The Russian Empire

A Multi-ethnic History

Andreas Kappeler

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317568094
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Histoire
• Categoría: Histoire de la Russie

The "national question" and how to impose control over its diverse ethnic identities has long posed a problem for the Russian state. This major survey of Russia as a multi-ethnic empire spans the imperial years from the sixteenth century to 1917, with major consideration of the Soviet phase. It asks how Russians incorporated new territories, how they were resisted, what the character of a multi-ethnic empire was and how, finally, these issues related to nationalism.

1
The Mediaeval Background

THE HISTORY of the Russian multi-ethnic empire begins in 1552 with the conquest of Kazan by the Muscovite tsar, Ivan IV, the Terrible. The majority of scholars both within and outside the former Soviet Union are of this opinion, and they are supported by Russian folk tradition. It is possible to adduce a number of good reasons for such views. The Khanate of Kazan was the first independent polity to come under Russian rule which possessed a historical tradition, dynastic legitimacy and an upper class which not only spoke a different language but also belonged to a different world religion and civilization, Islam. However, the date traditionally assigned to the transition from an ethnically fairly uniform to a multi-ethnic Russia obscures the fact that the population of the Muscovite state and that of the other eastern Slav principalities had always been diverse in ethnic and religious terms, and that some of the nationalities of the former Soviet Union had been under Russian control since the Middle Ages.¹

The population of the first polity of the eastern Slavs, the Kievan Rus, included a considerable proportion of tribes who spoke Finnish and Baltic languages, a small number of Turkic-speaking soldiers, and, in the early period, Scandinavian Varangians. The early principalities into which the Kievan realm was divided in the twelfth century were not ethnically uniform either. As the Russian historian V. O. Kliuchevsky has pointed out, the new ethnic group of the Great Russians began to emerge at this time in the north-eastern part of Rus as a result of the interaction of eastern Slav and Finnish-speaking tribes.²

A vast empire centred on the city state of Novgorod and inhabited by numerous non-Slav ethnic groups arose between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries in the north-western part of the area settled by eastern Slavs. An inner circle of Finnish-speaking tribes to the north — Karelians, Vots, Izhora (Ingrians) and Veps — was ruled directly from Novgorod, and an outer circle was subject to loose tributary rule. They included the Finnish-speaking Lapps in the far north, and, further to the north-east, the Zyrians and Permiaks, who were also Finnish-speaking, the Ugric-speaking Ostiaks and Voguls, and the Samoyeds (see Table 1) Novgorod exacted tribute from the hunters and fishermen of the northeast, if necessary with military force. Its most important component consisted of costly furs, which were exported from Novgorod via the Hanseatic cities to western Europe. Furs, and sable in particular, drew Russian soldiers and trappers from Novgorod for thousands of kilometres to the northern Urals. Yet the inner socio-political structure and the animist value system of the remote tribes remained untouched. Loyal tribal chiefs were left in place, and were responsible for collecting tribute. This first great eastward movement of the Russians via the river system of the north preceded the similar conquest of Siberia.

On the other hand, the Finnish-speaking ethnic groups of the inner circle, which subsisted largely on agriculture and forestry, were directly subject to the rule of Novgorod. The areas in which they lived were gradually settled by Russian peasants, and came into the possession of secular and ecclesiastical landowners from Novgorod. They were also converted to the Orthodox faith: to this day the Orthodox church continues to constitute the main difference between Karelians and Finns. However, the integration of non-Slav ethnic groups did not always take the form of peaceful acculturation, and the sources also reveal that there was armed resistance to the rule of Novgorod. In addition to this, the King of Sweden laid claim to the Karelians, and thus they frequently became the victims of border conflicts between Novgorod and Sweden.

Between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, the Novgorod state already possessed a series of features which were to become characteristic of the later Russian multi-ethnic empire: a variety of motives for expansion, the two types of direct and indirect rule, and the stepwise incorporation of non-Russians that led from economic to administrative subservience, and thence to social, religious and cultural integration.

