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Abstract. The review analyzes the monograph “Rossiya na Dunaye. Imperiya. Elity i politika reform v Moldavii i Valakhii. 1812–1834” by V. Taki, published in the publishing house “New Literary Review” in 2021. The author attempts a comprehensive study of the history of the influence of the Russian Empire on the internal affairs of the Ottoman Orthodox provinces – Moldavia and Wallachia – during the first third of the 19th century, considering this case in the context of the foreign policy of the great powers. Moldavia and Wallachia in the study become not just an object of “bargaining” between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, as it seemed in the previous historiography, but a forming cornerstone and subject of the Russian “unified imperial” policy on the Eastern issue. In the review, the author noted that this study gives a new look at the process of constructing the foreign policy of the Russian Empire on the Danube and the Balkans, since the researcher uses a combination of approaches from several directions at once – the history of ideas and concepts, biographical, microhistory, the new history of empires. Through the representation of the ideas of Russian, Ottoman, Moldovan and European foreign policy actors, this allows us to trace the “evolution” of Russian approaches to the “solution” of the Eastern issue associated with the creation of “regular” principalities controlled by Russia – Moldavia and Wallachia. Based on a wide range of unpublished materials, V. Taki comes to the conclusion that the creation of Organic Regulations in Moldavia and Wallachia in the 1820s and 1830s was an attempt by Russia to create a controlled “buffer” zone on its borders, which solved several tasks: strengthening influence on the Ottoman Empire, creating a “sanitary cordon” from the revolutionary ideas of the 1830s, which was an organic addition and continuation of Russia’s internal policy.
Keywords: Moldavia, Walachia, imperial politics, the Eastern Question.