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An interest in Begriffsgeschichte in the strict sense of the word, as well as in die history of concepts in general, has only emerged in Russia in the last ten years. Both the extreme shortage of historical dictionaries and fhe lack of research on the semantics of the Russian language in the eighteenth and, in part, the nineteenth century, make it a complicated area to study.1
Slovar ' Akademii Rossiisfai, the only Russian dictionary published in the eighteenth century, does not include any of the concepts under discussion. However, the word natsiia was already known at the time, and used in its modern senses. There are tiiree mentions of natsiia in the Russian version of the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, a 1774 peace treaty between Russia and tiie Ottoman Empire. Article 3 speaks of recognition by both Russia and die Sublime Porte of the independence of the "Tatar nation" which should unite "all Tatar peoples." This statement is followed by a list of lands that Russia "cedes to die Tatars in their full, sovereign (samoderzhavnoe), and independent possession and rule." Article 9 proclaims immunity for interpreters, "no matter what nation they belong to." Finally, Article 1 1 mentions the French, English and otiier "nations," using the word as a synonym for empire or state. (Imperia and derzhava are also used in this article.)2 Thus, the word natsiia is used here primarily to denote an independent political entity or state, a person's civil allegiance, but also has an ethnic connotation.
At the very end of the 18th century, in 1797, reacting to the challenge of the French Revolution, the future tsar Alexander I wrote about his plans of "giving freedom to the country and thus preventing the possibility that Russia becomes a toy in the hands of any madmen". He believed that the best sort of revolution would be the introduction of Constitution by the legitimate power (that is autocracy), "which would seize to exist at the moment when the Constitution would be introduced and the nation (natsiia) would elect her representatives".3 Of course, such talks were limited to a very narrow circle of Alexander's closest friends.
It can be suggested that the use of the notion natsiia in the eighteenth century was mostly limited to...