The thesis explores state control practices over the Russian Orthodox Church communities in Kyiv during the late Soviet period (1968-1989).
For the Soviet ideology, religion appeared to be a "vestige of the old world" that was bound to disappear with the passage of time and the progress of society. In various periods of Soviet history, the party-state apparatus would try to bring the "death of religion" closer by means of repressions, church closures, and propaganda of atheism. However, with time, the Soviet leadership concluded that religion could be instrumentalized to the benefit of the state, ensuring Soviet government sustainability in particular regions and promoting Soviet narratives abroad. The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) came in handy to aid the Soviets. After WWII, during the "Cold War" period, this Church was supposed to help the Soviet government "sovietize" the recently-annexed western regions, dominated by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and promote the Soviet vision of peace and international cooperation abroad.
Extensive historiography studies the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union from different perspectives. The existing studies delve mainly into the relationship between religious institutions and state power or the practices of lived religion and forced secularization. Scholars are primarily interested in the relations between the ROC's highest hierarchies and the leadership of the USSR and the Union republics, while the local dimension of such relations still needs to be addressed. Moreover, the existing historiography deals mainly with the periods of Stalinism and Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign (1954, 1957-1964). While the relatively calm "Era of Stagnation" only begins to attract scholars' attention.
Therefore, this thesis focuses on the local features of state-church relations in the late Soviet period. The locality in focus is the city of Kyiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine. Kyiv was the residence of the Metropolitan, holding the title of Exarch for Ukraine - i.e., representative - of the Moscow Patriarch, leader of ROC. In the second half of the 1960s, the role of the Exarch rose significantly as he was to cope with the Greek Catholic underground activities in the western regions of Soviet Ukraine. As a result, the status of the Exarch's capital also changed: numerous religious delegations from abroad regularly visited Kyiv, as many important international events for the Russian Church took place in the Exarch's residence. In addition, at this time, Kyiv gradually became a popular tourist destination, attracting visitors from other regions of the USSR and abroad. These developments increased the visibility of the Orthodox communities located in Kyiv and directly influenced state-church relations at the local level.
Drawing on a wide range of sources, in particular on archival documents, eyewitness accounts, and the bulk of published materials, this thesis examines the daily work of the local Soviet bureaucrats who were tasked to control the activities of the city's Russian Orthodox communities. First of all, this study focuses on the Commissioner of the Council For Religious Affairs - an official responsible for implementing state policy regarding religious organizations on the ground. Another local institution being addressed are the commissions for "facilitating compliance with the legislation on religious cults," semi-volunteer groups of "local activists" that were subordinate to executive branches (ispolkomy/vykonkomy) of the district councils of deputies. These commissions aimed to help the local Commissioner in his daily work.
By employing methods rooted in historical anthropology, particularly "history from below" and local history, this text analyzes the practices of state control over the Church communities and the "survival strategies" of Orthodox priests and parishioners determined by the oversights of the state officials and activists on the ground.
This study contributes to the discussions about state-church relations in the late Socialism, bringing to the fore the local dimension of practices of state control over the Church and introducing the whole range of sources that until now evaded scholars' attention: minutes of meetings of the volunteer commissions. The eyewitnesses' accounts collected for this study shed light on the state-Church relations from a new perspective.
Keywords: USSR/Soviet Union, Ukrainian SSR/Ukraine, Kyiv and Kyiv Metropolitanate, religion, Orthodox Church and Orthodoxy, Soviet party-state system, Soviet propaganda and ideology, everyday life, personnel policy, religious identity and culture, lived religion, scientific atheism, modernization of religion, memory, volunteer commissions.
