The Establishment of the Eastern Agency in Istanbul as a Center for Polish Exile  Missions in the 1830s–1840s Ottoman Balkans

Aleksandar Zlatanov

Institute for Historical Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences / Department of History, Vytautas Magnus University

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  Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 221-247 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.221 

This article analyses the ideological development and political evolution of the Balkan policy pursued by Adam Jerzy Czartoryski’s Hôtel Lambert, one of the exiled political camps of the Polish Great Emigration associated with conservative-liberal and monarchist ideas. It argues that the geopolitical transformations in Eurasia of the late 1830s onwards and especially the growing strategic importance of the Ottoman Empire within the framework of the Eastern Question prompted Czartoryski and his circle in Paris to revise their earlier political assumptions and formulate a more active and systematic policy toward the Ottoman Balkans. The clearest expression of this new strategy was the establishment of the permanent Eastern Agency in Istanbul under the direction of the agent Michał Czajkowski. The article examines the circumstances of the agency’s creation, the ideological premises of its activity, and its role in implementing Hôtel Lambert’s wider political designs in the Ottoman Balkans. It further demonstrates that the agency functioned not just as an informal diplomatic outpost, but as a key center for coordinating Polish émigré missions, gathering intelligence and maintaining contacts with the primary strategic European policymakers and local political actors. At the same time, it attempted to adapt the Polish national cause to the realities of international diplomacy and revolutionary movements. The study thus situates Hôtel Lambert’s Eastern Agency existence within the broader framework of transnational exile politics and the imperial rivalry among the Great Powers in the Ottoman Balkans. It also highlights the extent to which Polish political exiles were drawn into wider diplomatic and strategic calculations, particularly in the context of anti-Russian activity and the shifting balance of power after the Second Ottoman–Egyptian Crisis.

Keywords: Hôtel Lambert, Eastern Agency, Balkan policy, Ottoman Balkans, Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Michał Czajkowski, Polish emigration, exile diplomacy

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The Influence of Adam Czartoryski’s Foreign Policy Thinking and 
Agent Network on National Movements in Serbia and Bulgaria

Katalin Schrek

University of Debrecen

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 Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 188-220 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.188

Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (1770–1861), a leading Polish political emigrant and scion of one of Poland’s foremost aristocratic families (who even held the hereditary title of prince), recognized early in the nineteenth century that the survival of Central and South­eastern Europe’s small states depended on regional cooperation, especially considering the geopolitical pressures of the Russian, Austrian, and Ottoman Empires. His view of politics was strongly influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution, his time in Russian service, and the lessons of the Polish uprising of 1830–1831. He established the Hôtel Lambert in Paris as the political and organizational center of his activity, and over the course of the 1830s and 1840s, Czartoryski built up an extensive international network, which was also very active in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan Peninsula.

The network, which consisted of political émigrés, intellectuals, former military officers, and experienced diplomats, provided support to the Balkan national movements fighting for independence. It operated mainly from Constantinople and Belgrade and sought to promote political cooperation in the Balkans. The aim was to strengthen national ideologies and weaken the influence of regional powers, most importantly the Habsburg Empire and the Russian Empire. The purpose of the efforts of Czartoryski’s network in Serbia was to stabilize and strengthen the internal political system. In Bulgaria, the network focused primarily on supporting the movement for the establishment of an independent Orthodox Church and the Uniate Church. The discussion below examines the changes in Czartoryski’s thinking about international relations and the regionally differing mechanisms of his network of agents in the Balkan Peninsula, as well as the long-term effects of the efforts of this network on Balkan national movements.

Keywords: Czartoryski agents, diplomacy, Balkan Peninsula, nineteenth century, geo­political strategy, Balkan national movements

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Lieutenant Colonel Nazar Karazin: An Adventurer in the Service of Catherine II, and the Anti-Ottoman Conspiracy in the Shadow of the Monastery Walls

Vasily B. Kashirin

Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 163-187 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.163

The eighteenth century was a “golden age” of adventurers, impostors, and mystifiers in Europe. It was also the era when the Russian Empire began an offensive policy in the Black Sea and Balkan region. It is not surprising that several extraordinary travelers and adventurers were associated with the Russian service in this area. Nazar Aleksandrovich Karazin (1731–1783) was an ethnic Bulgarian, a lieutenant colonel in the Russian service, intelligence officer, and secret emissary of Catherine II in the Danubian Principalities on the eve of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. The son of a native of the Balkans, Karazin participated in all major battles of the Russian army in the Seven Years’ War in the ranks of the multinational Serbian Hussar Regiment, and retired with the rank of second major. In early 1768, he went on a trip to Bulgaria to claim an inheritance. Traveling as a private individual in Wallachia, Karazin, posing at his own initiative as a secret emissary of the Russian Empire, established secret contacts with representatives of the Russophile party in the high boyars and clergy of the principality. Without having the authority to do so, he reached a preliminary agreement with them on joint actions against the Ottomans in the event of the outbreak of a Russo-Turkish war. Returning to Russia Karazin presented his own project for organizing an anti-Ottoman uprising in the Balkan region. Catherine II approved the project, and in February 1769, Karazin, disguised as an Orthodox monk, set out from Kyiv on a solo journey back to Bucharest. He carried printed manifestos from Catherine II to the Balkan Slavs, and a large sum of gold. Traveling alone and on foot Karazin reached Bucharest, where he reestablished contact with the anti-Ottoman party and then returned safely. In November, at his own initiative, he even occupied Bucharest with his troops. The history of his activities provides a vivid example of how a lone adventurer can exert significant individual influence on the course of a war, and how the transnational network of Orthodox Church helped these efforts.

