LITERATURE REVIEW, METHODOLOGY, AND SOURCE MATERIAL

It must be noted that various issues at the intersection of religion and politics in Ukraine have by no means been ignored by scholars of religion, sociologists, and political scientists since the mid-1990s (Bociurkiw Reference Bociurkiw and Bourdeaux1995; Plokhy and Sysyn Reference Plokhy and Sysyn2003; Mitrokhin Reference Mitrokhin2010). Extensive research has been done on the church–state relations and the political role of churches in Ukraine in the period before and during the Euromaidan protests of 2013 (Denysenko Reference Denysenko2014; Kozelsky Reference Kozelsky2014; Wanner Reference Wanner2014; Wawrzonek Reference Wawrzonek2014; Panych Reference Panych and van der Laarse2015). Amongst the most significant studies on the religious factor in the Russian–Ukrainian conflict are the articles of Mulford (Reference Mulford2016), Hudson (Reference Hudson2018), and Jedraszczyk (Reference Jedraszczyk2018). Other scholarly attempts to analyze the reactions of religious organizations to the Ukraine crisis can be found in the edited volumes of Krawchuk and Bremer (Reference Krawchuk and Bremer2016), Wanner (Reference Wanner2015), and van der Laarse (Reference van der Laarse2015). Yet the religious ideology of the post-Euromaidan government in Ukraine (and especially the new developments of 2016–2018 in this area) remains largely unstudied in the academic literature––a gap which this paper aims to address.

The methodological framework of this paper is twofold. In the first place, it draws upon various concepts of discourse analysis which offer suitable vantage points for tracing the relationship between religion and politics on the discursive level.Footnote ⁶ In this regard, of particular importance are the concepts of interdiscursivity and intertexuality which signify situations “when different discourses and genres are articulated together in a communicative event” (Jørgensen and Phillips Reference Jørgensen and Phillips2002, 73). In contrast to “manifest intertextuality” (or “the explicit presence of other texts in a text” (Fairclough Reference Fairclough1992, 10)), interdiscursivity appears in more subtle and complex forms and, as Wu puts it, “is concerned with the implicit relations between discursive formations rather than the explicit relations between texts” (Wu Reference Wu2011, 97).

In this study, interdiscursivity and intertexuality will refer to cases where political and religious actors turn to each other's discourses to borrow ideas and “naturalize” them as part of their own ideological agendas in order to strengthen their positions in the public sphere. With regard to political actors, this means using general religious language, references to sacred texts as well as drawing on concepts, argumentative strategies, and quotes from statements by religious figures. This borrowing creates what Jørgensen and Phillips term as “interdiscursive mixes” or “hybrid discourses” which are closely connected to power relations and social struggles for cultural hegemony between different social groups (Jørgensen and Phillips Reference Jørgensen and Phillips2002, 73).

Along with this, to interpret these discursive aspects I shall employ the schema of Barbara-Ann Rieffer which describes various shades of interaction between religion and nationalism (Rieffer Reference Rieffer2003). Based on her analysis of different cases around the world, Rieffer singles out three major types of such interaction. On the one side of the spectrum is secular nationalism which presupposes that nationalist political actors “ignore religion or reject a specific religious tradition” (Rieffer Reference Rieffer2003, 231). On the opposite side is religious nationalism, or the fusion of nationalism and religion to the point where they become inseparable (Rieffer Reference Rieffer2003, 225). As Rieffer puts it, in such cases a group of people is aspiring not just to establish its sovereignty as a political nation, but also as a religious community (2003, 225).

There is also an intermediate type between the former two, namely instrumental pious nationalism, which uses religion as merely a supporting element in the whole structure of a nationalist movement (Rieffer Reference Rieffer2003, 229). The role of religion here is to unite a population by providing a source of identity and loyalty to a state that suffers from a lack of legitimacy or political instability (Rieffer Reference Rieffer2003, 229–230). This last type––instrumental pious nationalism––is particularly important for explaining the dynamic of religion and politics in many countries of Eastern Europe which ever since the disintegration of the Soviet Union have been trying to reconcile an outward commitment to secularity and church–state separation with the growing role of religion in politics.

