СТАНОВИЩЕ ЛЬВІВСЬКОЇ АРХІДІЄЦЕЗІЇ ВІРМЕНСЬКОЇ КАТОЛИЦЬКОЇ ЦЕРКВИ ПІД ЧАС ДРУГОЇ СВІТОВОЇ ВІЙНИ

Abstract

Before the World War II, the big group of ethnic Armenians – the descendants of former immigrants from Armenia lived in western Ukraine. While being isolated from the country of origin for more than seven centuries and after dozens of generations they assimilated with the local population and formed in Galicia entrenched Armenian ethnic group. As religious beliefs the “Lviv”, “Galician” or “Polish” Armenians kept mostly Armenian Catholic faith and belonged to the parish, which united into the Lviv Archdiocese of the Armenian Catholic Church (ACC). Lviv Archdiocese of the ACC belonged to the Eastern Catholic churches subordinated to the Vatican, and was one of the three major Catholic churches in western Ukraine.

During the World War II, the Lviv Archdiocese of the ACC and Armenian national communities of Galicia had experienced great turmoil and got involved in political intrigue, created by the secret services of different countries, seeking to gain a foothold in the region. Based on the relatively unknown documents from the Branch State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, the relations of the Armenian Catholic Church in Lviv with representatives of the German occupation authorities and with the Soviet security services in the 1941–1946 have been researched. The author argues that the elimination of the Armenian Catholic Church in Lviv was held on the basis of documents fabricated by the Soviet secret security services and was part of the anti-religious ideology campaign aimed at the elimination of Eastern Catholic churches in Ukraine in the postwar period.