Ukrainian Lutheranism originated in the seventeenth century. In 1933 the Ukrainian Lutheran Liturgy was published, the first Liturgy of
Byzantine Rite Lutheranism. The ULC traces its roots to early Lutheranism in the 16th century, and more recently, to the Ukrainian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession which was persecuted by the
KGB and Soviet government, which held a policy of
state atheism, in 1939. From 1939-1945, many Byzantine Lutheran clergy were martyred for their faith. Theodor Yarchuk, a priest who was a major leader in the Ukrainian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession was tortured and killed in
Stanislaviv by communist authorities. Many Ukrainian Lutheran laypersons were also sent to the
Gulag, where they died. In the diaspora, parts of the Lutheran Church survived. In 1989, Pastor Yaroslav Shepeliavets from a Ukrainian Lutheran Church in Minnesota ordered over 100,000 Bibles from Germany, translated to Ukrainian, once Communist controls on religion were relaxed late in
Perestroika. The ULC was reorganized in 1994 by several Lutheran congregations in Ukraine after the fall of the
Soviet Union and the loosening of
restrictions on religious expression. The ULC is legally seen as the successor to the earlier church body and has been given the right to reclaim some of the church property that had been seized by the Soviet government. The ULC has been officially registered with the government of Ukraine as a Christian denomination since 1996. ==Affiliations and ecumenical relations==