Karel C. Berkoff. Was There a Religious Revival in Soviet Ukraine under the Nazi Regime?

HISTORIANS of modern Europe are increasingly studying popular religiosity as a topic distinct from the institutional history of religion.1

This article studies the stance towards religion of a particular group of Soviet citizens during the Second World War. It argues that many, if not most, of these people were and remained indifferent to religion.
They were the historically Orthodox East Slavs in the part of Ukraine which, after the German occupation in 1941, received a civilian Nazi administration and was called the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Mostly situated west of the Dnieper River and mostly comprising territoryt hat had experienced two decades of Soviet rule, it was led by Reichskommissar Erich Koch. It grew steadily in size and by the autumn of 1942 it was the Third Reich’s largest colony, consisting of six large Generalbezirokre general districts, led by Generalkommissaars e, w ell as numerous smaller districts led by GebietskommissaTrhe.e Reichskommissariat Ukraine did not exist long: by late 1943 the Red Army was back at the Dnieper River, halfway across, and by March 1944 the German armed forces lost all of its territory. But even though the Reichskommissariat Ukraine existed only for a brief period, Adolf Hitler and his fellow Nazis from the beginning made a frantic effort to realize their racial and economic Utopia there. It was what I call Hitler’s clean slate a place where the German ‘race’ was supposed to be regenerated, free from the supposed evils of industrialized society, and the native population killed or eliminated in some other way. Limitless terror and daily humiliation of the non-German population was the result. Never before in the history Karel Berkhoff, PhD, is Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam.

The author would like to thank Professor Paul Robert Magocsi and SEER’s anonymous referees for their critical comments.

1 For recent examples, see the studies in Hartmut Lehmann (ed.), Sdkularisierung, DechristianisierungR, echristianisierunigm neuzeitlichenE uropa. Bilanz und Perspektivedn er Forschung, Gottingen, 1997.

of Ukraine did so many social and ethnic groups suffer so much at (more or less)t he same time.2

Any study of popular religiosityi n this region must start with an outline of the basics of Soviet and German policiest oward religion as well as the competition among the leaders of what eventuallyb ecame two Orthodox Churches,a n Autonomous Orthodox Church and an Autocephalous Orthodox Church. As not all civiliansu nder discussion were Ukrainians, the word native(s) is employed, as meaning all those who lived in Ukraine when the Germans arrived.

The Pre-1941 Period

The revolutionaryp eriodt hat startedi n 191 7 broughtg reat changest o church life in Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church received a certain autonomy from Russia, but also lost ground against new competitors. By the 1920S Soviet Ukraine had three Orthodox Churches. The largest was the Russian Orthodox Church, also called the PatriarchalC hurch. Since 1918, the Ukraine-basedp art of the PatriarchalC hurch had autonomouss tatus as an exarchate, and in 1921 it received its first exarch.

In 1920, a new, independent, Ukrainian AutocephalousO rthodox Church appearedo n the scene and one year later,i t ordainedi ts own metropolitan Vasyl’ L ypkivs’kyi. The consecration was not in accordancew ith Orthodoxc anon law, however, but in the form of the supposedlya ncient but controversiarl itual of a ‘laying on of hands’.

The third Orthodoxt endency was called Renovationism.
From 1925, it was representedi n Ukraineb y the Orthodox Autocephalous Synodal Church,a lso withi ts own metropolitan.3

In I927, the militantlya theist Soviet authoritiesr ecognizedt hat the Russian Orthodox PatriarchalC hurch had a rightt o exist. Fromt hen on, its two Orthodox rival went into decline. Althought his process was aided by the fact that the vast majority of faithful preferredt he Russian Orthodox Church,t he decline of the others was significantly hastenedb y the state. In 1930 the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was forced to declare at a synod that it no longer existed, and an estimated half of its clergy were arrestedt hereafter. Anothers ynod later that year renamed the remnants of the Church the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This Church functioned until the mid-1930s, when 2 Karel Cornelis Berkhoff, ‘Hitler’s Clean Slate: Everyday Life in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, 1941-1944, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 1998. Primary sources are listed and discussed in my ‘Ukraine under Nazi Rule (1941-1944): Sources and Finding Aids [Parts I and 2]‘, JahrbficherffirG eschichteO steuropas,4 5, I997, I, pp. 85-103, and ibid., 2, pp. 273-309. its metropolitan was arrested and its parishes were closed down.

3 Earlier this body was called the Living Church (1922), then the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (I923-25): see Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, ‘The Renovationist Church in the Soviet Ukraine, 1922-1939′ (hereafter ‘Renovationist Church’), Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciencesi n the US, 9, I96I, I-2 (27-28), pp. 41-74 (pp. 52 and 62-67).

Meanwhile, in 1936, the metropolitan of the Synodal Church (Renovationists) was banned from holding church offices and arrested one year later, and all Synodal bishops were forced to resign. In other words, the Ukrainian Autocephalous and Synodal (Renovationist) hierarchies were eliminated and only the Russian Orthodox (Patriarchal) Church remained.4

The Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine (Patriarchal Exarchate) suffered, however, as much as its rivals. In I935 and 1936 two of its bishops were arrested, and in 1937 it was the turn of its exarch. The remaining Russian Orthodox hierarchs soon shared this fate.5 The assaults on the Church were also felt at the parish level.

For example, in early I938 all priests in the border region of Zhytomyr were deported. By the end of the decade, there were only about a hundred Orthodox priests left in Soviet Ukraine (besides a number of underground priests), none of whom were allowed to conduct services.

The campaign against Orthodoxy was more extensive than in Soviet Russia, where hierarchies of the Renovationist and Russian Orthodox Churches, while depleted, nevertheless continued to exist.6

During this period, there existed an Orthodox Church in neighbouring Poland, recognized since I924 as autocephalous (independent) by the ecumenical patriarch in Istanbul. When Germany and the Soviet Union destroyed the Polish state in 1939, in the German-ruled General Government this Church was renamed the Holy Orthodox Autocephalous Church in the General Government, led by Metropolitan Dionysii (Valedyns’kyi), archbishop of Warsaw.7 Meanwhile, in western Volhynia and eastern Galicia, under Soviet rule since 1939, most Orthodox bishops pledged allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Patriarchal Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodskii) of Moscow and Kolomna.

Although they did this under duress, it is conceivable that among them were those who were pleased to be rid of their ‘Polish’ autocephaly. Barely had this new situation come about, however, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

German Policies and Church Leaders

As the Germans occupied Ukraine, they put up posters which announced: ‘The time of Stalinist atheism is gone. The German Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, ‘The Soviet Destruction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, 1929-1936′, Journal of UkrainianS tudies, 12, I 987, i (Summer), pp. 3-2 1 (PP. 5-12 and 14); Friedrich Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irchei n der Ukrainev on I917 bis i945, Cologne and Braunsfeld, 1953 (hereafter Die orthodoxeK irche),p . I I 4.

5 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. I I5- 6, I I 8-20 and 1 25.
6 Ibid., p. I 26; Bociurkiw, ‘Renovationist Church’, p. 72.
7 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . I 44; State Archive of the Kiev oblast’ (hereafter DAKO), f. r-24 12, op. 2, d. 199, 1. 75, letter by Dionysii, Warsaw, 13 November 1941.

authorities give you the opportunity to pray in freedom again.’8 In fact, in various ways, representatives of the German Army were more deeply involved. Some commanders issued orders for the re-opening of the churches, and many soldiers and officers helped clean and restore church buildings. Ukrainians who worked as army interpreters seem to have told Orthodox priests that their services should be in the Ukrainian language. If they did not know it, Church Slavonic might be used, although it should be pronounced with a Ukrainian accent.9

There were, however, instances in which the Germans acted with caution or even with disdain. In the southern city of Kherson, the regional Economic Command (Wirtschaftskommangdao)v e the local Orthodox clergy 30,000 roubles for the restoration of the church building, in exchange for a promise to conduct services in Church Slavonic, a written loyalty oath, and a vow to ‘reject all efforts to make the Church a political tool of Ukrainian nationalists’.10 There were also cases when German soldiers turned just-restored churches into stables. 1

These various kinds of German involvement displeased the German High Command, and quickly it banned any further interference by Germans in church life.’2 From then on, the German army at most played a mediating role. For example, in Boryspil’, east of Kiev, in November 1941, the local commander ordered a referendum on language use. When the pollsters disagreed about the outcome, he ordered the church building to alternate between being an ‘Old Slavonic Church’ and a ‘Ukrainian Church’.13

8 Scholarly Reference Library of the Central State Archives of Ukraine, Kiev, collection ‘Afishy ta plakaty okupatsiinoho periodu’, item 764sp, ‘Doba stalins’koho bezbozhnytstva mynula’.
9 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . I 7 I; Harvey Fireside, Icon and Swastika: The Russian Orthodox Church under Nazi and Soviet Control, Cambridge, MA, I971 (hereafter Icon and Swastika), p. 118; 0. Iaroslavs’kyi [Lev Chaikovs'kyi?], ‘Vid Sianu po Dinets’ (Z spohadiv perekladacha)’, Visti Bratstvak ol. VoiakivI UD UNA, 7, 1956, 7-8 (69-70) (July-August), pp. 16-23 (p. 21).
10 Central State Archive of the Higher Organs of Authority and Government of Ukraine (hereafter TsDAVOV), f. 3676, op. i, d. 50,1. 27, ‘Erklarung des orthodoxen Kirchenrates von Cherson, abgegeben am 21.10.4I auf Veranlassung des Kreislandwirtschaftfuhrers Sonderfuhrer Linke’.
11 Mykhailo Hartymiv, ‘Zemleiu ukrains’koiu. . .’ in Kost’ Mel’nyk, Oleh Lashchenko and Vasyl’ Veryha (eds), Na zov Kyieva: Ukrains’kyin atsionalizm u II Svitovii Viini: Zbirnyks tattei, spohadivi dokumentivT, oronto and New York, I 985 (hereafter Na zov Kyieva),p . I 46.
12 Fireside, Icon and Swastika, p. I I8; Walther Bienert, Russen und Deutsche: Wasfur Menschen sind das? Berichte, Bilder und Folgerungena us dem Zweiten Weltkrieg,S tein am Rhein, 1990 (hereafter Russen und Deutsche),p . 92.
13 DAKO, f. r-24I2, op. 2, d. I99, 11. 19-20, Mykola Rybachuk, ‘Vidrodzhennia tserkovno-relihiinoho zhyttia v zvil’nomu nimets’kym viiskom Zolotoverkhnomu Kyievi i oblasty’, n. p., n. d. (hereafter ‘Vidrodzhennia’). This is a memoir by a lieutenant-colonel in the Kiev city police who was the first president of the Kiev-based Church Council. It is based on original documents;s ee ibid., 11.I 21-22 and 1 24-25.