In the principalities of the north-east, and in the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, which advanced to become the predominant power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Russians lived side by side with Finnish-speaking ethnic groups. However, the majority of the aboriginal inhabitants (Merya, Muroma and Ves) were assimilated in linguistic and religious terms in a process of acculturation that took several centuries, and they disappear from the sources in the fourteenth century. Only the western Mordvinians on the eastern tributaries of the Oka, who had been subjugated by Russian princes in the thirteenth century, retained the status of an independent ethnic group in the Muscovite state. Since the fourteenth century, Muscovy had extended its influence in the north-east to the Zyrians and the Permiaks, who nominally owed allegiance to Novgorod. In this the mission to the Zyrians of Bishop Stephen of Perm, who was later canonized, played an important role. It was the first example of missionary activity helping the cause of Russian expansion. However, both the mission and the flexible methods of Christianization, which was carried out with the help of sermons in the Zyrian language, and of translations written in a newly devised Zyrian alphabet, were to remain the exception in the history of Russian expansion.

The conquest of Novgorod by Ivan III in 1478 finally imparted a multi-ethnic character to the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. Furthermore, the Viatka district, which was conquered in 1489, was inhabited not only by Russians, but also by Finnish-speaking Votiaks and Cheremis, by Besermians, who were probably descendants of settlers of Volga Bulgar origin, and by a small Tatar elite. The majority of the non-Russian ethnic groups are mentioned in the testament of Ivan III (1503—04), and, in his famous book on Russia, the Austrian diplomat Sigismund von Herberstein, who went to Moscow twice at the beginning of the sixteenth century, describes the Karelians, Lapps, the Samoyeds, the Permians (i.e. Zyrians and the Permiaks), the Cheremis (partly confusing them with the Votiaks), the Mordvinians and the Ugric-speaking ethnic groups of the Urals, whose language he already described as being related to that of the Hungarians.³

However, in numerical terms these non-Russian ethnic groups were only small peripheral entities. The vast majority of the inhabitants of the Muscovite state in the first half of the sixteenth century were Great Russians. It was more Russian and Orthodox in character than its successors, and in ethnic and religious terms was considerably more homogeneous than any of its neighbours (Lithuania, Livonia, Sweden, the Khanates of Kazan, Sibir and Crimea), or, for that matter, than Poland and Hungary, the great kingdoms of eastern central Europe.

The non-Russian ethnic groups, which were part of the Muscovite state before the middle of the sixteenth century, can be divided into four different types that are subsequently encountered on numerous occasions:

1. Ethnic groups that engaged in agriculture and forestry, which were integrated in administrative, economic and social terms, which had accepted the Orthodox faith, at least nominally, whose elite no longer existed, and whose territory was also settled by Russian peasants. This type included the Karelians, Veps and Izhora in the north-west, and the Zyrians and Permiaks in the north-east. It is noteworthy that these groups — especially the Karelians and the Zyrians (now known as Komi) — have preserved their ethnic identity to this day, after more than 700 years of Russian rule and acculturation. However, they have been Russified to a greater extent than most of the other nationalities of the former Soviet Union.
2. The hunters, fishermen and reindeer herdsmen of the northern and north-eastern periphery, where there were no Russian settlers and the climate was harsh. They were subject to a loose tributary rule that left their inner socio-political structures and animist religion untouched. Their most important function for the centre was an economic one. Tribute was paid in kind, and consisted largely of furs, and to some extent of fish and walrus tusks. In the first half of the sixteenth century this group included the Samoyeds, Lapps, Ostiaks and Voguls.
3. Somewhere between these two types were the Mordvinians, Cheremis, Votiaks and Besermians on the borders of the Khanate of Kazan. They engaged primarily in agriculture and forestry, and their areas had to some extent been integrated in administrative and economic terms, and had already been reached by Russian settlers. However, they retained a non-Russian elite and their animist value system.
4. The fourth type consisted of the small though in qualitative terms important groups of foreigners who were residents of the Muscovite state and performed specific functions for its rulers. First, there were Tatars who had entered the service of the Grand Duke. They either supplied highly effective cavalry units that considerably strengthened the Muscovite armies, or were given land near the border in order to guard it against incursions from the steppes. In this respect they were the direct predecessors of the eastern Slav Cossacks. Originally this was also a task assigned to the Khanate of Kasimov, which was founded in the middle of the fifteenth century on the river Oka. Although its Tatar rulers were vassals of the Muscovite Grand Duke, it managed for more than two centuries to retain its traditional socio-political order and Islamic religion. If they decided to settle permanently in the Muscovite state, Tatar noblemen became members of its aristocracy. This type may be regarded as a precursor of the later Russian practice of coopting foreign elites and assigning complementary functions to them. The category also included foreigners from western and southern Europe. Under Ivan III these were primarily Greek and Italian specialists who were active in the fields of administration and diplomacy, or worked in technical professions. They also included architects and painters.

