The reign of Alexander II (1855-1881) was arguably the most vital quarter-century between Napoleon and Lenin, as far as the fate of Imperial Russia was concerned. During this period the Great Reforms were carried out, and for all their well-known weaknesses, these reforms remain one of the most impressive examples of attempted social and political engineering in the nineteenth century. At the same time, and not entirely divorced from the fate of the reforms, Russia was confronted by a number of new challenges at home and abroad. Among these, nationality, ‘national destiny,’ and imperialism figured importantly. While these three issues are at least in principle discrete problems, they came together during this period (and afterwards) when Russians asked question such as “Who are we?” “What role should Russians (or, the Russian Empire) play in the world?” “What is the place of non-Russian national groups in the Russian state?” At this point, such questions primarily interested Russia’s educated public or obshchestvo. But these years also witnessed the beginnings of a large-scale press and, one may argue, increasingly important role of public opinion in influencing government action. To put matters another way, on an as-yet small scale, the Russian political nation was being formed.
This paper will attempt to sketch the contours of the Russian political nation as it developed during these nearly twenty years by focusing on three geographically distant and seemingly unrelated ‘questions’ of the era: the eternal pol’skii vopros, in particular in the aftermath of the 1863 Insurrection, the relatively new but exciting sredneaziatskii vopros that burst onto the public scene with General M. G. Cherniaev’s taking of Tashkent in 1865, and the enormous slavianskii vopros which won widespread public attention in the later 1870s, in particular during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. All three of these ‘questions’ had both internal, domestic and outward, international ramifications. All three demanded an activist role in the world for the Russian Empire and presupposed that the Russian nation had the right, even the duty, to acquaint other cultures with its language, religion, and way of life. This belief paralleled the contemporary general-European idea of a mission civilisatrice cherished by many imperialists in Africa and Asia. Russian imperialism, however, differed significantly from the western European variety, partly because the new ‘colonies’ were geographically contiguous to the ‘metropol’ (and directly annexed), partly because even ‘at home’ in Europe the Russian Empire had to contend with large numbers of culturally and religiously distinct inhabitants. Furthermore, unlike the British, French, Dutch or even German case, Russian national identity was in the nineteenth century quite weakly developed. Hence in the second half of the century, imperial and national identity often developed hand in hand. This will be one of the main points of this paper.
Getting at ‘identities’ is a notoriously difficult and risky business. Even basic terms such as ‘Russian’ (either russkii or rossiiskii – the distinction is not always as clear as one might like!), ‘national minority,’ ‘Slav,’ ‘russification’, or ‘civilization’ are not always precisely defined. To take just one example, ‘Russian’ can denote ethnicity, poddanstvo (‘citizenship’ is not an appropriate term for an autocracy), or simply political reliability. To make matters worse (at least, for those demanding complete conceptual clarity), the same author will frequently use the same term in more than one meaning. Rather than attempt to give fixed definitions, in what follows I will aim to clarify as best I can the author’s meaning in context. In this way I hope to suggest some possible rhetorical models and explanations for what I have grandiloquently dubbed “Russia’s World-Historical Mission” and, most important of all, to stimulate discussion on the possible connections between Lithuania, Turkestan, and Montenegro in this national endeavor.

Protecting Pure Slavdom: Russia and the Poles

If there was one thing nearly all Russians could agree on in the nineteenth century, it was that the Poles presented a headache for the Russian Empire. The Poles occupied a special place in the national world of imperial Russia for several reasons, foremost among these, simple numbers, geography, history, culture, and religion. Using imperial Russia’s method of calculating nationality, the Poles made up the largest non-Russian ethnicity in the Empire.^[1] This inherently hostile national group, furthermore, lived in the geopolitically vital borderlands between Russia and Central Europe. Unlike most other minority nationalities (the term is, of course, rather anachronistic), Poles could look back on a long and distinguished history, a fact of no little import in the historically-obsessed nineteenth century.^[2] Besides political strength, the historical existence of a Polish court and Polish nobility meant that, again unlike Lithuanians or Kazakhs, Poles could boast of a sophisticated European high culture which, for all their criticisms, Russians respected. And from at latest the early seventeenth century, the history of Polish-Russian relations were consistently hostile. One constant source of this hostility was the religious divide between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, and in particular the fact of Catholic-Polish landlords ruling over Orthodox peasants-serfs in the territory between ethnic Russia and ethnic Poland. All of these factors – religion, culture, history, geography, numbers – continued to make the Polish question sui generis among the nationality headaches of the Russian Empire to its very demise.
The Polish headache operated on at least three levels. First of all, there was the direct political threat: Poles as revolutionaries and disloyal subjects. The infamous general (later Count) M. N. Murav’ev (“the hangman”) and the journalist Mikhail Katkov took this line. Then there was the Polish question as religious-spiritual threat. The panslav writer Ivan Aksakov exemplifies this perspective. Finally, the Polish question could be seen as a threat within Slavdom, to quote Aleksandr Pushkin’s well-known lines, “Eto spor slavian mezhdu soboiu, / Domashnii, staryi spor, uzh vzveshennyi sud’boiu, / Vopros, kotorogo ne rasreshite vy.”^[3] This line is exemplified in the writings of the panslav slavicist Aleksandr F. Gil’ferding. Obviously these three approaches to the Polish question will overlap somewhat, and other individuals could be cited in each ‘category.’ Most interesting for our purposes, however, is what these Russian representations of Polishness reveal about presuppositions regarding the Russian essence.
