The Expansion of Russia - Alfred Rambaud 1904

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Contemporary Ubougbt SeriesI. ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM. By MaxNoRDAU and Dr. Gustave Gottheil. Price,

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THE !EXPANSION OF RUSSIA

PROBLEMS OF THE EAST ANDPROBLEMS OF THE FAR EASTBY

ALFRED RAMBAUD

"Wiib. an Essay on theRUSSIAN PEOPLEBY

J. NOVICOW

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NEW YORKSCOTT-THAW COMPANYJ904

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LIBRARY of CONGRESSTwo Cooles ReceivedAPR 21 1904Ctpyrieht Entry

CLA'SS CtXXc. No.COPY A

Copyright byFREDERICK A. RICHARDSON

1900

Copyright bySCOTT-THAW CO.

1904

c c c c r 'CO ac a

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Contemporari? 'Sbougbt Series

THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA ANDTHE RUSSIAN PEOPLE


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CONTENTSPAGETHE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA 1

The Origin of the Russian State and Na-tion. The Tartar-Mongols. PrincipalityOF Moscow. The Unity of Russia. Isola-tion. The Aim of Russian Diplomacy.

THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA IN EUROPE. 25Peter the Great. Poland. The EasternQuestion. Latin and Greek Churches.Catherine the Great. Turkish Wars.Greek Independence. Crimean War. TheBalkan States. Nihilism, Results ofEuropean Wars. Nicholas II.

THE SOUTHWARD EXPANSION OF RUSSIAIN ASIA 57An Asiatic Power. Wars and Treatieswith Persia. A Way to the Indian Ocean.In the Caucasus. Paramount in Persia.

FURTHER CONQUESTS 68Expansion towards India. Napoleon.The Conquest OF THE Khans. In Afghan-istan. The " Key of the Indies." InTouch with India. Abyssinia. BritishOver-Confidence.


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CONTENTSPAGETHE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA IN THE FAREAST 90

The Opening of Siberia. Value of Siberia.Chinese Wars. Settlements on thePacific. Chinese Cessions. Vladivostock.Russian Influence at Pekin

COREA 102The China-Japan War. Interference ofRussia. Conflict with Japanese Inter-ests. Russia's Gain.

CHINA 108Russian Concessions. Port Arthur. Rail-ways. Loans. Corea. Germany. GreatBritain. The United States.

THE MEANS AND METHODS OF RUSSIANEXPANSION 116Fruits of Diplomacy. Absolutism ofRussian Government. An EnlightenedDespotism. "^ Russian Colonists. RaceCharacteristics. Religion. Population.Franco - Russian Alliance. From theBaltic to the Pacific.

THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE: A PsychologicalStudy 139

I. Race and Teimperament. II. GeneralPsychology. III. Sentiment. IV. Intel-lect. V. Politics. VI. Present State


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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA


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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA.The Origin of the Russian State and NationThe Tartar-MongolsPrincipality of MoscowThe Unity of RussiaIsolationThe Aim ofRussian Diplomacy.We fail to discover, however far back we

go towards the beginnings of the RussianState, any indication that this was ever des-tined to become a maritime power. In theninth centm-y, the Slavic tribes that wereto form the first political organization desig-nated by the name Russian,the Slavo-Russian tribes,occupied a territory securelyshut in on the west, by the Poles and theLithuanians; on the north, by the Finnishtribes, the Livonians, the Tchudis, and theIngrians; on the east, Finnish tribes again,the Vesi, the Merians, the Muromians, andtwo Turkish tribes, the Meshtcheraks andthe Khazars, that occupied all the northern

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAcoast of the Black Sea; allowing but a singleone of the Slavo-Russian peoples to hold aposition upon its shores. Except at thispoint, these Slavo-Russian tribes nowherehad access to the coast. The shores of theWhite Sea and the Arctic Ocean were Fin-nish; those of the Baltic, Finnish or Scan-dinavian; those of the Black Sea were heldby the Khazars, the Caucasian tribes, theByzantine Empire, and the Bulgarians, aFinnish tribe that had imposed its name andsovereignty upon a certain number of Slavictribes.In the East and North, the Slavs were not

to be found even in those regions whereafterwards rose the Russian capitals, Mos-cow and St. Petersburg. Beyond began thoseimmense spaces that stretch away into thedepths of Central Asia, and even to the PacificOcean, spaces peopled with Finnish andTurkish tribes, and other branches of theUralo-Altaic family. Then, still further east,

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAwere to be found certain peoples of theyellow race.To speak now only of the Russia of Europe,

how did the Slavo-Russians, who in the ninthcentury held scarcely a fifth part of theirpresent territory, succeed in securing pos-session of it all? A two-fold change cameabout during the centuries. On the onehand, the Slavo-Russians, very venturesome indisposition, following, at first, the courseof the rivers and their tributaries, spreadout over the vast plains that stretch away tothe Ural Mountains; founding everywherecities, villages, and markets right in the midstof the territory of the aboriginal tribes. Onthe other hand, they absorbed the greaterpart of those tribes, and imposed upon themtheir language, religion, and even their man-ners and customs. A double colonization,therefore, took place, a colonization of the soiland a colonization of the native. The ancientUralo-Altaic tribes, subjugated or absorbed

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAby the Russians, has disappeared from themap of the empire. There persist still onlysome scattered remnants of them, surroundedby men of Russian race and speech, anddestined soon to disappear. These aboriginesare to be foimd in fairly compact groups onlyin those places where the severity of the climate,the barren character of the soil, the thick-ness of the forest, and the desert steppescheck Russian civilization, an ethnographicalmedley, moreover, occupying only a very smalland indifferently valuable part of the Euro-pean Russia of to-day.'Thus the primitive tribes of the Slavo-

Russians formed an agglomeration which waseverywhere well-nigh entirely shut off fromany sea. This had a character essentiallycontinental; the population was wholly agri-

(0 Thus the Suomi, the Karelia and the Laplandersin Finland; the Zyrians and the Permians, in thenortheast; the Tcheremisa, the Mordva, the Votiaki,the Meshtcheraks, and the Bashkirs on the river Volga,or between the Volga and the Ural Mountains and river.


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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAcultural in character, and, except as fleetsof light boats descended the Dnieper in thetenth century to harass Constantinople andto commit piracy on the Byzantine shoresof the Black Sea, there was nothing to indi-cate that it would one day come forth as amaritime power.The Russia of the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries was scarcely European. She wasbound to Europe only by her form of relig-ion, and even that, borrowed from Byzantine,was an Oriental, an almost Asiatic form ofChristianity. When there came about in theeleventh century the rupture between theLatin and Catholic Church of the West,and the Greek and Orthodox Church ofthe East, a still higher barrier was raisedbetween the two parts of Europe. To theWestern Christians, the Greeks and the peo-ples that they had evangelized, the Bulgar-ians, the Servians, the Moldavo-Wallachians,and the Russians, were only schismatics.

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIANow, while the Catholic peoples of the West,thanks to more favorable historical circum-stances, began to take shape as powerfulnations in which an already well-advancedcivilization went on developing, the schismaticpeoples of Eastern Europe, assailed by suc-cessive invasions, from Asia, and after havinglong served as a living bulwark against bar-barism for ungrateful Europe, were checkedin their historic evolution, and fell one afterthe other into servitude to pagan Mongolsor Mohammedan Turks.The country where the Slavo-Russians first

established themselves was only a prolonga-tion of the great plains which, scarcely brokenby the Ural Mountains, extend to Behring'sSea, Okhotsk Sea, and the Sea of Japan.Geographically, topographically, this prim-itive Russia was already Asiatic. Just as thewinds from Asia swept unhindered all thisimmense plain, so could the migration ofpeoples and invading expeditions, at times

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAoriginating near the Great Wall of China,pour unchecked over the Russian plains asfar as the Carpathian Mountains and theVistula.

