Outline History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church — Volume IV, Part I

Wlasowsky, I. Outline History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Translator's note: This is an English translation from the Ukrainian original. Theological and ecclesiastical terms are rendered in standard Orthodox English usage. Where a Ukrainian term has no precise English equivalent, the original is given in parentheses. Proper names follow standard Ukrainian transliteration. Page markers from the original edition are preserved. A Glossary of Terms is provided at the end of the text for reference.

This English translation was produced through AI-assisted translation in March 2026, with three iterative review passes comparing against the Ukrainian original. It is a working academic reference intended for graduate-level study, not a published scholarly edition. A Glossary of Terms appears before the Index.

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Table of Contents

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IVAN WLASOWSKY

Outline History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Volume IV (20th century). Part One.

Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A.

New York, 1961 / Bound Brook

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Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate

Ivan Wlasowsky

Outline History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Volume IV, Part One

Reprint Edition

Kyiv

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THE FIFTH ERA

THE REVIVAL OF THE UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN THE ERA OF THE NATIONAL AWAKENING OF THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE, WITH THE COLLAPSE OF THE RUSSIAN TSARIST EMPIRE, DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR (1914–1918) AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1917. (From 1917 to the present day.)

In the introduction to our "Outline History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church," we expressed the thought that perhaps no Orthodox Church is as bound up in its history with the life and fate of the people, the nation, as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (vol. I, pp. 15–16). Four eras in the history of this Church, spanning more than nine centuries, are behind us. We have seen that throughout these centuries, the Ukrainian people, under the care and influence of their Orthodox Church, created their national culture as a branch of the broader Christian culture. They shared this culture with their northern neighbor, helping Russia in the 17th–18th centuries to find the path to culture and education. We have seen that the Orthodox Church formed and nurtured over the centuries in the character of the Ukrainian people the traits of inner piety, the foundations of morality in personal, family, civic, and state life. The Orthodox faith became so intertwined with the worldview, character, and way of life of the Ukrainian people that it became a mark of Ukrainian nationality: belonging to this faith testified for centuries to a person's belonging to the Ukrainian nation. Therefore, we have seen that in the plans to denationalize and assimilate the Ukrainian people, the attacks in history were directed first and foremost against the national Ukrainian Orthodox Church — attacks came both

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from the state authorities on Ukrainian lands of the foreign-faith Polish state, and from the state authorities on those same lands of the co-faith Muscovite state. The difference between these attacks was significant. The attack of the foreign-faith authorities was directed at the destruction of the Orthodox Church itself among the Ukrainian people, replacing it with the Union with Rome or outright Latinism. The attack of the co-faith authorities, by contrast, moved in the direction of Muscovitizing or Russifying the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Old Poland never thought of Polonizing the Orthodox Church in Poland; "Polish Orthodoxy" for non-Poles, modeled on "Russian Orthodoxy" for non-Russians, was an achievement — as we shall see further — of the Polish state thinking in the restored Versailles Poland of our times. How, to what extent, and with what success the Ukrainian people resisted both of these attacks on their national Orthodox Church in past centuries, how they defended their Orthodoxy — this was discussed in the preceding sections of our work.

As we now proceed to the narrative of the events of the modern history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the era we call its revival in our times, we must note an undeniable fact. The leveling measures of the Russian authorities regarding Ukrainian church life, practiced throughout the 18th–19th centuries under the cover of co-faith status, led to the point where the very existence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a national Church of the Ukrainian people was forgotten by Ukrainians themselves. The Ukrainian church tradition was preserved only partially, in the depths of the people's worldview and in the liturgical-ritual customs of the Ukrainian popular masses (on this, see Era 4, Section V, 3). Among the Ukrainian clergy, this tradition was largely forgotten, and the history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a national church was for the most part entirely unknown. The Ukrainian intelligentsia, following the Russian radical intelligentsia, generally despised church affairs as "clerical" and backward. From the 1860s until the very revolution of 1917, the Ukrainian national movement in Russia, which proceeded through organizations of the intelligentsia and was barely connected with the broad popular masses, knew the struggle for the Ukrainian language in print, Ukrainian literature, Ukrainian theater, Ukrainian schools, but in the field of this struggle, or demands, or polemics, we find no mention of a Ukrainian Orthodox Church for the Ukrainian people. Therefore, when we read such assertions as: "The Ukrainian Church never reconciled itself to subordination to the Moscow church authorities"... "The conscious Ukrainian public was always captivated by the dream of restoring the Ukrainian Church's rights of freedom" (Tserkva i Zhyttia [Church and Life; hereafter Ts. i Zh.], no. 1, 1927, organ of the UAOC, p. 21), their historical value is the same as in the "Historical Memorandum on the Past Life of the Ukrainian Church," sent by the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church

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Rada (governing council) in 1925 to the Orthodox churches, which attributed to Minister Valuev the words: "There is no Ukrainian Church, no Ukrainian language, no Ukrainian people; there never was and never can be" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2–3, 1927, p. 142). In the circular of July 18, 1863, Minister Valuev wrote, as is well known, citing the opinion of some mythical "majority of Little Russians," that "there was no, there is no, and there can be no special Little Russian language" (S. Yefremov, op. cit., p. 47); talk of the Ukrainian Church in the mouth of a Russian interior minister of the mid-19th century is a gross anachronism by the authors of the "Historical Memorandum," which departed from historical reality in many other places as well.

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, in his work "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church," which constitutes Chapter 7 of his "History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church" (the complete work was lost; Chapter 7 survived in manuscript), writes that with the revolution of 1917, when the movement began in church life in Ukraine as well, at its beginnings "in church gatherings the national aspect was not yet sufficiently prominent: the clergy, as well as the laity, divided not by nationality but by ideology, into conservative and progressive; both Ukrainians and Russians participated in both camps"... The fact was that in the Russian Orthodox Church, within which the Ukrainian dioceses also found themselves, well before the revolution of 1917 there were rather significant progressive currents. At the basis of these currents lay a deep dissatisfaction with the condition in which the Church found itself in Russia, subordinated to state authority and politics entirely since the time of Peter I. At the beginning of the 20th century, with the general growth of revolutionary sentiments in Russia, and further into the revolution of 1905–1906, these oppositional currents against the enslavement of the Church and its state-bureaucratic structure and character grew in strength as well. The result of this movement was the announcement of the convening of an All-Russian Church Sobor (church assembly/synod), since there had been no sobors in the Russian Church since the beginning of the 18th century. To prepare for the Sobor, a "Pre-Conciliar Commission" (Predsabornoie Prisutstvie) was organized in 1906. Its membership, divided into several committees, included the flower of the theological, canonical, and church-historical scholarship in Russia of that time, the most distinguished representatives of the hierarchy and clergy, the professoriate of the theological academies, and well-known lay and church figures.

No one in the Pre-Conciliar Commission disputed the necessity of church reform, but regarding the direction of reform, great divergences appeared between the conservative and progressive members. The conservative group was numerically larger; its ideologist was Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky, then Archbishop of Volyn. This group was against the chief-procurator's state power in the Church, but saw the revival of church life in the restoration of the patriarchate in the Russian Church, abolished by Peter I, and in the strengthening of the hierarchical church authority, freed from the excessive patronage and control of the secular state bureaucracy. The progressive group considered the basis of church reform to be the revival of the principles of conciliarity (sobornist) in the life and governance of the Church from

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top to bottom (the revival of the parish as a legal unit, the basic cell of church life). Those reports and heated discussions that took place in the committees and at the plenary of the "Pre-Conciliar Commission" (six volumes of its proceedings were published as a supplement to the synodal Tserkovnyia Vedomosti [Church Gazette]) had an echo in the dioceses as well. The Church Sobor in Russia, as is known, was never convened until the very end of tsarist Russia. But the ideas that gave rise to the preparation of the Sobor, that were the subject of debates in the "Pre-Conciliar Commission," did not die out; they continued to spread and immediately manifested themselves with the revolution of 1917, when in April–May of that year diocesan congresses began to be held everywhere, including in Ukraine. Metropolitan Lypkivsky mentions this in the words cited above, as he himself had long belonged to the progressive part of the clergy. Moreover, he was an active leader among the progressive part of the Kyiv clergy. Already during the revolution of 1905, he presided over the Kyiv Diocesan Congress; in those same times, students of the Kyiv Theological Academy would gather at his home for conversations on the topics of church reform. There was no talk in those times about the revival of the Ukrainian Church, and even less about its autocephaly.

The church movement that erupted with great force in the revolution of 1917, and which had its roots, as we see, in the times before it, stood on church-religious ground. Its basic postulates were church reforms in the direction of freeing the Church from the role of servant to the political regime, the revival of church-communal life under conditions of restoring conciliar forms of church governance, with the ultimate goal of raising the authority and religious-moral influence of the Church in the life of Christian society. But the very circumstance that the liberating, church-progressive movement in the Church had dealt, even before the revolution of 1917, with the dominance of Russian politicking on the foundations of the "sacred formula-dogma: Orthodoxy — Autocracy — Nationality," this inevitably influenced the fact that soon in the revolution of 1917, the church movement in Ukraine also took on a national-political character. Thus Metropolitan Lypkivsky, having spoken of the division at the beginning of the revolution of 1917 of clergy and laity at church congresses and gatherings in Ukraine not by nationality but by ideology, continues: "But in the state life of Ukraine, meanwhile, things were seething; the purely national aspect was coming to the fore more and more. And this inevitably was reflected in the Church as well. Already at the diocesan congresses, the Ukrainian language rang out, demands arose for independence from Moscow, and a bit later a division appeared in the clergy as well, into Ukrainian and Muscovite." Although the active Ukrainian political figures at the beginning of the revolution disclaimed, as we shall see below, the church question, nonetheless the national awakening of the Ukrainian people in the 20th century did not pass by the Church. This historical fact strengthens the thesis about the most

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intimate connection of the Orthodox Church with the life and fate of the Ukrainian people; this historical fact testifies that the Orthodox Church was not and did not become a relic in the national-spiritual structure of the Ukrainian people, as it might have seemed to those of the Ukrainian intelligentsia who, under the influence of modern theories, had lost the national Ukrainian traditions. The events connected with the revival of the national Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its development over these forty years since the revolution of 1917 will be the subject of the further part of our "Outline History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church." These events took place not only in Ukraine, but everywhere in the world where communities of Orthodox Ukrainians found themselves abroad in this extraordinarily turbulent era of world history. We think that the designation "outline" rather than "history" will be most justified for this fifth era, which is still fresh in the memory of many and may arouse passions and provoke misunderstandings. We therefore declare in advance that we are far from any feeling of infallibility in illuminating the facts, and do not pretend everywhere to thoroughness and precision in their transmission, although the author was a participant in many of the events of this time. What is presented in the further sections of this work concerning the life of our Church from the time of the Russian revolution of 1917, and as far as possible to the present day, the author treats rather as material for future historians of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, who will be able to examine more calmly and impartially the events of church life in the era of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the records of those events, of which, unfortunately, we have very few from participants and contemporaries. The primary source for the history of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukraine in the years 1917–30 remains the aforementioned work of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky. The manuscript was handed to Bishop (now Metropolitan) Nikanor at the time of his arrival in Kyiv (in March 1942), in accordance with the instructions given by Metropolitan Lypkivsky himself before his arrest.

CHAPTER I. THE UKRAINIAN CHURCH MOVEMENT IN UKRAINE DURING THE REVOLUTION OF 1917, UP TO THE ALL-UKRAINIAN CHURCH SOBOR IN KYIV, OCTOBER 14–30, 1921.

When a historian of church life in Ukraine during the All-Russian Revolution of 1917 consults the "Book of Rules," published for the first time in 1839 by the "Most Holy Governing All-Russian Synod," and with that alone begins to verify the "correctness and legality" of the events of that life; when that same historian draws his knowledge of the events of that life only from the writings and accounts of the enemies of the national revival of the Ukrainian people, such as the defamatory tract by S. Ranevsky (pseudonym), "The Ukrainian Autocephalous Church," printed in 1948 at the press of the Holy Trinity Monastery of the Russian Church Abroad in Jordanville,

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New York — then he will easily arrive at such "scholarly-historical" conclusions on the question of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the 20th century as K. V. Fotiev, a candidate of theological sciences from the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, who wrote: "The Lypkivsky movement (Lypkivshchyna) was a clerical movement that was sustained by the Petliura administration, just as twenty years later the 'autocephaly' of Bishop Polikarp relied on the German occupier-dismemberers and the Galician policemen they installed" (Attempts at Ukrainian Church Autocephaly in the 20th Century. Munich, 1954, p. 20). One could pay no attention to similar attempts by "candidates of theological sciences" to present the national-church movement among the Ukrainian Orthodox people as some kind of "chauvinistic operetta" (p. 29), were it not for the acknowledgment of such "historical-critical attempts" as "valuable" by persons of genuinely considerable church-historical erudition and experience, such as the former professor of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and Minister of Confessions in the Russian Provisional Government in 1917, A. V. Kartashev, who accompanied Fotiev's brochure with his recommendation: "His [Fotiev's] work gives the reader a sufficient compass to orient himself in the chaos of the Ukrainian church factions that claim autocephaly and autonomy" (p. 4).

Guided by such a "compass," the "leaders of the Church" will certainly not be able to "competently intervene in the course of events" (A. V. Kartashev), but will only wander again along the paths of the unwise policy toward Ukraine in the years 1917–21 pursued by the Russian hierarchs — Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky, Bishop Nazariy Blinov, and Exarch Mykhail Yermakov. The revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was met with hostility by this policy of the Muscovite hierarchs in Ukraine, as is well known, which immediately sharpened the process of making the Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent as a national Church — of the kind that the Eastern Orthodox Church is composed of. Just as dismissively the Provisional Government in Petrograd initially treated the national-political awakening of the Ukrainian people, so even more dismissively and with astonishment did the Russian hierarchs treat the Ukrainian church movement, saying, in effect, "even the khokhly [a derogatory term for Ukrainians] have raised their noses" ("national aspirations" in Fotiev's words, p. 7). Therefore, as had happened more than once in the history of the formation of separate autocephalous local churches in the Eastern Orthodox Church, so this time too a fierce struggle began for and against the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Muscovite, or Russian, Church, to which the Ukrainian Church, as the Kyiv Metropolitanate, had not been subordinate for 700 years, and on the contrary, the Muscovite national Church until 1458 was part of that Kyiv Metropolitanate from which it received its very beginning. The first stage of that struggle was the period from the beginning of the Ukrainian church movement during the revolution of 1917 to the convening of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in Kyiv in October 1921 and the formation at it, in an extraordinary manner, of a Ukrainian hierarchy.

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1. The Diocesan Congresses of 1917 in the dioceses of Ukraine, their composition and resolutions. The organization in Kyiv of the first All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada and its activities.

From the very first days of the Great Russian Revolution at the end of February 1917 — a revolution "bloodless," as it was characterized in the first days at rallies and gatherings in joyful elation — church life, especially in the cities, was also caught up in turbulent moods, for much combustible material had accumulated over the centuries in this life through the enslavement of the Church by the state, its service to a particular political regime, and the bureaucratization of its structure and administration. Pastoral gatherings in the cities, now even without the blessing of the diocesan bishops, began to take place more and more frequently, also with the participation of laity; sharp criticism of the existing order, complaints, grievances, dissatisfaction of subordinates with their superiors on one hand, and on the other — the matter of the church's future, church reform from top to bottom — these were the subjects of reports, deliberations, and discussions at these gatherings. The "executive committees" that were common in revolutionary times across various institutions, organizations, and corporations arose in the revolution of 1917 in church life as well. In Kyiv, at one of the pastoral gatherings, an "Executive Committee of Clergy and Laity of the City of Kyiv" was elected, in which, from the clergy, progressive-minded priests entered (of whom there were few in Kyiv), and from the laity, mostly professors of the Theological Academy and the University. Questions of church reform were discussed in the aforementioned "Executive Committee of Clergy and Laity of the City of Kyiv" on an all-Russian scale, until the question was raised of convening a "Diocesan Congress of Clergy and Laity of the Kyiv Diocese." In pre-revolutionary times, diocesan congresses in the Russian Church were held with representation only from the clergy. Only after the revolution of 1905 was representation from laity allowed (a separate curia), but the subject of those congresses was almost exclusively economic matters concerning the maintenance of diocesan institutions and theological schools. Now, even before the Synod (in its renewed composition) issued a series of "Provisional Regulations" (pending the All-Russian Church Sobor) on self-governance in parishes and dioceses, on the election of clergy and bishops, the situation had already changed. The competence of diocesan congresses was expanded by default, as was the representation of laity at those congresses. Thus, according to the electoral instructions for the diocesan congress adopted by the "Executive Committee of Clergy and Laity of the City of Kyiv," lay representatives at the Kyiv Diocesan Congress were to be twice as numerous as clergy representatives. In the spring and summer of 1917, diocesan congresses were held in all dioceses of Ukraine, regardless of whether or not the diocesan bishop welcomed them. Thus, Kyiv Metropolitan Volodymyr, who was in Petrograd during Great Lent 1917 for a session of the

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Synod, upon the request of the Executive Committee of the Clergy of the City of Kyiv for his blessing for the congress, declared the congress untimely, but the Executive Committee appealed to the Chief Procurator of the Synod, V. N. Lvov, to influence the metropolitan, and then the blessing was granted. We do not have data to state categorically, but it appears that during this period not a single diocesan congress in the Ukrainian dioceses was held with the participation of the diocesan bishop. However, Ukraine was not exceptional in this regard. Prof. A. V. Kartashev, who was in the Russian Provisional Government first as assistant chief procurator of the Synod (under V. N. Lvov), and then as Minister of Confessions (in August 1917, the chief procuratorship at the Synod was abolished), writes about these revolutionary times: "In all the provincial capitals of Russia, the liquidation of the previous governors and police authorities was taking place. Simultaneously, in many cities there were cases of arrest of bishops known for their active sympathy with the old regime or their connections with Rasputin. As in Moscow, in other dioceses extraordinary diocesan congresses were also held, and unpopular bishops were declared removed from their cathedras, with requests sent to the Synod through the new chief procurator. In some cases, V. N. Lvov sent his officers after arrested bishops, who extracted them from difficult situations by bringing them to Petrograd, to the Synod. The Synod retired them 'to rest' and assigned them residence in certain monasteries. A number of cathedras thus became vacant. It was planned to fill them through a new electoral process. It was necessary to place 'at rest' yet another member of the Synod, Archbishop Vasily of Chernihiv, also discredited by the clergy congress of his diocese" (Revolution and the Sobor of 1917–18. Bogoslovskaia Mysl. Proceedings of the Orthodox Institute in Paris. Paris, 1942, p. 78).

Metropolitans Pitirim of Petrograd and Makary of Moscow (both Rasputin's protégés) were also forced "to rest" at that time. In Ukraine, besides Vasily, Archbishop of Chernihiv, Archbishop Antoniy Khrapovitsky of Kharkiv was retired in April 1917, having submitted his request to the Synod at the demand of the "Commissariat for Spiritual Affairs" formed in Kharkiv in the first days of the revolution. The Synod granted Archbishop Antoniy's request, designating the Valaam Monastery in the north as his place of residence. According to Metropolitan Lypkivsky's account, the diocesan congresses in the Ukrainian dioceses "were extraordinarily stormy; the laity, compensating for their long silence, expressed everything that had been burning them, and the sharpest criticisms were directed at the faults of the clergy." These speeches by representatives of the flock were the main content of reports from the field. From all the discussions and resolutions that passed at these diocesan congresses in Ukraine in the first months of the revolution, two main ideas clearly emerged. First, with the fall of the old regime, under which the Church had been so diminished in its moral-spiritual authority by being forced to serve that regime, it must regain that authority. A revival must come, a transformation of the "Department of the Orthodox Confession" into the Church of Christ, with the granting to it of freedom of church-communal action on the ancient foundations of the conciliar structure of parish and diocesan life. Second, the Ukrainian dioceses should not remain further separated in the row of other Russian dioceses, but some kind of all-Ukrainian church center must be formed.

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For us, in the history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the latter idea is important because it was evidence of the awakening of national-church consciousness among the Ukrainian clergy and laity. This idea led to the restoration first of all of the church-legal status in which the Ukrainian Church found itself at the end of the 17th century, when it, as the Kyiv Metropolitanate, was subordinated to the Moscow Patriarchate on the basis of its autonomy. The fate of this autonomy was discussed by us in Chapter I of Volume III of this work: "The Kyiv Metropolitanate; its fate as an autonomous church province within the Russian Orthodox Church, from 1686 to the end of the 18th century." K. Fotiev cites from Orientalia Christiana (no. 4, 1923) an excerpt from a letter of Moscow Patriarch Tikhon to Metropolitan Nikolai of Caesarea, locum tenens of the Ecumenical Patriarchal Throne, where the matter of the "Ukrainian church revival" is presented as the work of "a small group of schismatics," "a small group of persons who were not in holy orders" (K. Fotiev, op. cit., p. 21). To treat this matter so superficially, one must either have the self-assurance of political assimilators, claiming that in over 200 years the Ukrainian people had completely lost the consciousness of their national distinctiveness. Otherwise, one must be an ignoramus in the field of the church history of the Ukrainian people. The only wonder is why Patriarch Tikhon went to meet this "small group of schismatics" and gave, as we shall see further, his blessing for the convening of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor?

At the Kyiv Diocesan Congress, held during the Paschal holidays of 1917, a proposal was introduced by Fr. Ya. Botvynovsky to name this congress the "First Ukrainian Congress of Kyiv Region." The "true-Russian" delegates from the city of Kyiv left the hall during the vote on this proposal. Vicar bishops of the Kyiv Diocese were also present at the congress; the proposal was accepted with great enthusiasm. The most important resolution of the Kyiv Congress was the resolution to convene an All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of clergy and laity. A commission for convening this Sobor was also elected, headed by Vicar Bishop Dymytriy (Verbytsky) of Uman. The intention was, as one of the participants of that congress later wrote in his memoirs (Fr. P. Korsunovsky), to restore the ancient rights of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its autonomy. "About autocephaly there was as yet no thought, just as at that time there was no thought about the complete independence of Ukraine. It was assumed that after the overthrow of the tsardom, the Ukrainian and Russian peoples would live in brotherly harmony in a free Russia" (Tserkovnyi rukh na Ukraini v pershi roky revoliutsii [The Church Movement in Ukraine in the First Years of the Revolution]. Journal Dnipro, 1925).

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"The idea of convening an All-Ukrainian Church Rada arose, according to Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, at all the diocesan congresses of Ukraine." At the Poltava Diocesan Congress, held May 3–6, 1917 (the diocesan bishop in Poltava at that time was Archbishop Feofan Bystrov, a well-known ascetic who, while serving as inspector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, had introduced Grigory Rasputin to the imperial court), following the report "On the Ukrainization of the Church," a number of resolutions were adopted, according to which "the Church in Ukraine, heeding the voice of life and history, should Ukrainize itself in concrete forms," such as: 1) conciliar governance pervading the entire church organization; 2) divine services in the Ukrainian Church in the Ukrainian language; 3) restoration in liturgical practice of ancient Ukrainian rites, rituals, and customs; 4) construction of churches in the national Ukrainian style; 5) a national theological school for the training of pastors of the Ukrainian Church; 6) Orthodox theological literature in the Ukrainian language; 7) immediate cessation of the practice of appointing Great Russians as bishops to Ukrainian dioceses; 8) immediate Ukrainization of the Kyiv Theological Academy, and other more detailed resolutions. The congress resolved to enter into communication with other diocesan congresses of Ukrainian dioceses for a detailed examination of the question of Ukrainization (more precisely, de-Muscovitization) of the Church and for the convening of a Ukrainian Church Sobor, as "preparatory to the All-Russian Sobor." Finally, the congress called upon the clergy of the diocese to take part in the awakening of national consciousness among the Ukrainian people on the basis of the demands for national-territorial autonomy of Ukraine in a federative connection with other independent parts of the Russian State ("On the Ukrainization of the Church." Report at the Poltava Diocesan Congress, May 3–6, 1917. Lubni, 1917, pp. 10–12). The Podolia Diocesan Congress also expressed itself in the spirit of the resolutions of the Poltava Congress. In light of these resolutions of the Ukrainian diocesan congresses, already in the first months of the revolution of 1917, the historian of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church can in no way agree with the tendencies of the patriarchal letter from Moscow to Constantinople (the date of the letter is unknown), and following that letter, of certain Russian historians, to present the movement for the revival of the national Church of the Ukrainian people as having arisen from the initiative of some "small group of schismatics."

The Commission for convening the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, elected at the Kyiv Diocesan Congress, turned in June 1917 to the Synod with a request to grant permission for convening in Kyiv a sobor of representatives of clergy and laity from the Ukrainian dioceses, which were: Kyiv, Volyn, Kamianets-Podilsk, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kherson, Katerynoslav, and Kholm (in the zone of military operations). The chairman of the Synod, after the dismissal of the old pre-revolutionary composition and the appointment by the Russian Provisional Government of a new composition, was Metropolitan Platon

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(Rozhdestvensky), who at the beginning of the February Revolution of 1917 occupied the cathedra of Exarch of Georgia. The Georgians, in the very first days of March, after the abdication of Nicholas II, declared the Georgian Exarchate independent from the Russian Synod, arrested the Synod's Exarch Archbishop Platon, and restored the ancient autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church, of which that Church had been deprived by the Russian Government at the end of the 18th century during Russia's conquest of the Caucasus. The Synod and the Provisional Government had to recognize the accomplished fact of Georgia's church independence, and the Georgians released Exarch Platon, who came to Petrograd, to the Synod, as its member by virtue of his position as Exarch of Georgia, although such an exarchate no longer actually existed. The example of Georgia did not, however, serve as a lesson for the church leadership of the Russian Church. From the chairman of the Synod, the former Exarch of Georgia Platon, the Kyiv Commission for convening the All-Ukrainian Sobor received a negative response with the reasoning that "there is no need for an All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, since in August of this year 1917 the All-Russian Church Sobor is opening in Moscow."

After such a response from the Russian church authorities, Bishop-Vicar Dymytriy of Uman withdrew from the Kyiv Commission, but the other members of the Commission did not abandon the work entrusted to them by the Diocesan Congress. In the autumn of 1917, when a Ukrainian military force began to form, separating from the all-Russian one, large military congresses were held in Kyiv. At the Third All-Ukrainian Military Congress in the last days of October, after the resolution on Ukraine's independence, a resolution was also adopted on the independence of the Ukrainian Church from the Russian one — that is, on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church. To implement this resolution, the Congress decided that a Ukrainian Church Rada be formed, composed of representatives of nationally conscious Ukrainian clergy and lay delegates from Ukrainian military units and from various Ukrainian organizations. In November, after the proclamation (November 7, old style) by the Ukrainian Central Rada of the Third Universal on the Ukrainian People's Republic in federation with Great Russia and other peoples of the former Russian Empire, organizational and constituent meetings were held, at which the first All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada (VPCR; Ukr. Vseukrainska Pravoslavna Tserkovna Rada; ВПЦР) — a standing governing body, not to be confused with a Sobor (church assembly) — was formed. Its membership included members of the Commission for convening the All-Ukrainian Sobor elected at the Kyiv Diocesan Congress and the Committee elected for the same purpose at the Third Military Congress. Representatives of Ukrainian organizations were also co-opted as "organizing members of the Ukrainian Church Rada" at the constituent meetings. Thus was formed the Ukrainian Church Rada as a temporary body for convening, and until the convening of, the All-Ukrainian Sobor. The chairman of the first VPCR was the military chaplain Fr. Oleksa Marichiv (military chaplains in general played a great role in the organization of the first VPCR), and the vice-chairman was Colonel Tsvichynsky. At the head of the entire Church Rada was to be

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Bishop Dymytriy of Uman, who from the entire active episcopate in Kyiv (the metropolitan and four vicar bishops) was not only Ukrainian by origin but at times even manifested his Ukrainianness. However, upon the Rada's request that Bishop Dymytriy lead it, he refused. They then turned to Archbishop Oleksiy (Dorodnitsyn) of Volodymyr, who was living "at rest" in the Kyiv Caves Lavra (Kyivo-Pecherska Lavra).

One of the distinguished hierarchs of the Russian Church in the pre-revolutionary period, Archbishop Oleksiy was a native of Katerynoslav; he was consecrated as Bishop of Sumy, vicar of the Kharkiv Diocese, at the end of the 1890s; he was later appointed rector of the Kazan Theological Academy; the revolution of 1917 found him on the cathedra of Archbishop of Volodymyr in Muscovy. Archbishop Oleksiy, as Fr. P. Korsunovsky writes in his memoirs, "had an extraordinarily strong will; both in the Academy and in the dioceses where he presided, he ruled, as they said, 'with an iron rod.'" Evidently, this was the reason that "Archbishop Oleksiy was one of the bishops removed by the revolution through their diocesan assemblies" (F. Heyer, Die Orthodoxe Kirche in der Ukraine von 1917 bis 1945, Cologne, 1953, p. 39). In the summer of 1917, the Synod granted Archbishop Oleksiy leave for medical treatment (a chest ailment) in the Caucasus, which it then extended for two more months, soon after placing him "at rest" and appointing to the Volodymyr cathedra Archbishop Sergiy (Stragorodsky) [Ukrainian: Starohorodskyi; the conventional Russian form 'Stragorodsky' is retained here as the more widely recognized name in English scholarship] — the future pro-Soviet patriarch.

Archbishop Oleksiy gladly agreed to be the honorary chairman of the Ukrainian Church Rada, after which the work of the Rada in plenary sessions and in committees "boiled over — in the words of a participant — like boiling water in a cauldron." Already at the first session of the Rada, it was unanimously resolved to convene an All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, which would decide what the church governance in Ukraine should be: the old way — subordination to Moscow, or autonomy under the supremacy of the Moscow Patriarch, or full independence — autocephaly. In these times, the Bolshevik coup had already occurred in Moscow, and at the All-Russian Church Sobor, on November 5/18, 1917, Tikhon, Metropolitan of Moscow, was elected patriarch to the restored (by the Sobor's resolution of October 28, 1917) Moscow Patriarchal Cathedra. In the hope of a fraternal attitude toward the church question in the Ukrainian People's Republic and its peaceful resolution, the Ukrainian Church Rada resolved to send a delegation to the newly elected Patriarch Tikhon, tasked with explaining to the patriarch the state of church affairs in Ukraine and requesting his blessing for the convening of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor. In the last days of November, the delegation, headed by Fr. Marichiv, departed for Moscow.

p. 15

From Fr. Marichiv's report at a session of the Church Rada after the delegation's return from Moscow, one could see satisfaction with the successfully completed journey. Patriarch Tikhon received the delegation immediately upon its arrival, listened attentively, and understood that the Ukrainian Church Rada wished to resolve and settle the church question in Ukraine in a fraternal Christian manner. After brief deliberation, he said that for the sake of peace in the Church, he blessed the Church Rada to convene the All-Ukrainian Sobor. The patriarch promised to send the charter (hramota) with this blessing with a delegation that would come from him and the All-Russian Church Sobor to Kyiv. Such a delegation indeed arrived in Kyiv at the end of November; it was headed by Metropolitan Platon and included members of the All-Russian Sobor: Prof. Yevgeniy Trubetskoy of Moscow University, Prof. N. Kotliarevsky of the same university and former vice-minister of confessions in Kerensky's cabinet, Fr. Ya. Botvynovsky, and Myrovych, a teacher at the theological school in Podil, Kyiv. After the delegation was met by the full membership of the Church Rada, headed by Archbishop Oleksiy, conferences began with a separate committee delegated by the Rada, which lasted four days. Metropolitan Platon, who was evidently the central figure of the delegation, took an irreconcilable position in the negotiations. In his view, the Church in Ukraine, as a part of the general Russian Church, should have no privileges and no separate sobors; there could be no autonomy of church life in Ukraine. Such views clearly ignored the political situation of Ukraine at that time and the national-church movement within it. This ignoring went so far that Metropolitan Platon even called upon the very institution to which the patriarch had delegated him to dissolve itself and disperse, because this institution, the Church Rada, was illegal, self-appointed... Such talk and demands could only sharpen relations in the Church, not reconcile them.

Thus the negotiations of the patriarch's delegation with the Ukrainian Church Rada led to nothing and were broken off by Metropolitan Platon. "The fault in this," writes Rada member Fr. P. Korsunovsky, "falls on those who did not wish to understand either the spirit of the people or the spirit of the times; who in self-delusion wanted, as before, 'to rule and lord over' the souls of a free people striving for revival, and to rule by force, contrary to the wishes of this people. The Church Rada did not at all strive for discord in the Church and did not want on its own to break with the Russian Church... And yet even at that time in the Church Rada, there was no thought of autocephaly or of a break with the patriarch. The dependence on him could have been such as the old dependence on the Patriarch of Constantinople. And in general, the Church Rada did not resolve this question. The task that the Church Rada set for itself was the convening of the Ukrainian Sobor, which, as a body lawfully elected by all Ukraine, alone had the right to decide on the church governance in Ukraine and on the mutual relations with the Russian Church."

p. 16

Thus it remained unclear whether Metropolitan Platon, as the envoy of Patriarch Tikhon, had brought with him the patriarchal charter for convening a church sobor in Ukraine, which the patriarch had promised, as stated above, to send with his delegation. But after Metropolitan Platon broke off the negotiations, the Church Rada did not turn to Moscow a second time, but resolved to act actively, taking church affairs in Ukraine into its own hands. The convening of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, as a church constituent assembly, was the main task of the "All-Ukrainian," as it now began to call itself, Orthodox Church Rada (VPCR), but even before the Sobor, the Church Rada resolved to take church authority in Ukraine into its own hands temporarily, during this transitional period, actively intervening in and taking under its control the existing organs of church administration.

The first act of the VPCR's temporary governance of the Ukrainian Church, pending the Sobor, was its issuance to the Ukrainian people of a charter under the motto: "Glory to Thee who hast shown us the light." The charter was lavishly printed at the press of the Kyiv Caves Lavra on large-format sheets and sent in thousands of copies throughout Ukraine. In this charter, the people were informed about the negotiations that had been conducted on the church question with the Russian church authorities and how those negotiations had been broken off, as a result of which the VPCR had taken into its own hands the temporary governance, pending the convening of a church sobor of Ukraine, of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. It was further ordered to cease commemorating the Russian church authorities in churches, to send no funds to those authorities, to have no official dealings with them, and that this, as well as administration in the diocesan spiritual consistories in general, would be supervised by commissars appointed by the VPCR to the spiritual consistories in the Ukrainian dioceses.

Soon after this, the Church Rada sent a delegation to Kyiv Metropolitan Volodymyr with a proposal that he leave the Kyiv cathedra and Kyiv. Russian sources report, narrating with great indignation about this event, the following document: "On the ninth of this December, at two o'clock in the afternoon, with a commission from, ostensibly, the Central Rada, there appeared before me a commission headed by the priest Fr. Marichiv, who called himself the chairman of the Ukrainian Central Rada, and delegates: Archpriest N. Sharaivsky, Fr. P. Tarnavsky, Fr. S. Fylypenko, Deacon Botvynenko, and Hierodeacon Porfiriy, and some military man, and after Fr. Marichiv's speech, I was presented with an oral resolution of the Rada to the effect that Bishop Nikodim, Bishop of Chyhyryn, be removed from Kyiv, that the newly appointed members of the Consistory immediately begin their duties, and it was also proposed that I leave Kyiv. Wishing to have this statement from the named delegation in writing, I summoned my personal secretary and told him to record these demands of the delegates with the stipulation that they sign them, but they categorically refused. This document was signed by: Volodymyr, Metropolitan of Kyiv; Secretary A. Levkov" (Prof. I. M.

p. 17

Andreev, Brief Survey of the History of the Russian Church from the Revolution to the Present Day, 1952, p. 13).

In the memoirs of the already mentioned participant, Rada member Fr. P. Korsunovsky, about "the church movement in Ukraine in the first years of the revolution," we find a more detailed account of these events. During the organization of the Ukrainian Church Rada and the arrival and negotiations with the Rada of the delegation headed by Metropolitan Platon, Kyiv Metropolitan Volodymyr was not in Kyiv; he was in Moscow at the All-Russian Church Sobor. The resolution of the Church Rada was approximately as follows: "In view of the fact that Metropolitan Volodymyr is a person foreign both by origin and by spirit to Ukraine (the metropolitan came from Great Russia, from Tambov province), that he cannot understand the aspirations of the Ukrainian people and its spirit, and therefore cannot lead that people, and moreover may cause unrest and disarray in the Church — he is proposed to leave Kyiv and Ukraine in general, which is foreign to him, where a bishop may be only a son of his own people."

With such a resolution, the delegation from the Rada appeared before the metropolitan. The metropolitan, as the delegates later reported to the Rada session, "simply did not understand what was being said to him; he asked in astonishment: what Ukraine? what Ukrainian people? Are the Little Russians not the same Russian people?" The delegates in turn asked in astonishment whether the bishop had not yet heard that Ukraine has its own government and its own parliament, and is even at this moment in a state of war with Russia (following the Bolshevik coup there). "I do not understand this," the metropolitan shrugged his shoulders. "In any case, since you have your own government, when it tells me to leave, I will leave, but I do not recognize you"... He turned and went to another room.

At the Rada session, the delegates recounted their visit to the metropolitan in the Lavra, and the Rada resolved to stand even more firmly on its position that Metropolitan Volodymyr should leave Kyiv. The Rada decided that the delegation would go again to the metropolitan the next day, but this time to take with them Mr. Rafalsky, as a representative of the government (more about this "representation" below). Rafalsky agreed to go. When the delegation appeared again before the metropolitan and began to insist that the metropolitan leave Kyiv, it noted that in its membership there was now also a representative of the Ukrainian government. Upon the metropolitan's question, Rafalsky confirmed that he was indeed a government representative. "Well, and so what? Does your government really want," the metropolitan asked Rafalsky, "me to leave Kyiv?" "Er... er... no, I cannot say that," this representative stumbled, turned red as a lobster, and fell silent. "Well, there you see," the metropolitan turned with a smile to the delegation, "your government has nothing against me, and yet you are going against your own bishop"... "The delegation was utterly confounded by the behavior of the representative of the Vynnychenko Government," concludes this account Fr. Korsunovsky.

p. 18

As we see, this one episode of the revolutionary period and movement was far from having such a character as to warrant writing about "outrages unheard of before in the Orthodox Christian world," "all manner of mockeries by enemies of the Church against a seventy-year-old metropolitan elder," as the enemies of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church present this episode (Archpriest M. Polsky, New Martyrs of Russia, 1949, p. 17). On this, the matter of removing Metropolitan Volodymyr from the Kyiv cathedra came to a halt, and, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes, "Metropolitan Volodymyr himself accepted the position of honorary Chairman of the Church Rada." This happened after Patriarch Tikhon, despite all the reports from Kyiv in which the work of the Church Rada was presented in the blackest light by the enemies of the Ukrainian national revival, nevertheless issued an important order. He directed that all bishops occupying cathedras on the territory of Ukraine, during the Christmas recess of the session of the All-Russian Church Sobor, should assemble in Kyiv, join the All-Ukrainian Church Rada as members by right, and together with it convene the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor. The patriarch appointed as his personal representative to this Sobor that same Metropolitan Platon who, as we have seen from the events above, was generally against any church sobors of Ukraine that led to "separatism." About this recognition, it turns out, by the patriarch, and following him by the episcopate in Ukraine, of the "self-appointed," "self-proclaimed," "anti-canonical" All-Ukrainian Church Rada, Russian authors are silent, of course.

After prolonged negotiations and bargaining between the Rada and the bishops, an electoral ordinance on the elections and composition of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor was adopted, as well as the statutes of the Sobor itself, which was scheduled for December 28, 1917. It is hard to say how church events in Ukraine would have unfolded at this time had Patriarch Tikhon forbidden or not given his blessing for the convening of a church sobor in Ukraine and called upon the diocesan bishops and clergy to resist its convening. Metropolitan Volodymyr was undoubtedly right when he told the delegation from the Church Rada: "Since you have your own government, when it tells me to leave, I will leave, but I do not recognize you." The Church at that time in Ukraine was not yet separated from the state, and the voice of the state authority on church affairs was not to be heard. The historian of the Ukrainian Church cannot pass by this question.

2. The Ukrainian Central Rada, the General Secretariat, and their attitude toward the national church question in Ukraine.

Prof. O. H. Lototsky, Minister of Confessions in the Ukrainian State under the Hetman government of 1918, wrote later in emigration in 1927:

The great spiritual upsurge of the revolutionary era did not move the Ukrainian intelligentsia from its position on the religious-church question.

p. 19

On the contrary, our intelligentsia stood apart from those living currents that strove for the restoration of church traditions rooted in the age-old history of the Ukrainian people and proper to its national spirit... The Ukrainian intellectual, in the moment of revolutionary enthusiasm, was even less inclined to turn his attention toward the despised 'clerical' matter, so scorned by the educated people of the Russian radical world.

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— Tryzub, no. 12, 1927, "A Despised Cause," p. 7

The local government in Ukraine, which under the name "Ukrainian Central Rada" formed in Kyiv in the very first days of March 1917 upon receiving news from Petrograd about the outbreak and triumph of the revolution, consisted in the overwhelming majority precisely of that Ukrainian intelligentsia whose negative attitude toward the Church and religion, inherited from the second half of the 19th century, Prof. O. Lototsky speaks of in the cited words. The attitude toward the Church and clergy as a reactionary element threatening the foundations of democracy was based, evidently, on the role of the Church in the Russian state, where the Church was moreover for Ukrainians also an instrument of their denationalization. But it would seem that precisely from such views on the role of the Church in the still so fresh past before the revolution, the Ukrainian government of intellectuals (party groups of Social Democrats, Socialist-Federalists, Socialist-Revolutionaries) should have, in the struggle for Ukraine's freedom and in the creative work of building Ukrainian statehood, turned its attention to the Church and church life, in order first and foremost to neutralize their political character, which was contrary to the interests of the Ukrainian nation. The Ukrainian authorities' incomprehension of this duty proved fatal. Their far-reaching neutrality in the struggle that had begun within the Church -- between nationally conscious Ukrainian clergy and faithful on one side, and the Muscovite episcopate with the "true-Russian" elements in the Kyiv clergy on the other -- fatally affected the church question in Ukraine during the years of the national revival of the Ukrainian people. The facts, and a thoroughly sound treatment of them regarding the state of church affairs in Ukraine during the era of the Central Rada in 1917, are found in the above-named article by Prof. O. Lototsky.

O. Lototsky writes:

By the living forces of the Ukrainian clergy, from the very beginning of the revolution, a Ukrainian Church Rada was formed, which set as its task the transformation of church life in Ukraine on the basis of the old religious-national traditions and in accordance with the new, contemporary demands of life. The Church Rada displayed great creative energy; among other things, it initiated and actually accomplished the task of convening the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor. The work of these Ukrainian church activists met, of course, determined resistance from the episcopate, which even in revolutionary times preserved in its hands all administrative and material means in church affairs and was disposed to conduct church life according to its

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p. 20

own preference. The episcopate, which was entirely Muscovite -- whether by its national origin or by its national-state convictions -- placed every obstacle before the national demands of the Ukrainian Church Rada, using for this purpose all its external means, and in this way impeded certain national achievements in this area of Ukrainian public life. The task of a government conscious of its national-civic duties lay in freeing the church life of Ukrainian citizens from those external fetters which were evidently being abused by figures foreign and hostile to Ukrainian interests. And with precisely such a request did the Ukrainian Church Rada turn to the Ukrainian General Secretariat with the modest plea to guarantee Ukrainians freedom in the creation of national forms of church life.

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— ibid., p. 7

Fr. P. Korsunovsky recounts this appeal of the Church Rada to the General Secretariat as follows:

A delegation from the Rada appeared before President-Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine V. Vynnychenko to ask him that the government grant the Church Rada official status. But Vynnychenko resisted strenuously; he, he said, is a socialist and does not recognize any Church. He was pointed out that among the people the Church has great significance, and that as long as Moscow rules the Church in Ukraine and the souls of the Ukrainian people, the revival of the Ukrainian State would be on slippery ground; this must be reckoned with. But Vynnychenko would not reckon with it. Finally, after long visits to him by delegations from the Church Rada, he, just to get rid of them, assigned to the Rada a representative from the Secretariat of Internal Affairs -- some gentleman whom he simply wanted to be rid of, and that without any authorization. Simply so that he would not come to the Secretariat but would go to the Church Rada, especially since he held the academic degree of master of canon law. His name was Rafalsky. How Mr. Rafalsky 'represented' the Ukrainian government in the Church Rada's delegation to Metropolitan Volodymyr was recounted above.

From the words of Prof. O. Lototsky we learn that the important matter raised by the Church Rada before the General Secretariat about formalizing its status was the subject of deliberations not only of Vynnychenko but of the entire General Secretariat. O. Lototsky writes:

I had to present that matter in the General Secretariat, as General Secretary (Pysar), since the department of spiritual affairs was not represented in the Secretariat. I argued the essential need to channel the church-administrative affairs into the general course of the Ukrainian government's activity and through a certain external oversight over the administrative activity of the governing organs of the clergy to prevent their abuses in church affairs. This absolutely had to be done while the separation of church and state had not been formally implemented and while the foreign episcopate among us was using the state apparatus and every means of authority.

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p. 21

The matter did not find resolution in the General Secretariat, and I subsequently presented it in the Central Rada. Here it provoked stormy discussions, which resulted in a resolution to the effect that our state ideal is such a system where religion must be a private sphere of life, and therefore the creation of any administrative institutions for that sphere would be a departure from the established order. Thus the matter remained in statu quo ante, and the Ukrainian citizenry, as a church flock, was in this way evidently wronged in the church area of Ukrainian life. AND THIS HAPPENED BECAUSE THE POLITICAL FIGURES OF THAT TIME WERE CONSCIOUS NEITHER OF THEIR RIGHTS NOR THEIR DUTIES IN CHURCH AFFAIRS, which by their external, administrative side unquestionably fall within the competence of ordinary administrative authority. Granting the foreign episcopate all the rights and means of state power, the Ukrainian politicians, evading the necessary oversight over that power, gave this hostile factor complete freedom and the ability for the greatest arbitrariness and abuse to the detriment of Ukrainian national interests.

>

— ibid., pp. 7-8; emphasis everywhere ours

Ukrainian senator S. P. Shelukhin testifies to the same attitude of the General Secretariat and Central Rada toward the national-church question in Ukraine:

The ruling Ukrainian circles in Kyiv treated the matter of the Ukrainian Church and religion not only negatively but even with hostility. M. Hrushevsky would not even listen, and Vynnychenko simply mocked. This came about because they themselves did not understand the national weight of this matter... For this reason in Kyiv the church matter was taken into its own hands by the citizenry itself, while the Ukrainian Central Rada took no interest in it, despite the fact that in Kyiv, headed by the clergy, a special society was even organized to combat the Ukrainian liberation movement, and in the diocesan journal special propaganda was conducted against the Ukrainian movement, and all manner of fabrications and nonsense were spread, so as to set some against Ukrainians and to make others loathe that movement.

>

— Ukrainsky Holos, Canada, August 12, 1925

The starting point of the Ukrainian left government's view in the first year of the revolution was profoundly mistaken and very lamentable in its consequences. This was the view that the church-religious matter was a private matter, not subject to the competence of state government actors in a "supra-confessional" state under the rule of law. Even if one were to agree with this programmatic thesis of the socialist parties that "religion is a private matter for each individual," this thesis could not have been applied immediately, especially during the era of national-liberation struggles, in the life of a people that had lived for nearly a thousand years in and with the Church, whatever the character of the epochs of its church-historical life. State wisdom dictated not to let this life drift during this critical moment in the people's existence, if only for the "liberal" reason of state that in its organs of administration there nested Russian reaction, freely disposing of church properties.

p. 22

After all, the Russian episcopate, when forced by the order of Patriarch Tikhon to enter into negotiations with the Ukrainian Church Rada on the matter of convening the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, used as its main trump card the threat that it would not provide funds for holding the Sobor from monastery assets. By this leverage it forced the Rada to make concessions on certain points in developing the Sobor's statutes. If it was not clear to the leading figures of the Ukrainian state institutions that in the church life of Ukraine what was essentially going on was a political struggle by anti-Ukrainian elements, this is understandable. Given their negation of the mighty factor of religion and the Church in state and public life, it was all the more difficult to demand from those figures an understanding of the pious, idealistic character of the Ukrainian people throughout its history.

Notably, the Russian Provisional Government of the February Revolution could have been an example for the Ukrainian Government in the area of church policy. The Provisional Government -- both in the composition of the first months of the revolution and after a certain shift to the left in July 1917 (following the failed Bolshevik uprising of July 3-4) -- did not negate church affairs. On the contrary, it took into its own hands the initiative of church reform in the direction of freeing the Church from its enslavement by the state. The pre-revolutionary composition of the Synod was dismissed by the Government, a new composition of the Synod was appointed, and attached to it a "Pre-Conciliar Council" (Predsoborny Sovet) of over 60 persons. Its task was to prepare as quickly as possible, in cooperation with the Synod, all necessary materials for convening the All-Russian Church Sobor. The Government allocated one million rubles for the Sobor, and the Synod from its church funds two and a half million rubles. The preparation for the Sobor was evidently not proceeding in the direction of separating Church from state.

Point 1 of the draft law on relations between Church and state, developed in the Pre-Conciliar Council, stated: "In the Russian State, the Orthodox Church must occupy, among other religious confessions, the most favorable public-legal position in the state, due to it as the greatest national shrine, an exceptional historical and cultural value, as well as the religion of the majority of the population." At the opening of the Church Sobor in Moscow on August 15, 1917, which was opened in the Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin with a solemn Divine Liturgy, present from the Provisional Government were: the head of the council of ministers A. Kerensky, the Minister of Internal Affairs N. Avksentiev, and the Minister of Confessions A. Kartashev.

The lamentable consequences of the indifference -- not to say more -- of the General Secretariat and Central Rada toward the church question in Ukraine during the era of the national revival of the Ukrainian people will be evident from the narrative of the further events in the church life of Ukraine, closely tied to the political changes in the revolutionary years, for in about three years, 1918-1921, power in Kyiv and Ukraine changed hands eleven times.

p. 23

3. The All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1918; its first session in January 1918, interrupted by the Bolshevik capture of Kyiv. The formation, in place of the Church Rada, of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius. The martyrdom of Kyiv Metropolitan Volodymyr.

The date of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, scheduled for December 28 (old style), could not be kept, for by that date few could have arrived after the first days of the feast of the Nativity of Christ; in other places during the Christmas holidays only elections to the Sobor were still being conducted.

The composition of the Sobor, which was generally to be held, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes, "on the basis of the regulations of the Moscow All-Russian Council," included the episcopate, which "constituted a separate body and entered the presidium of the Sobor; from it was also elected the chairman of the Sobor; from each county (povit) there was to be one priest and two laymen; the All-Ukrainian Church Rada and the Pre-Conciliar Commission entered in their full composition (60 persons); from the military -- 100 representatives." "Not all bishops, despite the patriarchal blessing to hold a Sobor in Ukraine, conducted elections to this Sobor in their dioceses. In the Poltava region (Bishop Feofan), in the Kherson region (Archbishop Nazariy), there were no elections; sometimes individual church communities elected representatives upon hearing about the Sobor. In general, the situation in Ukraine at that time did not favor either elections or assembly for the Sobor. The military front was collapsing. Soldiers were abandoning positions and fleeing home in droves. The railways were clogged with gray soldier masses. Private individuals simply could not travel by rail. Everything was in the hands of a disorganized mob. In various cities of Ukraine, especially the larger cities where there were many outsider elements, Bolshevik uprisings were breaking out, and in northern Ukraine an actual war against Ukraine was already being waged."

After New Year, bishops from other dioceses began arriving in Kyiv to prepare for the opening of the Sobor, which was to take place on the feast day of the Holy Prophet and Forerunner of Christ, John, January 7, 1918. Among the members of the Church Rada, a rumor spread that the bishops wanted, before the Sobor, to suspend Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn from sacred ministry so that he, being suspended, could not be a member of the Sobor. Military chaplain (of the Ukrainian Doroshenko regiment) Fr. Pavlo Pashchevsky went on the Eve of Theophany to Metropolitan Platon to verify this rumor, which greatly agitated the members of the Church Rada, whose honorary chairman was Archbishop Oleksiy. Metropolitan Platon assured Fr. Pashchevsky that no one was planning to impose any sanctions on Archbishop Oleksiy. However, on the morning of January 7, Archbishop Oleksiy received written notification that by a resolution of the bishops, confirmed by Metropolitan Platon as the representative of the Moscow Patriarch, he, Archbishop Oleksiy, was suspended from sacred ministry; the notification was signed by all bishops present at the meeting. What the canonical grounds for this suspension were, we have no clarification to this day.

p. 24

This act, on the one hand, was a means to rid themselves of opposition within the Russian or Russified episcopate at the Sobor, and on the other hand, was a provocation against the Church Rada as a national-church organization. At nine in the morning, a Divine Liturgy was scheduled at Saint Sophia Cathedral, after which the opening of the Church Sobor was to follow. At eight in the morning, the members of the Church Rada gathered at the Consistory on the grounds of Saint Sophia. The gathered Rada members decided to appeal the suspension of Archbishop Oleksiy to the Sobor, but from the further course of the short-lived first session of the Sobor, we do not see that this matter was raised. It seems that the Church Rada, had it had behind it the support of the Ukrainian state government in church matters, could have reacted entirely differently and with dignity to the action of the Russian episcopate, which was accustomed to heeding the directives of state authority rather than being guided by church legal consciousness.

Unfortunately, the understanding of the importance of church affairs in the national-state life of Ukraine remained in the government at the previous level, properly speaking at the stage of incomprehension of this matter. True, when in mid-January 1918 the Rada, where the majority were Socialist-Revolutionaries, appointed a new government predominantly of Social-Revolutionaries under the leadership of Holubovych, a Department of Confessions was created within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but the person appointed as director was someone whose appointment could only further attest to the new government's dismissive attitude toward church affairs. Appointed as director of this department was the former bishop Nikon Bezsonov. While still a student at the Moscow Theological Academy, Nikolai Bezsonov had taken monastic tonsure under the spiritual influence of the rector, Archimandrite Antoniy Khrapovitsky. Under Archbishop Antoniy on the Volyn cathedra, Nikolai, in monasticism Nikon, Bezsonov was consecrated in 1909 as Bishop of Kremenets, vicar of the Archbishop of Volyn. In Kremenets, as Metropolitan Evlogy writes, Bishop Nikon left behind an unsavory reputation in connection with a scandalous affair at a women's theological school. This affair led to Nikon's transfer to Siberia as Bishop of Krasnoyarsk, where he brought from Volyn the student from the school and installed her in the bishop's residence. When the revolution of 1917 broke out, Bishop Nikon renounced his rank, reverted to Nikolai Bezsonov, and married that student. Having arrived in Ukraine, he became a contributor to periodicals, signing himself "former Bishop Nikon -- Mykola Bezsonov." This "ex-bishop" was appointed director of the Department of Confessions.

The then Archbishop of Volyn, Evlogy, who had been a fellow student of Bezsonov at the Moscow Academy, in righteous indignation turned to Prime Minister Holubovych with a request "to take pity on the Church and protect it

p. 25

from a renegade who so degraded the episcopal rank," but received the answer that Bezsonov was a person technically knowledgeable in matters of church administration. To the remark that surely in Kyiv one could find for spiritual affairs an equally knowledgeable person but with a different "moral standing," Holubovych paid no attention (Evlogy, The Path of My Life, Paris, 1947, pp. 288-289). In his account of this affair, Metropolitan Evlogy made several errors: Holubovych was not the chairman of the Ukrainian Central Rada; the affair of Bezsonov's appointment did not take place in the summer of 1917; and Bezsonov was not "Minister of Confessions," since under the Central Rada no such ministry existed at all.

How numerous the first session of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor was in January 1918 is hard to say, for participants give various figures, from two hundred members (Fr. P. Korsunovsky) to four hundred (Metropolitan Lypkivsky). "In view of the terrible cruelty of the Bolsheviks (they were advancing on Kyiv), all correspondence -- of both the VPCR and the Sobor -- was destroyed; the membership list of the Rada and the Sobor was also destroyed," as Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky testifies in his work "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church."

The Sobor was opened after the Divine Liturgy at Saint Sophia, right there in the metropolitan's cathedral, for which all bishops in their mantles came out to the center of the church and sat in armchairs, while the members of the Sobor arranged themselves behind them. Metropolitan Volodymyr read out the patriarchal charter for the opening of the Sobor; there were speeches; whether there was any greeting from the Government, our sources are silent about this.

In the first days after the opening, organizational work was carried out for the Sobor's work. Elections to the presidium dragged on for several days, for it was necessary to elect up to twenty persons. Ukrainians predominated at the Sobor, and therefore the persons nominated by the Church Rada were elected in the majority. Most difficult was the election of the chairman, who according to the statutes could only be a bishop. For Ukrainians, the only desirable candidate among the episcopate, after the exclusion of Archbishop Oleksiy, was Vicar Bishop Dymytriy (Verbytsky) of Uman, but he flatly refused to stand as a candidate. The Russian-conservative part of the Sobor put forward as candidates the metropolitans, of whom there were three at the Sobor (Volodymyr of Kyiv, Antoniy Khrapovitsky of Kharkiv, and Platon of Odessa), but in voting they, like other candidacies, all fell through. Ultimately, Metropolitan Volodymyr had the most chances among the episcopate. When the candidacy of the little-known Bishop Pimen (Pegov) of Balta, vicar of the Podillia diocese, who had been a student of Metropolitan Antoniy during the latter's rectorship at the Kazan Theological Academy, was named, a rumor was circulated among the Ukrainians that Archbishop Oleksiy's suspension did not bear Bishop Pimen's signature, and this influenced the voting for Bishop Pimen's candidacy as chairman of the Sobor. He was elected by a significant majority.

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It then turned out that Bishop Pimen's signature was indeed absent from the suspension, but not for reasons of disagreement or any protest -- he had simply been away at that time, having gone somewhere. The election of Bishop Pimen as chairman of the Sobor gained the Ukrainians nothing, for, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes, Bishop Pimen "merely had a loud voice, and Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky served as his brain."

The work of the Sobor, after the elections, moved into commissions, of which six were formed. In the evenings, professorial reports on various church questions were delivered for Sobor members. Among others, at the session of January 14, Prof. Ivan Ohiienko delivered a report on the topic "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church," after which the session concluded with the singing of the national anthem, "Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished."

Metropolitan Evlogy writes in his memoirs: "From the very beginning, the Sobor's irreconcilable position toward the Russian Church was apparent. The cries 'Away with Moscow!,' 'Let us free ourselves from Muscovite oppression!' met with great success. Sessions proceeded in heated rally-style speeches" (op. cit., p. 309). Despite such an assessment of the Sobor's activity in January, Archbishop Evlogy of Volyn himself, a Great Russian by origin from Tula province, headed the commission on the Ukrainization of the Church at the Sobor.

In one of the speeches at a session of the Sobor, after the Fourth Universal of the Central Rada had already been proclaimed on January 9/22, 1918, declaring the full independence and sovereignty of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the speaker said that in an independent Ukraine there must also be an independent, autocephalous Ukrainian Church. Metropolitan Antoniy, as Fr. Korsunovsky relates, reacted to this with a shout from behind the presidium chairs: "Wait, wait! The Bolsheviks will come -- they'll show you your Ukraine!"

Indeed, already on January 17/30, the first Bolshevik artillery shell thundered over Kyiv. The bombardment of Kyiv began. This was not yet the Bolshevik invasion from Moscow; it was local and nearby Bolsheviks who raised an uprising against the Central Rada. In the first days of the uprising, the Sobor still worked. But there was great danger that if the Bolsheviks prevailed, the members of the Sobor -- especially a Ukrainian one -- could face execution; as time went on, work became impossible. There was a case where an artillery shell flew into the premises where a session of the most numerous commission was taking place, which fortunately did not explode. Fewer and fewer members appeared at sessions; many fled Kyiv. Archbishop Evlogy and Metropolitan Antoniy were taken to Zhytomyr by the key-keeper of the Zhytomyr cathedral, Fr. Holosov, who arrived from Zhytomyr by car, hid the car in the Sviatoshyn forest near Kyiv, made his way into Kyiv, and took the bishops by horse-drawn transport to Sviatoshyn. Under such circumstances, the Sobor members who still remained decided to end the first session of the Sobor, scheduling its second session for the month of May 1918.

The Church Rada, considering its task -- for which it had been formed -- accomplished with the convening of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, ceased to exist after the opening of the Sobor. Now, when the work of the Sobor was abruptly interrupted by the Bolshevik capture of

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Kyiv, the Ukrainian members of the Sobor hastily formed, from the former Church Rada, the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, whose membership included former Rada members, but quite a few new members also enrolled. The Brotherhood's first task was to ensure the timely convening of the second session of the Sobor and generally to watch that the bishops would not entirely cancel the Sobor. The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius began its church-educational work after the liberation of Kyiv from the Bolsheviks, which occurred in the second half of February.

During this first Bolshevik occupation of Kyiv, after their occupation of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Katerynoslav, and Poltava regions, they remained in Kyiv very briefly -- only three weeks. But "they perpetrated a bloody bath here," as Prof. D. Doroshenko writes. "They burst into homes, dragged out generals, officers, and simply grown men, and killed them on the spot, or led them to the imperial palace and shot them there, or even along the way. And here is a curious thing: it was Ukrainians who defended Kyiv, all the fury was directed at Ukrainians, but the bloodshed fell almost exclusively on Russian officers and in general on the Russian gentry and bourgeoisie. Why did it happen that all the vengeance and terror of the Bolsheviks turned against those who had actually maintained 'neutrality'? The thing is that Kyiv was taken by Muscovite Bolsheviks who had come from afar, who had been agitated and incited in advance against 'bourgeois' and 'officers.' Having reached Kyiv, they did not discriminate who exactly had fought against the Bolshevik power, and poured out their fury and thirst for vengeance on the wealthier quarters, on the wealthier buildings and residences, where there was also something to loot." These were predominantly the quarters of Pechersk and Lypky (Doroshenko, My Memories of the Recent Past, 1914-1918, Part 2, Lviv, 1923, p. 63).

"One morning," recounts Fr. P. Korsunovsky, "the news spread through Kyiv like lightning that during the night (of January 26) Metropolitan Volodymyr had been shot. Accustomed as people were to shootings, tortures, and hellish abuses, this news simply horrified people, even the political opponents of Metropolitan Volodymyr. This murder was simply senseless and was carried out by a band of drunken sailors on their own initiative, as even the 'dictator' Muravyov himself declared."

In Russian memoir literature and historiography, with some exceptions (e.g., Fr. Kirill Zaitsev, The Orthodox Church in Soviet Russia, Part I, Shanghai, 1947, pp. 17-20), we see an unconscionable tendency to link the martyrdom at the hands of Russian Bolsheviks of Kyiv Metropolitan Volodymyr with the Ukrainian national-church movement. Archpriest M. Polsky writes: "Even under threat of losing his life, Metropolitan Volodymyr did not submit to the illegal demands (of the Ukrainians), which he proved by his martyrdom, which he could have avoided had he wished to hide from his enemies and murderers... The beginning of the persecution and harassment of Metropolitan Volodymyr, initiated by his own enraged former spiritual children (i.e., Ukrainian clergy and faithful), was completed by the murder of the Bishop

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during the Bolshevik occupation of Kyiv by satanist unbelievers" (Polsky, New Martyrs of Russia, pp. 18-19).

Above, we presented the conversations that took place in December 1917 between Metropolitan Volodymyr and the delegation from the Church Rada; we also cited from Russian sources the record of the delegation's audience with the metropolitan, signed by the metropolitan himself and his secretary. Are there in those conversations and in that document any grounds for the assertions of Archpriest Polsky about "threats to deprive the metropolitan of his life" for "not submitting to the illegal demands" of the Ukrainians? There are no such grounds, and the further facts -- the metropolitan's acceptance of the title of honorary chairman of the Church Rada, his participation in the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in January 1918, which he opened with the charter of Patriarch Tikhon -- entirely refute the fabrications of Fr. Polsky about threats to deprive him of life, fabrications evidently dictated by hatred of the Ukrainian church movement, which the author intended to stain with the martyrdom of Metropolitan Volodymyr.

There is no connection whatsoever, apart from the chronological sequence of events, between the Ukrainian church movement that led to the convening of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor and the murder of the metropolitan by a band of marauding sailors from Muravyov's Bolshevik army, from which the Ukrainians defended Kyiv as best they could.

But one should not be surprised at Fr. Polsky, Prof. I. A. Andreev, and other historians who, on the basis of "historical documents," try to blacken the "self-appointed anti-canonical attempt to create an autocephalous Ukrainian Church," claiming that it, as a "rebellion," quickly led to the murder of Kyiv Metropolitan Volodymyr. One should not be surprised when such a version of the causes of the metropolitan's martyrdom was circulated by the highest dignitaries of the Russian Church, such as Metropolitan Evlogy. The latter writes: "News reached us (in Zhytomyr) soon about the Bolshevik capture of Kyiv, about the atrocities they committed in the city, and finally -- the terrible news... about the murder of Metropolitan Volodymyr. Later I learned under what circumstances Bishop Volodymyr was killed. In the crime, a role was also played by Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn, the former Archbishop of Volodymyr, but the blood is also on the monks of the Lavra... Expelled from his diocese, Dorodnitsyn, a Ukrainian from Katerynoslav, migrated to Kyiv 'to fish in troubled waters' -- and settled in the Lavra... Having established himself in the Lavra, Archbishop Oleksiy began to agitate the Ukrainian monks and incite them against Metropolitan Volodymyr, hoping to achieve his removal and take his place himself" (Evlogy, Path of My Life, pp. 307-308, 310).

Metropolitan Evlogy then recounts that when at the end of January Kyiv was taken by the Bolsheviks, the commander of the Bolshevik forces Muravyov came to the deputy abbot of the Lavra (Archimandrite Amvrosiy) and warned: "I will be staying in the Lavra's guesthouse; you have a telephone connection with me. If bands break in to search

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(thus the commander assessed his own troops), with demands for money, or if anything else happens, call me." Soon after, a band of sailors came to the refectory of the Lavra, and when the novices (poshlushniki) who were dining there, "propagandized by the revolution and incited by Dorodnitsyn's agitation, began to complain about oppression: people bring large sums of money to the Lavra, and he [the metropolitan] consumes them... and the novices pointed upstairs, where the metropolitan's quarters were" (ibid., p. 310). From the refectory, the sailors went to the metropolitan's quarters, where they remained, according to Metropolitan Evlogy, for about two hours. And it was the evening hour, around 7 o'clock, as Fr. Polsky writes (op. cit., p. 21). Searches and robberies in the metropolitan's quarters, mockery and torture -- all of which ended with the metropolitan being led beyond the walls of the Lavra, to the "Lavra ramparts," where he was shot, after which several terrible stab wounds were inflicted.

The entire Lavra evidently knew what was happening that evening of January 25 in the metropolitan's quarters. Metropolitan Volodymyr was led by the sailors past Deputy Abbot Archimandrite Amvrosiy, past Bishop Fedor of Pryluky (Polsky, p. 21); his cell attendants Philip and Ivan stood by, and the metropolitan bade them farewell... "The monks," writes Metropolitan Evlogy, "who saw their metropolitan being led away, not only did not raise the alarm, did not ring the bells, but did not say a sound to anyone. Quite some time passed before someone came to his senses and called Muravyov. He sent his soldiers. Interrogations, questions -- who? where did they take him? when? But it was already too late; the crime had been committed" (p. 310). "Forgotten and abandoned by his brethren," writes Archpriest Polsky, "surrounded by executioners and murderers, entirely innocent, the quiet and humble elder, Metropolitan Volodymyr, calmly walked to his execution... That night the peace of the Lavra was no longer disturbed. The entire monastery slept a deep sleep" (pp. 22-23).

Can it really be that Archbishop Oleksiy so agitated the entire Lavra brotherhood with the Ukrainians that it slept peacefully and soundly through the whole night, while "a thousand paces from the Lavra already lay the corpse of the tortured, murdered Abbot and Father of the Lavra, Metropolitan Volodymyr"? Incidentally, Archbishop Oleksiy had left the Lavra even before the Bolshevik uprising in Kyiv, intending to travel to his sister in Katerynoslav, but the train he was to take did not depart, and the bishop came from the station at night to Fr. Korsunovsky's home near the station (in Solomianka), where he stayed throughout the uprising and fighting. When the Bolsheviks captured Kyiv, after some time a loyal man drove the archbishop by simple sleigh through fields and villages to a distant station, from which he was able to make his way more safely by rail to his sister in Luhansk.

The unbridled fantasy of Metropolitan Evlogy (then Archbishop of Volyn) turned Archbishop Oleksiy into a contender for the Kyiv Metropolitanate, the means to which, according to Metropolitan Evlogy, was the incitement by Archbishop Oleksiy of "Ukrainian monks" in the Lavra against Metropolitan Volodymyr (op. cit., p. 307), as if those monks had the power to remove Volodymyr and install

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Oleksiy. This is one thing, and another -- which of the Russian hierarchs did not know how thoroughly the Kyiv Caves Lavra had been Russified throughout the 19th-20th centuries, and how many "Ukrainian monks" Metropolitan Evlogy could have found there? True, on page 310 of his memoirs, Metropolitan Evlogy already replaced them with merely "novices," "incited by Dorodnitsyn's agitation" -- the "Ukrainian monks" were no longer to be found.

Thus, in the unbridled fantasy of the memoir author, the "criminal role" in the murder of Metropolitan Volodymyr was attributed to Archbishop Dorodnitsyn, and following Metropolitan Evlogy, other Russian church historians added with "holy indignation" all the "enraged" Ukrainian autocephalists to such "murderers."

It is characteristic that Archpriest Polsky entirely omitted from Metropolitan Evlogy's account what pertains to Muravyov and his arrangements. About Metropolitan Evlogy's "firm conviction" that Archbishop Dorodnitsyn "set" the sailors on Metropolitan Volodymyr through the nationalist Ukrainian monks of the Lavra, we also find a mention in the German historian of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine (Fr. Heyer, op. cit., p. 46). Applying such a historical method, one could also attribute to the Ukrainians the bloody bath perpetrated by the Bolsheviks in February 1918 in Kyiv, mostly, as Prof. D. Doroshenko writes, against the Russian officer corps and gentry in the very same Pechersk district. The Bolsheviks in the Lavra and beyond it were acting, it would turn out, with the intention of furthering the national aspirations of the Ukrainians. To such absurd conclusions one can arrive in an atmosphere of political passions!

Metropolitan Evlogy, having told of his captivity with the Poles after the Ukrainian Directorate government transported him and Metropolitan Antoniy westward from Kyiv in December 1918, draws this conclusion: "Captivity was undoubtedly beneficial for me in spiritual life. In my cell, in the quiet and solitude, I became conscious of many things, took a critical view of my past, found deficiencies, mistakes, sins. Political passions, earthly tension, the intoxication of political struggle -- all this distanced me from God" (op. cit., p. 344). What a pity that this awareness and self-criticism did not extend to his views on the rights of the Ukrainian people to self-determination -- that people among whom Metropolitan Evlogy, a Great Russian, had the lot of working extensively in Kholm and in Volyn, and toward whom he remained in the intoxication of Russian great-power politics, as reflected in his Paris memoirs about the path of his life.

In Fr. Korsunovsky's memoirs about the martyrdom of Metropolitan Volodymyr -- at whose home Archbishop Oleksiy was staying at the time -- there is not a word of accusation against anyone beyond the band of drunken, debauched sailors. "Through the economic gate of the Lavra (with the church atop the Mazepa building)," writes Fr. Korsunovsky, "the metropolitan was led beyond the Lavra walls. The gatekeeper who opened the gate understood everything and ran to the brethren with the sad news that the Bishop was being led to execution.

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The brethren, like frightened mice, sat in their burrow-cells. And what could they have done? The Lavra was filled with Red Army soldiers... The impression in Kyiv from this murder was great, but the terrible terror forced everyone to be silent. Muravyov himself also understood that this was already too much. Therefore he announced that the metropolitan's execution had been carried out without his knowledge. He installed a commissar in the Lavra to maintain order and to prevent anything similar from happening again, and permitted a solemn funeral for the metropolitan."

4. Church affairs under the government of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky. Elections of the Kyiv Metropolitan. The summer and autumn 1918 sessions of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor; the struggle of Ukrainians for a Ukrainian Church independent from Moscow. The declaration at the Sobor by Minister of Confessions O. H. Lototsky. The resistance of the Russian episcopate to the declaration and its political maneuvering.

On February 9, 1918, in Brest-Litovsk, a peace treaty was signed by the representatives of the Ukrainian People's Republic with the alliance of the Central Powers, headed by Germany. As a result of this treaty, German troops, with Ukrainian military units ahead of them, began clearing Ukraine of Bolshevik forces that had captured Left-Bank Ukraine and Kyiv. The Bolsheviks left the capital of Ukraine on March 2 (new style); the Central Rada headed by M. Hrushevsky and the Council of Ministers under Holubovych returned to Kyiv. "It was a moment," writes D. Doroshenko, "similar to the time of the proclamation of the Ukrainian People's Republic in November 1917: as then, so now, the citizenry placed great hopes on the young Ukrainian State, and the authority of the Ukrainian government stood high under the impression of the Brest Peace and the expulsion of the Bolsheviks... But the SR government did not justify the hopes placed on it... The citizenry saw that nothing new would come, and everything would go the old way, along the path that had already led to the January catastrophe."

The state coup in Kyiv, with the consent and assistance of the German command, was carried out on April 16/29, 1918. The Central Rada was dispersed by the Germans, and General Pavlo Skoropadsky assumed power as Hetman of Ukraine. Throughout the seven and a half months of the Hetman government in Ukraine, the state government was not indifferent to church affairs, as it had been under the Central Rada, but that earlier indifference, the Ukrainian government's ignoring of the church question throughout the entire first year of the national revival, of the Ukrainian people's surge toward freedom -- weighed extraordinarily heavily on the further fate of church affairs in Ukraine.

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Metropolitan Evlogy, who, as a member of the 2nd and 3rd State Duma in Russia (representing Kholm), had also been part of the hierarchs who were members of the Synod of the Russian Church, writes in his memoirs about the interrelations between the Duma and the Synod, characterizing these relations as "a hopeless collision of two sides, alien to each other and at times even hostile" (op. cit., p. 192). The author then poses the question: "Did the Duma have grounds to treat the Synod with such disdain?" He gives this answer:

The degradation of the Church, its subordination to state authority, was felt very strongly in the Synod. The chief procurator was a member of the Council of Ministers; each Council of Ministers had its own policy, the higher spheres also influenced this policy, and the chief procurator, without regard for the voice of the Church, directed the Synod's activity according to the directives he received. The Synod had no face, could not raise its voice and had lost the habit of doing so. The state interest suppressed everything. The primacy of secular authority suppressed the freedom of the Church from top to bottom: bishops depended on governors and had to implement their policy through priests. This long forced silence and subordination to the state created in the Synod a habit, not proper to the ancient church principles of Orthodoxy -- to decide matters in the spirit of external, formal church authority, the incontestability of its hierarchical resolutions... The Church, voiceless and powerless, had to do what it was told. The publicist Menshikov (Novoye Vremya) called the synodal bishops 'decorative old men.' The hierarchs themselves evidently saw their degraded position. 'I am studying calligraphy -- I sign protocols, that is all my occupation,' said one bishop.

>

— Metropolitan Evlogy, Path of My Life, pp. 195-196

We cite this longer passage from Metropolitan Evlogy's memoirs as an authoritative witness to that subservience which characterized the Russian church hierarchy in its relationship to state authority. Standing on the Orthodox Christian principles of symphony or harmony between Church and State, which system was also adopted in the life of ancient Ukraine-Rus (see vol. I of this work, pp. 47-48), we are obviously very far from the ideology of caesaropapism, the application of which in the Russian Empire now, after the collapse of that empire, has found a vivid critic in Metropolitan Evlogy himself.

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In the times before the revolution, when we, students of the theological academies, in the years 1905-1906, spoke out against the enslavement in Russia of the Church by the autocratic secular authority, against the Church's service to a particular political regime -- then the more active hierarchs, including Evlogy, then Bishop of Liublin, called us rebels and revolutionaries and wrote to the Synod about the necessity of repression in the academies (the 1908 inspection of the Kyiv Theological Academy by Archbishop Antoniy Khrapovitsky of Volyn). In his memoirs, Metropolitan Evlogy himself calls, for example, the condemnation and dismissal by the Synod -- in whose membership Evlogy served -- of Prof. V. I. Ekzempliarsky of the Kyiv Theological Academy "a heavy case," because "Prof. Ekzempliarsky was dismissed without hearing either his explanations or his justifications" (op. cit., pp. 195-96).

Thus, while completely not sharing caesaropapist theories as a system of relations between Church and State, with this digression about the Synod, the church hierarchy in pre-revolutionary Russia, and its subservience to state authority, we wish to say the following. The good of the Ukrainian people in the first years of their national-state revival with the revolution of 1917 required from the Ukrainian secular authorities a different language in dealing with the Russian hierarchy in Ukraine -- however distasteful and contradictory to the ideal principles of relations between Church and State this might be. That language was the one to which the hierarchy had become accustomed in Russia under caesaropapism and its chief procurators. For such a language was demanded by raison d'etat, given that the Russian hierarchy in Ukraine, during the era when Ukraine was rising to independent existence, constituted, together with the non-Ukrainian and Russified clergy, one of the political groups that combated the very idea of Ukrainian identity -- let alone Ukrainian statehood.

Even the German historian of the "Orthodox Church in Ukraine in 1917-1945," the Lutheran pastor Dr. Fr. Heyer, whose work the spiritual children of Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky characterize with the words "impartial honesty, truthfulness, objectivity, history in its pure form" (Pravoslavnaya Rus, no. 12, 1954, article "The Voice of History"), writes, having cited from the epistles of Kyiv Metropolitan Volodymyr in August 1917 his "united-and-indivisible views, particularly regarding the separation of church Ukraine from the All-Russian Church": "The views of the hierarchs of the other (besides Kyiv, Metropolitan Volodymyr's) Ukrainian dioceses and the heads of the consistories were the same. Their church consciousness was firmly formed. Politically, they were people of an all-Russian orientation, whether Great Russians or Russified Ukrainians. For them there was no doubt that Ukraine, like other Eastern European peoples that had succumbed in the previous struggle, was denationalized in its upper strata" (Heyer, op. cit., p. 37).

The duty of the Ukrainian authorities in such a situation was first and foremost the creation in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine of a national hierarchy, at least initially in the number required by the canons of the Orthodox Eastern Church for the further consecration (chirotonia) of bishops in the revived

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national Ukrainian Church. About the complete ignorance of the church question in the first year of the revolution by the Ukrainian Central Rada and its socialist government, we have already spoken above in Section 2 of this chapter. The Hetman government, as already stated, was not indifferent to church affairs. "Only in the ideology of the Hetman movement," writes D. Doroshenko, "was the matter of the Orthodox Church given its proper place" (The Orthodox Church in the Past and Present Life of the Ukrainian People, 1940, p. 63). We would say that in ideology -- yes, but in practice, in the events of church life under the Hetman government, the government of Hetman Skoropadsky only in the last month of its existence took the proper tone in church affairs, that state tone which the Ukrainian authorities should have taken from the very moment of their appearance with the revolution of 1917. Most importantly, the government of Hetman Skoropadsky did not at all attend to the creation of a national hierarchy of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, so that, as 1917, so also 1918 was from this perspective a year lost for the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Under what circumstances -- justifying or not justifying the government -- this came about, will be evident from the accounts of church events in the life of Ukraine following the Hetman coup.

Proclaiming the foundations of "State Legal Order in Ukraine" after the coup, the Hetman Government, regarding faith, proclaimed freedom of faith and worship for every confession to which any citizen or resident of Ukraine belonged, but, similarly to the Russian Provisional Government before the Bolshevik coup in October 1917, recognized "the first place in the Ukrainian State for the Orthodox Christian Church." In the Hetman's cabinet of ministers, headed by the Poltava zemstvo leader Fedor Lyzohub, a Ministry of Cults or Confessions (Ukr. Ministerstvo Ispovidan; both "Ministry of Cults" and "Ministry of Confessions" render the same Ukrainian institution and are used interchangeably in this translation) was created right away, and the position of Minister of Cults was assumed by Prof. Vasyl Zinkivsky.

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The first church matter that the Hetman Government had to settle in Ukraine was filling the cathedra of the Kyiv Metropolitan, which after the murder by the Bolsheviks of Metropolitan Volodymyr Bohoyavlensky had remained vacant for three months. We have no information whether there were any approaches to the government on this matter under the Central Rada by Ukrainian church activists, who were at this time, as we already know, gathered in the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, or whether it was expected that the Moscow Patriarch would settle this matter.

Indeed, around Pascha, which in 1918 fell on April 18 (old style), Metropolitan Evlogy (then Archbishop of Volyn, member of the Moscow Patriarchal Synod) received an order from Patriarch Tikhon to go to Kyiv and conduct elections for the Kyiv Metropolitan. "The All-Russian Church Sobor," writes Metropolitan Evlogy, "resolved regarding the election of bishops: each diocese had the right to elect its own candidate; the patriarch confirmed him, and if he considered the candidacy unsuitable, he would send his own candidate" (op. cit., p. 312).

Carrying out the patriarch's commission, Archbishop Evlogy arrived in Kyiv from Zhytomyr soon after the Paschal holidays, where the Hetman government and cabinet of ministers were already in place.

Metropolitan Lypkivsky, in Chapter VII of his History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, limits himself to these lines about the elections of the Kyiv Metropolitan under Hetman Skoropadsky: "In February the Germans arrived with the Central Rada, and in April, in place of the Rada, Hetman Skoropadsky was elected. A heavy reaction began, a clear inclination toward 'united and indivisible,' conservative clergy raised their heads, toward whom the Hetman showed great favor. In May, from this clergy and similar laymen, an 'election sobor' was convened for the election of the Kyiv Metropolitan, and there was elected the bitter enemy of Ukraine, the head of the 'Union of the Russian People,' Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky."

The question arises spontaneously: did the Ukrainian national-church movement, which under the Central Rada had neither understanding nor support from the Ukrainian government, die entirely with the Hetman coup in Ukraine? So it would seem from the brief account just cited about the filling of the metropolitan's cathedra in the capital of the Ukrainian State with a person who was, in the words of Prof. O. Lototsky as well, "the well-known Ukrainophobe and reactionary Archbishop Antoniy Khrapovitsky, who had just before gained popularity by forbidding the reading at Pascha of the Gospel (in the Kharkiv Diocese) in the 'bazaar' [i.e., vulgar (bazarna)] Ukrainian language" (Tryzub, no. 12, 1927, p. 8).

In reality, this act of installing Kharkiv Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky on the Kyiv Metropolitan cathedra with the alleged consent of the Hetman government and "the Muscovite clique of Black Hundreds among the clergy and laity of Kyiv," without any alleged participation of nationally conscious elements of the Ukrainian flock -- which for the latter would be the worst testimony -- did not proceed so easily. First of all, the elections of the Kyiv Metropolitan were conducted

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not at the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, as Prof. O. Lototsky also incorrectly states (ibid., p. 8), but at a Kyiv diocesan assembly convened for May 19, 1918. The convening of such an assembly by the Kyiv Spiritual Consistory was done at the arrangement of Bishop Nikodim, Chyhyryn Vicar of the Kyiv Diocese, by his agreement with Archbishop Evlogy of Volyn. Bishop Nikodim, after the death of Metropolitan Volodymyr, was, as first vicar, the administrator of the Kyiv Diocese, and the Mykhailivsky Monastery, where the first vicar resided, was at that time a sort of headquarters for clerical circles of a pro-Russian orientation. We have no information whether the Ministry of Cults was notified about the purpose of the diocesan assembly -- the election of a metropolitan; it is possible that under the previous Ukrainian governments, indifferent to church affairs, the practice had already developed of not having dealings with the government even in such matters as filling the metropolitan's cathedra in the capital -- matters of importance for the state as well.

Metropolitan Evlogy writes that upon arriving in Kyiv, he held several pre-election assemblies to acquaint himself with possible candidates for metropolitan and "discuss" them. Thus in the presence, or even under the chairmanship, of the patriarchal exarch for the elections, campaigning went on in Kyiv for one or another candidate. Evlogy names as "strong" candidacies: Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky, Metropolitan Platon, former Exarch of Georgia, Metropolitan Arseniy of Novgorod (Stadnitsky, of Ukrainian stock from Bessarabia, Doctor of Church History, entirely loyal to Ukrainian statehood), and Bishop Dymytriy (Verbytsky) of Uman, vicar of the Kyiv Diocese. Besides these, there were candidates not named by Archbishop Evlogy from among the professors of the Kyiv Theological Academy. In a trial ballot by written notes at one such gathering, the most votes were cast for Metropolitan Antoniy, followed by Bishop Dymytriy (Metropolitan Evlogy, op. cit., p. 312).

But into this matter of the metropolitan's election intervened, as a representative of the state government, Minister of Confessions V. Zinkivsky -- about which there is no mention either in the memoirs of Metropolitan Lypkivsky or in those of Metropolitan Evlogy. Minister V. Zinkivsky proposed that the diocesan assembly not proceed with the election of the Kyiv Metropolitan but postpone it, and he motivated his proposal with the Government's view that the Kyiv Metropolitan should be not merely the diocesan bishop of the Kyiv Diocese (to which role the Russian government had reduced the Kyiv Metropolitan since the time of Peter the First) but the Head, the Primate of the entire Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and therefore his election should be conducted at the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, not at an assembly of a single Kyiv diocese (D. Doroshenko, History of Ukraine 1917-1923, Uzhhorod, 1930, p. 323). Such a proposal by the Minister of Confessions, entirely justified from the national-state point of view -- and we would add, from the Orthodox-canonical point of view as well (Apostolic Canon 34 [which stipulates that the bishops of each nation should know their primate], Canon 9 of Antioch, Canon 17 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council) -- was met with determined opposition from the episcopate at the assembly, for Archbishop Evlogy and Bishop Nikodim were striving precisely to

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wrest the matter of the Kyiv Metropolitan's election from the competence of the All-Ukrainian Sobor and conduct it at a mere diocesan assembly. For them this was important for two reasons. First, the election of the Kyiv Metropolitan at a diocesan assembly would testify that nothing had changed in the position of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine -- that it was still composed, as before, of separate dioceses subordinate to Moscow, which already had political significance: the Church does not support the Ukrainian "separatists." Second, from the experience of the first session of the All-Ukrainian Sobor in January 1918, the leaders of Russian policy in the Church in Ukraine knew that at an All-Ukrainian Sobor they would not be able to elect a Ukrainophobe hierarch as metropolitan.

Thus the episcopate resolutely opposed the Minister of Confessions' proposal, declaring that the matter of electing a metropolitan was urgent, while a Sobor could not be convened earlier than autumn. The bishops' position was supported by the assembly as well, in what proportion we do not know. So the election of the metropolitan proceeded, in which, out of 290 voting electors, Metropolitan Antoniy received 160 votes and Bishop Dymytriy 130. Metropolitan Evlogy writes in his memoirs: "The elections passed without incidents, and I announced the results of the balloting. Metropolitan Antoniy was elected Kyiv Metropolitan by an overwhelming number of votes. All 'the Russian population' and the Ukrainian centralists stood for him; the separatists for Bishop Dymytriy" (op. cit., p. 312). The political character of the elections to the Kyiv Metropolitan cathedra is underscored by the patriarchal exarch himself who conducted these elections.

On the basis of the 130 votes cast against Metropolitan Antoniy's candidacy for Bishop Dymytriy, one can assert the participation in the Kyiv diocesan assembly for the metropolitan's election of a nationally conscious Ukrainian element, in the number of approximately 45% of the total participants. Why the Ukrainians found themselves in the minority, we do not have data to judge. In Fr. Korsunovsky's memoirs we read that the Consistory's proven "operatives of the tsarist era together with the bishops crafted such an electoral law that it did its work"; others point to abuses during the elections (Prof. O. Lototsky). The Ukrainian side could have, evidently, with activity in this important matter, come forward with protests both against the fabrication of some "law" and against abuses. We have no data about such protests, although Fr. P. Korsunovsky does testify to the activity of the Ukrainians: "In counterbalance, the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius deployed all its possible effort so as not to let itself be defeated."

How did the Hetman government react to the election of Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky? It must first be said that in those times in Russia, after the October Bolshevik coup of 1917, the Bolshevik authorities had already issued a decree on January 23, 1918, on the separation of church from state and school from church, according to which the Church "was not only deprived of all state assistance, not only was there expropriation by the state of

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all church property, but the Church was deprived of all rights and significance of a public-legal union within the state" (Fr. Kirill Zaitsev, The Orthodox Church in Soviet Russia, Shanghai, 1947, Part I, p. 21). Instead of the Church, the decree permitted individual groups of believers to form religious communities that would apply to the secular authorities for registration and for the temporary use of this or that church property. Nothing of the kind existed in Ukraine: the Central Rada and its governments, as we have already said more than once, to the detriment even of Ukrainian national interests, did not interfere in the life of the Church and did not restrict its rights. With the Hetman coup in Ukraine, the danger was removed that a law on the separation of church from state would be enacted in the Ukrainian State, to which the socialist governments might have arrived.

It would therefore seem that the existing attitude toward the Church in Ukraine, with the national-state revival of the Ukrainian people in the revolution of 1917, should have aroused in the church hierarchy -- for which nothing other than the good of the Church should have stood in first place -- only feelings of deep gratitude and a striving for cooperation with the Government of that country which remained for the Church an oasis in the sea of godless "Soviet power" that in Soviet Russia had already begun the persecution and destruction of the Church. Such feelings and such strivings were not manifested by the Russian hierarchy in Ukraine, for the reason of its political blindness with hatred toward the Ukrainian "separatists-Mazepists" and its dreams and hopes of returning Russia to the pre-1917 order.

The Hetman government had both the right and the moral obligation, standing on the principles of the union of church and state, to exercise its authority in resolving such important questions for the Ukrainian State as the creation of a national hierarchy and the filling of the cathedra of the Primate of the Ukrainian Church. Yet it did not exercise such authority, thereby giving anti-Ukrainian, that is anti-state elements in Ukraine, the opportunity to run rampant in the Church and behave indecently and insultingly toward the Ukrainian people.

The election of Metropolitan Antoniy to the cathedra of the Kyiv Metropolitan could formally have been contested, even standing on the positions of the Russian episcopate for whom the Fourth Universal of January 22, 1918, proclaiming the independence of the Ukrainian State, did not exist. For according to the statute adopted by the All-Russian Church Sobor, the election of a diocesan bishop at a diocesan assembly required a qualified majority of 2/3 of the voters for a candidate to be considered elected. Metropolitan Antoniy received not an "overwhelming majority," as Metropolitan Evlogy writes, but 160 votes out of 290 voters -- he was still 32 votes short of the required 2/3 [Trans. note: Wlasowsky writes '32 votes short,' but 2/3 of 290 is approximately 194, making the shortfall 34 votes.]. Nevertheless, Minister of Confessions V. Zinkivsky continued to hold the position that only an All-Ukrainian Sobor should elect the Kyiv Metropolitan, which governmental view was disregarded by the Russian episcopate. Therefore, by resolution of the Council of

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Ministers, it was officially declared that the Government did not recognize as valid the metropolitan's election conducted by a diocesan assembly, and the Council of Ministers authorized the Minister of Confessions to appeal to the Moscow Patriarch, seeking from him authoritative support for the correctness of the Ukrainian Government's view on the election of the Kyiv Metropolitan (Dm. Doroshenko, op. cit., p. 323).

But before the delicate Minister of Cults entered into correspondence with the Moscow Patriarch on this subject, the nimble supporters and like-minded associates of Metropolitan Antoniy had already arranged the matter with the patriarch. "Before us," recounts Metropolitan Evlogy, "arose the question: how to send the election document for confirmation to Moscow? On one hand, on the roads to Moscow -- Bolsheviks, on the other -- Germans. We deliberated and decided to place this difficult mission on Bishop Nikodim of Chyhyryn (vicar of Kyiv). He handled it 'excellently' -- returned with the papers confirming Metropolitan Antoniy and with official recognition that the elections had been conducted properly" (op. cit., pp. 312-313). Before confirming Metropolitan Antoniy on the Kyiv cathedra, Patriarch Tikhon did not evidently consider it necessary to ask the opinion of the Ukrainian state authority -- the Hetman or the Hetman's Government. The Government was presented with a fait accompli. Metropolitan Antoniy's transfer from Kharkiv to Kyiv was undesirable for the Government, and the Government for the time being treated him as the Metropolitan of Kharkiv, not recognizing the title of Metropolitan of Kyiv (Doroshenko, op. cit., p. 325).

When Metropolitan Antoniy arrived from Kharkiv to Kyiv at the beginning of June 1918, government representatives did not participate in his reception; there was not a single representative from the Ministry of Cults either. The solemn reception at the Kyiv railway station, which the "true Russians" of Kyiv had prepared for the metropolitan, was foiled, on their own initiative, by Ukrainian railway workers, who detained the train carrying Metropolitan Antoniy at a small station for several hours, so that instead of the morning, he arrived in Kyiv only late in the evening (Fr. Heyer, op. cit., p. 50). Archbishop Ioann of Shanghai also writes: "Representatives of the then Ukrainian Government did not participate in the reception of Bishop Antoniy, and even after his first visit to Hetman Skoropadsky, an announcement was issued that the Hetman had received Metropolitan Antoniy as the Metropolitan of Kharkiv." However, a personal meeting of the bishop with Pavlo Skoropadsky, who was immediately filled with great respect for the metropolitan, and especially the resolution of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor demanding that the Government recognize the new Kyiv Metropolitan, "forced all who stood in the way of that recognition to fall silent" (Pravoslavny Put, Jordanville, NY, 1950, article "His Eminence Antoniy, Archbishop of Kharkiv and Akhtyrka," pp. 35-36).

We now turn to the history during the Hetmanate of this Church Sobor in Ukraine, which, when called "All-Ukrainian," is not

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without reason often placed in quotation marks by Ukrainian historians. As we know, the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, convened not at the initiative of the hierarchy but of the Ukrainian Church Rada, had to interrupt its first session in January 1918 due to the Bolshevik invasion, and at that time the Sobor resolved to continue its work in the month of May. In May, after the Hetman coup, the hierarchy did not convene the Sobor but instead held a diocesan assembly for the election of a metropolitan. When the Minister of Confessions demanded the metropolitan's election at the All-Ukrainian Sobor, they told him the Sobor could not meet earlier than autumn. However, we see that the hierarchy convened the Sobor soon after the metropolitan's election, on June 7/20, 1918 -- that is, at the beginning of summer, not in the autumn. What influenced the acceleration of the Sobor's convening, we do not have firm data to judge.

In Fr. Korsunovsky's memoirs we read that the Ukrainians, in their struggle against the election of Metropolitan Antoniy to the Kyiv cathedra, "placed their hopes on the Sobor, where there was a Ukrainian majority." The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, according to Fr. Korsunovsky, "declared to the episcopate that it would itself, as a body elected by the Sobor, summon the Sobor members," and then the episcopate "promised that it would soon convene the Sobor, but since at the first session there had not been representatives from some dioceses, and from others an incomplete complement, supplementary elections would be held."

These "supplementary elections" played the greatest role in the activity of the "All-Ukrainian" Church Sobor under the Hetman government. "For June," writes Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, "the second session of the All-Ukrainian Sobor was announced. But in essence this was no longer the second session of the January Sobor, but an entirely separate Russian Sobor in Ukraine, because the composition of its members was completely different. From the military representatives, almost no one came to this session; the former All-Ukrainian Church Rada came in the number of 45 persons, while in the dioceses the bishops conducted new elections for this session and elected whomever they wanted, mostly from among theological school teachers and other persons directly subordinate to them." "During the recess," writes Prof. O. Lototsky, "in the dioceses, new members were additionally elected, after which the composition of the Sobor assumed a clearly Muscovite-reactionary character... In fact, Sobor members were appointed by the bishops from among their supporters" (Lototsky, Ukrainian Sources of Canon Law, op. cit., pp. 129-130).

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Establishing the fact that the anti-Ukrainian majority of the All-Ukrainian Sobor, which during the Hetman government became a center of action hostile to Ukrainian interests, was caused by major abuses during the "supplementary elections" of Sobor members, the historian must simultaneously establish that these abuses and the "lording over" church life and church questions in Ukraine by anti-Ukrainian elements was, as Prof. O. Lototsky states, "the lamentable consequence of the ignoring of church affairs by the authorities and the Ukrainian citizenry." In such a lamentable situation, there was no one to oversee the Sobor electoral process to ensure it would produce a predominantly nationally conscious membership of the Church Sobor in the revived Ukrainian State.

The anti-Ukrainian majority fabricated through the "supplementary elections" in the Sobor membership did not, however, satisfy the Sobor's Russian hierarchical leadership. In Metropolitan Evlogy's memoirs we read: "It was hot (in June), but we worked all the same. We deliberated on the governance of the Church in Ukraine. THE MAJORITY STOOD FOR AUTOCEPHALY, an 'independent,' that is nezavisimaia, Ukrainian Church" (op. cit., p. 313; emphasis ours). According to Metropolitan Evlogy's own testimony, even after the "supplementary elections" to the Sobor, the majority of its participants were for making the Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent from the Russian or Moscow Church. Is this not the explanation for the "purge" of Sobor members that was carried out alongside the unlawful "supplementary elections," in order to create a certain pro-Russian majority at the Sobor?

When the credentials committee began reporting on its work of verifying the mandates of Sobor members, then, as Fr. Korsunovsky writes, "it immediately became clear that this committee, under the leadership of the dean of the Zhytomyr cathedral, Archpriest K. Levytsky, had been given from above the task of purging the All-Ukrainian Sobor of the 'Mazepist element.' In its captious treatment of Ukrainian mandates, the committee reached the Pillars of Hercules, a kind of bacchanalia. An illegibly written word was enough -- and the mandate was no good, not recognized as valid." At the same time, the Kherson group of 52 Sobor members, not elected by the diocese to the Sobor but appointed by diocesan authorities, was considered by the credentials committee to be a valid representation of the diocese, because "there was no longer time for elections on the ground, and since the people trusted them to be delegates to the Odessa congress, they thereby [Trans. note: Question marks in parentheses throughout represent the author's (Wlasowsky's) editorial skepticism, not translator uncertainty.] (?) also trusted them to be members of the All-Ukrainian Sobor." Moreover, all 52 persons participated in the vote on this proposal of the credentials committee, voting for themselves.

When a sufficient number of conscious Ukrainians had been removed from Sobor membership, the credentials committee unexpectedly raised the question of the Sobor members from the Church Rada, of whom 45 were present. The Sobor was the continuation of the January 1918 Sobor, and according to the constitution of that Sobor, confirmed by Patriarch Tikhon, the Church Rada entered the Sobor in its entirety. True, the Church Rada had since become defunct, replaced by the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, but the credentials committee did not proceed from this in its

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declaration. It declared that the representation from the Church Rada, as an institution, was too large; that the Kyiv Theological Academy, an institution no less venerable than the Rada, had only two seats at the Sobor; therefore, in the committee's opinion, three representatives from the Rada would be quite sufficient, and the Rada should elect them from among itself.

The credentials committee's proposal, despite decisive protests from the Ukrainian side, was not even put to a vote, although nothing would have come of such a vote anyway, because Sobor chairman Bishop Pimen declared that he would not count the votes of Church Rada members. "And you allowed the Odessites to vote for themselves?" the outraged Ukrainians shouted. The chairman only waved his hand.

After deliberation, the committee's proposal to elect three Sobor members was rejected with indignation by the Church Rada members, Sobor participants, who composed a sharp resolution of protest and submitted it to the Sobor presidium. Bishop Pimen did not even announce this resolution at the Sobor, but simply declared that "the Church Rada has voluntarily declined representation at the All-Ukrainian Sobor."

Thus 45 members of the institution at whose initiative the Church Sobor in Ukraine had been convened in 1918 were expelled from the Sobor's membership -- the Sobor now usurped by opponents of the revival of the national Ukrainian Orthodox Church -- an act formally similar to the usurpation by the Catholic political authorities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Sobor at Brest in 1596. "This fact," writes Prof. O. Lototsky, "caused by motives not of church order but exclusively political and nationalistic, compelled the representative of state authority, Minister of Confessions (V. Zinkivsky), to react, declaring at the Sobor that 'the fact of the expulsion from the Sobor of the former Ukrainian Church Rada is very important and unprecedented in history; therefore the Council of Ministers must have its opinion on it, and the state cannot leave it without attention'" (Lototsky, Ukrainian Sources of Canon Law, op. cit., p. 130). O. H. Lototsky does not further indicate whether this fact was the subject of deliberations at the Council of Ministers, or what the Council's opinion was. It is known only that the Minister of Confessions' protest against the expulsion from the Sobor of the Church Rada members in corpore went unheeded (Doroshenko, op. cit., p. 328). One must think that in the Council of Ministers of the Hetman government there were at that time quite a few who shared the Russian hierarchy's views on Ukrainianness.

Speaking on the day after the opening of the second session of the Sobor, at its session of June 8/21, Minister of Cults V. Zinkivsky, on behalf of the government, delivered a declaration containing the basic points of the government's church policy. The government stood on the principle that the Church in Ukraine should not be separated from the State; the government would not interfere in the internal life of the Church but expected from the Church its support of the state. On the question of Church autocephaly, the government wished to hear the desires of the people, but church administration in Ukraine must

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already now be organized; therefore the government considered it necessary that for the time being the organization of the governance of the Ukrainian Church be carried out on the principles of autonomy, given the impossibility of reconciling hostile currents; at the autumn session of the Sobor, it should take up the question of autocephaly, when questions of mutual relations with Moscow should also be resolved.

Obviously, the Sobor in the composition that had been formed for its second session confirmed by majority the election to the Kyiv cathedra of Metropolitan Antoniy of Kharkiv, all the more so since, as we know, this election by the diocesan assembly had already been confirmed by the Moscow Patriarch. Metropolitan Evlogy writes: "The chairman at the Sobor was Bishop Pimen, vicar of Podillia, but when Metropolitan Antoniy arrived from Kharkiv, he voluntarily ceded the chairmanship to him" (op. cit., p. 313). This remark is very characteristic of the legal consciousness of the Sobor members, when a representative elected at the January session of the Sobor could now dispose of the chairman's mandate and "voluntarily" cede it to another person from the hierarchy who, incidentally, had not been elected as chairman at the January session.

The summer session of the Sobor lasted from June 20 to July 11 (new style), 1918. "The most fundamental and responsible resolutions of the Sobor had," as O. Lototsky writes, "an expressly political character. Here, first of all, belongs the resolution on granting the Kyiv Metropolitan and Galician the right to visit his flock in Galicia -- as a continuation of Russian church-governmental measures during the Russian occupation of Galicia. Even more expressive, from this point of view, was the resolution on the obligatory character for the Orthodox Church in Ukraine of the resolutions of the Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Moscow Patriarch: 'All resolutions of the All-Russian Church Sobor and the Most Holy Patriarch, particularly the resolution of this Sobor on the abolition of the elective principle for sacred church servants, must unconditionally bind all dioceses of Ukraine'" (Lototsky, Ukrainian Sources of Canon Law, p. 131).

The main point of the Sobor's work was the organization of the supreme church administration of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The chairman of the Statute Commission, in which the draft of this administration was being developed, was Archbishop Evlogy of Volyn. During the preparation of the draft, Hetman Skoropadsky visited the Sobor on July 6 (Metropolitan Lypkivsky incorrectly states that the Hetman's visit to the Sobor took place during its autumn session). Metropolitan Platon greeted the Hetman on behalf of the Sobor -- as Fr. Korsunovsky notes -- "in such pure Ukrainian that many Ukrainians would have envied it," which elicits from the author of the memoirs the remark: "What Russian bishops cannot pull off in the presence of the powers of this world!" The Hetman in his speech to the Sobor emphasized that "state affairs require that all church affairs be resolved here, in Ukraine" -- a statement that satisfied the Ukrainian

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part of the Sobor. This was, as Prof. D. Doroshenko interprets, an expression by the state authority of the desire for autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church, but the Sobor produced only a draft statute for church autonomy (The Orthodox Church in the Past and Present Life of the Ukrainian People, p. 52).

As Fr. Korsunovsky recounts, two drafts of the administrative structure of the Church in Ukraine were heard at a plenary session of the Sobor: one (developed by the Statute Commission), according to which "the Church in Ukraine is an inseparable part of the general Russian Church with the Patriarch of All Russia at its head"; the second draft, "from the Ukrainians, developed and read by Archpriest V. Lypkivsky, was entirely the opposite: the Church in Ukraine must be independent from Moscow, as it was before, without however breaking spiritual brotherly unity with both the Russian and the entire Universal Orthodox Church."

Metropolitan Lypkivsky himself does not mention a word about this Ukrainian draft at the 1918 Sobor; in Chapter VII on "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church" he writes: "Having freed itself from the former members of the All-Ukrainian Rada, the Sobor now briskly took up the resolution of the most fundamental questions regarding the life of the Ukrainian Church and resolved them almost unanimously. It was resolved that the Ukrainian Church must continue to remain under the supremacy of the Moscow Patriarch, and for the governance of Ukrainian church affairs a 'Sacred Synod' was elected, consisting of three priests and three laymen (all bishops, it seems, enter the Synod by rank -- I confess, I do not well remember); Russians got into the membership of the Ukrainian Synod. Having elected a Russian 'autonomous' church government for the Ukrainian Church, the Sobor concluded its session."

In more detail, the matter of organizing the structure and administration of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, carried out at this session of the Sobor with the participation of the Hetman government, presents itself somewhat differently. The "Statute of the Provisional Supreme Church Administration of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine," the draft of which was definitively adopted at the Sobor session of July 9, 1918, built the administration of the Ukrainian Church on the principles of autonomy of this Church in the canonical jurisdiction of the All-Russian Patriarch. To the All-Russian Patriarch, as the kiriarch of the Ukrainian Church, the following rights belonged under this draft: 1) confirmation of the election of the Kyiv Metropolitan and his blessing; 2) blessing for all diocesan bishops in Ukraine, confirmed on their cathedras by the Sobor of Ukrainian Bishops; 3) receiving all complaints against the Kyiv Metropolitan and supreme court over all bishops of Ukrainian dioceses; 4) blessing (permission) for convening a Church Sobor in Ukraine; 5) confirmation of the Statute of supreme church administration in Ukraine; 6) commemoration of the name of the All-Russian Patriarch at all divine services in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

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The organization of the Supreme Church Administration was projected as follows: 1) The supreme organ of church legislation, administration, and church court in the Ukrainian Church was the Ukrainian Church Sobor, to be held every three years (more frequently in case of special need). The Sobor's composition included all serving diocesan bishops and their vicars, representatives of clergy and laity elected at diocesan assemblies.

2) The permanently acting organs of the Supreme Church Administration in Ukraine were the Sobor of all serving diocesan bishops and the Supreme Church Rada (Vyshcha Tserkovna Rada).

3) The Supreme Church Rada consisted of three bishops (elected to the Rada by the Sobor of Bishops), four representatives of the clergy (one of them a deacon), and six from the laity -- all elected by the Church Sobor for three-year terms.

4) The chairman of the Church Sobor, the Sobor of Bishops, and the Supreme Church Rada was ex officio the Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia.

5) The Sobor of Bishops had jurisdiction over matters of a hierarchical and pastoral character -- matters of faith and worship, church administration, discipline, and court. The Supreme Church Rada was to manage matters of a church-communal character, mainly the external side of church life: church economy, church schooling and education, auditing of church institutions, church-legal relations, etc.

6) For the consideration of more important matters, joint sessions of the Sobor of Bishops and the Supreme Church Rada were to be held.

7) The Ukrainian state authority had the right of oversight over the expenditure of sums allocated to the Church from state funds, as well as supervision over the legislative activity of the Church Administration organs from the standpoint of their conformity with state laws (D. Doroshenko, History of Ukraine 1917-1923, p. 328).

In anticipation of the confirmation of this draft "Statute of the Provisional Supreme Church Administration of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine," the Sobor conducted at its final sessions the elections of the personal composition of the "Supreme Church Rada," to which were elected: from the clergy -- Archpriest F. Titov, Archpriest N. Grossu (both professors of the Kyiv Theological Academy), Fr. Lobov, and Deacon Tsiumanov; from the laity -- chairman of the congress of justices of the peace Bich-Lubensky (Kharkiv), Professors Yasinsky and Morachevsky, Inspector of Public Schools Marchenko, Gymnasium Director Tiulpanov, and theological school teacher Cherniavsky. Not by the general Church Sobor but by the Sobor of Bishops were elected to the Supreme Church Rada: Metropolitan Platon of Odessa, Archbishop Evlogy of Volyn, and Bishop Pakhomiy of Chernihiv. The Supreme Church Rada was headed ex officio by Kyiv Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky.

Not a single person from the Ukrainian clergy or from Ukrainian lay activists was admitted to the Supreme Church Rada, so that Metropolitan Lypkivsky was right when in his memoirs he wrote that there had been "elected for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church a Russian autonomous church government."

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The draft statute, adopted by the Sobor on July 9, after which the summer session of the Sobor was closed on July 11, 1918, was to be reviewed by the Hetman government before it could be confirmed by the All-Russian Patriarch. Obviously, this review should have concerned not only formal questions of whether or not this Church Administration Statute contradicted state laws, but also, given the connection in the Ukrainian State between church and state, questions of expediency and the Statute's correspondence to the interests of the State. Prof. O. Lototsky says that "the Hetman government automatically forwarded that draft (statute) to Moscow for confirmation by the All-Russian Patriarch" (Tryzub, no. 12, 1927, p. 8; emphasis ours). We would not agree with such a characterization of the government's action, for from the letter of the Hetman government to Moscow Patriarch Tikhon dated August 5, 1918, with which the draft Statute was sent, it is evident that the government deliberated on this Statute and expressed those deliberations in the letter to the patriarch.

Thus the Government of the Ukrainian State, seeing "in the flourishing of spiritual forces a necessary precondition for the strengthening of morality in the life of the Ukrainian people," had resumed, as it wrote at the beginning of the letter to the patriarch, the work of the All-Ukrainian Sobor interrupted in January. The brief duration of this session of the Sobor did not favor detailed deliberation of the questions that were the subject of the Sobor's work, and therefore the resolution of these questions had, in the government's opinion, a temporary character. The Government considered the formation in Ukraine of organs of Supreme Church Administration to be an urgent church need, and therefore asked the patriarch for the prompt confirmation of those provisions of the draft Statute, adopted by the Sobor, that pertained to the formation of the Supreme Church Administration, as well as the confirmation of the personal composition of that Administration. As for the provisions of the draft concerning the rights of the All-Russian Patriarch with respect to the Ukrainian Church, the Government saw no urgency in confirming these provisions. The Government found the basis for such a view in its firm conviction that the question of these rights, along with other more important provisions regarding the church governance in Ukraine, would be the subject of careful deliberation and final decision at future sessions of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor (D.

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Doroshenko, op. cit., p. 331). Thus the Government gave a temporary character to the resolution of the church question represented in the Sobor's Statute of July 9, 1918. Minister V. Zinkivsky did not abandon his plan of convening a new session of the Sobor in autumn for the discussion of the project of autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, and if the Sobor had rejected this project, then the Government, as writes Prof. D. Doroshenko, then Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Hetman government, was to dissolve this Sobor and order new elections for an All-Ukrainian Church Sobor (The Orthodox Church in the Past and Present Life of the Ukrainian People, p. 52).

In response to the "Statute of the Provisional Supreme Church Administration of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine" sent to Moscow, Patriarch Tikhon informed the Kyiv Metropolitan that he would submit this draft "Statute" for the review and decision of the Sacred Sobor of the Russian Church. The patriarch wrote that although, according to the provisions of the draft Statute, its confirmation was granted personally to the patriarch, he, the patriarch, considered it necessary to submit this matter for review by the All-Russian Sobor, for the following reasons: 1) the Ukrainian Church Sobor itself had resolved on the unconditional obligatory character for all dioceses of Ukraine of the resolutions of the All-Russian Church Sobor; 2) only the All-Russian Sobor alone possessed the supreme legislative authority in the Orthodox Russian Church, and therefore the work of the Ukrainian Sobor must be placed in close connection with the labors of this Sobor.

The All-Russian Sobor, opened as is known on August 15/28, 1917, was still in session even after the restoration of the patriarchate and the installation of the patriarch, convening in sessions (it ceased to exist on September 7, 1918). At this Sobor, amendments were made to the draft of the Ukrainian temporary church statute, by which the Sobor had the evident tendency to trim even that autonomy of church administration in Ukraine that was in the draft -- which in Metropolitan Evlogy's expression was "a certain concession to the Ukrainians" (op. cit., p. 313). In the amendments of the Moscow Sobor, it was even more expressly underscored everywhere that the Ukrainian dioceses "remain an inseparable part of the Orthodox Russian Church," that "the resolutions of All-Russian Councils, as well as the resolutions and instructions of the Most Holy Patriarch, have force for the entire Ukrainian Church." The patriarch's confirmation on cathedras of hierarchs in the Ukrainian Church was required by these amendments for all, and not only the Kyiv Metropolitan, as was in the draft. "The Most Holy Patriarch," the Moscow Sobor added, "retains with respect to the Ukrainian Church all rights provided by conciliar resolutions regarding the rights and duties of the Most Holy Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia."

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By this provision, the Ukrainian diocesan bishops were placed in the same position toward the patriarch as all bishops and dioceses of the Moscow Church; even the right to grant temporary leaves to Ukrainian bishops belonged to the patriarch, who could then delegate this right to the Kyiv Metropolitan. The unification of church authority in the Russian Church, to which the "autonomous" Ukrainian Church also belonged, was also visible in those amendments of the All-Russian Sobor which established the obligatory participation in All-Russian Sobors of representatives of clergy and laity from Ukraine; the Ukrainian bishops were not only to participate in those Sobors but, by "turns of service," in the Patriarchal Synod as well. On the other hand, the Moscow Patriarch would send his representatives to the Ukrainian Church Sobor (O. Lototsky, Ukrainian Sources of Canon Law, op. cit., pp. 132-133).

To these amendments and changes made by the Moscow Sobor in the draft Statute of the Supreme Church Administration of the Ukrainian Church, the consent of the Ukrainian state authority was required. Thus the draft returned to Kyiv, where, as was mentioned above, the Ministry of Cults had been planning the convening of a new session of the Ukrainian Sobor in autumn for the discussion of the project of autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

But in autumn, changes occurred in the Hetman government, discussions about whose reorganization had begun as early as July; the reorganization of the cabinet of ministers was to proceed in the direction of Ukrainizing the cabinet, in which, since the coup carried out with the help of German military force, non-national figures had predominated who were not devoted to the idea of Ukrainian statehood, and in part were simply outright opponents of the state independence of the Ukrainian people. The non-national majority composition of the Hetman's ministers was conditioned by the political fact that the Hetman government, having arisen under the protection of the German military command, had no support either in the broad Ukrainian masses or in the Ukrainian political parties, but leaned on the "Union of Landowners" (Soiuz Zemelnych Sobstvennikov) in Ukraine, an organization of a class character before the revolution and of a political character during the revolution, which united great landowners of Russian culture and Russian orientation, determined opponents and enemies of Ukrainian political independence and Ukrainian identity in general.

The Russian episcopate and the Russian or Russified clergy maintained connections, evidently, with this and similar "unions" in Kyiv and in other cities of Ukraine, which were being founded at that time and reinforced by refugees from Muscovy fleeing the Bolsheviks; in the mobilization of forces

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for the rebuilding, after the expected quick collapse of Bolshevism, of the "united and indivisible Russia," the Church was to occupy, as before, one of the first places. In a memorandum submitted to the Hetman by the Ukrainian Democratic-Agrarian Party together with other right-wing parties and estate-based Ukrainian organizations, it was written: "Along with education, attention must be turned to the Church, which our Hetman has declared a state institution. And yet during the Hetmanate, the militant mood of the Moscow Church has gained special force: a campaign is being waged against the Ukrainian Sobor, new metropolitanates are being established, the hounding of Ukrainian clergy is increasing to the extreme, our statehood is being silenced in the Church or openly opposed, and in general everything possible is being done to prevent at all costs the creation of our Autocephalous Church" (P. Mirchuk, op. cit., pp. 60-61).

The reorganization of the cabinet of ministers, when Hetman Skoropadsky attempted to break free from the influence of Russian circles and establish cooperation with the "National-State Union," in which the Ukrainian national parties had united in their opposition to the Hetman government and its policies, took place on October 19, 1918. After negotiations between the Hetman and the head of the "National Union," Vol. Vynnychenko -- who, by his own admission, conducted these negotiations about forming a national-democratic cabinet merely "for purposes of conspiracy," thereby "concealing the true goals and intentions of seizing power from the hands of the bourgeois classes by force" through uprising (Vynnychenko, The Revival of the Nation, Kyiv-Vienna, 1920, Part III, pp. 87-93) -- after such negotiations, a cabinet of ministers was formed in which the majority consisted of Ukrainian national figures delegated, one could say, by the National Union. The Minister of Confessions in this cabinet became O. H. Lototsky, an alumnus of the Kyiv Theological Academy (and not the St. Petersburg one, as incorrectly stated by Fr. Heyer, and a native of Podillia, not Katerynoslav, as Heyer again incorrectly states, op. cit., p. 47), a longtime Ukrainian activist and writer before the revolution.

Oleksander Lototsky was Minister of Confessions in the second cabinet of ministers under the Hetman, led by F. Lyzohub, for a very brief period -- less than a month -- but in the history of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, his tenure became historic, for in the era of the revival of the Ukrainian nation and Ukrainian statehood with the revolution of 1917, the proper voice of state authority was heard in church affairs in Ukraine for the first time in the declaratory speech at the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor by Minister of Confessions O. H. Lototsky.

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The autumn session of the so-called All-Ukrainian Sobor, when its members had dispersed from Kyiv in July 1918, was scheduled for October 28. It was to deal, as stated above, with the review of the amendments to the Statute of the Supreme Church Administration in Ukraine made at the Moscow Sobor; on the other hand, as we know, the Ministry of Cults or Confessions had not abandoned the idea of raising the matter of church autocephaly at this autumn session. Therefore, the historian must be somewhat struck by the strange attitude toward this autumn session of the Sobor by the Ukrainian church-national side.

In Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky's Chapter VII of his History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, we find only these lines about this session: "In September (actually in October) another session of this Sobor was convened, but it was already of no interest to anyone; it took place in the Lavra and was entirely dominated by Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky." Fr. P. Korsunovsky in his memoirs, as a participant, likewise says: "In the autumn the third session of the Sobor gathered, but it no longer interested us. The Sobor was in Antoniy's hands, and that already tells about its activity. Resolutions were adopted as Moscow dictated, especially when the Hetman began to reveal his true Muscovite face."