Mikhail Nikolaevich Murav’ev exemplifies, even into the twenty-first century, the image of the brutal Russian and russifier, in particular in Polish and Lithuanian popular historiography. And, to be sure, Murav’ev was no liberal in any sense of the word, and certainly regarded the Poles (in particular the szlachta and the Roman Catholic clergy) as inveterate enemies of all things Russian. From his own point of view, however, Murav’ev was no simple brute but a defender of Russian state interests and of the Russian “simple folk” whose economic and national interests were held in thrall by haughty and repressive Lechites. During the 1863 rebellion (for Murav’ev and his supporters always miatezh or “mutiny”), Murav’ev also enjoyed a good deal of support in Petersburg and Moscow society, one indication of which are the poems written in his honor by F. Tiutchev and N. Nekrasov.^[4] Upon accepting Murav’ev’s resignation from his post as Vil’na general governor, Tsar Alexander II wrote of him:

You carried out and strengthened my orders for transforming the way of life of the peasant population [preobrazovanie byta krest'ianskogo naseleniia] who were in their overwhelming majority loyal to their task [i.e., they did not join the rebels] and today once again are characterized by a deep consciousness of the ancient and indissoluble unity of the Western territory with Russia. You presided over [ozabotilis'] the improvement of living conditions [byt] of the Orthodox clergy, restored in the people's memory [v narodnoi pamiati] the immemorial Orthodox feastdays, worked for the building and adornment of Orthodox churches and, by increasing the number of people's schools [narodnye uchilishcha], laid the cornerstone for a transformation of them in the spirit of Orthodoxy and the Russian nationality.^[5]

Officially, at least, Murav’ev’s program as set down in his short period as governor general of Vil’na, remained the cornerstone of official policy there at least to the early twentieth century.^[6]
The “positive” side of Murav’ev’s program may be discerned from Alexander’s praising words: intervening for the (Russian) peasantry against their (Polish) landlords, supporting the Orthodox church, and encouraging (Russian) education. The negative side of this program is easily guessed: land settlements very unfavorable to the landowning class, followed by a complete prohibition on Poles from purchasing land in the region, repressions and restrictions on the Catholic church and clergy, and proscriptions on many aspects of Polish culture.^[7] As for Murav’ev’s own views, these are succinctly set down in his final report to the Tsar, penned in 1865. Here Murav’ev justifies his sometimes harsh measures against Polish landowners and Catholic clergymen, arguing that only a hard line would succeed in dispelling the Poles’ illusions and pretensions toward this “eternally-Russian land.” More than that, only swift punishment of the “mutineers” would still anti-Russian propaganda in Europe: “Russia spoke [zagovorila] – and Europe fell silent [umolkla], having seen the successes of the quick suppression of the mutiny in Lithuania [Litva].” Still, Murav’ev cautioned, Russia’s success over the Polish rebels would only be temporary if not followed by thorough-going measures to increase the numbers of schools, improve the financial situation of the local Orthodox churches and clergy, keep Poles out of government posts, and watch carefully over the activities of the Catholic clergy.^[8]
In many respects, the influential journalist M. N. Katkov’s opinions on the Polish question paralleled those of Murav’ev. Indeed, the fundamental agreement between the two men on political matters comes through in letters exchanged between them in 1866.^[9] Katkov also defended Murav’ev against “mud flung at him in the foreign press”.^[10] During the years 1863-1864, Katkov published dozens of editorials denouncing the Poles and calling for swift and merciless retribution against the traitorous rebels. Katkov accused the Poles of attempting to resurrect the borders of 1772 and re-establish Polish domination over western Russia. In so doing, the Poles betrayed their responsibilities as subjects of the Tsar and as members of the Russian nobility (rossiiskoe dvorianstvo - a rather unusual phrase). In the next paragraph, however, Katkov wrote: “A Russian noble (russkii dvorianin) can be only one who has no other fatherland than Russia.”^[11] Indirectly Katkov’s words were a call for a nationalization or, to put it another way, russification of the noble estate throughout the Russian Empire.
