Talk:History of Christianity in Ukraine

Persecution of Greek Catholic Ukrainians in Kholm
I find it ironic that someone, who wrote a nice article on forceful conversion to Orthodoxy of the Kholm Governorate should be reverting a statement describing discrimination and persecution of Catholic Ukrainians in that area. Even though sources from Russian orthodox church site Iith respect to the persecutions, a solution might be to qualify the referenced statement - "according to..." and then include the info on persecutions. However this brings up another problem with the particular reference. The info doesn't come from, say, the Ukrainian Catholic Church's website but from one parish's web page. Adding "according to St. Mary's Church in Winnipeg persecutions etc. occurred" isn't right.


 * About Subtleny's boook - are you sure that Subtelny was referring specifically to the persecutions etc. in Chelm? I might be wrong and wil check again, but Subtleny didn't seem to write much about Chelm (I think I looked when I worte the article).  On the other hand Himka seemed to present the situation in Chelm as generally calm and free of persecution until the 1860's.  I won't revert until I double-check, but the sentence "Within the Russian Empire, the Uniate Church - despite mass deportations, persecutions and discrimination - continued to function until 1875, when the Eparchy of Chelm was abolished." implies that the deportations were happening in Chelm, which might not be accurate.Faustian (talk)
 * Let me cite from Subtelny: By means of mass deportations, bribery and even executions Bibikov succeeded in practically eliminating the Greek Catholic Church in the empire. Please, do check it on p. 211. In this article we are talking about the Greek Catholic Church as such. That's what the paragraph means. And mass deportations, executions and general persecution of Greek Catholics happened throughout the empire, including the Kholm Governorate if you are interested. --Hillock65 (talk) 04:54, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * On the top of the page it states that Bibikov was in charge of Kiev, Podolia and Volhynia provinces. The persecutions etc. refers to those regions specifically (Subtelny also adds Belarus).  As mentioned in the article Conversion of Chelm Eparchy, until 1865 Kholm was part of the autonomous Congress Poland and thus was spared these things.Faustian (talk) 05:05, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Please do have a look at the article. Neither the whole of it, or the section, or even that particular sentence restricts the subject to Kholm governorate. It states, and correctly so, that the Greek Catholics were persecuted by Russian authorities in the empire. It, and neither in fact Subtelny mention if that happened in that particular Governorate. It happened in the empire to all Catholics and the sentence correctly reflects that. Whether that happened in KG is left out and does not seem to be that relevant in relation to general persecution in the empire. --Hillock65 (talk) 05:19, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

GA/A class
Since this article has seen quite an input from numerous users a suggestion to upgrade it to class A or GA? Can people identify which parts need to be worked on to achieve this? --Kuban Cossack (По-балакаем?) 16:09, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

CURRENT STATISTICS
According to the most recent independent survey of the Ukrainian population, one conducted in June and July of 2007 by the Ukrainian Sociological Service, Ukrainians identified their own church affiliation as follows:


 * UOC-KP 32.4%
 * Non-religious 23.0%
 * UOC-MP 20.9%
 * Greek Catholic 10.3%
 * Believer, but no affiliation 9.7%
 * "Other" 1.8%
 * UAOC 0.8%
 * Roman Catholic 0.6%
 * Protestants 0.2%
 * Jewish 0.1%
 * Muslim 0.0% (less than 0.1%)

That is, in this survey 32.4% of the Ukrainian population, or roughly 14 million people, identify themselves as members of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarch (UOC-KP), while only 20.9%, or about 9 million, claim to be members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate, or UOC-MP).

The CIA World Factbook provides the following figures for religious affiliation in Ukraine:


 * "Ukrainian Orthodox - Kyiv Patriarchate 50.4%,
 * Ukrainian Orthodox - Moscow Patriarchate 26.1%,
 * Ukrainian Greek Catholic 8%,
 * Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox 7.2%,
 * Roman Catholic 2.2%,
 * Protestant 2.2%,
 * Jewish 0.6%,
 * other 3.2% (2006 est.)"

