Archpriest Dmitry Popov was born on this day in 1876. Last week, I finished the transcription of my old interview with Fr. Ioannikii, a brother of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville from the 1960s to the 1980s. He was talking there about Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky. Fr. Michael was born in 1888 into a priest's family and received education in an elementary ecclesiastical school, seminary, and academy. Fr. Michael became a key theologian at Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville. Before the 1917 revolution, he moved to Western Ukraine and remained there until it came under Polish control. Archpriest Tikhon Popov's life is similar and different. He was born in 1876 into a priest's family. He attended Voronezh Elementary Ecclesiastical School, the seminary there, and, like Fr. Michael, the academy in Kyiv. Fr. Tikhon was an elected member of the Russian Parliament (Duma) and of the politically ultraconservative monarchist organization, the Union of the Russian People. After the Revolution, Fr. Tikhon became an opportunist. Firstly, in 1919, he participated in the procession with the cross greeting the White Army that liberated Voronezh from the Bolsheviks. The following year he agreed to work as a secret informer for CHEKA (Bolshevik Secret Police). The Renovationist schism began in the Russian Church in May 1922. The same year, Popov became an activist for this movement. He was a member of the Synod and, from 1931 to 1935, a professor at Moscow Theological (Renovationist) Academy. In 1935, he became an uncanonical bishop, still being married. Throughout the Renovationist schism, Popov continued acting as a secret agent. When Fr. Tikhon was arrested in 1938, he supplied the Soviets with information about the faculty and students of the theological academy. Popov was exiled to Kazakhstan. In 1943, he was permitted to return to the Moscow region. After Stalin met with the chief hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church in September 1943, the Soviets withdrew all support from their "Renovations project." In January 1944, Fr. Tikhon repented before Patriarch Sergii (Stragorodskii). Fr. Tikhon was returned to the Russian Church as an archpriest and appointed to serve at one of Moscow's churches. All these facts of Fr. Tikhon's biography are different from the life of Fr. Michael Pomazansky, with the exemption of the fact that Fr. Michael was ordained a priest in 1936 in the Church of Poland (the Russian Church did not recognize its autocephaly). In August 1944, Fr. Tikhon was appointed rector of the Moscow Orthodox Theological Institute, which was transformed into the Moscow Theological Academy in 1946. In this capacity, Fr. Tikhon mirrored Fr. Michael. Both in Jordanville and Moscow, Russian churchmen badly needed experts. In 1947, Fr. Tikhon Popov became legally blind. Nevertheless, his wife, Anna Pavlovna, helped him write his lectures, taking him to a classroom. I don't know whether any people suffered as a result of Fr. Tikhon colluding with the Soviet machine. Some new martyrs refused to follow the path of survival selected by Fr. Tikhon. But do I know if I would have done better than him? No. He died in the canonical church. Let Fr. Tikhon's memory be eternal! | 
