As the post-1989 outlines of historical evolution come into focus, two fundamental and ancient forces help shape post-communist societies, both in the countries of the former Soviet bloc and in the territorium of the once Soviet Union: one is dynamic cultural and political ethnicity; the other is potent revivals of religious activity. These phenomena are interrelated, perhaps inextricably intertwined, though conceptually distinct.

Just as Mikhail Gorbachev, in announcing the goals of perestroika and setting the spirit of glasnost', had no program in his scheme to resuscitate the Soviet Union to accommodate the explosion of republican separatism and the tidal wave of ethno-politics, neither had he given any thought to the potential of grassroots revitalization of religious life. To his surprise, spiritual and social religious activities forcefully entered onto the stage of post-Brezhnev civic society throughout the USSR.

Communism in the Soviet Union has long served officially as religion's surrogate. It has offered an organized and compelling belief system with which to rationalize the misfortunes of the past, establish codes of behavior to manage the present, and conceptualize the future. Although communist theory categorically rejects religion, it actively promotes, and is itself predicated on, institutions of “faith” in the abstract sense. The herculean industrialization and literacy campaigns of the early decades of Soviet rule that forever transformed the USSR's largely illiterate, agricultural society vividly illustrate the power and popular legitimacy of communist institutions of “faith” such as the Party and the Komsomol. Trusting that earthly sacrifice will bring future rewards has been as much the basis of Soviet communism as it has been of the Abrahamic tradition of religion addressed in this issue.

The political role of the Orthodox Church in post-communist Russia is more difficult to assess than its social and cultural roles for several reasons. First, to offer any systematic observations on the matter one must attempt to construe the nature of the church-state relationship in Russia, a notoriously controversial subject. Second, one must make an educated guess concerning the part played by the huge internal security apparatus which only yesterday dominated the internal affairs of the Soviet Union, including religious affairs. The security establishment has been dislodged from its hegemonic role in the Soviet state as a result of the Gorbachev reforms, but there is little question that it continues to exist as a political force in the country. Reading the aims of this network is no easy matter, however, because by definition it operates in relative secrecy and by means of diversionary tactics. One also has to reckon with the possibility that the security network has been disrupted by the changes of recent years, and operates with less coordination than in the past.

In 1944, the Soviet Army recaptured Galicia and Transcarpathia from the Germans, and the last stronghold of Ukrainian Greek Catholicism fell under Soviet control. Following the arrests of all Uniate bishops and of the “recalcitrant” clergy, the Lviv Sobor of March 1946 nullified the 1596 Union of Brest, which first established the Greek Catholic Church, and forcibly “reunified” the Uniates with the state-controlled Russian Orthodox Church. The post-World War II period saw the gradual suppression of the Uniate Church throughout Carpatho-Ukraine, Poland, and Eastern Slovakia, and marked the beginning of more than four decades of struggle for Eastern Rite Ukrainian Catholics in the USSR to maintain their banned Church against the overpowering alliance of the Soviet regime and the Russian Orthodox Church. Despite the enforced “reunification,” the Greek Catholic Church has remained the most important cultural and institutional preserve of national identity in Western Ukraine. The following is an examination of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church's attempts to assert its right to legal existence since the beginning of political and social revitalization under Mikhail Gorbachev.

In August of 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev sent a message to His Holiness Vazken I, Catholicos of All Armenians, “pleading” with him “to use the influence, authority, rich life experience and the higher feelings of your humanitarianism and your responsibility for the fate of the Armenian people to work for the immediate ending of ethnic violence and fighting in the Transcaucasian region.” The message reveals the deep historical and cultural relationship of the Armenian Church to the Armenian nation. It also is a reminder of the long established Soviet practice of prevailing upon the church to assist the central government in imposing its will upon a subject people.

The following statement was delivered by His Holiness Vazken I, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, over Yerevan State Television following the bloody confrontation on July 5-6, 1988, at Yerevan's International Airport in which Armenian activists and Soviet troops clashed.

My beloved people, citizens of our mother country, at this hour of trial, I, Catholicos of All Armenians, address all of you from Holy Etchmiadzin. First, I must express my condolences to all those who suffered on July 5 this year during the events that took place near Zvartnots International Airport. I was told that one of [the activists] died. I pray for his soul, and grieve over his death together with his relatives. I also deeply regret that our soldiers were among the wounded.

On November 9, 1989, Vazken I addressed the members of the Armenian National Movement at Etchmiadzin, Armenia, illuminating the evolving nature of church-state relations.

On the eve of the referendum on Armenia's independence on September 21, 1991, Vazken I issued the following appeal to voters.

By the will of God, the citizens of our freedom loving nation and newly born Republic will respond on September 21, 1991, to the invitation for independence by declaring unanimously and loudly, “yes.”

The Soviet Union has a Muslim population about the size of Turkey's. Definition is a problem because Soviet censuses do not ask about religious convictions. All one can say is that those nationalities which have traditionally been predominantly Muslim number, according to the 1989 census, approximately 55 million people out of a total population which exceeds 285 million. Although it is common to refer to “Soviet Muslims” as if they constituted a monolithic community, these millions of people are in fact diverse in terms of their religious traditions, current attitudes toward their ancestral faith, nationality, and numerous other secular aspects of life as well. This essay will attempt to describe all the forms of Islamic activity among the Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union, but will consider the status of Islam primarily in Central Asia, where the largest number of the Soviet Union's traditionally Muslim nationalities live, and especially the republic of Tajikistan, where the status of Islam largely resembles that of other important parts of the region.

American Jews often treat their religion and ethnicity as coterminous. In the Soviet Union religion and ethnicity are formally more distinct, through in most people's minds the two are closely related. American society generally considers Jews both an ethnic and religious group. There is a strong correlation between religion and ethnicity among other groups—for example between Irish and Polish ethnicity, on the one hand, and Catholicism, on the other. But since Catholicism is a universal religion—to say “Irish” or “Polish” is usually is to say “Catholic”—the converse is not true, since to say “Catholic” may also imply French, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian or many other ethnicities.

1985

April 3: Lutheran Minister Harri Motsnik, known for his outspoken criticism of human rights violations in the USSR, is arrested on charges of anti-Soviet propaganda.