While there have been fluctuations over the years, I am personally not aware of a single, independent survey of the Ukrainian population subsequent to 1997 which would indicate that the UOC-MP is larger than the UOC-KP. For example, in analyzing an earlier set of surveys, historian Andrew Wilson writes, in "The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation" (Yale University Press, 2002: pp 236-237):

"...According to the largest and most comprehensive poll undertaken in 1997, 65.7% of the sample considered themselves believers, and of these 62.5% expressed an allegiance to particular Church. Of the latter, 12.3% declared themselves supporters of the UOC-MP and a further 11.6% claimed to belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, although technically it no longer exists in Ukraine (its supporters can basically be grouped with those of the Moscow Patriarchate). An impressive 43% named the UOC-KP, and only 4% the Autocephalous Orthodox. Greek Catholics accounted for 14.3%, concentrated overwhelmingly in the western regions of Galicia and Transcarpathia."

According to Dr. Wilson's footnotes, the above figures are from a 1997 Socis-Gallup poll. Dr. Wilson adds, on page 361:

"According to another Sosis-Gallup poll in February 1998, 41% claimed no religion, 20.4% backed the UOC-KP, 7.5% the UOC-MP, 1.8% the UAOC and 6.3% the Greek Catholics..."

The fact that, despite the availability of objective data such as the above, the Moscow Patriarchate continues to claim to represent almost 70% of the Ukrainian population, would suggest that the claims provided by Moscow are extremely doubtful.

Bandurist (talk) 16:47, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for posting these. These and other similar statistics were discussed here, but two contributors (one now banned) were adament against mentioning statistics of this type in the article.  It does seem strange that this appears to be the only article that discusses number of parishes in great detail, and avoids any mention of number of followers, which is the normal way to measure church size.  I would be very much in favour of including this type of information in the article. Qe2 (talk) 04:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * As per this discussion: I would feel comfortable mentioning that MOST surveys point to more UOC-KP adherents but would change little else; conclusions based on surveys are inherently flawed for the reasons described in the discussion.Faustian (talk) 06:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, Bandurist appears to be correct that ALL *independent* surveys (those not commissioned by a church brotherhood or the like) agree on relative church size. We can simply present the information in straightforward encyclopedic prose, "According to XXX ...."  Presently there is too much information on distribution of parishes, which is confusing.  Qe2 (talk) 10:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it's irrelevent who commissioned the survey as long as it was conducted by an independent organization (which seems to have beenthe case with the Ukrainian Catholic Church-commissioned survey whose reults were anomolous). If the survey itself was conducted by a church brotherhood or the like than I agree with you absolutely.  But in this case it wasn't, so I think that the thing to do would be to add that MOST surveys show more adherence to the KP than the MP, but surveys have limitations. I also agree that the information about the distribution of parishes could be streamlined. I'll make some changes, feel free to edit them.Faustian (talk) 14:45, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Regarding the party commissioning the survey, I do not feel that a survey paid for and designed by one of the interested parties can be considered "indpedendent" in the strict sense. As a practical matter, can you (or anyone) provide any other surveys conducted by an independent scientific survey agency which would agree with the results obtained in the UGCC survey?  Qe2 (talk) 16:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I feel that changes should be made to reflect the information that I put forward. Is there anything reliable that that opposes this information? Previously I tried to incorporate some of these statistics and only got it all removed. I am worried not to start up a conflict.


 * I do think that the UOC Kyiv patriarchy should be listed first for a number of reasons. 1) It has more parishioners, 2) It is not subservient toa foreign patriarch, 3) Th UOC Moscow Patrircrchy was previously known only as the Russioan Orthof\dox Church and only recently changed its name. I remember proof reading a book published by the Ukraina Society in 1988. At that time the UOC MP was known in Ukraina as the Rus' Orthodox church. However when translated into English Rus' Orthodox church was transformed into Russian Orthodox church. Despite my opposition to the translation that is how they published it.Bandurist (talk) 15:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The counterarguments are that the UOC-MP is the only one recognized by the international Orthodox community, it is the "default" Church (the one that was the only one outside Galicia since the 1930's, and the one that dominated Ukraine from c. 1680), and has overwhelmingly the largest infrastructure (most parishes, most church buildings, most priests). The second and third reasons are probably related.  The contra - number of adherents - invovles survey data whose flaws have been discussed at length.  The surveys suggest more adherents for the KP - perhaps even strongly suggest - but is this enough to override the reasons to place the UOC-MP first?  I suggest a vote before we make any changes, in order to have some sort of consensus.Faustian (talk) 18:26, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I do not believe that the fact that "the UOC-MP is the only one recognized by the international Orthodox community" should be considered as a standard for an encyclopedia article, as that criterium is weighted from the POV of one group of people. The article should state this fact clearly, as it does, but it really does not seem to me that it can be neutrally argued that this should be a reason for automatically giving the UOC-MP top billing. For the same logic, I would disagree with Bandurist's Reason #2; if the UOC-MP did have more adherants today, it should come first. (Hence, I would agree with his #1, and regret that I am not sure that I understand #3 exactly.)  Qe2 (talk) 16:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Makes sense. It is better to get some sense of re opinions before making changes that have a tendency of escalating matters.22:26, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Vote on placing UOC KP before UOC MP
Currently in the article we have UOC MP before UOC KP. This gives a distorted picture. Currently the UOC KP has more parishioners. I am calling a vote in order to see opinions regarding placement of UOC KP before UOC MP in the Lead.


