چکیده:
The article deals with the problem of gaining independence of the principality of Serbia in the Russian-Turkish war 1877-1878. In modern literature the war between the Russian empire and its allied Balkan states, on the one hand, and the Ottoman Empire, on the other, is viewed from the point of view of the main participants. It was the war caused by the rise of the national identity of the Christian citizens of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. Brutality, the April Uprising of 1876 in Bulgaria was suppressed with, caused sympathy for the position of Ottoman Christians in Russia and became a trigger for glorious pages of the young states’ Balkan history. The article considers the events with the Serbian participation in the liberation war through the pages of the Russian press. It describes all the vicissitudes of gaining Serbia’s independence from the Ottoman rule
خلاصه ماشینی:
km, which were quite modest compared with the increase in Montenegro, which received the neighboring regions almost equal to it in size and access to the Adriatic Sea, and, most importantly, Bulgaria, the territory of which stretched from the Danube to the Aegean coast and the Albanian mountains; the Bulgarian principality was even given a part of the lands Serbia claimed to (liberated by the Serbian forces of Ak-Palanka, Pirot and Vranje).
Realizing the impossibility of implementing this plan due to the evident resistance of Austria-Hungary at the Berlin Congress, contemporaries indicated the possibility of preserving the Russian influence in Belgrade, since it would have remained "a pleasant memory in the Serbian minds and tied them to Russia as to their benevolent benefactor for a long time" (Moscow Gazette, 1878).
The only explanation contemporaries could find out was that Russia was guided primarily by its geopolitical interests in the process of post-war settlement: according to the terms of the Reichstadt Treaty, "everything Bulgarian" was assumed to be to some extent "Russian", while "everything Serbian" fell in the sphere of Austria-Hungary influence.
In this regard, Russian diplomacy set a task to guarantee "perhaps, broad borders and independence of the Bulgarian principality created by the war", while Serbia was considered to be "the territory of the Austrian influence and even opposed Serbia's aspirations to attach the south-eastern regions conquered by the Serbian forces during the last war.
Russian contemporaries considered the fact of the "incremental increase of Serbia" according to the Berlin treaty as "a mistake we made" and pointed out "the willingness of the hostile countries to take advantage of it" (Herald of Europe, 1885).