murafa is Ukrainian. Conversations conducted and observations made during the research indicate that the source of declared Polish identity was mostly religious tradition, with the language of prayer at its core. Polish in the religious context is described by Murafa’s residents with the expression the Catholic language, and the notions of Polish nationality and Catholicism are often used synonymously. Polish as the language of prayer, of the sacred sphere, is a very important element of religious identification and often also the way Murafa’s Catholic residents from the middle and older generations, people above the age of 30, identify in terms of nationality. They were brought up in the Soviet Union when religious practices were forbidden or strictly limited and punishable with various repressive measures. People during those times would secretly meet in private homes and later also in churches, but attending church each Sunday could lead to numerous sanctions from local authorities. The content of faith and prayer was conveyed orally in Polish by parents and grandparents; at home, people would read from old Polish prayer books, canticles and songbooks which were passed down with reverence from generation to generation. From 1958

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until his death in 1993, the local parish priest was Antoni Chomicki, a charismatic and distinguished priest for Podilia and Volhynia, often mentioned by my interviewees. Church services and sacraments were celebrated in Polish. My interlocutors claim that the Polish language in Murafa, which previously belonged to the sacred sphere, was at least partially mixed with Ukrainian: “Here, it’s enough to know a hundred words that are unlike Ukrainian; this is our Polish language.”2 It seems to go unnoticed by the residents themselves, but it is noticed by the youth who go to Poland to study and learn Polish from the start. M., who studies in Warsaw, says: “My grandma prays in a weird way: half and half. I didn’t get it before.”3 As my interlocutors claim, to master the local Polish language as the church language, it was enough to know only certain Polish words, those that differed from their equivalents in Ukrainian. However, as Romek, who has been studying in Poland for eight years, shows in his own example, the knowledge of Polish in the younger generation was limited to several basic prayers and was not supported by understanding the meaning of spoken words. The lack of understanding of the prayers’ content by the faithful constituted an argument for local priests to change the language of liturgy to Ukrainian, in line with the Second Vatican Council’s decisions. The gradual change of the language of liturgy and songs in church to Ukrainian, decided and executed top-down by priests for the last 15 years, encountered resistance and often open opposition from the older generation’s members, who were strongly connected to the religious traditions as well as to the Polish services and Polish prayers they had inherited and learned as children from their parents and grandparents. Oftentimes, Polish prayers were the only ones they knew, and as they claim themselves, they only know how to pray in Polish. According to their assessment, Ukrainian, their everyday language, strips prayer and religious ceremony of its sacred aspect and blurs the clear linguistic distinction between Catholic and Orthodox Church ceremonies. For Catholics from Murafa, prayer is both a personal and social experience and does not undergo easy linguistic changes. My interlocutors’ narratives indicate that the Polish language was ascribed significant symbolic value, connected to the religious tradition and the sphere of sacrum that gave one a sense of personal dignity despite Soviet repression. Polish books as family relics were symbols of identity for my interviewees and held enormous value, worthy of personal sacrifice and taking risks in the attempt to transport them from Poland to the Soviet Union. Polish magazines and literature were subscribed as well. Polish as the language of liturgy and prayer categorically distinguished Catholic and Orthodox residents.

2 A 64-year-old male. The original quotation goes as follow: “Tu wystarczy znać sto słów takich jak niepodobny na ukraiński, to jest nasz polski język.” 3 A 22-year-old female. “Moja babcia dziwnie się modli: pół na pół. Wcześniej tego nie rozumiałam.”

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Even though my interviewees learned Polish mainly from prayer books and the church, they now have improved their command of it and use it in the context of labour migration and newly formed transnational connections. One of my female interlocutors teaches her young daughter Polish, for example, when they are making dumplings in the kitchen. She believes that the knowledge of Polish may turn out to be useful in the future, perhaps, when her daughter goes to study in Poland. Meanwhile, parents of the younger generation of Murafians who study in Poland often watch Polish movies and read Polish books brought by their children to Ukraine.

Exam for the Pole’s Card The Pole’s Card is a document confirming Polish decent. It was created for the citizens of former Soviet Union states who found themselves outside Poland’s borders for reasons beyond their control, who do not have Polish citizenship or the permission to reside in Poland and who decide to declare in writing their nationality as Polish and document their Polish lineage. The first project of such a document was drafted as early as 1999 during the Polish Sejm’s third term, but it was finalised only during the fifth term with the September 7, 2007, Act. The act came into force on March 29, 2008 and was very significant for Poles in the East, as on December 21, 2007, Poland joined the Schengen zone, which prevented their earlier visafree entry into Poland. One of the privileges ensured by the Pole’s Card is the reimbursement of the costs of a visa issued to visit Poland. The document also guarantees rights applicable in Poland: the right to legal employment without a permit, to establish and perform business activity on the same conditions as those applying to Polish citizens, free education at all levels, free emergency healthcare, free admission to state museums and a 37 % discount on railway transport.4 The document needs to be renewed every ten years. When creating the Pole’s Card project’s framework, politicians and legislators emphasised that it is the fulfilment of the Polish state’s moral obligation towards compatriots who due to historical developments beyond their control found themselves outside of Poland’s current borders. The Pole’s Card was intended as a repayment of this obligation to Poles residing in the former Soviet Union’s territory by virtue of the fact that on the one hand it constitutes a kind of certificate confirming they belong to the Polish nation and on the other it guarantees its holders certain privileges. The document is intended as an element reinforcing their bond with Poland. To receive the Card, an application needs to be submitted to the Polish Consulate along with a written declaration of “belonging to the Polish nation” and a 4 Information about the Pole’s Card on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website, July 31, 2017. http://www.msz.gov.pl/en/c/MOBILE/foreign_policy/polish_diaspora/ card_of_the_pole/

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document attesting that at least one of the parents or grandparents or two greatgrandparents had Polish nationality or Polish citizenship. After their verification, the Consul conducts an interview to confirm the applicant’s knowledge of the Polish language, national symbols, customs and traditions, basic geographical information about Poland and knowledge about prominent Poles. Verification of the origin and knowledge of the Polish language can be avoided by acquiring an attestation of an entitled Polish or Polonia organisation, confirming the applicant’s active involvement in activities pertaining to Polish language and culture. The Pole’s Card may also be issued to a minor when requested by parents if at least one of them is a Card holder. A minor is exempted from the oral examination with the Consul.5 When the Pole’s Card Act entered into force in mid-2008, Polish consulates in Ukraine started to accept applications to issue the document. Like the Polish identity in Podilia, the institution of the Pole’s Card itself was connected to the Catholic Church from the very beginning. Local priests informed their parishioners about the possibility of obtaining the Card and encouraged them to apply; they also helped them find required documents in parish records. In 2008, before the creation of the Polish Consulate in Vinnytsia, when the closest Polish diplomatic outpost was the Embassy in Kyiv, in the face of the great number of applicants from Murafa and its surroundings, the Consul would personally visit the town, hosted by local priests, collecting documents and conducting exams for the Pole’s Card in the presbytery. As my interviewees recall, during the first two or three years after the act entered into force, the Card was easy to obtain by presenting only extracts from the parish records as proof of Polish origin, and the interview itself was not very demanding. In the face of the Soviet authorities’ anti-Polish policy exercised towards Poles in Podilia, when applying for the Pole’s Card, very few of my interviewees could present Soviet documents or even earlier Imperial Russian documents attesting their parents’, grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ Polish nationality. This is a common problem for many Poles from the former USSR. As a result, initially, Polish consulates accepted extracts from parish records confirming their ancestors’ births, kinship and Roman Catholic sacramental marriages, which were used to confirm their Polish nationality. Sometimes, it led to abuse and forgery of records from parish archives: A: He wrote this information down for me more quickly; it wasn’t even necessary... Although I have... such Polish descent. I have those grannies, grandpas and so on. It’s even written in the archives. But he made it so that he even gave wrong dates.

5 Cf. Ewa Pietraszek, “Wpływ doświadczenia pokoleniowego na recepcję Karty Polaka (Sambor i Łanowice),” in: Na pograniczu „nowej Europy”. Polsko-ukraińskie sąsiedztwo, ed. Magdalena Zowczak (Warszawa: DiG, 2010), pp. 555–565.

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They were made up. We couldn’t find out right away when my grandpa was born, or my grandma. We made up my information so quickly. KK: So he would forge these documents a little? A: Well, he did... But don’t be upset... We wanted this forging. But the information is there; you can find it, my name is there. And it was forged, because [it was not always possible – K.K.] to find everything which was true. KK: So when someone didn’t have documents or didn’t have information from the parish records, then N. made them up? A: He helped a lot. I keep thinking that he made it for somebody’s good, not to harm anyone, for example. For the good of the issue, not the opposite. I believe that if the aim is harna [beautiful], then you can obtain it in various ways. Maybe it’s not true, but I believe so... KK: And who is he? A: A good man. He, too, received a lot of persecution from us, as you say... Well, on the one hand, he had difficulties to write all this and collect information. He didn’t have access to all archive records. I helped him with all that forging. And the forging went like that: there are people who have Polish origin, and there are those who almost don’t have it. And now... they aren’t in these parish registries, or it’s rarely mentioned that someone was Polish. It just isn’t there. And that’s why the Orthodox church or your Polish office makes some [concessions – K.K.]. With this Pole’s Card... to give these people some sense of who they are. To reclaim their roots.6

6 A 45-year-old male. The original quotation goes as follow: A: On mi szybciej te dane zapisywał, że nie trzeba było takich… Chociaż ja mam… takie pochodzenie polskie. Mam tych babci, dziaduszek i tak dalej. Że zapisane są nawet w archiwach. Ale on tak zrobił, że nawet nieprawidłowe daty dał. Takie wydumane były. My nie znaleźliśmy od razu, kiedy mój dziadek urodził się, albo na przykład babcia. My dane moje przyspieszone takie robili. KK: Czyli on fałszował tak trochę te dokumenty? A: No fałszował… Ale ty nie przeżywaj… My chcieli tego fałszowania. Ale dane są, można znaleźć, moje nazwisko. Ale tak było zafałszowane, bo nie zawsze [można – K.K.] znaleźć to wszystko prawdziwe. KK: To jak ktoś nie miał dokumentów albo brakowało mu danych z ksiąg parafialnych, to N. je robił? A: Pomagał dużo. Ja tak sobie dumam, że on to robił dla dobra człowieka, a nie dla jego zła na przykład. Dla dobra sprawy, a nie odwrotnie, wskażom. Ja wierzom, że jak harna cel, to można różnymi sposobami. Może to nieprawda, ale ja tak wierzom… KK: A kim on jest? A: Dobrym człowiekiem. Też zaznał od nas dużo prześladowań, jak to się mówi… No z jednej strony, że trudności miał, żeby to pisać i dane zbierać. Nie do wszystkich ksiąg archiwnych miał dostęp. Ja jemu pomagał z tym wszystkim fałszowaniem. Z tym fałszowaniem to tak: są takie ludzie, że mają

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My interlocutor then mentioned that his acquaintance also helped the Orthodox residents who requested documents from church archives to apply for the Pole’s Card. For assistance in finding or fabricating records from parish registries, small voluntary donations were collected. In my interviewee’s narrative, the Pole’s Card is perceived as a kind of compensation for Soviet repressions against the Polish population and the loss of relations with Poland to which local Catholics, descendants of Poles, were entitled. Obtaining the Card is regarded as a good end that justifies illegal means used to fulfil it, that is, falsifying church archive records. The Pole’s Card is supposed to allow its holders to “reclaim their [Polish] roots” and a sense of Polish identity. For the last few years it has been more difficult to obtain the Card; church records are no longer accepted; today it is necessary to submit state documents confirming the ancestors’ Polish nationality and the interview is more difficult. The examined applicants are being quizzed not only about Polish national symbols but also Polish traditions and customs, prominent Poles and tourist information about Poland. Sometimes the questions are quite surprising; for instance, asking about applicants’ life plans or questions with various possible answers. It is now required to prove a better command of Polish than before. Criteria of issuing the Pole’s Card are becoming increasingly stricter. BC: Here the consul would come to Murafa; he collected documents. We would greet him with bread and everything, and talk to him in Polish. He didn’t ask me and my husband much. When he saw that the people who left talked in Polish, he just asked this and that... what about... I can’t remember... some questions, not many. (...) And then when my daughter was applying for the Pole’s Card, she had to try three times. (...) In Vinnitsya. Three times. The first time, when she was 15, she answered everything, only for one question she couldn’t give some kind of a real answer, about who she wanted to be in future. That was the question... She didn’t say anything, she was so confused. And the Consul said that she could use some more learning. Then the second time (...) it was before she was 16, she had 11 days, or 7 days... until she was 16. And she was already a student in Poland in a Catholic high school in Warsaw. (...) And the Consul said we should come after the 19th, after her 16th birthday, but she had to go back to school, so she didn’t go. And the third time, when she came home for the holidays, then there was no problem [to receive the Pole’s Card – K.K.]7

to pochodzenie polskie, a są tacy, co u nich prawie brak tego pochodzenia polskiego. Ale teraz… w tych książkach parafialnych o chrztach czy ślubach nie ma czy rzadko jest zapisane, że był Polakiem. No nie ma tego. I dlatego cerkiew czy urząd wasz polski idzie nam na ustupki [ustępstwa – K.K.]. Czy na przykład z tą Kartą Polaka… żeby dać tym ludziom trochę odczuć, kim oni są. Odzyskać swoje korzenie 7 A 44-year-old female. The original quotation goes as follow:  “BC:  Tutaj konsul przyjeżdżał do Murafy, zabierał dokumenty. My tak witali pana konsula chlebem,

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WM: Now I  know that it’s very hard [to get the Pole’s Card  – K.K.] they ask so much, about some Polish traditions, and something else... Well it’s really hard. I, for example, was also asked: who the president of Poland was, what the flag was like – such basic things. I remember that for the first time I didn’t pass this oral exam, I mean the interview. Because he [the consul – K.K.] asked me, and I hadn’t been to Poland yet. And so he asked me:  “The most famous places in Poland?” (...) And I asked: “Cities?” And he said: “No, places”. If it was about cities, I could name some: Wrocław, Poznań, Kraków, Warszawa. But he said: “places”. Well, what places, I hadn’t even been to Poland, I don’t know any places. I said: “I don’t know”. “When you know, then you can come back.8

Tania’s father,9 who works at construction sites in Poland, has his own theory about the large number of Pole’s Cards issued in the region. OS: You understand, to make a consulate in Vinnytsia, you need many people of Polish origin. They made it so in the beginning. Now with this Pole’s Card there is no point. MS: [Church – K.K.] Documents don’t mean anything now. OS: It was a moment like that.

wszystkim, i mówili do niego po polsku. Mnie z mężem nie bardzo pytał. Jak zobaczył, że te ludzie, którzy wychodzili, mówili po polsku, to tak tylko wypytał… o co pytał… już nie pamiętam… jakieś pytania, nie dużo. (…) A już później jak córeczka brała Kartę Polaka, to chodziła trzy razy. (…) W Winnicy. Trzy razy, Pierwszy raz, jak miała 15 lat, na wszystko odpowiedziała, tylko na jedno pytanie nie mogła zrobić jakiejś takiej prawdziwej odpowiedzi, kim chciałaby być w przyszłości. Takie było pytanie… Nic nie odpowiedziała, taka była zmieszana. I pan konsul powiedział, że nada jeszcze pouczyć się. Potem na drugi raz (…) to było przed 16 lat, wystarczyło jej 11 dni, czy 7 dni… do 16 lat. A już studiowała w Polsce w liceum katolickim w Warszawie. (...) I pan konsul mówił, że przyjdziecie po 19-tym, jak będzie miała 16 lat, ale ona musiała wyjechać na studia, to nie przyszła. I trzeci raz, kiedy przyjechała na wakacje do domu, to już bez problemu [wyrobiła Kartę Polaka – K.K.].” 8 A 21-year-old female. The original quotation goes as follow: “WM: Teraz wiem, że już jest bardzo ciężko [wyrobić Kartę Polaka – K.K.] pytają się już tyle, jakieś tradycje polskie, coś tam, coś tam… No to jest naprawdę ciężko. Mnie na przykład jeszcze pytali tam: prezydent Polski, flaga – takie podstawowe rzeczy. Pamiętam, że pierwszego razu nie zdałam jeszcze tego ustnego egzaminu, to znaczy tej rozmowy. Bo on [konsul – K.K.] się mnie spytał, a jeszcze nie byłam w Polsce. No i on się mnie pyta: Najbardziej znane miejsca w Polsce? (…) Ja pytam się: Miasta? A on: Nie, miejsca. No miasta to bym nazwała jakieś: Wrocław, Poznań, Kraków, Warszawa. A ten mówi: miejsca. No jakie miejsca, jeszcze w Polsce nawet nie byłam, nie znam żadnych miejsc. Mówię: nie wiem. No to jak pani będzie wiedziała, to wtedy pani przyjdzie.” 9 Names of the interviewees were changed.

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TS: And now we don’t know what it’s gonna be in 10 years... No, it’s 8 years now [she got her card 2 years ago – K.K.] and there won’t be a Pole’s Card. We don’t know if they will extend it for us.10

As fate would have it, Tania’s fears proved right; when after graduating with a Bachelor’s degree she wanted to continue with her MA, it was required of her to renew the Pole’s Card which she received as a minor. Due to the lack of official documents confirming her Polish nationality, currently required by the procedure, Tania gave up the idea of continuing her education in Poland. My interviewees’ narratives testify to the arbitrary nature of a decision as to whether an exam for the Pole’s Card has been successful or not and the sense of uncertainty as to the changing rules and future rights to which having the card entitles one to. My interlocutors, who were brought up in the Soviet Union, or in the younger generation’s case during the politically unstable years after Ukraine regained its independence, being witnesses to universal corruption in the public sphere, do not trust state institutions and documents, even those offered to them by the Polish state. They also realise that Polish visa policy towards Ukraine’s citizens, even those who hold the Pole’s Card, depends upon the entire European Union’s visa policy and will also depend upon the relationship between Ukraine and the EU.

Attitudes of Murafa’s Catholic Residents Towards the Pole’s Card Among my Catholic interviewees, residents of Murafa and Klekotyna (and therefore those who did not have any problems obtaining the Pole’s Card), we can distinguish three attitudes closely correlated with age and social status (having a family, children, etc.). A similar classification of the observed attitudes towards the Pole’s Card connected to age and life experience was proposed by Ewa Pietraszek in her research on the PolishUkrainian border.11 However, the area of that research conducted in Sambir and Lanovychi12 was very different from mine; therefore, 10 TS – a 20-year-old woman; OS – father of TS, age ca. 45; MS – mother of TS, age ca. 45. The original quotation goes as follow: OS: Rozumie pani, żeby był konsul w Winnicy, to trzeba za dużo ludzi polskiego pochodzenia. To na początku oni tak zrobili. Teraz tam nie ma sensu z tą Kartą Polaka. MS: Dokumenty [kościelne – K.K.] teraz nic nie znaczą. OS: To był taki moment. TS: I teraz nie wiadomo, jak za 10 lat… Nie, już 8 lat [wyrabiała Kartę Polaka 2 lata temu – K.K.] i ta Karta Polaka nie będzie. Nie wiadomo, czy dalej nam przedłużą. 1 1 Ewa Pietraszek, Wpływ. 12 Ukr. Самбір, Лановичі (Lviv Oblast).

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conclusions from Ewa Pietraszek’s research differ from my studies’ results in Murafa. The typology described next, based on in-depth interviews I conducted and participatory observations, is useful to analyse narratives about the Pole’s Card, but it does not fully describe the entire spectrum of individual attitudes towards this document that can be to observe around Murafa. We should also mention people (mostly Orthodox Christians) who had no possibility of obtaining the Pole’s Card and those who are indifferent both towards the document and towards Polish nationality.

I The Older Generation These are people born in the Soviet era: before, during the Second World War or in the first years following it so over 60 years old. Holding the Pole’s Card is of no importance to them, and it is not related to a sense of Polish identity or individual national identification. They do not have the Card and they see no reason to obtain one: KK: And do you have the Pole’s Card? MS: No, I didn’t get one. KK: Why not? MS: Whatever for... I could have done it...13   You know... I don’t concern myself with such things. For one thing, they didn’t do it for me. (...) Among these young people, a lot of them get those cards. Because they want to go to work, they go for three months, half a year, a year to Poland, so they get a Card. And we don’t get it, because we don’t have a reason to go anymore.14

The few residents of Murafa who decidedly declare themselves to be Polish and manifest their Polish identity, who are regarded both by themselves and by other villagers as local “defenders of the Polish nationality” and Polish language in liturgy, belong to this generation as well. They do not have the Card and do not declare any willingness to apply for it.

13 A 77-year-old female. The original quotation goes as follow: KK: A u pani jest Karta Polaka? MS: Nie, nie zrobiłam. KK: A dlaczego? MS: A po co… Mogłam zrobić…” 14 A 67-year-old male. The original quotation goes as follow: “Ja, wie pani… Nie zajmuję się tym. Bo to nie dla mnie, to raz. (…) Z tych młodych to oni sobie wyrabiają dużo, młodych. Bo chcą do pracy jechać, jadą na trzy miesiące, na pół roku, na rok do Polski, to wyrabiają sobie te Karty. A my nie wyrabiamy sobie, bo nam już nie ma co jechać.”

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Conclusions from my interviews with Murafa’s older generation of residents differ dramatically from the results of Ewa Pietraszek’s research conducted upon the same age group in Sambir and Lanivtsi, where the Pole’s Card had a great symbolic meaning and value as a document attesting Polish nationality. It may stem from the fact that these towns’ oldest residents remember the era when they were part of the Second Polish Republic (during the interwar period) with a Polish administration and education system. They were citizens of Poland then, and now, when the opportunity presents itself, they want to obtain a document that certifies their Polish nationality. Since Poland’s second partition (1773), central Podilia has remained outside of Poland’s borders and even its oldest residents have never been citizens of Poland. The interviews I conducted with older Murafa residents indicate that they see no reason to apply for the Pole’s Card; it has neither any symbolic meaning for them nor does it lead to personal economic profit. In their narratives, the Pole’s Card does not appear as a document that certifies their Polish national identification, but as a document intended for the young to travel to Poland and the West.

II The Middle Generation This is the broadest category of respondents described in this study. It includes people born and raised in the Soviet Union after 1950, so those who are between 30 and 60 years old, in their working age. They have families and children. They find temporary, seasonal work (the so-called zarobitki) in Poland, mainly in agriculture and food processing, mostly for one to two months. More women than men migrate, travelling in groups to places of employment in Poland that they already know, where they have been going each year, often for several years. These places are mostly regions specialising in orchards and gardens: Warka, Grójec, Czerwińsk and Nowa Sól. Priests form local parishes and Podilian Catholic organisations often serve as brokers who facilitate their contact with employers in Poland. Igor describes how he and his wife found seasonal work in Poland the following way: We go to one place, to one [lady] farmer; that’s where I went with my wife. A couple of years ago I went to church, there was a rumour going around that they needed people. People from the church were coming, a priest came to us, left a phone number, so she phoned somewhere to Caritas in Kamianets; she spoke, there were more details and that’s how we went.15

15 A 40-year-old male. The original quotation goes as follow:  “ W jedno miejsce jeździmy, do jednej gospodyni, tam z żoną byłem. Parę lat temu tu do kościoła pryszedłem, była taka plotka, że potrzebni ludzie. Tu z kościoła chodzili, tu u nas był ksiądz, dał numer telefonu, to ona gdzieś dzwoniła w Kamieniec w Caritas, rozmawiała, tam była dokładniejsza informacja, więc pojechaliśmy w taki sposób.”

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Photo 2–3: Photos from one of the interlocutor’s collection, taken during zarobitki (short-term labour migration) in Poland: Cleaning train carriages and making wreaths. Murafa. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska.

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These people have an extended network of contacts in places of employment, so sometimes they go to work even multiple times in one year. A  yearly cycle of zarobitki proceeds as follows:  apple packing in cold store (winter, spring), cauliflower crop (from spring to autumn), asparagus (from late April to the end of June), strawberries (May–June), cherries (July), raspberries (summer), apples (September), making Christmas wreaths (from late October to December) and yearround work in a sewing room, on a poultry farm, in meat-processing plants and cleaning jobs. Men often find work in construction sites for several months, and alongside women, picking asparagus, which requires tough physical labour. Seasonal workers go abroad to earn money for their families, not to fulfil their personal needs. After their work in Poland is done, they return home. Having a Pole’s Card is of enormous practical (economic) importance to them. It allows them to acquire a free annual visa to Poland and easily find seasonal work. They also value 37 % discounted train fares within Poland. My interlocutor Maria appreciates these benefits: “It’s good that we have the Pole’s Card, because train tickets are cheaper and the visa is free.”16 The Pole’s Card is a document only for slightly cheaper train fares. Because no one there pays attention if you have the Pole’s Card or not. Let me repeat, this Pole’s Card is proof that there are Poles in the family. I don’t look at my family like: are they Poles, or are they Ukrainians. For me all people are people. For me, there’s no difference if they’re Poles or Romanians; what counts is if they’re good people.17 It’s somehow better at the border. Maybe because after the Pole’s Card (came into existence) we are less trouble. Because all these invitations: they may be false, they may be something else. And registering for residence. And here we are easy; a person can give you work with the Card. And what I liked on trains is that a lady told me [about the reduced fare which Pole’s Card holders are entitled to  – K.K.], because I would ride just like that and pay the full price.18

16 A 57-year-old female. The original quotation goes as follow: “No dobrze, że mamy Kartę Polaka, bo taniej bilet kosztuje i wiza bezpłatnie.” 17 A 37-year-old female. The original quotation goes as follow: “Karta Polaka to tylko dokument do tańszych trochę przejazdów. Bo tam nikt nie zwraca uwagi, czy ty masz Kartę Polaka, czy nie. Ja powtórzę, że ta Karta Polaka, dowód jest, że Polaki w rodzinie. Ja liczę, że ja nie mam rodziny, co Polaki, co Ukraińcy. Ja, że wszystkie ludy to są wszystkie ludy. Dla mnie nie ma różnicy, czy Polacy, czy Rumuni, ważne, czy dobry człowiek.” 18 A 43-year-old male. The original quotation goes as follow: “Na granicy jakoś lepiej. Może dlatego, że z nami mniej kłopotu po Karcie Polaka. Bo te wszystkie robią zaproszenia: i fałszywe, i różne. I meldowania. A tu spokojnie, człowiek może cię wziąć do pracy z Kartą. I to mi się spodobało w pociągach, pani mi powiedziała [o zniżce przysługującej posiadaczom Karty Polaka – K.K.], bo ja tak jeździłem i płaciłem za bilet.”

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The Pole’s Card helped me a lot. Just as my mom got the Pole’s Card and came one time, when I was still at school [in Warsaw – K.K.]. It was right after getting the Pole’s Card and she went to work for the first time. Seasonal work, or something like that, I think. And she had a brain stroke. And the Pole’s Card covers free emergency medical aid. If it wasn’t for the Card, we would have had to pay. In Poland, healthcare isn’t the cheapest. Generally, it was a lot for my family. Financially, we might not have made it otherwise.19

Even though my interlocutors regard the Pole’s Card in a very pragmatic, transactional manner, applying for the card, in many cases, searching out documents in the archives, in the Murafa parish church and the Vinnitsya state archive, as well as the interview with the Polish Consul General in Vinnitsya (or before the consulate in Vinnitsya was established, in the Polish Embassy in Kyiv) contributed to their reflecting upon their own origin and national identity. In conversation, they often legitimise their identity and the fact that they hold the Pole’s Card by referring to their ancestors, sometimes semi-mythical as “true, pure Poles.” Another measure for the legitimisation of their origin are old Catholic prayer books, canticles, song books in Polish and paintings inherited from parents and grandparents. For this age group, Polish still remains the language of sacrum, of domestic prayer; but now it has mainly become the language of exchange, due to their working visits to Poland. The value mentioned by almost all my interviewees, regardless of their age, is the Catholic faith and being part of the church community. As I was told by Anna, mother of ten children, five of whom have the Pole’s Card: “Our grandparents, great-grandparents and parents were born into this faith and we don’t want anything more; we will just live and we will die in this faith.”20 The Catholic Church is the institution around which the construction of my interlocutors’ identity is focused. The ceremonies which cement this identity are traditionally observed religious holidays (Easter, the Sharhorod Calvary’s Way of the Cross, the Corpus Christi procession, Assumption, Christmas, parish fairs), pilgrimages to holy sites both in Podilia and abroad (e.g., Częstochowa and Rome) as well as family religious celebrations:  christenings, the First Communion, weddings, funerals, and so on. Murafa’s Catholics make pilgrimages to nearby Latyczów and Jasna Góra in Częstochowa, undoubtedly considered as the holiest place in my interviewees’

19 A 23-year-old male. The original quotation goes as follow:  “Karta Polaka bardzo pomogła mi. Akurat jak moja mama wyrobiła Kartę Polaka i kiedyś przyjechała, jeszcze w szkole [w Warszawie – K.K.] się uczyłem. Akurat to było po wyrobieniu Karty Polaka i pierwszy raz ona pojechała do pracy. Chyba sezonowe prace czy coś. I miała wylew do mózgu. A Karta Polka przewiduje pierwszą pomoc bezpłatną. Jakby nie Karta Polaka, to musielibyśmy płacić. W Polsce medycyna nie jest najtańsza. Generalnie to bardzo dużo było dla mojej rodziny. Finansowo może nie dalibyśmy rady.” 20 A 55-year-old female. The original quotation goes as follow:  “Nasi dziadkowie, pradziadkowie, rodzice w tej wierze urodzili się i my też nic więcej nie chcemy, tylko w tej wierze będziemy żyć i umrzemy.”

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narratives. As Anna, a literature teacher at the local school, told me:  “My first association with Poland is Częstochowa; it’s really the first thing.” Later in the conversation Anna said: AG: Our ancestors were real Poles, that’s why now we have the Pole’s Card. (...) MS: And what does it mean that real Poles were here? AG: Well, that they really were Polish... Now we are Ukrainian, really. We are Poles, but we have Ukrainian citizenship and we live according to Ukrainian culture and traditions. And whether we want it or not, there really is something Ukrainian. Polish traditions remained only in what our parents gave us. (...) When there are both the Orthodox and the Catholic churches, then if we were Ukrainians or Orthodox, we would not take our children to be baptized in the Catholic church. (...) It’s a miracle that we still had that passport that said grandpa was Polish. It was very easy to get [the Pole’s Card – K.K.]. My great-grandfather, or even further, great-great-great, on my father’s side, he came with Count Potocki [Count Joachim Karol Potocki – K.K.]. And they were kind of friends. It was my grandfather, no, not grandfather, but great-great-grandfather who was some kind of a musician, or some such; he came with Count Potocki and was the organist in the church. And he had a plot of land. (...) and when I was looking for these papers for my husband and me in the archive, I found that his great-grandma and greatfather... great-grandfather on his father’s side, were Dorota and Jakub. These are purely Polish first names. We don’t have them in Ukraine. They were really pure Poles. KK: So you don’t have first names like that in Murafa any more? AG: No. There haven’t been any names like that for some seventy years. MS: Is it still said that Catholics are Polish? AG: Well yes; it is often said that Catholics are Polish, but it is hard to say that about all Poles... but it really, really is like that. Because if it’s all passed from father to son, from mother to daughter, then it says in documents that they are Ukrainians, because the passport is Ukrainian, and it says that I’m Ukrainian, but I really have documents that say I have Polish roots. (...) If we didn’t get this Pole’s Card, we wouldn’t know either if we’re Polish, or if only these traditions were passed on to us. And we keep these traditions: my father is Catholic, I am Catholic and my husband is Catholic. Here people say: Poles, Poles. Once they used to say: not Poles, but Ukrainians. But really, we didn’t know. Only when we got these cards saying that we can apply for the Pole’s Card, then we started to search if we’re really Polish or not. And when we started to look, we found that we are. KK: And after you got the Pole’s Card, did you feel more like a Pole? AG: Well, I think so. This piece of plastic won’t make what’s here [she puts her hand on her heart]. And whether there is this plastic, or not, if it’s here, then I feel I’m Polish. It’s you who are Polish. If not, then the piece of plastic won’t help. But that’s only my subjective assessment.21

21 A 44-year-old woman. The original quotation goes as follow: AG: Nasze przodki byli Polakami prawdziwymi, dlatego teraz mamy Kartę Polaka. (…)

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Many of my interlocutors very clearly differentiate citizenship and nationality inscribed in Ukrainian documents from their personal national identity. This identity is confirmed by old holy pictures and prayer books in Polish as well as by traditions passed on from generation to generation and their roots’ orally transmitted memory. At the same time, my interlocutors emphasise that the decisive factor in this regard is personal identification, “what’s in one’s heart.” A significant

MS: A co to znaczy, że byli prawdziwi Polacy tutaj? AG: No że naprawdę byli Polakami, bo… Teraz już jest Ukraińcami, naprawdę. Jest Polakami, ale obywatelstwo mamy ukraińskie i żyjemy za kulturą i tradycjami ukraińskimi. I chcemy, nie chcemy, ale naprawdę jest ukraińskie coś też. Tradycje polskie pozostali tylko tym, co nam rodzice nasi przekazali. (…) Jak tu jest i prawosławna [cerkiew – K.K.] i katolicki kościół, to gdyby byli Ukraińcami czy prawosławnymi, to tak naprawdę by nie ponieśli dzieci do kościoła do chrztu. (…) To cudownie został ten paszport, w którym było zapisane, że dziadek jest Polak. To było bardzo lekko zrobić [Kartę Polaka – K.K.]. Mój pra-pradziadek albo jeszcze więcej, pra-pra-pra, ze strony ojca, to przyjechali z Grafem Potockim [hrabią Joachimem Karolem Potockim – K.K.]. I byli jakimiś tam przyjaciółmi. To dziadek, to nie będzie dziadek tylko to będzie pra-pra… dziadek, był jakimś tam czy muzykantem, czy jakimś, i przyjechał z Grafem Potockim i w kościele był organistą. I tam kawałek ziemi miał. (…) A kiedy szukałam w archiwie dla męża i dla siebie te dokumenty, to znalazłam, że jego prababka i praojciec… pradziadek ze strony ojca to Dorota i Jakub. To czysto polskie imiona. Na Ukrainie takich nie ma. To naprawdę czyste Polacy. KK: Czyli takie imiona teraz w Murafie się nie zdarzają? AG: Nie. Naprawdę takich imion to nie ma już lat siedemdziesiąt gdzieś. MS: Mówi się wciąż jeszcze, że katolicy to Polacy? AG: No tak, mówi się często, że katolicy to Polacy, ale ciężko mówić, że to wszyscy Polacy… ale naprawdę, naprawdę tak jest. Bo jeżeli to wszystko przekazuje się od ojca do syna, od matki do córki, to jest w dokumentach zapisani Ukraińcami, bo naprawdę paszport ma ukraiński, gdzie napisane, że Ukrainka, ale naprawdę te dokumenty, które mam, że korzenie mam polskie. (…) Gdybyśmy nie zrobili tej Karty Polaka, to też byśmy nie wiedzieli, czy jesteśmy Polakami, czy to tylko przekazywane nam te tradycje. I  my te tradycje mamy: jest katolikiem ojciec, ja jest katoliczką i mąż jest katolikiem. Tu ludzie mówią: Polacy, Polacy. Kiedyś mówili: nie Polacy, tylko Ukraińcy. Ale naprawdę to nie wiedzielim. Dopiero jak otrzymaliśmy te wizytówki, że można otrzymać Kartę Polaka, to dopiero zaczęliśmy szukać, czy naprawdę jesteśmy Polakami, czy nie jesteśmy. I kiedy już zaczęli szukać, to znaleźli, że tak. KK: A czy po tym, jak dostała pani Kartę Polaka, to bardziej się pani poczuła Polką? AG: No myślę, że tak. Ten szmat plastiki nie zrobi tego, co tu jest [kładzie rękę na sercu]. I jest ten plastik, czy nie ma tego plastika, to jeśli tu jest, to czuję się Polką. To ty jesteś Polką. Jeśli nie, to ten plastik nic nie pomoże. Ale to moja taka subiektywna ocena.”

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factor in confirming one’s Polish identity was searching archives for documents attesting to one’s Polish descent, which is required to apply for the Pole’s Card. At the same time, obtaining the Pole’s Card reinforced the connection with being Polish and made some of my interviewees feel more like Poles than they had ever felt before. However, as Anna stated, holding the Card is in itself not the decisive factor here, but rather the process of obtaining it, as well as reflections and self-identification which are related to it. A noble family crest, its name and family souvenirs were supposed to confirm my interviewees’ noble Polish descent. They often speak about Polish nationality transferred alongside faith and traditions from one generation to the next, and express the conviction that if history had taken a different course, they would be living within Poland’s borders: My aunt told me that her father – my grandfather, my grandfather’s father, which means my great-grandfather, came here from Poland to build a church. It was back in eighteen-hundred-I-don’t-remember-exactly. He was from Białystok. (...) She even said that there was a crest here; there was a gerb there that my great-grandfather left to my grandfather. And the grandfather had one son, so he left it to him.22 KK: Did you feel you were Polish before getting the Pole’s Card? BC: When I was going to Poland, I felt I was Polish. Because we are Poles from the East. Maybe if times were different, we would be living in Poland. Those were different times; this here became Ukraine. Our grandparents, great-grandparents lived here, just like my father and us do.23 AF: (...) Or for example with this Pole’s Card... to let these people feel a little who they are. Reclaim their roots. KK: Does the Pole’s Card give these people the sense of being Polish? AF: I think... that whoever wants to benefit from it can do it. I, for instance, I feel my Polish roots. And I can live in Ukraine or anywhere else. On the one hand... of course it helps, it helps a little. It reveals this Polish identity. I believe in its power. [laughter] Although it’s made artificially, it wasn’t from Adam and Eve after all.

22 A 54-year-old female. The original quotation goes as follow: “Ciocia mi opowiadała, że jej ojciec - mój dziadek, mojego dziadka ojciec, to znaczy mój pradziadek, przyjechał tutaj z Polski budować tutaj kościół. To było jeszcze w 1800-nie-pamiętam-którymroku. To on tam z Białegostoka. (…) Ona nawet mówiła, że tutaj taki gerb był, tam taki gerb był, to mój pradziadek zostawił mojemu dziadku. A dziadek miał jeden syn, to temu synu oddał.” 23 A 58-year-old female. The original quotation goes as follow: KK: Czyli pani czuła się Polką zanim Kartę Polaka dostała? BC: Jak ja jeździłam do Polski, to czułam się Polaczką. Bo my jesteśmy Polacy ze Wschodu. Może jakby były inne czasy, to my toże byśmy mieszkali w Polsce. Inne czasy były, tutaj została Ukraina. Nasze dziadki, pradziadki, i tak i my, i ojciec, tu mieszkamy.”

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Photo 4: A keepsake from Jasna Góra pilgrimage (the main Marian sanctuary in Poland). Murafa. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. You yourself believe that it can do something... because you can do something, travel at half-price, find your friends or enemies, colleagues; it helps in life. If you make concessions for someone, he gets back more: for himself, for the culture, for everything. (...) One lady told me that my family, my kin, one man came with Count Potocki; they were building this church, settled around that time, around these parts. (...) I think to myself that now with this Card I will go again [to Poland – K.K.]. It gives me this hope. Because I almost lost the relationship [with the family in Poland – K.K.], but there is the Card. So, the Card has its importance.24

24 A 45-year-old male. The original quotation goes as follow: “AF: (…) Czy na przykład z tą Kartą Polaka… żeby dać tym ludziom trochę odczuć, kim oni są. Odzyskać swoje korzenie. KK: Czy Karta Polaka daje tym ludziom poczucie polskości? AF: Ja myślę… ja dumaju, że kto chce z tego skorzystać, to może. Ja dajmy na to odczuwam te swoje korzenie polskie. A żyć może na Ukrainie czy gdzie indziej. Z jednej strony… wiadomo, że to pomaga, pomaga trochę. Ona odkrywa tę polską tożsamość. Ja wieru w jej moc. [śmiech] Chociaż ona zrobiona

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In narratives by Murafa’s residents from the middle generation, alongside the dimension of economic benefits received thanks to the Pole’s Card, a kind of compensation is featured for the hardships of preserving tradition and the Catholic faith as well as for Soviet repressions towards Polish people; a compensation which local Catholics, descendants of Poles, deserve. The Pole’s Card is supposed to recreate the relationship with Poland which was lost during the Soviet era, it is supposed to “reveal this Polish identity.”

III The Younger Generation In this group I included people born in the period during and right after the collapse of the Soviet Union – in the 1990s. They are under 25 years old; they do not have their own families or children yet. They went or want to go to Poland for education, for high school, or more often, after graduating from a local school, for higher education. That is their reason for learning Polish. People already studying in Poland learned Polish in special courses, organised, for instance, in the nearby town of Zhmerynka,25 or in Poland, during so-called year zero, organised for foreigners who want to take up studies in Polish. Thanks to special assistance programmes for Poles in the East, many of my interviewees graduated from Warsaw’s Stanisław Kostka Potocki High School. All of my interlocutors who study in Poland hold the Pole’s Card. Having the Pole’s Card is of enormous practical importance; it allows them to study in Poland for free, receive scholarships and covers health insurance. Many of them receive a special scholarship from the Polish government, intended for persons of Polish descent from former USSR states who want to receive higher education in Poland. The wish to study in Poland was their motivation to apply for the Pole’s Card. This is how Irina describes going to Poland to study: “It was my mom’s decision [to go and study in Poland – K.K.]. She just went: it’s the West, you need to leave Ukraine, there is no future here.”26 sztucznie, nie była przecież od Adama i Ewy. Ty sama wierzysz, że ona może coś zrobić… bo może coś człowiek zrobić, pojechać za pół kosztu, odnaleźć swoich przyjaciół czy nieprzyjaciół, kolegów, pomaga w życiu. Jak idzie się człowiekowi na ustupki [ustępstwa – K.K.], to on więcej wtedy odzyskuje: dla siebie, dla kultury, dla wszystkiego. (…) Tu jedna pani mi mówiła, że rodzina moja, ród mój, to jeden pan z Grafem Potockim przyjechał, budowali ten kościół, osiedlili się w tych czasach, na tych terenach. (…) Ja sobie myślę, że teraz z tą Kartą jeszcze pojadę [do Polski – K.K.]. Ona daje mi taką nadzieję. Bo związki [z rodziną w Polsce – K.K.] już prawie utraciłem, a Karta jest. Więc Karta też ma swoje znaczenie. 2 5 Ukr. Жмеринка. 26 A 22-year-old female. The original quotation goes as follow: “To decyzja mojej mamy [o wyjeździe na studia do Polski – K.K.]. Ona to normalnie, że Zachód, że trzeba wyjechać z Ukrainy, że tu nie ma przyszłości.”

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For my interlocutors from the younger generation, the only motivation to learn Polish was leaving to study in Poland and obtaining better life prospects resulting from receiving education in Poland. Initially, they learned the basics of the Polish language on their own, watching Polish TV programmes, and from their families; then they perfected their skills in Polish language courses organised in nearby Zhmerynka, or more often in Poland, during special Polish courses for foreigners. The only person I encountered from the younger generation of Murafians, who emphatically declares her Polish nationality and does not feel that she is Ukrainian, is Krystyna. She has been studying in Warsaw for over six years; she has documented Polish origins and intends to apply for Polish citizenship. K: I am of Polish descent. (...) On my father’s side, I’m a true Pole-Pole, and on my mother’s side not so much, I only have these church documents and everything is mixed up, because we also have Russians, but not Ukrainians. (...) I proved everything from my father’s side, where it’s less complicated, and about my mother I don’t know who was who. (...) When I applied for the Pole’s Card, then I changed my birth certificate, because I used to have Ukrainian nationality in it. And then I changed it, I lied that I lost it [laughter]. I used to have the Soviet one. I was born in Ukraine that was no longer Soviet, but they didn’t have new documents yet, because I was born in 1991, so they gave me the old document, and it said that my nationality is Ukrainian. And later I exchanged it for a new one; there is this new standard, and there is nothing where the nationality used to be. And they accepted it like that. Because, you know, that wouldn’t be right to apply for the Pole’s Card when it says that you’re Ukrainian. And now it says everywhere that I’m Polish. (...) Nationality isn’t marked in our passports, but if it was, I would write that I’m Polish. KK: What will Polish citizenship give you? IS: A confirmation. That I am who I am.27

27 A 22-year-old female. The original quotation goes as follow: K: Ja mam pochodzenie polskie. (…) Ze strony ojca to jestem taka PolkaPolka, a ze strony matki no to nie, mam tylko te kościelne dokumenty i takie wymieszane, bo też mamy Rosjanów, ale Ukraińców to nie. (…) Ja to wszystko udowadniałam ze strony ojca, to mniej skomplikowane, matki to nie wiem, kto kim był. (…) Jak o Kartę Polaka ubiegałam się, to wtedy zmieniłam świadectwo urodzenia, bo u mnie w świadectwie urodzenia była napisana narodowość ukraińska. A wtedy zmieniłam, skłamałam, że zgubiłam [śmiech]. Ja miałam jeszcze ten radziecki. Przecież urodziłam się już w Ukrainie nie radzieckiej, ale jeszcze wtedy nie było tych nowych dokumentów, bo w 1991 roku urodziłam się, i dali mi ten stary dokument i było napisane, że jestem narodowość ukraińska. I później ja wymieniłam sobie na nowy, jest taki standard nowy i tam, gdzie narodowość jest, to nic nie ma. I tak przyjęli, że spoko. Bo wiesz, ubiegać się o Kartę Polaka, gdzie jest napisane, że ty Ukrainka, no to jakoś nie

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In my research, I  strived to capture the impact of holding the Pole’s Card on Murafa’s residents’ identity. Tim Edensor writes that “national identity is grounded in the everyday, in the mundane details of social interaction, habits, routines and practical knowledge.” According to him, it is precisely within these banal spheres of life that identity undergoes constant un-reflexive re-enactment: There is thus an interweaving of conscious and unreflexive thought which typifies everyday practice and communication. Most actions are habitually (re)enacted without reflection, but occasionally they are subject to surveillance from community members, or to self-monitoring to ensure consistency and the upholding of values and practical norms.28

I believe that this concept can be perfectly applied to studying Murafa’s community, and in particular the Catholic community within it, where the memory of Polish ancestors survived, often in a mythologised form, and the middle and older generations retained the knowledge of the Polish language from the religious sphere, currently enriched with practical language skills acquired during work stays in Poland. As Edensor further explains: the dynamic process of identity formation, or identification, occurs in mundane life as well as in more spectacular collective gatherings, in the enaction of practical knowledge as much as in the overt assertion or celebration of communal values and characteristics, which are equally part of a larger social dimension of experience, thought and action.29

Such collective gatherings in which Murafa’s Catholics’ Polish identity is sustained, constructed anew and redefined are religious ceremonies: Holy Masses in Polish, processions on Corpus Dei and in the local Sharhorod Calvary and pilgrimages to nearby Latychiv and faraway Częstochowa. Crucially, however, national identity, just like other identities, “is about using resources of history, language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being.”30 According to this proposition, the practices presented in connection with the Pole’s Card possess, to some extent, performative power.

wypada. I teraz wszędzie piszę, że jestem Polką. (…) U nas w paszportach to nie ma narodowości, ale gdyby była, to ja bym wpisała, że jestem Polką. (…) KK: A co ci da polskie obywatelstwo? IS: Potwierdzenie. Że jestem tym, kim jestem. 28 Tim Edensor, National identity, popular culture and everyday life (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2002), pp. 19–20. 29 Tim Edensor, National identity, p. 24. 30 Stuart Hall, “Introduction: Who Needs Identity,” in: Questions of Cultural Identity, eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London: Sage, 1996), as cited in Tim Edensor, National Identity, p. 24.

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Bibliography Edensor, Tim. National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2002, pp. 19–20. Pietraszek, Ewa. “Wpływ doświadczenia pokoleniowego na recepcję Karty Polaka (Sambor i Łanowice).” In: Na pograniczu „nowej Europy”. Polsko-ukraińskie sąsiedztwo, ed. Magdalena Zowczak. Warszawa: DiG, 2010, pp. 555–565. Hall, Stuart. “Introduction: Who Needs Identity.” In: Questions of Cultural Identity, eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay. London: Sage, 1996, pp. 1–17. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website. “Information about the Pole’s Card.” http://www.msz.gov.pl/en/c/MOBILE/foreign_policy/polish_diaspora/card_of_ the_pole/, July 31, 2017.

Jan Wawrzyniec Lech

The Sounds of Chaos: The Liturgical Music Situation in Murafa’s Roman Catholic Community Abstract: This text is an interpretation of the narratives of local residents of Murafa, a village in Podilia, who describe their national and religious identity in relation to their longing for clearly outlined aesthetic values. These aesthetics are embedded in a conflict taking place within the local Roman Catholic Church, whereas the sphere in which it is manifested is liturgical music. The analysis of the conflict produced a typology of musical-religious experiences of Murafa’s Roman Catholic population. The first type is represented by the so-called Older Choir, established in the 1960s. It represents a traditional aesthetical approach of the older generation. This group emphasises the importance of the use of the Polish language in liturgy, in particular, singing Polish songs. The Polish-Catholic aesthetics is manifested in the form of group singing (with a division into voices) accompanied by the organ music. The second approach, a radical version of the Ukrainian-Catholic aesthetics, is represented by the Adoration Band. It is closely related to young people’s expression, who apply not only electric music instruments and microphones but also movement and dance. Their aesthetic is in opposition to the Older Choir’s. Two intermediary groups are placed between these two opposing radical approaches: the so-called Younger Choir (singing in Ukrainian, accompanied by organ music) and a brass orchestra (brass instruments, no organ music or singing). The conflict mainly pertains to the relations between the leaders of each of the groups, and in particular, of the Older Choir and the Adoration Band. The music produced by these groupings can be called sounds of chaos, evidence for conflicted debate, transferred into the liturgical music sphere. Keywords: cosmologies, aesthetics conflict, music expression, religious experience, church’s spatial structure, music performance

“The Neglected Music” “I see it this way,” the older man lightly shook his plastic bag as he joined the discussion. “Somehow it worries me that music everywhere in the world, including here, has been neglected. Although here in Poland it is still at more or less a high level.”1 He sighed, turning away briefly in the direction of the children running in front of the church. The May heat made one feel desperate for at least a few gulps of water after every word pronounced.

1 “Ale ja tak teraz widzę, jakoś mnie tak trwoży, że wszędzie tu po świecie, i u nas, zaniedbana o tam muzyka. Chociaż u was w Polski jeszcze trzyma się ona na jakimś takim wysokim poziomie.”

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Well, it’s an old tradition; the songs are beautiful. And I see that all around the world now; it is decreasing, there is just so little singing. Maybe it will be for just a certain period of time; maybe that is the reason. But one way or another, if I hear just the organ playing and nobody singing, what impression does that give one?2

The man appeared to be speaking in an increasingly energetic, emotional and personal tone. “It appears to me that, I am sorry, to make all churches beautiful is not a question of one bishop or priest. The question needs to be raised all over the world:  how can the Holy Mass be accompanied with beautiful songs, delightful ones?”3 Several seconds later, after taking a deep breath, in a quiet but dignified and secretly majestic way, usually untypical of an elderly man walking all day long with a rustling plastic bag in a village in the heart of Podilia, he added: “So that a man who attends the Mass can listen to everything not only with his ears, but also with his heart. Do you understand?”4,5 This short fragment of an intimate conversation full of longing and some majestic nostalgia showed me the essence of one of the aesthetic attitudes demonstrated by Murafa’s population. Before having made contact with the quoted respondent, I associated the village’s musical map with a homogenous,6 monolithic narrative regarding the liturgical sound space. I attributed the reasons for differences within Murafa’s tastes to confessional differences and to a lesser extent generational ones. These differences ironically reminded me of Claude Levi-Strauss’ structural vision7 based on such oppositions as “Catholic or Orthodox vs. atheist,” “old vs. young,” and so on. However, as my field research progressed, I reached a certain secret, unofficial network of aesthetic debate, not only about the inter-confessional contacts’ space but also regarding internal conflict within the Catholic community.

2 “Ot, stara tradycja, pieśni też są piękne. A widzę po całym świecie, że już to troszeczkę tak jakby, ot, tak mnie zdaje się, że to kubek śpiewu. Może to jakiś dany jest odcinek czasu, to na przykład tam odcinek, to może dlatego. Ale tak czy innej, jeśli ja słyszę, że po prostu organ gra, a nikt nie śpiewa, no to jakie jest to wrażenie.” 3 “No mnie zdaje się, że, przepraszam, żeby we wszystkich kościołach żeby było ładnie, to nie kwestia jednego biskupa czy kapłana, na cały świat trzeba podnieść to pytanie: żeby obsadzić Mszę Świętą pięknymi pieśniami, takimi zachwycającymi.” 4 “Żeby człowiek, który przybywa na Mszę, słuchał tego wszystkiego nie tylko uszami, ale i sercem. Rozumie?” 5 A fragment of Interview 1, conducted in May 2013 in Murafa. The interlocutor was a Catholic male born in 1949, a resident of Murafa, not engaged in any musical activities, with a good command of Polish, who identified as a Pole and was against the Ukrainianisation of the Roman Catholic liturgy. This interview was conducted by Jan Lech. 6 Cf. Jonathan D. Kramer, “The nature and origins of musical postmodernism,” in: Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, eds. Judith Irene Lochhead and Joseph Henry Auner (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 13–26. 7 Cf. Claude Lévi-Strauss. Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963).

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Photo 1: The faithful after a Holy Mass in front of the church in Murafa, 2013. Photo by Jędrzej Fulara.

Why would the quoted respondent otherwise have said, “everywhere in the world, including here, music has been neglected”? Murafa’s faithful of the Roman Catholic rite8 represent varying aesthetic attitudes. They are associated with the dominant aesthetic narratives presented by leaders and proponents of sides in the aesthetic conflict. The discussion on music also engages various specific categories, including national identity, the mission of religion, space, body and sacrum. The church situated at the heart of Murafa has been the site of a robust exchange of blows. This musical battle arena has attracted the faithful not only from Murafa but also from neighbouring villages. When in November 2012 on a certain Sunday I went to a seven o’clock morning Mass, my sleepy eyes could see a line of people running from the top of the hill to a turn at the foot of the high ground 50 metres away, blocking the view the rest of the way to the church. On their way to church, people were talking about current affairs, giving accounts of their family and professional lives, constructing a certain feeling of order. Family and economic discussions, and, what is more, the requirement to skilfully fit into this form of dialogue, was soon to be my own experience. 8 There are no Greek Catholics in Murafa.

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The faithful going to the church finally reached the gate. The black threads of human figures wrapped in coats, scarves, hats and caps entered the church, sending a brief look at the church founder Joachim Karol Potocki. While crossing themselves with their fingers dipped in holy water, they kissed the Crucifix’s feet above the font; only after finishing the whole series of rituals were they able to enter and take their seats. In terms of special planning of occupied seats there is a certain order in Murafa’s church. The faithful never mention it directly; however, there is an unwritten rule, a certain tradition of truly cosmological nature.9 An example of this phenomenon may be something that occurred during the abovementioned Holy Mass. I entered the church about ten minutes before the service. I sat on a bench next to the wall, in the right (male) side nave, not far from St. Anthony’s figurine. When people filled the church, three elderly men sat next to me and the fourth one, clearly acquainted with the other three, stood in front of me with his arms folded. On my left-hand side there was still some space, so I moved a little and showed him that there was enough room for both of us. The standing man shook his head lightly in disappointment. Somewhat disoriented, I slowly stood up, walked deeper into the nave and leaned against the wall. Only then the man sat down, greeting the three other members of the pack. The situation was explained to me by one of my respondents after the Holy Mass.10 It turned out that during the eight o’clock Sunday mass, this group of men always sits on that particular bench. This was not an exceptional situation: many people have their favourite places at the church; a certain tamed, friendly space of ritual experiences. After all, the occupied place at a church impacts the quality of the religious experience, influences the liturgical music acoustics, the opportunity to watch the chancel or becomes a place of relaxation for a tired, constantly standing body. One of the striking aspects of the situation I was observing was the peaceful expressions on the faces of all the men taking part in this event. Cosmos, in Herzfeld’s understanding, or the ordered reality,11 appears to best describe the four men’s attitudes; the tendency to preserve the order, the organised reality that otherwise would appear unsafe, alien. Such an attitude was also expressed by my first assessments of musical life in Murafa. I attempted, in a cosmological way, to adjust the debate space to my own analytical categories. I saw it as a single-layered sphere of realisation of certain

9 Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology. Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2001). 10 A fragment of Interview 2, conducted in November 2012 by Jan Lech. The interlocutor was a woman of about 60, a Roman Catholic, resident of Murafa, engaged in the Older Choir activities. She spoke very good Polish and identified herself as Ukrainian of Polish origin. 11 Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology.

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Photo 2: The faithful assembled during the Sunday main Mass at the Murafa’s church. A view from the choir, 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

assumptions regarding the functioning of sound in a religious act. The tendencies to keep the status quo and a certain static order, in which Murafa’s faithful could feel safe and calm, could also be observed in the church music bands’ activities. However, while striving for order may be a laudable and justified idea, the conflict of different cosmological orders does not seem as picturesque. In the present text, I  will describe the situation of liturgical music in Roman Catholic services at Murafa’s church. This is music entangled in multi-layered processes, interests, aims and various distinct conceptions of order. I will ultimately try to prove that cosmological orders expressed by aesthetic attitudes in Murafa do not ensure a sense of security, but rather introduce more chaos than calm.

Four Bands, Different Attitudes, Main Actors There are four main bands affiliated with Murafa’s church. The establishment of each of them is associated with an important moment in Murafa’s history, as well as the history of Ukraine. The first and oldest band is the so-called Older Choir. Its common name is related to the fact that it has existed in Murafa for the longest period of time; it was established in the 1960s by the current organist. According to his account, there was another choir before, conducted by the previous organist; however, when he arrived to Murafa, almost nothing was left from that choir. The

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Photo 3–4: The male and female groups of the Older Choir, 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

choir members, in his words: “Could not speak a word of Polish, could not practice, nothing. (…) But they were so eager! So I had to teach them Polish, musical notes and how to practice. It was a religious instruction of sorts. I did not complain, because my work gave good results.”12 Religious instruction was conducted by the organist and his wife. The results, which he mentioned, are still present: the old choir predominately sings in Polish and its repertoire is dominated by Polish religious songs (the organist showed me recordings of Polish songs performed by the choir, including “Czarna Madonno,” “Matko, Królowo” and Polish Christmas carols). The formula used by the old choir can be described as traditional:  the choir singing is accompanied by organ music. During the time of my research, the organist’s daughter usually played the organ, while he conducted the whole band. The singers are divided into two groups, male and female ones, and they respectively occupy the left and right parts of the church’s balcony. Notably, this division does not follow the division of the faithful; men usually occupy the right nave, except for the first several rows of benches, whereas women keep to the left side. The front row benches are usually occupied by nuns. The Younger Choir also follows the traditional formula. The choir’s name is justified by both its members’ age as well as its period of existence, which is rather

12 “Ani po polsku nie umieli, ani me, ani ćwiczyć, nic. A ja spytałem jak się modlić: ‘Siedzi na trawicy, z tatem przyjdzie i na świętych łubcowaniel.’ Takie było, żeby tak zrobić. Ale takie chętne było! (…) To ja musiałem ich nauczyć i po polsku, i ćwiczyć, i nuty wytłumaczyć. Katechizacja taka była. Ja nie żałowałem, bo te trudy dawały dobre rezultaty, wyniki.” A fragment of Interview 3, conducted in 2012 in Klekotyn. My interlocutors were a Roman Catholic male born in 1927, who lives in Klekoty and speaks Polish and Latin, identifies himself as a Pole and is engaged in the “Older Choir’s” activities and an about 60-year-old female engaged in the “Older Choir’s” activities as well, who has a very good command of Polish and identifies herself as a Pole. This interview was conducted by Jan Lech.

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short in comparison to the old choir. The band is directed by one of the local school teachers, and a nun plays the organs during church services. The choir members are predominately children and school youth. For this reason, the repertoire is adjusted to youthful aesthetic preferences even though it preserves a classical form. It sings in Ukrainian. I had such a vision of liturgical music after my first two research visits to Murafa. Having assumed Paul Atkinson’s and Martyn Hammersley’s13 data analysis method, I conducted my research in several two-week visits, grounding my experience in theory after returning. The aim was to create a certain typology14 that could be verified during subsequent research visits. In this way, I identified certain ideal types of Murafa’s religious-musical expressions. My first vision of Murafa’s music was rather pastoral: two music groups performing similar music (in terms of form), each targeted at a different social group, performed during liturgies ascribed to them. The Older Choir performs on Sundays at twelve o’clock noon, whereas on weekdays it performs at eight a.m. The Younger Choir sings at Sunday morning liturgy, and sometimes also appears during weekday evening services at five. My interlocutors characterised both groups in terms of their musical training: “You know we have the older choir and the younger one (…) The older is somewhat larger; they have better musical education, while the younger choir is less educated.”15 My initial assumption was that these two bands differed only in terms of language, repertoire and musical education level. What followed, the differences in their aesthetic attitudes, had to do with language preferences as the interlocutors often presented it. The Older Choir’s fans were first of all older people, and the Younger Choir’s fans were children and school youth. Certain events during my last two research visits changed this notion of an ideal, ordered and cosmologically normative system within Murafa’s church. In July 2013, I witnessed a surprising situation. During Sunday Holy Mass at twelve o’clock, the Older Choir was singing. Aware of a group of Polish ethnographers’ presence and convinced that their performance would be recorded by the group, the choir had prepared accordingly. This was the most celebratory church service I  ever witnessed in Murafa. The singers were dressed in their most elegant clothes; the female singers wore beautiful white lace head-kerchiefs. The organist was also elegantly dressed and was 13 Cf. Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, Ethnography:  Principles in Practice (London: Routledge, 1995). 14 Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, Ethnography. 15 “Wy znajete, w nas je starszy i molodszy chór (…) Starszy taki bilszy [większy – Jan Lech], edukacja muzyczna tam bilsza [większa], chór młodszy po lekszy [lżej: słabiej wyedukowany muzycznie].” Fragment of Interview 4, the interviewee was a Roman Catholic woman of about 30, a resident of Murafa, member of the Adoration Band, who speaks only little Polish and identifies herself as Ukrainian. The interview was conducted by Jan Lech.

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proudly wearing a shiny medal on his chest for services made to the Roman Catholic faith. One could not help but feel the celebratory mood, tension and desire to show off, demonstrating the mastery of musical craft. Initially, the Holy Mass proceeded in an orderly fashion. The choir had been singing in Polish during Sunday Mass for about a decade,16 while the priest spoke his words in Ukrainian, making them understandable to the faithful. More important prayers were also made in Ukrainian. I was used to that; however, I received a surprise during psalm singing. The priest slowly took his place at the pulpit. Choir singers were already standing, looking at the beautiful song books, written in good Polish and with notes written down by the organist; the first accords were played by the organist’s daughter on the old but monumental instrument. The organist gave a vigorous sign to begin and the choir started singing. The psalm’s refrain had not even ended; yet into the moment which music phenomenology calls “the border between the lasting present and future about to start,”17 the priest started adding his two cents’ ex cathedra in Ukrainian. I tried to explain my initial shock to myself by my low cultural awareness;18 this could be the regular liturgical cooperation pattern between the priest and the band. Yet, the organist’s facial expression and his increasingly energetic arm movements to cue the dynamic changes of the choir’s volume casted doubts on my initial assumptions. What was happening went beyond ritual goals to overcome chaos.19 The psalm singing went on. Yet the character of the mass changed. Despite their elegant dresses, the noticeable pathos in the singers’ eyes and a certain mythic elevation, I  was witnessing not so much a celebratory Holy Mass, but rather a real musical battle. In response to the subsequent verses sung in Polish by the organist’s daughter, the priest almost shouted the refrain in Ukrainian. Naturally, the choir and the faithful took part in this battle’s subsequent phases. The choir singers, led by the organist, tried to unsuccessfully silence the priest’s Ukrainian vibrato with their magma of sounds. The priest, armed with the microphone, led part of the faithful, creating a certain multilingual contrafactum. After the psalm finished, emotions seemed to calm down. Tired singers slid down onto their seats, while the priest returned to the later parts of the liturgy, pretending nothing had happened. Yet, the surprise did not fully subside, at least in my young, anthropologically sensitive eyes. What had really happened? In order to answer that question, we need to discuss the person of the priest first. The priest can administer liturgies in two rites: the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic ones. Besides, he is Polish,20 and enjoys a lot of respect in Murafa due to 1 6 Based on Interview 1. 17 Carl Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 18 Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy:  Social Poetics in the Nation-State. (New York: Psychology Press, 1997). 19 Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology. 20 Cf. Marek Koprowski, Kresy we krwi (Warszawa: Fronda, 2011).

