Archpriest David Shevchenko

Archpriest David Shevchenko (1891-1972)

Shevchenko may be spelt Shevtchenko, Chevtchenko.

Gratitude is expressed to Igumen Georges (Leroy) for his research, and to Dr. Paul Ladouceur for his publication of the information.

Early life of David Shevchenko

On 24 June, 1891, David Shevchenko was born in Ukraine, although available information does not indicate where. It is not known at this time who were his parents. Regardless, he was raised in the bosom of the Russian Orthodox Church during the time of the Russian Empire. Because the Shevchenko surname has some historical association with the Kiev Governorate, it is possible that Davie Shevchenko was from that area of Ukraine (although there are certainly other alternatives).

He received his primary and secondary education in accordance with the custom of the time.

Higher education

David Shevchenko entered military service at some time before 1910, and by 1912, he entered an artillery school in Vladivostok, on the Pacific Coast of the Russian Far East. Before long, he was serving as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army. In this context, he served as a garrison officer in Manchuria, until 1917.

World War I

The effects of World War I after 1914 were felt in Vladivostok as well as in the rest of the Russian Empire.

Revolutions, 1917

The February and October Revolutions of 1917, and the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, brought considerable unrest, particularly with the Russian Civil War. There were many effects in that regard in the Far East and in Sibera.

China, 1918

David Shevchenko remained within China after the revolutions. There were 3 main centres of Russian-speaking settlement : in Peking (as it was written then), the capital ; in Harbin, Manchuria ; and in Shanghai, in the south. It is not known at present what his life was like there at that time.

Theological study, 1940s

It is known that David Shevchenko began to study at the Russian Orthodox seminary in Shanghai. It is in this city that Bishop John (Maximovich) was serving, it is highly probable that they were acquainted with one another.

Ordinations, 1945

In 1945, David Shevchenko was ordained to the Holy Diaconate, and then to the Holy Priesthood by Bishop John (Maximovich).

Philippines

After the collapse of “nationalist China” (led by General Chiang Kai-Shek), in the 1949 Revolution (led by Mr. Mao Tse-Tung), Father David took refuge in the Philippines. His taking refuge there occurred at about the same time as did Archbishop John (Maximovich) and his many orphans, along with a very large number of Russians, who fled the revolution. They lived on an uninhabited part of the island of Tubabao. Many were refugees for the second time, as was Father David. Father David remained in the Philippine Republic until 1952. However, Archbishop John had been transferred to Western Europe in 1951.

Belgium

In 1952, Priest David Shevchenko travelled also to Europe. He stayed in Brussels, Belgium for a year, in the same city where Archbishop John was living. It is very likely that his next travel was in association with the connexions and inspiration of the holy archbishop.

Japan

In 1953, Father David boarded the French liner “Vietnam”, and he sailed to Tokyo, and then to Kobě, in Japan. In Tokyo, he had received the blessing from Archbishop Ireney (Bekish) (temporary leader of the Orthodox Church in Japan) to serve in Kobě. Many Russians lived in Kobě, and he helped them as a priest for a short time.

Indo-China, Japan

Afterwards, he stopped over for 8 days in Saigon (in newly-independent South Vietnam. There he heard Russian spoken, and he listened to a woman who lamented that they had not seen a priest for 20 years. He brought religious aid to this Russian colony, and then he returned to Japan, where he remained until 1957.

Transfer to Canada, 1957

In 1957, Priest David Shevchenko received a transfer to Canada. At the time, it was understood that it was a temporary transfer, in order to replace Archpriest Theodore Oustoutchenkov (who had reposed in the Lord suddenly and unexpectedly. He was received into the Archdiocese of Canada by Bishop Nikon (de Grève) of Toronto and Canada, and he was assigned to serve the parishes in Abitibi, Québec.

There, he began to serve from Val-d’Or ; and he lived in Val-d’Or, right next to the Temple, in the former home of Théodore Koulomzine. At that time, the Temple was situated at the intersection of Lamaque and Sigma Boulevards, not (as now) isolated on all 3 sides by road-ways.

