An Interview with Myroslav Marynovych of the Ukrainian Catholic University

As a young man, Myroslav Marynovych became a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, formed in 1976 to monitor compliance with the Helsinki Accords on human rights that had been signed by the Soviet Union the previous year. In 1978 he was consequently sentenced to seven years in the Gulag and a further five years’ internal exile for “antiSoviet propaganda and agitation.” 

Now 70, Marynovych is vicerector of the rapidly expanding Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Inaugurated in 2002, the university is the intellectual hub of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. While forcibly reunited by the Soviet authorities with the Russian Orthodox  Church in 1946, members of this church continued to gather clandestinely until it was made legal again in 1989. 

Today, the Greek Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in westernmost Ukraine, with over 3,600 communities there. Its practices are in line with the Orthodox—also numerous in westernmost Ukraine. As the church recognizes the Catholic Pope, however, it is in full communion with Rome. 

The editor of the East-West Church Report met Myroslav Marynovych at the Ukrainian Catholic University in late 2018. The conversation took place in English.

Did your experience as a dissident during the Soviet period draw you to the Christian faith, or did a Christian upbringing contribute to your becoming a dissident? As a child, were you aware of the Soviet ban on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1946?

I was certainly aware of the ban on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. My grandfather was a Greek Catholic priest who was arrested in 1945 and forced to change his affiliation to Russian Orthodoxy. He did so in order to save his elder son, who was arrested by the Soviets. The Soviets promised to release his son, but—as always—they did not fulfill that promise. So my grandfather was already a priest belonging to the Moscow Patriarchate by the time I was born; he died when I was eight. Yet my family knew perfectly well that this was not his voluntary, personal decision, but one made under threat of arrest. I knew about that, and of course I was critical of the Soviet system because of it. 

Did you attend an Orthodox church as a child? 

Yes, that was possible to some extent. But before Easter, for example—when the plashchanitsa [embroidered icon of Christ’s crucified body] was displayed in church, and many people in our city of Drohobych (Lviv Region) went there to pray—I would see some of my school teachers standing nearby. They were watching to see whether pupils from their school were attending church. 

What would happen if they were? 

The parents of those children would be invited to the school and subjected to an ideological conversation. [Grins] 

Did you still identify as Greek Catholic within your family? 

Officially we were Orthodox. But we remembered that this had been forced, and once the Greek Catholic Church was legalized in the late 1980s, our entire family moved back to being Greek Catholic. So I was raised in a religious family. But I lost my faith while at college. When I was arrested around that time, there was a question about my attitude towards religion during my interrogations. I remember answering, “I appreciate the fact that some Baptist communities announced prayers for us, the arrested members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, but I personally am neutral towards religion.” I was able to exist without God. It was only when I was in detention in Kyiv that I had a very powerful religious experience—a personal revelation. I understood afterwards that I was different: a believer. 

Did some particular event take place? 

Or did this have to do with the overall experience of being in detention? I would need half an hour to explain this alone! But it was internal: I was reflecting upon the universe and the structure of the world when I experienced a blast of light and did not respond to my cellmate for three days. He grew afraid of me, thinking I had gone crazy. But it was really powerful. I had a second experience later, when I was in labor camp. Today it is obvious to me that I have a religious perspective; I feel God’s presence very often. But I understand that many people have not passed through this experience, and for them this is just theory, myth and legend. [Chuckles] 

Did this religious experience have anything to do with your observations of the Soviet system as a dissident? 

I did not speak about the system as a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, because we were a human rights group. We spoke about human rights violations and the Helsinki Accords. But it had become more and more obvious to me that the Soviet system was wrong, that Soviet ideology was a false and even criminal ideology. I received plenty of proof of that when I was in labor camp. It is clear to me now that Communism and Nazism are equal evils. They differ in some elements, but not the main one—they were both antihuman. I spent seven years imprisoned in a labor camp in Perm Region in Russia, and after that I was exiled to Kazakhstan. According to my sentence, this was to be five years of exile, but I spent only three years in Kazakhstan because of Gorbachev. He released around 200 political prisoners in 1987, including me. Our “guilt” was forgiven, and in 1991 I was rehabilitated, so there was no “crime” at all. 

Were there other religious believers with you in the labor camp? 

Yes. On the one hand, any religious activity was forbidden in the Soviet camp system. For example, at some point I was not allowed to wear my baptismal cross, because, “No, it’s not allowed!” At the same time, it was a place where many people converted to faith. This was due to different factors—personal, as I told you in my case, and sometimes also for ideological reasons. For example, people were against the Soviet system. The Soviet system was atheistic, so they were against the atheistic system as well, and came to favor religion. Sometimes this was a little funny, because people did not actually believe in God, but they still preferred to be considered believers!

Who were the religious believers in the camp? 

