He faced many challenges including a priest shortage, ethnic nationalism amongst the diaspora populations, and unpopularity of the church (in part due to resistance towards Russian hegemony).

Platon's primary concern was the question of administering Ukrainian and Russian churches, and most ethnic missions were largely overlooked.

Platon remained there until the restoration of autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church in 1917, after of which he served as bishop of Kherson and Odessa until having to flee due to the Russian Revolution.

On December 1917 he was elected to the Holy Synod and represented a delegation in Kiev in January 1918 in order to address the movement for autocephaly in Ukraine.

Dudikoff followed Platon to Russia in which he claimed to have witnessed, in his expose, of various scandals of violence within the church, including adultery, homosexuality, orgies, embezzlement, prostitution and sexual assault.

Facing resistance led by Father John Kedrovsky over the current bishop's alleged handling of church finances, Archbishop Alexander Nemolovsky in 1922 resigned and asked the Metropolitan to take over as the ruling hierarch of the diocese before leaving for Europe.

[2] While serving as Archbishop of North America, Platon was pro forma retired by Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow in order to satisfy Bolshevik demands.

[17] A second sobor was called on April 2, 1924, in Detroit, Michigan in which the North American diocese was declared "temporarily self-governing" due to difficulties in communication with the church in Russia.

In later years, Platon would continue to rebuff affiliations with Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchate in order to maintain the diocese's independence.

While mostly unsuccessful, he achieved a major victory in 1925 when the US courts recognized him as the legitimate owners of St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral in New York City.