Viacheslav Olitskyi

Viacheslav Olitskyi

Candidate of Historical Sciences (Ph. D.), senior Lecturer at the Department of History of Ukraine, Sumy State Pedagogical University named after A. S. Makarenko.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5518-5127

DOI: 10.17721/2522-4611.2021.44.6

REPRESSIONS AGAINST THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CLERGY

IN UKRAINE (THE LATE 1920s– 1930s)


Abstract. The aim of the study is to analyze the repressions against the Roman Catholic clergy in Ukraine, to determine their features, scale and consequences. The methodology was based on the use of general scientific and special-historical research methods, including problem-chronological, comparative-historical, typological, etc. The position of the Roman Catholic Church in the USSR in the late 1920s was determined. An attempt to secretly revive the hierarchy to establish functioning the church in the USSR was analyzed. The visits of Bishop M. d’Erbigny to the USSR and the plans of activity of the newly appointed administrators for reorganizing and reviving the religious life of Roman Catholics were described. Persecuting the newly appointed administrators was described. The consequences of the Soviet authorities' obstruction of their activities for the church's position in the Ukrainian Soviet socialist republic were determined. The main forms of repressions against the Roman Catholic Church, its pastors and believers in the context of anti-religious and repressive policies in the USSR were considered.

The main stages of anti-Catholic repressions in Ukraine in the 1930s, their features and consequences were described. Considerable attention was paid to certain mass anti-Catholic actions, including the «The Catholic Priests’ Case», accusations of espionage in favor of Poland or the Vatican, persecuting Roman Catholic German priests, group criminal cases of the «great terror» period, etc. The fate of the clergy, who returned to Ukraine after serving their sentences in the mid-1930s and tried to resume religious activities, was considered. Repressions against Roman Catholics were seen in two ways: persecuting the clergy and closing churches and restrictions on functioning parishes. The reaction of Pope Pius XI to such a policy of the Bolsheviks and his attempts to protect the faithful and to involve the international community in their defense were determined. The scale and consequences of the repressions of the late 1920s and 1930s for the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine were determined.

Key words: Roman Catholic church, clergy, repression, imprisonment, anti-religious policy, Roman Catholic church building, Soviet revolutionary activists, early Soviet internal affairs ministry.

Received by the editorial board: 1.02.2021

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