Confessor-Patriarch
The seven and a half years (1917–1925) in which Patriarch Tikhon led the Russian Church through the opening phase of the Bolshevik persecution: the 1918 anathema, the protest-epistles to the Soviet authorities, the stand on neutrality in the Civil War, the confiscation crisis of 1922, the house arrest, the Renovationist “deposition,” and the release-statement extracted under duress. This is the record of his confession.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (glorified 1989)
Overview
The Patriarchate restored in November 1917 was, from its first hour, a confessor’s office (see The Lot). Within ten weeks of Tikhon’s enthronement the Soviet state stripped the Church of its legal existence; within three months the first bishop was murdered. Tikhon’s response moved between two poles the documents will not let us simplify: prophetic denunciation of the regime’s atrocities, and a deliberate refusal to enlist the Church on either side of the Civil War. He anathematized the perpetrators of bloodshed and wrote to the Council of People’s Commissars that they had given the people “a stone instead of bread” — yet he declined to bless the White armies. When the famine of 1921–1922 became the pretext for seizing the Church’s consecrated vessels, he drew the line at sacrilege and was arrested for it.
This section covers that record in two files. The first treats his resistance — the precisely-worded 1918 anathema (which condemned those committing the atrocities, not “Soviet power” by name, and was never formally rescinded), the protest-epistles, the Civil-War neutrality, and the 1922 confiscation crisis. The second treats his passion — the Donskoy house arrest, the prepared show-trial, the Renovationist robber-council that purported to depose him, the international pressure, and the June 1923 release-statement issued under duress, with both its text and its coercion set out together. Both are repo-consistent with Soviet Persecution and The New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
Contents
| File | Subject |
|---|---|
| Anathema and Resistance | The 1918 anathema; the epistles to Sovnarkom; Civil-War neutrality and the Denikin episode; the 1922 confiscation crisis |
| Arrest and Trials | The Donskoy house arrest; the show-trial preparations; the 1923 Renovationist “deposition”; international pressure; the June 1923 release-statement and its aftermath |
See Also
- Election of 1917 — how he came to the office
- Soviet Persecution — the verified persecution record
- The New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia — the host among whom he is named
References
- Pospielovsky, Dimitry V. The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982. Vol. 1. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.
- Curtiss, John Shelton. The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917–1950. Boston: Little, Brown, 1953.
- Roslof, Edward E. Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905–1946. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
- Vostryshev, Mikhail. Patriarkh Tikhon. Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya (ZhZL), 1995.