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Christian Churches in Ukraine and Their Relations 1991-2015

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Christian Churches in Ukraine and Their Relations 1991-2015 Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 67(1-2), 103-142. doi: 10.2143/JECS.67.1.3144284 © 2015 by Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. All rights reserved. “PROJECT UKRAINE” UNDER Threat – CHRISTIAN CHURCHES IN UKRAINE AND THEIR Relations 1991-2015 ALFONS BRÜNING UKRAINE IN THE 1990S – THE YUGOSLAVIAN PORTENT The story to be told here starts in the early 1990s, and just as elsewhere in Europe it was not clear by this time whether it would end well. In late 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist, months after several of its former republics had declared themselves independent, and abolished the monopoly of the Communist party. Ukraine had adopted independence on August 21, 1991, and the act of this declaration had been supported by a vast majority through- out the former Soviet republic, both in its predominantly rural and pro- Ukrainian Western parts as in its industrialized and traditionally Russophile East.1 Yet this initial consensus turned out to be superficial, and it very soon gave way to expressions of inner tensions that had already existed for a long time. Nowhere were these tensions felt more strongly than in the area of church and religion. Already previous to the turnover of the late 1980s Ukraine had aptly been described as the Soviet Union’s Bible belt. Despite all persecutions by the atheist regime remnants of religious activity remained disproportionately strong, and also the signs of religious revival since the 1970s appear to have been felt more intensively here than elsewhere.2 In addition, Ukraine’s West- ern provinces (the regions of Galicia, Bukovyna, Zakarpatt’ia and Volhynia) anyway had fallen under Soviet rule a generation later, which means only 1 Cf. Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians. Unexpected Nation (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 168-169. 2 Viktor Yelensky, ‘Religiosity in Ukraine according to Sociological Surveys’, Religion, State and Society, 38 (2010), no. 3, pp. 213-227, esp. 213f. An illustrative case study concerning a particular wave of religious revival in the Eastern central city of Dnepropetrovsk, evoked among others by the “Western” rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” is provided by Sergei Zhuk, ‘Religion, “Westernization”, and Youth in the “Closed City” of Soviet Ukraine, 1964-1984’, Russian Review, 67 (2008), no. 4, pp. 661-679. 98607.indb 103 12/05/16 12:47 104 ALFONS BRÜNING after World War II. They had therefore not experienced the brutal persecu- tions of the 1930s. As the religious policy of the Soviet regime had changed meanwhile, they were now subject to a more pragmatic and utilitarian, albeit still anything but tolerant political course, that aimed at an exploitation and use rather than unconditional extinction of religion. Later, i.e. in the later years of the perestroika-policy under Communist party leader Mikhail Gor- bachev there was to be seen another subsequent liberalization of the party’s former guidelines towards religion. In 1988 the solemn celebration of the millennium of the “baptism of Kievan Rus’” by the Russian Orthodox Church had marked a significant change in the status of this religious organization in particular, but also of religious groups in general.3 Previously forced into a semi-legal existence determined rather by pragmatic tolerance than legal secu- rity, and with many activities banned into the underground, now churches and religious communities throughout the Soviet Union regained a secure and influential place in society. In the Orthodox Church in Ukraine this soon led to a split of the hitherto monopolized church structure under jurisdiction of the Moscow patriarchate into ultimately four branches of Christianity, all performing the liturgy according to the Eastern, Byzantine rite. Starting from 1989 (after a visit of party leader Gorbachev in the Vatican) it was first the Ukrainian Greek Catholic (UGCC, commonly named Uniate) Church that reclaimed a legal status independent from the structures of the Moscow patriarchate. This Eastern rite church once, four centuries earlier (in 1596) had placed itself under the jurisdiction of the Roman pope, a step that had never been recognized by other Orthodox churches. After World War II, when formerly Polish Western Ukraine (the provinces of Galicia, Zakarpatt’ia and Bukovyna) came under Soviet rule, under pressure of the NKVD a local synod in 1946 had declared the “return” of the Greek Catholic dioceses and par- ishes towards the Moscow Patriarchate – a step that forced many clerics and believers in disaccord with this measure into the underground. The Greek Catholics therefore for a large part had existed as a catacomb church struc- ture, which now, in 1989, successfully claimed its re-establishment as an independent and legal religious entity. 3 Cf. Sabrina Ramet, ‘Religious Policy in the Era of Gorbachev’, in id. (ed.), Religious Policy in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: CUP, 1992), pp. 21-52. 