Author ORCID Identifier
ORCID: 0000-0002-2445-968X
Abstract
Abstract
The article examines the place of Christianity in the personal life and creative activity of Mykhailo Hrushevsky. On the basis of a wide range of archival and published sources (memoirs, diary, and correspondence), the spiritual evolution of Hrushevsky as a Christian has been reconstructed – from the rigorous observance of religious duties in his youth to a fairly secular attitude toward the Church in his mature years. Faith in God helped him overcome the spiritual crisis of his youth, caused by the search for his life’s vocation, and to choose the path of serving the people through scholarly work.
Institutionally, the scholar’s sympathies, like those of other representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, shifted from attachment to the Russian Orthodox Church to close cooperation with the founders of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. The article has demonstrated that Hrushevsky made a significant contribution to the study of the history of religious beliefs in Ukrainian lands. In his synthetic works (above all, in “History of Ukraine-Rus”), popular scholarly essays, and numerous articles, the historian consistently argued for the religious tolerance of Ukrainians, their orientation toward inner faith, democracy, and conciliarism. Through his academic work, he substantiated the necessity of developing national cultural forms of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Through this perspective on historical and ecclesiastical issues – viewed through the prism of Ukrainian cultural interests – Hrushevsky-historian gained considerable popularity among his Ukrainian and Western European contemporaries, and his ideas formed the foundation of twentieth-century Ukrainian religious studies discourse.
Recommended Citation
Telvak, Vitalii; Hyrych, Ihor; and Nakonechnyi, Volodymyr
(2026)
"Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Church,"
Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 46
:
Iss.
4
, Article 13.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55221/2693-2229.2775
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol46/iss4/13