The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939-1950

Myroslav Shkandrij is head of the Department of German and Slavic
Studies at the University of Manitoba, and editor of The Cultural
Renaissance in Ukraine: Polemical Pamphlets, 1925–1926.

This book surveys the history of the Uniate or Greek Catholic Church
from the Soviet incorporation of Western Ukrainian territory following
the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to its liquidation in Galicia and
Transcarpathia after World War II. The central event in the narrative is
the “Lviv” Sobor of 1946. Bociurkiw demonstrates the political
motivation behind this action, which was directed exclusively by the
Soviet secret police. His account draws on archival documents that have
recently become available in the former USSR; other sources include
Vatican, Church, and Western government archives, as well as interviews
and private correspondence.

The culmination of a lifetime’s scholarship, the book is a masterful
exposition of an important episode in Ukrainian history and Soviet
cultural politics. The Greek Catholic Church was closely linked with
nationalist resistance to Soviet rule. Bociurkiw analyzes the origins of
the Church, its relationship to the national resistance, and the various
ways in which it was persecuted and its remaining faithful driven
underground. The clergy shared the fate of some half a million Western
Ukrainians who were removed from Galicia and forcibly dispersed
throughout Stalin’s Gulag archipelago.

The author also describes the parallel fate of the Church in Poland,
which was outlawed at the same time as the Wisla operation that
resettled some 139,000 Ukrainians and imprisoned thousands more. It is
because of its resistance to this “ethnic ecclesicide” that the
Church, when resurrected and legalized in 1989–90, was able to draw on
such widespread support.

This is essential history for anyone wishing to understand contemporary
events in Ukraine—and in particular, the tense relations between the
churches and the survival of a powerful sense of national identity. The
author, however, draws wider conclusions. He insists that neither
Marxist atheism nor Leninism alone was sufficient motivation to explain
the forcible incorporation of the Church into the Moscow patriarchate.
Tsarist policies provide a fuller illumination of Stalin’s actions.
There are striking parallels between the Soviet policies and tsarist
treatment of the Church in Belarusian and Ukrainian territories in the
1770s. The common feature was a desire to remove barriers to
Russification. In this way, Bociurkiw’s meticulously researched,
concisely written, and well-edited book can also serve as a case history
in Soviet nationality politics.