THE LAND OF ST. VLADIMIR, AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF UKRAINE

The Baptism of Rus’. Fresco from the St. Vladimir Cathedral in Kiev, Ukraine. Victor Vasnetsov, 1896.

UN CORNELIA REES: THE LAND OF ST. VLADIMIR: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF ORTHODOXY IN UKRAINE

The Land of St. Vladimir attempts to provide a history of Orthodox Christianity in this region to give the reader a clearer understanding of the numerous complex circumstances that have shaped it. Beginning just prior to the baptism of Rus ’, Nun Cornelia chronicles the events that unfolded over the centuries: attacks, occupations, religious persecutions, and, through the midst of it all, innumerable manifestations of sanctity, perseverance, spiritual solidarity, and courage.

    

The old maxim that “history is written by the victors” always puts us on our guard when trying to make sense of the past in order to make sense of the present. But this maxim only serves to further smudge the edges of real history, because history is not how modern people see the past, but how the people of a given time period saw themselves and those around them. This is especially important to remember in the current age of lightning-fast information exchange, with its unprecedented potential for an ongoing revision of history. As seekers of truth, Christians have to make every effort to understand history with all its nuances and hard facts, so that we might think twice or thrice before joining whatever ill-conceived crusade may be afoot at a given time.

Looming large right now in the information space is a Slavic country now called Ukraine, also called “the Ukraine,” known as “Malorussia” or “Little Russia” when it was part of the Russian Empire, and long before that called, simply, Rus’. If you follow the news, it appears that the political history of this country has become the subject of wild revisionism, and indeed its mind-boggling complexity lends itself to that. In outlining the history of Christianity in the Ukraine we cannot entirely avoid politics, because we are forced to acknowledge that Christianity everywhere took root and developed under varying and changing political conditions, and Ukraine is no exception

But temporarily setting aside modern complexities, we’ll begin by looking back to distant, apostolic times, when the light of Christianity was just beginning to penetrate the tenebrous dominions of Scythes and Slavs.

1. Apostle Andrew

Apostle Andrew setting up a cross of the hills of Kiev. Miniature from a fifteenth-century Russian chronicle.

    

Early Russian history was researched and recorded by the most literate people of those days—usually monks. The father of Russian history is considered to be St. Nestor the Chronicler († ca. 1114, commemorated October 27), a monk of the Kiev Caves monastery, whose relics remain there to this day. If it seems strange to the modern ear that we call a monk of the Kiev Caves monastery the father of Russian history, we can only reply that this simple fact, confirmed by centuries of written history, underscores another fact: that in those days, when Christianity had finally taken root in the Kievan lands, there was no Ukraine—only Rus’

Many Russian chronicles talk of the Apostle Andrew’s preaching to the people of Rus’—most notably the fourteenth-century Lavrenty Chronicle, which used Byzantine chronicles as source material. Additionally, in the early third century, St. Hippolytus of Portuense writes in his work on the twelve apostles: “After preaching to the Scythes and Thracians, Andrew endured death on the cross in Patras….”¹ Origen also makes similar reference to St. Andrew preaching to the Scythes.² Ancient Scythia encompasseв many lands and peoples, but from Hippolytus’ words, “the Scythes and the Thracians” it can be concluded that the Apostle Andrew preached to those Scythes adjoining Thrace—those who inhabited the Balkans and the lands beyond the Dunai [Danube], including what is now Southern Russian and Ukraine.³ Modern historians have even traced the Apostle Andrew’s fourth journey from Jerusalem around the Black Sea to Kiev, and thence to Moscow and even Karelia.⁴ Well known is the tradition of St. Andrew’s prophecy on the hills of Kiev: “Do you see these hills? Upon these hills shall shine forth the beneficence of God, and there will be a great city here, and God shall raise up many churches.” According to his Life, the apostle went up around the hills, blessed them and set up a cross. Having prayed, he went up even further along the Dniepr River and reached Novgorod.⁵

St. Clement of Rome. Eleventh-century mosaic from the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev.

This same Dniepr River was the connecting line between the group of eastern Slavic tribes that would unite to become Rus’, with Kiev as their capital. One could travel from Novgorod along its waterways, then portage to the Dnieper and reach Kiev. Continuing south to the Black Sea, one would stop in the Crimea, and carry on to Constantinople. This was a well-travelled trade route, which would in time connect Russian Christians with Greek Christians. The southern coast of Crimea being part of the Byzantine Empire, with Greek Christian settlements, it was naturally the first part of the future Russian Empire where Christianity took root. The missionary work begun by St. Andrew was continued by St. Clement of Rome (†101, commemorated November 25), who arrived in Taurida (Crimea) with a large number of his Roman flock. After St. Clement worked a miracle, pagans from all over the peninsula were drawn to him and hundreds received baptism every day, so that after only one year, paganism was uprooted from southern Crimea, and seventy-five churches were established.⁶

Archeological evidence shows that there were some churches established along the Viking trade route in the time of the Apostle Andrew, but the Slavs of the regions around Kiev and Novgorod were so utterly pagan that any new converts to Christianity were severely persecuted. However, there is proof that Christians were living in Kiev before the Baptism of Rus’ in 988. One indicator is the Byzantine record of a diocese of “Rossia” centered in Kiev, from 862/863. It is supposed that St. Cyril (brother of St. Methodius) baptized some of the Rus’ during his missionary travels to Khazaria in 860. There is also a written record of two Christians killed by pagans in Kiev in 983. Theodore refused to yield his son John as a human sacrifice to the god Perun, and now father and son are considered the first martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church (commemorated June 12).

There is also record of the baptism of the Scandinavian prince Askold. Askold was one of the earliest rulers of Kiev; he was travelling along the Dniepr trade route when he discovered the beautiful, hilly town, and conquered it to be his own. Other Varangians—the Byzantine term for those warriors from the north—came to live in Kiev, and later attacked Constantinople in Askold’s army. The Byzantine capital was miraculously saved from this attack; the Orthodox Patriarch sent missionaries to Kiev, who baptized Askold. Modern historical sources express doubts about the baptism of Askold, but the Russian chronicles do not. It is also supposed that Askold was murdered by pagan warriors precisely because he had become a Christian.

The principalities of Kievan Rus’, from 1054 to 1132.

    

With the murder of Askold began the reign of Rurik, a Scandinavian originally invited by Novgorodians to unite the squabbling Slavic tribes. The Rurik Dynasty would produce Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev, canonized as the Baptizer of Russia (†1015, commemorated July 15).

Here again we have the phrase “of Russia,” when we are talking about events in Kiev. That is because at the time of Kiev’s Christianization all of the Slavic peoples inhabiting the regions of what are now Russia and Ukraine were called the Rus’, mainly by the Roman Empire (with Contantinople as its capital). There were different tribes always at war with each other, but the Slavic-Varangian people who made themselves known to the Roman Empire were called Rus’. When St. Vladimir united them all under the new religion, these warring tribes became a new people, all united and made one ethnos by Orthodox Christianity.

2. The Baptism of Rus’, in Kiev

  

Grand Prince Vladimir was the grandson of Princess Olga, who was married to Igor, the son of Rurik. Although St. Olga herself became a Christian, she was unable to bring her children to the Christian Faith. But when Olga received baptism in Constantinople in either in 955 or 957, she also had her maidservant, Malusha, baptized with her. Malusha was the daughter of the Drevlian⁷ prince who had killed Olga’s husband, Igor. Malusha would become her daughter-in-law, and give birth to Prince Vladimir.

Vladimir, half Viking, half Slav, had a natural talent for ruling, and a strong appeal to the Russian people. He became the prince of Novgorod and later conquered Kiev, uniting the three existing princedoms of Novgorod, Kiev, and the Drevlian capital—in some cases peacefully, in others, by the sword. He was thoroughly pagan and a hedonist, but he had an inherent urge to unite—first the cities, and then the religious cults. In Kiev, he erected all the idols known to the Kievans, but he was becoming more and more aware of the advantages of monotheistic religion. It is said that Vladimir saw in the Christian religion a means of uniting all his subjects, and the influence of his righteous grandmother and an inner longing to find the one true religion led him, after an investigation of the major monotheistic religions, to Orthodox Christianity.

When the Byzantine co-regent brothers, Basil the Bulgar-Slayer and Constantine, turned to Vladimir for military assistance against the mutinous regiments of Bardas Skliros and Bardas Phocas, Vladimir consented, providing they give him their sister, Princess Anna, in marriage. The Byzantine rulers were loath to give their sister to one they considered a barbarian, but when with Vladimir’s help they successfully defeated the rebellion, they were finally forced to comply, although not without military threats from Vladimir. Part of the agreement, however, was that Vladimir be baptized Christian.

St. Vladimir, Equal-to-the-Apostles (center) with his sons, Passion-bearers Boris and Gleb. Icon from late fifteenth-century Novgorod.

    

Tradition has it that just before his baptism at Chersonese on the Crimean peninsula, Vladimir went blind. Abandoned by all but the Greek priests sent to catechize him, he descended into the baptismal font, and emerged a new man. Gone were both his physical and spiritual blindness. St. Vladimir changed the course of Russian history, bringing all of Kiev to the Dnieper for Baptism with the words, “If anyone does not go into the river tomorrow, be they rich or poor, beggar or slave, that one shall be my enemy.” That everyone appeared willingly at the river shows how great Vladimir’s authority and popularity already were, and how the people respected the source of his newly acquired glory as “Tsar.” But as we recall, the seeds of Christianity had already been planted in the land of Rus’, particularly in the southern lands, and here was the crown of the endurance of these Christians.

Vladimir went on to convert Novgorod and other parts of the realm, including various pagan tribes of the steppe. His rule was just, generous, wise, and strong, and his subjects adored him. The new glory of his budding Christian realm attracted other nationalities to his religion. His Life mentions: “In the Nikol’sk Chronicles under the year 990 was written: ‘And in that same year there came to Volodimir (Vladimir) at Kiev four princes from the Bulgars [Moslems] and they were illumined with Divine Baptism.’ In the following year ‘the Pecheneg prince Kuchug came and accepted the Greek faith, and he was baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and served Vladimir with a pure heart.’ Under the influence of the holy prince several apparent foreigners were also baptized; for example, the Norwegian ‘koenig’ (king) Olaf Trueggvason (†1000) who lived several years at Kiev, and also the renowned Torvald the Wanderer, founder of a monastery of St. John the Forerunner along the Dneipr near Polotsk, among others. In faraway Iceland the poet-skalds called God the ‘Protector of the Greeks and Russians’.”⁸

Orthodox Christianity blossomed mightily under Vladimir, and everywhere idols fell and churches and monasteries were built. The hierarch of Kiev was titled Metropolitan, and the succession of Kiev Metropolitans established other dioceses: at Novgorod, Vladimir-Volhyn (opened May 11, 992), Chernigov, Pereslavl, Belgorod, and Rostov. These were the major cities of Rus’; there was no Moscow yet. Christianity was, however, most fully and readily embraced near Kiev, which is why Kiev is still called the “Mother of Russian cities.”

Metropolitan Makary (Bulgakov).

Metropolitan Makary (Bulgakov) of Moscow and Kolomna⁹ in his work on the history of the Russian Church emphasizes the development of the Russian nation as taking place parallel to and intertwined with the introduction and flourishing of Christianity under St. Vladimir and afterwards. “And if we remember (as an historian must always remember), that here also, as in all other events and processes of the world, regardless of all apparent differences, there was one invisible, supreme Actor—God, Who moves and directs all toward one high goal, although through varying ways, then we must come to the question: What does this precise concurrence of two highly important events in one and the same people mean? … Did not He [the Lord] thus unite them [Church and state] even from the first minutes in indivisible bonds, as the body and soul are united in man? … to live one, common life, yet completely retaining their distinguishing qualities?... Thus, was this not mutual, beneficial, and natural cooperation with each other preordained by the Most High for the Russian people and the Russian Church, as He united them from the very beginning?”¹⁰

3. Early Clash with Roman Catholicism

Vladimir’s reign placed the foundation of Orthodox Russia, and he made this foundation strong through his unifying efforts. Under him an Orthodox nation grew from disparate princedoms, although not without great struggle. Even during Vladimir’s life, a threat to Orthodoxy was looming in the West, in the realm of another Slavic nation— Poland. This nation would play a large, antagonistic part in the future of Orthodoxy in what would later come to be known as the Ukraine.

