The medieval world, which saw this life as merely a preparation for the day of judgement and the life to come, was drained of its psychological imperative. All this change – a fundamental shift in Western civilisation – was taking place in a Europe that had little contact with Russia. Even the connection to Constantinople had been broken, when the Byzantine world was swept away by the Ottomans.
From 1547 on, the Russians would be ruled by a Czar who had absolute secular and spiritual power. And all the while the country would remain in isolation. Decisive developments in European history – from the Magna Carta (the first guarantee of civil rights), to the Renaissance and the Reformation (which saw the Protestants split from the Roman Catholic church),43 would see no echo in Russia.
However, when Europe tore itself apart in the brutal, mainly religious Thirty Years War (1618-1648), this had been preceded in Russia during the reign of Feodor I (Ivan the Terrible’s son) by the ‘Time of Troubles’ (1606-1613). The latter witnessed a similarly widespread catastrophe to that which would affect central Europe.Though indicatively it was not prompted by religions division. A corrupt Czardom and ineffective administration was tipped into anarchy following the cold summers of 1601-1603, when ruined crops unleashed famine and uprisings.
In the West, Polish-Lithuanian forces took advantage of this chaos to invade Russia, even taking Moscow in 1610. But, as Napoleon and Hitler would later discover, reaching Moscow was no guarantee of victory over Russia. The wooden city was set on fire, and a patriotic, largely ‘volunteer’ army forced the invaders to withdraw in 1612.
These volunteers would not have volunteered of their own accord; they would largely have consisted of serfs, who had been ‘volunteered’ by their feudal owners. Serfdom in Russia meant that the landed gentry legally owned the peasants who worked on their land. Serfdom had largely died out in western Europe with the collapse of the feudal system, which never fully recovered after the Black Death. In Russia, serfdom would not be abolished until 1861 (i.e. four years before slavery was abolished in the Deep South of the United States). Following the chaos of the ‘Time of Troubles’, in 1613 an assembly of feudal lords voted for the installation of a new dynasty of Czars – namely, the Romanovs. The first of the new line of Romanov Czars would be Michael I, whose grandfather had been adviser to Ivan the Terrible, as well as being a brother of his first wife, the Czarina Anastasia.
It was during the rule of Michael I that Russia began its more lasting expansion beyond the Urals into Siberia. By 1639, Russian explorers had reached the Pacific Ocean, with a settlement being established in 1647 at Okhotsk, which lies some 1,200 miles north of modern-day Vladivostok. (An indication of the sheer scale of Russia can be seen from the fact that Okhotsk is 3,500 miles east of Moscow, with the easternmost point of Russia being a further 1,500 miles away.)
The Khanate of Sibir, a region of indigenous tribes and diverse Muslim peoples had officially been a vassal state of Russia since 1555. Yet not until the following century would the region known as Siberia become part of the Russian Empire. Cossacks defeated the local tribes, establishing forts. The Russian state then collected taxes from the subdued tribespeople, allegedly in exchange for protection from their long-term enemies – further tribespeople who had not yet been subdued. Meanwhile other Cossacks conducted expeditions to collect the fur of sables, foxes and ermines, which fetched a high price in western Russia and even more in the markets of western Europe.
The furthest north-eastern regions of Siberia were occupied by tribes of the Koryak people and the Chutki, many of whom had been isolated from outer contact since Stone Age times. The fierce climate had ensured that these remote nomadic peoples remained at a stage of development that had vanished from Europe around 4,000 years previously. Siberia became Russia’s "Wild East’, which existed as such some two centuries prior to the American "Wild West’. But whereas the latter consisted of expansive plains and would be settled by pioneer farmers and "cowboys’, the very different terrain of forests and tundra in the Wild East was settled mainly by escaped prisoners, fugitive serfs and "Old Believers’.
These last were Orthodox Christians, who rejected the reforms introduced in an attempt to align the Russian Orthodox Church more closely with its Greek Orthodox parent. These liturgical and ritual reforms had been instigated in 1666–67 by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow, under the auspices of Czar Alexis, the son of Michael I. From this time on, all who clung to the ancient rites were anathematised, or placed under the curse of God. This meant that they could only continue to practise their faith in regions beyond European Russia and the Urals.
Owing to the nature of Siberia and the spread of its new inhabitants, even its remotest outposts were viewed as part of an expanding Russian Empire, rather than as distinct colonies. This eastward expansion continued to such an extent that just 100 years after the reaching of the Pacific, the Danish explorer Vitus Bering, in the employ of the Russian navy, ventured into the strait named after him. From here he spotted the distant shoreline of continental America, making landfall and claiming the territory in the name of the Czar. Trappers and hunters would soon follow, establishing themselves in Alaska and eventually pushing many hundreds of miles down the archipelago of the western American seaboard.
The liturgical reforms of 1666–67 were a rare attempt to unify Russia with its European neighbours. Unfortunately, this unity was achieved with the Orthodox religion, which now flourished only in the more backward parts of southern Europe, as well as the Levant and beyond. These areas had been barely touched by the great developments taking place in northern and western Europe, such as the Renaissance and the Reformation. Just a year after the Russians implemented their religious reforms, the disastrous Thirty Years War that had devastated western central Europe came to an end. But with the cessation of hostilities came a transformation of Western political thought, which remains to this day.
The 1668 Treaty of Westphalia laid the foundations of international politics. It established the idea of national self-determination, the sovereignty of the state, and decreed against any involvement in national affairs by neighbouring states. Nations existing side by side with different customs, culture, religion or race were not to interfere with each other, no matter how antithetical such practices might be.
As far as European nations have been concerned, this principle may have been honoured as much in the breach as in the observance over the centuries since 1668. However, the seed was sown. The prolonged preliminary negotiations for the Treaty of Westphalia were attended, on and off, by 194 different states (many little more than German family dukedoms). All signed up to the new order, which has remained central to international law. Ironically, although the European powers would practise no such observance in the establishment of their world-wide empires, this principle would be a major argument for the peoples seeking liberation from these empires, and especially in the creation of the United Nations.
In the immediate aftermath of the Treaty of Westphalia, Switzerland would be granted freedom from Austria, and the Netherlands from Spain. Russia did not attend these negotiations, and indeed throughout its long history the policy of the Russian Empire – in its various forms – has seldom paid regard to this notion of national self-determination. Further irony emerges in the fact that during this very period Russia would be ruled by Peter the Great, the Czar who did his utmost to drag Russia into the European sphere of enlightenment and modernity. His forty-three-year rule, from 1672 until 1725, would transform the country from a state of historical stasis into a major European power and participant in the continent’s affairs.
From the outset, Peter was different. His father, Alexis I, ensured that he had the best available education. This involved being taught by a variety of tutors, including an aristocratic Scottish soldier of fortune, who believed in "making outdoor games with live ammunition’. At the age of ten, Peter was chosen to be Czar by the Boyar Duma (a council of noblemen). After a period of family squabbles, Peter finally becam
e a fully independent ruler at the age of twenty-two. By now he had sprouted to the exceptional height of six foot eight inches, but his frame was weak and he suffered from facial tics.
Even at this early age, Peter already had in mind a grand plan for Russia. This can be summed up in one word: Reform. He wished to transform the country from top to bottom, turning Russia into a state on the European model. His reign started with an edict banning beards and robes from his court, commanding that European dress would be worn from now onwards.
The young new Czar Peter then set off with a large delegation to form alliances with European monarchs and discover for himself how the modern world worked. He insisted upon travelling incognito, but this soon descended into farce owing to his towering height and his outrage when members of his delegation omitted to treat him with the exaggerated deference expected of all citizens in the presence of the Czar. Peter’s extended tour of Europe included longer stays in France, England and Holland, where he observed and learned a great deal regarding the achievements of Western civilisation. Europe was entering the Age of the Enlightenment, which placed a premium on rational thought and scientific advancement – a total contrast to the mystical thought so prevalent in Russia.
This early Russian incursion into Europe would also bring lasting diplomatic results. Eventually treaties would be signed with Venice and the Holy Roman Empire, which guarded Russia’s southern flanks from the Ottoman Empire; and a treaty with Denmark opened the way to the Baltic without Swedish interference. The latter would result in Peter’s greatest undertaking, the building of St Petersburg. This would guarantee Russia a port giving access to Europe for almost the entire year. Its only other northern port, Archangel, was iced up for months on end during the long winters.
Although this new city was named in honour of Peter’s patron saint, indicatively it was given the German suffix ‘burg’. In the new Czar’s eyes, Germany stood for all things modern. Swiss, French and Scots architects were imported, and a vast army of peasants was press-ganged in from all over the country.These drained the marches and constructed the grand buildings that lined the grid of canals on Vasilyevsky island, the central island at the mouth of the Neva. The project had been started in 1703, when the Swedes had been driven from their fortress at the mouth of the Neva, and in 1712 Peter the Great (as he was now becoming known) transferred the capital to St Petersburg. During the course of building the city, many tens of thousands of peasants would lose their lives.
Peter the Great would officially declare Russia to be an empire in 1721, by which stage its territory stretched from Finland to the Pacific, and as far south as the Sea of Azov and the northern shores of the Caspian. Only during the following century would the empire gradually expand south and east into central Asia, which would become known as Russian Turkestan (modern Kazakhstan and its Turkic neighbours).
Peter the Great ensured his own survival and that of his Europeanisation programme by curtailing the strong influence of the powerful pro-Slavic Boyars. Amongst other measures, he imposed a prohibitive tax on their beards, which the Boyars regarded as a measure of their rank (junior ranks were only permitted moustaches). By the time Peter III became Czar in 1762, Europeanisation amongst the Russian ruling family had reached extreme limits.
The man who became Peter III was the son of Peter the Great’s elder surviving daughter, and he was born in Kiel as Karl Peter Ulrich von Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp. His wife was the even more Germanic, Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst. Peter III could barely put a sentence together in Russian, which hardly endeared him to his subjects. However, he proved even more unpopular with his wife, who had him assassinated six months into his reign. Whereupon she herself became Empress of Russia, which she ruled for thirty-four years, becoming known as Catherine the Great.
