History of Paper Mill

The Radomyshl Paper Mill was built between 1606 and 1612 to produce paper for the printing house of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. The initiator of its foundation was the Archimandrite of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Elisha Pletenetsky (1550-1624).

From the day of its origin to the Khmelnytsky times, the Paper Mill in Radomyshl was in fact a monopoly paper producer in Central Ukraine. Most of the church and secular books that existed in this region were printed in the Lavra printing house on Radomyshl paper.

Paper from Radomyshl is easy to recognize by watermarks of four types. The first two are the noble coats of arms of the Lavra archimandrites, Elisha Pletenetsky and Zacharias Kopystensky. The third type is a stylized image of one of the founders of the Lavra, St. Anthony of Pechersk, the fourth is a drawing in the form of three domes with crosses.

Soon a settlement was built around the Paper Mill, which became known as Papirnya (“Paper Mill” eng.) It existed until the 1960s, after which it was annexed to Radomyshl.

The role of the Paper Mill grew especially during the reign of Metropolitan of Kyiv and Halych Petro Mohyla (1597-1647), who reformed the orthodox education system in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This required many new textbooks, philosophical, polemical, scientific works – and, accordingly, more paper.

The first and unchanging (until his death) head of the Radomyshl Paper Mill was the hieromonk and treasurer of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Panteleimon Kokhanovsky.

During the uprising of Bohdan Khmelnytsky or during the “Ruins” (50-80 years of the XVII century) the Paper Mill could be destroyed. Confirmation of this is contained in the “inventory list” of King Jan Sobieski (1682) on the transfer of Radomyshl with parishes to the Union Bishop of Lviv Joseph Shumlyansky, in which the Paper Mill was no longer mentioned.