Turning the pages back...March 4, 1988 (03/01/98)

Turning the pages back...

March 4, 1988

On March 4, 1988, Senate Joint Resolution (SJ Res.) 235 issued in commemoration of the Millennium of Christianity in Kyivan-Rus' criticized the Soviet government's active persecution of religious believers in Ukraine, called for the legalization of the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and discouraged the official participation by U.S. government officials in Soviet-sponsored Millennium ceremonies. The resolution was unanimously approval by the U.S. Senate. One of the resolution's initial co-sponsors, Sen. Dennis DeConcinni (D-Ariz.) stated: "if the Soviet government truly wants to commemorate the Millennium of Christianity, it can legalize the Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches and stop persecuting believers of all denominations."

In a rare attempt to directly influence Congress, representatives of the Soviet government, bypassing traditional diplomatic channels, sent a protest to U.S. congressional leaders, denouncing the joint resolution. The president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, Valentyna Shevchenko, sent a letter to Speaker of the House Jim Wright and Vice-President George Bush, president of the Senate, to which she attached a Ukrainian Supreme Soviet statement signed by 10 people's deputies that criticized the U.S. congressional resolution. In her letter, Chairman Shevchenko stated that the U.S. resolution "presented a twisted outlook about the situation regarding religious believers (in the USSR) ... and that this resolution could not but help illicit offense in the Ukrainian SSR, where freedom of conscience is guaranteed for all citizens." The four-page statement sent by the deputies claimed that both Churches "were invariably used as a cover by certain forces ... engaged in political ploys aimed at rousing national hatred and hostility between fraternal peoples born in a single cradle," and accused the U.S. Congress of encroaching "on one of our greatest gains - friendship among Soviet nations."

The Supreme Soviet's letter was preceded by English- and Ukrainian- language propaganda and disinformation articles in the Soviet News from Ukraine that in great detail outlined how the Ukrainian Catholic Church "voluntarily" liquidated itself in 1946 and reunited itself with its brethren Russian Orthodox Church (failing to mention how several hundred Ukrainian Catholic bishops and priests "voluntarily" shot themselves in the back of the head) and that the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church "had revealed itself as a zealous underling of Hitlerites, utterly discredited itself in the eyes of the people and thus naturally ceased to exist" (failing to mention that the Church had all but ceased to exist before the war, having been destroyed on orders of Stalin.) On March 26, the TASS news agency reported out of Kyiv that the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet issued a protest about "the gross interference of the U.S. Congress in the [sic] Ukraine's internal affairs."

Rep. William Lipinski (D-Ill.), also an original co-sponsor of the resolution, in response to the Supreme Soviet's protest commented, "the fact that the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR found it necessary to refute our bill's findings is proof in my eyes that we hit a raw nerve." Disregarding the Soviet deputies' protest, the House of Representatives unanimously passed the resolution on April 19. It was signed on May 2 by President Ronald Reagan.

On June 1, the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe responded to the Soviet deputies' protest with a detailed refutation of Soviet abuse of religious believers, current and historical, and the USSR's disregard for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Source: The Ukrainian Weekly, January-June 1988; Final Report of the Organizational and Government Relations Committees of the National Committee to Commemorate the Millennium of Christianity in Ukraine, March 1989.