History of Christianity in Ukraine - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The History of Christianity
History of Christianity
The history of Christianity concerns the Christian religion, its followers and the Church with its various denominations, from the first century to the present. Christianity was founded in the 1st century by the followers of Jesus of Nazareth who they believed to be the Christ or chosen one of God...

in Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

dates back to the earliest centuries of the apostolic church. It has remained the dominant religion in the country since its acceptance in 988 by Vladimir the Great (Volodymyr the Great), who instated it as the state religion

State religion

A state religion is a religious body or creed officially endorsed by the state...

of Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....

, a medieval East Slavic

East Slavs

The East Slavs are Slavic peoples speaking East Slavic languages. Formerly the main population of the medieval state of Kievan Rus, by the seventeenth century they evolved into the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian peoples.-Sources:...

state.

Although separated into various denominations

Christian denomination

A Christian denomination is an identifiable religious body under a common name, structure, and doctrine within Christianity. In the Orthodox tradition, Churches are divided often along ethnic and linguistic lines, into separate churches and traditions. Technically, divisions between one group and...

, most Ukrainian

Ukrainians

Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

Christians share a common faith

Faith in Christianity

Faith, in Christianity, has been most commonly defined by the biblical formulation in the Letter to the Hebrews as "'the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen". Most of the definitions in the history of Christian theology have followed this biblical formulation...

, a unique blend of Byzantine practices and Slavic mythology

Slavic mythology

Slavic mythology is the mythological aspect of the polytheistic religion that was practised by the Slavs before Christianisation.The religion possesses many common traits with other religions descended from the Proto-Indo-European religion....

. These Eastern Christian traditions

Eastern Christianity

Eastern Christianity comprises the Christian traditions and churches that developed in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East, Northeastern Africa, India and parts of the Far East over several centuries of religious antiquity. The term is generally used in Western Christianity to...

, in the form of both Eastern Orthodox

Eastern Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...

and Eastern Catholic Churches, have been at various historic times closely aligned with Ukrainian national

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

self-identity

Self-concept

Self-concept is a multi-dimensional construct that refers to an individual's perception of "self" in relation to any number of characteristics, such as academics , gender roles and sexuality, racial identity, and many others. Each of these characteristics is a research domain Self-concept (also...

.

Currently, three major Ukrainian Orthodox Churches

Eastern Orthodox Church

coexist, and often compete, in the country: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate

Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate

Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate is one of the three major Orthodox churches in Ukraine, alongside the Ukrainian Orthodox Church , and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church...

, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)

Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is an autonomous Church of Eastern Orthodoxy in Ukraine, under the ecclesiastic jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate...

, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church

Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church

The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church is one of the three major Orthodox Churches in Ukraine. Close to ten percent of the Christian population claim to be members of the UAOC. The other Churches are the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kiev Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Russophile Orthodox...

. Additionally, a significant body of Christians belong to the Eastern Rite

Eastern Rite Catholic Churches

The Eastern Catholic Churches are autonomous, self-governing particular churches in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, the Pope. Together with the Latin Church, they compose the worldwide Catholic Church...

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church , Ukrainska Hreko-Katolytska Tserkva), is the largest Eastern Rite Catholic sui juris particular church in full communion with the Holy See, and is directly subject to the Pope...

, and a smaller number in the Ruthenian Catholic Church

Ruthenian Catholic Church

The Ruthenian Catholic Church is a sui iuris Eastern Catholic Church , which uses the Divine Liturgy of the Constantinopolitan Byzantine Eastern Rite. Its roots are among the Rusyns who lived in the region called Carpathian Ruthenia, in and around the Carpathian Mountains...

. While Western Christian traditions such as Roman Catholicism

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

and Protestantism have had a limited presence on the territory of Ukraine since at least the 16th century, worshipers of these traditions remain a relatively small minority in today's Ukraine.

Early history

Christianity was most likely first introduced into the lands of present-day Ukraine by the Goths

Goths

The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....

, who established the Chernyakhov culture

Chernyakhov culture

The Sântana de Mureș–Chernyakhiv culture is the name given to an archaeological culture which flourished between the 2nd and 5th centuries in a wide area of Eastern Europe, specifically in what today constitutes Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, and parts of Belarus...

in the 2nd century. Although not a Christian people as a whole, the incoming Ostrogoths certainly had relations with Christian centres such as Rome and had come across missionaries

Missionary

A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

in the lands they had previously inhabited; it is therefore believed that some of the Gothic inhabitants of Oium

Oium

Oium or Aujum was a name for an area in Scythia, where the Goths under their king Filimer settled after leaving Gothiscandza, according to the Getica by Jordanes, written around 551...

were Christian, as they had established churches in other lands occupied by the Goths. However, the Gothic control over the area proved to be short-lived, as the Hunnic Empire

Hunnic Empire

The Hunnic Empire was an empire established by the Huns. The Huns were a confederation of Eurasian tribes from the steppes of Central Asia. Appearing from beyond the Volga River some years after the middle of the 4th century, they first overran the Alani, who occupied the plains between the Volga...

swept into the area in the 4th century, making any lasting impression by the Goths unlikely.

Metropolitan Ilarion (Ivan Ohienko)

Metropolitan Ilarion (Ivan Ohienko)

Metropolitan Ilarion was a Ukrainian Orthodox cleric, linguist, church historian, and historian of Ukrainian culture. In 1940 he was Archimandrite of the St...

and other scholars have suggested that earlier Trypillian

Cucuteni culture

The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, also known as Cucuteni culture , Trypillian culture or Tripolye culture , is a late Neolithic archaeological culture which flourished between ca...

and Scythian religious practices, and hierarchical pantheism

Pantheism

Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...

, influenced Christianity's later development in Ukraine.

Saint Andrew

Saint Andrew , called in the Orthodox tradition Prōtoklētos, or the First-called, is a Christian Apostle and the brother of Saint Peter. The name "Andrew" , like other Greek names, appears to have been common among the Jews from the 3rd or 2nd century BC. No Hebrew or Aramaic name is recorded for him...

the apostle is believed to have traveled up the western shores of the Black Sea

Black Sea

The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...

, to the area of present-day southern Ukraine, while preaching in the lands of Scythia

Scythia

In antiquity, Scythian or Scyths were terms used by the Greeks to refer to certain Iranian groups of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dwelt on the Pontic-Caspian steppe...

. Legend has it that he traveled further still, up the Dnieper River

Dnieper River

The Dnieper River is one of the major rivers of Europe that flows from Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea.The total length is and has a drainage basin of .The river is noted for its dams and hydroelectric stations...

, until he came to the location of present-day Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

in 55 AD, where he erected a cross

Cross

A cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two lines or bars perpendicular to each other, dividing one or two of the lines in half. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally; if they run obliquely, the design is technically termed a saltire, although the arms of a saltire need not meet...

and prophesied the foundation of a great Christian city. Belief in the missionary visit of St. Andrew became widespread by the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

, and by 1621, a Kiev synod had declared him the "Rus'-apostle". Saint Titus, a disciple of St. Andrew's, is also venerated in Ukrainian churches, as are three "Scythian" disciples, Saints Ina, Pina and Rima, who accompanied him to the Kiev. Both the 18th century Church of St Andrew

St Andrew's Church of Kiev

The Saint Andrew's Church is a major Baroque church located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The church was constructed in 1747–1754, to a design by the Imperial Russian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli...

and an earlier structure from 1086 it replaced were purportedly built on the very location of the apostle's cross, planted on a hill overlooking the city of Kiev.

Although the Primary Chronicle

Primary Chronicle

The Primary Chronicle , Ruthenian Primary Chronicle or Russian Primary Chronicle, is a history of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110, originally compiled in Kiev about 1113.- Three editions :...

refers to the apostle continuing his journey as far north as Novgorod, St. Andrew's visit to any of these lands has not been proven, and in fact may have been a later invention designed to boost the autocephalic

Autocephaly

Autocephaly , in hierarchical Christian churches and especially Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, is the status of a hierarchical church whose head bishop does not report to any higher-ranking bishop...

aspirations in the territories where the upper clergy continued to be dominated by Greeks for several centuries.

Crimean roots

According to a 9th century tradition, Pope Clement I

Pope Clement I

Starting in the 3rd and 4th century, tradition has identified him as the Clement that Paul mentioned in Philippians as a fellow laborer in Christ.While in the mid-19th century it was customary to identify him as a freedman of Titus Flavius Clemens, who was consul with his cousin, the Emperor...

(ruled 88-98) was exiled to Chersonesos on the Crimean peninsula

Crimea

Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...

in 102, as was Pope Martin I

Pope Martin I

Pope Martin I, born near Todi, Umbria in the place now named after him , was pope from 649 to 653, succeeding Pope Theodore I in July 5, 649. The only pope during the Byzantine Papacy whose election was not approved by a iussio from Constantinople, Martin I was abducted by Constans II and died in...

in 655. Furthermore, it has been definitively recorded that a representative from the Black Sea area, the "head of the Scythian bishopric", was present at the First Council of Nicaea

First Council of Nicaea

The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325...

in 325, as well as the First Council of Constantinople

First Council of Constantinople

The First Council of Constantinople is recognized as the Second Ecumenical Council by the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox, the Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholics, the Old Catholics, and a number of other Western Christian groups. It was the first Ecumenical Council held in...

in 381; it has been surmised that this representative would have to have been Bishop Cadmus of the Bosporan Kingdom

Bosporan Kingdom

The Bosporan Kingdom or the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus was an ancient state, located in eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula on the shores of the Cimmerian Bosporus...