One of those revolutions, so frequent amongthe nomadic tribes of Asia, brought togetherfrom 1154 to 1227 under the blue banner ofTemuchin, called Jenghis Khan, numeroustribes of shepherds and mounted nomads.They adopted as their collective name thatof the Tartar-Mongols. At their head "theInflexible Emperor," ^Hhe Son of Heaven,"conquered Manchuria, the kingdom of Tan-gut, North China, Turkestan, and GreatBokhara, and founded an empire whichextended from the Pacific to the Ural Moimtains.Under the successors of Jenghis Khan, thesemounted hordes, maddened by the fury ofwar and conquest, crossed into Europe, fellupon Russia, then divided into numerousprincipalities, carried the capital cities byassault, annihilated, one after the other, the

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAarmies of foot and horse sent against them,and in 1240 converted all Russia into a mereprovince of the Mongol Empire. The Russianprinces and the chieftains of the Finnish tribesbecame vassals of the Great Khan/ who heldhis court on the banks of the Onon, an affluentof the Amur, or at Karakorum on the Orkhon,a stream emptying into Lake Baikal. Theywere also more directly the vassals of one ofhis vassals, the Khan of the Golden Horde,who was stationed at Sarai on the lower Volga.At this period the Tartar-Mongols, among

whom Mohamimedanism was disseminateduntil about 1272, were still Buddhists, Sham-anists, or fetich worshippers; at heart veryindifferent in matters of religion, and strangersto any thought of propagandism or of intoler-ance. They, therefore, . left the Russians inundisturbed possession of their religion, their

(0 Consult Howorth, History of the Mongols, London1876. Wolff, Geschichte der Mongolen, Breslau, 1872.L^on Cahun, Introduction a Vhistoire de VAsie, Paris,1896.

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAlaws, and their own princely dynasties. Theymerely exacted' tribute, and, in certain contin-gencies, military service; and every new Russianprince must go to receive his investiture eitherat Sarai, or even by a journey that wouldoccupy years, at the court of the Great Khan.There they were compelled to prostrate them-selves at the foot of his throne, to defend them-selves against the accusations of enemies, orof their Russian rivals; and the Khan disposedof their heads as of their crowns. Many Russianprinces were executed before his eyes. Someamong these, the Russian Church honors asmartyrs.

Among the Russian princes who went thereto prostrate themselves before the Horde werethose who had founded round about a littlemarket-town, the name of which is met withfor the first time in 1147, a new principality,that of Moscow, one of the most insignificantof the Russian states of that period. It wasestablished in the midst of a Finnish country,

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAamong the Muromians. It formed, therefore,a colony of primitive Russia. The princesof Moscow knew how to turn to their ownadvantage the Mongol yoke that weighed onall Russia. They were more adroit than theothers in flattering the common master andthe agents that represented him in Russia.One of them, George (1303-1325), even marrieda Tartar princess. In their struggles againstother Russian princes, they alway carried thecontroversy to the court of the Khan, whoalmost always decided in their favor, and sentthem away with the heads of their rivals. Theysecured from the Khan the privilege of collectingthe tribute, not only from their own subjects,but from the other princes of Russia. Thisfunction as tribute collector for the Khanraised them above all their equals; and themore humble vassals of the barbarians theyshowed themselves to be, the better did theyestablish their suzerainty over the other Chris-tian states. They succeeded thus in building

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAup a powerful state, which was called the ''GreatPrincipaUty'' of Moscow. When they feltthemselves to be strong enough, and perceivedthat the Mongol Empire had grown sufficientlyweak through internal dissension and divisionsto warrant the attempt, they turned againstthe barbarians the power that they owed tothem. In 1380, the Grand Prince Dmitri,having refused payment of tribute, defeatedMamai, the Khan of the Golden Horde, atKulikovo on the Don. But the Mongols werenot yet as weak as Dmitri Donskoi (hero ofthe Don) had thought. Tamerlane, or Timur-Leng, had just conquered Tiu-kestan, PersiaAsia Minor, and North Hindustan. One ofhis lieutenants, Tokhtamysh, having vainlysummoned the Grand Prince, Dmitri, to appearbefore him, marched against Moscow, capturedthe city and its Kremlin, sacked the othercities of the principality, and everywherereestablished Asiatic supremacy. Nevertheless,the Mongol yoke was not to survive long the

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAheroic effort made at Kulikovo. The greatbarbarian empires founded by Asiatic conquerorsquickly fall to pieces. This historical lawwas verified in the Empire of Tamerlane, asin that of Jenghis Khan. Towards the endof the fifteenth century, the Mongol Empireof Asia was divided in the Mongol Empireof China, the Mongol Empire of India, theMongol Kingdom of Persia, and a large mmiberof khanates in Turkestan and Siberia; and allthose states were scarcely any longer Mongolsave in name. In Russia itself, the GoldenHorde was broken up. From its debris wereformed the czarate of Kazan on the middleVolga, the khanate, or czarate, of Sarai, orAstrakhan, on the lower Volga, the horde ofthe Nogais, and the khanate of the Crimea.In 1476, Akhmed, the Khan of Sarai, sent ademand for tribute to the Grand Prince ofMoscow, Ivan the Great. Ivan put the ambass-adors to death. Four years later, the KhanAkhmed marched upon Moscow with a large

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAarmy. Near the rivers Oka and Ugra he metthe army of Ivan the Great; but neither ofthe adversaries dared force the passage ofthe two rivers. They remained there severaldays exchanging insults and darts from theopposite shores. Then a panic simultaneouslyarose in both armies; the one fleeing in thedirection of Moscow, the other in the directionof Sarai. It was in this bloodless, inglorious waythat the Mongol power in Russia came to an end.The Mongol yoke had continued two hundred

and fifty-six years (1224-1480). It left inRussia traces that were for a long time ineffac-able. Before the Tartar conquest, the powerof a Russian prince was founded upon Euro-pean origins. It recalled the patriarchal author-ity of the old-time chieftains of the Slavo-Russian tribes; the martial authority of theheads of the Scandinavian or Variagian clans,like Rorik and other Variagian chiefs, calledinto Russia, it is said, by the Slavs; and theauthority, at once civil and religious, of the

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAByzantine-Roman emperors, whom the succes-sors of Rorik, Hke all the barbarian chieftainsof Eastern Em-ope, hked to take as models.After the Tartar conquest, on the contrary,the Russian princes, and especially the GrandPrinces of Moscow, selected as prototypes oftheir own authority the Khans and GreatKhans with their autocratic power,coarse,irresponsible, Asiatic. From that time forward,they treated their vassals as they themselveshad been treated by the Khans. Between theGrand Prince and his vassals, and between theseand the peasants, the relations were those ofbrutal masters and trembling slaves. The sover-eign of Moscow did not differ from a MongolKhan, from a Persian Shah, or from an OsmanliSultan, save as he professed the orthodox reli-gion. He was a sort of a Christian Grand Turk.When the title of Grand Prince seemed to himunworthy of his increased power, the title thathis ambition chose was none of those that theChristian rulers of the West then bore; it was

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAthe one which the Khans of Siberia, of Kazan,or of Astrakhan had arrogated; it was the titleof Czar, which, of course, has not any etymo-logical connection with that of Csesar, a fictioninvented very much later. Such was the titlethat the heir of the Grand Princes of Moscow,Ivan the Terrible, solemnly took in 1547.Many other facts attest the predominance ofAsiatic influences over the Russia of the six-teenth century. The costumes of the Czar ofMoscow and of the other great lords, the princesand boyars, were Asiatic; Asiatic was the servileetiquette of the court; touching with the browthe foot of the throne, and the humble formulasin which the highest personages declared them-selves to be slaves; Asiatic was the seclusion ofthe women in the terem, which was a Russianharem ;^ Asiatic was the equipment of the royal

(1) However, it is proper to call attention to the factthat the servile character of the court etiquette mayalso have been borrowed from Byzantium, and thatthe Russian terem may have had its original in thegynsecium of the Greeks.

