The people’s metropolitan

Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky (1864-1937) is one of the most tragic figures in Ukraine’s modern history. This Ukrainian hierarch founded the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) and sacrificed his life for its development. Lypkivsky headed the UAOC from 1921 to 1927, the period of the Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine, when the Soviet government organized all-out terror aimed at the physical destruction of all dissidents, including those churchmen who rejected compromises and collaboration with the repressive Soviet authorities.

Vasyl Lypkivsky was born in 1864 in the village of Poludni, Kyiv gubernia (now Cherkasy oblast). A year after graduating from the Kyiv Theological Academy with a degree in theology, he was ordained a priest and appointed dean of a cathedral in the town of Lypivtsi, Kyiv gubernia. Shortly afterwards he was appointed inspector of church schools in Lypivtsi district and was in fact the organizer of a network of schools there. That was when he first showed his organizational and teaching talents. Later he became principal of a convent school in Kyiv.

When he was still a young man, Lypkivsky realized that Ukrainian Orthodoxy and the Russian Church were incompatible notions: he characterized the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the life of the Ukrainian people as “complete subjugation to the Russian state and slavish fulfillment of its tasks.” He always spoke out against the disenfranchisement of church communities and the arbitrary rule of the high clergy and monasteries. In his view, all this formed “an unbridgeable gap between the outer grandeur and the inner nothingness of the (Russian) church, which enjoyed the support of the state and police.”

In 1917 Archpriest Lypkivsky became the leader of the Ukrainian religious liberation movement aimed at establishing the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, a church that would “speak” in the Ukrainian language. On May 22, 1919, he served the first Ukrainian- language liturgy at St. Nicholas Cathedral, the church that was built by Hetman Ivan Mazepa and later demolished. For conducting divine services in the Ukrainian language, Lypkivsky was twice forbidden by the Russian church hierarchs to serve Mass.

In October 1921, the efforts of Lypkivsky and his followers led to the convocation of the first All-Ukrainian Church Council at Kyiv’s St. Sophia Cathedral. But as it turned out, not a single bishop (all of them belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine) wished to participate in a Ukrainian Orthodox council. According to church canons, this meant that the council was not authorized to elect the supreme church hierarch (metropolitan) and hence, to ordain bishops. Many believers wondered if Christ was present and the Holy Ghost spoke at the council.

Archpriest Lypkivsky was the first to address the council. He offered the following postulates to be discussed by the Orthodox conclave: 1. All the believers who have come to the council are not private individuals but elected representatives of their church communities, and therefore the council hears the voice of the entire Ukrainian church. 2. All council members are here to address the problems of Christ’s church in Ukraine, and therefore Christ Himself is present here with us. 3. All the council delegates believe that the Ukrainian church is guided by the Holy Ghost and that “the Holy Ghost’s grace” has brought them to the council. 4. All this means that the council has all the signs of being completely canonical. 5. The Muscovite bishops did not come to the council because they do not consider themselves members of our Church or the chosen ones of this Church.”

After a careful discussion of Lypkivsky’s postulates, the council pronounced itself the canonical and legitimate voice of the entire Ukrainian church.

Then developments took the following course: after consulting the Holy Scriptures, the council declared that there was no such thing as episcopal ordination in apostolic times: for example, the Apostle Paul was ordained by the prophets, who were not bishops. The Apostle Timothy was also ordained “by the laying on of priests’ hands,” not by bishops. The Holy Ghost’s grace applies not to individual bishops but to the church as a whole, i.e., a community of believers. Therefore, the Ukrainian church also has the full right to lay its hands on the chosen one and bring the Holy Ghost’s grace down on him, as was the case in apostolic times.

This was in fact done: all the members of the All-Ukrainian Church Council laid hands on their first bishop, Vasyl Lypkivsky, and elected him Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Rus’, i.e., head of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Then they ordained the Ukrainian hierarchy and approved the main — new and indispensable — principles of the Ukrainian church, such as autocephaly, separation from the state, unity, as well as the native language in churches and church-sponsored schools. Lypkivsky thus became metropolitan in this ancient Christian way and began to reform the UAOC.

Addressing the Ukrainian Orthodox community on the final day of the council, Lypkivsky said, “All that has happened was prepared by the finest forces of Ukraine,” and he called upon the delegates “not only to cherish but expand the church. Each of you should be an apostle of the Ukrainian church.”

Under Metropolitan Lypkivsky’s guidance, the church began to use the Ukrainian language during services and revive ancient Ukrainian church traditions. Parishioners began taking an extremely active part in their church life. As time passed, the UAOC grew in strength: some historians believe that up to 2,000 were created, a large number for those times. In other words, the UAOC became the people’s church, and the faithful loved and venerated its finest bishops. Lypkivsky was also called the “people’s metropolitan,” for he was the spiritual leader of the Ukrainian people.

This situation troubled the Bolshevik authorities. Metropolitan Lypkivsky was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned, and forbidden to travel to his congregations outside Kyiv. However, he managed to overcome these obstacles and visit his parishioners. In 1927 the Soviet government convened a false “Second UAOC Council,” which, on pain of arrest and exile for all its participants and under pressure exerted by some traitors among the UAOC episcopate, voted to dismiss Lypkivsky. As Arsenii Zinchenko states in his book Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky (2007), “the 2nd Council’s records convey a stultifying atmosphere of the sessions, which was caused by the presence and direct interference in the proceedings by GPU officers and their agents among the delegates.” Thus, it is little wonder that the majority of the council resolved “to relieve Vasyl Lypkivsky of the burden of his service as metropolitan.” Three years later, in 1930, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the first independent church in Ukraine’s history, was abolished.

After 1927 Metropolitan Lypkivsky lived for another 10 years, forgotten by everyone, in poverty, under constant surveillance, and arrested from time to time. He resided in a suburb of Kyiv, where he continued to work on his History of the Ukrainian Church and his priceless sermons, corresponded with Ukrainian church figures abroad, translated liturgical literature, and tried to improve the church’s statute — he was preparing to rebuild the Ukrainian church.

The metropolitan met a violent death, without a proper investigation and trial, by a decision of the so-called troika: the metropolitan of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church was shot by the NKVD on Nov. 27, 1937.

He left us his fiery sermons, his history of the Ukrainian church, liturgical translations, his reflections on the Ukrainian people’s destiny, and a testament, in which he called on future generations to rebuild the national Ukrainian church. He wrote, “I pray to God that the terrible communist flood that is now trying to drown our people and wipe off the face of the earth their faith, church, and all things dearest to them, their human nature, their freedom and nation, will finally vanish and the people will save themselves from it and will go on living.”

On Nov. 20, 2007, Ukraine marked the 70th anniversary of the death of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky. His memory was honored both in Kyiv and in the places where he was born and raised, and where he preached. Commemorative liturgies were served in UAOC churches. Rev. Yevstratii, spokesman of the Kyiv Patriarchate, said that “the church is praying that Vasyl Lypkivsky’s soul may rest in peace; it is also praying for the sons and daughters of Ukraine, who died under the Bolshevik occupation regime.” The National Vernadsky Library of Ukraine hosted an exhibit of Metropolitan Lypkivsky’s legacy. A conference entitled “The Service and Legacy of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky” was held on Nov. 17. The metropolitan’s fellow countrymen donated money to the organizing committee for the publication of the conference proceedings.

It is 70 years since Metropolitan Vasyl met a martyr’s death. During this time, Ukraine became an independent state, but the problems, which the metropolitan sought to resolve and in doing so died a martyr’s death, remain unsolved. Ukrainian Orthodoxy still lacks unity: part of it is still chained to the imperial church of another state. It is very difficult to predict the end of this abnormal situation. Far from all Ukrainian Orthodox churches have switched to the Ukrainian liturgical language — they are still praying with a strong Russian accent.

Our Orthodox churches have also done very little to democratize their internal workings, about which the metropolitan spoke out so fervently. All this leads one to conclude that this shameful schism is the only sign of contemporary Ukrainian Orthodoxy. It seems futile to expect the church to reform. As Yevhen Sverstiuk declared at the conference, “a terrible disorder reigns supreme in Ukraine’s religious life, some mindless babble about canons.”

I wonder how long true believers and patriots of Ukraine will put up with this situation, or will they simply continue, to quote Lypkivsky, “to sit and weep by the rivers of Babylon?” Will there ever be any “living souls that will restore a truly Christian life in Ukraine?”