. Ostrogoths, who remained on present-day Ukrainian lands after the invasion of the Huns

Hunnic Empire

, established a metropolinate

Ecclesiastical Province

An ecclesiastical province is a large jurisdiction of religious government, so named by analogy with a secular province, existing in certain hierarchical Christian churches, especially in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches and in the Anglican Communion...

under the Bishop of Constantinople at Dorus in northern Crimea around the year 400. A bishop's seat

Diocese

A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...

had also existed since 868 across the Strait of Kerch

Strait of Kerch

The Kerch Strait connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, separating the Kerch Peninsula in the west from the Taman Peninsula in the east. The strait is to wide and up to deep....

, in the ancient city of Tmutarakan

Tmutarakan

Tmutarakan was a Mediaeval Russian principality and trading town that controlled the Cimmerian Bosporus, the passage from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. Its site was the ancient Greek colony of Hermonassa . It was situated on the Taman peninsula, in the present-day Krasnodar Krai of Russia,...

. The Polans

Polans (eastern)

The Polans ; also Polianians; were a Slavic tribe between the 6th and the 9th century, which inhabited both sides of the Dnieper river from Liubech to Rodnia and also down the lower streams of the rivers Ros', Sula, Stuhna, Teteriv, Irpin', Desna and Pripyat...

and the Antes cultures, located so close to the Crimea, surely became familiarized with Christianity by this time.

Saints Cyril and Methodius

The relics of Pope St. Martin were allegedly retrieved by the "Equal-to-apostles

Equal-to-apostles

An equal-to-the-apostles is a special title given to some canonized saints in Eastern Orthodoxy. It is also used by Eastern Rite Catholic Churches that are in communion with Rome...

" brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius

Saints Cyril and Methodius

Saints Cyril and Methodius were two Byzantine Greek brothers born in Thessaloniki in the 9th century. They became missionaries of Christianity among the Slavic peoples of Bulgaria, Great Moravia and Pannonia. Through their work they influenced the cultural development of all Slavs, for which they...

, who passed through present-day Ukraine on their way to preach to the Khazars

Khazars

The Khazars were semi-nomadic Turkic people who established one of the largest polities of medieval Eurasia, with the capital of Atil and territory comprising much of modern-day European Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the northern Caucasus , parts of...

. Sent from Constantinople at the request of the ruler of Great Moravia

Great Moravia

Great Moravia was a Slavic state that existed in Central Europe and lasted for nearly seventy years in the 9th century whose creators were the ancestors of the Czechs and Slovaks. It was a vassal state of the Germanic Frankish kingdom and paid an annual tribute to it. There is some controversy as...

, these brothers would add to foundation of Christianity in Ukraine by creating the Glagolitic alphabet

Glagolitic alphabet

The Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" . The verb glagoliti means "to speak"...

, a precursor to the eponym

Eponym

An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...

ous "Cyrillic script

Early Cyrillic alphabet

The Early Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th or 10th century to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language...

", which enabled the local population to worship God in Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...

, a language closer to the vernacular

Vernacular

A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...

Old East Slavic language

Old East Slavic or Old Ruthenian was a language used in 10th-15th centuries by East Slavs in the Kievan Rus' and states which evolved after the collapse of the Kievan Rus...

than the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

used to worship in Constantinople, or Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

in the west.

In response to local disputes with clerics of the Latin Church, Cyril and Methodius appealed in person to the Bishop of Rome

Pope

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...

in 867, bringing with them the relics of Pope St. Martin from Chersonesos. Their labors and request were met with approval, and their continued efforts planted the Christian faith into Ukraine. By 906, they had founded a diocese in Peremyshl

Przemysl

Przemyśl is a city in south-eastern Poland with 66,756 inhabitants, as of June 2009. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship; it was previously the capital of Przemyśl Voivodeship....

, now Przemyśl in present-day Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, at the western edge of Ukraine. Their efforts, and those of their apostles, led to the translation of Christian Scriptures

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

and service (liturgies) from Greek to Slavonic, and the eventual development of the modern Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

Early Rus' period

By the 9th century, it is known that the Slavic

Slavic peoples

The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...

population of western Ukraine (likely the White Croats

White Croats

White Croats is the designation for the group of Slavic tribes, of which seven tribes led by 5 brothers and 2 sisters migrated to Dalmatia as part of the migration of the Croats in the 7th century, being invited to settle on this vastly depopulated area by Roman...

) had accepted Christianity while under the rule of Great Moravia

Great Moravia

. However, it was the East Slavs

East Slavs

who came to dominate most of the territory of present-day Ukraine, beginning with the rule of the Rus'

Rus' (people)

The Rus' were a group of Varangians . According to the Primary Chronicle of Rus, compiled in about 1113 AD, the Rus had relocated from the Baltic region , first to Northeastern Europe, creating an early polity which finally came under the leadership of Rurik...

, whose pantheon of gods had held a considerable following for over 600 years.

Following the 860 assault on Constantinople

Rus'-Byzantine War (860)

The Rus'–Byzantine War of 860 was the only major military expedition of the Rus' Khaganate recorded in Byzantine and Western European sources. Accounts vary regarding the events that took place, with discrepancies between contemporary and later sources, and the exact outcome is unknown...

by Rus' forces under the command of Askold and Dir

Askold and Dir

Askold and Dir are semi-legendary rulers of Kiev who, according to the Primary Chronicle, were two of Rurik's voivodes in 870s...

, the two princes were baptized in that holy city. Returning to Kiev, the two actively championed Christianity for a period of 20 years, until they were murdered by the pagan Prince Oleg

Oleg of Novgorod

Oleg of Novgorod was a Varangian prince who ruled all or part of the Rus' people during the early 10th century....

in the inter-princely rivalry for the Kiev throne. Patriarch Photios purportedly provided a bishop and priests from Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

to help in the Christianization

Christianization

The historical phenomenon of Christianization is the conversion of individuals to Christianity or the conversion of entire peoples at once...

of the Slavs. By 900, a church was already established in Kiev, St. Elijah's, modeled on a church of the same name in Constantinople. This gradual acceptance of Christianity is most notable in the Rus'-Byzantine Treaty

Rus'-Byzantine Treaty (945)

The Rus'–Byzantine Treaty between the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII and Igor I of Kiev was concluded either in 944 or 945 as a result of a naval expedition undertaken by Kievan Rus against Constantinople in the early 940s...

of 945, which was signed by both "baptized" and unbaptized Rus'", according to the text included in the Primary Chronicle

Primary Chronicle

The Primary Chronicle , Ruthenian Primary Chronicle or Russian Primary Chronicle, is a history of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110, originally compiled in Kiev about 1113.- Three editions :...

.

Christianity acceptance among the Rus' nobility gained a vital proponent when Princess Olga, the ruler of Kiev

Kiev

, became baptized, taking the "Christian name

Given name

A given name, in Western contexts often referred to as a first name, is a personal name that specifies and differentiates between members of a group of individuals, especially in a family, all of whose members usually share the same family name...

" Helen. Her baptism in 955 (or 957) in either Kiev or Constantinople (accounts differ) was a turning point in religious life of Rus' but it was left to her grandson, Vladimir the Great, to make Kievan Rus' a Christian state. Both Vladimir and Olga are venerated as the Equal-to-apostles saints

Equal-to-apostles

An equal-to-the-apostles is a special title given to some canonized saints in Eastern Orthodoxy. It is also used by Eastern Rite Catholic Churches that are in communion with Rome...

by the Eastern Orthodox Church

Eastern Orthodox Church

.

Princess Olga of Kiev

Olga of Kiev

Saint Olga , or Olga the Beauty, hypothetically Old Norse: Helga In some Scandinavian sources she was called other name. born c. 890 died 11 July 969, Kiev) was a ruler of Kievan Rus' as regent Saint Olga , or Olga the Beauty, hypothetically Old Norse: Helga In some Scandinavian sources she was...

shortly after her baptism appealed to the Holy Roman emperor

Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...

Otto the Great to send missionaries into Kievan Rus'. Saint Adalbert, a Latin

Latin Church

The Latin Church is the largest particular church within the Catholic Church. It is a particular church not on the level of the local particular churches known as dioceses or eparchies, but on the level of autonomous ritual churches, of which there are 23, the remaining 22 of which are Eastern...

missionary bishop from Germany, was sent, but his missions and the priests who missionized along with him, were stopped. Most of the group of Latin missionaries were slain by pagan forces sent by Olga's son, Prince Svyatoslav

Sviatoslav I of Kiev

Sviatoslav I Igorevich ; , also spelled Svyatoslav, was a prince of Rus...

, who had taken the crown

The Crown

The Crown is a corporation sole that in the Commonwealth realms and any provincial or state sub-divisions thereof represents the legal embodiment of governance, whether executive, legislative, or judicial...

from his mother.

Christianity became dominant in the territory with the mass Baptism of Kiev in the Dnieper River

Dnieper River

in 988 ordered by Vladimir. Following the Great Schism

East-West Schism

The East–West Schism of 1054, sometimes known as the Great Schism, formally divided the State church of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western branches, which later became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, respectively...

in 1054, the Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....

that incorporated most of modern Ukraine ended up on the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine

Byzantine

Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...

side of the divided Christian world.

