Russia

by Philip Longworth

  To this day many Russians share Pushkin’s sentiments, even though they know about the costs. And the moral dividend was also to help sustain the imperial momentum, and even quicken it.

  It is said that Peter the Great left a testament encapsulating his advice to his successors on how to enlarge the Empire. Indeed, France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs contains a copy of this plan for the domination of Europe. It begins with exhortations to Europeanize Russia and to keep it in a perpetual state of war ‘in order to harden the soldier and militarize the nation’. All possible means were to be used to expand in both the Baltic and the Black Sea regions. More particularly, Sweden was to be softened up for subjugation by stirring up England, Brandenburg and Denmark against her. Similar indirect means were recommended to assist Russia’s advance in other directions.

  In this document an alliance with Habsburg Austria against the Turks was advised in order to ‘facilitate Russia’s expansion to Constantinople’, and, while the Habsburgs were being sapped of strength by war in the Balkans, their German neighbours were to be stirred up against them. To this end and others, Russia should ‘contract marriage alliances in Germany in order to gain influence there’, and use every opportunity to become involved in the quarrels of Germany and indeed of all Europe. ‘Encourage anarchy in Poland with the object of subjugating it,’ and ‘use religious dissent to disrupt Poland and Turkey’

  Commercial imperialism was central to the plan. The English should be courted and brought into a ‘close commercial alliance’, because it was through them that Russia could acquire the necessary commercial and naval skills to acquire a world empire. Outside Europe the objective should be the Levant, because by controlling the eastern Mediterranean Russia could monopolize ‘the commerce of the Indies and thus become the true sovereign of Europe’.

  The final step would be to make secret proposals to both Habsburg Austria and Bourbon France, offering each a half share, with Russia, in the domination of the world, while getting them embroiled in an exhausting war with each other. Then, at an appropriate moment, Russia would join Austria and march its troops to the Rhine. At the same time two large fleets would sail from Archangel and Azov and head for the Mediterranean, there to disgorge swarms of ‘nomadic and greedy’ Asiatic peoples who would overrun Italy, Spain and France, carry off much of the population to settle in Siberia, and subjugate the remainder. 29

  As we have seen, several strategies recommended in the document had already been implemented by Peter. Others were to become evident in Russian policies later in the eighteenth century All this gives the testament the ring of truth. Yet it is spurious. Its vision of a European Armageddon is imaginative rather than practical, and the mindset that created the document is quite un-Russian. Indeed, the document turns out to have been composed later in the century, using ideas deriving from Ukrainian exiles, Poles, Hungarians and Turks, probably by the notorious diplomat the Chevalier d’Eon. Its purpose was to arouse fear of Russian expansionism in Europe, and France had ample motive to use it.

  France was in a state of accelerating decline since the grand reign of Louis XIV. It had been Sweden’s ally and had seen it defeated. It had worked closely with the Turks, but feared their powers were waning. It was Britain’s rival at sea, but increasingly apprehensive of its competitiveness, especially since Britain had drawn close to Austria, France’s rival on land. And now upstart Russia was empire-building at a dangerous rate. Just as Polish diplomats and German publicists had whipped up fear of Ivan the Terrible’s Russia, so France now encouraged fears of an insatiable Russia swallowing all Europe. It contributed to the pervasive fears of later ages too. The growth of an empire reflects power; it may bring wealth, and it certainly attracts enemies.

  9

  Glorious Expansion

  I

  T HAS BEENargued that empires, like companies, must grow or die, that an expanding empire generates costs that can only be met with more resources, and that these resources can only be found by further conquests. 1The principle may only apply to continental empires based on agriculture, like that of the Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru or the empire of Kievan Rus - though China seems to be a doubtful case - but the second Russian Empire seems to conform to it. Governments have a chronic disposition to outspend their incomes, of course, but Russia’s financial plight after Peter’s death (to the extent that it can be established from the record) seems to have been serious. As the British minister to the Russian court, Claudius Rondeau, remarked in 1730, with only a little exaggeration, ‘They have not a shilling in the treasury, and, of course, nobody is paid.’2

