Arsen Vasyliovych Richynskyi (12 (25) June 1892, Tetylkivtsi, Kremenets district, Volyn province - 13 April 1956, Dzhusaly, Kyzylorda oblast, Kazakh SSR) was a Volyn Ukrainian public, political and church figure, composer, photographer, local historian, founder of the Ukrainian ethnology of religion, holy confessor, and doctor.
Arsen Rychynskyi was born on 12 June 1892 in the village of Tetylkivtsi, Kremenets district, Volyn province, to a priest, Vasyl Fedorovych Rychynskyi, and Vira Kapitonivna Rychynska. Apparently, it was his father who influenced the choice of his son's future profession. Arsen Rychynskyi received his primary education at a rural parish school, then at the Klevan Theological School and the Kremenets Gymnasium. Later, he entered the Volyn Theological Seminary in Zhytomyr, whose teachers and seminarians, although ostensibly pretending to be servants of Russian politics in the region, were actually traditionalists.
"...The Volyn clergy was Ukrainian by nature. It was a spontaneous Ukrainianism, our parents did not show any deeper national consciousness; Ukrainianness in them and in us, their children, was manifested in the fact that we spoke Ukrainian, our native language. The whole life of the priestly families, the family life, as well as the life of the Volyn peasantry, was purely Ukrainian. Russification influences did not reach here. Ukrainian traditions - church and folk - were firmly preserved,"
wrote Philimon Kulchynsky, a professor at the Volyn Theological Seminary, in his memoirs.
In Zhytomyr, the young seminarian belonged to a history study group led by members of the Society of Volyn Researchers and seminary professors. Arsen Rychynskyi himself recalled his years of study in Zhytomyr, when he and his like-minded friends were together:
"...once or twice a month we would sneak into the winter evenings in the suburbs of Zhytomyr to the steps of an underground Ukrainian school youth group, just to learn about our native history and literature from the reports of our comrades. We had to look out for the school "authorities" and the police, and the one who suffered the most was probably the widow who let us up these steps into her house for 2 karbovanets."
On 26 January 1907, when Arsen Rychynskyi was just in the 2nd grade, the seminarians went on a riot. All exits and entrances to the seminary buildings were blocked by police and gendarmerie. The seminarians resisted. Having turned off the lights, they began to pour water from a fire hose on the representatives of the order, and threw furniture. Regular army units were called in to help, and they occupied the premises. The search, which lasted until 5 am, was aimed at finding traces of 'Ukrainian separatism' and 'Mazepa'. 26 seminarians were arrested. Seven were taken to court, of whom four were sentenced to several months' imprisonment and three to two and a half years.
In 1911, dissatisfied with his position as a teacher at the parish school in the village of Sidniarky, Lutsk district, Arsen Rychynskyi went to Warsaw University to study medicine.
In 1914, due to the outbreak of the First World War, he was transferred to the Kyiv Imperial University of St Volodymyr. He organised student literary readings and musical evenings, scientific meetings, and edited handwritten journals and wall newspapers. After his first year, due to financial difficulties in his family, he worked as a teacher at a paramedic school alongside his studies.
Employees of the Iziaslav school administration. Arsen Richynskyi is the first on the right in the first row. 1920
In 1915, he was sent to serve in the Izyaslav district zemstvo, and then as a district doctor in Khrolyn. From there, he was evacuated to the village of Vasylivka, Petrovskyi district, Saratov province, then to the village of Popivka, Rylskyi district, Kursk province, and then to the village of Vechirky, Poltava province. Later, her daughter Liudmyla Richynska explained her father's frequent movements as a result of his unwillingness to draw special attention to his person from the imperial authorities, which was particularly acute during the war.
In 1917, she returned to the university, passed her exams on 30 March, but received her medical degree only a year and a half later, on 20 September 1918.
