INTERVIEW: Dr. Borys Gudziak on the revival of religion in Ukraine (04/14/96)

INTERVIEW: Dr. Borys Gudziak on the revival of religion in Ukraine

Dr. Borys Gudziak received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1992, writing on the history and genesis of the Union of Brest (1596). Currently he is director of the Institute of Church History (which he founded) at the Lviv Theological Academy and vice-rector of the academy. Dr. Gudziak will conduct a course on modern Ukrainian history at the 1996 Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute.

In anticipation of this and Dr. Gudziak's forthcoming book on the Union of Brest ("Crisis and Reform," to be published by HURI and Harvard University Press), HURI conducted an interview with Dr. Gudziak during his recent visit to Cambridge.

Q: You have been in Lviv since 1992. What are your impressions of the changes that have been going on in that society from a political and sociological point of view? And from the point of view of your own particular interests?

A: Well, I think many of us who grew up with an image of Ukraine - whether we were professional students of her history or not - were both galvanized and surprised, gratified and in some ways perhaps disappointed by the realities we have come to know in the last few years.

When I arrived in 1992 the period of exaltation was still there although strongly waning. I think it is very important to keep in mind the psychological atmosphere in Ukraine when trying to characterize any particular aspect of contemporary Ukrainian life. Right now people in Ukraine are enduring a time of trial, a time when many of the expectations of a few years ago are proving to have been overly high and unrealistic. Sometimes that leads to very negative characterizations of present developments in the country.

I think that Ukraine, as a state that is 95 years old, has made some very significant steps towards political nation-building in terms of government structure and army reorganization. Much more needs to be done in the area of the economy. Economic crises or economic problems have hardly been confronted head on by the government, but oddly enough I think there are signs that the average person is beginning to take personal responsibility - which is very important. The problem with the socialist legacy is that the average person relied on the state for job, salary, security. That guarantee is no longer there and now after three or four years of having lost that guarantee, people are starting finally to react and show initiative. I think that dynamic is evident everywhere.

So, to summarize, the euphoria is long over, and I would say that the depression after the euphoria is also coming to an end, and there is a steep stabilization occurring that involves a basic and increasing readiness to confront the problems in every sphere of life.

Q: One of the reasons for the euphoria is presumably the fact that two of the greatest aspirations of Ukrainians were the establishment of the Ukrainian state and the establishment of free Churches, but now that those two goals have been achieved there is still the special relationship between that new state and those recently liberated Churches. How do you see that Church-state relationship, particularly in its historical context?

A: The role of the Churches in Ukrainian history can hardly be overestimated. I think we post-moderns are sometimes not sensitive to historical facts, and anyone who carefully observed developments in Eastern Europe in the last few decades and years, sees how the Church can express, not only in western Ukraine but in all of Ukraine and Russia, very broad concerns of the population at large and political culture and ideological concerns that have always been part of the vocabulary of Ukrainian Christianity. It is an inculturated phenomenon.

At the same time, very advanced secularization has occurred during this century so this historical legacy is now confronted with a post-modern social, cultural reality and both the state and Churches are still searching for a modus operandi. Both politically and ecclesiastically, there is a want of creative leadership.

In the 20th century there has been remarkable ecclesiastical leadership in Ukraine, some remarkable personalities. Now we do not have those kinds of outstanding individuals. Thus some of the developments are less dramatic. But I think the traditional Churches are having a difficult time accepting pluralist society and the fact that Ukraine will now be a multi-confessional society, one in which the traditional religious communities no longer necessarily dominate. There are many interesting questions therein, and it is by studying the history and knowing the legacy of the present context that it can be well understood.

Q: Two other trends of recent Ukrainian history have been the nationalist movement and the Ukrainian struggle for cultural revival. Religion and nationalism have had a complicated relationship and have combined in different ways in Ukraine and in other countries. How does that relationship now stand in its historical context, and how do religion and culture relate today and in the past?

A: The image of the Ukrainian traditionally has been conditioned very much by religious categories and the aspiration for nationhood. The complexities between national ideology and religious identity weave through Ukrainian history from the Christianization of Kyivan Rus' through the early modern period with reformations throughout Europe, when the question of Ukraine's position between East and West was variously debated and the controversial Union of Brest occurred - through the 19th and 20th centuries, when the autocephalous movement in eastern Ukraine and the Greco-Catholic Church in western Ukraine were a constituent element of the modern Ukrainian revival. In most recent affairs we see how prominent Church communities were articulating a desire for nationhood.

Now the question is: Can this contemporary state and the Churches develop a mutually life-giving relationship? That is the contemporary challenge. In my course I will discuss the historical legacy with an eye to the contemporary dilemma - nation building and the religious dynamic.

Q: And what about contemporary culture and religion?

A: In the contemporary West there is a great spiritual hunger, and this now is found throughout Ukraine, with people looking for nourishment from new sources. The challenge for the traditional Ukrainian Church is to address the spiritual aspirations of the post-modern, post-Soviet society. It is a tremendous challenge. This is a time when many of the presuppositions of 2,000 years of Christianity are being challenged throughout Christendom - and no less so in Ukraine.

I'm convinced that a very interesting synthesis will come out of the present challenge in Ukraine, because there are a variety of Eastern and Western meeting points. There has been a basis for strong religious movements and strong formulations. Many young people are very serious about religion on a personal level rather than an intellectual level, examining the issue of spirituality, religious life and culture. What does it mean? The religious society and new state, and how does one express that? I think that there will be a truly fruitful rearticulation of Ukraine; this is just beginning.

