Cognella History of Europe Series
Modern Russian History The Search for National Identity and Global Power
Roxanne Easley, Mark Davis Kuss, and Thomas Pearson Central Washington University, University of Holy Cross and Monmouth University
SAN DIEGO Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher David Miano, Senior Specialist Acquisitions Editor Michelle Piehl, Senior Project Editor Christian Berk, Production Editor Jess Estrella, Senior Graphic Designer Trey Soto, Licensing Coordinator Natalie Piccotti, Director of Marketing Kassie Graves, Vice President of Editorial Jamie Giganti, Director of Academic Publishing
Copyright © 2021 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, repro- duced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permission of Cognella, Inc. For inquiries regarding permissions, translations, foreign rights, audio rights, and any other forms of reproduction, please contact the Cognella Licensing Department at rights@ cognella.com.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Cover image copyright © 2017 iStockphoto LP/letty17.
Printed in the United States of America. Brief Contents
A Note on Transliteration, Dates,and Acknowledgments xiii
Chapter 1 Introduction: The Russian Empire to 1855 1
PART I. Late Imperial Russia 21
Chapter 2 The Renovation of Autocracy: The Great Reforms and Expansion of the Russian Empire 23
Chapter 3 Opposition to Tsarism: Young Russia and the Imperial Regime Under Attack, 1861–1881 47
Chapter 4 Fateful Reaction: Autocracy Retrenched and the Empire in Flux, 1881–1904 67
PART II. Russia in Revolution—The First Stage, 1905–1921 87
Chapter 5 The Disintegration of the Imperial Regime, 1905–1917 89
Chapter 6 Cultural Developments, 1855–1917: From the Social and National to the Abstract and Personal 113
Chapter 7 The Russian Revolution and the Making of Soviet Russia, 1917–1921 137 PART III. Russia/USSR in Revolution—The Second Stage, 1921–1941 157
Chapter 8 The New Economic Policy and the Experimental 1920s 159
Chapter 9 Apotheosis of Stalin and Stalinism as a Way of Soviet Life, 1928–1941 175
Chapter 10 Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1941: New Designs on a World Stage 191
PART IV. The Other “Superpower” and the Last Empire, 1941–1991 211
Chapter 11 Triumph and Tragedy: The USSR in the Great Patriotic War and Reconstruction, 1941–1953 213
Chapter 12 Last Empire: From De-Stalinization to Stagnation, 1953–1968 237
Chapter 13 The Last Empire II: Stagnation and the Collapse of the Soviet Empire, 1968–1991 267
PART V. Post-Soviet Russia 289
Chapter 14 Post-Soviet Russia Since 1991: The Search for National Identity, Political Order, and Global Power 291
Chapter 15 Epilogue—Whither Russia? 313
Glossary 319 Index 323
vi Brief Contents Detailed Contents
A Note on Transliteration, Dates, and Acknowledgments xiii
Chapter 1 Introduction: The Russian Empire to 1855 1
The Physical Setting 2 The Autocratic State 3 The Institution of Serfdom 8 The Multinational Empire 11 The West 14 Suggested Additional Reading 17 Russian and Soviet Films for the Period Before 1855: A Short List 17 Notes 17 Figure Credits 19
PART I. Late Imperial Russia 21
Chapter 2 The Renovation of Autocracy: The Great Reforms and Expansion of the Russian Empire 23
The Emancipation of the Serfs 24 Monetary and Credit Reform 31 Reform of Local Administration, Rural and Urban 32 The Judicial Reform 33 Higher Education and Censorship 34 Military Reform 35 Assessing the Great Reforms 36 The Growth of Russian National and Imperial Consciousness: Foreign Policy 37 End of an Era 41 Suggested Additional Reading 42 Notes 42 Figure Credits 45 Chapter 3 Opposition to Tsarism: Young Russia and the Imperial Regime Under Attack, 1861–1881 47
First Stirrings: The “Women’s Question” and “Fathers” and “Sons” 48 Emergence of the Revolutionary Circles of the 1860s 51 The Polish Rebellion of 1863 and the Genesis of Russian Jacobinism 52 Populism and “Going to the People” 55 Ascendancy of Terrorism and the Crisis of the Autocracy, 1878–1881 58 Suggested Additional Reading 62 Notes 62 Figure Credits 65
Chapter 4 Fateful Reaction: Autocracy Retrenched and the Empire in Flux, 1881–1904 67
Alexander III: Bureaucratization and the Counter-Reforms 68 Russification in Late Imperial Russia 72 Witte, Industrialization, a New Alliance, and the Last Tsar 74 New Revolutionary Challenges and the Witte System in Crisis 77 Suggested Additional Reading 81 Notes 82 Figure Credits 85
PART II. Russia in Revolution—The First Stage, 1905–1921 87
Chapter 5 The Disintegration of the Imperial Regime, 1905–1917 89
Growing Unrest 89 Military Disaster in the Far East 93 The Revolution of 1905 95 The New Political Order 99 The Last Years of the Monarchy 100 The Great War 104 Toward the Revolutions of 1917 109 Suggested Additional Reading 110 Notes 110 Figure Credits 112 viii Detailed Contents Chapter 6 Cultural Developments, 1855–1917: From the Social and National to the Abstract and Personal 113
Education and Social Change 114 Literature 115 Music 122 Painting 123 Popular Culture 126 The Silver Age of Culture 130 On the Eve of 1917 132 Suggested Additional Reading 132 Notes 133 Figure Credits 135
Chapter 7 The Russian Revolution and the Making of Soviet Russia, 1917–1921 137
Collapse of Tsarism and Russia’s Turn to the West: Initial Crises of the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet 138 Descent into Anarchy and Lenin’s Influence 141 Lenin’s Return and the Provisional Government’s Descent into Anarchy 144 Friends and Foes of the Encircled Soviet Union—Spring 1918 146 Crucible of Civil War and Allied Intervention, 1918–1920: Militarization of Soviet State and Society 148 War Communism and the Comintern in Practice: A Soviet Reality Check 151 Suggested Additional Reading 153 Notes 153 PART III. Russia/USSR in Revolution—The Second Stage, 1921–1941 157
Chapter 8 The New Economic Policy and the Experimental 1920s 159
Origins and Impact of the NEP: An Economy Resurrected, a Party Divided 159 Struggle for Lenin’s Succession and Stalin’s Rise to Dictatorship 162 The Great Industrialization Debate, 1924–1928 163
Detailed Contents ix Soviet Culture, 1917–1928: From Proletarianism and Experimentation in the Arts and Education to the Party Line (Partiinost’) 165 The Formation of the Soviet Union: The Affirmative Action Empire 169 Suggested Additional Reading 172 Important Films of the Period 172 Notes 172 Figure Credits 174
Chapter 9 Apotheosis of Stalin and Stalinism as a Way of Soviet Life, 1928–1941 175
Stalin in Command: 1928–1929 175 “The Great Turn”: The Stalin Revolution in Industry and Agriculture 176 Development of the Great Terror of the 1930s 179 Stalin’s Revolution in Political Culture and its Impact on Soviet Life and Society 180 Socialist Realism and Mass Culture 183 Stalinization of the Soviet Empire at Home and Abroad 184 Stalin and the Legacy of the Traumatic 1930s 186 Suggested Additional Reading 187 Notes 187
Chapter 10 Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1941: New Designs on a World Stage 191
The Two Faces of Soviet Diplomacy: Accommodation and World Revolution, 1917– 1927 191 Lenin’s Diplomacy 192 Chicherin 194 Building Socialism in One Country and Neo-Isolationism, 1928–1933 196 Collective Security and Popular Fronts, 1933–1939 200 The Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact: Reasons and Consequences, 1939–1941 206 Suggested Additional Reading 208 Notes 208 Figure Credits 210 x Detailed Contents PART IV. The Other “Superpower” and the Last Empire, 1941–1991 211
Chapter 11 Triumph and Tragedy: The USSR in the Great Patriotic War and Reconstruction, 1941–1953 213
Operation Barbarossa 214 To Leningrad, Moscow, and the Caucasus 216 First Victories and the Turning Point 218 Stalinism in War 219 Planning for Victory 220 Into Eastern Europe 221 Soviet Wartime Achievements—and Their Price 224 Creating New Soviet Citizens 225 Reconstruction 228 The Cold War Heats Up 229 Crackdown on Culture 231 Death of a Tyrant 232 Suggested Additional Reading 233 Notes 233 Figure Credits 235
Chapter 12 Last Empire: From De-Stalinization to Stagnation, 1953–1968 237
Khrushchev’s Rise 238 The Power Struggle 239 First Steps Toward De-Stalinization 242 Economic Reforms 244 The Thaw 249 Advance and Retreat in the Cold War 252 The Ouster 255 Brezhnev and Collective Leadership 256 The Nomenklatura 257 Stabilization 257 Cultural Crackdown 259 Foreign Policy 260 Invasion of Czechoslovakia 262 Suggested Additional Reading 263 Notes 263 Figure Credits 265
Detailed Contents xi Chapter 13 The Last Empire II:Stagnation and the Collapse of the Soviet Empire, 1968–1991 267
Retrenchment, Stability, and the Development of Soviet-American Détente, 1968–1975 268 A “Sick Soviet Society” and the Demise of Détente, 1976–1982 271 Gorbachev and Perestroika from Above: Seeking “Socialism with a Human Face,” 1985–1989 275 “Runaway Train”: Perestroika from Below and the Implosion of the USSR, 1989–1991 278 Suggested Readings 283 Notes 283 Figure Credits 288
PART V. Post-Soviet Russia 289
Chapter 14 Post-Soviet Russia Since 1991: The Search for National Identity, Political Order, and Global Power 291
A “Time of Troubles:” Economic Trauma, Political Confrontations, 1992–1993 292 Chechnya, the Oligarchs, and Yeltsin’s Re-election, 1994–1997 297 Diplomatic Tensions, Financial Crisis, and Putin’s Rise to Power 299 “Managed Democracy”: Putin’s Russia, 2000–2004 302 Putinism, the “New Russia,” and Anti-Western Policies (Since 2005) 305 Suggested Readings 309 Notes 310 Figure Credits 312
