Kholmskaya Rus. Poland in the Russian Empire

CHAPTER III. DRAFT LAW ON SEPARATION OF KHOLMSCHINA. ATTITUDE TO HIM OF GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY

The project on the separation of Kholmshchyna into a separate province, recalls Metropolitan Evlogii, “which was put forward two or three times by Russian patriots, was systematically buried by government offices now in Warsaw, now (under Pobedonostsev) in St. Petersburg. Nobody wanted to understand the meaning of the project. For government agencies, it was simply a matter of modifying a feature on the geographical map of Russia. Meanwhile, the project met the most pressing needs of the Kholm people, it protected the Russian population interspersed in the administrative district of Poland from Polonization, and took away the right to consider Kholmshchyna as part of the Polish region. Russian patriots understood that the separation of Kholmshchyna into a separate province would be an administrative reform of enormous psychological significance. However, the project met with opposition even in the person of the Warsaw governor-general. He saw in him a manifestation of distrust of the power and moral authority of his power. Other opponents of the Kholm administrative independence also reasoned in this way. This was explained by a complete ignorance of the life of the people. For example, when I was in Warsaw as a vicar bishop on a visit to the Governor-General Maksimovich, he asked me with surprise: “What is Kholmshchina? Is this Kholmsk district? "

He did not have the most elementary concept of the region that was part of the provinces subordinate to him. Where could he have known the centuries-old history of the long-suffering Kholm people! " 1

The path of my life. M., 1994.S. 152

So, back in 1902 in St. Petersburg, a special meeting was convened by the highest, established on March 14, 1902, under the chairmanship of Pobedonostsev, from the ministers of military, internal affairs, justice and finance and the Warsaw governor-general specifically to consider the Kholm issue. The meeting was attended by Kuropatkin, Witte, Sipyagin, Muravyov and Chertkov. The Minister of Internal Affairs Sipyagin believed that the simple separation of the Kholmsk Territory was a fictitious measure, it could yield results only when it was followed by a number of other measures, namely the replacement of the entire administrative system of the Territory with Russians, the introduction of a separate peasant administration, like the Russian one, and forced eviction. from this edge of the Polish element. Witte, in turn, added that if one does not intend to resort to such measures, then the allocation of Kholm loses all meaning, since the same central authority operates in Warsaw and ("" will operate in Kholm, the power that has the authority to resort to the same measures in the protection of the Russian element of the population For these reasons, a special meeting unanimously recognized the project of separating Kholmshchyna unacceptable

At a meeting of the Council of the Kholmsk Brotherhood in October 1905, a special commission was created to develop a bill on the allocation of Kholmsk region and it was decided to send a delegation to St. Petersburg with this project, headed by Bishop Eulogius. The trip to St. Petersburg took place only after Christmastide. Previously, Bishop Eulogius visited the Governor-General of Skalon in Warsaw, who met the project as a personal grievance

“I stayed in the capital for a long time,” says Metropolitan Evlogiy, “squeezing our project through government circles. 11 visited both the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Witte and the Minister of the Interior Stolypin. Witte received me unkindly, sitting in a casual position with a cigar in his mouth. I think he gave this touch of carelessness to the reception not without deliberation.

Allocation of Kholmshchyna ... but what is it - "Kholmshchyna"? What does it matter? I will tell them to consider ... "1

1Eulogy (Georgievsky), Metropolitan. Decree. op. P. 156.

Stolypin reacted more favorably to the project, who immediately referred the case to a commission chaired by Kryzhanovsky, assistant minister of the interior.

To work in the commission were summoned: Governor-General Skalon, manager of the Warsaw chancellery Yachevsky (“a clever, delicate man, but my ardent enemy,” says Metropolitan Evlogii), Lublin and Sedlec governors. In heated debates that unfolded at four or five sessions, the position of Bishop Eulogius was supported by Kryzhanovsky (nephew of Mother Athanasia - abbess of the Radochnitsky monastery), the main opponent - Skala with the help of Yachevsky, who, according to Bishop Evlogiy, was the only participant in the conference who was in the know ... In the end, the meeting instructed the Minister of Internal Affairs to develop a bill and submit it for consideration by the sovereign. However, the project stalled, and its consideration took place only in III The State Duma.

In addition to the fact that the position of Bishop Eulogius was generally close to Stolypin, mutual understanding may have been facilitated by the close acquaintance of Bishop Eulogius with the Stolypin family. This acquaintance arose thanks to Mother Elena, abbess of the Krasnostok monastery in Grodno province. Matushka Elena became close to Stolypin during the period when Stolypin was governor of Grodno, and subsequently always stayed with them when he came to Petersburg.

The closeness of Bishop Evlogy to Stolypin is evident, for example, from this fact. On the eve of Stolypin's famous speech in the State Duma on March 6, 1906, the wife of the minister O.B. Stolypin visited Bishop Evlogy with a request: “I ask you to pray ... I will also mentally pray for him in the Duma, it will be easier for me if I know that you are praying for him in these minutes "1

1Eulogy (Georgievsky), Metropolitan. Decree. op. P. 162.

Metropolitan Eulogius testifies that the struggle in the commission around the Kholm question was stubborn and active. The Poles slowed down the discussion through endless debates, the left-wing members of the commission always voted against Metropolitan Eulogius, according to him, regardless of whether he defended a right or wrong cause, the Octobrists kept the nationalists "in check" by trading in votes: they promised support in the Kholm issue in exchange in return for support in other matters, the right-wingers also treated the Kholm issue with indifference and were unhappy with Eulogius's transition from them to the nationalists. In the latter case, class egoism also manifested itself: "The Polish landowner is closer to us than the Russian peasant," many monarchists from the nobility believed.

Bishop Evlogy realized that for the success of the business it was necessary to propagate the bill not only within the walls of the Duma, but also outside it. He begins to acquaint Petersburg society with the Kholmsk region, with the idea of \u200b\u200bits administrative independence, with its historical fate, the aspirations of a significant part of the Russian population for liberation from Polish dependence. Performances in clubs (for example, in the "October 17" club), in public meetings, high society salons, a lecture in Moscow at the Diocesan House in front of a huge audience - all this contributed to the transformation of the Kholm question into a topical issue, causing sharp clashes in the Duma and among the public. The Kholmshchyna was discussed in the press and in public circles. “I needed this,” wrote Metropolitan Evlogii 1, “that the discussion of the bill in the commission was hopelessly dragging on, and the Kholmsky question could turn into one of those issues, annoying with its insolubility, which in the end are buried using some formal pretext”.

1Eulogy (Georgievsky), metropolitan.Decree. op. P. 204.

Bishop Evlogy is taking a very energetic step to draw attention to the Kholm issue of a number of Duma members sympathizing with him, inviting them in the spring of 1911 to visit Kholmshchyna. There were 10-15 guests, including NN Lvov, gr. Bobrinsky, DN Chikhachev, EP Kovalevsky, Gizhytsky and others, as well as two correspondents: one from Rech (Kondurushkin), the other from Novoye Vremya.

Bishop Eulogius took the guests to Trinity to the Lesninsky Monastery, which at that time was gathering thousands of pilgrims, then to Kholm, where the Kholm brotherhood gave them a solemn reception, and then drove them through the villages, warning the priests about it. The goal was to convince the deputies that the indigenous Russian population in the Kholmsh region really exists, that there is a century-old fierce struggle to preserve their faith and nationality, that the efforts to get the bill have a serious, real basis. In order to avoid accusations of bias, the deputies also visited the Polish landowners, in particular, they visited the LK Dymshi estate next to the Lesninsky Monastery, which gathered several Polish neighbors that day. Of course, there the activities of Bishop Eulogius and the whole problem were illuminated in a different light.

The trip strengthened the authority of Bishop Eulogius among the Orthodox local population, who were already beginning to lose hope that the independence of the Kholmsk region could become a reality. On the other hand, in the Duma, Bishop Eulogius acquired several active supporters of the project, who stopped looking at it as a formal, meaningless matter. 1 .

That same spring, before the holidays, Bishop Evlogiy visited PA Stolypin, who promised to provide the project with full support and in the fall to take matters into his own hands. However, Bishop Evlogy's hope for Stolypin collapsed: on September 5, the chairman of the Council of Ministers was killed in Kiev. At the funeral, Bishop Evlogy, who arrived at the head of the Kholmsk deputation, uttered a funeral oration, from which he remembered some phrases: “The sermian peasant Kholmsk Russia sent me to bow to your tortured soul, your wounded body ... So, the enemies of Russia did not have enough blood of your children - they needed your blood, your life ... Blood is the seed of life, it is the cement that holds them together. And your blood will serve the revival of Russia, the consolidation of its national forces ... "2

1 Evlogiy (Georgievsky), Metropolitan. Decree. op. P. 205 2 Ibid. P.207

The loss of Stolypin was a big blow to the Duma nationalists. Having started his administrative career in the Western Territory, Stolypin was sensitive to national problems, and his support was extremely important for the fate of the Kholm bill. However, by the time of the assassination, Stolypin's position at court was already tending to decline.

The new chairman of the Council of Ministers, V. N. Kokovtsev, showed no interest in the Kholm issue in his conversation with Bishop Evlogii. “I will not interfere, but I don’t see the point, I don’t know the question, I will not defend the bill - I’ll entrust it to someone,” he said. 1 To complete the setbacks, Deputy Minister Kryzhanovsky, in the words of Evlogii, “a fellow countryman, a well-wisher and a tireless assistant,” left the Ministry and took up the post of State Secretary, not directly related to creative legislative work.

Kokovtsev instructed the new Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Makarov to present the Kholm bill to the Duma. After much persuasion, Bishop Eulogius managed to insist that the issue be brought up for discussion at the general meeting. Makarov made an introductory speech on the project at a meeting of the Duma.

Evaluating this speech, Bishop Evlogy writes: "He (Makarov), of course, was not very familiar with this issue, and in his speech there was clearly a hurried, theoretical preparation, but nevertheless he studied it in good faith and did not make big mistakes." 2

Consideration of the bill in the Duma commission

The bill of the Ministry of the Interior "on the separation of the eastern parts of the Lublin and Sedlec provinces from the provinces of the Kingdom of Poland, with the formation of a special Kholm province from them" was considered by the commission for sending legislative proposals to the 4th session of the Duma 3.

1 Eulogius (Georgievsky), Metropolitan. Decree. op. P. 208.2 Ibid. 3 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Review of the activities of commissions and departments. Session IV. SPb., 1911. S. 211-244.

The commission examined in detail the historical, religious and ethnographic material related to the Kholmsh region.

The size of the Orthodox population in the eastern districts of the Lublin and Sedletsk provinces in 1906-1907. was determined according to various sources from 278,000 to 299,000. According to official data, after the manifesto on April 17, 1906, 168,000 people converted to Catholicism, while the number of "persistent" in 1902 was determined at 91,000 people, while the rest converted to Catholicism "By misunderstanding."

The commission opposed the tendency to identify the concepts of "Catholic" and "Pole" in the Western Russian region. The total Russian-speaking population of the region was estimated at the time of discussion at 450,000. This number did not include about 100,000 Orthodox Christians speaking Polish, and approximately the same number of Catholics who spoke Russian were included. Thus, according to these data, in 11 eastern districts attributed to the Kholmshchina, the Little Russian population was the majority.

The minority left of the commission objected to the linguistic method of determining nationality, pointing out that the personal will and national self-determination of a person are of paramount importance. In particular, in this regard, religious statistics should be more important than linguistic ones. At the same time, it was indicated that the linguistic data of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were devoid of any reliability, since the information was delivered by the heads of the counties and voyts, who were guided by personal considerations, or, more precisely, by the instructions of the Ministry imposed on them.

The majority of the commission considered that the idea of \u200b\u200bthe left minority that the transition from one nation to another is a matter of personal arbitrariness of the individual leads to the denial of the concept of a nation. In fact, national features are not being lost so quickly and arbitrarily. For example, it is not easy for a Russian to become a Tatar. It takes centuries to consolidate this transition, because even with the change of religion, the influence of the former nation has a long effect on the language, in everyday life, in the elements of culture. An appeal to the will and self-determination of the population could give real results only if there is sufficient cultural self-awareness and in the absence of any outside influence. Meanwhile, the Kholmsk low-culture population is often unable to understand such a complex issue, given the close intertwining of Russian and Polish culture. It is even more difficult to achieve freedom of expression. It is known, for example, how one threat affected the results of the 1897 census that the entire population that did not register as Catholics would be exiled across the Bug.

Considering the references of the Polish and left-wing members of the commission to the negative attitude of former statesmen such as Witte and Durnovo to the project of separating Kholmshchina, the Octobrists stated that the position of these figures was fair, provided the strength and stability of the central Russian power in Poland and Kholmshchina, but at present time it is necessary to reckon with the fact that the Kingdom of Poland is on the eve of the introduction of city and zemstvo self-government in it, which by its nature can only be Polish. The commission referred to the statement made by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers P. A. Stolypin at the meeting of the Council for Local Economy Affairs on October 15, 1909: “If, thus, in the Western Territory, the Ministry sought to create a zemstvo for painting Russian, in the cities of the provinces of the Kingdom of Poland we expect see Polish self-government, subordinate only to the Russian state idea. " Due to the fact that it is planned to introduce Polish self-government, the commission considered the allocation of Kholmshchyna "absolutely necessary, since otherwise the Russian population of this region would face complete polonization in a short time." The example of Galicia and the West Russian Territory showed how difficult it is to ensure the national interests of the Russian population even where it is much more numerous than in the Kholmsk region.

The separation of the Kholmsk region, in the opinion of the majority of the commission, should have been considered as the first step in a series of cultural and economic events, which should have been based on the consciousness of local figures, from top to bottom, that the majority of the population of the Kholmsk region belonged to Russian nationality and the need for a firm and consistent national policy ...

The majority of the commission formulated their conclusions in the following provisions:

1. According to its historical past, the Kholmsk region is inextricably linked with the whole of Western Russia and forms part of this latter.

2. The Kholmsk region, despite the difficult historical and modern conditions, has retained its national Russian appearance, and the majority of the population of this region belongs to the Russian nationality.

3. The separation of the Kholmsk region seems necessary both in the interests of the indigenous Russian population of this region in order to prevent its polonization, and in the interests of the Kingdom of Poland in view of the need to introduce zemstvo and city self-government and other reforms in it.

4. The government bill on the separation of the Kholmsk region from the Kingdom of Poland in its main provisions is quite expedient and acceptable.

A minority of the commission did not join these conclusions and remained with their dissenting opinion.

D. N. Chikhachev's report

The bill on the separation of Kholmshchyna was considered in the general meeting of the Duma at the 5th session on November 25, 1911. The rapporteur on the bill was the nationalist D. N. Chikhachev 1 who has done a tremendous job of finding and putting in order a vast amount of material. His written report was a solid volume of 426 pages. Having outlined in his speech at the general meeting of the Duma the history of complex religious and ethnic relations in the Kholmsk Territory, D. N. Chikhachev called for the separation of the ethnographic principle from the confessional.

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part I. P. 2591-2608 .

“The ethnographic composition of the population, - said the speaker, - in this region, as well as throughout Western Russia, does not coincide with a religious attribute ... The desire to identify the concept of Catholic and Pole, on the one hand, and Russian and Orthodox, on the other hand, this striving is common for the entire West Russian region. Undoubtedly, by the mere fact of the transition from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, the Russian nationality can in no way be lost, the loss of the national identity can be the work of only several generations due to the interaction of a number of factors, namely, first of all, the Polish church, then the Polish landowners' estates in this region and, finally Polish secret schools. Only with the interaction of all these factors over many decades can one achieve certain results in terms of polonization. "

Based on the estimate of the population speaking the Little Russian dialect, at 450,000 souls, D.N. Chikhachev emphasized that the Russian nationality is numerically predominant in this region, and the entire history and ethnography of the region lead to the conclusion that Kholmshchina together with Galicia constitute one whole from all over Western Russia.

Hinting at the indifference to the Kholm issue - in its administrative and political aspect - by statesmen of recent decades, the speaker said, expressing the mood of the nationalists:

“The venerable figures of the former bureaucratic system, which have passed into eternity, have left us a heavy legacy in the field of Polish-Russian relations, an inheritance, especially a heavy legacy in the field of resolving the Kholm issue; unfortunately, they believed in the salvation of half-measures, they were not inclined to look at the Kholm issue as a matter of national, nationwide significance, as a matter of the well-known intra-appraisal demarcation of Russians and Poles within a single Russian empire. Unfortunately, the idea of \u200b\u200ba consistent and systematic national policy was alien to many of them; other behind-the-scenes influences, often anti-Russian in nature, were too strong, the influence of the chancellery, all kinds of advisers of higher and lower ranks was too strong, and only representative institutions can serve as a guarantee of a consistent and systematic national policy on our outskirts, and in particular Kholmsk Russia.

Minister of Internal AffairsMakarov, speaking with clarifications on the bill noted the wide international interest caused by the Kholm issue. In particular, the Poles abroad protested vigorously against the separation of Kholmshchyna, having launched a whole campaign against the "new partition of Poland," as they called this bill. The minister opposed attempts to view the Polish lands as something more than one part of the Russian Empire.

"Not discord and not persecution is assumed by the bill, but it means only to enable the Russian people living there to preserve their identity, to develop and strengthen their national identity and the associated sense of commitment and Russian statehood."

“You have to prove,” the Minister of Internal Affairs said, addressing the members of the Duma, “that Poland is only one of the constituent parts of a united Russia, that Russia that cares about the welfare of all its peoples, but at the same time remembers firmly, that its power and statehood were created by the friendly, centuries-old work and efforts of the Russian people. "

L. P. Dymsha's presentation of the position of Polish nationalists

A large report was made by the Polish landownerL. P. Dymsha 1 , the author of a written composition on the Kholmsk question, opposed to the report of D. N. Chikhachev.

