“Imagined Slavonicism”: The Russian view of the Bulgarians and the “Second Eastern War” (1877-1878)

International Academic Conference 150 years since the Herzegovina Uprising: impact on regional security and European geopolitics, June 10-11, 2025, Belgrade [pp. 139-143]

 

AUTOR(I) / AUTHOR(S): Darina Grigorova  

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.46793/Herzegovina.139G

SAŽETAK /ABSTRACT:

The article explores Russian public opinion, both liberal and conservative, of the Bulgarians and the “Second Eastern War”, as the Russians call the Russo-Turkish War of Liberation (1877-1878). The term “imagined Slav” was coined by Russian liberal thought in the 1880s. It indicated the specifically Russian phenomenon of “Slav fever” that gripped an entire society, excited by the idea of liberating the Bulgarian brotherhood from Turkish oppression. A comparative analysis of the conservative and the liberal views of Russian policy in the Balkans during and after the “Second Eastern War” is undertaken. The primary sources for the article are liberal and conservative publications from the Russian periodical press of the 1870s and the 1880s, as well as the epistolary legacy of Konstantin Leontiev, whose view of the “Turanian” and “non-Slavic” Russian nation stands out as an exception against the background of Russian public thought during the war.

KLJUČNE REČI / KEYWORDS: 

“Imagined Slavonicism”, “Second Eastern War”, “Bulgarobesye” (Bulgarian devilment), “Byzantinism”, “Evropobesye” (European devilment), “Turanian Myth”, San-Stefano Bulgaria, Eastern Question, Western Question

PROJEKAT / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

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