Merkulov was still haranguing Ukrainian state security, demanding ever more

decisive measures against the OUN. He ordered his forces to prepare yet an-
other wave of arrests: “A savage and just blow must be delivered to enemies
conducting disruptive work against Soviet power,” he wrote, “in order to ensure
calm and security for the workers of these oblast’s”55 It was already too late for
such measures, however; the OUN would continue to be a thorn in the Soviet
flesh throughout the war, and even after. Indeed, Stepan Bandera would actu-
ally survive Merkulov himself, who would be shot in 1953 during the purge of
the NKVD-NKGB that followed Stalin’s death.56

The Role of Religion

Histories of the Soviet occupation of the western borderlands have ignored the
centrality of local churches in the process. Only with the opening of Soviet
archives after 1991 has it become possible to see just what importance Soviet
authorities themselves placed on undermining organized religion in their
newly acquired domains. This should have been no surprise; in the USSR itself,
after all, Communist authorities had been unable to extinguish Russian Ortho-
doxy and other religions despite two decades of repression. In the western bor-
derlands, the religious situation was even more dangerous from the Soviet
point of view. Not only were local churches still thriving, with large numbers of
followers, but also they were hotbeds of anti-Soviet nationalist feeling. Further-
more, the most numerous religions in the region — Roman Catholic, Uniate,
and Jewish — all had strong transborder ties. To penetrate, neuter, and ulti-
mately subjugate these religions became a cardinal aim of Soviet occupation
policy.
Religious connections were vital to the resistance in western Ukraine; espe-
cially important in this respect was the Greek Catholic, or Uniate, Church,
under the leadership of the Ukrainian nationalist Metropolitan Sheptyt’sky.
The deputy chief of the NKGB’s Third Directorate, Ivan Shevelev, noted: “In
their anti-Soviet work, the OUN widely use the aid and influence of the Uniate
clergy. The leadership of the OUN is directly connected with the L’vov metropol-
itan Sheptitskii [sic].” The church provided the OUN with printing presses as
well as safe venues for clandestine meetings. Even more important were Uniate-
run schools that acted as breeding grounds for anti-Soviet nationalism: “The
OUN underground pays great attention to work among the young,” Shevelev
wrote, “especially among schoolchildren and students, assigning their more ex-
perienced cadres of illegals for creation and leadership of ‘uniatsva.’ ”57

44 the church redux

 The Greek Catholic Church and its head Sheptyt’sky enjoyed great popular-
ity among the western Ukrainian population, as even Soviet internal docu-
ments ruefully admitted. The occupiers therefore moved methodically and
deliberately against the church, banning the printing and sale of religious pub-
lications, seizing and in many cases occupying church property, and closing
church-run schools and seminaries. An American Catholic priest resident in
eastern Poland when the Soviets arrived describes what followed:

The Church itself became a special target for attack. The Oriental Rite
[Greek Catholic] church at our mission was closed immediately; the Latin
Rite parish was allowed to function for a while for those few families who
dared to attend. The rest of our mission buildings were taken over by the
Red Army and used to quarter troops. A propaganda campaign was mounted
against the Church and against the priests; we labored under a campaign of
constant harassment and incidents large and small. And it was effective.
Even the most faithful became cautious about visiting the church or seeing a
priest. Young people dropped away quickly. Workers soon learned they could
lose their jobs if they insisted upon attending religious services.58

While thus slowly strangling the church, the Soviets did not impose the full
range of antireligious measures in force throughout the rest of the USSR. Chil-
dren could still be given a religious education, though only in private; and con-
gregations and clergy did not yet have to register with the state. Registration,
one of the more onerous forms of harassment in the USSR, enabled authorities
to identify individual believers and to take action against them at the state’s
convenience.59 Despite this go-slow approach, Uniate clergy only needed to
look east to see what lay in store for them. Priests were therefore natural collab-
orators with the nationalist resistance, even though Sheptyt’sky himself refused
openly to endorse armed resistance.
Roman Catholic priests were equally inclined to join, or even lead, anti-
Soviet nationalist movements. In those parts of western Belorussia that con-
tained substantial Polish populations, the “Union of Armed Struggle” (the SVB
in the Soviet acronym) sprang up to contest Soviet occupation. Composed of
former officers and men of the Polish army who had somehow evaded capture
by the Nazis or Soviets, this group operated a clandestine radio station and pre-
pared for an armed uprising should circumstances become favorable. Accord-
ing to Soviet intelligence, the Roman church provided critical support: “The
leadership of the SVB in its anti-Soviet work use the Catholic clergy, its mate-
rial means and significant influence on the Polish population. Priests took and