Let me give you an example of the image of contemporary Ukraine and this picture paints a thousand words. If one goes into a remote Ukrainian village, one is apt to see a house that has no indoor plumbing. It has a little outhouse facility, but the house may be adorned by a big satellite dish. Basically we have a community that is passing from the pre-modern era, overstepping the modern period, and stepping into the post-modern world. This villager who may be attending his or her parish church flips on the TV and has all kinds of preaching, spiritual messages, readily available in the living room, and the question is how will all of these messages be assimilated?

Q: Can you say something about the Institute of Church History, the Lviv Theological Academy and your involvement with them?

A: I am the director of the Institute of Church History and vice-rector of the Theological Academy. I am responsible for academic and scholarly development, academic and research development.

The Institute of Church History grew out of a research project that is the study of history of the underground life of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church. It began in 1992, and over the years the research staff of the institute has collected over 700 interviews with various representatives of the underground and also with those who observed the underground from the outside. The institute has been running a program with 18 one day-symposia in different cities in Ukraine surrounding the controversial issue of the Union of Brest, and we will be publishing seven volumes of the conference proceedings on monographic studies and also issues together with the Institute for Historical Research at a Lviv University journal called Kovcheh with articles on Church history.

The goal of the institute is to contribute to the revival of the discipline which for obvious reasons could not develop in Ukraine. The institute also served as an administrative base for the revival of the Lviv Theological Academy.

The academy harkens back to the institution founded by Metropolitan [Andrey] Sheptytsky and organized by Rector Josyf Slipyj in the late 1920s and 1930s. However, it transcends the parameters of that institution by opening its doors to laity, including women. Plus, the academy has become the first institution of higher learning in Ukraine's history that offers a full theological philosophical program open to women. It also is open to students of any confessional background or, in fact, lack thereof.

The academy now has 200 students in its first two years of operation. A full five- to six-year program is being phased in so that by the end of the decade it will have about 600 students, at which time the development of a separate school of humanities and a faculty for social sciences is planned - then the academy will develop into a liberal arts university.

This year there are 36 lecturers teaching at the academy. We enjoy a very high faculty-to-student ratio. Many of our classes are limited to 10 students - especially the language classes. There is a premium on philological preparation. All students are required to master English, study Greek for three years, Latin for two, Church Slavonic and another foreign language besides a standard array of philosophical courses. The theology program stresses scriptures, Christic writings and liturgy, but also analysis of culture. One example of that is the courses the students will take devoted to the study of film.

Q: Just out of curiosity, what is the proportion of women?

A: The student body is composed of 120 seminarians who are all young men, and of laypeople and some members of religious communities. Of the 80 non-seminarians, 50 or so are women.

Q: The Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard will be publishing your book. Could you tell us something about the subject and how you became interested in it?

A: The book is about the genesis of the Union of Brest and it focuses on one aspect, which despite the great deal of attention that the union has received, has received little notice - the relationship between the Kyivan Metropolitan and the Patriarchy of Constantinople in the period before the Union of Brest. The union after all was not only a movement towards Rome but in fact, adversely affected the relationship of the Eastern Catholic Church with its Mother Church, the See of Constantinople.

Basically, the book tries to understand how the Union occurred and explains why at least some people, some ecclesiastical leaders and even prominent lay leaders who may or may not have supported the union later, like Princess Hroska, did consider the union as a viable, and indeed necessary, step to take.

The whole question was posed by my more personal story, being in an Eastern Catholic Church, in the Ukrainian Catholic Church. I've been to seminary. I really found the position of Eastern Catholics in many ways enigmatic, and I was interested in seeing how we got to that position.

Q: What about your background? You were born here in the States - how did you become interested in the subject?

A: Well, I felt the call of the priesthood when I was a teenager in the mid-'70s. Both personally and historically that was not an easy time to go through such inclinations, and I went to the seminary in Rome and studied under Patriarch Josyf Slipyj, one of the few Ukrainian leaders of the 20th century who I think had a clear vision of where he wanted to lead his community. In many of his projects he was more or less effective in bringing them to life.

One point in his agenda was stressing the role and the importance of intellectual life in the life of a Church, and a group of us young seminarians became inspired by his example and took the path of scholarship. I think he also reminded the diaspora community of the vitality of the Church in Ukraine and spoke about the need to be in solidarity with the Mother Church. So a number of us actually...well we were seminarians of the new archdiocese in the '70s and '80s, as abstract as that seemed.

When things changed I had an opportunity to, first as a graduate student, spend a good deal of time in Eastern Europe and Ukraine and Poland and then, after defending my dissertation, to move to Ukraine and work on the intellectual elaboration of the Christian legacy. I had a chance to go to Ukraine and work for the development of institutions that will help others gain a deeper knowledge and appreciation of each Eastern Christian tradition.

Q: How did you experience the students at Harvard?

A: Well, it was a big change coming from the seminary in Rome to Harvard. That is an understatement, but I would say that my religious commitment was bolstered by my nine years in graduate school here. I was challenged to confront many different questions by people that did not always share my views or my commitments, but I can say that on a profound level I also found a lot of support and understanding from scholars who may have been very puzzled by some of my priorities - and I'm grateful for that respect.

Q: Finally, if you could say a few words about the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute course and some of the things you hope to achieve in the course. What do you want to put forward to your students?

A: Each of us has a story, and to really get to know a person you must hear that story. Today the personality of Ukraine is very complex and at first sight it may seem impenetrable. One way to understand it better is to hear Ukraine's story. This course will try, in a rather brief time, to give the student an understanding of the historical legacy - particularly cultural and religious - that has shaped modern Ukraine beginning from the dramatic transformations of the early modern period leading up to 1996.

The course will incorporate readings and visual material. Musical recordings will also be used to illustrate what sometimes escapes expression in words and in text. I hope that the students taking this course will emerge with an appreciation and understanding of those various processes which have come to shape Ukraine as it is today.

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