98607.indb 104 12/05/16 12:47 “PROJECT UKRAINE” UNDER THREAT 105 The Greek Catholic Church in the 19th century had been a stronghold of the formation of a modern Ukrainian national idea, but via its bounds with the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church it had also claimed Ukraine as an integral part of Europe and of the West, in often conscious dissociation from Moscow and the Orthodox in the Russian Empire. On the other hand, within its ranks it had an equally strong fraction of dissenters who instead put an emphasis on the Eastern, Byzantine heritage and therefore voted for closer connections with the Russian East, or at least for an independent Ukrainian Eastern Rite church. So the general options of a pro-European or Western orientation, Ukrainian nationalism and a favor for the Eastern rite and spiritual tradition had always been present also within this church.4 Despite all efforts especially of the church leaders since the early 20th century (like the widely respected Metropolitan Andrii Sheptyc’kyi, 1900-1944) to balance these tendencies, the inner tensions within the church in Galicia had never disappeared.5 As it would turn out after independence, even the hard times in the catacombs were not able to erase them completely.6 4 On the role of the Greek Catholic Church in the formation of Ukrainian national consciousness in the 19th century cf. John Paul Himka, The Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian Society in Austrian Galicia (Cambridge MA: Harvard Ukrainian Studies Fund, 1986); id., Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine. The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia 1867-1900 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill University Press, 1999); Jan Kozik, Ukraiński ruch narodowy w Galicji w latach 1830-1848 (Cracow: Wyd. lit., 1973). On the Russophile fraction within the Greek Catholic Church cf. Anna Veronika Wendland, Die Russophilen in Galizien. Ukrainische Konservative zwi- schen Österreich und Russland, 1848-1915 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001). 5 For the history of the Greek-Catholic Church in the interwar period cf. A. Sorokowski, ‘The Lay and Clerical Intelligentsia in Greek-Catholic Galicia, 1900-1939: Competition, Conflict, Cooperation’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 24 (2002-03), no. 1-4, pp. 261-290; B. Budurowycz, ‘The Greek Catholic Church in Galicia, 1914-1944’, ibid., pp. 291-375, on nationalist tendencies and Sheptyc’kyi’s role in this situation cf. esp. pp. 325-339. 6 Whereas the church leaders and also, for example, the staff of the newly founded Ukrai- nian Catholic University in L’viv usually betray a pro-Western and democratic course, it is still a matter of debate to what extent nationalist tendencies are alive among the believers. Cf. the debates of Sophia Senyk, ‘The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Today: Universal Values versus Nationalist Doctrines’, Religion, State & Society, 30 (2002), no. 4, pp. 317- 332, and Serge Keleher, ‘Response to Sophia Senyk The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Today: Universal Values versus Nationalist Doctrines’, Religion, State & Society, 31 (2003), no. 3, pp. 289-306. 98607.indb 105 12/05/16 12:47 106 ALFONS BRÜNING It may be for this reason that after a liberation of the Soviet legislation had made it possible for many formerly Russian Orthodox parishes to chose their actual allegiance freely and to change their jurisdiction according to what they deemed fit, in the Ukrainian West only a part of the parishes and also several monasteries returned to the Greek Catholics, whereas others (like e.g. the famous Pochaiv Monastery) deliberately remained under Orthodox jurisdic- tion. Few of such decisions were unanimous even amongst the believers them- selves, and struggles over jurisdiction, buildings and church property in some cases even ended in violent confrontation. The Russian Orthodox Church did not find it easy to give in to the loss of a significant amount of its former parishes, as Western Ukraine after 1946 had retained a higher concentration of (then) Orthodox parishes than almost every other region on former Soviet territory. To make things worse, a further equally significant amount of reli- gious entities chose neither of the two camps recently established, but took the side of a third force, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). Already in 1989 the former Russian Orthodox priest Dmytro Yarema placed his parish under the jurisdiction of this branch of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, the begin- nings of which date back to the aftermath of the October Revolution. In 1921 a group of clerics had declared its independence from Moscow, and established the core of a national Ukrainian church which was yet not canonically recog- nized. After the extinction of its remainders on Soviet Ukrainian territory through the Stalin era persecutions the church survived in its diaspora forma- tions especially in Western Europe, and in the United States and Canada. After its return into Ukraine, in 1990 the first All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC was held in Kyiv, on the initiative and with active participation of Yarema.
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