In many respects, Katkov’s proposals for solving the Polish question are familiar. The role of the Orthodox church in the region had to be strengthened, in part by improving the material conditions of local Orthodox priests and in part simply by building more churches.^[12] He was also highly critical of the role of the Catholic clergy in pressing Polish national claims.^[13] Katkov insisted that surely the Russian Empire needed to protect Russian peasantry in the Western provinces from denationalization at the hands of the Poles.^[14] Like Murav’ev, he dismissed criticisms of “cruelty,” insisting instead “we should rather chide ourselves that we have been too pliant (ustupchivy), too much tending toward obsequiousness, too little inclined to appreciate our own dignity.” The Poles would only understand energetic, consistent measures and anything less would be a betrayal of the Russian cause in this vital borderland.^[15]
In other respects, however, Katkov was more of a consistent modern nationalist than Murav’ev. While setting the state above individual nationalities and arguing that “state power” must extend equally throughout the Empire’s territories, Katkov nonetheless admitted that particular state policies needed to reflect the peculiarities (including ethnographic make-up) of specific regions.^[16] The real problem, as he saw it, lay in the fact that for all their patriotic rhetoric, the Poles were in fact very poor nationalists. “It is true that the Polish nobility (shliakhetstvo) has killed the Polish nation (narod).” All of Polish history and culture, Katkov wrote, was infused with the equating of szlachta with nation, and a complete neglect of and contempt for the peasant masses.^[17] For Katkov, proof of this lay in the fact that the Poles had henceforth been unwilling to give up the Western provinces, whose peasant population was overwhelmingly non-Polish. Katkov ended the editorial, remarkably enough, with a call for Polish ethno-nationalism: “Here is the inevitable dilemma: either Polish patriotism in Russian territories and sooner or later an end to all hopes for the rebirth of the Polish nationality and independent Poland, or independent Poland (samostoiatel’naia Pol’sha) and a final end to the Polish nationality in the Empire’s western lands.”^[18] Following this logic, the russification of the Western provinces would, besides saving the Russian people there from polonization, essentially save the Poles from themselves.^[19]
While Katkov never denied the importance of Orthodoxy for Russians, on the whole his vision of ethnicity was more ethnically – and linguistically-based. In this respect he differed from Ivan Aksakov, who vehemently rejected the very idea of a “Russian Catholic” (not to mention the concept of russkii evrei). Just after the suppression of the 1863 rebellion Aksakov wrote, “From the very beginning Catholicism [in the Northwest provinces] appeared as an instrument of polonization.” Catholicism could not be combined with the Russian nationality because in its essential nature it was opposed to it: “In the end, isn't it well known to the whole world ... that Catholicism is by no means just a faith [katolichestvo i voobshche est' ne tol'ko vera] but also a political doctrine ...?” Hence there could be no overlap between “Catholic” and “Russian” for Aksakov: “One can either be Russian and call oneself Roman Catholic or be Roman Catholic and only call oneself Russian.”^[20] As the bearers of this despised and pernicious “political doctrine,” the Poles endangered more than the economic and cultural life of Russia – they called into question the Russian nation’s most cherished spiritual foundations.
For Aksakov, any attempt to break the link between russification (obrusenie) and Orthodoxy was both pernicious and doomed to failure. When the local Russian weekly in Vil’na, Vilenskii vestnik, published an article in early 1867 arguing that the Russian language would be the primary unifying element between various nationalities in the Western provinces, Aksakov attacked the journal bitterly. Learning Russian, he claimed, could never be more than an external, even superficial, side of the question. Jews and Poles could certainly learn Russian but they would remain alien from the Russian nation because of their failure to accept Orthodoxy.^[21] In a similar vein, Aksakov criticized plans to introduce the Russian language into Catholic churches with Belarusian congregations. Aksakov could not accept these Catholic peasants as truly Russian; for him, the religious far outweighed ethnic or linguistic considerations.^[22] For Aksakov, then, the Russian mission on the western frontier aimed to preserve and strengthen the Russian nation, but the most central defining characteristic of this nation was the Orthodox religion, which needed to be protected from the deleterious influences of the politico-religious doctrines of Catholicism.^[23]
Besides the political and religious threat posed by the Poles, the Poles presented a problem for Russia as, so to speak, a threat within Slavdom.^[24] For Russia to fulfill her role in protecting, nurturing, and uniting all Slavic peoples, the anti-Russian attitude of Slavdom’s second largest (by contemporary Russian reckoning) had to be ended. The worst aspect of the Polish-Russian conflict from the panslav point of view was that the Poles forced the Russians into direct contradiction with their own most precious values, of toleration, generosity, and respect for other cultures. This sentiment is clearly and poignantly expressed by Aleksandr Gil’ferding in three articles written between April and December 1863 and published under the title “The Polish Question.”^[25]
Gil’ferding began his essay by posing the question “what are we fighting for?” The Poles were quick with their answer: for fatherland, culture, and freedom. After some deliberation, Gil’ferding answered that Russians are fighting, not for some rights granted by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, but for “our age-old all-Slav historical cause.”^[26] Poland committed a act of “historical treason” against Slavdom by embracing the ideals of the western-European world, and Russia was called upon to defend Slavic ideals and spirit.^[27] In particular in the Western territory, “the force of historical development” (sila istoricheskogo razvitiia) demanded that they cease their pretensions to rule over Russians there, and to accept a modest role as tolerated guests. The Polish Insurrection was doomed from the start, because a successful outcome would mean the abasement of the Slavic tribe (plemia) to the “spiritual principles of another historical world.”^[28]
Poland represented Russia’s “sore spot” because it forced Russians to act in contradiction with their fundamental national values. Russians were by nature tolerant, and yet they were forced by circumstances (and by faults in the Polish national character) to retain a tight grip not only on the Russian Western provinces, but even on the Kingdom of Poland. Russia’s “holy calling ... the protection [pokrovitel’stvo] of Slavic nations [narody]” seemed to run counter to Russian measures against the Poles, and yet, these very measures were necessary for the survival of Slavdom.^[29] In theory Russia would be delighted to relinquish control over the Kingdom of Poland, but in view of the current political situation, such an action would be catastrophic not only for Russia and Poland, but for Europe as a whole.^[30] Furthermore, Gil’ferding concluded, the only hope for a proper renovation of the Polish nation away from aristocratic principles and toward a more properly national-peasant basis, could be brought about only under the stern overlordship of Russia.^[31] In the end, the contradiction between Russian severity toward Poland and Russia’s “sacred calling” toward Slavdom is only apparent: the stern treatment of Poland now would in the long run call forth a renewal of the Polish nation along lines that would allow its reintegration into the Slavic tribe.