If we pause at this time in history to take a bird’s eye view of the Christian world, East and West, we can see that a rift is forming. The Byzantine Empire is shrinking; the Pope of Rome, under Frankish influence, has inserted the filioque¹¹ into the Creed, nursing also ambitions of eclipsing all the other Orthodox Patriarchs as “Christ’s vicar on Earth.” In fact, he is convinced of his supremacy, but the other Patriarchs do not agree. Jurisdictional territories in the Balkans, Southern Italy, and Sicily are under dispute. And now a new nation of formerly wild barbarians in the northeastern expanses is growing, and they are solidly attached to the Constantinople Patriarchate. This rift was bound to spread upwards and divide the Slavs of the West from the Slavs of the East, and the division would prove to be a violent stormfront and a painful wound.

While Rus’ received Christianity from the Greeks in 988, Poland’s Christianization dates to just slightly earlier, in 966, with the baptism of Mieszko I, the first ruler of the Polish state, along with much of his court. But Poland did not experience the swift, sweeping conversion that St. Vladimir effected in Rus’. It took the predominantly pagan Poland several centuries to become a Christian country, despite the efforts of Mieszko I. The first Christian influence came from the East; Mieszko’s wife was Bohemian, and her country’s religion dated back to the work of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, enlighteners of the Slavs. But Poland’s proximity to Germany made it an object of heavy-handed Teutonic missionary work, and the ecclesiastical alignment shifted west. In order to avoid German domination, the Church in Poland gradually submitted itself directly to the Vatican. The Polish King Boleslav the Brave was especially loyal to Rome, and strove through military conquest to make the Latin Church dominate over the Slavs of both East and West, under the aegis of Catholic Poland.

Vladimir had a rivalry with Poland even in his pagan years, and conquered several Lakh (an east Slavic name for Poles) cities in an area that came to be known as Galicia, or Chervonaya Rus’—Red Russia, also called Ruthenia. (Note that just like Rus’, Poland was not a united country before Christianization. Its territory expanded and contracted, and tribes warred amongst themselves.) Later, Boleslav became Vladimir’s main enemy, and in 1013 Vladimir was forced to foil a conspiracy in Kiev inspired by Boleslav’s cleric, the Kolobzheg Catholic bishop Reibern. Vladimir’s son Svyatopolk (by a pre-Christian wife) was married to Boleslav’s daughter and became the first instrument of betrayal against Orthodoxy, through his own lust for power

After Vladimir’s death, Svyatopolk had Vladimir’s sons by Princess Anna, Boris and Gleb, murdered, so that he could seize power (for this crime he went down in history as “Svyatopolk the Accursed”). But this Russian Cain did not ultimately succeed. He looked to the Poles for help with no regard for their militant Catholic intentions. Boris and Gleb, who knew of the conspiracy but refused to lift their hands

against their brother, are now saints of the Church—holy passion-bearers († ca. 1015, commemorated July 24). By their prayers, the Russian Orthodox Church lived on. Threatened by a militarized Roman Catholic Church almost from the beginning of its existence, it was saved in a mystical way through the meekness and endurance of its early sons.

Power struggles continued in Kiev, and became almost inevitable, prince after prince. But the Orthodox Faith grew despite these tumultuous external circumstances. The Church hierarchy, mostly Greeks, earned the respect of their flock. The Rurik dynasty continued, each ruler having his own human foibles and downfalls, but the Orthodox Faith was held sacred, and the princes understood themselves to be its guardians. So quickly and deeply did Orthodoxy take root among the Rus’ that monasticism—the litmus test of Christianity—developed early among the native peoples of the land, producing numerous saints.

4. More Problems from the Latins

Attempts by the Roman Catholic Church to gain the newly enlightened Slavic lands for itself continued in Kiev. The Russian people seemed to be inoculated against it by the strong, beneficial influence of their hierarchs and monks, but the weak link was always in the elite classes, who were lured by the growing might of the Latin world, and pressured by their Catholic peers.

In the 1070s there was a power struggle among the sons of Grand Prince Yaroslav of Kiev. Izyaslav Yaroslavich turned to Pope Gregory VII for help after being exiled from Kiev by his brothers, and the pope tried to use this opportunity to his own ends. He and his religion then proved to be unnecessary when Izyaslav succeeded without them. In the 1080s Pope Clement III of Rome sent an offer to Metropolitan John II of Kiev to join the Latin Church, but the latter only returned the offer with a letter rebuking the errors of Rome. In 1207, Pope Innocent III sent an epistle to all Russian princes, clergy, and people saying that although they had long been distanced from “their mother’s breast” (that is, the Roman Church) the pope simply could not repress his fatherly feelings and was calling the Russians to himself. The entire Greek Church, he said, had now accepted the authority of the Apostolic See, and how could it be that a part of it (the Russian Church) did not follow?

The pope’s persuasion would have been humorous if it were not so sad and cynical—Constantinople had been sacked during the fourth crusade (1202–1204), its churches desecrated, and its hierarchs and clergy forced to submit to Rome. By referring to Constantinople’s “submission,” the pope’s words sounded more like a threat veiled in an invitation to return to the mother’s breast and father’s embrace. A similar epistle was again sent to the Russian princes by Pope Honorius III in 1227, and Dominican friars were sent to Kiev to discuss it three years later, but they were dismissed unceremoniously by Grand Prince Vladimir Rurikovich. The Eastern Slavs, beside being forewarned by their Greek enlighteners, combined good sense with stubbornness, and none of these attempts succeeded. No less important was the Slavs’ ability to fight

Less fortunate were the Orthodox of the western lands of Rus’, where Latin propaganda was introduced with the aid of Danish, Hungarian and Livonian swords.

The lands bordering western Rus’ were under siege by the Brotherhood of the Sword, the Teutonic Knights. This was an expansion of the Holy Roman Empire, by means of the Germans. In Livonia—what is now Estonia, Latvia, and some territories bordering—even former pagans that had been baptized were so horrified by the violence of these Germanic “brothers” that they threw themselves into the Dvina River to “unbaptize” themselves. But strong fortresses and swords finally prevailed, and the Order of Livonian Knights was formed. The Russian presence in these lands waned

The far western part of southern Russia (reminder: southern Russia would only much later be called the Ukraine)—Galicia—also came under Latin pressure. It had been conquered in the late eleventh century by the Hungarians, who began a fierce persecution of the Orthodox. The Galicians were saved in the late twelfth century by the Russian prince Roman Mstislavich of Volhynia, who annexed Galicia to his Volhynian princedom. At that time, the Roman pope was reaching the height of his power: Constantinople was his captive, and none other than he was bestowing crowns upon European kings. He could not bear to see a strong prince not crowned by him, and made the usual sugarcoated offer to Prince Roman in a way that could be interpreted as: “All these dominions will I give to you if you will bow down to me.” “Does the pope have a sword like mine?” Prince Roman answered as he struck a blow with it for emphasis. However, after Roman’s death, Galicia again fell to the Hungarians. Again came the Latin priests and monks, who exiled the Orthodox clergy, turned the Orthodox churches into Catholic ones, and began to force the population into the Roman Catholic fold. In 1220, the Russian prince Mstislav Udaloi again wrested Galicia from the Hungarians, but this conquest brought no benefit to the Orthodox, since he used his prize as a dowry for his daughter, whom he gave to the Hungarian prince in marriage. After his death in 1228, the Latin Church again began a persecution against the Orthodox, which ended when Prince Roman’s son Daniel took the throne of Kiev in 1239.

5. The First Russians to Become Metropolitans of Kiev

Up to 1051, all the Metropolitans of Kiev had been Greeks, chosen by the Patriarch of Constantinople. When the last one died and a new one was not sent for three years (perhaps due to a war between Prince Yaroslav the Wise and the Greeks), the prince decided in 1051 to chose one himself. His choice, Hilarion, asked the blessing of the Patriarch of Constantinople that same year, and it was granted. Both Hilarion, and later Russian Metropolitan Ephraim, were holy ascetics and men of prayer. Ephraim was also known as a wonderworker, and was later numbered among the saints.

The Metropolitans continued to be consecrated in Constantinople. Then the will of Russian princes began to have more power over the choice of Metropolitans. The Greek hierarchs sent to the Russian lands would often flee to Greece when relationships between Russian princes became too heated. When Metropolitan Michael of Kiev returned to Constantinople during an internecine conflict, Prince Izyaslav chose another Metropolitan from among his own people. Clement, his choice, was of unimpeachable character. Disputes ensued as to whether or not he could be consecrated by a synod of bishops, rather than by the Patriarch. It was suggested that the Constantinople blessing be substituted by Rome’s. This cast a shadow over Clement, who was appointed, but not accepted by those who adhered to the Greek side. Allegiance finally returned to Constantinople, but now the Russian prince’s opinion would be taken more into consideration.

Without looking very closely, it is difficult even to see where, in Church matters, Constantinople ended and Rus’ began. Unlike Rome, Constantinople did not use the Church to enslave and subdue newly Christian peoples, and the fact that most Kievan hierarchs were Greek did not cause the princes of Rus’ to suspect any political maneuvers. In fact, because the Russian princes were so often vying with each other in internecine wars, a politically aloof Greek Metropolitan was a stabilizing factor in society. But the time was coming for Church leaders to come forth from among the Russian people—men who could win over die-hard pagans in outlying areas. Another reminder: “outlying areas” at that time were Rostov, Moscow, Suzdal, Ryazan, and places further north—areas we now call Central Russia. Rus’ was, for a very long time, Novgorod, Kiev, and Galicia-Volhynia

We will not go into great detail about the successive Russian princes, and will only say that Russian rule took its ideal from the Byzantine Empire, but it took centuries to grow out of the childhood of sibling rivalry. Despite the piety some princes showed in their own princedoms, they were far from merciful to the Christian princes and subjects of others. A greater influence for good came from the monastics. Much was needed to uproot the strong pagan customs and habits among the masses. But it has to be noted that this work was primarily wrought through education, and the examples of holy men and women.

6. Monasticism

Monasteries, built by St. Vladimir and his successors, appeared in Kievan and Novgorodian Rus’ almost from the beginning of their Christianization. But, as St. Nestor the Chronicler wrote, these were “not like the monasteries built by tears, fasting, and vigils.” That kind of monastery was the Kiev Caves Lavra, founded by Sts. Anthony and Theodosius—considered the fathers of Russian monasticism

The Sevsk Icon of the Theotokos, also depicting Sts. Anthony (right) and Theodosius. Painted in the 11th century by St. Alypius the Iconographer

St. Anthony (†1073, commemorated July 10) was born in the western city of Lubech. He received his monastic tonsure on Mt. Athos, where he had gone to satisfy his longing for the ascetic life. His abbot on Mt. Athos foresaw what benefit Anthony would bring to his own people and sent him back with the words: “Go again to Rus’, and may the blessing of the Holy Mountain be with you, for from you are destined to come many monastics.” But when Anthony returned to his homeland he could not find anything like Mt. Athos in the existing monasteries, so he settled in a cave near the city of Kiev and continued his ascetic life. This was in 1051. A priest, Nikon, joined him in his ascetic labors, and tonsured all those whom Anthony accepted as monks. One of these was St. Theodosius, from Kursk (†1074, commemorated May 3). St. Theodosius would later become the abbot of the forming Kiev Caves monastery, and build it. The brotherhood grew to 100 under the abbacy of St. Theodosius.

The Kiev Caves monastery gradually became the light to all other Russian monasteries, and a great influence for good to the entire population. New monasteries opened with the inspiration to be like it, and lay people were drawn to these monasteries like bees to honey. Although the monasteries were eventually bestowed with lands and serfs, in most cases these properties were used to benefit the local population, and thus the moral authority of Russian Orthodox monks only grew

7. The Mongol Invasions and the Fall of Kiev

It can be said that Kiev was first taken from the rest of Rus’ by the invasion of the Mongol Tatars, known as the Golden Horde, between 1237 and 1240. This invasion did not spare other Russian principalities, but Kiev was utterly razed, as was Peryaslavl, Chernigov, and cities in Volhynia and Galicia. The Desyatina Church and the St. Sophia Cathedral, both built by St. Vladimir, were destroyed. The Kiev Caves monastery was razed, and the monks fled. The Mother of All Russian Cites was reduced to two hundred homes.

