The Catacomb Church: Ukrainian Greek Catholics in the USSR

Patriarchate which would unite under its jurisdiction all Uniate dioceses both within the Ukraine and abroad. During 1976, the Vatican remained silent while its Ukrainian flock in the West marked the 30th anniversary of the tragedy that befell their co-religionists in the Soviet Ukraine. This attitude of the Holy See, the seeming fraternization of its representatives with the Uniates' persecutors, and its negative response to those demanding greater autonomy for the Ukrainian Church, have embittered and divided Ukrainian Catholics in the West, as well as inside the USSR, while offering to the Soviet authorities a new propaganda weapon in their continuing attempts to demoralize and destroy the "Catacomb Church".

1 Annuario Pontificio, 1943-45.

2 On the liquidation of the Uniate (Greek Catholic) Church in the Western Ukraine, see this writer's "The Uniate Church in the Soviet Ukraine: A Case Study in Soviet Church Policy," Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. VII, 1965, pp. 83-113.

8 See V. Markus, Nyshchennia Hreko-Katolytskoi Tserkvy v Mukachivskii Eparkhii v 1945-50 rr. (Destruction of the Greek Catholic Church in the Mukachiv Diocese in 1945-50) (Paris: Offprint from Zapysky N.T.Sh., Vol. CLXIX, 1962).

'On their respective role in the "re-union" campaign, see this writer's "The Uniate Church in the Soviet Ukraine," loc. cit.

5 Pravoslavnyi visnyk, No. 7, 1957, p. 215.

Some Uniate priests found haven within the Lithuanian Catholic Church and have continued to serve their Western Ukrainian flock from afar. For hostile accounts of the "illegal" Uniate activities, see Pravoslavnyi visnyk, No. 4, 1957, p. 70; No. 8-9, 1957. p. 255; No. 12, 1957, pp. 368-69; No. 1, 1958, pp. 24-27; No. 5, 1958, pp. 133-35; No. 11-12, 1958, pp. 349-50; No. 6, 1959, p. 189.

'See Molod Ukrainy, 11 September, 1964.

8 Zhovten, No. 2, 1957, pp. 120-26; Kommunist Ukrainy, No. 7, 1959, pp. 77-82; Pravoslavnyi visnyk, No. 3, 1957, p. 70; No. 7, 1957, p. 255; No. 8-9, 1958, p. 284; and No. 5, 1958, pp. 133-35.

'Pravoslavnyi visnyk, No. 12, 1957, p. 371.

10 In his declaration submitted on 5 September, 1974, to the Moscow Human Rights Committee, Anatoli Levitin-Krasnov estimated that some 300,000 Uniates were arrested or deported in connection with the suppression of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church after the war (“V oboroni Ukrainskoi Katolytskoi Tserkvy," Suchasnist [Munich]. No. 1, January 1975, p. 108). See also Ukrainskyi visnyk, No. 7-8, 1974, Paris-Baltimore, 1975, pp. 143-45; and ✔. Markus, “Religion and Nationality: The Uniates of the Ukraine," in B. R. Bociurkiw and J. W. Strong (eds.), Religion and Atheism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, London, 1975, pp. 101-122.

"Cited in a report on the Uniate Church in the Ukraine by Lvivskyi in Ukrainski Visti, Edmonton, 5 September, 1974. Cf. V. Markus, "The Suppressed Church: Ukrainian Catholics in the Soviet Union," in R. T. De George and J. L. Scanlan (eds.), Marxism and Religion in Eastern Europe, Dontrecht, 1976, pp. 122-127.

12 Borys Antonenko and Roman Fedoriv in Zhovten (Lviv), No. 4, April 1974, PP. 90-96.

13 See Lvivskyi, loc. cit.

"Ukrainskyi Visnyk, No. 7-8, 1974, pp. 140-45. E.g., the Ivano-Frankivsk diocese, which in 1956 had 630 parishes, in early 1974 had slightly more than 100 priests left (Antonenko and Fedoriv, loc. cit., p. 95).

