CROATIAN TRAVELERS IN MOSCOW: FROM THE "THIRD ROME" (CITY AS TEMPLE) TO THE CENTER OF THE "THIRD INTERNATIONAL" (CITY AS STAGE)

CROATIAN TRAVELERS IN MOSCOW: FROM THE "THIRD ROME" (CITY AS TEMPLE) TO THE CENTER OF THE "THIRD INTERNATIONAL" (CITY AS STAGE) The city, viewed as a semiotic whole, embodies controversies: it is a mechanism constantly reproducing its own past, but also a story that is ageing using all its pasts. In this article it is argued that the controversy is apparent in the texts written by various Croatian travelers about the Russian "urban village". In this context it is interesting to note that the idea of Moscow as a big village in the writings of Croatian travelers appears long after the establishment of Saint Petersburg (in the writings of Franjo Racki and Vatroslav Jagic dating from the last decades of the 19th century) - the time of rapid urbanization around the world. In addition, the mentioned stereotype is observable not only in the writings of 17th- and late 19th-century travelers, but also in 20th-century writings by Krleza and Cesarec, where it arises and develops by way of allusions to two seemingly opposite ideas-that of the "Third Rome" and the center of the "Third International".