Holosiiv Monastery to be checked for ties with RF over arithmetic textbook?

The Holosiiv Monastery. Photo: open sources

The hysteria in the media and among officials over the report on the Orthodox school operating on the territory of the Holosiiv Monastery in Kyiv is still remembered. If we remove all the foolish fabrications like "glorifying the Russian god" and "singing the RF anthem," then ultimately the only "crime" that remains is the teachers' use of a Ukrainian-language arithmetic textbook from 1966, watching Soviet fairy tale films, and studying the Russian language.

If you ask an intellectually and morally healthy person whether there is a criminal offense here, the answer would be obvious. But the employees of the State Service for Ethnopolitics see things differently.

DESS announced that it intends to check the Holosiivs Monastery for ties with Moscow. And the reason for such activity is precisely the school's activities.

"According to journalists' reports, children were taught using Soviet-era textbooks, the curriculum included the study of 'Slavonic language,' and pupils were shown Soviet propaganda films. DESS shares the public's concern about the activities of the men's Monastery 'Holosiivska Pustyn' of the UOC. Given the new circumstances, the agency is moving to an active phase of inspecting the religious organization," reads the official message.

Let’s ask a simple question: what does the SSEFC hope to find there? Do the officials really believe that the activities of the school – which, by the way, have nothing to do with the monastery – could be controlled from Moscow? Maybe Patriarch Kirill personally selected the Ukrainian-language math textbooks for it or sent instructions via encrypted messengers to show the children films from the "Visiting a Fairy Tale" series?

It seems everything is simpler. It was precisely to the Holosiiv Monastery that the Kyiv Theological Seminary and Academy relocated after being expelled from the Lavra. It now hosts academic theological conferences, international meetings, and other events of the UOC.

Under the pretext of responding to a “public request”, the authorities could evict the Kyiv Theological Seminary and Academy from there as well, and even close the monastery itself. In the context of disgraceful corruption scandals and the dire situation at the front, this could become a small “victory” for the authorities over their “enemy,” temporarily diverting public attention from the darkness unfolding around them.

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