• 1 See for example Stavrou 1963. For such an appreciation dating back to the period in question see M (...)
• 2 Cf. the letters of Cyrillus of Jerusalem, Jakob and Ierotheus of Alexandria in the Archive of Noro (...)

1The traditional point of view on the Russian ideology towards the Orthodox East and the Balkans considers that Panslavism is at its core1. It also upholds that the heads of the Slavophilic movement and the Slavonic Committees implemented a policy directly stemming out of this ideology. Though this was the prevailing stream of thought in Russian political ideology between the 1850s and 1877, much less is known about another group, which aimed at the support of the Greeks. Up to the Crimean War (1853‑1856) the opposition between the Greeks and the Slavs in the Balkans was not as strong. There would often be prominent Russian individuals promoting cooperation between these two groups. For instance, the prominent Archimandrite of the Russian church in Athens, Antonin Kapustin (who would later become the chief of the Russian mission in Jerusalem), was one of the most passionate philhellenes of the middle of the 19th century. During his service in Constantinople from 1860 to 1865, he helped both Greeks and Slavs. In 1863, he insisted on awarding Stephanos Karatheodoris, one of the well‑known Greek intellectual and political figures in Constantinople, membership in a Russian order. Another great supporter of the Greek interests from the 1830s to the 1860s was Avraam Norov, a senator and the Minister of Education in Russia. He travelled to the Orthodox East several times, edited descriptions of his journeys, and had very close relations with the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch. In addition, Norov wrote a series of notes addressed to the Russian government in support of the owners of estates2 on lands belonging to the Eastern churches in the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia whose income was being confiscated by their Prince Alexander Cuza.

• 3 This term qualifies the quest for Bulgarian ecclesiastical independence from the Constantinople ec (...)
• 4 Gerd 2003.
• 5 Petrov 1886.
• 6 Filaret 1886.

2After the Crimean War, however, the rise of the Bulgarian ecclesiastical question3 meant that the Russian government could not pursue its policy of indifference. Moreover, it is well known that Emperor Alexander II was a prominent supporter of the Bulgarian struggle for ecclesiastical and political independence. Nevertheless, even in those years, A.P Tolstoy, the general procurator of the Russian Holy Synod, was more inclined towards the Greeks and the patriarchate of Constantinople as being holders of the strict canonic positions4. The same ideas were shared by Archimandrite Petr Troitsky, the priest of the Russian church in Constantinople, who addressed this problem in a series of notes written towards the end of the 1850s5. Even the first authority of the Russian church policy of the 1860s, metropolitan Philaret Drozdov of Moscow, was rather reserved in his views towards Bulgarian activities and regarded them as non-canonical6.

• 8 Sinitsyna 1998, pp. 16‑21; Florovsky & Zvegintsev 1924.
• 9 Dostoyevsky 1981, pp. 45‑50.

4The new policy of the Russian Empire has to be understood within a broad philosophical and historical background. The 1880s ideology associated to it diverged considerably from the Slavophile movement. A national ideology based on the uniqueness of the Russian Empire and its religious and political superiority in the Orthodox world was replacing the Slavophile ideas. The post‑1878 theoreticians were the ideological descendants of some extremely influential Russian writers and philosophers of the previous decades. Before the Crimean War, the poet and diplomat Fyodor Tyutchev wrote a plan, according to which the Byzantine Empire was to be transferred to Russia. In fact, here we encounter another continuation and modification of the old well‑known theory of Moscow as the Third Rome8. N. Ja. Danilevsky, the author of “Russia and Europe” (1869), was the philosopher standing at the roots of this 1880s ideology. On the eve of the Russian-Turkish War of 1877, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky expressed the messianic idea of the Russian mission in the Orthodox East, where Russia, as the head of Orthodoxy, had to obtain Constantinople as an act of final rising of Truth and the final word of Orthodoxy9.

• 10 In this article we don’t aim at a detailed analysis of Leontiev’s philosophic essays. See the bibl (...)

