Pavlovsky, Ivan

Pavlovsky, Ivan [Павловський, Іван; Pavlovs'kyj], b 20 May 1890 in Sosnivka, Chyhyryn county, Kyiv gubernia, d 9 December 1937. Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church (UAOC). He graduated from the Chernihiv Theological Seminary in 1914 and was ordained; he then organized Ukrainian parishes in Chernihiv county (1920–1). In November 1921 he was consecrated bishop of the UAOC for Cherkasy-Chyhyryn. From December 1926 he was archbishop of Kharkiv, where he also edited the UAOC organ Tserkva i zhyttia (Kharkiv). He participated in the extraordinary council of January 1930, at which the Soviet authorities dissolved the UAOC, and in the second extraordinary council of December 1930, at which the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was founded as the successor to the UAOC. At this council he was also made ‘metropolitan of Kharkiv and of all Ukraine’ (1930–6). His seat was the Kharkiv Cathedral of the Resurrection (1930–4) until it was destroyed, and then the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Kharkiv. When the capital of Ukraine was transferred to Kyiv, he moved there. In 1936 he was arrested and subsequently executed.

[This article was updated in 2021.]