Between “barbarity” and “brotherhood”: Balcan Slavs in Russian travelogues

Abstract

The article is devoted M. V. Belov’s book «Discovery of the “Slavonic brothers”: Russian travelers in the Balkans in the first half of the XIX century» (St. Petersburg, Nestor-History, 2018). The reviewer notes that in addition to the publication of a representative body of sources, the book includes an analytical article, which sets out the author’s concept of the formation of ideas about the Slavic “brotherhood” in Russian travels in the Balkans. The author of the book convincingly shows the complex nature of this process, discovering that the image of the Balkan Slavs in the studied texts depends on a number of factors. Along with the advantages of the book (deep contextualization of the studied ideas, their consideration in the Balkan as well as in the Russian perspective, attention to the theoretical and methodological aspects of the study etc.), the reviewer also points to some of its shortcomings (non-obvious principle of selection of texts for publication, short description of the texts). According to the reviewer’s observation, the author’s endeavour to combine different theoretical approaches generates an interesting and contradictory effect: the drift of the research focus between the observer’s own views and the reality described by him.