Kurd von Schlezer. Personal correspondence from St. Petersburg 1857-1862

This edition presents a translation from the German language into Russian personal correspondence of the Prussian diplomat and historian Kurds von Schlezer for the period from 1857 to 1862, when he fulfilled the position of secretary of the Prussian royal diplomatic mission in St. Petersburg. This interesting source was first published in German in Germany in 1921, but until now it remained almost unexplored both in German and Russian historiography. In terms of information content, his letters are comparable to the St. Petersburg correspondence of Otto von Bismarck, and in some cases even more substantial. They transmit interesting information about the international situation of the Russian Empire, the abolition of serfdom and railway construction in Russia, the prospect of domestic political transformations in general. An important information of the Prussian diplomat reports on Russian statesmen and the Russian elite, the German world of the Russian capital of that time. The translation of the St. Petersburg correspondence of the Schles is accompanied by footnotes, notes, a pointer of the name, the indicator of geographical names, and the topographic pointer in St. Petersburg