Russia as Kulturträger: Central Asia 1865-1880

If Polish-Russian relations always bore the signs of Russian insecurity and even perhaps a slight inferiority complex, the Russian cultural and historical role in Central Asia was far clearer. Here Russia could present herself as progressive and European, sweeping away vestiges of “corrupt, backward Asiatic” culture. On the other hand, it was far less clear just why Russia should be in Central Asia at all, and on the whole, Russians were not particularly comfortable in the role of imperialist.^[32] Still, once Central Asia came under Russian control in the mid-1860s, both the Russian government and Russian “society” (obshchestvo) had to come up with rationales and rhetoric to fit the new reality of Russian state and national forms in the Central Asian context. The southern border of the Russia Empire had been creeping southwards from the later eighteenth century at least. In the west, this process ended with the acquisition of “New Russia” along the Black Sea littoral and Bessarabia during the Napoleonic period. The Caucasus, of course, were hotly contested in the first half of the nineteenth century and remained even decades later something of a wild frontier.^[33] Farther east, Russian southward expansion had by mid-century reached essentially to the Aral Sea by the time of the Crimean War. In the 1860s the Russians pushed southward again and by the end of the following decade – that is, by the time of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 – Russia had acquired either direct control over Central Asia or indirect suzerainty as the “overlord” of the Khanates of Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand.^[34] These new conquests brought Russia face-to-face with new and exotic peoples in a region best known for its fairytale place names – Samarkand, Khiva, Bukhara. To be sure, the Russian experience with “exotic” peoples has a long history, at least back to the conquest of Kazan’ under Ivan the Terrible. The context of the Russian encounter with Central Asia differs from these previous experiences, however, in its historical context: it took place against the background of expanding European self-confidence, world-wide imperialism, a technological revolution (in particular in communications), and a great expansion of Russian journalism.^[35]
Rather like the British acquiring an empire in a fit of absent-mindedness, the Russian conquest of Central Asia was not the result of careful planning and policy. While one may argue that geopolitical, economic, and other imperatives might have made the Russian advance inevitable at some point, the fact remains that a great push was given by the insubordinate actions of General Mikhail G. Cherniaev in 1865. After a failed attempt, it appears that the impetuous and ambitious Cherniaev simply could not rest without taking this major city. A combination of luck, modern weapons, and daring-do convinced the town elders of Tashkent to submit to the Russian’s authority on 17 June 1865.^[36] The impact of Cherniaev’s deed was tremendous. To quote a perhaps exaggerated statement by his biographer, “Cherniaev’s feat committed Russia, contrary to official intent, to conquer and civilize all Central Asia.”^[37]
As one might expect, the conquest of Tashkent also made General Cherniaev an instant hero. Both Tsar Alexander II and his son, the future Alexander III, praised Cherniaev’s intrepid actions. There was also considerable public interest in Central Asia; a number of articles on the region appeared in Russian journals in the mid- and later 1860s.^[38] Cherniaev himself was unable to translate this fleeting moment of glory into a stable position in Tashkent. Barely a year after the conquest he was relieved of his duties, mainly because of his erratic personality and lack of talent as an administrator. The tenure of his immediate successor, General D. I. Romanovskii, in Tashkent lasted just over eight months. In 1867 the newly-conquered Central Asian territory was re-organized as the Turkestan governorship-general (general-gubernatorstvo) with its capital in Tashkent. Tsar Alexander II named as first governor general of Turkestan General K. P. fon-Kaufman, Murav’ev’s chosen successor in Vil’na. Kaufman was to leave far more of an imprint on Central Asia than on the Northwest provinces, remaining in his position there until his death in 1882.^[39]
Despite his relatively short stay in Tashkent, Romanovskii was no stranger to the region or the borderlands of the Empire, having previously served in Orenburg (the administrative capital of the region until 1867) and, as he later wrote, “well acquainted with the Asiatic character [dukh aziiatov]” from his military service in the Caucasus.^[40] Compared with Cherniaev, Romanovskii was a moderate, hard-working official, less interested in military glory (though a career military man himself) than in creating a workable, stable administration in the newly-acquired Central Asian territory.^[41] During his short term at the head of administration in Tashkent (his official title was “military governor of the Turkestan district” [voennyi gubernator turkestanskoi oblasti]), Romanovskii attempted to avoid conflict with the “neighboring khanates” and to lay the foundations for an enduring Russian presence in Central Asia. His short book, Remarks on the Central Asian Question, is both an attempt to provide Russian readers with information on this little-known area and to justify his own activities there in 1866.
