Greek, Russian, and Ukrainian Monks on Mount Athos: Conflicts and Interactions (19th-21st Century)
Résumés
L’article examine la pénétration économique et culturelle des Russes sur le mont Athos au xixe siècle. Il montre comment la réponse à l’hellénisation, qui avait marqué la Méditerranée orientale et les Balkans jusqu’alors, a été un processus de russification, promouvant l’image de la Russie en tant que puissance protectrice de tous les Orthodoxes, mais aussi en tant que promotrice de la modernité européenne. Il étudie également la manière dont la différence entre Russes et Ukrainiens a été effacée dans une très grande partie des sources. Même les textes grecs, caractérisés par leur russophobie, semblent avoir adopté un discours russocentré dans ce contexte, ne mentionnant que rarement la présence des Cosaques et des Ukrainiens sur le mont Athos.
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- 1 For an analysis of the Hellenization process in Cappadocia in the nineteenth century, see Seraïdari (...)
- 2 Gerd Lora, Russian Policy in the Orthodox East: The Patriarchate of Constantinople (1878-1914), Var (...)
1In the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire came on stage in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkan region as the natural protector of all Orthodox people, not only against the oppression of the Ottoman Empire, but also against Greek hegemony imposed through the Hellenization process. Hellenization often led to upward mobility. It is defined here as the possibility of becoming Greek (for individuals or religious and educational institutions) by expressing a preference for Greek language, art and culture and by changing names and toponyms.1 Hellenization was considered to be linked to the preeminent role of the Patriarch of Constantinople, whose function was not defined by supranational principles, since Greeks were favoured. The Orthodox millet (Rum, Roman nation, or Romaic community) was called “Greek”; as Lora Gerd writes, “at first, relations in the millet were harmonious enough, though Slavs, Moldavians, and Vlachs were included in it as well. The centralization of the church administration was to the benefit of the Ottomans and coincided with Greek interests. As a result, the Slavonic and Arab populations were Hellenized.”2 In this context, the Greek “cultural yoke” became the equivalent of the Ottoman Empire’s “political yoke.”
- 3 Makrides Vasilios N., “Orthodox Christianity in the Context of Postcolonial Studies,” in Hans-Peter (...)
2After 1830, Hellenization became part of the agenda of the new nation-state,3 whose aim was to facilitate the revival of the Byzantine Empire. Athens and Constantinople became the two ideological centres of Hellenism. In this framework, three Empires were measuring themselves against each other, two real (the Russian and the Ottoman ones) and one that existed only in the Greeks’ imagination: the Byzantine one, whose revival the Greeks were hoping for. The three empires, real or imagined, disappeared in the decades of the 1910s and 1920s, because of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War, which not only gave the final blow to the Ottoman Empire, but also, with the Greek-Turkish war in 1919–1922 and the Greek defeat that followed, triggered the disappearance of all Greek dreams about a possible Byzantine revival.
- 4 Tozer H. F., “The monks of mount Athos,” in F. Galton (ed.), Vacation tourists and notes of travel (...)
3Placed under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Mount Athos is a privileged observation point for those interested in the confrontation of these different imperial ambitions. The monastic peninsula has been for centuries one of the more important spiritual centres of the Orthodox world. In the nineteenth century, it also became for several decades the place where Russians, Greeks, and monks of other nationalities lived, worked, fasted, and prayed together, even as it expressed in different forms these rival imperial ambitions. During the second half of the nineteenth century, as seen below, Athonite Greek monks started to denounce attempts at Russification. Many of them felt that their own future was connected with the “political future of Turkey”: “When the happy period arrives, to which all Greeks look forward, when they are to regain Constantinople, Athos, they think, may once more become the learned place which they believe it to have been in former times,” wrote H. F. Tozer in 1862.4
- 5 Anastassiadis Anastassios, “Sisyphean Task or Procrustean Bed? Matching State and Church Borders an (...)
- 6 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 88-89, 97.
4Since 1912, this pan-Orthodox centre has been under the sovereignty of the Greek state. The religious actors who operate within its borders are placed under the Greek state’s control. All of them depend on an “institution based in a foreign country under foreign law,” that is, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which operates “within Greek borders according to its own asserted supranational principles.”5 Things are even more complicated, since monks of different origins cohabit there. While in the past all of them were regarded as Ottoman citizens, in 1926 “the Greek government issued a law that all monks of the Holy Mountain should be Greek citizens.”6
- 7 We should not forget that the monastic peninsula has played an important role in the creation of ce (...)
5Athos is a self-governed monastic community that hosts various groups of religious actors embracing supranational or nationalist ideas.7 The twenty Athonite cloisters participate in this self-governing system: seventeen of them are for Greek monks, one is for Serbs, one for Bulgarians, and one for Russians (St Panteleimon monastery). Moreover, only those twenty establishments own land and dependent sketes or cells.
- 8 Kalaitzidis Pantelis, “Orthodox Theology Challenged by Balkan and East European Ethnotheologies,” i (...)
- 9 Kalaitzidis, “Orthodox Theology,” op. cit., p. 110, note 2.
6Mount Athos is also a problematic observation point, since women are not allowed to enter its territory. The absence of ethnographic material and of the voices of the Athonite monks is, hopefully, compensated by a critical juxtaposition of bibliographical sources in Greek, English, and French. Eastern Orthodoxy is considered here as a functional institutional system, which not only took part in the process of nation building, but also provided the framework for the development of a “state religion,” whose weight in society has much more importance than a simply “predominant religion.” In fact, the formation of a nation-state and of an independent national church were parallel and (more or less) simultaneous phenomena in this part of Europe. The creation of these “multiple nationally based jurisdictions” have resulted in a sort of “balkanization of Orthodoxy” that “annuls the principles of Orthodox ecclesiology, and the unity of the church.”8 These divisions started with the unilateral proclamation of the autocephaly of the Church of Greece in 1833, which was recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1850. Before this event, Orthodoxy functioned mainly as a supranational institution, according to Kalaitzidis; this is why he also refers to “the perspective of a postnational Orthodoxy.”9
7My article examines how a monastic peninsula situated in the northern Aegean allows us to understand Orthodox peoples’ divisions and their relation to states and empires, namely the Russian and the Ottoman ones, whose dissolution led to the emergence of nation-states in Eastern and Southeast Europe. The objective is twofold: to analyse the Russian economic and cultural penetration on Mount Athos in the nineteenth century, which was presented as a form of liberation from the Hellenization process; and to examine how the difference between Russians and Ukrainians (referred to historically as Great Russians and Little Russians) has been silenced in Greek sources and travelogues from that period until today.
- 10 Related to the notion of “Orthodox commonwealth,” discussed by Kitromilides Paschalis M., An Orthod (...)
8From a methodological point of view, Mount Athos is portrayed here as an arena defined by competing forces and factions, and by accusations of attempted (Greek or Russian) spiritual, economic, and cultural domination. The aim is to focus on an aspect that is less studied in comparison to other issues, such as the ethnic collaboration of Athonite monks of different origins,10 the spiritual contribution of Russian Athonite monks to the Orthodox world, the “Bulgarian Schism,” or the travels of Russian pilgrims in Palestine and the Russian policy in this region.
9Some of the sources used here are primary. They were written by Greek or foreign travellers, like Alexandros Moraïtidis and Athelstan Riley, who left their personal testimonies after their journeys to Athos in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; or they were published in the nineteenth century by Greek writers and scholars, like Christophoros Ktenas or Pavlos Karolidis, whose aim was to inform Greek public opinion about the Greek-Russian conflict on Athos. The secondary sources are divided into two categories: a) those recently produced by academics (mostly historians) of different origins; and b) those published in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which have a hagiographical or religious character (such as the compilation of Athonite saints’ biographies by Panagopoulos or the texts included in Saint Paul of Xiropotamos: Athonite journal [Agios Pavlos o Xiropotamitis: Agioreitikon periodikon]) or a touristic and heritage approach (such as the book of the Austrian photographer Gerhard Trumler, whose Greek translation can be found in the library of the Byzantine Museum of Athens, next to specialized archaeological and historical books). As seen below, Greek texts of the nineteenth century and travelogues do not mention the existence of Athonite Cossacks and Ukrainians. In these texts, the Ukrainians are not treated as a people separate from the Russians. Sources that clearly make the distinction between different groups of Eastern Slavs are thus privileged here.
- 11 Pritsak Omeljan, Reshetar John S. Jr., “The Ukraine and the Dialectics of Nation-Building,” Slavic (...)
10Interestingly enough, the term Malorossiia and Little (or Small) Russia was of Greek origin: it was “employed by the Byzantine Patriarch to identify the second Rus’ metropolitan established in 1303.”11 Whereas this ecclesiastical categorization was relevant in the fourteenth century, the term looked apparently less relevant for the Greeks and the European travellers on the nineteenth-century Holy Mountain, during a period marked by the expansion of Pan-Slavist ideology.
- 12 Seraïdari Katerina, “Museographic objects, saints, and sacred places: Saint Antony Pechersky, Esphi (...)
- 13 Gonneau Pierre, “L’odyssée religieuse de Vasilij Grigorovič Barskij à travers les chrétientés latin (...)
