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Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis pp 79–101Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Orthodox Autocephaly in Ukraine: The Historical Dimension

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Abstract

Alfons Brüning examines the interplay of shared Russian and Ukrainian historical experiences and competing visions of autocephaly. Drawing upon Pierre Nora’s concept of sites of memory, the study compares different Russian and Ukrainian historiographic approaches to understanding the branches of Eastern Christianity that trace their origins to Kyivan Rus’. In addition to the establishment of Orthodox Metropolitan sees in Moscow and Kyiv and the subsequent subordination of Kyiv to Moscow, the inquiry assesses the efforts to restore Christian unity at the councils of Florence and Brest.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History. Les lieux de Memoire,” Representations 26 (1989), pp. 7–24.

  2. 2.

    See Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples. Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

  3. 3.

    The UGCC is unique in this discussion of autocephaly. Through communion with Rome it is under the ultimate authority of the pope, though it shares a canonically recognized autonomous (or, sui iuris) status with 22 other Eastern Catholic Churches. With an estimated membership of over 5 million in 2010, it is the largest Eastern Catholic Church, but possesses only a major archepiscopate—a lower status than that of six smaller Eastern Catholic patriarchates (e.g. the Syrian Catholic Church, with less than 160,000 members). In the mid-1960s, in the time of Cardinal Yosyf Slipyj, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic patriarchal movement was mobilized to pressure the Vatican into granting patriarchal status. Though Rome never gave in, the campaign has continued in milder, less confrontational forms than in the 1960s and 1970s. The head of the UGCC has been known to use the title “patriarch” in internal correspondence.

  4. 4.

    A new, revised edition was sponsored by the Moscow Patriarchate. See Makarii (Bulgakov), Mitropolit Moskovskii i Kolomenskii, Istoriia Russkoi Tserkvi, 12 vol. (Moscow: Izd. Spaso-Preobrazhenskogo Varlaamskogo Monastyria, 1994–1996), vol. 1, part II. [also online on http://www.sedmitza.ru/lib/text/435711/].

  5. 5.

    There are numerous editions of the book, including N. Kostomarov, Russkaia istoriia v zhizneopisaniiakh ee glavneishikh deiatelei (re-ed. Moscow: Olma Press, 2004), pp. 69–71.

  6. 6.

    N. Kostomarov, “Dve russkie narodnosti,” Osnova 3 (St. Petersburg, 1861), pp. 33–80; also online at http://litopys.org.ua/kostomar/kos38.htm.

  7. 7.

    Mykhailo Hrushevsky, “The traditional scheme of ‘Russian’ history and the problem of a rational organization of the history of the Eastern Slavs,” The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S. II, 1952:2, pp. 355–364 (the Ukrainian original appeared in 1904; reprinted in: From Kievan Rus’ to Modern Ukraine: The Formation of the Ukrainian Nation (Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Studies Fund Harvard University, 1984).

  8. 8.

    Cf also Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi, Z istorii relihiinoi dumky na Ukraiini, reprint in id., Zbirka tvoriv (Kiev: Lybid’, 1994), pp. 5–135; and the study by I. Hirlich, V. Ul’janovs’kyi, “Relihiia ta tserkva v zhytti i tvorchosti Mykhaila Hrushevs’koho,” ibid., pp. 521–544.

  9. 9.

    Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians. Unexpected Nation (New Haven–London: Yale University Press, 2000), chapter 1, esp. pp. 11–14.

  10. 10.

    Serhii Plokhy, Ukraine and Russia, Representations of the Past (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), p. 244f.

  11. 11.

    Sinopsis, Kiev 1681, Hans Rothe, ed. and author of introduction, (Cologne: Boehlau, 1983).

  12. 12.

    Myroslav Ivan Cardinal Lubachivsky, Was It Really Russia That Was Christianized in 988? (London-Rome: Ukrainian Publishers, 1985).

  13. 13.

    Cf. http://www.ugcc.org.ua/31.0.html?&L=2.

  14. 14.

    S. Tomashivs’kyi, Tserkovnyi bik Ukrains’koi spravy (Vienna, 1916). Cf. Wilson, The Ukrainians, loc.cit., p. 17f.

  15. 15.

    Cf. Jaroslav Pelenski, The Contest for the “Kievan Inheritance”, in Peter J. Potichny, Marc Raeff, Gleb N. Zekulin (eds.), Ukraine and Russia in Their Historical Encounter (Edmonton-Toronto: CIUS Press, 1992), pp. 8–15.

  16. 16.

    Wilson, The Ukrainians, pp. 43–46.

  17. 17.

    Karol Chodynicki, Kościoł Prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska, 1370–1632 (Warsaw, 1934, reprint Bialystok: Orthdruk, 2005), esp. pp. 76–83.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., p. 85.

  19. 19.

    Makarii (Bulgakov), Istoriia Russkoi Tserkvi, vol. 4, book 3, and vol. 9.

