The beginnings of foreign cultural politics in Russia. Part 2. Heinrich von Huyssen as a manager of foreign cultural policy in the Great Nordic War

The article continues the cycle author’s cycle of works in area of clarifying and researching the origins of foreign cultural policy in Russia. The author emphasizes that the implementation of his new foreign cultural policy, Peter I primarily employed well connected Europeans as experts who could refute anti-Russian writings on a journalistic level that would conceal, in the first instance, the programmatic, political character of their written rebuttals, which would appear rather as an intellectual battle endeavouring to portray the truth in the context of a conflict between educated experts. His first and longest-serving specialist in this regard was the German Heinrich von Huyssen (1666-1739), who not only appeared from 1705 onwards in the Great Nordic War (1700-1721) as a propagandist for the Russian side but also tried, in numerous writings presented in the current paper, to undertake foreign cultural policy in the sense of disseminating a postive image of Russia, its government and the Tsar. The author’s attention is focused on the personality of Heinrich von Güssen and the value of his epistolary heritage, which is cited from rarely and difficult of approach sources. The main subject of research is making of propaganda discourse at the turning point of Russian history - during the period of Peter I reign.