This article is devoted to the study of the problem of Church autocephaly made by a prominent scholar, an expert in canonical law, Vladimir Beneshevich. The article is based on the unpublished documents from the Beneshevich archive in St. Petersburg. The documents help reconstructing religious life of the country of the first post‑revolutionary years (1917–1922). Their significant part deals with the problems of the canonical law, mostly related to the issue of autocephaly of the Georgian Church.

The article discusses ecclesiological issues that were included in the agenda of Pan-Orthodox Council but found no solution in the pre-conciliar debates: the Orthodox Diaspora; proclamation of autocephaly; the role of the Diptychs. The author then examines the issue of primacy in the Universal Church. All these questions can be combined and connected with the issue of the supreme or sovereign power in the Orthodox Church: its localization and mechanics for the implementation.

In 1920-1930s the West Ukrainian areas, Galicia and Volhynia, incorporated into the independent Poland (the Second Rzeczpospolita) according to the 1921 Riga peace treaty, became the centre of the Ukrainian national movement. However the political activity of the Ukrainian nationalists was strongly limited by the Polish government. One of the few organizations of the Ukrainian people, capable to maintain social activity, was the Church. In Galicia the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church traditionally supported the Ukrainian national movement.