11I was first confronted with this problem while writing about the relation of St Antony Pechersky to the Holy Mountain. St Antony was born in Lyubech around 983 and lived in Kyiv, which is often portrayed as the “mother of all Rus.” He has been presented as “Ruthenian,” but in the nineteenth century, both Greeks and Russians on Mount Athos considered him to be the father of Russian monasticism.12 Another instructive example is Vasilij Barskij (1701–1747), who stayed on Mount Athos in 1725–1726 and returned for a second sojourn in 1744–1745. Barskij “is incontestably a ‘Ruthenian’ Orthodox,” but “he is also a loyal subject of the Emperor.”13 In Greek sources and travelogues written by Europeans in the nineteenth and twentieth century, when there is a question about Russian Athonites, Russian or Ukrainian ethnicity is not a relevant issue. They are simply considered to be Russian imperial subjects. Even for modern historians, the question is tricky. The generic term of Rus, whose legacy is not easy to define either, allows one to avoid dealing with the issue:
- 14 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 84.
Under Byzantine rule, the ecumenical patriarchs had usually been Greek. Because the highest spiritual authority on Mt. Athos was the Patriarch of Constantinople, it is not surprising that most of the monasteries on Mt. Athos belonged to the Greeks. Although the Greeks dominated, many Orthodox peoples (Georgians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Rus/Russians, and later Romanians) had their own monasteries on Mt. Athos.14
12Thanks to some sources, however, another reality emerges behind the term of Rus. These divisions show that conflicts between different nationalities were not a monopoly of Orientalized Balkan peoples, as they were often portrayed, but concerned also those originating from the Russian Empire.
The Presence of “Little Russians” in Three Athonite Sketes
- 15 It is named Mavrovirou (Μαυροβίρου or Μαυροβήρου) in Greek sources, Chornyi Vir in Ukrainian and Ru (...)
- 16 Christou Pan. K., To Agion Oros. Athoniki Politeia – Istoria Tehni Zoi (Το Αγιον Ορος. Αθωνική Πολι (...)
- 17 Ktenas Christophoros, Apanta ta en Agio Orei iera kathidrymata eis 726 en olo anerhomena kai ai pro (...)
13Three Athonite sketes have hosted important numbers of Ukrainian monks since the eighteenth century: Mavros Viros, Bogoroditsa, and most of all, Prophet Elias. The Mavros Viros skete15 was definitively abandoned in the beginning of the nineteenth century and almost nobody, except scholars, knows its name today. It was situated three kilometres to the northwest of Zograf, the Bulgarian monastery. Its main feast was for the Virgin’s birth, on 8 September. It was under the jurisdiction of Zograf monastery and had 28 monks, “all of them Russians,” in 1808.16 Christou does not make here any difference between Russians and Ukrainians, and the same is true for the Greek archimandrite Christophoros Ktenas (1864–1940) who was an Athonite monk and wrote a lot about the peninsula. Ktenas explains that the few Russians who were living in the sketes of Prophet Elias and Mavros Viros at the end of the eighteenth century left after the Greek war of Independence in 1821.17 As far as I know, no Greek scholar mentions the presence of Ukrainians in the Mavros Viros skete.
- 18 Fennell Nicholas, The Russians of Athos, with special reference to the Prophet Elijah Skete, PhD di (...)
- 19 The Ukrainian “Cossack myth” and the celebration of this past stress the love for freedom and the s (...)
- 20 Bachynska Olena, Kaiuk Svitlana, “The Ukrainian Cossaks and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Istanbul (...)
14According to Nicholas Fennell, the skete “was founded in 1747 and was originally inhabited by Zaporizhian Cossacks who had come to Athos because the Unia had made life difficult for them on the West-Bank of Ukraine.”18 In 1775, after the dissolution of the Zaporizhian Sich, considered to be the proto-state of Ukrainian Cossacks,19 some groups became subjects of the Ottoman Empire and put themselves under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Apparently, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Kosh ataman Semen Moroz not only had personal connections with the Patriarchate, but also visited Mount Athos and became archimandrite in one of the Greek cloisters.20
- 21 Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth…, op. cit., p. 66.
15While the Mavros Viros skete is barely known, the two other sketes were much more prosperous and influential. The skete of Bogoroditsa, which was under the jurisdiction of St Panteleimon (the Russian monastery), was historically significant, since it stood on the site of Xylourgou monastery, considered to be the first cenobitic Russian house on Athos, “mentioned by name in documents from 1030 on.”21
- 22 See for example Christou, To Agion Oros (Το Αγιον Ορος), op. cit., p. 235.
- 23 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 156.
- 24 Ibid., p. 158.
16The Prophet Elias skete was the most important of these three establishments. It was under the jurisdiction of Pantocrator (a Greek monastery) and was generally perceived to be Ukrainian in non-Greek sources. It was founded in 1757 by Paisius Velichkovsky (1722–1794). Interestingly enough, the Ukrainian descent of Paisius is broadly recognized by Greek scholars.22 During the first decade of the nineteenth century, “the skete is thought to have been inhabited by Black Sea Cossacks.”23 They had to leave because of the Greek war of independence. They came back to Athos again in 1830, after the creation of the Greek state and the return of stability. The skete’s food supply and income came from the rich fisheries on the Danube,24 where Zaporizhian Cossacks were specialized in sturgeon fishing.
17Throughout the eighteenth century, this skete was the only Athonite monastic establishment with an important East Slavic population. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after a period of absence, the Russians started to come massively back to Athos.
“Little Russians” and “Great Russians” in the Skete of Prophet Elias (1837–1841)
- 25 Ibid., p. 156.
- 26 Ježek Václav, The historical and archaeological importance of travel accounts made by Russian pilgr (...)
18Parfeny Aggeev (1807–1868) arrived on Mount Athos in 1839. He was a “Bessarabian Small Russian,” but “he had far more sympathy for the Great Russians on Mount Athos.”25 His influential Tale of Monk Parfeny’s Journeying was published in 1855. He refers to the coexistence of Great Russians with Little Russians in the skete of Bogoroditsa, but also to “the huge fight” which erupted between the two groups in the neighbouring skete of Prophet Elias.26 The Little Russian brethren wanted obviously to keep a firm hand on the Prophet Elias skete. Parfeny describes how the Great Russians were chased out by the Little Russians, the more numerous group.
- 27 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 42-43. Karyes is the political and economic centre of (...)
- 28 Ježek, The historical and archaeological importance, op. cit., p. 285.
- 29 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 43.
- 30 Shumylo Serhii, “St. Paisius Velichkovsky and the Ukrainian Elias Skete on Mount Athos,” Pravoslav’ (...)
19Between 1837 and 1841, six or seven people, according to different sources, were elected abbot in the skete. Among them were Arseniy and Pavel, both Great Russians. Eventually, Pavel and “the other Great Russians were forced to leave the skete and settled in kellia [cells] and hermitages around Karyes.”27 The Greeks were even obliged to protect the Great Russians against the Little Russians’ attacks.28 According to Parfeny Aggeev, “one of the causes of the quarrel was that Small Russians had been incited by certain Greek monks who bore the Great Russians a grudge.”29 In his view, Greeks played an ambivalent role in this case, protecting the weaker group, while trying to keep the two groups divided. Serhiy Shumylo offers another version: he reports that in 1839 the Greek authorities of Athos in Karyes took the side of the Little Russian majority.30 As far as I know, only one text in Greek refers to the brief election of Arseniy. After this election of a Great Russian, the Little Russians (Mikrorosoi, Μικρορώσοι) started to diffuse the rumour that all the Russians were schismatics:
- 31 Panagopoulos Al., Agnostes osiakes morfes Agioreiton Ellinon, Slavon, k.a. tou 19ou aiona (Άγνωστε (...)
For a long time, they hated them and searched for an occasion to cast them away from the Holy Mountain. This is how the quarrel started. The Greeks and the Bulgarians found this very strange, because they loved much more the Russians than the Ukrainians, and were very surprised by such an unexpected accusation. But the Ukrainians were telling their version and accused the Russians and most of all, Arseniy, who had stayed in the Prophet Elias skete in 1838 for a while.31
20This is one of the rare Greek sources that mentions the presence of Ukrainians in the skete. According to it, the Greeks supported the Russians because this was their favourite group. This Russophile position is probably explained by the fact that this compilation of biographies of different Athonite saints is based on Russian and Serbian sources.
- 32 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 159-160.
- 33 Fennell Nicholas, Russian Monks on Mount Athos. The thousand year history of St Panteleimon’s, Jord (...)
21During this “confusing period of instability” for the skete, the brethren “were no longer Cossacks from the Black Sea but a mixture of Cossacks from the Zaporozhye region, who were Ottoman subjects, and Russians, Ukrainians and Moldavians from the Danube.” For Fennell, the “chief trouble maker among the Small Russians was Monk Savva, who strove to expel the numerous Great Russian brethren from the skete.”32 Unsurprisingly, the Ukrainians were presented as the main troublesome element in some Russian sources: “the unsavoury Little Russians did not cease to stir up and shatter the peaceful life of the skete.”33
The Skete of Prophet Elias between 1841 and 1914
- 34 Ktenas, Apanta ta en Agio Orei (Απαντα τα εν Αγίω Ορει), op. cit., p. 674.
- 35 For the relations between the Russians and the Esfigmenou monastery, see Seraïdari, “Museographic o (...)
- 36 Shumylo, “St. Paisius Velichkovsky,” op. cit., p. 212.
- 37 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 164-165.
