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The Amish Voice 16
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Conference Call Schedule
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This article was first published in the
Kyiv Post, a newspaper in the Ukraine,
and is reprinted with permission.
Students sit in a classroom in the village
of Stinka in Ternopil Oblast. Almost 80
percent of the students in the school come
from the local religious
community, mistakenly referred
to as Amish.
There are many mentions of
Ukrainian Amish community in
western Ukraine, but they are
wrong.
Small religious communities
living in Ternopil and Ivano-
Frankinsk oblasts are identified
as Amish, but are not.
They are closed Christian
communities who have no name for
themselves and live in rural settlements
along the Dniester River.
Their neighbors call them Amish for their
similarity
with
the
renowned
traditionalist
movement,
but
the
Ukrainian communities are autonomous
and have developed independently from
similar communities in the West. They
were founded in the 1950s by a man
called Ivan Derkach, but not much else is
known. The religious beliefs are close to
Baptists.
They refuse to be photographed and
won’t speak to journalists.
The only way to learn more is to talk with
those living next to them in the villages
of
Stinka,
Kosmyryn,
Snovydiv,
Mostyshche and Budzyn.
Valentyna Shtepula, a resident of the
village of Stinka and the principal of a
local school, lives next to the reclusive
members of religious community. At
least 1,800 of the village’s 3,020
residents are from this mysterious
community.
Shtepula’s school is the biggest
in Buchach District in Ternopil
Oblast, with 630 pupils
enrolled. That’s mainly due to
the rapid growth of the
religious community – at least
90 babies were born in Stinka
last year.
“They are Christians, but they
don’t go to church,” Shtepula
says about her neighbors. “I
know that they are a rather
closed community, so women pray apart
from the men and children.”
According to school principal, they use
the Bible while praying at home, but
being a Protestant denomination, they do
Continued inside back cover
They Live Like Amish, but They are Not
—Yuliana Romanyshyn