Baháʼí Faith in Ukraine

[10] Around the same time period, (about 1910,) Albert K. Caillet, president of the Société Unitive and editor and founder of the Bulletin de la Société Unitive, published an article about 'Abdu'l-Bahá and the religion, and also announced plans for a new magazine, Revue Universelle (Universala Unuigo), which would review progressive movements including the religion.

During the early Soviet period, there was another connection with the Bahá'ís when a bust of 'Abdu'l-Bahá was accomplished by Nicolas Sokolnitsky, native of Kyiv, and a Ukrainian diaspora, after comments from 1936 through a visit to his studio in Paris.

[21] In the second half of 1938 Lidia Zamenhof had been a major influence on the conversion of the first known Ukrainian becoming a Baháʼí, who was living in eastern Poland at the time.

That spring, Doroshenko was in a hospital and wrote a letter to Anne Lynch at the International Bahá’í Bureau in Geneva: ‘I bless the Heavenly Father for this illness and for being in the common ward with the other sufferers….

Just received a long letter from Lidia Zamenhof - full of encouragement and love, enclosing many prayers by Baha’u’llah.’" Lynch was also of Ukrainian descent and often corresponded with him.

In March 1986 the message of the Universal House of Justice, international head of the religion, entitled The Promise of World Peace had been given to the Ukrainian representative to the UN, Gunnadi Oudovenko.

[27] A month long march promoted by Bahá'ís traveled from Odessa to Kyiv run by International Peace Walk Inc. in the later summer of 1988.

[29] Around the time of the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, one of the people to join the religion in the country just before the Two Year Plan (1990-1992) was a sixteen-year-old boy who immediately taught his mother what he had learned.

Additionally one university student in Ukraine, who was not a Bahá’í, received the highest mark in his class for his presentation on the religion in a course called “Scientific Atheism”.

[30] During this time the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States was given responsibility for the promotion of the religion across several countries including Ukraine in the Two Year Plan.

[32] The Baha'is supported an initiative by the United States Institute of Peace founded by the US Congress to study conflict history in Ukraine among other sessions.

[40] Ukraine was opened to the Faith in 1990 with Bahá’ís pioneering to the country; Iraj and Jinus Victory from Canada and Riaz Rafat from Norway.

A number of teaching trips to expand the Faith beyond Kyiv were organised, starting with Lvov, Chernovtsy, Dnepropetrovsk, Vinitsa, Chernigov, and Kirovograd.

[46] There was a broad sense of needing to increase Bahá'í Centers, (places for devotions, meetings, discussions,) in Ukraine during 1996-2000.

[47] Circa 2000 Bahá’í communities were encouraged to open their study groups to non-Bahá’ís including in Ukraine.

[49] Canadian travel-teacher Darioush Nikfardjam, Toronto, Ontario, is pictured in Ternopil, Ukraine, with a group called the Harmonia Club, whom he addressed on the importance of the role of mothers as the first educators of children.

Mr. Nikfardjam spent two months travel-teaching in Ukraine, addressing a variety of audiences on the subjects of education, parenting, and the teaching of morality and spirituality.

[54] In 2002 there was encouragement for Bahá'í social and economic development projects and arousing the interest of prominent people including in Ukraine.

[55] In 2003 the Universal House of Justice stated: "Though facing serious economic difficulties, the friends in the well-developed clusters in Moldova and Ukraine are contributing more generously than ever to all the funds of the Faith.

[3] In February 2008 the Ukrainian government rose in support of a declaration by the President of Slovenia on behalf of the European Union on the deteriorating situation of the Persecution of Baháʼís in Iran.

[4] For the observance of the bicentenary of the Birth of the Báb in 2017 a photograph of the community of Dnipro was taken,[60] and the Museum of Religious History had a display about the Bahá'ís.

[64] To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the observance of the Bahá'í holy day of the Ascension of 'Abdu'l-Bahá on November 28, 2021, Bahá'ís of Kyiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and other cities, they gathered online to commemorate 'Abdul-Bahá, share stories and memories of Him, and offer prayers.