Early on, the Orthodox Christian metropolitan

Metropolitan bishop

In Christian churches with episcopal polity, the rank of metropolitan bishop, or simply metropolitan, pertains to the diocesan bishop or archbishop of a metropolis; that is, the chief city of a historical Roman province, ecclesiastical province, or regional capital.Before the establishment of...

s had their seat in Pereyaslav, and later in Kiev. The people of Kiev lost their Metropolitan to Vladimir-Suzdal

Vladimir-Suzdal

The Vladimir-Suzdal Principality or Vladimir-Suzdal Rus’ was one of the major principalities which succeeded Kievan Rus' in the late 12th century and lasted until the late 14th century. For a long time the Principality was a vassal of the Mongolian Golden Horde...

in 1299 (who retained the title), but gained a new Metropolitan in Halych

Halych

Halych is a historic city on the Dniester River in western Ukraine. The town gave its name to the historic province and kingdom of Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, of which it was the capital until the early 14th century, when the seat of the local princes was moved to Lviv...

in 1303. The religious affairs were also ruled in part by a Metropolitan in Navahrudak, (present-day Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

After the breakup of the Kievan Rus

In the 15th century, the primacy over the Ukrainian church was restored to Kiev, under the title "Metropolitan of Kiev, Halych and all Rus'". One clause of the Union of Krevo stipulated that Jagiello would disseminate Roman Catholicism among Orthodox subjects of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Grand Duchy of Lithuania

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state from the 12th /13th century until 1569 and then as a constituent part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1791 when Constitution of May 3, 1791 abolished it in favor of unitary state. It was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the polytheistic...

, of which Ukraine was a part. The opposition from the Ostrohskis and other Orthodox magnate

Magnate

Magnate, from the Late Latin magnas, a great man, itself from Latin magnus 'great', designates a noble or other man in a high social position, by birth, wealth or other qualities...

s led to this policy being suspended in the early 16th century.

Following the Union of Lublin

Union of Lublin

The Union of Lublin replaced the personal union of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with a real union and an elective monarchy, since Sigismund II Augustus, the last of the Jagiellons, remained childless after three marriages. In addition, the autonomy of Royal Prussia was...

, the Polonization

Polonization

Polonization was the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, in particular, Polish language, as experienced in some historic periods by non-Polish populations of territories controlled or substantially influenced by Poland...

of the Ukrainian church was accelerated. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox church in Ukraine was liable to various taxes and legal obligations. The building of new Orthodox churches was strongly discouraged. The Roman Catholics were strictly forbidden to convert to Orthodoxy, and the marriages between Catholics and Orthodox were frowned upon. Orthodox subjects had been increasingly barred from high offices of state.

Union of Brest and its aftermath

In order to oppose such restrictions and to reverse cultural polonization of Orthodox bishops, the Ecumenical Patriarch encouraged the activity of the Orthodox urban communities called the "brotherhoods" (bratstvo). In 1589 Hedeon Balaban

Hedeon Balaban

Hedeon Balaban was the bishop of Lviv from 1569 to 1607.Balaban was born in 1530. He took the side of the Orthodox church against the Polish Roman Catholics, in particular the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lviv. He resisted introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 and struggled against the...

, the bishop of Lviv

Lviv

Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...

, asked the Pope to take him under his protection, because he was exasperated by the struggle with urban communities and the Ecumenical Patriarch. He was followed by the bishops of Lutsk

Lutsk

Lutsk is a city located by the Styr River in northwestern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Volyn Oblast and the administrative center of the surrounding Lutskyi Raion within the oblast...

, Cholm, and Turov in 1590. In the following years, the bishops of Volodymyr-Volynskyy and Przemyśl

Przemysl

and the Metropolitan of Kiev

Kiev

announced their secession from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was increasingly influenced by the Ottomans

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

. In 1595 some representatives of this group arrived to Rome and asked Pope Clement VIII

Pope Clement VIII

Pope Clement VIII , born Ippolito Aldobrandini, was Pope from 30 January 1592 to 3 March 1605.-Cardinal:...

to take them under his jurisdiction and unite them to the Apostolic See of Saint Peter

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

.

In the Union of Brest

Union of Brest

Union of Brest or Union of Brześć refers to the 1595-1596 decision of the Church of Rus', the "Metropolia of Kiev-Halych and all Rus'", to break relations with the Patriarch of Constantinople and place themselves under the Pope of Rome. At the time, this church included most Ukrainians and...

of 1596 (colloquially known as unia), a part of the Ukrainian Church was accepted under the jurisdiction of the Roman Pope, becoming a Byzantine Rite

Byzantine Rite

The Byzantine Rite, sometimes called the Rite of Constantinople or Constantinopolitan Rite is the liturgical rite used currently by all the Eastern Orthodox Churches, by the Greek Catholic Churches , and by the Protestant Ukrainian Lutheran Church...

Catholic Church, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, colloquially known as the Uniate Church. While the new church gained many faithful among the Ukrainians

Ukrainians

Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

in Galicia, the majority of Ukrainians in the rest of the lands remained within Eastern Orthodoxy with the church affairs ruled by then from Kiev under the metropolitan Peter Mogila (Petro Mohyla). The Orthodox Church was made illegal (its legality was partially restored in 1607), its property confiscated, and Orthodox believers faced persecution and discrimination which became an important reason for large numbers of Ukrainians to emigrate to Tsardom of Russia following the Union. The eastward spread of the Union of Brest led to violent clashes, for example, assassination of the Greek Catholic metropolitan

Metropolitan bishop

Josaphat Kuntsevych by the Orthodox mob in Polotsk in 1623.

Khmelnytsky Uprising

As the unia continued its expansion into Ukraine, its unpopularity grew, particularly in the southern steppe

Steppe

In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...

s where Dnieper Cossacks lived. The Cossacks valued their traditions and culture saw the unia as a final step of Polonization

Polonization

. As a result they reacted by becoming fierce proponents of Orthodoxy. Such feelings played a role in the mass uprising

Khmelnytsky Uprising

The Khmelnytsky Uprising, was a Cossack rebellion in the Ukraine between the years 1648–1657 which turned into a Ukrainian war of liberation from Poland...

whose targets included all non-Orthodox religious proponents, the Catholic and Uniate clergy and Jews. During this time metropolitan Mogila took full advantage of the moment to restore the Orthodox domination in Ukraine, including returning one of its sacred buildings, the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev

Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev

Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev is an outstanding architectural monument of Kievan Rus'. Today, it is one of the city's best known landmarks and the first Ukrainian patrimony to be inscribed on the World Heritage List along with the Kiev Cave Monastery complex...

Territories gained by Pereyaslav Rada

In 1686, 40 years after Mogila's death, the Ottomans, acting on the behalf of the regent

Regent

A regent, from the Latin regens "one who reigns", is a person selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu...

of Russia Sophia Alekseyevna

Sophia Alekseyevna

Sophia Alekseyevna was a regent of Russian Tsardom who allied herself with a singularly capable courtier and politician, Prince Vasily Galitzine, to install herself as a regent during the minority of her brothers, Peter the Great and Ivan V...

, pressured the Patriarch of Constantinople

Patriarch of Constantinople

The Ecumenical Patriarch is the Archbishop of Constantinople – New Rome – ranking as primus inter pares in the Eastern Orthodox communion, which is seen by followers as the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church....

into transferring the Orthodox Church of Kiev and all Rus' from the jurisdiction of Constantinople to the Patriarch of Moscow, established a century prior to that. The legality of this step is occasionally questioned to this day along with the fact that the transfer was accompanied by graft and bribery, which in church affairs amounts to an ecclesiastical crime. The transfer itself, however, led to the significant Ukrainian domination of the Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...

, which continued well into the 18th century, Feofan Prokopovich

Feofan Prokopovich

thumb|Theophan ProkopovichFeofan/Theophan Prokopovich was an archbishop and statesman in the Russian Empire, of Ukrainian descent. He elaborated and implemented Peter the Great's reform of the Russian Orthodox Church...

, Epifany Slavinetsky

Epifany Slavinetsky

Epifany Slavinetsky was an ecclesiastical expert of the Russian Orthodox Church who helped Patriarch Nikon to revise the ancient service-books, thus precipitating the Great Schism of the national church....

, Stephen Yavorsky

Stephen Yavorsky

Stefan Yavorsky was an archbishop and statesman in the Russian Empire, of Ukrainian descent, one of the ablest coadjutors of Peter the Great and the first president of the Most Holy Synod....

and Demetrius of Rostov being among the most notable representatives of this trend.

Territories gained from Crimean Khanate

In the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate

Crimean Khanate

Crimean Khanate, or Khanate of Crimea , was a state ruled by Crimean Tatars from 1441 to 1783. Its native name was . Its khans were the patrilineal descendants of Toqa Temür, the thirteenth son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan...

(Vassal for Ottoman Empire) was conquered by Russia, and the latter annexed most of the southern steppes and Crimea. Colonization of these lands was actively encouraged by Orthodox people, particularly Ukrainians, Russians and Serbs. As New Russia (Novorossiya, as it was then known) was settled, new Orthodox parishes were created. Construction of Cathedrals that demonstrate some of the finest examples of late 19th century Russian Architecture

Russian architecture

Russian architecture follows a tradition whose roots were established in the Eastern Slavic state of Kievan Rus'. After the fall of Kiev, Russian architectural history continued in the principalities of Vladimir-Suzdal, Novgorod, the succeeding states of the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian Empire,...

was undertaken in large cities such as Odessa

Odessa

Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...

and Sevastopol

Sevastopol

Sevastopol is a city on rights of administrative division of Ukraine, located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimea peninsula. It has a population of 342,451 . Sevastopol is the second largest port in Ukraine, after the Port of Odessa....

