The national regeneration of the Greeks as seen by the Russian intelligentsia

Abstract

When the Greek people rose up in 1821 and threw off the Turkish yoke,
the Russian intelligentsia’s attitude was rather different from the official one.
The intellectuals began by accepting a certain historical determinism and,
taking a rather more emotional approach to the event, they applauded the
idea of restoring the Greek Byzantine Empire, or at least of creating a state
which would be a continuation of it. Paisii Velichkovskii, A. S. Pushkin, and
Prince S. Shirinskii-Shaxmatov fervently espoused these views. The first to
oppose them were the Slavophiles, who, as the exponents of a historical
Slavonic Messianism, could no longer accept the supremacy of the Hellenic
world. Though utopian, their views were justified to a considerable extent by
the developments within the evolving tiny Greek state, which no longer reflected the magnificence of the Byzantine Empire. K. P. Leont'ev radically
disagreed with the Slavophiles’ views, for he had a thorough knowledge and
deep love for the Greek world; but he too was disappointed in the modern
Greek state and deprecated the notion of re-establishing a Greek empire. The
article paves the way for further research and discussion.