• DOI:10.2307/3650068
• Corpus ID: 111387049

Borderlands of Faith: Reconsidering the Origins of a Ukrainian Tragedy

@article{Skinner2005BorderlandsOF,
  title={Borderlands of Faith: Reconsidering the Origins of a Ukrainian Tragedy},
  author={Barbara Skinner},
  journal={Slavic Review},
  year={2005},
  volume={64},
  pages={88 - 116}
}

• B. Skinner
• Published 1 March 2005
• Political Science
• Slavic Review

Critiquing prevalent secular explanations for the cossack-led uprising called Koliivshchyna that erupted in the Ukrainian borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1768, this article identifies religion as the root cause of the uprising. Traditional nationalist and socioeconomic arguments explain Ukrainian violence against Poles and Jews, but do not account for Ukrainian violence against Ukrainians, which set this uprising apart from previous cossack-led disturbances. Increasing conflict between Uniate and Orthodox parishes along the newly reinforced Polish- Russian border on the Dnepr River at the time of Catherine II set the stage for the uprising. As Uniate religious practices had become more Latinized while Orthodoxy in this region drew ever closer into dependence on the Russian Orthodox Church, confessional tensions also reflected opposing Polish or Russian political allegiances. This article reaches beyond the context of Ukrainian national history to bring this event into current discourse on borderland regions and on overlapping political and religious identity.