THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE SLAVOPHILES ABOUT BESSARABIA UNDER THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE

Nadia CRISTEA Liceul Teoretic „Pro Succes” din Chișinău

Abstract

The History of the 19th century Bessarabia with its linguistic, legislative and national aspects, the habitat and its distinctive peculiarities that were formed by a large number of ethnicities, was reflected in a lot of works of the Russian writers. From this amount of written works I have selected some aspects that can be found in the writings of the Slavophil intellectual movement representatives. The majority of the personalities mentioned above visited Bessarabia when it was under the Soviet occupation, the reasons being quite different: some did it out of curiosity, others - being on a mission, while a lot of them wrote their studies based on the information they had learned or heard. An interesting fact that can be noticed in their works is the ideology of time, expressed through the Slavs’ rights for this territory, which was annexed in 1812. Their concepts are inherent to time and historical space, taken from the reality of the Russian Empire, Pan-Slavism and Protective Orthodoxy. Keywords: The History of Bessarabia, Slavophil intellectual movement, the ideology of time, interests of the Russian Empire, messianic politics.