The traditions of the early Muscovite multi-ethnic realm, which evolved in the Middle Ages, constituted an important group of preconditions for the multi-ethnic empire that came into being around the middle of the sixteenth century. A second cluster of preconditions is associated with the successful territorial expansion of the Muscovite state from the fourteenth century onwards, which is commonly known as ‘the gathering of the lands of Rus’.⁴ In less than two centuries the small and politically insignificant principality of Muscovy became the largest European state in terms of size, although the vast taiga and tundra areas in the north and the north-east, which had originally belonged to Novgorod, were very sparsely populated. In the course of ‘the gathering of the lands of Rus’ the Muscovite rulers developed the basic patterns of an expansionist policy which made use of a number of different methods. They included an astute kind of diplomacy which made frequent use of the technique of divide et impera, wooed the support of foreign elites, and secured their allegiance; a stepwise strategy that led from protectorates whose status was sealed by a declaration of loyalty to complete annexation at a later date; the acquisition by purchase of smaller territories; military conquest and brutal repression; the legitimation of annexations with political arguments, such as the charge of collaboration with Muscovy’s foreign enemies, or historical ones, such as the claim that the territories of the former Grand Duchy of Vladimir were the ‘patrimony’ (votchina) of the Muscovite rulers. In the case of the incorporation of the territories of Novgorod, Viatka and Pskov, the Grand Dukes of Muscovy proceeded in a particularly brutal manner, destroying the socio-political order, which differed considerably from that of Muscovy, and resettling a large part of the aristocratic elite and the merchants in the central areas of the Muscovite state.

Flexible diplomacy and conquest were also in evidence in the course of the conflict with Poland-Lithuania. At the end of the fifteenth and at the beginning of the sixteenth centuries this led to the incorporation of a series of eastern Slav principalities that had been conquered by the Grand Duke of Lithuania in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. An important expansionist element in this context was the fact that certain eastern Slav Orthodox princes voluntarily switched their allegiance to the Muscovite state. The Grand Duke of Muscovy, who now styled himself ‘Ruler of all Rus’, developed the gathering of the lands of Rus into a claim to the patrimony of the whole realm of Kiev. In this he received support from the Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church, who resided in Moscow. The ensuing conflict with Poland-Lithuania for control of those areas inhabited by Orthodox eastern Slavs was a foregone conclusion. It was to determine the shape of later Russian foreign policy up to the partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century and the events of 1939. The annexation of the ‘Severian’ principalities on the Desna, and of the principality of Smolensk at the beginning of the sixteenth century first brought Ukrainians and Belorussians under Muscovite rule. However, contemporary sources do not as yet refer to ethnic differences between the eastern Slavs, who are all referred to as Rus.

A third cluster of mediaeval preconditions for the multinational Russian empire derives from the fact that for a number of centuries the north-eastern Rus were part of the Golden Horde. With the decline of the vast Mongolian empire in the fifteenth century there began a struggle for its inheritance. This question is dealt with at the start of the next chapter, which, in analogy to the familiar concept of ‘the gathering of the lands of Rus’, is entitled ‘The Gathering of the Lands of the Golden Horde’.

