Annexation of the Kyiv Metropolis by the Moscow Patriarchate (1685–1690)

To gain control over the church, Moscow applied corruption at the international level: the Kyiv metropolitanate was seized "through bribery, manipulation, and blackmail"^[3]. The payment was recorded by Patriarch Dionysius of Constantinople himself in a letter to the tsars: "We have received the alms of your holy tsardom from your envoy, lord Nikita Alekseevich – three forties of sables and two hundred gold pieces"^[1].

The liquidation of independent jurisdiction to turn the church into an instrument of assimilation – the annexation of the Ukrainian church to the Muscovite one in 1686^[4]. The Ecumenical Patriarchate later officially stated that these actions "were carried out entirely out of accord with the lawful canonical prescriptions"^[5].

The introduction of censorship control over Ukrainian book printing. Patriarch Joachim banned publications without his sanction and sent a reprimand for publishing books without prior permission^[2][6], and in 1690 "the Council of the Russian Orthodox Church condemned the 'new Kyivan books' of Petro Mohyla, Kyrylo Stavrovetsky, Ioanykii Galiatovsky, Sylvestr Kosov, Lazar Baranovych, and others, laying on them a curse and anathema"^[7].

The destruction of the Kyiv theological school and the declaration of its works as heresy: "All Ukrainian writings, beginning with the catechism of Petro Mohyla, were declared heretical... the council condemned virtually all the principal works of Kyivan theological scholarship"^[6][2].

The annexation of the metropolitanate was disguised as the protection of co-religionists: the reform was carried out "relying on the Orthodox movement against the Turkish conquerors"^[2], and "Golitsyn's main project concerning Ukraine… became the reform of the Ukrainian Orthodox church, or rather – the subordination of the Kyiv metropolitanate to the Moscow patriarch"^[2][6].

Immediately after the subordination began the imposition of Muscovite church standards and rites, marginalizing the local tradition. The Ecumenical Patriarchate recorded the canonical illegality of the act itself directly: "the alienation from our Throne of the Metropolitanate of Kyiv and of the Orthodox Churches of Lithuania and Poland dependent on it, as well as their attachment to the Holy Church of Moscow, were from the very beginning carried out entirely out of accord with the lawful canonical prescriptions"^[5].

Following the establishment of control over the metropolitanate came the gradual unification of liturgical printing and pronunciation along Muscovite models, culminating in Peter I's direct decree of 1720: church books could be printed only after being checked against Muscovite ones, "so that there be no discord or distinct dialect in them"^[8].