Eastern question in political and geographical teaching of V. I. Lamanskii

Abstract

The article deals with the views of the largest Russian Slavist Vladimir Ivanovich Lamansky (1833–1914) on the Eastern Question. Both his published works and manuscripts are used as sources. It is noted that Lamansky, on the base of the ideas of Slavophiles, formulated an original civilizational and political-geographical doctrine, which was developed in the concept of Eurasians. It is pointed out that the specific feature of Lamansky’s approach was a broad philosophical-historical and global-historical view at the Eastern Question. He showed that the significance of the Oriental Question was not limited to the rivalry with Turkey, liberation of the Southern Slavs, capture of Constantinople, and control over the Straits. According to Lamansky, the Eastern Question is an issue of civilizational rifts in Eastern Europe and Asia Minor that lead to the confrontation of two civilizational worlds: the Germanic-Romanic and the Greco-Slavic or the Middle World. The main boundaries of Greco-Slavic civilisation coincide with the borders of the Russian Empire, but the western boundary of this distinctive world remains unstable. Its definition constitutes the main content of the Eastern Question. The political configuration of the Greco-Slavic civilisation corresponds best to the idea of a unified Christian Empire, allowing for different forms of government on different territories. However, the Russian state, as the largest representative of the Middle World, realized a different type of empire - a Europeanizing state, which does not correspond to its global-historical task. The Eastern Question, therefore, was aquestion issue of mutual relations between the Germanic-Romanic and the Middle Worlds. Lamansky argued that its solution could not be purely military. A favourable resolution of the Eastern Question for the Middle World would be a consequence of its successful internal development.