Territories gained from partitions

In the late 17th century the Poland became less and less influential and internal corruption as well as the pressure from its powerful neighbors resulted in its partitions

Partitions of Poland

The Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years...

by neighbouring empires. The Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

, in particular, gained most of ethnically Ukrainian

Ukrainians

Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

land and all of the Belarusian

Belarusians

Belarusians ; are an East Slavic ethnic group who populate the majority of the Republic of Belarus. Introduced to the world as a new state in the early 1990s, the Republic of Belarus brought with it the notion of a re-emerging Belarusian ethnicity, drawn upon the lines of the Old Belarusian...

lands. After nearely two centuries of polonization

Polonization

, the Uniate influence on the Ukrainian population was so great that hardly any remained Orthodox. Although some, particularly in Podolia

Podolia

The region of Podolia is an historical region in the west-central and south-west portions of present-day Ukraine, corresponding to Khmelnytskyi Oblast and Vinnytsia Oblast. Northern Transnistria, in Moldova, is also a part of Podolia...

, chose to revert to Orthodoxy soon after, this in many cases was an exception rather than trend and in locations where the Unia already gave deep roots into the population all of the church property remained in the Catholic and Uniate authority. Also significant was Empress Catherine II's decree "On the newly acquired territory", according to which most of the Polish magnates retained all their lands and property (thus a significant control over population) in the newly acquired lands.

Nevertheless the first Russophile

Russophilia

Russophilia is the love of Russia and/or Russians. The term is used in two basic contexts: in international politics and in cultural context. "Russophilia" and "Russophilic" are the terms used to denote pro-Russian sentiments, usually in politics and literature...

tendencies began to surface, and came in face of the Uniate Bishop Joseph Semashko. Believing that the Uniate Church's role as an interim bridge between Orthodoxy

Eastern Orthodox Church

and their eventual path to Catholicism is over, now that the ruler of the lands is no longer a Catholic, but an Orthodox Monarch, he began to push for an eventual reversion of all Uniates. Although the idea was shared by growing number of the lower priests, the ruling Uniate synod

Synod

A synod historically is a council of a church, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not...

, controlled by the strong Polish influence, rejected all Semashko's suggestions. In addition many of the Latin Catholic authorities responded to this by actively converting the Uniates to Latin Rite Catholicism.

In 1831, the general discontent of the Poles with the Russian rule erupted into a revolt, now known as the November Uprising

November Uprising

The November Uprising , Polish–Russian War 1830–31 also known as the Cadet Revolution, was an armed rebellion in the heartland of partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. The uprising began on 29 November 1830 in Warsaw when the young Polish officers from the local Army of the Congress...

, which the Uniate Church officially supported. However, the uprising failed, and the Russian authorities were quick to respond to its organisers and areas of strongest support. The outcome was that the Uniate synod's members were removed along with most of the Polish magnates privileges' and authority being taken away. With the Polish influence in the Ruthenian lands significantly reduced and in some cases eliminated, the Uniate Church began to disintegrate. In Volhynia

Volhynia

Volhynia, Volynia, or Volyn is a historic region in western Ukraine located between the rivers Prypiat and Southern Bug River, to the north of Galicia and Podolia; the region is named for the former city of Volyn or Velyn, said to have been located on the Southern Bug River, whose name may come...

the famous Pochayiv Lavra

Pochayiv Lavra

Holy Dormition Pochayiv Lavra has for centuries been the foremost spiritual and ideological centre of various Orthodox denominations in Western Ukraine. The monastery tops a 60-metre hill in the town of Pochayiv, Ternopil Oblast, 18 km southwest of Kremenets and 50 km north of Ternopil...

was returned to Russian Orthodox clergy in 1833. The final blow came from the Synod of Polotsk in 1839 headed by the ex-Uniate Bishop Semashko, where it was agreed to terminate the accords of Union of Brest

Union of Brest

and all of the remaining Uniate property on the territory of the Belarus and Right Bank Ukraine within the Russian Empire was incorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

. Those Uniate clergy who refused to join the Russian Orthodox Church (593 out of a total of 1,898 in Ukraine and Belarus) were exiled to the Russian interior or Siberia. By means of mass deportations, persecution and even executions the Uniates were practically eliminated in the Russian Empire. Only a small number of Greek Catholics in the Kholm Governorate

Kholm Governorate

Kholm Governorate or Chełm Governorate was an administrative unit of the Russian Empire. Its capital was in Chełm ....

managed to preserve their faith.

Within the Russian Empire, the Uniate Church continued to function until 1875, when the Eparchy of Chelm was abolished

Conversion of Chelm Eparchy

The Conversion of Chełm Eparchy, which occurred from January to May 1875, refers to the generally forced conversion of the last Uniate Eparchy in the Russian Empire, which was centered in the Volhynian city of Chełm , to the Orthodox faith....

.The greater longevity of the Uniate Church in this region was attributed to the fact that it came under Russian control later than did the other territories (1809) and that, unlike other Ukrainian regions within the Russian Empire, it had been part of the Congress Poland

Congress Poland

The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...

, which had some autonomy until 1865. Within Chelm, the conversion to Orthodoxy met with strong resistance from the local ethnic Ukrainian priests and parishioners, and was accomplished largely through the efforts of Russian police, Cossacks, and immigrating Russophile

Ukrainian Russophiles

The focus of this article is part of a general political movement in Western Ukraine of the nineteenth and early 20th century. The movement contained several competing branches: Moscowphiles, Ukrainophiles, Rusynphiles, and others....

priests from eastern Galicia. The resistance was strong enough that when, a generation later in 1905, the formally Orthodox population of Chelm was allowed to return to Catholicism (Russian authorities only allowing conversion to the Latin Rite), 170,000 out of 450,000 did so by 1908.

Austrian Galicia and World War I

Although the Partitions of Poland

Partitions of Poland

awarded most of the Ruthenian lands to the Russian Empire, this excluded the southwestern Kingdom Of Galicia (constituting the modern Lviv

Lviv Oblast

Lviv Oblast is an oblast in western Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Lviv.-History:The oblast was created as part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on December 4, 1939...

, Ivano-Frankivsk

Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast is an oblast in western Ukraine. Its administrative center is the city of Ivano-Frankivsk. As is the case with most other oblasts of Ukraine this region has the same name as its administrative center – which was renamed by the Soviets after the Ukrainian writer, nationalist...

and parts of Ternopil

Ternopil Oblast

Ternopil Oblast is an oblast' of Ukraine. Its administrative center is Ternopil, through which flows the Seret River, a tributary of the Dnister.-Geography:...

oblasts), which fell under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Similarly to the situation in the lands of the Russian Empire, the Uniate Ruthenian

Ruthenians

The name Ruthenian |Rus']]) is a culturally loaded term and has different meanings according to the context in which it is used. Initially, it was the ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples who lived in Rus'. Later it was used predominantly for Ukrainians...

(Ukrainian) peasantry was largely under the Polish Latin Catholic domination. The Austrians granted equal legal privileges to the Uniate Church and removed Polish influence. They also mandated that Uniate seminarians receive a formal higher education (previously, priests had been educated informally by other priests, usually their fathers, as the vocation was passed on within families), and organized institutions in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

and Lviv that would serve this function. This led to the appearance, for the first time, of a large educated social class

Western Ukrainian Clergy

The Western Ukrainian clergy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church were a hereditary tight-knit social caste that dominated western Ukrainian society from the late eighteenth until the mid twentieth centuries, following the reforms instituted by Joseph II, Emperor of Austria...

within the Ukrainian population in Galicia. As a result, within Austrian Galicia over the next century the Uniate Church ceased being a puppet of foreign interests and became the primary cultural force within the Ukrainian community. Most independent native Ukrainian cultural trends (such as Rusynophilia, Russophilia

Russophilia

and later Ukrainophilia

Ukrainophilia

Ukrainophilia is the love of and/or identification with Ukraine and Ukrainians; its opposite is Ukrainophobia. The term is used primarily in a political and cultural context. "Ukrainophilia" and "Ukrainophile" are the terms used to denote pro-Ukrainian sentiments, usually in politics and...

) emerged from within the ranks of the Uniate Church. The participation of Uniate priests or their children in western Ukrainian cultural and political life was so great that western Ukrainians were accused of wanting to create a theocracy in western Ukraine by their Polish rivals.

During the 19th century there was a struggle within the Uniate Church (and therefore within the general Galician society due to its domination by priests) between Russophiles

Ukrainian Russophiles

who desired union with Russia and Ukrainophiles

Ukrainophilia

who saw the Galician Ruthenians as Ukrainians, not Russians. The former group were mostly represented by older and more conservative elements of the priesthood, while the latter ideology was more popular among the younger priests. The Russophilia

Russophilia

of the Galician Ruthenians

Ruthenians

was particularly strong during the mid-19th century, although by the end of that century the Russophiles had declined in importance relative to the Ukrainophiles

Ukrainophilia

. The Austrian authorities during this time began to be more and more involved in the power-struggle with Russia for the rule of the Balkans

Balkans

The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...

