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Managing empire: tsarist nationalities policy

theodore r. weeks

Almost from its inception, Russia has been a multinational state. Long before anyone spoke of the ‘Russian Empire’ (Rossiiskaia Imperiia), a designation that dates from the latter part of Peter I’s reign, a variety of ethnic groups lived in territories claimed by the Muscovite tsar. However, the very concepts of nations and nationality, now considered a central element of human identity, were largely absent in Imperial Russia, at least until the later nineteenth century. Rather, religion played a far more central role in defining what was ‘foreign’ than language or ‘ethnicity,’ a slippery concept at best. The role of the Orthodox religion (Pravoslavie) for Russian identity cannot be overstated. Thus a ‘Catholic Russian’ or ‘Muslim Russian’ even today are conceptually difficult for many Russians to accept.

In Russian – unlike English – one can differentiate between Russian as a cultural-ethnic category (russkii) and Russian as a political-geographical designation (rossiiskii). In practice, however, the distinction was never made consistently in the imperial period, not even by officials who should have known better. Even more inconsistent, perhaps, is the use of the term ‘Russification’ both at the time and in subsequent historiography. The Russian Empire did not ‘embrace diversity’ – such an idea would have seemed absurd to the tsars and their servitors. They took for granted the predominance of Russian culture (including language) and the Russian Orthodox religion within the empire. But Imperial Russia also lacked the resources and even will to carry out consistent and activist programmes of national assimilation or ‘ethnic cleansing’ whether through education or more violent methods. Tsarist ‘nationalities policy’ was not, in fact, one single policy. Rather, there were very different measures taken in, say, the Caucasus, Poland or Central Asia, at different times. Typically an activist, often violent period in which non-Russians would be actively persecuted would be followed by years in which a more passive, though seldom benevolent policy was followed.

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Nationalities before Peter

When Peter the Great came to the throne, the Russian Empire already stretched from the White Sea and Pskov in the west all the way to the Pacific Ocean. While some small Finnic tribes lived in Muscovite territory from an early date, the real beginning of Russia as a multinational empire can be dated rather precisely in the years 1552–6. At this point Ivan IV (‘the terrible’) seized the Volga khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, bringing at a stroke thousands of Muslim Tatars under Muscovite rule. The conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan also opened the way for further Russian expansion to the east, into Siberia. On the whole, Moscow allowed the Tatar elite to retain its status and property demanding, however, loyalty to the Russian centre. Only in the eighteenth century did Peter and, with less consistency, his successors press Muslim landowners to accept Russian Orthodoxy or give up their estates. Here again the key issue was not ethnicity or national culture but religion. The baptised Tatar landowners did not soon give up their ethnic and cultural distinctiveness.

Having gained power over the Volga Muslim khanates but stymied in their attempts to seize territory to the west and south, the natural direction of expansion lay to the east. To be sure, Russian traders – in particular the Stroganov family – had even earlier ventured beyond the Urals, but consistent exploration leading to permanent territorial claims began only in the late sixteenth century. Conquest of Siberia is usually connected with the Stroganov family and in particular the Cossack commander in their employ, Ermak, who helped defeat the Muslim overlords of western Siberia in the 1580s, opening the way to Russian conquest of the entire sparsely-populated expanse of territory between the Ural mountains and the Pacific. The city of Tobolsk was founded in 1587, Tomsk in 1604 and Okhotsk on the Pacific Ocean in 1648. Russian expansion over this huge area proceeded slowly but without encountering serious obstacles. The local peoples, a hugely various collection of linguistic, cultural and religious groups, were seldom in a position to oppose the better-armed and organised Russians. Nor did Russian rule particularly impinge on their everyday lives. On the whole, Moscow had no particular interest in direct rule, but was ruthless in enforcing a tribute paid in furs, the yasak. Certain groups, most notably the nomadic Kalmyks, did oppose accepting Muscovite rule (and the yasak), but their raids could not prevent the steady Russian march to the east over the seventeenth century. This process of territorial expansion was capped by the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689,

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Managing empire: tsarist nationalities policy

which set down the Sino-Russian border that would not change for nearly two centuries.1

