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"THE MIRACLE OF SEREDNE" AND "THE PENITENTS": ESCHATOLOGICAL
TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE UNDERGROUND GREEK CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE
USSR
Roman Skakun
Social, cultural, and political upheavals inaugurated by the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 were, indeed,
of apocalyptic scale. Facing a crackdown on religious life and the disruption of social fabric by
government-fomented "class strife" and forced collectivization, suffering from repressions and famine
under the slogans of building a godless utopia, the largely pre-modern Eastern European peasantry had
only one conceptual framework to make sense of its trials and tribulations – the one derived from the
folk Christianity with its notions of the end of times. Such an interpretation of revolutionary events was
supported by a part of the Orthodox clergy that denounced the Soviet regime as the Antichrist and
refused obedience to the patriarchal locum tenens Sergius who agreed to sign a declaration of
unconditional loyalty prepared at Lubyanka. In a striking parallel to the Old Believers' struggle against
the Westernizing reforms of Peter the Great, the 1920s and 1930s saw the emergence of a multitude of
religious groups that Soviet propaganda summarily termed krasnodrakonovtsy, or Red Dragonists (due
to their typical identification of the new godless regime with the Red Dragon of the Revelation). Fearing
to take, even unwittingly, the seal of the Antichrist, the peasants refused to join collective farms, the
Komsomol, or the army, withdrew their children from public schools, shunned the few remaining
"registered" churches, sheltering instead wandering priests and monks, did not accept any Soviet
documents or even money etc. Quite naturally, given the lack of any centralized institutional control,
these groups often departed considerably from the official Orthodox doctrine and gave rise to a host of
self-styled spiritual elders, prophets or even messiahs with their own extravagant commandments.
Following the Soviet expansion into Western Ukraine in 1939-1944, this pattern of religious resistance
to Sovietization found a striking parallel in a different, non-Orthodox cultural area, where Latin Catholic
influences, including Catholic mysticism, mixed with basically the same Eastern Slavic folk religion.
The Ukrainian Galicia, annexed by Poland after an unsuccessful war of independence in 1918-
1919, lived the short intermezzo of 1920s and 1930s in the atmosphere of social and national frustration
and growing fear of the imminent Communist expansion westwards. Interpretations of the Communism
as the precursor of the Antichrist and of the Communist persecutions against the Church as the sign of
the last times were quite commonplace in the interwar Catholic thought. Such fears and frustrations
sublimated, in some sectors of the Greek Catholic population, into intense mysticism that followed
modern Latin Catholic models popularized in Galicia by the Basilian missionaries since the end of the
19th c. Since 1918, Marian apparitions modelled on Lourdes and Fatima occurred in a Subcarpathian
village of Strupkiv. Sensational spiritist phenomena were reported in Brody in 1920-1922. In 1935,
Ukrainian stigmatic girl Anastasia Voloshyn, in the image and likeness of the famous Theresa Neumann,
appeared and was enthusiastically embraced by the metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky himself. In the
next several years, stigmatics proliferated (at least seven are known), displaying various allegedly
supernatural phenomena: prophecies, communication with different sacred personages, spiritual travels
to far-away lands, miraculous healings and so on. The "renovated" icons, crosses or church domes, as
well as miraculous images on window glasses etc., numbered in hundreds. All this evoked mass
enthusiasm among the faithful and some circles of the clergy and was interpreted, in a nationalistic key,
as a witness of God's special benevolence towards the Ukrainian nation, oppressed by the Poles and
threatened by the godless Communism.
The perturbations of the World War II provoked an even greater, albeit poorly documented, surge
of mysticism, as more stigmatics and visionaries entered the stage. In a pastoral letter "On Pseudo-
Prophets" metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky felt it necessary to warn against "the so-called private
revelations or prophecies which, due to the war in the world, appear in great numbers almost every day".
