Literary Ethnography and Nationalism in the Imperial Russia: A Case of the Naval Ministry 'Literary Expedition'
This paper explores the ideological sources of the Russian Naval Ministry “literary expedition” in a broad context of ethnographical knowledge, 1840-1860. The author explains which Russian and Western models of literary ethnography compelled Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich to commission Russian writers to describe various provincial regions and ethnic groups. The investigation demonstrates that this expedition was an indispensable part of a broad and influential paradigm of nationalizing knowledge which dominated the Russian science and the literary and discursive fields of the 1850s