NIZHNY NOVGOROD, November 3 (RIA Novosti, Olga Lipich) - Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, urged all Russians to respect their national history, speaking Thursday ahead of National Unity Day to be celebrated November 4.

"There can be no present or future without the past," Alexy II said at the Nizhny Novgorod airport in northwestern Russia where he had arrived to mark the national holiday.

He congratulated the Russian people on the upcoming holiday that "starts on Nizhny Novgorod soil."

Alexy II said, "This holiday must come into our life because it is our history."

"We remember the tragic events that shook Russia during the Time of Troubles in Rus," he said. "The militia was formed here to liberate Moscow under the leadership of Kozma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky."

On November 4, 1612, Moscow was liberated from Polish occupation. A commemorative holiday will be celebrated for the first time this year, replacing the former holiday of November 7, which marked the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.