Editor’s note: The following report notes the marked increase in the number and intensity of attacks on the Catholic Church within the Soviet Union. The report was prepared by Catholics For Religious Freedom in Totalitarian Nations (P.O. Box 33883, Washington, D.C. 20033-0883) and is reproduced here with the group’s permission.
In the last decade Western groups dedicated to human land religious rights have attempted to monitor the state of religious life in the Soviet Union. Their inquiries into the condition of the Catholic Church in the U.S.S.R. have uncovered evidence of a marked increase in the number and intensity of Soviet attacks on the Church. While deplorable, the amount of news reaching the West of active Soviet persecution of the Church does provide an ironic confirmation of the extent to which Catholicism still poses a strong and, in many cases, growing threat to Communist tyranny.
Lithuania and the Ukraine are the strongest Catholic areas in the U.S.S.R. In both population and in their degree of self-conscious religious unity, Catholics in these areas pose the greatest challenge to Soviet authority. Smaller numbers of Catholics live in Latvia, Moldavia (on the borders of Rumania), and among the ethnic Germans, Poles, and Hungarians isolated in diaspora in the Soviet Union. Reliable statistics on the number of Catholics in the Soviet Union are hard to obtain. Information about religious life, official persecution, and acts of dissent is fragmentary. We know Soviet hatred of the Church is unyielding. Nevertheless, the condition of Catholics under Soviet rule is not hopeless. In the Ukraine, even after years of repression, there are stirrings of religious dissent tied to the human rights movement and to Ukranian nationalism. In Lithuania this interweaving of ethnic nationalism, human rights, and religious revival has grown remarkably in the past decade and reached almost to a “Polish” level of activism and self-confidence. The following report emphasizes the condition of Catholicism in these two countries.
Lithuania
Though the Lithuanians were the last of the Baltic peoples to embrace Christianity, they eventually became the staunchest of Catholics. 75% of Lithuania’s 31/2 million people are still practicing Catholics (vs. 85% in 1939). There are about 700 priests (vs. 1500 in 1939). In Lithuania, as in neighboring Poland, the Catholic Church holds a special place in the national consciousness.
The first known stirrings of organized Catholic dissent appeared during the Brezhnev regime. Petitions for religious freedom, one signed by some 17,000 persons, were sent to Moscow in 1970 and 1971. They produced a wave of repression culminating in the issuance of new regulations restricting Church authority and the arrest of three priests for teaching religion. But the campaign of mass petitions did not diminish and has become even more popular in recent years. In 1983, 123,000 Lithuanians petitioned Yuri Andropov for the release of two imprisoned priests. However, attempts to deliver the petitions to Moscow were twice thwarted by authorities.
A more successful method of dissent has been the unofficial Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania. Since it was first circulated underground in March 1972, sixty-four issues have appeared, the most recent on October 7, 1984. (An English translation is prepared by Lithuanian Catholic Religious Aid of New York City.) Although fourteen people have been arrested over the last ten years for distributing the Chronicle, KGB efforts to stop publication have been unsuccessful. Despite the increased crackdown on Soviet dissenters launched in the years since 1979, observers report that the Chronicle and as many as fifteen other Lithuanian samizdat periodicals have survived virtually unscathed thanks to Lithuanian readiness to organize demonstrations and mass protests when they are pushed too far.
For instance, the October 7, 1984 Chronicle (English language publication date February 16, 1985) provides an amazing 70 pages of reports from Lithuania’s dioceses citing Church-state disputes, mass protests, KGB raids and investigations, news about political prisoners, and the texts of sermons and petitions. Names of priests and laymen who have signed petitions are openly cited. Collaborationist priests and Communist officials who have issued threats against publicizing persecution are also identified by name. In 1982 the Communist Commissioner of Religious Affairs, Petras Anilionis, offered Lithuanian Catholics their own official newspaper if only the Chronicle were shut down. The offer received no response.
The Chronicle identifies in great detail the extent of Communist persecution. But even more impressive is the degree of Catholic resistance. It ranges from elementary school students and their parents who protested KGB pressures to report on the religious education activities of their local pastor to Bishop Julijonas Steponavicius who denied the authority of Commissioner Anilionis to interfere in Church affairs. The Chronicle reports: “Anilionis was worried that the bishop might report the conversation to the Chronicle. To this, Bishop Stepanovicius replied, ‘I’m going to tell everyone that you visited me, and what you warned me about.’ ”
Lithuania’s hierarchy was severely persecuted during the Stalinist regime. In 1940 the nation’s two archdioceses and four dioceses were served by three archbishops and nine bishops. Most of these were arrested and deported to Siberia. During the Khruschev regime Rome appointed several bishops without Soviet permission. Bishop Steponavicius, consecrated in 1955, has never been permitted to administer his diocese, Vilnitis. Bishop Vincentas Sladkevicius, consecrated in 1957, was under severe government restrictions until 1982 when his Vatican appointment to the diocese of Kaisiadorys was accepted by Soviet authorities. The 1982 appointments of Sladkevicius and Bishop Antanas Vaicus are attributable in part to the campaign of petitions and appeals directed at secular authorities by Lithuanian priests and faithful over the previous ten years.