5Konstantin Leontiev, writer, journalist, and diplomat, was one of the most original figures of 19th century Russia. In the 1860s to 1870s, he was a consul in Adrianople, Tulcea, Ioannina (1869‑1871), and Thessaloniki (1871‑1872)10. In his diplomatic reports, he stressed the danger of the multiethnic territories of Macedonia and Thrace becoming the battleground between various competing nationalisms (Bulgarian, Greek, Serbian). He considered that as a result Russia had to play the role of peacemaker to prevent these conflicts from occurring.

• 11 Leontiev 1912, p. 273.

8So instead, Leontiev moved to Constantinople, and spent his time in the pleasant atmosphere of the magnificent, at least in those days, Russian embassy, ruled by the famous Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev. Leontiev’s spiritual thirst was now quenched during his visits to the Theological School of Halki, the best establishment of its kind in the Orthodox East. Here he had the opportunity to compare the Slavophile atmosphere of the embassy with the more reserved views of the Greek patriots in Halki. His time spent in Constantinople coincided with a period of rapid and stormy political changes, particularly with the development of the Bulgarian question in the days of two patriarchs: Anthimus VI and Ioakeim II. However, it was also in Constantinople where his love of Byzantium and the Greeks grew and found literary forms, thus ending the Slavophile period of his life. As a result, he lent his support to the Greek side with regards to the Greek-Bulgarian question. He expressed his philhellenic point of view in his articles “Panslavism and the Greeks”, and “Panslavism on Athos”. In addition, the phenomenon of Byzantinism became the main object of research for Leontiev, and he tried to explain the different ways the Byzantine legacy was understood by both the European nations, and by Russia. Leontiev understood Byzantinism to mean “our Russian Orthodoxy, our Russian Autocracy, sanctified by Orthodoxy, and many reflections of Orthodoxy and of our Orthodox statehood in literature, poetry, architecture, and so on.”11 Thus, for Leontiev, Byzantinism was, and had always been, its source of strength, the base of Russian civilization. As he wrote emphatically in his work East, Russia, and Slavinism:

• 12 See Vovchenko 2016.

10The period of Alexander III, from 1881 to 1894, can be understood as an example of the revival of Byzantinism, moving it to a new level by adopting the old idea of the Third Rome, only this time understanding it to be located at St. Petersburg. In addition, the Byzantine idea of the Orthodox Oikumene, the Orthodox world, and the family of Orthodox peoples was revalued on the basis of the Russian national idea. Therefore, the opinion that the Russian policy in the East was synonymous to Panslavism is not a correct representation of the 1880s to 1890s. During this period, Russia was internationally isolated in regard to this Balkan policy, which had deadlocked it in a strengthened relationship with only Bulgaria and Serbia. As a result, Russia’s only way out of this impasse was to develop the idea of its uniqueness and superiority in the whole East Christian world. According to these theories, Russia was the only Orthodox Great Power, and as such it had the moral right not only to protect the Christians of the Ottoman Empire, but also to “liberate them from the Turkish yoke” and to determine their future political life. As a consequence, Russia had to bring under its guidance all independent Orthodox states regardless of nationality12.

• 13 Many of the byzantinologists, especially professors of the Theological Academies, also worked as p (...)
• 14 Kapterev 1914.
• 15 See his report on the visit to Constantinople in 1886: Gerd 2001.

11The main ideologists of Russian policy of the 1880s to 1890s, such as Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov and Konstantin Petrovich Pobyedonostsyev, chief procurator of the Russian Holy Synod, were adamant supporters of this policy. This period also announces the dawn of the golden age of the Russian school of Byzantine studies13. However, the thorough studying of the political and cultural experience of Byzantium was intended to serve the political ambitions of Russia in the Near East. This idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome” was central in the book of Professor N. F. Kapterev, which was dedicated to the relations between Russia and the Orthodox East during the 16th and 17th centuries14, as well as in the works of I. E. Troitsky, a professor at St. Petersburg Theological Academy. Troitsky was an expert on Eastern affairs of the Holy Synod of the Russian church. His point of view, which was hostile to both the Greeks and the Slavs, was well reflected in his unofficial reports that were written for the procurator of the Holy Synod Konstantin Petrovich Pobyedonostsyev15.

• 16 “Νέα Ημέρα”, November 14th/26th, 1892, no. 937 (1925).

