This paper reflects on my research in the Vatican archives on the Vatican's policy toward the Soviet Union during the pontificate of Pius XII. Documents declassified in 2020 reveal new aspects of Vatican-Soviet relations, in which the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church often became a hostage of "high politics." The history of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine and Eastern Europe is shaped by intertwined ecclesiastical, political, and identity-related factors and has been significantly influenced by Western Orientalizing perceptions that persist within Church structures and academia. The main questions of my presentation are as follows: Despite changes in the foreign policy orientations of different popes, what are the longue durée continuities in the Vatican's so-called "Eastern policy"? What role have Ukraine and the Greek Catholic Church played within this framework? How has the Western perception of the East in general—and, more specifically, the prejudice of certain 19th- and 20th-century Roman Catholic bishops against the Byzantine rite—influenced Vatican policy? How has this policy changed (if at all) in connection with the decisions of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which officially introduced ecumenical ideas into the Catholic Church? How has the unique position of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church—one that exists not situationally, but fundamentally, between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions—contributed to its epistemic injustice and political inequality? And how can we conceptualize the experience of practical ecumenism in Soviet Ukraine, where Orthodox believers, who were identifying themselves as Greek Catholics, might attend Roman Catholic churches—a phenomenon frequently misunderstood, difficult to classify, and ultimately marginalized in Western academic discourse?