Election of 1917
How Vasily Belavin — Archbishop of Yaroslavl, then of Vilna, then the first freely elected Metropolitan of Moscow (June 1917) — became, by the drawing of a lot before the Vladimir Icon on November 5/18, 1917, the eleventh Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. This section covers the road to the All-Russian Council, the restoration debate, and the lot.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (glorified 1989)
Overview
In the spring and summer of 1917 the Russian Church, freed by the February Revolution from the tsarist veto that had blocked a council for a decade, did two things it had not done in over two centuries: it elected diocesan bishops by the vote of clergy and laity, and it gathered an All-Russian Council (Pomestny Sobor) empowered to restore the Patriarchate suppressed by Peter the Great. Vasily Belavin (1865–1925), known in religion as Tikhon, stood at the intersection of both novelties. In June 1917 the Moscow diocese elected him its ruling bishop — the first Moscow hierarch chosen by his flock rather than appointed. Five months later, as Bolshevik artillery shelled the Kremlin, the Council restored the Patriarchate and chose him for it by lot.
This section tells that story in two files. The first traces the road to the Council — Tikhon’s sees, the wartime evacuations, the Moscow election, and the restoration debate, with the characterization of the three final candidates as “the cleverest, the strictest, and the kindest.” The second narrates the lot: the urn before the Vladimir Icon, the Elder Alexy of Zosimova drawing the name, Tikhon’s acceptance words drawn from the scroll of Ezekiel “of lamentations, and mourning, and woe,” and his enthronement in the Dormition Cathedral of the shelled Kremlin on November 21/December 4, 1917. Both are repo-consistent with the verified record in The All-Russian Council of 1917–1918.
Contents
| File | Subject |
|---|---|
| Moscow and the Council | Yaroslavl and Vilna; the 1915 evacuation; the June 1917 Moscow election; the restoration debate and vote; the three candidates |
| The Lot | November 5/18, 1917: the lot before the Vladimir Icon; the Elder Alexy; the acceptance words; the enthronement in the Dormition Cathedral |
See Also
- The All-Russian Council of 1917–1918 — the verified record of the Council and the election
- Confessor-Patriarch — what followed the enthronement
- Soviet Persecution — the storm into which he was elected
References
- Destivelle, Hyacinthe, O.P. The Moscow Council (1917–1918): The Creation of the Conciliar Institutions of the Russian Orthodox Church. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015.
- Pospielovsky, Dimitry V. The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982. Vol. 1. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.
- Vostryshev, Mikhail. Patriarkh Tikhon [Patriarch Tikhon]. Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya (ZhZL), 1995.