religion and nationality 45

take active part in the creation and in particular the financing of anti-Soviet
Polish formations, harbor illegals, organize in the churches and monasteries se-
cret rendezvous quarters and underground printing presses.”60
In Lithuania as well, one of the more effective leaders of the resistance was
a Roman Catholic priest, Adam Stankevich, who worked to merge Lithuanian
and Belorussian anti-Soviet groups in an umbrella organization, the Belo-
russkii tsentr v Litve. The NKGB admitted that Stankevich “has great authority
among Belorussian nationalists.” He had been one of the leaders of the Chris-
tian Democratic Party before the Soviet invasion, and for the time being the
NKGB felt it politic not to arrest him, fearing unpredictable public reactions.
Instead, they carefully monitored his activity in Vilnius, presumably hoping to
net his collaborators. An NKGB memorandum said that “‘The Christian Dem-
ocrats’ have as their task the creation of an ‘independent’ bourgeois Belorus-
sian state. As a path toward the achievement of this goal they promote a ‘union
of all Belorussian people on the basis of a new religion’ preached by priest
Adam Stankevich.” In fact, this was not a new religion at all, but rather an at-
tempt to bring together Orthodox and Catholics in the face of a common
threat. Stankevich’s party was especially troublesome to the Soviets, because it
had strong roots not only in the cities but also in the countryside, where it was
even more difficult to eradicate. Shevelev complained to Moscow that, “ ‘The
Christian Democrats’ use their earlier significant influence among the peasants
of western Belorussia and had their cells in villages.”61
As if such groups operating within Soviet borders were not headache enough,
Soviet intelligence was aware that the Nazis were dabbling in Ukrainian reli-
gious and nationalist politics, hoping to exploit fissures within the USSR in the
event of a future invasion. Shevelev wrote:

The Germans widely demonstrate their support of the Ukrainian national-

ist movements. The premises of clubs and theaters [in Nazi-occupied Poland]
were handed over to Ukrainians. Polish churches and even the famous
Kholm Orthodox Cathedral were given to Ukrainian [Uniate] churches. On
the recommendation of the Germans, the former minister of education in
the government of Petliura,62 Professor [Ivan Ivanovich] Ogienko [Ohi-
ienko], was chosen to be archbishop of Kholm.

Both the Nazis and the Soviets were playing the game of dividum et imperium.
In the Nazi case, this involved wooing Ukrainians at the expense of Poles, who
were already under German domination and could therefore be abused with
relative impunity. The Soviets appealed to Ukrainian national feeling by claim-
ing that Moscow had “liberated” western Ukraine from its Polish masters and

46 the church redux

had unified Ukraine for the first time in modern history. In addition, the So-
viets opened Ukrainian-language schools, a Ukrainian university in L’vov, and
gave land to western Ukrainian bedniaks hoping to wean them away from the
OUN.63
Such relatively small cultural and economic concessions could scarcely com-
pensate for the full-scale war Soviet authorities were simultaneously conduct-
ing against Ukrainian society. So, in addition to direct repression of OUN ac-
tivists, Moscow also sought to sever the organization’s roots by moving against
local churches. The arrest of nationalist priests suspected of collaboration with
the underground was an especially delicate matter. During two decades of anti-
religious campaigning the Communists had learned the hard way that guile
and tact were required in such questions. Too crude an approach could actually
provoke armed resistance from otherwise intimidated villagers. The NKGB in
Moscow therefore warned its local representatives to prepare arrests very care-
fully in order to avoid unnecessary collateral damage: “[D]uring the removal of
[Orthodox] priests and Roman Catholic priests,” Moscow advised, “it is neces-
sary to think through all questions thoroughly, in order to exclude noise and
excesses in the village. For this, make provision for clock and church bells.”64
In addition to repression, even if cautiously undertaken, the Soviets em-
ployed a more subtle tool: the Russian Orthodox Church. Ironically, as one his-
torian notes, the Nazi-Soviet Pact “probably saved the Russian Orthodox Church
from extinction.”65 The newly acquired territories contained a large population
of Orthodox believers whose churches were, of course, still in operation when
the Soviets arrived. There were so few open churches in the USSR itself after
two decades of atheist campaigns that those in the borderlands probably con-
stituted more than 70 percent of the total by 1941.66 The largest concentrations
were in western Belorussia and Bessarabia, but there were also significant pock-
ets of Orthodoxy in western Ukraine and the Baltic states, especially in Estonia.
In the NKVD’s view, each church represented a possible rallying point for re-
sistance to Soviet rule.
The inhabitants of the western borderlands therefore witnessed the strange
spectacle of the Red Army’s arrival with a handful of Russian Orthodox hier-
archs trailing quietly in its wake. The Orthodox prelates immediately set to
work subordinating independent, or even nationalist, parishes to the authority
of the Moscow Patriarchate. Even though the head of the Russian church, Met-
ropolitan Sergii, was still only locum tenens and would not be elected patriarch
until September 1943, nonetheless the Patriarchate itself claimed jurisdiction
over most of the western borderlands. This claim was of many centuries’ stand-
ing and had often been used by various tsars to enhance their foreign and do-