We had different Christians: Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. We also had Jews—some Jews were very religious and had contacts with Israel, which supported their faith while in labor camp. There were some Muslims, but they were not so religious. I also remember the existence of a sort of “camp ecumenism.” We understood very clearly that if we were separate, it would be much easier for the camp administration to persecute us. We therefore normally celebrated Easter and Christmas twice, according to the different church calendars. We would gather twice in order to support one another. I recall that in 1982 we were all punished for celebrating Easter together. In the list of those who were persecuted for celebrating Easter there were representatives of all three Christian confessions, and also Leonid Lubman, a Jew! But he joined us in order to support us, to be together. 

Were you able to replicate any element of the traditional Easter celebrations? 

No, that was quite unrealistic. There were 60 prisoners in our labor camp and around 120 guards. Everything was so visible that it was like sitting in the palms of their hands. 

What kind of worship service did you have, in that case? Was there anything like the Eucharist? 

No, everything was forbidden. We just had prayers— prayers people normally knew, like “Our Father.” But even people who did not know joined the ones who were able to pray. 

So you had no texts, no Bible or other religious literature? 

No, no. I remember going on hunger strike for 20 days in the late 1970s for the right to have a Bible. I did not succeed. 

By the way, there is an ending to the story about our prayers at Easter. They punished us by putting us in an isolation cell. We decided that we had to inform the world about that, because at that time—the early 1980s—the Soviet Union supported so-called Christian marches in Western Europe because they supported nuclear disarmament. The Soviet Union paid a lot of money to support such Christian movements. And there was a contradiction in terms, because on the one hand they were supporting these Christian movements, and on the other they were punishing Christians who had just prayed at Easter—nothing more, we were not committing any crime, only praying. We decided that we had to send a letter to Pope John Paul II about this, and I was selected to prepare a draft. Once we were released from the punishment cell I prepared this draft, the others approved it, and we smuggled the text to Moscow and from there to the free world. A few months later I received a message in secret code from my mother, which said that the Pope had received our letter and celebrated a Mass on our behalf. We experienced such an explosion of very powerful emotions on learning this, because it was so important to us that we had been able to inform the outside world. 

How do you view what has happened in Ukraine more recently: the 2013-14 revolution centered on Kyiv’s Maidan Square, known as the Revolution of Dignity, Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea, and the ongoing Donbass conflict? 

What impact has all this had upon the Greek Catholic community? First of all, the revolution did not change the Greek Catholic worldview, but rather confirmed our belief that the Soviet system was wrong, and that everything in the postSoviet system, with its oligarchic and quasi-Soviet system of management, is also wrong and needs to be changed. This is nothing new for Greek Catholics, just confirmation that we are on the right road. Putin’s reaction did not change our worldview either, because we understood quite clearly from the very beginning that Russia would never agree to Ukraine being independent. 

The Belovezha Accords [1991 agreement ratifying the dissolution of the Soviet Union, signed by representatives of newly independent Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine] were possible only because the Russian delegation had its own clear vision of the future. I read some protocols from the Belovezha meeting indicating that the Russian delegation had decided they would agree to the dissolution of the Soviet Union because they understood Ukraine to be so close to Russia economically that it would be impossible to separate the two. After six months, they supposed, Ukraine would request reunification with Russia, and then there would be no more talk of violence, occupation, and so on, because it would be Ukraine’s own decision to join with Russia. They had a very simple theory that Ukraine could not exist without Russia. 

Well, it didn’t happen. I like the metaphor of an apple tree. There is an apple—Ukraine—and Russia put a basket underneath it; when this apple is ready, it will fall into the basket of its own accord. It didn’t happen. So for Russia, the Orange Revolution [of 2004-5, also centered upon Kyiv’s central Maidan Square] was a very strong signal that they had to do something. 

Shake the tree? 

[Laughs] Shake the tree in order for this apple to fall down into the basket.

And so the regime of pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych [2010-14] was an attempt to re-establish all those ties? 

Exactly. I also read some materials indicating that a new version of the Soviet Union was being prepared. Putin and Yanukovych would have needed a month in order to establish it, together with Belarus. So the Revolution of Dignity came at the last possible moment. 

Were you involved in the demonstrations on Maidan Square? 

Yes, of course. But I am too old to be marching every day. I arrived and spent the night there, immediately caught the flu and returned to Lviv. It is not for me any more! I worked with the media a great deal, however, and I published many articles. 

How have the Maidan events affected the younger generation, including the students here at the Ukrainian Catholic University? 

They were affected, but not in the sense that very many of them became politically active. They were active during both Maidans [i.e. also during the Orange Revolution] and we even have an expression here: “the generation of the two revolutions.” But there is a difference between the situation in Poland in the 1980s, when the Solidarność [Polish: Solidarity] workers’ rights movement was established, and the situation now in Ukraine. As you see, no single, strong oppositional party was created as a result of the Revolution of Dignity. My understanding of this crystallized at a meeting of the board of the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC in 2015. I presented my own view of these revolutions and spoke about the lack of one oppositional party as our own, Ukrainian fault; our sickness, as it were, of otamanshhyna [Ukrainian: Cossack groups]; of having many factions rather than one commander. 

There is that hackneyed saying about Ukrainians, “Wherever there are two Ukrainians, you will find three hetmans [Cossack leaders].” 