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his knowledge of many languages and his travels around the world (at least within its Roman Catholic boundaries). The priest, however, also represents an aesthetic attitude which dramatically clashes with that of the Older Choir, and with singing in Polish, in particular. This aesthetical attitude is also demonstrated by the fact that he has established two church bands: the Adoration Band (Grupa Uwielbienia) and a brass orchestra. In regard to the forms of expression used, first of all, by the Adoration Band, certain transnational tendencies were noticeable in broadly understood ritual music. I had already learned about these practices in May 2013, thanks to the interviews with the woman who managed the group’s musical side,21 as well as with one of Murafa’s younger priests. The “singing back” priest established the Adoration Band at the end of the 1990s. It was comprised of several singers, guitar players, who used both electric and bass guitars, and one keyboard player. Singers could use microphones, while the guitar players used electric amplifiers. In contrast to the traditional choir and organ formula, the Adoration Band did not occupy the balcony, but stood facing the faithful, with their backs turned against the altar next to the stairs leading to the chancel. The understanding of the very nature of sound was also different. While choirs, especially the Older Choir, were proud of their musical education (conducted by the organist together with Polish-language catechesis) and the resulting artistic, multi-vocal, coloratura adornment of the liturgy’s word, the group was predominately comprised of young amateurs, local school students. The sound was not a goal of its own, at least not to the extent characteristic for organists. The performances were accompanied by dance sequences, hand clapping and shouts. Gestures performed by the singers were supposed to be repeated by the rest of the faithful. Some of the older generation’s interlocutors described these “amusements”22 as compulsory; reportedly, the priest even made elderly ladies stand up and take part in the dances.23 Although these accounts should not be treated as fully reliable, especially taking into consideration the different aesthetic sensitivity of the majority if not all of Murafa’s older generation, the fact of the matter is that the Adoration Band’s practices have been met with certain resistance. This can be confirmed by the terms used to evaluate the band’s musical vision: “noise,” “ramble,” “tumult” or “amusement.”24 They reminded me of the terms 21 Interview 4, conducted in May 2013 in Murafa. The interviewee was a Roman Catholic woman of about 30, a resident of Murafa, member of the Adoration Band, who speaks only little Polish and identifies herself as Ukrainian. The interview was conducted by Jan Lech. 22 Interview 1. 23 Interview 3. 24 Interview 1, Interview 3 and Interview 5 were conducted in July 2013 in Murafa. The interlocutor was a Roman Catholic woman of about 60, engaged in the Older Choir’s activities, who spoke little Polish and identified herself as a Ukrainian of Polish extraction. The interview was conducted by Anna Ptaszyńska-Biały and Jan Lech.

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Photo 5: A sub-section of the brass orchestra during the Corpus Christi procession in Murafa, 2014. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska.

applied by my parents and grandparents when commenting on youth music on television and radio. Thus, a certain aesthetical change could be seen against the generational change context. (Photo 5) The priest also established a brass orchestra. With the help of a conductor, called by Murafa residents “Maestro,”25 he supplied the instruments and rehearsal room and organised many young people. The brass orchestra performs during big holidays. It is never accused of “making noise,” because its repertoire is rather a display of the players’ skills and not a politicised narrative that could be perceived as an attack against the Polish Catholic liturgy. The band plays canonical tunes on traditional instruments, and since the orchestra does not engage singers, the linguistic aspect does not affect its evaluation. The only controversy is related to the inter-confessional relations between Murafa’s Catholic and Orthodox believers. In order to describe this in Geertz’ description method,26 I will describe a certain situation, the depiction and interpretation of which were presented to me by my interlocutors.27 2 5 Interview 1. 26 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 27 Interview 3; Interview 6 conducted by Jan Lech in July 2013 in Klekotyna. The interlocutor was an 80-year-old female, a resident of Klekotyna, not engaged in the

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The Catholic priest who established the brass orchestra, as already mentioned, was prepared to administer liturgy in both rites. He knew that he had made contact with many of Murafa’s Orthodox church priests.28 He had a conflict with one of them. A rumour was spread around the village that the Catholic priest wrote to the Orthodox priest asking him to leave Murafa’s church and stop administering priestly services altogether. The other priest took it to heart so much that he read the letter after a church service. As a result, there was an inter-confessional conflict which lasted for about a month. When it appeared that the situation had calmed down, Christmas season came. While in Catholics’ case the time of pastoral visits occurs right after the Christmas festivities, the Orthodox faithful are still preparing for the celebrations. The conflict had to do with the Orthodox Nativity Fast or the period of reflection and abstinence before the Nativity of Jesus. During this period (up to two weeks after Catholic Christmas Eve) no fun parties, discos, etc., should be organised. Of course it was not possible to bring any musical instruments to the church, which is against Orthodox theology striving for asceticism.29 In the meantime, soon after the New Year, our Catholic priest took the brass orchestra for the pastoral visits with him. One of the places the band was supposed to visit was a church situated at the top of a hill. When, however, our band comprising both Catholic and Orthodox children reached the church gates and started to produce happy sounds out of the tubas, clarinets and trumpets, the Orthodox priest chased the orchestra away, energetically waving his hands. The broken rules were not the only problem here. It was also not a matter of the personal conflict between the two priests. The Orthodox priest did not perceive the inter-confessional youth band as an ecumenical rapprochement, but rather as a violation of unwritten rules of co-existence between the two confessions. Father Świdnicki’s earlier actions appear to confirm this interpretation.30 Thus, there are four bands in Murafa associated with the Catholic Church. They implement certain religious projects,31 which reflect certain social groups’ aims. Their aesthetics, according to the simplest typology, may be divided into the ones

musical bands’ activities. She spoke Polish and identified as a Ukrainian of Polish descent. 28 In Murafa there are two Orthodox churches, both of the Moscow Patriarchate. 29 Włodzimierz Wołosiuk, Wschodniosłowiańscy kompozytorzy muzyki cerkiewnej od XVII do pierwszej połowy XX wieku i obecność ich utworów w nabożeństwach PAKP (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe ChAT, 2005), p. 14. 30 One of the interlocutors told me that the priest once adorned the fence around the church with yellow and white (Papal colours) ribbons as well as Pope Paul John II’s portrait to mark his pilgrimage to Ukraine in 2001. 31 Stefan Czarnowski, Kultura religijna wiejskiego ludu polskiego, in:  Dzieła [Stefan Czarnowski], Vol. 1, Nina eds. Assorodobraj and Stanisław Ossowski (Warszawa: PWN, 1956), p. 88.

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shaped before the systemic transformation,32 during the domestication of religion processes33 and created after the transformation. Murafa’s aesthetic attitudes are, however, more complex than that. Although I presented them up to now as mainly a matter of generational differences, they also engage a broader sense of identity, such as Polish Catholic identity. This works (or used to work) in Murafa as a term to stereotype Catholics, often of Polish origin. This category has become the most fundamental symbol of religious identity. Its nationalised character rarely is reflected in Murafa’s discourse:  the majority of interlocutors I talked with, also in Polish, declared that they belonged to the Ukrainian people. The information in documents justifying such declarations had their origins in Communist times. The census “forced” the Ukrainian identity onto the Polish-speaking local population. Yet, the surnames testify to their Polish roots, which the census’ authorities did not change.34 The Polish Catholic aesthetic position was based on what the Older Choir had cultivated. First of all, there was the language, rather absent from everyday life, yet vital, according to the traditional Latin liturgical model, shaped in opposition towards the Communist atheisation policies. As one of my interlocutors put it: I did not partake in anything Ukrainian. Nothing. If something was in Polish, then yes. I was brought up like this (...) We consider ourselves Poles; that is right. Even if we are registered as Ukrainians, it does not matter; we consider ourselves Poles. I am very much against the introduction of the Ukrainian language. I want to have prayers in Polish. What is there wrong with knowing another language; a European, Western one; a Western European one. I would also be against us praying in Russian or Georgian, in any Eastern language, and I am against praying in Ukrainian. If until now we have prayed in a Western country’s language, that of a country close to us, a Catholic country that links us with the Pope, then I am against doing otherwise. We should pray in Polish.35

3 2 The beginning of the 1990s. 33 Tamara Dragadze, “The Domestication of Religion under the Soviet Communism,” in:  Ideals, Ideologies and Local practice, Socialism, eds. Chris Hann (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 150–151. 34 Ірина Батирєва, Етносоціальна структура населення с.Мурафа Шаргородського р-ну Вінницької обл. 1940–1950-х рр, February 26, 2014, http://www.vspu.edu.ua/ science/art/a67/index.html#/2. 35 “A ja w ukraińskich rzeczach żadnego działania nie był. Ja nie wiem, nie byłem. Nic, w żadnych po ukraińsku. Ja jestem taki przeciwnik ukraińskiego. Nic, żadnych. Jeśli po polskiem, da, to tak. Ja tak wychowany, w tym duchu (…) My siebie uważamy Polakami, i tak. Chociaż nie było… no, jak zapisani jesteśmy Ukraińcami, ale co jest zapisane to jedno, my siebie uważamy Polakami. Ja bardzo sprzeciwiam się, że wprowadzają ukraiński język, ja chcę, żeby modlili się po polsku (…) I co złego by było w tym, żeby znać jeszcze jeden język, bo to jewropejski [europejski – Jan Lech] język, zachodni, zachodnio jewropejski język. Ja przeciwko temu był, przeciw temu: żeby my do tego czasu modlili się po rusku lub po gruzińskiu, po jakomukolwiek

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The Polish Catholic identity, although presented as a national identity (“we consider ourselves Polish”), refers mainly to religious identification. However, it remains closely related with the desire to preserve the aesthetic ideal, which is the Polish language and Polish repertoire used by the Older Choir. This analysis needs to be complemented with not only the concept of tradition and traditional formulas, according to which liturgy is performed, but also those in which liturgical music function. The traditional perspective precisely defines the place of music in church as well as the way of understanding, describing and assessing sound. On the opposite side of this typological dimension is the Ukrainian Catholic perspective. Its aesthetics are represented by the Adoration Band. It manifests itself not only by emphasising the role of the Ukrainian language in the liturgy and liturgical music, but also in new types of bodily expression in religion as well as in the church’s reformulated sound space. The Adoration Band resigned from the traditionally used choir balcony and opted to be closer to the faithful. By coming closer to the non-musical faithful thanks to the melodies’ simplicity and easy movement sequences, it transgresses symbolical and ethno-aesthetical conditionings.36 The Younger Choir and brass orchestra could serve as examples of interim aesthetics. The former combines the Ukrainian-Catholic vision of liturgy with the traditional formula of musical church service accompaniment. Whereas the orchestra relies on a traditional repertoire and enjoys wide public support as a practice which engages youth into active religious life and thus unites the modern formula with traditional content. The lack of critical opinions about the brass orchestra can be explained by its purely instrumental nature, which eliminates the language issue.

Two Paths in the Musical Space The four Murafa bands follow two paths in terms of musical space arrangement. The “soundscape” term proposed by Raymond Murray Schafer’s music ecology37 appears to order these sounds by planning two methods. By defining music as “humanly organized sound,”38 one can notice how “keynotes,”39 “sound

3 6 37 38 39

wschodniemu języku, to ja byłbym za to, żeby modlić się po ukraińsku. Jeśli my modlili się do tego czasu na języku zachodniego państwa, tylko państwa bliskiego nam, katolickiego państwa, państwa, które nas łączy z papieżem, to ja sprzeciwiam się. Trzeba nam było modlić się po polsku.” Fragment of Interview 1. Michael Herzfled, Antropology. Cf. Murray Schafer, The soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester: Destiny Books, 1993). Cf. John Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1977), pp. 11–12. Keynotes are the most important notes in the soundscape, since they emphasise the character of the individuals who create them. Schafer principally identified natural (or nature-inspired) sounds within them. Yet in Murafa’s context, the role of keynotes is played by the performance formulas’ syncretic sounds adopted by each of the

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signals”40 and “soundmarks”41 organise Murafa’s church interior.42 The more unexpected and disturbing these sounds are and the more they break away from the ethno-aesthetic perspective, the less clear the liturgy’s musical shape appears to be. Since ethno-aesthetics cannot be limited to sound intensity alone, I will depict the paths of two musicians: a traditional formula follower and a new aesthetics’ representative. The working titles for these two paths are a hiking trip and a pilgrimage. The Older and Younger Choirs’ members perform on the church balcony. In order to get there, one needs to turn left upon entering the church, towards heavy carved-wooden doors. Entering the balcony is a sort of a trial: one needs to conquer the fear of falling from the creaking, twisting, wooden stairs, and then to understand a certain secret cultural code,43 which allows one to walk behind the monumental organs’ back wall. And then, taming one’s fear of heights, one looks at the whole church space from behind the special yellow crates. The crates originated in time when the Older Choir was comprised of 80 participants and not 20. Since such a numerous group was at risk of falling down through the balustrade, the crates were added for safety’s sake. Painted yellow, they fit together with the organs’ pipe ornaments and mark the space devoted to the musical craft by separating the singers from the faithful and the sphere of sounds from the musical profanum space. The Adoration Band and brass orchestra perform in front of the chancel, among the faithful. They do not need to hike to the magic mound in order to sail into the sphere, where music drifts among words, where the “unspoken rest”44 is realised to its fullest. The pilgrimage character of these two bands, following the new formula, is fulfilled in a peregrination along a flat surface. This trip is not vertical, as the Older Choir’s ritual entrance is: it is horizontal. The role of musicians as religious experience animators is based on the mobilisation of the faithful present at the service, the holistic experience promotion. Paradoxically, this type of expressions lie within a current inspired by Protestant movements and has been well characterised by William James45 as directed towards the individual; a powerful and almost aesthetic attitudes (the organ and Older and Younger Choirs, the Adoration Band’s electronics and the brass orchestra’s instruments). 40 Sound signals are the foreground sounds which one listens to consciously. An example in Murafa’s context can be the bells’ opening liturgy, the tower clock’s bells and the gong and bells during the Ascension. 41 Sound marks are topographic elements that belong to a given sound space. In Murafa’s church, they are the sounds of feet stepping on the floor, the words of prayers said by the faithful, the sound of knees landing on the ground, the creaking stairs leading to the choir balcony, the sights and the rustles. 42 Cf. Murray Schafer, The soundscape. 43 Michael Herzfeld, Cultural intimacy, p. 3. 44 Jean Starobinski, Les Enchanteresses. (Paris: Seuil, 2005). 45 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).

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Photo 6: The Roman Catholic Church in Murafa, the 18th-century organ. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

ecstatic religious experience. This current of religious experiences appears in the form of Charismatic movements within the Catholic Church across the globe. The establishment of the Adoration Band is the result of the broader existence of charismatic social groups (e.g., the Movement for Renewal in the Holy Spirit, the Light Life Movement). In Murafa, however, the Band appears to be functioning separately from these sorts of practices.46 The mobilisation of the crowds happens within the same dimension in which the “regular” faithful are standing, sitting, kneeling and singing. The pilgrimage focuses on the individual’s strong spiritual experiences, which is the essence of a religious ritual and is associated with the experience vital for William James’ interpretation.47 A hiking trip, in its turn, corresponds to a certain

46 There are no such distinct and vocal Charismatic movements in Murafa, such as those which exist in Poland. Apart from the Adoration Band’s activities, I have not heard about any representatives of these types of practices, or witnessed declarations of participation within Charismatic movements. (Within Murafa’s church, there is a Renewal in the Holy Spirit movement, although, I was told, it has a much milder form. Editor’s note). 47 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

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syncretic experience with a tendency towards a cosmological order within a selected hierarchy. According to Emil Durkheim’s interpretation of religion,48 it is something supra-individual, within the social framework of the discussed co-existence rules. For this reason, the hiking trip, loaded with ethno-aesthetics and communityconstituting symbols,49 would be a paleo-Durkheimian, as Charles Taylor put it,50 pattern of understanding the relations between an individual and sacralised community. Whereas a pilgrimage is closer to James’ religious experience and Eliade’s “archaic techniques of ecstasy.”51 It happens on the surface of the peregrinating human “I,” which in a way is free from social authority (even if only illusorily, since it is created in opposition to what is recognised and rather normative) and becomes a declaration of internal belonging to the living faith. It does not deny the representatives of the hiking trip category the right to participate in living religious experiences. Rather, it demonstrates what each of the categories of the sound description of space accentuates – in a phenomenological sense – the most.

Chaos By presenting the most “acute,” in an ethnographic sense, moments of musical performances’ co-experience,52 I  demonstrated certain typological boundaries within Murafa’s Catholics’ aesthetic attitudes: the division into Ukrainian-Catholic and Polish-Catholic groups, radical factions, represented by the most distinct bands in their artistic-political programmes, as well as the intermediary, less univocal aesthetics, represented by the Younger Choir and the brass band. The conflict between the two main camps cannot be analysed, however, exclusively in terms of performance differences following a different aesthetic sensitivity. 48 Cf. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain (London: Allen and Unwin, 1976). 49 Cf. Anthony Cohen, Symbolic Construction of Community (London and New York: Routledge, 1985). 50 Cf. Charles Taylor, The Varieties of Religion Today (Vienna:  Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, 2002). 51 Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964). 52 I understand musical performance as a musical activity that, by expressing certain content, testifies to real existence of this content’s action. I understand the performative dimension of music as an interpretation of “performative expression,” cf. John Langshaw Austin, How to do things with words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962) in the language of music. Performative expressions, by being pronounced, introduce their meaning into life (e.g., saying “yes” to the question: “Do you take this woman to be your wedded wife?”). In a similar way, musical performance is such an interpretation of a work of music that by taking into account the performance quality contained in it, it partakes in the discursively created process of sound valorisation.

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Photo 7: The Roman Catholic Church in Murafa, a fragment of the 18th-century organ and mouldings. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

The conflict is stimulated by selected individuals who, thanks to the radical attitudes, have provided personal support; and thus the factions have developed a feeling of stabilisation and leadership. These leaders have become the linchpin of cosmological orders represented by each of the aesthetic attitudes. They enjoy enormous authority, support and a close circle of “associates,” the leaders’ direct supporters, who work with the bands and are engaged in civil performance. These leaders are the organist and the priest, whereas their associates include the people grouped around them, including the main persons involved in the bands’ functioning. This system falls into the framework of a seeming order, illusion of harmony. The cosmologically depicted reality does not really want to subjugate itself to the boundaries defined by man. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty said:  “The world is there before any possible analysis of mine (…). The real has to be described, not constructed or formed.”53 By following the direction offered by the phenomenology of perception, I summarize my ethnographic observations in a chronological way.

53 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).

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My first vision of the research on music in Murafa was rather straightforward. It was based on ideal types54 of Roman Catholic and Orthodox expression. An additional distinction was noted on the level of generational conflict. However, these differences still fit in the cosmological order, a static picture of musical arrangement of liturgy without going into a deeper sphere of social ties. The first phase of my research was more of a general observation, in which I focused more on the Older Choir’s role creating the Polish Catholic aesthetic example. I constructed a vision of Murafa’s music as a monolithic, ordered microcosm. During my next research visit in May 2013, I  met with representatives of a different aesthetic vision. By reaching out to the Adoration Band’s members, I learned a different perspective of how to look at the role of music in liturgy as well as sound quality, sound description and harnessing the church space. The analysis of the two conflicted communities led me to conclude that although the music activity in Murafa reflects two extreme aesthetic types, there are also borderline practices, which for different reasons do fit into the mainstream lines of an aesthetic narrative. During the fourth phase of my research which took place in July 2013, I discovered a cosmological conflict that goes beyond verbal discourse and which was taking place mainly between individuals and smaller groups. Specific visions of the psalm I  could observe during one of the Sunday Holy Masses, further talks with the organisers of Murafa’s musical life and contact with the recipients and passive participants of the conflicted aesthetical debate convinced me that the typology I  created in my research’s earlier phases was not necessarily the best method of understanding the essence of music’s meaning in a Podilia village’s religious culture. My “analysis of the world” had become secondary to the reality I was observing, its cosmological over-interpretation. It served my research work well but not the conscious experience of Murafa’s musical expression. Describing several expressive situations which inspired reflection has made me feel closer to the embodied, intimate understanding of Murafa’s music situation: the conflict between what was and what is to come. The conflict in which, in fact, only some individuals and small groups actively partake, while the majority of the faithful only passively observe these struggles. The conflict against which the broader picture of social life with all its frictions, controversies and rules can be better seen. The conflict which is real proof that attempts to cosmologically arrange the world introduce more chaos than order into it. This chaos is created equally by the pluralised debate regarding liturgical music and by a typological zero-sum description or analysis, even if it is conducted in the context of ethnographic contact with Murafa’s broader community.

54 Cf. Maz Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993).

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Bibliography Austin, John Langshaw. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Blacking, John. How Musical Is Man? Seattle and London: University Of Washington Press, 1977. Cohen, Anthony. Symbolic Construction of Community. London and New York: Routledge, 1985. Czarnowski, Stefan. Kultura religijna wiejskiego ludu polskiego. In: Dzieła [Stefan Czarnowski], eds. Nina Assorodobraj and Stanisław Ossowski, Vol. 1. Warszawa: PWN, 1956. Dahlhaus, Carl. Esthetics of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Dragadze, Tamara. “The Domestication of Religion under the Soviet Communism.” In: Socialism. Ideals, ideologies and local practice, ed. Chris Hann. New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. 150–151. Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Pantheon Books, 1964. Émile, Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain. London: Allen and Unwin, 1976. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Hammersley, Martyn and Paul Atkinson. Ethnography: Principles in Practice. London: Routledge, 1995. Herzfeld, Michael. Anthropology. Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2001. Herzfeld, Michael. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State. New York: Psychology Press, 1997. Koprowski, Marek. Kresy we krwi. Warszawa: Fronda, 2011. Kramer, Jonathan D. “The Nature and Origins of Musical Postmodernism.” In: Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, eds. Judith Irene Lochhead and Joseph Henry Auner. New York and London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 13–26. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Basic Books, 1963. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Schafer, Murray. The soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester: Destiny Books, 1993. Starobinski, Jean. Les Enchanteresses. Paris: Seuil, 2005. Taylor, Charles. The Varieties of Religion Today. Vienna: Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, 2002.

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Weber, Max. The Sociology of Religion. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993. William, James. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. Wołosiuk, Włodzimierz. Wschodniosłowiańscy kompozytorzy muzyki cerkiewnej od XVII do pierwszej połowy XX wieku i obecność ich utworów w nabożeństwach PAKP. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe ChAT, 2005. Батирєва, Ірина. Етносоціальна структура населення с.Мурафа Шаргородського р-ну Вінницької обл. 19401950-х рp. http://www.vspu.edu.ua/ science/art/a67/index.html#/2, (February 26, 2014).

Magdalena Zatorska

Christian-Jewish Relations in the Antagonistic Tolerance Model: From Religious Communities to Communities of Memory1 Abstract: This article is based on ethnographical fieldwork conducted in Ukraine in Vinnytsia Oblast (Sharhorod, a town of about 7,000 inhabitants and Murafa, a village of about 2,000 inhabitants) and Cherkasy Oblast (Uman, a city of about 83,000 inhabitants). Before the Second World War, all the three localities used to be populated by large Jewish communities. During the war, Uman’s Jewish population was largely annihilated by the Nazis. The Jewish populations of Murafa and Sharhorod mostly survived the war. The last quarter of a century has brought considerable changes in all the localities in terms of the social and national structure, as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and ensuing political transformations. In the 1980s and 1990s, mostly due to the sever economic crisis, almost all Jewish residents of Sharhorod and Murafa left for Israel, Germany or the United States. In Uman, the Hasidic pilgrimage movement to the grave of R. Nachman of Bratslav has been resumed and a local Hasidic community has been formed. The pilgrimages have become of mass character recently. In the face of these changes, the studied localities’ space has also been transforming, which has been a source of some social tensions. I discuss two disputes around the construction of Christian sacred objects on the territory closely related to the local Jewish heritage. I interpret these conflicts in terms of Robert M. Hayden’s and Timothy D. Walker’s antagonistic tolerance model. By juxtaposing the conflict around the Way of the Cross (Calvary) in Sharhorod and the conflict about the crucifix in close proximity to the tsadik’s grave in Uman, I attempt to demonstrate the functional similarity between a religious community and a community of memory. Keywords: antagonistic tolerance, Christian-Jewish relations, anthropology of memory, private memory, public memory, official memory, Sharhorod, Murafa, Uman

The last 25 years in Ukraine have been a period during which significant changes have occurred within the status of religion in social life. After the fall of the Soviet Union, religion has had a comeback into the public space and has been recognised by some researchers as “a symbolic canopy” of societies in the process of transformation, searching for integrating factors in the face of rapid changes and growing

1 The paper was originally published in Polish in periodical “Konteksty,” Vol. 3 (310) (2013), pp. 206–219. In this article, I have used fragments of the text Szarogród: Ruchome krajobrazy, published in a conference’s materials volume Віннищина: Минуле та сьогодення. Краєзнавчі дослідження. Матеріали ХХV Всеукраїнської Наукової Історико-Краєзнавчої Конференції, Vinnytsia, 2013.

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social diversity.2 In the spirit of Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s theory, Irena Borowik interprets this turn to religion as a source of assumptions that give order and sense to all new experiences, using the categories of “becoming rooted in the past again, reconstructing the continuity of historical experiences.”3 From this perspective, the valorisation of external forms of religion – that is, those which have the greatest impact on the nature of public space and are not accompanied by either declarations of faith or participation in religious practices – is perceived through the categories of “reconstructing memory,” searching for continuity and collective and individual identities formation. My research in Ukraine demonstrates that for many Ukrainian nationals, religion is an important determinant of identity and a rarely questioned source of authority, which legitimises various practices  – from unconventional medical practices to selected forms of scientific activity or political participation. Moreover, and rather expectedly so, religion is also often used to legitimise power, as the aforementioned “symbolic canopy” that can function in various ways. As the mayor of Sharhorod (Ukr. Шаргород)4 blatantly put it, demonstrating his golden chain with a Star of David hidden underneath his shirt: I won the election and went to have this star made for me, so that it could be like a lucky charm [...]; there was a Catholic priest and an Orthodox priest here, but there was no a R., because I did not invite him, and they [the two priests] were here. I believe in God, simply believe in God, [...]. But I do not have to pray. Neither in the Jewish way, nor in any other. But I believe that, I will say this once again, they elected me and I am very grateful to people for that and I will work to make Sharhorod transform.5

The conviction about the association between religion and national identity, as well as politics and transformation in the Ukrainian context, is shared by many researchers6 who see the religious thaw of the 1990s as a reconstruction of memory

2 Irena Borowik, Odbudowywanie pamięci. Przemiany religije w Środkowo-Wschodniej Europie po upadku komunizmu (Kraków: Nomos Publishing House, 2000). 3 Irena Borowik, Odbudowywanie pamięci, p. 206; Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory (Trans. from La religion pour mémoire by Simon Lee) (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000). 4 Known as Szarogród in Polish. 5 A 45-year-old male, Sharhorod, 2013. The original quote goes as follows: “Я виграв вибори і поїхав заказав собі зірку для того, шоб це як оберіг [...], хотя в мене і ксьонз тут був, і батюшка був, равіна тут не було, бо я його не приглашав, а вони були, ну я вірю просто в Бога, просто вірю в Бога [...]. Хотя я могу не молитися. Ні по-єврєйські, ні по якому. Но я считаю, шо, ну я ще раз кажу, шо мене обрали, за шо я дуже вдячний нашим людям, і я буду старатися робити для нього, шоб змінився Шаргород.” 6 Irena Borowik, Odbudowywanie...; Mara Kozelsky, Christianizing Crimea. Shaping Sacred Space in the Russian Empire and Beyond (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010).

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and a search for ties with the past. Reconstruction of memory and change of the churches’ status in Ukraine have been sometimes accompanied by the entanglement of religion with the policies of history, mentioned by Magdalena Zowczak in her text in this volume. Research conducted by Mara Kozelsky in Crimea, discussed in her publication entitled Christianizing Crime. Shaping Sacred Space in the Russian Empire and Beyond, demonstrates, as the author has emphasised, that religious identities in Ukraine sometimes divide rather than unite society. The researcher describes a chain of conflicts between Crimean Tatars and the Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate related to shared space and its transformation, using the example of a church built on a hill considered sacred by both Tatars and the Orthodox community in the village of Holubynka (Ukr. Голубинка). The church’s construction was put to a halt, thanks to a public debate inspired by local archaeological finds. Another example of such an interlocking of religion and the politics (and policies) of memory, in Mara Kozelsky’s research, is the initiative of erecting crosses at all entries and exits of every larger town and city in order to commemorate the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christianity. This aroused much controversy and was considered by some commentators as a form of politically motivated pro-Russian activities.7 Some questions spring to mind in this context, including how local communities deal with the exploitation of religious identities for political purposes; how their internal diversity and social structures’ changes impact local identity and memory as well as what the symbolic boundaries of the already mentioned “canopy” are – who they embrace and who they do not. The status of Christian denominations in Ukraine makes Christianity visibly present in the Ukrainian urban and rural landscape; and the number of places of worship and religious symbols is constantly growing. The recent “Christianisation” of the public space, to echo Kozelsky’s publication, is a process that is both symbolic and political, while the latter dimension cannot be easily overestimated. The localities I want to discuss here have faced rapid changes in their national and social structure during the last 25 years. These changes are the result of political transformations and are related to the demise of the Soviet Union. In the 1980s and 1990s, almost the entire Jewish population left Sharhorod and Murafa. Whereas in Uman (Ukr. Умань), a city where the local Jewish population perished during the German occupation, a Hasidic pilgrimage movement has rejuvenated and has permanently changed both the public space as well as the town’s social structure. In this text, I will discuss two disputes between the local Christian communities’ and the Jewish communities’ representatives linked to these territories. These disputes were sparked by the placing of Christian religious symbols in the vicinity of places that are significant for the Jewish heritage.8 7 Mara Kozelsky, Christianizing, pp. 189–195. 8 This research was made possible thanks to the Polish National Science Centre’s grant (2011/03/B/HS3/00341).

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Sharhorod and Murafa Sharhorod (with a population of 7,000) and Murafa (with a population of 27,000) are located in the Vinnytsia Oblast with a distance of ten kilometres between them. Sharhorod is an administrative and communication centre for Murafa’s residents. Both places are united by history as well as by similarities in terms of social and religious structure. Both Sharhorod and Murafa are Catholic strongholds, and today the Catholic Church appears to have a stronger impact on local public life than the Orthodox Church does. The Jewish communities of Sharhorod and Murafa, whose presence in both places dates back to at least the 16th century, survived the Second World War. During the war, the local territories were under Romanian occupation, which, probably due to corruption within the authority structures created by the occupying forces, was relatively benign. However, the social structure rapidly changed during the 1980s and 1990s, as almost all the local Jews left for Israel, Germany or the United States. My interviewees often pointed out that the economic crisis was one of the main motivating factors for this emigration. Due to the dire economic situation, the majority of local residents used every opportunity they had to leave the country. One of the most striking changes that occurred in the local public space resulting from the Jewish population’s emigration has been the systematic disappearance of former Jewish quarters that used to be distinct wholes in architectonic terms. The former centres of both Sharhorod and Murafa are now tightly packed with new buildings, distinct from the older houses with arcades. Sharhorod’s centre also features a 16th-century synagogue (see Photo 2). Jewish houses are currently being repossessed by other residents  – many of them have been bought by neighbours who have extended their dwellings this way or by new residents who are settling in this part of town. Some of the buildings are still the property of former Murafa or Sharhorod residents who now reside in Israel, Germany or the United States; but since they have not been lived in or visited for years, they have sometimes been annexed by neighbours, who use some or all of their rooms. Sometimes this happens with the knowledge and permission of former residents, and sometimes without. An important aspect of buying or using Jewish property by local residents is the adaptation of these houses to the new residents’ needs by rebuilding or demolishing them. The houses are often demolished down to their foundations, which are later used to construct a new house. A widely held opinion is that the houses that once belonged to the Jewish residents are durable and continue to have various amenities. As one of my respondents explained: In Sharhorod there were Jewish houses, and when the Jews left our folk were buying these houses, because everything was solidly built there. Those people used to bring water from the well, and in these houses there already was running water. Sometimes

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Photo 1: Murafa, 2013: The rubble of a former Jewish house in front of the Roman Catholic Church. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. they also already had a sewage system. They had all the amenities. This is why they tried to buy those houses for themselves, and then they could do some remodelling, redecorating.9

Simultaneously, some of the buildings, derelict and never maintained, are falling to ruin or are being demolished. As a result, historic Jewish architecture is disappearing. This process is coupled with changes in both localities’ architectural space. Both in Sharhorod’s and Murafa’s case, the historic centres do not fully overlap with the current centres. Sharhorod’s public space is more interesting in the sense that the old town centre – which was located in close vicinity to St. Florian’s Church, the

9 A 50-year-old female, Murafa, 2012. The original quote goes as follows:  “В Шаргороді, шо хочу сказати, будиночки були єврєйські, то наші, коли вони виїхали, викупляли, того шо було, як би сказати, добротно все було зроблено. Там було, вони, ці люди не знали шо це таке криниця, воду з криниці брати. У них вже мав бути водогін дома. В них вже могла бути каналізація. В них там були вже удобства. Тому вони собі старалися викупити ті будинки для себе, а там вже переробляли собі на якісь ремонти.”

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Photo 2: Sharhorod. The 16th-century synagogue, 2012. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Orthodox monastery and the former Jewish quarter – still possesses the features of a town centre: this is the place where the mayor’s office, the local cultural centre and the local museum are located. Meanwhile, the real centre of economic, trade, business and social life is located about 2 kilometres away from there, next to the bus station. This is where big shops, cafes and service points are located. In Murafa, the contemporary centre is located in the direct vicinity of the church10 – where cafes, shops and the former univermag (a Soviet-style shopping centre), currently used as a space rented out for wedding parties and other big celebrations, are all situated. The former centre is located on the other side of the street in relation to the univermag. It is a large square surrounded by houses that used to belong to local Jews. The changes in the public space are less visible to a newcomer for this reason; one can learn about the centre’s former location and the changes that have taken place only thanks to local residents’ stories.

10 The proximity of the Catholic church and Jewish quarter in both locales is worth noting. In Murafa this co-existence continues: Jewish houses are being taken by Catholic residents.

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Photo 3: Sharhorod, a former Jewish house, 2012. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

In Sharhorod there are two Jewish cemeteries – the old one, closed in the 18th century, and the new one, divided into the old part and the new one. The Jewish cemetery in Murafa, established in the 16th century, is located on a hill on the outskirts of the village. The new Jewish cemetery in Sharhorod and the cemetery in Murafa are still open. Even if they may give the impression of being rather neglected (particularly the parts where old tombstones are located), they are systematically cared for. Jewish emigration also meant that Jewish cemeteries as places of memory have changed their character. Nowadays it is local Orthodox or Catholic residents who usually take care of the cemetery and graves, entrusted to do so by their former Jewish neighbours. Usually this is done as a neighbourly favour:  former residents of Sharhorod or Murafa living now in Israel or other countries ask locals to look after their family members’ graves, often in exchange for some payment. The Jewish community watches over the cemetery and contracts local residents to do bigger works, such as cutting the grass or trimming the shrubs. Some of my interviewees regularly help with such jobs. One of them also keeps the key to the ohel11 located in Sharhorod’s old cemetery.

11 Ohel – Hebr. a tent; a vault inside which a gravestone is situated.

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Photo 4: One of the old matzevahs at the Jewish cemetery in Murafa, 2013. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. As far as the graves are concerned, after the Jews left, today there is no single Jew in our village, but there is their cemetery. The old cemetery is at the hill; they chose a beautiful spot for it, from there on the top there is a nice view. As I showed the boys yesterday, this road took people to the cemetery, it was separated by a wall. The road was passable, well-maintained, not so overgrown with bushes as it is now. And today those people who live nearby are paid by the Jews to take care of the graves. When you come here in the summer, you can see that there are some gravestones painted and there are no weeds around them.12

12 A 50-year-old Orthodox female, Murafa, 2012. The original quote goes as follows: “Що стосовно могилок, то єврєї коли виїхали, в нас жодного єврєя в селі зараз немає, але кладовище їхнє є. Старе кладовище на горбі, вони облюбували собі красіве місто, то таке там наверху, шо можуть, добре видно. Дуже, це як хлопцям ми вчора показували, це дорога така, що вела їх до кладовища, була муром відгороджена, дорога була проїжджа, хороша, от, там доглядали за нею, не заростала вона такими кущами, як зараз. І зараз ті люди, які поблизу живуть, єврєї їм платять гроші за те, шоб вони доглядали за могилами. Тому шо як влітку прийти, то видно, шо там є такі могили пофарбовані, бур’ян коло них не росте.”

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Photo 5: The Jewish cemetery in Murafa. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska.

Photo 6: The Jewish cemetery in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

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Photo 7: The ohel at the old Jewish cemetery in Sharhorod. In the foreground, one can see the traces of the removed Way of the Cross station. Photo by Magdalena Zatorska.

The Dispute About the Way of the Cross Despite the practices briefly sketched earlier regarding the care given to Jewish cemeteries, their space is not always clearly distinct from the town’s landscape. The old Sharhorod cemetery, closed already in the 18th century, was for years overgrown with shrubs. About five years ago, according to the interviewees’ accounts, it was tidied up by a group of volunteers from Poland. Several years ago, an ohel containing the tombstones of Sharhorod rabbis was also erected there. It was not fenced, however, which has left room for disputes about the construction of a Catholic sanctuary in the cemetery’s immediate vicinity, and partially on its site. The newly built Way of the Cross’s stations have been situated along the road that leads from St. Florian’s Church, near the old Jewish cemetery, across the Kovbasna river, all the way to the still functioning Jewish cemetery located in one of the town’s quarters, Hybalivka. The endeavour’s scale is impressive; a wide variety of materials are being used. Many of my interviewees claim that Catholics as well as Orthodox residents have been participating in the celebrations that have taken place for several years now at sanctuary stations. The list of the founders of particular chapels, according to my Catholic interviewees, includes “Catholics, the Orthodox and even Jews.” The

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Photo 8: The ohel in Sharhorod. The inside. Photo by Magdalena Zatorska.

actual list of the sanctuary’s founders as well as the construction’s photo account can be found on the sanctuary’s web page.13 One of my interviewees, a Sharhorod Jewish community activist, took part in the dispute over the chapel’s construction site. She described the rising challenge in the following way: And then there were only the foundations. And the [wall] was that high from the foundations [she showed about a meter-high wall with her hand]. A  commission came, took a look and [said] that they did not have any documents and were not allowed to build; they forbade them to build. And they continued to build. I  came to them; an architect came and said: do not build, you are not allowed to. [And they replied] “we were given an order, we cannot go unless they tell us to”. And they built it [the wall] all the way to the top. What should I create a problem here for, let it be the way it is. And this guy, who built this Jewish chapel, he built such chapels all around the world. After a while, this year or last year, I do not remember now, he calls me

13 A website devoted to the Sharhorod sanctuary:  http://golgofa.ofm.org.ua/ 21 April 2014.

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Photo 9: Sharhorod. The Way of the Cross, 2013. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. and asks: “What is happening here? Why are you not taking care of anything?” And I replied: “What has happened?” And he said: “What sort of trees have they planted?” And I said: “What sort of trees?” He came by car and took me with him. And we saw thujas planted along the road. We had said that no, why did they need to do that? First, according to our laws conifers should not be planted in cemeteries. Second, let it be, but we had told them that this was not their territory, so why did they plant those trees there? So [we had] another fight.14

14 A 55-year-old female, Sharhorod, 2012. The original quote goes as follows: “А в той час […] був тільки фундамент. І від фундамента о така вот висота. Приїхали комісії, подивилисіа, що в них не було документів, щоби можна будувати, заборонили будувати. А вони продовжували будувати, і приходила я, і приховив цей, архітектор, і казав: не будуйте, не можна. Нам дали наказ, поки нам не зяжут, ми не підемо. І збудували нею до самого кінця, до верху. На що я тут буду ходувати пролеми, хай вже є як є, так що буде так. А цей чоловік, який цю еврейську капличку будував, він такі каплички по цілому світу. Проховив якийсь час, того року, чи цього, я вже не пам”ятаю, телефонує він мені, що це в вас робиться? Що ти за нічем не дивишся? Я кажу: що случилос? Що це за дерева там посадили? Я кажу, які дерева, він приїхав машиною, забрав мене

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Photo 10: Sharhorod. Matzevahs and the stations of the Way of the Cross. The neighbourhood, 2013. Photo by Magdalena Zatorska.

As a result of prolonged disputes, protests and interventions, the chapel was dismantled and soon rebuilt on the other side of the road. As another interviewee, a Catholic woman, described: A: This all has been built in a month. In a month. The foundations were left. They started building in August and [they finished] on the 26th [of September] MZa: And who was on the other side of that conflict? A: I believe the Jews. I am not sure… MZa: But they have all left? [referring to what the interviewee said before] A: They have left, but some activists have remained. And somebody needs to step aside.15

по дорозі, там вже туї ростуть. Ну вже говорили, що це не то, ну на що було, по перше по наших законах не можна взахаі хвойні дерева на кладовищах не можуть рости. По друге, хай навіть може, ну вже говорили, що це не ваша територія, чого ці дерева ви там посадили? Знову скандал.” 15 A 35-year-old Catholic female, Sharhorod, 2012. The original quote goes as follows: A: […] To wszystko było wybudowane za miesiąc. Za miesiąc. Fundament został. W sierpniu to poczali budować i akurat 26 [września skończyli – MZa]. MZa: A z kim był ten konflikt?

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An interviewee from Murafa explained the conflict in the following way: I remember that when I was in Sharhorod there was this dispute [regarding] that they did not want to give away a piece of land. And those people fought for it and won. They wanted it, you see? Because a Way of the Cross was being built there and they wanted to put a chapel on that side. And this chapel from that side was removed to this side, you see? There was this dispute again. The Catholics wanted to put it there, but there are Jewish graves there, they should respect religion […] MZa: And how did they want to put that chapel? N: It’s on their way, you see. In the way that, oh, for example, you never have been at the Way of the Cross here, have you? MZa: Not here, but I was there once, just had a look, right? N: Hmm, I, for example, I  took part in the Way of the Cross during school hours. I just went to the director and asked for a leave and quickly took a bus and went to Sharhorod. They were erecting the cross and consecrating it, the priests were there and the administration was as well. And it was all so festive and beautiful. And when you go along the Way of the Cross, all these stations were on one side, and this station was built on the other side, as if off the track. It is simply that… the Catholics wanted it because it was along the way, so that one did not have to cross the road, and for all [stations] to be on the same side. But the Jews wanted to renovate something of their own, wanted to do that and to commemorate the memory, and to do something about the graves that had been neglected for such a long time.16

A: Z Żydami chyba, dokładnie nie wiem… MZa: Ale oni powyjeżdżali chyba… A: Powyjeżdżali, ale zostali aktywiści. No i w końcu ktoś musi ustąpić. 16 A 50-year-old Orthodox female teacher, 2012. The original quote goes as follows:   я пригадую, як я була в Шаргороді, там була така суперечка, не хотіли там давати цю частину землі. Але вони всьо-такі відвоювали її самі, да. Вони хотіли знаєте як? Тому шо будували там Хресну дорогу і вони хотіли поставити стояння по цій стороні. І саме цю капличку, це стояння по цій стороні, а тепер вони перенесли це стояння на другу сторону, бачите? Знову там була така дисткусія. Католики хотіли покласти тут, а все ж-таки там є поховання єврєїв, ми повинні шанувати тільки релігію, як вважають там напевне. J: А як вони хотіли поставити цю капличку? Н: Їм по ходу, по дорозі, понімаєш? Як так-о, наприклад, ви ні одного разу не були на Хресній дорозі в нас? J: Тут ні, але я була, коли там, просто дивилась, да? Н: Угу, а я, на приклад, на Хресній дорозі була просто під час навчально го процесу, я в директора пішла відпросилася, швиденько сіла і поїхала в Шаргород. Там вони закопували хреста, освячували, священство було, адміністрація була, було так святково, врасиво і просто по ходу дороги як ідеш, оці стояння так зручно по дорозі, це стояння зробили вже як би

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Antagonistic Tolerance The model of competitive sharing of religious sites was proposed by Robert M. Hayden and Timothy D. Walker in reference to spaces, the shape of which have been challenged and disputed by religious or ethno-religious groups. They built this model on the basis of the comparative research conducted in places where local communities differ from one another in terms of religion, but inhabit the same territory and share public space for their separate religious practices. At the same time, they preserve their distinctness: mixed marriages are rare and religious separateness is underpinned by a range of differences in terms of traditions and rituals.17 The key concept applied in the antagonistic tolerance model is “religioscape,” understood as “the distribution in spaces through time of the physical manifestations of specific religious traditions and of the populations that build them.”18 The term “religioscape,” according to Hayden and Walker, has been conceptualised on the basis of Arjun Appadurai’s concept of ethnoscape, as well as the definition of “religioscape” formulated by Elizabeth McAlister and Bryan S. Turner and the concept of “landscape” developed in history and archaeology.19 In this conceptualisation, both components – the physical manifestations of a given religious tradition, for example, the sites of worship, temples and sanctuaries and the community that practices the given religion – are equally important: “a physical artefact associated with a religion that is no longer practiced may be evidence of a previous religioscape but does not itself constitute a religioscape.”20 Religioscapes understood in this way intersect and sometimes overlap within the space shared by confessionally distinct communities. The antagonistic tolerance model helps one to grasp the principles regulating the relations between these communities’ members. In this model, religious sites and other objects manifesting religious tradition serve as indicators which characterise relations in religious life or other dimensions of social reality. A given group’s dominating position can be identified on the basis of visibility and the central location of objects or religious worship sites.

в стороні. Вони просто із-за того, шо католики хотіли із-за того, шо їм просто по ходу, вот, шоб дороги не переходити, всі по одній стороні. Але все ж-таки там же єврєї хотіли відновити шось своє, хотіли це зробити і вшанувати пам’ять, шо так довго вони були занедбані, ті могили. 17 Robert M. Hayden, Timothy D. Walker, “Intersecting Religioscapes: A Comparative Approach to Trajectories of Change, Scale, and Competitive Sharing of Religious Spaces,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 81, No. 2 (2013), pp. 399–426. 18 Robert M. Hayden, Timothy D. Walker, “Intersecting Religioscapes,” p. 399. 19 Robert M. Hayden, Timothy D. Walker, “Intersecting Religioscapes,” p. 407. 20 Robert M. Hayden, Timothy D. Walker, “Intersecting Religioscapes,” p. 407.

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The antagonistic tolerance model refers to the peaceful co-existence of separate religious or ethno-religious groups when the domination structure is preserved. It also refers to periods of conflicts and disputes about shared space and its transformation when the established power relations structure sways or changes.21

Uman An example of two religiously and ethnically distinct communities’ intersecting religioscapes, which possibly occurred due to changes in the city’s social structure, is the case of Uman in the Cherkasy region. Uman is a large city with a population of about 83,000 people, located 200 kilometres from Kyiv. The history of Uman is closely linked with the Potocki family, which is remembered thanks to the famous Sofiyivsky Park (“Софіївський парк” in Ukrainian, “Zofiówka” in Polish), established at the end of the 18th century by Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki, who dedicated it to his wife Zofia. Today, it is one of the city’s main landmarks and tourist attractions. Uman is also associated with the history of the koliyivshchyna, the uprising of Cossacks and Ruthenian peasants, as well as the Uman massacre which took place on June 21, 1768, during which haydamakas under the leadership of Ivan Honta and Maksym Zaliznyak mass-murdered local Jews and Poles who sought refuge in Uman’s fortress. Ivan Honta and Maksym Zaliznyak, as the leaders of the koliyivshchyna, interpreted by Ukrainian historiography as a national uprising, are contemporarily seen as Ukraine’s national heroes. Simultaneously, the Uman massacre reportedly was the main motivation behind Hasidic leader R. Nachman of Bratslav’s (also known as Nachman of Breslov) decision to move to Uman. He arrived there just before his death in 1810. In order to commemorate the koliyivshchyna’s victims, he supposedly chose the place where the graves of the murdered Jews were situated as the site of his own burial. Similarly to Sharhorod, Uman’s Jewish population comprised about half of the city’s population before the Second World War. Hitler’s army annihilated the local Jews after entering Uman in 1941.22 The grave of R. Nachman of Bratslav, along with the rest of the cemetery, was also destroyed during the Nazi occupation, and a residential district was erected on the site after the war. Another significant change in the ethnic composition of the city’s social structure coincided with the demise of the Soviet Union, which took place in the early 1990s. The opening of the borders resulted in an intensively developing Hasidic pilgrimage movement and Jewish tourism, centred around R. Nachman of Bratslav’s

21 Magdalena Lubańska emphasises the greater potential of the term “agonistic tolerance,” see: Muslims and Christians in Bulgarian Rhodopes. Studies on Religious (Anti) syncretism (De Gruyter Open, 2015). 22 Although the continuity of the Jewish community has been ruptured, a small remaining group of integrated Jews has lived in Uman from Soviet times until today.

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grave, which was discovered in the 1980s. At the peak of the pilgrimage movement, which takes place for about two weeks during autumn around the Rosh Hashanah holiday, thousands of pilgrims and tourists arrive there. Their number grows from year to year, and during the past several years around 30,000 people have gathered there every year. The growing pilgrimage movement impacts the intensive development of the neighbourhood found in the immediate vicinity of the tsadik’s grave and nearby Pushkin Street. New houses and hotels have been constructed in the Hasidic part of the city. Their residents include the Hasidim who arrived from Israel and other countries in order to be permanently close to R.  Nachman’s grave. There are kosher shops, restaurants and cafes located there. The local authorities even considered resettling the quarter’s previous residents in order to placate the growing conflicts and disputes between the Hasidim and the rest of the city’s population. The conflicts between these two groups predominantly have to do with respecting the law and public order regulations. During their disputes, people sometimes employ religious symbols. In the early 2000s, after the Rosh Hashanah celebration occurred along the streets of Uman, a Christian procession took place, during which priests consecrated the city’s public space. In the summer of 2013, before the Rosh Hashanah holiday in September of that year, a tall cross with a crucifix was erected near the lake in the immediate vicinity of R. Nachman’s grave. Soon afterwards, texts in Hebrew calling to stop profaning the name of God appeared on the cross, and the whole affair immediately made its way into the Ukrainian and foreign press. A police station was placed under the cross during the Rosh Hashanah holiday. The case of erecting a cross next to the grave of R. Nachman of Bratslav was widely discussed in the Western media. The press wrote about the Jewish-Christian conflict, passing judgements about both local authorities and local church representatives, as well as about the Hasidic pilgrims whose activities were compared to those of street gangs. One of the commentators wrote: The outrage is understandable. But their expression of it is inexcusable. It is the kind of behavior that can bring tragedy upon the Jewish people. Uman is not Jerusalem. R.  Nachman’s gravesite is not the Beis HaMikdash. The citizens of Uman are their hosts. Breslovers are guests. And the guests have just defaced the image of the god their hosts worship.23

The cross was erected on the initiative of Uman’s Civic Organizations Council to mark the 1025th anniversary of the Christianisation of Kyivan Rus. It was consecrated by two priests: a Greek Catholic one and an Orthodox one from the Ukrainian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.24 This was a grass-roots initiative, 23 Harry Maryles, “Exacting Vengeance on the Gentiles?”, The Jewish Press August 21, 2013, http://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/haemtza/exacting-vengeance-on-thegentiles/2013/08/21/0/?print, access: February 1, 2018. 24 Information received from one of the interviewees.

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Photo 11: Uman, the crucifix at the pond, 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

and the local authorities emphasised that they did not know about this endeavour. The selection of the site in a conspicuous way has provoked conflict. The cross is situated on a hill above a pond, used by Jewish pilgrims during ritual baths as well as a site where they pray and perform the tashlich. When pilgrims stand at the lake, they face the crucifix. When they pray, they look at the crucified Jesus. It appears that the cross is thus situated precisely where it should not be. My Ukrainian interviewees usually interpreted this event as a way of drawing attention to a range of problems associated with Hasidic pilgrimage movement and in particular its mass character, as well as a way of getting back at the unpopular authorities. The presence of the Hasidim in Uman is sometimes interpreted as a threat for the local community’s interests. The establishment of the “Hasidic quarter,” closed for local residents who do not have special permits during Rosh Hashanah, as well as the idea of resettling local residents and other undertakings have had a considerable impact on the ethno-religious relations. As a result, many Uman residents have perceived their city’s Hasidic revival in the categories of the growing domination of visitors’ and local authorities’ representatives, accused of corruption and lack of respect for the law. It is likely that the mobilisation of religious symbols is related to the form of Uman’s Hasidic presence. This community is defined first of all in religious terms and only later in political or ethnic terms. However, even if the symbol of the cross has not been used instrumentally in this case, and the initiators of the crucifix’s

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erection did not have any intention of insulting the Hasidic pilgrims’ religious feelings, the cross has become an instrument within the conflict that has lasted for the past several years. After all, as one of my interviewees noted: “the authorities won’t dare to remove the cross.”

The Communities of Memory The case of Uman is almost a model example of antagonistic tolerance. It reflects the earlier discussed group distinctiveness pattern as well as the power relations’ and inter-religious relations’ intersections principle. The case of Sharhorod’s sanctuary, although seemingly similar to Uman’s cross, does not fit the discussed theoretical model that well. In his discussion regarding the antagonistic tolerance model, Hayden and Walker point out that religioscapes need to at least partially overlap in the territorial sense. They understood this more broadly, however, than just the overlapping of religious landscapes  – the sacral object’s visibility, audibility or accessibility. Religioscapes entail two integral parts:  artefacts and people. When one of the groups whose religioscape intersects, disappears or is eliminated and is not just dominated by another group, its religioscape ends its existence. One cannot talk about the space shared by these communities, even though some physical elements of the religioscape remain there.25 In the case of Sharhorod, the Jewish population, previously integrated with the rest of the local community, ceased to exist as a distinct group after the 1980s’ and 1990s’ emigration. Many people of Jewish descent who stayed in Sharhorod treat their Jewishness as an important element of their identity. However, it is difficult to refer to this group as a religious one, because even if my interviewees considered themselves to be believers, they rarely think of themselves as religious people. It is difficult to call Uman’s contemporary Jewish population a separate group, let alone refer to it as a religious community. Yet, the antagonistic model also remains relevant when given groups differ from others in terms of religious heritage. Hayden and Walker emphasise that in many cases antagonistic tolerance manifests itself as a refusal to recognise such a group’s visibility. It may appear from this perspective that one could observe the case of the Sharhorod sanctuary’s landscape, which obscures the much less prominent Jewish cemeteries. In the case of Sharhorod, it is difficult to sketch out the community’s boundaries that could be defined in the Jewish religious heritage’s terms. However, if we put Hayden and Walker’s model aside for a while and define community in reference to the attempts to preserve the memory of Sharhorod’s Jews and commemorate Sharhorod’s Jewish history, the group of people who are engaged in preserving the Jewish elements of Sharhorod’s religious landscape considerably increases. In

25 Robert M. Hayden, Timothy D. Walker, “Intersecting Religioscapes,” pp. 420–421.

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that case, this group may include not only local Jews but also people from outside Sharhorod, whose aim is to keep the memory, document or research the town’s Jewish history, for example, documentary makers.26 Notably, in the case of the sanctuary dispute, the driving force behind the protests was an outside initiative: a representative from an institution working on Jewish history in Ukraine asked my interviewee to help take care of the Jewish cemetery site: When they started building those chapels… I have been the leader of the [Jewish] community from 1994. If you walk around Sharhorod, everybody will tell you that. Could they have approached me? They started building; I did not even notice. A head of the Vaad [Association of Jewish Civic Organizations and Communities in Ukraine] calls me from Kyiv and says: “Inna, what is happening there at your place?” I said: “What has happened?” And he says: “A Polish woman came. [She said] ‘I don’t like it there in Sharhorod; there was an opening of the Way of the Cross and they put chapels in the Jewish cemetery.” ’ And that’s all. There’s how it all started. And there is just one there, you’ve seen it.27

Public Memory A manifestation of the need for commemoration is the Jewish museum in Sharhorod, established by local Jewish community activist Inna Fridkina. The idea was born as part of the Jewish community’s and religious life’s revival of the 1980s and 1990s, still before the mass emigration of Jews. Seder dinners, concerts and holiday celebrations started to be organised then. These practices were abandoned after the mass emigration of Jews in the 1990s.

26 In reference to the initiatives from outside Sharhorod or even outside Ukraine, we could mention two documentaries: Kadish, the Last Jews of Sharhorod (original title: Kadisz. Ostatni Żydzi z Szargorodu, Poland, 1992), directed by Stanisław Krzemiński and Mieczysław Siemieński and The Miracle of Podole (original title: Das Wunder von Podolien, Germany, 1997, directed by Grzegorz Linkowski). There are also literary works devoted to the Jews in Sharhorod. Local poet Hanna Bojarska published the book The Bells of Small Istanbul (original title: Дзвони малого Стамбула). In 2011 a book entitled Sharhorod – a Jewish Shtetl (original title: Шаргород - еврейское местечко) authored by local ethnographer Anatoliy Nahrebetski was published at the request of town mayor Ihor Vinokur. 27 A 55-year-old female, Sharhorod, 2012. The original quote goes as follows: “Ви пройдете по Шаргороду, вам всі скажут. Можна було звернутися? Почали будувати, я навіть не бачила. Звоне мені наш холова Вааду. З Кієва, і каже, Інна, що в вас там робиться? Я кажу: що случилося? Він каже: приїхала полячка, полька приїхала, він каже полька. Там в Шаргороді мені не подобається, що робили відкриття хресної дороги, я приїжджала, мені здається, що ці каплички, що вони на єврейському кладовищі. І всьо. І пішло, і пішло. І получилося так, що одна прямо стоїт, ви бачили, перед.”

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I: Let’s go back to the beginning; the community was alive, had its own life. Very many people used to come to the community, people were coming from Zhytomyr [Ukr. Житомир], sending religious boys to our place, organising celebrations. MZa: And who was that? Did you organise all the events? I: No, they offered me, and told me to, I  don’t remember whether they were from Vinnytsya or another religious community, and said:  “We will send [money] for the holidays. They gave [money] for the holidays, but one could eat fish without scales, there are those laws, so I asked them to send food rather than money. And then I was going from shop to shop asking whether that fish had scales before it was canned or not. I feel this warmth while I am telling you this. And my mother was still alive then, and many people gathered and were singing and talking, you see? What I mean is that even simple socialising [was important], and it is probably not there anymore. When I see how people go to the Catholic church, I feel envious; when I see people nicely dressed, I don’t even mean the religious aspect of it, just simple communication, socialising. This is also true about the Orthodox monastery. My acquaintances go there, somehow cleanse themselves there. And in our case, it is what it is. We used to gather together all the time, people talked, it was really nice. It was difficult to get together, but once people did get together, it was really good. People would thank one another because it was all very nice and very good.28

28 A 55-year-old female, Sharhorod, 2013. The original quote goes as follows: I: То вернемся до початку, шо громада жила, було життя. До громади дуже багато людей приїжжало, з Житомира приїжжали, присилали нам хлопчиків релігійних, які проводили свята тут. J: І хто присилав, хто це? Це Ви організували? І: Нє, мені пропонували і казали там, я не памятаю, чи з Вінницької чи з якої релігійної громади, і казали, ми вам пришлемо на свята. Прислати звичайно присилали, а я пам’ятаю такий случай, давали на релігійні свята, а не можна було там, є ж свої закони, рибу без луски їсти, і коли я просила пришліть краще їжу, нє, гроші. То я ходила по магазинах і питала, скажіть, будь ласка, ця риба до того, як вона стала консервою, вона мала луску чи не мала. Ну хорошо, ну аж тепло іде, як згадую, і мама тоді була жива моя, збиралися багато людей, співали, спілкуван ня було, розумієш? От до чого я веду, навіть просто спілкування, якого зараз немає мабуть не тільки, от я дивлюся, в костьол ідуть люди, так? Я заздрю просто, заздрість збирається, як на свята гарно одягнуться, я не кажу за релігійну сторону, просто спілкування. Так само монастир, в мене знайомі ходять в монастир, зібралися, якось очищаються там люди, от, а в нас зараз так-во, от тоід тоже не було, не було куди його, но ми весь час збиралися на такі посиденькі, як то можна так сказати, то люди і спілкувалися, хорошо було. в усякому разі от коли вже зібралися, тоді було добре. Важко було зібратися. А потім не було такого, шоб не підходив один до одного, а дякували, шо дуже гарно і дуже добре.

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Former residents who emigrated left various household items in their houses. Many objects that could be taken out unnoticed were simply stolen. Some were collected by Inna who in the 1990s created a small museum in the house next to the synagogue. The assembled things were grouped according to their usage in their respective parts of the house: kitchen, bedroom, living-room. Inna as the museum guide explains what occupations Jews of Sharhorod had and why they had them; she also tells local legends about miracles performed by rabbis buried at the local Jewish cemetery. There is also a dilapidated 16th-century synagogue in Sharhorod, which housed a winery for decades. The synagogue was divided into two floors at the time, and up until now there are still barrels and casks inside the building. The synagogue premises have been fenced and there is a plaque informing one that the building is a historical monument. As my interviewee informed me, getting the synagogue back was not a big challenge. However, keeping it in a good state is much more difficult: The guys who rented the premises, a company from Kyiv [...]. Something went wrong there. Then we petitioned to the mayor so that he let us take the synagogue. They helped because a large number of documents was necessary and there were problems. Not problems really, but issues to fix. They helped. It’s better for them this way than to pay a lot of money for the renovation. So they gave the synagogue to us. And now there is nothing special in the synagogue… I don’t know, there is no sense even to enter it.29

On a different occasion, my interviewee complained about the lack of interest in the synagogue both among the local authorities as well as former Sharhorod Jewish residents, who, in her opinion, despite financial opportunities, did not decide to support its preservation or renovation. My interviewee’s dream was to exploit Sharhorod’s potential, the unique and largely preserved Jewish architecture, and to create an outdoor museum that would comprise the Jewish quarter and the synagogue along with neighbouring houses. The ideas for commemorating Sharhorod’s Jewish history and its residents have been related to plans to develop tourism in the region. My interviewee was

29 A 55-year-old woman, Sharhorod, 2012. The original quotation goes as follows: “Хлопці, які взяли в оренду ці приміщення, з Києва фірма [...]. Щось там не вийшло. Ми тоді звернулись до мера, щоб ми забрали синагогу до нас. Вони домопогли, тому що та треба було купу документів, і були проблеми..., нот нє то що були проблеми, скільки питання ці щоби вирішити, треба було допомоги, треба було кошти, вони допомогли. Їм вигідніше було це зробити, ніж платити за ремонт цього приміщеня дуже великі гроші. А так синагогу передали. Так що зараз в цєї синагозі зараз немає нічого такохо... я навіть не знаю, просто не ма сенсу там заходити.”

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inspired by visits from tourists and representatives of Jewish organisations from Western Europe, the United States and Israel. The revival of interest in Jewish Sharhorod, according to my interviewee, started along with the first visits made by Jewish organisations’ representatives and activities aimed to support the Jewish community (parcels for holidays and money for small holiday gifts for community members). She managed to turn the dreams and ideas into concrete plans; they have not, however, materialised yet. The attempts to raise resources for the synagogue’s renovation or to maintain the museum have also not been successful. According to my interviewee, her efforts have not fallen on fertile ground: her requests for funding have been denied on many occasions, and she cannot count on broader support from the local authorities or institutions. The fact that my interviewee’s commemoration efforts have proven unsuccessful could be interpreted as an indicator of Sharhorod’s social structure transformation. In the context of the local Jews’ emigration and the dissolution of the Jewish community soon after its initial revival as a community of memory, such a grass-roots initiative strongly embedded in my interlocutor’s personal experience does not possess sufficient motive power – it is characterised by an individuality characteristic for biographical memory. Social memory, described by Kaja Kaźmierska as the product of actions made by civil society, cannot develop in this context.

Private Memory Memory about Jewish history and the residents of Sharhorod and Murafa increasingly has a private and biographical character. It is present in autobiographical narratives, manifests itself in individual memories and family stories. Similar processes have been described by Anna Wylegała, who researches social memory in Zhovkva in Ukraine, among other places. She wrote:  “Collective memory often proves to be too weakly linked to personal experiences to mobilise people to engage in commemoration practices; biographical memory, in turn, is often too particular.”30 Local residents still remember the Jewish quarters’ old character; this memory, however, is manifested in individual narratives. It is present in the language: the term misto (місто, city or town in Ukrainian) is used both in Murafa and in Sharhorod to refer to the former centre characterised by the Jewish streets’ dense settlement. MZa: And they [persons, whose gravestones the interviewee shows during a walk around the Jewish cemetery in Murafa] were very… P: Religious, yes.

30 Anna Wylegała, Przesiedlenia a pamięć: Studium (nie)pamięci społecznej na przykładzie ukraińskiej Galicji i polskich „ziem odzyskanych” (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu M. Kopernika, 2014) p. 83.

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MZa: But were they R.s? P: No, no, they were believers, and a R. was this one [she shows a different gravestone]. MZa: And what did they do, these believers? P: Well, ministrations at the synagogue. The way we have a church here, they had a synagogue in the town [misto], where they had a school [...] It’s all Catholics in the town [nowadays]. They bought those Jewish houses. They [Jews] left and they bought from them. There from the shopping centre [univermag] down the hill to the pond, there are many houses that used to be Jewish.31

Systematic changes in the urban space, the disappearing Jewish architecture and the dissolving Jewish community may lead to transformations in terms of the connotations of the term misto. A  good example of a similar process is the term kirkut used in Polish to refer to Jewish cemeteries. It is increasingly losing its former meaning, less and less being associated with a cemetery and simply becoming unrecognisable for current language users.32 Of course the mechanism in this case is somewhat different, as the word misto is still in use and still refers to a certain part of the town; however, its connotations can change. The obliteration of the Jewish quarters and buildings’ character goes hand in hand with the disappearance of the traces of Jewish history in these locales. The memory of former residents is preserved in a concealed form, s similarly to the “archive” memory understood by Aleida Assmann as an inactive or passive memory, “waiting for better times,” like museum collections not used in current exhibitions that are kept in storage places and are difficult to access.33 At one of my interviewee’s house, which I visited on several occasions, there is a large mirror in a humongous wooden frame. I had already noticed it during my first visit, because of the impression that it completely did not fit the house interior and other furniture and objects assembled there. After several visits, during 31 A 70-year-old woman, Murafa, 2013: “MZa: І вони були якісь сильно... P: Вєрующі, да. MZa: Але рабінами були? P: Нє, нє, це вєрующі, а рабіном он був, цей во. MZa: А що вони робили, ці вєрующі? P: Ну так во, в синагогу, прислуги. Так як в нас є церков, так в них синагога, у місті, там де така як казали вони школа [...] Там всьо, католики, у місті. Покупляли ті єврейські хати. Ці виїжджали, а вони він них купляли. Там від універмагу вниз до ствка, там багато хатів, є, де єврейськє колись.” 32 A comment by Alicja Mroczkowska, a PhD candidate at the Transdisciplinary Doctoral programme at Warsaw Univeristy, who works at the Jewish Historical Institute and for years has been involved in the revitalisation of Jewish cemeteries. 33 Aleida Assmann, “Canon and Archive,” in: Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, eds. A. Erll and A. Niinning. Berlin, New York, 2008, pp. 97–108.

