Vladimir Ivanovič Lamanskij in Venice (1868-1869)

Abstract

The aim of the article is to update the scientific heritage of the well-known Slavist and prominent representative of late Slavophilism Vladimir Ivanovič Lamanskij (1833-1914). Lamanskij’s biography is insufficiently studied in modern research literature. On the basis of archival documents, the article reconstructs Lamanskij’s work in the archives of Venice in 1868 and 1869, which resulted in the publication of an extensive collection of documents and studies on the Venetian Republic’s relations with the Greeks and Slavs during its heyday (16^th-early 18^th century), called State Secrets of Venice (1884). Lamanskij himself considered State Secrets of Venice his primary academic contribution, and the preface is one of Lamanskij’s main ideological texts. It reflects the Panslavist ideas that were supported in the Russian academic environment in the last third of the 19^th century. Archival materials allow us to trace the genesis of Lamanskij’s historiosophic views to better understand how his concept of civilisation, in which the ideas of Slavophiles were developed, was formed. One of the key concept of Lamanskij’s work is the idea of confrontation between the Greco-Slavic and Romano-Germanic cultures in Europe. As a consequence, the study provides a better understanding of the ideology of late Slavophilism in the form of a theory which, in Lamanskij’s works, claims the status of a scientific programme in the humanities and social sciences.