Author Olga Orlova has published the following talk with the now reposed Archpriest Vladimir Boldin from Western Ukraine, recorded before Russia’s special military operation. Things are even worse for the Orthodox now in Ukraine, but Fr. Vladimir gives some interesting background.
At one time in Sretensky Monastery we could see a certain very bright, often outright shining with joy, Archpriest Vladimir Boldin. He was always smiling and responsive. We once had a conversation and as it turns out, Batiushka is from Western Ukraine… He was the rector of the Church of Great Martyr George in the town of Nadvornaya, Ivano-Frankovsk province. At the end of 2023, the mayor of this town boasted in social media about the “liquidation of the only Orthodox community in town.” This community held on to the end in this very church. The mayor also said that anyone who hasn’t gone over to the OCU are being dealt with by the special services… Fr. Vladimir himself was no longer alive by then. It would have been dangerous to publish this interview while he was alive [because of the immediate consequences he and his community would have faced from the Ukrainian authorities]. So we are publishing it now. Please remember Fr. Vladimir in your holy prayers.
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Archpriest Vladimir Boldin
“No one is prepared for this”
—Fr. Vladimir, did you grow up in the Church, or did you come to the faith as an adult?
—I was already married; my wife Elena wanted to have kulichi blessed on Pascha. This was in 1991. And in 1989, the schism had happened in Ukraine. Greek Catholics started lording it over the Orthodox. They were already calling the central cathedral church in Ivano-Frankovsk by a Ukrainian name: katedra. We went there, but we didn’t like it!
The Lord brought us to the Orthodox, who after all their churches had been seized, were praying in a small house with an altar dedicated to the Transfiguration of the Lord. Now the Uniates want to seize even this tiny building where there was once a nursery school (they’ve already seized it.—Auth.). But if they haven’t been completely befuddled by [Ukrainian] propaganda, the people nevertheless feel where the Truth is.
When in 1992 I turned thirty, I was baptized. I remember how Archimandrite Amphilochy (Zaletsky) who baptized me warned me: “Your life may change.” Vladyka Tikhon (Shevkunov) also, I know, was baptized when he was twenty-four—true, my life didn’t change so much as to become a monk. But I did become a priest.
—How did you come to the priesthood?
By God’s mercy, soon after my baptism in Galicia province the Protection Convent was opened, and I started going there to help the nuns. They were elderly. Just like the only Orthodox church in Ivano-Frankovsk, the convent was situated in an ordinary house. Archimandrite Jonah (Timishak) served there. He is one of the two priests in all of Ivano-Frankovsk province who did not become a Greek Catholic! He was wholly dedicated to God. The people loved him very much, and tried for a long time to persuade him: “Batiushka, come over [to the Uniates], we’ll be with you…” “No,” he replied, “I cannot abandon my faith in God.” Then they all turned on him and stirred up persecutions against him.
Glory be to God that such a stronghold of Orthodoxy as the Holy Dormition Pochaev Lavra remains in Western Ukraine. Fr. Jonah loved that monastery selflessly. He and I used to go there together. He was friends with many of the monks there. Towards the end of his life, the Lord gave him the gift of healing for his steadfastness in Orthodoxy. People came to him from all over. He once healed a demon-possessed woman from the village of Tustan, where the monastery is located. And he didn’t just trouble the demon—he cast it out! Alas, even after this miracle the other villagers did not return to Orthodoxy, and they disdain the divine services.
The Pochaev brotherhood respected Fr. Jonah and buried him in the brothers’ cemetery. The Lavra also became one of my and matushka’s most beloved places of pilgrimage. Later I graduated from seminary by distance learning.
When Archimandrite Jonah reposed, the Pokrov Convent was left without a priest. Abbess Maria, who was Fr. Jonah’s sister, turned to me. “Go to Vladyka Nicholai [now also reposed, his surname was Grokh.—Auth.]. Ask him to ordain you.” “Matushka,” I said, “I’m not ready.” “No one is ever ready for this. Don’t lose precious time.” At first she hurried me on, but later, when I was already ordained, she put it to me squarely: “If the fathers were to know before ordination what difficulties lie ahead for a priest, no one would do it.”
Lord have mercy! I had thought about that even before she told me. I went to Vladyka. He loved me very much, and ordained me a deacon on November 6, 2005 on the feast of the Icon of the Mother of God, “Joy of All Who Sorrow,” and on December 19, on my name day, the feast of St. Nicholas, he ordained me a priest. I served the first five years in the Protection Convent. They say that one year counts as three for father-confessors who serve in women’s monasteries. After this, Vladyka took me to the Ivano-Frankovsk Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ.
