| Summary/Abstract |
IN THE second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, thanks to the activities of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem and the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS), many land plots were acquired in various towns and villages of the Holy Land on which churches, compounds, abodes, hotels for pilgrims, and schools for children were built. Numerous Russian properties in the Holy Land were even referred to as "Russian Palestine." After the end of the Crimean War (1853-1856), according to the Treaty of Paris of 1856, Russia lost the right to have a military fleet in the Black Sea.1 At the same time, the Russian Empire could maintain and strengthen its presence in the Mediterranean Sea by organizing pilgrimages to Orthodox shrines of the East and establishing a Russian merchant shipping company and a seaport in Odessa for this purpose. Among the ideologists of this project was statesman, public figure, and member of the first council of the Orthodox Palestine Society Boris Pavlovich Mansurov, "one of the founders of the idea of a Russian presence in the Holy Land."
|