When civilian Nazi rule replaced military rule, a more elaborate system of control over religious life was imposed. All ‘Ukrainian organizations of a non-productive and non-economic character’ had to register with the native city mayor or raion chief, and were obliged to inform him once a month about changes in their structure or personnel.’4 On 8 December I94I, and again on I I July 1942, Reichskommissar Koch banned church services on weekdays, with the exception of Christmas (7 and 8 January), New Year’s Day (I4 January), and the two days of Easter.1 5 The civilian German authorities also placed more emphasis on the separation of Church and state. In late 1942, Koch warnedt hat any transgressingm ayors or raion chiefs would be dismissed. The official ban on religious instruction at schools amounted to a radical change for western Volhynia, where such instruction had existed under Poland and even during the brief period of Soviet rule.16

Aside from the above measures, the Nazis interfered in several other ways in church life. Church charity was never allowed. Neither were seminaries, with the exception of one autonomous seminary in Kremenets’ that was sanctioned and created in 1943.17 There were also ad hoc decisions aimed at preventing the emergence of a united Orthodox Church, and an almost total ban on newspaper reports about church life.’8 From mid-I942, Koch and his associates started to support what had become the Autonomous Orthodox Church, since they had taken a strong dislike to the Autocephalists.19

Most difficult to ascertain is the role of the GebietskommissareM. uch of their policies vis-a-vis church life appear to have depended on a personal agenda. Some used the general ban on public gatherings as an excuse

14 DAKO, f. r-2292, op. i, d. 2, 1. 23v-
15 V. V. Hordiienko, ‘Nimets’ko-fashysts’kyi okupatsiinyi rezhym i pravoslavni konfesii v Ukraini’, Ukrains’kyiis toychnyi zhurnal, 1998, 3 (May-June), pp. 10 7-I9 (pp. I 14-I5).
16 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. I 89 and 199-200; Ivan Vlasovs’kyi, Nays istoriTU krains’koi PravoslavnoiT serkvy,v ol. 9 (XXst.), part 2, New York, [South] Bound Brook, I 966 (hereafter Nfagysi stori’), p. 239.
17 Vlasovs’kyi, agys istoni’, pp. 235-36; Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche, pp. I97-99 and 205; A. Dublians’kyi, Ternystyms hliakhom. Zhyttia Mytropolyta Nikanora Abramovycha: Do 20-littia arkhypastyrs’koshlou zhinnia, 1942-1962, London, i962 (hereafter Ternystymsh liakhom),p . 40.
18 Rybachuk, ‘Vidrodzhennia’ (see note 13 above), 11. 6-7 and i6; Heyer, Die orthodoxe Kirche,p p. 127 and 172.
19John A. Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, 3rd edn, Englewood, CO, I990, p. 155; Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. 212-13 and 2I7-I8. One exception was that Generalkommissar Magunia of the Kiev Generalbezircko ntinued to somehow ‘support’ a congregation that was neither Autonomous nor Autocephalous and that recognized the Berlin-based Orthodox Bishop Serafim: TsDAVOV, f 3206, op. i, d. 26,1. 29v, ‘Teilbericht Politik uber die Bereisung des Reichskommissariats mit Prof. v. Grunberg in der Zeit vom 13.8. bis 3.9.1942′, Rivne, io September 1942 (hereafter ‘Teilbericht Politik’). Heyer, Die orthodoxe Kirche,p p. 217- I 8, writes incorrectly that Reichskommissariat officials first gave preference to the Autocephalists.

to do away with local church councils or to ban celebrations.20 Many Gebietskommissaarned Landwirte( agricultural leaders) banned church services at certain times, especially during the harvest. As for the SD (Nazi Security Service), it closely monitored the clergy, while banning and destroying any publications issued by the Orthodox Churches.

Until the summer of I 942, this agency rarely intervened in disputes. When it did, however, it tended to be in support of the Autocephalists.2′ In the middle of 1941, seven Orthodox bishops found themselves in German-ruled western Ukraine. On 18 August 1941, Archbishop Aleksii (Hromads’kyi, I 882-I 943) of Volhynia called a Regional Synod (Oblasnyi Sobor) in the monastery of Pochaiv in far south-western Volhynia, near the future border with the General Government. Here Aleksii obtained the provisional title of Regional Metropolitan (Oblasnyi Mytropolytb), ut the bishops in attendance still felt canonically bound to the Russian Orthodox Church. They called their Church by various names (the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Ukrainian Church, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, or the Orthodox Autonomous Church in Ukraine), but it was generally known as the Autonomous Church.22

Another synod of the Autonomous Church followed on 8 December 1941, and it established that the best candidate for the important but

20 Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys istonii;p p. 227-28; S. Haiuk, ‘Vodokhreshchi’, Litopys Volyni( Winnipeg), I, 1953, I, pp. 85-86; Archives of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Alexander Dallin collection, box 2, folder 14, Professor Hans Koch, interview AD G-2o by the Harvard University Refugee Interview Project, Salzburg, Austria, I June 195 I (hereafter Hans Koch, HURIP interview), fol. 9. The first page of the transcript is not in this folder but in ibid., box 7, folder 6, fol. 9.
21 Dublians’kyi, Ternystyms hliakhom, p. 40; Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys istorii, pp. 236-37; Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, ‘Der SD und die Kirchen in den besetzten Ostgebieten I94I/42′ (hereafter ‘Der SD’), MilitdrgeschichtlichMe itteilungen,5 5, 198I, I, pp. 55-94 (p. 86).
22 The seven initial bishops were (i) Archbishop Aleksii (Hromads’kyi) in Kremenets’; (2) his first vicar, Bishop Polikarp (Sikors’kyi) in Luts’k; (3) Aleksii’s second vicar, Bishop Antonii (Martsenko) in Kamin’-Kashyrs’kyi; (4) Aleksii’s third vicar, Bishop Symon (Ivanovs’kyi) in Ostroh; (5) Archbishop Oleksander (Inozemtsev) of Pinsk and Polissia; (6) Bishop Veniiamyn (Novyts’kyi), also in Pinsk; and (7) Bishop Damaskyn (Maliuta) of Chernivtsi in northern Bukovina: see A. I. Kishkovskii, untitled review of an article by W. Alexeev, Vestnik Instituta po izucheniiu SSSR (Munich), 2, 1958, 27 (May-August), pp. 128-32 (pp. 130-31).

The August Synod also determined that only Aleksii was obliged to mention Metropolitan Sergii of Moscow and Kolomna in prayer, and it agreed in principle to accept the Synodalists (Renovationists) into the ranks of the Church: see Osyp Zinkevych and Oleksander Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiiau krans’kykht serkovu chotyr’okht omakh,I : Ukrains’ka pravoslavnat serkva,T oronto and Baltimore, MD, I 987 (hereafter Martyrolohiiai,) , pp. 677-79 and 73 I; Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. I 75-76 and i88.

The August Synod spoke of the ‘Orthodox Church in Ukraine’ (Pravoslavna Tserkva na Ukraini) and the ‘Ukrainian Orthodox Church’ (Ukrains’ka Pravoslavna Tserkva). In October 1942, three bishops who disagreed with Aleksii over policy vis-a-vis the Autocephalous Church spoke of the ‘Orthodox Church in Ukraine’, the ‘Orthodox Autonomous Church in Ukraine’ and the ‘Orthodox Ukrainian Church’: see Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiiai,, pp. 677-78 and 731.

vacant Archeparchy of Kiev and Pereiaslav was a respected Ukrainian patriot based in the General Government, Archbishop Ilarion (Ohiienko) of Chelm and Podlachia.

It was decided to ask Ilarion’s agreement to the transfer, which he gave, and more importantly that of his superior, Dionysii of Warsaw. The long-term plan was to convene in Kiev, with German permission, a special synod where bishops, priests and laypersons would elevate Ilarion of Kiev to the position of Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine.23

Two hierarchs based in Ukraine did not, however, participate in either of these synods: Bishop Polikarp( Sikors’kyi,I 875-I953) of Zhytomyr and Archbishop Oleksander (Inozemtsev) of Pinsk and Polissia. Like Aleksii and his associates, these two men did not want to submit to the ‘Polish’ Orthodox Autocephalous Church in the General Government, but they did not wish to obey the Russian Orthodox Patriarchal Locum Tenens in Moscow either. Under Soviet rule, they had not recognized the Moscow Patriarchate as fully as the other hierarchs had done. Polikarp made it clear that he wished to revive the original Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.24 Laypersons in Rivne urged him to sever all ties with the Autonomists under Aleksii, especially when the latter started calling himself Exarch of Ukraine and Metropolitan of Volhynia and Zhytomyr, and they proceeded to ‘recognize’ Polikarp as what they called Administratoorf the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.25 At that stage Dionysii, heretofore shunned because he was in Warsaw and ‘of foreign blood’ (namely Russian), became involved, apparently because he had become a Ukrainian patriot. After the situation had been explained to him, he decreed on 24 December I94I that Polikarp was the ‘Temporary Administrator of the Orthodox Autocephalous Church in the liberated lands of Ukraine’.

23 Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys istonii; pp. 211-12.
24 In I939 or 1940, Polikarp held a service in Luts’k with Archbishop Nykolai (Borys larushevych), a man appointed by Sergii of Moscow to handle affairs with the Orthodox clergy of Western Ukraine. In this service, Polikarp and Nykolai consecrated Veniiamyn (Novyts’kyi) as Bishop of Pinsk. But Polikarp never acknowledged either Nykolai or Sergii in writing. Nykolai left Ukraine for Moscow one week before the German invasion and was therefore proclaimed dismissed by the Orthodox hierarchs who held the first synod in Pochaiv in August I94I. In 1942, he admitted that Polikarp never put down in writing that he was canonically subject to the Moscow Patriarchate: see Mykola Velychkivs’kyi, ‘Sumni chasy nimets’koi okupatsii (I941-I944 roky)’, Vyzvol’nyi shliakh,12, I965, 5, PP. 5I7-23 (PP. 520-2 i); Russkaia pravoslavnaiat serkovi’ Velikaia Otechestvennaivao ina. Sbornikt serkovnykh dokumentov,M oscow, n. d. [I943], p. 67; ‘Pershe zasidannia Ukrains’koi Rady Dovir»ia na Volyni’ (hereafter ‘Pershe zasidannia’), Volyn’ (Rivne), 7 September I 941, P. 2.
25 These laypersons constituted the Volhynian Church Council. It convened for the last time on 23 August I942 and dissolved itself when Generalkommissar Heinrich Schone demanded a list of its members: see Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys istonii, pp. 2 10 and 228; Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), MartyrolohiiaI, , P. 737; I. Vlasovs’kyi, ‘lak bulo z obranniam na kyivs’ku katedru Arkhyiepyskopa Ilariona (Ohiienka) roku I9 4 ‘ (hereafter ‘lak bulo’), Tserkvai narid (Winnipeg), I 949 (April-May), pp. I 7-32 (pp. 2 I and 24-26).

After some time, without a specific decision, the adjective ‘temporary’ simply disappeared.26

The emergence of a rival Orthodox Church was complete when, in February I 942, three new bishops were consecrated, two of them at a synod. That synod also decided to accept any surviving priests of the original Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church without a second consecration.27 The new Church functioned under varying names, but the most official was the Holy Orthodox Autocephalous Church in the Liberated Lands of Ukraine.28

Both the Autonomists and the Autocephalists agreed that Ilarion of Chelm and Podlachia was the best candidate to lead Orthodox Church life in Ukraine,29 so it was not inevitable that they should fail to unite into one Orthodox Church (apart from the issue of subordination to the Moscow Patriarchate). The Reichskommissariat leadership, however, refused to grant Ilarion a travel permit.30 The Nazis, already feeling generous for allowing church life in central Ukraine to resurrect itself, were adamantly opposed to Ukrainians arrivingf rom the General Government and speeding up the process. This obstruction was damaging enough, but in May I942 Koch took one step further.

Orthodox Church representatives were summoned to Rivne and were notified not by Koch, who never met any such people that the Nazis acknowledged the existence of two Orthodox Churches in the Reichskommissariat, an Autonomous Church led by Aleksii and an Autocephalous Church led by Polikarp. They were told to put an end

26 In Ukrainian, ‘Tymchasovyi Administrator Pravoslavnoi Avtokefal’noi Tserkvy na zvil’nenykh zemliakh Ukrainy’: Vlasovs’kyi, ‘lak bulo’, p. 26; Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche, p. I74; Central State Archive of Civic Organizations of Ukraine (hereafter TsDAHOU), f. I, Op. 23, d. 4I, 11. 47-47V, ‘Aus dem Schreiben des Herrn Matzjuk’, n. p., n. d.; ‘Pershe zasidannia’; Fedir Dudko, ‘Interv»iu z vladykoiu Polikarpom (vid vlasnoho korespondenta)’, Volyn ‘, 26 February 1942, p. 3.
27 The bishops consecrated at the synod, which was held in Pinsk, were Nikanor (Abramovych) of Chyhyryn and Ihor (Huba) of Uman’. The consecrations were performed by Polikarp, Oleksander, and probably Bishop Iurii (Korenistov) of Brest, who was himself consecrated on 8 February by Polikarp and Oleksander.’Jedyna Pravoslavna Tserkva v Ukraini’, Volyn’,i 9 February 1942, p. I.
28 In Ukrainian the name was ‘Sviata Pravoslavna Avtokefal’na Tserkva na vyzvolenykh zemliakh Ukrainy’: DAKO, f. r-2412, op. 2, d. I99, 1. 68, document from the May I942 Synod in Kiev, 17 May I 942; Vlasovs’kyi, Nagysi stonr p. I 7 7 (speaks of zvil’nenykhi nstead of vyzvolenykh)T. he May 1942 Synod also spoke of the ‘Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church’. In a letter to Hitler in June 1942, hierarchs spoke of the ‘Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church’. In a unification agreement with Metropolitan Feofil (Buldovs’kyi) of Kharkiv on 27 July I942, hierarchs spoke of the ‘Orthodox Autocephalous Ukrainian Church’, and so did a ‘Temporary Statute’ dated 28 July 8942, while adding the word ‘Holy’: DAKO, f r-2412, op. 2, d. 199, 1. 74, letter to Hitler, Kiev, 22 June 1942; Vlasovs’kyi, NAaysi storni;p p. 226 and 229-30.
29 Vlasovs’kyi, ‘lak bulo’, p. 23; A. Nesterenko, MytropolytI larion. Sluzhytel’ Bohovii narodovi. Biohrafichnam onohraftia,W innipeg, I 958, p. 78.
30 Aleksii requested it according to TsDAVOV, f. 3206, op. i, d. 78,1. 34, Reichskommissariat Ukraine ‘Lagebericht fur Januar 1942′, Rivne, 14 February 1942. to polemical exchanges.3′ Soon afterwards, the five Autocephalous Church hierarchs found out that consecrations of bishops would be banned. In response, they quickly consecrated seven more bishops. On 26 May, it was indeed announced that consecration of bishops were not allowed unless Koch gave permission in advance.32 Koch’s most radical intervention came several days later, on i June 1942. A Regulation of the Legal Position of Religious Organizations proclaimed freedom of worship, but actually constrained church life.
Henceforth, a Generalkommissar could dismiss the leaders of religious organizations if he had ‘objections of a general political nature’ against them. New denominations needed to be licensed by Koch, and he reserved the right to disband any denomination that he might deem a threat to ‘order and security’ or simply to be involved in other than ‘religious tasks’.33 Koch also did not want any Autocephalists in Kiev and ordered Polikarp to remove his bishops from there. One of the two (Mstyslav [Stepan Skrypnyk], the former head of the Ukrainian Council of Trust in Volhynia), was even ‘not allowed to be in territory with a population which is mostly Ukrainian’. Both bishops refused to budge.34