When I had already received ordination, my mother—her name was Vera—revealed to me that my great-grandfather Gabriel on my mother’s side was an archpriest under the Tsar.
—Did he suffer under the persecutions?
—Yes, he was sent into exile, and no one ever heard from him again. Most likely his matushka was also arrested, because four children were left all by themselves, stigmatized as “children of enemies of the people.” Such children didn’t even have the right to study at vocational schools, to obtain some sort of professional education. Somehow they ended up in the town of Ichnya, Chernigov province. There some believers took the orphans under their wing. So my grandfather Ivan was able to study and became a successful agronomist. And his brother Nicholai became a well-known metallurgical engineer—during the war he invented a high-density steel for T-34 tanks.
—Were the children of the repressed priest able to preserve their faith?
—No, it was forbidden to openly believe at the time. My mother, the granddaughter of a priest, grew up without the Church. True, mothers are often able to pass the faith on to their children, but her mother died tragically at age thirty-six. A neighbor who was one of the local authorities had a gunfight at his home during an argument. The houses there are close to each other, and one of the bullets flew from his window to my grandmother Tanya’s window and fatally wounded her. Grandfather Ivan raised three young children, but he didn’t instill the faith in them. My mother started going to church only after I was baptized. She departed to the Lord after making peace with everyone, confessing, and receiving Communion. Glory be to God!
Adopted daughter Verochka and Fr. Vladimir with his mother, Vera, just a few days before her departure to the Lord.
—Fr. Vladimir, what is the most important thing in life?
—Fear of God and love of God. The Lord opens one’s eyes to what in life is good and what is base. From that moment on, one fears acting badly. This fear restrains the passions at first. The new Christian has not yet overcome them, but he is struggling with them. Later he can live above temptations, but that is a higher level.
—How can we live above temptations?
—The Jesus prayer is a strong helper. Everyone has his own inner path to God. We have to listen with great sensitivity to our own souls. Perhaps we can even make a vow to God, but only with a blessing, of course.
My matushka and I adopted a little girl. I baptized the infant in the emergency room, and named her Verochka (the name was changed.—Auth.). Then I asked Schema-Archimandrite Jonah (Ignatenko) from Odessa to pray for her, and he told me, “If you want to and can, take her for a time.” At the time I didn’t understand how this could be possible, because she had deep burns over sixty-five percent of her body, and she had no chance of survival. For half a year after her baptism, the child was taken from one hospital to another. My matushka never left her side, because the girl’s parents abandoned her. That is how Verochka ended up our family. The Lord preserved her. Now she is going to school. Her right arm was seriously damaged, but she’s learned to write with her left hand. She manages with everything. She’s a very joyful child. She speaks perfect Russian. When she was still little, she would yell, “Papa!” in a grocery store or somewhere else. Everyone would turn and look at us. In Western Ukraine, probably no one else would dare speak Russian in public.
The Lord gave me a strong visit. I was feeling very feeble, what this illness was I don’t know. I called Fr. John (Ludishchev)—at the time he was the dean of Sretensky Monastery—with a request for prayers, and he asked Vladyka Tikhon (Shevkunov) for a blessing for me to come to Moscow for a medical examination. First they examined me, but couldn’t find anything. But the weakness got worse. By a miracle I met the hematologist Tamara Ivanovna Kolosheinova. She examined me for a month and then pronounced a diagnosis: multiple myeloma. This is a malignant tumor in the spine. I was scheduled for chemotherapy in January. Vladyka Tikhon inquired at a number of specialized hospitals, but only Hospital No. 40 responded. It’s headed by Vadim Anatolievich Doronin. All the doctors there are remarkable. They literally pulled me back from the brink of death. In keeping with medical protocols, they recommended a bone marrow transplant, but that is very expensive. In Ukraine you can’t even get an analysis of that illness. I did it here, and it showed that the illness was progressing.
In the Protection Convent, Moscow
Sicknesses are given to us for our sins and for humility. It’s very good for us to humble ourselves. Glory to Thee, O Lord! We should always thank God for everything. When the fathers of Sretensky Monastery came to give me Holy Communion in the hospital, other patients in the ward asked to be communed also. Many repented. Some were able to turn to Christ before they died. Although, there were also those who just continued to mentally flounder in their daily cares, not finally participating in the great Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. I found this astonishing. A fight for your life is going on! How can you just give up?
