Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Religious Diplomacy of USSR during the Cold War

The paper deals with the issue of organization of pilgrimage trips of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to the Holy Land (Israel and Jordan) during the Cold War Era. The author argues that a number of foreign policy factors (primarily the struggle for Russian property and the tension of Soviet-Israeli relations) led to the opening of the opportunity to make Orthodox pilgrimage trips from the USSR to the Holy Land. The paper provides evidence that the Soviet government considered the possibility of regular dispatch of groups of Soviet pilgrims from among the “clergy and laity” already in 1956, whereas in reality the first group went only in 1964. Archpriest Mikhail Zernov's project on the restoration of pilgrimage trips from the USSR to the Holy Land that has not been analyzed before is introduced into academic circulation. The author examines the specifics of the composition of the pilgrim groups, and a description of pilgrims' activities, as well as the perception of the role of pilgrims by Soviet officials. The author comes to the conclusion that the establishment of the practice of sending pilgrim groups through the ROC MP became one of the USSR's foreign policy instruments in the Middle East, which provided an alternative to traditional diplomacy.

Keywords

pilgrimage, Russian Orthodox Church in the USSR, Holy Land, religious diplomacy, Russian Ecclesiastic Mission in Jerusalem, Mikhail Zernov

Acknowledgment

The research is conducted with a financial support of Russian Science Foundation, project “Imagined Territories of Russian identities: the case of Palestine 19th — 21th centuries" (№ 18-78-10062).

Received

13.09.2021

Publication date

15.09.2021

Number of characters

46381

Cite

GOST	Gerasimova V. Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Religious Diplomacy of USSR during the Cold War // ISTORIYA – 2021. – V. 12. – Issue 8 (106) [Electronic resource]. URL: https://history.jes.su/S207987840015404-3-1 (circulation date: 22.07.2024). DOI: 10.18254/S207987840015404-3
MLA	Gerasimova, Victoria "Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Religious Diplomacy of USSR during the Cold War." ISTORIYA 12.8 (106) (2021) DOI: 10.18254/S207987840015404-3
APA	Gerasimova V. (2021). Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Religious Diplomacy of USSR during the Cold War. ISTORIYA 12(8 (106)) DOI: 10.18254/S207987840015404-3

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