A review in this journal of Alexander Bitis’s hefty tome is long overdue, for it will be the definitive Anglophone study of “the Eastern Question” for many years to come. Joining many recent studies of the imperial periphery doubtlessly already familiar to Ab Imperio readers, it adds as well to the historiography reassessing Nicholas I’s reign. Within the field of tsarist military history, Russia and the Eastern Question is more focused than Alex Marshall’s recent analysis of the Asian theater, though less direct than Frederick Kagan’s The Military Reforms of Nicholas I, to which Bitis acknowledges a debt.^[1] Interweaving several fields usually treated separately, Russia and the Eastern Question is an impressive work of scholarship.
“The Eastern Question” was and remains a somewhat confused term whose meaning shifted over time; Bitis settles on the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica “classic” definition of it as an “expression used… to comprehend the international problems involved in the decay of the Turkish empire and its supposed impending dissolution” (quoted on P. 21). For Nicholas I, these problems amounted to advancing Russia’s interests at Turkey’s expense while preserving the Ottoman state and avoiding a military response by Austria, France, or England to maintain the balance of power. Territorially, Russia sought to annex or at least exert influence over the Porte and, of course, the Straits. But the Eastern Question also involved Persia, insofar as the vassal khanates and pashlyks Russia wrested away from it then had to be defended against Persian revanchism. The three-way struggle between Russia, Turkey, and Persia for control over the Caucasus and Transcaucasia originated during the sixteenth century, when Muscovite expansionism turned Russia into an Asian, not just European, state, and it is this “‘Asiatic’ dimension” that Bitis purports to emphasize in contrast to the traditionally “Eurocentric understanding of the Eastern Question” (P. 2). Yet this goal is only partially fulfilled: Bitis’s overwhelmingly archival sources include Russian military and central government documents and (mostly) British diplomatic reports, yet nothing from the Turks, Persians, or other principals involved. The result, he admits, is a Russocentric account of the Eastern Question, even if it does represent better than previous works Russia’s “Asiatic” concerns and activities.
What follows is a wide-ranging discussion covering four principal topics: military (and to some extent government) administration and reorganization; military strategy and the campaigns of the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829; international relations and diplomacy, including the Treaty of Adrianople, Russia’s protectorate over the Danubian Principalities, and their aftermaths; and wartime propaganda and public opinion.
The first topic revolves around the struggle between the “Germans” and “Russians” that was exacerbated by the patriotism emergent after 1812 among not just elites but the narod. Shading into chauvinism, Russian national pride targeted the Germans who were supposedly dominating the military and society. Baltic Germans did occupy a disproportionate number of leadership positions, and Nicholas’s closest associates tended to be of German extraction; but the charge of “Germanism” more importantly signified a fetish for order and discipline and contempt for the average Russian. Hence, Arakcheev was considered a “German” while the Decembrist Baron A. E. Rozen (Rosen) was accepted as a “Russian.” As for Nicholas, he was on the one hand rumored to be German (a claim in many ways true), and on the other regarded as the “little father” cruelly kept apart from his subjects by a claque of German courtiers. On a more material level, the Germans were principally responsible for adapting the Prussian General Staff model to the Russian army. His Imperial Majesty’s Main Staff (Glavnyi shtab) had actually originally been established by Paul I, but under Nicholas it came to displace the War Ministry as de facto authority over military affairs until the 1832 military reforms, and not just military affairs, for the emperor’s indulgence toward all things military resulted in society’s militarization throughout his reign. Arguing that the Decembrists’ primary motive was to counter the Germans’ domination, Bitis therefore develops an idea earlier floated by John Keep, that they were not a “civilian phenomenon” but rather a “military intelligentsia” (P. 69).^[2]
Despite the author’s promise not to indulge in “day-to-day detail” (P. 3), his chapters on military strategy and campaigns are rather quotidian and, while they will no doubt interest military historians, tend to slow the narrative flow. However, they include lively digressions on the behavior of individual commanders and civilian populations. For instance, despite the earlier annexation of their homelands, Transcaucasian Muslims’ resistance during the Russo-Persian War showed they remained unreconciled to Russian rule. Commander of the Caucasus Corps General Ermolov’s frequent recourse to “pacifications” alone proved this.^[3] Bitis also shows how Persia’s defeat led to British anxiousness about guarding Afghanistan against Russian expansionism. With regard to the Russo-Turkish War, Nicholas-cum-warrior emerges from this account largely unscathed and even credited with contributing to the campaign, with no mention of his embarrassing display of squeamishness at the sight of blood. Still more interesting is the description of Kiselev’s futile struggle with Dibich (“Diebitsch,” Bitis tellingly prefers) and how this led to the curbing of Kiselev’s reformist zeal. These and other vignettes from Nicholas’s lieutenants’ early careers are helpful toward a better understanding of their later activities. Finally, there is the terrible cost of these wars. Despite many a Russian misstep, victory against Turkey was as inevitable as against Persia, but in 1829 maladministration and lack of medical expertise resulted in the deaths of as many as 75,000 soldiers from disease alone.
The discussion of international diplomacy, like that of the military campaigns, is somewhat traditional, a lengthy digression into British reactions to Adrianople seeming overly indulgent. Far more engaging is Bitis’s description of Russia’s efforts to create a militia of Balkan irregulars to police the Danubian Principalities during its brief protectorate. The challenge first involved finding willing volunteers; later, to restrain their desire for autonomy. Petersburg struggled to represent itself as protecting fellow Orthodox Slavs against Ottoman excesses but not engaged in a holy war against the infidel. After the militia was disbanded, members turned to banditry, foreshadowing the Mujahadeen formed by the American CIA against the Soviets. As with Washington later, so with Petersburg then, an inconsistent policy

