The Crimean War

To have a feeling for the liberty enjoyed in the other European countries one must have sojourned in that solitude without repose, in that prison without leisure, that is called Russia. If ever your sons should be discontented with France, try my recipe: tell them to go to Russia. It is a journey useful to every foreigner; whoever has well examined that country will be content to live anywhere else.²⁹

Within a few years of its publication, La Russie en 1839 went through at least six editions in France; it was pirated and republished in several other editions in Brussels; translated into German, Danish and English; and abridged in pamphlet form in various other European languages. Overall it must have sold several hundred thousand copies, making it by far the most popular and influential work by a foreigner on Russia on the eve of the Crimean War. The key to its success was its articulation of the fears and prejudices about Russia widely held in Europe at that time.

Throughout the Continent there were deep anxieties about the rapid growth and military power of Russia. The Russian invasion of Poland and the Danubian principalities, combined with Russia’s growing influence in the Balkans, gave rise to fears of a Slavic threat to Western civilization that La Russie had expressed. In the German lands, in particular, where Custine’s book was very well received, it was widely argued in the pamphlet press that Nicholas was plotting to become the emperor of the Slavs throughout Europe, and that German unity could not be gained without a war to push back Russian influence. Such ideas were further fuelled by the appearance of Russland und die Zivilisation, a pamphlet published anonymously in various German editions in the early 1830s and translated into French as the work of Count Adam Gurowski in 1840. As one of the earliest published expressions of a pan-Slav ideology, the pamphlet excited much discussion on the Continent. Gurowski maintained that European history until the present time had known just two civilizations, the Latin and German, but that Providence had assigned to Russia the divine mission of giving to the world a third, Slavic, civilization. Under German domination, the Slav nations (Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Slovenes and so on) were all in decline. But they would be united and reinvigorated under Russian leadership, and would dominate the Continent.³⁰

In the 1840s Western fears of pan-Slavism focused specifically on the Balkans, where Russian influence seemed to be on the rise. The Austrians were increasingly wary of Russia’s intentions in Serbia and the Danubian principalities, as were the British, who set up consulates in Belgrade, Braila and Iai to promote British trade and keep a check on Russia. Of particular concern was Russia’s interference in Serbian politics. In 1830 Serbia had become self-governing under Ottoman sovereignty, with Prince Milos of the Obrenovi family as its hereditary prince. The ‘Russian Party’ in Belgrade – Slavophiles who wanted Russia to adopt a more aggressive foreign policy in support of Balkan Slavs – quickly built up its support among Serbian notables, the clergy, the army and even among members of the Prince’s court, who were disgruntled with his dictatorial policies. The British responded by buttressing the Milos regime, on the grounds that a pro-British despot was preferable to a Russian-controlled oligarchy of Serbian notables, and exerted pressure on the Prince to strengthen his position through constitutional reforms. But Russia used its influence to threaten Milos with rebellion, and to extract from the Ottoman authorities in 1838 an Organic Statute as an alternative to the British constitutional model. The Statute granted civil liberties but established life-appointed noble councillors rather than elected assemblies to counteract the power of the Prince. Since most of the councillors were pro-Russian, the tsarist government was able to exert considerable pressure on the Serbian government during the 1840s.³¹

What the Tsar’s motives in the Balkans were is difficult to say. He insisted that he was opposed to any pan-Slav or nationalist movement that challenged the legitimate sovereigns of the Continent, the Ottomans and Milos included. The aim of his intervention in the Balkans was merely to stamp out the possibility of national revolutions arising there which might spread to the Slav nations under his own rule (the Poles in particular). At home, he openly condemned the pan-Slavs as dangerous liberals and revolutionaries. ‘Under the guise of sympathy for the oppression of the Slavs in other states,’ he wrote, ‘they conceal the rebellious idea of union with these tribes, despite their legitimate citizenship in neighbouring and allied states; and they expect this to be brought about not through God’s will but from violent attempts that will make for the ruin of Russia herself.’³² The ‘Russian Party’ were deemed a major threat by Nicholas and kept under a close watch by the Third Section, the political police, during the 1830s and 1840s. In 1847 the Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius, the centre of the pan-Slav movement in Kiev, was closed down by the police.³³

Yet the Tsar was pragmatic in his adherence to legitimist principles. He applied them to Christian states but not necessarily to Muslim ones, if this involved siding against Orthodox Christians, as demonstrated by his support for the Greek uprising against the Ottoman Empire. As the years passed, Nicholas placed more importance on the defence of the Orthodox religion and Russia’s interests – which in his view were practically synonymous – than on the Concert of Europe or the international principles of the Holy Alliance. Thus, while he shared the reactionary ideology of the Habsburgs and supported their empire, this did not prevent him from encouraging the nationalist sympathies of the Serbs, Romanians and Ukrainians within the Austrian Empire, because they were Orthodox. His attitude towards the Catholic Slavs under Habsburg rule (Czechs, Slovenes, Slovaks, Croats and Poles) was less encouraging.

As for the Slavs within the Ottoman Empire, Nicholas’s initial reluctance to support their liberation gradually weakened, as he became convinced that the collapse of European Turkey was unavoidable and imminent and that the promotion of Russia’s interests involved building up alliances with the Slav nations in readiness for its eventual partition. The shift in the Tsar’s thinking was a change of strategy rather than a fundamental alteration of his ideology: if Russia did not intervene in the Balkans, the Western powers would do so, as they had in Greece, to turn the Christian nations against Russia and into Western-oriented states. But there is also evidence that in the course of the 1840s Nicholas began to feel a certain sympathy for the religious and nationalist sentiments of the Slavophiles and the pan-Slavs, whose mystical ideas of Holy Russia as an empire of the Orthodox increasingly appealed to his own understanding of his international mission as a Tsar:

Moscow, and the city of Peter, and the city of Constantine –

These are the sacred capitals of Russian tsardom …

But where is its end? and where are its borders

To the North, to the East, to the South and toward sunset?

They will be revealed by the fates of future times …

Seven internal seas and seven great rivers!

From the Nile to the Neva, from Elbe to China –

From the Volga to the Euphrates, from the Ganges to the Danube …

This is Russian tsardom … and it will not disappear with the ages.

The Holy Spirit foresaw and Daniel foretold this.

(Fedor Tiutchev, ‘Russian Geography’, 1849)³⁴

The leading pan-Slav ideologist was Mikhail Pogodin, a professor of Moscow University and founding editor of the influential journal Moskvitianin (Muscovite). Pogodin had an entry to the court and high official circles through the Minister of Education, Sergei Uvarov, who protected him from the police and brought many of his ministerial colleagues round to Pogodin’s idea that Russia should support the liberation of the Slavs on religious grounds. At the court Pogodin had an active supporter in Countess Antonina Bludova, the daughter of a highly placed imperial statesman. He also had a sympathetic ear in the Grand Duke Alexander, the heir to the throne. In 1838 Pogodin laid out his ideas in a memorandum to the Tsar. Arguing that history advanced by means of a succession of chosen people, he maintained that the future belonged to the Slavs, if Russia took upon itself its providential mission to create a Slavic empire and lead it to its destiny. In 1842 he wrote to him again: