Ukraine, Orthodoxy in the

TODD E. FRENCH

The Ukraine is host to the rich history of the conversion of the Rus to Orthodoxy, which led to the further spreading of Christianity in Asia. Its capital city, Kiev, has served as the focal point of political maneuvering in the Slavic territories from the conversion of the Rus down through to modern times. It is worth noting that the history of this conversion, commonly associated with Vladimir in 988, overrides numerous alterna­tive conversion stories. Ancient Christian leg­end tells that St. Andrew the “First-Called” embarked on a mission to convert the Scyth­ians in the year 55. Evidence only becomes clearer in the later medieval period, when one starts to find several clues to Christianity’s influence on the Rus. Although the term “Rus” is used to describe the people of a diocese in Tmutorokan as early as the 860s, the Rus are historically associated with the Kievan centered kingdom. The distance between these two cities being roughly a thousand miles has raised questions about whether the two Rus settlements are both Slavic kingdoms or if the Black Sea Rus were the same as the Goths mentioned by St. John Chrysostom in the 4th century, as being an important community for missionary enterprise.

Few were more influential in the growth of Christianity in the Ukraine than St. Constantine (tonsured Cyril before hisdeath) and his brother St. Methodios. They were chosen to lead a mission to the Slavic kingdom of Moravia in 864. Prior to their departure they devised an alphabet (Glagolitic) into which many texts were translated. Their successors, Clement and Naum of Ohrid, were instrumental in the development of the Cyrillic alphabet, named for their teacher.

Kiev, however, was a good distance from Tmutorokan and the story of the Kievan Rus conversion proper begins with two princes, Askold and Dir. A popular version of the story tells how after attempting to seize Constantinople, the princes saw their fleet destroyed through a miracle which they believed to have been called down by the Patriarch St. Photios and the emperor. This led to the baptism of the defeated (and impressed) leaders. A more textured account survives in Greek chronicles relat­ing the defeat of Askold and Dir by Prince Oleg, who made Kiev his capital. Vladimir, one of four successor princes, was a pagan like his forebears but perhaps saw the need for a unifying religion that resonated with the population both within his kingdom and in neighboring lands, especially Byzantium. After dismissing the claims of Judaism and Islam, Vladimir settled on Christianity, but relied on ambassadors to the Latins and Greeks in order to decide on his preferred style. His emissaries returned explaining that they were not sure whether they were in heaven or on earth during a service at St. Sophia’s. The decision was made for Byzantine alliance and the Orthodox Church began to fuel Ukraine’s religious history. In 988 Vladimir was baptized at Chersonesus. Following that, there were mass baptisms of the people in the river Dnieper.

The conversion of Vladimir has been attributed to his Christian grandmother St. Olga and his political connections with the Byzantine ruler, Basil II (the “Bulgar Slayer”). Regardless of its origin, its spread was initiated from the ruling classes down through Slavic society by incentive and coercion. The Byzantine church maintained important links with Vladimir’s kingdom through missionaries and an appointment of a metropolitan archbishop in Kiev. Vladimir’s son, Yaroslav, consolidated his rule in 1036 and was able to build many churches. Among them was the renowned cathedral of St. Sophia (1044), built to rival its sister in Constantinople. Yaroslav organized the translation of important reli­gious texts into the liturgical language of Church Slavonic. In 1051 he appointed the first non-Greek archbishop, Ilarion.

Ukrainian monasticism was first founded in the Kievan caves (Pechersky Lavra) in the 11th century. Built into the banks of the river Dnieper, the lavra’s catacombs are a treasury of relics uniquely preserved through mummification and attesting to the rich history of saints this land has pro­duced. The golden age of Kievan Rus began to deteriorate in the 12th century when princes began to challenge Kiev for auton­omy in their territories. The result was a fractured kingdom with numerous claims to power. Disunity allowed for a national defeat when in 1237 Genghis Khan’s grand­son, Batu, invaded the northeastern Rus territories. By 1240, Kiev had fallen and its churches were burned by the Mongol invaders. Perhaps even more significant than the loss of the capital was the shift of the metropolitan archbishop’s seat from Kiev to the city of Vladimir in 1299 and then on to Moscow.

