CHERNIVTSI PARTY APPARATUS AND RELIGIOUS REVIVAL OF BUKOVYNA AT THE END OF THE 80s – THE BEGINNING OF THE 90s

Abstract

The Purpose of the Research. Scientific research reconstructs little-known events related to the peculiarities of the religious “renaissance” of the northern part of Bukovyna in the second half of the 80s – at the beginning of the 90s of the twentieth century, which was the part of the UkrSSR and the USSR from 1940 and 1944 till 1991. Reproduction of the religious revival dynamics is presented through the prism of its communist reception, based on the latent but sympathetic attitude of the pro-Russian Communist Party leadership of Chernivtsi region to the Russian Orthodox Church and the party leadership’s complete rejection of the national Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCCh) and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOCh). The Methodology of the Research. The verification of Chernivtsi Communist Party’s negative reception of the religious revival of the national churches has been done in accordance with the principle of historical objectivity. Methods of critical and structural analysis and classification, systematization of unpublished archival sources have been used in the research. The conclusions have been drawn based on documents from three regional archives, as well as the pages of communist and national periodicals and interviews with participants. The novelty of the research is that for the first time in the Ukrainian historical science the analysis of the causes and consequences of a dual reception of Chernivtsi party apparatus of the religious situation in the region, due to the party apparatus subordination to Moscow Central Committee of the CPSU, which considered the Russian Orthodox Church (ROCh) as one of the tools for instilling the Russian mentality in the annexed Ukrainian lands. Such analysis made it possible to introduce into scientific circulation a new archival documentary base, which was not previously made public to a wide range of researchers. The Conclusions. In historical science, there is a hypothesis about the selectivity of the Soviet, and therefore Russian, communist doctrine of “militant atheism” as a complete and irrevocable denial of faith in God. Such double standards were evident for the Soviet power during critical period, when, in order to survive, it consciously deviated from its own postulates and adapted them to the demands of time. The last in the “queue” of these manifestations was the period when the CPSU-CPU exhausted itself as the ideological core of the state and the USSR – as a geopolitical object. Then, on the instructions of Moscow, Chernivtsi local party apparatus illustrated the favourable attitude to the ROCh, subsidized magnificent celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Kievan Rus-Ukraine in the Orthodox-Russian format and exercised an uncompromising attitude towards the UGCCh and the UAOCh and the Protestant churches, guided not by religious but political circumstances.

Key words: religious revival, the CPSU-CPU, Chernivtsi party apparatus, national and democratic movement, statehood, Ukraine.