Between 1931 and 1936 thousands of churches—three-quarters of those in the country—ceased to function altogether. Many would be physically demolished: between 1934 and 1937 sixty-nine churches were destroyed in Kyiv alone. Both churches and synagogues were converted to other uses. The buildings, hungry peasants were told, were needed to serve as “granaries.” The result was that by 1936 services took place in only 1,116 churches in the entire Ukrainian Republic. In many large provinces—Donetsk, Vinnytsia, Mikolaiv—there were no Orthodox churches left at all. In others—Luhansk, Poltava,
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