Notes

1 This chapter is primarily based on Kappeler (1986), which also contains suggestions for further reading. See also la. A. Kizilov, Zemli i narody Rossii v 13—15 vv. (Moscow, 1984); Janet Martin, ‘Russian Expansion in the Far North: Tenth to Mid-Sixteenth Century’, in Rywkin (1988), 23—43.

2 VO. Kliuchevsky, Sochineniia I (Moscow, 1956), pp. 292—315.

3 Dukhovnye i dogovornye gramoty velikikh i udel’nykh knyazei 14—16 vv. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1950), pp. 356 f.; Herberstein (1984), pp. 171 f., 198 f., 206-11, 286—92. The passages omitted in this shortened version in Herberstein, Moscovia … (Vienna, 1557), p. M IIIv.

4 See Stökl (1990), pp. 193—203; Handbuch I, pp. 635—52.

2
The Gathering of the Lands of the Golden Horde between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries

ON 2 OCTOBER 1552 a large Russian army commanded by the young tsar, Ivan IV, took the city of Kazan. A contemporary official Russian chronicle described the occasion thus:

With the help of Our almighty Lord Jesus Christ and the prayers of the Mother of God … our Orthodox tsar and Grand Duke Ivan Vasilevich, crowned by God and autocrat of all Rus, fought the infidels, and, at last prevailing, took prisoner the tsar of Kazan, Ediger Mahmet … and he took possession of the tsardom and populous city of Kazan. The tsar caused the women and little children to be taken prisoner, but all those who carried arms were put to death on account of their treason.¹

The conquest of Kazan was an unparalleled step in the history of the Muscovite state. Whereas it had been possible to justify ‘the gathering of the lands of Rus’ on historical, dynastic and religious grounds, the annexation of a sovereign state that had never belonged to Rus, and was a part of the Mongolian empire, the political system established by Genghis Khan, and the Islamic community, went against all the traditional legal concepts. Thus in contemporary sources and in numerous works of Russian historiography the conquest is legitimated with a series of arguments that are often quite implausible. For example, it is depicted as a defensive measure against the incursions of the Kazan Tatars, as punishment for their treason, as a crusade against the infidels (as in the chronicle cited above), and as a liberation (requested by emissaries) from the yoke of the Khanate of Crimea and the Ottoman Empire. In direct analogy to the gathering of the lands of Rus, the Khanate is even described as Muscovite patrimony (votchina), and as ‘an ancient land of Rus’, a statement that is ‘proved’ with reference to dynastic claims reaching back to Kievan days.² I shall return later to the question of the motives behind Muscovy’s conquest of Kazan. However, before I do so the perspective needs to be widened.

The conquest of the Khanate of Kazan and, four years later, of the Khanate of Astrakhan, were epoch-making events in the history of Russia and of the whole of Eurasia. The predominantly eastern Slav, Orthodox and north-east European Muscovite state had finally turned into a multiethnic empire with several religions. By gaining control of the Volga waterway and thus dividing the Eurasian steppe into two parts, the Muscovite rulers assumed the mantle of the Khans of the Golden Horde. For this reason Russian ostpolitik in the centuries that followed can be described as ‘the gathering of the lands of the Golden Horde’.

The conquest of Rus by the Mongols between 1237 and 1240, and the ensuing period of Mongol and Tatar rule, which lasted for more than two centuries, constituted a profound caesura in the history of the eastern Slavs as a whole and of Russia in particular. However, for the Khans of the Golden Horde, which was the westernmost part of the former Mongol empire and reached from the Crimea to the steppes of Middle Asia and from the Caucasus to the north of Russia, peripheral Rus was not of primary importance.³ Thus they restricted themselves to indirect rule, though this was enforced with military means whenever the need arose. T...