  20. 20.

    John Meyendorff, “Was There an Encounter Between East and West at Florence?” in id., Constantinople, Rome, Moscow. Historical and Theological Studies (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), pp. 87–112.

  21. 21.

    On the role of Isidore in Florence cf. E. Golubinskii, Istoriia russkoi tserkvi, vol. II, part I (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1900), pp. 438–442. [also online: http://www.odinblago.ru/golubinskiy2/11].

  22. 22.

    Golubinskii, Istoriia Russkoi Tserkvi, loc.cit. [fn. 21], pp. 454–458.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., pp. 469–515, with a thorough discussion of the negotiations. Cf. also the chapter by Alain Ducellier in Die Geschichte des Christentums, vol. 7, German edition by H. Smolinsky (Freiburg: Herder, 1995), pp. 52–55.

  24. 24.

    Stephen Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).

  25. 25.

    The actual political application of the “Third Rome” idea dates back only to the nineteenth century, especially the time after the Crimean war. Cf. Marshall Poe, “Moscow, the Third Rome: The Origins and Transformations of a ‘Pivotal Moment’,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 49:3 (2001), pp. 412–429.

  26. 26.

    This is also the tenor of the comments on the Florentine Union both in Golubinskii, Istoriia Russkoi Tserkvi, loc.cit. [fn. 20], pp. 458–468; and Makarii, Istoria Russkoi Tserkvi, loc.cit., book III, chapter VIII, part III.

  27. 27.

    Liubachivsky, Was It really Russia That Was Christianized in 988?, loc.cit., pp. 21–25. Necessarily more cautious with regard to Isidore—simultaneously condemning the “Uniate” metropolitan and critically evaluating the emerging division into two church provinces—is the historiography of the Autocephalous Church, as represented e.g. by Ivan Vlasovs’kyi, Narys istorii Ukrains’koi pravoslavnoi tserkvy, vol. 1 (New York: Ukrains’ka Pravoslavna Tserkva v ZDA, 1955), p. 117ff.

  28. 28.

    For the Russian view, see Makarii (Bulgakov), “Obshchii vzgliad na istoriiu Zapadnorusskoi Tserkvi v nastoiashchii period”, introduction to vol. 9 of his Istoriia Russkoi Tserkvi [also on http://www.sedmitza.ru/lib/text/436017/]; the national Ukrainian perspective in Vlasovs’kyi, Narys Istorii [fn. 26], pp. 175–192. On the controversial prawo podawania and its consequences, see also Chodynicki, Kościoł Prawoslawny a Rzeczpospolita Polska, loc.cit., pp. 109–150.

  29. 29.

    This is the general perspective dominating the classical study by Oskar Halecki, From Florence to Brest (1439–1596), 2nd ed. (Rome-Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1968). Russian church historians have not hesitated to qualify Halecki’s book as biased, cf. e.g. the review by Fr. Georges Florovsky in Renaissance News 13:1 (1960), pp. 27–29. Halecki’s Catholic background merges with his devotion to what he had earlier identified as the “Jagiellonian idea”, cf. id., “Idea jagiellońska,” Kwartalnik Historyczny 51:1–2 (1937), pp. 486–510.

  30. 30.

    Borys Gudziak, “The Union of Florence in the Kievan Metropolitanate: Did It Survive until the Times of the Union of Brest? Some Reflections on a Recent Argument,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 17:1–2 (1993), pp. 138–148, at p. 148.

  31. 31.

    Makarii (Bulgakov), Istoriia Russkoi Tserkvi, vol. 9, chapter IV, part IV [online http://www.sedmitza.ru/lib/text/436074/].

  32. 32.

    The most comprehensive study to date about the union and its pre-history is Borys A. Gudziak, Crisis and Reform. The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Many additional insights, especially about the point of view taken by respective religious and political factions, can be gained from Mikhail V. Dmitriev, Mezhdu Rimom i Car’gradom. Genezis brestskoi unii 1595–96 gg. (Moscow, 2003).

  33. 33.

    For the details, see Gudziak, Crisis and Reform, pp. 209–256.

  34. 34.

    Ihor Skoczylas, “Slavia Unita—the Cultural and Religious Model of the Archdiocese of Kiev in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Jerzy Kłoczowski, Hubert Łaszkiewicz (eds.), East-Central Europe in European History. Themes & Debates (Lublin: Inst. Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, 2009), pp. 243–254.

  35. 35.

    David Frick, Meletij Smotryc’kyj (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

  36. 36.

    Gudziak, Crisis and Reform, pp. 168–188.

  37. 37.

    Orest Subtelny, Ukraine. A History (2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), pp. 92–102.

  38. 38.

    Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi, “Kul’turno-natsional’nyi rukh na Ukraiini v XVI–XVII vitsi,” in id., Dukhovna Ukraiina [as in fn. 10], pp. 136–155 (originally Kyiv-L’viv: 1912); Ivan Vlasovs’kyi, Istoriia Ukraiins’koi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvy, vol. 2 (New York: Ukrains’ka Pravoslavna Tserkva v ZDA, 1956), pp. 5–291.