From 31 May 1917 to 9 April 1920, he served as a doctor at the Izyaslav District Hospital. It was in Izyaslav that Arsen Rychynskyi saw the beginning of the liberation struggle, to which he sought to contribute wholeheartedly. In 1917, he was elected chairman of the Izyaslav District Zemstvo, and later became editor of the newly created magazine Nova Doroga. He became one of the most active figures of the Iziaslav "Prosvita". He organises a teachers' choir, with which he makes his debut as a conductor. He contributes to the creation of "Ukrainisation" courses at the Ostroh Women's Gymnasium, where he teaches the history of Ukraine. There he met Nadiia Prokopovych and they fell in love. Nadiia Prokopovych was a teacher in the village of Vaskivtsi, a suburb of Izyaslav. After leaving his first wife Lidiia Vilenska from Shepetivka, Arsen Richynskyi moved to Vaskivtsi. Here he was caught up in the Soviet occupation. Liudmyla Rychynska has this memory of those events:
"In 1920, the Bolsheviks came to Volyn. They began to identify and arrest those who supported the Ukrainian idea. This especially frightened the Korenevych family, with whom A. Richynskyi had close ties. There was a rumour that a Petliurist, a Jewish teacher, had been shot in the town near the school. Then my mother hid Arsen Vasylovych on the roof of the house (...)
Nina Pavlivna came to Izyaslav to collect his diploma. Obviously, she loved him very much. Risking her life, my mother hid the diploma in her braids. She visited her uncle and learned that he had been shot by the Bolsheviks. Dad sat on the roof of the village of Vaskivtsi for a week, and then he started walking at night to the village of Trostianets, where there were no Bolsheviks. It was an uncertain time."
The lovers were reunited in Trostianets, Lutsk district, where the Prokopovych family home was located. They got married on 11 July 1921, as the bride's father was a priest. In Trostianets, Arsen Rychynskyi worked as a practising doctor until April 1922.
Subsequently, he was promoted to district doctor and then appointed chief physician of the Volodymyr-Volyn hospital (until April 1925).
During the Volodymyr period, Arsen Rychynskyi collaborated with such prominent personalities as Archimandrite Polikarp (Petro Sikorsky), composer, publicist and politician Mykhailo Telezhynskyi, historian and archaeologist Oleksandr Tsynkalovskyi, cultural and public figure Stepan Smal-Stotskyi, literary critic, publicist and politician Dmytro Dontsov.
He writes texts on church topics: "The Origin of the Episcopate: in connection with the question of the grace of the hierarchy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church", "The current state of church and religious life of the Ukrainian population in Poland. A report delivered at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Congress in Lutsk on 5-6 June 1927", "A Critical Examination of the Resolution of the Holy Synod Banning the Ukrainian Church Congress", "On the Road to Nowhere". He prepares collections where he acts as a composer: "National Chants in the Ukrainian Church. A Collection of Generally Available Church Songs for Village Choirs, Schools and the People", "Ukrainian Church Songs", "Ukrainian Carols", "Grieving Mother. A Collection of Ukrainian Church Folk Songs from the Book of Common Prayer for Mixed Choir, and Ukrainian Vespers and Matins. In Volodymyr, Arsen Rychynskyi's main text "Problems of Ukrainian Religious Consciousness" appears, and it is the first attempt in Ukrainian intellectual history to analyse the Ukrainian ethnos from the perspective of the ethnology of religion. He devotes some of his works to local history and Plast.
He was active in public, political and cultural activities. Founds Prosvita in Volodymyr and Volodymyr-Volynskyi district (in 1928-1929 he acts as its head), Plast (banned by the local administration in 1929), Union of Ukrainian Women, Raiffeisenka (did not actually start operating due to the district court's failure to approve its charter), and Revival (banned by the starosta in 1935).
Since 1929, she has been a member of the Ukrainian Volyn Association and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists.
He edited the general cultural and religious magazines "On Guard" (1925-1926), "Ridna Tserkva" (1927), and "Nashe Bratstvo" (1929).