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAcavalry with their high saddles and short stir-rups; their boots with the toe in the form of anupturned crescent; their armor reminding oneof the Chinese and Japanese; their curvedswords, their bows and quivers, and their head-dress, which resembled a turban surmounted byan aigrette. All this oriental apparel was tocontinue in vogue imtil the time when Peter theGreat, with the violent measures of an Asiaticdespot, forcibly introduced into Russia theshort clothing of the West,'^German dress,''that is, European. With this change in cos-tume, he also brought in the fashion of shavingthe face; the holding of social gatherings, whichthe recluses of the terem were compelled toattend; the etiquette of the Christian courts;the formulary of the German bureaucracy, andthe imiforms, equipments, and tactics of thearmies of the WestWhile Russia was still groaning under theMongol yoke, the Grand Princes of Moscow,

utilizing their servitude as an instrument of16


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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIApower, caused the other princes to bow beforethe terror of the Mongol, and brought about'Hhe consoUdation of the Russian territory,''that is to say, they founded the unity of Russia.When the family line of the Grand Princes andCzars of Moscow died out in 1598, and whenthere began for Russia 'Hhose troublous times(smoutndie Vr^mia)/' which the accession of theRomanofs brought to an end in 1613, the czar-ate of Moscow was already a very powerfulstate.

In the North especially, by the annexation ofthe territories of the ancient republics of Nov-gorod and Pskof , the Muscovite supremacy wasextended to the White Sea and the ArcticOcean. On the west, in a series of wars againstthe Lithuanians and the Poles to ^'recover"from them Russian territory which they hadformerly conquered, the Moscow czarate hadcarried its power beyond Pskof and Lake Pei'pus,and had reached the Dnieper at Kiev andSmolensk. In the South, it had reached

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAneither the Black Sea nor the Sea of Azov,from which it was separated by the Ukrainethat still belonged to the Poles, by a republicof adventurers and pirates called the Zaporo-vians, by the khanate of the Crimean Tartars,by the camping-grounds of the Nogaian Tar-tars, and, finally, by the maritime power of theOttomans on the Euxine. Eastward, Russianconquest and colonization had made greatadvances. The uniting of the old territories ofNovgorod, and the annexation of those of therepublic of Viatka, brought the Muscovite dom-ination to the Ural Mountains. The conquestof the czarate of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible,in 1552, gave him all the region of the middleVolga, and the conquest of the czarate ofAstrakhan, two years later, placed in his powerall the lower Volga country, with a part of thecoast of the Caspian Sea. Finally, the con-quest of the khanate of Sibir, between the years1579-1584, by the Cossack Irmak, carriedthe Russian eagles beyond the Urals, and

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAopened before them the immensities ofSiberia.But the more extensive the Muscovite

Empire became, the more it suffered from nothaving access to any sea which was all the yearfree from ice, or which would afford an outlet tothe ocean. The Harbors of the White Sea wereclosed with ice eight months of the year; theCaspian Sea is only a great lake without an outlet.To reach the Baltic Sea, it would be necessary tobattle against the Germans, the Poles, and theSwedes, the masters of all its shores. To gainaccess to the Black Sea, there were, again, thePoles to be fought, as well as the Tartars, theZaporovians, and the Grand Turk. Now, theEuropean neighbors of Russia were beginning tofear this great barbarian empire. They wereconvinced that it would become truly a terror tothem the day on which, by obtaining regularcommunication with the West, it could therebylearn something of their civilization, their indus-tries, and, above all, their military art. They

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAunderstood that the backward condition of itsciviUzation was the only safeguard against itsambitions. They, therefore, closed against ittheir eastern frontiers, and barred it out of theBaltic. At the time when Ivan the Terrible,profiting by the decadence into which the Sword-Bearers, the religious military order of the Livo-nians, had fallen, took their lands away fromthem, and raised his flag at their port of Narva,Poles, Germans, and Swedes imited against him;they incited fresh invasions of the Crimean Tar-tars, conspiracies and rebellion among his nobil-ity; and, after a bitter struggle of twenty-fouryears, compelled him to abandon his conquest in1582. So long as Narva was in the hands of theCzar, Sigismund, King of Poland, did not have amoment's peace. When English merchantsbegan to resort there, he wrote threatening let-ters to Queen Elizabeth, sununoning her to for-bid that traffic. ''Our fleet will seize all thosewho continue to sail thither; your merchantswill be in danger of losing their liberty, their

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAwives and children, and their Hves/' And thisconfession escaped him: "We see by this newtraffic the Muscovite, who is not only ourenemy to-day, but the hereditary enemy of allfree nations, furnishing himself thoroughly,not only with our guns and munitions of war,but, above all, with skilled workmen, whocontinue to prepare equipments of war forhim, such as have been hitherto unknown tohis barbaric people. * * * It would seemthat we have thus far conquered him becausehe is ignorant of the art of war and the finesseof diplomacy. Now, if this comimerce continues,what will there soon be left for him to learn? '^

Thus, it was not merely unpropitious naturethat kept Russia in a condition of blockade;but the jealousy of her neighbors mounted amost rigorous guard around these "barbarians''of the North. The empire of Moscow remainedcondemned, like the agglomeration of Slavictribes of the ninth and tenth centuries fromwhich it had sprung, to a purely continental

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAlife. It was shut up to its vast northernplains like the Swiss to his mountains, andseemed to have as little chance of ever becominga maritime power.

Hitherto, the Muscovite Empire with its mili-tary organization wholly Asiatic, with itsnoble-born knights and free peasants, with itsinfantry militia, the streltsy, with its old-fashioned artillery, with its regular troops ofCossacks, Tartars, and Calmucks, had beenable to withstand victoriously Asiatic forces;but it could not maintain a struggle against theregular troops and improved weapons of thewestern nations. In order to make her markin Europe, it was necessary for Russia tobecome European; but she could not becomeEuropean if Europe persisted in holding herin a condition of blockade. It was a 'Wiciouscircle''; and it was reserved for the genius ofPeter the Great to succeed in breaking thatcircle.

