ROC in Ukraine waits for power change or 'Russian spring', according to historian Oleh Turiy

During the last decades, many confrontations of the Ukrainian Orthodoxy with Russia arose. Director of the Institute of Church History of the Ukrainian Catholic University Oleh Turiy analyzes in an interview with Radio Liberty what the reason for the confrontation is and looks at the essence of Russian Orthodoxy.

“The Russian Orthodox Church experiences great identity problems both in Ukraine and in Russia - it has failed to find its place after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The brief period of religious and civil liberty and hopes for a spiritual revival in the times of Gorbachev's perestroika very soon was substituted by nostalgia for "lost greatness" and attempts to revive the empire. The Moscow Patriarchate not only voluntarily set to serve this neo-imperial regime, but also became a kind of ideological support for it with the ideas of the “Russian world” and a special “Orthodox civilization,” the historian says.

“Deformed by a godless authority, this Church during the Second World War was in fact placed into the service of the Stalinist regime under the watchful eye of its repressive organs.

Therefore, it is not surprising that some of the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, like Putin, believe that the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century is not the Holodomor, not world wars, not Nazism, but the collapse of the Union. For the idea of ​​“great Russia,” which "rises from its knees,” they are even ready to glorify Stalin. However, according to already published data, over 80% of the clergy who took part in the restoration of the ROC in 1943 were recruited by the NKVD agents. These “traditions” are cultivated in the newest ROC, and the recruited hierarchs even manage foreign churches. Already today, according to international sociological surveys, in Russia, only 3% of the population regularly attends divine services,” Oleh Turiy analyzes and adds:

“The problems of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine are due to the fact that there is an independent state, other churches, there is no monopoly, and one must do on its own, but it cannot. The only possible option is to wait for changes in power in Ukraine or a “Russian spring”.

Not everyone is talking about it openly, but many among the hierarchs are waiting for this to happen. However, under the tenure of Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan) in the UOC (MP) powerful processes of Ukrainization began, and eventually this wing joined the OCU.”