Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Moscow’s push south of the Oka into the steppe was at least initially a defensive measure. The Crimean Tatars sacked Moscow in 1571 and its suburbs in 1591, and they regularly “harvested” tens of thousands of Slavs into captivity for sale into the world slave trade out of Kefe across the Black Sea. To put a stop to these continuous depredations, the Muscovites paid annual tributes to the Crimeans that were never sufficient, mounted patrols along the southern frontier, and began the process of walling it off from the steppe to keep the nomads from penetrating Eastern Slavdom. A series of fortified lines were built in the steppe, until the Crimean Khanate was surrounded and then finally annexed in 1783. What began as a security measure turned into a great economic boon for Russia. Most of the area annexed was chernozem soil, prairie soil a yard thick that proved to be the richest soil in Europe. The western part of this area had been Ukraine, which was annexed in 1654. The eastern part of the steppe was uninhabited because of continuous Tatar depredations. Once it was secure, it was settled primarily by Russian farmers hoping to improve on their yields from the pitiful podzol soils north of the Oka. This colonization gave the Russians access to the sixty-thousand-square-kilometer Donbass, one of late Russia’s and the USSR’s major fuel and metallurgical regions. The homeland of the Great Russians, the Volga-Oka mesopotamia, is almost totally lacking in useful minerals and suitable soil and weather for productive agriculture-all of which were supplied by the colonization of Ukraine and Siberia.

  One of Russia’s good fortunes was that generally it was able to pick its colonization-annexation

  COLONIALISM

  targets one at a time. Peter the Great in 1703 annexed the Neva delta, which became the site of the future capital, St. Petersburg, and gave Russia direct access to Baltic and Atlantic seaports of tremendous value during the next three centuries. The next target to the west was Poland, which was divided into three partitions (among Russia, Austria, and Prussia). The first partition, in 1772, involved primarily lands that once had been East Slavic, but the second (1793) and third (1795) engorged West Slavic territories, including the capital of Poland itself, Warsaw. This strategic move netted Russia more intimate access to the rest of Europe, but otherwise gave the Russians nothing but trouble: the enduring hatred of the Poles, rebellions by Poles against Russian hegemony, and dissent by Russians who opposed the annexation of Poland.

  After the Napoleonic Wars, the Russian Empire moved against the Caucasus. This move led to the horror of the Caucasian War, which dragged on from 1817 to 1864. Control over the Caucasus had been contested for centuries among the Persians, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, and the Russians. There, Christianity and Islam met head to head. The Islamic Chechens were among the first peoples attacked in 1817, an event that reverberates to this day. The Armenian and Georgian Christians looked to the Russians to save them from Islamic conquest. The Russians ultimately won, but at tremendous cost and for little real gain.

  In 1864 Russia turned its attention to Central Asia. Between then and 1895 it defeated and annexed to the Russian Empire the weak khanates of Bukhara, Samarkand, and Khiva. Central Asia was inhabited by primarily Turkic nomads. Silk was the main product manufactured there that the Russians wanted, as well as access via commercial transportation to Balkh, Afghanistan, and India further south. In Soviet times Uzbekistan was foolishly converted into the cotton basket of the USSR at the cost of drying up the Syr Daria and Amu Daria rivers and the Aral Sea, leaching the soil, and converting the region into a toxic dust bowl.

  Russia was successful in its colonial empire building efforts because of the weakness and disorganization of its opponents. Areas such as Poland, the Caucasus, and Central Asia benefited Russia little, whereas St. Petersburg, Siberia, and left-bank Ukraine were profit centers for Russia and for the USSR. See also: DEMOGRAPHY; EMPIRE, USSR AS; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Davies, Brian. (1983). “The Role of the Town Governors in the Defense and Military Colonization of Muscovy’s Southern Frontier: The Case of Kozlov, 1635-1638.” 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago. Davies, Norman. (1982). God’s Playground: A History of Poland. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press. Hellie, Richard. (2002). “Migration in Early Modern Russia, 1480s-1780s.” In Coerced and Free Migration: Global Perspectives, ed. David Eltis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Khodarkovsky, Michael. (2002). Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1550-1800. Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press.

