Rapoarte diplomatice ruse din România 1888–1898. Diplomatičeskie dokumenty Rossijskich predstavitelej v Rumynii (1888–1898). Editori: Flavius Solomon / Adrian-Bogdan Ceobanu / Andrei Cuşco / Grigorii Şkundin. Iaşi: Editura Universităţii „Alexandru Ioan Cuza“ Iaşi, 2014. 459 S. ISBN: 978-606-714-087-3

Rapoarte diplomatice ruse din România 1888–1898. Diplomatičeskie dokumenty Rossijskich predstavitelej v Rumynii (1888–1898). Editori: Flavius Solomon / Adrian-Bogdan Ceobanu / Andrei Cuşco / Grigorii Şkundin. Iaşi: Editura Universităţii „Alexandru Ioan Cuza“ Iaşi, 2014. 459 S. ISBN: 978-606-714-087-3.

The collection of documents, edited by a team of Romanian and Russian academics, is focused on the diplomatic relations between the Russian Empire and the young Romanian nation-state and covers the decade from the emerging of a new Romanian government in 1888 to the visit of the Romanian King Carol I in Russia in 1898. The publication is the result of a larger research project, entitled Visions and Perceptions of Romania in the Russian Imperial Discourse and Public Sphere in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century (sponsored by the Romanian National Council for Scientific Research in Higher Education [http://history.uaic.ro/research/rvpr/?page_id=21]).

During the researched decade, the relations between the two countries can be characterized as evolving from tensioned to reciprocally unsympathetic. After the Congress of Berlin (1878), they were shaped by two main factors: first, the European competition for influence in the Balkans, which remained a determinant factor in Russia’s diplomacy in the region, whereby during the last decades of the 19th century Russia assumed a more reserved role; second, the territorial issue of Southern Bessarabia (the districts Ismail, Cahul and Bolgrad, populated predominantly by non-Romanians), reacquired by the Russian Empire after the territory was lost to the Moldavian Principality as a result of the Crimean war (1856), which created animosity within the Romanian society. These factors marked, subsequently, either the Romanian or the Russian perception of the ‘Other’ in opposition to the ‘Self’.

In a well-argued generous introduction, written in Russian and Romanian, the reader is made aware of the larger chronological and geographical context, in which the uneasy relations between the two countries, previously acknowledged mostly based on official documents, evolved. The “Oriental question” is presented as a revealing case study, in which Russia’s foreign policies’ aims, intent, and strategies intersected with political aspirations and long-term ideological visions. The 84 diplomatic reports (from a total of 85 documents, including one ministerial instruction for diplomatic activity), written by the Russian official representatives in Romania, reveal the oscillation between two ideological perspectives – that of the Westernizers and of the Slavophiles –, the balance being gradually inclined towards the latter. By the end of 1890s, the idea of Russia’s noble mission civilisatrice in the Balkans and expansionist politics to gain access to the Turkish Straits became dominant on the imperial foreign policy agenda.

The documents guide the reader into the fate of the Russian diplomats who served in Romania in the late 19th century and the way they influenced the course of the bilateral relations. The shift of perspective towards the personal and professional profile of the diplomats, emphasized in the introduction, recently became popular among historians of diplomacy in the West. (See the publications of the “New Diplomatic History” group of academics who study diplomats within their cultural social, and political milieu and the way these affected international society [http://newdiplomatichis tory.org/].) Personal perspectives and differences of opinion on what was seen and heard in Romania can be explained taking into account the Russian diplomats’ social origin, ideological and political orientation, career path, as well their “imaginary universe”. In some cases, the recommendations were taken forward by the decision-makers in St. Petersburg, such being the case of the Russian consul to Iaşi, Alexandr A. Giers, a relative of the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nikolai K. Giers.

A separate topic approached in the reports was that of the image of the Romanian state, with its monarch, constitutional regime, population and custom. In the majority of reports, Romania is presented as a small state, whose appearance on the political map was “premature and without a proper historical ground” (Doc. 27), with a foreign monarch, who lacked popularity and whose figure was substantial in directing Romania towards Central Powers, a “scandalous constitutional regime” (Doc. 11) and a small army, incapable of keeping control of internal struggles. Despite this dominant opinion, there were reports that showed a differentiated attitude of the Romanian political elite towards Russia, found King Carol I in a perfect harmony with political circles, scrutinized the effects of the spreading of liberal views in Romanian society, and distinguished between “national sensibilities” towards either Transylvania and Bessarabia, the latter playing a marginal role in the Romanian political visions at that time. The reports, once corroborated by other primary sources (memoirs, diaries, correspondence), enrich and nuance the picture of the Romanian society during the late 19th century.

Additionally, the reports contain observations on Romania’s development within the Balkan regional frame, which suggests further research into Russia’s perception of commonalities, as well as specificities of the Balkan countries. These comparisons are relevant when it comes to understanding the subtleties of Russia’s interference in the Balkans and the various internal reactions coming from the region at that time. Besides bringing to light facts and judgements on Russian-Romanian relations that cannot be depicted in official documents, the documents reveal the (hidden) mechanisms of interaction between different political and (non)diplomatic actors from both sides, the decision-making mechanisms of Russian foreign policy, as well as the existing contradictions between political expectations and diplomatic realities which widens our understanding of the official relations between the two countries.

The editors who also assumed the task of analysing the published diplomatic reports within a larger context, refer, although briefly, to the culture and praxis of reporting in Russian diplomacy in the 19th century. In this context, some questions remain unanswered: how selection and (con)textualization of information was intertwined with the sociability of diplomats and their presence in the Romanian society, whether the Russian diplomats used informants and, if so, who were they, how trustworthy was the information provided and based on which criteria was the information further selected and delivered. These and other similar questions recently caught the attention of German scholars with regard to the Western diplomatic reporting of the early Modern period. (The workshop Wissen und Berichten. Europäische Gesandtenberichte der Frühen Neuzeit in praxeologischer Perspektive took place in Aachen on April 2016.) A comparative perspective of Western and Eastern diplomatic reporting as source of “self-representation” and social practice can become an interesting topic of research in the future.

The authors specify that the original version of the documents, written in Russian and French, and translated into Romanian, are held at the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire (AVPRI) in Moscow, their microfilmed version being donated to the National Central Historical Archives of Romania in 1992. Since access to the AVPRI collections is closed today (since 2012), the research and the publication of Russian diplomatic reports on Romania during the previous and later decades up to today remains a challenge. Despite the lack of chronological continuity of the collection, the intention of the editors to diminish the scarcity of primary sources on the Russian-Romanian relations of the second half of the XIXth century, in comparison with the available sources on Russian-Bulgarian or Russian-Serbian relations, as well with other chronological periods covering Russian/Soviet-Romanian relations, was worth the effort; moreover, it shows that it should be continued. This bilingual edition undoubtedly enhances the access of a larger public from both countries, the reading being enriched by numerous footnotes that point at interesting biographical details and further bibliographical references.

Svetlana Suveica, Regensburg