Cerkiew prawosławna w II Rzeczypospolitej
The Orthodox Church, 2nd Polish Republic

Summary/Abstract: In 1918 the independent republic of Poland was proclaimed. In 1920-1921, after the Polish-Soviet war, the Polish border was moved 200 km east of the Curzon line, which is more or less the Soviet-polish border of 1945. During the 2nd Polish Republic the Orthodox Church was not supported by an ascendancy of the authority yet, but was identified with the Russian invader’s religion. The Polish authorities treated Orthodoxy not as the religion of their people, but as the faith of the former occupant. The transfer of Orthodox Church property was part of the government’s policy of building a revived Polish state and its national unity on the basis of Roman Catholicism. This policy meant decreasing the number of Orthodox parishes and monasteries, the confiscation of church property by the state or its transfer to the Roman Catholic Church, closing Orthodox churches, and converting the faithful to Roman Catholicism. Throughout the mid-war period (1938-1939) the Orthodox Church had no regulated legal status. It was only after the transfer of Orthodox churches and estates by the state and the Roman Catholic Church that president Ignacy Mościcki signed a decree of 18 November 1938 On the attitude towards the Autocephalous Orthodox Church. On the basis of that decree the position of the highest authority governing the matters of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church was given to the General Council (Sobor) which consisted of bishops and representatives of the clergy and faithful. The executive body of the Church was a synod consisting of the metropolitan, the army bishop and two diocese bishops. The 1938 decree was the first document in the history of the Orthodox Church in the Second Polish Republic, which settled the relations between the Polish state and the Orthodox Church. It removed the state temporariness criticised by the clergy and faithful. On the basis of this decree the Orthodox Church was greatly subjected to the state and its policy. Within three weeks of issuing the decree, on 10 December 1938, a governmental decree was issued containing “The Internal Statute of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church”. It settled in detail the competence of the Orthodox metropolitan, the General Council, the Bishops’ Council and the Bishops’ Synod.

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