, as the declining Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

withdrew, and in so doing opposed the Russophiles. The Balkans themselves were largely Orthodox and crucial to the Russian Panslavism movement. In this situation, the Galician Ruthenians found themselves in the pawn's position.

When the power struggle erupted into the First World War, the Russian Army

Imperial Russian Army

The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of around 938,731 regular soldiers and 245,850 irregulars . Until the time of military reform of Dmitry Milyutin in...

initially quickly overran Galicia (see Eastern Front (World War I)

Eastern Front (World War I)

The Eastern Front was a theatre of war during World War I in Central and, primarily, Eastern Europe. The term is in contrast to the Western Front. Despite the geographical separation, the events in the two theatres strongly influenced each other...

). Free of Polish domination, unlike in other areas of Ukraine the Uniate church had become closely linked to the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian national movement. For this reason, the population in general were quite loyal to the Austrian Habsburgs, earning the nickname "Tyroleans of the East", and resisted reunion into the Orthodox Church. A minority of them, however, welcomed the Russians and reverted to Orthodoxy. After regaining the lost territories with the counterattack in late 1914, the Austrian authorities responded with repressions: several thousand Orthodox and Russophilic people died while being interred at a Talerhof

Talerhof

Talerhof was a concentration camp created by the Austro-Hungarian authorities of Franz Joseph I of Austria in the first days of World War I, in a sandy valley in foothills of the Alps, near Graz, the main city of the province of Styria....

concentration camp for those deemed disloyal to Austria. Already a minority, the Russophiles were largely extinguished as a religious-cultural force in Galicia as a result of these actions.

Soviet Union

After the Russian Revolution

Russian Revolution of 1917

The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...

and the Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

the Bolsheviks seized power in the Russian Empire and transformed it into the Soviet Union. Religion in the new socialist society was assigned little value by the state, but in particular Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

was distrusted because of its active supportive of the White Movement

White movement

The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...

. Massive arrests and repressions began immediately. In the Ukrainian SSR

Ukrainian SSR

The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...

(one of the founding republics of the USSR) as early as in December 1918 the first execution of the head of the Ukrainian Exarchate Metropolitan of Kiev and Halych

Halych

took place. This was only the start which culminated in mass closing and destruction of churches that (some standing since the days of the Kievan Rus) and executions of clergy and followers.

Ukraine was controlled by several short-lived yet independent governments which revived the Ukrainian national idea. Ukraine declared its political independence following the fall of the Provisional Government

Provisional government

A provisional government is an emergency or interim government set up when a political void has been created by the collapse of a very large government. The early provisional governments were created to prepare for the return of royal rule...

in 1918 and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church

Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church

was established.

Following the Soviet regime's taking root in Ukraine and despite the ongoing Soviet-wide antireligious campaign, the Bolshevik authorities saw the national churches as a tool in their goal to suppress the Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

always viewed with the great suspicion by the regime for its being the cornerstone of pre-revolutionary Russian Empire and the initially strong opposition the church took towards the regime change (the position of the patriarch

Patriarch

Originally a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is called patriarchy. This is a Greek word, a compound of πατριά , "lineage, descent", esp...

Tikhon of Moscow

Saint Tikhon of Moscow , born Vasily Ivanovich Bellavin , was the 11th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia of the Russian Orthodox Church during the early years of the Soviet Union, 1917 through 1925.-Early life:...

was especially critical).

On November 11, 1921 http://www.day.kiev.ua/151244/, an unrecognised Church Council started in Kiev. The council would proclaim the first formation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). The Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

strongly opposed the formation of the Ukrainian autocephaly and not a single ordained bishop was willing or able to ordain the hierarchy for a new Church. Therefore, the clergy "ordained" its own hierarchy itself, a practice questionable under the canon law

Canon law

Canon law is the body of laws & regulations made or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Catholic Church , the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the Anglican Communion of...

, in the "Alexandrian" manner - by laying on priests' hands on two senior candidates who became known as Metropolitan Vasyl (Lypkivsky)

Metropolitan Vasyl (Lypkivsky)

Vasyl Kostantynovytch Lypkivsky was founder of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the first "Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine" .- Education and early ministry :...

and Archbishop Nestor (Sharayivsky) (reportedly the relics of St. Clement of Rome who died in Ukraine in the 1st century were also used). Despite the canon law

Canon law

controversy, the new church was recognized in 1924 by the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory VII

Patriarch Gregory VII of Constantinople

Gregory VII was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 1923 until 1924.He imported the New Style Calendar to the Church of Constantinople. He died suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1924.-External links:*...

.

In the wake of the Ukrainization

Ukrainization

Ukrainization is a policy of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of Ukrainian culture, in various spheres of public life such as education, publishing, government and religion.The term is used, most prominently, for the...

policies carried out in Soviet Ukraine in the first decade of the Soviet rule many of the Orthodox clergy willfully joined the church thus avoiding the persecution suffered by many clergy members who remained inside the Russian Orthodox Church. During the period in which the Soviet government tolerated the renewed Ukrainian national church the UAOC gained a wide following particularly among the Ukrainian peasantry.

In the early-1930s the Soviet government abruptly reversed the policies in the national republics and mass arrests of UAOC's hierarchy and clergy culminated in the liquidation of the church in 1930. Most of the surviving property was officially transferred to the ROC, with some churches closed for good and destroyed. On the eve of the Second World War only 3% of the pre-revolutionary parishes on the territory of Ukraine remained open to the public, often hidden in deep rural areas.

Second Polish Republic

The 1921 Peace of Riga

Peace of Riga

The Peace of Riga, also known as the Treaty of Riga; was signed in Riga on 18 March 1921, between Poland, Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine. The treaty ended the Polish-Soviet War....

treaty that ended the Polish-Soviet War

Polish-Soviet War

The Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine and the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic—four states in post–World War I Europe...

gave the significant areas of the ethnically Ukrainian (and Belarusian) territories to the reborn Polish state

Second Polish Republic

The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...

. This included Polesie and Volhynia

Volhynia

, areas with almost exclusively Orthodox population amongst the rural peasants, as well as the former Austrian province of Galicia with its Uniate population.

The Greek Catholic church, which functions in communion with the Latin Rite Catholicism, could have hoped to receive a better treatment in Poland, whose leadership, especially the endecja
Endecja
National Democracy was a Polish right-wing nationalist political movement active from the latter 19th century to the end of the Second Polish Republic in 1939. A founder and principal ideologue was Roman Dmowski...

party, saw the Catholicism as one of the main tools to unify the nation where non-Polish minority comprised over one third of the citizenry. Nevertheless, the Poles saw the Greek Catholic Galicia Ukrainians as even less reliable and loyal as the Orthodox Volhynia Ukrainians. Also, despite the communion with Rome, the UGCC attained a strong Ukrainian national character of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and the Polish authorities sought to weaken it in various ways. In 1924, following a visit with the Ukrainian Catholic believers in North America and western Europe, the head of the UGCC was initially denied reentry to Lviv until after a considerable delay. Polish priests led by their bishops began to undertake missionary work among Eastern Rite faithful, and the administrative restrictions were placed on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

With respect to the Orthodox Ukrainian population in eastern Poland, the Polish government initially issued a decree defending the rights of the Orthodox minorities. In practice, this often failed, as the Catholics, also eager to strengthen their position, had stronger representation in the Sejm

Sejm

The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....

and the courts. Any accusation was strong enough for a particular church to be confiscated and handed over to the Roman Catholic Church. During the Polish rule, 190 Orthodox churches were destroyed (although some of them have already been abandoned) and 150 were forcibly transformed into Roman Catholic (not Ukrainian Catholic) churches. Such actions were condemned by the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, who claimed that these acts would "destroy in the souls of our non-united Orthodox brothers the very thought of any possibility of reunion."

In addition to persecution from the new authorities, the Orthodox clergy found itself with no ecclesiastical link to submit to. Like most ex-Russian Orthodox communities that ended up outside the USSR, and thus with no possible contact with the persecuted mother church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople , part of the wider Orthodox Church, is one of the fourteen autocephalous churches within the communion of Orthodox Christianity...

agreed to take over Moscow Patriarchate's role and in 1923 the Polish Orthodox Church

Polish Orthodox Church

The Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church, commonly known as the Polish Orthodox Church, , is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Churches in full communion...

was formed out of the parishes that were on the territory of the Polish republic although 90% of its clergy and believers were non-Polish people.

Czechoslovakia

The redrawal of national boundaries following World War I also affected yet another ethnically Ruthenian territory. In 1918, the country of Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

was formed, the nation included several minorities. In the easternmost end of the country, Transcarpathia

Carpathian Ruthenia

Carpathian Ruthenia is a region in Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast , with smaller parts in easternmost Slovakia , Poland's Lemkovyna and Romanian Maramureş.It is...

lived the Rusyn

Rusyns

Carpatho-Rusyns are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an Eastern Slavic language, or Ukrainian dialect, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century...

population. For most of their history they were ruled by the Hungarians, who unlike the Austrians ruling Galicia were quite active in opposing Ukrainophile sentiments. Instead, the Hungarians supported a Rusyn identity (separate from either a pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian orientation) through pro-Hungarian priests in an effort to separate the Ruthenian people under their rule from their brethren across the mountains. Thus despite being Uniate at the time of the formation of Czechoslovakia, the population was about evenly divided between Rusynophile, Ukrainophile and Russophile orientation. The general Russophilic sentiment was very strong amongst them, and these cultural and political orientation impacted the local religious communities. Even before the first world war already quite a lot of distant mountain communities were de facto Orthodox, where priests simply ceased to follow the Uniate canons. However, much more significant changes took place in the interwar period.

