Russia

by Philip Longworth

  In 1720 a group of over 100 Yaik Cossacks and Russians taking salt and fish to market on the Volga was intercepted by a much larger raiding party. A Cossack called Mikhail Andreyev was among those taken. He managed to escape, taking two horses with him, but then fell foul of a small group of rampaging Bashkirs, who kept him for two months trying to sell him. Fortunately for him a Russian tribute-collector came to his rescue, ransoming him for a silver-trimmed bridle, a pair of boots and a fur hat. 10 The ever lurking presence of such steppe bandits, who sometimes rode in large parties, constituted a serious deterrent to commercial investment in the oriental trade overland.

  The arrival of the Jungarian Kalmyks posed a problem, for they mounted raids into the province of Kazan. So did the Kazakhs, who blocked Russian approaches to Sinkiang and Mongolia. The fact that the Bashkirs, despite their nominal subjection to Russia, threw off their traces from time to time and went on wild, destructive rampages compounded the problem of order on the steppe. It was to contain the threat of the Kazakhs and Kalmyks in particular that Peter ordered the construction of a defensive line in southern Siberia east of the Iaik (Ural) river. This so-called Orenburg Line, begun in 1716, consisted of forts interspersed with redoubts, with beacons at regular intervals which were to be lit to give warning of approaching raiders. 11 These forts became information gathering points concerned with the movement and mood of steppe peoples not only locally but over all inner Asia. The security of the caravan route to China became important from 1719, after a splendid embassy led by Lev Izmailov with attendant gentlemen and secretaries and a cohort of interpreters, clerks, valets and footmen, besides an escort of smart dragoons, a military band and a Scottish doctor, 12 made its way to Beijing to gain some valuable commercial concessions. These advantages were to be reinforced eight years later when China agreed to accept triennial Russian caravans of up to 200 traders and to pay their expenses during their stay. 13Yet Peter seems to have been more interested in trade with Persia and India than with China.

  Peter’s instructions to Artamon Volynskii, whom he had appointed envoy to Persia in 1715, suggest as much. They focused particularly on Persia’s trade and its communications with India. At the same time, watchful Russian eyes were trained on the Caucasus. Peter had in mind the creation of an emporium somewhere in this mountainous and treacherous region to serve as Russia’s base for trade with Persia, India and beyond. And in 1721 an opportunity arose when the chief of the Lezghians asked for Russian support against Persia. Peter decided not to let the opportunity slip, and ordered substantial forces to muster at Astrakhan the following spring. At that point it was learned that the Afghans had also rebelled against the Shah. When the Safavid dynasty crumbled, Russian intervention became urgent, since the crisis in Persia would certainly bring the Turks in to exploit it. Peter himself travelled with the expedition to the Caspian.

  The coastal town of Derbent surrendered without a fight, but Baku resisted and Peter turned back. At one point on this expedition an officer suggested to him that it would be much easier, and cheaper, to get to India via the river system of Siberia and the Pacific. Peter replied that the distance was too great. Then, pointing south towards Astrabad in the southeastern corner of the Caspian, he remarked that from Astrabad ‘to Balkh and Badakshan with pack camels takes only twelve days. On that road to India no one can interfere with us.’ 14 In this Peter revealed his chief motive in going to war with Persia — a war which would continue until 1735.

  Meanwhile Russia involved itself in the politics of the Central Asian steppe. In 1723 the Kalmyks began to move into the valley of the Syr-Darya and towards Tashkent, forcing the Kazakhs west and north, and in 1725 some Kazakhs approached the Russian government with a request to be taken under its protection. The Russians set out to gain control of the northern part of the desert steppe, in order both to protect west Siberia and to trade with the Kazakhs. Mutual need promoted co-operation, but Russia soon became the dominant partner — thanks to its trading position rather than force. Thereafter it was to be a matter of negotiating and renegotiating terms as the local situation and the aims of Russian strategy changed. Before long Kazakhs were helping to guard the Orenburg area, which soon became a focus for Kazakh trade. Thenceforth St Petersburg was able to control the Kazakhs by offering economic incentives and controlling the prices of the goods they needed and wanted to sell. 15 On the Central Asian front ambition might have exceeded capability in the short term, but Peter’s aims were to be pursued with vigour in the two decades following his death in 1725.

  Peter’s preference for a Persian road to India and his preoccupation with the Swedish war had led to his neglecting Siberian affairs. In 1708 Siberia had become a province (guberniia), one of eight into which Peter divided his realm, but it was so vast and had such difficulties of communication that it had to be divided into five only slightly more manageable districts. Three years later all Siberia was put in the charge of the experienced Prince Matvei Gagarin, who had headed the central government’s Siberian Department and was now allowed to continue in that office. The arrangement left lines of responsibility unclear, and gave him far too much power. The door to corruption was left open, and Gagarin strode happily through it. In particular he defrauded the government by breaching its China trade monopoly, selling permits to merchants and his own goods to the Chinese, representing them as the state’s. So far from being exclusive, the princely title in Russia was heritable by all descendants, not only the eldest of each generation, and it did not save Gagarin from retribution. He was hanged publicly in St Petersburg in 1714, as a warning to others. The warning was repeated in the edict (ukaz) on the Preservation of Civil Rights issued eight year later: ‘Anyone … behaving like Gagarin contrary to this decree shall be put to death as a law breaker and an enemy of the state … [without being given] mercy on account of his former merits.’ 16

