BALKAN REGION: FROM THE EASTERN CRISIS TO THE DECISIONS OF THE BERLIN CONGRESS OF 1878

Abstract

The article examines the foreign policy plans and activities of the major European powers in the Balkans in the 1870s of the 19th century, which were aimed at ensuring their own Balkan-Middle Eastern policy, and therefore caused the resolution of international crises in the region in the 1880s of the 19th century. It is established that in the system of international relations of the 1870s–1880s of the 19th century, the Balkan region occupied one of the central places, where the interests of the major European powers, which claimed exclusive influence in it, clashed. The Eastern Question came to the forefront of world politics - a complex of unresolved acute problems, the components of which were the national liberation movement of the Balkan, primarily Slavic, peoples, the crisis of the military-feudal Ottoman Empire, the global rivalry of the great powers for influence in South-Eastern Europe, their desire to seize the Black Sea straits and establish themselves in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is traced that not the least role in the policy of the great European powers was also played by the desire to establish their own control over the significant possessions of the Turkish Sultan in this part of Europe. It is analyzed that in the 1870s of the 19th century. new trends in the development of the Eastern Question emerged, caused by many cardinal changes in the international arena. The flames of the uprisings of 1875–1876. in Herzegovina, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro and the fire of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 destroyed the “Crimean System”. The central place in the struggle of the great powers for influence in the Balkans, in the fate of the peoples of South-Eastern Europe belonged to the Eastern Crisis of 1875–1878. It is proved that its main defining feature was the liberation of the Balkan Slavs through their armed struggle and as a result of the defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 of the Ottoman Empire. It is worth noting that in the period under study, none of the Balkan peoples had yet completed the process of consolidation and the construction of national states. The Balkan peoples strongly advocated a revision of borders, and this demand soon became the main component of the foreign policy of the great powers of Europe.