22Ktenas considers the Russians to have totally abandoned the Prophet Elias skete between 1841 and 1871. He mentions that during this period, the skete was inhabited by Vlachs from Bessarabia. He criticizes Gerasimos Smyrnakis, who was the friar and abbot of Esfigmenou monastery in 1906–1908 and who wrote an influential historical account about the Holy Mountain, because Smyrnakis wrongly considered its inhabitants to be Bulgarians.34 This confusion is characteristic of a more general Greek position: only the Russians interested Greek scholars, and this is why all the other groups were imprecisely identified. The question of terminology is thus important. And of course, the skete was not abandoned by Russians during these thirty years. In 1845, the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, son of Nicolas I, visited not only some important cloisters like Panteleimon, Zograf, and Esfigmenou,35 but also the Prophet Elias skete. He even spent the night there on 17 July 1845. After this imperial visit, which was marked by the Grand Duke’s compliments to the Little Russian monks for their work,36 the “humble skete” became “respected by all, both on Athos and particularly in Russia.” In 1867, it was the turn of Grand Duke Aleksei, son of Alexander II, to pay the skete a short visit.37
- 38 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 164-165. As we saw earlier, the pilgrim Parfeny Aggeev (...)
- 39 Nivière Antoine, Les glorificateurs du nom. Une querelle théologique parmi les moines russes du mon (...)
23Nevertheless, Ktenas was also right in a way: this was the period of the reign of the prior Paisius II (1841–1871), who was “a Bessarabian.” Because of his origin, Paisius supposedly shared the same mentality “with the Balkan peasantry that made up the bulk of the traditional Athonite community,”38 This shows that borders between different communities were not always clear-cut. In general, there were two tendencies: on the one hand, to oppose Greek and Slav Orthodoxy; and on the other hand, to consider Balkan people as a homogenous group, into which Russians could not fit. According to Nivière, Russian monks were inhabited by “a kind of nationalism with Messianic overtones.” They were convinced that their community was achieving on Athos “a ‘spiritual feat’ more important than any other accomplished by other nations”: whereas the other Slav Athonite monks were linked to Greeks “through common traditions and Oriental mentality,” Russians were staying apart, conserving their “national ways of doing” and “a certain formalism, marked by national pride.”39 Hence, the question was sometimes where to put Little Russians: closer to Bessarabians (and thus, in the Balkan category); or closer to Great Russians.
- 40 Kotsur Anatolii, Kotsur Vita, “Information on Paisius Velichkovsky and the Romanian monasticism of (...)
- 41 Ibid., p. 119.
- 42 Ibid., p. 120. As with the foundation of the Mavros Viros skete (see above), the Polish interventio (...)
- 43 Kotsur, Kotsur, “Information on Paisius Velichkovsky,” op. cit., p. 121.
- 44 Ibid., p. 122.
24In 1893, an article entitled “Little Russian cenacle on Athos” was published by the diplomat Aleksandr Dabizha (1860–1899) in the first Ukrainian scientific historical review, Kievskaia starina. He wrote it after visiting the Prophet Elias skete on 15 May 1892.40 According to Dabizha, this was “a living corner of distant Ukraine,” which had been “transferred to the legendary ground of Athos.” However, “very few people were interested in the fate of the Little Russian Illinsky Skete [Prophet Elias skete], a spiritual child of the Zaporizhian Cossacks, that arose in the Muslim East in the second half of the eighteenth century.”41 The text associates the creation of this Little Russian skete with a troubled period, marked by “the double oppression of Poland and the Jesuits” that had affected Right-Bank Ukraine.42 After the death of the skete’s founder, Paisius Velichkovsky, in 1794, the “remaining monks consisted of almost exclusively Ukrainians.” Aleksandr Dabizha mentions an “era of decay” around 1821, despite “the help provided by the Cossacks” and their offering of rich gifts.43 A new era started with the arrival of “the starets Paisius II” in 1841, which seemed to confirm Paisius Velichkovsky’s prophetic words of farewell: “In the course of time, another Paisius will enter the skete.”44
- 45 Nivière, “Les Russes au mont Athos,” op. cit., p. 108, note 17.
- 46 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 156.
25In 1912, three hundred monks, “exclusively originating from Little-Russia (Ukraine)” were living there.45 The presence of Cossacks was still strong. The Priest-monk Ioann was enthroned as prior of the skete on 30 June 1914. He was of Cossack origin46 and under his authority, the skete was at its apogee and experienced an unprecedented expansion. The new central church with the ornate gold iconostasis, which was consecrated in August 1914, was the second largest on Athos.
- 47 Ibid., p. 194.
26During the nineteenth century and up to 1914, its principal benefactors were “Black Sea and Don Cossack families. The Kavurs, Kulikovs, Sizlovs, Minayevs, Vorobeychiks, Chertkovs, and Gryzlovs regularly sent donations of 100–150 roubles. Some, such as the Kulikovs, had sent several thousand roubles by 1914.”47
- 48 Osios Isaak, “Chronografiki kai topografiki istoria tou Agiou Orous Atho. Iera Moni Pantocratoros” (...)
- 49 Ibid., p. 11-12.
27Most Greek texts never make a clear distinction between Great and Little Russians. Let us take the example of an article in an Athonite journal, which examines the two disputes that arose between the governing Greek monastery, Pantocrator, and its dependence, the Prophet Elias skete. The first one took place in 1839 (during the troubled period following the arrival of Great Russians, as examined above); the second one started in 1880 and was concluded by patriarchal decree in 1892. In the article, only one group is mentioned, the Russians. This is why the conclusion is incomprehensible: “especially the Russian monks of the Prophet Elias skete have always been good monks, polite, honest [philagathoi, φιλάγαθοι] and fraternal [philadelphoi, φιλάδελφοι], and therefore, for these reasons, all the Athonite monks have always loved them.”48 The reader is left with the impression that these ones were the good Russian monks, in comparison to some others who were less exemplary. The latter were the “more recent Russians” [tous neoterous Rosous, τους νεωτέρους Ρώσους] who founded the St Andrew skete, as seen below, and who started coming on Mount Athos in great numbers in the nineteenth century [enefanizonto polyplitheis, ενεφανίζοντο πολυπληθείς].49 Hence, the text suggests that there were, on the one hand, the exemplary Russians of the Prophet Elias skete and, on the other hand, the less exemplary Russians, who were living in St Panteleimon monastery and in the St Andrew skete: it was their bad influence that provoked the regrettable dispute at the end of the nineteenth century between the Prophet Elias skete and Pantocrator.
St Panteleimon and St Andrew Skete
- 50 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 92.
- 51 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 33.
- 52 Fennell, “The Prophet Elijah Skete,” op. cit., p. 55.
28The “golden age” of Russian Athos started at the end of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878 and ended at the beginning of the First World War.50 The rivalry between Greeks and Russians on Mount Athos became tense during this period: “Russians were eager to acquire large properties, tried to buy parts of Mount Athos, and engaged in lucrative trade and banking.”51 After 1840, “Russian Athonites became so numerous and wealthy that they threatened to overrun the peninsula. […] The Greeks, who had always been in the majority and saw the Holy Mountain as their apanage, came to look on their Orthodox brothers from the north as their enemies and never forgave them.”52
- 53 Fennell, Russian Monks, op. cit., p. 13.
- 54 Soloviev A., “Histoire du monastère russe au Mont-Athos,” Byzantion, 1933, vol. 8, no 1, p. 213-238 (...)
29For centuries, St Panteleimon has been called the Rossikon, that is, the Russian monastery. On 18 October 1635, the Roman Catholic Apostolic Missionary to Athos, Nicola Rossi, reported to his bishop that “the monastery’s brethren comprised Ruthenians (Little Russians from Transcarpathia, Little Russians originated from the equivalent of modern-day Ukraine and Belarus), Bulgarians and mostly Greeks.”53 In 1705, the abbot was a Little Russian, named Varlaam: “ A document of 1705, written in Russian by the abbot Varlaam, shows that this Little Russian, full of energy, had renovated the monastery of St Panteleimon ‘for it serves as shelter to Russian pilgrims’.”54 After a period of decline because of the Greek War of Independence, the monastery stayed for some decades under the authority of Greek abbots.
30The Russian Abbot of St Panteleimon, Makarii (Sushkin), was elected on 10 May 1875. This was an important event that aroused Greek distrust toward Russian intentions and Pan-Slavism. Greeks were conscious of the geopolitical asymmetry between their newly founded and economically unstable kingdom, and the powerful and expanding Russian Empire, which was a major player in the European state system. They feared a Russian conquest of Mount Athos.
- 55 Riley Athelstan, Athos or the mountain of the monks, London, Longmans, Green, and Co, 1887, p. 244.
- 56 Riley, Athos, op. cit., p. 243.
31John Athelstan Laurie Riley (1858–1945) visited the peninsula in 1883. He considers that St Panteleimon “was the starting-point of the present Russian colonization” and “the head-quarters of the Russians.”55 He also refers to the Greek fears about Russian becoming stronger “when sufficient Russian subjects have been imported to outnumber the Greeks.” Demography was thus at the core of his argument. Riley considers that “the ultimate aim of the Russians” was to strike a blow “at the authority of the Oecumenical Patriarch and at the pre-eminence of the Greek Church” in order to “subject the mother to the daughter Church and both to the Czar and its ministers.”56
- 57 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 10.
- 58 Fennell, “The Prophet Elijah Skete,” Annual Report of the Friends of Mount Athos, Parchment-Oxford, (...)
32Another event, very important for the Russian monastic community, took place in 1849, when the St Andrew cell, called also Serai and placed under the jurisdiction of one of the most important Greek monasteries, Vatopedi, became a skete. This establishment “was very much a nationalist, Great Russian house, not intended for Ukrainians and other Small Russians.”57 Fennell stresses the contrast between “the Small Russian brethren” at the Prophet Elias skete who were “an endearingly varied, informal, and colourful lot” and “the Great Russians at the St Andrew Skete, whose nationalist pride bordered on snobbery.”58
- 59 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 91.
