Initiative group and its activities for the establishment of the Lviv synod of 1946

This study discussed the reasons for the establishment, the composition and the scope of activities of Initiative Group formed in 1945 among the clergy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which wanted to be reunited with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Initiative Group increasingly used a variety of tools for persuasion of the Uniate clergy. The structure of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Europe at the end of the Great Patriotic War was described. The research reviewed the works of Greek Catholic Archpriest Gabriel Kostelnik who worked hard to hold the Lviv Synod eliminating the institutional forms of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church on the territory of the Soviet Union. The viewpoints of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy I (Simansky) of Moscow and All Russia and the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church were compared. The research is based on the documents of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (SARF, Moscow).