Crisis in Society and Religion in Ukraine

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe Volume 14 | Issue 2 Article 1 4-1994 Crisis in Society and Religion in Ukraine Patricia Herlihy Brown University, RI Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree Part of the Christianity Commons, and the Eastern European Studies Commons Recommended Citation Herlihy, Patricia (1994) "Crisis in Society and Religion in Ukraine," Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 14: Iss. 2, Article 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol14/iss2/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ George Fox University. CRISIS IN SOCIETY AND RELIGION IN UKRAINE by Patricia Herlihy Dr. Patricia Herlihy (Roman Catholic) is professor of history at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. She received her degrees from Stanford University and University of Pennsylvania. She is on the Board of Overseers of the Center for Ukrainian Studies and a fellow of the Russian research Center at Harvard University. This paper was prepared for a lecture delivered at Rosemont College in November 1993. Introduction Few, if any, would advocate a return to the communist regimes of Eastern Europe. Yet, one of the ironies of history is that those oppressive systems kept in check nationalistic and religious antagonisms or at least visible violent clashes such as we are witnessing in the former Soviet states and in the former Yugoslavia. This entire series of lectures being held here at Rosemont College testifies to that sad reality. The Communist ideology, like Christianity, claimed to have the power to forge a universal brotherhood so that it was above nationalism. Now that nation states have emerged from the implosion of the Communist Soviet Union, religious as well as ethnic clashes have broken out nearly everywhere. In Ukraine, to date, the tensions have been principally sectarian and apocalyptic. And nowhere else has the religious situation for Eastern Christians changed more radically than in Ukraine. Among the successor states of the former Soviet Union, after Russia, Ukraine has the largest population with approximately 52 million persons, that is, roughly the size of modern France or the state of Texas. It is the third largest is size after Russia and Kazakhstan. In addition to its significant size, it has the distinction of being a nationstate in its present contours for the very first time. The concept or idea of independent Ukraine has existed at least since the nineteenth century. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and during the chaos of the Civil War, Ukraine proclaimed itself to be an independent nation. But soon Soviet power overwhelmed this independent state. Indeed, being part of a larger political entity has marked the entire history of Ukraine. A brief excursion into the past will help illuminate when and how it acquired the various religions it now professes. In the distant past, if we go back to the eighth and ninth century, we learn that the ancestors of present-day Ukrainians, Russians and Byelorussians lived together as East Slavs in an extended territory around Kiev. Kievan Rus, as that loose federation of Eastern Slav principalities was called, over a period of four hundred years, created a wealthy commercial urbanized state, with a high level of culture. One of the reasons for its high culture is the fact that in 989 Grand Prince Vladimir (or Volodymyr as Ukrainians call him), the ruler of Kievan Rus, became a Christian and forced his people to accept his religion. The missionaries who succeeded in converting these pagan Slavs came from Greek Byzantium. This explains why the East Slavs became Greek Orthodox Christians instead of Western Latin Christians. From Byzantium they inherited not only the form of their Christianity, but also their alphabet, literature, arts and crafts, and their world view. In the 13th century, however, because of internal dissention and external invasions by the Mongols out of the east, Kievan Rus disintegrated. Some East Slavs moved south and west, and eventually, in the middle ages, fell under the rule of the Polish-Lithuanian State. Others moved to the northeast to find safety in thick forests. Over the ensuing centuries this diaspora resulted in the evolution of three distinct languages and cultures: those who fell under Polish-Lithuanian rule became Ukrainians and Byelorussians, and those who went north eventually created a new state, Muscovy, and they became Russians. The once unified East Slavs splintered into these three close, but distinct, ethnic groups. To follow then briefly the fate of the people who began in the l9th century to be called Ukrainians, we can note that after being under Lithuanian rule for centuries, in 1569 Lithuania transferred territory inhabited by Ukrainians to Poland. Thereafter, much of Ukrainian history became commingled with the history of Poland; even their language came to reflect Polish influence. Just as the land had been fragmented, so too was their Christian religion. Under Polish influence, at Brest-Litovsk in 1596, a number of Orthodox Ukrainian bishops, including the metropolitan of Kiev, linked themselves with Rome rather than Moscow. Rome permitted the Uniates, as they were called, to retain the Eastern-rite Liturgy, the use of the Slavonic language in church, and the married clergy. Such a compromise reflected both a partial assimilation with the Poles, and yet it also signified resistance to total assimilation. Just as the Roman Catholicism of the Poles appeared to be a badge of nationalism, so too did the Ukrainians retain their badge of national culture by being Uniates. In the seventeenth century when much of Ukraine came under Russian rule (1686), many of the higher clergy returned to Orthodoxy so then they came under the patriarchate of Moscow. As a reward, Ukrainian clergy were co-opted into the hierarchy, so in effect there was a process of Russification and integration of the Ukrainian church into the Russian church. Only the western part of present-day Ukraine remained under Polish rule and remained Uniate. When Russia, Prussia and Austria divided up Poland in the late l8th century, even more Ukrainians who had been in Poland came under the Russian flag. But many of these Ukrainians were Uniates who could not be assimilated into the Russian Orthodox Church because of their allegiance to the Pope. It was this Uniate Church in Western Ukraine and, later in the twentieth century, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church which gave its support to the secular national movement. To summarize: after the fall of Kiev, Ukrainians were never to become a single unified independent state until the present. Until now Ukrainians were divided--living either within Russia, the Soviet Union, or in Poland, (...truncated)