The Suppression of the Uniate Church in the Early Russian Empire, 1772-1839

FAIN: FB-51665-05

Barbara J. Skinner
Adelphi University (Garden City, NY 11530-4213)

The Uniate Church merged Eastern and Western religious traditions to create a distinct culture and identity. After millions of Ukrainian and Belarusian Uniates came into the Russian Empire with the partitions of Poland, Catherine II began an attack on this separate identity through mass forced conversions to Russian Orthodoxy. This study assesses 1) distinctive characteristics of the Uniate Church in the 18th century; 2) the policy and process of mass conversion in the Russian Empire; and 3) Uniate responses of both conformity and resistance. Based on archival sources in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, this study aims to bring the Uniate case into a broader discussion of empire, borderlands, and the centrality of religion to identity.

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