Organizational Models of State-Church Relations in Volhynia during the Soviet Period among Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Communities

Abstract

The article analyses the organizational models of state-church relations in Volhynia during the Soviet period (1939–1991) across three confessional environments: Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant. Drawing on a comparative approach, the author argues that the Soviet state did not apply a single unified religious policy, but instead developed differentiated administrative strategies based on the size, ethnic associations, degree of manageability, and missionary activity of each religious community. The article examines the fundamental mechanisms of Soviet control over religious life: the community registration system, the institution of commissioners of the Council for Religious Affairs, and state security surveillance of clergy and believers. It demonstrates how the formally declared constitutional freedom of conscience diverged from the actual practice of administrative restrictions, persecution, and the systematic dissolution of communities. With regard to Orthodox parishes in Volhynia, a model of «controlled integration» is identified, whereby the Church retained a minimal institutional structure at the cost of complete subordination to state interests and the renunciation of any social autonomy. Roman Catholic communities found themselves subject to gradual marginalization, driven by a catastrophic shortage of clergy, their association with Polish ethnic identity, and suspicion of ties to the "hostile" Vatican. Protestant communities – Evangelical Christian Baptists, Pentecostals, and Seventh-day Adventists – faced administrative disciplining and persecution primarily because of their organizational flexibility, missionary practices, and transnational connections, all of which fundamentally contradicted the logic of centralized control. The article concludes that the differentiated character of Soviet religious policy reflects its predominantly administrative, rather than purely ideological, nature: different confessions became objects of distinct technologies of state control over social diversity.