Henceforth, we see Russian diplomacy, with22


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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAtireless patience, with a shrewdness equal toits persistency, endeavoring simultaneously inall directions to pierce the blockade. Shestrives to secure access to the Baltic Sea;and we shall have the Northern War of Peterthe Great, the partition of Poland underCatherine II., the Finland question under theCzarina Ehzabeth, and under Alexander I.She strives to secure access to the Black Sea;and we shall have the Eastern Question in allits forms, from the first efforts of Peter theGreat down to the war of 1877-78 of AlexanderII. She strives to make herself mistress ofthe Caspian Sea, and the attempt made byPeter the Great will reach an end only imderAlexander III. She strives to secure accessto the Indian Ocean, and we shall have thewars and treaties with Persia, Afghanistan,and England. She strives to secure accessto the Okhotsk Sea, the Sea of Japan, and thePacific Ocean, and we shall witness the workof Siberian colonization and all the phases of

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAthe Far Eastern Question. The matter ofsecuring new territory concerns her muchless. It has been the supreme end of herefforts, at times continued for centuries, toreach a sea,a sea free from ice, a sea openinginto the ocean.

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIAIN EUROPE.

Peter the GreatPolandThe Eastern QuestionLatin and Greek ChurchesCatherine theGreatTurkish WarsGreek IndependenceCrimean WarThe Balkan StatesNihilismResults of European WarsNicholas II.We know with what energy and alterna-

tion of success and failure Peter the Greatstruggled against the Swedish masters of theeastern and southern shores of the Baltic.We are amazed when we reflect that a war,lasting more than twenty-one years: a warthat convulsed all Europe; that brought theSwedes into the heart of Russia and the Russiansinto the centre of Germany; that broughtabout the creation of a Russian army andnavy imder the fire of the enemy, and thatnumbered a score of battles on land and sea,should have ended in results apparently so

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEmeagre as were those gained by Russia in1721 at the Treaty of Nystad; namely, theacquisition of four small provinces, Livonia,Esthonia, Ingria, and Karelia. But theseprovinces gave him on the Baltic the portsof Riga, Revel, and Narva; they gave himalso the mouths of two rivers, the broad Nevaand the Duna, or Dvina (not to be confoundedwith the other Dvina that empties into theWhite Sea). It was on the islets of the Nevathat Peter the Great had founded, in 1703,on lands still disputed by the Swedes andby the floods, the capital of European Russia,St. Petersburg, protected on the west by themaritime fortress of Kronstadt. Yes, ''theGiant Czar" considered himself amply repaidfor his efforts of twenty-one years by the factthat for his vast continental empire, stillwrapped in Asiatic darkness, he had been able''to open one window on Europe."

This ^dndow was still a very narrow one.It was somewhat enlarged by Elizabeth, when,

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEafter a war foolishly undertaken by Sweden,she made that country, in the Treaty of Abo,1743, surrender some districts in Finland.Later, Alexander I., during his short-livedaUiance with Napoleon, conquered from hisrecent ally, Gustavus III., all of Finland(Treaty of Fredericksham, 1809). Russiahad now no longer anything to seek in thatdirection.Westward, between Russia, already power-

ful and always war-like, and Prussia, nowgrown great in glory and strength, lay anextremely weak state made up of the king-dom of Poland, the grand duchy of Lithuaniaand some old-time Russian districts. Thefirst three partitions of this state (1772, 1793,1795), carried the Russian frontier to theNiemen, the Warthe, and the Dniester.Catherine II. completed these conquests bythe annexation of Courland, w^hich had beena vassal dependency of the fallen kingdom.It is to be noted, however, that in what is

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEcalled "the partition of Poland/' CatherineXL did not acquire any Polish, but merelyLithuanian territory that formerly had beenRussian. If Napoleon I. had not attemptedto reestablish on the Russian frontier a Polishkingdom under the name of 'Hhe grand duchyof Warsaw/' perhaps Russia would not havebeen ambitious to secure possession of anyformer Pohsh territory. After the fall ofNapoleon, the Czar Alexander I. was obligedto appropriate a considerable part of this underthe name of "the kingdom of Poland/' wereit for no other reason than to prevent an in-crease of territory upon the part of the twoGerman powers. Henceforth the westernfrontier of Russia was fixed. It has not changedsince 1815, and, to admit the possibility ofa change in the future, it would be necessaryto admit the possibility of a total overturningof the European balance of power.Though Russian expansion towards thenorth was stopped by the icy solitudes of Lap-

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEland, westward by the frontiers of states asfirmly established as the German and Austro-Hmigarian Empires, yet for a long time abroad Avay remained open to Russia in thedirection of the south. The decadence of theOttoman Empire seemed to offer her the samefavorable opportunities as did the decline ofthe Polish-Lithuanian Empire. In this di-rection, acquisition of territory promised tobe infinitely more precious. The Russianscould dream of the Black Sea, the Propontis,and the ^gean Sea becoming Russian lakes;of Christian peoples of the same religion (Rou-manians and Greeks),and of some of thesame religion and race (Bulgarians, Servians,Croatians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, andMontenegrians),welcoming the armies of aLiberator Czar, and joyfully accepting thedomination of Russia in exchange for thatof the Ottoman; and, finally, they could dreamof Constantinople, the capital of the EasternRoman Empire, freed from the yoke of the

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEinfidel; and of the cross taking the place ofthe crescent on the dome of Saint Sophia.Nevertheless, it was, perhaps, in the directionof the south, that Russia, in her schemes forexpansion, after some brilliant successes, foundherself the most completely deceived.For a long time the sovereigns that sat

upon Russia's throne at Moscow, and then atSt. Petersburg, were infatuated with thisOriental mirage. The Russian OrthodoxChurch urged them on in this course throughsympathy with the Orthodox Christians whowere in subjection to the infidel. Even theRoman Catholic Church at a certain timeencouraged them in the hope that the swordof the Czar might accomplish both the deliv-erance of the Christians and the union of thetwo churches, that is to say, the subordinationof the Greek Church to the Roman. It wasPope Paul III., who, at the advice of the Greekcardinal, Bessarion, offered to the GrandPrince of Moscow, Ivan the Great, the hand

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEof his ward, Sophia Palseologus, the niece ofthe last Christian emperor of Constantinople.It was at Rome that the marriage took place,and it was the Pope who gave a dowry to theheiress of the Csesars of the East.^ It is fromthe time of this marriage that the double-headed eagle of the Palseologus took its placeon the escutcheons and standards of the Rus-sian sovereigns. Paul III. was deceived inboth his hopes; for the union of the two churcheswas never accepted at Moscow, and manyyears passed before a Russian army was ableto advance a step southward. The second ofthe Romanofs, Alexis, father of Peter the Great,set the first landmark southward in the Treatyof Andrussovo with Poland, in 1667, by acquir-ing a part of the Ukraine, extending as far asthe upper course of the Dnieper. Vast spacesstill separated the Russian and the OttomanEmpires. Nevertheless, in the coolest and

(i) Le R. Prerling, La Russie et Vorientmariage d'untsar au Vatican, FsLYis, 1891; La Russie et le saint-siege,2 vols., Paris, 1896-'97.

