Contours of V.N. Khitrovo’s Worldview: on Genesis of Religious-Political Concept

The article is devoted to Vasily Nikolaevich Khitrovo, the founder of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, a renowned Palestine scholar and statesman of Russia. The author considers the problem of the formation of the foundations of V.N. Khitrovo’s worldview, which has been insufficiently studied in historiography. Based on Khitrovo’s memoirs and works, the stages of the formation of the Palestine scholar’s worldview have been reconstructed, and the factors in its development have been determined. The starting point of his worldview formation was the 1860s, when he worked in the Naval Ministry of the Russian Empire under the supervision of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich Romanov. At that time, the contours of the statesman’s worldview were initially formed: an understanding of the scope of the state tasks of the presence in the Holy Land, and the cult of science, which made it possible to improve the conditions of people’s lives. Another source of the Palestine scholar’s worldview was Orthodoxy learned from the family. The decisive factor in shaping V.N. Khitrovo’s holistic religious concept was during the 1870s, when the confessional penetration of the West into the Holy Land accelerated. At the turn of the 1880s, in the internal policy of the Russian Empire, there was a growth of conservative religious tendencies, and the church became an instrument of state policy. V.N. Khitrovo’s political ideal was tied to Byzantism, according to which the true defender of Orthodoxy is Russia, as the spiritual successor of Byzantium.