Героический образ Черногории в русской литературе начала XIX в.

Abstract

The paper deals with the first literary and scholarly responses about Serbs that appeared in Russian periodicals, memoirs and travel notes in the first quarter of the 19th century. A considerable part of these materials concerned Montenegro, the most exotic Serbian province, known for its struggle against the Turks. The main impetus to the description of Serbs in Montenegro was the interest of Russian authors to the folk poetry and patriarchal morals of the Slavs, co-religionists with Russia, who admired travelers for their military valor and heroic struggle against the Turks. The words of the Russian officer, writer V.B. Bronevsky, who, with the squadron of Vice-Admiral D.N. Senyavin took part in the combat operations of the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean, are quite noteworthy. Speaking of his desire to describe the life and manners of the Serbs, he writes of them as a people “by origin and faith, so close to us, and by devotion, love and zeal for Russia, all the more worthy of my compatriots' attention”. The peculiarity of such materials is that the description of historical and cultural realities, the mention of certain designations and names are given in accordance with the general level of scientific knowledge about the foreign Slavs in the specified period. For this reason, there are terminological discrepancies and inaccuracies in dates and names. Meanwhile, the above-mentioned works and memoirs of Russian scholars and writers laid the foundation for a more thorough study of Slavs, which began in Russia in the following decades.