Russia and the Low Countries

“2003 – the year of St. Petersburg’s 300th anniversary – made many a historian and Slavic scholar in the Low Countries aware of the fact that there is yet a lot of work to do concerning the relations between Russia and the Netherlands. Many areas in the historiography of the relations between our regions and Russia still remain unreclaimed. The Dutch-Russian Archive Centre in Groningen has taken the initiative to give future researchers the necessary tool.

In the meantime, Werner Scheltjens’ Bibliography of Dutch literature in Russian translation appeared (St. Petersburg, Aleteja, 2003), a complete and thoroughly indexed bibliography of everything translated from Dutch into Russian – in book form and in periodicals. By thetime of the grand jubilee of the city St. Petersburg, the Russian Bibliography about the Netherlands and Russian-Dutch Relations 1700-2000 was published by myself and Hans van Koningsbrugge, the driving force behind the NRAC. Through detailed indexes the user can rapidly find information about what has been published in Russia on any subject concerning Russian-Dutch relations and on the Netherlands as a whole (history, politics, language, literature, culture).

With this publication by Roger Tavernier, we bring you the counterpart of that bibliography: everything that has been published in the West – except from Russia – about the relations between the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) and Russia – in every Western language. Throughout 2006, we hope to publish the analytical bibliography about the Great Embassy of Dmitri Gouzévitch (Paris).

We thus hand future historians, bibliographers, philologists and slavic scholars a tool to find the necessary information about any subject concerning the relations between our countries.”

ILLUSTRATIONS XIII

PREFACE XV

INTRODUCTION 1

I. COLLECTED ESSAYS 7

II. BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CATALOGUES, ARCHIVES, PRINTING AND BOOKSELLING 27

III. RUSSIANS IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. DUTCHMEN AND BELGIANS IN RUSSIA. EMIGRATION 39

IV. PRO & CONTRA 63

V. NAVIGATION. THE NORTH EAST PASSAGE. POLAR EXPEDITIONS 69

VI. CARTOGRAPHY OF RUSSIA 93

VII. TRAVEL ACCOUNTS 103

VIII. PEOPLES OF RUSSIA 141

IX. HISTORY 147