action, the council decided to ordain its leader, Archpriest Vasyl Lypkivsky, as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine for the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church through the laying-on-of-hands by the priests and laypeople present. Because of the extremely unorthodox method it used to obtain a hierarchy, and its disrespect for some established canonical principles, this church was never acknowledged by any other Orthodox church. However, by early 1924 the new church had 30 bishops and approximately 1,500 priests and deacons serving in nearly 1,100 parishes in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with possibly as many as six million faithful. Persecution, arrest and death Lipkivsky spent the whole period of his office as Metropolitan travelling to parishes throughout Ukraine. Under Soviet rule the authorities at first viewed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in a positive way as a counterweight to the Russian Orthodox Church, but by the late 1920s they saw it as a dangerous expression of Ukrainian nationalism. During his time as Metropolitan he was arrested by authorities of the Soviet government several times. The authorities often prohibited his departures from Kyiv and travel to parishes in Ukraine. Upon demands of the Soviet government, he was removed from his position as Metropolitan at the Second All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Council in 1927. In 1927, he was placed under house arrest, whereby his permission to depart from Kyiv and to conduct religious services in the churches of the city of Kyiv was withdrawn. His arrest in quarters continued from 1927 to 1937. Under threat of Soviet repression, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church dissolved itself and accepted incorporation into the Russian-dominated Moscow Patriarchate in 1930. In February 1937, Metropolitan Vasyl (Lypkivsky) was arrested by the Russian Secret Police, the NKVD. In 1937 he was sentenced to death by the decree of an NKVD troika, and was executed on 27 November 1937. In 1989, he was politically "rehabilitated" by the Soviet government. References 1864 births 1937 deaths People from Cherkasy Oblast People from Kiev Governorate First Hierarchs of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church Eastern Orthodox people executed by the Soviet Union Great Purge victims from Ukraine Soviet rehabilitations Kiev Theological Academy alumni