Neither in Metropolitan Lypkivsky's nor in Fr. Korsunovsky's account do we find a single word about the appearance at the Sobor of Minister Lototsky with a declaration in the name of the Government on the matter of Church Autocephaly in Ukraine. For, as they write, this session was already of no interest to anyone (evidently, among the national church activists). This testifies, amid strong emotions, to an immaturity in the church struggle, which explains no small number of deficiencies in church life during the era of the revival of the Ukrainian National Orthodox Church.

O. Lototsky writes about the "lamentable situation" he found before him "when, on the commission of the Ukrainian National Union, he entered the government of the Hetman and assumed the duties of Minister of Cults. The Council of Ministers," he writes, "I managed to convince of the erroneousness of its church tactics." The declaratory speech with which Minister O. Lototsky spoke in the name of the Government at the Sobor session of November 12, 1918, was as follows:

In the new conditions of our state life arises the essential need to arrange church affairs. The state authority, under my predecessor, opted for a temporary and compromise solution: it sought an understanding with the Moscow Patriarch in view of the previous ties of our Church with the former Russian Church. But that attempt not only did not help resolve the matter but complicated it even further. The autocratic claims of the Moscow Patriarch, who even wishes to confirm Ukrainian bishops, place the matter back at its very beginning. Before the state authority and before the Church Sobor stands again the same task: to create church order, and for that, first of all, to establish the fundamental law of the Ukrainian National Church.

>

The situation requires that the government clearly and firmly indicate those principled foundations on which it stands regarding the establishment of proper church-state relations. Among us, the Church is bound up with the State -- therefore the State has not only the right but the duty to establish mutual relations between them. The state authority fulfills this duty all the more willingly because it corresponds to our old national traditions: in the history of our national-state building, the elements of Church and Nation were closely united and in the process of that building helped one another.

>

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The fundamental principle of the Ukrainian state authority is that in an independent state there must be an independent Church. This is equally demanded by the interests of both the State and the Church. No government that understands its state duties can agree that the center of church authority should be located in another state. Even less can this be permitted in the present case, given the cardinal difference between the two states both in political regime and in the legal state position of the Church in Muscovy and in Ukraine.

>

Therefore, in its relations with other churches, the Ukrainian Church must be autocephalous, under the leadership of the Kyiv Metropolitan and in canonical connection with other independent churches.

>

As for the mutual relations between Church and State among us, those relations must stand on the unshakeable foundation: render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. I indicate only those fundamental principles with which the particular aspects of church organization must be brought into accord.

>

The state authority has the deep conviction that only a church organization built on such principles corresponds solely to church, state, and generally national interests. The independence of the Church will help manifest those civic forces that displayed such extraordinary self-activity in our former national life. That self-activity was curbed, the living foundations of church conciliarity (sobornist) were neglected, when our Church was governed by alien principles of life, forcibly imposed upon it; but that church-popular self-activity must be revived when our Church firmly stands on the ground of its proper independent life -- in an autocephalous form.

>

Thus the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church is not merely a church but also a national-state necessity. It is an essential need of our Church, our State, our Nation. And whoever understands and sincerely takes to heart the interests of the Ukrainian people accepts also the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church. And vice versa.

>

In the name of the Government of the Ukrainian State, I have the honor to announce its firm and unwavering conviction that the Ukrainian Church must be

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autocephalous.

>

— Prof. O. Lototsky, Ukrainian Sources of Canon Law, pp. 133-134

The cause of Ukrainian church independence had been so discredited by the entire previous policy of neutrality by Ukrainian governments (during the Central Rada era) and further subservience to the Russian episcopate in Ukraine, hostile to the very idea of Ukrainian statehood (during the Hetman government), that the Minister of Confessions' declaration met with determined resistance. This declaration rejected the project of church autonomy and proclaimed in the name of the Government the autocephaly of the Church in Ukraine. It was opposed at the Sobor by the same episcopate and, evidently, its henchmen from the Muscovite-reactionary camp that had entrenched itself in the Church in Ukraine to the great detriment of Ukrainian national interests.

Very eloquent was the fact that the Russian bishops who spoke at the Sobor against Minister O. Lototsky's declaration saw in it a violation by the Ukrainian government of the freedom of the Church. The Church, they said, decides for itself about its own existence, whether or not it wishes to be subject to anyone, and if so, to whom exactly. It was evident that during these nearly two years of revolution, the principles of church freedom, after two hundred years of its enslavement by Russian autocracy, had already been assimilated by the bishops -- only, unfortunately, one-sidedly, against the right of the Ukrainian state authority to decide on the fate of the Church in Ukraine. These bishops declared at the Sobor that "they see greater freedom of the Church in Bolshevik Russia and consider it preferable to separate church from state in the interests of church freedom."

Minister O. Lototsky's response to such wishes from the recent servants of the tsar was very apt. The minister replied: "1) The Government does not prevent anyone from moving to the territory of Soviet Russia, for whom that order is more suitable; 2) the separation of church from state will likewise not meet with obstacles from the state; this is where the normal development of the organization and life of the state and church leads; for budgetary reasons, such separation would even now be received by the government very favorably. But the separation of church from state will not untie the hands of church agents for destructive work (in the Ukrainian state); church institutions will assume the status of private institutions, like commercial, industrial institutions, etc., and will be subject to the ordinary legal responsibility in the event of a harmful act" (ibid., p. 134).

The declaration in the name of the government by the Minister of Confessions about the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church at the Sobor session in Kyiv on November 12, 1918, was not yet, obviously, a law on autocephaly, but this declaration had an entirely legal significance with respect to the "Statute of the Provisional Supreme Church Administration of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine," the draft of which had been adopted at the Sobor on July 9, 1918, and sent by the Hetman government to the Moscow Patriarch for approval. That Statute was built on the principles of the autonomy of the Ukrainian

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Church; the Moscow Sobor had made certain changes in it in the direction of narrowing the autonomous rights, after which these changes proposed by that Sobor were to be reviewed again at the All-Ukrainian Sobor and obtain the consent of the Ukrainian state government. But the government, in the declaration of Minister of Confessions O. Lototsky, refused this consent; the Minister of Confessions, in the name of the government, announced at the Sobor the rejection of the conciliar project of church organization in Ukraine on the principles of autonomy, and thereby that project lost any formal significance. The state government took the position of autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church.

This must be emphasized in view of the fact that in historical literature we encounter the incorrect view that the Statute of July 9, 1918, adopted by the All-Ukrainian Sobor, acquired the force of a legal act by which the Autonomous Ukrainian Church is governed to this day (Fr. Heyer, op. cit., p. 53).

In Metropolitan Evlogy's memoirs, who, though he was a member of the 2nd and 3rd State Duma from Ukrainian Kholm, understood Ukrainian affairs poorly, we find this account of the Ukrainian Sobor's activity during the Hetman period: "At the Sobor, the struggle between the Ukrainian and Russian parties defined all the debates. The Minister of Confessions under the Hetman was V. V. Zinkivsky. A moderate Ukrainian, he held an irreconcilable position toward the adherents of the extreme Ukrainian camp and soon had to resign along with another minister from the more moderate group (Gerbel). In his place came the candidate of the Kyiv Theological Academy, Lototsky -- a fierce Ukrainian. The struggle for autocephaly continued. I ardently stood for the 'united, indivisible Russian Church,' acknowledging, however, that certain concessions to the Ukrainians could be made. My opponents, the Ukrainians, attacked me with resentment. In the end, we prevailed: Lototsky was dismissed. I said at the Sobor: 'The minister has fallen -- and autocephaly has fallen with him. Let us now calmly attend to our affairs.' The Ukrainians were beside themselves at these words" (op. cit., p. 313).

These few words of Metropolitan Evlogy's memoirs -- one of the most prominent figures of the so-called All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1918 -- suffice to imagine what sort of builders of church life in Ukraine existed during the era of the revival of the Ukrainian people. "To calmly attend to church affairs" in Ukraine was not fated for these hierarchs, these Russian politickers, even though they solemnly sang, after the resignation of O. Lototsky -- as he himself recalls -- "a thanksgiving moleben" (Te Deum) (Tryzub, no. 12, 1927, p. 8).

In fact, the Minister of Confessions' resignation occurred not because the camp of Metropolitan Antoniy and Evlogy at the Sobor prevailed and secured the dismissal of O. Lototsky, as Metropolitan Evlogy falsely presents events; this resignation was caused by the general events in the history of Ukrainian revived statehood, when on November 14, 1918 -- that is, one day after Minister Lototsky's appearance at the Sobor --

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Hetman Skoropadsky proclaimed a charter on the unification of Ukraine with Russia on the basis of federation. Before that, revolution had erupted in Germany, and the military force under whose protection the Hetman government in Ukraine had arisen and maintained itself fell; in hope of reaching an understanding with the victorious Entente, the Hetman and his circle decided to restore the union with Russia. Simultaneously with the proclamation by charter of federation with Russia, the (quite recently more or less Ukrainized) cabinet of ministers was replaced; in it now, headed by S. Gerbel, there was not, it seems, aside from Minister of Education V. Naumenko, a single Ukrainian, and the Minister of Confessions was the unknown M. Voronovych, who, being absent from Kyiv, did not even assume his office.

On November 16, an uprising began against the Hetman government, organized by the Ukrainian National Union, whose main driving force was the Sich Riflemen under the command of Col. Ye. Konovalets, who were stationed in Bila Tserkva and from there marched on Kyiv. The Supreme Commander of the forces of the Directorate, created by the National Union for the political leadership of the coup and as the future government of the Ukrainian People's Republic, became Symon Petliura, who had spent several months in prison during the Hetman government and was only freed in November by Minister of Justice A. H. Viazlov (in the second cabinet of ministers of F. Lyzohub).

Obviously, the Russian episcopate in Ukraine welcomed the Hetman's charter on the union of Ukraine with Russia, and when the uprising against the Hetman began, issued a pastoral letter to the people (Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky writes that this letter was issued by the episcopate on behalf of the Sobor), in which, overstepping the bounds of the church sphere, it called upon the people to combat the Directorate's uprising. But this letter had no significance whatsoever. On December 14, Skoropadsky proclaimed his resignation, in which, noting that for seven and a half months he had exerted efforts to lead the country out of a difficult situation, he declared: "God did not give me the strength to cope with this task, and now, given the conditions that have now formed, guided exclusively by the good of Ukraine, I renounce power."

With the political events in Ukraine of the second half of November, by which in December 1918 the era of the Hetmanate came to an end, the work of the All-Ukrainian Sobor convened in January 1918 also ceased forever. This Sobor was, as we see from the accounts of its proceedings at all three sessions plus the Kyiv diocesan assembly for the election of the Kyiv Metropolitan, essentially an arena of national-political struggle. The opponents and enemies of the independence of the Ukrainian people, under the leadership of the Great Russian or Russified hierarchy, strove to hold firmly in their hands the Church -- as an instrument of Russification for more than two hundred years in the past -- and the connection with Moscow through subordination to the Moscow supreme church authority for the political purposes of the future.

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Therefore, in the proceedings of this Sobor, it is futile to seek any resolutions useful for the Church as such. Beyond the proceedings of the Sobor, in the church life of the time, politics also blazed a trail, expressly conducted by the church leaders. There was, for example, a case raised of depriving of the priestly rank those priests who had been members of the former Church Rada (expelled from the Sobor), and only the resolute intervention of the Ministry of Cults stopped these acts of revenge by the metropolitan and the Kyiv Consistory. And the behavior at the solemn opening in Kyiv of the State Ukrainian University of Metropolitan Antoniy -- about which we read in the memoirs of contemporaries and eyewitnesses things that compromise a prince of the Church. In his speech (in Russian), Metropolitan Antoniy, instead of "Ukraine" and "Ukrainian," began using "Malorossiia" and "malorossiiskii," which provoked the indignation of thousands of students, and when he repeated this term -- shouts of: "Shame! Get out!" "So you don't like this word?" the metropolitan asked. Shouts: "No, we don't like it!" He finished his speech and descended from the podium amid general silence. The always composed D. I. Doroshenko, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, writes about this act of Metropolitan Antoniy: "And here, at such a solemn moment, he could not restrain himself from pulling a clownish trick, knowing in advance that the use of the word 'malorossiiskii' in such a setting constituted a deliberate provocation of the listeners -- and yet he used it" (Doroshenko, My Memories of the Recent Past, p. 87, Part III).

During the Hetman government, much was done for the development of Ukrainian national culture and school education. True, in the area of higher and secondary schooling, a gradual path of organization was chosen as Ukrainian, justified not only by the fact that cities in Ukraine were greatly Russified, but also by the insufficiency of Ukrainian pedagogical cadres and textbooks and scholarly courses in the Ukrainian language. Therefore, instead of the path of immediate Ukrainization of existing secondary and higher schools, the path was chosen of opening these schools anew with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, while introducing in the old schools, as obligatory subjects or chairs, Ukrainian language, literature, history, and geography. Ukrainian state universities were opened during the Hetmanate in Kyiv and Kamianets-Podilsky; about 150 new Ukrainian gymnasiums were opened across the entire state during this era; in autumn 1918, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was founded.

We do not have precise data, but it seems we will not be mistaken in saying that the matter of Ukrainization or de-Muscovitization stood weakest in these years of 1917-18 in the life of the Church -- in liturgical worship, in preaching, in theological education. And the reason for this was also the dominance of the Russian episcopate and the absence of a national Ukrainian hierarchy in the Church.

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Here is the resolution of the so-called All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1918 on the liturgical language in the churches of Ukraine (translated from the Russian language in which the acts of the Sobor were written): "Having discussed the question of the language of worship in the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and taking into consideration: a) the more than thousand-year antiquity of the Church Slavonic language, b) its richness and suitability for expressing the highest truths of the Christian faith, c) the spiritual need of all peoples to pray not in their customary, everyday, living language, d) the general and unanimous desire of all Ukrainian people (?), expressed through their representatives at the diocesan congresses of 1918 (?), as well as e) that Church Slavonic, from the days of the blessed memory of the holy and equal-to-the-apostles brothers Methodius and Cyril, first teachers of the Slavs, unites all Slavic churches and peoples -- the Ukrainian Church Sobor resolves: the liturgical language in the Orthodox Church in Ukraine shall remain, as before, the Church Slavonic language" (O. Lototsky, op. cit., p. 49). The Sobor, as we see, disregarded even the fact that the Holy Gospel in the Ukrainian language -- customary, everyday, living -- had been published by the old Russian Synod itself in 1906-07.

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, in Chapter VII, "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church," writes: "The external conditions for church work (in the years 1917-18), despite all the enthusiasm of the brethren for it, were exceedingly difficult and changeable. And the 'living inventory' (zhyvyi inventar -- a contemptuous term for clergy seen as tools of the state) in the Church -- Russian, reactionary -- was still too strong and influential to be overcome so quickly; and the activists of the revival of the Ukrainian Church, one must acknowledge, did not sufficiently clearly imagine how precisely and with what precisely to begin its revival. The fact that they intended to begin this revival from above, from the All-Ukrainian Sobor, was undoubtedly mistaken, for without proper preparation from below, a random and poorly informed populace, however ardent, is not a solid foundation for church building."

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In the introduction to this Chapter VII, Metropolitan Lypkivsky indicates the "prerequisites" for the revival of the Ukrainian Church -- such as autocephaly, universal conciliar governance (sobornopravnist), brotherhood, equality -- places alongside them "complete apoliticism, non-interference in any state affairs, separation from the state." In our humble opinion, precisely this last point was that "insufficiently clear imagining by the activists of the revival of the Church themselves, of how and with what to begin this revival." At the beginning of the history of this Fifth Period in the life of our Church, we already wrote: "The leveling measures of Russian authority regarding Ukrainian church life, practiced throughout the 18th–19th centuries, carried out under the cover of shared faith, led to the point that the very existence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as the national Church of the Ukrainian people passed into oblivion among the Ukrainians themselves." Thus the traditions of that Church were also forgotten and lost. To proclaim complete apoliticism, separation of church from state -- and, consequently, of state from church -- as a "prerequisite" for the revival of the Ukrainian Church was misguided. Moreover, in a state that was itself only being reborn and tottering on weak legs, this meant blindly following fashionable contemporary radical theories rather than the traditions of Ukrainian history. The state authority in the hands of the holy Prince Volodymyr baptized the Ukrainian people and gave them their first church organization, with which it was in alliance and harmony. The Zaporozhian Host, headed by Hetman Petro Sahaidachny, restored in 1620 the hierarchy in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which the Jesuit fathers in alliance with the Polish authorities had been leading to destruction. These fundamental facts of our history should have stood before the eyes of the activists of the revival of the Ukrainian Church, as well as the activists of the revival of Ukrainian statehood, especially in the era of the Hetmanate, which did not stand on the position of separation of church from state but, unfortunately, allied itself with the "living inventory" of Russian reaction in the Church (and beyond the Church).

It was difficult to agree with Metropolitan Lypkivsky's thought that the revival of the Ukrainian Church had to begin from below, not from above, as the activists of revival had begun, with the Church Sobor. We think that it was indeed necessary to begin from above, with the creation of a national Ukrainian Orthodox hierarchy, in alliance in this national matter with the state authority of those times, which could and should have helped the Church in this cardinal question of its revival. The national-church struggle for independence of churches and against Hellenization (Grecification) of the people through the church in the Orthodox Churches of Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia was never without a hierarchy; it was led there by the hierarchy and the national clergy, just as the state revival of those peoples at various times in their history came with the most active participation of the Church, hierarchy, and clergy.

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5. Church policy under the Directorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic. The Law of January 1, 1919, on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its supreme government. The diplomatic mission to Constantinople by Prof. O. Lototsky. The Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada (VPCR) and events of national-church life in Kyiv under Bolshevik rule in 1919, as well as during the Denikinite occupation of Kyiv in the second half of 1919.

The pastoral letter of the episcopate -- or under its leadership of the entire so-called All-Ukrainian Church Sobor -- to the Ukrainian Orthodox people calling upon them to obey and submit to Hetman Skoropadsky was an overt political act, to which, given its anti-Ukrainian character, the Directorate of the UNR could not fail to react after the overthrow of the Hetmanate and the Hetman's abdication. Thus, even before the solemn entry of the Directorate members into Kyiv, when administrative authority in Kyiv was exercised by the Revolutionary Committee, on December 4/17, 1918, Archbishop Evlogy was arrested in the Lavra, and the next day Metropolitan Antoniy as well; that evening of December 5/18, they were taken to the Kyiv station and during the night transported westward in a second-class railway compartment.

When one of the guard soldiers in Kyiv asked Metropolitan Antoniy why he and Evlogy had been arrested, Metropolitan Antoniy replied: "For the Orthodox faith," to which the soldier, in simplicity of heart but aptly, objected: "For the faith? They don't arrest people for faith; you must be some kind of thieves" (Metropolitan Evlogy, op. cit., p. 318). Along the way, Metropolitan Antoniy and Archbishop Evlogy learned they were being taken to Galicia, which news they received, in Evlogy's words, with "great relief."

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Of those 9 months, approximately 6 months (from December 4/17, 1918, to the Day of the Holy Trinity, 1919) Antoniy and Evlogy were in Ukrainian "captivity," after which they voluntarily transferred to Polish captivity. They lived in the Ukrainian Basilian monastery in Buchach, Ternopil region, where Metropolitan Antoniy, undoubtedly with far greater benefit for the Orthodox Church than his politicking on the Kyiv cathedra during the Hetmanate, wrote "An Essay on the Christian Orthodox Catechism" (published in 1924).

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On December 6/19, 1918, Kyiv solemnly greeted the new Ukrainian authority -- the Directorate of the UNR. Thousands of people filled Sophia Square and the streets. From Saint Sophia Cathedral, to the melodious sound of bells, a magnificent procession of the cross (khresny khid) went forth to the center of the square, to the monument of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Almost all the clergy of the city of Kyiv participated in the procession, and it was headed by Archbishop Agapit of Katerynoslav, who greeted Symon Petliura in his speech as a liberator.

One of the first legislative acts of the Directorate after its arrival in Kyiv and its magnificent reception, at which the favorable participation of the Church in the events of the national-political life of the Ukrainian people was manifested, was the "Law of January 1, 1919, on the Supreme Government of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church." By this legislative act, enacted by decree of the Directorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the independence -- the autocephaly -- of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was proclaimed, thereby fulfilling, in the development of the national-church movement in Ukraine since the revolution of 1917, the declaratory statement of Minister of Confessions O. Lototsky at the Ukrainian Church Sobor on November 12, 1918: "The fundamental principle of the Ukrainian state authority is that in an independent state there must be an independent Church."

The said Law of January 1, 1919, contained the following provisions:

1) The supreme church-legislative, judicial, and administrative authority in Ukraine belongs to the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, whose resolutions, when they have church-state significance or require expenditure from state coffers, are subject to review and confirmation by the legislative state organs.

2) For the governance of the affairs of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, a Ukrainian Church Synod is created,

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consisting of 2 bishops, 1 archpriest, 1 priest, 1 deacon, and 3 laymen, and one priest from the Military Department. Until the convening of the Sobor, which elects and submits for Government confirmation the members of the Synod, the members of the Church Synod are appointed by the Supreme Republican Ukrainian Government.

3) The Synod's jurisdiction includes church affairs: a) religious, b) administrative, c) economic, d) educational, e) oversight and auditing. (By a supplementary decree of the Directorate, the Synod was also given judicial functions.)

4) At the sessions of the Ukrainian Synod, a representative of the Republican Government appointed by the Minister for that purpose shall be present, who is designated the State Representative, whose duties include: providing information, clarifying laws, monitoring the execution of laws and Synod resolutions that do not violate the interests of the Republic. The State Representative has the right of protest before the Council of Ministers.

5) The church authority of the Autocephalous Ukrainian Church, with its entire administrative staff, is funded from the State Treasury according to staffing levels established additionally for this purpose.

6) The Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, with its Synod and spiritual hierarchy, stands in no dependence whatsoever from the All-Russian Patriarch.

7) The Ukrainian Church Synod, for the governance of its activity and for the convening of the Church Sobor, develops regulations that enter into force upon confirmation by the Ukrainian Republican Government.

(O. Lototsky, Ukrainian Sources of Canon Law, pp. 297–298.)

Apart from the proclamation by the state government of the Ukrainian People's Republic of the independence (autocephaly) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (point 6 of the Law of January 1, 1919), this Law of the Directorate of the UNR on the supreme government of the UAOC is significant for the history of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church also in that it stands not on the principle of separation of Church from State but on the principle of their union, possibly even with some exaggeration of state influences in the internal life of the Church. But this tendency in the Law is easily explained by the need to de-Muscovitize the Church, for during these two years, 1917–1918, the dominance of spiritual Russifiers in the Church in Ukraine was clearly revealed, especially during the Hetmanate.

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It is known that autocephaly of the Church is not any dogma of faith; autocephaly is a purely canonical concept designating the external structure of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in contrast to the monarchical centralized structure of the Western Catholic Church. In the canons of the Universal Orthodox Church, however, there are no instructions on the methods of establishing autocephaly for churches, nor on the procedure of when and how previously independent churches are deprived of autocephaly. In the canons of the Orthodox Church, we find only the grounds on which a Church becomes autocephalous. Of these, the most ancient -- Apostolic Canon 34 -- indicates the national ground for church independence. Canons 6 of the First Ecumenical Council, 9 of the Council of Antioch, and 17 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council indicate the state or administrative-territorial ground. According to this principle, the distribution of the Church in its earthly administration follows the civil and territorial order.

Thus in the matter of proclaiming autocephaly (on the grounds indicated by the canons), in the absence of canons, the authoritative factor is church-historical practice in the history of the Orthodox Church. The initiative in proclaiming and establishing Church autocephaly in the history of the emergence of Orthodox Autocephalous Churches most often belonged to the state authority of those countries where Autocephalous Churches arose. This was the case in the history of the Georgian (Iberian), Bulgarian, Serbian, Muscovite, Romanian, and Albanian autocephalous Orthodox churches. Therefore, when in recent publications about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church during its revival with the revolution of 1917, we encounter a characterization of the Ukrainian national-church movement in its striving for the independence of its Church from the Muscovite one as "an irresponsible and theologically illiterate current, represented by certain clerics and laymen" in contrast to the "moderate and lawful" current of the Ukrainian episcopate (K. V. Fotiev, op. cit., p. 72), such a characterization can truly come only from authors who are themselves poorly educated in church history and theology.

p. 63

Metropolitan Evlogy, the founder of the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, of which K. V. Fotiev is also an alumnus, recounts in his memoirs his missionary activity in Russian-occupied Galicia in 1914. During a related audience with the commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the latter said: "I am not very sympathetic to the creation of a separate administration for church affairs in Galicia. War is an uncertain business: today it turns one way, tomorrow another." Grand Duke Petr Nikolaevich interjected: "I want to put a church-canonical question to you: does the Synod have the right to install its administration when the territory is not yet Russian? After all, it remains even now the territory of the Ecumenical Patriarch." Archbishop Evlogy's answer was: "According to the content of church laws, the Church in its administration follows the states. When a territory is already administered by Russian civil authority, then the Russian Church also has the right to organize its administration. I do not insist -- I merely carry out the will of the Sovereign" (op. cit., p. 261; emphasis ours).

The logical conclusions from these views of the Russian hierarch are clear also for the legal validity of the legislative act of the Ukrainian state authority regarding the independence and administration of the Church in Ukraine, especially after the Fourth Universal of this authority on January 22, 1918, proclaimed the independence and full sovereignty of the Ukrainian People's Republic.

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The Law of January 1, 1919, on the supreme government of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was entirely legally valid, and the great harm to the cause of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was only that it did not appear earlier, as events showed.

The matter of establishing the autocephaly of this or that Local Orthodox Church does not conclude merely with the proclamation of that autocephaly, whether by a law of the state authority of that country or by a resolution of a national church sobor. The legislative act of state authority, like the resolution of a Sobor, and sometimes both in accord together, represent the initiative in establishing the autocephaly of the given Church; after the proclamation of this autocephaly, there follows -- almost always, as history shows -- a factual autocephaly, the factual independence of the given Church from another in its administration and ordering of its own life. But a Local Orthodox Church, proclaimed autocephalous, must formalize and legalize its autocephaly in church law in order to be within the Universal Orthodox Church and in unity and prayerful communion with other Orthodox Autocephalous Churches. The matter of such formalization, recognition of a Church as autocephalous, was within the competence of the Ecumenical Councils. In the absence in the Eastern Orthodox Church of such councils (after the Seventh Ecumenical Council of 787), the church-legal formalization (legalization) of the autocephaly of this or that Orthodox Church is carried out canonically through inter-church relations. The initiative for such recognition usually comes from the Church seeking its autocephaly from the already existing autocephalous Sister Churches.

The Russian Church itself celebrated in 1948 the 500th anniversary of its autocephaly, initiated by Moscow Grand Prince Vasily Vasilyevich in 1448, when the Bishop of Ryazan, Iona, was installed independently as metropolitan without Constantinople. But this independence, this autocephaly, was recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch and other Eastern patriarchs only at the end of the 16th century, so that for a full 140 years the Moscow Church remained in a state of only factual autocephaly.

The initiators and issuers of the Law of January 1, 1919, on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its supreme government were well aware of the procedure by which church autocephaly is achieved and formalized in the Eastern Orthodox Church. This is clearly evidenced by the next step, after the issuance of the Law of January 1, 1919, by the Government of the UNR in its church policy -- the delegation of a diplomatic mission to Constantinople, headed by the former Minister of Confessions under the Hetman (from the National Ukrainian Union), Prof. O. H. Lototsky.

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The negotiations on this matter were conducted by O. Lototsky in Constantinople in February–March 1919, not with the patriarch but with the locum tenens of the Ecumenical Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Nikolai of Caesarea. The patriarchal cathedra was not occupied at that time: in 1918, Patriarch German V had died, and the Turks did not allow elections of a new patriarch until 1922. The response of Locum Tenens Metropolitan Nikolai in negotiations with O. Lototsky was not a refusal, but neither was it consent. The locum tenens pointed precisely to the vacancy of the patriarchal cathedra at that time as an obstacle to the deliberation and resolution of such an important question as the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church. At the same time, Metropolitan Nikolai expressed the goodwill of the Patriarchal Throne toward "the pious Ukrainian people and the hope that this people will stand firmly in the ancestral faith, awaiting with complete certainty the fulfillment of its desire, that is, the independence of its Church, in accordance with the holy canons and rules" (O. Lototsky, In Constantinople, Warsaw, 1939, pp. 94–99).

It is obvious that had the Ukrainian national authority in the Ukrainian People's Republic endured, church life in Ukraine would have entered upon the path of factual autocephaly and gradual de-Muscovitization of the Orthodox Church.

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The Directorate of the UNR accepted this resolution and issued to the people a Universal on the unification of the Republics, read right there on Sophia Square. The proclamation of the great historic act of Ukrainian unity (sobornist) also took place with the prayerful participation of the church and clergy, the great significance of which fact the historian of the Ukrainian Church cannot fail to underscore. A solemn Divine Liturgy was held at Saint Sophia Cathedral that day, after which a magnificent procession, amid the pealing of the Sophia bells, set out from the cathedral to the center of the square, where, in the presence of the Directorate members (except Vynnychenko), the Government, representatives of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, military command, and various delegations, a thankful moleben was served, and then the acts of unification were proclaimed; soldiers stood all around, and beyond them uncountable masses of people.

The next day, January 23, sessions of the Labor Congress began, but within 5–6 days panic already seized Kyiv, and evacuation began. To spare Kyiv from new destruction, given the great forces of the Red enemy, Kyiv was surrendered without a fight. On February 5, the Bolsheviks took Kyiv. In the first days of February, Vynnychenko left the Directorate and departed abroad; the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Workers' Party withdrew its representatives from the Ukrainian Government entirely, so V. Chekhivsky also departed.

With the departure from Kyiv, at the end of January -- beginning of February 1919, of the Ukrainian state authority, which was unable to defend Ukraine from the Bolshevik onslaught from the Muscovite north, Ukrainian church life in its strivings for independence from foreign leadership and for the organization of a national Ukrainian Orthodox Church lost in Great Ukraine, with its capital Kyiv, for long years the support -- so belated -- of its national state government. Henceforth the national-church movement in the struggle for the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church again, as at its beginnings with the revolution of 1917, became a church-communal affair in Kyiv, conducted, under greatly worsened political conditions, by a few clerics and nationally conscious lay elements in the Church.

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Negotiations with the Constantinople Patriarchate on the recognition of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were broken off due to the Muscovite-Bolshevik seizure of Ukraine, but the church-communal leadership of the church-liberation movement in Kyiv also continued to ignore the state law of January 1, 1919, on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, issued by the Ukrainian Government.

"In Kyiv, from the beginning of 1919," writes Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "Soviet power more or less firmly established itself, and with its law on the separation of Church from State gave an entirely new direction to church life in Ukraine." (The decree of the Soviet Bolshevik power "on the separation of church from state and school from church," issued in Russia on January 23 / February 5, 1918, was extended in March 1919 to Ukraine as well.) "According to the Soviet law on the separation of Church from State, churches and other church property ceased to be the property of the Church, becoming state property, and churches could be given for the use of religious communities that registered their statutes with the authorities. In March 1919, the first Ukrainian group formed to establish a 'community' (hromada), whose membership included almost all the members of the former All-Ukrainian Church Rada who were in Kyiv; new supporters of the Ukrainian church-liberation movement joined them. But the first steps of this group were quite modest: it did not want to break traditional ties with the episcopate and turned to Bishop Nazariy (vicar Bishop of Cherkasy), who was then administering the Kyiv Diocese in the absence of Metropolitan Antoniy, and asked him to permit, in the small church of Saint Sophia Cathedral, the celebration of Holy Week services and Pascha with the reading of the Gospels in the Ukrainian language. When Bishop Nazariy rejected even this modest request with indignation, the Ukrainian group composed its parish statute and turned to the authorities with a request to register a Ukrainian parish and release to its use one of the churches of the city of Kyiv."

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According to Bishop Nazariy's words, this "would be a division of the united Russian Church," while the "Diocesan Rada" (Rus. Eparkhialnyi Sovet) issued a resolution that, given the prohibition of the Ukrainian language in worship services by the All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1918, the request of "so-called Ukrainians" was left without satisfaction.

Then, writes Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "a signature list was circulated through institutions, and in three days several tens of thousands of signatures were collected. We composed the statute of the first Ukrainian parish, and our statute was registered by the authorities. The authorities did this all the more willingly because the Russians were ignoring the state decree on the separation of church, were not composing statutes, but were using churches on the basis of, so to speak, tradition."

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church had not previously lived under conditions of separation of church from state in its history, although its life under Poland in the 17th–18th centuries, when the defense of the Church, its strength and development or decline, rested exclusively on the church community itself, was lived under conditions approaching a system of separation. But the separation of church from state carried out by the Bolshevik authorities was specific: it did not arise from principles of religious freedom, which would have freed the Orthodox Church from service to political ends as it had been in tsarist Russia, but arose primarily from hostility to the Church and to religion in general. Under "separation of the Church," the dictatorship of materialist-atheists understood something very different from what dreaming socialists understood.

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Bolshevik separation of the Church was not only the deprivation of the Church of material and all other support from the state, but above all the confiscation, the robbery by state authority of all church properties, movable and immovable, which entailed the deprivation of the Church of all rights as a public-legal institution, followed by the persecution of the Church's ministers in this new and unprecedented struggle of a godless authority against the Church and religion.

Having robbed the Church by "decree" of all its properties, the atheist authority broke it as a religious organization. It now demanded that individual groups of believers register with the secular authority under their own statutes, to which this secular godless authority would grant temporary use of churches and other things from the church property it had seized -- or might grant nothing at all. Obviously, this anti-church and anti-religious decree of the Russian Bolshevik authority was received by believers with great indignation. At first no one wanted to take it seriously, for it seemed to everyone a manifestation of political folly, an attempt to destroy church life by unworthy means. But as time went on and Bolshevik power strengthened its positions, the godless essence of this power became ever more apparent, as it slowly but persistently implemented its decree on the separation of the Church, which was itself a persecution of the Church and whose implementation was accompanied by oppression and violence against the ministers of the Church and the faithful.

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When the decree of the Soviet authority on the separation of church from state and school from church was extended to Ukraine with the Muscovite Bolshevik seizure of Ukraine, it had already been in effect in Russia for more than a year. For the Russian episcopate in Ukraine, it must have been well known: what the Soviet authority and its decree on the separation of church from state brought for the Church; the epistles of the patriarch and the Sobor calling on the Orthodox to unite around their shrines and pastors in the face of the terrible enemy -- the godless state authority -- must also have been well known.

And in view especially of the condition in which the Church then found itself, can an objective historian call the behavior of Bishop Nazariy (Blinov) of Cherkasy and his Diocesan Rada "wise church policy"? Can one write: "The steadfastness of the Orthodox episcopate (Russian in Ukraine), their faithfulness to the episcopal oath, can only gladden the church-minded person"? (K. Fotiev, op. cit., p. 28).

What exactly is there here for a "church-minded" person to be glad about? Ukrainians who wish to pray to God in their native language, even less than that -- for now only to hear at the "Passion" services on Great Thursday and at the Paschal liturgy the Holy Gospel in the Ukrainian language -- do not have in the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, a single church where this pious desire of theirs could be fulfilled. Ukrainians also have no church where their children, given the Bolshevik decree's prohibition of religious instruction in schools, could continue to learn the Law of God in their native language from priests who had already in 1917–18 switched to Ukrainian as the language of instruction.

On the basis of the Soviet decree on the separation of church from state, the Ukrainians could have turned immediately to this authority and, having registered their religious community, asked to be given a church in Kyiv for their use. But they, not wanting to break traditional ties with the episcopate and evidently showing solidarity with the general Orthodox front in Kyiv regarding the Soviet anti-church decree, sent a delegation to the diocesan administrator, Bishop Nazariy, with a request, as was recounted above, to bless Ukrainian priests (Frs. Lypkivsky, Sharaivsky, and Tarnavsky) to celebrate services during Holy Week and Pascha in some non-parochial church in Kyiv, pointing first to the small church attached to Saint Sophia Cathedral. Was the refusal of this request a work of God? Or could it be called a Christian attitude of a bishop toward the Ukrainian flock?

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Has the Cyrillo-Methodian idea, built on Holy Scripture and Tradition, about the use in Christian preaching and worship of all the languages of the peoples of the world, ceased to be a principle in the Orthodox Church? And as for the resolution adopted by a majority at the so-called All-Ukrainian Sobor under the Hetmanate prohibiting the Ukrainian language in worship -- that resolution was in essence a heresy, against which Saints Cyril and Methodius themselves had fought in their time. It was dictated by the politicking of Metropolitan Antoniy and others who used the Orthodox Church in Ukraine in their struggle against Ukrainian identity and Ukrainian statehood in general.

By refusing Ukrainians who wished for church worship in the Ukrainian language a church, Bishop Nazariy and his "Diocesan Rada" continued in the Church the political line of the Russian episcopate adopted during the national revival of the Ukrainian people, and placed Muscovite or Russian nationalism above the good of the Orthodox Church.

The historian can establish that the utterly unwise step of Bishop Nazariy, which struck at the national feelings of pious Ukrainians, forced them to pursue their right in national-church life by another path. Not having a church in Kyiv on the basis of tradition, as the Russians still did while ignoring the Bolshevik decree on parish registration, the Ukrainians were forced to obtain a church for themselves in Kyiv by using the decree on the separation of church from state. And here the Ukrainians took care not to inflame tensions in church life; they did not want to force anyone to pray in the Ukrainian language, and therefore declined to take parish churches. After registering their parish statute, they asked to be given for their use the former military Cathedral of Saint Nicholas (Mykolaivsky) on Pechersk, built by Hetman Mazepa. The authorities issued the Ukrainians a mandate for the use of the Saint Nicholas Cathedral after some delays. Thus appeared in Kyiv the first Ukrainian Orthodox parish.

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Having taken this organizational path, the VPCR, according to Metropolitan Lypkivsky's testimony, "sincerely wanted, however, to work with the Russian episcopate, to be under its spiritual leadership." Indeed, we see that even after receiving from the authorities the use of Saint Nicholas Cathedral on Pechersk, a delegation from the VPCR once again went to Bishop Nazariy to ask for his blessing for the first celebration of worship at the Ukrainian parish on the church's patronal feast day of May 9/22 (the feast of the Translation of the Relics of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker). Bishop Nazariy delayed his answer; the delegations pestered him, and only when the clergy came on May 8 to the cathedral to serve the vigil was the delegation's answer-"blessing" brought, with the following content: "It grieves me greatly that the Ukrainians want to somehow (?) separate themselves into a distinct parish. But in view of the fact that they have received from the Soviet authorities a church for their religious needs, I am compelled to bless their worship, with the condition, however, that everything be celebrated in Church Slavonic, and the Gospel be read first in Slavonic and then before the sermon in Ukrainian. For the worship I appoint Archpriest Lypkivsky, Sharaivsky, and Tarnavsky, and Deacon Durdukivsky."

The first Ukrainian service at Saint Nicholas Cathedral on Pechersk took place on the patronal feast of May 9/22, 1919, magnificently. At the vigil and at the Divine Liturgy, such masses of people gathered from all over Kyiv that not only was the cathedral packed, but the large square around the cathedral as well. The people wept, hearing for the first time the Apostle, the Gospel, the Our Father, the psalms of the Six Psalms in their native language; the celebrated Ukrainian composer Leontovych wrote the musical settings of the Divine Liturgy for this feast and himself directed the choir. That same day, several thousand Ukrainians enrolled in the first Ukrainian parish.

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Many of those who enrolled in the Pechersk parish were residents of the center of Kyiv, the so-called "Old Town." They formed the second Ukrainian parish and asked the authorities for the use of Saint Andrew's Cathedral, which stood locked (its rector, Prof.-Archpriest F. Titov, had left Kyiv before the Bolshevik invasion). Learning that Ukrainians were seeking the use of Saint Andrew's Cathedral, Bishop Nazariy and the Russian clergy formed some sort of brotherhood of five persons (the cathedral had no parish), locked the cathedral with their own padlocks, and submitted their claims on Saint Andrew's Cathedral to the authorities. After examining the case, the authorities nevertheless gave the cathedral for the use of the second Ukrainian parish.

To prevent further efforts by Ukrainians to take churches for their use, Bishop Nazariy and his "Diocesan Rada" devised the following: they ordered that general assemblies of parishioners be held in all parishes of the city of Kyiv, and that at those assemblies the parishioners decide "whether to remain further Orthodox, in the faith of their fathers, or to go over to the Ukrainians," and that they elect one from the clergy and four from the laity to a congress of all Kyiv parishes, where the question would be decided whether to remain in Orthodoxy or go over to the "Ukrainian" faith.

It is hard even to believe that the question of de-Muscovitizing church worship in Ukraine (in language) was placed by the bishop and his "Rada" on the plane of the 18th-century Moscow Old Believer schism. The Orthodoxy of the Ukrainians, as once the Orthodoxy of Patriarch Nikon by the schismatics, was called into question, and Russian priests at parish assemblies in Kyiv were to develop arguments about the "un-Orthodoxy" of the Ukrainians.

The VPCR organized its counteroffensive, and at almost all churches where assemblies and elections were held, it had its own advocates who spoke at the assemblies and so thoroughly and convincingly explained what exactly the Ukrainians were seeking in church life that the result of the elections to the congress of Kyiv parishes was entirely unexpected for the initiators of that congress: in the majority of parishes, supporters of the Ukrainian church movement were elected. Even at the assembly in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Ukrainians gathered in such numbers that they could elect their representatives to the congress and resolved to form a third (after Saint Nicholas and Saint Andrew's) Ukrainian parish in the ancestral Ukrainian shrine from the times of Prince Yaroslav the Wise.

The results of the elections in Kyiv to the congress of Kyiv parishes were so unfavorable for the Russians that Bishop Nazariy and his "Rada" decided it was better not to hold the congress at all.

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When the representatives elected by parishes to the congress began arriving on the appointed day, June 25, to the hall of the "Religious-Educational Society," the doors were locked, and a notice on them announced, without giving reasons, that the assembly of parish representatives was postponed "due to circumstances beyond our control." Upon inquiring about the reasons for the postponement, they heard from the doorman that the assembly had been forbidden by the authorities. But a representative of the authorities also appeared at this assembly, not having been warned that the assembly would not take place. This so outraged the Soviet authorities that when the representatives of the third Ukrainian parish turned to register their parish and receive the use of Saint Sophia Cathedral, the authorities promptly issued a mandate for the cathedral to the Ukrainians, being in the role of the third party that rejoices in the struggle that led to the weakening of the church-religious front.

The Ukrainian delegation did not receive a blessing for the celebration of worship in Saint Sophia Cathedral, but "at the demand of the people, the Divine Liturgy had to take place even without Bishop Nazariy's blessing" (Metropolitan Lypkivsky).

The first extraordinarily solemn Ukrainian Divine Liturgy took place at Saint Sophia Cathedral on the feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, June 29, 1919. The Russian clergy of Saint Sophia Cathedral drew up a report on this event and submitted it to Bishop Nazariy, who called to account for this service seven priests headed by Archpriest Lypkivsky. Members of the Parish Rada of the Old Kyiv parish and many parishioners came with the summoned clergy to Bishop Nazariy to defend their priests, but Bishop Nazariy and the other bishops at the Mykhailivsky Monastery (Bishop Nazariy's residence) did not wish to speak with the people, which evidently provoked indignation and did not raise the authority of the Russian hierarchy.

Called a second time, the priests went to Bishop Nazariy alone. The conversation went, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky describes, "in different languages -- the bishops said their thing, and we said ours." It ended with Bishop Nazariy asking Lypkivsky whether he would celebrate today (it was Saturday) if the Ukrainians asked him and the bishop forbade it. Fr. Lypkivsky crossed himself before the icon and said: "To such a prohibition the apostles said to their chief priests: whom should we obey more -- you or God? And so I too must obey God more than you, and if the parishioners ask me, I will go to serve and will step over your prohibition." "So what is this? A schism?" the bishops cried. "Yes," answered Lypkivsky, "but it is not we who begin it."

The bishops decided to write about the Kyiv church events to Patriarch Tikhon and wait to hear what the patriarch would say about it all. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, continued to serve in Saint Sophia Cathedral, where the parish elected its clergy: Frs. Lypkivsky, Tarnavsky, Hrushevsky, and Deacons Durdukivsky and Nedzelnytsky.

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In a proclamation of that time by the "United Radas of Ukrainian Orthodox Parishes" of the city of Kyiv under the heading "What Orthodox Ukrainians Want in Their Life," we read:

Orthodox Ukrainians want to praise God and thank Him in prayers, both in God's churches and constantly in everyday life, in their native language, and to be guided in church-religious life by the ancient rites and customs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Orthodox Ukrainians want to revive the structure and customs of the ancient free Ukrainian Church, because then the entire people, and not the clergy alone as now, took part in all church-religious life... By performing Divine Services in their own language, Orthodox Ukrainians do not thereby show any disrespect for the Slavonic language, but only recognize that this language is poorly understood by the majority, both of the Ukrainian and the Muscovite populace...

>

Orthodox Ukrainians do not wish to and never will go to either Catholicism, or Protestantism, or the Union, as malicious people spread rumors... Not wishing to take churches from anyone, Orthodox Ukrainians want only such a distribution of the churches nationalized by the state in the city of Kyiv between the Orthodox Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian population as would give these peoples the best opportunity to satisfy their religious needs...

>

Ukrainians do not strive for separation from the present Ukrainian Orthodox bishops and will not depart from them, even if they drive them away, but at the same time, Ukrainians sincerely wish to receive from their bishops, in accordance with the ancient structure of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, archpastoral guidance, help, and unity with the people in its church work, and not merely orders and instructions of spiritual bureaucrats.

>

Orthodox Ukrainians do not want any division from the Greek, Muscovite, Serbian, Romanian, and other Orthodox churches, but want to remain forever in brotherly unity in faith and accord with all of them... At the same time, Orthodox Ukrainians strive for autocephaly, that is, the complete non-subordination of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to any other Orthodox church.

On July 10, 1919, in Saint Sophia of Kyiv, a second solemn celebration took place: the first liturgy entirely in the Ukrainian language was served. Bishop Nazariy was invited to this celebration and asked to confirm the elected priests for the Sophia, Saint Andrew's, and Saint Nicholas parishes, but Bishop Nazariy "drove the Ukrainian representatives away, did not want even to speak with them."

Patriarch Tikhon sent his response to the report of the Kyiv bishops; on the feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, it was announced.

p. 76

in a mild tone: "In it there was neither a prohibition of the Divine Liturgy nor other punishments for the Ukrainian clergy, as Bishop Nazariy had expected, but merely a call to the Ukrainians to be obedient to the bishop, to unfailingly carry out his will, and to wait patiently until everything calmed down and the Russian Church Sobor assembled, which would satisfy everyone, including the Ukrainians" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1, p. 24).

The desire of Supreme Commander Symon Petliura, about which we recounted above on the basis of Metropolitan Evlogy's memoirs — namely, that "Metropolitan Antoniy and Archbishop Evlogy should no longer exist for Ukraine" after they were removed from Kyiv in December 1918 — was not fulfilled, as we see, regarding Metropolitan Antoniy, for following in the wake of the Denikinites in their seemingly victorious offensive northward against the Bolsheviks, from whom they were clearing territories, Metropolitan Antoniy arrived in Kyiv for several months and assumed the administration of the Kyiv diocese. He arrived together with Vicar Bishop Nikodim from the south.

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As we know, Metropolitan Antoniy and Archbishop Evlogy were housed in the monastery of the Basilian Fathers in Buchach. After the Christmas holidays, Vicar Bishop Nikodim was also brought there from Kyiv, and from Pochaiv Archimandrite Vitaliy (Maksymenko, who later became Archbishop of Eastern America and New Jersey of the Russian Church Abroad) and Hieromonk Tikhon Sharapov.

The war of the Ukrainians with the Poles, unfortunate for the Ukrainians, led to the flight of the (Galician) government eastward, and then the exiles in the Buchach monastery were informed that they were free and were even offered transport to Volyn. Metropolitan Antoniy, Archbishop Evlogy, and Bishop Nikodim "after some hesitation decided to remain with the Poles, surrendering to the magnanimity of the victors. Our position as enemies of their enemies (the Petliurites) placed us in favorable conditions and could guarantee us safety, and possibly even freedom" (op. cit., p. 325).

When the Poles entered Buchach, the Russian hierarchs in the Uniate monastery were arrested on the first day of Holy Trinity by the Poles, searched to their undergarments, and transported under guard. When passing through Stanyslaviv, Metropolitan Antoniy suggested appealing to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Bishop Hryhoriy Khomyshyn for intercession, but Bishop Khomyshyn did not receive Archbishop Evlogy, who had undertaken to negotiate with Khomyshyn. Evidently, Bishop Khomyshyn had not forgiven Evlogy for his recent campaign to convert Galicians to Orthodoxy during the World War before the revolution.

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Someone suggested sending them to Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, who had recently returned from Russian captivity and exile in the Suzdal and then in one of the Yaroslavl monasteries, freed by the revolution of 1917 by the Russian Provisional Government. And so Metropolitan Antoniy, Archbishop Evlogy, and Bishop Nikodim found themselves in the residence of Metropolitan Sheptytsky. "Before they could even announce us, the metropolitan himself came out on the stairs and hospitably: 'Please, please... I have free rooms, be my guests.'" Thus the Metropolitan-Ukrainian received the bitter enemies of Ukrainian identity, who had gone into captivity with the Poles, hoping for good from them on account, they said, of their common enmity toward the Ukrainians.

For several days, the former missionaries in Galicia and Transcarpathia of Russian Orthodoxy linked with great-power tsarist politics lived at Metropolitan Sheptytsky's residence. They had many conversations, which Metropolitan Evlogy conveys, it seems, objectively and even warmly (pp. 330–334). Once Archbishop Evlogy asked Metropolitan Sheptytsky: "How is it that you, a representative of a Polish aristocratic family, head the Ukrainian movement that is waging war against the Poles?" The metropolitan smiled. "You want to accuse me of reneging? Oh, no. I will defend myself. Allow me to tell you that the Sheptytsky family is of Rusyn (rusky) stock, but in the 17th century became Catholic and Polonized. Our forefathers betrayed the Rusyn name. I am correcting the mistake of my ancestors." "On this topic we spoke in more detail... The metropolitan was not being hypocritical. In his words one felt a sincere aspiration toward the East. He spoke convincingly. 'Eastern Orthodoxy, Ukraine, ancient Kyivan Rus'... All this was his 'Holy of Holies'; he considered them to be the genuine, undisturbed Rusyn element, which cannot be ethnographically identified or politically united with Great Russia. The historical fate and paths of Ukraine and Great Russia are different... Such sincere conversations brought us closer together" (ibid., p. 332).

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And regarding the negative attitude toward the Ukrainian language in worship, the metropolitan (and not some semi-literate Black-Hundred fanatic) did not stop even before inserting into his memoirs the Black-Hundred lampoon, alleging that Ukrainians translated the Church Slavonic "Rejoice, Bride Unwedded" (Raduysia, Nevesta Nenevestnaya) as "Cackle, Girl Unbetrothed" (Hrehochi, Divka Neprosvatanaya) (ibid., p. 297).

Understanding the danger for Antoniy and Evlogy of remaining in Galicia under Polish rule, the benevolent Metropolitan Sheptytsky advised them to seek their release and pointed the way: to appeal to Clemenceau; in Paris the Versailles Treaty was being discussed; Paderewski was there as Poland's representative; the petition could be transmitted through the French military attache in Lviv. Sheptytsky himself composed the petition from the Russian bishops in French. Within a day or two came an order from the Polish command to send them to Krakow. There they were placed in a monastery of the Camaldolese monks near Krakow at "Bielany."

Metropolitan Antoniy and Bishop Nikodim investigated how to make their way to Kyiv — evidently, to their cathedras. Kyiv had long passed from hand to hand, but now news arrived that Kyiv "was again in the hands of the Whites," and Metropolitan Antoniy and Bishop Nikodim hastened to depart for Kyiv. Archbishop Evlogy remained, for Zhytomyr was still in Bolshevik hands.

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Metropolitan Antoniy, having arrived in Kyiv with the Denikinites, immediately created an atmosphere of the most acute hostility toward the Ukrainian church movement. He took from the Ukrainians all their churches and gave them to the Russians. In revenge and with the aim of completely crushing the Ukrainian church movement, Metropolitan Antoniy suspended from sacred ministry 13 Ukrainian priests and deacons in Kyiv and put them on trial. Some, like Archpriest V. Lypkivsky, who had departed for Kamianets-Podilsky, he suspended and put on trial in absentia.

Leaning on the military victory of the "Whites," with whom he had arrived in Kyiv, Metropolitan Antoniy renewed the old Russifying policy in the Church in Ukraine and began persecuting the national Ukrainian clergy. On the other hand, when someone says that Metropolitan Antoniy punished violators of the resolution of the so-called All-Ukrainian Church Sobor that had prohibited the use of the Ukrainian language in worship, and thus attended to church discipline, then, despite the anti-canonical nature of that politically motivated resolution, among the violators of that resolution one must include Metropolitan Antoniy himself, who, politicking, had allocated for the thousands of Ukrainians in Kyiv just one domestic chapel at the metropolitan's palace, and later added the small Sophia church as well. On what basis was a departure from the resolution of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor permitted in these two small churches?

In any case, when the Denikinites in December 1919 were forced to leave Kyiv, Metropolitan Antoniy also left his flock with them, thereby vividly confirming by his arrival and subsequent departure his close connection with a particular political cause, with service to a particular political idea.

6. How the Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada (VPCR) came to proclaim the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on May 5, 1920. The VPCR's letter on this matter to the Ukrainian Orthodox citizenry. The VPCR's efforts to obtain bishops for the UAOC. The spiritual care of the UAOC by Archbishop Parfeniy (Levytsky) of Poltava. The creation by the Moscow Patriarchate of an exarchate in Ukraine to combat the Ukrainian church movement. On the eve of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in October 1921.

Metropolitan Antoniy, having left Kyiv with the Denikinite military units, left in Kyiv under suspension from sacred ministry and under church trial a number of persons from the Ukrainian clergy.

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The churches that had been taken from Ukrainian parishes under the Denikinite government were returned by the Ukrainians (except for Saint Sophia Cathedral), and they established two more new parishes in Kyiv — the Elijah parish near the main railway station and the Peter and Paul parish in Podil. The VPCR then turned to Bishop Nazariy, who in Metropolitan Antoniy's absence had again become the administrator of the Kyiv diocese, with a request to lift the suspension on the Ukrainian priests. Bishop Nazariy replied that according to church canons, the suspension could only be lifted by the bishop who had imposed it — that is, Metropolitan Antoniy.

The Christmas holidays of 1919 were approaching. A delegation from the faithful of the Ukrainian parishes turned to Bishop Nazariy again: we cannot remain for Christmas without a Divine Liturgy; either conclude the trial of our priests or lift the suspension; otherwise our priests will have to proceed to fulfill their pastoral duties. Then Bishop Nazariy summoned the suspended priests and told them that officially he could not lift the suspension imposed by Metropolitan Antoniy, but would not take proceedings against them if they began celebrating worship services. Thus the Ukrainian clergy found itself under an official previous suspension and trial, but in fact under Bishop Nazariy's blessing for services in the churches.

On February 26, 1920, at the invitation of the VPCR, for the Shevchenko commemoration, Bishop Vasyliy Bogdashevsky, the last rector of the Kyiv Theological Academy, came to the "small Sophia" where the Ukrainian priests served; he was present at the liturgy in the Ukrainian language, and himself led the panakhyda (memorial service) for Taras Shevchenko. "This was the only case," writes Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "when a Tikhonite (a bishop or church loyal to Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow) bishop served with the Ukrainian clergy."

During this time, Ukrainian parishes began to form beyond the limits of Kyiv as well. The VPCR then composed a "Statute of the Union of Ukrainian Parishes," which outlined "the organization of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the order and limits of the VPCR's work, county and district church radas, etc." Submitted, in accordance with the decree on the separation of church from state, to the Soviet authorities in Ukraine, this statute was registered by the authorities, and thus the Union of Ukrainian Parishes obtained legal status in the Ukrainian Soviet state.

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Organizing, as we see, Ukrainian national-church life on the basis of a separate "Statute of the Union of Ukrainian Orthodox Parishes," the VPCR "did not want to sever ties with the Russian episcopate in Ukraine, although its dead canonicity, its unwillingness to come alive a bit, to open its eyes, to meet the demands of life... outraged both the VPCR and all the Ukrainian people" (Metropolitan Lypkivsky).

In this situation, new conflicts soon arose in the church life of Ukrainians with the episcopate in Kyiv, behind whose back still stood active elements from the "true-Russian" clergy and laity of Kyiv in their hatred of the Ukrainian church-liberation movement.

The conflict came before the Paschal holidays of 1920. The Ukrainian Old Kyiv Sophia parish, from which Metropolitan Antoniy had taken Saint Sophia Cathedral under the Denikinite government, received again from the Soviet authorities a mandate for the use of that cathedral immediately after Metropolitan Antoniy left Kyiv with the Denikinites in December 1919. But the parish rada with its clergy, wishing to keep peace with Bishop Nazariy, decided that the parish would for now remain with the use of the "small Sophia," while the great Saint Sophia Cathedral would remain, as under the Denikinites, in the use of the Russian clergy.

But the Paschal holidays were approaching, and the Ukrainian faithful not only of the Old Kyiv parish but of other Ukrainian parishes in Kyiv began to demand from the VPCR that the ancestral shrine of the capital of the Ukrainian people — Saint Sophia — pass into the use of the Ukrainian Church and not remain with the Russians. Bishop Nazariy, to whom they turned with the request that the Russian clergy move to the "small Sophia" while the Ukrainian parish would take the great cathedral, was terribly outraged, and the next day a notice appeared on the doors of the great cathedral stating that any priest who dared to serve in the cathedral if the Ukrainians occupied it would be suspended from the Divine Service.

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In view of this notice's disregard of the mandate issued by the authorities to the Ukrainian parish for Saint Sophia Cathedral, Bishop Nazariy and the head of the VPCR were summoned to the authorities on Holy Monday and were invited to reach an understanding immediately. But Bishop Nazariy would agree to nothing and stubbornly maintained only that Saint Sophia Cathedral was his cathedra and he knew nothing else. Then the authorities told the head of the VPCR to immediately move the Ukrainian parish into the great Saint Sophia Cathedral.

On Wednesday of Holy Week that year fell the feast of the Annunciation. VPCR representatives went before the vigil to Bishop Nazariy for his blessing, but he did not wish even to speak with them and did not receive them. The service in the cathedral took place nonetheless, and continued, with the cathedral overflowing, during Holy Week services, the bearing out of the Plashchanytsia (Epitaphios), and the Paschal night; the Ukrainian priests did not even know whether they were suspended or not.

On the second day of Pascha, after the Divine Liturgy, VPCR representatives and Old Kyiv parishioners, with the church choir, went to greet the bishops with the Paschal feast and to ask them, for the sake of such a great holiday, to set aside their anger at the Ukrainians, for "they are guilty of nothing and only seek what is rightfully theirs." Bishops Vasyliy (Bogdashevsky) and Dymytriy (Verbytsky) received them joyfully and exchanged the Paschal kiss. Bishop Nazariy did not come out, but when the VPCR members went to his quarters, he was angry at first, but then, word by word, they got to talking, and finally the bishop said that he would quite reconcile with the Ukrainians if only they would return Saint Sophia Cathedral to the old clergy. The VPCR representatives stated that this matter depended on the general assembly of the parish. After this, the conversations became very mild; Bishop Nazariy said of the priests: "No, let them serve." He gave his word not to take any measures against the priests until the general assembly of the parish.

A few days later, satisfaction turned to great astonishment. For by the order of the administrator of the Kyiv diocese, Bishop Nazariy, dated April 17/30, 1920, all Ukrainian priests in the city of Kyiv were suspended from sacred ministry.

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On May 5 (April 22, old style), 1920, a plenary session of the VPCR was convened, at which 31 members were present. From the exchange of views at the VPCR session, it was evident that Bishop Nazariy's behavior, changeable in its attitude toward the Ukrainian church movement, was explained by changes in political circumstances. At this point, rumors were spreading that "Polish forces and a 40,000-strong army of General Bredov were approaching Kyiv" and that General Wrangel was advancing from the south — hence Bishop Nazariy and the Russian clergy, "using external circumstances, outside of any canons, simply want to crush the Ukrainian church-liberation movement with one blow."

Archpriest V. Lypkivsky at this session said:

If I knew that they truly want only to remove Lypkivsky, Sharaivsky, Tarnavsky, and others from the road, I and my colleagues would step aside at once, but here a struggle is going on between our people and the episcopate, and the latter wants, by imposing punishment on us, to strike at the people, to halt our church movement... We, Ukrainian priests, knew that a break with this episcopate was inevitable. Furthermore, we knew that the episcopate itself would make the break, and we were not mistaken: so it happened. For what have we been suspended? Are we libertines, drunkards, thieves, and the like? No, the episcopate suspended us because we went with the people toward the liberation of the Church. In this question, a vast chasm has opened between the people and the episcopate. And so how should we, priests, respond to the punishment imposed on us? In other words, with whom should we go in this decisive moment — with our people toward the building of the destroyed Church, or with the destroyer of this Church and our church movement — the episcopate? We chose the first. Now it is the people's turn, your turn, members of the Rada — as you say: should we submit to the episcopate (individual shouts: under no circumstances submit), or not, so it will be. If you say serve, we will pay no attention to the episcopate and will serve.

Summing up the thoughts of the speakers, VPCR chairman M. Moroz said: "All have converged on one thing: we must recognize the episcopate's suspension as null and void; but from this all further conclusions must be drawn. We must, having taken the path of non-submission to the episcopate, consider our Ukrainian Church henceforth autocephalous."

As a result, the VPCR plenum at its session of May 5 (new style), 1920, unanimously resolved to proclaim the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, issuing on this matter a letter to the Ukrainian Orthodox citizenry with the Rada's resolutions.

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The letter stated: "The Ukrainian Orthodox citizenry, guided by the precepts of the Holy Apostolic Church, did not at all have as its aim to separate from the supreme spiritual authority, but on the contrary wished to conduct all its work on the revival of the Church in accord with the episcopate, delegating its best people for an understanding with it. How then did the local supreme spiritual authority — the episcopate — respond to this liberation movement?"

The last suspension of the Ukrainian priests from sacred ministry on May 3, 1920, placed the Ukrainian citizenry before a dilemma: either submit to the will of the episcopate and renounce the cause of liberating their Church, or renounce the hostile episcopate and go their own way, taking measures to obtain their own episcopate. The VPCR chose the latter.

Thus the Church Rada resolved:

1. To recognize the order of the representative of the Moscow spiritual authority — the Kyiv episcopate, namely Nazariy, Bishop of Cherkasy — on the suspension of Ukrainian clergy from sacred ministry as an immoral and anti-canonical act and therefore null and void, which the suspended members of the clergy should not obey; 2. To consider that henceforth the Ukrainian Church, composed of Ukrainian parishes, has no bishops, and therefore the VPCR recognizes the necessity of temporarily, until the election of an episcopate and the creation by the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of proper organs of leadership, taking upon itself the chief governance of the affairs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, both in the cities and in the villages of Ukraine; therefore no orders of the episcopate, the representative of Moscow spiritual authority, should be carried out by Ukrainian parishes and clergy, and no dealings should be had with it, all matters being addressed exclusively to the VPCR; 3. To consider the Ukrainian Orthodox Church liberated from Moscow supremacy — autocephalous (independent) and conciliar-governed (sobornapravna); 4. To take proper and immediate measures for the preparation and lawful conduct by the Ukrainian Orthodox people of the election of Ukrainian bishops; 5. To call upon the Ukrainian Orthodox people to respond with proper consciousness to everything that has happened and to support the VPCR both in its struggle against the enemies of the Church and in the great work of rebuilding the entire church structure; 6. To propose that the parish councils of all Ukrainian parishes take proper measures to ensure that this letter of the VPCR be immediately announced in the holy churches and at parish assemblies upon its receipt.

The VPCR's letter was read at Saint Sophia Cathedral on the feast of Saint George the Victorious before an overflowing church; at Pentecost 1920, the first conference of representatives of all Kyiv and neighboring parishes took place, with about 200 participants, and all of them welcomed the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church.

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Without doubt, from a canonical-legal perspective, the state law of the UNR of January 1, 1919 on an independent Autocephalous Church in Ukraine, as well as the subsequent measures of state authority toward the recognition of this autocephaly, most importantly with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, carry far greater significance than the proclamation of autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the VPCR on May 5, 1920. The sphere of the Second VPCR's activities was effectively limited at that time to the city of Kyiv and its environs, although it called itself "All-Ukrainian" (the explanation of this name, in the words of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, was given by us above, subsection 5); therefore, the VPCR's decision could not be as authoritative as a law of the state Government of the UNR.

In our opinion, the church activists united in the Second VPCR proclaimed the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church on May 5, 1920 themselves, rather than relying on the already proclaimed autocephaly by law of the state Government of the UNR from January 1, 1919, for reasons of political danger: the Bolshevik authority in Ukraine could immediately accuse the VPCR of counter-revolutionary activity in making use of a UNR law, all the more so since the law of January 1, 1919 did not stand on the principle of separation of Church from State.

The attempt, lacking their own episcopate, to remain in subordination to Moscow led to nothing good over the course of a year and a half since the issuance of the law of January 1, 1919; the Ukrainian national-ecclesiastical movement had to return to autocephaly and seek in it salvation from Moscow's dominance in the Church. But having taken this path of independence from the Moscow hierarchy — which Metropolitan Lypkivsky in his letter to Fr. P. Korsunovsky calls "a new era in the life of the Ukrainian Church" — the leaders of the Ukrainian church movement immediately had to painfully feel the cardinal error that during the era of the revival of Ukrainian statehood, no attention had been devoted to the important matter of acquiring a national episcopate in the Orthodox Church of the Ukrainian people.

"The situation of the Ukrainian Church without a hierarchy," writes Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "became very difficult; it could not last this way for long. The spread of the Ukrainian Church was proceeding very vigorously; St. Sophia in particular became a hearth of the Ukrainian movement; pilgrims from all over Ukraine came to it and, hearing the Divine Service in the Ukrainian language, were greatly inspired, turned to the VPCR, received information and advice, and set about establishing Ukrainian parishes in their own areas. But here the VPCR made a miscalculation: it hoped that if not the proud city protopresbyters, then the humble, downtrodden rural parish priests would willingly go over to the free Ukrainian Church, especially when the people would follow. It turned out otherwise; almost none of the priests went to the Ukrainian Church; not only against sobornapravnist (conciliar governance), but even against the living language in the church, priests vehemently opposed — even sincere Ukrainians among them. There were even more priests who seemed sympathetic but looked over their shoulders at the bishops, who did not conceal their hostility toward the UAOC; most of all — they simply did not stir from their places, waiting to see what would happen next. Meanwhile, the people were enthusiastic about the Ukrainian Church, dismissing Tikhonite priests and requesting priests from the VPCR; it had candidates, but no one to ordain them."

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Feverish efforts of the VPCR began to acquire bishops of its own for the Church proclaimed autocephalous. This matter, for a civic body without state support and without material resources, proved not at all easy. It is characteristic that in the memoirs, and first of all in those of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, we read that in such a dire situation "it became known to the All-Ukrainian Church Rada at this time that in Poltava, Archbishop Parfeniy not only does not forbid the Divine Service in the Ukrainian language but himself celebrates in Ukrainian and has founded a Ukrainian parish in Poltava"... (Tserkva i Zhyttia [Church and Life], no. 1, 1927, p. 25). This testifies to the VPCR's insufficient connections with the Ukrainian church movement in the localities, all the more so since Poltava and the Poltava diocese had already at the beginning of the revolution of 1917 manifested at the congress of May 3–6, 1917 its sympathy for the Ukrainian church movement (see subsection 1).

Archbishop Parfeniy Levytsky (a native of the village of Pleshivtsi in the Poltava region), whose name is linked with the publication in 1906–07 by the Russian Synod of the Holy Gospel in the Ukrainian language (see Vol. III of this work, chapter V, 6), at the beginning of the revolution of 1917 occupied the cathedra in Tula, where he had been transferred by the Synod from Kamianets-Podilsky on account of the "danger" of his Ukrainianness in a diocese with a Ukrainian population (he preached sermons in the Ukrainian language and encouraged the clergy of the diocese to do the same). With the beginning of the revolution, he retired, in view of his advanced age, and moved to his native village in the Poltava region. When Poltava Archbishop Feofan left Poltava in November 1919 and departed with Denikin's forces into emigration, the diocese was left without a bishop; Patriarch Tikhon, at the request of the temporary Diocesan Administration, appointed Archbishop Parfeniy to the Poltava cathedra. In the spring of 1920, Archbishop Parfeniy, having settled in the Holy Cross Monastery of Poltava, assumed the governance of the diocese.

Thus, the VPCR in August 1920 dispatched a delegation to Poltava, to Archbishop Parfeniy, consisting of the Chairman of the Rada M. Moroz, Protopresbyter V. Lypkivsky, and Priest Yu. Shevchenko. Arriving in Poltava and visiting the Resurrection Church in Poltava, the delegation had the joy of hearing there a truly Ukrainian service and learned that the Ukrainian church cause in the Poltava region was led by the "Poltava Ukrainian Church Brotherhood," which consisted of the finest Ukrainian intelligentsia. During the sessions, complete unanimity between the VPCR delegation and the Poltava Brotherhood was revealed. The Brotherhood took into account the situation in which the Ukrainian Church in Kyiv found itself and agreed to persuade Archbishop Parfeniy to satisfy the VPCR's request. With the blessing of the Archbishop, the Kyiv priests together with local clergy solemnly celebrated the Divine Service on the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord at the Resurrection Church, and on August 8/21 a joint session of the VPCR delegation and the Brotherhood took place at Archbishop Parfeniy's, at which Archbishop Parfeniy gave his consent

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to take under his spiritual leadership all Ukrainian parishes that belong to the union of Orthodox parishes founded in Kyiv. Archbishop Parfeniy's resolution on the VPCR's petition was as follows: "1920, August 8. Sympathizing with the desire of the Ukrainian Orthodox faithful, I bless the Orthodox Church All-Ukrainian Rada of the Union of Ukrainian Parishes to carry forward, with faith in God and His holy aid, the work of forming a living Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Christ — one dear to the Ukrainian people in language, customs, and rites — a Church that is conciliar-governed (sobornapravna) and free. For the sake of ecclesiastical peace and the full preservation of Christ's flock, I agree to take under my supervision the Ukrainian Orthodox parishes that belong and will belong to the All-Ukrainian Union of Orthodox Parishes founded in the city of Kyiv. Archbishop Parfeniy" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1, 1927, pp. 123–124).

"The main goal of the VPCR delegation," as Metropolitan Lypkivsky recounts, "was achieved: the UAOC acquired a bishop of its own."

Naturally, the acquisition of one bishop was far from a way out of the situation and did not resolve the problem of a full episcopate, a national hierarchy in the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church. As Metropolitan Lypkivsky relates, the delegation in Poltava also raised the question of the consecration of a bishop, but "Bishop Parfeniy said that this was premature, that it still required further thought."

Satisfied for the time being that it had its own bishop, the VPCR intensified its activity; likewise, the rumor that Archbishop Parfeniy had assumed leadership of the UAOC — and he began to be commemorated at services in Ukrainian parishes as "All-Ukrainian" — furthered the spread of the Ukrainian church movement. Ukrainian parishes were opened in cities such as Zhytomyr, Chernihiv, Kamianets, Vinnytsia, even in Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and in many villages, especially in the Kyiv region. Work on translating and printing liturgical books moved forward; as early as June 1920, the "Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom" (translated by Protopresbyter V. Lypkivsky) was published; now, alongside translations circulated in typewritten copies, it proved possible to obtain from the printing houses (which had been nationalized by the Soviet authorities) the "Chasoslovets" (Book of Hours), the "Trebnik" (Book of Needs), and the "Molytovnyk" (Prayer Book). Archbishop Parfeniy truly rendered a great service to the Ukrainian Church: during this time he ordained more than 30 priests; and both Archbishop Parfeniy and the Poltava Brotherhood took active part in the life of the UAOC.

However, the fact that Archbishop Parfeniy of Poltava stood at the head of the UAOC, that the Ukrainian Church began to spread across all of Ukraine, and that the VPCR expanded its activities — all this alarmed the Russian episcopate in Ukraine and the old-regime clergy, who, obviously not clearly understanding what the Bolshevik godless authority portended for the Church, directed their energy toward a fierce struggle against the Ukrainian current in church affairs. And in the name of what? We do not find a fitting answer to this question even among the present-day historians sympathetic to that fierce struggle, for they would

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not dare say that the bishops and clergy — opponents of the Ukrainian church movement — were caring and fighting for the salvation of souls, for the Kingdom of Heaven for the pious Ukrainian faithful.

From Kyiv, a demand was sent to Patriarch Tikhon that the Patriarch appoint a metropolitan to Kyiv who would rally the Moscow episcopate and clergy in Ukraine to resist the spread of the Ukrainian Church. To appoint a metropolitan to the Kyiv cathedra, which was not "widowed" (after all, Metropolitan Antoniy was alive and could, should a suitable political authority return, go back to the cathedra), the Patriarch could not; therefore, a Patriarchal Exarch was appointed to Kyiv and to all Ukraine — Archbishop of Grodno Mykhail Yermakov, about whom a German historian writes that he "was a Great Russian and a highly valued guardian of Orthodox (?) traditions against the schismatic (?) movement that spread in the Ukrainian Church during his episcopacy" (Fr. Heyer, Op. cit., p. 75). Indeed, what was at stake was the tradition of Moscow's dominion over the Church in Ukraine...

When exactly Exarch Mykhail Yermakov arrived in Kyiv, we have contradictory information on this matter; Metropolitan Lypkivsky himself gives different dates, for in Chapter VII of his History of the Ukrainian Church, the Metropolitan recounts the organization by the Exarch of the Tikhonite episcopate and clergy in Ukraine as early as the beginning of 1921 and the convocation by him in February of that year of a sobor of bishops in Kyiv, while in his letter to Fr. Korsunovsky we read that Exarch Metropolitan Mykhail Yermakov was "sent by the Moscow Patriarch to Kyiv to support the sobor of bishops of Ukraine in August 1921"...

Whether with the Exarch already or still without him, the sobor of Russian bishops in Kyiv in February 1921 did take place and issued a decree on the exclusion of all clergy of Ukrainian parishes from the "clerical estate," the deprivation of their sacred rank, on the dissolution of the VPCR, which was to liquidate itself, and on the liquidation of the union of Ukrainian parishes; all those who did not carry out this decree were threatened by the sobor of bishops with anathema.

It is obvious that this decree of a foreign hierarchy, from which the Ukrainian church organization had proclaimed its independence nearly a year earlier, could only further inflame tensions in the church life of Ukraine. In March 1921, a gathering of representatives of Ukrainian parishes of Kyiv and the Kyiv district took place, numbering up to 150 persons, predominantly peasants, at which the interference of the Moscow Exarch and his Synod in the affairs of the Ukrainian Church was indignantly rejected.

In May 1921, the Kyiv Provincial Council (Hubernialnyi Sobor) assembled, with up to 400 participants; not only representatives of the Kyiv region came but also individuals from Podillia, Chernihiv region, and even Slobozhanshchyna. The VPCR asked Archbishop Parfeniy to come to this sobor and even sent a member of the Rada to fetch him. Archbishop Parfeniy was preparing to go to Kyiv but then supposedly fell ill and did not go, transmitting to the VPCR only a letter of rather vague content. As his representative

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at the sobor was Priest from Poltava Fr. Konstantyn Krotevych, whose authority to represent him the Archbishop himself later denied.

The May 1921 Sobor of the Kyiv Province should be considered a kind of preparatory assembly for the All-Ukrainian Sobor in October 1921. The Sobor of the Kyiv Province fully approved the work of the VPCR, confirmed the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church, rejected the decree of the February 1921 sobor of Russian bishops in Kyiv, did not recognize Exarch Mykhail Yermakov, and elected Archbishop Parfeniy as Metropolitan of Kyiv, taking into account the assurances of Fr. K. Krotevych that Archbishop Parfeniy would be unfailingly devoted to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

For some unknown reason, the provincial sobor of the Kyiv Province "expressed," as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes in his letter to Fr. Korsunovsky, "also certain principled wishes: that the clergy should be able to marry a second time, like laypeople; that bishops too should be married; that bishops should not be autocrats in the Church, but only its spiritual leaders, etc." Finally, the Sobor of the Kyiv Province resolved to convene an All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of the UAOC and set the date and place for the Sobor — October 1/14, 1921 in Kyiv.

While forbidding and excluding Ukrainian priests from the clerical estate, the Moscow episcopate did not dare in February to impose any prohibition or exclude Archbishop Parfeniy. Now, having learned of the election of Archbishop Parfeniy as Metropolitan of Kyiv at the Rada of the Kyiv Province, decisive measures were taken against him. A delegation from the sobor of Russian bishops was sent to him in Poltava, which threatened him with prohibitions and excommunication if he did not renounce the metropolitanate to which he had been elected and the Ukrainian Church. Archbishop Parfeniy "did not hold firm" and at the delegation's demand wrote a statement that he renounced the Ukrainian Church, severed his connection with the VPCR, and did not accept his election as Metropolitan of Kyiv.

"The Synod of Bishops widely publicized this statement, and — one must admit — it stunned our Ukrainians, while the Tikhonites raised their heads"... (Metropolitan Lypkivsky).

In our historical literature, we encounter condemnation of Archbishop Parfeniy, even unjust disregard of certain facts. Thus, Prof. O. Lototsky wrote that Archbishop Parfeniy "did not answer the call of national duty at the most critical moment, when the representatives of the autocephalous Ukrainian Church asked him to take the lead of the Church at least for a short time"... ("The Way of the Cross of the Ukrainian Church," Tryzub, no. 43, 1927, p. 10). As we have seen, the facts presented by the chief participant in events of our church life in 1920 speak otherwise about Archbishop Parfeniy's response to the VPCR's request.

But on the occasion of correcting a certain injustice toward Archbishop Parfeniy, one could raise the question: what was done by the Ukrainian nationally conscious citizenry and by Ukrainian state officials in the very first years of the national-liberation struggle of 1917–19 in order to win over,

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surround with attention, and strengthen in spirit those, in the words of Prof. Lototsky, "evening sacrifices" from the hierarchy of the Russian Church, who were not devoid of Ukrainian national feeling and could have served the great cause of creating a national Ukrainian hierarchy?

In the "Historical Memorandum" of the VPCR, which the Rada circulated in November 1925 to the Orthodox autocephalous churches, we read: "The first to restore its autocephaly was the Georgian Church. To its good fortune, bishops — sincere sons of their people and supporters of the autocephaly of their church — were still preserved in it, and therefore the restoration of the autocephaly of the Georgian Church proceeded normally: the Georgian people sent the Russian bishops beyond the borders of Georgia, and took all their own bishops as leaders of their church, proclaiming them independent of the Moscow Patriarch" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2–3, 1927, p. 142).

The authors of the "Historical Memorandum," using the general term "the Georgian people," do not write that the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church was restored by the revolutionary Georgian government, and not at all at a time when the All-Russian Sobor had already restored the Patriarchate and Metropolitan Tikhon had been elected Patriarch of Moscow in November 1917, but in the very first days of the revolution, in March 1917, when the recently appointed Russian Synod Exarch to Georgia, Platon, was arrested and elections for an autocephalous Catholicos of Georgia were announced. Although the Russian Synod did not recognize the "legality" of this act, referring the decision on the restoration of the Georgian Church's autocephaly to the All-Russian Sobor (Russia had "legally" deprived this church of autocephaly after the conquest of Georgia in 1801), nevertheless the Georgian government, having released Exarch Platon, carried out the autocephaly by de facto procedure, elected the Catholicos and other bishops at a sobor, and the Georgian Church did not send representatives to the All-Russian Sobor that opened in August 1917 and did not take part in it (A. V. Kartashev, "Revolution and the Sobor of 1917–18," Bogoslovskaya Mysl [Theological Thought], Paris, 1942, pp. 79–80; 88).

Let us now continue with what the "Historical Memorandum" writes about Ukraine: "In a different situation at the time of its liberation found itself the Ukrainian Church. All the bishops in Ukraine, appointed by the Moscow church authority and, by Tsarist decree, from Russians and from 'Little Russians,' were fanatical (?) supporters of that authority and all to a man (?) immediately took a very hostile position toward the liberation of the Ukrainian Church from Moscow church authority and began to use every means to extinguish the Ukrainian church-liberation movement. Not a single bishop was found (?) who even somewhat attentively regarded the just aspiration of the Ukrainian Church toward its liberation. What oppressors of the Ukrainian people and its church (?) these bishops had been during the times of Russian autocracy, such they remained after its destruction" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, Op. cit., pp. 142–143).

Such a testimonial of the VPCR, essentially issued to the Ukrainian people regarding their consciousness, in comparison with the consciousness of the Georgian people, could still be understood

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if the "Historical Memorandum" about the "oppressor-bishops" had been written only for the Soviet authorities in Ukraine, but it was (in Ukrainian and French) circulated "to all Orthodox churches and to the representatives of the UAOC in America, Geneva, and Prague" (p. 139).

So the authors of the "Memorandum" truly did not find "a single bishop" who even somewhat attentively regarded the just aspiration of Ukrainians for liberation in the national-ecclesiastical sphere? All bishops were "oppressors of the Ukrainian people and its Church"?

And what of Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn, honorary chairman of the First VPCR? Of Archbishop Parfeniy Levytsky, who took all Ukrainian parishes under his spiritual care in August 1920? Of Archbishop Ahapit Vyshnevsky, who celebrated a moleben (prayer service) on St. Sophia Square and greeted the entry of the UNR Directorate into the capital? Of Bishop Dymytriy Verbytsky, whom the Ukrainians themselves put forward in 1918 as a candidate for metropolitan against the oppressive candidacy of Metropolitan Antoniy Khrapovitsky?

Were any measures taken regarding the prohibition of Archbishop Oleksiy on the eve of the opening of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in January 1918? Incidentally: what was the further fate of Archbishop Oleksiy?

Above, we cited from the memoirs of Metropolitan Evlogy about his encounters with Archbishop Oleksiy in 1919 in Galicia and his subsequent journey to southern Russia. Before that, from Prof. Doroshenko we find a recollection that in February 1919, Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn arrived in Kamianets-Podilsky and began lecturing at the state university on the history of early Christianity ("My Recollections of the Recent Past," Part IV, p. 12). The same Metropolitan Evlogy writes that "Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn was forced to flee from Ukraine" (Op. cit., p. 342), but why did he flee not with the Ukrainians, but made his way southward? Did Protopresbyter M. Polsky have grounds to write that Archbishop Oleksiy "was expelled by the Ukrainians themselves"? ("New Martyrs of Russia," Vol. I, p. 18).

Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes in his letter to Fr. Korsunovsky that, while searching for bishops (when Archbishop Parfeniy had not yet completely withdrawn from the UAOC), "we wrote to Archbishop Oleksiy in Odessa, but the latter died in Novorosiisk, as we learned." The letter mentioned here the VPCR could have written to Archbishop Dorodnitsyn at the end of 1920 or the beginning of 1921. Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn died in a small monastery in Novorosiisk as early as January 1920. Metropolitan Evlogy recounts his death (from heart paralysis) and funeral. "Bishop Sergiy (of Novorosiisk and the Black Sea) gave no instructions regarding the funeral, and the body of Archbishop Oleksiy lay in his undergarments in a shed for about three days. I offered Bishop Sergiy to entrust the burial to me, and he gladly agreed. At the appointed time, I came with a deacon to the church at the cemetery... There was no coffin in the church. It turned out that the body would be brought, but one had to wait... Finally,

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a cart with one horse came into view, and on it an enormous coffin, on which the cart driver was sitting; behind the cart walked two or three monks. In the church, the lid of the coffin was opened... Archbishop Oleksiy lay not in vestments, but in an old cassock and an epitrachelion. Due to the frost, the body was still intact. The service had to be conducted not as bishops are usually buried, although I tried, as best I could, to read through everything that the rite prescribed. After the funeral I asked: where is the grave? It turned out — at the very edge of the cemetery in a thicket of bushes. We trudged for a long time through snowdrifts, sinking into the snow"... (Op. cit., pp. 355–356).

Thus ended the life of Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn.

Involuntarily the question arises: with proper good organization of the Ukrainian church movement, with a deeper awareness of the full weight of the history and present state of the Orthodox Church and its traditions in the life of the Ukrainian people, could not the four named hierarchs — united and supported as they should have been by both the state apparatus and the nationally conscious citizenry — have accomplished that same great task of creating a national hierarchy for the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, as this matter, without looking toward the Russian Synod, was carried out in Georgia?

Moreover, one could cite yet more names of bishops of Ukrainian origin, not only not "oppressors" of the Ukrainian people, but actually not devoid of national feeling, with whom in the era of the Ukrainian people's national breakthrough toward freedom and revival with the revolution of 1917, relations could also have been established in the cause of reviving the National Ukrainian Church. Let us name Archbishop of Minsk Yuriy Yaroshevsky, later Metropolitan of Warsaw, about whom we shall write more; a school companion at the Kyiv Academy of Prof. O. Lototsky and a former contributor to the Zapysky NTSh (Memoirs of the Shevchenko Scientific Society), Archbishop Yuriy Yaroshevsky carried out the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in Poland, despite the "thunders and lightnings" from the Moscow Patriarchate and the Karlovtsi group (Serbia) of Russian emigre bishops. Also Bishop Amvrosiy Hudko, who came from peasant stock in the Kholm region, was vicar bishop of Kremianets (in Volynia in 1904–09), where he always preached in villages in the Ukrainian language. For this the Russian Synod transferred him to the north, to the position of Bishop of Sarapul, vicar of the Viatka diocese. In 1916, Bishop Amvrosiy was transferred by the Synod into "retirement" as a result of conflicts with the state administration, which he rebuked from the church pulpit for its arbitrariness, and was exiled to the Sviiazhsk Monastery of the Kazan diocese. During the revolution of 1917–18, he fearlessly spoke out against the blasphemies and outrages of the Bolshevik authority in its treatment of holy objects and worship. At the hands of these godless Bolsheviks he met a martyr's death in July 1918, arrested by order of Lev Trotsky (who had arrived in Sviiazhsk to fight the Czech detachments) and bayoneted in a field near the Tiurlema station of the Moscow–Kazan railway.

Also Bishop Feodosiy Oltarzhevsky, whom Prof. Lototsky calls "the Ukrainian Nicodemus"; during the years of the author of this work's studies at the Kyiv

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Academy, Bishop Feodosiy, as a candidate of the progressive group of professors, was elected rector of the Academy (after Bishop Platon) in 1906; when the "Temporary Rules of 1906 on the autonomy of theological academies" were revoked, the Synod transferred the elected rector to one of the Great Russian cathedras, and he died in some remote monastery "in retirement."

The "Historical Memorandum" of the VPCR, without mentioning at all the law on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church of January 1, 1919, but citing its own resolution of May 5, 1920, to "no longer recognize the enemies of our church life as our bishops," pessimistically draws the conclusion: "Thus, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church was left without bishops; orphaned, it began its life" (Op. cit., p. 143).

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, however, draws this conclusion not after May 5, 1920, but in 1921, when Archbishop Parfeniy did not accept the election as Metropolitan of Kyiv: "So the Ukrainian Church again was left without a bishop."

While Archbishop Parfeniy had not yet definitively withdrawn from the UAOC, the VPCR, in its concern for bishops for the Ukrainian Church, established contacts with Bishop Antonin Hranovsky, who was living "in retirement" in Moscow. Known for his liberalism, Bishop Antonin had become notable since the autumn of 1905, when, after the Tsar's manifesto of October 17, 1905, on the State Duma and its legislative functions, he — then one of the vicar bishops of the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg — ceased commemorating the Tsar in the services as "Autocrat" (samoderzhavnyi), that is, he rejected this title, finding that Russia now had a constitutionally limited monarch. Obviously, such freethinking cost him his further ecclesiastical-administrative career.

With the revolution of 1917, Bishop Antonin began introducing all manner of bold innovations in the celebration of the Divine Service, switching also to the literary Russian language in worship, and delivering passionate sermons on themes of the revolutionary era. He also became interested in the Ukrainian Church. The VPCR sent him the necessary information and asked him to come to Kyiv and take spiritual leadership of the Ukrainian Church. He finally agreed to go to Kyiv. In June 1921, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky recounts, "a representative was sent to Moscow for him; he had already packed, said to buy railway tickets too, but at the last moment he wavered and declined, citing illness. 'If it were possible,' he said, 'to dive into the Moscow River and emerge in the Dnipro, that would be one thing, but to set out on a long journey — I, a sick man, am afraid. And what use will I be to you anyway? You'll bring a rotten log'... Thus the VPCR's contacts with Bishop Antonin ended."

A year later, the initiators of the so-called "Living Church" (Zhyva Tserkva) in Moscow, after Patriarch Tikhon was imprisoned by the Bolshevik authorities, drew Bishop Antonin into their action; at their sobor in Moscow (April 29 – May 9, 1923), they granted him the title of Metropolitan, and he greeted the Bolshevik authority in a speech and thanked it for the decree on the separation of Church from State, by which, he said, the Church was given "freedom of the spirit"... (Priest K. Zaitsev, Op.

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cit., p. 131). He did not play any special role in that Living Church and died, it seems, in 1925.

A rumor reached the VPCR that in Odessa, Bishop Oleksiy (Bishop of Yelysavethrad, vicar of the Metropolitan of Kherson and Odessa) was favorably disposed toward the Ukrainian Church and had himself celebrated the first service in the Odessa Ukrainian parish. The VPCR also sent Bishop Oleksiy a request to head the Ukrainian Church. He responded with a brief letter in which he expressed full sympathy for autocephaly and the native language in the Ukrainian Church, but as a non-Ukrainian (surname Belikov), did not consider it proper for him to head the Ukrainian Church.

In the fervent desire to have an episcopate by the time of the All-Ukrainian Sobor, scheduled for October 1/14, 1921, the VPCR grasped at yet another possibility of escaping the difficult situation. From the Caucasus, from Tiflis itself, Protopresbyter Stepan Orlyk, a native of Volynia, came to the May sobor of the Kyiv region. He joined the Ukrainian Church, said that he was close to the Georgian Catholicos Leonid (the first elected Catholicos of Georgia, Kyrion, had been killed under mysterious circumstances in 1919), and assured them that the Catholicos of Georgia would consecrate bishops for the Ukrainian Church, since the Georgian Church itself had declared its autocephaly de facto.

Protopresbyter Orlyk said he was able to return to the Caucasus and could bring another person with him to Georgia. He was a widower; the VPCR decided to delegate with him another widowed priest, Pavlo Pohorilko from Podillia, and to request the Catholicos of Georgia to consecrate these two candidates as bishops for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

But Frs. Orlyk and Pohorilko traveled only as far as Kharkiv; the Bolsheviks did not let them proceed further. Then, on their return, they stopped in Poltava, at Archbishop Parfeniy's, in conversation with whom, as we know, the first VPCR delegation in 1920 had also raised the question of consecrating bishops. The candidates for the episcopate decided to try now to hear what Archbishop Parfeniy would say. K. Fotiev writes that Archbishop Parfeniy "refused them, declaring: seek another" (Op. cit., p. 32).

About these events, K. Fotiev, like other authors, writes on the basis of materials left by Metropolitan Lypkivsky. But in Metropolitan Lypkivsky (in Chapter VIII of the manuscript on the Revival of the Ukrainian Church) we read: "Archbishop Parfeniy received them quite favorably; personally, he took a liking to Priest Pavlo Pohorilko; Parfeniy even wanted to make him his deputy. As for the consecration of our candidates as bishops, Archbishop Parfeniy did not tell them anything definite, but ultimately advised them to find another bishop so that the consecration would be fully canonical, and he suggested they turn to Bishop Ahapit in Yekaterynoslav."

As we see, the historian Fotiev distorted Archbishop Parfeniy's answer, giving his words "Seek another" the meaning "Get away from me, look for someone else," when in fact Archbishop Parfeniy was concerned with observing Apostolic Canon 1: "Let a bishop be consecrated by two or three bishops."

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Thus distorting the historical materials, K. Fotiev speaks disparagingly about the Ukrainians' efforts in 1921 to acquire a national hierarchy for their Church: A veritable “chase for grace” began — something simultaneously monstrous and comical [Trans. note: Original in Russian: “Началась форменная 'погоня за благодатью' — нечто одновременно чудовищное и комичное”] (Ibid.). Indeed, simultaneously monstrous and comical "historical works" arise when their authors are imbued with nationalistic-political spite.

On the advice of Archbishop Parfeniy, Frs. Orlyk and Pohorilko went to Bishop Ahapit. K. Fotiev again wrote an untruth, that "Bishop Ahapit refused to consecrate (khirotonizuvaty) them." In Metropolitan Lypkivsky's account we read: "Bishop Ahapit received our candidates quite attentively, asked questions, but regarding consecration said nothing definite, only promising that he would write to Archbishop Parfeniy, or even go to him himself, and they would come to an agreement; finally, he said there was no need to rush: I am to be in Kyiv, at the Exarch's Synod, and I can also drop by the VPCR and talk." Thus the Ukrainian candidates for the episcopate returned to Kyiv, where they arrived precisely on the day of the opening of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, October 1/14, 1921. Their conversations with Bishops Parfeniy and Ahapit still provide grounds for the assertion that timely measures by Ukrainian governments and church-civic leaders in the matter of creating a Ukrainian national hierarchy could have achieved the desired results.

7. National-ecclesiastical activity of the UNR government in 1919–1921.

As we can see from the events in church life described in the two preceding subsections, the Ukrainian church movement in the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, was conducted in the years 1919–21 by the Ukrainian church-civic forces themselves, which had to — after the departure of their own Ukrainian authority from Kyiv at the beginning of 1919 — adapt the conduct of church affairs to political circumstances: under Bolshevik authority, with its separation of Church from State and plundering of church property; under Denikin's authority, with its restoration of pre-revolutionary church arrangements; and once again under Bolshevik authority. We do not have data to judge what connection existed during these times, prior to the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in October 1921, between the church-civic leaders of Kyiv and the government officials of the UNR government who were in charge of religious affairs.

The UNR government, having found itself from February 1919, in the historian's expression, "in a state of chronic evacuation," could not, naturally, in the circumstances of armed struggle and diplomatic-political maneuvering and negotiations, devote much attention to matters of culture in general, and to the revival of the Ukrainian Church in particular; moreover, being on the edge of the Ukrainian ethnographic territory with a Ukrainian Orthodox population (the strip of Podillia, partly Western Volynia), and by the end of 1920 entirely beyond the borders of such territory, the government also lacked a territory on which to carry out the Ukrainianization of the Orthodox

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Church. Notwithstanding, we have facts from the national-ecclesiastical activity of the UNR government during these times that deserve to be noted in history.

Pastor Fr. Heyer writes that "Petliura, as early as December 1918, summoned as the church head in Ukraine Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn, as the only bishop who had up to that time participated in the national-church movement and had been chairman of the Church Rada, but that the actual leadership of the Church was in the hands of the Directorate's Minister of Confessions, Prof. Ivan Ohiienko" (Op. cit., p. 58). Where Heyer obtained such information he does not cite, although in citing sources he is very punctual. About such a role of Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn with the coming to power of the Directorate, we have read nowhere except in Heyer; he further writes that Archbishop Oleksiy "abandoned the national-ecclesiastical affairs to their own fate" (p. 67), and then recounts Archbishop Oleksiy's move to Novorosiisk and his death, citing the memoir of Metropolitan Evlogy, about which we too have recounted above. But Metropolitan Evlogy says nothing about Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn heading the Ukrainian Church under the Directorate.

Prof. I. Ohiienko assumed the office of Minister of Confessions in September 1919 (D. Doroshenko, The Orthodox Church in the Past and Present Life of the Ukrainian People, p. 54), when Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn was already in Novorosiisk and Kyiv was in the hands of Denikin's forces. Thus the chronological dates of events entirely refute the above-cited assertions of Pastor Heyer about the nominal heading of the Church in Ukraine by Archbishop Oleksiy and the actual leadership by the Minister of Confessions, Prof. I. Ohiienko.

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky recounts: "During the Denikin offensive, some of the Ukrainian church activists had to leave Kyiv and arrived in Kamianets-Podilsky, where the Ukrainian authority — the Directorate — still held on. The presidium of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, which consisted entirely of government officials, also went there with it. In Kamianets, the Brotherhood greatly expanded its work, organized public gatherings; Volodymyr Chekhivsky, who had left political work, also joined it. There, at gatherings of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, the refugees from Kyiv reported on the establishment of Ukrainian parishes in Kyiv and on the election of the new All-Ukrainian Church Rada. All the members and the presidium of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood merged into the new current of the Ukrainian church-liberation movement, ceased their work as a separate organ, and formed the first Ukrainian parish in Kamianets-Podilsky."

From this account, it would appear that until this time there was no Ukrainian parish in Kamianets, such as had been opened in Kyiv since the spring of 1919. Among those Ukrainian church activists who during the Denikin offensive had to leave Kyiv and headed for Kamianets was Protopresbyter V. Lypkivsky, as he writes in his letter to Fr. Korsunovsky of April 23, 1922. He was also, evidently, the chief informant of the Brotherhood members in Kamianets about everything that had happened in church life in Kyiv from the time the Directorate government left

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Kyiv. One must assume that, while in Kamianets until the end of December 1919, Protopresbyter V. Lypkivsky had the opportunity more than once to discuss the affairs of the Ukrainian church-liberation movement with Prof. I. Ohiienko, as Minister of Confessions, all the more so since they had been brought closer together on this field as early as 1909–11, when Fr. Lypkivsky was a teacher of the Law of God and I. Ohiienko a teacher at the Commercial School in Kyiv, and they already "pondered the reorganization and renewal of the Ukrainian Church" ("Liudyna Pratsi" [A Person of Labor], Slovo Istyny, 1950, XI–XII, p. 7).

From the same letter of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky to Fr. Korsunovsky (April 23, 1922), we learn that even on that small patch of Ukrainian land where the UNR government found itself in 1919–20, the Moscow hierarchy and clergy put up stubborn resistance to the de-Russification of the Orthodox Church in Ukrainian Podillia. At the head of this resistance stood Archbishop of Podillia Pimen Pehov, a Great Russian by origin from Ufa, whom the Ukrainians, by misunderstanding, had highly elevated by electing him in January 1918 as chairman of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor. At that time he was Bishop of Balta, vicar of the Podillia diocese; now, after the death of Archbishop of Podillia Mitrofan, he took the Podillia cathedra through election at a diocesan sobor, during which the fact of Pimen's chairmanship at the All-Ukrainian Sobor played no small role.

How confident Archbishop Pimen felt in his resistance to government circles in the matter of de-Russifying and making independent the Ukrainian Church is evident from the fact that Protopresbyter V. Lypkivsky, as he writes in the letter, "received a prohibition from Pimen, though he had served only once and with his blessing." Later, when the "Living Church revolution" began within the Russian Church in May 1922, the "Supreme Church Administration" (VTsU) was formed under the dictate of the Bolshevik authority. In 1923, the "Living Church and its VTsU" was replaced in the struggle against the Patriarchate and the "Patriarchal Church" by "Renovationism" (obnovlenstvo) with the "Synod of the Orthodox Russian Church." Archbishop of Podillia Pimen joined the "Renovationists." When in October 1923 a Renovationist sobor took place in Kharkiv, it was chaired by Archbishop Pimen Pehov, who was elected metropolitan of the "Synodal-Renovationist Church" in Ukraine and moved from Kamianets to Kharkiv, where he headed that church until 1936 (Fr. Heyer, Op. cit., pp. 102, 114).

It is unknown on what basis Protopresbyter Polsky wrote the completely opposite about "Metropolitan in Kharkiv after the revolution (?) Pimen Pehov" in the composition of the Ukrainian Exarchate (i.e., the Patriarchal Church). He claimed that supposedly Metropolitan Pimen "reduced to nothing all the plans and schemes of Renovationism in Kharkiv, and the churches remained Orthodox, though at the beginning Renovationism had taken over almost all the churches in the city"; this supposedly "became the cause of the severe persecution of the Metropolitan by the authorities." Protopresbyter Polsky did not notice that he himself, before the information about "Metropolitan of Kharkiv Pimen," had written about Konstantyn, Metropolitan of Kyiv (Diakov), as consecrated by Patriarch Tikhon in 1923 for Kharkiv,

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from where Metropolitan Konstantyn moved to Kyiv only in 1935 ("New Martyrs of Russia," Vol. II, 1957, pp. 88–89). It would appear that two metropolitans of the Patriarchal jurisdiction were simultaneously present on the Kharkiv cathedra from 1923.

The center of church-cultural activity in the direction of reviving the national Ukrainian Church in Podillia became the Theological Faculty of Kamianets State University, with its rector Prof. I. Ohiienko, who had been appointed rector by a Hetman's decree upon the university's founding in the autumn of 1918. As dean of the Theological Faculty, Prof. Vasyl Bidnov was elected — a researcher of the history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under old Poland, a longtime teacher at the Katerynoslav Theological Seminary; the Russian Synod had not allowed V. Bidnov to lecture at the Kyiv Theological Academy, where he had been elected to a cathedra after the Synod's dismissal of Prof. V. Zavitnevych following the Academy's visitation in 1908 by Archbishop of Volynia Antoniy; the grounds for not confirming the election were Bidnov's Ukrainophilism (sympathy for Ukrainian national and cultural aspirations). At Kamianets University, Prof. Bidnov taught the history of the Ukrainian Church. Besides him, young docents taught specialized courses: I. Liubarsky, Myk. Vasylkivsky, Yos. Oksiuk — graduates of the Kyiv Theological Academy. As was already mentioned above, in February 1919 Archbishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn arrived and began lecturing, and Protopresbyter Yefym Sitsinsky also began teaching church archaeology. Protopresbyter Ye. Sitsinsky, a veteran Ukrainian activist and distinguished historian of Podillia, head of the Church-Archaeological Society, celebrated the Divine Service in the Ukrainian language at the university church.

Fr. Heyer names as the chief collaborator of the Minister of Confessions I. Ohiienko in Ukrainianization efforts Protopresbyter Petro Tabinsky, rector of the then Podillia Theological Seminary (Op. cit., p. 68), but if we are not mistaken, Fr. Tabinsky — later, from 1924, rector of the Kremianets Theological Seminary in Volynia — also belonged to the faculty of the Theological Faculty of Kamianets University.

At the Theological Faculty, the University Rector organized a special commission for the translation of liturgical books into the Ukrainian language, in which work the Rector himself invested the most effort. In the organ of the UAOC Ts. i Zh. (Tserkva i Zhyttia) for 1928, we read: "The Rector of Kamianets University, Prof. Ohiienko, read a paper on the reading and singing of Slavonic text in ancient times with Ukrainian pronunciation. After this, in some churches of Kamianets and in villages, they began reading and singing with Ukrainian church pronunciation. This was not to the liking of the then Podillia bishop Pimen, and services with this pronunciation ceased"... (no. 2, p. 138).

Prof. Dm. Doroshenko writes that "the Minister of Confessions, Prof. I. Ohiienko, very energetically pursued the Ukrainianization of the Church, only the territory for this activity was small, and within a year even this territory was lost" (The Orthodox Church in the Past and Present Life of the Ukrainian People, p. 53). In the second half of 1920, the Bolsheviks

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occupied Kamianets-Podilsky. Kamianets State University was reorganized under them into an INO (Institute of Public Education). The UNR government, by force of insurmountable circumstances, was compelled to go into emigration, including the Ministry of Cults.

In 1921, the UNR government was based in the town of Tarnow in Poland. At this time, the Minister of Confessions, Prof. I. Ohiienko, developed extensive publishing activity to popularize the idea of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the restoration of its ancient customs, and the introduction of the living Ukrainian language into worship in place of Church Slavonic. The charitable publishing house "Ukrainian Autocephalous Church," edited by Prof. I. Ohiienko, as noted on all the popular booklets of this publisher, performed a great national-ecclesiastical service, for the booklets it published were distributed among the pious Ukrainian people everywhere, one might say, throughout the world. The great majority of these booklets were also from the pen of the publisher's editor.

Let us name some of them: "The Ukrainian Language as a Liturgical Language: The Rights of a Living Language to Be the Language of the Church." "How Moscow Took the Ukrainian Church Under Its Authority." "How Moscow Destroyed the Freedom of the Press of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra." "Church Brotherhoods and Their History." "Ukrainian Church Brotherhoods: Their Organization and Tasks." "How Tsarina Catherine Russified the Ukrainian Church." "Ancient Translations of Holy Scripture into the Ukrainian Language." "How in Moscow They Burned Ukrainian Church Books." "Letters of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople to the Ukrainian People." "The Ukrainian Autocephalous Church: Its Tasks and Organization." "Ukrainian Pronunciation of the Church Slavonic Liturgical Text." "The Church Movement in Ukraine." "A Fraternal Message to Church Activists about the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church." "Laws of the UNR on the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church," and others.

This same charitable publishing house "Ukrainian Autocephalous Church" published, as No. 1, the "Petition to the Patriarch of Constantinople to Bless the Autocephalous Ukrainian Church." This was an initiative which, on the commission of the UNR Government in emigration, the Ministry of Cults carried out in the direction of the necessary measures for formalizing the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the inter-church forum of the Universal Orthodox Church. This initiative was evidently connected with the law of January 1, 1919, on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, issued by the UNR Directorate, and with the delegation of Prof. O. Lototsky to Constantinople in the same year 1919 regarding the recognition of the autocephaly of the UOC by the Ecumenical Patriarch. To support the efforts already begun for recognition of autocephaly, petitions were to be sent to the Ecumenical Patriarch from various Ukrainian organizations, government institutions, ecclesiastical and civic institutions, cultural-educational bodies, military units, schools, and so forth, as stated in the instructions accompanying the published text of the "Petition," signed by the Minister of Confessions, Prof. I. Ohiienko.

We present here for the historical record the text of this "Petition to the Patriarch of Constantinople to Bless the Autocephalous Ukrainian Church":

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To His Holiness, the Most Holy Patriarch of Constantinople, Archbishop of New Rome.

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The Church of Constantinople was in its time the Mother of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and transmitted to the latter, in the times of the Ukrainian-Kyivan prince Volodymyr the Great, the Christian teaching recognized by all the Ecumenical Councils; it transmitted the church hierarchy, the Divine Service, and the Holy Mysteries necessary for the salvation of Christian souls. For whole centuries, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was in close connection and union with the Most Holy Patriarchs of Constantinople, submitted to their authority, used their counsel and wise directives for its development and for protection from soul-destroying heresies. During this time, our Ukrainian Church received from patriarchal hands its senior hierarchs and leaders — the Metropolitans of Kyiv — and when our bishops themselves elected the Metropolitan of Kyiv, they would request from the God-enlightened Patriarchs of Constantinople the almighty blessing and confirmation of the chosen candidate.

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In the times of the greatest hardship and danger for our holy Ukrainian Church, at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries, when our hierarchs, out of unfortunate greed and great ambition, betrayed the ancestral faith and broke the union with the radiant Patriarchal Throne of Constantinople and went to Rome, while the defenders of the Orthodox faith remained the laypeople themselves, united in Orthodox church brotherhoods — then the God-wise Patriarchs Jeremias II, Cyril Lucaris, and others decisively stood on the side of these brotherhoods and helped them defend the holy Christian faith from its enemies.

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The Ukrainian people with great joy and sincere gratitude remember these glorious times of close union between the Ukrainian Orthodox brotherhoods, dear to their hearts, and the Ecumenical Patriarchs, and, conversely, with sorrow recall the year 1686, when Patriarch Dionysius agreed to relinquish the governance of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and ceded this right to the Moscow Patriarch.

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The times of the rule over us in Ukraine by the Moscow Patriarchs, and from 1721 by the Russian Holy Synod, brought much harm and sorrow to our Ukrainian Orthodox Church, for we lost during that time our ancient church rights regarding the election of clergy from church reader to metropolitan inclusive, lost our Ukrainian hierarchy, and were compelled to be shepherded by a Moscow hierarchy; our ancient church customs were destroyed, the text of our church services was altered, our national brotherhood schools and education were ruined and replaced by Muscovite ones. We constantly took measures to preserve and safeguard all this, but our strength was insufficient, for the Moscow Tsarist government openly oppressed us, charging that we did not possess the purity of Ecumenical Orthodoxy in ourselves.

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And only the recent years, beginning from 1917, gave us the opportunity to restore to our Ukrainian Orthodox Church that which had been

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destroyed by Moscow. The political freedom and state independence of the Ukrainian people now give us the full opportunity to renew our church life as well. We are now restoring in our churches our ancient Ukrainian customs, developed still in the times of direct union with the Most Holy Ecumenical Patriarchs; we celebrate the Divine Service in the native language comprehensible to our people.

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But the Moscow hierarchy creates obstacles for us, hinders our holy work for the glory of the great name of God. The illustrious Government of the UNR, by the law of January 1, 1919, recognized it necessary to proclaim the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The entire Orthodox Ukrainian people and a great part of the clergy recognized the Ukrainian Church as autocephalous and not subject to the Moscow Patriarch. Among other civic organizations, together with the entire Ukrainian people, the autocephaly of our Ukrainian Church is supported also by (name of the institution). Working for the benefit of the Orthodox faith, it asks Your Holiness to bless its labors and the entire cause in Ukraine.

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Bless, Most Wise Father, with Your Holy Patriarchal Blessing, to the glory of God and for the benefit of the Universal Orthodox Faith, the Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The canonicity of this autocephaly is upheld by the illustrious Theological Faculty of Kamianets-Podilsky University — it has explained this in detail in a memorandum submitted to Your Patriarchal Throne, with whose content and wishes we fully agree and fully support.

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May the Holy Patriarchal Throne of Constantinople also now support our all-national efforts to protect the Autocephalous Orthodox Ukrainian Church, as it helped it in the times of the activity of our glorious church brotherhoods in the 16th–17th centuries.

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The Papal Throne of Rome has appointed to Ukraine its legate, Father Genocchi. Bless, Your Holiness, also to appoint to Ukraine Your representative — a bishop — so that he may continually see our zeal for the ancestral Orthodox faith and help us safeguard it in inviolable purity.

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We also ask Your Holiness not to refuse the Ukrainian people the consecration (khirotoniia) of Orthodox Ukrainian bishops, when candidates elected by us are sent to the Patriarchal Throne.

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The paternal grace of Your Holiness to the Synodal Ukrainian Church will enliven its work, strengthen it, and once again bind it in close bonds to the Holy Patriarchal Throne of Constantinople forever and ever.

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Asking for Your Holy Prayers and Almighty Patriarchal Blessing, we remain forever the obedient children of Your Holiness.

Such petitions, with signatures duly attested, were to be sent, according to the instructions of the Ministry of Cults, either

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directly to Constantinople addressed to the Ecumenical Patriarch, or to the Ministry of Cults of the UNR. We have not encountered data on how successful this initiative of submitting petitions to Constantinople was among the Ukrainian citizenry, or whether there was any response from Constantinople to the petitions. One must assume that the very fact of the UNR Government being in emigration, the ongoing ecclesiastical and political struggle in Ukraine, and in general in the European East after the collapse of the Tsarist empire, were entirely unfavorable for Constantinople to be able under such circumstances to decide the question of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

What is important for us here is not this or that success of the petition initiative for the blessing of autocephaly by the Ecumenical Patriarch, but the position of the then Government of the Ukrainian National Republic on the question of carrying out the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the Orthodox world. As we see, the UNR Government, having proclaimed by the law of January 1, 1919, the independence of the Ukrainian Church from the Moscow Patriarchate, did not consider that such a proclamation was sufficient and that "we do not need anyone's recognition of our independence, our autocephaly" — the unwise views of "super-autocephalists" that one encounters now in the Ukrainian Orthodox press.

The idea of the unity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with the entire Universal Orthodox Church — in living concreteness, with all other Orthodox Autocephalous Sister Churches — rather than the existence of the Autocephalous Ukrainian Church in isolation, "by itself," was one of the chief principles of the church policy of its leaders in the UNR Government of that time.

We see this also in other documents besides the one cited above. On the occasion of the completion of Prof. I. Ohiienko's work on translating the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom into the Ukrainian language, the Chairman of the UNR Directorate, Symon Petliura, in a letter dated November 19, 1921, addressed to the Minister of Confessions, Prof. I. Ohiienko, expresses gratitude to him, in the name of the Republic, for the work accomplished, and there, in that same letter, credits him with the fact that "the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is establishing relations with the Ecumenical Patriarch and is entering in an organized manner into worldwide ecclesiastical associations."

In another letter to the Minister of Confessions, Prof. I. Ohiienko, dated December 19, 1921, Symon Petliura, recognizing that "an integral part of our state-building is also the planned building of the Ukrainian Church," asserts that "we did not have such a program, thought through precisely to the details (regarding the restoration of the national Church); and this, from my point of view and experience, was one of the main reasons for our failures."

Regardless of the presently unfavorable circumstances (in emigration), Symon Petliura expresses to the Minister of Confessions his view that in the plan of Ukrainian church-building, the idea of a national Patriarchate must occupy the chief place; at the head of the Ukrainian Church there should, in his opinion, be a Patriarch, equal to the Patriarch of Moscow. "In the future conflicts," he wrote, "of our state with Moscow, an internally strong, hierarchically disciplined Ukrainian Church can play a

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great positive role in the outcomes of such a struggle"... (O. Lototsky, Symon Petliura, Warsaw, 1936, pp. 53–55. Emphasis ours).

Obviously, the establishment of a Patriarch of one's own in the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church with the authority of a real Patriarch, without the consent of other Autocephalous Churches, never even occurred to the Chairman of the UNR Directorate.

Chapter II. The All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in Kyiv, October 14–30 (new style) 1921, Its Acts and Subsequent Events in the Life of the UAOC in Ukraine Until the Second World War of 1939–1945.

At the time when the Chairman of the UNR Directorate in emigration was reflecting on "the matter of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church," he came to conclusions about the necessity of "an internally strong, hierarchically disciplined Ukrainian Orthodox Church headed by its own Patriarch, as the most expedient hierarchical form in the organization of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church" (from the letter of Symon Petliura to the Minister of Confessions I. Ohiienko dated December 19, 1921). In Kyiv, however, the Ukrainian national-church movement, by force of various circumstances to a significant degree already shown by us, arrived at opposite conclusions. It had taken in essence the path of struggle against the "episcopal-autocratic structure of the Church," as this path was formulated at the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in Kyiv on October 14–30 (n.s.) 1921.

This Sobor, convened by the VPCR, was destined to play the chief role in the history of the Ukrainian Church in the era of its revival, so that the historian too, in presenting the history of the revival of the UOC with the revolution of 1917, cannot fail to place this Sobor at the center of historical events, examining the events of the Ukrainian national-church movement that led to this Sobor and the events that followed as a consequence of the acts of this Sobor.

As Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes, "On October 14, 1921, the chief master of the UAOC himself finally arrived — the one who was to receive the report from its workers on the past work, chart the paths for the future, and lay a firm foundation for its life and development."

Nearly 10 years ago, when the affairs of the ecclesiastical unification of Orthodox Ukrainians in the world into one Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and the convening to this end of an All-Ukrainian Orthodox Sobor (outside the Fatherland, which is in captivity), were being treated among us even more reliably than now, the author of this work, during the discussion of these affairs, wrote an article "Pre-Sobor Reflections" (Tserkva i Narid [Church and People], Nos. 6–7, 8, 9 of 1949; 1, 2–3, 4 of 1950). In this article, proceeding from the thought that in the realization of the idea of ecclesiastical

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unification at the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Sobor outside the Fatherland, this or that attitude of the Sobor members toward the Kyiv Sobor of 1921 could greatly interfere, we undertook an attempt to conduct an analysis of the acts of the Kyiv Sobor of 1921 from the dogmatic-canonical and church-historical point of view. Over these 10 years, we have not encountered any criticism of this analysis that would compel us to revise its conclusions. New materials with which we have had the opportunity to become acquainted during this time — such as Tserkva i Zhyttia, the organ of the UAOC, published by the VPCR, for 1927 and 1928 — have only strengthened our confidence in the correctness of the analysis conducted. This gives us the moral right, in presenting the history of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in Kyiv in October 1921, to draw to a significant degree on what we previously wrote about this Sobor in the above-named article "Pre-Sobor Reflections."

1. The composition of the All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1921, the question at it of its canonicity. The matter at the Sobor of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The Second VPCR, like the First, formed in the autumn of 1917, considered itself merely a temporary governing organ of the UAOC until the convening of an All-Ukrainian Sobor. Preparations for the All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1921 consisted of congresses and church assemblies from the end of 1920 and from the beginning of 1921 (in Kyiv and in the peripheries — in the towns of Bohuslav, Zvenyhorod, Berezne, and others). The VPCR distributed information and the Sobor's program with a call to elect delegates to the Sobor not only to Ukrainian parishes but to all parishes in Ukraine. The VPCR also distributed ideological literature. This is evidenced by a brochure published in 1922 abroad, among the publications of the above-mentioned publishing house "Ukrainian Autocephalous Church" edited by Prof. I. Ohiienko, titled "The Foundations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church." Prof. I. Ohiienko accompanied it with the following note: "I present here for the attention of our citizenry the article 'The Foundations of the UOC,' composed by the VPCR in Kyiv; this article was distributed among the Ukrainian faithful before the church pre-sobor congress of representatives of Orthodox parishes of the volosts of the Kyiv district, which took place on March 27–29, 1921 in Kyiv. I present this article verbatim, making no changes in it, although with certain passages in it, which too strongly reflect the revolutionary time and the contemporary Ukrainian regime, it is even difficult to agree" (Brochure p. 1. Emphasis ours).

We unfortunately do not have information on how the elections of delegates to the All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1921 were conducted, nor about the actual number of delegates and members of the All-Ukrainian Sobor: different figures are given. In Metropolitan Lypkivsky's Chapter VII of his history of the Ukrainian Church, it is stated that more than 400 delegates gathered; in the "Historical Memorandum" of the VPCR, we read that "up to 500 representatives of the clergy and laity from all Ukraine came to the Sobor," and in Metropolitan Lypkivsky's letter to Fr. Korsunovsky the same figure is given —

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the number of "up to 500 representatives from almost all provinces of Ukraine." As to the question of how well represented this or that diocese of Ukraine was, Metropolitan Lypkivsky notes: "Many delegates were sent by Podillia, the Chernihiv region, the Poltava region, Volynia; there were delegates from Odessa, Slobozhanshchyna, even from the Kuban; the most, surely, were from the Kyiv region, especially from Kyiv itself; the overwhelming majority of members were from the peasantry and the teaching profession; of priests there were about 60." It is unknown whether these 60 priests were representatives of the clergy or had come to the Sobor of 1921 on their own initiative. One should rather think that most came on their own (since there was not yet an organized church administration of the UAOC by districts or dioceses), but still — such a small number of priests is striking at a Sobor that was to decide the fate of the Ukrainian Church, for according to statistical data of 1914, there were 10,565 priests in Ukraine, 1,825 deacons, and 10,793 readers (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, pp. 106–107); one cannot help but recall that in the 16th century, at the Orthodox Sobor of Brest in 1596, besides 25 archimandrites, vicars, and protopopes, there were over 200 priests.

