“SPEAKING OF THE OTHER, DESCRIBING THE OTHER, THE OBSERVER REPORTS MUCH MORE ABOUT HIMSELF”. Ekaterina Boltunova’s Interview with Maria Leskinen

Abstract

With the permission of the editorial board of the journal Historical expertise we publish the interview with Maria Voittovna Leskinen, Doctor of Historical Sciences, lead researcher of the Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Science. She was interviewed by Ekaterina Mikhailovna Boltunova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor, head of the International Laboratory for the Regional History of Russia in the National Research University Higher School of Economics. The text of the interview was first published on the website of the journal Historical expertise in the April 2021 and hasn’t been printed before. Area of Maria Leskinen’s expertise is study of the images and perceptions of ethnocultural distinctivness of the peoples in the public and scientifi c discources. She analyzed the issues of formation of the Polish Sarmatian ideology of the 16th–17th centuries, also history and evolution of the hetero- and autostereotypes of the Poles and Finns in the ethnological and educational conceptions of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century. Her last papers are dedicated to reconstruction of the perceptions of Great Russians and Little Russians as the „branches“ of the triune Russian people by russian academic community, and also to the debates about the ways of representation of the ideal type of a Great Russian during the period of emperial nationmaking. The interview touches on an issue of situation with reviewing in the national historical science, its quality and the state of the professional critisizing and polemic.