At this time, Arseniy Richynsky's principled stance on the need for the Ukrainian Church to obtain autocephaly was eloquently demonstrated. He was one of the inspirers and organisers of the Ukrainian Church Congress (5-6 June 1927) in Lutsk. Unlike the head of the Polish Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Dionysius, who, under pressure from Russian public organisations, declared the congress "ecclesiastically inappropriate and unnecessary" and forbade the clergy to participate in it, the secular authorities allowed the meeting, which was called the "Congress of Orthodox Lay Ukrainians in Church Affairs". The congress was attended by 565 delegates from all counties of Volhynia, Polissya, Kholm, and Podlasie. More than 200 guests arrived, including 8 Ukrainian ambassadors to the Sejm and Senate, the Volyn vice-voivode, and the Lutsk city starosta.
At the same time, Arsen Rychynskyi was elected chairman of the Orthodox Church Ukrainian Executive Committee in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The congress adopted a series of demands for the Ukrainisation of the Orthodox Church on Ukrainian lands. In particular, it demanded the introduction of the Ukrainian liturgical and business language, the restoration of Ukrainian church customs and rituals abolished by the Russian authorities, the appointment of Ukrainian bishops in the Ukrainian lands, and the reorganisation of spiritual consistories and district archpriests, which had been centres of Russification. The congress's resolution stressed that:
"...All nations on earth are called to the kingdom of God. Christianity does not know any privileged peoples, and therefore every nation, according to the principles of the Orthodox Eastern Church and its ecclesiastical and historical tradition, has the right to express its religious life in distinctive national forms that not only do not divide the community of Christ, but also enrich the Universal Church with its many colours and the peculiar flavour of individual national cultures and national characters."
In 1928, Arsen Rychynski was appointed to the Metropolitan Council of the Polish Orthodox Church. This step was only a diplomatic game. In reality, the demands for the Ukrainisation of the Orthodox Church on Ukrainian lands were ignored. On 4 December 1928, in protest against this policy, Arsen Rychynski resigned as a member of the Metropolitan Council.
In 1929, by Resolution No. 14 of 15 April, the Synod of the Polish Orthodox Church excommunicated Arsen Rychynski.
On 28 April 1929, Arseniy Rychynskyi was anathematised in the Vladimir Assumption Cathedral surrounded by police.
In his book Problems of Ukrainian Religious Consciousness, Arsen Rychynsky wrote about this situation as follows:
"The unpreparedness of our intelligentsia was striking when, after the anathema thrown at the author, members of the Ukrainian Church Committee, instead of clearly and firmly taking an independent position - the only one worthy of a mature nation - wondered whether they could still 'formally' advise the council together with their 'damned' chairman."
He is also a photographer. Arsen Rychynskyi's photographs of the Volodymyr period were reflected in publications: "Album of Culture in Images" (1932), O. Tsynkalovskyi's work "The Princely City of Volodymyr" (1935), and the album "Ukrainian Sich Riflemen" (1937).
He was persecuted and arrested three times by the Polish authorities. In 1925, 1935, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp in Bereza Kartuzka) and 1939. In 1940, he was arrested by the Soviet authorities. The family was deported to northern Kazakhstan, from where the Richinskis were able to return only in 1946. In May 1942, he was sentenced in absentia to 10 years of exile in the Gulag.
Arsen Rychynskyi's everyday life during his exile is somewhat reconstructed in the memoirs of Volodymyr V. Herun, a resident of the city who also wandered around the camps:
"There were two Ukrainian doctors in the strict regime camp. They were Ivan Klymenko and Arsen Richynskyi. Arsen was the head of the sanitary unit, and Ivan Vasylovych was a surgeon. I think that at that time Rychynskyi was semi-free in the camp. That's why he was appointed head of the medical unit. Obviously, the prison authorities made concessions because there were not enough doctors. I know that Richynskyi was "cut" in the zone, so he did not feel well after his recovery. Many Ukrainians from western Ukraine were given work release by Rychynskyi, so they hated him. There was a nationalist named Bohdanovych who was released from prison and then stabbed to death. I don't know why criminal gangsters wanted to kill him. The Russians were angry with doctor Richynskyi. Because he fired Ukrainians from their jobs. I met Rychynskyi in June 1946. I was undergoing a medical examination then, and also when I applied to him for release because I could not walk because of a leg injury. People in the camp often said when one of the Ukrainians was off work: "Arksyusha has freed the Khokhlov again."
