Issue No.2, Summer 2000

Ukrainian Declaration
August 25, 1998, Kyiv Ukraine

Dear friends and brothers and sisters of the Ukrainian Native Faith, Dear Ukrainians, confessors of all different confessions, we are on the threshold of the Third millennium. Nowadays humanity begins to realize the importance of the renewal of its spiritual values which have been lost during the millennia. The reasons for these losses are getting obvious. Mixing of ethnic(national) cultures finally inevitably drives to demolition of the ethnosphere which is a part of biosphere of the Earth. You should not forget that a person and a nation are a part of the nature. Just as nature exists owing to the variety of species so society lives and develops in its variety of ethnocultural displays. In the critical moments of history the appeal of the animistic faith of our ancestors is first of all the search for the ways out of the spiritual, political and economic crisis.         We, the Ukrainian animists, represent the movement of Regeneration of the Ukrainian Native Faith (the Ukrainian Animism) as the traditionally Ukrainian confession which was commenced by professor Volodymyr Shayan in 1934.

We consider ourselves the heirs and successors of the Animistic Faith of Russ-Ukraine, which was forbidden in 988 to satisfy the international religion - Christianity. Our Native Faith is deep, traditional and the only national confession. We have our dogma which is represented in "The Book of Veles", "Our Ancestors' Faith" by professor Volodymyr Shayan, "Volkhovnyk", and "Pravoslov"(the prayers to Native Gods).         The communities of the Ukrainian Native Faith have been registered and are being registered in different regions of Ukraine now, they are officially recognized. Ukraine is a participant of World Congress of the Ethnic Religions (WCER), whose slogan is "Unity in Variety". The Congress recognizes originality of every ethnic religion and defends their rights and freedoms and is against religious discrimination. Peoples' return to their native religions is a natural evolutionary process. But in Ukraine the negative appreciation of our spiritual heritage is still being spread by mass-media, vulgar names such as "pohanstvo" (bad) and "pohantsi" (bad people) are used. But these words are the exact rendering of the word "paganus" (peasant) from Latin into Ukrainian. From here comes "paganism" (the peasant faith). And the conductors of the confessions even call annihilation of animism. Mass-media to satisfy the governmental policy of christianisation refuses to give either its pages and time for information about the Native Animistic Faith of the Ukrainians. That is why we demand that the government of Ukraine during the official reabilitation of the Native Faith (Ukrainian Animism) remove the informational blockade and to keep the Law of Freedom of conscience and international agreements on the rights of a person and organizations, which were signed and ratified by Ukraine. Freedom of conscience cannot exist without Freedom of speech. At the same time we want to pay attention of the state structures, to ensuring the equal rights and possibilities for citizens, the representatives of different confessions. We consider inadmissible the facts of discharge from work, expulsion of the believers of the Ukrainian Native Faith from creative groups and others. Forced christianisation of school specifically in the Western regions of Ukraine causes indignation of the public's broad Circles'. The support of only one Christian confession affirms the infringement of article 35 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which declares the separation of church from state.         We, the Ukrainian animists, who got together to this Congress on the occasion of the 7-th anniversary of the Independence of Ukraine create the Union of the believers of the Ukrainian Native Faith in Ukraine with the center in Kyiv. Since there is still prejudice to our confession in some regions of Ukraine, we address our State Committee of Religions and Cults and insist on the free registration of our religious communities in all regions of Ukraine.         Only those states which are developing in national ways can achieve the best prosperity. Only the persons with the highest level of national consciousness can direct the state to this way. The Native Faith as the national spiritual system can bring up a new person of the national type and also to stop the formation of faceless practical men without any national face. The Native Faith of the Ukrainian people is of their selfpreservation and the guarantor of their natural ethnic development. We trust in the Native Ukrainian Gods, united in Svaroh.