The government assumed that the indigenous peoples of the middle Volga and Urals were already integrated into the Empire. They were subject to military service on the same terms as Russians, and their nobility were co-opted into the imperial nobility. Reforms introduced around the turn of the century restricted the autonomy of some other native peoples, but imperial administrators treated the Buriats, for example, in the same way as Russian peasants, even though most still clung to Buddhism. 8Russian imperialists made very limited progress in converting the peoples in their Central Asian possessions.
British officials in India became increasingly concerned as they observed Russia’s advance into the continental heartland. In 1864 (on the initiative of a local commander) Russian forces entered Chimkent and occupied Turkestan, a useful producer of cotton. The next year they took Tashkent, and in 1868 Samarkand on the ancient silk road to China. Five years later the khanate of Khiva followed, and in 1876 Kokand. Most of these new acquisitions became Russian protectorates, like Bukhara, the Russians assuming responsibility for their foreign relations but otherwise leaving government in the hands of their respective khans. However, a rising staged against the Khan of unstable Kokand called for a full-scale intervention. An Uzbek tribe had recently appropriated the most fertile area, the Fergana valley, the Persian Tajiks were at daggers drawn with the inward-migrating Turkic Sarts; and the Sarts and Kipchaks tried to exterminate each other. These troubles had preceded Russian occupation. Most of the population came to accept Russian rule, but the Sufi Muslims of Fergana continued to give problems. In 1898 they mounted an armed attack on Russian barracks. Kokand had to be administered directly. 9
In general, Russian colonial administration was closer to the French than to the British model, in that the territories were regarded as part of Russia. They were governed by a military hierarchy down to district level, although local courts, taxation, irrigation and other functions were usually delegated to elected officials. In this fashion Russian norms were adapted to local realities. The Muslim population lacked the rights prevalent in Russia proper, but were not subject to military service or Russian taxation. The problem in Central Asia, however, was not the regime as such but the administrators on the ground. Some Russian colonial governors, such as Muravev-Amurskii in the Far East, combined humanity with efficiency and were first-rate by any standard, but the dross of the service tended to be posted to Central Asia. Many officials in Turkestan in particular had been sent there as a punishment. They were overworked, and rarely bothered to learn the local language; and their low pay encouraged many to take bribes. 10
The acquisition of Central Asia added a further million and a half subjects to the Empire’s population, not counting another 3.5 million in the khanates of Khiva and Bukhara. Apart from the enlargement of its domestic market, Russia also acquired some commercial assets and strategic advantages. As Gorchakov had claimed, Russia was only rounding out its frontiers and ensuring their stability. Nevertheless, though Bukhara, north of the Amu-Darya, might be a Russian protectorate, Afghanistan to the south was a British one. 11 As yet there was no confrontation between the two powers, but it was to come before long.
Russian imperialism, which had always differed in the European provinces, took a new turn in the later nineteenth century, following the Polish insurrection of 1863. Trouble there had been expected for some time before it actually erupted, prompting the government to announce reforms that would have given the population more self-government. Most Poles seem to have been content with this, but extremists - hitherto a comparatively rare breed — were determined to scupper any reconciliation. They organized demonstrations to mark past rebellions, the death of an archbishop, and anniversaries of significant events in Polish history and of martyred Polish revolutionaries. The temperature rose. When the authorities reacted it rose even higher. The Tsar’s brother Constantine, who served as his viceroy in Warsaw, was still inclined to conciliation, but an alliance was emerging between the radical nationalists and the Catholic Church that made a negotiated settlement virtually impossible. Attempts on the lives of the viceroy and his chief adviser, Marquis Bielopolski, were answered with executions. The moderates on both sides had lost out. Conscription was ordered to take young men, regarded as the most susceptible recruits to the nationalist cause, out of circulation, and this sparked an armed insurrection.
It turned out to be a messy business. The revolutionaries were disunited and poorly organized; the suppression was often severe. The attempted revolution degenerated into a sporadic guerrilla war. Most Polish nobles, though sympathetic to the rebels, stayed aloof from the action. Both sides used terror tactics, and the Polish peasants sometimes reacted violently against both sides. Britain, France and Austria demanded that Russia make concessions to the Poles, but the chance of that disappeared with the departure of Grand Duke Constantine. Eighteen months passed before order was fully restored. 12 St Petersburg then changed its strategy in Poland. It had switched its favour from the Polish nobility to the Polish peasants by going ahead with a land reform even before the rebellion had been fully suppressed. In this way the elite were punished for their lack of loyalty and the peasants were rewarded for their ‘good sense’ in resisting the lures of the rebels and ‘standing fast under all manner of threats and violence’. 13 It also began a policy of Russification in its Polish provinces. Russian, not Polish, was to be the language of the courts and the chief language of instruction in schools. Since the vast majority of Polish peasants were illiterate, a race ensued for their hearts and minds between the state-controlled schools, which encouraged loyalty to the Empire, and the informal Church schools, where increasingly nationalist priests taught Polish and preached the idea of Polish independence.
