DIED. Patriarch Pimen, 79, politically accommodating head of the Russian Orthodox Church who presided over the faith's revival after decades of repression; in Moscow. As Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Pimen led millions of believers in a country that was officially atheist. After a historic meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988, on the 1,000th anniversary of the birth of Russian and Ukrainian Christianity, Pimen praised the Soviet leader's efforts to grant more religious freedom. The following year Pimen was chosen to serve in the Soviet parliament. Critics hope that his successor, as yet unnamed, will be the first Soviet religious leader to be independent of secular authority.