“A Historical Sketch of the Greek War of Independence…” by G. Paleolog and M. Sivinis as a Historiographical Source

Abstract

The article presents a historiographical analysis of “A Historical Sketch of the Greek War of Independence…” as one of the first writings in Russian historiography on the Greek Revolution and the participation of the great powers in it. The writing was published in St. Petersburg in 1867 by two Russian military historians of Greek origin — G. Paleolog and M. Sivinis. It was based on preserved materials from the personal archive of Russian admiral Pyotr Ricord, an active participant in the last episodes of the war. Besides the fact that the authors have used a many new historical sources (mostly epistolary), they also analysed the experience of studying this issue by European historians, who published several important writings at that time. With this in mind, Paleolog and Sivinis tried to form their own vision of the Greek events and the participation of the great powers in them. As a result, they became one of the first Russian scholars who have actualized the Greek Question in their historiography and presented it as one of the most important parts of Russia’s eastern policy at that time. The research of “A Historical Sketch” as an important historiographical source consists in an analysis of the preconditions and circumstances of publication, its structure, content, genre and ideological concepts, as well as biographies of the authors, their views and attitudes. It is considered inseparably with the historical background and in view of ideas about Greek events of that time in European historiography. Thus, the reader will have a holistic idea of “A Historical Sketch” as both a separate historical work and an important historiographical source for the study of the Greek Question in Russian pre-revolutionary historiography.

Keywords

• historiography
• historical sketch
• greek question
• romanticism
• state theory
• national spirit