After the final establishment of Soviet regime in Western Ukraine in 1944, the suppression of nationalist
resistance, and the liquidation of the Greek Catholic Church in 1946, the miracles – like Marian
apparitions in 1947-1948 in Tyahliv, Havarechchyna or Yosypivka, or mass apparitions of holy images
on window glasses in the region of Stanyslaviv in 1949 – assumed clear anti-Soviet overtones. They
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were interpreted as omens of the imminent war of the Western powers against the Soviets and the
subsequent Ukrainian national revival, as demonstrations of God's benevolence to the persecuted
Christians and His anger against the godless. In this respect, they served to strengthen the religious
identity of the Greek Catholics, shattered by the advent of the long-feared Soviets, the ruin of their
Church and the defection of a large part of the clergy to Orthodoxy. The miracle sites, in the absence of
legal Catholic churches, attracted underground priests and monks and became centers of religious life of
the underground Church as well as forums for anti-Soviet and anti-Orthodox propaganda. The
authorities treated these miracles accordingly, as hostile intrigues of the nationalist or clerical
underground, repressed their "organizers" and often employed police or even army to prevent mass
pilgrimages.
Of all "anti-Soviet" miracles of the 1940s and 1950s, the most large-scale was the so called
miracle of Seredne that was closely associated with the person of an underground priest fr. Ignatius
Soltys and his visionary sister Hanna Kuzminska and led to the formation of an apocalyptic cult focused
on a hill near the village of Seredne in the present-day Ivano-Frankivsk (formerly Stanyslaviv) region.
Born in 1912 and orphaned a couple of years later, Soltys, since his school years, displayed heightened
religiosity and was resolved to become a monk. In 1930, he joined the Studite monastery in Univ, but
weak health forced him to abandon monastic life in 1935. In 1937, he entered the seminary in
Stanyslaviv, but was again discharged on medical grounds. He resumed his studies in 1942, being an
assiduous though not very bright student, but in 1945 the seminary was dissolved by the Soviet
authorities and he, along with other seminarians, was drafted in the Red Army. Lucky enough not to take
part in military action, he was discharged in 1946. In 1948, he learned the whereabouts of his seminary
professor bishop Latyshevsky, exiled to Kazakhstan, and after some preparation went there to pass the
remaining exams and receive his priestly orders.
Thus, Ignatius became one of the first Greek-Catholic priests ordained in underground. Those who
knew him during his early ministry remember his unusual pastoral zeal, the profound impression made
by his preaching, his striking ascetism and his readiness to share his meagre possessions with his
impoverished flock. Unlike many underground priests who limited their activities to their village, he
voyaged across Subcarpathian districts of Kalush, Halych, Rozhnyativ, Bohorodchany, Nadvirna, Stryj
and formed a wide clandestine network of supporters. He preached fiercely against the godless
authorities and those who aligned with them by entering the Party or the Komsomol, and warned against
attending Orthodox churches in which there were no grace and no valid sacraments. He is said to have
convinced a number of priests who "unified" with the Orthodox Church to return to the Catholicism. He
also supported, both morally and materially, the remains of armed nationalist resistance and proclaimed
the imminent resurrection of independent Ukraine.
The period since 1948 till the liberation of GULAG prisoners in 1954-1956 was the lowest point
in the history of the Greek-Catholic Church when no bishops and few active priests remained in
freedom. Amid this sorrow situation, fr. Soltys soon developed a sense of his unique mission. In 1952,
when the superior of st. Vincet's sisters Olga de Clerck, a Belgian national, was forced to leave the
USSR, fr. Soltys with a group of his supporters asked her to convey to Rome a list of three underground
priests, including himself, from among which a new Greek Catholic bishop could be nominated by the
pope. The name of the nominee was to be reported using a code phrase. Soon the code phrase referring
to fr. Soltys – about "the priest of Christ the King" being nominated a bishop – was allegedly caught by
his followers on the waves of Vatican radio. He readily believed in this, feeling himself, as he said,
worthy of the episcopal title. No verification of his claim was possible from beyond the Iron Curtain, but
soon the rumor spread about him being a bishop or, more than that, the "exarch" of the Greek Catholic
Church in Ukraine. Even a part of the clergy did not preclude the possibility of such a nomination,
treating him as bishop-nominate awaiting ordination.