 * Support - I believe that the UOC KP should be placed before the UOC MP because there it has more adherants, in fact its share of the religious pie is now greater. I also would place the UOC KP before the MP because it is a local church that is not subservient to a foreign power.Bandurist (talk) 22:26, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd note unaligned form the largest segment, followed by... there's no editorial rationale that I can support that places UOC-MP before UOC-KP. Having the biggest sandbox doesn't make it the most popular one. PetersV     TALK 01:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Support.Galassi (talk) 01:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Support - Ukrainians form a substantial portion of the Russian Orthodox Church--bishops and laypeople held about a third of the ballots in the election of the last patriarch. However that does not translate to dominance in Ukraine. Certainly there is a schism in Ukrainian orthodoxy, part oriented toward those ties with Moscow, part seeing any such ties as an incarnation of Russian imperialism--Ukrainian orthodoxy, as I understand it, currently allied with the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP), and there is an additional autonomous Ukrainian variant (UAOC). Clouding today's preferences is that during the Soviet era the autonomous Ukrainian church was coerced to recognize Moscow as the central authority. (Its persecutions and resurrections during the Soviet era being another topic.) Even so, the Ukrainian Church under Moscow today constitutes a minority of Ukrainian orthodox believers. IMHO, perhaps if Moscow un-excommunicated Ivan Mazepa--originally excommunicated for violating his loyalty oath to Peter the Great--it might garner more believers that it is not (still) an instrument of central Russian policy. I certainly see no objective reasons to place the Moscow Patriarchate first, nor is putting Ukrainian orthodoxy first pandering to nationalists. The numbers are what they are. PetersV     TALK 01:31, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose I'm not going to fight the change because the arguments in support have merit.  To reiterate the case for the MP, surveys suggest more adherents for the KP but are flawed due to the people's seeming confusion (see the lengthy discussion in the archives here: ).  For example, in one survey (Mott Foundation, 2000 - the most recent one) the MP has 12%, KP 22%, and "Orthodox No Particular Affiliation" has 26%. The CIA Worldfactbook cites MP 9%, KP 19%, and Orthodox unspecified 16%. This phenomenon is seen in every survey.  For this reason, we can't say that the survey states that the KP actually has more adherents.  It's suggested, but not concluded and making such a conclusion is original research. All we can say is that more people explictly state that they belong to the KP than explicitly claim to belong to the MP.  This is not the same as more adherents.  It could mean that KP people are more activistic and self-aware.  It could mean that people living in areas with no choice (MP territory in eastern Ukraine with few KP churches) just say "Orthodox" without specifying.  If you live in Donetsk and every church is a MP Church you might just say "Orthodox" without specifying; but if you live in Kiev where on one corner is a KP Church and on another an MP Church you might be more likely to give a specific answer.  We don't know why more people endorse KP than MP and we can't base edits on our speculation because it's original research.  All we can say is which one has more self-declared adherents, in the context of more people giving a vague answer than giving a specific one and that the number of self-declared adherents is still under 50% of Orthodox adherents. So the survey data doesn't tell us which Church has more actual adherents, though it tells us whose adherents are more self-aware.  On the other hand, number of priests, number of parishes, and number of churches are not subject to speculation or interpretation.  They are facts, and the MP has something like a 3 to 1 advantage in that area over the KP.  So let's summarize what the actual facts are without any speculation:


 * MP has more than three times the churches, monasteries, priests and parishes than the KP has. See and .  It also has more of the most important religious cites such as the Pecherska Lavra.


