UAOC 1921: The Ukrainian Church Before the Tomos

The myth of a “new political church”

Critics of Ukrainian autocephaly often begin its history with the 2018 Unification Council and the 2019 Tomos. That chronology erases the preceding century. Today’s Orthodox Church of Ukraine is not the same administrative body as the UAOC of 1921, but the demand for an independent Ukrainian church long predates independence in 1991.

1917: church and revolution

After the monarchy fell, the church movement developed alongside the Ukrainian Revolution. In April 1917, the Kyiv Eparchial Congress of clergy and laity, chaired by Vasyl Lypkivskyi, resolved that autonomous Ukraine should have a Ukrainian church independent of the Russian Synod^[1]. This was neither a Bolshevik decision nor a post-Soviet state project. It was an act of self-organization by clergy and worshippers.

The movement sought more than a change of jurisdiction. It wanted Ukrainian restored to worship and parish communities given a greater role. Memories of the first Ukrainian Gospel readings at St Nicholas Cathedral record the response: worshippers wept when they heard Scripture in their own language^[4].

The Council of 1921

The First All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Council met in St Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv from 14 to 30 October 1921. It established the UAOC as an organization and, on 23 October, elected and consecrated Vasyl Lypkivskyi Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine^[2]. The new church rested on autocephaly, Ukrainian-language worship, and conciliar governance: parishes elected clergy, while laypeople took part in church administration^[3].

The UAOC’s consecration of its hierarchy by presbyters rather than bishops prompted a sharp canonical dispute from the outset. A factual account should not conceal that ecclesiastical controversy. It also does not negate the documented mass movement, the 1921 Council, the Ukrainian parishes, or the state’s repression of them.

How the GPU dismantled the UAOC

The Soviet authorities first exploited conflicts among Orthodox movements. As Stalinist power hardened, they moved to direct destruction. Archival records document informants, provocations, and GPU-organized conflicts inside parish communities^[5]. The Bolsheviks used the same method to replace Ukrainian agency with controlled bodies in politics and culture.

The UAOC’s Second Council in 1927 already met under GPU supervision. A political police representative monitored the proceedings, while the state demanded Lypkivskyi’s removal from church leadership^[6]. The council complied in the hope of saving the organization. It failed: in 1930 the authorities forced the UAOC into a so-called “self-liquidation,” after which repression of its clergy intensified.

The old “fascist” label

The NKVD arrested the 73-year-old Lypkivskyi in October 1937. Investigators accused him of leading an “anti-Soviet fascist organization of churchmen.” He rejected the charge and did not testify against others. An NKVD troika sentenced him to death on 20 November, and he was executed in Kyiv’s Lukianivska Prison on 27 November^[7].

The Soviet security apparatus was labelling Ukrainian movements “fascist” long before Russia’s modern rhetoric of “denazification.” Lypkivskyi’s case shows what that label did: invent a conspiracy, criminalize a Ukrainian institution, and physically eliminate its leader.

What it means

The UAOC’s history refutes two distortions. The Ukrainian drive for church independence did not begin in 2018, and the Bolshevik state was not its benevolent sponsor. The movement arose from Ukrainian society in 1917, took institutional form in 1921, and was destroyed by the Soviet political police. The Tomos arrived a century after the first public demand for autocephaly, not in place of the history that preceded it.