Victory eventually went to the priests and the Church schools, but it was a close-run contest and the outcome was in doubt until the turn of the century. Russia had been slow to appreciate the possibilities of education as a force capable of winning the young and thereby promoting imperial integration. 14 Partly because of this, but partly also because Russia lacked the resources to implement it sooner, Russification eventually turned out to be counter-productive. On the other hand, in Poland as elsewhere, the disunity of the opposition allowed the occupying power to ‘divide and rule’ in the great imperial tradition.
St Petersburg soon had to cope with a rising tide of nationalism in its other provinces too. In Estonia and in the Latvian-speaking hinterland of Riga, where in the late eighteenth century modern nationalism had been ‘discovered’ by Gottfried von Herder, the German elite had been co-opted by the government and it took some time before the peasants were to become aware of their distinct linguistic and cultural identity. It took even longer for them to realize that it might entitle them to claim political rights and even autonomy In rural Lithuania, where the elite were Polish and the city population largely Jewish, the case was somewhat different. So it was in Finland, where nationalism took root in reaction against the dominant Swedes, not the Russians. A semi-autonomous grand duchy, Finland had its own parliament, which in 1863 decided that Finnish should be used as the language of public business within twenty years. The growth of elementary education in the 1870s ensured the triumph of the Finnish language and, eventually, of Finnish nationalism, but for the moment the Finns were loyal, and, to signal his appreciation, in 1863 the Tsar personally opened the Diet at Helsingfors (Helsinki).
Meanwhile the use of Romanian in schools and churches was being restricted in Bessarabia; integrationist policies were reinforced in the Crimea and in Transcaucasia, while in Ukraine what remained of independent institutions disappeared and Russian became the sole language of administration. From the 1880s measures were also taken to stifle any cultural assertion by Armenians, and particularly oppressive language policies — including a ban on printing in the vernacular — were introduced into Georgia, and succeeded in damping down the nationalist movement. But Russification policies were doomed to failure in many areas not only because t
he multifarious peoples of the Empire varied so much in cultural level, but because the state had been so slow to introduce universal education. In particular, the peasants were overlooked until too late, and they were eventually to embrace the rising creed of nationalism most strongly. Nevertheless, Russification was not entirely without success. Nikolai Gogol, though Ukrainian, wrote in Russian and always saw himself as Russian. So did the historian George Vernadsky a century later. Many Tatars and members of other minorities preferred Russian to their own vernacular because Russian was associated with a stronger culture, and because it gave access to greater opportunities.
But outside the government there were Russians who tried to exploit language issues to promote imperial expansion though pan-Slavism, an idea which used the common origin of the Slavonic languages as a basis for constructing a movement that advocated the common interests of the Slavonic-speaking peoples. The original pan-Slavists were not Russians but Czechs, Slovenes, Serbs and others in the German-dominated Austrian Empire who had gathered in Prague in 1848 to assert their rights against the dominance of German. The movement, though influential culturally, was based on a romantic idea, and too impractical to have much political effect. However, Russian nationalists - particularly proponents of Orthodox unity - took up the idea and shaped it into an instrument of Russian imperialism.
The regime itself did not favour pan-Slavism, although in 1858 the Tsar endorsed the setting up of a Slavonic Benevolent Committee, whose purpose was to promote the Orthodox religion, education and national development among the south Slavs. In 1867 this body organized an ethnographic exhibition in Moscow to stimulate interest in the idea, but it raised more concern about Russian expansionism abroad than it drew interest from the Russian public. 15 Of more account was a poem called The Eagle, written as early as 1835 by A. S. Khomiakov, a former cavalry officer and religious enthusiast who believed that God had chosen Orthodox Russia to serve as his instrument. The eagle, of course, represented Imperial Russia, and the other, emerging, Slavonic nationalities were represented as eaglets in need of the older bird’s protection.
You have built your nest high,
O eagle of the North.
You have spread your wings wide
To fly deep into the sky
Fly on …
… but do not forget
Your younger brothers!
There are many of them there,
There, where the Danube rages,
Where clouds gather round the Alps,
In the creviced cliffs of the dark Carpathians,
In the dales and forests of the Balkans …
Your enslaved brothers await your call.
When will your wings spread out
To protect their vulnerable heads?
Remember them, O eagle of the North.
Let them hear your piercing screech in greeting.
It will comfort them in the darkness of their slavery
Show them your bright light of freedom …
Their time will come. Their wings will stiffen,
Their young talons spread.
The eaglets will cry out - and your iron beak will shatter
The cruel chains which holds them captive. 16
The poem may not have gained wide popularity immediately, but it was to be read, declaimed and savoured by the literate classes over the years. The message certainly reached the officials and army officers who made and implemented policy. And it gained particular resonance in 1875, when a crisis flared up in the Balkans.
