TICHON (WASSILIJ JVANOVIĆ), BELLAVIN. — Patriarch of Moscow, born 17 January 1865 at Toropec, died 7 April 1925 at Moscow.
Having completed his studies at the theological Academy of Pietroburgo in 1888 and been appointed professor at the Seminary of Pskov, in 1891 he became a monk, changed his baptismal name Basilio to T., and received priestly ordination. He was subsequently appointed rector of the Seminaries of Kazan and Cholm, until in 1897 he became bishop of Lublino, auxiliary to the Ordinary of Cholm. From 1898 to 1907 T., with the title of bishop of the Aleutians (archbishop from 1905), had spiritual responsibility for Eastern dissenters in America. In 1907 he was transferred to Jaroslav in Russia, and in 1913 he moved to Vilna. On 23 June 1917 a diocesan assembly of clergy and laity elected T. archbishop of Moscow and Kolomna; on 13 August the Holy Synod granted T. the title of metropolitan. T. immediately faced the delicate task of hosting the All-Russian Council, which convened in Moscow on 28 August 1917, and he fulfilled it with such tact and modesty that he won everyone’s sympathy.
The Council restored the patriarchal dignity suppressed by Peter the Great, and on 10 November, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution, T. was elected patriarch of Moscow and all Russia. Under his leadership, the Council drew up a plan for profound reforms in the Russian Church. The civil war, however, forced the Council to suspend its sessions at Easter 1918 and then, in August, to adjourn indefinitely. T. went to various cities, including Pietroburgo, then the center of the revolution, and everywhere he was enthusiastically received by people of every social class. But on 23 January 1918 the Bolshevik government, which had meanwhile moved to Moscow, issued a decree proclaiming the separation of Church and State and of the school from the Church, and confiscating all ecclesiastical property, including sacred buildings and furnishings. In an open letter addressed to the government, T. protested against all the abuses and acts of violence perpetrated by the Bolshevik regime. Meanwhile, T. also had to struggle against the internal schisms within the patriarchal Church, fomented by the Bolsheviks. Finally, in May 1922, the patriarch, who continued to fight against the harassment of the Bolshevik authorities, was imprisoned and released only in June 1923, after formally recognizing the legitimacy of the Soviet government, hoping thereby—unfortunately in vain—to mitigate the persecution of his Church. T. then attempted to consolidate the ecclesiastical administration, which had been thrown into disarray by internal schisms and the continual arrests of bishops and priests.