The patriarch who led the Russian Church through revolution
During the 1922 dispute over church valuables, he distinguished voluntary gifts for the starving from the compulsory seizure of sacred objects.
Tikhon was a Russian Orthodox hierarch and the first holder of the patriarchate restored in 1917, becoming the central figure in the Church’s confrontation with the post-revolutionary state. During the famine of 1921–1922 he appealed for relief, but after the February 1922 decree he distinguished voluntary donations from the compulsory surrender of sacred objects, which he regarded as a violation of canon law. His position defended ecclesiastical autonomy, yet it could not prevent a confrontation that brought prosecutions, executions of clergy, and the seizure of church property.
Career Timeline
- 1888Teacher at Saint Petersburg Theological Academy
- 1897Bishop of Lublin
- 1898–1907Bishop and archbishop of the Aleutian and North American Diocese
- 1907–1913Archbishop of Yaroslavl and Rostov
- 1917Archbishop of Moscow, then Patriarch of Moscow
- 1917–1925Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia