«I serve to nation…»: (to the publication of «Historical letters about the relations of the Russian nation to its tribesmen» by V. I. Lamansky)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the general overview of the creative work of V. I. Lamansky an outstanding Russian Slavonic scholar (1833–1914) and presents the introductory text to the publication of the first part of the series of his works «Historical letters about the relations of the Russian nation to its tribesmen» (1859). The article explicates the important details of the scientist’s biography and gives a brief analysis of the essential content of the archive materials published for the first time. V. I. Lamansky had studied the Slavs throughout his scientific career. However, not a series of interesting and separate special investigations typical of modern historians and philologists but the monumental conception of the political and cultural structure of Eurasia divided by Lamansky into three independent worlds, i. e. European (Roman and German), Middle (Greek and Slavic) and Asian, has become the main outcome of his creative searches. Although Lamansky’s studies were carried in the quiet of the room and were the result of the scrupulous scientific work, they were oriented towards the understanding of the basic principles of the social life. V. I. Lamansky understood a scientist’s work an indispensable element of social being and strived to lead it out into the spear of opinion journalism and free intellectual life. This trait of Lamansky’s creative works is already notable in his early series of articles named «Historical letters about the relations of the Russian nation to its tribesmen». The very first «Letter…» reflects a number of the most important ideas of Lamansky’s theory: the unity of the Slavs on the fundament of the unity of their languages, animosity of the Western — especially German — culture towards the Slavs and understanding of language as an expression of the volksgeist. Moreover, it is important to mark that in «Letter…», there is evident influence of the theories which were contemporary to Lamansky and had appeared in Germany on the wave of the Romanticism. This fact primarily concerns the obvious W. von Humboldt’s influence which lent the conception of language to this work. The examination of both Lamansky’s «Letter…» and his whole creative work gives an idea about the level and character of the Slavic studies in Russia throughout the second half of 19th century, allows to realize that deep transformation which has happened to this science since the time when Lamansky worked and affords to understand how its development begins in Russia.