№2-2023-05
№2-2023-05
DOI:10.22281/2413-9912-2023-07-02-53-58
Vlasov N. A.
OTTO VON BISMARCK AND HIS PERCEPTION OF RUSSIA DURING THE DIPLOMATIC MISSION IN ST. PETERSBURG IN THE 1850S.
The article deals with the problem of knowledge of the Russian language and its influence on the perception of Russia by the German statesman Otto von Bismarck. Acting in 1859-1862 as Prussian envoy in Petersburg, Bismarck studied Russian. The degree of his language proficiency remains, however, to this day a debatable topic, and the question of how knowledge of the language influenced the image of Russia in the worldview of the «Iron Chancellor» has not yet been raised in the research literature at all. The author used Russian and German sources, including the memoirs of contemporaries and the statements of Bismarck himself. The conclusion is that Bismarck’s knowledge of the Russian language was limited to a relatively narrow framework necessary for everyday communication and reading the socio-political press. The idea that this knowledge was explained by the sympathies of the «Iron Chancellor» for Russia or gave rise to such sympathies is not true. The ability to read the Russian press and communicate with representatives of the Russian common people had little general effect on Bismarck’s ideas about Russia. His image of Russia by and large corresponded to the images and stereotypes common in Western Europe in the middle of the 19th century.
Keywords: Otto von Bismarck, Russian language, image of Russia, Russian-German relations, political psychology.
Saint-Petersburg State University
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