CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Yashchuk, Yevhen |
|---|---|
| Title | The "Eastern Question" in the Russian Empire's Western Provinces: The Case of Kyiv between 1875-1878 |
| Summary | The appearance of important political concepts in history of the nineteenth century is usually tightly connected to the intellectual and political contexts of imperial metropoles, where the “Eastern Question” presents a complicated example. Scholars typically define it as a question of the fate of the Ottoman Empire, and such an understanding seems to be relevant because the Eastern Question was a part of European debates about the future of the so-called ‘sick man of Europe.’ However, the focus on a fixed definition produced in the public discourse of European imperial capitals obscures the complexities of the views on the question, especially in parts of the globe where it also appeared in the public space but was hardly ever studied by historians. I aim to partly fill this gap by giving a voice to the public debates in Kyiv, a multiethnic provincial city in the Russian Empire in the 1870s. In this thesis therefore, I focus primarily on local newspapers issued during the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875-1878 to uncover the local appearance of the “Eastern Question.” Drawing on approaches from media history and intellectual history, I argue that the authors presented interrelated, contested, and multiplied views on the question. I show the diversity of intertwined sources used by local news producers to cover the major international crisis of the 1870s and highlight the variety of approaches to put the information about the crisis on the pages of newspapers. Its multi-faceted meanings also underlined the heteroglossia and agency of local actors in the discussions related to international affairs. Finally, I consider opinions about the solutions of the question expressed in the local media environment that presented the uncertain nature of the Eastern Question, which disappeared from the local discussion once the ongoing struggles in the “East” were settled. Ultimately, I prove that Kyiv-based authors appropriated the concept for their needs despite the restrictions related to the censored provincial press and access to information. These appropriations showed the Eastern Question not as a thing in itself but as an interdiscursive phenomenon, simultaneously elusive and ubiquitous. |
| Supervisor | Hennings, Jan |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/yashchuk_yevhen.pdf |
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