AviK, their Rebbe is not on the bookshelves, he is in Uman, just as the Ovos and Imohos are in Chevron, and Rochel is in Beis Lechem. A person’s nefesh remains with the body and is aware when people visit and talk to him.
The Zohar says that when the world needs rain we take a sefer torah to the cemetery to alert the people who lie there, and then they will go to Chevron to alert those who lie there, and together they will go up to the higher worlds and alert their neshomos Above, who will intercede with Hashem and ask for rain.
manitou, Golus Yovon was not about loss of sovereignty, because we never had sovereignty before it. The second beis hamikdosh was built under Persian sovereignty, which lasted until Alexander took it from them, and then we were under Macedonian and Seleucid sovereignty long *before* Antiochus the 4th and his gezeros. Golus Yovon only starts then.
So it is not about sovereignty but about a beis hamidkosh. Golus Yovon was the period when the BHMK was turned into a temple of avoda zara, and ended when it was liberated and returned to regular service, even though the war continued for several more years.