“Blessed Idlers” or “Indolent Loafers”: the Stereotype of Crimean Tatar Laziness in Russian and Foreign Mind in the Late of the 18th and 19th Centuries
Journal: Istoriya
Year: 2023

This paper discusses the origin and evolution of the stereotype of “laziness” of the Crimean Tatars, which appeared in Russian and foreign travel writings from the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It has been shown that this stereotype was a product of Western “armchair” knowledge of the Enlightenment, which produced the ideas of “terrestrial paradise” in faraway countries where lived the “noble savages”. Applying it to what was seen in the Crimea, the writers and scientists ignored the