ABSTRACT
With the emergence of the Ukrainian state in 1991, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church retained its unity with the Moscow Patriarchate but faced a definite challenge. Patriotic public opinion urged the Church to break ties with the former imperial center, while a significant number of its believers and clergy were people who still supported subordination to Moscow. This challenge has recently become particularly acute in the context of the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in Donbas. In response to the challenges, the ecclesiastical leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate tried their best to play both sides to preserve the unity of the Church. This chapter is devoted to how this church legitimized itself with the help of historical narratives—what and how did it tell about its past, who was the hero and who was the traitor in this story, and most importantly where and when did the history of the Ukrainian Church itself begin? By analyzing official publications of the Church, this chapter demonstrates how the Church’s leadership created and employs two basic narratives about the Church’s past—one legitimizing the unity of the Russian Church and reflecting “the leading role of Russian culture,” and another with “displayed Ukrainian identity,” in which Russia became a violator of the rights of the Kyiv Metropolis.
