Authors

Discussion

This paper revisits the Slavophile philologian and imperial official/diplomat Aleksandr F. Gil’ferding to understand how imperial Russian elites saw the Finns in Eurasia. In Finnish national historiography, Slavophilism is notorious: especially after the start of the reform by tsar Aleksander II, Slavophile showed dissatisfaction with the “privileges” the Grand Duchy of Finland enjoyed and denied an agency of the Finnish people in history, which scared those Finns who were actively promoting the Finnish deeds. Though unknown in Finland, Gil’ferding was close to such leading Slavophile as Askakov and Khomiakov and in his final years gathered Russian folklore in Russian Karelia for his search for the Russian soul.

Gil’ferding was, however, not only Slavophile but also diplomat and imperial official who worked in Balkan and Russian Poland while studying Slavic philology. After this experience in the Romanov Empire, he started to write about Finland and the Finns and left for the Russian-Finnish borderland to seek the Russianness: Russian folklore. This trajectory is not exceptional: other leading imperial Russian philologians, whether Slavophile or Westerner/liberal, saw the Finns and their culture in an imperial Russian/Eurasian context, not purely in a European/Western context.

Featuring Gil’ferding’s career and writings, this paper addresses how Gil’ferding and his contemporary intellectuals saw Finland and the Finns in an imperial and Eurasian context.