Chapter 15 Epilogue—Whither Russia? 313
Suggested Readings 317 Notes 317
Glossary 319 Index 323
xii Detailed Contents A Note on Transliteration, Dates, and Acknowledgments
ransliterating Russian words into English and synchronizing the dates of Russian and T Western calendars prior to February 14, 1918, present special challenges to historians. We have chosen to follow the Library of Congress system for transliterating Russian words and names except for using English versions of the first names of the rulers of the Romanov dynasty, for instance, Catherine II rather than Ekaterina II. For a few well-known Russian names, for example, Leo Tolstoy, Peter Tchaikovsky, and Sergei Witte, we use the spelling that is more familiar to American readers. In the case of calendar use, prior to February 14, 1918, Russia adhered to the Julian calendar, which lagged behind the Western (Gregorian) calendar by twelve days in the nineteenth century and thirteen days from 1900 to February 14, 1918. In this book, the Russian dates are given in the old (Russian) style until the Soviet Union converted to the Western calendar in 1918. Co-authoring a textbook is a collaborative effort. Still, in this case, it began with individual authors writing separate chapters. Thomas Pearson wrote Chapters I, III, IV, XIII, XIV, and XV; Roxanne Easley, Chapters II, V, VI, XI, and XII; and Mark Davis Kuss, Chapters VII, VIII, IX, and X. We are grateful to all who have helped us in writing this text, particularly our external readers. Mark Davis Kuss would like to thank the publication team at Cognella for their help and support throughout this process as well as his co-authors for their insightful comments and suggestions. We also thank Collin Dougherty, Professor Pearson’s graduate assistant, who helped in selecting the photo images found in Chapters I, III, IV, XIII, and XIV; and Professor Easley’s graduate assistants, Adam Robertson and Henry Jennings, who contributed to the compilation of the glossary and index for this book and assisted with selecting the images for her Chapters (II, V, VI, XI, and XII).
xiii TABLE 1 Key Dates in Russian History from 862 to 1855 Kievan Rus (862–1240) 978–1015 Reign of Grand Prince Vladimir (the Baptizer) 988 Kievan Rus accepts Orthodox Christianity 1019–1054 Reign of Grand Prince Iaroslav the Wise 1237–1242 Mongol armies capture most of Rus (not Novgorod) Mongol Rus/Appanage Rus (1240–1480) 1325–1462 Rise of grand princes of Moscow 1453 Byzantine Empire falls to Ottoman Turks 1462–1505 Reign of Ivan III (the Great) 1480–1500 Golden Horde breaks up Muscovite Russia (1480–c. 1700) 1533–1584 Reign of Ivan IV (the Terrible) 1589 Establishment of office of Patriarch in Russian Orthodox Church 1598–1613 Time of Troubles (1598–end of Riurik Dynasty) 1613 Election of Michael I as tsar and beginning of Romanov Dynasty 1645–1676 Reign of Tsar Alexis I 1649 Law Code (Ulozhenie) 1652–1658 Nikon as Patriarch 1654 Moscow agrees to provide Ukraine protection 1666–1667 Russian Orthodox Church Council and beginning of Church Schism Imperial Russia (c. 1700–1917) 1689–1725 Reign of Peter I (the Great) 1703 Establishment of St. Petersburg as capital 1709 Victory over Sweden in Battle of Poltava 1722 Establishment of Table of Ranks 1756–1763 Seven Years War 1762 Emancipation of gentry from obligatory state service 1762–1796 Reign of Catherine II (the Great) 1772–1795 Three partitions of Poland 1773–1775 Pugachev Rebellion 1801–1825 Reign of Alexander I 1805–1815 Wars against Napoleon 1825 Decembrist Rebellion 1825–1855 Reign of Nicholas I 1853–1856 Crimean War
xiv Modern Russian History Chapter 1
Introduction The Russian Empire to 1855
“One cannot understand Russia by reason alone, Cannot measure her with a common measure: She is under a special dispensation— One can only believe in Russia!” —Fiodor Tiutchev (1803–1873)1
n the mid-nineteenth century, the Russian elites. Indeed, Russia’s astonishing resurrec- I Empire under Tsar Nicholas I (1825–1855) tion from the humiliation of Polish occupation had no peer in the world in size or multiethnic of the Moscow Kremlin in 1611–1612 to mil- diversity. Spanning eleven time zones across itary victories over Prussia in the Seven Years Eurasia from its western border in Poland to War (1756–1763) heralded its arrival as a great its eastern shores on the Pacific Ocean, the power in Europe. The triumph over Napoleon’s Russian Empire comprised nearly 8.5 million Grand Army in the Great Fatherland War of square miles, one-sixth of the entire land 1812–1814 established Russia as the dominant surface of the world. Its population of approx- power on the European continent and aroused imately 59 million people was the largest in hopes and fears about its territorial ambitions Europe and consisted of more than 100 differ- and political aims at home and abroad. ent nationalities that spoke over 200 different This chapter will briefly analyze some major languages, embraced multiple religions, and forces and factors in Russian history from the reflected an array of diverse cultures and life- mid-ninth century to 1855 that shaped Rus- styles. The Great Russians were the largest sia’s development as a nation (Rus) and a great nationality and historical center of the empire empire (Rossiia). These forces and factors gov- even as their share of the overall population erned Russia’s evolution from its pre-Russian was declining from 90% in the late sixteenth foundations in Kievan Rus (862–1240)— century to under 50% at the beginning of the likewise, the birthplace of current day Ukraine nineteenth century; Ukrainians and Belorus- and Belarus—to its experience under the sians constituted another 30% of the Eastern Mongol yoke (1240–1480) and the rise of Slav-dominated realm.2 Moscow (1480–1700), and they were signifi- It was not just statistics that stirred the cant in its eventual emergence as the Russian pride of the Russian poet Tiutchev and the Empire (1700–1917). Many of these forces anxieties of European states and their social and factors, in more contemporary forms,
1 contribute to Russia’s current strategic goals and no mountain ranges to provide for their defense influence the views that Russia’s rulers and people and security. The Caucasus and Altai mountain have of their own identity and place in the world. ranges on the southern and eastern frontiers, respec- Here, we will focus on five such forces—the physical tively, became part of the Russian Empire only in setting; the role of the autocratic state; the institu- the nineteenth century. Hence, there were no nat- tion of serfdom; the multinational empire; and the ural barriers to shield the Russian heartland from West—to understand the daunting problems and repeated invasions from the East, most notably by opportunities that Tsar Alexander II faced when the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- he succeeded to the throne on February 18, 1855. turies, or from the West as illustrated by the waves of Germans, Swedes, Poles, and Lithuanians who attacked Russia from the thirteenth through the The Physical Setting eighteenth centuries. Such invasions left a deep psychological imprint on the Russian state and its Next to its immense size, the physical features that subjects with respect to their views of foreigners. In most defined Russia in the nineteenth century were addition, the absence of mountains and other natu- its extreme northern location and harsh continental ral barriers facilitated the movement of people across climate. As with Canada, much of Russia’s terri- these flat lands, making Russia, in Kliuchevskii’s tory lies north of 50 degrees latitude which means famous phrase, a land of colonization.4 The four there is a short growing season for agriculture—only great eras in Russian history prior to 1917 were 5 ½ months in the central region around Moscow each initiated by colonization movements—the and 4 months in the forest region farther north. By arrival of the Eastern Slavs and then the Scandi- contrast, farming occurs in Western Europe and the navian Varangians in the lands that became Kievan United States for 8–9 months of the year. According Rus; the movement of the Slavs to the northeast to one expert, 80% of Russia’s cultivated land suffers following the first Mongol attacks; the coalescence from inadequate thermal conditions as opposed to of the Great Russian people around the rising power less than 20% in the United States. Poor soil condi- of Moscow; and their migration across the open tions and the unpredictable nature of precipitation, steppes to the west, south, and east in the imperial especially in the steppe and grass lands most suitable era. As a result, Russia’s rulers had to impose their for cultivation, likewise, impeded Russia’s success own controls over their subjects in order to gather in agriculture. This combination of hardships the revenues and mobilize the human resources prompted Vasilii Kliuchevskii, Russia’s pre-eminent needed to defend and protect the Russian land. historian of the prerevolutionary era (pre-1917), Similarly, for much of its history after the Kievan to claim that of all the European nations, Russia period, Russia remained landlocked because the was the most disadvantaged in terms of its natural northern and eastern coastlines were ice-clogged environment. More recent scholarship, however, for much of the year (recent climate change in the has attributed Russia’s historical difficulties with Arctic and northern Pacific Oceans, however, is agriculture more to the policy choices of Russia’s creating very different ecological problems). Prior rulers than to natural obstacles.3 to the 1700s, Russia was unable to develop as a sig- Other topographical features were just as influ- nificant naval and maritime power along the lines of ential in Russian history. As residents of a vast Great Britain, Spain, France, or the Dutch Repub- Eurasian plain over 7,000 miles long, Russian and lic. This limited the foreign and domestic trade that non-Russian peoples for most of their history had Russia needed to diversify its economy. Thus, the