The primary source material for this paper comprises official statements, media interviews, and public speeches by the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in the period between June 2014 (the start of his term) and December 15, 2018 (the date of the unification Council and the creation of the OCU). The sample includes 47 items of analysis: 14 pronouncements before April 17, 2018 (the date of the first announcement of a breakthrough in the negotiations with the Constantinople Patriarchate regarding Ukrainian autocephaly) and 33 pronouncements after this date. Another significant source of material for this study is public statements of other influential religious and political actors (such as Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko), Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan), President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, and ex-President of Ukraine Viktor Iushchenko) as well as surveys of attitudes toward the issues of autocephaly and church unity in Ukraine.

CHURCH AND STATE IN THE DISCOURSE OF PRESIDENT POROSHENKO

Petro Poroshenko, a prominent Ukrainian politician and businessman, was elected President on May 25, 2014 amid the deepest political crisis in the history of independent Ukraine. At the time of his election, he was publically known as an active UOC-MP parishioner and a major donor of the UOC-MP's Trinity Monastery of St. Jonas in Kyiv. However, in stark contrast to the fugitive President Ianukovych, even before coming to power Poroshenko was not considered to be a supporter of the UOC-MP's unflinching determination to preserve unity with the ROC. In this regard, media publications which appeared before and after the presidential elections in May 2014 unanimously predicted that he would start distancing himself from the UOC-MP, as any connection to this structure would be a liability to his public image in the context of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict (Shchotkina Reference Shchotkina2014). An immediate sign of this tendency was that, according to some reports, in June 2014, Poroshenko personally blocked an attempt by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to schedule a visit to Ukraine for the celebration of the anniversary of the Baptism of Kyivan Rus' in July (Shchotkina Reference Shchotkina2014).

As was the case for many of his predecessors, the discourse on religion by President Poroshenko in 2014–2018 revolved around the central issue of the division in Ukrainian Orthodoxy and the necessity of a united autocephalous Orthodox Church's emergence in Ukraine. In general, his discussion of this topic is characterized by the employment of diverse rhetorical tools which range from quoting the Gospels (e.g., Matthew 5:37) to intentionally using loaded Russian idiomatic expressions (such as “ukazuiushchii perst”/“pointing finger”) and colorful colloquialisms related to criminal argot (such as “rozstavliaty pal'tsi viialom”/“position one's fingers like a fan”).Footnote ⁷ Another common feature of President Poroshenko's discourse is its cyclicity, a tendency consistently to reproduce the same basic messages verbatim in each subsequent speech or written address. Nonetheless, in terms of the quality and quantity of these messages, this discourse can be divided into two main periods: the first from June 2014 to April 17, 2018 (the date when the first announcement of Ukrainian autocephaly was made) and the second after April 17, 2018.

In the initial months of his term, autocephaly was virtually absent from President Poroshenko's official addresses even on religious occasions (such as the anniversary of Baptism of Kyivan Rus' in July 2014 (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2014)). However, after the stabilization of the frontline in East Ukraine in the first half of 2015, his attention to this sphere started to increase. In 2015–2017, he put forth several key points which overtly manifested the intentions of the state authorities to interfere in the slow-burning crisis of Ukrainian Orthodoxy.

In the first place, President Poroshenko officially declared Ukraine's unquestionable right to have its own autocephalous Orthodox Church in the same way as Bulgaria, Georgia, Serbia, and other Orthodox countries did (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2015). He also started to represent such a church as a means of achieving social cohesion and unity in Ukrainian society, claiming the existence of a significant (or continuously growing) demand for church unity and autocephaly among the Ukrainian population (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2016a; Reference Poroshenko2016b). Along with this, in framing the church issue, President Poroshenko confirmed his complete rejection of the idea that the united Orthodox structure should become an official state church. In his annual address to the Ukrainian Parliament in September 2017, he supported the freedom of choice of any Orthodox confession and asserted that the appearance of an autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine would not affect the status of other existing Orthodox organizations:

A common discursive feature of President Poroshenko's statements on religion in 2014–2017 was that they were couched in a rather circumspect language, without directly naming specific religious or political adversaries of the Ukrainian state, such as the Russian Federation or the Moscow Patriarchate. In this regard, he constantly made only general references to an external force (“foreign state”) which had been trying to use the Orthodox division to its advantage:

Moreover, although President Poroshenko did reveal intentions to facilitate the resolution of the religious stalemate in Ukraine (“the state cannot stand idly by”), in the period 2014–2017, he was cautious in describing the potential role of political actors in overcoming the Orthodox division. In particular, he stressed that the state authorities would not resort to any coercive means or pressure to establish a united church and would leave this process to the initiative of Ukrainian believers and clergy themselves (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2015). During his meeting with the members of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches in April 2016, President Poroshenko stated:

However, after April 2018, when negotiations with the Constantinople Patriarchate had finally reached a consensus and autocephaly procedures were set in motion, the religious rhetoric of President Poroshenko regarding the church–state relationship in Ukraine immediately underwent observable changes, becoming significantly more radical and far-reaching. Along with this, he started to incorporate the issue of upcoming autocephaly in the majority of his public statements on religious and secular occasions alike.

The key development in the Ukrainian President's discourse in this period was the explicit conceptualization of autocephaly as not a religious but as a political issue which goes beyond the sphere of church affairs. In particular, President Poroshenko proclaimed the existence of a direct link between the political independence of the state and the autocephalous status of the Orthodox church in it (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018j). He also designated the autocephalous church as a “key element” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018a) and “absolutely necessary attribute” of Ukrainian statehood (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018e; Reference Poroshenko2018r), equal in significance to the other two core elements––the army and the Ukrainian language––without which “the state cannot be established” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018a). In his speech on the TV show “Svoboda slova” on April 23, 2018, President Poroshenko asserted:

Furthermore, he also started to represent the united autocephalous church as a “pillar of the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian nation” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018h) and a “matter of national security” which would strengthen Ukrainian statehood (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018r) and finalize the establishment of Ukrainian independence in the spiritual dimension (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018d). In this light, the creation of such a religious structure was billed by him not as an optional course of action but as a direct obligation of the state authorities which must ensure the recognition of this autocephalous church in world Orthodoxy (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018r). The upcoming document (tomos) of autocephaly was declared by President Poroshenko to be “de facto another Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018k; Reference Poroshenko2018p) and “absolutely equal to the referendum on our independence [on December 1, 1991]” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018m; Reference Poroshenko2018o). At the same time, the aspect of “Ukrainianness,” mentioned in the quote above, can be seen as reflecting the further binding together of religion and nation in his general political stance:

In the same vein, in his description of the future autocephalous church, President Poroshenko consistently put special emphasis on defining its essence as, first and foremost, “Ukrainian” (“…we have a real chance to create in Ukraine a United Local Orthodox and, most importantly, Ukrainian church” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018d; Reference Poroshenko2018f)).

Although in his key speeches of 2016 President Poroshenko had already implied that his religious policies were driven by concerns about limiting foreign influence in Ukraine, in 2018 he took this rhetoric to the next level. In particular, he started to represent a Ukrainian autocephalous church as a global geopolitical issue (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018h), inseparably linked to the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and to the necessity to sever all ties between the two countries (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018d):

In this light, President Poroshenko asserted that Ukrainian autocephaly would deal a decisive blow to the idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome” and to the doctrine of the “Russian World”Footnote ⁸ as a “dangerous political heresy” created by the hierarchs of the ROC and promoted by the Moscow Patriarch Kirill (Hundiaev) (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018k). While regularly claiming that “the ROC is acting at the behest of Russia” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018b), he also used the terms “the ROC” and “the Russian state” interchangeably, conflating religious and political concepts for increasing this rhetorical effect. For instance, in his speech on April 23, 2018, President Poroshenko stated that “Ukraine is declared to be a canonical territory of the Russian Federation” (instead of the ROC) which he interpreted as tantamount to a declaration of “territorial claims” by Russia (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018a).

In direct connection with this, the Ukrainian President often implied that the UOC-MP was not in fact a fully autonomous entity (as it continued to claim) but merely an extension of the ROC which willingly rallied support for the victory of Russia in the Russian–Ukrainian conflict (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018i). Based on this, he argued that the new autocephalous structure in Ukraine should be a “Ukrainian church which is not controlled by the aggressor state, does not praise the intruder, and does not refuse to conduct funeral services over our heroes” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018c). Consequently, while confirming his commitment to the freedom of choice of church affiliation, in the period after April 17, 2018, Poroshenko phrased it in a manner which implicitly alienated the UOC-MP and its flock:

In general, while the issues of Russian aggression and the subversive role of the ROC appear to be pivotal in President Poroshenko's discourse on autocephaly (“the state must not interfere into church affairs, especially if this is a foreign state” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018a)), it might be argued that the overarching motif of his discursive production after the announcement in April 2018 was the necessity to legitimate the new prominence of the state in the religious sphere of Ukraine and its crucial role in negotiating the unity of Ukrainian Orthodox churches. From this perspective, because the issue of autocephaly was defined as de facto political or geopolitical, the Ukrainian authorities were not in violation of any European secular principles and their efforts did not fall under the category of interference with the church's “internal affairs” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018a). This discursive strategy replaced President Poroshenko's earlier claims that “overcoming the division in Ukrainian Orthodoxy has to be the task of believers” and that the state would not use pressure against churches (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2015).Footnote ⁹ Additionally, to reinforce this view about the necessity of the state's involvement, he represented it as a standard requirement of the Constantinople Patriarchate for issuing a “tomos” and as typical of the ways in which other autocephalies were created in the past (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018r). He also stressed that “autocephaly is granted not so much to a specific church as to a country” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018r).

There are other important religious elements which appeared in President Poroshenko's discourse after April 2018, such as regular polemical remarks regarding the principle of the “canonicity” of churches (the legitimacy of their status in terms of canons and recognition in world Orthodoxy)––a topic, which has been heavily exploited by the UOC-MP to shore up its position. For instance, he argued: “No one has a right to impose the view that this church is canonical and this church is not because there are millions of believers behind such churches” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018a). On another occasion, he referred to the ROC as “non-canonical” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018o). In his speech on Independence Day of 2018, President Poroshenko also claimed:

Thus, the religious notion of “canonicity” appears in President Poroshenko's statements in a dichotomous way: on the one hand, it is criticized when it is applied to describe the internal situation in Ukraine; on the other hand, it is used as a fully legitimate concept for the purpose of “othering” the ROC and undermining its status in the eyes of Ukrainian believers.

Finally, it might be argued that to shift the focus from the role of political actors in the autocephaly process, in April 2018, President Poroshenko also adjusted his style of self-representation to come across as a religious individual, using the term “believing person” or the self-deprecatory expression “sinful person” (“hrishna liudyna” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018a)) to refer to himself. At the same time, in his speeches, Poroshenko also regularly attributed the main credit for Ukrainian autocephaly to the will and help of God (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018a; Reference Poroshenko2018o) and referred to it as a “miracle” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018q).

SOURCES OF PRESIDENT POROSHENKO'S DISCOURSE ON RELIGION

As the previous section illustrated, over the period of his term, President Poroshenko's discourse on religion developed into a full-fledged program which heavily emphasized the political role of the church. In terms of their wording and content, his pronouncements can be traced to several sources.

For one thing, some of the basic ideas in Petro Poroshenko's public statements of 2014–2017 were previously expressed by President Viktor Iushchenko in 2005–2010 in the course of his own attempt to establish a united Orthodox church in Ukraine. For instance, in his address devoted to the anniversary of the Baptism of Kyivan Rus' in July 2008, Iushchenko described church and state as “the two wings of the Ukrainian nation,” both equally important for it (Iushchenko Reference Iushchenko2010, 47). He put special emphasis on the Ukrainian language and an autocephalous church as parts of the national idea of a “Ukrainian, European Ukraine” (Iushchenko Reference Iushchenko2010, 340). Iushchenko also designated church unity as an issue of “strategic importance” which the state was entitled to raise and facilitate “without interfering in internal church affairs” (Iushchenko Reference Iushchenko2005). In this respect, he claimed that the state should not interfere in church affairs but if it “cherishes the unity of its people, [the state] cannot stand idly by” (Iushchenko Reference Iushchenko2010, 53).

However, the primary source for shaping President Poroshenko's religious discourse can be found in the set of claims developed in the 1990s and the early 2000s by Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko), the founder of the UOC-KP and its Primate in 1995–2018. The affinity of their discourses manifests itself not just in the general similarity of ideas or argumentative structures but also in the consistent use of the same concepts, metaphors, wordings, and rhetorical tools. To invoke the terminology of discourse analysis, this intertwining or overlapping represents a clear case of interdiscursivity.

