Discuss why Russia’s trajectory of historical development has been distinct from that of Europe.
In 1939, Winston Churchill had remarked: “it [Russia] is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. With such a simple statement Churchill had managed to brilliantly capsulise the great riddle that Russia has been throughout her existence for her people, rulers and for politicians and historians that have had to deal with her from the world over. There has been a mysterious illness that has afflicted Russia to which historians, politicians and diplomats have, over centuries, ascribed different names. Riddle is just one among them. It has sometimes been referred to as the ‘crisis’ in Russian identity; sometimes as the Russian ‘problem’, ‘dilemma’ or ‘ambiguity’. And if one is to explore why the trajectory of Russian history has differed from the trajectory of Europe, then he would be compelled to explore into this illness, identify it, and understand how it steered Russia away from Europe.
The suggestion for such exploration implicitly assumes that Russia and Europe have indeed charted different trajectories in their historical evolution. This assumption, as will be shown by this essay, is largely correct. So, the objects of this essay are dual: to explain why Russia and Europe diverged, with greater focus on the period from the eight century A.D onwards, and also, in that process, show the extent to which this assumption as accurate.
Eurasia, besides being a geographical concept, is perhaps the first clue we can exploit to understand the Russian conundrum. Etymologically, it is derived from the fusion of Europe and Asia, but more importantly, it refers to a confused geographical space that cannot be claimed wholly by either the Asian or the European continent. Russia finds herself in this confused space, and with that it becomes evident that the conundrum has a geographical basis. In its formative years in the middle ages, the incipient Russian state spanned over a vast exposed plain that stretched from Eastern Europe to central Siberia. Under more vigorous expansionism, the Russian empire in the 17th century embraced an area that sprawled from Eastern Europe to the extremity of the Siberian landmass tapering into the Pacific Ocean. Being contiguous to the evolving geographical entities of Asia and Europe, Russia always found herself in a dilemma; of whether she was part of Asia or Europe, or whether she formed a complex world of her own.[1]
This geographical confusion would have probably not arisen had there been an imposing physical barrier, say like the Himalayas are for the Indian subcontinent, cutting the landmass climatically and ethnically from the rest of Asia. The only physical barrier that could have possibly divided Asia from Europe would have been the Urals, but with a mean altitude of 1500 feet, and with numerous passes and valleys making transit easy, the Urals are no kind of climatic or even physical barrier. It is this physical indeterminacy that has left Russia stranded in ambiguity over her identity. It was with this central confusion: of whether she must chart the ways of Europe or with the ways of Asia, that Russia was born. The illness, therefore, was congenital; Russia was born, and grew up as a blue baby.
Russians are people of European racial origins and belong to the eastern branch of the great Slavonic group, speaking the Slav branch of Aryan languages. The first moment of departure came about when the Slavs were stirred into movement by contact with nomadic and semi nomadic hordes from Asia, notably the Huns in the 4th century, Avars in the 6th century A.D, and with Scythians, Sarmathians and Goths from the northwest. Successive bands of warlike people poured westwards across the steppe in course of the following centuries creating an external pressure due to which the Slavs migrated towards the west and south (Balkans) and towards the east. The Slavs who moved westwards found older cultures in East Germany and Bohemia while the Slavs who migrated eastwards intermingled with pagan aboriginal inhabitants who were mostly of Finno-Ugrian or Baltic stock. Thus, by expansion in the direction of the east, eastern Slavs were distanced and cut off from the Slavs in the west, and more importantly, were drawn close to the ethnic melting pot of Central Asia. Philip price points out this very departure was followed by some important developments that would resonate powerfully into Russian history. The most important among them was the rise of what he calls ‘primitive communism’ among the eastern Slav peasants who in their relative isolation began to live in groups and communities, and contrasted in this manner with the far more individualistic Anglo Saxon farmer.
It is also possible to understand the distinct path that Russia took, and the departures it made from Europe, by following its history chronologically from the period of the Kievan Rus in the middle ages to the Soviet Union in the twentieth century.
