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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Soviet Union
Index
The Georgian Orthodox Church, another autocephalous member of
Eastern Orthodoxy, was headed by a Georgian patriarch. In the late
1980s, it had 15 bishops, 180 priests, 200 parishes, and an
estimated 2.5 million followers.
The spread of Christianity in Georgia began in the fourth
century. It became the state religion in the sixth century, and in
1057 the Georgian Orthodox Church became autocephalous. In 1811 the
Georgian Orthodox Church was incorporated into the Russian Orthodox
Church but regained its independence in 1917 after the fall of
tsarism. Nevertheless, the Russian Orthodox Church did not
officially recognize its independence until 1943.
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church
When the metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' moved to Moscow in
the fourteenth century, Ukrainian Orthodox believers were left
without an ecclesiastical leader. From the mid-fifteenth to the
late seventeenth century, the see of Kiev was under the
jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople. In 1686, however,
the Russian government's pressure on Constantinople led to a
transfer of the metropolitan see of Kiev to the jurisdiction of the
patriarch of Moscow.
The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church separated from the
Russian Orthodox Church in 1919, when the short-lived Ukrainian
state adopted a decree in 1919 declaring autocephaly from the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The church's independence was reaffirmed
by the Bolshevik regime in the Ukrainian Republic, and by 1924 the
church had 30 bishops, almost 1,500 priests, nearly 1,100 parishes,
and between 3 and 6 million members.
From its inception, the church faced the hostility of the
Russian Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian Republic. In the late
1920s, Soviet authorities accused the church of nationalist
tendencies. In 1930 the government forced the church to reorganize
as the "Ukrainian Orthodox Church," and few of its parishes
survived until 1936. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian Autocephalous
Orthodox Church continued to function outside the borders of the
Soviet Union, and it was revived on Ukrainian territory under the
German occupation during World War II. In the late 1980s, some of
the Orthodox faithful in the Ukrainian Republic appealed to the
Soviet government to reestablish the Ukrainian Autocephalous
Orthodox Church.
Data as of May 1989
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