Yelensky: The UAOC is a center of hostile nationalist elements

Young Yelensky. Photo: RISU

Excerpts from an article written by the current head of the Department for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), Viktor Yelensky, in 1988 have been published online. At the time, Yelensky worked at the Institute of Scientific Atheism. The article, titled “Implementation of the Decree ‘On the Separation of Church from State and School from Church’ in the Early Years of Socialist Construction in the Ukrainian SSR”, praised Lenin and his methods of destroying the Church.

In particular, young Yelensky strongly criticized the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), which opposed Lenin's decree. He stated that the UAOC, "created by ardent bourgeois nationalists and Petliurist henchmen, after the defeat of the counter-revolution, turned into a legal center around which hostile nationalist elements consolidated."

“The UAOC became a legal center of attraction for hostile nationalist elements against the people's government,” Yelensky wrote. He noted that “some scholarly works point out that one of the main reasons for the comparatively long-lasting influence of the UAOC on the peasant masses was its leaders’ shameless exploitation of nationalist sentiments.”

“The party organizations of the republic launched a decisive struggle to expose the autocephalic leadership as direct accomplices of the yellow-blue counterrevolution. It was isolated, and its influence on the masses was undermined,” Yelensky emphasized.

It should be noted that the UAOC today is an integral part of the OCU (Orthodox Church of Ukraine).

Earlier, the UOJ analyzed why Yelensky praised Lenin.

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