Bakhmut. How the First and Other Places of Worship Appeared in the Town

Bakhmut (from 1924 to 2016, Artemivsk) is the oldest town in the Donetsk region, founded four and a half centuries ago with the creation of the Bakhmut watch-post to defend the state frontiers against enemy raids. With the formation of the sloboda came the need to build places of worship. In the 17th and 18th centuries the county town had several churches. The Church of St Nicholas has survived to our day unchanged, one of the most ancient wooden churches still in use in Eastern Ukraine (8 Taras Shevchenko Street).

Bakhmut. Donetsk region. The Church of St Nicholas. 1797.

Its earlier predecessor was dismantled and carried off by the inhabitants, who were forced to move away after the decline of the salt trade in Bakhmut. Unable, during flooding, to reach the Church of the Intercession and perform the Christian sacraments, the faithful of the St Nicholas sloboda appealed to the ecclesiastical board with a request to build a new church in their area. The petition stated that, for this godly cause, the community had the money, the materials and a master builder. After receiving the charter of permission, a foundation of stone was laid, and the walls were raised from bog oak. In 1797 the church was consecrated.

The Church of St Nicholas. 1797.

The three-tier stone bell tower was built in 1861 to a design approved by Emperor Alexander II. Today, the Church of St John the Forerunner is open in the bell tower.

The bell tower church of St John the Forerunner. 1861.

Local merchants acted as trustees and founders of the construction. In the years of the war on religion the priests were repressed, the shrine was looted and closed. In 1942 the Hitlerite authorities allowed the faithful to return to the church, and since then it has not closed.

Bakhmut. The Orthodox complex

From 1900 a parish school opened at the church, and to this day the Orthodox church complex has not lost its educational significance. In the Sunday school, classes are held for the rising generation, and a library and workshops have been created in which the boys are taught the carpentry trade.

The Orthodox complex. The Sunday school

The shrine holds the status of an architectural monument.

The first cemetery Church of All Saints appeared in 1791 through the efforts of the clergy and citizens of Bakhmut (58 Kovalska Street). A century later the wooden one was replaced with a stone one. After the Second World War the church was closed, and the building of worship fell into decay. In the 1990s, after restoration, roof repairs and the replacement of the domes, services resumed in the church.

The Church of All Saints. 1893.

The Church of St John Chrysostom was raised in 2012 on the site of the destroyed Church of the Intercession (17 Rostovskyi Lane).

The Church of St John Chrysostom. 2012.

The Holy Intercession Church was built in 1732 'at the expense of the parish people, by the labours and efforts of Archpriest Ioann Lukianov' on the bank of the River Bakhmut. After a fire in 1794 the shrine was restored, and services continued in it until the 1930s. The Bolshevik authorities demolished the church; only the arch of the entrance gate survived.

The gate arch of the Holy Intercession Church. 1794.

After decades of neglect, a wasteland formed on the former church courtyard. Having restored the arch, which is called 'the Intercession Gate', the community began construction work.

The design, like the old church itself, had been lost. The new church was erected within 5 months, without a single nail, to the design of a Suzdal church. It is believed that such structures can last for about 600 years.

Bakhmut is a town of different religious denominations. In the premises of a former Catholic church there is now a Church of Evangelical Christian Baptists (26 Nekrasov Street).

The Church of Evangelical Christian Baptists. The former Roman Catholic church

In 1863 a synagogue opened for the Jewish community. In it prayed the doctors, musicians and traders of Bakhmut (80 Nezalezhnosti Street). In 1923, after the prayer house was closed, the premises were occupied by the workshop of the sculptor I. P. Kavaleridze, the author of the monument to Artem in Sviatohirsk. Later the building housed an aeroclub, a library, and a production shop of the society of the blind. Now the 19th-century choral synagogue has been adapted into a shop, although under the laws of Halakha even a ruined temple is forbidden to be used for commercial purposes.

Bakhmut. The former synagogue. Now a shop