The article concerns the Russian policy in the Balkans on the eve of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878 and focuses on the activity of the Russian ambassador to Constantinople, Count N.P. Ignatiev, and his associate, General R.A. Fadeev, that was carried out outside the scope of the official policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A few years before the armed conflict, they proposed a plan for the destruction of Turkey in the result of a combined attack from the south (by the forces of the khedive of Egypt, Isma’il Pasha), from the Balkan Peninsula (by the uprising of Slavic peoples instigated by Russia) and, finally, by direct military operations of the Russian army from the Caucasus. It was assumed that such an attack would lead to Egypt’s independence, restoring the Slavic states in the Balkans, and establishing Russian control over the Black Sea straits and Constantinople. This adventurous project was not entirely viable, since it neglected the international context. However, some its elements were implemented during the uprising in the Balkans that started in 1875, when Russia helped the Bulgarians and Serbs, and, finally, certain ideas of the Ignatiev–Fadeev plan were reflected in the content of the preliminary San Stefano Peace Treaty. But the most important was that Saint Petersburg simultaneously followed two different directions in its policy – the Ignatiev–Fadeev plan, worked out to resolve the Balkan problems between Russia and Turkey, “one on one”, and the official policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headed by Prince A.M. Gorchakov, who relied on the decisions of the “concert of powers”. This ambivalence was evident at various levels, including Alexander II’s decisions. It predetermined the considerable differences between the terms of the San Stefano Peace Treaty and the 1878 Berlin Congress. Such a split of Saint Petersburg’s foreign policy resulted in a decline in the role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the global stage. This decline further evolved and affected the situation in the 1880–1890s.

The article covers the history of K.F. Golovin's salon, which was held from the second half of the 1880s until the death of its host in 1913. The salon occupied a prominent place among other similar informal gatherings (V.P. Meshchersky's, E.V. Bogdanovich's salons) which influenced the formation of the contemporaneous government policy. Grown out of the “Ellipsis”, an informal circle of economists discussing the agrarian and economic problems of Russia, the salon gradually expanded the range of topics to include questions of the political structure of the empire. The article shows the importance of the salon as an unofficial politicized institution prior to the First Russian Revolution, when its activities to some extent compensated the lack of political freedoms. K.F. Golovin's Wednesday coterie was attended both by public figures of the right wing and middle-ranking officials. In some cases, certain agricultural policy measures (V.I. Kovalevsky, the Commission on the Impoverishment of the Central Provinces), which were later implemented, were tested there. K.F. Golovin's salon played a prominent role in the discussion of the drafts aiming to change the political system in 1905, especially concerning the establishment of the State Duma, and namely, the question of the form of popular representation and the electoral law (a mixed electoral college, the forming of the workers' curia, etc.). In parallel K.F. Golovin and the regular visitors of his “Wednesdays” took an active part in the attempts to unite the moderate-right and create a political party on this basis. These attempts continued to be made until 1912, but ended in failure. The history of the salon also shows the importance which unofficial right-wing thought had, first and foremost, for the authorities: public figures often offered better recipes for solving complex problems, while the ban on political activity created a deficit of government support from loyalist citizens, a deficit which could not be covered by the activity of the bureaucratic apparatus. The Wednesday salons were part of those complex mechanisms which tied the promonarchist public and the authorities. However, by the early 20th century they had clearly become insufficient.