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a random conversation, it turned out that the mirror had been inherited from the house’s previous owners – a Jewish family who had left for Israel. The mirror was not needed or its transport had been too challenging, so they just left it in the house they had sold to my interlocutor’s family. For another one of my interviewees, who also bought her house from Jews who left Murafa, a visit paid by the former owners became an opportunity to learn some local history: Many years ago, some ten years ago they came. I look (through the window), somebody is standing by the gate. I approached them and they say “you know, this is our fatherland, our father built this house. Can we come in for a moment?” Can you imagine how pleasant that was? These are adult people, about retirement age and they were crying when they entered the house and saw the marks on the door frame their father made to record their height. And here there was a porch, and windows on this side were like that. And the sister fell out this window and she cried so much. She cried too. And they remembered their history, and one could see it was sincere, and they had fond memories of this village they used to live in. They were small children then. I, for one, did not know the history of my house.34

For some interviewees close contact with Jews becomes an important element of their autobiographical narrative as well as identity. This happens in particular in the case of people who owe a lot to their Jewish neighbours. The interviewee cited below has lived in the Jewish part of Sharhorod for a long time. He got a tailor workshop from his former boss; he also bought his house next to it. His account about Sharhorod’s Jewish residents is exceptionally concrete: After that we finally started to have enough to survive, but I did not know what to do next. Well, I believe… My neighbour’s family name was Kryshta. They were very helpful, good people. And she says to me, you know what Volodya? All around buy pigs, kill them, have for oil, for… And you have nothing. My mother, blessed be her soul, took a quarter of oil, this is such a small bottle, so that the sisters did not notice, and brought us. Brought us so that we would have some for soup or something.

34 A 50-year-old female, a teacher, Murafa, 2012. The original quote goes as follows: “То багато років тому назад то десять років тому назад приїхали, я бачу біля воріт хтось стоїть, попросили, я підійшла, вони розповідають, ви знаєте, це наша б атьківщина, це наш батько будував цей будинок. Чи можна зайти? Знаєте, як це було приємно, люди дорослі, віку ближче до пенсійного, як в їх, як вони плакали, як вони зайшли в хату, вони побачили коло дверей помітки, це батько помічав, наприклад, коли вони росли, якого зросту були. А тут була віранда з цієї сторони, там були вікна такі і сестричка вивернулася з того вікна і випала. Тоже плакала. От вони згадували таку свою історію і було видно, шо це щиро і як вони добрим словом згадували за цим селом, шо вони тут жили. Вони ше малими були дітьми і таку історію розказали. Я, наприклад, не знала за історію свого будинкy.”

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Because there was a child. And every money we earned went for the house’s debts. And they [the Jewish neighbours – MZa] say: we will give you some money, buy a pig and kill it, and maybe some cracklings will remain, and you’ll have something to live on, as we cannot look at how you live in such poverty [...]. I said I don’t have the money, and she says, we give you the money. I come on Saturday and ask, so are you giving the money? Today is Saturday, they do not give anything on a Saturday. Like we don’t give things on a Monday. And they do not on a Saturday. She says, on Saturday we do not give anything, come on Sunday morning. I say, on Sunday morning I need to go before dawn to that market. But very early in the morning I come to her house, and she is still in bed [...], and he already left for work. I say, Auntie Ita, you promised me some money, will you give it to me? Take the purse on the stove; there is a small plate, and there is a purse in it, just take it. I say, how can I take it, could you give it to me yourself? I told you to take, so take yourself. Take as much as you need. Could you imagine that Jews were not kind? She has so much confidence in me that… She knew I would not take more. She says, take some. I counted three hundred and fifty roubles, enough for the best big. That was the money. I  counted, I  went, I bought, I killed. I could not cut the meat so well then, so I did not earn that much, but I earned some.35

35 A 69-year-old male, a tailor, Sharhorod, 2012. The original quotation goes as follows: “Але так пройшло время, ми вже начали як то кажуть, виживати, до чого дальше братися, не знаю. Кажеться, моя сусідка, фамілія їхня Кришта була. Дуже допомічні люди, хароші. І вона каже до мене, Володя, знаєте що? Всі купляють свині, ріжуть, знов натовкаєте, то на олій, то на те... Ви ж не маєте нічого. Моя мама покійна брала четвертушку олії - це така маленька бутилочка що сестри не бачили в своїй хаті і приносила нам. Приносила, щоби ми мали на який суп чи що. Бо що дитина є, як що якусь копійку заробимо, то віддаємо довги за хату. О, вони мені кажуть так: ми шам даєм гроші, купите кабанчика, заріжте, продасте, а якіс шкварок, кришка останеться, то будете мати з чого жити, бо ми не можем дивитися, як ви бідуєте [...]. Я кажу, в мене немає гроші, вона каже, ми даєм гроші. В суботу я прихожу, кажу, що, даєте гроші? Сьогодні субота, в ним в суботу нічого не дається. Так як в нас кажут в понеділок. А в них - в суботу. Вона каже в суботу ми нічого не даємо, прийдете в понеділок рано. Я кажу, як рано, як треба до світа їхати на цей базар. Але раненько я піднявся, вона ще в кроваті, покійна з внучкою, а він вже пішов на руботу. Я кажу, цьоця Іта, ви обіщали гроші, дасте? Візміт, там кошильок на пєцу стоїть такий ковбишок, там є кошильок, візміть собі. Я кажу, як візьміть собі, ви мені дайте. Я вам сказала, беріть собі. Скільки вам треба, беріть собі. От представляєте, що евреї булу не добрі. Вона даже, на стілько була доверен ість, на стілько вона дивилася на наше життя, що вона сама себе підставляла, щоби тилько... вона знала, що я не візьму лишні. Вона каже, беріть собі. Я не можу дозволити собі, беру цей кошильок і іду до її кроваті, а вона нєт, ідіть і беріть собі. Відрахував собі триста п”ятдесят рублів, стільки на найкращого кабанчика. Такі це були гроші. Відщитав, пішов, купив, зарізав, тільки там я ще не вмів це рубати, це всьо, щось за мало заробив, но заробив.”

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Memory in the cases discussed is of an “archival” character, as aptly put by Assman. It manifests itself in a way characteristic for family or biographical memory: in the private dimension, in individual narratives that are difficult to generalise and that rarely need to be remembered or commemorated in the public sphere.

Official Memory Grass-root commemoration practices characteristic for social memory are of little significance in Sharhorod. And the Jewish community has remained outside the state authorities’ interest, who create official (collective) memory and who do not support initiatives such as the Jewish museum or synagogue renovation. However, Jewish history has been included within one of the local authorities’ historical political projects. In 2007, Sharhorod was distinguished as a distinction in the “Seven miracles of Vinnytsia land” competition as “a centre of spiritual life and peaceful co-existence”. The decision’s justification contained a list of several neighbouring buildings: St. Florian’s Church from the 16th century, St. Nicolai’s monastery from the 18th to 19th centuries and the synagogue from the 18th century.36 When the competition results were announced, the sanctuary’s construction had not been started yet; however, it has been treated by many local residents as part of the Sharhorod historic-cultural complex distinguished by regional authorities.37 The sanctuary’s construction has proven to be a challenge to the ideal of different religions’ “peaceful co-existence” in Sharhorod, distinguished by the “Seven miracles of Vinnytsia land” competition jury. As has been previously mentioned, one of the sanctuary’s stations was constructed on the territory of the Jewish cemetery, according to the assumption that all sanctuary stations would be built on the right side of the road leading from St. Florian’s Church located in the town centre to Hybalivka hill, which became the bone of contention described earlier. One could wonder how the construction of the sanctuary partly on the territory of the Jewish cemetery and in its immediate vicinity  – at the time when Sharhorod was being distinguished as a centre of peaceful co-existence between two religions: Judaism and Christianity – was possible. One could wonder about the logic behind the thinking that the sanctuary was an element of Sharhorod centre’s spiritual life. Hayden and Walker believe that attempts to stop antagonistic tolerance or manage it are increasingly frequent. One of the examples they provide is the penalisation of cultural heritage damage. Although they do not develop this theme, I believe that historical memory is one area where authorities attempt to manage

36 According to the official data on the information plaque, the synagogue dates back to 1589, that is, to the 16th and not the 17th century. 37 Vinnytsia city council’s website, http://www.vinrada.gov.ua/sim_chudes_ vinnichchini.htm. April 21, 2014.

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Photo 12: Sharhorod, The Monument to the New Monument by Zhanna Kadyrova. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflicts. Management is understood here as a process rooted in the existing domination structure. Local authorities do not function here as arbiters and guarantors of dialogue, but rather as side spectators in the conflict, which, by realising a given historical memory policy, formulates and implements its own hegemony’s principles. In May 2009, The Monument to a New Monument sculpture authored by Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova was unveiled in Sharhorod. It was erected on Lenina Street, the town’s main street found within the neighbourhood previously inhabited by the Jewish community. Made of white enamel, the sculpture is placed on a stone pedestal in the part revitalised according to Kadyrova’s design, surrounded by cobbled alleys’ trees and benches. Kadyrova’s work presents a new monument still covered by a white cloth, waiting to be ceremoniously unveiled. In 2013, the monument was shown at the Ukrainian pavilion in Venice’s 55th International Art Exhibition. As one can read on the artist’s web page: The Monument to the New Monument is a universal project. “Everybody can imagine their own hero under the white cloth on the stone pedestal. (…) This is a hero for everyone, the monument is always topical.”38 38 Zhanna Kadyrowa’s website, http://kadyrova.com/en/news/16-2012-01-13-09-46-01, April 20, 2014.

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Photo 13: Sharhorod, The Monument to the New Monument by Zhanna Kadyrova: The fragment with the inscription “In love head over heels.” Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

In an interview for the Art Ukraine magazine, the artist emphasises that it was important for her to show a general commemoration mechanism:  “One monument replaces another, just the way state systems and leaders do. And my monument is always topical, because it represents the moment just before the unveiling of a new monument.”39 She wanted to illustrate the universal truth that “times change,” heroes replace one another and each time new figures and ideas are put on the pedestal of official memory. The monument represents the moment when “everything is possible”; it embodies “pure potentiality.” For the author, its power derives from the conviction that the same story can be written in different ways, and the relativity of interpretation relieves us of the sense of reality in terms of both past events as well as things that are currently taking place before our eyes.40

39 Zhanna Kadyrowa, Anna Cyba, LA BIENNALE 2013: Жанна Кадырова: „Я сделала документацию жизни скульптуры в городской среде”, „Art Ukraine”, No. 6–2, pp. 31–33. 40 Zhanna Kadyrowa, Anna Cyba, LA BIENNALE 2013....

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The concept of the “monument for everyone” is based on the negation of the very idea of a monument, rooted in the term’s etymology. Dictionary definitions of the word “monument” include: “(1) a lasting evidence, reminder or example of someone or something notable or great, a distinguished person,” or “(2) a memorial stone or a building erected in remembrance of a person or event.”41 A monument always represents something concrete; it is always intentional, defined. Even if it remains unfinished, in a sense, and leaves space for interpretation, its very name usually requires a modifier: a monument is always something to someone or to something. Kadyrova’s idea is based on looping this relationship. The Monument to a New Monument fulfils the classic mechanism of meta-text. It represents the process of representing; its theme is memory and commemoration practices as such. The monument represents a figure veiled by a white cloth. However, the cloth has been reproduced in a schematic way and is far from being realistic. The angular clump placed on a pedestal, although reminding one of a human figure, encourages us to perceive it as some sort of abstraction. According to my interviewees’ accounts, this non-figurative understanding of the monument is most appealing to them. Nobody was surprised by the lack of a plaque or paid attention to its meta-text dimension. Only one interviewee said that this was the Monument to a New Monument; however, she was not able to or did not wish to explain the title. Simultaneously, I encountered interpretations that the monument represented, for example, a Jew, the Holocaust or the god of love: MZa: A monument to the god of love? […] A: Yes. It has been here for a while, a couple of years. Five, maybe six years ago they erected a monument to love. The god of love. MZa: But what is it? A: Young people profess their love there. And leave their autographs. MZa: And whose initiative was it? A: Our local authorities’ initiative […]. Young people often come here, walk around, so they decided to put a monument to love here. MZa: Interesting, yes [we go to see the scribblings – MZa]. A: “Maksym, I can’t live without you,” “Anja de best” [Photo 18].42

Treated as an abstract representation, the monument loses its versatility. It stops being the monument to a monument and becomes a representation of something or someone concrete. In this way, the effect intended by the artist is achieved: the monument is interpreted in various ways; it activates the imagination and encourages the co-creation of a work of art. Open, unfinished in a sense, this work makes the monument a meeting point for various, often contradictory visions, since one cannot unveil it and see what is “in reality” behind the cloth. 41 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monument. 42 A 35-year-old Catholic female, Sharhorod, 2012.

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Although Zhanna Kadyrova never mentioned the Jewish history of Sharhorod as the inspiration for the monument in that particular town, when we attempt to understand the practices aimed at commemorating the local Jews, The Monument to a New Monument demonstrates surprisingly much. Kadyrova wanted to grasp, as the explains, the universal mechanism of commemoration. “The always topical monument,” however, clearly shows the processes that also shape social memory. Social memory, which – as was precisely demonstrated by Kaja Kaźmierska and Anna Wylegała,– is created as a result of the interaction between three types of narratives: the state one, which shapes a memory’s official dimension, the family one, which impacts the private dimension, and the public one (related to civil society), which is responsible for a memory’s social aspect.43 The Monument to a New Monument representing an “always contemporary hero,” accentuates the tensions between the official (collective) and biographical (individual) dimensions of memory. When interpreting the monument in the categories of collective memory and collective imagination, one can treat Kadyrova’s project as a representation of still another position than those which have already been mentioned by the artist:  a position that evades competing ideologies, world outlooks and contested history. Although, as a monument erected on the town’s main street, “the monument for everyone” manifests the official (collective) memory, it fulfils its intended role – commemoration – only at a private level.

Bibliography: Assmann, Aleida. “Canon and Archive.” In: Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, eds. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Niinning. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008, pp. 97–108. Borowik, Irena. Odbudowywanie pamięci. Przemiany religije w ŚrodkowoWschodniej Europie po upadku komunizmu. Kraków: Nomos Publishing House, 2000. Hayden, M., Robert Timothy D. Walker. “Intersecting Religioscapes: A Comparative Approach to Trajectories of Change, Scale, and Competitive Sharing of Religious Spaces.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 81, No. 2, 2013, pp. 399–426. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle. Religion as a Chain of Memory, trans. Simon Lee. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

43 Kaja Kaźmierska, Biografia i pamięć. Na przykładzie pokoleniowego doświadczenia ocalonych z Zagłady, Kraków 2008; Anna Wylegała, Przesiedlenia a pamięć: Studium (nie)pamięci społecznej na przykładzie ukraińskiej Galicji i polskich „ziem odzyskanych,” Toruń, 2014.

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Kadyrova, Zhanna and Anna Cyba, “LA BIENNALE 2013: Жанна Кадырова: „Я сделала документацию жизни скульптуры в городской среде,” Art Ukraine, No. 6–2, 2013, pp. 31–33. Kaźmierska, Kaja. Biografia i pamięć. Na przykładzie pokoleniowego doświadczenia ocalonych z Zagłady. Kraków: Nomos, 2008. Kozelsky, Mara. Christianizing Crimea. Shaping Sacred Space in the Russian Empire and Beyond. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010. Lubańska, Magdalena. Muslims and Christians in Bulgarian Rhodopes. Studies on Religious (Anti)syncretism. De Gruyter Open, 2015. Maryles, Harry. “Exacting Vengeance on the Gentiles?” The Jewish Press, August 21, 2013, http://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/haemtza/exacting-vengeance-onthe-gentiles/2013/08/21/0/?print, February 1, 2018. Sharhorod sanctuary website, http://golgofa.ofm.org.ua/ April 21, 2014. Vinnytsia city council’s website, http://www.vinrada.gov.ua/sim_chudes_ vinnichchini.htm April 21, 2014. Wylegała, Anna. Przesiedlenia a pamięć: Studium (nie)pamięci społecznej na przykładzie ukraińskiej Galicji i polskich „ziem odzyskanych.” Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu M. Kopernika, 2014. Zatorska, Magdalena. “Szarogród: Ruchome krajobrazy,” Віннищина: Минуле та сьогодення. Краєзнавчі дослідження. Матеріали ХХV Всеукраїнської Наукової Історико-Краєзнавчої Конференції. Vinnytsia: Vinnytsia Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical Univeersity, 2013. Zhanna Kadyrova’s website, http://kadyrova.com/en/news/16-2012-01-13-09-4601, April 20, 2014.

A People Without a Homeland. “Mother of Exiles, Do Not Let Us Perish!”

Iuliia Buyskykh

Confessional Communities as Communities of Memory: The Greek Catholics of Biały Bór and the Orthodox of Włodawa1 Abstract: This article is based on the results of my research conducted in two religiously and ethnically mixed local communities in Poland, Biały Bór and Włodawa. These two localities share many similar experiences, including a multicultural and multi-confessional past, the presence of Jews before the Second World War, and their extermination during the Holocaust, the forced resettlement of the Ukrainian population from 1944 to 1946 to the Soviet Union, the repatriation of Poles from Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine after the war and finally Operation Vistula in 1947. My research interests focus on Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic community (who are predominately Ukrainian) and Włodawa’s Orthodox community. Both communities are relatively marginal due to the fact that they are formed by national and confessional minorities. My research has been inspired by the anthropology of memory; the concept of post-memory has proved to be especially useful here. From an epistemic perspective, post-memory is the memory of second and younger generations who have not experienced historical traumas directly but have inherited the memories of them from their parents or grandparents. In both communities’ cases, confessional identity functions as a factor that determines national identity, which is very important for understanding the perception of history as defined by religion. Biały Bór’s and Włodawa’s communities are examples of the broader phenomenon of the strong interaction that exists between nationality, confession, land, places of worship and “sites of memory” around which collective identity is formed. This is quite typical for marginalised religious communities within national, religious and ethnic borderlands characterised by traumatic memories that tend to be highly contested. Keywords: post-memory, borderlands, neighbours, identities, religious minorities

Introduction For a year and a half, I conducted field research in Ukrainian-Polish communities located in Poland.2 This article is based on the ethnographic data I collected in Biały 1 I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my interviewees from both local communities I studied. My words of gratitude for help with my fieldwork go to Father Piotr Baran, the Maciupa family, the Myc family and the Bodnar family from Biały Bór as well as to Father Jerzy Ignaciuk, the Lisiecki family, Stepan Samoszuk, Krystyna Ostapiuk and Anna Stanford from Włodawa. I am also very grateful to Emilia Słomianowska-Kamińska and Alina Cywińska from the Warsaw University Library’s Cabinet of Documents of Social Life, who organised my first visit to Włodawa. 2 The research in Biały Bór was funded from the Polish National Science Centre grant “Religious culture in the face of social changes. A comparative study of local

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Bór and neighbouring villages in Western Pomerania as well as in Włodawa and neighbouring villages in the Polish-Belarusian borderlands. I  stayed four times from 3 to 8  days in Biały Bór and three times in Włodawa (altogether, I  stayed in Włodawa for almost a month). Both places share many similar experiences, including a multicultural and multi-confessional past, the presence of Jewish populations before the Second World War, and their annihilation during the Holocaust, the forced resettlement of the Ukrainian population from 1944 to 1946 to the Soviet Union, the repatriation of Poles from Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine after the war and finally Operation Vistula in 1947. However, from my perspective, the two communities are rather distinct from each other. My initial research aim was to observe these communities’ religiosity as well as the inter-confessional relations between Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics in Biały Bór and between Roman Catholics and the Orthodox faithful in Włodawa. However, the fact that I was a researcher from Ukraine influenced my interlocutors’ narratives; new themes emerged in their accounts, since they perceived me through the prism of my nationality and Orthodox confession. These issues defined the context of my field research and shaped new research themes that emerged. In Biały Bór, I relied on the biographical-narrative interview method, while in Włodawa I partially relied on the biographical-narrative interview method and partially on the free, in-depth interview method. In Biały Bór, I conducted interviews mainly with representatives from the first generation of the population that experienced Operation Vistula’s forced resettlement, whereas interviews and meetings with representatives of this population’s second and third generations were limited. At the same time, when I was almost finished with my fieldwork, I was quite unexpectedly invited to the wedding ceremony and reception of a young woman of my age, so I had a chance to see how weddings are celebrated among Poland’s Ukrainian minority.3 In Włodawa, my contacts were not limited to the Orthodox community; I also communicated with Roman Catholics, some of them from Orthodox families.4 communities (PolandUkraine),” awarded by the National Science Centre of Poland (Project no.  2011/03/B/HS3/00341).) by prof. Magdalena Zowczak. The study in Włodawa was implemented thanks to the V4EaP Scholarship (Post-Doc) awarded by the International Visegrad Fund for the 2015/2016 academic year. 3 The number of respondents in Biały Bór was 28, including 24 women and 4 men. Out of all the men whom I interviewed, one belonged to the first generation that experienced the forced deportation, one belonged to the third generation and two to the second. Out of all the women, two were Polish Greek Catholics and the rest were Ukrainian including 14 from the first generation of the resettled population, 6 from the second and 2 from the third. 4 The general number of my respondents in this region was 23. In Włodawa, I spoke with 9 women (5 Orthodox, 4 Roman Catholic) and 4 men (2 Roman Catholic and 2 Orthodox). Only one of the Orthodox women was originally from Ukraine and had lived in Włodawa for seven years at the time of the study. In Orchówek, I had interviews with two Roman Catholics: a man and a woman. In the village of Stawki

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I would like to emphasise that I  describe identities first of all based on my interlocutors’ self-declarations. Since religious identity sometimes serves as a defining factor for national identity in the researched communities, I always posed such questions as, “Who are you? Who do you feel you are/how do you identify yourself?” This was particularly important in the case of Włodawa’s Orthodox population, who first and foremost identified themselves as Orthodox and then as тутейшi,5 which translates roughly as “local” or “from this place” (I discuss the concept of тутейшi later in the text) and sometimes as Ukrainian. This last identification is more characteristic for the second and third generation of Orthodox followers I communicated with. My research methods included not only interview but also participant observation and field notes, in which I fixed my observations and emotional impressions. My “research field” was defined not only by the borderland culture’s territorial boundaries and its multi-layered character, but also by the multi-dimensional (national, “phantom,”6 confessional and ethnic) borderlands and human actions. It included people’s behaviour in churches and at cemeteries, their emotions, gestures and religious experiences, as well as my engaged participation in church services together with community members. I  adopted James Clifford’s understanding of field as habitus, seen as a combination of embodied tendencies and practices (and not a physical place), as well as his perspective on field research as the embodiment of spatial practices.7 Kirsten Hastrup’s works also considerably influenced my research approach, in particular her concept of reflexivity which

I worked with eight study participants: 5 women and 3 men. All of them were Roman Catholic, yet 3 women and 1 man came from Orthodox families (they had an Orthodox father, mother and/or grandparents). 5 Translator’s note: tutejszy in Polish or тутешній (тутейший) in Ukrainian are a self-identifying category of people living in culturally and linguistically mixed areas of Central and Eastern Europe. 6 I apply the term phantom border after Sabine von Löwis, who defined “phantom borders” as “political borders which politically and legally do not exist anymore, but seem to appear in different forms and modes of social action and practices today” (Sabine von Löwis, “Phantom borders in the political geography of East Central Europe: An Introduction,” Erdkunde. Archive for Scientific Geography, Vol. 69, No. 2 (2015), p. 99. Of course, I am aware of the fact that this phenomenon may be interpreted in a much wider sense; however, I use the term phantom border first of all in relation to Biały Bór as a town located in a pre-war German territory inhabited by Germans and Jews whose presence in the town can be traced in the few tomb stones, old houses, and the cemetery chapel that for a long time, starting in the 1950s, was used by the Greek Catholic community. 7 James Clifford, “Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining of Anthropology,” in: Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of the Field Science, ed. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Londres: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 185–222: 195.

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is, in her own words, “an inherent element in any empirical ethnography.”8 Since reflexivity is part of ethnographic research, an anthropologist becomes a respondent for himself; “reflexivity implies an awareness of self as both a subject and object.”9 My fieldwork experience and its influence on the following research also addresses what Michael Herzfeld calls “empirical reflexivity,” which seeks to translate a researcher’s emotions into anthropological insights and reflections. This kind of reflexivity means a specific attitude when an ethnographic interaction can be perceived through an imperfect interlocking of two different codes with entangled identities and conjectures.10

Place, Narrative and Memory It is believed that oral traditions define certain landscapes’ localities and places, explaining their origin and names, telling stories about the events that happened in a given place. A certain place’s folkloric sense is closely related to a given local community’s history and preserved in its oral tradition.11 With its help, memory of local community is transmitted to the next generations and preserved. The following concepts are important elements of this process: place (landscape),12 narrative (text, history and tradition) and memory (individual and collective). Pierre Nora refers to material and non-material aspects of memory as “sites of memory.” He defines them as any significant objects that, by virtue of someone’s decision or with the passage of time, become elements of a given local community’s symbolic heritage.13 In the context of religious culture research, a local community’s important “site of memory” can be its local sanctuary (church, chapel or monastery) or the site where a sanctuary once existed but is not present anymore. To illustrate this interaction between place, sanctuary, memory and religious experience, which is so significant for my research, let me use these quotes from the interviews:

8 Kirsten Hastrup, A Passage to Anthropology. Between Experience and Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 50. 9 Kirsten Hastrup, A Passage to Anthropology. Between Experience and Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 2001) p. 82. 10 Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001). 11 Mario Katić, “Oral Tradition Emplaced in the Landscape: The Skakava Monastery in Bosnia,” Folklore, Vol. 126, No. 1 (2015), p. 25. 12 I use the term “landscape” after Tim Ingold. According to Ingold, “landscape tells – or rather is – a story.” As he puts it, “To perceive the landscape is therefore to carry out an act of remembrance, and remembering is not so much a matter of calling up an internal image, stored in the mind, as that of engaging perceptually with an environment that is itself pregnant with the past.” See: Tim Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape,” World Archaeology, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1993), pp. 152–153. 13 Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 17.

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I like to come to Jabłeczna; I really do. One can spend the night at the monks’; they have these rooms. I like it when the Orthodox church bells ring (…) I am a Catholic [Roman Catholic]; of course I am! As far as I know everyone on my father’s side were Catholics. On my mother’s side, I believe only my grandmother was Orthodox; she even used to speak Khakhlak.14 Sometimes she would also speak Khakhlak to my mom and to my sister and me. She used to live in Hajnówka and we used to spend every summer at her place. O-o-o, my grandmother was a true Orthodox (…) Was she Ukrainian? I don’t know; it’s hard to tell if she was Ukrainian or Belarusian, but I know for sure she was Orthodox. Before the war, there were many Orthodox believers here. It was possible that half of a family might be Orthodox and the other half Catholic. But after the war, somehow, people became afraid to admit they were Orthodox. (…) I don’t know; maybe the reason I come to Jabłeczna is that I miss the Orthodox element. It’s beautiful there. And the songs, Jesus! We don’t have that in our church [Roman Catholic church]; the relief that those songs give.15 We were going (to the church – IB); we did not know anything yet. And here they were saying something in Polish like “Módł się za nami” (“pray for us”). And even I would say something like “mur się zawali” (“the wall will fall”), because we did not understand anything in Polish. Yes, we were saying “mur się zawali” (“the wall will fall”), yes, “mur się zawali” (“the wall will fall”) (…) That was before we learnt that there is a church in Biały Bór; then we… there were no cars back then (…) we took a horse, harnessed it and went by horse-cart, only an iron ring and go, and went to Biały Bór’s church. (…) And I remember how for the first time we went by horse-cart to church, I listened to what I used to listen to and cried, really cried, because I really

14 The Khakhlak (Chachlak) dialect is related to modern Ukrainian and also contains Polish and Belarusian words. The name derives from a derogatory term for Ukrainians (khakhol or khokhol Ukr. Хохол) related to the traditional Ukrainian Cossack hairstyle featuring a long lock of hair left on an otherwise completely shaven head. 15 A Polish Catholic female, born in 1969. Higher technical education. The original quote goes as follows: “Lubię przyjeżdżać do Jabłęcznej, no lubię. Tam u mnichów można przenocować, takie pokoje mają. Lubię jak tam dzwony cerkiewne dzwonią (...) Jestem katoliczką, pewnie! Z tego, co wiem, to z rodziny taty wszyscy byli katolikami. Z rodziny mamy to chyba tylko moja babcia była prawosławna, ona jeszcze mówiła pa-chachłacku, czasem i do mamy mojej tak mówiła i do nas z siostrą. Mieszkała w Hajnówce i każde lato spędzałyśmy u babci (…) O-o-o, babcia była prawosławna i wie pani co – pieszo do Jabłecznej chodziła, taka była prawdziwa prawosławna. (...) Czy była Ukrainką? Nie wiem, trudno mi powiedzieć, czy Ukrainką, czy Białorusinką, ale wiem na pewno, że była prawosławna. Przed wojną tu sporo było prawosławnych, mogło być tak, że pół rodziny prawosławnej, pół katolickiej. Ale po wojnie już jakoś bali się mówić o tym, że w rodzinie był ktoś prawosławny. (...) Nie wiem, może, dlatego przyjeżdżam do Jabłecznej, że trochę tęsknię za tym prawosławiem. Pięknie tam jest. I te śpiewy, Jezu! U nas w kościele takiego nie ma, takiej ulgi po tych śpiewach.”

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heard the same; it came back to me; I heard the same sounds as at home, when mother used to take us to church.16

The first quotation comes from an interview with my respondent from Włodawa, a Pole and Roman Catholic, whose maternal grandparents were Orthodox. Whereas the second quotation comes from an interview with a Ukrainian Greek Catholic who was forcibly resettled from Bieszczady to Western Pomerania as part of Operation Vistula. These narratives are connected through the religious experiences these women gained at the sites of worship, related to their families’ or even the entire local communities’ past. In the case of the Roman Catholic interviewee from Włodawa, the site was the Orthodox monastery. It brings back family memories and gives a sense of relief, which she cannot experience in a Roman Catholic church. Although she is a Roman Catholic, she is connected with the Orthodox community through family memory. The Greek Catholic woman tells about a liturgy organised for the Ukrainian community at the old former German cemetery chapel, ten years after their forced resettlement to Western Pomerania. This experience evokes strong emotions, tears and memories of their “lost homeland.” Only in this provisional church, during a liturgy in Ukrainian, she was able to experience the feelings she used to have when going to church with her mother in her home village. The matter of the liturgical language as well as personal religious experiences are crucial here: the Ukrainian Greek Catholic who used to attend a Roman Catholic church during the initial period following the forced resettlement could not understand the point of a religious service in the Polish language. For this reason, the site of worship did not become her “own,” as it was not associated with a group of people sharing a common destiny. According to Jan Assman: Any group that wants to consolidate itself will make an effort to find and establish a base for itself, not only to provide a setting for its interactions but also to symbolize its identity and to provide points of reference for its memories. Memory needs places and tends toward spatialization [...] Group and place take on a symbolic sense of

16 A Greek-Catholic female born in 1937, resettled from Wola Michowa in Bieszczady, currently living in Pieniężnica (Rzeczenica Gmina, Czułchów Powiat, Pomerania Voivodeship). The original quotation goes as follows: “... Ішли ми (до костьолу IB), ше ничь ми не знали, як тут шось так казали по-польську: „Módł się za nami,” же молитися за тим. То таке я навіть сама казала, же „мур шє, - якось, завалі,” якось так, бо ніц не розуміли по-польському, ніц (…). Ми казали „Mur się zawali,” да, ми казали „mur się zawali” (…). Перше, аж я ми си довідали, же церква у Білому Борі є, то ми юж так, тих самоходів не було так тих (…) то брали коня, запрігали і їхали із возом, тико желізне коло то сьо, і си їхали до Білого Бору до церкви. (…) І я пам’ятам, як першій раз пішли там з возом до церкви – і я слухам то саме, шо колись, і так плакалам, направду плакалам, яко направду слише – то саме вернуло, то саме чулам, шо вдома, як нас мама брала до церкви.”

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community that the group also adheres to, when it is separated from its own space, by symbolically reproducing the holy sites.17

This article is an attempt to compare Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic community and Włodawa’s Orthodox community as religious minorities within the borderlands (phantom and physical ones, respectively). Both these communities are minorities and are surrounded by a Polish Roman Catholic majority. I consider them to be communities of memory, as they possess a collective identity based on a common past and its shared vision and have contributed to its creation by means of the Greek Catholic Church in Biały Bór and the Orthodox church in Włodawa. These two communities are predominantly comprised of Operation Vistula’s victims and their descendants. Yet, they differ considerably in terms of their opinions on Operation Vistula, their perception of their own identities, religious culture’s manifestations and attitudes towards Ukraine and Ukrainians. In reference to these two communities, I use the term “communities of memory,” previously applied by Iwona Irwin-Zarecka.18 I borrow the term’s interpretation from sociologist Lech M. Nijakowski, who defined it as: [...] an aggregate of people (not necessarily a group) who are united by a certain biographical experience, not necessarily a traumatic one, as well as their descendants who adopted their family’s memory. Communities of memory are differentiated between one another not only by the different, ‘objective’ history of their members (e.g. grandfathers who lived in different zones of occupation), but also its members’ individual perspectives [...] and related emotions.19

I have also relied on Juraj Buzalka’s research results on collective memory conducted in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands in Przemyśl and its vicinity. Buzalka identifies “past violence” as an important source of memory in this area and more concretely among the studied local Ukrainian community. A  considerable number of local Ukrainians were resettled as part of Operation Vistula and returned to their homeland in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Buzalka emphasises that the memories of violence are always strongly politicised and are evoked especially when national and religious identity issues surge: Memories of violence are highly political and contested; they are recalled by individuals and groups especially when these memories are tied to national and religious policies and ideologies. Because the violence I  look at was exercised upon a

17 Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 26. 18 Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswik and London: Transaction Publishers, 2009). 19 Lech Nijakowski, Domeny symboliczne. Konflikty narodowe i etniczne w wymiarze symbolicznym (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2006), pp. 32–33.

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people united by one criterion – religious-national belonging – it is appropriate to apply a view of memory as ‘collective representation.’20

Furthermore, an important category for my research is “post-memory” as defined by Marianne Hirsch. According to her, post-memory uses histories, images and behavioral patterns of those who experience collective or cultural trauma, transmitting it to the next generation(s): Post-memory describes the relationship that the generation following that which witnessed cultural or collective trauma bears to the experiences of those who lived through them, experiences they ‘remember’ only by means of the stories, images and behaviours among which they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively that they seem to constitute memories in their own right.21

Within my research perspective, post-memory is the second and third generations’ memory, that of the children and grandchildren of those who experienced Operation Vistula’s forced resettlement. When conducting interviews with the second generation, I often noted that their emotions are stronger than those of the first generation, i.e. peoplewho actually experienced the trauma. In Włodawa, I encountered more fabulates22 among the memories recounted by the study participants than among the memories of those who actually experienced the violence. In Biały Bór, the majority of my respondents personally experienced the trauma of resettlement and shared their direct memories with me. Eric Ketelaar discusses the significance of family memory in the formation of individual memory and emphasises that families, like any other collective group, have their own memories and commemoration practices, cultivated by their members. It is through family memory that an individual is connected to a past that he or she has never experienced 20 Juraj Buzalka, Nation and Religion. The Politics of Commemoration in South-East Poland (Berlin: Lit-Verlag, 2007), pp. 5–6. 21 Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” Poetics Today, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2008), pp. 106–107. 22 I use the terms fabulate and memorate to operationalise my study participants’ narratives according to the methodology recognised in the folkloristics field. Oral stories are divided according to their function into “memorates,” which are the speaker’s verbalised personal relations with their own experiences or memories; and “fabulates,” which are fabularised accounts of events retold by another person or group of persons. Ukrainian folkloristics applies and develops these terms after Swedish folklorist Carl von Sydow. For details see: Олександра Бріцина, “XX сторіччя в усній історії українців (нотатки до питання про історизм фольклору),” in: У пошуках власного голосу: Усна історія як теорія, метод та джерело. Зб. наук. ст., ed. Гелінада Грінченко, Наталія Ханенко-Фрізен (Харків: ПП “ТОРГСІН ПЛЮС,” 2010), pp. 135-144; Леся Халюк, Усні народні оповідання українців-переселенців Лемківщини, Холмщини, Підляшшя та Надсяння:  жанрово-тематична специфіка, художні особливості (Київ: ІМФЕ НАН України, 2013).

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but has a need to commemorate.23 In this sense, I  find Katarzyna Kaniowska’s reflections, who developed Marianne Hirsch’s research in a Polish context, exceptionally useful. Kaniowska believes that post-memory is the second generation’s memory, who “not having experienced the reality reflected within the original memory, is doomed to define its own identity based on a past experience which was not its own.”24 In Włodawa, I noticed that although the second generation’s memory is less expressive than that of my Biały Bór interviewees, it contributes to the feeling of distinctiveness among the Orthodox population and reinforces the discourse of injustice and suffering. Thus, the source of memory I focus on is violence (or “past violence” as Buzalka calls it), referring to the period between 1938 and 1947. Another source of memory in the researched communities is the widespread mythologised image of a tolerant, multi-religious and multi-ethnic world where everyone could find their place, has been forever lost. I believe that in the case of both communities, memory becomes an act of communication and is often a symbolic and ritualistic reproduction of the past. It is manifested in commemorative practices of past events at the studied communities’ sites of worship, including churches and cemeteries.

Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic Community Biały Bór, home to the Greek Catholic community analysed here, is situated in the voivodship of West Pomerania; before the war, it was the German city of Baldenburg. The town’s Jewish community was annihilated during the Second World War. In 1946, Poles from Ukraine and Belarus were resettled there, while Germans were forcefully resettled to Germany.25 In 1947, Ukrainians, Boykos and Lemkos were forcibly resettled to Biały Bór and its neighbouring villages from the Bieszczady Mountains region and Podkarpackie voivodship. Since 1957, Ukrainian Greek Catholics from Biały Bór and the neighbouring towns and villages have been allowed to gather and have religious services at the former Evangelical cemetery chapel.26 23 Eric Ketelaar, “Sharing: Collected Memories in Communities of Records,” Archives and Manuscripts, Vol. 33 (2005), p. 47. 24 Katarzyna Kaniowska, “‘Memoria’ i ‘postpamięć’ a antropologiczne badanie wspólnoty,” Codzienne i niecodzienne. O wspólnotowości w realiach dzisiejszej Łodzi, Łódzkie Studia Etnologiczne, Vol. 43 (2004), p. 20. 25 Although I have heard on many occasions that some people of German origin managed to stay, in particular women who married Poles. 26 It is important to note that after the forced resettlements of 1944–1946 and Operation Vistula, the Greek Catholic Church’s activity was prohibited and persecutions against Greek Catholics started. In the Soviet Union, the Greek Catholic Church was banned until the end of the 1980s, priests were deported to camps and communities that survived the repressions practiced their faith underground. Officially,

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You know, when there was no [Greek Catholic] church, we went to the [Roman Catholic] church. And later, when there was a Greek Catholic church, we started going there. [And what was the first church like?  – IB] The first one was organized in a chapel. There was this small chapel in Biały Bór which they turned into a church. And many people used to go to it for the parish feasts; very many people.27

The present Greek Catholic Church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biały Bór was designed by Prof. Jerzy Nowosielski and was built in 1997. In 2015– 2016, Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic parish (including the neighbouring villages) comprised 500 people, according to Father Piotr Baran.28 I have heard from my eldest interviewees that it was initially difficult for them to accept such an unusually designed church, since it was not similar to other Greek Catholic churches located

the Greek Catholic Church reactivated only after Ukraine’s independence in 1991. See Stanisław Stępień, “Represje wobec kościoła greckokatolickiego w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej po II Wojnie Światowej,” in:  Polska-Ukraina. 1000 lat sąsiedztwa. Vol. 2.  Studia z dziejów chrześcijaństwa na pograniczu kulturowym i etnicznym, ed. Stanisław Stępień (Przemysł: BACCARAT, 1994), pp. 218–219. In the People’s Republic of Poland, the Greek Catholic Church also did not function officially. Within the communist authorities’ rhetoric, Greek Catholic priests were accused of collaborating with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and thus were imprisoned in the Jaworzno concentration camp (Stanisław Stępień, “Represje wobec kościoła,” p. 221). However, 10 years after Operation Vistula took place, the Greek Catholic Church started to come out from underground, which can be illustrated by the permission given to Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic community to gather and hold services at the former Evangelical cemetery chapel. The first Greek Catholic service for the resettled population in western Pomerania was celebrated on April 7, 1948, by Father Wasył Hrynyk in the town of Nowy Dwór Gdański. In 1950–1968, he was a priest in Cyganek (located 2 km away from Nowy Dwór Gdański), where the first Greek Catholic parish in the so-called Recovered Territories was created, organised for the population resettled from South-East Poland. Father Hrynyk was arrested in 1954 and imprisoned in Gdańsk and later Warsaw, and released in 1956. See Богдан Прах, Духовенство Перемиської єпархії та Апостольської адміністрації Лемків щини. Vol. 1. Біографічні нариси (1939–1989) (Львів: Видавництво Українського католицького університету, 2015), p. 64–65. 27 A female born in 1925, resettled from Wańkowa village (Lesko Powiat, Rzeszów Voivodship) to Brzeźnica village (in Biały Bór Gmina, Szczecin Powiat, West Pomerania Voivodship). The original quotation in Ukrainian goes as follows, “А знаїте, як не було церкви, то ми ходили до костела. Дисіть літ ходилам до костела, ну. А пузніше, як церква настала, то юж до церкви ми ходили. [А яка була перша церква? – IB] Перша – з такої каплиці зробили, така була в Білому Борі така каплиця невелика була і там зробили церкву, ну. І там дуже людей, дуже людей з’їжджалося до тої церкви, і на відпусті дуже людей багато било, ну.” 28 Father Piotr Baran. Cerkiew Greckokatolicka pw. Narodzenia Przenajświętszej Bogurodzicy w Białym Borze, Biały Bór portal: July 18, 2016 .

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Photo 1: The Greek Catholic Church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biały Bór. The blessing of the food on the Great Saturday, April 2015. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh.

in their homeland of Subcarpathia, either wooden or stone ones. Those always had their characteristic golden domes, paintings (Ukr. розписи), icons under woven and richly embroidered towels (Ukr. рушники) and a wooden iconostasis. However, with time, parishioners got used to it and the church has become a new symbol for the community (Photo 1): While it was under construction, we managed to see parts of it – oh, no way […] I did not go there for a long time, because I probably thought it would be something bad. And when I came there for the first time, no one was there, I liked it very much. I felt divinely there. Somehow there was such a feeling of inspiration.29

29 A female born in 1936, resettled from Futory village, Oleszyce gmina, Lubaczów powiat, Podkarpacie voivodship. The original quote goes as follows, “Коли вона шє будовалась, то ми там з єдним чоловіком в częściach її бачили – но нє.

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In Biały Bór, I  conducted my research almost exclusively among the Ukrainian Greek Catholic community. I managed to interview only two Polish women who joined the Greek Catholic community after they married Ukrainian men.30 My relatively easy entry into the field was possible thanks to the kind assistance of Father Piotr Baran, who comes from a family of resettlers. He introduced me to many informants, took me to several families’ houses in Biały Bór, hosted me at the parish priest’s house, took me to different places by car and did everything to help Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic parish community accept me. During my first two stays, I spent lunch or dinner every day at one of the families’ houses and had plenty of opportunities to talk to people. I felt I was given a huge credit of trust. However, despite the generally very friendly attitude and considerable hospitality I  received, I  felt constantly as an “Other” Ukrainian among “Other” Ukrainians. My “Otherness” in this community was defined by the fact that I was baptised at the Orthodox Church,31 even though I  often go to a Greek Catholic church (since I do not see much difference between the two liturgies when they are celebrated in Ukrainian). I have never payed particular attention to differences in liturgies, since I have always been a casual believer, rather secular one. I started to pay closer attention to these differences when I  started researching the local Greek Catholic and Orthodox communities. Such an approach surprised many of my interlocutors in Biały Bór, as they associated the Orthodox Church in Ukraine only with the Russian Orthodox Church, which they perceived as a threat to the Greek Catholic Church. Another matter that surprised the eldest informants was my bilingualism and the way I treat Russian as a second mother tongue (which is a quite common situation in my native city of Kyiv). During my first stay in Biały Bór (April 2015), we spoke a lot about politics (even though I never started these conversations, and even tried to avoid them). It was one year after the Crimean annexation by Russian Federation and the beginning of the war in Eastern Ukraine. I was deeply touched by the fact that the Ukrainian community was very engaged in what was happening in “Greater Ukraine” (as the eldest informants called the Ukrainian state), and the local residents were providing financial support, buying medicine and clothes and sending everything to volunteers working in Ukraine. In a neighbouring village, I met a woman who [...] Я довго не шлам, бо, може, думала, шо буде шось злого. А як перший раз пришлам там – не було нікого – nо tо strasznie mi się podobało. Так я там czuła się bosko tam. Якось, нє, так – било натхнєніє такоє.” 30 I met one of these women accidentally in the following circumstances; I was ordering lunch at a local restaurant. A waitress heard my accent and asked me whether I was from Ukraine. I replied that I was from Kyiv and switched to Ukrainian. The woman also switched to Ukrainian and only later on it turned out that she was a Pole who married a Ukrainian and had switched to the Greek Catholic Church. She also sent her children to a Ukrainian school and sang in a church choir. 3 1 In fact, the option of choosing another confession was hardly available in 1986, the year during which I was baptised.

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invited a family from Eastern Ukraine to her house and took care of them. I was told that nobody could better understand war refugees than someone who had also experienced forced deportation from their homeland. During my next field trips to Biały Bór, I was often asked how I could reconcile my Russian origin (my father comes from Siberia) and my perception of Russian as my second native language with a distinct Ukrainian identity. My interlocutors were also surprised that I did not know the Ukrainian folk songs that were sung by my informants’ families or at the church, and nobody in my family was used to singing. I  later understood that Ukrainian folk songs and the Greek Catholic faith (as well as the Ukrainian language church services), along with the forced resettlement trauma discourse, forged the resettled Ukrainians into a community of memory with a distinct national identity. Thanks to being invited to a wedding in Cyganek, I had the opportunity to observe young people, representatives from the third and even fourth generations of the forcibly resettled population from different regions, from Sanok to Lubaczów. They spoke Polish or a mixture of languages among themselves, but were wearing folk embroidered shirts (Ukr. вишиванки), singing Ukrainian songs and dancing the hopak (Ukr. гопак), the Hutsul arkan and other Ukrainian dances.32 I was deeply impressed by the observed expressions of personal religiosity of Biały Bór’s community’s members, their active participation in the parish’s life and their reminiscences about the beginnings of the Greek Catholic Church after the deportation. In many communicative situations, the discussion would start with memories about what it was like during their first years at the new place, how difficult it was to survive and how, on the one hand, that experience united people and how, on the other hand, it divided them. The following quotation comes from an interview with a married couple who experienced the forced resettlement: When we were going to the church that is there at the cemetery, to that chapel on Sundays; there were some papers along the road with a picture of gallows and a Ukrainian on these gallows. Well, that was during the fifties or sixties; during that period. And then they [Poles] got used to that. [...] And we got mixed. And many Ukrainians became polonised, because you can still hear their Ukrainian way of speaking. [...] That could have been different, but Poles stick to their language more

32 Similar observations were made by Bożena Domagała regarding an invitation’s text to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Ukrainian schools in Górów Iławiecki, “The first ‘Ukrainian class’ was created in Górów Iławiecki’s lyceum in 1968. In 1990, a separate new school was opened: a lyceum with the Ukrainian language of instruction. For 35 years in this small town in northern Poland, young people’s origins had been defined by their embroidered shirts (sorochky), folk songs, dances and the memory of the forced resettlement.” See Bożena Domagała, “Akcja ‘Wisła’ w pamięci biograficznej wysiedlonych i dyskursie historycznym,” in: Pamięć utraconych ojczyzn, eds, Ewa Nowicka, Aleksandra Bilewicz (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2012), p. 101.

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Photo 2: The St. Nicolas Greek Catholic Church in Cyganek. The former Lutheran church. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. than Ukrainians. We felt somehow exceptionally miserable, because we did not ever have our own motherland; somehow we felt very miserable.33

The self-awareness about belonging to a faith that was forced to function underground in a clandestine way, and the suffering and injustice discourses are reflected in Operation Vistula’s material objects of remembrance. For example, there is a plaque next to the church entry with the names of villages and towns from where people were forcibly resettled to Cyganek (Photos 2, 3).

33 A male born in 1934, resettled from Krajna village, Bircza Gmina, Przemyśl Powiat, Podkarpacie Voivodship (this village does not exist anymore); a female born in 1936, resettled from Futory, Oleszyce gmina, Lubaczów powiat, Podkarpacie voivodship. The original quote goes as follows, “Так же ми як ходили до тої церкви на тім, там на цментарі, до теї каплиці, то в неділю як ішли, то по дорозі були папєри такіє, нарисована шибеніца і українця на шибеніци, українця на шибеніце. Ну, воно так – п’єдисяти – шистдесяти роки, в тим часє. А потім вже си приз вичаїли до нас так. [...] І так помішалися. І багато українців сполонізувалося бо говір українця таки чути. [...] То могло б бути інакше, тіко Polacy się bardziej тримают слова, ніж українці. My się wyjątkowo jakoś tak. Якось так шє чулися бідно, може, для того, же не мали ojczyzny nigdy, tak się якось бідно чули.”

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Photo 3: An information plaque next to the entrance to the Greek Catholic Church in Cyganek. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. The text on the plaque reads: “To all those who were murdered, expelled from their native lands, and degraded as a result of Operation Vistula. Deportees from Korni, Uhryniv, Mosty Mali, Hrebenne, Tenetys'ka villages”

Next to the church, there is a monument featuring similar information which is also repeated at a memorial site in the Taras Shevchenko Park near the Ukrainian school and church (Photos  4, 5, 6). In Biały Bór, I  noticed during a church service that priests prayed for the souls of Operation Vistula’s victims, as well as for peace in Ukraine; all church services were celebrated in Ukrainian. Józef Obrębski, pointing out the special relationship between a community, its religion and its language, called the latter “an instrument of unity for different ethnic groups.”34 This can be fully applied to Biały Bór’s Ukrainian community. I  would like to emphasise that the majority of my informants and their families, representatives from the resettled population’s second and third generations including those who came from Lemko and Boyko families, identified themselves as Ukrainians. Among my age-mates (people in their thirties), I  could observe a very distinct shared identity, constructed around the memory of trauma and belonging to the forcibly resettled community. The following quotations illustrate the claim that the Ukrainian, Boyko and Lemko populations who were forcibly resettled from 34 Józef Obrębski, “Lud bez ojczyzny. Uzupełnienie,” in:  Józef Obrębski, Polesie. (Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa, 2007), p. 239.

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Photo 4: A stone commemorating the victims of Operation Vistula in front of the Ukrainian schools complex in Biały Bór. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh.

Photo 5–6: Plaques with the names of the villages where the Operation Vistula’s victims originally came from in front of the Ukrainian schools complex in Biały Bór. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh.

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Photo 7: Street art at the fence around the Łęczyca-Włodawa Lake District Museum. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh.

southeastern Poland have been transformed through their experience of violence into a community of memory: My father is a Boyko, my mother is a Lemko. I am mixed, but I am a Ukrainian. Here in the north, after the resettlement, we all had to become either Ukrainian or Polish, there was no third option given here. For me, the choice was obvious.35

For many of the forcibly resettled population’s descendants, being Ukrainian was a conscious choice resulting from the trauma of persecution, from the desire to preserve their ties with the abandoned homeland and the natural need to survive that forges people into a community of memory with “one’s own,” in this case the resettled Greek Catholics. Hence, I share Bożena Domagała’s opinion that “for the deported in Operation Vistula, the settlement in the new place has become

35 M., born in 1969 in Słupsk, in a forcibly resettled family from the Bieszczady Mountains region, Lesko powiat, university educated. The original quote goes as follows, “Мій тато бойко, а мама – лемкиня, я мішаний, але я вже українець. Тут на Півночі по виселенню ми всі мусили стати або українцями, або поляками, третього тут немає. Для мене вибір був очевидний.”

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the beginning of their new identity’s formation, in terms of both the group’s image and the aims it defines for itself.”36

Włodawa’s Orthodox “Locals” (Tутейшi) The second community I studied is composed of Ukrainians and Poles of Ukrainian and Belarusian origin in the Włodawa area (including the villages of Różanka and Stawki, and the town of Orchówek), the majority of whom come from mixed families. During the inter-war period, Włodawa’s population was 9,000 people. It was a shtetl populated predominantly by Jews; Christians formed around 30 % of the population.37 The majority of the Jewish population of Włodawa perished in the Sobibór concentration camp during the Nazi occupation.38 Traces of Jewish memory may only be found in the town’s places of public memory. These include the Łęczyn-Włodawa Lakeland Museum located in the former synagogue complex, which hosts exhibitions, Jewish dances, song workshops, and so on; the Three Cultures Festival (Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish) which has annually taken place since 1995; and the information plaques at the former Jewish cemetery which has now been turned into a park between the bus station and town centre. The memory of Jews in the context of the town’s tri-culturalism is also reflected in the town’s street art (Photos 7, 8), tourist souvenirs and artefacts made by local sculptor Jan Pawłowski (Photo 9). At the beginning of the 19th century, there were large Uniate (or Greek Catholic) parishes in Włodawa and its neighbouring villages. However, they were dissolved during the second half of the 19th century by Russia’s tsarist authorities, who forced Uniate Church followers to become Orthodox.39 Nowadays, the Orthodox Church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Photo 10) is located at the site of the former wooden Uniate church. It was built in 1840–1842 as a Uniate church but turned into an Orthodox one in 1875 and rebuilt into its current shape in 1893–1895.40 In 1938, Orthodox churches were systematically destroyed in Chełm and the southern part of the Podlaskie voivodship, including Włodawa powiat. This operation was part of a broader programme, the so-called Polonisation operation of 1938–1939, during which the local Orthodox population of Ukrainian and

3 6 Bożena Domagała, “Akcja ‘Wisła’ w pamięci,” p. 100. 37 Konrad Górny, Antropologiczno-socjologiczne studium społeczności lokalnych w okresie transformacji. Przypadek Włodawy i powiatu włodawskiego (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2003), p. 52. 38 Konrad Górny, Antropologiczno-socjologiczne studium, p. 55. 39 Kazimiera Pastusiak, Fleksja gwar ukraińskich okolic Włodawy (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2004), p. 12. 40 Andrzej Wawryniuk, Powiat Włodawski: historia, geografia, gospodarka, polityka. Monografia miejscowości (Chełm: Starostwo powiatowe we Włodawie, 2010), p. 439; www.cerkiew.wlodawa.pl

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Photo 8: Street art at a bus stop near the Łęczyca-Włodawa Lake District Museum. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh.

Belarusian origin suffered a lot.41 Before the Second World War, Ukrainians constituted 57 % of Włodawa powiat’s population (including 30 % of Roman Catholics with Ukrainian language as their mother tongue). In 1945–1946, 25,030 people of Ukrainian origin from the region were resettled in the USSR.42 In 1947, Operation Vistula took place, during which the Orthodox population (mainly Ukrainians, but also some mixed Belarusian-Polish-Ukrainian families, including Orthodox Poles who spoke the Khakhlak dialect) were resettled to the Warmian-Masurian voivodship. The Orthodox Church in Włodawa survived the tragic events of 1938–1947; it was only partially damaged. Currently, Włodawa’s and Orchówek’s Orthodox parish consists of 80 people and includes both local parish members (about 60 people) and, according to Father Jerzy Ignaciuk, Ukrainian migrants who live and work or study in Włodawa. My research in Włodawa suggests that the terms “the people” or “nation” and “faith” (or “confession”) are used interchangeably in everyday communication. My informants (both Roman Catholic and Orthodox) believe that a Pole has to be a 41 A detailed account of these events and their consequences can be found in: Grzegorz Kuprianowicz, Akcja burzenia cerkwi prawosławnych na Chełmszczyźnie i Południowym Podlasiu w 1938 roku  – uwarunkowania, przebieg, konsekwencje (Chełm: Archiwum Chełmskie), Vol. IV, 2009. 42 Andrzej Wawryniuk, Powiat Włodawski, pp. 406 – 407.

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Photo 9: Carved wood figures of an Orthodox batiushka, a Catholic priest and a rabbi in the inner yard of Łęczyna-Włodawa Lake District Museum. Picture taken during the Festival of Three Cultures in September 2015. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh.

Roman Catholic, whereas a Ukrainian or Belarusian may only be Orthodox.43 For example, when I asked one of the interlocutors whether the Orthodox priest is a local and a Pole, she replied: 43 This is a rather widespread phenomenon in the Eastern Europe borderlands: the Polish-Ukrainian, Polish-Belarusian and Polish-Lithuanian ones, as well as in “confessional borderlands” (I use this term after Justyna Straczuk, Pol. pogranicza wyznaniowe). During my research in the Ukrainian-Polish borderland, a question about religious identity often elicited the answer: “Pole” and not “Catholic.” This also worked the other way around: when asked about their nationality, a person might have answered that he or she was Orthodox. (See: Iuliia Buyskich, “Stereotypy wyznaniowe i wierzenia mitologiczne o „swoich” i „obcych” na Polesiu Zachodnim Ukrainy: przypadek wspólnot protestanckich,” Slavia Orientalis, Vol. LXV, No. 1 (2016), p. 111). A similar situation was noted by a researcher studying Catholics in Belarus; the Catholic faith was associated exclusively with Polishness by the study participants, while the term ruska wiara (“Rusian faith”) was used in reference to the Orthodox faith, while “Orthodox language” in reference to the Russian language; see Ewa Golachowska, Jak mówić do Pana Boga? Wielojęzyczność katolików na Białorusi na przełomie XX i XXI wieku (Warszawa: Instytut Slawistyki PAN & Wydawnictwo

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Photo 10: An Orthodox church in Włodawa. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. Maybe he comes from this area, but for sure he is not Polish. Tell me, how can a “batiushka” [Rus. батюшка, literally “father”, Ukrainian/Russian term referring to an Orthodox priest – translator’s note] be a Pole? There is certainly nothing like that. I believe he is one of yours. He is a Ukrainian or Belarusian; after all, that does not make much of a difference. But a batiushka can never be a Pole; likewise, a Pole may become a Catholic priest [Pol. ksiądz], but never a batiushka.”44

According to my observations, in Włodawa, a person’s religious identity appears more significant for defining oneself and others than their national identity. For Agade BIS, 2012), p. 79. Iwona Kabzińska-Stawarz, when discussing her research in Belarus in the beginning of 1990s, claims that her interlocutors were sure that there were no Catholics among Belarusians, who are exclusively Orthodox, whereas a Pole can only be a Catholic. E.g.: “A Belarusian is always Orthodox [...] and a Pole is Catholic”; see Iwona Kabzińska-Stawarz. “I po co ta granica?,” Etnografia Polska, Vol. XXXVII/1–2 (1994), p. 87. 44 A Polish Roman Catholic female, born in 1950. The original quotation goes as follows: “Może on pochodzi z tych stron, ale na pewno nie jest Polakiem. Powiedz mnie, jak batiuszka może być Polakiem? Nie ma czegoś takiego. Myślę, że on wasz.

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example, when I would ask Orthodox interlocutors during our introductions, “Who are you?” or “Who do you consider yourself to be?,” they would usually reply, “local” or “from this place” (“тутейший,” “тутешній”).45 My informants would claim that their parents and grandparents did not define themselves as Ukrainians, but rather as “locals” and “Orthodox” before the Second World War: “My father was a pure-blooded rosary Pole, and my mother was Orthodox.”46 There was also certain flexibility in terms of religious holidays’ celebration, in particular, in the case of mixed families: “My mother used to always say, ‘If the weather is nice for Polish holidays, we will celebrate them; if it is nice for Orthodox holidays, [we will celebrate] theirs.”47 However, the entire Orthodox population, irrespective of its ethnic origin, was seen as Ukrainian during the 1944–1946 resettlement to the USSR, and later during Operation Vistula. Before the resettlement, people were forced to declare a concrete nationality: They told us how to sign up; if [we signed up] as Poles, they would not deport us, they would let us stay. If [we signed up] as Orthodox, they said there was no such category. [We could signed up] either as Ukrainians or as Belarusians. My family was afraid to sign up as Balarusians. Our [family] signed up as Orthodox, but of Polish citizenship. (N.N., born in 1932, resettled from Olszanki, Lublin Voivodship, Bialski Powiat, Kodeń Gmina)48

On jest Ukraińcem czy Białorusinem, zresztą nie ma jakiejś istotnej różnicy. Ale batiuszka nigdy nie był Polakiem, przecież Polak może zostać tyko księdzem, nigdy batiuszką.” 45 During my research in the Belarusian-Ukrainian borderlands, north of the Zhytomyr, Rivne and Volhynia Oblasts in Ukraine, I encountered a situation where local inhabitants would refer to themselves as “tuteishy” or “local.” Such an association of identity and attachment to a homeland and local place was also documented in research regarding the Polish-Lithuanian and Belarusian-Lithuanian borderlands; see:  Łukasz Cegliński, “Społeczność podzielona. Granica litewsko-białoruska z perspektywy procesów komunikowania się,” in: Centrum na peryferiach. Monografia społeczności lokalnej Ejszyszek i okolic na Wileńszczyznie, ed. Andrzej Perzanowski (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2005), p. 81. For a detailed account of the “tutejszy” identity, see Anna Engelking, “Tożsamość „tutejsza” na wielojęzycznym pograniczu. Spostrzeżenia na przykładzie parafii nackiej,” in: Język a tożsamość na pograniczu kultur, Elżbieta Smułkowa, Anna Engelking, eds. (Białystok: Katedra Kultury Białoruskiej Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, 2000), pp. 17 – 22. 46 A Polish Roman Catholic female, born in 1954, Stawki. 47 A Polish Roman Catholic female, born in 1942, Włodawa. The original quotation goes as follows, “Mama moja zawsze mówiła: Jak będzie ładna pogoda na polskie święta, będziemy je obchodzić, jak na prawosławne – ich.” 48 Marcin Gościk, Katarzyna Sawczuk, et  al. eds. Dwie godziny. Wspomnienia mieszkańców Chełmszczyzny i Południowego Podlasia o akcji „Wisła,” (Lublin and Biała Podlaska: Fundacja Dialog Narodów, 2013), p. 187. The original quotation goes as follows: “Вже там кажуть, як то пісатися; як поляками – то не будуть вивозити,

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Many of my informants’ families were mixed, including family members not only of Ukrainian but also of Belarusian and Polish origin, as well as those who defined themselves as “local.” Such mixed families, as a result of their memories of the past violence, transformed into a community of memory united by the Orthodox faith. While some of them identify as Ukrainian, they have a much stronger Orthodox identity as well as sense of their own confessional distinctness. I would like to emphasise that I was introduced to the Orthodox community by an Orthodox priest (batiushka), Father Ignaciuk (who came from a family of resettlers). After one Sunday service he introduced me to the parishioners, asked them to let me record the interviews with them and also personally acquainted me with a number of people. He also devoted a lot of his time to me, shared materials from his private archive, invited me to Sunday meetings at his house and supported my research. His high status within the Orthodox parish and support of my research were very important and helped me gain the community members’ trust and acceptance. Rather numerous resettled population was united by several important elements:  a collective memory about the mythologised tolerant pre-war world that was destroyed, the Orthodox faith and a strong intention to return to their ancestors’ land on the Bug River. After 1957, many of the resettled Orthodox population has returned to their homeland, and some of their grandchildren are buying property in Lublin in order “to be closer to their forefathers’ land.”49 Włodawa’s Orthodox population was resettled in relatively less distant localities in comparison to the Ukrainians, Lemkos and Boykos who were resettled from Bieszczady to Western Pomerania. My respondents’ families from Włodawa were resettled to Olsztyn or Suwałki. Unlike the Greek Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church was not banned, and the Orthodox population had the opportunity to assemble for religious purposes without fear of persecution. However, as a result of the resettlement and the closing down of Orthodox churches, local parishes gained rudimentary and diasporic features.50 The Orthodox faith became a criterion of belonging to a group of “one’s own,” which allowed them to preserve a sense of distinctiveness after Operation Vistula’s forced resettlement. The so-called Khakhlak language, the language of family communication as well as that of the sacrum which my Orthodox respondents were also speaking to me, is yet another important community consolidation factor. When I introduced myself in Polish at the church and explained that I was from Ukraine, my interlocutors immediately started inviting зоставлять. Православними – то кажуть нема такої категорії. Альбо бєларусом, альбо українцом. Бєларусамі то моя родзіна боялася. Можна било запісатися, але зостати в тому сьродовіску, то не вельми била радость. Наше записалися православнимі, але обивательство польськє.” 49 A female born in 1981. 50 Grzegorz Kuprianowicz, “Akcja Wisła i jej znaczenie dla losów Kościoła prawosławnego i społeczności ukraińskiej na Chełmszczyźnie i Południowym Podlasiu,” in: Marcin Gościk, Katarzyna Sawczuk, et al. eds. Dwie godziny, p. 20.