12Parallel to this political line existed a minority view, which considered the Greeks necessary for Russian political interests in the Near East. This was expressed in the 1870s to 1890s by few, but key politicians. Tertiy Ivanovich Filippov (1825‑1899), a high government official, who also acted as State Auditor, expressed his opinion on the question of the Bulgarian “schism” and positioned himself fully on the side of the Patriarchate on the eve of the Russian-Turkish War of 1877. Filippov exchanged letters with many of the Eastern Patriarchs and was very popular both in Constantinople and Jerusalem. The Patriarchate of Jerusalem, recognizing Filippov’s help, granted him the honorary title “Epitropos of the Holy Sepulchre”. In November 1892 the Greek newspaper “Νέα Ημέρα”, edited in Trieste, published a piece arguing that Filippov should be the one to assume the position of chief procurator of the Russian Holy Synod as “a friend of Greece, the Greek Church and the Greek language”16. Though the Russian Synod regarded Filippov’s activities as harmful to Russian church policy, the Russian Foreign Ministry found them useful for moderating the tensions arising from the Bulgarian question. As a result, some employees of the Russian embassy in Constantinople, such as M. K. Onou, and later P. B. Mansurov, welcomed Filippov’s initiatives.

• 17 “Гражданин”. February 7, 1891, no. 38.

13Tertiy Ivanovich Filippov’s position in relation to the Eastern policy of the Russian Church can be broken down in two essential components. First, he argued that the Patriarch of Constantinople was the head of the Orthodox world. From this postulate, he derived that Russia, having been baptized by the Byzantines, had to preserve its obedience to the Ecumenical Patriarch at Constantinople. He expressed these opinions in 1891, during the commemoration in Constantinople of the death of Patriarch Photius in 891. Photius, having been canonized as a saint by the Ecumenical Church in 1848, but not by the Russian Church, Filippov wrote an article in which he expressed his pity that the Russian Church was such a disobedient daughter to her mother, the Church of Constantinople. As a result, he considered Russian church policy in Bulgaria to be a failure17. This article provoked great indignation from the side of I. E. Troitsky and Konstantin Petrovich. Troitsky wrote a response to Filippov, in which he expressed the official point of view adopted by the Russian Church of this period:

• 19 Filippov 1882.

15With regard to the Bulgarian ecclesiastical question, Filippov demonstrated himself as a passionate defender of the Greek canonic position. Even before the Russian-Turkish War of 1877‑1878, when Russian society infused with Panslavistic enthusiasm, he was brave enough to express this point of view in a book19. Filippov offered an appreciation of his activities on the Bulgarian question in his letter to Patriarch Dionysius V, who was a well‑known opponent of the Bulgarians, written on 15 May 1889:

• 21 Their letters to each other are edited: Fetisenko 2000.

16Though Filippov did not find support from the governmental authorities and stood apart from the main streams of Russian foreign policy, both before and after the war of 1877‑1878, he did have some notable sympathizers. Konstantin Leontiev, whom Filippov tried to help in the beginning of the 1880s with the editing of his articles, sympathized with him regarding the Bulgarian question21. And N. Dournovo, a journalist who edited the philhellenic newspaper “Vostok” from 1879‑1885, was another ally. This newspaper supported not only the Greeks, but also the Russian old-believers, and for this reason was soon prohibited by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church.

• 22 In 1872, the Orthodox Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem condemned the pro (...)

17The second main pillar of Filippov’s political views was closely connected with the first, and was in harmony with the traditional role of Russia as the protector of the Orthodox population in the Ottoman Empire. One of Filippov’s most important proposals dealt with the question concerning the properties of the Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Bessarabia. During the 18th century the hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia granted large estates to the monasteries of the Holy Land and Mount Athos. Then, in the middle of the 19th century, one portion of the lands of Bessarabia passed to Russia, and the major part to the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which formed Romania. In the 1860s Duke Alexander Cuza began to confiscate the incomes of these estates. The Russian government tried to do its best in returning to the owners their violated rights. The Russian representative in the International Commission in Constantinople and the Russian ambassador opposed the French who supported Cuza and insisted on the total confiscation of the lands. Russia regarded these actions as an expression of its traditional duty to protect the Orthodox Churches of the East. Nevertheless, all attempts of this kind failed due to the obstinate position of both sides. Even in Russia, following the partition of Bessarabia the rights of the administrators of these estates (metochia) were not legally documented. In 1863 a special commission tried to regulate the situation, but the owners failed to produce the documents that would confirm their rights. Finally, in 1873 the Russian government changed its position and began to confiscate these properties as a reaction to the Eastern patriarchates’ policy with regard to the Bulgarian ecclesiastical question22. As a result, the owners now received only 2/5 of their incomes, and this was done through the Russian embassy in Constantinople. This act, analogous to the confiscation of the estates of the Eastern Churches in Romania by Alexander Cuza in the 1860s, provoked a storm of protests.