The invitation to participate in the All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1921 was also sent by the VPCR to the Patriarchal Exarch, Metropolitan Mikhail Yermakov. And to all bishops in Ukraine, "asking them," as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes, "to be members of the All-Ukrainian Sobor and together with it to discuss and resolve all questions regarding the life of the Ukrainian Church." Such an invitation, directed to the Russian bishops in Ukraine, clearly contradicted the resolutions of the VPCR of May 5, 1920, which proclaimed the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and called upon the Ukrainian Orthodox faithful not to carry out any directives of the episcopate, the representative of the Moscow spiritual authority, and not to enter into any relations with it (see about these resolutions in Chapter I, subsection 6).

Nearly a year and a half after the proclamation of this autocephaly, the Ukrainian parishes under the VPCR's leadership were independent of the Russian episcopate (for some time enjoying the spiritual care of Archbishop Parfeniy, who was in the jurisdiction of Patriarch Tikhon), and were served by priests who had been prohibited by the Russian bishops. Thus it was clearly inconsistent for that same VPCR to now appeal to the bishops, from whose authority it had proclaimed independence on May 5, 1920, asking that these bishops come to a sobor convened by the VPCR and participate "in the discussion and resolution of questions regarding the life of the Ukrainian Church." This course of action was the bitter consequence of the neglect by national and church leaders since the beginning of the revival of the Ukrainian Church in 1917 of the important matter of creating a national church hierarchy in Ukraine.

We think that the critical situation of the Church without bishops compelled the VPCR, under pressure especially from clergy opposed to reform, to appeal to the Russian bishops and

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ask them to take part in the Sobor. But given the relations between the VPCR and the Russian episcopate that had already formed since the former's proclamation of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church on May 5, 1920, one could not, obviously, send invitations to the Sobor without first conducting negotiations on this matter with the Exarch and other prominent bishops. We do not see that such negotiations were conducted, and therefore it was difficult to expect from the Russian episcopate any response to the invitation other than a refusal. Such a response was indeed sent by the Exarch Mikhail on his own behalf and on behalf of all the bishops, adding that any priest who took part in the Sobor would be excommunicated from the Church by him.

Thus the Sobor of 1921 opened on October 14 without bishops and proceeded the entire time in the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv. As chairman of the Sobor, the chairman of the VPCR, Mykhailo Moroz, was elected, along with a presidium and secretariat composed of clergy and laity.

The first question posed at the Sobor concerned its authority: "Does the Sobor, in view of the absence of bishops from its membership, consider itself a fully legitimate canonical Sobor of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, or merely an ordinary conference?" (Metropolitan Lypkivsky). Protopresbyter V. Lypkivsky presented the report on this question. After his report, the Sobor addressed the absence of bishops. It declared that "the bishops in Ukraine themselves did not wish to come to the Sobor, either because they do not consider themselves members of our Church, or do not consider themselves elected by the Church, or, finally, consider themselves a higher estate in the Church and wish to dominate the Sobor." Against this, the Sobor affirmed that "every member of the Church becomes a member of the Sobor not according to what estate or ministry he holds in the Church, but according to whether he has been elected by the Church to the Sobor, regardless of whether he is a bishop, a priest, or a layperson, for in the Church before Christ all are equal"; and that all "members of the Sobor have gathered in the name of Christ to decide matters concerning the life of Christ's Church among the Ukrainian people." Proceeding from these arguments of the rapporteur, the Sobor "recognized itself as a valid canonical All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, convened by the Supreme Governing Organ of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church — the VPCR."

Despite the Sobor's recognition of itself as such, in historical literature — both hostile to the revival of the Ukrainian National Church, which is not surprising, and, it would seem, neutral — we encounter the characterization of the Sobor of 1921 in Kyiv as a "schismatic sobor" (Heyer, Op. cit., pp. 77, 85). Naturally, in the history of church councils, no council has ever recognized itself as schismatic, but in the history of the struggle within the Eastern Orthodox Church for the independence, the autocephaly, of this or that Church — when the Church from which separation is sought opposes it — the latter has always called and will always call "schismatic" the councils of the Church aspiring to autocephaly. The history of churches' struggles for their autocephaly is equally full of disregard for the prohibitions and excommunications passionately imposed in the struggle on the hierarchy

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and clergy by the so-called Mother Church. This should not be forgotten by neutral church historians, and they should be careful not to offend the members of the Church that is fighting for its rights. And such offense comes when a historian uncritically repeats after those who do not wish to release from their authority the national Church of an entire people the contemptuous words: "schism," "schismatics," "schismatic" sobor...

The Sobor of 1921 did not need to deliberate long or debate the matter of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. There is absolutely no evidence that among the Sobor members anyone was opposed to the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church, and the Russian episcopate, from whose authority the Church had departed, did not accept the invitation to the Sobor. In fact, the Ukrainian Church had been independent of the Russian Church for a year and a half, having before that the proclamation of its autocephaly both in the state law of January 1, 1919, and in the resolution of the VPCR of May 5, 1920. True, the latter resolution required confirmation by a more authoritative body than the VPCR, and in this, in our opinion, should be seen the chief significance of the act of the Sobor of 1921 in the part of its resolutions on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

These resolutions of the Sobor are contained in Chapter II of the "Acts" of the Sobor under the heading: "Mutual Relations Between the Ukrainian Church and Other Churches." In points 8–13 and 15–16 of this Chapter II, the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is proclaimed, or the previously proclaimed autocephaly is confirmed. The central point is actually point 12, where we read: "The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which was forcibly and contrary to the canons deprived of its autocephaly by the Moscow Tsarist authority, which (Church) morally and canonically always remained autocephalous, and by the resolution of the VPCR of May 5, 1920, actually restored its autocephaly in full, is autocephalous, subject to no spiritual government of other Orthodox churches, and itself governs its church life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit" (Acts of the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor in the City of Kyiv, October 14–30, n.s., 1921. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1946. Reprint of the VPCR's Kyiv edition of late 1921, p. 6).

This conciliar resolution, as we see, is silent about the state act of the Ukrainian government on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church issued on January 1, 1919. It contains an affirmation of the will of the church people represented at the Sobor toward the independence, the autocephaly, of their Church, which in fact is already autocephalous. In this sense, the act has historical significance in the life of the revived national Ukrainian Orthodox Church. But the motivation of this act by reference to the forced deprivation of the Ukrainian Church's autocephaly in its past history is problematic. This argument is discussed at greater length in point 9, Chapter II, with phraseology characteristic of the revolutionary era. The claim that what had come was only the restoration of canonical autocephaly must be recognized as unsuccessful in the conciliar resolution, for

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it contradicts historical truth. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church was not autocephalous; it was, as the Kyiv Metropolitanate, under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople until 1686, and from 1686 was subordinated to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarch. If this had not been the case, why would the Moscow authority have appealed to the Ecumenical Patriarch, and moreover through the intermediary of the Turkish vizier, about the cession to Moscow of the Kyiv Metropolitanate? (In detail about this — in Vol. II of this work, Chapter XVII, pp. 292–343).

The argumentation of the right of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to autocephaly can be strong even without departures from historical truth, for which there is especially no place in the resolutions of church sobors, where such departures only weaken, rather than strengthen, Ukrainian national-ecclesiastical positions.

Finally, the historian must note that in the consciousness of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, in its confirmation of the previously already proclaimed autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, it was evidently clear that in inter-church relations with other Orthodox Autocephalous Churches, the recognition of the proclaimed autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church by these Sister Churches was necessary. Therefore, in the resolution of the Sobor of 1921 (point 9, Chapter II), we read: "For the recognition of that autocephaly, the Ukrainian Church raises its voice to the conscience of the entire Universal Church and is confident that the Universal Church will not refuse such recognition" ("Acts," Op. cit., p. 6).

2. The question at the Sobor of the episcopate in the UAOC; the appeal on this matter to the Patriarchal Exarch in Ukraine, Mikhail Yermakov. The resolution of the question by the Sobor's decree. The creation of the UAOC episcopate through conciliar consecration.

An essential attribute of the autocephaly of any Orthodox Local Church is the Church's independence in the appointment within itself of its Primate and other bishops, and through them of all the priesthood. In other words, an Orthodox Church is autocephalous only when it possesses within itself the source of hierarchical authority and does not turn to the episcopate of another Orthodox Church for bishops or for the consecration of bishops, and all the more for priests. Obviously, there may be cases in the history of an Autocephalous Church when its own episcopacy ceased within it, for one reason or another, and then it would appeal to another Autocephalous Sister Church for its restoration. But these would be exceptions; the normal ancient order in the Church of Christ is attested by Canon 8 of the Third Ecumenical Council, which, defending the autocephaly of the Church of Cyprus, violated by the Patriarch of Antioch, decreed: "The rulers of the holy churches of Cyprus shall have their freedom, without encroachment upon them and without pressure upon them, according to the canons of the Holy Fathers and according to ancient custom, themselves to accomplish the

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ordination of pious bishops." Thus, with the proclamation of the autocephaly of a Church, certain prerequisites are linked, and if they are lacking, one must attend to their creation. The most important prerequisite of autocephaly is one's own episcopate, without which there is no Orthodox Church.

We have more than once emphasized that the matter of the Ukrainian episcopate was neglected in the first years of the revival of the Ukrainian Church. Now, finding themselves also under a foreign, non-Ukrainian, state authority, the Ukrainian church leaders, however much they outwardly welcomed the separation of Church from State under that authority, saw that they had reached a dead end, having proclaimed the autocephaly of their Church while having no episcopate in it.

"The question of the Ukrainian episcopate," writes Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "most of all troubled the VPCR even before the Sobor. VPCR member Protopresbyter Ksenofont Sokolovsky addressed a written demand to the VPCR to say openly what it thought about the creation of the episcopate: did it not have in mind, as a last resort, creating the episcopate not in the traditional Orthodox way but in a reformational way? The VPCR answered Sokolovsky that it had no opinion of its own on this question and was waiting to hear what the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor would say... And now, when the Sobor assembled, when it recognized itself as the sole canonical organ of the UAOC for resolving this question, the saturation of the ecclesiastical air with it reached the highest point...

The clergy in particular were certainly agitated. The general opinion of all was that the matter of the episcopate must be definitively resolved at the Sobor, come what may, for the Sobor to disperse without resolving this question, to go home without a bishop — that would mean casting one's Church to certain death right after its birth. Therefore, the Sobor must not adjourn until it resolves the matter of the episcopate. But in what way to resolve it?.. Here they threw up their hands: some simply spoke of 'the laying on of hands of the presbyterate,' in accordance with apostolic times, while others were simply horrified by this. Finally, they resolved to use all means to come to an understanding with the existing bishops.

When the question of the episcopate was raised at the Sobor, they decided to try once more, from the Sobor itself, to invite the bishops to come; perhaps they would treat the invitation of the entire Sobor more attentively than that of the VPCR. Then a delegation from the Sobor was elected to go to Exarch Mikhail with a request for him and the bishops to come to the All-Ukrainian Sobor."

In our opinion, this was an extraordinary moment in the history of relations between the Russian, or Moscow, Church and the Ukrainian Church, when the former could have profoundly repaid the Ukrainian people and their Orthodox Church for all their church-missionary service to the Suzdal-Moscow north from the times of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Volodymyr, for those church-educational services that Muscovite Rus received during the 17th–18th centuries from Ukrainian hierarchs and Ukrainian clergy with their schools; on the other

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hand, in this historic moment the Moscow hierarchy could have made amends for the wrongs inflicted by it, as the servant of a particular political regime, on the Ukrainian people, denationalizing its strata through the Church for over two centuries. But fate ordained that at the head of that hierarchy in Ukraine there stood at that moment, as the Patriarch's representative, an archpastor of narrow views, who, remaining even in this era of the empire's fall with its caesaropapism in the Church on the position of an old-regime bureaucratic bishop of the "Department of the Orthodox Confession," was unable to rise to an understanding of the spiritual role of the Church in the life of nations.

The Patriarchal Exarch, Metropolitan Mikhail Yermakov, at the request of the delegation from the Kyiv Sobor, did come to the Sobor with several priests; no other bishops were present. But he came not to participate in the Sobor's work. Greeted at the Sobor as befits an archpastor, with the singing of "It is truly meet" (Dostoyno yest) and "Eis polla eti, Despota," Exarch Mikhail did not give his blessing to those assembled. Instead, rushing up to the table of the Sobor's presidium, he declared that he did not recognize this "gathering" as a Sobor, as it had been assembled without his permission and contrary to the canons. He proposed that everyone immediately go home. With that he wanted to leave at once, but he was asked to sit down and answer some questions; they began to ask him to consecrate as bishops of the Ukrainian Church those candidates whom the Sobor would now elect. The Exarch replied that in his opinion there were already enough bishops in Ukraine, and if more were needed, he would consecrate whomever he wished... Just this Sunday a bishop was being consecrated.

Bishop Mykola Karabinevych, then a priest and a participant, recounts:

Then individual members of the Sobor came forward with passionate speeches suffused with love, called for concord and brotherhood, and on behalf of the entire Sobor asked Metropolitan Mikhail of the Russian Church to go halfway toward the wishes of the Ukrainians. One of the speakers, the old father of the cooperative movement, Mykola Levytsky, ended his speech with the words of the Holy Gospel: 'We are asking you for bread — do not give us a stone; we are asking you for fish — do not give us a serpent' (Matt. 7:9–10). [Note: The original Ukrainian text cites this as Matt. 8:9–10, which appears to be a misprint in the source; the actual Gospel reference is Matt. 7:9–10.] The entreaties of the Sobor did not move, did not melt, the heart of the old Tsarist metropolitan. To him at this moment the resurrected Ukrainian Church stretched out its hands, implored him for life, but in vain. The metropolitan forgot the commandments of Christ and to this responded: 'I do not consecrate vipers.' There was nowhere further to go; a greater sin, a greater insult could not be expected. It became clear to all that neither by entreaties, nor by pleas, nor by the Word of God could the stone hearts and souls of the old bishops be pierced. They themselves had walled themselves off, they themselves had driven stakes into the body of the Church, they themselves had taken the path of division and struggle.

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— "The Truth About the Holy UAOC," Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 4, 1927, pp. 275-276

"Exarch Mikhail jumped up and immediately left, saying that he would not give the Ukrainians a bishop, and turned in prayer to the Mother of God of the 'Unbreakable Wall' (Nerushyma Stina)" (the Sobor sessions were held in the

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Cathedral of St. Sophia) "with faith that She would not allow the gravest ecclesiastical crime to take place here, that is, the consecration of a bishop by presbyters" (Metropolitan Lypkivsky).

Instead of praying for this to the Heavenly Protectress, Exarch Mikhail could himself have prevented such a consecration by satisfying the request of the All-Ukrainian Sobor for the consecration as bishops of the candidates elected by the Sobor, on the condition, of course, that the conciliar candidates met the canons of the Universal Orthodox Church. What guided Metropolitan Yermakov in his conduct, which entirely fits the words of the Lord: "Woe to that person through whom temptation comes"? (Matt. 18:7). Certainly not church-Christian motives, which neither theologians nor canonists offer — at least we have not heard such motives from them — even those hostile to the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Thus, Russian nationalism blinded the eyes of the then leader of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, Exarch Mikhail. He could have met the wish of the Sobor of 1921 regarding the consecration of Ukrainian bishops and would have remained in good order even before the Moscow Patriarchate in this matter — so important for the future coexistence of Orthodox Ukrainians and Russians. He could have made use of the Patriarchal directive, based on a resolution of the Supreme Church Rada, of November 7/20, 1920, No. 362. According to this directive, broad self-governance was granted to the local episcopate, including the consecration of new bishops, without communication with the Moscow church center. This was done in view of the severe difficulties in communications and their interruption due to revolutionary events, civil war, the shifting of military fronts, and the like.

We do not have data to judge whether there were among the bishops in Kyiv at that grave moment for the Ukrainian Church any who opposed the Exarch Mikhail's conduct, and how far, therefore, the Exarch acted with the agreement of all the bishops, as the contemporaries — members of the Sobor — were convinced. "All of them (the Slavonic bishops) unanimously resolved to refuse participation in the Sobor and to fight against it, and they did not stop even before insulting the Sobor, and in its person the entire believing Ukrainian people" (Bishop M. Karabinevych, Op. cit., p. 275).

But the "unanimity" of the bishops is greatly illuminated by the following fact, about which we find information in Vol. IV of the "Life of Metropolitan Antonii" by Bishop Nikon (Rklitsky). In Metropolitan (then Archbishop) Evlogy's own handwritten note about his arrest in December 1918 in Kyiv, together with Metropolitan Antonii, Evlogy writes: "Metropolitan Antonii told me (while under arrest) that on the eve, after my arrest, he had gathered all the bishops who were in Kyiv, and they resolved to firmly hold, under threat of ecclesiastical punishment, to the resolutions of the Ukrainian Church Sobor" (which took place under the Hetman's authority. -- I. V.) [Trans. note: "I. V." = Ivan Vlasowsky, the author's editorial interjection].

In a footnote to this in the text, Bishop Nikon adds: "In view of the fact that at this time the Ukrainian independentists were waging an intense struggle for the complete separation (autocephaly) of the Ukrainian Church from the Russian Church and the Moscow Patriarch, the bishops,

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at the proposal of Bishop Antonii, gave in writing, under oath, a pledge that they would remain faithful to the Russian Church and would not join the autocephaly. Later, one of the bishops did not keep this pledge, for which he was condemned by a sobor of bishops and deprived of his cathedra" (Bishop Nikon, Life of His Beatitude Antonii, Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia, Vol. IV, New York, 1958, p. 239. Emphasis ours).

The bishop not named here by the author of the "Life" was, one must think, Archbishop of Katerynoslav Ahapit Vyshnevsky, about whose condemnation — for greeting the UNR Directorate and celebrating a moleben on St. Sophia Square in Kyiv — by the Supreme Church Administration under the army of General Denikin, we have recounted above (Chapter I, 5).

Exarch Mikhail Yermakov was not, it is true, bound by the oath that Metropolitan Antoniy had extracted — on the basis of what dogmatic-canonical teaching about the Church of Christ remains unknown — from the bishops in Ukraine in 1918 after the fall of the Hetman's authority, for Exarch Mikhail was not even in Ukraine at that time. But the other bishops, despite their perhaps similar political orientation toward a single indivisible Russia (Bolshevism was still considered a short-lived phenomenon), were bound with regard to Ukraine and the Ukrainian Church also by the written oath they had taken.

Who knows whether the satisfaction of the Ukrainians' request by consecrating a national hierarchy for them might not have brought pacification into the mutual relations in the church life of Ukraine between the "autocephalists" and the "Slavyanists" and weakened the drive for full immediate church independence? Neither the Exarch nor the other bishops reflected more deeply on the eloquent fact of the All-Ukrainian Sobor's fervent appeal to them. And the chief inspirer of the struggle under oath against the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church, who — we acknowledge — might now have reflected, Metropolitan Antoniy, having abandoned his flock, was at the time of these events in Kyiv far abroad.

Naturally, the elevated mood with which the Sobor of 1921 had generally begun was raised still higher by Exarch Mikhail's final refusal. Even those priests who had still hoped in the bishops acknowledged that nothing was to be expected from them. Voices were heard saying that "there can be no agreement, the Ukrainian Church cannot be reborn, cannot live a new life with such bishops; the supreme pastors have cast the Ukrainian Church to the crossroads; they are not interested in and do not wish to work in it and together with it in a godly way; they thought and dreamed of forever keeping the Church in Ukraine in their subjection and slavery"...

The sharpening by the Russian nationalistic hierarchy in Ukraine of the hierarchical question in the national Ukrainian Church gave rise to a series of acts that might not have occurred at the Sobor of 1921, and the most important of them was the creation of the Ukrainian episcopate by an unprecedented and non-canonical path.

That the creation of the Ukrainian hierarchy by this path at the Sobor of 1921 was a forced act is clearly evident from the efforts before the Sobor

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and during the period after its opening to acquire canonical bishops for the Ukrainian Church. Direct testimony about the nature of this act we have from one of those bishops who were consecrated at that time, during the Sobor of 1921, by Metropolitan Lypkivsky and Archbishop Sharaivsky. Namely, the first bishop consecrated by them (now Metropolitan of the UOC in the USA), Ioan Teodorovych, writes: "We never separated ourselves from Universal Orthodoxy. The act of the Sobor of 1921 was not a reformative act but a forced act. We spiritually still count ourselves in the bosom of Universal Orthodoxy"... (From a letter to Metropolitan Polikarp Sikorsky, dated June 6, 1946).

This same thing Bishop Ioan Teodorovych confirmed in his letter of October 16, 1947, to the Council of so-called "autocephalist-conciliarists" (sobornapravnyky) in Aschaffenburg, when they turned to him, having elected him honorary chairman of the Rada, asking that he lead them. In the same letter, Metropolitan Teodorovych wrote: "Of what the will and heart of our people created in 1921, much of it was not a free expression of our centuries-old Ukrainian ecclesiastical life, but an expression under the compulsion of the circumstances of that time. Among such expressions of compulsion, and not free decision, one must count the very act of restoring our hierarchy — an act that later became the 'Achilles' heel,' the sore spot that always required defense and was not a point of support that gives the confidence of standing without needing any buttresses" (Emphasis ours).

Forced by the Exarch Mikhail's final refusal, and not reformational in character, the act of creating the Ukrainian hierarchy at the Sobor of 1921 is also confirmed by the conciliar resolutions on this subject, contained in the "Acts" of the Sobor (Chapter IV: The Restoration of the Ukrainian Church Hierarchy).

One should first draw attention to the fact that the resolution on conciliar consecration to the episcopate, in the absence of bishops at the Sobor, was not — despite the general indignation at the political maneuvering of the Exarch and the other Russian bishops — so unanimously adopted at the Sobor as is usually written. From Metropolitan Lypkivsky's own account of the conduct of this matter at the Sobor, it appears as follows.

The reports on the question of creating an episcopate in the Ukrainian Church were delivered at a session of the Sobor on the second day after Exarch Mikhail's refusal to consecrate bishops for the Ukrainian Church — by Volodymyr Chekhivsky (a graduate of the Kyiv Theological Academy, former Chairman of the Rada of Ministers under the UNR Directorate in December–January 1919) and Protopresbyter Ksenofont Sokolovsky.

Chekhivsky "argued that in apostolic times there was no episcopal consecration, that the Apostle Paul was ordained to apostleship by prophets who were not bishops (Acts 13:1), that the Apostle Timothy was ordained by the laying on of the hands of the presbyterate (1 Tim. 4:14), and further, that in the Alexandrian and Roman Churches for a long time the bishop was consecrated by presbyters. And when the bishops took this right away from the presbyters, this was already a violation of apostolic practice. The grace of the Holy Spirit

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is generally not in the bishops but in the Church, that is, in the community of the faithful. Therefore, the Church, as was the case in apostolic times too, may also lay its hands upon the one it has chosen and bestow upon him the grace of the Holy Spirit... The general conclusion from his report Chekhivsky made was that since the Tikhonite episcopate in Ukraine goes against the will of the Church — does not wish to render it the service of the traditional consecration of a bishop at its election — the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor has the full canonical and dogmatic right to consecrate the first bishop-metropolitan it has elected, remaining firmly on Orthodox ground, through an all-conciliar consecration and laying on of the hands of its presbyterate" (From Chapter VII of Metropolitan Lypkivsky's manuscript on the "Revival of the Ukrainian Church").

Protopresbyter K. Sokolovsky in his report stood on the ground of the traditional practice of the Universal Orthodox Church, according to which practice, based on the teaching about the Church and on church canons, "the Orthodox Church recognizes only one way of consecrating a bishop — the laying on of hands upon the candidate by two or three bishops in the rite of consecration (Apostolic Canon 1). Any other way of consecration without bishops — this will be a deviation toward Protestantism and a betrayal of the Orthodox faith" (Ibid.).

We do not have detailed information about the discussion at the Sobor of the hierarchical question after the hearing of these two opposing reports. Metropolitan Lypkivsky limits himself to general remarks that "during the discussion of this question, Chekhivsky and others easily demonstrated the erroneousness of Fr. Sokolovsky's assertions, but several priests and laypeople (not many) also spoke in support of Sokolovsky against the all-conciliar consecration... Some others even left the Sobor"...

We think that for the members of the Sobor, in deciding which way to lean, which consecration to vote for, the greatest role was played by the bishopless situation of the Ukrainian Church at that moment. Protopresbyter K. Sokolovsky did not point to a way out of this situation; V. Chekhivsky offered a way out.

Later, in 1925, the VPCR in its "Historical Memorandum" to the heads of all Orthodox churches wrote about this situation: "Even in those members of the Sobor who to the last moment had not lost hope for assistance from the Russian bishops, their eyes were opened and they saw that in these bishops there no longer remained Christ's grace of serving the Church with their spiritual gifts, but only the state right of their dominion over the Church, and that to expect brotherly help from such bishops was a futile thing. To turn to the bishops of other churches was impossible — it was wartime, all borders were closed. For the Sobor to disperse without creating its own hierarchy — that would be the death of the just-born free Ukrainian Church. In such grave circumstances, when help from people is powerless — Almighty God..." (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2–3, p. 144).

Although the discussion revealed the inclination of the majority of speakers toward a way out of the bishopless state of the Church through the conciliar consecration of two bishops, it was nevertheless decided, at the proposal of the Sobor's presidium,

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to apply yet, out of caution in deciding such an important question, the principle of a qualified majority. The Sobor resolved that the matter of the conciliar consecration of the first bishop — metropolitan — would be considered positively decided only if no fewer than 11/12 of all members of the Sobor present voted for such a consecration, and the voting was to be personal and open: each member of the Sobor, coming forward when called to the table of the presidium, stated whether he was for or against the all-conciliar consecration.

In this vote, according to the testimony of Metropolitan Lypkivsky in Chapter VII of his History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, 262 members of the Sobor participated, of whom 5 were against the all-conciliar consecration, 7 abstained, and 250 were for it; in the letter of April 23, 1922, to Fr. Korsunovsky, the Metropolitan gives 294 present and voting, of whom 282 voted "for" and the remaining 12 as above. Obviously, the Metropolitan wrote from memory at different times. But this discrepancy is not of great importance.

What is most important for history is that the number present and voting on the question of episcopal consecration at the Sobor was far short of the previously cited number of representatives who came to the Sobor. For Metropolitan Lypkivsky in "Chapter VII" gives "more than 400 delegates," and in the letter to Fr. Korsunovsky — "up to 500 representatives" at the Sobor; the latter figure is also cited in the "Historical Memorandum" of the VPCR. Thus it turns out that up to 150, or even up to 200 (if we accept the total number of representatives as 500), members of the Sobor did not participate in the vote on the question of creating the Ukrainian episcopate. Are we not justified in thinking that these absent ones "left the Sobor" after the discussion on the hierarchical question, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky indeed recounts without giving the number of those who left?

In our opinion, such significant opposition must have also contributed to the fact that the conciliar resolutions on the "Restoration of the Ukrainian Church Hierarchy," adopted by the Sobor of 1921, bear an indistinct and ultimately inconsistent character. Familiarity with the "materials from the history of the liberation of the UAOC" and with articles provoked by the polemic about the canonicity and grace-bearing quality of the Ukrainian hierarchy of 1921, published on the pages of the UAOC organ Tserkva i Zhyttia, gives us grounds for the conclusion that among the activists of the Ukrainian church movement there was a current which — whether under the influence of the sharpened struggle with the nationalistic Russian episcopate, or independently of that and in connection with the revolutionary moods of the time — was approaching reformational ideas about the life and structure of the Church. This current either paid no attention to the traditions of its historical national Ukrainian Orthodox Church or distorted its history and character. It drew its inspiration and ideology — we do not enter here into how correctly it was understood — from the times of early Christianity and dreamed of the revival of "apostolic times" in the Ukrainian Church, and through the latter's messianism, in the entire Universal Church of Christ. For this current, the "all-conciliar consecration" of a bishop by the presbyterate and faithful laity was

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not an act forced by circumstances and only justified by the ancient practice of the times before the Ecumenical Councils — as, let us say, in the Alexandrian Church — but rather "the highest degree of ecclesiastical creativity," when "the Ukrainian Church was striving for the development of higher forms of life"... (Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky, "The First All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor," Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2–3, 1927, p. 204).

Or, we read from another representative of this current, "the God-established hierarchical ministry in the church through the apostles consisted of two orders: a lower, auxiliary, or diaconal, and a higher, supervisory, or episcopal, simultaneously called presbyteral... All the distinctive forms of presbyteral ministry appeared later; the early Church of Christ did not know them... Therefore, they will exist only as long as there is need for them, or as long as the forces that called them into existence remain alive... The Church of Christ would have lost nothing of its grace-bearing essence if, under the influence of certain changes in historical life, it returned to the original state when the bishop differed in no way from the presbyter, and the presbyter from the bishop. This would only be the restoration of the two basic hierarchical orders in their earlier form"... (Volynsky, "The Origin of the Episcopate in Connection with the Question of the Grace-bearing Quality of the UAOC Hierarchy," Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1, 1927, pp. 80, 81). As we see, the ideas of this current were not far from Presbyterianism.

But this current — which, evidently, the organ of Metropolitan Ilarion Ohiienko (in 1921 the Minister of Confessions of the UNR), Slovo Istyny (Word of Truth), had in view in its article "Obstacles to the Unification of Our Churches" (January 1950, Winnipeg), about whose (the current's) influence on the Sobor of 1921 we shall speak more — in the hierarchical question in the Ukrainian Church could not carry through its reformational views. In the conciliar resolutions on this question, we see the affirmation: "The Ukrainian Church has no bishops and now remains orphaned" (point 3) — this is a confession of the necessity of the episcopal order in the church hierarchy in the spirit of the teaching of St. Cyprian of Carthage (3rd century): "He who is not with the bishop is not in the Church [cf. St. Ignatius of Antioch], and to whom the Church is not Mother, to him God is not Father."

Having stated the election at the Sobor of the Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine and 12 bishops for separate parts of Ukraine, the Sobor decreed the following about the consecration of those elected: "Fulfilling the will of the Founder and Head of the Church, Jesus Christ, Son of God, the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor sacredly and conciliarly, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, consecrates by ecclesiastical ordination two persons elected as bishops from among the priests" (point 6). "The sacred rite of the consecration (khirotoniia) of bishops for the restoration of the episcopate is performed according to the foundations of the rite accepted in the Universal Church" (point 7, Acts of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, Op. cit., p. 8).

If we did not know how the consecration to the episcopate by the laying on of hands of priests and laypeople (the so-called "all-conciliar consecration") actually took place in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv on October 10/23, 1921, could one read in the cited texts of the conciliar resolutions about

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such a manner of consecration? No. There it speaks of "the rite accepted in the Universal Church," when consecration of a bishop by non-bishops was a departure from that rite. Only by the absence of reformational thought and aspirations of the Sobor to equalize the presbyterate in the Church with the episcopate can the historian explain that indistinctness of the cited resolutions regarding the manner of creating the episcopate in the Ukrainian Church at the Sobor of 1921.

And most strongly, finally, about the absence of reformative intent, and on the contrary about the compulsion in applying the unprecedented manner of consecration, testifies the resolution of that same Sobor with which the resolutions on the "Restoration of the Ukrainian Church Hierarchy" conclude. In it we read: "Henceforth, the sacred rite of the consecration (khirotoniia) of bishops in the Ukrainian Church of Christ shall be performed with the participation of two or more bishops according to the rite of the Universal Eastern Church" (Ibid.).

In other words, the Sobor of 1921, having allowed in dire circumstances the consecration of bishops by presbyters and laypeople for the creation of an episcopate in the Local Church, decrees that episcopal consecrations shall henceforth be performed by the rite accepted in the Universal Orthodox Church — that is, in accordance with Apostolic Canon 1, Canon 4 of the First Ecumenical Council, Canon 60 of the Council of Carthage, etc. — only by episcopal ordination.

Therefore, when we encounter the tendency to present the act of creating the episcopate in the Ukrainian Church in October 1921, not by episcopal ordination, as a historical step in the struggle generally against the "episcopal-autocratic structure of the Orthodox Church" (beyond the manifestations of arbitrary rule only by Russian bishops in Ukraine), such a tendency is contradictory to the Sobor's resolution on the further consecration of bishops in the Ukrainian Church only by episcopal ordination.

And we see such tendencies in the "Historical Memorandum" of 1925 by the VPCR itself, where it is written: "Regardless of the mortal danger for the Ukrainian Church, the act of reviving the hierarchy in it by the all-church path, with a change in the usual traditions, is a great step toward the transformation of the old-state structure of the Orthodox Church in general, without disturbing the Christian faith in it in its Orthodox understanding" (Op. cit., p. 146).

In Chapter VII of Metropolitan Lypkivsky's manuscript we find a similar passage: "In the event of the all-national consecration of a bishop, everyone felt a great church-liberating act, by which the Church freed itself from the chief mark of episcopal dominion over it and once again took upon itself the right to elect and consecrate all its servants for itself — a right that the bishops had monopolized and for whole millennia firmly held in their hands, having even proclaimed it a dogma of Orthodoxy."

If the Sobor of 1921 had proceeded from such motives, then why would it immediately also annul this "church-liberating" act from episcopal dominion, ordering that it not be used henceforth and that bishops be consecrated by bishops according to the canons of the Universal Orthodox Church?

No — even if there was a reformative current in the hierarchical question, the Sobor of 1921 did not follow it. Having used only once, out of great need and necessity for the Church, the form of elevation to the episcopate

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practiced among other forms in the early centuries of Christianity, the Kyiv Sobor of 1921 affirmed henceforth its fidelity to Sacred Tradition regarding episcopal consecration in the Orthodox Church (the "Orthodox Confession" of Metropolitan Petro Mohyla, Part 1, answer to question 109; the "Epistle of the Patriarchs of the Orthodox-Catholic Church" of 1672, article 10) — a Sacred Tradition to which the Ukrainian Orthodox Church held throughout its entire history from the times of St. Volodymyr the Great. (The act of the restoration of the Ukrainian Orthodox hierarchy in 1620 was also fully canonical.)

After the conciliar resolution of the question about creating an episcopate in the Ukrainian Church according to the former practice of the Alexandrian Church (before 240 AD) by the hands of presbyters, the Sobor on October 8/21 by secret ballot and almost unanimously elected as bishop-metropolitan the Protopresbyter Vasyl Lypkivsky.

Protopresbyter Vasyl Lypkivsky was born on March 7 (old style) 1864 in the family of Priest Konstantyn Lypkivsky, rector of the parish of the village of Popudnia, Lypovets district, in the Kyiv region. According to Metropolitan Lypkivsky's account, their family originated from Galicia, and the surname is connected with the river Lypa; from some village or town on this river came his great-grandfather, who around the middle of the 18th century served as a private tutor in the household of some Polish magnate on an estate along the river Buh.

A family legend was preserved that the son of this tutor, Fotii, grandfather of Vasyl Lypkivsky, at the age of 12 placed his younger brother Lavrentii in a boat during the spring flood on the Buh, and they were carried away by the water. There was no one on the bank; however much they shouted and wept, no one rescued them. Only after a full day did they drift to some bank; they found themselves in the uninhabited steppes of Podillia, came upon a shepherd with a flock of sheep, who fed them and showed them the way to a village. For several years the boys lived in severe poverty with a village cantor (diak); then they ended up in the metropolitan's choir in Kyiv. In time the metropolitan gave Fotii a certificate so that he might seek a young lady with a parish and become a priest. He found such a young lady near Uman in the Kyiv region, in the village of Dmytrushky; he married her and became a priest there. Their son Konstantyn, who served long as a priest in the Lypovets area, was the father of Vasyl Lypkivsky; thus a remarkable adventure transported the family from the Galician Lypa to Lypovets in the Kyiv region.

In 1873–1878, Vasyl Lypkivsky studied at the Uman theological school ("Dukhovne Uchylyshche"), in 1878–1884 at the Kyiv Theological Seminary; upon completing it, he was sent, as one of the top students, to the Kyiv Theological Academy (1884–1889), where he completed the course with the academic degree of "Candidate of Theology." In the autumn of 1889, he was appointed religion teacher at the state gymnasium in Cherkasy in the Kyiv region, and in 1891, on October 20, he accepted ordination to the priesthood. The following year, 1892, he was

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appointed by the diocesan authority as rector of the Lypovets city cathedral and district "supervisor" (nabliudatel) of church-parish schools of the Lypovets district (the equivalent of a district inspector of secular public schools). In these positions, Fr. Vasyl Lypkivsky worked in the Lypovets area for 11 years.

In 1903, he was transferred by the School Rada of the Holy Synod to Kyiv to the position of director of the Kyiv Church Teachers' School (these schools prepared teachers for church-parish schools and were equivalent to teacher seminaries of the Ministry of Public Education). But in 1905, Fr. Lypkivsky was removed from this position for "Ukrainophilism" and generally "liberal views." The diocesan authority then appointed him rector of the Solomianka parish in Kyiv, whose membership consisted predominantly of employees and workers of the Kyiv Railway; simultaneously he taught religion in several schools, such as the Kyiv Commercial School.

As was already discussed earlier, Fr. Vasyl Lypkivsky belonged even in those times of the liberation movement in Russia to the current of progressive clergy, of which there were very few in ecclesiastically conservative, and even ecclesiastically reactionary, Kyiv. To us, students of the Kyiv Theological Academy (the author of this work completed the Academy course in 1904–1908), who for the most part took part in this movement and in the autumn of 1905 conducted a strike at the Academy in the struggle for its autonomy as an institution of higher learning, the progressive priests of Kyiv were known by their views. One of the prominent places among the progressive clergy was occupied by Fr. V. Lypkivsky; the author of these lines [Trans. note: Wlasowsky's self-referential convention] had occasion to attend gatherings at his home with some students; in those times there was no talk of a Ukrainian Church, still less of its autocephaly. The topics of conversation were church reforms in the direction of liberating the Church from the role of servant to the political regime, the revival of church-civic life under conditions of restoring conciliar forms of church governance, with the ultimate goal of elevating the authority and the religious-moral influence of the Church in the life of Christian society. At gatherings at Fr. Lypkivsky's, Academy students who were not Ukrainians were also present — natives of Tula, Tambov, Riazan...

Fr. Lypkivsky also contributed to the progressive journals of that time. In Pastor Fr. Heyer (Op. cit., p. 84), we find the report that "during the occupation of Eastern Galicia by the Tsarist army in 1914/15, Fr. Lypkivsky placed himself at the disposal for work in the campaign to convert to Orthodoxy (Ukrainians in Galicia), which Archbishop Evlogy was conducting there." This entirely implausible report was not cited even by K. V. Fotiev, although the source for the biography of Metropolitan Lypkivsky for both Fotiev and Heyer was the journal of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, Orientalia Christiana (no. 4, 1923). Metropolitan Evlogy, both in his memoirs ("The Path of My Life") and in his report to the Synod on the missionary campaign in Galicia, where he names his collaborators, nowhere mentions Fr. Lypkivsky at all — something that in the memoirs he would surely not have omitted for the purpose of compromising the leader of the Ukrainian national-church movement. We see an attempt at such discrediting in the organ of Roman activists of the "Eastern Rite."

As was recounted in the preceding chapter, with the revolution of 1917, Protopresbyter V. Lypkivsky took the most active part in the church-liberation movement in the life of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, serving as chairman of the Kyiv Diocesan Congress in April 1917 and vice-chairman

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of the Second VPCR. The distinguished role of Protopresbyter V. Lypkivsky in this movement, which by the autumn of 1917 had also taken on a national character for the Ukrainians, led to the fact that when the question was raised at the Sobor of 1921 — whom to elect as the first archbishop and metropolitan of all Ukraine — the candidacy of Fr. Lypkivsky, once the Sobor decided to allow a married episcopate as well, came in first place. In his letter to Fr. Korsunovsky, Metropolitan Lypkivsky wrote: "I must confess, from the very beginning I sensed that this cup would not pass me by"...

On Saturday, October 9/22, the nomination (narechennia) of the metropolitan-elect, Protopresbyter V. Lypkivsky, took place before the Sobor, and on Sunday, October 10/23, 1921, his consecration as bishop in the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv. The Divine Service was celebrated by some 30 priests and 12 deacons; the gathering of the people was extraordinary. "There came," recounts a participant, "the majestic moment of consecration. The entire community of Christ, the entire Sobor, merged in one ardent prayer to the Heavenly Father — to grant, to send the Holy Spirit upon the first Ukrainian bishop. The senior protopresbyter by age read the prayer of consecration, and all members of the Sobor laid their hands on each other's shoulders, and those who stood on the solea laid their hands on the deacons' shoulders, those on the priests' shoulders, and the priests on the one being consecrated. Amid church singing and prayer, the one being consecrated was vested in the archpastoral vestments, and there came a moment of pure, holy joy. People wept, congratulated one another on the revival of the Ukrainian Church and its hierarchy. It was a true Pascha of our believing Ukrainian people" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 4, 1927, p. 279).

In literature hostile to the revival of the Ukrainian people and their Church, you will not find any other characterization of the act of "conciliar consecration" of bishops for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 1921 than: "blasphemous consecration," "blasphemous lawlessness," and the like (Pravoslavnaya Rus, no. 12, 1954, article "The Voice of History"; K. V. Fotiev, Op. cit., p. 36). The concept of "blasphemy" (koschunstvo in Russian) has its established meaning among human sins and crimes — the conscious desecration, profanation of that which in the understanding and feelings of other people is considered a sacred thing, holy, and is associated primarily with religious beliefs.

So do not those historians who use the label "blasphemy" to characterize the act of creating the Ukrainian hierarchy at the Kyiv Sobor of 1921 take upon themselves a grave sin? It is known that many laypeople, members of the Sobor of 1921, before the Sobor's decision on the matter of creating an episcopate, confessed and received the Holy Mysteries. What does this extraordinarily heightened pious mood speak of? Of "blasphemy"? Who dares assert such a thing? Only that proud man or hypocrite about whom Christ said: "Thou hypocrite! first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (Matt. 7:5).

Above, we already cited the testimony of a participant in the conciliar consecration of Metropolitan Lypkivsky about that prayerful exaltation, about those

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moments of pure, holy joy that the church community experienced in St. Sophia Cathedral on Sunday, October 10/23, 1921. Such moving testimonies, memorable for a lifetime, one has had occasion to hear in no small number. Let us cite here one more, of the highest authority.

"The installation of the first hierarch of our Church at the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor, carried out by the pastors of the Ukrainian Church present at the Sobor, and in which installation the faithful of the Church took direct part through their prayers and faith, was a majestic act of spiritual-religious exaltation, a holy act of the impulse of faith that has the power to rise above all obstacles. It was a holy and unforgettable — for the author of this essay as for the other members of the Sobor — impulse of living faith, which in time of need, in the words of our Divine Teacher, could even move mountains. It, this holy impulse of living faith, conquered the mountains of our difficulties at that time, pointed the way out of the crevices of hopelessness in which the Church had then found itself. As such a holy impulse of living faith, the act of restoring the episcopate of our Church does not require any proofs; faith acts by powers beyond our presence. It cannot be explained or demonstrated. It acts above all this. It acts and achieves its goals by higher, otherworldly powers. They cannot be placed under any headings. This essay does not have the aim of justifying, explaining, or proving the rightness of this holy act of faith. This act has an inner justification. It is in the holiness of the intentions of its participants and in the power of their daring, all-conquering faith. This is beyond the need of proofs and demonstrations — for us who in the inspiration of faith carried out this act, and for all who accept it with that holy faith. This was done by the power of the promises of our Lord and Savior"... (Ioan Teodorovych, Archbishop, now Metropolitan of the UOC in America and Canada, The Grace-bearing Quality of the UAOC Hierarchy, Regensburg, 1947, pp. 101–102).

One could enter into a certain discussion regarding the content of this testimony by a direct participant in the events of the Sobor of 1921 — for example, on the topic of the right of living faith to violate the church legal order accepted in the "Confession of Faith" of the entire Orthodox Church — but to accuse this living faith of blasphemy is another matter entirely. This faith was compelled to violate that legal order precisely in seeking to preserve the fullness of the church-Orthodox organization. Would not such an accusation be, quite the contrary, blasphemy against the living faith and sacred things of pious people? These were people who, in the time of the stormy waves of revolution with its Bolshevik slogans -- "rob what has been robbed" and "religion is opium for the people" -- went among the people against those waves, with the preaching of church-religious revival, with the living national language in the church, with the restoration of the ancient conciliar structure of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

On the other hand, those historians who call "blasphemy" the act of consecration to the episcopate by the Sobor of 1921 must also call "blasphemy" the practice of the Alexandrian Church in the early centuries of Christianity regarding the election and installation of the bishop in Alexandria by

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presbyters, to which Blessed Jerome, the ancient historian Severus, and Patriarch Eutychius of Alexandria testify (Prof. V. Bolotov, Lectures on the History of the Ancient Church, St. Petersburg, 1910, pp. 456–457). Interestingly, Fr. Heyer, recounting the two currents at the Sobor of 1921 regarding the consecration of a bishop, cites the opinion that it is still unknown whether with the old manner of episcopal ordination (in the Russian Church) this was not "merely a dead ritual on the basis of a Tsarist decree, or also the patronage of Rasputin" (Op. cit., p. 83).

On the second day after the consecration of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, several more persons were elected by the Sobor as bishops, to create a full episcopate. The first elected as Archbishop of the Kyiv region was Protopresbyter Nestor Sharaivsky. An active member before the revolution of 1917 of the "National Russian Club," Protopresbyter N. Sharaivsky, a native of the Chyhyryn area, at the very beginning of the revolution became aware of his national identity, and at one of the pastoral gatherings of the city of Kyiv made a statement, frank and sincere, that "I have come to know the abyss in which I had been until now, have come to know all my delusions and all the evil I caused Ukraine. And I wish," said Fr. Sharaivsky, "to atone for my sins. I deeply believe that Ukraine will accept the prodigal son into its embrace and forgive me, a sinner." His zealous work after this in the field of national-church revival was indeed recognized by the All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1921, which elected Protopresbyter Sharaivsky as bishop immediately after the election of Protopresbyter Lypkivsky.

Protopresbyter N. Sharaivsky was consecrated as bishop by Metropolitan Lypkivsky with the participation of priests. Further, the Sobor elected: Priest from Volynia Ioan Teodorovych (a native of Volynia and a graduate of the Volynia Theological Seminary), who by his "substantive and sincere speeches," writes Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "attracted the Sobor's attention"; "a representative of the Poltava region, Oleksander Yareshchenko, who had completed the Theological Academy and a higher technical school and now held the position of director of the Poltava Railway, and traded it all for the crown of thorns of the episcopate in our Church"; Priest from Zolotonosha (Poltava region), born May 6, 1868, a priest since 1894, Yurii Mikhnovsky; and Protopresbyter Stepan Orlyk. All of them were consecrated during the Sobor, from October 25 to 30, 1921, "by the general path, the traditional one" ("Historical Memorandum" of the VPCR, Op. cit., p. 144).

From the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor, an appeal was issued "to the brothers and sisters of the free, all-national, conciliar-governed, autocephalous, Orthodox, Ukrainian, living Church of Christ." In this appeal, the Sobor informed the Ukrainian people about events in the church life of Ukraine, namely: about the assembly on October 1/14, 1921, in "the ancestral shrine of the Ukrainian people, in the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv, of the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor"; about its confirmation of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church; about the separation from the Ukrainian Church of the present bishops in Ukraine; about their refusal to consecrate Ukrainian bishops and their efforts "to hold

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the Ukrainian Church in their power in the name of the Moscow Patriarch"; about the Sobor's decision "to restore the episcopate in the Ukrainian Church by the early-Christian, conciliar-church, apostolic order" and "the consecration on October 10/23, A.D. 1921, by the laying on of the hands of the priesthood and of the entire holy All-Ukrainian Orthodox Sobor, as Archbishop and Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine, the cathedral rector, Protopresbyter Vasyl Lypkivsky," whereby "the construction of the new life of the free UAOC" was completed.

Announcing this, the Sobor called the people to unity under the leadership of the Sobor, to "obedience and the carrying out of the resolutions of the VPCR authorized by the Sobor, to the organization of Divine Services in churches in the native language, to firmly holding church affairs in their own hands," and also to commemorate at the Divine Services "the Sobor's chosen one, our Most Reverend Father, Archbishop Vasyl, Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine" (Text of the appeal in Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1, 1927, pp. 124–125).

With his first Archpastoral Epistle, dated October 10/23, 1921, Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky addressed "all the children of the free, all-national, conciliar-governed, autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church." In this epistle, Metropolitan Vasyl, as "a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, elected by the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, through the laying on of the hands of the Ukrainian priesthood and the entire Sobor, installed," called upon the Ukrainian people:

"The holy Orthodox Christian faith, with which Christ the Savior enlightened our people through holy baptism under the holy Prince Volodymyr, and in which He has preserved our fathers and us to this day — hold firmly, be enlivened by it, do not depart from it... The holy Christian hope, a living and joyful hope for the renewal of our life through the Resurrection of Christ from the dead — nurture and enliven in yourselves; let not this hope wither in us amid all earthly troubles and misfortunes. Our fathers did not lose hope in Christ in the most difficult circumstances of life. Do not lose it now, when the light of freedom has shone upon us. And above all this, raise up Christian love — love for unity, for brotherhood, for mutual help in all things, love even for enemies"...

"I sincerely bless you and all our Ukrainian Church with my first archpastoral blessing — not a commanding one, but a sincere, native, fatherly blessing, which through your prayers I have now received from the Lord God"... (Ibid., pp. 125–126).

3. The internal structure of the UAOC according to the canons of the Kyiv Sobor of 1921. Other resolutions of the Sobor of 1921 on individual questions of church life. The appeal to the clergy of Ukraine by the VPCR in December 1921.

On questions of church structure, the Kyiv Sobor of 1921 took the most radical position, compared with its resolution of other questions that confronted the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, revived to independent

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life. For while the consecration of the episcopate by a non-canonical method was, as shown above, an act forced upon the Sobor, and was henceforth prohibited by that same Sobor, the church structure, with far-reaching departures from the canons of the Orthodox Church, was adopted without compulsion, as a conscious reform in the life of the Church.

We have already mentioned that as early as the spring of 1921, the VPCR published in Kyiv a brochure, "The Foundations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church," republished abroad in 1922 by the Minister of Confessions, Prof. I. Ohiienko. In it was written:

"Sobornapravnist (conciliar governance), that is, the all-national management of all church affairs, is the foundation not only of the Ukrainian but of the Apostolic Church in general. Sobornapravnist requires the recognition of: 1. The right of all-national election at all levels of church ministry; 2. The right of all-national church economy, that is, the administration of church property; 3. The right of participation of all the church faithful in the resolution of all church questions — charitable, economic, educational, liturgical, and even canonical and dogmatic" (Op. cit., p. 7).

The authors of the brochure write that such an all-national, conciliar-governed church structure existed in the times of the Apostles, but already in the times of the persecution of the Church by the Roman authority, "necessity required that the management of all church affairs be placed on separate, most reliable people, who at that time were undoubtedly the bishops, elected by the entire Church" (p. 8). Thus, sobornapravnist, in the authors' understanding, ceased to exist in the Church already from the end of the 1st century after Christ.

"From the fourth century, when the Roman state entered into agreement with the Christian Church, and when the canonical structure of the Church was being most developed, the civic structure of the state had a very great influence on the formation of the church structure... The monarchical structure began to be implemented in church life as well. Bishops were now elevated by the state still higher, became more and more separated from the people and the people's life. They closed themselves within their caste interests and in intrigues and disputes of the same kind... All the ancient councils consisted exclusively of bishops, with the participation of senior government representatives. The populace, deprived of all church rights, ceased to interest itself in church affairs and became merely a passive element of the Church"... (pp. 8–10).

These ideas of the VPCR's brochure were laid as the foundation of the canons of the UAOC regarding the internal structure of the Church at the Sobor of 1921.

"Not for the purpose of abolishing or changing the old canons," we read in the resolution of the Sobor, "but caring for the salvation and progress of people toward the better, we decree: 1. The episcopal-autocratic structure of the Church, which formed under the influence of circumstances and the state-monarchical order of those times, by which the old canons are permeated, can no longer remain and must be replaced by a church conciliar-governed structure, corresponding to the spirit of the Orthodox Christian faith; 2. Sobors consisting of bishops alone, as has been the case and still is, do not correspond to the true spirit of the Orthodox Christian faith, do not give

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the Church the opportunity to live a full life, and they must be replaced henceforth with sobors of representatives from the entire Orthodox Ukrainian faithful" (I. General Principles).

In Chapter III, under the heading "The Internal Structure of the Ukrainian Church," the Sobor of 1921 decrees:

"1. Church authority has as its foundation the power of the Holy Spirit. Among the members of the Church there can be neither dominion nor coercion. The fundamental commandment of Christ, Son of God, about the structure of the Church was given us in these words: 'Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and the great ones exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant' (Matt. 20:25–27).

  1. The structure of the UAOC, in accordance with the spirit of the Christian faith, is henceforth all-national and conciliar-governed (sobornapravnyi): all church affairs are managed by the Church itself through — (a) the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor, which assembles periodically at fixed intervals (at the Sobor of 1921 it was established: every 5 years) of representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox faithful; (b) the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada (VPCR), consisting of Ukrainian bishops and representatives from the parishes; (c) District (povitovi) Church Radas and District Church Assemblies; (d) Volost Church Assemblies and Volost Church Radas; (e) Parish Church Assemblies and Parish Church Radas."

These organizational conciliar-governance principles in the structure of the Church, expressed in Chapter III, were further developed by the Sobor of 1921 in Chapter XI of the resolutions under the heading "The Organization of the Ukrainian Church and Church Administration." The radical character of the reform of church structure and administration of the UAOC, as we called it above, runs through the entire Chapter XI on the organization of the Ukrainian Church. Let us dwell on the chief points of the reform, in whose implementation the reformational current among the members of the Sobor played a great role, under the particular influence of the social slogans of the revolution. ("Not to princes and the powerful of this world, but to poor people, to fishermen, to carpenters, Jesus Christ brought His teaching. Therefore the true Ukrainian Church of Christ has so decisively declared that the believing people should take part in the governance of the Church"... — Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 4, 1927, p. 282.)

The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (abbreviated UAOC) is defined in Chapter XI as "a free fraternal union of the believing faithful, who desire to build their earthly life for the attainment of the Kingdom of God on the ground of the true and inviolable understanding of the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the commandments of the Holy Apostles, and the dogmas and canons of the Holy Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church" (point 1, Chapter XI). "For the common satisfaction of their religious needs, the members of the UAOC unite into Ukrainian Orthodox parishes, which are the component parts of the Ukrainian Church as the All-Ukrainian Union of Orthodox Parishes" (point 3).

Where, in what, for the Sobor of 1921 lay the ground of "true and inviolable understanding of the Holy Gospel, the commandments of the Holy Apostles, the dogmas and

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canons of the Holy Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church"? An answer to this question we do not find in the resolutions of the Sobor. And when, for example, regarding the canons of church order and governance in the Church, adopted by the Ecumenical Councils for use, the Sobor speaks of them as "most expedient for their time" but now obsolete, so that they need to be changed "in accordance with the spirit of the Orthodox Christian faith," which the Sobor of 1921 proceeds to do — does the Sobor not consider that it itself is that ground of "true and inviolable understanding"?...

The modern statutes of Orthodox Autocephalous Churches usually begin with a confession of being part of the One Universal Orthodox Church — a confession that obliges the Autocephalous Church, in the structure and governance of the Church as well, to be guided by the principles accepted in the Eastern Orthodox Church on the basis of Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition, which is contained in the canons of the Holy Apostles, the canons and decrees of 7 Ecumenical and 10 Local Councils, the canonical rules of the Holy Fathers accepted by the Ecumenical Councils, and the church statutes regarding worship and monastic life.

Sacred Tradition of the Church, on the basis of which the very codex of the canonical books of Holy Scripture was also established, gives — basing itself clearly on Holy Scripture as well — the definition of the dogmatic concept of the Church as "the Body of Christ, under the Head the Lord Jesus Christ, united by faith, the Law of God, the Holy Mysteries, and the God-established hierarchy, for the salvation of mankind." The most essential attribute of the Church is that it is a divine institution, which "Christ founded not upon men, but upon Himself and upon His Divine teaching" (Confession of Metropolitan Petro Mohyla, Part I, answer to question 85).

"The All-Ukrainian (voluntary) Union of Orthodox Parishes" instead of the Church as a divine institution — this is a concept new in the history of Ukrainian ecclesiastical life since the times of the baptism of Ukraine.

The understanding of the Church on the model of formally free human associations or unions, even with lofty moral aims but with an obscuring of the divine origin and mystical character of the Church as the Body of Christ, was further manifested in the organizational structure of the UAOC according to the resolutions of the Sobor of 1921. The UAOC consists of district (povitovi) church associations, or churches; district churches of volost and city-wide churches; volost and city-wide churches of parish churches (points 5, 22, 25, 28 of Chapter XI). But these "church associations" — volost, city-wide, district — arise on the basis of resolutions of the corresponding assemblies and may exist, or may not exist (Notes to points 5, 25, 28). From the Sobor's resolutions, it is not clear to what degree these autonomous (point 6, Chapter XI) churches (parish, volost, district) are firmly bound together in one UAOC, and how easily they can leave the UAOC by their own resolutions.

For the creation of these churches or associations, only a minimum is indicated at which the association may arise: to found a district church, no fewer than three volost churches are needed; to create a volost church, no fewer than three parish churches; and to found a parish itself, no fewer than 20 members (points 24, 27, 30). There is no resolution of the Sobor

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that a district church should resolve on its belonging to a still broader church association, that is, to the UAOC. About this, each parish decides by a majority vote of its lawful parishioners (point 4, XI), since volost and district church associations may not exist everywhere; hence the basic component part of the Church is the parish, and the entire Church is the "All-Ukrainian Union of Orthodox Parishes" (point 3, Chapter XI).

We think that this name arose and entered the resolutions on the church structure of the UAOC at the Sobor of 1921 in connection with the Bolshevik authority's decree in Ukraine on the separation of Church from State. As early as the spring of 1920, from the first Ukrainian parishes in Kyiv (numbering 5) and several outside Kyiv, a "Union of Ukrainian Parishes" was formed, whose statute was registered by the Soviet authorities. The Soviet authority's attitude toward the Church was not tolerant but hostile, and it soon turned into outright persecution of the Church and religion in general by various "legal" means. For the atheistic Soviet authority it was surely more convenient — for weakening and decomposing the Church — to deal not with the Church as an institution, strong in its unity of governance and life on the principles of divine law, whose roots of historical existence reach into the depths of centuries. Rather, it preferred to deal with an ordinary "union," on the model of other human societies and unions — a "Union" of Orthodox parishes, which had left behind "the old church order of the 2nd–3rd centuries in the Church," "the old hierarchical structure," "the old canonical Orthodoxy," and so on.

When the separation of Church from State was being carried out in France under the law of 1905, that law also ignored any church authority over French Catholics not only beyond the borders of France but within France itself, such as archiepiscopal dioceses with their chapters. In place of the Church, the law of 1905 permitted associations of worship (associations cultuelles), also allowing "Unions of Associations of Worship" by resolution of individual associations. Liturgical buildings with all their immovable and movable property, which had been at the disposal of bishops (under the Concordat with the Vatican of 1801), passed to the ownership of the state, departments, and communes, from which "associations of worship," after being registered by the authorities, could receive those buildings for use.

Thus the French law of 1905 imposed upon the Catholic Church in France a structure that the secular state authority desired, without regard to whether it corresponded in principle to Catholic ecclesiastical law. It is evident that the Soviet authority, in carrying out the separation of Church from State, very much followed the French law of 1905. An adaptation to the Soviet authority's decree of January 23, 1918, were, evidently, those resolutions of the Sobor of 1921 on various "unions," church associations — volost, city, district — into which parishes enter on the basis of resolutions of their assemblies. Therefore, in the resolutions regulating the life of parishes, we find (in point 22, 7) that parishes "enter into unions permitted by state laws with other Ukrainian parishes."

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It turns out that on file with the secular authorities are first of all separately registered parishes, as unions of members; then registered associations of those parishes follow. Thus the unity and monolithic quality of the Church was weakened... It seems that this secularization of the Church, its equalization with ordinary human unions or associations, was also what Archbishop (now Metropolitan) Teodorovych had in mind when he wrote: "Among the expressions of compulsion — expressions that do not flow naturally from the preceding processes of our church history — one must also count certain canons adopted at that time (at the Sobor of 1921). They were demanded by the then atmosphere of conditions and moods, an atmosphere elevated and created not by the Ukrainian milieu, but by influences outside it, hostile influences" (From the above-mentioned letter of October 16, 1947).

The organization of governance in the UAOC was constructed by the Sobor of 1921, in consistent development of the concept of the Church, on the principle of equality in the rights of church governance of bishops, clergy, and ordinary faithful. "The All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1921 thereby abolished," wrote Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "the old canonical church order, introduced as far back as the 2nd–3rd century in the Church, confirmed also by the Ecumenical Councils, with a firm belief that it does this under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in response to the demands of modern times, under whose guidance the old canons too were created in response to the demands of the times of old. And this the Sobor did with full consciousness"... ("The Creation of the Hierarchy and Other Acts of the UAOC Sobor").

Thus, applying the principle of equal rights in the governance of the Church for all its members, the Sobor concentrated church governance in the UAOC in elected Radas — All-Ukrainian, Small, district, volost, and parish — for which the binding authorities are the resolutions of the All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC and the Assemblies of district, volost, and parish churches (Chapter XI, Section G: Governing Bodies in the Ukrainian Church, points 31–86). These organs are staffed through elections, regardless of one's position or ministry in the Church — whether bishop, priest, or layperson, for "in the Church before Christ all are equal."

True, all bishops are members of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor without special election to the Sobor, but all members of the VPCR also take part in the Sobor by virtue of their position (point 32).

The All-Ukrainian Church Sobor was to be the highest legislative and judicial authority in the Church, but assembling as a rule only every five years, it could not play such a role in the constant governance of the Church's life as its executive organs — the VPCR with the Small Rada and the presidium of the Small Rada.

Therefore, we consider as the cardinal question the question of the rights and role of the episcopate and clergy in these governing organs at the top, and equally at the bottom, down to the parish radas and assemblies.

"The VPCR is the highest governing organ of the UAOC" (point 38, Chapter XI). "The Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine is considered the honorary chairman of the VPCR" (point 43), but whether he can be not "honorary" but actual chairman of the VPCR, even by election, is not mentioned in

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the church constitution of the UAOC. One should rather think that he cannot, for it is stated: "For presiding at sessions of the VPCR in the absence of the Metropolitan, and in his presence with the Metropolitan's blessing, the Rada at the Pokrova (Protection of the Theotokos) Assembly elects for a term of one year a chairman of the Rada and two vice-chairmen" (point 43).

The bishops of the UAOC are considered members of the Rada (point 41), but they participate in the Great Assemblies of the VPCR not all at once but in rotation, which the VPCR itself establishes (points 41, 3). As for the composition of the entire VPCR, the elections of its members were to be conducted not at the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, as the district, volost, and parish assemblies elected their councils. Members of the VPCR are elected first by the founding parishes of the "All-Ukrainian Union of Orthodox Parishes" — the Old Kyiv, Podil, Pechersk, and Lybid parishes in Kyiv — 10 members from each; from the remaining Ukrainian parishes of the city of Kyiv — 9 members. The cities of Kharkiv, Odessa, Poltava, Katerynoslav, Chernihiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Kamianets-Podilsky elect 3 members of the VPCR each; district church assemblies elect 3 members each, of whom 1 clergyman and 2 laypeople (point 41).

Since there were at that time up to 90 districts in the Ukrainian provinces, the theoretical total of all VPCR members, according to this constitution, would have to be calculated at over 350. Such a Rada was to assemble twice a year: on May 9/22 (St. Nicholas) and on the Pokrova, October 1/14 (point 44).

For conducting the current work of church governance, the VPCR elects a Small Rada in a number of members determined by resolution of the VPCR (point 46). The Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine is again considered the "honorary chairman" of the Small Rada, but "the presidium consists of the actual chairman of the VPCR, his vice-chairmen, the treasurer, and the secretary of the VPCR" (point 49).

"Honorary chairmen" of the "District (Eparchial) Radas" are also the district (eparchial) bishops (point 55), while the actual chairman and other members of the District (Eparchial) Church Rada, which "governs the life of the Church and the church economy, and also carries out all assignments of the higher church organs of the Ukrainian Church" (point 61), are elected by the District Assembly (point 62).

About any role of priests at the assemblies of volost and parish churches and in the volost and parish church radas (points 72–86 of Chapter XI), the resolutions of the Sobor of 1921 say absolutely nothing. The right to visit the parishes of the Ukrainian Church belongs to the Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine as a representative of the VPCR, while the district (eparchial) bishops visit the parishes of the district as representatives of the District Rada (points 37, 56) — and not by the right and duty of the archpastorate to which they were appointed by sacred ordination (khirotoniia).

The reform of church governance in the UAOC was reduced at the Kyiv Sobor of 1921 to sobornapravnist as the predominance — possibly complete — of the secular, lay element in church governance. We consider the degradation of the hierarchical principle in the Orthodox Church a specific influence

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of the revolutionary moods of the time. The episcopate and clergy were treated with distrust, pushed aside from the actual leadership of church life, because they supposedly "must earn for themselves spiritual authority, moral influence, and this depends on them, not formal command" (words of Metropolitan Lypkivsky), while the laity acquire for themselves that "command" in the Church through simple voting at electoral assemblies.

The structural canons of the UAOC the Sobor of 1921 built on the words of Christ: "The princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and the great ones exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you" (Matt. 20:25–28). But was the Lord speaking in these words about the structure of the Church on earth? Are these words a denial of all authority in the Church? And how then should one understand the words of Christ to His disciples-apostles: "He that heareth you heareth Me; and he that despiseth you despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me" (Luke 10:16); "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt. 18:18); "Receive ye the Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained" (John 20:22–23)?

How should one understand the words of the Apostle: "Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account" (Heb. 13:17); "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Spirit hath made you overseers, to feed the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood" (Acts 20:28); "Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification, and not to destruction" (2 Cor. 13:10)?

Obviously, the Sobor of 1921 confused the commandments and rules of a Christian's personal morality with the norms of the legal order in the Church as a divine institution — a legal order to which belongs first and foremost the division of the church community into the sacred hierarchy and the flock. Christ's words: "The princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them..." pertain to rules of a Christian's personal morality, not to the structure of the Church. In the Church, as in the state, persons who hold authority must regard, according to Christian teaching, their position as service for the good of society, of humanity, and not as dominion, still less coercion over people (and here Christ's words — Matt. 20:25–28 — apply), but neither in the state nor in the Church can they renounce the authority given them to command where necessary and to forbid where necessary; they cannot place above themselves those whom they are called to lead.

From the history of the struggle of individual national Orthodox churches for their autocephaly, we know of no instances when such a struggle was accompanied by a degradation of the very position of the hierarchy in the Church, of bishops and clergy. There was a struggle against a foreign hierarchy that abused its power over a Church dependent on it with a different national composition of the flock, but this did not affect the attitude

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toward the hierarchical principle itself in the Orthodox Church. On the contrary, the authority of the clergy who went in this struggle for ecclesiastical independence together with their people, and often led it, only grew, as did the trust in them in their leadership of church life, in accordance with the church-canonical rights belonging to them — rights that were not called "old canonical shackles," "rusty episcopal chains," "episcopal-autocratic structure," and the like.

Therefore, it is difficult for us to understand the degradation and distrust toward the Ukrainian national hierarchy exhibited in the organization of the internal structure of the UAOC of 1921 other than as the influence of the revolutionary moods of the time, intensified by the sharpness of the struggle of the Russian episcopate in Ukraine, hostile to the revival of the Ukrainian people, against the Ukrainian national-church movement.

Among the other resolutions of the Sobor of 1921, one must note those concerning the marital status of the entire sacred hierarchy of the Church, the episcopate and clergy. The Sobor decreed: "The married state cannot be an obstacle to the acquisition of all degrees of the clerical rank, up to and including the episcopal, by persons worthy of it both from the moral and the educational standpoint. In the matter of acquiring the episcopal rank, celibates (unmarried clergy/monastics) shall have no privileges. In matters of marriage and the dissolution of marriages, the clergy of the Ukrainian Church are subject to the general laws" (points 16, 17, 18 of Chapter XI).

Thus, according to these resolutions of the Sobor of 1921, bishops, priests, and deacons may enter into marriage after having been already ordained as unmarried; they may, having been married before ordination and having become widowers or having divorced their former wife after ordination, marry a second and third time while remaining in their "existing sacred rank" — that is, in the matter of marriage and the dissolution of marriages, bishops, priests, and deacons are fully equalized with laypeople.

This radical reform regarding the marital status of the clergy of the UAOC was a complete violation of Apostolic Canons 17, 18, 26, of the canons of the Universal Orthodox Church (Canons 3, 6, 12 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council; Ancyra, Canon 10; Neocaesarea, Canon 1), and of the centuries-old tradition in the clerical estate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

No circumstances in the struggle for the independence of the Ukrainian Church could, it seems, have forced this reform, and we have never read anywhere about its being forced. Metropolitan Nikanor writes about this reform that it is "a gross violation of the canons of the Orthodox Church and in its essence un-Orthodox" ("The Dogmatic-Canonical Structure of the Holy Orthodox Universal Church," Bohoslovskyi Visnyk, no. 1, 1948, p. 22).

The connection of the episcopal rank with monasticism was also part of the Ukrainian Church throughout its entire history, from the times of the holy Prince Volodymyr. The abolition of this historical tradition by the resolution of the Sobor of 1921 was not motivated by anything. The Sobor did not abolish monasteries but only decreed that monasteries "should be transformed in the direction of the original (?) monastic religious-labor communities, in accordance with the conditions of contemporary general

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church life," and expressed the wish that monasteries "should enter, as separate brotherhoods, into the composition of parishes" (Chapter IX: 1, 2).

The Sobor of 1921 also dealt with the question of the worldwide union of Orthodox Autocephalous Churches. In the Sobor's resolutions, the view was expressed that "the organ of worldwide inter-church union should be a body of elected representatives of all autocephalous churches" (Chapter II, 4). The initiative regarding such a union and the convening for that purpose of an Ecumenical Council should, in the opinion of the Sobor of 1921, come from the UAOC, as we see from the following resolution of the Sobor: "To recognize it as necessary that the VPCR immediately see to the convening in the city of Kyiv on May 9/22, 1922, of a preparatory conference of representatives of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches of the World for the discussion and resolution of questions regarding the convening in the near future of a World Orthodox Church Sobor" (Resolution VII on individual questions).

Characteristic of the same spirit of messianism, little comprehensible in the circumstances of "Soviet reality" that was descending upon Ukraine, was also the VPCR's epistle to the clergy of Ukraine, issued in December 1921 following the Sobor and the creation of the Ukrainian hierarchy.

"Life and death, blessing and curse has the Lord God placed before us in these last times," the VPCR addresses the clergy. "Choose then life and blessing, that ye may live, ye and your seed. Open your eyes and understand that by the invincible will of God a great, irreversible shift has occurred in the general life of the world, that the old is being destroyed, that God Himself calls you to the new building, to the creation of new life. And first of all He calls you, the leaders of the eternally living life according to the truth and teaching of Christ — you, the spiritual leaders of our Church, which in painful travail is winning for itself the right to a free and equal spiritual life with other churches after long oppression...

You are troubled by the fear of violating the old canons. Open your eyes and understand that in the general destruction of everything old, those old narrow buildings of the past church life must inevitably be destroyed and new, more spacious ones built... For the eternally living Church of Christ must be an eternally creative Church, shaping its life in accordance with the general conditions of the times...

Cast off from yourselves the yoke of slavish submission to episcopal autocracy in the Church... There is now before you an immeasurably greater and the only worthy path of service for a servant of God — to be the first servant of one's national living Church. Take this path then...

You are very troubled by the creation by the Ukrainian Church of its own episcopate not in the way traditional for the times of episcopal autocracy, but in the early-apostolic, conciliar-church manner. But understand that in this event the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor committed no violation of the Orthodox faith, no destruction of the dogmas of the Orthodox Church. It merely used the most worthy and most appropriate manner — appropriate to the dignity of the Ukrainian Church and the spirit of the

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Christian faith — of creating, by the power of its own faith and hope, the highest organs for the renewal of its church life...

You fear that the Universal Church will not recognize this event of ours? That Universal Church which is built on the ground of the Orthodox faith but in accordance with the new demands of life — the living Church, the Church of the future — will undoubtedly recognize this event as a consequence of living life. And the Universal Church of the past, the Church that is a ruin — where is it? Let not those anathemas with which the leaders and supporters of the old Church — a coffin — shower us frighten you. Not us, but themselves do they excommunicate from life to death"... (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2–3, 1927, pp. 241–243. Emphasis ours.)

The epistle was signed by the Honorary Chairman of the Rada, Metropolitan Lypkivsky; the elected Chairman of the Rada, Mykhailo Moroz; his deputy Hryhorii Vovkushivsky; and six members of the Rada, among them Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky and Protopresbyter Ksenofont Sokolovsky. The signature of Fr. Sokolovsky, who at the Sobor of 1921 had delivered a report against the "conciliar consecration" of the episcopate, testifies that he remained in the UAOC and in the VPCR, and did not "join Exarch Mikhail," as K. V. Fotiev untruthfully wrote (Op. cit., p. 35).

4. The external growth of the UAOC after the Kyiv Sobor of 1921. Church Okruhas of the UAOC; their spiritual leaders — the Bishops. Statistics of UAOC parishes; "weekly" or "shared" parishes. What stood in the way of the UAOC's expansion.

Descending from the lofty dreams in the VPCR's appeal cited at the end of the previous subsection — about "the living Church, the Church of the future" as opposed to "the Universal Church of the past," "the Church that is a ruin" — we now turn to the narration of actual events and the state of the UAOC's life after the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, called "the Sobor of Revival" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1, 1927, p. 114). Here we must first establish the fact that in what has been written to date about the life of the UAOC in Ukraine in 1921–30, we do not have a full, clear, and — insofar as possible — objective historical picture of that life.

In so evaluating the historical literature about the UAOC in Ukraine, we entirely disregard such "works" by Russian authors as the pamphlet-like brochure by S. Ranevsky, "The Ukrainian Autocephalous Church" (Ukrainskaya Avtokefalnaya Tserkov), or K. V. Fotiev's "Attempts at Ukrainian Church Autocephaly in the 20th Century" (Popytki Ukrainskoi Tserkovnoi Avtokefalii v XX veke). S. Ranevsky from the outset treats the creation of the UAOC as a scheme of the Bolshevik "Soviet system" during the era of the "Ukrainian NEP," whose executor was supposedly Mykola Skrypnyk, "a true Ukrainian patriot and nationalist," who "directed his main attention to the Ukrainianization of the Orthodox Church, which at that time was united and strong and constituted one whole with the Russian Church" (p. 3). K. Fotiev, though among his sources he did have this pamphlet by S. Ranevsky (whom he redesignated as Raevskago S.), sees the source of "Lypkivshchyna" not in the "Soviet system" and Commissar Skrypnyk, but in the "priestly movement

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backed by the Petliurite administration" (p. 20), although no such administration existed in Ukraine at all in 1921 and thereafter. Obviously, one cannot seriously treat the historical "discoveries" of S. Ranevsky or K. Fotiev. We have mentioned them here again only to emphasize the utter recklessness of even serious people in their political hatred of the Ukrainian church-liberation movement, for S. Ranevsky's pamphlet came from the bosom of the Russian Church Abroad, from the press of the Venerable Job of Pochaiv at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, USA, while K. Fotiev's brochure was accompanied by a favorable introduction from the learned church historian A. V. Kartashev, former professor of the Petrograd Theological Academy and former minister of confessions in the Russian Provisional Government.

No, speaking of the absence of a truthfully historical portrait of the UAOC's life after the Sobor of 1921, we have in mind such a state in the Ukrainian Orthodox literature itself about these times in the history of our Church. This state can be characterized as two opposite poles: we see, on the one hand, an immoderate glorification of the internal life of the UAOC, a glorification of it entirely, without any shadows that might fall on its life through the fault of the church communities themselves or of individual leaders. Such a portrayal, especially by "living witnesses" of those times here in emigration, has become latterly a kind of standard. On the other hand, we find in the Ukrainian church press a completely opposite — and equally passionate — portrayal of the life and significance of the UAOC in the church-religious history of our people, superlatively negative compared to the first.

Here we read:

The revolution of 1917 came, and raged across the entire East... Loudmouths and destroyers immediately set about our Church and immediately seized it into their hands... And the tragedy of 1921 occurred — the creation of the UAOC. The Church was completely seized by the extreme left, led by Bolsheviks, both their own and others'. And in the atmosphere of socialist intoxication the UAOC arose. This Church decisively broke both with the traditional, centuries-old Ukrainian Church and with the centuries-old tradition of the purity of Orthodoxy. This unprecedented new creation decisively broke with the very soul of Orthodoxy — with the canons of the Seven Ecumenical Councils — and manufactured 'canons' of its own. The centuries-old Ukrainian church ideology was crudely trampled. Illiterate loudmouths and demagogues called this 'the Revival of the Ukrainian Church,' whereas it was a complete break with the traditional, age-old Ukrainian Church. For revival means the restoration of what was, and what was manufactured in 1921 had never existed in the Ukrainian Church in all the centuries of its history...

>

And the church revolution spun on. Widowed clergy married, a married episcopate appeared, bishops were 'consecrated' by the people... At the head of the Church stood a secular Church Rada, as its supreme organ. The metropolitan and bishops were stripped of their age-old titles; their duties were specified (UAOC canons, point 37): to care for the cleanliness of the church and church utensils... The Sacred Canons of the Ecumenical Councils were broken; their own new ones were created... This Church was called 'conciliar-governed'

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(sobornapravna), understanding by this not the historical governance of the Church by its Sobors, but secular council-rule. And they created the 'canons of 1921' — a burning shame for Ukraine for all eternity... All this struck extraordinarily hard at the respect for the Ukrainian Church, and now no one recognizes it, and in the best case they treat it with suspicion...

>

— Slovo Istyny, Monthly of the Publishing Committee of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Winnipeg, January 1950, pp. 6–9

The absence of unanimity regarding the role of the UAOC of the 1920s in the spiritual life of our people gave occasion for one of our distinguished archpastors to write to the author of this work about the UAOC: "Today people have not yet matured enough to decide what it was: an adventure, a provocation, or truly a spontaneous eruption of what had boiled up in the soul of the people; historians, on the basis of the material presented by Metropolitan Lypkivsky (Chapter VII of the History of the Ukrainian Church), will in time impartially sort it out and decide in what category to place all of this."

There is no doubt for us that the material preserved in Metropolitan Lypkivsky's memoirs about the times of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is insufficient for one to be able to give either a more or less complete, or to the best of one's ability impartial, history of the UAOC under the Bolshevik regime until its liquidation by that regime. But those memoirs give the Ukrainian historian a firm moral support for composing a true history of the UAOC, and not a legend, or, as Shevchenko expressed it, a "poem of a free people" (in the "Epistle to the Living and the Dead and the Unborn"), because Metropolitan Lypkivsky himself in those memoirs presents not only lights but also shadows from the inner life of the revived UOC — at times perhaps even exaggerated shadows — which the panegyrists, especially the "living witnesses," usually pass over in silence.

Those shadows were also not passed over in silence by other distinguished archpastors of the UAOC besides Metropolitan Lypkivsky; relying also on their testimonies, we must recount here the fate and significance of the UAOC without exaggeration in one direction or the other, but at the same time without any pretensions to historical completeness and infallible conciseness, for which we do not have sufficient materials.

With the creation at the Sobor of 1921 of the UAOC hierarchy, a rapid growth in the number of UAOC parishes begins. "The life of the Ukrainian Church through the restoration of the hierarchy was not only saved," we read in the "Historical Memorandum of the VPCR," "but reached such a strength that is proof that the act of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1921 was not a human work but God's" ("Ts. i Zh.," no. 2–3, 1927, p. 145). For with the creation of its own episcopate, the possibility appeared of ordaining new Ukrainian priests for parishes that demanded a Ukrainian priest. The old clergy in the parishes for the most part held, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes, "for canonical considerations and material advantages" to the old Moscow episcopate in Ukraine, which, in the words of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "is hopelessly hostile to us; the same can be said of the old clergy, which is entirely unsuited to the new life

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and, sensing this, resists and tries to hold the people back on the old positions as well." The transition of the old clergy to the jurisdiction of the UAOC was extraordinarily hindered by the counteraction of the Moscow episcopate, which proclaimed the bishops of the "new national, in the expression of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, grace" to be pseudo-bishops, the Holy Mysteries performed by the UAOC clergy invalid, and ordered the reconsecration of churches and altars that had been in the use of autocephalist priests.

As we know, the Sobor of 1921 in constructing the local associations of UAOC members rejected the division into large dioceses, which on Ukrainian lands at that time were: Kyiv, Chernihiv, Volynia, Podillia, Poltava, Kharkiv, Katerynoslav, Kherson, and Kholm (the last found itself within the borders of the restored Republic of Poland in 1918). According to the resolutions of the Kyiv UAOC Sobor of 1921 regarding the organization of the Ukrainian Church, "district (povitovi) church associations," called in parentheses "eparchial," were to arise instead of those large dioceses that territorially and administratively corresponded to the pre-revolutionary provinces. But this name did not hold in the practice of church life, just as the name "eparchy" also disappeared. Instead of "district" (povit), the name "okruha" (circuit/region) came and was established in official documents. In the church life of the UAOC, each unit was called a "church okruha" with the addition of a proper name by territory — "Kyiv church okruha," "Bila Tserkva," "Uman," "Lubny," etc.

According to the internal statute of the UAOC, for the creation of a church okruha that has the right to elect a bishop, it was necessary that no fewer than three volost (this name too did not hold; instead came "raion," "raion church rada") church associations unite (Chapter XI, B, 30), and for the creation of a volost (raion) church association, no fewer than three parishes had to unite (XI, B, 27). Thus, according to these conciliar resolutions, a completely insignificant minimum was required — namely 9 parishes — to create a church okruha that could elect its own bishop. To bring the bishop closer to the flock, as was the case in early Christian times — this idea evidently guided the ideologues of the UAOC in building its structure on such small church okruhas.

In the first years after the Sobor of 1921, we indeed see a kind of fervor (on territory, admittedly, closer to Kyiv) for the creation of separate okruhas and elections of bishops in them, but for reasons that will be clarified later, this fervor cooled, and the church okruhas, in place of eparchies, more or less stabilized before the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, after which the liquidation of the UAOC in Ukraine proceeded rapidly. Such okruha churches of the UAOC as Bohuslav, Zvenyhorod, Chyhyryn, Skvyra, Tarashcha, Lypovets, Radomysl, Lokhvytsia, Zolotonosha, and others did not hold.

At the end of 1926, on the basis of a resolution of the Great Pokrova Assembly of the UAOC of October 25–30, 1926, the Presidium of the VPCR carried out "without disturbing the boundaries of state okruhas and raions" the following division of the UAOC into church okruhas:

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  1. Berdychiv, consisting of the Berdychiv and Shepetivka okruhas, under the spiritual leadership of Archbishop Stepan Orlyk;
  2. Bila Tserkva, under the spiritual leadership of Bishop Yurii Teslenko;
  3. Vinnytsia, consisting of the Vinnytsia and Mohyliv okruhas, under the leadership of Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych;
  4. Volynia, consisting of the Zhytomyr and Korosten okruhas; no spiritual leader at that time;
  5. Dnipropetrovsk, consisting of the Dnipropetrovsk, Kryvyi Rih, and Zaporizhzhia okruhas; no spiritual leader;
  6. Kamianets, under the leadership of Bishop Volodymyr Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky;
  7. Kyiv city, under the spiritual leadership of the Metropolitan;
  8. Kyiv (rural), under the spiritual leadership of Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky and Archbishop Feodosii (Pereiaslavshchyna);
  9. Konotop, consisting of the Konotop and Hlukhiv okruhas, under the spiritual leadership of Bishop Oleksander Chervinsky;
  10. Lubny, under the leadership of Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk;
  11. Odessa, consisting of the Odessa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson okruhas; no spiritual leader;
  12. Poltava, consisting of the Poltava and Kremenchuk okruhas, under the leadership of Bishop Yurii Shevchenko;
  13. Proskuriv, under the leadership of Bishop Maksym Zadvirnyak;
  14. Romny, consisting of the Romny and Pryluky okruhas; no spiritual leader;
  15. Tulchyn, under the spiritual leadership of Bishops Mykola Karabinevych and Mykola Boretsky;
  16. Uman, under the spiritual leadership of Bishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych;
  17. Kharkiv, consisting of all okruhas of Slobozhanshchyna and the Donbas; no spiritual leader;
  18. Cherkasy (sometimes also called Shevchenkivska), consisting of the Cherkasy and Zynovievsk (Yelysavethrad) okruhas, under the spiritual leadership of Bishop Yukhym Kalishevsky;
  19. Chernihiv, consisting of the Chernihiv and Nizhyn okruhas, under the leadership of Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky;
  20. Balta, consisting of the Pershotravneve okruha and the AMSR (Autonomous Moldavian Republic), under the spiritual leadership of Bishop Anton Hrynevych.

(Minutes No. 2 of the session of the VPCR Presidium of November 3, 1926 — "Okruha Ukrainian Autocephalous Churches" — list of UAOC okruhas sent by the VPCR on November 15, 1926 to Archbishop of America Ioan Teodorovych.)

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When the church okruhas of the UAOC confirmed above by the VPCR are examined territorially in relation to the former Orthodox dioceses on Ukrainian lands, one can easily notice a significant unevenness in the spread of the UAOC across the former dioceses of Ukraine.

Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, was, as we have seen, the center of the national-church liberation movement from 1917. It is entirely natural, therefore, that in the Kyiv diocese, in the Kyiv region, after the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, the greatest number of parishes joined the UAOC. Here, according to the list of the end of 1926, we have 6 okruhas (Berdychiv, Bila Tserkva, Kyiv — 2, Uman, Cherkasy), and of those that did not hold as separate okruhas, 7 were also in the Kyiv region.

After the Kyiv region comes Podillia — 4 okruhas (Vinnytsia, Tulchyn, Proskuriv, Kamianets); then Poltava region — 3 okruhas (Lubny, Poltava, Romny); Chernihiv region — 2 okruhas (Chernihiv, Konotop); Volynia — 1 okruha (Zhytomyr); Kharkiv region or Slobozhanshchyna — 1 okruha; the former Katerynoslav eparchy, now Dnipropetrovsk region — 1 okruha; the former Kherson eparchy, with cathedra in Odessa, also 1 okruha; and finally, in the very south of Podillia, the Balta okruha, about which Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR on May 11–13, 1927, said that there was no such okruha church at all, but only Bishop Anton Hrynevych, who held the title of "Balta" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 11–13, 1927).

This fact of the uneven spread of the UAOC across Ukraine will become still more vivid when we speak no longer of the number of okruhas in the territories of the former dioceses but of the number of parishes in them.

Of the 34 bishops of the UAOC during the metropolitanate of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, whom he names in his memoirs (Chapter VII, Revival of the Ukrainian Church), the official VPCR list of the UAOC in November 1926 contains only 17 as active bishops of the UAOC at that time. We present information first about these 17 spiritual leaders who were active in the UAOC a year before the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC.

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, the spiritual leader, according to the statute of the UOC (XI, G, 35), of the entire UAOC, with the title "Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine," was elected specifically as bishop by the Kyiv city okruha (consisting of 9 Ukrainian parishes of the city of Kyiv); by the state government he was deprived of the right to leave Kyiv and was therefore entirely restricted in his rights as Metropolitan of the entire UAOC (more detail about the relations between the government and Metropolitan Lypkivsky will be discussed in its proper place).

Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, born 1865, graduate of the Kyiv Theological Academy, was consecrated as bishop, as we know, by the Sobor of 1921 for the Kyiv region and elected deputy of the Metropolitan; in view of the fact that in the Kyiv region (the former Kyiv eparchy), according to Metropolitan Lypkivsky's testimony, in the first years (after the Sobor of 1921) 10 UAOC bishops worked, Archbishop Sharaivsky did not always have a definite church okruha assigned to him for spiritual leadership, working

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more as deputy of the Metropolitan and member of the VPCR Presidium in Kyiv (especially in the work of translating liturgical texts and as chairman of the Pre-Sobor Commission), without having his own cathedra in Kyiv.

Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk, born September 9, 1894, in a peasant family in the village of Lukovysko (in Pidliashshia/Podlasie), completed the Kholm Theological Seminary and the Kyiv Theological Academy, where he was retained as a professorial stipendiary in the chair of patrology. In January 1919, he was appointed docent at Kamianets University in the chair of the history of the Christian Church; after the reorganization of Kamianets University into an Institute of Public Education in 1920, he taught general history at the Institute. In May 1922, he accepted the priesthood, and in June of the same year was elected and consecrated as bishop of the UAOC for the cathedra in Kamianets. In mid-1923, the Lubny church, following the transfer of its spiritual leader Archbishop Oleksander Yareshchenko to Kharkiv, elected Bishop Oksiuk as its bishop. In 1926–27, Archbishop Yosyf was deprived by the state government of the right to travel beyond the boundaries of the Lubny-Myrhorod okruha.

Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych, born February 2, 1890, in a clerical family (village of Zhylyntsi in Volynia), completed the Volynia Theological Seminary and the Kyiv Theological Academy in 1916; he accepted the priesthood in his third year at the Academy. From 1916 to the end of 1921, he worked in Uman (Kyiv region), first as a religion teacher in schools, and from the revolution of 1917 as a teacher in secondary schools; in August 1921, he organized the first Ukrainian parish in Uman and became its rector. In February 1922, he was elected and consecrated as Bishop of Uman; in 1924, he was elected to the Katerynoslav cathedra, which he also tended without severing his connection with the Uman okruha; in 1925, he renounced Katerynoslav and remained only as Bishop of Uman.

Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych, born 1872, with a higher legal education, before the revolution was a prosecutor of the district court in Poltava; he accepted the priesthood in 1918; in March 1922, at the Poltava okruha sobor, he was elected bishop of the UAOC for Poltava (in January 1922, Archbishop of Poltava Parfeniy Levytsky had died); in 1924, he transferred first to Zhytomyr (for a short time) and then was elected to the Vinnytsia cathedra.

Bishop Yurii Shevchenko, born February 17, 1885, completed the Odessa Theological Seminary, a priest from 1911; in 1914–17 he was a military chaplain; in April 1922 he was consecrated as bishop for the Skvyra church okruha; in 1924 he was elected to the Poltava cathedra.

Bishop Yukhym Kalishevsky, born 1892, son of a teacher; after completing university, worked as a pedagogue in Kyiv; consecrated as UAOC bishop in February 1922 for the Zvenyhorod area, which soon entered the composition of the Cherkasy (Shevchenkivska) church okruha, whose cathedra Bishop Kalishevsky occupied.

Bishop Mykola Boretsky (later Metropolitan of the UAOC), son of a priest, born December 6, 1879, in the town of Sarny in the Kyiv region.

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Orphaned at age five and left in the care of his mother. Theological education — Uman Theological School and Kyiv Theological Seminary — 1901; 1902 — short-term pedagogical courses in Kharkiv. In 1902–04, worked as a teacher in schools in the Kyiv region. From 1904, in the priestly rank, was rector of parishes in Podillia (village of Kokhanivka, Mala Zhmerynka, town of Zhmerynka, town of Haisyn), religion teacher in the gymnasia of Zhmerynka and Haisyn, a teachers' institute in Vinnytsia, and a teachers' seminary in Cherkasy. Performed the duties of military chaplain and dean of the 65th Infantry Division in 1914–16 during the World War. In 1921, joined the UAOC. At the Sobor of 1921, he was elected among other candidates as a bishop of the UAOC and was consecrated in February 1922 as Bishop of Haisyn. A Haisyn okruha did not actually exist; the former Haisyn district was part of the Tulchyn okruha, which was in the process of being organized.

Bishop Boretsky, in letters to the VPCR Presidium of December 15, 1926 and January 21, 1927, asked to be relieved of the assigned duties of overseeing the Tulchyn church okruha and to be counted only as rector of St. Nicholas Church in Haisyn, which he in fact was (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session No. 5/25, January 25, 1927, item 10).

Bishop Mykola Karabinevych, born in Podillia in 1888, completed the Podillia Theological Seminary, accepted the priesthood in 1911, was consecrated as bishop in April 1923 for Mohyliv-Podilsky, but according to the VPCR's list of church okruhas in November 1926, the Mohyliv okruha was part of the Vinnytsia okruha. At the reports from the field at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR on May 11–13, 1927, regarding the Mohyliv okruha, it was recorded: "Bishop M. Karabinevych provides information. But he cannot say anything because the okruha is actually managed by Archbishop K. Krotevych, who also could say nothing" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 11–13, 1927, p. 13).

At the Great Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR in 1926, Bishop Karabinevych provided information about the Tulchyn church okruha; he resided in the village of Yalanets, former Yampil district, where he evidently had a parish. The absence of a church for a UAOC episcopal cathedra in the town of Tulchyn was the reason, one must think, for the disorderly church life of the UAOC in the Tulchyn okruha.

Bishop Anton Hrynevych, born July 23, 1870, in the Kherson region, completed the Odessa Theological Seminary, accepted the priesthood in 1897, was a member of the Russian State Duma (1907) and of the Ukrainian faction in it; joined the UAOC in 1921. Consecrated as bishop in August 1923 with the title of Balta; resided at his long-standing rural parish near Odessa.

Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky, born May 20, 1890, in the priestly rank from 1914. Consecrated as UAOC bishop at the beginning of 1922 for the Cherkasy-Chyhyryn okruha, which he soon left, having been elected bishop by the Chernihiv okruha. On December 1, 1926, at an okruha sobor in Kharkiv, he was elected Archbishop of Kharkiv

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and took the Kharkiv cathedra, where from 1927 he was also the responsible editor of the UAOC organ Tserkva i Zhyttia.

Archbishop Stepan Orlyk, born January 9, 1891, in Volynia, a priest from 1916. Was consecrated as bishop for Volynia at the Sobor of 1921 (those consecrated during the Sobor of 1921 received, by the Sobor's resolution, the title of Archbishop). Left the Zhytomyr cathedra and after 1924 was spiritual leader of the Berdychiv-Shepetivka okruha, whose representative at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 11–13, 1927 (Protopresbyter M. Kudria) complained about the absence in the okruha of "a definite, appropriate senior spiritual leader" (Minutes of the named assembly, p. 10).

Bishop Volodymyr Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky, born 1893 in the Poltava region, a priest from 1917, consecrated as UAOC bishop on January 1, 1922, for Pereiaslavshchyna. Left the Pereiaslav okruha due to misunderstandings with the Okruha Rada; at first temporarily, then permanently, was spiritual leader of the Kamianets okruha. On February 15, 1927, was elected spiritual leader of the Tulchyn okruha.

Archbishop Feodosii Serhiiev joined the UAOC from the Russian Church in 1924. Consecrated on February 2, 1923, by hierarchs of the jurisdiction of Patriarch Tikhon as vicar Bishop of Pryluky (Poltava eparchy); when the Synodal-Renovationist Church was organized in Ukraine (in October 1923), Feodosii went over to the Renovationists, became the eparchial bishop of that Church in the Poltava region, and at that time married a young woman (he had been a widowed priest). Metropolitan Pimen of Kharkiv (Renovationist) banned Feodosii from the priesthood, and then he went over to the UAOC. He was quite active; after Bishop Dakhivnyk, he organized Pereiaslavshchyna again as a separate church okruha, worked in the Berdychiv area and in the Kamianets okruha; later he apparently left the clergy and lived in the house of his father-in-law (Fr. Heyer, Op. cit., pp. 104–105).

Bishop Maksym Zadvirnyak, born 1882 in Podillia, a priest from 1915. Consecrated as UAOC bishop in June 1923 for the Proskuriv okruha, in which, however, he had to have his seat 75 km from Proskuriv itself, in the parish of Ivankivtsi, where he was rector — the consequences for church life of the okruha were sorrowful (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session of February 8, 1927).

Bishop Oleksander Chervinsky, born 1886, consecrated as bishop in 1925; was spiritual leader of the Konotop-Hlukhiv okruha, from where he transferred at the beginning of 1927 to the Chernihiv-Nizhyn cathedra.

Bishop Yurii Teslenko, born 1894 in Podillia, a priest from 1918; consecrated as UAOC bishop in 1925; was spiritual leader of the Bila Tserkva okruha, compelled at that time to reside outside the center of his okruha.

To these 17 bishops, presented by the VPCR Presidium in November 1926 as active spiritual leaders of church okruhas of the UAOC

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in Ukraine at that time, one must add as also active in the UAOC at that time, as members of the VPCR Presidium of the UAOC in Kyiv, the following bishops: Petro Romodaniv, Marko Hrushevsky, and Yakiv Chulaivsky.

Bishop Petro Romodaniv, a native of the Poltava region, was consecrated as UAOC bishop in October 1923 for the Lokhvytsia okruha (Poltava region), but he spent little time in the okruha, fulfilling for about two years the duties of legal representative of the UAOC in Kharkiv — "with little benefit for the UAOC but probably more for the DPU [secret police]," as Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky says (Chapter VII, Revival of the Ukrainian Church). In September 1926, at a consultation of bishops and representatives of the UAOC in Kyiv, he was elected chairman of the "Commission for the Normalization of the Life of the UAOC," and at the Great Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR on October 25–30, 1926, he was elected chairman of the VPCR Presidium.

Bishop Marko Hrushevsky was consecrated as bishop in July 1922 for Volynia (according to Metropolitan Lypkivsky's letter to Fr. Korsunovsky, July 23, 1922), but was initially spiritual leader of the Konotop okruha (Chernihiv region), then of the Tarashcha okruha (Kyiv region), then for a long time without a position (Metropolitan Lypkivsky's letter to Archbishop Teodorovych, November 11, 1926), and at the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1926 was elected a member of the VPCR Presidium — head of the Evangelism Department, after V. M. Chekhivsky declined this election (Minutes of the Assembly, p. 21).

Bishop Yakiv Chulaivsky, born 1889, a priest from 1914, consecrated as UAOC bishop on the Pokrova of 1923 for the Berdychiv okruha; was spiritual leader of the Hlukhiv okruha (Chernihiv region), then without a position; at the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1926 he was elected a member of the VPCR Presidium — head of the Department of Church Education.

Outside Ukraine, from among the UAOC episcopate consecrated during the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, the active bishop on a cathedra was Archbishop (now Metropolitan) Ioan Teodorovych, who headed in North America at that time the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the USA and the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church in Canada. Born October 6, 1887, in Volynia, he completed the Volynia Theological Seminary, was a military chaplain of the UNR and a participant in the liberation struggle of 1918–19, after which he settled in the only parish of his life, in the village of Mytnytsi, Starokostiantyniv district in Volynia, where the events in the history of the UAOC of 1921 found him.

In the spring of that year, Fr. Teodorovych, as a delegate of the clergy of his deanery, attended the Volynia Eparchial Congress in Zhytomyr. Representatives of the All-Ukrainian Church Rada also arrived at that congress from Kyiv; among 300 priest-delegates of the diocese, only Fr. Ioan Teodorovych stood in defense of the ideas and work of the VPCR in Kyiv, moreover speaking in the Ukrainian language. His speech was met with indignation by the Volynia clergy, which was to be expected from the clergy of a diocese on whose cathedra in the 20th century there had been such prominent hierarchs and

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activists of the idea of an indivisible and mono-national Tsarist Russia as Archbishops Antoniy Khrapovitsky and Evlogy Heorhievsky, while the Pochaiv Lavra in Volynia, with its abbot Archimandrite Vitaliy Maksymenko, was a fortress of the organization "Union of the Russian People," of which many of the Volynia clergy were members.

During the eparchial congress, Fr. Teodorovych established contact with the representatives of the Kyiv Church Rada, and after that began the work of national-ecclesiastical awakening of the Volynia peasantry. At the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, he was one of its most active members. The Sobor elected him (Fr. Teodorovych was a widowed priest) as the third candidate (after Frs. Lypkivsky and Sharaivsky) for the episcopate, to the cathedra of Bishop of Podillia and Vinnytsia, and he was the first to receive the nomination (narechennia) and episcopal consecration (khirotoniia) (October 25 — nomination, October 26 — consecration) from the first two bishops of the UAOC, Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky and Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky (Ioan, Archbishop, "A String of Recollections," Ukrainian Orthodox Calendar for 1951, New York, pp. 90–98).

After two years of archpastoral work in Podillia, Archbishop of Podillia and Vinnytsia Ioan Teodorovych, after communications with the VPCR of the Spiritual Consistory of the UOC in the USA, which procured the necessary documents, departed on January 9, 1924, for America, and on February 13 arrived to his Ukrainian flock in the New World (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 4, 1927, p. 355).

Archbishop Oleksander Yareshchenko, born September 12, 1890, in the Poltava region, completed the Moscow Theological Academy. Besides his theological education, he completed a higher technical school, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes in Chapter VII of the History of the Ukrainian Church; unfortunately, Metropolitan Lypkivsky did not indicate which school exactly. Archbishop Oleksander Yareshchenko belongs among the most distinguished hierarchs of the UAOC.

Metropolitan Ioan Teodorovych writes about his first meeting with him: "By the window (in the hall during the Sobor of 1921) I saw in a heated discussion a tall, handsome brunet with a small, military-style 'square' beard. He immediately attracted my attention. There was something unusual in him: high intelligence, refinement, and the restrained emotionality of a nervous temperament. I admired him. This was Oleksander Yareshchenko, later Archbishop of Kharkiv... He was convincing his interlocutor that the Sobor under present circumstances must resolve upon a decisive, radical step — namely, must install a metropolitan by the ordination of the priesthood present"... (Op. cit., pp. 95–96).

At the Sobor of 1921 in Kyiv, Yareshchenko was a representative from the Poltava region, where he held the position of Director of the Poltava Railway, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes, noting that Yareshchenko traded this position for the "crown of thorns of the episcopate in our Church." In Fr. Heyer we also find confirmation that Yareshchenko held the position of a railway official (Op. cit., p. 88); from Fr. D. Burko we learn that O. Yareshchenko, besides the Theological Academy, also completed the "Institute of Railroad Engineers" (Institut Inzhenerov Putei Soobshcheniia)

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in St. Petersburg, which is consistent with his high position on the railway. But Protopresbyter Mitrofan Yavdas states that, besides the Theological Academy, O. Yareshchenko completed the law faculty of Kyiv University, while also calling O. Yareshchenko a "doctor of theology," probably thinking that all who completed theological academies in Russia were "doctors of theology" (The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Munich — 1956 — Ingolstadt, p. 63). It is sad that we have not even taken care to this day to collect more concise biographical data about such hierarchs of the UAOC as Archbishop Oleksander Yareshchenko.

At the Sobor of 1921, he was consecrated on October 28 as bishop for the Poltava region, but began his archpastoral work not in Poltava, where Archbishop of Poltava Parfeniy Levytsky was on the cathedra, but in Lubny, from where in mid-1923 he moved to Kharkiv, at the invitation of the UAOC community at St. Nicholas Church. At the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR on May 25–30, 1924, Archbishop Oleksander Yareshchenko was almost unanimously elected first deputy of the Chairman of the VPCR Presidium (the Chairman at that time was elected as Protodeacon Vasyl Potiienko). His activity in the composition of the Presidium of the Second VPCR of the UAOC will be discussed elsewhere.

"On March 18, 1926," writes Metropolitan Lypkivsky to Archbishop Teodorovych in America, "on the fifth anniversary of the Kharkiv parish's existence, Archbishop Oleksander somehow expressed himself carelessly about oppression by the authorities, and on April 1, 1926, he was arrested, and on April 22 sent to Moscow, and from there to exile in Tashkent, where he remains to this day" (letter of November 11, 1926).

Archbishop Oleksander Yareshchenko was the first of the UAOC hierarchs to be exiled by the Bolshevik Soviet authority to the far reaches from Ukraine.

Archbishop Yurii Mikhnovsky, born 1868 in the Poltava region, a priest from 1894; was consecrated as UAOC bishop during the Sobor of 1921 for Chernihiv. According to the testimony of Metropolitan Lypkivsky (Chapter VII, Revival of the Ukrainian Church), "he had to leave the Chernihiv region and could no longer be a leader of the Church anywhere"; at this time (1926–27) he was rector of a parish in the village of Prokhorivka, former Zolotonosha district.

Bishop Hryhorii Storozhenko, born 1889, was consecrated as UAOC bishop upon his election for the Kyiv district in November 1921. About him, Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes that Storozhenko was "a good speaker, was enthusiastic about the UAOC, but was entirely unfit for the episcopate..., soon completely departed from the UAOC and went into government service." Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, in his report on the Kyiv rural okruha at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927, said: "Since 1923, the Kyiv okruha has been ailing and has come to the point where its spiritual leader, Bishop Hryhorii Storozhenko, has departed. Why? Too many guardians"... (Minutes of the named assembly, p. 16).

Bishop Konon Bei, born 1884, a priest from 1908; consecrated as UAOC bishop in February 1922 for the Bohuslav okruha, which did not hold as a separate one. As is evident from the minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 11–13, 1927 (p. 20), Bishop Konon Bei was at

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that time spiritual leader of the Pryluky okruha and was overseeing the Romny okruha, which was requesting its own separate bishop. In the official list of okruhas and their spiritual leaders from November 1926, however, it was noted that the Romny okruha (consisting of the Romny and Pryluky okruhas) had no spiritual leader at that time. Thus Bishop Konon Bei must be counted among the active UAOC bishops of that period.

Bishop Volodymyr Samborsky, born 1873, a priest from 1898; consecrated as UAOC bishop in February 1923, served as bishop in Kaniv, Konotop, Lypovets, and Bila Tserkva. In the words of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, he "showed complete unfitness for the episcopate" and "departed from the cause" (Chapter VII, Revival of the Ukrainian Church). But from the minutes of the VPCR Presidium session of August 9, 1927, it is evident that in the summer of 1927 Bishop Samborsky was bishop of the Hlukhiv okruha.

Bishop Hryhorii Mozolevsky, born 1876 in the Chernihiv region; before the revolution of 1917, was a religion teacher in several secondary schools in the Chernihiv region; consecrated as UAOC bishop in June 1924 for the Konotop area, but "was unable to satisfy it" (Metropolitan Lypkivsky). In the winter of 1926–27, he was rector of a UAOC parish in the town of Radomyshl (Kyiv region), but that parish had so declined that it could not support a clergy — the VPCR Presidium then resolved to consider Bishop Mozolevsky as a candidate for one of the vacant cathedras. In February 1927, Bishop Mozolevsky was elected rector of a parish in the village of Spaske (Leninske), Konotop okruha, to which the VPCR Presidium agreed (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session, March 2, 1927).

Bishop Mykhailo Maliarevsky was consecrated as bishop in December 1921, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes, "for Volynia (Polonne), at the demand of Moroz (Chairman of the VPCR), but had neither aptitude nor desire for episcopal ministry, never even tried to go to his diocese, but sat in his parish"... (Letter to Fr. Korsunovsky, July 23, 1922; Chapter VII, Revival of the Ukrainian Church).

Bishop Pylyp Buchylo, "a layman, became enthusiastic about our cause, and perhaps also imagined the episcopate in the old past circumstances; was consecrated as UAOC bishop in Mykolaiv in 1922, but when he tasted the bitter episcopal bread of those times, his enthusiasm lasted only a short time; already in 1923 he completely departed from the UAOC"... (Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "Shortcomings in the Life of the UAOC and Its Organs Under the Second VPCR," Vidomosti Hener. Tserk. Upr. na Vel. Brytaniiu [Bulletin of the General Church Administration for Great Britain], December 1951).

Bishop Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky, born 1887, accepted the priesthood in 1912. Was consecrated as UAOC bishop for Bila Tserkva (Kyiv region) in November 1921; after the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1924, he revealed himself (appeal of September 17, 1924) as the head of the disruptive brotherhood "Active Church of Christ" (DKhTs) in the life of the UAOC and was excluded from the UAOC episcopate. Then he supposedly repented, and there followed a reunion with the UAOC, but in

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August 1927 he was still in an "unclear state" regarding his belonging to the UAOC hierarchy (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session, August 16, 1927, p. 24).

Bishop Petro Tarnavsky was consecrated as UAOC bishop in 1922, was rector of the St. Sophia parish in Kyiv, with whose clergy he developed strained relations, and he had to leave that parish. Having received from the authorities a mandate for St. Michael's Monastery in Kyiv, he established there a DKhTs parish, being one of the founders of that disruptive DKhTs brotherhood; in the summer of 1927, he was in the same "unclear state" as Bishop V. Brzhosnyovsky.

Bishop Mykola Shyrai, installed as UAOC bishop in June 1922 for the Nizhyn okruha, left it, became rector in the town of Nosivka. In 1924, due to disagreements between him and the Okruha Rada (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly, 1924, p. 11), in 1925 he joined the DKhTs and was rector of the Holy Trinity DKhTs parish in Kyiv, but after the act of reunion of the DKhTs with the UAOC, he was the first of the schismatic bishops to fulfill the conditions of reunion and left that parish.

Bishop Mykola Pyvovariv was installed as UAOC bishop in January 1922 without the consent of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, as a protege of the VPCR Presidium Chairman Mykhailo Moroz (about this matter more will be said later); in the episcopal rank, Pyvovariv, "a person without conscience or honor," as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes about him, "ruined Tarashcha, Katerynoslav, visited Odessa, Sloviansk, Nizhyn, Kamianets, and Vinnytsia, and could not hold on there either, and they say he renounced his rank" (Vidomosti... Op. cit., p. 13). Mykola Pyvovariv also belonged to the DKhTs; at the Consultation of 11 UAOC bishops on October 30, 1926, the bishops recognized it as inadmissible for the former Bishop Mykola Pyvovariv to return to work in the UAOC (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session, November 24, 1926).

Bishop of Luhansk Yurii Prokopovych, in the episcopal rank, joined the UAOC in 1926 from the Russian Church but soon departed.

The varying number of church okruhas of the UAOC across the territories of the eparchies in Ukraine, which also led to the concentration of bishops in one area — for example, the Kyiv region had up to 10 bishops, while the Kherson or Katerynoslav regions had none at all — was closely linked to the great difference in the number of UAOC parishes across those territories. It would be entirely mistaken to assume that when, for example, in Slobozhanshchyna there existed one UAOC church okruha — Kharkiv — it therefore had a large number of parishes — this was nowhere the case.

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, in a letter to Fr. Korsunovsky in America dated July 23, 1922, wrote: "To give you definite statistical data about the state of our Church now is difficult, because our cause at present does not have a stable character and is in a process of growth and formation. I can only say one thing: that this growth is proceeding very intensively, and nowhere among the people is a turn backward felt; on the contrary, what holds back this advance is only the lack of priests and other organizational and technical forces (good readers, choir directors, and so forth)."

Such a lack of definite statistical data about parishes in the composition of the UAOC is entirely understandable in the first year of organizing the UAOC after the Sobor of 1921. But here in July 1927, not long before the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor and almost six years after the Sobor of 1921, the situation was no better. At a session of the VPCR Presidium they heard "a report of the Secretary of the VPCR Presidium, Protopresbyter Kharyton Hoviadovsky, to the effect that to this day the VPCR Presidium's files contain no information about UAOC parishes; their number has not even been established; the addresses of parishes are unknown; and in general the matter of UAOC statistics has not been addressed at all. This matter is undoubtedly important and requires great work in the future, but the life of the UAOC already now demands that this work be begun; to take at least the first step in this direction, information should be collected according to a questionnaire that has already been prepared. Resolved: To approve the parish questionnaire and send it to all Okruha Church Radas with a proposal to immediately collect information according to the questionnaire items about parishes and send it to the VPCR Presidium no later than the month of August of this year"... (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session No. 52/72, July 5, 1927).

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The lack of definite statistical data about the composition of parishes belonging to the UAOC testifies, of course, to the weakness of the UAOC's church-administrative apparatus — about which and its causes we shall speak more — but it also testifies to the movement in the church life of Ukraine, which did not cease in the 1920s in the struggle of various currents or jurisdictions in Ukrainian church life. In our press, the number of UAOC parishes in Ukraine during those times is usually given arbitrarily (most often "over 2,000"), but without any substantiation of that figure. The highest number of UAOC parishes we have encountered is in Pastor Fr. Heyer, namely "about 3,000" (Op. cit., p. 87). But he has no documentation for such a number, for he cited (p. 87) the UAOC organ Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1, 1927, p. 59, where, upon verification, there is no mention at all of the number of UAOC parishes.

However, for understanding the external growth of the UAOC in Ukraine through establishing the number of its parishes, source materials do exist. On the basis of these materials we can, if not give entirely precise statistics of parishes by year, at least put a stop to wildly inflated arbitrary calculations.

The "Historical Memorandum on the Past Life of the Ukrainian Church and the Revival of Its Autocephaly" of the Second VPCR, circulated by the Rada in November 1925 to all Orthodox churches abroad, gives the information that "in three years of the restoration of the hierarchy, thanks be to God, the Ukrainian Church already has 30 bishops and more than 1,200 parishes" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2–3, 1927, p. 145).

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, both in his letter to Fr. Korsunovsky (July 1922) and in Chapter VII of the History of the Ukrainian Church — written already after the Metropolitan's removal from the cathedra in October 1927 — gives from memory rounded numbers of parishes in approximation as follows:

1) Kyiv region — no fewer than 500; Podillia — about 300; Poltava region — about 100; Chernihiv region — about 50; Volynia — about 50; Slobozhanshchyna — 11; Odessa, Kherson, Mykolaiv — 3; total (without the Katerynoslav region, where the number is unknown) — 1,014 parishes in the first year;

2) In Chapter VII: Kyiv region — over 700; Podillia — about 300; Poltava region — about 150; Chernihiv region — about 150; Volynia — about 50; Kharkiv region — 2; Katerynoslav and Kherson regions — 5; total — 1,357 parishes in the first three years.

As we already noted above, during the 1920s the church life of Ukraine was in flux due to the struggle among various church currents, and the number of parishes changed accordingly. In the reports from the field by representatives of UAOC church okruhas at the Great Assemblies of the VPCR — with which reports those Assemblies usually began — the number of parishes that at that time belonged to the UAOC church okruha was given. These reports from the field are therefore the best sources regarding the statistics of UAOC parishes in the 1920s.

We have such statistical data from reports at three Great Assemblies of the VPCR, namely: the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 25–30, 1924; the Great Pokrova Assembly of October 25–30, 1926; and the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 11–13, 1927.

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Great St. Nicholas Assembly 1924 — Okruhas and Parishes:

  1. Berdychiv — 25; 2. Bila Tserkva — 69; 3. Tarashcha — 27; 4. Kyiv — 117; 5. Lypovets — 20; 6. Shevchenkivska — 90; 7. Cherkasy — 4; 8. Uman — 53; 9. Skvyra — 39; 10. Volynia — 56; 11. Poltava — 40; 12. Lubny — 60; 13. Pereiaslav — 21; 14. Zolotonosha — 11; 15. Podillia — 247 (combined); 16. Katerynoslav-Zaporizhzhia — 25; 17. Kharkiv with Donbas — 2; 18. Konotop — 35; 19. Hlukhiv — 16; 20. Nizhyn — 50; 21. Chernihiv — 6; 22. Radomyshl — 14; 23. Odessa-Mykolaiv — 5. Total: 1,080

Great Pokrova Assembly 1926 — Okruhas and Parishes:

  1. Berdychiv — 25; 2. Bila Tserkva — 70; 3. Bohuslav — 28; 4. Kyiv — 114; 5. Kyiv (city) — 10; 6. Uman — 125; 7. Cherkasy — 110; 8. Bratslav — 27; 9. Vinnytsia — 104; 10. Haisyn — 27; 11. Proskuriv — 34; 12. Tulchyn — 24; 13. Volynia — 14; 14. Shepetivka — 40; 15. Chernihiv — 6; 16. Nizhyn — 30; 17. Hlukhiv — 16; 18. Konotop — 32; 19. Poltava — 50; 20. Lubny — 62; 21. Pryluky — 11; 22. Romny — 16; 23. Kharkiv with Donbas — 24; 24. Katerynoslav-Zaporizhzhia — 30; 25. Mykolaiv — 4; 26. Odessa — 4. Total: 1,040

Great St. Nicholas Assembly 1927 — Okruhas and Parishes:

  1. Berdychiv-Shepetivka — 51; 2. Bila Tserkva — 104; 3. Kyiv — 108; 4. Kyiv (city) — 10; 5. Uman — 116; 6. Cherkasy — 107; 7. Vinnytsia — 100; 8. Kamianets — 35; 9. Proskuriv — 31; 10. Tulchyn — 41; 11. Zhytomyr-Volynia — 13; 12. Korosten — 10; 13. Chernihiv-Nizhyn — 52; 14. Konotop-Hlukhiv — 48; 15. Poltava — 50; 16. Lubny — 62; 17. Pereiaslav — 1;
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  1. Pryluky — 17; 19. Romny — 22; 20. Kharkiv — 12; 21. Dnipropetrovsk-Zaporizhzhia — 29; 22. Odessa-Mykolaiv-Kherson — 5. Total: 1,039

To these three tables of UAOC parish statistics in Ukraine for the years 1924, 1926, and 1927, based on reports from the field at the plenums or Great Assemblies of the VPCR of the UAOC in those years, we add one more statistical table regarding the number of UAOC parishes from the VPCR's Budget for 1927–28 (from September 1, 1927, to September 1, 1928). The revenue portion of the budget was based 60% on membership dues from church okruhas according to the number of parishes in the okruha. According to a resolution of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1924, each parish, regardless of the number of its members, was to pay for the maintenance of the VPCR, through its Okruha Rada, one ruble per month.

