The Armenian Church and the Russian State, 1825-55
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DRAFT: Please do not cite or circulate. Carolina Seminar, “Russia and Its Empires, East and West,” September 17, 2015 Divine Diplomacy: The Armenian Church and the Russian State, 1825-55 Stephen Riegg PhD Candidate History Department UNC-Chapel Hill Monument to “Russian-Armenian friendship” in Yerevan. Photo property of the author. 1 DRAFT: Please do not cite or circulate. Introduction A large crowd in Yerevan braved the winter chill of 2 December 2013 to watch the unveiling of the city’s latest sculptural addition. Dignitaries at the ceremony included Serzh Sargsyan, the president of the Republic of Armenia, and Maksim Sokolov, the Russian Minister of Transportation.1 Towering behind the men stood the new, fifteen-foot-tall marble monument. It depicts two women, their veiled heads slightly bowed toward each other, bound in an intimate embrace. A large cross, the focal point of the sculpture, not only links the women but also finds shelter in their unity. While new to the Armenian capital, the monument is a larger replica of an older statue in central Moscow, whose inscription declares: “Blessed over centuries is the friendship of the Russian and Armenian peoples.” The political partnership and the ecumenical solidarity evoked by these monuments experienced their defining epoch during the reign of Tsar Nicholas I (1825-55). This paper examines the encounter between the tsarist state and the Armenian Church in that period, placing this dynamic within a broader discussion of Russian imperialism. I argue that St. Petersburg capitalized upon the political influence of the Armenian Church to advance its foreign policy in the Ottoman and Persian capitals. This circumstance represented the tsarist government’s wider effort in the nineteenth century to harness the stateless and dispersed Armenian diaspora to build its empire in the Caucasus and beyond. Russia relied on the stature of the two most influential institutions of that diaspora, the merchantry and the church, to project diplomatic sway from Constantinople to Copenhagen; benefitted economically from the transimperial trade networks of Armenian merchants based in Tiflis, Astrakhan, and Moscow; and drew political advantage from the Armenian Church’s authority in that nation. 1 The asymmetrical positions of the attending Armenian and Russian dignitaries, of course, speak volumes about modern Russo-Armenian ties. 2 DRAFT: Please do not cite or circulate. At the same time as the government employed Armenian ecclesiastical leaders toward its goals, the Armenian Church derived social, political, and often economic benefits from its patronage by the state. The church relied on state institutions to censor critical publications, to hinder the work of Catholic missionaries, and to expand its physical presence in Russia’s major cities. Thus a two-way dynamic characterized the encounter between the tsarist state and the Armenian Church, with each side deriving particular gains. Yet under the reactionary rule of Nicholas I, who ascended the throne during the Decembrist challenge to the institution of the Russian monarchy, religious toleration and ethno- national cooptation represented official policies only in so far as they advanced the state’s control and domination over non-Russians. In the evolving dialogue between Russian and non- Russian tsarist subjects, the emperor promoted Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality as a rejoinder to the republican cries of liberté, égalité, fraternité. The government condoned expressions of sui generis culture and national identity among its minorities as long as such actions did not imperil the superiority of the ruling Orthodox Great Russian element. But in the Armenian case, as this paper shows, the state pursued more important goals than the tranquility of an imperial periphery. Context The Russo-Armenian encounter antedates by centuries the tsarist incorporation of Eastern Armenia in 1828. Divided between the Ottoman (Western) and Persian (Eastern) empires, Armenia lost its political independence in 1375. Since the mid-seventeenth century, Russo- Armenian relations developed along two primary foci: economic and ecumenical ties. Having become frequent visitors in Russian bazaars and trade posts, Armenians’ real and mythologized economic prowess, as well as the value of the rare goods they carried from the Orient, earned 3 DRAFT: Please do not cite or circulate. them special status by the second half of the seventeenth century. In April 1667, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich (1645-76), eager to take advantage of Persian Armenians’ silk imports, included Armenians among ethnic groups permitted to trade at advantageous rates, often duty-free, in major Russian commercial centers, such as Astrakhan and Moscow.2 Under Peter the Great, Russia