This was the setting in which both Orthodox orientations started exploring closer relations. In late June I942, Aleksii proposed to Polikarp that they meet an establish ‘some kind of concord’. When in the autumn the next Autocephalous synod convened, it agreed to start negotations. These resulted in the proclamation, on 8 October 1942, of a single Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, led not by Aleksii

31 The meeting was on 4 May: see Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys istorz;, p. 221. Vlasovs’kyi was Polikarp’s secretary at the time and was present at the meeting.
32 Most consecrations, by Bishop Nikanor (Abramovych) and Bishop Ihor (Huba), took place from 9 to I 7 May in Kiev in the small church near St Andrew’s Cathedral. The new bishops were Fotii (Tymoshchuk) of Podolia; Hryhorii (Ohiichuk) of Zhytomyr; Mstyslav (Stepan Skrypnyk) of Pereiaslav; Syl’vestr (Haievs’kyi) of Lubny; Manuil (Tarnavskyi) of Bila Tserkva; and Mykhail (Khoroshyi) of Ielysavethrad [Kirovohrad]. Also consecrated this month was Hennadii (Shyprykevych) of Sicheslav [Dnipropetrovs'k] (Luts’k, 24 May). Four subsequent consecrations of bishops involved Volodymyr (Malets’) of Cherkasy (place unknown, 23 June, became vicar of Novo-Myrhorod); Serhii (Okhotenko) of Melitopol’ (place and date unknown); Platon (Artemiuk) of Zaslav/Krem»ianets’-Rivne (Kiev, 2 and 25 August I942); and Viacheslav (Lisyts’kyi) of Dubno (Luts’k, 13 September I942). In September 1942, Reichskommissar Koch banned the consecration of bishops altogether: ibid., pp. 222 and 230.
33 Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiia,I , pp. 747-48. See also Ukrains’kyih olos (Proskuriv/Khmel’nyts’kyi), 28June I942, p. 4.
34 The other bishop was Nikanor (Abramovych). Later that year, Mstyslav was again ordered to leave Kiev: see Vlasovs’kyi, Na?ys istorif, p. 238; Armstrong, UkrainianN ationalism, p. I 55; Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiiai,, p. 750.

or Polikarp, but by Dionysii of Warsaw.35 The German authorities opposed the act of union, however, and forbade any mention of it in the press.36 Moreover, there was internal opposition against it: three Autonomous hierarchs demanded that Aleksii remove his signature and relinquish his title of exarch. Aleksii eventually disavowed the union (on I5 December), while holding on to his title.37

Along with the attempt at unification, the autumn of 1942 also saw the emergence of an outright destructive Nazi line vis-a-vis the Orthodox hierarchies.

Representatives of the six Generalkommisstaorled church leaders that neither Orthodox orientation should have lines of authority across the borders of any GeneralbezirkM. oreover, each Generalkommissara ppropriatedt he leadership of the Churches located in his Generalbezifrrko m the hierarchs, and bishops who did not live in the Generalbezircka pital had to move there. From now on, each Generalkommissar claimed the authority to select one leading bishop per Church.

Synods were allowed, but only of bishops from one GeneralbezirkS. pecial permission was needed for episcopal consecrations, while the Gebietskommissharaed to be consulted before the appointments of priests. The Generalkommissar could dismiss any priest. Thus in fact the Autocephalous and Autonomous Churches were each divided into six jurisdictions. Now the Reichskommissariat 35 The document was signed by Aleksii, Nikanor and Mstyslav. I have found no evidence to supportJohn Armstrong’s view that Aleksii accepted the terms of the unification because of the strength of the Autocephalous Church. The Autocephalous Synod (2-9 October 1942) had been ‘unofficial’, for on I October Koch’s deputy Paul Dargel directed the Generalkommissare to ban all synods. When the bishops received the news, they were already on their way to Luts’k. The Synod also asked Polikarp and Oleksander to take on the title of Metropolitan, which they did, and Nikanor started calling himself Archbishop.
Decisions on both title-changes had apparently been made in Kiev in May I942: see Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohijiai , pp. 729-3I; Vlasovskyi, Aa?ys istorii; pp. 241-43; Dublians’kyi, Temystyms hliakhom,p p. 46-47; and Armstrong, Ukrainian National’sm, pp. I54-55-

36 When Mstyslav refused to retract his signature from the agreement, he was arrested and transported to various prisons east of the Reichskommissariat. He was released at the end of 1942, with orders to report regularly and to refrain from conducting church services. Typically, Polikarp was not informed. In early March 1943, Mstyslav was rearrested and placed on death row in Kiev. Eventually the German Army intervened and released him: see Vlasovs’kyi, Nagysi stonri,p p. 243 and 248; Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), MartyrolohiiaI,, pp. 742-43.
37 The opposing hierarchs were Symon (Ivanovs’kyi) of Chernihiv, Panteleimon (Petro Rudyk) of Kiev and Veniiamyn (Novyts’kyi) of Pinsk. In his December announcement, Aleksii added that German officials in Rivne agreed with him that the Church should no longer be called Autonomous, but the Exarchate Orthodox Ukrainian Church (Ekzarsha PravoslavnaU krainzs’kTa serkva)s: ee Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiiai,, pp. 73 I-33 and 735; Vlasovs’kyi, Nagysi storz-;p . 246.

Ukraine had twelve Orthodox Churches.38 This treatment of the Orthodox was a radical version of the divide-and-rule policies towards Churches that the Nazis practised everywhere they went in Europe.39

The new situation inevitably caused abuses, most strikingly in the Zhytomyr Generalbezirwk,h ich was by then led by SS-Brigadefihre Errnst Leyser. For reasons that remain unclear, Leyser insisted on retaining two bishops who were obviously Soviet agents. The first was the Autocephalous Bishop Fotii (Tymoshchuk) of the Podolian Eparchy. In August I942, it came to light that the Polish state had convicted him as a Soviet spy and that he had been stripped of the priesthood. Polikarp expelled him from the Church, but Fotii stayed put in Vinnytsia. He said the act of unification amounted to reconciliation with ‘Moscow’, which compelled him to create ‘my own Ukrainian Church’. General-kommissar Leyser had a strange sympathy for the man and ‘appointed’ him in early November 1942 as ‘the highest representative of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church’. Fotii’s one potential contender, Bishop Hryhorii (Ohiichuk) of Zhytomyr, meanwhile was kept under arrest. He was released only in mid-March I943, after Polikarp wrote to Koch about the issue. Only at that stage did Fotii disappear- never to be seen again.40

The Fotii scandal was barely over when it was the turn of the Autonomous Church. In early 1943, a Russian arrived in Kiev from the Caucasus Mountains with retreating German soldiers and claimed to be Bishop Nikolai (Avtonomov) of Piatigorsk in Russia. An Autonomous bishop appointed him as a priest, but instead the man went to see Aleksii, who even created a new eparchy for him, in Mazyr in Belarusan Polissia. Soon rumours started circulating that ‘Nikolai’ was an impostor, which were fanned by his demeanour during mass and at German parties. German military intelligence confirmed that

38 Nikanor received the news from Generalkommissar Magunia on 25 September 1942. Most if not all other bishops were notified in October 1942. Polikarp and Aleksii were told about these changes at Generalkomissar Schone’s office on i i and I 2 January I943. The order to move to the Generalbezirk capital mostly affected the Autocephalous bishop Mykhail (Khoroshyi), who had to move from Kirovohrad to Mykolaiv: see Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiia, I, pp. 751-54; Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys istonrzpi p. 249 and 252-53; Dublians’kyi, Ternystyms hliakhom,p . 43; and Archbishop Mykhail, ‘Moi zustrichi z Ivanom Vlasovs’kym’ in F. Kul’chyns’kyi and Mykhailo Mukha (eds), Ivan Vlasovs’kyi.P ropam»iatna knyha, Toronto, I 974, p. 95.
39 Christoph KleBmann, ‘Nationalsozialistische Kirchenpolitik und Nationalitatenfrage im Generalgouvernement (I939-1945)’ (hereafter ‘Nationalsozialistische Kirchenpolitik’), JfahrbucherfliGr eschichteO steuropasi, 8 I 970, 4, pp. 575-600 (p. 575).
40 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. 213- I 6; Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys istorii;p p. 230 and 250-52.

he was a spy for the Soviet Union, but still Leyser kept ‘Nikolai’ in office until the very end.41 Besides Orthodox Christians, there were in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine also Protestants and Catholics. A comparison of their status with that of the Orthodox reveals that they were treated much differently either significantly better (in the case of the Protestants) or much worse (in the case of the Catholics). The SD considered the pacifist Baptists and Evangelical Christians (also collectively known as Shtundysy -Stundites) to be harmless. Therefore it decreed that they be treated with ‘magnanimity’. The civilian German authorities took the same line, and lifted bans on Baptist/Evangelical Christian activity that some native policemen, village elders, mayors or raion chiefs imposed.42 As a result, these denominations flourished. Their mission- aries even stealthily travelled about Dnieper Ukraine, preaching and distributing literature at great risk of denunciation and arrest. In Kiev and most other cities, communities were created or re-created, and some even managed to get booklets published.43( The Islamic faith was also allowed. Kiev’s approximately 700 Muslims had a mosque in the Podil district since October 1941.)44

In contrast, Greek Catholic (also known as Uniate) and Roman Catholic priests were persecuted. The SD considered the Greek Catholic Church, led by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptyts’kyi in the General Government, an ‘outpost’ of the Vatican in the Reichskomissariat (which actually had relatively few Greek Catholics), and therefore banned it. Whenever Greek Catholic priests from Galicia tried to move into the Reichskommissariat, they were turned back.45 In the case of the Roman Catholics, Nazi hostility to the Vatican combined with hostility to the Poles, who in Ukraine constituted the vast majority of these Christians. Thus the Roman Catholics were refused places for

41 According to Heyer, ‘Nikolai’ retreated with the Germans, after the German surrender was appointed Metropolitan for all Germany-based ‘Russian’ Greek Catholics by the Vatican, and in early I948 was arrested as a Soviet agent by the American secret service: see Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. 2 I 6- I 7.
42 Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), MartyrolohiiaI,, pp. 745-46; Panas Khurtovyna [Mykhailo Podvorniak], Pid nebom Voyni. (Voiennis pomynyk hrystyianyna), Winnipeg, 1952 (hereafter Pid nebom Volyni),p p. 102-04. I do not discuss here the mainly ethnic German Mennonites and Lutherans. Baptist communities differ from Evangelical Christian ones in that they have far more autonomy within the church community.
43 Bohdan Liubomyrenko, Z Khgystomv Ukraini: Zapysky viruiuchohoz a roky I94I-I943, Winnipeg and Toronto, 1973, p. 76, 8i, 90, IOI-02 and passim; Stepan Nyshchyk, Shliakh viy, Winnipeg and Detroit, MI, 1975, p. 85; DAKO, f. r-2412, op. 2, d. I99, 1. 64, I. Korovyts’kyi, ‘Vidrodzhennia Tserkvy v Ukraini ta Kyievi’, Kiev, 22 July 1942 (hereafter ‘Vidrodzhennia Tserkvy’). On Korovyts’kyi, see note 76 below.
44 The 1942 Kiev city census registered 7 I 4 Muslims, including four with Ukrainian, two with Russian and two with Polish nationality: Korovyts’kyi, ‘Vidrodzhennia tserkvy’, 1. 64; L. Maliuzhenko, Kyiv za 1942 r.’, JVashem ynule,I (6), 1993, pp. I5I-i862 3-64()p. p.
45 Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiia,I , pp. 745-46; Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche, p. 179.

