Wessel, Martin Schulze Sysyn, Frank E. Religion, Nation, and Secularization in Ukraine (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 567 The volume can be situated within a recent historiographical trend that challenges more traditional understandings of the Brezhnev ‘stagnation’ period, at the end of which APTART appeared. Traditionally perceived as a time of economic and social ennui, it is now increasingly portrayed as a time characterized by a burgeoning shadow economy, multiple zones of civic engagement and developing alternative youth cultures. APTART can thus be seen as typical of alternative culture of the Brezhnev era, contributing to the development of civil society. Anti-Shows: APTART 1982–84 makes an important step towards the construction of a critical history of curation in the USSR. Although the Russian term kurator (curator) had a limited currency among artistic circles and was primarily associated with KGB officials, the example of APTART demonstrates that the issue of developing new exhibitionary — curatorial — models became a focus of many artists and art professionals at the time. Department of Politics, History & International Relations M. Maximova Loughborough University Wessel, Martin Schulze and Sysyn, Frank E. (eds). Religion, Nation, and Secularization in Ukraine. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, Edmonton, AL and Toronto, ON, 2015. xi + 174 pp. Notes. Index. $24.95 (paperback). Thisisacuriouslynamedcollectionofessays.Accordingtothetitle,thevolume is about religion, nation and secularization in Ukraine. With the exception of Tobias Grill’s chapter on rabbis as agents of modernization, however, every contribution deals with Greek or Roman Catholics. Reading this book might allow one to conclude that there were no other denominations in Ukraine. But Greek and Roman Catholics combined make up about 7.5 per cent of the country’s population. And Orthodox Christians — who, at over 65 per cent, still make up the majority of Ukraine’s believers — do not merit one chapter in the book. On the other hand, as a history of the encounter of Ukrainian Greek Catholic religious culture with Polish Roman Catholics from the 1596 Union of Brest to the 1930s, this slim volume makes a real contribution. Kerstin S. Jobst masterfully describes the different approaches of Greek Catholic Ukrainians and Roman Catholic Poles to St Josaphat Kuntsevych: while the Poles tried to use his cult to build a ‘Catholic International’, the majority of Uniate Galicians rejected it. Burkhard Wöller’s comparison of Polish and Ukrainian historiographies of the Union of Brest — each tradition showed great variety, SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 568 each alternately borrowed from and rejected the other — is similarly thorough and nuanced. The next three contributions can be grouped under the broad rubric of clerics in forging modernization. Michael Moser argues that nineteenth-century Galician Greek Catholic priests were as important as laymen in the Russian empire in developing Modern Standard Ukrainian — and that such Orthodox clerics as Vasyl’ Hreculevyc were as well (Moser is the only contributor to the volume to mention Orthodox Christians as contributing to Ukrainian identity). Tobias Grill illustrates how nineteenth-century rabbis played a major role in modernizing Ukrainian Jewish communities, first tending towards acculturation, and later propagating self-emancipation and Jewish nationalism. Frank Sysyn provides a biographical sketch of the Greek Catholic priest Mykhailo Zubrytsky and his commitment to creating a community of ‘enlightened, patriotic, sober, prosperous, and literate’ Ukrainian villagers. The remaining four chapters treat controversies and conflicts in the first half of the twentieth century. Liliana Hentosh looks at the Ukrainian-Polish War of 1918–19 as a challenge for the Vatican: how could Pope Benedict XV manoeuvre in an armed conflict between two competing Catholic peoples, both trying to build new nation-states on the same territory? This was especially tricky given that the Pope had recognized nationalism as leading to the Great War, and that both Ukrainian and Polish troops committed atrocities on the local populations. Oleh Pavlyshyn examines the calendar reform controversy (Julian ‘Old Style’ versus Gregorian ‘New Style’) among Ukrainian Greek Catholics and their sense of identity versus (Polish) Roman Catholicism and (Russian) Orthodoxy, both in Ukraine and in the diaspora. Martha BohachevskyChomiak focuses on even more charged issues for Greek Catholics, such as Latinization, clerical celibacy and clerical support for the OUN and Ukrainian nationalism broadly speaking (Bishop Kotsylovsky, for example, enraged his flock by banning secular patriotic songs during church services; similar conflicts extended...