V. I. Lamansky and Eurasianism: "Columbus" of the "Continent of Eurasia"

P. N. Savitsky compared the "discovery of Eurasia" (as the middle place of the Old World) with the discovery of America and pointed out that it was made by the Russian geographer and Slavist V. I. Lamansky. This article is devoted to clarifying the relationship between Lamansky's views on the middle world of "Greater Eurasia" and the views of Eurasians about "Eurasia". Lamansky's "middle World" was wider than Savitsky's "Eurasia" and included the lands of Yugoslavia, Greece, Syria and European Turkey. In his "construction", Lamansky applied two criteria - kinship-linguistic and religious. However, the political practice of the late XIX and early XX centuries convincingly showed the fallacy of the doctrine of pan-Slavism. Bulgaria's turn towards Germany and Greece towards England dispelled the pan-Slavic illusions. The Eurasians, constructing their "middle world" - Eurasia, proposed other criteria - geographical and the factor of "common historical destiny", which determined other borders. The methodological basis for the Eurasians was "ontological structuralism", in which a complex, structural unity was put in place of the unity of the "generic", based on a common origin.