In the 1920s many Russian emigres, particularly Orthodox clergy, settled in Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

. Loyal to the Orthodox state, they became actively involved in missionary work in central Europe. A group, headed by Bishop Dosifei went to Transcarpathia. Because of the historical links between the local Greek Catholic clergy to the disliked Hungarian authorities, mass conversions to the Orthodox Church occurred. By the start of the Second World War, approximately one third of all of the Rusyn

Rusyns

population reverted to Orthodoxy http://www.rusyn.org/?root=rusyns&rusyns=religion&article=94. The region's local Hungarian population, estimated at slightly less than 20% of the population, remained overwhelmingly Calvinist or Roman Catholic. (For the Ruthenian population left outside Ukraine in 1945 (Preshov territory in Slovakia) see Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church

Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia is a self-governing body of the Eastern Orthodox Church that territorially covers the countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia...

)

Second World War

On September 17, 1939, with Poland crumbling under the German attack

Invasion of Poland (1939)

The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe...

that started the Second World War, the Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

attacked Poland

Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union

Immediately after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, which marked the beginning of World War II, the Soviet Union invaded the eastern regions of the Second Polish Republic, which Poles referred to as the "Kresy," and annexed territories totaling 201,015 km² with a population of 13,299,000...

, assigning territories with an ethnic Ukrainian majority to Soviet Ukraine. Because the Ukrainians were by-and-large discontented with Polish rule most of the Orthodox clergy actually welcomed the Soviet troops.

The addition of the ethnic Ukrainian territory of Volhynia

Volhynia

to the USSR created several issues. Having avoided the Bolshevik repression, the Orthodox church of this rural region outnumbered the rest of the Ukrainian SSR

Ukrainian SSR

by nearly a thousand churches and clergy as well as many cloisters including the Pochayiv Lavra

Pochayiv Lavra

. The ecclesiastical link with the Moscow Patriarchate was immediately restored. Within months nearly a million Orthodox pilgrims, from all over the country, fearing that these reclaimed western parishes would share the fate of others in the USSR, took the chance to visit them. However, the Soviet authorities, although confiscating some of the public property, did not show the repressions of the post-revolutionary period that many expected and no executions or physical destruction took place.

On October 8, 1942 Archbishop Nikanor and Bishop Mstyslav

Patriarch Mstyslav (Stepan Skrypnyk)

Patriarch Mstyslav, secular name Stepan Ivanovych Skrypnyk , was a Ukrainian Orthodox Church hierarch.Born in Poltava , Stepan Skrypnyk was the nephew of Symon Petlura, a prominent Ukrainian military and political figure...

(later a Patriarch

Patriarch

) of the UAOC and Metropolitan Oleksiy (Hromadsky) of the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church

Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church

The Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church was a short-lived Ukrainian church that existed at the time when Ukraine was occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.-History:...

concluded an Act of Union, uniting the two national churches at the Pochayiv Lavra. Later German

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

occupation authorities and pro-Russian hierarchs of the Autonomous Church convinced Metropolitan Oleksiy to remove his signature. Metropolitan Oleksiy was murdered in Volhynia

Volhynia

on May 7, 1943 by the nationalists of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army which saw this as treason.

Post-war situations

The Russian Orthodox Church regained its general monopoly in the Ukrainian SSR

Ukrainian SSR

after World War II following another shift in the official Soviet attitude towards Christian churches. As a result many started to accuse it of being a puppet

Puppet

A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....

of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...

. After the suspicious death of Patriarch Tikhon, the UAOC and UGCC sought to avoid the transfer under the Moscow Patriarchate; something that Moscow tolerated until after World War II, for example the head of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...

attended the funeral of the head of the Uniate Church in 1946. Nevertheless as the Uniate Church did in some cases support the Nazi regime, the overall Soviet attitude was negative. In 1948 a small group of priests started to proclaim a reunion with Orthodoxy. The Soviet state organized in 1948 a synod in Lviv, where the 1596 Union of Brest

Union of Brest

was annulled. Thereby breaking the canonical ties with Rome and transferring under the Moscow Patriarchate. In Transcarpathia, the reigning Greek Catholic bishop, Theodore Romzha

Theodore Romzha

Blessed Theodore Romzha was bishop of the Ruthenian Catholic Eparchy of Mukacheve from 1944 to 1947. Assassinated by Stalin's NKVD, he was beatified as a martyr by Pope John Paul II on June 27, 2001.-Early life:...

, was murdered http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/theoromz.htm and the remaining priests were forced to return their Church to Orthodoxy. This move's acceptance was mixed. With many clergy members and lay believers turning to the ROC, some adamantly refused. As a result of this the Patriarchate of Moscow could now legally lay claim to any Orthodox church property that was within the territory of its uncontested jurisdiction, which it did. Some believers refused to accept liquidation of their churches and for nearly 40 years the UAOC and UGCC existed in Western Ukraine underground led by the clergy members under the threat of prosecution by the Soviet state. Much of the UGCC and UAOC clergy not willing to serve in the ROC emigrated to Germany, the United States, or Canada. Others were sent to Siberia and even chose to be martyred http://www.ugcc.org.ua/eng/press-releases/article;3254/http://www.risu.org.ua/article.php?l=en&sid=1431. Officially the Moscow Patriarchate never recognised the canonical right of the synod as it lacked any bishops there.

The relatively permissive post-war government attitude towards the Orthodox Church came to an end with Khrushchev's "Thaw" programme, which included closing the recently opened Kiev's Caves Lavra. However, in the west-Ukrainian dioceses, which were the largest in the USSR, the Soviet attitude was "softest". In fact in the western city of Lviv, only one church was closed. The Moscow Patriarchate also relaxed its canons on the clergy, especially those from the former-uniate territories, allowing them, for example to shave beards (a very uncommon Orthodox practice) and conduct eulogy in Ukrainian instead of Church Slavonic.

Late Soviet period

In 1988 with the millennium anniversary of the baptism of Rus, there was yet another shift in the Soviet attitude towards religion, coinciding with the Perestroika

Perestroika

Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...

and Glasnost

Glasnost

Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...

programmes. The Soviet Government publicly apologized for oppression of religion and promised to return all property to the rightful owners. As a result thousands of closed religious buildings in all areas of the USSR were returned to their original owners. In Ukraine this was the then ROC's Ukrainian Exarchate, which took place in the central, eastern and southern Ukraine. In the former-uniate areas of western Ukraine things were more turbulent. As UGCC survived in diaspora and in the underground they took their chance and were immediately revived in Ukraine, where in the wake of general liberalization of the Soviet policies in the late-1980s also prompted the activization of Ukrainian national political movements. The Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

became viewed by some as an attribute of Soviet domination, and bitter, often violent clashes over church buildings followed with the ROC slowly losing its parishes to the UGCC.

The UAOC also followed suit. Sometimes possessors of Church buildings changed several times within days. Although the Soviet law-enforcement did attempt to pacify the almost-warring parties, these were often unsuccessful, as many of the local branches in the ever-crumbling Soviet authority, sympathised with the national sentiments in their areas. Violence grew especially after the UGCC's demand that all property that was held prior to 1939 would be returned.

It is now believed that the only real event which helped to contain the growing schism in the former-uniate territories was the ROC's reaction of raising its Ukrainian Exarchate to the status of an autonomous church, which took place in 1990, and up until the break up of the USSR

History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991)

The history of the Soviet Union from 1982 through 1991, spans the period from Leonid Brezhnev's death and funeral until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Due to the years of Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development, economic growth stagnated...

in late 1991 there was an uneasy peace in western Ukraine. After the nation became independent, the question of an independent and an autocephalous Orthodox Church arose once again.

Post-Soviet period

What historians now see as the reason for the following events was the decision of the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine Filaret

Patriarch Filaret (Mykhailo Denysenko)

Patriarch Filaret is the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate , former Metropolitan bishop of Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Filaret (secular name in Ukrainian Mykhailo Antonovych Denysenko, in Russian Mikhail Antonovich Denisenko, officially His Holiness, the Patriarch of...

to achieve total autocephaly

Autocephaly

(independence) of his metropolitan see with or without the approval of the mother church

Mother Church

In Christianity, the term mother church or Mother Church may have one of the following meanings:# The first mission church in an area, or a pioneer cathedral# A basilica or cathedral# The main chapel of a province of a religious order...

required by the canon law

Canon law

. These events followed Filaret's own unsuccessful attempt to gain a seat of the Moscow Patriarch to himself (1990) and the Ukrainian independence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...

in August, 1991. In November 1991, Metropolitan Filaret requested the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

to grant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephalous status. The skeptical hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church called for a full Synodical council (Sobor) where this issue would have been discussed at length. Filaret, using his support from the old friendship ties with the then newly elected President of Ukraine

President of Ukraine

Prior to the formation of the modern Ukrainian presidency, the previous Ukrainian head of state office was officially established in exile by Andriy Livytskyi. At first the de facto leader of nation was the president of the Central Rada at early years of the Ukrainian People's Republic, while the...

(Leonid Kravchuk

Leonid Kravchuk

Leonid Makarovych Kravchuk is a Ukrainian politician, the first President of Ukraine serving from December 5, 1991 until his resignation on July 19, 1994, a former Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada and People's Deputy of Ukraine serving in the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine faction.After a...