  RICHARD HELLIE

  COLONIALISM

  Colonialism is a type of imperial domination of the non-Russian peoples who inhabited the southern and eastern borderlands of the Russian Empire and who subsequently fell under the control of the Soviet Union. It refers specifically to policies to spread Western civilization (a “civilizing mission”) among peoples in those territories, and to integrate them into the imperial state and economy. It extends as well to the colonization by Russian and Ukrainian peasant settlers of lands inhabited by pastoral nomadic tribes.

  COLONIZATION

  The Russian Empire’s southern and eastern borderlands became its colonial territories. Russian expansion onto the plains of Eurasia had by the middle of the eighteenth century brought within the boundaries of the empire all the lands south to the Caucasus Mountains and to the deserts of Turkestan, and east to the Pacific Ocean. Much of the area consisted of vast plains (the “steppe”) once dominated by confederations of nomadic tribes, who became the subjects of imperial rule and the empire’s first colonized peoples. The grasslands where they grazed their flocks along the lower Volga River and in southern Russia (the Ukraine) attracted peasants from European Russia seeking new farmland.

  The imperial government encouraged this southward movement of the Russian population (most of whom were serfs owned by noble landlords). Occasionally nomadic tribes fought to reCOLONIALISM

  A greedy octopus represents Russia’s expanding influence in 1877. © CORBIS tain their lands. Prolonged resistance came first from the Bashkirs, Turkic peoples whose tribes occupied lands east of the Volga and along the Ural Mountains. During the eighteenth century many clans joined in raids on the intruders and battled against Russian troops. They joined in the massive Pugachev uprising of 1772 to 1774 alongside Cossacks and rebellious Russians. But in the end Russian armed forces invariably defeated the rebels.

  During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Russia’s borders of the empire shifted further southeastward into Eurasian lands, bringing an increasingly diverse population into the empire. Peoples in these borderlands spoke many different languages, mostly of Turkic origin; practiced a wide variety of religions, with the Islamic faith the most widespread; and followed their own time-honored customs and social practices. Russia was becoming a multiethnic, multireligious empire.

  THE IMPERIAL CIVILIZING MISSION

  In the reign of Empress Catherine II (r. 1762-1796), the empire’s leadership began to experiment with new approaches to govern these peoples. These policies drew upon Enlightenment concepts of government that redefined the object of colonial conquests. They became the basis of Russian colonialism. Previously, the Russian state had extended to the princes and nobles of newly conquered eastern territories the chance to collaborate in imperial rule. It had required their conversion to Orthodox Christianity, and had periodically encouraged Orthodox missionaries to conduct campaigns of mass conversion, if necessary by force. Before Catherine II’s time, the state had made no concerted effort to alter the social, economic, and cultural practices of the peoples on its southern and eastern borderlands. This authoritarian method of borderland rule demanded only obedience from the native populations.

  COLONIALISM

  In the late eighteenth century, some educated Russians began to argue that their empire, which they believed a civilized Western land, had the duty to spread civilization, as they understood it, to its backward peoples. They had two principal objectives. By spreading Russian culture, legal practices, and oppor
tunities for economic enrichment, the empire could hope to recruit a progressive group from these peoples who would become willing collaborators in Russian domination. Equally important was their belief that Russia’s own historical development made the spread of its newly acquired Western culture among “savage” peoples a moral obligation.

  Catherine II herself traveled among the empire’s eastern peoples at the beginning of her reign. Impressed by what she described as the “differences of peoples, customs, and even ideas” in Asian land, she looked for new ways to win the loyalty of the population. Encouragement of trade, education, and religious toleration appeared to her desirable and useful tools to strengthen the bonds between these colonial peoples and their imperial rulers. These goals suggested practical guidelines by which she and her advisers could build their empire on modern political foundations. These also confirmed in their eyes the legitimacy of their imperial domination of backward peoples.