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part I. P. 2620-2650.

L. Dymsha pointed out that the question of secession of the Kholmsh region had already been raised eight times and all eight times by Russian statesmen were rejected. The speaker assimilated the initiative of the department to local nationalist leaders, mainly the Orthodox clergy and the Russian administration. He sharply criticized the methods of collecting statistical information, which radically distort the real picture of the national distribution of the population.

“The near-shore region,” said L. Dymsha, “is ethnographically the place where two most powerful Slavic peoples met: the Russian and the Polish ... This meeting was expressed in the fact that even an average church was formed there, a union was introduced for this average population ... The language, regardless of its name, was the result of a clash of two large Slavic peoples, and therefore, at the present time, to say that there are 450,000 Russians there seems to be scientifically completely unverified. One can say that there are Russians there, that there are Poles there, that there is a mixed tribe there, but to say that there are so many and so many thousands of one or the other seems to me a wrong calculation. "

The speaker denied the existence of that onslaught from the Catholic clergy, about which so much talked about in the commission, especially Bishop Eulogius.

Speech by Bishop Eulogius

After L. Dymsh spokebishop Eulogius 1 Without entering into a detailed polemic with his main opponent, the bishop limited himself to setting out only the principal motives of the bill. He only remarked about the statistics that for all its imperfection, it was checked and processed three times at the request of the Polish colo, and there is no reason to consider this statistics biased.

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part I. P. 2650-2702.

When asked about the purpose of separating Kholmskaya Rus from "Poland, alien to her," Bishop Eulogius answered "directly and briefly": this is necessary to save the Russian people dying there. Particularly tragic is the fact that the process of denationalization continued even when the Kholmshchyna came under Russian rule, and developed with particular intensity in the 19th century, culminating in the catastrophe of 1905. Only state measures can put an end to this process of the disappearance of the Russian people.

“And now a relatively small remnant of the Russian population of the Kholmsk region, however, extending to almost half a million, equal to 470,000, turns its supplicating gaze to native native Russia and asks her for salvation from the impending final death. I ask you, gentlemen, representatives of the people, can Russia turn away from this entreaty, can it repel these disadvantaged hands stretched out to her for help? n sons? Does the Russian state, which respects itself, have the right to allow an entire nationality to disappear within its limits and under its rule, and at the same time the Russian nationality, that nationality, through whose labor and then the greatness and power of the Russian state was created? "

Further, the bishop, pointing out the roots of the disease, attacks with various accusations against Catholicism, recalls the most dramatic episodes of the religious struggle in the Kholmsk region. In particular, "I recall this ill-fated union, brought on by cunning and violence, with which they finally wanted to incline the Russian people into the Polish church."

“This is how the Russian people suffered and endured, not in the Kholmsk region alone, but together with it the whole people suffered and endured in all of Western Russia; and they do not exaggerate when they say that this Polish yoke was even heavier than the yoke of the Tatar, for the Tatars, who enslaved the Russian people, at least left the most precious and most sacred property intact, namely the Orthodox faith, and the Poles encroached on this holy of holies of the people, broke, distorted the soul of the people in their grip and produced what prof. Fonevich aptly calls it "husking the spirit."

“Western Russia,” continued Bishop Eulogius, “did not remain under this heavy yoke for long. When Poland fell, the West Russian people, after so many centuries of forcible alienation from their native Russia, returned to their Motherland again and quickly followed the path of their religious and national revival, quickly threw off themselves like worn out shabby clothes, this union and got so strong his Russian self-awareness, that now only some dreamers, fanatics can consider the Western Russian land - a Polish land, a "taken land."

Kholmshchina became a victim of an unfortunate historical misunderstanding, when the border of the Kingdom of Poland in 1815 was determined along the Bug River, and thus the western Russian Zabugia was artificially torn off from its homeland, “unnaturally squeezed” into the Kingdom of Poland, it gradually began to turn into the Polish Pribuzhie.

Having lost the Western Territory, the Poles sent all their forces to the Kholmshchina in order to secure at least this part of the former possessions left to them. The Catholicization and Polonization of the Kholmsk region proceeded with rapid strides.

Bishop Eulogius, to prove these propositions, quoted the Uniate hierarch, Bishop Mikhail Kuzemsky, who had great moral authority in the eyes of both Russians and Poles: it is distorted to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish the Russian church from the Latin church and the Greek rites from the Latin. Greek rites and the Russian Church are in danger of being pushed back beyond the river. Bug, and the Russian population will completely disappear in the Kingdom of Poland ... The goal of this collective missionary work was more political than religious. Because of their religious views, it was not necessary to seduce the Latin-Uniates who belonged to the same Roman Church. Here it was about the people, ”wrote Kuzemsky in his time.

Objection to those who pointed to the unity of the Russian administration, Bishop Eulogius emphasized that in the minds of the Poles themselves, dreams of autonomy, of the restoration of the Kingdom of Poland will never disappear, that these dreams of a future independent Poland are persistently instilled in the Russian population, producing “a heavy, oppressive impression. ... on our poor, downtrodden Kholmsk Russian peasants. "

“Our people have been living in this age-old nightmare of impending Poland for many centuries, and this oppresses and crushes its national consciousness; his Russian heart attracts him to the Orthodox Church, but the thought that maybe Poland will come and force him into the church makes him look into the Catholic church; he attends a Russian school, but the thought of restoring Poland sometimes makes him go to a secret Polish school ... I would like you, gentlemen, to understand this terrible psychology of our local Russian peasant, this constant spiritual split. Dispel, gentlemen, this nightmare in him, crushing him and paralyzing all efforts for his national revival, cut him apart from the Poles, cut these age-old chains, age-old shackles that bind him to Poland. Let the Poles dream of anything they want - autonomous, self-sufficient

Poland, but let these dreams not concern and pass by our Russian Kholmsk Orthodox peasant, let them not oppress or rape his soul. Give firm confidence that his fate, his future is not connected with Poland, but with great Russiaand in this unity he will gain strength for his all-round and free cultural and national revival. Link his life with a close organic connection with all-Russian life, introduce it into the general Russian channel and he will immediately get stronger in his national consciousness, and, perhaps, the Poles, too, when they lose all hope that the Kholmshchyna is their inseparable part, perhaps, and the Poles will find the strength to abandon it, not to assimilate it for themselves and direct their inner work to ethnographic Poland. "

“The Poles,” says Bishop Eulogius, “understand perfectly well that with the separation from the Kingdom of Poland, Kholmskaya Rus will completely slip out of their hands, from under their influence, and will quickly follow the path of its national revival, become truly Russian, not Polish. This is the whole essence, the whole nail of the present question, the whole acuteness of our endless dispute with the Poles. What should be Kholmshchyna, Polish or Russian? This is our main, our fundamental question, and is there any compromise, any concession, any reconciliation possible on this issue? Of course not".

Having painted a picture of fierce religious enmity within the Kholmsk region, Bishop Eulogius said:

“If now, when it is so unprofitable for the Poles to show such violence, to attack the Russians, if now, when they are trying to lull the Russian society with their statements about peace and tranquility in Kholmskaya Rus, such phenomena are possible, one can imagine what will happen when this moment passes , and if, God bless, the present bill does not pass in the State Duma, it fails, and the Kholmshchyna will still remain in Polish hands - oh, then they will especially reward themselves for this temporary and forced calmness, then once again our Kholmshchyna will groan and screams - but, alas, no one will hear these groans and screams, they will freeze and die out in the wilderness of our Kholm and Podlasie villages. It's scary, gentlemen, even to think about this ... Exhausted, tormented by centuries of unbearable struggle, Kholmshchyna, if it remains in Polish hands again, will not be able to resist and resist the Polish onslaught for long, slowly but surely its extinction, dying will begin ... with the rest of Russia - this is a testament to the entire history of the Russian people, this is the duty of its national feeling, this is the demand of the Russian people's conscience. "

Continuation of the controversy on the Duma rostrum

Member of the Polish coloYa.S. Garusevich 1 in his speech, he stated that the project on the separation of the Kholmsk region is "primarily an act of revenge against the Polish people by the Kholm politicians, wounded in their vanity by the fact of the mass conversion of the local population to Catholicism."

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part I. P. 2711-2729.

“We have nothing,” said the Polish deputy, “against the peaceful competition of cultures in this part of the Kingdom of Poland with a mixed population, but the project prepares not peaceful competition, but a struggle, an inexorable life-and-death struggle. Not for imaginary protection ... this bill is being introduced, but its purpose is clearly aggressive, offensive, conquering; undoubtedly the horrors of 1875 are being prepared, the year which the French author Le Blond called the blackest spot in European history of the 19th century. Having lost the campaign in one purely religious position, the Kholmsk leaders move on to another, pseudo-national position. .. A matter of national consciousness, a matter in the same measure of human conscience as religious faith. In these same Pouniatic localities, nationality is so closely linked with religion as nowhere else, perhaps in the world, and therefore national persecutions inevitably become fatal persecutions. "

Nationalist gr. B. A. Bobrinsky 2nd 2 in his speech, he spoke about personal impressions from numerous conversations with Orthodox and Catholic peasants in the Kholmsh region.

2 Ibid. S. 2729-2747.

“I must convey to you,” the orator said, “the unanimous prayer of all Orthodox Christians, all without exception, for the separation and recognition of the region as Russian, for a solemn act that would convince the population that there will never be Poland here again.” Bobrinsky also conveyed the fears of Russian Catholic peasants about the possibility of encroachment on the freedom of their faith after the separation of Kholmshchyna.

“It is necessary to establish quite clearly, and we solemnly from here declare that there will never be any desire in any way to restrict the freedom of their faith, the freedom of faith that this people wishes to profess, will never, we hope, on the part of the government. If it manifests itself, then we will be the first to sign requests that the representatives of the Polish colo will be able to submit. (Applause from the right.) In this respect, the conscience of the population should be reassured ... Local peasants, although Catholics - if you are kind, if you treat them properly in Russian - believe me, if they are lost to the Orthodox Church, they are still far from lost to the Russian people ... ".

OctobristG. V. Skoropadsky 1, deputy of the Chernigov province, in his speech stated:

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part II. S. 136-143.

“I believe that moral influence is a very important factor in this case. After all, we must pay attention to the situation in which the Russian population of the Kholmshchyna is. The history of Kholmshchyna explains this to you. After all, the history of Kholmshchyna is the history of suffering and intolerable torment of the human soul. For a long time a storm of conflicting interests of Russians and Polish raged there, and in this case I am not justifying either the Poles or the Russian government, blinded by the struggle, they completely disregarded the needs of the human soul and made cruel violence against it, desecration of its sacred beliefs and dear covenants. The soul of the Russian peasant is currently crumpled, intimidated and depressed, and therefore moral support will be of enormous importance for him. The enslaved spirit is looking for something, wants something, and above all it expects moral support, and we cannot refuse it. A drowning man is shouted from afar: "Hold on, you are saved" - and this invigorates him, this supports his weakening strength. We must say this to the peasant of the Kholmsh region. Then a ray of hope will flash in his sick soul and he will say that good news has come: we are no longer in Poland. "

Polish MPV. Yu. Yablonovsky 1 , arguing with gr. Bobrinsky 2nd, who declared that all Orthodox peasants, without exception, want the allocation of the region, recalled the list of 8000 persons belonging to Orthodoxy and who did not want the separation of Kholmshchyna. Statement gr. Bobrinsky about the Duma's guarantees against possible restrictions on the freedom of the Catholic faith, the Polish deputy described as lightweight and worthless. Along with the polonized Little Russians, there are also Russified Poles in the Kholmsk region. Even official statistics show that in the projected province the vast majority of the population is not Orthodox, that even after deducting other confessions, Catholics prevail over Orthodox there.

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part II. S. 143-156.

“No one is now in a position to investigate the genealogy of peasant families, and this way the question of the nature of these lands will not be resolved,” Yablonovsky said. - It can be resolved only in one way, namely, by giving the people the opportunity to express themselves freely and naturally. But you, gentlemen, supporters of this bill, will not go this way, because you have no doubt that not a single Catholic inhabitant of this space, which you want to tear away from the Kingdom of Poland, recognizes himself as Russian. And therefore, gentlemen, zealots of this bill, tell the unfortunate peasant of this country that although he recognizes himself as a Pole, you do not want to recognize him as such and threaten him that against his will you will turn him and his children into Russians.

Deputy of the Perm province, retired lieutenant general, Catholic Pole, member of the Cadet Party A. F. Bobyansky 2 raised the issue of the Catholic Church as a means of Polonization.

2 In the same place. S. 331-344.

Comparing the specific features of Orthodoxy and Catholicism, he noted that the strength of Orthodoxy lies in the closeness of priests to the people, while the strength of Catholicism lies in its organization.

“I have many venerable friends of priests and I see the closeness that exists in the Orthodox population between pastors and flocks, but I must say that this closeness has been broken in the Kholmsk region; there the priest and the population are elements, I will not say, alien to each other, but not originating from the same national environment; this closeness existed until the 1860s, but then, with the call of the Galician immigrants there and then with the call of the clergy there from central Russia, this traditional age-old closeness, which gives, I would say, the greatest strength to Orthodoxy, was violated.

“The Catholic clergy,” Bobyansky continued, “at this time, and precisely in Russia, represents the independence of the religious conscience from the secular authorities. This is his attractive power and this is the key to the success of his entire business. Orthodoxy does not have this moment in itself. Orthodoxy is too close to secular power, and it does not protect the conscience of its flock from the influence of secular power, while Catholicism protects and recognizes that they are independent of secular power, and the state should not interfere in the affairs of conscience. Is it right or wrong from a government point of view? You may say that this is dangerous, but nevertheless it is a fact, and this is the germ of the population's sympathy for the Catholic Church. "

Having painted a picture of the religious battles between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in Poland in the 17th-18th centuries, reflecting the general state of the European worldview of that time, which made religious wars inevitable, Babiansky stated:

“To reopen these disputes now, in the 20th century, when they have finally died out, when they have no meaning, when fundamental questions of conscience seem to be personal issues, and to build on this policy and this particular bill, this is, at least narrowly, aimlessly, no goal can be achieved by this (Fr. Yurashkevich, from the spot: yes, nothing has gone out). "

An elderly Kiev professor-historian, member of the Candidate-Democratic PartyI. V. Luchitsky 1 ironically spoke about the references of the polemicizing orators to history, which gives both sides grounds to defend their positions.

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part II. S. 509-523.

“History, as a rule, in cases like the present, is an extremely dangerous double-edged weapon ... You cannot follow the morality that exists among the Hottentots: when I steal it is good, and when it is stolen from me it is evil ... I leave completely in side all that side, which for me, from the point of view of a historian, is completely unsubstantiated and unscientific, and this is all the more so since we are talking about too old times, "at the dawn of history." I will tackle a completely different issue that interests me most in this case, namely the issue of minority rights. This question has recently become the most essential and fundamental question, it occupies the minds most of all and is one of those questions, before the solution of which, sooner or later, everyone must stop, because otherwise history will force this question to be raised in all its breadth. "

Raising the question of the rights of the Little Russian minority in Kholmshchina, Luchitsky said that there were no guarantees of these rights either before, under the rule of Poland, or now, under the rule of the Russian administration.

This powerlessness is due to the fact that the Little Russian population consisted of slaves, of people to whom neither the Polish nor the Russian state treated as something independent, but disposed of this population at their own discretion. The dominant point of view was that "the unity of the state is based on the unity of faith, and in the name of this unity, experiments were made on people of a mean state."

These experiments led to one result - persecution of a religious nature, in the desire to "catholicize" the population by means of union on the part of Poland, and then, on the contrary, "send" it from Russia.

The speaker said that he considers it necessary to take measures against the forcible polonization of the Little Russians, but that the bill does not provide any guarantees for the preservation of their national identity after the separation of Kholmshchyna.

The government considers as its goal the complete Russification of the region, and only in this way - internal merger with indigenous Russia, i.e. merging not through independent development and support of those elements that can constitute a certain major force for the country, but through ordinary violence, which is always associated with the policy of unification, which is a policy related to religion, the policy of “leveling everyone along the same template” ...

Since the separation of the Kholmshchyna does not provide for any guarantees to protect the interests of the allocated Little Russian Population, much less guarantees for the Polish population allocated with it, Luchinsky spoke out against the bill as a whole.

Position of progressives: speech by N. N. Lvov

Deputy of the Saratov province progressistN. N. Lvov 1, on the basis of personal impressions, confirmed that the Kholmshchyna undoubtedly leads the process of polonization of the population.

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part II. P. 509-523

He also recognized the need to "support the weaker Russian nationality in its struggle for existence."

“Yes, during the Rzecz Pospolita there were persecutions of the Russian population and faith, and there were conversions of Russian churches to Catholic churches, and there were outrages over Orthodox rituals, and all this was all the harder because it fell on the people soft and meek, violence was committed over the soul of a child. "

But at the same time, N. N. Lvov admitted that “this issue must be approached with the greatest caution, because we ourselves have made such huge mistakes that this obliges us to be especially careful before touching the sick wounds, our own by hand. "

The bill on the separation of the Kholmsk region, in his opinion, was an attempt to "cut with an ax an issue that is of enormous complexity and enormous difficulties."

The reason for the calamities of this region lies in the fact that “on these people, on this people, be they Poles or Russians, claims were made by two warring states and two Churches. The centuries-old dispute over domination and power fell with all its burden on the people who lived at this turn. Living people with their national feeling, with their faith were sacrificed for the triumph of the Church and the state. This is the main mistake of everything that happened in this region, and if you take a closer look at the history of this region, you will not see anywhere such striking examples of how the gospel truth affects deeds: he who takes the sword from the sword will die. You see here the mighty Basilian monasteries, which made encroachments on the subjugation of the human conscience, turned into ruins, but you see here both Orthodox churches left by the worshipers and pastors without a flock. You need to think about this ... ".

