Number DOI: http://doi.org/10.33209/2519-4348-2707-9627-2023-11-143

VB. – № 11, 2023. – P. 221-248

Summary

The biography of the last bishop of the first revival of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) in the years 1917–1930, Archbishop Yosyp Oksiyuk, who had a long life and died just a few months before Ukraine regained its independence on August 24, 1991, remains probably the least researched, and probable guesses and rumours about his life travel through encyclopedias and reference books. Before this article was written, various church encyclopedias and electronic directories differed in their versions, primarily regarding the exact place and even the date of his death. Therefore, we aim to research and introduce into scientific discourse the newly discovered facts from the life of bishop Yosyp Oksiyuk, to study how the repressive institutions of the USSR were able to turn one of the leaders of the Ukrainian church liberation movement of the interwar period, one of the leaders and bishops of the UAOC into a theologian who served the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church in Soviet Ukraine, how the Soviet occupation authorities managed to force to silence the person who in the 1990s could become the leader of the new, that is, the third revival of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. History does not know the subjunctive mood – that is why it is not always appropriate to write how the fate of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church could have turned out if it had not been destroyed and persecuted by the Russian-Bolshevik invaders in the 1930s. It is not for us to judge whether Yosyp Oksiyuk is to blame for his life turning out the way it did. We cannot even imagine the hell of Stalin’s prisons and concentration camps that Archbishop Yosyp Oksiyuk and thousands of clerics of the Church of the Martyr – the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, had to go through. Whether Archbishop Yosyp Oksiyuk did the right thing by not supporting the third revival of the UAOC and the proposal of Archpriest Volodymyr Yarema to lead the UAOC is somewhat rhetorical question. In 1990, Yosyp Oksiyuk was already 96 years old. It is obvious that the older man, intimidated by Soviet punishers and special services, no longer had the physical or moral strength for this position. However, even the years spent in Stalin’s concentration camps did not kill Yosyp Oksiyuk’s love for his native Ukrainian language and his native Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Until the end of his life, he lived and worked with faith in Christ and for the benefit of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He left for us an extensive array of theological translations and articles, the crown of which is the translation of the New Testament into the Ukrainian language. Currently, on the thrones of all churches of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine lies the Gospel translated by Archbishop Yosyp Oksiyuk and Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko), which clergy use during services.

Key words: Yosyp Oksiyuk, translator, theologian, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, UAPC, biography, bishop, translation of the New Testament, Bishop Kamianets-Podilskyi, Archbishop Lubensky, Archbishop Poltava, Orthodox Herald, Journal of the Moscow Patriarc

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