Romanovskii began his book with the statement that among the many “questions” occupying the interest of Russian society, the Central Asian question has assumed a “highly visible place” (ves’ma vidnoe mesto). What were the main reasons for Russia’s penetration into Central Asia and how had the Russian position there changed in the past few years? Romanovskii made two strong points: first, that the situation of Russia in Central Asia was now (1867) far better than in 1854 (when, he claimed, a plan for future action had been decided upon) and, second, that further Russian expansion (rasshirenie nashikh vladenii v stranakh Srednei Azii) would demand neither extraordinary sacrifices nor large expense.^[42] Romanovskii accepted the idea that Russia had a mission (or at least vital interests) in Central Asia, but seemed to recognize that the Russian public (and government) might lose interest in this region if holding it entailed high costs.
Romanovskii’s Remarks is a curious document. On the one hand, he argued that Asians only understand force and that to show weakness among them can be fatal.^[43] On the other, he consistently attempted to avoid armed conflict with the Central Asian rulers, though not entirely successfully. Romanovskii also emphasized the need to rely not just on force, but even more on “moral influence” (moral’nee vozdeistvie) which unfortunately had not yet been successful: “... we have thus far been unable to demonstrate in the eyes of the half-savage, closed-minded (zamknutee v svoei srede) Central Asian population the actual superiority of Russian over Bukhara which in fact exists.”^[44] Despite the fact that in many cases local inhabitants expressed their satisfaction and even joy (radushie) at becoming Russian subjects, such sentiments remained superficial.^[45] Strangely, however, Romanovskii fails to advocate any specific measures – religious, cultural, educational – that would convince Central Asians of the superiority and benevolence of Russian rule. He concludes his book by noting that the “only way to reach our desired situation in Central Asia without extending Russian administration there consists of subordinating the neighboring khanates without destroying their independence (samostoiatel’nost’).”^[46] This is hardly a stirring appeal for colonial expansion or an ardent enumeration of Russian cultural and political virtues. To be sure, Romanovskii remained convinced of Russian superiority even though he could not (or at least did not) explain just wherein this lay.
Creating some sort of Russian Central Asia was to fall to Romanovskii’s successor in Tashkent, General Konstantin P. fon-Kaufman, who arrived in Tashkent as the first governor general of Turkestan in 1867.^[47] Kaufman was to spend the next fifteen years at his post, dying there in 1882. While substantial Russian colonization in Central Asia did not occur until the very last years of the century (and in any case was concentrated considerably to the north of Tashkent), during Kaufman’s term as governor general the beginnings of a Russian administrative order, educational and cultural institutions, and, so to speak, a “government line” was established here. According to Hйlиne Carrиre d’Encausse, the main line of government policy consisted in limiting the influence of Tatars and weakening Islam.^[48] Regarding Islam, Kaufman pursued a policy of “ignoring” the religion while refusing to allow any Orthodox missionaries into the area. It was hoped that tolerating Islam, respecting its institutions and not pushing conversion, would lead in the long run to a weakening of the religion. At the same time, as Daniel Brower has pointed out, Kaufman was vitally interested in ethnography and under his administration considerable important ethnographic work was carried out.^[49] Jeffery Sahadeo has provided us with considerable new information on Kaufman as one of the builders of Russian Tashkent.^[50] Clearly, one may consider governor general Kaufman one of the “founding fathers” of Russian Tashkent.^[51]
Unlike Romanovskii, Kaufman did not come to Tashkent from a neighboring region but from the western provinces, where he had been Murav’ev’s hand-picked successor as governor general of Vil’na. In the Northwest provinces, Kaufman had tried to restore the “ancient [Russian] foundations” of the land, in particular concentrating on three areas: strengthening Orthodoxy, opening primary schools, and encouraging the transfer of land from Polish to Russian hands. Kaufman also supported the founding of a Russian theater in Vil’na and attempted to counter Catholic propaganda.^[52] Despite all of this (or, if we believe Kaufman’s supporters, because of it), Kaufman was abruptly relieved of his post after only eleven months.^[53] After a short time in limbo in Petersburg, Kaufman was personally summoned by Alexander II and asked to take up the new position in Tashkent.^[54] With some reluctance, Kaufman accepted the emperor’s request and set out for Tashkent.^[55]
An admiring, almost reverential portrayal of Kaufman as Turkestan governor general was penned by his subordinate in the educational field, N. Ostroumov, who called Kaufman, “a Russian man in his very soul who loved the Turkestan territory [Turkestanskii krai] not just as his creation [sozdanie] but also as ‘Russian land’.”^[56] Ostroumov’s ambivalence about the true Russian nature of this territory comes through in the quotation marks he places around “Russian land.” Ostroumov argued that two factors, education and development (razvitie), would help Russia in her task of assimilating “the native [tuzemnoe] population with the Russian nationality,” a belief he clearly also ascribed to Kaufman.^[57] At the same time, while spreading Russian literacy was important, the government needed to stick to the “principle of non-interference” in the existing religious and cultural institutions of Central Asia.^[58] Along these lines, Ostroumov quoted Kaufman: “We ... must introduce to Turkestan Christian Russian civilization but we should not attempt to force on the native population the Orthodox faith.”^[59] Once again, the specific content of “Christian Russian civilization” was not made clear, and matters are further complicated by the proviso not to press with religious conversion. Russian civilization was clearly seen as superior to native practices, but there is no clear explanation of why this is so, and concrete policy consisted more in keeping the peace than in pressing any kind of cultural agenda. As Sahadeo has shown, Russian Tashkent developed quite separate and divorced from everyday local life, not an example of superior civilization but a colonial “gated community” surrounded by an indifferent and from the 1890s increasingly hostile population.
