Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

Finland constituted a very special case. Conquered from Sweden during the Napoleonic Wars, it remained a distinct Grand Duchy whose ‘grand duke’ was the Tsar. Otherwise, it had its own administrative system, and from the mid-19th century its own Diet and its own army. Russian proponents of assimilation and administrative coordination found this both anomalous and dangerous, especially since the Finnish border was so close to St Petersburg. In the 1890s, the imperial regime embarked on a programme of complete integration of Finnish institutions, including army and Diet, into the imperial hierarchy, operating in the Russian language.

The Finns responded with a petition signed by no less than one-fifth of their population and then with a boycott of all Russian institutions. Conscripts evaded recruitment and went into hiding, protected by their countrymen. Russia found this peaceful resistance more difficult to cope with than violent rebellion, which it could always crush. In 1905, faced with rebellion throughout the empire, Nicholas II gave way and restored Finland’s autonomous status.

The Caucasus

By the late 18th century, Russia had finally conquered the north coast of the Black Sea and begun to mobilize the abundant agricultural and commercial potential of the southern Ukrainian plains. The whole Caucasus and Transcaucasian region became an area of vital strategic interest, as a buffer zone against the Persian and Ottoman Empires. It was, however, exceedingly problematic territory, depicted in Greek mythology as the edge of the world. Peoples of very different lifestyles, ethnic origin, languages, and religions lived close to one another, though often separated by towering mountain walls. Some were traders, some transhumant nomads, some cultivators of vineyards and olive groves, some warring mountain tribesmen regularly feuding with each other. Some lived in semi-feudal petty kingdoms, others in more loosely articulated tribal confederations.

South of the highest range, the medieval Christian kingdom of Georgia, surrounded by Muslim powers, had fragmented into numerous smaller principalities but was beginning to revive again, and looked to its Christian big brother Russia for protection. To offer it, in the late 18th century Russian engineers built the Georgian Military Highway across the Caucasian massif to send armed convoys southwards. That highway needed its own protection from the mountain peoples living along its course. Providing that protection involved Russian armies in a half-century of destructive and costly warfare. As far as possible, Russian administrators proceeded by gaining the allegiance of tribal elites, and by exploiting their conflicts with one another, as they had done elsewhere. For military reconnaissance and patrol work, they relied on Cossacks, operating from bases at first on the plains north of the Caucasus, then later in the highlands.

Increasingly, Russian strategy aimed to eliminate clans that opposed them by mounting raids against them, destroying their habitat in the forests, then their settlements, and deporting them. This policy naturally aroused ferocious hostility against both the Russians and their native allies, especially in the eastern Caucasus, among the peoples of Dagestan and Chechnia. Resistance crystallized around the Sufi brotherhoods known as tariqat. Their adherents would adopt a discipline of silent prayer and meditation to prepare them for unyielding battle against the infidels. For several decades, they were led by a series of imams, of whom the most tenacious was Shamil, known as ‘commander of the faithful’. He achieved unity by invoking Islam: his proclamations were directed against ‘unbelievers’ and ‘hypocrites’ rather than Russians as such. Under such leadership, the local tribes learned to suspend their feuds and unite to wage skilful and agile guerrilla campaigns, descending to storm Russian forts and outposts, then melting swiftly back into the mountains and forests. Slowly and painfully, the Russians devised a counter-insurgency strategy, but it was not till 1859 that they finally captured Shamil.

Even after that, resistance remained stubborn in the western Caucasus, among the Circassian people, who for centuries had lived as loose Ottoman vassals, secure in their upland fastnesses. The Russians decided the only way to overcome their defiance was to physically displace them and resettle their lands with immigrants. In the end, during the 1860s, between one and two million Circassians were deported in appalling conditions to the Ottoman Empire, in whose successor territories their descendants still live today. This was the first great mass deportation of modern times. Russians achieved the mastery over the Caucasus at which they had aimed, but at the cost of alienating and embittering most of the peoples who lived there – a legacy that still has its destructive effects today.

Chapter 5

Reform and revolution