The Image of Russian Pan-Slavism in Germany, Great Britain and France at the end of the XIXth century

The reconstruction of the image of Russian Pan-Slavism in Western European countries at the end of the 19th century is of no small importance, since it brings us closer to understanding the perception of Russia and Russian politics by the great European powers.The article offers a comparative analysis of the image of Russian Pan-Slavism in Germany, Great Britain and France, the purpose of which is to identify common features and differences that allow us to establish the presence or absence of a correlation between the nature of this image in a particular country and the trajectory of its relations with Russia during the period under review.The analysis is based on a wide range of sources: diaries and correspondence of representatives of the political, diplomatic and military elite, materials of parliamentary debates, newspaper and magazine journalism, fiction and journalistic literature.The main common feature of the perception of the image of Russian Pan-Slavism in Germany, Great Britain and France was a negative attitude towards the ultimate goals of this movement, which could lead to a "big war" in Europe, regardless of whether it was interpreted as a plausible cover for the expansion of the Russian Empire, as an irrational public demand "from below" or the intrigues of a small "party".However, while in Germany the term Pan-Slavism acquired an increasingly broad sense of a label to designate Germany's opponents in Russia, in France, on the contrary, the previously quite unambiguous image of Russian Pan-Slavism fragmented, being replaced by new neutral or even positive interpretations.The evolution of the image correlated with the dynamics of relations between the great powers: the degradation of Russian-German relations, the increasingly close nature of Russian-French ties, as well as the stability of Russian-British rivalry within the framework of the Great Game.In all three countries, interest and attention to the phenomenon of Pan-Slavism had almost disappeared by the end of the 1880s.