The VPCR Budget for 1927–28, approved by the Plenum of the Small Rada of the VPCR on December 28–30, 1926, contains income from Okruha Radas with their names and the number of parishes in each okruha:

  1. Kyiv (city) — 9; 2. Kyiv (rural) — 114; 3. Berdychiv-Shepetivka — 55; 4. Bila Tserkva — 98; 5. Cherkasy — 110; 6. Uman — 125; 7. Vinnytsia-Mohyliv — 126; 8. Kamianets — 35; 9. Proskuriv — 30; 10. Tulchyn — 44; 11. Hlukhiv-Konotop — 48; 12. Nizhyn-Chernihiv — 36; 13. Lubny — 62; 14. Kremenchuk-Poltava — 42; 15. Pryluky-Romny — 32; 16. Kharkiv — 17; 17. Dnipropetrovsk — 26; 18. Zynovievsk (Yelysavethrad) — 8; 19. Odessa-Mykolaiv-Kherson — 6; 20. Zhytomyr-Korosten — 23. Total: 1,068 parishes.

(Sources: Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 25–30, 1924, pp. 3–13; Minutes of the Great Pokrova Assembly, October 25–30, 1926, pp. 7–12; Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 11–13, 1927, pp. 8–26; Resolution of the Plenum of the Small VPCR Rada, December 28–30, 1926.)

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Thus, indubitable historical sources show that the number of UAOC parishes in Ukraine in 1924–27, in the period on the eve of the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927, at which Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky was removed from the metropolitan cathedra, can be objectively expressed by the historian in the words: "up to 1,100 parishes." This takes into account that even after the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927 until the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1927, there could have been accessions and returns from the "unclear state" of certain parishes that had fallen away to the DKhTs.

And this was the largest number of UAOC parishes in Ukraine, for after the removal of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, a flourishing of the UAOC was not to follow at all; rather, the godless Soviet authority proceeded with rapid steps to liquidate it.

We have no data at all for establishing the number of UAOC faithful, since parishes varied — small, large, and medium — in the number of families and parishioners even before the revolution of 1917. With the formation and organization of the UAOC, one must also take into account that the accession to the UAOC of this or that parish did not always mean that the entire parish joined. Even after accession there were cases of parishes splitting. This we see from the parish information questionnaire approved by the VPCR Presidium on July 5, 1927 (about which we spoke above); item 36 of that questionnaire asked: "Was the parish previously completely Ukrainianized and then split; if this happened, under what circumstances, and to which church current did the other part of the parish go?"

It happened more than once that at the very moment of a parish's decision to join the UAOC, the parish split into parts. Opponents of accession, even remaining in the minority, often obtained the right to the church and to services in it by their priest in the Church Slavonic language. Conversely it also happened that a minority desiring the Ukrainianization of worship won its right to the church in the parish, accepting a priest from the UAOC.

Matters of church usage in this or that parish were decided by the central state government in Kharkiv, the then capital of the Ukrainian SSR. The UAOC's "legal advisor" was also based there, primarily to advocate in matters of the use of church properties, and had to petition the NKVD Collegium in all UAOC affairs. After Bishop Romodaniv, when he became chairman of the VPCR Presidium, such legal advisor was Protopresbyter L. Yunakiv.

Such non-unified parishes, in which the use of churches for worship took place by turns and belonged, by resolution of the Soviet government, to two parts of the parish, have various names in the VPCR's records: "shared parishes," "weekly parishes" (potyzhnevi), "parallel parishes." In contrast, unified parishes in the okruhas are sometimes called "independent" (samostiini). How many were "independent" — that is, those that alone had the use of the "nationalized" parish church — and how many were "shared" or "weekly," we have no data, since both types in the reports of representatives from the okruhas were usually presented together as Ukrainian parishes; only occasionally

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do we encounter numbers of "shared" parishes. For illustration of the proportion between the two, we can cite: in the Lubny okruha, out of 62 parishes, 10 were "weekly" (in the Myrhorod area); in the Uman okruha, out of 114 parishes, 20 were "parallel"; in the Pereiaslav okruha, out of 17 parishes, 9 were independent and 8 were "shared with other groupings."

In the report from the Kyiv rural okruha at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927, Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky testified that "the shared use of churches weighs heavily on the life of the Church." Bishop Yurii Shevchenko said at the same time that he had been in Mykolaiv at the opening of a parish where the Admiralty Cathedral was given to our community for shared use with the "Renovationists"; the latter did not look after the church or its property and had no believing faithful; the Mykolaiv parish's request to the Great Assembly was to see to the transfer of the church into the full use of our community.

The struggle for the right of full use of a church generally occupied a prominent place in the life of the UAOC of that time; evidently, shared use had great inconveniences and intensified the church-religious struggle. On the basis of this experience, the Lubny Okruha Church Rada, as Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk reported at those same Great St. Nicholas Assemblies of 1927, "does not organize and does not accept new weekly parishes in the okruha" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly, 1927).

"It seems little has been done," concludes Metropolitan Lypkivsky about the first years of the UAOC's spread in Ukraine, "but when one takes into account that all this was done in three years under extraordinarily difficult conditions, in a hard struggle, amid incessant civil war, then even for this it is worth sincerely praising God, for all this too could have happened only with God's help and the general aspiration of the faithful toward our Church."

When one considers that in the Orthodox eparchies of Ukraine before the revolution of 1917, there were — in round numbers — 10,000 parishes (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 7, 1928, p. 105), then 1,100 parishes, which over approximately five years entered the composition of the UAOC, constitute 11% of the total number of Orthodox parishes in Ukraine. There is no question that the Russified large cities in Ukraine, with a tremendous influx into them of purely Great Russian population as well, were poorly suited for organizing Ukrainian parishes in them. But despite this, the fact that 89%, or 9/10, of the parishes remained in those times under the Moscow episcopate in Ukraine places under great doubt the assertion about the "general aspiration of the faithful" to go over to the UAOC.

We do not enter here into the question of which jurisdiction those faithful belonged to — the Moscow Patriarchal Church, as was the case with the great majority, or the "Renovationist" or "Synodal" Church. This church, originating from the so-called "Living Church" of Russia, called itself in Ukraine — for more successful soul-snatching — even the "Ukrainian Synodal Church," when from the autumn of 1923 the chairman of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1918, known to us from earlier, Archbishop of Podillia Pimen Pehov, elected by the "Renovationists" as metropolitan in Ukraine, stood at its head.

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From this fact — that the far greater part of the Ukrainian Orthodox people remained in the 1920s in Ukraine under the authority of the Moscow episcopate, when the UAOC already existed with its Ukrainian episcopate of 1921 — one cannot, in our opinion, in any case draw conclusions about the state of national consciousness of the Ukrainian people at that time, saying that it was a portion (89%) that "had not yet succeeded in awakening nationally and wandered in the darkness of unconsciousness," as we have had occasion to read. Writing in such a way, we only belittle our own people both in the degree of their national consciousness — and this after the years 1917–19, after the Universals from I to IV and the Act of Union of Ukrainian Lands in January 1919 — and in the degree of their general spiritual culture in its development from the times of the holy Prince Volodymyr the Great.

We think that a complex of causes stood as obstacles to the UAOC's expansion in Ukraine.

We dare assert first of all that if, from the very beginning of the revival of Ukrainian statehood, the proper attention of the Ukrainian government had been directed to church affairs in the life of the Ukrainian people — attention that would have secured for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church its own national hierarchy without violating the tradition of the Universal Orthodox Church of installing bishops through apostolic succession by bishops — then the results of growth in the number of church communities of such a UAOC would have been different. The same would have been the case, in our opinion, if Ukrainian bishops had been consecrated, at the request of the Ukrainian Sobor, when there was no longer a Ukrainian state authority in Ukraine, by Russian or other Orthodox bishops.

The Orthodox Church of the pious Ukrainian people — membership in which in ancient times, under Polish occupation, was a mark of belonging to the Ukrainian nation — remained in the people such a value in itself that to cover or justify with national need the violation within it of deep traditions encountered precisely the resistance of traditional conservative piety, just as in religious life in general the conservative psyche plays a great role.

True, Metropolitan Lypkivsky, in the subsection "The Attitude of the People Toward the Ukrainian Church and the New Hierarchy" (Chapter VII, Revival of the Ukrainian Church), says that "it was not the 'new grace' that mainly divided the people; the great mass (apart from the more conscious) probably understood little (?) about it"... In our opinion, it was precisely this "little understanding" by the masses of the appearance of hierarchs of the new grace that was the fertile ground on which resistance to the spread of the UAOC grew, when both the old clergy locally and the more conscious "churchmen" in the parishes and the monks and nuns who now, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes, had to scatter from the closed monasteries "like mice among the people" — spread everywhere rumors about the "incorrectness" of the new bishops and the invalidity of the Holy Mysteries performed by them and by the priests they ordained.

The best proof of how relevant the question of "the new grace" and the new hierarchy of 1921 was among the Ukrainian Orthodox citizenry in Ukraine at that time is

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the fact that this question received the most attention in the UAOC organ Tserkva i Zhyttia, which began publication, with the permission of the authorities, five years after the Sobor of 1921. Not a single sermon was published in the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia, but it was full of articles in defense of the conciliar rite of installing bishops by presbyters in Kyiv in October 1921.

Here are these articles: "The Origin of the Episcopate in Connection with the Question of the Grace-bearing Quality of the UAOC Hierarchy," by V. Volynsky. "The Basis of the Church's Liberation from the 'Principality of the Darkness of This Age,'" by V. M. Chekhivsky (no. 1, 1927, pp. 58–83; 84–96). "The Installation of Bishops and Other Clergy to Church Positions in the Christian Church," by V. Yukhymovych (V. Chekhivsky). "The Basis of the Liberation of the UAOC," by V. M. Chekhivsky. "The First All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor, the Sacred 'Council of Bishops of Ukraine,' and the Sobors of the First Centuries of Christianity," by Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky (no. 2–3, 1927, pp. 151–171; 183–194; 197–205). "The Basis of the Liberation of the UAOC" — continuation, by V. M. Chekhivsky. "The Truth About the Holy UAOC," by Bishop Mykola Karabinevych. "The Installation of Bishops"... continuation, by V. Yukhymovych (no. 4, 1927, pp. 268–272; 273–288; 288–316). "The Basis of the Liberation of the Church"... continuation, by V. M. Chekhivsky. "The Installation of Bishops"... conclusion, by V. Yukhymovych (no. 5, 1927, pp. 378–392; 415–445). "The Basis of the Liberation of the Church," by V. Chekhivsky (no. 1/6, 1928, pp. 6–13; no. 7, 1928, pp. 109–121).

It is clearly evident that it was not for lack of other material that these articles were published throughout the entire existence of the UAOC organ Tserkva i Zhyttia, but they were necessitated by the resistance among the people to the spread of the UAOC with its non-canonically installed hierarchy — which is confirmed also by such an authoritative witness as Metropolitan Ioan Teodorovych, who says: "Of what the will and heart of our people created in 1921, much of it was not a free expression of our centuries-old Ukrainian ecclesiastical life, but an expression under the compulsion of the circumstances of that time. Among such expressions of compulsion, and not free decision, one must count the very act of restoring our hierarchy, which later became the 'Achilles' heel,' the sore spot that always required defense and was not a point of support that gives the confidence of standing without needing any buttresses" (From the letter of Metropolitan Ioan of October 16, 1947, to the so-called "autocephalist-conciliarists" in Aschaffenburg, Germany. Emphasis ours).

Undoubtedly, the people were also repelled by the violation by the UAOC clergy and hierarchs of the age-old tradition of the Ukrainian Church regarding the celibate status of bishops and the single marriage (with a maiden and before ordination) of priests and deacons. We know with what indignation our ancestors, the Orthodox brotherhoods, greeted in the 16th century the violation of the rules regarding the marital status of the clergy under the metropolitanate of Onysyfor Divochka (see Vol. I of this work, pp. 201, 253). And although Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky writes about the present times that supposedly "the people were not too much (?) scandalized even by the sad carelessness of some Ukrainian bishops in matrimonial

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matters — well, they said, that's a matter of life"... but this is unconvincing when the Metropolitan himself, depicting reality, says elsewhere about such "pastors" who "were attracted to the UAOC by the freedom from canonical traditions, and evil human nature did not delay in exploiting it," and about those bishops who precisely because of "marital matters could not hold on anywhere and could not at all be pastors, leaders of the Church" (Tserkva i Narid, no. 4, 1950, pp. 22–23).

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky himself considers the most important cause of the people's resistance against the UAOC to be the living language of worship. "The language of worship," he writes, "was the cause of enmity and struggle... In almost every village, two hostile parishes arose — Ukrainian and Slavonic."

Elsewhere we shall speak about what the VPCR did in the matter of translating liturgical books into the Ukrainian language and what, in fact, it could do. But here one must immediately underscore the extraordinarily complex matter of the transition in worship to the living Ukrainian language — a matter that encompassed both the question of the translation texts and their adaptation to existing church melodies, and the cadres of performers of those melodies, and the psyche of the churchgoing people accustomed to prayer and church singing in the Church Slavonic language.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that this complex problem — and moreover in that situation when from the "Tikhonite" clergy, in the expression of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "very few joined the UAOC, and it always felt a great lack of priests and had to accept everyone who expressed a desire, predominantly from the youth, who had little in common with church ministry" — this complex problem played a very great role in the villages. The readers and singers in the choirs could not manage the transition to the living language and often had nothing from which to do so. They resisted, wishing to remain with the familiar and accustomed.

Even more important was the fact that the readers, evidently also for material reasons in these times, began in general to abandon their profession, as clearly shown by the statistical data cited in the report at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1928 by Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych: there were 10,793 readers in Ukraine in 1914 and 4,574 in 1927 — a decrease of 6,219 (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 7, 1928, p. 106).

All the causes indicated so far that stood in the way of the UAOC's spread in Ukraine were causes of an internal character, within church life itself of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. To them are added what we consider the most powerful causes of an external character: the slogans and atmosphere of the revolutionary era. In this era, not ideas and feelings of a higher ideal order came to prevail, but the urges and instincts of material life ("rob what has been robbed!") with promises of equalizing everyone in well-being — when state power fell into the hands of godless materialists who launched a campaign against religion in general, as an ideal value in the life of nations, against God, against the Church, and moreover a national one, like the UAOC.

On this theme, Metropolitan Lypkivsky wrote thus: "The UAOC, in the composition of the entire

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church community, was still a small child — it had only just begun to live, did not yet have firm traditional foundations, was still of little awareness, little churchliness, and little, so to speak, evangelical character; the organization of the UAOC was still very weak — it formed quickly but also fell apart easily... And when the heavy communist air of destroying the Church and faith blew upon all of society, then, naturally, frailty, faintheartedness, and treachery in the UAOC community manifested even more than among its clergy, and inflicted upon the UAOC perhaps its greatest wounds"... (Ch. VII. The Renewal of the Ukrainian Church. Shortcomings in the Life of the UAOC and Its Governing Bodies during the Second VPCR). But we shall speak in more detail about the role of the godless state authorities in the life of the UAOC of that era further on.

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky wrote in 1927: "Our Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in its renewed state set for itself extraordinarily great tasks for the elevation and liberation of Christian life in general... But all these general-Christian and church-Ukrainian tasks are united by the great task proclaimed by our UAOC — namely, the apoliticality of the UAOC. Until now, throughout the world the principle of agreement, of 'union' between Church and State has prevailed and almost everywhere still prevails — that is, the politicality of the Church and the churchliness of politics. Without touching on politics, one must merely point out that this union was ruinous for the Church — it led to the transformation of the Church into a State, not only in form but in substance; in Catholicism it led to papocaesarism; it caused the subordination of the Church to the State in the latter churches — to caesaropapism, from which the Orthodox Church suffered most of all, both in the East and especially in Russia, but which is also characteristic of Protestantism and Anglicanism. The UAOC considers it her task to decisively separate from the state and to be entirely apolitical. She herself does not wish to exert any political influence, nor does she wish to depend on any political forces or groupings; under all external circumstances, she wishes to remain herself — a kingdom not of this world" (Tserkva i Zhyttia [Church and Life], no. 1, 1927, pp. 3–5).

The union and harmony between the Church and a Christian state, as existed in our history during the first era of the historical life of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (see Vol. I of this work, pp. 47–52), is neither papocaesarism nor caesaropapism. The "apoliticality" of the Church — understood as "its decisive separation, as 'a kingdom not of this world,' from the state" — not only did not set upon the path of realization in the life of the UAOC. There is no evidence that it became universally recognized even by the Church's leadership, or entered into the ideological foundations of the UAOC. And therefore in the Draft Program of the Second Church Sobor of the UAOC

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(in October 1927) the following question was included (point 10): "The relationship of the UAOC to state-civic life; the Church within the State and their separation; members of the Church in general and clergy in particular in relation to the State." And the chairman of the Pre-Sobor Commission for that Sobor, Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, who was also the Deputy Metropolitan, wrote: "Time does not stand still; the horizons of life expand; the demands of the Church grow more complex. New creative forces are needed, an increase in their influence upon all spheres of life, visible traces of this influence upon the development of new forms of civic, social, and political life. But here the Church, through its spiritual leaders, found itself in a critical, helpless state. It displayed complete anemia, a lack of viability... Meanwhile, life is trying to cast the Church aside. Matters have reached the point where, after ten centuries of the Christian era in the country, the government of a hundred-million-strong state removes the Church from influence upon the life of the people and tells the Church's leaders: step aside, we do not know you and do not wish to know you; you are not our helpers; we have nothing in common with you"... "And so in our time too, when darkness has again enveloped the world, the Churches of all nations, recalling the beginning of the Christian era, must once more raise high the banner of Christ's love in the contemporary struggle of humanity for a better fate... In vain does the proud human mind try to bring God down to earth in order to raise itself to heaven, saying: 'There is no God-Spirit, there is nothing but matter'... Such assertions of the materialist worldview cloud some minds and trouble human conscience, especially over the last century and a half... Unrelenting preaching in the name of Christ's love is the direct and unchanging work of the Church. Through the mouths of its archpastors and pastors, the Church must unceasingly and loudly proclaim the word of God's truth, insist, reprove, threaten, beseech with all longsuffering... (2 Tim. IV, 2). The opponents of the Church take up her tasks; with human reason, without God, they think to order the much-suffering life of the people. And the enemies of the Church rejoice because they think she has been condemned to death. But let them not rejoice, and let them know that she lives forever... With such faith, the UAOC, which was reborn for new life in fire and storm, set out upon a path, perhaps narrow and covered with thorns — a path toward the true manifestation of God's truth in the life of the native people, as its soul, and as one of the agents of the Christianization of the universe" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2–3, 1927, article "The Work of the Church of Christ," pp. 133–138. Emphasis throughout ours).

In our view, the fundamental thoughts of Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky presented here regarding the main tasks of the renewed Church of the Ukrainian people formulate and frame these tasks far better than the task of her "apoliticality" — especially under the conditions of that "separation from the state" with which the Soviet authorities had "endowed" the Church in general, and the freedom of which separation Metropolitan and martyr Vasyl Lypkivsky so painfully felt upon himself. Studying the materials at our disposal — insufficient as they are for a complete characterization of the internal life

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of the UAOC in Ukraine in those times — we can say that this internal life of the Church in its main stages proceeded not so much according to the will of the UAOC's governing bodies and the creative forces of its leadership, as according to the will of the political organs and leadership of the Soviet state authorities in Ukraine. We do not hesitate to advance the thesis: the UAOC, under the separation of Church from State in Ukraine and throughout the USSR, was dependent on the state and state organs of the NKVS [NKVD] to a degree previously unknown. The Orthodox Church in Russia was never this dependent even under caesaropapism and the ober-procurators [the lay official who oversaw the Russian Holy Synod on behalf of the Tsar] of the Holy Synod. We shall be convinced of the truth of this thesis by the facts in the further narrative about the life of our Church and its liquidation in Ukraine.

The main stages in the internal life of the UAOC were connected with the changes in its VPCR, more precisely the Presidium of this VPCR, which Presidium was the permanent, in accordance with the canons of 1921, executive-administrative supreme body of the UAOC. This Presidium (Small Rada) should have been elected annually (for one year — point 46, section XI of the 1921 canons), but since the Great Pokrova Assemblies of the VPCR, at which this election of the VPCR Presidium would be conducted, could not convene every year, the annual election of the Presidium's composition did not take place. The reason was that the UAOC was not legalized in Ukraine for five years. Only on December 10, 1926 was "The Statute of the All-Ukrainian Association of Religious Communities of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, abbreviated as UAOC," approved by the Soviet authorities and entered in the register under No. 56 (Extraordinary Communication of the VPCR Presidium of January 22, 1927). Such a "legal" status of the UAOC also affected the possibilities of its expansion. Permission from the authorities was required to convene the Great Assemblies of the VPCR, and this was often denied.

In the memoirs of Metropolitan Lypkivsky we find an enumeration of three VPCRs: the First VPCR was organized in November 1917 and dissolved with the convening and commencement of the work of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1918; in April 1919 the Second VPCR was organized, which lasted seven years and three months (closed by the authorities on July 31, 1926); the Third VPCR was elected at the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1926; Metropolitan Lypkivsky called it the "liquidation" council, meaning the liquidation of the UAOC. A closer analysis of church life and the role of the supreme governing body of the VPCR shows that one cannot reckon the existence of the Second VPCR as seven years and three months. This Second VPCR ended its life and work at the time of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR permitted by the authorities, which took place May 25–30, 1924. At this assembly a new Presidium (Small Rada) of the VPCR was elected, with Protodeacon Vasyl Potiienko as its head, and the former chairman Mykhailo Moroz was not re-elected. This new VPCR, given its composition and its activity and the attitude of the Soviet authorities toward it, as we shall see, we cannot but separate from the Second VPCR headed by M. Moroz. This was

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the Third VPCR, which ended its life through the violence of the authorities on July 31, 1926. The Fourth VPCR was under the chairmanship of Bishop Petro Romodaniv, from the Great Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR on October 25–30, 1926, to the Second Church Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927, at which, after the removal of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky and the election of Bishop Mykolai Boretsky as metropolitan, the Fifth Presidium of the VPCR was elected, headed by Archpriest Leontii Yunakiv. This Presidium remained until the Extraordinary (liquidation) Church Sobor of the UAOC held on January 28, 1930.

The work of none of these VPCRs was free, as a church institution called upon to develop the internal church life and govern it according to the tasks of the Holy Church already separated from the state. Rather, it proceeded under the sleepless eye of the political authorities of the Soviet state, whose task, moreover — being anti-Christian and altogether anti-religious — was also the destruction of church life, the annihilation of the Church. As Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes (in "Chapter VII" of the History of the Ukrainian Church), the Soviet communist authorities at first took advantage of the UAOC to combat the Tikhonite Church in Ukraine. "The DPU (State Political Administration) immediately decided to exploit the church struggle for the destruction of the Church. Surely with this aim the Soviet authorities quite willingly registered Ukrainian parishes, gave churches, permitted assemblies and even the All-Ukrainian Sobor in Kyiv in 1921. But when, after the 1921 Sobor, the growth of the UAOC began, when the archpastoral visitations of parishes by the metropolitan himself and other bishops evoked national-religious uplift among the people in towns and villages, when before the authorities enemies," wrote Metropolitan Lypkivsky in a letter to Fr. Korsunovsky (July 23, 1922), "began filing denunciations that we are Petliurists and conduct political anti-Soviet agitation" — then "the authorities began in some places locally to treat our Church with suspicion and even hostility. Undoubtedly, the authorities keep a close watch on our Church"...

The Church of Christ in its history has always had enemies, but it is a well-known thing that it is better to have an open enemy than a secret one, who often conducts subversive, destructive work inside the very organization, at the will of those who sent him for such work. "No organization," writes Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "can be without faults. Even among Christ's twelve apostles there was one Judas — a traitor... It is entirely natural that into the UAOC, during the greatest popular turmoil, quite a bit of light, simply adventuristic spirit blew in... There were probably not a few such adventurers at the First All-Ukrainian Sobor, even in its presidium... Perhaps in other times all these indifferent, faint-hearted, self-serving people would have spun out their life's thread unnoticed by anyone, but under the vigilant eye and pressure of the Bolshevik DPU, many of them were transformed into shameful Judases, betrayers of Christ... As a fish, they say, rots from the head, so it happened in the UAOC; its first grievous wound appeared in the supreme governing body — the VPCR, and first of all in its head...

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Before the Sobor (of 1921) the negative traits of the head of the Second VPCR, Mykhailo Moroz, did not stand out so much; everyone then, it seemed, worked without ulterior motives. But immediately after the Sobor, the awl began to poke very painfully out of the sack. Moroz for some reason imagined to himself that all-national conciliar governance (sobornapravnist) means 'council-rule' (radopravie) — that is, that the Sobor transfers all power of church governance to the church councils, and in the Council the very foundation is the chairman, therefore the Chairman of the VPCR is the supreme leader of the UAOC. And this theory of his Moroz immediately after the Sobor began to put into practice. There was in the composition of the VPCR a treasurer, Mykola Pyvovariv; he was a very sycophantic person. They said he was supposedly a former priest who had removed his orders... Observing him closely, I noticed in him base moral traits. About two weeks after the Sobor I left for a five-day journey in the direction of Bila Tserkva, where the consecration of Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky as bishop was to take place. In Bila Tserkva, Pyvovariv met me already wearing a riasa [clerical robe] and said that Moroz had restored his orders on the basis of the Sobor's resolutions about restoring orders to those who had married a second time. This surprised me, and when I arrived in Kyiv and asked Moroz why he had not waited for my return, and that in general Pyvovariv's past was unknown to me, Moroz replied: 'Pyvovariv sincerely repented to me, and I restored his orders.' Another two weeks later, Moroz announces in the Presidium: 'On Sunday we will perform a consecration (khirotoniia).' 'Of whom?' I ask. 'Why, of Fr. Mykola Pyvovariv. He is a person with higher education and worthy of the episcopate.' I remarked that he was not a candidate of the Sobor and had not been elected by anyone, and there was no reason to consecrate him. A week later, Moroz presents a resolution from the St. Nicholas Pechersk parish that it wishes to have its own bishop and elects Pyvovariv. The Pechersk parish was barely surviving as it was, and at my insistence the matter went to an expanded session of the VPCR, which rejected Moroz's initiatives. In January 1922, I left on a journey, and when I returned to Kyiv, Pyvovariv had already been consecrated and sent for evangelistic work to Tarashcha, and during my second journey he had been elevated to archbishop and transferred to Katerynoslav. Moroz, with his 'council-rule,' generally did not like to consult with anyone, but whatever he conceived, he carried out by means of intrigues, whispering, and the creation of 'parties' around himself; in this he was an expert, and in the VPCR Presidium under his chairmanship everyone was a 'Morozite' except me and V. Chekhivsky — even my deputy, Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, obediently carried out the will of Moroz"...

"The 'council-rule' of Moroz was very harmfully reflected in the work of the County Church Radas (Povitovi Tserkovni Rady). Moroz for some reason did not like Archbishop of Vinnytsia, Ioan Teodorovych. And so, as a result of Moroz's correspondence with members of the Vinnytsia County Church Rada, a demand came from it for the dismissal of Archbishop Teodorovych for 'diocesan autocracy' (yeparkhonachaliie), in Moroz's terminology, and the archbishop was immediately dismissed. But Chekhivsky and I protested against this, and the VPCR had to

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request an explanation from Archbishop Teodorovych and the Vinnytsia County Church Rada. It turned out that there were some trifles that could be settled by mutual understanding, as later indeed happened, and the 'diocesan autocracy' was simply a lack of clarity on the part of the VPCR itself regarding the relations between bishops and councils. But Moroz, already without authorization from the VPCR, went to Vinnytsia, convened the County Church Rada, and by his own authority announced the dismissal of the archbishop. This terribly outraged the Ukrainian citizenry of Vinnytsia; a Regional Sobor was convened, at which Archbishop Teodorovych was unanimously confirmed in his cathedra, while the County Church Rada was dismissed and re-elected in a different composition. Moroz attempted to create the same kind of disruption in Kharkiv and other County Church Radas, often traveling to them with the aim of 'adjusting' their work...

In the spring of 1922, Moroz suddenly wished to be ordained a priest. Though this was not required by church affairs, and he had little aptitude for the priesthood, he had to be ordained. Somehow during one of my journeys he awarded himself the rank of archpriest and a miter, since this supposedly befitted him as the head of the VPCR, and a few days before the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1922, Moroz gathered some ten sycophants and had himself elected as the Kyiv county bishop and persistently demanded that his consecration be solemnly performed at the opening of the Great Assembly. This was already too much, and I insisted that the matter be submitted for confirmation by the Assembly. The Great Assembly was already very irritated against Moroz and entirely rejected his consecration, and so as not to humiliate him to the utmost, left him for one more year as chairman of the VPCR. But this service of Moroz became ever more outrageous and even suspicious — and the first Great Assembly of the VPCR that took place after the 1922 Assembly, the St. Nicholas Assembly of 1924, first of all removed Moroz from the chairmanship of the VPCR. He then went to Katerynoslav, then to Odesa, stirred up trouble everywhere, and finally renounced the UAOC, renounced his orders, and took up some government position"... Thus narrated Metropolitan Lypkivsky in Chapter VII of his historical work on "The Renewal of the Ukrainian Church" ("Shortcomings in the Life of the UAOC and Its Governing Bodies during the Second VPCR." — Vidomosti Gener. Tserkv. Upravl. UAPC (Ukrainian abbreviation for UAOC) na Velyku Brytaniiu [Bulletin of the General Church Administration of the UAOC for Great Britain], June–July 1951, pp. 5–6).

To this narrative of the metropolitan one must add that the former chairman of the VPCR, Mykhailo Moroz, was one of the chief witnesses at the trial in Kharkiv of the "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine" (March 9 – April 19, 1930) and confessed, among other things, that "in essence he is an atheist, but took part in church life exclusively for political motives, because in the UAOC anti-Soviet and independence-minded elements were concentrated" (M. Kovalevsky, Ukraina pid chervonym yarmom. Dokumenty. Fakty [Ukraine under the Red Yoke. Documents. Facts], Publ. "Skhid," Warsaw–Lviv, 1936, p. 103). We do not suppose that among the church activists of the UAOC in the 1920s the role of Mykhailo Moroz — removed from his position as chairman of the VPCR and subsequently a witness in the SVU trial — was unknown, and yet from the lips of one of them we find such a characterization of Moroz:

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"At the head of the VPCR was elected Mykhailo Naumovych Moroz. Before that he had been a zemstvo worker — a very firm and energetic person, intelligent, diplomatic, and tactful" (Nedilia [Sunday], July 3, 1949, article "On the History of the UAOC — Conciliar-Governed"). Thus wrote one of the "living witnesses" of church life in Ukraine about Moroz. Do not such instances of testimonies, entirely contradicting the facts presented by us from the memoirs of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, undermine historians' trust in such living witnesses of UAOC life?

During the time of Mykhailo Moroz's chairmanship of the Second VPCR, there began a disruptive campaign inspired by the DPU in the life of the UAOC, which manifested itself particularly in the formation at the beginning of 1924 of a brotherhood under the name "Active Church of Christ" (abbreviated DKhTs), whose head became Moroz himself. We shall narrate about the struggle with this church schism in another place. Here we shall cite what the Presidium of the Third VPCR, elected at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 25–30, 1924, said about this campaign:

"Most harmful to our Church, threatening it with the greatest danger, are those sad cases of discord, misunderstandings, separatist actions, and dark machinations — including provocations and denunciations — by which someone wishes to create dissension in our Church, to split its unanimity, to blow it apart, so to speak, from the inside. Unquestionably, our Church is free and gives every one of its members, every group, full freedom to express their thoughts and put them into practice, but all this work must be conducted in a conciliar manner (sobornapravno), by way of public expression of one's thoughts and their defense at sobors, at council assemblies: 'in the midst of the congregation I will sing praises to You' (Ps. XXI [XXII], 23). To great regret, all such phenomena took place within the VPCR Presidium of the old composition itself. There, the notion was artificially created that supposedly in the views and actions of certain members of the Council there existed a principled divergence; it was said that some members of the VPCR aspired to 'diocesan autocracy' (yeparkhonachaliie), by which was meant the episcopal autocracy of the old Church, while others defended 'council-rule.' This was absolute falsehood and fabrication. Someone wished to see and create a schism in our Church, and so to the main figures were sewn this or that tendency... The dirty work of creating dissension in the VPCR spilled beyond its borders. Various separatist groups began to be formed outside the VPCR, without its knowledge, under the holy name of brotherhoods, but with the ignoble aim of dividing the members of the one UAOC into separate tendencies — a right wing and a left wing, ordinary and privileged. In Kyiv itself there was founded the brotherhood 'Active Church of Christ,' which immediately obtained for itself various privileges. Along with the activity of these 'brotherhoods,' shameful articles appeared in newspapers (for example, 'Obscurantists' in Proletarska Pravda, no. 105 of this year) concerning members of the VPCR who stood in the way of the shameful activity of these 'brotherhoods,' and other dark and shameless denunciations and slanders against them. Obviously, someone wished to create a fissure in our very Church. With this aim, some members of the VPCR were presented as reliable — association with them was pleasing to someone; others, on the contrary, as unreliable — association with them

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was dangerous" (Address of the VPCR to All Venerable Bishops, Honored Clergy, and All Brethren in Christ, on the occasion of the third anniversary of "The Restoration of the Ukrainian Hierarchy," signed by Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, Rada Chairman Protodeacon V. Potiienko, Rada members — Archbishop N. Sharaivsky, Frs. M. Khomychevsky, E. Kavushynsky, D. Khodzytsky, Brothers P. Antypchuk, H. Vovkushivsky, and member-secretary P. Hordovsky. Dated November 14, 1924).

In this "Address" of the VPCR dated November 14, 1924, we see fairly transparent hints at who benefits from "discord, misunderstandings, separatist actions, and dark machinations" in the life of the UAOC, who "wishes to create dissension in the UAOC." And such addresses of this VPCR, along with individual epistles of Metropolitan Lypkivsky and sermons by him and other bishops on this theme, all intensified the fury of the DPU against the VPCR and its more active members.

At the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, held with the authorities' permission on May 25–30, 1924, before the elections of the new VPCR Presidium, at the proposal of V. M. Chekhivsky, a "Public Declaration to All Churches of the VPCR of the UAOC" was read out as a "directive to the newly elected Rada from the Great Assembly of the VPCR." About this "Public Declaration" Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky writes in his memoirs thus: "To deflect from the UAOC all accusations of counter-revolutionary activity, Petliurism, and so on, VPCR member V. Chekhivsky submitted to the Assembly a draft 'Public Declaration' about the attitude of the UAOC toward the authorities, written exceedingly in the spirit of 'class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat.' Present at the reading of this 'Public Declaration' of the VPCR was the representative of the Kyiv Provincial Liquidation Committee, Comrade Lesner. In this declaration of the VPCR 'to all the people of Ukraine about our faith,' the very rebirth of the Ukrainian Church is placed in a causal connection with the appearance of Soviet power in Ukraine. 'Naturally in Ukraine, when the Socialist Soviet Republic overthrew the power of the old oppressor classes, the Community of Christ — the Ukrainian Church — could be reborn. Naturally, the Church of Christ in Ukraine so clearly and firmly raised before the churches of the entire world the banner — the Cross of Christ — the banner of service to the cause of elevating the life of all the toiling and burdened toward higher development'... 'The creative liberation movement of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church,' says the 'Public Declaration,' 'is merely a constituent element of the worldwide movement of "the toiling and oppressed"... The social revolution, as the transfer of power in the State from the class of oppressors to the class of creator-workers, is for the members of the UAOC a matter of life's truth, of moral justice... Against the misuse of the Church's cause for national oppression, against manifestations of any chauvinism and oppressive nationalism, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church of Christ fights and will continue to fight. Any member of the Ukrainian Church who exhibits work of stoking national feelings within the Church for the purpose of establishing the power of oppressive parasitic classes is excommunicated from the Church... In the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church there is no caste, there is no clergy,

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but only sacred ministers (sviashchenodiiachi). Centuries of Orthodoxy and service to lords have deposited their sediment of worldviews upon doctrine and ethical teaching, as well as upon sacred rites. The Ukrainian Church has begun and will continue to conduct the cleansing of church life from the sediment of centuries... The superstition of fetishism will vanish in the Ukrainian Church, will vanish from the light of the science of Christ... We know and believe that those who reject the gods of capitalism, the gods of tsar-worship and lord-service, not knowing the unknown to them One God, by their nature often do good, and they stand closer to God's community than the servants of the god of capitalism, the god of lords and tsars'..." (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, held May 25–30, 1924, at the Kyiv-Sophia Grand Cathedral. The "Public Declaration" is found on pp. 29–32 of the Minutes).

After the reading of this "Public Declaration" of the VPCR, V. M. Chekhivsky stated in his speech to the Great Assembly that "the authority of the Proletarian Socialist Republic, having separated the Church from the state, does not require any self-appointed intermediaries; it will not go the way of appointing officials of its own choosing, as was the case under the old regime. One should elect only those members of the Church who are truly unblemished before the law and will act both on the basis of the laws of the Soviet authorities regarding the separation of the Church from the State, and on the basis of the 'Public Declaration' of the VPCR, which represents the credo of our Church" (Emphasis ours).

The Great St. Nicholas Assembly approved the "Public Declaration of the VPCR" and resolved to take all measures for its dissemination. After that, elections for the Presidium of the Rada were held. As Chairman of the Rada, Protodeacon Vasyl Potiienko was elected (in the vote: 86 for, 32 against, 12 abstained; the candidacy of M. Moroz received: 43 for, 73 against, 21 abstained). As First Deputy Chairman, Archbishop Oleksandr Yareshchenko was elected; as Second Deputy — Archpriest M. Khomychevsky; as Secretary of the Rada — P. Hordovsky; as Treasurer — P. Antypchuk; as Rada members — Archpriest D. Khodzytsky, Archpriest E. Kavushynsky, K. Tereshchenko, and M. Sviderska. Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky was part of the Presidium's composition as Honorary Chairman, without election, in accordance with the 1921 canons. As for the Deputy Metropolitan, Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, he too, by the practice of the past, entered the Presidium without election, but since the 1921 canons are silent about this, a member proposed putting this to a vote, whereupon the Assembly unanimously resolved: Archbishop Nestor, by virtue of his position as Deputy Metropolitan, enters the Presidium of the Rada without separate election.

Thanking the Assembly for its trust, Chairman V. V. Potiienko "promised to firmly defend in the life of the UAOC its revolutionary achievements, and above all the conciliar-governed order (sobornapravnyi ustrii), which lies at the foundation of its life; furthermore, insofar as the canons of the Ukrainian Church are not yet fully developed and implemented in life, he considered the main task of the new Rada to be the deepening of the UAOC's ideology, as well as the implementation of those ideas outlined in the 'Public Declaration

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of the VPCR,' clarifying the attitude of the UAOC toward the State Government and other church currents in Ukraine"... (Ibid., p. 34).

In November 1924, the VPCR Presidium addressed the Chairman of the Rada of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR with a statement "regarding the normalization of the legal status of the UAOC and the clarification of those facts that violate the objective conditions for the life of the UAOC." Affirming in this statement that the UAOC is "the first among the churches on the territory of the USSR that has always sincerely, from the very beginning of its rebirth, welcomed the Workers'-Peasants' government," the VPCR "once again (after the 'Public Declaration') testifies before the Supreme Ukrainian Government about its attitude toward contemporary life, leading in the direction of assistance and active participation of the faithful of the UAOC in the construction of the Proletarian State." It also "raises its voice in defense of the right to life, for the removal of abnormalities that arise in the process of shared life and relations between Church and State. At a time when other All-Ukrainian Church Associations have the right to legal existence on the basis of registered statutes, the UAOC still does not have such a right. Misunderstandings because of this in the localities, which significantly hinder and often impede the cause of liberating the Ukrainian people, and with them all the world, from the darkness prevailing in the Church — the constant threats from the Kyiv GPU to deprive even the VPCR Presidium of the right to work — compel the VPCR once more to request the Council of People's Commissars to register the Statute of the UAOC, submitted for registration." To this main request for registration of the statute, the VPCR added requests for permission for a seal for the VPCR, for the printing of liturgical books, and for the publication of a periodical organ of the UAOC. All of this was refused precisely on the formal grounds of the absence of a registered statute of the institution ("Communication of the VPCR to All Parish Associations of the UAOC," November 14, 1924, No. 4).

Despite assurances before the Government of the Ukrainian SSR of more than its loyalty — indeed, of active participation of the UAOC faithful in the construction of the Proletarian State — the Government evidently did not trust the VPCR and did not register the UAOC's statute, thereby also restraining the spread of UAOC parishes locally and the activity of its governing bodies, and keeping the central executive organ of the Church — the VPCR Presidium in Kyiv — in a state of constant tension. We shall convey the development of events in the life of the UAOC in connection with this attitude of the Soviet authorities best in the words of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky himself, from his letter to Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych in the USA (letter from Kyiv dated November 11, 1926): "The Active Church [DKhTs], about which You are already aware, did what it was created to do: with its denunciations and slanders it cast us into the camp of counter-revolution and evoked great mistrust toward our Church, and most of all toward the VPCR. Registration was refused to our Church, and the VPCR was ordered to cease its work. But how could we cease? Only by transferring our authority to a different composition of the VPCR. And this could be done only at the Great Assembly. But meanwhile

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permission for the Great Assembly was not given to us for two and a half years. The Chairman of the VPCR, V. V. Potiienko, was demanded to sign a statement about the cessation of the VPCR's work, but he refused; a signed statement was taken from him that the VPCR would work only within the composition of its Presidium of 11 persons. And so we worked until the end. From the autumn of the previous year (1925), repressive measures began: several churches were confiscated in various cities, including St. Andrew's and St. Elijah's in Kyiv. An investigation was opened against me and the entire VPCR Presidium under Article 119 of the criminal code (incitement against the Soviet authorities), and a written statement of non-departure from Kyiv was taken from us... Bishop K. Maliushkevych was arrested, as were Poltava Bishop Yurii Shevchenko and Chernihiv Bishop Ivan Pavlovsky, and they were taken to Kharkiv... The bishops were held for about a month and a half. During this time, on March 18 (1926), at the fifth anniversary of the Kharkiv parish, Archbishop Oleksandr (Yareshchenko) somehow expressed himself carelessly about the oppressions by the authorities, and on April 1 he was arrested, and on the 22nd sent to Moscow, and from there into exile in Tashkent, where he still remains. With Bishops Maliushkevych, Pavlovsky, and Shevchenko, conversations were held that they might be given permission for the Great Assembly, if only it were not convened by the VPCR Presidium. We agreed even to this. But on June 3, the Chairman of the VPCR, V. V. Potiienko, was arrested, and he is still in prison. The impression is that his arrest was most influenced by a letter written to You [Archbishop Teodorovych] and published in the newspaper Dnipro. They began to accuse us that Dnipro was an organ of the UAOC, and that it contained many anti-Soviet statements, and the Chairman of the VPCR himself takes part in these statements. The publication of that letter in Dnipro was viewed as the VPCR Chairman's complaint about the Soviet authorities to another anti-Soviet state.

On June 14 the bishops were finally summoned to Kharkiv regarding the Great Assembly; permission was also given for me and the Deputy Chairman of the VPCR, Archpriest Khomychevsky, to come. On June 17 we appeared before the representative of the authorities, and we were presented, as an absolute condition for changing the authorities' attitude toward our Church, the condemnation of Archbishop Yareshchenko and Potiienko and the carrying out of a purge of non-church elements. We submitted a statement that we dissociate ourselves from any anti-Soviet or generally political actions, and that judging particular individuals and removing them is the right only of the Church. They were not satisfied with this, and we left empty-handed. On the night of July 31, I was arrested, held for four days in Kyiv, then sent to Kharkiv and released only on September 18. Besides the Turchenko affair (excluded from the UAOC clergy for having betrayed those who vouched for him, which was unworthy of a priest), I was charged with sympathy for Yareshchenko and Potiienko, with using the cathedra for anti-Soviet statements, and even with sending delegates to the Stockholm Conference ('World Conference on Life and Work of Christian Communities,' held in Stockholm August 19–30, 1925. — I.V.), particularly with not ceasing the work of the VPCR after it was declared illegal. On August 1 (1926) the VPCR was sealed, and on the 11th all members of the VPCR were required to sign statements that they would not resume work. At the helm of church affairs there remained only Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky... Meanwhile, to Kyiv

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bishops began to be summoned and conversations held with them; as a result, Archbishop Nestor convened on September 1–3 a Conference of Bishops and Representatives of the UAOC, at which a proposal was adopted (at the demand of the authorities) to recognize as deserving of condemnation myself, Yareshchenko, and Potiienko, and the entire composition of the VPCR Presidium, for supposedly political and anti-Soviet actions. The Conference elected from its own membership a 'Commission for the Normalization of the Life of the UAOC,' headed by Bishop Petro Romodaniv, to which the authorities transferred the VPCR's office, and even released me into their custody. The 'Commission' earned the trust of the authorities, and was given permission to convene the Great Pokrova Assembly, which took place from October 25 to 30"...

At our disposal is a copy of the Minutes of these Great Pokrova Assemblies of the VPCR on October 25–30, 1926, and therefore we shall now interrupt our account of events from the extraordinarily valuable letter of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky dated November 11, 1926.

The imprisonment of the VPCR Chairman, Protodeacon V. V. Potiienko, the arrest two months later of the Honorary Chairman of the VPCR, Metropolitan of all the UAOC Vasyl Lypkivsky, with the simultaneous closing and sealing of the VPCR office — created a dangerous situation for the further life of the entire UAOC as an organization which until then, not being registered, had existed, as it turns out, by de facto procedure, which more than once had already been the formal reason for the Government's refusal to register individual parishes that declared their belonging to the UAOC. At the helm of church affairs in this difficult time there remained only, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes in the letter cited above, Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky — obviously, at the center of the church administration, in the position of Deputy Metropolitan of the UAOC. Archbishop Sharaivsky himself recalls these times in his speech at the session of the VPCR Presidium on March 30, 1927, in defense of Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk, who asked for support in his petition to the government to lift the prohibition on his departures from Lubny for the past three years. Archbishop Sharaivsky testified that "when the life of the UAOC in 1926 compelled him to take upon himself, as deputy of the metropolitan of the UAOC, the governance of the UAOC, he first of all turned for advice to Archbishop Oksiuk. On his advice, he convened the 'All-Ukrainian Conference of Representatives of the UAOC,' which took place on September 1–3, 1926." For us, from this testimony of Archbishop Sharaivsky, it is clear that the idea of the September Conference belonged to Archbishop Yosyf of Lubny, but for the realization of this idea the consent of the Soviet government was needed, which neither the Deputy Metropolitan Archbishop Sharaivsky nor the civilly restricted Archbishop Oksiuk were in a position to obtain. As is evident from all the subsequent events in the life of the UAOC, the one who realized this idea was Bishop Petro Romodaniv, who for more than two years had been the legal adviser on behalf of the UAOC in Kharkiv and had become there a "man of trust" in the NKVS.

The "All-Ukrainian Conference of Representatives of the UAOC" in Kyiv, which took place on September 1–3, 1926, followed the line of the Soviet government's wishes, condemning first of all Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, Archbishop

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Oleksandr Yareshchenko, and the Chairman of the VPCR, V. Potiienko, for political anti-Soviet actions. With the consent of the authorities, an "All-Ukrainian Commission (VUK) for the Normalization of the Life of the UAOC" was elected as a temporary organization until the convening of the Great Pokrova Assembly in October of the same year, 1926. It was to temporarily replace the closed VPCR; to it were transferred the office and all the affairs of the Third VPCR. As chairman of the VUK in the UAOC, the Conference elected Bishop Petro Romodaniv. At the same time, the Regional ("County" according to the 1921 canons) Church Radas also ceased their activity; they too were replaced by "Regional Commissions for the Normalization of the Life of the UAOC."

The "All-Ukrainian Commission for the Normalization of the Life of the UAOC" prepared the convening for October 25, 1926, of the Great Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR, which took place in the Cathedral of St. Sophia — the Wisdom of God in Kyiv, with written permission of the Kyiv Administrative Division, No. 31580, dated October 13, 1926, in the presence of the government representative Comrade Markovych; the sessions of the Assembly continued from October 25 to 30. The composition of this Great Assembly included: one metropolitan, 17 bishops, 48 priests, 2 deacons, and 64 lay delegates — 132 in all. V. M. Chekhivsky was elected chairman of the assembly, and Bishops Konstantyn Maliushkevych and Ivan Pavlovsky as deputy chairmen.

Metropolitan Lypkivsky, after the reports of Archpriest Khomychevsky (on the activity of the VPCR Presidium from the last Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1924 to July 31, 1926) and Bishop P. Romodaniv (on the work of the VUK from the Conference of September 1–3, 1926, to the day of the Assembly), left the Assembly at the request of his family, supported by the Assembly Presidium, due to illness. As Honorary Chairman, Archbishop Sharaivsky alone remained until the end of the Assembly, in his capacity as Deputy Metropolitan.

Bishop Petro Romodaniv in his report generally characterized the hitherto life of the UAOC as spiritually impoverished due to the contamination of the ranks of church workers by amoral persons, the dispersal of intellectual forces, and the absence of ideological unity among UAOC workers. He emphasized "the failure to utilize all possibilities for the elevation of church life under the protection of the decree on the separation of the Church from the State, which (elevation) had begun initially under the Government's favorability toward the UAOC's measures for the renewal of church life"; he equally emphasized the present "benevolent attitude of the Government toward all petitions of the All-Ukrainian Commission — the liberation of Father Metropolitan, the removal of the seal from the VPCR office; the petition for the return of Father Yareshchenko has been received favorably, but this, like the case of V. V. Potiienko, is being delayed by the disturbance of the peace over these questions in the Kharkiv and Kyiv-Sophia parishes."

When reports from the localities began — from each of the church regions about the state of life and events in it — the regional representatives had to answer the question of how their region had received the resolution of the September 1–3 Conference, and whether the regions endorsed the resolutions of that Conference. The answers of all regions were: yes; even the representative of the Kyiv City Region, V. M. Chekhivsky, stated: "The city of Kyiv

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endorses the resolutions of the Conference." On the basis of these statements, one could foresee in advance the content of the Great Assembly's resolution on the reports of Khomychevsky and Bishop Romodaniv, but the Government was apparently not certain that the Assembly would adopt the resolution it desired condemning Metropolitan Lypkivsky, Archbishop Yareshchenko, and VPCR Chairman V. Potiienko, and therefore demanded from the Assembly Chairman V. Chekhivsky the submission of a draft resolution for review by the DPU before its vote, with the warning that "the continuation or suspension of the Assembly would depend on this." To present the draft resolution to the government, an entire delegation was elected, consisting of V. M. Chekhivsky, Bishop K. Maliushkevych, and Bishop P. Romodaniv; evidently the moment was critical, and conversations about "the apoliticality of a Church separated from the state" were conducted with the main church figures.

Finally, the resolution — basically composed by Bishop Maliushkevych and edited by the Drafting Commission, adopted in its session by seven votes against one (V. Chekhivsky, who proposed his own rejected version) — was voted on at the session of the Great Assembly on October 28, 1926, and adopted by almost all votes of those present, since only 5 were "against" and 7 "abstained." The resolution was as follows:

"The Great Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR of the UAOC, held October 25–30, 1926, implementing the resolution of the All-Ukrainian Conference of Representatives of the UAOC on September 1–3 of this year regarding the necessity of placing before the Great Pokrova Assembly the matter of the disloyal, tactless, anti-Soviet actions of the VPCR Presidium, the Chairman of the VPCR Presidium V. Potiienko, the Deputy Chairman — Archbishop of Kharkiv Oleksandr Yareshchenko, and Father Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, and of rendering its verdict regarding these actions — having heard the reports of the Deputy Chairman of the former VPCR Presidium, Archpriest M. Khomychevsky, and the Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Commission for the Normalization of the Life of the UAOC, Bishop P. Romodaniv, on the life of the UAOC from the time of the St. Nicholas Assembly of 1924, and reports on this matter from the localities, and taking into account the unanimous assessment in these reports of the means for normalizing the life of the UAOC —

  1. Confirm by their authority all the resolutions of the Conference regarding the establishment of the extraordinarily severe external-legal status of the UAOC, which came about owing to the tactless, disloyal to the Government of the Ukrainian SSR, and anti-Soviet actions of the persons named in the Conference resolutions, and express the Church's condemnation of the line of conduct of the VPCR Presidium and the actions of the Chairman of the Presidium V. Potiienko, the Deputy Chairman of the Presidium Archbishop Oleksandr Yareshchenko, and Father Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky. The Great Assembly considers it necessary in the most categorical manner to warn all those named in the Conference resolutions against similar actions in the future, and for actions already committed, resolves to consider these resolutions of the Pokrova Assembly as sufficient penance and not to impose upon them any additional church penalty.
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  1. The Assembly without any objections also accepts the declarative portion of the Conference resolutions concerning relations between Church and State, and instructs the VPCR Presidium to ensure that the principles indicated in the resolutions are observed by all UAOC workers, and in case of their violation by individual church workers, not to hesitate to issue appropriate warnings or even penalties" (Minutes of the Sessions of the Great Pokrova Assembly of the UAOC, October 25–30, 1926, pp. 16–17).

The Great Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR in 1926 also had to satisfy the second demand of the Soviet authorities: to carry out a purge (called a "verification") of the personal composition of the UAOC's clergy. The Assembly resolved: "Confirming the resolutions of the All-Ukrainian Conference of September 1–3 of this year on the necessity of verifying the personal composition of the clergy in the UAOC according to the principles adopted by that same Conference, the Great Pokrova Assembly instructs the VPCR Presidium to develop a clear instruction on the method of verification to guide the Regional Church Radas in this matter" (Ibid., p. 27).

As for the legal status of the UAOC going forward, Bishop Romodaniv assured the Assembly that "hope for registration is complete; the obstacle is the lack of statistical information about the number of parishes." The Drafting Commission reviewed the Statute of the UAOC, amendments to it were accepted by the Assembly, and the VPCR Presidium was authorized to sign the Statute and submit it for registration with the Soviet authorities. The Assembly adopted the motion: "To petition the Government on behalf of the Assembly for the release of V. V. Potiienko, for the return of Archbishop Yareshchenko, and for permission of freedom of movement for Father Metropolitan, members of the former VPCR Presidium, Archbishop Oksiuk, and V. M. Chekhivsky."

From the official minutes of the Assembly, which likewise could be made use of by the authorities, it is difficult, of course, to sense all the true sentiments and thoughts of the Assembly participants regarding the current events in the life of the Church, and above all, the condemnation of its moral Metropolitan. But that such sentiments, contrary to the demands of the Soviet authorities, existed — and possibly even strongly — is evident from the fact that even Bishop Romodaniv, in his closing remarks during the debates on his report, said that "full respect for Father Metropolitan, as the spiritual leader, dictates the necessity of preserving him from the administrative-economic trifles that have now led to the necessity of acknowledging mistakes; Father Metropolitan must be guaranteed full freedom of purely spiritual leadership without the possibility of subjecting him to the threat of condemnation. All are guilty for not having protected the father. The VPCR settled into its bureaucratic chairs, did not respond to the severe sufferings of the periphery, and involuntarily forced Father Metropolitan to respond to them" (Minutes, pp. 14–15). In other speeches one could hear: "The supreme governing body is struggling, but the churches (regional) are indifferent. Conditions make the work of the supreme body impossible: they did not follow the directives of the supreme body, did not support it materially — the self-serving question predominated" (Archpriest Basovol).

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The presence of such sentiments at the Assembly also prompted the adoption of a vote of thanks from the Assembly to the condemned former VPCR Presidium, along with thanks to the VUK. The resolution read: "Having noted in the work of the former VPCR Presidium those moments that were harmful to the life of the Church from the external-legal standpoint, and such shortcomings as the absence of close ties with the Regional Churches, unclear definition of church territories, unclear attitude toward individual church workers who violated church discipline — the Great Pokrova Assembly cannot fail to note the selfless and beneficial work of the VPCR in the purely internal life of the Church, which under difficult conditions of activity achieved the most possible results, and extends to it heartfelt thanks for the beneficial work done for the Church, particularly for the expansion of church publishing. Likewise, the Great Assembly extends sincere thanks to the All-Ukrainian Commission (VUK), which at a difficult moment in the life of our Church, without fear, took upon itself the responsibility and managed to lead the UAOC out of its severe external-legal situation" (Minutes, pp. 26-27. Emphasis ours).

A delegation consisting of Bishop K. Maliushkevych, Archpriest L. Yunakiv, and Brother Haleta was sent to Metropolitan Lypkivsky at the end of the Assembly to ask him, if possible, to come at least for the closing of the Assembly and to bless them before its adjournment. After visiting the metropolitan, Bishop Maliushkevych informed the Assembly that the metropolitan could not come due to illness and transmitted his blessing for the closing of the Assembly.

The Great Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR in 1926 elected the Fourth Presidium of the VPCR in the following composition: Chairman — Bishop Petro Romodaniv (for — 72 votes, against — 26, abstained — 22); Deputy Chairmen: First — Bishop K. Maliushkevych; Second — Archpriest L. Yunakiv (with the obligation to reside in Kharkiv in the position of legal adviser of the UAOC, which had previously been held by Bishop Romodaniv); Secretary — Archpriest Kharyton Hoviadovsky; Treasurer — Brother M. Kobzar; Members — Archbishop Feodosii Serhiiev (liturgical affairs), Bishop M. Hrushevsky (after V. M. Chekhivsky's refusal — evangelistic affairs), Bishop Ya. Chulaivsky (church education affairs), Brother Kovalenko-Kalamatsky (publishing affairs), Ol. Or. Levytsky (legal member), Archbishop N. Sharaivsky (translation affairs), Brother Tyshchenko. With Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, there were 13 members of the permanent VPCR. Although in the minutes of the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1926 Archbishop N. Sharaivsky is listed in the VPCR Presidium as a member for the translation of liturgical books, in the subsequent minutes of VPCR Presidium sessions he is recorded as a member-Deputy of the Metropolitan — that is, a member of the Presidium by office.

It draws attention that in the composition of this Fourth VPCR Presidium, the episcopate predominated (seven members) and the actual chairman was a bishop.

With the restoration of the VPCR's activity and the election of a new Presidium — the permanent supreme governing body of the UAOC — the tension in which the UAOC

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found itself after the sealing of the VPCR office and the arrest of the metropolitan came to an end for the time being. Immediately after the closing of the Great Pokrova Assembly on October 30, a session of the new VPCR Presidium took place on November 1, 1926, in the presence of the Honorary Chairman, Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, and several new bishops outside the Presidium. On the proposal of Chairman Bishop Romodaniv, the Presidium resolved: "To liquidate the All-Ukrainian Commission for the Normalization of the Life of the UAOC, as a temporary governing body; to express on behalf of the VPCR sincere thanks to all its members and collaborators for their honest and irreproachable work." That same day, November 1, the Statute of the UAOC and an application from 10 members of the VPCR to the NKVS for the registration of the Statute were signed before a notary. The handling of this matter was entrusted to Archpriest L. Yunakiv in Kharkiv. He was also instructed to immediately petition the Government for the release of Metropolitan Lypkivsky from the prohibition on free departure and the granting of the right of free travel throughout all of Ukraine in matters of spiritual governance of the Church.

The crisis just weathered was now reflected in an uplift of the spiritual and church-organizational life throughout the entire UAOC. In November 1926, permission was given — albeit one-time — to Metropolitan Lypkivsky to travel to Poltava for the solemn celebration of the consecration of the Resurrection Church; on December 10, 1926, the Statute of the UAOC was registered; before that, on December 5, Protodeacon V. Potiienko was released from prison; on December 18, permission was given to hold the Minor Assembly of the VPCR. This Assembly took place on December 28-30, 1926, with 11 bishops, 6 priests, and 11 laypeople present. At this plenary session of the Minor Assembly, they heard the report of the Metropolitan himself on the spiritual life of the UAOC and the accounts of the VPCR's work since the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1926 from Presidium Chairman Bishop Romodaniv and Secretary Archpriest Hoviadovsky. The following optimistic resolution was adopted: "The Minor Assembly notes with satisfaction: a) the uplift of the spiritual life of the Ukrainian faithful united in the UAOC; b) the increased interest in the life of the Church by the clergy and laity, not only members of the UAOC but also other church currents; c) the gradual calming of the Church after the preceding disturbances; d) the normalization of the external-legal status of the Church; e) the establishment of church-administrative life through the convening of Regional and District Sobors, the election of governing bodies, and the establishment of communication between the VPCR and Regional Churches through correspondence, sending of minutes, and visits to the localities by members of the VPCR Presidium. The Minor Assembly fully approves the work of the VPCR Presidium for the reporting period and instructs the Presidium, continuing its work in the same direction, to demand from the Regional Church Radas the establishment of church life through the convening of District Church Sobors and closer communication with the VPCR through the sending of minutes of all their sessions and diligent reporting" (Minutes of the Plenary Session of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR of the UAOC, held December 28-30, 1926, p. 7).

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On January 15, 1927, the VPCR received notification from the People's Commissariat of Education, No. 4889, granting permission for the publication of a monthly journal Tserkva i Zhyttia (Church and Life) as the organ of the UAOC, on the condition, however, that the journal be published in Kharkiv. This was a new achievement of the VPCR, long desired and awaited in the spiritual circles of the UAOC. The chairman of the journal's editorial board was Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky. In March 1927, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, with the authorities' permission, traveled to Kharkiv for the solemn celebration of the fifth anniversary of the Ukrainian St. Nicholas parish in Kharkiv.

Thus, it seemed, the church life of the UAOC after the crisis during the Third VPCR had begun, under the Fourth VPCR, whose Presidium, headed by Bishop Romodaniv, was considered in a sense pro-government, to develop and prepare for the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC, with an extraordinarily broad program, as we shall see.

But shortly after the Plenary Session of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR on December 28-30, 1926, Bishop P. Romodaniv made a journey to Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Romny, and reported on this journey at the session of the VPCR Presidium on January 21, 1927. An ominous harbinger of the UAOC's future was his report on the visit to the "Central Government" in Kharkiv, in the part recorded in the minutes of the VPCR Presidium session No. 3/23 — 1927 as follows: "As regards the Government's attitude toward the persons of Father Metropolitan, Archbishop O. Yareshchenko, and Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk, it remains for now the same as before. This is because the Government has in its possession documents which — perhaps even involuntarily on the part of these persons — discredit them in the eyes of the Government; these documents are not subject to disclosure." Incidentally, the Lubny Regional Church was not given permission to hold its regional sobor on January 25-26, because on the territory of that region some priests were spreading agitation "against the direction of the activity of the current VPCR Presidium." After Bishop Romodaniv's assurances that such agitation could not be coming from Archbishop Oksiuk, the representative of the Soviet authorities agreed to grant permission for the sobor, but on the condition that the Presidium also send its representative to the Lubny sobor.

In Kharkiv, sympathies for the exiled Archbishop Yareshchenko were manifested in his commemoration at liturgical services, and when Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky, elected by the Kharkiv community to the orphaned cathedra, arrived, the Regional Church Rada resolved that he should not be commemorated as "of Kharkiv" but as "of Sloboda-Donets" — a demonstration that "agitates both the Government and part of the citizenry," so that the government demands from the VPCR "an end to this game with commemorations, for it is unnecessary for the UAOC." The VPCR Presidium resolved to inform the Kharkiv-Sloboda Regional Church Rada to adhere to the resolution of the Regional Sobor of November 30, 1926, confirmed by the VPCR, according to which Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky was elected to the Kharkiv-Sloboda cathedra, and not to the Sloboda-Donets cathedra.

During the journey to Kharkiv for the fifth-anniversary celebration of the Ukrainian St. Nicholas parish on March 18, 1927, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky

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visited the Government representatives and held a conversation with them in the presence of Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky and Brother Ivan Harashchenko. As recorded in the minutes of the VPCR Presidium session of March 23, 1927: "Father Metropolitan declared to the Government representative, and now emphasizes, that he was and will continue to be entirely correct in his relations with the Government." The Presidium's resolution on this report of the metropolitan was: "The assurance of Father Metropolitan that he was and will continue to be entirely loyal and correct in his relations with the Government is noted." Obviously, such a resolution was demanded by the circumstances.

At the VPCR Presidium session of April 5, 1927, Archpriest L. Yunakiv was present from Kharkiv and delivered a report "on the state of the UAOC in general, insofar as it is revealed by the Government's attitude toward the UAOC." The report was accepted "for information" without any further conveyance of its closer content in the minutes. From a written communication received around this time by the VPCR from Archpriest Yunakiv, it is evident that the NKVS transferred to the UAOC a number of church properties, among them such distinguished ones as: the Pokrova [Protection] Cathedral in Odesa, the Ss. Boris and Gleb Church in Chernihiv, the Holy Trinity Church in Poltava, churches in Kyiv — St. Elijah's, Jordan, Pokrova (on Solominka), and others.

Three days later, at the session of April 8, 1927, the VPCR Presidium heard "the statement of the Most Honorable Father Metropolitan concerning the information presented by Deputy Chairman Archpriest L. Yunakiv at the session of April 5 of this year" and resolved: "To send a copy of Father Metropolitan's statement to the NKVS, noting that the joint work of the VPCR over the past six months gives it grounds to testify before the Government to the truthfulness and sincerity of Father Metropolitan's statement."

At the VPCR Presidium session of May 6, 1927, the "report of the Presidium Chairman on his journey to Kharkiv on the general affairs of the UAOC" was heard, and the report was resolved to be "accepted for information," without specifying its content. As is evident from the minutes of the VPCR Presidium session of November 16, 1926, at which there were debates regarding the VPCR's right to communicate with foreign church organizations and church figures without clearing each instance of communication with the Soviet government — the record shows that all minutes of the VPCR sessions were sent to the Government.

On May 11-13, 1927, the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR took place, and at that Assembly the delegates noted, regarding relations with the Government, that the life of the UAOC had calmed. The Assembly resolved: "Having heard the report of the Chairman of the VPCR Presidium, Bishop P. Romodaniv, on the work of the Presidium and the life of the UAOC since the Great Pokrova Assembly, the St. Nicholas Assembly recognizes that the VPCR Presidium has adhered to and implemented the resolutions of the Great Pokrova Assembly — in particular, both itself maintained and ensured that all leaders of the UAOC maintained a loyal attitude toward the Government. In fulfilling its duty in this matter, it timely and truthfully warned the American and Canadian UAOC against admitting in their periodicals (Siiach [The Sower], Pravoslavnyi Blahovisnyk [The Orthodox Herald]) certain articles and expressions that do not correspond to the line

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of the UAOC's attitude toward the Government" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 11-13, 1927, p. 55).

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky himself, though he did not deliver a report at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 11-13, 1927 (the opening address on behalf of the VPCR and the report on the state of the UAOC's life were delivered by Bishop P. Romodaniv), before the closing of the Great Assembly gave "a word of blessing," in which "he welcomed the Great Assembly for the free manifestation of the spirit of our Church, called on all members to take part in the publication of the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia, and expressed the wish that the Assembly members carry everything they heard at the Assembly back to the localities, think it over, and, having cast aside everything erroneous, lead our Church toward perfection, to the glory of its Founder, Christ the Savior, and for the benefit of our Ukrainian people, and through them for the benefit of the entire world" (Ibid., pp. 69-70).

During this same Great St. Nicholas Assembly, on the proposal of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, the Assembly adopted a resolution: "To ask the bishops to give due attention to the preparation for the Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor, and to this work all bishops and all church forces must be called upon."

"It seemed that all was well," we read about these times in a later report of the "Commission for the Investigation of the Church Life of the UAOC" — "a new true course of church life was taken, which should give the Church complete peace — but so it only seemed... A clear disturbance of the life of the UAOC begins with the meeting of the Trinity parish on June 2, 1927, in the premises of the VPCR Presidium. This meeting was the beginning of a strain in relations between the Presidium on one side and the supreme spiritual leader, Father Metropolitan Vasyl, on the other, which lasted until the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor. This strain was also reflected in the life of the periphery, which interpreted it differently. The fundamental reason for these disagreements was precisely the different attitude of the spiritual leader and the VPCR toward the resolutions of the September Conference and the Pokrova Assembly of 1926" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, p. 84) — that is, on the matter of the Church leadership's attitude toward the Soviet state authorities.

At the VPCR Presidium session of June 19, 1927, Metropolitan Lypkivsky submitted a statement that "he is resigning from the chairmanship of the Editorial Board of the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia and requests that the distribution of the journal among the parishes of the UAOC, which was conducted on his initiative, be suspended until an appropriate resolution of the VPCR Presidium is adopted on this matter." The statement was accepted for information. After this, the metropolitan was not present at several sessions of the VPCR Presidium until the end of July, when the Pre-Sobor Conference took place on July 26-27.

At the VPCR Presidium session of August 16, 1927, the report of Chairman Bishop Romodaniv on his journey to Kharkiv and his visit to the NKVS was heard. The Soviet authorities agreed in principle to the convening of the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor; official notification with permission would be sent in due course. As for the satisfaction of requests regarding the transfer of churches, the opening of a Theological School, and so forth, "the final resolution of these questions was postponed until the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor

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and will be resolved depending on the direction of the work of that Sobor."

At this same session of August 16, 1927, a copy of the Statement of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky to the supreme representatives of the Central Government of the Ukrainian SSR, dated August 15, 1927, was heard. The statement was as follows:

From Citizen of the Ukrainian SSR Vasyl Lypkivsky, Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

I consider it a duty of my service to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic to address you with a statement-petition for the protection of my civil rights and the freedom to carry out my church service. Officers of the State Political Administration have been investigating my work from the political side the entire time; twice, in 1923 and 1926, they took me to prison, but my present freedom testifies that no intentional political crimes were found in my work; yet they still keep me under suspicion of anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary sentiments. And so, on account of mere suspicion of anti-Soviet sentiments, I have for more than a year been deprived of the right to leave Kyiv and the ability to actually carry out my service to the Church; moreover, various threats are being called down upon the Church I serve because of me.

On July 27 of this year, the representative of the All-Ukrainian State Political Administration, being in Kyiv, summoned me together with six representatives of the regional churches during the Pre-Sobor Conference and, in my presence, laid before them in a manner offensive to me my supposedly anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary actions, which place under threat the free and legal existence in the Ukrainian SSR of the entire Ukrainian Church, declaring to them that he trusts not a single word of mine so completely that he does not even bother speaking to me.

What, then, are these actions that evoked such mistrust and contempt toward me from the representative of the State Political Administration? I am charged with a private conversation with the former chairman of the VPCR, Potiienko, which took place in January of this year, during which I supposedly said that the Soviet government in Ukraine is experiencing its death agony; that sometime in the spring, before someone unknown and at an unknown time, I supposedly expressed the view that the Soviet government had two to three weeks left to exist, and so forth. But I testify that I never had and never conducted such conversations with anyone, and I do not know why such idle talk, which I never engage in, is being attributed to me.

Furthermore, I am accused — as evidence of Petliurism — of having sent to Kharkiv, to the responsible editor of the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia, Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky, along with other materials for publication, a letter addressed to me from Shelukhin, dating from June 18, 1925, in which I crossed out Shelukhin's sharp and abusive expressions regarding Petliura, and thereby supposedly displayed my sympathy for Petliura. But I did this, as the former chairman of the Editorial Board — as I have already explained to the State Political Administration in writing — not out of any Petliurist considerations or sympathies, but solely out of purely church considerations, so as not to introduce any

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politics into a church journal.

Finally, I am accused of supposedly being aware of some Ukrainian circle formed with the aim of reconciling the Ukrainian Church with the Tikhonite Church for a joint struggle against the Renovationists. But about this circle I first heard from the representative of the State Political Administration. The representative of the State Political Administration himself added that these and similar actions of mine reveal my anti-Soviet sentiments and counter-revolutionary soul, but he does not believe my justifications against these sentiments.

My position in the Ukrainian Church is such that all the machinations of the enemies of the Ukrainian Church are directed against me, and they naturally first of all shower the DPU with slanders about me, and, undoubtedly, all these slanders are not the last. The representative of the All-Ukrainian DPU declared in my presence to the representatives of the UAOC that he does not trust me and therefore considers it superfluous to speak with me. But I am the spiritual leader of this Church, and I consider it unworthy of myself and my Church to speak untruth to anyone. And so I testify, and my testimony is true:

1) I have never said anything to anyone about the present Soviet government — either publicly or privately — that would discredit the Soviet government. 2) I have no relations and never have had any with any political party or individual political figures, either here or abroad. 3) I have never been and am not now either a political revolutionary or a political counter-revolutionary, for I have never interfered in any politics and do not wish to interfere. But I am a church revolutionary, for the Ukrainian Church arose and is liberating itself and wages its struggle against the old order in a revolutionary manner, and will not allow any reaction or return to the past. Therefore I welcome both the political and social revolution — the general liberation and more just satisfaction of the toiling. 4) All my life I have been interested only in church affairs, dreaming about the liberation of the Church — that is, about such a state of the Church when there would be no lords in it, no princedom, but only brotherhood, and when the state would not interfere in its life. And I am happy that I have lived to see the possibility of realizing this state of the Church during Soviet rule, under its law on the separation of the Church from the State. 5) I never made peace with that state of the Church under the capitalist order and Russian tsarism, when for many centuries it was burdened with boundless treasures, went into the service of mammon, and thereby lost the commandments of Christ and extinguished within itself the spirit of Christ, according to the word of Christ: one cannot serve God and mammon (Mt. VI, 24), and surrendered itself to the service of the state for the sake of this mammon; I am happy that under Soviet rule the Church has been liberated from the burdens of capitalism, returned to the position of Christ, who had nowhere on earth to lay His head (Lk. IX, 58); she can now freely be imbued with the spirit of Christ and His commandments, serving only God and the lesser brethren. 6) I have always been and am a son of my people, and I dreamed of the liberation of the Ukrainian Church and people from foreign church governance and denationalization, and I am happy to see that

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under Soviet rule the opportunity has been given both to our Church and to our people to liberate themselves from foreign oppression and to restore their native church and cultural-national life. 7) All the feelings of supreme happiness in my life, which I experience thanks to Soviet rule, make me a sincere adherent of Soviet rule, compel me to wish it development and strengthening, and not to be its enemy; and throughout the time of my church work under Soviet rule, I may have evoked many revolutionary sentiments among the people regarding the former tsarist autocratic order, but in no way did I promote anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary sentiments, for I did not have and do not have them in my soul. 8) I submit in all things to the Soviet government, in accordance with the Apostle's commandment, as its conscious citizen; I fulfilled and fulfill its laws and render it due respect not only out of fear but also out of conscience, and never will the Soviet government see in me an opponent or rebel against it. This I also testify for the entire Ukrainian Church. 9) I unconditionally recognize the enormous significance for the fullness of freedom and the might of the people's life of faith in general, and for the Ukrainian people of the Orthodox Church of Christ — and for the strengthening, liberation, and arming of the Ukrainian people with the commandments of Christ I shall work as long as I live. But I think that from the standpoint of the state, this work of mine is neither anti-Soviet nor counter-revolutionary, insofar as the Ukrainian Church is based on the Soviet law on the separation of the Church from the State and is liberating itself in a revolutionary manner from the old traditions of church statehood. 10) I recognize that for the further implementation of the State law on the separation of the Church from the State in the Ukrainian SSR and the evaluation of the significance of the Church in general in the life of the people, both the State and the Church will still have much work to do, in order to find that equilibrium at which the Church would be most fully guaranteed a free life, and the state's interests would be fully secured by the Church. In the course of this work, mistakes in one direction or another were unavoidable. But I dare assure — not only for myself but also for the Ukrainian Church — that she will never take the path of any politics or rebellion, just as she has never wished to pursue any politics until now, has consciously withdrawn from all politics, has consciously limited herself solely to the religious-moral education of her native people, and only in this desires from the State favorable conditions for free life and flourishing. 11) I assure, on behalf of myself and the Ukrainian Church, that it contains no chauvinism or nationalism — that is, hostility toward other peoples or violence against them — and does not cultivate these in the people, but in accordance with the commandments of Christ, its aim is the brotherhood of all peoples, not the artificial exaltation of its own nation, but its elevation to equality and cooperation with the nations of the entire world for the spiritual benefit of all humanity. 12) I confess and preach that the Church of Christ is above parties, knows no parties, and the Ukrainian Church is in fact the church of the worker and the peasant, and therefore the happy, conscious life of the workers and peasants is closest to her, while any oppression and exploitation of the workers and peasants is most repugnant to her.

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These are my openly, truthfully, and sincerely expressed inner sentiments and convictions, by which I live and on the basis of which I work. By the will of the Church I was placed in its service in the rank of supreme spiritual leader; only the will of the Church can remove me from this service. And while I am still in this service, I request that orders be given to remove the restrictions on my civil rights, to grant me freedom of movement within the Ukrainian SSR, and the ability to carry out my service in the Church.

The entire time of my life and work under Soviet rule clearly testifies that my service has never, anywhere, provoked among the people counter-revolutionary, anti-Soviet actions or even sentiments; on the contrary, it has more than once evoked calm and enlightenment among the populace. I dare assure that in the future, too, my church service will not represent any danger to the Soviet state authorities.

August 15, 1927. Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky.

Certified as true to the original: Secretary — Archpriest Kh. Hoviadovsky. (Minutes No. 67/87 of the VPCR Presidium session, August 16, 1927, pp. 24-27.)

This statement of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky to the Government of the Ukrainian SSR was accepted by the VPCR Presidium for information, after which the following proposal was made by the Chairman of the VPCR Presidium, Bishop P. Romodaniv: "The VPCR Presidium must take all measures to calm the Church and protect the person of Father Metropolitan from any suspicions on the part of the Government, in order to bring the UAOC to the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor. Meanwhile, provocative rumors are now circulating in Kyiv about the need to collect signatures in defense of Father Metropolitan. These rumors disturb the peace of church life and may harm the person of Father Metropolitan, and perhaps the entire UAOC, more than the Government's previous remarks. The basis for such rumors must be considered the speech of Brother V. M. Chekhivsky in St. Sophia Cathedral on August 7 of this year, on the theme: 'One of the Duties of a Christian in the Work of Preparing Church Life for the Future All-Ukrainian Church Sobor,' in which speech Brother V. M. Chekhivsky appealed to the faithful with a call to testify lawfully, according to the voice of their conscience, to Father Metropolitan's innocence from the state's point of view, and to request the removal of the restrictions on the Metropolitan's work. Brother V. M. Chekhivsky in his statement to the VPCR Presidium notes that he alone takes upon himself the church responsibility, but the extra-church responsibility may fall not on Brother Chekhivsky but on the Sophia parish, its rector, on the VPCR, and on the entire UAOC. To prevent such consequences of V. M. Chekhivsky's speech, the VPCR Presidium must express its view on the action of Brother V. M. Chekhivsky."

After Bishop Romodaniv's proposal, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky assured the Presidium that neither he nor the Sophia parish rada had been warned by Brother V. M. Chekhivsky about the content of his speech and had not given their consent to such an address. Archbishop F. Serhiiev considered inadmissible such addresses from the church cathedra at this time, when the Commission elected by the entire Church for the

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comprehensive clarification of the Church's life was conducting its investigation. Such addresses — whether in defense of Father Metropolitan or against him — in no case can promote the calming of the Church, and therefore they should be considered harmful to the Church in general and to the person of the Metropolitan in particular. The VPCR Presidium resolved: "To consider the address of Brother V. M. Chekhivsky from the cathedra of St. Sophia Cathedral on August 7 of this year as imprudent and harmful to Father Metropolitan and the entire UAOC, and to advise the Parish Rada of St. Sophia Cathedral not to permit similar addresses from the church cathedra in the future" (Ibid., pp. 23-24).

After this, a statement from V. M. Chekhivsky was received by the VPCR Presidium, requesting a special session of the Presidium to hear his proposal regarding the coordination of the joint work of the VPCR and Father Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky. Such a session, with Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky present, took place on August 30, 1927. V. M. Chekhivsky's proposal was of the following content:

  1. The current state of the UAOC's life on the eve of the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor requires the consolidation of the supreme governing bodies of the Church — the VPCR Presidium and the Metropolitan of the Church; the obstacle to such consolidation and harmonious work is the lack of clarification and normalization of the mutual relations between the Metropolitan and the representatives of the Government of the Ukrainian SSR.
  2. In such a situation as exists, the Metropolitan may think that the Presidium has not done everything to remove difficulties and help the Metropolitan emerge from his severe state of distrust and restriction of his rights by the Government; while the Presidium may have taken the position that the Metropolitan, through his attitude toward the Government, hinders the Presidium's work.
  3. Among the faithful, the impression forms that either the VPCR Presidium does not wish to support the Metropolitan with its authority before the Government, or the Metropolitan, not having normalized his relations with the State Government, is harming the church cause.
  4. Therefore, even before the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor, the mutual relations between the State Government and the Metropolitan must be normalized. In what way? It is necessary, whether from the church cathedra or in a proper statement to the Government, to clarify the Metropolitan's absolute apoliticality, to reveal clearly and concretely the Metropolitan's political worldview; this statement must be supported by the VPCR Presidium through sending a separate delegation to the Government.
  5. In favor of sending a delegation speaks the experience of the past: a delegation consisting of the former Chairman of the VPCR V. Potiienko, Archbishop Oleksandr Yareshchenko, and himself, Chekhivsky, had an audience last year with Comrade Balitsky, assured him of the UAOC's loyalty, gave certain guarantees that fully satisfied the Government and secured legal existence for the UAOC; only "Archbishop O. Yareshchenko, a nervous person, a person of emotions, did not keep his word and thereby harmed himself and the entire Church; Father Metropolitan is more balanced, and if the delegation this time too evokes the Government's trust, then Father Metropolitan will not violate the conditions."
  6. If this attempt to rehabilitate the Metropolitan through joint efforts were to fail, then it would be
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clear to all that the campaign against the Metropolitan is being waged independently of the Church and outside it.

In the discussion of V. M. Chekhivsky's proposal, the members of the VPCR Presidium first of all refuted Chekhivsky's notions that supposedly between the VPCR Presidium and Metropolitan Lypkivsky there existed some misunderstandings, and that the Presidium had supposedly not taken all measures for the Metropolitan's rehabilitation in the eyes of the Government and for his defense. From the words of Bishop P. Romodaniv it emerged that the protection and defense of the metropolitan after the September Conference of 1926, when relations between the Government and the metropolitan had been regulated, went so far as to evoke accusations from the Government against the VPCR Presidium that it was covering up the metropolitan's counter-revolutionary actions, as the Government representative had stated during the Pre-Sobor Conference at the end of July of this year. "Now, when the VPCR Presidium itself has been deprived of the Government's trust, its intervention through a delegation in defense of the Metropolitan will carry no weight either before the Government or before the Church (?). Perhaps the Presidium should have done more in this direction, but as Chairman of the Presidium, I testify that in political matters, the mediation of a Church representative does not justify the dignity of the Church itself: we can only knock on doors to find ways to improve relations with the Government. The fact of the Metropolitan's accusation is an evident fact of guilt: there are materials on some points of accusation even at the Church's disposal; therefore the Metropolitan's rehabilitation can come only from himself; the Government does not trust words — one must prove one's righteousness (?) by deeds and facts, and if Father Metropolitan can do this, the VPCR Presidium will joyfully welcome such a step of his."

Member-Secretary of the Presidium, Archpriest Kh. Hoviadovsky, noted that until January the mutual relations between the Government and the Church had been favorable; there was hope that the Government would lift the Metropolitan's travel ban, but after the release from prison of the former VPCR Chairman V. Potiienko and his solemn honoring by a group of faithful led by Father Metropolitan in St. Sophia Cathedral, these relations began to deteriorate with each passing month... Bishop M. Hrushevsky expressed the opinion that if a delegation were to be sent to the Government, it should not be from the VPCR Presidium but from influential citizens of the UAOC. The remaining members of the Presidium expressed the view that under current conditions, sending any delegations was inadvisable and might be understood by the Government as a demonstration on the part of the Church.

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky himself declared that he had already submitted his statement to all the supreme representatives of the Government and would do nothing further in this direction. Thereupon the Presidium resolved: "To establish that between the VPCR Presidium on one side and Father Metropolitan on the other, there have been no grounds for mutual misunderstandings during the entire time of joint work; that the VPCR Presidium has fulfilled its duty of protecting the person of the Metropolitan from any accusations of counter-revolution; and that if such accusations exist, they took place outside the VPCR Presidium, and therefore the rehabilitation of Father Metropolitan

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depends exclusively on himself" (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session No. 70/90, August 30, 1927).

Thus we see from the documents cited above that the removal of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky from the metropolitan cathedra at the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor — although the metropolitan himself composed, and the VPCR Presidium, having heard it and expressed thanks, distributed to all church regions his Address on the occasion of that Sobor (Minutes of the Presidium session of September 9, 1927) — this removal was not, particularly for the VPCR Presidium, a surprise provoked by sudden demands of the DPU. To this, as we see, the preceding events and relations had been leading, the basis of which we shall attempt to analyze later, when we narrate the denouement of the tragedy of the renewed Ukrainian Orthodox Church at the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor. But before that, to complete the picture of historical circumstances, we shall say more about the disruptive currents that were active in the life of the UAOC at its peripheries during the same period before the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor.

6. Attempts to Disrupt the UAOC. The Brotherhood "Active Church of Christ" (DKhTs). The "Ukrainian Autocephaly" Headed by Bishop Feofil Buldovsky.

When by God's allowance the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was destined to enter into relations with the Soviet authorities in Ukraine, upon registration with these authorities it was registered not as a Church but as a "Union of Ukrainian Parishes." This was still in 1919. After the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, this "Union" already had its own church hierarchy and the Statute of its internal organization and governance adopted at that Sobor. As the "Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church" it should have registered as such, but the Soviet authorities dragged out this registration for five years. For the godless Soviet authorities, as we wrote about this above (Ch. II, 3), "it was more advantageous for the weakening and disruption of the Church to deal not with a Church-institution, strong in its unity of governance and life on the foundations of Divine law, with the roots of its historical existence reaching into the depths of centuries," but with a "union" consisting of religious groups (parishes) that could enter and leave the "union."

By not registering the UAOC as an institution to which new parishes could simply enroll, the State Political Administration (DPU), as Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky writes, "wants to break up the UAOC with its all-Ukrainian character into separate groups, and for these groups now uses the ancient Ukrainian name of brotherhoods, but in each place gives the brotherhood a different name, so that there would be less commonality." Moreover, this means of disrupting the UAOC was also tried to be applied to already registered parishes of the UAOC. "From Mykolaiv," writes Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "the VPCR received notification that the Parish Rada was summoned to the DPU and told to re-register its parish as a Ukrainian Church Brotherhood. When the Rada did not agree to this, the church was taken from it and given to the community that registered as a 'Ukrainian Church Brotherhood.' Soon from

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Odesa too came reports that there too the Pokrova [Protection] Cathedral had been taken from the Ukrainian parish and was promised to be returned only when the parish transforms into a brotherhood and accepts the statute of the 'Brotherhood of Renewal.' It was noticeable," narrates Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, "that Archpriest K. Yanushevsky, working in the VPCR as the elected secretary, was also drafting a project for some brotherhood, calling some brothers; once they even called V. Chekhivsky to participate, and he proposed to them naming their brotherhood the 'Church of the Working'" (Vidomosti Gen. Tserk. Upravl. UAPC v V. Brytanii [Bulletin of the General Church Administration of the UAOC in Great Britain], no. 8, 1953, p. 9).

At the beginning of 1924, this "Brotherhood" of Archpriest Yanushevsky appeared, but not with the name "Church of the Working" but with the name "Active Church of Christ." The statute of this brotherhood "DKhTs" was registered by the Soviet authorities; in the statute there was nothing contrary to the principles of the UAOC, but it was not stated that the DKhTs was part of the UAOC. Under the statute were the signatures, as founders of this DKhTs, of the VPCR Presidium Chairman M. Moroz, Archpriest K. Yanushevsky, and Bishop Stepan Orlyk; a prominent member of the DKhTs brotherhood from its inception was also Bishop Petro Tarnavsky, a VPCR member and rector of the Kyiv-Sophia parish. When Bishop Tarnavsky's relations with the Sophia clergy became strained and he had to leave St. Sophia Cathedral, he immediately received from the Soviet authorities a personal mandate for the St. Michael's Monastery adjacent to St. Sophia Cathedral. Here, in St. Michael's Cathedral, a parish of the DKhTs was opened with the obvious aim of splitting the Ukrainian Sophia parish.

At the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1924, in the session of May 28, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky delivered a report titled "Brotherhoods in the Contemporary UAOC and the Brotherhood 'Active Church of Christ.'" In his report, he welcomed the idea of reviving church brotherhoods as one of the ancient forms of conciliarity in the past history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. However, the metropolitan cautioned that in the realization of this idea one should "not diminish the earlier high cultural idea of Brotherhoods in the free life of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church: brotherhoods in our Church can be welcomed only when they unite and do not disunite our faithful people, for in the latter case they would be an enormous evil." The metropolitan then dwelt on the circumstances of the appearance in Kyiv of the brotherhood "Church of the Working." He said that while it is desirable for brotherhoods to be formed, it is not desirable for their relations with the VPCR to be non-brotherly. The brotherhood "Church of the Working," renamed "Active Church of Christ," exists, but the VPCR knows nothing about its composition and work.

Given that this DKhTs conducted its work in secret, rumors began to spread in Kyiv that VPCR Chairman Moroz and Archpriest K. Yanushevsky had gone over to the "Living Church."

Having reviewed the statutes of the Ukrainian brotherhoods registered by the authorities in Ukraine, the VPCR was convinced of the identity of those statutes in content; it was evident that the formation of those brotherhoods, separate from

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the VPCR and consequently from the UAOC, was directed by a single hand, hostile to the spread and development of the UAOC. Then the Presidium, at its session of March 27, 1924, resolved:

  1. All those Ukrainian church Brotherhoods whose statutes contain no provision regarding their relationship to the UAOC shall be considered as not belonging to this Church, and therefore from the statutes of Ukrainian church brotherhoods — "Living Church," "Church of the Working," "Brotherhood of Renewal" — the VPCR's authorization for their existence shall be withdrawn, and the Most Honorable Father Metropolitan is asked to withdraw his blessing from those brotherhoods to which it was given;
  2. Henceforth it shall be required that all Brotherhoods that wish to work in unity with the VPCR must clearly specify in their statutes their relationship to our UAOC;
  3. Ukrainian church brotherhoods that wish to work in union with the UAOC must, before submitting their statute for registration to the authorities, present it for consideration to the appropriate organs of our Church and for confirmation by the VPCR;
  4. All those Ukrainian brotherhoods that already exist on the basis of registered statutes shall be invited, within a one-month period, to supplement their statutes with a provision — if such is lacking — that they will work for the benefit of the UAOC and in full union with it. In case of their failure to fulfill this requirement within the specified period, they shall be considered as not belonging to the UAOC.

In furtherance of this fundamental resolution on the establishment and work of brotherhoods in the UAOC, the Small Rada of the VPCR in expanded composition, at the session of April 3, 1924, confirmed the above resolution. It added rules for the review of draft brotherhood statutes and their confirmation depending on the scope of their work (parish, district, region, all of Ukraine). These rules concluded with the following important resolution: "Brotherhoods in the UAOC are organizations of internal church life and have value from the moral standpoint and from the standpoint of assisting the administrative church organs in various branches of church life, and therefore are registered only for legal existence, while all communications with the state authorities are conducted through the mediation of the appropriate administrative organs or with their consent."

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's report provoked a lengthy discussion, but given that the majority of speakers who took the floor on the question of founding Brotherhoods fundamentally endorsed the resolutions of the Presidium and Small Rada at the expanded sessions of April 3, 1924, a resolution of the following content was put to a vote: "To recognize the resolutions of the Small Rada regarding Brotherhoods as correct and requiring implementation." This resolution, supplemented with the words: "In the statutes of Brotherhoods, the word 'Church' must not appear as an addition to the name of the Brotherhood, to avoid the possibility of a Brotherhood being construed as a separate Church," was adopted unanimously at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1924

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(Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 25-30, 1924, pp. 21 verso to 29 inclusive).

Following the resolution of the question of Brotherhoods in the UAOC came the re-election of the Presidium (Small Rada) of the VPCR, which according to the rules should have taken place at the Great Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR, but in 1923 this assembly did not take place. The attitude toward the participants in the disruptive campaign in the life of the UAOC through the establishment of brotherhoods separate from the VPCR — particularly the "Church of the Working" or "Active Church of Christ" — was also reflected in these re-elections, when, in the words of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "Archpriest Yanushevsky was not even nominated by anyone, and the candidacy of Archpriest Moroz for the chairmanship of the VPCR was rejected by a large majority" (43 for, 73 against, and 21 abstained. Ibid., p. 34).

After the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1924, we have no information about any other separatist brotherhoods besides the DKhTs Brotherhood. The so-called Brotherhood "Active Church of Christ" not only failed to comply with the resolutions regarding Brotherhoods in the UAOC of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1924, but expanded its disruptive campaign even further. As the VPCR reported in its Address "to the Church Radas and all pastors and faithful of the UAOC," the DKhTs Brotherhood on September 11, 1924, issued a public address with slanders against the Metropolitan and other UAOC figures and "sentenced to death the entire UAOC, placing as the heading of its shameful address the text of Holy Scripture: 'Life and death I set before you — choose life' (that is, the DKhTs), 'that you and all your kin may live.'" The address was issued under the signature of the DKhTs head, Bishop Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky, Bishop Petro Tarnavsky, Archpriest Yanushevsky, and "two more who had renounced the Church altogether."

When the VPCR asked these clergy whether they considered themselves as belonging to the DKhTs, they responded that they belonged both to the DKhTs and to the UAOC. Then the Presidium of the VPCR referred their case to the Supreme Church Court. Having reviewed the case, the Church Court on February 11, 1925, resolved to expel Bishop Brzhosnyovsky, Bishop Tarnavsky, and Archpriest Yanushevsky from the composition of the UAOC.

But their DKhTs Brotherhood "continued to conduct the shameful disruptive work in the UAOC for which it was founded, and through various deceitful means began to transfer UAOC parishes to its statute, clearly demonstrating that it is an entirely separate church, wholly hostile to the UAOC, although with Judas-like hypocrisy it continued its kiss, commemorating at Divine Services both the VPCR and Metropolitan Vasyl."

In May 1925, the "activists" issued a new address, full of "untruth, slanders, and false political denunciations against UAOC figures, and above all against Father Metropolitan." "The attempt of the DKhTs," we read further in the VPCR Address, "to unite with the Renovationist-Synodal Church through secret ordination not only definitively separated the so-called DKhTs from the UAOC, but in substance deprived the DKhTs of the right to call itself a church organization, inasmuch as its leaders do not believe in the fullness of the grace of the Holy Spirit, Who abides and acts in the Church." The "activists" cried that the UAOC's position

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was catastrophic, that it would never be registered and must cease to exist, and therefore the only means to save the UAOC was to join the DKhTs, which was registered by the authorities.

On October 21, 1925, an All-Ukrainian assembly of the DKhTs took place. At it the "activists" decided that the time of the UAOC's death had already come and adopted a resolution that they were the rightful successors of the UAOC, must take over all functions of the UAOC, and they elected their own VPCR consisting of persons not even belonging to the UAOC, to which the real VPCR was supposed to hand over its functions. Thus the "activists" usurped in the most shameful manner the authority of the Church-community, imposing their resolutions upon a church organization to which they did not belong. "At this congress, likewise, the greatest efforts were made to discredit Father Metropolitan, the VPCR elected at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1924 (the Third), and individual UAOC figures, while the 'activists,' accusing the VPCR and the Metropolitan of non-church activity, did not stop even before a resolution about the political unreliability of the UAOC's church leadership."

At the end of its Address about the disruptive campaign of the DKhTs, the VPCR Presidium called upon the faithful "to reject with disgust the appeals of the activists to submit to them," and told them not to be frightened by their constant threats of "state measures," for the UAOC consists of registered parishes, and the VPCR Presidium is taking all measures to register the UAOC's Statute.

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky separately addressed "the clergy and faithful of the UAOC" with an epistle on the occasion of the DKhTs campaign. We cite this document of the time in full:

"Dear fathers and brethren! Oh, it would be better for me to be silent than to say what I must say. With pain of heart and tears of sorrow I inform you that from among us have emerged fierce enemies of our Church, who have united in the so-called Brotherhood 'Active Church of Christ.' And they stop at nothing to destroy, to disrupt our UAOC, and with every untruth and slander to besmirch me and other workers of it. These are our former bishops — Petro Tarnavsky and Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky, our former Archpriest Kost Yanushevsky, and their adherents.

'But if it were an enemy who insulted me — I shall say in the words of the Psalm — I could have borne it; or if it were my adversary who slandered me, I would have paid him no heed. But it was you, a man my equal, my companion, with whom we held sweet counsel and walked together into the House of God'... The Psalm goes on to say: 'Let death come upon them'... (Ps. 54 [55]:13-16). But I, as a servant of Christ the Savior, shall say to each of them in the words of Christ to Judas the traitor: 'Friend, do what you came to do' (Mt. XXVI, 50). And you, my dear ones, I warn against their deception, treachery, and slanders, aimed at the disruption of our Church, which become ever more brazen.

Having gathered at their assembly on October 21, this handful of activists was not ashamed to adopt a resolution that the VPCR Presidium, elected by the will of the entire Church, must already be liquidated, and they decided to appeal to the state authorities to take from the VPCR

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all functions of governing the UAOC and transfer them to the Rada of their Brotherhood. I am confident that our state authority will do justice in this church matter too, and will give the opportunity for the Great Assembly of the VPCR to convene, which will decide according to all proper rules about the life of our Church. Until that time, brethren, be vigilant, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be steadfast (1 Cor. XVI, 13), and put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Maintain complete unity with the present VPCR Presidium, which, of course, can be changed only by that Church which elected it; this VPCR is taking all measures for the speediest convening of the Great Assembly of the VPCR. To the insolent call of the enemies of our Church, the 'activists,' to submit to their governance, give answer only with even greater unity among yourselves and with the VPCR, so that there be no division in the young body of our Church, but that all its members equally care for one another. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and my love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. (1 Cor. XVI, 23).

Archbishop Vasyl Lypkivsky, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine. In the Year of our Lord 1925, October 10/23. (Feast of the Restoration of the Hierarchy of the UAOC)."

On October 24, 1925, in the Kharkiv newspaper Komunist, under the heading "A Schism in the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church," a dispatch was published. It had been sent from Kyiv from the congress of "autocephalists" of the DKhTs, addressed to the chairman of the VUTsVK [All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee] Comrade Petrovsky, the chairman of SOVNARKOM Comrade Chubar, and Narkomvnudel [People's Commissar of Internal Affairs] Comrade Balitsky. Its content was as follows: "The First All-Ukrainian Congress of members of the UAOC who have united in the Brotherhood 'Active Church of Christ' greets through you the peasant-worker government of Ukraine for granting the believing populace the right to freely organize their church-religious life, and asks you to accept the sincere assurance that the UAOC, represented by the Brotherhood and its executive organ, the VPCR, elected by this congress on October 20, 1925, which at the present moment is the sole legitimate governing body in the Ukrainian Church, will strive for the realization of the social truth in Ukraine bequeathed by Christ." It was signed by the Presidium of the congress, headed by Bishop P. Tarnavsky.

The editorial staff appended a note to this dispatch: "The congress, whose sessions are taking place in Kyiv, unites parishes that have rallied against the present leaders of the so-called Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, who have provoked dissatisfaction with their duplicitous policy toward the Soviet authorities and their connections with counter-revolutionary circles in Ukraine and abroad."

In response to this action of the DKhTs before the authorities and publicly — so dangerous for the UAOC — a session of the VPCR Presidium took place, at which the Presidium resolved to send to the central organs of authority and to the newspaper Komunist a refutation of the false information and the dispatch of the "activists" congress Presidium, who are not members of the UAOC and had not had at their congress any representatives from UAOC parishes, and of the editorial note about the duplicity of the policy of the UAOC leaders

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and their connections with the counter-revolution. The texts of the refutations, composed by Archpriest M. Khomychevsky, were adopted at that same session (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session No. 129, October 30, 1925).

The VPCR's refutation was not published in Komunist, but the state authorities did not take the path of recognizing the "VPCR" elected by the "activists'" congress as "the sole legitimate governing body in the Ukrainian Church at the present moment," leaving them to continue their subversive work within the internal life of the UAOC.

Although we do not have precise data to judge the extent of the "activists'" disruptive campaign, it is evident from subsequent events that the VPCR's counter-action immediately revealed to the clergy and faithful of the UAOC the true face of the DKhTs. Therefore, in the transition of certain persons from the hierarchy or priesthood, as well as entire parishes, to the DKhTs, it is difficult to discern any ideological motives. These transitions can be compared to those "flights" that during this time (from 1925 onward) took place in the life of the Orthodox Autocephalous Church in Poland. There the Catholic campaign of "neo-union" or, as it was called, "governmental union" — a union "of the Eastern rite" — was launched there: in the "flights" to this union it was futile to look for moral or ideological motivations; the transitions of parishes were provoked either by deceptions or by dissatisfaction with the church authorities' handling of legitimate requests of parishioners.

From the episcopate of the UAOC, besides the already named Bishops V. Brzhosnyovsky and P. Tarnavsky, Bishop Mykola Shyrai went over to the DKhTs, having fallen out with the Nizhyn Regional Rada; he began creating unrest, and up to 20 parishes in the Nizhyn region went over to the DKhTs. The Bishop Pyvovariv already known to us from earlier also joined the ranks of the "activists" and nearly the entire Bratslav region (26 out of 27 parishes) "in a provocative manner," in the words of Archpriest Basovol, joined the DKhTs, having exploited the dissatisfaction caused by the deprivation of the region of separate existence as a regional church (Minutes of the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1926, p. 7).

Expelled from the UAOC by decision of the Supreme Church Court, Bishop P. Tarnavsky was settled at the parish of the Golden-Domed St. Michael's Monastery, and Bishop V. Brzhosnyovsky in Bila Tserkva in the Kyiv region (at the St. Panteleimon Church). Besides these four named DKhTs bishops, in the records one also encounters the names, as DKhTs bishops, of Khomzha (worked in the Yelysavethrad/Zinovievsk region) and Vasyl Pshenychny — both consecrated by persons unknown to us. Bishop M. Shyrai, after the Nizhyn region (village Nosovka), moved to Kyiv and had there a Trinity parish attached to the DKhTs. There are reports that the DKhTs even published its own organ, Tserkovne Zhyttia [Church Life].

Meanwhile, the state authorities' need for the "DKhTs" significantly weakened and then completely disappeared in connection with the events in the church life of the UAOC about which we narrated above: the state authorities' closing of the Third VPCR, the imprisonment of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, the arrival in Kyiv from Kharkiv of Bishop P. Romodaniv, the convening of the September Conference of 1926, the formation of the All-Ukrainian Commission for the Normalization of the Life of the UAOC, and the convening of the Great Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR in 1926, at which a new Presidium

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of the VPCR was elected, headed by Bishop P. Romodaniv, and recognized by the Soviet authorities. Already with the formation of the All-Ukrainian Commission for the Normalization of the Life of the UAOC, an order was evidently given to the DKhTs figures to liquidate themselves, and a memorandum was submitted by the DKhTs leadership to the VUK, in connection with which a commission composed of representatives of the VUK and the DKhTs was created for the joint review of the memorandum and discussion of the conditions for the DKhTs's return to the UAOC.

The report on the work of this commission and the VUK's resolution on this matter was presented at the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1926, in the session of October 29, by Bishop K. Maliushkevych. After debate on this matter, in which the prevailing opinion was that "members of the DKhTs, like prodigal sons, must ask forgiveness of the metropolitan and their parishes, and then be received," the following resolution was adopted: "The Great Pokrova Assembly recognizes that the existence of the DKhTs Brotherhood within the UAOC under the present conditions of the Church's life is not necessary. The enrollment of parishes that consider themselves as belonging to the DKhTs into the UAOC is desirable. For this purpose, the said parishes must formalize the matter through their general assemblies and a protocol resolution on their enrollment into the UAOC. The enrollment of clergy is also desirable, but they themselves must apply with a statement regarding their enrollment to the appropriate governing organs of the UAOC (bishops to the VPCR, priests to the Regional Church Radas). The VPCR will address all parishes and clergy of the DKhTs Brotherhood with a call for their return to the UAOC" (Minutes of the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1926, pp. 27-28).

After the VPCR, on the basis of this resolution of the Great Pokrova Assembly, had determined the path for the reunification of the DKhTs with the UAOC, and after the VPCR distributed the resolution to the Regional Churches and to the center of the DKhTs Brotherhood, a request came from the latter to the VPCR to hold a joint conference for the final establishment of the conditions of reunification. The conference, which took place on November 29, 1926, did not have the desired results. "The general impression from the DKhTs representatives at the conference was as follows: for K. Yanushevsky, reunification is not desirable, because the affairs of the Church are not dear to him, and the division gives him the opportunity to wage a struggle against those persons toward whom he harbors malice; the bishops are inclined toward reunification if only their own welfare is secured in the process; in general, the DKhTs representatives consider possible only a complete reunification of the entire Brotherhood membership, while the VPCR, on the basis of the act signed during the Great Pokrova Assembly by 11 bishops of the UAOC, recognized the return to work of Bishop Pyvovariv as inadmissible. Therefore on December 10 the VPCR Presidium resolved to place the DKhTs matter before the Plenary Session of the Small VPCR Rada for final resolution" (From "Communications of the Lubny Regional Church Commission on the Life of the UAOC," No. 2).

At the plenary session of the Small Rada of the VPCR on December 29, 1926, DKhTs Bishops P. Tarnavsky, V. Brzhosnyovsky, and M. Shyrai participated in the matter of the liquidation of the DKhTs. During the discussion of this matter, Bishop H. Maliarevsky expressed the opinion: "One should not raise the question of what prompted the bishops to go over to the DKhTs, for Christ did not ask even

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the harlot or the robber — He forgave them both." To this, from the side of the laity came the remark: "Christ did not ask because He knew, but we are humans and must know the reasons for the departure." Nevertheless, besides acknowledging their mistake, no substantial reasons for the defection were given by the DKhTs bishops, and Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky made a statement: "On my part there was no personal hostility, and after the departure of the present bishops from the UAOC, I see them for the first time. They became enemies of the Church, and I defended the Church from them; therefore, after their reunion, until I see them at work and that they are not enemies of the Church, I personally refrain from brotherly communion with them."

The DKhTs bishops again insisted on the accession of the DKhTs in corpore, but this was rejected. On the contrary, the question was raised: "Are the three bishops a guarantee that the entire Brotherhood will reunite?" (Archbishop N. Sharaivsky).

Finally, the Small Rada of the VPCR, believing in the sincerity of those at fault and their desire to become members of the UAOC, adopted a resolution according to which Bishops Brzhosnyovsky, Tarnavsky, and Shyrai of the DKhTs would be accepted personally as members of the UAOC, for which purpose they would submit a formal statement about their departure from the DKhTs union and its Rada, a copy of which statement would also be submitted to the State Administrative Division. In view of the assurances of the named bishops that the entire DKhTs union wished to liquidate its statute and cease its activity, the VPCR Presidium was instructed to take measures for the complete liquidation of the DKhTs with the participation of the said bishops. As for the place of the accepted bishops' sacred ministry, this matter was referred to the VPCR Presidium for decision (Minutes of the Plenary Session of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR of the UAOC, December 28-30, 1926, pp. 11-14).

In connection with this resolution, on January 21, 1927, a liquidation session of the Rada of the Union of Religious Communities of the DKhTs (abbreviated VURS) took place under the chairmanship of Bishop Shyrai, at which the Rada resolved to cease the work of the VURS and transfer all matters of governing the DKhTs to the VPCR, and to notify all priests and parishes of the Union about this and invite them to immediately carry out the directives of the Great Pokrova Assembly; the cessation of the VURS's work was to be reported to the Soviet authorities.

The motives given by the "activists" for this resolution are interesting: 1) their VURS was supposedly a temporary governing body of the UAOC pending the election of a permanent governing body of the UAOC; 2) at the Great Pokrova Assembly in October 1926, a permanent VPCR in the UAOC was elected and confirmed by the Soviet authorities; 3) the Union of Religious Communities of the DKhTs, as a constituent part of the UAOC, must now subordinate itself to the lawful VPCR and carry out the resolution of the Great Pokrova Assembly permitted by the Government.

The VPCR Presidium, at its session of January 25, 1927, accepted for information this liquidation resolution of the "activists" and turned to the Kyiv Regional Administrative Division with a request to notify the VPCR of the final liquidation of the DKhTs Brotherhood Statute; after receiving such notification, the VPCR was to accept all DKhTs records into the VPCR archive. But, as we see from the Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 11-13, 1927, the liquidation of the DKhTs even after the cited liquidation resolutions did not proceed so quickly. And the matter was not in the rank and file, who essentially

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were not at fault in the very formation of the DKhTs schism. Parishes misled into the DKhTs often did not even understand that they were not in the UAOC. In reports from the localities at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly there were statements: "DKhTs liquidated" (Proskuriv region); "Bratslav region liquidated" (the entire region had been in the DKhTs); "16 parishes that came over from the DKhTs are in an unclear state" (Kyiv region); "unclear attitude of certain parishes that joined from the DKhTs" (Bila Tserkva region); "activist activity left sad, severe consequences of complete anarchy... 16 parishes joined from the DKhTs" (Nizhyn region).

In the report on the state of the UAOC by the Chairman of the VPCR Presidium, Bishop Romodaniv, the main culprits of the protracted process of the DKhTs's return to the UAOC were clearly identified. "Some of the clergy," said Bishop Romodaniv, "wishing to preserve their chieftainship in the DKhTs, did not entirely agree with those principles of reunification that were put forward by the Great Pokrova Assembly. The Bila Tserkva Oleksandriivka parish — the people are ours, but the clergy... Things stand badly with the top leaders of the DKhTs Brotherhood — P. Tarnavsky, V. Brzhosnyovsky, and other bishops; particularly noteworthy is the unwillingness of the former DKhTs bishops to submit to the VPCR Presidium's resolutions on the inadmissibility of leaving certain clergy in their previous places of service"... Such persons included precisely P. Tarnavsky and V. Brzhosnyovsky themselves.

The head of the Bila Tserkva region, Priest Dovhalenko, narrated: "As long as Bishop Brzhosnyovsky remains in Bila Tserkva, there will certainly be no sincere reunification; the reunification is only on paper, while the old business goes on as before"... And the Bila Tserkva region, through its representatives, asked the Assembly to adopt a proposal to Bishop Brzhosnyovsky to leave Bila Tserkva and go to work for the benefit of our holy Church in another region, if he wished to remain within the UAOC. But the Assembly resolved only to "ask the VPCR to take appropriate measures in this matter" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927, pp. 14, 24, 31-32, 61-62, 66).

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky knew those bishops from the DKhTs well when he wished first to see them at work after the "reunification" before having brotherly communion with them on the basis of their labor. Our information about Bishop Brzhosnyovsky ends with the fact that the VPCR Presidium found it necessary to accept for information "the notification of the representative of the Oleksandriivka St. Panteleimon Parish of Bila Tserkva, Samofalov, about the desire of the parishioners to keep Bishop V. Brzhosnyovsky as their rector" (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session, September 9, 1927).

As for Bishop P. Tarnavsky, after the reunification and the resolution of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly in May 1927, we find in the VPCR records information about how he was summoned by the VPCR Presidium for clarification of the state of the St. Michael's parish at the Golden-Domed Monastery, which to this day had not actually reunited with the UAOC, though it lived according to the UAOC statute. Bishop Tarnavsky gave the explanation that the St. Michael's parish considered itself part of the UAOC but, "on the basis of conciliar governance, cannot recognize the VPCR's demand to change its rector" (that is, Father Tarnavsky himself). The VPCR Presidium resolved: "To recognize as erroneous and harmful the view of Bishop P. Tarnavsky on

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the conciliar governance of the UAOC as the right of each parish to live as it pleases, not subordinating itself to any directives of the governing bodies; such an interpretation of conciliar governance leads to the ambiguity of the status of Father P. Tarnavsky himself, as well as of the St. Michael's parish, which at present represents 'an autocephaly within an autocephaly'" (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session, June 28, 1927).

Of a different origin and character from the DKhTs Brotherhood (a brotherhood for the disunion of brothers) was the Ukrainian church current of the same era, also striving for independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church but hostile to the UAOC — called "Buldovshchyna" by the opponents of this current, after the surname of the bishop, later metropolitan, Feofil Buldovsky, who headed it.

"Many citizens of Soviet Ukraine," writes Fr. Heyer, "who from a political standpoint stood in the midst of the national-Ukrainian movement and enthusiastically welcomed in idea the founding of their own Autocephalous National Church, were nevertheless so deeply bound to Orthodox traditions that a profound reluctance must have arisen in them at such a development of Lypkivsky's Church. They grieved that the so extraordinarily consecrated bishops Lypkivsky and Sharaivsky had placed themselves outside the canonical apostolic succession. They wished that where matters touched the Church, church postulates would not be overshadowed or displaced by politics" (Op. cit., p. 90).

About this same current, V. V. Potiienko — the former chairman of the Third VPCR Presidium (1924-26), who in 1928 was obliged to leave the UAOC clergy and renounce his deaconal rank (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1/6, 1928, p. 37) — wrote in 1944 as follows, contrasting it with "the most reactionary church elements" in Ukraine who accepted nothing from the resolutions of the Kyiv Sobor of 1921: "Others, more far-sighted, agreed that the Sobor's resolutions enliven the life of the Church, impart vital strength to it, and heal it. They recognized that these resolutions attract to the Church new forces that had until then stood apart, making the Church closer to the people and necessary to them. But they wished that all of this would be carried out in a lawful manner, through the existing authority of the Moscow Patriarch Tikhon. Such a tendency was particularly strong in the Poltava region, and Archpriest Feofil Buldovsky headed this current" (V. Potiienko: The Ukrainian Autocephalous Conciliar-Governed Church. Kirchhain, March 1944. Manuscript, p. 7).

Archpriest Feofil Buldovsky was born in 1865 in a Ukrainian clerical family in the Poltava region; before the revolution of 1917, like Archpriest V. Lypkivsky in the Kyiv region, he belonged to the prominent progressive pastors of the Poltava region and was a Ukrainophile. The report at the Poltava Diocesan Congress of May 3-6, 1917, "On the Ukrainianization of the Church," which we cited above (see Ch. I, 1), was authored by Archpriest F. Buldovsky, as V. Potiienko testifies in the above-mentioned manuscript. When in Poltava the old-regime Spiritual Consistory was replaced by the Diocesan Administration, Archpriest F. Buldovsky entered its composition and headed the national-Ukrainian

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circle around Archbishop Parfeniy Levytsky, who supported the national-Ukrainian movement in the Church but in canonical forms. After the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, Archpriest Buldovsky, like Archbishop Parfeniy, was an opponent of the new hierarchy consecrated conciliarly at that Sobor for the UAOC.

During the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, Exarch Mikhail consecrated in Kyiv the Poltava archpriest Hryhorii Lisovsky as Bishop of Lubny, vicar for Archbishop Parfeniy. Bishop Hryhorii was elected by the Poltava Eparchial Assembly to the cathedra of Bishop of Poltava after the death of Archbishop Parfeniy in January 1922. In the Diocesan Administration, those national-Ukrainian circles of Poltava that held canonical positions in the church movement continued to play an important role. From them — citing the broad successes of the UAOC in the Poltava region with the consecration as bishops of Oleksandr Yareshchenko for Lubny and Konstantyn Krotevych for Poltava (in March 1922) — came a request to Bishop Hryhorii of Poltava to consecrate a vicar, a Ukrainian bishop for Lubny, in order to weaken, if not halt, the successes of the "Lypkivtsi." The candidate for such a bishop was Archpriest Feofil Buldovsky.

Bishop Hryhorii evidently could not decide this question on his own and turned to Exarch Mikhail. But in those times even the bishops in Ukraine under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate were yielding their previous positions under the influence of both the spread of the UAOC and the appearance in 1922 of the "Living Church," which from Moscow was stretching its hand to Ukraine as well. "On September 5, 1922, a Synod of Bishops in Ukraine (the so-called 'Tikhonites'), under the leadership of the Exarch of Ukraine, Metropolitan Mikhail, resolved in Kyiv to take the path of autocephaly and to decide church affairs independently at a Synod of Bishops" (From the epistle "To the Most Honorable Clergy of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine," signed by Aleksii, Metropolitan of Volyn — Exarch of Ukraine, Antonii, Archbishop of Kherson, Simon, Archbishop of Chernihiv, and other autonomist bishops. Ukrainskyi Holos [Ukrainian Voice], Proskuriv, January 22, 1942). And so the idea of consecrating Archpriest F. Buldovsky as bishop was received favorably and received the sanction of the Synod of Bishops under the leadership of Exarch Mikhail.

On New Year's Day, January 1/14, 1923, the consecration of Archpriest Buldovsky, with the participation of three bishops, took place with extraordinary solemnity in Poltava, where the people had never before seen a bishop's consecration. That same year 1923, on the motion of the newly consecrated Bishop Buldovsky, a second vicar of the Poltava eparchy, of Pryluky, was consecrated; Archimandrite Serhii Labuntsev, the steward of the hierarchal residence in Poltava, who was a representative of the same orientation as Bishop Feofil, became Bishop of Pryluky.

Settling in Lubny, Bishop of Lubny and Myrhorod Feofil Buldovsky did indeed for some time slow the spread of the UAOC. In those parishes where there was a pull toward autocephaly and a desire for services in the Ukrainian language, a priest under the jurisdiction of Bishop Buldovsky would often settle and serve in Ukrainian. On the other hand, for those priests who stood on the ground of

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Ukrainianization of the Church but did not want, or hesitated, to recognize the resolutions and rites of the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, the presence of the Ukrainian bishop Feofil Buldovsky helped define their position. Ukrainian priests from other dioceses too began to turn to Bishop Buldovsky to be under his care and leadership.

This "national-separatist" campaign in church life by Bishop Buldovsky provoked hostility toward him from the Poltava and neighboring eparchial hierarchs, who filed a complaint against Buldovsky with Patriarch Tikhon, in which they accused Bishop Feofil of interfering in the life of other dioceses, in the affairs of other bishops, of separating parishes with priests into a special eparchy, of separatism, and of intentions to create his own autocephaly. Bishop Feofil was summoned to Patriarch Tikhon in Moscow.

Around this time, Bishop Pavlo Pohorilko arrived in Lubny from Podillia. He was, as we know (Ch. I, 6), a Ukrainian candidate for the episcopacy even before the Sobor of 1921, but did not agree with the method of consecration adopted at the 1921 Sobor and departed from the UAOC. Then Father Pohorilko joined the "Living Church" movement, and was consecrated bishop by bishops of the "Living Church" in Moscow. Bishop Pohorilko returned to Podillia and there began conducting a "church-renovationist campaign" on a national basis, requiring, however, that a parish wishing to Ukrainianize "should express the will to do so by no less than two-thirds of the votes of the entire parish." Pohorilko's campaign had no success in Podillia (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly, May 25-30, 1924, p. 8). Then Bishop Pohorilko joined forces with Bishop Buldovsky and moved to the Poltava region.