The idea of fr. Soltys' special mission was enthusiastically supported by his sister, Hanna
Kuzminska, a devout woman, fiercely hostile to the Soviets and prone to mysticism. On December 20,
1954, during a clandestine liturgy, she claimed to have seen Virgin Mary standing over a spring on a hill
near her native Seredne village. According to her words, the Virgin told her:
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This is a jubilee year [the centenary of proclamation of the Immaculate Conception doctrine] and I
desire to announce a great liberation for poor sinners, because the perdition is as close as it was in
Noah's times. The destruction will be by fire, not by water. A flood of fire will destroy the people, for
they have sinned against God. Since the beginning of the world there was no such decline as there is
now. Now, the reign of Satan has begun. I shall stay on this mount. From here I see the whole
universe, a plentitude of sinners, and I shall dispense my graces through this spring […]. Those who
will come, repent their sins and partake of this water with faith, will not perish in the times of ruin.
Mary, according to Hanna's vision, also demanded that the spring on the hill be sanctified and a statue of
the Virgin be erected there, which fr. Soltys did at night on December 22.
The next day, the rumor about the apparition began to circulate, spreading all over Galicia and
even in Transcarpathia, where the Mukachevo Greek-Catholic eparchy was liquidated in 1949. The hill
with the "miraculous spring" began to attract hosts of pilgrims. The pilgrimages became especially
numerous in 1955-1956 when many Greek-Catholic priests returned from prison camps (e.g. on the
feast of Dormition in 1956 Seredne saw some 2000 pilgrims). It is to be noted that fr. Soltys, despite his
episcopal claims, did not break ties with the underground Church. He did not refuse obedience to
metropolitan Slipy, still in jail, and the few bishops who survived the camps and returned home (he
approached bishop Lyatyshevsky, asking for episcopal ordination in line with the presumed decision of
the Pope, but had no proofs to support his claim and faced a refusal). Until 1958, the miraculous site of
Seredne remained an important focus of underground Church life where different underground priests
celebrated regularly, while itinerant monks and nuns from the dissolved Greek-Catholic monasteries
spread the news about the apparitions and the miraculous healing spring. The texts of Hanna's
revelations were popularized among the faithful and even smuggled abroad to be published by the
Basilian fathers in Canada.
The problem was that these revelations, which continued uninterruptedly since December 1954,
were becoming increasingly eschatological and focused ever more clearly on the person of fr. Ignatius.
They predicted that the pope would be betrayed by the clergy and murdered, the Rome would fall,
becoming the seat of the Antichrist, but a priest – so far unnamed, although the hint was clear enough –
would be called by God to lead the Church in its final tribulation. Following the death of Pius XII in
March 1958, Hanna announced that the prophecy had been fulfilled, the Rome had fallen prey to
communists and freemasons, and the Holy See had been transferred to Seredne where the new and the
last pope Peter II Emmanuel, also known as Ignatius Soltys, had been called to office. Incidentally, the
plausibility of such claims was boosted by John XXIII's abandonment of his predecessor's anti-
Communist rhetoric and the reversal of anti-Soviet Eastern policy that, perceived through the distorting
lens of the Soviet press, exasperated many underground Greek-Catholics.
Quite naturally, fr. Soltys' messianic claims, voiced at first among his closest supporters, led to his
rapid estrangement from the rest of the underground clergy who ceased to support the Marian cult in
Seredne and began to dissuade their faithful from going there. Fr. Soltys, in hiding from December
1954, since 1956 was actively hunted by the KGB which – with the help of its agents from among the
clergy – managed to track him down in the middle of 1958. In November 1958, a secret decree of the
Communist Party Central Committee was issued demanding severe measures to stop pilgrimages to
various "sacred sites" that had become key centers of "illegal" religious activity in the USSR, and the
authorities decided that the time was ripe to do away with "the miracle of Seredne". On December 3,
1958, fr. Soltys was arrested and sentenced to five years of exile in Siberia as a "parasitic element"
avoiding "socially useful labor."
