Tikhanovsky studied at the physical and mathematical gymnasium, then graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the Francisk Skorina Gomel State University.
He organized a farmstead near Gomel and faced bureaucratic hurdles from local, regional, and national officials, then spoke of his difficulties with journalists.
[6] The YouTube channel "Country for Life" (Страна для жизни)[7] was launched in 2019 and managed to attract 140,000 subscribers during the year.
Tikhanovsky shoots a video on social and political topics and talks about the problems of people – mainly in the Belarusian regions.
Together with his team in a car with the logo "Real News", Tikhanovsky spent more than a month driving around Belarus and interviewing subscribers, who told him about the problems in the city and the country on camera.
The most popular video on the channel (almost one million views as of 30 May 2020) is the story of a woman from the town of Hlybokaye about her life and her attitude toward Lukashenko.
[10] On 9 May 2020, dozens of supporters of Sergei Tikhanovsky held an "Anti-parade" in Babruysk to express their disagreement with the Victory Day Parade in Minsk during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On 7 May, Sergei Tikhanovsky announced on his YouTube channel that he intended to become a candidate for President of Belarus, challenging Alexander Lukashenko and his decades long rule.
[16] After his arrest, Sergei Tikhanovsky was held at a temporary detention center in Gomel, nominally due to participation in the rally in Minsk on 19 December 2019 against the integration of Belarus with Russia.
[18][19] After the election commission refused to register Tikhanovsky's candidacy, his wife Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (Svetlana Tikhanovskaya), decided to run herself.
In an interview with him after the release, Deutsche Welle drew parallels between Tikhanovsky and both the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the Ukrainian actor Volodymyr Zelensky, who became the president of Ukraine.
[25] Euronews journalists called the events in Belarus as "Slippers Revolution" demonstrating the quote of the Belarusian activist Franak Viačorka with this phrase.
[26] On 29 May 2020, Sergei Tikhanovsky and at least eight other men were arrested in the city of Grodno, in northwestern Belarus, while collecting signatures for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's presidential candidacy, and charged with "organization or preparation for a grave breach of public order.
[4] According to the Viasna Human Rights Centre, at least 13 people were detained, including two members of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's initiative group and three aides to Sergei Tikhanovsky.
[4] In response to Sergei Tikhanovsky's detention on 29 May 2020, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya demanded the immediate release of her husband, condemning "the 'dirty' provocation" against him; declaring that "the picket was legal and peaceful in nature; and calling the arrest a politically motivated violation of her constitutional rights.