In mutual understanding, Bishops Buldovsky, Pohorilko, and Labuntsev decided to seek Ukrainian autocephaly on canonical foundations; with this Bishop Buldovsky traveled to Moscow at the patriarch's summons. The consideration of the matter in Moscow, according to V. Potiienko's account from what appears to be Bishop Buldovsky's own words, ended with "Buldovsky receiving no punishment; he pledged not to interfere in the life of other dioceses; Patriarch Tikhon treated him very well and supposedly on the matter of autocephaly said that 'no one will bring you autocephaly on a platter,' and supposedly, as Buldovsky maintains, Patriarch Tikhon agreed to the autocephalous path of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and permitted the organization of a Synod of Bishops for the governance of the Church in Ukraine" (Manuscript, Op. cit., p. 4).

Upon returning from Moscow, Bishop Feofil did indeed convene bishops to Lubny for the organization of the governance of the Ukrainian Church. Four bishops took part in this Synod of Bishops: Feofil Buldovsky, Pavlo Pohorilko, Serhii Labuntsev, and, it appears, Makar Kramarenko. They proclaimed the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church. The Synod of Bishops assumed the functions of an all-Ukrainian church governance, designating Lubny as the seat of the Synod; by resolution of the Synod, two more bishops were consecrated.

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The Soviet authorities soon registered the statute of this religious association, submitted by the Synod of Bishops under the name "Brotherly Union of Ukrainian Autocephalous Churches," abbreviated as BOUAPC. For the authorities gladly took advantage of every division and fragmentation that weakened the Church.

But this campaign of Bishop Buldovsky and those with him provoked resolute opposition from the Tikhonite episcopate on the spot. By the Synod of Bishops under the leadership of Exarch Mikhail, Bishop Feofil Buldovsky was placed on trial before the bishops, which took place, as V. Potiienko testifies, in absentia.

But when this trial took place, our sources are confused. Fr. Heyer dates the proclamation of independence from Moscow by Bishop Buldovsky and other bishops with him of Ukrainian parishes to May 1925, after which supposedly Patriarch Tikhon placed Bishop Buldovsky on trial, which took place as a trial of bishops in Ukraine on June 4-5, 1925. But Patriarch Tikhon died on March 25 (Old Style) 1925 (Op. cit., pp. 91-92).

V. Potiienko writes about the trial: "An act was drawn up in which Bishop Buldovsky was charged with a series of offenses of a church-canonical nature. As punishment, it was resolved to strip him of the episcopal and priestly rank. This act was sent to Moscow, where the Church was now being governed by the present Patriarch Sergii (then metropolitan)... Metropolitan Sergii confirmed the conclusion of the judicial act, signed by 12 bishops" (Op. cit., p. 5). But Metropolitan Sergii Stragorodsky began to govern the Russian Church as locum tenens of the patriarchal throne more than two years after the death of Patriarch Tikhon, from July 1927. The trial, however, did take place in connection with the Synod of Bishops in Lubny in the spring of 1925, in that same year 1925, and not in 1927.

In the transmission of the sentence there is also a discrepancy, for in Fr. Heyer the episcopal sentence was milder, conditional: "The Lubny sectarians shall be given over to church penance, and if they do not acknowledge their errors and do not bring penance, they shall be stripped of their sacred rank and excommunicated from the Church" (Ibid., p. 92).

But Bishop Feofil and the Synod of Bishops of one mind with him did not submit to the sentence either in this form or in the one cited above in V. Potiienko's narrative. The "Ukrainian Autocephalous Church" he headed continued its existence. According to V. Potiienko's testimony, "at the greatest flourishing of that Autocephalous Church, about 200 parishes belonged to it — in the Lubny, Poltava, Chernihiv, Podillia, and Dnipropetrovsk regions" (p. 5).

With the ever-increasing struggle of the godless Soviet authorities against the Church and religion and the destruction of church life, the Autocephalous Church headed by Bishop Buldovsky also shared the fate of the other Churches; under this oppression and persecution, the activity of Bishop Buldovsky himself was transferred to Kharkiv, and then to Luhansk. When the last church in Luhansk was closed in 1937, Bishop Buldovsky returned to Kharkiv and lived there as a private

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person (Fr. Heyer, p. 92). During the German occupation of Ukraine in 1941-43, Bishop Buldovsky, already bearing the rank of metropolitan, again appeared in Ukrainian church life, but about this we shall narrate in due course, following the course of events.

7. The Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927; the Removal from the Metropolitan Cathedra of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky and the Election of Bishop Mykolai Boretsky as Metropolitan.

According to the resolutions of the UAOC Sobor of 1921, the All-Ukrainian Sobor of this Church was to take place every five years (Ch. XI, Section G, point 32), on October 1/14, the Feast of the Pokrova [Protection of the Theotokos]. Thus such a Sobor should have taken place in October 1926. But the life of the UAOC, already after three years of its development following the 1921 Sobor, had revealed the need for the convening of an extraordinary Church Sobor. Therefore, at the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1924, the VPCR resolved to convene an All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in 1925, and a Pre-Sobor Commission at the VPCR was elected for the preparation of materials. However, neither the planned extraordinary Sobor of 1925 nor the regular Sobor in 1926 could take place, for the simple reason that the Bolshevik state government did not grant permission for the holding of the Sobor. The UAOC did not have a registered state statute, the registration of which was not being processed by that same government in order to keep the UAOC in a rightless state. Only on December 10, 1926, as we already know, did the state authorities of the Ukrainian SSR register the UAOC's statute. Proceeding from Bishop Romodaniv's assurances at the Great Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR in 1926 about the speedy registration of the statute and permission for the Sobor, that Assembly resolved to convene the Church Sobor on October 17, 1927.

However, the Pre-Sobor Commission, under the chairmanship of Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, had been working since the time of its election in October 1924; now, after the registration of the Church's statute, the VPCR decided to distribute the "Draft Program of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor," developed by the Pre-Sobor Commission, to the Regional Church Radas for consideration of the program's questions and possibly the raising of other questions not noted in the Commission's draft.

The draft of this Program of the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor of 1927 — called the "Sobor of Self-Knowledge" after the 1921 Sobor, which was the "Sobor of Renewal" of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church — testifies to how voluminous and varied were the questions in the field of church-Christian and religious life in general that constituted the subject of interest for the creators of the UAOC. Here is the draft of the Sobor program; in parentheses we give the surname of the designated speaker:

  1. The current state of religion in general and Christianity in particular in world life (V. M. Chekhivsky). — 2. The fundamental requirements of the contemporary Christian worldview in the field of the doctrine of faith (Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky). — 3. The fundamental requirements of the contemporary Christian
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worldview in the field of morality (Archpriest M. Khomychevsky). — 4. A review of the life of the UAOC over the past six years (Bishop Petro Romodaniv). — 5. The organization of the UAOC — a report that was to consist of subsections: the foundations of the Church's organization, the significance of canons and their understanding; the canons of the UAOC and their revision according to the demands of church life; the codification of the canons of the UAOC; the organization of the material situation of the UAOC; the means of maintaining church discipline; the determination of the labor of Church workers; the matter of renewing the composition of the clergy; the care and governance of the church life of the faithful (Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky). — 6. Church-educational affairs (Bishop Yakiv Chulaivsky). — 7. The liturgical sphere of church life (Archbishop N. Sharaivsky). — 8. The church-historical-archaeological-ethnographic section (Archpriest M. Khomychevsky). — 9. The relationship of the UAOC to other Christian churches (Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky). — 10. The relationship of the UAOC to non-Christian associations (Bishop Marko Hrushevsky). — 11. The relationship of the UAOC to state-civic life (O. O. Levytsky). — 12. Consideration of appeals to the Sobor in various matters (Archpriest Kh. Hoviadovsky) (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1, 1927, pp. 114-115).

We do not have information about whether the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927 followed this program, for its acts were not published, and we find only brief information about it in Chapter VII of the History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Lypkivsky. Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky, in his report at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly on May 29, 1928, said: "It is a bad phenomenon among us that for some reason until now, already for half a year, we have not informed the UAOC about the main acts of the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, and thereby seem to be concealing something from the Church. Such a phenomenon is undoubtedly undesirable, and the Church must be told the whole truth, otherwise the Church will be uneasy and its life will not be normalized" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, p. 96).

We do not know whether this warning of Metropolitan Mykolai was heeded by the VPCR Presidium. One must think that the question of the change in the position of metropolitan of the UAOC — which was not included in the program of the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor but was placed before the Sobor immediately by the representatives of the state authorities — so thoroughly disrupted the "agenda" of the Sobor that its participants had no time for the resolution of the broad many questions of an ideological character with the numerous reports outlined in the above draft program of the Sobor.

Not many delegates, compared with the 1921 Sobor, came to the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of the UAOC. There were 203 participants at the Sobor; it was striking that among them there was almost no intelligentsia and no workers; the clergy and peasants predominated. Metropolitan Lypkivsky characterizes the mood of the faithful at the Second Sobor as "free and oppositional," especially among the peasantry; the priests wavered this way and that; among the episcopate, the minority was passive, while the majority actively manifested themselves if not as proponents, then at least as zealous executors

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of the course taken by the VPCR Presidium under the leadership of Bishop Romodaniv. V. M. Chekhivsky was elected Chairman of the Sobor Presidium.

Shortly after the opening of the Sobor, V. Chekhivsky was summoned to the Kyiv DPU and ordered, as Chairman of the Sobor, to immediately place before the Sobor for deliberation the matter of removing Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky from the metropolitan cathedra; at this, DPU agent Karin threatened Chekhivsky that in the event the Sobor did not satisfy the government's demand for the removal of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, the Sobor would be immediately dispersed and the first to be sent into exile would be Chekhivsky himself, followed by Metropolitan Lypkivsky.

The ultimatum to the Sobor of the UAOC from the so-called state authorities — to whom dithyrambs had been sung for the "separation of Church from State" — was placed in the most brutal form.

Before the resolution of this matter at the Sobor, which took place, like the 1921 Sobor, in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, the VPCR Presidium invited Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky to the VPCR office with the aim of persuading him to submit his own resignation. The Chairman of the VPCR Presidium, Bishop Romodaniv, asked the metropolitan whether he considered it possible to continue the governance of the Church under such external conditions. The metropolitan's answer was: "Christ built the Church not only when He freely preached the Good News, but also when He suffered on the Cross. And so I too must consider the governance of the Church possible under all conditions, when such be the will of Christ — that is, the will of the Church." Thus the metropolitan wished to hear in this matter the voice of his Church.

At the Sobor session when the matter of the resignation of Metropolitan Lypkivsky was being decided, the Cathedral of St. Sophia was packed with people both below and in the choir lofts. According to Metropolitan Lypkivsky's account, lay members of the Sobor expressed with tears how difficult it was for them to decide his case, how they did not wish to dismiss him, but, as they said, you cannot beat a butt-end with a whip...

The metropolitan himself, as is related, in his speech at the Sobor on the occasion of the authorities' demands for his dismissal, supposedly called upon the faithful not to be afraid, not to venture onto deceitful side paths, to go by the open and simple way. But in Metropolitan Lypkivsky's own Chapter VII of his History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, neither the speech itself nor any mention of such a speech is to be found; from its text (e.g., in the article of Archpriest D. Burko "Under the Butt-End" — Ridna Tserkva, no. 31-32, 1957) it is not clear to what action exactly the metropolitan was calling the faithful in connection with the matter of his dismissal placed before the Church Sobor by the DPU.

At the Sobor, three proposals were submitted on this matter. Priest Kovbasiuk came forward with a Judas-like proposal, evidently inspired by the DPU, for the dismissal of Metropolitan Lypkivsky from the cathedra "for criminal, untruthful, and harmful activity against the Church" — it is unknown whether even Father Kovbasiuk himself voted for this proposal. — The second, entirely opposite, draft resolution on the given matter was submitted by Sobor member Ivan Hryshchenko, to whom, after such a submission, a DPU agent rushed, and his mandate to the Sobor was confiscated by Bishop Romodaniv. According to this draft, the Sobor

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was to express in its resolution the retention of Metropolitan Lypkivsky on his cathedra in the absence of any grounds for removal from the cathedra. Despite the presence of DPU agents as a means of terror at the church Sobor, the draft of this resolution was supported by several peasants and two women delegates to the Sobor; one of them ended her speech at the Sobor with the words: "It is better to die with honor than to live in shame." But the draft resolution that rejected the demand of the godless authorities for the removal from the cathedra of the UAOC Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky received only 40 votes.

Then, by a majority of votes, the third proposal was adopted — the formula of the resolution submitted by the Chairman of the Sobor, V. M. Chekhivsky: "For objective reasons, the Sobor lifts from Metropolitan Lypkivsky the burden of metropolitan service." Into this concept of "objective reasons" one can read various meanings, but most properly these "objective" reasons should be understood as external causes, independent of the will of the Church Sobor. On the other hand, the resolution also emphasized that metropolitan service in the UAOC had been a burden for Metropolitan Lypkivsky.

We do not have sufficient materials to clarify the causes of the tragedy that occurred at the Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927: the removal by Sobor resolution from the metropolitan cathedra of the first metropolitan of the renewed Ukrainian Orthodox Church, who was also the foremost leader of that renewal. The common conception that this tragedy occurred under the brutal pressure of the communist godless authorities cannot be an exhaustive answer for the historian investigating the causes of an event of such historical weight. The question naturally arises: could the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor not have stood in defense of its metropolitan? Could it not have given a majority of votes among the Sobor members for the draft resolution of Ivan Hryshchenko, for which 40 participants voted? Why did it not unanimously and courageously defend its metropolitan?

It remains an open question how the God-fighting government of the Ukrainian SSR would have reacted in those times to the opposition of the entire Sobor to the demands of DPU agent Karin. And even if Karin indeed embodied in himself the entire government of the Ukrainian SSR, then we — while in no way considering ourselves entitled to demand martyrdom from the hierarchs of the Church — cannot, however, fail to recall that by this time, prior to the pro-government declaration of the locum tenens of the Moscow Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Sergii, which was issued on July 29, 1927, some 30 bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church had already ended their lives by martyrdom at the hands of the godless communists, and even more were in exile (Protopresbyter M. Polsky, New Martyrs of Russia, 1949, p. 178).

The Sobor could have resisted the demands of DPU agent Karin all the more because Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky had submitted on August 15, 1927, to the supreme representatives of the Central Government of the Ukrainian SSR the declaration of loyalty cited by us above. Finally, the question of a church trial of the metropolitan (in accordance with the resolutions of the 1921 Sobor, Ch. XI, Section G, point 50) could have been raised at the Sobor, against the demand for his dismissal unlawfully, without trial or investigation.

When none of this happened and the Sobor, by the majority of its participants, obediently followed the demand of the DPU and dismissed the metropolitan — when the metropolitan had not requested his resignation — then such a decision of the Sobor testifies, in our opinion, not to the fact that it was composed of cowards. Rather, it testifies that there was a fairly strong current at the Sobor in favor of the metropolitan's removal from the cathedra. Such a current, in our opinion, existed in the episcopate of the UAOC.

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Studying the materials on the history of the renewal of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, especially for the period from the destruction by the DPU in the middle of the summer of 1926 of the central administration of the UAOC — the VPCR, headed by its Honorary Chairman Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky — to the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in October 1927, where we had at our disposal almost all the minutes of the sessions of the VPCR Presidium and the Great Assemblies and Small Assemblies of the VPCR that took place during the indicated period — we came away with the impression of Metropolitan Lypkivsky's isolation in the central leadership of the UAOC.

In the composition of the Presidium of the Fourth VPCR, the majority of its members, as we know, came from the episcopate, and if one adds two archpriests (Fr. L. Yunakiv and Fr. Kh. Hoviadovsky), then there was a complete preponderance in the central governance of the Church of the clerical estate: of the 13 members of the Presidium, 9 belonged to the clerical estate (7 bishops and 2 archpriests) and only 4 were laypeople — complete "diocesan autocracy" (yeparkhonachaliie), not conciliar governance, as M. Moroz would have said. Not as honorary but as actual chairman of the VPCR was also a bishop — Petro Romodaniv. True, of the clerical members of the Presidium, Bishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych (First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium), Archpriest Yunakiv (Second Deputy), and Archbishop Feodosii Serhiiev, who did not reside in Kyiv, were very rarely present at its sessions; but Metropolitan Lypkivsky, his deputy Archbishop N. Sharaivsky, Bishop Petro Romodaniv, Bishop Ya. Chulaivsky, and Bishop M. Hrushevsky almost always formed the majority at VPCR Presidium sessions. Yet one does not sense from the sessions and acts of such a Presidium in its governance of the Church that this was an ideological group whose center was the metropolitan.

The metropolitan rarely spoke at sessions; it is clearly felt from the minutes that the conduct of church affairs was in the hands of the Presidium Chairman, Bishop Romodaniv. And although the resolution of the VPCR Presidium of August 30, 1927, affirms the absence of any grounds for mutual misunderstandings between the VPCR Presidium and Father Metropolitan during the entire time of joint work (see about this above, at the end of subsection 5), nevertheless in the "Review of the Work of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1928" by Archbishop K. Maliushkevych we read: "A clear disturbance of the life of the UAOC begins with the meeting of the Trinity parish (in Kyiv) on June 2, 1927, in the premises of the VPCR Presidium. This meeting was the beginning of strained relations between the VPCR Presidium on one side and the supreme spiritual leader, Father Metropolitan Vasyl, on the other, which lasted until the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor. This strain was also reflected in the life of the periphery, which interpreted it differently. The fundamental reason

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for these disagreements was precisely the different attitude of the spiritual leader and the VPCR toward the resolutions of the September Conference (of 1926) and the Pokrova Assembly" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, p. 84).

As for the visible disagreements between the supreme spiritual leader of the UAOC, Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, and the episcopate of the UAOC, their cause was most likely, it seems, the metropolitan's position in his defense of "all-national conciliar governance" (vsenarodnioho sobornapravstva) in the Church. Here are a few quotations in support of such an assumption:

"Who is to blame for the fact that the priest became a hired hand? In the first place, the supreme spiritual leadership is to blame. We have had occasion more than once to hear how the first metropolitan of the Ukrainian Church at the Assemblies of the VPCR and even at the Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor would say: you are the masters, and we are the servants — whatever you say, so it shall be, and that is what we shall do. When the metropolitan said this, and he knew that some of the masters liked hearing this, then clearly they seized upon it, remembered it, and indeed transformed the priests from servants of God into servants of men and of masters"...

"It is clear that first of all the church leadership must develop a true view of the priest and his place in the Ukrainian Church, so that they themselves do not tempt the lesser brethren and do not create an ideology harmful to the Church. In this direction, those changes that occurred in the composition of the supreme spiritual leadership of the UAOC (at the 1927 Sobor) are undoubtedly beneficial; they should exert their healing influence on the life of the Church"...

"Only when the Church found itself in an extremely difficult situation (in 1926 — I.V.) and it was necessary to lead it out of that situation, then they silently agreed that bishops should take up this work. The bishops experienced particular humiliation at the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, when they felt that Metropolitan Vasyl distinguished himself from among them and was not afraid to say at the Sobor that the bishops convene at the Assemblies only to agitate the Church and create upheaval"... (From the report of Archbishop K. Maliushkevych at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1928, "The Service of the Bishop in the UAOC and the Place of the Priest of the UAOC in the Parish." Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 7, 1928, pp. 101, 105-106.)

There is no evidence that at the 1927 Sobor any bishop spoke in defense of Metropolitan Lypkivsky; they were silent, or even — as we have heard from participants of that Sobor — spoke against him, as, for example, Bishop N. Krotevych spoke with sharp criticism of the declaration the metropolitan had submitted to the government. Was it not an echo of these relations in the episcopate — the voice of a peasant at the Sobor: "The Father consecrated for himself sons, and now they are selling him" (cited by the metropolitan in Ch. VII of the History of the Ukrainian Church), and outside the Sobor — "entirely uninformed faithful spoke too loudly about the betrayal by the bishops, about Judases, and so on" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 7, 1928, p. 101).

The passionate character with which, in our opinion, Metropolitan Lypkivsky's remarks about almost all the UAOC bishops individually are imbued, and about the entire new episcopate of the UAOC as "the most grievous sore on the body of his Church" (in Ch. VII of the History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, subsection "Shortcomings in the Life of the UAOC and Its Governing Bodies during the Second VPCR" — Vidomosti Gen. Tserk. Upravl. UAPC na Velyku Brytaniiu, December 1951, pp. 12-14) — is also undoubtedly explained by the enmity between the episcopate and the first metropolitan of the UAOC.

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Above, in subsection 5 of this chapter, we cited from the minutes of the VPCR Presidium sessions the speeches of Presidium members and its resolution, from which it is evident that the Presidium affirmed certain facts of the metropolitan's actions against the government, but outside the VPCR Presidium — that is, the fault in those facts lies not with the central administration of the UAOC but solely with the metropolitan himself — and therefore, as stated in the VPCR Presidium resolution of August 30, 1927, "the rehabilitation of Father Metropolitan depends exclusively on himself."

How could one have arrived at that "rehabilitation"? "The Government does not trust words; one must prove one's righteousness by deeds," said the Chairman of the VPCR Presidium, Bishop P. Romodaniv. In the same words, Metropolitan Sergii of Moscow called upon church figures in his declaration of July 16/29, 1927, to "show themselves, not in words but in deeds, as loyal citizens of the Soviet Union," to recognize "the Soviet Union as our motherland, whose joys and achievements are our joys and achievements, and whose misfortunes are our misfortunes" (Prof. I. M. Andreev, A Brief Survey of the History of the Russian Church from the Revolution to Our Days, 1952, p. 50).

Obviously, the declaration of loyalty submitted to the state government in Kharkiv by Metropolitan Lypkivsky on August 15, 1927, as well as the earlier "Public Declaration to All Churches of the VPCR of the UAOC" in May 1924, was entirely insufficient for the communist government of Ukraine. What was demanded were "deeds," "actions." What kind? Perhaps only such Christ-betraying ones as entirely contradicted the very idea of the Church of Christ — and which Metropolitan Lypkivsky does indeed accuse his brethren of in his memoirs. It seems to us that among the "Christ-betrayers" and "traitors of the UAOC" — if there were indeed such — Metropolitan Lypkivsky also included those bishops and clergy of the UAOC in general who may have genuinely thought as the metropolitan himself thought. In his Statement to the Government he had written: that "under Soviet rule the opportunity has been given both to our Church and to our people to liberate themselves from foreign oppression and to restore their native church and cultural-national life," and who "were ready in all things to submit to the Soviet authorities as conscious citizens," certain that then the authorities would also leave them in peace and would not meddle in their purely church activities, since they would not go against the authorities either in sermons or in conversations, but on the contrary would support them.

The profound error of those who thought and hoped in this way, and criticized Metropolitan Lypkivsky for harming the arrangement of coexistence between the Church and the government with his actions, lay in the fact that the godless nature of that government was forgotten — that it, being godless, was only further expanding, alongside the social struggle, its anti-church and altogether anti-religious struggle. At that stage of that struggle, in 1927, Metropolitan Lypkivsky had to become its victim, for whose removal the authorities still needed to provide arguments; but two years later, his

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successor fell as well — against whom no accusations of a political character whatsoever had been made — and the UAOC itself had to liquidate itself under the pressure of the godless authorities, and not cooperate with them for the "liberation of the people," for, in the word of the Apostle, "what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? What communion has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols?" (2 Cor. 6:14-16).

On the day after the Sobor's release of him from the burden of metropolitan service, Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky delivered at the Sobor session his final report on his six years of metropolitan work in the Church, concluding with thanks to God for all that had been accomplished with God's help and wishing well to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the future.

Representatives of the DPU proposed to the Sobor Presidium that a new metropolitan be immediately elected to the cathedra and that no other questions be resolved until the metropolitan was elected. Two candidacies were put forward for the metropolitan cathedra: Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk and Bishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych. The first, according to Metropolitan Lypkivsky's account, was the candidate of the laity and part of the clergy; the second was the candidate of the episcopate and the supporters of the episcopate among the clergy. But both of these hierarchs, distinguished in their archpastoral activity in their regions and in their authority in the UAOC, firmly refused.

Then Metropolitan Lypkivsky turned to Bishop Mykolai Boretsky and began to persuade him to give his consent to the nomination of his candidacy for the metropolitanate. As Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes in Chapter VII of the History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Bishop Boretsky "stood apart from the pre-Sobor quarrels" in the UAOC; he was a modest person; as a bishop he had been almost the entire time essentially the rector of the St. Nicholas parish in the town of Haisyn in Podillia; only recently had he been elected and agreed to become the spiritual leader of the Zinovievsk (Yelysavethrad) church region. And this modest bishop, of high moral qualities, rescuing the Sobor from the impossible situation with the elections of the metropolitan, gave his consent to be a candidate and was unanimously elected metropolitan of the UAOC on October 24, 1927.

In his word to the Sobor, Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky said: "You have placed a heavy cross upon me, but out of boundless love for God, for you, for the Ukrainian people, I am ready for sacrifice. Let it be the will of the Most High."

As deputy to the new metropolitan, the Second Sobor did not elect Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, but instead elected two deputies to the metropolitan — Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk and Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych. The latter was elected spiritual leader of the Kyiv church region, which was formed by combining two regions — city and rural — into one, and was elevated to the rank of archbishop.

Around the elections of the VPCR Presidium at the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, a significant struggle arose. Three times there was voting on the candidacy for

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the chairmanship of the VPCR Presidium of the previous Chairman of the Fourth VPCR, Bishop Petro Romodaniv, and three times Bishop Romodaniv lost the elections. Finally elected as Chairman of the Fifth VPCR Presidium was Archpriest Leontii Yunakiv — "so long as it was not Romodaniv," as Metropolitan Lypkivsky notes in his memoirs. For Archpriest L. Yunakiv belonged in "church politics" to the same direction as Bishop Romodaniv; under the previous VPCR Presidium he had been the Second Deputy Chairman and resided in Kharkiv as the UAOC's legal adviser for dealings with the state authorities.

The new VPCR Presidium, after the election of Archpriest L. Yunakiv as Chairman, came to include by election of the Sobor: Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk (evangelist of the UAOC), Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych (Deputy Chairman), Bishop Marko Hrushevsky, Bishop Yakiv Chulaivsky (director of the book depository), Archpriest Leonid Mizetsky (secretary), Archpriest Leonid Karpov (director of the Publishing Division), V. M. Chekhivsky (director of the Education Division), and M. P. Kobzar (treasurer); of the 10 Presidium members, headed by the Honorary Chairman Metropolitan Boretsky, 8 belonged to the clerical estate — there were only 2 laypeople. The former Metropolitan of the UAOC V. Lypkivsky and the former Deputy Metropolitan Archbishop N. Sharaivsky were granted by the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor a monthly allowance of 50 karbovantsi each.

The Presidium of the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, under the signatures of Chairman V. M. Chekhivsky and his deputies — Archpriest Kh. Hoviadovsky and Archpriest V. Levytsky — issued an address on behalf of the Sobor "to all faithful children of the holy UAOC," in which it wrote: "Sensing the urgent need to put the life of our Native Church in order internally, in order to give it peace, to avert the severe threat to the external legal conditions of the UAOC's existence in the State, to open the possibility for the further peaceful life of the Church — with this you sent us to the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor... There were no divisions among us when the circumstances of the Church's life clearly determined the complete impossibility for the Most Honored Father, our Metropolitan Vasyl, to continue further his metropolitan service to the UAOC. Desiring good for the Church and caring only for this, the Sobor, as the supreme leader of the UAOC's life, by unanimous resolution released the first servant of the Church, the Most Honored Metropolitan Vasyl, from the burden of metropolitan duties. And we, the Holy Sobor, the multitude of the faithful, had one heart and one soul (Acts IV, 32), were truly 'one body and one spirit' (Eph. IV, 4), when together with the Most Honored Metropolitan Vasyl, we unanimously placed the spiritual leadership of the UAOC's life upon the Most Honorable Bishop Mykolai Boretsky, on October 24 electing him as Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine, and on Sunday October 30, after sincere church prayer, installing him in primatial service in the UAOC...

The Second Sobor believes with faith that the difficult times in the life of the UAOC have ended, that the disturbances have passed"... (Emphasis ours.)

Despite such an Address from the Sobor with assurances of the Sobor's unanimity in deciding the question of the change on the metropolitan

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cathedra of the UAOC, in the localities certain speakers reporting on the work of the Second Sobor presented a different version of the matter with the Metropolitan — as a matter necessary not for the Church but for the Government. We learn of such accounts from "A Brief Information on the Life of the UAOC after the Second Sobor," which the VPCR Presidium distributed to the Regional Church Radas, calling upon the Radas to refute such accounts, because they "may once again place certain workers of our Church and the entire Church in a difficult position vis-a-vis the Government." As we see, the motivation for this appeal only reinforced the speakers in presenting the removal of the Metropolitan from the cathedra not for the Church's need but at the demand of the Soviet authorities.

8. Lights and Shadows in the Internal Life of the Renewed UAOC. The Matter of the Ukrainianization of the Church. The Liturgical Sphere of Church Life: Translations and Publishing of Books of Holy Scripture and Liturgical Books in the Ukrainian Language; Church Music, Ukrainian Spiritual Composers. Church Preaching. The Publication by the VPCR of the Journal Tserkva i Zhyttia [Church and Life].

In the reports of church figures who were contemporary to the church events about which we write, we encounter a characterization of the period from the First to the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor (1921-1927) as an era of "inspired construction," "inspired creative work which, regardless of who participated in the construction and whether the building material was suitable," "built the first floor of our dear UAOC." "From the time of the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, the building of the second floor began"... (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 6, 1928, p. 41).

This characterization, given only four months after the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, does not seem apt to us now, at a distance of time and with knowledge of the further fate of the Church in Ukraine. As we have already seen, there were few conditions for inspired creative work even after the 1921 Sobor to build fundamentally the first floor of the Native Church. There were even fewer such conditions for building a second floor upon an unfinished first.

The historian must above all affirm that the renewal of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was destined to proceed under extraordinarily complex conditions of the historical life of the Ukrainian people. One can say that not one of the existing autocephalous Orthodox churches embarked upon the path of its autocephaly, of its independence, under such severe circumstances of national life as the Ukrainian Church. And this historical fact must never be lost from sight when examining the internal condition of the Ukrainian Church during its renewal — equally whether in its achievements and development, or in its mistakes and faults, in its grave shortcomings...

In the idealistic understanding of the tasks of the UAOC in its renewed state, its best representatives of this renewal saw the outline of two main tasks of the renewed UAOC: first, the UAOC, like every national Orthodox autocephalous Church, in the development of its church-civic life would go

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through with a national character on the ground of the native language, native ways of life, native church history — in general on the ground of the eternally devout and lyrical soul of the Ukrainian people; second — this national-church renewal of the people must, however, be closely connected with the general Christian aspirations of the Churches toward the Christianization of humanity, toward the building of the Kingdom of God among people, the idea of which is the central idea of the Christian idealistic worldview (Archbishop N. Sharaivsky, "The Work of the Church of Christ," Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2-3, 1927, pp. 133-139; Archbishop K. Krotevych, "On the Ideology of the UAOC," Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1(6), 1928, pp. 14-24).

It need not be demonstrated that both of these great tasks of the UAOC were counter-revolution in the eyes of the materialist doctrine of Marxism-Leninism, which was the official doctrine of the communist party in whose hands lay the state power in Ukraine.

The Ukrainianization — or more properly, the de-Russification — of church life in the Ukrainian Church had to touch first and foremost the language of church liturgical services, both public and private (so-called treby [occasional services]), as well as church preaching to the people. Unfortunately, we do not yet have any work, either detailed or brief, in which data would be collected regarding translations into the living Ukrainian language and the publication of those translations of books of Holy Scripture, liturgical rites and books, as well as the publication of sermons in the Ukrainian language, during the years of the renewal of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukraine under the Ukrainian government and then under Bolshevik rule. It is obvious that in times when both printing presses and the printed word, after their "nationalization," found themselves in the hands of the godless communist authorities, it was difficult for the Church — and perhaps altogether impossible — to print anything for the needs of God's temple and liturgical worship.

We have already mentioned above that in Podillia some churches began, after the paper of Prof. I. Ohiienko on reading and singing the Slavonic text with Ukrainian pronunciation in ancient Ukraine, to introduce such pronunciation into the liturgical services in the Slavonic language. It is unknown whether such attempts were made in the Dnieper region, but generally it must be said that this method of de-Russifying the liturgical language in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church did not take hold; the late Metropolitan Polikarp said that our people do not wish to have services with Ukrainian pronunciation of the Slavonic text because they see in such services intentions to convert them to the Union [with Rome].

In the article "The Role and Significance of Kamianets-Podilsky in the History of the Renewal of the UAOC" (Ts. i Zh., no. 7, 1928, pp. 136-138), it is reported that as a result of the work of a special commission at the Theological Faculty of Kamianets State University (comprising Professors: Archpriest Ye. Sitsinsky, Archpriest P. Tabinsky, V. O. Bidnov, as well as Kyiv Archpriest, later Metropolitan of the UAOC, Vasyl Lypkivsky), the following were published: Biblical History, Prayer Book, Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Book of the Acts of the Apostles, Horologion, and Sacrament of Marriage. The date of publication of these translations is unfortunately not given.

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Above, on the testimony of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, we wrote that the first Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom entirely in the Ukrainian language was celebrated on July 10, 1919. This translation was the work of Archpriest Vasyl Lypkivsky himself; it was carefully, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes in his memoirs, reviewed by the VPCR and the VPCR decided to print it. And so in June 1920 the first printed liturgical book in the living Ukrainian language appeared: The Order of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The year 1922 marks the publication of The Holy Divine Liturgy of Our Holy Father John Chrysostom in the Ukrainian Language, a translation by Prof. I. Ohiienko, which publication was issued with the blessing of Bishop Dionisii Valedynsky of Kremenets, who evidently did not consider sound the resolution of the so-called All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1918, led by Metropolitan Antonii, regarding Church Slavonic as the liturgical language in Ukraine. A year later, Metropolitan of the entire Orthodox Church in the Poland of that time, Bishop Dionisii in 1920-22 governed that part of the Volyn eparchy which was occupied by the Polish authorities and fell under Poland according to the Warsaw and Riga treaties. We have no information about the extent to which translations of Ukrainian liturgical books published outside Greater Ukraine were disseminated there. Likewise abroad was printed the translation by Prof. I. Ohiienko — Morning and All-Night Service. These were, as we see, separate parts of the Sluzhebnik [Service Book], the publication of which in Ukrainian translation in its entirety in the 1920s is not known to us.

Translations and publications of books of Holy Scripture and liturgical books in the living Ukrainian language for the needs of the UAOC constituted, naturally, an important subject of concern for the VPCR as the central administrative body of the UAOC, during the times of all the various compositions of the VPCR Presidium. This matter was not easy even by its very nature, given both the volume of what needed to be translated and the demands placed upon the translation of works that were not ordinary but holy, intended for Orthodox liturgical worship. The difficulty of the matter in its essence may be attested by the fact that even now, after 40 years of the renewal of the national Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the matter of translations into the living Ukrainian language of liturgical books and the use of those translations in the Church is far from finished and altogether unregulated.

But let us speak of the difficulties of that time. Who was to translate the books of Holy Scripture and the liturgical books? The theological schools were closed; church-theological scholarship in the Soviet state had been terminated. The cadres of theological school teachers had gone to secular schools. In their own national state, professional forces for church translations could have been found. Under the given conditions, the work of translation fell upon the shoulders of the members of the VPCR Presidium themselves, for it was altogether impossible, as we shall see, to pay for the work of translators outside the VPCR Presidium.

In the report on the work of the Publishing Division of the VPCR at the Plenary Session of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR on December 28-30, 1926, Bishop Marko Hrushevsky said: "The workers in the Publishing Division, besides the head of the division (Bishop Hrushevsky), are the

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other members of the VPCR: Father Metropolitan, his Deputy, the head of the evangelism division, the head of the education division, the head of the legal division — and that is all. These same persons also work in other divisions: education, evangelism, translation of books, the Pre-Sobor Commission, and others. In every division the same persons work... For where can one find other workers without funds? It is not good to co-opt persons when there is nothing with which to thank them for their labor"... (Minutes of the Plenary Session of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR, December 28-30, 1926, p. 15).

The chairman of the Translation Commission at the VPCR was Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky; he, like Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, did the most work on the translations of the liturgical books. After the 1927 Sobor, at the invitation of Metropolitan Boretsky, Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk became more closely involved in the work of organizing the liturgical rite in the UAOC (Ts. i Zh., no. 1(6), 1928, p. 39). In Metropolitan Lypkivsky's memoirs it is noted, among other things, that a Psalter was prepared for publication, translated by Deacon, later Archpriest, Fedot Khoroshy (now Archbishop Mykhailo of Toronto and Eastern Canada in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada), which translation was reviewed by Metropolitan Lypkivsky, Archbishop Sharaivsky, Archpriest M. Khomychevsky, and Protodeacon V. Potiienko, after which it was published in 1926.

Metropolitan Lypkivsky notes about the translations themselves that they were made "predominantly from the Slavonic," because "Greek originals could not be obtained" (the reference is evidently to the liturgical books). Therefore, writes Metropolitan Lypkivsky, the VPCR "always considered its translations merely the beginning of free creativity." Of that "free creativity" — of the sort where "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, over people God's mercy" (instead of "on earth peace, among people good will" or "of good will") — there is not a little in the liturgical translations published by the VPCR.

Worse was this "free creativity" when, for lack of translations authorized by the supreme authority of the Church, amateur translations of liturgical services arose in the localities. From the localities themselves — as, for example, from Lubny — protests were received by the VPCR regarding such "amateurism." At a VPCR Presidium session, the statement of Bishop V. Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky was heard, with a request to pay attention to the translations of church services and prayers in general, particularly the translation of "Penance," where such expressions are used as "for he is shameful," "defiled," "from all uncleanness," and the like. The VPCR Presidium resolved: "To recognize as desirable that all translations of Divine services, prayers, kanty [hymns], and new compositions should necessarily be sent for review to the Translation Commission at the VPCR and should be admitted for use in churches only after their review by the Translation Commission. All translation work is to be concentrated in the hands of Archbishop N. Sharaivsky, who is also responsible for the accuracy of translations, and to this end no church translations shall be printed without the prior review by Archbishop N. Sharaivsky" (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session of February 25, 1927).

An analogous resolution was adopted by the VPCR Presidium regarding the musical scores of liturgical

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books, prepared on a hectograph outside the VPCR: "To categorically prohibit the acceptance of any musical scores and liturgical books printed outside the VPCR, and to distribute only those scores and books produced in the VPCR office" (Minutes of the session of February 11, 1927).

There were cases where Regional Church Radas, among the more active ones, took initiative in the publication of liturgical rites — as, for example, the Vinnytsia Church Rada, by letter of February 28, 1927, addressed the VPCR regarding the publication by the Vinnytsia Rada of akathists to the Savior, the Mother of God, and St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. The VPCR Presidium resolved: "In principle to agree to the publication by the Vinnytsia Regional Rada of a complete Akathistnik [collection of akathists], gathering in it all akathists that already exist in Ukrainian translation, and to ask the Vinnytsia Regional Rada to develop and send to the Presidium a financial plan for the publication of the Akathistnik, indicating the amount of the author's honorarium, the percentage of the edition at the VPCR's disposal, and in general to develop a plan of coordination with the VPCR in the matter of the publication by the Vinnytsia Regional Church Rada of liturgical books."

As we see from the "Catalogue of Books and Musical Scores" that were in the VPCR depository (Kyiv, 24 Korolenko St., 5a) for sale for use in Ukrainian churches, the books and scores were divided into "printed in a printing house" and "printed on a hectograph." These were the two means by which the VPCR disseminated the books and musical scores necessary for the Ukrainianization of worship. Obviously, in the localities, typewritten copies and handwritten transcriptions also served this purpose.

Of the Holy Scripture and liturgical books listed in the 1927 "Catalogue," 14 were printed in printing houses and 8 on a hectograph; of the musical scores, only "Liturgy No. 1 by Stetsenko" was printed in a printing house; all others (Nos. 35) were on a hectograph. It is characteristic that instead of "price," "donation" was written, with the amount indicated for each book or score; evidently, a Church separated from the state was not permitted to sell anything.

Regarding church materials printed on a hectograph, we found no evidence in our materials of censorship of those publications by the Soviet authorities; we assume it was not dispensed with. But for publications in printing houses, permission from the state authorities was required. Only once in Metropolitan Lypkivsky's memoirs is it noted that "a fortunate circumstance (?) permitted the VPCR to print in the Ukrainian language the Horologion, Trebnik [Book of Needs] No. 1, and Prayer Book" (translations of Metropolitan Lypkivsky).

The further the consolidation of Bolshevik power in Ukraine progressed, the more difficult, apparently, became the matter of church-religious publications in the printing houses nationalized by the Soviet authorities. The matter of obtaining permission to print the Mineia [Menaion] dragged on for months, and when this permission was obtained by the VPCR at the beginning of 1927 — with the condition that the Mineia be printed in Kharkiv — this joyful "event" was reported by the VPCR in an extraordinary communication to the Regional Church Radas on January 22, 1927. During the printing of Ukrainian liturgical books in Kharkiv, it was discovered, among other things, that

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not a single one of the Kharkiv printing houses still had typographic blocks with letters of the ancient Greek language.

What books of Holy Scripture and liturgical books did the UAOC have in those times for conducting worship in the Ukrainian language in Ukraine? We present the list according to the catalogue of the VPCR book depository in Kyiv.

A. Printed in a printing house: Holy Gospels (Kyiv edition), small, bound (50 kop.) and unbound (25 kop.). Holy Gospels (Kherson edition), smaller format (1 ruble), in velvet binding for occasional services (12 rubles), also for processions (25 rubles). Psalter (1 ruble). Order of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1 ruble). Order of the All-Night Vigil (1 ruble). Horologion (1 ruble 25 kop.) [Trans. note: was "1.25 kop."]. Trebnik [Book of Needs], Part 1 (Mysteries of Baptism, Marriage, Funeral), bound (1 ruble). Oktoikh [Octoechos], bound (1 ruble 50 kop.). Mineia (for great, middle, and small feasts, and general), in simple binding (4 rubles 20 kop.). Service for Holy Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; Paschal Service (1 ruble). Litin [Litiya] (large, old-style — 20 kop.). Akathist to the Pokrova [Protection] of the Theotokos. Prayer Book (40 kop.). Prayer Book, Slavonic-Ukrainian (old edition — 10 kop.).

B. Printed on a hectograph: Collection of Services of Great Lent (Canon of St. Andrew of Crete; Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts; Liturgy of St. Basil the Great; Prayers before and after Holy Communion; Passion Service; Akathist to the Passion of Christ), bound, 2.50 rubles. Service for Holy Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (75 kop.). Trebnik, Part II (1.75 rubles). Akathists: Collection 1 (1.50). Collection 2 (1.50). Collection 3 (1.50). Order of Holy Unction (1 ruble). Canon of St. Andrew of Crete (1 ruble).

According to the testimony of Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych, "the vast majority of churches in Ukraine still use to this day (written in 1928) the Ancient Bulgarian (Church Slavonic) language" (Op. cit., p. 19).

One of the important reasons for the delay in the Ukrainianization of worship in Ukrainian churches was the shortage and insufficiency of liturgical books in the Ukrainian language. This situation with books, besides the reasons already indicated — such as the necessity of obtaining permission to print liturgical books from the atheist authorities, the lack of qualified translators — probably had its chief cause in the absence of funds for the printing of books by the VPCR, about which we have a whole series of testimonies.

Already in a letter of July 23, 1922, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky writes to Fr. P. Korsunovsky in America: "Due to the absence of funds, mainly, we are in a very bad situation with printing, and we have published few even liturgical books... There are already many translations, but printing is terribly difficult. If only there, abroad, the printing and publishing business could somehow be arranged — that would be a great help for our movement."

The speaker on the publishing affairs of the VPCR at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 25-30, 1924, V. M. Chekhivsky, states in his report that the publishing situation in the UAOC "is extraordinarily bad; there are now large debts for books, there are books that are already due for publication, but there are no funds for this. The VPCR can no longer give books on credit, but when a priest comes to Kyiv with the aim of obtaining books, he must collect money in advance from the faithful for the purchase of

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books"... (Minutes of the said Assembly, p. 38).

During the time of the Third VPCR, when its chairman was Protodeacon V. Potiienko (1924-26), a separate Financial-Publishing Commission was organized for the publishing work of the UAOC, which was evidently to a significant degree made independent of the VPCR Presidium. This Commission, to expand publishing work, borrowed money from private individuals. The chairman of the Commission was the VPCR Presidium Chairman V. Potiienko himself, with members including Brothers Podolianko, Kryzhanivsky, Demydiv, and others. With the borrowed money, the printing of the Octoechos, Psalter, Horologion, prayers, funeral crowns, and so forth was carried out [Trans. note: "wedding crowns" changed to "funeral crowns" — Ukr. вінчики in this liturgical-publishing context refers to the paper crowns placed on the forehead of the deceased in Orthodox burial practice]. With the arrest of V. Potiienko and the destruction of the Third VPCR in the summer of 1926, the activity of this Publishing Commission at that VPCR also ceased.

A mention of it is found in the report on the state of publishing affairs at the Plenary Session of the Minor Assembly of the Fourth VPCR on December 28-30, 1926. Bishop Marko Hrushevsky said: "The main impediment in publishing is the publishing costs. They are absolutely nonexistent. Everything that has been published by the VPCR up to the reporting period was published at the expense of individuals in the city of Kyiv. There was a Financial-Publishing Commission, which was left with some amount of debt including from the VPCR. I believe that the situation of this Financial-Publishing Commission will be finally clarified soon, but all of this will still be insufficient for the proper supply and distribution of liturgical books for the entire UAOC. The entire periphery must participate in the publishing fund. The matter of printing is the concern of the entire Ukrainian believing populace."

In the discussion of this report, VPCR Chairman Bishop Romodaniv said: "The publishing work is broad. The periphery demands the expansion of publishing, but will not lift a finger to help materially. There are many material possibilities and intellectual forces for the advancement of publishing in the UAOC. Let the Minor Assembly carry to the periphery the call for material and intellectual assistance. Publishing is a means of national self-identification" [Trans. note: was "self-awareness"; Ukr. самовизнання means self-identification or self-determination] (Minutes of the Plenary Session of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR, December 28-30, 1926, p. 16).

The matter of the Financial-Publishing Commission was clarified and liquidated at the VPCR Presidium session of February 16, 1927, in which the former Chairman of that Commission and of the VPCR Presidium, Fr. Potiienko, released from prison in December 1926, participated along with other members of the Commission. The VPCR Presidium assumed the debt of 815 rubles that the Commission still owed to private individuals and the Kharkiv Regional Church Rada (280 rubles); the Commission transferred to the Presidium the books still in its possession and in the possession of private individuals. In accordance with the wish of the members of the former Publishing Commission, the Presidium resolved to consider the Publishing Commission as no longer existing (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session No. 13/33, February 16, 1927).

The continuation of publishing by the VPCR was accompanied by the same trouble — the absence of funds in the UAOC for publishing books. From the report of the Secretary of the VPCR Presidium, Archpriest Kh. Hoviadovsky, at the

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Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 11-13, 1927, we learn that of 180 resolutions at the Presidium sessions since its election in October 1926, 32 resolutions were devoted to publishing. Indeed, it was more a matter of passing verbal resolutions than actually publishing, since the new, Fourth VPCR Presidium, elected at the Great Pokrova Assembly of 1926, had received from the treasury of the previous Presidium a grand total of one ruble and 54 kopecks in cash. "There were no funds whatsoever," affirms Archpriest Kh. Hoviadovsky, "for the publication of liturgical books."

At the same Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927, Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, as Chairman of the Translation Commission, reported: "There is a Mineia in translation; there is permission to print it; what is needed is money and money. Perhaps out there, in the localities, resources will be found. There is also an Apostol [Epistles], a Triodion — Pentecostarion and Lenten. I offer no proposal — that must be given by the Assembly or the VPCR Presidium, which has experience in this." On the proposal of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, the Assembly resolved that each parish should send five rubles to the VPCR as a prepayment for a book, for the printing of the Mineia. From the report of the Head of the Economic Division of the VPCR, M. Kobzar, it is evident that as of May 1, 1927, book debts owed by Regional Church Radas and individual persons amounted to 3,775 rubles and 5 kopecks (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927, pp. 27, 29, 35-36, 44).

During Great Lent 1927, the already printed services for Holy Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and the Paschal service lay, however, in the printing house, because there was no money to pay the printing house for the printing. The VPCR Presidium resolved on this occasion: "Temporarily, for one month, to borrow 600 rubles from the treasury of the Editorial Board and to appeal to all Regional Church Radas with a request to send immediately all debts for books sold, warning that the delay in sending debts deprives the VPCR Presidium of the possibility of utilizing the permission to print the Mineia, Panikhidnik [memorial service book], and other books" (Minutes of the session of April 12, 1927).

In the draft program of the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, in the section "The Liturgical Sphere of Church Life," one of the points was: "Review of the liturgical rubrics in the Sunday, festal, and weekday services; composition of new rites." We have no data on whether this point was discussed at the Sobor, or indeed the entire program section on liturgical matters. It is more likely that the Sobor did not reach it.

New services already before the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor included such services as: a moleben [prayer service] for the Labor Day holiday of May 1, composed by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky; "Liberation" and "The Word of the Cross," composed by V. Chekhivsky. An awareness that such innovations in liturgical rites required a conciliar resolution can be seen in the following resolution of the Lubny Regional Church Rada, which it sent to the VPCR: "To address (the VPCR) with a request that all improvements to liturgical services and attempts to impart to them more mystical content, as well as newly composed services, be submitted for discussion to the local churches, and on the basis of this discussion to draw a final conclusion, and until then not to permit for public church use either new services or radical changes in them, so as not to repeat the sad

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cases that are still fresh in the memory of the UAOC." The VPCR Presidium resolved: "To accept the remark of the Lubny Regional Rada for information" (Minutes of the VPCR Presidium session of February 1, 1927).

Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky, in his report at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1928, "The Spiritual Leadership of the UAOC," said: "Who among us is not familiar with the church service designated for the Second Pokrova, included in our festal Mineia? And who has not read there the verses in honor of the Most Pure Virgin Mary, which the author took directly from the poem Mariia by T. H. Shevchenko? We are undoubtedly embarrassed not only to report about this service here, but even to recall it to ourselves... We also have other deviations — the non-observance of the church rubrics and the willfulness that at times assumes, behind this or that church service, threatening forms... We must also familiarize ourselves with and express our opinion regarding the new church-homiletic services, of which we now have two: 'Liberation' and 'The Word of the Cross' — works of V. M. Chekhivsky... No one can refuse to hear the voice of the Church, the voice of the Assembly, what they themselves think about various liturgical changes"... (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, pp. 95-96. Emphasis ours.)

As we see on the basis of documentary data, the burning need for translations into the living Ukrainian language of the principal church services was being met under conditions that were difficult with regard to the printing itself, as well as in the ideological struggle for the holy cause and right of every Christian people to turn to God in prayer in their native language. For in Ukraine the greatest struggle in those times in church life perhaps proceeded on the ground of the liturgical language — between the autocephalists with the Ukrainian liturgical language and the "Slavonicists" [slovyanisty — those who insisted on retaining Church Slavonic in worship] who, under the influence of the Russian and Russified clergy and the same kind of cantors and lay scholars, held to the Church Slavonic language, as once in Muscovy the Old Believers held to books "of the pre-Nikonian printing."

As the years passed and the people, hearing the services and hymns in their native language, grew accustomed to the change — and conversely, the Slavonic language with Muscovite pronunciation began to grate on the ear — the struggle over the church language weakened, about which we find the testimonies of contemporaries. "Ukrainian people, from time immemorial sincere in faith and devout," wrote Bishop Mykola Karabinevych, "the precious pearl, ground by dust, trampled by enemies — your native language — was raised up and sanctified by Divine worship by our Ukrainian Church. True, now all those who trampled it, laughed at it, called it 'marketplace talk,' already bless it for use in Divine services. But do not forget that our holy Ukrainian Church, and only she, compelled them to this. They fought — and were defeated in this battle, and now hypocritically 'bless it'" (Ts. i Zh., no. 4, 1927, p. 286).

Among the achievements of the UAOC, contemporaries noted, alongside the introduction of the living Ukrainian language into church worship, the fact that during the renewal of the national Ukrainian Church, "church composers of Ukraine broadly and powerfully unfold their work."

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With deep sorrow, however, the historian must report here that already at the beginning of the awakening of the national Ukrainian Church to new life, it suffered heavy losses in the ranks of the creators of its national religious music.

Even before the Kyiv Sobor, in October 1921, the composer Mykola Leontovych was gone — he who at the first Ukrainian Divine Liturgy in Kyiv on May 9/22, 1919, himself directed the choir in St. Nicholas Cathedral, singing liturgical compositions of his own. M. Leontovych perished tragically on January 23, 1921.

Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych was born on December 1, 1877, in the village of Monastyriok in Podillia, in a priestly family. He studied at the "theological school" in Sharhorod, upon completing which he transferred to the Kamianets-Podilsky Theological Seminary; in the seminary he conducted the church choir; during vacations he recorded folk songs in the villages. After completing the seminary course, Leontovych taught in the village of Chukiv, in the town of Tyvriv, then in the railway school at Hryshyno station in the Katerynoslav region; later he held the position of teacher of singing and music at the women's eparchial school and a private gymnasium in the town of Tulchyn in Podillia. From Tulchyn, M. Leontovych traveled to St. Petersburg, where he took private lessons in music theory from Prof. Bartomin, and later from Prof. S. Taneev and B. Yavorsky.

With the revolution of 1917, M. Leontovych, widely known for his arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs as well as his original compositions, was invited to collaborate in the Music Division at the Ministry of Education. Working here, M. Leontovych taught singing in 1918 at the Kyiv Theological Seminary and at the Mykola Lysenko Music-Drama Institute. In September 1919, when Kyiv was under Denikin's authority, M. Leontovych left Kyiv and moved to a teaching position again in the town of Tulchyn in Podillia. But fleeing the dangers of the raging civil war, M. Leontovych fled from Tulchyn to the village of Markivtsi in the Haisyn district, where his elderly father was then serving as a priest.

During M. Leontovych's stay at his father-priest's home, on the evening of January 22, 1921, an unknown traveler in military uniform came to the priest's house and asked to spend the night. They received the traveler with old-fashioned hospitality, fed him supper, conversed with him, and put him to rest for the night in the same room as M. Leontovych. Toward morning on January 23, this unknown bandit shot and killed the famous Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych with a bullet to the chest, and disappeared... The grave crime and the reason for its commission remained uninvestigated and unexplained. In the 44th year of his life, at the height of his musical creativity, the renowned creator of tender, lyrical melodies based on the Ukrainian folk lyric song departed this world. Ukrainian church music, in which Leontovych left his Liturgy, suffered a heavy loss at the dawn of its renewal. The single kant [hymn] universally known, "To the Pochayiv Mother of God" ("Oh, the Evening Star Has Risen"), alone can create the fame of Mykola Leontovych as a great lyricist among the devout Ukrainian folk lyricists of old.

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A year and three months after the tragic death of M. Leontovych, the UAOC suffered a second, most severe loss: on April 29 (April 16, Old Style), Archpriest Kyrylo Hryhorovych Stetsenko died, who is considered the founder, in our times of the renewal of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, of the new Ukrainian national church music (V. Zavitnevych, "Archpriest Kyrylo Hryhorovych Stetsenko," Ukrainian Calendar for 1957, published by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the USA, p. 124).

K. H. Stetsenko was born on May 24, 1882, in the village of Kvitky in the Kaniv district of the Kyiv region. His father, K. H.'s — Hryhorii Mykhailovych — was a peasant painter [Trans. note: was "peasant house-painter"; Ukr. селянин-маляр means painter by trade, not specifically house-painter], and his mother Mariia Ivanivna was the daughter of a deacon from the same village, Fr. Ivan Horiansky. The Stetsenko family was large (11 persons), and their means were very meager (two and a half desiatyny [acres] of land). From childhood, Kyrylo Stetsenko helped his father in painting village churches, and his grandfather in church singing on the kliros [choir loft]. A great role in the life of K. H. and indeed the entire family, as his famous brother Petro Hryhorovych writes, was played by their uncle on their mother's side, the older brother of their mother — Fr. Danylo Horiansky, who had a higher theological education (Kyiv Theological Academy) and held the position of "inspector of the Kyiv-Sophia Theological School" (the position of inspector in "theological schools" was equivalent to the position of rector in theological seminaries). This uncle helped his sister's family, as the saying goes, "get on their feet."

Fr. Danylo noticed the abilities of little Kyriusha while spending the summer of 1892 in their native village at his sister's home, and when he departed after the vacation, he took Kyrylo with him to Kyiv, where he placed him in the study under the well-known painter Murashko, and at the same time in the preparatory class of the Kyiv-Sophia theological school. During his studies at this school (5 years), K. H. lived at the full expense of his uncle, and during summer vacations he earned money to help his parents: he went to the landowner's estate to collect beetles from the sugar beets, became an ox-driver; he ground paints for his father and helped in the painting of churches, walking on foot to those churches distances of from 20 to 40 versty (Shpola, Vodiana, Kavunivka, Kozatske, Stebne, Zvenyhorodka, and others). In the village of Stebne, K. H., already after finishing the seminary, himself painted the entire church with icons, having taken the "contract."

But K. H.'s greatest passion was nevertheless the art of music, and especially church music. In his Kyiv-Sophia bursa [boarding school], he sings in the church choir (at all theological schools there were domestic churches); while in the third class, he already often conducts this choir, and even makes his first attempt at church composition, writing a kontsert [sacred concerto] on the text of Psalm 33 — "I will bless the Lord at all times"... Whenever he has the opportunity, he hurries to the worship services at St. Sophia (the Kyiv-Sophia bursa was located on the same metropolitan estate as the cathedral), and there he does not take his little eyes off the great maestro Ya. S. Kalishevsky, as he conducts the renowned cathedral

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choir. Transferring in the autumn of 1897 to the Kyiv Theological Seminary, Stetsenko lived the first year still with his uncle Fr. D. Horiansky, and in the second year he entered as a singer and assistant conductor in the St. Michael's hierarchal choir and lived on his own means. The conductor of the hierarchal choir at St. Michael's Monastery at that time was I. I. Apoloniv, a very musical person, and the patron of the choir was Vicar Bishop Serhii, who greatly loved singing and gathered for his choir everything that was best in the theological seminary at the time. During his studies at the theological seminary, K. H. participated in the choir of Mykola Lysenko as a singer and sub-conductor, and in the renowned concert tours of this choir throughout Ukraine in the times before the revolution of 1905.

After completing the course of the Kyiv Theological Seminary in 1903, K. Stetsenko obtained the position of singing teacher at the Kyiv Church-Teachers' Seminary, whose director was at that time Archpriest V. Lypkivsky. At the same time, K. Stetsenko enrolled in the M. Lysenko music-drama school, which opened in 1904, where he perfected his knowledge of the theory of harmony and counterpoint under Prof. Liubomirsky.

The repressions that began after the regime's triumph over the revolution of 1905-06 also affected K. Stetsenko, who for spreading national-liberation Ukrainian ideas among the student youth was exiled from Kyiv to Oleksandrivsk-Hrushevsky (Don Cossack region), where he spent two years. Returning to the Kyiv region, he spent a year as a singing teacher in the gymnasiums of the town of Bila Tserkva, and having obtained permission to reside in Kyiv, became a tutor and singing teacher at the Kyiv medical school. During this time K. H. founded in Kyiv, together with Prof. V. Petrushevsky and O. Koshyts, a music society.

But K. H. did not remain long in Kyiv; he was again administratively exiled for having composed music to the text of "Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished" and "Prometheus," published by the poet O. Kovalenko. In 1910 K. H. returned to Kyiv but could not obtain a position anywhere and was forced by material circumstances to leave Kyiv — this musical center so necessary for the advancement of his musical education. He then went to Podillia, to the town of Tyvriv, to the position of church singing teacher at the Tyvriv theological school, whose inspector was now his uncle Fr. Danylo Horiansky.

In 1911 K. H. received priestly orders, with appointment to the parish of the village of Holovo-Rusava in the Podillia diocese; he served at this parish until the revolution of 1917. With the outbreak of the revolution in February 1917, Fr. Kyrylo left the village and went first to Vinnytsia, which did not give him satisfaction; he yearned for Kyiv, where he soon moved to the position of singing teacher and religious instructor at the Church-Teachers' Seminary.

At that time, outstanding young Ukrainian musical talents had flocked to Kyiv, who, in the words of P. H. Stetsenko, "burned with the Ukrainian musical cause" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 4, 1927, p. 345). Projects were developed for various musical institutes, exemplary national choirs, and also a state capella and symphony orchestra. At the beginning of 1919, by commission of the Head of the Directory, S. Petliura,

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Archpriest K. H. Stetsenko, together with Ol. Koshyts, organized the Ukrainian Republican Capella, which was dispatched under the direction of O. Koshyts for a concert tour abroad, in the cause of spreading awareness in the West of Ukrainian spiritual culture.

Spending the year 1919 in Kamianets-Podilsky and even more so in Galicia, Fr. Stetsenko organized national choirs and wrote musical-vocal works (among them the musical picture from Shevchenko's poem Haidamaky — "Pray, Brethren"). Returning to Kyiv after the Denikinites left it at the end of 1919, Fr. Stetsenko organized at the "Dnipro-Soiuz," where he held a position, a second national capella, with which, with the help of the "Dnipro-Soiuz," he undertook a concert tour through almost all of Ukraine in 1920. This tour was simultaneously, even before the consecration of the Ukrainian hierarchy at the 1921 Sobor in Kyiv, an evangelism of the renewal of the national Ukrainian Church.

In Odesa they long recalled with enthusiasm how Fr. Stetsenko, having evoked great emotion with the concerts of his capella, one Sunday in St. Demetrius Church himself celebrated an inspired Divine Liturgy in the Ukrainian language with the singing of his capella; this service founded the Ukrainian parish in Odesa. With similar services, with the participation of the Ukrainian capella and preaching in the Ukrainian language, Fr. Stetsenko founded Ukrainian parishes in Yelysavethrad, Cherkasy, and other cities.

When Fr. Stetsenko returned from his tour with the capella in February 1921 to Kyiv, he was soon forced to leave Kyiv with his family, fleeing from the misery and famine that in the spring of 1921 had taken hold of the capital of Ukraine. K. H. moved with his family to the village of Vepryk (in the Kyiv region, near the town of Fastiv), to the position of parish priest. Here a merciless death overtook him. An epidemic of typhus came to the village of Vepryk; Fr. Stetsenko, while administering communion to a sick peasant, himself contracted typhus from him during Paschal week of 1921. The typhus was in a severe form, and in about ten days the renowned Ukrainian composer burned out in the struggle with the terrible illness, having lived only 40 years.

Archpriest Kyrylo Stetsenko was buried in the cemetery near the church in the village of Vepryk, in accordance with the wishes of the parishioners, who did not want to give up the body of their "batyushka" for burial in Kyiv, as the Kyivites demanded. The deceased left behind a wife and three children; the elder of the two daughters, in the story "Orphanhood," left extraordinarily tender memories about the last days and death of Fr. K. H. Stetsenko (Published in the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 4, 1927, pp. 346-349).

"In the two and a half years of his life and work since the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was born," wrote the composer's brother Petro Stetsenko, "K. H. wrote so much church music that looking through only what he wrote, one marvels at the strength and might of his inspiration, creativity, and simply the physical endurance of this small, outwardly frail, but great and mighty in his creativity person, and at the same time one imagines how much

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K. H. could have written in his lifetime, had merciless and sudden death not mowed him down so early" (Op. cit., p. 345).

The treasure of Fr. Stetsenko's church-musical creativity is now represented as follows: 1. All-Night Vigil (for mixed choir). — 2. Liturgy (for congregational singing). — 3. Liturgy (for mixed choir). — 4. Memorial Service (Panikhida) (for mixed choir). — 5. Six "Cherubic Hymns." — 6. Four "Mercy of Peace." — 7. Nine "Praise the Name of the Lord." — 8. Harmonizations of the chants of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. — 9. "Christ is Risen" (3). — 10. "The Angel Cried Out." — 11. Zadostoiniky [hymns in honor of the Theotokos]. — 12. "The Wise Thief." — 13. Canon on Holy Saturday. — 14. Christmas carols. — 15. Spiritual kanty [hymns] (V. Zavitnevych, Op. cit., p. 123).

When, with the introduction of the living Ukrainian language into worship, the Divine Services in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church began to take on the national Ukrainian character of the devout soul of the Ukrainian people, then this same goal of expressing the particularities of our people's soul was to be served in worship also by church hymns and church melodies colored with national character; Ukrainianization — if one is not afraid of this term, frightening to some — had to encompass the sphere of church singing as well. That process had proceeded similarly in our ancient past, with the acceptance of Christianity by our ancestors (see Vol. I of this work, pp. 92, 159; Vol. II, p. 298; Vol. III, pp. 106, 108).

Prof. V. Zavitnevych writes: "K. Stetsenko knew well and felt the national Ukrainian nature of the old church chants, but at the same time he felt in them the loss of connection with the Ukrainian song tradition created by the Ukrainian people in subsequent centuries... The Ukrainian people, the creator of the old Orthodox church singing, was deprived of the possibility of reviving and supplementing its original creation with a new element of song creativity. The refined musical mind of Stetsenko felt the rupture between church and new folk singing, and from the first steps of his compositional activity he begins to fill this gap" (Op. cit., p. 124).

Somewhat older among the renowned trio of Ukrainian musicians of the era of the Ukrainian people's renewal (O. Koshyts, M. Leontovych, K. Stetsenko), who emerged from the school of Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912), Oleksander Antonovych Koshyts was born on September 12, 1875, into a family of the ancient Ukrainian clerical Koshyts line in the Kyiv region, in the village of Tarasivka, Zvenyhorodka district, where his father was a priest. His general and theological education O. Koshyts received at the Bohuslav bursa, the Kyiv Theological Seminary, and the Kyiv Theological Academy; his musical education at the M. Lysenko school in Kyiv, in the composition class of Prof. H. L. Liubomirsky.

Already as a student of the Theological Academy, O. Koshyts became famous as a renowned conductor of the academic choir at the Epiphany Brotherhood Monastery (the choir was mixed, with the treble and alto voices recruited from students of the Kyiv-Podil bursa). To hear the concerts of A. Vedel performed by this choir at the "Brotherhood" under the direction of O. Koshyts, as the inhabitants of the monastery later put it, "all Orthodox

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Kyiv" would gather, and the fame of O. Koshyts as an unsurpassed artist-conductor of the church academic choir remained in the annals of the Academy until the end of its existence (1919).

After completing the Academy, O. Koshyts was for some time a history teacher in the gymnasiums of Stavropol and Tiflis in the Caucasus, and from 1904 settled in Kyiv and devoted himself to musical and pedagogical work. He taught at various secondary schools in Kyiv and conducted choirs (among them the famous choir of the students of the Kyiv University and the Higher Women's Courses), was a choirmaster at the Ukrainian theater of M. Sadovsky and at the Kyiv Opera Theater. With the national renewal of Ukraine during the revolution of 1917, O. Koshyts, together with other Ukrainian musicians, began the great work of organizing musical institutions and model Ukrainian choirs.

By commission of the Supreme Ataman Petliura, at the end of 1918, K. Stetsenko (head of the Music Division at the Ministry of Education) and O. Koshyts (head of the Ethnographic Section of that Division) undertook the organization of the Capella, which was to consist of up to one hundred of the best male and female singers of Ukraine and travel abroad on a concert tour through the main centers of European culture. With the Ukrainian Republican Capella, as this institution was named, dispatched by the Government of the Directory of the Ukrainian People's Republic abroad with the mission of propagating the name of our people and the richness of its soul in folk song, O. Koshyts departed from Ukraine in the spring of 1919 as the Capella's conductor and never returned to his Fatherland, which was in the hands of the Bolsheviks.

In the years 1919-1927, O. Koshyts, at the head of the Ukrainian Republican Capella — and after the cessation of its existence as a Ukrainian state institution (in the winter of 1921, mainly due to financial difficulties) — at the head of the Ukrainian National Chorus, as their conductor, toured with extraordinary success in the following countries: Czechoslovakia, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Germany, Poland, Spain, the USA, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina.

After this world concert tour of the Ukrainian National Chorus, O. A. Koshyts made individual appearances at the head of Ukrainian choirs, living in New York, USA; over a number of years O. Koshyts came from New York to Canada for the Summer Educational Courses in Winnipeg, organized annually by the "Cultural Center" at the Ukrainian National Association. These courses usually concluded with concerts by their participants under the renowned direction of O. Koshyts. After such courses in the summer of 1944, O. A. Koshyts unexpectedly fell ill and died in Winnipeg on the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, September 21, 1944. He was buried at the cemetery (11 miles outside the city) in the mausoleum of the city of Winnipeg.

In the church-musical legacy of the renowned conductor and composer, the following church compositions of O. Koshyts remain: 5 liturgies (4 for mixed choir and 1 for three male voices), dogmatika [dogmatic hymns] of the eight tones, chants of the All-Night Vigil (in manuscript), many kanty [hymns] and Christmas carols. About the kanty and psalms, O. Koshyts said that they are the best testimony to the sincere religiosity of the Ukrainian people. "A wonderful melody, sincere as the people's heart itself, with an echo of the ancient Ukrainian church singing;

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a splendid, highly poetic verse of folk poetry with its naive charming images; a general, somewhat exalted religious mood — these are all the features that place our religious song on the loftiest artistic pedestal."

In the field of church-religious musical creativity of the era of the renewal of the national Ukrainian Orthodox Church, one must also name the Ukrainian composers: Yakiv Yatsynevych (1869-1945), P. Demutsky (1860-1927), P. Kozytsky, Fr. Khomychevsky, Haidai, Fr. H. Pavlovsky, Honcharov, Fr. M. Telezhynsky, A. V. Richynsky, and others.

Just as in the field of translations of liturgical books into the Ukrainian language and their dissemination, the attitude of the Soviet godless authorities toward the Church in Ukraine was a great obstacle. This same attitude undoubtedly did not favor the development of church-musical creativity within the UAOC, especially as the anti-church and anti-religious work of the party and government intensified. Church-musical creativity was destined to wither in Ukraine under the atheist authorities, devoid of the principles of religious tolerance.

The 1921 Sobor recognized the necessity for the VPCR to attend to the enrichment of church-choral material by investigating all materials on ancient church singing preserved in church archives, organizing the recording of ancient church chants from cantors, priests, and old singers, attending to the scholarly-artistic processing of the collected material and the creation on its basis of a Ukrainian church obikhod [standard chant book], and making use for church purposes of the best works of composers of other Orthodox churches. For the organization of church-choral affairs, the 1921 Sobor also resolved that the VPCR should "put the training of conductors and cantors on a solid foundation" and "attend to the organization in the churches of congregational church singing."

We have no data to judge what and to what extent the VPCR was able to carry out from these resolutions of the 1921 Sobor on "Ukrainian Church Singing" (Diianiia [Acts] of the 1921 Sobor, Op. cit., p. 30); for this, funds were needed — and with funds the VPCR was "always," as Metropolitan Lypkivsky testifies, "in a catastrophic state" — as well as conditions different from those in which the Church found itself after its separation from the state, simultaneously with its plundering by the government of that state.

It is a fact, attested in the report of Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych at the Great Assembly of the VPCR in the spring of 1928, that it was difficult for parishioners to find a cantor-conductor, and not only in the UAOC; Archbishop Maliushkevych cites statistical data that in Ukraine in 1914 there were 10,793 cantors, and in 1927 only 4,574 — a decrease of 6,219, or 57.6%; it was easier to find a second priest than a cantor for a parish (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2, 1928, pp. 105-106).

It is obvious that in the UAOC the question of cantors-conductors was complicated by the requirement of singing in the Ukrainian language, which was not easy

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for cantors trained and accustomed to Church Slavonic, given the state of translations of liturgical books about which we have spoken above.

Church preaching acquired great significance in the UAOC when, from the church cathedra, preaching began to be delivered in the native language of the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian people in the villages in the pre-revolutionary era were essentially deprived of the living word from the church ambon [pulpit] by the pastors of the Church. Kyiv Metropolitan Flavian characterized the fate of a pastor who was a fervent preacher in the Russian Church at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century with the words that such a person "is moved further away" (Vol. III of this work, p. 252). But in Ukraine, outside its Russified cities, one must add to this the incomprehensibility to the rural parishioners (who constituted 80-90%) of the Russian language of the sermon, even of a priest willing to preach. Therefore, the preaching of pastors in rural churches of Ukraine was, generally speaking, a rare phenomenon.

We cannot speak for all theological seminaries in Ukraine, but about his own Kharkiv one, the author of this work, as its graduate, can testify that we were not trained in homiletic practice. During the years of study at the theological schools of the Kharkiv eparchy (1893-1904), I do not recall a single sermon in the churches of either the Theological School or the Theological Seminary delivered by the spiritual father or the rector; in the seminary we had good teachers of homiletics, such as, for example, S. V. Bulgakov, the author of the well-known Desk Book for Clergy, but never did seminarians deliver sermons in the seminary church; studying theory and writing sermons according to it, they did not acquire the practice of delivering sermons, and with that went out to their parishes.

Homiletic practice was acquired by some of us through the fortunate circumstance that from idealistic priests of the city of Kharkiv, such as Fr. Mykola Zhebuniv and Fr. Petro Fomin, came the initiative to draw several seminarians into preaching in their churches and in extra-liturgical gatherings and religious conversations.

Unquestionably, it was not easy, when the renewal of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church began, to commence the proclamation of the Word of God from the church cathedra in the Ukrainian language. The very homiletic Ukrainian language had to be developed, and the theological terminology (still not established to this day) in the Ukrainian language. National-minded pastors undertook this, as well as laypeople with theological education acquired at Russian schools, in theological academies and seminaries.

How great a significance was attached to preaching in the UAOC is evident from the fact that the VPCR, having abolished in the Church the administrative positions of regional blahochynni [deans], who in our ancient Ukrainian Church were called protopopy [archpriests], replaced them, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes, with blahovisnyky [evangelists], who were to be in every county or district Church, with the function, evidently, of being model preachers in the district and advisors to priests in the work of preaching.

In Kyiv itself, at St. Sophia Cathedral, a "Brotherhood of Workers of the Word" was organized, headed by the candidate of theology of the Kyiv Theological Academy Volodymyr Chekhivsky, former premier of the Government of the Directory of the Ukrainian People's Republic.

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"The art of preaching in the Ukrainian Church," wrote V. Chekhivsky in 1927, "is acknowledged even by its opponents. In the short time of renewal, the Ukrainian Church has produced several outstanding, powerful preachers. Both the form and the content of preaching are being perfected. The fullness of life encompassed in the sermon, the breadth that opens up, the depth that is given by the living word, serve as a mark of the development of preaching in the Ukrainian Church... New forms of church services, so-called homiletic services, with special content and text — such as, for example, the service 'Liberation,' 'The Word of the Cross,' festal evening concerts, Christmas evening services, and others — are developing unceasingly in the creativity of the Ukrainian Church" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1, 1927, pp. 8-9).

Unfortunately, regarding the art of preaching in those times in the Ukrainian Church, almost exclusively the recollections of contemporary listeners have been preserved, who with great reverence recall the powerful impressions from the sermons of a number of preacher-hierarchs of the UAOC, such as: Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, Archbishop Oleksandr Yareshchenko, Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk, Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky, Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych, Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych, Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych, and others; among the lay preachers, the head of the "Brotherhood of Workers of the Word," Volodymyr Chekhivsky himself, became famous and was called the "All-Ukrainian Evangelist."

But we do not know whether those sermons appeared in print; in the UAOC journal Tserkva i Zhyttia we find not a single sermon, although the journal's program did include among its sections a "religious education and evangelism" section (no. 1, 1927, p. 126). It may be that those sermons were not permitted to be published in the journal by the censoring eye of the godless authorities. In the resolutions of the meeting of the clergy of the Kharkiv regional church on March 26, 1928, we find this resolution: "To request the VPCR to send sermons in a timely manner." It is evident that the VPCR did send sermons, although not in a timely manner — evidently not by publication from printing houses nationalized by the Soviet authorities.

In the catalogue of books of the Book Depository at the VPCR, listed for sale are "Sermons for June and July" by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, printed on a hectograph; one must think that the metropolitan's sermons for other months, and possibly those of other hierarchs, were printed and disseminated in the same way. The VPCR Presidium, at the session of March 23, 1927, resolved "to petition the Government for permission to publish as a separate supplement to the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia a collection of church sermons under the title Propovid [The Sermon]" (Minutes of the session, p. 2). Whether such a petition was made and what its results were — we found no traces.

In the years 1934 and 1936, Fr. P. Maievsky published in Winnipeg (Canada) by rotaprint (in not entirely legible print) two collections of sermons by Vasyl Lypkivsky — the first in 1934 under the title "The Word of Christ to the Ukrainian People," on the themes of the Gospel readings at the Divine Liturgy (160 sermons), the second in 1936 — "The Apostolic Word to the Faithful of Christ's Church," on the themes of the Apostle readings (50 sermons). The publisher, testifying in the preface that these sermons were sent to him by Father Metropolitan directly from Kyiv, while 30 of the sent ones did not arrive ("for unknown reasons"), expressed the hope that "perhaps the Church will find the means to publish both of these collections by the usual printing method for the convenient and general use of them."

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It would seem that out of respect for the person of the first metropolitan of the UAOC alone, it was proper to publish his homiletic works properly, honoring him by deed and not with "many years" and often empty phrases. This is very important for characterizing also the content and form of preaching in those times of our Church's renewal. Perhaps the sermons of other prominent preachers of that time could also be found in manuscripts.

In this matter of the proper publication of the sermons of UAOC preachers in Ukraine, there is one more very important issue. This is the question of the authenticity of this or that sermon, of its belonging to the indicated author. On the pages of the Ukrainian church press in the free Western world, we encounter sermons with Metropolitan Lypkivsky given as their author, but without indication of the source from which the editorial board took this sermon as a sermon of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky. Therefore, doubt may always arise: does this or that sermon truly belong to Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky?

The historian may commit great errors in characterizing Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky as a preacher, in characterizing the preaching of that era in the UAOC in general, if he uncritically accepts as authentic the sermons of absent or already deceased preachers of the UAOC, without paying attention to this or that documentation of their authorship. This especially concerns Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky in view of his role in the renewal of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Here there should in no case have been a private publication by a private person, as Fr. P. Maievsky himself felt, appealing to the Church (one must think, to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada) whether it would be able to publish the collections of Metropolitan Lypkivsky's sermons.

What we have just said can be illustrated by the following vivid example. On the pages of the journal Vidomosti Generalnoho Upravlinnia UAPTserkvy u V. Brytanii [Bulletin of the General Administration of the UAOC in Great Britain], no. 2/29 for 1953, there was published a "Word on Meatfare Sunday" by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, "The Last Judgment and the Ukrainian People." Having read this sermon, we personally fell into doubt whether it could belong to Metropolitan Lypkivsky; then we received inquiries also from some priests on the subject of that sermon, whose conscience was troubled by the teaching on the Last Judgment presented in the "Word" of Metropolitan Lypkivsky.

Indeed, that teaching has no foundation in Holy Scripture and contradicts the Orthodox teaching from Christian eschatology, as it is set forth in the Symbolic Books of the Ecumenical Orthodox Church; and as it contradicts the teaching of the Church, it cannot be attributed even to the so-called theologoumena — that is, individual theological opinions and theological views in areas where there is no clearly expressed teaching of the Church.

According to the content of that sermon, the Ukrainian people (as, evidently, every people) at the Last Judgment must answer collectively for whether they fought for the creation of an independent native Church and whether they prayed and conducted worship in their living language. If they did not do this, they "will find themselves not among the sheep but among the goats"... The preacher considers these things to be "our very first duty before God, for which our people will have to give answer at God's judgment"

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(Vidomosti, Op. cit., p. 3).

First, the teaching of our Orthodox Church knows no collective responsibility at the Last Judgment (in the composition of a nation, people, class, union, etc.), but only the personal responsibility of each individual person (Rom. XIV, 12); second, the autocephaly of the Church, the language of worship and prayer must be considered in the realm of right, and not of the moral duty of a person. By the preacher's reasoning, all our forefathers, from the baptism of Ukraine, who did not have the Church's autocephaly and prayed in Church Slavonic and not in the living folk language, will have to answer for this at the Last Judgment of Christ.

Faith in God, personal moral perfection, and good works (Mt. XXV, 31-41) — these are the most essential things for a person's justification at the Last Judgment and for salvation, and not the purely earthly rather than eternally heavenly things that the preacher speaks of in the said sermon. And therefore, such a sermon, in our opinion, could not have come from Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, a person with a higher theological education.

We think that such intimidation of Orthodox Ukrainians with responsibility at the Last Judgment of Christ for not all joining the UAOC could not have come not only from the mouth of the Church's metropolitan, but altogether from the mouths of the educated preachers of that time in the UAOC. In Metropolitan Lypkivsky himself we find, as opposed to the teaching about the collective responsibility of individual peoples at the Last Judgment, a clear teaching on the basis of the Gospel of the Apostle Paul that "every person is responsible before God for all their actions and secrets of their life, and the day will come when all people will stand before the Judgment of God" (The Apostolic Word to the Faithful of Christ's Church, Winnipeg, 1936, p. 4).

Thus, not having, besides the sermons of Metropolitan Lypkivsky — whose authenticity ought to be verified by our scholarly-theological institutions — the homilies of other UAOC preachers, it is difficult to analyze the content and form of preaching in those times of our Church's renewal. Nevertheless, on the basis of the content of Metropolitan Lypkivsky's sermons, the historian can affirm that from the church cathedra of the UAOC in the 1920s, in Ukraine under the godless communist authorities, a bold struggle was waged against unbelief and materialism, the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which was propagated by "the party and government."

In the metropolitan's sermons, the sorrowful present often becomes the subject of the preacher's reproaches. Let us cite examples. "Brethren! With what shame do they now cast the word 'slave' — those who consider themselves now the greatest masters. 'We have broken the chains of every slavery and mastery,' they shout, 'we do not wish to be anyone's slaves, not even slaves of God! Let us tear the chains of religion!'... So they shout, but probably even they themselves can see, and from the outside it is even more visible, that no one was ever in such heavy slavery, no one ever clanked such chains, as they. The only path of liberation from slavery in people is slavery to Christ"... (The Apostolic Word to the Faithful of Christ's Church. Written by Fr. Vas. Lypkivsky, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine. Winnipeg, 1936, p. 12.)

"Already the first people, Adam and Eve, wanted to be like gods. And the modern materialists too shout: we don't need God, we ourselves want to be like gods! How this desire of theirs will end is still unknown; perhaps it will end no better than for Adam and Eve... And if indeed the modern materialists achieve that they become gods, then these will be gods similar to the pagan ones — Jupiter, Bacchus, Venus, and others, with all the caprices of human egoism and licentiousness, or from the Christian point of view they will be creatures of the darkness of this world, of demonic powers"... (Ibid., pp. 76-77.)

"Now an even more stubborn struggle of Christianity is being waged against the banners of unbelief, which attempts not only to drive the cross into the ground again, but to destroy it from the earth altogether, so that the banner of salvation would stand nowhere on the path to perdition. How, brethren, infinitely important it is now that all Christians should unanimously stand under their banner and together go out to this battle with the 'armor of God' — that is, in the holiness of truth and love to overcome human untruth and violence" (Ibid., p. 43.)

"In our times, the leaders of the proletariat have risen especially sharply and fanatically against the imprint of Christ within themselves [Trans. note: was "upon themselves"; Ukr. відбитку в собі Христа = within oneself]. A proletarian, they say, must necessarily be an unbeliever and in any case must reject every imprint of Christ within himself, in order to preserve his 'class unity.' But does the imprint of Christ on the people really erase all their national and social distinctions? In no way" (Ibid., p. 81.)

"They want to convince us that Christ did not exist at all, and the apostles are mostly invented, and all of Christianity is nothing more than someone's fabrication, unnecessary for people. But no. Sufferings and blood cannot be invented. This is a terrible but real fact. Christianity was founded on the blood of Christ, on the blood of the holy apostles, on the blood of countless holy martyrs" (Ibid., p. 25.)

"Brethren! There is faith and there is unbelief. But does unbelief really exist? In my view, it does not. The unbelievers have even more faith than the faithful. Do not the unbelievers believe in Marx, Engels, and their other ideologues, as we believe in the Gospel? The works of these unbelieving 'evangelists' are for the unbelievers holy scripture. Even in religious unbelief they are guided by faith" (Ibid., p. 100.)

On the immeasurable contributions of Christianity to the history of humanity, the metropolitan preaches:

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"Christianity placed an enormous sacrifice on the altar of the elevation of the general life of humanity, for its science, art, and culture. But it will always remain a living call —

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an appeal to all people and nations: build from yourselves a worthy temple of the living God. For this alone is the worthy completion of all human labor, which will give it eternal weight. Everything else: the great factories and plants, the countless airplanes and steamships, the magnificent cities and states — all this shall pass away. For the highest life, the unforgettable words of the Apostle Paul remain: 'you are the temple of the living God'..." (Ibid., p. 47).

Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych, in his report "The Ministry of the Bishop in the UAOC and the Place of the Priest of the UAOC in the Parish," delivered at the Great Assembly of the VPCR in the spring of 1928, said that a significant portion of the UAOC's membership always demanded that a bishop be a brilliant orator. As for the content of sermons, homilies of purely ecclesiastical content — doctrinal and moral — did not satisfy many at the beginning and were unpopular. "Once a preacher speaks in such a way that a certain political allusion can be found in each of his addresses, then he is an orator, then they are satisfied with him, they praise him, they listen to him." But in such demands upon preaching, a change subsequently occurred, when first and foremost the bishops themselves "abandoned this easy method of gaining popularity," and their sermons began to acquire an ecclesiastical, predominantly general apologetic character. "There is no need to fear for the state of bishops as preachers now. Deviations from the true norm of church preaching, when they occur and will occur, are merely deviations, and one must combat them as deviations. Nor need one fear the evaluation of such purely ecclesiastical addresses by the genuinely faithful of our Church. They are already listening to these sermons and beginning to love them, and through them they are beginning to respect the preachers themselves" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 7, 1928, pp. 99-100).

Contemporaries of Ukrainian church life of the 1920s in Ukraine testify that "the Ukrainian church liberation movement called forth in the Church an uplift and life that was spiritual and moral, overcoming within itself unbelief and indifferentism toward the Christian faith. Christians who previously were half-indifferent to the work of God, in the liberation movement are reborn, displaying profound and complete self-dedication"... (Ts. i Zh., no. 1, 1927, p. 9). Obviously, such facts were observed most of all among the nationally conscious Ukrainian intelligentsia and semi-intelligentsia (educated non-professionals), who previously had been largely indifferent, if not hostile, to the Church, given its political role in pre-revolutionary tsarist Russia. Without doubt, for many of those who returned to the work of God, the national element in the life of the UAOC held no small significance. But, as we presented at the beginning of this subsection, the second, no less important task of the revived Ukrainian Orthodox Church, in the ideology of its leaders, was the renewal of contemporary church life in the world, the satisfaction of the spiritual strivings of those faithful who in the Church seek first and foremost God's truth, who seek Christ, who aspire to the fulfillment of His commandments. Such sentiments were reinforced by the horrors of the revolutionary era and the civil war. About these sentiments and the Church's response to them, we find a splendid passage in the report of Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky, "Spiritual Leadership of the UAOC," at the assembly of the VPCR in the spring of 1928.

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"Who does not know," the Metropolitan said, "what attracts and draws people to our UAOC? Who is not familiar with the newest ideology of our Church? Who has not noticed that it alone lies at the foundation of the newest human ecclesiastical searchings? That to it alone every aching heart hastens, and that a glorious future belongs only to that Church which honestly understands this truth and liberates itself from its old dead forms and concerns. Look upon the ranks of our UAOC and you will see in it people close to us in faith and blood. Peer into our churches — what a multitude of people there are who, when you ask them what they seek in the UAOC, will tell you that 'it is hard on their soul,' and therefore they came to the UAOC, because only in the UAOC do they feel a new spirit, new warm sentiments. So this is what leads people to the UAOC — its 'new spirit and warm sentiments'... Having proclaimed autocephaly, conciliar governance, a married episcopate, and certain other principles in our Church, we think that we have thereby constituted the ideology of the UAOC. No, my dear ones! And who then will resolve all those tragedies of human life that the old Slavonic Church was unable to resolve, thereby diminishing its authority and remaining a poor widow, without spouse or children? Yet Christ stands in the Church and calls: come unto Me all who are weary and burdened by heavy misfortune, and I will give you rest [cf. Matt. 11:28, in the Metropolitan's own paraphrase]. But with what will our UAOC give rest to these 'weary and burdened' children, if there is no proper consciousness in it, no understanding of the Lord Christ Himself?" "The power," says the Word of God, "came from Christ and healed all (Lk. 6:19). Therefore we must remember this power first of all, and this power is our true and sincere love for God and people, is our truly Christian spirit, our Christian sentiments, which alone can heal the tragedies of human life and at the same time give us a different Christian worldview, and with it a different Christian ideology, toward which the new world now strives, and which our UAOC is constructing with its common efforts" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2, 1928, p. 97).

The question of publishing a spiritual journal as the periodical organ of the UAOC arose, one must think, soon after the Sobor of 1921. But it was possible to realize this idea only in 1927, when the Soviet authorities on January 15, 1927, under no. 4889, granted permission for the publication of a monthly journal of the UAOC under the title Tserkva i Zhyttia [Church and Life], with the condition that it be printed in Kharkiv. We do not know exactly when the VPCR first applied to the authorities for permission to publish a church journal. But in November 1924 the Third Presidium of the VPCR, elected in May 1924, in its well-known statement to the Chairman of the Rada of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, also wrote about publishing an organ: "Recognizing the necessity of taking all measures to combat everything that impedes the cultural development of the working believing populace in Ukraine, which the old Slavonic Church so broadly abused, and considering the best means in such a struggle to be a periodical press organ, the VPCR requests, in the name of the interests of truth and the cultural life of the believing populace, that it be given the opportunity to have a periodical press organ of the UAOC, a journal, with the condition and obligation of observing current printing regulations."

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What motives guided the Soviet authorities in stipulating that the printing location of the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia (with the supplement of the also-monthly newspaper Tserkovni Visti [Church News]) be Kharkiv is unknown, since the DPU organs in Kyiv could equally well censor the content of submitted material for publication. But for the journal's publishers, this created difficulties: the Editorial Board under the publisher — the VPCR — was located in Kyiv, while printing and dealings with state press censors were in Kharkiv. It became necessary to have a responsible editor in Kharkiv, and then alongside him also a Publishing Commission.

The Editorial Board in Kyiv was composed of: chairman — Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky; members — Bishop M. Hrushevsky, Bishop Ya. Chulaivsky, and O. O. Levytsky; the closest collaborators were Archbishop N. Sharaivsky, Protopriest M. Khomychevsky, and V. M. Chekhivsky. The responsible editor in Kharkiv was Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky; he also served on the Editorial Board of the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia and was "the representative of the Board for dealings in matters of the journal's publication with the Central Government and the Censorship," was to "stand guard for the protection of the UAOC and ensure that the content of the journal's articles did not give grounds for suspicion of disloyalty or tactlessness of the UAOC toward the Government" (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, February 22, 1927).

Petitions before the government for permission to print the journal in Kyiv were unsuccessful; the government promised that when the first issues of the journal appeared and through them the government became convinced of the journal's loyal direction, permission to print in Kyiv would be granted. Therefore, in Kharkiv, to assist the responsible editor Archbishop Pavlovsky, a Publishing Commission was established, composed of Protopriest L. Yunakiv, Protopriest P. Protopopov, and lay brothers A. Yanchenko and Iv. Harashchenko; the latter two soon declined participation in the commission.

The journal Tserkva i Zhyttia, of which only 7 issues appeared — 5 in 1927 (nos. 2–3 in a single volume) and 2 in 1928 — was not, by its content and character, a popular journal for a wide readership. We would say that its content and style required a reader above the average, corresponding to the character of theological journals that had been published at theological academies in pre-revolutionary times; indeed, its contributors were predominantly graduates of the Kyiv Theological Academy.

Characteristic was the discussion regarding the direction and content of the journal, the organ of the UAOC, even before the printing of the first issue of Tserkva i Zhyttia. The discussion took place on February 10, 1927, at an extraordinary session of the Presidium of the VPCR with the participation also of non-members of the Presidium who were collaborators of the journal. The Chairman of the Presidium, Bishop Romodaniv, knowing how the church community of the UAOC, long awaiting the journal's appearance, was interested in it and placed great hopes upon it, and therefore wishing that the first issue come out as well as possible, took advantage of the arrival in Kyiv of three bishops — Archbishop F. Serhiiev, Bishop H. Mozolevsky, and Bishop V. Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky — and asked them to review the material for the first issue of Tserkva i Zhyttia, already approved for printing by the Editorial Board.

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The bishops, having reviewed the material, asked that a session of the VPCR be convened, to which Protopriest M. Khomychevsky and V. M. Chekhivsky were also invited.

Bishop Hryhorii Mozolevsky was the first to express the following thoughts at the session: "The journal is my (and not only my) precious dream; today this dream has changed to apprehension: I fear that the first issue of the journal may harm the entire cause, because the material prepared for the January journal is too heavy, dry, and makes an unpleasant impression. Running through it like a red thread is a kind of self-praise that crosses into a peculiar sectarianism — we, and no one else; others should praise us, while we should appear before readers with the spirit of all-embracing Christian love; one must also bear in mind the educational level and desires of our clergy and peasantry; the prepared material will not satisfy these desires."

Archbishop Feodosii Serhiiev expressed the view that "the general direction of the journal must be permeated by the spirit of love and should not provoke bitterness from other religious currents; one must avoid all grounds for suspecting the journal of any politicking. Inadmissible in the journal is a blanket accusation of the old hierarchy of the Russian Church, among which there were great men of the Church and holy saints (Ioasaf, Feodosii, and others), and therefore such expressions as 'predator-bishops' (khyzhaky-yepyskopy) can provoke indignation among the faithful and clergy."

Bishop Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky expressed the view that "the journal should be brought closer to the understanding of the average reader and even the generally literate parishioner, and therefore the content of the journal should be made more popular, for otherwise it will not interest the clergy and will remain in the Editorial Board."

Archbishop N. Sharaivsky said: "In my opinion, the journal 'Ts. i Zh.' must first and foremost reflect the current life of our Church, outline and illuminate the paths toward a better future, acquaint readers with the life of other ecclesiastical currents, and satisfy the pressing needs of the current church moment. The history of the past, polemics about our Church's right to autocephaly, about grace, and so forth, no longer interests anyone now. The journal must help the clergy and communities of the faithful to exercise their rights under the conditions of contemporary life, illuminate the idea of conciliar governance, which often manifests itself in impermissible forms, give support in the struggle against godlessness, and so on. To set lofty goals before oneself is untimely; one should use the journal to strengthen what already exists, so that the UAOC acquires real strength with which opponents would have to reckon."

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Protopriest M. Khomychevsky expressed the following thoughts: "The general direction of the journal must correspond to the spirit of the canons of the UAOC and must be Christian in the highest sense of the word. One may engage in polemics, debate, and dispute, but not in a manner of aggravating mutual relations, rather in a manner of calm, gentle, objective, and well-grounded articulation of the UAOC's ideology. The journal must be serious and at the same time popular. When the journal's program was being developed, the intention was to publish two journals."

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky informed the assembly that "the Editorial Board commenced work without having any definite concrete tasks. Circumstances require the immediate release of the first issue of the journal; for this, the material at hand is being used. When the first issue of the journal appears and when the periphery responds to it and assists this cause morally and materially, it will develop and in the near future will find a definite path, but for now it depends on the Presidium of the VPCR to decide whether to release the first issue with such content as has already been prepared, or to wait until other material is selected and prepared."

V. M. Chekhivsky refuted the remarks of the previous speakers and maintained that the material composing the first issue of the journal was of great significance and would satisfy all readers. The journal must be serious and substantive — such was the first issue — while the future would depend on various circumstances that were difficult to foresee at present. He agreed, however, to editorial corrections in accordance with the bishops' remarks.

Bishop Romodaniv summarized the thoughts of all speakers and put to a vote of the Presidium the question of whether to send to Kharkiv the material for the first issue already prepared by the Editorial Board, or to postpone for some time until the Editorial Board prepared new material. The Presidium resolved to recognize the publication of the journal Ts. i Zh. as soon as possible as an urgent need of the UAOC, and therefore to approve the first issue in the content composed by the Editorial Board, instructing it only to correct certain articles according to the comments and remarks of the bishops. (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, no. 11/31, February 10, 1927.)

And subsequently the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia appeared not without interruptions. In June 1927, after the first issue had appeared and material for nos. 2–3 had been prepared, some misunderstandings arose in the Editorial Board. As a result, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky resigned from the chairmanship of the Editorial Board and asked the Presidium of the VPCR to halt the distribution of the journal to UAOC parishes, which "was being conducted on his initiative, until a corresponding resolution of the Presidium of the VPCR was adopted on this matter." This statement was accepted by the Presidium for information, but Bishop Romodaniv, thanking the Metropolitan for his tireless work on the Editorial Board, expressed the Presidium's hope that the Metropolitan, after a month's rest, would return to active work on the Editorial Board, to which the Metropolitan replied that he "did not refuse participation in the work of the Editorial Board, but would not accept the chairmanship" (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, June 19, 1927).

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The Editorial Board of Tserkva i Zhyttia, as is evident from its announcements, set broad scholarly tasks for the journal, intending to publish original articles and translations in the following departments: 1) Philosophy and Ethics of Christianity; 2) History of Religions; 3) Church History; 4) Studies on Holy Scripture; 5) Religion and Science; 6) Religion and Economic and Social Life; 7) Church Art and Church Archaeology; 8) Religion and Belles-Lettres; 9) Bibliography and Criticism; 10) Theological Scholarly and Church-Historical Materials; 11) Church Apologetics and Polemics; 12) Pastoral Practice; 13) Liturgical Worship; 14) Religious Instruction and Evangelism; 15) Contemporary Religious Life in the UAOC and Beyond — Poems, Stories of Religious Content, etc. (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2–3, 1927, p. 248.)

During Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky's tenure as metropolitan, four issues of the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia were published; issue no. 5 appeared before Christmas 1927, no. 1/6 in 1928 appeared at Pascha, and no. 2/7 at the end of summer 1928. With that, the publication of the UAOC's organ ceased.

Although on the covers of all seven issues of Tserkva i Zhyttia there stands "Publication of the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada," nevertheless, as we see from the announcement at the end of issue no. 5 of the journal, the publication of Tserkva i Zhyttia had been transferred, by resolution of the VPCR, to the Publishing Commission of the Kharkiv District Church Rada. What motivated the transfer is not precisely known. It is possible that the reasons were of a financial character, since the printing costs of each issue of the journal amounted to 1,500 rubles. But then it would follow that the Kharkiv District Church Rada stood on materially firmer ground than the VPCR of the entire UAOC; the sorry state of the VPCR's finances will be discussed below. It is possible that there were also motives of a church-political character. In the aforementioned announcement in issue no. 5 of the journal, we read that the new Publishing Commission, attached to the Kharkiv District Church Rada, "aims to simplify the journal in content, to make it more interesting for the ordinary member of the UAOC" (Ts. i Zh., no. 5, 1927, p. 461).

Valuable from this perspective was the appeal of the Kharkiv Publishing Commission in the next issue, no. 1/6, of the journal in 1928. They wrote: "Time passes. No one anywhere is writing the history of the revival and life of the UAOC. The splendid, inspired, truly historic times of the revival of our Church are vanishing from the memory of the pioneers of our holy church cause. One must be able to record everything for history in a timely and truthful manner. Therefore, the Commission asks all those who stand close to and have been involved from the beginning in our church cause, to set down on paper everything that occurred, to recall the chronological dates of events, names of activists, and names of cities and villages. It would be desirable for each district to list all parishes in chronological order of Ukrainianization, to recall which of the local faithful took an active part and which clergy member helped it to organize. It would be good if the District Church Radas provided a list of clergy members

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and noted when and by whom each was ordained, and so forth. All this must be recorded, printed, and transmitted as materials for the history of our Church" (Ts. i Zh., no. 1(6), 1928, p. 69).

In the last issue, no. 2/7, of the journal in 1928, there is no longer any announcement either from the Publishing Commission of the Kharkiv District Church Rada or from the VPCR. Thus, one must conclude that the publishers already knew that Tserkva i Zhyttia would appear no more, but they dared not announce this or the reasons for its cessation. Obviously, the journal of the UAOC Tserkva i Zhyttia, after a year and a half of existence, did not die a natural death...

There were no other publications of ecclesiastical-religious literature worthy of note, apart from the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia. Even for offprints of individual articles from the journal — petitions for which the Presidium of the VPCR instructed the Responsible Editor to undertake — the Soviet authorities apparently did not give consent. The VPCR applied to the authorities for permission to print a church calendar for 1926, but the material sent for censorship lay about for so long and was lost, that the proper time for the calendar's release passed. Protopriest L. Yunakiv found it at the DPU, the material was then adapted for a calendar for 1927, in which it appeared with the authorities' permission, as did a calendar also in 1928; the print run for each was 3,000 copies.

9. Lights and Shadows in the Internal Life of the UAOC (continued): church life in the districts; district church sobors; the role of bishops in the districts. Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's characterization of the UAOC clergy. The social standing of UAOC clergy in the ideology of its leaders. Means of training UAOC clergy: schools and mentorship, pastoral conferences. Verification of the personnel composition of the clergy. The legal position and material condition of the clergy. Conciliar governance in the practice of the UAOC's church life. The material condition of the UAOC.

Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych wrote: "In all ages of the Christian Church, a fact of great legislative value was the Jerusalem Apostolic Sobor. It must serve as a measure, a model, an ideal for future times... The principle of conciliar governance has always been given a rather significant place among us. We must fight for this principle, defending the right of active participation of the people in our church life, when we resolve all the main questions, especially the question of the election of our clergy. At the same time, we must place this popular labor in a purely ecclesiastical plane... One must, however, say with all sincerity that it will not be easy to apply the conciliar principle in our life; much effort must be made to straighten the direction of our church life, to renew it with the proper conciliar order. The kingdom of truth on earth, according to the great commandment of Christ, is taken by effort, and evidently the greatest effort will be required of us

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in instilling this principle of conciliar governance in our believing populace. Therefore it is not surprising that the application of this principle provokes the most conflicts, misunderstandings, and friction" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1/6, 1928, "Toward the Ideology of the UAOC," pp. 17–18).

The "shadows" — and often great ones — of the badly understood principle of conciliar governance in the church life of the UAOC will be discussed below. A bright manifestation of the principle of conciliar governance in church life across the districts (dioceses) of the UAOC were the District Church Sobors. They played a great organizational role in the life of the Church and awakened the life of a church district when it was in decline.

In the period from the Grand Pokrova Assembly of 1926, at which the new Presidium of the VPCR was elected, until the end of December 1926, 13 District Church Sobors were held, at which 8 bishops were elected across the districts. So many sobors in such a short time was necessitated by the need to organize the church life of the UAOC following the Soviet authorities' crackdown on it in the summer of 1926. Convening a District Church Sobor required case-by-case permission from the central government in Kharkiv. That such permission was not a mere formality can be seen from the case of convening, in the same period after the Grand Pokrova Assembly of 1926, the Lubny District Sobor for January 25–26, 1927.

The Chairman of the VPCR Presidium, Bishop Romodaniv, was informed by government representatives in Kharkiv that permission for this sobor had not been given by the government because on the territory of the Lubny district, certain clergy members (named individuals) were conducting agitation against the direction of the current composition of the VPCR Presidium, which could not contribute to the pacification and normalization of the Lubny Church's life. Bishop Romodaniv documented for the government representatives the completely loyal attitude of Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk toward the VPCR, and therefore the tactless conduct of certain irresponsible individuals, even if clergy, could not constitute an obstacle to convening the District Sobor, which was to normalize church life and bring it into its proper course by electing appropriate district governing organs (District Church Rada, District Church Court, Examination Commission, Auditing Commission). After this, the government representatives agreed to grant permission for the convening of the Lubny Sobor on the condition that a representative of the VPCR Presidium be present at the Sobor and that the VPCR Presidium guarantee the peace and loyal attitude of the Sobor's members toward the Government. The Presidium of the VPCR delegated Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky as its representative to the Lubny Sobor (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, no. 3/23, January 21, 1927).

District Church Sobors, as a manifestation of the principle of conciliar governance in the UAOC, with the participation especially of representatives from the VPCR, played, as mentioned, a great positive and creative role in the life of the Church in the peripheries, across the districts. But these Sobors were a sporadic phenomenon, also dependent, as we have seen, on the Soviet authorities' permission. The permanent organ of church governance on the basis of conciliar governance were, across the districts, the District Church Radas, regarding whose

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activity, taken as a whole, the historian cannot form as positive an impression as from the activity of the District Sobors.

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky himself writes: "The UAOC did not have time and lacked the external possibility to achieve genuine conciliar governance, but achieved at most perhaps 'council-rule' (radopraviia), and even that truncated, and moreover under the constant danger of the Antichrist's sword" (Vidomosti Gen. Tserk. Upravl. UAPC na Vel. Brytaniiu [Bulletin of the General Church Administration of the UAOC for Great Britain], December 1951, p. 13).

Archbishop K. Krotevych wrote: "Early Christianity gives us two main pillars of church organization — the church community and its bishop: 'As there is no Church without a bishop, so there is no bishop without a Church.' By the end of the third century already, on the stage of church life, these two basic church elements had clearly emerged — the episcopal and the communal, with bishops, upon whom lay spiritual leadership and even the obligation to give direction to all church affairs. At the same time, the church community also appeared, which was likewise an active force and provided the so-called church reception (retseptsiia — the agreement of clergy and faithful people)" (Op. cit., p. 17. Emphasis ours).

To these words of Archbishop K. Krotevych, it must be added that these two pillars of church organization — the church community and its bishop — existed also in the ancient history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from its beginnings in the tenth century and, with certain interruptions (in the sixteenth century), over the course of several centuries until the subordination of our Church to Muscovite ecclesiastical authority, which was soon thereafter entirely subordinated to secular authority (caesaropapism) under Tsar Peter I.

With the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in revolutionary times from 1917, one can see in the process of this revival a clear tendency to diminish the status of the bishop, qualifying it as "episcopal autocracy," "eparchy-rule," and other such contemptuous names. But life itself resisted such a departure from our church tradition, founded on early Christian tradition. The historian, studying this church life of the UAOC in the 1920s of the current century, cannot but affirm the great role of the bishop in the organization, ordering, and development of this life — a role before which the much-vaunted "conciliar governance" through church councils, which was supposed, according to the canons of the Sobor of 1921, to replace the hierarchical principle in church governance, stands in second place.

The historian has every reason to affirm, first and foremost, that in those church districts of the UAOC where there were outstanding bishops, those districts expanded in the number of parishes. In their church life, order was maintained, church discipline was strengthened, and various branches of the church-religious life of the people flourished. In reports from the field at the Grand and Minor Assemblies of the VPCR, about which we have information, the following always stand out as the organized, conscious, and most developed parts of the UAOC in terms of church life — the District Churches of: Lubny, Uman, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, and Poltava. But these churches owed their condition to the leadership of such outstanding bishops as: the Lubny bishop (62 parishes) — Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk;

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in the Uman district (125 parishes) — Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych; in the Vinnytsia district (126 parishes) — initially Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych, then Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych; in the Cherkasy district (110 parishes) — Bishop Yukhym Kalishevsky; and in the Poltava district (42 parishes) — Bishop Yurii Shevchenko.

The departure of such bishops — the leaders who had organized their church districts — immediately threatened a decline in church life in those districts. In the "Review of the Work of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR, held March 6–8, 1928," we read: "The sole danger for the Lubny Church is the possibility of Archbishop Yosyf's departure, as the Poltava Church is inviting him... The Poltava Church has been living without a bishop since the departure of the Venerable Bishop Yurii Shevchenko to Odesa. In Poltava region, a characteristic church phenomenon is the Buldovsky movement [Buldovshchyna]," which "compels the Presidium of the District Church Rada to monitor its measures regarding the destruction of our parishes and to expedite the matter of inviting a bishop to Poltava"... "The Uman Church, weakened during this church year by the absence of a bishop (Archbishop K. Maliushkevych had been elected to the Kyiv cathedra, formed by uniting the urban and rural Kyiv districts into one Kyiv district, the largest District Church in the UAOC), weakened also by changes in the composition of the Presidium — there is a most pressing need to help this Church by providing it with a bishop"... (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 6 [i.e., 1/6], 1928, pp. 36, 38).

From those same reports from the field at the Minor and Grand Assemblies of the VPCR, as well as from the minutes of the Presidium sessions of the VPCR, we see that contemporaries identified the main cause of decline, disorganization, and at times even anarchy in the church life of one or another church district as the absence of a bishop in the district. Here are just a few of the many examples of such ecclesiastical consciousness regarding the role of the bishop in the Church.

On February 23, 1927, in the city of Zhytomyr, a District Sobor of the Volyn District Church was held, with the participation of the VPCR's representative, Bishop of Uman K. Maliushkevych. Present were Archbishop Stepan Orlyk, Bishop Hryhorii Mozolevsky, 12 priests, and 15 laypeople. The general state of the Volyn church district proved to be "grave and sorrowful." The only person who had sustained the life of the district was Protopriest V. Avushev, but he too had left Zhytomyr. The district required a spiritual leader who would gather and unite all active forces of the district and elevate its spiritual life. But when it came to discussing the question of electing candidates for the episcopal cathedra, none were found, and the Sobor resolved to ask the VPCR to help the Volyn Church in the matter of obtaining a bishop.

The Presidium of the VPCR resolved: "To note with sorrow the decline of the Volyn District Church and to attribute such a grave condition of the district to the absence of a spiritual leader in it over recent years, and therefore to recognize the need for the Volyn District Church to have its own separate bishop"... (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, March 1, 1927.) And a year later, in reports from the field at the Minor

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Assembly of the VPCR, March 6–8, 1928, we hear again: "The Volyn Church, being without a bishop, has declined organizationally"... (Ts. i Zh., no. 6, 1928, p. 35).

In the Chernihiv region, the Sobor of the Nizhyn Church District, held December 22–23, 1926, "noted the sorrowful decline of life in the Nizhyn District (40 parishes) due to the absence of a permanent spiritual leader and a governing district organ, and therefore resolved to elect a permanent bishop"... As such, Bishop of Hlukhiv Oleksander Chervinsky was elected, whose election was confirmed by the Presidium of the VPCR, with a charge to him also to administer the Chernihiv District (only 5 parishes), which after the transfer of Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky to Kharkiv had also been left without a bishop (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, February 25, 1927).

In the Chernihiv region, besides the Chernihiv and Nizhyn church districts, there were the Hlukhiv and Konotop church districts, neighboring one another. Of these, the Konotop district was without its own bishop almost the entire time, because in Konotop itself it had no church for a bishop's cathedra. The consequence of the bishop's absence was a struggle among the clergy in the Konotop district, manifestations of anarchy (the case of Protopriest D. Karpenko — Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, September 1, 1927), as a chronic phenomenon, which was noted at the Minor Assembly of the VPCR on March 6–8, 1928: "The Konotop Church, since the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor, has done nothing to improve its condition. The Presidium of the District Rada is completely inactive. Organized life has died out"... (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 6, 1928, p. 37).

In Podillia, in the Haisyn and Tulchyn church districts, as the Haisyn District Church Commission for the Normalization of Church Life in the Tulchyn area reported to the Presidium of the VPCR, "complete anarchy reigned among the clergy, discipline had utterly collapsed, and the situation required a bishop who would unite and elevate the life of the UAOC." From a briefing note submitted during the discussion at the Presidium session of the VPCR on the state of church life in the Tulchyn and Haisyn church districts, the following became evident. Bishop Mykolai Boretsky informed the VPCR on December 15, 1926, that due to his illness he could not assume spiritual leadership over the Tulchyn area. By letter of January 21, 1927, he asked to be relieved of the duties of overseer of the Tulchyn-Haisyn district and to be counted only as rector of the St. Nicholas Church in the town of Haisyn. The VPCR resolved to charge Bishop M. Karabinevych with conducting preparatory work for convening the Tulchyn District Sobor (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, January 25, 1927). This sobor took place on February 14–15, 1927; at it, Bishop Volodymyr Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky was elected as bishop of the Tulchyn-Haisyn district, with his residence in the town of Ladyzhyn, since in Tulchyn there was no church in the UAOC's use (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, February 25, 1927).

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Also in Podillia, due to the absence of a bishop or various disorders in the bishop's position in a church district, the state of church life was sorrowful in the Mohyliv-Podilsky, Kamianets, and Proskuriv districts.

From an investigation of the state of UAOC church life in the Mohyliv area by the Vinnytsia District Commission at the end of 1926, it emerged that "the Ukrainian cause in the Mohyliv area barely holds on; it requires episcopal support, because Old Slavonic priests are conducting agitation against the UAOC, and faint-hearted priests are losing spirit, while evangelists are negligent in their duties." The Presidium of the VPCR resolved: to ask Archbishop K. Krotevych to visit the Ukrainian parishes of the Mohyliv area at the first opportunity, to elevate their moral state and to comprehensively clarify the conditions for the establishment of a separate episcopal cathedra in the Mohyliv area. (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, February 25, 1927.)

In the Kamianets district, "the frequent change of bishops on the Kamianets cathedra had an extraordinarily negative effect on the life of the Kamianets Church, both morally and materially." Bishop Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky was compelled to apply a purge of the clergy by removing the most immoral persons from service, and also to exclude from the UAOC four parishes that refused to submit to any directives of the governing organs. But Bishop V. Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky himself could not hold on in the Kamianets area and asked the VPCR to transfer him to episcopal work in another district, motivating his request primarily by the complete absence of material means for the bishop's maintenance in the Kamianets district. (Minutes of the Presidium sessions of the VPCR, February 9 and 25, 1927.) He was elected, as already mentioned, to the Tulchyn episcopal cathedra.

At the Proskuriv District Sobor on December 14, 1926, held in the presence of the VPCR delegate Bishop Ya. Chulaivsky, it was noted that Bishop Maksym Zadvirnyak, residing in the village of Ivankiv where he served as parish rector, had no connection whatsoever with the Proskuriv District Church Rada, and this "provoked anarchy in the district, complete disorganization of its life." Bishop Chulaivsky considered that the Proskuriv area could emerge from this grave condition only when it succeeded in establishing the episcopal cathedra in Proskuriv itself and concentrating there the work of the District Church Rada. The Presidium of the VPCR concurred. (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, February 8, 1927.)

Great complications with filling the UAOC episcopal cathedra existed throughout in Dnipropetrovsk (Katerynoslav), from which Ukrainian church life in the Katerynoslav region also suffered in its spread and development. In his report at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR on May 29, 1928, Metropolitan M. Boretsky said: "Look if you will at the Dnipropetrovsk district, and you will be horrified by the frenzied struggle of church factions, all of which there, under the banner of the Church, ceaselessly war against one another, and in the desire for victory drench each other with the gravest accusations and

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slanders. Pyvovar's faction, Romodaniv's faction, Morozov's faction, Orlyk's faction, and others in the Dnipropetrovsk region exist as legal factions in our Church, and it should not surprise you at all when, at the reception of an honored guest, you hear that the bread and salt is presented on behalf of the Pyvovar faction, or the Romodaniv faction, or some other..." (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, p. 94).

From the examples cited here, we see how the very church life of the UAOC was restoring a true understanding of the role and ministry of bishops in the Christian Church. Archbishop K. Maliushkevych, in his already-mentioned report at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1928, "The Ministry of the Bishop in the UAOC and the Place of the UAOC Priest in the Parish," affirms this thought. He said: "The First VPCR Sobor of 1921 did not dwell much on this question (of episcopal ministry in the Church). It knew well that bishops were necessary as bearers of God's grace; it knew that the bishops of the old Slavonic-Russian Church had occupied a false, improper place for bearers of supreme grace in church life, but what place the bishops should occupy in the UAOC so that it would be true — this the Sobor did not say. The Regulations of the UAOC, adopted only at the Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor, are to this day not printed and are therefore unknown to the entire Church. This means that the life of the Church itself determined this place...

"What has our Church done, what has the VPCR done, to establish a true relationship between the members of the Church and the governing organs of the Church toward the bishops? To make it untrue — much has been done. The idea was cultivated that there should be many bishops, so that not only every district but every raion should have a bishop. And bishops were indeed consecrated. Perhaps this was called for by the needs of the time to increase evangelism. But along with the benefit, this led to exceedingly sorrowful phenomena in the life of the Church (renunciation by bishops, humiliation and besmirching of the name of bishops, etc.). The idea was cultivated that bishops want to seize power in the Church into their own hands, and therefore they must be watched and not given the opportunity to do so. In Katerynoslav, a group of active church workers told one of the bishops, who had shown no such seizure intentions and whom they did not yet even know well as a person, immediately declared: 'we will be watching you.' Episcopal conferences were feared and stubbornly persecuted... Bishops were restricted in their electoral rights. The Great Assembly of the VPCR, it seems in 1923, placed under great doubt the right of bishops to be members of the VPCR Presidium and under even greater doubt the right to be chairman of the Presidium. (The reference, obviously, is to actual chairmanship, not 'honorary.' In connection with the fact that in the Cherkasy District Church, Bishop Yukhym Kalishevsky became the actual chairman of the District Church Rada, the Presidium of the VPCR resolved 'to recognize as impermissible the combination in the person of the District Bishop of the duties of actual chairman of the District Church Rada' — Povidomlennia Lubenskoi Okruhovoi Tserk. Komisii pro zhyttia UAPC [Bulletin of the Lubny District Church Commission on the Life of the UAOC], no. 2, 1927. — Author.) Only when the Church found itself in an exceedingly grave condition and it was necessary to lead it out of that condition,

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then they silently agreed that bishops should take up this work... The attitude of the District Radas toward bishops also contained much that was false, abnormal. Without trial, without a Sobor, the District Church Rada would remove a bishop from his cathedra, or would not allow him to actually carry out his episcopal ministry. When inviting a bishop to a cathedra, they did not create a material basis for the possibility of his residence at the cathedra, and the construction of this basis depended on the economic abilities of the bishop himself. As a result of such an attitude by the governing organs, we had the same attitude toward bishops also from individual parishes: some parishes did not invite the bishop to serve among them, but instead turned to the District Church Rada and asked it to send them a bishop; other parishes considered that they could bring the bishop to their parish, but were not obligated to take him back, etc. All this may be too petty and unworthy of much discussion, but these petty matters depict the condition of bishops in our Church; these petty matters show what we must combat to make this condition worthy of episcopal ministry in the Church."

