RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW OF THE SYNODAL PERIOD OF UKRAINIAN ORTHODOXY

Abstract

The article examines the influence of imperial ideas on the genesis of the Russian autocracy from the proclamation of the Russian Empire by Peter I to the modern stage of the dictator Putin’s efforts to revive the neo-empire and the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in this process, which included Ukrainian Orthodoxy. It is emphasized that imperial chauvinistic thinking and traditions have been preserved from the 18th century to the present day and were expressed in the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation in February 2022 in Ukraine. It is noted that Feofan Prokopovich’s ideological discourse, which began under Peter I, was completed in the 1930s by the doctrine of Count Serhiy Uvarov, at that time the deputy minister of education, the doctrine of Russian identity, which consisted of three fundamental components: Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality, which every subject king’s had to observe. It is emphasized that the Ukrainian clergy, which at the beginning of the 18th century played a dominant role in the development of Russian Orthodoxy, which in terms of its educational and cultural level was significantly ahead of the representatives of the Russian Church, occupied high positions in the Russian state at the end of the century, began to lose their positions. The article proves that the strengthening of the Russification of the Ukrainian population in general, and in the religious population in particular, had a negative impact on the development of the national identity, culture of the Ukrainian people, and self-affirmation in the spiritual and religious sphere. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the complete subordination of church life to the state institution of the synod, the limitation of the independent management of church communities, the deprivation of the right to elect priests and hierarchs, the total subordination of the activity of metropolitans, spiritual and religious educational institutions turned the church into an influential ideological institution for the education of believers in the interests of Ukrainian autocracy and unification churches according to the Russian model. It is emphasized that the implementation of Uvarov’s doctrine in everyday life laid the foundations of the “Russian world” narrative, which was realized in the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022.