The exile, however, ended much sooner. Fr. Ignatius was released on parole in the middle in 1961
and returned to his native Subcarpathians. Here, in the town of Stryj, he met with another underground
priest, Antony Potochnyak (1912-1984), recently released from his second imprisonment for "anti-
Soviet activity", who believed in the revelations of Seredne and Soltys' messianic mission. The
propaganda of the miracle of Seredne intensified again, reaching an ever higher pitch of apocalypticism.
In their preaching, Soltys and Potochnyak denounced Orthodoxy (instead of pravoslavya they termed it
kryvoslavya, which means cacodoxy, or distorted faith) and criticized fiercely the priests who "signed"
in favor of Orthodoxy and all those who attended Orthodox churches. They deplored mass godlessness,
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cultivated by the Soviet regime and announced a prompt renovation of the faith and the world, for the
present condition, they said, could not last long. The center of this renovation was to be in Ukraine, the
most hard-suffering among the nations, where the sin of atheism reached its peak. It was from here the
Virgin Mary would begin the salvation of humanity and it was here that the new Holy See had been
erected by the will of God. At the same time, the followers of fr. Soltys condemned the underground
Greek-Catholic priests for their failure to break with the fallen Rome, now the seat of the Antichrist, and
charged them with unacceptable indulgence towards the godlessness: by baptizing, marrying and
communicating those who belonged to Komsomol and other Soviet institutions, the clergy "transgressed
the God's law and cast the Holy Sacraments under the feet of those who were already marked by the seal
of the Antichrist". Moreover, the figure of fr. Soltys in the revelations of Seredne as well as in the minds
of his followers began to outgrow the status of a "pope" and assumed the stature of a messiah – Christ
himself in his Second Coming that inaugurated the new age of the Holy Spirit. All this fr. Potochnyak
sought to prove by references to Daniel, Malachi, Amos and other scriptural prophecies. Likewise, fr.
Soltys' sister transformed from a simple "witness of the apparition" into a new incarnation of the Mother
of God who spoke through her lips.
In 1961-1962, pilgrimages to the Mount of Seredne began to gain momentum again. Among the
Greek-Catholic faithful, a "declaration" spread with a call to believe in the revelation of Seredne and to
come to the "Blessed Mount" and drink the holy water which would cure the believers both in body and
soul. All across Galicia and Transcarpathia – even near the St. George's cathedral in Lviv – hand-written
letters circulated about the establishment of the Holy See in Ukraine and the imminent Judgement Day,
set on various dates in spring or summer of 1962. According to Hanna's revelations, all sinners – first
and foremost, Young Pioneers, Komsomol members and Communists – would perish to the third
generation, and only those would survive who had accepted the revelations and repented their sins on
the mount of Seredne. All faithful were encouraged to take chalks sanctified by fr. Soltys and fr.
Potochnyak and to draw crosses on their doors and windows, for only the houses thus marked would be
spared on the day of God's anger.
In many villages, small groups of Seredne pilgrims began to emerge in which intense apocalyptic
expectations prevailed and whose members sought to break decisively with the "system of the
Antichrist". All this occurred against the background of Khrushchov's anti-religious campaign of 1958-
1963, the first such large-scale campaign to affect also the Western Ukraine, which saw hundreds of
churches closed and numerous show-trials of "clerics and sectarians" organized. In April 1962, in one of
the pilgrim groups in the district of Brody, a woman tormented by apocalyptic fears after a tumultuous
group prayer ended in a mental hospital, which gave a good pretext for repressive actions. On July 2,
1962 fr. Soltys was arrested and later sentenced to 7 years of prison for "anti-Soviet propaganda" and
"trespass to the person or infringement of rights under the pretense of religious rituals". He served his
sentence in a special camp for political prisoners in Sosnovka, Mordovia, where activists of different
religious confessions were held.