  Catherine II shared the Enlightenment conviction that reason, not religious faith, lay at the core of enlightened government. She did not abandon the policy of maintaining Orthodox Christianity as the state religion of the empire, but ended forced conversion of Muslim peoples to Christianity. In 1773, she formally accorded religious toleration to Islam. Her successors on the imperial throne maintained this fundamental right, which proved a valuable means of maintaining peaceful relations with the empire’s growing Muslim population. They encouraged the conversion to Christianity of peoples holding to animist beliefs, for they believed that their duty was to favor the spread of Christianity. They also promoted the commercial exploitation of colonial resources and the increased sale of Russian manufactured goods in their colonial territories. The Western colonialists’ slogan of “Commerce and Christianity” described one important aspect to Russia’s civilizing mission. Self-interest as well as the belief in spreading the benefits of Western civilization provided the ideological basis for Russian colonialism. This new policy never fully supplanted the old practices of authoritarian rule and discrimination against non-Russians, which had strong defenders among army officers on the borderlands. But it, too, enjoyed powerful backing in the highest government circles. In the nineteenth century, their vision of an imperial civilizing mission brought Russia into the ranks of great Western empires.

  COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY IN COLONIAL ALASKA

  Alaska was the first area where Russian colonialism guided imperial rule. In the late eighteenth century Russian trappers had appeared there, having crossed the Pacific Ocean along the Aleutian Islands from Siberia in their hunt for fur-bearing sea mammals. The sea otter, whose fur was so highly prized that it was called “soft gold,” was their chosen prey. They forced native peoples skilled at the dangerous craft of hunting at sea (mainly Aleutian tribesmen) to trap the animals, whose range extended from the Aleutians along the Alaskan coast and down to California. In 1800, the Russian government created a special colonial administration, the Russian-American Company, to take charge of “the Russian colonies in America.” Its main tasks were to expand the commercially profitable fur-gathering activities, and to spread Orthodox Christianity and Russian culture among the subject peoples of this vast territory.

  “Commerce and Christianity” defined the Russian Empire’s objectives there. It operated in a manner somewhat similar to that of the British Hudson’s Bay Company, also established in colonial North America. And like other overseas colonies of European empires, the Russians exploited Alaska’s valuable resources (killing off almost all the sea otters), in the process confronting periodic revolts from their subject peoples. Faced with these difficulties, the Russian government finally abandoned its distant colony, too expensive and too distant to retain. In 1867, it sold the entire territory to the United States.

  COLONIAL TURKESTAN AND IMPERIAL CITIZENSHIP

  In seeking to create a unified, modern state, the Russian Empire moved toward establishing a common citizenship for the peoples in its multiethnic, multireligious borderlands in the late nineteenth century. It began this effort in 1860s and 1870s, at the time when it freed its peasant serf population from conditions of virtual slavery to its nobility. Reformers in the government conceived of an empire founded on a sort of imperial citizenCOLONIALISM ship, extended to former serfs and to native peoples.

  That was the period of the empire’s last major colonial expansion, when its military forces conquered a large part of Central Asia. The settled and nomadic populations of Turkestan (as the area was then called) spoke Turkic languages and were faithful Muslims who looked to the Ottoman Empire, not Russia, for cultural and religious leadership. The Russian colonial administration was deeply divided on the proper treatment of their unwilling new subjects. Some preferred to rely on the old policies of authoritarian rule, restrictions of the Muslim religion, and the encouragement of Russian colonization. Others took their inspiration from Catherine II’s colonialist policies. The latter argued for progressive colonial policies including religious toleration of Islam, respect for the ethnic customs and moral practices of Turkestan’s peoples, and the development of new crops (especially cotton) and commercial trade with Russia. They hoped that, as the powerful Minister of Finance Sergei Witte argued in 1900, full equality of rights with other subjects, freedom in the conduct of their religious needs, and non-intervention in their private lives, would ensure the unification of the Russian state.