The period from the 9th to the 11th centuries saw Kiev as the political centre of the eastern Slavs. The most significant development in this period that greatly determined Russia’s movement towards a different path was the adoption of the Greek Orthodox Church by Vladimir of Kiev as the official religion of Kiev in 989 A.D. This adoption was the culmination of a long process which had started when Kiev established trade and commercial relations with Constantinople and the great Byzantine Empire. The first cultural influence on the Kievan Rus was Christianity, but of the eastern or Greek rite.[2] Kiev, thus, was exposed to Greek philosophy and Asiatic mysticism in addition to Roman law and discipline. The uninterrupted flow of Byzantine influences is very perceptible in the architecture and paintings that remain of the Kievan era: the monastery of the caves and St. Sophia’s cathedral being the two most outstanding monuments of Rus Christianity. However, it must be noted that the Greek orthodox Christianity subsisted strongly in the Kievan Rus only by a process of adaptation and modification whereby Russians added their own interpretations to Greek traditions and religion.[3] The development of Rus Christianity had an impact on other important aspects of Kievan society as well, most notably, on language. The Greek Orthodox clergy who came to propagate the gospel accepted the use of a language close to the vernacular, Church Slavonic, in the liturgy. It proved to be a mixed blessing for while it made the new faith more accessible, the new language based on classical learning transmitted in Greek and Latin also prevented Kievan Rus from sharing in the culture of the lands to the west.
It is important to observe the process by which the Orthodox Church cemented a clear distinction between itself and western Christianity. One such event was in 1439 A.D when Isidore of Russia accepted the union of Eastern and Western churches under the Ferrara- Florence conference of 1438-39. Russia, however, rejected Isidore and the Union and on his return got Isidore arrested in Moscow and elevated the Russian Jonas over the patriarch of Constantinople who hitherto had appointed the head of the Russian church. The elevation of the Jonas was in 1449, which is a date etched in Russian history for it marked the rise of the independent Russian Orthodox Church. [4] An important feature of the Russian church which set it apart from its variant in Europe was the fact that it acted in close concert with the grand princes, and the prince was more powerful for he confirmed appointments to the Metrolopolitan.
Kievan Rus ran into major challenges to its authority in the period between the 11th and 13th centuries A.D. Threats emerged from both the east and the west. The challenge from the west came from the aggressive and proselytising Knights of the Teutonic order and Knights of the swords while the principal challenge from the east came at first from the Turkic tribes of Pechnegs and Polovtsians who were overwhelmed by a power that eventually became the nemesis of the Kievan Rus: the Mongols. These oriental hordes came in 1237 A.D under Mongol Khan Baty. The Mongol invasions were the single most important episode in Russian history which severed Russia’s links with Europe and dealt a stinging blow to any possibility of Russia’s integration into the European mainstream. Yaroslav was the last to rule over the Kievan Rus as a whole. Following the Mongol invasions the Rus dissolved into many principalities of which Novgorod retained its independence from both the Livonian knights and the Tartars owing to the diplomatic acuteness of its ruler Alexander Nefsky.
The rule of the Golden Horde[5] had a devastating impact on Russia. The economy was despoiled and crippled to an unprecedented scale. But the Mongol incubus was to leave Russia with some deeper and indelible problems. The Mongols preferred the acquisition of exorbitant peshkash or tribute which the Russian princes were to collect by squeezing their peasantry. Instead of direct rule the Mongols placed powers with divided principalities and exploited Russians as a source of slaves and army recruits. Thus the more permanent impact of Mongol rule was to set into practise a highly exploitative system that depressed the peasantry. This exploitative character has since then been a permanent feature of Russian life passing well into the times of Muscovite and Romanov absolutisms and seen even in the Soviet Union, particularly during the 1930’s under Stalin’s Collectivisation campaign.
