| Summary: | The article attempts to investigate the historical circumstances of the formation of Church-state relations principles in the extraliturgical activities of Polycarp (Huts), the Bishop of Donetsk and Luhansk and the first hierarch of the UOC-Kyivan Patriarchate in the Donbas. It observes the formation of the future hierarch’s pastoral experience, which was embedded in the period of his service in the Odessa Diocese (1956 – 1961) under the influence of the high-principled administrative policy of Metropolitan Boris (Vik) to develop the diocesan structure against the background of the brutal anti-religious campaign of N.S. Khrushchev. It is proved that the circumstances of the first years of the future hierarch’s ministry contributed to the formation of such principles in his character as ecclesiocentrism, democracy, broad involvement of parishioners in community life and lack of fear of the authorities. It is substantiated that these qualities allowed Bishop Polycarp, despite his relatively short archpastoral ministry in the conditions of ideological and political resistance, to lay the foundation for the process of organizational restoration and institutional establishment of the Donetsk-Luhansk Diocese of the UOCKyivan Patriarchate. The article analyzes the forms and methods of the archpastor‘s public, social and political activity and covers the events surrounding the institutional establishment of the Donetsk-Luhansk Diocese of the UOC-Kyivan Patriarchate in the first half of the 1990s.
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