SUMMARY:

The history of the Western periphery of the Russian Empire has long been told as a story of violent oppression and forced “Russification.” Recent studies attenuate this dire picture, stressing the incoherent and often improvised nature of Russian policies and underlining the importance of individual actors. One key actor, however, has been largely absent from historical research: the Russian army as agent of imperial rule. Using the history of the Warsaw garrison as an example, the present article explores the role of the Russian military in establishing a political order on the Russian periphery. In this context, it devotes special attention to the use of violence.
Norbert Elias and others have demonstrated how modern states have been eager to monopolize violence. Their actions aimed at banning it from the public sphere, rendering violence the exclusive competence of the military and police forces. As an ideal, the application of violence should be replaced by its symbolic representation. Instead of acts of violence, the threat of force became a desired mode of action.
The first section of the present article describes how the presence of Russian soldiers was partially an attempt to create a system in which the threat of force buttressed colonial rule. The pinnacle of this system was the fortress. As a symbolic threat, it was designed to demonstrate to the population who was ultimately in charge of the city.
In 1905, however, this economy of threat reached its limits, as the article’s second section demonstrates. Violence lost its effect as a deterrent. The high level of everyday violence on the streets of Warsaw triggered the complete breakdown of this system of symbolic threats. The visual presence of the Russian army ceased to have any deterrent effects.
Drawing largely on unpublished sources from the Russian military archive, the article shows in its third section how the symbolic representation of violence was now replaced by its excessive and demonstrative application. By these means, leading Russian military officials wanted to reimplement the efficiency of threats of force.
The conclusion discusses the long-term consequences of these measures for the history of the Russian Empire leading up to 1917.