Why did the Maidan revolution happen?
—Which of the newly-glorified saints are now revered in Ukraine?
—Of the most venerated saints in Western Ukraine are Sts. Job and Amphilochius of Pochaev. St. Job labored there in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, but St. Amphilochius was a saint of the twentieth century. He reposed in 1971. He was glorified locally fifteen years ago, but for general veneration only in 2016.
—When he was locked up in the madhouse, he said to the doctors, “Give me a cross and Gospel, cuffs and epitrachelion, and there won’t be a single patient left here.
—Many of us in Ukraine remember him personally; people who were healed by the saint, including former psychiatric patients, are still alive and well. People prayed at his grave even before his glorification.
Also very venerated among us are the two saints locally glorified in 1994, Sts. Job and Theodosy of Manyavsk. St. Theodosy created an enlightenment center that had a printing press. Just like St. Alexiy of Carpatho-Russia, he enlightened the people.
The Manyavsk saints lived in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries. At that time, the Austro-Hungarian empire spread over Ukrainian territory, and they tried to force the entire Ukrainian population to convert from Orthodoxy to Greek-Catholicism. That was when the mova—the contrived “Ukrainian language”—was forced on the people. Those who refused to go over to the jurisdiction of the Vatican were sent to the concentration camps of Talerof and Terezin, where the European authorities destroyed the Russian population of Bukovina, Galicia, and all the Rus’ territories occupied by the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Talerof concentration camp, the execution of Rusins
In Galicia, where I served, there used to be a large stone cross by the western entrance of the church, facing eastward to the altar. It was in our own days that the Greek-Catholics burned this holy shrine. While I served there, the cross was still standing. I myself read the names and surnames on it of those who suffered during the forcing of the Unia. This was a whole host of tortured and killed Orthodox Ukrainians! And they were buried under this cross. Later the Uniates tore out this cross with two cranes, razed the burial sites, and all those who in our day treacherously accepted the Unia started happily treading over these graves of their own Ukrainian martyrs to go to the church seized by the Uniates!
—In Belarus, St. Athanasius of Brest was tortured, all because he relayed at the behest the Most Holy Theotokos her words: “May the cursed Unia be condemned unto the ages.”
—What will come of those who have betrayed the true faith in God and completely disdained their Orthodox ancestors? This is a violation of one of the most important commandments about honoring God and one’s parents (Deut. 5:6–16). For honoring our elders we are promised good things and a long life; but what awaits those who do not honor their forebears? And what future is there for those who don’t have even an elementary knowledge of their own history? They live according to the principle of yak vsi, tak i my (where everyone goes, there go I). I can’t say a word without them jumping on me: “God is one!” they say. “Yes,” I say, “but the there is also only one true faith—Orthodoxy.”
—Do the Greek Catholics invite you to serve with them?
—There used to be such attempts, but no longer. The Uniates are compromisers, betrayers. How could I serve with them?
—Metropolitan Jonah (Karpukhin) once told about how some students from Western Ukraine, who used to study in the Moscow Theological Seminary, would grow their beards while studying but when it was time to go home, they would stop at a barber just outside the Kiev Station for a clean shave before returning to Ukraine. How could someone live for several years in the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and then betray Orthodoxy? For the sake of what?
—Uniates no longer study at the Moscow Theological Seminary and Academy; they’ve opened their own educational institutions.
—Yes, in the 1980s our students would be sent to Czechoslovakia to study at the Presov theological department so that the Uniates wouldn’t grab it. But later by hook or by crook they managed to take at least its better buildings. In the Zhirovich Holy Dormition Monastery in Belarus it is known that there were very many members of Masonic lodges among the Uniates. We are preparing a book in the Sretensky Monastery publishing house about the Belarus exarch Metropolitan Philaret (Vakhromeyev) and have dug up all these archives. A monstrous war against Vladyka Philaret also ensued.
—Well, what can you expect from Judases? Why they agree to it I don’t know; maybe they want to somehow distinguish themselves. They are everywhere putting pressure along the lines of national pride—“Ukraine above all,” and other slogans that they forcing on people. But this is all very destructive. Because of this they are going not to God, but in the completely opposite direction.
Metropolitan Philaret (Vakhromeyev). Mospat.ru
The roots of this are deep, going back several hundred years in Ukraine. Having betrayed Christ, His Orthodox Church at the signing of the Unia in 1596, the people have been under a curse. Only through repentance will the Lord forgive them; otherwise this apostasy carries on from generation to generation.