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me to “speak in our way” (погуворимо по нашому).51 For them, it was very important to speak “their own” language, which also meant they did not perceive me as completely “alien.” Włodawa’s community, despite many shared traumatic experiences, primarily differs from that of Biały Bór in terms of Operation Vistula’s role in the construction of their collective identity. Despite the experience of violence and its significant place in my interlocutors’ collective memory, Operation Vistula did not function as the most traumatic historical experience uniting the Orthodox population into a community of memory. When staying in Włodawa as well as during my trips to Orchówek, Sławatycze, Jabłeczna, Stawki and Różanka, I  heard two other dates mentioned on many occasions:  1929 and 1938. These two dates still shape my respondents’ traumatic memory. During that period, the Second Polish Republic’s authorities conducted Polonisation and pacification operations, targeted at the Orthodox population of Ukrainian and Belarusian origin. These operations were conducted by Polish Army units in southern Podlasie and Chełm region. Representatives from my respondents’ oldest generation (born in 1930–1932) still remember 1938’s events thanks to their elder siblings’ and parents’ accounts, even though their memories now have the form of fabulates. Many of the interviewees recounted the demolition of the church in Międzylesie52 (a village north of Włodawa). The church in Włodawa was only burgled by unknown assailants, according to my interviewees’ accounts. During that period, some Orthodox families were forced to become Roman Catholic in order to survive. The fabulates were highly emotional similar to the situation in Biały Bór, while the feelings of injustice permeating them appeared to be stronger in the case of the recounts of 1938’s events than those of Operation Vistula. For example, one of my interlocutors, who was just two years old at the time of the church’s demolition in 1938, was crying, telling me in detail how Polish authorities demolished the church in Międzylesie down to pieces and burnt it (Photo  11), (even though he himself came from a village next to Międzylesie, so I doubt he could have witnessed this event or was too young to vividly remember it). Thus, the second generation’s memory of past violence or post-memory, recreated through fabulates, has been at the centre of my research regarding Włodawa’s Orthodox community. I would refer here to Anna Wylegała who emphasises that

51 Cf:  Stanisław Baj, “‘Puhuwurim pu naszomu”. Zapomniana mowa chachłacka zamknięta w ilustrowanym słowniku,” Wschod. Kwartalnik społeczno-kulturalny, Vol. 1, No. 21, (2016), pp. 9 – 11. 52 More on this can be found in: Jarosław Nieścioruk. “Cerkiew prawosławna św. Anny w Międzylesiu i jej zburzenie w trakcie akcji 1938 roku?” in: Akcja burzenia cerkwi prawosławnych na Chełmszczyźnie i Południowym Podlasiu w 1938 roku – uwarunkowania, przebieg, konsekwencje, pp. 311 – 315.

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Photo 11: A cross commemorating a church in Międzylesie demolished in 1938. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh.

the “true” and most significant focus of her research is memory, reconstructed during her interviews: “Memory, reproduced and recreated during the interviews, became the proper ‘objective’ social reality for me. This is not about ‘how it really was’ anymore, but rather about what sort of perception of the events is shared by the studied community today.”53 The languages used by Włodawa’s local community are another one of its significant characteristics. These include the language of everyday communication (Polish); the language of communication with family and friends (the Khakhlak language); and the language of the sacrum (the Old Church Slavonic language of the prayers as well as Khakhlak). The eldest generation communicated with me 53 Anna Wylegała, Przesiedlenia a pamięć. Studium (nie) pamięci społecznej na przykładzie ukraińskiej Galicji i polskich „ziem odzyskanych,” (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2014), p. 95.

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Photo 12: A plaque at the entrance to the church in Włodawa with an inscription in Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian, saying: “THIS I HAVE DONE FOR YOU. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME?” Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh.

in Khakhlak (or “the way we speak”, “по-своєму”), and their children, in particular former or current students of Ukrainian philology at Lublin University, in Ukrainian. During solemn services at church, I noticed that the priest (batiushka) uses three languages during liturgy: Polish, Old Church Slavonic and Ukrainian. For example, he may first speak to the parishioners in Ukrainian:  (Слава Ісусу Христу!), next start the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic (Блажен муж, иже не иде на совет нечестивых. Аллилуиа…) and afterwards continue the sermon in Polish. Parish announcements have always been made in the Khakhlak language. I also noticed that some parish announcements, quotations from the New Testament, and other information are made in all three languages (Photo 12). My interlocutors (Roman Catholics and Orthodox), when talking about the Khakhlak language and describing it in different categories (“soft,” “Orthodox,” “our own” or “local”), never perceived the term “Khakhlak” in a pejorative sense, which I cannot say regarding my own perception. I do not want to generalise, but in my own family as well as among some of my acquaintances in Ukraine, the term “Khakhlak” instead of the terms “Ukrainian language” or “a Ukrainian person” is perceived as derogatory and strongly politicised in a post-colonial sense. The situation in Włodawa is entirely different. Speaking Khakhlak appeared to be an object of pride among my respondents, in particular when they emphasised the unity of language, place and confession by saying that “their forefathers already

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used to speak that way,” “the Orthodox folk have always spoken like that here” and “here on the Bug River, everybody spoke like that.”54 The Khakhlak language is an important means of religious expression for Włodawa’s Orthodox population. During the interviews, I often asked about language issues connected with religious expressions, while simultaneously observing how people pray and in what language they address God when making personal requests. The language of personal communication, confession and personal religious experience (including dreams about God, the Heavenly Kingdom, death or deceased relatives) is Khakhlak, despite the fact that the language of everyday communication is Polish. Some of my Roman Catholic interviewees coming from Orthodox families who were brought up during the 1960–1970s within Polish and Roman Catholic culture complained about a lack of bodily experience during Catholic Church services as well as a lack of a sense of relief after the service. A Roman Catholic liturgy (according to my observations, which are of course subjective), despite containing such elements as the sign of peace and confession, engages the body to a minimal extent and is focused on pronouncing acclamations.55 One of my respondents (a Polish Roman Catholic woman) said she liked the fact that people kiss Orthodox icons and sing their prayers in the Orthodox Church, fully engaging in the liturgy processes. During my interviews with several Roman Catholics who had Orthodox family members, parents or grandparents, I noticed that these people liked to visit a monastery in Jabłeczna, attend Orthodox liturgies, put candles in front of icons and leave prayer notes for someone’s health or for somebody’s dead soul (записки о здравие or о упокой). These Roman Catholics did not include themselves among the Orthodox community’s members, yet they emphasised their relationship with their Orthodox families’ roots as well as with Eastern rite places of worship. I believe that members of the Orthodox community, which in my interpretation is a community of memory, express their collective identity by means of commemoration practices closely related to religion. For example, I observed how during church services the priest prayed for the souls of those who had perished as a result of forced resettlement. The Orthodox parish also organises trips to attend church services in Uhrusk or the Orthodox cemetery in Zbereże near the border with Ukraine. Aside from that, there are church services commemorating the 1938 demolition of churches in Chełm and southern Podlasie regions. Another way of commemorating and unifying the small Orthodox community is Sunday meetings at the Orthodox priest’s house, during which parishioners have a chance to watch

54 The original quotations go as follows: “говорімо як ту з діда-прадіда,” “православ ні люде тутай так завсігди говоріли,” “у нас над Бугом всєя люді так говоріли.” 55 Rafał Rukat reflects on this issue when discussing his research experience in an Old Rite community in Odessa Oblast, Ukraine. He compares the Old Rite Orthodox liturgy with the Catholic one. See Rafał Rukat, “Katolicki etnograf w staroobrzędowej cerkwi. Antropologiczne badania nad doświadczeniem religijnym z perspektywy ucieleśnienia,” Lud, Vol. 98 (2014), pp. 322–323.

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documentaries about the history of the Orthodox religion in the region, take part in icon-painting workshops facilitated by the priest or listen to religious songs. Such practices unite parishioners, while emphasising their uniqueness in a globalised world and being surrounded by Roman Catholics and Poles. According to one of my respondents, who described herself as “Ukrainian,” “local” (тутейша) and “Orthodox”: Here, one must be either Roman Catholic or Orthodox; there is no other way. Yet there used to be fewer Catholics and more Orthodox people, but now there are fewer Orthodox people; the Ukrainians have died, and some were deported. Out of the elders, it is I who have remained, as well as some older women. And those who are closer to the Catholic church have gone to the Catholic church. (…) As long as I have been alive, I have gone to the Orthodox church every Sunday and will continue to go; I will keep to my own.”56

The Orthodox community also has some new members who stand out from the rest. These are people who have come from various places in Ukraine to Włodawa to work (e.g., a woman from Rivne) or study (e.g., three 15-year-old girls from Lutsk, Ivano-Frankivsk and Mykolayiv and two 16-year-old boys from the Volyn Oblast). During my short discussions with these teenagers, I  asked them whether they came from religious families and why they attended church in Włodawa. It turned out that the students from Ukraine (from different confessions, Greek Catholics as well as Orthodox from both Kyiv’s and Moscow’s patriarchates) attended the church in Włodawa in order to not feel too lonely in a foreign country and to “join something familiar.” They almost never communicated with the community’s older members, limiting their contacts to the Orthodox priest. The priest pins his hopes on the parish’s new members, believing that “fresh blood” will help Włodawa’s Orthodox community survive and not become completely marginalised.

Conclusions The main research problem reformulated in response to the new challenges encountered during my fieldwork has proved more productive for me than the initial one focused on personal religiosity and inter-confessional relationships in mixed families on the borderlands. My research, influenced by the reflexive anthropology

56 A Ukrainian Orthodox female, born in 1933, resettled in 1947 from Holeszów to Giżycko, living in a small village near Włodawa. The original quotation goes as follows: “Тутай у нас мусово бути або католіком, або православним, інакше не може биць. Тілько же католіков калісь било мало, все больше православних, а тепер православних мало, поуміралі уже українци, а кого вивєзлі. Зі старших оце я зосталася і ще такі самі старушкі, а каму бліжей кастьола, то да кастьола пашлі. (…) Я пакуль живу, кажну неділю іду до церкви і буду хадзіть, я свого тримаюся.”

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tradition, demonstrates how the researcher’s national and religious identities influence the whole research’s course and shape the research topics. Although I  conducted my research in local communities that are not totally alien to me, Ukrainian Greek Catholics and the mainly Ukrainian Orthodox population, this was not a case of anthropology at home or research conducted at a place close to the researcher’s home and populated by people from the researcher’s nationality. I felt that I  was attentively observed by my interviewees and that their observations about a Ukrainian from Ukraine itself also formed quite important research data. The studied local communities share a multicultural and multi-confessional past and have been undergoing many processes similar to each other. Both Biały Bór and Włodawa are situated in Poland’s peripheral regions and the rural populations have recently been making up for their prolonged disadvantage. It appears that this process is going at a slightly faster pace within Biały Bór’s Ukrainian community than in Włodawa’s. Both groups experienced considerable waves of economic migration to Western states due to high unemployment. In Biały Bór, this type of emigration started in the 1980s, while in Włodawa it started around the year 2000.57 Although the number of members of Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic community (500 people) is considerably higher than that of Włodawa’s Orthodox community (80 people), both communities are somewhat marginal because they comprise national and confessional minorities in Poland. In recent years, both communities have been joined by new members, Ukrainians from Ukraine. The majority of them are middle school students, who obviously do not share the past traumas’ discourse. They do not necessarily join the parish community or choose only to participate in Sunday services. In my research, I focused more on the older, permanent members of the communities (the first and second generations), who form a community of memory based on their own experiences or on the knowledge about traumatic experiences passed down from one generation to another. In Biały Bór, one can observe a distinct Ukrainian identity (both a sense of belonging to Poland’s Ukrainian minority as well as a strong engagement with the Ukrainian state’s affairs); meanwhile, in Włodawa, a strong Orthodox and local (тутейшi) identity is apparent. Despite these differences, both communities have been constructed around persecuted religion, banned and cultivated underground in the case of Greek Catholics or artificially marginalised and muffled in the case of the Orthodox, and consolidated around the discourse of injustice and suffering.58 In both these cases the local priests, whose families also experienced persecution and suffering due to their national and religious origins, have played a significant role in promoting these communities and shaping their self-representations. 57 I would like to point out that in Włodawa’s case I do not have reliable information regarding the beginnings of economic migration, as here I rely on my respondents’ accounts. 58 What I mean by the “muffling” and marginalisation of the Orthodox community is the long-term effects of the 1938 events as well as Operation Vistula, after which the Orthodox population that survived the persecutions and resettlement were afraid to

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These two local non-heterogeneous and multi-layered Ukrainian communities in Poland are examples of a broader phenomenon of the strong interaction between nationality, confession, homeland, places of worship and “sites of memory” around which a sense of belonging is shaped and collective identities are formed. They are characteristic of marginalised religious communities on national, confessional and ethnic borderlands contaminated by contested traumatic memories.

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maintain contact with the Orthodox Church. During the Polish People’s Republic, fearing discrimination, they often concealed their confessional identity and converted to Roman Catholicism. This was particularly common in the case of mixed families.

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Engelking, Anna. “Tożsamość „tutejsza” na wielojęzycznym pograniczu. Spostrzeżenia na przykładzie parafii nackiej.” In: Język a tożsamość na pograniczu kultur, eds. Elżbieta Smułkowa and Anna Engelking. Białystok: Katedra Kultury Białoruskiej Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, 2000, pp. 17–22. Golachowska, Ewa. Jak mówić do Pana Boga? Wielojęzyczność katolików na Białorusi na przełomie XX i XXI wieku. Warszawa: Instytut Slawistyki PAN & Wydawnictwo Agade BIS, 2012. Górny, Konrad. Antropologiczno-socjologiczne studium społeczności lokalnych w okresie transformacji. Przypadek Włodawy i powiatu włodawskiego. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2003. Hastrup, Kirsten. A Passage to Anthropology. Between Experience and Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Herzfeld, Michael. Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. Hirsch, Marianne. “The Generation of Postmemory.” Poetics Today, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2008, pp. 103–128. Ingold, Tim. “The Temporality of the Landscape.” World Archaeology, Vol. 25, No. 2, 1993, pp. 152–153. Irwin-Zarecka, Iwona. Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory. New Brunswik and London: Transaction Publishers, 2009. Kabzińska-Stawarz, Iwona. “I po co ta granica?” Etnografia Polska, Vol.38, No. 1–2, 1994, pp. 79–106. Kaniowska, Katarzyna. “‘Memoria’ i ‘postpamięć’ a antropologiczne badanie wspólnoty.” Codzienne i niecodzienne. O wspólnotowości w realiach dzisiejszej Łodzi, Łódzkie Studia Etnologiczne, Vol. 43, 2004, pp. 9–28. Katić, Mario. “Oral Tradition Emplaced in the Landscape: The Skakava Monastery in Bosnia.” Folklore, Vol. 126, No. 1, 2015, pp. 20–36. Ketelaar, Eric. “Sharing: Collected Memories in Communities of Records.” Archives and Manuscripts, Vol. 33, 2005, pp. 44–61. Kuprianowicz, Grzegorz. “Akcja Wisła i jej znaczenie dla losów Kościoła prawosławnego i społeczności ukraińskiej na Chełmszczyźnie i Południowym Podlasiu.” In: Dwie godziny. Wspomnienia mieszkańców Chełmszczyzny i Południowego Podlasia o akcji “Wisła,” eds. Marcin Gościk, Katarzyna Sawczuk, et al. Lublin: Fundacja Dialog Narodów, 2017, pp. 15–21. Kuprianowicz, Grzegorz. Akcja burzenia cerkwi prawosławnych na Chełmszczyźnie i Południowym Podlasiu w 1938 roku – uwarunkowania, przebieg, konsekwencje. Chełm: Archiwum Chełmskie, 2009. Nieścioruk, Jarosław. “Cerkiew prawosławna św. Anny w Międzylesiu i jej zburzenie w trakcie akcji 1938 roku?” In: Akcja burzenia cerkwi prawosławnych na Chełmszczyźnie i Południowym Podlasiu w 1938 roku – uwarunkowania,

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przebieg, konsekwencje. Chełm: Prawosławna Diecezja Lubelsko-Chełmska, Towarzystwo Ukraińskie, 2009, pp. 311–315. Nijakowski, Lech. Domeny symboliczne. Konflikty narodowe i etniczne w wymiarze symbolicznym. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2006. Nora, Pierre. Realms of Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Obrębski, Józef. “Lud bez ojczyzny. Uzupełnienie.” In: Polesie, ed. Józef Obrębski. Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa, 2007, pp. 186–275. Pastusiak, Kazimiera. Fleksja gwar ukraińskich okolic Włodawy. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2004. Rukat, Rafał. “Katolicki etnograf w staroobrzędowej cerkwi. Antropologiczne badania nad doświadczeniem religijnym z perspektywy ucieleśnienia.” Lud, Vol. 98, 2014, pp. 321–330. Stępień, Stanisław. “Represje wobec kościoła greckokatolickiego w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej po II Wojnie Światowej.” In: Polska-Ukraina. 1000 lat sąsiedztwa. Vol. 2. Studia z dziejów chrześcijaństwa na pograniczu kulturowym i etnicznym, ed. Stanisław Stępień. Przemyśl: Południowo-Wschodni Instytut Naukowy w Przemyślu, 1994, pp. 195–262. von Löwis, Sabine. “Phantom Borders in the Political Geography of East Central Europe: An Introduction.” Erdkunde. Archive for Scientific Geography, Vol. 69, No. 2, 2015, pp. 99–106. Wawryniuk, Andrzej. Powiat Włodawski: historia, geografia, gospodarka, polityka. Monografia miejscowości. Chełm: Starostwo powiatowe we Włodawie, 2010. Wylegała, Anna. Przesiedlenia a pamięć. Studium (nie) pamięci społecznej na przykładzie ukraińskiej Galicji i polskich “ziem odzyskanych.” Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2014. Бріцина, Олександра. “XX сторіччя в усній історії українців (нотатки до питання про історизм фольклору).” In: У пошуках власного голосу: Усна історія як теорія, метод та джерело. Зб. наук. ст., ed. Гелінада Грінченко, Наталія Ханенко-Фрізен. Харків: ПП “ТОРГСІН ПЛЮС,” 2010, pp. 135–144. Прах, Богдан. Духовенство Перемиської єпархії та Апостольської адміністрації Лемківщини. Vol. 1. Біографічні нариси (1939–1989). Львів: Ви давництво Українського католицького університету, 2015. Халюк, Леся. Усні народні оповідання українців-переселенців Лемківщини, Холмщини, Підляшшя та Надсяння: жанрово-тематична специфіка, художні особливості. Київ: ІМФЕ НАН України, 2013.

Urszula Rukat

The Role of Priests in Shaping the Religious Culture of the Uniate Parishes in Kostomłoty and Biały Bór Abstract: The cases of the neo-Uniate parish in Kostomłoty and the Greek Catholic parish in Biały Bór serve as an illustration of the different ways priests may shape local religious culture. These two parishes’ charismatic priests have proved to be active creators of religious culture. Apart from preaching the teaching of the Church, they have also promoted values significant for themselves and for the parish communities in their pastoral care. Current changes taking place within the Greek Catholic and neo-Uniate Rites as well as past and contemporary debates regarding these changes show that patterns of religious practice are the object of negotiations between clergy and lay people. These negotiations are not aimed at undermining the Catholic Church’s teachings; rather, at emphasising the possibility of various ways of practicing doctrine within the religious orthodoxy. The neo-Uniate parish in Kostomłoty is a special case here: as the only community of this Rite in Poland, it cannot be compared to other parishes. Despite the village’s complicated past marked by inter-faith conflict, the priests in co-operation with the local community have promoted the neo-Uniate parish as a place of reconciliation between Christians of different rites and a symbol of the Church’s unity. The parish in Biały Bór, in turn, along with the construction of the new church and changes in religious services held within it, has become a space where the clash of Latinisation and Byzantinisation tendencies in the Greek Catholic Church can be seen. Keywords:  Byzantinisation, Latinisation, clergy, Greek Catholics, Eastern liturgy, Bizantine rite

In this chapter, I intend to examine ways in which priests shape religious culture based on the research I have conducted in two parishes: one in Kostomłoty and the other in Biały Bór. My starting point is with Stefan Czarnowski’s already classic statement that “the religious culture of a given community is not the same as the religion practiced by it.”1 Even though religion is understood as a certain pattern that influences the faithful’s practices and aims to transform them, the faithful do the same by “adapting it for their own use, according to their own pattern.”2 During my field research in Kostomłoty3 and Biały Bór, I was mostly interested in

1

Stefan Czarnowski, “Kultura religijna wiejskiego ludu polskiego,” in: Dzieła, Vol. I (Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1956), p. 88. 2 Stefan Czarnowski, “Kultura religijna,” p. 88. 3 In my research conducted in Kostomłoty during 2013–2015. The results of my research were presented in my MA thesis entitled “Pod krzyżem jedności – konstruowanie wspólnoty neounickiej w Kostomłotach,” (Klimut 2016).

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observing the ways this “transformation” takes place, especially in the sphere of liturgy, service and visual settings, including church decoration. Priests play a particularly important role in this process. Although in Czarnecki’s view the clergy appears as the bearer of “pure” religion, a closer look at the priests’ activities in Kostomłoty and Biały Bór allows us to notice how differently the same pattern of religious practice characteristic for a given rite (if we can speak of such patterns at all) can be applied, depending on the priest’s character and views. Due to the specificity of anthropological research, the collected field material allows me to depict the experience of religion, or – as Anna Niedźwiedź would define it –“individual and collective religious practices as well as religion understood as it is experienced by concrete individuals and communities.”4 Apart from getting to know both communities, I also familiarised myself with theological and historical works that allowed me to better understand the observed reality.

The History of the Neo-Uniate Parish in Kostomłoty I asked Father Zbigniew Nikoniuk of the neo-Uniate parish in Kostomłoty when the neo-Uniate Church was established. He replied with his typical sense of humour: on the day of Pentecost. The history of the church building used by the neo-Uniate5 community as told by the priest is a bit shorter. The church was built for the Uniate parish in 1630. After the liquidation of the Uniate Church under the Russian partition of Poland in 1875, the parish was incorporated into the Orthodox Church. The First World War brought an end to the Orthodox parish, as a result of the “refugeehood” (біженство in Ukrainian, bieżeństwo in Polish) or mass migration of the population escaping the approaching German front to inland Russia. When former residents started returning to the deserted village, a conflict between the Orthodox and Uniates regarding the church’s ownership rights flared up. The Uniates were supported by the Catholic Church, which promoted neoUniate action during the inter-war period.6 According to its assumptions, the 4 Anna Niedźwiedź, “Od religijności ludowej do religii przeżywanej,” in:  Kultura ludowa:teorie, praktyki, polityki, eds. Barbara Fatyga and Ryszard Michalski (Warszawa: Instytut Stosowanych Nauk Społecznych, 2014), p. 332. 5 There is a value judgement behind the choice between the terms “Uniates” and “neo-Uniates.” The choice of the term “Uniates” implies the focus on the continuity of the parish. The current parishioners are perceived to be heirs to the Uniate tradition of Podlasie. Whereas the term “neo-Uniates” suggests separateness, as a result the parish may be perceived as a 20th-century creation. I use both terms in this text interchangeably, in order to emphasise the particularity of the neo-Uniates and respect the fact that the parishioners call themselves “Uniates.” 6 The neo-Uniate action started in 1924 on the initiative of Podlasie bishop Henryk Przeździecki. It covered one Catholic archdiocese in Wilno (Vilnius) and the dioceses of Lublin, Łuck, Pińsk and Podlasie. Cf. Andrzej Tłomacki, “Kościół rzymsko-katolicki obrządku bizantyjsko-słowiańskiego (Kościół neounicki) na południowo-wschodnim

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Photo 1: An entrance to the church decorated by the parishioners during the Corpus Christi holiday. Photo by Urszula Rukat.

Orthodox faithful could convert to Catholicism without changing their rite. The Uniate parish in Kostomłoty was officially established according to canonical law in 1927. Based on the national laws of the time, the church in Kostomłoty was given to the Uniates as heirs of the 19th-century owners and not to the Orthodox community, who, despite being the village’s majority population, had to settle for a filial chapel. In 1947, the majority of Kostomłoty’s population was resettled as part of Operation Vistula.7 The Orthodox parish was liquidated, but the neo-Uniate one survived thanks to Aleksander Przyłucki, the parish priest of the time. During the second part of the 1950s, when the deported population started returning home, only one parish community was to be found there – the neo-Uniate one. It was joined by Podlasiu w latach 1924–1947,” Radzyński Rocznik Humanistyczny, Vol. 5, (2007), pp. 96–130. 7 As a result, 329 persons were deported and 53 persons remained in the village. For details, see, Andrzej Tłomacki, Stosunki wyznaniowe w Polsce w latach 1944–1953 na przykładzie powiatu bialskiego (Warszawa: Andrzej Tłomacki, 2010).

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Uniate and Orthodox faithful alike, and, at a later stage, also by Catholics, who settled in Kostomłoty after the indigenous population was resettled. The division among the faithful took place (or resurfaced) in 2003, when a single-person male monastery as well as an Orthodox parish appeared in the village, which was joined by some Uniates. Both communities are currently rather small.8

The Greek Catholic Parish in Biały Bór The Greek Catholic community in Biały Bór was established as a result of Operation Vistula’s resettlement. The majority of the resettled Ukrainian population removed from bigger localities was scattered over villages. Many of our informants moved to Biały Bór during the 1950s–1970s. In 1957, a Greek Catholic church was put into operation in Biały Bór, and a year later the second in the Polish People’s Republic Ukrainian school was opened there.9 As a result, the town has become the centre of Ukrainian national and religious life. Annual parish festivals organised on the feast day celebrating the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (September 18–21) used to bring together thousands of faithful from all over Poland. Today, the biggest challenge faced by Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic community is the town’s gradual depopulation as well as the Ukrainian populations’ assimilation, associated with the change of the rite to the Roman Catholic one.

Similarities Between the Two Parishes Both Kostomłoty and Biały Bór are well-known local pilgrimage destinations, even though neither of them is widely considered to be a miracle site. I have not learned of any accounts regarding wonders or miraculous recoveries related to the objects of worship in any of these two localities – either St. Nikita’s icon10 and the blessed Podlasie Martyrs’ relics11 in Kostomłoty, or the Virgin Mary’s icon in Biały

8 In 2014, 136 people belonged to the neo-Uniate parish. According to the most recent data available on the parish’s internet page, it comprises 120 parishioners: http:// kostomloty.com/node/302. 10 Nov. 2016. 9 Krystyna Mariak, “Szkolnictwo mniejszości ukraińskiej w Polsce w Latach 1952– 2004. Zarys problematyki,” Teka Komisji Polsko-Ukraińskich Związków Kulturowych – OL PAN (2010), pp. 264–271, p. 269. 10 St. Nikita was a martyr living in the 4th century, venerated both by the Catholic as well as Orthodox Churches. 11 The Blessed Podlasie Martyrs, or Wincenty Lewoniuk and his 12 associates were Uniates who in 1874 died in front of the church in Pratulin, defending it against being included to the Orthodox Church. They were beatified in 1996 by the Catholic Church. They commemorate all Uniates who fought for their faith during the Uniate Church’s liquidation at the times of the Russian partition. There are the blessed Pratulin martyrs’ relics at the church in Kostomłoty, and the parish is called Podlasie Uniates’ sanctuary. However the main centre of their worship is Pratulin.

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Bór. What attracts most tourists to both locations are the extraordinary churches themselves. A 19th-century antique church in Kostomłoty attracts many pilgrims, especially since that town is located along the route to Kodeń. The church in Biały Bór, fully designed by Jerzy Nowosielski, also enjoys widespread popularity, even though it is somewhat less popular with tourists than the church in Kostomłoty. It appears that the popularity of both sites is not accidental and derives from another similarity between the two communities – the charismatic priests leading the two parishes. Generally, priests’ influence upon their communities may be difficult to identify, when they have only briefly served as parish priests or when their engagement into their communities’ life has been limited. The situation in Kostomłoty and Biały Bór has been very different, however. I believe it is precisely these towns’ charismatic priests – still reminisced about by their parishioners – who have made these localities exceptional. Almost every conversation I had with the residents of both towns was centred around the figures of the priests who had served the communities. In Kostomłoty’s case, there have been three post-war parish priests: Father Aleksander Przyłucki (1940–1967), Father Roman Piętka (1967–2007) and Father Zbigniew Nikoniuk (from 2007). Among the Greek Catholic priests in Biały Bór, my interlocutors most often mentioned the first two:  Father Stefan Dziubyna (1957–1977) and Father Jarosław Madzelan (1977–1989), as well as Father Bazyli Hrynyk, a much honoured figure in the Greek Catholic community. They all worked during a time in which communities were divided in terms of confession and rite, in circumstances unfavourable to religious activity. At the beginning of his service in 1940, Father Przyłucki already had to face the UniateOrthodox conflict. His successor, Father Roman, worked hard towards OrthodoxUniate reconciliation and encouraged Roman Catholics living in Kostomłoty to join the parish.12 Declaring respect for all confessions and rites and the right to preserve one’s religious identity, Father Roman emphasised that the parish was open to all. This was possible, however, at the cost of forsaking a clear definition of who a neo-Uniate was. Placed between “Russian” Orthodoxy and “Polish” Roman Catholicism, the Uniates remained tutejsi – “locals” or “of this place.”13 The existence of the Eastern Rite in Biały Bór was dependent from the start on the believers’ national identity. Ukrainians, who did not have their own church, were joining Roman Catholic parishes and some were becoming Polonized. Thus, attempts to establish a Greek Catholic parish were a fight simultaneously for a

12 During Father Przyłucki’s times Roman Catholics used to go to a church in a neighbouring village. Father Roman started to convince them that neo-Uniates belong to the same Church, and so they can join the local parish. 13 Translator’s note:  tutejszy in Polish or in тутешній in Ukrainian are a selfidentifying category of people living in culturally and linguistically mixed areas of Central and Eastern Europe.

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religious and national identity.14 The chapel in Biały Bór, from the start, contained many Ukrainian national symbols, which I will come back to later when discussing the churches’ interior decoration. According to Andrzej Maciupa, Father Madzelan, Father Dziubyna’s successor, actively promoted the parishioners’ Ukrainian identity, including by encouraging marriages within the same rite and writing down the names of those who failed to acknowledge.15 The strategies presented above allowed the priests to preserve or re-create their parishes16 as well as effectively placate tensions within local communities. However, their guiding ideas also impacted local “religious cultures,” including the churches’ interior decoration or forms of religious service to the extent that both churches became rather famous at a national level.

The Formation of Kostomłoty’s Religious Culture The neo-Uniate Rite originates from the Russian synodal Rite, and thus is different from the Greek Catholic one, which was practiced in Kostomłoty until the Uniate parish’s liquidation. One of the neo-Uniate action’s aims was to preserve the existing rite in an unchanged form; however, since the parish’s creation in 1927, it has undergone certain changes. While the post-war parish priest Father Przyłucki was brought up in the Uniate tradition and educated in neo-Uniate seminaries, his successors  – Father Roman and Father Zbigniew  – came from Roman Catholic families. When they came to Kostomłoty, their knowledge of the rite was limited compared to that of some the town’s oldest residents brought up during the tsarist times. Father Zbigniew used to openly admit that parishioners often corrected his minor errors. According to my interviewees, during Father Roman’s times, the faithful also had a lot to say regarding the liturgy. The generation born before the First World War was particularly actively engaged in the parish’s affairs. The neo-Uniate parish – being this rite’s only parish in Poland – is under limited control from the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and enjoys relative independence and freedom in terms of liturgy. Orthodox services could serve rather naturally as an “example.” On the other hand, why would a neo-Uniate parish blindly follow this example? Although I was told by the local residents that Father Roman used

14 The question what share of the deportees had a Lemko or Boyko identity remains unanswered. During my research I heard about people who declared such roots, however this was never a basis for questioning their identity. There was also small number of Orthodox believers among the deported population. 15 Andrzej Maciupa, Placówka greckokatolicka w Białym Borze w latach 1957–1991, MA thesis written under the supervision of Dr. Dorota Urzyńska at the Contemporary History Department, Pomerania Pedagogical Academy, Słupsk, 2004, p. 90. 16 Biały Bór formally was not a parish until 1991, even though the existing unit functioned very similarly to a parish.

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to go to a nearby monastery in Jabłeczna in order to learn Orthodox church melodies, his successor claims that his main purpose is providing spiritual guidance to the faithful, and the preservation of the rite’s consistency is of considerably lesser significance for him. For this reason, he resigned from the services that were not attended by parishioners, including St. Basil’s Liturgy on Easter’s Eve, but introduced new ones, including rosary prayer meetings in October. Father Zbigniew emphasised how important it was for him to adjust the rite to the needs and capabilities of the parishioners. For this reason, the neo-Uniate church in Kostomłoty is probably the only place in Poland where tourists and pilgrims visiting the parish are mentioned in the Ektenia17. The traditional language of neo-Uniate liturgy is Old Church Slavonic; however, only the oldest parishioners are currently attached to it. My oldest informants, born in the 1920s, complained that younger generations have not learned even basic prayers and sing the entire liturgy from their books. Father Zbigniew was convinced that introducing the Polish language was the right decision: not a single parishioner fully understands Old Church Slavonic today. Nowadays, liturgies are carried out partly in one and partly in another language, depending on the number of visitors from outside the parish present. The service of last two parish priests – Father Roman and Father Zbigniew – has been of utmost importance for the rise of Kostomłoty’s popularity. The former was fascinated by the Christian culture of the East. The period of his priesthood formation coincided with the Second Vatican Council and the warming up of the relations between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.18 Moreover, Father Roman met neo-Uniate missionaries freed from Soviet prison camps19 at the Marians Congregation. Relying upon his contacts among the clergy and lay Catholic intelligentsia, as well as on support from friars, Father Roman promoted Kostomłoty as a

17 Ektenia consists of a series of petitions to God. The priest or deacon mentions petitions and the faithful reply with “Hospodi pomiłuj,” or “God, have mercy on us” or “Podaj, Hospodi,” or “Give us, our Lord.” The Ektenia petitions have become a part of liturgy; for this reason, the introduction of new petitions by Father Zbigniew appears rather brave and original. 18 This was manifested, for example, by the meeting of Pope Paul VI with the Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras in Jerusalem in 1964. In Kostomłoty church there is an icon representing St. Peter Coryphaeus and St. Andrew Protokletos in a brotherly embrace. It is a copy of an icon created on that historic meeting. 19 Father Tomasz Podziawo and Father Józef Hermanowicz came to Poland in 1955. Originally from Belarus, these monks were engaged in missionary work in Harbina, converting the Orthodox to the Eastern rite Catholicism, for which they were imprisoned in 1948. After coming to Poland, they engaged in ecumenical activity and popularized knowledge about the Eastern Rite. After a while, both of them left for London to work among the Belarusian diaspora. Cf. Roman Piętka, Autobiografia z okazji 70-lecia urodzin o. archim. Romana Piętki. http://www.cyrylimetody.marianie. pl/ankieta.htm. 08 Oct. 2015.

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Photo 2: The processing initiating the parish feast celebrating the Pratulin martyrs, 2014. Photo by Urszula Rukat.

place where the West meets or even unites with the East. He organised ecumenical meetings, retreats and youth camps for participants from all over Poland, met with Orthodox priests and believers and put a lot of effort into decorating and adorning the Kostomłoty church. At the same time, from the beginning of his service, he encouraged local youth to learn about the Eastern Rite and study Old Church Slavonic. His narrative about neo-Uniates focused on the call to unite or “be as one” made in reference to both the relationships within the local population as well as the reconciliation of Christians of different rites in a broader sense. Father Roman drew the attention of both Catholics and the Orthodox to the example of two Apostles, brothers Peter and Andrew, who according to tradition, gave rise to two different rites – the Roman Rite and the Greek Rite – yet preserved the bond of brotherly unity. Father Zbigniew also referred to the commandment “to be as one,” yet interpreted it in a somewhat different way. He emphasised the unity of different rites reflected in loyalty to the Roman Church; hence, his narrative of the Uniate community’s history focused on the Blessed Martyrs of Pratulin. His focus on the loyalty towards the Catholic Church may be seen as a response toward religious divisions prominent before he became the parish priest.

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The antagonism these divisions evoked in the community is reflected in the differences between the two priests’ narratives regarding the community. Kostomłoty Uniates, once advocates of Christian reconciliation, have become the heirs of the Pratulin Martyrs’ legacy of suffering for their loyalty to the Catholic Church. Today, the images of Podlasie’s Uniate Martyrs decorate the church’s interior and exterior as well as the nearby chapel, while visitors are welcomed by a big cross with the inscription: “Blessed Uniate Martyrs, pray for us,” placed in the parking lot. The parish festival celebrating the Blessed Martyrs of Pratulin has become the most important parish festival that has overshadowed the church’s patron Nikita, the Martyr’s feast day, celebrated in September. It usually takes place on the second Sunday after the day of Pentecost, which is also the day of All Saints of the Nation according to the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church. Father Zbigniew chose this day not only because the Martyrs of Pratulin are the blessed of the local “nation,” but also due to organisational reasons. June is a better time for a parish festival lasting many hours compared to mid-September, when days are shorter and colder. The church festival is preceded by a two-day pilgrimage to Pratulin, and sometimes by the feast of Corpus Christi,20 so the celebration may go on for three or even four days. The festive Sunday liturgy is celebrated by notable guests: bishops from Poland or Ukraine, or the head of the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church, Father Archimandrite Sergiusz Gajek21. During the procession, the martyrs’ relics are carried to the church’s entry accompanied by a fire brigade orchestra playing music and songs honouring the martyrs. At the end of the ceremony there is another procession around the church, during which the four Gospels are read. The most honoured and active members of the parish come forward to the priest and lower their heads over the Gospel Book. After the end of the liturgy, all guests attend a dinner organised by the parish, which later turns into a feast lasting until late into the night. The parish church festival functions as the manifestation of the Uniate community’s confession vis-à-vis the Orthodox and Catholic neighbours from the village and the nearby localities. During the sermons I had a chance to listen to, the bishops praised the perseverance of faith in Kostomłoty’s population, who nurtures their Rite despite its small size. The preparations for the parish feast and the praise coming from notable guests are equally important for the integration of the faithful and strengthening the community’s spirit. For the parishioners, the festival starts several days before the official celebration and ends several days after. The process of preparation and tidying up after the celebration is a great opportunity for meetings and discussions, which sometimes appeared to me to be of more importance than the work that had to be done. During the parish festivals

20 According to the calendar, the parish church festival has to take place on the Sunday after Corpus Christi; however, this rule is not always respected. This was the case in 2015, when the celebration took place a week later. 21 Father Sergiusz Gajek was a close friend of Roman Piętka.

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I participated in,22 the parishioners were reminiscing about old times, singing local songs and debating about the future of their community.

Biały Bór – Questions about Religion and National Identity The establishment and development of the Greek Catholic church in Biały Bór is also related to the figures of its own charismatic priests – Father Bazyli Hrynyk23 and Father Stefan Dziubyna. Thanks to their determination, in 1957 one of the first Ukrainian churches after Operation Vistula opened there. As I already mentioned, the priests’ activity has not only had a religious dimension, but also a national one. Parish church festivals have considerably helped increase the size of the community by attracting hundreds of faithful even from Pomerania and other regions of Poland. Careful preparation of the festivals was very important for Father Dziubyna. The celebratory mood and good organisation were key for the event’s success24. The parish priest invited many other priests to the parish festival, so that every participant had a chance to confess as well as ask good preachers to deliver sermons. There were processions at the beginning and end of the liturgy, attended by children in Ukrainian folk costumes. What is more, until the end of 1990s the Eucharist also was carried in the procession. According to Father Piotr Baran, Biały Bór’s parish priest, this tradition, in terms of liturgy, did not make any sense.25 In the 2015 procession I took part in, only the Virgin Mary’s icon as well as the World Youth Day pilgrim cross were carried. I believe another significant element that contributes to the popularity of church festivals, not mentioned by Father Dziubyna, is the dinner following the celebration. A shared free meal brings many guests from neighbouring villages to Kostomłoty and attracts those parishioners who rarely attend regular services at the neo-Uniate church. Although food and drink are not free in Biały Bor, the tents

2 2 In 2014–2016. 23 Father Bazyli Hrynyk was a person who united Kostomłoty and Biały Bór. In the inter-war period he propagated the neo-Uniate action in Kostomłoty and visited the parish in 1968 or 1969. Moreover, he took young Aleksander Przyłucki as his disciple, encouraging him to study to become a Uniate priest. Cf. Igor Hałagida, “Szpieg Watykanu”: kapłan greckokatolicki ks. Bazyli Hrynyk (1896–1977) (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2014), p. 25. 24 Andrzej Maciupa, Placówka greckokatolicka, p. 64. 25 Father Baran talked in a sceptical way about the custom of carrying the Holy Sacrament during celebrations, claiming that even among Roman Catholic theologians there are discussions about the sense of this service. In the Roman Catholic Church, the procession with monstrance is traditionally associated with the resurrection and the Corpus Christi celebration, but it is difficult to justify its relationship with the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God among Greek Catholics.

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Photo 3: Easter in Biały Bór. The procession is coming back to the church, 2016. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

where meals are served and consumed become meeting sites even for those who come with their own food supplies. Although many people attended the church festival in 2015, it appears that it did not have the same scale and significance in comparison to earlier festivals. The decline in popularity of the Biały Bór’s festival may be related to the change of the celebration’s site. Initially, the church celebration took place in a chapel at the cemetery. A former Evangelical cemetery chapel was turned into a Greek Catholic church. During its renovation, Father Dziubyna had it adorned with Ukrainian folk motifs and introduced icons to it. One of these icons was Our Lady of Exile. Today, it is located in the new church. The church’s interior decoration design was inspired by the Bieszczady Mountains’ churches, which transformed a prayer house into a symbol of Ukrainian national identity, and a bond with the past. The chapel reflected the deportees’ notion of a Greek Catholic church, unlike the new church’s design by Jerzy Nowosielski that radically severed the links to it. Many older village residents had fond memories about the old church and criticised the new one, commending the church built in the nearby Bielica village (where furnishings from Biały Bór’s chapel were transferred to). The church designed by Nowosielski and constructed under Father Józef Ulicki’s initiative (parish priest from 1990 to 1997) is a symbol of returning to the roots, roots so ancient that for many of Biały Bór’s residents that they already seem alien.

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The church’s design was inspired by early Christian symbolism, but has considerably departed from the parishioners’ notions regarding a Greek Catholic church. In conversations with me, they pointed out the lack of iconostasis, lack of domes, and especially the Royal Doors, substituted by a curtain made of thick fabric. They also drew my attention to the black faces and unusual images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints represented on the icons. In contrast to the former church, there is no space in the church either for Ukrainian folk ornaments or the Latinised elements of interior design present in the Uniate Church, such as the Stations of the Cross. The only thing that was transferred from the old chapel was the icon of Our Lady of Exile, which was too important for the faithful and “prayed to,” not to include it in the new building. Although the parishioners have got used to the new church, it remains a site for negotiations between the ideal presented by Nowosielski and the parishioners’ needs, which is well illustrated by the picture available on the official website of the Greek Catholic Church in Poland. One can see black columns covered with white ribbons, a white tablecloth embroidered with Ukrainian folk patterns and a flower pot on the lectern. This picture demonstrates the dissonance between the intended church’s aesthetics and its actual users’ wishes.26 According to Nowosielski’s idea, the church’s front façade may serve the function of an outdoor iconostasis used during parish festivals’ liturgies. Yet, such an idea was not popular with all the faithful. One of the participants of the parish festival expressed his disappointment that he could not see what was happening on the altar, even though the concealing of the Eucharist’s secret from the faithful’s eyes is very characteristic in the Eastern Rite. The differences in the exterior and interior decoration designs of the old and new churches are reflected in the ways holy masses are celebrated inside them. According to Father Baran, the traditional Roman Catholic prayers and services – such as rosary prayer meetings, the May church services and the Way of the Cross – have been widely popular among parishioners. However, while there were Stations of the Cross in the old chapel, they are not present either inside or outside the new church. As the priest explained, the centre of a church is its altar, and walking around it outside goes against the grain of this symbolism. At the same time, this does not prevent the Way of the Cross services being held in other churches in Poland, for example, at the Przemyśl’s Cathedral. My interviewees also mentioned the fact that many new religious services have been introduced, for example, the Passions of Christ Akathist during Lent, whereas Latin traditions, including boys forming a guard protecting the Tomb of Jesus or girls kneeling at the Tomb, have disappeared. Moreover, after Bogdan Drozd became the parish priest and Father Baran became the vicar in 1997, the practice of celebrating of the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts during Lent has been introduced, while the tradition of caring monstrance during a procession has been abandoned. 26 http://www.cerkiew.net.pl/Eparchia/Cerkwie/Bialy_Bor_02.jpg. 04 Nov. 2016.

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In one of our conversations, the parish priest emphasised that it is important for the Greek Catholic Church to discover its own liturgical tradition, as previously, during communist times, this was not possible. At the same time, he declared his openness towards new forms of religiosity, including those deriving from the Roman Catholic tradition. His attitude reflects the tension between the Latinisation and Byzantisation of traditions in the Greek Catholic Church. The “purification” of the ritual and religiosity from Latin influences has been promoted by the Congregation of Eastern Churches, especially after the publication of the Eastern Churches’ Code of Canons in 1990.27 In the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, this dispute already existed during the second half of the 19th century and was related to its search for its own ecclesiastic and national traditions, reaching its peak of intensity during the inter-war period.28 However, while the 19th-century Byzantisation advocates supported the approximation of the Rite to the Orthodox tradition, often ultimately making the decision to convert, the inter-war period Byzantisation current followers opposed any borrowings from the Orthodox tradition, and postulated liturgy history research and reconstructing the former rite.29 Current Biały Bór’s priests appear to clearly prefer the Byzantisation direction. This claim can be illustrated by their construction of the new church as well as gradual abandoning of services related to the Roman Catholic tradition. Yet, the parishioners do not seem to be missing the old forms of religiosity. Sometimes, only my questions about Corpus Christi holiday, rosary prayer meetings or the Way of the Christ made them realise that these have not been practiced at their church. This situation is in sharp contrast with a strong attachment, especially on the oldest generation’s part, to the old church’s interior decoration design. As a side note, it is worth pointing out that currently, some new elements borrowed from the Roman Catholic tradition also appear, within Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic parish, including new youth religious songs. These songs, also popular in the Polish Catholic Church, are accompanied by guitar music and performance of various gestures. This type of prayer has been adopted by the church in a specific setting – during evening prayer meetings for young people. The parish priest excluded the possibility of using the guitar in liturgical music. At the same time, he emphasised that the Church is a living organism and should not be restricted to historical forms. 27 Cf. Stéphanie Mahieu, “Icons and/or Statues? The Greek Catholic Divine Liturgy in Hungary and Romania, between Renewal and Purification,” in: Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective, eds. Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2010), pp. 79–100. 28 Stanisław Stępień, “W poszukiwaniu tożsamości obrządkowej. Bizantynizacja a okcydentalizacja Kościoła grekokatolickiego w okresie międzywojennym,” in: Polska – Ukraina. 1000 lat sąsiedztwa, Vol. 5, Miejsce i rola kościoła grekokatolickiego w kościele powszechnym (Przemyśl: S. Stępień, 2000). 29 Stanisław Stępień, “W poszukiwaniu tożsamości obrządkowej.”

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Another change in the liturgical life of the Biały Bór parish was the transition from Old Church Slavonic to Ukrainian. This change has proved to be difficult to implement due to similarities between the two languages. Ukrainian liturgical texts contained many archaisms and needed new proofreadings, whereas every correction meant the need for the choir to learn the new text. The Biały Bór priest joked that it is likely that in parishes headed by lazy priests parishioners may still be praying in Old Church Slavonic. He himself witnessed elderly people using this language in their prayers at home. Currently, the new generation understands Ukrainian less and less; hence, some parishioners expect the introduction of the Polish language to the liturgy, particularly during important family occasions such as funerals. One could hypothesise that the aim of this departure from the Latin tradition and embracing of old Byzantine forms is to open up the community towards new challenges. Searching for own tradition, not Latinized, yet also distinct from the Russian Orthodox tradition, may be a way of working out own ecclesiastic identity vis-à-vis the temptation of attracting the faithful from both these communities. Simultaneously, the church’s symbolic retreat from the Ukrainian tradition opens up the opportunity to be a Greek Catholic regardless of one’s national identity.

Summary The role of priests as mediators between religious doctrine and the faithful put forward by Czarnowski appears to be only partially true. On the one hand, a priest is someone who can look at a community form the outside: he describes it, makes reflections and generalisations about it, particularly when telling visitors about his parish. On the other, he knows the local residents’ histories and world outlooks, and thus becomes a co-creator of the religious culture, not only as a representative of the Church, but also as a member of the community. Personal contacts and knowledge about the local community have proved to be the key to the success of the endeavours undertaken by the priests described above. Familiarity with and adequate responses to the needs of the local faithful have helped attract new parishioners. The neo-Uniate parish in Kostomłoty was joined by representatives of two confessions and two rites, whereas the Biały Bór parish brought together the Ukrainian community. The priests discussed above have (or had) exceptional charisma and organisational skills. These priests  – actively engaged in local community affairs  – have helped the community not only in spiritual matters, but also everyday ones, for example, by providing financial support to impoverished parishioners and helping them find work. At the same time, they have been successful at encouraging parishioners to provide organisational and financial support for the church community. Without parishioners’ engagement, the parish priests would never have been able to organise a single church celebration, not to mention a large-scale annual parish festival. The priests’ guiding ideas required concrete funds and means for their realisation. By taking part in church-related

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activities and the organisation of church events, the parishioners co-operated with their priests in creating their shared religious culture. The model of relations between the priests and the parishioners as illustrated by the two cases of Kostomłoty and Biały Bór is closer to co-operation than to the antagonism described by Czarnowski. Apart from their activity as Catholic preachers, the priests from Kostomłoty and Biały Bór parishes have engaged in other activities significant to them: Father Roman worked towards reconciliation of Christians of different rites, Father Zbigniew focused on cultivating the memory of the Uniate Martyrs and the Biały Bor parish priests engaged in sustaining and promoting the Ukrainian national identity. The priests functioned as representatives of their parish communities vis-à-vis the outside world, and their narratives shaped the communities’ historical significance in accordance with their personal convictions about what is good and right. This is particularly evident in Kostomłoty, where the village’s difficult and complicated past was camouflaged by Father Roman’s ecumenical narrative. The priest’s determined actions and faith have proven effective in reconciling Christians of different confessions and rites at a neo-Uniate parish, previously hated by the Orthodox community and perceived as alien by Roman Catholics. Kostomłoty’s example demonstrates how cooperation between priests and the faithful can produce a dynamic local religious centre. Drawing on their theological education and knowledge of local history, the priests initiated such events as ecumenical meetings and parish festivals, which, thanks to the parishioners’ active participation, have become manifestations of the local religious culture, making their village nationally renowned. In the meantime, the ongoing Latinisation versus Byzantisation debate between the Greek Catholic episcopate, clergy and intelligentsia undermines the existence of a single form of the Eastern Rite. With the help of Czarnowski’s model, one can say that the priest negotiates not only between a given religion’s model and local traditions, but also between different variations of the model, selecting the tradition within the Church. The concept of religious culture has proven particularly useful for my research in Kostomłoty and Biały Bór. The analysis of the process of negotiation between “religion” and “religious culture” has brought me to the following conclusions. The transformation of religion “in their image and similarity” is equally the domain of lay believers, who practice their faith, as priests, who add whatever they believe is right for their parish community to their mission to realise a religious ideal. What is more, the ideal itself is often rather ambiguous: a single doctrine may be practiced in many ways, while still remaining within the boundaries of a religious orthodoxy. Consequently, the transformations of religious culture are not the outcome of the top-down imposition of the ideal, so much as the result of priests’ creative cooperation with their local community, whose members often passionately care about the form of its rite, and appeal to the Church tradition to justify it.

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Bibliography Czarnowski, Stefan. “Kultura religijna wiejskiego ludu polskiego.” In: Dzieła, Vol. I. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1956. Hałagida, Igor. “Szpieg Watykanu”: kapłan greckokatolicki ks. Bazyli Hrynyk (1896–1977). Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2014. Kostomłoty Uniate parish website, http://kostomloty.com/node/302. (10 Nov. 2016). Maciupa, Andrzej. Placówka greckokatolicka w Białym Borze w latach 1957–1991. MA thesis written under the supervision of Dr. Dorota Urzyńska at the Contemporary History Department, Pomerania Pedagogical Academy, Słupsk, 2004. Mahieu, Stéphanie. “Icons and/or Statues? The Greek Catholic Divine Liturgy in Hungary and Romania, between Renewal and Purification.” In: Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective, eds. Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2010, pp. 79–100. Mariak, Krystyna. “Szkolnictwo mniejszości ukraińskiej w Polsce w Latach 1952–2004. Zarys problematyki.” Teka Komisji Polsko-Ukraińskich Związków Kulturowych – OL PAN, 2010, pp. 264–271, p. 269. Niedźwiedź, Anna. “Od religijności ludowej do religii przeżywanej.” In: Kultura ludowa: teorie, praktyki, polityki, eds. Barbara Fatyga and Ryszard Michalski. Warszawa: Instytut Stosowanych Nauk Społecznych, 2014. Piętka, Roman. Autobiografia z okazji 70-lecia urodzin o. archim. Romana Piętki, http://www.cyrylimetody.marianie.pl/ankieta.htm. (08 Oct.2015). Stępień, Stanisław. W poszukiwaniu tożsamości obrządkowej. Bizantynizacja a okcydentalizacja Kościoła grekokatolickiego w okresie międzywojennym w: Polska – Ukraina. 1000 lat sąsiedztwa, Vol. 5, Miejsce i rola kościoła grekokatolickiego w kościele powszechnym. Przemyśl: S. Stępień, 2000. Tłomacki, Andrzej. “Kościół rzymsko-katolicki obrządku bizantyjskosłowiańskiego (Kościół neounicki) na południowo-wschodnim Podlasiu w latach 1924–1947.” Radzyński Rocznik Humanistyczny, Vol. 5, 2007, pp. 96–130. Tłomacki, Andrzej. Stosunki wyznaniowe w Polsce w latach 1944-1953 na przykładzie powiatu bialskiego.Warszawa: Andrzej Tłomacki, 2010.

Jacek Wajszczak

Jerzy Nowosielski’s Church in Biały Bór: Reception and Cultural Contexts Abstract: The Greek Catholic church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biały Bór designed by Jerzy Nowosielski, a well-known painter and theologian, was consecrated in 1997. Its design does not draw on the Ukrainian folk tradition, but rather is an avant-garde interpretation of the early Christian traditions and Greek basilicas. Starting from Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic church phenomenon, the author follows the pathways trodden by the faithful and sets this experiences in the contexts of memory, space and art; he sketches out and analyses the dynamic and living cultural landscape of Biały Bór. Apart from ethnographic field research, the author draws his analysis on his interlocutors’ archival photos, correspondence related to the church’s construction, press articles as well as Prof. Jerzy Nowosielski’s publications. Keywords: architecture, cultural landscape, religion, art, memory

The Greek Catholic church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biały Bór designed by Jerzy Nowosielski, a well-known painter and theologian, was consecrated in 1997. The church owes to him its unique structure and interior, inspired by early Christian architecture and Greek basilicas, yet also rather avant-garde in comparison to typical Polish sacred architecture. For almost half a century before it was built, Greek Catholics from Biały Bór and neighbouring villages used to pray at a former Evangelical cemetery chapel – a memento of the former German residents who left the town at the end of the Second World War, escaping the approaching Red Army frontline. Making the Biały Bór church phenomenon my point of departure, I set out on a journey along the routes of contexts, meanings and associated practices. I navigated the spaces of landscape, memory, everyday life and art. The analysis based on these concepts has allowed me to extract and sketch out Biały Bór’s dynamic and vivid space based on these concepts and to explore its residents’ identity characteristics as reflected in the church’s architecture. The methodological inspiration of my work is the mindful presence in the field, proposed by Jacek Olędzki. Apart from my ethnographic practice and the resources produced by it, the interpretation was based on my interlocutors’ archival photographs, as well as on correspondence related to the construction of the church, press articles and publications by Prof. Jerzy Nowosielski.

The Landscape of Biały Bór Biały Bór is located in northwestern Poland, famous for its forests and lakes, as well as for its German past.1 When entering Biały Bór, one can get the impression 1 After Poland regained its independence in 1918, Western Pomerania became part of Germany according to the Treaty of Versailles. It became Polish again in 1945.

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that the town has moved somewhere else. The ludicrously large town square and parking site, located at the very centre of the city, make one desperately search for a local axis mundi. While there is indeed an installation called “the Biały Bór Trident” by local resident Mr. Radosław2 – a metal mast with Biały Bór’s coat of arms, Poland’s national emblem, the dates of 1382–2012 and a small inscription saying “the Town Residents” – these efforts have not produced the intended impression of something serious and “eternal.” I look around. I cannot relax because of the cars speeding through the town; it is located on the route that connects central Poland to Western Pomerania. Across the street, I see a park, a municipal outdoor gym, a faded map and a “Strongmen” show poster. Behind the trees, I can see colourful houses draping across the hills. Nearby, there is a winding street that looks like those “in the olden days”3:  with its townhouses with wrought-iron balconies and verandas as well as an abandoned mill hidden between them. Next, there is a shopping pavilion, a Rose of the Winds socialist realism style relief, unfortunately scrapped and partly veiled by ads, the “Amazonka” restaurant, empty and with a “for rent” note, a press kiosk gleaming with colourful newspapers and postcards and a bus stop with several people with suitcases waiting for a bus. Behind the “Trident,” I can see a modest brick church and the glistening dark blue surface of a lake in the distance. Biały Bór, sometimes called the “Polish capital of Ukrainians,” was granted its municipal charter in 1395 by the Grand Master of the Order, Konrad Zöllner von Rotenstein. Before the Second World War, the city was called Baldenburg. Old photos and documents present us with the image of a charming town, not too poor and not too rich, famous for its resorts located on its lake shores. Apart from brick townhouses, churches and a half-timbered synagogue, there were also more modest houses, with chickens and geese running in the yards. After the Second World War, along with other cities in Western Pomerania, Baldenburg found itself within the new Poland’s borders and was renamed Biały Bór. Most of the Germans who used to live in the region left, trying to escape from the arriving Soviet Army. The abandoned localities gradually became inhabited by people who arrived from central and eastern Poland. About 45,000 Ukrainians from southeastern Poland were deported to the so-called Recovered Territories as part of Operation Vistula. Some of them were settled in Biały Bór. Why here? This is Mr. Radoslaw’s explanation: New settlers already lived in Szczecinek and in Miastko; in every village everything was occupied. But not in Biały Bór. When you leave Biały Bór and go in the direction of Człuchów, there behind the railway Germans had a rifle position and a tank, but

2 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 3 Biały Bór’s residents emphasised this sort of character of the street.

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Photo 1: “The Ukrainian Trident” at the centre of Biały Bór. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. the tank broke down.4 The Germans were chased away, but it stayed on (…) and here there was a German convent. Here, when you go to the railway station, on your left. And Russians turned it into a hospital. (…) And when they recovered, they got from

4 The original quotation goes as follows:  “W Szczecinku mieszkali [nowi polscy osadnicy  – JW], w Miastku mieszkali, w każdej wiosce, tam było wszystko pozajmowane. A  w Białym Borze nie było. Proszę pana, tu jak się wyjeżdża z Białego Boru, na Człuchów, tam za torami, za przejazdem, kolejowym, Niemcy mieli stanowisko karabinowe umocowane, i taki czołg tam też mieli, i ten czołg się tam zepsuł. (…) Niemców pogonili, to zostało. (…) a tu kiedyś był zakon. Jakiś niemieckich sióstr. Po lewej stronie, jak się idzie do dworca PKP. I proszę pana, i tam Rosjanie, zrobili szpital. (…) No i jak wydobrzeli, to gdzieś tam bimbru skombinowali, napędzili. Ten czołg naprawili, i wjechali, jak stadion jest, boisko. I zaczęli strzelać. To tylko ten ratusz, ten czerwony, co tutaj jest, to nie. Bo tam więzienie i ratusz był. To tego nie ruszyli. A resztę wszystko roz... (…) Taki sam kościół [jak w centrum Białego Boru – JW] był w Słupsku, był w Koszalinie, w Kołobrzegu. Bo katedra jest mniejsza, niż ten w Białym Borze co był. Poczta była taka duża, jak w Słupsku, jak w Szczecinku. Bo to było przecież duże miasteczko. (…) Więc, no i poniszczyli ten Biały Bór. No przecież dziewięćdziesiąt dwa procent zniszczyli [śmiech]. I tu Polacy się nie pchali.”

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Photo 2: The town centre. Empty spaces and pre-war houses. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. somewhere or made some home brew. They fixed the tank and drove it here, where the stadium and the playing ground is, and started to shoot. Only the town hall, this red one here they did not [shoot at]. Because there was a prison there. They did not touch it. And the rest they just [destroyed]. The same church [as there was in the centre of Biały Bór – JW] was in Słups, Koszalin and Kołobrzeg. Because the cathedral is smaller than the church that used to be in Biały Bór. There was a large post office, as large as the one in Słupsk and Szczecinek. Because this used to be a big town (…) And so they destroyed Biały Bór. They destroyed ninety two percent of it [he laughs]. So, Poles wouldn’t go here.5

Before the war, Jews used to live in Biały Bór. Pre-war, black and white photographs show an interesting half-timbered synagogue. Today, there is a square and an outdoor gym in its place. Similarly to the fate of the synagogue and the Jewish cemetery located further on up the hill, there is nothing left of the Evangelical church that used to be at the former market square, just near the spot where buses are parked today. The most magnificent example of Biały Bór’s old architecture is the

5 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016.

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town court building. After the war it housed a school and following the political transformation the town’s authorities sold it at an incomparably lower price than the market price of a building of such a class.6 Today the empty building behind a new, gilded fence is waiting for a new investor.7 After the war, Biały Bór became an important sports and recreation centre. The surrounding lakes are undoubtedly important town assets. For years, there was a circuit for kayaking competitions. Today, the abandoned futuristically shaped stadium tower is the only remaining trace of those sports emotions. There is still a recreation centre on the lake shore; however, according to local residents, the number of holidaymakers there today is considerably smaller than what it was in the past. Another source of local pride is a stud farm, organised there at the end of the 1950s. Its reputation attracted Jerzy Hoffman, who shot the Pan Wołodyjowski film here. To this day, there are various town legends about various actors enjoying themselves here. The walking trail along the Pomeranian Wall, the Second World War German fortifications as well as the Nordic walking trails are rather popular, as I was told at the local tourist office. However – as my interlocutor noticed – the beach and the lakes, despite their unquestionable charm, are no longer tourist attractions as such. Holidaymakers are looking for something more: more activities and other types of recreation which cannot be found here. Apart from the lakes, canoes and charming streets, postcards and tourist brochures from Biały Bór feature another attraction: “the Greek Catholic church designed by Prof. Jerzy Nowosielski.”8 The church is located away from the town centre marked by the square with “Biały Bór’s Trident,” in the vicinity of several blocks of flats as well as a Ukrainian school complex. A typical brown sign depicting sightseeing attractions along tourist trails leads to it from the main road.9 This Greek Catholic church was what attracted me most to Biały Bór. Since I appreciate Nowosielski’s art, both abstract and sacred, I wanted to get to know the church which was supposed to be the embodiment of his concept from beginning to end.10 I knew that Nowosielski’s works, especially those connected with religious worship, were not always met with enthusiastic response on the part

6 One of my interlocutors who wanted to remain anonymous mentioned more than 110,000 zloty. 7 When writing this article, I came across a piece of information about this building being advertised for sale for 12 thousand zloty. My interlocutors explained that this was part of a game between the owner and the officials. The link to this offer is available here: https://otodom.pl/oferta/budynek-bylego-sadu-grodzkiego-bialybor-ID32Wbk.html (17.09.2016). 8 The description comes from a road sign. The emphasis on the scientific title of Jarzy Nowosielski is noteworthy here. I will come back to this issue in what follows. 9 E-22b sign: an object on a tourist car route. 10 Why it “was supposed to be” and not “is” will be explained below.

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Photo 3: Out of service water sports infrastructure. Biały Bór. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

Photo 4: This is not a “trail commemorating the resettled,” but a war fortifications trail. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

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Photo 5: The Greek Catholic church in Biały Bór on the tourist trail. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

of the faithful and clergy – a fact pointed out by Nowosielski himself.11 Initially, I intended to make the church the main subject of my work. During the research, however, I realised the potentially hidden trap of such a one-sided approach, which could lead to omitting various contexts or the Biały Bór’s residents’ perspective. This town’s cultural landscape also includes the surviving former German buildings, the lakes, which were so important for the town’s development for decades, the forests planted in the seventies, the war and post-war history, the contributions made by Ukrainian and Polish settlers and their ways of life. The church itself is not just a rare example of interesting contemporary sacred architecture. Being a significant part of the Ukrainian diaspora’s history in Biały Bór, it is constantly negotiating its meanings. Thus, it needs to be perceived in the context of relations with local residents as well as with elements of the local cultural landscape. In this article, I will try to explore these contexts and relationships and

11 See, e.g., Katarzyna Surmiak-Domańska, “Cerkiew bez kompromisów,” Magazyn No. 7, supplement to the Gazeta Wyborcza, No. 42, 19 Feb. 1999. The polychromy in Hajnówka and Jerzmanowice is discussed by Krystyna Czerni and Jerzy Nowosielski, Listy i zapomniane wywiady (Kraków: Znak, 2015), pp. 126–142, 163–175, 176–181.

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look into how the local residents’ practices and other cultural landscapes’ elements affect the meaning and functioning of Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic church.