From the time of his arrival, Father David led the 3 communities as a faithful shepherd. As a good shepherd, he led the people, and by his example he showed the people how to live their lives in the Orthodox Christian manner. However, as his successor (many years later) pointed out, even so, not all understood this way of life beyond the externals.

Father David serving at Rouyn

Father David was very much a “royalist” Russian, and one who rejected the communist-Soviet government which yet reigned during his lifetime. Because of the circumstances of his life, he lived for many years within the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), while he lived in China. Nevertheless, he was not rigid in his disposition, much in the manner of Archbishop John (Maximovich) of Shanghai (later of San Francisco). Thus, his relationships in Canada overlapped the ROGCCNA and the ROCOR in Canada. Many other details of the life of Father David Shevchenko are provided in the following “Reflections” section.

Saint Nicholas, Val-d'Or (left) ; Saint George, Rouyn (right)

Holy Transfiguration, Kirkland Lake

Repose, 1982

Archpriest David Shevchenko reposed in Christ in Val-d’Or, Quebec, in 1982, at the age of 90. The Service for the Burial of a Priest was offered in the Temple of Saint Nicholas in Val-d’Or.

Reflections

In 1972, Jean-Michel Wyl interviewed Archpriest David Shevchenko, and published the content in the Belgian newspaper “l’Écho”. The text is reproduced here, including the published introduction. It seemed interesting to us to make this text available to everyone, which presents the personality of Father David Shevchenko. The journalist who did the interview gives us a very enthusiastic point of view : without a doubt, he was impressed by the striking personality of Father David. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the site author ; Father David Shevchenko’s political opinions must of course be placed in the socio-cultural context of the time. Since then, the world has changed considerably ! Here is the text : As if out of a Gheorghiu novel, Father Shevchenko, this little-known person.

It happens few times in a man’s life that one can meet a being who is totally out of the ordinary ; who is not made like the others ; who thinks with the experience that age brings ; who carries within him an inordinate love for four things : Russia, Tsar Nicholas II, God, and Canada. Apparently, these four things don’t seem entirely reconcilable. Let’s say that they seem to fit together in twos or threes, but that the fourth element of this rebus is incompatible with the others. Yet, the story and life of the Very Reverend Father David Shevchenko is not a trivial story.

After hours of unwinding the difficult skein of a life of eighty-two years, we end up understanding that there can be, in man, immense greatness ; and that this man is even greater when his life has been nothing but a long series of deep tears, and when at eighty-two he has finally found peace ! He works ten hours a day. He prays. He is surprisingly happy. He is endearing. Moreover, when you meet an eighty-two year old man who tells you, without laughing : “in twenty years I could visit all the parishes using a helicopter !”, it gives you food for thought.

Archpriest David Shevchenko with interviewer Jean-Michel Wyl, 1972

A Soviet is not a Russian

“I was born on 24 June, 1891, in Ukraine”. The reign of Emperor Alexander III ended (1894). We are witnessing a policy of reaction and Russification, the political separation of Russia from Germany, and the signing of the treaty of alliance with France, signed in 1892. Nicholas will be the last tsar of Russia. His wife is the famous Alix of Hesse, better known as Alexandra Feodorovna.

In 1895, Tsar Nicholas intervened to save China from Japan ; but, a few years later, he engaged his country in the disastrous Russo-Japanese War which lasted from 1904 to 1905. A Russian page was going to be turned because the tsar let it happen. The repression known as “Red Sunday” (or “Bloody Sunday”) in which thousands of workers died (see the film “Doctor Zhivago”). Despite the election of a Duma (popular assembly), another insurrection was bloodily crushed, and the Duma was dissolved.