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEshrewdest minds brooded the idea of a holywar against the infidel. Peter the Great, stillyoung and journeying in Western Europe,learning its arts and himself wielding the car-penter's axe at Saardam, wrote, in 1697, toAdrian, the Patriarch of Moscow: '^We arelaboring in order thoroughly to conquer theart of the sea, so that having completely learnedit, on our return to Russia, we may be vic-torious over the enemies of Christ, and byHis grace be the liberator of the down-troddenChristians. This is what I shall never ceaseto desire until my latest breath."Upon his return to Russia, however, his

struggle with Sweden occupied all his attention.It was only in 1711, when his enemy, CharlesXII., a refugee in the domains of the GrandTurk, earnestly sought to have the lattertake up arms against Russia, that Peter theGreat allowed himself to be tempted by theappeal which the hospodars of Moldavia andWallachia, Montenegrian envoys, and Greek

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEagents addressed to him in the name of Chris-tians who were oppressed and ready to rise inrevolt. He found immense spaces to be trav-ersed; and crossed the Pruth with only thirty-eight thousand starving and harassed soldiers.He discovered that all the promises of theLevantines were unwarranted; he met neitherallies nor help; and beset by two hundredthousand Turks, or Tartars, he had to considerhimself fortunate to get back again acrossthe rivers, after having signed the Treaty ofFalksen, or of the Pruth, which restored to theOttomans his first conquest, the city of Azov.The second southward step of the Russians

was the conquest of a bit of territory that waspeopled with Servian colonists, and that wascalled New Servia. This acquisition was wonby the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739; but it hadcost the Empress Anna Ivanovna three yearsof war and useless victories, and nearly onehundred thousand men.The third was a gigantic step. After the

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEfirst war against the Turks, Catherine II.found herself checked by the intervention ofPrussia and Austria, who -compelled her torenounce nearly all her eastern conquests,and to accept a compensation in Poland.Nevertheless, by the treaty of Kai'rnaji, in1774, she had ceded to her Azov on the Don,and Kinburn at the mouth of the Dnieper.She forced the Sultan to recognize the inde-pendence of the Tartars of the Bug, of theCrimea, and of the Kuban. This was to pre-pare for their annexation to Russia, whichwas successfully accomplished and sanctionedby the Constantinople Compact of 1784. Allthe north shore of the Black Sea and of theDniester, as far as the Kuban River, nowbecame Russian. The last Mohammedanstates of Russia were converted into prov-inces of the empire, and the last vestige of"the Tartar yoke'' was effaced from Russiansoil.At once in the Tauric peninsula and at the

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEmouths of the rivers arose formidable for-tresses, Kherson, Kinburn, and, on a bayof the Crimea, Sevastopol was made ready-to control the Black Sea. An entire Russianfleet was built up, which could in two dayscast anchor before the walls of the Seraglio.The conquest of the Turkish Empire, impos-sible to Peter the Great, seemed to becomeeasy for Catherine the Great. In the trium-phant journey that she next accomplishedthrough the conquered provinces, her routewas crowded with triumphal arches, bearingthis inscription: ''The way to Byzantium.'^She herself provoked the second Turkishwar (1787-1792). The Russian armies, every-where victorious, advanced to the Danube.The janissaries and spahis of the Sultan couldnot stop them in their course. But again didEuropean diplomacy intervene. CatherineII. had to give up the Roimianian hospodarates,which had been entirely subdued, and be sat-isfied with Otchakov, and a strip of territory

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEbetween the Bug and the Dniester, and withguarantees more explicit than those of 1774in favor of the Roumanian principahties.This arrangement, accompUshed at the Treatyof Yassy, 1792, estabUshed over these prin-cipahties a sort of distant Russian protectorate.Thus, although four Russian interventionshad already occurred, not an inch of Christianterritory had been wrested from the Sultan,and not a Christian tribe had been deliveredfrom his yoke.The fifth intervention took place under

Alexander I. So long as his alliance, madeat Tilsit in 1807, with Napoleon continued,his armies were victorious. The Roumanianswere again conquered as far as the Danube;Bulgaria, conquered as far as the Balkans;and under George the Black (Kara-Georges),Servia won her independence with her ownforces alone. The rupture with Napoleoncompelled the Czar to sign the peace of Buch-arest with the Sultan in 1812. Of all his con-

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEquests, he retained only a bit of Roumanianterritory, Bessarabia between the Dniester andthe Pruth,as also Ismail and Kilia on thelower Danube. The Roumanians and Bul-garians fell again under the Ottoman yoke,and Servia was abandoned to herself. Never-theless, an amnesty was stipulated in favorof the Servians, and guarantees were given infavor of the Roumanians. In 1827, NicholasI., by the Akerman Agreement, which was anexplanation of the Treaty of Bucharest, causedthe guarantees accorded the Romnanians tobe clearly defined. As for the Servians,crushed for a time by Ottoman retaliation,they had taken up arms under Milosh Obre-novitch, and, thanks to European intervention,they obtained, with certain restrictions, theirautonomy.The sixth intervention of Russia occurred

on the occasion of the Greek revolution. OnJuly 8, 1827, Russia, France, and Englandentered into concerted action by the Treaty

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEof London. The united fleets of the threepowers annihilated the Turkish and Egyptianfleets at Navarino (October 20). While aFrench army was operating in the Morea toinsure Greek independence, Nicholas I. tookit upon himself to settle the rest of the EasternQuestion. His European army again con-quered the Roumanians and Bulgarians,invaded Thrace, and entered Adrianople. InAsia, his forces occupied Turkish Caucasia.The Treaty of Adrianople, concluded in 1829,guaranteed the autonomy of Moldavia, ofWallachia, and of Servia, and consummatedthe independence of Greece, which was formedinto a kingdom, Thus were the hopes thatPeter the Great had entertained respectingthe Christians of the East partially realized;but Russia did not secure any territory inEurope except the isles of the Danubian delta;reserving for herself freedom of navigation inthe Black Sea, and an open way through thestraits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEOnly in Asia did she secure a territorial indem-nity.The second eastern war, undertaken by

Nicholas I., and which began like the othersby the conquest of the Roumanians, broughtabout the intervention of France and Englandin the Crimea, which caused the Czar Nicholasto die of grief, and which ended in the Treatyof Paris (March 30, 1856). By this treaty,his successor, Alexander II., had to renounceall the advantages gained in Europe by theTreaty of Adrianople; to give back the deltaof the Danube; to consent to limiting of hismilitary power in the Black Sea; and to abdi-cate his exclusive right of protection over theDanubian principalities, which were hence-forth placed under the collective protectorateof the great powers.When France found herself engaged in a

bloody duel with the German Empire, Russiaprofited by the occasion to have a conferencecalled at London in March, 1871, by which she

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEsecured the suppression of article two of theTreaty of Paris, which Umited her military-power in the Black Sea.The last and the most decisive Russian inter-

vention was the one provoked in 1877 by theBulgarian massacres, the Bosnian and Herze-govinian revolution, and the uprising in Serviaand in Montenegro. In addition to the helpof these different forces, Russia made sure ofthe armed assistance of the principality ofRoumania, that had been formed in 1859, bythe union of the two old-time hospodarates ofMoldavia and Wallachia. She again made theconquest of Bulgaria and of a part of Thrace.This time, it was in plain sight of Constanti-nople that the victorious armies of Alexander II.halted. The Sultan had with which to opposethem only twelve thousand men, encamped onthe heights of Tchadalcha. It seemed, there-fore, to be in the power of the Czar to bring toan end the Ottoman domination in Europe,to proclaim the liberation of all the Christian

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEpeoples, and at last to plant the cross on thedome of Saint Sophia. But before the threat-ening demonstration of England and thedisquieting attitude of Austria and Germany,he did not dare to do so. He contented him-self with imposing upon the Porte the Treatyof San Stefano (March 3, 1878), which securedfor the proteges of Russia an actual dismem-berment of European Turkey. Montenegro sawits territory doubled in extent; Servia andRoumania were declared entirely independent.The first received the districts of Nisch, Lesko-vatz, Mitrowitz, and Novibazar; the secondacquired Dobrudscha, but on the conditionthat it return to Russia the delta of the Danube,which Wallachia had acquired in the treaty of1856. Bulgaria was to form a vassal principal-ity of Turkey. Her territory extended fromthe Danube to the Black and ^Egean Seas,leaving around Constantinople and Salonicaonly some fragments of Ottoman territory.In Asia, Russia acquired the fortresses

