Empire Unguided: Russo-Bulgarian Relations, 1878-1886
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1 EMPIRE UNGUIDED: RUSSO-BULGARIAN RELATIONS, 1878-1886 A dissertation presented by Mikhail Sergeyevich Rekun To The Department of History In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of History Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts March, 2016 2 EMPIRE UNGUIDED: RUSSO-BULGARIAN RELATIONS, 1878-1886 by Mikhail Sergeyevich Rekun ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University March, 2016 3 Abstract Empire Unguided seeks to explain the very rapid breakdown in Russo-Bulgarian relations in the years immediately following the Russian liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. At the beginning of the period, the Russian Empire and the Principality of Bulgaria were extremely close allies, bound together by sentiment, by geopolitical reality, and by strong administrative ties. Yet by 1886, relations would degenerate to the point that the Bulgarian Prince was overthrown in a Russian-backed coup, there were serious discussions of a Russian invasion of the country, and diplomatic relations were ultimately severed entirely for the better part of a decade. Empire Unguided contends that the proximate cause of the break was the aggressive and tactless behavior of a series of Russian military and diplomatic agents in Bulgaria, who frequently followed their own policies and ideas without regard for the foreign policy preferences of St. Petersburg. More broadly, the organizational weakness and backwardness of the Russian foreign policy apparatus meant that the Russian Empire was unable to develop a single policy approach, or to force its acceptance by its agents in Bulgaria. This gap was instead filled by Panslav ideology, with sharply negative consequences both for Russo- Bulgarian relations and for Russia‘s geopolitical goals in the Balkans. Ultimately, Empire Unguided demonstrates the critical importance of organizational competence in diplomatic affairs. 4 Acknowledgements There is a very good and very famous line by the English devotional poet John Donne, which runs ―No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.‖ The same can be said, if less eloquently, for dissertations. Empire Unguided was done with the help of many hands and many minds, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to thank them now. First place goes to my dissertation committee. Prof. Harlow Robinson, for being my guide through Northeastern University and getting me to this point to begin with. Prof. Heather Streets-Salter, for being an eternal pillar of support. And Prof. Howard Malchow, for seeing this project from its beginnings at Tufts and now seeing it to the end at Northeastern. I would also like to thank the members of my MA thesis committee at Tufts, who oversaw the earlier version of Empire Unguided – Prof. Malchow, but also Prof. Daniel Mulholland, for putting up with all of my last minute questions and concerns, and Prof. Gregory Carleton, for riding to the rescue at the last moment. I would like to thank Professors Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe, David Proctor, and Jeffrey Burds for all the help, advice, and suggestions they have given me. I would like to thank Margaret Casey and Annette Lazzara at Tufts and Bonita Knipfer, Kirsten Bilas, and Amy Killeen at NEU for their help with a never-ending stream of technical and bureaucratic issues. And I would like to thank the hardworking staff at the Tisch and Snell Libraries for securing a veritable dragon‘s hoard of obscure and forgotten tomes. 5 I would like to thank the American Research Center in Sofia for giving me the funding, lodgings, and resources to go to Bulgaria for my research, and to the Gillis Family Fund for the funding to go to Russia. This project would not have been possible without their assistance. I would like to thank the helpful staff at the Russian State Library, State Archive of the Russian Federation, and Russian State Military-Historical Archive. I would particularly like to thank the very kind women who worked at Sofia‘s Central State Archives, who were remarkably helpful despite us being utterly incapable of mutual communication. I would like to thank my fellow ARCS Fellows, in particular Victor Petrov, for translating some of the trickiest Bulgarian sources for me, and Francesco La Rocca, for serving as a sounding board and brainstorming assistant when I finally figured out what this dissertation was about. I would like to thank my proofreaders, Marlie Philiossaint, Eleanor Ferron, Regina Kazyulina, and Serge Rekun, who helped make this dissertation far more readable. And I would like to particularly thank Galina Tyrtova for all of her assistance in working and living in Russia. I would have been a great deal more lost and confused without her. And finally, I would like to thank all of my friends and family, for putting up with me when I embarked upon long-winded monologues about the politics of Stefan Stambolov in the fall of 1886. They have had the patience of saints. 6 Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 4 Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ 6 Preface............................................................................................................................................. 7 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1: A History of Bulgaria until 1878 ................................................................................ 27 Chapter 2: The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs .................................................................... 75 Chapter 3: Panslavism................................................................................................................. 108 Chapter 4: Setting up the State, 1878-1879 ................................................................................ 131 Chapter 5: The First Troubled Year, 1879-1880 ........................................................................ 159 Illustrations ................................................................................................................................. 186 Chapter 6: Assassination, Ultimatum, Coup, 1880-1881 ........................................................... 196 Chapter 7: Simmering Resentment, 1881-1882 .......................................................................... 220 Chapter 8: The Nadir, 1882-1883 ............................................................................................... 232 Chapter 9: The Unification of Bulgaria, 1883-1885 ................................................................... 265 Chapter 10: The Final Act, 1886................................................................................................. 293 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 319 Glossary of Names ...................................................................................................................... 333 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 337 7 Preface No work on Slavic History in the 19th century can avoid addressing the issue of calendars and nomenclature. Regarding the latter, this study uses the American Library Association – Library of Congress transliteration system for most Russian and Bulgarian names, with four exceptions. Names which are famously known by other spellings maintain those – thus one speaks of Tsar Alexander II and not Aleks ndr. Russian or Bulgarian authors who also wrote in English keep the spelling they themselves used, so one speaks of D. I. Abrikossow and not the more modern Abrik sov. Cities are called by their modern names, for instance Plovdiv instead of Philippopolis. Finally, names quoted directly from sources are left in the original spellings. Regarding dates, specific dates are cited according to both the Gregorian calendar used in the West and the Julian calendar in use in Russia and Bulgaria whenever possible. During the 19th century the two calendars were twelve days apart, the Julian being the earlier of the two. In some cases, particularly when dealing with sources, the author has been unable to determine precisely which calendar a given date is using – in those cases, the date is delivered as it is in the source, though one can usually assume that it is the Julian calendar being used. Bulgaria would maintain the Julian calendar until 1916, and Russia until the Revolution a little later. Abbreviations Used in Endnotes TsDA: T Sentralen d"rzhaven arkhiv (Central State Archives in Sofia, Bulgaria) RGVIA: Rossiĭskiĭ gosudarstvennyĭ voenno-istoricheskiĭ arkhiv (Russian State Military- Historical Archive in Moscow, Russia) AVPRI: Arkhiv vneshneĭ politiki Rossiĭskoĭ imperii (Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire in Moscow, Russia) 8 Introduction On August 8th/20th, 1886 the twenty-nine-year-old