GREEK CATHOLIC PRIEST DANIIL MIKHAILOVICH BACHYNSKY (1879 – 1951): NEW DOCUMENTS FOR HIS BIOGRAPHY

The article highlights the biographical path of the Greek Catholic priest Daniel Bachynsky. The authors traced his fragmentary family tree and showed that he came from an old priestly family. A native of the village of Vyshkovo, where his father served, he received a good education, he studied at Mukachevo and Uzhhorod gymnasiums, and received his higher spiritual education at the Uzhhorod Theological Seminary. The author traced the priest's marital status and found out the number of his children and the scope of their activities at the time of the priest's arrest in 1949. It was found that D. Bachynsky enjoyed considerable authority among the bishops of the Mukachevo Greek Catholic diocese, who honored him with church positions and entrusted him with responsible missions. He was the priest who confessed and gave communion to Bishop Theodore Romzha after an accident in the Mukachevo hospital, where he was soon killed by a shot of curare poison. The priest was arrested after his son, Fr. Daniel, in December 1950. The materials of the archival criminal file show that the investigators imposed on him political activities in favor of the Czechoslovak agrarian party, anti-communist activities in 1920-30, cooperation with the Hungarian occupation authorities, conciliatory and favorable activities, which resulted in the targeted labor mobilization of Dubrivka residents for the construction of defensive structures for the Hungarian army, collecting warm clothes and food for Hungarian gonweds, anti-Soviet agitation during worship and idealization of the figures of Hitler, Mussolini and Horta, slanderous propaganda against the leaders of the USSR, in particular Stalin, and so on. The materials of the prosecution and the verdict were based on the testimony of 11 witnesses, mostly members of the Communist Party, coming from the rural poor, who a priori hated or distrusted the representative of the wealthy church stratum. The priest mostly denied the accusations against him, but because of his age, he could not resist the Soviet totalitarian machine. At the age of 73, he died in Uzhhorod prison and was buried in an unmarked grave in secret from his relatives. The article introduces five archival documents into scientific circulation. They characterize the means and methods of the totalitarian machine in the struggle against a representative of the Greek Catholic clergy.