Panslavism and the Russian Cause
At the same time that Ostroumov was arriving in Tashkent, Russia went to war with the Ottoman Empire. Turkestan may have been geographically distant from the Balkan battlefields, but even in Tashkent the Russian-Slavic cause did not pass unnoticed. Upon conclusion of peace with Turkey in 1878, governor general Kaufman gave a speech celebrating this glorious feat of Russian arms: “The Russian people [russkii narod] may now with glad salutations extend its noble [blagorodnaia] hand and congratulate the millions of Slavic brethren liberated by them [i.e., by the Russian people] on their long-awaited freedom.”^[60] Kaufman’s sentiments were echoed in a wide variety of Russian periodicals from the liberal Vestnik Evropy to the nationalist Russkii vestnik. In fighting the Ottoman Empire, the Russians simultaneously defended European culture against Islam and Slavdom against pernicious western (e.g., Austrian and German) influences. The years of the Russo-Turkish War 1877-1878 also marked the high point of Russian interest in the Slavic cause.^[61] For a short moment, Russian and panslav interests seemed to be identical.
The roots of panslavism, or in Slavic reciprocity (slavianskaia vzaimnost’) can be traced back to the Slavic brothers Cyril and Methodius, but in its modern form was primarily a development of the post-reform period. Panslavism allowed, at least in principle, a connecting up of domestic Russian patriotism with the expansion of Russian influence abroad. Consciously or not, the often patronizing behavior of Russian Panslavs to their Slavic “little brothers” allowed Russian nationalists to assuage their feelings of inferiority vis-а-vis European culture.^[62] Panslavism may be seen as one of the first manifestations of genuine Russian patriotism, that is, no longer “official nationalism,” but a force generated by “society” and, as many commentators have pointed out, not entirely welcomed by the government. Panslavism as a societal force was most important between the late 1850s and 1880. Before 1855, the restrictive censorship and general distrust of any social organizations made panslavism as a coherent movement impossible. After 1878, disappointment with the outcome of the Russo-Turkish War (in other words, with the Congress of Berlin) combined with the growing revolutionary movement made panslavism seem irrelevant, dated, and even reactionary.^[63]
The Balkan events of 1875-1878 made Slavic unity suddenly seem interesting, vital, and an actual political possibility. In September 1875, Vestnik Evropy published a long article on the Herzegovina insurrection, calling a revolt of Balkan Christians against Turkish overlordship a “historically inevitable fact” that would end “put an end to Ottoman rule in Europe.” The overthrow of Turkish power in the Balkans was inevitable because, unlike the situation in India or of the ex-slaves in the USA, the Balkan Christians possessed a culture superior to that of the Turks.^[64] It was simply a crime against historical justice that Bulgarians, Serbs, and other southern Slavs continued to groan under the exploitative yoke of the pashas. The article ended by appealing to Russian interests and national honor: “It is necessary ... for Russia to vindicate her traditions [opravdat’ svoi predaniia] in the defense of Balkan Slavs. We are in any case convinced that our government will know how to guard Russia’s interests and to preserve those traditions. And as to the sympathies of the Russian people [russkogo naroda] for everything that can be done to aid the Turkish Slavs, this goes without saying.”^[65]
In fact, however, the Russian government did its best to keep out of the Balkan conflict. The military reform (introduction of universal military service) had only been introduced two years earlier, and neither minister of war D. A. Miliutin nor minister of foreign affairs A. M. Gorchakov were eager to intervene in the Balkans, fearing international complications.^[66] However, there was considerable popular enthusiasm – as shown in the Vestnik Evropy article – for aiding the Balkan Slavs, and the “Lion of Tashkent” put himself at the head of this movement, leaving in the spring of 1876 for Serbia. Cherniaev insinuated to the Serbian authorities that the Russian government backed him – which was the opposite of the truth – and in this way encouraged the Serbs to wage war on Turkey, with himself heading the Serbian army (as well as Russian volunteer units). Complete military disaster for Serbia was averted only by a Russian ultimatum in October 1876 threatening war on Turkey.^[67] As revolts spread to Bulgaria and were followed by bloody Turkish reprisals, however, the Russian government found it impossible to avoid intervention, and a victorious war ensued, culminating with the ambitious Treaty of San Stefano, leaving the Ottoman Empire without only a toehold in Europe. San Stefano, which would have hugely increased Russian influence over the Ottoman Empire and in the Balkans, proved unacceptable to the Great Powers who revised it at the Berlin Congress of late 1878, to the considerable anger of Russian patriots.^[68]
For our purposes, the details of the war with Turkey and the ensuing diplomatic triumph and humiliation (as the Berlin Congress was seen by many Russians) are less important than the discussions of panslavism and Russia that took place during the conflict. Here I would like to examine three examples of Russian public opinion regarding the Balkan Slavs and Russia’s national mission there. Ivan Aksakov provides so to speak the typical conservative panslav voice in which Russia’s religious and political mission is emphasized. A. N. Pypin demonstrates a different kind of panslav sentiment, with the striving for liberal European civilization and democratic freedoms take pride of place. Finally, Konstantin Leont’ev presents a conservative Kulturkritik that purports to examine the “national psychology” of the Balkan Orthodox nations but in fact amounts to a sustained diatribe against liberal “bourgeois” Europe. These three figures certainly do not exhaust all nuances of opinion on the “Slavic question” expressed by Russians in these years, but they do exhibit certain elements – religion, culture, history, “striving for freedom” – that characterize nearly all contemporary discussions.