From that moment on, Nicholas allowed himself to be advised by a reactionary adventurer, Stolypin, who was assassinated in 1911. From 1905, another adventurer had a harmful influence on the emperor. This was the "monk" Rasputin (note: Rasputin was never a monk or ecclesiastic), assassinated in 1916 by Prince Youssoupov. Then it was the emperor himself who was assassinated by the Bolsheviks at Yekaterinburg in the night of 16 to 17 July, 1916. Russia no longer existed from that moment on. It was Lenin who founded the first peoples’ government in April, 1917.

From Russia to Manchuria

In 1912, Mr. David Shevchenko was a student at an artillery school in Vladivostok. Later, he was an officer in the imperial army of Tsar Nicholas II. Precipitating events led to “White Russia” being invaded. White Russian intelligentsia took refuge in Manchuria, a neutral territory located in the north of China, a country crossed by the Amur River and whose capital is Kharbin (Harbin). This neutral region, this “no man’s land”, would have been of capital importance at that time, since it allowed millions of men (“White Russians”) to be spared (more or less) from the events which were agitating, during this time there, the defunct Russia and the new USSR.

Mr. Shevchenko had been a garrison officer in Manchuria, at the general staff. He took care of military assignments from 1910, until the Russian Revolution, the one called the October Revolution (despite the fact that it took place in November, according to the Gregorian calendar).

Thirty-five years in China

We could add a subtitle : “And from one revolution to another”. Manchuria, like China, would become a hot spot. China was hostile towards the Manchu dynasty, which was reinforced by 300,000 White Russian emigrant intellectuals who, in a few years, acquired the best positions and key positions in the country (banks, industry, commerce, liberal professions, university, art, and the like) which considerably strengthened the position of Manchuria and its governor, the Republican general Fong Tso-Lin. On the other hand, splits were created here and there and, moreover, Chiang Kai-Shek, educated from the best sources by the Russian elite, organised and founded the first army (instructed by the Russians, and then by a German mission, Sect-Falkenhausen).

According to Mr. David Shevchenko, we will also find, in this army, a mosaic of English, French, and other external aid, for reasons that we can barely understand today.

Japanese aggression

From then on, three problems faced China : the communist problem, military agitation, and the political organisation which went hand in hand with economic recovery. Then Chiang Kai-Shek turned violently against the communists. To this end, Mr. David Shevchenko, a consummate historian who corresponds, from Val-d’Or, with several American universities and newspapers, cites to us a strange affair : that of the updating of very compromising documents which proved, without shadow of a doubt, the communist invasion plans of China.

This discovery, made at the Soviet embassy in Beijing, would change the course of history and create this profound schism between Chiang Kai-Shek (and also Kuo-min-tang) and the communist world of the time. This anti-communist policy did not end until 1936, faced with the danger of Japanese aggression. In 1931 and until 1935, the Japanese seized Manchuria and from there gradually infiltrated China. In 1937, we witnessed the capture of Beijing, then that of Nanking. From 1941 to 1945, the Pacific War immobilised Japanese forces and the communists took over from the nationalists, with the help of the United States (as strange as that may seem). But this American aid is less imposing than that of Moscow, which finds great ideological and political advantages in it.

Civil war

One evil does not go without leading to another. From 1946, China was agitated by the civil war that Mr. Shevchenko tells us about. The disappearance of the common enemy facing the Americans (the Japanese) leaves the nationalists and the Chinese communists face to face. The communist army refuses to integrate with the nationalist army supported by the United States. But the nationalists, exhausted by the war, lost ground and, consequently, Manchuria. Inflation and poverty set in in the regions controlled by the nationalists. Opposite Chiang Kai-Shek who tries to support what remains of his nationalists, a new politician offers the populations an interesting programme : it is Mr. Mao Tse-Toung who is strongly supported by the USSR.

In 1949, there was nothing left of the nationalists who took refuge, with their leader Tchang Kai-Tcheck (Chiang Kai-Shek), in Formosa (Taiwan), where he constituted the government of nationalist China (which had just “disembarked” from the UN in November, 1971) while we see the official birth of the People's Republic of China which was proclaimed in Beijing on 1 October, 1949.

