Take from thy neighbor: Despite war and sanctions, Russia is continuing to reclaim church property abroad

RU

Imperial property abroad: who got it after the Russian Revolution?

By the early 20th century, the Russian Empire owned vast holdings abroad: churches, religious missions, residences, plots of land, and cultural institutions. Most of these properties were located in Europe and the Middle East — including in Nice, Paris, Jerusalem, Bari, and Palestine. At the time, the Russian Orthodox Church effectively functioned as a branch of the state, so churches and other religious sites abroad were, in practice, state-owned.

After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government in St. Petersburg declared itself the legal successor to the monarchy and upheld its claims to foreign property. But the October coup ended that continuity: the Bolsheviks renounced the debts and obligations of tsarist Russia, invalidated its laws, and effectively created a new type of state on the ruins of the old empire.

The crux of the problem was that the Russian Empire’s assets couldn’t simply pass to the new Soviet state. Consider a later example: after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all former Soviet republics were recognized as successor states and had to negotiate among themselves about how to divide the union’s collective assets. The same logic could have applied to the property of the Russian Empire — any state that emerged on its former territory could have laid claim to a share. There was no clear legal basis for transferring that property to the Soviet Union alone.

Under international law, the scope of succession rights is defined by the successor state itself, as it is not obligated to assume full responsibility for the predecessor state. At the same time, a successor state cannot automatically claim all the property and assets of its predecessor — such matters must be settled through engagement with other successor states and external partners. Since Soviet authorities declared early on that they would not honor the debts and obligations of previous governments, they had no grounds to claim all the foreign assets of the former empire.

As a result, these assets ended up in a legal vacuum. Where properties were not nationalized or seized by local authorities, they came under the management of Russian émigrés. This gave rise to independent parish associations, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), and parishes that came under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. These entities — the so-called “White Church” — became the legal owners of most of the legacy holdings.

Still, the Soviet Union did not entirely abandon the issue. In the 1920s and 1930s, it made attempts to win back certain properties through legal means. The best-known case involved the Russian compound in Bari, Italy, built in 1911 with funds from the imperial family. In 1926, Soviet representatives tried to reclaim the property from émigrés in court, but lost.

Occasionally, Soviet diplomacy did see results. In the 1960s, the USSR reached a deal with Israel under which the Sergei Compound in Jerusalem was transferred to Soviet ownership. In exchange, the USSR purchased large shipments of citrus fruits from Israel — a compromise that became known as the “orange deal.” Formally, Israel recognized the USSR’s ownership rights, but the deal was legally contentious given that the buildings were administered by ROCOR, whose representatives were not involved in the negotiations.

Even so, up until the late 1980s, Soviet restitution policy remained inconsistent, sporadic, and largely ineffective. By the time the USSR collapsed, much of the overseas church and cultural property had long since been under stable legal ownership by émigré organizations that were hostile to the Soviet regime and that did not recognize the Moscow Patriarchate. It was these very properties that would once again draw interest a decade later — not from the Comintern, but from the Kremlin.

A new kind of restitution: how Putin’s Russia took up the imperial legacy

After the collapse of the USSR, Russia officially declared itself the legal successor to the Soviet state, giving newly independent Moscow the right to claim diplomatic property abroad. However, pre-revolutionary assets — churches, missions, cemeteries — lay outside this framework. Russia never declared itself the successor to the Russian Empire, which made legal claims to imperial property significantly more complicated. Still, by the late 1990s, a renewed wave of interest in this “forgotten” property began to take shape.

The trigger was a campaign led by historian Vladlen Sirotkin, who in 1998 publicly asserted that immense riches lost by the Russian Empire — from gold to buildings — were still scattered around the globe. Although his claims were met with skepticism by the academic community, the idea of a “tsarist inheritance” struck a chord with Russian politicians. That same year, the government issued an order calling for a search for imperial real estate and assets.

The real turning point came soon after the turn of the millennium. In the year 2000, a presidential decree issued by Vladimir Putin transferred the management of Russia’s non-diplomatic foreign property to the Presidential Property Management Directorate (UDP). A new structure, Goszagransobstvennost, was created to carry out this mission, and the initiative came under the de facto supervision of Vladimir Kozhin, who headed the UDP from 2000 to 2014 and later became the subject of investigations by the late Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF).

Kozhin played a key role in turning scattered statements about “the legacy” into a consistent state policy. Under his leadership, the UDP launched a campaign to identify, legally formalize, and physically reclaim properties once owned by the Russian Empire.

