Holy Land, Christian East, Byzantine empire on the Russian religious, political and cultural horizon

The matter of this article is the detailed analytical investigation of the Russian religious, political and cultural activity which was connected with Holy Land, Christian East and Byzantine Empire in the sphere of their historical significance for Russia. There is also the examination of numerous reflections of such an activity in the Old Russian texts, in the Russian literarature and publicism in the 18th — 20th centuries: V. G. Grigorovitch- Barsky, D. V. Dashkov, A. N. Muravjov, A. S. Norov, P. A. Viazemsky, A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, F. I. Tiutchev, A. S. Khomiakov, K. N. Leont’ev, F. M. Dostoevsky, I. A. Bunin and others. The important subject of this investigation is the history of the Eastern Question and so in connection with the fundamental conception of the geopolitical and geocultural Axis «North — South» for the first time it is introduced. This Axis is the elder dominant of Russian historical dynamics. Present conception is correlated with conception Axis «Russia — West» and both together with conception «Russian Picture of the World» in its axiological substance function as the theoretical base of the investigation.