Declaration of the former Patriarch Tikhon
Patriarch Tikhon, Declaration of Vasilii Belavin (Former Patriarch Tikhon). June 16, 1923
Original Source: Rabochaia Moskva, 27 June 1923.
Tikhon confesses his counter-revolutionary activities. He recognizes the just decision of the Supreme Court to try him. Tikhon regrets his activities against the State regime.
On June 16 the former Patriarch Tikhon addressed the following declaration to the Supreme Court:
'"I address the following declaration to the Supreme Court of the RSFSR and find that it is my pastoral duty to declare the following:
"'Having been brought up in a Monarchist society and being up to my arrest under the influence of anti-Soviet persons, I had indeed hostile feelings towards the Soviet power, and those hostile feelings sometimes changed from a passive state into overt acts, such as the declaration in connection with the Brest treaty in 1918, the anathematizing of the authorities in the same year and finally an appeal against the decree ordering the requisition of Church valuables in 1922.
"'All my anti-Soviet activities are formulated, with the exception of a few inaccuracies, in the indictment of the Supreme Court. Recognizing the correctness of the decision of the Court to bring me to trial, according to the articles of the Criminal Code enumerated in the indictment, for my anti-Soviet activities, I regret my actions against the State regime and request the Court to do away with my detention, i.e., to release me from arrest.
I also declare to the' Supreme Court that I am no longer an enemy of the Soviet power. I am finally and positively breaking all relations with the Monarchist White-Guardist counter-revolution at home and abroad."
June 16, 1923 Patriarch Tikhon (Vasilii Belavin)
Source: Boleslaw B. Szczesniak, ed. and tr., Russian Revolution and Religion; a collection of documents concerning the suppression of religion by the Communists, 1917-1925 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959), pp. 177-178.