Religion, Community, Communism: The Social History of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Poland and Ukraine, 1944-1992

Abstract

This dissertation tells the story of the near-death, transformation, and resurrection of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) in Soviet Ukraine and communist Poland between 1944 and the early 1990s. Developed in the formerly Austro-Hungarian borderland between contemporary Poland and Ukraine, the UGCC blended Eastern (Byzantine/Orthodox) rituals with Western (Latin/Catholic) structures. Due to its 19th century legacy as a social and cultural carrier of Ukrainian national identity, and 20th century associations with Ukrainian nationalist militias, the UGCC was deemed incompatible with the postwar communist projects in the USSR and Eastern/Central Europe. The post-WWII border established between western Ukraine and southeastern Poland created two new state configurations and split Greek Catholic communities apart. In the mid-1940s, Soviet authorities forcibly “reunited” the UGCC with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Ukraine. In Poland, the church was dealt with by dispersing the Ukrainian minority across regions in the north and west known as the “Recovered Territories.” Through a combination of oral histories, correspondence, memoirs and materials from state archives (civilian and police), I analyze how Greek Catholics on both sides of the border reimagined their ritual practices, adapted to institutional and social repression, and sustained networks of pastoral care. I investigate how the repressions of the communist period reshaped the elements that made up the UGCC: ideas (theology), practices (ritual), infrastructure (church space and institutional hierarchy), and community (social networks). By the 1980s, decades of persistent worship and appeals to authority escalated into an all-out movement to legalize the UGCC in Soviet Ukraine, which was part of the wave of anti-communist and national independence campaigns that swept Central and Eastern Europe in the final years of the Soviet experiment. In the end, the UGCC was restored as an official institution and communities of believers returned to their sacred spaces without fear of persecution or interference. However, the church was irrevocably reshaped by half a century of existing only in practice, not on paper. I argue that the UGCC survived its 20th century trials through a foundation of hybrid practice; inspiration from dedicated church leaders; and interpersonal networks of support. Using a transnational and comparative approach, I trace individual and communal lived experience to understand how communist state policies actually functioned on the ground in divergent contexts. In Poland, the powerful Roman Catholic Church provided institutional shelter for the UGCC in a way that had no equivalent in the USSR. In both Ukraine and Poland, purportedly atheist communist authorities collaborated with “loyal” Orthodox churches to neutralize Greek Catholics. By approaching a single church across two states in a 50-year timespan, I demonstrate how Greek Catholics dealt with similar issues in different ways, and how generational shifts in the communist experience affected Greek Catholic maneuverability. Finally, this dissertation reveals how the UGCC functioned internally—as a spiritual, cultural, and social home for millions of Ukrainians who did not fit into the version of communist atheist modernity they inhabited.