The dissertation provides the results of the complex research of the church and institutional transformations of the Ukrainian Orthodoxy
from 1939 till 1944. During the Second World War, on the territory of Kholm region and Pidliashia, there was a Ukrainian national-cultural and
spiritual revival, a significant component of which was the national-church movement for Ukrainization / de-Muscovite of the Orthodox Church.
The Sovietization of the western Ukrainian regions was accompanied by intensive and varied agitation and propaganda work and at the same
time repressive measures against the clergy. At that time, the process of Ukrainization and democratization of Orthodoxy in Volhynia was
interrupted, when the Soviet leadership began testing a fundamentally new model of the relationship between the government and the Church.
The leitmotif of the German religious policy, based on the imperial principle of “divide and rule”, was the focus on the split of Ukrainian
Orthodoxy and the neutralization of the national patriotic movement.
The Orthodox Volhynia that had a significant human resource among the clergy became a kind of church Piedmont in the process of revival of
religious life in the East. The main factors of the German government’s more sympathetic attitude towards AOC were the loyalty, controllability and anti-Soviet position of its leaders, clear and consistent distancing from any political activity and national movement, predominantly negative reaction to the unification of the Churches. In 1943, according to rough estimates, the AOC counted with more than 2,500 parishes. It denied the right of the Metropolitan of Warsaw to interfere in Ukrainian church affairs and expected the recognition of its autocephaly from the ROC and other local Churches.
The proponents and promoters of the church-independent vision hoped the autocephalous idea to be supported by the mass of Orthodox
believers, but they were divided into supporters of religious traditionalism and modernism. The UAOC can be considered a self-sufficient ecclesial body with its own Council of Bishops and the administrator, Metropolitan Polikarp Sikorskyi. Maintaining contact with the Metropolitan of Warsaw made it possible to preserve through it the canonical communication with world Orthodoxy. Autocephaly, which was never officially proclaimed, was seen by the leaders of the national church movement as an instrument of de-imperialization and spiritual liberation of the Ukrainian people.
The death of Metropolitan Oleksii Hromadskyi marked a turning point in the development of the Orthodox Church both in Volhynia
and in occupied Ukraine and intensified the transition of a number of autonomous parishes and the Derman Monastery to the Rivne-Kremenets
Eparchy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church which since then included over 200 parishes. At the same time, the struggle between
Orthodox jurisdictions developed into a latent phase and continued at a lower parish level. It is worth noting that a part of clergy belonging to
both trends tried to avoid the implementation of orders of the occupying regime, participated in the rescue of the Jewish population, performed
chaplaincy duties in the structures of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
Warsaw Council of UAOC Bishops of 1944 stinted itself with half-hearted decisions concerning its canonical status and postponed its settlement until the end of the war. A part of the participants of the Council tried to confer Metropolitan Dionisii with the title of Honorary Patriarch, however, this was prevented by the German invaders. The canonical and jurisdictional dependence of both Orthodox orientations on foreign centres – Warsaw and Moscow – contributed to the complication of church life in Ukraine, created one of the significant obstacles to their unification, prevented the emergence of a powerful spiritual leader who would be able to head the united Church. The restoration of Soviet power in Ukraine led to the destruction of the UAOC and APC and incorporation of their institutional structures into the Moscow Patriarchate.