The arrest of the leader and the persecutions suffered by the pilgrims led to further radicalization
of the Seredne cult. In one of Hanna's revelations, a demand was announced "that the right side separate
finally from the left one", meaning a decisive break – both actual and symbolic – with the world
dominated by the Antichrist and with everything worldly. An instruction spread among the faithful
encouraged them to become a kind of a monastic order: "We should die for the world and for the idol of
our self, not to seek our own pleasure, but to seek the cross and the suffering, to co-suffer with Jesus and
make a sacrifice of our suffering". The pilgrims began to turn in all the documents that attested their
belonging to the godless regime: passports, draft cards, pension books etc. They quit their jobs in
kolkhozes, state enterprises and public institutions, living off their small household plots, private crafts
(e.g. construction works) or small trade. They would not let their children to attend schools, where
teachers sought to inculcate them with atheism, or at least kept them at home on Church holidays and
forbade them to wear Young Pioneer ties. They shunned all the so-called "cultural and educative
institutions" of the Soviet regime (cinemas, village clubs etc.), refrained from participation in elections
or other quasi-obligatory civil campaigns, refused to read newspapers, listen to radio or watch
television. They ceased to greet those not believing in the "Second Coming" – those "who did not accept
the truth of God" – and instead crossed them demonstratively. They also made the sign of the cross on
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everything they had to use or even touch (e.g. before eating a food, before entering a bus) in order to
cleanse it from the mark of the Antichrist.
In one of the revelations, the followers of fr. Soltys were given the name of "penitents"
(pokutnyky), for they were called, in these last times, to do penance for their own sins and those of their
families and the whole mankind. Their life increasingly focused on pilgrimages to Seredne where they
prayed intense novenas, spending there days and nights despite police roundups and beatings. Several
cases were also reported when penitents burst into Orthodox churches, denouncing Orthodoxy or even
physically attacking Orthodox priests, which often led to clashes with the parishioners. Penitents openly
defied all orders of the authorities, refused to sign any papers offered by government representatives
and, when detained, responded to interrogations by standardized phrases: "By what power do you ask
me: God's or Devil's? My first name is Penitent. My family name is the Chosen One. I was born on the
mount of Seredne in the year of my first pilgrimage – before that time I lived not, but rotted in sin. I
work on God's field" etc.
The penitents' anti-Soviet resistance was self-consciously demonstrative, so they were no longer in
the "underground". In the region of Lviv, as of 1965, over 150 penitents (up to 50 households) were
registered by the authorities, while in the region of Ivano-Frankivsk in 1971 there were some 160,
including 64 in the single village of Perehinsk. In the region of Transcarpathia, as of 1977, there were 81
penitents, and in the region of Ternopil, as of 1973, only 23 of them. However, there was also a large
number of sympathizers who believed in the divine mission of fr. Soltys and occasionally visited
Seredne without abandoning their jobs, withholding their children from schools or otherwise inviting
troubles with the authorities. The overall number of people involved, one way or another, in the penitent
movement could have reached 800 to 1000 persons, and their anti-Soviet and anti-Orthodox actions
must have had much wider repercussions in the West Ukrainian society than these sheer numbers may
suggest. It is also to be noted, that in mid-1960s the Seredne cult gained one more follower from among
underground Greek-Catholic clergy – fr. Stephen Hrehorovych from Mukachevo, who in late 1950s was
among active propagators of the Seredne apparitions. At first he rejected fr. Ignatius' messianic claims,
but several years later, after profound hesitations, came to believe in him as "Jesus Christ in the Second
Coming".
Quite naturally, the emergence of such a fiercely anti-Soviet movement could not but entail
government repressions. Pilgrims in Seredne were dispersed and cruelly beaten by the police, thrown
into a nearby river (especially in winter), taken away to distant fields or forests, or arrested and
sentenced to several years in prison for "vagrancy" or "parasitism". E.g., in 1968, in the region of Lviv,
20 penitents were put to jail on criminal charges (not counting administrative arrests), including fr.