- 60 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 55.
33Russians aimed at changing the status of establishments under their control – for example, transforming a cell into a skete, as happened with St Andrew. Even if the richest Russian cells, “the inhabitants of which were only tenants,” were able to host large numbers of monks and to get bigger, through extensions and new buildings, Athonite regulations forbade such expansion without the approval of the mother monastery.59 Russians, who wanted to be proprietors instead of tenants, tried to turn sketes into independent monasteries, but they never managed to get this accepted by the Athonite community. Unsurprisingly, St Panteleimon, was “as for the land tenure, one of the most important land-owners of Athos.”60
- 61 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 88.
- 62 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 60.
34Not all Russians were enthusiastic about this situation: “St. Petersburg consistently tried to limit the flow of money to Mt. Athos that Russian monks, especially kelliotes (inhabitants of small cells that belonged to the big monasteries and that could, therefore, never be regarded as Russian property) collected throughout Russia.”61 Russian financial investment was thus judged to be acceptable only if there were chances for the establishment to be categorized as “Russian property” in the future. In this context, Greek monasteries were accused of profiting from the situation (characterized by Russian demand for cells), by increasing the rental prices.62
- 63 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 2.
- 64 Fennell, “The Prophet Elijah Skete,” op. cit., p. 57-59. Fennell asserts that after 1917, “the sket (...)
- 65 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. ii.
35Despite the spectacular expansion of the Prophet Elias skete at the end of the nineteenth century, this was the smaller of the three main Russian Athonite establishments. In 1914, the Prophet Elias skete was “half the size of the Serai and a quarter that of St. Panteleimon.”63 Between 1871 and the First World War, the Prophet Elias skete became “a kind of bank”: monks, including several from the mother monastery of Pantocrator, “deposited their money (mostly gold Turkish lira) there. The skete sent this on to its Odessa banks, whose interest rates were very attractive to the investor.”64 Fennell also considers that the skete “deviated less than the other Russian houses from its founder’s ideals. This was partly because the skete’s Small Russian brotherhood was on the periphery of the Greek-Russian quarrel, and also thanks to the enlightened leadership of some of its priors.”65
- 66 The skete fathers “were Black Sea Cossacks […] noted for their ingrained bad habits and willfulness (...)
36Fennell tries to understand why the skete “blended in with the rest of Athos rather better than the larger Russian houses.” He gives three main reasons for this: “the skete’s informality;”66 the fact that it “was not involved in the heresy of the Glorifiers of the Name that destroyed the calm of the Rossikon and the St Andrew Skete;” and, finally, the fact that the skete was not “accused of the land-grabbing tactics of the worldly Russian kelliots, who seemed to invade the peninsula at the end of the last century with the intention of turning tiny hermitages into great cenobitic communities at the expense and against the wishes of the ruling monasteries.”
37The Russian Athonite community had grown to 5,000 by the end of the nineteenth century, whereas there were only 150 Ukrainians and Russians in 1840. The perception of Russians’ demographic growth was certainly reinforced by the Greek incapacity to distinguish between different categories of Eastern Slavs.
The End of the Massive Russian Presence on Mount Athos
- 67 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 108, 177 and 403, where Nivière gives biographical (...)
38The Name-Glorifiers affair in 1907–1914 leaded to massive expulsions and departures and, consequently, to a drastic diminution of Russian Athonite monks. A Russian diplomat, Paul Mansourov, even considered that the Name-Glorifiers movement developed among Russian Athonite monks because of the conflict between different nationalities: during the end of nineteenth century, St Panteleimon was directed by monks from the South of Russia and from Ukraine, much to the displeasure of those from the North of Russia. Antoine Nivière shows, however, that these explanations (including the one suggesting that Ukrainian separatism was at the origin of the heresy) were unfounded.67 The insistence on the quarrel between different nationalities served here a defined purpose: to explain a problematic situation. It was as if ethnic divisions could produce nothing but anarchy and theological errors.
- 68 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 92.
- 69 Anastassiadis, “Sisyphean Task,” op. cit., p. 72.
- 70 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 93.
- 71 Ibid., p. 84.
39The Greeks “annexed the Holy Mountain” in November 1912.68 In the spring of 1913, Russia proposed constituting Athos “as an autonomous republic, still dependent on the Patriarchate but under international protection.”69 It was clear, however, that the Russian plan for international control in fact “would ensure Russia’s dominance.”70 Mount Athos was important for the Russian Empire because of its geographical location, since it was at the centre of “the Russian–Ottoman–Balkan relationship.”71
- 72 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 25.
- 73 Coman Constantin, “Moldavians, Wallachians, and Romanians on Mount Athos,” in Graham Speake, Metrop (...)
40The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 confirmed Greek sovereignty and “the government of Athens” decided to limit, “for not to say completely stop for forty years (1925-1966) all arrivals of new monks originating from Russia on Athos.”72 Russians were not the only group concerned. Different sources show how severe measures were taken against the non-Greek monks, who became undesirable: “starting in 1927, the Romanians’ access to the Holy Mountain was practically blocked, being made conditional on the approval of the one of the twenty monasteries, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Greek government, the archbishopric of Athens, and the renunciation of Romanian citizenship in favour of Greek.”73
- 74 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 2.
- 75 Fennell, “The Prophet Elijah Skete,” op. cit., p. 55.
- 76 Ibid., p. 60.
41Fennell also refers to this difficult period: “The last of the Serai Russians left in the mid-sixties. The Prophet Elijah Skete was in Russian hands until its brethren were expelled from the Holy Mountain in 1992.”74 Fennell explains that “it had been the only major Russian house on Athos to be continuously in Russian hands” from its foundation by Paisius Velichkovsky in 1747 until 1992.75 Even Fennell, who is very careful to differentiate East Slavic groups, shows here that the distinction between Little Russians and Great Russians is not always relevant. In the same article, however, Fennell clearly explains that this “was a house essentially for Small Russians” and that in “the troubled period of the seven priors […] the ethnic distinction became, if only briefly, unfortunately exclusive.”76
- 77 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 85.
- 78 Ibid., p. 84-86.
42The Greek-Russian quarrel on Mount Athos shows how it is difficult to find a balance between Greek and Russian propaganda, that is, between the Greek scholarship suffering from Slavophobia and Russophobia on the one hand, and the Russian scholarship defending the interests of an empire on the other hand. Jealousy was advanced as one of the main causes explaining the conflict, according to both sides: for the former, the daughter Russia was jealous of the Mother Church; and for the latter, it was the prosperity of the Russian monasteries and sketes on Athos that “provoked discontent and envy among the Greeks, whose monasteries suffered from lack of financial support.”77 Whereas the former accused the Russians of trying to build a “Third Rome,” the latter condemned the ideology of imperial Byzantinism and the Greeks’ will to perpetuate “cultural domination.” Gerd, who criticizes “the intensity of nationalist passions and anti-Slav prejudices” on the Greek side, clearly shows what the dominant Russian position was and how the Russian presence was justified as an attempt to liberate or take back older possessions (as with Iveron monastery, as seen below): “Little by little, the non-Greek monasteries fell into the hands of Greek monks, a process that reflected the situation in the Orthodox Church in the whole of the Ottoman Empire.”78 The argument of the Greek “cultural yoke” is central here.
- 79 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 15.
- 80 Speake Graham, Ware Kallistos metropolitan, “Introduction,” in Graham Speake, metropolitan Kallisto (...)
- 81 Ibid., p. 4.
- 82 Piégais Gwendal, “‘A rightful share of prestige and influence’: The Russian brigades in Macedonia a (...)
43This does not mean that Greek domination was a natural phenomenon that should not be questioned. Nivière shows to what extent the ruling structures of Mount Athos were Hellenized: the authorities of the Holy Mountain were chosen “exclusively among the Greek monks” and the Patriarchate of Constantinople “was equally directed by the Greek clergy.”79 In their book, Graham Speake and Kallistos Ware publish a graphic about the twenty Athonite monasteries: while seventeen of them are Greek today, there were only nine in 1489, thirteen in 1725/44 and twelve in 1903 (mostly because of Russian penetration).80 The case of Iveron monastery is interesting. It was built by Georgian monks, who “became active on Athos in the decade of 970s,” but gradually their monastery “was infiltrated by Greek monks, by the twelfth century it contained two distinct communities, and in 1357 the Georgians finally lost control of it.”81 In the nineteenth century, Russians “claimed authority over the monastery of Iveron, where monks of the Caucasus lived,” by reclassifying “the monks’ origin from Georgian to Russian.”82 This example clearly shows how the response to the Hellenization process was the Russification process.
- 83 Karolidis Pavlos, I enestosa katastasis en to Agio Orei (Η ενεστώσα κατάστασις εν τω Αγίω Ορει) [Th (...)
- 84 Ibid., p. 116.
44This does not mean that Greek fears were not sometimes irrational. Russophobia was denounced even by Greek scholars. In 1896, Karolidis mentioned the construction of an Athonite chapel, which, according to an unfounded rumour that quickly spread, was funded by Russians: they supposedly wanted to erect a fortress and arm it in order to get control of the Macedonian plain.83 Karolidis was one of the few Greek scholars of the nineteenth century who fully realized how the Russian group was divided, even if there is no question of different nationalities in his approach. His opinions were based on conversations with Athonite monks, for whom the Russian threat was not so important, since both the Russian government and the Russian Holy Synod were not satisfied with the departure of so many Russians for Athos; there was also the problem of the Russian kelliots, who had acquired a bad reputation. Even St Panteleimon was not on fraternal terms either with the Russian kelliots or with the Russian sketes of St Andrew and Prophet Elias.84
45Fennell also insists on the fact that the Russians were a socio-ethnic group
- 85 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 153.
as multifarious as their country was great. St Panteleimon Monastery did not approve of the kelliots; Dmitrievskiy opposed Pavlovskiy; Ivanov suggested that the supremacy of the patriarch on Athos was uncanonical, whereas Dmitrievskiy and Pavlovskiy believed that maintaining the patriarch’s position was essential. The monks of St Panteleimon and the Serai were Great Russians; those of the Prophet Elijah Skete were Small Russians.85
- 86 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 107.