This article draws on previously unknown documents from the collections of the Russian State Military Historical Archive, the Russian Archive of Ancient Documents, and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire.

Keywords: Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, Russian Empire, Principality of Wallachia, Catherine II, Russian intelligence, secret diplomacy

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From Documentary to Digital: The Role of the National Film Board of Canada
in Transnational Knowledge Transfer, Twentieth–Twenty-First Century

John W. Bessai

Independent scholar

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ORCID: 0009-0003-2755-6623

Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 1 (2026): 116-145 DOI 10.38145/2026.1.116

This article examines the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) as a state-supported cultural institution that enables transnational knowledge transfer through public-facing media. It traces how NFB productions circulate interpretive frames across borders and across media forms, connecting Cold War cultural diplomacy, participatory documentary practice, and twenty-first-century interactive storytelling. The analysis centers on three case studies: Neighbours (1952), Norman McLaren’s internationally circulated anti-war short aligned with postwar peace discourse; Winds of Fogo (1970), produced through the Challenge for Change milieu and linked to community development practice through the “Fogo Process”; and Circa 1948 (2014), an interactive historical project that stages memory work through navigation, interface design, and archival assemblage. Me­thodo­logically, the article uses close institutional reading and hybrid thematic analysis across film texts, production contexts, and official documentation, supported by interpretive reflection on how form shapes public engagement. The findings show that the NFB’s public-service mandate takes procedural form through circulation infra­structures, participatory address, and interface governance, while the Canadian aporetic condition remains visible in the institution’s ongoing negotiation of national authority, uneven development, and contested belonging.

Keywords: National Film Board of Canada, transnational knowledge transfer, cultural diplomacy, Challenge for Change, participatory documentary, interactive digital storytelling

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Minority Networking Behind the Iron Curtain: The Petrozavodsk Finnish Theater and Finland, 1965–1985

Simo Mikkonen & Sampo Ikonen

University of Eastern Finland

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 1 (2026): 90-115 DOI 10.38145/2026.1.90

This article examines the role of the Petrozavodsk Finnish Theater (PFT) in cultural exchanges between Finland and the Soviet Union from 1965 to 1985. As the only professional Finnish-language theater outside Finland, PFT occupied a unique position within Soviet cultural diplomacy. Despite lacking the prestige of major ensembles and the ideological weight of propaganda groups, PFT was allowed to tour Finland six times, an exceptional frequency for a Soviet troupe. These tours not only introduced Finnish audiences to a little-known minority theater but also gave PFT access to new plays, professional contacts, and opportunities to sustain Finnish-language culture in the context of Russification. Drawing on interviews, Finnish archival sources, and the diary of theater actor and cultural administrator William Hall, this article highlights both the official frameworks and the informal networks that shaped these exchanges. While the Soviet state sought to showcase its nationality policy, PFT artists used the exchanges to pursue their own goals: artistic renewal, language preservation, and community survival. This study situates PFT within the broader history of Cold War cultural diplomacy, showing how a peripheral minority institution could leverage international contacts to carve out cultural space. PFT’s story illustrates the entanglement of politics, identity, and theater across the Iron Curtain.

Keywords: cultural exchange, Cold War, minority theater, transnational networks, Karelia, Finland, Soviet Union

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Forced Knowledge Transfer: Ancient Near Eastern Studies and
German (Jewish) Displaced Scholars in Türkiye in the 1930s and 1940s

Sebastian Willert

Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 1 (2026): 58-89 DOI 10.38145/2026.1.58

In the early 1930s, the Republic of Türkiye became a significant refuge for Jewish and oppositional scholars escaping Nazi persecution in Germany. Negotiations led by German pathologist Philipp Schwartz facilitated the relocation of around 1,000 academics to Türkiye, primarily to Istanbul and Ankara. This article focuses on two displaced German (Jewish) scholars in the discipline of Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Benno Landsberger, one of the most significant figures in the field of Assyriology, was removed from his position at Leipzig University by the Nazi regime in 1935. He secured a professorship in Ankara, where he established contact with the charity organization Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland (Emergency Association for German Scholars Abroad). Landsberger played a pivotal role in mentoring refugee scholars, including his former student Fritz Rudolf Kraus, who was employed by the Turkish Ministry of Education at the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul.

This article builds on the case studies of Landsberger and Kraus to explore the dynamics of knowledge production and transfer within Türkiye, particularly in the context of the experiences and contributions of displaced scholars. It focuses on the center-periphery relations between Istanbul and Ankara, elucidating how the dichotomy between the former Imperial capital and the emerging Republican center impacted the arrival and work of refugee academics. This micro-historical approach to the presence and impact of Landsberger and Kraus in Türkiye aims to examine a pattern of mentorship and knowledge transfer, Orientalist perspectives, and their implications for work relations. It uncovers the complex interactions between local and global actors, such as charity organizations, refugees, researchers, and state institutions, amidst the contentious identity policies prevalent in the first decades of the Kemalist Republic.

Keywords: forced academic migration, knowledge transfer, ancient Near Eastern studies, Türkiye, displaced scholars

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