2 Modern Russian History acquisition of a warm-water port became an obses- especially village, level was, at times, little more than sion of Russia’s rulers, especially beginning with the an illusion, many officials, as illustrated by Leronty reign of Peter I, or Peter the Great (1689–1725). To Dubelt, a high official in the secret police of Nicholas that end, he established St. Petersburg on the Gulf I, emphasized the importance of autocratic rule for of Finland in 1703 as the new capital of Russia. Russia’s welfare. As Dubelt observed: It is noteworthy that 2/3 of Russia’s European Russia can be compared to a harlequin’s costume, trade, thereafter, flowed through St. Petersburg. the many-colored pieces of which have been sewn Russia’s expansion into the Black Sea region and with a single thread and hold together splendidly. the Crimea and her ambitions for access to the That thread is autocracy. Pull it out, and the cos- eastern Mediterranean, as pursued by Catherine II, tume will fall apart.7 or Catherine the Great (1762–1796), contributed much to the diplomatic tensions in Europe after The origins and significance of Russia’s auto- 1815. These tensions and disagreements over the cratic state—with its centralized absolute potential partition of lands of the Ottoman Turk- power—are the subject of much dispute among ish Empire in the event of its collapse were a major historians even in Russia today. Some attribute cause of the Crimean War (1853–1856) between the rise of autocracy to the adoption of Orthodox Russia and the allied powers of Britain, France, Christianity from the Byzantine Empire by Vlad- and the Ottoman Empire.5 imir, the grand prince of Kievan Rus, in 988. They contend that along with a static cultural tradition that prescribed standards in architecture, art, and The Autocratic State literature; the Old Church Slavonic language; and an authoritarian concept of law, the Byzantine In their desire to achieve a status equal to the most Empire bequeathed to the Rus and Russia the powerful of Europe’s monarchs and acquire ter- concept of a ruler holding supreme secular and ritories to show for it, Russia’s rulers from Peter ecclesiastical power (caesaropapism), derived from the Great on challenged other European states that the caesars of ancient Rome. Others maintain that favored maintaining a balance of power following the Mongol conquest, in demolishing the political the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) and, more balance of princely rule, oligarchical control, and so, the French Revolution and Napoleonic eras urban democracy of Kievan times, favored the rise (1789–1815). Yet, it was the nature of the Russian of arbitrary, authoritarian princes who competed autocratic state as well as its rapid growth beginning for the Mongol khan’s favor at the expense of the with the rise of Moscow in the fifteenth century local people they ruled. The Mongol leadership in that also fascinated and worried European rulers.6 the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries continually Perhaps more than any other force, the autocratic backed the princes in their power struggles against state shaped the course of Russia’s history. This aristocratic factions and urban democratic assem- certainly was the central thesis in Sergei Soloviev’s blies (the veche). The grand princes of Moscow were magisterial history of the Russian state (published the most successful in adapting Mongol methods in 1851–1879). The autocracy (samoderzhavie), as to build their power base. Still other historians, he maintained, functioned either as a dynamic cat- for instance, Richard Pipes, insist that the harsh, alyst of change, as under Peter I, or as an unyielding patrimonial rule of Russia’s leaders dates back to guardian of tradition as under Nicholas I. Even the initial Varangian subjugation of the Slavs in though the reach of the autocratic state to the local, the ninth century.8
Chapter 1 Introduction 3 Whatever the case, few historians dispute that force of the state’s power or fundamentally change the authority of Russia’s autocrats was far more the traditional social structure, but he did try to severe and unconstrained than that of any other introduce enlightened absolutism, with himself as absolute monarchs in Europe. Unlike in the West, the first servant of the state, to pull Russia into the there were no ecclesiastical and secular institutions, modern European world. He hoped that his belief independent classes, social groups, or legal author- in human progress, systematic reforms, and his com- ity to curb the power of Russian autocrats before mitment to Russia’s military glory would inspire all the twentieth century. Prior to Peter I, the tsars who served under him and those who followed him regarded the land, people, and the state as their on the throne.12 Some, such as Catherine II, as noted personal patrimony, and ordinary people, judging below (see Figure 1.1), were clearly up to the task. from folklore and other sources, revered even such She raised Russia’s standing in Europe and made despotic rulers as Ivan IV, or Ivan the Terrible the Russian elite more European but also proud of (1533–1584), as their protectors against foreign their Russian heritage. Others, like Nicholas I, felt enemies, heretics, and selfish aristocrats.9 Others, burdened by the legacy of their august predecessor. however, such as the famous Russian revolutionary Whereas, Peter boldly led Russia to victory in the thinker Aleksandr Herzen (1812–1870), were far Great Northern War against Sweden (1700–1721), more critical in assessing the impact of autocracy on opened Russia’s window onto Europe, and took the Russia’s history in claiming, “Moscow saved Russia new title of emperor (Russorum Imperator), Nicholas by stifling everything that was free in Russian life.”10 I was a paranoid and indecisive ruler, a mere shadow As the first grand prince of Moscow to be of his idol, Peter I.13 crowned as tsar (in 1547), Ivan IV was unusu- In considering the long-term effects of the autoc- ally blunt in boasting about his divinely ordained racy’s role in Russian history prior to 1855, three authority as opposed to the more limited powers additional points need to be made here. First, from of European rulers. He scorned Queen Elizabeth the origins of the Muscovite autocracy of Ivan III, or I of England for having to rule with the consent of Ivan the Great (1462–1505), to the establishment Parliament (an opinion that did not further his goal of the concept of absolute statehood (gosudarstven- of stimulating trade between the two countries). nost) under Peter I and his successors, Russian tsars Still, most of his successors were quite attentive protected their personal power at all costs. Even as to political developments in Europe once Russia’s they argued for the use of law and reason to improve original dynasty, the Riuriks (the Danilovich line), the effectiveness of government, they refused to died out in 1598.11 Following Russia’s descent into subordinate their own authority to a higher law anarchy, Civil War, and foreign occupation during or give power to mid-level civil institutions. The the Time of Troubles (1598–1613), the new Roma- incongruities in their activities were clearly evi- nov Dynasty gave high priority to expanding its dent in Nicholas I’s own imperial chancellery central bureaucracy and selectively borrowing which included the Third Section—the notorious technology, personnel, and ideas from the West. secret police—created in 1826. These agencies were As the state turned to more secular concerns, it accountable to the emperor alone and operated out- began to divorce itself from traditional Russian side—and frequently in conflict with—the regular culture. Peter I, in particular, brought the central state bureaucracy, ostensibly to cut through red tape European concept of the well-ordered police state to and provide a reassuring, paternalistic presence the Russian Empire. His determination to establish throughout the empire. Unfortunately, this arrange- a well-regulated state did not diminish the coercive ment reinforced a tradition of administration based