• 23 A. I. Nelidov-N. K. Giers, July 8th 1891. Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire. F. Grec (...)

18In 1891 Filippov raised the question of providing a supplementary income to the Athos monasteries from their Bessarabian properties. This income would be used for the needs of the Patriarchate of Constantinople23. The official report accompanying Filippov’s proposal underlined the fact that the governmental act of 1873 did not really contest the rights of the Eastern monasteries. According to the document, it only aimed at the redistribution of the income, so that the larger part would be used for philanthropic purposes. To support his argument, Filippov mentioned in his report that in 1881 the Russian Foreign Ministry had already decided to provide the Patriarchate of Jerusalem 4/5 of its incomes from its Bessarabian properties.

• 24 A note by Nekliudov, July 5th/17th 1891. State Archive of the Russian Federation, ff. 4‑16.
• 25 State Archive of the Russian Federation, ff. 44‑64^v.

19Responding to Filippov’s request, the Council of Ministers decided to initiate a discussion on the question of economic relief brought to the ecclesiastical institutions of the Holy Land24. Following the rejection of his original proposal, Filippov composed another note on 17 March 1893 regarding the needs of the Holy Places of the Orthodox East and their properties in Bessarabia25. In this note, Fillippov upheld that beginning from 1893 the Russian government should only retain a small sum from the incomes yielded by the Bessarabian properties in order to compensate for their administration instead of withholding 3/5 of the incomes as was originally done. He wrote:

• 27 Iona archimandrite 1903.
• 28 K. P. Pobedonostsev to the Holy Synod. March 2, 1902, no. 6123. Russian state historical Archive, (...)
• 29 Russian State Historical Archives, f. 796, op. 184. 6 dep., 1, d. 5263.

20Fillippov was not the only friend of the Patriarchate on the Russian side. The Archimandrite of the Russian Church Iona (1899‑1913) can also be counted among the Patriarchate’s Russian friends in Constantinople. He was a great admirer of the Greek clergy and church customs, and printed many articles in support of the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire27. In 1900, he was elected member of the Society of Church Music in Constantinople. In 1912, Patriarch Ioakeim III awarded him the title of Great Archimandrite of the Ecumenical Apostle See, and also in the same year, he was bestowed a golden cross with a piece of the True Cross by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. He spoke vehemently against the Russian disinterest in providing financial aid to Greek schools, churches and monasteries in the Ottoman Empire. In his opinion, the rich Russian monasteries of Mount Athos should set aside annual funds for support of the poor Greek schools. Regarding this specific point, Iona was confronted by the Director of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople, Fyodor Ivanovich Uspensky, who regarded the Russian monastic communities of Mount Athos as a stronghold of the Russian political influence in the East. Soon after the 1901 reelection of Ioakeim III as Patriarch of Constantinople, Iona became the mediator between the newly elected Patriarch and the Russian Holy Synod on the question of the official distribution of the Patriarchate’s newspaper “Εκκλησιαστική Αλήθεια” to all seminaries and theological academies in Russia. This amounted to 62 copies of each issue paid for by the Russian government and meant as a support for the Ecumenical See28. Iona’s efforts for a Greek-Russian alliance can also be explained by his opposition to Catholic proselytism in the Ottoman Empire as is attested by his other activities. For example, in 1903 he founded a school for Greek Orthodox children in Galataria near Constantinople that was aimed at opposing Catholic missionary efforts in the fields of education and relief. This initiative was funded by the Russian government, which granted an annual subsidy of 700 rubles from the incomes of the Bessarabian estates29.

