THE PUBLIC, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ACTIVITY OF BISHOP POLICARP (HUTS)

Abstract

The historical circumstances of the archpastoral service of Polycarp (Huts), the bishop of Donetsk and Luhansk and the first hierarch of the Kyivan Patriarchate in the Donbass, still remain one of the least investigated pages of the Ukrainian local Church history. Despite the fact thatthe problem of the Ukrainian Church history of 1990’s has been studied by many researchers, there is a large number of questions, concerning the events of the institutional formation of Donetsk-Luhansk diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyivan Patriarchatethat require elaboration. Nowadays on the basis of the earlier unknown material it is possible to expand the generalpicture of the events mentioned above and explore the unique afterliturgical activity of the main figure of this process – Bishop Polycarp (Huts). That is why the main purpose of the article is to gain insight into the circumstances of the public, social and political activity of Polycarp (Huts) (1988 – 1993), the bishop of Donetsk and Luhansk. The originality of the article consists in an attempt to research the events of the Donbass Church history without traditional historicalclichés, since in this case it should consider all the trends of the Ukrainian Church life of the 20th century. In our strong opinion, the ignorance of the deep needs of the interecclesiastic life’s normalization led to the schism in the Church. In the early 1990`s Bishop Polycarp (Huts) managed to lay the foundation for the process of the institutionalization of the UOC-Kyivan Patriarchate in the Donbass region and initiate a series of urgent social projects that, unfortunately, were not fully realized due to the complicated social, political and economic situation of the first years of Ukraine’s independence, and especially due to the premature death of the hierarch. The historical analysis of the activities of Bishop Polycarp gives ground to assert that the proclaimed liberalization from the religious policy of the post-totalitarian state never found its practical embodiment in real life. The history of the schism in the Orthodox Church in the Donbass proves that the fundamental aspect of the division was the subconscious desire of a part of the clergy to restore the totalitarian form of church-state relations with the possibility of regulating the Church’s activity in social life. In conclusion, it is worth mentioning that studying the Donbass local Church history isnowadays complicated by a difficult political situation in the region. Unfortunately, the material of Luhansk and Donetsk archives is unavailable for the Ukrainian studies, but the gradual actualization of this problem paves the wayfor good prospects for its future research.