  Certainly the decades that followed Peter’s death were to see brilliant advances on almost every front. Russia’s armies and fleets were to win astonishing victories over militaristic Prussia in the Seven Years War and over the underestimated Ottoman Turks in two subsequent wars. Russia was to prevail in yet another war with Sweden, and, besides fighting a series of lesser engagements with steppe nomads, Persia and wild tribes of the Caucasus, was to be largely instrumental in sweeping the armies of revolutionary France out of northern Italy in 1799. Russia’s generals and admirals were showered with gem-encrusted orders, diamond-studded swords, and exquisite gold or enamel snuffboxes by their generous mon-archs as tokens of their appreciation — and, not surprisingly, because they had made huge strategic gains for the Empire.

  By 1800 Poland was erased from the map of Europe, the greatest part of it swallowed by her age-long antagonist, and Russia had also pushed out her frontiers in Central Asia, acquired a bridgehead in North America, taken the Crimea, established itself on the Danube estuary, and become a power in the Mediterranean as well as the Black Sea, the Baltic and the Pacific.

  And, despite Peter’s efforts, all this was accomplished by a state which was regarded as institutionally ramshackle as well as financially weak. As Edward Finch, Britain’s envoy in St Petersburg, reported in 1741,

  Not to be trifled with: President Putin in uniform brandishing a model of the Molnia spacecraft

  Completing the furnaces for the Soviet Union’s largest steel plant at Magnitogorsk (early 1930s). Photograph from W. Chamberlin, Russia’s Iron Age (London, 1935)

  Barracks for Gulag prisoners cutting the White Sea-Baltic Canal, 1933. Photograph from W. Chamberlin, Russia’s Iron Age (London, 1935)

  Poster celebrating the completion of the Dnieper Dam (early 1930s). From W. Chamberlin, Russia’s Iron Age (London, 1935)

  Circassian princes arriving for a conference, 1836. Stone lithograph from E. Spencer, Travels in Circassia, Krim Tartary (London, 1837)

  Imperial diplomacy: Persians paying Russian representatives an indemnity in bullion under the terms of the Treaty of Turkmanchai, 1828. Engraving by K. Beggrov, after V.I. Moshkov

  Engravings from W. Miller, Costume of the Russian Empire (London, 1803)

  A Russian embassy approaches the Great Wall of China, 1693. From E. Ysbrants Ides, Three Years Travels from Moscow Over-land to China (London, 1706)

  Bashkirs. Soft-ground etching from John Atkinson and James Walker, A Picturesque Representation of the Manners, Customs and Amusements of the Russians (London, 1803)

  Woodcut showing a Lapp shaman’s view of the world

  Access to Japan, Alaska and the Pacific: SS Peter and Paul, Kamchatka, in the late 1770s Engraved drawing by John Webber, RA, artist with Captain Cook on his last voyage

  A Yakut shaman treating a patient. Engraving from G. Sarychev’s Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the North-East of Siberia (London, 1806)

  Kalmyks. From E. Ysbrants Ides, Three Years Travels from Moscow Over-land to China (London, 1706)

  The Darial Pass: Russia’s gateway to Georgia and the Near East. From an 1837 drawing by Captain R. Wilbraham, in his Travels in the Trans Caucasian Provinces of Russia (London, 1839)

  A Tatar encampment. Soft-ground etching from John Atkinson and James Walker, A Picturesque Representation of the Manners, Customs and Amusements of the Russians (London, 180
3)

  Tiflis, one of the Romanov Empire’s multicultural cities. Lithograph from the Chevalier Gamba’s Voyage dans la Russie Meridionale (Paris, 1826)

  A ceremonial show of force to greet the submission of an important chief. From a drawing by Juan van Halen in his Memoirs (London, 1830)

  Right: Punishments for recalcitrant natives. From the Remezov Chronicle (Mirovich version)

  Below: Reindeer-power in Okhotsk. After a drawing by W. Alexander in M. Sauer, An Account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia (London, 1802)