 * According to most surveys, a huge portion of Orthodox don't identify which Church they belong to (in some surveys it's the largest simgle group, in others it's within 5% of the top). Among those who do identify it, however, more identify themselves as belonging to the KP than the MP by a large margin. In each survey, however, the self-identified KP adherents still make up less than 50% of Orthodox Christians due to the large number with no expressed preference.


 * These are the facts and the placement should be based on them.Faustian (talk) 06:10, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there is a large part of people who do not identify with either Patriarchate, but there is no reason to assume that they would be divided any differently than those who do make a distinction. I think that in this kind of situation, their impartiality eliminates them from the decision-making process. We should focus on the facts that are clear - of the people who do choose a Patriarchate, more support the Kyiv Patriarchate, therefore that should be stated first.
 * Support - the facts are simple - more people identify themselves as members of the Kyiv Pariarchate than the Moscow Patriarchate.

Also, all other statistics being equal, alphabetically Kyiv is before Moscow, so it should come first. Thanks, Horlo (talk) 09:23, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually there is reason to assume they would choose the MP, because the MP territory is monolithic (I.e., in Donetsk almost every church is an MP church, so someone from there, a member of an MP church, would be more likely to simply call themselves Orthodox without bothering to specify). As I said, the statistics say that more people identify themsevles as KP than MP.  They do NOT say that most people belong to the KP.  There is a big difference there.Faustian (talk) 17:20, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Support - Ranking according to number of adherents is an objective standard. (I intend to follow Faustian's comments in a separate section.) Qe2 (talk) 15:45, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Article improvment
I think that this article can be good or featured just with more references. --Vojvodaeist 14:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments on Voting
I apologize if it is innapropriate to start a subheading for this discussion, but I wished to address some of the points raised by Faustian in the voting section in a greater detail than I thought appropriate at that place. First, I will address the questions regarding the survey data.

1. Regarding the survey commissioned by the UGCC, while I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of the UGCC or the professional ability of the Ukrainian Sociological Survey, this survey is unusual in that, at the request of the UGCC, the choices given were "Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate" or "Ukrainian Orthodox Church"; "Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)" was not an option. I believe that it can be inferred from this, if considered in comparison with other surveys, is that there are Ukrainians who would consider themselves followers of THE "Ukrainian Orthodox Church", but not of the "Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate". I suspect that the UGCC simply wanted to be cautiously respectful to the UOC(MP) and used their legal name. While I see nothing wrong with discussing this, or citing it, as long the difference is noted, I do not think this survey would fall in the category of "independent" surveys cited by Bandurist, as the UGCC had too much input in designing this question.

2. In any survey of religious self-profession, there will be a larger number of "nones" if the survey uses a two-step process (asking first if the people belong to a certain church, and then asking which church) then with a one-step process (just asking people which church, possibly with "none of the above" or "other" as alternatives). This is true everywhere, and not unique to Ukraine. Dr. Brian Grim of the Pew Forum published an example showing how, in Bulgaria, the number of 'nones' were more than 7 times higher when using a two step survey process compared with a one step process, among the exact same population. The fact that many people will, in some surveys, give an answer like "Orthodox of no jurisdiction" does not mean that the relative size data is not accurate.

Regarding ranking church strength based on number of registered parishes or clergy, there are a number of flaws which would seem to make this inherently unreliable. For example:

1. The allocation of church buildings in Ukraine is decided in the first instance by local authorities, and is therefore subject to influence outside of the local congregations. For example, in a case decided on June 14, 2007 and cited in the U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report (2007), the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Kyiv city administration was violating the rights of the faithful of the Svyato-Mykhaylivska parish by not allowing them to reregister from the UOC-MP to the UOC-KP. That is, the faithful of that parish overwhelmingly wish to be a part of the UOC-KP, but the civil authorities force their church (and its priest) to remain in the UOC-MP. In fact, even though a survey in December of 2006 showed that 52% of the adults in Kyiv suported the Kyivan Patriarchate, compared to only 8% for the Moscow Patriarchate, the Kyiv City Council that same year granted Moscow title to 10 churches and only 1 to the Kyivan Patriarchate. There is evidence here and elsewhere that the number of faithful does not, at least in places, correlate with the number of parishes.