To begin with, ever since the Orthodox crisis in May–June 1992, the cornerstone of Patriarch Filaret's discursive agenda was the representation of church autocephaly as essentially a political issue which required direct involvement of secular political actors.Footnote ¹⁰ For instance, in his 1997 address, Patriarch Filaret argued:

To substantiate this point of view, he postulated an inevitable and inseparable interconnection between the independence of a state and autocephaly of the Orthodox church in it, to the degree that “one cannot exist without the other” (Filaret Reference Filaret2010a). The basic formula “in an independent state there must be an independent church” (or “an independent Ukraine is impossible without an independent Church” (Filaret Reference Filaret2003a, 36)) was consistently repeated by him in dozens of media interviews and public addresses:

Similarly, while strongly advocating the urgent necessity to unite all Ukrainian Orthodox churches in a single autocephalous structure, the Primate of the UOC-KP also represented such a church as the bedrock of national security and the state-building process (Filaret Reference Filaret2006) as well as the guarantor of the state's independence (Filaret Reference Filaret2007, 403; Reference Filaret1997, 8–9). Patriarch Filaret considered such a structure as the only force capable of consolidating society and achieving social cohesion in the face of the cultural, political, and religious differences that resurfaced in the country after the breakdown of the USSR (“This is why we must unite not just from the church point of view but also from the point of view of [promoting] statehood in order to rebuild Ukrainian society and strengthen the Ukrainian state” (Filaret Reference Filaret2012, 274)). Therefore, he claimed, the idea of such a church should be incorporated into Ukrainian national ideology:

Thus, from the early 1990s, the Orthodox church's autocephaly and unity in Ukraine were represented by Patriarch Filaret as inherently political notions without which the sovereignty of the Ukrainian state could not be considered complete (Filaret Reference Filaret2003a, 70). Already in 1992, he argued that “Ukrainian Orthodoxy is closely linked to the independence of Ukraine” and that “Ukraine can be really independent only if there is a spiritual background – if our Church is independent from a center located in a foreign state” (Filaret Reference Filaret2003a, 55). The situation where the “administrative center” of a church is located abroad was designated by Patriarch Filaret as “unnatural” because, in his framework, the church was meant to defend the interests of the state (Filaret Reference Filaret2003a, 37; cf. Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018i). In another interview, he stated: “It is normal for an independent state to desire to have its own independent Church. So why should it [the Church] be governed from the capital of a foreign state?” (Filaret Reference Filaret2003a, 520–521).

These and other similar statements which focused on the interplay between “church” and “foreign center” found their manifestation in President Poroshenko's pronouncements, such as his major catch-phrase “the state must not interfere with church affairs, especially if it is a foreign state” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018a). In his interview for TV channel “Pershyi zakhidnyi” in September 2018, Poroshenko also argued that “Ukrainian statehood, the Ukrainian state cannot be independent if it has a Church – one of the elements and pillars of the existence of statehood – which is controlled from abroad” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018j).

As has been mentioned, Patriarch Filaret's primary goal in this discursive “politicization” of the issue of a united Orthodox Church was to prove that it was the state that first and foremost needed the church's autocephaly for its survival, more so than the church itself (Filaret Reference Filaret2007, 384); thus any involvement of political actors in the resolution of the autocephaly issue would be fully legitimate. He stressed that when it came to the church's unity and autocephalous status, the state authorities had an “immediate duty” to secure its ubiquitous recognition.Footnote ¹¹ In an address of 2007, the Primate of the UOC-KP also asserted that autocephaly could be achieved by the church only through active involvement of the state:

Moreover, given the strategic significance of a united church as an instrument of state-building, Patriarch Filaret claimed that those who opposed the involvement of the political authorities in the creation of such a structure in fact acted as the enemies of the Ukrainian state (Filaret Reference Filaret2007, 710–723). In the same vein, he pointed out that “all the obstacles on the path to the unity of Ukrainian Orthodoxy – whatever their source is – should be seen as anti-state and anti-Ukrainian in nature” (Filaret Reference Filaret2003b, 403).

Another point where the discourse of Patriarch Filaret could potentially serve as a source for President Poroshenko's agenda on religion is the idea of the army, the Ukrainian language, and the autocephalous church as the three pillars of Ukrainian statehood. For one thing, the issues of the Ukrainian language as a language of religious services and national identity were very pronounced in Patriarch Filaret's speeches in the 1990s. In his address from 1997, he singled out the Ukrainian language and the autocephalous church as the two key components of national security (Filaret Reference Filaret1997, 2). In another speech, he stressed that there can be no Ukrainian state without the Ukrainian language or an autocephalous church (Filaret Reference Filaret2007, 411–412).