15 A private letter from the Ukraine (Autumn 1974).

16 At least five Roman Catholic churches are known to be still operating in Galicia. V. Markus ("The Suppressed Church," loc. cit.) as well as Lvivskyi (loc. cit.) distinguish between "hard-liners" and "moderates” among the Uniates in the present

The Catacomb Church: Ukrainian Greek Catholics in the USSR

Western Ukraine. The "hard-liners" treat even the "crypto-Uniates" who formally converted to Orthodoxy, as "traitors" and consider Orthodoxy a "schismatic," "false" faith. They are most likely to be found in the few remaining Roman Catholic churches.

"According to unofficial Vatican sources, whose estimates are far too conservative according to Uniate spokesmen in the West.

18 Levitin-Krasnov, loc. cit.

19 For a Soviet version of Velychkovsky's trial, see M. Bielinskyi, “Iuda: iz zalu suda" (Judas: From the Courtroom), Vilna Ukraina, Lviv, 14 December, 1969. 20 Levitin-Krasnov, loc. cit.

a Lvivskyi, loc. cit. For a report on the Uniate Church's activities in the Ukraine, see Giovanni Ruggeri, “I cattolici in Russia tornano a pregare nelle catacombe: La drammatica testimonianza di un vescovo minatore costretto a lasciare l'Ucraina," Gente, Milano, Vol. XVII, No. 3-4, 26 January, 1973, pp. 40-43, based on an extensive interview with the late Bishop Velychkovskyi.

22 See Ukrainski Visti, Edmonton, 20 February, 1975, on the new anti-Uniate repressions in Lviv in connection with the uncovering by the KGB of an underground prayer house and convent. Among the victims were three candidates for priesthood in the Catacomb Church.

23 For Soviet accounts of the sect's genesis and activities, see le. Pryshchepa in Liudyna i svit, No. 11, 1968, pp. 36-39; Iu. M. Grigoriev (Hryhoriev) in Akademia nauk Litovskoi SSR, Otdel filosofii, prava i sotsiologii pri Institute Istorii, Katolitsizm v SSSR i sovremennost (Catholicism in the USSR and the Present), Vilnius, 1971, pp. 168-75; and, in particular, Iu. M. Hryhoriev, Buzuviry (Fanatics), Lviv, 1974. 24 M. A. Morozov and E. I. Lisavtsev, Aktualnye zadachi ateisticheskogo vospitania (The Timely Tasks of Atheistic Upbringing) Moscow, 1970, p. 17. Cf. V. Bychatin and O. Suhak, "Uniia – iak vona ie" (Union - How It Is), Robitnycha hazeta, Kiev, 13 March, 1973.

25 V. L. Bodnar, "Osobennosti razvitia ateizma v protsesse kulturnoi revolyutsii v natsionalnoi respublike (na materialakh zapadnykh oblastei USSR)," in Akademia obshchestvennykh nauk pri TsK KPSS - Institut nauchnogo ateizma, Ateizm i sotsialisticheskaya kultura (Atheism and Socialist Culture) Moscow, 1971, pp. 51-52.

In the same year, according to Soviet sources, the exiled Primate of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Cardinal Josyf Slipyi, addressed to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR a demand for the lifting of the illegal ban on the Uniate Church in the Ukraine (Morozov and Lisavtesv, op. cit., p. 18). The clandestine Ukrainskyi Visnyk (No. 1, 1970, p. 59) reported a rumour circulated among the Uniates that the Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev, Filaret (Denysenko), personally appealed in 1969 to Shelest (then first secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukraine) for the regime's assistance in suppressing "Uniate competition" in Galicia.

See, e.g., a 1972 petition from 180 Ukrainian Catholics of Stryi, Galicia, reproduced in Religion in Communist Lands, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1974, pp. 31-32.

28 Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church, No. 9, 1974.