NN Lvov called to remember the wise warnings of those who, in the era of the 30-year war, when people were burned at the stake, when Archpriest Avvakum was burned here, warned about the disastrous consequences of such a "union of the cross with the sword."

NN Lvov recalled that the horrors of 1875 in the ministerial report presented to the State Duma are described as "the protection of the Russian people by general administrative measures with some state influence in the field of church life." At that time there were also calls from 300,000 Uniates, who stretched out their hands to Russia for salvation from Romanization and Polonization, and everything that was written then on the Kholm question is strikingly reminiscent of today's conversations.

“The religious issue is the dominant issue in the Kholmsk region - this is the root of everything, it dominates the national issue, and strife in the Kholmsk region occurs not on the national issue, but on the religious one. Here Russian Catholics are at enmity against the Russian Orthodox. Here, the transition from one religion to another is not only a change of faith, but it is a transition to the camp of those who oppressed the faith of your father and your grandfather. Here religion brought discord, one might say, into the depths of the family itself. The age-old persecution has brought the consciousness into the population: whoever is Catholic is the Pole, who is Orthodox is that Russian. And this bypassing, as the commission suggests, cannot be resolved. "

“After all, after you have transferred the boundary pillars,” N. N. Lvov said, “and write that here is Poland, and here is Russia, you will not stop any furious sermons with denunciations, with attacks on someone else’s faith, on someone else’s nationality; because you will not stop contacting the police; you will not stop the militant clericalism and militant nationalism that constitute the entire plague of this region; you can't do that ...

You want to transfer the whole struggle from religious ground to national soil, but can you really do it? .. When you touch on the question of language, you are thereby touching on the question of religion; we do not have Russian Catholicism, and the language of the church is the language of Polish ... You must never forget that the Russian people that you call Russian in this Kholmsk province are Little Russian, and that song about which you grieve so much that it is torn from the grip of Polonization — this is a Little Russian song; you come to this people not with the language in which the Bishop of Kuzemsky and Bishop Terashkevich spoke to him, who came from this people and loved this people, but with a different language, and as you learn at school, the language in which his free is sung will be lost song, and you, in the same way, do not approach his share out of participation, and you just want to lay a heavy hand on him in the name of other state goals. "

“After all, you need to understand,” N.N. Lvov continued, “that what happened in Kholm was not the collapse of the Russian cause, not the triumph of the Poles and Catholicism, but the collapse of the Victorious policy ... For the first time, the manifesto on October 17 proclaimed that a living person, with his faith, with its popular feeling, with its human suffering can not be anyone's property, neither Polish nor Russian statehood, nor the Orthodox, nor the Catholic Church. This cuts the age-old knot gravitating over the Kholmsk region, where the age-old history has passed, tormenting the human conscience for the triumph of the Church and the state. In the history of Kholm, one can learn that there are depths of the human spirit, to which the rude hand of power should not touch - this is faith and nationality. "

V. A. Maklakov (cd) 1 in his speech said:

“Everywhere, not only in Poland, we hear from the Russian clergy complaints about the art, energy and success of Polish Catholic propaganda ... In order to resist the influence of Catholic propaganda, there is one means - to help Orthodox propaganda; you are doing this, you are helping her, you are putting this propaganda in favorable conditions, but this is not necessary for this selection. "

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part I. S. 643-659.

Maklakov called for the real elimination of those sources of evil that poison the Kholmsh region through reasonable practical measures, while the separation of the Kholmsk region without further measures for Russification is pure demagogy and deception, since in reality these measures are going to be carried out later. Addressing the Octobrist center, Maklakov said: “Either you will not do anything more than what you promise and assume, and you will not oppress the Polish element and will not scoff at it, but then you will make your enemies all those on whom you rely , all those who came up with this project, or you give in and, reluctantly and unwillingly, will follow these adventurers of Russification into all the jungle where they will lead you. "

Secondary speeches by Bishop Eulogius and D. N. Chikhachev

Bishop Eulogius 1 in a second speech, responding to the speeches of previous speakers, he rejected accusations that the authors of the project pin any hopes on police violence and administrative arbitrariness, but only strive to “raise and strengthen the people's self-awareness, put the people in such conditions that they themselves represented such a strong force, about which the master's inclinations would have been broken. "

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part II, pp. 659-686.

“If we move from artificial calculations to reality, the picture will be just the opposite. Call in any place where there is an Orthodox church and a Catholic church, the Orthodox church is small, wretched, poor old woman often bends to the ground, and there is no money to fix it and put it in proper form, and next to her there is a majestic, Grandiose, stylish Roman Catholic church. Here is a picture for you, and this is really a very telling symbol: a symbol, on the one hand, of the servile faith, as we say, the Orthodox faith, and on the other hand, of the lord, that is, of the Catholic faith. Then compare our Orthodox priest with the Catholic priest; our Orthodox priest, however, is somewhat better off than in central Russia, he receives 1200 rubles. salaries, but this and only, there can be no question of any income, often even the land does not bring any benefit, especially in areas with a predominantly Catholic population. But he has a family, he is responsible for raising children, which requires a lot of money, and next to him is a completely lonely, unemployed, familyless Catholic priest, who is not interested in either salary or land. He already has so many funds that the parish gives him, because his parish is not made up of ordinary poor peasants, but rich landowners enter there and from this parish he receives five times more funds than an Orthodox priest receives a salary. "

Describing the real balance of forces in the Kholmsh region, Bishop Vvlogy said:

"On the Polish side whole army militant Catholic clergy, then on his side the economic power of the landowner, which often turns into dominance, on his side all the intelligentsia, the legal profession, doctors, finally, small urban artisans and various societies, which under the guise of culture are the centers of the most irrepressible political proselytism, and that's all it oppresses and crushes our poor, dark, downtrodden peasant in one continuous mass, pushing him onto the path of betrayal of his native principles. All this attracts and seduces him even appearance contentment, tranquility and a prosperous life, all this says: come to us and you will be full and satisfied, or remain Russian, and then you will be downtrodden in poverty, often persecuted, doomed to ridicule and mockery. What, then, can our poor Russian side oppose to this continuous onslaught? On our side there is only one poor village priest, a poor, also a poorly secured official, and an even poorer folk teacher, who receives 150-180 rubles in our church school. in year. And these are the only defenders of the Russian population. Can we say after that ... that there are more than enough funds in the Kholmsk region to protect the Russian population. No, the Russian population in Kholmshchyna, weakened, shaken, broken, broken and worn out by the age-old unbearable struggle, requires special attention to itself, special patronage of the Russian state, requires special measures, legislative, cultural, educational and cultural economic, and above all requires complete isolation from the main source of their troubles, namely from Poland. It is necessary to strengthen the Russian self-consciousness, the people themselves must be firmly placed to defend their Russian national identity. "

Regarding the picture of "mistakes and crimes" of the Russian secular and spiritual authorities during the reunification of the Uniates, drawn by N. N. Lvov, Bishop Evlogiy said:

“In general, this picture is, of course, fair, if we discard some of the extremes, and we realize that the 1870s and 1880s are a sad page in the history of the Russian Kholmshchyna, but to see in these inept, rude, often violent actions of the administration the only and the exceptional reason for all our misfortunes, the Polonization that is now seen in the Kholmsk Territory, is to see only one side of the matter and close our eyes to the other ... In the first half of the 19th century there was no Pobedonostsev, there was no Gromeka, then the Russian authorities were completely were not interested, however, the poor Uniates were already saturated with this Catholic Polish hatred. And Bishop Mykhailo Kuzemsky, whom the deputy Lvov cannot but believe, explains it with this: the constant performance of the gentry with the Latin clergy, their joint missionary work, not so much religious as political. "

Bishop Evlogiy ended his speech with a description of the events of 1905, while polemicizing with N. N. Lvov:

“Deputy Lvov goes to the Kholmsk region, he sees a picture of this polonization, he sees that the Kholm people have lost 170,000, but he considers it as if it were in the order of things, he considers it a natural consequence of the previous Russian policy. When they tell him that not only the stubborn ones who were really hired by the sad legacy of this policy have fallen away, but also the strong, firm Orthodox Russians who went to the church crying, nipping, cursing, groaning, he says: why are you keeping human conscience, why do you consider those who have fallen away, let them go, do not interfere with this movement, leave them alone. Yes, visiting the Kholmsk region, he did not see the bloody tears of our poor Kholm people there, he did not see these pitiful farm laborers who, like a wordless herd, were driven into Catholic churches, he did not hear the groans and screams that were heard in our Kholm village ... And now, when we make attempts to save this unfortunate people, to free them from Latin-Polish bondage, the deputy Lvov, speaking from this chair, with pathetic indignation says why you are doing this, let everything remain as it is, let it be under the banner of the manifesto On October 17, the Poles will finally gnaw at the unfortunate peasants of Kholmsk, leave, he says, your work, rough, clumsy, with an ax you want to chop off Kholmshchyna from the Kingdom of Poland, with which it has grown together, got along. It may be that our work is really rough, technically imperfect, but on the other hand, it strives in a natural way to strengthen the Russian self-consciousness of the Russian Kholm people in order to build a building of Russian culture on this solid foundation. Maybe our work is rough, clumsy, but nevertheless it is creative, constructional work, and the work of the deputy of Lvov and his friends is really that ax that is carried over the head of our already beaten man, whom they want to finally finish off, finally dig it up " ...

In a short secondary speechD. N. Chikhachev 1 noted the great interest in the Kholm issue on the part of various circles of Ukrainian society, cited the opinion of the local Kholm leader of the left direction Spolitak, who in Moscow, at a meeting of the society of Slavic culture, objected to N.N. Lvov and turned out to be a supporter of separation.

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part II. S. 703-708.

"Positively, the entire Western Russian society," said Chikhachev, "one way or another intimately familiar with the needs of the Kholmsk Territory, while others are certainly a convinced supporter of this separation and other ways to save this population from Polonization." | Having made “only the first step and outlining the further scheme of reforms, the commission thereby went to meet the wishes of the entire Western Russian society. She understood that this movement really arose from below, as State Duma member Maklakov put it, in the best sense of the word; she realized that in this case she is not on the basis of the party, but takes into account the interests of the entire West Russian region, not allowing at least one Russian person within the Russian Empire to undergo polonization. "

As on other national issues, there was no unanimity among the Octobrists on the Kholmsk question, and at the meeting on January 20, 1912, von Anrep1 on behalf of several like-minded people spoke . against the separation project as completely useless and unnecessary.

After eight days of discussion, the transition to article-by-article reading the draft was adopted by 154 votes to 107 .. The article-by-article discussion of the draft was accompanied by the same heated debate as was the general debate.

1 State Duma of the 3rd convocation. Verbatim records. Session 5. Part II. P. 717-719 2 Ibid. P. 722

On February 15, at a morning session, the State Duma voted and rejected the main, 10th article of the Kholmsk bill. This article provided for the separation of the newly formed Kholmsk province from the provinces of the Kingdom of Poland and its subordination to the direct jurisdiction of the Minister of Internal Affairs.

Opponents of the bill have mobilized all their forces to achieve this success. The day before, invitations were sent out to the entire opposition and to those of the Octobrists, in relation to whom one could count on a negative attitude towards the bill. Discussion of the bill began at 11 o'clock. The next in line were 20 speakers, mostly opponents of the project. Counting on the fact that the debate will drag on, the defenders of the bill did not appear at the morning session in full force. However, most of the speakers immediately refused to speak and thus ensured the preponderance of the opposition.

As a result, by a majority of 150 votes against 105, von Anrep's proposal was adopted to exclude the words that speak of the separation of Kholmshchyna from the Kingdom of Poland. Then, by a majority of only 4 votes: 139 against 135, the proposal was made to subordinate the new province to the Warsaw governor, and not to the Minister of the Interior. The nationalists and rightists demanded a second vote through the doors, but it gave the same result.

Second reading of the bill in the State Duma

Despite the fact that with the rejection of Article 10, the entire bill lost its meaning, the nationalists insisted on further discussion of it.

The next day, February 16, defenders of the bill have achieved the adoption of a number of articles that contradict the decision adopted the day before. By a majority of 168 votes against 139, it was decided to subordinate the new province in parts not to the Warsaw governor, but to the Minister of Internal Affairs and the chief governor by affiliation. In judicial respect, the Kholmsk province was annexed to the district of the Kiev judicial chamber, its educational institutions under the Ministry of Public Education are subordinate to the trustee of the Kiev educational district.

The successes of the nationalists were limited to this. In a further vote, all clauses limiting the teaching of the Polish language in educational institutions of the new province, as not the state language, were removed from the bill. The rules of the project, establishing the compulsory use of the Russian language in local legal proceedings, suffered the same fate. EP Kovalevsky made a statement of principle on behalf of the Octobrist group.

“The isolation of the Kholmsk province,” he said, “should not deprive anyone of the rights that they have already acquired. Together with a member of the Duma Parchevsky, we think that this law should not deprive anyone. In view of this, all restrictions on schools must be removed from Section XI. ”

Bishop Eulogius objected to this point of view, who said:

“We remember how in 1905-1906. Poles declared a fierce boycott of the Russian school, a boycott that did not stop even before terror. We remember how at that time the notorious school "Matica" appeared on the stage, which appeared as a self-proclaimed, independent school government, parallel to the government school district. Now, unable to deter children from attending Russian school, Polish chauvinists are trying to suspend school work by all means. They speak out at commune gatherings, influence the dark peasant masses, incite against any school "warehouses", against the self-taxation of school affairs, try to inspire them with the idea that they demand a Polish school. She is in a combat position and the Russian government has not always emerged victorious in this struggle; in 1905 it nearly capitulated to Polish claims. In the Kholmshchyna, the Russian principles are already shaken, the Russian self-consciousness is shaken, why further aggravate this difficult struggle for the Russian original principles? We are trying to put the Russian school in the future Kholmsk province in such conditions so that it can calmly develop and do its great work. "

The final debate on the first article-by-article reading of the Kholmsk bill on February 24, when the majority rejected the articles establishing restrictions on Polish and Jewish land tenure and measures to protect Russian landowners' lands, which occupied only 4304 tithes in the Kholmsk region, took place with the same failure for the nationalists and the right.

Associate Minister of Education Taube remarked on all these amendments:

“You can't really separate the Kholmshchyna from the Vistula region and leave it as before in the same form in which it exists as part of this region. Of course, this is illogical. Why, in this case, and generally allocate? Why all this noise if you only mean changing the sign? "

“A phantom law,” the Pole Sventsitsky described it. “Do the Octobrists think about strengthening their pre-election activists? As if this asset did not turn out to be a dead weight later, from which it will be difficult to get rid of later ”.

After the end of the article-by-article reading, a three-day period was set for making amendments to the draft. On behalf of the Polish colo, more than 150 of them were introduced. For the most part, they included proposals to exclude certain gminas, cities and villages from the Kholmsk province. Deputy Parchevsky as an "amendment" proposed to exclude the department on the formation of a new province "in the absence of data for such a measure", that is, to completely reject the bill. A number of other points of the Polish colo 1 proposed to exclude "in view of the unfoundedness of the adopted resolution."

1 "Polish Kolo" (kolo - literally a circle) is the name of the Polish parliamentary faction in the I-IV State Dumas; representatives of Polish democratic and socialist circles in the Duma were not included in the Polish colo. - Approx. ed

The final fate of the bill was to be decided in the second article-by-article reading.

When discussing the main, 10th article, its previous meaning was restored in the commission of legislative assumptions in the following wording: "The Kholmskaya province is separated from the provinces of the Warsaw General Governorship and is subordinate in the general order of administration to the Minister of Internal Affairs." In comparison with the original edition, the expression: "from the provinces of the Kingdom of Poland" was replaced by the expression: "from the provinces of the Warsaw General Government". In this edition, with minor purely verbal changes proposed by the chairman of the commission Antonov, this article was adopted by the State Duma.

Of the private changes made at the last reading, it should be noted the question of non-attendance days, which arose due to the fact that the Gregorian calendar was adopted in the provinces of the Warsaw General Government, in contrast to the rest of Russia. Following the example of the rest of Western Russia, where, despite a large percentage of Catholics, the all-Russian order of non-partisan days was established, the government version of the bill assumed the abolition of the imperially approved provision of the Committee of Ministers of May 15, 1881 on exemption from classes in public places on Catholic holidays celebrated in a new style.

Third reading of the bill

During the discussion in the State Duma in the second (first article-by-article) reading, this proposal was rejected, but during the third reading Bishop Eulogius introduced an amendment restoring the government edition.

The rapporteur of the commission D.N.Chikhachev pointed out that in order to eliminate the inconveniences, the Roman curia has the opportunity to annex the new Kholmsk province to the Lutsk-Zhitomir Catholic diocese and thereby establish one calendar for the Kholmsk province and other provinces of the Western Territory. However, the amendment was rejected by the State Duma.

All that the opponents of the bill managed to defend was: the preservation of the Napoleon Code, the Gregorian calendar and the right of the Poles to free purchase of land.

On April 26, the State Duma, by a majority of 156 votes against 108, finally adopted the bill on the formation of a special Kholm province from the eastern parts of the Lublin and Sedletsk provinces, subordinating it in the general order of administration to the Minister of Internal Affairs and with appropriate changes in its structure.

That is how the three-year struggle for this bill ended in the Duma, a struggle in which such an exclusive role belonged to one person — Bishop Eulogius.

On May 7, the budget commission of the State Duma in an evening session, despite stubborn opposition from the Polish Kolo and the opposition, by a majority of 18 votes against 15, adopted a bill on the release of funds for expenses related to the formation of an independent Kholmsk province.

