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  • The Polish Orthodox Church in the Twentieth Century and Beyond: Prisoner of History by Edward D. Wynot Jr.
  • Natalia Shlikhta
The Polish Orthodox Church in the Twentieth Century and Beyond: Prisoner of History. By Edward D. Wynot Jr. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. 2015. Pp. xiii, 123. $75.00. ISBN 978-1-7391-9884-1, clothbound; ISBN 978-0-7391-9885-8, ebook.)

This monograph depicts a portrait of the church whose appearance is compared to the birth of an “unwanted stepchild” (p. 1) and that managed to become the second largest Christian denomination in contemporary Poland. The author tells a fascinating story of this church as a part of broader issues of religion’s accommodation to demands of secular politics, of relations between national identity and faith, and of minority activism in Poland. The research base is extensive, including documents from Polish state archives, published sources, and newspapers and magazines of the period. The analysis is supported with statistical data on ethnic composition of Poland, church network, numbers of Orthodox believers and clergy, and maps showing geographical disposition of Orthodox dioceses. The monograph is divided into four chapters and also contains a preface, select bibliography, and index. [End Page 182]

Chapter 1 (pp. 1–19) provides a sketchy overview of Eastern Christianity in Poland prior to World War I. The author notes important milestones: inclusion of Ukrainian and Belarusian lands into the Polish state, the 1596 Union of Brest, and the struggle of Cossacks in support of Orthodoxy. The 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo is seen as a turning point, as “the ‘Mother City’ of Polish Orthodoxy [Kyiv] … now passed into the jurisdiction of the Russian Patriarchate” (p. 9). No longer simply a “minority faith,” Orthodoxy in partitioned Poland became an “imperial Church” perceived with “the lasting enmity of Poles from all social strata” (p. 15). A nonspecialist in early-modern history, the author freely uses anachronistic terms such as Polish Orthodox Church, Polish Metropolitan, and Polish Orthodoxy, which are misleading in relation to the historical events he describes.

Chapter 2 (pp. 21–56) examines the complex fate of the Orthodox Church in interwar Poland. The altered geopolitical situation forced the church to accommodate itself in the Polish nationalist state where Roman Catholicism became the established face. Answering pressures from below and from above, the hierarchy under Metropolitan Dionizy (Waledynski) strove to become independent from Moscow. Polish authorities’ support was decisive in persuading Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory VII to bestow autocephaly on the Polish Orthodox Church in November 1924 (interpreted by the author as a “non-canonical act” [pp. 33, 38]). Simultaneously, state authorities saw this church as an instrument of Polonization and Latinization of the Slavic minorities. Yet another factor came on the scene in the period: clergy and lay activists of Ukrainian and Belarusian origin attempted to ensure the national character of their church and saw it as a crucial constituent of their respective national movements. The latter’s loyalty to the state was open to doubt because of the treatment of the church by the ruling Polish majority (the author mentions campaigns of “pacification,” forced conversions to Catholicism, and “Neouniatism”), criticized both inside the country (by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky) and abroad (pp. 42–43).

The focus of chapter 3 (pp. 57–82) is on the existence of the Polish Orthodox Church under communism. The World War II period, however, does not escape the author’s attention either. The author’s remark, “That the Church not only survived but actually somewhat prospered during this era is a testament to its skill at adapting to changes in its surroundings” (p. 57), is not without moral judgment. The church collaborated with the Nazis during the war (the author provides an oversimplified picture with some factual mistakes [pp. 58–59]) and Polish communists never failed to remind it of this to bring the church under tighter state control. To have an effective instrument in their hands, they obtained the approval of the church’s autocephalous status from Moscow and tolerated its considerable expansion, financial gains, and growth in prestige. The church had to pay the price and therefore supported all governmental policies both domestically (from the...

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