Inter-Orthodox Conflicts in Ukraine and the Movement to Unite Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in the 20th and 21st Century

The article analyzes the historical conditions in which the movement towards independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church took place. It is shown that the stages of formation of the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine coincided with the stages of the Ukrainian people's struggle for state independence. The role of P. Skoropadskyi's government in establishing Orthodox statehood and the idea of building a canonical Ukrainian church independent of the Russian Orthodox Church is revealed. It is shown that in the 1940s, two Ukrainian Orthodox churches were formed on the territory of Ukraine - the Autonomous Orthodox Church, whose leaders advocated the necessity of subordination to the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which aimed to establish an independent Ukrainian Church. An attempt to overcome the inter -church confrontation by signing the Act of the Union of the Autocephalous and Autonomous Churches, due to the intervention of the German occupation authorities, was not carried out. The formation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate in 1992 was the first attempt to unite the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches into one Local Church after the independence of Ukraine. The reasons for the failure of this attempt are analyzed and it is shown that the most recent attempt to unify Ukrainian churches into one local church was the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). It is shown that the movement towards obtaining autocephaly by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is an important element of both the will of the Ukrainian people towards independence and an important component of Ukrainian state formation.