"The medieval prince Alexander Nevsky is a pop star of Russian historical politics. The saint is honored as a far-sighted geostrategist. Criticism against him is undesirable," writes Frithof Benjamin Schenk, a historian and expert on Eastern Europe at the University of Basel, in the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

“The fact that Alexander Nevsky would become one of the most important Russian national heroes was not yet foreseen at the end of the 13th century. At first, his memory was kept in the Nativity of the Mother of God Monastery in Vladimir, where Alexander was buried. (...) At the same time, Alexander was originally It was only during the reign of Ivan IV ("the Terrible"), in 1547, that he was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church and has since been revered as the patron saint of the "Russian land," the historian writes.

"An important milestone in the history of the memory of Alexander Nevsky was the reign of Peter I. In 1723/24 the reformer tsar transported the remains of the prince from Vladimir to the newly founded St. Petersburg, opened the luxurious Alexander Nevsky monastery there and declared the saint the patron saint of the new capital. ( ...) Peter made sure that Alexander Nevsky was no longer depicted on icons as a monk removed from the world, but appeared on them as a ruler. The foundation of the first Russian order named after Alexander Nevsky dates back to him".

"In the 19th and especially in the 20th century, Alexander Nevsky increasingly acquired in Russian cultural memory the features of a military hero and a skillful commander. In World War I, Russian soldiers had to follow the example of his victory over the Teutonic Order in 1242. In the Great Patriotic War (1941 - 1945) The Red Army followed the battle cry "Whoever comes to us with a sword will die by the sword." in the mid-1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev abolished the communist monopoly on the interpretation of Soviet history, and the religious veneration of Alexander Nevsky began to experience a renaissance. "