Exactly. So I maintained that because we are Ukrainians we are unable to have one hierarchical command, unfortunately. But the Americans said, “No, it is not your fault as Ukrainians. There is a difference in the mindset of the younger generation.” The younger generation involved in the Occupy Movement in New York, in the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, even the Arab Spring in the Muslim countries, all displayed the same character. They did not want to have one leader or commander, but to preserve their autonomy while also joining in one action. I was surprised when I heard this view, but it is correct. The Ukrainian Maidan was formed exactly according to these principles. 

Diffuse centers of power but everyone working towards one goal? 

Yes. And the Americans said to me, “Don’t be too critical, because the Ukrainian Maidan was the only successful phenomenon among all these movements.” Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Center, Ukrainian Catholic University (G. FAGAN) 

Do you envisage the Ukrainian Catholic University as contributing towards this newer kind of thinking? 

Let me give you a comparison between the two revolutions. During the Orange Revolution, I recall our students being a little reluctant to get involved. In the early days, when the students at the National University here in Lviv were already active, our students were not. I remember discussing what to do with our rector. Why didn’t our students declare a strike? The rectorate could not possibly insist that the students declare a strike! [Laughs] But we were alarmed— why were they so passive? At that point we had an interesting discussion with the students and we understood. They did not trust the opposition politicians. They were afraid that the opposition politicians would misuse their activity. They did join the student protest a week later, however. 

There was not so much reluctance during the Revolution of Dignity; our students were active from the very beginning. Our university and the Kyiv Mohyla Academy were the two most active universities. The first phase of the revolution, even here in Lviv, consisted purely of students; there were no older people or politicians involved. Politicians wanted to control the situation, but the students preferred to be left alone. Our students kept active during the whole revolution; many of them were present on Maidan Square in Kyiv. 

A critical moment came during the night of 10- 11 December 2013, when government forces attempted to destroy the Maidan encampment. Many people were beaten. I was woken up at around 1 a.m. “Are you watching Channel 5 [television channel not controlled by thenPresident Yanukovych]? Watch, because this is a very dangerous moment!” So I watched all night. At about 5 a.m., I understood that Maidan had survived, and I decided that we had to do something as a university. Via Facebook, I invited other staff members and our students to a 9 a.m general meeting of the university. By that time, I had already drafted a statement. The rector did not even want to check it, he just told me to read it aloud. My statement said that, because the government—the ruling elite of the country—had used violence against innocent young people—people who were peaceful, who had not used violence of their own accord— we as a university declared civil disobedience to the president and leadership of the country. 

Wow. 

Wow. Yes, it was strong! But we were under threat of closure. It was very clear to me that if we were afraid—if we did not protest and if Yanukovych survived—our university would have no chance of continuing its activities. So it was an all-or-nothing situation. There was a moment of silence when I read out my draft, because everyone understood this danger. But then there was applause, and the statement was accepted. I am very proud of our community because of this. We really tried to live according to our values. 

How do you see Ukraine’s position as a nation from a Christian perspective? 

Ukraine is situated on the edge between two different civilizations: Western and Eastern Christian. Conflict between these civilizations was the typical fate of our land. In the past, for example, the Polish state viewed Orthodoxy as heresy and tried to convert the whole Ukrainian nation to Catholicism. Later on, Russia tried to eliminate all signs of Greek Catholicism in order to make us exemplary Orthodox. We Greek Catholics are traitors to both—we betray the purity of the faith. To overcome these differences is therefore our national mission, so to speak. We want to preserve our unity as a nation, and so we must have inclusive thinking.

Do you therefore believe there to be an innate pluralism in Ukrainian culture? 

Yes, it is natural for this land to have different subidentities. And during our two Maidans I was happy to see people from different parts of Ukraine come together and stand united with one goal. I understood that, yes, it is in the nature of this nation to overcome difference. 

With that in mind, what will the impact upon your Greek Catholic community be of Constantinople’s awarding of autocephaly [independence] to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine? 

Greek Catholics are in favor of this development, as it is very clear to us that every monopoly— including spiritual monopoly—is dangerous. According to our understanding, a future united Kyivan Church is possible—a Church consisting of the different branches of Christianity that are now in separation. In this unity, however, each church would preserve Eucharistic union with its particular ecclesiastical center. Each would bring its particular union to the common basket, so that centers which are not now united among themselves—Rome, Constantinople, Moscow—would be in unity via the Kyivan Church. 

In that case, Ukraine would not be on the edge of Christian civilizations at all, but a hub? 

Yes. But according to Moscow’s understanding, this all means that the Uniates [derogatory term for Greek Catholics] want to turn the Kyivan Church into a Uniate church! So when we have domination of distinctly confessional thinking, such a unity is not possible. Realistically, we will have a situation in which Ukraine has three nucleii: Orthodox in unity with Moscow—because there will always be some part of the population that wants to preserve this unity, Orthodox in unity with Constantinople, and Greek Catholics in unity with Rome. So we will wait. Our goal will be to co-exist, to co-operate, and if we establish routine forms of co-operation, unity at a higher level will become more and more realistic.