Australia, Adelaide, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker Church.
Years of construction: 1963–1970.

However, few people know that the designer and builder of this architectural marvel is our talented fellow Slobozhan—Vladimir Sergeyevich Pozhidaev.

To our deep regret, we know very little about the lives and fates of Kharkiv residents in exile. However, we have no right to forget or erase the names of those who, against their will during the Civil War, left their native Sloboda Ukraine and sailed to foreign lands on Baron Wrangel’s ships.

He was born on February 15, 1909, in Sumy, a county town in the Kharkiv Governorate.
His father was an officer and instructor at the Sumy Cadet Corps and, later, the Crimean Cadet Corps.
In 1920, like many other residents of Kharkiv, Pozhidaev and his parents were evacuated from Crimea to Yugoslavia.

In 1928, Vladimir Sergeyevich graduated from the Crimean Cadet Corps in Bela Crkva (Yugoslavia). He then studied in the architecture department of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Belgrade. After graduation, he remained at the university as an assistant in the church architecture program and later worked at the State Monopoly Administration.

As a talented architect, he has devoted his entire life to his profession.

In 1951, Vladimir Pozhidaev moved with his entire family to Adelaide, Australia. While working in the civil service, he designed and oversaw the construction of a Russian Orthodox church in Adelaide and began work on a project for an Orthodox church in Canberra, the capital of Australia.

He died on August 19, 1972.

This is one such example—albeit a small one—of Sloboda Ukraine’s influence on Australian architecture. That said, there were quite a few such traces of Slobozhanshchyna’s influence, as well as well-known emigrants from Kharkiv, throughout the world after 1920.

So, this is just the beginning of new stories about amazing lives…

Sources:

• Obituary from the magazine *Kadetskaya Pereklichka*, No. 4, 1972.
• Chuvakov, V.N., *Unforgotten Graves (Russians Abroad: Obituaries, 1917–1979)*, Vol. 6, Book 1. 2005.