The article is devoted to the figurative and artistic representation of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877–1878 on the pages of popular Russian magazines of the 1870s «Niva» and «Pchela». Analyzing the texts of poems published in periodicals, the author examines the historical and cultural context of the formation and evolution of images of the liberation war of Russia in the Balkans. The author of the article analyzes the cultural and psychological components of the perception of the “Slavic question” in Russian society in the 1870s.