Every year up to 15,000 Russian pilgrims would arrive in Jerusalem for the Easter festival, some even making the long trek on foot across Russia and the Caucasus, through Anatolia and Syria. For the Russians, the holy shrines of Palestine were objects of intense and passionate devotion: to make a pilgrimage to them was the highest possible expression of their faith. In some ways the Russians saw the Holy Lands as an extension of their spiritual motherland. The idea of ‘Holy Russia’ was not contained by any territorial boundaries; it was an empire of the Orthodox with sacred shrines throughout
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