4 Modern Russian History FIGURE 1.1 Stone monument reads “Catherine II to Peter I, 1782.” on personal ties at the central and local levels that rise of Moscow in the fifteenth century, put the had existed for centuries and had bred a culture of church on a collision course with the Muscovite official corruption, self-enrichment at the expense state. Eager to position himself and Moscow as the of the local population, and disrespect for the law.14 legitimate heir to the fallen Byzantine Empire (as Second, the Russian Orthodox Church, which of 1453)—the Second Rome—Ivan III manipu- played a fundamental role in the development of lated divisions among Russian Church leaders to Russian culture and national identity after the gather power and land for the crown. He took the Mongol conquest, was, ultimately, swallowed up by title of tsar, the diminutive of Caesar, that church the secular absolutist state under Peter I and Cath- leaders urged him to take to elevate his status as the erine II. It is significant that throughout Russian protector of all of Eastern Christendom. Ironically, history during the times when central state author- the claim in 1505 by the monk Filofei of Pskov that ity was weak, as in the early Mongol era, the Time Moscow was the Third Rome and a fourth there of Troubles, or even the decade that followed the would not be, was not simply a theological endorse- collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Russian Church ment of Moscow’s expansion to the West as most filled a moral vacuum and provided a cohesive cul- historians have contended; it was also intended to tural identity for Russians. warn Ivan III against expropriating church lands Yet, its status as a large landholder and spiritual lest he bring down upon Russia the wrath of divine mentor to Russian princes, especially during the apocalyptic judgment.15
Chapter 1 Introduction 5 Unfortunately for the church, Ivan III and his legal administrative hierarchy of social estates of autocratic successors were not deterred from seiz- the realm (sosloviia). This arrangement attested ing church properties and awarding them to their to Peter’s belief that the state should direct all military and administrative service elite. In the activity and work to improve the welfare of its mid-seventeenth century, when Patriarch Nikon subjects although, as shown below in our brief (1605–1681), the head of the Russian Church, made section on serfdom, the consequences of Peter’s theocratic claims to co-rule Moscow with Tsar policies often undermined his stated goals. As Alexis (1645–1676), it was clear that the church and with the Russian Church, the process of binding state were on opposite paths. Nikon’s actions and society to the state began with Ivan III and the the “Greek” reforms of Russian Orthodox ritual and rise of autocracy. In order to recover disputed ter- liturgy, which he pursued to enhance his authority ritory on the Polish-Lithuanian border that was over Orthodox Christians living in Ukraine and originally part of Kievan Rus, Moscow’s claimed the Balkans, divided Russian Orthodox believers patrimony, Ivan III established a service gentry of and alienated the tsar and many of his top advi- commoners (dvoriane) who owed their allegiance sors. The Church Council of 1666–1667 made the and tax-exempt status fully to the grand prince. In Russian Church Schism official in anathematizing return, he awarded them landed estates (pomestiia) both those who opposed the new “Greek” reforms which they held on condition of service rendered (called Old Believers) and Nikon for his arrogance. to the ruler. Ivan III also used the creation of the Ultimately, Peter abolished the office of patriarch service gentry as leverage to get the boyars, the in 1700 when church leaders condemned his efforts Russian aristocrats who held their own lands and to secularize and Europeanize Russia. In 1721, he had the freedom to serve the prince of their choice, established the Holy Synod, a state administrative to commit to Moscow rather than the rulers of college to run the affairs of the Russian Ortho- Poland-Lithuania. dox Church. Forty-three years later, Catherine II The service hierarchy that Ivan III and his secularized church properties and turned them successors introduced to support their policy of over to the Russian government. Thus, by the late expansion was very different in principle from eighteenth century, the Russian Orthodox Church the aristocracies and bureaucracies that served depended on the imperial government for its sub- the monarchies in Western Europe. Whereas, sistence and mission; in turn, the state, going back aristocrats in the Western states were indepen- to Peter I, expected clerics to report to the govern- dent and privileged by birth and landed wealth, ment any anti-state activity that they heard in the in Russia, all social groups by the late seventeenth confessions of their parishioners.16 century were enmeshed in state service. The peas- A third important outcome of the rise of the ants and townspeople (except for the privileged autocratic state was the formation of a rigid social merchants or gosti) were tied to the land under the hierarchy that by the end of Peter I’s reign defined 1649 Law Code (Ulozhenie) and obligated to pay the role of all people in the Russian Empire ver- taxes. Although the boyars and service gentry were tically, according to the services they rendered to exempt from taxes, they were required to perform the state. By 1725, Russia had no independent military service and provide peasant recruits for aristocracy, middle class, or peasants, unlike the the army when the tsar so decreed. As Peter I took situation in much of Western Europe. Instead of Russia into wars against Turkey in 1695–1696 and economic classes with social mobility and hori- Sweden in 1700–1721, the harness grew tighter. zontal political ties between them, Russia had a In 1709, he abolished the distinctions between
6 Modern Russian History the boyars and service gentry and established one local government through various institutions of corporate group, the dvorianstvo (service gentry). gentry self-administration. The results, unfortu- The gentry were, hereafter, ordered to give 25 years nately, failed to fulfill Catherine II’s aspirations. of military service or 35 years of civil service to On the contrary, the state’s continual interference in the state. In his desire to achieve military glory the gentry’s efforts to manage their local affairs bred and have Russia compete with Europe, the tsar hostility between the bureaucracy and rural gentry commanded that the Russian gentry be educated between 1775 and 1855. Catherine II’s advocacy of in European ways. In 1722, he carried out the most enlightened absolutism and her insistence that the significant social reorganization in imperial Rus- state and gentry pursue the “common good” also sian history with the establishment of the Table of opened the monarchy up to criticism from educated Ranks. Based on the Swedish model, Peter I cre- society when it failed to meet the high standards ated a hierarchy of fourteen parallel ranks (chiny) in that it set for itself.17 the military, civilian, and court service. In theory, Nonetheless, in terms of rural governance, by each official, regardless of family lineage or past the middle of the nineteenth century, the gentry title, began at the lowest rank (14) and rose as far pomestiia served as the basic unit of local admin- and as quickly as meritorious service and educa- istration and police, responsible for preserving tion carried him. Upon entering the state service, order, collecting taxes, seeing to the public welfare the individual received a landed estate (pomestie) in times of emergency, and supervising peasant with serfs and held personal gentry status; once work. In the exercise of these duties, serfowners he reached the eighth rank, his title and pomestie could mortgage serfs; relocate them by exiling became hereditary property. them, taking away their lands or moving them Although, in practice, the old nobility contin- to poorer lands; reallocate their labor; arrange or ued to dominate the highest service ranks, the prohibit their marriages; pass criminal and civil Table of Ranks, with its concepts of meritocracy judgment upon them; and punish them short of and the need for a European education, defined death or financial ruin. Peasant self-administration the values of Russia’s service gentry even after they existed only where permitted by the serfowner. were freed from obligatory state service in 1762 State and gentry goals were, thus, symbiotic. The until the end of imperial Russia. It also widened gentry got its livelihood and nearly unlimited priv- the gap between the service elite and the large ilege and authority at the local level. The state got mass of traditional peasants in rural Russia. The local administrators and so did not need to deal highpoint of the state-gentry alliance came under directly with serfs at all (except in a military sense Catherine II. A great admirer of Peter I, she regu- either in conscripting serfs for military service or larized state administration and sought to use the when called by the landowner to quell peasant principles of the Enlightenment to improve the lives disturbances). Order was preserved, taxes were of her subjects. Although she was a believer in the collected, and conscripts were provided without power of good legislation to enhance the quality serious outlay of state funds or personnel both of of government, it took the Pugachev Rebellion in which were in short supply. Perhaps more import- southern Russia in 1773–1775 to prompt her to ant, serfdom kept peasants and gentry apart. There make the rural gentry her partners in administer- would be no mass/elite alliance against the state ing the provinces. As discussed in the next section in the nineteenth century since neither the gentry below, this entailed giving the landed gentry near nor the peasantry was in a position to develop a total control over their serfs and involving them in sense of identity separate from the state.