worship, existing churches were closed, and in some cases priests were shot — at least seventeen in western Volhynia alone. Even a Roman Catholic church in Mykolaiv where most members of the congregation were ethnic Germans was closed.46 An exception was the Vinnytsia district, where the Gebietskommissaallro wed its one Roman Catholic church to function, apparently because most of the 6,ooo parishioners were registered as Ukrainians.47 These developments stood in marked contrast to the situation in the General Government, where the Nazis tolerated the Roman Catholic Church and subsidized the Greek Catholic and most other Churches.48

Clearly, the official German treatment of Churches in the Reichs-kommissariat varied considerably, depending on the denomination and the length of the German presence. As the war went on, Nazi policies became harsh and even destructive. Now that this has been established, it is possible to deal what the question of the role, if any, that the Churches and religion played in the lives of ordinary people. Populariety After the Germans arrived, there were many signs of popular piety and religious life was quickly resurrected. Peasants again dared to cross themselves in public, and some even did so upon seeing the first German tanks, which had white crosses painted on them. Peasant women and children started to wear crosses, sometimes even before the German arrival, and elderly peasants frequently participated in German field services.49 The clearest sign of a religious revival was the restoration of churches. In villages and small towns, few locals did not participate in the process. The buildings were painted white and church bells improvised from iron rails were installed. Whenever the original church had been demolished before the war, ordinary buildings
46 ‘Teilbericht Politik’ (see note i9 above), 11. 30v, 33V34, and 37; United States National Archives (hereafter USNA), microcopy T-84, roll I 20, frame 49I8I, ‘Auszug aus dem Lagebericht des Generalkommissars’, Kiev, i September I942; Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Das Dritte Reich und die Deutscheni n der Sowjetunion,S tuttgart, I983, p. I 64; Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, p. I53; Zygmunt Zielifiski (ed.), Zjcie religijne w Polsce pod okupacjq 1939-1945, Katowice, I 992, p. 502 (the figure); EreignismeldunUg dSSR, 1 28 (3 November 194 1), pp. 5-6; Meldungena us den besetzten Ostgebieten5, (29 May I942), p. I 2; ibid., I I (I O July 1942), p. 2. The last two titles are mimeographed reports by the SD that are on USNA microcopy T-175, rolls 233-236. For the sake of brevity, they are cited here and below as publications.
47 ‘Teilbericht Politik’, 1. 28, on the church in Hnivan’. Apparently, there were by mid- 1943 also services in the Polish church in Vinnytsia. Many of those attending were German soldiers: see Mykhailo Seleshko, Vinnytsia:S pomynyp erekladachaK omisiid oslidivz lochynivN KVD V I937-I938, New York, Toronto, London and Sydney, I99I (hereafter Vinnytsia), p. 137.
48 KleBmann, ‘Nationalsozialistische Kirchenpolitik’ (see note 39 above), pp. 582, 596n and 598.
49 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . I 7 I; TsDAHOU, f. i 66, op. 3, d. 259, 1. gv, diary of F. K. Kushnir, on a village in the present-day Chornobai raion of the Cherkasy oblast’; EreignismeldunUg dSSR, 120 (2 October 194 I), p. I 0.

were used. People who had hidden icons, communion cloths (wantyminsy), church books, utensils, towels and garments now brought them to the surface. In the town of Vasylivka, south of Zaporizhzhia, a magnificent iconostasis was put back together from parts saved by various people.50

The first services were held within days or at most weeks, and sometimes even before any Germans arrived. As there were not enough priests, villages were forced to invite visiting priests from elsewhere.5′ ‘The women prayed, all the time wiping away the tears which were trickling from their cheeks in small drops’, a Ukrainian recalls. ‘The people greeted each other as if it were Easter. From both sides of the church, which was in an ordinary building, one could hear the refrain, «Christ has risen!» and «The Lord wished us to live to see this happy day». ’52

Soon there was a flood of people of various ages who wished to be baptized, often in large crowds. In accordance with the Orthodox tradition, which prescribes immersion, these baptisms were frequently held in rivers. Many people also had themselves remarried by a priest.

Baptisms and religious marriages were to remain a constant feature during the Nazi period.53 Initially there were also reburials, with or without a priest, in which coffins were opened and a cross or icon was placed inside. This phenomenon became more rare after October 1941, however, when the SD began banning it.54 In general, burials without the participation of a priest were illegal.55 Particularly note- worthy were burials of the victims of the NKVD massacres during the Soviet retreat. In Luts’k in August 1941, 3,862 prisoners who had been shot were buried in five mass graves in a ceremony conducted by 50 Bienert, Russen und Deutsche( see note I2 above), p. 93; EreignismeldungU dSSR, 8i (I 2 September 1941), p. I5; F. Pihido-Pravoberezhnyi, ‘Velyka Vitchyznianav iina’, Winnipeg, 1954, p. 120; Osyp Zhaloba [Osyp Zales'kyi], ‘U sorokalittia «pokhodu na skhid» (spomyny perekladacha)’, Kalendar-al’manakNh ovoho Shliakhu1 982, Toronto, n. d., pp. 83-10I (p. 93); Nina Mykhalevych, ‘Do Kyieva! Fragment zi spohadu’ in Mel’nyk et al. (eds), Na zov Kyieva (see note i i above), pp. 225-26; and Vlasovs’kyi, Nagysi stori;,p p. 232-33.

51 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. 170-7 I; Pihido-Pravoberezhnyi, ‘Velyka Vitchyznianvai ina’, p. I49.
52 Pihido-Pravoberezhnyi, ‘Velyka Vitchyznianav iina’, p. 120, describing events in the village of Staiky in the Kiev region. See also Khurtovyna, Pid nebom Volyni( see note 42 above), p. 88.
53 Kost’ Pan’kivs’kyi, Vid derzhavy do komitetu, New York and Toronto, 1957, p. 104; Ukrains’kyhi olos, I 2 March 1942, p. 4; Vlasovs’kyi, Nag’s istorai;pp. 232-33; Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), MartyrolohiiaI,, p. 744; Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . I 7 I.
54 Wilhelm, ‘Der SD’ (see note 2I above), p. 84; Ievhen Onats’kyi, ‘Ukraina ochyma italiis’kykh korespondentiv u druhii svitovii viini’, Samostiina Ukraana( New York), i8, I965, 8 (i 98), August, pp. 2 I-26 (p. 23).
55 TsDAHOU, f. I, Op. 22, d. 122, 1. 99, ‘Deiatel’nost’ partizanskikh otriadov v tylu vraga i v kakoi pomoshchi oni nuzhdaiutsia’ (hereafter ‘Deiatel’nost’ partizanskikh otriadov’), n. p., n. d. (deals with Dnieper Ukraine in late 194 1).

Polikarp.56 A similar mass burial of victims took place in Rivne. As General Karl Kitzinger, the Commander of the armed forces stationed in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (who happened to arrive that day), looked on, young adherents of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists carried portraits around and chanted ‘Ukraine for the Ukrainians’ and ‘Long live Bandera, the Leader of Ukraine’.57

One of the largest religious gathering of the entire Nazi period was the celebration in honour of St yov near the Pochaiv monastery and church. On I o September 1941, for the first time in twenty years, some 15,000 pilgrims from the Right Bank (Ukraine west of the Dnieper) gathered there. (In the tsarist period, tens of thousands used to gather.)

The mostly female pilgrims had been informed by word of mouth and some travelled for days. The event was used by German propagandists, who instructed the local authorities to put up wall-newspapers and large portraits of Hitler. The Germans themselves handed out small German flags, postcards with Hitler’s portrait, and the Rivne-based newspaper Volyn’.O ne poster was embellished and taken along in the procession. Most of the pilgrims had never seen a picture of Hitler before and were impressed, as the propagandists alleged. An old man smiled broadly at the postcard and told others, ‘That’s our father Hitler’, while some women even kissed the portrait. The orderly proceedings were led by Archbishop Aleksii, who prayed for Hitler and the German Army. In a speech to the clergy and laity, he ‘demanded that they always remember in their prayers the Fuihrer, the most brilliant leader of today, and the German people. The blood sacrifice of the German people should never be forgotten. He and all Ukrainians, he said, wanted the intentions and thoughts of the Fuhrer to be realized in full.’58

Most especially under the military authorities, but also after the introduction of civilian German rule, the auxiliary native administrations generally promoted Orthodox Christianity. A raion chief might for example order the village elders to repair church buildings.59 The native administrations also returned many traditional Orthodox holidays and made them official. For example, Mayor Volodymyr Bahazii of Kiev did so with fourteen holidays. Celebration of these holidays

56 Leonid D s’kyi [sic], ‘Pokhoron u Luts’ku’, Litopys Volyni,I , 1 953, pp. 71-74.
57 Ulas Samchuk, Na bilomuk oni. Spomynyi vrazhennia,W innipeg, I972, p. 183.
58 TsDAHOU, f. I, Op. 23, d. 41, 11. 26-27, Abteilung Ila, Betr. Bericht ueber eine Kundgebung, Rivne, 15 September 194I. This report must have been written by a correspondent of the German News Agency; see Samchuk, Na bilomu koni. Spomynyi vrazhennia,p p. 204-05. Dionysii of Warsaw wanted to attend but was not allowed to leave the General Government, according to Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys istorni,p . 208. On pilgrimages in Ukraine under the Nazi regime, see also Khurtovyna, Pid nebom Volyni,p . I 05 and Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. 172 and 201-02.
59 DAKO, f. r-2210, op. I, d. 3,1. 112, note by raionc hief Okhrymenko, I January 1942.

according to the Old Style calendar was reinstated in many places; this meant, for example, that Christmas fell in early January.60I n vain, the German military authorities warned the native administrations against such practices and against organizing or banning — any religious activity.6′ Ukrainian school inspectors also ‘completely forgot the democratic principle of the separation of church and state’.62 As a result, Orthodox Christianity (ZakonB ozhyyi the Law of the Lord) was taught in many schoolsi n the school year I 941-42. In one school in Kiev, which was probably typical, every class received religious instruction once a week. In a typical village school, first-graders during the 194I-42 school year had a subject called Ethics (Moral’). Among the topics were ‘The Creation of the Universe’, ‘The Suffering on the Cross, the Death, and the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ and ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. Ethics also comprised secular topics such as the work ethic and the proper way to treat the elderly.63 Any such instruction (usually by Orthodox priests) was banned everywhere by mid-1942 at the latest. The Poltava district was an exception: here religious instruction continued due to the influential district school inspector, an ethnic German woman who lived with the regional military commander.64

There is still more evidence which suggests that there existed a generally pious mood. In population censuses, the vast majority of natives identified themselves as ‘Orthodox’. Very few chose ‘without religion’ or gave no answer.65 Traces of a religious way of thinking also showed up in expressions which some Ukrainians, in particular peasants, used to identify the Soviet authorities; most notably, dyiavol’s'ka vlada or vlada satany the devil’s regime. In one village during the German advance, as the noises from the front became louder, a man

60 DAKO, f. r-24I2, op. 2, d. 2, 1. 72, mayoral decree No. 252, 12 December I941; Ukrains’kyhi olos, 25 December I 94 p, p. I .
61 For example, DAKO, f. r-24 i8, op. i, d. I3,11. 3-3v, Ortskommandainnt lahotyn to raion chief, 8 January I 942.
62 Library and Museum, Ukrainian Cultural & Educational Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, autograph manuscript dated I945, Pavlo Ternivs’kyi [Ivan Zhyhadlo], ‘Spohady emigranta’, fol. 57. I thank Marco Carynnyk for supplying this source to me.
63 Klavdiia Iakovlivna Hrynevych (Ukrainian born in 1930 in Klyntsi [Kirovohrad oblast']), author interview, Kiev, io August I995; DAKO, f. r-2505, op. I, d. 5, 11. 14-I5, 25, 27, 29-30, and 34; ibid, d. 8, 11.i i and 24, records of the village of Pleskachivka in the Smila rayon.
64 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche, pp. 200-01; Halyna V»iun, Pid znakom ChervonohoK hrestav Poltavi I941-42 rr.: Spohad-zvitd lia istorii;[ Neu-Ulm], 1973, p. 29.
65 Of Kiev’s 352,139 legal inhabitants on I April 1942, only i Io declared themselves as ‘without religion’ and 473 gave no answer. The others registered as being Orthodox (338,517), Protestant (3,05 I), Roman Catholic (8,898), other Christian (233), Muslim (714), or of ‘another faith’ (I43): see Maliuzhenko, ‘Kyiv za 1942 r.’ (see note 44 above), pp. I 63-64.

over eighty took off his cap, crossed himself, and told his fellow- villagers, ‘I never thought, children, that I would live to see the day, but now you see, the Lord had mercy. Pilate’s empire [tsarstvoI hemonai]s coming to an end.’66

Upon closer examination, however, popular attitudes in Dnieper Ukraine towards churches, and religiosity in general, turn out to be more complex. For instance, the massive participation in the reconstruction of the churches in the countryside, even by the young generation, was perhaps less motivated by piety than by the fact that these buildings were the most prominent symbol of the better life that people expected. That new life would include a labour-free Sunday. In the 1930s, it had been rare for all the members of a peasant family to have their weekly ‘labour-free day’ on the same day. Moreover, even that day was often designated for ‘voluntary’ work, so that people’s lives were restless and monotonous. When a German army chaplain asked male peasants in 194 I about this, they merely let out curses.