religion and nationality 47

mestic policies along the western border of the Russian Empire. Now, the athe-
ist Soviet state was following the example of such reactionary nationalist tsars
as Nicholas I by using the Russian church to assist the imposition of Russian
rule in the fluid borderlands.67
The chief ecclesiastical agent of Moscow during this process was Nikolai,
metropolitan of Kiev and Galych, a controversial figure who would become
prominent during the war as the chief executor of the church’s relations with
the outside world. His lieutenant in this murky affair was the perhaps even
more controversial Sergii (Voskresenskii),* a comparatively young and appar-
ently very able bishop whose rise in the church has been described as “mete-
oric.” Sergii was one of only four bishops to survive the golgotha of the 1930s,
and it was widely believed in Moscow’s religious circles, where he was despised,
that he had done so because of his close collaboration with the NKVD.68 In
1939 Sergii was sent to Volhynia to subject the local Christian population to
Muscovite control. In 1940, following the seizure of the Baltic states, he was ap-
pointed metropolitan of Lithuania and exarch to Estonia and Latvia. This was
possibly an unwise and certainly a fateful choice: despite his record of compli-
ance with the NKVD, Sergii had reason to oppose the Soviets, since his father
had been arrested and sent to a concentration camp in 1935. (Fear for his fam-
ily’s well-being may also explain his collaboration with the secret police.)
Whether owing to vengeful feelings toward the Soviet state or sheer oppor-
tunism, following the Nazi invasion he would ignore direct orders to retreat
with Soviet forces, instead hiding in Riga Cathedral as that city fell, only to
emerge later to cooperate with the Germans.69
Little is known about the mechanics of Nikolai’s operation, because it seems
to have been directed by the NKVD, and the relevant documents have not yet
been made available. Nonetheless, several points emerge: despite years of severe
repression, the Moscow Patriarchate willingly collaborated with Soviet annex-
ationist aims; not only did Nikolai and Sergii (Voskresenskii) impose Mus-
covite control over extant Orthodox parishes, they also sought to undermine
the Greek Catholic Church through “forced conversion to Orthodoxy.”70 The
whole undertaking involved the arrest, deportation, and even liquidation of
certain recalcitrant clerics. Whether Nikolai and Sergii actually fingered those
to be repressed is unknown, but they could not have been unaware that such
things were occurring and that they were complicit.71 This operation was
greatly enhanced by the legacy of anti-Orthodox repression by the prewar
regimes in the region. Nikolai and his confederates could not eradicate anti-

*Not to be confused with Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodskii), the acting patriarch.

48 the church redux

Soviet religious opposition, but they could and did drive wedges into the
enemy camp.

On the Eve
When Barbarossa erupted, a great question mark hung over the USSR: would
Soviet subjects fight for the Communist regime, for the government of Stalin
that had victimized millions of the very people to whom it now turned in des-
peration, asking them to lay down their lives? There was ample reason to be-
lieve that many would not. Stalin himself was apparently one of the doubters.
At a Kremlin victory celebration on May 24, 1945, he would admit: “Our gov-
ernment made not a few errors, we experienced at moments a desperate situ-
ation in 1941– 42, when our army was retreating, because there was no other
way out. A different people would have said to the government: ‘You have failed
to justify our expectations. Go away. We shall install another government
which will conclude peace with Germany. . . .’ The Russian people, however,
did not take this path.”72 The dictator’s emphasis on the Russian — not the
Soviet—people was no slip of the tongue. As the experience of war would soon
show, ethnic Russians were more reliable recruits for the Soviet war effort than
were members of minority nationalities.
From the outset of war, Moscow could not comfortably count on the loyalty
of its subjects, especially the non-Russian nationalities who inhabited the west-
ern borderlands, precisely the area that lay directly in the path of the Nazis’
blitzkrieg. The largest of the republics most vulnerable to the German forces,
Ukraine, had perhaps suffered disproportionately from Stalin’s policies. Not
only had millions of Ukrainians perished in the man-made famines of the col-
lectivization less than a decade earlier, but also during the intervening years
Moscow had waged vigorous war on any nascent signs of Ukrainian national-
ism.73 The NKVD had arrested thousands of Ukrainian political figures and
prominent intellectuals suspected of “bourgeois nationalism.” And Ukrainian
churches had been shut down or destroyed, as had so many in Russia itself.74
The result may have been a cowed population, but it was also one sullenly and
bitterly suspicious of the Communist regime.
The situation in the other western republics was, if anything, even worse
from the Soviet point of view. Here, Moscow’s rule had not yet been consoli-
dated before the outbreak of Barbarossa. In the three Baltic states, western Be-
lorussia, and Bessarabia, Soviet occupation policies were manifest failures.
Local populations continued to resist Soviet power, and religion remained an
untamed and politically significant force. The program of subordinating local

religion and nationality 49