46In the same vein, Nivière stresses the spatial separation between Little Russians (living in the Prophet Elias skete) and Great Russians (living in St Panteleimon and Serai), which allowed the two groups to stay apart and not to fight: “For the Little Russian, the Great Russian was Satan; and for the Great Russian, the Little Russian was a demon.”86
47Russian domination was not only demographic and economic, but also cultural. During this period, Russian-style icons became very popular all over Greece. The massive introduction of religious objects in different Orthodox regions has always been interpreted as a sign of domination, as I discuss next.
Hellenization and Russification Processes: A Story Told Through Objects
- 87 Han Verena, “Décoration artistique de la nacre dans les pays balkaniques pendant la domination otto (...)
48In the eighteenth century, Greek liturgical objects, “decorated with marquetry inlaid with mother-of-pearl and engravings,” invaded the churches of Macedonia and Serbia: “The fact that Greek patriarchs put Greek bishops in the regions under their administration explains the increase of imported objects of cult originating from Greece.”87 As for Russian objects, they had been sent en masse to Orthodox populations of the Ottoman Empire since the reign of Catherine II (1729–1796). Her plan, the so-called “Greek project,” was to create a Greek Christian Empire, placed under Russian control.
- 88 Le Berrurier, Diane, “Icons from the deep,” Archaeology, 1988, vol. 41, no 6, p. 20-27 (21-22).
- 89 The ERC project Visual culture, piety and propaganda: Transfer and Reception of Russian Religious A (...)
49In 1980–1981, “80 small metal icons” were found in a Russian warship, sunk in 1780. The discovery represented “the richest collection ever recovered from a single ship.” The art historian Diane le Berrurier cannot explain their presence: “A chapel may have been located in the stern of the ship where members of the crew kept their personal icons for use in worship. Another possibility is that some of the icons were being shipped for use at the Livorno base.”88 The incapacity to understand why a Russian warship carried such an important number of icons in 1780 clearly shows that the introduction of Russian ecclesiastical objects in the Balkans and in the Mediterranean, as a social and political phenomenon, is still understudied.89
- 90 Μoraïtidis Alexandros, Me tou voria ta kymata. Taxidia, perigrafai, entyposeis, Agion Oros (Με του (...)
50Let us go back to the Holy Mountain. The Greek writer Alexandros Moraïtidis (1850–1929) visited the peninsula four times: in 1888, 1893, 1898, and 1900. In his view, most of the Russian paper icons sold there were “inelegant and coarse” and represented all the cloisters as if they were built in a Russian architectural style, with onion domes.90 For many Greeks like Moraïtidis, Russian icons were not only considered to be unsophisticated in comparison with Byzantine art, but they were also used for propaganda, thus giving the impression of a Russian-dominated Athos. Interestingly enough, this propaganda was based on the circulation of paper icons, considered “icons of the poor” due to their affordability.
51Because of changes in taste, Greek-style icons were in disgrace. The need to satisfy the increasing demand for Russian artifacts obliged even the Greek icon-makers of the Holy Mountain to pretend to be Russians. This was a successful marketing strategy: since the customers demanded “authentic” Athonite Russian icons in great numbers, Athonite Russians were smuggling in Greek icon-painters. Gradually, Greek Athonite monks started to limit themselves to the execution of commissions made by Russian monks of St Panteleimon and St Andrew skete. All the evidence suggests that the Ukrainian Prophet Elias skete participated in this commerce to a lesser degree.
- 91 Ibid., p. 142. On Athonite art, see Kalokyris Constantin D., Athos. Themata arhaiologias kai tehnis (...)
52Moraïtidis examines why the popularity of Russian religious items was responsible for the disappearance of Greek craft on the Holy Mountain. After the drastic decrease in the number of potential buyers who liked this style of painting and Athonite art’s distinctive identity, Greek monks were forced to abandon their craft and to concentrate on the cultivation of the land.91
53The “golden age” for the Russian commerce of Athonite icons lasted five decades, between the 1870s and 1910s. For many Greek writers, this was a period of decline, defined by an ill-advised Westernization in church art and by the commodification of icons. Very few thought that this new form of commerce was capable of bringing financial relief to the struggling Greek Athonite monasteries. What was embarrassing, however, was the fact that spiritual symbols (such as icons) and spiritual figures (such as Athonite monks) were at the centre of intense commercial activity. What was equally problematic was the fact that this Westernized style, introduced by Russians, became progressively dominant on the Holy Mountain, generally seen as the gate-keeper of Orthodox tradition and authenticity.
54To use contemporary vocabulary, this was an endangered cultural heritage and an endangered living tradition, but no measures were taken for their safeguarding and for the transmission of traditional skills. This does not mean that Byzantine art is inherently valuable or that it should stay immutable and fossilized. This is not a nostalgic narrative for an idealized past that the massive arrival of Russians on Athos disrupted. In fact, even during the Latin rule over Crete (between 1205 and 1669) and over the Ionian Islands (from the mid-fourteenth century until the late eighteenth century), as well as in Peloponnese, Byzantine models were modified and influenced by Western features. Changes in taste reveal, most of all, how a mode of artistic and religious production can become valuable or, on the contrary, outdated.
- 92 De Meester Placide, Voyage de deux Bénédictins aux monastères du Mont-Athos, Paris, Desclée de Brou (...)
55What is specific in this case is that Russian economic domination lead to a cultural homogenization process and to quasi-industrialized methods. It took centuries for post-Byzantine art with Western influences to develop, whereas Russian impact on Athos lasted only for some decades. The motifs of icons and certain techniques used for their production (like oil painting) were completely foreign to the local Athonite culture before the nineteenth century. These were unfamiliar craft objects made according to instructions and samples supplied by Russians. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Belgian Benedictine monk Placide De Meester (1873–1950) visited the disciple of one of the most famous Greek icon-painters, Joasaph, in his Athonite skete: “He showed me all these boxes with manuals full of copies, coming from the Academies of modern art in Petersburg, Moscow, even Paris.”92 These Russian and French manuals allowed Greek icon-painters to conform their art to Russian standards imposed by contract. If heritage is nowadays considered to be a way of putting “the past for sale,” the Athonite icons produced during this period had nothing to do with the local past: they were relevant to Russia’s artistic evolution, while using Athos (the place of their production) as a prestigious brand. From this point of view, this was a “place branding” strategy.
- 93 Gerd Lora, “Russian political theologies. Messianism, mythologisation of history, and practical pol (...)
56It would be erroneous to consider that all Russian initiatives had negative effects. We should not forget that the Russian scholar Petr Sevast’ianov was the first to photograph the frescoes and manuscripts of Athos. This was a pioneering act of safeguarding and diffusion, and it led to further research into Athos’ past – even if Russian research was part of the Russian Empire’s cultural diplomacy and, directly or indirectly, “Byzantine Studies served imperial geopolitical ambitions.”93
- 94 Tozer, “The monks of mount Athos,” op. cit., p. 88, 100.
57Russian influence was not considered harmful by all European visitors. Some admired the way Russians managed not only to introduce modernity into the peninsula, but also to enhance accessibility: the Athonite craft they produced and commercialized travelled all over Russia, up to Siberia, while isolated places on Athos started to be inhabited again and were frequently visited by Russian pilgrims. The reverend H. F. Tozer, who visited Mount Athos twice, in the spring of 1853 and in the summer of 1861, was one of them: “as the Russian Church has been the progressive branch of the Eastern Church since the time of Peter the Great, so the Russian monks are the most progressive element in the society of the Holy Mountain.”94
- 95 Riley, Athos, op. cit., p. 241. Like almost all Greeks, Riley does not make difference between Litt (...)
- 96 Ibid., p. 275.
- 97 Ibid., p. 318.
58Riley equally considered St Panteleimon to be “a go-ahead colony; the inhabitants pride themselves upon being the subjects of a first-class European Power and despise the Greek civilization as a relic of Oriental barbarism.”95 Nevertheless, Riley was as pessimistic as Moraïtidis concerning the future of Athonite craft: “There are now signs of the approaching annihilation of the native school that has existed in this odd way for so many centuries, for Russian influence is grafting modern European art on the old stock; a process which, far from revivifying it, is raising a strange and unpleasing hybrid.”96 During his stay in St Panteleimon, Riley visited the room where icons were painted. These icons “showed a sad falling off from the traditional art in the direction of the worst European taste.”97
- 98 Makrides, “Orthodox Christianity,” op. cit., p. 360.
59According to Makrides, after the fall of Byzantium in 1453, a process of “Russification of Orthodoxy” was set in motion in “the realms of theology, art and ritual practice, in which Russian Orthodoxy managed to develop its own local traditions that differed from the Byzantine (‘Greek’) ones.”98 Both the Hellenization and the Russification projects were in competition about the Byzantine Empire’s legacy. At the same time, Russians wanted to open new paths to modernization and Greeks also acted as mediators of progressiveness in the Ottoman empire. Paradoxically, the Greek-Russian quarrel on Mount Athos was both about the Byzantine legacy and about modernization. Hence, this conflict reveals the porous frontiers between religion, economic transactions, and geopolitical debates about the status and future of the monastic peninsula. In this framework, the production and circulation of religious objects show how commercial activity cannot be dissociated from cultural domination and other forms of soft power.
