Ukrainian Church History (review)

This volume of Harvard Ukrainian Studies (HUS) is devoted to Ukrainian church history in tribute to Bohdan R. Bociurkiw (1925–98), who was professor of political science at Carleton University and who specialized in the study of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) and to a lesser extent of the Orthodox Church in Soviet Ukraine. With the exception of Bociurkiw's articles, those of the other contributors all deal with the UGCC or, as it was called before the Austrian period, the Uniate Church.

HUS has been published at irregular intervals, and this double volume (although no thicker than ordinary) is particularly tardy, as it was issued in late summer 2007. Moreover, as the introduction by G. Grabowicz makes clear, the articles have been languishing in editorial files for quite some time. Not a few, in fact, were prepared in the 1980s for a projected encyclopedic work on Ukrainian church history that never materialized, although some attempt has been made to bring at least the references up to date. I have not been able to detect the "welcome breath of revisionist thinking" that the introduction applauds, but then revisionism is not synonymous with clearer perception.

Two articles are by the person being honored himself. The first reproduces a lecture of the 1980s on the difficulties of access to sources on the Orthodox Church in Ukraine between the two world wars, with footnotes provided by the editor (who is unaware that Heyer's work came out in a second, updated version in 2003). It serves no evident purpose, pace what the editor writes in footnote 1. Bociurkiw's second article "The Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine: The Exarchate and the Renovationists, and the 'Conciliar-Episcopal' Church" cannot be dealt with in depth in a review. This article is followed by two and a half pages of "Reflections" by Andrii Krawchuk that add nothing. Bociurkiw appears to believe that the patriarchal Russian Orthodox Church refused to recognize the "self-ordained" UAOC because of national bias ("political orientation," p. 67). Neither he nor Krawchuk realizes that for the overriding majority of the hierarchy, clergy, and people who remained with the patriarchal Church the issue was not between Ukrainian Orthodoxy versus Russian Orthodoxy, but between orthodoxy and schism. The statement that the demolition of churches of historic or artistic value "was unparalleled in ethnic Russia" (p. 83) is questionable at best.

The other articles, as suits encyclopedia entries, are competent expositions, in spite of some questionable assertions and inaccuracies that cannot be dealt with here; they are useful as a general introduction to the history of the UGCC from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

Teresa Chynczewska-Hennel's article "Political, Social, and National Thought of the Ukrainian Higher Clergy, 1569–1700" is closely connected with her studies on Ukrainian national consciousness in the seventeenth century. In the article by Larry Wolf on the Uniate Church in Poland in the period of partitions I would be more hesitant about accepting the "spontaneity" of the return of peasant masses to the Uniate Church; we have too few sources of these masses themselves. John-Paul Himka gives a good overview of the UGCC in the years 1848–1914. The article by Andrew Sorokowski stands out as a critical analysis of the UGCC in the interwar period through the example of Catholic Action and brings out the difficulty of reconciling Christianity and nationalism. The article by Bohdan Budurowycz, "The Greek Catholic Church in Galicia, 1914–1944," was published previously after its author's death and has been brought up to date by others. It would have benefited from more competent editing, especially by persons better acquainted with church terminology.