ABSTRACT
The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) officially ceased to exist in 1944 within the territory of Ukraine with the arrival of the Soviet Red Army and return of Communist Party rule. The Stalin-approved Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) of the Moscow Patriarchate became the sole staterecognized Eastern Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Ukraine had the largest European population without being an independent state as it fell fully under the political control of the authorities in Moscow. The ROC soon became the only Eastern Christian Church with the Moscow imposed liquidation in 1946 of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Although the ROC ruled supreme in Ukraine, a connected Metropolitan Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate existed in Kiev for the Ukrainian Republic that would respond to autocephalous tendencies among Orthodox and Greek Catholic Christians. A UAOC existed outside the borders of Ukraine amidst a significant and, after the Second World War, enlarged Ukrainian diaspora, especially in North America alongside an even stronger diaspora of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC). Although the UAOCwas not formally recognized in the USSR, the Orthodox
Church in Ukraine was relatively stronger in adherents, clergy and faithful than the Orthodox Church in Russia. The Ukrainian component of the Russian Orthodox Church created the foundation of a rebirth of a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church ideal toward the end of the USSR’s existence and the eventual formation of three Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdictions.