29 Bychatin and Suhak, loc. cit.

30 Morozov and Lisavtsev, op. cit., p. 17.

"Ukrainskyi Visnyk, No. 3, Paris-Baltimore, 1973, p. 108. The latest (No. 7-8, 1974) issue of Ukrainskyi Visnyk also devoted several pages to the Soviet persecution of Ukrainian Catholics and other believers.

See Boomerang. The Works of Valentyn Moroz, ed. by Y. Bihun, Baltimore, Smoloskyp Publishers, 1974, pp. 91-124.

33 For relevant petitions and other documents, see, in particular, the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church, No. 1, 1972, p. 53; No. 4, 1972, p. 16; and No. 12, 1974, p. 11.

34 Levitin-Krasnov, loc. cit.

35 The only criticism of the Local Sobor's action came in the course of an interview "On Relations Between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church" offered by Cardinal Willebrands to L'Avvenire (published on 4 July, 1971),

The Catacomb Church: Ukrainian Greek Catholics in the USSR

in which the Cardinal stated: "I must however mention one point: the Council noted the annulment of the unions of Brest and Uzhorod, which took place in the 16th and 17th centuries. As is well known, in 1946 and 1949 these two unions were unilaterally declared to be abolished, with the result that these communities were placed under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow. It is quite certain that we cannot share the thesis whereby by the annulment of these acts of union, the ecclesial situation of our Eastern Catholic brethren in the Soviet Union has found its solution. The Catholic Church is certainly glad that in the course of recent years, with God's help, important progress has been made in her relations with the Russian Orthodox Church. However, in this dialogue of charity which is now developing, we cor inue to be firmly convinced, as we have ever been, that such thorny problems cannot be resolved unilaterally." (Cited in the bulletin of the Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, Information Service, No. 15, August 1971, p. 9).

Religion And Nationalism In
The Contemporary Ukraine

Bohdan R. Bociurkiw

Introduction

Close interdependence of religion and nationalism has been a recurrent theme of Ukrainian history and it continues to complicate the tasks of both Soviet nationalities policy and anti-religious propaganda in the contemporary Ukraine. Several factors have been instrumental in shaping this intimate relationship between religious and national consciousness. Among them were the Byzantine legacy of a "symphony" between spiritual and secular powers, the absence of a single, international ecclesiastical authority in Eastern Christendom, a tradition of laymen's participation in the government of the church, and the use of an intelligible liturgical language. Unlike the Church of Rome, the Eastern Church has been a national church par excellence, authocephalous in its organi zation, its jurisdictiona! boundaries as a rule coinciding with the state borders. However, such coin idence of secular and ecclesiastical authority could not but create serious problems, both political and religious, whenever an Orthodox state happened to be a multinational empire, since the Church generally identified itself with the ruling nationality, as was the case in the Russian Empire. It was inevitable that, with the rise of national consciousness and the emergence of rationalist movements among subject nationalities of such an empire, strivings for national independence invariably should be accompanied by demands for a separate, autocephalous church organization-demands which as a rule were bitterly opposed by the old imperial Church! The rise of the Ukrainian autocephalist movement in 1917 and its attempts to emancipate the local Orthodox Church from the Russian control as well as similar movements in Georgia and Belorussia- exemplified this intertwining of political and religious nationalisms. Similarly, a nation's loss of statehood tended to result in its loss of ecclesiastical independence and the Church's subordination to the new political centre as illustrated by the subordination of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to the Moscow Patriarchate in 1687, following the 1654 Treaty of Pereizslav and the establishment of Moscow's hegemony over the Ukrainian Cossack State. On the other hand, political emancipation of an Orthodox people inevitably led to the establishment of an independent church hierarchy. The Ukrainian state which emerged in the wake of the 1917 Revolution was too shortlised to implement the autocephaly and Ukrainianization of the local Orthodox Church; it left, however, its legacy in the form of a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church a minority Church that'seceeded from the Russian Church in which was eventually destroyed by the Soviet regime during the 1930's. Revived during the wartime German occupation, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church was again suppressed with the Soviet recapture of the Ukraine, its flock forced back into the centralized Russian Orthodox Church.?