Methodology I conducted my research in Biały Bór during two-week-long field trips. The first one took place in early summer and the second  – in early autumn. While the first visit was not associated with any major religious or secular event, the second one coincided with the local Greek Catholic parish festival. This fact gave me the opportunity to observe “everyday life” as well as to participate in an event significant for local residents. Participation in the parish festival was recommended by a man riding a bicycle under the “Biały Bór Trident”: But this [parish festival  – JW] is beautiful, I  am telling you. People from all over Poland and even from abroad come. From the US and Canada. This is the church’s patron’s [sic! – JW] festival. Once I came too late and missed it. I really wanted to have a look, because it is so interesting. What they bring here, all the fantastic folk handicrafts, this is really great. And how they also sing their various songs.12

My second stay in Biały Bór allowed me to verify earlier observations and assumptions and discuss some of the topics with my interlocutors again. My research method included both formal recorded interviews as well as informal conversations I had with people I met on the streets. I informed all my interviewees that I was conducting ethnographic research on religiosity, or – in my preferred fashion  – “about Biały Bór’s history.” My research methodology was not about interviewing as many people as possible, but rather to have deep and meaningful conversations that sometimes also covered less related topics, which gave me the opportunity to better understand the context and fill in the blanks within the interviewees’ “on-the-record” accounts. Observation was an important element of my research. I  watched what my interlocutors were doing during our meetings:  whether and how they pointed to various sights in the local space, how they talked about them, whether they complemented our conversations with photographs, films or drawings. Whether and how they demonstrated various artefacts and whether they were willing to show their own backyard or neighbourhood. I also observed the local space, including its architecture, trees, river and lakes, as well as tourist trail signs and the town’s iconosphere, which included posters and advertisements as well as street and shop signs. I watched how local residents moved around their city, which sites were more frequented, on what occasions and by whom. Sometimes, I  sketched pictures based on these observations. I marked not only what I noticed or heard, but also various contexts and my own 12 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Roman Catholic. The conversation was held in 2016.

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associations of selected places. These drawings later became helpful in describing Biały Bór’s multi-layered cultural landscape. The inspiration for the method of work comes from Jacek Olędzki. Admittedly, Olędzki himself did not give his approach a special name. As Łukasz Smyrski writes in the introduction to his publication Murzynowo which was renewed twenty five years later: “Olędzki did not care about his colleagues’ opinions and – as befits an ethnographic eccentric or eccentric ethnographer  – he contested the need to stick to a specific current.”13 One of the essential elements of Olędzki’s approach, his “unconsciously professed concept,” is a close focus on the interlocutor: The subjectification of my interlocutors is reflected in the practice of frequently mentioning the names of the characters depicted in the work, often including their titles. Statements from specific persons are also treated not as anonymous information with an “intelligence register” stamp, but as independent entities, similar to fragments of scientific literature. My whole conduct was governed by the idea of a conversation.14

Olędzki had a critical attitude towards any form of objectification of the interlocutor, including referring to her or him as “an informant” (he associated this term with “police methods”), not treating them as the conversation’s equal partners or playing down their individuality and unrestrained exploitation for the glory of the researcher and science.15 Olędzki emphasised: I have assumed that a conversation, and not an interview — which I emphasise here — is a basic means of collecting information. A spontaneous oral account with its informative functions, as well as dramaturgical and therapeutical ones, is exactly those conversations in the village which were provoked by my presence for several years.16

Jacek Olędzki carried out research in Murzynowo for several years. During the time he lived there, he organised an ethnographic museum and took care of it, which granted him ample time and space to create an atmosphere of intimacy. In contrast to Olędzki’s long-term research, mine consisted of several two-week-long visits as a member of a research team. Another difference is that Biały Bór is not a picturesque Mazovian village, but a town of 2,000 inhabitants. Thus, the context as well as opportunities to build deeper relations were very different. Yet, I tried to practice his ideas: I talked to people instead of questioning them; I also attempted to present my interlocutors’ characters, who had to remain anonymous, however, according to contemporary standards. The second aspect of Jacek Olędzki’s method that turned out to be important and inspiring for me was his unusual mindfulness both during field research

13 Jacek Olędzki, Murzynowo. Znaki istnienia i tożsamości kulturalnej mieszkańców wioski nadwiślańskiej XVIII-XX wieku (Warszawa: WUW, 2011), p. 8. 14 Jacek Olędzki, Murzynowo, p. 37. 15 Jacek Olędzki, Murzynowo, p. 34. 16 Jacek Olędzki, Murzynowo, p. 37.

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as well as during the research results’ analysis and presentation. This approach included a thorough study of all archival documents and existing sources, such as earlier ethnographic research and close attention to the practice of everyday life and language, such as the functioning of proper names and concepts, the local residents’ relationship with nature and their participation in the landscape surrounding them. This “thick description,”17 although Olędzki never called it that way himself, fascinated me not only by the meticulousness manifested in its constant observation of the encountered details of everyday life, nature and emotions, but also by a certain artistic dimension which existed in his work. I am not referring here only to photos and films, whose frames and the play of lights were supposed to help the researcher understand the studied culture and give expression to this understanding. I  also found all his litanies of names and surnames and endless descriptions of everyday rituals truly fascinating. Their role appears to go well beyond the mere informative or “descriptive” function. Rather, they help to activate or unleash the reality, which – described in an excessively synthetic manner devoid of such a sensibility  – may feel as if it was pinned down like an exotic beetle.

The Origins of the Church The church in Biały Bór was consecrated in 1997; however, as can be read in the folder18 published by the local parish of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The origins of the church date more than thirteen years back. Below I quote the timeline presented in the folder, which I will refer to later: The Church Construction Timeline 1984 • Jerzy Nowosielski expresses his dream to construct a church according to his comprehensive design. • Father Józef Ulicki (Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic community) is fascinated by the Professor’s idea. Early 1990s • The Greek Catholic church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary parish in Biały Bór collects project proposals for a new church. 17 In contemporary ethnology, the “thick description” functions as a term coined by Clifford Geertz in his The Interpretation of Cultures book from 1973. 18 Ikona w przestrzeni. Cerkiew grekokatolicka pw. Narodzenia Przenajświętszej Bogurodzicy w Białym Borze (Biały Bór: the Greek Catholic church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary parish in Biały Bór, no publication data). The brochure was published on the occasion of a photo competition devoted to the church. Although this publication’s circulation was just 600 copies, it should be seen as an important attempt to record the history of the church.

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• Prof. Jerzy Nowosielski’s project proposal wins. 1991 • Prof. Nowosielski visits Biały Bór in order to familiarise himself with the landscape and site where the church is supposed to be built. • Prof. Nowosielski has doubts whether his excellent, but very unusual idea can be executed. 1992–1997 • Work on the construction and decoration of the church continues. • Jerzy Nowosielski and Bogdan Kotarb19 visit Biały Bór. September 18, 1993 • The cornerstone is laid by H.E. Archbishop Jan Martyniak, currently Greek Catholic Metropolitan Bishop of Przemyśl and Warsaw. 1997 • Icons for the church are painted (in Kraków). • Polychromes are created (in Biały Bór: August–September 1997). September 21, 1997 • The church is consecrated by H. E. Archbishop Jan Martyniak.20 In what follows, the origins of the church are presented in a dialogical form by juxtaposing Jerzy Nowosielski’s “dream” about the construction of this church with Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic community’s response. The Dream This project was simply the realisation of my dream. I did not initiate the church’s construction. I was asked to do so. And I wanted to do something that would be, in a sense, an artistic manifestation, an architectural manifestation and a protest against all the terrible chaos in sacred architecture, which spreads throughout the world and haunts it. (...) Well, I wanted a small instance of executing something meaningful — not just thinking, realising, but having it applied in materials, making it a fact that would serve as a reminder for all those crazy people who use their imagination to do things that are really uninteresting and uninspiring in this field. I drew inspiration from the Eastern Church, the Ruthenian Church. Jerzy Nowosielski, (The laying of the cornerstone ceremony, Biały Bór, September 18, 1993) (...) The Response

19 Jerzy Nowosielski cooperated with Bogdan Kotarba in his work on the church design project. 20 Ikona w przestrzeni, p. 5.

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The words of the Great Artist met with the desire of Greek Catholics after years of persecution and formal non-existence, to have their own church — a dignified temple. In this way, Jerzy Nowosielski created the most important “gate” to the invisible — an icon of the heart, the one and only icon — the unique one — that creates the (most?) ample and beautiful iconostasis in the universe. Father Piotr Baran.21

The history of Biały Bór’s church was presented this way in the dialogue between the artist and theologian Jerzy Nowosielski, who was guided by his vision of art and faith, and the Greek Catholic community of Biały Bór, who had their prewar memory, the deportation trauma and the experience of living in the Polish People’s Republic. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that a community can always speak with one voice, just like an artist is not always consistent. For the article’s purposes, I will continue with the dialogical structure proposed in the folder. I think it will allow me to present and analyse the examined reality more precisely. At the same time, however, I will try to draw attention to both dialogue partners’ polyphony in order to show the contexts that accompany their meeting.

The Time and Place “The most important thing is that they finally have a Greek Catholic church. It’s a shame to say, but for half a century, they prayed in a chapel at the German cemetery,” one can read in one of the popular press articles22 devoted to Biały Bór’s church. The reader will not find out, however, whether the greater reason for being ashamed is the fact that it was a “chapel,” and not a church, the fact that it used to be German or that the services took place among the graves of former local German residents. The subject of the chapel appeared in the conversations I had almost spontaneously, especially when we talked about the contemporary church. It soon turned out that not only does the chapel not bring shame, in fact, quite the contrary; it is a source of numerous fond memories and reflections. Michel de Certeau once noted, “every story is a travel story – a spatial practice.”23 Meanings hidden within memories can be found not only in these “milestones” – the story’s foundations – but also in our characters’ everyday spatial practices as well as in their shorter and more distant journeys. The “topographies of actions” sketched this way allow us to better understand our interlocutors’ concepts and values. The distance travelled defines the goal and destination. Following this idea, I would like to outline the significance of Jerzy Nowosielski’s church in Biały Bór’s 21 Ikona w przestrzeni, p. 5. Father Piotr Baran served as Biały Bór’s vicar in 1997–2008 and parish priest in 2008–2016. 22 Katarzyna Surmiak-Domańsk, “Cerkiew bez kompromisów,” p. 24. When I quoted parts of this article, they usually turned out to be already familiar with it. 23 Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life (Berkeley: University of California Press 1984), p. 115.

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contemporary cultural landscape. I intend to do this not by focusing on the cultural landscape itself, or on narratives unleashed by “beautiful  – not beautiful” value judgements, but by looking at “journeys” and “steps” that either take us to the church or circumvent it. I will draw this way on de Certeau’s concepts of “space” (espace) and “place” (lieu). “A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationship of coexistence,”24 de Certeau states. In other words it is a temporal constellation of positions that implies stability. However, we can speak of space when we activate movement vectors, speed measurements and time variables: “space is composed of intersections of mobile elements.”25 De Certeau elaborates on this concept in the following way: “Space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize it, and make it function in a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs or contractual proximities.”26 My intention is to look at Biały Bór’s church located in a space or “practiced placed.” As I have already pointed out, the subject of the former “German”27 cemetery chapel, where Greek Catholic services were celebrated over the years, evoked vivid memories among my interlocutors. Our conversations were often accompanied by old photo displays,28 which – judging from my interlocutors’ enthusiastic reactions – reflected the atmosphere inside the church at that time very well. What drew my attention was the adaptation of the Protestant temple’s modest interior to the needs of the Greek Catholic liturgy. At the top of the chapel there was a massive carved-wood altar. There were also icons decorated with embroidered cloths, flowers in vases and pots around the altar. The austere interior was warmed up by candlelight. The whole interior gave an impression of a place that is extremely “accustomed” and “domesticated.” And although the photos I  saw had usually been taken during the famous parish festivals, the interlocutors emphasised that they were actually presenting the converted chapel’s usual look:  “maybe there were not so many flowers, but that’s what it looked like.”29 They simultaneously emphasised that the chapel’s décor was similar to that of the Greek Catholic churches they remembered from their home places in the Bieszczady Mountains and which, along with entire towns and villages, had been destroyed as a result of Operation Vistula. The pain of the displaced people and grief after the loss of their everyday landscape is described by Jan Kurak, known as Mandiak, in the following way:

2 4 25 26 27

Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, p. 117. Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, p. 117. Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, p. 117. The chapel was usually referred to as “German” or “post-German,” almost never as “Evangelical” or “Protestant.” 28 The photos are in djęcia znajdują się w domowych archiwach rozmówców. 2 9 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016.

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Jacek Wajszczak Say your farewells, poor people, To the mountains and lakes You will never be happy Going about your affairs again Farewell, rivers And mountain springs We won’t be drinking the crystal-clear water From them ever again Farewell, all the roads That we have trod together And the green trails That we used to walk along Farewell, all the churches That we used to go to To pray to God Now turned into a desert Farewell, all the cemeteries And all the gravestones Under which our parents Are resting their bones.30

This poem was included in a book entitled Nad Bieszczadami słońce zgasło (The Sun went dark over the Bieszczady Mountains), a fond account of the history of Wola Michowa. Similar memories were invoked31 in the everyday conversations of many residents of Biały Bór and its neighbouring villages. However, at the end of the 1940s and start of the 1950s, there was no good atmosphere for demonstrating nostalgia. First, the displaced people were afraid of being stigmatised as Ukrainian nationalists; secondly, there was a ban on any Ukrainian cultural activities or associations before the regime “thaw” occurred; thirdly, the deported people were hoping to return to the Bieszczady Mountains someday; fourthly, the harsh postwar reality made people primarily focus on their hard work. The Bieszczady landscapes and everyday life survived mainly in stories, sometimes written down in notebooks, but rarely collected in a systematic way. Trips

30 Jan Kurak, Nad Bieszczadami słońce zgasło (Warszawa 2008), pp. 28–41. The original poem goes as follows: “Żegnajcie się biedni ludzie/ Z górami, lasami/ Nie będziecie się weselić/ Swoimi sprawami/ Żegnajcie wszystkie rzeki/ I potoki górskie/ Nie będziemy pić już z was/ Kryształowo czystej wody/ Żegnajcie nam wszystkie dróżki/ My was wydeptywali/ I zielone ścieżki/ Któreśmy chodzili/ Żegnajcie nam wszystkie cerkwie/ To do was chodziliśmy/ Modlić się do Boga/ Teraz pustynię zostawiliśmy/ Żegnajcie cmentarze/ I wszystkie mogiły/ Tam nasi rodzice/ Kości swe złożyli.” 31 A sixty-year-old male, university graduate, self-identifying as Ukrainian; a fortyyear-old male, university graduate, self-identifying as Ukrainian; a thirty-year-old female, university graduate, self-identifying as Ukrainian and others, 2016.

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Photo 6: A fragment of the Bieszczady Mountains landscape with the scarecrow. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

to the Bieszczady Mountains functioned as another form of remembrance practice. Although people knew very well that nothing was left of their homes and churches, whole families and later even school trips started going there. Those who were fortunate enough to revisit their hometowns learned to read the Bieszczady Mountains region’s contemporary landscape: to recognise the hills that used to be houses, balks that used to divide the fields and places that used to be the sites of former cemeteries. For them, these seemingly empty places have become the space marked by the former inhabitants’ lives, their grandparents’ and aunts’ memories as well as their own imagination. More recently, however, the link with the homeland has not been maintained so directly. The younger generation’s representatives, who know these places from stories heard in their childhoods, feel lost there, and the Bieszczady Mountains remain an illegible space for them. The bustling Bieszczady Mountains have turned into a desolate space, over which the sun has gone dark. These lands have remained empty, and former villages, cemeteries and fields have been overgrown with shrubs. Few traces of the Bieszczady villages’ former glory have survived until today,”32

32 Jan Kurak, Nad Bieszczadami słońce zgasło, p. 8.

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writes Jan Kurak. What follows is a fragment of a conversation with a thirty-year-old man from Biały Bór, who visited his family’s homeland for the first time as an adult: JW: Have you been to your family’s homeland? O: Once. I was there just once. JW: Was it a long time ago? O: Two year ago. Two or three years ago. There is nothing left there. From my grandmother’s village.33 I still have a grudge against her for not showing me her village. They went there. But I was a child then. When I wanted to go, she said she was too old for that, she could not go. (...) I was in that village. But what for? I came to the village. There is nothing. I called — where should I go now? I don’t know. There are shrubs here, a forest over there. A hillock here. Church ruins over there, something else somewhere else. And I have no idea where that house, for example, used to be. And I would really like to know. (…). I wanted to know. But in the case of many of the villages, there are no reasons to go back there.34

Nowadays, those who at least remember family stories or have archived memories attempt to describe the remote everyday life of the Bieszczady Mountains’ villages and towns. This fits in with the recent turn in historical writing, where events resulting from politicians’ and generals’ actions are supplemented with the personal accounts of those who simply experienced that “historical” everyday life. During a fair in Biały Bór, at a stand organised by the Ukrainian school staff and students, I  found one such account among many publications about Ukrainian history, culture and language in the already-mentioned book entitled Nad Bieszczadami słońce zgasło. The author wanted to bring the reader closer to “something lost forever:  the lives and ways of these lands’ former inhabitants.”35 This

3 3 This concerns Wola Michowa. 34 A male of about forty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows: JW: A pan jeździł, tam rodzinne w strony? O: Raz byłem. Raz tylko jeden. JW: Dawno temu? O: Dwa lata temu. Dwa czy trzy lata temu. Tam już nie ma nic. Z wioski mojej babci, skąd moja babcia jest, to mam do tej pory żal, że mi nigdy nie pokazała. Oni jeździli tam. Ale jak byłem dzieckiem, wtedy. W momencie kiedy ja chciałem już pojechać, no to, że ona już jest stara, że ona już nie może. (...) Byłem w tej wsi. No, ale co? Przyjechałem do wioski. Nie ma nic. Tak. Stoję na środku, dzwonię, no i gdzie mam teraz pójść? No nie wiem. Tu krzaki, tu las. Tu jakiś pagórek. Tam jakieś ruiny cerkwi, gdzieś tam coś. I nie wiem, na przykład, gdzie ten dom stał. Bardzo chciałbym to wiedzieć (…). Chociażby dlatego, żeby wiedzieć. No, ale tam, do niektórych wiosek, już nie ma do czego wracać. 35 Jan Kurak, Nad Bieszczadami słońce zgasło, p. 8.

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hundred-pages-long publication is a kind of ethnographic monograph devoted to Wola Michowa. It mainly focuses on the first half of the 20th century. The book contains chapters devoted to everyday life, material and spiritual culture and includes a historical outline as well as local villagers’ names. The author relied on ethnographic and historical publications, source materials and accounts by former Wola residents who were still alive in the year 200036 to whom the author had dedicated the book to. In the chapter devoted to Wola Michowska’s history37 the author describes the local church in the following way: One of the most important buildings in Wola Michowska was the church. (…) Through the church entrance (…) one could pass through the church tower climbing the stone stairs to the choir gallery and to a large narthex (Ukr. притвір), through which one could enter the “women’s gallery” traditionally meant for women, Neocatechumens and sinners. The choir gallery was large, three-storied and had a window on the front door wall. Members of the choir assembled there irrespective of their gender or age. The next largest part was the “nave” for the faithful, traditionally for men. The main part of the church was the kliros with benches, occupied by the oldest and most respected local residents (e.g. the village head, etc.), while the rest would stand: men in the front and women at the back of the church. Mothers used to have coifs, which made their heads look square. Whereas unmarried women used to wear scarves, which made their heads look round. I  could not get over it, despite my mother’s explanations; I  was convinced that the shape of women’s heads changed with age.38

This brief account illustrates the important function of church in the lives of the Bieszczady villages’ and towns’ residents: it was not only the site of liturgical celebration, but also a place for the community’s everyday reproduction. In this context, a personal anecdote at the end of this fragment is very insightful. On the one hand, it gives an account of a young boy experiencing the “strangeness” of his own culture; on the other hand, there is a signal about some extra-liturgical practices which took place in the church. I  suppose that was the atmosphere the Greek Catholics wanted to recreate in Biały Bór fifty years later. I encountered similar experiences in my conversations regarding religious practice in the former German chapel: the faithful came to the church not only to pray, but also to meet, get to

36 Further on the author mentions the following persons: “Maria Mandiak, my godmother – aged 85, Wasyl Połowyszczak – aged 75, Jan Wełtyński – aged 85, Tekla Dunda – aged 82, Fedor Soroki – aged 81, Andrzej Holaka – aged 78, Stefan Fesia and Michał Bocyk, who helped me collect the materials,” Jan Kurak, Nad Bieszczadami Słońce Zgasło, p. 8. 37 The chapter entitled: “Zarys dziejów Woli Michowej.” The book also contains a separate chapter on the “spiritual life” devoted to christenings, burials and weddings. 38 Jan Kurak, Nad Bieszczadami Słońce Zgasło, pp. 25–26.

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know and observe others. The children, bored by the unending rituals, could often find some alternative activities for themselves while the youth, after listening to the readings and homily (“so that they would know what the priest spoke about”39), usually left the church in order to spend some time in the company of peers. Such behaviour could possibly be seen as unacceptable in the priest’s or some parents’ eyes. Yet, this accumulation of often very extra-liturgical practices might also be a sign of a certain “domestication” of the church. In de Certeau’s words, one could say that the church turned from a “place” into a “space” through these activities.40 For this reason, when the possibility to build a new, larger church arose, many people imagined that its shape would be similar to the Bieszczady churches with their “domes”41 (bania in Polish, as my interlocutors usually called them). The members of the initiative committee also shared this conviction: “well, there was certainly an expectation that it would go in that [“traditional” – JW] direction.”42 The practices and narratives described have become the foundations of Nowosielski’s church. Following de Certeau’s metaphor, we could assume that the path trodden to the old chapel has turned in ways that not only lead to the new church, but also to the Bieszczady villages and towns. However, the paths trodden to the Bieszczady are not the only paths or vectors that define both spaces. The old chapel with its pre-war past opens up another path that leads to the town of Baldenburg. Although the town suffered a great deal during the war when the majority of its German residents were deported,43 the awareness about Biały Bór’s “Germanness” is still alive and often supported by memories about the town’s German neighbours. One of my interlocutors remembers his German neighbour in the following way: I have a certain fondness for the German language because, when I was a child, I had a neighbour named Mrs Hilda Rezek. And I had a duty. She was fat and I had a duty to bring her some wood from the forest and some coal. And she only read the Bible and drank something for her stomach or metabolism, because she ate very little but was very fat. Wormwood, she drank wormwood tea. There was always that smell of

39 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 40 Michael de Certeau, Wynaleźć codzienność, p. 117. 41 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate; a male of about forty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate and others. The conversations were held in 2016. 42 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate; the conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows: “to znaczy, na pewno oczekiwanie jakieś tam było, czy też wyobrażenie, że myśleliśmy, że może też pójdzie w takim [„tradycyjnym” – JW] kierunku.” 43 According to my interlocutors, the town was already destroyed after its seizure by the Soviet Army. Drunken Soviet Army Soldiers activated a tank and shot at the town. This information can also be found on information plaques in the town centre.

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wormwood, of herbs. But I always had this duty. She did not speak Polish until she died. So, she spoke German to me. I used to carry her shopping. And I could understand everything in German.44

I carried out this conversation about the German neighbour at the (former) Evangelical cemetery, next to the chapel in which Greek Catholic services were celebrated during the Polish People’s Republic’s times. I learned from the same person about the so-called Russian Meadow nearby: JW: Have any Germans stayed here? R: Yes, because there was this so-called “Russian Meadow” in Biały Bór. JW: The Russian Meadow; and where is it? R: Women were raped there by Russians; German women. Here by the lake. Have you been to the beach? You must have seen… JW: Yes, I have. R: There are those platforms and a road down there, right? JW: This is the town beach? R: Yes, and the road leads to this beach. JW: Yes, yes. R: Not to that red town hall, but here, closer. About two hundred meters. There is this clearing by the lake. German women were brought here and raped. Day and night.45

Next, my interlocutor talked about marriages between surviving German women and resettled men, as well as about children that attended the local school who had been conceived as a result of the Russian meadow rapes or other war rapes. Today in peace times, this account sounds simultaneously drastic and stunning. One can only imagine that there were no winners in Biały Bór during the first years after the war. People living here at the time had to learn to count on one another in the face of the new antagonistic authorities. 44 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows: “Ja proszę pana, mam sentyment do języka niemieckiego, bo ja za dzieciaka miałem obowiązek, miałem sąsiadkę, panią Hildę Rezek. Miałem, i zawsze moim obowiązkiem było, ona była gruba, więc miałem jej zawsze przywieźć drzewa, koszyk drzewa i taką, hm... jak to się nazywało, taką tę, ten pojemnik od kuchni, takiej kuchni, westfalki. Węgla, węgla miałem jej przynieść. Ona, a ona tylko Pismo Święte czytała i piła, tam coś miała z żołądkiem, albo na przemianę materii, chyba coś, bo była, taka, niewiele jadła, a gruba była. Piołun, herbatę z piołunu. Tam zawsze śmierdziało tym piołunem, ziołami. Ale miałem obowiązek, właśnie zawsze. I ona umarła i po polsku nie mówiła. Więc ona do mnie po niemiecku mówiła. Zakupy ze sklepu jej przynosiłem. I rozumiałem wszystko po niemiecku.” 45 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows: “R: Nie tu do tego ratusza czerwonego, tylko tu, wcześniej. Jeszcze dwieście metrów. Taka polanka jest nad jeziorem. Tam zwożono, zwożono Niemki, i gwałcono. Dniami i nocami.”

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Photo 7: At the lake Łobez shore, where the “Russian meadow” most likely used to be. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

Yet another path leading to Baldenburg’s pre-war history was pointed out to me by one of my interlocutors, who was passionate about what he called “Black archaeology” or amateur “treasure” hunting. I put the word “treasure” in quotation marks because I noticed that my interlocutor was mainly interested in military paraphernalia, while he would give away actual valuables he found to people who cared for them or to the museum. I  had the impression that he was more interested in the searching process itself. Among the discovered objects I  was shown I became interested in canning jars and churns. They were hidden under the ground by Germans during the evacuation because of the arriving army. The jars contained canned fruit, vegetables and meats as well as clean cloths, while churns contained clothes, plates and jars. Not really high-end porcelain, rather random tableware, each piece coming from a different set. When I asked what had happened to those canning jars, my interlocutor told me: “well, I gave some to the dog; the dog survived, so I tried some myself.”46 This trove was also described in Andrzej Gawroński’s BA thesis entitled Kultura materialna mieszkańców rejencji 46 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows: “no dało się pieskowi, piesek przeżył, to się zjadło samemu.”

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pilskiej zpierwszej połowy XX w. w świetle odkrytych depozytów.47 Other Baldenburg German residents’ “deposits” [sic!] included Karl Marx’s works, Adolf Hitler’s Main Kampf (“this one, however, was less valuable due to its ordinary cover,” my interlocutor noted), books on German architecture and various pieces of household equipment. As I  mentioned, this person was not interested in selling this “trove,” but rather in giving it to someone “who is well up in this.”48 These objects were some sort of invaluable treasures which one could see, touch, show or create stories about, regarding their owners. Displayed on a table or in a workshop, these objects have become a sort of a story about this land and its residents, a collage of collected artefacts which attempted to recreate former everyday life. Apart from the objects left by the Germans and various military curiosities, my interlocutor found metal travel icons and Orthodox crosses. He dug them up in the forest, near the former Soviet military training grounds in the vicinity of Borny Sulinów. He did not know where they had come from or what exactly they were. He did not recognise them from his own family’s liturgical practice, although he came from a Ukrainian-Polish family and his family members attended both a Roman Catholic church as well as a Greek Catholic one. We discussed where they could have come from. In his opinion, they could have been stolen from somebody and hidden there, or someone was afraid of persecutions and hid them there himself.49 Thus, the “deposit” has been broken. Of course, one could only wonder to what extent hunting for “treasures” hidden by former local residents is driven by the desire to become rich. On the one hand, I have heard that “this hidden gold would be enough for the whole country,”50 on the other, I learned that when the resettled Ukrainians came, everything was already “sorted”: houses and farms that had survived the horrors of the war were already occupied, and equipment and valuables had been taken by teams of “professional” looters, so no real treasure had been left behind.51 Although this treasure hunt is partially motivated by the belief regarding the legendary riches – the “golden horse” buried under the ground – it is also an attempt to learn about the foreign space in a very physical, even tangible way. Most of my interlocutors were eager to tell me about the town’s and surrounding area’s 47 According to the author the products could be preserved fresh for such a long time thanks to special red gums introduced into the production of Weco canning jars just before the Second World War. (A. Gawroński, Kultura materialna mieszkańców rejencji pilskiej z pierwszej połowy XX w. w świetle odkrytych depozytów (BA thesis written under the supervision of Prof. Dr. hab. Andrzeja Klonder at the Kazimierz the Great University in Bydgoszcz, 2013). 48 A male of about sixty. The conversation was held in 2016. 49 A male of about sixty. The conversation was held in 2016. 50 A male of about sixty. The conversation was held in 2016. 51 A male of about sixty; a male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversations were held in 2016.

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Photo 8: Orthodox traveller crosses and icons found in the ground. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

history: where the church used to stand, where the synagogue and Jewish cemetery used to be and where the mill stands today. I had the impression that the legendary treasure is also a kind of business card, something they want to show off and which they believed might be appreciated by outsiders. The local authorities have also reached out to Biały Bór’s pre-war history, which was then Baldenburg’s. The “630th anniversary of Biały Bór” saw the publication of a collection of commemorative postcards featuring large sepia photographs from Baldenburg combined with small colour photographs from today’s Biały Bór. The town’s pre-war history is also featured on special plaques that can be found around the town, including a large picture of the demolished Evangelical church that used to be located at the “Trident’s” current site. A keen eye would also notice that the streets’ name signs’ fonts are stylised after Gothic fonts. Traces of the town’s pre-war history appear in the public space somewhat selectively and gradually. However, I met a person52 who presented a vision of a more articulate attempt to commemorate the pre-war history of the town and its residents. It included placing a water-fountain with the figure of St. Martin on a 52 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016.

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Photo 9: A (milk) churn with the remains of the clothes and crockery of the German residents of Baldenburg, today’s Biały Bór. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

horse with cackling geese running around him at the site of the former Evangelical church. There would also be a commemorative plaque with inscriptions in Polish and German. St. Martin has been included as a German saint, a horse – because of the stud farm in Biały Bór, and the geese – because they betrayed him (according to my interlocutor). Another element of this plan was aimed at commemorating the Jewish population. In this case the project was less precise: it envisioned a board at the site of the former synagogue with a verse from the Old Testament, the Decalogue or another symbol related to the Judeo-Christian tradition, “so that some anti-Semites wouldn’t dare destroy it.”53 A very different attempt to tell visitors about Biały Bór’s past is the 2014 Baldenburg Project,54 which is a show “devoted to the 1945–1947 events” [sic!]. According to the organisers, “this is an exceptional initiative, where local residents will tell the story of their town, co-creating the show along with re-constructionists.” The event was accompanied by historical and acting workshops for Biały Bór’s residents. The end result was a show performed at the town market square as well

53 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhloK62u7uM (17.01.2017)

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Photo 10: The lapidarium at the Evangelical cemetery in Biały Bór. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

as a short video available on the town’s YouTube channel. A historical show was also organised in 2016.55 It was focused on military activities, however, and did not deal with the forced resettlement history. The Baldenburg Project is interesting because it combines accounts regarding the old and new resettlements. In the film only the armies are represented by their nationalities, while the civilian population is presented as Baldenburg residents and/or as “the civil population mass-deported during Operation Vistula.” There is a very suggestive scene in which a small boy, who is running away, loses his teddy bear, which is later found by the new settlers’ children. In fact, this sense of affinity of fates shared by the old and new local residents is not untypical and has a rather strong presence in my interlocutors’ narratives. Paradoxically, in the context of all these efforts to commemorate Biały Bór’s German past, the old cemetery, where the chapel is located, has almost completely lost its Evangelical character. Only a few gravestones gathered in front of the entrance, forming a sort of lapidarium, remind one about its past. The rest of the gravestones have probably been re-used. I was told that I should not be surprised,

55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyFeJXgpag (17.01.2017)

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Photo 11: A fragment of the sett made out of gravestones in Germany, according to the interlocutor. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

as Germans also remove gravestones in the case of unpaid lots.56 A moment later I was able to see a set from such a cemetery engraved with a partially faded inscription in gold stating “Herr...” and including a cross. Yet this pragmatic approach was followed by the reflection that maybe the lapidarium next to the entrance looks too messy and that the people buried there deserve a more dignified commemoration.57 A tight web of steps-vectors, sketching the space of the chapel-turned-into-achurch, leads to the old and contemporary Bieszczady Mountains, as well as to Baldenburg and to post-war Biały Bór. These are not, however, signposted trails – the only signposted one is the one running along the Pomeranian Wall – the Trail of Forgotten Fortifications.58 I was often wondering why there was no museum or memory site where this story of post-war deportation, resettlement and new settlement was to be told. The answer I usually received was that it would be too easy to hurt somebody by not telling enough or by telling too much.59 In this context, 56 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 57 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 58 http://www.bialybor.com.pl/strona/menu/60_szlak_zapomnianych_fortyfikacji# (17.01.2017) 59 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate; a male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate and others. The conversations were held in 2016.

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the act of retelling Baldenburg residents’ history appears to be a likely attempt to tell one’s own story, to find the right form of expressing one’s own emotions and experiences.

The Construction of the Church The Biały Bór church construction timeline mentioned above contains information regarding the fact that Jerzy Nowosielski’s project was selected from among various other project proposals.60 However, the information about these other proposals is rather abstruse. One of my interlocutors claimed that there were initially two projects:  Nowosielski’s and a young Gdańsk architect’s PhD thesis.61 The PhD candidate’s project was eight hundred thousand zloty more expensive; the church however, according to his project, would have three domes, including a large one: “Beautiful! (…) What work!”62 Another interlocutor stated that there may have been another project, but he is too young to remember that.63 The church committee representatives meanwhile claimed that well before there were any sketches, there had been a decision to engage Jerzy Nowosielski into this project. And alternative visions appeared only after the sketches presenting the author’s vision for the building’s elevation, cross-section and frescos had been publically shown. I have had a look at both the “parallel project” as well as the “alternative” ones created later. The first one was a fairly detailed architectural sketch made from three angles. The domes were the most important aspect of it. Its design drew direct inspiration from Bieszczady Greek Catholic churches. The impression of monumentality it gave was probably also significant here. The “alternative” projects were merely conceptual sketches. I could not get information about who prepared them. However, they were already more “modern” in their character, only partially drawing from the traditional Bieszczady churches’ looks. One of them did not even have any domes. What is more, all of them were rather slender, featuring a repetition of sharply cut angles reminding one of a hut’s roof or mountain peaks. The unrealised projects, as well as the conversations with the church’s construction initiators, give the impression that the general wish was to draw upon the Bieszczady Mountains for inspiration to revive it here. Tim Edensor, among others, reminds us of the significant role played by landscape in the national

6 0 Ikona w przestrzeni, p. 5. 61 “Z Gdańska, on tu w Białym Borze miał rodzinę, która wyjechała.” 62 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotations goes as the following: “No śliczne! (...) Taka robota!” 63 A male of about forty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016.

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Photo 12–13: Sketches of “alternative” design projects of the Greek Catholic church in Biały Bór. (From the archive of the deputy mayor of Biały Bór, Jan Batruch.) Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

community’s preservation process. He particularly draws our attention to the role of rural landscape: It is difficult to mention a nation without conjuring up a particular rural landscape (often with particular kinds of people carrying out certain actions). (…) These specific landscapes are selective shorthand for these nations, synecdoches through which they are recognised globally. But they are also loaded with symbolic values and stand for national virtues, for the forging of the nation out of adversity or the shaping of its geography out of nature whether conceived as beneficent, tamed or harnessed. (…) Moreover, landscapes come to stand as symbols of continuity, the product of land worked over and produced, etched with the past, so that “history runs through geography.”64

Edensor emphasises that landscape is important for a community not only in terms of its appearance, in terms of a particular type of scenery, but also in terms of practicing it within the space. This is where all those everyday seemingly banal activities gain meaning, be it within a rural landscape or an urban one. The construction of this church was meant not only as an attempt to recreate a web of everyday rituals associated with the Bieszczady Mountains’ pre-war history, but also for people to fit into this new landscape and present themselves. I cannot be sure to what extent the church’s construction initiators were familiar with Nowosielski’s theological writings, in particular those devoted to the church. As far as I could learn they considered him a contemporary artist specialising in religious painting. As one of my interlocutors noted, Nowosielski’s project, and in particular the fresco projects, looked very surprising to them as members of

64 Tim Edensor, National identity, popular culture and everyday life (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2002), pp. 39–40.

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the initiative committee.65 I found the answer to the question of how Nowosielski understood the idea of such an “experimental facility” in a series of interviews conducted by Zbigniew Podgórzec: The house of holy paintings is the church. I would like to talk with you today about the functionality of its architecture, about your ideal of this kind of interior... This is a difficult subject. I know that my ideal of religious painting is the icon. However, I cannot point to such a model in the sphere of architecture. Why? Because, although I believe that the icon is something living and needed today, I do not believe that the liturgy is equally living and necessary. So if the liturgy is something dead to me, then I cannot come up with an ideal of modern sacred architecture, because it is always a function of a living liturgical action. And since I doubt the spontaneity of the liturgy celebrated in the churches of various Christian denominations, I  also do not believe in the possibility of the existence of good sacred architecture today. (…) In one of our previous conversations you said, however, that if you had the opportunity to implement your own project, you would design the interior of the church on an antique theatre set. Is this not your ideal of sacred architecture? Not so much an ideal as an optimum of what I could implement, knowing my own capabilities as well as the current state of contemporary Orthodox liturgy. Would such an interior prove itself in liturgical practice? I do not know. I do not know if it would really be authentic. What I know is that sacred architecture depends on living liturgy. (…) Let me return to the interior of a church designed on an antique theatre set. It is hard for me to talk about; I would need to paint that. One cannot describe that. But maybe you could try? Everything would be very simplified. This would go down to the interaction with very small discreetly located icons. And what about the iconostasis? There would be no iconostasis. Does this imply that there would be no division between the presbyterium and the main nave? There would be one, but not in the sense of a wall, rather as a way of shaping the space into metaphysical spheres. This cannot be expressed in words; I would have to create a scale model. And in what manner would the icons be located? Spatially. I would like all the attention to be focused on them. Simply put, everything would be arranged in such a way as to create optimal conditions for the

65 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016.

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perception of every single icon. It is a pity that I live in a country where I cannot build such a church. Unfortunately, the inertia of the Orthodox community is so considerable that any such plans cannot be executed. (…) So, what would need to be done to have your project implemented? First of all, there is a need for a circle of enthusiasts who care about the construction of such an experimental liturgical facility. (…)66.

Such a circle of enthusiasts was found in Biały Bór. As one of the initiators reminisces: We approached Prof. Nowosielki; Father Ulicki went to meet him [and inquire] whether Prof. Nowosielski would like to design a church here in Biały Bór. Naturally, he was happy about being able to do it from the beginning to end. I mean, while in Wesoła or other churches he produced his paintings for otherwise finished interiors, here he said he [would produce paintings] under the condition that he also designed the building. And that we would execute his project. Without any changes. He made this condition from the start [the interlocutor smiles a little – JW] that no one would interfere in order to avoid any misunderstandings. (...) And together with Eng. Kotarba they developed this project and came here to show us the main idea. The very idea was…. The very project was a bit shocking for us. What I mean is that nobody expected such a design of the building itself. But the young ones… I mean those who could decide and give some suggestions to the priest, we were for it from the start.67

I managed to get hold of two letters that are representative of the correspondence between the church’s construction initiators and Nowosielski. They are not too extensive; yet in my opinion they reflect the general mood of the time well, in particular if I quote them as part of the interview during which my interlocutor reads out the letter:

6 6 Zbigniew Podgórzec, Rozmowy z Jerzym Nowosielskim, pp. 202–209. 67 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows:  “Zwróciliśmy się do profesora Nowosielskiego, pojechał na rozmowę ksiądz Ulicki, czy profesor zechciałby zaprojektować tutaj cerkiew, w Białym Borze. On oczywiście ucieszył się, że mógłby to zrobić od początku do końca. To znaczy, tak jak, czy w Wesołej czy w innych [świątyniach – JW], on realizował swoje malarstwo, ale już wewnątrz obiektu, a tutaj powiedział, że pod warunkiem, że on tu zaprojektuje bryłę. I my wykonamy tak jak on to zaprojektuje. Bez jakiś tam zmian. To zastrzegał [rozmówca uśmiechnął się lekko – JW] od początku, żeby nie było ingerencji jakiejś i żeby nie było później jakichś nieporozumień. (...) I wspólnie, z panem inżynierem Kotarbą, przygotowali i przywieźli tutaj, pokazać nam, jaki jest zamysł. Bo to była taka..., sama ta koncepcja była dla nas trochę też szokująca. To znaczy, bo nie spodziewaliśmy się takiej bryły. Ale... młodzi, to znaczy ci, którzy mogli i decydować, i podpowiadać za księdza, byliśmy od początku za.”

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P: There is a letter to the priest: “Along with a letter to the engineer I am sending some technical remarks on the following work and your church. Along with this document… yes. I am very happy with what I have seen on the photos sent from Biały Bór. I need to visit you sometime soon. I have a problem… I mean, with finding an adequate carpenter, who would produce a cross designed by me that I will paint while in Kraków. Yet, let’s hope for the best though and… could you kindly pass this letter on to Mr. (…) Please accept my best regards. Jerzy Nowosielski.”68 (...) JW: This is very interesting, as it seems that Prof. Nowosielski did not have luck with the carpenters… P: No, he did not. He looked for them. (...) P: “Dear Colleague, I am sending colour samples for our church’s interior. This document contains everything. Please leave the walls and the domes’ interiors as they are. Window embrasures and parts of the arches, royal and deacon gates, the white, cornices, frames and window embrasures. JW: Mhm [radio music is playing in the background]. P: On this piece of paper he writes about things I had already forgotten about. “Please give us the exact dimensions, the inside diameter of the dome and the dimensions of the spaces intended for the murals on the facades. Please prepare at least a small area plan of the church, because we want to design the fence. (…) Please provide the full name of the Commissioning Party in whose name the invoice should be made. The committee or parish, along with the address and the cost. Also, will the payment be made in cash or by bank transfer? For you to understand this better I am attaching the Golgotha project. My best regards. Jerzy Nowosielski. I also attach a fresco project, without colour, made for the wooden elements of the interior.” This was a contract for the polychromy (…). Because the professor did not take any money, but Kotarba said he was not able to do all this for free, so … Nowosielski initially got a little angry, but later, he said that I  have to understand it too:  he goes with me, does things, helps and I cannot reproach him that he does not take any money. JW: Really? P: Yes, he did not take any money. These were draft contracts, cost estimates… JW: This is interesting, he must have liked it very much. On other occasions, such as the painting of frescos, I remember correspondence in which the priest

68 The original quotation goes as follows: “Tu jest taki list do księdza. «Przesyłam wraz z listem do was, dla inżyniera (…), niejakie techniczne, hm... postanowienia odnośnie dalszej pracy i waszej cerkwi. Razem i z tym dokumentem... aha. Jestem bardzo zadowolony, jak obejrzałem zdjęcia, jakie dostałem z Białego Boru. Niedługo trzeba będzie przyjechać do was. Mam, hm, mam kłopot i... to znaczy, ze znalezieniem odpowiedniego stolarza, który zrobiłby, według mojego projektu, zaprojektowany krzyż, który chcę namalować w Krakowie. Bądźmy jednak dobrej myśli, i... niech ksiądz będzie łaskawy i przekaże pismo panu (…), Proszę przyjąć szczere pozdrowienia. Jerzy Nowosielski».”

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negotiated the price with him — that it was too high and that they had a painter who was cheaper.69 P: Yes, yes [he smiles]. He could have done it for half the price. Precisely. He also told me that. There was a document to certify that. Partially as a joke, and partially so that we did not have to argue about that. These are his sketches, work drawings, the initial ones, on the basis of which we could form our understanding of what it would look like. He later prepared everything in colour, the walls’ projection and all the paintings in colour, and here he just noted how this was supposed to be done. And here there was this recess;70 it looked rather shocking for us when we saw it, we were not sure whether we should rather level it... [rustling of pages]. Nowadays nobody gives it a thought anymore. These were the initial drawings that demonstrated what this object in the church would look like.71

69 “Mówiłem tylko i pisałem Panu Profesorowi kilka razy, że to się nikomu nie podoba. (…) Parafianom wygadza się dzisiaj dać za bielenie około 10 tysięcy i być zadowolonymi, że tak tanio, a zrobili jak chcieli, bo dają pieniądze”. Krystyna Czerni and Jerzy Nowosielski, Listy i zapomniane wywiady, p. 133. 70 This refers to the characteristic recess in the floor of the main nave of the church. 71 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows:    Wielce szanowny panie kolego, przesyłam panu próbki kolorystyczne do wnętrza naszej cerkwi. Jest tam wszystko. Zasadnicza powierzchnia ścian, wnętrze kopuły, proszę pozostawić. Glify okienne oraz części łuków, cesarskich i diakońskich wrót, biel, gzyms, gzymsu i obramowania, glifów okiennych. JW: Mhm [w tle muzyka z radia]. P: Na tej karteczce pisze o rzeczach, które zapomniałem. «Prosimy o podanie dokładnych wymiarów, średnicy wewnętrznej kopuły, wymiary przestrzeni przeznaczonych pod malowidła na fasadach. Prosimy sporządzić choćby niewielki plan sytuacyjny terenu cerkiewnego, bo chcemy zaprojektować ogrodzenie. (…) Prosimy o podanie pełnej nazwy zleceniodawcy, na kogo ma opiewać rachunek. Komitet czy parafia, i to wszystko z adresem i kosztem. Czy płatność będzie gotówką, czy przelewem. Dla orientacji przesyłam projekt golgoty. Łączę pozdrowienia. Jerzy Nowosielski. Dołączam prospekt fresku, z niezamalowaniem koloru, wykonanego na elementy drewniane wystroju wnętrza». To była umowa za wykonanie projektu polichromii (…). Dlatego, że profesor nie brał żadnych pieniędzy, ale Kotarba mówi, że on nie jest w stanie za darmo tego wszystkiego robić, więc... Nowosielski początkowo się zdenerwował i trochę był zły, ale później, no mówi, no muszę też to zrozumieć, że jeździ ze mną, robi, pomaga, i tego, i nie mogę tu żądać od niego, bo on nie chciał pieniędzy. JW: Tak? P:   ak. Także nie wziął tych, żadnych pieniędzy. To były projekty umowy, kosztorysy, tam... jaka to kosztowała, bo tam, no i same takie, projekty, które... [szelest kartek]

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As I mentioned earlier, and as is evident from my interlocutor’s account, the work on Nowosielski’s church project evoked conflicting emotions. There were alternative projects and it was not clear whether they were competing ones or whether they were produced in response to the artist’s idea. There were many doubts and critical responses. Unfortunately, I  did not get hold of the correspondence that would partially at least reflect this tension. However, this experience was nothing new for Nowosielski. Therefore, I will present fragments from the published correspondence between Nowosielski and the priest from another parish for which he worked, in order to demonstrate this relationship. While this correspondence does not refer the whole church, but “only” the frescos, the problem of the local residents’ reception of art and the theology of the objects of art is similar: Your Excellency, I am writing in response to a letter from the diocese chancellery commissioning the preparation of the interior design of the church in Hajnówka. (…) The architectural design of Hajnówka’s church attracted considerable attention and the editors of Project magazine (devoted to architecture in Poland) organised an exhibition of my religious art projects at the Critics’ Gallery in Warsaw, with a particular focus on the project for Hajnówka which had already been finished. (…) Whereas in Orthodox Podlasie, where everywhere I  tried to execute one of my projects I met with general disapproval, a complete lack of trust in my professional competences they proved adequate, however, in places where nobody interfered with my projects:  e.g. Warszawa  — Jelonki, Warszawa  — Wesoła, Kraków  — Azory and many other places. For example, the parish priest from Klejniki recently asked me to paint new icons for the iconostasis. I warned him that my paintings are not well received by the locals from that region. This did not help, the parish priest still insisted. I started painting, but what happened next was exactly what I had anticipated: the two icons I painted were met with disapproval and I received a phone call from the

JW: A to ciekawe, że musiało mu się to bardzo podobać, bo gdzieś tam, przy okazji innych, przy okazji malowania jakiś fresków, pamiętam, że taki fragment korespondencji, że, ktoś, proboszcz czy ktoś, negocjowali z nim cenę, że to jest za dużo, że oni mają takiego co maluje taniej. P: Tak, tak [z uśmiechem]. Mógłby za połowę ceny zrobić. Zgadza się. Też opowiadał. Był glejt do tego. Trochę, trochę w żartach, ale trochę w nerwach, żeby tutaj nie było takiej, podobnej sytuacji. Żebyśmy się nie musieli, tam jakoś, przekomarzać. To są te jego takie szkice, rysunki robocze, ale pierwsze, które były, to po nich dowiedzieliśmy się, jak to będzie wyglądało, nie. Bo później zrobił już to w kolorach, takich i same już, rzuty ścian i rozmalowane malowidła, bo tutaj tylko zaznaczył, że coś takiego, tak byłoby zrobione. No i tu było to zagłębienie, dla nas, tak jak dostaliśmy w takim, w takiej wersji, to był trochę tak, taki, można powiedzieć, i lekki szok, że tu nie równo, tu nie... zastanawiano się czy nie wyrównać jednak, czy... [szelest kart]. Teraz już nikt dalej o tym nie myśli. Takie... także, to były rysunki takie, zrobione, pierwsze, które pokazywały, jak, jak ten obiekt, w cerkwi będzie wyglądał”

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Photo 14: A sketch of the church by Jerzy Nowosielski. (From the archive of the deputy mayor of Biały Bór, Jan Batruch.) Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. parish priest to discontinue my work. This is more proof that displaying my icons in this region is premature. People are not prepared for them. For example, I managed to forge (or create) my six large icons in a Kraków Orthodox parish with completed disregard (or lack of concern?) for my personal dignity. Young people love them, but old people suffer because of them. I experienced a lot of unpleasant moments because of that, yet I believe I need to simply endure them and do whatever I can for the Kraków church despite everything.72

As I learned from the conversations I had in Biały Bór, there was no dispute over the concept between Father Ulicki, the “construction committee” and Nowosielski, because from the beginning, whether they had anything to say or not, they trusted the artist with this project. This does not mean, however, that some doubts did not come to Nowosielski’s attention. He was aware that his works were not uncritically accepted, and sometimes he commented on that situation, with or without a smile.

72 A fragment of Nowosielski’s letter to the Metropolitan bishop Bazyli from January 11, 1983, quoted in: Krystyna Czerni and Jerzy Nowosielski, Listy i zapomniane wywiady, pp. 174–175.

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Photo 15: Jerzy Nowosielski’s correspondence. (From the archive of the deputy mayor of Biały Bór, Jan Batruch.) Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

The correspondence I  had the pleasure to read was accompanied by various calculations and sketches, Christmas greetings, documents and photocopies of contracts. The whole was kept in a transparent plastic folder. At the top, there were some colour samples and an exhibition catalogue. Unfortunately, there were none of Nowosielski’s colour sketches; the stripes of colourful paper were the only reminder of those. I noticed that my interlocutor considerably enjoyed just reading and browsing through them. I had the impression that he was showing me something as valuable as a family album.

The Practices I was just a child then, so I  only vaguely remember all of that. My parents would have remembered that better. Older people probably remember what that all actually looked like better. But honestly, people had a grudge against him. Not all of them, of course. Because some were absolutely thrilled. Thrilled. But some were simply devastated. Older people, in particular. And when the first parish feast celebration occurred in Biały Bór just after the new church had been built, elderly people came from even Canada and the United States. Some of them gave some money, because this was not just a local or national level enterprise; the money for it was even collected in Australia. Even there. In order to help with the construction. My brother watched over parking sites during the parish feast. He told me how an elderly man arrived and said: “What is this supposed to be? I donated so much money here, but I did not

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give my money for such a church.” He was appalled. (…) There were some very harsh reactions. Very harsh reactions. But there were also very complimentary ones.73

The construction of the church according to Nowosielski’s design evoked various emotions and inspired activities related to them. Referring to de Certeau’s theory we can translate this situation into relations between “strategy” and “tactics.” The initial idea and the construction of the church according to Nowosielski’s design project was a “strategy” here. As de Certeau put it: “I call a strategy the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationship that becomes possible as soon as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific institution) can be isolated. It postulates a place that can be delimited as its own and serve as the base from which relations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats (customers or competitors, enemies, the country surrounding the city, objective and objects of research, etc.) can be managed.”74 Similarly to de Certeau’s “strategy,” one can distinguish this “subject with will and power,” in this case, the Greek Catholic parish along with its “construction committee”; whereas the “experimental facility” concept is related to the modernisation project addressed to the local faith community,75 which is a plan to introduce new norms and practices. In this way, the church was supposed to be “a triumph of place over time.”76 The “tactics” were all of Biały Bór’s residents’ “responses” to the new church. According to de Certeau: “a tactic is calculated action determined by absence of power locus. (…) It operates in isolated actions, blow by blow. (...) It must vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers. It poaches in them.”77 “The space of the 73 A male of about forty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows: “Ja panu powiem, ja byłem dzieckiem wtedy, ja tylko pamiętam tak przez mgłę. Rodzice pewnie lepiej by pamiętali, starsi ludzie pewnie też będą pamiętać, nie. Jak to wyglądało naprawdę. Ale, szczerze mówiąc, naprawdę ludzie mieli do tego, pretensję. Nie wszyscy oczywiście, nie wszyscy. Bo niektórzy byli zachwyceni. Zachwyceni. Ale niektórzy byli po prostu zdruzgotani. A zwłaszcza starsi ludzie. A jak był pierwszy odpust w Białym Borze, już z tą cerkwią, to przyjechali starsi ludzie nawet z zagranicy, z Kanady ludzie przyjeżdżali, ze Stanów Zjednoczonych. Którzy gdzieś tam dawali jakieś pieniążki, no bo to był taki czyn nie tylko tutaj lokalny, czy ogólnopolski, ale pieniądze były zbierane nawet z Australii. Nawet stamtąd. Po prostu, żeby pomóc w budowie. No to, brat akurat był wtedy takim, pilnował takich jakby parkingów, przy odpuście, żeby samochodów nikt nie ukradł i tak dalej. Mówi, przyjechał taki starszy pan i mówi: Co to ma być? Co to ma być w ogóle? Ja to tutaj tyle pieniędzy dałem, ja bym takiej cerkwi, ja na taką cerkiew pieniędzy nie dawałem. I był taki, no zbulwersowany. (…) Także były bardzo ostre reakcje. Bardzo ostre reakcje. No, ale były też bardzo pochlebne.” 74 Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, p. 35. 75 Zbigniew Podgórzec, Rozmowy z Jerzym Nowosielskim, pp. 202–209. 76 Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, p. 36. 77 Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, pp. 36–37.

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tactic is the space of the other”;78 however, a “place” can become into a “space” thanks to such activities. “Tactics” activate “the place,” its order and its clear-cut nature79 and are its practices. The first “tactics”  – Biały Bór residents’ activities  – appeared in the form of “alternative projects” well before the construction of the church. I  was not able to receive an unequivocal answer to the question of whether Jerzy Nowosielski’s project had been selected as a result of a project competition or just from brainstorming. In the brochure quoted earlier there is some information that leads the reader to believe that there were some “explorations,”80 whereas the majority of my interlocutors claimed that Nowosielski’s project was meant to be implemented from the start. Some of the projects clearly appeared in response to Nowosielski’s project. Irrespective of the order of events, their authors must have known that their chances for success, when competing with a world-renowned artist, were close to nil. A  case in point here is the story of the young architect, who  – as I was told on many occasions – felt personally hurt due to the rejection of his project. According to one of my interlocutors, although his project was much more “Ukrainian” and was adapted on the contest organisers’ request to cut down costs, somebody selected Nowosielski’s project at the last moment.81 Looking at this situation from today’s perspective, this story about competitive projects appears particularly interesting. Along with the story of Nowosielski’s project it demonstrates the process of negotiations and explorations, in the way it was presented in the above-mentioned Greek Catholic parish publication.82 The one and only suitable project from this multitude of ideas and sketches was extracted thanks to collective explorations. Another activity worth mentioning is the faithful’s collective engagement in the construction of the church. This is not an exception, and in other Christian denominations and religions, the faithful raise their temples together. In any case, for one of my interlocutors, the unsurpassed example of this cooperation was the construction of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall. That Greek Catholic was so impressed by the organisation and enthusiasm of the Jehovah Witnesses builders that he joined their work.83 Members of the Greek Catholic community contributed to the construction of the church according to their capabilities,84 irrespective of the amount of their financial contributions. This was also an opportunity to watch the construction work in progress, since – as one of my interlocutors noted – “It 7 8 79 80 81

Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, p. 37. Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, p. 117. Ikona w przestrzeni, p. 5. A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 82 Ikona w przestrzeni, p. 5. 8 3 A male of about sixty. The conversation was held in 2016. 84 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016.

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all looks nice on the sketches; the question is what will come out of them.”85 The building appears striking from the very beginning. One of the examples is the famous “pit” or the main nave’s floor recessed beyond the regular level. There was gossip among the church construction’s observers that there would be some sort of a pool.86 The experience and joys of collective work and later the discussions about it at a family table helped “domesticate” this unusual project. This was also simultaneously an opportunity to collect voices of support for introducing modifications and to build the church in one’s own way.87 The preparatory and construction works were performed by Biały Bór’s residents, whereas the more specialised works were carried out by a “befriended” construction company from nearby Miastko.88 The whole construction process was thus organised very locally. During my research, I also learned that apart from this usual everyday engagement, Biały Bór’s residents made yet another special contribution to the church’s construction:  an additional window in the main nave, originally not present in Nowosielski’s project: Yes, [there was a strong group here – JW] that accepted him [Nowosielski – JW]. And from the beginning he reserved the right to — and I think this was the right decision — to do everything here on his own from beginning to end. And you need to accept this, with understanding or without, but accept and implement without any changes. Of course there were some minor changes, e.g. when there were no materials available… And there was a situation when we made this window behind the altar stone by mistake.89 We were erecting the side walls and nobody took a good look at the project and we made this window. The professor arrived and said: what have you done here? (…) we were going to wall it up. But we said, Professor, maybe… and he said later, ok, we need to think about it, but who came up with such an idea? [he laughed]. So, this was a fact. And it has remained there until today.90

85 A male of about forty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 86 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 87 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 88 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 89 “Behind the altar” here means right behind the altar stone (mensa). 90 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows: “Tak, [tu była silna grupa  – JW] która jego [Nowosielskiego  – JW.] jakby akceptowała. I  on zastrzegł sobie od początku, i myślę, że bardzo dobrze zrobił, postawił taki trochę warunek, że on się tym zajmie, ale od początku do końca. I wy to przyjmujecie, czy ze zrozumieniem, czy nie, ale przyjmujecie, i tak realizujecie. Bez żadnych takich jakiś zmian. Oczywiście jakieś tam kosmetyczne były, bo czy materiałów nie było... I było coś takiego, że my przez pomyłkę zrobiliśmy, nie wiem czy pan zauważył,

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Photo 16: A file with correspondence, a catalogue and paint samples for the Greek Catholic church in Biały Bór. (From the archive of the deputy mayor of Biały Bór, Jan Batruch.) Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

As one of the interlocutors later explained, Nowosielski later designed a special shutter for the window. Today it gives the effect of an eclipse in the morning sunlight and appears to have been part of the initial design. This short account is a summary of the construction of Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic church. It starts with the acceptance of the project, later a contract between the artist and the community is made, and finally something is added by the community that helps “domesticate” this unusual project and the building itself. When I listened to this story, I could observe how much my interlocutor was involved in it. I can imagine that he was intentionally saving it like an ace up his sleeve, until he could pull it out during the final part of our conversation. The additional window, even if it was an accidental act, could be seen as an attempt to bring the artist down a peg, a bit like haggling with God. On the other hand, it could be

tam za ołtarzem powstało też okienko. Robiliśmy po bokach, nikt z nas dokładnie nie spojrzał na projekt, i zrobiliśmy okno. Przyjechał profesor i mówi, co to wyście tu zrobili! (…) Mieliśmy to później zamurować, ale mówimy, no panie profesorze, może by... no i on to... tak już później, no dobra, coś musimy pomyśleć, ale kto to wymyślił! [śmiech]. No tak, to był taki fakt. I to zostało do dzisiaj”.

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interpreted as a way of participating in the mystery of art. The window cannot be seen, but it gives an interesting light effect. In a way, it has become a sort of seal mark put by the community, a “sign of presence,” similar to the ones described by Jacek Olędzki in his account of his research in Murzynowo.91 Other interventions in the project, as already indicated above, were driven by prosaic reasons, such as problems with building materials’ availability or the need for additional space. One of the changes concerned the floor: it is now covered with glossy glazed porcelain tiles, beige ones in the main nave and blue ones in the sides naves, which in fact do remind one of a swimming pool. The hues are so intensive that it appears to be the result of the artist’s conscious decision. Yes, as I  have learned, this sort of material was applied due to the lack of stone tiles selected by Nowosielski (“like old marble stone”), similar to the ones used in ancient Greek temples. Thus, the original plan had to be thwarted due to a lack of intended material, its high costs as well as time pressure: the annual parish festival, during which the church was supposed to be consecrated, was rapidly approaching.92 Another diversion from Nowosielski’s original plan was a hall on the left hand side of the altar: a mirror reflection of the vestry in the initial project. Nowosielski was not happy with this change, in particular with the symmetric form gained by the building. However, this hall was necessary. It was initially used for storing objects moved from the chapel to the new church: the altar, pennants, candleholders and everything else that was not used in the new church. These assorted “unnecessary” objects contributed to the creation of a provisional chapel that functioned there for some time. However, this idea was soon abandoned as this room created a separate space that disrupted the sense of community.93 This incident was duly noted however: the author of the articles mentioned in the introduction wrote that this was a chapel for “traditionalists”: “those who want to may pray there in the familiar atmosphere surrounded by flowers.”94 Currently, since the wooden altar and liturgical equipment were moved to a new church in Bielica, and a recollection house where religious utensils can be stored was erected in Biały Bór, a plan has been made to install a gas boiler in this “additional” hall in order to heat the church.95 Another more subtle practice of the “domestication” of the church is the production of snobbish narratives, echoes of which could be traced in some of my conversations with local residents. These include numerous accounts about

9 1 Jacek Olędzki, Murzynowo, pp. 380–412. 92 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 93 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. 94 Katarzyna Surmiak-Domańska, “Cerkiew bez kompromisów.” 95 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016.

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international tourists who come to admire the church in Biały Bór.96 Some press articles also contain mentions of Biały Bór’s residents’ snobbishness that has helped them accept their new church’s unusual shape: The parish priest cleverly managed to placate the attitudes [critical of Nowosielski’s project – JW]. He was happy to receive journalists in Biały Bór. And when the church was going to be featured in a television or radio programme, he announced this fact during the holy Mass. In this way mass media prestige has triumphed. When people saw their church on the screen and heard that a prominent journalist was talking about it with Nowosielski, they reconsidered their attitudes and stopped complaining.97

The significance of snobbery was also appreciated by Nowosielski, although not so much in terms of understanding as in terms of accepting his art: You seem to be ignoring the element of snobbery. No. It possibly played a significant role in Wesoła. But we should not forget that Wesoła is a suburb of Warsaw. It is still located within its cultural influence. People who live there respect certain values even if they do not directly adopt them. Yet, there are such milieus where snobbery does not reach. They are so closed and primitive that they simply cannot be snobbish. A snob needs to be an open-minded person. Let’s take, for example, people who reject my icons. These people mainly come from the Belarusian or Ukrainian communities living in the Białystok or Podlasie regions. These are communities completely isolated from Poland’s cultural life. They are petrified in their particularistic value judgements about culture, because they do not really care about it.98

Some of the interlocutors were not convinced about the value of snobbish attitudes however: As a historian I understand this. After all, I used to teach history. The Eastern Church is not only white: there are Copts, Blacks. But these people were taken aback… [he laughs] Black women!99 Why on earth? What does it have in common with the church, what does one do with this? They still do not know. Many of them. (…) Wherever a church is built, it has domes. God forbid there would be something similar to the one in Biały Bór. I don’t know; it seems to be some sort of snobbery. I understand it is something different. Well, it is different. Showing Eastern spirituality, religiosity in this specific way, looking at God with brown-black eyes [he laughs]. They have

96 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate; a male of about sixty, Roman Catholic; a male of about forty, self-identifying as Ukrainian; a male of about sixty. The conversations were held in 2016. 97 Katarzyna Surmiak-Domańska, “Cerkiew bez kompromisów.” 98 Zbigniew Podgórzec, Rozmowy z Jerzym Nowosielskim, p. 206. 99 The interlocutor had images of “dark-skinned” Christs and Madonnas in mind.

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Photo 17: A window made by the local residents and later added to the project by Jerzy Nowosielski, according to the interlocutor. (From the archive of the deputy mayor of Biały Bór, Jan Batruch.) Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. the right to do so. Clearly. But we here in a foreign land need to have some objects of worship similar to those that used to be there in the east.100

An Experimental Facility For many Nowosielski is too abstract. People complain about aggressive colours, (…) that the strange figures spook them instead of conducing them to prayer. Some even

100 A male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows: “Ja jako historyk rozumiem to. No kurczę, uczyłem historii. No przecież cerkiew wschodnia, to ona nie jest tylko biała: Koptowie są, Murzyni. Ale konsternacja była ludzi... [śmiech] Murzynki! Po co, po cholerę? Co to ma wspólnego z kościołem, jak to się je? Do dzisiaj nie wiedzą. Wielu nie wie. (…) Gdzie by nie budowano teraz cerkwi, to wszędzie banie. Nie daj Bóg upodobnić się do Białego Boru. Nie wiem, bo to jest taki przejaw jakiegoś snobizmu. Ja rozumiem, jest coś innego. No jest coś innego. W specyficzny sposób pokazanie jakiejś takiej wschodniej duchowości, religijności, patrzenia na Boga oczyma czarno-brązowymi [śmiech]. No mają prawo. Wiadomo. Ale my tutaj na obczyźnie, powinniśmy po prostu, mieć jakieś własne obiekty, takie jakie tam były na wschodzie.”