The significance of this historical event cannot be underestimated in Russian-Ukrainian history. The southern lands of Rus’ were turned into deserts by this unanticipated whirlwind from the Far East, while the northern areas, especially along the River Volga, became the population’s refuge. Northern Rus’ was also subject to incursions, but its princes managed to find a way to live under the Mongol Yoke without having to capitulate entirely. Great Kiev, however, was gone, and the center of Church life began its migration to Vladimir, near Suzdal, and later to Moscow.

Kievan Rus’ in about 1240, the time of the Mongol Tatar invasion.

    

In Galicia, the Mongol Yoke meant trouble for the struggle between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Northern Russia had the wise and valorous St. Alexander Nevsky (†1263, commemorated November 23) to foil the plans of Pope Innocent IV, who used the Swedes to attack the Russians with the ambition of spreading Latinism to the Finnish tribes. Galicia-Volhynia, however, had the weary Prince Daniel Romanovich. Western Rus’ had an experience similar to the Byzantine Empire’s when it had turned to Rome for help against the Moslems. Daniel sent a message to the pope promising to unite with the Roman Church in exchange for an army against the Mongols. The pope sent one charter after another to Galich, allowing the Russians to keep the Greek Rite, promising to send preachers and bishops, granting Daniel the right to confiscate the properties of all princes who refused to join the Latin Church, and bestowing a crown on Daniel. The only promise Innocent did not keep was to send a crusade against the Mongols. No one in Europe was interested. Daniel cut off ties with Rome, and Orthodoxy remained the ruling Faith—until 1340, when the Poles took over Galicia, and the Lithuanians took over Volhynia. The promise of “all these dominions” had again shown itself to be a cruel joke.

Incidentally, Galicia-Volhynia, Kiev, and other regions now called the Ukraine were ultimately saved from the Mongol-Tatars through the exploits and sacrifices of such Russian leaders as St. Dimitry Donskoy in the battle of Kulikovo (1380), and through other decisive battles undertaken by the Russians of the north—particularly those of Muscovy. Help from the Latins did not figure into these victories in the least—on the contrary, Roman Catholic countries such as Poland saw the Mongol Yoke as a good opportunity to spread Catholic influence into Russia.

8. The Inquisition

Lithuania was, at this time, somewhere between paganism and Orthodoxy, and viewed the violence of the Prussian and Livonian Orders with contempt. But, in Galicia, the Polish Catholics began seizing churches from the Orthodox, and establishing bishoprics. Then, in 1381, with the blessing of the Roman pope, Dominican friars arrived to conduct an inquisition.

The superficial nature of the Lithuanian princes’ acceptance of Christianity made them easily turn to the Catholics when it was politically advantageous. The Lithuanian prince Yagelle married a Polish princess and in 1386 received Catholicism in Poland, then demanded that it be introduced in Lithuania. The Poles first began forcing the pagans to be baptized Catholic, and then directed their fervor against the Orthodox, beginning with the ruling class. All who refused were executed. This spread to the surrounding Russian areas, all the way to Kiev, which after its destruction had been taken over by Poland-Lithuania. For the most part, the Lithuanians remained tolerant of Orthodoxy, but the official religion of Vilnius and Kiev was now Catholicism, and a Catholic episcopate was established in these cities. In 1413 the Polish Sjem (Council) decreed that only those Russians who converted to Catholicism would retain their titles. Many did convert, purely for material gain, but when the Orthodox Prince Svidrigailo succeeded the Lithuanian Prince Vitovt, there was brief triumph of Orthodoxy in the land (1430–1432), which ended when Sigismund was sent from Poland to ascend the throne. Orthodoxy was again overthrown by force, and its churches destroyed. Finally, the Union of Florence¹² gave the Catholic Church a new plan for ending what promised to be an endless, violent seesaw from Eastern to Western Christianity and back again.

Meanwhile, the Orthodox Church in Rus’ was nearly in a shambles due to the Mongol Yoke. The Patriarch of Constantinople sent Cyril II as Metropolitan to Kiev, when the former Metropolitan disappeared during the city’s sacking. He arrived at the ruins, and was forced to move his cathedra to another city, which became Vladimir in the north. Thus did Kiev lose its place as first among Russian cities physically—but not spiritually. For centuries after, until the establishment of the Russian Patriarchate under the Moscow princes, the first hierarch of the Russian Church was always titled, “Metropolitan of Kiev and all the Russias,” even when he was physically situated elsewhere.

9. The Division of the Russian Church into the Moscow and Kiev Metropolitanates

By the mid-fifteenth century, Orthodoxy had become the main religion in Muscovy, protected by a strong government, and able to resist all influence from Rome

This was not the case in the western regions, where the Orthodox were the persecuted subjects of a Catholic government. Now, the center of Russian Orthodox gravity was Moscow, and those who, at great cost, retained their Orthodoxy in Poland and Lithuania, felt the pull. Lithuania had a large Russian Orthodox population, including members of the nobility, but when it united with Poland, these Orthodox people increasingly became an inconvenience to their rulers. Prince Vitovt set up a Lithuanian Metropolitanate in Kiev with the aim of gathering his Orthodox subjects into a fold that could be separated from powerful Moscow. This placed the Orthodox Church within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in a weak, unprotected position.

Moscow had decisively rejected the Union of Florence and imprisoned its harbinger to Russia, Metropolitan Isidore. (This, incidentally, was a strong factor in the establishment of Russian autocephaly.) But Isidore was allowed to escape, and died in 1463 as the Roman Catholic dean of the college of cardinals. His disciple, Gregory, attempted to introduce the Union into Lithuania. He did not succeed, and ten years later himself even joined the Orthodox. As Orthodoxy was still strong in Lithuania, the Lithuanian princes could not confront it directly and coerce it entirely into the ecclesiastical union that they hoped would follow the political union with Poland. Therefore they set about to weaken it, to bleed and starve it.

This was achieved by again withdrawing all titles and lands from those nobles who would not convert to Catholicism, so that Orthodoxy would more and more be looked upon as the religion of the lower classes. The Polish and Lithuanian kings were also conferred the privilege of “patronage” over monastery and church property, to appoint bishops and clergy, and even to run the monasteries on the lands given to them through opportunists who were on the king’s payroll. This had the effect of undermining the authority of the Orthodox Church by depriving it of worthy leaders.

The faithful of the Kiev Metropolitanate realized the danger to their existence and tried to alleviate it by growing closer to the Patriarch of Constantinople. But this closeness could not change the fact that Kiev Metropolitans had to be approved by a Catholic king and, just as in Moscow, the Metropolitan of Kiev was chosen by a synod of bishops. As for the actual city of Kiev, none of the Metropolitans even visited it. The only one who tried was Macarius I in 1497, but he was killed by the Tatars in the city of Mozyr.

So, one can see what a difficult time this was for the people who would much later be called Ukrainians.

10. Brotherhoods

Bishop Gideon Balaban of Lvov, defender of Orthodoxy from the Polish Catholics

As their leadership was undermined, and as the “divide and conquer” strategy was used against their Church, the Orthodox in Poland and Lithuania began to form brotherhoods as a counter-force. The remaining Orthodox landowners (who still retained the legal power of patronage) and city brotherhoods took a major role in protecting Orthodox churches and affairs. The Lvov Dormition Brotherhood, dating back to midfifteenth century, was the oldest brotherhood, and served as the example to others. These Orthodox brotherhoods worked to stem state-supported Roman Catholic prosyletism, opening Orthodox schools and publishing Orthodox books in Cyrillic. For obvious reasons, they were a thorn in the side of Latin-leaning Orthodox bishops, who often sought to eliminate them. The Polish king was happy to oblige these bishops, because this would ultimately give him more direct authority over his Orthodox subjects. The brotherhood schools in Lvov, however, found a supporter in its local bishop, Gideon Balaban (1530–1607), who had at one time participated in negotiations with Catholics but then took a strong stance against union with them, to which he held until his death.

The brotherhoods continued to thrive under conditions that ranged from less than favorable to outright hostile. And, as we shall see, by the providence of God they were to receive help from some unexpected sources.

In 1492, the successor to Prince Kasimir of Poland, Alexander, took control of the western Russian territories that were under Polish rule.

With his approval, Joseph Bolgarinovich became the Kiev Metropolitan. Joseph was a strong supporter of the Florence Union, and with his help Alexander initiated new outright persecutions of the Orthodox. Even Alexander’s wife, Elena, who was Orthodox and had been promised in writing in her marriage agreement that she could continue confessing Orthodoxy, was deprived of her Orthodox father-confessor and house church. As Elena was the daughter of the Moscow Grand Prince John III, this Catholic fanaticism cost Lithuania greatly. Moscow began a war with Lithuania, which lost several ancient principalities presided over by Orthodox princes, who annexed these lands to Moscow. In 1514, under Alexander’s successor Sigismund I, the western Russian city of Smolensk also broke away from Lithuania. Sigismund changed his policy to overt tolerance of Orthodoxy, but made greater use of his power to appoint clergy, and mixed unworthy hierarchs and clergy into key clerical positions, thus humiliating and weakening the Orthodox leadership.

In Galicia, which was directly under the Polish king, things were worse. The Orthodox diocese of Galicia was annulled, and all Church affairs and properties were presided over by a vicar of the Kiev Metropolitan. (Previously, the Metropolitan had been titled, “Of Kiev and Galich.”) In 1509, the Polish king granted the Catholic Archbishop of Lvov power to choose this vicar. But the Orthodox Galicians opposed this measure and elected their own vicar, and a thirty-year bribery war ensued between the Orthodox and Catholics, ending with the appointment of Macarius Tuchansky in 1539 as bishop of the reinstated Galicia diocese.

Recall now that the Metropolitan of Kiev was physically based in Vilnius. Therefore, whatever was happening politically in Lithuania affected all the Orthodox in the western lands that were under Poland. The ruling Metropolitan at this time, Joseph Soltan, elected under Sigismund I, was a well respected hierarch, who was able to finally restore the vicariate in Galicia to the Kiev Metropolitanate. But the rights won by the Orthodox in these lands were now under a new threat.

Religious freedom for all confessions had taken a brief turn for the better with the introduction of Protestantism in Lithuania through Sigismund’s successor, Sigismund August II. But to fight Protestantism in Poland, the Catholics increased their own vigilance, which could not but aim another blow against Orthodoxy, especially since through the initiative of such noblemen as Prince Ostrogsky, the Orthodox and Protestants formed an alliance to defend themselves from the Catholics. These hard times for the Church were preceded by the Union of Lublin,¹⁵ and the arrival of Jesuits in Poland and Lithuania. Politically, Lithuania and Poland were now united into one state, which facilitated the infiltration of Polish Catholics into previously Orthodox aristocratic properties, positions of authority, and seats in the Sejm. Their decisions and directives were one-sided against the local people and their Orthodox faith. This culminated after the death of Sigismund II, who had no heirs. Polish rulers came into power, determined to force religious unification in the steps of political unification.

The Catholic measures against the rapid spread of Protestantism in Poland and Lithuania worked in Poland, but fared less successfully in Lithuania. The Jesuits, who started gaining acceptance by doing charity work, carried out the mission. But once Protestantism was sufficiently weakened in Poland, the Catholics turned their zeal against the remaining Orthodox.

The Jesuit Order is a subject all to itself, but in brief strokes we will say that the Jesuits take a vow of unquestioning submission to the Pope, and education and erudition have always been their main instruments among the masses. A large, influential school, encompassing everything from elementary school to college, was established in Vilnius. Having nothing that could compete with it, the Orthodox elite class also sent their children to study there. By 1586 the school had seven hundred students and over fifty teachers. The school demanded unquestioning submission to the Jesuit teachers, and within its walls a generation of apostates from Orthodoxy was soon brought up. A special school was also opened in Rome that carefully studied the traditions and specifics of the Eastern European Orthodox cultures, to prepare instructors and missionaries for work among the Orthodox

The Unia was seen as a convenient and tactful step in this direction. The Unia, or uniatism, was a policy developed by Rome in order to bring Orthodox and other non-Roman Catholic believers under the authority of the Pope. These believers were to be allowed to retain their unique rituals and customs, and even certain aspects of their theology, as long as they submitted to papal authority. Uniate churches, also called “Greek Catholic” or “Byzantine-Rite Catholic” churches, exist up to today in numerous parts of the world.¹⁶

As the Orthodox Church was being undermined in Poland-Lithuania under Roman Catholic rule, its believers were looked down upon by Latin clerics who wanted them to accept the Unia. Here is the essence of what the famous Polish Jesuit orator Peter Skarga wrote about the Orthodox in his book On the Union of the Churches (1577):

1. The married life of the priests, in taking care only for the worldly, has made them crude and turned them into slaves;

2. The Greeks left the Slavs with the Slavonic language when they converted them to Christianity in order to leave them in ignorance, because it is only possible to advance in learning through Latin and Greek, and Slavonic can never be used in schools where theology is taught. Not so for the Catholics, for Latin is used everywhere in their schools. Even the Christians of India can converse with Christians in Poland;

3. The laity’s intervention into religious affairs, and the humiliation of the clergy. The Unia must do away with all this evil; all the Orthodox need to do is to accept the teaching of the Roman Church, and the supremacy of the Pope, but they can keep their old rites.

