Religion, Church, and State in the Post-Communist Era: The Case of Ukraine (with Special References to Orthodoxy and Human Rights Issues)
Yelensky, V., 'Religion, Church, and State in the Post-Communist Era: The Case of Ukraine (with Special References to Orthodoxy and Human Rights Issues),' Brigham Young University Law Review, Vol. 2002, No. 2 (2002), 453-488
I. RELIGION, CHURCH, AND STATE IN UKRAINE ON THE EVE OF
THE FALL OF COMMUNISM
A. Communist Religious Policy
Up to the beginning of Gorbachev's reforms in Ukraine,1 there were over six thousand officially functioning religious communities (one-third of the religious organizations in the Soviet Union). This number included four thousand Orthodox parishes (65% of the reli- gious communities in Ukraine), more than eleven hundred commu- nities of Evangelical Christian-Baptists, about one hundred commu- nities of Roman Catholics, and eighty communities of the Church of Reformation of Trans-Carphathian's Hungarians and others.
The "Regulations Concerning the Religious Organizations in the Ukrainian SSR" defined the legal basis for the activity of religious organizations in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.2 This law, which mainly reproduced the Stalinist legislation of 1929, was issued in 1976. In addition, a great number of special instructions existed that led to an even more severe attitude towards churches. The viola- tion of the minimal set of rights granted to believers was an ordinary phenomenon.