The victory of Bishop Eulogius in the Duma did not yet mean that his struggle for the Kholm bill was over. Getting the law through the Council of State also seemed difficult. “There I foresaw a lot of pitfalls,” recalls Metropolitan Evlogiy, “I defended the interests of a gray peasant who did not know how to defend his national consciousness. The Polish aristocracy had family and friendship ties in the capital's society, in its higher spheres, - this also had to be taken into account " 1

1 Evlogiy (Georgievsky), Metropolitan. The path of my life. M., 1994.S. 209.

Decision of the State Council and approval of the law on the allocation of the Kholmsk province

On April 27, the day after the Duma passed the bill, the State Council, on the initiative of 52 members headed by D.I.Pikhno, formed a special commission of 15 members for preliminary consideration of the bill, without waiting for its official receipt from the Duma. On May 2, elections were held and the commission included: P. P. Kobylinsky, D. I. Pikhno, prot. T.I.Butkevich, N.A.Zverev, A.P. Rogovich, V.F.Deitrikh, Vol. P. D. Golitsyn, S. E. Brazol, N. S. Tagantsev, N. P. Balashov, I. D. Shebeko, E. V. Khrzhanovsky, Vol. A. D. Obolensky 2nd, S. M. Lukyanov and M. A. Stakhovich.

Bishop Eulogius visited several members of the State Council: the leader of the right-wing Durnovo, Neidgart (center) and prof. Bagaleya, sent his brochures to all members of the Council. Durnovo promised support, but without much enthusiasm. “I cannot call myself your supporter,” he said to the bishop, “but I see that the bill is at such a stage when it cannot be turned back ...”. Chairman of the State Council Akimov promised to support the bill, but advised to talk with Witte first. “If he’s good enough, he will help,” Akimov said, hinting at the ex-minister's heightened pride.

At this time (at the end of May 1912), Bishop Eulogius received a notification that he had been awarded a "special Imperial Rescript" with the elevation to the rank of archbishop, although he had been in the rank of bishop for only 9 years. This was a clear approval in connection with the Kholm victory in the Duma.

The meeting of the State Council, which finally decided the fate of the whole case, opened under the chairmanship of Akimov. The speaker on the project was a member of the State Council, former Deputy Minister A. S. Stishinsky. Makarov defended the bill from the government.

Metropolitan Evlogiy describes the course of the discussion in the Council: “The debates revealed our supporters and opponents. "For" the bill were: Archpriest. Butkevich, prof. Bagaley; “Against” - NS Tagantsev, Maxim Kovalevsky, the entire Polish stake and, in general, the entire left side of the Soviet. The representative of the center, Count Olsufiev, was even sarcastic in his speech. He criticized the zigzag boundaries of the Kholmsk province and mockingly responded about its outlines: "This is how a drunken peasant" thinks "deduces ..." He did not take into account our desire to precisely adhere to the 30-percent norm of the Russian population and already, depending on it, draws borders, regardless of with what will be the outlines on the map. Whenever he mentioned my name in his speech, he said: "Bishop, and now Archbishop Eulogius ...", underlining the last two words and thus hinting that the Kholm bill allegedly served as a means for my career.

All the ministers were present at the meeting, but during the voting Kokovtsev and someone else from the ministers disappeared ... The bill passed by a large number of votes. The fight was over and ended in complete victory ...

On June 15, the III Duma and the State Council were dissolved after five years of prosperous existence, and on June 23, shortly after my return from Valaam, on the day of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, the Kholm bill was approved by the Highest. It is hard to imagine the delight and jubilation of the people when I returned to Kholm as a winner ... " 1

1Eulogy (Georgievsky), Metropolitan. Decree. op. S. 210-211.

The official opening of the Kholmsk province took place on September 8, 1913. A. N. Volzhin, the former governor of Sedletsky, was appointed governor, who with his despotic and capricious character strongly compromised the whole idea of \u200b\u200bjoining Russia, which was perceived by the people "almost religiously", before the Orthodox population of the Kholmsk region.

The educational activity, which was the main goal of separating the Kholmsh region, was developed by Archbishop Evlogiy himself, almost without the support of the governor. Under the "Kholmsk brotherhood" a printing house was created and the weekly "Kholmskaya Rus" began to appear, a cultural and educational society of teachers, an agricultural society and a society of mutual credit were founded.

Further activities to strengthen the cultural and economic ties of the Kholmsk region with Russia were interrupted by the transfer of Archbishop Eulogius to the Volyn see, which took place in the spring of 1914, and then by the outbreak of the war.

The further fate of the Kholmshchyna

On August 5, 1915, German troops entered Warsaw. Soon the German and Austrian armies occupied the entire Kingdom of Poland.

| bevel, i.e. ten Privislyansk provinces. With the advance of the Germans, not only the Russian administration left, but also the Orthodox faith

| khovenstvo, with a few exceptions. Part of the population was also evacuated.

! During the occupation, the integrity of the Kingdom of Poland i was not preserved and it was divorced into two parts: the large, occupied one | the Germans, with the Governor-General Bezeler in Warsaw (from September 4, 1915) and the smaller one occupied by the Austrians, with the Governor-General Diller in Lublin (from October 1, 1915).

On the territory of the German occupation, the relationship between Orthodox and Catholics remained more or less peaceful. There is a known case when, during the first occupation of the town of Kelec, a local Roman Catholic bishop protested with all his energy against the conversion of an Orthodox church into a stable. He was subsequently awarded the Order of St. Stanislav of the first degree, and the ribbon and the star were handed over to him personally by the assistant to the Warsaw Governor-General D. N. Lyubimov 1 .

1 Lyubimov DN Article in the "Renaissance". Paris, 1935; 11th of November. Cit. according to the book: Nikolaev KN Eastern rite. Paris, 1950.S. 79.

Kholmshchyna and Podlasie ended up in the territory of the Austrian occupation. Here many Orthodox churches were transferred to Catholics, in particular, cathedrals in Kholm, Lublin, and other places. On December 16, 1918, immediately after the departure of the Germans, the government of I. Pilsudski issued a decree, according to which about 20,000 hectares of church land with buildings and grounds were transferred to state administration.

As a result of the Polish-Soviet war, not only Kholmshchina and Podlasie, but part of the Volyn and Minsk provinces with an almost entirely Orthodox Russian population of about 4 million people passed to Poland.

On February 10, 1925, a concordat was signed between Rome and Poland, which established five ecclesiastical provinces of the Latin rite (5 archbishops and 15 bishops), one Greek Catholic Uniate (1 archdiocese and 2 bishops) and one Armenian rite. One Latin diocese had 750,000 people, one Uniate diocese - twice as many, 1,500,000 people. Uniatism was almost entirely locked up within Galicia and lost its former partial independence. Now it was only a province of the Eastern Rite.

Uniate preaching in the Kholmsk region and in Podlasie did not lead to much success. At the Veligrad Congress in 1927, Bishop Pshezdecki reported 20,000 converts to the Uniatism throughout Poland.

In 1929, events took place that greatly undermined the position of Orthodoxy in Poland. In the summer of this year, Orthodox hierarchs began to receive alarming reports of numerous claims brought against the Orthodox Church in Poland by the Roman Catholic episcopate.

At the end of August 1929 it was found out that 144 claims were brought against the Volyn diocese, 71 against the Vilenskaya, 248 against the Polesskaya and 159 against the Grodno dioceses. The Polesskaya and Grodno dioceses were in the most difficult situation. In the first, out of 320 parishes, including attributed ones, there were 248 claims; in the second - 159 claims per 174 parishes. In the Volyn diocese, the number of lawsuits was relatively small, but demands were made to seize all Orthodox monasteries. At the final count, the number of claims was 724.

Claims were brought on behalf of the Vilna Metropolitan, the Bishop of Pinsk, as well as the Bishop of Lutsk, in the district courts in Brest, Bialystok, Vilna, Grodno, Lutsk, Novogrudok, Rovno and Pinsk.

The claims stated the following: “After the liquidation of the November uprising (1831), the Russian government destroyed the union by violence. Uniate churches were liquidated, transferring them along with all their property to the Orthodox clergy with the aim of rebuilding them into Orthodox churches, which was done.

Taking into account that the liquidation of the Uniate churches by the Russian government cannot be a legal basis for the acquisition of property rights by the Russian government and that such liquidation remains always an act of violence and lawlessness, one must come to the conclusion that the rights of the Orthodox clergy in relation to the selected Uniate churches and real estate in the form of land and buildings that belonged to those churches, is vicious and does not create property rights. Illegally seized property is subject to return. "

However, the scandal that broke out in connection with this led to the refusal of the Polish court to satisfy these requirements, which were significantly mitigated by the plaintiffs themselves. By the decision of the highest court of November 20, 1933, the transfer of the shrines was left at the discretion of the local civil authorities, in addition to the judicial procedure, on the basis of a government order of October 22, 1919, which concerned only former Catholic, but not Uniate churches.

The situation in the Kholmshchyna was as follows. By 1925, out of 383 Orthodox churches that existed before the war, 59 were destroyed, 111 closed and 150 converted into churches. Only 63 churches remained at the disposal of the Orthodox population.

As a result of the return of part of the population from Russia, a number of churches and houses of worship were reopened. Another blow was struck in 1938, when about 200 churches were destroyed - all closed churches, as well as some of the ones that were open and built since 1920. However, demands for the opening of Orthodox churches and the sending of priests did not stop, 200,000 Orthodox people in the Kholmsh region showed firmness and did not want to convert to the Catholicism of the Eastern rite.

Forgotten Russian land

Kholmskaya Rus, or Kholmshchina. This name once had the East Slavic historical and ethnographic region, a part of primordial Russia. Actually, historically Kholmshchyna has always been a part of Volyn. But since 1795 the history of Kholmshchyna began to differ from the history of Volyn proper.

Kholmskaya Rus is located on the left bank of the Western Bug, which is why it is also called Zabuzh. Historical Kholmshchina stretched between Volynia, Galicia, Lublin land of Poland and the so-called. Let's pry. Actually, historically, Podlasie was part of the Kholmshchyna, from which it was separated only by a small river Wlodawa, and only due to the cataclysms of the 20th century it began to be considered an independent historical and ethnographic region. The main "separator" between Kholmshchyna and Podlasie was that the Kholmschaks belonged to the Little Russian branch of the Russian people, and the "Podlyashsky" ones belonged to the Belarusian.

The name of Kholmskaya Rus comes from its central city Kholm, located just 30 km from the border with modern Ukraine. The territory of the Kholmsk region is small - the Kholmsk province of the Russian Empire, created in 1912, covered an area of \u200b\u200b10 460 km2 and was the smallest province in Russia. Lived in the Kholmsk province about 720 thousand people. But the very concept of "Kholmskaya Rus" has already become a thing of the past. Now it's just Kholmshchina. Like all "Zakerzonye" (East Slavic territories located to the west of the "Curzon Line"), Kholmshchina experienced a complete replacement of the Russian local population. Now Kholmshchyna is part of Poland (Lublin and a small part of the Mazovian Voivodeship), and there are almost no Russians there, and the few remaining Eastern Slavs are considered and, which is especially tragic, they themselves consider themselves Ukrainians ...

Capital city of the Galicia-Volyn principality

Kholmshchina has been inhabited since ancient times. The first known inhabitants of the region were the East Slavic tribe of Dulebs. Under Prince Vladimir Volyn, together with the future Kholmshchina, became part of Russia. Nestor narrates that in the year 981 "Ida Volodimer to Lyakhom and the zaya of their grads: Przemysl, Cherven and other cities, which are the essence of Russia to this day." The hill is not mentioned in this list of cities, but the entire territory of the Kholmshchyna was part of the Cherven cities (the city of Cherven itself is the modern Polish village of Chermno, 50 km from Holm). Almost all archaeological finds testify to the absolute predominance of the East Slavic population in the region. Moreover, it is likely that in the 9th century the local lands were either part of or were closely associated with the Great Moravian state, in which the missionary activities of Cyril and Methodius developed. Therefore, the idea that Christianity in the Orthodox form became known to local residents a century before the Baptism of Rus seems quite reasonable. It is no coincidence that in the city of Vladimir-Volynsky founded by Vladimir in 982 (that is, even before the baptism of Rus) there was already an Orthodox bishop.

For the Cherven cities, Russia again fought with Poland in 992. Then, taking advantage of the strife of the sons of Vladimir, Poland again seized this land in 1018, but in 1030 Yaroslav the Wise again knocked the Poles out of here. The borderline character of the Kholmshchyna led to the fact that this small but important region entrenched the concept of "ukraina" (as well as for other border territories of Russia). So, in the Ipatiev Chronicle under the year 1213 it is said that Prince Daniel Galitsky took the cities of Zabuzh and the whole "Ukraine". But in fact, neither Volhynia nor Galicia were then considered "Ukrainian". These lands were part of Russia. But the Poles, residents of the territories bordering on the Kholmsk region, were called by the Russian chroniclers "Lyakhov Ukrainians".

Probably, it was at this time that the city of Holm was born, although the time of the city's origin is unclear. In the Galicia-Volyn Chronicle, the story of the founding of the Hill was recorded under 1259 in connection with the description of the fire. Apparently, on the site of Kholm there used to be an unfortified settlement in which the Eastern Slavs lived. Later this settlement grew into a city. This is evidenced by wooden structures in the ramparts and ceramics of the 11th century, found here by archaeologists. According to the Polish chronicler Dlugosh, in 1074 a certain prince Gregory ruled in Kholm.

There is a legend that a pagan shrine was located on the hill that gave its name to the city. According to legend, when the enemies attacked her, a polar bear, which came out of the bowels of the mountain, helped the defenders of the shrine to repulse this attack. To this day, the polar bear is depicted on the coat of arms of the Hill.

The city of Kholm was probably not indicated by the chroniclers because there were no serious defensive fortifications, at least until 1241, when the Tatars could not take Kholm. Daniil Galitsky became the creator of the city as a fortress and its capital. According to legend, the prince asked local residents "What is the name of this place?" and received the answer: "The hill is his name" Daniel built powerful fortifications in the Hill ("the city is different, his own Tartars cannot accept, when Baty the whole land of the Russian floodplain," wrote the chroniclers) and was almost constantly in the city, which, thus , became the capital city of the Galicia-Volyn principality. In order to further develop the city, Daniel began to generously attract immigrants from all over the world: “Danilo began to call upon the Germans, foreigners and Poles. I go every day and every day and unti and masters of all kinds of begahu and Tatars, saddlers, and archers, and tulnitsi and blacksmiths of iron, copper, and silver; and without life, and filling the courtyards around, fields and villages. " As you can see, the Hill during the time of Prince Daniel was something like St. Petersburg under Peter I - new town, founded by the sovereign will of the ruler, standing right next to the enemy line, quickly populated by a mixed population. Probably, the Kholm attracted the attention of Daniel not only with its fortifications, but also by the fact that it was located at the junction of both the prince's possessions - Galicia and Volyn lands, as well as a certain distance from the Tatar raids. At the Hill, Daniel died and was buried.

The large population of the city and the region was evidenced by the creation of a separate Chomsky episcopal diocese. The first Bishop John of Kholmsk was not only a spiritual leader, but also political activities... As a diplomat, John traveled to negotiate peace with the Tatar commanders. Developed in the Kholmsk region and orthodox culture... The handwritten "Galician Gospel of Priest Eusebius", written in Kholm in 1283, and the "Kholmsk Gospel" (XIII-XIV centuries) have come down to us. However, the proximity to Catholic lands also affected local Orthodoxy. So, the Cathedral of Kholm was decorated with stained-glass windows ("Roman glass"), which is generally not typical of ancient Russian temples.

After the death of Daniel, Kholm became the capital city of the special appanage principality of Chomsky within the Grand Duchy of Galicia-Volynsky. The evidence of the importance of the city was the fact that the eldest sons of the Galician princes reigned here. The Kholmsk principality also included the cities of Belz, Cherven, Suteysk, Vereshchin, Shchekarev (later - Krasny Stav). In total, there were about 20 cities in Kholmskaya Rus in the XIII century.

As part of the Kingdom of Poland

In 1349, Kholm, like the entire Galician land, was conquered by the Polish king Casimir III. At the same time, Podlasie became part of Lithuania. In fact, the final conquest of Galician Rus, together with the Kholmshchyna, took place only in 1387, after the end of long wars between the Poles, Lithuania, Hungarians and Russians. However, the Kholmsk prince, submitting to the Polish king as a vassal, retained his power over the Kholmsk region. The Kholmsk princes, serving the Polish kings, repeatedly distinguished themselves in battles. In 1399, Prince Ivan Kholmsky died in a battle with the Tatars on the Vorskla River. After that, the prince of the ancient city of Belz became the Prince of Kholmsk. The principality thus became Kholmsko-Belz. In 1410, in the battle of Grunwald, the Polish troops included a "banner" (a military unit under its own banner) from Kholm. Only in 1462, after the suppression of the local dynasty, Kholmshchyna became part of the Polish kingdom, losing all remnants of autonomy. The last of the Russian princes fled from Lithuania to the Moscow kingdom in 1481. Podlasie, which was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, was annexed to Poland in 1569, on the basis of the Union of Lublin.

Kholmshchina was part of the Russian Voivodeship of the Kingdom of Poland. The Kholmsk region was directly ruled by a castellan with a residence in Kholm. In turn, Kholmshchina consisted of counties (in Polish poviats) - Kholmsky and Krasnostavsky (with the center in the city of Krasny Stav). In general, the history of Kholshchina before the divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth practically did not differ from the history of Volyn and Galicia at that time. The hill received self-government under the Magdeburg Law (Magdeburg), as well as, subsequently, a number of privileges from the Polish kings. True, the city developed rather slowly. In 1504 and 1519 the city was burned by the Tatars. Several times it burned out completely due to fires. From time to time the city and the entire Kholmsk Rus were devastated by epidemics. In 1612 the city of Kholm had 2,200 inhabitants, including 800 Jews. The hill had some cultural significance as the main city of the diocese, the focus of church schools.

