Liquidation of the Church Union in Belarus According to Vasil Lencyk („The Eastern Catholic Church and Czar Nicholas I”)

Abstract

As a result of the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the eighteenth century more than half of 4 million faithful of the Uniate Church in the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian lands fell under Russian rule. The theory and practice of religious and ethnic policies of the Russian Empire had not allowed the existence of East Slavic Christians minority not subject to the Great Russian Orthodoxy but associated with Rome and Latin culture. The first dissolution of the Church Union performed immediately after the partitions of Poland proved to be only partially successful for tsarist regime. Another liquidation of Church Union during the reign of tsar Nicholas I, completed in 1839, was carried out in the so-called Taken Lands (Western Krai) on the right bank of the Bug River following a carefully prepared and consistently implemented plan of “reforms” of the rite in the Great Russian and Orthodox spirit until completely merge into the state religion. The Work of Vasil’ Lencik, American historian of Ukrainian origin, was the first attempt to bring the researchers and the general public in the Western world the issue of the controversial religious policy of the Russian state in the first half of the nineteenth century. The author argued that the objectives of tsarist religious policy was the complete unification of the East Slavic inhabitants of Belarus and its neighbouring lands with Russia, breaking all ties of hierarchy and clergy with the Latin and Polish culture influence and the destruction of emerging national consciousness among Ukrainian and Belarussian population.