2. Legally, all that is required to register a parish in Ukraine are the signatures of 10 adult citizens. There is therefore clearly at least an opportunity to inflate the number of parishes by registering "paper parishes".

3. As elsewhere in the world, parishes vary in size and commitment. I believe that there are actually more registered Protestant parishes and clergy than for the UGCC, yet I do not believe that anyone would claim that there are more Protestant faithful than Greek Catholic in Ukraine.

4. In terms of possession of buildings and clergy, the UOC-MP in most places became the 'de facto' inheritor of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was the only church legally tolerated throughout most of the Soviet Era.

Given the inherent problems with basing church strength on a secondary figure like number of parishes or clergy, and given the consistency of multiple sets of scientific survey data, there seems to be no clear reason to consider using parish size or number of clergy as an exception in this case. Qe2 (talk) 16:32, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I apologize for following my own post with yet another, but I think I see that Faustian is making a distinction between, on one hand, number of "adherants" and, on the other hand, number of "followers" or "self-declared adherents". I sincerely apologize that, probably in my ignorance, I am not certain I understand this difference, and would be grateful if someone could patiently explain to me the significance of this distintion.  Qe2 (talk) 07:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Perfectly appropriate to have a discussion section so as to not make the voting section too thick with discussion. To paraphrase some of the points above...
 * Size of infrastructure and numbers of support personnel is not a measure of customer base.
 * Using the now proverbial Macy' and Gimbel's (rival departments stores across the street from each other in their heyday in New York): guessing how to allocate customers who state they don't prefer either either Macy's or Gimbels (only that they do shop at department stores) into a count of Macy's or Gimbel's customers is unencyclopedic speculation.
 * It would appear the appropriate course is to indicate most Orthodox adherents, when asked, state no preference; those that do are most loyal to Kiev, then followed by Moscow. PetersV     TALK 08:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * In response to QE2: the reason I make this distinction is that presumably one of the arguments fro placing KP first is that more Ukrainians belong to that church. In my opinion, if that were indeed the case and this was proven than this fact would probably trump all others and would change my vote.  Unfortunately, the survey results don't support that - they only indicate that for whatever reason more people explicitly state that they belong to the KP than the MP, the number of explicit KP supporters still being below 50% of Orthodox Christians.  Let's look at the results of one survey, the mostr recent one from the Mott Foundation in 2000, which showed that the MP has 12%, KP 22%, and "Orthodox No Particular Affiliation" has 26% support, Ukrainian Autocephalous 1%.  Doing the math, this means that among Orthodox Christians, about 36% declare themselves as members of the KP, 19.7% as followers of the MP, and 1.7% as followers of the UAOC.  A whopping 42.6% don't specify what kind of Orthodox Christians they are.


 * The reasons for this phenomenon are purely speculative and unscientific. All we can work with are the facts, and these say that a minority of Orthodox Christians declare themselves as belonging to the KP (albeit, a larger minority than those declaring adherence to the MP).  The huge number of undeclared people means that no conclusion can be made about which Church actually has more followers in the general population. It is quite possible that more Orthodox go to MP churches than KP churches. So to reiterate, the actual FACTS say that more people say they belong to the KP than the MP, this number still being too low to draw any conclusion about actual adherence.  On the other hand, the MP enjoys a 3 to 1 advantage in "infrastructure" - number of priests, number of church buildings, number of monasteries, etc.