By the late 1870s, Ivan Aksakov had been writing on Slavic or, if one will, panslavic, themes for several decades. For him the Turkish war provided an opportunity to blot out the shame of the Crimean War while inaugurating a new epoch in Russo-Slavonic history. During the years 1876-8 Aksakov stood at the head of the Moscow Slavic Benevolent Committee, an organization that, among other things, helped support General Cherniaev’s journey to Serbia.^[69] In these years Aksakov gave several speeches at committee gatherings, and issued appeals to committee members and sympathizers. One such appeal, dated June 1876, called on Russians to support the beleaguered Serbs and Montenegrans in this “terrible, bloody, final battle of Slavdom with Islam” and thundered that “Europe” kept these “unhappy tribes” in chains “only because they are Slavs, one in faith and nation [edinoplemenny] with Russia.”^[70] In March of 1877, some months after the Russian ultimatum to the Porte, Aksakov addressed the committee, demanding war against the Ottoman Empire as a historical and political necessity for Russia. Anything less would be tantamount to “the Russian nation [narod] resign[ing] itself from its calling [prizvanie], and sign[ing] its own death warrant.”^[71]
Shortly after this speech, in April 1877, Russia declared war on Turkey. Aksakov greeted this event with joy, praising the wisdom of the Tsar for thinking of the “obligation and honor of Russia” that were involved in this struggle. This was no petty war of interests but a war of the spirit: “this is a war for the faith of Christ; this is a war for the liberation of enslaved and oppressed Slavic brethren; this is a righteous war, this war is a great holy deed [podvig sviatoi, velikii] ...”^[72] Even in the autumn of that year, after military reverses at Plevna, Aksakov did not change his tone: “This war is a historical inevitability; this war is national [narodnaia], and never has a nation [narod] regarded any [previous] war with such conscious sympathy [uchastie].” Anyone who would try to deny these evident truths was alienated from the Russian people – or worse.^[73]
In the end, of course, after massive blood-letting, the Russian troops did break through and reached the suburbs of Constantinople before reaching an armistice with the Turks in January 1878. The Treaty of San Stefano, creating a large Bulgaria and granting formal independence to Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania followed a month later.^[74] Aksakov, as we might expect, was ecstatic: “Of course, the Eastern question is not yet solved, Tsargrad [Constantinople] is not cleansed of Asiatic filth [skverna] and Russia’s task not yet fully realized. Nonetheless what the most daring fantasy would have hardly deemed possible just two years ago has come true.”^[75] Russia had ended Ottoman rule in Europe, presided over the creation of an autonomous Bulgaria, and completely liberated Serbia and Montenegro (Romania, another Orthodox state, is strangely left out) from the last vestiges of the Turkish yoke. Now Russia must defend these gains from the European powers as well as standing up for the western Slavs within the Austrian Empire.^[76]
Aleksandr Pypin is rarely considered a panslav and yet as a linguist, literary critic, and publicist, he did much to popularize the Slavic cause. His point of view, unlike that of most panslavs, was firmly liberal, democratic, and “westernizing.” While Russia and her Slavic brethren should pride themselves on their own national cultures and traditions, the fact remained that they had much to learn from the west. Unlike Aksakov and Leont’ev, Pypin produced a considerable body of scholarly works on Slavic cultures, including a history of Slavic literatures that even his political antipode, Leont’ev, grudgingly described as “dry, boring, though not useless.”^[77] During 1878, Pypin published in Vestnik Evropy a series of articles that was later published in book form under the title Panslavism in the Past and Present.^[78] Here Pypin developed the idea of a panslavism that was progressive and democratic, though he is unable to define clearly just what this panslavism would entail, making his pamphlet both confusing to read and impossible to act on.
