This book is a collection of nine scholarly articles that, as the title suggests, focus on how religion and religious institutions have interconnected with nations and nation-building efforts as they have played out over 400 years in lands inhabited by Ukrainians, be they in Galicia, eastern Europe or North America. The articles grew out of an international conference held in Munich in 2010 with the same broad contours and were originally published together in an issue of the Journal of Ukrainian Studies. In light of the considerable interest in Ukrainian religious and cultural politics, especially since the outbreak of the hybrid war between Russia and Ukraine, these selected articles have been republished in book form here.

The articles cover a wide range of issues, time periods, and places in an attempt to illustrate the broad modernizing dynamics that shaped the religious and cultural practices of Ukrainians over time. It is a great contribution of this volume that it not only addresses the interdependence and interlocking dynamics that prompted religion to intersect so prominently in efforts to modernize and secularize Ukrainian society through nation-building, but also the role of engaged Ukrainians outside of Ukraine to affect political developments in their homeland.

The volume begins with an article by Kerstin S. Jobst on the cult of a saint in the early modern period. Josaphat Kunstsevych was initially venerated by several religious institutions in eastern Europe. The cult that grew up around his relics and the stories of the miracles he performed were exploited by various regimes to garner state legitimacy and foster national cohesion. Jobst illustrates the extent to which saints have been able to maintain their appeal, making them valuable political resources for multiple states over time. To further illustrate the scope of the book and how these themes are interwoven, Tobias Grill provides a compelling analysis of how, beginning in the late nineteenth century, German-Jewish influence on religious life in the southwest Russian Empire prompted changes that served secular political and social purposes. For example, Grill documents the emergence of “philanthropic modernization,” as he terms it, among Jewish communities. This begins with efforts to promote self-help at the community level, but evolves into a decisive role in the development of the secular, social welfare system more broadly. In a similar vein, Frank Sysyn provides a profile of a Greek-Catholic priest who, moved by the poverty of his parishioners, became socially engaged and saw the clergy as key agents in the national cause. In his efforts to create a literate and self-reliant peasantry, Father Zubrytsky became convinced that the church, much like the society in which it was embedded, had to reform. His vision to create a unified, egalitarian, priest-led community inspired him to halt the separation of parishioners by status when it came to ritual participation, such as, for example, when priests blessed the Easter baskets of the nobility apart from those of the peasants. In a related essay, Leonid Heretz reminds us that “traditional piety” often included a full roster of beliefs in apparitions, ghosts, and other strakhy, as well as the practice of incantations, sorcery, and witchcraft. The conviction held by many clerical and secular elites that such practices and worldviews had to be eradicated was a key motivating factor in their embrace of enlightenment or svitomist’ as well as, of course, the propagation of communism. Interestingly, Heretz's article includes a discussion of how immigrants to Canada and the United States, who returned to Ukraine to spread the promises of communism, which they understood as predicated on destroying traditional superstitions that formed the heart of folk beliefs and practices, also played a significant role in advancing secularizing processes in Galician Ukraine.

Overall, this collection of articles centers on Galician Ukraine and primarily depicts how modernizing tendencies endorsed a view of nationalism as an emancipatory project, which prompted state entities to assume some of the responsibilities formerly shouldered by religious institutions, thereby changing both the political and religious landscapes in places where ethnic Ukrainians lived and traveled. In several key instances, it was the leadership of religious institutions themselves, pursuing their own agendas to achieve a more just world, that propelled forward nationalist and secularizing political projects.

There is little discussion, however, as to how a recognition of the allegiances among ethnic Ukrainians in “Dnipro Ukraine” to Orthodox traditions might have inadvertently fostered secularization and propelled modernizing tendencies by prompting national activists to avoid appeals to religion in their efforts to advance the Ukrainian nationalist cause. Religion had the potential to reinforce, but also to hinder, a nationalist cause that sought to unite all Ukranians. The Orthodox Church clearly linked ethnic Ukrainians to Russians and Belarussians. In contrast, the Greek-Catholic Church offered links to Rome. With its base in western Ukraine, the Greek-Catholic Church provided a tie that connected western Ukrainians to diaspora communities in North America and elsewhere. The inability of religion to unify all Ukrainians diminished its political utility in terms of nation-building efforts at certain points in the modern period. In some instances, it even prompted members of the elite to embrace secular ideologies, including communism, as a more promising means to unite ever-greater numbers of Ukrainians as a nation. Given the diverse threads this volume weaves together, it will be of interest to historians of eastern Europe, particularly those with a pronounced interest in religious and political history of the region.