Declassification of Soviet Docs on Ukr. Cath. Liquidation

  • Thread starter Thread starter KyivAndrew
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
K

KyivAndrew

Guest
KYIV—The deputy head of the State Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine, Serhii Kokin, said in an interview to the German Wave that the archives of Ukraine contain over a thousand documents confirming that the top leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was involved in the destruction of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, UNIAN reports. RISU’s Ukrainian-language web site posted this story on August 5, 2009.

Kokin says that historians have already declassified 240 documents of the workers of security service of USSR, who watched priests, interrogated and tortured them, and wrote reports for Khrushchev on the basis of their testimonies. He is convinced that the historic truth should be restored. However, he could not say if it will be possible to initiate proceedings and sentence the perpetrators on the basis of these proofs.

“According to Rafael Lemkin, the liquidation of a national church is an attribute of genocide, as it is aimed against a certain group of people. The question arises why exactly the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was liquidated when there were also other denominations,” noted Kokin.

risu.org.ua/eng/news/article;30793/

Me personally, I am glad this is all being thoroughly declassified, at least the documents in Ukraine. (For the secret archives in Russia, don’t hold your breath). I wonder, however, why Nikita Khrushchev’s granddaughter feels it incumbent upon herself to lionize Nikita Khrushchev as a paragon of virtue and new thinking in the Soviet Union in the Western press lately without ever adequately addressing these specific crimes. She too like many others simply dismissed the notion of Ukraine as a nation with its history books being written in Toronto, she said. (Well, one could rebut this was no thanks to the bloody work your grandad had done with Ukrainian intellectuals in the 1930s when he headed the Party there and admitted he was up to his elbows in Ukrainian blood). Thankfully, the fact that now there are many competent Ukrainian-born historians of Ukraine and Church - Plokhy comes to mind is fantastic news just like news of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine being among the highest recognized in Ukraine to achieve international scholarly standards.

It must make for grim reading going through what those priests had to endure and what tortures. I’ve read some others that were previously published.

That the souls of those poor priests may Rest In Peace and that the Church they died for, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic continue to grow under God’s Care! Vichnaya Pamyat.
 
And, here is a list of Ukrainian Catholic martyrs Beatified by His Holiness John Paul the Second during his 2001 visit to Ukraine.

ugcc.org.ua/35.0.html?&L=2

I take it what is required now for sainthood for anyone of these Blessed’s is a miracle accomplished through prayer for their intercession with God for a healing. Would be nice to have a Saint among these holy men and nuns. I’ll try on one for a loved one. God Bless!
 
God bless the martyrs.

Thank you for sharing this information, I’m going to pass the links along-
 
HyeDetroit said:
God bless the martyrs.

Thank you for sharing this information, I’m going to pass the links along-
Click to expand...
Thank You. I am here posting a link for the PRAYER FOR CANONIZATION OF THE SERVANT OF GOD, METROPOLITAN ANDREW SHEPTYTSKYI, who was a great, holy man and who was Head of the Church through all its tribulations in the 20th Century, both world wars, and who died in 1944 before the liquidation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church began. He was such a powerful a figure in Western Ukraine that Stalin and Khrushchev may have waited upon his death before proceeding after World War Two to liquidate the Church. He died naturally as far as we can tell, so not as a martyr.

He was a tremendous leader to his flock always looking out for their welfare no matter what occupant Ukraine found itself under during the time; he saved Jews from the Holocaust hiding them in St. Michael’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral in Lviv during World War Two; he wrote a letter to the head of the German S.S. Himmler during World War Two entitled strikingly “Thou Shalt Not Kill” as the Nazi liquidation machine set off; he vigorously attempted to help and draw world attention to the Great Famine in Soviet-ruled Ukraine (East and Central Ukraine was under the Soviets then, Metropolitan Sheptytsky and western Ukrainians were under Poland, apart from those under Romania or Czechoslovakia) in 1932-33 when perhaps some 5-7 million were purposefully starved by Stalin and the world stood silent. He could have quite easily have been killed for his courage and brazenness.

But God protected Him though he suffered greatly along with his flock.

Here is the link for the Canononization Prayer which anyone with hope for a Miracle can attempt by putting his or her specific illness in the hopes of being healed. Maybe the good Metropolitan and God will hear you? Scroll down to the bottom of the page because the top is in Ukrainian. God Bless.

sheptytsky.ugcc.org.ua/main.php?menu=6&sub=1
 
Thanks so much for posting this KA. Дуже дякую. And for all of our fallen brethren who were victims of the godless, Вічная пам’ять.

n.b. I believe our apostolate in Kansas was the first to be dedicated to the New Martys in the US.
 
"A five-decade-old letter from the Soviet Communist Party archives, made available to RFE/RL’s Russian Service this week as [Russian Patriarch] Kirill was wrapping up his 10-day visit to Ukraine, illustrates the extent to which the patriarch’s predecessors were involved in Stalin’s efforts to wipe out the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in the 1940s.

The letter, from then-Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksy I to the head of the Soviet Council on Religious Affairs, Georgy Karpov, was dated December 7, 1945, when the Kremlin was consolidating control over territories in heavily Catholic western Ukraine after World War II. Karpov was a colonel in the NKVD, a predecessor to the Soviet KGB."

rferl.org/content/SovietEra_Documents_Shed_Light_On_Suppression_Of_Ukrainian_Catholic_Church/1795023.html

Of course, we are dealing with the Sergian ROC of the time put in place after Patriarch Tikhon. Still an acknowledgment of this by today’s ROC would be nice IMHO and there has never been one. God Bless All!
 