The declining number of clergy has been eased in Lithuania by the government’s decision to allow more candidates for the priesthood to enter the seminary in Kaunas. In 1982, eighteen new priests were ordained, the largest single group since 1963. But each year about twenty priests die. Although the Communist Commissioner of Religious Affairs has the final decision on admitting candidates to the seminary and undoubtedly tries to weed out individuals unlikely to cooperate with the state, the seminary has been able to turn out many priests loyal to the Church. That is remarkable considering that teaching is poor, morale is low due to infiltration and the presence of a number of unsuitable candidates, and the rector is a well known collaborator.
The success of the campaign to increase seminary enrollment is partly due to the existence of an unofficial seminary, which was started in 1972 after many suitable candidates were refused entry year after year. By 1980, fifteen secretly ordained priests turned up in parishes “illegally.” Authorities have threatened to prosecute priests for “impersonating the clergy” but were no doubt aware of how ridiculous this would make them look.
Despite this evidence of successful resistance, the religious rights of Catholics are far from secure. The activities of the Soviet Union’s only above-ground formal dissident group, Lithuania’s Catholic Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Believers, have been severely restricted since 1983. On January 26, 1983, one of its founding members, Father Alfonsas Svarinskas, was arrested. Another member, Father Sigitas Tamkevicius, was arrested at Svarinskas’ trial in May 1983. Both were sentenced to 10 year terms. Since its founding in 1978 the Catholic Committee has sent over sixty documents to government and Church authorities defending not only the rights of Catholics but also of Russian Orthodox and other believers. The groups’ members have been searched, harassed, privately and publicly warned, and placed under pressure to resign from the Committee.
It is illegal for priests and laymen to teach religion to children. Interrogation, threats, the denial of privileges, and non-admission to schools of higher education (all of which the Chronicle duly reports) are regular features of Communist persecution. Nonetheless, catechism has not been stopped. Lay women and nuns are very active in religious education. Though all convents and monasteries were disbanded in 1947 and their communities dispersed, religious orders were reorganized in the 1970s. There are now about 2,400 nuns who are secularly employed but active in unofficial Church life.
The 1984 sentencing of an older married woman, Mrs. Jadvyga Bieliauskiene, demonstrates Soviet sensitivity to the teaching of children, especially when it includes lessons in Lithuanian history and literature. Mrs. Bieliauskiene, sentenced to four years strict regime camp and three years exile, was accused of organizing teenagers and staging plays with a nationalist content. Police have also broken up holiday retreats for teenagers organized by priests.
The Church has also been deprived of religious literature. Churches and clergy are allowed only one copy each of the Catholic Calendar-Directory, which is unavailable to the lay public. The publication of the missal has been delayed because paper provided by the Vatican was mysteriously damaged.
Catholic churches, shrines, and cemeteries continue to be vandalized. Communist officials have not stopped the desecration and they have invented bureaucratic excuses to prevent or delay restoration.
Still, the Catholic dissent movement seems to be growing in scope. Selective arrests will continue. But Soviet authorities are well aware that they cannot imprison signatories to petitions when their numbers exceed 100,000. As Father Svarinskas put it in 1978: “Everyone in Lithuania is a dissident. We don’t have a few dissidents; we have a handful of collaborators.”
Latvia
In 1983 the Vatican appointed Julijans Vaivods, Apostolic Administrator of Riga, Latvia, as the first resident cardinal of the Soviet Union. The appointment angered Lithuanians, who consider the Latvian Church too passive and, therefore, unworthy of the honor. However, Catholicism in Latvia confronts several difficulties. It is the minority denomination among Latvians whose principal religion is Lutheranism. Moreover, ethnic Latvians comprise a much smaller proportion of the population of their own country due to the Soviets’ success at population transfers. Nationalist feeling has not yet developed into even a loosely organized movement. (The same problems pertain to Estonia. Latvia’s population is 21/2 million; Estonia’s 11/2 million.)
