by Vladimir Rozansky

By targeting the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, Moscow has struck the sacred site it has used for centuries as evidence of its "special spiritual mission", which it refused to cede to the Ukrainians until its complete evacuation. Now it will be necessary to rebuild the place, like after the Tatar-Mongol invasion, and the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis.

 

With the bombing of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, Russia has set fire to its own myth of the "Third Rome”, heir to the Orthodox civilisation, defender of the true faith, guardian of sacred places – a myth that had the Pechersk Lavra as the first "mother city" of Rus'.

Putin sought to avenge the humiliation he suffered the previous week in St Petersburg, at the International Economic Forum, when Ukrainian drones covered the modern capital on the Neva River in smoke, symbol of another Russia, master of the world.

Starting in the dark ages of the Tartar Yoke, Moscow appropriated the legacy of Kyivan Rus', presenting itself as the sole representative of the baptism imposed on the people by Prince Vladimir the Great, deemed “equal to the Apostles”, and of the entire tradition of Byzantine Orthodoxy, since the Patriarchate of Constantinople had fallen to the Ottoman Turks, along with all the other peoples connected to it.

For this reason, Moscow needed the Lavra, not so much as a monastery, but as a symbol of its right to the history, memory, and identity of “all the Russias”.

On the hill overlooking the Dnieper River, the Jordan of Rus', the monks had brought the sacred traditions of all Byzantine spirituality from Mount Athos, excavating caves from the top of the cathedral to the banks of the Baptismal Column.

Now Russia itself bombed the sacred site it used for centuries as evidence of its "special spiritual mission”, which it claimed to be a true "Russian monastery" that it refused to yield to the Ukrainians, until the arrest of Metropolitan Pavel, the monastery's pro-Moscow superior, known as Pasha Mercedes for his penchant for luxury cars, and the clearing of the monastic caves used for commercial purposes of all kinds.

This is the basis of the accusations that the Ukrainians were persecuting Orthodoxy, disrespectful of the sacred places. Now it will be up to the Ukrainians to restore and rebuild what the Russians destroyed, like after the Tatar-Mongol invasion, which razed the sacred buildings of the Lavra, and the Great Patriotic War, when the Russians bombed Kyiv to annihilate the “German and Ukrainian Nazis”.

Media outlets affiliated with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate have tried to explain that the Lavra's Dormition Cathedral “may have been hit not by the Russians, but by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile”, or “it may have been accidental”, and that in any case “it was absolutely not a targeted attack”.

According to other supporters of the Moscow Patriarchate, Russia targeted the part of the shrine managed by the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), not the part controlled by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) loyal to Moscow. But “This is pure fantasy, since no one would deliberately bomb churches; the costs would be too high," a pro-Russian outlet noted, cynically adding that “judging from the photos, the damage is not too serious”.

Following the Russian attack on the Lavra, the Dormition Cathedral, a church with a history dating back to the 11th century, went up in flames. This "currently represents one of Russia's gravest crimes against Christian culture," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Facebook, saying that in a single night, the Russians launched more than 60 missiles at the capital alone, killing four people and wounding another 28.

The primate of the autocephalous Church, Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), called the bombing of the monastery “another Russian crime against humanity, against history, and against Christianity.”

European foreign ministers condemned the massive attack in Kyiv on the night of 15 June, calling it a war crime and proof that Russia “has no red lines”.

“For us, the French, [this] would be equivalent to bombing Notre-Dame or [the Basilica of] Saint-Denis,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot speaking at the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg. Russia, he added, “once again demonstrated the scale of its brutality” by causing serious damage to the Dormition Cathedral of the Monastery of the Caves in Kyiv, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The Russian attack on the original seat of “Holy Russia” further justifies the campaign to abandon the imperial Soviet and Russian names of Ukrainian cities, which has been underway since the start of the war as the vanguard of a broader process that is affecting the entire post-Soviet space.

From the Caucasus to Central Asia, the former Soviet republics are gradually freeing themselves of foreign toponyms and symbols, emphasising their independence and national identity.

The Ukrainian policy of decommunisation and de-Russification began well before of the invasion in February 2022; the first steps in this direction were taken in the early 1990s, when many communist-era monuments were dismantled.

In Central Asia, Kazakhstan is one of the most significant examples of decolonisation through the renaming of geographical features. The country has a very long border with Russia, a significant Russian-speaking population, and a national language seriously weakened during the Soviet period. After the collapse of the USSR, the map of Kazakhstan began to change rapidly: Ust-Kamenogorsk became Oskemen, and Uralsk became Oral.

The history of Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, is particularly interesting. Originally called Akmola (White Tomb), the city was renamed Tselinograd, meaning "City of Virgin Lands" during the Soviet era. This name reflected the Soviet vision of Kazakhstan as an empty space, destined for the settlement of immigrants from Russia.

After independence, the city was first renamed Akmola and then Astana, which in Kazakh simply means “capital”, before becoming Nursultan in honour of the “eternal president" Nazarbayev, which was eventually dropped with the return to Astana.

Russia's hostile reaction to the post-Soviet trend toward decolonising toponyms clearly shows the importance the Kremlin places on the space inherited from the empire and its symbols.

Russian authorities have condemned the name changes in independent Ukraine, calling them “forced de-Russification”, accusing Kyiv of trying to “destroy the historical unity” of the two peoples.

This approach directly echoes Vladimir Putin's essay on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, published in July 2021, in which the Russian president asserted that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people” and lamented that the distinction drawn between the two during the Bolshevik era had led to the “spoliation of Russia”.

These ideas became one of the ideological foundations of the invasion that began a few months later.

Throughout its history, the Lavra's Dormition Cathedral has suffered extensive damage: it was damaged by an earthquake in 1230, sacked by Khan Batu's Mongols in 1242, severely damaged by a fire in 1718, blown up on Stalin's orders on 3 November 1941, and finally hit by Putin's missiles five days ago.

After the humiliation of St Petersburg, Putin threatened to strike Kyiv's “decision-making centres and command posts”. Apparently, he believes that Ukraine makes its decisions at the Monastery of the Caves, the Dovzhenko Film Studios, and the Dnipro House of Organ Music, all targeted last week.

As Ivan Preobrazhensky noted, the Dovzhenko Film Studios are not just “a name in textbooks”, but a place where "one comes into contact with the world of cinema, creativity, and history."

“A costume collection,” he explained, “like the one that was destroyed, is not just made of fabrics, buttons, or old clothes... It is memory, it is the lives of artists, costume designers, directors, and actors; it is part of Ukrainian culture, carefully collected and preserved for decades."

The Russian World at war behaves like its Soviet “heroes”, like the Asian invaders who, after all, are the true ancestors of Imperial Russia. Now the Lavra is burning, the museums are suffering, the libraries are blown up ... And the Russian World shows itself for what it truly is, but it does not have much time left before it disappears completely.

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• russia
• ukraine
• kyiv
• lavra
• kyiv monastery of the caves
• dormition cathedral
• putin
• zelenskyy
• dovzhenko film studies