Interpretation of the “Russian question” in the journalistic discourse of the national-patriotic and Slavophile press of the first half of the 1860s

Abstract.  The article examines the background to the emergence of the Polish and Russian questions, which became the subject of study in the early historical works of
N.G. Ustryalov and M.P. Pogodin. With the beginning of the reign of Alexander II, the conceptual apparatus of these historians began to be used in the journalistic discourse
of the Russian press. The purpose of the article is to consider the experience of applying this terminology when discussing the “Russian question” in the journalistic discourse of the national-patriotic and Slavophile press of the first half of the 1860s. In this regard, the primary objective of the study was to elucidate the separatist perspective, based on the “principle of nationality”, on the state affiliation of Western Russia and its Russian Orthodox population. The journalistic discourse of the journal “Vestnik Yugo-Zapadnoy i Zapadnoy Rossii” (Bulletin of South-Western and Western Russia) and the newspapers “Den” (Day) and “Moskovskie Vedomosti” (Moscow News) responded to this ideological challenge. Key concepts in this discourse included “Russian nationality”, “Orthodoxy”, “Russian land”, and “Russian world”. These concepts shaped ideas of national and social liberation for the Western Russian peasantry, linked to the defense of the integrity of the Russian state and the unity of the Russian Church.

Keywords: Western Russia, “Polish question”, “Russian question”, “Russian nationality”, “Orthodoxy”, “Russian land” and “Russian world”, journalistic discourse, “principle of nationality”, irredentism, separatism.