Similar fate awaited after World War II the Ukrainian Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church Dating from the Union of Brest in 1596, this largest of the Uniate Churches was eventually suppressed throughout the Russian Empire, following the partitions of Poland. It survived only under the Austrian and Hungarian rule in Galicia and Transcarpathia. By the nineteenth century it evolved into a national Ukrainian church. separated from the Russian Orthodox Church by its dogmatic, canonic and organizational framework, and from the Polish Roman Catholic Church, by its Byzantine rite and church law, its married clergy and its Church-Slavonic language. Indeed, under the relatively benevolent Hapsburg rule, the Uniate Church has become the central, most important national institution in Galicia. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church continued to play this paramount integrating role in Galicia during the inter-war Polish rule and the war-time Soviet and German occupations of the Western Ukraine.

The Soviet suppression of the Ukrainian Uniate Church and its forcible “reunion" with the Russian Orthodox Church were much less motivated by the anti-religious or even anti-Catholic orientation of the regime than by its hostility to Ukrainian nationalism entrenched in the Uniate Church. These events dramatically demonstrated the resurrection of a "symphony" pattern in the relationship between Stalin's regime and the Russian national church, their ideological incompatibility being overshadowed by their joint identification with the traditional Russian national interest and their shared hostility to Ukrainian nationalism. It is not insignificant that the Church which has been granted by the Kremlin exclusive jurisdiction over Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian. Moldavian and other Orthodox believers in the USSR (except for the Georgians') has been allowed-by its name, centralized organization, rules and, with some exceptions, language, — to ignore the multi-national composition and diverse religious-cultural traditions of the Orthodox flock in the USSR. Undoubtedly, the Russian Orthodox Church has been recognized by the regime as an effective vehicle for the integration and socialization in "Soviet patriotism" of the non-Russian Orthodox believers. It has been used both for the destruction of the traditional symbiosis of religion and nationality among non-Russians, as well as for ensuring that the Orthodox Church will not offer its quasiautonomous organizational framework for the forces of anti-Russian nationalism. Religious organiza tions it must be stressed here- remain the sole social structures which have not been effectively integrated into the Soviet political system due to their ideological incompati bility. This has made churches and sects particularly susceptible to the social and national protest movements which lack a legal, institutional framework of their own or are denied legitimate channels for articulating their demands.

"Ukrainianization" of the Orthodox Church?

The massive anti-religious campaigns of the Khrushchev era have seriously undermined the Stalinist church-state "symphony". By the time of Khrushchev's removal, more than half of all Orthodox Churches and theological seminaries and mest of monasteries and convents were suppressed throughout the USSR. In the Ukraine, where more than half of all operating Orthodox churches in the USSR are located, the pattern of church-closings shifted even further the social base of the Orthodox Church from the more Russified cities to the overwhelmingly Ukrainian countryside (where 89% of churches are now located"). At the same time, Khrushchev's campaign markedly strengthened the relative numerical weight of the Western dioceses within the Ortodox Church in the Ukraine; this was particularly the case in formerly Uniste Galicia where the continued existence of the catacomb Ukrainian Catholic Church had persuaded the regime to spare many more churches than in the central and south-eastern oblasti of the Ukraine. Thus by the mid-1960's, the total number of operating Orthodox churches in the republic was reduced from about 7,000 in 1959 to some 2,500 to 3.000: closed were seminaries reopened since the, war 10 Of the surviving churches in the republic, two-thirds are now reportedly located in the Western Ukraine" the main base of Ukrainian nationalism. It is here, too, that the percentage of overt believers is estimated to be twice as large as in the rest of the Ukraine."? Paradoxically, formerly Uniate Galicia has now the largest concentration of operating Orthodox churches in the entire USSR."