From the outset, Catherine was determined to follow in the footsteps of Peter the Great. She started by reforming the administration and ordered the building of new cities. Her court would attract European intellectuals of the highest calibre, epitomised by the Swiss Leonhard Euler, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Her reign also enabled homegrown talent to flourish, especially the ‘father of Russian Science’, Mikhail Lomonosov, who was a remarkable polymath. Not only did he write original poetry, but he also made important discoveries in both chemistry and astronomy. It was during Catherine’s reign that Russia extended its empire along the shores of the Black Sea, and south along the western seaboard of North America.
By now it was clear that Russia was emerging as a major player on the European scene. So much so that it would attract the attention of Napoleon. Having conquered most of Europe, in 1812 Napoleon launched his revolutionary army on a drive towards Moscow, which he duly captured. But the greatest military tactician of his age had overlooked three basic facts concerning the Russian Empire: its huge expanse, its vast population and its bitter climate. Once again, the inhabitants of Moscow set fire to their wooden city and withdrew to the hinterland, leaving Napoleon to face the Russian winter amidst the ruins. Napoleon was forced to order a withdrawal. His retreat from Moscow back across Europe was to be one of the most bitter defeats in European history, costing the lives of anything up to 380,000 men.
Following Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the Russian Czar Alexander I was invited, along with other European statesmen, to the Congress of Vienna. Beside figures of the stature of Metternich, Wellington and Talleyrand, Alexander I sought to shape the future of Europe through the coming century. This was the first time in history that leaders from throughout Europe had met to make such momentous decisions. Where Alexander I was concerned, the Congress of Vienna was a huge success. He managed to gain control of Poland, at the same time ensuring peaceful coexistence in Europe. He also signed a Holy Alliance, a coalition of monarchist powers intended to crush secularist republicanism and revolution. Having begun his reign as a liberal, Alexander I had by now developed into a reactionary nationalist tyrant.
By this period the upper classes in Russia had become completely Europeanised) as described by Tolstoy in War and Peace. Yet the serfs, though granted their ‘liberation’) remained members of a huge downtrodden Slavic underclass. These were the lumpenproletariat, described by Marx as ‘owning nothing but their labour’. Here we see the opening words of Tolstoy’s other great novel, Anna Karenina, applied on a continental scale: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ This ‘unhappiness’ in Europe remained more or less contained ‘in its own way’, with cycles of alternating liberation and repression. On the other hand, the Russian way involved ever-increasing autocratic rule, which began transforming Siberia into a vast penal colony, and ensured that no Bohemian or intellectual community in the great cities of Europe was without its cadre of exiled Russian revolutionaries.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the balance of powers in Europe was assured. It was built on the blueprint set out by the Treaty of Westphalia, with foundations laid down by the Congress of Vienna, and rising on bricks and mortar through the nineteenth century in a series of interlocking treaties. However, all it took was the removal of one brick for the entire house to come tumbling down. This might have resulted in just another self-destructive European war. However, by now the European empires spanned the globe, while the scientific and industrial revolutions had enabled the construction of a monstrous military machine. This meant that instead of a European civil war, like the Thirty Years War, or to a large extent the Napoleonic Wars, by 1914 humanity found itself capable of launching a World War.
By 1917 the Russian army was in a state of collapse, as was the country it was meant to be defending. In March 1917, the weak and unpopular Czar Nicholas II was forced to resign in favour of a Provisional Government. The Germans shipped the exiled Bolshevik revolutionary Lenin back to Russia, in the hope that he would foment a situation that resulted in a Russian surrender. This did take place, but prior to it Lenin had outwitted his political opponents
– a majority who ranged from social democrats to fellow revolutionaries – and staged a Bolshevik Revolution. Lenin took charge of the new Revolution, proclaiming a deceptive blend of Marxist, Communist and his own ideas.
A civil war ensued, between the Reds (under Lenin, but led by his henchman, Trotsky) and the Whites (ranging from Czarists to democrats to anarchists, supported by opportunistic invasions by British and American expeditionary forces). Five years later, the Reds emerged victorious, and Lenin decreed that Russia was now the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This proved to be neither a union, nor socialist, nor ruled by soviets (workers’ committees), or a republic. Instead it was a re-emergence of the Russian Empire in a different guise.
The country was now subject to autocratic rule by a pseudo-Czar – devoid of familial, or indeed any recognised form, of succession. In this, it has been compared variously to the Papacy or a mafia family – where a leader ‘emerges’. Just over a year after the civil war ended, Lenin died. Whereupon his expected successor Trotsky fled for his life, and a Georgian named Stalin, who really had been a gangster (and a trainee priest), ‘emerged’ as leader.
Surprisingly, there was a genuine ideological clash behind this seizure of power. Trotsky subscribed to Marx’s slogan, ‘Workers of the World Unite’, and wished to spread the communist revolution across the globe. Stalin, on the other hand, wished to consolidate ‘communism in one country’. Only then would he launch the ‘historical inevitability’ of communism superseding the various forms of capitalism that had evolved in the ‘free world’.
Empire Page 17
