The People's Patriarch

On October 28, 1917, just days after the Bolsheviks seized power, the great Council of the Russian Orthodox Church voted to restore the patriarchate, which had been abolished by Peter the Great two centuries earlier. The Council chose Tikhon (Bellavin), the son of a humble village parish priest, to be head of Russia’s largest religious confession. At the time, the majority of Orthodox Christians were devoutly religious. Tikhon’s vision of the
Church, which he began putting into practice during his years as the Orthodox bishop of North America (1898-1907), was that of an organic body which welcomed the participation of all believers. The
Bolsheviks had other ideas. They aimed to create a revolution that would be carried out by the state on behalf of the people. And they sought to eradicate religion as

Author Biography

Scott M. Kenworthy is Professor in the History Department at Miami University (Ohio), where he also teaches for the Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and Religious Studies programs. He is the author of the prize-winning book The Heart of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism and Society After 1825 and, together with Alexander Agadjanian, Understanding World Christianity: Russia. He is past president of the Association
for the Study of Eastern Christianity and has held research fellowships in the US, Germany, Hungary, and Romania.