Nonetheless, Cardinal Vaivods has been fairly successful in shepherding his flock. For historical reasons, the Catholic population of Latvia is widely scattered and Church leaders have had to pull together dispersed clusters of the faithful. Despite this and the shortage of priests, Cardinal Vaivods has managed to preserve the number of Catholic churches and retain the loyalty of believers.
It is thought that Pope John Paul II named Vaivods the Soviet Union’s first resident cardinal because of Vaivods’ concern for ministering to the Soviet Catholics “in diaspora.” The Catholic seminary in Riga, Latvia—the only other seminary in the U.S.S.R. outside Kaunas, Lithuania—accepts seminarians from outside the Baltic area and provides aid to scattered congregations as far away as Kazakhstan.
Ukraine
Ukraine is the second largest republic in the Soviet Union. Of its forty-six million inhabitants, thirty-six million are ethnic Ukrainians. Historically tied to Byzantium, the Ukrainian Church adhered to Eastern Orthodoxy following the schism of 1054. In 1596 the Church in the western part of Ukraine entered into a union with the Roman Church while retaining the Eastern Rite. The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic or “Uniate” Church, as it is frequently called, numbered 14 million faithful at the end of World War II.
In 1946 the Church was banned and the entire hierarchy was arrested. A spurious synod made up of a few collaborationist priests and laymen nullified the 1596 union and “reunited” the Church to Russian Orthodoxy. Metropolitan Josyf Slipyi, Patriarch of the Ukrainian Church, was imprisoned for 18 years in Siberia. His release to the Vatican in 1963 was on condition that his public utterances and appearances be limited. He died in Rome September 7, 1984 at the age of 92.
While the Vatican’s Ostpolitik placed some restrictions on him, Cardinal Slipyi attempted to unify and inspire Ukrainian Catholics abroad and, though the evidence is sparse, it seems in the Ukraine. He established a Ukrainian Catholic seminary in Rome to maintain the faith. The fact that the western Ukraine has borders with Poland appears to have made it possible to supply the Uniates with some religious literature. And the elevation of a Polish cardinal to the papacy has helped to revive religious and nationalist sentiment. There are now an estimated 300 priests who live and work as laymen but administer the sacraments, having been secretly ordained.
The Ukrainian Catholic Church shares with Lithuanian Catholicism the same capacity for unifying nationalism and religion. But its insecure outlaw status and Soviet fears of nationalism in their second largest republic have made official government policies radically different. Demands for the legalization of the Uniate Church have been suppressed with vigor. But the evidence of increased repression seems to signify that the demands are growing stronger.
In the spring of 1981 churches were looted and closed in four villages and in twelve villages the faithful were attacked during Easter services. Two young priests from Lvov were sentenced to five year prison terms. In September 1982 the Action Group for the Defense of the Rights of Believers and the Church was formed. Its Chairman, losyp Terelya, was soon arrested. By the beginning of 1984, the Action Group began publishing a samizdat journal called The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Ukraine. The Chronicle is not regularly translated into English, though efforts to do so are currently underway among Ukrainians in Canada.
While the Ukrainian Chronicle devotes considerable attention to repression of other religious believers and contains political articles of a non-religious nature, it provides essential basic information on the persecution of Ukrainian Catholics. The March 1984 Chronicle reports:
520 Ukrainian Catholics burned their passports and refused to have any dealings with the authorities. Considering the regime to be hostile to Christianity and evil in the eyes of God, they resolved to accept all the torments of the persecuted just to avoid having anything to do with atheists. For two months the authorities did not know what to do and how to act, but at the end of February (1984) the repressions begin.
The May 1984 Chronicle reports:
In Zakarpatska (Transcarpathian) oblast (province) alone, more than 290 persons have surrendered their passports. In Western Ukraine as a whole from 921 to 927 passports have been surrendered since January 2-3 of this year.
Remarking on this protest, Iosyp Terelya writes:
We are persecuted and deprived of our rights. They have taken everything from us: our Church and our educational institutions. We are constantly hounded; we exist for the state only as a work force in concentration camps. In this situation, of what use are Soviet passports to us? After all one needs no passport to be sent to a Soviet concentration camp.
Still, the renewed but underground activism of the Ukrainian Catholics is clear in a March 1984 Chronicle report:
Just over the period of the last three years, 81 priests have been ordained in the Carpathian region. Of this number, only 9 have a secondary-technical education; the rest all have a higher education. There is an underground three-year monastery school in Zakarpattya, where young men and women are taught the principles of Christian teachings.