Authors

Discussion

Many of the disagreements seen today between Russia and its surroundings can be traced back to the imperial period. If in the eighteenth-century Russia was separating the empire into the central and peripheral areas, in the nineteenth century it was ranking the ethnic groups within the country, and the Russian turned to the superior one. That caused inequalities and disagreements in the Russian empire. The reason of centralization cannot be separated from a number of concepts emerging at that time, such as scientific rationality, new territorial thinking, nationalism came from the West, etc.

In recent historiography the broad perspective has revealed many factors in the operation of Russian centralization, and the "top-down" is basic model. This article will explore the practice of self-identity in everyday life before the Russian nationalism. Taking the travels of the Demidov family in the second half of the eighteenth century as an example, we will examine how Russian men passed down their own traditions in the family when European science and culture were introduced. Private traveling in the eighteenth century held special significance both in Russia and in Europe. Traveling, unlike today’s tourism, was a symbol of freedom and a key to reach knowledge. Demidovs traveled for different purposes. Keeping records of their journeys, they wrote texts in a variety of genres, including travel journals and letters. They even traveled for collecting plants, and published plant catalogs. In those texts national consciousness was expressed by the authors. They were the male members of the family, and also the heirs to the enterprise and cultural tradition passed down from generations.

It is worth attention to understand whether the system of patriarchy unnoticed in the past served as a support to the national centralization. Is this a factor that needs to be considered to review the old structure of "top-down" centralization? This article will put the question in several contexts, namely eighteenth-century geography, the imperial scientific expeditions and the European aristocratic life, to explore the prior Slavic-Russian nationality.