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEand districts of Batum, Kars, Ardahan, andBayazid. Moreover, Turkey was to pay awar indemnity of three hundred and ten millionrubles.Thus Russia took, so to speak, nothing for

herself in Europe. It was sufficient for her thatRoumania, Servia, Montenegro, and Bulgariawere completely liberated and organized. Ofcourse, she hoped that these petty states thatowed their very existence to her would be moredocile to her influence than to that of the Sultan

,

less accessible to the hostile influences of theGerman and English powers; that their portswould be open to her, and that their armieswould constitute auxiliary corps of the Russianarmy.An early disillusion came to the ^'Liberator

Czar." The relative disinterestedness of whichhe had given proof at San Stefano did not fore-see the jealousy of Austria, fostered as this wasby Germany and England. Under threat ofa general war, they demanded a revision of

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEthat treaty. England would have even desiredthat the treaty of 1856 should be taken as abasis for discussion, as if she could proceedwith the victorious Russia of 1878 as she haddone with the Russia of 1856, conquered in theCrimea. The Czar agreed to the calling of acongress in Berlin. The treaty that wassigned there July 13, 1878, curtailed Monte-negro of half the part assigned her, and for-bade her having a navy; took back Novibazarand Mitrowitz from Servia, and was particu-larly harsh towards Bulgaria; reducing herterritory by one-third, and carving the remain-der into two provinces: Northern Bulgaria,with the title of '^vassal principality," andSouthern Bulgaria, under the name of theprovince of Eastern Roumelia, which continuedunder Turkish domination, but which was to beadministered by a Christian government.Increase of territory was granted to Greeceby the addition of a district of Epirus (Arta)and almost all of Thessaly. There was even

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEquibbling over the territory that Russia hadretained in Asia. Bayazid was taken fromher, and Batum was to be dismantled and tobecome an open port. ^Vhat especially irri-tated the Czar was the fact that the two powersthat were thus depriving him of the fruits ofhis victories found means to shce off a sharefor themselves. Under the pretext of adminis-tering their affairs, Austria secured Bosnia andHerzegovina, and, by a separate treaty, Eng-land had given to her by the Sultan the islandof Cyprus (30th of May and 4th of June) anda controlling situation in Anatolia.^Emperor Alexander II. had run the danger of

a European war in order to carry out hisprogramme of ''liberation.'' The danger stillremained imminent, so long as he did notaccept the provisions of the Berlin Treaty.There threatened to spring up again, at eachof the manifold incidents that arose over the

(0 A. d'Avril, Negociations relatives au traite de Berlinet aux arrangements qui ont suivi. Paris, 1886.

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEtask of settling the boundaries of the cededcountries, armed protests, now by Greece,and now by the Albanians, against certaindecisions of the powers that were not to theirfancy, and intrigues by Austria and Englandfor the purpose of alienating from Russia thesympathies of the nations emancipated by hervictories. In addition to this, the Panslavicagitation, which had been sufficiently strong inRussia to lead the government to run thoserisks in the East, did not subside. The mostimpetuous minds found cause of grievanceagainst the Czar, that he had not carried outhis undertaking to the end, and had his vic-torious regiments enter Stamboul, at the perilof a conflict with the English in the very streetsof that capital. The Liberals made a pretextof the constitutions granted the Roumanians,the Servians, and the Bulgarians, to demand aconstitution for Russia. The Panslavist andLiberal agitation had, perhaps, some connec-tion with the rise of another agitation which

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEsoon made its appearance, an agitation calledNihilism, of a character entirely revolutionaryand subversive, and which fitly terminated onthat tragic day of March 13, 1881, when the"Liberator Czar'' became the "Martyr Czar."For his successor, Alexander III., the results

of the eastern war were preparing anotherseries of disillusions. The only fruit thatRussia could still expect from her sacrificesand her victories was the strengthening of herinfluence over the Christian peoples emancipatedby her,and their eternal gratitude. Nowimmediately after this war the most short-sighted Russian statesmen were constrained toconfess that the success of their arms had justcreated on that "Way to Byzantium," whichCatherine II. had so thickly strewn with pre-mature triumphal arches, obstacles more insur-mountable than those which the armies of theSultan had ever been able to oppose to thearmies of Alexander I. or of Nicholas I.,

more insurmountable than the Danube or the46


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RUSSIA IN EUROPEand of national pride among newly born peopleswill always outweigh the feeling of gratitudetowards their liberators. In this respect therewas no difference between the peoples joinedto the Russians merely by religion, like theRoumanians and the Greeks, and those whowere related to them both by religion andrace, like the Bulgarians and the Servians. Informer times, when the Ottoman yoke restedupon them with its frightful burden, assuredlythey would all have joyfully accepted the lord-ship of the Czar in exchange for that of theSultan; but now, when it was a question ofchoosing between the domination of the Czarand their own independence, there could be nohesitation with any of them.The Russias had done much for the Rou-

manians. Even when they had been imsuc-cessful in wresting their territory from Turkey,they had in the treaties of Kairnaji, Yassy,Bucharest, Akerman, and Adrianople, stipu-lated precious guarantees for their prot^g^s and

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEthen, later, secured for them an almost com-plete autonomy. In concert with France, in1861, they had made the Sultan accept theunion of Moldavia and Wallachia into oneprovince. In 1878, they assured this prin-cipality of Roumania its full independence,and, in 1881, they consented to its beingorganized into a kingdom. But the new Kingof Roumania, Charles of Hohenzollern, andhis new subjects meant to remain independentof every other power, to have their own armyand navy, their own national policy and diplo-macy, and to exercise the right, whenever theirliberators showed themselves in the slightestdegree meddlesome, to seek help even fromRussia's rivals, Austria, Germany, and Eng-land, or, even more than this, from their old-time oppressor, the Sultan of Constantinople.More than once, the Roumanians raised com-plaint against Russia, because, in 1812, shehad annexed the little Roumanian district ofBessarabia, and because, in 1878, she compelled

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEthem to give back to her the islands of theDanubian delta.