  Meanwhile the frontier in Siberia was being pushed further out, the limits of the unknown receding. In 1696 a handful of Cossacks sent to subdue local Koriak tribesmen had found their way to the river Kamchatka and back to their base fort on the Anadyr. It took until 1711 to bring all of the great Kamchatka peninsula under control. Of its inhabitants, the Kamchadales were to be described as ‘timorous, slavish, and deceitful’, but in 1706 they had rebelled, attacked a Russian fort, and slaughtered many Cossacks. As for the Koriaks themselves, they spoke loudly ‘with a screeching tone’ and, according to Stepan Krashennikov, who was sent to study Kamchatka and its peoples later in the century, were ‘rude, passionate, resentful … cruel’ and ridden with lice, which they ate. They ‘never wash[ed] their hands nor face, nor cut their nails … [ate] out of the same dish with the dogs … [and] everything about them stinks of fish.’ 17

  This was not a simple case of better-armed colonizers coming to exploit and oppress innocent but backward natives. These natives could be bellicose (they rebelled in 1710 and again in 1713), and the Kamchadales treated enemies who fell into their hands barbarously — burning them, hanging them by their feet, tearing out their entrails, lopping their limbs off while they were still alive.

  In 1714 Peter sent shipwrights to Okhotsk, on the mainland coast opposite Kamchatka in order to bypass Koriak territory. If there were assets to be had there the colonizers might have found the risks posed by natives worthwhile, but in this region there were few resources except for fish and reindeer, and Russia had no shortage of either. Hence the development of Okhotsk to the north of Sakhalin, westward from Kamchatka across the Sea of Okhotsk. However, the Russian population of eastern Siberia was small (66,000 in 1710), and it grew little for some time thereafter. 18

  At the time of Peter’s death it was still not certain whether Siberia was contiguous to North America or separated by the ocean, but in that year steps were taken towards finding the answer. Peter’s widow and successor, Catherine I (a former serving girl captured in Livonia), commissioned Vitus Bering, a Danish sailor in the Russian service, to go east to Okhotsk and Kamchatka, build two ship
s, and sail them east.

  You shall endeavour to discover, by coasting with these vessels, whether the country towards the north, of which at present we have no distinct knowledge, is part of America or not.

  If it joins the continent of America, you shall endeavour, if possible, to reach some colony belonging to some European power; or in case you meet with any European ship, you shall diligently enquire the name of the coasts, and such other circumstances as it is in your power to learn …

  It was to take Bering two years to reach Okhotsk overland, and another year to build the boats, but at last, on 14 July 1728, he set sail in the St Gabriel with two officers and a crew of forty. On 8 August he met a Chukchi in a boat, and soon some islands, but spied no other land. 19 Thus Bering discovered the strait that was to be named after him, returning to base that same September. The islands, which we now know as the Aleutians, and the surrounding waters turned out to be rich in sea otter and other animals yielding valuable furs, but this was incidental. Russia was already feeling its way to becoming a Pacific power. 20

  There is a widespread assumption that the reasonable, co-operative face which Russian imperialism sometimes showed to newly associated or subject peoples had the purpose of lulling suspicions and masked an intention to dominate as soon as circumstances permitted. This interpretation is largely the work of latter-day nationalists, for whom the imperialist power is ever the villain against which the virtuous oppressed have to struggle for their freedom. Such a telling of the story does not always conform with the historical record. It does not in the case of Central Asia, where the security and development of commerce was the spur, negotiation and the manipulation of interests the means, and political domination only incidental — a means to secure other objectives. Nor does it in the case of Ukraine.

  Peter undoubtedly imposed a harsher regime on Ukraine in the wake of Mazepa’s betrayal. Nevertheless, the tale told by nationalists misrepresents the truth. 21 Peter had been given reason to distrust the Ukrainian elite. Associates of Mazepa and those suspected of association with him were therefore examined and tortured, and, if local legend can be believed, nearly a thousand of them were executed. On the other hand the new hetman and other loyalists were rewarded. The Zaporozhian Sech was destroyed (though it was subsequently to be revived). Some Russians and others benefited from a great share-out of land in Ukraine, but the chief beneficiaries were members of the indigenous Ukrainian elite. Ukrainian regiments were marched to Ladoga and other points to labour on Peter’s projects. However, these consequences were not part of any long-standing plan for domination. Rather they were a response to what had happened, the outcome not of Russia’s nefarious intentions but of betrayal by Mazepa and by Ataman Hordienko of the Zaporozhian Sech. And the rebels and their supporters were motivated not by nationalism, which belonged to a later age, but by a desire to be on the winning side and the hope of accreting more property and personal privileges.

