Orthodoxy Triumphant? Reassessing the 1839 "Reunification" of Greek Catholics

This paper investigates one of the most dramatic moments of religious history in the Russian Empire's periphery: the conversion in 1839 of more than two million Belarusians and west Ukrainians to from the Greek Catholic, or Uniate, Church to Russian Orthodoxy in 1839.  The 1839 conversions officially eradicated the Greek Catholic church from the lands Russia gained from partitioned Poland, thereby eliminating the main source of Polish and Catholic influence among the Belarusian and west Ukrainian peoples and expanding the Orthodox core of the empire.  As Eastern Slavs, Ukrainians and Belarusians were ethnically and culturally closer to Russians than any other groups in the empire; their conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, then, heightened this proximity, bringing them closer to a "Russian" identity -- a key motivation for imperial policymakers. 
            Ostensibly a victory of Russian over Western influence in Russia’s western borderlands and a hallmark of Russification policies, the conversion effort -- officially termed "reunification" with Orthodoxy -- bears reassessment.  Problematic practices and questionable compliance to Russian Orthodox norms in the previous Greek Catholic regions throughout the 19^th century reveal a more complex result.  Looking at the process of conversion in terms of religious practices at the parish level, this paper will consider accommodations made by both the Belarusian and Ukrainian religious leaders and Russian Orthodox and imperial officials, asking to what extent the end result was "Russian" Orthodoxy and what the implications were for local and imperial identity.  The realities on the ground during and after 1839, which comprised the Empire's largest single conversion effort among its non-Orthodox subjects, will serve as a lens for reconsidering imperial confessional and cultural policy in Russia's western borderlands from the perspectives of both the center and the periphery.