Orthodoxy in Ukraine: Stuck Between Soviet Legacy and European Future [Die Orthodoxie in der Ukraine: Zwischen sowjetischem Erbe und europäischer Zukunft]

Elsner, Regina

Abstract

Ukraine holds an exceptional historical legacy of religious diversity in general and a confessional Christian plurality in particularly within the post-Soviet context. After decades of Soviet forced homogenization, this plurality re-emerged in the 1980s and flourished under the conditions of religious freedom in the 1990s. Orthodoxy as the religious affiliation of the majority played a special role in the formation of a renewed religious landscape of the country, most notably by establishing an inner-Orthodox split over political loyalty and the notion of national identity. The chapter discusses how decades of mutual ecclesial hostilities between the different Orthodox churches shaped sustainable attitudes of intolerance and enmity in the society. The chapter also re-evaluates how the question of ecclesial communion between Orthodoxy in Ukraine and Orthodoxy in Russia became a factor of domestic and foreign policy in the same way as the question of the European identity of Ukraine challenged the Orthodox churches. After two decades of growing into a pluralistic society, since 2014 Russia’s war pushes Orthodoxy back in ecclesial nationalization, identity politics, and a complex navigation of conservative values, which is at odds both with Russia’s claim and with European liberalism.