In turn, the linking of the army and the church by President Poroshenko echoes Patriarch Filaret's claim from an interview in September 2016, in which he asserted that “in order to establish the Ukrainian state we need two things: a strong army and a united autocephalous Orthodox Church” (Filaret Reference Filaret2016). It is noteworthy, though, that this idea about a church-army “tandem” can be further traced in Patriarch Filaret's discourse to a pronouncement by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. In September 2009, Patriarch Filaret argued:

The pronouncement referred to here is from President Putin's press conference on February 1, 2007 in which he asserted that “the traditional confessions of the Russian Federations and its nuclear shield are those components that strengthen Russian statehood and provide the conditions for the external and the internal security of the country” (Putin Reference Putin2007). President Poroshenko himself also made a direct reference to this statement in his address in November 2018 at the conference “The Hybrid War Decade Lessons Learned to Move Forward Successfully”:

This clear ideological intertwining constitutes an interesting example of interdiscursivity where ideas and concepts “float” between opposing discourses: sometimes they are criticized and sometimes borrowed and adopted. In the context of his expressions in the 2000s, it might be inferred that Patriarch Filaret spoke critically of the system of the church–state relationship in Russia and represented the UOC-KP's public role as merely a forced response to it. On the other hand, after 2014, he de facto borrowed “the church and the army” schema as a template to adopt in Ukraine. Correspondingly, while being critical of the Russian system of church–state relations, the Ukrainian authorities in effect decided to mirror this discursive agenda and adopt the same religio-political framework. It is plausible to argue, however, that the idea of church and army as two pillars of the Ukrainian state in President Poroshenko's speeches is not directly indebted to President Putin's statement but comes––with the rest of the borrowings––from the discourse of Patriarch Filaret.

There are a number of other elements which illustrate a close intertwining of Patriarch Filaret and President Poroshenko's discourses as far as the ideas and arguments presented through them are concerned. First, despite attributing the highest level of political significance to an autocephalous church in state-building processes, both President Poroshenko and Patriarch Filaret equally dismissed the idea of introducing an official state church (“derzhavna tserkva”) in Ukraine (Filaret Reference Filaret2003a, 288; Reference Filaret2003a, 88–89). On the other hand, they were keen to draw direct parallels between the proclamation of the autocephaly of Ukrainian Orthodoxy and the Referendum about the independence of Ukraine, held on December 1, 1991 (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018o). This was one of the pivotal points in President Poroshenko's Address dedicated to the 27^th anniversary of the Referendum as well as in other speeches of this period (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018m; Reference Poroshenko2018n; Reference Poroshenko2018q). Although not as straightforward, similar connections were frequent elements in Patriarch Filaret's discourse where he explicitly linked his efforts to obtain autocephalous status for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with political processes during the disintegration of the Soviet Union (Filaret Reference Filaret1997, 3; Reference Filaret2003b, 431; Reference Filaret2003a, 32–46; Reference Filaret2012, 447–464).

Second, both Patriarch Filaret (already in his discourse in the 1990s) and President Poroshenko (Reference Poroshenko2018a; Reference Poroshenko2018c; Reference Poroshenko2018r) on numerous occasions expressed their disapproval of the multiplicity of Orthodox churches in Ukraine as a threat to the state and as a status quo which plays into the hand of Russia.Footnote ¹² In April 2018, President of Ukraine stated:

In his speech in May 2018, he also asserted that Ukraine did not need several Orthodox churches because Ukrainians “are not divided by anything” and thus they should not be forced to choose between different Orthodox affiliations (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018c).

Third, while discussing the religious situation in Ukraine, both Patriarch Filaret and President Poroshenko extensively resorted in their discourses to the notion of a “fifth column.” However, while even before the eruption of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict, Patriarch Filaret applied this label directly to the UOC-MP (Filaret Reference Filaret2003a, 212; Reference Filaret2007, 391–394; Reference Filaret2015, 629), President Poroshenko avoided such direct application: his usage of the “fifth column” notion for the most part referred to Russian or pro-Russian political forces in Ukraine which act through the UOC-MP to undermine political stability in the country (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018e; Reference Poroshenko2018r).