It was the same with the principaUty ofServia, also made into a kingdom in 1882, andwhich, according to the needs of its nationalor dynastic policy, did not cease to oscillatebetween Russian and Austro-German influences.It was the same also with the kingdom ofGreece, which paid no heed to the remon-strances of Russia, when her national ambitionwas involved, and which had no scruples introubling the peace of the East every time thatit was possible for her to raise the question ofuniting to the Hellenic state either Epirus orNorthern Thessaly or Macedonia or Crete.The country that was under the greatest

obligation to Russia was Bulgaria. If Franceor England had at times assisted in the libera-tion of the Roumanians, the Servians, and theGreeks, it was to Russia alone that the Bul-garians were indebted for this deliverance.Immediately after the ''Bulgarian atrocities'^

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEof 1875, Russia had hastened to her help.From the condition of simple raias oppressedby Turkey and cruelly treated by the Tcher-kesses and the Bashi-Bazouks, she had causedthem to be instantly raised to the dignity ofa free people. At San Stefano, she had endeav-ored to unite them into one state, the mostpowerful of the Balkan peninsula; which wouldhave extended from the Danube to the Blackand iEgean Seas; and she accepted only withdeepest reluctance the mutilation and dismem-berment that the Treaty of Berlin imposed upon"Great Bulgaria." She gave the restrictedprincipality of Bulgaria at least a constitutionwhen she herself had none. It was the Rus-sian commissioner in Bulgaria, Prince Dondu-kof-Korsakof, who, on February 23, 1879, con-voked at Tirnovo the first "constituencyassembly"; it was he who presided at themeeting of the first "legislative assembly," orSohranie; it was he who espoused the cause oftheir prince, Alexander of Battenberg; it was

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEhe who organized a Bulgarian army of onehundred thousand men supplied with valiantRussian officers, well equipped, well drilled, andprovided with excellent artillery. Neverthe-less, this people and this prince, who owedeverything to Russia, began at once to prac-tice a policy in which the advice of the CzarAlexander III. was no longer heeded. Theyset out to remove the Russians w^ho had port-folios in their ministry and positions in theirarmy. In spite of the Czar, they brought aboutthe revolution of PhiUppopolis in September,1885, w^hich ended in the union of the Bul-garian principality and the Bulgarian provinceof East Roumelia, but which provoked a bloodywar with Servia, jealous at seeing her neigh-bor's increase of territory. ^Tien Alexander ofBattenberg had to renounce his throne, in 1887,it was a prince that posed as a client of Austriaand of Germany, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg,whom the Bulgarians called to rule them.With his Prime Minister, Stambulof, he gov-

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RUSSIA IX EUROPEthe Pnith. and another Roumanian bit of land inthe delta of the Danube. Even this last morsel,acquired in 1829 and restored in 1S56, was wonback in 1S77 only at the cost of vehement fault-finding upon the part of the Roumanian people.Russia, whose fleets have twiceat Tchesme in1770, and at Xavarino, in 1827,annihilated thenaval power of Turkey, have never been able tosecure even an island in the .Egean Sea.Thus much for material advantages. As to

satisfaction of a moral character, the Russiansoldiers have never been able to enter Stamboul,nor to pray in Saint Sophia ; and as to gratitudeupon the part of the liberated peoples, we haveseen what Alexander 11. and Alexander III.could never have dreamed of.

Their successor, the present Emperor, Nicho-las II.. seems to have taken it for granted thatin the direction of the Danube, of the BlackSea, and of the .Egean Sea. the destmy of Rus-sia is fixed for a long time to come. In thesedirections, she has no longer any moral or

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RUSSIA IN EUROPEmaterial advantages to gain, and the age ofsentimental midertakings is also at an end.Unless there should come some European over-turning, the famous "Eastern Question^' willhave for Russia only an archaeological interest.All that Nicholas XL is doing seems to indicatethat this is his conviction. He shows no inter-est in the party struggles and ministerial crisesin the Roumanian and Servian kingdoms;towards the Bulgarians, he shows neither jeal-ous affection nor the irreconcilable rancor ofhis father. Whenever the Prince and peopleof Bulgaria have manifested a desire for recon-ciliation with Russia, he has cordially welcomedthem; he sent a representative to the orthodoxbaptism of the Crown Prince Boris, but appar-ently without forming any illusions as to whathe might expect of his 'proteges. When theCretan insurrection occurred, and the warfoolishly undertaken by the Greeks againstTurkey was declared, he was careful not toassume a leading role, something that his three

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THE SOUTHWARD EXPANSIONOF RUSSIA IN ASIA:

An Asiatic PowerWars and Treaties withPersiaA Way to the Indian OceanIn theCaucasusParamount in Persia.If the policy of the present Emperor of the

Russias seems to be inspired by other princi-ples than those of his predecessors; if thispolicy has shown itself to be essentially peace-able and disinterested in Em-ope; if it hasshifted its sphere of activity from the West inorder to devote all its efforts to Southern andespecially to Eastern Asia,this is, perhaps,due to the impressions made upon the Czarduring his extended travels in the years 1890and 1891, while he was still only the Czaro-vitch Nicholas. He visited Greece, Egypt,British India, French Indo-China, Japan, andChina. Then, disembarking at Vladivostock, apowerful Russian naval station on a bay of the

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RUSSIA IN ASIASea of Japan, he returned overland to St.Petersburg, crossing the whole extent of Siberia.The Czarovitch, of course, did not give hisimpressions a literary form; but one of histravelling companions. Prince Oukhtomski, haspublished his in two luxm-ious volumes, mag-nificently illustrated by the Russian artist,Karazine.*The opinions of Prince Oukhtomski seem to

reveal a new element in Russian policy. For-merly the Russians were indignant over PrinceBismarck's reported observation that ''Russiahas nothing to do in the West. Her mission isin Asia; there she represents civilization."Prince Oukhtomski is not far from holding thesame opinion as did this envious foe of hiscountry. For a few parcels of territory con-quered with such difficulty in the West, whatbloody wars has she not endured? Her effortsto obtain access to the sea have been but half

() Le prince Oukhtomski, Voyage de son AltesseImperiale le Czarovitch en orient, Paris, 1898.

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RUSSIA IN ASIAsuccessful. The White Sea, blocked with ice;the Baltic, as much Scandinavian and Germanas Russian, closed to her on the west by theSound and the Belts; the Black Sea, only yethalf Russian, and closed on the southwest bythe Bosphorous and the Dardanelles; and theMediterranean itself, with England holdingGibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, and the SuezCanal,are these seas, so little available, suffi-cient for the needs of the expansion of themighty continental empire that Russia is to-day?In Asia, on the contrary, who knows whetherby the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, byAfghanistan and the Indus, she is not going tobe able to open her way to the Indian Ocean?Who knows whether, already mistress of theOkhotsk Sea, she will not become mistress alsoof the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea, bothopening with broad outlets into the immensityof the Pacific? Now, the importance that inancient times the Mediterranean had for man-kind, and which the Atlantic possessed from

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RUSSIA IN ASIAthe fifteenth to the nineteenth century, seemsto-day to be shifting to the Pacific Ocean. Ofall the nations bordering on this truly universalocean, the Russian Empire is destined to beone of the most powerful. As to territorialconquests, how are those that Russia won inlittle Europe, where every square mile cost hera battle, to be compared with those which,with infinitely less sacrifice and effort, she hasalready won, or can yet win, in Asia? Bis-marck spoke in disdain of the mission of Russiain Asia. Prince Oukhtomski speaks of it withpride: ^'The time has come for the Russians tohave some definite idea regarding the heritagethat the Jenghis Khans and the Tamerlaneshave left us. Asia! we have been part of it atall times; we have lived its life and shared itsinterests; our geographical position irrevocablydestines us to be the head of the rudimentarypowers of the East.^'From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century,

Russia was a province of the Mongol Empire.60


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RUSSIA IN ASIAEverything that constituted that Mongol Em-pire, however, is perhaps destined to becomeonly a province of Russia. The capital willsimply be transferred from Karakorum or fromthe shores of the Amur to the banks of the Neva.Asiatic in their mixture of races, Asiatic intheir history, conquered in the thirteenth cen-tury, conquering since the sixteenth, the Rus-sians possess to a higher degree than either theFrench or the Anglo-Saxons an understandingof things Asiatic. They have all the right thatis possible to supplant "those colonies of theGermanic and the Latin races that are takingunwilUng Asia under their tutelage. '^ More-over, the true successor in Asia of the old-timeczars or khans of the Finnish race is not theBogdy-Khan who rules at Pekin, but '' the WhiteCzar who reigns at St. Petersburg.'' In oneof the pagodas of Canton are to be seen, asPrince Oukhtomski assures us, four colossalfigures, called "the kings of the four cardinalpoints,'' and Prince Oukhtomski felt confident

