DAILY DISPATCH | KIEV — DAY EIGHT

	Catacombs, Catholics and Kiddush mark the eighth day study of religion in the former Soviet Union By BRIAN McGUIRE Posted Friday, March 22, 2002; 6:51 p.m. EST

Our first full day in Kiev, and we spent it underground.

A trip to Kiev Pecherska Lavra, also known as the Monastery of the Caves, brought students literally into the catacombs. In the afternoon, we visited St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church, which focused our attention on the clandestine worship of Ukrainian Orthodox believers who were loyal to the Pope under the Soviets.

Toward evening, we headed for Kiev's lone reform synagogue, which reminded us of the great losses the Jewish community suffered — in freedom and lives — during the 20th century. The Russian earth, as one underground poet of the Soviet era put it, loves blood. And we went under for a look.

The morning ride to Kiev Pecherska Lavra was a feat of organization. A week in sprawling Moscow had taught us how to move more efficiently in a pack. The Metro ride to a bus stop downtown took no time, and staying together on a crowded bus from there to the Lavra was downright artful.

When we arrived at the Lavra, an enormous walled-in compound of bright golden domes and freshly painted pastel churches of green, yellow and blue, pilgrims were pouring in for Lenten devotions. The sky was bright blue, and the smell of burning leaves filled the chilly air. Black cassocked monks counseled old women while leaning on iron gates. Workers cut dead limbs from trees. Spring was in the air.

The Lavra is one of the three holiest sites of the Russian Orthodox Church. Legend has it that the Apostle Andrew brought Christianity to Eastern Europe near its walls toward the end of the first century. Monks from Byzantium came here in the 12th century to live an ascetic life. They dug caves to live in on a cliff overlooking the Dnieper River, and a sprawling monastery soon grew up on the land around it.

"The history of the Lavra is very dramatic," said Dimitri Volovnikov, our guide at the monastery. Volovnikov, a former Russian Orthodox seminarian who now teaches church history at the Lavra's Kiev Theological Academy, said that the fall of the Soviet Union in 1988 and the subsequent independence of Ukraine in 1991 resulted in a scrambling for religious identity among Ukrainians. He called the 1991 creation of a Kiev Patriarchate independent of Moscow "unfortunate," saying it attracted Ukrainians who had been atheists under Soviet rule. "It's not proper to put Ukrainians against Russia," Volovnikov said. "Until the 15th century, we had a common history."

Later we visited a Ukrainian Greek Catholic church in a nearby park. St. Nicholas Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was a short walk from the Lavra. A tiny, yellow church, St. Nicholas is home to a small group of Catholics in Kiev who worship according to the Eastern Orthodox rite. Until 1991, Ukrainian Catholics in Kiev had no church. They worshipped at a botanical garden after Ukrainian independence, but the harassment of Russian Orthodox believers forced them to this site, the Rev. Ihor Onyshevych, pastor of St. Nicholas, said.

According to Onyshevych, the Ukrainian government gave Ukrainian Catholics in Kiev this building, a former museum, through the efforts of Roman Popadeuk, America's first ambassador to Ukraine. Onyshevych told our group to use words for the good of America and for the advancement of freedom. Recalling the example of Taras Shevchenko, the national poet of Ukraine who fought for independence through his writing, Onyshevych said, "Words are a powerful weapon. I wish you can use words for the good of America."

After leaving St. Nicholas, our group headed to a Reform synagogue, our first of the trip, for Shabbat services. Part of the group got lost on the way. After a long and winding walk from the Subway, the lost group ran into an American defense contractor in downtown Kiev. They asked him for directions to the synagogue. He called them a cab and sent them to the wrong one. Michael Gartland, Nicole Still, Elizabeth O'Brien and Brian McGuire ended up at the Brodsky Synagogue, an Orthodox Synagogue near our hotel, where a young man sang prayers to welcome in the Shabbat for a black-clad congregation. The beautifully appointed main room of the Brodsky Synagogue, with its crystal chandeliers, pine floors and bright white walls, had been used by the Soviets as a puppet theatre. Jews in Kiev were forced to worship in the basement.

Today, Jews worship freely in Kiev. But the memory of massacres like Babi Yar, one of the bloodiest purges of World War II, in which some 100,000 Jews were killed in two days not far from Kiev, are fresh. Discrimination against Jews in the region did not end with Ukraine's independence. "The situation here is volatile for Jews," said a visiting Israeli before walking home after the service.

Students who visited the Reform synagogue, known as the Hatikvah Congregation, got a dose of political rhetoric in advance of next week's elections from Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny. He told his congregation that they should vote and who they should vote for. "I thought it was inappropriate, but not surprising for Ukraine given the mix of politics and religion that we've seen all day," said Nicole Neroulias, one of the more vocal students on the trip.

The turn to politics at the end of the day underscored how the rise in nationalistic feeling after Ukraine's independence threatens the very freedoms — religious and civil — that this people longed for under Soviet domination.

When Professor Goldman asked if the splits in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have caused division within families since Ukrainian independence, Dmitri Volovnikov at Pecherska Lavra said, "Yes. Of course."

After coming into the light of freedom after decades in the dark, Ukraine's religious communities can't afford to descend again. Teeming with the relics of saints, the caves of Kiev are already full.