HEATHER BAILEY
In the modern Orthodox world, local churches tend to coincide with national boundaries. Ukraine’s quest for both ecclesial and political sovereignty has proven arduous, however. The country has twice—in 1917-18 and 1991—secured political independence from Russia. Yet it retains direct ties with the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), even as many Ukrainian Orthodox Christians allege that church to be a tool of Russian imperialism. In his thorough and nuanced study, Nicholas Denysenko examines the century-long efforts to establish an autocephalous [independent] Ukrainian Orthodox Church that would be recognized as canonical [legitimate] by the global Orthodox community. These attempts have yet to succeed due to both disagreements within Ukrainian Orthodox clerical circles and the Moscow Patriarchate’s insistence that Ukrainian autocephalist movements are linked with ethnophyletism [heretical subordination of the Orthodox faith to ethnic identity], even fascism. Denysenko—a U.S.-based specialist in Orthodox liturgical theology and a deacon in the autocephalous Orthodox Church in America—here recounts the complex historical, theological, and political circumstances that have contributed to the present fragmentation of Ukrainian Orthodoxy. His study provides essential context for understanding the ongoing ecclesial and political tensions between the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow, and between Ukraine and Russia. These disputes are not merely academic, but represent a pastoral crisis for all Ukrainian Orthodox clergy, confuse the laity, and potentially contribute to ongoing violence in Ukraine. Denysenko’s main thematic lens is Ukrainization. By the time of Bolshevik upheaval in 1917-18, Ukrainian Orthodox clerics wanted church reform, yet disagreed over the extent to which their church should be Ukrainized. The spectrum of this ranged from moderate measures—such as Ukrainian pronunciation of Church Slavonic or the use of Ukrainian in worship services—to more radical ideas about egalitarian, laitycentered church governance. For many, it meant the pursuit of Ukrainian autocephaly. The majority of bishops and priests wanted to pursue this canonically, but some prioritized it above all else, exposing the autocephalist movement to charges of ethnophyletism. Here, Denysenko convincingly demonstrates that the actions of a minority during a tumultuous era have obscured the fact that most Ukrainian churchmen desired only moderate Ukrainization and autocephaly via a canonical route.
Amidst the political turmoil of revolution, civil war, and Ukraine’s incorporation into the U.S.S.R., a group of Ukrainizers established the first, short-lived Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) in 1921. This body—the first of three using the title—was unequivocally uncanonical, a characteristic that the Moscow Patriarchate’s subsequent narratives applied to all later entities claiming to be the autocephalous church of Ukraine. Since all Ukrainian bishops who favored autocephaly wanted to attain it through a canonical process, none joined the 1921 UAOC. In disregard of the doctrine of apostolic succession, the new entity responded by using a novel rite based upon ecclesial egalitarianism to consecrate its first two bishops. This meant that their ordinations of subsequent clergy were also uncanonical. When the 1921 UAOC was liquidated by the Soviets in 1930, its uncanonical status accompanied a wave of Ukrainian Orthodox émigrés to North America.
The quest for autocephaly next arose during the Second World War when Ukrainian churchmen anticipated Ukraine’s liberation from Soviet rule. Once again, the bishops were all committed to canonical autocephaly. They turned to the Orthodox Church of Poland, whose own autocephalous status had been affirmed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1924. It was thus that the second UAOC was born in 1942, and—due to its Polish Orthodox connection—could claim legitimacy where the earlier UAOC could not. The 1942 UAOC was not a “direct descendant” of the 1921 UAOC, but the Moscow Patriarchate nevertheless depicted it as such (79). However, the founders of the 1942 UAOC broadly viewed the Nazis—whose short-lived control of Ukrainian territory had made their entity possible—as liberators. This allowed the Moscow Patriarchate to depict the Ukrainian autocephalist movement as inherently fascist following Ukraine’s reincorporation into the U.S.S.R. in 1944 (89).
From 1945 to 1989, the Russian Orthodox Church was the only church in Ukraine following the Eastern Orthodox Rite that was allowed to operate legally. During this period, the Soviet state and the Moscow Patriarchate promoted a narrative portraying the U.S.S.R.’s military victory as a triumph that preserved the fundamental unity of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The Moscow Patriarchate asserted its ecclesial hegemony by painting Ukrainian nationalism and autocephalist movements as “inspired by fascism” (89, 157); by reuniting the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to Orthodoxy through a sham council in 1946; and by pressuring the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Poland to relinquish its autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in return for autocephaly from the Moscow Patriarchate in 1948. When projecting its influence abroad, Moscow also “sought to replace” the Ecumenical Patriarch’s authority as “first among equals,” Denysenko avers (159).
During the Cold War, Ukrainian Orthodox émigré communities in North America lacked unity. They also were deprived of legitimacy in global Orthodox opinion because of the uncanonical ordinations of many of their clergy. Church representatives sought a solution to this problem for decades, while rejecting the ecclesiology of the 1921 UAOC (103). Looking to the Ecumenical Patriarchate to resolve their legitimacy problems, they finally obtained canonical status when full Eucharistic communion was established between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada in 1990, and with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA in 1995.
