Victoriya Bilyk, Oksana Karlina. A Live Community in Imperial World: Lutsk Greek-Uniate Eparchy of the late 18th – first half of the 19th centuries. Lviv: Ukrainian Catholic University Press, 2018. 280 p. (Kyivan Christianity Series, Vol. 13).

The monography is a successful attempt of reinterpreting traditional view on the history of union in the Russian empire as a historical period of persecutions and martyrdom, as well as a mass-scale abandonment by Ruthenian Catholics of their ethno-confessional identity. The authors of the book consider Lutsk Greek-Uniate Eparchy, founded in 1798, a live community which, despite the religious limitations of the official authority, managed to preserve its orga­nizational structure and develop a rather successful pastoral, cultural, educational and charity activity. The phenomenon of a long lasting Uniate Church in Volyn up till the 1840’s (unlike in Kyiv area and Podillia) was made possible due to a tight interaction between clergy and laity on the parish level, an efficient support of the local nobility of the Latin and ‘Ruthenian’ rites and the previous successes of confessionalization in Kyivan Metropolitanate during the times of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Victoriya Bilyk, Oksana Karlina. A Live Community in Imperial World: Lutsk Greek-Uniate Eparchy of the late 18th – first half of the 19th centuries. Lviv: Ukrainian Catholic University Press, 2018. 280 p. (Kyivan Christianity Series, Vol. 13).