Thus, this analysis demonstrates a close affinity between President Poroshenko and Patriarch Filaret's discourses which represent the same discursive formation. Despite this apparent closeness, however, the leader of the UOC-KP was never directly quoted or even referred to by the President of Ukraine in his public speeches or interviews regarding church issues. Instead, to enhance his messages in support of autocephaly and increase their rhetorical effect, Poroshenko used direct quotations from the UOC-MP's documents and the pronouncements of its late Primate, Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan). This discursive strategy represents the dimension of intertextuality in the public discourse of President Poroshenko.

For instance, in January 2016, he sent a letter to the Synod of Bishops of the UOC-MP calling for church unity in response to the challenges of Russian aggression (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2016c). In particular, President Poroshenko urged the bishops to consider a union with the UOC-KP and the UAOC by quoting the social doctrine document of the UOC-MP and also the address of the Kharkiv Synod of May 1992, which laid out the reasons for the coup d'etat in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and for removing of Metropolitan Filaret (Denysenko) from his post as Primate of this church. Similarly, in July 2016, the Ukrainian President quoted Metropolitan Volodymyr in his speech during the official ceremony which marked the anniversary of the Baptism of Kyivan Rus':

This quotation, intended to represent the Primate of the UOC-MP Metropolitan Volodymyr as a de facto proponent of the idea of autocephaly, was taken from his 2012 address written on the occasion of the 20^th anniversary of the Kharkiv Synod, the event that effectively halted the process of autocephaly initiated by the then Metropolitan Filaret. Consequently, in this text, Metropolitan Volodymyr––while acknowledging the legitimacy of the notion of autocephaly per se––at the same time strongly criticized any political involvement in its negotiation and implementation in the modern context (Metropolitan Volodymyr 2012). Similarly, in many of his media interviews, the hierarch downplayed the actual significance of autocephaly for church life and refused to recognize it as a means of achieving the unity of Orthodoxy or social cohesion in Ukraine (Metropolitan Volodymyr 2008).

However, the inclusion of these quotations in Poroshenko's discourse may be seen as part of a strategy of intertexuality which disregards the original context of a document's production and its actual content in favor of achieving a certain rhetorical or polemical effect. On the one hand, President Poroshenko's selective quoting was intended to portray Metropolitan Volodymyr, by far the most authoritative and widely popular figure of the UOC-MP, as a true ally in the state's crusade for autocephaly and thus sway the opinion of those among the UOC-MP's flock who might not have been aware of such pronouncements. On the other hand, it might have been used to put the hierarchy of the UOC-MP in the difficult position of not following the ideas of their own Primate and thus leave them much less wiggle room for refusing to join the government's religious project.

Thus, while President Poroshenko's core ideas on church and state appear to be derived from the discourse of the UOC-KP, nonetheless in cases of direct quotation, he utilized the texts of the UOC-MP, a staunch opponent of the state project of autocephaly and of uniting Ukrainian Orthodoxy for reasons of socio-political expediency.

CHURCH AND STATE IN UKRAINE: TOWARD RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM?

There are a number of different approaches to interpreting the religio-political discourse of President Poroshenko and its rapid radicalization since April 2018. On the most basic level, as mentioned, the quantitative and qualitative change in his rhetoric might be seen as reflecting a strategic necessity to legitimize the crucial role of the state in the autocephaly process and to mobilize the Ukrainian population which, according to several social surveys, was lukewarm toward the issue of church autocephaly and, what is crucial, to the government's interference in it.

For instance, a survey conducted by Democratic Initiatives Foundation and Razumkov Center in May 2018 on the heels of the sensational announcement by President Poroshenko, evinced only a moderate level of popular demand for a united autocephalous Orthodox Church among Ukrainians. According to the data, it was supported by 31.3%, while 19.8% objected to it (DIF 2018). The largest group of respondents, 34.7%, picked the option “Don't care/not interested” (DIF 2018). Overall, this and other earlier studiesFootnote ¹³ contradicted President Poroshenko's regular appeals to social surveys and repeated claims that the creation of a united independent Orthodox church was supported by “more than half of Ukrainians” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018g).

