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The disappearance of Poland as a sovereign state in the late eighteenth century and subsequent unsuccessful Polish attempts to regain unity and independence throughout the following century thrust the Roman Catholic Church into a position of "guardian" of the Polish "national spirit." This was particularly true in juxtaposition to the Protestant and Eastern Orthodox faiths, which came to be identified with German and Russian rule, respectively. The reemergence of the independent Republic of Poland following World War I placed these two faiths in the category of "minority" denominations, whose believers came from predominantly non-Polish ethnic groups, and thus became objects of official as well as popular pressures. This unfortunate historical legacy continued throughout the century, and resulted in a situation wherein the fortunes of the Orthodox Church have been closely intertwined with those of both the Polish state-irrespective of its governing ideology-and the Roman Catholic Church. An overview of the situation, development, and activities of the Polish Orthodox Church from the conclusion of World War II to the collapse of the communist regime in 1989 is the subject of this article. POLISH ORTHODOXY PRIOR TO 1945
The Polish Republic was a multinational state with substantial religious as well as ethnic diversity among its inhabitants. The last official prewar census of 1931 listed 3,762,484 Orthodox believers in Poland, or 11.8% of the total population.1 In terms of nationality the vast majority of Orthodox were either Ukrainian/Ruthenian (40%) or Belorussian (24%), with Poles comprising 12% and Russians a scant 3% of the total.2 By the eve of World War II, the number of believers registered with the Orthodox Church had risen to 4,220,000; since most were concentrated in those provinces bordering the Soviet Union, they were susceptible to being labeled "security risks" by official as well as nongovernmental sources.
From the outset the Orthodox Church became the focus of three conflicting concepts of its role in the new Poland. The Orthodox clergy, predominantly of Russian ethnicity and exclusively so in the hierarchy, viewed the Church as the best means of retaining a viable Russian presence in Poland, with an eye to the eventual restoration of tsarist rule in Russia. Conversely, many Ukrainians and Belorussians saw it as a prime instrument in their struggle to develop cohesive national...