RUSSIA: Putin Came to the Mountain

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Stelios Fotinos

ATHENS, Sep 19 2005 (IPS) - It is more than memories that linger from the time the 12-ton bell rang, and Russian and Ukrainian monks queued up in impeccable white robes to receive Russian President Vladimir Putin at Mount Athos..

It has long been the ambition of Russian leaders to visit the holy mount, the chief standard bearer of orthodox Christianity. Mount Athos is perched on the Athos peninsula about 30km long and 10 km wide off the Macedonian coast of Greece. The peninsula lies to the east of Thessaloniki, 700km from Athens.

Spirituality was not the only purpose of the Russian president’s visit to Greece. Oil too was on the agenda.

Putin arrived from Berlin, where he had discussed with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder a deal on a 1,200km Baltic Sea gas pipeline that will increase Russian sales to Germany in particular.

In Thessaloniki where he landed, Putin met Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis. The two leaders talked about the construction of a 285km trans-Balkans pipeline to bring Russian oil from the Black Sea port of Burgas in Bulgaria to the Greek port of Alexandroupolis close to Turkey.

They also talked politics (“our positions are very close on many issues, like the Balkans and the Cyprus problem,” Putin said), and of increasing trade that on current trends will match last year’s 1.15 billion euros (1.4 billion dollars).

But it was the Russian president’s visit to Mount Athos Sep. 9 that has left a lasting impression. The Holy Mount had apparently inspired Putin for some time. Apart from being the cradle of Orthodoxy, the Kremlin has always seen it as a spearhead of Russian culture and religious presence in the Mediterranean. Mount Athos appeared therefore the right scenario to give Putin the chance to appear a defender of both interests.

The Russian president kissed the Axion Esti, an icon of Virgin Mary, and also handed over a three-million dollar donation for conservation of the Russian monastery of St. Panteleimon.

Putin’s visit to the Holy Mount was discretely prepared following two visits planned earlier. One failed due to bad weather and the other because of the siege at the school in Beslan in southern Russia last year.

The long awaited visit, the first ever by a Russian leader, followed more than 800 years of historical links between Russia and the Mount, in particular with the Russian monastery of St. Panteleimon.

Over the centuries more and more Russian monks came to Mount Athos, in spite of the fact that not all of it is Russian. Apart from the holy monastery of Panteleimon founded by Russian monks in the 11th century, the Athos peninsula hosts another 19 monasteries distributed over 350 sq. km.

The area is a self-governed part of the Greek state, and each monastery has a Superior, elected by its monks for life. The Superiors are members of the Holy Assembly, and exercise legislative authority.

To coincide with Putin’s visit to the Mount, a confidential Soviet Union document was made public in Greece. It was a letter from mid-1969, addressed by the president of the Soviet Union’s state council for religious affairs to the central committee of the Communist Party.

The St. Panteleimon’s monastery, it said, “has accumulated great wealth, consisting of valuable and unique ecclesiastical objects, murals, rare books and items valued in 1913 at over 220,000 gold roubles.”

Over the last 10 years, says the 1969 document, the Greek government had “obstructed contacts between the Patriarchate of Moscow and the Mount Athos monastery in every possible way, trying to expropriate valuable monastic property.” The Greek military dictatorship had declared the monasteries to be under state control and “there is the real risk that the Junta will expropriate objects of inestimable value in the Russian monastery.”

The 1969 document seemed to suggest how times have changed, and also what remains of value. And far from old attempts to spread communism, Putin’s visit meant that Russia is now opening religious doors to Europe and the Mediterranean.