Religion in Ukraine
Religion in Ukraine is diverse, with a majority of the population adhering to Christianity. A 2018 survey conducted by the Razumkov Centre found that 71.7% of the population declared themselves believers. About 67.3% of the population declared adherence to one or another strand of Orthodox Christianity (28.7% of the Kiev Patriarchate, 23.4% state simply 'Orthodox' with no declaration as to which Patriarchate they belong to, 12.8% of the Moscow Patriarchate, 0.3% Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and 1.9% other types of Orthodoxy), 7.7% 'Christian' with no declared denominational affiliation, 9.4% Ukrainian Byzantine Rite Catholics, 2.2% Protestants and 0.8% Latin Rite Catholics. Judaism was the religion of the 0.4%; while Buddhism, Paganism (Rodnovery), and Hinduism were each the religions of 0.1% of the population. A further 11.0% declared themselves non-religious or unaffiliated. According to the surveys conducted by Razumkov in the 2000s and early 2010s, such proportions have remained relatively constant throughout the last decade, while the proportion of believers overall has decreased from 76% in 2014 to 70% in 2016 and 72% in 2018. (p. 22).
History of Christianity in Ukraine
In 1988 with the millennium anniversary of the baptism of Rus, there was yet another shift in the Soviet attitude towards religion, coinciding with the Perestroika and Glasnost programmes. The Soviet Government publicly apologized for oppression of religion and promised to return all property to the rightful owners. As a result, thousands of closed religious buildings in all areas of the USSR were returned to their original owners. In Ukraine this was the then ROC's Ukrainian Exarchate, which took place in the central, eastern and southern Ukraine. In the former-uniate areas of western Ukraine things were more turbulent. As UGCC survived in diaspora and in the underground they took their chance and were immediately revived in Ukraine, where in the wake of general liberalization of the Soviet policies in the late-1980s also prompted the activization of Ukrainian national political movements. The Russian Orthodox Church became viewed by some as an attribute of Soviet domination, and bitter, often violent clashes over church buildings followed with the ROC slowly losing its parishes to the UGCC.