What religions came to prominence in Ukraine after the Soviet collapse?
Present-day political fault lines do not correspond neatly to any historical religious divides in Ukraine. Still, membership in any of the three main Christian churches in the country involves a nationalidentity choice as well, because of their different historical relationship to the Russian Orthodox Church, which functions as the de facto state church in Russia.
Kyivan Rus adopted Eastern-rite Christianity in the tenth century from the Byzantine Empire. After the Mongol conquest in the thirteenth century, the metropolitan (archbishop) of Kyiv escaped to the northeast, eventually moving the metropolitan see to Moscow. In 1589 Tsar Boris Godunov forced the head of the mother church, the patriarch of Constantinople, to acknowledge the ecclesiastical independence of the Russian Orthodox Church. From that point, its head also wielded the title of patriarch. However, the ecclesiastical territory of the patriarch of Moscow did not include the Ukrainian lands. There, under Polish rule, a separate Orthodox church existed, and it was still under the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople. After Muscovy's absorption of the Ukrainian Cossack polity, the Muscovite government arranged with the Ottomans in 1686 to pressure the patriarch of Constantinople into transferring these lands to Moscow's canonical jurisdiction.
Even before that, in 1596, a new Christian church was established in the Ukrainian lands under Polish rule, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (the word “Greek" referring to the Byzantine rite; historically, this church was also known as the Uniate Church and is now referred to simply as the Ukrainian Catholic Church). Most Orthodox bishops in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth accepted the ecclesiastical authority of the pope, while preserving the Eastern Christian rite and the ordination of married men to the priesthood.
Relations between the Uniates and the Orthodox were violent, at first; Cossacks slaughtered Uniates during the Khmelnytsky Uprising in the 1640s. Since the late eighteenth century, however, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has served as a national church for Ukrainians in Galicia, the region of the Habsburg Empire that became the center of the Ukrainian national movement.After the Russian Empire's collapse in 1917, the independent Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was established, and it competed with the Russian Orthodox Church for parishioners in the Ukrainian SSR, until the Stalinist authorities suppressed it in 1930. Following the Soviet annexation of Galicia during World War II, the Ukrainian Catholic Church was dissolved, its parishes transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church. Many Ukrainian Catholics continued practicing their religion underground.
The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev lifted the ban against the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1989, on the eve of his historic visit to the Vatican. Since then, the church quickly reclaimed most of its parishes and its dominant position in Galicia, as well as in the smaller western Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia, but it has only a token presence elsewhere in the country. It now has over 4,000 parishes and an estimated 4 million faithful in Ukraine, as well as a considerable following in the Ukrainian diaspora.
The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), which had survived in the diaspora as well, was also re-established in Ukraine shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. Initially, there was considerable interest in an indigenous Orthodox church free from Moscow's control, but the UAOC was disadvantaged by the lack of recognition from canonical Orthodox churches, dating back to its establishment in 1921 in a ceremony that was marked by the absence of bishops. Also, a powerful new competitor soon emerged for the role of a Ukrainian alternative to Russian Orthodoxy.
Following the emergence of independent Ukraine in 1991, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, the metropolitan of Kyiv, Filaret, embraced the idea of a separate Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). This plan, which President Kravchuk supported as part of his nation-building efforts, led to a new schism in what had been the country's dominant religion.
A significant number of bishops and parishes followed Filaret into the UOC (Kyiv Patriarchate), which they created by merging temporarily with the UAOC. However, the majority remained with the Russian Orthodox Church, which excommunicated Filaret and elected a new metropolitan of Kyiv, Volodymyr, in his place. In 1995 Filaret became patriarch of the UOC (Kyiv Patriarchate).After the split, the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine (which is also technically called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but often with the explanatory designation “of the Moscow Patriarchate”) retained its position as the country's most influential religion. It boasts over 11,000 parishes and claims up to 75 percent of Ukraine's population as members. Most Ukrainians are not regular churchgoers, however, and many identify themselves to pollsters simply as “Orthodox," without specifying the church they belong to, if any. In recent years and especially after the EuroMaidan Revolution, however, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) was forced to scale down, at least publicly, its dependence on Moscow and involvement in Ukrainian politics. In contrast, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate) has increased its visibility and has tried to position itself as a Ukrainian national Orthodox church, although it still lacks international canonical recognition. By the mid-2oios the Kyiv Patriarchate had some 4,300 parishes, and the UAOC approximately 1,200; together they claimed some 7 million faithful.
In addition to the traditional Eastern Christian churches, Protestants of various denominations have been proselytizing actively in independent Ukraine, with their share of the faithful now estimated at between 1 and 3 percent of the population. Over 450,000 Ukrainian citizens are Muslims, but most of them are Crimean Tatars residing in the Crimean Peninsula, now under Russian control.
The Orthodox churches in particular have felt the impact of recent political events.
During the EuroMaidan Revolution, the St. Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral in central Kyiv, which belongs to the Kyiv Patriarchate, served as a refuge and field hospital for injured protestors pursued by riot police. After the Russian takeover of the Crimea and the start of the Donbas war, 30 parishes reportedly switched their affiliations from the Moscow Patriarchate to the Kyiv Patriarchate.5 The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) has found itself in a difficult position following the deterioration of Russo-Ukrainian relations. The administration of President Poroshenko promoted the creation of a united Orthodox Church that would be under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. In December 2018, a unification council took place in Kyiv, proclaiming the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), but it was constituted primarily through the merger of the Kyiv Patriarchate and the UAOC with only two bishops crossing over from the Moscow Patriarchate. There was initially a significant transfer of individual parishes from the Moscow Patriarchate to the new church, but it slowed down after Poroshenko's electoral defeat in 2019. The OCU also became weakened by the conflict between its head, the young and energetic Metropolitan Epiphanius, and his former mentor and head of the Kyiv Patriarchate, Metropolitan Filaret. Opinion polls show that the OCU has more public support in Ukraine than the pro-Moscow church, but it is unclear whether the OCU really has the 7,000 parishes it claims. The division of the Ukrainian Orthodox Christians into the "all-Russian" and “Ukrainian” orientations continues.