Ukrainian Ministry of Education ridiculed for historical illiteracy in church topics

The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (MES) has faced a wave of criticism on the Internet over a publication that, according to experts and the public, contains gross historical inaccuracies regarding the Ukrainian language in church worship. Users and historians ridiculed the agency for its ignorance in a sensitive church subject.

According to the Union of Orthodox Journalists (UOJ), the cause of the scandal was the MES’s Facebook post titled “Church Rashism, or the Church as an instrument of linguistic unification.” It claimed that “in the 1620s Ukrainian church books were ordered to be burned, and in the 1690s the Ukrainian language was even ousted from the divine service”. The piece also stated that the Uniate Cardinal Iosif Slipyi (XX century) “founded the UCU and gave the Ukrainian language back a voice in the church and the world”.

Tetyana Yevseyeva of the Institute of History of Ukraine under the National Academy of Sciences reacted sharply to these statements. The historian called the dissemination of such information on behalf of the MES “Spanish shame” and reminded the officials of elementary historical facts. According to Yevseyeva, it is absurd to talk about “Church Rashism” in the 1620s, since the Pereyaslavl Treaty was signed only in 1654, the Ecumenical Patriarch’s permission to supply the Kiev Metropolitan was granted to Moscow in 1686, and the synodal reform of Peter the Great took place only in 1721.

Tatyana Yevseyeva also emphasized that from 1458 to 1619, the Kiev and Moscow Metropolises did not maintain either written or Eucharistic communion because of Moscow’s isolationism. The 1622 decree by Tsar Mikhail Romanov, mentioned by MON, to burn the “Teaching Gospel” by Cyril Tranquillion-Stavrovetsky, printed in Ukraine, was a purely internal Moscow affair and had nothing to do with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which at that time included Russian voivodships.

Facebook users also joined in the criticism. For example, Olga Dichko wrote: “In the Orthodox worship services did not use “Ukrainian language” in the modern sense. The language of divine services is Church Slavonic, with different regional editions.” Another commenter, Taras Tymo, expressed bewilderment: “Ummm… sorry, but who wrote this? And this is from MON goes to the people?”.

Recall, earlier we reported that the National Reserve “Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra” concluded a contract for services of protection of the territory and premises until the end of 2026. The total value of the contract amounted to more than 27.5 million hryvnias.