  However, although the original contract of 1654 between the Tsar and Ukraine had been broken by subsequent rebellions, the Russian government was not eager to create trouble for itself by alienating subjects who might be loyal, or at least politically inert. The subsequent shifts in policy stemmed largely from changing circumstances and pragmatic attention to Russian interests.

  The situation in the Baltic territories of Livland and Estland (corresponding with part of today’s Latvia and Estonia) was quite different. After conquest in 1710, the existing rights and privileges of their landholding nobility and inhabitants were immediately confirmed, though their nobility were, as it were, effectively obliged to serve on the same terms as their Russian counterparts. As it was expressed in pompous, careful legal language, all former ‘privileges … statutes, rights of nobility, immunities, entitlements, freedoms … and lawfully held estates are hereby confirmed and endorsed by Us and by our rightful successors’. The Lutheran Evangelical religion was permitted without any let or hindrance, 22 and German was allowed as the language of the courts and administration.

  True, the conditions were only for ‘the present government and times’, which left the way open for Peter’s successors to withdraw them at some future date. But these two new provinces were accorded, and continued to receive, extraordinarily privileged treatment. In 1725 a separate College of Justice and a financial office were set up for them, staffed by Germans and allowed to deal with other parts of the central administration in German. Concessions by the imperial authorities were commonly prompted by fear of rebellion or administrative convenience, but in this case they were informed by a wish to reform Russian institutions along more efficient Germanic lines. Peter had been deeply impressed with the ideas of the early Enlightenment, including the concept of ‘the well-ordered police state’ that was being introduced into some of the states of central Europe, and the more educated, German-speaking population of his new possessions were in touch with that world of Mitteleuropa. Furthermore, he had a high regard for their legal system and institutions of local government, which derived from both German and Swedish practice and which he thought might serve as models for Russia.

  It was recognized, too, that in taking over these territories the Empire had acquired an important human asset which was badly needed - a large number of highly educated men skilled in many useful professions, from navigation to pharmacy, and from economics to engineering, administration and the law. The Baltic German elite and Russia found a commonality of interest, and from that point on these Germans were to play a prominent part in both Russia’s cultural life and the running of the Empire. 23

  Yet, despite the extent and strategic value of Peter’s gains, on the Baltic, the Caspian and the Pacific, the Empire remained overwhelmingly Russian in character. It has been calculated that in 1719 over 70 per cent of its population were ethnic Russians, and at least another 15 per cent were Ukrainians or Belarussians, whose languages were very similar, though there were significant differences related to culture, primarily religion. Of the remaining minorities, the largest groups were Estonians and Tatars (1.9 per cent each), Chuvash (1.4 per cent), Kalmyks (1.3 per cent), Bashkirs (1.1 per cent), and Finns and Latvians (1 per cent each). 24

  Great resources had been expended on the Empire’s expansion, though by modern standards they were modest. Peter left an army little more than 200,000 strong, yet that represented an almost three-fold increase. He also left Russia’s first fleet of significance: 48 ships of the line, as well as 800 smaller vessels. 25 In the northern war alone Russia lost 100,000 men killed, died of wounds and of disease, and a total of over 365,000 were drafted into the armed services during Peter’s reign - but this was little more than 15,000 a year out of a male population of nearly 7.8 million. 26 The costs were proportionate. However, between 1710 and 1725 the state’s revenues increased threefold — or by some 250 per cent allowing for inflation. 27 This proved sufficient to feed, clothe, arm and equip the army and navy, and to build the core of St Petersburg, together with all its related infrastructure, and dozens of forts and settlements besides. Funds were to prove insufficient to prevent most of the navy going to rot after Peter’s death. On the other hand his military priorities produced some useful by-products: expanded woollen cloth and arms industries, and an expansion in iron production sufficient not only to meet the demands of the armed services, but to roof half the buildings of the new capital, and to export sufficient quantities in pig form to help get the heavy-industry sector of Britain’s Industrial Revolution under way

  Despite the immense cost in terms of money, people and material, Peter’s projects turned out to be affordable. In the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Russia’s assets had grown significantly, thanks to conquest and to more peaceful conditions in the productive Black Earth zone of the south. Furthermore, along with other parts of Europe, the Empire profited from a marked economic upswing that stemmed from a beneficent global warming. As harvests became more abundant, diet improved and so did fecundity. Epidemics were somewhat fewer,
and their death toll less severe. With population increasing, the economic tempo quickened — and the demands of government accentuated the trend. In this context Peter’s huge expenditure on war and on building projects (shipyards, mines and factories as well as a new capital city) was in the end to yield dividends — notwithstanding the claims by some economic historians that the country’s economic development would have been even better without it. 28

  And there was a moral dimension besides. More than a century later Russia’s greatest poet, Aleksandr Pushkin, who well understood the suffering involved in the creation of St Petersburg, wrote a poem, The Bronze Horseman, which celebrates the city and its creator. Pushkin demonstrated nothing less than love for the imperialism and militarism the city represented:

  I love you, O military capital,

  Love your acrid smoke and the thunder of the guns

  That announce the birth of a son in the imperial palace

  Or a victory over the enemy.

  Russia triumphs again …