In 2006, Kozhin publicly declared that “Russia intends to recover its former tsarist property abroad.” By 2010, he had reported the first successes: Russia now owned churches and missions in Nice, Jerusalem, Bari, and other cities. The emphasis was on discretion — quiet actions backed by strong political will.

Officially, these were legal procedures. But in reality, they were supported by the full machinery of state influence: the Presidential Property Directorate, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and, in some cases, intelligence agencies. The “restitution” of foreign property became part of a broader effort to promote Russia’s image as a “historic power,” restoring its cultural, spiritual, and legal presence on the international stage.

This project did not come about as a spontaneous reaction to shifting realities on the international stage. Instead, it was embedded in the domestic state apparatus — and unlike the Soviet Union’s previous attempts, it was truly effective.

The legal and informal mechanics of “restitution”

Russia does not recognize itself as the legal successor to the Russian Empire. However, since Putin’s rise to power in the early 2000s, the Kremlin has actively invoked the notion of “historical continuity” in its efforts to reclaim property built or acquired by the imperial government. These claims are framed as the restoration of justice, but in practice they are carried out through a flexible, multi-layered system — ranging from lawsuits and negotiations to pressure via the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian diplomatic corps, and the Russian security services.

The primary route is legal action in national courts of the countries where the properties are located. The Russian side typically argues that:

• the buildings were constructed using state or imperial funds;
• documents from the early 20th century confirm ownership by the Russian Empire;
• transfers or registration of these sites to émigré groups did not nullify the state’s legal rights.

For example, in the case of the cathedral in Nice, Russian lawyers cited a 1909 lease agreement under which the church was transferred to a local association for 99 years. Once the lease expired, Russia claimed, the property was to revert to its “rightful owner” — the Russian state.

The cathedral itself was built in 1912 with funds provided by Emperor Nicholas II. After the Bolshevik revolution, the building came under the control of the Russian émigré community. In the 1920s, the Association of Orthodox Russians in Nice (ACOR-Nice) — a secular organization affiliated with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and registered under French law — took over management of the church.

For decades, ACOR-Nice owned the building and oversaw the parish. Unsurprisingly, the émigré group did not recognize the Moscow Patriarchate as a canonical authority. In 2005, Russia filed a lawsuit, claiming that the lease term (under the 1909 agreement) had expired and that the building belonged to the contemporary Russian state as the successor to the empire. ACOR-Nice was the defendant in the case.

As one of the group’s representatives, Sorbonne professor Mikhail Sollogoub, explained the situation:

“We want dialogue and cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church, we want openness, but we don’t see it as necessary to unite all Russian Orthodox believers under a single ecclesiastical authority.”

In 2010, a court in Nice recognized Russia’s ownership rights. Despite protests from the association and part of the parish, the property was handed over to the Russian state. The cathedral was placed under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate and came under the administration of the Kremlin’s Presidential Property Management Directorate.

But not all European courts gave Moscow the answers it wanted to hear. When other proceedings did not deliver the desired result, political levers came into play.

The clearest example is the Russian compound in Bari. After the Soviet Union’s failed attempts to claim the complex through legal means, its fate was settled at the highest level in 2007, during a visit by Vladimir Putin to Italy. The issue was raised directly, and in 2009 the Bari city council transferred the property to the Russian Federation.

The compound, which includes a church and residential building, was constructed in 1911 with funding from the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society. After the revolution, management passed to the émigré branch of the society and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), which retained effective control of the building.

As previously mentioned, in 1926 and again in the 1930s, the Soviet Union tried to claim the site through the courts but lost. In response to the threat of a possible Soviet takeover, the then-custodian of the compound, Prince Nikolai Zhevakhov, transferred ownership to the Bari municipality. However, the deal included an important condition: ROCOR would retain access to the church for worship, and it did indeed continue to hold services there for several decades.

Until 1998, both of the churches on the compound were under the control of the “White Church” — ROCOR. In 1998, the Bari city council and the Moscow Patriarchate signed an agreement under which the upper church and several residential premises were handed over to the Moscow Patriarchate. However, the lower church remained in the hands of ROCOR.

Then came Putin’s aforementioned visit to Italy in 2007. The issue of transferring the entire compound to Russia was placed on the agenda of high-level negotiations, and in 2008, the entire property, including both churches, was transferred to Russia, with none other than Vladimir Kozhin — the head of the Presidential Property Directorate — receiving the site as Moscow’s official representative.

No lawsuits were required. The deal was presented as a gesture of Italian goodwill, but in reality, it was a diplomatic concession made by Rome in exchange for political and economic benefits.

There were more of these behind-the-scenes deals than the public is aware of. And in many such cases, the Russian Orthodox Church often served as a front for property-related operations carried out by the UDP.

