Putin’s Descent: Iconography of the Last Judgment and Politics in Contemporary Ukraine

Abstract

This article explores the role of social and political agendas in the shaping of the development of contemporary Last Judgment iconography in Ukraine. Specifically, it focuses on a controversial recently painted icon of the Last Judgment in the town of Chervonohrad (Lviv region), on which universal Christian themes and motifs are interwoven with representations of historical and contemporary events and national sensibilities. Many episodes on the mural arose as a response to military aggression by the Russian Federation. The most controversial of these depicts scenes of Hell, where the main figure resembles Russian President Vladimir Putin burning in fire along with other anonymous sinners and totalitarian symbols. Although the mural may be observed as non-canonical or even absurd, it is enthusiastically accepted by church attendees and members of the laity. This paper highlights both religious and secular reactions to the mural. It examines the social and political dimensions of this religious piece, its iconographic elaboration, and its function as a piece of propaganda.

Keywords::

• last judgment
• contemporary church art
• iconography
• sacred art
• Ukraine
• images of the enemy
• Vladimir Putin

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the Fulbright scholarship program for supporting my residency at Georgia State University where research for this article took place. I am particularly indebted to Kimberly Cleveland and all the faculty of the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design for supporting and inspiring my work in many ways. I am grateful to all the contributors to this project, especially artists and photographers, whose names appear throughout this work. All translations are by the author of this article.

Notes

1 In this article I use the term sacred art and church art interchangeably.

2 Direct quotes from interviews and from Ukrainian and Russian media outlets in the text, are translated by the author. I use pseudonyms for individuals whom I interviewed, except for the author of the mural and for those people who made public statements in the media or published sources. I received explicit permission from my consultants to use any portion of the interviews I conducted with them. Ethics reviews of research involving human participants are generally not conducted in Ukrainian institutions, therefore my institution does not have an ethics board.

3 Numerous studies have been done on the Ukrainian Euromaidan. For political context of the revolution see an edited collection by Marples and Mills (2015); its dynamics is shown in the study of Shveda and Ho Park (2016); a recent monograph by Wynnyckyj (2019) examines Euromaidan from the standpoint of a participant.

4 For an analysis of Putin’s attitudes towards Euromaidan see Baysha (2018). For discussion of the military conflict in the Donbass region see Malyarenko and Wolff (2018).

5 Religious freedom in Ukraine during the Soviet period had been restricted and religious organizations were either banned or under control of the state, see Yelensky (2002).

6 For a general historical overview of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church see Shlikhta (2016), Avvakumov (2016).

7 In the early 1990s, three major Orthodox churches were formed in Ukraine. Although their liturgical tradition and doctrine are similar, they have competed with one another declaring different attitudes toward the nation, language, and history. The biggest difference had been between both pro-Ukrainian Orthodox churches, the Kyiv Patriarchate and the Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and the pro-Russian Moscow Patriarchate, see Brik (2018). The pro-Ukrainian churches and some of the Moscow Patriarchate clergy united to form the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in December 2018.

8 The Orthodox hierarchy and believers avoided recognizing the legalization of the Greek Catholic Church in the early 1990s. This led to inter-church conflict and a struggle for property between the Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches in western Ukraine. The former tried to regain property lost during the Soviet period, the latter tended to further dominate in the region. The construction of new churches somewhat weakened the inter-confessional conflict. For a detail, see Yelensky (2002) and Druzenko (2010).

9 On the diffusion and assimilation of development of iconography in the region see Flaga (2014); how contemporary sacred art reflects Western and Eastern icon painting traditions in the region, see Kohan (2018).

10 This evaluation is based on my personal experience of visiting and documenting numerous churches in the region. It is important to say that Western printmakers have had a remarkable influence on Eastern Christian iconographers in the region since the sixteenth century, see Deluga (1993).

11 Oleksіj Cherednіchenko is the chair of the artists’ union that participated in the church painting. Yaroslav Yarchak, Sergіy Kolodka, Volodymyr Stakhіv, Bogdan Radіkhovs’kyj, Oleksandr Samolyuk, Іvan Tachyns’kyj are the artists who helped Cherednichenko to create the mural.

12 Cossacks - members of self-governing men’s military and territorial communities, whose activity in the steppes of Eastern Europe since 15th century has been discussed by numerous sources. For more details see Plochij (2001), Yekelchyk (2015).

13 The Cossack Cross resembles the Templars Cross, and it has been used in heraldry and on tombstones in the steppes of Eastern Europe (Sapozhnykov 1997). Today it is associated with Cossacks, Ukrainian chivalry, and the army. See Yekelchyk 2015).

14 Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) – an official term that was used for the description of the armed conflict in the Eastern part of Ukraine from 2014 to 2018. It was renamed The Operation of United Forces in 2018.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Taras Lesiv

Taras Lesiv is a lecturer in art (drawing, painting, icon painting techniques) and art history at the Department of Sacred Art, Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine. He received both BA (2005) and MA (2007) degrees in Fine and Applied Arts, specializing in sacred art (of the Eastern Christian rite) at this institution. In 2010, he also completed a postgraduate program in art history and theory. He defended his dissertation “Icon Painting in Galicia from the late 19th – early 21st centuries: Artistic Imagery and Theoretical Discourse.” in 2021, receiving the Candidate of Sciences degree. During 2017–2018 he was a Fulbright fellow at the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University (USA). His research interests embrace history, theory, and practice of Christian sacred arts, visual arts and national/ethnic identity building.[email protected]