Russia and Ukraine share a common and a separate religious, cultural and political history. The East Meets West Conference hosted by the University of Eastern Finland on 4 October will focus on the diverse network of various encounters between things ‘Russian’ and ‘Ukrainian’. The conference will discuss religious and political interests linking and separating Ukraine and Russia.
One of the most recent controversial issues is the establishment of an independent Orthodox Church in Ukraine in 2019, which has been deemed unacceptable by the Russian Orthodox Church and its section operating in Ukraine.
“Today, both these Churches claim to represent the true legacy of the baptism of Kievan Rus. Indeed, the root cause of the disputes and different interpretations dates back further than the past decade and its political upheavals. With our conference, we want to shed light on both sides,” Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology Heta Hurskainen says.
The conference will be organised online, with English being the conference language. The programme will start with a keynote speech by Andriy Fert from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, focusing on the different modern Ukrainian Orthodox Churches’ interpretations of national history. The keynote speech by Assistant Professor Elizaveta Gaufman from the University of Groningen, on the other hand, will deal with disputes between the Churches that have been caused by the pandemic. The keynote speakers' presentations will be commentated by Dr Maija Penttilä, who holds a title of Docent at the University of Helsinki, and by Professor Kirill Hovorun from University College Stockholm.
The focus of the afternoon programme will be on controversies identified in personal histories between Ukraine and Russia, as well as on the interpretation of decisions made by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the emergence of the Soviet Union, from a contemporary Russian perspective. Discussions will also be held on how the Russian Orthodox Church has attempted to resolve the tensions risen in the Orthodox world as a result of the establishment of an independent Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
The conference constitutes part of the School of Theology’s new East Meets West series, and is the first conference organised under this theme. Themes relating to the encounters between East and West are also highlighted in the East Meets West blog, podcast and events.
Photo on top of the page by Matti Piirainen.