Contentious cases: how Russia reclaimed “imperial” property abroad

In some instances, intervention occurred via means that were neither legal nor even diplomatic. One such case involved the compound in Jericho (on the West Bank of the Jordan River), built by the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in the late 19th century. After 1917, the site remained under the control of ROCOR, which continued to maintain the site despite the émigré group’s deteriorating relations with the local authorities.

However, in January 2000, following a visit by a delegation from the Moscow Patriarchate and talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, officers from the Palestinian security forces stormed the compound, expelled ROCOR representatives, and transferred control of the site to the Moscow Patriarchate. A key event influencing the decision by the Palestinian authorities was Patriarch Alexy II’s 1998 visit to Bethlehem — and his warm relations with Palestinian Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat.

The expulsion of the nuns from the compound sparked a diplomatic scandal that spread all the way to the United States. One of the nuns, Maria Stephanopoulos, was a U.S. citizen and the sister of George Stephanopoulos, a prominent American journalist and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1996. The incident prompted visits to Jericho by the consuls of both the U.S. and Russia. For several days, negotiations took place over the division of the site. News of the seizure made it into the pages of the Washington Post.

Ultimately, the ROCOR nuns were expelled from Jericho, and the site was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Kirill (Vladimir Gundyayev), who was then the head of the Church’s Department for External Church Relations, took part in the takeover on the ground.

In 2008, Jericho Mayor Hassan Saleh personally handed over the title documents for the property to Sergei Stepashin, head of the Russian Palestinian Society. Palestinian officials emphasized that the decision to “return” the site to Russia had been made by none other than Mahmoud Abbas, who succeeded Arafat in 2005. Following the handover, Vladimir Kozhin visited the site and began developing reconstruction plans. In 2010, Patriarch Kirill offered Kozhin his special thanks for supporting the project, which Kirill called “the first major project in the Holy Land of the third millennium.”

In such cases, the synchronized actions of diplomats, the church, and local security forces suggest a deeper level of coordination — possibly involving the Russian intelligence services.

In every restitution case where Russia laid claim to pre-revolutionary real estate, the key question was: who owns it now? Almost always, it was a dispute over abandoned property, but of well-maintained buildings that were legally and consistently used by émigré or church organizations that did not recognize the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. In these disputes, Russia was not reclaiming empty walls, but symbolic centers of someone else's memory.

The Sergei’s Courtyard site in Jerusalem, for example, was built in 1889 by the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society and remained under the control of its émigré branch after the revolution. The compound was effectively managed by entities linked to ROCOR and the overseas IOPS.

In the 1960s, as part of a political and economic exchange between the USSR and Israel known as the “orange deal,” Israel transferred the rights to the compound to the Soviet Union in return for large-scale citrus purchases. This transfer occurred without the involvement of the compound’s actual users and included legal reservations that rendered the status of the property contentious for decades.

After the collapse of the USSR, the status of the complex again became matter of dispute. In 2008, following strong lobbying by Sergei Stepashin (head of the Russian IOPS), Israel officially recognized Russia as the owner of Sergi’s Courtyard. The building was restored with the involvement of the Presidential Property Management Directorate and was placed under the patronage of the Moscow Patriarchate. At the time of the transfer, the previous owners — representatives of the overseas IOPS — still considered the deal illegitimate. Their objections were ignored.

What the Russian Orthodox Church is after

Following the 1917 Revolution, the Russian Church split into two branches. Inside the Soviet Union, the Moscow Patriarchate remained, falling under the direct control of the Communist authorities. In 1927, Metropolitan Sergius issued a declaration of loyalty to the Soviet Union, proclaiming that the state's joys and sorrows were also those of the Church. This act earned the ROC the lasting reputation of a «Sergian» Church — subservient to an atheist regime, stripped of independence, and compromised by its collaboration with state power.

Abroad, the ROCOR was formed, rejecting both the Soviet regime and the Moscow Patriarchate. This “White Church” saw itself as the true bearer of Russian Orthodox tradition and canonical legitimacy. At the same time, parishes of the Russian tradition in Western Europe came under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Together, ROCOR and the Constantinople-affiliated exarchate became the owners and stewards of much of the Russian church’s property abroad, inherited from the imperial era.

In the early 2000s, as the ROC gained strength inside Russia, it launched a campaign to reclaim influence over the fractured Orthodox diaspora. In 2003, Patriarch Alexy II publicly appealed to émigré parishes, calling for reunification with the “Mother Church” by framing it as a long-overdue healing of the century-old schism.