Potochnyak who had been in hiding since 1962 and now received a 5-year sentence. Numerous deaths
are reported by the penitents as a result of police violence, though no verification is possible. In
December 1972, by the decision of regional authorities, the "miraculous spring" in Seredne was dug up
and covered with concrete and the water from under the hill was directed to the kolkhoz cowshed. The
house of Hanna Kuzminska in the village of Kolodiiv, another sanctuary of the penitents, was also
demolished.
Penitents were encouraged to break relations with family members who did not recognize the
"Second Coming" in Seredne: "God needs no soul that is divided in itself, – explained one of the
penitents. – If your relatives do not accept the Lord, they are no relatives to you." Bearing children was
also discouraged due to the impossibility of raising them as Christians. Numerous family breakups
followed, with wives repudiating their husbands and parents, their children. However, many more
families were broken by the authorities who – according to a widespread practice with regards to
members of illegal sects – deprived penitents of parental rights and placed their children in public
boarding schools. Such cases were quite numerous – e.g., as of May 1972, in the sole region of Ivano-
Frankivsk there were 43 penitents' children in boarding schools. I have recorded from the penitents
many dramatic stories about how children were forcibly taken away from home, ran away – often more
than once – back to their parents, went hiding, but eventually were tracked down by the police and
returned to boarding schools. The Soviet press described these events in a completely different key,
telling the story of how these children, – who were allegedly abused by their fanatic parents, deprived of
education, healthcare, and every joy of life, compelled to fasting and exhausting pilgrimages, and upon
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arrival to a boarding school, refused to communicate with educators, crossed food before eating etc. –
were healed physically and mentally, liberated from the influence of their parents, reeducated and
returned to full-fledged life. Eventually, as the penitents themselves acknowledge, through the efforts of
the Soviet education system most of these children became part of the secularized Soviet society and
lost touch or at least spiritual affinity with their penitent parents.
After Khrushchov's demise, the practice of condemning religious activists for "anti-Sovietism"
was abandoned, and fr. Soltys' prison term was reduced to 5 years. He was released in 1967 and returned
to Western Ukraine, where he lived secretly among his followers (mostly in Lviv). During the 1970s, the
radicalism of the penitents somewhat abated, and protest actions in Orthodox churches ceased.
However, in January 1981, after a new campaign against "religious extremists" began, fr. Soltys was
arrested again along with his niece Kateryna Kuzminska. After several months of investigations, the
elderly priest was sentenced in a public trial to 5 years of high security prison for "trespass to the person
under the pretense of religious rituals" (article 209 of the Criminal Code regularly used against religious
activists in the last decades of the Soviet rule). This sentence he had to serve in full and was released
only in 1986.
Little is known about his later life. After his release, fr. Soltys resided, supposedly, in Ternopil. He
lived to see the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he had long prophesied, and the emergence of
independent Ukraine that he desired so much. He is said to have been still alive in 2001, when pope
John Paul II (or "antipope", according to the penitents) came to Lviv and Kyiv, and urged the Ukrainian
authorities to cancel the pope's visit lest the nation should be punished by God. The penitents interpret
the tragic accident during an airshow in the Lviv airport in July 2002 as the consequence of the
government's inattention to their warnings. According to some witnesses, Soltys died in 2002-2003 and
was buried in Sambir near his father, who was killed in World War I. However, his followers refuse to
tell the exact date of his death or disclose the place of his burial, claiming that "he is still alive" – for
"God never dies."