In 1648, the army of Bohdan Khmelnitsky occupied for a short time Kholmshchina and Podlasie. In the late 17th - early 18th centuries, Kholmshchyna was the battlefield of the Polish-Swedish wars. The city was also badly damaged during the Northern War (1700-1721). At the end of the 18th century, about 2,500 inhabitants lived in Kholm, including more than 1,000 Jews, 1,000 Poles, and only 200 Rusyns.

The fact that Kholmshchina was adjacent to the Polish ethnic territory and became directly part of Poland, led to the Catholicization and polonization of the local Russian population. Previously, not only the entire Kholmshchyna was Orthodox, but, according to the testimony of the Catholic leaders themselves, even in the XIII-XIV centuries up to the Vistula River, in the cities of Sandomierz, Zavikhvost, Vilica, as well as in Krakow, there were Orthodox churches with the Greek rite, whose flock was local residents. The Polish chronicler Kadlubek wrote that the Orthodox St. Nicholas Church in Lublin was built at the end of the 10th century. An Orthodox monastery existed in Lublin in 1287. Only gradually, by the middle of the 16th century, did the Catholics succeed in converting the Orthodox of southern Poland into their faith.

But attempts to catholicize Kholmshchyna, as well as the whole of Galicia, met with stubborn resistance. Initially, there were very few Catholics in the Kholmsk region, and even those were mainly from the number of Poles and Germans who moved here. Only in 1414 a Catholic bishop appeared in the Kholmsk region, and, due to the small number of local Catholics, the main task of the episcopate was to convert the Orthodox to Latin. It is interesting that the Catholic bishop of the Kholmshchyna, despite his title, had a residence in Hrubieszow, then in Krasnostava, and then completely in Lublin, Poland. Catholic propaganda met with little success. In 1500, the Krakow canon wrote: “By stubbornness in their schism (Orthodoxy), Russians do not believe any truth offered to them, do not accept any convictions and always contradict ... learned Catholics run away, hate their teachings and turn away from the instructions ... that they hate the faith of the Latins, that they would like not only to harm it, but even to eradicate it all over the world. "

For the purpose of Catholicization, measures were introduced (as, indeed, throughout Malaya and Belaya Rus') such measures as depriving Orthodox Christians of all rights, a ban on interfaith marriage between Catholics and Orthodox Christians, if the Orthodox Christianity does not accept the Catholic faith, etc. measures. On Wednesdays and Fridays, special prayers were read in churches for the conversion to Catholicism in Russia. However, not relying on the power of prayer, Catholic hierarchs and Polish magnates quickly turned to pressure with brute force. In 1500, Pope Alexander VI Borgia officially authorized the use of weapons and the death penalty for those who persisted in Orthodoxy. In 1533, several Russian villages with new, newly built churches were taken away from the Orthodox Bishop of Kholmsk, and transferred to the Latin bishop under the pretext that one of the peasants wished to convert to Catholicism. At the same time, with admirable frankness, the seizure of someone else's property was motivated by the fact that the Catholic clergy should be provided materially better than the Orthodox. The Orthodox were forbidden to openly conduct divine services, ring bells and build new churches. But churches were built even where there were only a few families of the Catholic faith. So, by order of King Stephen Batory in 1581, a church was built in the district, in which only 23 Catholics lived for several tens of thousands of Orthodox (who were supposed to build this church at their own expense and who were forbidden to build their churches). But even at the end of the 16th century, the Kholm Roman Catholic diocese had only about 60 parishes, and the Orthodox one ten times more.

Cultural and educational resistance to Catholicism and Uniatism was led by the city of Kholm Orthodox brotherhood and church schools. One of the first Orthodox brotherhoods in Poland was Shchekarevskoe (Krasnostavskoe), which in 1550 achieved recognition of its independence from the king.

The proclamation of the church union at the Brest cathedral in 1596 caused a general rejection in the Kholmsk region, despite the fact that among the initiators of the union was the Kholm bishop Dionysius Zbirui.

In 1599, the governor of Kholmsk, Andrei Urovetsky, created a "confederation" (an association of gentry and gentry) in defense of the Orthodox faith. It got to the point that the townspeople of Kholm in 1649 refused to bury the Greek Catholic Bishop Methodius Terletsky in the city, and the Catholics were forced to take him to the cathedral in Krasnostava. In 1621, the Orthodox Bishop of Kholmsk Paisiy was appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem. But Vladyka had to act almost secretly. The Uniates did not let him into Kholm, and Paisiy had to live on the outskirts of his diocese, in a monastery above the Bug. After the death of Paisius, the Orthodox bishopric in Kholm had no primate. In the Hill itself, the Uniates raged. The Orthodox Kholm Cathedral was rebuilt in 1638, and many Orthodox relics were thrown out and destroyed. A Uniate seminary was opened at the cathedral for the further spread of the union. Even when the king allowed the return of the Orthodox a number of churches taken from them by the Uniates, the local Uniates opposed this.

Of course, the Kholmshchyna ardently supported the uprising of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, and the townspeople surrendered Kholm to the Cossacks almost without a fight. But after many battles of the Russian-Polish war of 1654-67, when the border was established along the Dnieper, the westernmost Russian lands, including Kholmshchyna, remained in Poland. The planting of the union, followed by "pure" Roman Catholicism, followed by the inevitable polonization, took on a huge scale. In 1690, the Orthodox brotherhood disappeared in the city of Belz. In 1700, the Lviv bishop Joseph Shumlyansky passed into the union, after which almost all of the Lviv region (with the exception of the Manyavsky monastery) passed into the union. The Kholmsk region finally became Uniate. All the upper strata were finally pollinated. The number of Catholics gradually increased due to the conversion of the former Uniates to Latin. Back in the second half of the 17th century, the Kholmsk Orthodox diocese had over 400 parishes, the Uniate diocese numbered over 300, and there were 700 Russian parishes in the Kholmsk region. In 1749 there were no more Orthodox parishes; the Uniates had only 285 parishes. The rest were converted to Latinism. Until 1711, all metric records of residents of all religions were kept in Russian, but gradually all metric records, including the registration of marriages and births of Orthodox Christians, were transferred to Polish and Latin.

It should be noted that many hierarchs of the newly-minted church did not show much zeal in implanting Latin rituals in the church, fearing the revolt of their own flock, preserving the Byzantine rite and the usual Orthodox way of life. It is interesting that some of the hierarchs of the Uniate Church, due to many circumstances, defended the Orthodox. Outstanding bishops Jacob Susha (1652-1687), Philip Volodkovich (1731-1756), Maximilian Rylo (1756-1784), being Uniates, played a huge role in protecting the interests of the Orthodox population. However, the main reason for their actions was the fear that the union, having done its job of separating the Orthodox from their faith, would soon be abolished as unnecessary. For this reason, these Uniates tried to slow down the introduction of the Latin rite and the final Catholicization of the church. In fairness, it should be noted that many, if not most of the Kholm Rusyns were Uniates rather formally. So, in 1680, one of those who converted to Catholicism asked the Western Russian peasants about their faith, they called themselves Orthodox, although they had already been listed as Uniates for many generations. Ritualism remained Byzantine Orthodox, the liturgical language was Church Slavonic. And yet, slowly but surely, Roman Catholicism spread among the Uniates. By the end of the Rzecz Pospolita's existence, there were already more than 170 churches in the Kholmsk region. But even after converting to Catholicism, many Rusyns retained their language (even contaminated with Polonisms) and way of life. Until the beginning of the 20th century, a certain part of the population of the Kholmsh region was made up of "Latinists", or Kalakuts - Rusyns of the Roman Catholic faith with the Russian language and way of life. Uniatism finally linked its fate with Poland, which, however, was logical, because reunification with Orthodoxy would lead to the liquidation of this Uniate church. And it is no coincidence that in 1794 the Greek Catholic bishop of Kholmsk Porfiry Vazhinsky led the struggle against Russia, joined the Kosciuszko uprising and formed a regiment from local Uniates, the command of which he entrusted to Colonel Grokhovsky. However, this regiment did not win any laurels on the battlefield, and the bulk of the peasants, Poles and Rusyns, did not support the uprising of the "lords" at all.

By the end of Poland's existence, Kholmshchina was a backward and impoverished land. Only 2.5 thousand inhabitants lived in the city of Kholm, of which there were about 200 Ruthenians of the Uniate faith, the rest were approximately equally divided by Jews and Poles.

There is no Poland, but the Polish government remains

In 1795 Rzeczpospolita was finally divided. The Kholmsk land and Podlasie went to Austria. From that time on, the historical fate of Kholmsk Russia began to differ from the history of other Western Russian lands. This was only the beginning of violent political upheavals. Already in 1807, having defeated Prussia, Napoleon created the puppet state of the Duchy of Warsaw. Two years later, in 1809, after Napoleon once again defeated Austria, Kholmskaya Rus was annexed to the Duchy of Warsaw. This gave the edge some changes. For example, serfdom was abolished. But the polonization has increased sharply. So, in 1810, the bishop of Kholmsk Tsekhanovsky introduced a service in Polish in all Greek Catholic churches. Teaching was carried out in Polish in schools, office work was carried out in the offices, commands were given in the army of the Duchy of Warsaw, and now sermons were heard in Polish in churches and Uniate churches. Polonization proceeded rapidly. The political realities of the 19th century were by no means conducive to the Russian cause.

After the defeat of Napoleon by the decision of the Congress of Vienna, a significant part of the Polish lands was the so-called. Kingdom (or Kingdom) of Poland, connected only by a personal dynastic union with the Russian Empire. Kholmskaya Rus and Podlasie were included in this Kingdom. As you can see, nothing changed for the local Rusyns, despite the fact that they were headed by the Emperor of All Russia (it was more important for them that the emperor was also the King of Poland).

In 1830-31. Poles tried to restore Poland within the borders of 1772. After the defeat of the Poles, Emperor Nicholas I abolished the Kingdom of Poland, creating on its territory a number of provinces under the general control of the Warsaw governor-general. However, the Polish provinces have retained a number of features that distinguish them from other Russian provinces. Legislation, language of documents and administration remained Polish, the Catholic Church retained its position as the leader in all provinces of the former Kingdom of Poland.

The hill with the district became part of the Lubelskie Voivodeship, which was transformed into a province in 1837. The hill in 1837-1866 was not even a district town and belonged to the Krasnostavsky district. Kholmshchina experienced economic stagnation, the city of Kholm in 1860 had 3,600 inhabitants, of which 2,480 were Jews. On the whole, Kholm was more of a Jewish town than a city. However, all this time it remained the center of the Uniate diocese, which also occupied the lands of Podlasie.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Kholmsk region experienced a very sluggish economic recovery, especially contrasting against the background of the rapid industrial growth of the entire Russian Empire and Russian Poland. In 1877 passed through the Hill railway... Small industrial enterprises appeared. The population of the city grew slowly. In 1873, for 5 595 residents of the city there were: Orthodox - 263, Uniates - 530, Roman Catholics - 1 294, Jews - 1 503 people, the rest belonged to the "other". By 1911 the population had grown to 21,425 inhabitants. By confession the inhabitants were: 5,181 Orthodox, 3,820 Roman Catholics, 12,100 Jews, 315 Lutherans. The most important phenomenon for Kholmskaya Rus was that now Orthodoxy has revived again. At the same time, the region again began to feel like a Russian. The Polish language began to be supplanted by the literary Russian language. This was facilitated by the development of Russian schools in the region. The total number of Russian schools (parish and ministerial) in the region was brought to 825. All Polish schools are closed. There were 1,052 inhabitants for one Orthodox priest, and 4041 for one priest. The revival of Orthodoxy and Russian life in Kholmskaya Rus took place in very difficult conditions.

Back in 1839, the union was liquidated in the western Russian provinces and the former Uniates returned to Orthodoxy. However, Uniatism remained in the Polish provinces. Thus, the Kholm diocese turned out to be the only Uniate diocese in the entire Russian Empire. (Uniatism also remained in Galicia, which became part of the Austrian Empire, where it has survived to this day).

The Polish authorities, in the conditions when the Uniates were already in the minority of the local population, and their ritual was close to the Latin, zealously set about the final polonization of Kholmskaya Rus. In the 19th century, the Latinization of the Uniate Church in the Kholmsk region increased significantly. Iconostases were removed from churches almost everywhere, organs were introduced; some ancient eastern church holidays were eliminated and Latin ones were introduced; more and more sermons were conducted in Polish. More and more Uniates became indistinguishable from Catholics. More and more, the local Russian language was replaced by Polish, even in everyday life. Kholmskaya Rus remained less and less Rus. The conversion of the Uniates to Roman Catholicism became a mass phenomenon. All the Uniate parishes in Krasny Stava (Krasnystav) disappeared, in the remaining towns and countryside the Uniate eked out a miserable existence. The number of Uniates practically did not increase, despite the high natural increase - the conversion to Catholicism "ate up" practically the increase. And Orthodoxy has not existed for a century and a half. What the Catholic Church and Polish magnates had stubbornly pursued for several centuries began to triumph, by a bitter irony of fate, during the period when the region was under the scepter of the Russian emperor.

After the Polish uprising of 1863, the Russian government realized the threat of complete Polonization of the population of the Kholmsk region and decided to liquidate the Uniate Church and free the believers from Polish influence. Optimism in government measures was strengthened by the fact that among some of the Uniates there were tendencies towards Orthodoxy. Among the prominent supporters of the return to Orthodoxy was a prominent Uniate figure, a native of Austrian Galicia, Markell Popel. He moved to Russia and from 1871 headed the Kholm diocese. On February 18, 1875, at the initiative of Popel, the clergy of the consistory and the Kholm Cathedral decided to draw up an act on the reunification of the Kholm Greco-Uniate Diocese with the Orthodox Church. 260 thousand Kholmsk Uniates returned to Orthodoxy.

However, the return to Orthodoxy began to be carried out with very rough administrative measures. At the same time, taking and simply abolishing the rituals that had already become customary for the Kholm peasants by decree of the authorities did not mean at all that they would immediately turn into Orthodox. The Catholic Church made the most of the opportunities that opened before it, involving former Uniates in Roman Catholicism, since its financial and administrative opportunities were much more significant than those of local supporters of a return to Orthodoxy. Among the arrested instigators in the ensuing riots were not Uniates at all, but Poles, including the Catholic priest Yatskovsky. Many Polish landowners refused to hire Orthodox Christians from among the former Uniates, inciting them to accept Catholicism.

In official Petersburg, the cosmopolitan bureaucracy simply did not understand the essence of the unfolding struggle, limiting itself to formal statements about the elimination of the union. It is believed that in the 19th century at least 200 thousand of the Uniates of the Kholmsh region moved to the Roman church, and, therefore, became pollinated. So the ill-conceived "unraveling" with the help of the police gave the exact opposite effect. When on April 17, 1905, Nicholas II issued a decree on religious tolerance, many of the former Uniates switched to the Roman rite. Before the decree was issued, 450,000 Orthodox Christians lived in Kholmshchina and Podlasie, at the beginning of 1908 there were already only 280,000, that is, 170,000 people, converted from Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism. These data, cited by Metropolitan Eulogius, were somewhat exaggerated. According to other sources, about 119 thousand people were actually catholicized. However, for the Kholmshchyna it was all equally a huge figure.

The struggle for the Russian Kholmsk province

Since the second half of XIX century, especially after the abolition of the union, among Russian patriots began to emerge the idea of \u200b\u200bseparating from the Polish provinces of the former Kingdom of the Polish territories with a predominance of the Russian Orthodox population. However, for decades, all projects of reorganizing the administrative structure of the Polish provinces did not find the slightest sympathy in the cosmopolitan higher spheres. For almost half a century, these projects were discussed in the government eight times and rejected the same number of times. All Warsaw governors general were against her for purely business reasons. In their opinion, the administrative breakdown, which would have been required when the Kholmshchyna was separated into a separate province, would create a lot of administrative and military-strategic inconveniences.

In the early years of the 20th century, a prominent church figure, Archbishop (later - Metropolitan) Evlogy Georgievsky (1868-1946), became the leader of the struggle for the Russian Orthodox Kholmsk region. His right hand was a prominent publicist, a native of the city of Kholm, Ivan Porfirievich Filevich (1856-1913), the son of a Uniate priest, one of the first to return to Orthodoxy. The main organizational force of the Russian leaders in the Kholmsk region was the “Kholmsk Orthodox Holy Mother of God Brotherhood” created in 1879, whose trustee was Evlogiy, the chairman of the council of the brotherhood was Archpriest Alexander Budilovich. The Brotherhood published books, the Kholmskaya Zhizn fortnightly, the Bratskaya Beseda weekly, the Kholmsk People's Calendar, and other publications. The Brotherhood acted directly as a political party, conducting agitation, fiercely polemicizing with its opponents (not so much with Catholics as with the St. Petersburg bureaucracy). It was in the capital of the empire that the Russian movement of the Kholmsk region met with the fiercest opposition. As Metropolitan Evlogy recalled: “Nobody wanted to understand the meaning of the project. For the government authorities, it was simply a matter of modifying a feature on the geographic map of Russia. Meanwhile, the project met the most pressing needs of the Kholm people, it protected the Russian population interspersed in the administrative district of Poland from Polonization, and took away the right to consider Kholmshchyna as part of the Polish region. Russian patriots understood that the separation of Kholmshchyna into a separate province would be an administrative reform of enormous psychological significance. However, the project met with opposition even in the person of the Warsaw governor-general. He saw in him a manifestation of distrust of the power and moral authority of his power. Other opponents of the Kholm administrative independence also reasoned in this way. This was explained by a complete ignorance of the life of the people. So, for example, when I was in Warsaw as a vicar bishop on a visit to the Governor-General Maksimovich, he asked me with surprise: “What is Kholmshchina? Is this Kholmsky district? " He did not have the most elementary concept of the area that was part of the provinces subordinate to him. Where could he have known the centuries-old history of the long-suffering Kholm people! ...

