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the Baltic and Azov fleets until 1724. In 1725,
shortly before PETER I the Great's death, he was
appointed commander of the First Kamchatka
Expedition (1725-30), whose secret mission was
to discover whether Siberia was joined to North
America. In July 1728, the vessel Saint Gavriil
sailed under Bering's command from the Kam-
chatka peninsula, in a northeastern direction.
The expedition established that a strait divided
the two continents and gathered important infor-
mation about eastern Siberia. Ironically, this
question had already been answered in 1648 by
Semyon DEZHNEV , a Cossack, who had sailed from
the mouth of the Kolyma River on the Arctic
around northeastern Siberia, and through the
strait that now carries Bering's name. His report,
however, lay unread in a Siberian archive until
1736. In 1733, a second Kamchatka expedition
was formed, again under Bering's leadership. Its
mission was broader. In addition to the vexing
question of the link between Asia and North
America, its members were to map the Arctic
Ocean coastline, study the region of the Far East
and the northern Pacific, and sail to Japan from
Kamchatka. After unusual delays in preparing
the expedition, the Saint Peter, commanded by
Bering, and the Saint Paul, commanded by his
assistant Chirikov, left the port of Okhotsk toward
Kamchatka in September 1740, where Bering
founded the town of Petropavlovsk-on-Kam-
chatka. After wintering in the region, the ships
set sail again toward the east, but on June 20,
1741, they lost contact with each other. On July
16, one and a half days after Chirikov, Bering
reached the coast of ALASKA . On the return trip
he discovered the Shumaginskii islands and part
of the Aleutians. After a difficult journey home,
the Saint Peter did not reach Kamchatka but
instead sailed toward what is now Bering Island,
where the expedition planned to winter. Already
in very poor physical condition, Bering died on
the island.
major setback for Russian diplomacy. The Con-
gress of Berlin was convened to revise the Treaty
of SAN STEFANO , which had ended the R USSO -
T URKISH W AR OF 1877-78 but aroused concerns
among European powers about its provisions.
With the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck
acting as its chairman and attended by senior
European statesmen such as British prime min-
ister Benjamin Disraeli, the congress met from
June 13 to July 13, 1878. Russia was repre-
sented by its long-standing foreign minister,
Aleksandr GORCHAKOV , by then almost 80 years
old. Negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Berlin,
signed on August 24, 1878, which maintained a
few of the provisions of the Treaty of San Ste-
fano but altered it in several important ways.
Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania retained the
independence from the Ottoman Empire that
had been previously awarded to them. Russia
was allowed to keep the territories it had gained
in the Caucasus, as well as southern Bessarabia.
On the other hand, the borders of the new state
of Bulgaria were drastically reduced. The Bulgar-
ian territories located north of the Balkan Moun-
tains, roughly one-third of the Bulgarian state
created at San Stefano, became an autonomous
state. The territory known as Eastern Rumelia,
located to the south of the Balkan Mountains,
remained under Ottoman rule, albeit under a
special status, until 1885, when it was added to
the autonomous Bulgarian lands to create a new
independent Bulgaria. The Macedonian lands
granted to Bulgaria at San Stefano remained
under Turkish rule and would become a source
of contention during the Balkan wars of the
early 20th century as the Ottoman Empire fur-
ther disintegrated. The Congress of Berlin also
ratified Austria-Hungary's occupation of Bosnia-
Herzegovina, without giving it the right to annex
the former Ottoman province.
Bezborodko, Aleksandr Andreevich
(1747-1799)
statesman
Of Ukrainian Cossack background, Bezborodko
became an influential official and diplomat
Berlin, Congress of (1878)
An international meeting held in the German
capital in June-July 1878 that is regarded as a
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