Soviet Policy toward the Ukrainian Catholic Church, 1945-1946

CHAPTER I SOVIET RELIGIOUS POLICY - IDEOLOGICAL OR NATIONALISTIC? Two Legacies: Marxist and Russian Two important events occurred during the Second World War and shortly afterwards in the Soviet Union. One was the restoration to full civil rights of the Russian Orthodox Church, the other the destruction of the Ukrainian (Uhlate) Catholic Church in the Western Ukraine, the last and the only part of the country, in which the Ukrainian Catholic Church had been able to escape both the Tsarist and the Communist persecution. So contradictory a policy toward two Christian Churches, ritually almost identical, may sound strange. Moreover, one might ask: Did not the Communists declare war on God and Church, regardless of religion or rite? Are they not professed atheists and materialists? How come then, the support for religion in one area and its persecution in another