Recent Divisions on Mount Athos
60Russification measures were part of an imperial policy and, as such, they implied, from the very beginning, a strong link with the Russian Empire and its expansion. There were two main markers of Russian national identity: Orthodox religion and the Russian language. From this point of view, Hellenization and Russification were similar, since they were based on the construction of schools and churches. However, the Russian Empire not only had the administrative and financial means to implement efficient policies, but also managed to build the image of a liberating force and to deflect that of an oppressing actor.
- 99 Sifnaiou Evridiki, Paradeisopoulos Sofronis, “Oi Ellines tis Odissou to 1897: diavazontas tin proti (...)
- 100 Interestingly enough, the data of this population census were used to create a series of maps in th (...)
61One of the measures taken by the Tsarist bureaucracy in the 1860s was the ban on the Ukrainian language. The First General Census of the population of the Russian Empire took place in 1897. It showed that the most important group in Odessa was, by far, the Russians: “probably some Ukrainians declared that their mother tongue was Russian and not Ukrainian in order to be part of the dominant politically ethnicity.”99 If Ukrainians who wanted to move up the social ladder inside the Russian Empire developed strategies of this kind,100 how could we expect them to be visible in a place like Athos?
- 101 Kalaitzidis, “Orthodox Theology,” op. cit., p. 145-156.
62Until today, Russians and Ukrainians continue to be considered, in the Russian nationalist rhetoric, as “brother nations” and part of “Holy Rus,” as this transnational Russian sphere is called. This narrative serves as a basis for the justification given by Russian authorities regarding the war in Ukraine101 that began on 24 February 2022.
- 102 Tsoumis Evris, “To Agion Oros sti dini tis rosikis eisvolis” (Το Αγιον Ορος στη δίνη της ρωσικής ει (...)
63One and a half months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an article in a Greek newspaper102 examined the impact this war had on the interactions between the twenty Athonite monasteries. The first one to be mentioned was St Panteleimon, the Russian monastery with 110 monks, the majority of whom were Russian-speaking Ukrainians, apparently pro-Russian. In November 2016, the Ukrainian abbot died and the Russian and Ukrainian monks of St Panteleimon came into conflict, each group seeking to impose its own candidate. It was finally the Russian candidate who won the election. After the choice of the new abbot, the conflict between Ukrainians and Russians apparently ended there.
- 103 See also the graphic by Speake, Ware, “Introduction,” op. cit., p. 10. According to it, Philotheou (...)
64Hilandar, the Serbian monastery, fell into the same category, because of the close relations between Russia and the Serb government. Zograf, the Bulgarian monastery, followed this line as well. As for the Greek monasteries, some were openly pro-Russian, like Philotheou,103 where the renovation work undertaken in recent years has been funded by the family of the Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Mishustin visited this monastery twice, in 2020 and 2021. Financial dependence on Russian donors may explain, more broadly, why the authorities of the Holy Mountain decided to keep a neutral stance and just call for prayers for peace, without making any difference between aggressors and victims.
- 104 Andriopoulos Panagiotis Ant., “I Rossia dihazei kai to Agion Oros gia to Oukraniko” (Η Ρωσία διχάζε (...)
65Even before the beginning of the war, the two thousand monks living on the Holy Mountain were divided because of the Patriarch of Constantinople’s decision to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2018. Since the invasion, two cloisters have clearly sided with Ukraine: Pantocrator (the governing monastery of the Prophet Elias skete) and Xenophontos. On 9 April 2023, during a celebration in Philotheou, the abbot asked the representatives of these two monasteries to abstain from the mass, because of their position regarding Ukraine’s autocephaly.104 This shows the impact that disputes among top-level church officials, between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Patriarch of Moscow in this case, may have locally: even Athonite religious celebrations are eventually affected.
- 105 Non-signed article, “Oi 22 Oukranoi stratiotes pou vrikan katafygio sto Agio Oros” (Οι 22 Ουκρανοί (...)
- 106 Tzimas Stavros, “Apo ta harakomata tis Oukranias sto Agion Oros” (Από τα χαρακώματα της Ουκρανίας σ (...)
66On 3 January 2025, twenty-two wounded Ukrainian veterans came to Mount Athos for a stay of five days, during which they visited only Greek monasteries.105 This programme of psychological support, named AXIOS, started in November 2024. Of course, the Prophet Elias skete was visited on this occasion and photographs were taken in front of the ornate gold iconostasis. However, the Ukrainian veterans were not welcome in St Panteleimon monastery.106
Concluding Remarks
67On nineteenth-century Mount Athos, the answer to the Hellenization process was the Russification process. Russians aimed at replacing Greek influence by Russian influence: no space was left for any other group. Because of this double supremacy, all the other groups were classified or treated as minor.
- 107 Vovchenko Denis, “Modernizing Orthodoxy: Russia and the Christian East (1856-1914),” Journal of the (...)
- 108 Ibid., p. 308. Vovchenko also examines how Russian discourses hesitated between a Pan-Orthodox and (...)
68Both Russification and Pan-Slavism insisted on Russia’s messianic role in the Christian East and encouraged “a cultural and political union with Russia,” considering this to be the sole condition for developing “a separate civilization against the encroachments of Greeks, Turks, and the West.”107 In this context, the Greeks had been singled out “from the previously undifferentiated mass of victimized Ottoman Christians” and presented “as powerful and devious oppressors of the Balkan Slavs.”108
- 109 See, for instance, Trumler, Athos (Αθως), op. cit., p. 190, where the skete is considered to be “Uk (...)
69Three Athonite establishments have been central for the Russian implementation on Mount Athos in the nineteenth century: St Panteleimon, the skete of St Andrew, and the skete of Prophet Elias. The last one has been marked by the presence of Ukrainians – even if this fact is rarely mentioned.109 The lack of hegemonic and expansionist ambitions may explain the better integration of Little Russians on Mount Athos, but also their invisibility. What is surprising in this context, however, is the fact that even Greek texts characterized by Russophobia finally adopted Russocentric discourses, since they (almost) never mentioned the existence of Ukrainians. The invisibility of Little Russians shows, most of all, Greek blindness.
- 110 Vovchenko Denis, “Ignoring nationalism? Religious, corporate, material, regional and dynastic optio (...)
70In this context, the Eastern Orthodox subjects of the tsar became simply Russians, while, at the same time, the Eastern Orthodox subjects of the sultan were not simply Ottomans, but kept being defined by conflicting nationalities and Eastern otherness. We should keep in mind, however, that on Athos, ethnic distinctions and conflicts were not highlighted for another reason, more ideological: because of the will to stress the existence of a harmonious and spiritual Orthodox Commonwealth. This tendency is clear in a recent article, which mentions only briefly the important presence of Ukrainian monks in the Prophet Elias skete and “the free Cossack spirit,” according to a testimony left by Stadnitskiii after a trip to Athos in 1883.110
71Four main parameters link the nineteenth-century conflicts on Athos with the Ukrainian issue and the divisions it provokes today: a) the acceptance (or not) of the role of the Patriarch of Constantinople as primus inter pares; b) the refusal to consider Little Russians and Great Russians as two different groups; c) the historical continuity in the attitude of certain monasteries, such as St Panteleimon (defending the Russian position since 1875) or Pantocrator (defending the Ukrainian position today). From the very beginning, the Prophet Elias skete has been a dependency of Pantocrator; the Greek brethren of this monastery developed historical links with the Little Russian brethren of the skete as well as with the Cossack donors that supported the skete, despite the conflicts between the dependency and the mother monastery described earlier; d) the tendency to consider the Other as schismatic – accusations concerning the Great Russians living in the Prophet Elias skete in 1839, as examined above, as well as the ecclesiastics of the new Ukrainian Church, to which autocephaly was granted in 2018.
72All these elements show a certain continuity in discourses, stances, and practices. The main difference, however, has been the relation of Russia to modernity. In the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire was a vehicle of modernization in the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkan region; in this context, modernizers were opposed to Orientalized and backward people. The rhetoric has changed nowadays. The Russian state and its ecclesiastic hierarchy are much more conservative; and the Athonite monasteries that follow the Russian line are those who develop a clearly anti-Western discourse and the more anti-modernist ideas.
Notes
1 For an analysis of the Hellenization process in Cappadocia in the nineteenth century, see Seraïdari Katerina, “Saint John the Russian (ca. 1690–1730) and the spread of his cult,” Chronos, 2021, no 42, p. 1-29, online: http://olib.balamand.edu.lb/balamand_publications/journals/chronos/chronos_42/article_1.pdf (accessed in November 2024).
2 Gerd Lora, Russian Policy in the Orthodox East: The Patriarchate of Constantinople (1878-1914), Varsovie/Berlin, De Gruyter Open, 2014, p. 22.
3 Makrides Vasilios N., “Orthodox Christianity in the Context of Postcolonial Studies,” in Hans-Peter Grosshans, Pantelis Kalaitzidis (eds), Politics, Society and Culture in Orthodox Theology in a Global Age, Paderborn, Brill Schöningh, 2023, p. 338-367 (361-362).
4 Tozer H. F., “The monks of mount Athos,” in F. Galton (ed.), Vacation tourists and notes of travel in 1861, London, Macmillan and Co., 1862, p. 87-120 (120).
