Three generations in the historiographical understanding of the Russian church-political presence in the Holy Land, the end of the 19th – 21st centuries

The article analyzes the historiographical situation in the field of the study of the Holy Land (Palestine) and the Russian cultural, religious and political presence in the region. It traces the dynamics of the study of the Holy Land in the context of Russian politics in the region is traced, from the experiences of self-determination in the middle – second half of the 19th century to the present. The specificity of the region is associated with the saturation of its religious, value and cultural meanings. Neither its remoteness nor other factors became an obstacle to the realization and historical understanding of the special Christian kinship of the Russian consciousness with the locos of the Holy Land. Its study got to be one of the significant directions of the national humanitarian thought in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The analysis of the key works, plot and thematic lines in historiography revealed three generations in the study of the Holy Land associated with certain epochs in the history of Russia and the history of international (church-diplomatic) relations. The imperial period was characterized by a powerful popularization vector, the first experiments in the field of Christian archeology of the region. The post-Soviet return to the study of the region was characterized by attention to the study of the structures and institutions of the Russian presence in the region (the Russian Spiritual Mission, the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society). The modern generation of researchers is characterized by an interest in studying the realities of modern history, the objectification of the church-diplomatic factor in international relations of the post-war world.

Russian-Palestinian relations, historiography, church diplomacy, Holy Land, religious factor, historiographical generations

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