Chapter 1 Introduction 7 The Institution of Serfdom paid obrok generally had more freedom and lighter obligations than those on barshchina. As evident from the discussion on the autocratic Besides providing an essential labor force on state, for most Russians in the mid-nineteenth lands held by various landlords, serfdom was a century, serfdom—the rural linchpin of the autoc- vital support structure for the imperial regime racy—was the defining force in their daily lives. In and the peasant community. Here, it drew on the the 1857 census, peasants constituted 84% of the patriarchal culture of the peasant household and overall population. The serfs of the landed gentry the customs and functions of the peasant commune comprised 51% of the peasant population and the (mir). In the peasant household, the senior male remaining 49% were largely state peasants who figure bolshak( ) had the dominant voice in all deci- were attached to government-owned lands. By sions affecting the extended peasant family. Women contrast, the gentry made up less than 2% of the were expected to be subordinate to men, and all total population and the urban sosloviia slightly household members were to put their duties to the more than 7%.18 family and commune—the shared good—ahead Serfdom appeared later in Russia (during the of individual desires. Themir represented, at once, fifteenth century) and lasted longer than anywhere collective safety and stifling discipline. This con- else in Europe except for Romania (where it was cept of an organic, unified community sobornost( ) outlawed in 1864). The main reason is that unlike in Russian peasant life contrasted sharply with the in Western Europe, where serfdom was based on a ethos of upward social mobility that Peter I and his contractual relationship between peasant and land- successors espoused to the service elite. lord, in Russia, it developed because it met the needs The mir with its traditions of communal land of the autocracy and provided labor on the pomestiia holding and collective responsibility or mutual allocated to the service gentry. In introducing serf- guarantee (krugovaia poruka) was even more vital dom, the autocracy focused its efforts on restricting to peasant survival and successful revenue collection peasant movement. In the law codes of 1497 and by the tsarist government. Agriculture in Russia 1550, peasant movement was limited to the two- was among the most unproductive in Europe. Fer- week period after St. George’s Day (November 26) tilization resulted from a combination of three-field at the end of the harvest season. By the early 1600s, rotation (with one fallow), slash-and-burn tech- however, peasants not only were prohibited by law niques, and limited animal manure. There was very from moving during that two-week window, but if little mechanization and far less animal power than they did move after 1592, even when the state sus- Western Europeans had at hand. Unpredictable pended the “forbidden years” legislation, they could rainfall, extreme temperature variations, natural be hunted down and punished by their former land- disasters, and fluctuations in the working popula- lords until 1607. The fiction of peasant movement tion could mean the difference between villagers’ ended with the Law Code of 1649 which institution- subsistence and famine. Even in good harvest years, alized serfdom. Peasants were attached to the lands the peasants had a lot to pay for: heavy state taxes of the gentry, crown, church, or state on a permanent and landlord obligations (collected in common); basis. They not only were subject to state taxes under their own subsistence and that of their animals; the 1649 Law Code (as were the townspeople and seed for next year; and repair or replacement of other non-exempt people), but, in addition, they had tools, housing, and clothing. Given their marginal to perform barshchina (labor service) or pay obrok existence, it is no wonder that Russian peasant (dues in cash or kind) to their landlords. Serfs who farmers were generally not innovators or individual
8 Modern Russian History entrepreneurs. The price for the failure of a new assigned to labor in factories owned by state, gentry, crop or method could be debt, poverty, and suffer- and merchant entrepreneurs to produce the weap- ing—for everybody. ons and textiles that the Russian Army and Navy In much of central European Russia, the mir allo- needed. Working in these new, alien environments, cated shares of communal land in strips (of various likewise, was a major source of peasant distress. fields) to families on the basis of their ability, or Although serfs participated in the uprising of labor power, to meet their share of the commune’s 1667–1671 led by the Don Cossack Stenka Razin tax obligations to the state. As the composition of against the secularizing Muscovite state—a popular families within the village changed over generations, revolt that inspired later generations of traditional the mir redistributed the lands among village fam- rebels—the Pugachev Rebellion of 1773–1775 ilies, thus, preserving rural stability and providing (see Figure 1.2) really attested to the government’s a safety net for residents who no longer had a suf- neglect of the worsening conditions of the peas- ficient number of hands in the family to do the ants. Indeed, by 1773, peasants in the Volga region farming. The custom of periodic repartitioning of were paying higher salt taxes and facing increased communal lands, however, was not introduced in barshchina demands from gentry landlords eager Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, or the Baltic provinces to capitalize on rising grain prices in Europe. as these territories came under Russian control.19 Moreover, Catherine II’s expansion into territories The century following the enactment of the 1649 populated by non-Russian, non-Christian national- Law Code saw a precipitous decline in the living ities and Russian peasants who were Old Believers conditions of serfs and state peasants because of the government’s wars and territorial expansion. New and heavier tax obligations and military conscrip- tion quotas represented the most significant state intrusions into the village and the greatest source of peasant discontent. Prior to Peter I’s reign, peasants paid a land tax (beginning in 1645–1647) and a tax on occupied households (starting in 1678). As the state quickly discovered, peasants devised strategies to evade taxes by vacating their homes and moving in with neighbors at tax collection time until Peter I, in dire need of funds for his wars against Turkey and Sweden, introduced many indirect taxes and the direct poll (or “head”) tax on each male peasant in 1722. Between 1689 and 1725, state tax reve- nues increased more than 500%. Worse yet for the villages, Peter’s campaigns required conscripted peasants to serve for life. The loss of peasants—and their labor—was a damaging blow to the village economy. Indeed, many villages held funeral ser- vices for the peasant conscripts who left the village. Under Peter I and his Romanov successors, other FIGURE 1.2 Pugachev’s Rebellion was the largest uprising serfs were removed from the lands they worked and against the imperial regime prior to the 1917 Revolution.