‘The women, however, tended to let out a flood of complaints. They often pointed out that the present defeat of the Bolsheviks was a just punishment by the Lord for their fight against God and the Church, and in particular for the abolition of the Sunday, which made one’s entire life miserable.’67 The military intelligence officer and Slavist Hans Koch was surprised at the strength of the religious revival, but he also thought that it was partly a reaction to the Soviet period that is, a way to celebrate the demise of the Soviet system.68

Regarding baptisms, there appears to have been a certain amount of compulsion. A Communist underground activist stated in a report about the Kiev and Kirovohrad regions that native authorities made baptism mandatory for all children up to the age of twelve and that the village elders summoned those who refused.69 Fear also played a role; according to another Soviet report, many baptisms were prompted byrumours that unbaptized children would be shot -a clear reference to the Jewish Holocaust.70

66 Pihido-Pravoberezhnyi, ‘Velyka Vitchyzniana viina’, pp. 56-57 (the long quotation); Khurtovyna, Pid nebom Volyni,p . 96; K. T. Turkalo, Tortuy: (Avtobiohrafiizaa bol’shevyts’kykh chasiv), NewYork, I 963, p. 192.
67 Vlasovs’kyi, Nays istori; p. 232 (on participation by young people); Ernst Benz, Die religioseL agei n der Ukraine. Erlebnisbericheti nes DivisionspfarrersA.l s ManuskriptgedrucktM, arburg (Lahn), 1942 (hereafter Die religio’sLe age), pp. I5- i 6 (the quotation).
68 Hans Koch, HURIP interview (see note 20 above), fol. 8. In this post-war interview, Koch even said that a peculiar opportunism was involved. The Ukrainians supposedly wanted to impress the Germans, whom they expected to be religious. This is rather unlikely.
69TsDAHOU, f. I, Op. 22, d. I23, 1. 64, Petr Timofeevich Berdnik, ‘Kharakteristika polozhenii na okkupirovannoi territorii’ (hereafter ‘Kharakteristika polozhenii’), n. p., n. d. The author adds that baptisms were repeated whenever parish priests were replaced.
70 TsDAHOU, f. I, Op. 22, d. I 23, 1. 97, ‘Informatsiia tov. Matsko o polozhenii na territorii, vremenno okkupirovannoi nemetskimi voiskami’, n. p., n. d. (deals with mid-1942).

The Faithful and the’ Se!f-consecrators’

One way to measure the extent of the religious revival is to ask whether believers actually cared about the controversy between the Autonomists and the Autocephalists.

Hans Koch found that most faithful had a wait-and-see attitude and wanted the Germans to settle the matter.7′ This overstates the indifference, however. Bishops from both orientations were besieged with requests for priests,72 but once people had more information, and especially once they had an option to choose because both Churches were represented in their community, the vast majority preferred the Autonomous Church. In the autumn of I94I, the SD’s EinsatzgruppeC estimated that just under 55 per cent of the Slavic population favoured the Autonomous Church, while 40 per cent supported the Autocephalists.73 Hereafter the number of adherents of the Autocephalous Church continued to decline, because in Kiev and beyond -in the words of the former head of the shortlived Church Council74 ‘gradually word got around that the priests of the Church of Metropolitan Vasyl’ Lypkivs’kyi[ that is, the Church represented by Polikarp] were uncanonical and should be called «Lypkivsky-ites» and «self-consecrators» [samosviaty]‘.75 The former head of the Section of Denominations of the Kiev city administration confirmed this trend in a I942 memoir. He found that the ‘overwhelming’ (bezperechnma)a jority of Ukraine’s Orthodox faithful supported the Autonomists.76 Indeed, one Autocephalous bishop lamented in a letter that the parishioners of

71 Hans Koch, HURIP interview, fol. II.
72 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . 206; Vlasovs’kyi, Nagysi storn’,p . 218.
73 The remaining 5 per cent were Protestants or were affiliated with the Synodal Church (Renovationists); see EreignismeldunUg dSSR, I 1 7 (i 8 October 194 1), p. 8.
74 The full name of this Kiev-based body was the Church Council of the Holy Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Created on 17 October 1941 and dominated by Autocephalous priests and their sympathizers, it proved unable to control developments in church life in Kiev after an Autonomous bishop (Panteleimon [Rudyk]) arrived on I8 December 194I. The SD disbanded the Council on 11 February 1942: TsDAVOV, f. 3676, op. I, d. 50, 11. 1-2, German translation of letter by Archpriest Mykhailo Ivaskiv, Panteleimon’s secretary, to PersonalchefD r Boss, 4January 1942; EreignismeldunUg dSSR, 191 (i o April 1942), p. 4 I; Dublians’kyi, Ternystymsh liakhom( see note I 7 above), pp. 3 I -32. The record of one of the Council sessions is in Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiia,I , pp. 693-705. The similar text in Iu. Boiko-Blokhyn, ‘Vazhlyvyi dokument Tserkovnoi Rady Ukrans’koi Avtokefal’noi Tserkvy z 1941 roku’, Ukrainls’kyiis toyk (New York), 24, 987, I -4 (93-96), pp. 128-36, appears to be orthographically closer to the original record, but lacks the final part, which discusses Ilarion’s planned arrival in Kiev.
75 Rybachuk, ‘Vidrodzhennia’ (see note I 3 above), 1. I 8.
76 Korovyts’yi, ‘Vidrodzhennia Tserkvy’ (see note 43 above), 1. 33. Ivan Ivanovych Korovyts kyi was born in Volhynia in I 907. He held the degree of Master of Theology and before the war taught Church Slavonic at Warsaw University. The Section of Denominations (Sektsiia viroispovidan’) which he headed for a while was part of the city administration’s Section of Culture and Education (Viddil kul’tury i osvity).

Kiev’s supposedly Autocephalous Pokrov Church ‘loathe us as «self-consecrators» and yearn for Moscow’.77 In the Poltava region, an estimated 8o per cent of all churchgoers attended only Autonomous services, and in the district of Kryvyi Rih, the Autonomous Churchwas reportedly ‘more influential’ than the Autocephalous Church.78
To be fair, there are some reports of the continued strength of the Autocephalous orientation. According to Generalkommissar Walde- mar Magunia, by the autumn of 1942 both Orthodox Churches were equally represented in the Kiev Generalbezirkw,i th the south being ‘strongly Autocephalous’.79 Another German report, based on conversations with Nazi officials in August 1942, said the Autocephalists were ‘dominant’ in the Cherkasy and Kirovohrad regions.80 Presumably both reports refer to the distribution of parishes.

The evidence dealing with changes of denominations by entire parishes is scarce, but it seems clear that most such changes were moves towards the Autonomous Church.8′ In contrast, when western Volhynia became a partisan zone in 1943, parishes started to abandon the Autonomous Church for the Autocephalous Church. But there is reason to doubt whether this was actually according to the wishes of most Orthodox, for considerable pressure was exerted by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the leaders of which were hostile towards the Autonomists.

Most Orthodox faithful had two problems with the Autocephalous Church. One was their conviction that it was uncanonical. At least as important was that Church’s insistence on the use of the Ukrainian language, which proved to be very unpopular in Dnieper Ukraine. On this matter, the Autonomous Church was more flexible Church Slavonic was its liturgical language, but a bishop could allow the use of Ukrainian if most parishioners preferred it. As a result, it was not 7 Letter by Nikanor (Abramovych) to Polikarp, Kiev, 2 I April 1942, partly published in Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), MartyrolohiiaI,, p. 7′ ‘.

78 Heyer, Die orthodoxe Kirche, p. I89; Bundesarchiv Berlin, R-6, file I5, fol. 105, ‘Lagebericht uber das Gebiet Kriwoi Rog-Land’, Kryvyi Rih, 30 June 1943, a source supplied to me by Dr Erich Haberer.
79 USNA microcopy T-84, roll 120, frame 4I9I8I, ‘Auszug aus dem Lagebericht desGeneralkommissars’, Kiev, I September I942.
80 ‘Teilbericht Politik’ (see note i 9 above), 11.3 0v, 3 1V, 32v, 33v, 36, 37, and 38. This report considered the Autocephalous Church, compared to the Autonomous Church, to ‘dominate’ the Oleksandrivka district; to be ‘somewhat stronger’ in the Oleksandriia district; to have ‘the most adherents’ in Kirovohrad; and to be ‘stronger represented’ in the Zvenyhorodka and Uman’ districts. Regarding the Dnipropetrovs’k Generalbezirk, the report noted the following: ‘The large masses support the autonomous-Orthodox orientation, whose churches are always well-attended. In the autocephalous-Orthodox Church, the intelligentsia assembles. It has less a desire for spiritual care than the urge to realize its political objectives with the help or under the cover of the Church’, ibid., 1. 33v.
81 For example, in the Mykolaivr egion in late 1942: see Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys zstor7i;p . 261 .

unusual for Autonomous parishes in western Volhynia to have officially the service, in part or entirely, in Ukrainian, and to have any Church Slavonic pronounced in Ukrainian.82 In Dnieper Ukraine, however, any priest who tried to introduce Ukrainian in the liturgy faced dissatisfaction and resistance from parishioners.83 In Sviatoshyn, a western suburb of Kiev, an Autocephalous priest asked the choir to sing in Ukrainian. ‘The congregation did not want to do this’, he reported in December 1941. ‘When I hold service, the former choir singers take their position and start singing in Slavonic, and all behave as they see fit’.84 In Kiev’s Autocephalous Pokrov Church, soon morning services in Church Slavonic had to be allowed.85I n Dnipropetrovs’k, unidentified activists even placed a bomb under the cathedral, where Ukrainian-language services were conducted. It caused little damage, but the explosion apparently set in motion a struggle that involved vandalism against both Orthodox denominations.8 6

The resistance against Ukrainian in the Church was no less in the countryside. A glimpse is provided by the record of a 20 November 1941 regional conference (‘Synod’) in Bucha, a village about twenty-five kilometres west of Kiev, of forty-five faithful and priests from thirteen villages (and five parishes). Most delegates were laypersons (thirty-five), Ukrainians (forty; the rest were Russians) and (probably)

82 According to Bishop Panteleimon’s secretary, Mykhailo Ivaskiv, ‘all parishes in Volhynia [were] saying prayers in Ukrainian’. Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiiai,, p. 698 (the quotation); Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche, pp. I93-94; Mykola Velychkivs’kyi, ‘Sumni chasy’, Vyzvol’nyishliakh,1 2, I965, 6, pp. 8oi-o6 (p. 8o i).
83 The opposite view is in Armstrong, UkrainianN ationalism,p . I 9 I: ‘As more Autocephalous priests were consecrated, and more of the older priests came to accept the Ukrainian language service, they evidently won the support of the peasantry’. This statement appears to be based on two articles in Krakivs’kvi isti and one in the Prague-based weekly Nastup. Nazi intelligence did report at an early stage from Zhytomyr that Orthodox faithful wanted the liturgy in Church Slavonic and the sermon in Ukrainian: EreignismeldungU dSSR, 52 (I4 August 1941), p. 14. Before the suppression of Ukrainian nationalist activity in Kiev, most services there seem to have been in Church Slavonic with Ukrainian pronunciation. See Rybachuk, ‘Vidrodzhennia’ (see note 13 above), 1. 24, which mentions one church. Cf. Leontii Forostivs’kyi, Kyiv pid vorozhymyo kupatsiiamy,B uenos Aires, 1952, p. 59, a memoir by the third mayor of German-ruled Kiev, according to which the Autonomous clergy in the city ‘was forced to pronounce sermons and even to conduct the service in Ukrainian’.
84 Rybachuk, ‘Vidrodzhennia’, 11.2 1-22, quoting from an original letter by Father Myron Karpan located at ibid., 11. 107-o8. This priest had been consecrated in the UAOC in I 92 1.
85 Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), MartyrolohiiaI,, p. 7 1.
86 This involved the Transfiguration Cathedral, where Bishop Hennadii (Shyprykevych) of Sicheslav was based after his arrival in June 1942. The Gebietskommissar participated in a public ceremony in which he handed Hennadii a bishop’s staff and granted him the use of the building. Hennadii got along well with both factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. A month later, the Autonomous bishop Dymytrii (Mahan) of Dnipropetrovs’k arrived: Mykola Pavlovych Kostiuk (Ukrainian-Canadian, born in 1915 in present-day Dnipropetrovs’k; died in I997), author interview, Downsview, Ontario, i March i996, Canada; Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys istorii; p. 233; Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche, p. 2i8; Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, p. I57.