The impact of Mongol rule also had a strong psychological dimension to it as it left Russia with an air of lamentation. Another important way in which Tartar rule was to shape Russian history was the impetus it gave for growth of Moscow, which developed from being an insignificant minor principality to the capital city of the first Russian state under the cloak of foreign overlordship. Moscow was just one of the many principalities that could have emerged powerful, but the reason for its success lay in the support it’s rulers got from the Mongols who sought to develop it as a Tartar base in the face of threats posed by the great principality of Tver and emergent Lithuanian power in the mid 14th century. But Mongol role in shaping up the Muscovite phase in Russian history did not end here. After overpowering the Tartars, the new Muscovite state, under rulers like Ivan the Great, created a national ideology based on the glorification of Russia, which was in many ways a response to the long period of subordination and humiliation under Tartar rule. These attempts to create a new nationalism and identity in the long run would preclude the possibility of Russia associating herself with Europe. Instead, the element of self glorification and exaltation of Russia’s distinctness put her father away from Europe.
But it was in alienating Russia almost completely from Europe that the Mongol period had its most significant ramification. The period impaired Russia from being embraced into the European fold and created a medieval prototype of the later ‘iron curtain’. Russian princes were not permitted conduct foreign policy and all contact with the Western Europe was suspended. Russia seemed to have taken the brunt of Tartar expansion and cushioned Europe from further Mongol penetration. There were also other forces that widened the cleft between Russia and Europe. The two centuries after 1300 A.D were particularly important In this regard. The Black Death intermittently severed connections between Asia and Europe, the fragmentation of Mongol power placed formidable barriers on overland trade routes and China withdrew from its previously expansive maritime trade. The consolidation of Ottoman Turkish power in the Balkans climaxing in the capture of Constantinople in 1453 diminished the volume of traffic along this channel to the outside world and enhanced Muscovy’s relative isolation. Indeed, the capture of Constantinople was to define the confrontation of Christendom and Islam while cementing a love hate relationship between Muslim turkey and Orthodox Russia- now the sole surviving orthodox Christian realm.
It is also possible to flesh out another darker implication of Mongol rule that had a truly profound impact on the evolving political systems and traditions of Russia. The prolonged period of ruthless autocratic rule by the Mongols created traditions of brutality and terror that were not forgotten with Mongol fragmentation but flowed into the future political system and traditions of Russia. Many succeeding rulers of Russia from Muscovite absolutism (Ivan the great; Ivan the Terrible), Romanov absolutism (Michael Romanov; Peter the Great; Catherine the Great, among others) and even from the Soviet Union employed political terror in defence of their interests. This practice of using terror as a political instrument was established and entrenched in the period of Mongol rule. This use of terror, however, reached a limit that failed rational explanation during the reign of rulers like Ivan the Terrible and Stalin. This element of political terror draws connections throughout the seven centuries following Tartar rule. Each ruler used political terror in new ways and at times replicated the practices of their predecessors. For instance, the policy of mass deportations was inaugurated by Ivan III when he sent the citizens of Novgorod into exile, and this practice was appropriated later by Stalin when he deported many Karachaevans, Meshedin Kurds, and other ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union. Many such parallels can be drawn between Stalin and Ivan the Terrible: both were highly oppressive autocrats; Ivan’s oprichnina had a parallel in the Soviet NKVD security police; both justified repression and the persecution of dominant groups[6] in the name of strengthening a centralised Russian state. Both, also, purged important officials to secure their dominance. [7] Political terror did not disappear during the reign of the great Westerniser Peter the Great who butchered the stretsyl militia and divested them of their powers when they rose in revolt in 1698.
The chief architect of Muscovite absolutism was Ivan the Great who ruled from 1462 to 1505. Ivan was the fist to deal with the vexed problem of uniting his realm and of imparting to it a somewhat homogenous identity that perhaps did not exist. Byzantine influences were strengthened under him: he imported Byzantine practices to his court, sought greater aggrandizement through marital associations with great Byzantine families and was known for his defence of the Orthodox faith. Ivan’s reign also witnessed the strengthening of the Orthodox Church. Muscovy began to see itself as the centre of Christendom. With Rome and Constantinople fallen, their place was now taken by Moscow which was referred to as the Third Rome- one that would never lapse into the fourth.