  Left: Portrait of Ivan III. Sixteenth-century woodcut by Hirschvogel

  Below: Russian cavalryman of the sixteenth century. Woodcut by Hirschvogel

  The construction of Moscow’s Kremlin (1491) Chronicle. Litsevo Manuscript Codex miniature from the Shumilov

  Emperor Constantine VII receives Princess Olga at his palace during her visit to Constantinople, c. 955-7. Reconstruction of a fresco in Kiev’s St Sophia Cathedral

  Model of the St Sophia Cathedral, Kiev, as it would have looked in the eleventh century

  Saints Boris and Gleb: their martyrdom in 1015 was used to legitimate the Grand Princes of Kiev. Fourteenth-century icon of the Suzdal School

  After all the pains which have been taken to bring this country into its present shape … I must confess that I can yet see it in no other light, than as a rough model of something meant to be perfected hereafter, in which the several parts do neither fit nor join, nor are well glewed [sic] together, but have been only kept so first by one great peg and now by another driven though the whole, which peg pulled out, the whole machine immediately falls to pieces. 3

  Peter himself had served as the first peg. But who now could keep the Empire from crumbling?

  Eighteenth-century Russia was dominated by women. Of Peter’s immediate successors, his widow, Catherine I, his half-niece Anna and his daughter Elizabeth together ruled Russia for more than thirty-two of the thirty-six years following his death, and Catherine II, known as ‘the Great’, reigned for more than thirty years thereafter. Peter II (1727—30), Ivan VI (1740-41) and Peter III (1761-2) interrupted the sequence, but had little impact on events.

  The fact that most of these rulers were women did not diminish their authority, though there was some muted grumbling among the lower orders. However, none of them had received an education to fit them for supreme office, and apart from Catherine II they tended to be rather more dependent on one or two trusted advisers than most rulers. Cronyism and factionalism do seem to have increased at the Russian court, though this may be an impression given by observers who expected it to be so. The eighteenth century was a heyday for gossips. Empress Anna’s favourite, Biron (Bühren), was the dominant figure in the government, yet not — in Finch’s view at least - the linchpin that was needed. That function, he thought, was fulfilled by Count Andrei [Heinrich] Ostermann.

  Ostermann, Russia’s ambassador to Sweden, was given charge of the Foreign Office after Peter’s death, and soon undertook a thorough reassessment of Russia’s foreign relations in the light of current circumstances. The findings of this complex exercise led him to conclude that, although Peter’s policy of alliance with Denmark and Prussia had helped to keep a usually complaisant Poland in tow, it involved risk and yielded insufficient dividends. Prussia had proved an unreliable ally, and the orientation towards the Baltic region was too narrow to serve the Empire’s interests in the new era. Ostermann wanted to extend Russia’s influence in Europe as a whole, and, at the same time, to promote imperial growth. He was to achieve both these aims with brilliant economy, through one revolutionary turn of the diplomatic rudder.

  The means was an alliance with Habsburg Austria, which was signed in August 1726. The two powers had a number of interests in common. They wanted to preserve the independence of their mutual neighbour Poland, the ‘sick man’ of Europe for the previous half century (its brilliant showing at the siege of Vienna in 1686 had been deceptive). They also wished to contain the Ottoman Empire, and to deter their other enemies - in particular France. But expansion to the south also figured in Ostermann’s strategy. His instructions to Ambassador Nemirov, Russia’s representative at peace talks with Turkey in 1735, included claims to the Crimea and the Kuban. As yet they were only negotiating points to be conceded, but they were not forgotten. Indeed, two years later Ostermann drew up a plan for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. Strategists tend to plan for contingencies of course, but the Ottoman Empire was nowhere near collapse, as Ostermann well knew. These aims were for the longer term. A generation later they were to be pursued by Catherine the Great. Meanwhile the immediate thrust of Ostermann’s policy was directed further west. 4

