Doboj, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, September 14, 2017
Photo: foma.ru On September 30, 2017, in the city of Doboj, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, an opening ceremony and consecration of a new monument to Tsar-Martyr Nicholas will be held, organized by the Society of Russian-Serbian Friendship and Unity of Orthodox Peoples, with the support of the Russian embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, reports pravoslavie.ru.
The event will be attended national and local authorities, local clergy, representatives of the Russian military-historical society, and about 1,000 invited guests, including from the Russian business sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Society of Russian-Serbian Friendship, public, scientific, and expert circles, diplomatic corps, and Bosnian-Serbian and Russian media.
The event will also include a cultural program, with Russian and Serbian folk choirs, and a folk crafts fair.
Construction on the monastery complex of St. Matrona of Moscow and Russian ethno-village has been underway since 2009 in the village of Ritešić by the initiative of the chairman of the Society of Russian-Serbian Friendship and Unity of Orthodox Peoples Z. Gajić. The project received the blessing of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and has been met with a positive response in broad public circles. The church, designed in the neo-Russian style with five domes, with a total height of 62 feet, has already been completed.
The ceremony of laying the first stone in the foundation of the future ethno-village was held in July 2015. In addition to the religious sites, the project includes a hospital, a recreation-hotel center with traditional dwellings of Orthodox people, and cultural and tourist centers. The streets will be named for famous Serbian and Russian figures, squares will be decorated with memorials to great people who have made a great contribution throughout history to the protection and preservation of Orthodoxy, and the Russian and Serbian people.
The main goal of the project is to promote the idea of the unity of all Orthodox peoples, and the Russian language, culture and literature within the framework of regular “Russian Days” events, to organize pilgrimages in Orthodox countries, and later the creation of a confederation of societies of Serbian-Russian friendship in the Balkans.