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Photo 18: The Mother of God, a fragment of Jerzy Nowosielski’s fresco from the front of the church in Biały Bór. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. say that Nowosielski does not paint saints but devils, as Father Ulicki told us. If it was not for the fact that there are enlightened people in Biały Bór, we would never have managed to push this project through here.101 But when Professor Nowosielski proposed such a building, we accepted it. After all, we cannot have highlanders’ huts everywhere; they simply would not fit everywhere.102

The phenomenon of the local church is often described in terms of the relation or even conflict between the enlightened, sometimes rather snobbish fans of modern art and the uneducated traditionalists not only in the press, but also in many of the conversations I had with Biały Bór’s residents.103 In order to somewhat placate this tension, the priests explained the meaning and character of the new church during its opening and consecration as well as during special dedicated lectures. Despite these 1 01 Katarzyna Surmiak-Domańska, “Cerkiew bez kompromisów.” 102 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation goes as follows: “Ale jeżeli profesor, zaproponował, taki rodzaj budynku, przyjęliśmy to. No, nie wszędzie musi być, nie wszędzie będzie pasowała chata góralska”. 103 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate; a male of about fifty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate; a male of about forty,

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efforts I heard critical remarks regarding the church on several occasions. The persons I talked to knew that I was from the University of Warsaw and was conducting research; they were simultaneously aware of the fact that their views were not too progressive and differed from what one was supposed to say. So, depending on their personal character and probably on their social position, they explained their thoughts on the matter in a more or less concealed way. Often enough, they “put aside” the architectural value of the church in order to explain their position, admitting that it was designed by a renowned artist and as a result it is a “valuable artifice,” yet reserved their right to have their own opinion based on their perception. A pure sense of aesthetics does not exist; it is usually related to a concrete action and presence in the world or habitus. Beautiful shapes, colours or “lack of gaudiness” can be perceived as interesting and valuable; however, in order to be accepted, they need to be related to a personal practice and values associated with a given community, because education alone apparently may not suffice. During the construction of the church one could already notice that the artist’s attitude towards his work of art may be very different from that of the local residents as well as the construction’s initiators. I  will return here to the story about the church’s floor: “And here we’ve made a mistake, and Prof. Nowosielski had a small grudge against us that we made it as if it were a bathroom floor. This is the only thing that went against his specific requirements [stone tiles “like old marble stone” were supposed to be there – JW].”104 Whereas what mattered for Nowosielski – for whom every detail of the frescoes, the church interior or the building itself was significant – was art, understood in the following way: In my opinion, art as a mysterious act of faith in the fantastic reality itself belongs to the sphere of the sacred and cannot exist outside it. (...) Art is a spiritual activity. A spiritual activity aimed at leading us out of the situation of the beings banished from paradise. This is to put it shortly. If one seeks a lengthier answer, volumes have been written on the subject.105

According to Nowosielski it is not possible to create profoundly materialistic art, because “art belongs to the sphere of the sacred and cannot exist outside it.”106 An important context for the understanding of this thought is Nowosielski’s own creative path. As he emphasised himself, it is modern art, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate; a male of about sixty, Roman Catholic. The conversations were held in 2016. 104 A male of about sixty, self-identifying as Ukrainian, university graduate. The conversation was held in 2016. The original quotation went as follows: “I tutaj, może zrobiliśmy błąd, i tu profesor miał do nas trochę żalu, że, zrobiliście takie, trochę jak posadzka łazienkowa. To jedno, co zostało trochę wykonane niezgodnie z jego zaleceniem [miały być kamienne płytki – „taki stary marmur” – JW].” 1 05 Zbigniew Podgórzec, Rozmowy z Jerzym Nowosielskim, pp. 212–213. 106 Zbigniew Podgórzec, Rozmowy z Jerzym Nowosielskim, p. 213.

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surrealism and geometrical abstraction (“understood in a particular magical way”) that allowed him to preserve the contact with the metaphysical reality (“in the psyche, obviously, unconsciously”107). Surrealism seemed “as if it annulled some linear logic of art’s development:  that from the past to the future” and “questioned all rational thought attempts to form any binding value judgements about art and life.”108 In his “tactics” and “strategies” theory, de Certeau refers to Immanuel Kant and his reflections on judgement, taste and the art of action (Kunst). As he noted, Kant encounters art on the road leading from taste to judgment, as the parameter of practical knowledge exceeding knowledge and having an esthetic form. Kant discerns in it what he calls, in a stroke of genius, a “logical tact” (logische Takt). Inscribed in the orbit of an esthetic, the art of operating is placed under the sign of the faculty of judgment, the “alogical” condition of thought.109

In this way, the art of action located at the origins of the thought undermined the traditional division into theory and praxis. Kant gives a precise definition to the art of action with the help of the example of a juggler and a tightrope walker, where the former demonstrates knowledge, and the latter  – art, the perpetual creation and recreation of certain activities subject to change depending on the circumstances. As de Certeau emphasises: in this ability to create a new set on the basis of a pre-existing harmony and to maintain a formal relationship in spite of the variation of the elements, it very closely resembles artistic production. It could be considered the ceaseless creativity of a kind of taste in practical experience.110

This equilibrium as well as “the transformation of one state of equilibrium into another” becomes for de Certeau one of the points of departure for his “tactics and strategies” concept, as well as for his “space” and “place.” The analysis of Biały Bór’s church’s reception should take into account not only the local residents’ “knowledge,” but also this “subjective ‘equilibrium’ of imaging and understanding” that comes from the practical experience of the church. It includes memory and history, identity and everyday life. Such an approach makes the church become part of the living cultural landscape. At this point, one could finally try to name the meanings surrounding the church, which I tried to sketch out in this article. However, on the one hand, they are in the process of constant change, also for the residents themselves. On the other hand, following the artist’s recommendation, it is worth leaving some space for what eludes functionality and is beyond the reach of the discursive thought set.111

1 07 108 109 110 111

Zbigniew Podgórzec, Rozmowy z Jerzym Nowosielskim, p. 22. Zbigniew Podgórzec, Rozmowy z Jerzym Nowosielskim, pp. 23–24. Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, p. 72. Michael de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, p. 73. Zbigniew Podgórzec, Rozmowy z Jerzym Nowosielskim, pp. 22-23.

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Bibliography Czerni, Krystyna and Jerzy Nowosielski. Listy i zapomniane wywiady, Kraków: Znak, 2015. De Certeau, Michael. The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Edensor, Tim. National identity, popular culture and everyday life. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2002. Ikona w przestrzeni. Cerkiew grekokatolicka pw. Narodzenia Przenajświętszej Bogurodzicy w Białym Borze. Biały Bór: Greek Catholic Parish, 2011. Kurak, Jan. Nad Bieszczadami słońce zgasło. Warszawa: TYRSA, 2008. Olędzki, Jacek. Murzynowo. Znaki istnienia i tożsamości kulturalnej mieszkańców wioski nadwiślańskie XVIII – XX wieku. Warszawa: Warsaw University Press, 2016. Podgórzec, Zbigniew. Rozmowy z Jerzym Nowosielskim. Kraków: Znak, 2014. Surmiak-Domańska, Katarzyna. “Cerkiew bez kompromisów,” Magazyn No. 7, supplement to Gazeta Wyborcza No. 42, 19 Feb. 1999, p. 24.

Tomasz Kosiek

When “the Other” Becomes Someone Close… Ethnological Self-reflections on Functioning in a Ukrainian Community in Biały Bór Experience is what makes ethnography.1 …we have looked to the personal, concrete, and mundane details of experience as a window to understanding the relationships between self and other or between individual and community.2

Abstract: The present text is a voice in the discussion on ethnographic field experience, including contact and living among “Others.” However, instead of focusing on the experience related to fieldwork, I explore his own experiences related to this contact, on constructing relations and functioning within the Ukrainian community in Biały Bór. I aim to delineate selected phases of the process, thanks to which this community, while initially being completely “strange” for him, has become essential for his own current identity. The readers can trace the author’s sources of interest in the Ukrainian national minority as well as the process of building relations with the Ukrainian community of Biały Bór. I also consider why despite his very good insight into the group’s everyday life, I have been able to only partially implement his research objectives related to its identity and culture. Keywords: Ukrainian national minority, Biały Bór, mixed families, Polish-Ukrainian mixed families

During my ethnological studies in a class taught by an anthropologist with considerable experience in conducting field research in Amazonia, I heard on many occasions that “by researching ‘Others’ we learn about ourselves.” I cannot speak for all my fellow students, but I did not understand what my teacher meant by that too well at the time. His remark, repeated on many occasions during the course of the class, appeared rather illogical to me. At the time, I could not imagine that by learning about “Others” I could experience and analyse myself as a person. This

1

Kirsten Hastrup, A Passage to Anthropology. Between Experience and Theory (London and New York: Routledge 2001), p. 57. 2 Stacy Holman Jones, “Autobiography. Making the Personal Political,” in: The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, eds. Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, London and New Deli: Sage, 2005), pp. 763–792.

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problem intrigued me even more due to the fact that I chose that discipline precisely in order to study “Others” and not to study myself. I believe not many ethnology students get the opportunity to experience what this teacher had in mind. The reason for this is that “ethnographic” self-learning requires engaging oneself in long-term field research based, i.e., on a participant observation technique.3 Such field research is usually not conducted as part of ethnologic studies programmes due to lack of time and financial resources. Cases in which students undertake their own research projects are rather rare. At the same time, I believe that we are able to see ourselves – if not fully, then at least partially – only when we have the opportunity to have an intensive look at ourselves in the mirror provided by a different culture or “Other” community. In other words, without field experience,4 with its myriads of unpredictable situations and varied interactions, we cannot really grasp what my teacher had in mind. Being among “Others” generates a variety of emotions, desires, fears, etc. The “field” ethnographic experiences, with all the consequences they have for the ethnographer conducting research, have been at the centre of anthropologists’ reflection for the past several decades.5 The present text is yet another voice in the discussion regarding ethnographic field experiences during contact with and being among “Others.” Yet, it is different from the texts that I have been familiar with so far. The difference is that my reflections are based not on my field research, but upon the experience of 3 Łukasz Kaczmarek in his text “Między survey research a obserwacją uczestniczącą:  rozdarcie metodologiczno-tożsamościowe w polskiej etnologii/ antropologii kulturowej XXI,” Etnografia. Praktyki, Teorie, Doświadczenia, Vol. 2 (2016), pp. 123–136 points to a certain duality of identity in the Polish ethnology milieu deriving from the methodology used by particular researchers “understood as a reflection on the data collection and usage as well as construction of claims and theories based on these data.” According to the author, Polish ethnologists and anthropologists have varying and often clearly different understandings of the aims and ways of conducting participant observation. 4 For some time now there has been a debate on the term “space” in anthropology. James Clifford, “Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining of Anthropology,” in: Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of the Field Science, ed. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Londres: University California Press, 1997), pp. 185–222). In the Polish debate on the term, one of the first and distinct voices was a conference in Poznań in 2008. Specyfika wiedzy antropologicznej, which resulted in a collective volume edited by Tarzycjusz Buliński and Mariusz Kairski, Teren w antropologii. Praktyka badawcza we współczesnej antropologii (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013). In the present text, I apply the term “space” in the sense of human interactions, ethnographic participation, experience and emotions, of which an interview is the first and not the last phase. 5 Barbara Tedlock, “From Participant Observation to the Observation of Participation: The Emergence of Narrative Ethnography,” Journal of Anthropology Research, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Spring) (1991), pp. 69–94.

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living within a Ukrainian community from Biały Bór. This community, initially completely “strange” to me, with time and through friendships and marriage as well as my own participation, has become much closer to me. It has become a group with which I personally, substantially identify. Thus, I would like to present here some sort of an anthropology at home. Predictably, the category of home is far from unambiguous;6 in this case “home” has been constructed over the decade on the basis of my interests and choices, until the Ukrainian cultural spaces have transformed from “strange” and “Other” to at least partially my own. In short, I am presenting the reader with a perspective on Biały Bór’s Ukrainian national minority from a person who entered this community driven not by research plans, but by curiosity regarding its differences from mainstream Polish society; at the same time, who by partaking in the community’s life and through the process of education has become an anthropologist. This story is not an easy one for me to tell for two reasons. First of all, during the decade of my life in Biały Bór’s Ukrainian community, I worked as an ethnographer conducting research projects only for a short period of time.7 For most of this time I did not perform any research, but rather functioned as an acquaintance and friend, as well as a husband, son-in-law and father. Clearly, I did not suspend my ethnographer identity, yet my participation in the group did not have a clearly research-focused character and was not based on a regular scientific participant observation, reflected in an observation diary. Being “there” was not limited to posing questions. I was learning about it through a continuous immersion into the group’s everyday life. In this way, when writing this text and reaching out to my own experiences, I have relied on my memories, or, a certain kind of headnotes8, 6 Cf. Mariza Peirano, “When Anthropology Is at Home: The Different Contexts of a Single Discipline,” Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 27 (1998), pp. 105–128. 7 In 2005, I conducted a small research project aimed to provide me with research for my licentiate (BA) (or bachelor’s) thesis. Based on it, I wrote a text: “ ‘Wspólnota na różnicy budowana’. Kilka uwag etnologa o polsko-ukraińskich małżeństwach polsko-ukraińskich w Białym Borze,” in:  Polska-Ukraina. Pogranicze kulturowe i etniczne, ed. Michał Buchowski (Wrocław: PTL and Uniwersytet Wrocławski, 2008), pp. 139–149. In 2015, in the Oral History grant’s framework from the Future and Memory Centre in Wrocław, I collected around a dozen biographical interviews with direct witnesses of the post-war forced resettlements from south-east Poland. Based on these articles, I wrote “Polacy i Żydzi Bieszczadów i Pogórza Przemyskiego w narracjach biograficznych osób wysiedlonych w Akcji ‘Wisła’. Raport z badań,” Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Prace Etnograficzne, Vol. 44/1 (2016), pp. 39–50. In 2016, I took part in research conducted within the “Religious culture in the face of social changes. A comparative study of local communities (Poland – Ukraine)” grant framework, under the supervision of Prof. Magdalena Zowczak (project leader). 8 Simon Ottenberg, “Thirty Years of Fieldnotes: Changing Relationship to the Text,” in: Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthropology, ed. R. Sanjek (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 139–160.

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or fieldnotes registered in my head, memories of emotions and experiences. Headnotes for an anthropologist may be as important as regular fieldnotes and often create contexts for the interpretation of the latter. In my case, a standard field diary never existed, and reaching for headnotes requires reminiscing and recreating meaningful situations, contexts and emotions. This experience has taught me that writing a text based exclusively on memories is very limiting due to transience of human memory as well as its flexibility and may lead to distortions. It would have been a much easier task, if I had my field diary notes to revive my memory. Second of all, in the “field” constructed in this particular way – by being part of Biały Bór’s Ukrainian milieu as a husband, father and friend, as well as by sharing part of my identity with “the Others” – I decide to partially unveil my own privacy and emotions. Of course, revealing one’s emotions and field experiences in ethnographic writing has been rather widespread since at least the 1960s.9 However, in this case, a somewhat different situation exists:  what is being reflected upon is being in the field as a result of having entered a community of “Others” due to friendships and the decision to marry a woman from this community, rather than having conducted a research project, which is the majority of such ethnographic self-reflections’ case. In the present text, I would like to share the sources of my interest in Biały Bór’s Ukrainian community and culture, the process of entering the group of “Others” and instances of my “wonder” by having experienced the encountered difference. I  would also like to reflect on the process of how acceptance is ensured by the host community. I will try to reflect on how I function in this community today, how my “marrying into” a Ukrainian family has changed me, my identity, perception of the group and the perception the community has of me. I will also try to answer the question of why despite such good access to the group I still cannot decide to conduct a fully blown ethnographic research regarding it. The topic I discuss here is the consequence of my conviction that qualitative methods used by anthropologists demand great self-awareness as well as reflection upon the way they function within the studied communities as well as of their own cultural baggage in treating with the “Others.”

The Beginnings Often enough, qualitative research projects are borne out of personal motivations, experiences or passions.10 In the case in point, not only the selected research field, but also the decision to study ethnology is accounted for by my personal interests.

9 Michael Carrithers, “Fieldwork,” in: Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, eds. Alan Bernard and Jonathan Spencer (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 262–264. 10 Uwe Flick, Introducing Research Methodology: A Beginner’s Guide to Doing a Research Project (London: Sage, 2015).

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In middle school I already often took part in Boy Scout camps in the Lower Beskids and Bieszczady Mountains. I also wandered on my own in Przemyśl’s and Dynów’s foothills. Wherever I  went, I  could spot traces and mementos of the former inhabitants of this region, often referred to as the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands. These included roadside stone crosses with partially faded inscriptions in the Cyrillic alphabet, abandoned churches, grown wild orchards and weedy cemeteries  – all that was left behind by the victims of mass forced resettlements in 1944–47. Fascinated by the difference and mystery surrounding these landscape elements, I started my first unprofessional research into who these people were, how they lived and why they were not there anymore. While looking for answers to these questions, I had some conversations, which today I would call amateur interviews, with witnesses who remembered the war and resettlement times. This limited baggage of experiences and my passion about it were decisive in my choice of studies, which, as mentioned before, were meant to help me deepen my interest in the borderlands. After finishing my first year of studies in Poznań, I decided that studying the material traces of the former inhabitants of the region of my interest and following its history as well as ethnographic accounts that could be found in the library was not enough for a fresh ethnology scholar. I thought I needed to meet the people whose culture I  was so fascinated by; hence, I  decided to visit the “Łemkowska Watra” (Lemko Watchfire) festival in Zdynia in the Lower Beskids11. On my way there, along with a Boy Scout friend, I was full of trepidation regarding what I would see and experience there. When I saw the tent camp on the horizon I felt fear and uncertainty. The stereotypes based on primary school lessons, stories about the “UPA12 gangs,” the Bieszczady Mountains on fire and murderous Ukrainians started to play. Yet, youthful curiosity won in the end. When we stood in front of the entrance gate, I  saw hundreds of people and dozens of tents. The camp site appeared to be a small colony of young people; some of them were dressed in vyshyvanky embroidered shirts13 or had oseledets 11 Jacek Nowak, in his book Zaginiony świat? Nazywają ich Łemkami (Kraków: Universitas, 2003), pp. 141–146, discussed the meaning of this festival for Poland’s Lemko and Ukrainian communities. The festival context creates a great space for meeting young people of Lemko/Ukrainian origin from all over Poland. Other aspects of Łemkowska Watra and similar festivals are discussed by Patrycja Trzeszczyńska in her article “Folkloryzm i postfolkloryzm w kulturze łemkowskiej w Polsce,” in: Łemkowie, ed. Beata Machul-Telus (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 2013), pp. 127–150. 12 UPA or Ukrainian Isurgent Army (Pol.:  Ukraińska Powstańcza Armia, Ukr.: Українська повстанська армія, УПА) was Ukrainian paramilitary and later partisan army that fought during and soon after the Second World War against Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and both Underground and Communist Poland. 13 Vyshyvanka (Ukr.: вишиванка) is an embroidered shirt. It is treated as an element of Ukrainian traditional dress. Embroidered patters have many local variations.

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hairstyles.14 Our tent, as it turned out later, was located next to the tents of Ukrainian students from Biały Bór’s Taras Shevchenko lyceum. Communal meals15, singing and playing helped break the initial mutual prejudices.16 The Łemkowska Watra festival experience, with all its folkloric abundance on the stage, youthful energy under the stage and communality convinced me that Ukrainian thematics were something I wanted to focus on more, not only in the course of my studies, but also in my private life. Several months after the Watra, it also turned out that the acquaintances I made during the festival did not end at the festival, but went on and developed further. First, in November, I was invited by one of Biały Bór’s lyceum students to Ukrainian youth festival “Jarma Rock” in Gdańsk, and a month later I was invited to the Sviat Vechir17 play at Biały Bór’s lyceum. This was my first opportunity to visit Biały Bór. More opportunities to visit, deepen acquaintances and enter into closer relations with Biały Bór’s youth and their parents followed shortly.

Wonders As I have already mentioned, my first meeting with Ukrainians did not have a scientific character. I did not have any scientific goals and was not trying to answer any research questions. Rather, I wanted to meet people of Ukrainian descent and develop relationships with them. From time to time, I had the idea that Biały Bór and its inhabitants would become the focus of my research in the future; yet that was not the primary reason that I  became acquainted with this milieu. Today, I realise that from the start I experienced several wonders, which often play a key role for anthropologists. I cannot discuss all of them here, so I will focus on just two of them. Although I believe that these wonders can tell us something about the group, its ways of functioning and identity building, I will not analyse these issues here, but rather limit myself to their descriptions. I present them here mainly

14 Oseledets (Ukr.: оселедець) is a lock of hair at the top of an otherwise closely shaven head. This hairstyle was popular among Zaporozhian Cossaks. 15 Gail Kligman, in reference to her research conducted in the Maramureș in the 1980s, reflects upon the table community as a shared space with the family she stayed with during her research. The context of these meetings was an excellent occasion to construct social relations and build anthropological knowledge, see: The Wedding of the Dead. Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988). 16 My friends told me that they initially had not been too happy about us putting up a tent in their “space” either. They also had had certain fears and had been asking themselves what those Poles were doing among them. Yet, they also emphasised that our interest and openness diminished their initial reluctance towards uninvited neighbours. 17 In Eastern churches, the Svyat Vechir tradition (Holy Evening) is the equivalent of Christmas Eve.

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to show how my way of being in the group and immersing myself into it gave me the opportunity to observe its practices without the need to directly ask questions regarding them. The first wonder was related to the practice of ethnical categorisation of people with whom the Ukrainian community members interact. Although the categorisation into “strangers” and “own people” has often been at the centre of anthropological reflection,18 when functioning in a Polish group prior to meeting Ukrainians, I have never seen someone wondering about a person’s ethnic origin while getting acquainted. Living in a homogenous milieu, I never experienced such practices. When I entered a minority group, however, it turned out that the need to identify oneself with a certain group was a widespread, almost everyday practice. Biały Bór Ukrainians apply ethnic categories in everyday discussions when they talk about who they have met, who they have done business with that day. Such categorisation is not needed in the case of the inhabitants of Biały Bór’s neighbouring villages, because in their case – as I heard on many occasions –“we all know who is who and where their parents come from.” It is worth mentioning here that the very formulation “where their parents come from” shows that a person’s forefathers came from the regions covered by the resettlement programme that is from Ukrainian towns and villages. Clear ascription to a given group happens only when it turns out that a given person meets, e.g., when visiting the church, running errands or when that person has Ukrainian roots. I believe another observed practice is related to this need for categorisation: people of Ukrainian descent also classify people seen on television in news or documentaries. When they see someone with a name that “sounds” Ukrainian, they may call those names out aloud to draw other family members’ attention. Such names include those ending with -ko, -szczuk, -szczyszyn, those names which sound like Polonised versions of Ukrainian originals (e.g., Choma, Sołowij, Nadbereżny, Chodowaniec, Filipczuk), as well as those that can be found among the Ukrainian community’s members. This practice of “recognising” Ukrainian names and ascribing a Ukrainian origin to their bearers is not limited to media accounts, but also happens in direct encounters, e.g., at school or work. In other words, when a person with a Ukrainian sounding name is mentioned in a conversation, he or she becomes ascribed to the “Ukrainian” category. It is worth noting that the categories “Pole” and “Ukrainian” are not the only ones which have social significance. There are also categories such as “Boyko,” “Lemko” and “perekinchyk” (Ukr.:  перекінчик). The presence of the first two is

18 Cf. Zbigniew Benedyktowicz, Portrety obcego. Od stereotypu do symbolu (Kraków:  Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2000); Rogers Brubaker, Margit Feischmidt, John Fox, Liana Grancea, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 207–238; John Fox, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, “Everyday Nationhood,” Ethnicities, Vol. 8 No. 4 (2008), pp. 536–563.

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Photo 1: The end of the school year celebration at the Ukrainian school, 1970s. Photo by Roman Mandziak.

problematic and requires a separate discussion.19 I would just like to signal here that in the studied milieu both categories are treated as elements or sub-categories of the term “Ukrainian.” Their usage is related to the region from which the family of a given person came from before Operation Vistula’s resettlement in 1947. These categories, however, are fluid and imprecise, and people applying them are not always sure of their exact usage. In particular this refers to the oldest generation, who often may self-identify with one of these categories. On several occasions, I  have witnessed when someone identified themselves as, e.g., “Boyko,” and people would correct them, explaining that they are “Lemko,” or vice versa. Such self-identification is often done by younger people, who often have familiarised themselves with some ethnographic publications, museum narratives, etc. (e.g., Folk Architecture Museum in Sanok) or participated in ethnic festivals (e.g.,

19 Regarding the “Boyko” category, see Zbigniew Libera, “The Borders of Western Boyko Land,” Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Prace Etnograficzne, Vol. 39 (2011), pp. 1–25. See also my article “Czy w rumuńskim Maramureszu mieszkają Huculi? Kilka uwag o kategorii Hucuł i Huculszczyzna w kontekście marmaroskim,” in: Kultura współczesnej Huculszczyzny, eds. Jan Stęszewski, Justyna Cząstka-Kłapyta (Kraków: Oficyna Wydawnicza Wierchy, 2010), pp. 45–62.

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Łemkowska Watra, Rajd Karpaty,20 etc.). I  believe the usage of the “Boyko” and “Lemko” demonym is an example of how categories created and popularised to a large extent by “professionals” (e.g., ethnographers, regional studies scholars, etc.) function among common people. In Biały Bór’s Ukrainian milieu, the category of perekinchyk is clearly pronounced. This term puts an emphasis on forsaking one’s identity in exchange for something foreign, alien. In the Ukrainian milieu, it is used to refer to people who are ascribed a shared ethnic origin by the group, yet who in the group’s perception have forsaken their roots. One becomes a perekinchyk by consciously resigning from some elements of Ukrainian culture, including the Ukrainian language and Greek Catholic faith. What is more, one can often hear the statement that “it is more difficult with a perekinchyk than with a Pole.” This statement emphasises that when any problems related to various cultural or religious initiatives or activities by the Ukrainian community arise, the responsibility for these problems usually lie with people who have forsaken their Ukrainian roots. Although in Biały Bór there are people who despite their Polish origin engage in Ukrainian community life, the term perekinchyk is reserved only to the people of Ukrainian descent. Another wonder is related to some life choices made by the Ukrainian youth. Having observed for a number of years this group’s declared and usually practiced attachment to the Ukrainian language, ethnic music, embroidered shirts or their engagement in the Orange Revolution21, I  was very surprised to observe young Ukrainians’ higher education choices. I expected at least some of them to choose universities in Ukraine. I  naively believed that people who emphasised their patriotism and attachment to Ukraine would decide to study in their “ideological” motherland and try to civically and culturally engage there in order to bring about positive changes to Ukraine. In order to understand their choices, I asked them about their motivations. They emphasised that despite their attachment to Ukraine, they have spent their entire lives in Poland. They were born here and their forefather’s lands are here,22 the contemporary lands and those from which 20 The Karpaty (Carpathian mountains) rally is a wandering camp for Ukrainian youth in Poland, regularly organised from 1976. The participants wander around the Bieszczady Mountains and Lower Beskids region, visiting various localities affected by Operation Vistula in 1947. 21 During the Orange Revolution, the Ukrainian minority in Poland was very supportive of the protesters. A group of Biały Bór residents, including young people, took part in the protests in Ukraine and participated as observers of the repeated second round of elections. The Maidan (2013–2014) events aroused even stronger emotions; media accounts of the events were perpetually followed and were the main topic of everyday conversations. 22 The attachment to their new motherland in western Poland, motivated socially as well as economically, can be illustrated by the very low response among the Ukrainian community to the calls made by some community leaders to return to the towns and villages where their parents and grandparents used to live before Operation “Vistula” (Operation “Povernennia” or Return).

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their grandparents were resettled. Those who are civically engaged want to first of all support Poland’s Ukrainian minority; support for Ukraine and its citizens comes after.

Polish-Ukrainian Marriages: between Research and Experience My research in Biały Bór started only three years after my first experience within this milieu. Looking for a topic for my licentiate (equivalent to bachelor’s) thesis, I thought I would like to write about “my” Ukrainians. Ultimately, I chose the topic of mixed Polish-Ukrainian marriages functioning in a West Pomeranian community. The research resulted in more than a dozen interviews and free conversations with Biały Bór’s both younger and older inhabitants. Yet my several day-long visits prevented me from conducting in-depth observation. This research was thus not helpful in meeting other people beyond the lyceum youth. As a guest, called “Kazek the Enthusiast,” or as a good acquaintance, I became a researcher collecting materials for my thesis, somebody who needed to go beyond the existing group and form contacts. My research was accompanied by some ethical doubts. I felt certain psychological discomfort when I started my research, because I was afraid that my Ukrainian friends would be unhappy about the new situation. Until then I had been a friend without a hidden agenda, and suddenly I became someone who wanted to realise their research project. Luckily, my doubts proved to be ungrounded. What is more, it was easy for me to find willing interlocutors to discuss my topic of interest. Polish-Ukrainian marriages that became the focus of my attention during my work on the thesis in spring of 2005 became my own experience just a year and a half later, thanks to my marrying into one of the local families. The decision to marry probably changes a lot in any person’s life. However, when two people from different ethno-cultural origins marry, the scope of change becomes much greater. The literature on the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands often refers to the category of “mixed marriages.” It supposedly refers to what is “typical for ethnic and cultural borderlands institution of inter-confessional relations.”23 In Biały Bór’s context, these sort of marriages are mixed in terms of both ethnicity: Polish/Ukrainian, as well as religion, or rather confession: Roman Catholic/Greek Catholic. In the past, mixed marriages were so popular that this phenomenon even needed special legal regulation on the part of church institutions. Zdzisław Budzyński24 writes that in the 18th century there were formal legal rules regarding 23 Robert Benewiat, Zdzisław Budzyński, “Ludność wsi Hoczew obrządku łacińskiego w latach 1867 – 1918 (w świetle ewidencji metrykalnej),” in: Studia i materiały z dziejów społecznych Polski południowo – wschodniej, Vol. I, ed. Zdzisław Budzyński (Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2003), p. 195. 24 Zdzisław Budzyński, Ludność pogranicza polsko – ruskiego w drugiej połowie XVIII wieku. Stan. Rozmieszczenie Struktura wyznaniowa i etniczna, Vol. I (Przemyśl – Rzeszów: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk w Przemyślu i Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna w Rzeszowie, 1993).

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inter-confessional marriages. A  Polish-Ruthenian couple’s marriage had to be announced both at a Catholic and Orthodox church. The wedding celebration was to take part at the bride’s church, while the young couple was obliged to preserve the religions they had each been brought up in. What is more, the couple were also obliged to bring up their children according to the following rule: their daughter would be brought up according to the mother’s confession, and the son according to the father’s. While this sort of marriage was not popular in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands immediately after the Brześć Union was adopted,25 their number grew at the turn of the 18th century to become into a very common phenomenon. An example of this is Ujkowicie’s community (near Przemyśl), where the percentage of this type of marriage in the 1830s was 50 %.26 This trend remained during the second half of the 19th century, which can be illustrated by the marriage structure in Hoczwa near Sanok; in 1867–1890, in 31 cases out of 68 marriages, one of the partners was Ukrainian.27 The situation was similar in Lwów, where in the second half of the 19th century the share of mixed marriages fluctuated from 30 % to 60 %.28 During this period, however, the Ukrainian intelligentsia warned Ukrainians against marrying Poles, seeing them as an assimilating factor.29 Despite the hostility towards mixed marriage within the Ukrainian national movement, such marriages were a common element of the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands until the deportations and forced resettlements that followed the Second World War.30 As a result, before the Second World War, despite the growing conflict between elites and activists from both groups, at the level of religiously and ethnically diverse local communities, the distance between the two groups was small. Mixed marriages and the range of related family-religious practices (e.g., shared celebration of Polish and Ukrainian holidays, asking someone from the different confession to become a godfather or godmother) were widespread. The opposition towards mixed marriages at a local level can be noticed only in the post-war period, after the ethnic cleansings occurred. In Biały Bór, mixed marriages are not an unambivalent category. According to some, “mixing” involves only the ethnic dimension. Others believe that the ethnic difference has to go hand in hand with the confessional difference. During my research, I encountered the opinion that we can talk about a “mixed marriage” only when each spouse remains true to their own confession. When one of them resigns 25 Przemyśl’s and Lwów’s Orthodox eparchies did not enter the Brześć Union in 1569, but only in 1692 and 1700, respectively. 26 Zdzisław Budzyński, Ludność pogranicza polsko – ruskiego, pp. 383–395. 27 Robert Benewiat, Zdzisław Budzyński, “Ludność wsi Hoczew,” pp. 195–196. 28 Jarosław Hrycak, Prorok we własnym kraju. Iwan Franko i jego Ukraina (1856-1886) (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, 2010), p. 317. 29 Jarosław Hrycak, Prorok we własnym kraju, p. 317. 30 Tomasz Kosiek, “Polacy i Żydzi Bieszczadów i Pogórza Przemyskiego w narracjach biograficznych osób wysiedlonych w Akcji ‘Wisła’. Raport z badań,” Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Prace Etnograficzne, Vol. 44, No.1 (2016), pp. 39–50.

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from their confession, the marriage should not be seen as “mixed.” In Biały Bór’s context, mixed marriages contribute to the exchange between the Polish majority and Ukrainian minority. Although at a declarative level it is believed that such marriages are “absolutely correct,” they are perceived by the minority as a threat to its existence. There is the commonly shared conviction that such marriages result in Ukrainian spouses going over to the Polish side. This process is called by the Ukrainian minority “assimilation” and means weakening the minority group, and in the long run, will result in its disappearance by melting with the Polish majority. As a result, the Ukrainian minority loses not only the member who marries a Pole, but also other potential members, that is their children, because they rarely go to the Ukrainian church or school. Such people visit church only on the main holidays: Rizdvo (Ukr.: Різдво, Christmas) and Velykden (Ukr.: Великдень, Easter). In other words, according to the Ukrainian community’s perception, mixed marriages accelerate Ukrainians’ “dilution” or assimilation into the Polish community, hence the hostility towards such marriages declared by many of my interlocutors. In some families’ cases, a factor that strengthens such hostility is what can be termed “family memory,” or family experience. In such families, the memories of past wrongs, resettlement, or being sent to the Central Labour Camp in Jaworzno31 or to prison remain acute. In the Ukrainian community, the belief that the young generation is best off marrying “one’s own” is widespread. Such life choices are meant to prevent “merging” into the Polish majority. In practice, however, it turns out that a high share of marriages is mixed. Such marriages also existed before, right after the resettlement, but in my opinion they were less frequent than now. The Ukrainian national minority, after decades of living in the Recovered Territories, has worked out certain tactics aimed at promoting in-group marriages. These are based on organising various dance parties, malankas32 or cultural festivals by various Ukrainian local communities, similar to the Biały Bór one. Their number is difficult to establish, since these parties have varying scopes, from local ones to the ones addressed to the Poland’s entire Ukrainian community. These parties, also aimed 31 As Grzegorz Motyka writes in his book Od rzezi wołyńskiej do Akcji “Wisła.” Konflikt polsko-ukraiński 1943-1947 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2011), pp. 430–431, during Operation Vistula, people suspected of sympathies with the Ukrainian national underground were interned in the Central Labour Camp in Jaworzyn. In practice, apart from Greek Catholic or Orthodox priests and teachers, simple peasants with their whole families, pregnant women and children were sent. About four thousand Ukrainians were sent to this camp; about a hundred died there. 32 Malanka is a Ukrainian New Year’s Eve party organised according to the Julian calendar. Every year, the Ukrainian community in Poland organises more than a dozen such parties in different parts of Poland. Only in Poland’s Koszalin Union of Ukrainians, our country’s main minority organisation, malankas are organised in Koszalin, Kołobrzeg, Szczecinek, Biały Bór, Świdwin, Charzyn, Wałcz, Przećmin and Bielica.

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Photo 2: A wedding at the Greek Catholic church in Biały Bór, 1970s. Photo by Roman Mandziak.

first and foremost at cultivating Ukrainian culture, are treated as an opportunity for young people to meet, which may often result in relationships and marriages. I have heard on many occasions how parents encourage their children to take part in such meetings, because these may result in meeting their life partners. Also slightly “older” singles, believed to be at risk of “spinsterhood” or “bachelorhood,” treat such meetings as a last resort for them to find a partner. When requests, threats, family pressure and other strategies fail and young Ukrainian men or women want to marry a Pole, the choice of the church, the setting the young couple wants to get married as well as baptise their children at becomes significant. These decisions often bring about family conflicts, as once the young couple chooses a Roman Catholic church, they are believed to be lost for the Ukrainian community. Naturally, the decision to get married and baptise the children at an Orthodox church does not guarantee that the new family will still function within the Ukrainian community; yet the assumption is it will make it more likely. Interestingly enough, apart from the context of mixed marriages, I have also observed certain inter-confessional “transfers”: in other words, people may participate actively in different confessional communities during different periods of their lives. Their choices arer grounded in various personal motivations, including career choices, convenience or mixed family origins.

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Photo 3–4: A weddings in Bialy Bór, 1970s. Photo by Roman Mandziak.

I believe that the analysis I present here would not be complete without my own experience and my observations from the last decade, when I  entered a mixed marriage myself. Marrying into a Ukrainian family has not only changed my position within Biały Bór’s Ukrainian community, but also has given me direct access to the sort of problems and challenges faced by Polish-Ukrainian couples. However, my wife and I cannot be seen as a model mixed couple from Biały Bór. First of all, during our marriage, we lived in that community for slightly more than a year, during which I also travelled to Poznań to continue my studies and to Maramureș in Romania to do field research. Moreover, Poles marrying Ukrainians typically do not learn the Ukrainian language and culture. Whereas in my case, due to my professional interests and my personal fascination with Ukrainian culture, I  conducted research projects focused on Ukrainian problematique. Despite being different from the “standard” mixed couple, our marriage was not spared from problems typically faced by Polish-Ukrainian couples. As I  noticed before, the Ukrainian community treats a mixed marriage as a threat to its cultural continuity and the preservation of language and religion. We also experienced the hostility towards this type of marriage. When after several months of dating we decided to live together in Poznań, my wife-to-be faced a lot of criticism coming from her family. According to my wife, her family’s opposition was clearly rooted in the fact that I was Polish and hence I would pull their daughter away from the Ukrainian language and traditions as well as from the Greek Catholic religion. However, there was only one such conversation and the topic never resurfaced again. My wife’s parents felt relieved after learning that despite my Roman Catholic upbringing we would be married at an Orthodox church. What is more, I also decided to change my own confession. Entering the Greek Catholic church became a sort of warranty that our children would also be brought up in the Greek Catholic and Ukrainian tradition. In this way, our mixed marriage would not weaken the Ukrainian community the way that usually happens in Polish-Ukrainian marriages.

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Thanks to these personal experiences, today it is easier for me to understand the minority group’s perspective, its fears and the distance it feels towards mixed marriages, which I could barely understand several years ago during my research. Observing my own family, I  believe that fears regarding risks related to mixed marriages are not ungrounded. Despite my fascination with Ukrainian culture and my openness towards it, it may be difficult to cultivate the elements deemed so significant for the Ukrainian community’s survival in a Polish-Ukrainian marriage. The greatest challenge appears to be teaching the children Ukrainian. This task demands a lot of determination on the part of my wife, and even with my support it remains difficult. Here, I would like to shed some light on another factor contributing to quick assimilation or “going over” to the Polish side, which has not been discussed in the mixed marriage context. This element is the milieu the couple decides to settle in. From my own family’s experience, living in a local community which has its own Ukrainian school, church and is populated by Ukrainians is an important factor contributing to Ukrainian cultural cultivation, even among mixed families. In other words, it would have been much easier for us to maintain our daughter’s Ukrainianness had we lived in Biały Bór, rather than trying to cultivate Ukrainian culture in our current place of abode, where we do not have any access to the Ukrainian community, church or the Ukrainian language learning centre. Hence, I  believe that for Ukrainian identity construction and cultivation in places such as Biały Bór, not only the Ukrainian school’s or church’s presence has been significant, but also the construction of and endurance of the Ukrainian community. I may speculate that the decision makers preparing Operation “Vistula” were aware of this. They not only wanted to resettle the Ukrainian communities from southeastern Poland, but also to disintegrate them by resettling their members to different, often very distant localities. The strength of family-neighbour relationships from before the resettlement can be illustrated by my respondents’ accounts about Polish families that decided to leave along with their Ukrainian neighbours. Their motivation was that staying in their forefathers’ land without their family and neighbours would have been completely pointless. Although some local communities were disintegrated in the resettlement’s aftermath, the example of Biały Bór’s community demonstrates that the Ukrainian population uprooted from its native socio-cultural contexts managed to create new communities in the Recovered Territories. These communities were initially based less on family relations,33 previously so significant, and more on shared ethnic and religious differences and the experience of resettlement.

33 Family relations and ties remained very important despite the Ukrainian community’s relocation. As follows from interviews with witnesses, after forced relocation, Ukrainian families searched for their family members who were resettled in the USSR. Some families are still looking for their lost family members. In my wife’s family, one of her grandmother’s brothers was found just six years ago living in the UK.

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Closing the marriage theme, I would like to mention that despite the declared hostility towards mixed marriages in Biały Bór’s Ukrainian community, they are rather frequent34 and ultimately accepted. Of course, some of such couples “disappear” from the Ukrainian community, but others manage to work out their own model of realising their mixed identity and combining their participation in the Greek Catholic community with that of the Roman Catholic one. There are also marriages where the Polish spouse starts to fully participate and engage within the Ukrainian community’s life. Despite the distance (or opposition) towards mixed marriages, the Ukrainian community does not reject them. Acceptance and co-existence, to a large extent, is dependent on the family’s model of functioning in the community.

Immersion and Identity My presence in Biały Bór’s community has evolved from the level of an acquaintance to being a member of the community. Participation in religious practices, everyday life experience with all its monotony, but also community experiences of family meals, neighbours visits, gossip, listening to accounts about the communities’ problems (not from a researcher’s position, but from that of a Ukrainian family member) create an excellent context for participant observation. “Normal” life, uninterrupted by the presence of “strangers,” has surrounded me. This kind of participation in a group makes me realise that being a person from the outside limits one’s access to some spheres of community life. I would not know how to ask about many issues, and about a great many more issues if I did not know if I could dare to ask. Of course “marrying into” a Ukrainian family has not automatically made me a full “insider.” However, it has created a situation where immersing myself into the community has become almost natural. Being just an ethnographer, I would have had to work for this kind of relation for a much longer period, and I would still have remained an outsider. The many years I  have lived or functioned within the Ukrainian community has not been insignificant for my own identity. One of my ethnologist friends has remarked half-jokingly that I have become into a Ukrainian. His claim was based mainly on our conversations and his knowledge about my conversion to the Greek Catholic confession, decision to baptise our children at a Greek Catholic church and use the Ukrainian language in the private space, as well as my sympathy and often uncritical approach towards Ukrainian problems. Indeed, looking at my choices from an outsider’s perspective, I might have reached the same conclusions. Barbara Tedlock mentions that some anthropologists go native or become bicultural as a result of their ethnographic research and field experiences.35 I believe it is worth reflecting if any of these processes also refer to my case.

3 4 There is no reliable data on the number of mixed marriages. 35 Barbara Tedlock, “From Participant Observation,” pp. 70–71.

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Edwin Ardener,36 in his discussion of the identity phenomenon, points to its complexity and claims that it comprises both internal and external association. I  believe that I  have not gone native, as Barbara Tedlock would call it. At best, I am a person reaching the bilcultural level in many aspects and dimensions. I took many decisions, including the ones surrounding conflicts in Polish-Ukrainian marriages, due to the respect for my wife’s and her family’s values. My support for the children’s bilingualism, baptising them and bringing them up according to the Greek Catholic confession have not made me, in my own opinion, resign from my Polish identity. Yet, my participation within Ukrainian culture has also brought some changes. Thanks to learning about a different point of view, I have become more critical, while my identity has not become weaker. It has been modified, different from what it was even a decade ago. Part of me identifies with the Ukrainian culture, religious culture or problems faced by a minority in a majority community context. By deciding to change my confession, I have become a member of Poland’s Greek Catholic community. By learning the Ukrainian language, I have started to treat it as my second language, even though my proficiency still does not match that of my Ukrainian friends. My immersion and participation in Ukrainian culture has led to a situation where I may be perceived as Ukrainian. This is not about being called “vin sviy,” “vin nash” (Ukr.: він свій, він наш, “he is one of our own”) by Biały Bór’s community members. If this were really the case, there would be no need to emphasise this so much. However, I  am surprised by the number of occasions during which members from other Ukrainian communities when meeting me have been genuinely surprised to learn that I am Polish. However, if someone asked me what I feel to be, I would answer that I represent an open identity type mentioned by Ola Hnatiuk in reference to her mother:37 I draw on both the culture I was brought up in as well as the one that has become dear to me through my professional interests and personal experiences. My presence and way of functioning within the Ukrainian community is not only observed but also used by the community members in certain contexts. For example, I have heard from two former students from the Ukrainian lyceum that in one of their teacher’s opinions, my engagement has boosted the town’s Ukrainian culture’s and traditions’ standing. Her words were addressed to the students and went more or less like this: “If a Pole can learn Ukrainian and is so interested in our culture and community, it means that it is valuable. You should also not be ashamed of your language and your origin.” This comment shows that not only am I under constant observation by the Ukrainian community, but also that the notion about the Ukrainian culture’s inferiority among the Ukrainian community might still be present.

36 Edwin Ardener, “ ‘Remote areas’: Some theoretical considerations,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory Vol. 2, No. 1 (2012), pp. 519–533. 37 Ola Hnatiuk, Odwaga i strach (Wrocław-Wojnowice: Kolegium Europy Wschodniej, 2015), p. 20.

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Pros and Cons of Being a Member of the Researched Community As an ethnologist, on many occasions I have heard from my friends: “Why are you not conducting research in Biały Bór?,” or: “Having such access to the community, you must write about it.” Indeed, my engagement, participation and access to the group may be perceived as an ideal position for conducting a research project on Biały Bór’s Ukrainians. The spheres of everyday lives of the Ukrainian community that I have access to would have been difficult to access for an outsider. Being a well-known person in Biały Bór’s community, I would also have facilitated access to potential study participants. Of course, I  do not know everybody personally, but my social contacts network allows me to reach all people competent in this problematique. In short, my position in Biały Bór appears to be ideal for doing field research based on interviews and participant observation. Yet, there are also certain dilemmas and concerns, including those of an ethical nature. I already had doubts about conducting research in Biały Bór when I was writing my thesis. I was thinking whether it would be fair if when meeting people and having friendly relations with them, I would simultaneously be gathering research material. Research on mixed marriages was conducted in a open way, yet I feared that some of the study participants may feel used. I was afraid that someone might accuse me of developing our relation with the sole aim of collecting research material for my thesis. These fears, however, proved ungrounded. When an anthropologist undertakes a research topic, the situation regarding who the researcher is and who the object of research is appears to be clear enough. However, when an anthropologist becomes a member of a community due to their life choices and not research plans, this clear division becomes more blurred. The ethnographic “being in the field” with the studied community is a dynamic situation. A researcher makes the effort to work out their entrance into the studied community, negotiates their status and role and learns how to be among “the Others.” The “Others” also work out their strategies of dealing with an inquisitive “Stranger.” An ethnographer during their research may change their status and become someone nearer, and sometimes even a friend or the studied community member38. However, when a researcher changes from being a stranger to almost a community member, and only then starts researching among “their own” people, this appears somewhat different and raises certain problems. In a regular ethnographic research project, when the population with which the researcher works 38 Cf. Paul Rabinow, Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (Berkley: University of California Press, 2007); Nigel Barley, The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut, (Harmondsworth:  Penguin Books, 1986); Renata Hryciuk, “Od córki do profesjonalistki. Obserwacja uczestnicząca w antropologii: dylematy, ograniczenia i zaskoczenia na przykładzie badań terenowych w mieście Meksyk,” in: Obserwacja uczestnicząca w badaniach historycznych, eds. Barbara Wagner, Tomasz Wiślicz (Zabrze: Instytut Historyczny Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2008), pp. 55–76.

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is aware of why this “stranger” is among them, it can at least partially control the ethnographer’s actions. It is this group that grants the researcher access to the intimate spheres of group life or undertakes actions that prevent such access39. In other words, it has a variety of defense strategies at its disposal against an excessively intrusive ethnographer. When, however, an “our (wo)man” transforms into an ethnographer studying the group, the group becomes defenseless and loses the ability to protect the spaces it might not want to make public. In other words, since in my case the immersion into the Ukrainian community has not been the consequence of a research project, but that of my life choices, I have wondered how I can transform an unscientific participant observation, accompanying our everyday life at all times, to an explicit and scientific one. For the latter is the only ethical approach in relation towards the studied group, in my opinion. On the other hand, studying “one’s own,” exploring problems that may be relevant for the ethnographer’s own home, brings up problems of an emotional nature. Unveiling what is hidden among “one’s own” is a challenge difficult to overcome. Marta Kurkowska-Budzan,40 using the example of her research in Jedwabne, her hometown, demonstrates that being an “autochton” opens up many doors and spaces unavailable to outsiders, yet burdens the researcher with a huge emotional and ethical dilemma ballast. Under the pressure of this ballast, the researcher sometimes prefers to preserve silence and not crown their field research with a final product, such as a text.

Conclusion When I  started ethnological studies, I  wanted to explore the Ukrainian problematique. At the time, my impression of the undertaken studies was akin to the pictures from Oskar Kolberg’s or Wincenty Pol’s works. The romantic vision of discovering “the Others” and describing their lives was quickly negatively verified. It has turned out that contemporary anthropology demands from its adepts much more than what it did in the late 19th century. A contemporary ethnographer is expected to demonstrate a great degree of self-awareness in relation to the undertaken research problems and to develop ties and relations with the studied population. When starting my adventure with Poland’s Ukrainian national minority, I  entered its space unfree of prejudice and stereotypes. This was the baggage I  gained from school education and my social milieu. A  direct experience of the “Others” has led to the deconstruction of these prejudices, and “Ukrainian”

3 9 Renata Hryciuk, “Od córki do profesjonalistki,” p. 69. 40 Marta Kurkowska-Budzan, “Badacz-tubylec. O emocjach, władzy i tożsamości w badaniach oral history miasteczka Jedwabne,” in: Obserwacja uczestnicząca w badaniach historycznych, eds. Barbara Wagner, Tomasz Wiślicz (Zabrze: Instytut Historyczny Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2008), pp. 17–25.

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elements have stopped evoking fear and uncertainty in me. My authentic meeting with Ukrainian cultural representatives started from the desire to meet my Ukrainian peers. Several year-long intensive contacts and interactions transformed into family relations and my own identity’s evolution. It could have appeared that this was an ideal situation for an anthropologist, where from being a “Stranger” he became into one of their “own people,” and has gained a much deeper and easier insight into the group and its everyday life. Such intensive immersion leads, however, to ethical dilemmas and raises questions regarding using one’s status in the group and conducting participant observation research within it. It is possible, however, that despite my personal straddled position between the Ukrainian and Polish cultures, I should not avoid ethnological studies among the Ukrainian community any longer. However grandiloquent that might sound, perhaps being indebted to both cultures, I need to undertake the effort of contributing to mutual understanding, especially during our turbulent times which are putting PolishUkrainian relations to the test.

Bibliography Ardener, Edwin. “‘Remote areas’: Some theoretical considerations,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2012, pp. 519–533. Barley, Nigel. The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986. Benedyktowicz, Zbigniew. Portrety obcego. Od stereotypu do symbol. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2000. Benewiat, Robert and Zdzisław Budzyński, “Ludność wsi Hoczew obrządku łacińskiego w latach 1867 – 1918 (w świetle ewidencji metrykalnej).” In: Studia i materiały z dziejów społecznych Polski południowo – wschodniej, Vol. I, ed. Zdzisław Budzyński. Wydawnictwo: Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2003. Brubaker, Rogers, Feischmidt, Margit, Fox, John and Liana Grancea. Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Budzyński, Zdzisław. Ludność pogranicza polsko – ruskiego w drugiej połowie XVIII wieku. Stan. Rozmieszczenie Struktura wyznaniowa i etniczna, Vol. I. Przemyśl – Rzeszów: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk w Przemyślu i Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna w Rzeszowie, 1993. Buliński, Tarzycjusz and Mariusz Kairski, (eds.) Teren w antropologii. Praktyka badawcza we współczesnej antropologii. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013. Carrithers, Michael. “Fieldwork.” In: Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, eds. Alan Bernard and Jonathan Spencer. London and New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 262–264.

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Clifford, James. “Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining of Anthropology.” In: Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of the Field Science, ed. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Londres: University California Press, 1997, pp. 185–222. Flick, Uwe. Introducing Research Methodology: A Beginner’s Guide to Doing a Research Project. London: Sage, 2015. Fox, John and Cynthia Miller-Idriss. “Everyday Nationhood.” Ethnicities, Vol. 8, No. 4, 2008, pp. 536–563. Hastrup, Kirsten. A Passage to Anthropology: Between Experience and Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Hnatiuk, Ola. Odwaga i starch. Wrocław-Wojnowice: Kolegium Europy Wschodniej, 2015. Hrycak, Jarosław. Prorok we własnym kraju. Iwan Franko i jego Ukraina (1856– 1886). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej,, 2010. Hryciuk, Renata. “Od córki do profesjonalistki. Obserwacja uczestnicząca w antropologii: dylematy, ograniczenia i zaskoczenia na przykładzie badań terenowych w mieście Meksyk.” In: Obserwacja uczestnicząca w badaniach historycznych, eds. Barbara Wagner, Tomasz Wiślicz. Zabrze: Instytut Historyczny Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2008, pp. 55–76. Jones, Stacy Holman. “Autobiography. Making the Personal Political.” In: The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, eds. Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, London and New Deli: Sage, 2005, pp. 763–792. Kaczmarek, Łukasz. “Między survey research a obserwacją uczestniczącą: rozdarcie metodologiczno-tożsamościowe w polskiej etnologii/antropologii kulturowej XXI,” Etnografia. Praktyki, Teorie, Doświadczenia, Vol. 2, 2016, pp. 123–136. Kligman, Gail. The Wedding of the Dead. Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988. Kosiek, Tomasz. “‘Wspólnota na różnicy budowana.’ Kilka uwag etnologa o polsko-ukraińskich małżeństwach polsko-ukraińskich w Białym Borze,” In: Polska-Ukraina. Pogranicze kulturowe i etniczne, ed. Michał Buchowski. Wrocław: PTL i Uniwersytet Wrocławski, 2008, pp. 139–149. Kosiek, Tomasz. “Czy w rumuńskim Maramureszu mieszkają Huculi? Kilka uwag o kategorii Hucuł i Huculszczyzna w kontekście marmaroskim,” In: Kultura współczesnej Huculszczyzny, eds. Jan Stęszewski, Justyna Cząstka-Kłapyta. Kraków: Oficyna Wydawnicza Wierchy, 2010, pp. 45–62. Kosiek, Tomasz. “Polacy i Żydzi Bieszczadów i Pogórza Przemyskiego w narracjach biograficznych osób wysiedlonych w Akcji ‘Wisła’. Raport z badań.” Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Prace Etnograficzne, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2016, pp. 39–50.

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Kurkowska-Budzan, Marta. “Badacz-tubylec. O emocjach, władzy i tożsamości w badaniach oral history miasteczka Jedwabne,” In: Obserwacja uczestnicząca w badaniach historycznych, eds. Barbara Wagner, Tomasz Wiślicz. Zabrze: Instytut Historyczny Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2008, pp. 17–25. Libera, Zbigniew. “The Borders of Western Boyko Land.” Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Prace Etnograficzne, Vol. 39, 2011, pp. 1–25. Motyka, Grzegorz. Od rzezi wołyńskiej do Akcji “Wisła.” Konflikt polsko-ukraiński 1943–1947. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2011. Nowak, Jacek. Zaginiony świat? Nazywają ich Łemkami. Kraków: Universitas, 2003. Ottenberg, Simon. “Thirty Years of Fieldnotes: Changing Relationship to the Text.” In: Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthropology, ed. Roger Sanjek. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1990, pp. 139–160. Peirano, Mariza. “When Anthropology Is at Home: The Different Contexts of a Single Discipline.” Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 27, 1998, pp. 105–128. Rabinow, Paul. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkley: University of California Press, 2007. Tedlock, Barbara. “From Participant Observation to the Observation of Participation: The Emergence of Narrative Ethnography.” Journal of Anthropology Research, Vol. 47, No. 1, 1991, pp. 69–94. Trzeszczyńska, Patrycja. “Folkloryzm i postfolkloryzm w kulturze łemkowskiej w Polsce.” In: Łemkowie, ed. Beata Machul-Telus. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 2013, pp. 127–150.

Magdalena Zowczak

The Locals (Tutejsi) and the Exiles: The Modernisation of Religious Culture in an Ethnographic Collage Abstract: I compare the fates of the Roman Catholic minority in Murafa and Greek Catholic minority in Biały Bór and their paths to modernisation against the background of the history of their respective churches, which are treated as each community’s metaphorical representations. The point of reference for this comparison is the practices of the heroic era, or the period of resistance to the totalitarian policies of atheisation and assimilation. After the systemic change in Poland and Ukraine, both minorities have introduced changes in their respective religious lives. Roman Catholics in Murafa, together with the change of the language of prayer and liturgy, have abandoned the memory baggage that unites them with the Polish tradition. They have built their current identity around localness, at the same time, moving towards the individualisation of religious life. The Greek Catholics in Biały Bór, united by the memory of forced resettlements, have constructed their religious identity within the boundaries of the Ukrainian ethnic religion. The participation in this community is conditioned by an individual’s response to the community’s moral challenges: the declaration of difference in reference to the Polish and Roman Catholic majority community. Out of a sense of bond with Ukraine, they use the same emblems as Greek Catholics from Western Ukraine. Confession is a matter of individual choice to a greater degree here than in Murafa, whereas the authority of priests is incomparably lower than that in Murafa. Both types of modernisation have deepened internal divisions within the two communities. Biały Bór’s ethnic religion has been overborne by the universal mysticism of the new Greek Catholic church, whose design draws heavily on the Early Christian traditions; the Greek Catholic faithful unhappy with its avant-garde character have constructed more traditional churches in Biały Bór’s vicinity. In Murafa, the older generation of Roman Catholics have been partially deprived of the local tradition, and part of their identity, along with it. However, Murafa remains “Our Lady’s garden” – a safe haven under God’s protection, in contrast to the secularised world of Biały Bór’s Greek Catholics, who see themselves as “a nation without homeland” and who perceive their language and liturgy as their greatest heritage. Keywords: religious life, confessional identity, diaspora, tradition, memory, Roman Catholics in Ukraine, Greek Catholics in Poland, the chain of memory, ethnic religion, Marian devotion, aesthetics, religious authority

In the “Introduction” section I presented the location of the churches belonging to the two minorities that became the subject of this book’s study as a visual, metaphorical representation of their status: a Latin rite Catholic church, fitted into the landscape and located in the centre of the Ukrainian village of Murafa, and a Greek Catholic church on the outskirts of Biały Bór, a town in Poland’s Western Territories, situated in a spatial counterpoint to the town’s two Roman Catholic churches.

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When the collapse of the old system, in 1989 and 1991 respectively, brought freedom of religious life to both minorities, its intensity and the faithful’s engagement stemmed from their identification with religion, treated as an inseparable part of their identity, as well as from the care and support from charismatic priests. These minorities differed in regard to their legacy and status, with the resettled Greek Catholics finding themselves in a less favourable position. But in the formerly German town of Baldenburg, their Polish neighbours were also new settlers. Although they had come earlier, had already occupied better houses and had their own church, their religious life under the communist regime was no paradise. Both in Murafa and Biały Bór, the return of religion to the public sphere also meant the end of a heroic era of resistance and significant shifts in religious culture: adjustments of the institution of domesticated religion to the Church’s organisational rules could, in fact, still be implemented in the early 2000s. The history of both communities and their paths to modernisation can also be metaphorically represented by the history of their respective churches at the beginning of the political transformation era. In Murafa, the church and the recovered adjoining monastic buildings complex were deprived of the context typical for the former shtetl’s structure:  the palace of the old landowner, Joachim Karol Potocki,1 from the north, and the 19th-century Jewish inn from the south (it was a unique historical building as described in tourist guides).2 These buildings, demolished when Ukraine was already independent, have left an empty space around the church; this sense of emptiness has been enhanced by the gradual dilapidation and dismantling of the nearby Jewish district, abandoned in the 1990s. But Murafa’s Catholic community preserved its greatest pride: the church, a fundamental longue durée structure. The carefully renovated church, along with the adjoining presbytery building, became a kind of aesthetic ideal for Podilian Catholics, and it might have even influenced the architecture of Murafa’s new Orthodox church. The older Catholic generation preserved the memory of their ancestors’ participation in the church’s construction, and mentions of the building constituted an honour of sorts for our interviewees, testifying to both their local and Polish roots. In Biały Bór, three places of worship used by the Greek Catholic community mark different stages of its symbolic history. From the conflictual guest-presence and alienation in the Roman Catholic church,3 to the post-Evangelical cemetery 1 Before the collapse of the USSR it served as a public health clinic (lekarnia), while the convent building was used as a housing unit. 2 Вениамин Лукин, Анна Соколова, Борис Хаймович, 100 еврейских местечек Украины: Исторический путеводитель, Выпуск 2. Подолия (Санкт-Петербург: А. Гершт, 2000), p. 219; Дмитрий Малаков, По Восточному Подолью (от Жмеринки до Могильeва-Подольского: путеводитель) (Москва: Искусство, 1988), p. 120. Both publications contain the photo of the inn from 1979. 3 Andrzej Maciupa quotes the statement of the Presidium of the National Council of the City of Człuchów, addressed to the higher authority: “Coexisting with the Polish population – it is not good! E.g., in Brzeź the priest recommended singing partly in

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Photo 1: The new Orthodox church of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, Murafa. Photo by Jędrzej Fulara, 2013.

chapel furnished after the style of old Greek Catholic churches in southern Poland, to the self-financed, original church in which only the patron’s icon of Our Lady of Exiles serves as a reminder of the past. Father Moisey Bogdan Drozd described the move from the chapel to the new church: On Friday, September 19th, 1997, a peregrination from the Greek Catholic cemetery chapel to the new church took place. The procession through the town headed towards its destination. The faithful were attached to the Ukrainian chapel. It was pretty sui generis exceptional. It had a unique atmosphere. We said goodbye to this place kneeling, with tears in our eyes, hoping that the future would be kinder for these people and to the Church which testified to the purity of their faith in Jesus Christ and His Church.4

Polish and partly in Ukrainian. After the Mass, women started to brawl, pulling each other’s hair” (Andrzej Maciupa, “Początki działalności Kościoła greckokatolickiego w Białym Borze w latach 1957-1977,” in: Ukraińcy w najnowszych dziejach Polski 1918–1989, ed. Roman Drozd (Słupsk: Akademia Pomorska, 2007), Vol. 3, p. 172.) 4 Moisiey Bogdan Drozd, “Dies Et Mens” [501]. Chrystusa nie poznają [Essay, part 2]: 15 Apr. 2018 http://www.dem.cerkiew.net.pl/index.php?site=diesetmens&id_mysl_ dnia=890&numer_wpisu=501.

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Photo 2: A liturgy on the Birth of the Virgin Mary feast, 2016. Photo by Urszula Rukat.

According to the notion of its designer, Jerzy Nowosielski, the new church represents Christian unity from before denominational divisions occurred, so it could be used for prayer by Catholics from both orders, as well as by the Orthodox faithful. The idea to invite this particular artist most likely came from the priests who studied in the Greek Catholic Seminary in Lublin. Nowosielski painted the iconostasis and epitaphios for their seminary chapel in 1988–89. The icons were created in Kraków, whereas on site, while living in the seminary, Nowosielski painted the royal door and deacons’ door. Clerics would pray at this chapel daily. Aso curate Piotr Baran, later the parish priest in Biały Bór, commented in an interview: “We all grew up on him.”5 Greek Catholics derive their Church from Kievan Rus’ tradition, considering it an Orthodox Church in union with the Roman Catholic Church and with the Pope 5

Krystyna Czerni, “Projekty i realizacje sakralne Jerzego Nowosielskiego dla Cerkwi greckokatolickiej,” in:  Światło Wschodu w przestrzeni gotyku. Materiały pokonferencyjne (Górowo Iławieckie: Parafia Greckokatolicka pw. Podwyższenia Krzyża Świętego w Górowie Iławieckim, 2013), p. 106.

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Photo 3: The Biały Bór’s church interior. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

as St. Peter’s successor. They consider themselves to simultaneously be Orthodox and Catholic, and their Church as an autonomous space for synthesis, a potential meeting place between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, two denominations which have contended for ages. In practice, however, their neighbours, Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests in particular, regard Greek Catholics as representatives from a competing denomination. Indeed, members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church themselves are often prone to characterise themselves in this light, more so in Poland, where religious identity usually coincides with ethnic identity. Similarly to Weber’s ideal types, the universal religious idea easily shifts towards the stereotype of a two-dimensional, mundane rationalisation, and in everyday practice towards the common-sense division between “us” and “strangers.” The idea of the union, however, created a foundation for spiritual development in Poland’s initial times of freedom during the early 1990s. Ukrainians from Biały Bór used that time to build their church, which represents the idea of a religious synthesis across divides. Incidentally, we should note the significant difference in both groups’ attitude towards the Orthodox Church (in practice – mainly towards the Church of the Moscow Patriarchate). In Murafa, despite the organisational alienness, cultural closeness prevails. Roman Catholics tend to belong to the perennial local tradition, and their confession does not place them in opposition to their Orthodox neighbours. One can also sense the clergy’s affinity for Greek Catholicism, perhaps partly related to the union-based cultural “background” which favoured both denominations’ intermingling in religious borderlands. In Biały Bór, where being Ukrainian is understood to be in opposition to “Moscow,” the Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is decidedly disliked, just as it is in Western Ukraine.