Only after 1905, when the problem with the voluntary conversion to Catholicism of recent Orthodox, formerly Uniates, became clear evidence of the decline of Russian self-consciousness in the westernmost part of historical Russia, did St. Petersburg finally pay attention to Kholmskaya Rus. In December 1909, a congress of Russian leaders convened by the brotherhood was held in Kholm. The congress was attended by local Orthodox clergy, teachers of rural schools, teachers of seminaries and gymnasiums, officials and representatives of peasants. The congress demanded the early separation of the Kholmsk region from Poland and the introduction of a zemstvo in the future Kholmsk province on the same grounds on which a zemstvo was created in the six western provinces of the Russian Empire. (Recall that in the western provinces, at the elections to zemstvos - local authorities, national curias were created, which ensured a guaranteed majority of seats in the zemstvo bodies for the national majority of the province). Evlogiy collected over 50 thousand signatures of local residents in support of the petition for the separation of Kholmshchyna as an independent Russian province.

Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin supported the project of creating a separate Kholmsk province. However, this did not mean the immediate creation of a new administrative unit. Let's not forget that the Russian Empire since 1906 was a parliamentary monarchy with a legislative State Duma. Within the walls of the Russian parliament, a fierce struggle over the "Kholm issue" began.

The bill on the separation of Kholmshchyna was considered in the general meeting of the III State Duma at the 5th session on November 25, 1911. More than a hundred deputies spoke in the debate, and sometimes they spoke several times. The speaker on the bill was D. N. Chikhachev, (a member of the faction of Russian nationalists), who did an enormous job of finding and systematizing extensive reference material. His written report was a volume of 426 pages. Outlining in his speech at the general meeting of the Duma the history of religious and ethnic relations in the Kholmsk Territory, D. N. Chikhachev called for the separation of the ethnographic principle from the confessional: “The ethnographic composition of the population in this region, as well as throughout Western Russia, does not coincide with a religious sign ... The striving aimed at identifying the concept of Catholic and Pole, on the one hand, and Russian and Orthodox, on the other, is a common striving for the entire Western Russian region. Undoubtedly, by the mere fact of the transition from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, the Russian nationality can in no way be lost, the loss of the national identity can be the work of only several generations due to the interaction of a number of factors, namely, first of all, the Polish church, then the Polish landowners' estates in this region and, finally, Polish secret schools. Only with the interaction of all these factors over many decades can one achieve certain results in terms of polonization. " Based on the estimate of the population speaking the Little Russian dialect of 450,000 souls, D.N. Chikhachev emphasized that the Russian nationality is numerically predominant in this region, and the entire history and ethnography of the region lead to the conclusion that Kholmshchina together with Galicia constitute one whole from all over Western Russia.

Of course, the Polish Duma deputies were sharply opposed. Many deputies from national minorities also expressed solidarity with them. The Polish deputy I. M. Nakonechny said that the Polish lords not only never oppressed the Kholm peasants, but, on the contrary, helped them. If there was such oppression, then it is nothing compared to what was happening in the depths of the Russian state. A touching unity with Catholic priests and Polish landowners was shown by Russian liberals and social democrats. The position of the Social-Democratic faction was expressed in his speech by Deputy IP Pokrovsky: “Russian nationalism treats the Russian people, the democratic masses with all hatred, as well as all democracy - be it Russian, Great Russian, Little Russian, Polish, Lithuanian and Jewish ... The assurance of their love for the Russians ... they need it in order to open a way for themselves to persecute other nationalities. " Since the bill does not imply the allotment of land to the Little Russian peasants, said I.P. Pokrovsky, there is nothing to support it from the point of view of social democracy.

The law on the separation of the Kholmsk province was nevertheless adopted and entered into force on June 23, 1912. The official opening of the Kholmsk province took place on September 8, 1913. The Kholmsk province was created according to the ethnographic principle from the parts of the Lublin and Sedletsky provinces inhabited by the Malorussians. In terms of ethnic composition, the population of the province looked like this: Little Russians - 52.6%, Poles - 24.4%, Jews - 15.3%, Germans - 4%, Russians (Great Russians) - 3.7%. In fact, the ethnic composition of the population was more confusing. Many Latin Catholics, who spoke in everyday life in the Little Russian dialect, were noted as Poles, some inhabitants of the Kholmshchyna, including Jews who had education, called themselves Russians or Poles. Let us recall that the main criterion for referring to a separate nationality in the course of pre-revolutionary censuses was the linguistic principle. But in the Kholmsk region, almost all residents were two or even trilingual. Almost all Kholmschak knew both the Polish language and the local version of the Little Russian dialect, and, to a lesser extent, the literary Russian language. Jews mostly spoke Yiddish, but almost everyone could also communicate with Poles and Little Russians. Slightly more accurate information was provided by the data on the religion of the inhabitants of the new province. There were 311,000 Catholics, 305,000 Orthodox, 115,000 Jews, and 28,000 Protestants.

The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the Kholmshchyna did not have a clearly expressed national identity. As a rule, all of them, both Catholics and Orthodox, called themselves "Kholmschak", which is quite consistent with the Belarusian "tutor" (local, local). The spoken language of most of the Kholmschaks was the local version of the Little Russian (different from the language of the Little Russians of the Dnieper region), as well as the local dialect ("gvara") of Polish.

Under Poland again

The development of the Kholmsk province was hampered by the outbreak of the First World War. Already in the summer of 1915, Kholmshchina was occupied by German and Austro-Hungarian troops. A significant part of the local population was evacuated or (in much larger numbers) went to the east with the retreating Russian army. This is how the future wife of N. Khrushchev, Nina Kukharchuk, came from Kholm to Donbass. Then came the revolutions in Russia, the Civil and Soviet-Polish wars. Kholmshchina became part of the revived Polish state.

As part of Poland, Kholm finally turned into a city where Russians were in the minority. In 1921, for 23,221 residents, there were 12,064 Jews, 9,492 Roman Catholics, 1,369 Orthodox Christians, 207 Lutherans. In general, in the Kholmsk region, the eastern Slavs now accounted for no more than 15% of the population.

The Polish character of the Kholmsk region was already so obvious that when in 1920, at the initiative of the British Foreign Minister Curzon, an ethnographic line was proposed as an armistice line between Soviet Russia and Poland, dividing areas with a predominance of the Polish population from areas with a predominance of the Eastern Slavs, later known as the "Curzon line", the Kholmshchyna was attributed to the Polish territories.

The Polish authorities were reluctant to allow the repatriation of Kholmschak with Russian identity to their homeland. It is believed that up to 150,000 residents of the Kholmsk region, including even some Poles and Jews, remained in Soviet Russia after the end of the wars. However, the local Orthodox diocese numbered about 250,000 parishioners. They became the object of persecution and persecution.

Official Warsaw persistently pursued a policy of assimilation under the slogan: “There are no Russians in Poland”! Everything connected with Orthodoxy and Russia was barbarously destroyed. So, the church of St. Cyril and Methodius was blown up on Holy Saturday 1921, the Church of the Holy Spirit was demolished in 1935. Several more Orthodox churches were also destroyed. Many Orthodox churches were transferred to Catholic churches. So, the church of St. Trinity became the church of St. Casimir, St. Barbara became the church of St. Andrew. The temple structures in the premises of the Kholm Theological Seminary were transferred to a Polish secular school. As a result of this vandalism, the city of Kholm has completely ceased to be purely outwardly similar to Russian cities.

Soon the campaign to destroy the Orthodox churches reached the village churches. At the end of 1937, the Poles began the mass destruction of churches as "unnecessary objects." Of the 389 Orthodox churches that operated in the Kholmsk region and Podlasie in 1914, 51 remained (149 were converted into churches, and 189 were destroyed).

In September 1939, Poland was defeated by German troops. But if most of the East Slavic lands went to the USSR, then Kholmshchina, together with the so-called. "Zakerzonie" was occupied by Germany and became part of the "General Government". German rule over the Kholmsk region (as well as over other East Slavic lands of the Zakerzonia, such as Lemkovina) had several unexpected forms - Ukrainization began in the Kholmsk region.

Since the middle of the 19th century, the Ukrainian movement began to operate on the territory of Russian Little Russia, as well as Austrian Galicia. The reason why the Polish nobility and the Austrian General Staff created the Ukrainians were understandable - to create Poland "from sea to sea" it was necessary to win over the Little Russians to their side. Similarly, separatism in Little Russia was necessary for everyone who was going to fight with Russia. But let it not seem strange that there was no Ukrainians in the Kholmsk region until World War II. The fact is that the Poles ruled the Kholmsk region even in the absence of a Polish state. In addition, there was originally a large Polish population, and the process of Polonization was quite noticeable. The Uniate Church played its part in dividing the local Russians. And in these conditions, creating some other Ukrainian movement would be a waste of time and money. But the Polish leaders did not think that the Ukrainian nationalism they were creating for subversive activities in Little Russia could well act against its creators.

In fact, for the first time, Ukrainian leaders declared their claims to Kholmsk Rus in 1917. After the fall of the monarchy, many of the Kholmschaks who found themselves in the interior regions of Russia found themselves in a difficult situation. Under these conditions, some of them really became interested in Ukrainians. So, refugees from Kholmshchyna spent September 7-12, 1917 in Kiev so-called. "National Congress of Kholmshchyna". The congress was held in the house where the Ukrainian Central Rada met. The congress was attended by the Ukrainian politician and pseudo-historian M. Hrushevsky, himself a native of Kholm. At the Congress, several resolutions were adopted, which stated that Kholmshaki is part of the "Ukrainian people", and Kholmshchyna should become part of the Ukrainian state. In 1917, there were a great many similar "congresses" that adopted loud resolutions that were not supported by any real deeds, so that most of the Kholmschaks did not even know that they were Ukrainians.

The German occupation authorities began to give various benefits to all Rusyns who would agree to recognize themselves as Ukrainians. In 1940, the Germans transferred the Bogorodchansky Cathedral in the Kholm to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church. Many churches, recently selected by Catholics, were returned to the Orthodox, but in all 220 Orthodox churches of the Kholmsk region, services were now to be held in Ukrainian. A network of schools with teaching in Ukrainian language was created (for the first time in the history of Kholmshchyna).

An auxiliary police was formed from local “Ukrainians”. The hands of these newly-minted "Ukrainians" did all the "dirty" work, such as the destruction of the inhabitants of the Jewish ghetto in the fall of 1942, the protection of prisoner-of-war camps, etc. It is clear that almost all Kholmschaks, both Poles and Rusyns, were hated by the "Ukrainians" However, the Germans, through Ukrainization, managed to push the Slavs of the Kholmsh region against each other. Polish resistance, in particular the so-called. The Home Army (AK), without risking a fight against the Germans, began terror against the East Slavic population, not at all embarrassed by the fact that the overwhelming majority of Rusyns did not consider themselves Ukrainians. Thus, the Akovites burned the villages of Sagryn and Berest, and killed most of their inhabitants, several hundred people. Thus, the Ukrainians were present in the region for only a few years, but they did everything that the Ukrainians have always done - brought confusion and discord, and, in the end, killed the local Little Russians.

The death of Kholmsk Russia

In July 1944, Kholm was occupied by the Red Army. Since it was Holm that became the first more or less significant city in Poland west of the Bug, outside the territories that were ceded to the USSR in 1939, it was here that the first communist pro-Soviet Polish government was located. July 22, 1944, the day of the proclamation of the new government, was celebrated in the Polish People's Republic as a public holiday.

The ability to preserve the Russian character of the Kholmsk land remained for some time. At the turn of 1943-1944. O. Korniychuk, the then People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, publicly put forward a demand to annex to Ukraine "historical Ukrainian lands" - Podlasie, Kholmshchyna, Nadsyania. A map of the Kholmsk region of the Ukrainian SSR was even printed. Among the Soviet leaders who advocated the annexation of the lands west of the Bug to the USSR stood NS Khrushchev, the leader of Soviet Ukraine, married to a Kholmschanka. But Stalin decided to leave the border in the Kholm area unchanged. After the creation in Lublin in July 1944 by the Polish communists of the Polish Committee for National Liberation (PKNL), which became the interim government in the very first Polish territories liberated from the German occupiers, Stalin decided to pacify the Poles without insisting on annexing lands west of the Curzon Line. According to the Soviet-Polish agreement of 08.16.1945, the border between the USSR and Poland was established approximately along the "Curzon line" with some deviations in favor of Poland. As a result, Kholmshchina, Podlasie, Lemkovina remained in Poland, and at the same time Przemysl and Yaroslav (which had been part of the USSR since September 1941) were ceded. But even before this agreement, starting in September 1944, an action began to evict ethnic Rusyns from Poland to the Ukrainian SSR and Poles living in the western regions of the Soviet republics to Poland. The Rusyns who remained in Poland were given another alternative - to move to the north and west of Poland, to new lands left by the Germans.

Until August 1946, 482 thousand Zaerzon “Ukrainians” were resettled to the USSR, among them 193 thousand people were from Kholmshchyna and Podlasie. Almost all Ukrainians who remained in Poland after the resettlement (more than 150 thousand, including about 29 thousand Kholmschak) were resettled in 1947 to the northwestern lands that became part of the Polish state after World War II.

As for the northern part of Zabuzhskaya Rus - Podlasie, in September 1939, part of this territory was transferred to the USSR, and became the Belostok region of the Byelorussian SSR. On September 20, 1944, Podlasie was transferred to Poland, which, as part of an exchange of population with the USSR, began to pursue a policy of forcible eviction of the East Slavic population from there.

So Kholmsk Russia finally disappeared. Now it is a purely Polish land. The city bearing the Polish name Chelm is almost nothing like the ancient Russian city, the capital of Daniil Galitsky. The remnants of the Eastern Slavs, who were declared Ukrainians by both the Polish and Soviet authorities, gradually adopted a Ukrainian identity. It is significant that in the Kholmsk region there are only Ukrainian schools for Rusyns. The revival of Orthodoxy on the Kholmsk land evokes cautious optimism. And yet (how one wants to be mistaken in this!), Kholmskaya Rus disappeared forever. But in the memory of the Russian people the life, struggle and death of Kholmskaya Rus must remain forever.

It is customary to associate the Kholmsk question with the name of Stolypin. However, the very idea of \u200b\u200bconsolidating a significant part of the former Polish territories in the Romanov empire in case the Kingdom fell away arose much earlier, after the first Russian-Polish war of 1830-1831. And according to the old Russian tradition, it was primarily a question of the predominance of national Russian land ownership in the Kholmsk region.

However, in reality, it began to take shape there only after the suppression of the 1863 uprising, and mainly in the form of entitlements - the empire was preparing to secure the land in the Vistula valley for a long time. However, in parallel with the agrarian reform, which had a distinctly "collective" character, in the east of Poland the commune administration with elective warriors, shopkeepers, soltys remained, and local courts had much broader rights than in the central provinces of Russia (1).

Ordered to cross

The ruling class and landlords in the territory of the Kholmshchyna were mainly Poles, and the Russians were mainly peasants; however, they spoke Russian and retained Russian identity. According to modern researchAt the beginning of the 20th century, Poles in the Kholmsh region constituted only 4% of the population, but due to the fact that almost all the large landowners and nobles in these provinces were Poles, only they passed the property and estate qualification to the Duma and the State Council. Researchers rightly point out that "the estate-property attribute was in conflict with national realities."

P. Stolypin wrote in this regard: “For democratic Russia, the Poles are not in the least afraid, but Russia, in which the land nobility and bureaucracy rule, must defend itself from the Poles by artificial measures, by fences of“ national curia ”. Official nationalism is forced to resort to these methods in a country where there is an undoubted Russian majority, because noble and bureaucratic Russia cannot touch the ground and draw strength from Russian peasant democracy ”(2).

The Polish question was one of the main ones already in the work of the committee on reforms created by Emperor Alexander II. And at the very first meeting, where the Polish topic was considered, Prince Cherkassky and N.A. Milyutin was proposed to separate Kholmshchyna from the Kingdom of Poland, relieving her of her craving for Lublin and Sedlec.

However, the main ideologist of the "spin off", Milyutin, was not only too busy with other reforms, but also seriously feared new political complications to force this issue.

Noting that "in Russia, Russians can enjoy all the rights of independence from administrative units," he admitted that in the event of an immediate dissociation of Kholm, even the Russian population of the Catholic faith "would definitely move to the Poles." Therefore, the reunification of the Uniates with Orthodoxy in 1875 can be considered the first radical step towards the creation of the Russian Kholm province. At the same time, the Uniates were allowed liberties, unthinkable under the omnipotence of the Russian Church.

In Vilna, the anniversary of the reunification of the Uniates with Orthodoxy was widely celebrated, in Kholm - they did not have time

Nevertheless, in fact, it was a question of a direct prohibition of Uniatism, since all Greek Catholic priests and believers were ordered ... to convert to Orthodoxy. Military force was used against those who resisted, which provoked a response directly opposite to the expectations of the Russian authorities. Formally, most of the Uniates adopted Orthodoxy, remaining in their hearts as supporters of their special confession. And if the Greek Catholic Church was liquidated, many had no choice but to become secret Roman Catholics.

However, several tens of thousands of Uniates were able to convert to Catholicism quite openly. On the whole, straightforward Russification backfired - many residents of Kholmshchyna and Podlasie felt much more acutely their generally dubious unity with the rest of the population of the Kingdom of Poland. The ksiondzy immediately began to use the fact of "new baptism" to form the Polish national identity among the newly converted. The scale of the secret transition of the inhabitants of Kholmshchyna and Podlasie from the union to Catholicism is evidenced by the data of the well-known pre-revolutionary researcher of the Kholm problem V.A. Frantsev, who relied on quite official Russian statistics.

