Can someone tell me about Greek people in Russia historicallly?

Question

connections via the Orthodox church

Answer 1

Saints Cyril and Methodius were two Byzantine Greek brothers born in Thessaloniki in the 9th century, who became missionaries of Christianity among the Slavs of Great Moravia and Pannonia. Through their work they influenced the cultural development of all Slavic peoples for which they received the title “Apostles to the Slavs”. They are credited with devising the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet used to transcribe the Old Church Slavonic language. The Cyrillic alphabet, which was based on the Glagolitic alphabet, is used in a number of Slavic and other languages. After their death, their pupils continued their missionary work among other Slavic peoples. Both brothers are venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as saints with the title of "Equals to the Apostles". In 1880, Pope Leo XIII introduced their feast into the calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1980, Pope John Paul II declared them Co-patrons of Europe, together with Saint Benedict of Nursia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_Cyri...

Cyril (originally Constantine) and Methodius were brothers, from a noble family in Thessalonika, a district in northeastern Greece. Constantine was the younger, born in about 827, and his brother Methodius in about 825. They both entered the priesthood.... In about 861, the Emperor Michel III sent them to work with the Khazars northeast of the Black Sea in the Dnieper-Volga region of what was later Russia. They learned the Khazar language and made many converts...  In about 863, Prince Rotislav, the ruler of Great Moravia (an area including much of what was later Czecko-Slovakia), asked the emperor for missionaries, specifying that he wanted someone who would teach his people in their own language (he had western missionaries, but they used only Latin). The emperor and the Patriarch Photius sent Methodius and his brother Constantine, who translated the Liturgy and much of the Scriptures into Slavonic.

Since Slavonic had no written form, they invented an alphabet for it, the Glagolitic alphabet, which gave rise to the Cyrillic alphabet (named for Constantine aka Cyril), which is used to write Russian and (with modifications) several related languages today. They used the Greek alphabet as their basis, writing a letter in two forms when two similar sounds in Slavonic each needed a letter (hence, in modern Russian, we have "plain a" written "A" and "fancy a" written like a backward "R" representing the sounds of hard and soft (or unpalatalized and palatalized) a, represented approximately in English by "ah" and "yah"). When no Greek letter was close, then they borrowed from Hebrew (the letter TZADDI for the sound "ts" as in "tsar", and the letter SHIN for the sound "sh", and a variant on it for the sound "shch" as in "Khrushchev", and so on). The resulting alphabet had 43 letters. It has since undergone development, chiefly simplification and the omission of letters. Thus, the modern Russian alphabet has only 32 letters. The Cyrillic alphabet with minor variations is used today for Russian, Ukrainian, and other languages of the former USSR, and also for Bulgarian and Serbian and formerly for Rumanian. (Serbs and Croats both speak Serbo-Croatian, but the Serbs, who are traditionally East Orthodox, write it with the Cyrillic alphabet, while the Croats, who are traditionally Roman Catholic, write it with the Latin alphabet.

http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/02/14...

Christianity was apparently introduced into Kievan Rus by Greek missionaries from Byzantium in the 9th century. An organized Christian community is known to have existed at Kiev as early as the first half of the 10th century, and in 957 Olga, the regent of Kiev, was baptized in Constantinople. Undoubtedly influenced by his Christian grandmother and by a proposed marriage alliance with the Byzantine imperial family, Olga's grandson Vladimir I (c. 956-1015) prince of Kiev, from among several options, chose the Byzantine rite. Baptized in 988, he led the Kievans to Christianity. His son Yaroslav encouraged translations and built monasteries.  Under Vladimir's successors, and until 1448, the Russian church was headed by the metropolitans of Kiev (who after 1328 resided in Moscow) and formed a metropolitanate of the Byzantine patriarchate.

http://www.friends-partners.org/oldfrien...

Eastern Orthodox church of Russia, its de facto national church. In 988 Prince Vladimir of Kiev (later St. Vladimir) embraced Byzantine Orthodoxy and ordered the baptism of his population. By the 14th century, the metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia (head of the Russian church) was residing in Moscow; dissatisfied western Russian principalities obtained temporary separate metropolitans, but authority was later recentralized under Moscow. In the 15th century the church, rejecting Metropolitan Isidore's acceptance of union with the Western church (see Council of Ferrara-Florence), appointed their own independent metropolitan. Moscow saw itself as the “third Rome” and the last bulwark of true Orthodoxy; in 1589 the head of the Russian church obtained the title patriarch, putting him on a level with the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The reforms of Nikon caused a schism within the church ( Old Believers), and Peter I abolished the patriarchate in 1721, making church administration a department of the state. The patriarchate was reestablished in 1917, two months before the Bolshevik revolution, but under the soviets the church was deprived of its legal rights and practically suppressed. It saw a great resurgence following the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991). The Russian Orthodox Church in the U.S. became independent from Moscow in 1970.

The Eastern or Greek Church, having the Patriarch of Constantinople as its head, and the national Churches of Russia, Romania, etc. in communion with it. Separation from the Western Church came in the 4th century, originally through cultural and political factors, focused from the 5th century onwards on differences of doctrine and ritual, and took formal effect in 1054 when the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other. In the latter part of the 20th century the Orthodox Churches have taken an active part in the ecumenical movement; the mutual excommunication of 1054 was abolished in 1965.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O48-Ort...