Beyond ‘Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment’. Greek intellectuals between the Ionian Islands, Italy and Russia (1800-1830)
Beyond ‘Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment’. Greek intellectuals between the Ionian Islands, Italy and Russia (1800-1830)

Summary/Abstract: Police accounts from the Austrian Veneto, especially of the decade 1817-1827, reported that there existed in Italy a certain network of individuals, so-called “Greco- Russians”, who were serving, officially or unofficially, tsarist interests. Men like Giorgio Mocenigo, Spiridione Naranzi, Andrea Mustoxidi, Bishop Ingnatius, Demetrios Mostras and, above all, Ioannis Kapodistrias, were, for that reason, considered suspect, and their actions were carefully followed and reported. These police accounts reflected, of course, Austria’s preoccupation with the increasing political infiltration of Russia in the Italian and Balkan peninsulas. That is why they were usually conspiratorial in tone and often exaggerated. Nonetheless, their authors were right in one thing: that there was indeed an unofficial axis between Italy and Russia, a political, diplomatic and above all an ideological space, which connected the lives, as well as the professional and intellectual careers, of certain individuals of Greek origin. The node for the creation of this axis was the Russian protectorate of the Ionian Islands (1800-1807). It was there that a certain group of individuals, Greeks who were formerly or subsequently connected to Italy, first entered into contact with each other and with the Russian administration. Actually, the conditions for the creation of the axis were set with the end of the protectorate: the Treaty of Tilsit (1807), which made the Ionian Islands a province of imperial France, practically obliged many of the Ionians who were formerly associated to the Russian regime to pursue their careers abroad. The most promising place for such a thing was the tsarist court and its extensive international diplomatic service. In this sense, then, the ‘Italy-Russia axis’ passed undoubtedly from the Ionian Islands.

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