Chapter 1 Introduction 9 created conditions ripe for a rebellion. In 1765, the on the other hand. Serfowners frequently bemoaned central government formally prohibited peasants the shoddy work, immorality, and brutality of their from sending their petitions of grievances directly serfs. The vast majority of elite observers, of course, to the throne; instead, they were to submit the peti- denigrated the ability of peasants to articulate their tions first to their landlords (who usually were the own interests or to determine their own affairs. But objects of the grievance). When the Iaik Cossack peasants, lacking any legal channels for articulation Emelian Pugachev (1742–1775) declared himself of their interests and grievances, regularly and effec- to be the true Russian tsar, as opposed to the Ger- tively wielded what political scientist James Scott man-born Catherine II, the rebellion erupted. It called “weapons of the weak”—work stoppages, foot was not directed against autocratic rule but, rather, dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, loyalty, against the bureaucratic and gentry agents of the feigned stupidity, malingering, sabotage, pilfering, state and the cultural Europeanization of Russia. and flight—long before they resorted to open con- Even though the rebellion ultimately failed, the flict or violence.21 In these ways, peasants could Pugachev uprising inspired fear in the imperial sometimes make use of the cultural gap between regime of similar, massive rural unrest for gen- Russia’s secular, educated, and cosmopolitan elite erations to come. It also damaged Catherine II’s society and their own traditional, Orthodox, xeno- reputation as an enlightened empress, especially with phobic, and illiterate one. respect to the peasant question. Actually, Catherine Sympathetic educated voices, passive peasant was deeply interested in improving the serfs’ condi- resistance, and state anxieties about social disor- tion when she came to power in 1762. In 1785, after der did generate tentative steps to better the lives of the Pugachev Rebellion, she drafted projects to free the serfs. Beginning in 1797, the government took the state peasants and all children of serfs who were modest steps to curb the abuses of serfs by land- born after 1785, but top officials dissuaded her from owners and, under Alexander I (1801–1825), to enacting them. As Catherine herself acknowledged, allow gentry landlords to voluntarily free their serfs the gentry elite would not stand for these reforms. with land. However, under his Law on Free Agri- At the same time, during her reign, she gave away culture (1803), only 160 redemption agreements 400,000 state peasants as serfs to her favorites.20 Her between gentry landlords and peasants were con- inaction on the peasant issue, set against the back- cluded, liberating 47,000 serfs (about 1.5% of their drop of the French Revolution, brought Catherine total number) by 1861. The fact was that serfdom II under the attack of some gentry intellectuals, the presented the regime with a problem that had no most prominent example being Aleksandr Radish- easy solutions. Many officials and landed gentry chev. In his Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, saw it as a still viable institution, whereas, others published surreptitiously in 1790, he accused the recognized that it impeded the development of empress of hypocrisy and condemned serfdom as an an industrialized, more competitive economy and institution that abused the peasants, corrupted the society. The abusive treatment of serfs and peasant landlords, and disgraced the autocracy. hopes for freedom produced an increasing number Thus, by the end of the eighteenth century, edu- of peasant disturbances in the years preceding cated society had developed a seeming fascination and during the Crimean War. On his part, Tsar with the nature of their peasant brethren, whom Nicholas I called serfdom a “powder keg” which they depicted as ignorant, lazy, bestial, savage, and threatened to explode if it were not addressed or depraved, on the one hand, or childlike, pious, inno- if peasant emancipation was rushed. He set up ten cent, gullible, trusting, and noble in their simplicity commissions during his reign from 1825 to 1855 to
10 Modern Russian History study the peasant question. Although legislation in benefiting from a thriving commerce along the 1837–1841 brought some reforms in the adminis- Volga River and the lands they controlled, made tration of state peasants, the tsar, ultimately, refused attractive targets for Ivan IV. The capture of Kazan to abolish serfdom, especially as revolution spread and Astrakhan also opened the door to Russian in Europe in 1848. As he put it, the gentry’s land “is colonization of Siberia, initially, in the form of Cos- something holy, and no one may touch it.”22 Stran- sack campaigns financed by the wealthy merchant gled by the Gordian knot of serfdom, Nicholas I, family, the Stroganovs, and, later, funded and car- on his deathbed in 1855, ruefully admitted to his ried out by tsarist forces. Compared to other areas successor (Alexander II) that he was leaving Russia of Muscovite and imperial Russian expansion, the in dreadful shape—a result that fell far short of his colonization of Siberia proved relatively uncontested dream of creating a beautiful autocracy in Russia. except for the unsuccessful raids of the Kalmyks (who were predominantly Buddhists). Russia’s east- ward expansion was temporarily contained by the The Multinational Empire Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 that established Mus- covy’s border with China.23 Within another century, Already renowned for its aggressive gathering of Russia established itself as a tricontinental empire lands that once were part of Kievan Rus, Muscovite with the founding of Russia America in Alaska, its Russia became a multinational empire under Ivan only overseas colony (see Figure 1.4).24 IV (see Figure 1.3) with the conquest of the khanates The core additions to Russia’s multinational of Kazan in 1552 and Astrakhan in 1556. empire came in the seventeenth century with Mos- Unlike the lands previously annexed by Moscow cow’s expansion into Ukraine and, in the eighteenth (for instance, in Lithuania and the free city-states century, with Russia’s annexation of territories in the of Novgorod and Pskov), Kazan and Astrakhan Baltic (through war with Sweden), Poland (through lay outside the Kievan “patrimony.” They were Russian participation in the three partitions of that under the control of Tatars, descendants of the kingdom), and the Crimea (through victory over Mongol Golden Horde that had ruled Russia in the Ottoman Turks). All three of these conquests previous centuries. Muslims by religion and Tatars had enormous strategic and economic significance by language, the princes of Kazan and Astrakhan, for Russia at the time and continue to be relevant to current day international tensions. In building its multinational empire Russia successfully used a variety of methods that were first developed in its acquisition of Kievan “patrimony” and then in the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. These included the use of “divide and conquer” diplomacy in order to bring the non-Russian elites of these territories into Russian service (most effective with the Baltic Germans); introducing “protection” agreements that later became the pretext for territorial claims by Russia (used in Ukraine); and making political and even religious arguments to legitimize the annex- ation of territories. Religion, not ethnicity, was the FIGURE 1.3 Tsar Ivan IV—the “Terrible.” basis for determining which groups were “foreign”
Chapter 1 Introduction 11 (that is, non-Russian Orthodox) in the empire. Also, Russia with much of the former Polish-Lithuanian except for a brief period under Peter I, the central lands in Ukraine. These territories were a fertile and Russian government employed a policy of soft con- valuable agricultural region that supported Russia’s trol of the non-Russian nationalities, allowing the transformation into a leading continental power by native national elites to retain their social status and the early nineteenth century. property as long as they pledged loyalty to Russia. By eighteenth century standards, Catherine II’s Russian policy toward non-Russians hardened acquisition of territories with their multinational under Nicholas I, and beginning in the 1860s, it populations showed her to be the most successful assumed the form of Russification.25 European ruler of her time. Her wars against Poland The challenges and later complications of multi- (1768–1774) and Turkey (1768–1774, 1787–1792) national empire building were clearly on display in had removed or, in the case of Turkey, weakened Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine in the seventeenth Russia’s traditional foes and opened the door to Rus- century which involved Russia in war against Poland sian conquest of the Black Sea territories (including and in hostilities with Ukrainian Cossacks (many the Crimea) and expansion in the Caucasus. In 1801, of whom were runaway serfs) and other national- Russia annexed the Christian kingdom of Georgia, ist groups. In their desire to throw off Polish and and in 1808–1809, as a result of Alexander I’s peace Catholic control, Ukrainian nationalists, led by the treaty with Napoleon, Finland became an autono- Cossack Bogdan Khmelnitskii, appealed to Moscow mous part of the Russian Empire. in 1650–1654 for protection and support. They Of even more significance was Russia’s defeat even agreed to a temporary union of Ukraine with of Napoleon in the War of 1812 and success in Moscow. The decision to supportKhmelnitskii and establishing the postwar peace settlement at the Ukraine plunged Russia into a long war with Poland Congress of Vienna in 1814–1815 that brought in 1654–1667 and again in 1669–1686. The peace Russia additional Polish territories. In 1818, settlement of 1686 reaffirmed the terms of the Peace Alexander I granted the Polish territories under of Andrusovo of 1667. It awarded the left bank of Russian control autonomous status with its own Ukraine (east of the Dnieper River) and the capital sejm (parliament) and constitution—much to the city of Kiev (permanently) to Russia. To Ukrainians, consternation of some Russian officials in St. Peters- the agreement with Russian Tsar Alexis in 1654— burg. Polish nationalists were not mollified either. of which no final text has survived—was meant to be They rebelled against Russia in 1830. The Polish temporary and subject to further negotiation. How- uprising was crushed by Russian troops, and the ever, Russia saw it as permanent and binding. In the new Tsar Nicholas I absorbed the Polish kingdom eighteenth century, Peter I and, especially, Catherine fully into the Russian Empire by the Organic Statute II took advantage of the weakened Polish kingdom of 1831, which abolished the autonomy and rights as well as the support of the Ukrainian leader, Ivan his brother had granted the Poles in 1818. With Mazepa, for King Charles XII of Sweden in the that step, the Russian state abandoned the more Great Northern War against Russia. Peter used his flexible, pragmatic approach that had characterized victory over Sweden and the Ukrainian national- its policy toward most non-Russian nationalities. ists as justification to begin Russia’s expansion into Instead, it tightened surveillance and supervision Western Ukraine and claim the territory as “New over non-Christians (inorodtsy) and pursued force- Russia.” The three partitions of Poland from 1772 to ful military colonization in the Muslim territories 1795, which were initiated by Frederick II of Prus- in Transcaucasia (Chechnya, Dagestan). Muslim sia with Catherine II as his accomplice, provided mountain rebels under various leaders (including
