Kateryna Budz
One of the most popular Ukrainian carols is ‘Nova Radist’ Stala’ (‘A New Joy has Come’), which tells the story of the birth of Christ.[1] After the Soviets occupied the Western Ukrainian region of Eastern Galicia[2] during the Second World War, a new interpretation of this carol emerged to reflect the political reality of the time. It started with the words: ‘A sad Christmas Eve in the year forty-six. All over our Ukraine weeping is heard everywhere’.[3] The Stalinist regime sought to eradicate the main sources of opposition in the region, namely the anti-Soviet armed resistance led by Ukrainian nationalists and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), a Byzantine-rite Church in union with Rome. In April 1945, the Church’s leader, Metropolitan Iosyf Slipyi, and all Greek Catholic bishops in the Soviet-held territories were arrested. Soon afterwards, three Greek Catholic priests and the Soviet security police organized a supposedly voluntary ‘reunification’ of the UGCC with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). The campaign culminated in the official abolition of the UGCC at the Lviv pseudo-council (8-10 March 1946).[4] This happened about three months after Christmas Eve, which was celebrated, in line with the Julian calendar, on 6 January.[5] Most Greek Catholic clergy joined the ROC under pressure, while most priests who refused to ‘reunite’ suffered arrests and persecutions.
Yet, Christmas continued to be celebrated on two dates in Soviet Ukraine: on 25 December in the Roman Catholic Church and on 7 January in the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic underground. In Western Ukraine, the number of Roman Catholic parishes dwindled, since local Poles were resettled en masse across the border to the Polish People’s Republic. Following the ‘reunification’ of 1946, the Greek Catholic parishes officially became Russian Orthodox. Being treated preferentially since Stalin allowed the election of the Patriarch in 1943, the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union then suffered a severe blow during Khrushchev’s antireligious campaign of the late 1950s-early 1960s. Even so, Soviet desire to suppress the Greek Catholic Church was stronger than its determination to close places of worship. Christians in Western Ukraine nonetheless continued to maintain their religious practice. Even after the antireligious campaign, about one third of all registered Orthodox churches in the Soviet Union were located in Western Ukraine.[6] Given a strong religious tradition in the region, the Soviets’ tolerating the official ROC in Galciia seemed a ‘lesser evil’ than a potential revival of the UGCC.
Nonetheless, every effort was made by the Soviet regime to ban the celebration of Christmas in general and carol singing in particular. To prevent children from attending church services on Christmas or Easter, schools would often organize trips to the city or forest hikes on feast days.[7] Oleh, the younger brother of Greek Catholic nun Vasyliia Nykolaichuk, was temporarily arrested and permanently expelled from school for allegedly having organized a carol singing procession.[8] The Soviet wish to eradicate religion from the public sphere went so far that even the officially functioning Russian Orthodox Church was allowed no concessions in terms of carol singing. As Bishop Iosyf (Savrash) informed the clergy of Ivano-Frankivsk diocese in December 1964, carol processions, which had occasionally taken place in previous years, would in future result in the withdrawal of the parish priest, with no subsequent appointment of a clergyman there.[9]
While both the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church were formally allowed to operate, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church existed in the underground until 1989. Sharing a faith with the Roman Catholics and a Byzantine rite with the Russian Orthodox, the clandestine Greek Catholics in the Soviet Union resented the official ban on their Church. Hanna Baziuk recalls her visit to a Roman Catholic cathedral in Lviv before Christmas: ‘When I saw Jesus in the manger, how beautiful it was, how people prayed at least in Polish, how calmly they prayed, no one persecuted them... I wept so much, I was so very upset: “When will we be able to all stand together in the holy temple like this and listen to the service like other people do?”’[10] Hearing the beautiful sound of organ in the Latin-rite Catholic church or the carol ‘Bog Predvichnyi’ (‘God Eternal’) in the Lviv Transfiguration church, which functioned as a Russian Orthodox temple during the communist period, Pavlo Mendeliuk, who later became a clandestine priest, shared a similar sentiment: ‘And my soul was in pain. Because Easter or Christmas was celebrated, and we would gather somewhere in a house, if we were lucky enough to have a Divine Liturgy, we did, but if not, we listened to it on the radio’.[11] Indeed, those Greek Catholic believers who found it unacceptable to participate in the Russian Orthodox services celebrated Christmas with the help of the Vatican Radio. The radio broadcasts of the Greek Catholic liturgy provided spiritual support to the members of the ‘silent Church’, as the UGCC was often dubbed during the Cold War era. Not only the Greek Catholics in Western Ukraine[12] but also the Ukrainian Gulag inmates in Siberia benefitted from the broadcasts by the Vatican Radio.[13]
Strikingly, the Ukrainian tradition of the Christmas Eve Holy Supper, consisting of twelve lenten dishes, that is, containing no dairy, meat or eggs, was preserved even in the harsh conditions of the Soviet forced labour camps. A Greek Catholic priest Volodymyr Senkivskyi left a warm memory of the Christmas celebration in Siberia in the letter to his sister, dated 14 January 1956: ‘On Christmas Eve, I was in two community groups and shared not only prosphora,[14] but also traditional Christmas wishes with my fellow countrymen. Obviously, there was no shortage of Ukrainian kutia[15] with honey or our good borscht. There were also canned fish, dried fruit, gingerbread and other treats. And after dinner, our wonderful carols were heard everywhere for a long time’.[16] As follows from Fr Senkivskyi’s letter, on the first two days of Christmas, he celebrated the Divine Liturgy. Moreover, the priest, who operated a circular saw in a sawmill at the woodworking plant, did not go to work on the Christmas day.[17]
For several decades, the Ukrainian Greek Catholics had no opportunity to openly profess their faith. While many attended the Russian Orthodox or the Roman Catholic churches in the meantime, others gathered to pray secretly. The broadcasts of the Greek Catholic liturgy over the Vatican Radio provided them with spiritual support and consolation, especially at the time of big Christian feasts. Despite state control and persecution, the Western Ukrainian believers continued to celebrate Christmas, with traditional Holy Supper and carol singing, whether in Western Ukraine or in the Gulag.
