Ukraine’s Youth: Religion Adds to Nationalism

LVOV, Soviet Union —  Roman Dovah, a 9-year-old Ukrainian who wants to be a priest when he grows up, says his proudest possession is a cross his mother gave him last month.

But Roman wears it only at home, or when he goes to services of the outlawed Ukrainian Catholic Church, to which his family belongs. He is afraid to wear the religious ornament to school, he said, because his classmates or teacher might see it when he changes clothes for gym class.

“Someone would immediately tell someone else, and then the director of the school would ask me to visit him,” Roman said. “He would want to know where the cross came from, why I wear it. I would get into trouble--and just because the Communist Party doesn’t like our church.”

Wrinkling his freckled nose in distaste, the boy went on: “I don’t want to be a party member. The Soviet power is bad. It tried to wipe out our church. I think the Ukraine should separate from the Soviet Union.”

Growing Disillusionment

Roman’s views, although those of a child, reflect a growing outspoken radicalism among young people, even the very young--a radicalism that often finds an outlet in the organized religion that the late dictator Josef Stalin sought to stamp out.

In cities and farming villages here in the Ukraine, Christianity is attracting increasing numbers of young converts these days as a result of growing disillusionment with the Communist Party.

Although President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has preached the need for religious tolerance, the growing power of the church, particularly the banned Ukrainian Catholic Church, is likely to be a headache for the Kremlin in this republic where religion and nationalism are so bound together as to be almost indistinguishable.

Calls to break away from the Soviet Union, now being heard from radical young people and left-wing religious and political groups, are a cause for serious concern in Moscow, which already has a plateful of problems with the country’s minorities.

The Ukraine, the second-largest republic in the country in terms of population, is also the national breadbasket, supplying about a third of the Soviet Union’s wheat and grain. Serious nationalist unrest here would be even more threatening to the Soviet Union than the nationalism of the Baltic states and other smaller republics.

Roman is clearly being indoctrinated at home and on the streets by anti-party sentiment. His mother, Anna, sounded resentful as she told a foreigner that the anti-religious influence of party officials in the Ukraine makes it difficult even now for Roman and the family. Anna said her sister was dismissed from her teaching job in 1983 after her bosses learned that she was attending Mass in a friend’s apartment. Since then, she has not been able to get a teaching job.

Forced Merger of Church

Members of the Ukrainian Catholic Church are often among the most adamant in their opposition to the party because of the official hostility directed toward the church since 1946, when it was forced to “merge” with the Russian Orthodox Church. Catholic believers who refused to accept the merger were either arrested or forced to go underground.

While the church can now hold services openly, it is still officially illegal, and thus there are no churches.

“Trying to repress our church won’t stop us,” Roman’s mother said. “Forbidden things are just that much sweeter.”

In the fight for official recognition, the young are the recruits. A church-sponsored street procession Sunday in this capital of the western Ukraine drew more than 100,000 people, about a third of them teen-agers. Ivan Hel, a church activist, said the young are often among the most committed.

Hel, head of the Committee for the Defense of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, estimated that in 1987 about 17% of the young people in the Ukraine attended the underground church services regularly, and that now the figure is more than double that.

“The upsurge of religious belief among young people reflects their disappointment with the party, particularly here in the Ukraine, where perestroika goes very slowly,” Hel said, referring to Gorbachev’s program of reform. “The crisis in the revolutionary Bolshevik ideology makes them seek another ideology. So they turn to the church and join us.”

It is Gorbachev himself who has rocked the Communist Party boat. In his effort to shake up and reinvigorate his country he has brought to light corruption and apathy in the ranks and at senior levels as well.

One result, clearly, is that many of the idealistic young people feel that they cannot pin their hopes on the party, so are looking elsewhere.

Andrei Skop, a 14-year-old who began attending underground church services with his mother at the age of 6, belongs to a new youth organization that he described as being both religious and political. His group opposes the Communist Party, he said, “because it is a bloody party.”

“My only dream,” he said, “is to become a priest, to give myself to God and persuade others to believe in Him. I want nothing to do with the party.”