Archbishop Tikhon (Sharapov) of Almaty was executed on this day in 1937. On August 21, I wrote about the fate of Nikodim (Krotkov), Bishop of Chyhyryn in Ukraine, a vicar of Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitskii) of Kiev and Galich who remained in Russia. Today, I am writing about another close associate of Metropolitan Anthony: Archbishop Tikhon (Sharapov). The future Archbishop Tikhon grew up in Tula Region, Russia. In 1911, when Konstantin (his lay name) was 25, he joined Holy Dormition Pochaev Lavra in Ukraine. Anthony (Khrapovitskii) was the archbishop there, and Archimandrite Vitaly was in charge of the monastery publishing house. Pochaev monastery was initially Orthodox, but the principal buildings were erected while it was Greek Catholic (1713–1831). After the Polish revolt in 1831, the monastery, by decree of Emperor Nicholas I, was transferred to the Orthodox Church. After the occupation of Galicia by the Russian Imperial Army during World War I, Fr. Tikhon was actively involved in missionary work among the Greek Catholics. He was also decorated for his fearless ministry to Orthodox soldiers on the battlefield. On December 14, 1918, Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsʹkyi’s government was toppled due to a coup d’état led by the Ukrainian socialist and nationalist politicians Symon Petliura and Volodymyr Vynnychenko. The so-called Directorate Government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic did not plan for a dialogue with the Ukrainian Autonomous Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitskii) and Bishop Nikodim were arrested in Kiev, and Frs. Tikhon and Vitaly (Maksimenko) at Pochaev. All of them were forcibly confined within a Greek Catholic monastery in Buchach, Galicia. Archbishop Evlogii (Preobrazhenskii) of Volynia was also kept there. In 1919, the bishops were released through the intercession of the Entente, but the fathers did not want to leave Volynia and remained in Poland. The authorities of the newly established Polish Republic treated the Russian Church as an arm of the former Russian imperial administration. They worked hard in the decades leading up to World War II in 1939 to reduce the number of churches and place the Orthodox Church under the firm control of the state. Until his deportation from Poland to Germany in 1924, Fr. Tikhon actively resisted the introduction of the new liturgical calendar and reception of autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In Berlin, the church at the Russian embassy, which became Soviet, was closed down. Having spent three months there, Fr. Tikhon received permission to go to Russia. On March 22, 1925, Patriarch Tikhon presided at his episcopal consecration in Moscow for the See of Gomel in Soviet Belarus. This was one of the last, if not the very final, consecration performed by St. Tikhon. In Gomel, Bishop Tikhon’s activity countering the Renovationist schism resulted in his first arrest in December 1925. More arrests followed, including incarceration in Solovki. Although Bishop Tikhon belonged to the part of the episcopate that recognized Metropolitan Sergii Stragorodskii’s Synod, he did not endorse Metropolitan Sergii’s policies. In January 1937, Bishop Tikhon arrived in Kazakhstan. There, he was arrested for the last time and executed at the shooting grounds in Zhanalyk. |
