Russia From a Hungarian Perspective. Lajos Thallóczy's Study “Russia and Our Country”

Hammerstein, Judit (2023) Russia From a Hungarian Perspective. Lajos Thallóczy's Study “Russia and Our Country”. RUSSIANSTUDIES.HU, 5 (2). pp. 47-69. ISSN 2677-0660

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Abstract

In many respects, the work of the historian Lajos Thallóczy, published in 1884 under the title Oroszország és hazánk [Russia and Our Country],” stands out from the Russia-related studies and writings of his time. The great virtue of this volume is that, in addition to travel experiences, the author also draws on primary Russian archival sources and presents the Tsarist Russia of the 1880s from a wide variety of perspectives, while always keeping the Hungarian point of view in mind. The focus of his attention is the comparative presentation of Russian and Hungarian economic relations, with an emphasis on Russian-Hungarian competition in the grain market. Thallóczy sees the Tsarist Empire as a rival of concern from Hungary’s point of view, as well as a promising but untapped opportunity for bilateral trade relations. This method of analysis, which focuses on analogies and parallels, is a feature of the entire volume, including the chapters on travel experiences. The author has published comparative economic and social analyses that have opened up new lines of research and are still relevant today. A further interesting feature of the text is the separate chapter on Russian colonialism, which is also discussed in the context of the Austro-Hungarian occupation of the Balkans. There is a strong emphasis on comments on the Russian character, which abound in virtually every chapter. Mostly, this concerns the formulation of stereotypes that have become fixed in the meantime and which are also known from other travelogues of the time, that are echoed in the memoirs of Hungarian prisoners of war of the First World War and even in travelogues published between the two world wars.

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