How could we possibly forget this?

Addressing the topic of historical memory of the Soviet Union, and World War II in particular within the Orthodox Churches of Ukraine prior to 2022, the article provides a number of examples illustrating the ambiguity of this memory in post-Soviet Ukraine. The ambiguity concerns the place of memory itself, the former Soviet Union as a – officially decreed – homeland to Russians and Ukrainians to be defended in the “Great Patriotic War” 1941–1945, but it also concerns ambivalences between heroic secular narratives and Christian sainthood. Furthermore, the ambivalence is reflected in monuments as much as in the statements of church officials and believers.