The Unia began to appeal to the upper crust of Orthodox society in Poland-Lithuania. The privileged position of the Catholics and their studied disdain for the “ignorant slaves” of grassroots Orthodoxy broke down the resistance of this upper class with the lure of becoming just like the Polish aristocracy. Russian monasticism—with its long beards, manual labor, and down-to-earth approach—had not been transformed into the Jesuit image of Catholicism—with its clockwork order and clean-shaven faces—and was completely foreign to the new liberal Protestantism. In short, the upper class Orthodox were suffering from an inferiority complex that could only be remedied, they thought, by casting off the bone of contention—traditional Orthodoxy. Catholic bishops participated in the Senate, while the Orthodox hierarchs were in submission to a Patriarch now under the Turkish yoke and answerable to a sultan. The Polish king carefully cultivated this rift by appointing Orthodox bishops who would broaden it even further. The bishops were mostly from the aristocracy, and had no problem with handing over the Orthodox monasteries in their sees to the Catholic Church. They were often simply careerists, and no attention was paid to the fact of their married life, which would have normally excluded them from a bishopric in the Orthodox Church. It was a dismal situation for the Orthodox Church in Galicia and Volhynia, yet those very people whom the Jesuits disdained—the peasants, the working classes, and the outcast Orthodox landowners—were the ones who preserved Orthodoxy.

Prince Constantine Ostrogsky.

Here is an interesting turn of providence. Prince Andrei Kurbsky was a fugitive from Tsar Ivan the Terrible. He was a friend and patron of St. Cornelius, the abbot of the Pskov Caves Monastery, who had died a martyr’s death at the hands of the enraged Tsar, who thought the saint was harboring the disfavored Kurbsky. But Kurbsky had fled to Lithuania, and seeing the Orthodox in dire straights, used his own finances to fight against Catholic and Protestant propaganda. He fervently began publishing books on Orthodox apologetics, and compelled his relatives to help him. Another laborer in the field of Orthodox enlightenment in these western lands was Prince Constantine Ostrogsky, who opened a school on his own property, along with a printing press. This printing press even sent Orthodox service books to Russia. Both Ostrogsky and Kurbsky corresponded with and supported the Orthodox brotherhoods in Galicia. Ostrogsky also took upon himself the herculean task of publishing what is now known as the Ostrog Bible (1581), the first complete printed edition of the Bible in the Church Slavonic language.

Unfortunately, however, this princely support soon waned, and the aristocracy was Polonized. The succeeding generation later even warred against Orthodoxy, as did both Kurbsky’s son Dmitry and Ostrogsky’s son Janush. It was left to the people, the communities, brotherhoods and their schools, to carry on this publishing work. In the late fourteenth century, something totally unexpected by the strictly hierarchical Catholic Church had taken place: the Eastern Patriarchs had blessed the brotherhoods to “police” those who departed from Orthodox teaching, including the Orthodox bishops. In 1586, Patriarch Joachim V of Antioch travelled through Russia at the behest of Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople. It will be recalled that the believers of the Kiev Metropolitanate had turned to the Patriarchate of Constantinople for help during this period of extreme difficulties. When Patriarch Joachim reached Lvov¹⁷ and saw how dire the situation had become, he, acting on behalf of Patriarch Jeremiah, gave a charter to the ancient Lvov Orthodox Brotherhood to elect its own church wardens, conduct Church affairs, and excommunicate those who worked against the teachings of the Orthodox Church. The charter acknowledged the Lvov Brotherhood as the authority over other brotherhoods. It had its own hospital, printing press, and school, and its influence even gave trouble to the Unia-inclined bishops. In 1589 Patriarch Jeremiah visited Lvov himself, and gave his approval to the brotherhoods.

By the time Patriarch Jeremiah arrived in Lvov, the Orthodox hierarchy was in deep Latin captivity, and its authority was totally undermined. The Metropolitan of Kiev had been married twice. The bishops of Peremysl and Pinsk were living with their wives. The bishops lived like the aristocrats they were, in castles, surrounded by servants, eating delicacies, defended by cannons (the iron kind). They fought amongst themselves and started wars. They made money from their properties, but none of it went to the diocese. On the contrary, their armed attacks against their neighbors, some ending in murder, left no doubt that no help in Church affairs could be expected from them. Therefore, the Patriarch gave even more power to the Lvov Brotherhood, including the power to dismiss priests. He also encouraged the formation of new brotherhoods. The Patriarch removed Metropolitan Onuphrius of Kiev, but he did not have much to work with in appointing a replacement. Considering how displeased all the bishops were with his support of the brotherhoods, and the Jesuits’ vigilance in using this displeasure to their own advantage, Jeremiah’s departure was followed by heated discussions among the bishops against Constantinople and in favor of the Unia with Rome.

The new Metropolitan, Michael Rogoza, was Orthodox, but weak. He was no match for the other bishops, who were sent to Rome to accept the Unia. They presented a document to him with conditions for acceptance: the protection of Orthodox dogmas and rites, and protection against the brotherhoods. Metropolitan Michael signed it. But the two bishops pushing for the Unia acted entirely without his approval, and made so many concessions to the Latins that the Metropolitan was aghast. Rumors flew around the laity that they had been betrayed, and the Metropolitan completely lost his authority in their eyes. The brotherhoods called for action.

Confusion arose among the bishops, each pointing a finger at the other, and the two most determined in favor of the Unia—bishops Cyril Terletsky and Hypatius Potei—made haste to Rome, there to submit to the Pope. They accepted the filioque, indulgences, purgatory, and papal supremacy. Only the Orthodox rites were left intact. Pope Clement VIII was overjoyed, and created a special medal for the emissaries, reading, “Ruthenis receptis” (the Russians in Galicia were called by the Western world “Ruthenians”). At home, however, people reacted very differently to the agreement. The brotherhoods and the priests called Terletsky and Potei traitors. Constantine Ostrogsky published a work entitled “St. Cyril of Jerusalem on the Antichrist”—showing how the Roman Pope fit the description. He called upon the nobles and lower classes to revolt. Even many of the Catholics in Galicia could feel in their bones that nothing good would come of this. How could anything good come of deception?¹⁸

11. St. Job of Pochaev

St. Job of Pochaev. Eighteenth-century icon

One great light for the Orthodox during these troubled times was St. Job of Pochaev (commemorated May 6, August 28, and October 28). Born Ivan Zhelezo in Galicia in about 1551, he left home at the age of ten for the Monastery of the Transfiguration at Ugornits, where he received the tonsure at the age of twelve. At the age of thirty-one he was ordained to the priesthood. At the repeated requests of Constantine Ostrogsky, St. Job was transferred to the Monastery of the Holy Cross at Dubensk, one of Ostrogsky’s properties. He served as the superior of that monastery for the next twenty years, and made ample use of Ostrogsky’s printing facilities to defend Orthodoxy against the teachings of Protestants that were just beginning to spread and, of course, against the Latin innovations. Under his guidance, many of the teachings of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church were translated, and they contributed mightily to his labors in educating the Orthodox population and confirming them in their Faith. St. Job’s growing popularity, as well as the anger of the Roman Catholics, compelled him in 1604 to move to the Pochaev Monastery of the Dormition of the Mother of God, located in a more remote area. His severe monastic struggles and holy life inspired the brethren of Pochaev, and they made him their superior. He expanded the size of the monastery greatly and continued his educational activity, acquiring a printing press for the monastery for this purpose. He reposed in 1651, at the age of one hundred.

The Pochaev Lavra of the Dormition of the Mother of God, as it looks today.

    

12. The Council of Brest

In 1596, a council was called in the city of Brest-Litovsk, located in what is now Belarus. It was a large council, with two patriarchal exarchs present—Nicephorus from Constantinople and Cyril Lukaris from Alexandria. It was divided into two camps: the Orthodox and the Uniate. The Orthodox had to meet in a private home, because BrestLitovsk was in the diocese where Potei ruled, and he had ordered all the churches locked against them. Nicephorus invited the Uniate Metropolitan and four other bishops three different times to the Orthodox council, and when they did not appear, the exarch defrocked them and rejected the Unia. The Unia council likewise anathematized the Orthodox council and triumphantly signed the act of Unia, which had been already ratified by the Polish king. They pronounced a thunderous rebuke against all the Orthodox—saying that their bishops were in disobedience and had betrayed their Church, that the Greek exarchs were spies for the Turkish sultan, and that all the Orthodox faithful were criminals against their ecclesiastical authorities and the will of their king. Thus, this “Union of Brest,” as it is called, was anything but a union, and the consequences of the debacle would be felt through the ages, even to our own day, leaving a trail of violence and injustice.

Just as the Jews prevailed upon Pilate to crucify Christ, so did the Uniates call for punishment, and outright persecutions against the Orthodox were not slow to come. Nicephorus was imprisoned in Malbork Castle and starved to death, while Cyril Lukaris fled. Uniate bishops removed all Orthodox priests from their parishes and appointed Uniates. Constantine Ostrogsky was pursued by tax collectors. The brotherhoods were declared terrorists and their activities scrutinized. Churches were seized from the Orthodox, and their priests were beaten and imprisoned. The St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev was taken over by Uniates. Only the Kiev Caves Lavra was able to withstand the aggression, through the prayers of its saints. From top to bottom, throughout society, Uniates were given special preferences over the Orthodox. The non-Orthodox landowners deprived their Orthodox peasants of their churches and clergy, either giving Church property to the Uniates or turning it over to local Jews. In the latter case, the Orthodox were forced to pay a fee every time they used the churches to the Jewish owners, who were given leave to humiliate the faithful and blaspheme against their religion with impunity.

Hypatius Potei during his time as the Uniate Metropolitan of Kiev. Seventeenth-century portrait

Hypatius Potei succeeded Rogoza as Metropolitan of Kiev, and the persecutions increased. More churches were seized, while the clergy and then the brotherhoods were attacked. The pressure led to an uprising and an attempt on Potei’s life, which only increased the pressure against the Orthodox.

Here is one illustration, taken from Metropolitan Makary (Bulgakov’s) History of the Russian Church, showing what the clergy and faithful who opposed the Unia had to endure. Just three months after the signing of the Brest Union, Archimandrite Sophronius of the Holy Trinity Monastery in Vilnius appeared before the local magistrate and resigned his position as abbot of the monastery:

I have had to endure too much from the local people for commemorating the [Uniate] Metropolitan. I had done this against my own conscience and convictions, but from now on I will not supplicate God’s mercy for the Metropolitan and do not want to be superior of the monastery, wishing to be a simple monk somewhere and preserve my conscience, rather than pray for the current Metropolitan.¹⁹

Sophronius soon reneged on this resignation, remained abbot, but refused to commemorate the Metropolitan. The Holy Trinity Brotherhood became the only congregation in Vilnius to actively oppose the Unia, and here is what happened to them.

The brotherhood lost its permission to build its church, so they began construction on the other side of the street, on the property of two Orthodox sisters from Smolensk, with the surname Volevich; and therefore the magistrate could not legally stop them. The church was consecrated in 1598, and all the Orthodox people of Vilnius planned to attend the Paschal services there, as they had no other church. Metropolitan Makary writes:

This is the time that the enemies of Orthodoxy chose to mete out the greatest insult to them. On the eve of Great Saturday, a crowd of fifty students from the Jesuit academy, led by the Catholic priest Geliashivech, came to the yard where the monastery school and church were located. First they entered the school (collegium)…²⁰

In the school they began a dispute with the teachers.