—Can it be said that this “patriotism”, distorted to the point of hatred toward others and first of all toward Russians, was in fact provoked by the Unia?
—Exactly. The Ukrainian people are by nature kind. Just as every person in and of himself, apart from the jumping, slogan-chanting mob, is good, because he is made in the image and likeness of God. It’s just that these people’s actions are stupid and evil.
My father, Anatoly, was born in Pskov province, Novorzhev. My surname is Boldin. Alexander Pushkin was exiled there; that is where he wrote a large volume of his ingenious masterpieces, and that is where the expression “Boldin autumn” (this is what they call any intensely fruitful period.—Auth.) comes from. In the war years, my father reached Carpathia, and after the war, when he learned that his whole family had died, he came to this beautiful hilly region, to the town of Stanislav, which was renamed in 1962 to Ivano-Frankovsk. He graduated from the road system technical school in Lvov. Thus he worked his whole life in Western Ukraine. He reposed there in the hills. He told me, “Even during the war, people from Western Ukraine were never trusted with any serious armaments—no tanks or airplanes.” Apparently they understood even then that these people were not reliable.
—What should Uniates do if they want to return to Orthodoxy?
—In the Pochaev Lavra, the fathers say outright that they should not be accepted through the rite of reunification to the Church. They need to be baptized!
—So that means that for the past twenty-five years, the Uniate population of Western Ukraine is not baptized…
—Yes, and they are the ones who ran the Maidan revolution. Because of them, the whole Ukrainian nation is suffering.
—The choice is now between Russia and the West. But don’t they see what is going on in the West?
—They see it. But they are seduced by consumer decorations. People want to live according to their own lusts, not thinking about salvation of the soul.
—And the Uniates encourage that?
—Yes, they have complete carte-blanche in that respect.
—No need to fast?
—Of course not! The very concept of fasting doesn’t exist for them.
—The West enticed them with a free lifestyle, meanwhile buying up all the land.
—It’s like that joke about the devil’s demo-version of “paradise”. The mass exodus from Ukraine started a long time ago—working people left a number of years ago to earn money—some to Poland, others to Russia.
Ukraine will yet stand in Orthodoxy
—Fr. Vladimir, do you feel the support of the martyrs, that it is thanks to them that Orthodoxy is now flourishing in Western Ukraine?
—Of course, we feel their support and the support of all the saints who shone forth in the Russian lands. The Orthodox spirit unites us. With the Orthodox, it’s simple, we have no arrogance over others. The grace of God protects the faithful. Only it is important to remember that both Metropolitan Onuphry and Metropolitan Sergiy of Ternopyl once studied in the Lavra of St. Sergius. And they are now great luminaries of Orthodox Ukraine!
—And not only of Ukraine. We pray for them, and worry about them.
—In 1992, when on January 22 Vladyka Onuphry refused to sign the appeal of the Bishops’ meeting of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to His Holiness Alexiy II about granting autocephaly to the Church in Ukraine, he was transferred to the Ivano-Frankovsk cathedra the very next day by the now anathematized Philaret (Denisenko).
After a few months he was restored to his Chernovitsi-Bukovina diocese. He later visited us when Archbishop Nicholai (Grokh) was our ruling hierarch, and Met. Onuphry helped the new bishop. It was a difficult time. The enemy had even divided Orthodox parishioners into two camps—some were for the use of Church Slavonic at the services, while others were coming out for the use of the Ukrainian language. Our archpastor came to make peace between them. There were some very unpleasant moments.
Strange as it seems, our Ivano-Frankovsk Orthodox church was no more than a tiny house, but from there Orthodoxy began to spread so quickly that even the cathedral is too small for all the people who come to services, and they have to pray in outside—even though on Sundays and feast day there are two Liturgies served. Even back in 2010 I could sense that Orthodoxy would flourish in our lands.
By that time, at the blessing of Elder Nicholai Guryanov from Talabsk Island (Zalit, in Pskov Lake), we had already built some churches. When the Ukrainian military began bombing Donetsk and Lugansk, many of those who survived moved to our region, so that even in Ivano-Frankovsk there were Donetsk and Lugansk Orthodox communities forming.
—And are Orthodox churches continually being seized in Western Ukraine?
—Only within recent years the theomachist Philaret has seized around forty Orthodox churches in Western Ukraine—ones that the Uniates had not taken over. Just recently in Ivano-Frankovsk province they tried to take the Annunciation Church away from the Orthodox. And they don’t allow us to build new Orthodox churches. They simply don’t give us the land. These are the politics. These are times of martyrdom and confession in Ukraine.
