WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?

by Stamen Manolov; photography by Anthony Georgieff

It may be not be particularly large, but this church took years to build in the late 19th century and was consecrated as late as 1914

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Referred to by everyone as just "The Russian Church," its initial purpose was to serve the Russian emigres in town. It was erected on Russian land and its maintenance was given to the Russian legation nearby. When the Bolsheviks took power in 1917, two things happened. Firstly, the Soviet diplomatic corps neglected it and, second, the number of White Russian emigres increased manyfold. Understandably, The Kremlin did not like that. In the 1930s, when Stalin had already ascended to power, he granted use of the other Russian churches in Bulgaria, namely at Shipka and Yambol, to the Bulgarian nation provided they would be governed by Bulgarian dioceses and no Russian emigre would be given any position of authority. This one, however, remained the property of the Russian embassy, and since 1953 has been governed directly by Moscow.

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