 * In response to the department store analogy - what if for example 36% say they are Gimble's shoppers, 20% say they are Macy's shoppers, and 42% of shoppers say they don't know or don't care, yet there are 3 times as many Macy's stores and 3 times as many Macy's employees in the city. Would you be prepared to conclude that Macy's is smaller/less important than Gimble's based simply on Gimbles' shoppers greater stated allegience?  What criteria to we use to rank importance of each Church?  Does the ability or desire of its members to identify which Church they belong to take precedence over number of churches, number of priests, etc.? Faustian (talk) 14:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Just to carry the comparison forward, Faustian's question (3x stores and employees at Macy's) omits the fact that when the anti-trust division of the Justice Department wasn't trying to dismantle Macy's, it was granting Macy's a state monopoly and telling Gimbel's employees to work for Macy's or be unemployed (or worse, and not to mention other factors). We can't project MP's greater physical presence as being the result of "market forces" because of those other factors at work. The best we can do is to prioritize personal preference, followed by the note that MP is the better equipped for historical reasons X,Y,Z.
 * No one has the absolute majority here, so stating "a minority profess allegiance to KP" implies there's a majority somewhere else, which there is not. Let's simply state who is allied with whom in order of highest to lowest %. There's no reason to believe that people say something other than their FACTual alliance. It's clear that the (self-professed) order is:
 * non-aligned Orthodox believers (_%)
 * UOC-KP (_%)
 * UOC-MP (_%)
 * UAOC (_%)
 * We should be able to list such and move on, no? If there's any conclusion to be drawn, it's that Ukrainians care less about the politics of faith than WP editors. PetersV     TALK 23:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * P.S. We can just as well state (going back to Faustian's minority phrasing) that, say, less than a tenth [if 8% is the number we're using] of Ukrainian Orthodox believers identify themselves with the Moscow Patriarchate. Simply listing and moving on would be the NPOV thing to do, IMHO. The Orthodox belief has a rich and long history regardless of Patriarchate, It's frankly disrespectful to turn this into a contest jostling for position. The numbers are what they are. PetersV <SMALL><SMALL>   </SMALL> TALK</SMALL> 01:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I thank PetersV for his perspective and explanation. I agree with his position here, and hope that he, and all others who may be lurking, will not lose patience with us. Qe2 (talk) 06:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello, to offer a different perspective about a simple majority: in countries with a parliamentary system, the party with the largest number of seats forms the government, even if it has less than 50% of the seats. If the other parties (who together hold more than 50% of the seats) decide to join and vote together against the government, then the government falls. Independent members do not form the government, they sit in the opposition.
 * I think that the situation is similar here - if the majority of faithful decide to acknowledge adherence to one Patriarchate, they will hold the "swing vote". However, until that time, we cannot assume which one they would join depending on the availability of a local church. In this case, the Kyiv Patriarchate forms a minority government, and will do so because they are the biggest piece of the pie (even though that piece is not larger than 50%). Thanks, Horlo (talk) 08:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The problem with your analogy is that those poeple are "independent" - they do ultimately go to either one Church or the other. It's basically a two party system, with a huge number of "undecided" in the polls which means that no projection can be made with respect to the actual winner.  But since you support the change, could could you add your vote to the "Support" group in the previous section?Faustian (talk) 14:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello, in a two party system, if you don't choose one, your vote is not counted. They very well may choose one over the other, but we just don't know. To further cast doubt on the idea that many undecideds would choose the Moscow Patriarchate, I would submit that some parishoners would prefer to go to a Kyiv Patriarchate church, but are actually afraid to say so, as in some areas speaking out for a Ukrainian alternative can cause attacks. I don't know how common that is now, but I know that it was very common in some rural parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts during the Orange Revolution.
 * I did add my vote to the support group above, and apologize if I didn't do it correctly so that it wasn't recognized. Thanks, Horlo (talk) 08:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The point is that the undecided do ultimately choose one, we just don't know which one. You are speculating that they want to choose the KP but are afraid to do so in the surveys.  That's just speculation.  We just don't know.  Therefore, we can make no conclusion based on the survey that KP has more adherants than MP. All we can say is exactly what the survey does conclude - that twice as many people claim to belong to the KP than to the MP, but such a large number don't declare a preference that less than half admit to belonging to the KP.Faustian (talk) 13:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

How about something like this, with citations for all data and quotes, in the "Modern Times" section:


 * Although the UOC(MP) has more than twice as many registered parishes as all other Ukrainian Orthodox Churches combined, in independent surveys of the Ukrainian population the majority of those selecting a preference among the Orthodox churches in Ukraine have indicated themselves to be supporters of the UOC-KP. For example, in a 2007 survey conducted by the Ukrainian Sociological Service, 32.4% of Ukrainians, or about 14.9 million people, identified themselves as members of the UOC-KP, compared to 20.9% or 9.6 million for the UOC(MP) and 0.8% or 0.4 million for the UAOC, although in (a recent survey selected by Faustian) in which the respondents were given the option of identifiying themselves as "Orthodox of no particular jurisdiction", Ukrainians identified themselves as (results of survey).  The UOC(MP) itself officially claims to have 28 million followers, while the UOC-KP press service gives numbers of 14 million and 9 million for the UOC-KP and UOC(MP), respectively.