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Model of Changes I will present the directions of changes in religious culture after the political transformation in relation to the model formulated at the beginning, and then use it to describe the situation of both minorities. Religious culture creates the context for social drama (political transformation), providing it with symbols and action patterns. Both religious culture and social drama, determined by the political and economic transformation, are processual. However, the processes occurring within them can be considered as relatively autonomous, located between the conciliar modernisation of the Second Vatican Council (aimed at the adaptation of religion to everyday life, the empowerment of the faithful and ecumenical opening to other traditions) and the particularisation and turn towards the past, or even regression  – the return to the practices and imagery from before the Second Vatican Council – which occurred afterwards. Due to the individualisation of culture and the globalisation related to the development of new media, the dynamics of shifts in religious culture can be most generally depicted as a transitory period between the people’s Church and the Church of choice.6 Within this tendency, one can notice hesitation or oscillation within attitudes towards tradition, between departure and return, forgetting and remembering (in the Gadamerian sense). We do not see them as opposing, but as complementary. These tendencies often coexist or clash with one another; but in a given time it is possible to clearly distinguish the dominance of one or the other. At the same time, in the face of the assault of popular culture, religious life unfolds between tradition and commerciality, between Carnival and Lent. This last context metaphorically refers to the commutation of penance practices in the Catholic Church – the easing of fasting and the lifting the prohibition of festivities on Fridays– which also helped Catholics overcome other limitations, and which, after the rejection of religious discipline, helped them become more open to popular, i.e., consumer culture. In the changes which occurred in the studied communities’ religious culture, memory and attitude towards tradition play a significant role. This is why Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s theory, focusing on the religious dimension of memory,7 seems to reflect shifts occurring in both communities better than denominational analogies proposed by other Western scholars, such as those constructed by Jose Casanova or those which refer to Charles Taylor’s project.8 Denominational models correspond with the situation of religion in Western democracies, but they have limited 6 Terms introduced to the Polish sociology of religion by Władysław Piwowarski (Władysław Piwowarski, “Od ‘Kościoła ludu’ do ‘Kościoła wyboru,’ ” in: Socjologia religii, ed. Władysław Piwowarski, (Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 1996), pp. 265–279. 7 Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, trans. Simon Lee (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000). 8 José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Charles Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).

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relevance in Poland, to say nothing about vast former Soviet territories. It would certainly be more justified to evoke them when studying religious life in larger cities. But in provincial areas, on the border between the Catholic and Orthodox faith beyond Poland’s eastern border, everywhere in my ethnographic research I encountered the dominant principle: “I’ll die within the same faith in which I was born,” combined with a mistrust towards converts. Reality is much more complex than the direction of interpretation indicated in this model, but such a typological construction helps organise ethnographic observations collected on a microscale, concerning both tradition and shifts in religious culture. In Poland, during the explosion of liberalism caused by the political transformation, the Catholic population underwent a period of ecumenical openness, modernisation and innovation, reaching eclecticism sometimes akin to chaos, with “ecclesial keystones”9 creaking with effort; it opened to novelties which were brought by New Age trends and the influences of popular culture. In the last decade, however, a reverse process occurred: the closing off of Catholic communities to cultural differences, and thus a return of pre-Vatican Council forms of religiosity (e.g., liturgy in Latin, demonology and exorcisms). As the Society of Saint Pius X returned to the folds of the Church, accusations directed at the Second Vatican Council: of yielding to the influence of “Jews and Freemasons” re-emerged. While ecumenism  – despite the openness of current Pope Francis – has been criticised and gained the ominous aura of sin in conservative circles. These processes coincide with the nostalgic phase of remembrance, a return and reconstruction within social drama in which Manichean attitudes have become stronger, alongside those rejecting all that is considered different – all the way to cultural fundamentalism. In many respects, the religious culture of Greek Catholics in Biały Bór matches the model presented above:  a local ethnic religion which initially reactively responded to the ecumenical opening in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it formed a community with Roman Catholics at the time of Pope John Paul II’s pilgrimages, and then distanced itself from them in response to xenophobic tendencies escalating in Poland after 2010. At the same time, due to assimilation processes, including bilingualism and the creation of a new, shared locality (and elite) with Roman Catholics, a part of this group – in my opinion going beyond just the elite – displays an ecumenical attitude of openness and looks towards the future. This is evidenced by the previously quoted description of a “solemn translation” to the new Greek Catholic church, written by Father Moisiey Drozd. The most distinctive symbol of these tendencies is this unique “Church from the future.”

9 Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz’s description of the heightened activities of diverse religious communities in Warsaw; “Zwyczajne duszpasterstwo w niezwyczajnym mieście. Z arcybiskupem Kazimierzem Nyczem, metropolitą warszawskim, rozmawiają ks. Adam Boniecki i ks. Jacek Prusak,” Tygodnik Powszechny, No. 48 (2009): 10 Mar. 2018 http:// prasa.wiara.pl/doc/459162.Zwyczajne-duszpasterstwo-w-niezwyczajnym-miescie/2.

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If Greek Catholics are radicalising on the national dimension, it is to a large extent the reaction of a minority towards the current political situation:  antiUkrainian stereotypes and the sentiments of certain Polish milieus, mainly external (in Biały Bór they are represented by a small but distinctively active, charismatic community of Roman Catholics, operating under the patronage of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour) and towards the media’s manner of depicting Ukrainians and Polish-Ukrainian relations. Forefathers’ tradition is greatly valued in Biały Bór, and one of its symbols is the Taras Shevchenko monument dominating the space around the school complex named after the poet, where students are taught in Ukrainian. Nearby, plaques were installed to commemorate Operation Vistula forced resettlements, with a long list of towns from which people were deported to Poland’s Western Territories. Even though Greek Catholics had been completely deprived of their material heritage (or perhaps due to that fact?) the attachment to tradition did not impede their modernisation. More active than the Polish majority, they constitute a competing, original culture, drawing from both their national sources. In the case of Murafa, the difficulty in placing shifts of the Roman Catholics’ religious culture within the aforementioned model is greater, since the political transformation in Ukraine occurred differently than it did in Poland. In the 1990s, Poles were generally enthusiastic about the European Union. In Podilia, located in central Ukraine, despite the interdenominational and even interfaith coexistence that developed over the ages, attitudes towards the European policy of multiculturalism, ecumenism and especially moral and social changes were and are permeated by conservatism, and the European Union (Ukr.: Європейський Союз) itself is often regarded (not without the contribution of Russian television and the “Moscow” Orthodox church) as a nihilistic regime, similar to the former USSR. The nearby border with Moldova and the war in the east create conditions for smuggling, exacerbating already widespread corruption. These factors impact the distanced attitudes of residents from this part of Ukraine towards the EU, often against the intentions of those who demonstrated their pro-European support during the Orange Revolution of 2004–2005 and on Kyiv’s Euromaindan (Ukr.: Єв ромайдан) in 2013. Meanwhile, the regression in Polish–Ukrainian relations in the last decade has been the result of the nationalisation of memory that contributed to the escalation of divisions and conflict. To outline the point of departure for the summary and interpretation of shifts that occurred in religious culture during the transformation period, I will go back to the 1960s when the 21st Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church initiated the reform of religious life in Rome.

The Heroic Era: Strict Rules In the USSR, the implementation of post-conciliar changes was riddled with much more serious obstacles than in the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL) where, incidentally, under the direction of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, the Church reinforced

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popular folk religiosity, which was deeply rooted in the national culture. While in the 1960s many similarities between the two religious minorities can be indicated (social marginalisation, harassment of the clergy and religious individuals, stronger scrutiny from the secret police, compulsory work on religious holidays), in Podilia, the isolation of Catholics from the Church organisation and the only few priests working in the region in many respects not only hindered, but even prevented post-conciliar changes. Father Józef Kuczyński, the parish priest in Bar since 1966, described changes introduced in the late 60s by priests working in Podilia at the time (including the parish priest of Sharhorod, and then Murafa, Father Chomicki) in the following manner: There is no bishop’s authority over us and we are guided only by what we hear on the radio or read in press clippings sent by our colleagues from Poland; and as we learn more, we try and adhere to the introduced guidelines. In every church, we have already placed the liturgical table so that we consecrate the Mass facing the congregation; however, it is not standing in the centre of the church, but by the side, next to the balustrade, on the side of the Gospel. The entire Mass is in Polish, which is well received by the faithful. Only elderly people had to be told to close their prayer books, put away their rosaries and pray with everyone else during Mass: it is difficult for them to get used to. I also do not insist that they stand up or kneel: for some people it’s very uncomfortable, especially since we don’t have a lot of sitting places, and usually the elderly are in the pews [...]10

As to prayers and Catechism: Women know them more often than men, who are very difficult to teach: most only finished four grades. When they don’t know Polish and don’t know prayers, we use the copies of prayers written down in Russian letters, telling them to learn it or copy them by hand into a notebook, and learn them on their work breaks.11

The faithful learned and got used to it, which I could observe in an amateur film shot in Murafa in the early 1990s, when after a Mass, they easily talked in Polish with the visiting Polish bishop. It must have been shortly before the death of Father Chomicki who appears in the film, i.e., before 1993. But the activity of these priests was largely conducted clandestinely (Pl. podpolny) and was based on preconciliar tradition. It was manifested primarily in radical and absolute adherence to sacramental life with the application of collective responsibility. Father Kuczyński writes about difficult decisions he had made in certain cases:

10 Ks. Józef Kuczyński, Między parafią a łagrem (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Spotkania, 2017), p. 137. 11 Ks. Kuczyński, Między parafią a łagrem, p. 142.

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Pastoral methods that emerged in the area, perhaps odd, introduced by the priests who worked here before me, like Fathers Chomicki and Zarzycki, worked thusly: to ensure that everyone takes care of the confession of the sick before their death, they introduced a particular rule which said that if someone participated in a funeral of a person who didn’t go to confession before they died, they too were subjected to punishment. Also when someone didn’t go to confession at Easter or committed suicide, the faithful were forbidden to attend such a funeral under the pain of severe penance or the refusal of absolution for a certain time.12 If parents organised a wedding for their child who wasn’t married in church, the priest would refuse to hear their confession, and their relatives or neighbours who attended this ‘illegitimate’ wedding were given severe penance that could last up to several years.13 etc.

Another rigorously applied “educational” practice was combatting alcoholism, omnipresent wherever sugar beets were traditionally cultivated to produce sugar, which was often used as a form of remuneration. Priests would not absolve making and selling homebrew. The religious culture of Greek Catholics from Biały Bór must have largely taken form already in the new place, after the resettlement. Although the first period of the parish operations was overseen by Father Stefan Dziubyna, a conscious Ukrainian who was educated before the war in the Greek Catholic seminary in Przemyśl, part of the resettled population was illiterate (they signed acts granting land ownership by drawing a cross instead of a signature).14 Anti-Ukrainian state policy, whose symptoms can be pointed out in numerous films and novels – books from school reading lists from the times of the PRL – was consistently building a negative stereotype of Ukrainians, contributing to laying the collective blame on them for the crimes committed in Volhynia and collaboration with the Nazis. One of my Polish interviewees, a teacher and daughter of a settler from the earliest group, told me that Ukrainians would not admit their national identity. When I asked her why so, visibly confused, she only said: “Because they were ashamed.” Why? – I kept asking. “Because it was something bad,” she answered, and I could not get anything more out of her. The Greek Catholics of Biały Bór were therefore marked primarily due to their nationality, while Podilian Roman Catholics were primarily marked due to their religious culture. In both cases the mark caused isolation, which contributed to

1 2 Ks. Kuczyński, Między parafią a łagrem, pp. 140–141. 13 Ks. Kuczyński, Między parafią a łagrem, pp. 140–141. 14 In the early 1950s, illiteracy among settlers was universal. According to statistical research from 1963, 43.2 % of the population in Western Pomerania above the age of 50 did not finish primary education. (Janina Kosman, “Książka musi opanować Ziemie Odzyskane. Z czasów pionierskich książki i czytelnictwa na Pomorzu Zachodnim (1945–1949),” Przegląd Zachodniopomorski, No. 31/2 (2016), pp. 108–109.

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creating barriers and restrictions in the introduction of decisions made by the Second Vatican Council.

Language and Tradition: The Chain of Memory Reinvented The most important means of religious culture’s expression, and thus both minorities’ characteristics, are closely interrelated liturgy and musical tradition. While language is their consolidating element. Changing language, even if in many cases it means precisely translating liturgy, old prayers and songs, means, in fact, that a cultural change is also taking place, due to either the interrelatedness of everyday life and religious life (the way it is in Murafa) or their sacral separation (as occurs in Biały Bór’s case). In Biały Bór, Ukrainian is also the school language for children from Greek Catholic families, but it is rarely a domestic one, which implies that identity is still constructed within the sphere of ideals, including patriotism and national martyrdom, with the memory of the resettlement at the forefront. Symptomatic for this construction are ritual pilgrimages to forefathers’ birthplaces in the opposite part of Poland. Although Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic priests do not exclude the possibility of changing the language of liturgy to Polish in the near future (which would be difficult to accept for many members of the oldest generation), the Ukrainian tradition, strongly linked to the resettlement trauma, is carefully cultivated. Greek Catholics’ religious culture continues to resist popular culture here, and it refers to traditional Ukrainian models, reconstructed by teachers on the basis of pre-war publications and accounts of the resettled generation. As this generation slips away, the culture becomes increasingly prone to assimilation, which inspires such reactions as the establishment of an informal institution of a Ukrainian matchmaker, and more generally – the sacralisation of peasant folklore, typical for contemporary Ukraine. Ukrainians from Biały Bór still feel as a wandering people, a people with no land to call their own.15 There is a sense of distress that never leaves them. This is evidenced by the words of a teenage high school girl, filmed in 2010 by TVP reporter Brian Scott. I am from Biały Bór, and even though I’m very attached to my town, because a lot of my family and friends live here and I can speak Ukrainian here, I don’t know if I can

15 Biały Bór’s Ukrainian minority manifests all features of a diaspora as listed by Steven Vertovec (after Anthony Cohen and William Safran), except for one: “The development of the return movement that gains collective approbation” (p. 133). I have heard about the idea of the return of the resettled people to their former homeland, promoted by the Ukrainian minority activists from larger towns and cities, but I have not noticed any enthusiasm for it among my interlocutors. See: Steven Vertovec, Transnationalism, (London and New York: Routledge and Taylor and Francis Group, 2009) in particular Chapter 6: “Religious transformation,” pp. 128–155.

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call this place my homeland. I think – at least I feel very strongly – that a person who doesn’t live in their ancestors’ land doesn’t have a homeland. Because I  don’t feel entirely at home here, because you know – I live according to a bit [of a] different tradition than the one which is here, don’t I? When I go to the south of Poland, it’s not my home either; I’m there only on vacation, so I can’t say it’s my homeland one hundred percent. When I’m on holidays in Ukraine, those people usually just treat me like a Pole who can speak Ukrainian. So I can’t really say I’m at home either, can I? And that’s one of the problems that people like me, all of us, have. Because we don’t have our own homeland, not a proper one.16

In Murafa, conscious modernisation of the Catholic minority’s religious culture means primarily abandoning its Polish roots and introducing the Ukrainian language into the liturgy. Certainly, the current generation of priests and nuns hope this will eliminate, in their view, the excessive ritualistic nature of traditional practices. They consider much of what belongs to the previous religious tradition as mechanical, of little value, and believe it requires an adjustment aiming at the individualisation of religious life and creation of prayer communities. This adjustment is motivated by the conviction that “wherever tradition is strong, there is very little faith.”17 Until recently, the central form of the Murafa’s Catholics’ worship was the participation in the Sunday sum Mass18: the entire family had to attend, “wherever they were, whatever plans they had,” as the parish priest said not that long ago. Within less than two years of my observations, the attendance of the Sunday sum Mass has significantly decreased, because an earlier Mass for children has been organised, which is now attended by entire families, especially mothers with young children. According to their mission, the priests in Murafa do not want to simply “dispense religious services,” and they want to transform their parishioners into “witnesses of faith.” But they do realise that forms of expression characteristic for certain charismatic communities (e.g., glossolalia or spontaneous dancing in church) are unacceptable even for Murafa’s younger Catholic generation, and experienced as alien and heretical (associated with Protestant groups, here called Shtundy). That is why – as was explained to me – the group called Renewal in the Holy Spirit comprised of a handful of women, is “not charismatic,” but a milder, more focused one on praying, more adapted to local sensibilities. What priests consider to be the

16 The film Ukraiński Biały Bór (“Ukrainian Biały Bór”) was produced as a part of the series Etniczne klimaty (episode 102). Series author and coordinator: Waldemar Janda, reporter and narrator: Brian Scott, originally from Guyana, DOP: Dariusz Pawelec. Production: Oddział TVP S. A. Kraków. Broadcast on 22 May 2010: 16 Apr. 2018 http://krakow.tvp.pl/1849239/ukrainski-bialy-bor-16-i-2010-odc-102/. 17 I quote one of the priests here, a Ukrainian from the Gródek Podolski area. His grandmother’s father, a Pole, was executed by a firing squad in Kamianets-Podilskyi in the 1930s. 18 The main Mass on Sunday.

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greatest threat to faith is religious indifference, when “one can only rely on oneself.” But universal shuttle labour migrations change stationary farmers into nomads who must primarily rely on themselves. It brings chaos to family life, contributes to marriages falling apart and causes an increase in obligations towards people on both sides of the border. Hard, seven-days-a-week seasonal work in Poland often prevents the faithful from attending Sunday Mass and involves a new ritual of visiting the shopping centre.19 I asked one of the nuns born here about the reasons behind the current Murafa elite’s dislike of the Polish language and tradition. She described her reaction to the behaviour of her Polish superior who had not coped with her war trauma – a baggage of personal experiences – and projected her negative emotions on Ukrainian novices. Incidentally, the nun raised the issue of the Pole’s Card, confirming the parish priest’s opinion that it inspired an interest in families’ histories. AB: [...] there was a time in my life when if they would tell me that having Polish roots I’m a Pole, I’d answer: no, I’m Ukrainian. There was a time, a strange moment came, maybe that one for example, when we studied  – we completed our novitiate in Poland, da? And there was an elderly sister, she was from Volhynia, and Ukrainians slaughtered her entire family before her eyes. And she couldn’t accept us mentally, the fact that we, Ukrainians, came to study. She kept bullying us, and we didn’t know why. And there was this sense, although they gave us this sense of difference in the convent, and sometimes it inspired something in your heart... MZ: A protest? AB: Like a protest, a dislike, da? When you came back here, then – even though we, generally I like Poland and Polish people and everything, but sometimes there was this feeling. [...] When the Pole’s Card started here, and when learning and I talked, since my dad had died two years before, I talked with my mom – about the roots, da? And it turned out that somewhere in my distant family I have a priest who even works in Poland. And then the parish priest laughed at me. He said: so what, [are you of] Ukrainian or Polish origin? I said: alright. I’m an Orthodox Catholic, Ukrainian of Polish origin. So we laughed, and just two months ago, I also got the Pole’s Card. But – even though I’m not attached, but it’s just the way it is and the way it looks now – young priests here in Ukraine, I’m not entirely sure why it is so, but they very strongly... MZ: They are trying to eliminate Polish? AB: Yes. It even recently somehow turned out that I  didn’t like it, I  even started to defend it, and I was surprised even to myself; it’s not that I want to defend anyone, but... And yesterday the priest at the pilgrimage said in a conference that we should pray for our nation, da? And be proud of our language, but not bully and trample on where our faith came from. Because that’s the truth, da? [...] It’s sad to hear

19 Cf. Katarzyna Kaczmarska, “Narratives about the Pole’s Card and Its Impact on the Identity of the Murafa’s Residents,” included in this volume.

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Magdalena Zowczak what they write [priests resenting the Polish language – MZ], because our church has a website; [...] we just posted a video, a Christmas carol and this family likes to have everything in Polish. So it was on the Internet. And we got one comment, I responded with another comment – and always a heated discussion [starts – MZ] that it’s [the comment is] in Polish; and one of them was a priest, I know his sister, she’s a nun as well, [...] I couldn’t understand: why are they so against it. We do go through all the studies in Poland, da? We get the formation from Poland and even the same – it’s called roots, yes? Like our origin is there, and how many people... yesterday this saint Father Ludwik20 was discussed; they said he came alone from Poland and Ukrainians killed him in Ukraine, and there is this mutual connection. I mean, Sister Klara21 came here from Poland, too, da? Thanks to her we have our congregation here and we, as the younger [generation], can’t stand up and say: alright, no one forbids us, no one says not to say we’re Ukrainians, but our roots are from there. And we should be grateful – that’s what upsets me, as a person, and as a believer, these things. I can’t really understand, why they treat it like that.22

20 Father Ludwik Wrodarczyk (1907–1943), Polish monk, administrator of the parish of St. John the Baptist in Okopy in the Lutsk diocese of Volhynia, Righteous Among the Nations, murdered by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), Roman Catholic Servant of God. 21 Sister Klara (Klementyna Staszczak [1905–1991]) of the Congregation of Missionary Benedictine Sisters, Polish nun, for many years worked in Ukraine (in Bar, among other places) where she renewed the Congregation’s activities. She worked with Father Chomicki. 22 The original quotation goes as follows: […] był taki moment w moim życiu też, że jak mi mówiły, że masz polskie korzenie, że ty Polka, to ja mówiłam: nie, Ukrainka. Był taki moment, jakaś taka chwila przyszła, może tego na przykład wziąć, że studiowałyśmy – nowicjat przechodziłyśmy w Polsce – da? I starsza siostra taka była, która pochodziła z Wołyni i na jej oczach Ukraińcy wyrezały całą rodzinę. I ona nie mogła nas przyjąć psychicznie, że my przyjeżdżamy Ukraińcy studiować tam. Ona nas gnębiła, my nie wiedziały czego? I było takie poczucie, choć w klasztorze dali poczucie tej różnicy takiej, i też czasami w sercu rodziło takie… MZ.: Bunt? AB: Taki bunt, niechęć – da? Jak się wracało tutaj, to choć – że my, ogólnie ja bardzo lubię Polskę i polski naród, wszystko, ale czasami takie się rodziło takie poczucie. […] Jak tutaj się zaczęła ta Karta Polaka, uczenie się, i rozmawiałam, bo tato mi już dwa lata jak zmarł, rozmawiałam z mamą – powstania korzenie – da? I okazało się, że nawet w swojej rodzinie gdzieś daleko mam księdza, który właśnie w Polsce nawet pracuje. No i ksiądz proboszcz zaczął się ze mnie śmiać. Mówi: no to co, Ukrainka polskiego pochodzenia? Mówię: dobrze. Ja jestem prawosławną katoliczką, Ukrainką polskiego pochodzenia. I tak my się śmiały, właśnie już dwa miesiące temu, też otrzymałam Kartę Polaka. Ale – nawet nie

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But we should not assume that language in Murafa was ever fixedly assigned to national identity. Slightly archaic, pre-conciliar Polish opposed Ukrainian rather like a language of sacrum opposes everyday speech, natural communication, similarly to the way Latin opposed national languages before the Second Vatican Council. Both traditions are Ukrainian, both are local. The Polish tradition in Podilia gained a particular dolorous tinge in the context of centuries’ long religious persecutions of Latin Catholics. It was recreated and shaped in difficult post-war times by Polish clergymen who had survived the experience of prison camps. Let us study it as a longue durée institution in the context of the information regarding Catholics’ language in this part of Podilia, presented in a similar light in two accounts, separated by almost a century. Edward Chłopicki wrote about Polish peasants in Murafa in the account of his journey: he visited these parts in the 1870s during a church festival. Moved by the congregation’s “uplifting piety,” he described it in his correspondence for Warsaw weekly Kłosy:  “These peasants, like those in Sharhorod, almost all of the Catholic faith, once brought by local magnates from Masovia to Ruthenia in the Bug

jestem też powiązana, ale jakoś to tak jest i zaraz patrząc na to – że młodzi księża tutaj na Ukrainie, nie wiem do końca z czym to jest powiązane, ale bardzo mocno jakoś tak… MZ: Starają się eliminować język polski? AB: Tak. Właśnie nawet ostatnio tak wyszło troszeczku też, że nie podobało mi się to, nawet zaczęłam bronić tego, właśnie sama sobie też zdziwiłam się, nie o to chodzi, że ja tam chcę kogoś obronić też, ale… I wczoraj bardzo fajnie właśnie na pielgrzymce w konferencji ksiądz też mówił, że mamy modlić się o swój naród – da?, szczycić się swoim językiem, ale nie gnębić i nie stawać butami na to, co z czego powstała nasza wiara. Bo taka jest prawda – da? […] przykro to słuchać, jak piszą [księża niechętni językowi polskiemu – MZ], bo my mamy stronę internetową naszego kościoła […] wyszło po prostu z tego, że my wystawiłyśmy wideo, kolędę i ta rodzina bardzo lubi, żeby było wszystko po polsku. No i było to w Internecie. I dostałyśmy jeden komentarz, ja odpisałam, drugi komentarz – i zawsze się taka mocna właśnie dyskusja [wywiązuje – MZ], że po polsku i to też był ksiądz, znam jego siostrę rodzoną, też zakonnicą jest, […] nie mogłam zrozumieć: czego jest, aż tak, że przeciwko. Przecież studia przechodzimy wszystkie w Polsce – da? Dostajemy formację z Polski i nawet te same – to się nazywają te korzenie – da?, że bierzemy, bierzemy jakby początek stamtąd, a ile było ludzi… wczoraj o tym świętym księże Ludwiku opowiadano, że właśnie był tutaj sam z Polski i Ukraińcy go zabiły na Ukrainie tego księdza, i to jest właśnie to, jest to wzajemne powiązanie. Znaczy siostra Klara tutaj przyjechała też z Polski – da?, że o, dzięki jej nasze zgromadzenie jest tutaj i my nie możemy jako młodzi wstać i powiedzieć: dobrze, nikt nie broni, nikt nie mówi – da, że nie zabrania nam mówić, że jesteśmy Ukraińcami, ale że nasze korzenie ciągną się stamtąd. I powinniśmy być wdzięczni – o to mnie właśnie, jako człowieka, da, jako wierzącego mnie to boli, te rzeczy. Nie mogę zrozumieć do końca, czego oni tak to traktują.

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Basin, lost their native tongue with time, but preserved their customs and clothing entirely.” He noted, “in conversation, the people of Murafa seemed very warm, gentle and much more intelligent than their brethren living by the Vistula River.” Chłopicki also remarks that they were well-off people, as he saw one and three rouble banknotes presented as offerings at church.23 The previously quoted parish priest from Bar, Father Józef Kuczyński, a friend of Father Chomicki since their transportation to a prison camp in Vorkuta, wrote that unlike the so-called Mazurians (Polish peasants) who lived further to the West,24 his parishioners “speak Polish only with their priest, while Mazurians keep their language in everyday life.” “In this region, the Church plays an important role in maintaining Polish identity,” Father Kuczyński continues. In prayers and church songs, when reading books, people keep their mother tongue. But they do not use it in their everyday life. When neighbours want to be polite, they refer to Poles as Pan (“Mister” in Polish). But when conflicts occur, they use disrespectful diminutives: polaczok, laszok. And in anger, they use phrases like ‘you Polish skin, you Polish mug.’ We used these insults in our pastoral and national work. I explained to people that they can’t hide their nationality anyway; they should do quite the opposite and try to be one hundred percent Catholics and Poles. Then they’d be able to respond to the insults by saying that it’s not the “skin” that counts, be it Polish or Ukrainian, but internal values.25

The people Father Kuczyński refers to as “we” also include Father Chomicki, mentioned in the preceding fragment of the memoir. So what foundations did Polish priests have to conduct Catechism in Polish? Children prepare for their First Communion in Polish, by learning prayers and the Catechism in their native tongue. The ground is usually already prepared by the family. Grandmothers play a crucial role in children’s education; they teach their grandchildren first prayers when the parents are at work. [...] Older children even borrow books to read from me [...]; I managed to organise two evenings with poetry declamation competitions, where we all sang traditional songs “Płynie Wisła, płynie” and recited: “Who are you? A little Pole” and at the end: “What do you believe in? I believe in Poland.”26

23 Edward Chłopicki, “Od Buga do Bohu. Wspomnienia z podróży,” Kłosy, Vol. 21, No. 547 (1875), p. 411. 24 I.e., among other places, lands around Horodok Podolski, where before WWI, the parish congregation had more than ten thousand members, while the parish in Bar had ca. seven thousand. “This region was considerably affected by deportations to Kazakhstan and repressions executed in 1937, but thanks to the birth rate, the population surely didn’t drop,” estimates Father Kuczyński. “Whether in the Gródek, or in Bar’s parish, people got their priests only because they forcefully demanded them (Ks. Kuczyński, Między parafią a łagrem, p. 133). 25 Ks. Kuczyński, Między parafią a łagrem, pp. 134–135. 26 Ks. Kuczyński, Między parafią a łagrem, p. 135.

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Father Kuczyński mirrors Edward Chłopicki’s impressions also when it comes to financial provision: Thanks to my parishioners’ generosity, I live very comfortably. The offerings allow me to support myself, as well as the church staff, including two organists. Labourers who do work in the church also profit from my upkeep, and my sister manages the rest, feeding those who need it.27

In the household registers, the so-called Погосподарські книги,28 from the years 1947–1949 which I  browsed through at Murafa’s sielrada (Ukr.:  сільрада, town council), within the list of residents made along with a meticulously collected inventory of farms, there was only one person registered as a Polish national among Ukrainians and Jews, born in 1887. He lived in the centre of the town and worked as a bookkeeper in the kolkhoz (Ukr.: колхоз, collective farm). I was shown his abandoned house; I  learned that he was not religious. How he managed to get such a status in his papers will surely remain a mystery. According to older interviewees, during the census, officials would explain to them that since they lived in Ukraine they were Ukrainians, and this is what they would write in their papers regardless of their declarations. There is a story going around Murafa that the parish priest, Father Antoni Chomicki, a Pole born in Podlasie, told the census officials to write him down as Jewish since only two options were available. In June 2008, upon driving into Sharhorod, one would see three signposts with three versions of the town’s name. In 2011, they were gone29 and only the funeral home in the town centre maintained its sign in three languages. The change of the liturgy’s language to that of the faithful was, in fact, made according to the Second Vatican Council’s recommendations to make church services understandable to the congregation. However, it has been painful for the generation that managed to preserve its faith in difficult times and who built and renovated the churches. Both the Church’s taking over the children’s catechisation and its changing the language of liturgy have considerably undermined the grandparents’ generation. The prayers learnt in childhood as family heritage were often their only link to the Polish language and culture.30 Meanwhile, the catechist 2 7 Ks. Kuczyński, Między parafią a łagrem, p. 135. 28 Погосподарські книги were introduced in Ukraine instead of parish books after the October Revolution. See: Ірина М. Батирєва, “ ‘Погосподарські книги’ як джерело вивчення етносоціальної та етнодемографічної ситуації на Вінниччині у повоєнний період (на прикладі с. Мурафа Шаргородського р-ну Вінницької обл.),” Вісник Інституту історії, етнології і права: зб. наук. пр. Вип. 8. (2010), pp. 106–113. 29 This information was given to me along with the photographs by an IEiAK graduate, Zuzanna Żubka, whom I would like to thank here. 30 Cf. Magdalena Zowczak, “O długim trwaniu Polaków na Podolu. Imponderabilia tożsamości,” in: Podole i Wołyń. Szkice etnograficzne, ed. Łukasz Smyrski, Magdalena Zowczak (Warszawa: Wyd. DiG, 2003), pp. 9–76.

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Photo 4: A signboard of the funeral home in Sharhorod with inscriptions in Ukrainian, Polish and Yiddish. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak, 2013.

announced a couple of years ago that children who were taught the Catechism and prayers in Polish would not be admitted to the First Communion until they learned the Ukrainian version.31 The elimination of the Polish language from the seminary established in the 1990s in Horodok Podolski in the neighbouring Khmelnytskyi Oblast also has played its role. As one of its professors, and one of Murafa’s oldest priests, told me, “almost all lecturers are now ours,” meaning they are Ukrainian. Priests who study there usually come from families with Polish roots. They form the local elite and make decisions about the face of Catholicism in Podilia. Religious culture undergoes a certain familiarisation – cultural intimacy characterised, however, by indifference, or even disinclination towards the earlier local tradition. Despite labour and study migration to Poland, as well as the considerable presence of Polish lecturers during the first years after Horodok’s Podolski seminary opened, and after the death of Father Antoni Chomicki, who treated his

31 Priests in Murafa were still more liberal and delicate than Franciscan brothers in nearby Sharhorod. I talked to the local, nearly 90-year-old catechist who cried when telling me she would love to attend a Polish Mass in her church once more. Unfortunately, the only remaining Polish Masses were called off each subsequent week, so the old lady’s wish remained unfulfilled.

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parishioners as “his people – Poles,”32 local Catholicism has become linked to the Ukrainian identity. It does not have a radical national character as in the Greek Catholics’ case. Rather, it is the acceptance of the status quo in the sense of the local identity, accompanied by the rejection of the unwanted and burdening Polish tradition. A gesture symbolic for this tendency was removing the portrait of Joachim Karol Potocki, the church’s founder, from the side entry to the church narthex.33 On the one hand, these changes oppose the nostalgia, fit into forgetting, opening the church to everyday life. On the other hand, the exclusion of Polish elements of tradition, associated with the rejected Polishness understood as “lordliness,” demonstrates the presence of the resentment related to the previous epoch, thus slowing down the creative impetus of modernisation. Having rejected its tradition, the minority turns towards popular culture and adjusts to contemporary popular aesthetics. Catholics’ religious culture does not seem to be in competition with 32 “Why do you Ukrainianise my people?” he reportedly asked the priest who filled in for him when Chomicki was ill, according to the account by his inseparable friend, organist Eugeniusz Swarcewicz, shared with us during our conversations as well as in his manuscript Krótkim życiorysie życia i pracy organistego. The unquestionable equating of the Catholic population with the Polish nationality by Polish priests was confirmed by the previously cited memoirs of Father Józef Kuczyński, the parish priest of the nearly Bar since 1966 (Ks. Kuczyński, Między parafią a łagrem, pp. 134–135). 33 Joachim Karol Potocki, one of the leaders of the Bar Confederation, an armed rebellion of the Polish nobility in defence of the Catholic faith and Poland’s independence; after the Confederation’s defeat and emigration he withdrew from public life, settled in Murafa and “completely devoted himself to the improvement of his fellow men’s life.” He managed to organise two fairs a year, established a saltpeter factory and craftsmen’s guilds, and he paved and planted trees along the main street. He built a “relatively modest residence,” and reconstructed, or rather completely rebuilt, a Dominican church founded by Jadwiga Bełzka nee Jazłowiecka in 1627, destroyed during Cossack wars (Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, ed. Bronisław Chlebowski, Filip Sulimierski, Władysław Walewski (Warszawa: Filip Sulimierski and Władysław Walewski, 1885), Vol. 6, p. 666. The entry Morachwa written by Dr. Eugeniusz Maryański from Jarmolińce in Podilia; Roman Aftanazy, Dzieje rezydencji na dawnych Kresach Rzeczypospolitej, (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1997), Vol. 11, p. 266).  The portrait of “graf” Potocki still welcomed us in the church vestibule in 2012; it was then taken down for renovation and was not returned to the church. Placing founders’ portraits in church vestibules was a common custom in Podilia. It was also customary to bury the founders in the crypt under the church threshold, which in Murafa gave rise to a local legend about the count’s protective spirit that was credited with saving the church. “Sometimes pious Polish lords ordered themselves to be buried in the vestibule as a sign of their spiritual humility and penitence, so that their ashes would be trodden on by everyone who enters the church.” (Zygmunt Gloger, Encyklopedia staropolska (Warszawa: P. Laskauer i W. Babicki, 1902), Vol. 3.): 26 Apr. 2015 http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Encyklopedia_staropolska/Kruchta.

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Photo 5: A portrait of Joachim Karol Potocki (1725 – 1791), Murafa’s landlord, that used to hang over the south entry to the church narthex until 2013. Photo by Rafał Bieryło.

Orthodoxy here, facilitating the former group’s symbiotic functioning as locals and “ours.”34 It means the chain of memory is reinvented – to use a term coined by Danièle Hervieu-Léger, who thus perceives the contemporary role of religion. Creating substitution memories that enable individuals and social groups to take roots replaces the lost collective memory that  – once acquired “naturally”  – rarely became a subject of reflection. The interlocutors in Murafa claimed that, at best, about sixty people from the older generation would admit to being Polish (and this was three years ago). This sense of bond with Poland was usually accompanied by pro-Western political sympathies. The division between those who feel ties with

34 Cf. Maria Sokołowska’s article “Language and Identity: Murafa’s Catholic Population on Language Changes in the Church,” included in this volume.

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Russia and Orthodoxy and those who feel ties with contemporary Ukraine, the West and the European Union or those who feel a bond with Poland deepened during our research due to the Russian invasion and Russia’s media propaganda, especially since Russian TV channels are very popular in this part of Ukraine.

Social Lineage of Tradition The greatest difference between the two minorities is their approach to tradition. A structural, in a way, cultural difference between Poles and Ukrainians is connected with tracing their lineage to either peasantry or nobility. From the perspective of post-Soviet stereotypes, used and preserved an old feudal antagonism, Latin rite Catholicism as “the religion of masters” inspires antipathy; it is perceived as hostile and an element of an exploitation-based social hierarchy. These negative connotations contribute to the aversion of Ukrainian Catholics towards former tradition. Even worse, their experiences in contact with Poles often reinforce this aversion (as evidenced by the nun’s account quoted above). In the Polish People’s Republic (PRL), during the era of industrialisation and mass migrations from the countryside to the cities, the distance between the culture of elites, previously modelled mostly after the nobility, and peasant culture, identified with countryside folklore, was artificially maintained. The latter was marked as a synonym of backwardness – the attitude towards it is manifested in the language: there are negative, even insulting phrases in Polish, referring to people of country origin, such as kmiot, wsiok and wiocha (“yokel,” “bumpkin,” “in the sticks”). It is a paradox, since in the ruined post-war Poland, practically deprived of elites, most inhabitants of large cities hailed from the country. Furthermore, linguistic closeness between Poles and Ukrainians leads to connotations and emotions linked to these stereotypes, which are already noticeable at the level of reaction to the melody of a language, as well as associations with words. Meanwhile in Ukraine, the folklore, more vigorous and richer than in Poland, remains the main source for constructing national identity. This pertains particularly to Greek Catholics and their home turf, Western Ukraine and cities like Vinnytsia. There, especially since Euromaidan and the Russian invasion, we can observe the constant folklore carnival, ignited by the needs of a young country whose society lives in fear for their independence. These sacralising attitudes towards folklore also relate to the Ukrainian diaspora in Poland, including Greek Catholics in Biały Bór. So far, it does not concern Murafa’s Roman Catholics, but it is probably just a matter of time. The sight of one of the local Catholic priests in an embroidered sorochka (Ukr.: сорочка (traditional Ukrainian peasant shirt) shocked a Murafian Catholic woman who is deeply attached to traditional forms of religiousness and involved in church life. “We’ve never had something like this here!” she commented, appalled, the phenomenon symptomatic of the chain of memory reinvention that culturally brings Ukrainian Roman and Greek Catholics  – including those in Biały Bór  – closer together.

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Photo 6: The carnival of folklore in Vinnytsia on the Independence Day in 2016: pottery masterclass. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Photo 7: Vinnytsia. The Independence Day, 2016: Korovai – a traditional festive bread. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

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Photo 8: Vinnytsia. The Independence Day, 2016: children in festive dresses. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Boiling Blood: On the Conflict of Memories To determine attitudes towards tradition more precisely, it is necessary to take the memory cultivated by communities into account. In Biały Bór, Ukrainian identity is constructed by practicing opposition towards assimilation and the Polish Roman Catholic majority.35 Built upon Operation Vistula’s forced resettlement trauma, it finds its expression in its sense of close ties with former “small homelands,” and nostalgic visits to forefathers’ lands have gained a partially sacred status of annual pilgrimages for some families. Another expression of this is the sense of a strong bond with Ukraine and its fate.36 The Russian invasion of Ukraine deepened antipathy towards Russia, along with a hostile attitude towards the Orthodox Church 35 The memory of Ukrainian communities in Poland is described by Iuliia Buyskykh in the article “Confessional Communities as Communities of Memory: the Greek Catholics? of Biały Bór and the Orthodox of Włodawa” in this volume. 36 As evidenced by more than prayers for peace in Ukraine. E.g., in 2015, Greek Catholics collected funds for which the Caritas in the Eparchy of Wrocław–Gdańsk bought an ambulance with medical equipment for the Ukrainian Border Guard’s Southern Region Hospital; it was consecrated in Biały Bór by Włodzimierz Juszczak, the eparch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Eparchy of Wrocław–Gdańsk.

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which, we were told, tried to treacherously take over the Greek Catholic faithful after the war. This statement is not unfounded since, as historical documents demonstrate, the Office of Religious Denominations supported the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church (PAOC) in the 1950s, seeing it as an ally in eliminating Greek Catholicism.37 The Ukrainian identity is so strongly associated with this denomination in Biały Bór that an Orthodox Ukrainian is usually met with surprise, if not distrust. Murafa’s priests do not share this resentment. Local Catholics, according to the state policy of memory, link their traumatic memories with the Holodomor of the 1930s and the post-war famine,38 as well as with the Second World War and loss of relatives –fathers or grandfathers who joined the Polish military and never came back.39 War victims and its heroes have their monuments and commemoration sites. A  monument commemorating the Holodomor’s victims has recently been erected in the Catholic cemetery. At the same time, one cannot find a single monument or plaque devoted to the victims of Stalin’s 1935–1938 Great Terror cleansings that followed the Holodomor, the so-called Vinnytsia massacre.40 Murafa, as well as the entire Podilia, experienced dramatic losses strongly affecting the Catholic community equated with the Polish national identity, in particular, individuals active in religious and social life, and their families.41 Hundreds of local residents were deported or murdered by the NKVD in Vinnytsia, particularly all the church councils’ leaders, active in the years 1920–1930.42 Murafa’s parish priest, Father 37 In 1952, in Koszalin Voivodship where the predominately Greek Catholic population was resettled, the PAOC was given three buildings which ultimately remained empty. Orthodox priests did not speak Ukrainian and were not prepared to work with the deported population. (K. Myszkowski, “Sytuacja Kościoła greckokatolickiego w Polsce po przesiedleńczej Akcji “Wisła” w świetle dokumentów Urzędu do spraw Wyznań z lat 1950–57,” in: Ukraińcy w najnowszych dziejach Polski (1918–1989), ed. Roman Drozd (Warszawa: Tyrsa, 2005), Vol. 2, pp. 101–104.) 38 In the years 1946–1947. 39 In Polish Wikipedia I found names of two soldiers born in Murafa, lieutenant colonels of the Polish army who were awarded the highest military decoration, the Virtuti Militari order: Ryszard Żołędziowski, b. 1887, murdered by the NKVD in Kharkov in 1940 and Jan Szatowski, b. 1907, who died in 1988 in Poland. No one mentioned them in Murafa itself. 40 Józef Mackiewicz, “Klucz do Parku Kultury i Odpoczynku,” Wiadomości, London (1951), No. 48 (296):  10 Mar. 2018 http://www.katyn-books.ru/archive/polish/ Zbrodnia_katynska_2.html. 41 As a result of the “Polish operation” carried out in the USSR by the NKVD in 1937–1938, People’s Commissar Nikolai Yezhov issued an order to murder over 111,091 Poles and Soviet citizens. 28,744 were sentenced to prison camps and over 100,000 were deported from the Ukrainian and Belarussian SSRs. (Nikołaj Iwanow, Zapomniane Ludobójstwo. Polacy w państwie Stalina. “Operacja polska” 1937–1938 (Kraków: Znak, 2015), p. 392. 42 Анатолій Лисий, Нариси історії мурафського костьолу, p. 63.

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Wiktor Stronczyński, was shot by the NKVD in Syktyvkar, located in the Komi Soviet Republic, in 1938.43 In Vinnytsia, a Maksim Gorki Culture and Recreation Park was built at a mass massacre site located in an old Catholic cemetery. German Nazis dug up the collective grave in 1943, putting the clothes and small personal items found there on public display, letting many families learn about their loved ones’ fate.44 But our interviewees did not mention these tragic events. Asked about them directly, they claimed they had not known about them until recently. However, the memory is slowly returning since in 2014, on the initiative of Vinnytsia’s Polish community activists, plaques commemorating victims of NKVD crimes in Polish and Ukrainian were unveiled in the aforementioned park. They were placed on the walls of the chapel preserved from the old Polish cemetery. One of the most popular subjects of contemporary local memory is the massacre of peasants near Murafa in 1650 committed by Polish noblemen during hetman Marcin Kalinowski’s punitive expedition. The event occurred during the CossackPolish War, when the town was repeatedly destroyed by the Cossacks. According to Polish sources, they captured the monastery in 1648, murdered a Dominican monk, Father Dominic from Międzyborze, and burned down the wooden church. At the same time, they murdered Jewish inhabitants of the nearby Sharhorod45 and left the local church of St. Florian in ruins. As for Murafa, “in 1650 Marcin Kalinowski took it by storm, previously seized by Cossacks.”46 Alongside this distinct thread of local history, we encounter a typical discrepancy between the two traditions. Polish historians write in detail about Cossack massacres of Catholic and Jewish people, while Ukrainian historians write about the slaughter of Orthodox peasants supporting the Cossack revolt which was committed by Polish troops. Jewish sources confirm the pogrom and liquidation of the

43 Previously, Father Wiktor Stronczyński had been imprisoned, among others, in Jarosław with a group of 30 Polish priests from Ukraine. He could apply for deportation to Poland as part of an exchange but he “did not express the wish to leave the prison and the USSR, hoping to get back to work in his parish.” The place of his execution and burial are unknown: 15 Jun. 2017 http://pallotyni.kiev.ua/pl/?rozstrz elani#stroczynski. 44 According to Nikołaj Iwanow, who calls the Vinnytsia massacre “the first Katyn” due to the similarities in the NKVD’s practices in both cases, the fact that out of 699 remains recognised in Vinnytsia by the victims’ families only 100 turned out to be Poles results from the fact that the majority of victim’s families were either murdered or deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan. According to the German documents, the overall number of victims was 9439. See: Nikołaj Iwanow, Zapomniane Ludobójstwo, pp. 306–310. 45 Szargorod; Elektronnaja jewrejskaja encyklopedia: 18 Aug. 2014 http://www.eleven. co.il/article/14748. 46 Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, p. 666.

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Jewish qahal in Murafa during the Khmelnytsky Uprising.47 If we combine these perspectives, even considering contemporary chroniclers’ Homeric exaggerations, what emerges is an image of a genuine hell that these borderlands’ locals systematically went through. Antoni Józef Rolle, born in 1830 near Sharhorod, psychiatrist and amateur historian, describes Kalinowski’s punitive expedition with an important detail which confirms the Ukrainian tradition’s accounts. In winter of 1651, after the seizing of Sharhorod and nearby Krasne by Col. Danylo Nechay, Polish field hetman of the Crown Marcin Kalinowski, “just released from [Tatars’ – MZ] captivity, had only 6,000 people, ‘but only brave ones,’ [...] he made a bold move on the enemy: he destroyed Spachenko who was placed as a lookout and, not sparing a soul, suddenly attacked Krasne48 on February 22, 1651, crushed Nechay, found him on his deathbed and so allowed him to die in peace; on the 24th he vaporised rebel peasantry from Morachwa and immediately pressed on to Sharhorod”49 [MZ’s emphasis]. The author of the contemporary journal, quoted by Rolle, wrote about Kalinowski: […] the Hetman, determined to polish his rusty arms after a three-year-long captivity in Crimea, obliged the nobility to help him to diligently exact punishment on obstinate peasants, all readily reported; he did not have more than seven thousand people, but all of them were brave men.50

I did not find any mention of “vaporising” peasants from Murafa by “brave knights” in works written by Polish historians; in any case they were usually very critical towards the actions of Kalinowski whom they considered an incompetent commander. His letter to Vice-Chancellor Radziejowski where he boasted about taking back the cities does not contain any mention about the peasants. Descriptions of the punitive expedition of 1651 focus on the capitulation of Murafa’s townspeople who, terrified of the fate of Krasne, burned down by the marshal’s soldiers, opened the city gates and surrendered their castle. The Cossacks, commanded by a sotnik51 from Murafa, “one Szpak,” withdrew from the town earlier. After receiving the townspeople’s pledge of allegiance “to His Majesty the King and 47 Pogroms took place also during the 1735 Haidamak Uprising and in 1918. Cf. International Jewish Cemetery Project (International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies): 26 Apr. 2015 http://www.iajgsjewishcemeteryproject.org/ukraine/murafa. html. 48 Красне, currently in the Tyvriv Raion. 49 Antoni Józef Rolle, Zameczki podolskie na kresach multańskich (Warszawa-Kraków: G. Gebethner i Spółka, 1883), Vol. 3, p. 272. 50 Pamiętniki o wojnach kozackich za Chmielnickiego przez nieznanego autora. (Wrocław: Wyd. Z. Schletter, 1842). 51 Ukr.: сотник was a military rank among the Cossack military officers, literally a commander of a hundred soldiers.

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the Commonwealth,” the hetman started with his army towards Sharhorod, which surrendered in a similar way.52 Nothing in the descriptions refer to the peasantry against whom he started the campaign. However, the slaughter of peasants was described by Ukrainian historians, according to whom all the residents of Stara Murafa (“Old Murafa”) were murdered by the hetman’s soldiers in 1650. This account is among the most widespread within patterns of local memory – the local school had its hand in this. And even without it, the story about a massacre is easily remembered as it is intertwined with the popular etymology of the village of Klekotyna, neighbouring Murafa. According to this version, knights gathered the entire village population on the meadow called Pukawka and then killed everyone. The blood was spilling over to the stream so fast that it was bubbling (Ukr.: klekotila), hence the name of both the stream and the village: a separate administrative unit, but in fact, now forming one village with Murafa.53 The anonymous poem on the wall of a classroom in Klekotyna goes as follows: “[…] This restless stream / which, as they say, was born of blood so long ago… […] A cruel noble forced everyone into the valley / For steadily defending their freedom / He hacked and destroyed / Our proud people.” Next to it, there is a children’s drawing illustrating the massacre of unarmed villagers by knights on horseback. In the foreground, one of them raises his sword to a woman holding a small child. People chased by the attackers wear white shirts embroidered in red, so there can be no doubt as to their identity. The stream of blood flows like a River of Fire on the icons depicting the Final Judgement. This massacre of innocents is a demonstrative, easy to digest lesson of local historical policy which stands in stark contrast to the Polish version of the story. Some of the oldest Murafa residents that we talked to say, however, that the peasants were killed by Tatars.54 If this is true, as certain sources maintain that the 52 Mirosław Nagielski, “Kampania zimowo-wiosenna 1651 roku hetmana polnego koronnego Marcina Kalinowskiego przeciwko Kozakom,” Przegląd Wschodni, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1998), pp. 413–439. The same events are described from a different perspective by Mykhailo Kupszychyn, citing Mykhailo Hrushevsky (Михайло Грушевский, Історія України-Руси, Vol. IX-1, (Київ Наукова думка, 1996), pp. 189–190). 53 Анатолій Лисий, Нариси історії мурафського, p. 9 – no source cited. Only on the subject of the stream’s etymology, the author adds: за легендою – according to the legend; Михайло Купчишин, Мурафа і Клекотина (давнина і сучастність), Київ 2003, p. 29; the author quotes Lysy’s work cited above, and for the etymology of the stream and the name of the Pukawka meadow (галявина) he refers to the Russian guide to Eastern Podilia (Дмитрий Малаков, По Восточному Подолью, p. 118). 54 Among others, father Józef Świdnicki, native of Murafa: “There were many stories about Tatars’ incursions and raids, thousands of people taken captive, as well as murders. There was a village called Klekotyna nearby. It was called that due to a great number of people killed by Tatars, so much so that they said blood boiled and bubbled.” (Ks. Jan Pałyga SAC, Łagry – za Fatimę (Ząbki: Apostolicum, 1997), pp. 11–12): 26 Apr. 2015 http://mateusz.pl/ksiazki/lzf/01.htm.

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Klekotyna stream received its name long before Khmelnytsky’s Uprising,55 then perhaps the local legend of a Tatar massacre (like many that exist in Podilia) was remade into a legend about a Polish one during Soviet times. Such practices were a regular activity of Soviet propaganda. We should not eliminate such a possibility, which does not necessarily mean that Kalinowski’s massacre did not happen. The disdain for “obstinate peasants,” as I have previously mentioned, became an element of a long-standing structure of the Polish post-colonial tradition and it still creates a distance between Poles and Ukrainians.

Priest as a Trickster and Other Authorities Another difference between the discussed minorities concerns their role models. There are priests and nuns in both parishes who often come from the same or nearby parishes. Priests in Murafa still enjoy high social authority, hardly comparable with any other social or professional group. The faithful come to the priest’s perpetually open house, asking for help not only in spiritual matters but also in everyday life problems, including applying for a Pole’s Card. Presbytery doors that remain wide open throughout the entire day stand in sharp contrast with the intercom on the doors of the Orthodox priest who lives next to the church with his entire family (even though he seems to have a good rapport with the congregation). Meanwhile, Klekotyna’s batushka, the Orthodox priest, commutes several dozen kilometres. The tradition of participating in the life of the faithful and a close relationship with them was shaped by a charismatic parish priest who has been mentioned numerous times: Father Antoni Chomicki,56 former prisoner of the Vorkuta prison camp, who was dubbed the “Patriarch of Podilia and Volhynia”57 (unconfirmed

 Memory of older residents confirms this tradition, including the place marked by an old linden tree in which the remains of the Tatars’ victims were to be laid; cf. e.g.: 5 Jun. 2015 http://www.kresy.pl/kresopedia,architektura?zobacz/murafa,19398#f,19396. 55 Вениамин Лукин, “Евреи в Подолии XIV-XVII векoв,” in: 100 еврейских местечек Украины, Вениамин Лукин, Хаймович Бoис. Выпуск 1. Подолия (Иерусалим – Санкт-Петербург, 1997). 56 Cf. Marcin Skupiński, “Через наше село ішла Божа Матір (the Virgin Mary walked through our village): Public religion and enchantment of the world in contemporary Ukraine. The case of Murafa and Klekotyna villages in Vinnytsia Oblast”; Maria Sokołowska, “Language and Identity: Murafa’s Catholic Population on Language Changes in the Church.” 57 Previously, as the parish priest in Klesowa in Volhynia, he used the pseudonym “Roch” in the Home Army and established a hospital for wounded soldiers, which was used not only by Polish but also Soviet soldiers. Thanks to their testimonies, he was released from the prison camp in 1947. Decorated with the Cross of Valor (Henryk Dąbkowski, Ksiądz Antoni Chomicki, syn Podlasia - apostoł Ukrainy / wspomnienia, Warszawa: Kościół Rzymskokatolicki na Kresowych Ziemiach Polskich, 1999).

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Photo 9: Father Antoni Chomicki with the parishioners. From Eugeniusz Swarcewicz’s archive. Photo by unknown photographer.

sources claim that he did not want to be anointed bishop for fear of deportation from Ukraine). After his release from the prison camp, he served in Polonne, Sharhorod and finally in Murafa, from 1958 until his death in 1993. As Marcin Skupiński remarks, he grew into a local hero of semi-legendary status. Most legends concern dealings with Communist authorities. He is reputed to have inspired “prayers to Lenin” about which I heard during my previous research in Horodek and Smotrych,58 in the adjacent Khmelnytskyi Oblast. It was conducted among pensioners who no longer feared losing their jobs. The entire group said the rosary kneeling around the monument of the revolutionary leader, directing their loud pleas in particular intentions to “Lenin.” And since his statues could be found in the centre of almost every town, the story became famous in Podilia, and became a part of many places’ histories and was sometimes retold as an anecdote and sometimes as evidence of the heroic struggle against Communist authorities. When something was needed either for our parish or for another community, the faithful (on Father Antoni’s suggestion) arranged rosary prayer and singing around the Lenin’s monument. So, the authorities in order to get rid of them and avoid

58 Ukr. Смотрич.

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problems, made the required decisions, favourable for the local Catholics. “A prayer to Lenin” is Father Antoni’s invention, later adopted by other Podilia parishes.59

The abundance of anecdotes told by the older generation until this day about successful ruses “Father Antoni” used to outwit Soviet authorities can be interpreted as the adoption of his image by the Murafa community as a character equipped with certain features of a trickster, a peasant hero who defeats the enemy not in direct combat (which is the domain of knights) but with his wits and tricks. He does not lose his life in the fight  – he is able to save it even in most dire circumstances and eventually, somewhat accidentally, he luckily reaches his goal.60 In older generation’s narratives, Father Chomicki is therefore a type of fairy-tale hero, which may seem odd in the case of a Catholic priest, but proves a strong bond linking him with his parishioners. He acted as the protector and caretaker, an intermediary between “his people” and those in charge. In the game he played with them, he surely reached for longue durée models in the Podilian Catholics’ culture, shaped in Imperial Russia. This was noted by Father Roman Dzwonkowski who visited Father Chomicki during Soviet times, and who secretly assisted him in his priestly duties. In fact, the tsarist authorities’ campaign conducted against the Catholic Church also used methods like keeping eager and astute priests as assistant curates or in tiny parishes where their influence would be limited. The governor didn’t give his placet (approval) to transfer them to bigger parishes. Father Ryszard Rozenberg61 stayed for years in a tiny parish in Molchany in Podilia, near Bar […] because the government refused to allow him to be appointment Murafa’s parish priest. One day, a policeman came with the notification that the Governor had given permission for his transfer to Murafa. The policeman also showed him the copy of a document sent to the governor. This virtuous clergyman and human being started to read and slumped onto a chair, overwhelmed. The note said:  “Father Rozenberg, gambler, sot, woman chaser and devout idler, never sits in a confessional and makes no sermons; therefore, it is in the interest of the government that he goes to a larger parish where the people are pious. His life will make Orthodox priests’ work easier.” Seeing the horror on the priest’s face, the policeman, who was Catholic, started to kiss his hands and explain that there was no other way to obtain the governor’s approval of his transfer. A similar ruse was used by Rozenberg’s successor in Murafa, Father Antoni Chomicki, in the late 1970s. His young parishioner and student learned theology under his direction.

59 Отець Антоній Хоміцький: 9 Apr. 2018 http://catholic.volyn.ua/index.php/ua/ svidky-viry/87-otets-antonii-khomitskyi. 60 Magdalena Zowczak, “Bohater wsi. Mit i stereotypy,” Wiedza o kulturze, Wrocław (1991), pp. 88–89, passim. 61 Father Ryszard Rozemberg, born in 1841, Papal chamberlain, Movchany parish priest from 1880 till 86, Murafa parish priest from 1886 till 1907. Polskie Cmentarze na Podolu: 10 Jun. 2018, http://nekropolis.in.ua/people_view?people_id=467

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On the occasion of a trip to Poland in the winter of 1979, he received his ordination in secret in Lublin. […] So he [Father Chomicki – MZ] presented him to the authorities in an appropriate way, saying more or less what follows: “As you can see, I’m already old and too weak to work. The Murafa parish is large and there’s the commute to Krasne. I need help. I won’t get a priest from Riga. I was preparing someone here; he learned some himself. He’s a complete fool and a dimwit, but what am I to do? Beggars can’t be choosers. Give this spravka62 to him.” Thus, he validated the young priest who has been working diligently for the last dozen or so years. He turned out to be a good organiser and builder.63

According to a different version, the authorities wanted to remove Father Chomicki from Murafa and send him to the most godforsaken hole. When he discovered this, he called the dvadtsatka (parish committee) and obliged all its members to denounce him. One was to report him as a drunk, another – a skirt chaser, yet another – that he wanted a lot of money for services, etc. All were also to demand that the plenipotentiary expel him from Murafa as soon as possible; otherwise he would destroy the parish. The plenipotentiary just applauded such news and of course left the priest in Murafa, counting on him to destroy the community.64

Father Chomicki’s assistant and a close friend Eugeniusz Swarcewicz, a Pole from Belarus was, along with his entire family, an organist who still works at the church in Murafa. He remembers Chomicki both as a very charismatic priest65 and as a man with a great sense of humour. Local Catholics preserved a strong memory about their former parish priest. They devoted a “monument” to him – a tombstone featuring his portrait – in the Catholic cemetery, right by the gate. On the anniversary of his death, Podilian priests with the bishop of Kamianets-Podilskyi celebrate solemn Masses attended by numerous faithful. But for the new generation of priests, Chomicki represents a past era that they want to close already. His successor in the parish is a former altar boy who devoted himself to the renovation

62 Rus.: справка, a document confirming the authorities’ approval for pastoral work in a given place and time. 63 Ks. Jan Pałyga, Za wschodnią granicą 1917-1993. O Polakach i Kościele w dawnym ZSRR z Romanem Dzwonkowskim SAC rozmawia Jan Pałyga SAC (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Wspólnota Polska, Pallottinum II, 1993), pp. 262–263. 64 Marek A.  Koprowski, Jak ksiądz Chomicki z KGB wojował. Zespół:  Misyjny Wschód: 23 Jun. 2018 http://www.zmwschod.iaw.pl/pl/30062/0/chomicki.html. 65 This is confirmed as well by the current statements of some clergymen, including Father Jarosław Rudy, a theologian and parish priest in Khmilnyk:  “Завжди пам’ятатиму його палкі і досить тривалі проповіді та реакцію людей, вони слухали, майже не дихаючи...,” see:  Сергій Іваницький, Резонанс (2016-1203):  9  Apr.  2018 http://radiomaria.org.ua/pershim-mom-vchitelem-teologi-bulamoya-mama-doktor-bogoslivya-otec-yaroslav-rudii-4265.

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of Murafa’s church and convent, and who either built or renovated many local churches.66 As a representative of an unwanted tradition who was transferred from parish to parish, he has faced certain marginalisation within the community. Although he still lives in Murafa, he no longer visits his former church. In Biały Bór, in particular until the late 1990s, Ukrainian parish priests Father Stefan Dziubina (parish priest from 1957–1977), who was formerly a prisoner at the PRL’s Jaworzno work camp, and his successors: Fathers Madzelan and Ulicki (the latter was in charge of constructing the new church),67 played similar roles in shaping parishioners’ identities as Father Chomicki did for Murafa’s Catholics. The Eastern rite of the Uniate church […] was the only heritage Ukrainians could preserve from their rich, independent, cultural and national life. To be precise, this heritage was the starting point for Ukrainians’ further cultural development and their cultural revival during the following years.68

Ukrainian historian Andrzej Maciupa quoted a summary of sociological research from the 1990s when he wrote about the significance of the first Ukrainian liturgy in ten years for the resettled Greek Catholics. It was celebrated at a Latin Catholic church in Biały Bór by Father Stefan Dziubyna on October 14, 1956, on Pokrova Day (the Veil of Our Lady).69 Currently, the priests’ authority is growing weaker due to their breaking vows and violating recognised social norms. Anticlerical attitudes and distrust towards the priests can often be observed as well. Apart from local reasons, these phenomena are related to the secularisation of culture. A priest has never had as great of an authority in Biały Bór as Murafa’s priests have. The church has functioned from the start in close relation or even in symbiosis with the Ukrainian primary and secondary school. Its teachers, who are also activists for the Association of Ukrainians in Poland,70 have fulfilled their formative function to a similar extent 66 New churches, not all of them completed, constructed in nearby towns: Kozłówka (Козлівка), Joachimówka (Юхимівка), Derebczyn (Деребчин), Pieńkówka (Пеньк івка). 67 Biały Bór parish priest in 1990–1997. “Where did the idea to invite Nowosielski to Biały Bór come from? The idea sprouted from the heart and mind of a learned man, priest, thinker and mystic – Józef Ulicki.” (Drozd, “Dies Et Mens” [501]. Chrystusa nie poznają. Esej o Jerzym Nowosielskim.[Essay, part 2]: 12 Mar. 2018) http://www.dem. cerkiew.net.pl/index.php?site=diesetmens&id_mysl_dnia=890&numer_wpisu=501. 68 Irena Borowik, Andrzej Szyjewski, eds., Religie i kościoły w społeczeństwach postkomunistycznych (Kraków: Zakł Wyd. Nomos, 1993), s. 129; Maciupa, “Początki działalności Kościoła greckokatolickiego…,” p. 176. 69 A woman interviewed by Iuliia Buyskykh speaks about the significance of one of the first liturgies for the resettled population; cf. “Confessional Communities as Communities of Memory: the Greek Catholics of Biały Bór and the Orthodox of Włodawa” in this volume. 70 In 1990 the Association replaced the Ukrainian Social and Cultural Association (Уκраїнське суспільно культурне товариство) which also operated in Biały Bór.

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that the priests have. Ukrainians have paid greater attention to their children’s education than the Polish majority. Although this attitude has contributed to assimilation, and now they belong to Biały Bór’s elite, they are also – as I have already indicated  – much more engaged in cultural activities than their Polish neighbours. Currently, teachers’ roles have become even more significant and the Ukrainian school, due to its excellent reputation, is also attended by children from Roman Catholic families.

Singers In the history of both minorities, a very significant place has been occupied by members of the choir, the most active faithful, an elite among parishioners. Singing accompanying the liturgy, a particularly important kind of expression, co-creates the religious culture’s style, and choir members are much more intensely catechised than the rest of the congregation. Traditionally, they constituted a group that intermediated relations between the church’s organisation and regular people’s religious lives. Due to a shift in tradition – the aforementioned imaginative reconstruction of Murafa’s Catholics’ chain of memory  – there are two choirs in the church, one representing the old tradition and another representing the new one.71 The older, four-voice choir created by the aforementioned Polish organist and his musically gifted daughter72 at its most had ca. 70 members. When recalling his work with a choir of similar number which he previously had established in Sharhorod during Father Chomicki’s tenure as parish priest, Eugeniusz Swarcewicz writes: Most didn’t know Polish well, in those years it was only used, alongside Latin in the church liturgy […]. To learn to pray correctly, to read Polish and Latin, to explain notation a little, all required a lot of time and effort on both the singers’ and my part. It was kind of a Polish language school and catechesis. Due to the enormous eagerness and good will of the singers, our common efforts soon yielded positive results. Daily choir rehearsals started in the autumn, carried on throughout the winter and until the spring. There were periods when we rehearsed from 10 AM until 10 PM, in four shifts. Each voice would come at an appointed hour. […] Despite having a lot of work, I did it with great satisfaction, because I saw the people readily and in great numbers came to singing rehearsals with great eagerness and passion. The best evidence was that some 15 singers from Plebanivka who lived about 10 kilometres from the church came each day for choir practice, and the rest lived some 5–6 kilometres away. Nothing would

71 Cf. Jan Lech’s article “The sounds of chaos: the Liturgical Music Situation in Murafa’s Roman Catholic Community” in this volume. 72 See my “Bricolage i apokryf, czyli pochwała majsterkowania,” in: Etnograficzne wędrówki po obszarach antropologii. Tom w darze dla Profesora Lecha Mroza, ed. Łukasz Smyrski, Katarzyna Waszczyńska (Warszawa:  IEiAK i Wyd. DiG, 2013), pp. 301–311.