The Lord will have mercy on the Ukrainian people. To be sure, for our own mistakes we will have to drink the bitter cup to the dregs. But I am convinced that Ukraine will yet stand in Orthodoxy. It will be severely shaken, and people will come to their senses.
—The holy elders say that America will be punished. For example, the recent hurricane…
—By the way, I noticed how that hurricane spun—counterclockwise.
—Like an Orthodox cross procession.
—Yes, the Lord is trying to turn people to the Truth, so that they would stop spinning in the vanity of this age. The elders also say: You need to run from American and Europe, and not cling to the material side of life.
—The truth will manifest itself. How does this happen under circumstances in modern Western Ukraine?
—As St. John the Baptist taught: Exact no more than that which is appointed you… Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages (Luke 3:13–14), so people are now also repenting, returning from their errors to God, beginning to live according to the commandments, going to services in the Orthodox church. Here the Lord Himself heals souls through the Sacraments. People who have converted to Orthodoxy cannot help but feel this. Not by self-teaching, but by participating in the Orthodox Liturgies and saving themselves. Holy Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky), like many of the ancient fathers, confirmed that “There no salvation without the Church.”
—How does grace work in the life of the Orthodox?
—Joy in the heart, which you want to share with everyone!
—What about the Uniates?
Their faces are always somehow pompous, like the Pharisees. But what they’re so proud about, I don’t know, I don’t associate with them.
—Do they read the Gospel? It’s understandable that when an Orthodox Christian feels that his life does not correspond to the Gospel, he repents. But what if the Uniates have a contradiction at the level of their own principles? The Lord says: Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting (Matt. 17:21).
—The Uniates view themselves as a sort of army.
—Who are they fighting against?
—It is a struggle against God Himself.
—But isn’t it hard to kick against the pricks, as the Lord said when converting Saul to Paul? (cf. Acts 9:5)?
—It’s hard. The evil one helps them, giving them preference in the material sense. The fact of the matter is that they are doing a job.
—How do they serve?
—They have four to five Liturgies a day on one altar. They have the children’s Liturgy, another Liturgy for adults, for young people, teenagers who want to sleep till noon, and so on. Go ahead and sleep! But as for fasting before Liturgy, they don’t even have the notion.
But for all that, ritualism is very strong with them. What embroidered shirts to wear to church, and how to present yourself there… “What will people say?” is a typical Uniate phrase. Edited Text: They also have a scrupulousness about work worthy of the Pharisees: when to work, when not to work. They call the feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist the “headchop”. According to their tradition, it’s forbidden to take a knife into your hands on that day. And so on. These are their traditions, and they hold to them. But what the Lord says in the Gospel is not so important to them. Ukraine is “above all” [über alles], after all.
—Superstition and self-deception…
—Of course. “Everyone goes there, and so will I,” they say of the Uniate churches. It does happen sometimes that Greek Catholics come to my tiny church and convert to Orthodoxy. I’ll tell you about one case, and it’s not a simple one. One day a woman named Svetlana (name changed) came to me; she has two children. She saw a very real dream, as if waking, that she needs to save her children. She started praying to God to show her where to go. The Lord brought her to the Transfiguration Orthodox Church, located in that same little building where there was once a nursery school, in the center of Ivano-Frankovsk (it has since been destroyed by the schismatics.—Auth.). From there they sent her to me, because the church where I serve is closer to her home. She told me everything. I talked with her. I explained that she and her children need to receive Holy Baptism. I baptized them.
—And that was the beginning?..
—Yes, her father and husband, a former police chief, turned out to be terrible God-fighters. They beat her. She is simply a martyr. After her baptism, they kept puncturing my tires. They smashed the lamp outside the church. The messenger of Satan was sent to buffet me (cf. 2 Cor. 12:7). Not long ago there was a heat wave; during the Vigil for Sunday I heard a shout in the church. I came out of the altar and saw her father running into the church in his underwear, trying to break into the altar. His eyes were all red, as if filled with blood. A Uniate—Orthodox holy places burn them. I have a man named Boris there, a strapping fellow two meters tall, shoulders wide as a barn door. He carefully picked the man up and carried him out of the premises. That’s one of our everyday feast days for you!
Living in Ukraine these days is for the Orthodox a second-by-second confession of the faith and often even martyrdom. We are holding on by God’s mercy and the prayers of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry and all the saints. We have to leave everything up to God’s Providence.