Pypin began his articles by criticizing the European journalists and statesmen who used “panslavism” as a crude propaganda tool against Russia.^[79] In fact, panslavism was nothing more than the natural development of culture and nationality: “It is the thought about one’s own nation [narod], about its freedom, development, and enlightenment.”^[80] Immediately a question arises that Pypin never clearly answers: is panslavism then the development of separate branches of one nation, or of separate but related nations? At one point Pypin appears to answer this question when he concedes that, unlike the German or Italian cases, “this is a striving to unite not a nation [narod] but an entire tribe [plemia].”^[81] This distinction is singularly unhelpful, in particular as plemia was often used by contemporary Russians where we would expect nation and Pypin does not in any case hold to it consistently. At another point Pypin defines panslavism as “some sort of solidarity, if not directly political, then educational, literary, but an active solidarity ...”^[82] In another passage, he concedes that any kind of “purely scholarly” panslavism cannot be separated from political demands: “And the platonic enthusiasm [uvlechenie] for nationality [narodnost’] became a political aspiration [stremlenie].”^[83]
These seemingly contradictory statements can be reconciled with each other if one takes Pypin’s description of panslavism not so much as the description of a reality, but as a desired outcome not just for Serb or Bulgarian, but even more for Russian society. Pypin writes, “The Slavic renaissance [vozrozhdenie] took place [sovershalos’] precisely in this spirit – in the spirit of liberation and enlightenment.”^[84] Does this statement not reflect a hope and an aspiration rather than a fact? Similarly, “panslavism is the only means of political safeguarding [obezpechenie], a guarantee of independence, which can be obtained by Slavdom.”^[85] It seems that Pypin wants Russia to be worthy of its leadership of this liberation movement, a sentiment that comes out clearly at the end of his work: “our panslav views will be realized in theory and will be solidly grounded in practice only then, when our societal forces have achieved a solid [prochnyi] development ... Only then will be capable of speaking justly [s pravom] of our significance for panslav union and unity [soiuz i edinstvo].”^[86]
If for Aleksandr Pypin, panslavism provided a means of calling indirectly for the freer development of Russian society, for the conservative Konstantin Leont’ev, the Russo-Turkish war presented an occasion to lash out against his most hated enemy: western European liberalism. Leont’ev was unusual in that he had spent a decade living in the Ottoman Empire (1863-1873), and he used his own personal experiences in his article of early 1878, “Russians, Greeks and Iugo-Slavs: Attempt at a National Psychology.” He begins by noting that “as everyone know,” up to recently very little was known in Russia about the Balkan Slavs, which enabled the Slavophiles – to Leont’ev’s mind – to present a romantic vision of the Balkan Slavs as unspoiled and natural, as Russians would be had it not been for Peter the Great.^[87] Even at present, Leont’ev continues, many misconceptions and simple ignorance about Balkan Orthodox peoples continues to exist. Leont’ev spends most of the remaining pages of his article describing and contrasting Greeks, Bulgarians (with some slight reference to Serbs), and Russians. As he warns early on, the objects of this study may well not be pleased with his portrayal. Indeed, Leont’ev describes Bulgarians as “dry and cold” (words that come up again and again) in cultural and religious matters, at least when compared to Russians. Both Greeks and Bulgarians have an overly sober, “bourgeois” approach to life, lacking the spiritual depth, religious fervor, and material generosity of the Russians. In particular the educated classes come in for criticism. An educated Bulgarian is “a bourgeois [burzhua] par excellence” and Bulgarian patriots are described as “our village kulaks [miroedy] en grand, in frock-coats, not always well-sewn.”^[88] The great tragedy of these nations (in particular the Bulgarians, but to a lesser extent also the Greeks and Serbs) is that they came under the influence of European bourgeois culture before their own societies were strong enough to defend themselves. Religion had become merely a political-national tool, and even poetry remained on the whole on a low level.^[89] Leont’ev ended his essay rather limply, affirming his support for the Balkan Orthodox people in their struggle against the Ottomans, and asking that no political conclusions be drawn from these pages. Perhaps the only conclusion to draw would have been, to use the current Austrian witticism, that “the situation is hopeless, but not serious.”

* * *

The most obvious connection between the three above writers is that when ostensibly writing about the Balkans and panslavism, in fact their works had more to say about Russia, her society, and her role in the world. All three accepted Russia’s mission to liberate the Balkan Slavs and connected, overtly or discretely, Russian aid to this liberation struggle with fundamental characteristics of Russia and the Russian nation: piety, generosity, justice, fraternal love. The Balkan Slavs thus became primarily a foil to criticize the faults of Russian society (e.g., Aksakov attacking his enemies as people divorced from the fundamental values of the Russian nation) or as a means of advocating a more open and progressive development of Russian society, as in the case of Pypin. The actual essence of Balkan Slav culture and political aspirations per se disappear entirely. In a similar fashion, in considerations of Russian policy during and after the Polish Insurrection of 1863, actual Poles are less important than the image of “the Pole” – sly, fanatical, disloyal. And in Central Asia, too, local inhabitants – often lumped together as tuzemtsy – are important as the objects of benevolent and enlightened Russian policy; their own “half-savage,” “Asiatic” cultures are of less importance.
It is often said that people travel merely to reinforce their own prejudices. Perhaps then one can argue that the Russian “world-historical mission” from 1861 to 1878 consisted primarily in establishing domination (directly or, as in the Balkans, indirectly) over foreign nations in order to better understand and develop the essence of Russianness. Even at the end of this period, Russian national identity remained in many respects fluid and contested. Was Orthodoxy the key, as Aksakov and Leont’ev would have argued, or were ethnicity, language, even a politically progressive spirit more important? In view of these perplexing ambiguities, it may have been reassuring to regard the role of Russia (and Russians) as the force of order in Lithuania, an agent of civilization in Central Asia, and a means of aid and liberation to Slavic brethren in the Balkans. In the end, then, the Russian “world historical mission” aimed primarily at the salvation of the Russian nation.
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the American Philosophical Society, without whose help this paper could not have been written in that panslav paradise in Finland, the Slavonic Library of Helsinki University. All views expressed here belong exclusively to the author.