Bosphorus Strait and Its Environs in Russian Written Sources of the 1830s

In this article, Russian written sources of the 1830s are analyzed in terms of perception of the Bosphorus and its environs by the Russians. The author refers to Letters from the Anatolian Side of the Bosphorus by a Russian soldier published in the newspaper Severnaya Pchela in 1833; the notes by General N. N. Muravyov, Russians on the Bosphorus in 1833; Essays on Constantinople and Bosphorus and New Essays on Constantinople by an orientalist, diplomat and writer K. M. Bazili, who visited the Bosphorus in the first half of the 1830s. Their authors are people of different ages, education, and duties which makes it possible to present the Bosphorus through the eyes of the Russians, and at the same time from different, but complementary to each other, points of view. The letters of a Russian soldier contain information about the geographical features of the Bosphorus and its environs, as well as about the daily life of the people of that area. In the notes of General N. N. Muravyov, on the other hand, Bosphorus is described both as a strategic location for a military camp and as a study object of the history of this area. Finally, the description of the Bosphorus in the travel notes of K. M. Bazili is something more than a traveler’s observations since they contain historical information about this area and express nostalgic feelings for Istanbul, where Bazili was born. The proposed analysis makes it possible to introduce new information about the socio-cultural history of the Bosphorus and its environs in the 1830s, and present the image of Istanbul, and the Bosphorus in particular, through the eyes of foreigners.