Nataliia Shlikhta

This project focusses on Ukrainian youth’s attitudes towards the Soviet past and their value orientations, which partly explains Ukrainian society’s resistance to Russian aggression. The research field is the history of the Eastern Christian Churches in Ukraine during the Soviet period. This research contributes to the understanding of late Soviet religiosity with its curious blending of religious and Soviet elements, as well as examining the personal story of a Greek Catholic “reunited” priest and the present-day perception of his activities in Western Ukraine. Shlikhta’s study of the Russian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the post-WWII period sheds light on confessional situations in contemporary Ukraine and Russia. This research is predicated on the idea that the key to understanding  the character of the Russian-Ukrainian war is largely to be searched for in the Soviet past and especially in the social, cultural, and psychological processes of that period.