Governor Prince Sergius Shakhovskoy as a Spokesman for the Policy of Emperor Alexander III in Estonia and the Memorial Church of St. Sergius in the Pukhtitsky Monastery

The article examines the activities of the governor in Estonia in 1885–1894, Prince S. V. Shakhovsky. On the one hand, he was the most prominent spokesman in the Baltic provinces of the policy of Emperor Alexander III on the “national outskirts”, primarily “Russification”, on the other, he defended, more than imperial and national ideas, the importance of the unity of the Russian and Estonian peoples on the basis of Orthodoxy. The history of the construction of the church by the widow of the prince, named after his heavenly patron St. Sergius of Radonezh, and its architecture, are discussed. According to his will, the prince was buried in the Pyukhtitsky Assumption Convent, which he actually founded in the area, which he recognized as an ancient center of Orthodoxy. The tent-roofed wooden church in the style of the churches of the Russian North was created by one of the greatest masters of the Russian style, the author of the general plan of the monastery, M. T. Preobrazhensky. The article is based on both published and new archival sources from the depositories of St. Petersburg, Tartu, and Riga.