Ivan the Terrible’s reign was- as the suffix terrible would suggest- an oppressive period in Russian history. But under him the Russian state expanded and became truly multi racial and ethnic. Ivan’s death was followed by a period of political instability known as the Time of Troubles that ended with the establishment of Romanov absolutism in 1613 A.D. The reign of Michael Romanov was marked by the consolidation of autocratic powers at the cost of two traditional institutions: the zemsky sobor or land assembly and the boyar duma. Alexis Romanov’s reign was also significant for a tussle that emerged between temporal and church authority when the prelate Nikon challenged Alexis, but was eventually deposed. This outcome was decisive for it reaffirmed the dominance of temporal power over the church, though the latter was by no means a weak Institution in Russia.
Meanwhile, in Europe the period from the 15th century onwards ushered in dramatic changes. 1492 may be singled out as an arbitrary yet significant date from which profound transformations began to flow and affect both Europe and world around it. The late fifteenth century brought with a watershed in European economies and polities. For one, the date was significant as Columbus’ explorations of 1492 started the definitive integration of the Americas into the orbit of Europe. But this reaching out to the Americas constituted only part of Europe’s successful bid to become the world’s economic centre. Till the 14th century the world’s largest urban centres lay largely outside of Europe, while Europe’s largest cities like Constantinople found themselves near the orbit of Islam. However, a clear shift of politico-economic power towards north and later north Western Europe occurred after 1500 A.D, and this was largely due to the Black Death that decimated European populations and severed links between Asia and Europe. Other developments also played important roles in bringing about this disconnection, like the formidable barriers to trade imposed by fragmented Mongol territories, the withdrawal of Chinese from maritime trade and, most importantly, the rise of the Ottomans. These changes made Europe a more connected and autonomous unit than it had been ever before. This new development, coupled with the resurgence of European population in the sixteenth century, led to the robust growth of the Eurasian system.
Another very significant transformation within Europe was the coalescing of small segmented political entities to form consolidated states. The political texture of Europe in 1492 was characterised by innumerable small and occasionally big political units, the prominent being the kingdom of Aragon and Castile, the Papal states, the kingdom of Poland, the Hapsburgs, the French Valois, among others. ‘Germany’ at this point of time was subsumed by the Hapsburgs and comprised of countless cities and duchies. It was the French bid for Italian hegemony that sparked of an era of war on a European scale. These wars, in turn, shaped the European state system as they constructed the platform for European conquests outside the continent and facilitated the creation of centralised, differentiated, autonomous and bureaucratic states that came to dominate Europe and the world. Further, expansion into other continents brought with it capital accumulation that added to the ongoing war-state formations processes.
The period following 1942 also witnessed an unprecedented burst of industrialisation, urbanisation and populations growth, and ushered in major changes in European life. There were societal changes too. The dramatis personae of political conflicts, struggles and even revolutions changed, and challenges were thrust to the old order by these new socio-political forces. And while Europe was undergoing such dramatic metamorphosis, Russia in the east lay transfixed in systems that showed little propensity to change; and expectedly, the great human movements of Renaissance and Reformation never penetrated to effect any significant change in Russia.
