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Hryhory Komendant, President of the AUU AEB (1990-2006)

He was born in 1946 in the Khmelnytsky region in central Ukraine. He is a third generation pastor. (His grandfather was repressed for church activities in 1939 and his father was also a presbyter.) He was ordained a pastor at the age of 25. He was a student at the only Protestant educational institution in the Soviet Union, Correspondence Bible Courses in Moscow (1971-3). He was one of the very few Baptist pastors in the USSR who was able to study theology abroad: from 1973 to 1975 he studied at the seminary in Hamburg (Germany).

From 1979 to 1981 he was the elder presbyter of the Council of Evangelical Baptists in the Kyiv region. He then became the assistant of the elder presbyter of Ukraine, Yakiv Duchochenko. In 1994 he became the head of the All-Ukraine Union.

He is fluent in English and German. Married, he has two grown children and four grandchildren. His whole family belongs to the Church of Evangelical Baptist Christians; his wife works in the women’s committee of the Brotherhood.

Komendant likes to travel, he likes cool weather and rain. He likes spicy foods and himself can cook potatoes fairly well.

When he introduces himself, he always stresses that Komendant is his last name, not his title.

Text adapted from the Ukrainian-language journal "Liudyna i Svit" ("The Human Being and the World"), February, 1998.