Qe2 (talk) 15:29, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello, that sounds good, but I think that it is important to make sure that the lead does not imply anything which is not so. That's why the Kyiv Patriarchate should go first. Thanks, Horlo (talk) 08:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Qe2's paragraph sounds good, although I would change it a bit to make it clearer that the self-declared KP followers are les than half of the Orthodox believers.Faustian (talk) 13:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I would be interested in seeing your suggestions; based only on my understanding of your explanation, it sounds like emphasizing your conclusion would be OR. After all, in many, if not most, of the surveys we have discussed here, over 50% of self-declared Orthodox have selected the UOC-KP.  In the 2007 survey cited by Bandurist, for example, which does appear to be the most recent scientific survey, 59.9% of those identifying as Orthodox identified themselves as followers of the UOC-KP, as do 60.2% of the Orthodox in the CIA World Factbook estimate.  I agree that we should present a comparable recent survey where "Orthodox of no jurisdiction" is given as an option, but I am not sure that we should, or can, do anything other than just present the numbers.  It is in consideration of your concerns that I suggested the wording "the majority of those selecting a preference among the Orthodox churches in Ukraine"; that language holds true accross all surveys. Qe2 (talk) 14:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Hopefully Bandurist will provide a reference for the 2007 survey. If you look here:, stated support for KP is far less than 50% across all six surveys. I agree with you that we ought to just stick with the numbers, anything else (unless it's sourced) is just OR.Faustian (talk) 15:01, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I am glad that we seem to be reaching a consensus. This article  appears to refer to the same survey as that cited by Bandurist.  The World Factbook page for Ukraine can be found here:


 * Also, although I hesitate to disrupt the new pleasant mood with pedantic points, it seems to me that only three of the six surveys in your summary include "Orthodox of no jurisdiction" as an option; in the remaining three more than 50% of Orthodox respondents do identify themselves as followers of the UOC-KP. Further, one of the sets of data that does agree with your statement, the numbers from the World Factbook, appear to be from an older estimate; as noted above, the current numbers given at that site, those Bandurist cites, show 60% of Orthodox identifying as members of the UOC-KP.  Finally, other data on that page, such as all seven sets of data from 1994 through 2000 cited by Yakudza just above the link to your summary, do show a majority of Orthodox supporting the UOC-KP.  (Please note that I am NOT arguing that we draw any conclusion from this, but only explaining why I agree, approaching perhaps from a different direction, that we should "just stick with the numbers".) Qe2 (talk) 07:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * With respect to the six surveys I linked to, I assumed that "no particular religion" was the same as no particular Orthodox Church, which is reasnable given that most Ukrainians belong to some kind of Orthodox Church. However the latest CIA figures are important.  I can't acces the link tot he RISU but, properly sourced, if this info is included then I'll change my vote to weak support.  Weak because there are still compeelling arguments for the other side - the overwhelming advantage in number of Church buildings, priests, and monastaries (including the most significant religious treasure in Ukraine IMO, the Pecherska Lavra).  I am pleased with this debate although it may seem like a big deal over a small fact.  Changes ought not to be made without all sides offering their input, and I would want to avoid the appearence of these changes being "sneaked in" due ot the (temporary?) absence of certain editors.  How about:


 * Although the UOC(MP) has more than twice as many registered parishes, priests and monastaries as all other Ukrainian Orthodox Churches combined, in several independent surveys of the Ukrainian population the majority of those selecting a preference among the Orthodox churches in Ukraine have indicated themselves to be supporters of the UOC-KP. For example, in a 2007 survey conducted by the Ukrainian Sociological Service, 32.4% of Ukrainians, or about 14.9 million people, identified themselves as members of the UOC-KP, compared to 20.9% or 9.6 million for the UOC(MP) and 0.8% or 0.4 million for the UAOC. However, in surveys in which respondents were given the option of identifiying themselves as "Orthodox of no particular jurisdiction", Ukrainians identified themselves as (range of these surveys) suggesting that a minority of Ukrainians adhere to any particular Church. The UOC(MP) itself officially claims to have 28 million followers, while the UOC-KP press service gives numbers of 14 million and 9 million for the UOC-KP and UOC(MP), respectively.