5 Anastassiadis Anastassios, “Sisyphean Task or Procrustean Bed? Matching State and Church Borders and Promised Lands in Greece,” in Nikiforos Diamandouros, Thalia Dragonas, Çağlar Keyder (eds), Spatial conceptions of the nation. Modernizing geographies in Greece and Turkey, London, New York, I. B. Tauris, 2010, p. 65-91 (65).
6 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 88-89, 97.
7 We should not forget that the monastic peninsula has played an important role in the creation of certain Orthodox churches. This was the case with Paisii (1722–1773), an Athonite monk of Hilandar (the Serbian monastery), who was at the origin of Bulgarian nation building with the publication of his highly influential Slavonic-Bulgarian History.
8 Kalaitzidis Pantelis, “Orthodox Theology Challenged by Balkan and East European Ethnotheologies,” in Hans-Peter Grosshans, Pantelis Kalaitzidis (eds), Politics, Society and Culture in Orthodox Theology in a Global Age, Paderborn, Brill Schöningh, 2023, p. 108-159 (109). Kalaitzidis examines, among other themes, how the recent invasion of Ukraine and the war crimes have been justified “in the name of the Orthodox tradition”: “both the Patriarch and President Putin routinely justify the invasion of Ukraine on the basis of bringing it back into the fold of the ‘Russian world’” (p. 155).
9 Kalaitzidis, “Orthodox Theology,” op. cit., p. 110, note 2.
10 Related to the notion of “Orthodox commonwealth,” discussed by Kitromilides Paschalis M., An Orthodox Commonwealth. Symbolic legacies and cultural encounters in Southeastern Europe, London, New York, Routledge, 2007; and by Speake Graham, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth: The Spiritual and Cultural Diaspora of Mount Athos, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
11 Pritsak Omeljan, Reshetar John S. Jr., “The Ukraine and the Dialectics of Nation-Building,” Slavic Review, vol. 22, no 2, 1963, p. 224-255 (244).
12 Seraïdari Katerina, “Museographic objects, saints, and sacred places: Saint Antony Pechersky, Esphigmenou Monastery (Mount Athos), and the Museum of Christian Antiquities (Athens),” Museikon, vol. 6, 2022, p. 197-206.
13 Gonneau Pierre, “L’odyssée religieuse de Vasilij Grigorovič Barskij à travers les chrétientés latine et grecque (1723-1747),” Revue des études slaves, vol. 70, no 2, 1998, p. 399-409 (406). Author’s translations from French and Greek.
14 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 84.
15 It is named Mavrovirou (Μαυροβίρου or Μαυροβήρου) in Greek sources, Chornyi Vir in Ukrainian and Russian, and Black Whirlpool, Black Vir or Mavros Viros in English. In this article, I use the last version.
16 Christou Pan. K., To Agion Oros. Athoniki Politeia – Istoria Tehni Zoi (Το Αγιον Ορος. Αθωνική Πολιτεία – Ιστορία Τέχνη Ζωή) [Mont Athos. Athonite state – History, art and life], Athens, Epopteia, 1987, p. 236.
17 Ktenas Christophoros, Apanta ta en Agio Orei iera kathidrymata eis 726 en olo anerhomena kai ai pros to doulon ethnos ypiresiai afton (Απαντα τα εν Αγίω Ορει ιερά καθιδρύματα εις 726 εν όλω ανερχόμενα και αι προς το δούλον έθνος υπηρεσίαι αυτών) [All the holy establishments on Mount Athos, 726 in all, and their services to the enslaved nation], Athens, Τypois Alevropoulou, 1935, p. 411-412, 670.
18 Fennell Nicholas, The Russians of Athos, with special reference to the Prophet Elijah Skete, PhD dissertation, University of Southampton, 1997, p. 29.
19 The Ukrainian “Cossack myth” and the celebration of this past stress the love for freedom and the struggle with Poland and Russia. According to the Ukrainian version of history, there was a difference between the Zaporizhian Cossacks (loyal to Kyiv, speaking a version of old Ukrainian and creating a new artistic form, the Ukrainian Baroque) and the Don Cossacks (presented as agents of Moscow or as Russia’s advance guard, in the Russophile version of local history). Wilson Andrew, “The Donbas between Ukraine and Russia: The use of history in political disputes,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 30, 1995, p. 265-289 (271-272, 277).
20 Bachynska Olena, Kaiuk Svitlana, “The Ukrainian Cossaks and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Istanbul in the 18th–early 19th century,” CIEES History of Orthodox Churches, Platform of International European Studies, 2020, p. 128-136 (133).
21 Speake, A History of the Athonite Commonwealth…, op. cit., p. 66.
22 See for example Christou, To Agion Oros (Το Αγιον Ορος), op. cit., p. 235.
23 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 156.
24 Ibid., p. 158.
25 Ibid., p. 156.
26 Ježek Václav, The historical and archaeological importance of travel accounts made by Russian pilgrims to the Near East from the 12th to 19th centuries (Russia and the Near East in the Context of Ecclesial History), PhD dissertation, Univerzita Karlova, 2018, p. 285.
27 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 42-43. Karyes is the political and economic centre of Athos.
28 Ježek, The historical and archaeological importance, op. cit., p. 285.
29 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 43.
30 Shumylo Serhii, “St. Paisius Velichkovsky and the Ukrainian Elias Skete on Mount Athos,” Pravoslav’ia v Ukraini (Православ’я в Україні), 2022, p. 175-215 (212).
31 Panagopoulos Al., Agnostes osiakes morfes Agioreiton Ellinon, Slavon, k.a. tou 19ou aiona (Άγνωστες οσιακές μορφές Αγιορειτών Ελλήνων, Σλάβων, κ.ά., του 19ου αιώνα) [Unknown Athonite holy figures of Greeks, Slavs, etc., of the nineteenth century], Athens, Editions Tinos, 1994, p. 109.
32 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 159-160.
33 Fennell Nicholas, Russian Monks on Mount Athos. The thousand year history of St Panteleimon’s, Jordanville, New York, Holy Trinity Publications, 2021, p. 32. Fennell uses here a Russian, non-signed source, published in Odessa in 1913.
34 Ktenas, Apanta ta en Agio Orei (Απαντα τα εν Αγίω Ορει), op. cit., p. 674.
35 For the relations between the Russians and the Esfigmenou monastery, see Seraïdari, “Museographic objects,” op. cit.
36 Shumylo, “St. Paisius Velichkovsky,” op. cit., p. 212.
37 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 164-165.
38 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 164-165. As we saw earlier, the pilgrim Parfeny Aggeev was himself a “Bessarabian Small Russian.” The prior Paisius II was considered sometimes to be Bulgarian. See, for exemple, Trumler Gerhard, Athos. To Agion Oros (Αθως. Το Αγιον Ορος) [Athos. The Holy Mountain], Athens, ekdoseis Adam, 1993, p. 190.
39 Nivière Antoine, Les glorificateurs du nom. Une querelle théologique parmi les moines russes du mont Athos (1907-1914), 2015, Genève, Éditions des Syrtes, p. 50-51.
40 Kotsur Anatolii, Kotsur Vita, “Information on Paisius Velichkovsky and the Romanian monasticism of the eighteenth century in the pages of ‘Kievskaia Starina’ (1892-1896),” Codrul Cosminului, vol. XXIV, no 1, 2018, p. 113-130 (118).
41 Ibid., p. 119.
42 Ibid., p. 120. As with the foundation of the Mavros Viros skete (see above), the Polish interventions, on the one hand, and the question of Greek Catholics (Uniates) on the other hand, are generally presented as the main reason for the arrival of Cossacks on Mount Athos. See also Shumylo Serhii, “The connection between Holy Mount Athos and the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th century,” Rocznik Teologiczny LXV, no 4, 2023, p. 693-711. Shumylo considers that “the Ukrainian Cossacks” became “the new Orthodox elite of early modern Ukrainian society,” which replaced “the old Rusyn nobility that had become Polonised and converted to Catholicism” (p. 697).
43 Kotsur, Kotsur, “Information on Paisius Velichkovsky,” op. cit., p. 121.
44 Ibid., p. 122.
45 Nivière, “Les Russes au mont Athos,” op. cit., p. 108, note 17.
46 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 156.
47 Ibid., p. 194.
48 Osios Isaak, “Chronografiki kai topografiki istoria tou Agiou Orous Atho. Iera Moni Pantocratoros” (Χρονογραφική και τοπογραφική ιστορία του Αγίου Ορους Αθω. Ιερά Μονή Παντοκράτορος) [Chronographical and topographical history of Mount Athos. Holy Monastery of Pantocrator], Agios Pavlos o Xiropotamitis. Agioreitikon periodikon, no 61, January-February 1957, p. 10-13 (13).
49 Ibid., p. 11-12.
50 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 92.
51 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 33.
52 Fennell, “The Prophet Elijah Skete,” op. cit., p. 55.
53 Fennell, Russian Monks, op. cit., p. 13.
54 Soloviev A., “Histoire du monastère russe au Mont-Athos,” Byzantion, 1933, vol. 8, no 1, p. 213-238 (231).
55 Riley Athelstan, Athos or the mountain of the monks, London, Longmans, Green, and Co, 1887, p. 244.
56 Riley, Athos, op. cit., p. 243.
57 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 10.
58 Fennell, “The Prophet Elijah Skete,” Annual Report of the Friends of Mount Athos, Parchment-Oxford, 1997, p. 53-63 (60).
59 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 91.
60 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 55.
61 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 88.
62 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 60.
63 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 2.