The chain of events that was to lead to war began in the hard land of Hercegovina. The harvest had been particularly bad, and the peasants rose against Turkish tax-collectors and landowners. The rebellion spread to Bosnia, and received support from independent Serbia and the tiny principality of Montenegro. The rebels also had Russian sympathy. In this way a peasant revolt developed into a war between Orthodox states and Ottoman Turkey The Russian consul-general in Dubrovnik had done nothing to foment the insurgency, but he was a keen pan-Slavist, and did his best to help the rebels by channelling money to them once it started. Since he was also Russia’s agent in Cetinje, Montenegro’s capital, he was well placed to do so, and he was aided by a deputy and two Russian colonels, one representing the Slavonic Benevolent Committee, the other from the Ministry for War. 17 The insurgency spread further.
Then articles appeared in St Petersburg and Moscow journals proclaiming a modern crusade. Excited intellectuals explained why Russians had a duty to liberate the poor Balkan Slavs from material want and spiritual oppression, and the public was stirred to action. Money and consignments of humanitarian aid were soon on their way to Serbia and to Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire, as well as to Bosnia and Montenegro. Though the authorities kept quiet about it, arms and volunteers — some released from the army for the purpose — went too. In the spring of 1876 a rebellion duly broke out in Bulgaria. It was suppressed, occasioning protests in Russia and in England, where W. E. Gladstone fulminated about Turkish atrocities - although atrocities had been perpetrated by both sides. Then Russia joined in to help the beleaguered Serbs, making common cause with Austria for the last time, and in the spring of 1877 a Russian army marched south to the Danube. It was joined by troops from Romania (which, though not Slav, was Orthodox). The key Turkish fortifications at Pleven were eventually taken after heavy fighting. The Turks organized anti-Russian uprisings in the Caucasus and landed troops there, but early in the following January Russian forces took Sofia and Plovdiv and, in conjunction with Austrian forces, seized the Shipka Pass. Edirne fell without resistance. The road to Constantinople was open — and by 31 January 1878 an armistice brought the fighting to an end.
By the Treaty of San Stefano, signed in March 1878, a new state, Bulgaria, which included most of Macedonia, came into existence. Russia, to which it owed its existence, had made another friend and gained another client, to join Romania, Serbia and Greece. But the Powers, especially Britain, thought the new Bulgaria too large, as was Russia’s power in the Balkans. Bismarck agreed to host an international congress in Berlin, at which, by agreement, Bulgaria was much reduced, the rest being returned to the Turks, although eastern Rumelia was to have some autonomy under a Christian governor. This reduced Russia’s sphere of influence in the Balkans, but in return it was allowed to add Kars and Batum to its empire in the Caucasus. Russian statesmen were satisfied, though popular opinion, by now committed to pan-Slavism, was outraged.
The shame of defeat in the Crimean War had been exorcised; but Russia was no longer the predominant power in Europe. That place now belonged to Germany, conqueror of Austria and France. In the wake of the Congress of Berlin, Austria allied itself with Germany. So did Romania, and eventually even Serbia and Bulgaria. Thwarted in the Balkans, Russia turned its attentions back towards Asia.
The spotlight fell first on Central Asia, and on railway-building. The first Russian railway boom had petered out, but in 1879 army engineers started work on a strategic line from Krasnovodsk on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea, opposite Baku, along the Persian frontier, and into Central Asia. By 1886 it had gone through Ashkhabad to reach the oasis of Merv. Two years later it had been extended to Bukhara and Samarkand. From Tashkent the line diverged, one branch going north, the other to Kokand and Andijan in the shadow of the Tien Shan mountains. It brought rail transportation within range of the Irkeshtan Pass and, beyond it, Kashgar in Chinese Xinjiang. In 1885 Russian troops defeated Afghan forces at Pendjeh on the Afghan border. Russia was established on the road to Kabul and the Khyber Pass. Within ten years its forces were confronting the British in the Pamirs. This prompted Anglo-Russian negotiations which resulted in the demarcation of spheres of influence. By 1898 the Russians had pushed a branch line from the Trans-Siberian Railway up to Kushk on the Afghan frontier. 18
But the simultaneous extension of Russia’s influence into Persia was hardly less impressive. In 1879 the Shah asked Russia to organize a Persian Cossack brigade and send in officers
and NCOs. They were to provide the only disciplined troops in the country, and were to be used early in the twentieth century to suppress the Shah’s own obstreperous Majlis. By that time Britain had agreed that Russia should exercise a dominant influence in northern Persia, and have a commercial outlet on the Persian Gulf, where Russian warships were soon to appear. 19
Meanwhile on the western side of the Caspian a railway was constructed to connect Baku with the new possession of Batum and with Tiflis. The network locked newly acquired territories into the Empire, and enabled forces to be quickly switched between the Caucasus, Central Asia and the imperial heartlands. Only communications across Siberia remained as slow as ever. It was obvious that if Russia was to have a successful future as a Pacific power this needed to be rectified. The American Civil War had demonstrated that success in war was now a product of barbed wire, steam power and mass production as much as of the dash of cavalrymen and the endurance of foot soldiers. Efficient transport for mass armies, vastly expanded output of iron, coal and steel, and the production of the tools of war were now prerequisites for any great power. In 1891 the Russian government took a decisive step towards meeting these demands by starting construction on a railway to the Pacific.
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