From the USSR to Ukraine: Why Yelensky fights the Church under every regime
In recent times, new evidence has surfaced online showing that Viktor Yelensky faithfully served the Soviet regime. Why, then, has he not yet been “decommunized”?
Viktor Yelensky, head of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, has a long and very compromising background. Under the USSR, he loyally served Soviet power, glorified it in every way, and zealously promoted all the anti-church and anti-religious narratives of communist ideology. More and more of Yelensky’s works have recently come to light, in which he expressed ideas that today would be called “promotion of Russian narratives.” Let us examine this in detail.
Leninist or anti-Soviet?
Here is a quote from his brochure Jewish Clericalism and Zionism, published in 1988 in the series The Student’s Atheist Library:
> “Marxist-Leninist theory gives us the tools, the method to penetrate into the depths of the economy, politics, and the spiritual sphere of human life. … One cannot but marvel at the scope and depth of Lenin’s thought, his genius in foreseeing the monstrous calamities that the descending phase of capitalist development could bring upon the world.”
To illustrate Lenin’s “depth of thought,” let us recall his words on religion in the 1909 article On the Attitude of the Working-Class Party to Religion:
> “Religion is the opium of the people… All contemporary religions and churches, all religious organizations without exception, Marxism regards always as organs of bourgeois reaction, serving the defense of exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.”
As we shall see, Yelensky absorbed this Leninist view of religion very well.
In 1988 Yelensky published an article in the Ukrainian Historical Journal: Implementation in the Ukrainian SSR of the Decree ‘On the Separation of Church from State and School from Church’ in the Early Years of Socialist Construction. In it, he defended Soviet power and Lenin personally, like a zealous partisan.
Yet a mere quarter-century later, Yelensky’s views on Lenin, the Church, and the school system had turned completely upside down.
In 2015, as a member of the Verkhovna Rada, he called the law “On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine Concerning the Establishment of Educational Institutions by Religious Organizations” an “important step in the desovietization of Ukrainian education.” According to him, confessions had to prove that “the principle of separation of Church and State, understood as the complete expulsion of the Church from the public sphere, is a Leninist-Stalinist concept.”
So again, Yelensky invoked Lenin and the Soviet system – but now in a completely different, harshly negative key.
The Church as “enemy of the people”
Back in 1988, however, Yelensky was glorifying Lenin and his war on the Church. He wrote:
> “The leaders of the Church developed a program of large-scale resistance to the decree [on separation of Church and State], which fully coincided with the plans of the counter-revolution aimed at destroying Soviet power.”
We now know this was an outright lie: the hierarchy devised no such program and engaged in no counter-revolution. It tried only to save the Church from annihilation and preserve the faithful’s right to confess Orthodoxy. Yelensky knew this, yet he continued to brand the clergy as subversives:
> “After the Revolution, reactionary clergy and monks became agents of foreign interventionists, and monasteries located behind Soviet lines were turned into strongholds of the bands.”
Yelensky went so far in his servility to Soviet power as to claim that the people themselves welcomed the crackdown on the Church:
> “Even churchmen in 1921 were forced to admit that the Ukrainian Orthodox population received with sympathy the idea of separating Church from State.”
He even asserted that the people themselves fought against the Church:
> “Party organizations and Soviets in implementing Lenin’s decree ‘On the Separation of Church from State’ relied on the anticlerical movement of the working people, who for the most part received it with approval.”
The “bad”/ “good” UAOC
Yelensky’s double standards are especially striking in his treatment of two religious organizations that arose after the 1917 Revolution: the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) and the Renovationist Church.
Of the UAOC, Yelensky wrote:
- “Created by die-hard bourgeois nationalists, Petliura’s henchmen, the UAOC, after the defeat of the counter-revolution, became a legal center around which gathered nationalist elements hostile to Soviet power.”
- Members of the UAOC “carried out the ideological indoctrination of the bandits of the so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The episcopate of the UAOC blessed nationalist bands, executioners of the people, for the mass murder of Soviet citizens.”
