TEN LETTERS FROM PROFESSOR LEONID BILETSKY TO METROPOLITAN HILARION (OHIENKO)

Abstract

The article examines part of Metropolitan Hilarion (Ohienko)’s correspondence with the renowned Ukrainian philologist Leonid Biletsky in the 1920s. These letters, discovered in the archives of the Consistory of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada (Winnipeg). This allows us to partially fill the gap in the source base of Ohienko studies, since the metropolitan’s archive was destroyed twice, in 1920 and 1944. These letters shed light on Ohienko’s ties, while he was still Minister of Confessions of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, with an outstanding scholar and lecturer at the Ukrainian State University in Kamianets-Podilskyi, the first university of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. These letters provide a more complete picture of I. Ohienko’s activities as Minister of Education and Confessions of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, the difficult conditions of his life in exile, as was the case for all those who fled from the Bolshevik punitive authorities, his religiosity, and his desire to translate the Holy Scriptures into Ukrainian.