Plate 74 The Kiev Mohyla Academy, founded by the great Ukrainian hierarch Peter Moghila for raising the standards of the education of clergy. It was the center of a great revival in Orthodoxy after the 18th century. Photo by John McGuckin

After Kiev fell, Danylo, the ruler of Galicia-Volhynia (1237–64), attempted to recapture the prominence of Kievan Rus by waging war against the Mongols. Although his efforts at first failed, he and his successors were finally able to wrest the kingdom back. After the archbishopric was moved and Kiev was destroyed through multiple wars, the Lithuanians, a pagan community living along the Baltic Sea, saw an opportunity in these lands. They invaded what is now Belarus and made their way to the Ukraine. Under Grand Prince Algirdas, the Lithuanians declared all of Rus to belong to the Lithuanians and in 1340 they made their move into the Ukraine. By 1362 they had taken Kiev and they definitively defeated the Mongols shortly after. Lithuanian power was rooted in their amenability to Rus law (as constituted by Yaroslav), culture, and language. Their rule was preferred over Mongol rule and thus the pagan Lithua­nians gradually became the Orthodox­leaning Slavic state. This was once again to be challenged by the invasion of Polish Catholic interests in 1340, which promoted a westward leaning affiliation. Acquiring all of Galicia-Volhynia by 1366, the Poles ended the notion of Ukrainian self-rule in 1471 when they officially incorporated the Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Moscow imposed a decisive defeat on the Mongols in 1480 and was quickly emerging as the prominent power of the region. When the Ottoman Turks invaded Constantinople in 1453, Moscow emerged as a “Third Rome” and the domi­nant sustainer of Orthodox belief. The Orthodox in Ukraine found themselves in a strange relationship with this new power. It had lost its senior metropolitan status to Moscow, but also desperately needed Moscow’s support in maintaining any hope of an Orthodox Ukraine.

In 1448 the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church was in division over the issue of the Imperial Byzantine policy for Union with Rome; and because of this Moscow was able to declare some independence from Con­stantinople. This move promoted the devel­opment of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Union of Lublin in 1569 brought together the Lithuanian and Polish states, which housed nearly all of Ukrainian terri­tory. This combined power rivaled Moscow for a time, but eventually found itself divided internally between powerful, landed nobility and peasant, Ruthenian Orthodox who worked the agricultural lands.

In 1589 the metropolitanate of Moscow became fully autocephalous and the Ukrai­nian Orthodox were subsequently organized as a dependent ecclesial domain. Along with the rapid rise of Muscovite political control, there was a counterbalancing call in Ukraine for independence from Moscow. This move toward independence partially came to fruition in an attempt to organize a Greek Catholic church. In the Polish-Lithuanian Union, Catholics stood to gain political priv­ilege and preference over their Orthodox counterparts. In the interest of unity, the nobles proposed the conversion of the Ruthenian Orthodox quarter of their popu­lation by establishing a Greek church that maintained its Orthodox rules and rites but was subject to the pope. Orthodox commu­nities did not give in easily, however, and in 1578 their cause was championed by Konstantyn Ostrozky, who built a printing press at Ostrih in Volhynia. Famously publishing the first Slavic Bible in 1581, Ostrozky was instrumental in building an Orthodox rival to the Catholic schools of the West. The school, however, was turned over to the Jesuits in 1608 by his Catholic granddaughter, Anna.

Plate 75 St. Jonah’s skete in midtown Kiev. The monastery was destroyed by the Soviets and the church turned into a warehouse. Today it has been refounded and the monastic life thrives there with a young community. Photo by John McGuckin

Conflicts began to rage over properties and rights between the Greek Catholics and Orthodox, costing many clerics their lives. In 1632 the Polish government proposed a compromise in which the Orthodox hierarchy was recognized and properties were divided. Peter Mohyla (Moghila), the new archimandrite of Pechersky Lavra and eventual chief hierarch ofKiev, utilized the peace after 1632 to print the first Slavic Orthodox catechism.

Khmelnytsky’s uprising of 1648 showed what a united Ukraine was capable of accomplishing. Revoking the Polish mag­nates’ power, the Cossacks overthrew the political regime with a bloody revolution. Needing to call upon foreign assistance, Khmelnytsky first considered the Ottoman Porte, but ultimately secured the might of the Muscovites and their tsar, Aleksei Mikhailovich. The appeal was answered with a nod to the shared vision of Ortho­doxy. At the time of Khmelnytsky’s death, 17 percent of the land formerly in Polish hands was designated as the property of the Orthodox Church. The metropolitanate of Kiev was subsumed by the patriarch of Moscow in 1686.

