Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0061-2301
Abstract
This article analyzes the use of the courts by the totalitarian regime against Protestant communities in Ukraine. It has been established that the show trials held in the 1960s–1980s against the leaders and active members of the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists, which opposed the totalitarian regime, and against ordinary believers in Protestant communities were conducted according to the plan of atheistic campaigns by officials of the communist regime and were organized by the repressive special services of the State Security Committee and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It has been established that the trials led to the organization of a series of measures of a destructive and preventive nature and the discrediting of both the leaders of illegal Protestant communities and ordinary believers. It has been shown that, following the methodological guidelines of the security services, the regime’s propagandists in the media disseminated extensive so-called “incriminating” information about the future defendant prior to the trial to create an immoral image of him and incite public hostility towards his religious beliefs. The judges operated according to a premeditated scheme formulated by repressive special services, considering only facts favorable to totalitarian justice; the assertions of state experts were intended not to ascertain the truth, but to condemn actions and impose severe penalties on believers. It has been established that, with the support of the totalitarian regime, judges issued unlawful sentences, imposed lengthy prison terms on believers, levied fines, deprived non-conformist presbyters of parental rights, and stripped children from their families. It has been shown that the trials of Protestant community leaders in Ukraine provoked a significant response from believers; this contributed to their consolidation and resistance to totalitarian methods of justice, and the number of sympathizers to the believers increased, leading to the swift dissemination of information beyond the USSR's borders. Ultimately, all these factors led to the disintegration and elimination of the totalitarian communist regime and the restoration of the Ukrainian state, where every citizen has a real, rather than merely declarative, right to freedom of religion, as in the Soviet era.
Recommended Citation
Vysoven, Oksana; Varadi, Natalia; Fihurnyi, Yurii; and Kriukova, Ganna
(2026)
"Use of Courts by the Totalitarian Regime Against Protestant Communities in Ukraine,"
Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 46
:
Iss.
6
, Article 10.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55221/2693-2229.2799
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol46/iss6/10