In his spare time, Arsen Rychynskyi wrote a book based on Polissya legends called Legends of the Virgin Forest. Today the manuscript is considered lost. Here he found a new wife, from whom his son Viktor was born.
After serving a ten-year sentence, Richynskyi and his new family are sent into indefinite exile in the Kyzyl-Ordyn region of the Kazakh SSR without the right to return to Ukraine. There, he worked as a doctor at a district hospital. In the early 1950s, he created the Dva Khmaronky choir. However, life with his new wife does not work out and she leaves him with their son.
In 1952-1953, Arsen Richynskyi's articles on medical topics were published in the magazine "Zdorovye Kazakhstana" (Health of Kazakhstan). Arsen Richynskyi died on 13 April 1956 as a result of a haemorrhage. He was buried at the cemetery of the Dzhusaly station in Kyzyl-Orda region.
Re-burial in Ukraine
The grave of Arsen Richynskyi at the city cemetery near the village of Pidhorodne
In 2006, on the initiative of the head of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Mefodiy, Arsen Rychynskyi's remains were exhumed and brought to Ukraine. The discovery of his remains, with the assistance of the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev and the Embassy of Ukraine in Kazakhstan, was carried out by the first assistant to Metropolitan Mefodiy, Natalia Shevchuk. On 14 October 2006, on the Feast of the Intercession, the exhumed remains of Arseniy Richynsky were transported to Ternopil and reburied in the city cemetery near the village of Pidhorodne.
Works by
Anton Maliutsa. Cover of A. Rychynskyi's book "To Happiness, Glory, and Freedom".
Religious studies
The origin of the bishops: in connection with the question of the grace of the hierarchy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Vladimir Volynsky 1926. Reprint: Ukrainian Theologian, no. 2, 2003, pp. 29-51.
The current state of church and religious life of the Ukrainian population in Poland. Report delivered at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Congress in Lutsk on 5-6 June 1927. Warsaw, 1927.
A critical examination of the resolution of the Holy Synod to ban the Ukrainian Church Congress. Warsaw 1927.
On the back roads. Volodymyr Volynskyi 1932. Reprint: Ukrainian Theologian, no. 2, 2003, pp. 19-28.
Problems of Ukrainian Religious Consciousness. Volodymyr Volynskyi 1933. Reprint: 2nd (2000), 3rd (2002), 4th (2009) (with censorship-banned edits).
Sacred music
Folk singing in the Ukrainian church. A collection of publicly available church hymns for village choirs, schools, and the people. Volodymyr Volynskyi, 1925.
Ukrainian church chants. 1926.
Ukrainian carols. 1927.
The Grieving Mother. A collection of Ukrainian church folk songs from the hymnbook for mixed choir. Volodymyr Volynskyi. 1929.
Ukrainian Vespers and Matins. Volodymyr Volynskyi 1929.
Local history
The old town of Volyn. Lviv, 1938.
Plast membership
To happiness, glory and freedom. Lviv, 1930.
Honouring the memory
On 24 May 1999, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine named the Kremenets Medical School after Arsen Richynskyi. A memorial plaque was installed on the facade of the building.
On 26 August 2009, during a meeting of the Bishops' Council of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, it was decided to rank the confessor of faith Arsen Rychynskyi as a locally venerated saint.
In January 2009, the Arsen Rychynskyi Museum was opened at the Kremenets Medical School.
On 26 October 2010, a memorial plaque to Arsen Rychynskyi was unveiled on the facade of the surgical department of the Iziaslav District Hospital.
On 15 February 2016, a street in Izyaslav was named after Arseniy Richynskyi by the mayor's order.