The long wandering

After the collapse of nationalist China, Mr. Shevchenko, like thousands of men, set off on an adventure. The only possible country that could be a reasonable haven for him was the Philippines. This archipelago of ten thousand islands, the largest of which, Manila, which belonged to the Spanish Empire for a long time, became independent when General Aguinaldo occupied almost the entire territory in 1898. In the meantime, Spain ceded this country to the United States, but this did not end the nationalist insurrection.

The general was taken prisoner and, finally, it was in 1946 that an act of absolute independence was signed by the United States. Those whom everyone had been fleeing (like Mr. Shevchenko for years – the Japanese) would occupy the Philippines from 1941 to 1942. Great suffering was inflicted on the foreign emigrants. Concentration camps were set up. In addition to the calamities of war and political calamities, Mr. Shevchenko would have to experience the calamities of Nature : hurricanes, cyclones, etc.

A wish not like any other

After so much physical suffering, Mr. Shevchenko then vowed to become a Russian Orthodox priest, if he was spared from all these events. Luck, or Providence, will smile on him. He will therefore respect his wish and study at the Russian Orthodox seminary in Shanghai. This is how this man, a former officer in the army of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, became a priest after this long march strewn with misery, suffering, millions of deaths, millions of transplant recipients, so many prisoners supporting the pitiless yoke of endless ordeals. Who would believe, seeing this magnificent old man pass through the streets of Val-d’Or, that a man could have endured so much suffering, so much misery ; and to have preserved, in man, hope and love so vivid that he carries in his heart ? It's almost unthinkable !

Many trips

He stayed in the Philippines from 1949 to 1952. Then he left the Far East for Europe. For a year, he stayed in Belgium.

But in 1953, he once again boarded the French liner “Vietnam” and headed to Tokyo and then to Kobe. Many Russians remain in this region of the world and he ministers to them. His boat stopped in Saigon for eight days. He gets off the boat and, on the dock, hands his passport to an employee. As he only speaks Russian, he did not understand that the employee had only told him to wait. He sits down, discouraged, and wants to cry.

Suddenly, he hears Russian spoken. A woman asks him : “Are you Father David Shevchenko ?” She adds : “a telegram from Brussels informed us of your passage through Saigon”. Then the woman begins to cry : “it has been twenty years”, she said, “since we have had a Russian priest”. “I had the best stopover of my life”, he told me. “For eight days, I baptised children who had never received baptism. I married people who, by force of circumstances, were living together”.

Then he returned to Japan, where he stayed until 1957. The same year, he was transferred “temporarily” to Val-d’Or to replace Father Oustoutchenkov. It's 1972, and he's still with us.

“I love Canada”

“Canada is the most beautiful country in the world, for an old man like me. I discovered happiness and peace. The government gives me a small old age pension. Every week I visit the parishes of Val-d’Or, Rouyn, Kirkland Lake, and McGarry/Kearns, by bus”. When we visit the Very Reverend Father David Shevchenko (who lives in the former house of Mr. T Koulomzine, doctor in mining sciences, this Sorbonne graduate is married to a Russian princess, who died a few months ago), we are surprised by the fact that, in this house, there are no less than three offices.

Everywhere, books, documents, maps. This man works non-stop. He mainly studies military and political history. He writes articles for several American Russian-language newspapers. Columbia University asked him to write his memoirs and Mr. Shevchenko has already written the first part. What a shame that this precious document is written in Russian. It must be teeming with interest. He himself has seen it so much, experienced it so much!

A great patriot

Despite the years, we find in this man (as in almost all White Russians) a living love and veneration of the defunct imperial house. Moreover, we very clearly feel an unquestioned antipathy towards everything that is communist. “I will defend my little church until my last breath against the communists of the whole world”. Then he takes an icon from his pocket, kisses it, crosses himself ; he turns to the yellowed engraving hanging on the wall and which represents the imperial family, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra. “My homeland, Russia, the real Russia, is in my heart and I carry it within me like a hurt bird”.