These developments could not but generate pressures at the grassroot parish level for a greater identification of the Church with its Ukrainian flock. In Galicia, where the catacomb Greek Catholic Church has continued to challenge the legitimacy of "Russian Orthodoxy", the Moscow Patriatchate has prudently allowed the clergy to retain the traditional Ukrainian features of the "reunited" parishes, including many of the distinctly Uniate customs and rites. A few separate Russian parishes were established for believers migrating to Galicia from other areas of the Ukraine and the USSR," but otherwise the traditional Ukrainian pronunciation of Church-Slavonic was retained in church services, along with vernacular Ukrainian in sermons and church administration. A Ukrainian Orthodox monthly, Pravoslavnyi visnyk (The Orthodox Herald), has been published since 1946 by the Church primarily for the Western Ukrainian consumption, until its suppression in the course of Khrushchev's antireligious campaign." Vacancies in Galician parishes were in most cases filled with the native clergy already trained in the Orthodox theological schools. With relatively more candidates for priesthood eatering these schools from the Western Ukraine than from other areas of the country, more and more of West Ukrainian priests were being posted in the central and eastern areas of the Ukraine.

Since the mid-1960's it has become evident that the Patriarchate and the regime were beginning to respond to the pressures for greater "Ukrainianization” of the Church in the Ukraine. In 1966, for the first time in over one hundred and fifty years, a Ukrainian Filaret Denysenko was appointed Archbishop (later Metropolitan) of Kiev and Exarch of the Ukraine. A year earlier, the former Uniate metropolitan see of Lvov was entrusted to a native of Galicia, former Uniate, Nykolai Juryk, raised in 1971 to the rank of metropolitan. During the subsequent years, the Orthodox hierarchy in the republic has become overwhelmingly Ukrainian, by 1975, out of 16 bishops some 13 bishops were Ukrainians, including nine natives of the western oblasti (among them three former Uniate priests).16 Beginning in August 1958, the Exarchate resumed publication of Pravoslavnyi visnyk and started publication of Ukrainian church calendars. In the same year, it brought out its first Ukrainian prayer book." In December 1969, a Ukrainian branch of the Patriarchate's Department of External Ecclesiastical Relations was established in Kiev. Metropolitan Filaret - himself an alumnes of this Department (which has become a "cradle of the new generation of Orthodox bishops) has been devoting much of his time to external relations, some of his efforts evidently aimed at promoting "reunion" of the Ukrainian Orthodox abroad with the Mesco Patriarchate and counteracting in the Vatican the influence of the Ukrainian Catholics in the West.

It seems that the principal force behind the "Ukrainianization" tendency within the official Orthodox Church in the Ukraine has been a smali but growing group of the former Uniate clergy who. having reconciled themselves with Orthodoxy, attempt to infuse it with Ukrainian national values. They may have found favourable response among some East Ukrainian clergymen." Well known is the case of Father Vasyl Romaniuk who had joined with the dissident historian Valentyn Moroz in the defence of Ukrainian religious and national rights and has suffered a similar fate as Moroz.19 Undoubtedly, too, grass-roots "Ukrainianization" pressures must be generated by those Orthodox parishes in Volynia and Bukovyna which have adopted Ukrainian as the language of the church long before the Soviet annexation.

The Uniare Catacomb Church

The forcible nature of "reunion" of the Uniates with the Russian Orthodox Church thirty years ago—a clearly illega! act whether in terms of the Soviet legal norms or from the standpoint of both Catholic and Orthodox canons — left a legacy of illegitimacy with the Orthodox Church in the "reunited" dioceses, while conferring upon the Greek - Catholic Church an aura of martyrdom for the faith and the Ukrainian national cause. Despite three decades of persecution and crude anti-Uniate propaganda depicting the banned Church as a historical "enemy of the Ukrainian people," "servant of Fascism and Capitalism", and a subversive, "bourgeois nationalist" organization the Uniate Church has retained broad social base in Galicia (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in Transcarpathia) as a truly national church, uncompromised by collaboration with the "Muscovite" atheist regime. The Uniate flock can be classified into three categories: "crypto-Uniates"; members of the "Catacomb Church"; and the so-called "Penitents" (Pokutnyky) who are now actually outside the dogmatic-canonical framework of the Catholic Church.