Iryna Pustynnikova,
“Local History”
Finding an unpatriotic village in Pokuttya is a very difficult task. But in Tyshkivtsi, patriotism is special, enduring. Its support is the Shukhevych family. Because Shukhevych here is only in the plural. Father Osyp began to build a brick church. His son and Father Zenon took an oath from more than 500 villagers that they would never drink alcohol. Volodymyr did not return to his small homeland after Lviv University, although he regularly visited. Roman Shukhevych, aka “Taras Chuprynka”, was also here.
“Pearl of the County”
— Do I remember anyone from the Shukhevych family? — Mykhailo Mysyk, a priest of the Greek Catholic Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, straightens his hair somewhat confusedly. — You should probably ask one of the old-timers. I’m still young — since 1945. There’s not a single one of their family left in the village. And to know that the Shukhevychs are from Tyshkivtsi — everyone knows that. Tyshkivtsi is a very patriotic village.
The phrase about patriotism will be repeated almost verbatim by everyone you ask about the Shukhevych family. It’s as if they’re quoting the newspaper “Dilo”: “Tyshkivtsi is a nationally conscious, rich, well-managed village, the pearl of the county.” They will also say in unison that even in Soviet times they remembered the Shukhevychs, but they just didn’t talk about them out loud. It was impossible.
They appeared in Tyshkivtsi in 1848, almost at the time when the Habsburgs abolished serfdom. Osyp Shukhevych was also from Pokuttya, from Rakovets. It is not far from here: high cliffs above the Dniester with the ruins of a medieval castle, kilometers of forests, a mild climate. His father, a priest, Evstahiy Shukh (later he changed his surname to Shukhevych), died when Osyp was 8. The family sent the orphaned boy to the Basilian Monastery in Buchach — one of the best educational institutions in the region at that time. He then studied with the Lviv Dominicans, the seminary, belonged to the “Russian Trinity” and was ordained. 32-year-old Osyp arrived in Tyshkivtsi with his 26-year-old wife Anna and 6-year-old son Zenon. In total, the couple had 12 children. Two died during the plague epidemic.
Osip had the gift of oratory. He knew how to rally people around him, to lead them. He translated Virgil, and he tried to write himself. His works were later published by his son, ethnographer, teacher and publicist Volodymyr Shukhevych, Roman’s grandfather.
— For Hutsuls, his five-volume “Hutsulshchyna” is a table book, — says Maria Pidlesnyuk, director of the Shukhevych Family Memorial Museum. — Like his texts, and his photographs: for several decades, Volodymyr traveled around the region with Count Didushytsky, filming everything with a portable (for those times) camera. It is his merit that so many archival photographs of the family, Tyshkivtsi, and the local Easter custom of “churchmen” have been preserved — when young men in brightly decorated hats built living pyramids in the churchyard.
Village council with a fitness center
When another plague took Osyp’s life, Zenon became the guardian of the huge family. He was also a parish priest and served for over 60 years, until his death. The family gathered together on holidays. In one of the family photos from the interwar period, there are as many as 76 people — they barely fit in the frame. But only Zenon remained in Tyshkivtsi itself. The others dispersed. Military men, priests, lawyers… The eternal history of the rural intelligentsia, which sooner or later became the urban intelligentsia.
Father Zenon inherited his father’s gift: to lead and convince. In 1907, over 500 villagers swore on the Bible that they would not drink alcohol. On the occasion of this occasion, Shukhevych ordered a commemorative cross in Lviv. It stands next to the crosses that commemorate the abolition of serfdom and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Markiyan Shashkevych.
The village prospered: there were four branches of “Prosvita”, “Union of Ukrainian Women”, “Raiffeisenka Savings Bank”, a nursery for 120 children and a kindergarten. A school was built on the site of the tavern. The people of Tyshkiv are still very well-off: perfect roads, neat signs with street names, a renovated school, a large village council with a fitness center and a Museum of Liberation Struggles, bus stops decorated with embroidery on frosted glass, flags near the monuments to Taras Shevchenko and Roman Shukhevych. The credit here is not so much to the Shukhevychs as to Anatoly Matvienko, a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of six convocations. The politician hails from the Kyiv region. His wife, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences Olga Mykhalchuk-Matvienko, was born in Tyshkivtsi. Her family house was overgrown with weeds and was falling apart. She consulted with friends: maybe sell the house? But for how much?
“Ask for 800 dollars, give it back for 700,” they advised her.
She told her husband — he said that Olga would not sell anything, but would develop her own project. Which one? And to whom would her soul lie.
St. Nicholas’ Manor
The soul lay with the children. At first, graduates of the local school were given a golden trident: girls — a pendant, boys — a badge. In 2006, the St. Nicholas’ Manor appeared on Shevchenko Street. Its location is suggested by the figure of the saint from Myra under the roof of a square brick gazebo. Despite its shape, everyone calls it a rotunda.
The courtyard near the tall wooden house is filled with sculptures. Twice a year, on the feast of St. Nicholas in winter and St. Nicholas in summer, a scene is staged here. The theater is leaving from Frankivsk. Yuriy, the son of Roman Shukhevych, also visited.
