Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine: The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1870-1900

The Greek Catholic church has been described as a hybrid of eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism that combines the heritage of Byzantine Christianity with submission to the Roman Papacy. The eastern and western elements of the church have often collided, but perhaps never so dramatically as in the Austrian province of Galicia in the late nineteenth century.

Using Soviet archival materials declassified in the 1980s, John-Paul Himka examines a period during which the Greek Catholic church in Galicia was involved in a protracted, and at times bitter, struggle to maintain its distinctive, historically developed rites and customs. He focuses on the way differing concepts of Rutherian nationality affected the perception and course of church affairs while showing the influence of local ecclesiastical matters on the development and acceptance of these divergent concepts of nationality.

The implications and complications of the Galician imbroglio are engagingly explained in this latest addition to Himka's work on nationality in late nineteenth-century Galicia. His analysis of the relationship between the church and the national movement is a valuable addition to the study of religion and national movements in East Europe and beyond.