For all its bias, we note that after the tsar's decree of April 17, 1905, which proclaimed freedom of religion, but did not allow the Greek Catholic Church in Russia, a mass exodus of "Orthodox" to Catholicism began in the Lublin and Sedletsk provinces. In three years, 170 thousand people converted to Catholicism, mainly residents of Kholmshchyna and Podlasie (3). The conversion to another faith, although not so massive, continued later, and the total number of the inhabitants of Kholmshchyna and Podlasie who converted to Catholicism, according to some historians, approached 200 thousand people.

Nevertheless, in a significant part of the Kholmshchyna, especially in the east and central part of the region, the population remained Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking. He had his own, fundamentally different from the Polish, self-consciousness. Even if someone converted to Catholicism, moreover, often only because the church in which all generations of the family prayed became Catholic. They prayed, not really thinking about what rite this is done.

The project of separating the Kholmshchyna into a separate province, Metropolitan Evlogii recalled, “which was put forward two or three times by Russian patriots, was systematically buried by government offices now in Warsaw, now (under Pobedonostsev) in St. Petersburg. Nobody wanted to understand the meaning of the project. For the government authorities, it was simply a matter of modifying a feature on the geographic map of Russia. Meanwhile, the project met the most pressing needs of the Kholm people, it protected the Russian population interspersed in the administrative district of Poland from Polonization, and took away the right to consider Kholmshchyna as part of the Polish region. Russian patriots understood that the separation of Kholmshchyna into a separate province would be an administrative reform of enormous psychological significance ”(4).

Metropolitan Eulogius became bishop of Kholm when he was a very young man

The Polish question in miniature

The realization that the Kholmsk question is a miniature Polish question came very quickly. After the completion of the Great Reforms, the Kholmsk project was repeatedly rejected in the bud, but at the same time certain measures were taken to Russify the region - an active, sometimes even impudent promotion of Orthodoxy was carried out through schools. But at the same time they hardly touched upon the main thing - the economic structure. Here the stake was unequivocally placed on the fact that, first of all, the landowners should become Russians, and the farm laborers "get used to it."

However, “re-christening” the Uniates turned out to be quite difficult. By the end of the 19th century, according to the official statistics of the Synod alone, among those who were formally transferred to Orthodox Christians, there were 83 thousand "obstinate" left, and they had about 50 thousand unbaptized children. And according to unofficial data, only in the Sedletsk province there were 120 thousand "persistent" (5). But already at this time even the conservatives, headed by K.P. Pobedonostsev insisted on an exceptionally "firm" policy in the Kholmsh region, up to court sentences against the Uniates who did not want to be baptized in Russian (6).

This position was based on the decision of the Special Conference, created by Alexander III immediately upon accession - its members simply decided to "consider the stubborn Orthodox." It was then that the thesis that “the farm laborers will get used to it” was first voiced, and Pobedonostsev repeatedly raised the question more broadly - right up to the creation of the Kholmsk province. The authority of the well-known conservative under the tsar-peacemaker was so great that a corresponding request was immediately sent from the Special Conference to the Governor-General of the Privislinsky Territory I.V. Gurko.

Legendary hero the liberation of Bulgaria, Field Marshal I.V. Gurko did not justify the hopes of supporters of the annexation of Kholmshchyna

But he quite unexpectedly came out sharply against, believing that "thereby Russia will push the rest of the Poles into the arms of the Germans." The legendary field marshal, who was not noticed in liberalism, believed that "this (separation of the Kholm province) will only complicate the police measures to combat the Uniates." A useful measure in itself, given the haste of execution "deprived the Governor-General of the opportunity to follow the threads of propaganda." In addition, Gurko also made a strategic argument: the division of the unified in the economic and political sense of the Polish lands, "would prevent the successful management of the tasks of military defense in this most important border area" (7).

After death Alexander III Field Marshal Gurko was replaced in Warsaw by Count P.A. Shuvalov, better known for his bright diplomatic career. Much to the surprise of those who knew him as a conservative patriot and Slavophile, sometimes inclined to compromise with Europe, Shuvalov immediately declared himself an ardent supporter of the creation of the Kholmsk province.

Count Pavel Shuvalov, it seems, was not at all opposed to "pushing the Poles from the Russian land"

“It is necessary to unite the stubborn population into one whole and put a solid barrier between it and the cities of Lublin and Siedlec - these true centers of Polish-Jesuit propaganda,” the count wrote in a note addressed to the young king. Nicholas II, who had just ascended the throne, already by virtue of the traditions that had been implanted during the reign of his father, managed to become saturated with the "Great Russian spirit" and immediately wrote on Shuvalov's note: "I fully approve."

It was not in vain that the liberals called Shuvalov "a colorless figure in this post" (Warsaw governor-general), recalling that he had lived in Berlin for a long time and had clearly fallen under Prussian influence. There were also those who reminded the former "hero" of the Berlin Congress of a prolonged illness, which resulted, among other things, in the lack of freedom from foreign influence, above all German, in the Polish question.

The historian Shimon Ashkenazi noted that it was this that affected Shuvalov's attitude to the separation of Kholmshchyna, rather self-confidently calling the governor-general's point of view an exception (8). Shuvalov, however, was no exception in something else - like all Warsaw governors, the supporters of the separation of Kholmshchyna accused him of conniving at the Poles, and the liberals, on the contrary, of rude anti-Polish policy. Nevertheless, Shuvalov was soon replaced as governor-general of Warsaw by Prince A.K. Imereti, who immediately rushed to remind the emperor that a hasty solution to the Kholmsk question "would have made a depressing impression on the most" plausible "Pole" (9).

The famous Basilica, or Kholmsky Cathedral. 100 years ago and now

The aforementioned statistics, possibly deliberately exaggerated in order to push the solution of the Kholm problem, unexpectedly played exactly the role that was expected of them. In addition, they were promptly "seasoned" with messages about the visits of the Catholic bishop Yachevsky to the Kholm diocese, accompanied by a retinue in historical costumes with banners and Polish national flags, and about the activities of the Opieki nad uniatami and Bracia unici societies.

Notes
1. A. Pogodin, the Polish people in the XIX century, M. 1915, p. 208
2. P. Struve, Two Nationalisms. On Sat. Struve P.B., Russia. Homeland. Chuzhbina, St. Petersburg, 2000, p. 93
3. Olyynik P. Likholittya of Kholmshchyna and Pidlyashya // Shlyakh of the cultural and national rozvoy of Kholmshiny and Pidlyashya in the XIX and XX centuries. Prague, 1941, p. 66.
4. Metropolitan Evlogy Georgievsky, The Path of My Life, M. 1994, p. 152
5. Government Gazette, 1900, No. 10, The situation of the Orthodox on the outskirts
6. AF Koni, From the notes and memoirs of a judicial figure, "Russian antiquity", 1909, No. 2, p. 249
7. TSGIAL, Fund of the Council of Ministers, d.76, inventory 2, sheet 32-33.
8. Szymon Askenazego, Galerdia Chelmska, Biblioteka Warszawska, 1909, vol. 1, part 2, p. 228
9. TSGIAL, Fund of the Council of Ministers, d.76, inventory 2, sheet 34.

Slavic studies, no. 5

© 2014 E.S. Borzova

THE HISTORY OF FORMATION OF THE KHOLMSK PROVINCE

This article is devoted to the history of the formation of the Kholmsk province. The author reveals the origins of the Kholmsk question and analyzes the reasons that prompted the Russian government to set up a new province, and the attitude of the Warsaw governors general to this project. Particular attention is paid to the discussion of the draft law on the formation of the Kholmsk province in the III State Duma of the Russian Empire.

This article is dedicated to the Chelm province setting. The author reveals the origins of the Chelm issue and talks about the reason that prompted the Russian government to the setting of a new province. The attitude of the Warsaw general-governors to the project is consistently considered in this article. Special attention is paid to the discussion of the bill about the Chelm province setting in the III State Duma of the Russian Empire.

Key words: Kingdom of Poland, Sedletsk province, Lublin province, Kholm province, Decree of April 17, 1905, Bishop Evlogii, L.K. Dymsha.

Kholm province was formed in 1912 by separating the eastern districts of the Lublin and Sedletsk provinces from the Kingdom of Poland. However, the question of creating a new province had arisen half a century earlier, more than once during this time it went into the shadows and again made itself felt. What made the Russian government take such a measure?

The Lublin and Sedletskaya provinces differed from the rest of the Polish lands in that a significant number of Little Russians lived here: 16.9% and 13.9% of the total population, respectively. They were mainly concentrated in the eastern counties that made up the historical region of Kholmshchyna. The Kholmsk region, once part of the Galicia-Volyn principality, at the end of the XIV century. was conquered by the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (since 1569 - Rzeczpospolita). For centuries, the local population was subjected to Catholicization and Polonization. A huge role in this was played by the Brest Union of 1596, which replaced the Orthodox Church with the Greek Catholic one. After the Kholmshchyna became part of Russia again (by the decision of the Congress of Vienna in 1815), the process of "restoration of the Russian nationality, half-suppressed in this region," began. To achieve this goal, in addition to the abolition of the Uniate Church, it was proposed to allocate the Kholmsk Territory into a separate province in order to protect the local population from further Polish influence1.

Borzova Elena Sergeevna - postgraduate student of the Yaroslavl State University. P.G. Demidov.

1 On the territory of Kholmshchyna, the Uniate Church was abolished in 1875, and all the Uniates were declared reunited with Orthodoxy.

The idea of \u200b\u200bforming the Kholmsk province appeared in the second half of the 1860s. For the proper development of the project, a new demarcation of the eastern counties of the Lublin and Sedlec provinces was made. It turned out that more than a third of the Russian population (mostly Little Russians) 2 ended up outside the projected province. In addition, for the maintenance of the provincial institutions of the new administrative unit, the Ministry of Internal Affairs alone required up to 100 thousand rubles annually, not counting the one-time expenditure on the construction of the necessary buildings and their equipment in Kholm. In this regard, it is understandable why the Secretary of State for the Kingdom of Poland N.A. Milyutin rejected the formation of such an "expensive" province.

In 1881, on the initiative of the Minister of Internal Affairs, Count N.P. Ignatiev, a new project for the formation of the Kholmsk province was presented to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, involving the annexation of the adjacent part of Volyn to it. However, he did not find sympathy from the Warsaw Governor General P.P. Albedinsky. This circumstance and the short duration of Ignatiev's ministry contributed to the fact that this project "could not get a move."

In 1883, Adjutant General I.V. was appointed Governor-General of Warsaw. Gurko. Under him, a new project appeared, according to which the western parts of the Lublin and Sedletsky provinces, inhabited by Poles, were to form the Sedletsko-Lublin province, and their eastern parts, inhabited mainly by Little Russians, were to form the Kholmsk province. In Warsaw, the detailed development of this project had not yet been completed, when another appeared in St. Petersburg: not the separation of Russians in the Vislensky region, but their separation, in favor of which the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod K.P. Pobedonostsev, seeing in such an event a way to resolve the controversial issue of the Julian and Gregorian calendar. "The double calendar is very burdensome for Orthodox Christians from mixed marriages, serving as a source of many family strife," wrote Archbishop Leonty Pobedonostsev of Warsaw in 1889. However, Governor-General Gurko recognized all the arguments of this project as insufficiently substantiated and buried them with the following official objections: “The abolition of the Gregorian calendar will not only not lead to the strengthening of the former Uniates in Orthodoxy, but can significantly weaken the success of the struggle of the Orthodox Church with the persistent [... ] and will split the currents of religious life in the Lublin Roman Catholic Diocese. "

Gurko's successor at the post of Warsaw Governor-General, Count P.A. Shuvalov had a different opinion. In 1895, he spoke in favor of the need to form the Kholmsk province, since the previous measures of influence on the "persistent" - persuasion, fines, administrative expulsion - turned out to be ineffectual3. In his opinion, such a measure as the allocation of the Kholmsk province, "if it is not able to immediately remove all the obstacles surrounding the Uniate question, then at least it can quickly create a favorable soil for achieving this cherished goal."

By the end of 1896, the project for the formation of the Kholmsk province with administrative separation from the Kingdom of Poland was developed in detail, but Count Shuvalov by this time was replaced by Prince A.K. Imeretinsky, in whose person this issue met with a strong objection. In his opinion, “in such a strategically important point as the Kingdom of Poland, complete unification of military and civil power is necessary,” and “in the absence of unity, undoubtedly,

2 In archival documents of the late XIX - early XX centuries. Russians meant not only Russians themselves, but also Little Russians and Belarusians.

3 The former Uniates, who boycotted Orthodox churches and refused to fulfill the spiritual requirements of Orthodox priests, were called “obstinate”.

harmful consequences in the protection of the state ”. In addition, the prince believed that the formation of the Kholmsk province would make a depressing impression on the minds of Polish society, and "without promising beneficial consequences" could cause "only one bitterness in the soul of even the most well-meaning Pole."

In 1901, the new Warsaw Governor General, Adjutant General M.I. Chertkov received an order from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to report his opinion on the case. Repeating the arguments of Prince Imeretinsky, Chertkov also spoke out against the formation of the Kholmsk province, adding the wish "for an early and final resolution of the issue" in order to put an end to the "periodic initiation of a project, rumors about which, penetrating into the population, bring an alarming mood into public life" his edges.

Thus, in the last third of the XIX - early XX century. with each new appointment to the post of the Warsaw governor-general, the Ministry of Internal Affairs again and again raised the issue of separating the Kholmshchyna from the Kingdom of Poland. However, the chiefs of the region, with the exception of Count P.A. Shuvalov, spoke out against this measure. At the same time, it should be noted that the project for the formation of the Kholmsk province "in order to avoid its premature announcement in society or in the press" was discussed in complete secrecy.

The issue of separating Kholmshchyna sounded with renewed vigor after the promulgation of the decree on April 17, 1905 "On strengthening the principles of religious tolerance", which for the first time allowed a transition from Orthodoxy to another Christian denomination. This decree clearly showed the failure of the Russification policy. So, in 1905 alone (from April 17), there were 40,859 people who converted from Orthodoxy to Catholicism. in the Lublin province and 93,124 people. in the Sedletsk province. If we correlate these data with the total number of Orthodox Christians in these provinces based on the materials of the general population census of 1897, it turns out that the Orthodox Church lost 16.5% of its believers in Lublin and 77% in Sedletsk province (in this case, one should bear in mind the error, since the decree was issued eight years after the census) 4. It is not surprising that this situation seriously worried the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church, which again started talking about the need to form a "Russian" province. This time the initiator was the Kholmsk Orthodox Holy Mother of God Brotherhood, founded in 1879 with the aim of promoting Orthodoxy. From that moment on, the Kholmsky question was made public and did not stop leaving the pages of the periodicals.

On November 1, 1905, a meeting of the Kholmsk Orthodox Holy Mother of God brotherhood took place in the town of Kholm. “Everyone was in high spirits, they realized and felt that there was a question: to be or not to be Russian in Kholmskaya Rus, to disappear from the face of the earth or remain the Russian vanguard.” The members of the brotherhood came to a unanimous decision to petition the government for the separation of Kholmshchyna into a separate province. For this, a special deputation departed from Kholm to St. Petersburg, carrying a note entitled “On the need to separate Kholmsk Rus from the Kingdom of Poland”, under which there were 50,980 signatures of local residents.

On behalf of the trustee of the Holy Mother of God Brotherhood, Bishop of Lublin and Kholmsk Eulogius, Professor of Warsaw University V.A. Frantsev compiled ethnographic and faith

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RUSSIAN-JAPANESE WAR 1904-1905. PROBLEMS OF GOVERNANCE IN THE FAR EAST IN THE BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY

KAZANTSEV VIKTOR PROKOPIEVICH - 2013

kholmsk province Arkhangelsk, Kholmsk province Khabarovsk
Russian Empire Russian Empire

Adm. Centre Population Density Area

10 460 km 2 km²

Date of formation

Holm province (Ukrainian Kholmska province, Polish Gubernia chełmska) - an administrative unit of the Russian Empire and the Ukrainian state of Hetman Skoropadsky. Separated from the Lublin and abolished Siedlec provinces of the Kingdom of Poland in 1912. It consisted of territories with a significant proportion of Eastern Slavs (mostly Ukrainians). Provincial town - Kholm.

• 1 Russian empire
  • 1.1 Formation of the province
  • 1.2 Territorial composition
  • 1.3 Administrative division
  • 1.4 Population
  • 1.5 Coat of arms of Kholmsk province
• 2 Governors
• 3 Lieutenant Governors
• 4 Spiritual authorities of the Kholm diocese
• 5 1915-1918
• 6 Ukrainian state
• 7 Notes
• 8 Sources and literature
• 9 References
• 10 See also

the Russian Empire

Province formation

When, after the decree on religious tolerance of April 17, 1905, the shortcomings of the policy of converting the inhabitants of Kholmshchina and Podlasie to Orthodoxy appeared, interest in the highest ruling circles of Russia increased in the plans put forward in the second half of the 19th century for the allocation of primordially Little Russian lands in the eastern districts of the Lublin and Sedletsk provinces (Kholmshchina) with a predominant Little Russian (Ukrainian) population in a separate Kholmsk province. The proposal to separate the Kholmsk region from the Kingdom of Poland was put forward in the State Duma of Russia by the Bishop of Kholmsk and Lublin Evlogiy (Georgievsky). The bill was submitted to the III State Duma on May 19, 1909, on the same day it was submitted to the commission for the direction of legislative proposals. From November 17, 1909 to November 20, 1911, it was discussed in a special "Kholmsk" subcommittee. The report of the commission was presented to the general meeting of the Duma on May 7, 1911; its discussion took 17 sessions. Approved by the Duma, in particular by the deputies from the National Democratic Party of Poland - the foundations of the Polish stake faction in the Duma, - according to the report of the editorial commission on May 4, 1912, the Law “On the formation of a special Kholm province from the eastern parts of Lublin and Sedlec provinces, with its removal from management Warsaw Governor-General "was approved by the Highest on June 23 / July 6, 1912. The official opening of the province took place on September 8, 1913. Numerous protests arose against the creation of the Kholmsk province, including in the State Duma itself. In addition to other publications on the primordially Polish character of the Kholmsk land, the works of Lubomir Dymsza, Stefan Dziewulski and Henryk Wiercieński were published.