), convinced him that a new independent government should have its own independent church. Despite the UAOC lacked any significant following outside Galicia, Filaret was able to organise a covert communion with the UAOC in case Moscow Patriarchate refused.

At the synod in March–April 1992, however, most of the clergy of the UOC who initially supported Filaret, openly criticised this move, and put most of the other bishops against him. Questions of his unpopular disregard to monastic vows (having a common-law wife) as well as the allegations of improper financial dealings with the church finances made the council vote for Filaret to retire from his position which was confirmed by a sworn oath.

Upon returning to Kiev

Kiev

Filaret carried out his reserve option revealing that the retirement swore was given under pressure and that he is not resigning. The Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk

Leonid Kravchuk

gave Filaret his support as did the nationalist Paramilitaries

UNA-UNSO

The UNA-UNSO , is the most prominent nationalist political organization in Ukraine.-History:...

, in retaining his rank. In a crisis moment the Hierarchical Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, agreed to another synod

Synod

which met in May 1992. The council was conducted in the eastern city of Kharkiv

Kharkiv

Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...

where the majority of the bishops voted to suspend Filaret from his clerical functioning. Simultaneously they elected a new leader Metropolitan Volodymyr (Viktor Sabodan)

Metropolitan Volodymyr (Viktor Sabodan)

Metropolitan Volodymyr is the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church . Metropolitan Volodymyr's official title is : His Beatitude Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine...

, native of the Khmelnytskyi Oblast

Khmelnytskyi Oblast

Khmelnytskyi Oblast is an oblast of western Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Khmelnytskyi.The current estimated population is around 1,401,140 .-Geography:...

and a former Patriarchal Exarch to Western Europe.

With only three bishops remaining at his support Filaret initiated the unification with the UAOC, and in June 1992 creating a new Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate

Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate

Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate is one of the three major Orthodox churches in Ukraine, alongside the Ukrainian Orthodox Church , and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church...

(UOC-KP) with 94-year-old Patriarch Mstyslav as a leader. While chosen as his assistant, Filaret was de-facto ruling the Church. A few of the Autocephalous bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

s and clergy who opposed such situation refused to join the new Church and following the death of Mstyslav a year later. The church was once again ripped apart by a schism and most of the UAOC parishes were regained when the churches re-separated in July 1993.

Most of the fate of control of church buildings was decided by the church parishes, but as most refused to follow Filaret, paramilitaries, especially in Volyn

Volyn Oblast

Volyn Oblast is an oblast in north-western Ukraine. Its administrative center is Lutsk. Kovel is the westernmost town and the last station in Ukraine of the rail line running from Kiev to Warsaw.-History:...

and Rivne Oblast

Rivne Oblast

Rivne Oblast is an oblast of Ukraine. Its administrative center is Rivne. The area of the region is 20,100 km²; its population is 1.2 million...

s where there was strong nationalist sympathy amongst the new regional authorities, carried out raids bringing property under their control. The lack of parishes in eastern and southern Ukraine prompted President Kravchuk to intervene and force the still closed buildings since the Communist times to re-open under the UOC-KP's ownership. Upon the 1995 election of Leonid Kuchma

Leonid Kuchma

Leonid Danylovych Kuchma was the second President of independent Ukraine from 19 July 1994, to 23 January 2005. Kuchma took office after winning the 1994 presidential election against his rival, incumbent Leonid Kravchuk...

, most of the violence was promptly stopped, and the presidency adopted a de-facto neutrality regime to all the four major church groups.

Modern times

The recent events of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election and the Orange Revolution

Orange Revolution

The Orange Revolution was a series of protests and political events that took place in Ukraine from late November 2004 to January 2005, in the immediate aftermath of the run-off vote of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election which was claimed to be marred by massive corruption, voter...

affected the religious affairs in the nation as well. The UOC (MP) actively supported the former Prime minister Viktor Yanukovych

Viktor Yanukovych

Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych is a Ukrainian politician who has been the President of Ukraine since February 2010.Yanukovych served as the Governor of Donetsk Oblast from 1997 to 2002...

while members of the UOC-KP, UAOC, and UGCC supported the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko

Viktor Yushchenko

Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko is a former President of Ukraine. He took office on January 23, 2005, following a period of popular unrest known as the Orange Revolution...

, who was running against him. After Yushchenko's victory, the UOC (MP) criticised him for what they see as support of the "uncanonical organisations", such as his celebrating Orthodox Christmas in St. Volodymyr's Cathedral (owned by UOC-KP). Yushchenko himself has publicly pledged to distance himself from Orthodox politics during his presidential campaign. Nonetheless, he claims that his intention is to achieve a unity of the nation's Eastern Orthodox Church affairs. Questions still arise on what will be the ecclestical status of the Church and who will head it, and as of February 2007 no public dialogue has begun.

To date the issue between rivalries of different churches remains politicised and sensitive and also controversial. In a recent survey only 33.3% of the people felt satisfied with the current condition of several Orthodox Churches. At the same time up to 42.1% felt it would be important for a single united church, with 30.7% favoring the UOC-KP and 11.4% the UOC (MP). On the question of who shall head the church the political polarisation of the country surfaced with 56.1% of voters of Our Ukraine and 40.7% of voters from the Bloc Yulia Timoshenko endorsed wanting one Orthodox Church under the Kiev Patriarchate

Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate

Abbreveated as the UOC-KP, the church was created in 1992, and aims at becoming a Ukrainian national Orthodox Church. However, it is canonically

Canon law

unrecognised amongst other Eastern Orthodox churches

Eastern Orthodox Church organization

This article covers the organization of the Eastern Orthodox Churches rather than the doctrines, traditions, practices, or other aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy...

.

Since 1995 UOC-KP is headed by Patriarch Filaret (Mykhailo Denysenko)

Patriarch Filaret (Mykhailo Denysenko)

who until 1990 was a Metropolitan of Kiev and Halych (Galich) under the ROC, which defrocked him in 1992 and excommunicated in 1997 "for schismatic activities".

Geographically the church's main areas of support are the Volhynian provinces (where it holds from 30 to 40% parishes) and the capital Kiev

Kiev

. The church enjoys moderate support in the central and Galician provinces (ranging from 15 to 30 percent). The church also contains several parishes in the West (including eleven in the USA, 2 in Australia) and even in Russia, where it has agreed to incorporate some of the parishes that have been excommunicated by the ROC for infractions of canonic law.

Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church or UOC, sometimes abbreveated as UOC(MP), operates as an autonomous church under the Moscow Patriarchate and also is not canonically recognised within the Eastern Orthodox Communion. The head of the church is Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan)

Metropolitan Volodymyr (Viktor Sabodan)

Metropolitan Volodymyr is the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church . Metropolitan Volodymyr's official title is : His Beatitude Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine...

who was enthroned in spring 1992 as the "Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine". The UOC(MP) claims to be the largest religious body in Ukraine with the greatest number of parishes churches and communities counting up to half of the total in Ukraine and totaling over 10 thousand. The UOC also claims to have up to 75% of the Ukrainian population Independent survey results, however, tend to show greater adherence to the rival Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate. Such surveys show significant variance, as many Orthodox Ukrainians do not clearly self-identify with a particular denomination and, sometimes, are even unaware of the affiliation of the church they attend as well as of the controversy itself, which indicates the impossibility to use the survey numbers as an indicator of a relative strength of the church. Also, the geographical factor plays a major role in the number of adherents, as the Ukrainian population tends to be more churchgoing in the western part of the country rather than in the UOC (MP)'s heartland in southern and eastern Ukraine.

The number of parishes statistics seems to be more reliable and consistent even though it may not necessarily directly translate into the numbers of adherents. By number of parishes and quantity of church buildings, the UOC(MP)'s strong base is central and northernwestern Ukraine. However, percentage wise (with respect to rival Orthodox Churches) its share of parishes there varies from 60 to 70 percent. At the same time, by percentage alone (with respect to rival Orthodox Churches) the urban russophone

Russophone

A Russophone is literally a speaker of the Russian language either natively or by preference. At the same time the term is used in a more specialized meaning to describe the category of people whose cultural background is associated with Russian language regardless of ethnic and territorial...

southern and eastern Ukrainian provinces peak with up to 90% of church buildings. The same can be said about Transcarpathia

Carpathian Ruthenia

, although there the UOC's main rival is the Greek Catholic Church and thus in all its share is only 40%. The capital Kiev

Kiev

is where the greatest Orthodox rivalry takes place, there the UOC(MP) has only half of the Orthodox communities. The only place where the UOC(MP) is a true minority, in both quantity, percentage and support are the former Galician provinces of Western Ukraine. There the total share of parishes does not exceed more than five percent. The UOC(MP) does not have any parishes abroad, as its followers identify themselves under the same umbrella as those of the Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church

Abbreviated as the UAOC, the church was established and re-established several times in Ukraine. Originally formed in the 1920s, and initially supported by the Soviet regime, in early 1930s it was destroyed and forced into exile. The Church re-established itself in Ukraine during the Nazi occupation in World War II, and was again driven underground after the War. The church re-gained official recognition in the late 1980s, and was initially ruled from abroad by Patriarch Mstyslav. Following his death in 1993 it was re-organised into an independent church, after a brief union with the UOC-KP. Since then the church has been more successful in dialogue with the UOC(MP).