absorbed Armenians from abroad and sympathized with the first manifestations of an Armenian liberation movement. In 1701, the Russian emperor received Israel Ori, an envoy dispatched by Persian Armenians in hopes of securing a tsarist alliance against the shah. Peter granted the Armenian emissary the symbolic rank of colonel in the Russian army and promised to “extend his hand of assistance” toward the Armenians of Persia.3 Although Ori failed to deliver Eastern Armenians from the grasp of the shah, he inspired other young Armenians to look to the Russian empire for liberation. One of Ori’s most ambitious successors, Joseph Emin, an Indian Armenian who had served in the British army, arrived in the South Caucasus in 1761 to rally Armenians and Georgians into a joint uprising against Persia. In March 1711, Russia codified its recruitment of Armenians from abroad when the Governing Senate recommended that the state “increase Persian trade and court [prilaskat’] Armenians as much as possible and ease their lot, in order to encourage them to arrive [in Russia] in large numbers.”4 In November 1724, Peter issued sweeping economic privileges for Armenians settled throughout his realm, granting them exemptions from military service and other exclusive rights.5 After Peter’s death in 1725, his successors continued to grant economic privileges to Armenians in Russia. In 1746, Armenian merchants in Astrakhan were allowed to 2 Sobranie aktov, otnosiashchikhsia k obozreniiu istorii Armianskogo naroda, vol. 1 (Moscow: Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages Press, 1833), 3-4. 3 Sobranie aktov, vol. 2, 289. 4 Sobranie aktov, vol. 1, 7 and 290. 5 V. B. Barkhudarian, “Armianskie kolonisty v Rossii i ikh rol’ v armiano-russkikh otnosheniiakh,” in M. G. Nersisian, ed., Iz istorii vekovoi druzhby (Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1983), 124-125. 4 DRAFT: Please do not cite or circulate. trade tax-free and to establish their own court; in 1769, Astrakhan Armenians received the exclusive right to build seagoing vessels for trade in the Caspian Sea.6 Catherine the Great continued these policies, increasing the number of her Armenian subjects in 1779 by resettling Ottoman Armenians from Crimea to Nor Nakhichevan, a new settlement on the Don River.7 Religious solidarity drove Russo-Armenian relations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From the early adoption of Christianity by the two nations, in 301 by Armenians and 988 by Russians, the links between the Armenian Apostolic and the Russian Orthodox churches remained strong. Both of these autocephalous national churches are members of Orthodox Christianity, with Russia part of the Eastern Orthodox branch and Armenia member of the Oriental Orthodox wing. Although close dogmatic and liturgical cousins, the two churches did not enter into full communion and developed independently after members of Oriental Orthodoxy rejected the dogmatic definitions of the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Thus shared religion played both a unifying and a divisive role between Russians and Armenians. Religion also produced political implications for Armenians vis-à-vis Russo-Ottoman relations as soon as the tsarist empire portrayed itself as the patron of Ottoman Christians. When Russia forced Turkey to sign the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardzhi in 1774, few contemporaries could have imagined the later reverberations of the accord’s Article 7, which stipulated that the “Sublime Porte pledges to give the Christian faith and its churches firm protection and it grants the Ministers of the Russian Imperial Court [the right] to protect all interests” of Christians.8 6 Sobranie aktov, vol. 1, 27, and Barkhudarian, “Armianskie kolonisty v Rossii,” 126. 7 George Bournoutian, “Eastern Armenia from the Seventeenth Century to the Russian Annexation” in Richard Hovannisian, ed., Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, volume 2. (New York: St. Martin’s, 2004), 91. 8 Basil Dmytryshyn, ed. Imperial Russia: A Source Book, 1700-1917 (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Publishers, 1990), 109. 5 DRAFT: Please do not cite or circulate. With Armenians comprising one of the largest Ottoman Christian subject groups, their plight under Ottoman suzerainty became a key component of the nineteenth century’s Eastern Question. At the dawn of the nineteenth century Russia began a three-decade campaign against Persian territories in the South Caucasus. During two Russo-Persian wars, in 1804-13 and 1826- 28, the shah’s Armenian subjects collaborated with Russian agents, eager to have Eastern Armenia absorbed into the realm of the Christian monarch. In a systematic pattern of cooperation, Armenians served as tsarist spies, soldiers, and settlers, facilitating the Russian annexation of Persian domains, including Erivan and Echmiadzin, the headquarters