  39. 39.

    See e.g. Valeriia M. Nichyk, Petro Mohyla v dukhovnii istorii Ukraiiny (Kyiv: Ukrains’kyi Tsentr Dukhovnoi kultury, 1997).

  40. 40.

    Cf. Serhii Plokhy, The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

  41. 41.

    “Little Russia” was another synonym for Ukraine. Cf. Hans-Joachim Torke, “Moskau und sein Westen. Zur ‘Ruthenisierung’ der russischen Kultur,” Berliner Jahrbuch für Osteuropäische Geschichte 1 (1996), pp. 101–120. The work that remains a standard point of reference is Konstantin V. Kharlampovich, Malorossiiskoe vliianie na Velikorusskuiu Tserkovnuiu Zhizn’ (Kazan’: M.A. Golubev, 1914); see pp. I–VIII; on the episodes from the 1620s and 1640s cf. ibid., pp. 100–103, 115–117.

  42. 42.

    Cf. Ivan Vlasovs’kyi, Istoriia Ukrains’koi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvy, loc.cit., vol. 2, pp. 292–377; a more contemporary analysis with the same tenor is M. V. Charyshyn, Istoriia pidporiadkuvannia ukrains’koi pravoslavnoi tserkvy moskovs’komu patriarkhatu (Kiev: Venturi, 1995).

  43. 43.

    Cf. p. 4 and fn. 13 above.

  44. 44.

    The hetmanate even in more contemporary and balanced textbooks of Ukrainian history figures as the first period of autonomous Ukrainian statehood, cf. Subtelny, Ukraine, pp. 105–200; Paul R. Magocsi, A History of Ukraine: The Land and its Peoples (2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), pp. 209–275.

  45. 45.

    Mazepa’s alleged “betrayal” of Tsar Peter I, or his role as a proponent of Ukrainian independence respectively remains another main point of controversy between Russian and Ukrainian historians. On the fate of Mazepa in Ukrainian and Russian memory cf. Plokhy, Russia & Ukraine, pp. 66–76; Wilson, The Ukrainians, pp. 58–66.

  46. 46.

    Cf. Igor Smolitsch, Geschichte der Russischen Kirche: 1700–1917, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1964), pp. 389–427.

  47. 47.

    For the process summarized here, see Barbara Skinner, The Western Front of the Eastern Church. Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in Eighteenth-century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009).

  48. 48.

    On the role of the Greek Catholic Church in the formation of Ukrainian national consciousness in the nineteenth century cf. John Paul Himka, The Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian Society in Austrian Galicia (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard Ukr. Studies Fund, 1986) and id., Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine. The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia 1867–1900 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill University Press, 1999). A link between the two branches of the religious-national movement consisted in a Russophile faction within the Uniate clergy: cf. Anna Veronika Wendland, Die Russophilen in Galizien. Ukrainische Konservative zwischen Österreich und Russland, 1848–1915 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001).

  49. 49.

    G. I. Markevich, “Vybornoe nachalo v Duchovenstve v drevne-russkoi, preimushchestvenno jugo-zapadnoi cerkvi do reformy Petra I.,” Trudy Kievskoi Dukhovnoi Akademii 8 (1871), pp. 225–273.

  50. 50.

    Frank E. Sysyn, “The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Tradition of the Kyiv Metropolitanate” in id., Serhii Plokhy (eds.), Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine (Edmonton and Toronto: CIUS Press, 2003), pp. 23–39.

  51. 51.

    Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, “The Autocephalous Church Movement in Ukraine: The Formative Stage (1917–1920),” The Ukrainian Quarterly 16:3 (1960) pp. 211–223. The most comprehensive study concerning the pre-history of the autocephaly movement in the nineteenth century is Ricarda Vulpius, Nationalisierung der Religion. Russifizierungspolitik und ukrainische Nationsbildung 1860–1920 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005).

  52. 52.

    Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, “The Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, 1920–1930: A Case Study in Religious Modernization,” in Dennis J. Dunn (ed.), Religion and Modernization in the Soviet Union (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977), pp. 310–347.

  53. 53.

    Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger (eds.) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1–14.

  54. 54.

    For a recapitulation of contemporary discussions in post-Soviet Ukraine cf. Lilya Berezhnaya, “Does Ukraine Have a Church History?” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10:4 (2009), pp. 897–916.

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  1. Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, Nijmegen, Netherlands

    Alfons Brüning

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  1. University of Sudbury, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada

    Andrii Krawchuk

  2. University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Thomas Bremer

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Brüning, A. (2016). Orthodox Autocephaly in Ukraine: The Historical Dimension. In: Krawchuk, A., Bremer, T. (eds) Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34144-6_4

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