Sacred spaces and imperial boundaries on Catherine II’s southern frontier

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9640672
AutoresGregory Bruess (University of Northern Iowa, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen62
Número3-4
Páginas296-314
Fecha de publicación2020-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCanadian Slavonic Papers (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0008-5006 • E-ISSN: 2375-2475
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00085006.2020.1809335
OpenAlexW3091028719
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas26

In 1775, Catherine II established the diocese of Slaviansk and Kherson in those territories recently acquired from the Ottoman Empire as a result of the Russo-Turkish War. The Empress christened the new southern vistas, Novorossiia (New Russia), and immediately launched a project to transform the sparsely populated lands and integrate them into the Russian Empire. Catherine viewed religion in utilitarian terms and considered the Orthodox Church, in particular, as a very important “instrument” to realize her ambitions. As a reflection, perhaps, of her aspirations to increase the population of the southern borderlands through intentional colonization, she appointed, successively, the Greek prelates Voulgaris and Theotokis as bishops of the new diocese. The bishops, Theotokis in particular, endeavoured to realize Catherine’s self-evidently reasonable, yet abstract, goal of harmonizing a discordant periphery peopled with Orthodox Christians, Old Believers, Dukhobors, and a host of others of indeterminate identity, with an idealized Russian and Orthodox imperial centre. The reality of the frontier, however, compelled Theotokis to reach some concord with a universe of porous and fluid boundaries between faiths, ethnicities, and empires, the best example of which was his idea of accommodation with the Old Believers known as edinoverie

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Bishops · Empire · Frontier · Identity (music · Political science · Population · Sociology · Sovereignty · Demography · History · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious Tourism and Spaces · Soviet and Russian History

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