"Embassy of the Russian Church": restoration of Russian Pilgrimage ties With the Middle East in 1964

Abstract

The relevance of the research topic is due to the significance of the academic understanding of the phenomenon of Orthodox pilgrimage to the Holy Land of the citizens of the USSR, as well as the need to fit this phenomenon into the history of international relations of the Russian Orthodox Church. The purpose of the research is to identify the main features of the first pilgrimage trip of Soviet citizens to the Middle East in 1964. Objectives: to study the organizational characteristics and event content of the journey of a group of believers from the USSR to the territory of historical Palestine in 1964, to identify degree of compliance of this journey with tra-ditional pilgrimage norms; to characterize the features of the representation of the trip in the memoirs of members of the pilgrimage group; to analyze the influence of the factor of Soviet citizenship of pilgrims on their behavior and communi-cation in the Holy Land. Methodology. The conducted research combined work with archival documents reflecting the goals and progress of the 1964 pilgrimage trip, as well as published memoirs of its participants. In the process of analyzing memories the method of content analysis was used - a qualitative and quantitative study of their texts. In addition, historical-genetic and historical-comparative methods were used in the course of solving the tasks. Results. The paper demonstrates the inconsistency of the first pilgrimage trip of Soviet citizens to the Middle East with the traditions of Orthodox pilgrimage formed within the framework of Russian culture in the previous centuries. This discrepancy was determined by the lack of personal initiative, sacrifice, asceticism on the part of the group members, their dependence on church and state institutions, as well as the representative functions assigned to them. The study demonstrated that the delegation that went to the Holy Land had important church-diplomatic tasks that did not allow believers to focus on religious practices. The need to observe political loyalty to the Soviet state caused the pilgrims to be limited in words and actions, and also determined the choice of their subsequent memories. Conclusions. The article concludes that the trip of believers from the USSR to the Holy Land undertaken in 1964 became a significant event in the history of international relations of the Russian Orthodox Church and had a wide resonance in Orthodox circles of the Middle East. This event nominally revived the practice of Russian pilgrimage to historical Palestine, but the actual pilgrimage component of the journey turned out to be far from traditional ideals and norms.