PROTESTANTS IN SOVIET UKRAINE IN THE 20S – 30s of the XX century: POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL ASPECT

Abstract

The article raises the problem of the general political-historical analysis of the Protestant movement in the context of the party-state policy of Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s. The study of state-church relations of polyconfessional Ukrainian society in general and Protestant currents in particular actualizes a new scientific understanding of the state religious policy at different stages of development of the historical past and present. Baptists, evangelical Christians, Seventh-day Adventists, and evangelical Christians (Pentecostals)

are studied in a combination of the principles of objectivity, worldview pluralism, complexity, methodological principles of mathematical statistics, comparative studies, and problem-chronological method. The study is based on the use of archival materials of two central and four regional archives of Ukraine. The study identified two periods in the development of the Protestant movement. The first (1920-1928) was marked by external loyalty and covertly aimed at discrediting, splitting Protestant organizations, but at the same time expanding their activities and building their own institutions. Christians of the evangelical faith are marked by the greatest activity and territorial mobility. The second (1929–1939) stage was marked by an open anti-Protestant policy, oppression, and the destruction of Ukrainian Protestant institutions. A large number of Protestant communities decreased in number, but continued to operate without registration, semi-legally until the late 1930s.