Ukrainian catholics and orthodox in Poland since 1945

In addition t~ the usual probl~ms associated with the study of East European post-war history unavailability of important archival material, ideological factors, highly biased sources, and the lack of the perspec'tive of time the study of Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox in Poland and Czechoslovakia since 1945 confronts the researcher with considerable imbalance among available sources. Whereas there is a large body of literature on Ukrainian Catholics in Poland, there is little material available on Ukrainian Orthodox in Czechoslovakia. The amount of information obtainable in the West on Ukrainian Orthodox in Poland and Ukrainian Catholics in Czechoslovakia seems to' fall somewhere in between. There is, furthermore, considerable diffic~lty in identifying and isolating the objects of study. Ethnic assimilation of Ukrainians in both Czechoslovakia and) Poland, as well as controversy about whether such groups as Lemkos and Rusyns are Ukrainian, make it difficult to ascertain who the Ukrainians of these countries are. The absence of separate Ukrainian Catholic or Orthodox Churches in <;;zechoslovakia and Poland compounds. the problem, and it is even reported that until recently, the censors forbade mention of the existence of Greek-Catholics iI) Poland, J although the Greek-Catholic Church does have semi-official status in that country. The fact that virtually all Greek-Catholics in Poland are Ukrainian makes this group relatively conspiCuous, and ,identification of Ukrainians in Poland is somewhat easier than in Czechoslovakia although the official tendency to regard the' Lemko ethnic group as something other than Ukrainian does obscure matters to some extent. Since there are no official breakdowns by nationality of either the Polish government census or of church statistics, one must rely on estimates to ascertain the number of Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox as well as the overall number of Ukrainians in the country.