From the school they proceeded to the church, where the doors were already locked, and entered the altar with extreme indecorousness and threw the cross and Gospels from the altar; from there they left through the royal doors and entered the center of the church where the epitaphion²¹ stood, grabbed it and threw it from side to side; and when the church attendants, who were cleaning the church for the feast, tried to dissuade the rabble, they were cursed at and beaten. On the very feast of Christ’s Resurrection, a crowd of students again appeared in the church and, stepping around the epitaphion, tried again to throw it over, mocked the church ceremonies, shoved the worshippers, poked the women with hat pins, and pushed towards the altar, not allowing anyone to receive Holy Communion, so that Priest Gerasim was barely able to get them to move at least a little to the side. Even more brazenness and audaciousness did the riotous Jesuit pupils allow themselves the same day at the evening services in the brotherhood church, where this time they came armed. They grouped together around the church: some by the church doors, others in the narthex, others in the center of the church, and a fourth group on the kliros—pushing and shoving people everywhere and piercing them with hat pins, swiping the women on their lips and faces with their fingers and hands, and uttering shameless words.²²

The students proceeded to beat the clergy, answering pleas for order with blows to the face. They ran to the school to beat those who crossed their path, then went out to the street, where they were joined by several hundred more Jesuit students and citizens belonging to the Latin faith. This entire throng, armed with rifles, bows and arrows, stones, and axes began storming the monastery collegium and monks’ quarters, where one of the Smolensk noblewomen was staying. The students then carried out a pogrom. They did the same thing the next day at the Liturgy, wreaking havoc on the school and the cemetery, and beating all those who came to the services.

The Jesuits did all this with the aim of provoking the Orthodox to a fight, so that measures could be taken against them. But however painful it was, the Orthodox people endured it and did not fight.²³

Despite all their efforts and those of the Jesuits, the Uniates never gained the acceptance they had hoped for. The Orthodox people held them in contempt, and the nobles were ashamed of them, in many cases skipping right over them into the Latin Church. The Uniates were neither fish nor fowl, and everyone could see it. Rather than rising in the estimation of the Polish government, the Uniates found themselves in greater contempt, and never did receive the coveted senate seats.

This was because neither Rome nor the Polish authorities ever really intended the Unia to be an end in itself, but only a step in the direction of complete Latinization. Even Metropolitan Hypatius Potei saw things the same way—at least that was how it looked to the more Orthodoxleaning Uniate clergy. He had accepted so much of the Roman Catholic dogma that any remaining Orthodox rites had lost all meaning. The married clergy clung to these vestiges of Orthodox practice, while the Metropolitan strove to reform monasticism according to the Latin model. He and his successor worked tirelessly to bring the Uniates closer to Latin Catholicism. A special order called the Basilian Order was created, and the Uniate clergy and monastics were made subject to it, so that even the Eastern rite began to melt away in Uniate monasteries.

Again, let us look at the broader geographical-historical picture of that time period. Moscow was reeling from the “Time of Troubles,”²⁴ and fighting off military campaigns directed against it by the Poles and Lithuanians. The retreating Western armies were taking out their frustrations on their Orthodox subjects.

Southern Russia, from the area east of the Dniepr River up to Galicia, Lithuania, and what is now Belarus, was called Little Russia. While we are speaking of Little Russia, we will pause to explain where the term “Little Russia” came from. Μικρὰ Ῥωσσία was the name used first by Greek bishops for those Russians living in greater Lithuania, and then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. From the Polish perspective, Lvov (Galicia), Vilnius, and cities in present-day Belarus were “theirs” (Polish), while Kiev and the steppes beyond were called the okraina (Ukraine), which means outlying territories, or borderlands. Ethnically, as the Greeks and, in fact, as the Little Russians themselves understood it, the people of Little Russia and Greater Russia were one and the same, of the same religion, with only some differences in local color.

The Orthodox Little Russian peasants and tradesman were in strict subjection to the Polish-Lithuanian princes; however, rising from the steppes was a free, warrior class—the Cossacks.

While the Orthodox in Galicia were in captivity, the Little Russians enjoyed more freedom. It was becoming so intolerable for the Galician and Volhynian Orthodox that even some Catholics and Protestants began to stand up for them.

One Volhynian deputy, the zealously Orthodox Lavrenty Drevinsky, spoke to the Sejm in 1620:

In the large cities the churches are sealed, church property is stolen, there are no monks in the monasteries, and they are being used as cattle barns. Children are dying without baptism; the dead are taken out of the city without funerals, like fallen beasts; husbands and wives are living together without the blessing; people die without Communion. This is how it is in Mogilev, Orsha, and Minsk. In Lvov a non-Uniate cannot be a member of a guild; it is not possible to openly visit the sick with the Holy Gifts. In Vilnius they have to carry the bodies of the Orthodox deceased through the gates by which refuse is removed.²⁵

Support also came from Mt. Athos in the form of letters exposing the error of the Latins. But the greatest support to the Orthodox in Little Russia, and the greatest threat to those who persecuted them, came from the Cossacks. The Cossacks defended them, not with the pen, but with the sword.

The Orthodox response to Latinization in Little Russia and Volhynia actually produced a flowering of Orthodox enlightenment in these places. Instead of giving in and dying out, the brotherhoods multiplied. The Cossack leaders along with Orthodox noblemen provided the funds to open schools, and new monasteries opened to replace the confiscated ones. There were always more Orthodox monastics than Uniate ones—the Orthodox monasteries usually had eighty to two hundred monks, while the Uniate monasteries were often empty. Pillars of Orthodox monasticism opened and flourished: in addition to the Pochaev Monastery in Volhynia, the Holy Spirit Monastery in Vilnius, and the Brotherhood (Bratsky) Monastery in Kiev, as well as the Kiev Caves. More printing presses were running, and Orthodox theologians were called from Greece and Mt. Athos to raise the level of knowledge of the Orthodox Faith. Meanwhile, the Uniate bishops, who often had dubious pasts, received almost no support—either from the Latinized nobility, or, less so, from the brotherhoods.

Lavrenty Drevinsky spoke about this also at the Warsaw Sejm in 1620:

If certain of our clergy had not apostatized from their lawful hierarchy [that is, the Constantinople Patriarch], if those who had left us [the Uniates] had not fought against us, then such learning, such schools, such worthy and learned people would not have appeared among the Russian people and the study in our churches would have remained, as before, covered by the dust of carelessness.²⁶

Metropolitan Makary (Bulgakov) in his History further comments that “in general, the situation of the Unia in the Western Russian lands was still very unstable and unreliable, because it was both introduced and supported by force alone. The Orthodox were at enmity with it; the larger part of the Latins, both clergy and lay, did not sympathize with it; and even the Uniates themselves did not like it—at least the lower clergy and people, who accepted it and upheld it, not at all due to conviction, but rather against their will. The Unia’s only support came from the zealot King Sigismund III, and without his continual support the Unia would have inevitably fallen.”²⁷

Nevertheless, without the king’s permission there could be no freely acting Orthodox hierarchy.

13. Help Comes from the Eastern Patriarchs

The dearth of Orthodox bishops and clergy caused the Patriarch of Constantinople to send Patriarch Theophanes of Jerusalem who, at the request of the faithful, restored the Orthodox hierarchy. Theophanes, together with a Bulgarian bishop and one other bishop, consecrated worthy hierarchs secretly in Kiev. The Polish government did not recognize these bishops; those other than the Kiev Metropolitan Job (who locked himself in his quarters in Kiev) could not even enter their own dioceses for fear of arrest, and lived under the physical protection of Cossacks in Kiev or in various monasteries.

Again, the Orthodox responded with writings and apologetics, forcefully showing that the appointed Orthodox bishops were lawful, and explaining the error of the Unia. The Cossacks, who were needed to fight the Turks, announced that they would do nothing until order was restored to the Orthodox Church. This caused the senate to soften toward the faithful, but this détente did not last long. It ended abruptly with the murder of the Uniate Bishop Joasaphat Kuntsevich in 1623.

14. Joasaphat Kuntsevich

Joasaphat Kuntsevich, depicted as a saint by the Roman Catholics

Kuntsevich, the son of a cobbler, was a fanatical Uniate whose persecution of the Orthodox cried out to heaven for its cruelty. His actions are historically reflected in a letter to him from the Lithuanian Prince Sapega, to whom Kuntsevich had turned for protection against the angry masses:

I admit, that I, too, was concerned about the cause of the Unia and that it would be imprudent to abandon it. But it had never occurred to me that Your Eminence would implement it using such violent measures…. You say that you are “free to drown the infidels [i.e., the Orthodox who rejected the Unia], to chop their heads off,” etc. Not so! The Lord’s commandment expresses a strict prohibition to all, which concerns you also. When you violated human consciences, closed churches so that people should perish like infidels without divine services, without Christian rites and sacraments; when you abused the King’s favors and privileges—you managed without us. But when there is a need to suppress seditions caused by your excesses you want us to cover up for you…. As to the dangers that threaten your life, one may say that everyone is the cause of his own misfortune. Stop making trouble, do not subject us to the general hatred of the people and you yourself to obvious danger and general criticism…. Everywhere one hears people grumbling that you do not have any worthy priests, but only blind ones…. Your ignorant priests are the bane of the people…. But tell me, Your Eminence, whom did you win over, whom did you attract through your severity?… It will turn out that in Polotsk itself you have lost even those who, until now, were obedient to you. You have turned sheep into goats, you have plunged the state into danger, and maybe all of us Catholics—into ruin…. It has been rumored that they (the Orthodox) would rather be under the infidel Turk than endure such violence…. You yourself are the cause of their rebellion. Instead of joy, your notorious Unia has brought us only troubles and discords and has become so loathsome that we would rather be without it!²⁸

The people became so enraged against Kuntsevich that on May 22, 1620, they gathered near the Holy Trinity Monastery to speak out. But here they met their death: “These people suffered a terrible fate: an armed crowed of Uniates surrounded the monastery and set it on fire. As the fire was raging and destroying the monastery and burning alive everyone within its walls, Joasaphat Kuntsevich was performing on a nearby hill a thanksgiving service accompanied by the cries of the victims of the fire….”²⁹

In 1623 Kuntsevich was killed by the people of Vitebsk. Although he had instigated violent acts against many Orthodox, he himself was canonized as a “martyr” by Pope Pius IV in 1867. Various legends were dreamed up by the Catholics about his “miracles.” In 1995, in anticipation of the fourth centenary of the “Union of Brest,” Pope John Paul II praised him as an “an illustrious victim .… whose martyrdom merited the unfading crown of eternal glory.”³⁰

After Kuntsevich’s death, persecutions against the Orthodox became so ubiquitous and intolerable that Metropolitan Job of Kiev in 1625 applied to Tsar Michael of Moscow to receive Little Russia as part of Russia. He was refused at the time, since Russia, only recently freed from Polish incursions, did not want to go to war with Poland over this issue. However, conditions continued to deteriorate. Previous concessions that had been made to the Orthodox by the Polish authorities were reversed; Orthodox churches had no legal recourse when priests were attacked and property stolen.

This provoked the Cossacks, who began raids against the Poles, which provoked the Poles to greater persecutions and cruel punishments and executions.

15. Metropolitan Peter Mogila

Metropolitan Peter Mogila. Eighteenth-century portrait.

Here we must note also the important influence of Peter Mogila,³¹ Metropolitan of Kiev and Galich from 1632 until his death in 1646. Peter Mogila was born to a Moldavian boyar family in Suceava, Moldavia, on December 21, 1596. In Mogila’s time, the Romanian principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and part of Transylvania were still using Old Church Slavonic in their churches, and he cherished his ties to Slavic Orthodoxy. In the 1620s he travelled to Kiev and entered the Kiev Caves Lavra, eventually becoming its abbot, and the Metropolitan of Kiev. His influence as the head of the Orthodox Church in Kiev was far-reaching and timely. Respected by all due to his family connections with several European royal houses, he was able to negotiate with the Polish Sejm for the easing of restrictions against the Orthodox. Mogila also opened an institute of higher learning in Kiev that reached a very high level of educational quality, and then he proceeded to open schools throughout the area that would become Ukraine. In order to more greatly encompass all Orthodox thought, his schools taught in Latin, Greek, and Slavonic, and received students from all levels of society. Even the Uniate bishops had to admit with great consternation that their own educational institutions were paltry in comparison with those of Peter Mogila.

16. St. Athanasius of Brest-Litovsk and the Cossack Uprisings

St. Athanasius of Brest-Litovsk.