- “In the eyes of thousands of peasants, the UAOC became a legal cell of the nationalist yellow-blue counter-revolution, which for a decade fed parasitically on their feelings and moods. It was precisely this – and not any negligence in canonical matters – that led to the collapse of the UAOC.”
- “The leaders of the UAOC support nationalist groups, spread the ideas of clerical nationalism, propagate the legacy of such enemies of the Ukrainian people as Petliura, Konovalets, Bandera, Shukhevych, Dontsov, and call upon the Ukrainian emigration to participate in a ‘crusading anti-communist campaign’ against socialism.”
These quotations are taken from two of Yelensky’s scholarly atheist works:
- The article Implementation in the Ukrainian SSR of the Decree “On the Separation of Church from State and School from Church” in the Early Years of Socialist Construction;
- The article What Is the Foreign Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church?, published in the brochure Atheism and Religion: Questions and Answers. Moscow: Politizdat, 1988. Notably, a Moscow edition. V. Yelensky is listed among the authors, and since the brochure does not specify individual authorship of particular articles, we have every right to associate the content of this brochure with V. Yelensky.
Thus, the present head of the State Service for Ethnopolitics harshly lambasts the autocephalists. Yet in regard to the Renovationist Church, his words sound entirely different:
> “Within Orthodoxy, the Renovationist movement appeared. In Ukraine it found considerable support among the faithful. By the end of the recovery period, 17.2% of all Orthodox communities were Renovationist. The Renovationists sought to save the Church by revising its political and social orientation and establishing normal relations with Soviet power” (emphasis added).
In other words, V. Yelensky praises one religious organization while mercilessly condemning another. But why? After all, the “profound thought of Lenin” had taught him that “all contemporary religions and churches, all religious organizations of every kind, Marxism regards always as organs of bourgeois reaction.”
The answer suggests itself. The chief criterion of a confession’s “rightness,” in the eyes of today’s head of the State Service for Ethnopolitics, is whether it establishes “normal relations” with the ruling power. And how are such relations established? Let us recall: the Renovationists did not merely collaborate with the communists – the organization itself, known as the Renovationist or “Living Church,” was created in the early 1920s by the GPU in order to destroy the true Orthodox Church. It was nothing more than an instrument in the hands of the Bolsheviks. And it was only in this capacity that the communists needed it – and in this very capacity that Yelensky lauds it.
The UAOC, however – for all its uncanonical nature and other shortcomings – stood in opposition to Soviet power. That alone was enough to provoke the hostility of Soviet loyalists, both in the 1920s and again in the 1980s.
But then three decades passed. The Ukrainian SSR became independent Ukraine. And in Yelensky’s worldview, the changes were dramatic. Bandera, Petliura, and Shukhevych – once branded enemies of the people – were transformed into idols. The UAOC – once denounced as “a cell of the nationalist yellow-blue counter-revolution” – became part of the state-backed OCU. And Yelensky himself became the locomotive driving it forward.
In fact, in his present-day rhetoric, the UAOC/OCU has taken the very place once occupied by the Renovationists. Let us recall his words about that structure: “The Renovationists sought to save the Church by revising its political and social orientation and establishing normal relations with Soviet power.” If one simply replaces “Renovationists” with “OCU,” and “Soviet power” with “Ukrainian,” it could just as easily be said of today’s organization headed by Epifaniy Dumenko.
The government is persecuting the Church? “You’re all lying!”
Today, in nearly every public appearance, Viktor Yelensky insists that there is no persecution of the Church in Ukraine. In Russia – yes, there is. In the occupied territories – yes, there is. But in the Ukrainian state, he claims, there is supposedly astonishing freedom of religion. And this despite the countless videos of churches being seized, believers beaten bloody, priests and even bishops assaulted.
Those who report such cases to the international community, Yelensky brands as “Russian propagandists,” assuring everyone that they are working for the enemy.
