Tabinsky, Petro

Tabinsky, Petro [Табінський, Петро; Tabins'kyj], b 30 June 1888 in Berestechko, Dubno county, Volhynia gubernia, d 1950? in a GULAG labor camp. Church activist. He studied at theological seminaries in Zhytomyr and Saint Petersburg, was ordained in 1913, and then taught at the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy (1913–17) and the Kamianets-Podilskyi Ukrainian State University (1918–20). He was suspended from his priestly duties by the Moscow patriarch Pimen at this time for celebrating the Divine Liturgy and other religious services in the Ukrainian language. When the Bolsheviks occupied Ukraine, he fled to Poland, where he was interned by the authorities in 1920–2. He became a priest in Volodymyr-Volynskyi (1922–4) and rector of the theological seminary in Kremianets (1924–30). During this time he was an associate of the religious publication Na varti and a vocal critic of the Russian Orthodox church and its Russified hierarchy in Volhynia. His conflicts with the latter led ultimately to his dismissal from the Kremianets Seminary. Tabinsky then joined the Ukrainian Catholic church and moved to Lviv in 1931–2 to teach at the Greek Catholic Theological Academy. He was arrested in 1944 by the Soviet authorities and sent to a labor camp in Siberia, where he died.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]