Expansion in the eighteenth century and nationality

Conquest of the Baltic under Peter

Peter the Great was the true founder of the Russian Empire. Indeed, it was he who insisted on a change in the Russian state’s nomenclature to Rossiiskaia Imperiia, a change only gradually accepted by the other European powers. More important than the name change were territorial gains. After his crushing victory over Charles X of Sweden at Poltava (summer 1709), the fate of Sweden’s erstwhile Baltic provinces was sealed. In the course of the following year the region from Riga to Vyborg (Viipuri) came under Russian rule. Peter was careful not to alienate the ruling classes in this strategic area. The cities of Riga and Reval (Tallinn) retained their customary privileges, including the use of German language and a great deal of autonomy. Similarly the Livonian nobility (of mainly German ethnicity) continued to exercise its traditional rights and even gained back considerable lands previously lost to the Swedish crown. Religious freedom was guaranteed, though Orthodox churches were also introduced. Thus the transfer of sovereign power from Stockholm to St Petersburg changed little in the everyday workings of these provinces. The mainly German nobility and middle class continued to exercise almost total control over the economy and social life of the region, also profiting from the opening of the Russian market to their agricultural products. Furthermore, the Baltic German nobility was to play an inordinately important role as officers, officials and ambassadors of the Russian Empire. Typically for the age, the peasant masses of Estonian and Latvian ethnicity did not play a role in St Petersburg’s political calculations.

Peter’s victory at Poltava also sealed the fate of Ukraine as an independent entity. The Ukrainian leader Mazepa’s alliance with the Swedes spelled his downfall; in the eighteenth century Russia tightened its grip on left-bank

1The best overview of Russia as a multinational state is A. Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (New York: Pearson Education, 2001). On Russia’s ‘first (minority)

nationalities’ – primary among them the Volga Tatars – see A. Kappeler, Russlands erste Nationalitaten:¨ das Zarenreich und die Volker¨ der Mittleren Wolga vom 1 6. bis 1 9. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Bohlau¨ 1982). The struggles of the Kalmyks against the expanding Muscovite/Russian state are explored in Michael Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1 600–1 91 7 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).

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(east of the Dnieper) Ukraine which it had gained in the Treaty of Andrusovo (1654). However, significant territories of present-day Ukraine remained under Ottoman and Polish rule until later in the century.

Ukraine under Catherine

Catherine the Great (reigned 1762–96) continued Peter’s work of imperial expansion. During her reign the empire expanded to the Black Sea in the south and the Vistula river in the west, taking over territory relinquished by two declining states, Poland and the Ottoman Empire. Russian military victories on land and sea forced the Sultan to agree to the Treaty of Kuc¨¸uk¨ Kaynarca early in 1774. The terms of this treaty gave Russia a foothold on the Black Sea (between the Dniester and Bug rivers); two decades later Russian rule extended over the entire northern Black Sea littoral from the Dniester eastward. This territory was sparsely populated and the government quickly put in place programmes to entice new settlers to what they called ‘New Russia’. On the site of a Turkish fort called Yeni Dunai (‘New World’) the city of Odessa was founded in 1794, soon to become one of the most ethnically mixed and cosmopolitan cities in the empire.

Partitions of Poland

Even more than the conquest of Ottoman territories, Catherine’s legacy has been marked by her participation in the dismemberment of Poland. For Poles, the German-born Russian empress represents a despised and much reviled figure. In his Books of the Polish Pilgrimage the national poet Adam Mickiewicz described her as ‘The most debauched of women, a shameless Venus proclaiming herself a pure virgin.’ Catherine did not initiate the actual partitions – that role belonged to King Frederick II (‘the Great’) of Prussia. But certainly Catherine did everything she could to contribute to the weakening of the Polish state which resulted in its ultimate demise in 1795. In the three partitions, Russia gained considerable territories in what is now Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania. Unlike Prussia and Austria, Russia did not take over ethnically Polish territory in the partitions. However, in the vast eastern lands of the erstwhile Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the nobility (szlachta to use the Polish term) was generally Polish by language and culture, and Catholic in religion. The peasantry was Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian by ethnicity, and Catholic, Orthodox or Uniate by religion. Thus, with the partitions, Russia took on not one, but several potential ‘national problems’, leaving aside for a moment the most troubling one of all: the Jewish question.

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