interfaith relations (interfaith or situation), Western Ukraine, USSR, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, the Soviet government, of canonical obedience

The article deals with the policy of Soviet authorities concerning the church establishments in the attached West Ukrainian areas in 1939-1941. The author attempts to clarify the features, reasons and consequences of the Soviet religious policy in this region. The using of the wide materials’ spectrum of the Ukrainian and Russian historiography and also documents from some Soviet departments assists reconstructing the picture of the authorities’ influence on the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greco-catholic Church.

the Western Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church, People’s commissariat of internal affairs, NKGB, the Union of militant atheists (SVB), metropolitan Nikolay (Jarushevich), metropolitan Andrey (Sheptitsky)

The article covers the liquidation’s story by the Soviet government of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church in 1945–1949. The author investigates, in the context of the subject, the circumstances such the little-developed in the historiography the ambiguous problem, as the participation of the Moscow Patriarchy in destruction’s campaign of the Uniat Church by means the reunion It with the Russian Orthodox Church. In spite of the fact that this question is the subject of a brisk polemic, the objective information about the personal relation of orthodox hierarchies and clergy towards the action of the Soviet authorities is in limited supply. The author puts together the sources and sums up information clarifying the story of reunion the Uniat Church with the Russian Orthodox Church.

the Uniat Church, reunion with the Russian Orthodox Church, special services, protopresbyter Gabriel Kostelnik