• 30 Among them we must mention B. S. Seraphimov, expert on ecclesiastical affairs of the embassy in Co (...)

22From another perspective, the church reforms in Russia provoked a more attentive study of the Byzantine roots of Russian Christianity and the Russian Church. What should be the place of the Russian Patriarch in regard to the Pentarchy of the Apostolic Sees? What should characterize the relationship between the Russian Patriarch and the Patriarch of Constantinople? Questions like these were among the most hotly debated topics of the period. The attitude towards the Greeks and their church in the Ottoman Empire was a matter of research from the side of the Russian diplomats, some of whom also sympathized with the Patriarchate30.

• 31 Sokolov 1903.

23For example, in the beginning of the 20th century, Filippov’s philhellenic activities were followed by Ivan Ivanovich Sokolov (1865‑1939), a professor at St. Petersburg’s Theological Academy, who was a well‑known byzantinologist. Sokolov’s main argument was based on the term “Byzantinism” and its relation to the creation of an ideal theocratic state based on the model of Byzantium. His credo in matters of ecclesiastical policy was first declared in his 1903 speech at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy31, where he argued that

• 32 Sokolov 1904.

25Byzantium suffered a decline in the Palaeologian period according to Sokolov, but it flourished in terms of spiritual life; it had survived up to the fall of the Empire and had even survived after it, having passed some of its features to modern Hellenism. Sokolov concluded that Byzantium was “the first to elaborate a system of a church state, to establish such principles of private and social life, to create such cultural-historical ideals, which in their final practical realization could give mankind the always attractive happiness.” The pursuit of happiness through Byzantinism inspirited I. Sokolov during his whole career as a scientist, professor, politician and journalist. Since the early 1900s he started publishing reports and articles about the Orthodox East in the “Church Messenger” («Церковный вестник»), the official periodical of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. Soon he became its editor‑in-chief and wrote many short articles and extensive research works on the life of the Eastern Patriarchates, especially that of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In 1904 he published his book “The Church of Constantinople in the 19th Century” as a result of 8 months of his work in the archive of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the mere fact of which attested to his close contacts with Patriarch Ioakeim III32. Sokolov’s political position was steadily on the Greek side. For example, in 1906 during the massacres of the Greeks in Bulgaria, the Russian government stood aside and abstained from officially interfering. Different reasons explain such a position. First of all, Ioakeim III who had been elected for the second time to the Patriarchal See with the help of the Russian diplomacy did not live up to the Russian expectations. He had preferred being more obedient to the policy of the Greek kingdom and of Britain, and had not attempted to solve the religious and ethnic conflicts in a way that was suitable for Russia. In this situation Sokolov was the only Russian publicist who dared to raise his voice in favor of the Greeks.

• 33 “Вести с Афона” (“News from Mount Athos”), Церковный вестник (1912) 42, pp. 1317‑1318.

27For Sokolov, the question of the international status of the Holy Mountain, which was so much discussed by the Russian diplomats, was “an artificial shift of the right policy into various hesitations and adventures33.” He followed up in 1912 by printing a large article in memoriam of Ioakeim III, whom he considered the most prominent Patriarch of his time, still advocating in favor of a closer relationship with the Patriarchate at Constantinople.

• 34 For an appreciation of these questions regarding Russia and Constantinople observed from the side (...)
• 35 See Luneva 2010.
• 36 Published: Lisovoj 2002.

28One of the most vivid expressions of Sokolov’s political line is his 1915 “Opinion” on the question of Constantinople and the Straits. In 1915 the Allied Dardanelles campaign began. In order for the Allies to stimulate Russian military action on all fronts (especially on the Bosporus) and given that the final defeat of the Ottoman Empire seemed like it would be a matter of few months, Britain and France agreed to sign a secret treaty. This treaty, signed on 8 and 12 March 1915, outlined that after the victory over the Ottomans was secured, Russia would receive Constantinople and its surrounding territories. If this treaty had been put into action, its results would have been the fulfillment of Russian political dreams from all the previous centuries34. Between the 1890s and the 1910s Russian ministries had discussed, on several occasions, various projects regarding the annexation of the Straits, but each time the projects were rejected due to the unsuitable circumstances35. During the First World War the “Byzantine” ambitions of the Russian politicians rose to their highest degree. Immediately after the signing of the treaty, experts from the main ministries of economics and war science had to write their “Opinions” on the future Russian Constantinople, i.e. Tsargrad. The Holy Synod invested I. I. Sokolov with the mission of drafting the notes about the future church organization of Constantinople36. In his extended secret report “Constantinople, Palestine and the Russian Church,” he gives a vast historical panorama of the church administration in Byzantium to draw a conclusion on the canonical status of the Patriarchate in the 20th century:

• 39 Lisovoj 2002, pp. 171‑175.

