The opportunities opened up by the Gorbachev reforms have shown that religion is one of the most significant dynamic forces in Soviet society. Yet few scholars have attempted to relate the study of churches and religious movements in recent centuries to the politics and culture of the Soviet Union. To remedy this deficiency, leading western experts on Christianity in the Eastern Slav lands gathered at a conference in London on the occasion of the millennium of the baptism of Rus'. Their papers present unexpected and fascinating insights into an under-rated but crucial aspect of the life of the Soviet peoples.
In AD 988, Grand Prince Vladimir I of Kiev, replaced paganism with Eastern Orthodox Christianity as the official religious orientation of Kievan Russians.
Radical Protestant Christianity became widespread in rural parts of southern Russia and Ukraine in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Russia's Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830-1917, studies the origins and evolution of the theology and practices of these radicals and their contribution to an alternative culture in the region. Arising from a confluence of immigrant Anabaptists from central Europe and native Russian religious dissident movements, the new sects shared characteristics with both their antecedents in Europe and their contemporaries in the Shaker and Quaker movements on the American frontier. The radicals' lives showed energy and initiative reminiscent of Max Weber's famous paradigm in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. And women participated in congregations no less than men and often led them. The radicals criticized the existing social and political order, created their own educational system, and in some cases engaged in radical politics. Their contributions, argues Zhuk, help explain the receptiveness of peasants in this region to the revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
Ukrainians first came to Canada a century ago, seeking a new life on the western prairies. They brought with them an ancient and rich cultural tradition, deeply rooted in Christianity. The most visible symbol of this tradition is the Ukrainian church with its distinctive cupolas. As soon as the settlers were established in the new land, they began to reshape their environment by building churches in the styles they remembered from their homeland. In this richly illustrated volume, the authors trace the continuity of tradition in achitecture, art, and community life from Ukraine to the parishes of the Manitoba prairie. In a detailed examination of the exteriors and interiors of forty-nine churches, the book establishes a typology of Ukrainian church designs. Biographies of the architects, master builders, and artists are included, along with a guide to the art and architecture of a Ukrainian church.
Although present-day Ukraine has only been in existence for something over two decades, its recorded history reaches much further back for more than a thousand years to Kyivan Rus’. Over that time, it has usually been under control of invaders like the Turks and Tatars, or neighbors like Russia and Poland, and indeed it was part of the Soviet Union until it gained its independence in 1991. Today it is drawn between its huge neighbor to the east and the European Union, and is still struggling to choose its own path… although it remains uncertain of which way to turn. Nonetheless, as one of the largest European states, with considerable economic potential, it is not a place that can be readily overlooked. The problem is, or at least was, where to find information on this huge modern Ukraine, and since 2005 the answer has been the Historical Dictionary of Ukraine in its first edition, and now even more so with this second edition. It now boasts a dictionary section of about 725 entries, these covering the thousand years of history but particularly the recent past, and focusing on significant persons, places and events, political parties and institutions as well as more broadly international relations, the economy, society and culture. The chronology permits readers to follow this history and the introduction is there to make sense of it. It also features the most extensive and up-to-date bibliography of English-language writing on Ukraine.