During this decades-long process, the Ukrainian diaspora developed an anti-Bolshevik and anti-Moscow Patriarchate political theology that has contributed to Ukraine’s post-Soviet identity crisis, and to the power struggle between the Ecumenical and Moscow Patriarchates. Building on the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s affirmation of Polish Orthodox autocephaly in 1924, the émigrés argued that Moscow illegally annexed the metropolia of Kyiv from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1686, and so was not the rightful mother Church of Kyiv. They therefore sought Ukraine’s “ecclesial and political independence” from Russia and portrayed the Moscow Patriarchate as a usurper of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s authority, as well as a collaborator with the Soviet regime (106, 109).
Following the weakening and collapse of Soviet authority in Ukraine, three main Orthodox bodies emerged there by 1992, each claiming to be the rightful successor of the tenth-century Kyiv Metropolia and thus the local Orthodox Church of the newly independent nation. These were: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOCMP); a new entity named the UAOC; and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate (UOCKP). The UOC-MP remains the largest and regards itself as “the only canonical Church in Ukraine” (175). Established in 1989, the “third rebirth” of the UAOC declared itself a patriarchal church and elected a patriarch in 1990 (xiv). Then, once Ukraine had become politically independent in 1991, the Moscow Patriarchate’s Metropolitan Filaret of Kyiv requested autocephaly from Moscow, supported by the vast majority of UOC-MP hierarchs.
Committed to the religious and cultural unity of Kyiv and Moscow, the Moscow Patriarchate was prepared to grant only a more limited autonomy to the church of Ukraine. Filaret came under fierce public criticism and was accused of leading the Ukrainian Orthodox Church into schism. In 1992 Ukrainian and Russian bishops loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate held a council in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and deposed Filaret. Rejecting the legitimacy of this council, Filaret and some proponents of autocephaly in the UOC and UAOC then united to form the UOC-KP. The global Orthodox community regarded neither the UAOC nor the UOC-KP as canonical; in the latter case, this was because Filaret’s 1992 deposition was accepted as legitimate. From 1995 onwards as the UOC-KP’s Patriarch of Kyiv, Filaret sought to legitimize his church by obtaining Ukrainian autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The UOC-MP withdrew its request for autocephaly in 1996, and the Russian Orthodox Church formally anathematized Filaret the following year—a decision also accepted as legitimate “within global Orthodoxy” (183).
Amid the twists and turns of this feuding, Denysenko characterizes the rival political theologies involved as an obstacle to productive dialogue and unity, acknowledging that both Ukrainian nationalism and “Russian colonization of Ukraine” are problematic (207). Ukrainian Orthodox not affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate generally adopt a pro-Western orientation, whereas the Moscow Patriarchate favors a “Russian World” [Russian: Russkii mir] ideology that reasserts Moscow’s hegemony over newly-independent territories earlier firmly within its jurisdiction. For Denysenko, Russkii mir is a “civil religion” that has had particularly damaging consequences in Crimea and eastern Ukraine (208).
Since February 2014, when the security forces of President Yanukovych cracked down upon demonstrators favoring Ukraine’s association with the European Union, the Ukrainian autocephaly movement has become explicitly politicized. In June 2016 President Poroshenko—Yanukovych’s successor—and a now Western-oriented Ukrainian parliament petitioned the Ecumenical Patriarch to “pronounce” Moscow’s 1686 annexation of the Kyivan Metropolia “invalid” and to grant autocephaly (198). Their petition reiterated a claim made by many advocates of Ukrainian autocephaly over the previous hundred years—that autocephaly was necessary to end “Russian colonization of Ukraine” (198-99).
Denysenko laments the pattern of divisiveness that has left the country with no church whose claim to being “the Orthodox Church in Ukraine” is recognized by both the local population and the global Orthodox community (221). Appealing to Orthodox Christians to abandon fruitless canonical controversies, he calls for a focus on overcoming divisions in Ukraine that negatively impact the laity, cause credibility problems for each jurisdiction, and detract from significant pastoral issues.
Since this book was published in 2018, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew responded affirmatively on autocephaly.* His 5 January 2019, tomos established an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), with a Metropolia—rather than a Patriarchate—of Kyiv. While the tomos intended to unite the competing churches, factions of the UOC-KP and UAOC refused to accept the new arrangement. Moreover, the Moscow Patriarchate has broken communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the move and continues to insist that the UOC-MP is the only canonical church in Ukraine. To date, Ukraine thus has an autocephalous church which a segment of the global Orthodox community accepts is canonical—but its internal religious divisions persist, and its conflict with Russia has deepened.
Impressive in scope, Denysenko’s study brings much needed historical context and pastoral concern to a particularly thorny set of geopolitical and ecclesiological problems.
* For subsequent commentary by Nicholas Denysenko, see “Filaret’s Final Act and the Future of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” Public Orthodoxy, 15 May 2019, https://publicorthodoxy. org/2019/05/15/filarets-future-of-orthodox-church-of-ukraine/. For multiple perspectives on the situation by contemporary scholars, see Canadian Slavonic Papers vol. 62 (2020), nos. 3-4, 421-521.*
Heather Bailey is Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Springfield. She is the author of The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy: France and Russia, 1848– 1870 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2020).