The year 1596—the year of the institution of the Brest Union— was, in addition to the year of the birth of Metropolitan Peter Mogila, the year of the birth of one of the Orthodox Church’s great heroes in the struggle against the Unia, St. Athanasius of Brest-Litovsk (†1648, commemorated September 5). The son of an Orthodox Lithuanian nobleman, he acquired an outstanding education from schools run by the Orthodox brotherhoods, and at the age of thirty-two became a monk at the Holy Spirit Monastery in Vilnius. After living in other monasteries and being ordained to the priesthood, St. Athanasius was tasked by Metropolitan Peter with collecting funds for the restoration of the Kupyatitsk Monastery near Minsk. Having prayed before an icon of the Mother of God, he heard her voice saying, “Go to the Tsar. He will help build the church.” He then undertook a dangerous trip through Polish-controlled territory to Moscow to collect funds and inform Tsar Michael Fyodorovich about the dire situation of the Church in the occupied southwest.

Two years later he was appointed superior of the Monastery of St. Symeon the Stylite in Brest-Litovsk, where he embarked upon an impassioned defense of Orthodoxy against the Unia through his writings and sermons, successfully keeping Orthodox believers in the fold and bringing back many who had strayed. St. Athanasius addressed the Polish king, Vladislav IV, asking him to put a stop to the brutality being visited upon the Orthodox by Polish soldiers and the Jesuits. Although the king was sympathetic to his requests, the Polish officials were not, and the persecutions continued. So severe were they, that it was not uncommon for Roman Catholics to set fire to Orthodox churches on feasts days, so as to kill as many as possible. St. Athanasius approached the king again, and this time a small measure of relief was granted, but it did not last long, and a new persecution began. The saint was arrested and imprisoned for three years, and then released.³²

Bogdan Khmelnitsky. Seventeenth-century portrait.

After the death of Metropolitan Peter Mogila, significant changes began in the Kiev Metropolitanate. The Orthodox began more and more to turn to Russia for protection. Finally, in 1648, the persecutions became worse than ever. A rebellion against Polish and Lithuanian rule broke out in Little Russia. The Cossacks, under the leadership of Bogdan Khmelnitsky,³³ began a fierce struggle for independence from Poland, and after their first uprising more freedoms were granted to the Orthodox. ³⁴ However, after a failed second uprising, these freedoms were again lost.

St. Athanasius was again arrested and imprisoned, along with prominent Orthodox dignitaries. Crying out “Anathema to the Unia!” he was tortured with red-hot coals, flayed, burned alive, and finally shot and beheaded. His body was thrown into a pit, where it was later found to be incorrupt.³⁵

Bogdan Khmelmitsky, with the blessing of the Kiev Metropolitan, appealed to the Russian Tsar in 1654, and became a Russian subject. Moscow then went to war with Poland, which after its defeat in 1655 was forced to cede all of Malorussia (Little Russia) and Belorussia (White Russia) to Russia. Throughout these territories the Orthodox rose up against the Latin Catholics and Uniates.

17. Establishment of the Moscow Patriarchate

Gramota of the Synod of Constantinople on the founding of the Moscow Patriarchate, May 8, 1590

    

After a period of de facto autocephaly, the Russian Orthodox Church had received its charter from the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1588, granting it its own Patriarch. After Malorussia and Belorussia had become part of the Russian Empire, the Russian Orthodox Church hoped that, with the reuniting of these ancient Russian lands, the divided Church would also be reunited. But this did not turn out to be so simple—through the centuries of unrelenting pressure, the Uniate Church had already been sufficiently established in Galicia.

18. Submission of the Kiev Metropolitanate to the Moscow Patriarch

The Little Russians were divided on the subject of joining the Moscow Patriarchate. The masses and lower ranking Cossacks looked toward Moscow, but the Cossack leaders and aristocracy preferred the autonomy they enjoyed from a far-away Patriarch of Constantinople to the real and near authority of Moscow. Under the important leadership of the scholarly Metropolitan Peter Mogila, the Orthodox Church in Kiev had begun to grow into its own after long neglect. Politically, Little Russia was divided into two parts—the Cossack leaders wanted to retain the free-wheeling status they enjoyed, and hoped even to raise themselves to the dignity of the Polish landowners, while the lower classes were thoroughly weary of the latter’s tyranny, and felt relief under Russian rule. Little Russia entered a prolonged time of difficulties, rife with betrayals and internecine wars— Cossack leaders appealing now to Moscow, now to Warsaw

During this period, the late seventeenth century, political leanings directly affected the Kiev hierarchs’ inclinations. Just as the King of Poland had always appointed the Kiev Metropolitan, so the Cossack leader Bogdan Khmelnitsky and his successors were now placing their own candidates on the Metropolitan’s throne. There were also presiding hierarchs appointed by Moscow who then defected to Poland, and vice versa. Anathemas were exchanged, and the people were left to guess as to who was right and who was wrong. Finally, a peace treaty was signed between Poland and Russia in 1686; and although the Kiev Metropolitan was not entirely willing to be consecrated by the Moscow Patriarch, the unification was ratified in Constantinople in 1687, putting an end to the two-hundred-year-long separation. Some historians say that Moscow influenced the Ottomans to pressure the Constantinople Patriarch into ceding Kiev to Moscow. In any case, one historical result is the important contribution to Russian Orthodoxy of Little Russian saints, such as that of St. Job of Pochaev, St. Dimitry of Rostov, St. Paisius Velichkovsky, and others.

However, the Orthodox dioceses remaining in the torn-away Lithuanian regions and Galicia had no option to unite with Moscow, whether they wanted to or not—and now, deprived of support even from Little Russia, they were completely downtrodden.

Russian historian A. P. Dobroklonsky wrote of difficulties endured by Belorussian and Galician Orthodox in the period prior to the return of Volhynia and Little Russia to Russian protection in 1795:

The Orthodox suffered every possible restriction. In 1717 the Sejm deprived them of their right to elect deputies to the [local] sejms, and forbade the construction of new and the repairing of old churches; in 1733 the Sejm removed them from all public posts. If that is how the government itself treated them, their enemies could boldly fall upon them with fanatical spite. The Orthodox were deprived of all their dioceses and with great difficulty held on to one, the Belorussian; they were also deprived of the brotherhoods, which either disappeared or accepted the Unia. Monasteries and parish churches with their lands were forcibly taken from them…. From 1721 to 1747, according to the calculations of the Belorussian Bishop Jerome, 165 Orthodox churches were removed, so that by 1755 in the whole of the Belorussian diocese there remained only 130; and these were in a pitiful state.… Orthodox religious processions were broken up, and Orthodox holy things subjected to mockery…. The Dominicans and Basilians acted in the same way, being sent as missionaries to Belorussia and the Ukraine—those “lands of the infidels,” as the Catholics called them—to convert the Orthodox…. They went round the villages and recruited people to the Unia; any of those recruited who carried out Orthodox needs was punished as an apostate. Orthodox monasteries were often subjected to attacks by peasants and schoolboys; the monks suffered beatings, mutilations, and death. “How many of them,” exclaimed [Archbishop] George Konissky,³⁶ “were thrown out of their homes! Many of them were put in prisons, in deep pits; they were shut up in kennels with the dogs, they were starved by hunger and thirst, fed on hay; how many were beaten and mutilated, and some even killed!”… The Orthodox white clergy were reduced to poverty, ignorance, and extreme humiliation. All the Belorussian bishops were subjected to insults, and some even to armed assault….³⁷

It was also during this time, in 1720, that the Pochaev Monastery was seized by the Catholics, and Uniate monks replaced the Orthodox—an occupation that would last 110 years.

The confusing movement back and forth between Moscow and Warsaw continued until the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth weakened and broke apart.

19. Crimea and Novorossia Become Part of Russia

During the late eighteenth century, following the Russian-Turkish War, Russia annexed the territory of the Crimean Khanate, an arm of the Ottoman Empire, which included the Crimean peninsula and eastern steppes on the mainland—an area called then Novorossia—“New Russia.” Following this, Empress Catherine II expanded Russian territory into this area, populated by a Turkic people who had mingled over the centuries with the Mongol hordes. They had made the Crimea a slave-trading station—the slaves being southern Russians, who were in high demand by the Ottomans. St. John the Russian³⁸ (also most likely from that area) was one of these victims of human trafficking, who nevertheless achieved great sanctity in Turkish captivity. Western Europe took a dim view of Catherine’s expansion, but the resulting cessation of raids on the people to sell them into slavery was no doubt a welcome change to the local population.

(This territory would become part of the Ukraine only after the 1917 revolution, when Lenin annexed the mainland territory to the Ukraine in order to entice Ukrainians into the USSR. The Crimean peninsula was annexed to the Ukrainian Socialist Republic later by Nikita Krushchev, also of Ukrainian descent, as another pro-Ukrainian gesture.)

20. Return to Orthodoxy

It was also during the reign of Catherine II that Poland was partitioned. Three successive partitions, from 1772 to 1795, saw the oncepowerful Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth divided between Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Volhynia and Belorussia (as also Poland) became part of the Russian Empire. The higher clergy of the Uniate Church were typically pro-Polish. Russian rule favored either a return of the Uniates to Orthodoxy, or a conversion to Latin Catholicism. Now under a new, Orthodox monarch, many Uniates were in fact happy to return to Orthodoxy, and did so. A leading figure in this reversion was the Uniate Bishop Joseph Semashko.³⁹

Metropolitan Joseph Semashko.

The Polish uprising against Russian rule, which took place in November 1831, was officially supported by the Uniate Church. After this revolt failed, the Russian authorities began their strategy of removing all Uniate synod members and stripping the Polish magnates of their privileges. As Polish influence waned in Volhynia, so did the Unia. In 1831, the Pochaev Lavra was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church (with which it staunchly remains to this day), and in 1839 the now Orthodox Bishop Joseph Semashko led the Synod of Polotsk (Belorussia), and the Union of Brest was terminated. (There are no Uniate churches in Belorussia today, while Roman Catholic churches function there in larger numbers than in Russia.) All Uniate churches in the Russian Empire—which included Belorussia and the Right Bank Ukraine⁴⁰—were incorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church. Those members of the clergy who did not desire to become Orthodox—amounting to about a quarter of the total—were deprived of their clerical status. Unfortunately, many were even persecuted. The territories that had become part of the Russian Empire later than others naturally had more Uniates. After the decree of religious tolerance issued in 1905, they would be allowed to remain Uniates.

Meanwhile, Galicia remained on the volatile fault line between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and the Catholic Austrians gave no small trouble to the Orthodox Rusyns, as the Trans-Carpathian people were called.⁴¹ While the Poles always maintained a dialogue—albeit an uneven one—with the Russians, the Austrians viewed the Russian element with a cooler malice. The Russian Empire was gaining might, and the pull of a strong, Orthodox monarchy was growing among the Rusyns. Galicia contained a large population of non-Polish people who became polarized between those who considered themselves part of the Russian people—the Orthodox—and those who considered themselves Ukrainians, having a separate identity from Russia—mostly consisting of Uniates. Fearing a separatist uprising, Vienna began to systematically exploit this division, supporting the Ukrainophiles in every way. Thus, efforts were increased to drive the psychological wedge between Russians and Ukrainians even deeper, and Galicia became a stronghold of Ukrainian nationalism, as it is even today.

Once an instrument of Polish domination, the Greek (ByzantineRite) Catholic Church now became an instrument of this rising Ukrainian nationalism. Austria also financed the publication of literature in the language used by Rusyns and Galicians, in order to cultivate a greater linguistic difference between Russian and Ukrainian. Rusyns were more and more called a special nation with their own unique history, and Russia was framed as an enslaver and occupier. These methods of social engineering continued up to the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but they have had a lasting effect on Galicia.

21. World War I, the Fall of Austro-Hungary, and the Rise of Ukrainian Nationalism

When even these Germanic machinations did not entirely work, the Austrians simply killed all Russophiles, even among the Uniates—and there were such Uniates who still considered themselves Russian. In fact, the first concentration camps in Europe were built during World War I—not by Germany, but by Austria, and not for Jews, but for Galicians, Carpatho-Russians, and other Russophile Ukrainians. The most well known of these was Talerhof, near Graz, in southeastern Austria. At first, from 20,000 to 60,000 people died from disease, beatings, torture, and execution. Over 100,000 fled to Russia, and around 80,000 were killed after the Russians retreated. This included 300 Greek Catholic priests suspected of sympathizing with the Orthodox. This planned genocide left a population in Galicia that was now predominantly Ukrainophile.