  One fruit of Ostermann’s policy of co-operation with Austria had ripened in the early 1730s, when the allies succeeded in getting their candidate, rather than France’s, elected as king of Poland — though not before a Russian army had advanced to France’s frontier on the Rhine. Russia had at last become a member of Europe’s major league. But the allies’ first war against the Turks ended in disappointment in 1739: Austria lost Belgrade, and although Russia regained Azov it was forbidden to harbour warships there. 5 In 1741, when Peter’s daughter Elizabeth was brought to the throne by a coup d’état carried out by the guards regiments, Ostermann was arrested and purged. But the alliance with Austria continued to hold firm, and was to serve as the launch pad for brilliant advances late in the century. Where, then, did the cause of failure in 1739 lie?

  Peter had left an army of 200,000 men - seven battalions of crack infantry guards, fifty regiments of infantry, and thirty of dragoons. Apart from a few hussars, the remainder were mostly garrison troops. By 1730 the complement of the guards had increased — by five squadrons of cavalry guards and three battalions of infantry. Three regiments of cuirassiers had been added to the establishment, and fourteen militia regiments to defend Ukraine. By 1740 Russia had 240,000 men under arms, and by 1750 270,000 — not counting over 50,000 irregular troops, mostly Cossacks and Kalmyks. Although the range of Russia’s military commitments meant that few more than 120,000 regulars could be fielded in a campaign, the army was growing in size.

  Nor was it deficient in equipment. There were formidable magazines at Briansk, for operations in the west, and at Novo-Pavlovsk, for operations in the south, aside from the great arsenals in St Petersburg and Moscow. There were six cannon foundries, and two small-arms manufactories, one at Tula, the other outside St Petersburg, in which ‘everything is so well ordered that the connoisseurs, who have seen them, agree, that they are masterpieces of their kind’.

  There was also provision now for specialist troops: an engineering school for the army; a navigation school for the navy. There were even some successful operations. In the Crimean campaign of 1736 Tatars had swarmed round the invading force as soon as it crossed the Perekop, but the regiments formed into square formation and marched on to the capital, Bakhchiserai. They captured it and sacked it, but they could not hold it. A third of the army had fallen sick, and the rest were exhausted from the great heat. However, in the following year the great Turkish citadel of Ochakov on the Dnieper estuary was taken, and its fortifications were demolished. Eighty-two brass cannon fell into Russian hands on that occasion, along with nine horsetail banners — the Ottoman emblems of senior rank. Those who had participated received a gratuity of four months’ pay from a grateful government. Four years later Swedish Finland was invaded and the well-defended strong-point of Wilmanstrand was stormed, taken, and ‘razed to the ground’. 6

  Yet these successes were both hard-won and expensive. The root of the problem, according to an experienced officer, was not the enemy, however. ‘The Turks and Tatars … were what [the army] had least to dread; hunger, thirst, penury, continual fatigue, the marches in the intensest [sic] heat of the season, were much more fatal to it.’ 7 And then there was the plague which broke out among the troops at Ochakov in 1738 and spread quickly into Ukraine.
8 No wonder that by the end of a campaign regiments were seriously under strength, some by as much as 50 per cent.

  The great empires of the age depended on sea power, and both France and Britain had considerable navies. Russia’s, on the other hand was outclassed even by those of Spain and Holland. The navy had been neglected under Peter’s immediate successors. The proud Baltic fleet of thirty ships of the line with their attendant frigates, sloops and cutters had mostly been allowed to rot. Empress Anna made some attempt to halt the decline after 1730, but in 1734 when the city of Gdansk had to be besieged the Admiralty found difficulty in fitting out even fifteen ships of the line, and some of those proved barely seaworthy. 9 A serious programme of naval construction finally got under way again in 1766. But three years later, when the government attempted to send a fleet to the eastern Mediterranean to support a Greek insurrection against the Turks, operational difficulties soon became apparent. Since the enemy commanded the Black Sea, ships had to be sent from the naval base of Kronstadt near St Petersburg. The long lines of communication were as problematic as the army’s logistical problems had been on the long marches to the Crimea. Without help from Britain the voyage might never have been managed.