Tikhon Sharapov, an Orthodox Repatriate Bishop of the Interwar Period, and His Struggle for Church Freedom in the USSR

This article studies the fate of Bishop Tikhon (Sharapov, 1886–1937), who was unique among hundreds of Russian Orthodox Bishops of the era of Bolshevik persecution. Having found himself outside Russia as a result of the military revolutionary upheavals of the turn of the 1910s and 1920s and having the opportunity to get a good job abroad, he did not do this but was able to return in the rank of Archimandrite to his homeland and to Patriarch Tikhon (Bellavin) in early 1925, shortly before the death of the latter. Soon after his return, he was consecrated Bishop but spent only a month and a half in the bishop’s chair assigned to him, and then he was almost continuously in prison, exiles and camps, until his execution during the “Great Terror”. The article explains why the persecuted bishop was so disliked by the Soviet authorities. Bishop Tikhon defended the internal freedom of the Orthodox Church as best he could and fought against the Renovationist schism imposed by the Bolshevik government. Being expelled from his Gomel diocese, he, contrary to the demands of state bodies, tried to maintain a living connection with it and further expressed a sceptical attitude towards the line of servility of the God-fighting authorities. The research is based on the materials of the archival and investigative cases of K. I. Sharapov, as well as unpublished testimonies of the Church historian M. E. Gubonin (1907–1971), close to him, with whom he was in exile in Central Asia in the 1930s.