When, after the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, western Galicia became part of the restored Republic of Poland. Eastern Galicia and Volhynia declared itself the “Western Ukrainian People’s Republic.” However, after the Polish-Soviet War, the Peace of Riga (March 18, 1921) designated this land as part of Poland, and this was internationally recognized on May 15, 1923. This left a disgruntled separatist population, with even more unrest caused by the Polish government’s intolerance of minorities and its policy of forcible Polonization. Since the many Orthodox Christians in this area could no longer be connected with the Russian Church, which was, in any case, undergoing terrible persecutions at the hands of the Bolsheviks,⁴² the Patriarchate of Constantinople took over the administration of the Churches in the new states that were formerly part of the Russian Empire, such as Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland. In 1924, it granted autocephaly to the Churches in these states, and the Polish Orthodox Church was born. The Pochaev Lavra, now located outside the Soviet Union, became part of this new autonomous Church.

After the Russian Revolution, Orthodox Ukrainian nationalists decided to form a uniquely Ukrainian Church, separate from the Moscow Patriarchate. They held a synod in Kiev and declared the formation of the “Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.” In 1924, the Patriarchate of Constantinople granted autocephaly to this body. However, after the formation of the USSR, and Ukraine’s incorporation into it in 1921, these Christians began to suffer the same fate as those in other parts of the Soviet Union.⁴³

The long-suffering and patience of a once-Orthodox population in the face of persecutions was wearing thin, and as European war crimes in general became more and more horrific, from Galicia-Volhynia a monster was hatched—a Ukrainian nationalist movement prepared to commit any deed to create an independent, “ethnically pure” western Ukraine. One of the leaders of this movement was Stepan Bandera— whose portrait is now being paraded around western Ukraine by various right-wing groups, and who is considered by them a national hero worthy of emulation.⁴⁴

In 1929, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (oun) was formed in Vienna. In an illegal propaganda tract, the military arm (uvo) of the oun wrote:

The uvo constitutes a revolutionary organization whose fundamental task is to propagate the idea of a general revolutionary uprising of the Ukrainian people, the ultimate aim of which is the establishment of our own independent and undivided nation.

They considered anyone who leaned either towards Poland or the Soviet Union a traitor. The tract continued:

We must change the psychology of our society and the psychology of the enemies, and influence world opinion. Terror will be not only our means of self-defense but also of [revolutionary] agitation which will reach everyone: our own people as well as outsiders, regardless of whether they desire it or not….

Proclamation: The complete removal of all [occupiers] from Ukrainian lands will create the possibility for and expansive development of the Ukrainian people in the borders of their own nation…. In its internal political activity, the Ukrainian nation will strive to attain borders encompassing all Ukrainian ethnographic territories.⁴⁵

22. World War II and Its Aftermath

From 1941 to 1944, this policy took the form of extreme ethnic cleansing, first against Polish Jews in the city of Lvov, and later against Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. The first extermination, known as the Lvov Pogroms, took place over a four-week period, claiming 6,000 lives, while the second, known as the Volhynia Massacre, occurred over nearly two years and resulted in as many as 100,000 deaths, mostly of women and children. The atrocities committed by the Ukrainian nationalists against the Poles in the countryside were so sadistic and heinous that they are, simply, unspeakable. Many Ukrainian villagers, both Orthodox and Catholic, were horrified by the crimes and tried to save the Poles; they risked their lives in doing so, and those who were caught were slaughtered along with the Polish victims. ⁴⁶

To put it briefly, when the German Nazis occupied Poland, the Ukrainian nationalists, led by Bandera, saw this as an opportunity for independence. The Fascist Germans trained them in the mechanics of destroying whole villages. They set the Ukrainians against the Poles, knowing that the Poles would retaliate when given the chance, and all this fit well with the Germans’ plans. The Ukrainian nationalists then implemented their plan of ethnic cleansing.⁴⁷

In 1939, as one result of the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, western Volhynia was annexed to the Ukrainian SSR. The Pochaev Lavra, now freed from Polish oppression, rejoined the Moscow Patriarchate. The huge numbers of pilgrims that began to visit it, as one of the only monasteries that had not been closed by the Soviets, were actually instrumental in keeping it open. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Germans did not close the Lavra, but did pillage it to a large degree. In May of 1942, under the German occupation, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was revived. The Pochaev Lavra did not agree to become part of it, desiring instead to be part of the “Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church” which formed in 1941 and remained part of the Moscow Patriarchate. In October 1942, the Autocephalous Church united with the Autonomous Church in a ceremony at the Pochaev Lavra, becoming an exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate.

When the Soviets won the war, and Galicia-Volhynia became part of the Soviet Union, Stalin was swift to disband the Greek Catholic Church in favor of the Russian Orthodox Church—not of course because he was a conscious guardian of Orthodoxy, but because the Greek Catholic Church was seen as the spiritual leader of the Ukrainian nationalists. The ethnic cleansing in Volhynia had been initiated by the Ukrainian-Nationalist leadership from Eastern Galicia.⁴⁸ In 1931, the Ukrainians in Galicia had been mostly Greek Catholics.⁴⁹ There were even cases where these priests had incited and blessed the killings from the pulpit, reading special prayers over the knives, axes, saws, and pitchforks that were to go forth into genocidal action against the Poles. These cases were by no means representative of the Greek Catholic Church as a whole (the Ukrainian Catholic Metropolitan at the time, Andrey Sheptytsky, denounced the violent acts perpetrated by the oun), but the image of Ukrainian Catholic priests blessing the ethnic cleansing of Poles, after centuries of work by the Catholic Church to Latinize and Polonize western Ukraine, points to the staggering complexity of the situation.

23. The Post-war Years

After the war, many of the Ukrainian nationalist leaders, mostly of Greek Catholic background, emigrated—mainly to the United States and Canada. At home, the Soviet authorities were sending whole communities to Siberia and, in a stroke, the Greek Catholic Church was officially gone from Western Ukraine. In 1948, the Soviet state organized a synod in Lvov, at which the Union of Brest was officially annulled. Many churches were simply closed, as were most other churches in the rest of the USSR. For the Orthodox, the Soviet government’s tolerant attitude toward the Church that began during the war came to an end in 1953 with Stalin’s death and the accession of Khrushchev to power.⁵⁰ Churches that had only recently been reopened were again closed, including the Kiev Caves Lavra.

Conditions remained more or less the same until the late Soviet period. As the thousand-year anniversary (1988) of the baptism of Rus’ drew near, state attitudes began to change, in keeping with the perestroika and glasnost policies of Mikhail Gorbachev.⁵¹ By 1988, the government began returning churches and Church property to believers, including the Kiev Caves Lavra. The state even officially apologized for the previous oppression of religion.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Ukraine became an independent state, the remaining Greek Catholics emerged from underground, and, with moral support from some Ukrainian communities abroad, began to seize Orthodox churches, often using violence against the clergy and congregation.⁵²

In 1990, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church elevated what had long been its Ukrainian Exarchate to the status of an autonomous, self-ruling Church.

24. Today

This has been but a brief overview of the complex history of Orthodoxy in Ukraine. Mongol Tatar invasions, aggression from Catholic Poland, and internecine struggles have left their mark on Ukrainian Orthodoxy. However, the very fact that people preferred to live (and die) there despite such antagonistic conditions is proof that their faith was strong. The major monasteries—the Kiev Caves Lavra, the Pochaev Lavra, the Kiev Protection Convent, and others—are still Orthodox and still well populated, while there are no Uniate monasteries to speak of. But Ukrainian nationalism, encouraged as always by western “friends,” sees the Russian Church as a foreign occupation force, and has, even from the beginning of the twentieth century, produced a highly confusing variety of Ukrainian Orthodox schisms, the latest of which is the so-called Kiev Patriarchate, led by Philaret Denisenko.

When Patriarch Pimen of Moscow and All Russia reposed in 1990, Metropolitan Philaret (Denisenko) of Kiev became the Locum Tenens (temporary substitute). He was not elected Patriarch, but he would have continued to serve in the Moscow Patriarchate if the president of the newly independent Ukraine had not “strongly suggested” that he become the head of a Ukrainian national Church, formed and supported solely by the Ukrainian government. When the synod of the Moscow Patriarchate learned of his intentions, they offered him a diocese in Russia, but he refused, and remained in Kiev. The Moscow Patriarchate was also concerned about information that Denisenko had for a long time been living with a wife and children. Philaret decided to take up the offer of support from the new Kiev government to head a Ukrainian autonomous Church, but he first had to come to terms with an existing, “autocephalous Church” based in Lvov.⁵³ That “Church,” in fact a combination of two different “autonomous Churches,” was then approached by Philaret. Philaret invited “Patriarch” Mystislav of this “Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church” to Kiev, giving him lodging in his own home.⁵⁴ There, in Philaret’s home, Mystislav died at age ninety-four, and Philaret, who had, in effect, been running the Church, became the new “Patriarch.” This caused a new schism within that “Church.”

Metropolitan Vladimir (Sabodan), head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) from 1992 to 2014

In April, 1992, there was a hierarchical council of the Russian Orthodox Church, at which twenty bishops from the Ukraine (eighteen of whom had the right to vote) participated. A major topic was the situation in the Ukraine and the status of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church—a discussion in a venue that would free the Ukrainian bishops from all inhibition or pressure from the Ukrainian authorities. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainian participants voted against complete independence for the Ukrainian Church, because it would then be forced to struggle against “Uniate aggression” all by itself, without any support from its like-minded fraternal Church, while it was obvious that the schismatic “Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church” was unlikely to cease its own divisive and politically charged activities. The majority of Ukrainian bishops disavowed the signatures they had placed upon a declaration of autocephaly accepted in Kiev under admitted pressure from Metropolitan Philaret and the Ukrainian government.⁵⁵ Metropolitan Vladimir (Sabodan) was elected head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Metropolitan Onuphrius (Berezovsky), current head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).

Most Ukrainian Orthodox believers are still in the UOC (Moscow Patriarchate), and do not take “Patriarch” Philaret seriously. However, the “Kiev Patriarchate,” with the present Ukrainian government’s support and the use of its paramilitary groups, has taken over a number of churches, including the important St. Sophia Cathedral. “Patriarch” Philaret is regularly shown by the Western media as the head of the Ukrainian Church, with no mention of the legitimate Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Autonomous Church (Moscow Patriarchate), who, since August 2014, has been Metropolitan Onuphrius (Berezovsky). The First Deputy Secretary-General of NATO has even met with Denisenko in an official capacity.⁵⁶

In Volhynia, the churches are roughly divided between the “Kiev Patriarchate” and the Moscow Patriarchate. Volhynia is a mostly rural region, and the local people attend whichever church is closest to them. They generally accept both Churches there out of convenience, but all the monasteries in that region are under the Moscow Patriarchate, and the monastics are firmly resolved to remain in the canonical Church. The Moscow Patriarchate celebrates its services in Church Slavonic, while the “Kiev Patriarchate” uses a translation into modern Ukrainian. The latter grates on the ears of the older generation who know Church Slavonic, but the younger generation is becoming accustomed to the innovation. While the use of Ukrainian in the Church services may seem to many as an innocuous change, it can also be viewed as a continuation of the “linguistic division” and social engineering intended to deepen the rift between Russians and Ukrainians.

In Galicia, the Greek Catholic Church now prevails over the Orthodox Church. The Pochaev Lavra near Ternopil is now constantly under threat from the “Kiev Patriarchate,” and on Holy Thursday 2015, the Ternopil regional council voted to transfer the property of the Holy Dormition Pochaev Lavra to the state.

Although the “Kiev Patriarchate” has made appeals to the Patriarch of Constantinople to be granted autocephaly, this has not happened, and the “Kiev Patriarchate” has not been recognized by any Local Churches as a canonical Church. [This article was written before the current confusing situation, wherein Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has sent its exarchs to Ukraine to begin the process of granting authocephaly to the schismatic "Church". This move, which has not recieved any support from the other Local Orthodox Churches, caused the Russian Patriarchate to cease commemortion of the Constantinople Patriarch and cease participation in any joint activities. At the time of this posting, the whole affair is still unresolved.]

