In the 1830s and 1840s, increasing numbers of Russians renounced the modernized, secularized, Westernized Russia created by Peter the Great in an effort to revive alternative lifestyles based on Orthodox spirituality and values. This effort found expression in a revival of monasticism that began in the era of Nicholas I and would last for the duration of the imperial period, brought to an end only by the cataclysm of revolution and repression of the new Bolshevik regime. Suppressed by the communists, Russian monasticism experienced another revival in the post-World War II era and again in the...

St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow (Vasily Ivanovich Bellavin, 1865-1925) is one of the most important figures of both Russian and Orthodox Church history in the 20th century. Yet 90 years after his death this remains the only complete biography ever published in the English language. It has now been updated and revised with a new preface and bibliography, together with revised and additional endnotes, by Scott M. Kenworthy. The biography reveals a picture of a man whom no one expected to be chosen as Patriarch, yet who nevertheless humbly accepted the call of God and the people to guide the...