main
The Eurasian Politician - Issue 4 (August 2001)
By: Anssi Kullberg, 14th Aug. 2000, Tartu
The Russian state idea has been dominated by two dimensions: an imperialist strive to expand territory and hegemony, and a strive towards hierarchical and centralized power. The Russian historian Sergei Medvedyev has called these dimensions "cultures one and two". The Finnish researcher of Russian history, Dr. Arto Luukkanen points out in his book "Hajoaako Venäjä?" (Will Russia Disintegrate?), published this year with wide discussion in Finland, that Russia actually inherited both these tendencies from the Mongol Empire, whose place in Eurasia was taken over by Russia.
Another Finnish scholar of Eastern affairs, Antero Leitzinger, whose books include studies on the Caucasus and Turkic peoples, wrote in his article "Russia and the Kipchak Curse", published in English in The Eurasian Politician May 2000 Issue [http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/issue1/art9.htm], about how the Mongol legacy still makes it difficult for Russia to adapt into the changing world. Empires preserve their strategic fundaments as well as culture of governance even though regents and dynasties would change, and empires are transformed, expanding and reducing their territory, disintegrating and again reintegrating. When Russia grew more powerful, the Mongol Empire had itself disintegrated already, and Russia inherited the place possessed by the former Mongol Empire’s western part, the Kipchak Khanate.
Russians have wished to see themselves as the heirs of the Byzantium, but as Luukkanen remarks in his recent book, the idea of "Third Rome" was a relatively marginal invention and arrived Russia only late. It has gained more attention only when Western historians became so charmed by the idea that it finally spread to Russia, too. For original Russian leaders, the convertion to Orthodox Christianity and marrying a Byzantine princess were political manoeuvres; a way for the East Slavic princes to undermine Poland’s leading role among Slavs. Later the idea of crusades was used to legitimize the aggression against and conquest of the Tatar khanates that used to rule most of the area we nowadays know as Russia. The idea of another Christian Empire also gave "permission" for Moscow to suppress and "unite" other Slavic principates, while Muscovy was still a vassal of the Mongol Khans.
What, then, happened to the Byzantine legacy? In many senses it ended up becoming the state idea of the Turkish Empire. The Ottomans made Constantinople their capital and their Empire finally corresponded the Byzantine Empire both by territory and by political and administrative structure. Only religion changed. In the same way, Russia replaced the Mongols as the Empire of Northern Orient. It has been said that Byzantine purple could only hardly cover Genghis Khan’s grin in Russia’s strategic behaviour.
The "great mission" of the Kipchak Khanate had been to conquer back under the Great Khan all the disintegrated parts of Genghis Khan’s Empire. The Grand Duchy of Muscovy, which had risen to the position of leading vassal in the west, directly inherited this idea. The legacy was connected to centuries old internal power struggle between the parts of the Mongol Empire. This internal power game of empires and vassals still continues today in Eurasia.
For hundreds of years, Russia has sought expansion towards eastern and southern lands of Eurasia. The Kipchak legacy was completed with the idea of a crusade against Muslims and the European colonial competition, later named the Grand Game. Since the times of Peter the Great, Russia has mirrored the West. One of its main rivals in Europe was for a long time the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The heir of the Austro-Hungarian dynasty, Arch-Duke Otto von Habsburg, son of the last Austrian Emperor and nowadays leader of the Paneuropean movement, regularly speaks about Russia as the last colonial empire of Europe. According to Otto von Habsburg, Russia sticks to the models of the past and is therefore unable to adapt into a peaceful change in Eurasia.
When European great powers were hunting for colonies overseas, Russia expanded its colonial power in Eurasia: in Siberia, Far East, Black Sea, Turkestan and the Caucasus. Central Asia was freshly conquered territory when the young Finnish Colonel C.G.E. Mannerheim, later Marshal, hero of the Winter War and president of Finland, in 1906-1908 made his expedition to explore Turkestan, which had been divided into Russian and Chinese colonies. Mannerheim’s journey across Asia is famous for its ethnographic value and travel notes that later inspired Finnish youth and adventurers, but it is less recalled that Mannerheim actually acted in the intelligence service of the Russian Czar Nicholas II. The Czar had been humiliated in Manchuria by Japan, and sought further prospects for colonial expansion on the expense of weak China.
Russian expansion to the southern dominions took place relatively late, not until in 18th and 19th centuries. Poland, the Baltic countries and Finland had been annexed to Russian imperial dominions for a long time before Russia in 1774 gained access to the Black Sea, which had been so far dominated by Turks. The conquest of the Caucasus took place only in 1801-1859, and that of Turkestan in 1864-1885. In the North Caucasus, Circassia, Chechnya and Dagestan could resist Russian expansion up until 1859, when the famous Imam Shamil finally surrendered to General Bariatinsky’s troops. Even after that, resistance continued for decades in the West Caucasian mountains by Circassians.
The Kipchak legacy has influenced Russian policy in czarist, Soviet and present regimes. When the era of the crusades was over, the rhetorics turned to geopolitics, Velikaya Derzhava, "great space" and strive to unfrozen seas. Russia again mirrored its western rival. When Germany sought Lebensraum in the east, a "Drang nach Süden" prevailed in Russia. Catherine the Great and Grigory Potyomkin dreamed of a conquest of Jerusalem and created a "Greek Plan" to conquer Constantinople. Nicholas I bound his empire into an eternal colonial war in the Caucasus, and he was feared to threaten British colonial rule in India. General Aleksey Yermolov managed to make an impression to the Persian Shah by claiming that Russia was an heir of the Mongol Empire and Yermolov himself descended from Genghis Khan.
The Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia became zones of rivalry and warfare of the empires to seek expansion of their territory and power. As a by-product, two sinister fashions extending to our days were born in late 1800s: genocide and ethnic cleansing. The first and worst example of those times was the destruction of Circassia and the Circassian nation from 1856 on, followed by attrocities against other Caucasians, Anatolians, Armenians and Balkanians in the imperial struggle of Russia and Turkey.
Ever since, Russian expansion has turned towards west only when a "Zapadnik" or an atheist has rised to its regency. Such were for instance Peter the Great and Stalin. Ruled by the Georgian-Ossetian Iosif Dzugashvili, Russia achieved its greatest expansion to west, ruling Berlin, Budapest and Prague for half a century. In Stalin’s period, the Kremlin’s power also finally reached the vast continental China. The only part of the great mission of the Golden Horde, which remained unconquered, was the Il Khan Empire, which had split up into the Sunnite Empire of Turkey and the Shi’ite Empire of Iran. These two Russia never managed to vanquish, although it sought conquest of Constantinople and although Russians occupied Täbriz in 1900s.
When the Soviet policy of hegemony had once again turned from west towards south, the Kremlin’s foreign policy concentrated in gaining dominance in the Middle East. The southern dimension reached its peak by the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. For hundreds of years, Russian strive for sole Eurasian hegemony has been thwarted by two mountainous peoples: the Caucasians in the west, and the Afghans in the east. Small nations have not only become crushed by empires. They have also set limits to the great.
AKK