The new province was removed from the administration of the Warsaw governor-general and subordinated directly to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia. Educational and judicial institutions were subordinate to the trustee of the Kiev educational district and the district of the Kiev judicial chamber, respectively, and in relation to the audit of the reporting - to the Kiev Control Chamber.

In 1915, the Kholmsk province was formally subordinated to the Kiev general-governorship, however, due to the occupation of the province by the Central Powers, this decision was not actually implemented.

Territorial composition

The border between the Kholmsk and Lublin provinces was very complex and winding (in particular, with the enclaves of the Radecznica and Tarnogród volosts, which were not part of the Kholm province). This happened due to the predominance of the Little Russian population in this territory.

• The Kholmsk province included 58 gminas entirely and 24 partially from the liquidated Sedletsk province:
  • Belsk district
  • part of Wlodawa County (villages of Bednarzówka, Białka, Uhnin and Chmielów) communes of Dębowa Kłoda; gmina Ostrów (Lubelski); villages of Babianka, Kolychowicz ) and Tyśmienica communes of Tyśmienica; communes of Uścimów, Wola Wereszczyńska, Włodawa, Wyryki, Hansk (Hańsk), Horodysche (Horodze Opole, Romanów, Sobibór, Turno and the city of Wlodawa)
  • part of the Konstantinovsky district (communes of Hołowczyce, Kornica, Łosice, Czuchleby, Olszanka, Bohukały, Vitulin (Witulin), Gushlev (Huszlew), Zakanale Pavlov (Pawłów), Rokitno (Rokitno), Svory (Swory), as well as posad Janów)
  • part of Radinsky county (communes Tłuściec, Zahajki, Szóstka); villages of Kolembrody and Żelizna, communes Żelizna; communes Birch Kut (Brzozowy K) (Żerocin)).

• In addition, from the Lublin province:
  • Hrubeshovsky district
  • Tomashevsky district
  • a significant part of the Kholmsk district (the communes of Cyców, Siedliszcze, Pawłów, Bukowa, Wojsławice, Żmudź, Krzywiczki), Olchovets (Olchovec) , Rejowiec, Świerże, Staw, Turka, and also the city of Hill)
  • a significant part of the Zamost region (the villages of Wiszenki, Zabytów, Monastyrek and Sulmitsa of the communes of Stary Zamoмиć); the communes of Wysokie, Szczebrzeszyn, Czczebrzeszyn; Czczebrzeszyn, Czczebrzeszyn; (Dzielce), Radecznica, Radecznica Monastery (klasztor Radecznicki), Bogs (Trzęsiny) and Czarnystok of the Radecznica communes; the villages of Rozłopy, with the exception of the Zamoć commune, with the exception of the Sułów commune Дdanów; the villages of Białowola, Wólka Wieprzecka and Lipsko of the Mokre communes; the communes of Zwierzyniec; the villages of Lipowiec and Tereskhypolchy Shodzy (Szozdy) communes of Tereszpol; communes Krasnobród, Łabunie, Skierbieszów and Suchowola, as well as the city of Zamosc)
  • a significant part of the Belgoraisky (the city of Belgorai; the villages of Puszcza Solska), Rownówka, Boyars (Bojary) and Dyle (Dyle) communes of the Pushcha Solska (Puszcza Solska); the villages of Derezcza Solska (Dereźnia Solska) ), Lazory, Majdan Stary, Majdan Nowy, Rogale, Ruda Solska, Sól and Smólsko communes of Sól; Garasyuki villages (Harasiuki) and Ryczki communes of Huta Krzeszowska; communes of Krzeszów, Babice, Biszcza, Wola Różaniecka, Górny Potok, Górny Potok , Lukova (Łukowa) and Maidan Sopocki (Majdan Sopocki))
  • fragments of Lubart County (the villages of Dratów, Kaniwola, Kobyłki, Ludwin and Szczecin of the commune of Ludwin)
  • fragments of Krasnostavsky district (villages Dobryniów, Lopiennik Ruski (Dolny)) and Stężyca of the commune of Lopiennik; village Bzite, Vincentów, Krupieruc , Zagroda, Kostunin, Żdżanne and Wierzchowiny of the Rudka commune; the villages of Kraśniczyn Aleksandrowski, Anielpol, Boziny, Boczeziny, Wólka Kraśniczyńska, Drewniki, Zalesie, Kraśniczyn, Olszanka and Stara Wieś of the Chaika communes (Czajki).

Administrative division

Kholmsk province consisted of 8 counties:

№	County	County town	Area, versts²	Population (1897), people.
1	Belgoraisky	Belgorai (5,846 people)	1 500,8	96 332
2	Belsky	Bela (13,090 people)	1 311,0	76 687
3	Wlodavsky	Wlodawa (6 673 people)	1 900,1	98 035
4	Grubeshovsky	Grubeshov (10 639 people)	10 639	101 392
5	Zamostsky	Zamoć (14 705 people)	1 569,6	119 783
6	Konstantinovsky	Yanov (3,861 people)	1 263,0	61 333
7	Tomashevsky	Tomashev (6,233 people)	1 213,4	98 783
8	Kholmsky	Hill (18 452 people)	1 865,9	137 585

Population

In 1909, the population of the lands that became part of the Kholmsk province in 1912 was 703,000 people.

The entire population of Kholmsk province, according to official statistics, was about 760 thousand people, of which Catholics were 311 thousand, Orthodox - 305 thousand, Jews - 115 thousand, Protestants - 28 thousand. At the same time, Orthodox Christians made up more than half of the population in Grubeshovsky, as well as some parts of the former Lyubart and Krasnostavsky districts. parts of Tomashovsky and Kholmsky counties, as well as in the former Wlodawa county, the number of Orthodox Christians exceeded the number of Catholics by about 5%. On January 1, 1914, in the Kholmsk province of the total population of 912,095 people, Ukrainians accounted for 446,839, that is, 50.1%, Poles - 30.5%, Jews - 15.8%.

The ethnic composition of the territories of the counties that became part of the Kholmsk province in 1912 according to the data of 1897:

Coat of arms of Kholmsk province

Coat of arms of the Lublin province. (1869) before the separation of the Kholmshchyna from it - the coat of arms of the Kholmshchyna occupies the lower part of the coat of arms

The coat of arms of the Kholm province was approved by the Highest on October 15, 1914 and had the following description: “In a green shield with a head, between three golden trees, walking a silver bear with scarlet eyes and tongue. the golden head of the shield is the black Imperial eagle with three crowns. "

Governors

1. September 1, 1913 - (not earlier than May 26 and not later than July 7) 1914: Alexander Nikolaevich Volzhin (1862 (1860?) - 1933), full state councilor and chamberlain (from May 1914 - chamberlain); the first Kholmsk governor, earlier - the last Sedletsk governor.
2. (no earlier than May 26) 1914 - (no later than August 15) 1916: Boris Dmitrievich Kashkarov, full state councilor.
3. (no later than September 1) 1916 - (after March 2) 1917: Leonid Mikhailovich Savyolov (1868-1947), actual state councilor and chamberlain; the last Kholmsk governor.

Vice Governors

1. September 1, 1913 - (no earlier than May 26, 1914): Alexander Ivanovich Fullon, State Councilor and Chamber Junker
2. 1914-1917: Mikhail Mikhailovich Terenin, Collegiate Secretary

Spiritual authorities of the Kholm diocese

In church terms, the Kholmsk province was part of the Kholm diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church formed on June 16/29 (according to other sources - July 18), 1905 and was ruled by the Bishop of Kholmsk and Lublin.

1. 18/31 July 1905 (from 20 May 1912 Archbishop) - 14/27 May 1914: Eulogius (1868-1946)
2. May 14/27, 1914 - December 10/23, 1915: Anastasius (1873-1965)
3. 10/23 Dec 1915 - 3 Apr 1916: vacant
4. April 21 / May 4, 1916 - May 27 / June 9, 1917: Saint Seraphim (1880-1937), Bishop of Belsky

In the years 1915-1918

In August-September 1915, the territory of the province was occupied by the Central Powers (German (northern regions) and Austro-Hungarian (southern) troops). The provincial and district offices of the occupied Kholmsk province were evacuated to Kazan and continued to function after the February Revolution of 1917.

Initially, the entire territory of the Kholmsk province was under the direct control of the German and Austrian military authorities, but in June 1916, the zone of Austro-Hungarian occupation, which covered the Kholmsk region proper (Belgoraisky, Grubeshovsky, Zamostsky and Tomashovsky districts), was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Lublin provincial general-general Polish administration. 1916-1918 the territory of the province was part of the Kingdom of Poland. Under the terms of the Brest Peace Treaty, on January 27 (February 9), 1918 between the UPR and the Central Powers, the Kholmshchyna region (as well as the adjacent regions of the Grodno and Lublin provinces) was transferred to the UPR.

Ukrainian state

In April 1918, the districts of the Kholmsk province, together with the adjacent parts of the Lublin province, were transferred to the Volyn province of the Ukrainian State of Hetman Skoropadsky. On November 15, 1918, the hetmanate allocated a separate Kholm province. Brest-Litovsk was defined as the provincial city. The gubernia was headed by the headman AF Skoropis-Yoltukhovsky. However, due to the opposition of the local Polish authorities, he was not allowed into Kholm and was able to organize the Ukrainian administration only in the northern districts of the Kholm province occupied by German troops.

Kholmsk province during this period included:

• the southern part of the Brest district of the Grodno province;
• Belsk district of Grodno province;
• the southern part of the Kobrin district of the Grodno province;
• Pruzhany district of Grodno province;
• parts of the Konstantinovsky district of the Lublin province;
• parts of the Radinsky district of the Lublin province;
• part of the Krasnostavsky district of the Lublin province.

On November 2-4, 1918, the de facto administration in the southern part of the province passed to the Polish authorities. In early December 1918, the Ukrainian administration was liquidated in the north of the province, and its representatives, led by the provincial headman, ended up in an internment camp in Kalisz. Later, the territory of the former Kholmsk province was included in the form of separate counties in the Lublin Voivodeship formed on August 14, 1919. The UPR recognized the loss of Kholmshchyna under the Warsaw Pact on April 21, 1920.

Notes

1. Polish-Ukrainian territorial dispute and the great powers in 1918-1919
2. After 1905, 200 thousand people converted to Catholicism in the Kholmsk region. Priest Sergiy Golovanov. Bridge between East and West. Greek Catholic Church of the Kiev tradition from 1596 to our time
3. Zamojszczyzna w guberni chełmskiej (1912-1915)
4. Demoscope Weekly - Application. Handbook of statistical indicators
5. some sources September 2, 1913
6. “On May 26, Vladyka Evlogy prayed goodbye to all the Kholmsk flock.<…> On this day, His Eminence Vladyka Eulogius served the last Liturgy in the Cathedral, co-served by numerous local and visiting clergy.<…> Among the worshipers were the highest provincial officials headed by the governor of Kholmsk A. Volzhin ”(Metropolitan Evlogiy (Georgievsky) The Path of My Life).
7. From July 7, 1914 director of the Department of General Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
8. Acting on February 20, 1904, approved in office on December 6, 1907), html
9. From August 15, 1916 to March 1917, the last Pskov governor. some sources erroneously indicate that he remained the governor of Kholmsk in 1917.
10. - "Another letter from K. Herutz to the chairman of the Stuhr Society LM Savyolov, which also dealt with Slavic and American subjects, was dated September 1, 1916. Gerutz wrote:" I congratulate you, Leonid Mikhailovich, on your appointment as governor of Kholm.<…>; ... some sources erroneously indicate that Savelov was the governor of Kholmsk since 1914 (,).
11. Remained in the post of the Kholmsk governor on March 2, 1917 (). Formal resignation followed later.
12. Provinces of the Russian Empire: History and Leaders. 1708-1917 M .: United edition of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, 2003 .-- 479 p.
13. From April 3, 1916 - vicar of the Kholm diocese.
14. "Personnel question" in the Kazan provincial gendarme administration on the eve of the February revolution of 1917
15. Echoes from the Russian Diaspora L. M. Savelov

Sources and Literature

• Boyko, Olena. Territory, cordon and administrative-territorial subdivision of the Ukrainian State of Hetman P. Skoropadsky (1918) // Regional History of Ukraine. Collection of scientific articles. - 2009. - Issue 3.
• A. Wrzyszcz, Gubernia chełmska. Zarys ustrojowy, Lublin 1997.

Links

• Law on the formation of the Kholmsk province
• Avrekh A. Ya. Western Zemstvo and Kholmshchina

see also

• Kholmshchyna
• Evlogiy (Georgievsky)
• List of provinces
• Provinces and regions of the Russian Empire in 1914

Administrative division of the Russian Empire
General Government	St. Petersburg Governor General | Moscow Government General | Azov General Governorship | Belarusian General Government | Warsaw General Government | Vladivostok military governorship | East Siberian General Government | * Galician General Government | Grodno, Minsk and Kovno Governorate Generals | West Siberian General Government | Irkutsk Governor General | Kiev General Government | Lithuanian General Government | Little Russian Governor General | Novorossiysko-Bessarabian Governor-General | Orenburg Governor General | Orenburg and Samara Governors General | Priamurskoe Governor General | Pskov and Mogilev Governorships General | Ryazan General Government | Siberian General Government | Steppe Governor General | Turkestan General Government | Finnish Government General
Provinces	Azovskaya¹ | * Altai² | Arkhangelskaya | Arkhangelskaya | Astrakhan | Belgorodskaya | Belarusian | Bessarabskaya | Bratslavskaya | * Bukeevskaya | Vilenskaya | Vitebsk | Vladimirskaya | Voznesenskaya | Vologda | Volynskaya | Voronezh | Vyatskaya | Grodno | Ekaterinoslavskaya | Yeniseiskaya | Izyaslavskaya | Ingermanland | Irkutsk | Kazan | Kaluga | Kievskaya | Kovenskaya | Kolyvanskaya | Kostroma | Kursk | Lithuanian | Little Russian | Minsk | Mogilevskaya | Moscow | Nikolaevskaya | Nizhny Novgorod | Novgorod-Severskaya | Novgorodskaya | Novorossiysk | Olonetskaya | Orenburg | Orlovskaya | Penza | Perm | * Petrogradskaya | Podolskaya | Polotsk | Poltava | Pskov | Ryazan | Samara | St. Petersburg | Saratov | Siberian | Simbirskaya | Slobodsko-Ukrainian | Slonimskaya | Smolenskaya | Stavropol | Tavricheskaya | Tambovskaya | Tverskaya | Tobolskaya | Tomsk | Tula | Ufa | Finnish | Kharkovskaya | Kherson | Kholmskaya | Chernihiv | Yaroslavl
Areas	Amurskaya | Belostokskaya | Bessarabskaya | Don troops | Transbaikal | Imeretinskaya | Caucasian | Kamchatka | Kwantung | Orenburg Kirgiz | Omsk | Primorskaya | Sakhalin | Tavricheskaya | Tarnopolskaya | Turgai | Ural | Yakutsk
City administration	Baku | Distant | Derbentskoe | Izmail | Kerch-Yenikalskoe | Kyakhtinskoe | Moscow | Nikolaevskoe | Odessa | Rostov-on-Don | St. Petersburg | Sevastopolskoe | Taganrog | Feodosia | * Yalta
Areas of the Steppe region	Akmolinskaya | Siberian Kirghiz | Semirechenskaya | Semipalatinsk
Regions of Turkestan Territory	Transcaspian | Samarkand | Semirechenskaya | Syrdarya | Turkestan | Fergana
Provinces of the Ostsee Region	Kurlyandskaya | Liflyandskaya | Revelskaya | Riga | Estland
Provinces of Finland	Abo-Björneborg | Vasaska | Vyborgskaya | Kuopio | Nyulandskaya | St. Michelskaya | Tavastgusskaya | Uleaborgskaya
Provinces of the Kingdom of Poland	Augustow | Warsaw | Kalisz | Keletskaya | Krakowska | Lomzhinskaya | Lublin | Mazowiecka | Petrokovskaya | Plocka | Podlaska | Radomskaya | Sandomierz | Sedletskaya | Suwalki
Provinces of Galicia and Bukovina	* Lviv | * Przemysl | * Tarnopolskaya | * Chernivtsi
Administrative units Caucasian governorship	Provinces: Baku | Georgian | Georgian-Imeretinskaya | Derbent | Elizavetpolskaya | Caucasian | Kutaisi | Tiflis province | Black Sea province | Shemakhinskaya | Erivanskaya | Areas: Armenian | Batumi | Dagestan | Karskaya | Caspian | Kuban | Terskaya | Special districts: Zagatala | Sukhumi
Special districts	Zeravshan District | Black Sea District | Kyakhta city administration
Special formations	Russian America | Sloboda Cossack regiments | Kingdom of Siberia
Dependent state education	Abkhazian principality | * Administration of Western Armenia | Avar Khanate | Baku Khanate | Bogdo Khan Mongolia | Bukeevskaya Horde | Bukhara Emirate | Principality of Wallachia | Hetmanate | Principality of Guria | Imeretian Kingdom | Karabakh Khanate | Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti | Kokand Khanate | Courland and Semigalia | Nakhichevan Khanate | Moldavian principality | Republic of the Seven Islands | Rzeczpospolita | Tabasaran mystery | Talysh Khanate | Shamkhalstvo Tarkovskoe | * Uryankhai Territory | Khiva Khanate | Sheki Khanate | Shirvan Khanate
¹ Provinces, regions and other entities that did not exist, were renamed or abolished as of January 1, 1914 are italicized. ² An asterisk (*) marks provinces formed or created by renaming after January 1, 1914.

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