Russian and Ottoman Newspapers in the War of 1877–1878

Abstract

The proliferation of popular newspapers during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 transformed the boundaries of public debate in Russia and brought the people into close contact with each other as well as with the outer world. Printing and the press had a parallel effect on the fin-de-siècle Ottoman public sphere. Newspapers of the Sublime Porte utilized defeats against Russia to juxtapose – if not depose – the Sultan’s cult as the sole symbol of unity with a nationalist one. “Wartime Propaganda and the Legacies of Defeat” is a comparative study of the two major newspapers – Golos and Basiret – during this period. I examine the major commonalities between these papers: such as perceived images of the enemy, the war’s aims and purposes, as well as the behavior of the troops portrayed by the war correspondents. My primary purpose is to shed light on the Turkish popular press, which weighed in on the issues of nationalism, defeat and political campaigning just as its Russian counterparts did. Ultimately, this article argues that the emergence of a critically debating public sphere in Russia and Turkey demonstrates how both empires experienced modernity in the sense that most Europeans understood it.