Chapter 1 Introduction 13 Imam Shamil) held out against Russian forces until Sweden (in the case of the Baltic lands and Finland) they were subdued in 1858–1859. As in other terri- brought new Western ideas, values, and institu- tories, Russian settlers, bureaucrats, church officials, tions into Russia that, as noted above, changed the and peasants attached to lands followed Russian course of Russian history. For centuries, the rulers of troops into the Caucasus. The Russian campaigns Moscow believed that Russia could carefully choose in the Caucasus provided the backdrop for some those aspects of the West it wanted, such as techni- of the great literary works of nineteenth-century cal help and technology, without risking damage to Russia, including Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero for the essence of Russian civilization. Such confidence Our Time and Leo Tolstoy’s Khadji-Murat. inspired Ivan III to hire Italian architects to design a Yet, in the long run, Russia’s multinational new Kremlin in Moscow befitting the “Third Rome” empire-building appeared to be less successful. On and the first Romanovs to recruit European officers the one hand, the resources that the government to professionalize the Russian Army. Even Peter devoted to military campaigns and colonization, I, as he began the Great Northern War and the especially after the eighteenth century, came at the Western-type reforms that followed, claimed that expense of the development of the Russian people; Russia needed Europe for a few decades so that their economy and institutions; and, according to she could turn her back on it. His curiosity and the historian Lindsey Hughes, the civic or ethnic interest in Western technology and secular ideas consciousness vital to the Russian nation. As a predated his war with Sweden as illustrated by his result, the gap between what the Romanovs and frequent visits to the Foreign Quarter in Moscow the Russian people wanted widened substantially in the 1680s–1690s and his Grand Embassy tour as became evident with the rise of Russia’s revo- to Europe in 1697–1698; still, Peter, at that point, lutionary intelligentsia.26 On the other hand, the believed that he could judiciously select the tech- incorporation of disgruntled national minorities nology and cultural values of the West that would such as the Chechens and Poles, and the Jews, who best serve the needs of the Russian state. became part of imperial Russia largely by virtue of However, as became apparent, especially from the partitions and later annexation of Poland, added the early 1700s on, the West presented a source new centrifugal forces to the empire. The Jews were of dynamic ideas and innovations that disrupted not a source of political unrest as much as a target Russian traditions and often confounded the best of legal discrimination and later repression under intentions of the state. Indeed, the tension between Nicholas I, not to mention the anti-Semitism they Russia’s national identity and its rulers’ aim to have encountered from Russians and other nationality Russia be respected as a great, even global, power, was groups. Prior to 1855, the state generally left the and is a main reason for Russia’s historically ambiv- Jews alone in matters of family life and religion but alent attitude toward the West. In terms of culture, discriminated against them in the practice of their though, Peter I and, particularly, Catherine II had no businesses and in confining them to the pale of set- doubts about where Russia belonged. As the empress tlement in the western region of the empire.27 emphasized in her Instruction (1767) to the Legislative Commission assembled in St. Petersburg to advise her on needed reforms: “Russia is a European state.”28 The The West baroque and neo-classical buildings of the imperial capital (see Figure 1.5), designed by such renowned The development of Russia’s multinational empire, Italian architects as Bartolomeo Rastrelli and Carlo especially at the expense of Ukraine, Poland, and Rossi, demonstrated the Romanovs’ desire to make
14 Modern Russian History FIGURE 1.5 Rastrelli’s Baroque masterpiece—The Winter Palace with The Hermitage (1753).
Russia an integral part of Europe. On their part, parted ways with the imperial government over their the gentry elite received a Western education; spoke calling in life and the future of Russia.30 Prior to 1855, French; traveled abroad; and, with their imperial these repentant noblemen and educated critics, most rulers, purchased European art, fashions, and other notably the Decembrists and Russia’s greatest writer, commodities. As Peter commanded, the women of Aleksandr Pushkin, attacked the monarchy for its elite society wore European dresses and, later under failure to introduce substantial reforms such as the Catherine II, had access to schools that prepared them emancipation of the serfs and a constitution. These to be good citizens and accomplished people.29 criticisms from some, but not all, representatives of These state-directed efforts to use Western ideas educated society grew more intense in the wake of and culture to enhance Russia’s standing in Europe Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War. and improve conditions in the empire, however, had Second, the reliance on European ideas and several unwelcome results for the government. First, technology in the modernization of Russia’s mil- Catherine II’s desire to have a Western-educated itary and the use of the economic resources from gentry elite serve the state in governing Russia and newly acquired territories contributed significantly elevating her prestige abroad backfired, as illustrated to imperial Russia’s greatest accomplishment: the by Radishchev, among others. As a result of their victory over Napoleon. When Alexander I led the study of Enlightenment natural law philosophy in Russian Army into Paris on March 31, 1814, the Europe—an environment far removed from the life of Romanov dynasty reached the zenith of its pres- the serfs on their landed estates back home—some of tige. However, Napoleon’s invasion of 1812 and these elite gentry found a new mission in serving the the capture of Moscow, which some city residents narod, the common people of Russia, rather than the burned rather than surrender to the enemy, had a autocratic state. Radishchev and his contemporar- traumatic and transformative impact on Alexan- ies were the first generation of Russia’s intelligentsia der I. Rather than enacting the enlightened, liberal who, in the view of historian Nicholas Riasanovsky, reforms that he seriously considered prior to the war,
Chapter 1 Introduction 15 he experienced a spiritual awakening and became few reforms and relied heavily on censorship and obsessed with religious mysticism.31 At the Congress bureaucratic obfuscation, effectively preventing the of Vienna, he committed himself to the restoration development of an active civil society. As a result, of legitimate monarchy in Europe (at the urging of Russian public life developed in masked forms, such Austrian Chancellor Metternich) and the establish- as literature and the arts, and in underground soci- ment of a Holy Alliance among the leading powers eties. His reign marked the golden age of Russian of Europe to create an international order based literature even while abstract philosophical debate on the “Christian precepts of justice, charity and in secret circles began to turn to radical political peace.”32 The tsar’s turn to political reaction at home, programs. Meanwhile, Nicholas I, confident in fueled by his belief that national uprisings in Spain the rightness and success of Official Nationality, and Naples as well as the mutiny of the Semenovskii pushed for additional access to the eastern Medi- Regiment in his own army were organized by revo- terranean and control over the faltering Ottoman lutionaries in Paris, provided the climate that stirred Empire. Tragically, Nicholas I’s strategy culminated the Decembrists to action. On December 2, 1825 with Russia’s defeat in the Crimea, a conflict that (December 14 in the Western calendar), following showed on the battlefield how far Russia had fallen word of Alexander I’s death and amid confusion behind the more industrialized nations of Britain over the imperial succession, the Decembrists staged and France. their abortive insurrection against the autocracy Perhaps the most important challenge of the and became the heroic martyrs who inspired future West in Russian history, already apparent in the generations of Russian revolutionaries. reign of Nicholas I, has been the ongoing debate The Decembrist Rebellion baptized the reign over the identity of Russia and her place in world of Nicholas I with bloodshed as it took artillery affairs. In spite of the tsar’s efforts to silence all fire ordered by the new tsar to