"Of course," continued Archbishop K. Maliushkevych, "not all bishops were in such a condition. Of course, not all District Radas and not all members of the Church treated bishops this way. Of course, the bishops also saw manifestations of pure, selfless love toward them — love that rarely falls to anyone's lot — and respect for their ministry, and care for their well-being, and help in their work... Of course, the Church as a whole, in its provisions fixed in the Regulations (at the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor), did not permit a contemptuous attitude toward bishops and defined the place of the bishop in the Church as the most responsible and honorable"...

"If even now the formula 'the bishop is the highest spiritual leader' gives some bishops the idea of 'rights' alone, and not of duties; if even now there are those abuses of rights that occurred earlier — then it is clear that one must combat abuses. But how to combat them? Not by reducing the rights of bishops in general, not by creating 'council-rule' (radopravstvo), not by diminishing the authority and significance of bishops in the Church, but by precise and clear definition of their rights and duties; by the constant awareness among the bishops themselves that they are not above the Church and not above the Rada, but with the Church and with the Rada; that together with the Rada they share all rights and duties... Read the articles of the Regulations concerning episcopal ministry in the Church... Observe only these articles, so that they are not merely written on paper, but are embodied in the life and activity of the bishop, and then the bishops will fulfill their ministry with joy, and not with sighing" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, p. 103. Emphasis ours).

"If even among the highest representatives of the UAOC (the bishops)," writes Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, "human weaknesses manifested themselves more than the power of God, then what can one say about the lower parish clergy?" And he then gives a characterization of this UAOC clergy — quite dispiriting — without dwelling in detail on the causes of such a sorrowful state.

"One must acknowledge," the Metropolitan writes,

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"that the UAOC after the proclamation of autocephaly was left not only without bishops, but also without priests. Very few of the Tikhonite clergy joined the UAOC, and it always felt a great shortage of priests and had to accept all who merely expressed a desire. Many teachers and simply literate peasants, predominantly young people who had little in common with church ministry, entered the priesthood. Short-term courses or private preparation could give them only superficial knowledge necessary for church ministry... No matter how sincerely they approached their ministry and were captivated by it, their scant preparation weighed heavily on their church work. And many went simply for a piece of bread, or from other earthly considerations; such people immediately became merely mechanical performers of rites.

"Priests who were conscious workers, organizers of their church-parish, pastors of their flock — were few. Moreover, the priests of the UAOC also were, for the most part, not elected by the parishes, because there was no one from whom to choose — they would take anyone at all. They were sent by the District (County) Radas, or simply wandered in on their own, and therefore had no connection with the parishes. The turnover — as they say nowadays — of clergy was also a great defect of the UAOC; rarely would a priest stay in a parish for more than a year, and some would stay a month or two and then drift on."

"The scant connection of Ukrainian priests with their parishes and with the UAOC in general," continues Metropolitan Lypkivsky, "was revealed with particular sadness when the sun of communism began to burn, and rays of all manner of restrictions poured down upon the clergy. Then the UAOC clergy above all began writing declarations in the press renouncing their clerical status, often even shameful and brazen ones, calling themselves swindlers. This was a severe temptation for the UAOC, which showed that the UAOC had not yet managed to create its own genuine clergy, as representatives of the church-parish, but had for the most part relied on 'fly-by-nights' (nalotchyky)... True, the immeasurably difficult conditions of church work in the countryside could have forced even honest workers to renounce. With satisfaction, it must be said that there are, after all, priests who selflessly labor, and not a few have also endured severe sufferings in exile and even martyrdom by execution.

"To create a genuine clergy, to concentrate upon it the grace of the Church — this is for the UAOC a matter of the future. Until now it had neither the strength nor the opportunity to do this, and this was without doubt a great defect in the life of the UAOC to date; the lower clergy of the UAOC was a grievous sore on its body" (From Chapter VII of the History of the Church — Vidomosti Gen. Tserk. Upr. UAPC na Vel. Brytaniiu [Bulletin of the General Church Administration of the UAOC for Great Britain], December 1951, p. 14).

It is difficult to say what Metropolitan Lypkivsky meant by "creating a genuine clergy of the UAOC, upon which the grace of the Church would be concentrated." Earlier we discussed the "Public Declaration to All Churches of the VPCR of the UAOC," authored by V. M. Chekhivsky, which was read at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 25–30, 1924, and confirmed by it with a resolution to take all measures

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for its dissemination. In this "Public Declaration," views were expressed that in the UAOC there is no clergy as such (dukhivnytstvo), but only "sacred workers" (sviashchenodiachi). The development of this idea is found at those same Great St. Nicholas Assembly sessions of May 25–30, 1924, in reports on the theme "The Social Standing of the Clergy of the UAOC" by Protopriest M. Khomychevsky and V. M. Chekhivsky, and in the discussion following these reports and in the resolutions adopted by the Assembly.

From amidst the vague phrases and half-statements, understandable under the conditions of discussing the matter under a godless state authority, the question of clergy in the ideology of UAOC leaders was presented essentially as follows. The UAOC strives for the liberation of workers from every form of oppression. Its clergy are not any professional class or caste that would seek to exploit the faithful for its own benefit.

Their sacred ministry in the Church is not a material means for their existence, is not a certain profession, but "merely the highest elevation of the creative moral Christian life of a person." Like every believing layperson of the UAOC, "its clergy, acting within the bounds of the Church on the basis of the law on the separation of Church from State, are at the same time conscious citizens of the Ukrainian SSR, who, in accord with the ideology of the UAOC, unwaveringly strive for the renewal of social life worldwide on the basis of the laws of SOCIALIST justice, for the liberation of the unenlightened populace from every clouding of the mind by pseudo-religious superstition, and therefore should be recognized as useful cultural workers on a worldwide scale." Therefore, the clergy, like every member of the UAOC and at the same time a citizen of the Ukrainian SSR, should enjoy equal rights with all citizens of the Ukrainian Republic. Belonging to one or another religious or anti-religious current, in accordance with proletarian law, is a right solely of the personal moral conviction of each citizen.

At the same time, in the matter of practically implementing the wish that the priest's ministry not be a profession or a source of his material existence for himself and his family, the VPCR proposed that priests, through participation in cooperative labor, cultural-educational and artisan work, be included in the laboring element of the state and not be considered by the authorities as a non-laboring element.

In the spirit of such an understanding of the position of clergy in the UAOC and in the Ukrainian SSR, the Presidium of the VPCR was to compile a memorandum to the Soviet authorities, the theses of which were also resolved to be distributed among the District churches for the information and guidance of clergy in their work. (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 25–30, 1924, pp. 40–43.)

Obviously, the ideologues of the UAOC, who in formulating the UAOC's ideology generally turned to the unrepeatable times of primitive Christianity, had before their imagination the images of the first apostles, especially in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, who more than once wrote about supporting himself through his own physical labor: "I have coveted no one's silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have ministered to my needs and to those who were

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with me" (Acts 20:33–34. Cf. Acts 18:3; 1 Thess. 2:9; 1 Cor. 4:12; 2 Cor. 11:9; 2 Thess. 3:8). But in the same Apostle Paul we find justification also for not burdening a sacred worker with another profession or labor. "Do you not know," he says, "that those who perform the sacred services eat from the temple, and those who tend the altar share in what is offered on the altar? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the Gospel should live from the Gospel" (1 Cor. 9:13–14). In the history of the Christian Church among various peoples, this principle regarding the support of clergy by the Church prevailed, but this was by no means equivalent to the creation in the Church of a clerical estate as some kind of professional caste.

Without doubt, the conceptions of UAOC leaders about the social standing of UAOC clergy provoked only a smile from Balytsky, Karin, and other DPU officials: the Church with its idealistic worldview was the foremost enemy of the regime with its materialist worldview of Marxism-Leninism. Thus, the creation of a "genuine clergy" in the UAOC remained the dream of its ideologues, while the real life of the revolutionary era trampled these dreams, posing nonetheless its own demands for the satisfaction of pressing church needs.

The first such need, however one might understand the ministry of a priest in the Church at the present time, was the need for candidates for the priesthood, the shortage of which was painfully felt at all times, as Metropolitan Lypkivsky also writes. And the church authorities had to attend to the preparation of these candidates.

In the first period after the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, there existed in Kyiv a pastoral school of the UAOC, which "graduated," as V. M. Chekhivsky reported at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1924, "a significant number of clergy, but the dire material conditions did not allow for the development of clergy preparation to the proper level" (Minutes of the Assembly, p. 38). We do not know precisely when this school ceased to exist due to insufficient funds for its maintenance, but it seems that, having arisen during the period when Soviet authority in Ukraine was not yet organized, it would not have survived without official permission. Subsequently, we continually see the Presidium of the VPCR petitioning the Government in Kharkiv for permission to open a pastoral-theological school of the UAOC in Kyiv.

For the acquisition and maintenance of premises for this school, the VPCR established a special collection of donations to be taken in UAOC churches three times a year: on Palm Sunday, at Pascha, and on the day of the Holy Trinity. From these donations, sent to the VPCR, an educational fund was formed, which the Presidium of the VPCR was not permitted to spend on any other needs except the organization of the pastoral-theological school. Efforts before the government for permission to open the pastoral-theological school achieved the success that "the Central Government in Kharkiv gave its principled consent to open such a school to the Chairman of the VPCR Presidium, Bishop Romodaniv, and said to send a detailed program of the disciplines in the school, and promised to enter into dealings

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with the Kyiv local government, so that the latter would assist the VPCR in the matter of finding premises for the school" (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, January 21, 1927). We then encounter information from December 1927 that permission to open the school had been granted, but not in the name of the VPCR — only to some private committee headed by Bishop Ya. Chulaivsky. Whether this pastoral-theological school was ultimately opened before the liquidation of the UAOC, we have no data.

Simultaneously with the petitions for permission to open a theological school, the Presidium of the VPCR approached the Government with requests for permission to organize short-term theological courses in the UAOC's church districts for the preparation of priestly candidates, as well as for permission to print on a hectograph and distribute to parishes theological lectures and church sermons (for correspondence pastoral-theological education). To this the government's response was: "Given the existence of a pastoral-theological school, for the opening of which permission will be granted, there is no perceived need for district pastoral-theological short-term courses, and sermons and lectures may be printed in the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia" (Ibid.).

Under such difficult circumstances regarding the schooling of priestly candidates, the idea arose of "mentorship" [Trans. note: Ukrainian uchytelstvo — lit. "teaching" or "mentorship"] as a means of preparing for the priesthood, after the example of Christ and the Apostles. The particular proponent of this idea was V. M. Chekhivsky. Bishops in their districts and priests in parishes were to seek pious students who had an inclination to dedicate themselves to the ministry of the Church, take them under their spiritual care, and guide their educational preparation for the pastorate and their practical-liturgical preparation for the sacred ministry. To implement such "mentorship," it was necessary to distribute among the bishops the work of compiling popular materials in theology and other church sciences, which would serve as handbooks in guiding the students; it was necessary to compile a catalog of books for theological self-education and to publish a collection of sermons.

At the plenary session of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR on December 28–30, 1926, there was a discussion on the church-educational matter of preparation for the priesthood and the advancement of education for clergy already in service. In this discussion, critical voices were also heard regarding the successes of the mentorship approach in obtaining priestly candidates.

Protopriest Pukhalsky (Konotop) said: "The school is the first priority. Mentorship will accomplish nothing. Without a school, in 25 years there will not be a single educated priest." And when V. M. Chekhivsky said that this despairing speaker "had no grounds or experience for such assertions," Father Pukhalsky declared: "I and other priests have prepared priests according to the mentorship principle; now both they weep and we weep because of them. Only a school will yield real results; the call to mentorship will not."

The Assembly, having recognized in its resolution on the church-educational matter that the primary requirement was the founding of a theological school of the UAOC, resolved: "Furthermore, to charge the VPCR with issuing concrete instructions to the District Radas to pay special attention to raising the mentorship to a higher level across

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the districts in the form of short-term theological courses, lectures, discussions on various topics and explanation of the Gospels, creation of brief reports, textbooks, publication of sermons, etc. For carrying out this task in life, to summon all intellectual forces of the center and the periphery" (Minutes of the Plenary Session of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR, December 28–30, 1926, pp. 18–19). As we have already seen, the Soviet authorities did not give consent for short-term theological courses in the districts.

On October 25, 1923, during the expanded sessions of the Minor Rada of the UAOC, the first All-Ukrainian Conference of Clergy was held, which passed its resolution on the advisability of the systematic functioning of pastoral conferences in the UAOC. This resolution was confirmed by the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR on May 25–30, 1924, which recognized pastoral conferences as advisable and useful for the self-education of priests (Minutes of the said Assembly, p. 47).

How useful pastoral conferences of the clergy were in the life of the UAOC can be illustrated by the pastoral conference of the clergy of the Vinnytsia Church District, held December 13–14, 1926 (during the journey of Archbishop of Vinnytsia K. Krotevych on a missionary trip to distant Semirechye). The conference of the Vinnytsia District clergy devoted special attention to interrelations among priests, to the disorganizing conduct of certain priests, to the moral and material condition of the clergy, etc., and passed the following main resolutions:

  1. To recognize as impermissible the fact of the absence from the conference of the majority of the clergy, and to inquire through the Reverend Evangelists of each individual clergy member regarding the reasons for such absence.
  2. To draw the earnest attention of all the clergy to the fact that, owing to the lack of connection with the center and the indiscipline of the clergy themselves, a certain disorganization is being introduced into the cause, from which the clergy itself suffers in the first place, and to call upon all healthy church intellectual forces to take the most active part in church life, to influence and support their weaker and wavering brethren.
  3. To explain in a manner accessible to the believing populace the extraordinarily grave material situation of the clergy of our Church, including some workers' abandonment of their posts due to the absence of the most basic means for their families' livelihood, and to ask the believing populace to be more attentive to voluntary contributions for the maintenance of the church staff.
  4. To recognize as impermissible, anti-church, un-Christian, and extraordinarily harmful to the church cause the willful visiting by priests, without the knowledge of the Reverend Evangelist, of UAOC parishes with the aim of seizing them; in the event of such occurrences, to hold them accountable and punish in the most severe manner, up to and including removal from their positions and exclusion from the roster of UAOC clergy.
  5. To recognize as mandatory that congregational singing be introduced in all parishes of the District.

The conference developed a plan for dividing the District into 14 evangelist raions and noted the dedicated labor of the Chairman of the Commission for the Normalization of Life of the Vinnytsia District, Brother Yu. M. Mashkevych, to whom it expressed

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sincere gratitude. The Presidium of the VPCR confirmed all the resolutions of the Conference of the Vinnytsia Church District clergy, and to Brother Yu. M. Mashkevych, who "in the difficult conditions of life of the Vinnytsia District, preserved it from decline and dispersal," resolved to issue a commendation from the VPCR (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, January 11, 1927).

Despite the fact that pastoral conferences of the clergy were so useful and were held, as we see, sometimes on the initiative of a layperson, the morbid fear of the "caste character" of the clergy and of the violation of the principle of "conciliar governance" at times provoked opposition within the UAOC against holding separate pastoral (and episcopal) conferences.

At the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 11–13, 1927, during the discussion of reports from the field and from Presidium members on the current state of UAOC church life, Brother V. M. Chekhivsky said in his speech: "The reporters from the field, as well as from the VPCR Presidium, have raised those slogans that would promote the elevation of our church life. Some spoke about discipline, but have not even clarified what should be understood by that fetish — discipline. What then should be understood by church discipline? Enthusiasm for our cause, creative labor — these are the chief conditions for the success of our work. No coercion and no commands will elevate our church life. 'Be an example, be a model for the faithful' is the Alpha and Omega of our life.

"There is another article in our Statute about assemblies of the clergy; it has not been clarified. Previously this did not exist, but now this form of assembly — the Pastoral Conferences — is gaining strength. It must be clarified: what can these Conferences give to our Church? We have no caste, and the Pastoral Conferences have no privileges whatsoever; in them a tendency toward caste formation, toward closed corporatism, manifests itself. For example, the episcopal conference before the very Great St. Nicholas Assembly took up the time that should have been given to the Minor Assembly of the VPCR (the Plenary Session of the VPCR Presidium)... One senses the threat of caste-party domination, because in the past history of the Church the leadership of the top echelons always turned into domination and seizure of the will of the entire Church.

"And what is our clergy? The very expressions 'clergy and laity' are not correct expressions; they are groundless; these divisions are not even Christian, for every Christian lives spiritually. (Is this not an approach to the doctrine of the universal priesthood of Christians? — I. V.) [Trans. note: The author's term echoes the Protestant doctrine of "the priesthood of all believers," which he detects in Chekhivsky's rhetoric.] Previously, the concept of 'clergy' included daughters, matushkas, families of clergy; one must guard against caste formation, which deadened the life of the Church in the past."

Here the chairman of the Assembly, Bishop K. Maliushkevych, stopped the speaker, but V. Chekhivsky protested, and the Assembly asked him to continue. The speaker demanded that episcopal and pastoral conferences be open to all the faithful, because "special care must be taken for the development of the self-activity of the Church, the development of the participation of all members of the Church in church activity"... Chekhivsky's ideas found their expression in the following resolution adopted by the Great St. Nicholas Assembly in the session of May 13, 1927: "The unity and integrity of the leadership of church life cannot be disrupted by the duality of governing organs; therefore, church conferences

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of workers of one or another rank do not constitute a form of caste separation of the clergy, but merely promote the elevation of their creativity, and therefore should not conduct parallel work with the organs of church governance or appropriate their functions. These conferences should not be closed, except in matters of a personal nature or feelings of modesty. Members of the Church who do not belong to the circle of workers holding the conference may be present at the conferences" (Minutes of the said Assembly, p. 56).

When the All-Ukrainian Conference of the UAOC was held on September 1–3, 1926, convened with the permission of the Soviet authorities by the bishops to save the UAOC after the crackdown on its governing organs by the state, already at that Conference a resolution was adopted (one must think, at the demand of the DPU) on the necessity of verifying the personnel composition of the UAOC clergy. This resolution was confirmed by the Grand Pokrova Assembly of the UAOC on October 25–30, 1926, which charged the Presidium of the VPCR with developing a clear instruction for conducting the verification of the UAOC clergy composition.

At the Minor Assembly of the VPCR on December 28–30, 1926, this matter of verifying the personnel composition of the clergy was considered under the heading of "outlining means for the renewal of the UAOC clergy." At the session of the Presidium of the VPCR on March 2, 1927, a draft instruction for conducting the verification of the UAOC clergy composition was heard, and the Presidium resolved:

"Over the course of more than five years, workers of the Church were admitted into the UAOC, or from among the faithful were ordained, sometimes without careful attention on the part of the governing organs of the UAOC, without verification of information about their past activities, about their suitability for church work, without proper examinations, and even without personal documents. As a result, the UAOC faces the fact that the state of the UAOC clergy is not always satisfactory in the following respects: a) Moral (drunkenness, debauchery, dishonesty with oneself, and other forms of immorality); b) Educational (complete absence of theological knowledge, unpreparedness for the work of defending the faith and the Church, for serving the Church through the word); c) Church-ideological and church-administrative (failure to understand the ideology of the UAOC, indifference to the Church and its requirements, non-submission to church discipline, use of the Church for non-church tasks — anti-religious, self-serving, political). All this harmfully affects the UAOC, diminishes in the eyes of the faithful its ideological elevation and purity, diminishes its authority in general. For the elevation of the life of the UAOC and the authority of its clergy, it is recognized as necessary to review the entire current personnel composition of the UAOC clergy. The basis for this shall be: a) the teaching of Christ's Church about its ministers, in particular the words of the Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 3:2–10, 12–16; 2 Tim. 2:15; Titus 1:7–9; 1 Cor. 5:13); b) the canons of the UAOC; c) the resolution of the All-Ukrainian Conference of UAOC Representatives, September 1–3, 1926; d) the resolution of the Grand Pokrova Assembly of 1926."

The resolution further states that the verification is to be conducted throughout all of Ukraine, encompassing bishops, priests, and deacons, and should be completed

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by the Grand Pokrova Assembly of 1927, or by the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor. Recognizing the great significance of this verification for the UAOC, the Presidium considered it necessary to hear once more the voice of the District Churches in this matter, and therefore decided to send the draft instruction for consideration by the District Church Radas, with the final approval of the instruction for the verification of the clergy composition to take place at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1927, while the preparatory work for the verification should already begin now (compilation of lists of clergy and the requisition and collection of necessary personal documents) by the District Church Radas (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, no. 20/40, March 2, 1927).

The matter of verifying the personnel composition of the UAOC clergy caused great agitation in the life of the Church, as a sort of "purge" among the clergy that the church organs were to carry out. Indeed, paragraph 11 of the draft instruction established: "Having verified a UAOC clergy member in all respects (religious, moral, educational, church-ideological, church-administrative, and church-civic), the Church Verification Commission assigns him to one of three categories. To the first category — persons who are irreproachable and fully suitable for work in the UAOC; to the second category — persons who require assistance from the District Church Rada and spiritual leadership for correction and improvement; to the third category — persons entirely unsuitable for work in the UAOC and subject to removal from the UAOC clergy roster."

At the Minor Assembly of the VPCR on May 10, 1927, and the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR on May 11–13, the "Instruction for the Verification of the Personnel Composition of the UAOC Clergy" became the subject of critical discussion. Paragraph 11, concerning the division of workers into categories, was struck out as one that "weighs heavily upon the human soul"; in its place, the Assembly indicated that an individual approach should be taken in the verification of each worker. The Assembly determined that the verification should relate only to the church activity of the clergy member, and not to his entire prior life, which is not the task of church organs. The Assembly also recognized that it is not the business of the District Church Verification Commission to impose penalties — for this, church courts exist, to which the Commission refers such cases once it finds the necessary materials and facts for submission to the church court.

"Regular cantors" [shtatni diaky, i.e., salaried parish cantors] were also included in the verification — that is, cantors who "specifically fulfill their cantoral duties, are elected by the parish, and are confirmed by the District Church Rada." In those times, finding a cantor, and especially a cantor-conductor, was very difficult. Statistical data cited by Archbishop K. Maliushkevych indicate that in 1914 there were 10,793 cantors in Ukraine, while in 1927 there were 4,574 — a decrease of 6,219. It was easier to find two priests for a parish than one cantor (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 7, 1928, p. 106).

With such amendments, the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927 confirmed the Instruction for the Verification of the Personnel Composition of the UAOC Clergy. (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 11–13, 1927, pp. 63–65.)

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On the third anniversary of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1921, the Presidium of the VPCR issued a proclamation "to all venerable bishops, the honorable clergy, and all the brotherhood in Christ," signed by: Honorary Chairman Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, Chairman Protodeacon V. Potiienko, and members: Archbishop N. Sharaivsky, Protopriest M. Khomychevsky, Protopriest Ya. Kavushynsky, Protopriest D. Khodzytsky, P. Antypchuk, H. Vovkushivsky, M. Sviderska, and P. Hordovsky.

In this Proclamation, the VPCR, having briefly recalled the path of the liberation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church beginning with the revolution of 1917, and how the fighters for this liberation through their steadfastness, resoluteness, and unanimity in labor arrived at the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1921, after which the flourishing and growth of the UAOC began, then turns to a sorrowful tone and says:

"But even in our holy Church, which is founded upon the pure teaching of Christ, upon the sincere faith of the people, and which by its structure and its canons of life has decisively broken with various worldly habits of power-seeking, cunning, personal scores, servility, spying, and betrayal — to our great sorrow and grief, dark cases of all these earthly habits, exceedingly harmful to the life of our Church, have already begun to arise during this time... Therefore, to all these cases of deviation from the principles and ideals of our Church, we must already now turn our most careful attention, set them before our own eyes, for while they are still small, it will be easier to treat them."

The VPCR then points out in the Proclamation these sorrowful manifestations in the life of the UAOC, extraordinarily harmful to it. These are — the renunciation of work in the UAOC and of the Church and faith in general by priests and deacons of the UAOC, who publish notices of this in the press for public dissemination, often adding justification for their action, saying that they "thought to find in the UAOC something new and bright, but found much of the same old darkness." "Others, like true Judas-betrayers, not content with this justification, are not ashamed to publicly declare that they never believed in God and that during their entire priesthood they deceived the people for priestly profits; henceforth they no longer wish to deceive and publicly declare themselves atheists."

"Great harm," according to the words of the Proclamation, "is also brought to the UAOC by the common indifference, disunity, isolation, lack of fellowship in work, and mutual aid in trouble among its workers. Perhaps there would not be such cases of our workers renouncing the Church and the faith if our priests and church workers were not so isolated, if they lived in brotherhood, worked together, supported one another... The most common reason for renouncing church work is the dire material condition of our workers... But, brother," the VPCR addresses the priest in the Proclamation, "when you do not even care about ordering the material condition of your parish, when you do not want to exert even a little effort to lead it out of its chaotic, helpless state, you first of all undermine your own welfare — you cut the branch on which you yourself sit. But apart from your own welfare, if you are a true church worker, you must also care about the governing church centers and make your parish a firm material

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base for helping your governing organs as well. Therefore, brothers, take care of ordering the material condition of your parishes, of supporting the governing organs — the Radas, your bishops — of fulfilling the financial tasks of your governing organs; strive for timely and systematic contributions to them, and by this you will support your own material condition as well. For five years already our Church has languished in this material chaos; it is time to set about creating in it a certain system and order."

As we see, the Proclamation to the clergy and faithful of the VPCR, on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Sobor of 1921 and the renewal of the hierarchy at it, while citing a number of sorrowful manifestations from the state of the UAOC clergy, places the blame for such a condition primarily on the lower clergy itself in the villages, which was, in the expression of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, "a grievous sore on the body of the UAOC."

"Undoubtedly," we read further in the Proclamation, "we are now living through the time of which the Forerunner of Christ, John, spoke, when 'the winnowing fork is in the Lord's hand,' and He winnows on His threshing floor, separating the chaff from the wheat (Matt. 3:12). This winnowing fork is even very useful for our Church"...

Did the need for such a "winnowing fork" to separate the chaff from the wheat in the UAOC clergy increase even further in the three years since the autumn Proclamation of 1924 of the VPCR, when at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927 the VPCR confirmed the Instruction for the Verification of the Personnel Composition of the UAOC Clergy?

We have no information as to whether this verification was carried through to completion and what its results were, but materials from the church life of the UAOC after the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in October 1927 approach the matter of the state of the clergy in the UAOC from a different angle and illuminate this matter of sorrowful manifestations in the life and activity of the clergy differently, taking the lower clergy's defense in its bitter legal, moral, and material condition — a condition for which the clergy itself is far, far from being solely to blame.

In his report on the spiritual leadership of the UAOC at the Minor Assembly of the VPCR, held March 6–8, 1928, Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky reported that the episcopal and pastoral conferences conducted by the metropolitan had depicted for him the sorrowful condition of these workers of the Church.

"They are servants of all, without care or help. Loneliness, exhaustion, helplessness, indifference. Cast into remote villages, cut off from the light and warmth of cultural life, and above all by the so-called 'right of conciliar governance,' which in the imaginations of people the evil elements of our Church have transformed from a precious gift of Christ into boundless willfulness — such is the condition of our idealistic clergy, as depicted from the lips of the clergy itself" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1/6, 1928, p. 38).

"What shall I say about the place of the priest in the parish?" asks Archbishop K. Maliushkevych (in his report at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1928), and he answers: "Once our people used to say: 'The priest has peace and a well-fed life.' There was a great deal of truth in these words.

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Part of the clergy lived far too well-fed and far too peacefully. What proverb will our people compose now about the life of the priest? Here is what one priest from the Kyiv region writes to me about his situation: 'For the course of a year I have not seen white flour in my house, because there is nothing with which to buy it; for weeks there is no black bread in the house, and sometimes no potatoes. I went from house to house with prayer, and the people say: "Look, he's gone begging." Don't speak of parish support — for rites they give 30 kopecks for a funeral, 5 kopecks for a baptism, and a wedding for free. The priest perishes, his wife perishes with him, and the children perish with them.'

"And here is another letter of a more general character, but about the same thing — 'life is impossible.' No one was prepared for what one must endure. Priests are selling their last cows, leaving children without milk, selling their last possessions. There is help from no one. The District Church Radas for the most part wash their hands, refusing to help their priests. What will happen next? Unknown, but the consequences are already here. All the priests are worried, there is no cheerfulness, they have hung their heads."

"Such is the material condition, such is the 'well-fed life.' And what is the moral condition, what peace? Here is what a priest writes in a letter to the VPCR about this condition: 'What would you advise the priest of such a parish: the village has 290 households, of which 52 are atheist and 60 are sectarian. The village is drunk; moonshine is brewed in every other house; not only adults are drunk, but children too... They visit the church once or twice a year, and some never come at all... There is not a single family in the village to which the priest could go and share his thoughts, where he could ease his soul and find even a little peace. And one is horrified and loses one's mind'...

"What will happen next? What should the priests do? One would like to think that this is an exceptional phenomenon, but unfortunately, I have no small number of letters with approximately such complaints. Add to this 'well-fed life' and 'peace' the special civic status of the priest, his lack of rights; recall how difficult it is for the priest to enroll his children in school, and when by hook or by crook he even manages this, how difficult it is for these children to remain in school because of the high fees, the verification of the social composition of students, etc.; recall how many family dramas result from this, when a wife divorces her husband to save the children, when children renounce their parents to finish school — then, it seems, the picture of the priest's condition will be clear.

"But no, this picture is far from complete. Strange as it may seem, the darkest colors are added to this picture by the position of the priest in the parish itself, the parish's attitude toward him, his place in parish life...

"What then is the parish's actual attitude toward the priest? It is the attitude of a master toward a hired hand. 'This is our hired hand' — that is what the parish knows. Like a hired hand, he can be given orders; like a hired hand, he can be hired for a fixed term; one can bargain with him when hiring; one can, whenever one wishes, without trial, without accusation,

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dismiss him. But the priest is not even an ordinary hired hand, because an ordinary hired hand is under the protection of the law and his union; he cannot be wronged with impunity. But this is a hired hand who stands outside the law; he can be paid, or not paid — no one will say anything about it. And if he himself leaves the parish, another will quickly be found in his place.

"When the priest is a hired hand, then clearly he has no right to interfere in parish life, has no right to be a member of the District Church Rada or the Parish Assembly, to interfere in financial matters, in the candle business, or in church management in general — for this is the master's business. Complete rightlessness in the parish — that is his place according to the thinking of a portion of the Church's members. In the Kyiv region, this thinking has been adopted by parishioners more than in the territories of other District Churches.

"This attitude toward him, as toward a hired hand, determines to some extent also the parish's demands of the priest as a pastor and teacher. Clearly, a hired hand cannot and should not be a pastor and teacher. To serve beautifully and loudly, to baptize, to perform weddings, even to deliver a speech — this he must do, but not to teach, not to admonish, not to reproach, not to interfere in the life of his parishioners, not to correct moral defects — because the masters might take offense. We have even developed a special term — 'to give a speech' [daty promovu]. This means to say something loud, brilliant, thundering, interesting.

"Who is to blame for such a condition of the priest? Certainly, our general lack of culture is most to blame, for you will not find a similar phenomenon among cultured peoples. Certainly, the position of the Church — and therefore of the priests — in the past is to blame, when the Church was part of the state, a state apparatus, and the priest an official, and in the parish a master and lord — which is why it is now difficult for him to find his proper place"...

The speaker considers, however, that to cite such general causes means to refuse to correct the defects. One must look for the causes of the false condition of UAOC priests somewhere closer, somewhere "near us, and perhaps within ourselves." The higher spiritual leadership of the Church itself is to blame for this, according to the words of Archbishop K. Maliushkevych — from whose lips people at the VPCR Assemblies more than once heard: "You are the masters, and we are the servants; whatever you say, that shall be, that we shall do." The bishops themselves are also to blame, because never, at any Assembly, did they protest or say that this was not a Christian understanding of the mutual relations between priest and Church. And the priests themselves are to blame, because some of them also looked upon themselves as hired hands, and essentially were hired hands. More than one of them told the community: pay, and I'll do it. And when the parish asked him to help, for example, in the matter of registration, he would say: I was hired to serve in your church, not as a scribe. This very word "hired" revealed the hired hand in him.

The failure to understand state laws also plays a role in the priest's condition. The state restricted the priest in civic rights, and some parishes, through misunderstanding, transferred this restriction to parish life as well. And "the most important cause (of the sorrowful condition of the priest

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in the parish) is without doubt the misunderstanding of conciliar governance" — but on this cause there was to be a separate report at those same Great St. Nicholas Assembly sessions of 1928.

At the conclusion of his report, Archbishop K. Maliushkevych cites the regulations concerning the ministry of the priest adopted in the UAOC: 1. The presbyter, that is, the priest, is the first servant of God in his parish and its spiritual leader-pastor; 3. The priest, as he is elected, so he is dismissed by the parish church sobor, in accordance with the regulations of that sobor, with the knowledge and consent of the District Church Rada; 10. The priest, as honorary chairman and first counselor, works in the Parish Rada and, assisting it in its work, enjoys the right of vote equally with all its members; 19. The entire Rada takes all measures so that the ministry of all clergy of the parish may manifest itself in its full completeness; 22. Parish sobors and councils ensure that members of the clergy staff, instead of payment for rites, receive a constant monthly allowance for their livelihood; 24. The Parish Rada must provide the clergy with housing, fuel, and also pay the state taxes for the church staff.

"Implement these articles of the regulations in life," said the speaker, "illuminate this question at your assemblies, in our journal, in our informational bulletins, and you will accomplish a great work of the Church." In conclusion, Archbishop K. Maliushkevych stated that the sorrowful phenomena in the state of the priesthood in the UAOC presented in his report were not a general norm for all. "There are in the Ukrainian Church not a few bright, pure, grace-inspired pastors of the Church; not a few parishes where their pastors are loved and honored and given the opportunity to fulfill their ministry" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 7/2 [i.e., 2/7], 1928, pp. 103–108).

Throughout this account of ours about the internal life of the UAOC, we have more than once encountered in our sources reproaches against the principle of conciliar governance, which in the practice of church life, when improperly understood, often led to willfulness, anarchy, and chaos in church life in the localities. Thus, Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, who was the greatest proponent among the hierarchs of the UAOC of "all-popular conciliar governance" [vsenarodnoi sobornoravnosti], having felt upon himself, as we have seen, the power of the "layman" M. Moroz, came in his memoirs to the conclusion that the UAOC had not had the opportunity "to achieve genuine all-popular conciliar governance, but achieved at most perhaps 'council-rule' [radopravie], and even that truncated, and moreover under the constant danger of the Antichrist's sword"...

Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky, in his report on the spiritual leadership of the UAOC at the Minor Assembly of the VPCR in March 1928, warns against a false understanding of conciliar governance and its use not for good but for evil, and calls for a decisive struggle against that ecclesiastical willfulness and that ecclesiastical corruption of spirit when the great gift of God is turned into a weapon and a means for the domination of entirely non-ecclesiastical elements in the Church of Christ.

"Look," said the Metropolitan, "at the results that conciliar governance produces in those districts and those parishes that, in resolving church

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questions, do not use the opinion of the church community. Look at what the right of conciliar governance is reduced to when, in the election of a parish priest or district bishop, people are guided not by Christian principles, when they seek and elect for themselves not a good pastor who will lay down his soul for his sheep, but a person exclusively 'of this world,' dashing and loud-mouthed, so that he can be seen from afar and heard"... (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1/6, 1928, p. 38).

Bishop P. Romodaniv, in his report as Chairman of the VPCR Presidium on the state of the UAOC at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1927, said: "The Presidium of the VPCR had much trouble with the manifestation of the understanding of conciliar governance, because our people do not yet sufficiently grasp the foundations of conciliar governance and have for the most part taken unto themselves the power of the former bishops. When communities introduced an element of coercion, all members of the VPCR, headed by the Reverend Metropolitan, protected the Church from a false interpretation of this conciliar governance. In cases of the humiliation of clergy to the position of hired hands, the VPCR raised them to the proper position of ministers of the Church.

"The violation of conciliar governance by the clergy from the periphery is well enough known: how it impeded our church cause, how often the Presidium of the VPCR had to play the role of matchmakers between clergy and parish representatives. This is a difficult role. Owing to the fact that these pure principles have not yet been systematically implemented in life, we have the fact of disorder in church life in many districts, such as the Kamianets area (5 parishes in this district recognized no governing organ above them), the Mohyliv area, and others.

"The enthusiasm for consecrating as many bishops as possible, so that they might occupy themselves with their fragmented districts, does not yield the desired results. Those large collective units headed by a capable bishop remained large, and conversely — small ones remained 'small.' Fragmentation has no rationale — it means draining the life of strong districts into smaller and weaker ones" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 11–13, 1927, pp. 30–31. Emphasis ours).

In his report, Bishop P. Romodaniv testifies that the violation of conciliar governance by the clergy from the periphery is well enough known; from this one can see that the distortion of the idea of "conciliar governance" took place in the church communities predominantly in the provinces, and then its cause could have been the low level of church consciousness. But we have already seen (subsection 5, section II) what understanding of "all-popular conciliar governance" was held by the Chairman of the VPCR Mykhailo Moroz, from whose name even arose the term for the badly understood conciliar governance — "Morozovshchyna" [the Moroz phenomenon]. The author of this work first heard this term from the lips of Bishop Sylvestr Haiievsky at one of the sessions of the Sobor of bishops of the UAOC in emigration; we therefore think that this term was in use among church leaders of the UAOC already in Ukraine in the 1920s. Indeed, it comes to mind that even with "all-popular conciliar governance," the UAOC effectively had an ober-procurator in

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the secular chairman of the VPCR — only no longer by appointment of the authorities, but by popular election.

And here is another vivid example of the understanding of conciliar governance — also not somewhere in the remote provinces, but in the very center, in the parish at the metropolitan cathedra of St. Sophia — Wisdom of God — in Kyiv. Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, at the Sobor of 1921, was the second, after Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, to be elected bishop of the UAOC, consecrated as Archbishop of Kyiv and elected deputy of the All-Ukrainian Metropolitan. No cathedra church in Kyiv was specifically designated for him by the Sobor, but as the Metropolitan's deputy, he entirely reasonably, living and working in Kyiv, was considered to serve as deputy at the Metropolitan's cathedra of St. Sophia. However, the Parish Rada of St. Sophia Cathedral — we have not been able to ascertain for what reasons — ignored the Archbishop, the Metropolitan's deputy, and endeavored not to allow him to serve at St. Sophia.

The matter of such conduct by the St. Sophia Parish Rada was more than once before the VPCR Presidium for consideration. At the Presidium session of the VPCR on April 8, 1927, a statement by Chairman Bishop Romodaniv was heard, to the effect that he had been invited by the St. Sophia Parish Rada to serve at Sophia on April 9–10 in place of the Reverend Metropolitan. Not considering it possible for himself to accept this invitation without the consent of the VPCR Presidium and without an understanding with the Metropolitan's deputy, Archbishop N. Sharaivsky, Bishop Romodaniv asked that an appropriate resolution be adopted on this matter.

Archbishop N. Sharaivsky stated that he had nothing against the Venerable Father P. Romodaniv serving in St. Sophia Cathedral, but considered himself insulted by the St. Sophia parish, which systematically ignored him as the Metropolitan's Deputy, and that therefore on so great a feast as the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos he had to remain without a service.

The Presidium resolved: "To consider as a sorrowful fact in the life of the UAOC the conduct of the St. Sophia Parish Church Rada toward the person of the Metropolitan's Deputy, Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, and to place the question of the state of his ministry on the agenda of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor; until that time, so as not to leave St. Sophia Cathedral without episcopal services, to agree to the serving at St. Sophia by bishops at the invitation of the Parish Church Rada, which considers itself authorized to manage the cathedra of the Metropolitan of the entire UAOC" (Minutes no. 28/48 of the Presidium session of the VPCR, April 8, 1927).

As we see, neither the Reverend Metropolitan of the UAOC nor the Presidium of the VPCR consider themselves competent to give directives to the Parish Church Rada of St. Sophia as to who is authorized to manage the services at the cathedra of the Metropolitan of the entire UAOC.

Three months later, on July 8, 1927, at the Presidium session of the VPCR, Archbishop N. Sharaivsky made a statement that at St. Sophia Cathedral on July 3–7, due to the Metropolitan's illness, there were no episcopal services; there were reports that no episcopal service was foreseen for the coming Sunday either — and this at a time when many pilgrims and excursionists from distant countries were coming to Kyiv in general and to St. Sophia in particular.

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The Parish Rada of St. Sophia Cathedral did not consider it necessary to invite any bishop to serve at St. Sophia Cathedral, and therefore Archbishop N. Sharaivsky asked the VPCR Presidium to inform the Parish Rada of the St. Sophia parish that he, as the Metropolitan's Deputy, would serve on the coming Sunday, July 15, at St. Sophia, which is not an ordinary parish church but the cathedra cathedral of the Metropolitan.

Having heard this statement of Archbishop N. Sharaivsky, the Presidium of the VPCR resolved: "To note to the Rada of St. Sophia Cathedral the need, in the interests of the UAOC, that episcopal services always be held in the cathedral on feast days and Sundays" (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, no. 53/73, July 8, 1927). It is unknown whether, after such a "diplomatic" resolution of the highest central government of the UAOC, Archbishop N. Sharaivsky was admitted by the Parish Rada of St. Sophia to serve at the cathedra on July 15.

From among the numerous examples of the misunderstanding of true conciliar governance, let us cite one more, which also took place not in some remote province but in Dnipropetrovsk (formerly Katerynoslav), where, as we wrote above, there were complications with filling the episcopal cathedra and various factions existed in church life (in the words of Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky — the Pyvovar faction, the Romodaniv faction, the Moroz faction, the Orlyk faction).

In January 1927, the VPCR received from the faithful of the central parishes of the Dnipropetrovsk-Zaporizhia Regional Church (formerly the Katerynoslav diocese) a statement in which they wrote: "We know that the VPCR, through its Chairman, has objected to the transfer of Bishop Yur. Shevchenko to our region (from Poltava). We see in this the work of the previous former VPCR, and the current VPCR treats the normalization of our life in the same way and does not wish to help and confirm our election. We once again appeal to the VPCR and implore it to take a firm path, to confirm our election, for we previously petitioned for this from Odesa, and since Bishop Shevchenko issued acts to us earlier, we ask that they be fulfilled. We are not satisfied with the Chairman of the VPCR's information and demand that only Shevchenko be sent, for this is a trampling of the resolutions of our sobor and of conciliar governance, from whosever side it may be. We do not agree to other candidates. Do not send them to us. You will bring about disintegration if you do not confirm our election and do not influence Bishop Shevchenko."

In a letter to one of the members of the VPCR Presidium, the initiators of this statement wrote: "Our archpastor must be Bishop Shevchenko. Do not bother sending anyone else, for things could turn ugly for him. Let Yu. Shevchenko take us under his care. This is a last resort. Another will have a hard time, but for Yu. Shevchenko everything will be done."

The Presidium of the VPCR resolved: "To consider the above-cited correspondence as tendentious and therefore impermissible and harmful for the Dnipropetrovsk District Church; to call upon the Dnipropetrovsk District Church Rada to expedite the matter of obtaining a spiritual leader for the district. Independently of this, with the aim of preventing in the future disorganizing actions by persons, groups, parishes, and church organs —

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to ask the Dnipropetrovsk District Church Rada to take upon itself the obligation to educate the faithful of the Dnipropetrovsk Church District in the direction of fulfilling the canons and rules of the UAOC regarding proper relations with the governing church organs" (Minutes no. 5/25 of the Presidium session of the VPCR, January 25, 1927).

The distortion of the idea of conciliar governance in the UAOC created not only "Morozovshchyna," when the secular element in the Church took upon itself the governing power of the former bishops, but also undermined — through the equalization of rights of the component parts of the Church — the authority of the episcopate in the eyes of the clergy, the priests. It is observed more than once that where priests seized the helm of governance in the District Church Radas, they too would sometimes begin to act willfully and invoke "conciliar governance" against even meritorious bishops.

Bishop Konon Bei had labored considerably for the ordering of church life in the Romny and Pryluky church districts in the Poltava region, so that the VPCR considered it just "to express to Bishop Konon Bei sincere gratitude for his tireless and beneficial labor in evangelism and the organization of church life in the Pryluky and Romny areas" (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, February 25, 1927). But the Presidium of the Romny District Church Rada, whose chairman was Protopriest L. Terletsky, with his right-hand man in the Rada being Priest H. Yazvinsky, set about driving Bishop Konon Bei from the Romny district. The misunderstandings, which lasted for months, took on an acute form at the session of the Presidium of the Romny District Rada on June 15, 1927. The Rada resolved that Bishop Konon Bei "during his time at the Romny cathedra brought only disorganization to the life of the district as a result of his unwillingness to work in contact and understanding with the District Church Rada, arrogated to himself administrative functions, which had a negative effect on the life of the Church, and that Bishop Bei does not satisfy the Romny Church as a bishop of the UAOC." Therefore, the Presidium of the Romny District Church Rada "informs the VPCR that it can no longer work in contact with Bishop K. Bei as its District Bishop."

Bishop K. Bei himself, in a letter to the VPCR, asked either "to defend him from the shameless assault of Fathers Terletsky and Yazvinsky, or to relieve him of episcopal ministry in the UAOC, because if he does not satisfy the Romny Church as a bishop of the UAOC, then he will not be able to satisfy any other District Church in the UAOC."

Having reviewed this entire matter, the Presidium of the VPCR in its resolution "notes with sorrow the entire groundlessness of the accusations that the Romny District Church Rada hurls at its bishop, elected by the District Sobor, and therefore considers it its duty to call the Romny District Church Rada to church discipline. Bishop of the UAOC, the Venerable K. Bei, has worked irreproachably for the benefit of the UAOC for more than five years; as is known to the Presidium of the VPCR, he has invested no little labor this year in the organization of the Romny and Pryluky church districts; he is the elected one of the District Church, and the District Rada had no right, without the will of the District Sobor, to characterize its bishop as not

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satisfying the entire District Church. Therefore, the question about the bishop must be placed for discussion at the District Sobor, which should take place in the very near future, and until that time no other bishop may interfere in the spiritual leadership of the Romny Church District, and the Presidium of the VPCR cannot grant such a right to any bishop, because by doing so it would violate the rights of the Romny District Sobor, which elected as its bishop the Venerable K. Bei" (Minutes no. 63/83 of the Presidium session of the VPCR, August 9, 1927).

The numerous facts of a false understanding of conciliar governance in church life necessitated a separate report at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 29 – June 1, 1928, on the topic: "Conciliar Governance in Contemporary Church Life." Following this report (by Bishop Petro Romodaniv), the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1928 adopted the following resolution:

"A) To recognize conciliar governance as an indispensable organizational principle (foundation) of the UAOC.

B) To note that in the UAOC there have been understandings and manifestations of conciliar governance as willfulness, and to identify this willfulness:

1) in the matter of implementing evangelical ethics (morality); 2) in abuses of the moment and the means of non-ecclesiastical struggle in the cause of the Church's liberation; 3) abuses in the matter of church Ukrainianization have led in certain cases to manifestations of chauvinism in various directions; 4) in the clouding of autocephaly by the violation of church apoliticality; 5) in the unsystematic use of free creativity in church-liturgical practice (free services, artificial dramatization, etc.); 6) in the violation of the organizational unity of the Church by un-Christian sentiments of church factions.

"C) The Great St. Nicholas Assembly recognizes as impermissible the transformation of conciliar governance into willfulness and resolves to correct the false understanding of conciliar governance by the following means:

1) to educate the believing populace in the dogmatic and ethical foundations of the Church of Christ; 2) to liberate the Church from un-Christian manifestations of Ukrainianization and autocephaly; 3) to conduct the liberation of the UAOC by purely Christian means; 4) to regulate the use in the church-liturgical practice of the UAOC of the fruits of free creativity; 5) to decisively prevent and halt, through appropriate influences of the governing organs, violations of church unity through the formation and actions of church factions; 6) to charge the governing church organs with the concretization of these resolutions and their implementation in the life of the UAOC" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, p. 86).

In this resolution of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1928 on the struggle in the UAOC against "the transformation of the idea of conciliar governance into willfulness," it is noteworthy that the first means recognized by the Assembly in this struggle was "the education of the believing populace in the dogmatic and ethical foundations of the Church of Christ." It is evident from this that the distortion of the idea of conciliar governance was regarded by the Great St. Nicholas Assembly as the result of the lack of awareness of the believing populace about what the Church

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of Christ is as a dogmatic-canonical concept. But the clouding of the dogmatic-canonical Orthodox teaching about the Church of Christ had been permitted at the Kyiv Sobor of 1921 itself, in the resolutions concerning the internal all-popular-conciliar-governance structure of the "All-Ukrainian Union of Orthodox Parishes."

Those resolutions were a departure from the ancient Ukrainian ecclesial tradition, which built church life on the foundations of conciliarity (sobornist) — the term "conciliar governance" [sobornoravnist] is almost never encountered in the sources of our ancient church history — but understood these foundations differently than they were interpreted under the form of "all-popular conciliar governance" in the canons of the Sobor of 1921.

In the ancient Ukrainian church conciliarity, the concept of right was contained less than the concept, the consciousness of duty — being a member of the Church, to take an active part in its life, proceeding not from some formal right of one's own, but from the moral law of Love for one's neighbor, by which law Christian life, the life of the Church of Christ, should be permeated. It was this moral duty of Love, and not the consciousness of one's right of "conciliar governance," that permeated the broad activity of the ancient Ukrainian Orthodox brotherhoods.

On the other hand, the ancient Ukrainian conciliarity, while calling all members of the Church to conciliar, active participation in church life and the work of salvation of human souls, always recognized — also in the conciliar life of the Church — the special hierarchical authorizations of the Church's hierarchy, not only in the sphere of sacred ministry and teaching, but also of governance in the Church. It did not equalize all in the management of all church affairs in the name of all-popular conciliar governance, regarding the special hierarchical authorities in the Church, once again, not as some privileges or legal power for domination, but as a high moral duty in the Church of the priesthood of persons called by the church community and ordained for that purpose.

Thus we can conclude that the departure from the ideas of traditional Ukrainian conciliarity and their replacement with "all-popular conciliar governance" did not turn out well for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The new order in the Church, called in the "Acts of the Sobor of 1921" all-popular-conciliar-governing, and in the sorrowful practice of church life of that time characterized by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky as "council-rule" [radopravie], did not justify itself — precisely not in the severe, fierce times of tribulation for the Church, when, in view of the hostility toward the Church and religion in general of the godless state apparatus and its persecution, the support and defense of the Church fell upon the entire conciliar church community.

And although "eyewitnesses" write that "the conciliar governance of the UAOC demonstrated its church viability unprecedentedly during the times of Metropolitans Vasyl Lypkivsky and Mykolai Boretsky" (Danylo Sviatohirsky, The Main Foundations of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, In Exile, 1946, p. 9), the historian, in the face of such "eyewitnesses," must, on the basis of the primary sources cited in part only above —

Note: Our analysis of the resolutions of the Sobor of 1921 concerning the internal structure of the UAOC is found in subsection 3, section II.

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the testimonies of Metropolitans V. Lypkivsky and M. Boretsky, Archbishop K. Maliushkevych, and others — affirm precisely the opposite.

As one final proof to the contrary, let us briefly examine the material condition of the UAOC in those times of the supposed "viability" of all-popular conciliar governance.

In resolving in the history of the Orthodox Church the question of the participation of the secular element in church governance, the role and significance of this lay element in the management of church finances at all times met the least doubt and dispute. At the foundation lay the sound moral idea of freeing spiritual persons in their lofty ministry to the Church from material cares, and of protecting them from possible reproaches so often connected with the stewardship of communal property. In states where the Church is not separated from the state, secular state governments care to one extent or another about the material condition of the Church and its ministers. When the Church is separated from the state, the care for material means for it and its ministers falls entirely upon the shoulders of the church community, which entirely reasonably manages, through its representatives, the church finances.

In the UAOC, separated from the state in accordance with the Soviet decree "on the separation of church from state and school from church," issued in Russia on January 23 / February 5, 1918, and in March 1919 extended by the Bolshevik Soviet authorities also to Ukraine, the cares of material maintenance of the Church, its institutions, and ministers fell all the more entirely upon the church communities because the Soviet authorities, simultaneously with the separation of the Church, robbed the Church of all its properties to the last, confiscating not only church lands, buildings, and capital, but even the very houses of God themselves.

Therefore, the Sobor of 1921, in its resolutions on the internal structure of the UAOC, determines regarding "the funds and material means of the Ukrainian Church": "The Ukrainian Church obtains the funds and material means necessary for the maintenance of God's churches, church workers, and organizations through voluntary membership contributions, donations, etc." The collection of these means, their management, and in general the running of church finances is placed upon the councils — parish, volost (raion) church councils, county (district) councils, and the VPCR (Acts of the VPCR Sobor of 1921, section XI: Organization of the Ukrainian Church and Church Governance, D: Funds and Material Means of the Ukrainian Church, articles 87–94).

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, in his letter to Father P. Korsunovsky in the USA of July 23, 1922, cited more than once above, wrote: "To confess, the work is very difficult; we have almost no funds... Not everything, of course, goes smoothly and well with us; the economic matter is most hindered, because there is nothing to manage. But we are striving toward the better"... These efforts to achieve something better in church finances never materialized, for many reasons. And when later, after his removal from the cathedra, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky wrote the history of the revival of the UPC [Ukrainian Orthodox Church, i.e., the broader Ukrainian church as distinct from the specifically autocephalous UAOC], he said the same thing: "The economic department — this was the most painful place of the second VPCR from

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beginning to end of its life, not because, assuredly, there was no one to manage, but because there was nothing to manage. The material condition of the second VPCR was always, as they say, catastrophic"... We may add to this that the Presidiums of all subsequent VPCRs, after the second, were in no better material condition for their work.

In the report on the financial condition of the VPCR at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 25–30, 1924, Treasurer P. M. Antypchuk explained that during the 5 years of the UAOC's existence, it had conducted great work of reviving new church life under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Especially difficult was the work of the VPCR members and their collaborators. Hungry, with almost no support whatsoever, they worked the entire time for the common cause, paying no attention to the circumstances in which they had to work: the cold quarters of the VPCR, etc. Material shortages were a terrible obstacle in the matter of training new cadres of clergy, printing liturgical books, and satisfying other necessary needs of the Church. The VPCR's indebtedness for premises, for the printing of liturgical books, etc., was enormous — up to a thousand rubles in gold. All funds that came into the VPCR's treasury went first and foremost to repaying debts. The debt for printing liturgical books had not yet been paid off, which prevented further printing of those books.

To rescue the material condition of the Church, the VPCR sent a circular to the District Churches and other associations with a call to help the VPCR through voluntary support, but the desired results of this we have not seen to this day. During the past 5 months, the District Church Radas have sent almost nothing for the maintenance of the VPCR.

The speaker made a proposal that financial accountability be established in all church councils and measures taken for the local councils to send voluntary contributions for the maintenance of the central VPCR administration monthly. The Assembly resolved: to call upon the local church councils to send to the VPCR monthly, no later than the 15th of each month, monetary assistance for the center for the previous month in the amount of a general calculation of no less than one ruble per month from each parish; the District Church Radas together with the bishops should monitor the timely implementation of this resolution (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 25–30, 1924, pp. 18, 45).

It is noteworthy that the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1924 already holds the bishops accountable for the collection of money for the maintenance of the Church — those same bishops who were not permitted to be actual chairmen of the District Church Radas. In the recently cited Proclamation of the VPCR from the autumn of 1924 (on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Sobor of 1921), the work of ordering the chaotic material condition of the parishes is already placed upon the priests as well — about any role of whom in the assemblies of the volost (raion) and parish churches and in the volost and parish councils, the resolutions of the Sobor of 1921 on the internal conciliar-governance structure of the UAOC say absolutely nothing.

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The Grand Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR, October 25–30, 1926, normalized the life of the UAOC after its crackdown by the Soviet authorities in the summer of that year. In a resolution on the internal life of the Church, it instructed the newly elected Presidium of the VPCR "to steadfastly combat licentiousness, apostasy, and negligence both in the fulfillment of spiritual requirements of church life and in the satisfaction of the material requirements of the Church." The newly elected Auditing Commission was charged by the Assembly to audit the financial affairs of the former Presidium of the VPCR for 1925–26, to report to the Minor Rada, and for the Minor Rada to draw certain conclusions regarding the conduct of financial affairs (Minutes of the Grand Pokrova Assembly of the VPCR, October 25–30, 1926, p. 27).

The new (fourth) Presidium of the VPCR commenced its work having received the VPCR treasury with cash on hand as of November 1, 1926, of 1 ruble 54 kopecks. Therefore, in the distribution of duties among the members of the Presidium and the technical staff of the VPCR at the Presidium session of November 3, 1926, the Presidium resolved: "All members of the Presidium of the VPCR and its technical workers bear voluntary service to the UAOC, receiving material voluntary assistance from the Church depending on the state of the VPCR treasury" (Minutes no. 2 of the Presidium session of the VPCR, November 3, 1926).

At the session of the Minor Rada of the VPCR, which held its plenary session at the end of 1926, in the report on publishing affairs, we hear that the workers in the publishing department are members of the Presidium, who also staff other departments — education, evangelism, book translation, the Pre-Sobor Commission, and others. In each department, the same persons work. Almost the same persons adopt resolutions for each department, which they themselves must then implement. For where can one find other workers without funds? It is unseemly to co-opt persons when one has nothing with which to thank them for their labor. Therefore, the Most Reverend Metropolitan recommended this as the most feasible course. To find anything else is impossible (Minutes of the Plenary Session of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR, December 28–30, 1926, p. 15).

Indeed, the technical staff of the highest central institution of the UAOC — the VPCR — consisted at that time of just five persons: an accountant, a clerk, an assistant clerk, a typist, and a manager of the book depository.

Before us is the budget of the VPCR for the 1927–28 church-economic year (from September 1, 1927, to September 1, 1928), approved by the Minor Rada on December 28–30, 1926. The poverty of the budget is extraordinary, especially considering the value of the ruble at that time. The budget was balanced in revenues and expenditures at 23,850 rubles. The main source of revenue was contributions from parishes (one ruble per month per parish), which yielded according to the budget 14,436 rubles; and if one excludes 1,620 rubles from parishes in Canada and the USA, then the parishes in Ukraine were to provide 12,816 rubles per year for the maintenance and operation of the central institutions of the UAOC in Kyiv.

On the expenditure side of the 23,850 rubles, 8,520 rubles were allocated for remuneration of workers, called in the budget "assistance" [dopomoha]. Of this, the Metropolitan and the Chairman of the VPCR

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were to receive 70 rubles per month; the Metropolitan's Deputy, the Vice-Chairmen of the VPCR, the Secretary, and the Treasurer of the VPCR — 50 rubles per month; three members of the VPCR Presidium — 40 rubles per month; and hired workers — the accountant, clerk, typist, and manager of the book depository — 40 rubles per month, while the assistant clerk received 20 rubles per month.

In the resolution accompanying this budget, the Minor Rada of the VPCR confirmed the extraordinarily difficult financial condition of the VPCR, and identified its causes as: a) the abnormal state of the UAOC's life; b) the disorganization of financial affairs in the parishes and District Church Radas; c) the negligence in this matter of church workers, predominantly the priests (?).

The Presidium of the VPCR was charged: a) to petition the state government so that no obstacles would be placed locally to improving the financial-economic condition of the parishes; b) to study the material capacity of the District Church Radas, and depending on it to present its demands to the Radas; c) to require from the Radas their budgets and financial reports by March 1 and September 1 (Ibid., p. 11).

The meager quotas of remuneration for the workers of the VPCR were not, however, paid on time, due to the poor state of the VPCR treasury. In March 1927, the Chairman of the Presidium, Bishop P. Romodaniv, reported at the session of the VPCR Presidium: "Since November 1926, due to the lack of funds, some have received nothing at all, some have received a portion from 10% to 50% of the assistance designated in the budget; the life of each worker makes its own demands; material destitution negatively affects the productivity of labor; the workers are exhausted, reaching the point of nervous breakdown, or collapse entirely, as happened with Brother M. Kobzar, who has been bedridden for a second month now. His duties were taken over by the secretary, who himself is also under threat from overwork through excessive labor. Other members of the Presidium, who for 5 months have been receiving 20 rubles per month, can no longer work productively. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the capacity of the VPCR treasury and to satisfy the members of the Presidium and collaborators justly, in accordance with the budget."

And a resolution was then adopted regarding this "satisfaction" for the past 5 months in the amount of 50% to 100% of the budget allocation, corresponding to the material condition of each worker individually (Minutes no. 24/44 of the Presidium session of the VPCR, March 26, 1927).

The Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, held May 11–13, 1927, having heard the financial report of the VPCR Treasurer Brother M. P. Kobzar, resolved: "To address from the Assembly, through the District Church Radas, all parishes regarding the fulfillment of their obligations with respect to membership contributions and debts." (The shortfall in budget receipts as of May 1, 1927, was 8,491 rubles 80 kopecks. The book debt owed by District Radas and parishes was 3,775 rubles 5 kopecks — Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927, pp. 48–44 [sic].)

The material condition of the central institution of the UAOC, its VPCR, would not have been so poor if financial affairs were in good order in

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the localities — in the church districts and parishes. In the reports from the field at the Grand Assemblies of the VPCR, one constantly heard from the lips of delegates: "the financial condition is extraordinarily difficult," "financial affairs are in poor order," "financial affairs cannot be organized," "the clergy is in extraordinarily difficult material straits," and so forth.

Such church districts as the Volyn (Zhytomyr), Kamianets (Kamianets-Podilsky), and Dnipropetrovsk-Zaporizhia (Katerynoslav) were unable to create a material base sufficient to permanently maintain a bishop. The helpless condition of the Kamianets district was such that Brother V. M. Chekhivsky asked at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 11–13, 1927, whether the Kharkiv Church, materially strong though it then had only 12 parishes, could take the Kamianets Church under its material guardianship. The response of Kharkiv Archbishop Pavlovsky was: "Only the Kharkiv Church itself can decide this" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, 1927, p. 26).

The Kyiv District Church Rada (rural), which had over a hundred parishes, managed its affairs so poorly that in June 1927 it turned to the Presidium of the VPCR with a request to lend it five rubles, which "would be returned upon the first receipt of any monetary sums." From a briefing note accompanying the consideration of this request at the Presidium session, the Kyiv District Rada's debt to the VPCR for membership contributions, books, etc., as of July 1, 1927, was 1,063 rubles.

In its resolution, the Presidium of the VPCR noted "the complete inability and unwillingness of the current composition of the Kyiv District Church Rada to order the life of the District Church," proposed that the Rada prepare its documents and records for audit, and resolved to "leave without consequence" the request for a five-ruble loan (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, no. 51/71, July 1, 1927).

Of course, there were also exceptions — even if rare — of districts, such as the already-named Kharkiv, in which financial affairs were in order or even well-organized. The Lubny Church District could serve as a model. Its Archbishop, Yosyf Oksiuk, reported at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1927: "The district feels itself firmly united with the entire UAOC and its highest leadership. The thermometer of love and unity is sacrifice, not expressions of affection and loyalty. The Lubny Church has no debt from the past year; this year, 300 rubles in membership contributions have been paid; there is no book debt... As of today, the Lubny Church has transferred under all headings to the VPCR 1,054 rubles 34 kopecks" (62 parishes).

Here precisely was the understanding of conciliar governance in the spirit of the ancient Ukrainian conciliarity. "The mutual relations of clergy and laity," said Archbishop Yosyf in the same report, "do not yet give us grounds for sorrowful generalizations about a shift, a transfer of domination, of power from one side to the other; the District Church leadership combats the slightest manifestations of this and halts them, just as it liquidates the legacy of old non-ecclesiastical forms of life, endeavoring to build its own work as well on the foundations of love and service, and not of cold

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calculation, rights, and supremacy" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, 1927, pp. 18–19. Emphasis ours).

In the "Review of the Work of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR," held March 6–8, 1928, we again read dispiriting things about the material condition of the Church: "Sorrowful was the report of the manager of the financial-economic department, M. P. Kobzar. The repayment of debts, payment of rent, and administrative expenses do not allow the payment of assistance to the workers of the VPCR Presidium even in the amount set by the budget. A Presidium member who conducts the responsible work of managing publishing or educational affairs receives assistance with delays of entire months in the amount of 30–40 rubles.

"And the Presidium wishes to maintain the system of expenditures confirmed by the Second VPCR Sobor, so that the funds allocated for publishing or for something else are not spent on assistance to workers. The Auditing Commission reminds of the same thing. What is to be done? Where can funds be found? The condition of the parishes, which are the primary source for the receipt of funds to the Presidium, is also difficult. Even more difficult is the material condition of the clergy. How can one take from them when they themselves have nothing?

"And yet one must still remind them, again and again, that it is their duty to support the common church cause, still draw their attention again and again to maintaining a certain system in the conduct of church finances, accountability, the prevention of indebtedness, etc." (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1(6), 1928, p. 45).

10. The inter-church position of the UAOC of 1921; relations with other churches. The "Memorandum of the Plenary Session of the VPCR of 1924 regarding the unification of churches and the Universal Church of Christ." The "Historical Memorandum" of the VPCR of November 1925. The World Congress of "Practical Christianity" in Stockholm in 1925 and the UAOC's attitude toward it. The VPCR's dealings with foreign countries only with the knowledge of the Soviet Government. Relations between the UAOC and other Orthodox Churches in Ukraine. The matter of the ordination of Ye. Bachynsky as a priest for the UAOC by an Old Catholic bishop.

Above (subsection 3, section II), we cited the resolution of the Sobor of 1921 charging the VPCR immediately to see to the convening, for May 9/22, 1922, of a preparatory conference with representatives of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches of the world, for the discussion and resolution of questions concerning the convening in the near future of a World Orthodox Church Sobor. From the history of the Orthodox Ecumenical Church, we know that after the era of the Ecumenical Councils (fourth through eighth centuries), in the absence of such Councils, the ecclesiastical formalization of the autocephaly of one or another Orthodox Church came to be carried out through inter-church relations, the initiative for which usually comes from the Church or part of the Church that seeks recognition of its autocephaly by the already existing autocephalous Sister Churches.

Therefore, the first step of the church authorities of the UAOC, following the Sobor in Kyiv in 1921, toward establishing the inter-church position of the UAOC in the Orthodox world should have been

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an address by those authorities with a fraternal epistle to the primates of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches regarding the emergence, independent of the Russian, of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which considers itself a constituent part of the Universal Orthodox Church and asks its Sister Church to have with it prayerful communion. This step would also have been consistent with the state law on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church issued on January 1, 1919, by the Government of the Ukrainian People's Republic. After that law, dealings on the matter of the autocephaly of the UPC with other autocephalous Churches had been initiated (the delegation and negotiations in Constantinople on behalf of the Government of the UNR in February–March 1919 by Prof. O. H. Lototsky). A continuation of these dealings was the action of submitting petitions to the Patriarch of Constantinople to bless the Autocephalous Orthodox Church, an action carried out among Ukrainians on territories not occupied by the Bolshevik authorities (See section I, subsection 7, "The National-Church Activity of the Government of the UNR in 1919–1921").

The Ukrainian church leaders under the occupation of Ukraine by Soviet authority took, as we see from the above-cited resolution of the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, a different path in the matter of relations between the proclaimed Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the other already centuries-old, as well as later formed and recognized, Autocephalous Orthodox Sister Churches. It obviously went beyond the bounds of tact in inter-church relations for the UAOC to take the initiative in the matter of convening an entire World Orthodox Sobor, when it still needed to attend to the confirmation in the Orthodox world of its autocephaly not only de facto but also de jure, as the other part of Orthodox Ukrainians was striving to do.

The lack of a sense of, so to speak, reality in inter-church relations continued in the leadership of the UAOC in subsequent years as well, when it had already become apparent that the resolution of the Sobor of 1921 on the preparation of a World Orthodox Sobor at a conference of representatives of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches in Kyiv, to be convened for May 9/22, 1922, was merely a dream — unjustified by anything — of a special messianism of the UAOC in the Orthodox world.

Evidence of this lack of a sense of reality is the "Memorandum of the Plenary Session of the VPCR regarding the unification of churches and the Universal Church of Christ," issued "to the Most Venerable Bishops, the Honorable Clergy, and All the Brotherhood in Christ" in 1924, on the third anniversary of the Sobor of 1921 and the renewal of the Ukrainian hierarchy at it. This Memorandum was issued over the signatures of: Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, Archbishops N. Sharaivsky and I. Pavlovsky, Bishops A. Hrinevych, K. Maliushkevych, K. Bei, V. Samborsky, H. Mozolevsky, V. Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky, Chairman of the VPCR Protodeacon V. Potiienko, Vice-Chairman Protopriest M. Khomychevsky, and Rada members Protopriest D. Khodzytsky, Protopriest E. Kavushynsky, H.

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Vovkushivsky, K. Tereshchenko, P. Antypchuk, P. Hordovsky, and M. Sviderska.

As is evident from this Memorandum of the VPCR of 1924, in those times the question of church unification was vigorously debated among the clergy and faithful of the UAOC, as well as among opponents of the UAOC in Ukraine. On this ground, as the Memorandum affirms, "one notices even more a kind of apprehension and danger even among our own, and reproaches from our enemies, that our Church, by its self-recognition of its autocephaly and self-creation of its hierarchy, has supposedly broken away from the Universal Church, and that we must at all costs strive for recognition by the Universal Church, or at least by one 'Ecumenical Patriarch.' It is time," says the Memorandum, "to bring full clarity and consciousness to such questions, all the more since our Church has as its ultimate task the unification with all churches, the creation of a genuine Universal Church" (emphasis ours).

In the "Materials on the History of the Liberation of the UAOC," published by the editors on the pages of the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia, there is a Proclamation of the United Radas of Ukrainian Orthodox Parishes under the heading "What Orthodox Ukrainians Want in Their Life." There is no date on the Proclamation, but by its content it should be attributed to the early 1920s. In it, the believing Ukrainian people gave a clear answer to the question that the VPCR in 1924 wished "to fully elucidate and bring to consciousness" for the faithful in the above-named "Memorandum." "Orthodox Ukrainians," we read in paragraph 8 of that Proclamation, "do not want any separation from the Greek, Moscow, Serbian, Romanian, and other Orthodox Churches, but want to remain forever in fraternal communion in faith and accord with all of them, both in prayer and in life, as well as in the struggle against the enemies of Orthodoxy. At the same time, Orthodox Ukrainians aspire to autocephaly, that is, to the complete non-subordination of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to any other Orthodox Church" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/3, 1927, p. 239).

But how does the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada, in its Memorandum of 1924, educate its clergy and faithful on the matter of the UAOC's inter-church position? We present the answer to this question, drawing from the basic ideas of the Memorandum.

  1. There is currently no Universal Church, because a Universal Church in the sense of the unification of all under a single Christian confession "is utterly unrealizable, while to consider only one of the confessions of Christianity as the Universal Church is utterly false."
  2. "The paths by which the Church of Christ from its very beginning until now has walked toward unity and universality have been erroneous. Having turned its main attention to unity in faith, the Church imperceptibly departed from unity in life" (?).
  3. Every Church should first level the paths to worldwide unification within itself. Here the most suitable are the words of Christ: "Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see how to take the speck
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out of your brother's eye" (Matt. 7:3, 5).

  1. "The UAOC was the first to do this: it removed the log from its own eye, leveled within itself the paths to unity by having itself recognized itself as autocephalous, itself created its own hierarchy. By these events, the Ukrainian Church not only did not depart from unity and universality, but took the most decisive steps toward it" (?).
  2. "Therefore, the first step that the Church of every nation should take to level within itself the paths to unity is the step of its own liberation." "All Catholic Churches must become free, autocephalous; they must liberate themselves from enslavement by the pope-caesar." Also in states where Churches are subject to the state government, they must emerge from the abyss of subordination and be liberated into God's light, in order to see the further steps toward unification. "The Church of every nation must itself recognize itself as autocephalous and not wait until someone (who?) gives it autocephaly."
  3. The second step of the Church of every nation toward unification and universality is "all-popular conciliar governance within it." "To restore full equality and brotherhood of all in the Church, to make the hierarchy itself merely an organ of the Church (?), which every Church should create itself by its own election and institution — the self-creation (?) of the hierarchy — this is the second step toward fraternal unification of the Churches." "Also the structure of one's Church should be carried out at their own Sobors by the Churches themselves, and not merely by their hierarchy."
  4. The third step toward the unification of churches is the removal of state influences on church life, which arose either as a result of agreement between the Church and the state, or of the subordination of the Church to the power of the state, when the Church became an instrument of political, social, or national domination.
  5. Finally, to be worthy of unification, the Church must be a Church, that is, it must be on the one hand a people, and on the other hand a certain organic union, a body with various members. Where there is no people but only a church organization, there is no Church; and where there is only a people but no organization, there too is no Church, but only sects.
  6. The UAOC has already taken all these steps toward unification. It is Autocephalous, All-Popularly-Conciliar-Governing, has separated itself from all state influences (?), from all politics. It is a people united in the organic Body of Christ; therefore, it is already on a certain path toward unification with other churches.
  7. "One must begin the unification of the Churches from the other end — not from faith, but from ecclesiastical liberation. When all Churches are equalized in freedom and brotherhood, then in matters of faith too, understanding will come more easily"...

Understanding in this way the "task of the unification of Churches" with the aim of "creating a genuine Universal Church," the Memorandum of the VPCR of 1924 then poses the question: with whom then, "from this point of view," with which historical churches now existing alongside the UAOC — already worthy of unification — can the latter unite, and with whom can it not? There can be no unity for us, answers the Memorandum, with Catholicism and the Unia, because "there the hierarchy has entirely subordinated the people to itself, has made the people

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its slave, and the people reconciles itself to this slavish condition." "The UAOC's fraternal task with regard to these peoples can be to liberate its Catholic and Uniate brothers from papal slavery, to make them a spiritually free people." And "when they become free, even if remaining Catholic and Uniate in faith, morals, and rites, only then is a conversation about unification with our UAOC possible."

"The structure of the Eastern Orthodox Church, although it tends toward Catholic statehood (?), has not yet reached it; for unification with Orthodox Churches, subordination to one or another patriarch or church government is not necessary (?), and therefore unification with Orthodox Churches of all peoples is possible (?), but absolutely only on the basis of equality. But even our Orthodox brothers we must still liberate." From what? 1. From those "measures that the leaders of Orthodox Churches are taking on the path toward papism" (?), and 2. "From the slavish and superficial canonical legalism [Ukr. kanonizm] that deadens the free life of the Orthodox Churches with the deadness and immutability of canons, their infallibility (?), just as Catholicism deadens itself with the person of an infallible pope."

To the "talk" about unification with the Living or Renovationist Church, the Memorandum responds that it is not a Church, just as the Active Church of Christ (DKhTs) in Ukraine is not one either. These are merely "circles of clergy" without a people, created with the aim of destroying — the Living Church destroying the Patriarchal Russian Church, and the DKhTs destroying the UAOC — with the sole great difference that "the Moscow Patriarchal Church is truly reactionary and has already outlived its time (?), while the UAOC is purely revolutionary."

The Memorandum of the VPCR further rejects the possibility of unification also with the so-called "spiritual" Christians of various evangelical tendencies, because these are "Christian sects that do not have within themselves a definite church organic structure, and therefore do not represent the Church as the Body of Christ." The Memorandum refrains from expressing an opinion regarding unification with the Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Abyssinian, Armenian, Syrian, and other churches, on the grounds that "unfortunately, we do not have certain and truthful (?) information about these churches; from official textbooks (?) we knew only that these are heretical churches, and we were taught only to be horrified by everything heretical, as if diabolical, rather than to take interest in it." The "Memorandum" does not indicate who taught this and in what schools. It only notes that closer acquaintance with heretical churches is "a matter of the future, but mutual trust, mutual respect, the absence of Pharisaical pride and boasting of one's own Church alone as the sole truth — this is the first step toward fraternal understanding, fraternal unity with those of these Churches that will fulfill within themselves all those steps that our Ukrainian Church has already taken on the path of unification."

"The universality of the Church," the VPCR concludes in its reasoning, "must in no way be understood to mean that the Churches of all peoples become Orthodox or Catholic, or generally unite in some single

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historical Church. No, the Church of every people may remain as it is, with all its particularities created by the centuries-long creativity of life, but common to all should be freedom, equality, and brotherhood of all Churches."

Whether such reasoning about worldwide church unification and the eventual creation of the Universal Church is consistent with the teaching of the Orthodox Church contained in the ninth article of the Niceo-Constantinopolitan Creed ("I believe in One, Holy, Catholic [Sobornu], and Apostolic Church") — this question the Memorandum of 1924 of the VPCR does not raise.

In issue 2/3 of the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia for 1927, there was published a "Historical Memorandum on the Past Life of the Ukrainian Church and the Revival of Its Autocephaly" (pp. 139–148). The publication was accompanied by this important editorial note: "This Historical Memorandum was sent by the VPCR (in Ukrainian and French) in November 1925 to all Orthodox Churches and to our Church's representatives in the West — in America to the Most Reverend Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych, in Geneva to Yevhen Bachynsky, and in Prague to Serhii Shelukhin — as an official notification of the revival, autocephaly, and restoration of the hierarchy of the Ukrainian Church, in accordance with the tradition of Christian Churches in antiquity — by means of fraternal notifications about important events in the life of the Church, to express fraternal love and unity in Christ. Not being certain that this Memorandum reached its destinations in its time, the VPCR publishes this Memorandum in its journal Tserkva i Zhyttia, in the hope that this Memorandum will become known through the journal to those to whom it was sent by mail and who did not receive it" (p. 139).

Thus, a year after the Memorandum of 1924, on the fourth anniversary of the Sobor of 1921 and the establishment of the hierarchy at it, in November 1925, the VPCR attended to fulfilling the resolution of the Sobor of 1921 that authorized the VPCR "to inform all Autocephalous Orthodox Churches about the factual restoration of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church" (Resolution of the Sobor 11, 15), proceeding from the previous resolution of the Sobor (11, 13) that "the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as Autocephalous, is a free member of the Universal Sobornal Apostolic Orthodox Christian Church and remains in unbreakable fraternal communion with all Orthodox Churches."

The "Historical Memorandum" of the VPCR of 1925 should be viewed as an attempt and intention to establish fraternal and prayerful communion between the UAOC and other Orthodox Sister Churches, to formalize its position in the Orthodox world. "Aspiring to the Universal union of all Christian churches," we read in the Memorandum, "the Ukrainian Orthodox Church considers itself a part of the Universal Church of Christ and first of all, unconditionally, considers itself to be in indissoluble communion with the first Apostolic churches, the mother churches of all churches: Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome before its replacement by papism, as well as with the other Orthodox Autocephalous Churches, and hereby notifies them of its life and autocephaly;

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it asks for fraternal communion and sincerely beseeches God that this unity may as soon as possible be realized and strengthened at Sobors of the Orthodox Churches of all peoples" (pp. 147–148. Emphasis ours).

Unfortunately, the "Historical Memorandum" of 1925 of the VPCR, in its content as a whole and in form, little corresponded to the purpose for which it was sent to the Orthodox Churches. It followed more closely the ideas, which we have outlined above in their essentials, of the Memorandum of the VPCR of 1924. In its historical portion on the past of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, objectivity was not maintained, and not a few assertions were included that were shallow, disputable, or simply incorrect. The passionate tone with which it was suffused in its polemical ardor — going so far as to accuse certain churches even of "practical atheism," merely concealed under the form of "Orthodoxy" (p. 140) — did not testify to a Christian spirit of love and mutual respect between Churches in the very leading figures of a Church that was seeking and asking for fraternal communion from other Orthodox Churches.

Most importantly, in the "Historical Memorandum" we see a glaring inconsistency in the most important question for the autocephaly of the Church — the hierarchical one. In section VI of the "Memorandum," the act of the consecration of bishops at the Sobor of 1921 is presented, as it indeed was, as a forced act. "The Sobor," it says there, "considered this act extraordinary, performed in the manner of the early Christians, differing from the later generally widespread form of episcopal ordination, for the salvation of the life of the Ukrainian Church from mortal danger. Henceforth, all ordinations in the Ukrainian Church have been and continue to be performed in the general, traditional manner. This act constitutes no violation of the canons; only for the performance of the Mystery (tainstvo) was the original, ancient form taken instead of the generally used one, out of the demands of necessity, as the church life in its Orthodox understanding required" (p. 144. Emphasis ours).

Yet further, in section VIII of the "Historical Memorandum," the VPCR says: "But independently of the mortal danger to the Ukrainian Church, the act of reviving the hierarchy in it by an all-church path with a change of the usual traditions is a great step toward the transformation of the old-state structure of the Orthodox Church in general, without violating the Christian faith in its Orthodox understanding. The sad fact, when several bishops hostile to the Ukrainian people endeavored by all means to halt the free life of the people, and relying on the force of old tradition and the letter of canonicity, and having in mind only their own self-serving goal — domination over the Ukrainian Church — considered not themselves as heretics who had separated from it, but considered the entire Church as heretical... this sad fact shows as clearly as possible that the framework of old traditions has already become too narrow and unsuited to the contemporary state of church life, which insistently demands their change...

"The Ukrainian Church, which revived the fullness of its church life through an all-church election and consecration of its bishop, having only stepped over the traditional form, thereby testified that the recognition of the immutability

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of old-state traditions in the Church is the chief cause of the stagnation of the Orthodox Church and its separation (?) from contemporary life... The old episcopal-autocratic structure of the Church, which gave bishops special rights over the Church, like Roman papism, and the aspiration toward it by the old Orthodox bishops, cannot henceforth remain unchanged without great suppression of church life, and therefore that structure must yield and give way to the full brotherhood and equal rights of all members of the Church. The Ukrainian Church recognizes that the bishop in the Church, according to the word of Christ, is only a service person in it, and not a ruler over it"... (p. 146. Emphasis ours.)

Repeating the ideas of its Memorandum of 1924, the VPCR in section IX of the "Historical Memorandum" says: "The Ukrainian Church considers that the time has already come to take a new step in the matter of restoring the Universal Church, not by recognizing only itself as Universal, but by the fraternal unity of all churches (meaning, not only Orthodox — I. V.), preserving for the church of every people all the particularities of life and rite that have been created by it over the centuries, so to speak — preserving in essentials unity, in secondary matters freedom, and in all things love.

"By this essential, the Ukrainian Church recognizes first of all the will of the church of every people regarding its own life (?) and structure, its non-subordination to the church of another people (as if churches should be only purely national — I. V.); then the all-popular-conciliar structure of the church (and if the will of a church should not be for such a structure? — I. V.) with equal rights of all members of the church; and finally, the apolitical nature of the church, the non-use of it as a means for political, national, or social domination" (p. 147).

In the logic of these ideas about the creation of an eclectic Universal Church, the VPCR in the "Historical Memorandum"–epistle, intended and sent to the Orthodox Churches for the formalization of its position in the Universal Orthodox Church, turns at the end also to non-Orthodox churches. It addresses them with these words: "With the same feeling of brotherhood and love in Christ, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church addresses also all of Christ's Churches of all peoples with the notification of its revival and new life, and with a call to take the path of realizing the prayer for the unity of all churches, considering as the basis of unity the will of every church to create its own church life, fraternal love and mutual respect between churches, living fraternal relations between them, prayerful fellowship and fellowship in the Holy Mysteries (insofar as each one's conscience permits — Rom. 14), and the will of the church of every people to build its church life on the single common foundation for all churches, which is Jesus Christ the Son of God, in order to arrive at the soonest possible convening of a council of all churches, that is, a genuine World Council" (p. 148. Emphasis ours).

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, having written in his memoirs about the sending by the VPCR to all Autocephalous Orthodox Churches of the

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"Historical Memorandum," which "explains in detail all the main events of the revival of the UAOC and asks for fraternal communion," adds on his own: "Assuredly, recognition of the UAOC by other churches was not requested, because every church only recognizes itself, and to others can only offer its sincere brotherhood. The VPCR received no response to its notification from any Church; it is uncertain whether its notifications even reached their addresses, but that is no longer its concern; it fulfilled its duty of the UAOC to other churches, extended a fraternal hand to all, and even if all were to reject this hand, this does not deprive it of its truth before God"...

We think that, apart from causes of a non-ecclesiastical character, into which we do not enter, the brief characterization we have given above, on the basis of the content and form of the "Historical Memorandum" of the VPCR of November 1925, can most of all serve as an explanation of why no response was received by the VPCR from any Autocephalous Orthodox Church to its "Historical Memorandum" of 1925.

It should be recalled that even before the "Memorandum" of the VPCR in the autumn of 1924, in the "Public Declaration to All Churches of the VPCR of the UAOC," adopted at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR as the credo of the UAOC (See section II, subsection 5), it was stated: "Building the One Universal Church, the members of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church of Christ accept the unity of the Universal Church as a free, fraternal union of churches that unite the faithful workers of every people" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 25–30, 1924, p. 31).

In August 1925, the "World Congress of Practical Christianity," or (in its English name) "The Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work," took place in Stockholm — an event that was the beginning of the so-called ecumenical movement in the life of Christian Churches and communities throughout the entire world, which led to the creation of the "World Council of Churches" and continues its development further.

The VPCR also received from the Executive Committee for the convening of the World Congress of Practical Christianity in Stockholm a notification with a request to send two delegates to the Congress. The VPCR delegated as its representatives Archbishop Oleksander Yareshchenko and Brother V. Chekhivsky. But "the existing legal conditions in the Ukrainian SSR," as the VPCR wrote to the Presidium of the Congress, "do not allow the elected delegates to come to Stockholm, and therefore the VPCR has entrusted the representation of the UAOC to its authorized representatives abroad: Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych (America — Chicago), Prof. S. Shelukhin (Prague), and faithful Ye. Bachynsky (Geneva), whom, in the event of their arrival at the Congress, it asks to receive with fraternal love."

"The UAOC," the VPCR concluded its letter to the Presidium of the Congress, "extends greetings to the Illustrious Conference with the wish that it give the world new impulses of Christian life, and prayerfully joins all resolutions that serve the glory of God, the mastery throughout the entire world of the lofty Christian idea in its best and truest expression, for the cultural elevation

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of humanity toward a bright future" (Letter of the VPCR, August 25, 1925, no. 1662).

This legitimate aspiration of the Presidium of the VPCR to take advantage of the occasion of the World Church Conference (only the Catholic Church did not participate) in Stockholm, so that at the international church forum they would learn of the existence of the UAOC, was met in Ukraine by a protest from Ukrainian activists of the so-called Active Church of Christ (DKhTs), who considered themselves simultaneously members of the UAOC.

This protest, originating from the Kyiv Monastery of St. Michael of the Golden Domes, which had been given by the Soviet authorities to the DKhTs for use, was sent to all the church districts of the UAOC and, without doubt, was also brought to the attention of the Soviet authorities. The DKhTs activists protested that the Presidium of the VPCR had violated the principles of "the church conciliar-popular-governing construction of the UAOC" by sending, without the will of the Church, delegates to the Stockholm Conference, and moreover by entrusting the delegation to Messrs. Shelukhin and Bachynsky, "people foreign to and in no way connected with the UAOC."

But the main content of the protest consisted of motives of a political character. "In December 1924," they wrote in the protest, "the UAOC, through its representatives — the All-Ukrainian Evangelist V. Chekhivsky, the Reverend Metropolitan, and others — submitted to the Ukrainian Soviet Government a declaration in which it sincerely expressed its credo, so to speak, its faith and those principles that the believing populace placed at the foundation of the church edifice, whereby that declaration entirely dissociated itself from any political or other adventures. And now the Presidium of the VPCR, in the name of the same Church that so recently testified to its new loyalty and benevolent attitude toward the Soviet authorities and the church-economic (?) order that has formed in Ukraine, sincerely greets the 'Illustrious Conference' for its intention to give the world 'new impulses of Christian life,' and not only greets it but, foreseeing with its far-sighted eyes the high significance for the Ukrainian Church of the future resolutions of the Conference, with both hands prayerfully-reverentially signs in advance all its resolutions"...

Obviously, the "new impulses of Christian life" whose awakening was expected from the ecumenical movement in Christianity could not please the anti-Christian Soviet authorities; and this is precisely what the church activists who called themselves the Brotherhood "Active Church of Christ" exploit in their protest-denunciation to incite those authorities against the UAOC.

At the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, held May 25–30, 1924, a resolution was adopted: "To note the fact of the joining of believers of other nationalities, besides Ukrainian, to the UAOC, and to welcome it as a fact that refutes all accusations regarding the nationalist character of the Ukrainian Church; and proceeding from this, taking advantage of the opportunity for Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych to enter into relations with other Eastern Orthodox and Western Christian Churches, to give him broader authorizations regarding inter-church unification" (Minutes of the said Assembly, p. 17).

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This resolution of the Great Assembly of the VPCR could not have beneficial consequences for the UAOC itself, for the fundamental reason that all inter-church dealings of the UAOC with foreign church organizations, conducted either directly or through authorized representatives such as Archbishop Teodorovych, were subject to the control of the godless Soviet authorities. This is clearly seen from the resolution of the Presidium of the VPCR in November 1926, during the discussion of the question of the VPCR's right of dealings with foreign church figures. The resolution stated: "To maintain constant communication with the representatives, sending them informational material about the life of the UAOC, and to notify the Soviet authorities of this in an official manner, as has been done until now. In important cases, when the correspondence goes beyond the limits of mere information and may provoke objections from the Government, to enter first into an understanding with the Soviet authorities by means of appropriate dealings with the Government, and only in agreement with it to issue one or another directive" (Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, no. 3, November 16, 1926. Emphasis ours).

In establishing the number of UAOC parishes in Ukraine during the period of the UAOC's growth until the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in October 1927 (See section II, subsection 4), we arrived at the conclusion that 89%, or 9/10, of Orthodox parishes in Ukraine in those times remained under the Moscow episcopate.

Until the middle of 1923, these bishops belonged solely to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarch Tikhon, and among them pre-revolutionary bishops predominated, who before the revolution of 1917 had been subject to the Russian Holy Synod. This Russian hierarchy in Ukraine was headed, as we know, by Metropolitan Mikhail Yermakov, whom Patriarch Tikhon had appointed as his Exarch, creating the "Ukrainian Exarchate," in 1921.

In the second half of 1923, the revolutionary "Living Church" also appeared in Ukraine from Muscovy, already in the form of the "Renovationist-Synodal Church," for "the Living Church adherents," "the Renovationists," "the Synodalists" — these were the names of the phases through which the revolutionary current in the Russian Orthodox Church passed in its organization, creating a schism there, in the Moscow Patriarchate, with the knowledge and blessing of the godless Soviet-Bolshevik Government.

Having organized itself in Moscow in 1922–23, when Patriarch Tikhon was imprisoned by the Soviet authorities in the autumn of 1922 and until June 26, 1923, the "Living-Renovationist" schism from Muscovy crossed over into Ukraine as well, when hierarchs were found here too who joined the "Renovationists." Against the hierarchs — such as Exarch-Metropolitan Mikhail Yermakov, Bishops Dymytrii Verbytsky, Vasylii Bogdashevsky, Averkii Kedrov, and others — who remained faithful to the jurisdiction of the Patriarch, the Soviet authorities in Ukraine applied repressions — imprisonment, exile. The hierarchs who left the jurisdiction of Patriarch Tikhon as "Renovationists" even created, in the struggle against the UAOC, the "Ukrainian Synodal Church" (at a sobor in October 1923 in Kharkiv).

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The existence on one and the same territory, and most importantly among one and the same Ukrainian people, in the 1920s of three Orthodox churches — the UAOC, the Ukrainian Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchal Church, and the Ukrainian Synodal Church — (we do not take into account, given the small number of members, such offshoots as the DKhTs, "the Ukrainian Autocephaly of Bishop Buldovsky," and the "Free Progressive Autocephalous Ukrainian Church" in the Chernihiv region — Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, 1924, p. 10) — raises the question of the mutual relations in Ukraine itself among these three Orthodox Churches in times of the ever-intensifying campaign against the Church and religion in general by the godless Soviet authorities in Ukraine.

The question of these mutual relations remains very poorly documented, and we unfortunately do not have all the materials needed for that task.

Obviously, the struggle for the liberation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from administrative subordination to the Russian church hierarchy — a struggle in which the independent hierarchy of the UAOC was born in 1921 — was to continue further between the UAOC, in its expansion and organization in Ukraine, and the old Russian Orthodox Church there, now called "patriarchal" or "Tikhonite" — in common parlance, the struggle between "autocephalists," whom the opposing side also called "self-consecrators" [samosvyaty], and "Slavonicists" [slovyanisty].

The "Historical Memorandum of the VPCR" of November 1925, about which we have already spoken more than once, says: "The Russian Church in Ukraine, headed by Exarch Mikhail, held in August 1922 its own All-Ukrainian Sobor, which was officially called a conference; this Sobor accepted the basic principles of our Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church: autocephaly, conciliar governance, and the introduction of the native language of every people in its church. And for unification with our hierarchy, it elected a special commission of three bishops and two professors. This Sobor raised no accusations of heresy or schism against our Church" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/3, 1927, p. 145).

About the sobor of bishops in Ukraine, under the leadership of the Exarch of Ukraine, Metropolitan Mikhail Yermakov, in 1922 (only not in August, but on September 5), mention is also made in the epistle "To the Most Venerable Clergy of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine of the Episcopate of the Autonomous Orthodox Church in Ukraine," headed by Metropolitan Oleksiy Hromadsky in January 1942. There it says that this sobor "resolved in Kyiv to take the path of autocephaly and to decide church affairs independently at a Sobor of Bishops" (Ukr. Holos, journal in Proskuriv, no. 7, 1942).

This, obviously, is not the same thing as "conciliar governance" and the introduction of the living language into church worship — regarding which we have nowhere found information that similar resolutions were adopted in the Patriarchal Church in Ukraine. If the information in the "Historical Memorandum" of the VPCR of 1925 — written, let us recall, as a fraternal epistle to the Autocephalous Orthodox

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Churches — were authentic, this would mean that already within a year after the Sobor of 1921, relations between the UAOC and the Moscow Patriarchate, or its Ukrainian Exarchate, had been smoothed to the point that the question of unification with the hierarchy of the UAOC was raised in the latter. Unfortunately, we have no information whatsoever about the work and fate of the special commission on unification mentioned in the "Historical Memorandum."

On the contrary, immediately after conveying the information about such a benevolent attitude toward the UAOC by the Sobor of Bishops of the Russian Church in Ukraine in August 1922, the "Historical Memorandum" of the VPCR continues: "Individual Russian patriarchal bishops, as well as the late Patriarch Tikhon (who died on April 7, 1925) and those bishops in the Russian Church who call themselves 'Living,' 'Renovationist,' and others — who themselves, by the very essence of their entire hierarchy, have placed under great doubt their grace-bearing quality and apostolic succession — call the all-church act of faith in the Conciliar consecration of the Ukrainian Church a heresy, and do not stop even before blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, calling the Ukrainian hierarchy graceless" (Op. cit., p. 145). This was written in 1925, meaning already three years after that Sobor of 1922 of the patriarchal bishops in Ukraine, when even Exarch-Metropolitan Yermakov himself was already in exile in the Caucasus. Thus, one must think that even if that Sobor elected from its midst representatives to the special commission on unification, nothing came of it thereafter.

From the UAOC church leadership, one senses in the "Historical Memorandum" of 1925 satisfaction regarding the resolutions of the Sobor of the Patriarchal Episcopate in Kyiv in 1922 cited in the "Memorandum" in relation to the UAOC. The same feeling of satisfaction, apparently regarding those same resolutions, is found even earlier, in the VPCR's proclamation of 1924 on the occasion of the third anniversary of the restoration of the Ukrainian hierarchy, where we read: "Those who previously took a hopelessly hostile stance against the manner of restoration of our hierarchy now recognize the necessity of changing their attitude toward this historical fact. Those who waited for the death of our Church, who were certain of its incapacity for life, are already seeking unity with it"...

Beyond such expressions of satisfaction, we do not see the UAOC leadership seeking reconciliation, of prayerful communion with the Patriarchal Church. In petitioning the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukrainian SSR for the registration of the UAOC, the VPCR submitted a petition to the Chairman of the Rada of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR in Kharkiv at the end of 1924. It wrote: "From the very beginning of its revival, when the reactionary tsarist-lordly patriarchal Church had not yet been touched by the breath of revolution, and to the present moment, when under the influence of revolution even among the veterans of the old Church doubt has arisen about the possibility of the return of the old order, and when in connection with this one notices throughout the entire church front an outward restructuring — a repainting of themselves — the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, firm in its church-revolutionary principles, has had and has its greatest enemies in the persons of the representatives of that old Church, with which it has nothing in common in its ideology and structure. Lies, insinuations, slanders,

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a system of denunciations — that is the path of the Church hostile to the UAOC" (Copy of the VPCR's petition to the Government of the Ukrainian SSR, from the archive of Metropolitan Ioan Teodorovych. Emphasis ours).

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky in his memoirs on the "Revival of the Ukrainian Church" also mentions the sobor of the "Tikhonite" Church in Ukraine in 1922, presumably under the leadership of the bishops, which resolved to enter into an understanding with the VPCR and to create a joint commission for understanding. The Metropolitan adds: "It is unknown why this commission did not take place, but it shows that the sobor of the Tikhonites did not pronounce anathema upon the Ukrainians, while the episcopal 'golden thread' (Apostolic Succession — I. V.) is nothing other than a rusty chain on which the bishops hold the entire Church and its clergy in their domination. This chain the All-Ukrainian Sobor truly broke."

Nothing more on this topic of reconciliation with the Moscow Patriarchal Church is to be found in Chapter VII of Metropolitan Lypkivsky's History of the Ukrainian Church. In other acts of the VPCR, this Church was as a rule always treated as "a church-coffin." In reports from the field in the minutes of the Grand Assemblies of the VPCR, we more than once encounter statements about very hostile relations locally between the autocephalists and the Slavonicists.

In the "Public Declaration to All Churches of the VPCR," read by V. M. Chekhivsky at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 25–30, 1924, and adopted by that Assembly, it was clearly stated: "The tsarist-glorifying and lordly-glorifying Synodal and Patriarchal organization was not the Church of Christ" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, 1924, p. 30 verso). As we see, in the revolutionary fervor of church life at that time, the thought was entirely obscured that in that supposedly "not Church of Christ," generations of grandfathers and fathers of the Ukrainian people had been baptized, married, died, and cared for their salvation; in it were baptized and educated in its schools the very people who now undertook to deny it even the name "Church of Christ," not discerning what in it was not of Christ — for the "tares" will be in the Church until the Last Judgment — from what was of Christ (See on this vol. III of this work, section V, subsections 3, 4).

More visible in the documents at our disposal are the attempts of the Synodal-Renovationist Church in Ukraine to establish relations with the UAOC. In March 1925, a Commission, on the instructions of the Synod of the said Church, addressed the VPCR, as "the governing organ of the party of the so-called autocephalist Ukrainians," with a proposal to enter into official unity with the Universal Orthodox Church through participation in their All-Ukrainian Local Sobor, which was then being prepared and subsequently took place in May 1925. The Commission inquired what conditions the VPCR for its part might find it possible to propose to the future sobor for the unification of churches.

The VPCR, at its session of March 24, 1925, in response to this letter, resolved: "The VPCR, as the highest governing organ of the UAOC, does not consider it worthy of itself to enter into any church dealings with that non-church organization that calls itself the Renovationist Church."

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Two years after this, the VPCR received from Metropolitan Innokentii, as "Deputy of the Ukrainian Synod" of the Renovationist Church, a letter dated March 25, 1927, no. 92. In this letter, Metropolitan Innokentii, having first recalled how in 1925 the VPCR declined the invitation to the sobor, and therefore the division persists to this day, continued (in translation from the Russian of the letter):

Remembering, however, the commandments of the Founder of our Church, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Apostles, according to which Christians should have fraternal love among themselves, show forbearance toward one another, have unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and resolve all misunderstandings by the conciliar path; and also taking into account events that have taken place since then, such as the existence of our canonically legal autocephaly and full Ukrainianization, which did not yet exist in 1925 — the Holy Synod, by decree of October 1, 1926, no. 967, considered it its duty to instruct me to turn again to the members of the VPCR, and through it to all Orthodox Ukrainians under its jurisdiction, with a fraternal invitation to take part in the Pre-Sobor Conference, which, in accordance with the governmental permission of October 16, 1926, no. 1165, is being organized in the city of Kharkiv at the Cathedral building in May of this year; and with the wish that the entire membership of the VPCR, the entire episcopate under its jurisdiction on the territory of Ukraine, and two clerics and two laypeople from each eparchy attend this Conference, with the right of a decisive vote on the question of unification — which question will be placed first — and subsequently in all questions, if unity is achieved.

>

On this basis, I kindly ask the VPCR to inform me, for report to the Holy Synod, of its decision on the following points: 1. Does the VPCR wish to take part in the planned Pre-Sobor Conference on the conditions presented here above? 2. What conditions for such participation could the VPCR for its part propose to the said Conference?

>

— Minutes of the Presidium session of the VPCR, no. 25/45, March 30, 1927

The VPCR did not consider it possible for itself, in the composition of only the Presidium, to decide the questions posed, and transferred them for decision to the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, which took place on May 11–13, 1927. At this Assembly, the following resolution was adopted "in the matter of unification with the Synodal Church":

"Having heard the appeal of Metropolitan Innokentii of the Synodal Church for participation in a Pre-Sobor Conference with the Synodal Church with the aim of preparing for the unification of the Churches, the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, adhering to the principles of the VPCR regarding unification with other churches (these principles were presented by us above from the Memorandum of the VPCR of 1924 — I. V.), does not perceive in the life of the Synodal Church the 'existence of canonically legal autocephaly and full Ukrainianization' proclaimed by it, notes the canonical divergences of the UAOC and the Synodal Church, and considers it possible to permit only the preparation of an acquaintance with the formulation of the question of the unification of the Churches and the collection of all materials in this matter

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for their submission to the All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC, where the question of unification will be finally decided" (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, 1927, p. 58).

We do not have the minutes of the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, but from other sources we see that the question of the unification of the Churches in Ukraine was raised at that Sobor in October 1927, but no "final decision" on it was reached at the Sobor. This we see from the subsequent dealings of the leadership of the Synodal-Renovationist Church in Ukraine with the leadership of the UAOC, and from the resolutions of the Grand Assemblies of the VPCR after the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor.

In the period leading up to the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, one can observe a current in the church life of the UAOC whose representatives evidently ached in their souls from the struggle and enmity between the Churches of one and the same Ukrainian people, and thought about how to soften the sharpness of this struggle and find paths to reconciliation and unification.

Thus, at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR on May 25–30, 1924, during the discussion of the matter of convening the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of the UAOC (they planned to hold that Sobor at the end of 1925), Bishop Mykolai Boretsky made the proposal to invite to this Sobor representatives of all Churches in Ukraine, having clarified their attitude toward the UAOC. "It is possible," said the bishop, the future metropolitan of the UAOC, "that they will not appear at the Sobor, or will say nothing at it, because they do not have the same changes in the canons as we do, but this invitation may set those Churches afire, and they will respond to our call."

V. M. Chekhivsky, in his remarks on this proposal, stated that "for the purpose of unity with other Churches, it must be indicated which church organizations cannot be considered a genuine Church, for we can preach the Gospel to those who are in darkness, but to turn to those who consciously do not wish to take the path of renewal is not expedient." After this, the Great Assembly resolved: "To refer the question of inviting representatives of the Orthodox and other church currents to the All-Ukrainian Sobor to the Pre-Sobor Commission."

At those same Great St. Nicholas Assembly sessions of 1924, when, after a discussion on the report of Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky on "the necessity, in accordance with the demands of life, of transferring the church calendar to the new style," the timeliness of the transition to the new style was recognized in principle, the Assembly resolved to implement this reform in the church life of Ukraine in understanding with the other Orthodox Churches in Ukraine, and for this purpose to take the initiative, if necessary, of convening a conference of representatives of those Churches and even of convening an All-Ukrainian Orthodox Sobor (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 25–30, 1924, pp. 20–21, 43).

After the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of the UAOC, at which, as is known, Bishop Mykolai Boretsky was elected to the metropolitan cathedra, the Kyiv Metropolitan of the Synodal-Renovationist Church, Innokentii, sent him a letter with a request to set a time for a visit on official business. This meeting took place with the knowledge of the VPCR Presidium in the office of Metropolitan Mykolai at the VPCR chancellery premises

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on February 17, 1928. Also present at this meeting, at the wish of Metropolitan Mykolai, was Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych. The conversation lasted about two hours. A report on it was given by Metropolitan Mykolai at the Minor Assembly of the VPCR (a plenary session with one representative from each of all the District Churches of the UAOC) on March 6–8, 1928.

The conclusion of the conversation, which had a "completely fraternal character," according to the Metropolitan's report, was as follows: "Not rejecting in substance the principle of unification of all Orthodox currents in Ukraine into one UAOC, we nevertheless did not find it timely to unite with the Synodal Church at the present moment, because, in our opinion, the natures of our currents, by their previous upbringing, ideology, and struggle, are so opposed to one another that they are in themselves at present incapable of a spiritual unification into a single flock of Christ. Therefore, having noted this fact, we had to propose to the Synodal Church first to carry out, in complete pacification toward us and in general toward all Orthodox currents in Ukraine, the corresponding preparatory work and all those reforms through which, in time, the sharpness of the views of one current toward another would disappear, and a natural attraction toward their fusion into a single soul and a single Body of Christ would emerge."

The Minor Assembly received the Metropolitan's report with complete satisfaction and gratitude (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 6, 1928, pp. 39–40).

At the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, held in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv on May 29 – June 1, 1928, Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky delivered a report on "The Inter-Church Position of the UAOC" — a question that deeply stirred the members of the UAOC. The theses of this report were as follows:

  1. The general and cultural revolution in Ukraine authoritatively posed the question of a National Church of the Ukrainian people, who began to build it in the UAOC.
  2. The Tikhonite and Renovationist movements are remnants of religious-cultural layers alien to the Ukrainian people, which are condemned to die out; the future of religious life in Ukraine belongs to the UAOC, as a Church that naturally grows from the religious-cultural needs of the Ukrainian people.
  3. The Tikhonite movement stubbornly clings, ideologically and practically, to the continued domination of Russian church culture in Ukraine; if it has some ground for itself in the large cities, where there are many elements alien to Ukrainian culture, then with the awakening of the self-consciousness of the village, it will have less and less ground there.
  4. The Renovationist movement, absorbing the influences of the times, has theoretically recognized the principles of the UAOC's ideology — autocephaly, conciliar governance, Ukrainianization — but by its life reveals that these are foreign and unnatural for it; it is incapable of entering into immediate closeness to the religious-cultural needs of the Ukrainian people.
  5. The unification of the UAOC with any of these currents at the present moment would be artificial, unnatural — it would combine elements foreign to one another in their cultural substratum but would not fuse them into a single church organism.
  6. Nevertheless, the need for the creation of a single Orthodox Church in Ukraine is a burning demand of the religious
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consciousness of everyone.

  1. Complete church pacification in Ukraine is a matter of the more or less near future, when the roots of religious-cultural influences alien to the Ukrainian people finally die out.
  2. One should prepare for this pacification even now, transforming the un-Christian enmity between individual church currents into a fraternal coexistence of equal church organisms that in one another sincerely recognize the true Church of Christ.
  3. The state of such fraternal coexistence, as a temporary one, will continue further until the church organizations parallel to the UAOC are finally permeated by the elements of Ukrainian religious culture, take root in it, and then canonical fusion will occur of its own accord.

During the discussion of this report, it emerged that the composition of the recently held sobor of the Synodal-Renovationist Church at the beginning of May 1928 in Kharkiv was Ukrainian, for of the 120 members of the sobor, 87 registered themselves as Ukrainians. And although the speaker at the sobor on the UAOC, Protopriest Tarasov, knew no other name for the UAOC than "Lypkivshchyna," "chauvinists," "self-consecrators," etc. — Protopriest Tarasov and Metropolitan Pimen (of Kharkiv), it was said at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly, were not yet the Synodal Church. At that same sobor, its lay members reproached the proto-speaker for his impermissible attitude toward the UAOC and demanded from their hierarchs respect for the UAOC and pacification with it.

Having treated with full attentiveness the question of its inter-church position and having weighed all its circumstances, the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1928 adopted the following resolution on this question:

"The UAOC recognizes itself as a constituent part of the Universal Church of Christ. By virtue of this, it aspires to unity with other Churches, and first of all with the Orthodox Churches that exist in Ukraine. For this unification the UAOC prays, and it believes that the moment will come when the entire pious Ukrainian people belonging to the Church of Christ will unite in one holy UAOC. To bring this moment nearer, the UAOC proceeds not by the path of enmity with the Old Slavonic and Synodal Churches in Ukraine, but by the path of cultivating in its members respect for the seeking of Christ's truth and of Christ Himself that takes place in these Churches, as in every Church of Christ. The aim is thereby to establish moral unity, and through it to arrive at complete organizational unity. This will come at such time when not only the UAOC, but also the Old Slavonic and Synodal Churches, having taken this same path, will cultivate in their church leaders and faithful a corresponding spirit of love toward the entire Church of Christ, and first of all toward the Holy UAOC.

"For the constant care of such preparation for the unification of the Churches, the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR elects an appropriate Commission, which is to compose an instruction for its work and submit this instruction for confirmation to the Grand Pokrova Assembly."

From the episcopate, the Assembly elected to this Commission Archbishop of Poltava and Lubny Yosyf

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Oksiuk, Archbishop of the Kyiv Region Konstantyn Maliushkevych, and Archbishop of Kharkiv Ivan Pavlovsky (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, pp. 87–88).

Comparing the content and tone of this resolution of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1928 on the inter-church position of the UAOC with those reasonings and principles on this topic that were expressed by the leadership of the UAOC in the "Memorandum" of 1924 and in the "Historical Memorandum" of 1925, one can see to what extent the UAOC had now taken the path of a true Christian understanding and apoliticality of the Church of Christ in general and of the mutual relations between Autocephalous Sister Churches, of which, in historical earthly life, the Universal Church of Christ is composed.

Not a trace remained of the revolutionary-polemical fervor with its tendencies to teach other Churches in the world how they, liberating themselves from the "old-state episcopal structure" of the Church, should be reborn and create a single Universal Church. Such pretensions were absent both from the theses on the inter-church position of the UAOC by Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky and from the resolution adopted on those theses by the Great Assembly of the VPCR in 1928.

In affirming this fact, the historian, on the basis of all the material cited above regarding the inter-church position of the UAOC in Ukraine and the dealings of the UAOC leadership with the leadership of other Orthodox Churches in Ukraine, will simultaneously draw attention to another, no less significant fact. We have no grounds for saying that the UAOC was classified by the responsible representatives of the other Orthodox currents or Churches at that time in Ukraine as a sect rather than a Church. Such a classification of the UAOC is one that only irresponsible Ukrainian Catholic emigre authors are capable of (Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, The Revival of the Church in Ukraine 1917–1930, Basilian Press, Toronto, 1959, p. 138).

For the reasoning within the UAOC on the matter of inter-church relations with non-Orthodox churches, quite characteristic during this period was the affair of the ordination to the priesthood for the UAOC of Brother Yevhen Bachynsky by a bishop of the Old Catholic Church.

Yevhen Bachynsky, a Ukrainian emigrant from 1908 who became captivated by the Ukrainian church cause with the revolution of 1917, was, as we wrote above, the representative of the UAOC for Western Europe (he resided in Geneva) and corresponded with Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky. In 1926, Yevhen Bachynsky turned to Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych in America, who was the chief authorized representative of the UAOC abroad, in the matter of his — Bachynsky's — ordination to the priesthood of the UAOC, to increase his personal standing and significance as a representative of the UAOC abroad. Given that there was no UAOC bishop abroad in Europe, such an ordination could be performed by an Old Catholic bishop.

Archbishop Teodorovych, by letter of November 4, 1926, to Ye. Bachynsky, responded to this openly and decisively — as the documents say — against his ordination to the priesthood, considering this ordination unnecessary for the UAOC.

Bachynsky, in this same matter, by letter of November 9, 1926, turned to Metropolitan Lypkivsky. At the proposal of

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Metropolitan Lypkivsky, who read this letter at the session of the VPCR Presidium on December 12, 1926, the Presidium resolved: "To ask the Reverend Metropolitan to give his blessing to Brother Ye. Bachynsky for his ordination to the priesthood of the UAOC." About the fact that this ordination was to be by an Old Catholic bishop, there was no discussion. It was suggested (by Archbishop N. Sharaivsky) that Ye. Bachynsky be advised to seek ordination from the Orthodox Archbishop of Prague, Savvatii, or from Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych.

At the session of the VPCR Presidium on December 27, 1926, it emerged that Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky had already sent a letter both to Brother Ye. Bachynsky and, on his own initiative, to the Old Catholic bishop with a request to ordain Bachynsky as a priest for the UAOC. The Metropolitan had read neither letter at a session of the Presidium.

The matter was transferred to the session of the Minor Rada of the VPCR (Plenary), which took place December 28–30, 1926. At the plenary session, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky himself reported in this matter that "Ye. Bachynsky now considers it beneficial for our cause to be ordained to the priesthood; he is studying at the Theological University and in a year will be a Doctor of Theology; he asks permission to be ordained by an Old Catholic bishop. I have sent authorization and consent to the possibility of this ordination, because the Old Catholic Church on dogmatic grounds does not exclude this possibility. I bring this to your attention and wish to hear the decision on the principled question: is the enrollment of one ordained as such into the clergy of the UAOC possible — for this will not be an act of unification of our Church with the Old Catholic one."

To the remark of Archbishop Sharaivsky that Bachynsky should have turned to Archbishop Savvatii of Prague, not to an Old Catholic bishop, the Metropolitan again repeated that "we are not uniting, and the Old Catholic bishop is performing a personal favor for me, and through me for our Church; Archbishop Savvatii, however, has an unclear attitude toward our Church, as a Vicar of the Patriarch of Constantinople."

V. M. Chekhivsky, explaining that "ordination is a sending forth," said that "if Bachynsky believes that he will receive a sending forth for ministry, one must rely on his conscience and welcome the ordination." Bishop K. Krotevych advised postponing the decision on this question until a more thorough clarification, but the Minor Rada resolved by a majority: "The ordination of Bachynsky by an Old Catholic bishop does not violate the fundamental tenets of our Church. To confirm this step as a true fact, because there is here as yet no unification of Churches."

At the session of the VPCR Presidium on January 25, 1927, a statement by Archbishop of Lubny Yosyf Oksiuk regarding the resolution of the VPCR on the ordination of Ye. Bachynsky by an Old Catholic bishop was heard. Archbishop Oksiuk considered that this resolution could damage the inter-church position of the UAOC and introduce confusion into the Church itself. In the Archbishop's opinion, the time had come to convene a conference to clarify the very foundations of our church credo and to outline the perspectives for the future of the UAOC.

The Presidium, having noted for the record that the matter of Bachynsky's ordination had already been considered by the Plenary of the Minor

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Rada on December 28–30, 1926, limited itself to the resolution: "To accept the statement of Archbishop Oksiuk for information."

However, the matter of the ordination of Yevhen Bachynsky as a priest in a non-Orthodox Church with the blessing of the UAOC Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky did not end there, but was raised also at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR on May 11–13, 1927, because in the Orthodox press of other Orthodox currents, the fact of the violation in the UAOC of the system of "traditionally Orthodox" relations with the Old Catholic Church was being exploited.

It was not known whether Brother Ye. Bachynsky had already been ordained or not by the Old Catholic bishop for the UAOC, but the speaker on this matter and in connection with it, Bishop P. Romodaniv, on behalf of the VPCR Presidium, placed before the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR of 1927 for consideration and decision "the principled question of the attitude of the UAOC toward the Old Catholic Church."

But the discussion of this question, as is evident from the minutes of the Assembly, was essentially reduced to the matter of only the ordination of Ye. Bachynsky by the Old Catholics. Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky said that if one fears the ordination of Bachynsky, then one should not have permitted the consecration of our hierarchy in 1921 either. And to Archbishop Oksiuk, who for reasons beyond his control was not at the Assembly, the Metropolitan leveled the accusation that in his letter-protest one hears the voice of the old-churchmen: Antonii Khrapovitsky, Patriarch Tikhon, Exarch Mikhail Yermakov. There is no need to reckon with those who in reform do not wish to go forward with us, who hold back our progress.

On the side of Metropolitan Lypkivsky in his decision in the matter of Bachynsky's ordination was Archbishop Feodosii Serhiiev, who argued that "we did not choose Bachynsky and we are not ordaining him — he is being ordained for the foreign church; the VPCR sanctioned the step of the Reverend Metropolitan as a fatherly step"...

Archbishop K. Krotevych defended the opinion of Father Yosyf Oksiuk and protested against the Metropolitan's evaluation of Archbishop Oksiuk's letter, noting the purity of Father Oksiuk's work and his significant role in the cause of the revival of the UAOC.

Bishop K. Maliushkevych welcomed the candidacy for the priesthood of Brother Bachynsky, but considered that if he had not yet been ordained by the Old Catholics, then "to forewarn him would not hurt." There then came a proposal from the floor: "We have heard the voice of the bishops; let a layman have his say in this matter." It was approved. Brother Pashchenko D. took the floor: "There is nothing to fear from groundless accusations in connection with the ordination of Brother Ye. Bachynsky by an Old Catholic bishop; there is no point in even discussing these trifles, because we all already know that there were not two Christs."

After this, the proposal of Bishop K. Maliushkevych — "To delay the ordination of Brother Ye. Bachynsky until the next Assembly" — was rejected by the Great Assembly, and the proposal of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky was adopted: "Not to take any measures in the matter of preventing the ordination of Ye. Bachynsky" (Minutes of the Plenary of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR, January 25, 1927 — Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, May 11–13, 1927, pp. 66–69).

To the Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927 in the matter of the ordination of Ye. Bachynsky, the Archbishop of Lubny and Myrhorod Yosyf Oksiuk

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sent to the VPCR his Separate Opinion, dated June 17, 1927. In this extensive and detailed Separate Opinion, Archbishop Oksiuk refutes all the arguments of his opponents and, among other things, writes:

"The main argument in defense of the ordination of Bachynsky, in the invocation of an analogy with the act of the revival of the UAOC hierarchy in 1921, absolutely does not withstand any criticism. The attempt to place side by side, as equivalents, the great church act of the resurrection of the UAOC and the satisfaction of the personal whim of a single individual who cannot even leave his place of permanent residence to serve the UAOC in those places where communities of our Church exist — the revival of the hierarchy for the life of the Church and the ordination of Bachynsky, unnecessary in the fair expression of Archbishop Ioan of America — such attempts, juxtapositions, and analogies can only astonish, but not convince.