Eventually, Russia, Prussia, and Austria divided Poland-Lithuania among themselves and by the late 18th century Russia was in control of 62 percent of the Ukrainian terri­tories. There was a steady ongoing struggle between the tsars and Ukrainian notions of self-government. The period of imperial rule was marked with important moments for the Orthodox Church. During General Dmitri Bibikov’s rule (1837–52) the aim was to convert the 2 million remaining Catholics to Orthodoxy through willful tactics such as deportation and executions.

When the tsarist regime collapsed in 1917 the Ukraine quickly responded with the formation of the Central Rada. A rival to

Bolshevik power, it was ultimately put down by the Germans. The resulting Ukrainian Soviet government held some sovereignty until 1923. Orthodoxy in the Ukraine suf­fered significant setbacks during the com­munist era, but was never extinguished. When communism began to wane in its appeal, the Ukrainian Catholic Church began to move toward the restoration of its properties to its 5 million members. The Russian Orthodox Church responded to this development by changing its name to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 1990, but remained under the supervision of the Moscow patriarchate.

The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) had been created in 1921 with Vasyl Lypkivsky as its metropolitan. The UAOC grew quickly and was initially favored by the Soviets because of the chal­lenges it posed to the Russian Orthodox Church. Once the movement took hold, however, it too became another threat for the Soviets to extinguish. Dismantled after the 1930s in the homeland, but enjoying a time of development in the diaspora countries of the West, the UAOC came back as a significant factor in Ukrainian church life after the fall of communism, and reaffirmed their distance from the Moscow patriarchate in 1990. They now are represented by 1,650 parishes. Under the persecution of Soviet rule, several dias­pora parishes submitted to the leadership of the patriarch of Constantinople. In the US and Canada the UAOC communities have recently declared their independence from the phanar.

When President Kravchuk came to power in 1990, after the fall of the Soviet satellite system, there was the hope that the diverging religious communities of the Ukraine might be united under one unified church. For this reason the new Kiev patriarchate of the Independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church was formulated. It was largely composed of those communities who wished to place dis­tance between themselves and the Moscow patriarchate, which they characterized as a tool of oppression. The new political lead­ership of independent Ukraine fostered these ambitions for separate status. Wider world Orthodoxy, however, did not regard the Independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church as having legitimate canonical status. Its first claimant as patriarch, Filaret of Kiev, was unable to sustain unity and suffered the severe censure of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Moscow patriarch­ate, in response to these calls for Ukrainian autonomy, declared the canonical autono­mous status of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which was no longer to be called simply the “Russian Church,” although it remained in the wider system of the synod of the Moscow patriarchate: autonomous not autocephalous.

Currently, the largest of the communities in the Ukraine is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow patriarchate. They represent 6,000 parishes mainly in the East and South. Their liturgical language remains Church Slavonic rather than the vernacular Ukrainian used by other commu­nities such as the UAOC. Representing over 27 million Orthodox parishioners, the Ukraine is a major center of Orthodox energy and culture. This new vitality after commu­nism, however, has found itself divided on account of its liminal position between Europe and Asia. Depending on Russia for 90 percent of its oil and 77 percent of its natural gas, the Ukraine has often found itself in a difficult relationship with Moscow power bases, both secular and ecclesiastical. Politically, the Ukraine often leans toward cooperation with Europe and the United States, as can be seen in numerous treaties and disarmament proposals, but they con­tinue to find themselves in a difficult geo­graphical and political position with regard to Russia’s interests. These colliding trajectories also affect church life and will for the foreseeable future.

SEE ALSO: Lithuania, Orthodoxy in; Sts. Constantine (Cyril) (ca. 826–869) and Methodios (815–885)

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Kubicek, P. (2008) The History of Ukraine.

Westport: Greenwood Press.

McGuckin, J. A. (2008) The Orthodox Church. Oxford: Blackwell.

Pospielovksy, D. V. (1998) The Orthodox Church in the History of Russia. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Prokurat, M., Golitzin, A., and Peterson, M. D. (1996) Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.

Subtelny, O. (2000) Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.