women. An Autocephalous archpriest (mytrofomypi rotoiierei)f rom Kiev urged them to build ‘one single Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church, with one language, spirit and administration’. It was important to ‘liquidate all hostile leftovers of groups that were artificially created under the influence of Judeo-Bolshevik propaganda’. The minutes state that this speech was ‘debated vividly’. ‘Ukraine must be independent and the Church Ukrainian’, says Synod delegate Mr Zhovkivs’kyi, Bucha. ‘We want the divine service to be in Old Church Slavonic’, says Mrs Borzokovskaia from the village of Bucha, a Russian woman and a very pious person who devoted her life to saving the church in Lychansk [Kyievo-Sviatoshyns'kyir aion] from Bolshevik destruction. ‘In Hostomel’ the divine service is in Ukrainian, that’s why the people don’t attend it’, say delegates who are uneducated women from the village of Shybene, Borodianka raion.

The archpriest countered that Church Slavonic was not accessible enough. Typically, however, he was forced to make a concession. Until printed Ukrainian translations of the service became available, he said, services could be in Church Slavonic, if at the very least pronounced with a Ukrainian accent.

After some more discussion, the delegates resolved to reject all ‘schismatic agitation’.87

To the Autocephalous minority, it was hard to face the fact that most Ukrainian Orthodox opposed them. Therefore they called all of them ‘Russians’ or even ‘Muscovites’ (moskali), a by-then antiquated term for Russians.88 But contrary to the belief of the Autocephalists, the popular distaste for the vernacular language in the Church did not signify any commitment to a Russian national identity. Most faithful simply felt strongly that to contact the Almighty, one should use the most elevated language they knew as one peasant put it, ‘the language which God spoke’.89 There was possibly also a subconscious reason. The archaic

87 The archpriest who spoke was Ivan Potapenko, a man consecrated before I 920 that is, not in the UAOC who represented the Church Council: TsDAVOV, f. 3676, op. i, d. 50, 11. I 2-20, ‘Protokoll Nr. I des kirchlichen Organisations-Sobor im Kiewer Bezirk, der am 20. November 1941 in der Peter-Paul-Kirche im Dorf Butscha-Lisna stattfand’. This is a translation of the original Ukrainian-language minutes prepared by the Church Council in Kiev that was appended to the letter by Bishop Panteleimon’s secretary mentioned in note 74 above.
88 Korovyts’kyi, ‘Vidrodzhennia tserkvy’ (see note 43 above), 1. 52. A trace of this mentality can be found in Vlasovs’kyi, ‘lak bulo’ (see note 25 above), p. 28, which states that the Autonomists wanted to ‘spread the agitation that they were also Ukrainians’. Both Churches had non-ethnic Ukrainians in leading positions. Among the Autonomists in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, these were at least the Belarusan-born Veniiamyn/Veniamin (Novyts’kyi) of Poltava and Lubny and the Russian-born Antonii (Martsenko) of Mykolaiv and ‘Nikolai (Avtonomov)’ of Mazyr; among the Autocephalists in the Reichskommissariat, at least the Russian-born Oleksander/Aleksandr (Inozemtsev) of Polissia and Pinsk, and probably also Iurii (Korenistov) of Brest.

89 Khurtovyna, Pid nebom Volyni, p . 99.

Slavonic language kept the message at a distance, which seemed to make the commandments less compelling.90 The strongest basis of support for the Autocephalists was among the small Ukrainian nationalist intelligentsia.91 But even here support forthe Ukrainian language was not a given. Kiev’s Ukrainian Orthodox intelligentsia also frequently attended the Greek Catholic services which from January 1942 were held there (in the formerly Roman Catholic St Oleksander Church). In accordance with Greek Catholic practice, these services were in Church Slavonic with Ukrainian pronunciation, while only the sermon was in Ukrainian. Father Iurii Kostiuk’s success aroused the envy and ire of the local Autocephalists, who knew nothing about Galician church life. The head of the short-lived Ukrainian National Council, Mykola Velychkivs’kyi, even asked the priest to change to Latin-rite services, in exchange for a payment.

The ‘problem’ solved itself in June I942, when Father Kostiuk received a German order to return to the General Government.92

The Number of Parishes

To determine the extent of the religious revival more fully, it would be useful to employ figures. Unfortunately, most administrative records have been lost or are difficult to access. For instance, the records of the Church Council and its Autocephalous successor, the Supreme Church Administration, are almost certainly destroyed.93T here exist figures on denominations and clerics at the parish level: copies of originals which the raion chiefs sent to the GebietskommissarUen. fortunately, these documents are ‘hidden’ among mountains of other papers.94 Finally, the records from Polikarp’s administration were taken into emigration in 1944 and are still not available to outside researchers. As a result, the

90 Based on comments in P. H. van der Plank, TaalsociologieE: en inleidingi n de rol van taal in het maatschappelikv erkeer,M uiderberg, 1985, about the preference of Frisian churchgoers for services in Dutch, cited in Jan W. de Vries, Roland Willemyns, and Peter Burger, Het verhaal van een taal. Negene euwen Nederlands,A msterdam, 1 993, p. 233.
91 ‘The intelligentsia everywhere is streaming toward the autocephalous Orthodox Church’. ‘Teilbericht Politik’, 1. 40V. See also Heyer, Die orthodoxe Kirche,p . I 89.
92 Korovyts’kyi, ‘Vidrodzhennia tserkvy’, 11.6 2-63; Mykola Velychkivs’kyi, ‘Sumni chasy’, Vyzvol’nysi hliakh, I 2, I965, 4, pp. 392-40I (p. 399); Nykon Nemyron [Mykola Andrusiak],’U zbudzhenii v ohni stolytsi Ukrainy (Slavnii pam»iati muchenykiv za Ukrainu v Kyievi v 1941-42 rr.)’ in Mykhailo H. Marunchak (ed.), Vborot’biz a ukrains’kud erzhavu:E sei; spohady, svidchennial,i topysannia,d okumentDy ruhoi’svitovovii iny, Winnipeg, I 990, pp. 8 i i and 8 I 7.
93 The SD confiscated the Church Council’s records and never returned them. The records of the Supreme Church Administration were evacuated by car, but Germans who wanted space for themselves threw the bags on the road. The personal records of the members of that administration were burned in 1943 in Kiev, to preclude any use by the NKVD: see Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiia,1 , p. 714; Dublianskyi, Ternystym shliakhom,p . 4In.
94 An example is the handwritten ‘Reiestratsiia pravoslavnykh parafii Rokytnians’koho r-nu’, which also provides information about Protestants, at DAKO, f. r-2292, op. I, d. 2, 11. 13-I5.

only figures available come from published primary and secondary sources.

According to its autumn 1942 Synod, the entire Autocephalous Church in both the Reichskommissariat and the regions to the east of it had a total of 513 parishes. Of these parishes, 298 were in the ‘Kiev Region’ that is, probably what was considered the Eparchy of Kiev.95 A little over 500 parishes in such a large territory does not strike one as a very high number. No such general figures are available for the Autonomous Church.

Friedrich Heyer, a German soldier who met many hierarchs and priests in Ukraine, estimated after the war that when parishes from both Orthodox Churches are added, by the summer of I943 about two-thirds of the pre- 1917 number of parishes had been restored in the Kiev eparchy, and about half of them in the Zhytomyr Eparchy.

When counting only Autonomous parishes, he found that a third of all pre- 1917 parishes in the eparchies of Podolia and Vinnytsia came back to life.96 The following table contains actual numbers of Orthodox parishes as provided in the literature. Unfortunately, there are no such numbers whatsoever for five Autonomous and five Autocephalous eparchies (some of which were small in size).97 Unless indicated otherwise, the information comes from Heyer’s work.98

Eparchy (affiliation; bishop/archbishop, Generalbezirk) Podolia (Autonomous; Damaskyn [Maliuta], Volhynia-Podolia GB) Number of parishes nearly 500 by October I942;99 declining to 250 by autumn 1943

95 These figures, for i September i942, apparently originate from Nikanor’s speech at the October 1942 Synod: see Vlasovs’kyi, Nagysi storai;p . 234; Dublians’kyi, Ternystyms hliakhom, pp. 44-45. See also Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . 206.
96 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. 206-o8.
97 These eparchies are (i) in the Volhynia-Podolia Generalbezirkt:h e Autonomous Eparchy of Volhynia (under Aleksii), including four vicariates (Luts’k, Rivne, Pochaiv, and Volodymyr-Volynslyi); the Autonomous Eparchy of Brest (under loan [Lavrynenko]); the Autocephalous Vicariate of Dubno (under Viacheslav [Lisytskyi]); the Autocephalous Eparchy of Polissia and Pinsk (under Oleksander [Inozemtsev]), which included the Vicariate of Brest (under Iurii [Korenistov]); (2) in the Zhytomyr Generalbezirkt: he Autonomous Eparchy of Mazyr (under ‘Nikolai [Avtonomov]‘) and the Autocephalous Eparchy of Podolia (under Fotii [Tymoshchuk]); (3) in the Kiev Generalbezirkt: he Autocephalous Eparchy of Pereiaslav (under Mstyslav [Skrypnyk]); (4) in the Mykolaiv Generalbezirkt:h e Autonomous Eparchy of Mykolaiv (under Antonii [Martsenko]) and the Autonomous Eparchy of Kherson (under Serafym [Kushneruk]); and (5) in the Crimea Generalbezir(kt hat is, the Taurida Partial District): the Autocephalous Eparchy of Melitopol’ (under Serhii [Okhotenko]). Aleksii’s four vicars were: yov( Kresovych) of Lutsk, Feodor (Rafal’s'kyi) of Rivne, Nykodym [?] of Pochaiv, and Manuil (Tarnavs’kyi) of Volodymyr-Volyns’kyi. The names of eparchies and those leading them that are mentioned in this study were compiled from the various sources that are cited in the footnotes.
98 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. I 89 and 206-o8.
99 Armstrong, UkrainianN ationalism,p . I 96.