 * We can then add the info about each Church, starting with KP first.Faustian (talk) 14:34, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe your conclusion should not be included because it is OR. I would like to see your final draft, but we should present a balanced view of recent indendent scientific surveys, not weigh the article specifically towards those surveys which support your attempted conclusion.  As I am very much concerned that we two appear to be dominating this discussion, I would like to hear from the others who have contributed above, but I see absolutely no reason why we should try to anticipate the feelings of a particular banned user; let us just present the facts.  Qe2 (talk) 05:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

(Outdent) Hello, I think that we are getting too much into this voting - I believe that it was about which church should be stated first in the lead. I think that the case has been made for mentioning the Kyiv Patriarchate first, if only because the majority of decided parishoners go to the Kyiv Patriarchate church. Can we at least agree on the lead? Thanks, Horlo (talk) 11:12, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Horlo, I think you should feel free to go ahead and make that edit. Everyone other than Faustian agrees that it is proper, and Faustian agreed not to block the change. Qe2 (talk) 03:33, 7 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Per the consensus above, I've gone ahead and made the change in listing order. Qe2 (talk) 05:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Post Soviet Period
The "Post Soviet Period" section of this article seems to require a great deal of work. Would it help if we could here create an outline of the events that should be included? From my perspective, notable ommissions are (1) the establishment of the UAOC in 1990 and its election of Mystyslav as the first Patriarch of Kyiv, (2) the November 1-3 1991 All Ukraine Sobor of the UOC which unanimously called for the autocephaly of the UOC, and (3) the 1992 Unification Sobor which created the UOC-KP from portions of the UOC and UAOC. Qe2 (talk) 16:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Modern Times / Religion in Ukraine
I have just discovered the article Religion_in_Ukraine, which seems to overlap the Modern Times section of this article. Should we consider these together? Qe2 (talk) 13:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

UAOC-C
In the weblink section there is also one to Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church Canonical, but this church isn't mentioned in the text at all. The article sounds very strange, like exaggerated advocacy for a small group, so the real circumstances and importance should be clarified here. --Ikar.us (talk) 18:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

FA
Is this article ready for FA voting?--Vojvodae please be free to write :) 17:11, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

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Requested move 16 April 2020
<div class="boilerplate" style="background-color: #efe; margin: 0; padding: 0 10px 0 10px; border: 1px dotted #aaa;">
 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (non-admin closure) Simplexity22 (talk) 13:47, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

History of Christianity in Ukraine → Christianity in Ukraine – WP:CONCISE. No such article. Should be available first, before any eventual separate history article is needed. PPEMES (talk) 09:50, 16 April 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. <b style="color: White">b</b><b style="color: White">uidh</b><b style="color: White">e</b> 05:08, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose, first of all it may be misunderstood the article would be about current christianity, and not the history of it (the territory back it time what is today Ukraine), see i.e. Religion in Hungary or History of Christianity in Hungary, there is no Christianity in Hungary article, since the scope does not/could not be restricted to present-day Hungary necessarily, but the historic Kingdom of Hungary that comprised almost a three times bigger territory, etc. Since also other countries territories changed in the past millenia or earlier - as we may date Christianity onwards - and some others did not even existed until the modern or recent times, we should safely analyze them in a historical context, in order to avoid confusions.(KIENGIR (talk) 23:30, 18 April 2020 (UTC))
 * Oppose. Srnec (talk) 20:30, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Who of you intend to create Christianity in Ukraine? PPEMES (talk) 09:11, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not my problem and has nothing to do with the appropriateness of the proposed move. Lacking an article on X does not justify moving one about Y to the title X to make up the gap. That's absurd. If you think there is a gap, why don't you take a break from RMs, RFDs and TFDs to fill it? Srnec (talk) 11:47, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed with Srnec.(KIENGIR (talk) 12:49, 29 April 2020 (UTC))


 * The discussion above is closed. <b style="color: #FF0000;">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Diagram Needed
Can someone draw me a diagram of the splits and mergers of the Ukrainian Church? All these recent changes are getting hard to follow. Thanks.

"Ukrainian Orthodox Church" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Ukrainian Orthodox Church and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 March 6 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Heanor (talk) 19:52, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Ukrainian Orthodox Church (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 20:16, 25 December 2023 (UTC)