UOC isn’t banned, just ‘de-Russified’? Neither was UGCC under Stalin then

Sviatoslav Shevchuk. Photo: Zhyve Television

UGCC head Sviatoslav Shevchuk has come up with a new argument to justify the authorities’ persecution of the UOC. In an interview with Livyi Bereh, he expressed regret that government officials had openly begun talking about eliminating the UOC. Apparently, that was the wrong tactic – they should have been smarter about it.

“I think one of our weaknesses was that we started talking about eliminating a Church at all. That is not quite right. What we should be talking about is protecting believers’ feelings from being exploited by the aggressor state,” Shevchuk said.

He explains that because of this misstep by the authorities, international defenders of the UOC have begun speaking out about its persecution. As a result, Shevchuk and his colleagues, seeking to shield the Ukrainian government from criticism, now have to “explain to the whole world that freedom of conscience is by no means being curtailed in Ukraine.”

According to him, “simply eliminating some structure is not enough, simply banning it is not enough.” What is needed is to “de-Russify” and “de-Moscowize” the consciences and souls of Ukrainians.

And that raises an obvious question. If the Ukrainian authorities are not banning the UOC but merely “de-Moscowizing” Ukrainian souls, wasn’t the Soviet government doing exactly the same thing to the Uniates in 1946? By Shevchuk’s logic, Stalin never banned the UGCC or curtailed freedom of conscience – he simply “freed” the souls of the Uniates from Bandera ideology.

For some reason, however, the UGCC head does not put it that way.

So what’s the difference?

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