"The ordination of Bachynsky prior to a preliminary determination (through dealings, acquaintance, and mutual information of both Churches, etc.) of the mutual relations of our Church and the Old Catholic Church, I consider to be a hasty, harmful, and unnecessary act for the UAOC. Such an act of priestly ordination could have occurred only as a consequence of great and careful work by the leadership of both Churches, and not as an introduction to it.

"Now, when the Old Catholic Church does not know the UAOC at all, has not had and does not have any dealings whatsoever with it, a request to an Old Catholic bishop for the ordination of a priest for the UAOC can only provoke astonishment there. I think that the Old Catholic bishop has more sense of the dignity of his Church and respect for it, for himself, and for us than we do, and will not hasten to bestow upon us 'personal favors'...

"To expose the Church and oneself to lessons in respect for one's own Church and for oneself — in the fulfillment even of one's own principles of life and organization — this does not mean going forward. And conversely: to caution the Church against this, to honor the UAOC, to ache for its ecclesiastical honor and dignity — in no way means being a mouthpiece for Metropolitan A. Khrapovitsky, Patriarch Tikhon, or Metropolitan M. Yermakov, does not mean holding back our progress."

In conclusion, Archbishop Oksiuk writes: "I remain with my previous opinion, expressed in the statement to the VPCR of January 21, 1927: the ordination of Bachynsky by an Old Catholic bishop I consider, together with the Most Reverend Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych (although independently of him), to be unnecessary for the UAOC, unneeded, harmful, and in no way grounded — neither by the ideology of the UAOC, nor by the foundations of its organization, nor by the urgent demands of ecclesiastical economy."

The Presidium of the VPCR at its session of July 5, 1927, resolved: "To append the Separate Opinion of Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk to the minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly, and to send a copy of the 'Opinion' to Brother Ye. Bachynsky, informing him that the Presidium of the VPCR does not know the content of the letter that was sent in its time by the Reverend Metropolitan to the Old Catholic bishop in the matter of his — Bachynsky's — ordination, and that this matter, in view of its principled significance, should be placed for discussion at the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor. Therefore, the Presidium of the VPCR

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would be grateful if Brother Bachynsky, before receiving ordination, would work through the question of inter-church understanding and send his report on this topic to the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC" (Minutes no. 52/72 of the Presidium session of the VPCR, July 5, 1927).

We have no information whether such a report by Ye. Bachynsky was presented at the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927, but Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, in his history of the revival of the UAOC, briefly recounting the affair of Ye. Bachynsky's ordination, says: "This was already the first step toward the fraternal unification of Churches, but the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1927 overturned this matter" (Op. cit., p. 96. Emphasis ours).

In a letter to the fifth Presidium of the VPCR, elected at the Second Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927, Ye. Bachynsky, sending heartfelt congratulations on the occasion of the Second Sobor of the UAOC, now asked the Presidium of the VPCR to establish "fraternal relations with the Liberal Catholic Church," and to refrain regarding such relations with the Old Catholic Church, and to ask Bishop Wedgwood (of the Liberal Catholic Church) to ordain him, Bachynsky, as a priest (Ts. i Zh., no. 1/5, 1928, p. 65). The VPCR at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1928 did not give consent to the ordination of Bachynsky by Bishop Wedgwood (Ts. i Zh., no. 2, 1928, p. 79).

11. The policy of the communist government in Ukraine in its struggle against the Church and the means by which it destroyed church life. The deprivation of the Church of the rights of a juridical person; liquidation commissions; confiscation of church properties. The plundering of church valuables in Ukraine. The issuance by the Soviet authorities of permits for the use of churches; taxation of those permits. The closing of churches for worship; profanation in the use of churches for other purposes. The destruction of ancient Ukrainian holy sites. The mass destruction of churches and monasteries throughout Ukraine. The taxation and destruction of the clergy; their defenselessness in persecution by the authorities. Renunciation of faith and the Church. Anti-religious propaganda; the "League of Militant Atheists." Anti-religious communist education of youth in schools and in Komsomol organizations.

Above (subsection 8, section II) we wrote that the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was destined to proceed under extraordinarily complex conditions of the historical life of the Ukrainian people, that no existing autocephalous Orthodox church had embarked upon the path of its autocephaly and independence under such difficult circumstances of national life as the Ukrainian Church. The greatest evil for the Church among these difficult circumstances was, of course, the fact that during the organizational period of church life after the proclamation of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church, state power in Ukraine found itself in the hands of communist-atheists, for whom religion in general — and in Ukraine, the Orthodox Church with its centuries-old roots in the way of life and worldview of the people — was the greatest enemy, greater than

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Christianity of the first centuries was for the then Roman authority, which was not atheistic but pagan. Therefore, while considering the godless communist authority in Ukraine as the most important factor in the sorrowful fate of the UAOC in Ukraine, we cannot agree with such assertions. They are built supposedly "on the basis of the historical work of V. Lypkivsky," such as: "The UAOC from 1921 became the victim first and foremost of its own internal disintegrative factors, and the godless communist authority, after the self-liquidation of the UAOC in 1930, merely finished and completed the disintegration of the UAOC through exile, arrests, torture, and executions of its bishops, clergy, and faithful" (Fr. Dr. M. Solovii, OSBM. The Fate of the UAOC of Vasyl Lypkivsky. — Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky. The Revival of the Church in Ukraine. Toronto, 1959, pp. 225, 260).

No, the godless nature of this communist government was active the entire time, operating according to its policy of destroying the Church, applying only different tactics, and one cannot, in our view, exaggerate those internal disorders in the life of the UAOC, as is passionately depicted in the memoiristic historical work of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky.

In the "Memorial Note of the Solovetsky Bishops (in Exile)," presented in 1926 to the Bolshevik government of the USSR, the nature of this communist government is defined openly and concisely: "It would be untrue," we read there, "to say that between the Orthodox Church and the state authority of the Soviet republics there are no disagreements. But they do not lie where political suspicion or the slanders of the Church's enemies wish to see them. The Church does not touch the political organization of authority; it is loyal toward the governments of all countries within whose borders it has its members — from the Eastern despotism of old Turkey to the republic of the United States of America.

"The disagreement between the Church and the government of the Soviet republics lies in the irreconcilability of the religious teaching of the Church with materialism, the official philosophy of the communist party and government. The Church recognizes the existence of the spiritual world; communism rejects it. The Church believes in a Living God, Creator and Ruler of the world; communism does not admit His existence and recognizes the spontaneous generation of matter and the world. The Church teaches about the goal of human life in the heavenly calling of the spirit and calls people not to forget the heavenly fatherland, even if one lives in conditions of the greatest prosperity; communism wishes to know no other goals for a person than earthly well-being. The Church believes in the inviolability of the foundations of morality, justice, and law; communism considers them conditional results of the class struggle and evaluates phenomena of the moral order exclusively from the standpoint of utility. The Church sees in religion a life-giving force that not only ensures for a person the attainment of one's eternal destiny, but also serves as the source of everything great in human creativity, the foundation of the earthly prosperity, happiness, and health of peoples. Communism looks upon religion as an opium that intoxicates peoples and weakens their energy, as the source of their misfortune and poverty. The Church desires the flourishing of religion; communism desires its destruction. Given such a deep divergence

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in the very foundations of their worldview, there can be between the Church and the state no internal rapprochement or reconciliation, just as reconciliation is impossible between affirmation and negation, between 'yes' and 'no,' for the soul of the Church, the condition of its existence, and the meaning of its existence is that very thing which is rejected by communism" (Protopresbyter M. Polsky, New Martyrs of Russia, 1949, vol. I, p. 170).

It is obvious that the communist government of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, as a branch of the All-Union government of the USSR with its center in Moscow, was of the same nature and acted according to the same central instructions in its policy toward the Church, even if at times Ukrainian communists stood at the helm of the local government.

It would seem that given the irreconcilability of the ideologies of the Church and of a state where power is in the hands of communist-atheists, the way out of the severe conflicts in the work of the Church and such state authority could be a consistently implemented, on the basis of a definite law, separation of Church from state. And, as we know, the decree on "the separation of church from state and school from church" was issued by the Soviet authorities of the RSFSR as early as January 23, 1918, and was extended to Ukraine, after the Bolshevik seizure of Ukraine, in the spring of 1919.

But, as we have already seen more than once in the course of the preceding narrative, the understanding by the Soviet authorities of the principle of separation of Church from state was unlike anything previously known in the civilized world. The communist authority in the practice of life, in the order of governance, did not remain neutral in relation to faith and unbelief, but expressly took the side of atheism, employing all means of state intervention for the implanting and spreading of atheism and the destruction of religion.

In the conditions of its earthly existence, the Church, like any other organized body, cannot be deprived of the right to possess some property, which presupposes the recognition of it, as an entire institution, or at least of its individual constituent religious communities, as possessing the rights of a public institution, a "juridical person." The Church was deprived of these rights by the law of January 23, 1918, but the seizure by the Soviet authorities of the state church property was not so easy to accomplish all at once. The policy of economic undermining of the Church had to drag on, in view of the dangerous indignation and possible counteraction of the believing masses of the population. Therefore, so-called "liquidation commissions" (likvidkom) were organized by the government for the implementation of the law on the separation of Church from state — the very name of which indicated the intention to entirely liquidate the Church. In Ukraine, we encounter the activity of the likvidkom in the acts of the VPCR throughout the 1920s up to the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor.

The Orthodox Church in pre-revolutionary Russia, notwithstanding the secularization of church and monastic properties under Catherine II, possessed great wealth, which "could broadly be used for cultural-educational and charitable purposes." "Our metropolitans," writes Protopresbyter G. Shavelsky, "and archbishops, having everything ready for their livelihood, received salaries with revenues of 30, 40, 50,

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and even, like the Kyiv Metropolitan, up to a hundred thousand rubles per year"... (Fr. G. Shavelsky, Memoirs of the Last Protopresbyter of the Russian Army and Navy, New York, 1954, Chekhov Publishing, vol. II, p. 157). Thus the Bolsheviks had much in the Church to confiscate and plunder: church and monastic lands, episcopal dachas, church yards and buildings, church monetary deposits in banks, and so forth. As Soviet authority consolidated itself, the requisition extended even to the church sanctuaries themselves — the temples with the church objects in them.

Church leaders during the period of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as a national Church, favorably received the proclamation in Ukraine as well of the Soviet law on the separation of Church from state — as we see from the memoirs of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky. True, they imagined the idea of that law as "non-interference of the state in the affairs of the Church" (Metropolitan Lypkivsky), but what kind of "non-interference" this was, they did not feel at first, but later learned from their own experience.

The main thing at the beginning was that from the confiscation of church property, all of which in Ukraine had belonged to the Russian Church, Ukrainians could now benefit, as Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky writes: "Because churches are state property (under the law of January 23, 1918) and are given for use to religious communities, the Ukrainians came to the idea of creating a religious community and asking the authorities for the use of some church in Kyiv" (Op. cit., p. 23).

But the tactic of the Soviet authorities regarding the destruction of the Church included, at the beginning, as the Metropolitan himself later wrote, "destroying it with the very hands of its own workers" (Ibid., p. 154). And therefore so favorably, with the aim of destroying the patriarchal Church in Ukraine, did the Soviet authorities treat the organization of the UAOC at its beginnings in 1919–21; about this we have written in more detail in subsections 5 and 6 of section I.

"When the Soviet authorities established themselves in Ukraine in 1919," writes Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, "they immediately found here a great struggle of Ukrainians with the Russian 'Tikhonite' Church. The DPU immediately decided to exploit this struggle for the destruction of the 'Tikhonite' Church, which entirely dominated in Ukraine. Presumably with this aim, the Soviet authorities quite willingly registered Ukrainian parishes both in Kyiv and in the villages, gave them churches, permitted sobors, and even the All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1921. But it soon noticed that the UAOC, while destroying 'Tikhonism,' was itself growing into a strong and for the authorities dangerous mountain. It proclaimed itself 'autocephalous,' independent of the Moscow church government; and church independence conceals within itself the idea of state independence as well, and greatly captivates the people. This is the most unpleasant thing for the anti-church authority — that the church is, after all, national and cultivates in the people a national consciousness, when the Soviet authorities are against all national consciousness, especially Ukrainian. Therefore, the DPU immediately began to apply in Ukraine those measures for the disintegration of the Church that it used in Muscovy; it transferred to Ukraine the Renovationist Church, hoping that it would strike against both Tikhonism and autocephaly at once" (Ibid., pp. 157–158).

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The plundering of church valuables, which the Soviet authorities carried out in 1922 throughout the entire USSR under the pretext of aid to the starving, was carried out also in the churches and monasteries of Ukraine. It was of no significance, of course, that these valuables were for the most part in the churches and monasteries not of the UAOC but of the patriarchal Church in Ukraine. For the Ukrainian people, this was a robbery of their national treasure, a witness to their many centuries of piety and national culture. For these precious various church objects — often of the highest artistic craftsmanship, of gold, platinum, silver, adorned with precious stones and pearls; altar Gospels in golden and silver bindings; the richest sacristies of church vestments, episcopal mitres, pectoral panagias and crosses, etc. — were offerings to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church over the course of centuries from Ukrainian princes, hetmans, metropolitans, archbishops and bishops, the pious Ukrainian nobility, the Ukrainian Cossacks...

The most ancient centers of Ukrainian Orthodoxy — Kyiv with its holy sites (the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, St. Sophia Cathedral, the monasteries of St. Michael's, the Brotherhood, Florivsky, Mezhyhirsky, Vydubychi, and others), Chernihiv with its holy sites (the Transfiguration and Boris and Gleb Cathedrals, the Yelets Monastery, and others) — were thoroughly robbed "for aid to the starving."

Full grounds for classifying this action of the Soviet authorities as a robbery are provided by the trial of the Petrograd Metropolitan Veniamin (and 86 people with him), martyred by the Bolsheviks, which took place in June 1922. Metropolitan Veniamin, truly ready for all sacrifices for aid to those starving from the famine of 1921, submitted a statement to the government in which he indicated that for the salvation of the starving, the Church was ready to give up its property, but for the peace of the believing masses it was necessary: a) that this be a truly voluntary donation and not coercion, b) that representatives of the faithful participate in monitoring the use of the church valuables. The local authorities in Petrograd had agreed to this, but the Moscow center categorically opposed oversight, and Metropolitan Veniamin was sentenced by a Soviet court for supposedly obstructing the government's action of "aid to the starving." He was executed.

Protopresbyter M. Polsky also reports that in Ukraine, in connection with the requisition of church valuables by the Soviet authorities in 1922, the following numbers of clergy were executed and martyred in the dioceses: Kharkiv — 98, Poltava — 124, Katerynoslav — 92, Chernihiv — 78, and Odesa-Kherson — 191; a total of 583 persons. There are no data for the Kyiv, Podillia, and Volyn dioceses (Fr. M. Polsky, Op. cit., pp. 27–31; 57; 213).

As we already know, the Soviet decree of January 23 / February 5, 1918, by which the Church was essentially condemned to an illegal status, carried out the expropriation of all church property. The only thing that remained for believers was to form local communities of believers of no fewer than 20 persons and to register them with the godless authorities, and after registration to request for temporary use one or another church, taking upon themselves responsibility for that church and the property in it, and bearing all expenses connected with that use.

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Such a decree on "the separation of Church from state" with the robbery of all church property, proclaimed in a state that a year earlier had been Christian, seemed to the citizenry so absurd that they did not want to treat it seriously, and therefore in the first period the Bolshevik authorities could take into their disposal only non-parochial churches — such as, for example, military and domestic chapels. Parishes were in no hurry to register, and the dictatorship of the atheist-materialists did not feel itself immediately strong enough to close sanctuaries in unregistered parishes.

The Ukrainians in Kyiv founded the first Ukrainian parish, having received from the authorities a mandate for the magnificent St. Nicholas Cathedral, built by Mazepa at the end of the seventeenth century, which had previously been a military, non-parochial church, and in which no services were then being held (Metropolitan Lypkivsky, Op. cit., p. 24).

The struggle for church buildings among the various jurisdictions of Orthodox churches in Ukraine, when the sides began turning to the authorities for support, asking to register their community and to grant permission for the use of a church building, facilitated the implementation of the godless decree on the separation of Church from state, in the Bolshevik understanding of it — as the destruction of the Church and the ruin of church life.

It depended on the authorities to delay registration of a religious community and the permission for the transfer of a church into its use; the authorities could support one or the other side in the struggle for a church, deepening the enmity between them. These matters were decided by the central government in Kharkiv, where, primarily for these affairs, the VPCR maintained a representative called the "legal advisor."

From the report of such a "legal advisor," Protopriest L. Yunakiv, at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR on May 11–13, 1927, it is evident, for example, that of 77 cases brought by Father Yunakiv before the government during the half-year from November 1, 1926, to May 1, 1927, 60 of them concerned the transfer or return for the faithful's use of houses of God.

The godless authorities disposed of churches in those times as they wished, without regard for where or with what funds one or another church had been built — perhaps it had been erected with the hard-earned kopecks of a village, with collected donations from the working people through authorized emissaries from the village. Of the 60 cases, according to Father Yunakiv's report, only in 12 instances did Ukrainians receive churches for their full use; in 19 instances, for shared (alternating) use with other church orientations; in 13 requests, they were refused (among them the request for permission to use for worship the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and the Chernihiv Boris and Gleb Cathedral); 16 cases remained unexamined — and it is noticeable that these were predominantly requests for the transfer of churches for use in cities such as Cherkasy, Konotop, Zolotonosha, Bila Tserkva, Mykolaiv, Okhtyrka, Lokhvytsia, Smila, Kyiv (Demiyivka), Vasylkiv, and Korosten (Minutes of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR, 1927, pp. 39–43).

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Having taken from the people their church holy sites, in which their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had prayed for centuries, and now granting the people permission to pray and worship in these holy sites with great difficulties, the godless communist authority then began to levy taxes on church communities for the temporary use of the churches seized by the authorities. This taxation of churches was high, in the thousands of rubles, and moreover there was no fixed period for which the tax was paid. The tax was more like a contribution, upon payment of which the force hostile to the pious people would impose a new, even larger contribution for the right to worship in the temple.

Thus, for example, upon the parish of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, which was paying heavy taxes the entire time, at the end of 1932 there was imposed a levy of 10,090 rubles, and when the parish paid this sum, the authorities imposed upon it again 20,000 in contributions (Ridna Tserkva [Our Church], January–February 1956, p. 5). And such extortions were applied by the communists to God's churches throughout the entire USSR. This was not so much a source of revenue for the Soviet authorities as a means for the destruction of the Church and religion. Non-payment of the tax led to the seizure of the church and its closure for worship.

But for the closing of churches, other means were also widely employed. In the cities, the workers supposedly desired the closing, and passed resolutions for the closure of one or another church, which the authorities merely, so they said, implemented. In the villages, the closing of God's churches was closely connected with the intensified offensive against the Church from 1929 onward, when the era of the so-called New Economic Policy ("NEP") ended and the forced collectivization of peasant farms began.

The church-customary traditions of agrarian Ukraine (see vol. III of this work, pp. 266–271) were, without doubt, a great obstacle for the revolution in the people's way of life through the introduction of the kolkhoz system in the Ukrainian village. The Ukrainian village met this system with terrible resistance, and to drive it into the kolkhozes, the communist authority employed the horrific method of artificial famine in the winter-spring of 1932–33, during which millions of the Ukrainian people perished.

Against the Church, as mentioned, even before that, the Soviet authorities intensified their offensive, destroying the structure of the church-popular way of life and worldview of the Ukrainian village. The Soviet authorities, inflaming social enmity in the village, broke the unity of the nation; they placed power in the "village councils" in the hands of the "poor peasants" [nezamozhnyky], who were to destroy the prosperous farmers as "kulaks" — whose property was confiscated and who themselves were exiled to the far north.

At the head of the kolkhozes stood these same "poor peasants," who soon became atheists as well. The Church, robbed, as described above, of all its property, together with its clergy could be maintained only by the parish community; even aid to religious organizations by any benefactors was prohibited. And it was difficult for the Church to stand firm under the kolkhoz system, when at the head of the kolkhoz community stood atheists who, carrying out the orders of their superiors, began to pass "resolutions" about the "unnecessity"

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in their village or kolkhoz of a church. Thus, supposedly at the initiative of the peasants themselves, the village sanctuary was closed. Where resistance was encountered, the authorities showed initiative in their various ways. Frequently employed, for example, was the method of prohibiting worship in one or another church building on the grounds that the building was dangerous for the lives of those present in it. And such a church, as dangerous for life, would then be demolished and the materials sold.

Church houses, in which before the revolution the clergy had lived — built in the villages almost exclusively at the expense of the parishioners themselves — were also seized and used for the quarters of village councils or other kolkhoz "institutions."

Churches closed for worship, when not demolished for the time being, were used for various "public" needs, which was often connected with the profanation of the sanctuary. Churches were used as granaries for kolkhoz grain, as stables, dairies, pigsties; cinemas, youth clubs, various entertainments, anti-religious museums, and the like were set up in them.

From the account of Protopriest D. Burko, as an eyewitness, we learn how the cathedral of the Mezhyhirsky Savior near Kyiv — the former famous Zaporozhian monastery, and from the end of the eighteenth century a women's convent — was profaned. In that monastery, the Soviet authorities had established an Art-Ceramics Institute in 1929; until the spring of 1931, worship in the monastery cathedral proceeded without hindrance. But during Holy Week of 1931, the Institute's director Miller decided to "liquidate the counterrevolution on the territory of the Institute." And on Great Saturday, the student party cell, headed by its atheist director, carried out a pogrom of the sanctuary: "Destroyed were the precious Baroque iconostases of the seventeenth century, the work of the famous architect Andrii Melensky [Trans. note: Melensky (1779-1831) was active in the early 19th century; the attribution of 17th-century iconostases to him may be an error in the original.]; destroyed — hacked with spades and hoes — were the paintings of the Italian artist Antonio Scotti; destroyed was the rich monastic library; the bells were smashed; everything was utterly devastated, liquidated"...

When the eyewitness some time later crossed the threshold of the profaned sanctuary, he saw that "in the central nave, on the spot where the altar had been, stood on a pedestal a bust of Lenin; in the side naves, busts of Marx and Stalin; of the iconostases, only traces of their foundations remained; on the walls, where the frescoes — which had been destroyed — had been, there were fantastical paintings from 'socialist construction'... A student club" (Ridna Tserkva, no. 1, 1954, p. 9; no. 3, p. 5).

We do not have information — and God knows whether we ever will — about exactly how many churches were destroyed in Ukraine, as in the entire USSR, by the godless communist authority; but it can certainly be said that in the 40 years of that atheist authority, not a single new church was built in the USSR. The destruction of churches in Ukraine proceeded on a wide scale in the 1930s. Churches, predominantly wooden ones, were dismantled under the slogan "churches for science" — supposedly for the construction of ten-year schools — while the materials from the dismantled churches often went for heating the residences of the party elite in the districts and even for the construction of outhouses by district leaders (R. L. Suslyk, Bloody Pages from Unwritten Chronicles, England, 1955, pp. 294–295, "Dzvin").

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As eyewitnesses recount, before the German-Bolshevik war of 1941, one could travel by railway through Ukraine for a hundred kilometers and not see a single church in the villages.

In the great cities of Ukraine, the godless authority in the twentieth century did not spare in its destruction churches that were monuments of Christian culture of deep antiquity. The capital of ancient Ukraine-Rus', Kyiv, experienced this communist barbarity most painfully.

In 1934, the capital of the puppet government of the Ukrainian SSR, by order of the Red Kremlin in Moscow, was transferred from Kharkiv to Kyiv. As a result, there arose a plan for a certain reconstruction of princely Kyiv, in which obviously there were no buildings worthy of housing so high a government as the Soviet one.

Initially, the plan was to build the center of the godless Soviet government of Ukraine in Kyiv on the Pechersk. The victim of this project was the magnificent St. Nicholas Cathedral on the Pechersk, a monument of Ukrainian Baroque of the late seventeenth century, built in 1690–93 by the architect I. Startsev at the expense of Hetman Ivan Mazepa. In this cathedral, as we already know — before the revolution a military church — on May 9, 1919 (the feast of the Translation of the Relics of St. Nicholas), the first Divine Liturgy in the living Ukrainian language was held. And this monumental cathedral the godless authorities hastened to demolish in 1934, when the project of building government buildings on the Pechersk also soon fell through. Later, on the site where the temple of "St. Nicholas the Great" had stood, there arose a low, unimpressive factory for the processing of military-purpose wood — an apt symbol of the replacement of the religious spirit by soulless matter.

A new variant of the project for the reconstruction of Kyiv as a center for the godless government of the Ukrainian SSR threatened the church-cultural antiquity of Kyiv even more, because according to this project, the center of this authority was to be located where the center of Ukrainian Christian princely authority had been — the so-called "old city." A threat of destruction then arose for the greatest and most ancient church sanctuary of the city of Kyiv — St. Sophia Cathedral, built 900 years before by Prince Yaroslav the Wise, the son of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Volodymyr, Baptizer of Ukraine.

"The vandalism of this plan (to destroy St. Sophia) literally terrorized the consciousness of every Kyivan. The Bolsheviks, fortunately, later abandoned the intention to demolish St. Sophia Cathedral. The motives for this abandonment, perhaps, history will clarify"... (B. Mikorsky, The Destruction of Cultural-Historical Monuments in Kyiv in 1934–1936, Munich, 1951, p. 6). In 1934, St. Sophia Cathedral was only closed for worship, and an architectural museum-preserve was created from it.

But other holy sites of the Ukrainian people — precious monuments of the princely era — became victims of the "reconstruction" for the construction in the center of Kyiv of buildings for the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Bolsheviks of Ukraine: the St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery (eleventh–twelfth century) and near it the Three Saints Church (twelfth century). The demolition of St. Michael's Monastery, famous for its ancient frescoes and mosaics by old

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Ukrainian masters, did not proceed without the defense of this church-cultural monument by scholarly archaeologists and connoisseurs of art. The chief defender of the sanctuary was the Ukrainian archaeologist Professor M. Makarenko, a member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. His detailed memoranda in the struggle against Bolshevik vandalism, addressed to scholarly and governmental institutions and to individual persons such as Postyshev, the then Stalinist viceroy in Ukraine, and a large telegram addressed to Stalin himself — all ended with the arrest of Professor M. Makarenko and his exile to the city of Kazan, where he died. Nor did the intervention in defense of the sanctuary of the Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv by Russian academics help — such as Professor Ainalov, the architecture academician G. Kotov, and others (On this in detail in B. Mikorsky, Op. cit., pp. 7–11).

The most valuable mosaics of St. Michael's Monastery were taken to Moscow; the frescoes and other mosaics were removed and transferred to the museum in St. Sophia, and the monastery itself was demolished to the ground, as was the Three Saints Church.

A victim of the "reconstruction" of Kyiv — essentially for the arrangement in the Podil district of Kyiv of a park of "culture and rest" — was the barbarically demolished Brotherhood Monastery on the Podil, a witness to Ukrainian culture and education from 1615, when the Epiphany Brotherhood was founded and at it a school from which the Kyiv Theological Academy developed. The Brotherhood Epiphany Cathedral, which was also the academy church, was built at the expense of Hetman Mazepa, by the same I. Startsev who had built St. Nicholas Cathedral on the Pechersk, at the end of the seventeenth century, and the bell tower at the Epiphany Cathedral was built in the mid-eighteenth century by the well-known Ukrainian builder S. Kovnir. Both the cathedral and the bell tower of the Kyiv Brotherhood on the Podil were destroyed by the Bolshevik authorities.

On the Kyiv Podil, in the mid-1930s, the communist authority also destroyed: the Dormition Church (a sanctuary of the twelfth century), the St. Elijah Church, the Sts. Peter and Paul Church, the Greek Church (near the Brotherhood), the Church of St. Nicholas the Good, and the Church of the Nativity of Christ. In the vicinity of the Podil, in Lukianivka — the bell tower of the Cyril Monastery, a wonderful creation of the Baroque era by the Ukrainian architect Hryhorovych-Barsky. On the Pechersk, besides the Cathedral of "St. Nicholas the Great," the St. Nicholas Slupsky Monastery — known in popular parlance as "Little Nicholas" — was destroyed, and the church in the name of the Holy Princess Olga was demolished.

The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, after the terrible plundering by the Bolsheviks of its valuables and the extermination and dispersal of the monks, was declared from 1928 an "All-Ukrainian Cultural-Historical Preserve" (a "museum town"), where people were admitted by tickets for money to view the holy objects and to listen to anti-religious propaganda from museum guides. On the Kyiv St. Volodymyr Cathedral, closed for worship, there also appeared an inscription: "Anti-religious Museum — Volodymyr Branch."

Many other churches in Kyiv, built later, were also destroyed, as, obviously, were all domestic chapels. Destroyed

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While destroying Christian holy sites, the Soviet government, in reconstructing Kyiv, did not leave in peace even the places of eternal rest for the deceased. Among the closed and destroyed cemeteries in Kyiv, one must particularly mention the historic ones — "Askold's Grave," the Shchekavytsia hilltop cemetery, and the cemetery of the Florivsky women's monastery. The "Askold's Grave" cemetery above the Dnipro was completely destroyed; tombstones, often of high artistic value — marble, bronze, cast iron — were vandalized, smashed and scattered about; mausoleums and crypts were plundered and demolished. After the destruction of the cemetery and profanation of the graves, a garden for drinking and revelry was created in its place, under the name "Park of Culture and Recreation" (Ukrainskyi Zbirnyk, Book 10, Munich, 1957. M. Miller, "The Destruction of the Orthodox Church by the Bolsheviks," p. 52).

In other large and major cities of Ukraine, in the mid-1930s, the closing and destruction of God's temples was likewise carried out. Thus, in Kharkiv, St. Nicholas Church on Mykolaivska Square in the city center — which was then the cathedral of the UAOC in Slobozhanshchyna — was blown up. Destroyed were the churches of the Myrrh-Bearing Women, Holy Spirit, Resurrection, St. Demetrius, the Greek Church on Moskovska Street, and others. The Dormition Cathedral was converted into a radio hub; the Annunciation Cathedral was turned into a fuel depot. In Odesa, the magnificent Transfiguration Cathedral was demolished, along with the Church of the Archangel Michael at the women's monastery, the military St. Sergius Cathedral, St. Nicholas Church in the port, and others. In Poltava, the Dormition Cathedral was destroyed, the Resurrection Church — where the UAOC had its cathedra — the Trinity Church, the Presentation Church, the Nativity of the Theotokos Church, and the Protection Church. The godless government liquidated monasteries throughout all of Ukraine. Among them, besides the already mentioned mother monastery of all Ukrainian monasticism — the Kyiv-Pechersk Monastery — one must name such renowned and venerated monasteries as: the Sviatohirsk Dormition Monastery in Kharkiv region (founded 1624), the Exaltation of the Cross Monastery in Poltava, the Samara "Zaporozhian" Monastery near the city of Novomoskovsk on the Samara River; the Mhar Monastery near Lubny in Poltava region, the Kozelshchyna women's monastery in Poltava region, the Okhtyrka Trinity Monastery in Kharkiv region, the Ladyn women's monastery in Poltava region, the Trinity-Elias Monastery in Chernihiv (converted into a "pig farm"), the Yelets Dormition Monastery near Chernihiv, the Kyiv Protection Women's Monastery, the Kuriazh Monastery near Kharkiv, and the Kyiv-Vydubychi St. Michael's Monastery. For a general picture of the godless Communist government's destruction of Christian holy sites and Christian culture in Ukraine, we shall cite a longer excerpt from the report of Prof. M. Miller. "In 1943," he writes, "I had the opportunity, as part of an archaeological expedition, to survey on foot the entire bank of the Dnipro along its great bend, from Dnipropetrovsk all the way to Nikopol, over 160

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kilometers. Throughout that entire expanse, on both sides of the Dnipro, there were many large Ukrainian villages, all of which had once had churches. Already during the construction of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, up to 20 villages had been partially or completely relocated to higher ground due to the flooding of the Dnipro valley. In all those villages the churches had been destroyed, but in the new locations of those settlements, no new churches had been rebuilt. And in 1943, I did not find a single church throughout that entire expanse. In the large village of Bilenke, in place of the large stone church, only heaps of rubble remained, overgrown with weeds. In Nikopol, of the famous Zaporozhian cathedral — which was a rather rare monument of Ukrainian Baroque in its highest form of development, a nine-domed structure — not a trace remained. The same was true, of course, throughout all of Ukraine, and it is impossible to enumerate all the closed and destroyed churches, for 'their names Thou, O Lord, knowest'... One can say that as a result of the Soviet anti-religious policy and activity, already by 1937 all churches and monasteries had been closed, and the majority destroyed. From the churches they made utter ruins and left almost no monument from Ukraine's great past and the beautiful culture of its people. Herein lay the fundamental task of the Soviet government in its struggle against the Christian Church and 'bourgeois nationalism.' It was necessary to ensure that the new, Soviet generations of the Ukrainian people would no longer see or know the great ecclesiastical, historical, and cultural monuments created by old Ukraine. For only then could one conduct propaganda to the effect that Ukrainian culture had never existed at all, that there had been nothing good before, and that whatever exists is solely the achievement of the Bolsheviks. The same destruction was carried out with regard to churches of other confessions and monuments of civil architecture" (Ukr. Zbirnyk, Book 10, Op. cit., pp. 54–56).

"It is impossible to enumerate all the closed and destroyed churches, for their names Thou, O Lord, knowest," writes Prof. M. Miller. This form of commemorative prayer for the repose of departed souls — "their names Thou, O Lord, Thyself knowest" — applies even more so than to the destroyed holy sites, to the thousands upon thousands of clergy martyred in Ukraine who served at the altar — not only, of course, of the UAOC, but also of other ecclesiastical jurisdictions. Above (subsection 9 of Section II) we have already partly touched upon the legal and material situation of the UAOC clergy in the internal life of the Church, a situation that was for the most part entirely dismal. But the greatest misfortune and fear for the clergy came from without — from that same godless state government that was destroying and closing the churches, the places of divine worship. In the struggle against religion, alongside the destruction of temples, an even more effective measure was to be the physical extermination of the "servants of the cult" and the placing of them and their families in such a rightless position within the state that no one, under this terror, would dare to fill the ranks of the exterminated "servants of the cult." While in the first decade of the revolution, too, not a few clergy perished tragically — especially during the plundering of church valuables — this occurred more within the unleashed

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element of anarchy and awakened social hatred. But with the end in 1929 of the NEP era, when the forced collectivization of agriculture began, together with the liquidation of the economically healthiest segment of the peasantry — the "kulaks" — the destruction of the clergy also assumed a planned character in the hands of the Soviet government.

In the records of the VPCR that we had at our disposal, we almost never encounter data about the persecution of clergy by state authorities, about the struggle against the rightless condition of the clergy within the state, or resistance to the arbitrary treatment to which clergy were subjected as part of the government's plan of liquidation. At the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of May 11–13, 1927, a resolution was adopted, at the proposal of one of the Assembly's participants: "To raise before the government the question of improving the legal status of the clergy in connection with the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution." At the time of the October Revolution, Ukraine was under the authority of the Ukrainian Central Rada; to seek mercy for the clergy on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the godless Bolshevik party's rise to power in Moscow was, at the very least, naivete. At the same Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1927, the Assembly resolved: "The Assembly charges the Presidium of the VPCR to clarify before the appropriate state organs the matter of taxation of the clergy and its normalization" (Minutes of said Assembly of the VPCR, pp. 57 and 58). Having deprived the clergy of church land and church buildings, the Soviet government additionally taxed the clergy, often in the thousands of rubles — which was the same means of destroying the Church as the godless government's taxation on the use of holy sites. Whether the Presidium of the VPCR fulfilled this charge and what the government responded, or whether the Presidium raised the taxation matter before the government at all — we found no data on this in the records.

Even quieter was the voice, or indeed no voice at all, of the organs of church authority regarding arrests, exiles, and executions of clergy. The fact was that in making arrests, holding people in prisons, and exiling them for long years to distant lands for hard labor — bishops, priests — the godless government never honestly stated that this was punishment for belief in God, for preaching religion and morality among the people. No, the government claimed it did not persecute for that; instead, it pinned on the "servants of the cult" charges of counter-revolution, sometimes anti-Semitism. To the priests of the UAOC, it was easy to apply also the accusation of "bourgeois nationalism," for among them were not a few officers of the UNR who had participated in the Ukrainian people's national liberation struggle; the Bolsheviks said that "Petliurites have hidden from the Soviet government in churches under vestments." Thus, to speak out in defense of "counter-revolutionaries," "anti-Semites," "Petliurites" — did this not mean, in the eyes of the GPU, becoming an accomplice of "counter-revolution"? Terror sealed mouths...

In the records of the VPCR we found two specific cases of how the Presidium of the VPCR reacted to arrests of UAOC clergy. The representative of the Lubny Church District, Archpriest V. Slukhayevsky, in a report at a session of the VPCR Presidium, told of the arrest and threat of exile of Archpriest S. Yavtushenko, which had caused a depressed mood throughout the entire Lubny Church, since the pretext for the arrest had been the long since liquidated unsuccessful evaluation by Archpriest Yavtushenko of events in the church life of the UAOC in the summer-autumn of 1926 (see subsection 5 of Section II of this work). The resolution of the VPCR on this report by Archpriest V. Slukhayevsky (who, incidentally, was himself later repressed by the GPU in 1929) was as follows:

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"To note with sorrow the fact of the arrest of Archpriest Symon Yavtushenko, but until the final clarification of the reasons for this arrest, the Presidium of the VPCR does not consider it possible to raise a petition on its own behalf before the Government for the easing of Fr. Yavtushenko's fate, and takes upon itself the obligation to fully support such a petition before the Government when it is raised by the Holy Trinity parish of the city of Myrhorod, or by the Lubny District Church Rada, and when it has been proven that Fr. S. Yavtushenko was arrested in connection with his work for having infelicitously expressed his evaluation of church events of the past year 1926" (Minutes of VPCR Presidium session No. 29/49, of April 12, 1927).

The second case. The Uman District Church Rada informed the Presidium of the VPCR that on the night of June 15, 1927, during a search at Fr. Zayachkivsky's residence, the papers of the Uman District Church Rada were confiscated, along with 111 rubles in money belonging to the District Church Rada and other items; Fr. Zayachkivsky, priest I. Lukashevych, and priest O. Davydenko were arrested. The Presidium's resolution regarding this notification was: "To express to the Uman District UAOC sympathy in connection with the sorrowful fact of the arrest of clergy and the seizure of correspondence and money belonging to the District Church Rada; to propose that the District Church Rada take all measures for the return of the correspondence and money of the District Church Rada and for the clarification of the reasons for the arrest of the clergy" (Minutes of VPCR Presidium session No. 49/69, of June 24, 1927).

We encounter one more instance in the records of the VPCR — a general charge to the Chairman of the VPCR, Bishop Petro Romodaniv, when he was traveling to Kharkiv on UAOC matters, "to raise before the Central Government and fully clarify the question of easing the fate of persons deprived of freedom and restricted in their rights on church grounds," as well as "to clarify before the Government the abnormal relations of various local organs of state authority toward the UAOC" (Minutes of Presidium session of March 2, 1927). Whether Bishop P. Romodaniv, the Chairman of the VPCR, fulfilled this charge and with what success — there is no trace of this in the subsequent records of the VPCR.

Finally, our attention is drawn to the fact that in the report of Archpriest L. Yunakiv, as the legal consultant in Kharkiv on UAOC matters before the Government, which he delivered at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927, there is absolutely no mention of any case raised before the government in defense of any clergyman repressed by the government, even on "church grounds"...

There was no defense of the clergy in its persecutions and sufferings from the godless government — from anyone, nor could there have been... For the "anti-Christian sword" — armed power — was in the hands of people for whom "law" and "morality" were empty words. And this state of helplessness, defenselessness of the clergy must above all be taken

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into account when considering instances of "falling" among its ranks, just as in the first centuries of Christianity there were many martyrs for Christ who courageously went to their death for their new faith, while there were also not a few "lapsed" (lapsi), for whom the Church established paths of repentance and rules for readmission into the bosom of the Church. Naturally, the UAOC was not without "adventurist spirit" (авантюрницького пороху, lit. "adventurist gunpowder," an idiom for reckless drive) either, about which Metropolitan Lypkivsky writes that "there were probably not a few such adventurers even at the 1st All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1921, even in its presidium" (Op. cit., p. 136), but in explaining the reasons for the great number of defections and renunciations of rank among the UAOC clergy, more eloquent for us are not the words "adventurism," "Christ-sellers," "Judas-traitors," but other words of the same Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, such as: "The main deficiency (more accurately — misfortune) of the life of the UAOC and its governing organs was that general captivity, that heavy sword that hung over Ukraine, always ready to fall upon anyone who even slightly raised their head, especially in church work; it was this sword that created great emptiness in our Church"... (Op. cit., p. 144).

The heavy anti-Christian sword that generally hung over the Church in the USSR could provoke a kind of capitulation even from Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, who in a statement to the Supreme Court of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic wrote: "Recognizing the correctness of the Court's decision to bring me to accountability under the articles of the Criminal Code indicated in the indictment, for anti-Soviet activity, I repent of these offenses against the state order and ask the Supreme Court to release me from custody. In addition, I declare that henceforth I am not an enemy of the Soviet government. I finally and decisively dissociate myself from both the foreign and the domestic monarchist-White Guard counter-revolution" (Priest K. Zaitsev, The Orthodox Church in Soviet Russia, Shanghai, 1947, pp. 161–162). And at the same time, the Soviet press wrote: "We must finish off the church counter-revolution. It is the last fortress of the bourgeois-landlord reaction... We must hasten its demise in order to destroy the last counter-revolutionary organization on the territory of the Soviet Republic" (Ibid., p. 164).

It is therefore not surprising that under this heavy sword, in conditions of oppression, impossible taxation, all manner of tortures, arrests, terrible interrogations, the destruction of families, and so forth, declarations of renunciation and withdrawal from church work by clergy multiplied. How did the church authorities regard this sorrowful phenomenon? In the records of the VPCR we find the following resolution of the VPCR Presidium: "To recognize as inadmissible the return of a former clergyman of the UAOC who has renounced his rank and the Church to any service in the UAOC, and to place no obstacles to the return of such persons to membership in the UAOC with the rights of a faithful who desires to repent of his offense before the Church. This resolution of principle the VPCR Presidium shall bring for final consideration at the future Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR" (Minutes of VPCR session of April 12, 1927).

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At the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1927, this resolution, for lack of time, was not considered. Only a year later, at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR of May 29 – June 1, 1928, the question of "renunciation" or "apostasy" of both clergy and faithful of the UAOC became the subject of deliberations based on the report of Archbishop K. Maliushkevych. The presenter established that apostates from the Church and the faith, apostates from priestly and church service, had always existed in Christian life, but our times had increased renunciation — "it has become a mass phenomenon." "Renunciation of faith and Church, throughout the recent post-revolutionary times, is measured by thousands and tens of thousands of persons. Renunciation of priestly and church service is measured within the borders of Ukraine by tens and even hundreds."

The presenter grounded the possibility of returning apostates to the faith, the Church, and service in the Church upon the Gospel parables of the prodigal son, of the sheep that was lost and brings great joy to the shepherd when he finds it, and upon the restoration of apostleship to the disciple of the Lord, Peter, who had denied Christ but immediately wept bitterly in repentance and after Christ's resurrection was restored by the Lord to the rights of apostolic service. On the basis of these considerations, a draft decree was composed regarding the acceptance into the Church and into service in the Church of clergy. In this process, the forms of departure from the Church and renunciation of priestly service, as well as the behavior of the apostate in relation to the Church, were taken into account.

Clergy who had departed from the faith, the Church, and their service and, in departing, had manifested their departure through announcements in the press or through other forms of public statements that defamed the faith and the Church, or had caused harm to the faith and the Church in some other way, and who wished to return to the Church — return through public repentance before the Church. They are admitted to communion no earlier than after one year. After communion, they may be admitted to serve the Church in positions of choir directors, cantors, readers, and singers. They do not return to priestly service.

Priests who had departed from their service but had not renounced the faith and the Church, and who, having departed from their service, had defamed the very work of priestly service — return through acknowledgment of their offense before the Church and penance in the form of service over the course of a year in positions of cantor, singer, reader, and the like.

Priests who had left their service and the Church without intent to harm the Church and without corresponding actions — return to their service through repentance, Holy Communion after six months, and at that time (after communion) they may be admitted to fulfill the duties of church service, and after another six months may be restored to priestly service (Tserkva i Zhyttia [Church and Life], no. 7, 1928, pp. 90–91).

Concerning apostasy from the Church among the faithful, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky wrote: "As the Communist government strengthened in Ukraine and ever more tightly took into its hands all of civic life, it conducted an ever more frenzied work of destruction, liquidation

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of 'religious superstitions' throughout all of Soviet society... But while in the first years of Soviet rule, teachers and even professors and officials and workers and free citizens still took part in church affairs, from 1925–26 any participation of the people in religious matters had to cease or become severely limited. Teachers had to become openly anti-religious; they, like officials and workers, were deprived of work for even former church activity or even for distant connections with priests and the church, being expelled from trade unions, labor exchanges, and so forth, while free people became ever fewer — everyone had to submit to the government's hands... This was extremely difficult, mortally difficult, especially for the UAOC, which at its foundation had established universal conciliar governance (sobornapravnist), and the people?.. Hardly anyone would come to church, and then only furtively, but to work in the councils? To risk one's bread and that of one's family — certainly who would want to?" (Op. cit., pp. 187–188).

Clearly, the material dependence on the godless state government, which began concentrating in its hands all branches of social life, was reflected first and foremost in the intelligentsia's relationship to the Church. The national character of the UAOC to a great extent fostered the awakening among the Ukrainian intelligentsia of interest in the Church and church-religious life. But when, in the words of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, "the heavy Communist air of the destruction of faith and Church blew upon all of society, then naturally the weakness, faintheartedness, and treachery in UAOC society manifested itself even more than among its clergy, and inflicted on the UAOC perhaps even more wounds"... We think this was the case not only in UAOC society. For the Ukrainian intelligentsia, part of which had been carried away by the revival of their national Church, the advance of the Communist government against faith and Church created a double danger — to lose, through participation in church life, one's work and thus one's means of livelihood: the danger of accusations and persecutions for "religious superstitions"; and second — accusations of Ukrainian "nationalism" through membership in the UAOC. And therefore, at the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927, at which Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky was removed from the metropolitan's cathedra, representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia were already absent. "The Ukrainian intelligentsia," writes Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, "was already entirely in the Communist sack and had absolutely no representatives at the Sobor" (Op. cit., p. 205).

As we can see, the godless Soviet government, in its assault upon the Church and religion, had a whole arsenal of means necessary for the destruction of the Church and religion. All the indicated means were of a coercive character, connected with the Bolsheviks' exploitation of their position with the seized power, which wields physical armed force. The older and middle generations of the pious people, when they left the Church by the thousands, left it in the mass not from conviction, not through a change of worldview, but under the pressure of persecutions, terror, and material dependence. But alongside terror, the Soviet government also employed widely

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anti-religious propaganda as a means of an ostensibly ideological character, based fundamentally on the thesis: "religion is the opium of the people," religion is the instrument of capitalists and the bourgeoisie in alliance with "the priesthood" to exploit the masses of the ignorant people, keeping them in slavery and humiliation through the fear of God, preaching to them patience in earthly sufferings in the hope of the reward of bliss after death. Intensifying anti-religious propaganda — both oral, at gatherings of all kinds, and in print — the Soviet government forbade cultural and educational activity by religious organizations, closed church libraries, and removed books of religious content from public libraries.

In 1925, the atheistic organization "League of the Godless" appeared in the USSR, which published the journal Bezbozhnik ("The Godless"), whose chief editor was the Communist Yemelyan Yaroslavsky (his real surname was Gubelman). Bezbozhnik in 1930 was published in a circulation of 360,000 copies, and the number of members of the "League of the Godless" at the same time reached 5 million (Fr. Heyer, Op. cit., p. 111). In Ukraine, too, the organization of the "League of the Godless" spread. It recruited its members from among adults as well, particularly among the working class in larger cities, but its most important task was to capture the youth and to pour into young souls the poison of godlessness and hatred toward the Church and clergy. And this was all the easier for the atheists to do because their ally in this "educational" work became, under Soviet rule, the school. The law of January 23, 1918 on the separation of the Church from the state was simultaneously a law on the "separation of the school from the Church." The Church and clergy were removed from schools from the education of youth, but the school did not simultaneously become neutral regarding the Church and religion; rather, it assumed the position of their mortal enemy and began inculcating atheism in children from an early age, mocking "priests" and believers. Anti-religious elements were ordered to be incorporated into the teaching of humanities and natural sciences in schools; class supervisors or class organizers were required to include in their weekly educational plan a mandatory conversation with their students on an anti-religious topic. In pioneer and Komsomol organizations, too, the main goal was to tear the young generations away from the worldview and way of life of their parents and to make them godless materialists. And the entire arsenal of old cultural means and newer technical inventions was used for such anti-religious and anti-idealist education of youth — namely: school, books, press, theater, cinema, radio, and so forth. Komsomol godless youth organized all manner of blasphemous street carnivals to mock the great church holidays, similar performances on stages, all kinds of hooligan escapades with shouts and singing near churches during divine services — especially even on the Paschal night; they would meet young couples leaving the church after a church wedding with jeering, whistling, singing anti-religious songs, and the like. In Ukraine in 1938, there were 243,541 members of the League of the Godless (Fr. Heyer, p. 111).

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It is telling that in the records of the VPCR that we had at our disposal, and equally in the UAOC organ Tserkva i Zhyttia ("Church and Life"), we do not encounter material touching upon the question of educating youth in a Christian spirit, much less in a national-church spirit, under the difficult circumstances of that time for such education. The Church, upon which the doctrine of the faith placed the religio-pastoral obligation to proclaim the Holy Gospel to all, including the children of believers, had its mouth sealed by the godless government even with regard to deliberating questions of the Christian education of youth at that time... And therefore Communist propaganda lies when it writes: "Religion cannot be destroyed by administrative measures, by violence. The Communist Party, Lenin, and Stalin teach that religious survivals can be overcome and will be overcome gradually, in the process of the practical construction of a new society, in the process of Communist education. In the USSR, genuine freedom of conscience has been realized. Every citizen may be a believer or a non-believer — that is a matter of his conscience. But the Communist Party, as the vanguard of the working people, cannot be neutral in its attitude toward religion. The Party through all its activity helps the working people to free themselves from religious survivals and to master a scientific worldview" (Short Philosophical Dictionary, ed. M. Rozental and P. Yudin, Kyiv, 1952, p. 429). Indeed, the Communist Party "helped" the working people free themselves from religious survivals when, through unprecedented and terrible Bolshevik administrative violence in its assault upon the Church and religion, it plundered the Church of its property, destroyed thousands of temples, physically destroyed hundreds of hierarchs and thousands of clergy, placed clerical families in the status of "disenfranchised" (lishentsi), and placed its "taboo" upon the Christian education of youth, replacing it with Communist education based on the materialist worldview.

12. The State of Church Life After the 2nd All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1927. The Basic Ideas of the Enthronement Epistle of Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky and the Guiding Ideas of the Church Leadership in the Development of Church Life of the UAOC. The Liquidation of the UAOC in Ukraine in Close Connection with the Stages in the Development of Socialism-Communism by Force. The UAOC and the SVU; the Groundlessness of the View of Their Close Connection. The Extraordinary Sobor of the UAOC of January 28-29, 1930 as a Liquidation Sobor; the Subjective Account of This Event by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky. The Second Extraordinary Sobor of the UAOC of December 22, 1930 for the Restoration of (Simplified) Governance of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Fading of Church Life of the UAOC Under Pressures After This Sobor, as Well as of Church Life Generally Throughout Ukraine. The Fate of the UAOC Episcopate. Conclusion.

On behalf of the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of the UAOC, its Presidium, headed by its chairman, brother V. M. Chekhivsky, issued on October 30, 1927 an "Appeal to All Faithful Children of the Holy Orthodox Ukrainian Autocephalous Church." In it, the Presidium of the Sobor,

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informing the faithful of "the complete impossibility for Our Most Honorable Father, Metropolitan Vasyl, to continue further his metropolitan service to the UAOC" and the unanimous election to the Kyiv and All-Ukraine metropolitan cathedra of Bishop Mykola Boretsky, addressed the faithful thus: "Let the entire UAOC bless and glorify the grace of God, that by His mercy He has brought our Church to the great joy of conciliar unity and work, and that by the grace of the Life-Giving Holy Spirit, by the invisible presence of His Only-Begotten Son, He has blessed the unanimous work of the 2nd All-Ukrainian Church Sobor and the peace and spiritual benefit of the UAOC. The Sobor believes and is certain that its calm, truly conciliar, united by the Holy Spirit work is a sure guarantee that in its decisions the Sobor was the true mouth of the entire Church, the genuine expression of its will and consciousness. The Second Sobor faithfully hopes that the difficult times in the life of the UAOC have ended, that the disturbances have passed. And with all the faithful children of the UAOC we unite in the hope that henceforth its life will be a life of unity, truth, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit"...

It is difficult not to believe in the sincerity of these sentiments and hopes expressed by the Presidium of the Second All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in this Appeal upon the conclusion of the Sobor and after all that the Church had experienced in 1926 and 1927. And indeed, who can say that this Appeal of the Presidium of the UAOC Sobor of 1927 was dictated by the GPU? In subsection 10 on "The Inter-Church Position of the UAOC and Its Relations with Other Churches," we saw how the UAOC in the period after its Second Sobor embarked on the path of a genuine understanding of interrelations among sister Autocephalous Churches and among the various church orientations that existed at that time in Ukraine. In addition to the resolution on this question cited in that subsection, adopted on the basis of a report by Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1928, we shall cite here an excerpt from the epistle of Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych to his flock of the Kyiv Church District. After the Second Sobor, the Kyiv rural and urban districts had been united into one. Archbishop Maliushkevych wrote: "First and foremost I shall teach you faith in our Lord Jesus Christ; I shall guard it in your hearts as the most precious thing you possess; I shall preach love for our lesser brethren, for all the poor, infirm, and dispossessed of all the world, and above all for the Ukrainian people, for its difficult past and glorious future; I shall call upon you to cast off the shameful indifference toward your native mother and with your love to heal her wounds, to wipe away her tears; I shall call upon you to defend your natural right to pray to the Lord God in your native language, in your native temples. But I shall also restrain you in this struggle, so that you combine the struggle with a careful attitude toward the same rights of your brethren who are not with you now, who still wander on alien paths; I shall implore you to cultivate a spirit of tolerance toward other church currents, other religious groupings, toward people of another,

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than yours, worldview, lest you hear from Jesus Christ the words of reproach that the apostles heard: 'You do not know of what spirit you are.' Let the spirit of love and forgiveness, not pickets, reign in your hearts, for people will know that you are children of the Ukrainian Church, that you are members of Christ's family, when you have love among yourselves and when you spread this love around you" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1(6), 1928, pp. 49-50).

The enthronement epistle — as one might call it — of Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky of the UAOC is deeply imbued with the Christian spirit of love. "What shall I say to you, my dear ones, whom the Lord has given me?" we read in that epistle:

Pray for me, my brethren, that with a clear conscience I may now and always repeat the apostolic word: 'I count not my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus' (Acts 20:24). Stand firm in the faith, brethren. The holy Christian faith, this great gift of God, which with pious sincerity and great sacrifices of love our Ukrainian people have from time immemorial guarded, sanctifying their life and labor with it — you too preserve it for ever and ever, as the most precious treasure of our soul, as the greatest sacred thing that the Lord has given to our pious people, who from ages past and to this day call themselves a baptized people. 'Be not slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord' (Romans 12:11), living according to the eternal commandments of His Holy Gospel.

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Our Holy Orthodox, Autocephalous, native Church, which by the grace of our Heavenly Father and God, by the grace of the Life-Giving Holy Spirit, has been reborn for a new, free, and creative life to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the service of truth and love on earth — piously honor it with your sincere love and constant mutual brotherly assistance. Built by the pure impulse of faith and the power of love of the pious Ukrainian people for the Lord God, in hope of His Almighty aid, our Holy Church shall henceforth continue to build its life upon that same foundation of which the Holy Apostle tells us, that no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid, which is Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:11).

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We recall with what coldness or indifference our church critics and opponents of the revival of our native Church received it. Several years have passed — and how quiet and confused their objections have become. How much of what they condemned and cursed, how much of it they themselves have introduced into their own life, for to this they were compelled by the invincible power of truth brought into church life by the revival of the UAOC. And here, in our native Ukraine, and everywhere where difficult fate has scattered the children of our people — everywhere our believing people come to our Holy Church as to the source of their spiritual life, truth, and light for the soul; to it they bring their joy and gratitude, in it they weep over their grief and raise their supplications to the Father of Light...

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— Dnipro, organ of the UAOC in the USA, no. 9, 1928

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We do not possess sufficient materials to fully characterize the state of the UAOC in 1928-29 before the tragic date of January 28, 1930. But even what little we have speaks of "the gradual calming of the Church (after the 2nd All-Ukrainian Church Sobor), unity among the members of the VPCR Presidium in their work, and complete unity with Fr. Metropolitan" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1/6, 1928, p. 40). For the rational use of its forces, the VPCR Presidium divided its work into departments (administrative-organizational, publishing, educational, financial-economic) and established set times for departmental and its own sessions. In the consciousness of the UAOC leadership at that time, there was the notion that during the period from the 1st to the 2nd All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, creative work had built the first floor of the native UAOC; from the time of the 2nd Sobor, they began building the second floor. "The time has come for the entire UAOC to embark on the path of self-knowledge and self-determination, so that henceforth it and its governing body, together with the highest spiritual leader, His Most Honorable Fr. Metropolitan, would ensure that through the gradual advance of its self-knowledge and self-determination, it would demonstrate faith not in words but in our deeds, realizing the fundamental principles of the revival of our UAOC, not retreating from them and allowing neither their distortion nor deviation from them."

If one were to define more concisely the direction in which the leading figures, headed by Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky, now strove to guide the UAOC, this definition is best provided, in our view, by the conclusion from the review of the work of the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR of May 29 – June 1, 1928 in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, in which the Metropolitan, 19 bishops, 46 priests, 8 deacons, and 25 laypeople participated. Here is that conclusion: "The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church is and wishes to be a pure Church of Christ — the Bride of Christ without spot or blemish. To do everything to free ourselves from these spots, to look upon Christ with pure and bright eyes — this is our duty. Perhaps people will be dissatisfied with us who sought and seek in the Church not merely the satisfaction of the demands of a pious believing soul, who sought and seek in us chauvinism, political maneuvering, decisive reformism, or Protestantism — it is not about them that we are concerned, but about the pious children of the pious Ukrainian people. The beautiful words of His Most Honorable Metropolitan Mykola before the beginning and at the end of the Assembly noted precisely this aspect of our Church's life: to seek Christ and life with Him" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, p. 92).

The aspiration to lead the Ukrainian Church and the life of its members along the path of drawing closer to Christ, to the ideals of Christ, was combined, as we see from the enthronement epistle of Metropolitan Mykola, with the aspiration to have this Church, free from being exploited for non-religious purposes, as a Native Church, a National Church of the Ukrainian people, which had in the centuries past of this people invaluable merits in the creation of its national spiritual culture. But these aspirations

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had to forge their way toward one degree or another of their realization under the extraordinary, terrible circumstances of Ukrainian life at that time, which could be compared to the circumstances under which the Church of Christ spread in the first centuries of Christianity. Church historians and theologians have more than once seen in the struggle and victory of Christianity in the Greco-Roman world a miracle of God, the accomplishment of the wondrous works of God's economy for the salvation of humanity by divine grace — otherwise one cannot naturally understand, under those circumstances, the victory of the Church of Christ. We were not worthy of such a miracle in our times. By God's permission, unknown to us, the ideal aspirations that existed — though not in all — among the leaders of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church collided with the ever more devastating "anti-Christian sword," in the expression of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky.

Although the UAOC church leadership spoke, as we have seen, of the "gradual calming" of the Church after the 2nd All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, and expressed its belief in "the end of difficult times for the life of the UAOC," even it itself had no certainty about the coming of such peaceful times for the life of pious people and their Church. This we see from the frequent admonitions to be "loyal" to the state, which, it was said, "gave the UAOC legal existence in the state, but, according to the words of the Chairman of the VPCR Presidium, certain violations of the true (?) norms of relations with the state could always lead to the danger of the loss of this legality" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1/6, 1928, p. 40). In the report of Metropolitan Mykola at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1928, "The Spiritual Leadership of the UAOC," we read: "The time has come, my dear ones, for the Church to live a quiet and good life, and this is possible only if the source of the Church is not redirected to other sources and if the thought of the Church does not run up against those who bear the sword without reason" (Ibid., no. 2/7, 1928, p. 96). But the Church's misfortune was that the state sword was borne precisely "without reason," for even in the Old Testament we read: "The fool has said in his heart: there is no God"... (Psalm 13:1).

We have no data as to whether any Assemblies, Small or Great, of the VPCR took place in 1929. One can rather surmise that in this "turning-point" year, as it is called (B. Krupnytsky), in the development of Soviet Ukraine, no Great Assembly of the VPCR was held. As we know, at the end of 1928, the sole printed organ of the UAOC, for which the VPCR had with such difficulty obtained permission from the authorities at the beginning of 1927 for its publication and printing, ceased to appear — which was already an ill omen. At this time, the organizational state of the UAOC in Ukraine was as follows. The following church districts existed: Volyn, Berdychiv (Archbishop Feodosiy Serhiiev), Shepetivka, Vinnytsia (Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych), Kyiv (Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych), Lubny (Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk), Poltava, Bila Tserkva (Bishop Yuriy Teslenko), Katerynoslav (Bishop

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Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky), Romny (Bishop Mykolay Shyrai), Pryluky (Bishop Konon Bei), Kharkiv (Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky), Nizhyn-Chernihiv (Bishop Oleksander Chervinsky), Hlukhiv (Bishop Volodymyr Samborsky), Konotop, Kamianets (Archbishop Mykolay Pyvovariv), Proskuriv (Bishop Maksym Zadvirnyak), Balta-Pershotravnivka (Archbishop Antoniy Hrynevych), Uman, Korosten, Shevchenkivka or Cherkasy (Bishop Yukhym Kalishevsky), Odesa-Mykolaiv (Archbishop Yuriy Shevchenko). As we can see, of the 22 church districts of the UAOC, 6 — Volyn, Shepetivka, Poltava, Konotop, Uman, and Korosten — did not at that time have their own bishops. Of these, Volyn (Zhytomyr), Shepetivka, Konotop, and Korosten, small also in the number of parishes within them, had frequently been without episcopal cathedras filled even before 1928-29; Uman, with over 100 parishes, remained without a bishop after its long-serving Bishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych in December 1927 transferred to the cathedra of Archbishop of the Kyiv District, elected by the sobor of that district — the largest in the UAOC by number of parishes (152) — after the unification at the end of 1927 of the parishes of the Kyiv District (outside Kyiv) with the parishes of the city of Kyiv. The Poltava District, which for a long time had as its bishop Bishop Yuriy Shevchenko, remained without a bishop after Bishop Yuriy's transfer to the Odesa cathedra in 1928; the Poltava Church invited Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk of Lubny, but whether Archbishop Yosyf transferred to Poltava, we have no reliable information.

Thus, the internal organizational state of the UAOC after its Second All-Ukrainian Sobor in October 1927, for all the shortcomings in its life discussed in the preceding subsections, in no way exhibited such signs that the UAOC stood on the threshold of its liquidation because of "above all internal disintegrative elements in the UAOC," as Fr. Dr. M. Soloviy, OSBM, wishes to present "the fate of the UAOC of Vasyl Lypkivsky on the basis of the historical work of V. Lypkivsky" in the "Appendix" to the memoirs of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky on the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Op. cit., pp. 225, 244).

The history of the dissolution of the UAOC in Ukraine stood in close connection with the course of all historical events in the fate of the Ukrainian people under Communist rule, and to these events the will and desire of the people itself could least of all have contributed, whether in their positive or negative manifestations — the latter being, for example, the dissensions and misunderstandings in the internal life of the UAOC. The entire Ukrainian life was dependent upon the stages through which Communism passed in the USSR, and in which its leaders in the Moscow Kremlin conducted one or another internal (and external) policy of state power in the USSR. The year 1929 was a turning point, as noted above, in this policy: the leaders of Communism, who had been expecting proletarian revolutions in the industrially developed countries of the West in accordance with Marx's theory, lost faith in a world proletarian revolution by the forces of the proletariat itself and constructed a new doctrine about the possibility of introducing a socialist, and then a communist,

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system in one country, which would subsequently come with "fraternal assistance" (even with Soviet armies) to the proletarians of other countries in their class struggle to build socialism and communism in those countries as well. The victory within the Communist Party of the representatives of this doctrine (the Stalin-Molotov faction) led to the end in the USSR of the era of the "New Economic Policy" (NEP) and to the introduction of the forced collectivization of agriculture. If you do not want socialism and communism voluntarily, then we shall introduce them to you by force — the era of Communist militarism had arrived.

"The new era," writes Prof. B. Krupnytsky, "was connected with Stalin's 'new general line'... This was first and foremost a blow against the non-Russian national republics, above all against the Ukrainian, as the largest of them. Industrialization, the goal of which was the creation of new powerful industrial centers in the Urals and Siberia, was carried out at the expense of precisely these non-Russian republics. Collectivization, too, which was to provide the means for this industry at the expense of the enserfed peasantry, began to be implemented first of all in Ukraine... Collectivization cost Ukraine millions of human lives, for the peasants mounted great resistance against the new forms of enserfment, and therefore the full force of government repressions fell upon them (exile, the artificial famine of 1933, etc.). The Soviet regime's war against the peasantry (first and foremost against the Ukrainian peasantry) meant that the times of pacting with the peasants had passed. Thereby the Ukrainian intelligentsia also became unnecessary in the role assigned to it from above as a mediator between the government and the peasant masses. It had in any case not justified the hopes the Bolsheviks had placed in it. The intelligentsia had very zealously engaged in the creation of a national Ukrainian culture and had displayed tendencies toward emancipation from Moscow" (Ukrainian Historical Scholarship Under the Soviets, published by the Institute for the Study of the USSR, Munich, 1957, pp. 20-21).

In connection with this new stage in the development of Communism, the so-called "Ukrainophile" course of the Communist leaders in the sphere of culture in Ukraine, which had prevailed in 1920-28 and which was called the "Ukrainization" of Ukraine, changed sharply. National Ukrainian culture in its various branches — science, religion, belles-lettres, fine arts, theater — was declared "bourgeois nationalism," and its destruction began as a "counter-revolution," not only through the "Bolshevization" and "Sovietization" of cultural institutions, but also through the persecution and physical extermination of the creators of that culture from among the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Whoever wishes for facts from the terrible martyrology of representatives of Ukrainian scholarship in the 1930s — academicians and associates of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences — should read the work of Prof. N. Polonska-Vasylenko, The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, in two parts (published by the Institute for the Study of the USSR, Munich, 1955 and 1958). "The year 1930," writes Prof. N. Polonska-Vasylenko, "was one of the most tragic in the history of Ukraine, and at the same time — of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The 16th Congress of the VKP(b)

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proclaimed 'a full-scale socialist offensive on all fronts.' This offensive brought the liquidation of NEP, the forced collectivization of agriculture, and with it the unprecedented famine of 1933 in the history of Ukraine and the death of millions of peasants. In the national life of Ukraine, it brought the struggle against Ukrainian nationalism; thousands of Ukrainians perished in prisons, in exile, ostensibly for participation in the SVU ('Union for the Liberation of Ukraine'). In the sphere of church life, it brought the destruction of the Church and the arrest and exile of clergy. Ukraine was then isolated from all cultural life... In all branches of Ukrainian life, the Communist Party increasingly dominated... It is entirely understandable that under such conditions that had arisen throughout all of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences that was to celebrate its tenth anniversary in 1928 could not continue to exist. The year 1930 initiated a transitional period when academic institutions were rapidly destroyed, along with traditions and scholarly authorities. This led to incalculable losses both in people and in the scholarly works created by the Academy" (Op. cit., Part II, p. 9).

Thus the liquidation of the UAOC in Ukraine would have occurred entirely regardless of whether there were any internal disorders, dissensions, or misunderstandings in that Church, which the Soviet government supposedly exploited. Moreover, the logic of historical events in the development of Communism in the USSR provides grounds for asserting that the more quickly and ruthlessly the Communist government, having launched its offensive on all fronts, would have dissolved the UAOC had it seen in it — a National Ukrainian Church strong in harmony and unity — a political danger to itself. Whoever thinks otherwise should show from what dissensions, internal disorders, and so forth the Soviet government derived benefit in order to begin the destruction of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Thus, strong emphases on the "sorrowful role of the internal disintegration of the UAOC in its final liquidation" must be recognized, in our opinion, not as a historical conclusion but as a means of anti-Orthodox propaganda. We would not have taken such an approach if we were writing about the liquidation of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Galicia in 1945-46.

The liquidation of the UAOC is placed in close connection with the affair and judicial trial of the "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine" (SVU). This conspiratorial organization, the SVU, arose in 1926, shortly after the assassination in Paris of the Supreme Commander Symon Petliura, and its predecessor in 1920-1924 had been the "Brotherhood of Ukrainian Statehood" (BUD). The SVU began creating conspiratorial cells in various institutions and organizations, spreading its network in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, in higher educational institutions among professors and students, among writers and artists, secondary school teachers, cooperative workers, in Soviet publishing houses, and so forth — and also among the clergy and faithful of the national UAOC, with V. M. Chekhivsky as the leader of the church section of the SVU. From the confessions of the accused at the SVU trial, it emerged that supposedly already in 1920, members of the then BUD had entrusted Chekhivsky with leading the church action.

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Supposedly on the commission of this organization, Chekhivsky, who had great influence among the clergy, arranged the election of Archpriest Lypkivsky as Metropolitan; however, Metropolitan Lypkivsky rejected all attempts to involve him in political action, in view of his position in the church hierarchy (M. Kovalevsky, "The Union for the Liberation of Ukraine" — Opposition Movements in Ukraine and the National Policy of the USSR, 1920-1934, published by the Institute for the Study of the USSR, Munich, 1955).

From the history of the Ukrainian national-church movement from 1917 that is already known to us, such notions about the origins of the UAOC have no greater historical value than the "historical" assertions of S. Ranevsky, who wrote that "the emergence in Little Russia, which is now called Ukraine, of the Ukrainian Church coincided with the era of the Soviet NEP, and the executor of the program of the 'Ukrainian NEP' was the secretary of the Ukrainian Central Executive Committee, Mykola Skrypnyk; he, as a passionate Ukrainian patriot and nationalist, Ukrainized the institutions of Little Russia, schools, and directed his chief attention to the 'Ukrainization' of the Orthodox Church, which at that time was single and strong as a constituent part of the Russian Church" (Ranevsky, The Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, Press of Venerable Job of Pochaiv, 1948, p. 3).

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky himself in his memoirs is perhaps most indignant of all about the accusations against the UAOC that it supposedly participated in politics, was a political organization. "That the UAOC under the 2nd VPCR was a political organization," he writes, "is a pure lie. On the contrary, the UAOC at that time sincerely and diligently maintained complete apoliticism and defended it with all its strength. Nowhere — at sobors, at council sessions, or in speeches — were any political questions raised or discussed. The treasonous assembly of 1930 brazenly lies when it accuses the UAOC of this (he is evidently speaking only of the UAOC before 1926 under the 2nd VPCR). The UAOC did only what it publicly demonstrated: it fought for the Ukrainian language in the Church, church autocephaly, and conciliar governance — it had no other purpose and no political intentions whatsoever. If some individual member of the UAOC, outside the Church, engaged in any politics, whether Soviet or anti-Soviet — this surely did not concern the UAOC: outside the Church, everyone may be whatever they wish in political matters, but no one brought politics into the Church. The Church lived its own church life and convened its sobors and councils solely on its church affairs. In speeches and deliberations at sobors, state measures that directly affected the Church or intruded upon its life were discussed, but this was not the mixing of politics into the Church, but the Church's response to state demands and the discussion of state demands from the standpoint of the benefit and dignity of the Church in light of the commandments of Christ. Thus the UAOC engaged in no politics, no interference in politics" (Op. cit., pp. 150-151).

And about the SVU, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky writes: "The GPU either itself invented or indeed discovered some political circle, the SVU (Union for the Liberation of Ukraine). With this SVU, the GPU aimed to liquidate 'Petliurism,' and

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in general they sewed onto this frame the UAOC as well, in order to liquidate it too. Only two Chekhivskys were placed on trial — both former prominent political figures — but without trial they liquidated, exiled nearly half the priests and other faithful of the UAOC who needed to be liquidated: from Kyiv alone the best priests went into exile — Krasytsky, Karpov, Khodzytsky, Khomychevsky, Protodeacon Pyvarchuk — who knew nothing about the SVU or any politics whatsoever — and many others, and many were also shot" (Ibid., p. 215).

Indeed, regarding the connection of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church — in its governing institutions, of course, whether at the center (the VPCR) or in the church districts — with the political organization SVU, the historian, in our view, cannot but agree with the portrayal of this matter given in the above-cited words of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky. There is no evidence whatsoever that the UAOC, as an institution, conducted collaboration with the conspiratorial organization SVU. And it is a fact that no official representatives or leaders of the UAOC were placed in the dock in the judicial proceedings against the SVU — and the Communist government would certainly have done so had it possessed any evidence for this. And therefore Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky says: "Only two Chekhivskys were placed on trial — both former prominent political figures"... Of these, Fr. Mykola Chekhivsky was never once a member of the VPCR, while V. M. Chekhivsky, a prominent church figure and one of the organizers of the UAOC in 1921, also did not belong to the Presidium of the 4th VPCR elected by the Great Protection Assembly of 1926 — the year in which the SVU was organized. Obviously, V. M. Chekhivsky, using his influence among the clergy, could promote among individual priests of the UAOC the liberationist ideas of Ukraine's independence and statehood, but this was the activity not of the UAOC as such, not of its episcopate as spiritual leadership (none of the UAOC bishops was accused of participation in the SVU), but of individual members of the UAOC and outside the Church — which is precisely what Metropolitan Lypkivsky states in his memoirs.

As a political figure, V. M. Chekhivsky, arrested on July 29, 1929, was sentenced at the SVU trial by the Soviet court to execution on April 19, 1930. But the death penalty was commuted by the court for the principal SVU figures "in view of the political and economic might of the Soviet Republic and the repentance of the accused" to imprisonment: V. M. Chekhivsky received 10 years of imprisonment in strict isolation. In 1933, he was sent to the Solovetsky Islands, and in 1936 his sentence was doubled without trial and he was exiled to Far Eastern camps of special designation without the right of correspondence (Archpriest M. Yavdas, Op. cit., p. 50).

In the work of M. Kovalevsky, "The Union for the Liberation of Ukraine," the question of the UAOC's participation in the conspiratorial political organization SVU is presented so nebulously and with such contradictions to historical facts that the reader can indeed be led astray regarding the origins of the UAOC and the tasks that the

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architects of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church set for themselves. Here are examples of such confusion and divergence from the facts: "The independence-seeking action conducted by the SVU also encompassed religious life. The conclusion was drawn that the Church should play a great cultural role in Ukrainian life, as had occurred many times in olden times. Thus a special church group of the SVU was created, headed by Volodymyr Chekhivsky"... Could one not think that this group within the SVU then began to create the UAOC with a political goal and national-cultural purposes? But the national-church movement in Ukraine began during the revolution of 1917, while the SVU was organized only after the assassination of Symon Petliura in 1926 — as the author himself writes further (with great inaccuracies).

"The clergy and the entire church apparatus maintained a certain conspiratorial character in their work. At assemblies and conferences (the author calls the All-Ukrainian Sobor 'general assemblies,' which supposedly took place twice a year: on October 1, the Feast of the Protection, and on December 6, the Feast of St. Nicholas), protocols were never written, internal correspondence was always kept conspiratorial. All this was done in view of the various intrigues and provocations of the GPU"... Where the author obtained such nonsense about the conspiratorial nature of UAOC church record-keeping is unknown.

"The exposure of the SVU helped the Soviet government destroy the UAOC. Its prominent representatives were arrested, headed by Metropolitan Lypkivsky, and the rest were offered to adopt a resolution on the self-liquidation of the UAOC. It is characteristic that the prosecution twice appealed to Chekhivsky with the question of whether he considered it expedient to liquidate the Church on account of the counter-revolutionary activity of the clergy. The first time, Chekhivsky gave a negative answer, and then the second time he stated that in political life the UAOC was an instrument and constituent part of the SVU. One may suppose that this answer, which Chekhivsky gave after the first, was the result of behind-the-scenes (?) influences on Chekhivsky"... Did the Soviet government need the help of the SVU's exposure in order to destroy the UAOC? The author seems not to know that the liquidation of the UAOC was carried out at the end of January 1930, while the SVU judicial trial came afterward, from March 9 to April 19, 1930. The GPU arrested Metropolitan Lypkivsky not now, before the liquidation of the UAOC, but back in August 1926, when there was no talk of the SVU's exposure; in October 1927 at the 2nd All-Ukrainian Sobor, Metropolitan Lypkivsky was removed from the cathedra without any connection to the not-yet-exposed SVU. It is hard to accept that V. Chekhivsky confessed about the UAOC as "an instrument and constituent part of the SVU." And if he did confess such an untruth under coercion, then for the Church historian such forced confessions have no value.

"The activity of the UAOC," writes M. Kovalevsky, "was supposedly the culminating point in the SVU trial. This is entirely understandable, because the Soviet government needed at all costs to compromise the UAOC, whose influence was becoming too dangerous for it"... From everything that is known to us, on the basis of the facts, about how the

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Soviet government behaved in relation to the UAOC from the All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1921 to 1930, one can see the complete groundlessness of the assertion about the need for the Communist government to compromise (?) the UAOC, because of the dangers it posed, at the SVU trial, when that government had, moreover, taken care of the dissolution of the UAOC as a religious institution even before the SVU trial itself. Without placing representatives of the UAOC in the dock, "the prosecution attempted during the SVU trial to prove that: 1) the UAOC was founded with a political purpose; 2) its task was to spread anti-Soviet and anti-Russian agitation; 3) it united active Ukrainian elements, chiefly former military officers, and ordained them as priests in localities of strategic (?) significance; 4) it was preparing cadres of youth for national work."

"The basis for this were the confessions of the accused during the pre-trial investigation conducted by the GPU. For example, Yefremov, vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, said that the propaganda conducted by the UAOC aimed not only to discredit the Soviet government but also to practically prepare an uprising. From the words of the accused Tovkach, it appeared that the UAOC, which included many Petliurite officers, was to carry out the main preparatory work for a peasant uprising"... "However, during the judicial trial, some of the accused weakened the force of their previous confessions. Volodymyr Chekhivsky at the trial rejected the thesis that the UAOC was preparing an uprising"... But at the trial, "the prosecution's thesis about the counter-revolutionary activity of the UAOC found support in the confessions of two witnesses — Moroz and Potiyenko, who had taken active part in church activity. Moroz stated that in essence he was an atheist but had participated in church life exclusively for political motives, because anti-Soviet and independence-seeking elements had concentrated in the UAOC... Moroz, the Chairman of the Second VPCR, as the course of this trial revealed, worked in close connection with the GPU, which he did not even conceal... The suspicion involuntarily arises," says M. Kovalevsky, "that the secular authorities introduced their agents into various church centers, who were obliged to inform them about everything."

And finally we find in M. Kovalevsky the following conclusion: "The course of the Kharkiv trial and certain details revealed during it allow one with full justification to assert that provocation played a great role in the entire SVU affair. Suffice it to say that almost all of the prosecution's case rested solely on the confessions of the accused before GPU investigators. The prosecution presented no documentary evidence whatsoever during the entire 6 weeks" (emphasis ours).

Thus we have no grounds for closely linking — as is customary among us — the Bolsheviks' liquidation of the UAOC with the judicial trial of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. By this thesis, of course, we do not deny that the UAOC, as a National Church of the Ukrainian people, was doubly hateful to the Bolsheviks: both as a religious institution and as an institution

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of a national character. And here again one cannot but agree with the words of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky: "That the UAOC was built on a national foundation, that it raised the national consciousness of its people — this is a fact, and it could not be otherwise — but the UAOC not only had no chauvinism, no hatred toward other faiths or peoples, but on the contrary preached the brotherhood of all nations. Certainly, for the international commune, which recognizes only proletarians and rejects nations, any national work is unacceptable" (Op. cit., p. 151).

The liquidation of the UAOC as a religious institution, operating under the Statute registered by the Soviet government on December 10, 1926, took place at the Extraordinary Sobor of the UAOC in Kyiv on January 28-29, 1930. About this liquidation Extraordinary Sobor of the UAOC, we have extremely scant information; it emerges in the tragic life of the UAOC essentially as a deus ex machina in ancient Greek tragedies on the stage for the resolution of the tragedy. We have neither heard nor read anything about this Sobor beyond what is said about it in the memoirs of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky and in a private letter of Metropolitan Lypkivsky to Fr. P. Mayevsky dated June 5, 1933 (Tserkva i Zhyttia, November-December 1958, p. 10). In fact, the authors of articles about the way of the cross of the UAOC, when they write about the "self-liquidation" of the UAOC in January 1930, simply retell only what is written in the memoirs of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky about the sobor of January 28-29, 1930.

"The trial of the SVU had not yet taken place," writes Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, "when the liquidators from the VPCR had already completely fulfilled their task. On January 28-29, the bishops of the UAOC and about 40 priests were gathered; they were declared an Extraordinary Church Sobor, and they issued a conciliar resolution on the liquidation of the UAOC, and together with this Metropolitan Boretsky and all the bishops self-liquidated, ceased their spiritual leadership, remaining merely 'servants of the cult' at the churches where they were registered. The VPCR also self-liquidated, along with all its District Church Radas, Regional Radas, and Parish Radas. In a word: an all-Ukrainian church liquidation. One need only compare the resolution of this 'sobor' with the GPU's report about the UAOC submitted at the SVU trial to be convinced that the resolution of the 'sobor' is almost a word-for-word copy of the GPU's report (?), and to put a period there. I put it, attaching also this very resolution (the resolution is not provided — I. V.), from which it is clear that there was absolutely no church spirit at the sobor of these Christ-sellers — the episcopate and clergy of the UAOC, who composed an entirely political resolution, fulfilled to the end the GPU's task, which could not have been other than a liquidation task toward the UAOC. The voice that spoke at this sobor was not Christ's, not the Church's, but the GPU's. And perhaps these bishops and priests, through slanders against their Church and its leaders, beginning with Metropolitan Lypkivsky from whom they themselves originated, through this lie thought to save the UAOC and themselves from the Bolshevik danger? But a lie in general is no 'horse of salvation,' and a lie against

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the Church is merely genuine Christ-selling" (Op. cit., pp. 215-216).

In his letter to Fr. Mayevsky, Metropolitan Lypkivsky wrote: "After my forced removal from church work, I do not know and cannot fathom many things in its present state, for I have no relations whatsoever with the present leaders of the Church and receive no news from them"... In his memoirs we likewise read: "From the day I left the VPCR on the day of my removal, I no longer went there and had absolutely no connections with the governing organs of the VPCR. Although I still lived for two years near St. Sophia, within 10 sazhens of the VPCR, not one of the bishops, not one of the members of the VPCR — except Chekhivsky — hardly any of the priests came to see me: everyone shunned me as if I were the plague. Only Metropolitan Boretsky came a few times, but he avoided conversations on church topics, and I did not ask. Thus only bits and pieces reached me, and that from the side"... (Ibid., pp. 212-213). The historian must keep this self-testimony of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky in mind when evaluating the Metropolitan's account of what transpired in the UAOC after the 2nd All-Ukrainian Sobor, and particularly when evaluating his account of the event of the Extraordinary Sobor of the UAOC of January 28-29, 1930.

The fact is that Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, "not knowing and not fathoming many things in the present state of UAOC life" after his removal, and relying only on what "bits and pieces reached him from the side," viewed everything that occurred in the UAOC after its 2nd All-Ukrainian Sobor from the perspective that can be discerned in the following words: "The liquidators from the VPCR, when they undertook to fulfill the GPU's task — that is, to liquidate the UAOC and me personally — surely had to continue their work further" (Ibid., p. 213). And therefore Metropolitan saw nothing good in the activity of the spiritual leadership and governing organs of the UAOC in general in 1928-29, as the last pages of his memoirs attest; he sharply condemns everything as "the Christ-selling of liquidators," and reacts particularly painfully to criticism of those distortions in the ideology of the UAOC during its revival that took place in the first years after the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1921. With this extreme subjectivism of the last pages of the memoirs, the impression is created that the entire UAOC after its 2nd All-Ukrainian Sobor became permeated with a "liquidationist," "treasonous" spirit. And yet, based on reports — for example, at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of 1928 by Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky on the spiritual leadership of the UAOC, and by the "Commission for the Investigation of Church Life," whose members Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky calls "apostates" and "liquidators," and Metropolitan Mykola one "who follows after them" (pp. 213-214) — the Great Assembly of the VPCR unanimously adopted the following resolutions: 1. "Having heard the report of His Most Honorable Fr. Metropolitan on the spiritual leadership of the UAOC, the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR accepts it with satisfaction as a clear effort by the highest spiritual leadership to free our Church from deficiencies in its life, and agrees with the fundamental idea of the report that the time has come not merely to speak about the ideology of the

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UAOC but to embody its fundamental principles in life." — 2. "Fully agreeing with the existence in the UAOC of certain deviations identified in the report of the Commission for the Investigation of the Life of the UAOC, the Great St. Nicholas Assembly charges the VPCR Presidium to take all measures identified both in the Commission's report and at the disposal of the VPCR to correct the noted deviations" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, pp. 73, 86). The question involuntarily arises: what moral value does such an institution have, especially a church-religious one, that bases the guidelines of its future activity on falsehood and supposedly slander, and moreover with the aim of bringing itself to liquidation?

Thus, one must also, in our view, approach critically Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's account of the event of the Extraordinary Sobor, or Assembly, of the UAOC of January 28-29, 1930, with its resolution on the liquidation of the UAOC. In Metropolitan Lypkivsky's account, this matter is presented as though it was a mutual undertaking of both the GPU and the hierarchy and clergy of the UAOC; about laypeople — whether they were at that Sobor — nothing is said. Hence arose the notion of the "self-liquidation" of the UAOC primarily through its episcopate — an assertion joyfully seized upon and to this day repeated by the enemies of the UAOC — with this task of liquidating the UAOC, received from the GPU, having begun, in Metropolitan Lypkivsky's view, already at the 2nd All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC, or perhaps even earlier: "the liquidation wave of the 3rd (by our count, the 4th) VPCR, and the second sobor in fact became a sobor for the liquidation of the UAOC"... (p. 212).

When it comes to the GPU's attitude toward the UAOC and its plans for its liquidation by the godless government, we can trace the beginning of this action back to the time of the chairmanship of the atheist Moroz in the VPCR Presidium... But can we, because of Moroz, call the entire Presidium of the 2nd VPCR "Christ-sellers"? Can we call the Second Sobor of the UAOC of 1927, which "in fact became, as Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky writes, a sobor for the liquidation of the UAOC," "Christ-sellers"? Yet Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky himself says of this sobor: "And the spirit of churchliness at this sobor was quite lively, and there were forces, and consciousness for self-knowledge and self-determination, but the main thing was lacking — there was no will; the heavy hand of the GPU oppressed it"... (p. 212). Then why is this very "absence of will," this GPU oppression — far stronger in 1930 than in 1927, in the still-NEP era — not taken into account when judging the act of the Extraordinary Sobor of January 28-29, 1930, and why is that act called a self-liquidation rather than a liquidation of the Church by the godless government?

In our view, the harsh condemnation of the participants of the Extraordinary Sobor of January 28-29, 1930 as "Christ-sellers," "Judas-traitors," the characterization of the last VPCR Presidium (whose photograph has survived, comprising: Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky, Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk, Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych, Bishop Marko Hrushevsky, Bishop Yakiv Chulaivsky, Archpriest Leontiy Yunakiv, Archpriest Leonid Karpov, layman Volodymyr Chekhivsky, layman Stepan Kobzar) as a "pack of Christ-sellers" whose "honorary head was Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky" (p. 218 in Metropolitan Lypkivsky), the historian cannot

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accept, but must reject — both out of respect for those unfairly tarnished in this general condemnation and in defense of the historical truth of the UAOC, which would not then be a Martyr-Church, as we rightly confess it to be.

And even in the blessed memory Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky himself, we find a complete repudiation of those theses about "self-liquidation" and "Christ-selling" when he writes objectively: "The Soviet government created this conciliar liquidation of the UAOC surely only for human eyes; in the shadow of this liquidation, it carries out the genuine and relentless liquidation of faith in general and of Christ's Church according to its Communist program, and in its first five-year plan it set about liquidating the UAOC as the youngest — meaning the least durable — and moreover one that greatly captivated the peasantry. The commune in recent times has turned its face toward the village, has been taking over the Ukrainian peasantry, collectivizing Ukrainian land and peasant plow-oxen and the peasants themselves under its dictatorship, establishing state farms, collective farms, without priests, without churches, wanting to turn the entire peasantry into a godless proletarianized mass. By making it completely impossible for the priests themselves and their families to live in the Soviet state, it drives them in whole groups to renounce their rank, has made completely impossible the establishment of religious schools, the publication of periodicals and books of religious content, and in general completely destroys both the religious and national spirit of the Ukrainian people, creates a spiritual ruin, and when it does so, it succeeds"... (Ibid., p. 216. Emphasis ours).

Indeed, in the fire of the Communists' full-scale offensive in imposing by force a socialist system and destroying the previous way of life, in the 1930s in Ukraine it was not only the national UAOC that found itself, but also other — and no longer "nationalist" — churches, which likewise suffered destruction and liquidation, following the liquidation of the UAOC first and foremost, so that before the Second World War in 1939, there was no longer a single active Orthodox bishop of any jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in all of Ukraine.

In the light of these indisputable historical facts, the historian cannot give credence to claims of "self-liquidation" of the UAOC, even from such eyewitnesses and contemporaries of that "self-liquidation" as Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky of Kharkiv, who, already in the position of Metropolitan of the UAOC and Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Church Rada in Kharkiv (from December 1930), informed the church leadership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the USA and Canada about the Extraordinary Sobor of the UAOC in Kyiv of January 28-29, 1930 as follows:

"Due to the non-church activity in the Church and the use of its governing organs for political purposes, as testified at the SVU trial by V. M. Chekhivsky, K. I. Tkach, and others, not only was work rendered impossible, but a real threat arose to the very existence of our Church. The Slavianshchyna [Russian-oriented church] rose against us with renewed hatred and unconcealed malicious glee. The believing people began to lose faith in our church word; some parishes began departing to the Slavic Church. We heard the reproach of the believing Ukrainian people: where have we been led, to whom shall we go now? The Slavs rejoiced

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at our difficult situation and shamelessly defamed us and our Church before the people in every way. The Church, after the testimony of V. M. Chekhivsky and others, had nothing with which to justify itself. What was to be done? To wait for liquidation from outside and thereby finally demonstrate before all that the Ukrainian Church was not a Church but a political organization? We prayed to God and decided: the Church must be saved. There was one life-saving remedy under all conditions — the self-liquidation of the church organization, that organization which, according to the testimony of the leading members of the Church themselves, had been used for non-church purposes. Such was the will of the entire Church, which convened (?) the Extraordinary Sobor, which itself, under the honorary chairmanship of His Most Honorable Metropolitan Mykola, after the report of the VPCR Chairman Archpriest L. Yunakiv, unanimously expressed and unanimously ratified the decision: in the name of the life of the Church, to liquidate the governing organs of the UAOC. This meant that the following were liquidated: the VPCR, the District Church Radas, and the spiritual leadership of the Church by the Metropolitan and bishops. The parishes remained in existence, unorganized among themselves, without leadership, and their parish councils continued to function. The Metropolitan and bishops remained to serve and work within the bounds of their cathedral parishes. Thus, it was not by order of the Communist Government, as was reported in Ekklesia, but the Church itself that liquidated its non-church organization. An information notice about the resolution of the Extraordinary Sobor was sent to all parishes, signed by His Most Honorable Mykola and the Presidium of the VPCR"... (From the letter of Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky, Chairman of the VPCR, to Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych, dated August 5, 1931, No. 81. Emphasis ours).

Clearly, to save the Church through the liquidation of the Church itself is hardly the kind of wisdom one would commit to writing unless either directly ordered by the Communist government or certain that government organs would read what was written for brethren across the ocean. In this connection, one must again recall that the trial of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, during which the testimony of "the leading members of the UAOC themselves" supposedly revealed the non-church, political activity of the UAOC, took place in March-April 1930 — that is, already after the Extraordinary Sobor of the UAOC in January 1930, whose liquidation decisions were supposedly influenced by the SVU trial.

After the January 1930 Sobor of the UAOC, which under GPU terror and on the latter's orders dissolved the UAOC as a church-religious organization with the internal structure and governance adopted at the Sobor of 1921, the churches in UAOC parishes were not closed. The clergy, including the bishops, at parish churches remained as "servants of the cult." What the church life of the UAOC actually looked like in 1930, shattered as an organized body of the Church and reduced to liturgical gatherings in parishes that still had a "servant of the cult," we unfortunately have no data. Only eyewitnesses could have provided such information. It is understandable that the liquidation

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of the organs of church governance, the cessation of episcopal service in the UAOC (who was to ordain priests?) immediately had a disintegrating effect on church life, even in its cells — the parishes. It caused panic locally even without the terror that the GPU had launched against the clergy who had supposedly been left at their work as "servants of the cult." And when the frenzy of terror went further, the situation became impossible. In May of that same year 1930, Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky himself was arrested by the GPU and taken to a political isolator in the city of Yaroslavl in Muscovy. Arrests of priests that had begun in 1929 were carried out en masse. How could one expect active resistance in the parishes of the faithful when God's temples in the villages were being desecrated, closed, and destroyed?

Thus, under the ruthlessly cruel assault of the godless Soviet government upon the UAOC in 1930, after the liquidation of this Church's governing organs in January 1930, it is not surprising that by the end of that year 1930, only about 300 parishes of the UAOC remained — a Church which before the GPU-arranged Extraordinary Sobor of January 28-29, 1930 had, as stated above, 22 church districts containing certainly more than a thousand parishes.

After the destruction of the UAOC throughout 1930, at the end of December of that same year, there came an unexpected change in the Soviet government's position toward the liquidated UAOC. The bishops who still remained at liberty were permitted to convene a new "extraordinary sobor" and to restore the UAOC — no longer calling it Autocephalous — in its governance with a metropolitan at its head. About this second "extraordinary" sobor, which took place on December 9-12, 1930, we know even less than about the liquidation sobor of January 1930. In what composition it took place, we do not know. In his letter to Fr. Mayevsky dated June 5, 1933, Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky writes about this sobor that "at it, the Kharkiv Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky was elected Metropolitan, who styles himself 'of Kharkiv and All Ukraine.' Kyiv has already ceased to be the age-old center of the Ukrainian Church. The All-Ukrainian Church Rada has also been transferred to Kharkiv and consists, it seems, only of the Metropolitan-chairman and two priests — a treasurer and a secretary. In each eparchy (there seem to be seven eparchies now), the Eparchial Rada also consists of the bishop and two priests. (In Kyiv — Archbishop Maliushkevych as chairman, now imprisoned, Archpriest Botvynenko as secretary, and priest Khrypko as treasurer). Of all the parishes in Ukraine, no more than 200 remain, they say" (in 1933)...

In explanation of this reversal in the Soviet government's policy toward the UAOC, Metropolitan Lypkivsky in his memoirs offers the following thoughts: "The parishes found themselves (after the January 1930 sobor) free from all control, except for the usual GPU agents in every Soviet organization — free from all church authority. I even welcomed such a condition for the Ukrainian parishes: in such a state they could best prepare themselves for the creation, at the right time, of a truly church-wide, truly conciliar self-governing leadership. But the GPU quickly reversed course. Indeed, at a time when the Bolshevik government permeates all its institutions with the strictest centralization, introduces 'one-man management' in all other establishments, and fears all group activity above all else, the Ukrainian parishes found themselves in an anarchic state, became separate independent little groups of people — and moreover in the matter most suspicious

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to the Bolsheviks — the religious matter. And so in December 1930, the GPU convenes a second 'extraordinary sobor' and on it corrects its mistake... in order to have in its hands certain organs and certain persons responsible for the deathly quiet of the Ukrainian Church" (Op. cit., pp. 219-220).

A second hypothesis in explanation of the GPU's reversal regarding the restoration of the organization of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is offered by Metropolitan Lypkivsky at the end of his memoirs: "Perhaps the GPU was also influenced by the change in the Polish state's attitude toward the Ukrainian Church in its own state. There are rumors that Poland recognized a Ukrainian Church within its borders and consecrated (?) a bishop for it — Polikarp Sikorsky. Parishes of Soviet Ukraine deprived of bishops could have looked toward a Ukrainian bishop in Poland"... (Ibid., p. 221). This hypothesis has no basis. The Polish government in the restored Poland never recognized a separate Ukrainian Church within its borders. Most importantly, the Soviet government restored the organization of the UAOC at the end of 1930, while the consecration of Archimandrite Polikarp as bishop, vicar of Lutsk, took place in 1932. It is true that Ukrainians had sought the consecration of a Ukrainian bishop in Poland even before that, and at the Lutsk church assembly of June 5-6, 1927, over which the author of this work had the honor of presiding, the candidacy of Archimandrite Polikarp for the episcopate was put forward first; news of this evidently reached Kyiv. But at that time, the realization of Ukrainian aspirations in the Orthodox Autocephalous Church in Poland was still far off. At the Lutsk church assembly, there were speakers who looked in the opposite direction — toward the Ukrainian bishops in Kyiv, threatening to seek hierarchs there for themselves in case of dissatisfaction with the decisions of the assembly within the bosom of the Orthodox Church in Poland. But these threats were entirely unrealistic, while Archimandrite Polikarp had been isolated by the authorities from the Ukrainians by being transferred from his position as rector of the cathedral in the city of Volodymyr-Volynsky to Belarus, receiving an appointment as abbot of the Zhyrovytsi monastery.

It seems to us that the first conjecture expressed by Metropolitan Lypkivsky — about the Soviet government's desire, through the restoration of centralized authority in the UAOC, to have persons responsible for the life of the Church — is quite plausible. It is also possible that, having quickly overstretched in the persecution of the Church — to which the free press abroad had reacted — the Bolsheviks decided for propaganda purposes to somewhat ease off and deceive, as they had done many times before, about "freedom of religion" in the USSR. But more important for us here is the question: did the restoration of organized governance of the UAOC — even in a greatly simplified and curtailed form — and the election of Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky as Metropolitan of the UAOC bring about any revival in the church life of the UAOC, which had so terribly declined in 1930 under the blows of Soviet government persecutions, to "about 300

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parishes," as eyewitnesses attest? (Archpriest D. Burko, "From the Book of Genesis of the Ukrainian Church," Ridna Tserkva [Native Church], no. 1, 1954, p. 8). We do not have documentary evidence to illuminate the state of the UAOC during the time of Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky of Kharkiv's leadership. It is characteristic that in the work of one of the eyewitnesses, Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky of the UAOC is not even called Metropolitan. Instead, it is said of him that he "occupied the episcopal cathedra in Chernihiv, and later, from December 1930, in Kharkiv" — when in fact he had been Archbishop in Kharkiv since 1927, on which cathedra he was elected Metropolitan of the UAOC. Into such "disfavor" Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky has somehow fallen in the work of Archpriest Mytrofan Yavdas, The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church: Documents for the History of the UAOC, Munich, 1956 (see p. 73).

After the restoration of the UAOC organization, 7 eparchies were established, but apart from — one must assume — the Kharkiv eparchy, which was led by Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky, and the Kyiv diocese, which was under the leadership of Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych, it remains unknown to us which 5 other dioceses there were and who served as their bishops. In Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's letter to Fr. Mayevsky of June 5, 1933, we read: "Currently only 7 bishops are working, and several (Mikhnovsky, Shyrai, Samborsky) serve as parish priests. As you can see, the condition of the Ukrainian Church in Ukraine is very grave; moreover, no periodicals or books are published, and no church life is to be heard"...

Archpriest Demyd Burko in his essays "From the Book of Genesis of the Ukrainian Church," published in the journal Ridna Tserkva (quarterly of the Supreme Church Administration in exile), provides valuable information about the state of the UAOC in Ukraine in the 1930s, but unfortunately those memoiristic essays contain sparse factual historical material from the life of the UAOC in those times. "In 1931 and 1932," writes Fr. Burko, "the planned destruction of the Church in Ukraine and indeed throughout the entire USSR seemed to quiet down, possibly due to indignation in Europe. The Soviet press began to write more frequently that the government, it claimed, was not persecuting the Church but merely permitting free anti-religious propaganda, and that the liquidation of parishes and the demolition of churches was being carried out 'by the will of the working people.' The press was silent about the exile and martyrdom of clergy; only occasionally were brief notices given that such-and-such a bishop had been arrested 'as a counter-revolutionary.' But the official temporary relaxation of Soviet oppression of the Church did not hinder the activists of anti-religious propaganda in the localities. Any one of them could terrorize priests and even deprive them of life; everyone had the right to abuse sacred objects and demolish churches without being held accountable for these crimes. Such incidents were very numerous"... (Ridna Tserkva, no. 1, 1954, p. 9).

As is evident, the official relaxation of oppression of the Church in general — that is, from the central authorities — by no means signified a relaxation of oppression locally, where hooliganism and utter lawlessness

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toward the Church and its servants prevailed, combined with impunity from the authorities, since hooliganism and murders were perpetrated, it was said, "out of devotion to the cause of building socialism," whose greatest enemies were supposedly, in the localities, the "priests" together with the kulaks. Such moods and such tendencies of the Soviet government could obviously not contribute to a lessening of fear or a revival of UAOC church life, notwithstanding the restoration of its organizational governance. Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky appointed, for example, a church solemnity in the city of Pereiaslav (Poltava region) in the Mazepa Cathedral on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, July 7 (new style), 1931, in commemoration of the Orthodox sexton Danylo Kushnir, martyred by the Uniates in 1766 (see Vol. III of this work, p. 198). To this solemnity, announced among the people, the Metropolitan and 4 bishops were to come: Archbishop Yuriy Mikhnovsky, Bishop Volodymyr Samborsky, Bishop Konon Bei, and Bishop Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky. It is inconceivable that Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky did not inform the authorities in Kharkiv about this solemnity and did not receive their consent.

"But the solemnity did not take place," writes Fr. D. Burko. "The GPU did not allow Archbishop Yuriy Mikhnovsky and Volodymyr Samborsky to leave Kyiv; Bishops Konon Bei and Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky, who had arrived the day before the feast, were ordered by the local GPU to leave Pereiaslav immediately, and Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky was forbidden to serve and to preach. Only 5 priests served, without a procession" (Ridna Tserkva, no. 4, 1954, p. 6). The Kharkiv GPU later "apologized" to Metropolitan Pavlovsky and blamed its regional departments; but such governmental "policy" toward the Church and religion could no longer deceive with "freedom of faith" either the bishops, the clergy, or the faithful.

Thus the historian, on the basis of even the scant information about the church life of the UAOC in the 1930s, can come only to the conclusion that the restoration of UAOC church governance in December 1930 did not halt the oppressions, did not dispel the atmosphere of fear, and the life of the UAOC continued to fade. This was all the more so because death by starvation from the end of 1932 through the summer of 1933 engulfed peasant Ukraine, claiming millions of victims. In 1933, "the Paschal joy, so exalted here since the times of Holy Prince Volodymyr, did not shine in the city of Kyiv," recounts an eyewitness, "only black sorrow shrouded it. On the streets, it was not pilgrims who thronged — those who in the thousands in these days, and throughout the entire summer, had once gathered in Kyiv — but wretched 'kolkhoznyky,' swollen from hunger, whom the visible specter of death had driven here in search of bread"... (Archpriest D. Burko, Ridna Tserkva, no. 23, 1956, p. 6). Even the Christian desire of the Church's pastors to somehow help the victims of the terrible famine provoked, on the contrary, fury and persecution from the Soviet government. Archbishop of Kyiv Konstantyn Maliushkevych was arrested for addressing the people in St. Sophia Cathedral: "Give, brothers and sisters, a morsel of bread to the hungry. And there are many of them"... In this, the authorities suspected "anti-Soviet

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propaganda," because "in the USSR there is no famine and there cannot be." The Archbishop was locked in prison, where he remained through the Christmas season of 1932–33 (Ibid., no. 21, p. 5). On Pascha 1933, after the procession and the blessing of paschal breads (paskhy), parish sisters in St. Sophia Cathedral distributed to the starving the blessed bread and painted eggs donated by the faithful. On account of this, on the second day of Pascha, Archbishop Yuriy Mikhnovsky was summoned to the GPU, where official Portnov threatened him that St. Sophia Cathedral would be closed if "churchmen engage in matters that are not their business." And when the Archbishop dared to point out that helping the unfortunate is a Christian duty, Portnov began shouting that "in the USSR there are no unfortunate people." To the Archbishop's remark that during that night three people had died of hunger near St. Sophia Cathedral, the representative of the authorities replied: "Those who die are those we don't need"... (Fr. D. Burko, Op. cit., no. 23, 1956, p. 6). When such things were said about the masses of physical laborers of the village, what value in the eyes of the godless could the life of "servants of the cult" have?

The physical extermination of the clergy throughout all of Ukraine — with Stalin's delegation at the beginning of 1933 of the "viceroy," dictator of Ukraine P. Postyshev; with the transition of these times into the even more terrible era of the "Yezhovshchyna" [the Great Terror] throughout the USSR — assumed unprecedented proportions. Behind the formal preservation of the existence of Orthodox churches of various jurisdictions, their actual destruction proceeded through the demolition of holy sites, hierarchy, and clergy. Fr. Heyer collected data on how the bishops and clergy of the so-called "Synodal Ukrainian Church" (the "Renovationists," after they had been used in the struggle between churches) were destroyed, and how the so-called "Ukrainian Exarchate" of the Moscow Patriarchate under the jurisdiction of the locum tenens of the Patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Sergiy Starogorodsky, was also liquidated — notwithstanding the fact that Metropolitan Sergiy had, by his declaration of July 16/29, recognized and entered into collaboration with the Soviet government (Fr. Heyer, Op. cit., pp. 114–129).

"In the Great Russian regions," writes Fr. Heyer, "even in the times of the 'Yezhovshchyna,' there still remained the top of the Patriarchal Church hierarchy in the person of Sergiy Starogorodsky, locum tenens of the Patriarchal throne. In individual centers, diocesan bishops remained in office, and around them a thin wreath of legally registered communities, especially in Moscow and Leningrad. But the Ukrainian Exarchate was liquidated completely" (p. 126). Therefore, one can only in mockery characterize the position of locum tenens Metropolitan Sergiy as a "dictatorship of the first bishop," as we encounter in Russian church historians (Prof. I. M. Andreev, A Brief Survey of the History of the Russian Church from the Revolution to Our Days, 1952, p. 76).

The UAOC was liquidated in Ukraine first. Already in 1933, as we cited from the letter of Metropolitan Lypkivsky, according to rumors that reached him, there were no more than 200 parishes of the UAOC. Several times, the GPU frightened the parish of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv that

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it would be closed, and its rector Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych was continually arrested. It is unclear whether during those years of his service to the Kyiv Church he was more often at liberty or in prison. In 1934, he was forced to cease his archpastoral and pastoral service. Archbishop Yuriy Mikhnovsky, who carried out the duties of rector of St. Sophia during Archbishop Maliushkevych's imprisonments, characterized the state of the St. Sophia parish and of the Church in general in an address to the people in the cathedral on January 8, 1933: "Our parish is no longer able to pay state taxes. The clergy complain that it is extraordinarily hard for them, but what can I do? The cathedral treasury is empty; circumstances beyond our control are stronger than our capabilities... From other parishes in the provinces, sad news arrives ever more frequently. We all bear a heavy cross... One can only say with the words of the psalm: 'My soul languishes from sorrow; strengthen me, O Lord, according to Thy word'... And tears glistened in the archpastor's eyes" (Archpriest D. Burko, Ridna Tserkva, no. 21, 1956, p. 6).

When Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych had already ceased his service, Archbishop Yuriy Mikhnovsky was summoned to the Kyiv GPU in February 1934; there he was informed that the authorities had decided to close St. Sophia Cathedral; on the eve of the Presentation of the Lord (February 15), it was already sealed. Notices appeared in the Kyiv newspapers that St. Sophia Cathedral was being converted by the authorities into a "state preserve." In September 1926, the territory of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra had been declared a "State Cultural-Historical Preserve," in which an "All-Ukrainian Museum Town" was established, but at that time this was done "on the initiative of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, which hoped by this means to preserve the historical monuments on the Lavra's territory" (N. Polonska-Vasylenko, Op. cit., p. 24). Now, when the destruction of the Museum Town had already been carried out, its director P. P. Kurinny had been arrested, and the Lavra had been converted into an Anti-Religious Museum in 1933 (Ibid., p. 26), one must think that the conversion of St. Sophia Cathedral by the Soviet authorities into a "state preserve" was done not for any scholarly purposes but exclusively for anti-religious ones. Moreover, it was once again plundered. "Sometime at the beginning of March (1934)," recounts Fr. D. Burko, "sad curiosity led me to the St. Sophia grounds. The southern doors of the cathedral, I see, are open. Before me is a horrifying scene: the main altar is empty; the altar table, stripped bare, stands to the side; the royal gates, which were silver, wrought, of artistic workmanship — a gift of Hetman Ivan Mazepa — are gone (confiscated); the floors have been dug up all the way down to Yaroslav's original floor, above which over the course of 900 years three more layers had accumulated; beside the portal doors lies a large pile of vestments, phelonia, and other garments of the clergy, coverings from icons, and so forth"... (Ridna Tserkva, no. 38, 1959, p. 8).

The Ukrainian parish of St. Sophia, which since 1919 — with the exception of the time of Denikin's rule in Kyiv — had had use of St. Sophia Cathedral, was now compelled, under this Bolshevik assault upon

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the Church, to seek a house of God for itself in Kyiv, with the additional restriction that this church could not be in the upper part of Kyiv, but on the Podil. This church became the Dormition Cathedral on the Podil, built in the first half of the 12th century by Kyivan Prince Mstyslav Volodymyrovych, son of Volodymyr Monomakh. This ancient Dormition Church on the Podil also became the cathedral of Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky of the UAOC, when before Pascha 1934, Metropolitan Pavlovsky moved, by order of the Soviet government, from Kharkiv to Kyiv. This move was connected with the transfer of the capital of the Ukrainian SSR from Kharkiv to Kyiv. Transferring the central institutions of state authority to Kyiv, the Communists ordered the remnants of the centers of church authority to move to the capital as well. The Exarch of the Patriarchal Church, Metropolitan Konstantyn Dyakiv, also moved to Kyiv, where in October 1937 he was arrested and shot; he was the last Patriarchal exarch in Ukraine before the Second World War (Protopriest M. Polsky, Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 88).

The Dormition Cathedral on the Podil was not long the cathedral of Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky, for already in 1935 this holy site of deep antiquity was destroyed by the godless government. For some time more in that year 1935, Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky served in the Church of St. Nicholas Prytysky, but in June 1935 this church, too, was locked and sealed by the GPU. The final liquidation of the UAOC in Ukraine before the Second World War came in 1936, when in May of that year Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky of the UAOC was arrested — apparently in Cherkasy, where he had been forced to move from Kyiv — and after his arrest was exiled to Kazakhstan. In those same years of 1936–37, the bishops who were still "at liberty" were also arrested: Yuriy Mikhnovsky, Volodymyr Samborsky, Konon Bei, Oleksander Chervinsky, and Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky. The same fate befell those priests of the UAOC who still remained individually at their parishes. With the onset of the "Yezhovshchyna," they began to "expose" even those priests who had en masse left the priesthood from 1930, whether or not they had renounced their rank. These former clergy had fled from persecutions from villages to cities, from one city to another, taking up work at factories and plants. The "exposed" were driven for their past church work — just like those who were caught still at this work — to Siberia, the Solovetsky Islands, the White Sea Canal, Kazakhstan, and the like; or they were left to rot without exile in prisons and "isolators," or were dealt with on the spot...

The year 1937 was the year of liquidation of the Orthodox Church in general — of various jurisdictions — in Ukraine, and of the appearance on its territory of the illegal (catacomb) Orthodox Church (Friedrich Heyer, Op. cit., pp. 124–129). Archpriest D. Burko recounts that on the Paschal night of 1938 (the narrator was then still a layperson), he went to the Paschal service in Poltava far beyond the city limits to the St. Macarius Church, which was one of only two churches in all of Poltava region still not closed (the other still existed in Romny). There, a bishop and six priests were to serve — all that remained in Poltava and its environs. A sea of

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people had gathered; bundles and baskets with paschal breads (paskhy) and painted eggs for blessing gleamed white in abundance. But... at the gates of the churchyard, two passenger automobiles already stood, and a third — a cargo truck — with four militiamen. A minute or two later, the crowd stirred; five NKVD officers lead out of the church six priests, a deacon, and a frail elderly bishop. The bishop, in an elevated but sorrowful voice, greets the assemblage: "Christ is Risen!" — "Truly He is Risen!" responds a chorus of voices, mostly women's, in a soulful wail... The light in the church goes out, the doors are locked and sealed... Several women — likely priests' wives — weep as they bid farewell to the arrested. The cargo truck, flanked by the square of militiamen, moves off. Behind it, the other two glide softly. The people disperse in silence, carrying home the unblessed food that anyone could prepare at that time under the conditions of the "happy and joyful life," when even bread was hard to obtain.

Those arrested in Poltava on that Paschal night, not permitted to conduct the Paschal service, were Bishop Afanasiy Lebedyntsev of the Patriarchal Church, four priests of the same church, and two priests of the UAOC. "No organized jurisdiction existed any longer at that time," writes Fr. Burko; "these clergymen were then united by a common bitter fate, and above all by their faith and the Paschal service"... (Ridna Tserkva, no. 16, 1956, pp. 7–8).

Thus, from 1936 there was no longer in the UAOC in Ukraine a single bishop active in his episcopal service. We have no information as to whether by 1937 any parishes remained that belonged in Ukraine to the UAOC and in which services were conducted in the living Ukrainian language. We have heard that there was supposedly a single such parish in the city of Mohyliv-Podilsky, but who served there is unknown.

We conclude our scant information about the liquidation years in the life of the UAOC in Ukraine with equally insufficient information about the fate of the UAOC episcopate, data on whose composition and personnel from 1921 to 1927 inclusive we have provided in subsection 4 of Section II. The scarcity of our information about the fate of the Ukrainian Orthodox hierarchy of 1921 is explained, in our view, not so much by insufficient attention to the figures on the national-church field as above all by that terrible terror which, like a thick fog, enveloped Ukraine under Communist rule. A spiritual personage — one of high authority — whom, among others, we asked to provide what was known about the fate of the UAOC bishops, expressed regret at being unable to furnish "precise data," for everyone then lived in fear of being labeled an "accomplice" — hence "silence about everything and before everyone." An illustration of such testimony: a priest who had played a prominent role in the life of his UAOC church district, serving as chairman of the District Church Rada, was returning from exile — having served his nine years from September 1929 — through Kyiv. In Kyiv, he entered a church on Solomianka (according to the account of Protopriest M. Polsky, the Solomianka-Protection Church was then already the cathedral of the Patriarchal exarch, Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 168) during the service and stood

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with the cantors on the kliros to sing. There were those who knew him and were sympathetically disposed. But when he carelessly mentioned that he was returning from exile, he was left alone on the kliros. Everyone scattered. Thus — "rumors circulated," which are often transmitted in the memoirs and letters of Metropolitan Lypkivsky as well, but "to verify," to inquire — and especially for a person who had returned, by God's mercy, from exile, from prison — would mean inviting suspicion upon oneself once again...

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, after the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927 "removed from him the burden of metropolitan service," lived for two years in Kyiv in his previous residence (14/2 Korolenko Street), and in October 1929 had to move to his sister's on the outskirts of Solomianka (46/14 Mstyslav Street). In a letter to Fr. Mayevsky dated April 3, 1933, the Metropolitan wrote: "Since settling on Solomianka, I have almost never been to Kyiv; I live as a veritable anchorite, rarely even appearing on the street. I have no relations whatsoever with any of the current church leaders; I have not once met with any of them during the entire time; no one comes to see me, and I go to no one, and therefore about the state of the Church in Ukraine I am no better informed here, on Solomianka, than you there, in America"... As from this letter, so from two others to Fr. Mayevsky (dated June 5 and July 3 of the same year 1933), it is evident that the Metropolitan suffered grievous poverty the entire time, and the assistance of 10 dollars through the bank for "Torgsin," converted to gold-backed rubles, made it possible to receive products at the "Torgsin," with which one could live an entire month. "With joy and gratitude," writes the Metropolitan to Fr. Mayevsky, "I accept your promise to send me monthly aid of at least 5 dollars; this truly would be a great support and easing of life for me" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 6, 1958, pp. 8–11). Fr. Burko also recounts his accidental meeting in a Kyiv streetcar with Metropolitan Lypkivsky in 1933, during which "the suffering Metropolitan complained that he was in dire poverty, that there were no means of existence (he lived on Solomianka with his sister, who earned a living through hard labor, but those earnings were meager). 'And the worst thing oppressing me is the horrifying reality,' he said, 'the soul never ceases to ache'"... (Ridna Tserkva, no. 31–32, 1957, p. 8).

In the first years after his removal from the metropolitan's cathedra, the Metropolitan also wrote the "History of the Ukrainian Church," Section VII of which, under the heading "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church" (and not "The Revival of the Church in Ukraine," as the publishers of this section distorted it at the Basilian Fathers' printing press — Toronto, 1959, as if there had been no Church in Ukraine before 1917) — became the fundamental source for the history of the UAOC. We shall tell in greater detail about the fate of this work of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky in the bibliography section of this book.

