BETWEEN HITLER AND STALIN

METROPOLITAN VASYL LYPKIVSKY

b. 19 March 1864, Kiev Gubernia, d. 27 November 1937

Lypkivksy was the first Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Ordained in 1891, he began lecturing on canon law in the Kiev Church Teachers’ School but was dismissed for his support of a separate Ukrainian Church. After the 1917 Revolution he led the struggle for an independent Ukrainian Church. He celebrated the first Liturgy in the Ukrainian language in May 1919, for which the Russian Orthodox Church defrocked him. In summer 1919 he became parish priest of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv.

After the All-Ukrainian Church Council established the UAOC in October 1921 Lypkivsky was elected Metropolitan. Despite the Russian Orthodox Church’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the UAOC and its constant vilification of Lypkivksy, he worked tirelessly in establishing the new independent Church, for which he gained much popularity. His popularity was seen as a threat by the Soviet authorities, and he was placed under house arrest in 1927; soon after, the Soviet authorities forced the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Council to dismiss him. He lived under arrest and in poverty in Kyiv from 1927 until 1937. The NKVD arrested Lypkivsky in November 1937, at the height of the Great Terror. He was charged with anti-Soviet activity and summarily executed on 27 November 1937. Much of the hierarchy and clergy of the UAOC met with a similar fate as Soviet authorities attempted to control spiritual life in the USSR through the Russian Orthodox Church.