The Great Eastern Question: Development of the Pro-Eurasian Worldview of Ismail Gasprinsky at the Beginning of the ХХ Сentury

Abstract

The article reconstructs the views of the Russian Turkic-Muslim figure and educator Ismail Gasprinsky in 1908-1914. It examines the direction in which I. Gasprinsky's views evolved in relation to a conceptual Russian-Eastern Agreement due to a continued aggravation of domestic and regional international problems at the beginning of the twentieth century. Based on the journalism of the Terdzhiman newspaper, it is revealed that Gasprinsky continued to expand his views to the “Great Eastern Question” during the period and develop the concept of the Eastern Agreement, taking into account the central position of both Russia and Turkey, as well as the Slavs and Turkic peoples in general. However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the Eastern Question had transformed from Slavic-Turkish issue to Slavic-German one. According to Gasprinsky, the solution was to create a Slavic-Turkic “dam” against the “wave” of Germanism. At the new stage, he did not retreat from his central ideas and continued to remain a supporter of Russian-Muslim cooperation. The author concludes that Gasprinsky's worldview was largely pro-Eurasian in content, and the concept of an eastern agreement had developed by the beginning of the ХХ century to the level of a possible diplomatic breakthrough and had become a significant contribution to early Eurasian social thought and to the intellec- tual development of Russia and the Turkic world as a whole.

Keywords

• slavic and turkic world
• rapprochement between russia and turkey
• intellectual history
• russian-turkish relations
• liberal muslim political movement