clear Senate Square criticism following the execution and exile of the in St. Petersburg of the demonstrators. Known as Decembrist leaders in 1826, the debate over Russia’s the “iron tsar,” Nicholas I never got over this trau- future erupted in 1836 following the unauthorized matic episode. Unlike his predecessor Alexander publication of Petr Chaadaev’s First Philosophical I, Nicholas was not a child of the Enlightenment Letter (written in 1829). In surveying Russia’s long but, rather, of Russia’s victory over Napoleon. Not history and place among world civilizations, Chaa- only was he proud of Russia’s might, but he was daev called Russian history prior to Peter I “a blank fearful of Western influences such as nationalism, page” and argued that industrialization, and socialism. He dedicated his [w]e have not added a single idea to the sum total entire reign to insulating Russia from these dangers of human ideas; we have not contributed to the and eradicating revolutions and national uprisings progress of the human spirit, and what we have abroad as illustrated in Hungary in 1849 (Russian borrowed of this progress we have distorted. From troops were invited to intervene by the beleaguered the outset of our existence as a society we have Austrian government). At home, Nicholas I endeav- produced nothing for the common benefit of all ored to impose paternalistic bureaucratic rule and mankind ….33 govern his empire according to the doctrine of Offi- cial Nationality (1833). It proclaimed the ideals of In Herzen’s words, the publication of Chaadaev’s autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality for all of his letter was “a pistol shot in the night,” dividing edu- subjects. Believing in the might and effectiveness cated Russians into Westernizers and Slavophiles.34 of his army and secret police, the tsar introduced The Westernizers argued that Russia, in conscious
16 Modern Russian History emulation of Peter I, had to follow the European Kappeler, Andreas. The Russian Empire: A Multieth- path of cultural development. According to Herzen, nic History. Translated by Alfred Clayton. Harlow: Vissarion Belinskii, Timofei Granovskii, and others, 2001. Russia had to embrace Western individualism, law, Lieven, Dominic. Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for reason, and freedom. They argued that Russia had Europe, 1807–1814. London: 2009. no time to lose. By contrast, the Slavophiles, who Rey, Marie-Pierre. Alexander I: The Tsar Who Defeated included the Aksakov and Kireevskii brothers of Napoleon. Translated by Susan Emanuel. DeKalb, Moscow and Aleksei Khomiakov, responded that IL: 2012. Peter I, with his Western-type bureaucratic reforms, Sunderland, Willard. Taming the Wild Field: Coloniza- had destroyed the Orthodox community and the tion and Empire on the Russian Steppe. Ithaca: 2004. harmony that existed between the tsar and narod of the Russian land. In their view, Russia needed to return to its Orthodox, Great Russian roots, and Russian and Soviet Films for the preserve its distinctive traditions. Period Before 1855: A Short List In the increasingly sterile political environment of Nicholas I, especially after 1848, the ideas of Alexander Nevsky—Classic Eisenstein film about Medi- Westernizers and Slavophiles, with their attacks eval Russian Prince (1938). on serfdom and the soslovie system, challenged the Tsar—Recent, controversial film by Pavel Lungin on conservative order of Official Nationality. Following Ivan the Terrible (2009). Nicholas I’s death in 1855, both the Westernizers War and Peace—Epic Soviet film of Tolstoy’s great novel and Slavophiles contributed important ideas to the about Russia’s war against Napoleon (1968). reform discussions that occurred early in the reign The Youth of Peter and At the Beginning of the Glorious of Alexander II (1855–1881). However, before these Days—Sergei Gerasimov’s two-part film biography of discussions could influence state policy, Russia, first, the life of Peter I from 1672 to 1700—excellent on had to suffer the military and diplomatic humili- Peter’s clash with traditional Muscovite culture. ation that came with defeat in the Crimean War.
Notes Suggested Additional Reading 1. Quoted in Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A Parting Billington, James. The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive of Ways: Government and the Educated Public in History of Russian Culture. New York: 1966. Russia, 1801–1855 (Oxford: At the Clarendon De Madariaga, Isabel. Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Press, 1976), 259. Russia. New Haven: 2005. 2. Alexander Polunov, Russia in the Nineteenth De Madariaga, Isabel. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Century: Autocracy, Reform, and Social Change, Great. New Haven: 1981. 1814–1914, ed. Thomas C. Owen and Larissa G. Hoch, Steven. Serfdom and Social Control in Russia: Petro- Zakharova, trans. Marshall S. Shatz (Armonk, vskoe, a Village in Tambov. Chicago, 1986. NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2005), 5. Hughes, Lindsey. The Romanovs: Ruling Russia 1613– 3. Peter Gattrell, “Poor Russia: environment and 1917. London: 2008. Government in the long-run economic history Hughes, Lindsey. Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. of Russia,” Reinterpreting Russia, ed. Geoffrey New Haven: 1998.
Chapter 1 Introduction 17 Hosking and Robert Service (London: Arnold, 17. Marc Raeff,The Origins of the Russian Intelligen- 1999), 92–94. tsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York: 4. V. O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia v deviat tomakh. Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966), 167–171. Vol. I: Kurs russkoi istorii chast’ 1 (Moscow: 18. Census figures are taken from Ia. E. Vodarskii, “Mysl’,” 1987), 50. Naselenie Rossii za 400 let (XVI–nachalo XX vv.) 5. B. H. Sumner, A Short History of Russia. Revised (Moscow: “Prosveshchenie,” 1973), 36, 57–59; ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, and B. N. Mironov, Sotsial’naia istoriia Rossii 1949), 256. perioda imperii (XVIII–nachalo XX v.): Genezis 6. Dominic Lieven, “Russia as empire: a compara- lichnosti, demokraticheskoi sem’i, grazhdanskogo tive perspective,” Reinterpreting Russia, 10. obshchestva i pravovogo gosudarstva. Vol. 1 (St. 7. Quoted in Polunov, 4. Petersburg: DB, 1999), 130. 8. Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime 19. On the commune, see August von Haxthausen, (New York: Scribners, 1974), 27–57. Studies on the Interior of Russia, ed. S. Frederick 9. On the cultural historiography on this topic see Starr, trans. Eleanor L. M. Schmidt (Chicago: Kevin M. F. Platt, Terror and Greatness: Ivan and University of Chicago Press, 1972), 288–293; Peter as Russian Myths (Ithaca: Cornell Univer- and Wirtschafter, 11–13. sity Press, 2011). 20. Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Cath- 10. Quoted in Polunov, 5. For a different point of erine the Great (New Haven: Yale University view that argues that Russian political culture Press, 1981), 554; and Aleksandr B. Kamenskii, values freedom and individualism as local alter- The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century: natives to state power, see Nicolai N. Petro, The Searching for A Place in the World, ed. and trans. Rebirth of Russian Democracy: An Interpretation David Griffiths (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, of Political Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard 1997), 233. University Press, 1995), 18–20, 30–31. 21. Scott described these strategies among Malay- 11. Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar sian peasants. James Scott, Weapons of the of Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance 2005), 168. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). On 12. Marc Raeff,Understanding Imperial Russia: State Russian peasant passive resistance, see Peter and Society under the Old Regime, trans. Arthur Kolchin, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Russian Serfdom (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1984), 37–55. Press of Harvard University Press, 1987). 13. Lindsey Hughes, The Romanovs: Ruling Russia 22. Polunov, 22, 45. For an account of serfdom 1613–1917 (London: Hambledon Continuum, and life in one peasant village in the nineteenth 2008), 159. century, see Steven L. Hoch, Serfdom and Social 14. Geoffrey Hosking,Russian History: A Very Short Control in Russia: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 2012), 28. 23. Theodore R. Weeks, “Managing empire: tsarist 15. Ibid., 24. nationalities policy,” The Cambridge History of 16. Ibid., 24–27, 30–36; and Elise K. Wirtschafter, Russia. Volume II: Imperial Russia, 1689–1917, Russia’s Age of Serfdom 1649–1861 (Maiden, ed. Dominic Lieven (Cambridge: Cambridge MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 37–42, University Press, 2006), 28–29. 55–57.
18 Modern Russian History 24. See Lydia T. Black, Russia in Alaska, 1732–1867 32. Hughes, 154–155. (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2004) 33. Quoted from Marc Raeff, ed.,Russian Intellectual and Ilya Vinkovetsky, Russia America: An Over- History: An Anthology (New York: Harcourt, seas Colony of a Continental Empire 1804–1867 Brace and World, 1966), 167. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 34. Polunov, 57. 25. Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Mul- tiethnic History, trans. Alfred Clayton (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 18–23, 28. Figure Credits 26. Hughes, 98. Fig. 1.1: Copyright © 2009 Depositphotos/Kokhanchikov. 27. Weeks, 35–36. Fig. 1.2: Copyright © 2012 Depositphotos/marzolino. 28. Quoted in A Parting of Ways, 1. Fig. 1.3: Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:krem- linpic4.jpg. 29. De Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine Fig. 1.4: Source: Hammond Inc., Hammond Historical Atlas of the the Great, 491. World, p. H-35. Copyright © 1981 by Pearson Education, Inc. 30. Riasanovsky, A Parting of Ways, 262–264. Fig. 1.5: Copyright © by Dezidor (CC BY 3.0) at https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zimn%C3%AD_pal%C3%A1c_(3).jpg. 31. Marie-Pierre Rey, Alexander I: The Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon, trans. Susan Emanuel (DeKalb, IL: NIU Press, 2012), 255–257.
Chapter 1 Introduction 19