30According to the author, the position of the Ecumenical Patriarch during the Ottoman period was humiliating and did not correspond to his high destination. The “Third Conquest” of Constantinople should return the Patriarchate to its true purpose: to be the centre of the Ecumene, i.e. of the Orthodox world. Since the civil authority of the Patriarch that was obtained during the Ottoman period would be abolished under these new conditions, Constantinople “could serve as, if not a constant, at least a temporary residence of the Monarch of the great Russian State, in fact receiving from the brilliance of the emperor’s crown the equal significance of ʻEmpress of all the Citiesʼ39.”

• 40 Lisovoj 2002, pp. 203, 201.

32While Sokolov evoked the restoration of Byzantium under Russian rule as a realization of the idea of the Third Rome, Antony Chrapovitsky, the well-known Russian metropolitan, proposed a restoration of the Byzantine Empire under Greek domination as a realization of the Greek Great Idea (Μεγάλη ιδέα). Metropolitan Antony Chrapovitsky was a famous publicist and the author of different articles on the Greek-Bulgarian ecclesiastical conflict. In 1911 he wrote an article on the mending of the Bulgarian schism, in which he compared the Bulgarians with the ancient Donatist heretics, and proposed a complete subordination of the controversial regions to Constantinople. In April 1915 he addressed a note to the Holy Synod, where he wrote that “in the interests of truth, in the interests of religion and science and at last in purely Russian national interests, Constantinople should become the capital of the Byzantine Empire and all the Greek provinces of the Balkans and Asia Minor have to be included in it.” The expulsion of the Turks from Constantinople should be regarded as only the first step to the complete liberation of the Christian world from the Muslims. He added that Russia must restore “the Byzantine Empire by uniting the present-day free Greece with Constantinople under the domination of the Ecumenical Patriarch and thus to thank the Greek people for delivering us from slavery to the devil, by making us Christians”40.

• 41 “The Church of Constantinople and the Russian domination”. Russian National Library, St. Petersbur (...)

33Alexey Afanasievich Dmitrievsky, a famous specialist on Greek liturgy, was another professor-theologian who expressed his opinion on church policy in the years of the First World War. He was a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy up to 1906, and later moved to St. Petersburg to become secretary of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society. During this time, the political orientation of the Palestine Society had shifted and was advocating a rapprochement with the Greeks. Though he was more reserved regarding the extent of Greek domination on the future Russian Constantinople, he could not deny that the church of Holy Wisdom (Agia Sofia) should become a Greek church, while Vlacherna church would become a Russian one. The Russian part in the church administration should be in appointing a Russian metropolitan in the Patriarchal Synod41.

• 43 See Anastassiadis 2013.

35To conclude, it is thus obvious that Russian policy-making was far more complex and hotly debated than the doxa of the 19th c. “Panslavist menace” would like us to believe. There was no clear alignment between the Russian Church and the Imperial officialdom and even within these structures, positions varied depending on the circumstances and the period examined between the 1830s and the 1910s. There was even a moment, during WWI, when for certain influential Russian figures, there was a possibility of a “Greek” or “Byzantine” moment in the Russian Empire, as long of course as Constantinople passed from the Ottomans to the Russians. WWI and the 1917 Russian Revolution put an end to this period of political romanticism. The projects of Russian Constantinople, as well as the ideas of collaboration with the Greek clergy in Palestine would not be realized. Following the Paris Peace conference, it was now time for the Greeks to cherish their own, albeit short, moment of political-religious romanticism and envision the restoration of the Byzantine Empire around Constantinople, with the Russians being reduced to a secondary role.43