At that moment we want to say to him : “Batiushka, you are beautiful. There will no longer be any traces left (apart from in certain books) of this wonderful Russia of which you still speak to us”. “The one who comes after me”, he murmurs, “will not be the same because he will be younger. He will be a two-faced priest”. This great patriot, authentic priest of the Church of Constantinople, speaks slowly, with precision, of undeniable historical facts : “the Bolsheviks burned an entire city, Nicolaevsky, on the Amur River, and the Americans said nothing”. “In 1920, the Bolsheviks wanted to invade France, Poland, and Belgium ; and in 1927, the jurist Nicolaï Mitarevski discovered documents at the Soviet embassy in Beijing which also showed plans to invade China. These documents are jealously guarded in Canada”. “Every day, I pray for Canada and for its freedom”. My interpreter adds : “I also know that he has ended each of these masses, for years, with a prayer for the Tsar”.

Historian and visionary

He spends his days immersed in history which he knows in every detail. But he also judges the future. When you're that old, you have a lot to say. He likes to talk. He talks a lot, as if he fears not having time to say everything : “the fact that the White Russians were in China prevented the establishment of communism for 20 years”. “The knife is made for cutting bread. It is also used to kill”. “We arrive at two paths (he shows his outstretched index and middle fingers) on one side there is that of peace and, on the other, that of universal disaster. The earth is already beginning to punish man. We have already arrived at the point of no return and we are prisoners of the atom.

It is good to pray, but we must not remain idle : there are still too many things to do. Those who have not yet lost their minds should fight against these dangers, against the pollution of the planet and against that of minds. Modern youth have a heavy responsibility and I hope they already understand this”.

What a shame, again, that he speaks neither French nor English. There would be so much to learn from him ! Affectionately, he calls me Yvan-Michaeli Vasiliew. I'm afraid I didn't succeed in this article. What responsibility I feel on my shoulders when this venerable man said to me : “at the end of my life, what a great thing you are doing to me by paying homage to me. It’s like a great gift from Canada to my dear Russia”. A great gift from Canada to this beautiful Russia of yesteryear. Now I'm already afraid of having misused the words of my language. This man is so exceptional that he does not deserve to be misunderstood.

References

Golovanow, Vladimir, « Un prêtre de l'émigration : David Shevchenko (Ukraine 1892-Canada 1982 » (in French, 2013)

Orthodoxie en Abitibi (Orthodoxy in Abitibi)

Pages orthodoxes : Les communautés orthodoxes de l’Abitibi et de Rawdon (Québec) (Orthodox Pages : The Orthodox Communities of Abitibi and Rawdon, Quebec) (in French)

Pelchat, Marc, Rocher Marie-Claude, Patrimoine minorités religieuses du Québec : Richesse et vulnérabilité (Heritage of religious Minorities of Quebec : Wealth and Vulnerability) (in French)

Wyl, Jean-Michel, ‘Une Interview du Père David Shevchenko’ (Avec le concours de Mr. et Mme. Étienne Gabrisz, qui servirent d’interprètes) dans le journal « l’Écho ». (Mercredi, 26 janvier, 1972) [‘An Interview with Father David Shevchenko’ (With the assistance of Mr. and Mrs. Etienne Gabrisz, who served as interpreters) in the newspaper “l’Écho”. (Wednesday, 26 January, 1972)]

Year Book of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of North America (New York, 1964), pp, 101, 102, 119.

Canadian Orthodox Calendar, 1968 (Toronto : Diocesan Council of the Russian Greek-Orthodox Church in Canada, 1968), pp. 36, 42.

Additional information :

Archdiocese of Canada (OCA) web-site

Orthodoxwiki article about the Archdiocese of Canada

Orthodox Church of America web-site

Orthodoxwiki article about The Orthodox Church of America

Orthodox Church in Japan

Russian Orthodox Diocese of Shanghai

Saint John (Maximovitch)

Metropolitan Leonty (Turkevich)

Metropolitan Ireney (Bekish)