VLASOV N.A. “Pan-Slavists Are Now Setting the Tone in Russia”: The Image of the Russian Empire in the German Liberal Press of the Early 1880s
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/jvolsu4.2025.5.7
Nikolay A. Vlasov,
Candidate of Sciences (History), Associate Professor, Department of Theory and History of International Relations, Saint Petersburg State University, Universitetskaya Emb., 7/9, 199034 Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation,
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https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7476-268X
Abstract. Introduction. The goal of the presented study is to reconstruct the image of the Russian Empire in the German liberal press of the early 1880s. Findings will lead to a better understanding of the driving forces behind the evolution of Russian-German relations during the last quarter of the 19th century. Methods and materials. The research is based on materials from the four most influential independent quality daily newspapers published in the German Empire from the beginning of 1880 to the middle of 1883; all of them were politically liberal. Chronologically the research covers key events related to the end of the reign of Alexander II and the beginning of the reign of Alexander III, which attracted the attention of the German press. The key research method is qualitative content analysis. Analysis and results. During the early 1880s the German press paid considerable attention to different events in Russia. The image of the Russian Empire was neither unambiguously positive nor unambiguously negative. Russia was recognized as a part of European civilization, sympathies for the Russian people were declared, “Great reforms” were welcomed, and Russian monarchs Alexander II and Alexander III were positively assessed. At the same time, the thesis of Russia’s backwardness invariably appeared, the situation inside the country was dubbed critical, and a sharply negative assessment was given to the Russian bureaucracy. Great importance was attached by the press to the activities of the pan-Slavists, who were presented as a powerful destructive force capable of imposing their will even on the emperors. The German liberal press of the early 1880s shaped the image of the Russian Empire in German society as an unstable neighbor and an unreliable and even dangerous partner. This had a strong impact on the perception of Russia in German public opinion and on the dynamics of bilateral relations. Financing. The research was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (RNF), project 23-28-00090, “The image of Russian Pan-Slavism in Western Europe in the last third of the 19th century.”
Key words: image of Russia, German liberal press, Narodnism, Russian pan-Slavism, Russian-German relations, national stereotypes.
Citation. Vlasov N.A. “Pan-Slavists Are Now Setting the Tone in Russia”: The Image of the Russian Empire in the German Liberal Press of the Early 1880s. Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriya 4. Istoriya. Regionovedenie. Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya [Science Journal of Volgograd State University. History. Area Studies. International Relations], 2025, vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 89-101. (in Russian). DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/jvolsu4.2025.5.7.
“Pan-Slavists Are Now Setting the Tone in Russia”: The Image of the Russian Empire in the German Liberal Press of the Early 1880s by Vlasov N.A. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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