“was caused by an inner contradiction – the need to raise irregulars to assist the war effort, coupled with the fear that the mere presence of such forces… could unleash an unwanted general Balkan uprising.” (P. 347)

In addition to the militarization of Russian society, a discussion of Third Section propaganda and the development of public opinion makes Russia and the Eastern Question relevant to an audience extending beyond the military historian readership. Benckendorff’s deputy, von Vock, persuaded the emperor to use the Northern Bee and other periodicals as quasi-official mouthpieces. Even the Russian Invalid somehow became a source of news on the royal family, glorifying the Romanovs’ domestic bliss and probity in a way usually associated only with the reportage on Alexander III’s and Nicholas II’s families. Von Vock not only galvanized popular support for the Turkish war but also “fostered a ‘Cult of Nicholas’” (P. 392) that, judging by Third Section reports, captivated the literate and illiterate alike. Cork out of the bottle, publishers intoxicated by even this slight diminution of censorship began testing the boundaries, instigating “imperial Russia’s first foreign ‘media war’” (P. 393). When the war against Turkey entered its unforeseen second year, the media began blaming the German commanders for not following orders; later, to cover up additional embarrassments, Petersburg planted false stories or prevented war coverage altogether. In the meantime, Nicholas’s presence at the front led to grumblings that he himself might be to blame. Von Vock not only candidly reported these and other conversations overheard by spies but also conspicuously recommended that censorship be reduced rather than reinforced. Reacting to false reports that were spread after the especially costly siege of Varna, von Vock wrote:

“[I]n our time, in the nineteenth century, one cannot direct things with false news.… The open and straightforward character of the Sovereign is known to all. Why destroy the people’s faith in the straightforwardness of the Sovereign and announce that which did not happen?… As soon as the people no longer believe the official reports then the field is wide open for liars and frondeurs.…” (quoted on Pp. 411-412)

Bitis is careful to add that von Vock’s propaganda campaign was short-lived and an exception to the rule of Nicolaevan censorship; but he also notes that it demonstrates the realization (by at least von Vock) that the regime needed to legitimate itself through new measures targeted at the small yet pivotal middle class. By propping up a version of the “Tsar myth” wherein Germans prevented the emperor from communing with patriotic reformers “the Third Section,” writes Bitis, “…strengthened tsarism without strengthening the tsarist state” (P. 421). However, von Vock’s insights concerning censorship suggest that in fact both were weakened.
Following his eastern rivals’ defeats, Nicholas, for his part, also fell prey to a myth – this one about Russia’s invincibility. Citing Kagan, Bitis argues that even after the Polish Uprising, when Nicholas came face-to-face with Russia’s manpower shortage and geographical vulnerability, he maintained the “ridiculously anachronistic” belief “that Britain or Austria would support Russia in a war against Turkey and France…” (P. 498). This sovereign fantasy highlights the essential vulnerability of an autocratic militarized state ruling over a censored society, where narodnost’ nonetheless developed sufficiently independently to spawn the notion of a “Slavonic brotherhood” (P. 500) that, when popularly embraced, seduced a regime desperate for legitimacy into making fatal foreign policy choices. In compelling detail, Russia and the Eastern Question explains the reasons for these otherwise inexplicable choices. Highly recommended.