64 Fennell, “The Prophet Elijah Skete,” op. cit., p. 57-59. Fennell asserts that after 1917, “the skete repaid all the money invested in it – a far cry from the St Andrew Skete that refused to pay back any money that had become inaccessible in Russia” (p. 59).
65 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. ii.
66 The skete fathers “were Black Sea Cossacks […] noted for their ingrained bad habits and willfulness.” Fennell, “The Prophet Elijah Skete,” op. cit., p. 61.
67 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 108, 177 and 403, where Nivière gives biographical elements about two Ukrainian monks, from a Cossack family, who were among the leaders of the movement in St Panteleimon and were expelled from Athos in July 1913.
68 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 92.
69 Anastassiadis, “Sisyphean Task,” op. cit., p. 72.
70 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 93.
71 Ibid., p. 84.
72 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 25.
73 Coman Constantin, “Moldavians, Wallachians, and Romanians on Mount Athos,” in Graham Speake, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (eds), Mount Athos. Microcosm of the Christian East, Oxford, Bern, Peter Lang, 2012, p. 113-135 (120). This article shows “the Romanians’ sense of frustration”: Romanians do not have a monastery of their own despite all the donations made to the Holy Mountain for centuries. Nevertheless, this group should not “compete with the Russians and the Greeks,” but should take “the opposite direction” and “remain in this humble condition” (p. 133).
74 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 2.
75 Fennell, “The Prophet Elijah Skete,” op. cit., p. 55.
76 Ibid., p. 60.
77 Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 85.
78 Ibid., p. 84-86.
79 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 15.
80 Speake Graham, Ware Kallistos metropolitan, “Introduction,” in Graham Speake, metropolitan Kallistos Ware (eds), Mount Athos. Microcosm of the Christian East, Oxford-Bern, Peter Lang, 2012, p. 1-10 (10). I do not count here the monasteries with mixed communities, like Pantocrator, which is considered to be “Russ/ Greek” in 1903 (because of the Prophet Elias skete, without any doubt). In this book, there is nothing about Ukrainians (or Little Russians), even if the relation of other groups (like Georgians, Moldavians, and Wallachians) to the peninsula is examined and its multinational (rather than its supranational) structure is stressed.
81 Ibid., p. 4.
82 Piégais Gwendal, “‘A rightful share of prestige and influence’: The Russian brigades in Macedonia and Russia’s ambitions in the Balkans during the First World War,” Contemporary European History, 2025, p. 1-18 (12). For the Russian attempts to acquire Hilandar, the Serbian monastery, see Gerd, Russian Policy, op. cit., p. 89-90.
83 Karolidis Pavlos, I enestosa katastasis en to Agio Orei (Η ενεστώσα κατάστασις εν τω Αγίω Ορει) [The present situation on Mount Athos], Athens, Τypografeion “Paligenesias,” 1896, p. 70-74.
84 Ibid., p. 116.
85 Fennell, The Russians of Athos, op. cit., p. 153.
86 Nivière, Les glorificateurs du nom, op. cit., p. 107.
87 Han Verena, “Décoration artistique de la nacre dans les pays balkaniques pendant la domination ottomane,” Balkan Studies, vol. 24, 1983, p. 413-424 (420).
88 Le Berrurier, Diane, “Icons from the deep,” Archaeology, 1988, vol. 41, no 6, p. 20-27 (21-22).
89 The ERC project Visual culture, piety and propaganda: Transfer and Reception of Russian Religious Art in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean (16th-early 20th c.), in which I participated between 2019 and 2023, aimed at filling this gap.
90 Μoraïtidis Alexandros, Me tou voria ta kymata. Taxidia, perigrafai, entyposeis, Agion Oros (Με του βορηά τα κύµατα. Ταξίδια, περιγραφαί, εντυπώσεις. Αγιον Ορος) [Driven by the waves of the north wind. Voyages, descriptions, impressions. Mount Athos], Athens, Vivliopoleion Ιoanni Ν. Sideri, 1924, p. 141.
91 Ibid., p. 142. On Athonite art, see Kalokyris Constantin D., Athos. Themata arhaiologias kai tehnis. Epi ti hilietiridi (963-1963) (Αθως. Θέματα αρχαιολογίας και τέχνης. Επί τη χιλιετηρίδι (963-1963)) [Athos. Themes of archaeology and art. For the thousand years (963-1963)], Athens, Astir, 1963.
92 De Meester Placide, Voyage de deux Bénédictins aux monastères du Mont-Athos, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer et Cie, 1908, p. 250.
93 Gerd Lora, “Russian political theologies. Messianism, mythologisation of history, and practical policy in the nineteenth and early twentieth century,” in Mihai-D. Grigore, Vasilios N. Makrides (eds), Orthodoxy in the Agora. Orthodox Christian Political theologies across history, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2024, p. 169-180 (174).
94 Tozer, “The monks of mount Athos,” op. cit., p. 88, 100.
95 Riley, Athos, op. cit., p. 241. Like almost all Greeks, Riley does not make difference between Little Russians and Great Russians. For him, the Prophet Elias skete is “the Russian dependency” of Pantocrator, which was founded by a Russian, Paisius Velichkovsky (p. 114). He also refers to the “little ship” of the skete, “the return of which from Russia they were daily expecting. It was to bring them caviar, tea, and many other luxuries” (p. 116).
96 Ibid., p. 275.
97 Ibid., p. 318.
98 Makrides, “Orthodox Christianity,” op. cit., p. 360.
99 Sifnaiou Evridiki, Paradeisopoulos Sofronis, “Oi Ellines tis Odissou to 1897: diavazontas tin proti episimi rosiki apografi” (Οι Ελληνες της Οδησσού το 1897: διαβάζοντας την πρώτη επίσημη ρωσική απογραφή) [The Greeks in Odessa in 1897. Revisiting the First Official Russian Census], Ta Istorika, vol. 44, June 2006, p. 81-122 (95-96).
100 Interestingly enough, the data of this population census were used to create a series of maps in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary, published from 1890 to 1907 in Saint Petersburg – maps which promoted the idea of an All–Russian people. See Kappeler Andreas, Russes et Ukrainiens : les frères inégaux, du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2023.
101 Kalaitzidis, “Orthodox Theology,” op. cit., p. 145-156.
102 Tsoumis Evris, “To Agion Oros sti dini tis rosikis eisvolis” (Το Αγιον Ορος στη δίνη της ρωσικής εισβολής) [The Holy Mountain in the turbulence of the Russian invasion], Makedonia tis Kyriakis, 17 April 2022, online: https://www.makthes.gr/to-aghion-oros-sti-dini-tis-rosikis-eisvolis-548805 (accessed in November 2024).
103 See also the graphic by Speake, Ware, “Introduction,” op. cit., p. 10. According to it, Philotheou was a “Greek/Russ” monastery in 1903.
104 Andriopoulos Panagiotis Ant., “I Rossia dihazei kai to Agion Oros gia to Oukraniko” (Η Ρωσία διχάζει και το Αγιον Ορος για το Ουκρανικό) [Russia divides Mount Athos on the issue of Ukraine], Internet site of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, 9 April 2023, online: https://fosfanariou.gr/index.php/2023/04/09/rosia-dixazei-agion-oros-gia-to-oukraniko/ (accessed in November 2024).
105 Non-signed article, “Oi 22 Oukranoi stratiotes pou vrikan katafygio sto Agio Oros” (Οι 22 Ουκρανοί στρατιώτες που βρήκαν καταφύγιο στο Αγιο Ορος) [22 Ukrainian soldiers found shelter on Mount Athos], 3 January 2025, online: https://www.naftemporiki.gr/society/1872041/oi-22-oykranoi-stratiotes-poy-vrikan-katafygio-sto-agio-oros/ (accessed in May 2025).
106 Tzimas Stavros, “Apo ta harakomata tis Oukranias sto Agion Oros” (Από τα χαρακώματα της Ουκρανίας στο Αγιον Ορος) [From the trenches of Ukraine to Mount Athos], I Kathimerini, 18 November 2024, online: https://www.kathimerini.gr/society/563326897/apo-ta-charakomata-tis-oykranias-sto-agion-oros/ (accessed in May 2025).
107 Vovchenko Denis, “Modernizing Orthodoxy: Russia and the Christian East (1856-1914),” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 73, no 2, April 2012, p. 295-317 (307).
108 Ibid., p. 308. Vovchenko also examines how Russian discourses hesitated between a Pan-Orthodox and a Pan-Slav orientation. In the first case, among other things, Russia was considered to be invested with the mission of reconciling Greeks and Slavs and of strengthening the Patriarchate of Constantinople (p. 315).
109 See, for instance, Trumler, Athos (Αθως), op. cit., p. 190, where the skete is considered to be “Ukrainian-Russian” [Oukranorosiki Skiti, Ουκρανορωσική Σκήτη]. However, such characterizations remain unusual.
110 Vovchenko Denis, “Ignoring nationalism? Religious, corporate, material, regional and dynastic options on Mt Athos, 1839-1912,” Nations & Nationalisms, vol. 28, no 2, April 2022, p. 628-644 (638). Vovchenko considers that Athonite monks “were dominated by traditional piety, corporate interests, mundane economic concerns, regional and dynastic loyalties, leaving little room for new Western-derived nationalism” (p. 629).
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Katerina Seraïdari, « Greek, Russian, and Ukrainian Monks on Mount Athos: Conflicts and Interactions (19th-21st Century) », Balkanologie [En ligne], Vol. 20 n° 1 | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 octobre 2025, consulté le 23 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/7027 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15aaj
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