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Photo 10: Krystyna and Eugeniusz Swarcewicz, the organist, during liturgy. Murafa. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. prevent the singers from coming, no rain or snow blizzard or freezing weather; all came and were waiting at a given time in the sacristy.73

The old choir in the Murafa church still sings old Polish songs that begin the oldest group of Catholics’ morning prayers before the first Mass of the day – before the priest enters the church. The organist also intones the Psalm and some songs in Polish during the first Mass, but then he goes home, and all remaining Masses and their setting are exclusively celebrated in Ukrainian. However, usually after the sermon, one can hear a chorus of voices saying Bóg zapłać! (“God bless you” in Polish), and during the Elevation: Pan mój i Bóg mój! (“My Lord and my God!”). If older women, especially choir members, participate in the Eucharist, right after receiving Communion, kneeling down, they intone a prayer in Polish. It lasts for several long minutes, and the priest waits until they are finished. But the old choir singers are passing on one by one and the “new” choir sings only in Ukrainian.74

73 Eugeniusz Swarcewicz, Krótki życiorys życia i pracy organistego (Manuscript in the author’s archive, n.d., p. 27). 74 Cf. Jan Lech’s article “Odgłosy chaosu – sytuacja muzyki liturgicznej w środowisku murachowskich ‘rzymokatolików,’ ” included in this volume.

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Usually, the congregation automatically answers the priest in the language he uses to address them. But there are odd moments when the generation that underwent religious education in Polish does not respond to the Ukrainian prayer the celebrant initiated. We observed such a quid pro quo during the Sunday sum Mass. The priest started the Apostle’s Creed in Ukrainian, but no one joined him. A silence fell over the church for a moment, with tension increasing until the priest started over in Polish: Wierzę w Boga… Then the entire church joined in.75 The conflict between the old and the new choir is much more widespread in post-Soviet states and also takes place among Orthodox communities. It expresses the struggle of religion domesticated under political discrimination with its contemporary, “purified” and modernised form. The older one required sacrifices and self-organisation from the faithful, giving them a sense of agency, while the current one takes it away from the singers and functions based on completely different terms (e.g. new choir members would sometimes receive some small gratification for their work). But in Murafa, during our research, the choir conflict, which is at the same time a generational conflict and one of traditions, was limited. It manifested itself as small instances of resistance, inspired by the old choir members who – like in cases described above – forced the priest to switch to Polish for a while or waited until they finished their Polish prayer. In Biały Bór, the Orthodox church choir plays an important social role as well. It also has Polish songs in its repertoire and it has singers from mixed families. Ukrainian children already learn to sing and dance in kindergarten. At the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian language school there is a choir named Dzherelo, a Ukrainian Folk Dance Group named Vitrohon and a vocal ensemble named Oksamyt. Bohdan Ficak, a famous Ukrainian cultural animator and co-creator of the Association of Ukrainians in Poland’s Zhuravli male choir, worked here; he organised children’s and adult dance and song ensembles. The local tradition also involves collective carol singing during Christmas by both parishes’ choirs:  the Greek and Roman Catholic ones. Biały Bór’s carol-singing takes places in turns at the Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic churches, gathering audiences from both confessions. It is very impressive to hear Ukrainian carols performed by Polish groups in the Masovian style and Polish carols by Ukrainians when performance and musical styles mingle. In both communities, the Catholic Church has successfully managed to eradicate domesticated religion:  beliefs deemed magical and folk rituals which were popular before the transformation. However, different mechanisms were at work in each case. In Murafa these beliefs have been somewhat driven underground, when the last Catholic “whisperer” resigned from her practices after talking to a parish priest. The Church partly incorporated home rituals, including canonical practices, such as Tuesday blessings of children called vychytka, (Ukr.: вичитка) 75 Cf. Maria Sokołowska’s article “Language and Identity: Murafa’s Catholic Community on Language Changes in the Church,” included in this volume.

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Photo 11: Carols singing in Biały Bór in 2016: the Greek Catholic choir. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

given after Mass at the side altar of St. Anthony, or the rosary for the soul of a deceased person, gathering his mourners in the church rather than during an allnight wake by the body. Meanwhile, Greek Catholics from Biały Bór lost their folk practices as a result of their resettlement and the change of their main language of communication,76 as well as the advancing rationalisation and disenchantment of the world.

Miracula, Veneration of Virgin Mary and Aesthetics Miraculous events, typical within the Catholic tradition, are not a popular subject in either community. In Murafa, despite the universal devotion to the miraculous image of Our Lady of Murafa surrounded by numerous votive offerings, such a state of affairs was surely influenced by the priests’ dislike of tradition. Everyone heard about miracles, but rarely wanted or could say anything concrete. But what remains ever popular is the subject of apocalypses, a theme that cannot be eradicated despite priests’ efforts (which can be regarded as both a 76 Some materials documenting these events were collected during Ukrainian language interviews conducted by Iuliia Buyskykh.

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Photo 12: Our Lady of Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

permanent element of folk religiosity and an influence of the Orthodox Church). So there are still stories told about supernatural divine punishments,77 and daily events are often interpreted in terms of God’s signs. This theme is reflected by new, privately or collectively funded chapels and Murafa’s residents’ participation in the construction of calvary chapels in neighbouring Sharhorod which are gradually

77 One of them is the story of a curse put by the sister of a Jew named Dawidek, who lent money to his Christian neighbour; when it turned out that he did not intend to pay him back, Dawidek set himself on fire in his desperation and died. From that moment on, male descendants of the culprit’s family are to die prematurely and in mysterious circumstances.

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taking over Murafa’s fame.78 Murafa’s world appears to still be “enchanted” in the Weberian sense, remaining “Our Lady’s garden” in the faithful’s minds – a kind of refuge under a particular divine protection – thus a world of fate rather than a world of choice,79 in contrast to the much more secularised and diverse world of Biały Bór’s Greek Catholics. The space of miracles sometimes opens up in Biały Bór as well, however, albeit in a significantly more individualised way. One of the interviewees I befriended, a Ukrainian living close to the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall, studies their newspaper The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom (Вартоваa баaшта оголоoшує Цаaрство Єгоoви) with interest. He revealed to me that he sees and knows things about people that nobody has told him. He claims that one can see all coming events in the clouds. Sometimes the clouds form an eddy that forecasts violent storms. And before the Smoleńsk catastrophe, he saw and photographed clouds that formed the shape of an airplane. He makes photos with his old camera phone and showed me a couple of them on its small screen (including the airplane made of clouds). But he leaves these photos be; he does not want to do anything with them, because what would be the point? Above all, “one shouldn’t speak too much, because then one won’t be able to see. What is the fastest thing? Thought.” Dreams are also important, although Jehovah’s Witnesses, even if they prophesise the end of the world, do not believe in them (which discredits them in the eyes of my interlocutor). And in dreams one can see oneself in many places and gather knowledge unavailable to others. I would like to dwell on a key aspect of both communities’ religious culture, the veneration of Virgin Mary, as it connects Greek and Roman Catholics. It is not, however, so clear in the case of religious life; the universal idea of Virgin Mary’s motherhood is divided into particular groups of protective devotion that can compete with one another or even represent contrary interests among their followers. Both Marian holidays and patron images seem to divide Poles and Ukrainians rather than bring them together. Each represented community has its own patron who watches over them from a miraculous image of unknown origin. Our Lady of Murafa, a painting which perhaps dates as far back as the 17th-century,80 78 In 2017, the church of St. Florian with the new 3-kilometre “interdenominational Calvary” (modelled after the Calvary sanctuary in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska in Poland) was announced as the Sanctuary of the Passion. Cf. “10 faktów o Sanktuarium Męki Pańskiej w Szarogrodzie,” CREDO, 24.05.2017: 9 Mar. 2018 http://credo.pro/ pl/2017/05/183223. 79 Cf. Skupiński, “Через наше село ішла Божа Матір (the Virgin Mary waked through our village): Public religion and enchantment of the world in contemporary Ukraine. The case of Murafa and Klekotyna villages in Vinnytsia Oblast,” Rukat, “The Role of Priests in Shaping the Religious Culture of the Uniate Parishes in Kostomłoty and Biały Bór,” both included in this volume. 80 In the assessment of art historian Prof. Maria Kałamajska-Saeed, based on a reproduction. Unfortunately, I was not able to find reliable information about its origin in the literature. The mention of the miraculous painting of Our Lady in Murafa can

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Photo 13: In front of a devotional items shop. Latychiv, 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

represents the Latin iconographic type of Saint Mary of the Snows. Its prototype, the 12th-century Byzantine icon from the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome, was carried in public processions during the Turkish invasion threat. Christian victories over Turks in the battle of Lepanto (1571) and Chocim (1693) were credited to her miraculous protection; hence the nickname of Holy Mother Victorious. It is not surprising then that numerous reproductions of the image became famous for miracles in Podilia, including Latychiv, Bar and the borderland stronghold that Murafa was then. The characteristic feature of this depiction is Mary’s crossed hands. She holds the Baby Jesus on her left forearm and embraces him with her right hand. The white kerchief flowing from Mary’s left hand is a mappa, a symbol of imperial power in the Byzantine Empire. With time, its original meaning became forgotten, replaced by the belief that the Blessed Virgin dries the tears of the suffering and the afflicted with this kerchief, which is why Our Lady of

be found in Edward Chłopicki’s aforementioned account of his Podilian journey published in Kłosy in 1875 as well as in the work of Father Wacław of Sulgostow (Edward Nowakowski), O cudownych obrazach w Polsce Przenajświętszej Matki Bożej wiadomości (Kraków: 1902), p. 456; but the latter was not even certain if the painting was still there.

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the Snows is sometimes called Our Lady of Consolation.81 The painting is revered by Murafa’s entire community including by its Orthodox residents. The church patron saint’s day, that of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is on December 8. The church’s salvation from destruction, as well as the relative prosperity of the area, is attributed by its residents (also Orthodox ones) to Mary’s protection contained in the miraculous image: they say she covers the area with her cloak, protecting it from misfortune. During the war she would deflect bullets away from the church’s walls  – they would ricochet towards German soldiers. When hard times return, she will cover Murafa and the 55-kilometre radius with her cloak. There is such fear that it will be so hard in the world, but there will be one place the Holy Mother will cover with her cloak. People will go to sleep and when they rise, it’ll be different, for sure […] the place here with us in Murafa […] but to experience it, you have to earn it, you have to earn it […]. The Holy Mother will cover us with her cloak because, look, there are two Orthodox churches of Our Lady82 and one [Catholic] church of Our Lady. And what did Father Swidnicki say? Fifty-five kilometres around the church, some kind of grace, yes? The energy works? That’s around one church, and if there is one next to another, this energy widens.83

81 Ks. Władysław Smoleń, Ilustracje świąt kościelnych w polskiej sztuce (Lublin: KUL, 1987), pp. 225–228. 82 The interviewee is wrong. The new Murafa Orthodox Church of the Elevation of the Holy Cross surely inherited its holiday from old times. In 1781 King Stanisław Poniatowski, upon the request of Count Potocki “gave to Morachwa, composed of the old and the new town, two four-week markets,” one of which was held in the autumn on the eponymous holiday. Style-wise, it differs from contemporary Orthodox churches – it is much more modest, without gilded domes and stark blues. The belfry is covered with a pointy roof, resembling the towers of new churches a bit, which were built in the area in the past century. The old church was brought down with the use of a tractor in the Soviet times under the pretext of it being a hazard for the congregation. Supposedly, it was demolished because it blocked the view of the town council building from the side of the main road. The local tradition preserves the story of a divine punishment visited upon those who exacted this godless act. Today, a cross stands on the site of the old church, obscured from the main Lenin’s street by a statue of the Great Patriotic War’s heroes. Whereas the Orthodox church in Klekotyna from 1878 named after the Dormition of the Mother of God survived in a similar manner as the Murafa church did. 83 “Taki strach, takie ciażko bude po swici ciężkie, a bude jedno misce, gde Matka Boska swoim płaszczem nakryje. Leżut lude spaty, a wstanut, bude inaczej i ce nawerno […] misce u nas tut w Murafie, tak o, skazał i czut take. To ce ja duże zapomniała szczo, ale pereżyt szczo maje buty, to treba zasłużyt, ce treba zasłużyt. […].  Matka Boska płaszczom nakryje, to wy diwitsia, dwie cerkwy u Materi Bożu je i kostioł Matieri Bożu je. I ksiondz Świdnicki jak kazal? Piacdiesiat piac kilometriw kruhom kostioła blahodatie jaki, da? Enerhija dije? – Da. – Kruhom jednoho kostioła, a jak szczo kostioł kolo kostioła, to ona poszerujetsia, ce energia.” Two women, aged

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The popular belief in the Catholic religious tradition concerning the Holy Mother’s protection over a particular area also functions in the form of the saying “we are here like in Our Lady’s garden.” It combines the iconography of the so-called Cloak of Protection in Western religious art and the Eastern Pokrov – an icon depicting the Blessed Virgin shielding the faithful with her maforion (veil). Both types of depiction intersect and intermingle on the former union’s territory.84 A maiden’s gesture of throwing a white scarf on the head of a man condemned to death85 as a form of granting asylum, according to a custom practiced until the 18th century, meant keeping the convict in her protection with the intention to marry and thus suspending the sentence.86 This tradition combines the image with an archaic but legally effective ritual into a belief that is alive in the religious imagination of Marian devotion’s contemporary followers. The Biały Bór icon Мати скитальців is a particular variant of the Hodegetria. Biały Bór’s Greek Catholics are convinced that it was painted in the 1950s by an artist named Andriy Mentukh; some even claim they saw him at work. They believe it was modelled after the original icon by Italian Basilian monks from Grottaferrata (a Catholic Church abbey from the Byzantine-Italian rite located near Rome). However, even a cursory glance at the two icons excludes the possibility that the Madonna from Grottaferrata, a medieval Byzantine Hodegetria, could have been the Mother of Exiles’ prototype. The presumed author, an exile himself, whose biography very well reflects the icon’s metaphorical title, resolutely denies his authorship: I have seen the picture, but I did not paint it and neither did Nowosielski. I believe it was painted in the interwar period for a church (hence the lack of the author’s signature). The question of who brought it to the western part of Poland and saved it from destruction will remain unanswered, just as the name of the author will remain a secret! Almost all old icons are nameless. I  believe it is better that way for the faithful!87

84 85 86 87

79 and 49, residents of Tawna – a part of Murafa traditionally associated with Polish inhabitants – were interviewed by Eugen Bojko, Janina Sobolewska and Rafał Bieryło in July of 2012. Cf. Mieczysław Gębarowicz, Mater Misericordiae – Pokrow – Pokrowa w sztuce i legendzie środkowo-wschodniej Europy. Studia z historii sztuki, Vol. 38. (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1986). Preserved in Polish 19th-century literature by one of the most popular novels by Henryk Sienkiewicz, The Knights of the Cross, until this day present on the school compulsory reading list. Hieronim Łopaciński, “Zwyczaj ocalania skazanego na śmierć przez dziewicę,” Wisła, Vol. 19 (1905), pp. 274–290; Karol Koranyi, “Wypraszanie od kary śmierci,” Lud, Vol. 27 (1928). I quote from the correspondence, letter of 25.01.2016. Andriy Mentukh born ca. 1929 in Karov near Uhnov (now Ukraine). Deported with his family to the USSR, fled to Poland. Graduated from the State School of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. A uniquely interesting conversation about the dramatic fate of his family was conducted by Anna

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Photo 14: The Mother of Exiles of Biały Bór. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Even if this philosophical, or rather metaphysical, statement was meant as a joke, it fits the Christian tradition of worshipping miraculous icons and images “created by the hand of God,” appearing on a tree trunk, flowing on the water or brought in the air. In an art historian’s assessment, the icon may originate from the second half of the 19th century or from the 1930s. In an iconographic sense, it is a variation of the Hodegetria. What makes it stand apart from the original, that is the Hodegetria, is the position of Holy Mary’s hand below Christ’s elbow. I do not know any historical variants of the Hodegetria that look this way, so I suspect it is a later, 19th or early 20th-century innovation. The icon has probably been repainted; however, Holy Mary’s figure, her dress and the specific background point to that particular period. We also have a lot of Ukrainian elements in a style similar to the icon [...].88

Indeed, the icons have been renovated and, according to my interlocutors, “repainted” to the point that it was hard to recognise after it returned to Biały Bór. Some have assumed that the old icon was stolen and even secretly sold by priests. Only one competent interviewee from a nearby village told me that the icon in

Sobecka for Radio Gdańsk; hhe published it in the Kalejdoskop collection. Spotkania z mniejszościami narodowymi (Gdańsk: Wyd. Oskar, 2014), pp. 122–145. 88 I rely on the opinion of Dr hab. Aleksandra Sulikowska-Bełczowska from the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw, expressed in her letter from 17.09.2016.

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Biały Bór was brought from the East “not during resettlements… but probably they brought it later. When people missed it after building the new church, they hung it in the side chapel and all the older people went there to pray.” Irrespective of its origins and later fate, Our Lady of Exiles undoubtedly remains the only link between the old, familiar Greek Catholic church located in the former Evangelical cemetery chapel and the new one built in a very different style. It was the faithful who insisted on the presence of their patron at the centre of the new church, even though Nowosielski wanted to have a consistent interior, designed by him and adorned with his own icons.89 The icon of Our Lady of Exiles, the patron saint of all Ukrainians in Biały Bór, remains the last link between tradition and contemporary times. The church’s patron saint festival, the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has been regularly attended by Ukrainians from all over Poland and even from abroad since 1958 until the present. On this occasion, the icon of Our Lady of Exiles is put at the front of the church and carried around during the procession, functioning as the Greek Catholic community’s symbolic patron. Roman Catholics do not take part in this celebration, except for their parish priest and the so-called mixed families. Apart from the small neo-Gothic, 19th-century church of St. Michael Archangel, which survived the ravages of war and served both confessions before 1958, there is a new, big Catholic church in the town’s former Evangelical cemetery which was completed in 2001. Its patron is the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Poland – the Madonna of Częstochowa. The church towers over the area, shaped like a ship’s bow. On the front, there is an enormous portrait of John Paul II in colour. Both the church’s interior and its surroundings are permeated with national and martyrological symbolism. The attitude towards this image, a recognised symbol of Polish Catholicism, reveals ethnoreligious traumas on both the Polish and Ukrainian sides. Father Stefan Dziubyna, previously mentioned as Biały Bór’s parish priest, devoted a long passage in his memoirs to the problems he encountered as a result of his refusal to take part in the all-Poland Jasna Góra Oaths, solemnly performed in all of Poland’s Catholic parishes. This action, initiated in 1956 by Primate Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, who was then still imprisoned by communist authorities, was meant to be a thanksgiving practice for the change in the political climate surrounding the Catholic Church. When asked by a parish priest from Bytów whether he would be making the oaths during the service, he replied that he believed them to be “a clearly national issue of the faithful from the Polish nationality” thus not concerning Ukrainians. He did not realise, as he admitted himself, that such a declaration promulgated by a parish priest would scandalise not only Catholic priests, but also their parishioners. After being denounced, he was called up by the bishop,

89 Jacek Wajszczak writes about it in his article “Jerzy Nowosielski’s Church in Biały Bór: Reception and Cultural Contexts,” included in this volume.

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Photo 15: The new Roman Catholic church of Our Lady of Częstochowa, the Queen of Poland, in Biały Bór. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

and an explanatory letter he subsequently sent to the latter was cited in extenso in his memoirs. Knowing the content of the Jasna Góra Oaths, I  believed that it would have been unnatural and even not in accordance with the truth, if I, a priest of Ukrainian nationality, together with the faithful of Ukrainian nationality, during a Holy Mass celebrated especially for the faithful of Ukrainian nationality, would have pronounced the following words of the Oaths:  ‘Here we are, the children of the Polish nation, etc.’ Surprised by such a question [from Bytów’s parish priest – MZ], I believe that I answered in a very tactful and mild way that this was a strictly national affair, trying to explain that the Jasna Góra Oaths refer exclusively to the faithful of Polish nationality, not other nationalities.

Following his explanation, he added that this was not about a hostile or uninvolved approach to the Oaths, however: It seems to be clear that it is neither to my credit nor my fault that I was born a Ukrainian, not a Pole; but I believe I would not be a very noble person of strong character if now, for my own convenience, I  changed my nationality, or having been born a Ukrainian and feeling as one too, I pretended to be Polish. I am surprised that such a simple matter is not understood by the Bytów parish priest or other priests. I am

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curious about how he would have acted if he had found himself with the faithful of Polish nationality in Ukraine and if a priest of Ukrainian nationality would have demanded that he, at a service for Poles, along with other Poles, would have publicly made an oath starting with ‘Here we are, the Children of the Ukrainian nation’ […].90

I quote this priest’s comment because it demonstrates a typical deadlock that can be observed in Polish–Ukrainian relations. The similarities between religious cultures and their strong bonds with their respective national identities, as well as the symmetry of attitudes, often appear to disturb rather than facilitate mutual contacts. It is easy to indicate the peculiarity of Murafa’s symbiosis, in this context, that broke out of this symmetry. Thirty years ago still, Father Chomicki would reprimand the priest filling in for him for celebrating Mass in Ukrainian, calling it “the Ukrainisation of his people.”91 Recently, a certain priest from Murafa, one of Father Chomicki’s former altar boys, decided to put an image of the Madonna of Częstochowa painted by the organ player’s son in the new church he was building. He encountered the local priests’ reluctance, similar to Father Dziubina’s reaction. Similarly to him, the other priests unambiguously consider the Częstochowa image of the Mother of God as “Polish” and do not wish to have it in their churches, even though they are part of the Latin rite. In this case it does not matter that the image is also venerated by the Orthodox congregation, and that its copy is located in one of the nearby Orthodox churches next to a convent. Its Byzantine genesis and tradition, which states that Władysław Opolczyk brought it from Ruthenian Belz,92 could have potentially united Catholics from both rites; yet, in the neo-Durkheimian order, quite the opposite happens – ethnic religions confront each other through their respective Marian emblems. Incidentally, we have to note that the faithful, even the clergy, usually do not differentiate between paintings and icons. In Podilia, travelling salesmen of devotional objects mix items representing not only different iconographic types and aesthetics from the Orthodox and Catholic churches, but also from Islam and even Buddhism. Furthermore, Chinese manufacturers supply the Ukrainian market with pop cultural items, freely using heterogenous motifs, such as printed “Ukrainian embroidery” on plastic napkins for Paschal blessings.

90 O. митрат Степан Дзюбина, І стверди діло рук наших. Спогади (Варшава: Українский Архів, 1995), pp. 124–125, 266–267. 91 Cf. footnote 23. 92 In 1384; in what is currently Белз in Ukraine in Lviv Oblast. The Icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa, destroyed in the Hussite raid of 1430, repainted multiple times, does have a “Byzantine provenance, but in its history has been thoroughly repainted, so that in a theological sense, it is no longer an icon” (M. Kałamajska-Saeed in Maria Pawlicka’s interview, “Ostrobramska i częstochowska, czyli dwie matki Polki,” Newsweek Historia, 03.07.2017: 10 Mar. 2017 http://www.newsweek.pl/wiedza/historia/matkaboska-czestochowska-czarana-madonna-newsweek-pl,artykuly,347207,1.html.

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Photo 16: Ecclectic devotional objects sold during the celebration of the coronation of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Latychiv. Latychiv, 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak.

In Biały Bór, Greek Catholic priests do organise annual icon painting workshops, but local faithful rarely participate and rarely exhibit basic knowledge of the specifics of icons and iconography. Some instinctively sense the difference between an icon and a painting, due to their attachment to tradition, and thus certain types of depictions. But it is a field much less interesting for both minorities than the musical tradition, which in Biały Bór manifests itself in the universal conviction of the contemporary genesis of Our Lady of Exiles and her alleged Byzantine prototype from Grottaferrata.

Commemoration Sites The Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish cemeteries are located at three different ends of Murafa. One could say that the deceased from different confessions are more separated than the living who visit them on All Souls’ Day as entire, often confessionally-mixed families. Former Jewish residents appear individually and quietly. Many of Murafa’s inhabitants live in formerly Jewish houses. The Jewish part of the city, despite its central location, abandoned in the 1990s – except for several houses bought and occupied by new residents – was until very recently a district of desolation and wild gardens. Recently, the old houses have been demolished or rebuilt and now have new residents. Due to its close location to the Catholic Church, Catholics who come for major holidays and family celebrations from nearby places often rent them. Jews are remembered as neighbours, teachers

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and people in important public functions. Sometimes they individually visit the well-preserved cemetery. Memory about them does not stir up emotions among the Catholic population, even though some maintain rather friendly relations with them. Murafa’s residents also take care of the cemetery for a fee, and schoolchildren visit it during schooldays with their teacher, listening to her explanations. During our research, older interviewees agreed, in accordance with folk eschatology and common belief, that the Jewish exodus which has occurred foreshadows the approaching end of the world; it is to come when their wandering is finally over and they all find themselves in one place, indicated as contemporary Israel. (“They left, because it was told that they must come together in one place. God always gives them the best; they are the chosen ones.”)93 Mocking apocalyptic fears in sermons does not help: Sibyl, or Sabela, remains the authority connecting Christians  – Catholics and the Orthodox alike  – and prophecies credited to her merge with the news and are spread by word of mouth with each major disaster reported by the media. Prophecies gain popularity in times of a brutal war, when men are drafted and Vinnytsia’s military hospital is filled with mutilated soldiers brought from the front. Catholics in Ukraine celebrate All Souls’ Day more often than those in Poland, similarly to their Orthodox neighbours. Apart from the November festivities, festive cemetery visits are also practiced on the Sunday after Easter and on Holy Trinity Sunday. During my subsequent visits, however, I discovered gravestones with Polish inscriptions that have appeared relatively recently, as if in opposition to the Ukrainian language, dominant in the church. At the Jewish cemetery, gravestones are painted in spring around Orthodox Easter time, similarly to those in the Orthodox cemetery. In Sharhorod we observed a colourful forest of gravestones shaped like tree trunks and matzevahs, resembling the famous Romanian “happy cemetery” in Săpânța. In the pre-war town of Baldenburg, there was a small Jewish community. Today, it is difficult to find information about its former residents’ fate in the literature available. After the so-called Cristal Night pogroms (in November of 1933)  that spilled over into these territories, Jews fled to Berlin and other large German cities where, thanks to greater anonymity, they could attempt to emigrate. In March of 1940 the displacement of Jews from nearby towns began. The first group, which included Baldenburg residents, was transported away to the Majdanek concentration camp, “where almost all were killed.”94 The half-timbered synagogue used to be located in the centre of the town; its pictures can easily be found on the Internet. There is a town park currently located on its former site. The Jewish cemetery did not survive; it was partially destroyed by the Germans, partially during the Polish People’s Republic and the last remainders, 9 3 Orthodox interviewee in her sixties. Note from the field research journal, 2 May 2013. 94 Mirosław Słodziński, Biały Bór. Zarys dziejów (Koszalin: Koszalińskie Towarzystwo Społeczno-Kulturalne,1984), p. 73.

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including the remains of the wall, were removed in the 1990s by Commune Office employees as part of the “grounds clean-up effort.” Our interviewees’ middle-aged generation remembers playing hide-and-seek among matzevahs during their childhood. The memory of graves razed to the ground by bulldozers and gravestones thrown into a pit provoked a traumatic reaction in one of my interviewees who refused to continue speaking about this event. Evoking suppressed memories about the fate of the Jewish community and even – like in this case – about the fate of its legacy, often provokes emotional responses from interviewees. In the context of numerous monuments and plaques found in Biały Bór, the lack of any trace of the former Jewish population is rather striking. Contrary to Germans who visited the town a number of times after the war, nobody apparently stood up for the memory of the Jewish minority. But it was not repressed completely. One day, in the centre of Biały Bór, upon noticing my interest in the dilapidated watermill, an unemployed citizen shouted: “Everything here was built by Germans and Jews!”95 After the displacement of German residents in 1947, only few German nationals remained here. Biały Bór’s Ukrainians sympathise with the resettled Germans, recognising a certain similarity with their own exile from their forefathers’ land. During the Polish People’s Republic post-German property, if not suitable for use, was destroyed or devastated – Ukrainian as well. The Evangelical cemetery which was adopted by the Catholic Church served both confessions from the start and gravestones are mixed. Inscriptions in Ukrainian appeared only after 1989. In the 1990s, as a result of contact with former German residents who visited the town, a small lapidarium containing several preserved German gravestones was created next to the entrance. In 1984–2001 a new Roman Catholic church dedicated to Our Lady of Częstochowa, the Queen of Poland, was built on the cemetery grounds. Going down the church hill on the John Paul II square one passes numerous stones with inscriptions dedicated to the Poles’ martyrdom during the Second World War’s, and further downhill again one sees several Evangelical gravestones. The most prominent among them is a granite tombstone with names of German soldiers fallen during the First World War. Further still by the main road crossing the town 95 According to the Biały Bór chronicle, until 1955 there were no new buildings constructed “[…] until Polish borders were confirmed by the Germans, people felt insecure here due to bad propaganda. There was also no rush to expand. Only the Commune Cooperative developed a chain of its shops.” According to the Potsdam Declaration of 1945 the final confirmation of the Polish-German border was supposed to happen at the peace conference, which, however, never took place. The chronicler might have meant the Treaty of Zgorzelec 1950 and its supplementary acts on local border traffic, border crossing points and navigation in the border belt signed in 1951 and 1952. However only the Treaty of Warsaw between West Germany and the People’s Republic of Poland in 1970 normalised the bilateral relations in respect to the Polish-German border along Odra and Nysa. Whereas the final bilateral border treaty was signed after Germany’s reunification in 1990.

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centre near the most noticeable building – a neo-Gothic Magistrates’ Court from the early 20th century – the multi-layered tissue of the town still materialises in the form of monuments. A glossy granite cube commemorating Emperor Frederick III (“Des Guten Majestät”) stands next to a concrete pyramid with the inscription “Honour the Heroes of the Red Army.” Both pedestals lost their punchlines: the former, the Emperor’s statue, was shot down by the Red Army in 1945, the latter, a red five-pointed star, was broken in unknown circumstances. There is a plaque on one of the Evangelical cemetery’s chapel walls with an inscription in Polish and Ukrainian, informing that the church served as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church from 1957–1997 for people resettled to Pomerania as part of Operation Vistula in 1947. The remains of the destroyed German graves in the unused part of the cemetery, closer to the new church, are covered with moss. According to tradition, on November 2nd – All Souls’ Day in the Latin calendar – Roman and Greek Catholic priests together celebrate a Mass in honour of the deceased.

Conclusion The darkness that dominates the interior of Biały Bór’s Orthodox church works in favour of the apophatic mysticism that is best expressed by a choir of voices singing a capella. The diffused light in the white and subtle gildings of the late Baroque interior of Murafa’s church corresponds with the aesthetics of Latin Christianity, where the choir is supported by organ music. These were the premises made by architectural designers, reflecting their religious traditions. They are not necessarily compliant with the expectations or tastes of contemporary parishioners, shaped by their surroundings and influenced by popular culture. Through its representatives:  nuns and priests, Murafa’s Catholic minority accomplished a spectacular imaginative reconstruction of the chain of memory. It rejected the baggage of memory that connected it to local Polish traditions (Polish language in prayer and Mass, the Polish lineage of Catholicism, and with them – the “Polish” part of local history) and created a new Ukrainian one, as a type of religious innovation. Danièle Hervieu-Léger claims that within post-modernity, through “religion,” individual and collective consciousness of belonging to a particular line of confession is formed and controlled. Murafa’s innovators, although they build on locality, aim at basing religious life on a more individualised relationship with the sacrum than that which occurred previously. And they struggle with traditional forms of religion, both institutional and organizational, as well as bottom-up ones. They incorporate elements from the present times into their lives, including contemporary pop culture aesthetics. Danièle Hervieu-Léger points to the history of utopias in Europe between the 14th and 18th centuries, to their connection with revolutionary movements turned against feudalism: so usually small peasants’ movements that emerged in the context of huge economic crises. Their strength resulted from radical egalitarianism that drew justification from Biblical promises and the image of the

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original Christian community.96 It may partly explain the direction of changes that Murafa’s Catholic minority chose (and is not unique to Podilia in this respect). The choice to belong to the “Ukrainian religious line” manifests itself both in the removal of mementos of the legendary founding father and builder of Murafa, Joachim Karol Potocki, and in the popularity of the legend about Klekotyna in its anti-Polish version, reinforced by subsequent generations’ school education. The anti-feudal meaning given to the legend and the related resentment are strongly rooted in Ukrainian-Polish relations, struggling with a remote and very recent past. The new system of memory, and thus also imagination, created within a young independent country requires a complete rejection of the old order, which to an increasing degree includes heroic figures of priests, mostly Poles, working in the period of persecutions and religious discrimination. Father Antoni Chomicki represents this old order, so he is treated with distinct and increasing distance by the new generation of clergy, and his followers are gradually deprived of influence within the Church. But the dialectic relationship, outlined by Hervieu-Léger, between religion as a form of collective memory and utopia as the imaginative reconstruction of the chain of memory, is not revolutionary in its nature in Murafa. The process of change is alleviated by both its gradual introduction by local “our” priests with authority, who define the social sacrum in the name of the Church,97 and practical benefits coming from operating within a transnational Church organisation which provides the faithful with significant assistance in various domains of life. Meanwhile, the sectioned sphere of sacrum, even if it is slowly transformed in each subsequent renovation, remains a long durée structure despite the fact that the language of Polish inscriptions gradually becomes a dead language. Murafa’s Catholicism seems, therefore, a type of peasant’s cultural expression, formed in centuries past, modelled after elites, and practiced in the USSR as part of the resistance towards the state’s atheisation policy. The currently developing Ukrainian variant of this phenomenon bears first of all signs of ethnic religion, yet it is not radically pro-state, but rather local. What must remain problematic for Roman Catholics are certain elements of the currently constructed Ukrainian national culture, including the worship of all things Cossack, due to the universally known hatred of Cossacks (who considered themselves protectors of the Orthodox faith) towards Catholic “heretics.” From the historical perspective, in the Podilia of old, the conflict between two Christian denominations was sometimes even more serious than that between the Orthodox Church and Islam. In the case of Ukrainians in Biały Bór, the bond of the ethnic and religious element in the neo-Durkheimian order98 was reinforced by memory built on 9 6 Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory. 97 Charles Taylor calls this relation the Durkheimian model. See: Varieties of Religion Today, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 64. 98 The neo-Durkheimian effect according to Charles Taylor takes place where “the senses of belonging to group and confession are fused, and the moral issues of the group’s history tend to be coded in religious categories,” albeit without the alliance

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the scattered displaced persons’ resettlement trauma and reaction to the threat of losing their collective identity. A  shared construction of identity connected ethnic Lemkos and Boykos, “locals” from villages in south-eastern Poland before the deportation, into one group with Ukrainians. This construction uses emblems shared by the Greek Catholics of Western Ukraine, drawn from peasants’ folklore, such as the embroidered shirt or sorochka. Biały Bór’s Greek Catholicism is a formative construction of identity and memory which requires an individual to respond to the community’s moral challenge, a declaration of an identity separate from the Polish environment of Roman Catholics. Unlike them, Ukrainians see themselves as “a people without a homeland,” which adds Biblical mysticism to their religiousness. The reinvented chain of memory of Biały Bór’s Greek Catholic elite is manifested in their new church, overcoming the ethnic religion dominant in this community with its universal concept. References to early Christian architecture along with unique paintings by Jerzy Nowosielski open a closed community, focused on its traumatic past, to life here and now, maintaining the belief in the continuity of its own existence even if it is to continue with the sense of discomfort in the face of losing its homeland. Both types of religious culture modernisation are expressed within the aesthetics sphere: the radical change of Biały Bór’s liturgical scenery thanks to the church is postmodern but conducive to religious mysticism, while Murafa’s inherited church’s change of liturgical language, musical style and architectural details is as well. As a result, they have revealed and deepened internal divisions between the two minorities. In West Pomerania, the different tastes of Greek Catholics unhappy with modernisation are represented by new, small-domed churches built in recent years in several towns around Biały Bór. Whereas Murafa’s Catholics, to the vexation of the older, marginalised generation, have practically lost the Polish language liturgy, a significant element of their identity, and with it – a part of the local tradition. It means a step towards cultural homogenisation with the environment. The Roman liturgy and the Church organisation, including the priest’s involvement in different aspects of the Catholic community’s life, still marks its boundaries. These are the practical aspects of the diverse effects of religious cultural shifts initiated by the Second Vatican Council – aggiornamento and sensus fidelium, as well as ecumenical openness – carried out in the context of a political breakthrough and system transformation. Attitudes of the members of Murafa’s and Biały Bór’s religious minorities, separate and seemingly so different, in many respects have become part of the general climate changes, both in the Catholic Church and in nation-states’ policies. However, the global shift dynamics gives ethnographic of throne and altar, and even contrary to the authority, treated as alien (Varieties of Religion Today, p. 78). Ukrainian Greek Catholics’ religious culture also resembles that of Poles – Roman Catholics – in this respect.

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Photo 17: A new Greek Catholic church in Bielica, 2016. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

Photo 18: The domes of a new Greek Catholic church in Szczecinek, 2016. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak.

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observations the status of impressionist practices. So even in the span of several years we might witness subsequent breakthroughs in the observed phenomena of religious life and an attentive reader will undoubtedly notice the evidence of these shifts in our not always congruent accounts.

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Hervieu-Léger, Danièle. Religion as a Chain of Memory, trans. Simon Lee. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000. International Jewish Cemetery Project (International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies). http://www.iajgsjewishcemeteryproject.org/ukraine/ murafa.html (26 Apr. 2015). Iwanow, Nikołaj. Zapomniane Ludobójstwo. Polacy w państwie Stalina. “Operacja polska” 1937–1938. Kraków: Znak, 2015. Koranyi, Karol. “Wypraszanie od kary śmierci,” Lud, Vol. 27 (1928). Koprowski, Marek. Jak ksiądz Chomicki z KGB wojował. Zespół Misyjny Wschód. http://www.zmwschod.iaw.pl/pl/30062/0/chomicki.html (23 Jun. 2018). Kosman, Janina. “Książka musi opanować Ziemie Odzyskane. Z czasów pionierskich książki i czytelnictwa na Pomorzu Zachodnim (1945–1949).” Przegląd Zachodniopomorski, No. 31/2 (2016), pp. 108–109. Łopaciński, Hieronim. “Zwyczaj ocalania skazanego na śmierć przez dziewicę,” Wisła, Vol. 19, 1905, pp. 274–290. Maciupa, Andrzej. “Początki działalności Kościoła greckokatolickiego w Białym Borze w latach 1957–1977.” In: Ukraińcy w najnowszych dziejach Polski 1918– 1989, ed. Roman Drozd. Słupsk: Akademia Pomorska, 2007, Vol. 3. Mackiewicz, Józef. “Klucz do Parku Kultury i Odpoczynku.” Wiadomości, London (1951), No. 48 (296). http://www.katyn-books.ru/archive/polish/Zbrodnia_ katynska_2.html (10 Mar. 2018). Myszkowski, Krzysztof. “Sytuacja Kościoła greckokatolickiego w Polsce po przesiedleńczej Akcji ‘Wisła’ w świetle dokumentów Urzędu do spraw Wyznań z lat 1950–57.” In: Ukraińcy w najnowszych dziejach Polski (1918– 1989), Vol. 2, ed. Roman Drozd. Warszawa: Tyrsa, 2005, pp. 101–104. Nagielski, Mirosław. “Kampania zimowo-wiosenna 1651 roku hetmana polnego koronnego Marcina Kalinowskiego przeciwko Kozakom.”Przegląd Wschodni, Vol. 5, No. 3, 1998, pp. 413–439. Nowakowski, Edward. O cudownych obrazach w Polsce Przenajświętszej Matki Bożej wiadomości. Kraków: self-publishing, 1902. Pawlicka, Maria, “Ostrobramska i częstochowska, czyli dwie matki Polki,” Newsweek Historia, 03.07.2017. http://www.newsweek.pl/wiedza/ historia/matka-boska-czestochowska-czarana-madonna-newsweekpl,artykuly,347207,1.html (10 Mar. 2017. Pałyga, Jan. Łagry – za Fatimę. Ząbki: Apostolicum, 1997. http://mateusz.pl/ ksiazki/lzf/01.htm (26 Apr. 2015). Pałyga, Jan. Za wschodnią granicą 1917–1993. O Polakach i Kościele w dawnym ZSRR z Romanem Dzwonkowskim SAC rozmawia Jan Pałyga SAC. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Wspólnota Polska, Pallottinum II, 1993.

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Pamiętniki o wojnach kozackich za Chmielnickiego przez nieznanego autora. Wrocław: Wyd. Z. Schletter, 1842. Piwowarski, Władysław. “Od ‘Kościoła ludu’ do ‘Kościoła wyboru.’” In: Socjologia religii, ed. Władysław Piwowarski. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 1996, pp. 265–279. Rolle, Antoni. Zameczki podolskie na kresach multańskich. Vol. 3. WarszawaKraków: G. Gebethner i Spółka, 1883. Słodziński, Mirosław. Biały Bór. Zarys dziejów. Koszalin: Koszalińskie Towarzystwo Społeczno-Kulturalne, 1984. Smoleń, Władysław. Ilustracje świąt kościelnych w polskiej sztuce. Lublin: KUL, 1987. Sobecka, Anna. Kalejdoskop: spotkania z mniejszościami narodowymi. Gdańsk: Oskar, 2014. Swarcewicz, Eugeniusz. Krótki życiorys życia i pracy organistego (Manuscript in the author’s archive). Szargorod; Elektronnaja jewrejskaja encyklopedia. http://www.eleven.co.il/ article/14748 (18 Aug. 2014). Taylor, Charles. Varieties of Religion Today. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Vertovec, Steven. Transnationalism. London and New York: Routledge and Taylor and Francis Group, 2009. Zowczak, Magdalena. “Bricolage i apokryf, czyli pochwała majsterkowania.” In: Etnograficzne wędrówki po obszarach antropologii. Tom w darze dla Profesora Lecha Mroza, eds. Łukasz Smyrski, Katarzyna Waszczyńska. Warszawa: IEiAK i Wyd. DiG, 2013, pp. 301–311. Zowczak, Magdalena. “O długim trwaniu Polaków na Podolu. Imponderabilia tożsamości.” In: Podole i Wołyń. Szkice etnograficzne, eds. Łukasz Smyrski, Magdalena Zowczak. Warszawa: Wyd. DiG, 2003, pp. 9–76. Zowczak, Magdalena. Bohater wsi. Mit i stereotypy. Wrocław: Wiedza o kulturze, 1991. Батирєва, Ірина М. ‘“Погосподарські книги” як джерело вивчення етносоціальної та етнодемографічної ситуації на Вінниччині у повоєнний період (на прикладі с. Мурафа Шаргородського р-ну Вінницької обл.).” In: Нариси історії мурафського костьолу Непорочного Зачаття Діви Марії. Анатолій Лисий, Вінниця: self-publishing,2000, pp. 106–113. Грушевский, Михайло. Історія України-Руси. Vol. IX-1, Київ: Наукова думка, 1996. Дзюбина, Степан. І стверди діло рук наших. Спогади. Варшава: Українский Архів, 1995.

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Іваницький, Сергій. “Резонанс.” Radio Maryja, 2016-12-03. http://radiomaria. org.ua/pershim-mom-vchitelem-teologi-bula-moya-mama-doktor-bogoslivyaotec-yaroslav-rudii-4265 (9 Apr. 2018). Купчишин, Михайло. Мурафа і Клекотина (давнина і сучастність), Київ 2003. Лукин, Вениамин, Соколова, Анна, Борис Хаймович, 100 еврейских местечек Украины: Исторический путеводитель, Выпуск 2. Подолия. Санкт-Петербург: А. Гершт, 2000. Малаков, Дмитрий. По Восточному Подолью (от Жмеринки до Могильeва-По дольского: путеводитель). Москва: Искусство, 1988.

List of Photos Photo 1:   A map. The distance between Murafa (Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine) and Biały Bór (West Pomerania voivodship, Poland) in a direct line is 974 km; the distance by car is 1232 km, the travel time is 16 hours and 21 minutes. The source of the map: https://www.dystans.org/. Picture by Magdalena Zowczak. ..............................................................................  10 Photo 2:    A view on Murafa’s centre from the side of “Macedonia” (a district of Murafa). Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ........................  11 Photo 3:   The late Baroque-style Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ............................................................................... 11 Photo 4:    A  view on Biały Bór’s centre. The centre is dominated by the early 20th-century neo-Gothic building of the town court. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. .................................................. 13 Photo 5:   The Greek Catholic Church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biały Bór (designed by Jerzy Nowosielski in co-operation with Bogdan Kotarba, 1992–1997). .............................. 13 Photo 6:    A  monument to the metropolitan Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky as the Moses of Ukrainians (Yavoriv, Lviv Oblast). Photo by Magdalena Zowczak, 2007. .................................... 18 Photo 7:     A Greek Catholic member of the Pope’s guards from Biały Bór next to Pope’s throw in Koszalin, John Paul II’s pilgrimage to Poland in 1991. Photo by unknown photographer. .................................................................................................  21 Photo 8:   The knights of Christ the King and Father Natanek in Warsaw, 2016. Photo by Rafał Bieryło. ................................................ 23 Photo 9:   The Way of the Cross in Sharhorod (Vinnytsia Oblast), 2013. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ............................................... 25 Photo 10: The tomb figure of Zofia Lewicka born in 1890. “She went off on 2 November 1912 in Kopestrzyn.” “The maiden has not died, but is asleep.” The Catholic cemetery in Movchany. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. .............................................................. 40 Photo 11: A stone cross at the Catholic cemetery in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ................................................................................ 41 Photo 12: Stara Wieś Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, Murafa. Photo by Rafał Bieryło. ............................................................ 42

418

List of Photos

Photo 13: Former Jewish houses in Sharhorod, 2013. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. .............................................................................  43 Photo 14: The 19th-century Roman Catholic church in the centre of Biały Bór. Until 1956 the local Greek Catholics used it as guests of the Roman Catholic parish. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ..................................................................................................  45 Photo 15: A liturgy at the old cemetery chapel in Biały Bór, the feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Ukrainianlanguage inscription on the church says: “WHERE OUR CHURCH IS, OUR SOUL IS. AND OUR PEOPLE IS THERE TOO.” (1970s) The photo from our interlocutors’ archives. Photo by unknown photographer. .....................................................  47 Photo 16: Common prayer for the deceased at the cemetery in Biały Bór (1 November 2015, photo by Urszula Rukat). ..........................  49 Photo 17: A fragment of the old Baldenburg: Czujna Street. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. .............................................................................  53 Photo 1:    A manuscript by an Older choir singer, Murafa. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .....................................................................................  99 Photo 2:    A  n embroidery for the church in Biały Bór by a Greek Catholic parishioner forcibly resettled in 1947. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. .............................................................................  100 Photo 3:    Father Antoni Chomicki, Murafa’s parish priest in 1961– 1993, and his loyal friend, organist Eugeniusz Swarcewicz. Photo by unknown photographer. .....................................................  103 Photo 4:    A plaque in the centre of Murafa: “Murafa’s quarry,” 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ...................................................................  111 Photo 5:    A  plaque in the centre of Murafa: “Murafa’s quarry,” 2017. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ...........................................................  112 Photo 6:    A  procession around the church in Biały Bór on the patron’s fiest of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 2015. The icon of the Mother of Exiles is in the foreground and Jerzy Nowosielski’s icon (a fresco) at the church’s front is seen in the background. Photo by Urszula Rukat. .........................  116 Photo 1:    F ather Antoni Chomicki’s gravestone at the Catholic cemetery in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ....................  135 Photo 2:    M  atzevahs at the Jewish cemetery in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. .............................................................................  138 Photo 3:    M  embers of the Third Order of Francis are carrying the figure of their patron saint during the Corpus Christi procession, 2014. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ......................  144

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Photo 4:    The church in Murafa, the view from the east side. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ....................................................................  146 Photo 1:    An inscription at the front entry to the church in Murafa: “VENERATION AND GLORY TO THE ONLY GOD.” Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. .......................................  150 Photo 2:    An inscription at Murafa’s church vault: “WE ARE PRAISING YOU, WE ARE PRAYING TO YOU, SAVE YOUR PEOPLE, OUR LORD.” Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ..............  151 Photo 3:    The lyrics of a song about souls suffering at the purgatory, hand-written by one of the interlocutors and a keepsake of the confirmation by Father Antoni Chomicki in 1963. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ....................................................  154 Photo 4:    Organist Eugeniusz Swarcewicz presents a song book re-written with his own hand. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .......  157 Photo 5:    And old print from 1763 from the Murafa’s church’s treasury. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ...................................  161 Photo 1:    Corpus Christi procession in Murafa (2014). On the procession float, there is an image of the Madonna of Częstochowa and an inscription: “TAKE THE WHOLE PEOPLE UNDER YOUR PROTECTION” (a line from a popular Marian song). Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ..........  169 Photo 2–3: Photos from one of the interlocutor’s collection, taken during zarobitki (short-term labour migration) in Poland: Cleaning train carriages and making wreaths. Murafa. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ....................................  179 Photo 4:    A keepsake from Jasna Góra pilgrimage (the main Marian sanctuary in Poland). Murafa. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ..........................................................................................  185 Photo 1:    The faithful after a Holy Mass in front of the church in Murafa, 2013. Photo by Jędrzej Fulara. ...........................................  193 Photo 2:    The faithful assembled during the Sunday main Mass at the Murafa’s church. A view from the choir, 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ............................................................................  195 Photo 3–4: The male and female groups of the Older Choir, 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ................................................................  196 Photo 5:    A sub-section of the brass orchestra during the Corpus Christi procession in Murafa, 2014. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ..........................................................................................  200 Photo 6:    The Roman Catholic Church in Murafa, the 18th-century organ. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ...................................................  205

420

List of Photos

Photo 7:    The Roman Catholic Church in Murafa, a fragment of the 18th-century organ and mouldings. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .............................................................................................  207 Photo 1:    Murafa, 2013: The rubble of a former Jewish house in front of the Roman Catholic Church. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .....  215 Photo 2:    Sharhorod. The 16th-century synagogue, 2012. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ..........................................................................  216 Photo 3:    Sharhorod, a former Jewish house, 2012. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ..........................................................................  217 Photo 4:    One of the old matzevahs at the Jewish cemetery in Murafa, 2013. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ..........................  218 Photo 5:    The Jewish cemetery in Murafa. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ..........................................................................................  219 Photo 6:    The Jewish cemetery in Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ...............................................................................................  219 Photo 7:    The ohel at the old Jewish cemetery in Sharhorod. In the foreground, one can see the traces of the removed Way of the Cross station. Photo by Magdalena Zatorska. .......................  220 Photo 8:    The ohel in Sharhorod. The inside. Photo by Magdalena Zatorska. ................................................................................................  221 Photo 9:    Sharhorod. The Way of the Cross, 2013. Photo by Katarzyna Kaczmarska. ......................................................................  222 Photo 10:   Sharhorod. Matzevahs and the stations of the Way of the Cross. The neighbourhood, 2013. Photo by Magdalena Zatorska. ................................................................................................  223 Photo 11:     Uman, the crucifix at the pond, 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .............................................................................................  228 Photo 12:   Sharhorod, The Monument to the New Monument by Zhanna Kadyrova. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .............................  238 Photo 13:   Sharhorod, The Monument to the New Monument by Zhanna Kadyrova: The fragment with the inscription “In love head over heels.” Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ...............  239 Photo 1:    The Greek Catholic Church of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biały Bór. The blessing of the food on the Great Saturday, April 2015. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. ..............  255 Photo 2:    The St. Nicolas Greek Catholic Church in Cyganek. The former Lutheran church. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. ..................  258 Photo 3:    An information tableaux next to the entrance to the Greek Catholic Church in Cyganek. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. ..........  259

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Photo 4:    A stone commemorating the victims of Operation Vistula in front of the Ukrainian schools complex in Biały Bór. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. .................................................................  260 Photo 5–6: Tableaux with the names of the villages where the Operation Vistula’s victims originally came from in front of the Ukrainian schools complex in Biały Bór. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. ...................................................................................  260 Photo 7:    Street art at the fence around the Łęczyca-Włodawa Lake District Museum. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. ................................  261 Photo 8:    Street art at a bus stop near the Łęczyca-Włodawa Lake District Museum. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. ................................  263 Photo 9:    Carved wood figures of a batiushka, a Catholic priest and a R. from of the town administration by Jan Pawłowski. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. .................................................................  264 Photo 10:   An Orthodox church in Włodawa. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. ..............................................................................................  265 Photo 11:   A cross commemorating a church in Międzylesie demolished in 1938. Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. ...........................  269 Photo 12:   A plaque at the entrance to the church in Włodawa with an inscription in Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian, saying: “THIS I HAVE DONE FOR YOU. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME?” Photo by Iuliia Buyskykh. ......................  270 Photo 1:    An entrance to the church decorated by the parishioners during the Corpus Christi holiday. Photo by Urszula Rukat. ....... 279 Photo 2:   The processing initiating the parish feast celebrating the Pratulin martyrs, 2014. Photo by Urszula Rukat. .........................  284 Photo 3:   Easter in Biały Bór. The procession is coming back to the church, 2016. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ...............................  287 Photo 1:   “The Ukrainian Trident” at the centre of Biały Bór. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .............................................................................  295 Photo 2:   The town centre. Empty spaces and pre-war houses. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .............................................................................  296 Photo 3:   Out of service water sports infrastructure. Biały Bór. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .............................................................................  298 Photo 4:   This is not a “trail commemorating the resettled,” but a war fortifications trail. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ..............................  298 Photo 5:   The Greek Catholic church in Biały Bór on the tourist trail. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .................................................................  299 Photo 6:   A fragment of the Bieszczady Mountains landscape with the scarecrow. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .....................................  307

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List of Photos

Photo 7:      At the lake Łobez shore, where the “Russian meadow” most likely used to be. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .................  312 Photo 8:      Orthodox traveller crosses and icons found in the ground. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ............................................  314 Photo 9:      The (milk) churn with the remains of the clothes and crockery of the German residents of Baldenburg, today’s Biały Bór. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .........................  315 Photo 10:     The lapidarium at the Evangelical cemetery in Biały Bór. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ............................................................  316 Photo 11:         A fragment of the sett made out of gravestones in Germany, according to the interlocutor. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ...........  317 Photo 12–13: Sketches of “alternative” design projects of the Greek Catholic church in Biały Bór. (From the archive of the deputy mayor of Biały Bór, Jan Batruch.) Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .........................................................................................  319 Photo 14:     A sketch of the church by Jerzy Nowosielski. (From the archive of the deputy mayor of Biały Bór, Jan Batruch.) Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ............................................................  325 Photo 15:     Jerzy Nowosielski’s correspondence. (From the archive of the deputy mayor of Biały Bór, Jan Batruch.) Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ........................................................................  326 Photo 16:     A file with correspondence, a catalogue and paint samples for the Greek Catholic church in Biały Bór. (From the archive of the deputy mayor of Biały Bór, Jan Batruch.) Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .........................................  330 Photo 17:        A window made by the local residents and later added to the project by Jerzy Nowosielski, according to the interlocutor. (From the archive of the deputy mayor of Biały Bór, Jan Batruch.) Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ...............  333 Photo 18:             Th  e Mother of God, a fragment of Jerzy Nowosielski’s fresco from the front of the church in Biały Bór. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ........................................................................  334 Photo 1:            The end of the school year celebration at the Ukrainian school, 1970s. Photo by Roman Mandziak. ...............................  346 Photo 2:           A wedding at the Greek Catholic church in Biały Bór, 1970s. Photo by Roman Mandziak. ..............................................  351 Photo 3–4:     A weddings in Bialy Bór, 1970s. Photo by Roman Mandziak. ..........................................................................................  352 Photo 1:           The new Orthodox church of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, Murafa. Photo by Jędrzej Fulara, 2013. ..........................  363

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Photo 2:    A liturgy on the Birth of the Virgin Mary feast, 2016. Photo by Urszula Rukat. ....................................................................  364 Photo 3:    The Biały Bór’s church interior. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ...............................................................................................  365 Photo 4:    A signboard of the funeral home in Sharhorod with inscriptions in Ukrainian, Polish and Yiddish. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak, 2013. ...............................................................  378 Photo 5:    A portrait of Joachim Karol Potocki (1725 – 1791), Murafa’s landlord, that used to hang over the south entry to the church narthex until 2013. Photo by Rafał Bieryło. ........  380 Photo 6:    The carnival of folklore in Vinnytsia on the Independence Day in 2016: pottery masterclass. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ...............................................................................................  382 Photo 7:    Vinnytsia. The Independence Day, 2016: Korovai – a traditional festive bread. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ..........  382 Photo 8:    Vinnytsia. The Independence Day, 2016: children in festive dresses. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. .........................................  383 Photo 9:    Father Antoni Chomicki with the parishioners. From Eugeniusz Swarcewicz’s archive. Photo by unknown photographer. .......................................................................................  389 Photo 10:    Krystyna and Eugeniusz Swarcewicz, the organist, during liturgy. Murafa. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ..................................  394 Photo 11:   Carols singing in Biały Bór in 2016: the Greek Catholic choir. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ............................................  396 Photo 12:    O  ur Lady of Murafa. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. .................  397 Photo 13:      I n front of a devotional items shop. Latychiv, 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. ............................................................................  399 Photo 14:       Th  e Mother of Exiles of Biały Bór. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ...............................................................................................  402 Photo 15:   Th  e new Roman Catholic church of Our Lady of Częstochowa, the Queen of Poland, in Biały Bór. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ..........................................................................  404 Photo 16:    E  cclectic devotional objects sold during the celebration of the coronation of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Latychiv. Latychiv, 2013. Photo by Jacek Wajszczak. .................  406 Photo 17:   A  new Greek Catholic church in Bielica, 2016. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ..........................................................................  412 Photo 18:  The domes of a new Greek Catholic church in Szczecinek, 2016. Photo by Magdalena Zowczak. ..............................................  412

About the Authors Iuliia Buyskykh received her PhD in Ethnology from the History Department at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2014–2016 she was granted several fellowships at the University of Warsaw, Poland, including the V4EaP Scholarship Program supported by the Visegrad Fund. Since September 2016 she has been working at the Research Institute of Ukrainian Studies in Kyiv; her current research interests include religion in post-Soviet space, neighbourhood relationships, memory and border studies. Joanna Fomina is a sociologist (PhD), currently working as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She also holds an MA in English from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and Master of British Studies from Humboldt University in Berlin. Her academic interests include EU migration and migrant integration policy, populism and euroscepticism, EU Eastern Partnership policy and democratisation and transformation in Eastern Europe. In 2007–2008 she worked as a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Bradford, UK. Katarzyna Kaczmarska is a student of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw, she currently conducts research on the Iranian community in Warsaw. Tomasz Kosiek holds a PhD in Ethnology and is Assistant Professor at the Institute of History of the University of Rzeszów. He conducted field research in Eastern Carpathians in Ukraine and Romania, as well as research among the Ukrainian minority in Poland. Recipient of scholarships from the governments of Ukraine, Romania, as well as the Visegrad Fund, he is currently working on a book about ethnic problems of the Slavic languages speaking population of the Romanian Maramureș. In his studies, he concentrates primarily on the issue of ethnic identity of minority groups. Jan Wawrzyniec Lech is a student at the College of Inter-Area Individual Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and a graduate student at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology and the Institute of Musicology, University of Warsaw. Vice-president of the University of Warsaw Ethnomusicology Research Group, he conducts research in the area of musical anthropology, particularly regarding religious music, in relation to Richard Wagner’s concept of Musikdrama, as well as Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Elżbieta Przybył-Sadowska is a habilitated doctor of humanities, a religious studies scholar at the History of Christianity Department, Institute of Religious Studies, Jagiellonian University. She specializes in the history of religious ideas and Christianity, especially Eastern Churches and the 20th-century Polish Catholicism.

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About the Authors

Author of books: W cieniu Antychrysta: Idee staroobrzędowców w XVII wieku, 1999, Wyznania wiary. Kościoły orientalne i prawosławne, 2006, Prawosławie, 2000 and 2006, Triuno. Instytucje we wspólnocie Lasek 1911-1961, 2015; co-author (with Jakub Sadowski and Dorota Urbanek) of Rosja. Przestrzeń, czas i znaki, 2016. Urszula Rukat (Klimut) graduated from the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. In 2013–2015 she conducted research on the only neo-Uniate parish in Poland, presented in her master’s thesis entitled Pod krzyżem jedności –konstruowanie wspólnoty neounickiej w Kostomłotach. Her other academic interests include shepherding in Podhale in the context of tradition and cultural heritage. Maria Sokołowska is a student of Ethnology at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Warsaw. Marcin Skupiński is an MA student at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw, fellow at the School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University Stockholm. His research interests focus on anthropology of religion, particularly exploration of epistemologies alternative to western modernity and entanglements between religion and identity; fieldwork in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland. He works as educator, promoting anthropological knowledge outside the academia in cooperation with the Ethnographic Workshop foundation and as a part of the Autonomous Educational Space collective. Jacek Wajszczak is an ethnographer, cultural studies researcher, artist; his work is devoted to history, practice and possibilities of drawing in ethnographer’s field work. Conducts research concerning grass roots cultural practices, landscape and memory. In his academic work he applies tools of visual arts, such as film, photography and drawing. Two-time recipient of the scholarship from the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage, he was awarded the first prize at the Zlatna International Ethnographic Film Festival in Romania. Magdalena Zatorska is a graduate of ethnology and philosophy and PhD student at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Warsaw, working on her doctoral thesis on the Polish-Jewish and UkrainianJewish relations in the context of modern Hasidic pilgrimages to Poland and Ukraine. She conducts ethnographic research in Lelow and Leżajsk in Poland, as well as Uman in Ukraine. Her interests include anthropology of heritage, anthropology of memory, anthropology of religion, methodology and ethics. Magdalena Zowczak is an ethnographer and anthropologist, professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. Her areas of interest include anthropology of religion and the Apocrypha, contemporary religious expression and its connections to identity in various milieus and social groups (Bohaterwsi. Mit i stereotypy, 1991; Biblia ludowa. Interpretacja wątków biblijnych w kulturze wsi, 2000;Religijność na pograniczach. Eseje apokryficzne, 2015).

EUROPEAN ST UDIES IN THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF RELIGIONS Edited by Bartosz Adamczewski Vol. 1  Bartosz Adamczewski: Retelling the Law. Genesis, Exodus-Numbers, and Samuel-Kings as Sequential Hypertextual Reworkings of Deuteronomy. 2012. Vol. 2  Jacek Grzybowski (ed.): Philosophical and Religious Sources of Modern Culture. 2012. Vol. 3  Bartosz Adamczewski: Hypertextuality and Historicity in the Gospels. 2013. Vol. 4  Edmund Morawiec: Intellectual Intuition in the General Metaphysics of Jacques Maritain. A Study in the History of the Methodology of Classical Metaphysics. 2013. Vol. 5  Edward Nieznański: Towards a Formalization of Thomistic Theodicy. Formalized Attempts to Set Formal Logical Bases to State First Elements of Relations Considered in the Thomistic Theodicy. 2013. Vol. 6  Mariusz Rosik: “In Christ All Will Be Made Alive” (1 Cor 15:12-58). The Role of Old Testament Quotations in the Pauline Argumentation for the Resurrection. 2013. Vol. 7  Jan Krokos: Conscience as Cognition. Phenomenological Complementing of Aquinas's Theory of Conscience. 2013. Vol. 8  Bartosz Adamczewski: The Gospel of Mark. A Hypertextual Commentary. 2014. Vol. 9  Jacek Grzybowski: Cosmological and Philosophical World of Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy as a Medieval Vision of the Universe. 2015. Vol. 10 Dariusz Karłowicz: The Archparadox of Death. Martyrdom as a Philosophical Category. 2016. Vol. 11 Monika Ożóg: Inter duas potestates: The Religious Policy of Theoderic the Great. Translated by Marcin Fijak. 2016. Vol. 12 Marek Dobrzeniecki: The Conflicts of Modernity in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 2016. Vol. 13 Bartosz Adamczewski: The Gospel of Luke. A Hypertextual Commentary. 2016. Vol. 14 Paweł Rytel-Andrianik: Manna – Bread from Heaven. Jn 6:22-59 in the Light of Ps 78:23-25 and Its Interpretation in Early Jewish Sources. 2017. Vol. 15 Jan Čížek: The Conception of Man in the Works of John Amos Comenius. 2016. Vol. 16 Bartosz Adamczewski: The Gospel of Matthew. A Hypertextual Commentary. 2017.

Vol. 17 Bartosz Adamczewski: The Gospel of John. A Hypertextual Commentary. 2018. Vol. 18 Tomasz Stępień & Karolina Kochańczyk-Bonińska: Unknown God, Known in His Activities. 2018. Vol. 19 Joanna Kulwicka-Kamińska: Dialogue of Scriptures. The Tatar Tefsir in the Context of Biblical and Qur’anic Interpretations. 2018. Vol. 20 Mariusz Rosik: Church and Synagogue (30-313 AD). Parting of the Ways. 2019. Vol. 21 Magdalena Zowczak (ed.): Catholic Religious Minorities in the Times of Transformation. Comparative Studies of Religious Culture in Poland and Ukraine. 2019. www.peterlang.com