Reports of the Russian Diplomats on the Situation in Southern Italy in 1862: General and Particular Features

The article is dedicated to the general and particular features in the reports of Russian diplomats A. N. Volkonsky, V. P. Poggenpohl and A. Y. Skariatin on the situation in the lands of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which became part of the Kingdom of Italy. Most of these documents stored in the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire have not previously been analyzed by scholars. Russian diplomats reported to St. Petersburg about the activities of brigands, dissatisfaction of the population of Southern Italy with the government’s policy, the significance of Victor Emmanuel II’s visit to Naples and offered their own interpretations of the reasons for the tense situation in the South. At the same time, the information from the reports of A. N. Volkonsky, V. P. Poggenpohl and A. Y. Skariatin supplements the portraits of the Russian diplomats themselves. Their reports contain various assessments of the situation in Italy. The author of the article pays special attention to the terminology used by Russian diplomats to describe the events in Southern Italy in 1862 (“civil war”, “anti-national conquest”, “Neapolitan nation”, etc.)