Postwar Stalinism 1945–53

Abstract

Just as the Soviet Union was newly triumphant, expanding its power to bring large areas of Eastern Europe under its control, so the Russian Orthodox Church was able to bring believers in the conquered territories under its sway. Independent Orthodox Churches in the Baltic States and Poland were subjugated to Moscow, as were believers from the Romanian Orthodox Church in the annexed territory of Bessarabia. The Ukrainian Catholic Church, the 350-year-old Church which retained its Eastern rite while maintaining loyalty to the Pope, was destroyed in its stronghold of Galicia in 1946. The entire episcopate and many priests were arrested and the secret police organised a ‘synod’ at which the Church requested its incorporation into the Moscow Patriarchate. A similar fate befell the branch of the Church in Transcarpathia in 1949 after the murder of its leader, Archbishop Romzha.