During the Second World War, the West Ukrainian region of Eastern Galicia became a part of the Soviet Union. In 1946, the Greek Catholic Church, which was the Church of most Ukrainians in the region, was officially abolished through its allegedly voluntary “reunion” with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Under state pressure, the majority of Greek Catholic clergymen and laypeople “reunited” with the ROC. Nonetheless, most monks and nuns as well as a part of the Greek Catholic clergy and believers refused to change the Church’s jurisdiction.
The study mainly focuses on the strategies of survival and resistance employed by the Ukrainian Greek Catholics who refused to join the ROC and professed their faith clandestinely. First, the research looks at the strategies of their survival in Soviet society, including participation of young Greek Catholics in the Communist organizations and the clandestine clergy’s secular work. Concealment of faith or hiding one’s Greek Catholic identity offer a vivid example of how theology was influenced by the security context. Second, the proposed study deals with the Greek Catholics’ strategies of resistance, ranging from legal forms of protest to outright confrontation of believers with the representatives of Soviet authorities, including agents of the state security service, the KGB. By using the above survival and resistance strategies, clandestine Greek Catholics were able to preserve their denominational identity in a hostile environment up to 1990, when the UGCC was finally legalised.
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