*"March 10, 2010, marked the 64th anniversary of the end of the pseudo-synod of 1946 where by decree the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was liquidated in the USSR. The director of the Institute of Church History of the Ukrainian Catholic University Fr. Andrii Mykhaleiko, reports that the fact that the synod of 1946 was held by joint efforts of the Communist party leadership, state structures, and state security services in cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church is proved by documents found by church history study experts in the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine and the Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine.

According to the information of the Institute of Church History of the UCU, before the beginning of World War II the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church counted 2,387 parishes with 3.6 million faithful, had 2,352 eparchial priests, 31 men’s and 121 women’s monasteries and monastic houses. Under the care of the Church operated the Theological Academy and 3 spiritual seminaries, where 480 students studied.

According to the letter, written on September 24, 1949, to first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine M. Khrushchev by the head of the Council on Matters of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Council of Ministers of the USSR G. Karpov, between March 1946 and August 1949 to the ROC were passed “3,001 Uniate parish churches, 1,242 priests, 463 deacons, and 1,018 psalmists in the Zakarpattya, Drohobych, Lviv, and Stanislaviv regions.” * ugcc.org.ua/index.php?L=2

Also, our Church has recently released a movie on the church in the underground and also an exhibit.

One problem, however, is that under the new presidency barely elected in Ukraine from the Donetsk clan, Yanukovych, the state archives are now run by a member of the Communist Party which means any further historical research may dry up.
 
mardukm said:
I would love to see this. Any access online?

Blessings
Click to expand...
So would I Brother Marduk! Unfortunately, I looked for access online and so far it looks like it will be only shown in theaters and churches in Ukraine. As soon as I get a link, hopefully in English, I will post it, and THANK YOU for asking.🙂

God Bless!
Andrew
 
KyivAndrew said:
And, here is a list of Ukrainian Catholic martyrs Beatified by His Holiness John Paul the Second during his 2001 visit to Ukraine.

ugcc.org.ua/35.0.html?&L=2

I take it what is required now for sainthood for anyone of these Blessed’s is a miracle accomplished through prayer for their intercession with God for a healing. Would be nice to have a Saint among these holy men and nuns. I’ll try on one for a loved one. God Bless!
Click to expand...
thanks for this link
 
I’ve just gone through the papal Archives on the acts of the Vatican over WWII, book 3a which describes in detail the plight of Catholics in Soviet controlled Poland and the Ukraine. Its even worse than what happened in German occupied Poland…

Seriously, I’m having a hard time processing the extent of the evil inflicted on religious people during the war.

Szeptyckyj wrote in December 26th, 1939, “In every detail is manifested an incredible hatred of religion, clergy, and one could say even a hatred against man kind in general.” He adds, “One cannot explain this regime except as a mass demonic possession.”

God bless,
Ut
 
utunumsint said:
I’ve just gone through the papal Archives on the acts of the Vatican over WWII, book 3a which describes in detail the plight of Catholics in Soviet controlled Poland and the Ukraine. Its even worse than what happened in German occupied Poland…

Seriously, I’m having a hard time processing the extent of the evil inflicted on religious people during the war.

Szeptyckyj wrote in December 26th, 1939, “In every detail is manifested an incredible hatred of religion, clergy, and one could say even a hatred against man kind in general.” He adds, “One cannot explain this regime except as a mass demonic possession.”

God bless,
Ut
Click to expand...
Yes. Metropolitan Sheptytsky found himself and his flock stuck between the twin evils of Stalin and Hitler, a situation unlike that of Western Europe where the equation was relatively clear between which force constituted freedom and which evil during World War Two. Here one had no choice but two evils. Sheptytsky actually wrote a letter openly to Heinrich Himmler in February 1942 deploring the mass murder of Jews, putting his own life at risk.

In 1939, as the Red Army annexed Western Ukraine in keeping with Stalin’s pact with Hitler (they were allies at the time), Sheptytsky had no choice but to welcome the new occupiers hoping for the best from Stalin. Instead came the mass persecutions. In 1941, again he had no choice but to meet the new occupiers after operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany, hoping that this would be different than the Stalinist persecution. Again, as with the Soviets, twas not to be, but just as evil. Both Hitler and Stalin, the Nazis and the Soviets, were butchers. As the Soviets retook Ukraine from the bloody Nazis in 1944, again a new round of butchery began culminating in the liquidation of the entire Ukrainian Catholic Church.

In August of 1942, Shetytsky wrote to Pope Pius XII:

“`[the Nazi regime], this system of lies, of deceit, of injustice, of pillage, a caricature of every idea of civilization and order; this system of national chauvinism, exaggerated to the absurd, of hatred of everything good and beautiful; this system, which is so phenomenal that one’s first reaction to the sight of the monster is dumbfounded amazement”

In 1943, Sheptytsky asserted that “Germany is worse than Bolshevism”. But he only had so much wiggle room to deal with either totalitarianism and had no idea what equal hell would descend after Stalin took over all of Ukraine for good in 1944. Shortly before he died, in his closing address to the Ukrainian Catholic Lviv Synod of 1944, as he prepared to face another Soviet occupation, he wrote: the coming catastrophe will be, “like none ever experienced by our people. In such times, our only hope is to rely on the mercy and help of Almighty God.”
 
Yes and how horrible this genocide was. Now lets see,after WW2 there were two trials…one in Nurnenburg and the other in Japan…both executed many thugs of leftwing nazism and leftwing Jap imperalism…but I cant seem to recall any such trial re: crimes against humanity…held to try communist thugs…wonder why? Our beloved presz FDR used to refer to the bloody tryant…Stalin…as 'good ole Joe"…hey ya gotta luv em both…its pc…pas
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top