Russia, the Balkans, and Ukraine in the 1870s

Abstract

In the 1870s Alexander II had to respond to Slavonic awakenings in both the Balkans and Ukraine. In the Balkan case he began by discouraging local freedom-fighters but subsequently intervened on their side; in the Ukrainian case he began by permitting expressions of particularism but subsequently stamped them out. The immediate purpose of the present essay is to explain why the tsar responded in these different ways; the more deep-seated objective is to shed light on the differences between the political opinions of educated Russians and ethnically conscious Ukrainians in the middle of the nineteenth century.