Liturgical Innovations in the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (1921-1930): The Untold Story

Abstract

I the early twentieth century, the Orthodox Church experienced significant waves of change. In addition to persecution of the Church under the Soviet regime, the first part of the twentieth century witnessed a strong movement for church reform in the Russian empire, including proposals for revising the liturgy.1 As the Orthodox Churches sought simply to survive, the Revolution stifled progress but, in some cohorts of the Church, reforms were implemented. One of those cohorts was the short-lived Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), a body that emerged in 1921, and grew rapidly in Ukraine until the Soviet government began to openly persecute it until the Church’s coerced liquidation in 1930. The legacy of the UAOC is crucial for understanding the problems afflicting the Orthodox Church in Ukraine today, but a lesser-known feature of this Church was its commitment to liturgical innovation, for the purposes of promoting newness