New Archival Materials from the History of the Karazin Family

Abstract

New documents from the Russian State Military Historical Archive (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv – RGVIA, Moscow, Russian Federation) from personal file («passport certificate») of Nazar Alexandrovich Karazin (1731–1783) are published in the article for the first time in a historical literature. He is a military man, an officer of the Russian Army, as well as known as the father of Vasily Nazarovich Karazin who is the founder of the Kharkov Imperial University (one of the oldest in Eastern Europe). Nazar Alexandrovich Karazin has played a significant role in the Russian-Turkish war of 1768–1774. One of the brightest episode of his military career is described in the documents that are published in the present paper. Chronological framework of these historical sources covers the period from 18 December, 1768 to 27 March, 1769. They discover the process of preparing an important mission that N. A. Karazin was responsible for in the Balkans, namely for penetrating the Ottoman Empire territory to conduct propaganda work among minded Balkan Christians and to ensure the preparation of an anti-Turkish uprising. The documents emphasize an important role of N. A. Karazin as the «agent» of Catherine the Great in the Russian-Turkish war of 1768–1774. Moreover, they give an opportunity to shed further light on the issue of the Karazin’s family ethnicity, about which long discussions are held. The corpus of documents of this article is a valuable source on the history of Russian-Turkish relations at the end of the 18th century. It also allows us to clarify and supplement the “family history” of one of the oldest Balkan families, whose representatives made a significant contribution to the development of social and cultural life of many modern European countries (Ukraine, Bulgaria, Russia, etc.).