In 2022, the summer celebrations were not organized for obvious reasons, and the winter ones took place on December 18 – because it is Sunday. Tyshkovets’ “Mykolay” is still guided by the Julian calendar. Between holidays, Mrs. Olga is organizing the family photo archive. In the large room of this estate, behind the stacks of old photographs, two long tables are not visible. It is especially interesting to look at the tiny pictures of weddings from the first half of the 20th century. Women are in embroidered dresses, with endless strands of coral around their necks. Men have mush hats decorated with flowers, and neatly folded whips on their belts. Back then, they didn’t get married without a whip – the groom used it to baptize the door of his home during the ceremony.
— Look, there are a lot of photos from church and funerals, back then it was customary to take photos of sad events, — Ms. Olga shows a few tiny frames. — This is around the 1950s. Pay attention: women in church are not wearing headscarves! The custom of wrapping ourselves in headscarves was brought to us by our eastern neighbors, Ukrainian women did not do that!
The walls of the room where Olga Mykhalchuk-Matvienko is sorting through photos are hung with icons. All of them are of Saint Nicholas. There are dozens of them here: at one time, my husband bought the image of this saint at all the opening events, and that’s how the collection was built.
“Lightning” without devils
At the entrance to the Shukhevychs’ tenement house is an old chestnut tree with a large hollow, pierced by lightning. Father Zenon planted this tree on June 30, 1907, in his own yard on the occasion of the birth of his grandson Roman. He was born in Lviv, but he visited Tyshkivtsi.
Who hasn’t been to this estate: Ivan Franko, Olga Kobylyanska, Yosyp Kobrynskyi, Olena Kulchytska, Vasyl Stefanyk, Solomiya Krushelnytska. The house, built in 1836, was home to the parish priest of the Tyshkivtsi church a few years ago. The Matvienkos built a large two-story house for him nearby — wooden, like the Manor of St. Nicholas. And in the old house, museum workers from Kolomyia created an exhibition. An office, a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen — this is how the rural intelligentsia of Pokuttya lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Things were collected from everywhere. The piano traveled from France. The chair in the office is a hairdresser’s chair, unusual, in the Art Deco style. The secretary cleverly locks with a key. From the authentic things that were in the house for decades and decades, there is an old wardrobe with a heavy festive priest’s robe embroidered with crosses, two tall candlesticks. And also two dark wooden beds with high slats in a spacious bedroom, – says the museum employee Tetyana Manzyk, suggesting to remove the bags so that they do not get into the frame. In these bags lie an old fur coat and other props of the local “Malanka”. The action took place a few days ago. And it began precisely in the Shukhevych estate.
– Our “Malanka” are the most cultured in the region, – says Mrs. Tetyana. No devils or other evil spirits. After all, it is mainly women who play Malanka here, which is typical for the entire Pokuttya region. The funds collected during the event were given to the village elder – to help the Tyshkiv residents who serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. There are several dozen of them.
Kryivka in the cupboard
— I will show you three crosses, — the village headman Volodymyr Zolotarchuk leads to the outskirts of the village. I am still confused and do not understand: it seems that I have already photographed three crosses in the center, near the Shukhevych estate, Shukhevych Street and the monument to Roman Shukhevych. Aren’t these the same ones?
They are not. In the place where Shukhevych Street connects with Mazepa Street, on a rise is an old cemetery. Clean, not overgrown with weeds, only here and there are stone crosses chipped by time. Behind the iron fence is a family burial ground of the local branch of the Shukhevych family. Osyp, his wife Anna from Kulchytsky and two nameless children who died young from the plague. Zenon was buried in a tomb already in the new cemetery.
The village headman also shows the pride of the village – the Roman Shukhevych National Museum of History and Liberation Struggles “Underground Printing House of the UPA” – in the basement of the village council. The postmodernist building is the brainchild of the zero, but was built on the site of an older one. The strong brick basements are from those times.
To see everything, you have to turn on the generator – in Tyshkivtsi there is a planned power outage. The exhibition takes up several rooms. Pokuttsky clothing, household supplies, old church crosses, a reconstruction of a peasant room: both the pillows and bedspreads are densely covered with red embroidery. In the large hall on the walls are photographs: ladies in corsets and fancy hats, elegant men. These are all Shukhevychs, descendants of Father Osyp.
– Do you want to see what’s in this old closet? – asks Mr. Volodymyr at the end of the tour.
There, in fact, was the entrance to the printing house-hideout.
— This is how the rebels once disguised their hiding places here — behind the doors of ordinary cabinets, — says Maria Pidlesniuk. The generator helped not to get lost in the darkness. But, it seems, without light in these cramped underground rooms, it would be easier to imagine the life of a UPA commander in the post-war period. Damp, dark dungeons, where he not only hid, but also worked and lived. And free Ukraine was then only a dream, a concept, because its entire territory at that time was such underground hideouts.
Iryna Pustynnikova, “Local History”