The church currently has 1015 parishes in 697 churches. Geographically the church operates almost exclusively in the western areas with minute support elsewhere. The UAOC had many parishes in the Ukrainian diaspora communities in Canada and in the United States. These have, however, formed two separate churches: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada

Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada is an Eastern Orthodox Church in Canada, primarily serving Ukrainian Canadians. Its former name was the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada ...

and Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA

Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA is a jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the United States. It consists of three eparchies , ruled by two diocesan bishops, including about 85 active parishes and missions. The Church's current primate is Metropolitan Constantine...

. In 1995 the Ecumenical Patriarch accepted the latter churches under his patronage citing the transfer controversy of the Kiev Metropolitan's see to Moscow Patriarchate in 1686 and, thus, fulfilling a necessary step for the achievement of the canonical standing by these diaspora Churches (still not universally recognised). While this move, as well as the cited reason, soured relations between the Orthodox Church of Constantinople and the ROC (who refused to recognise it), the standing of the diaspora churches does not affect the status of the UAOC itself.

Old Believers

Traditionally the Ukrainian clergy, following the annexation of Kievan Metropolia, were one of the main sources of opposition to the Old Believer schism which took place at the time, under Patriarch Nikon

Patriarch Nikon

Nikon , born Nikita Minin , was the seventh patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church...

. None of the Ukrainian parishes followed the Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church

Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church

The Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church is an Eastern Orthodox Church of the Old Believers tradition, born from a schism within the Russian Orthodox Church following the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon in the second half of 17th century...

. Although in 1905 the Tsar's decree on freedom of religion allowed the Old Believers church to reform, it gained little support in Ukraine. Presently, however the Old Believer community very much exploited the politicised schism in Ukrainian Orthodoxy and, as of 2004, number 53 communities scattered throughout Ukraine, with one of the biggest in Vylkove

Vylkove

Vylkove is a small city located in the Ukrainian part of the Danube Delta, at utmost South-West of Ukraine, on the border with Romania. Administratively it is part of the Kiliyskyi Raion of the Odessa Oblast .- Geography :...

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

Abbreviated as the UGCC, and originally formed from the Union of Brest

Union of Brest

in 1596. The Church was outlawed by the Soviet government in 1948 but continued to exist in the Ukrainian underground and in the Western Ukrainian diaspora. It was officially re-established in Ukraine in 1989. In 1991, Cardinal Lubachivsky returned to Lviv from emigration. Since 2011 UGCC has been headed by Major Archbishop

Major Archbishop

right|200 px|thumb|Archbishop [[Sviatoslav Shevchuk]], Major Archbishop of Kyiv-HalychIn the Eastern Catholic Churches, major archbishop is a title for an hierarch to whose archiepiscopal see is granted the same jurisdiction in his autonomous particular Church that an Eastern patriarch has in...

Sviatoslav Shevchuk

Sviatoslav Shevchuk is the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church since 25 March 2011.-Life:Sviatoslav Shevchuk was born in 1970, in Stryi, Ukrainian SSR. He was ordained as a priest on 26 June 1994. From 2002 to 2005 he worked as head of the secretariat of Patriarch Lubomyr Husar...

.

Currently the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church has 3317 parishes which makes it the third largest denomination in Ukraine. Geographically, the Church's parishes were previously confined to the Western provinces of Lviv

Lviv Oblast

, Ternopil

Ternopil Oblast

Ternopil Oblast is an oblast' of Ukraine. Its administrative center is Ternopil, through which flows the Seret River, a tributary of the Dnister.-Geography:...

and Ivano-Frankivsk

Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

, where it has the most parishes of any Church and where its share of parishes ranges from 47% to 64%. The UGCC is also found in the neighboring Lemko areas in Poland

Poland

. Numerous surveys conducted since the late 1990s consistently show that between 6% and 8% of Ukraine's population, or 9.4% to 12.6% of religious believers, identify themselves as belonging to this Church. In addition, the church has mass parishes abroad in the North American continent, South America, and Australia.

In recent times parishes have been established in many Eastern Ukrainian cities such as Kharkiv, Donetsk, in the south in Odessa and Yalta and also in Russia. with parishes being set up in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Ufa, Cheliabinsk, Tomsk, and other cities. These parishes have been formed primarily by resettled Ukrainians from Western Ukraine.

One of the largest religious controversies in Ukraine recently involved having the almost exclusively western Ukraine-based UGCC move its administrative centre from Lviv

Lviv

to Kiev

Kiev

whilst its new cathedral's construction was sponsored by the first lady, Kateryna Yushchenko-Chumachenko

Kateryna Yushchenko-Chumachenko

Kateryna Mykhaylivna Yushchenko is the current and second wife of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and First Lady of Ukraine....

. This move was criticised not only by the UOC(MP), but also by the whole Eastern Orthodox Communion.

Latin-rite Roman Catholicism

Latin-rite Roman Catholicism is predominantly practiced by non-Ukrainian minorities, in particular Poles

Poles

thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...

and Hungarians. Originally holding a large amount of parishes, most of the churches remained empty after World War II which is attributed due to the fact that much of the Polish population (once a significant minority, especially in the west of modern-day Ukraine) was killed in the war and the interethnic violence that occurred during the war as well as were subject to forcible evacuations and deportations.

After the restoration of Soviet power in Western Ukraine since 1944, many catholic churches and monasteries were compulsively closed and clergymen persecuted.

In 1991, Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II

Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...

officially restored the activities of Roman Catholic Dioceses in Ukraine and appointed bishops.
Currently the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ukraine has 807 parishes in 713 churches.

Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Byzantine rite Catholic church in Transcarpathia emerged from the underground and was restored as a separate entity from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church based in Galicia, namely the Ruthenian Catholic Church

Ruthenian Catholic Church

. This was done despite the protests by a portion of the Church members led by the bishop of Khust who demanded to be integrated into the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Despite this revival, unlike its sister Church in Galicia, the Ruthenian Byzantine rite Catholic Church has not regained its pre-war position as the dominant Church in Transcarpathia. It currently has about 23% of Transcarpathia's parishes, slightly less than 60% of the Orthodox total there. Its traditional base is the Rusyn

Rusyns

(Ruthenian) ethnic minority in Transcarpathia.

Protestantism

In the 16th century small groups of Anabaptists appeared in Volodymyr-Volynskyi

Volodymyr-Volynskyi

Volodymyr-Volynsky is a city located in Volyn Oblast, in north-western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative centre of the Volodymyr-Volynsky District, the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast...

, but the influence of the Reformation

Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

in Ukraine remained marginal until the three centuries later.

Protestantism arrived to Ukraine together with German immigrants in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were initially granted religious freedom by the Russian Imperial authorities, unlike the native population. While some were Roman Catholic, the majority were either Evangelical (in North America known as Lutheran) or Mennonite (Anabaptist). Of the 200,000 or so Germans in Volhynia c.1900, some 90% or so were Lutheran. Lutheranism went into a major decline with the emigration of most of the Germans out of the region during the World Wars but there are still small remnants today (2006) in the Odessa and Kiev regions.

One of earliest Protestant groups in Ukraine were Stundists (the name originated from the German Stunde, "hour") German Evangelical sect that spread from German villages in Bessarabia

Bessarabia

Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....

and Ekaterinoslav province

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast is an oblast of central Ukraine, the most important industrial region of the country. Its administrative center is Dnipropetrovsk....

to the neighbouring Ukrainian population. Protestantism in Ukraine rapidly grew during the liberal reforms of Alexander II

Alexander II of Russia

Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...

in the 1860s. However, towards the end of the century authorities started to restrict Protestant proselytism

Proselytism

Proselytizing is the act of attempting to convert people to another opinion and, particularly, another religion. The word proselytize is derived ultimately from the Greek language prefix προσ- and the verb ἔρχομαι in the form of προσήλυτος...

of the Orthodox Christians, especially by the Stundists, routinely preventing prayer meetings and other activities. At the same time Baptists, another major Protestant group that was growing in Ukraine, were treated less harshly due to their powerful international connections.

In the early 20th century, Volyn became the main centre of the spread of Protestantism in Ukraine. During the Soviet period Protestantism, together with Orthodox Christianity, was persecuted in Ukraine, but the 1980s marked the start of another major expansion of Protestant proselytism in Ukraine.

Today largest Protestant groups in Ukraine include Baptists (All-Ukrainian Union of the Association of Evangelical Baptists), Pentecostals (All-Ukrainian Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith-Pentecostals) and Seventh-day Adventists (Ukrainian Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists). Of note is Hillsong Church in Kiev. One of the most prominent Protestants in modern Ukraine is the practicing baptist pastor Oleksandr Turchynov

Oleksandr Turchynov

Oleksandr Valentynovych Turchynov is a Ukrainian politician, a screenwriter, a Doctor of Economic Studies. He also was acting Prime Minister after former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's government was dismissed on March 3, 2010...

, former head of the SBU, Ukraine's successor to the KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

, and a former acting Prime Minister

Prime Minister of Ukraine

The Prime Minister of Ukraine is Ukraine's head of government presiding over the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, which is the highest body of the executive branch of the Ukrainian government....

. Despite the rapid growth, today Protestants in Ukraine remain a small minority in a largely Orthodox Christian country.

External links

General:
- Religious Information Service of Ukraine // - a project of the Institute of Religion and Society of the Ukrainian Catholic University
- Orthodoxy Page (Moscow Patriarchate) /
- Ukrainian Bible Society
Churches:

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.