Luts’k and Kovel’ (Autocephalous archeparchy; Polikarp [Sikors'kyi], V.-P. GB)
Krem»ianets’-Rivne( Autocephalous; Platon [Artemiuk], V.-P. GB)
Zhytomyr (Autonomous; Leontii [Fylypovych], Zhytomyr GB)
Vinnytsia (Autonomous; Ievlohii [Markovslyi], Zhytomyr GB)
Zhytomyr (Autocephalous; Hryhorii [Ohiichuk], Zhytomyr GB)
Kiev (Autonomous; Panteleimon [Rudyk], Kiev GB)
Poltava and Lubny (Autonomous; Veniiamyn [Novyts'kyi], Kiev GB)
Kiev (Autocephalous; Nikanor [Abramovych], Kiev GB)
Uman’ (Autocephalous; Ihor [Huba], Kiev GB)
Poltava (Autocephalous; Oleksii Potul’nyts’kyi and Syl’vestr [Haievs'kyi], Kiev GB)
Ielysavethrad, including the vicariate of Novo-Myrhorod (Autocephalous;
Mykhail [Khoroshyi], Mykolaiv GB)
Dnipropetrovs’k (Autonomous; Dymytrii [Mahan], Dnipropetovs’k GB)
Sicheslav (Autocephalous; Hennadii [Shyprykevych], Dnipropetrovs’k GB)
over 400 by early October 1943
nearly 8o in late 1943;
100 or 220 by early October I 943
300 by summer 1943
298 by autumn 1943
1oo by summer 1943
410 by late 1942
at least 140 by early I 943
298 on I September 1942101
6o by September I942102
150 in 1943, excluding the Lubny region103
over 1oo by October 1942, declining thereafter104
3I8 over 1oo until Christmas I 942;
eventually over 150 105

When the maximum numbers from this table are added which may count twice parishes that changed allegiance the total is 3,500. In addition, it may be estimated that the ten unlisted eparchies covered about a thousand parishes. Thus, the total estimated number of Autonomous and Autocephalous parishes in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, a territory that officially had I 6,9 I o,oo8 inhabitants on I January 1943,106 was 4,500. This means that to every 3,750 natives,

100 Protopresviter A. Teodorovych, ‘Preosviashchennyi Platon, lepyskop Rivens’kyi (V Sviti Pavlo Artemiuk) (Spohad)’, Litopys Volyni,4 , 1958, 4, pp.- 8-23 (p. 22).
101 Dublianslkyi, Ternystymsh liakhom,p p. 44-45; Vlasovs’kyi, Narys istori,; p. 234.
102 Armstrong, UkrainianN ationalism, p. 200.
103 Vlasovskyi, Naaysi storzip, . 234.
104 Ibid., p. 235.
105 Ibid., pp. 234-35.
106 TsDAVOV, f. 3206, op. 2, d. 23I, 1. 45, ‘Uebersicht uber die Verwaltungseinteilung des ReichskommissariatsU kraine nach dem Stand vom I. Januar 1943′.

there was only one church. This shows that, despite the efforts to revive church life after years of Soviet persecution, the number of parishes remained rather low. The figures which exist for cities confirm this general impression. In Kiev, churches were basically confined to the outskirts and suburbs.

Certainly, this was also partly because the Soviet authorities had destroyed most of those located in the centre, and the Germans did not hand over the St Sophia’s Cathedral which apparently they considered a Gothic artefact to be used for services. The Dormition Cathedral (Uspens’kyi Sobor), dating back to the eleventh century and the centrepiece of the Monastery of the Caves, could not be used either, for it was demolished by dynamite on 3 November I94I. (It is still unclear whether Communist agents or Germans set off the explosion.)107 Thus, in Kiev only one large cathedral was open for services, St Andrew’s Cathedral. The Autocephalists had this church and two other church buildings at their disposal.108 All twenty-five other churches in this city were Autonomous by the spring of 1943.109 The large St Volodymyr’s Cathedral had its first (Autonomous) service only on 19 September 1943, the second anniversary of the German arrival.110 In short, there were in Kiev altogether rather few parishes.

Dnipropetrovs’k eventually had ten working churches, all Autonomous.

As in the case of Kiev, however, this was little compared to the pre-1917 situation, when the city used to have twenty-seven churches. Poltava also had ten Orthodox churches, while Vinnytsia had only seven (all but two Autonomous). «‘

107 Iurii Maivs’kyi and Ievhen Shtendera (eds), Ideia i chyn. OrhanP rovodu OUN, 1942-I946. Peredrukpidpil’nohzoh urnalu[ Litopys UPA, 24], Toronto, I 995, P. 124; Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiia,I , p. 739. Cf. Pihido-Pravoberezhnyi, ‘Velyka Vitchyznianav iina’, p. 149; and, on the Dormition Cathedral, Titus D. Hewryk, The Lost Architecturoef Kiev, New York, I982,pp- 50 5I-
108 These were the Pokrov church in the Solom»ianka district and the Ascension (Voznesens’ka) church in the southern Demiivka district: see Vlasovs’kyi, Nagysi stornip, . 233. According to Rybachuk, ‘Vidrodzhennia’, 1. 23, there were also priests from Lypkivs’kyi’s UAOC in the Pokrov Church in the (Priors’ka-)Kurenivka district and in the Ascension (Voznesenslka) Church on the Baikove cemetery. They must have left of their own accord or were perhaps forced to leave.
109 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche, p. 209. Cf. Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiiai,, p. 7II.
110 A museum before I94I, it was made available by the German authorities only in the spring of I 942, to the Autonomous Church. Restoration took much time: see Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), MartyrolohiiaI,, p. 7 I 6; Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . 209; Dublians’kyi, Ternystyms hliakhom,p . 5 i; and Tat’iana Fesenko, Povest’ krivykhle t, New York, I 963, p. 90. 1 Heyer, Die orthodoxe Kirche, pp. 207-o8. On Poltava, cf. Vlasovs’kyi, Naiys istorii; pp. 233-34, which seems less reliable, for unlike Heyer, the author seems not to have visited the town.

Church Attendance

Another way to evaluate the religious revival is by studying participation in church life. There is strong evidence that many people showed up for major religious events. Large numbers of city-dwellers went to the Dnieper in 1942 for the Water Blessing (Vodokhreshchi). The next year, as many as 6o,ooo people came for the same occasion to Dnipropetrovs’k's Transfiguration Cathedral and made a two-kilometre procession to the river.112 Easter was a festive occasion everywhere. In 1943 it drew a crowd to Dnipropetrovs’k which was so large that the procession around the cathedral could be carried out only once, instead of the prescribed three times.113 In the countryside, almost the entire population participated in Easter. While curfews were lifted for the occasion, the peasants enjoyed choirs, banduram usic and amateur theatre.»4 The festivity of Thanksgiving (Spas)a lso returned, as did carolling by small children. 115
One wonders, however, how much of all this participation proves more than a widespread desire to use legitimate occasions to celebrate.116 It seems more important to focus on church attendance on regular days. According to Hans Koch, the number of churchgoers kept increasing ‘until I943’71 7 As for the peasants, the meagre evidence does not quite confirm this. In a village in southern Ukraine in I 942, a German saw ‘old women, greybeards, but also women, young girls and many children crowding around the entrance’ of a small church. He saw no boys or young men, whom he assumed were harvesting and perhaps not interested.118 According to Heyer, ‘the enormous market of Poltava was filled every Sunday morning with many thousands of peasants, who came there singing and laughing on their sleds and carts to trade. Few of them failed to visit the market church, which, white and newly plastered, rose above the bustle.119 (It is unknown whether this describes the situation before or after the introduction of civilian Nazi rule.) A German report based on statements by Ukrainian propagandists noted that in mid- 1943 church attendance in several

112 German censorship allowed the Dnipropetrovs’khaa zeta of 23 January I 943 only to speak of 20,000 people: Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. I 7 I and 208.
113 Ibid., p. 208.
114 DAKO, f. r-24i8, op. i, d. I3, 1. 64, on the Baryshivka raion in I942; Ortwin Buchbender, Das tonendeE rz: Deutsche Propagandag egen die Roten Armeei m Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart, 1978 (hereafter Das tdnendeE rz), p. 278.
115 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . I 72.
116 The same comment has been made by Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm on the basis of an SD report about Belarus: see Wilhelm, ‘Der SD’ (see note 2 I above), p. 9 I.
117 Hans Koch, HURIP interview, fol. 9. He felt certain that not all were actually believers.
118 Siegfried von Vegesack, Als Dolmetscheri m Osten: Ein Erlebnisberichta us den Jahren I942-43. Mit 12 Bildern nach Aufnahmend es Veifassers,H annover and Dohren, I965, p. I2I.
119 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . 207.

regions was ‘very high’.120 But a Soviet agent reported that ‘usually only old people’ went to church, and a man from a village in the Kiev region recalled in an interview that ‘nobody’ did.121 Altogether, the evidence regarding the villages is ambiguous.

Regarding the major cities, the evidence on church attendance on regular days is more straightforward.I n I94I and early 1942, Kiev’s St Andrew’s Cathedral, where a ‘State Choir’ sang, was generallyfilled.122
But after a while, as Heyer discovered, there were services here and elsewhere in the city which not a single person attended. He thought that ‘secularism’ remained predominant in Kiev, and a local told him: ‘What do Kievans believe in? A piece of bread, that’s all!’»23L ikewise, according to an NKVD report from the autumn of I942, church attendance in Dnipropetrovs’k was ‘insignificant -based on the very old’. 124 In Vinnytsia, the churches in mid- 1 943 had bishops, clergy and choirs, but, as the Ukrainian nationalist Mykhailo Seleshko recalls, ‘none had a large number of faithful, and the churches were deserted [... ]. Even the oldest people rarely went to church.’l25 In short, whatever the church attendance by city-dwellers in I941 and I942, by 1943 it was certainly not more than modest.

There were several reasons why attendance was not as high in the countryside, and particularly the cities, as it could have been. In the countryside, the occasional German bans during the harvest period played a role. Such local bans meant that attendance was forbidden on holidays which fell on weekdays, or on Saturday evening (vespers), in the middle of the day on Sunday, and sometimes even throughout the whole of Sunday. Germans who caught transgressorsc hased them out and ordered the priest to lock the building. The enraged local Landwirt

120 The regions in question were the Dnipropetrovs’k, Mykolaiv, Melitopol’ and Kirovohrad districts. The source notes in general in Ukraine ‘very high church attendance. Everywhere and often church weddings’: TsDAVOV, f. 3676, op. 4, d. I6i, 1. 55, report based on Ukrainian propagandists, Berlin, 30 November 1943.
121 ‘Informatsiia tov. Matsko’ (see note 70 above); Nikolai [Mykola] Salata (Ukrainian born in i914 in the village of Medvyn), author interview, Medvyn, Bohuslav raion, Kiev oblast’, Ukraine, 17 July 1995.
122 Zinkevych and Voronyn (eds), Martyrolohiia,I , p. 717 (says that those attending were members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia). See also Hartymiv, ‘Zemleiu ukrains’koiu. . .’ (see note i i above), p. 1 26; F. H. (Fedir Haiovych), ‘Kyiv u zhovtni I 94 ‘ in Mel’nyk et al. (eds), Na zov Kyieva( see note i i above), p. I63; Dublians’kyi, Ternystyms hliakhom,p . 36; Ievhen Onats’kyi, ‘Ukraina’, Samostiina Ukraina, i8, I965, 2 (February, 192), pp. I9-22 (p. 20); Paul Werner, Ein SchweizerJ ournalist sieht Rufiland: Auf den Spurend er deutschenA rmeez wischen San und Dnjepr, Olten, I 942, pp. 98-99 and unnumbered page in back with picture.
123 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . 209.
124 TsDAHOU, f. I, Op. 23, d. 124, 1. 97, Savchenko, VRIO NKVD USSR, to N. S. Khrushchev, ‘Razvedsvodka No 33/68 o polozhenii v okkupirovannom protivnikom g. Dnepropetrovske.P o sostoianiiu na 20. 10. 42g.’, Engel’s,2 IOctober I 942.
125 He also got an unfavourable impression of the Orthodox priests he met; they were rarely better educated than the average person and only seemed to know the rituals: see Seleshko, Vinnytsia( see note 47 above), p. I02. might lash the people out with his whip or beat them with a stick.

Priests were often forced to participate in the harvesting and could be beaten up for ignoring bans on mid-Sunday mass.126 Fear of being apprehended at the church and deported to Germany also diminished attendance,127 as did a fear of exposing oneself as a Christian, in the light of a possible return of the Soviet authorities.128 The latter applied only to city-dwellers, however, for villagers often already knew their neighbours’ convictions.

But the main reasons why people stayed away from the church were indifference and alienation. A Ukrainian visitor was told that, as before 1941, people cared only about baptism’. 129 They also felt alienated from their priests, who, as they quickly found out, were used by ‘the Gestapo’ for various political tasks. (All new priests had to sign a vow to spy on their communities.)130 Moreover, the priests, like all bishops, were themselves closely monitored by the Germans and their informers.

Among other reasons, this was to verify whether they obeyed the repeated orders from Gebietskommisstaor ien cite the parishioners to assist them in every possible way.131 On Hitler’s birthday on 20 April 1942, all priests had to pray for him in special services, and they reportedly did so ‘in part’.132 The clergy was driven to do all this by mortal fear.

