N.I. Nadezhdin and Carpathian Rus
Authors:   Saint Petersburg State University (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation), Sulyak S.G. 
Published: November 2020

Nikolai Ivanovich Nadezhdin (1804–1856), a Russian philologist, literary and theater critic, philosopher, journalist, editor, historian, archaeologist, ethnographer, art critic, and educator, was the son of a poor village priest. The surname Nadezhdin was given to him by the Ryazan archbishop Theophilact (Rusanov), who pinned great hopes on the boy. N.I. Nadezhdin made a significant contribution to the development of science in Russia. Back in 1834, he spoke of the need to study the Russian language in various fields, in addition to belles-lettres and theological literature. He defended the idea of using philology as a supporting discipline in history. Nadezhdin was one of the founders of historical geography and played a significant role in the formation of ethnography in Russia. In his works, N.I. Nadezhdin focused on the history of Carpathian Rus. His first materials on Rusins appeared when he lived in Odessa. The earliest articles explored the history of Rusins in Bessarabia, the north of which is thought to belong to Carpathian Rus (A Walk in Bessarabia (1839), On the location of the ancient city of Peresechen, belonging to the Uglich people (1844)). In 1840–1841, on behalf of the Odessa educational district trustee D.M. Knyazhevich, Nadezhdin traveled through the southern and West Slavic lands. In his Note on the Journey Through the South Slavic Countries (1842) and in The Report on the Journey Made in 1840 and 1841 in the South Slavic Lands (1844), he mentions the Russian population of Hungary and Transylvania. Unfortunately, according to Nadezhdin, “South-West Russia, whose purest and most unique part was leaving the Russian Empire” was hardly studied by Russian scholars. N.I. Nadezhdin reported about the surviving Russian settlements in Transylvania, whose inhabitants had spoken the “Little Russian language”. He drew attention to the need for further development of the diplomacy of the Danube principalities, especially Moldova, which was initiated by Yu.I. Venelin. Nadezhdin noted that the geographical nomenclature not only in the Moldavian and Wallachian principalities, which were adjacent to Russia, but in Transylvania and Hungary, almost up to the Danube, hides its Slavic and actually Russian nature “under a thick layer of Romanian and Magyar sediment.” In his article On the ethnographic study of the Russian nationality (Notes of the Russian Geographical Society. Book. 2. SPb., 1847), N.I. Nadezhdin once again raised the question of studying the “population of the Russian outside Russia.” He pointed to the “Russian element” in the Austrian Empire, to the Rusins (Rusnaks) living in Galicia and Hungary. The scholar recalled that the remnants of the Russian population could still be found in Transylvania, “At present, in most of the local Russian villages, only women still speak Russian; men, however, refused from their native language for the dominant languages around: Madyar or Volosh. In Moldavia and Wallachia, the presence of the Russian element was even more obvious. Especially in Moldova, where it shines everywhere through the ruling stratum of the Romanian population; and most of all – in the so-called Upper Moldavia (Țara de Sus).”