But the “White Church” rejected the offer. From its perspective, the Moscow Patriarchate remained irredeemably compromised by its Soviet-era entanglements with the Chekists. After this attempt at reconciliation failed, the Moscow-based ROC turned to more aggressive tactics. Quietly backed by the Russian government, it began asserting control over parishes and properties — effectively orchestrating takeovers, often under the guise of “canonical transitions.”

One of the most revealing episodes occurred in the French seaside town of Biarritz. The Alexander Nevsky Church there, built in the late 19th century, had fallen under the Ecumenical Patriarchate since the 1920s but was managed by a local parish association. In December 2004, the parish priest, Georgy Monzhos, suddenly declared that the community had joined the Moscow Patriarchate.

Monzhos claimed that the decision had followed a vote, but that process was marred by irregularities: people unrelated to the parish’s legal structure were present for the process, and the authorities were not informed until after the fact that such a move was even up for consideration. Nevertheless, the Russian Orthodox Church immediately declared the event to be an «historic reunification» of the parish with the canonical church.

Opponents of the reunification filed a lawsuit, and in 2005 a French court ruled the priest’s actions illegal. The parish remained under its previous jurisdiction — a rare example of successful resistance to the ROC’s expansionist activities in Europe.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin continued to promote the idea of “spiritual reunification.” As early as 2001, Vladimir Putin initiated a dialogue between the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR. In 2003, he invited ROCOR’s Metropolitan Laurus to Russia, and in 2007 the Act of Canonical Communion between the two churches was signed in Moscow. The event took place at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, with Putin personally in attendance. He stated that the event marked a restoration of the unity of the Russian people.

Formally, the reunification meant restoring liturgical and administrative communion. In practice, however, it gave the ROC legal grounds to claim overseas property previously controlled by ROCOR. Not all parishes supported the reunification, and some remained independent, but the Moscow Patriarchate nevertheless gained a powerful symbolic and legal tool to expand its influence beyond Russia.

For the ROC itself, restitution became a means of regaining control over Russian Orthodoxy outside the state. But in addition to the mere recovery of property, it also allowed the 21st century Moscow Patriarchate to assume the symbolic role of heir to the tsarist-era church.

Present day: restitution in an era of sanctions and resistance

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022, Russia’s restitution project has come under pressure. Sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and a crisis of trust have made Russian claims to overseas property toxic for many countries. It appeared at first that this development would mark the end of the entire restitution campaign. But it didn’t.

Nice 2025: the system is still working

In the spring of 2025, a French court in Aix-en-Provence handed over to Russia the Church of Saints Nicholas and Alexandra (not to be confused with the Nice Cathedral), along with the Caucade Orthodox cemetery. Despite worsening relations between Paris and Moscow, the court recognized the strength of the archival and legal arguments presented by the Russian side.

This case sent a clear message: in instances where legal proceedings had begun well before the start of the war, processes would continue as if nothing had fundamentally changed. The system functions on inertia (and this inertia is not a weakness).

Jerusalem: a stalled success

At the opposite end lies the Alexandrovsky compound in Jerusalem, whose fate remains unresolved. In 2019, the Israeli government registered the property in Russia’s name — a move seen as a political gesture of partnership. However, in 2022 the Jerusalem District Court revoked the registration, citing procedural violations and disregard for earlier court rulings.

Since then, Russia has sought to regain control. In 2023, with the involvement of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a special working group was formed to reassess the case. In 2024, Sergey Stepashin, head of the Russian Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, publicly declared that “the issue is practically resolved.” Yet by 2025, the registration still had not been reinstated, and the property remains under the authority of the German branch of the Palestine Society.

What began in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a quiet administrative initiative to reclaim overseas imperial assets has evolved into a robust state-church project. Over the past two decades, Russia has built a system in which judicial and diplomatic channels are tightly interwoven with canonical claims. The church functions less as an independent spiritual entity and more as a tool of foreign policy.

This project has endured sanctions, international isolation, and a sharp decline in Russia’s global standing. And it continues to yield results — albeit at a slower pace than before the war. The 2025 victory in Nice demonstrated how legal inertia benefits the Kremlin, even if the Alexandrovsky compound case in Jerusalem exposed the limits of this approach. Going forward, things will not get any easier for Moscow: political tensions, local resistance, and growing mistrust increasingly complicate and inflate the cost of restitution efforts.

Above all, however, this campaign is about far more than property rights. For the Russian authorities, it represents a symbolic restoration of what was lost: imperial identity, global presence, and the vision of a “united historical Russia” that ties together state power, the church, and the diaspora. On this front, churches and compounds become the strongholds of a new ideology — under the guise of “spiritual succession,” Moscow is asserting its cultural and political leadership beyond the borders of the Russian Federation.