Aleksandr Kallinikovich Svitich, 1890-1963
Aleksandr Kallinikovich Svitich was born the son of a Russian Orthodox priest on March 15, 1890 in Vilno, part of the Russian empire at that time. He followed the usual path of children of clergy and pursued a theological education, graduating from the Theological Faculty of Warsaw University in 1930 and teaching at the Vilno Theological Seminary. Svitich served on the editorial board of Za svobodu, a Russian émigré newspapers, to which he contributed numerous articles, at times using his pen name Tuberozov, and edited V ograde tserkovnoi from 1930 to 1933. As legal advisor to the Orthodox Church in Poland, Svitich was actively engaged in defending the interests of the Orthodox Church vis-à-vis the Catholic Church in Poland.
He was forced to leave Poland for Serbia in 1937, and settled in Belgrade, where he advised the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in legal matters. In 1938 Svitich participated in the Second Russian Orthodox All-Diaspora. In 1945, Svitich emigrated to Germany and lived in displaced persons camps before his arrival in the United States in 1950. Reflecting on his years in Poland and his activities in the Orthodox Church in Poland, he published a historical monograph in 1959 on the Orthodox Church in Poland and the issue of Church autocephaly Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ v Pol’she i ee avtokefaliia.
Aleksandr Svitich died on August 17, 1963 in Denver, CO.
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