The article deals with the main themes, subjects and images, that formed over the decades the problematics of the Balkan question in the interpretation of Russian pre-revolutionary journal satire. The traditions and novations in Russian satirical drawings that created the images of Turkey, it’s repressive politics in the Balkans and the images of Balkan peoples in their struggle for national liberation are analyzed on the historic material of two acute Balkan crises (1875–1878 and 1912–1913).

The article deals with the analysis of the satirical images of Turkey in Russian satirical journals at the beginning of the XXth century, in the epoch when the Romanovs and Ottoman empires suffered of the acute social and political crises connected with the process of rapid state modernization. On the base of narrative and visual sources of the leading satirical magazines of that time the author discovers an interesting phenomenon: Russian satirical journalist’s criticism on the “Ottoman renewal” became a kind of mirror for the perception and estimation of the entire situation in Russian empire on the eve of the century of wars and revolutions. The “gender” images in the satirical interpretation of Turkey in this context demonstrate an “orientalist” specificity of the critical rhetorics in the address of the “Southern neighbor”.

This work deals with contemporary historiographic rethinking (both in Russia and abroad) of the cultural context of war-revolutionary crises in Russia, 1917–1922. This problematic field helps to shape the answer to the main question of the topic: why did the “red project” turned out to be more successful, than the “white” one, and what was the role of cultural factors, demands and collisions in this process. The crush of traditional values system; formation of Bolshevik’s new sacrality; reality and utopia of democratic alternative in Russian revolution; the causes of weakness of the liberal politics; conspirology and mythology of Bolshevik’s upheaval; the discussion on the cultural essence of Bolshevism; mutual responsibility of society towards culture and culture towards society in the turning moment of Russian history – these are the main topics of the world’s historical science of this problematic sphere.

On the basis of analysis of the Russian satirical journals complex of 1917–1918 the article deals with the research of the formation and change of the images of the Orient in Russian public opinion and press in the period of Great Revolution and the beginning of the Civil War. The author proves the ambivalent attitude of Russian satirical journalists to the image of Turkey (hatred/empathy) as a satirical object. The context of such an attitude is common military, political and geopolitical situation of the epoch – the crash of old imperial regimes as a result of the Great War and revolutions.

The article is based on the analysis of Russian satiric journals (“Novyj Satiricon”, “Pugach”, “Bich”, “Strekoza”, etc.), of their public position and political esteems of the revolutionary crisis in Russia. The central point of the study – the feminine images of the triad “Russia – Revolution – Liberty” as metaphors of the revolutionary changers. The research attests: Rus-sian political satire of the epoch in its main genres is a very valuable historical source because it demonstrates in a form of the images a way to appropriate by the society the experience of revolutionary changes and so provides a researcher with the instrument to penetrate the struc-tures of everyday life in times of revolutionary crisis of 1917–1918.