In addition, respondents to the May 2018 survey regarded the issue of the church's status to be only moderately important: the combined share of those who thought that the new church “would not change anything” or “this issue should not be raised at all” amounted to 48.8% (DIF 2018). On the opposite side of the spectrum, it was named as a “top priority” by only 11.5%; as a “topical, but not a top priority” issue––by 22.7% (among those who were in favor of the autocephalous church––33.6 and 50.3%, respectively). Most importantly, though, the respondents were skeptical about the involvement of state authorities in the matters linked to the united Orthodox Church: the option that the state should take the lead in this process on its own initiative was selected only by 7% (DIF 2018). Also, 17.1% believed that the authorities were allowed to take some steps in regard to autocephaly, but only to assist the efforts of the churches themselves. That the authorities should not be involved at all was the view of 56.7% of all respondents (and of 40.7% of supporters of the idea of a united church).

However, a survey conducted by the sociological group “Rating,” in September 2018, several months after the changes in the rhetoric of President Poroshenko took place, demonstrated that his discursive strategy aimed at mobilization of popular support might have been effective in changing public perception of the matter. According to this study, 54% of respondents reported a positive or rather positive attitude to the idea of a united local church in Ukraine, while the share of those who expressed a negative attitude remained unchanged at 19% (Rating Sociological Group 2018).

In the big picture, though, the fusion of religious and political discourses discussed above––and in particular the close (albeit symbolic) binding of church and state in the utterances of President Poroshenko––signified a tendency toward redefining the boundaries of secularity in Ukraine and a shift in the state ideology toward adopting a more “religious” version of nationalism. This tendency was confirmed by President Poroshenko's explicit postulation of the triad of an autocephalous church, the Ukrainian language, and the army as the three key pillars of the new post-Euromaidan political order. The validity of this point of view is further supported by the fact that in August 2018, these often repeated statements were converted into the modified short slogan “Army! Language! Faith!” and put on official state posters, devoted to Independence Day celebration. In his annual speech to Parliament in September 2018, President Poroshenko stated that the expression “Army! Language! Faith!” should be seen as the “formula of the modern Ukrainian identity” (Poroshenko Reference Poroshenko2018k).

At the same time, expressed in the terms employed in Rieffer's theoretical scheme, this blending of religion and politics can be tentatively conceptualized as “instrumental pious nationalism,” or an intermediate type between the religious and secular forms of nationalism. As Rieffer puts it, in such cases “political leaders attempt to use religious and national sentiments and attachments to rally the population and shore up support when the political, economic, military or social institutions are failing to provide for the needs of the people” (2003, 229). In other words, this type of nationalism employs religion as a valuable political resource for bolstering legitimacy, especially in times of crisis. From this perspective, the new Ukrainian Orthodox structure––as it was conceptualized by Patriarch Filaret and President Poroshenko––could play a crucial political role in shoring up the policies of the state and de facto perform the same set of functions in Ukraine as the ROC performs in the Russian Federation: formally separated from the state, the ROC nonetheless fully backs the Russian political regime in its struggles with real or fancied enemies.

In the Ukrainian case, this “pious instrumentalization” of religion by the state authorities has two important dimensions. On the foreign policy level, by establishing the idea of an autocephalous church as an inseparable part of the state ideology, the Ukrainian authorities aimed to finalize the process of political and cultural separation between Russia and Ukraine and to undermine those ideological constructs (such as the “Russian World”) that have informed Russia's geopolitical claims over Ukrainian territories. Simultaneously, the establishment of such a church would be instrumental in minimizing the influence of the UOC-MP, regarded as not having displayed enough support for the ideological line of the Ukrainian state regarding the events in Crimea and Donbas.Footnote ¹⁴

Simultaneously, on the level of domestic politics, these messages mirroring the discourse of Patriarch Filaret might have been used by President Poroshenko to attract the sympathies of the UOC-KP's flock which, according to social surveys, constituted 42.6% of all Orthodox believers in the country (Razumkov Center 2018, 17). In the same vein, this strategy aimed at securing the loyalty and cooperation of those political forces which openly upheld the agenda of the Kyiv Patriarchate, especially such far-right nationalist groups as “Svoboda” and “Pravyi Sektor.” While these radical groups played a crucial role in the course of the Euromaidan protests, after it they also remained the most active and protest-prone part of Ukrainian civil society. Taking this into account, according to some experts and politicians, the active autocephaly campaign of 2018 should be primarily seen as a part of President Poroshenko's strategy to canvass popular support in view of the presidential elections in March 2019.Footnote ¹⁵