To anyone familiar with the persecution of the UOC, it is incomprehensible how any decent person can deny such facts, can call black white, and white black.
But here is the crux: Yelensky said *exactly the same things* 37 years ago. The only difference is that back then, he was whitewashing not the Ukrainian authorities, but the Soviet ones.
In his already-mentioned 1988 article *Jewish Clericalism and Zionism*, he wrote:
> “The lie about the ‘persecution’ of believers under socialism, about the ‘violent eradication’ of religious institutions, is being spread ever more insistently… What cunning did the defenders of this fabrication about ‘persecution of faith in the USSR’ not resort to! What lies did the anti-Soviet agitators not tell, what grotesque distortions did they not contrive, what inventions sprang from the fevered imagination of professional anti-Soviets!”
Now recall what Yelensky says today about Law 3894, which bans the UOC. According to him, it in no way infringes upon believers. Those who claim that the UOC is persecuted, he says, are manipulators who slander Ukraine.
He used practically the same words back then about those who criticized the Bolshevik destruction of the Church:
> “The elementary legal norms by which the relationship between state and religious organizations is regulated are immediately declared to be ‘interference,’ ‘encroachment,’ ‘restriction,’ and so forth. Moreover, these norms are often distorted beyond recognition or suddenly acquire ‘details’ that could only have been born in the fevered imagination of a licensed anti-Soviet.”
And when Yelensky today assures some Western official, pastor, or journalist that there is no persecution of the UOC and that freedom of faith in Ukraine is unparalleled, it is impossible not to recall his words from that panegyric article of 1988 on Lenin’s struggle against the Church:
> “Fabrications about ‘barbaric destruction,’ ‘closing of churches,’ and the like were already refuted back then by progressive figures who had been able to visit the Land of the Soviets.”
It is astonishing just how current Yelensky’s words from then sound today. Simply change “the Land of the Soviets” to “Ukraine,” and they can be reused without the slightest edit.
Conclusions
There is one obvious conclusion.
From everything listed, it follows that Viktor Yelensky does not care whom to support and whom to denounce. He does not even care which regime he serves. The only principle to which Yelensky has remained faithful throughout his entire professional career is *servitude to power itself*.
Under the communists, the UAOC was in opposition to the state – and Yelensky savaged it ruthlessly. He condemned nationalism and called its leaders enemies. But under today’s Ukrainian authorities, the UAOC first became “patriotic” and convenient to the government, and then merged into the state-sponsored OCU. And now Yelensky defends its interests with all his might.
Under the communists, it was profitable to extol the genius of Lenin – and Yelensky did just that. Under the present regime, it is profitable to preach “patriotism” and the revival of national identity – and Yelensky now stands at the side of those he spat upon not so long ago.
And it must be said: today’s Ukrainian authorities repay Yelensky in kind. With such a toxic background, he should never have been allowed anywhere near high office. After all, officially Ukraine has “decommunization.” Yet not only was he appointed head of the State Service for Ethnopolitics (and unofficially – the chief ideologue and executor of the task of destroying the Church), he is stubbornly kept in that position through every change of government. Why do the “patriotic” authorities retain in such a post a loyal Leninist, a man devoted to Marxist-Leninist ideology? Why, despite mountains of compromising material, do they refuse to dismiss him? Why, though the maximum age for state service is 65, do they renew his term year after year (he is now 68)?
Is it not because the authorities recognize in him their faithful servant – one ready to strike any bargain with his conscience, to trample people’s rights, to proclaim any lie – so long as it serves the powers that be?
There is also a less obvious conclusion.
We all know in theory that the devil acts in our world through human beings. And perhaps the devil’s chief work in such actions is the war against the Church of Christ – the very path through which humanity attains salvation. Viktor Yelensky, over his life, has shifted his political views to their exact opposite. But in one thing his activity has remained utterly unchanged. He fought the Church in his youth – and he fights it still today.