These European transformations are important to note because they give us the background in which new conflicting ideas about Russian identity emerged. With its spectacular changes Europe- more cohesive as an entity now than before- was to form the great other for Russia. It was not as if Russia did not realise that she had lagged behind somewhere, and one can say so with some certainty for it was precisely this anxiety which propelled reforms under Peter, Catherine and later under Alexander II and Stolypin. All in an effort to catch up. But, some questioned, was there any need to catch up? Did Russia have to emulate the West when she had a distinct path of her own which was not only distinct but superior too? ‘Inferiority complexes at times can transmogrify into superiority complexes’, and perhaps that can be considered the basis of Russian Slavophila that became rampant as an alternative to view Russia’s identity and her standing in the world. A powerful and enduring debate has subsisted in Russia between the ‘Westernisers’ who wanted to draw the country culturally closer to Europe, and “Slavophiles,” who insisted Russia had its own idea, one closer to the East. This debate has been central to Russian cultural development.
Interestingly, each side is based on as much myth as the other. The roots of the Slavophile position may lie in a dissenting tradition. Since the end of the sixteenth century, dissent was kindled by those whose status rested on birth and tradition, not merit. The dissenting tradition adopted a nostalgic view of a once-happy Rus ruled by grand princes who worked within what the tradition saw as the true nature of the Muscovite system’s oligarchic rule. Their conception of Russia revolved around certain eternal values of Russian life, which are peculiar to Russia, and which are at the same time superior to any system or tradition thrown up by the west. The two institutions that the Slavophiles exalted in particular were the Orthodox church and the village commune, the latter being a Slavonic institution of much publicized antiquity.
But this Russian dilemma was to trouble even those Russian rulers who to varying degrees considered themselves as Westernisers. On her ascendancy, the enlightened Catherine the Great was only too aware of the fact that Russia suffered not only from economic and cultural backwardness, but also from socio political backwardness, and that the only corrective to existing flaws lay in overhauling the practices by which the whim and caprice of the sovereign could translate into law, and in slowly ending the continued enslavement of the peasantry, serfs and state peasants. But at the same, Catherine was also aware that radical changes could threaten the monarchy and the existing order. Though Catherine had countered two great challenges to her authority- Cossack rebellions and palace revolutionaries- , it was her third threat that she confronted in the late eighteenth century with particular alarm. The French revolution of 1789 and the subsequent execution of Louis XVI revealed the potency of modern style revolution. Instead of traditional menaces, the threat would now come from people and revolutionaries. Towards the end of the 18th century, questions were being asked about the need for an absolutist monarchy in a modern state, particularly when an overwhelming majority of people were enslaved. Catherine’s anxiety about this matter became more than evident when she had Radishchev castigated and sent into exile when he came out strongly with his anti establishment views. Catherine, stranded between her western idealisms and Russian realities, tended to succumb to contradictory policies. For instance, to mollify the gentry she issued a charter in 1785 that intensified serfdom and reduced peasants to a condition of slavery. And this was an enlightened empress imbued in the ideas of Voltaire and Diderot.
Similarly, when the rest of Europe was swept in the tide of revolutions in 1848, Russia remained largely unaffected. In fact, the Russian emperor strengthened the forces of reaction and sent his imperial troops in large numbers to the Hapsburg monarch to clamp down on Hungarian revolutionaries. Even Alexander II came to the throne with a sense of mission and initiated crucial reforms for the emancipation of the serfs. One of the important reasons why he insisted on peasant reforms was because he was conscious and concerned of the fact that serfdom in the eighteenth century was a blot on Russia’s international image. But in the midst of these efforts to catch up with Europe there were also occasions when Russia tired to leap and take a lead over Europe. One such attempt to take the lead was Alexander I ’s Holy Alliance, which ended eventually in the rejection and catastrophe of the Crimean war. Yet another attempt to get ahead was through Bolshevism and revolution, by bypassing the historical development of Europe, which ended in rejection and confrontation of the Cold war.