Until 1938, for 10 years, even during the judicial proceedings against the SVU, when the GPU tried to accuse the entire UAOC of participation in the SVU

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organization, the GPU organs did not dare to touch Metropolitan Lypkivsky, evidently having no materials for this. But during the Yezhov terror, the Communists did not leave at liberty even the 74-year-old elder Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky; he was arrested by the NKVD in February or March (sources differ) of 1938. After the Metropolitan's arrest, "there was no information about his fate; the NKVD did not respond to inquiries" — so writes Archpriest M. Yavdas (Op. cit., p. 46). Fr. D. Burko, on the other hand, states that after the arrest of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky in March 1938, he was transported to the far north (Ukr. Visti — Neu-Ulm, March 25–28, 1954). The date of Metropolitan Vasyl's death — supposedly at Vorkuta on April 28, 1938 — was given as an established fact in the article "Reminiscences of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky" in the Yeparkhialnyi Visnyk, the quarterly of the Eparchial Rada of the UAOC in Australia (January–March 1957), by A. S. (Archbishop Sylvestr?). However, this information is given without reference to sources from which it originates, although the author of the reminiscences was asked about the source of this information (Ridna Tserkva, no. 30, 1957, "Is the Date of Metropolitan Vasyl's Death Really Known?"). Thus, beyond the fact of Metropolitan Vasyl's arrest by the Communist government in February or March 1938, we have no further reliable information about his fate. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church prays for the repose of the soul of Metropolitan Vasyl, quite rightly considering that he, given both his age and the spiritual and physical torments in the clutches of the godless government, long ago passed to his rest.

Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky — for whom, the most modest man in his righteous life and pastoral service imbued with a truly Christian worldview, the position of Metropolitan of the Church came entirely unexpectedly — did not long occupy this position: only 2 years and 3 months, counting to the liquidation Sobor of the UAOC of January 28–29, 1930, after which he had to cease his activity as Metropolitan and was soon arrested. In the position of Metropolitan of the entire UAOC, Metropolitan Mykola was in particular the spiritual leader of 12 UAOC parishes in the city of Kyiv. In the very first months of his metropolitanate, Metropolitan Mykola visited a considerable number of UAOC parishes, traveled to Volyn, Poltava region, Chernihiv region, and Dnipropetrovsk, conducted several episcopal and pastoral conferences. As he himself said, he "had first and foremost to hear what the Church itself says about itself; he had to put his ear to it, to its heart, to its entire organism, and listen to it." And this process of learning — as, naturally, his previous familiarity with the church life of the UAOC on a smaller scale than the metropolitanate — gave Metropolitan Mykola material for an understanding of the true state of the UAOC, proceeding from which he charted further paths for the elevation of the internal life of the UAOC. Fortunately, his depiction of the state of the UAOC, which he called "both bad and good," his views and thoughts about the means of improving the life of the

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UAOC have been preserved in the Metropolitan's reports at the Minor Assembly of the VPCR of March 6–8, 1928 and at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR of May 29 – June 1, 1928. These reports were partly published in detailed summary, while the main one — "The Spiritual Leadership of the UAOC (and the Current State of the Church)" — was published in full in the VPCR organ Tserkva i Zhyttia, Nos. 1/6 and 2/7 for 1928. And from there we drew material, extraordinarily valuable for the historian, illuminating the direction in which church life of the UAOC was to go during the metropolitanate of Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky.

Metropolitan Boretsky saw the "bad state" of our Church in the fact that "among us there is little of Christ's spirit, of Christ's dispositions; everywhere distrust, enmity, and struggle reign" (Ts. i Zh., no. 7, p. 94); that the Church "is being seized by non-church dispositions," "an exaggeration of national emotions is always noticeable" (p. 95); that "we also have other deviations — non-observance of the church typikon and that willfulness that at times assumes threatening forms in connection with certain church services" (p. 95). "Idealistic clergy, cast into remote villages, are driven and beaten by the so-called 'right of conciliar governance,' which in people's understanding, from a precious gift of Christ, evil elements of our Church have turned into limitless willfulness" (no. 6, p. 38). In subsection 8, where we also discuss church preaching in the UAOC, we cite a longer extract from Metropolitan Boretsky's report, from which it is clear in what he saw the good state of the UAOC and how he called above all for the cultivation in the UAOC of a genuine Christian spirit, genuine Christian dispositions... Who knows whether the Christian ideology, genuine and pure, that Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky promoted in the spiritual leadership of the UAOC was not the cause, or one of the causes, both of the sudden liquidation of the UAOC's organization and of the Metropolitan's swift imprisonment after that liquidation? For it is only by the stereotype accepted among us that one can write that "after the SVU trial, M. Boretsky was accused of 'national chauvinism'" (Fr. Dr. Soloviy, Op. cit., p. 297). It is even laughable to speak of Metropolitan Boretsky as a chauvinist. And might not a genuine and pure Christian ideology be more dangerous to Communism than national chauvinism?

When exactly Metropolitan Mykola was arrested by the Communist government — the precise date has, unfortunately, been recorded by no one. M. Yavdas writes that he was "arrested by GPU organs in 1930" (Op. cit., p. 57); Fr. D. Burko says that the arrest of Metropolitan Mykola came soon after the Extraordinary Sobor of the UAOC held on January 28–29, 1930, and that (according to rumors) the Metropolitan was held for some time in strict isolation in the Kharkiv prison, and in the summer of that same year 1930 was transferred to the city of Yaroslavl to a political isolator (R. Tserkva, no. 4, 1953, p. 6). Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky in his letter to Fr. Mayevsky writes (June 5, 1933): "In the summer of 1930, Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky was exiled to Yaroslavl to a concentration camp, where he remains at present" (Op. cit., p. 10). Archpriest D. Burko further reports that "the fragile health of Metropolitan Mykola could not long withstand

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the superhuman conditions of the Soviet regime," and, as a former prisoner of the Yaroslavl political isolator told Burko in 1936, already in June 1933 it was known in the isolator that Metropolitan Mykola was no longer among the living. The news of his death reached Ukraine only in October 1933, and then Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky secretly celebrated a memorial service (panakhyda) for the repose of the soul of the Metropolitan-Martyr. Archpriest M. Yavdas gives a different account: "The Metropolitan served his sentence (for what?) in the Yaroslavl isolator. There he fell gravely ill from GPU abuses. Already ill, he was transferred to the Solovetsky Islands, and then, as a hopeless mental patient, was transferred to the Leningrad psychiatric hospital. The last news about the hopeless state of the Metropolitan's health reached Ukraine at the end of 1935" (Ibid.). From a prominent spiritual figure of the UAOC whose stay in exile on the Solovetsky Islands was precisely in those years (1930–1937), we have information that Metropolitan Mykola was not there; only Archbishop Orlyk was. About Metropolitan Mykola, that person had information that he was in the Yaroslavl isolator, fell ill there, and died in the Leningrad psychiatric hospital. This information, with the addition of the year of death as 1933, as in Burko (M. Yavdas informs arbitrarily: he lists, for example, among the bishops and church figures as many as 5 "doctors of theology," when among them there was not a single one with this academic title) — should, in our opinion, be accepted in the obituary of the blessed memory Metropolitan of the UAOC Mykola Boretsky.

Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky was, as we know, the spiritual leader of the Kyiv (rural) Church District and simultaneously deputy of the Metropolitan throughout the entire metropolitanate of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky until the Second Church Sobor of the UAOC. He labored greatly in translating liturgical books into the Ukrainian language (especially the Festal Menaion). He suffered much in misunderstandings, as deputy of the Metropolitan, with the Parish Rada of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. After the Second All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC, which elected as deputies of the Metropolitan Archbishops Yosyf Oksiuk and Konstantyn Maliushkevych, Archbishop Nestor — an archpastor deeply devoted to the church cause — remained, one might say, in a state of retirement, which he did not easily bear. He was materially destitute, as Metropolitan Mykola attests in his words: "And what kind of purely Christian spirit, what kind of purely Christian dispositions can we, my dear ones, speak of, when we are presently so poor in our Christian consciousness that we cannot even help with a piece of bread our ailing retired Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky, who in the exhaustion of his last strength has already taken to bed and possibly faces an even greater threat?" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 2/7, 1928, p. 95). Archbishop Nestor reposed in Kyiv on October 29, 1929. He was then "buried in Kyiv, with great honor from the Ukrainian believing populace, near the Cathedral of St. Sophia" (Fr. M. Yavdas, p. 54). But by March 1934, the tombstone on the grave of Archbishop

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Nestor Sharaivsky at the main apse of St. Sophia was no longer there — only a freshly paved-over spot (Fr. D. Burko, R. Ts., no. 38, 1959, p. 8).

Archbishop Oleksander Yareshchenko. After his arrest and exile to Turkestan in April 1926, from where he did not return to Ukraine, we have no reliable information about him to this day.

Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk at the 2nd Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927, after the removal of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky and the GPU's demand to immediately elect a new Metropolitan, was the Sobor's first candidate for the metropolitan cathedra of Kyiv, but he categorically refused. Archbishop Yosyf was then elected, after the election of Bishop Mykola Boretsky as Metropolitan, as the first deputy of the Metropolitan and to the VPCR Presidium as the UAOC's herald. He remained the spiritual leader of the Lubny District; whether in the last year of 1929 before the liquidation of the UAOC he moved to Poltava, where he had been invited (Ts. i Zh., no. 1/6, 1928, p. 36), we have no reliable information; probably so. It must regretfully be acknowledged that about the fate of this distinguished archpastor of the UAOC, who in his well-organized Lubny District enjoyed great love and full authority, we do not have adequate information. Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky in his letter to Fr. Mayevsky dated June 5, 1933, places Yosyf Oksiuk on the list of UAOC bishops who "renounced their rank and the Church and went into state employment" (Op. cit., p. 10). Fr. Heyer, citing "Notes on the History of Church Life in Poltava and the Poltava Diocese in the Period 1920–1934" by Fr. V. Kovalenko (manuscript), states: "Bishop Yosyf Oksiuk was excluded from the Orthodox hierarchy, returned to the lay state, and lived as a pious layman in the Tikhon Church in Poltava" (Op. cit., p. 109). M. Yavdas states: "Driven by the pressures of the Soviet government (Archbishop Oksiuk) to extreme poverty. Arrested by GPU organs in 1935. Spent long years in exile in Siberia" (Op. cit., p. 59). At the beginning of the 1950s, there was a rumor among the Ukrainian emigration that Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk had returned from exile and was serving as secretary to Archbishop Makariy Oksiuk of Lviv (Yosyf's brother), who was Metropolitan of the Orthodox Autocephalous Church in Poland and reposed on March 2, 1961 (see the photograph in Yedyna Tserkva, March–April 1958, New York).

Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych was the second candidate — after Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk — for the metropolitan cathedra at the 2nd All-Ukrainian Sobor in October 1927, but likewise declined and was elected by the Sobor as the second deputy of the UAOC Metropolitan and deputy Chairman of the VPCR Presidium. At the end of that same year 1927, the Kyiv District Church Sobor elected Archbishop K. Maliushkevych as its spiritual leader, a position he assumed after six years of leading the Uman Church District, one of the most fully organized and nationally aware (Ts. i Zh.,

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No. 1/6, 1928, p. 49). The activity and authority of Archbishop Maliushkevych both before the liquidation Sobor of January 1930 and after it — when, with the restoration of governance in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in December 1930, Archbishop Maliushkevych headed one of the 7 eparchies, the Kyiv one — drew upon him the hostility of the GPU, as evidenced by his multiple arrests (7 times by 1934). When he was at liberty, the Communist government deprived him of the right to conduct divine services and the right to travel outside Kyiv. These constant torments and the impossibility of carrying on church work forced Archbishop Konstantyn to cease his service in the Church, after which he worked in Kyiv as a proofreader at the printing press of the FZU (Factory-Workshop School). But during the "Yezhovshchyna," one night in 1937, Archbishop K. Maliushkevych was arrested; his further fate is unknown (Archpriest M. Yavdas, Op. cit., p. 61).

According to the account of Archpriest D. Burko, Archbishop K. Maliushkevych lived in Kyiv until the very German-Soviet war in 1941; in the first days of the war he was arrested, and upon the Bolsheviks' retreat from Kyiv was shot. The basis for this account was that in the newspaper Ukrainske Slovo in December 1941 (Kyiv), among those shot during the retreat of the Soviet army, "Archbishop Konstantyn" was named (without surname). There was no other Archbishop Konstantyn in Kyiv at that time. Thus "one must suppose" that this was Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych (Vidomosti Gen. Tserk. Upr. UAPC, 1958, no. 9–10, p. 8).

Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky of Kharkiv had from 1927 occupied the position of Archbishop of Kharkiv, serving as responsible editor of the UAOC organ Tserkva i Zhyttia, the publication of which from 1928 was assumed by the Kharkiv District Church Rada under his spiritual leadership. After the election of Archpriest L. Yunakiv as Chairman of the VPCR Presidium at the 2nd Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927, Archbishop Pavlovsky replaced him as the UAOC's legal consultant in the capital Kharkiv. In December 1930, when the Soviet government permitted the restoration of the organizational state of the UAOC, Archbishop Pavlovsky was elected Metropolitan of the Church with the title "Metropolitan of Kharkiv and All Ukraine"; he continued to reside in Kharkiv until 1934, when, with the transfer of the capital to Kyiv, he too was ordered to move to Kyiv, but in Kyiv, with St. Sophia having been taken from the UAOC, there was no longer even a church for the Metropolitan. Metropolitan Pavlovsky remained, however, at the performance of his duties to the very last days of the UAOC's existence in Ukraine, however futile those duties may already have been, and in 1936 he too was arrested by the NKVD and transported to Kazakhstan. The further fate of Metropolitan Pavlovsky remains unknown.

Archbishop Yuriy Shevchenko left the Poltava cathedra sometime at the end of 1927 or the beginning of 1928 (and not in 1929, as Fr. Burko states), for in the reports on the state of church districts at the Minor Assembly of the VPCR of March 6–8, 1928, the report on the Poltava District stated: "The Poltava Church has long lived without a bishop after the departure

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to Odesa of the Most Honorable Fr. Yuriy Shevchenko... Negotiations with the Most Honorable Fr. Petro Romodaniv on this matter (a bishop for the district) did not give Poltava the desired results, and now it places all its hope in the Most Honorable Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk" (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1/6, 1928, p. 36). On September 1, 1929, Archbishop Yuriy Shevchenko was arrested in Odesa; he was held in prison in strict isolation for over three months and tortured several times; then he was exiled to the Baikal-Amur concentration camps in Siberia for 8 years, and when those years ended in 1937, 10 more years of penal labor were added; after that there is no news of him (Archpriest D. Burko, Vidomosti Gen. Tserk. Upr. UAPC, no. 9–10, 1959, p. 4).

Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych held the cathedra in Vinnytsia, and after 1930, "following the forcible liquidation of the UAOC by the Bolsheviks, he was arrested and expelled from Ukraine" (Archpriest M. Yavdas). In Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's letter to Fr. Mayevsky dated June 5, Archbishop Krotevych stands first in the list of those who supposedly "renounced their rank and the Church and went into state employment." But in the same issue No. 6/9, 1958, of Tserkva i Zhyttia, the organ of the Ukrainian Orthodox Brotherhood named after Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, where this letter is published, there is also a biography of Archbishop Krotevych, which states that he was arrested in 1930 and expelled from Ukraine. And further: "There were rumors that he was exiled to the Caucasus, where he went about in his cassock under windows, begging for bread — until he perished in such destitution" (p. 3). According to other reports, Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych was exiled in 1931 to Siberia, and there were later rumors of his execution.

Archbishop Yuriy Mikhnovsky from Poltava region, where he served as rector in the village of Prokhorivka in the former Zolotonosha district, moved at the beginning of the 1930s to Kyiv. This was not in 1937, as Archpriest Yavdas writes (Op. cit., p. 70), for in 1931–34, as is evident from the accounts of Archpriest D. Burko ("From the Book of Genesis of the Ukrainian Church" in a series of issues of the UAOC organ in exile Ridna Tserkva), Archbishop Mikhnovsky lived in Kyiv and often substituted as rector of St. Sophia Cathedral for Archbishop K. Maliushkevych whenever the latter was deprived of his freedom. In Kyiv, Archbishop Yuriy lived supported by his son; in 1937, as the Archbishop's son attests, Archbishop Yuriy was arrested and that same year 1937 was shot in Kyiv (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1/10, 1959, p. 2).

Archbishop Stepan Orlyk — whether he was the spiritual leader of any church district at the time of his arrest in 1928 is difficult to establish. Among the spiritual leaders of the districts at the time of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR of March 6–8, 1928, Archbishop Orlyk was not present. After his arrest, he was exiled to the Solovetsky Islands. In 1930–33, an archpriest of the UAOC was there with him, who told us that on the Solovetsky Islands he met with Archbishop Orlyk, spoke with him, but never a word about church matters; they talked "without a shadow that we knew each other." There, Archbishop Orlyk worked as a medical assistant. Having served ten years in exile, Archbishop Orlyk arrived, as Archpriest Yavdas

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recounts, "to Zhytomyr in Ukraine, but there he was arrested and placed in a dark prison cellar. After two months in this cellar, he went blind; they led the blind man to interrogations for two months; nothing is known to anyone about his death" (Op. cit., p. 67).

Archbishop Feodosiy Serhiiev in 1928 was the spiritual leader of the Berdychiv Church District; after the liquidation Sobor of 1930, evidently no longer active as a clergyman, he lived privately in Poltava, but in 1936 was arrested all the same and exiled to Kolyma; his further fate is unknown.

Archbishop Antoniy Hrynevych, spiritual leader of the Balta-Pershotravnivka District, had very few parishes across three state districts, so that he did not even have a District Church Rada. His fate is little known. "They say he died in Ukraine in great destitution" (Archpriest Yavdas, Ibid., p. 80).

Bishop Yukhym Kalishevsky, spiritual leader for a long time of the Cherkasy (Shevchenkivka) District, was subsequently, after the arrest of Archbishop Shevchenko, for some time his successor on the cathedra in Odesa. Thereafter we encounter various versions of his fate: arrest supposedly in 1930 and exile to the north; arrest in 1936 and exile; residence after Odesa in Kyiv and work as an accountant in Bila Tserkva in 1937 — his further fate is unknown in all three versions. Bishop Yukhym Kalishevsky was "a distinguished, energetic" archpastor, and his Cherkasy District was "one of the finest units of the UAOC with a large number of parishes and a stable organization" (Ts. i Zh., no. 1/6, 1928, p. 38).

Bishop Volodymyr Samborsky, Bishop of Hlukhiv in 1928–29, after the liquidation Sobor of the UAOC in 1930, served for some time as spiritual leader of the Vinnytsia Church District (or already eparchy), whose Archbishop K. Krotevych had been arrested. In view of the Communist government's prohibition on his being the leader of the diocese, he subsequently served as rector of various parishes; he also tried in Kyiv, from where he originally hailed, and then participated in divine services at St. Sophia until its closing. In 1935 (or 1937) he was arrested and exiled; he returned from exile in 1942 and died shortly afterward, exhausted from his exile.

Bishop Mykolay Karabinevych, after Archbishop K. Maliushkevych's transfer to the position of spiritual leader of the Kyiv District, was, after some time, his successor on the Uman cathedra, having left Podillia, where he served as rector of a parish and temporarily led either the Mohyliv-Podilsky or Tulchyn districts. After the liquidation of the UAOC, he departed for Moscow, where his relatives were, and there in 1935 was arrested and shot by the Communist government.

Bishop Konon Bei, after spiritual leadership in the Pryluky Church District, became Bishop of Cherkasy, evidently after the transfer of Bishop Yukhym Kalishevsky of Cherkasy to Odesa. By

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order of the authorities, sometime after 1930, he had to leave Cherkasy and departed for Irkutsk. His further fate is unknown.

Bishop Oleksander Chervinsky was the spiritual leader of the Chernihiv-Nizhyn District (he was never on the cathedra in Cherkasy, as Fr. Yavdas states); in the 1930s, he was bishop in Vinnytsia (after Bishop Samborsky); the Vinnytsia diocese was liquidated around 1934. In the position of Bishop of Vinnytsia, Bishop Chervinsky was arrested; his further fate is unknown.

Bishop Yuriy Teslenko was the spiritual leader of the Bila Tserkva District until the end; in 1930 he was arrested and exiled to the north to concentration camps, where he spent 10 years and, completely exhausted and tubercular, was released. Fr. Heyer reports that at the time of the German army's entry, Bishop Yuriy Teslenko was working as a collective farm watchman near Voronezh (Op. cit., p. 109). From Voronezh, Bishop Yuriy Teslenko came to Kyiv, then visited Metropolitan Polikarp in Lutsk, but soon died of tuberculosis in Vinnytsia in 1943. The information in Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's letter to Fr. Mayevsky dated June 5, 1933, that "Bishop Teslenko renounced his rank and the Church and went into state service" (Ts. i Zh., no. 6(9), 1958, p. 10) was groundless.

Bishop Petro Romodaniv, after the 2nd All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927, at which he was not elected to the VPCR Presidium, does not appear to have held the position of spiritual leader of any church district, but he still participated in church life, as we see from his report delivered at the Great St. Nicholas Assembly of the VPCR in 1928 (Ts. i Zh., no. 2/7, 1928, p. 86). After the liquidation Sobor of the UAOC in January 1930, he departed from the Church, renounced his rank, and held a teaching position.

Bishop Maksym Zadvirnyak, Bishop of the Proskuriv District in Podillia, was arrested in 1930, exiled to the Solovetsky Islands, where he died.

Bishop Volodymyr Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky, before the Sobor of January 28–29, 1930, held the position of spiritual leader of the Tulchyn Church District in Podillia. He was arrested in 1931 and transported to the north; there is no further information.

Bishop Marko Hrushevsky remained a member of the VPCR Presidium even after the 2nd All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC; in 1928 he performed the duties of VPCR secretary, as is evident from the Minutes of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR in March 1928 (Ts. i Zh., no. 1/6, 1928, p. 47); he was a member of the Commission for the Investigation of the Life of the UAOC (Ts. i Zh., no. 2/7, 1928, p. 81); he lived in Kyiv in his own house; he fell ill with typhus and died in February 1930.

Bishop Yakiv Chulaivsky was a member of the VPCR Presidium elected at the 2nd Sobor of the UAOC in 1927, which was dissolved at the liquidation Sobor of January 1930; within this Presidium, he served as manager of the VPCR book chamber (Ts. i Zh., no. 1/6, 1928,

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p. 44). Subsequently, according to information in Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's letter to Fr. Mayevsky dated June 5, 1933, Bishop Chulaivsky "renounced his rank and the Church and went into state employment" (Ts. i Zh., no. 6/9, 1958, p. 10); according to the information of Archpriest Yavdas, however, he was arrested in 1931, exiled to Siberia, and died in exile (Op. cit., p. 79).

Archbishop Mykolay Pyvovariv evidently did not renounce his rank (see about this in subsection 4); in 1927 he assumed leadership of the Kamianets-Podilsky Church District. At the 2nd All-Ukrainian Church Sobor, he delivered a report on the topic "The Church in the State and Their Separation" (published in the UAOC organ Ts. i Zh., no. 1/6, 1928, pp. 25–31). In it he expressed entirely Orthodox thoughts — thoughts that could not have pleased the Communist government. For example: "The Church must, through the influence of its internal life, so master earthly life as to gradually transform even the state into the Church, so that the kingdom 'of this world' would melt under the rays of the church atmosphere of love into the Kingdom 'not of this world'" (p. 31). He remained on the Kamianets cathedra until his very arrest on August 27, 1929, when together with him 45 persons — priests and laypeople — were arrested. He spent 6 months in a solitary cell and was sentenced by a judicial troika to 10 years, then sent to Siberia together with others. From the transit penal prison in Mariinsk, Archbishop Mykolay was sent to the station Yurga, to an NKVD state farm where they raised chickens. He served 5 years there and, due to poor health, was released early. In Vinnytsia he suffered great poverty; he finally found work as a proofreader for a local newspaper, worked the night shift, was exhausted, and soon died in Vinnytsia, where he was also buried. In the Kamianets District Rada, during the time of Archbishop Pyvovariv's spiritual leadership, there was no friction or division; the Kamianets District was disciplined and strengthened (based on information from Protopresbyter O. Potulnytsky, a fellow prisoner of Archbishop Pyvovariv).

Bishop Hryhoriy Mozolevsky was elected to the position of parish rector in the village of Spaske in the Konotop region, as stated above (subsection 4 of Section II); after the 2nd Sobor of the UAOC, we have no data about him. Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky writes in his memoirs that Bishop Mozolevsky "departed from the cause" (Op. cit., p. 146). According to Archpriest M. Yavdas, he was arrested in 1936; his further fate is unknown.

Bishop Mykhail Maliarevsky does not appear to have been the spiritual leader of any of the UAOC church districts; Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky gives a very negative characterization of him in his memoirs (p. 144). He was, however, also in exile for 5 years, and when he returned already during the time of the German occupation, he refused to consider himself a bishop, and then Archbishop Nikanor in Kyiv appointed him (as a protopriest) to a church in the city of Vasylkiv in the Kyiv region.

Bishop Mykolay Shyrai was elected in 1928 as the spiritual leader of the Romny District; in 1933, according to information from

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Metropolitan Lypkivsky in his letter to Fr. Mayevsky, he was serving as a parish priest. His further fate is unknown.

Bishop Petro Tarnavsky — there is no reliable information about him; there were rumors that he was shot.

Bishop Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky was elected as the spiritual leader of the Dnipropetrovsk (Katerynoslav) Church District at the sobor of that district on February 22–28, 1928, to which he moved from Bila Tserkva, where he had spent a long time as a figure of the DKhTs. During the "Yezhovshchyna," he was arrested and transported to Kotlas; there is no further information.

The Ukrainian hierarchy of 1921 numbered 34 persons in total. Here we have provided information about the fate of 30 members of the UAOC episcopate in Ukraine under the Soviet regime. About three UAOC bishops — Hryhoriy Storozhenko, Pylyp Buchylo, and Yuriy Prokopovych — who abandoned their service and departed from the UAOC even before the 2nd Sobor of the UAOC in 1927, we have already spoken earlier. Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych, now Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the USA, has been carrying out his distinguished archpastoral service in the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in the United States of America and Canada since 1924, and in the history of those Churches — quite separate from the history of the UAOC in Ukraine — pages will be devoted to the activity of Metropolitan Ioan Teodorovych, who has remained, perhaps, the sole surviving member of the Ukrainian hierarchy of 1921.

All 32 bishops of the UAOC were consecrated during the metropolitanate of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky (Archbishop Feodosiy Serhiiev and Bishop Yuriy Prokopovych transferred to the UAOC from the Russian hierarchy); during the metropolitanates of Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky and Ivan Pavlovsky, there were no more episcopal consecrations in the UAOC.

When there were no longer bishops in the UAOC in Ukraine, that Church ceased to exist. For where there is only the flock and no God-established hierarchy, there is no Church (Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs, Article 10). Thus, one of the theses of UAOC ideology about the equality in church governance of all its members on the basis of electivity, regardless of position in the Church — whether bishop, priest, or layperson — because "in the Church before Christ, all are equal" — was disqualified by the very church life of the UAOC. Even in the short time of its existence in Ukraine, the UAOC demonstrated, as we have seen, the entire role of bishops in the life both of individual church districts and of that Church as a whole. Eternal is the Gospel truth: "I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered"... (Mark 14:27).

This truth was grasped and firmly held in the 1930s by the enemies of Christ and His Holy Church in their destruction of the archpastors and pastors of the Orthodox Church, to the point that before the Second World War, in 1939, there was no longer a single active bishop of any jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in all of Ukraine, and of priests — if any remained alive and at liberty who conducted divine services and administered the Holy Mysteries — they did so in secret.

We do not presume to judge which of the UAOC bishops, about whose fate under the Soviet regime we have provided such information as exists, and also which of the thousands of Orthodox priests who reposed under that regime, whose names the Lord alone knows — deserve the recognition of martyrdom or confessorship. We recall here the Apostolic words: "Who are you to judge another's servant? Before his own Lord he stands or falls... But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ" (Romans 14:4, 10).

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It is especially difficult to pronounce condemnation when one is conscious of the horrifying circumstances amid which these people lived and stood in service to the Church. This was a service that was dangerous because hated and persecuted by those in power, materially uncertain and impoverished, requiring heroic effort amid the unpunished lawlessness of anti-religious propaganda, and very often also from the ill-understood "conciliar governance" (sobornapravnist) by laypeople in the internal life of the UAOC.

Therefore, we cannot uncritically accept those condemnations of the UAOC episcopate and clergy found in the memoirs of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, published in 1959 under the heading "The Revival of the Church in Ukraine 1917–1930" by the Basilian Fathers' press of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Toronto — published with the purpose, evidently, not of sympathy for the "tragic fate" of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky and the "martyred path of the UAOC of V. Lypkivsky" — those are "crocodile tears" — but with the purpose of discrediting Ukrainian Orthodoxy in general, above all in the eyes of the Ukrainian people themselves. For on the basis of the work of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, which in the edition occupies two-thirds of the published book, there follows a 100-page "study" by Fr. Dr. M. Soloviy, OSBM, in which the author has endeavored to expand Metropolitan Lypkivsky's condemnations of bishops and priests to the point that the reader involuntarily asks: could such "venal" (p. 254) and "base types" (p. 292) "in the bosom of the UAOC at the service of the Bolsheviks" (p. 305) really have been building the National Orthodox Church of the Ukrainian people? On page 304, Fr. Soloviy lists the names of as many as 24 bishops, adding "and still others" — that is, almost the entire episcopate, it turns out, of the UAOC, whose "martyrdom" or "confessorship" he places under great doubt on the basis of "the history of the revival of the Ukrainian Church from the pen of V. Lypkivsky," even though the Bolsheviks "sentenced more than one of those bishops, imprisoned them, sent them to penal labor, or even tortured them to death," because "all the same, more than one of those bishops played an inglorious and sad role in the history of the UAOC's disintegration and its final liquidation" (p. 305).

Apart from the fact that Fr. Dr. Soloviy, in thus exploiting the subjective memoirs of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, forgets the legal principle audiatur et altera pars ("let the other side also be heard"), he has inserted into that list of bishops "questionable" as to "venality" or other sins names that Metropolitan Lypkivsky himself does not mention among the "venal," "immoral," "self-serving," and so forth — namely: Archbishop Antoniy Hrynevych, Bishops Yukhym Kalishevsky, Mykolay Karabinevych, Yuriy Teslenko, Konon Bei, and Oleksander Chervinsky. Is such defamation of church figures — and without any basis for it — honest?

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But can objective history not also recognize the merits — sometimes great ones — in the church life of the UAOC of those archpastors of the UAOC who fell into disfavor in Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's memoirs for one reason or another? For example, Archbishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych — a candidate for Metropolitan at the 2nd All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC, the most distinguished organizer and spiritual leader of church life in the Uman and then the Kyiv districts and in the entire UAOC in the positions of deputy to Metropolitan M. Boretsky and deputy chairman of the VPCR Presidium; Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky, who to the very end of the UAOC in Ukraine did what he could for the continuation of the life of that Church; Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych, a distinguished archpastor of the well-organized Vinnytsia Church District, a missionary of the UAOC in the city of Alma-Ata in Central Asia, a courageous apologist of Christianity (see his article "On the Question of the Religion of Christ" — Ts. i Zh., no. 4, 1927) — all three treated in the memoirs as supposed "servants of the government," yet repressed by that same government...

Archbishop Yuriy Mikhnovsky and the "worthless" Volodymyr Samborsky remained faithful to their UAOC to the end of their ability to serve it, even if only in the positions of parish rectors, and one was shot, the other died exhausted after years of hard penal labor. Even the "monstrosity, not a bishop" (in Metropolitan Lypkivsky, p. 145) Archbishop Mykolay Pyvovariv — even about him we read in the UAOC organ Tserkva i Zhyttia (no. 1/6, 1928, p. 37) how by "his capacity for work he puts on its feet" the previously disorganized Kamianets Church, and in 1929 he, together with priests — as one of them, Protopresbyter O. Potulnytsky, attests (letter dated December 3, 1947, to Metropolitan Polikarp) — "was dragged to the dungeons of the GPU," and then goes into exile, about Archbishop Pyvovariv's sojourn in which Metropolitan Lypkivsky himself writes in his letter to Fr. Mayevsky dated June 5, 1933.

Thus, while far from offering any panegyrics to UAOC church figures who did not earn them, while not sharing the unhealthy and often harmful manner in our historiography of legendary exaggeration and "incense smoke," we cannot, on the other hand, don the toga of a judge and pronounce unappealable verdicts. We cannot declare that this one "could not be a pastor and leader of the Church," that one was "a person without honor and conscience," another "an adventurer of the highest order," another "a Judas," "a Christ-seller." Nor can we accept that from the other side, this one was "a church revolutionary of the purest water," and yet another "an ardent social democrat who saw nothing beyond his socialism," and so on and so forth. One can only repeat again after the Apostle Paul: "Who are you to judge another's servant? Before his own Lord he stands or falls"...

Certainly, the great majority of those UAOC church leaders did not see "business" for themselves in the creation of a National Church of Christ among the Ukrainian people and were imbued with lofty ideas, or at least dreams, perhaps erring not a little in the course of their service, sometimes falling and rising again, under conditions incomparably difficult in history for the construction of spiritual religious

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life. And the Lord's judgment will sort out their intentions and deeds and render His all-righteous and just verdict, for "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints"...

Before us has passed an epic from the church-religious life of the Ukrainian people in the time of its national revival, in connection with the great revolution in the Russian Empire of 1917 and the creation of the Ukrainian State, when there also arose and developed a movement for the creation of a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church independent from the Russian Church. The main events of this movement occurred already in the times of the decline of Ukrainian statehood with the occupation of Ukraine by the Moscow-Communist government. The history of this movement, as presented by us in this work, deals almost exclusively with how this movement proceeded in its leading circles: the Church Sobors and their acts, the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada (VPCR), its Great and Small Assemblies, the activity of its Presidium, the episcopate and the position of priests, the inter-church standing of the UAOC. Such a character of the work is determined by the sources that we currently possess for the history of this movement.

As for the Ukrainian "common folk" (гущі народньої), Orthodox since St. Volodymyr, the historian here is very poor in sources from which one could draw detailed knowledge of how the people received this movement in their nearly thousand-year-old Church and how they reacted to it in their entirety — all the more so since this movement quickly collided with the assault upon the Church and religion in general by the godless state government in Ukraine and throughout the USSR. For it is one thing when this movement would have proceeded in its own Ukrainian State, and quite another under a foreign and atheistic government. Therefore, about "the voice of the entire people" in this matter — when a significant minority of them entered the UAOC — the conscientious historian refrains from speaking and asserting, especially when the process of making the Church independent and Ukrainizing it was suddenly and violently, with terror, cut short.

On this question, we can cite, at the conclusion of this part of our work, only one thing. When during the German-Soviet war of 1941-45, Ukraine was occupied by the Germans and the revival of the Church there became possible, the sad fact of the arrival from Western Volyn — which had been under Poland — to Eastern Ukraine of two hierarchies of the Orthodox Church (autocephalists and autonomists) for the work of mission most deeply and profoundly disturbed those people in Ukraine who had remained pious, and equally undermined the successes of the mission among those who wished to know God. Let us also recall here one of the theses from the report of Metropolitan Mykola Boretsky on "The Inter-Church Position of the UAOC" (this report was discussed in subsection 10): "The need to create a single Orthodox Church in Ukraine is a burning demand of the religious consciousness of each person." And in the resolution on this report of the Great Assembly of the VPCR of May 29 – June 1, 1928: "The UAOC prays and believes that the moment will come when the entire pious Ukrainian people who belong to Christ's Church will unite in one Holy Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church."

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Appendices

THE HIERARCHY OF THE UKRAINIAN AUTOCEPHALOUS ORTHODOX CHURCH in the Era of the Revival in Ukraine — 1921-1936.

Name Title Period Notes
Vasyl Lypkivsky Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine 1921–1927
Mykola Boretsky Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine 1927–1930 Previously Bishop of Haisyn (1922–1927)
Ivan Pavlovsky Metropolitan of Kharkiv and All Ukraine Dec. 1930–1936 Previously Bishop of Cherkasy, Chernihiv (1922–26), Archbishop of Kharkiv (1927–30)
Nestor Sharaivsky Archbishop of Kyiv (rural district) 1921–1927 Deputy Metropolitan
Oleksander Yareshchenko Archbishop of Lubny; of Kharkiv 1921–1926 Lubny (1921–23), Kharkiv (1923–26)
Ioan Teodorovych Archbishop of Podillia and Vinnytsia 1921–1924 Later Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the USA
Yosyf Oksiuk Archbishop of Kamianets, of Lubny 1922–1929
Konstantyn Maliushkevych Archbishop of Uman; of Kyiv 1922–1934 Uman (1922–27), Kyiv (1927–34)
Yuriy Shevchenko Archbishop of Skvyra; Poltava; Odesa 1922–1929 Skvyra (1922–24), Poltava (1924–27), Odesa (1928–29)
Konstantyn Krotevych Archbishop of Poltava; of Vinnytsia 1922–1930 Poltava (1922–24), Vinnytsia (1924–30)
Yuriy Mikhnovsky Archbishop of Chernihiv 1921–1937 Chernihiv (1921–22), without a church district (1923–37)
Stepan Orlyk Archbishop of Zhytomyr; of Berdychiv-Shepetivka 1921–1927 Zhytomyr (1921–?), Berdychiv-Shepetivka (1925–27)
Antoniy Hrynevych Archbishop of Balta 1923–1930
Feodosiy Serhiiev Archbishop of Pereiaslav, of Berdychiv 1924–1930
Mykolay Pyvovariv Archbishop, various cathedras; Kamianets-Podilsky 1922–1929 Brief tenures on various cathedras (1922–26), Kamianets-Podilsky (1927–29)
Yukhym Kalishevsky Bishop of Cherkasy; of Odesa 1922–1930 Cherkasy (1922–29), Odesa (1929–30)
Volodymyr Samborsky Bishop of Kaniv, Konotop, Bila Tserkva; of Hlukhiv 1923–1929 Various cathedras (1923–27), Hlukhiv (1928–29)
Mykolay Karabinevych Bishop of Mohyliv-Podilsky, Tulchyn; of Uman 1923–1930 Mohyliv-Podilsky/Tulchyn (1923–27), Uman (1928–30)
Konon Bei Bishop of Bohuslav, Pryluky-Romny; of Cherkasy 1922–1930 Bohuslav/Pryluky-Romny (1922–28), Cherkasy (1929–30)
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Name Title Period Notes
Oleksander Chervinsky Bishop of Konotop-Hlukhiv; Chernihiv-Nizhyn; Vinnytsia 1925–1934 Konotop-Hlukhiv (1925–26), Chernihiv-Nizhyn (1927–30), Vinnytsia (1930–34)
Yuriy Teslenko Bishop of Bila Tserkva 1925–1930
Petro Romodaniv Bishop of Lokhvytsia 1923–1927 Legal representative of the UAOC in Kharkiv (1923–26); Chairman of the VPCR Presidium (1926–27)
Maksym Zadvirnyak Bishop of Proskuriv 1923–1930
Volodymyr Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky Bishop of Pereiaslav, Kamianets; of Tulchyn 1922–1930 Pereiaslav/Kamianets (1922–27), Tulchyn (1927–30)
Marko Hrushevsky Bishop of Konotop, of Tarashcha 1922–1930 Member of the VPCR Presidium (1926–30)
Hryhoriy Mozolevsky Bishop of Konotop 1924–1930 Parish rectorship (1926–30)
Mykhail Maliarevsky Bishop 1921– Consecrated 1921; served in a parish; spent 5 years in exile; during German occupation did not consider himself a bishop; appointed to a parish in Vasylkiv
Mykolay Shyrai Bishop of Nizhyn; of Romny 1922–1930 Nizhyn (1922–24), Romny (1928–30)
Petro Tarnavsky Bishop; rector of St. Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv 1922–1924 Fell away from the UAOC in 1924, founding the Brotherhood of the DKhTs
Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky Bishop of Bila Tserkva; of Dnipropetrovsk 1921–1930 Bila Tserkva (1921–24), Dnipropetrovsk (1928–30)
Yuriy Prokopovych Bishop of Luhansk 1926 Joined UAOC from the Russian Church in rank of bishop (1926); soon fell away
Hryhoriy Storozhenko Bishop, Kyiv district 1921–1923 Consecrated 1921; abandoned his position in 1923
Pylyp Buchylo Bishop of Mykolaiv 1922–1923 After a year departed from the UAOC

Note: More detailed biographical data about the UAOC episcopate and its fate are in the text of the work (Section II, subsections 4 and 12).

DISTRIBUTION OF THE UAOC INTO CHURCH DISTRICTS at the end of 1926, "without violating the boundaries of state districts and regions."

# District Bishop/Leader
1 Berdychiv (Berdychiv, Shepetivka) Archbishop Stepan Orlyk
2 Bila Tserkva Bishop Yuriy Teslenko
3 Vinnytsia (Vinnytsia, Mohyliv) Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych
4 Volyn (Zhytomyr, Korosten) vacant
5 Dnipropetrovsk (Dnipropetrovsk, Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia) vacant
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# District Bishop/Leader
6 Kamianets Bishop Volodymyr Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky
7 Kyiv — urban Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky
8 Kyiv — rural, with Pereiaslav region Archbishop Nestor Sharaivsky and Archbishop Feodosiy Serhiiev
9 Konotop (Konotop, Hlukhiv) Bishop Oleksander Chervinsky
10 Lubny Archbishop Yosyf Oksiuk
11 Odesa (Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson) vacant
12 Poltava (Poltava, Kremenchuk) Bishop Yuriy Shevchenko
13 Proskuriv Bishop Maksym Zadvirnyak
14 Romny (Romny, Pryluky) vacant
15 Tulchyn Bishop Mykolay Karabinevych, Bishop Mykola Boretsky
16 Uman Bishop Konstantyn Maliushkevych
17 Kharkiv (Slobozhanshchyna, Donets region) vacant
18 Cherkasy/Shevchenkivka (Cherkasy, Zynovivsk/Yelysavethrad) Bishop Yukhym Kalishevsky
19 Chernihiv (Chernihiv, Nizhyn) Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky
20 Balta (Pershotravnivsk, Autonomous Moldavian Republic) Bishop Anton Hrynevych

NUMBER OF PARISHES OF THE UAOC BY DISTRICTS, according to reports at the Great Assemblies of the VPCR.

Church District 1924 1925 1926 1927
Berdychiv 25 25 — 77
Bila Tserkva 69 70 104 98
Bohuslav 28 — — —
Bratslav 27 — — —
Vinnytsia 104 100 — 126
Volyn 56 14 — 13
Hlukhiv — 16 — 16
Haisyn 27 — — —
Dnipro-Zaporizhzhia 25 30 — 29
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Church District 1924 1925 1926 1927
Zynovivka (Yelysavethrad) — — — —
Zolotonosha — — — —
Kyiv — city 8 11 10 9
Kyiv — rural 117 114 — 108
Kamianets 35 — — —
Konotop 11 — — —
Korosten 43 53 — —
Lypovets 6 32 — 48
Lubny 104 — — 8
Mykolaiv 23 — — —
Mohyliv 20 — — —
Nizhyn 60 62 — —
Odesa-Kherson 4 — — 10
Pereiaslav 46 2 — 62
Podillia 50 30 — —
Poltava 5 6 — 6
Pryluky 21 17 — —
Proskuriv 24 — — —
Radomyshl 7 — — —
Romny 40 50 — 50
Skvyra 42 — — —
Tarashcha 14 17 — 32
Tulchyn 34 31 — 30
Uman 14 — — —
Kharkiv-Donbas 16 22 — 39
Cherkasy 27 — — —
Chernihiv 24 41 — 44
Shevchenkivka 53 125 114 125
Shepetivka 7 + 2 24 — 12
Totals — — — —

Glossary of Terms

Ecclesiastical Terms

Ukrainian Term English Equivalent Notes
avtokefaliia autocephaly Self-governing status of a church; independence from external ecclesiastical authority
sobor Sobor (church assembly/synod) A formal gathering of clergy and laity for church governance, convened periodically; distinct from rada (a standing governing body). Also used for a cathedral church
sobornist conciliarity The principle of collegial governance in the Church, rooted in Orthodox ecclesiology
sobornapravnist conciliar governance General term for church administration based on conciliar principles rather than hierarchical rule alone; variant spelling of sobornopravnist
sobornopravnist conciliar governance The UAOC's specific organizational principle: governance by the entire church community (clergy and laity together) rather than by episcopal authority alone; the preferred form in UAOC documents
sobornapravnyi ustrii conciliar system of governance The institutional structure embodying conciliar governance
vsenarodnioho sobornapravstva all-popular conciliar governance The UAOC's distinctive model granting laity full participation in church governance
radopravie / radopravstvo council-rule Lypkivsky's term for the truncated conciliar governance actually achieved by the UAOC
khirotoniia ordination / consecration The sacramental laying on of hands conferring holy orders
narechennia nomination Formal designation of a candidate for an episcopal see
pomisna local / particular (church) Designating a nationally defined Orthodox Church within the broader communion
yeparkhiia diocese / eparchy A territorial unit of church administration under a bishop
yeparkhonachaliie diocesan administration The system or office of episcopal governance over an eparchy
okruha church district A sub-diocesan administrative unit grouping several parishes
hromada parish community The local community of faithful organized as a church unit
vladyka hierarch Honorific form of address for a bishop (lit. "lord" or "master")
mytropolyt metropolitan A bishop holding the rank of metropolitan, head of a metropolia
arkhyyepyskop archbishop A bishop holding the rank of archbishop
yepyskop bishop The basic rank of the episcopate
protoierei archpriest A senior priest; the highest rank among married clergy
protopresbyter protopresbyter A rank above archpriest, for clergy of particular distinction
archimandrite archimandrite A senior monastic rank, often the head of a large monastery
hieromonk hieromonk A monk who has been ordained to the priesthood
protodeacon protodeacon A senior deacon; the highest rank among deacons
panakhyda / panikhida memorial service A service of prayer for the repose of the departed
kliros choir loft / area The area in a church where the choir stands and sings
typikon liturgical order The book of rules governing the order of church services
cathedra episcopal seat / cathedral The bishop's throne; by extension, the principal church of a diocese
sviashchenodiachi clergy / sacred ministers Those who perform sacred functions; ordained clergy
dukhivnytstvo clergy / spiritual estate The clerical class or spiritual leadership of the Church
blahodatnist grace-filled nature / validity Used regarding the sacramental validity of ordinations
Lavra Lavra The highest rank of Orthodox monastery; here, the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra
bursa bursa A seminary boarding school or dormitory for theological students
bratstvo brotherhood / confraternity A lay religious organization for the defense of Orthodoxy
tomos decree / edict A formal patriarchal or synodal decree; in this context, typically an edict granting autocephaly or other ecclesiastical status
Lypkivshchyna Lypkivsky movement Pejorative term used by opponents to characterize the Ukrainian church movement led by Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky
konsystoriia consistory The diocesan administrative office of a bishop; the bureaucratic organ of episcopal governance
eksarkh / exarch exarch A bishop appointed as the representative of a patriarch to govern churches in a particular region
hramota charter / decree A formal written document issued by a patriarch, metropolitan, or sovereign granting rights or conveying directives
povit county / district An administrative-territorial unit; used for both civil and church districts in Ukraine

Administrative and Political Terms

Ukrainian Term English Equivalent Notes
Rada Rada (governing council/board) A standing governing body, executive council, or committee; used for both church and state bodies. Distinct from sobor (a formal church assembly). In the UAOC, the VPCR was the central Rada; district and parish radas governed at the local level
Povitovi Tserkovni Rady District Church Radas Local-level church governing bodies
Okradminoddil Regional Administrative Department Soviet regional administrative authority
Adminviddil Administrative Department Soviet governmental administrative office
likvidkom liquidation committee A Soviet committee to wind down or abolish an institution
samosvyaty self-consecrated ones Pejorative term used by opponents of the UAOC for bishops consecrated through the laying on of hands by clergy and laity rather than by existing bishops
Obnovlenshchyna Renovationist movement Soviet-backed reform movement splitting the Russian Orthodox Church
Zhyva Tserkva Living Church Soviet-supported Renovationist movement in Russia
khyzhaky-yepyskopy predatory bishops Pejorative term for bishops accused of seizing sees
nezamozhnyky poor peasants / landless Soviet-era term for poorest peasants
lishentsi disenfranchised persons Persons deprived of civil rights under Soviet law
kolkhoz collective farm A Soviet collective agricultural enterprise
lapsi lapsed ones Those who fell away from the faith under persecution (Latin term used in Ukrainian theological discourse)
dopomoha assistance / aid Used in UAOC budgets for clergy remuneration
moskovskyi / moskivskyi Muscovite Of or relating to Moscow and the Muscovite state; used in Ukrainian discourse to distinguish Russian-imperial church influence from Ukrainian national traditions

Assembly and Event Names

Ukrainian Term English Equivalent Notes
Mykolaivska Assembly St. Nicholas Assembly Church assembly on or near the feast of St. Nicholas
Pokrovska Assembly Protection Assembly Church assembly on the feast of the Protection of the Theotokos
Predsobornoe Prisutstviie Pre-Conciliar Commission Commission organized in 1906 to prepare for an All-Russian Church Sobor

Periodicals and Publications

Ukrainian Term English Equivalent Notes
Tserkva i Zhyttia Church and Life Organ (periodical) of the UAOC
Tserkovnyia Vedomosti Church Gazette Official publication of the Russian Holy Synod
Vidomosti Bulletin / Gazette Abbreviated reference to various official church bulletins
Tryzub Trident A Ukrainian emigre periodical
Novoye Vremya New Times A Russian newspaper

List of Abbreviations

Abbreviation Full Form
UAOC Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (Ukrainska Avtokefalna Pravoslavna Tserkva)
VPCR All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada (Vseukrainska Pravoslavna Tserkovna Rada)
DKhTs Active Church of Christ Brotherhood (Diialna Khrystova Tserkva)
DPU State Political Administration (Derzhavne Politychne Upravlinnia) — Soviet secret police
NKVS People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Narodnyi Komisariat Vnutrishnikh Sprav)
UNR Ukrainian People's Republic (Ukrainska Narodnia Respublika)
SVU Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (Spilka Vyzvolennia Ukrainy)
GPU State Political Administration (Russian: Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravleniye)
VUK All-Ukrainian Committee (Vseukrainskyi Komitet)
Ts. i Zh. Tserkva i Zhyttia (Church and Life) — journal of the UAOC
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INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND JURIDICAL PERSONS mentioned in this book.

Note: This index preserves the original's Cyrillic alphabetical order. It includes both persons and institutions.

Abbreviations:

Averkiy Kedrov, bp. 274 Avksentiev N., min. 24 Fr. Avushev V., archpr. 232 Autonomous Orthodox Church in Ukraine 277 Agapit, abp. of Katerynoslav 61, 62, 94, 97, 115 Adam, bibl. pers. 227 Administrative Department (Adminviddil) 170 Aykalov, prof. 297 Aleksandr/Oleksander Koshyts, comp. 218, 219, 220, 221 Aleksandr Yareshchenko, bp. 125, 142, 146, 147, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 175, 178, 195, 224, 274, 325 Fr. Aleksandr Marychev, mil. pr., chmn. of VPCR 15, 16, 17, 18 Aleksandr Chervinsky, bp. 140, 144, 238, 311, 329, 339, 342 Aleksandr Lototsky, prof., min., auth. 20, 21, 22, 33, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 60, 62, 65, 66, 67, 92, 95, 102, 105, 106, 257 Aleksiy/Oleksiy Hromadsky, metrop. of Aut. Ch. 55, 56, 195, 277 Aleksiy Dorodnitsyn, abp., rector of Theol. Acad. 16, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 65, 79, 81, 94, 95, 99, 101 Aleksiy Belikov, bp. 97 Amvrosiy, archim., vicer. of the Lavra 30, 31 Amvrosiy Gudko, bp. of Sarapul 95 Andrey of Crete, st. 212 Andrey Melensky, archit. 295 Andrey Sheptytsky, metrop. 80, 81 Andreev I. M., prof. 204, 327 Entente — alliance of states at war with Germany 56, 61 Antoniy Khrapovytsky, metrop. 7, 10, 12, 26, 27, 28, 32, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 47, 52, 55, 57, 58, 60, 61, 67, 69, 73, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 91, 94, 114, 115, 146, 209 Antoniy, abp. of Kherson 195 Antoniy Hrynevych, bp. of Balta 267, 311, 338, 342 Antonin Hranovsky, bp. 96, 98, 140, 141, 143 Antonio Skotti, painter-artist 295 Antypchuk P. M., treasurer 165, 166, 250, 262, 267 Apoloniv I. I., conductor 218 Arseniy Stadnytsky, metrop. of Novgorod 3

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Askold, kn. — Askold's Grave 298 Afanasiy Lebedyntsev, bp. 330 Balitsky, com. offic. 182, 189, 244 Bartomin, prof. of mus. 216 Fr. Basovol, archpr. 172, 190 Bacchus, mythol. pers. 227 Bich-Lubensky, pres. of justices of the peace, memb. of VTsR 47 Fr. Blahovisnyk — missionary, preacher 246 Bohdan Khmelnytsky, hetm. 61 Theological Institute (in Paris, Russian) 65 Bolotov V., prof. 125 Fr. Botvynovsky Ya., pr. 13, 17 Fr. Botvynenko, archpr. 323 Fr. Botvynenko, deac. 18 Fraternal Union of Ukrainian Autocephalous Churches (BOUAPC) 197 Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius 25, 29 Brotherhood of Revival 185 Brotherhood of Ukrainian Statehood (BUD) 313 Bredov, gen. 85 Bulgakov S. V., prof. 223 Fr. Burko D. see Diomid Fr. Buldovsky F. see Feofil Valuev, min. 7 Vasyliy/Vasyl Bidnov, prof. 101, 208 Vasyliy Bogdashevsky, rector of Theol. Acad., bp. 83, 85, 276 Vasyliy Vasylovych, g.p. 66 Fr. Vasyliy Zinkivsky, prof., min., auth. 36, 38, 40, 44, 48, 49, 55, 58 Vasyliy Lypkivsky, metrop. 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 20, 25, 27, 28, 37, 38, 42, 46, 47, 52, 56, 58, 59, 65, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 100, 106, 107, 108, 109, 112, 114, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 133, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 230, 232, 233, 234, 236, 241, 242, 243, 250, 251, 254, 256, 260, 261, 267, 273, 279, 284, 285, 286, 288, 289, 291, 293, 302, 303, 304, 306, 307, 310, 311, 314, 315, 318, 319, 320, 321, 323, 324, 325, 327, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 337, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343 Fr. Vasyliy Potiyenko, protodeac., chmn. of VPCR 147, 160, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 174, 182, 183, 194, 197, 210, 213, 250, 267, 317 Vasyliy, abp. of Chernihiv 12 Vasylkivsky Myk., docent 101 Vasyliy Pshenychny, bp. of DKhTs 190 Vedel A., comp. 220 Wedgwood, bp. of Liberal-Catholic Ch. 288 Venus, mythol. pers. 227 Veniamin, metrop. of Leningrad [no page reference in original] Great Pokrova Assemblies [no page reference in original; see Pokrova Assemblies] Beliar — the devil 205 Department of Orthodox Confession 13, 113 "Vyzvolennia" (Визволення) — church service 224 Executive Committee of Clergy and Laity of the City of Kyiv 11 VTsK — All-Ukrainian Central Committee [abbreviation expansion only; no page reference in original] VTsR — Supreme Church Rada 47 VTsU — Supreme Church Administration 47 Vynnychenko V., auth., min. 19, 22, 23, 51, 61, 63, 68 Supreme Church Administration in Southern Russia 62 Vitaliy Maksymenko, archim., bp. 14, 79

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Vovkushivsky Hr. see Hryhoriy Vovkushivsky Ya., br. 250 Volynsky, auth. 119, 156 Volodymyr Bogoyavlensky, metrop. of Kyiv 11, 18, 19, 20, 22, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 37, 38 Volodymyr the Great, g.p. 59, 103, 112, 121, 126, 134, 155, 296, 297, 341 Volodymyr Monomakh, kn. 329 Volodymyr Brzhosnyovsky, bp. 148, 149, 162, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193, 310, 326, 329, 341 Volodymyr Dakhivnyk-Dakhivsky, bp. 148, 267, 310, 325, 326, 329, 338, 339, 343 Volodymyr Chekhivsky, prof., auth., activist 63, 64, 65, 68, 99, 116, 117, 145, 156, 162, 165, 166, 170, 171, 172, 173, 181, 182, 183, 185, 198, 200, 201, 206, 212, 214, 215, 223, 224, 230, 231, 232, 242, 243, 244, 245, 247, 265, 274, 275, 279, 281, 285, 306, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 320, 321, 322 Voronovych M., min. 56 Wrangel, gen. 85 Universal Eastern Church 120 All-Ukrainian Museum Town 328 All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada 73 All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1918 25, 33, 105 All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1921 82, 83 All-Ukrainian Union of Orthodox Parishes 128, 129, 130, 260 All-Ukrainian Commission — VUK 170 Viazlov A. H., min. 56 Haidai, comp. 222 Haleta, br. 173 Heyer Fr., auth. 35, 51, 55, 67, 91, 99, 100, 101, 109, 122, 125, 146, 150, 192, 194, 198, 305, 327, 329, 335, 339 General Secretariat (UNR) 20 Fr. Hovyadovsky, archpr., secr. 181, 183, 199, 202, 206, 213 Fr. Holosov, pr. 28 Holubovych V., min. 26, 27, 33 Honchariv, comp. 222 Hordovsky P., secr. of VPCR 165, 166, 250, 267 Hryhoriy Vovkushevsky, dep. chmn. of VPCR 136, 268 Hryhoriy Lisovsky, bp. of DKhTs 195 Hryhoriy Mozolevsky, bp. 148, 231, 237, 267, 340 Fr. Hryhoriy Pavlovsky, archpr., comp. 222 Hryhoriy Rasputin, "elder" 12, 14, 125 Hryhoriy Stetsenko, father of the composer 217, 341 Hryhoriy Storozhenko, bp. 147 Hryhoriy Khomyshyn, bp. of Greek-Catholic Ch. 79 Hryhorovych-Barsky, archit. 297 Hublikvidkom — Provincial Liquidation Committee 165 Fr. Hrossu N., prof., archpr. 47, 85 Fr. Davydenko O., pr. 301 Fr. Danyil/Danylo Horyansky, superint. of Theol. Sch. 217, 218 Danylo Svyatohirsky, auth. 260 Danylo Kushnir, cantor-martyr 326 Declaration of Metrop. Serhiy Starohorodsky of 16/29.VII.1927 327 Declaratory speech of Min. of Confessions Ol. Lototsky 51, 52, 53, 54 Delegation of the diplomatic mission to Constantinople 66 Demydiv, br. 213 Demutsky P., comp. 222 Denikin, gen. 62, 78, 81, 115 Department of Confessions (Min. of Internal Affairs) 26 State Duma I, II, III 55, 142 State Cultural-Historical Preserve 328 DPU — State Political Administration (Ukrainian equivalent of the Russian GPU/OGPU, the Soviet secret police) 83, 178, 336 Directorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic 60 Fr. Diomid/Demyd Burko, archpr., auth. 146, 200, 295, 325, 328, 329, 330, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337 Dionisiy Valedinsky, metrop. of the Orthodox Church in Poland 67, 209 Dionisiy, patr. 103 DKhTs — Active Church of Christ — "the Activists" 148, 149, 184, 270 "Acts" of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1921 110 "Dnipro," newspaper-journal in the USA 168 "Dnipro-Soiuz," cooperative 219 Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada 73 Fr. Durdukivsky, deacon 74, 76 Theological school, Theological Seminary, Theological Academy — lower, middle, higher Orthodox theological schools 121

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Ekzempliarsky, prof. 35 Engels, communist theoretician 227 Eve, bibl. pers. 227 Yevheniy/Yevhen Bakynsky, candidate for consecration 266, 271, 274, 275, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288 Yevheniy Konovalets, col. 56 Yevheniy Trubetskoy, prof. 17 Yevlohiy Heorhiyevsky, metrop. 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, 47, 49, 55, 60, 61, 62, 65, 67, 78, 79, 80, 81, 94, 99, 114, 122, 146 Yevtykhiy, patr. of Alexandria 125 Yevfimiy/Yukhym Kalishevsky, bp. 142, 237, 240, 311, 338, 342 Fr. Yevfimiy Sitsinsky/Sichynsky, archpr., auth. 101 Yezhov, communist executioner 332 Yefremov S., auth., vice-pres. of Ukr. Acad. of Sciences 317 Diocesan congress 11, 12 Diocesan Rada 85 Yeremiya II, patr. 113 Living Church, see Renovationist Church 96, 154, 185, 276 Zavitnevych V. V., prof. 58, 101 Zavitnevych V. P., prof. 220 Zaitsev K., see Fr. Kyril Law of January 1, 1919 on the supreme administration of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church 62, 63 Western Ukrainian People's Republic 67 Fr. Zayachkivsky, pr. 301 Ivan (Ioan), cell attendant of Metrop. Volodymyr 31 Fr. Ivan Harashchenko, br., pr. 230 Fr. Ivan Horyansky, deac. 217 Ivan Hryshchenko 200, 201 Ivan Mazepa, hetm. 73, 296, 297, 328 Ivan Ohienko, see Ilarion, metrop. Ivan Pavlovsky, bp., metrop. 119, 140, 143, 156, 168, 170, 175, 176, 178, 230, 238, 265, 267, 284, 311, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 329, 334, 336, 341, 343 Ivan Tarasenko, br., secr. of the Second VPCR 73 Jerome (Hieronymos), bl., st. 125 Ilarion Ohienko, prof., metrop. of Canada 28, 79, 101, 102, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 119, 127, 208 INO — Institute of People's Education 102 Innokentiy, metrop. of the Renovationist Church 280, 281 John Chrysostom, st. 90, 105, 208, 209 Ioann the Forerunner, the Baptist 25, 326 Ioan Teodorovych, metrop. 116, 123, 125, 131, 140, 145, 146, 147, 156, 162, 163, 167, 224, 237, 271, 274, 275, 276, 279, 284, 285, 287, 322, 341 Ioann, abp. of Shanghai 41 Iov of Pochaiv, st. 137, 314 "Historical Memorandum on the Past Life of the Ukrainian Church" 6, 93, 117, 118 and others Judas, "apostle"-traitor 16

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Yoasaf/Ioasaf, st. 231 Yosyf/Iosyf Oksiuk, bp., docent 101, 142, 154, 169, 172, 175, 205, 210, 224, 235, 236, 237, 265, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 310, 311, 320, 334, 335, 337 Fr. Kavushynsky E., archpr. 165, 166, 267 Fr. Kavushynsky Ya., archpr. 250 Kalishevsky Ya. S., maestro 217 Canons of the Kyiv Sobor of 1921, see "Acts" Ukrainian Republican Capella 221 Karyn, agent of the DPU 200, 201, 244 Fr. Karpov, pr. 315 Fr. Karpenko, archpr. 238 Kartashev A. V., prof., min., auth. 10, 12, 24, 137 Kateryna/Yekateryna II, empress 102, 290 Catacomb Orthodox Church in Ukraine, 1937 [date, not page reference] Kerensky A. F., min. 24 Kyril/Kyrylo, st. 58, 73 Kyril Lukaris, patriarch of Constantinople 103 Fr. Kyril Zaitsev, pr., auth. 29, 40, 302 Fr. Kyril Stetsenko, pr., comp. 86, 211, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221 Cyprian of Carthage, st., auth. 119 Kirion/Kyrion, Catholicos of Georgia 97 Clemenceau, premier of France 81 Book of Rules (Apostolic) 9 Kobzar M. P., br., chmn. of household dept. of VPCR 173, 206, 214, 264, 266 Fr. Kovalenko O., auth., publisher 218, 335 Kovalenko-Kolomatsky, auth. 60, 173 Kovalevsky M., auth. 163, 314, 315, 317 Kozytsky P., comp. 222 Commission for the Convening of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1917 14 Commission for the Normalization of the Life of the UAOC 168, 169 "Komunist," newspaper 189 Konon Bei, bp. 147, 148, 258, 259, 267, 310, 326, 329, 338, 342 Konstantyn Diakiv, metrop. of the Renovationist Church 100, 329 Konstantyn Krotevych, bp. 92, 142, 143, 195, 208, 212, 224, 234, 236, 237, 239, 246, 285, 286, 310, 337, 338, 343 Konstantyn Levytsky, archpr., superint. of Theol. Sch. 43 Konstantyn Lypkivsky, father of the Metropolitan 121 Konstantyn Maliushkevych, bp. 140, 142, 157, 168, 170, 171, 173, 191, 202, 203, 205, 206, 223, 224, 228, 237, 240, 241, 247, 249, 251, 253, 254, 261, 267, 282, 284, 286, 303, 307, 310, 311, 320, 323, 325, 326, 328, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 343 Fr. Konstantyn Yanushevsky, archpr. 185, 187, 188, 191, 202 Confucius 189 Kotliarevsky N., vice-minister of confessions 17 Kotov H., acad., archit. 297 Koshyts Ol., see Aleksandr Krayevsky D., br. 86 Fr. Krasytsky, pr. 315 Kryzhanovsky, br. 213 Krupnytsky B., prof., auth. 310, 312 Fr. Kudrya M., archpr. 144 Kudriavtsev P., prof. 58 Kurinny P. P., prof., museum director 328 Fr. Ksenofont Sokolovsky, archpr. 112, 116, 117, 136 Labuntsev, see Serhiy Lavrentiy Lypkivsky, brother of the Metropolitan 121 Lev Trotsky, com. 95 Levkov A., secr. [no page reference in original] Levytsky Ol., see Oleh Lenin, communist theoretician 306 Lesner, com., repr. of Hublikvidkom 165 Leonid, Catholicos of Georgia 9

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Fr. Leonid Karpov, archpr. 206, 320 Fr. Leonid Mizetsky, archpr., secr. 206 Fr. Leonid Yunakiv, archpr. 153, 161, 173, 174, 176, 202, 206, 230, 234, 293, 301, 320, 322, 336 Leontovych, comp., see Mykolay Lyzohub F., see Feodor Lysenko M. V., comp. 216, 218, 220 Fr. Lobov, pr. 47 Lototsky Ol., see Aleksandr Fr. Lukashevych, pr. 301 Lvov V. N., Ober-Procurator of the Synod 12 Liubarsky I., docent 101 Liubomyrsky H. L., prof. of music 218, 220 Liashenko H., br. 86 Fr. Mayevsky P., pr. 224, 225, 318, 319, 323, 325, 331, 333, 335, 337, 339, 340, 341, 343 Mazepa Iv., see Ivan Mazepa Is., min., auth. 33, 293 Makariy/Makar, st. 329 Makariy, metrop. of Moscow 12 Makariy Oksiuk, abp., metrop. of Poland 335 Makar Kramarenko, bp. 196 Makarenko M., prof., archaeol. 297 Maksym Zadvirnyak, bp. 140, 144, 239, 311, 339 Mariya Stetsenko (Horianska), mother of the composer 217 Marko Hrushevsky, bp. 145, 173, 183, 199, 202, 206, 209, 213, 230, 320, 339 Markovych, com., govt. repr. 170 Marx, communist theoretician 227, 295, 311 Marchenko, school inspector 47 Mashkevych Yu. M., br. 246, 247 Menshikov, publicist 34 Methodius, st. 58, 73 Mykilski (on the feast of St. Nicholas) Assemblies 132 Mykolay/Nikolay, st. 296, 297, 316 Mykolay II, emper. 15 Mykola Boretsky, metrop. 140, 142, 143, 161, 198, 199, 205, 210, 219, 224, 229, 238, 239, 251, 254, 257, 260, 261, 281, 282, 284, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 318, 319, 320, 323, 332, 333, 334, 335, 341, 343, 344 Fr. Mykolay Zhebuniv, pr. 223 Mykolay Karabinevych, bp. 113, 114, 143, 156, 215, 238, 338, 342 Mykolay, metrop. of Caesarea, loc. ten. of the patr. throne in Constantinople 13, 67 Mykolay Krotevych, bp. 140, 142, 203, 237, 310 Mykolay Levytsky, coop. 113 Mykolay Leontovych, comp. 74, 216, 217, 220 Mykolay Pyvovariv, bp. 149, 162, 190, 191, 311, 340, 343 Mykolay Skrypnyk, secr. of VTsK 136, 314 Fr. Mykolay Chekhivsky, pr. 315 Mykolay Shyrai, bp. 149, 190, 191, 192, 310, 325, 340 Mykorsky B., auth. 297 Myrovych, teach., delegate of Patr. Tikhon 17 Fr. Mytrofan Yavdas, archpr. 147, 315, 325, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340 Mykhaylo/Mykhail Hrushevsky, prof., auth., president of UNR 23, 33, 76 Mykhaylo Yermakov, metrop., exarch 10, 91, 92, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 136, 195, 197, 276, 277, 278, 286, 287 Mykhaylo Maliarevsky, bp. 148, 191, 340 Mykhaylo Moroz, chmn. of the Second VPCR 73, 86, 89, 109, 136, 148, 149, 160, 161, 162, 163, 166, 185, 187, 202, 206, 254 Mikhnovsky Yu., see Yuriy Miller, institute director, com. 295, 298, 299 Mirchuk P., auth. 33 Mishchenko F., prof. 58 Moscow Patriarchal Church 154 Morachevsky, prof., memb. of VTsR 47

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Morozovtsi, Morozovshchyna 240, 251, 255 Mstyslav Volodymyrovych, g.p. 329 Muravyov, gen. 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 Murashko, painter-artist 217 Mukhin N., prof. 58 People's Commissariat of Education — Narkom Osvity 175 NKVS — People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs 153, 160 Nazariy Blinov, bp. 10, 25, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 83, 84, 85, 87 Naumenko V., min. 56 National State Union / National Union 51, 56 Scholarly Committee at the Ministry of Cults 58 National Russian Club 125 Fr. Nedzelkytsky, deac. 76 NEP — New Economic Policy 136, 294, 312 NKVD — People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Narkomvnutrdel) 189 Unbreakable Wall — name of the altar image in St. Sophia in Kyiv [no page reference in original] Nestor Sharaivsky, bp. 18, 72, 74, 77, 85, 116, 125, 136, 140, 141, 146, 147, 154, 159, 162, 165, 166, 169, 170, 173, 192, 194, 198, 199, 202, 205, 206, 208, 210, 214, 224, 230, 231, 235, 250, 256, 257, 267, 281, 285, 334, 335 Nikolay of Caesarea, see Mykolay Nikola/Mykolay Prytynsky, st. 329 Nikolay Nikolayevych, g.p. 65 Nikanor Abramovych, metrop. 9, 134, 340 Nikodim, bp. of Chyhyryn 18, 38, 41, 78, 79, 80, 81 Nikon, patriarch of Russia 75 Nikon (Nikolay) Bezsonov, dept. director 26, 27 Nikon Rklitsky, bp. 114, 115 Renovationist-Living Church 154, 270, 279 Renovationist-Synodal Church 276 Renovationism (Obnovlenshchyna) 282 Ohienko Iv., see Ilarion District Sobor 163 Oleh Levytsky, attorney 173, 199, 230 Fr. Oleksander Marychev, see Aleksandr District Administrative Department (Okradminoddil) 192 Oleksander Lototsky, see Aleksandr Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn, see Aleksiy Alexandrian Church 121 Olha, g.p., st. 297 Onysyfor Divochka, metrop. 156 Orlyk, see Stepan Orlykivtsi 240, 257 Central Government 175 Cultural Center (in Canada) 221 Paul, ap., st. 76, 116, 226 and others Fr. Pavel/Pavlo Korsunovsky, pr. 13, 16, 17, 19, 22, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 39, 42, 43, 45, 46, 52, 62, 69, 88, 92, 94, 99, 100, 107, 118, 123, 145, 148, 149, 150, 161, 212, 261 Fr. Pavlo Pashchevsky, protopr. 25 Fr. Pavlo Pohorilko, pr. 97, 98, 196 Pavlo Skoropadsky, hetm. 33, 34, 36, 37, 41, 45, 51, 55, 56, 60 Pavlovsky, see Hryhoriy Paderewski, comp., repr. of Poland 81 Parfeniy Levytsky, abp. of Poltava 82, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 108, 142, 147, 194, 195 Patriarchal Church 100 Pakhomiy, bp. of Chernihiv, memb. of VTsR 47 Pashchenko D., br. 286 First All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada 15 Petliura S., see Symon Peter/Petro, ap., st. 76, 116, 243 and others Peter I, emper. 7, 38, 236

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Petr Dzhekoni, legate 104 Petr Mykolayevych, prince 65 Petro Mohyla, metrop. 121 Petro Romodaniv, bp. 145, 153, 161, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 181, 183, 190, 191, 193, 198, 199, 200, 202, 204, 206, 213, 230, 232, 235, 244, 255, 256, 259, 264, 286, 301, 337, 339 Petro Sahaidachny, hetm. 59 Petro Stebnytsky, min. 51 Petro Stetsenko, brother of the composer 217, 219 Fr. Petro Tabinsky, archpr., rector of Theol. Sem., auth. 101, 208 Petro Tarnavsky, bp. 72, 74, 76, 85, 149, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 341 Fr. Petro Fomin, archpr. 223 Petrovsky, chmn. of VUK 189 Petrushevsky V., prof. of singing 218 First Ukrainian Congress of Clergy of the Kyiv Region 13 Pyvovarivtsi 240, 257 Fr. Pyvovarchuk, protodeac. 315 Pylyp Buchylo, see Filip Pimen Pehov, bp., metrop. of the Renovationist Church 27, 28, 44, 45, 100, 101, 144, 154, 283 Pitirim, metrop. of St. Petersburg 12 Platon Rozhdestvensky, metrop., memb. of VTsR 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 27, 38, 45, 47, 93, 96 Podillia Diocesan Congress of Clergy 14 Podolianko, br. 213 Pokrova Assemblies of the VPCR 132 Polikarp Sikorsky, archim., bp., metrop. 10, 116, 324, 343 Poltava Diocesan Congress 14, 194 Polonska-Vasylevska N., prof. 312, 328 Fr. Polski M., protopr., auth. 20, 29, 30, 31, 94, 100, 201, 292, 329, 330 Pontifical Oriental Institute 122 Portnov, DPU official 327 Porfiriy, hierodeacon 18 Postyshev — com., Stalin's viceroy in Ukraine 297 "Weekly" parishes 136 Fr. Potulnytsky, protopr. 340, 343 "Pravoslavny Blahovisnyk" — journal 176 "Pre-Sobor Conference" (Predsobornoe Prisutstviie) — council 7, 8 Doorkeeper (unnamed), witness to the murder of Metrop. Volodymyr 32 Public Declaration to All Churches by the VPCR of the UAOC 165 Fr. Protopopov P., archpr. 230 Fr. Pukhalsky, archpr. 245 Fifth Presidium of the VPCR 160 All-Ukrainian Church Rada — the great one 131; the small one, its executive organ; county/district; parish Radnarkom — Council of People's Commissars 167 Ranevsky S., auth. 9, 136, 137, 314 Rasputin H., see Hryhoriy Editorial Board (Redkolehiya) 177 Rafalsky, min. repr. 19, 22 "Parallel" parishes 153 Richynsky Arsen, church activist, comp., auth., physician 222, 272 Romodanivtsi 240, 257 Russian Church Abroad 137 Russian State Duma 55, 142 "Free Progressive Autocephalous Ukrainian Church" 277 Savatiy, abp. of Prague 285 Sadovsky M., art. 221 Samborsky V., see Volodymyr Samofalov 193 World Congress of "Practical Christianity" 266 Holy Synod 46 Sviderska M., sister 166, 256, 267 Sever — historian [no page reference in original] Serhiy, vicar bp. of Kyiv 218 Serhiy Labuntsev, archim., bp. 195, 196

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Serhiy, bp. of Novorossiysk 94 Fr. Serhiy Pylypenko, pr. 77 Serhiy Starohorodsky, abp., metrop., loc. ten. of patr. throne, patr. 16, 204, 327 Serhiy Shelukhin, auth., political activist 23, 178, 271, 274, 275 Synodal Church 154 Synodal Ukrainian Church 327 Sitsinsky/Sichynsky Yu., see Yevfimiy Sylvestr Hayevsky, abp. of Australia 255, 332 Symon Petliura, Supreme Commander, president 56, 60, 61, 62, 68, 78, 99, 105, 106, 178, 218, 221, 313, 316 Symon, abp. of Chernihiv [no page reference in original] Fr. Symon Yavtushenko, archpr. 301 Synodal-Renovationist Church 100 Synod of the Orthodox Russian Church 100 "Siyach," journal 176 Fr. Slukhayevsky V., archpr. 300, 301 "Sobor of Revival" 136, 198 "Sobor of Self-Knowledge" 198 Sovnarkom — Council of People's Commissars 189 Fr. Soloviy M., OSBM 289, 311, 342 SVU — Union for the Liberation of Ukraine 332 Union of Landowners 50 Union for the Liberation of Ukraine 163 "The Word of the Cross" — church service 224 Union of the Russian People 146 "Union of Militant Atheists" 288 Association of Cult Unions 130 Union of Ukrainian Parishes 90 "Joint parishes" 136 Stalin, communist dictator 295, 306, 312 Statute of the Provisional Supreme Church Administration of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine 46 Startsev, chronicler 296, 297 Stepan Kobzar, br. 320 Stepan/Stefan Orlyk, bp. 97, 98, 125, 143, 144, 185, 237, 334, 337 Stetsenko Hr., see Hryhoriy Stockholm Conference 168 Suslyk R. L., auth. 295 Eastern Rite 122 Taneyev S., prof. 216 Taras Shevchenko, poet 83, 138, 215 and others Tarasenko I., br. 86 Fr. Tarasov, archpr. 283 Fr. Tarnavsky P., pr. 18 Teodorovych I., see Ioan Fr. Telezhynsky M., archpr., comp. 222 Tereshchenko K., br. 166, 267 Fr. Terletsky L., archpr. 258 Timothy, ap., st. 116 Fr. Tytov F., archpr., prof., auth. 47, 75 Tikhon, patriarch of Moscow 13, 16, 17, 18, 20, 24, 37, 41, 43, 48, 49, 71, 72, 76, 77, 89, 91, 93, 96, 108, 144, 194, 196, 197, 276, 278, 286, 287, 302 Tikhonovshchyna 282 Tyshchenko, br. 173 Tkach K. I., witness at the SVU trial 321 Torgsin, bank 331 Fr. Trehubov S., archpr. 85 Third VPCR 160 Third Military Congress 16 Labor Congress, parliament 68 Turchenko, br. 168 Tiulpanov, gymnasium director, memb. of VTsR 47 Ukrainian Academy of Sciences 57 UAOC — Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church 128 "Ukrainian Autocephalous Church" — publishing house 102 "Ukrainian Autocephaly of Buldovsky," see Feofil Buldovsky Ukrainian Democratic-Agrarian Party 50 Ukrainian Exarchate 276, 327 Ukrainian National Union, see National State Union UNR — Ukrainian People's Republic 19

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Ukrainian Synodal Church 154 Ukrainian Church Brotherhood 184 Ukrainian Church Rada 15 Ukrainian Central Rada 15 Ukrainian University 57 Fourth Universal 65 Feodor/Fedir, bp. of Pryluky 31 Feodor Lyzohub, min. 36, 48, 51, 56 Feodot Khoroshy, secular name of Abp. of Eastern Canada, Mykhail 210 Feodosiy, st. 231 Feodosiy Oltarzhevsky, bp. 95, 96 Feodosiy Serhiiev, bp. 140, 144, 173, 181, 196, 202, 231, 286, 310, 338, 341 Feofil Buldovsky, bp. 184, 194, 195, 196, 197, 237, 277 Buldovshchyna 237 Feofan Bystrov, abp. of Poltava, insp. of Theol. Acad. 14, 25, 89 Filip/Pylyp Buchylo, bp. 148, 341 Filip, cell attendant of Metrop. Volodymyr 31 Financial-Publishing Commission 213 Fr. Fylypenko S., pr. 18 FZU — Factory-Workshop School 336 Flavian, metrop. of Kyiv 223 Fr. Fotiy Lypkivsky, grandfather of the Metropolitan 121 Fotiyev K. V., auth. 10, 13, 65, 72, 73, 78, 97, 98, 122, 123, 136, 137 Fr. Kharyton Hovyadovsky, archpr. 150, 173, 222 Fr. Khodzytskyy D., archpr. 165, 166, 250, 267, 315 Fr. Khomychevsky M., pr. 165, 166, 168, 171, 190, 199, 210, 222, 230, 231, 232, 243, 250, 267, 315 Khomzha, bp. of DKhTs 190 Fr. Khrypko, pr. 323 Tsvichynsky, col., memb. of VTsR 16 Central Rada = Ukrainian Central Rada 27, 128 Tserkovnyia Vedomosty, journal 8 Church-Teachers' Seminary 218 Church-Teachers' School 122 Church Verification District Commission 249 Tserkovne Zhyttia, organ of the DKhTs 190 Tserkva i Zhyttia, organ of the UAOC 86, 157, 159, 178, 230, 336 Tserkva i Narid, organ of the Volyn Theol. Consistory 157 "Church of the Workers" 185 Church Rada = VPCR 87 Tsiumaniv, cantor, memb. of VTsR 47 Cherniavsky, Theol. Sch. teacher, memb. of VTsR 47 Fourth VPCR 160 Chekhivsky V., see Volodymyr Chubar, chmn. of Sovnarkom 189 Fourth Presidium of the VPCR 173 Shevchenko T., see Taras Shelukhin S., see Serhiy School Rada at the Synod 122 Shyrai M., see Mykolay Yuriy/Heorhiy, st. 87 Yuriy/Heorhiy Shevchenko, bp. 86, 89, 142, 154, 168, 237, 257, 311, 336, 337, 338 Yuriy Mikhnovsky, bp. 125, 147, 323, 325, 326, 328, 329, 337, 343 Yuriy Prokopovych, bp. 149, 341 Yuriy Teslenko, bp. 144, 310, 339, 342 Yuriy Yaroshevsky, metrop. of the Church in Poland 95 Yukhym Kalishevsky, see Yevfimiy Yukhymovych V., pseudonym of V. Chekhivsky 156 Fr. Yavdas M., see Mytrofan Yavorsky B., prof. of mus. 216 Fr. Yazvinsky H., pr. 258 Yakiv Chulayevsky, bp. 145, 173, 199, 206, 230, 239, 245, 320, 339, 340 Yakiv Yatsynevych, comp. 222 Yanchenko A., br. 230 Fr. Yanushevsky Kost, see Konstantyn Yaroslav the Wise, g.p. 75, 296 Yaroslavsky (Hubelman) Omelian, com., atheist 305 Yasinsky, prof., memb. of VTsR 47

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BIBLIOGRAPHIC INDEX for Part 1 of Volume IV of the Outline of the History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

A. SOURCES.

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky. History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Section VII. The Revival of the Ukrainian Church.

"This History is destined to become a cornerstone source from which historians will draw material for the history of the revival of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 1917-30," wrote Metropolitan Nikanor Abramovych to me in a letter dated August 19, 1955. Before that, in the journal Ridna Tserkva (for July-August 1955), the organ of the UAOC in emigration, a note had been published about the "History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church" by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky (on the occasion of the publication of Vol. I of our present work), in which the editors wrote: "The History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, comprising 552 pages in quarto of fine handwriting, completed on October 23, 1930, has reached us in manuscript. In this work, Section VII, in which information about the revival in 1917-30 is presented, deserves particular attention. Unfortunately, the time for publishing this work in print has not yet come. The complete, officially verified fair copy of the 'History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church' by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky is in the hands of His Eminence Metropolitan Nikanor. The original perished during the evacuation."

Regarding this note in Ridna Tserkva, His Eminence Nikanor was kind enough to provide me with detailed information about the fate of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's manuscript. Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, before his arrest, entrusted Fr. Chornomorets Vadym (a secret deacon) to take the manuscript out, hide it, and if it was God's will that church life be renewed in Kyiv, to give the manuscript to whatever archbishop would be in Kyiv. Upon the arrival of Bishop Nikanor in Kyiv on March 13, 1942, Fr. Chornomorets brought the manuscript to him. The manuscript began with the history of the Church from apostolic times and then continued through our entire history, while Section VII, under the heading "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church," covered the events of the church life of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from 1917 to 1930. The manuscript was kept by His Eminence Nikanor until his departure from Kyiv. During the evacuation of 1943 from Kyiv, everything most important from the archive of the Church Administration, including the manuscript of Metropolitan Lypkivsky's "History," was packed into a special sack entrusted to the care and protection of the Head of the Educational Department of the Administration, F. S. Havrysh. The latter was fortunate to obtain a place, during the German retreat from Kyiv, on a truck of a German-Ukrainian organization. This truck was stopped on the road by German soldiers who needed space for soldiers wounded along the way. Since there was no room at all, they unceremoniously threw off all the hand luggage of the passengers, including the sack with the records of the Church Administration and Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's manuscript, and seated those people on the truck. "The treasures in the sack," writes His Eminence Nikanor, "remained on the street at God's mercy."

Thus, the original of Metropolitan Lypkivsky's work — the manuscript of his "History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church" — did not survive; it perished during the evacuation. Nor did the complete work survive in fair copy. This complete "History" manuscript was read in Kyiv only by Their Eminences Nikanor and Mstyslav. But from Section VII of the manuscript, under the heading "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church," a complete typescript copy survived, thanks to the following event.

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In Kyiv, only Their Eminences Nikanor and Mstyslav had read the complete manuscript. But from Section VII of the manuscript, under the heading "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church," a complete typescript remained, brought about by the following event. An authorized representative arrived in Kyiv from Prague in 1942 from the German "Institute for the Study of the History of Eastern Europe"; he turned to His Eminence Nikanor (this was a Ukrainian) with a request for materials on the history of church life in Ukraine during the Bolshevik period. His Eminence showed him the manuscript of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky but refused to give him the manuscript, as he wished; he only agreed to a typescript of Section VII of the manuscript, which interested the representative. The work of the typist of the Church Administration for the typescript was paid for by the authorized representative of the Institute. Three copies were made. The first went to Prague, but certain passages that could compromise the UAOC were cut out by the Educational Department of the Administration, whose members verified the typescript. The second copy, complete and officially verified, became the property of His Eminence Nikanor. The third copy came into the possession of His Eminence Mstyslav, then vicar bishop of Nikanor; this copy was not officially verified against the original; from it, new copies of Section VII later appeared. — This much His Eminence Nikanor told me about the history of Metropolitan Lypkivsky's manuscript in a letter dated August 19, 1955, concluding his account with the words: "I repeat that the complete manuscript of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's 'History' no longer exists in the world; only the seventh section has survived" (in typescript).

I first became acquainted with Section VII — "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church" by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky in 1944, having in my possession precisely that copy that had been made in Kyiv for the "Institute for the Study of the Spiritual Life of Eastern Europe"; Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's work was given to me for review by an associate of that Institute, Prof. Eduard Winter (author of the monograph Byzantium and Rome in the Struggle for Ukraine, translated from German into Ukrainian and published by the late Yu. Tyshchenko — Prague, 1944). These memoirs of the UAOC Metropolitan, in their depiction of the internal life of the UAOC, immediately made a depressing impression on me, and I then turned to the blessed memory Protodeacon Vasyl Potiyenko, former Chairman of the VPCR of the UAOC in 1924-1926 (until May 21), who was in emigration at that time in Berlin, with the question: can everything written about the life of the UAOC in the Metropolitan's memoirs be accepted fully and without reservations? Fr. Potiyenko's response was that he knew the Metropolitan Lypkivsky had written memoirs (I also asked about the authenticity of the memoirs), that a degree of subjectivity in the depiction of life and persons was possible in the work, but that fundamentally the events of the UAOC's life were conveyed accurately.

In 1951, in the "Bulletin of the General Church Administration of the UAOC in Great Britain," in the issues for June-July and December, subsections from Section VII of the "History" by Metropolitan Lypkivsky were printed: "Shortcomings in the Life of the UAOC and Its Governing Bodies during the Second VPCR," and in 1953 in issues 8, 9, 10-11, the subsection "The Brotherhood of the DKhTs" ("Active Church of Christ"). These excerpts were printed by order of the blessed memory Metropolitan Polikarp. In 1959, from the press of the Basilian Fathers of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Toronto, Section VII of the History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky was published under a title given by the publishers, not by Metropolitan Lypkivsky — "The Revival of the Church in Ukraine, 1917-1930" (Of which Church? Metropolitan Lypkivsky wrote —

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"The Revival of the Ukrainian Church," that is, the national Church of the Ukrainian people). As we read in the introduction to this edition, the Basilian Fathers received a copy of Section VII of the History by Metropolitan Lypkivsky independently of the copies made from the original by order of His Eminence Nikanor. Namely, even before the arrival in Kyiv of the Ukrainian bishops Nikanor and Ihor, that same deacon Vadym Chornomorets showed the manuscript of the "History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church" by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky in December 1941 to Prof. M. Andrusiak, who at that time was the deputy head of the Department of Culture and Education at the City Administration of Kyiv, organized with the German occupation of Kyiv. Prof. M. Andrusiak, being interested mainly also in Section VII of the Metropolitan's work, asked V. Chornomorets to make at least two copies of that Section VII. One of them M. Andrusiak took with him when in February 1942 he returned from Kyiv to Lviv. He entrusted this copy to Metropolitan A. Sheptytsky, who ordered several copies to be made from it and distributed to various persons for safekeeping. "In this way," the above-mentioned "Introduction" states, "the History of the UAOC by V. Lypkivsky was preserved in several copies."

Among other things, a copy of these memoirs of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky reached even the hierarchs of the Russian Church Abroad, about which I heard while still in Munich from Metropolitan Anastasiy; however, I have not encountered any use of this work by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, or mentions of it, in the pages of the printed organs of the said Church. It remained unknown to Friedrich Heyer when he wrote his detailed monograph, published in 1953, Die Orthodoxe Kirche in der Ukraine von 1917 bis 1945.

The publication by the Basilian Fathers of Section VII of the History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky was not, obviously, dictated by "benevolence" toward Orthodox Ukrainians, who supposedly were unable to publish such an important work of the Metropolitan of the UAOC V. Lypkivsky on their own. The "good" intentions of the publishers are transparent and clear from all kinds of additions scattered under the text of the Metropolitan's memoirs and unrelated to the memoirs, and especially from the "Supplement" to the memoirs, comprising one hundred pages of print (one-third of the book) by Fr. Dr. M. Soloviy, OSBM, under the heading: "The Fate of the UAOC of Vasyl Lypkivsky (based on the historical work of V. Lypkivsky)," where Fr. Dr. Soloviy offers in his essay his learned "commentary" on the history of "the UAOC of Vasyl Lypkivsky" (now without any title) with the obvious aim of discrediting Ukrainian Orthodoxy, as I have already noted in the text of Part 1, Volume IV of this work.

But one cannot fight against such "fraternal" intentions with the means adopted by the "Vistnyk," the organ of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada, which in its issue of July 1, 1959, published an article: "A Matter of Historical Importance. The Distorted Text of the History of the UAOC under the Name of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky." In it, the "Vistnyk," supposedly "having data in hand" but not presenting them, that is, without any foundation, declared that "Catholic publishers released in print a distorted text of the History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the name of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky in a falsified form"... Scholarly polemics of this kind cannot withstand any criticism whatsoever. The copy of the manuscript of Section VII of the memoirs of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky that I had in Prague in 1944, and the copy now published from the press of the Basilian Fathers, do not have such differences in content and style as to speak of any "falsification." And these are copies from two sources: the one I had is a typescript made in Kyiv in the office of

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the Church Administration under His Eminence Nikanor; the one published by the Basilian Fathers is a typescript from the copy taken out by Prof. M. Andrusiak. And that Prof. M. Andrusiak did take out such a copy, about this His Eminence Nikanor now also writes to me, in a letter dated May 10, 1960: "Deacon Vadym Chornomorets, when handing over to me the manuscript of the History of the Ukrainian Church by Metropolitan Lypkivsky, told me that Section VII of the manuscript had indeed interested Prof. M. Andrusiak and he had copied it. That Prof. Andrusiak gave it to Metropolitan Sheptytsky, neither I nor deacon Chornomorets knew." Thus it turns out, if one is to believe the "Vistnyk," that a "falsification" of the work "under the name of Metropolitan Lypkivsky" could have originated only from deacon Fr. Chornomorets, or perhaps even from the sisters of the Metropolitan... Such an assumption is simply incredible, all the more so because Metropolitan Lypkivsky's handwriting was known to His Eminence Nikanor, and the letters of Metropolitan Lypkivsky about events in the church life of the UAOC, which the author of this work also made use of, addressed to Metropolitan Ioan Teodorovych and Fr. Pavlo Korsunovsky, have the same style and the same narrative scheme as in Section VII.

As for the various typographical errors, changes in orthography, changes in words or expressions, and other differences of generally minor significance in the admittedly careless edition of the Basilian Fathers — which differences were collected, for example, diligently by Fr. Mayevsky (in the organ of the new conciliarists Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 6 for 1959), comparing the Basilian Fathers' print of Section VII with that typescript of it that was in Fr. Mayevsky's possession — this is an entirely understandable phenomenon given the numerous retypings on machine, and even by hand, of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's memoirs. These memoirs are not Holy Scripture, for which one must establish the text precisely, to the letter. And even in our translations of Holy Scripture into the Ukrainian language, as well as of liturgical books, there are so many differences in words, stylistic matters, and sometimes even in content, yet there we do not speak of falsification... Therefore the work of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky both is and will remain the chief source for the history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukraine in 1917-1930, but it cannot be used entirely uncritically; one must compare and consider other sources that we have, and may yet acquire, adhering fundamentally to the ancient wise principles: "Audiatur et altera pars," "Amicus Plato, sed magis amica Veritas est."

Documents from the archive of His Eminence Metropolitan Ioan Teodorovych:

Letter of July 23, 1922, from His Most Honorable Fr. V. Lypkivsky to Deacon Fr. Pavlo Korsunovsky. Memorandum of the VPCR on the matter of the union of churches and the Universal Church of Christ (on the third anniversary of the Sobor of 1921 — autumn 1924). Appeal of the VPCR of November 14, 1924, on the occasion of the 3rd anniversary of the Sobor of 1921, on the state of the UAOC and actions aimed at schism in the Church. Acts regarding the admission to the UAOC of Feodosiy Serhiiev, Archbishop of the Russian Church (October 1924). Petition of the VPCR of the UAOC to the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukrainian SSR in 1924 regarding the registration of the UAOC Statute.

Note: In our work, citations from the memoirs of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky were made: from the typewritten copy-typescript, from the excerpts printed in the London "Bulletin of the General Church Administration of the UAOC in Great Britain," and when the memoirs appeared in print in the Basilian Fathers' edition, also from that edition.

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[Archival documents continued from previous page, including:]

Letter from the VPCR to the Presidium of the World Church Conference on Life and Work (Stockholm), dated August 23, 1925. Protest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Brotherhood DKhTs against the imposition of relations between the VPCR and the World Church Conference. Appeal of the VPCR to pastors and faithful of the UAOC regarding the destructive activity of the DKhTs (October 1925). Epistle to the clergy and faithful of the UAOC dated October 23, 1925, from Metropolitan Lypkivsky (regarding the subversive activity of the DKhTs). Catalog of books and sheet music held in the VPCR storeroom for use in Ukrainian churches. Letter from Metropolitan Lypkivsky to Archbishop Ioan Teodorovych, November 11, 1926 (regarding events of UAOC church life in 1925–26). Letter from the VPCR to Archbishop of America and Canada Ioan, May 20, 1927 (regarding the work for the benefit of the UAOC of the journals Siiach and Pravoslavnyi Visnyk). Letter from the VPCR to the same, dated January 20, 1928, regarding the release from the burden of metropolitan duties of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky, the election as Metropolitan of Bishop Mykolai Boretsky, with an appendix on the composition of the VPCR Presidium after the 2nd Sobor of the UAOC. Appeal of the Presidium of the 2nd All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC to all the faithful of the UAOC (October 30, 1927). Informational circular of the VPCR on the life of the UAOC after the 2nd Sobor to all District Church Radas.

Protocol of the Great Mykolai Assembly of the VPCR, which "took place May 25–30, 1924, in the Kyiv–St. Sophia Grand Cathedral with permission of the Soviet authorities, according to a certificate issued to the UAOC representative P. Romodaniv" (pp. 1–48). In the text of this Protocol is included the public "Declaration to All Churches of the VPCR of the UAOC," composed by V. M. Chekhivsky and confirmed by the Assembly. Protocol of the Great Pokrov Assembly of the VPCR, October 25–30, 1926 (pp. 1–28). List of 19 church districts of the UAOC with addresses of their spiritual leaders — the bishops (1926). Protocol of the Plenum of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR of the UAOC, which took place December 28–30, 1926 (pp. 1–22). Protocol of the joint session of the Heads of Commissions at the VPCR of the UAOC — December 15, 1926. Protocol of the Great Mykolai Assembly of the VPCR of the UAOC, May 11–13, 1927, in the Church of St. Sophia with permission of the state authorities (pp. 1–70). Separate opinion (on this protocol) of Archbishop Iosyf Oksiuk regarding the ordination to the priesthood of Br. Yevhen Bachynsky, and on the same matter an Extract from the Protocol of the session of the Presidium of the Kyiv VPCR, dated July 5, 1927. Extraordinary Communication of the VPCR Secretariat regarding the confirmation of the UAOC Statute by the Soviet authorities on December 10, 1926, and the authorities' permission to publish the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia, January 15, 1927. Communication of the Lubny District Church Commission on the life of the UAOC — 1927, No. 2. Budget of expenditures and revenues of the VPCR of the UAOC for the 1927–28 church-administrative year, from September 1, 1927 to September 1, 1928.

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Instruction for the verification of the personnel composition of the clergy of the UAOC (confirmed March 2, 1927 by the Presidium of the VPCR). Protocols of sessions of the Presidium of the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada: for 1925 — protocol of October 30; 1926 — 6 protocols; 1927 — from January 3 to September 9, 52 protocols. In the Protocol of August 16, 1927, the full text of the copy of the Declaration of Citizen of the Ukrainian SSR Vasyl Lypkivsky, Metropolitan of the UAOC, submitted on August 15, 1927, "to the highest representatives of the Central Government, so that the baseless suspicion of counter-revolutionary anti-Soviet sentiments be removed from him and he be given the opportunity to carry out church ministry."

The above-listed acts were sent to the Metropolitan of the UOC in the USA, Ioan Teodorovych (then Archbishop of the UAOC in America and Canada) by the VPCR; almost all of them are typewritten on full-size sheets.

Materials on the revival of the UAOC. Tserkva i Zhyttia — organ of the UAOC, publication of the VPCR, no. 1, 1927 (pp. 120–127). Historical Note of the VPCR on the past life of the UAOC and the restoration of its autocephaly. Ts. i Zh., no. 2–3 — 1927 (pp. 139–148). Materials on the history of the liberation of the UAOC. Ts. i Zh., no. 2–3 — 1927 (pp. 238–243). Review of the work of the Minor Assembly of the VPCR, which took place March 6–8, 1928. Ts. i Zh., no. 1/6, 1928 (pp. 35–45). Review of the work of the Great Mykolai Assembly of the VPCR of 1928. Ts. i Zh., no. 2/7, 1928 (pp. 73–92). Spiritual leadership of the UAOC (The Current State of the Church). Report of Metropolitan Mykolai at the Mykolai Assembly of 1928. Ts. i Zh., no. 2/7 — 1928 (pp. 93–98). The ministry of a bishop in the UAOC and the place of a priest of the UAOC in the parish. Report of Archbishop K. Maliushkevych at the Great Mykolai Assembly of 1928. Ts. i Zh., no. 2/7 — 1928 (pp. 99–108). Materials on the history of the UAOC. Ts. i Zh., no. 2/7 — 1928 (pp. 127–135).

Priest Fr. P. Korsunovskyi. The Church Movement in Ukraine in the First Years of the Revolution. Published in the journal of the UOC in the USA, Dnipro, in 1925. Acts of the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor in Kyiv, October 14–30 (new style), 1921. Frankfurt am Main. 1946. Reprint of the VPCR edition from the end of 1921. Sermons of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky: The Word of Christ to the Ukrainian People. Winnipeg. 1934. — The Apostolic Word to the Faithful of Christ's Church. Winnipeg. 1936. Mimeograph editions of Fr. P. Maievsky. Three letters of Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky (April 3, 1933; June 5, 1933; and July 3, 1933) to Fr. Maievsky. Published in the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia. Chicago. no. 6/9 — 1958. Enthronement epistle of Archbishop Mykolai Boretsky, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine, dated October 30, 1927 (Dnipro, no. 9, dated March 3, 1928).

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B. COURSES AND MONOGRAPHS.

Friedrich Heyer. Die Orthodoxe Kirche in der Ukraine von 1917 bis 1945. Cologne. 1953. O. Lototsky. Ukrainian Sources of Church Law. Warsaw. 1931. O. Lototsky. In Constantinople. Works of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw. Vol. XL. Warsaw. 1939. Ioan Teodorovych, Archbishop of the UOC in America and Canada. The Grace-Filled Nature of the Hierarchy of the UAOC. Regensburg. 1947. Prof. V. Bolotov. Lectures on the History of the Ancient Church. SPB. 1910. The Faith of the Orthodox Eastern Church According to Its Symbolic Books. Collection of extracts from the "Epistle of the Patriarchs of the Orthodox Catholic Church on the Orthodox Faith," the "Orthodox Confession" of Metropolitan Peter Mohyla, and the "Catechism" of Metropolitan Philaret. Moscow. 1889. Priest Kirill Zaitsev. The Orthodox Church in Soviet Russia. Part 1. Shanghai. 1947. Protopresbyter M. Polsky. New Martyrs of Russia. Jordanville. Vol. I. 1949, Vol. II. 1957. The Path of My Life. Memoirs of Metropolitan Evlogy, recorded from his narrations by T. Malukhina (p. 659). Paris. 1947. Prof. I. M. Andreev. A Brief Survey of the History of the Russian Church from the Revolution to Our Days. 1952. [publication location and publisher incomplete in original] Protopresbyter G. Shavelsky. Memoirs of the Last Protopresbyter of the Russian Army and Fleet. New York. 1954. Vols. I–II. Bishop Nikon (Rklitsky). A Biography of His Beatitude Anthony, Metropolitan of Kyiv and Halych. Vol. IV. New York. 1958. Bishop Alexiy. The Visit of His Beatitude, the Most Blessed Metropolitan Dionisiy to the Orthodox Autocephalous Eastern Churches. Warsaw. 1928. S. Yefremov. A History of Ukrainian Literature. Lviv. 1924. Dm. Doroshenko. My Memoirs of the Recent Past. 1914–1918. Lviv. 1923, Parts 1–3. Dm. Doroshenko. History of Ukraine, 1917–1923. Uzhhorod. 1930. Dm. Doroshenko. My Memoirs of the Recent Past. 1901–1914. Winnipeg. 1949. V. Vynnychenko. The Revival of the Nation. Kyiv–Vienna. 1920, Part III. Isaak Mazepa. Ukraine in the Fire and Storm of Revolution. Part I. Prometei Publishers. 1950. [publication location incomplete in original] Prof. N. Polonska-Vasylenko. The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Publication of the Institute for the Study of the USSR. Munich. Vol. I. 1955, Vol. II. 1958. M. Kovalevsky. Ukraine Under the Red Yoke. Documents. Facts. "Skhid" Publishers. Warsaw–Lviv. 1936. R. Suslyk. Bloody Pages from Unwritten Chronicles. England. 1956. Ukrainian Song Abroad. The World Concert Tour of the Ukrainian National Chorus Under the Direction of Oleksandr Koshyts. Paris. 1929. A Short Philosophical Dictionary. Edited by M. Rozental and P. Yudin. Kyiv. 1952.

C. BROCHURES AND ARTICLES.

Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky. "The Church and Life." [publication details incomplete in original] Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky. "The Orthodox Church of Christ of the Ukrainian People." (Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 1, 1927).

p. 364

V. M. Chekhivsky. "Achievements of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church." [publication details incomplete in original] V. M. Chekhivsky. "The Foundation of the Liberation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church." (Ts. i Zh., Nos. 1–5, 1927; Nos. 1–2, 1928). V. Volynsky. "The Origin of Hierarchy in Connection with the Question of the Grace-Filled Nature of the Hierarchy of the UAOC." (Ts. i Zh., no. 1 — 1927). Archbishop N. Sharaivsky. "Toward the Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor." (Ts. i Zh., no. 1). Archbishop N. Sharaivsky. "The Cause of Christ's Church." (Ts. i Zh., no. 2–3, 1927). Archbishop Ivan Pavlovsky. "The First All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor, the Sacred Sobor of the Bishops of Ukraine, and the Sobors of the First Centuries of Christianity." (Ts. i Zh., no. 2–3 — 1927). Bishop Mykolai Karabinevych. "The Truth About the Holy Ukrainian Autocephalous Church." (Ts. i Zh., no. 4 — 1927). Archbishop Konstantyn Krotevych. "Toward the Ideology of the UAOC." (Ts. i Zh., no. 1/6 — 1928). Archbishop Mykolai Pyvovariv. "The Church in the State and Its Separation." (Ts. i Zh., no. 1/6 — 1928). Archpriest Kyrylo Hryhorovych Stetsenko. Ts. i Zh., no. 4 — 1927. Short biographies of Metropolitan M. Boretsky, Archbishops Iosyf Oksiuk and K. Maliushkevych in Tserkva i Zhyttia, no. 5 — 1927. Prof. A. V. Kartashov. "The Revolution and the Sobor of 1917–18." Bogoslovskaia Mysl. Works of the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris. 1942. Ioan, Archbishop. "A String of Reminiscences." Ukrainian Orthodox Calendar for 1951. New York. Archbishop Nikanor. "The Dogmatic-Canonical Structure of the Holy Orthodox Ecumenical Church." Bohoslovskyi Visnyk, no. 1 — 1948. Munich. Archbishop Ioann of Shanghai. "His Eminence Anthony, Archbishop of Kharkiv and Akhtyrka." Pravoslavnyi Put. Collection. 1950. Jordanville. O. Lototsky. "A Spurned Cause." Tryzub, no. 12, 1927. Paris. O. Lototsky. "Symon Petliura." Warsaw. 1936. Dm. Doroshenko. "The Orthodox Church in the Past and Present Life of the Ukrainian People." 1940. I. Wlasowsky. "Pre-Sobor Reflections." Tserkva i Narid, Nos. 6–7, 8, 9, 1949; 1, 2–3, 1950. "Foundations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church," "On the Request to the Patriarch of Constantinople to Bless the Autocephalous Ukrainian Church" (1921), "Ukrainian Pronunciation of Church-Liturgical Text" (1921), "Church Law in Ukraine" (1921), and other pamphlet-publications of the Charitable Publishing House "Ukrainian Autocephalous Church" under the editorship of Prof. I. Ohiienko. "A Man of Labor" (on Metropolitan Ilarion Ohiienko). Slovo Istyny — monthly publication of the Metropolitan Sobor Publishing Commission in Winnipeg. XI–XII, 1950. Obserwator. "Obstacles to the Union of Our Churches." Slovo Istyny. January 1950. K. V. Fotiev. "Attempts at Ukrainian Church Autocephaly in the 20th Century." Munich. 1954. S. Ranevsky. "The Ukrainian Autocephalous Church." Jordanville–New York. 1948. "The Voice of History." Pravoslavnaia Rus, no. 12, 1954. P. Mirchuk. "The Ukrainian-Muscovite War of 1917–1919." Toronto. 1957.

p. 365

V. Zavitnevych. "Archpriest Kyrylo Hryhorovych Stetsenko." Ukrainian Orthodox Calendar for 1957. Publication of the UOC in the USA. V. Potiienko. "The Ukrainian Autocephalous Conciliar-Governed Church. The Ukrainian Autocephalous Conciliar-Episcopal Church." Kirchhain. March 1944. Manuscript. Epistle to the Most Reverend Clergy of Ukraine from Metropolitan Oleksiy Hromadsky and other bishops of the Ukrainian Autonomous Church. Newspaper Ukrainskyi Holos, January 22, 1942, Proskuriv. B. Mikorsky. "The Destruction of Cultural-Historical Monuments in Kyiv in 1934–36." Munich. 1951. Archpriest M. Yavdas. "The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church." Munich. 1956. M. Miller. "The Destruction of the Orthodox Church by the Bolsheviks." Ukrainskyi Zbirnyk, Book 10. Munich. 1957. B. Krupnytsky. "Ukrainian Scholarship Under the Soviets." Publication of the Institute for the Study of the USSR. Munich. 1957. M. Kovalevsky. "The Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. Opposition Movements in Ukraine and the National Policy of the USSR. 1920–1934." Publication of the Institute for the Study of the USSR. Munich. 1955. Archpriest D. Burko. "From the Book of Genesis of the Ukrainian Church." Ridna Tserkva, 1954–59. Archpriest D. Burko. "Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky." Ridna Tserkva, no. 4 — 1953. Archpriest D. Burko. "Archbishop Yurii Shevchenko." Vidomosti of the General Church Administration of the UAOC in Great Britain, no. 9–10 — 1959. H. Senko. "Toward the History of the Destruction of Our Church in Ukraine." Dzvin. Articles in yearbooks 1952–1955, issues: 4/25, 8(29), 9(30), 10(31), 10(43), 2(47), 3(48), 7(52), 8–9(53–54), 12(57), 1(58), 2(59), 4(61), 7(64), 8(65), 10(67), 7(76), 10(79). Ukrainske Pravoslavne Slovo, 1957, no. 5. "From the Time of Godless Tribulation. Khutir Ivanivka, Sloviansk District, Donetsk Region [Trans. note: Ukrainian Донеччині? — the source itself has a question mark]." Z. Riznykiv. "A Friend of the Ukrainian People" (on Archbishop Ahapit Vyshnevsky). Ukrainske Slovo, no. 1003. 1961. Paris. When the typesetting of this book was already completed, Chapter VII — "The Revival of the Ukrainian Church" by Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky appeared in print for the second time in the publication of the Greek-Orthodox Church in Canada. Winnipeg-4, Man., Canada.

p. 366

NOTED TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS.

Note: This errata table applies to the Ukrainian-language original edition (Winnipeg, 1961). Corrections are shown in Ukrainian as they appear in the source.

[Note: The errata table in the original contains OCR artifacts; the above is reconstructed as faithfully as possible from the source.]

Page Line Reads Should Read
25 — січні [unresolvable from source]
250 11 "Союз землевласників" "Союз Землевласників"
176 — українїогиа українства
68 1 Деникина Денікіна
22 — ініціяторих ініціяторів
96 7 иротонія хіротонія
119 7 Раюпутіна Распутіна
125 8 що вона що "вона
134 5 виступів, що виступів, щоб
168 15 Церква ґіращюючнх" "Церква Працюючих"
185 8 мале, виносне, мала, виносна,
212 7, 9 Дійсно [unresolvable from source]
225 2 християніськаго християнського
227 19 міусить буде мусить бути
232 22 крити критика
233 9 карецепцію (згоджування і рецепцію, згоджування
236 16 українськийтра українських
288 18 їняг ромадянству прав і на громадянству
293 19 іконоста/тси іконостаси
293 4 кільо.мертів кілометрів
295 22 Служб о Служба
296 3 архитектури архітектури
296 19 участиків учасників
297 12 от ато чі остаточно
300 11 по [unresolvable from source]
302 22 — [unresolvable from source]
p. 367

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note: Page numbers refer to the original Ukrainian edition (Winnipeg, 1961). Use the Table of Contents at the top of this document for navigation within this English translation.

THE FIFTH ERA THE REVIVAL OF THE UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN THE ERA OF THE NATIONAL REVIVAL OF THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE WITH THE COLLAPSE OF THE RUSSIAN TSARIST EMPIRE DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR (1914–1918) AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1917. (From 1917 to our days).

Section I. The Ukrainian Church Movement in Ukraine During the Revolution of 1917 to the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in Kyiv, October 14–30, 1921 ... 9

  1. Eparchial assemblies of 1917 in the eparchies of Ukraine, their composition and resolutions. The organization in Kyiv of the first All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada and its activity. 2. The Ukrainian Central Rada, the General Secretariat, and their relations to the national church cause in Ukraine. 3. The All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1918; its first session in January 1918, interrupted by the Bolshevik seizure of Kyiv. The creation, in place of the Church Rada, of the Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. The martyrdom of Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv. 4. The church cause under Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky. Elections of the Metropolitan of Kyiv. The summer and autumn 1918 sessions of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor; the Ukrainians' struggle for a Ukrainian Church independent of Moscow. The declaration at the Sobor of Minister of Confessions O. H. Lototsky. The Russian episcopate's opposition to the declaration and its political maneuvering. 5. Church policy under the Directorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic. The law of January 1, 1919 on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its supreme governance. The diplomatic mission to Constantinople of Prof. O. Lototsky. The Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Rada (VPCR) and events of national-church life in Kyiv under Bolshevik rule in 1919, and also during the Denikinite occupation of Kyiv in the second half of 1919. 6. How the proclamation of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the 2nd VPCR on May 5, 1920 came about. Letter of the VPCR in this matter to the Ukrainian Orthodox citizenry. The VPCR's efforts to obtain bishops for the UAOC. The spiritual care of Archbishop Parfeniy (Levytsky) of Poltava over the UAOC. The creation by the Moscow Patriarchate of an exarchate in Ukraine to combat the Ukrainian church movement. On the eve of the All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of October 1921. 7. The national-church activity of the UNR government in 1919–1921.
p. 368

Section II. The All-Ukrainian Church Sobor in Kyiv, October 14–30 (new style), 1921, Its Acts and Subsequent Events in the Life of the UAOC in Ukraine Until the Second World War of 1939–1945 ... 106

  1. The composition of the All-Ukrainian Sobor of 1921; the question therein of its canonicity. The question at the Sobor of autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
  2. The question at the Sobor of the episcopate of the UAOC; the appeal in this matter to the Patriarchal Exarch in Ukraine, Mykhail Yermakov. The resolution of the question by a decree of the Sobor. The creation of the UAOC episcopate through conciliar consecration.
  3. The internal structure of the UAOC according to the canons of the Kyiv Sobor of 1921. Other resolutions of the Sobor of 1921 on individual questions of church life. The appeal to the clergy of Ukraine by the VPCR in December 1921.
  4. The external growth of the UAOC after the Kyiv Sobor of 1921. Church districts of the UAOC; their spiritual leaders — the bishops. Statistics of UAOC parishes; "parallel" or "joint" parishes. What stood in the way of the UAOC's expansion.
  5. The main stages in the internal life of the UAOC in Ukraine; its legal status within the Soviet state. The VPCR as the central governing body of the UAOC, Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, and the Soviet government.
  6. Attempts at the disintegration of the UAOC. The Brotherhood "Active Church of Christ" (DKhTs). The "Ukrainian Autocephaly" headed by Bishop Feofil Buldovsky.
  7. The Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Sobor of the UAOC in October 1927; the removal therein from the metropolitan's cathedra of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky and the election as Metropolitan of Bishop Mykolai Boretsky.
  8. Light and shadow in the internal life of the revived UAOC. The liturgical sphere of church life: translations and publication of books of Holy Scripture and liturgical books in the Ukrainian language; church music, Ukrainian sacred composers. Church preaching. The VPCR's publication of the journal Tserkva i Zhyttia.
  9. Light and shadow in the internal life of the UAOC (continued): church life in the districts; district church sobors; the role of bishops in the districts. Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's characterization of the UAOC clergy. The civic status of clergymen of the UAOC in its ideology and practice. Means of preparing UAOC clergy: school and teaching, pastoral conferences. Verification of the personnel composition of the clergy. The legal position and material status of the clergy. Conciliar governance in the practice of UAOC church life. The material status of the UAOC.
  10. The inter-church position of the UAOC of 1921; relations with other churches. The "Memorandum of the VPCR plenum of 1924 regarding the union of churches and the Universal Church of Christ." The "Historical Note" of the VPCR of November 1925. The World Congress of "Practical Christianity" in Stockholm in 1925 and the UAOC's attitude toward it. VPCR communications with abroad only with the knowledge of the Soviet government. Relations between the UAOC and other Orthodox Churches in Ukraine. The matter of the ordination of Ye. Bachynsky as a priest for the UAOC by an Old Catholic bishop.
  11. The policy of the Communist government in Ukraine in its struggle against the Church and its means of destroying church life. Deprivation of the Church's rights as a juridical person; liquidation commissions, confiscation of church properties. Plundering of church valuables in Ukraine. The issuing by the Soviet authorities of permits for the use of churches; taxation of those permits. Closing of churches for divine services; profanation in the use of churches for other purposes. Destruction of ancient Ukrainian holy sites. Mass destruction of churches and monasteries throughout Ukraine. Taxation and destruction of the clergy; its defenselessness in persecution by the authorities. Renunciation of faith and Church. Anti-religious propaganda; the "League of Militant Godless." Anti-religious Communist education of youth in schools and in Komsomol organizations.
  12. The state of church life after the 2nd All-Ukrainian Church Sobor of 1927. The basic ideas of the enthronement epistle of Metropolitan Mykolai Boretsky and the guiding ideas of the church leadership in the development of UAOC church life. The liquidation of the UAOC in Ukraine in close connection with the stages in the development of socialism-communism by force. The UAOC and the SVU; the groundlessness of the view of their close connection. The Extraordinary Sobor of the UAOC of January 28–29, 1930 as a liquidation sobor; Metropolitan V. Lypkivsky's subjective portrayal of this event. The second Extraordinary Sobor of the UAOC of December 22, 1930 for the restoration of (simplified) governance of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The fading of UAOC church life under pressures after this sobor, as well as of church life generally throughout Ukraine. The fate of the UAOC episcopate. Conclusion.

Hierarchy of the UAOC in the Era of the Revival in Ukraine, 1921–1936 ... 359 Distribution of the UAOC into Church Districts ... 360 Number of Parishes of the UAOC by Districts ... 361 Index of Historical Persons ... 363 Bibliographic Index ... 373 Noted Typographical Errors ... 366

p. 369

The revival of our Holy Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the 1920s is a magnificent event in church history. The turbulent 20th century brought much suffering and tribulation to our people, with whom the Church-Sufferer was always present. Upon the altar of the struggle for the state independence of Ukraine, the finest church leaders of the 1920s–1930s laid down their lives. The Bolshevik regime failed to extinguish the flame of the church-liberation movement even when they destroyed and plundered our holy sites, even when they mowed down the peasants with the Holodomor. This tragic and at the same time heroic page of our church history is illuminated in the 4th volume of the work of Ivan Wlasowsky. Let us walk the path of studying the true history of our Holy Local (Pomisna) [Trans. note: Ukrainian Помісної — lit. "Local/Particular," a standard Orthodox ecclesiological term for a self-governing church with its own canonical territory; distinct from "Autocephalous," though related] Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

[This endorsement by Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko) accompanied the 1997 Ukrainian reprint edition.]

Filaret, Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus'-Ukraine.

ISBN 966-7017-03-6 ISBN 966-70-17-07-9 (Vol. 4, Part 1)