Kasatkin, Konstantin Aleksandrovich. The image of the Serbs in the works of I. P. Liprandi of the 1830–1860s

The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number № 19-39-90033 «The experience of the interpreter of the Ottoman Empire...» by I. P. Liprandi and the image of the Ottoman Empire in the Russian narrative from the first till the third quarters of the 19th century

Based on published and unpublished works of Ivan Petrovich Liprandi (1790–1880), this article considers evolution of the images of Serbs and Serbia in the period 1830-1860. Liprandi was studying the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans for 50 years and he was recognized by contemporaries as one of the foremost experts on the history and culture of the European regions of the Ottoman Empire. During the 1830-1860s his views underwent significant changes, and Liprandi went from an executive officer, collecting ‘objective’ information about the southern Slavs, to a staunch supporter of imperial pan-Slavism. In the 1830s Ivan Petrovich can be described as a representative of ‘practical’ Slavic studies. Being in the south of Russia, he was gathering information on the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula for his superiors. Based on the Enlightenment paradigm, Liprandi was convinced that independent Serbia should become a conductor of Russian influence in the Balkans. In turn, the empire would help the Serbs get rid of the ‘remnants’ of Ottoman rule and join the family of enlightened nations. However, by the middle of 19th it had become obvious that Serbia preferred to be Western-oriented in its foreign policy. At the same time, Liprandi became to be in close to supporters of imperial pan-Slavism (A. F. Veltman). As a result, Ivan Petrovich’s views on the Serbs underwent significant changes in the second half of the 19th century. He departed from the rhetoric of the Enlightenment and wrote about the Serbs as a nation who had lost the best features of the Slavs. Liprandi orientalised the Serbs and attributed to them all the negative qualities that previously attributed only to the Turks. As a result, in the works of Liprandi in the 1860s in descriptions of Serbs, extremely negative connotations prevailed and Serbia was portrayed as an unsuccessful example of modernization, as a result of which people lost their best qualities but could not fully join the achievements of European civilization. 

• Arato, Endre. The Slavic Thought: Its Varieties with the Slavonic Peoples in the First Half of the 19^th Century, in Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. Vol. 22. No. 1/2. Pp. 73–98.

  Belov, Mikhail Valeryevich. Na puti k slavyanskomu bratstvu… Pretvorenie opyta russkikh puteshestviy na Balkany pervoy poloviny XIX veka [On the way to the Slavic brotherhood… The implementation of the experience of Russian travel to the Balkans of the first half of the 19^th century], in Otkrytie «brat’yev-slavyan»: Russkie puteshestvenniki na Balkanakh v pervoy polovine XIX veka. St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriya Publ., 2018. Pp. 517–604. (in Russian).

  Belov, Mikhail Valeryevich. Perekrestnaya istoriya «slavyanskoy vzaimnosti» [Cross history of Slavic reciprocity], in Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana. 2017. No. 2 (22). Pp. 51–62. (in Russian). DOI 10.21638/11701/spbu19.2017.204.

  Churkina, Iskra Vasilyevna. K voprosu ob organizatsii vosstaniya slavyan vo vremya Krymskoy voyny 1853–1856 gg. [On the organization of the Slavic uprising in the Balkans during the Crimean War of 1853–1856], in Danchenko, Svetlana Ivanovna (ed.). Slavyane i Rossiya: problemy voyny i mira na Balkanakh. XVIII–XXI vv. Moscow: Institute of Slavic Studies (RAS), 2017. Pp. 47–64. (in Russian).

  Dostyan, Irina Stepanovna. Russkaya obshchestvennaya mysl’ i balkanskie narody: Ot Radishcheva do dekabristov [Russian public thought and the Balkan peoples. From Radishchev to the Decembrists]. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1980. 328 p. (in Russian).

  Ishutin, Vadim Valeryevich. Ivan Petrovich Liprandi (1790–1880), in Sovetskoe slavyanovedenie. 1989. No. 2. Pp. 85–94. (in Russian).

  Kasatkin, Konstantin Aleksandrovich. Sposoby opisaniya slavyanskikh oblastey Osmanskoy imperii rossiyskimi puteshestvennikami v pervoy treti XIX v. [Slavic regions of Ottoman Empire described by Russian travellers in the first third of the 19^th century], in Slavyanskiy al’manakh. 2017. No. 1–2. Pp. 237–246. (in Russian).