The Russian conundrum, as mentioned before, is congenital in its origins. So while one may debate about eternal Russian values and unchanging institutions, as Slavophiles trenchantly do, there is not much to debate about the fact that the single most permanent element in Russian history has been this central confusion on identity, and one sees it at work even in the Russia of today. The Slavophil- Westerniser debate has opened up fresh division in Russia where the void created by the rejection of a defunct but powerfully engrained ideology has forced the present leadership to construct and relocate focus on nationalism. Interestingly, Russia’s emerging conception of itself and the world draws almost exclusively from the past. Pastiches of images and rhetoric have flooded Russia’s developing popular nationalist collective identity over the past decade. One such attempt came in 1996 when, after winning his presidential election campaign, Boris Yeltsin created a special commission of intellectuals to find a so-called “national idea” to succeed the reviled tsarist ideology “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationhood” and Communist slogans such as “Workers of the World Unite.” The commission failed to come up with an idea.
The fundamental direction of the search for the new ‘Russian idea’ is a turning to the past and autarky. That is, there are strict characteristics to the new Russian idea. When the whole world is trying to become integrated and globalization is occurring, the Russian idea is to exist alone, apart from the rest. And the Russian idea consists of the sense that it is necessary to return to some kind of past.
Another interesting dimension to the Russian confusion has been the fact that it is not solely confined to Russia alone. Modern states like Belarus have also developed similar confusions. Being sandwiched between the Russia in the east and Poland in the west has placed the newly independent nation in a dilemma about its identity. Historically, the Belarusian’s have been drawn into the politics of Russia and Poland, and thus have identified themselves with Russia when the influence of Orthodoxy was greater than that of Catholicism. Similarly, identification with Poland came about when Catholicism overwhelmed Orthodox pressures. So, it has found itself stranded today between the East and Europe, with many agreeing- probably as a compromise- that Belarus has always been Catholic and Orthodox and Belorussian language takes it’s origin in the Polish/Russian family. Belorussia is therefore a part of both Europe and Russia. But the solution has not been that simple. Matters have complicated since now both the Vatican and Moscow’s Exarchate have activated their efforts to increase their influence over Belarus. And during the first years of independence in Belarus, Catholicism and Orthodoxy were equal when judged by the number of parishioners, by influence on social life and culture.
‘Belorussia’, the very name suggests ambiguity. The new nation state has embarked on its independent history, but has been born like a blue baby, with a dangerous defect; a defect that Russia and its history have known too well.
Bibliography:
Kochan and Keep: The making of modern Russia.
Price, Philip: Russia through the centuries.
Hingley: Concise history of Russia
Tilly, Charles: European revolutions
Deepak Nair
III History
St Stephen’s College.
[1] This question of geographical identification becomes important when one takes note of the fact that historical development in different continents or landmasses vastly separate from each other have shown significant variations. The histories, ethnic groups, politico-economic, social institutions and systems in one continent have differed over time and space from other continents. Also, similarities that may have come about through trade or commercial links tend to adapt to the landmasses own peculiar conditions. To say that Asia and Europe have inevitably followed different paths of historical development is an oversimplification. There are similarities, but also significant differences.
[2] It should be noted here that the Slavs who had moved westwards had come in touch with already existing cultures and religious systems and hence were brought under the influence of Roman Catholic Christianity.
[3] One such case was the accent Russian Christianity placed on suffering and uncompromising self sacrifice. This was brought out by the manner in which the Russian church treated a crisis in the royal family. King Vladimir’s eldest son killed his younger brothers Boris and Gleb who did not offer resistance when killed. While this resistance was not undertook or appreciated by the Greek Church the Russian church canonised them.
[4] The event was of such importance to national self assertion that the soviet state celebrated the 500th anniversary of this event.
[5] ‘Golden Hordes’ was the name given to the realm of Baty and his successors who settled in the vast western provinces of the Mongol empire over Russia.
[6] Boyars and princes in Ivan’s reign; kulaks and bourgeoisie during Stalin’s time.
[7] Ivan was known for the execution of a general who had been responsible for the conquest of Kazan khanate, Prince Michael Varotynsky. He had also banished Sylvester and Adashev who had been principal advors to him early in his reign. This was similar to Stalin who executed his close aids marshal tukhachevsky and Zhukov. Both rulers shared an abnormal paranoia for power and protection.