  This progressive colonialist program was notable by according (in theory) “equality of rights” to these imperial subjects. Colonial officials of this persuasion believed that they could extend, within their autocratic state, a sort of imperial citizenship to all the colonial peoples. They withheld, however, the full implementation of this reform until these peoples were “ready,” that is, proved themselves loyal, patriotic subjects of the emperor-tsar. Opposition to their policy came from influential civilian leaders who judged that the state’s need to support Russian peasants colonizing Turkestan territories had to come first. Their reckless decision led to the seizure from nomadic tribes of vast regions of Turkestan given to the peasant pioneers. Colonization meant violating the right of these subjects to the use of their land, which led directly to the Turkestan uprising of 1916. Coming before the 1917 revolution, this rebellion revealed that the empire’s colonialist policies had failed to unify its peoples. periority and often expressed itself in disdain for colonial peoples. Yet not all of these subject groups were treated with equal disregard. In the territories of the Caucasus Mountains (between the Black and Caspian Seas), imperial rule won the support of some peoples, but faced repeated revolts from others. Resistance came especially from Muslim mountain tribes, who bitterly opposed domination by this Christian state. They sustained a half-century war until their defeat in the 1860s, when many were forced into exile or emigrated willingly to the Ottoman Empire. The conquest of the region produced an abundance of heroic tales of exotic adventures pitting valorous Russians against barbaric, cruel, and courageous enemies. These tales created enduring images of “oriental” peoples, sometimes admired for their “noble savagery” but usually disparaged for their alleged moral and cultural decadence.

  Russian colonialism had a powerful impact on the population there. The Christian peoples (Georgians and Armenians) of the region found particular benefits from the empire’s economic and cultural policies. Armenians created profitable commercial enterprises in the growing towns and cities of the Caucasus region, and were joined by large numbers of Armenian migrants from surrounding Muslim states. Some Georgians used the empire’s cultural window on modern Western culture to create their own national literature and history. These quickly became tools in the Georgians’ nationalist oppositional movement. In the Muslim lands along the Caspian Sea where Azeri Turks lived, investors from Russia and Europe developed the rich oil deposits into one of the first major sources of petroleum for the European economy, a source of immense profit to them. The port of Baku became a boomtown, where unskilled Azeri laborers worked in the danger
ous oil fields. They formed a colonial proletariat living among Russian officials and capitalists, and Armenian merchants and traders. The new colonial cities such as Baku were deeply divided both socially and ethnically, and became places in the early twentieth century of riots and bloodshed provoked by the hostility among these peoples. Nationalist opposition to empire and ethnic conflict among its peoples were both products of Russian colonialism.

  ORIENTALISM IN THE CAUCASUS REGION

  To the end of the empire’s existence, colonialism rested on the assumption of Russian cultural suCOLONIALISM IN THE SOVIET UNION The fall of the empire in 1917 ended Russian colonialism as a publicly defended ideal and policy. The triumph of the communist revolutionary

  COLONIALISM

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  By 1914, the Russian Empire controlled more than one-sixth of the Earth’s landed surface. XNR PRODUCTIONS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF THE GALE GROUP movement in most of the lands once a part of the empire put in place a new political order, called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The communist leaders of the new Soviet state preached the Marxist-Leninist program for human progress. They persecuted all religious movements, and denounced imperialism and colonialism, in Russia as elsewhere in the Western world. Their promise was liberation of all colonial peoples. But they did not permit their own peoples, previously in the empire’s colonial lands, to escape their domination. Their idea of “colonial liberation” consisted of organizing these peoples into discreet ethno-territo-rial units by drawing territorial borders for every distinct people. The biggest of these received their own national republics. Each of these nations of the Soviet Union had its own political leaders and its own language and culture, but the “union” to which they belonged remained under the domination of the Communist Party, itself controlled from party headquarters in the Kremlin in Moscow.