In Search of One’s Self: Russian Travelers in the Balkans in 1800–1830s

Abstract

In this paper, we are going to demonstrate that the writings of Russian travelers of the early 19th century laid the foundation of a discourse of Slavism. The travelers stopped perceiving the Balkans as part of the Near East and began considering them as ‘Ours’. This allowed the Russians to assert their identity within the boundaries of the European community while simultaneously separating themselves from the Roman-Germanic “West”. We examined four different types of descriptions of the Balkans by Russian travelers of the 1800–1830s. The authors’ approaches to these narratives were either orientalist or Slavic in nature. Works written in the framework of Orientalism are often characterized by the view of the Balkans as the land of the past, and travels perceived the Balkans as the antithesis of Russia, which they saw as being part of the West. Discourse of Slavism was fundamentally different from Orientalism. Firstly, it replaced the East-West binary relationship with a West-Russia-East triptych. Secondly, it sought to equate Russia and the Slavs. The travelers of the 3rd group were the first to discover a way to reconcile with the “backwards” past within the West-Russia-East triptych. Fourthly, Venelin verbalized a new paradigm in Russia’s description of the Balkans. He was the first to consider Russia as the center of the Slavic world, as opposed to the wild European periphery.