The contacts of Alexey Khomyakov and William Palmer in the context of the history of relations between Russian orthodox church and the church of England

The article is devoted to the analysis of the place of the correspondence between Alexey Khomyakov and William Palmer in the broad context of OrthodoxAnglican relations over the past three hundred years. The purpose of the study is to clarify the historical conditions that led to the beginning of this correspondence. Attention is paid to the history of the presence of Russian Orthodoxy in England until the 1840s, the role of the Oxford (Tractarian) movement and the early Slavophilism in the emergence of their mutual interest in each other. Particular attention is paid to Russian-English church contacts in the second half of the nineteenth - early twentieth centuries. The chronology of these contacts in the 1860s - 1870s century is analyzed. The main directions of the activities of William Birkbeck and his associates on the rapprochement of the Anglican Church with Orthodoxy and the reasons for their deeper appeal to the correspondence between Khomyakov and Palmer are demonstrated. The activities of Stephen Graham, Nikolay Zernov and other advocates for the rapprochement of the two confessions in the twentieth century in the light of their attitude to the paradigm of Palmer and Birkbeck are highlighted.