Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

The tools of imperial policy varied over time. In the 16th and 17th centuries, priority was usually given to suppressing any lingering resistance, then ensuring the integration of populations and making them loyal to the Tsar, whatever their internal arrangements, customs, and beliefs might be. This was usually achieved by co-opting the indigenous elites as local chieftains or religious leaders under the Tsar’s ultimate authority. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, attention gradually shifted to bringing ‘civilization’ to non-Russian peoples, together with religious toleration and more direct administrative control. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, serious disagreements began to arise among imperial officials. Some of them aimed to inculcate grazhdanstvennost (civic consciousness) among non-Russians, to give them a feeling of pride in belonging to the empire and political identification with it. This implied preserving non-Russian culture, but reducing it to an auxiliary and folkloric status. Other officials considered this policy dangerous, likely in practice to strengthen non-Russian cultural and political movements; they preferred to stick to more authoritarian methods, to emphasize administrative integration, and to encourage indigenous populations to convert to Orthodoxy and to adopt the Russian language for all public business.

These policies were pursued in different ways in different regions. In the Volga region, the first non-Russian territory to be conquered, in the 1550s, the Muscovite authorities at first tried to convert the Muslim Tatar elites to Orthodoxy. However, they soon abandoned this policy, judging it was likely to produce effective leaders of popular resistance and thus threaten internal security. All the same, they periodically resumed conversion campaigns, extending them further down the social scale. Priests and local officials went around the mostly pagan Chuvash, Mari, Mordvin, and Udmurt villages, driving their inhabitants down to the river to be baptized. The results, however, were superficial: by and large, the populations continued their previous observances. In places, moreover, the policy aroused serious turbulence, and the authorities eventually abandoned it.

Central Asia

In Central Asia, the main priority became vacuum-filling. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, Russia gradually pushed its defence lines southwards and eastwards into the steppe land of the Kazakh Hordes. The Kazakhs had themselves appealed to the Tsar for protection against invading Kalmyks from further out.

Russia complied willingly. Its motives were articulated by Foreign Minister Gorchakov in the mid-19th century:

The situation of Russia in Central Asia is similar to that of all civilised states which come into contact with half-savage nomadic tribes without a firm social organisation. In such cases the interests of border security and trade relations always require that the more civilised state have a certain authority over its neighbours, whose wild and unruly customs render them very troublesome. It begins by first curbing raids and pillaging. To put an end to these it is often compelled to reduce the neighbouring tribes to some degree of close subordination.

Dealing with Kazakh nomads was easier if Russia could exercise some degree of authority over them, make them more dependent on Russian trade, and adapt their laws and customs to the needs of Russian officials and traders. Kazakhs welcomed Russian protection but sporadically rebelled against this incorporation into empire.

Until the mid-19th century, most of the Russian inhabitants of the steppe were Cossacks in mixed ranching and military settlements. From the 1870s onwards, increasing numbers of peasants came from the depressed central provinces of Russia, driven by the desire to create a better life for themselves. The Kazakhs at first tolerated this diminution of their pastures in the interests of the security the Cossacks afforded them. With the Resettlement Act of 1889, the state began systematically to survey and allot land to incoming settlers, whose numbers thereafter increased markedly. Their holdings began to cramp the nomads’ movements and thus compelled them to take up a more settled life. Landholdings became more strictly delineated, disrupting inherited notions of land and property.

Between the 1860s and 1880s, the Russians conquered the Khanates of Kokand (which controlled the fertile Ferghana Valley), Khiva, and Bukhara. The latter two became protectorates, while the first was abolished and Russian military rule was installed. By now, Russia was adopting a more pervasive method of imperial rule: imperial officials were brought in at higher and medium levels, while only the lower levels of authority were left to native headmen.