Meanwhile, the Greek Catholics have continually petitioned an apparently reluctant Rome for their own “Patriarch,” and now their chief hierarch, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, is being called the Patriarch of the Greek Catholic Church. However, he is not the only one coveting that same title, and there have been others in the past. The Moscow Patriarchate has repeatedly protested against this to the Vatican, which has continually reassured the Moscow Patriarchate that it would not sanction a Greek Catholic Patriarchate in Ukraine. However, although the Vatican has not recognized Shevchuk’s title of “Patriarch,” neither has it disbanded the Unia. The Greek Catholics conduct dialogue with the “Kiev Patriarchate,” preferring them to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), which still has the largest number of the faithful in its fold. While the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) remains the most traditional Orthodox Church in the Ukraine, the Greek Catholic Church has become more liberal and westernized, and the “Kiev Patriarchate” is somewhere between the two. Many see the “Kiev Patriarchate” as a bridge to the Unia, and the Uniates, as before, as a bridge to Roman Catholicism.

Map of Ukraine as it looks today.

    

It must be reiterated that by far the majority of Christian Ukrainians are Orthodox, and that most of these Orthodox are in the canonical Church. Ukrainians are in general a religious people, but this writer perceives a direct correlation between the violence done to the Ukrainian Orthodox people over many centuries by the Latin West and the violent nature of Ukrainian nationalism, an idea that has been taken to its present extreme in Greek Catholic Galicia.

25. Civil War

Tensions in Ukraine continued throughout the post-Soviet period, but erupted into open conflict and civil war in early 2014. After a U.S.-assisted coup, pro-Western, anti-Russian elements took over the government, supported by militant neo-Nazi groups. Pro-Russian, mostly Orthodox citizens in Crimea, fearful for their safety, held a referendum in which they overwhelmingly decided to become part of the Russian Federation. The Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainian provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk (likewise Orthodox in the great majority) refused to accept the coup in Kiev, resulting in an armed conflict between those provinces and the Kiev government that continues to this day.

The various Churches in Ukraine have been deeply affected by the events of the last two [now five at the time of this posting] years. The Orthodox in Western Ukraine have often had no choice but to go to the Uniate churches simply because they lacked their own. Over the years the two Churches have managed to coexist, partly because the Unia was a phenomenon forced upon the masses, though most were not totally convinced. Now the so-called “Kiev Patriarchate” is being forced on many Ukrainians, who are either unwilling to accept it, or who are passively accepting it out of ignorance of Church canons or simply out of convenience—reasons similar to their acceptance of the Unia in its time. The current civil war is exacerbating the tension between the three groups of Ukrainians: those who speak Russian and consider themselves a part of historical Rus’, those who speak Ukrainian but still consider themselves part of Rus’, and Ukrainian nationalists, who dissociate themselves entirely from Rus’ and want the entire Ukraine to do the same. This cannot but influence the religious landscape in Ukraine. And thus continues the tumultuous history of this country of hardworking, poetic, religious people—who gave the world Sts. Anthony and Theodosius of the Kiev Caves, Sts. Theodosius and Lawrence of Chernigov, the writer Nikolai Gogol, and many, many others—for whom all the churches of the Moscow Patriarchate are currently offering up special prayers at the Liturgy—“For peace in the much-suffering Ukrainian land.”

NOTES

1 History of the Russian Church, Metropolitan Makary of Moscow and Kolomna (Holy Transfiguration–Valaam Monastery: Moscow, 1994), 1:91–92 [in Russian] (Maximus biblioth. Veterum partum. 3. 265. Lugduni, 1677 [216]). (Unless otherwise noted, all footnotes are by the author.)

2 Ibid (Eusebii Histor. Eccles. III Cap. 1 [191]).

3 Ibid.

4 See Road to Emmaus Vol. V, No. 4 (#19), “The Astonishing Missionary Journeys of the Apostle Andrew,” p. 42.

5 https://oca.org/saints/lives/2007/11/30/103450-apostle-andrew-the-holy-andall-praised-first-called.

6 History of the Russian Church, 1:110.

7 The Drevlians were a Slavic tribe that lived from the sixth to the tenth centuries to the west of Kiev.—Ed.

8 https://oca.org/saints/lives/2013/07/15/102031-equal-of-the-apostles-greatprince-vladimir-in-holy-baptism-basi.

9 Makary (Bulgakov) (1816–1882) was metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna from 1879 until his repose in 1882. He is known as one of the foremost historians of Russia.—Ed.

10 History of the Russian Church, 1:258–59.

11 This addition to the Creed erroneously changed the dogmatic formula about the Holy Spirit. While the Orthodox teaching states that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father” (cf. John 15:26), the Latin Church added the words “and the Son” (“filioque” in Latin).—Ed.

12 The Union of Florence (1439) was an attempt by the Roman Catholic Church to subjugate the Patriarchate of Constantinople to itself in exchange for military aid against the Muslim Turks. Although all the Orthodox bishops present were forced to accept the Union (with the notable exception of St. Mark of Ephesus) it was not accepted by the Orthodox monastics and laity, and ultimately failed.—Ed.

15 Signed in 1569, the Union of Lublin united the Kingdom of Poland with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Over half of what is now known as Ukraine was included in this new country.—Ed.

16 The term “uniate” was once used with pride within the Roman Catholic Church. Since the Second Vatican Council, however, Catholic documents no longer use the term, due to its perceived negative overtones.—Ed.

17 Lvov (Lviv in Ukrainian) is now a major city in the far western portion of what is now Ukraine.—Ed.

18 To keep the people in the dark about the Unia, the Latins did the following: They compelled the priests and bishops to take oaths accepting the Latin dogmas, while the congregations often did not even know about this. For example, while the clergy officially confessed the filioque, in church the congregation recited the Symbol of Faith (the Creed) without it!

19 Met. Makary, History of the Russian Church, book 5, vol. 8, chap. 2.

20 Ibid.

21 The epitaphion (plashchanitsa) is a rectangular depiction of Christ in repose, and mourned by the Theotokos and several disciples. It is brought our for veneration for the services of Friday and Saturday of Passion Week.—Ed.

22 Met. Makary, History of the Russian Church, book 5, vol 8, chapter 2.

23 Ibid.

24 The “Time of Troubles” refers to the period between the death in 1598 of the last ruler of the Rurik dynasty (Tsar Theodore Ivanovich) and the beginning of the rule of the Romanov dynasty in 1613. During this period Muscovite Russia suffered a devastating famine and repeated attempts by the Polish-Lithuanian state to take it over and convert it to Roman Catholicism.—Ed.

25 Met. Makary, History of the Russian Church, book 5, vol. 9, chap. 1.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Quoted in L. Perepiolkina, Ecumenism—A Path to Perdition, St. Petersburg, 1999, pp. 227–28 (translation by Vladimir Moss, http://www.orthodoxchristianbooks. com/articles/384/orthodoxy-unia-east-central-europe/#_ftn6).

29 Ibid., p. 228.

30 “Apostolic Letter of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II for the Fourth Centenary of the Union of Brest, Nov. 12, 1995, Memorial of St. Josaphat,” Libreria Editrice Vaticana, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1995/documents/ hf_jp-ii_apl_19951112_iv-cent-union-brest.html.

31 Metropolitan Peter Mogila was canonized by the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) for local veneration in the Ukraine.

32 Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra, The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, vol. 1 (Chalkidike, Greece: Ormylia Convent, 1998), pp. 44–46.

33 Bogdan Khmelnitsky (1595–1657) leader of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, headed a rebellion of Orthodox Christians against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1648 to 1649. Initially successful, this rebellion led to the formation of an independent Little Russian state. After later reversals, Khmelnitsky appealed to Russia for protection, and the resulting Treaty of Pereyaslavl rejoined the two parts of the Russian nation.—Ed.

34 The hundreds of thousands of men who joined the Cossacks at this time attacked the Poles and the Jews in the western regions with unbridled brutality, and were a force to be reckoned with.

35 Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra, The Synaxarion, vol. 1, p. 46.

36 George Konissky (1717–1795) was Archbishop of Belorussia and was an ardent defender of the persecuted Orthodox before the Polish authorities.—Ed.

37 Dobroklonsky, Rukovodstvo po istorii russkoj tserkvi (A Guide to the History of the Russian Church), Moscow, 2001, pp. 647–52 (translation by Vladimir Moss, http://www.orthodoxchristianbooks.com/articles/384/orthodoxy-unia-east-centraleurope/#_ftnref7).

38 St. John the Russian (1690-1730), commemorated May 27, is widely venerated in the Orthodox Church. His holy relics are treasured in the Monastery of St. John the Russian on the Greek island of Euboea.—Ed.

39 Joseph Semashko (1798–1868), born in a village in the Kiev province, became a Uniate priest in 1821. However, greatly drawn to authentic Orthodoxy, in 1827 and again in 1828 he submitted requests to the Russian government to allow the gradual return of the Uniates to the Orthodox Church. Emperor Nicholas I approved his plan and it began to go forward. In 1833 Semashko became the Uniate bishop of the Lithuanian diocese, and began to institute changes in parish life to facilitate the move toward Orthodoxy (setting up of iconostases, removal of organs, etc.). Finally, on February 12, 1839, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the act of reunion was signed by 1,305 members of the clergy. It was confirmed by the Tsar, and 1,600 parishes and over 1.6 million souls were reunited to the Orthodox Church. Semashko, now Orthodox, was raised to the rank of archbishop and given charge of the new diocese of Lithuania and Vilnius. In 1852, he was raised to the rank of Metropolitan.—Ed.

40 The name given to the area to the west of the Dniepr River, which became part of the Russian Empire after the second partition of Poland.—Ed

41 Although Trans-Carpathia is now part of the Ukraine, the history of Orthodoxy in Trans-Carpathia is a subject that requires its own article, and therefore we will not go into detail about it here. In short, the Rusyns are now both Greek Catholic and Orthodox, but ethnically they strongly identify with Russians rather than with Ukrainians.

42 The Protomartyr of the Communist yoke in the Soviet Union was the Metropolitan of Kiev, Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) (†1918, comm. Jan. 25). He was martyred a few months after the Bolshevik Revolution while living at the Kiev Caves Lavra. Over the next 70 years, millions more New Martyrs, known and unknown, would follow.—Ed.

43 Although the Soviets at first tried to use the new Church against their main enemy, the Moscow Patriarchate, this policy ended by the end of the 1930s, and in the face of renewed persecutions, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church was disbanded.

Among the many sufferings Ukraine endured behind the Iron Curtain along with the rest of the Soviet Union, the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 calls forth special mention. The government’s forced collectivization of agriculture was a major cause of the famine, which affected the Soviet Union’s major grain-producing areas—most of all Ukraine. Encyclopaedia Britannica estimates that 6 to 8 million people died from hunger in the Soviet Union during this period, 4 to 5 million of whom were Ukrainians.—Ed

44 Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), the son of a Uniate priest, was born in Galicia when that area was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By the time he was twenty-five years old he was convicted as an anti-Polish terrorist and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was freed in 1939 and began to work with the Nazis to foment an uprising among the Ukrainians in what had been eastern Poland. After the beginning of the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Bandera’s oun began an active collaboration with Germany. However, when he declared an independent Ukrainian state, he was detained by the Nazis in Berlin until the war started going poorly for the Germans. He was then released to carry out sabotage against the Soviet Union. After the war, Bandera’s organization was connected with anti-Soviet British and American secret service actions. Bandera was assassinated by the kgb in 1959. Right-wing and neo-Nazi groups in western Ukraine have used Bandera’s image as a rallying point since 2014.—Ed.

45 Tadeusz Piotrowski, Genocide and Rescue in Wolyn ( Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 2000), p. 11–12.

46 See ibid., pp. 1–28, and Norman Davies, Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory (London, Macmillan, 2007), p. 352.

47 Kiev’s “Right Sector,” which rose during the coup of 2014, is the modern incarnation of the uvo.

48 Tadeusz Piotrowski, Genocide and Rescue in Wolyn, p. 17.

49 Ibid., p. 9.

50 Stalin had allowed churches to be reopened during the war, but again, his motivation was purely political. In this case, it was to gain popular support for the war effort.—Ed.

51 Perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness or transparency) were signature terms for the policy of gradual democratization initiated by Gorbachev in 1986.—Ed.

52 With the current crisis in the Ukraine, this is happening again, only now there is another religious/political organization at work: the so-called Kiev Patriarchate (see below).

53 This is the third time that this Church has been constituted—the first time being from 1921 to the late 1930s, and the second time in 1942.—Ed.

54 This information on Philaret Denisenko was taken from an interview by the author with Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin, professor of Church history.

55 From Wikipedia on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kiev Patriarchate (in Russian).

56 http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/78990.htm.

Source: The Orthodox Word   Vol. 51, January–April, 2015, No. 300-301