  Kudryavtseva, Elena Petrovna. Russkaya diplomatiya i plany gosudarstvennogo ustroystva Serbii v pervoy polovine XIX v. [Russian diplomacy and plans for the state structure of Serbia in the first half of the 19^th century], in Volkov, Vladimir Konstantinovich (ed.). Dvesti let novoy serbskoy gosudarstvennosti: K yubileyu nachala Pervogo serbskogo vosstaniya 1804–1815 gg. St. Petersburg: «Aletheia» Publ., 2005. Pp. 100–112. (in Russian).

  Kudryavtseva, Elena Petrovna. Transformatsiya predstavleniy o russkom «pokrovitel’stve» v ustavobranitel’skoy Serbii [Transformation of ideas about Russian «patronage» in Ustavobraniteljis’ Serbia], in Obraz Rossii na Balkanakh: Mifologemy, ideologemy, religioznye, etnicheskie i kul’turnye svyazi. Moscow: The Russian Academy of Sciences Press, 2011. Pp. 47–57. (in Russian).

  Marker, Gary. The Westernization of the Elite, 1725–1800, in Gleason, Abbott (ed.). A Companion to Russian History. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell Publ., 2009. Pp. 180–195.

  Omel’chenko, Oleg Anatolyevich. The System of State and Law in Eighteenth-Century Russia and the Political Culture of Europe: Some Historical Interactions, in The Slavonic and East European Review. 2002. Vol. 80. No. 2. Pp. 217–233.

  Pavlenko, Olga Vyacheslavovna. Panslavizm i ego modeli [Panslavism and its models], in Novaya i noveyshaya istoriya. 2016. No. 5. Pp. 3–15. (in Russian).

  Taki, Victor. From partisan war to the ethnography of European Turkey: The Balkan career of Ivan Liprandi, 1790–1880, in Canadian Slavonic Papers. 2016. Vol. 58. No. 3. Pp. 257–285. DOI 10.1080/00085006.2016.1202428.

  Taki, Victor. Orientalism on the Margins: The Ottoman Empire under Russian Eyes, in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 2011. Vol. 12. No. 2. Pp. 321–351.

  Taki, Viktor. Tsar’ i Sultan: Osmanskaya imperiya glazami rossiyan [Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire]. Moscow: New Literary Review Publ., 2017. 320 p. (in Russian).

  Teslya, Andrey Aleksandrovich. «Slavyanskiy vopros» v publitsistike M. P. Pogodina 1830–1850-kh gg. [«The Slavic Question» in Pogodin’s Publicism (1830–1850s)], in Sotsiologicheskoe obozrenie = Russian Sociological Review. 2014. Vol. 13. No. 1. Pp. 117–138. (in Russian).

  Titova, Lyudmila Nikolaevna. Yan Kollar o slavyanakh [Jan Kollar on the Slavs], in Avtoportret slavyanina. Moscow: Indrik Publ., 1999. Pp. 180–189. (in Russian).

  Tsimbaev, Nikolay Ivanovich. Slavyanofil’stvo: Iz istorii russkoy obshchestvenno-politicheskoy mysli XIX v. [Slavophilia: From the history of Russian social and political thought of the 19^th century]. Moscow: The State Public Historical Library of Russia Publ., 2013. 447 p. (in Russian).

  Ulunyan, Artem Akopovich. Rossiyskaya periodicheskaya pechat’ vremen Krymskoy voyny 1853–1856 gg. o Bolgarii i bolgarakh [The Russian periodical press of the times of the Crimean War of 1853–1856 about Bulgaria and the Bulgarians], in Dostyan, Irina Stepanovna (ed.). Rossiya i Balkany: Iz istorii obshchestvenno-politicheskikh svyazey (XVIII v. – 1878 g.). Moscow: Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies (RAS) Press, 1995. Pp. 163–207. (in Russian).

  Vatsuro, Vadim Erazmovich. Bolgarskie temy i motivy v russkoy literature 1820–1840-kh godov [Bulgarian themes and motives in Russian literature of the 1820–1840s], in Izbrannye trudy. Moscow: «Languages of Slavic cultures» Publ., 2004. Pp. 556–596. (in Russian).

  Vinogradov, Vladilen Nikolaevich. Dvuglaviy rossiyskiy orel na Balkanakh: 1683–1914 [Double-headed Russian eagle in the Balkans: 1683–1914]. Moscow: Indrik Publ., 2010. 480 p. (in Russian).

  Zorin, Andrey Leonidovich. Kormya dvuglavogo orla… Russkaya literatura i gosudarstvennaya ideologiya v posledney treti XVIII – pervoy treti XIX v. [Feeding the Two-headed Eagle. Russian Literature and State ideology in the last third of the 18^th – the first third of the 19^th century]. Moscow: New Literary Review Publ., 2004. 416 p. (in Russian).