The St. Anthony Church of Kharkiv University was built between 1823 and 1831 at Universytets’ka Street, 25, based on a design by Yevgeny Vasilyev. The building housed the St. Anthony Chapel, as well as an auditorium, an observatory, and a library. It is a national architectural landmark in the Neoclassical style.
The church was named after the early Christian ascetic and hermit, St. Anthony the Great (c. 251–356), the founder of monastic hermitage, and was one of the first university churches in the Russian Empire.
In the book *The History of the City of Kharkiv Over Its 250 Years of Existence* (1905), Academician D. I. Bagaley, drawing on the writings of Archpriest Timofey Butkevich, writes the following:
Generally, the congregation of house churches and other churches is limited to members of the institution to which the church belongs. An exception to this general rule is the University St. Anthony’s Church, which attracts numerous visitors from various segments of Kharkiv society; thus, although not a parish church, the University Church has always played a role in Kharkiv’s religious life that is no less significant—and perhaps even greater—than that of other parish churches.
The church took a long time to build due to a lack of funds. In addition to Vasilyev, architects Tatishchev, Ton, and Kalashnikov were involved in the project. According to the research made by Anton Bondarev, for a time the church was used not only for Orthodox services but also for services of the Catholic and Lutheran communities of Kharkiv (in turn). We are unaware of any other instances where representatives of three different churches served in the same church on Ukrainian territory.
The University Church has always attracted large numbers of visitors, mainly because of its beautiful singing. Until 1853, the bishop’s choir sang there; after that, a student choir was formed.
Nevertheless, many students gave little thought to faith after the 1905 Revolution. The archives contain a newspaper from 1907 that published a letter in which a parishioner of St. Anthony’s Church speaks with a heavy heart about what he witnessed at the Easter service:
The priest proclaims, ‘Christ is Risen!’ but the hearts of the parishioners do not respond to the proclamation. One gets the impression that they did not come for the service, but to show off themselves, their finery, and their adornments.
From 1909 onward, the church’s archpriest was the renowned theologian Nikolai Semyonovich Steletsky. He wrote many works, including studies on the history of the Kharkiv Collegium, on the activities of Skovoroda, Gogol, and Prince Golitsyn, as well as works on contemporary issues of morality and ethics, and on Christianity and socialism.
In the summer of 1919, before the White Army’s advance, Steletsky was taken by the Kharkiv Cheka to Sumy as a hostage and brutally murdered by the notorious revolutionary Stepan Saenko.
Since 1922, the building has housed the Institute of Physical Education and the Red Teachers’ Club.
In 1934, a monument to V. Karazin, one of the “founding fathers” of Kharkiv University, was erected to the left of the entrance; it had been moved from Shevchenko Park. In 1958, the monument was relocated to the university’s New Building (Freedom Square).
From the 1960s onward, the Pioneer Cinema operated here; it was later renamed the Yunost Cinema, and from the 1990s through the late 2000s, it served as the site of the Ukrainian Cultural Center.
Since then, the building has stood largely abandoned. In 2002, worship services resumed in the lobby of the library, which adjoins the church. Over time, services began to be held in the main building of the former church itself, which once again became an active place of worship.
St. Anthony’s Church was damaged in a Russian missile strike on March 2, 2022; the windows and frames were shattered, and the church’s interior was damaged.
