Hmm, that’s… unfortunate. Sounds like most of the people in countries like Ukraine could actually be put off from Orthodoxy if they were addressed in Russian. This state of affairs doesn’t exactly make things easier for me. Will I have to learn ten to fifteen languages to cover the entire former Soviet space?
(Georgian looks like a nightmare, for starters.)No, no…Russian is still probably the most useful language to know in the CIS countries. It’s just that for political and social reasons you should not assume that it will be welcomed by everyone, or at least not as much as trying a few words in whatever the local language would be. (Also, the farther you get genetically from Slavic, the less useful it is; while I’m sure there are Georgians who speak Russian just fine, there is actually in Russian a whole genre of “Georgian jokes” that all revolve around how Georgians are notoriously bad at speaking Russian; I can’t remember any of them anymore, but my first Russian professor used to tell them, so they must date back to at least the Soviet period when she still lived in the USSR.)Hmm, that’s… unfortunate. Sounds like most of the people in countries like Ukraine could actually be put off from Orthodoxy if they were addressed in Russian. This state of affairs doesn’t exactly make things easier for me. Will I have to learn ten to fifteen languages to cover the entire former Soviet space?
It was early in my Russian-learning career and I had to give a speech in some class about how to speak the language. There was a man in that class whose name was Roman who was Ukrainian. Judging by his age, I figured he had probably at least had some primary schooling in Russian back in the Soviet days (Ukraine had only been an independent country for about 10 years at this point, and he was in his mid-late 20s), so I asked if he could help me write an introduction for the speech in Russian, to make sure it would be grammatically correct. At first he said no, because he’s Ukrainian and they’re not the same thing. I told him that I know Ukrainian and Russian are not the same, but if he knew Russian I would really appreciate his help. He eventually did help, but was very curt and obviously unhappy about it, telling me “You won’t be able to understand it anyway, but here” before shoving a piece of paper at me and telling me Ukrainians don’t like Russians, so it’s rude to assume they are Russians (which I hadn’t done; I only asked if he could speak Russian and would help me). Hahaha. Maybe I just caught him on a bad day, but geez…
Y’all thank so? LOL
You are aware I hope that the majority in Ukraine are Catholics. Eastern Rite Greek Catholics but Catholics all the same who follow the Holy Father?
Yes I am aware of that , I am also focusing on all eastern countries generally in my comments .
Are you sure? According to the “Religion in Ukraine” article from Wikipedia, based on a 2006 study, 62.5% were non-religious or didn’t have a church; 26.8 were Orthodox; 5.9 were Catholic including Eastern Catholic; .9 were Protestant.
I stand corrected then AWM. Thank you.
I looked up the Razumkov Centre, which did the 2006 study of religious affiliation in Ukraine referenced by Wiki, and they appear to be the top public research/polling organization in Ukraine. Do you folks have other information?
Oops, sorry, we cross-posted. My pokey post-writing skills strike again.
I typed “religion in Ukraine” in Google and the following came up:
… by a student named Katherine Peisker, from her paper " Mapping Religion and Politics in Ukraine."
Thanks, Miserissima.
Then we are practically family, but my relatives lived in Volhyn and dealt with the border wars, too. I’m proud to meet you and will follow up in PM.
Thanks, Miserissima.
That thread you linked for me was really interesting. My sister went to Ukraine as part of a university course, but didn’t get to the little town we’re named after. My grandparents were Jewish, not Ukrainian ethnically, but somehow I still half-way self identify as being from a Ukrainian background because my relatives lived in that town for several generations and a house they built there is still standing. I’ve seen pictures of the town and the landscape looks familiar to me—much like the country landscape where I live now. It’s just, well, unnerving to know that my ancestors were settled there as part of the town, till the rest of the town turned on them or remained silent. I know, history is messy and human nature is complicated…Glad you made those clarifications. I know, of course, that Catholics engaged in quite a lot of proselytizing in Ukraine, centuries ago, but I would have been extremely surprised if the majority of Ukraine was Catholic … Especially considering that the eastern part of Ukraine wasn’t in the Polish Kingdom back when the infamous “Union of Brest” took place.
I stand corrected also .
Thanks for sharing his conversation. As a Catholic I would never try and convert the Orthodox. I do look forward to the day when we are united and stand together and defend each other. I do defend the Orthodox when I do apologetics with other Christians. I find that I have to use Scripture with them to support my arguments. I also like giving out tracks such as the ones developed at Catholic answers. I think the Orthodox should be developing their own and leave them on their cars and in their Evangelical Churches like they do to us.
Sadly, lots of Orthodox just assume that we (Catholics) want them to convert to Catholicism.
I only ask this out of respect and ignorance as to the reason but why wouldn’t you?
The eastern part that wasn’t part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Polish Kingdom?) at the time of Brest entails only about 20% of today’s Ukraine - roughly Kharkiv and East - regions not well-populated in those times. The measured predominance of Orthodox in Ukraine has relatively little to do with the incorporation and growth of ethnically Russian areas in the East, and much more to do with the aggressive anti-Catholic policies that Russia enforced when it gained control of Ukrainian territories - even unto very recent times. It is very odd, in the context of the actual history of the region, to refer to the Union of Brest as “infamous”.