126 Examples from early 1943 are in Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . 209 and in Volodymyr Serhiichuk, OUN-UPA v roky viiny. Novi dokumentiy materialy, Kiev, I996 (hereafter OUN-UPA), p. 329. On priests, see Vlasovs’kyi, Na?ysi storii;p p. 237-38; and Berdnik, ‘Kharakteristika polozhenii’ (see note 69 above), 1. 64.
127 Hoover Institution Archives, Harvard University, Russian Research Center, Interview transcripts, 1950-I95 I, Box 22, anonymous Orthodox priest, interview 96 AD, B-6 by the Harvard University Refugee Interview Project, n. p., 5 November I 950, fol. 2 1.
128 This fear may explain why priests who went door-to-door in Poltava in 1942 during the pre-Christmas fast were rarely invited in, even though they had been welcomed the year before: see Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p p. 208-o9.
129 Seleshko, Vinnytsia,p . 103.
130 Father Kovtun of the village of Moshoryne in the Nova Praha raion, quoted in a post-war report: TsDAHOU, f. I, Op. 22, d. 391, 1. 24, Mikhail Mikh. Skirda et al., ‘Otchet o podpol’noi partiinoi rabote i partizanskoi bor’be v Kirovogradskoi oblasti (avgust I94I goda — mart 1944 goda)’ (hereafter ‘Otchet’), n. d. Priests were supposed to receive a salary from the parish, which would then be taxed. In practice, this German regulation was ignored and they were paid in kind, usually with a loaf of bread: see Armstrong, UkrainianN ationalism, p. I 9 1; Vlasovs’kyi, Nagys istorni;p . 235; Hans Koch, HURIP interview, fol. 9; USNA microcopy T-84, roll I20, frame 419I8I, ‘Auszug aus dem Lagebericht des Generalkommissars’, Kiev, I September 1942.
131 For example, in August I 942 all the clergy of the Vinnytsia district were summoned for a meeting. Present were sixteen Autonomous priests, eleven Autocephalous priests, Bishop Fotii (Tymoshchuk) and four Protestants. There was no representative of the Roman Catholic Church in Hnivan’. The regional Kirchenreferenotn, e Hohn, ordered those present to incite the faithful to collaborate with the Germans: ‘Teilbericht Politik’ (see note i9 above), 1. 28. See also TsDAVOV, f. 3676, op. i, d. 50,1. 27, ‘Erklarung des orthodoxen Kirchenrates von Cherson’.
132 Announcement in Poslednien ovosti( Kiev), 20 April I942, p. 4; Fireside, Icon and Swastika (see note 9 above), p. I 12, quoting a September 1942 report on the ‘eastern territories’ by two German propagandists.

Father N. P. Stukalo of Oleksandriia, a town east of Kirovohrad, is known to have received weekly instructions, and probably threats to his life. There can be little doubt that his case was typical. Another (or perhaps the same) priest in Oleksandriia once in early I942 suggested in a homily that the Germans might leave. He was lucky to be let go after fifty blows of the birch. 133

Popular revulsion against priests was the greatest in Dnieper Ukraine, particularlyi ts cities. As early as October I 94 1, those Kievans who were still shaken by the recent massacre of the Jews at Babyn Jar undoubtedly were disgusted when Autocephalous priests praised the Germans, calling them ‘light-haired knights’.134 Also very important was the fact that people’s husbands, sons and brothers had been drafted into the Red Army and were hoped to be still alive. Thus, when the above-mentioned Father Stukalo asked his congregation to help defeat ‘the enemy’, the parishioners got angry and attendance dropped. Old people said the place of worship had become ‘debauched’.135 It is also instructive to look for generational differences. Anecdotal evidence provides no surprises about young females in formerly Polish western Volhynia: they were generally pious. When the Red Army returned to the region in 1944, one of its soldiers asked a local Ukrainian girl to sew a button on his clothes. It was a Sunday, so his request got a frightened reaction: ‘Hrikhl!’ ‘That’s a sin!’136 In Dnieper Ukraine, however, there existed a certain generational divide regarding religion. What may be described as the Komsomol generation, those born in the I920S and 1930s, were little interested in going to church. In fact, the vast majority of males, and many females, from this generation did not attend church at all. In the countryside they helped reconstruct the churches, but that was mainly out of solidarity and because they had never seen a mass.

133 Skirda et al., ‘Otchet’ (see note I 30 above), 1. 24; Berdnik, ‘Kharakteristika polozhenii’, 1. 64.
134 A. Khoroshunova, ‘Kievskie zapiski. 194I-I944′ in Erhard Roy Wiehn (comp.), Die Schoahv on Baby Jar: Das Massaker deutscherS onderkommandaons derjudischen Bevolkerunvg on Kiew 1941 funfz’g Jahred anachz um GedenkenK, onstanz, I99I, p. 304. Khoroshunova was herself not a Christian.
135 Skirda, ‘Otchet’, 1. 24. See also Berdnik, ‘Kharakteristika polozhenii’, 1. 64: ‘At first even the youth reached out to the Church, mainly out of curiosity, but it quickly became disappointed. Hereafter, gradually adults also started to cool down and to lose respect for the Church, especially in connection with appeals by the priests to [G]od to help defeat the Red Army and to let the Germans win.’
136 Mikhail Koriakov, Osvobozhdenideu shi, New York, 1952, p. I97. I have assumed that the peasant girl spoke Ukrainian and have therefore translated the author’s Russian rendition, grekh. For a similar observation on Polissia, see Maksym Skorups’kyi, Unastupakhi vidstupakh. (Spohady),C hicago, IL, I96I, p. 52. A supposedly new increase in interest in the Church among young people, particularly females, in the Luts’k and Pinsk districts is noted in a German report from Berlin, 30 November I943, located at TsDAVOV, f. 3676, Op. 4, d. I6I, 1. 48.

As early as the autumn of 1941, the SD estimated that half of the young generation was atheist.137

The young people quickly discovered that to them, masses were far less interesting than movies. They stopped attending or went ‘as if to a theatre’, as Seleshko discovered. ‘They listened for a while how the choir sang and left. Young people said that the liturgy meant nothing to them, it was a nothing but a nice show. They complained that it was boring, for every week the performance was the same.’ 138 Young people also frequently behaved as if in a circus, for example by touching the priests’ gowns.139 Altogether, church attendance by the young was ‘significantlyl ess than in the pre-Soviet period’.140

A German chaplain who spoke Russian and spent much time in the Ukrainian countryside concluded that ‘religious life’, as he put it, only existed ‘there where it already existed before the Communist period, namely among the older generation, those older than thirty-five’. Those up to twenty-five were almost all ‘completely alienated and indifferent’.141 But it is worth mentioning that many people over thirty-five were also indifferent. The SD reported as early as August 1941 from the Vinnytsia countryside that ‘a rejection [of the Church] could not be observed, but unambiguous support comes only from some women and elderly men. The young generation and the middle-aged [peasants] appear to be indifferent on this issue, but also willing to participate once asked.’142 According to a Soviet partisan this participation was actually motivated by fear. ‘The middle-aged really go only in order not to attract attention’, he wrote, ‘because the religious people take note of who does not attend church and threaten to tell the Kommandantth at «so-and-so sympathizes with the Bolsheviks».»l43

137 EreignismeldungU dSSR, 37 (29 July 1941), p. 6; ibid., 8i (12 September I941), p. I5; ibid., I20 (2I October I941), p. io (the estimate). The observation about indifference or hostility toward religion among the young generation has been made before, but with little supporting documentation: see Armstrong, UkrainianN ationalism, pp. 156 and I89.
138 Seleshko, Vinnytsia,p . 102. For more evidence on young city-dwellers, see Ereignismeldung UdSSR, 52 (I4 August I941), p. I4; ‘Teilbericht Politik’, 1. 3iv, regarding Kirovohrad; Buchbender, Das toinendEe rz (see note I I 4 above), p. 3i9; and Serhiichuk, OUN-UPA (see note 1 26 above), p. 345.
139 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . 20 I.
140 Statement by the Autocephalous Archpriest Demyd Burko, quoted in Vlasovs’kyi, Nays Istorti;p . 232.
141 Benz, Die religioseL age (see note 67 above), pp. 36-37. See also, about a village in the Berdychiv district, ‘Suchasne ukrains’ke selo (Vid vlasnoho korespondenta)’, Ukrains’kyi visnyk( Berlin), 4 April 1943, pp. 6-7. Similar evidence is provided in ‘Teilbericht Politik’, 11. 30v, 32v, and 33v. According to this last source, the youth in the Oleksandrivka district is ‘little interested in religion’; priests in the Oleksandriia district ‘have the people behind them, but the youth only to a small extent’; and the young in the Dnipropetrovs’k Generalbezirakr e ‘extremely indifferent about the denominations’.
142 EreignismeldunUg dSSR, 45 (7 August 1941), p. 6.
143 TsDAHOU, f. I, Op. 22, d. I22, 11. 32-33, Iakov Fedorovich Nosenko, komissar partizanskogo otriada Kanevskogo raiona Kievskoi oblasti, to Zam. nach. 4-go Otdela NKVD USSR, ‘Dokladnaia zapiska’, n. p., 3 January 1942.

Although not confirmed by other sources, such a situation may well have prevailed in places. A Soviet report dealing with the end of 1941 even asserted that other than a ‘small and elderly religious part’, ‘the majority of the population’ was ‘sceptical’ about the opening of the churches and talked ‘ironically’ about it.144 Such an attitude was particularly pronounced among peasants in the industrial regions, where the SD also took note of ‘a marked indifference’.145

After civilian Nazi rule was introduced and the Soviet separation of Church and state was declared still in place or, more precisely, restored -young peasants began to express objections to, or otherwise disrespect, people’s piety. The administration of the Autonomous Eparchy of Vinnytsia even complained to the Germans about the phenomenon.146 Baptist and Evangelical Christian missionaries held public meetings in villages and cities. These meetings were apparently well attended; a Communist report even spoke of a ‘large pull’ in the Right Bank towards these Protestants. But their audiences invariably included people who shifted in their seats and asked each other, ‘Who allowed them to preach here?’ There were also militant atheists, who were momentarily powerless. According to a former missionary, their faces were ‘contorted with malice’.147

Only one report, based on intelligence gathered by Ukrainian propagandists, found that by the middle of I943 young people in the Zhytomyr and Kiev districts participated in the supposedly ‘abundant’ church attendance.148 But the many testimonies to the contrary cast grave doubt on this finding. Indeed, even the fact that many young males with a higher education became priests does not mean as much as appearance might suggest. At least in part, these males had ‘negative’ motives forjoining the priesthood a lack of other proper employment and a wish to evade manual labour.149

Conclusion

There was a religious revival in the territory of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, but it was modest in scope. Churches re-opened and bishops and priests arrived, but as time went on, the German authorities obstructed church life more and more.

144 ‘Deiatel’nost’ partizanskikh otriadov’ (see note 55 above).
145 EreignismelduUndg SSR,8 i ( I2 September I 94 ), p. 15.
146 Heyer, Die orthodoxeK irche,p . 2 I8.
147 Liubomyrenko, Z Khgystomv Ukraini (see note 43 above), pp. 40 and 5′ (the last two quotations); Berdnik, ‘Kharakteristika polozhenii’, 1. 64. There were reportedly by 1943 in Ukraine east of the former pre-I939 Soviet border 713 Baptist/Evangelical Christian communities with a total of 32,000 members: see H. Domashovets’, Na?ys istorii ukrains’koi ievanhel’s'ko-baptysts’ktsoei rkvyI, rvington and Toronto, I967, pp. 222-24.
148 TsDAVOV, f. 3676, Op. 4, d. i6i, 11. 5i and 53, report, Berlin, 30 November 1943.
149 ‘Teilbericht Politik’, 1. 40v. Generalkommissar Magunia also reported in 1942 that young people in the Kiev Generalbezirwk ere ‘not very interested’ in the Church and merely ‘use[d] the service to evade work’: USNA microcopy, T-84, roll I 20, frame 419 I 8 I, ‘Auszug aus dem Lagebericht des Generalkommissars’, Kiev, i September I 942.

Most importantly, most young and many middle-aged natives had little or no interest in or respect for the Orthodox Church and indeed religion in general. This indifference was not entirely new. To date, we know little about the nature and depth of popular piety among the Ukrainians and Russians in the late tsarist and early Soviet periods, but historians tend to agree that already at that time these people were increasingly losing interest in religion and/or becoming anti-clerical. There existed in those years also another tendency that involved fewer people: conversion to Protestantism (Baptists and Evangelical Christians).150T his study has shown that both tendencies secularism and conversion to Protestantism also prevailed in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The widespread lack of interest in the Orthodox Church and religion in general that the tsarist and Soviet periods had bequeathed to Dnieper Ukraine changed little under the Nazi regime.

150 Stefan Plaggenborg, ‘Religiositat und Areligiositat’ in his RevolutionskulturM. enschenbilder und kulturelleP raxis in Sowjetrusslanzd wischen Oktoberrevolutiuonn d Stalinismus, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, I996, pp. 289-3I4; Stefan Plaggenborg, ‘Sakularisierung und Konversion in RuBland und der Sowjetunion’ in Lehmann (ed.), Sdkularisierung(,s ee note i above), pp. 275-90.