Dr Kateryna Budz is currently a British Academy’s Researchers at Risk Fellow at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. She holds a PhD in History (2016) from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine). Dr Budz specialises in the history of the clandestine Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the Soviet Union.
[1] ‘Nova Radist’ Stala’ (‘A New Joy has Come’). URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkowgkmB4_4 [accessed on 24.01.2025).
[2] This blog looks at the territories of the former Galician Metropolis of the UGCC which became a part of the Soviet Union. In the Soviet documents, the historic region of Galicia was presented as Western Ukraine. While Western Galicia belongs to Poland, Eastern Galicia largely corresponds to current L’viv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk regions of Ukraine. In a broader sense, Western Ukraine also includes Transcarpathia, Volhynia, and some other regions. During the Second World War, the Soviets stayed in Galcia between 1939 and 1941. Following the German occupation, they returned to the region in summer 1944. In Transcarpathia, which was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945, the Greek Catholic Church was abolished in 1949.
[3] One of the most popular versions of ‘Sumnyi Sviatyi Vechir’ is by ‘Haidamaky’. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkowgkmB4_4 (accessed on 09.01.2025).
[4] For more details on the Lviv pseudocouncil, see, for example: Adam DeVille and Daniel Galadza, eds, The ‘Lviv Sobor’ of 1946 and Its Aftermath: Towards Truth and Reconciliation (Boston, 2023).
[5] Before 1 September 2023, the UGCC in Ukraine followed the Julian calendar, which has a thirteen-day difference with the Gregorian calendar. Since September 2023, partly in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the UGCC and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) officially switched to a new calendar, which coincides with the Gregorian calendar for fixed feasts (e.g., Christmas) but retains the old Paschalia (e.g., Easter and the feasts of Easter cycle). Also known as the revised Julian calendar, it is followed by the Romanian Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox Church and many other autocephalous (self-governing) churches. In contrast, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), for example, still use the Julian calendar.
[6] Nathaniel Davis, ‘The Number of Orthodox Churches before and after the Khrushchev Antireligious Drive’, Slavic Review 50.3 (Autumn 1991): 619-20.
[7] Arkhiv Institutu istorii Tserkvy (AIITs) [Archive of the Institute of Church History, Lviv], P-1-1-321, Interview with Fr Mykhailo Sabryha, 30.03.1994, Ternopil. Interviewer: Ya. Stots’kyi, 4.
[8] AIITs, P-1-1-1128, Interview with Sister Vasyliia (Ariadna-Mariia-Olena) Nykolaichuk, 02.06.2000, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast, Kalush rayon, Voinyliv. Interviewer: N. Pavlykivska, 12.
[9] Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady ta upravlinnia Ukrainy, Kyiv [Central State Archive of the Higher Organs of Power and Administration of Ukraine], f. 4648, op. 1, spr. 435, ark. 479.
[10] AIITs, P-1-1-1354, Interview with Hanna Baziuk, 06.04.2002, Lviv oblast, Yavoriv rayon, village Koty. Interviewer: A. Betsa, 11.
[11] AIITs, P-1-1-1115, Interview with Fr Pavlo Mendeliuk, 21.12.1999, Lviv-Kryvchytsi. Interviewer: I. Boiko, 6.
[12] AIITs, P-1-1-270, Interview with Sister Markiiana (Maria) Kolodii, 13.01.1994, Ivano-Frankivsk. Interviewer: N. Pavlykivska, 23.
[13] AIITs, P-1-1-1286, Interview with Ms Hanna Salo, 28.04.2001, Lviv oblast, Zhovkva. Interviewer: M. Salo, 35.
[14] Prosphora is a leavened bread used for liturgical purposes in the Eastern Churches; in this context, prosphora was shared during the Holy Supper, similar to the Christmas wafer in the Roman Catholic tradition.
[15] Kutia is the main dish of the Holy Supper, traditionally made from grains, poppy seeds, nuts, and honey.
[16] Borys Gudziak and Oleh Turii, eds, Zhyttievi istorii pidpil’noi Tserkvy: zbirka interviu [Life Stories of the Underground Church: A Collection of Interviews] (L’viv, 2022), 219.
[17] Ibid., 219-20.