Today, the overall number of the penitents can be estimated at two or three hundreds, dispersed
across Galicia and Transcarpathia. Most of them are either those who followed fr. Soltys in 1960a and
1970s or their children and grandchildren, but there is also a number of later converts, usually aged, who
joined the penitents after the collapse of the Communism, often attracted by the nationalist implications
of the Seredne cult (a propos, this cult was propagated on the pages of notoriously nationalistic and
antisemitic newspaper "The Idealist," published in Lviv and now closed down). They are served by three
elderly priests ordained by fr. Soltys, including his nephew Myroslav. On the mount, a small chapel was
erected in early 1990-s and later, an imposing figure of Virgin Mary. On Church feasts according to the
penitents' new calendar – in which Sunday was replaced by Wednesday1 and some new feasts of Jesus
Christ and Virgin Mary in the "Second Coming" were introduced along with the old ones – two or three
priests celebrate a long four-hour service in Church Slavonic. These celebrations follow the old Greek-
Catholic rite, as it was practiced back in the 1930-s, with many of the so called "latinisms" like ringing
of bells before the communion, kneeling of the communicants, supplications after liturgy, May Marian
devotions, feasts of Christ the King, Corpus Christi etc. All these elements of Western Catholic
influence, now discarded in a controversial re-easternization of the rite, were once the visible sign of the
Greek-Catholics' distinction from the Orthodox and formed the pivot of the religious identity of
underground faithful. However, the rite of the Seredne liturgies contains also some significant
modifications, like liturgical readings "from the Holy Spirit" (i.e. from a "new Gospel" for the Age of
the Holy Spirit compiled of Hanna's revelations and the sayings of fr. Soltys), references to the
"Accomplished Second Coming" or "the Mary-Ann of Seredne" or, most conspicuously, communion
with the "holy water" from the Seredne spring instead of bread and wine. Be it rain, snow, heat or frost,
these services bring together some 80-100 people, mostly in their fifties and well beyond, with only ten
to twenty younger people or children.
In the recent years, many of the remaining penitents have sold their property elsewhere and
purchased houses in Seredne, settling on the "holy land". Here, several unrelated elderly men and
women often share a single house. On the edge of the village, near the "Holy mount", a larger house was
1 Ukrainian word for Wednesday, "Sereda", or the "middle of the week", is paronymous with Seredne, "the village in-
between".
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built which the penitents call their "monastery" and where priests and other pilgrims stop upon their
arrival to Seredne. On the hill, a small cemetery was allocated to them by the village authorities
(common cemeteries the penitents consider desecrated). The tension that existed between the penitents
and the Soviet society has now generally abated: they accepted the passports of the new Ukrainian state,
no longer reject their names or cross their interlocutors etc. The villagers of Seredne call them,
somewhat ironically, "the saints" and treat them with certain suspicion, remembering the tales of Soviet
propaganda about the alleged crimes of these "sectarians".
Today, the Seredne cult and its followers remain a vestige of the epoch of severe persecutions
suffered by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church under the Soviet rule. They are also a living witness to
the fact that underground existence was not only about steadfast confession of faith and heroic
martyrdom. Being driven into the underground was a deep psychological trauma which sometimes
caused irreversible changes in worldview, attitudes and lifestyle. Isolated beyond the Iron curtain, some
faithful viewed the tragedy of their nation and their Church as an event of world-historical and even
eschatological importance. Hardened by persecutions and privations, they began to treat any resistance
less radical than their own as a treacherous compromise. Faced with KGB intrigues and mendacious
Soviet propaganda, they developed an inclination to suspicion and conspirological thinking. Deprived of
institutional leadership, they sought support and consolation in divine miracles and found a new leader
in the person of a zealous and ascetic priest with an idea of his special mission. All in all, penitents
represent a curious – though not unusual in Eastern Europe – case of the most resolute and self-
abnegated resistance against the Soviet regime wrapped up in chimeric messianic illusions. Their
staunch and whole-hearted fidelity to the Catholic Church led, quite ironically, to the creation of a small
sect with its own "Holy See". In a way, they are among the most tragic victims of the Soviet rule – not
only in the sense of repressions and persecutions they sustained, but first and foremost in the sense of
being pushed on this path of enormous sacrifices for an illusionary cause.
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