Abstract: This article examines the role episcopal visitations played in traversing, constituting, and representing religious space in the newly founded diocese of Omsk in late imperial Russia. As the Russian state encouraged the movement of millions of peasants to Siberia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Russian Orthodox Church struggled to define its role under these new conditions of settler colonization. Using travelogues from these trips, this article illustrates how diocesan officials aimed to represent the bishops of Omsk as spiritual fathers, sacralizing this vast territory historically neglected by the institutional church.