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RUSSIA IN ASIAcemetery of Russian armies/' and the suc-cessors of the great Czar had to abandon them.A war undertaken by Catherine II., also inthe last years of her reign, ended in the sameresult, and her son, Paul I., recalled the troops.In the region of the Caucasus, the Russianshad gained a foothold, between the years1774-1784, by the acquisition of the Kubanas far as the Terek, and, strangely enough,it was not on the northern slope of the moim-tains, but upon the southern that they wereto begin the conquest of this Caucasus. In1783, the King, or Czar, of Georgia, Heraclius,declared himself to be the vassal of CatherineII. in order that he might have her assistanceagainst the Persians and the Ottomans. In1799, his son, George XII. ,^ formally cededhis state to Paul I., although his son, David,continued to govern until 1803, when the

(0 Dubrovine, Georges XII., dernier tsar de Georgie,et Vannexation a la RiLssie (in Russian), St. Petersburg,1897.

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RUSSIA IN ASIAannexation was consummated. This acquis-sition brought Russia into coUision with thePersians and the Ottomans on one hand, and,on another, with the independent tribes ofthe Caucasus. By the Treaty of Guhstan,

^^'''' in 1813, Persia ceded to Russia Daghestan,Shirvan, and Shusha, and renounced all claimsupon Georgia and other territories of theCaucasus. Another war broke out in 1826,which was terminated by the Treaty of Turk-manshai, February 22, 1828, by which Persiasurrendered her two Armenian provinces, ^Nakhitchevan and Erivan. The same year,in the Treaty of Adrianople, Turkey gaveover to Russia the fortresses and districtsof Anapa, Poti, and Akhalzikh, and all rights(bitterly contested by the inhabitants) overImeritia, Mingrelia, and Abkhasia. Thenbegan, in the new possessions, the task ofpacifying the wild mountaineers of these

(i) Lord Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question,London, 1892.

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RUSSIA IN ASIAregions, and also the Tcherkesses, or Cir- ^cassians, of the northern slope. The Circas-sians and the AbkhasAi, roused to fanaticismby the soldier priest, the Imam Shamyl, heldout against the Russians for nearly thirtyyears. In 1844, Russia had in the Caucasustwo hundred thousand soldiers, commandedby her best generals. The capture of Vedeni,in 1858, and the surrender of Shamyl, a yearlater, assured the pacification of the Caucasus.The increase of territory that Russia made atthe expense of Turkey, in 1878, by the Treatiesof San Stefano and Berlin, included the dis-tricts of Kars, Ardahan, and Olty, and the portof Batum, and fixed the boundary line betweenTurkey and Russia as it has since remained.

Since the Treaty of 1828, Persia under theShahs, Fet-Aly-Khan, Mohammed, Nasr-ed-Din, and Muzafer-ed-Din, has fallen almostentirely under Russian influence. In 1837-38,the Shah Mohammed, with an army com-manded by Russian officers, besieged Herat,

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RUSSIA IN ASIAkingdom, save those of the Persian Gulf. TheShah has bound himself not to seek furtherloans of any other European power, and hasthereby placed himself financially in the handsof Russia. It is thus that Russia, by herdiplomacy, by her banks, and by her railroads,making Persia her political and commercialvassal, has succeeded in furthering her schemeof expansion towards the Persian Gulf andthe shores of the Indian Ocean.

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FURTHER CONQUESTS.Expansion Towards IndiaNapoleonThe Con-quest OF THE KhansIn AfghanistanThe"Key of the Indies"In Touch with IndiaAbyssiniaBritish Over-Confidence.Towards British India Russian expansion

was to seek still other channels. The con-quests in the Caucasus, which we have beenreviewing, opened the way along the westernand southern sides of the Caspian Sea. Butfor a long time the Russians had been endeavor-ing to turn the sea from its northern side.In the reign of the Empress Anna Ivanovna,hordes of Kirghiz, whose camping groundslay to the east of the Ural River, submittedto Russia (1734). Her sway was then extendedinto Turkestan, that expanse of steppes andoases watered by the Jaxartes (Sir-Daria)and the Oxus (Amu-Daria), that empty intothe Aral Sea, a region that is bounded on thewest by the Caspian Sea, on the south by

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FURTHER CONQUESTSthat they were near British India, and thatan entrance to that rich peninsula would beas easy to them as it had been to so manyAsiatic conquerors that had gone forth fromthe steppes of Turkestan or the valleys ofAfghanistan. From this conviction was bornthe first schemes that the Russians entertainedfor the conquest of Hindustan. Even Peterthe Great thought of it. In 1717; he sentagainst Khiva an expedition under PeterB6kovitch that perished on the way. A cer-tain A. M. de Saint Genie proposed a planfor the conquest of Hindustan to CatherineII. in 1791; but the most celebrated of allthese projects was the one that Paul I. sub-mitted to Napoleon Bonaparte, then firstConsul of the French Republic, whose allyagainst England he had become. The planwas to place two armies in the field. GeneralKnorring, with the Cossacks of the Don andother Russian troops, was to march by Khivaand Bokhara to the upper Indus, while thirty-

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FURTHER CONQUESTSThe Khan of Khiva continued to pillage

caravans, and to hold in slavery Russianmerchants. In 1873, three bodies of troopswere sent against him; one coming from theshores of the Caspian Sea under General Mark-ozof, the second from Orenburg imder GeneralVerevkine, the third from Tashkend underGovernor-General Kaufman. The first, aftera difficult march through the burning sandsof the desert, was compelled to fall back. Theother two entered Khiva almost without strikinga blow. The Khan was obliged to acknowledgehimself the vassal of "the White Czar,^' tocede all that part of his territory situated onthe right bank of the Oxus : to grant the Russiansthe rights of navigation and commerce, andto submit to a war indemnity that exhaustedhis finances. The Khans that had yieldedto the Russians were now the objects of thescorn and hatred of the more fanatical amongtheir Mohammedan subjects. These did notcease to rise in revolt against them. The Khan

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FURTHER CONQUESTSof Khokand preferred to surrender his terri-tories to Russia; and they were formed into thenew province of Ferghana, in 1875. Thesame year, the Khan of Khiva offered to surren-der his in exchange for a pension. TheRussians did not wish to annex either thiskhanate or that of Bokhara, less through fearof EngUsh protests than because the existenceof two vassal Khans would allow them toconceal the better their political plans. Theymaintain them on their thrones by payingthem a pension. To-day, the Khan of Bokharais captain of a regiment of Terek Cossacks,and the Khan of Khiva is lieutenant-generalof the Orenburg Cossacks.

In 1851, the Russians had obtained fromChina some commercial advantages in theKuldja province. Twenty years afterwards aMohammedan adventurer, Yakub-Khan, seizedthe Chinese khanates of Kashgar and Yarkand,and incited a Mohammedan rebellion in Kuldja.The Russians entered the province, giving

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FURTHER CONQUESTShe took Askhabad, which was afterwardsceded by Persia.^The agreement with Persia and the conquest

of Turkestan brought Russia's power to thefrontier of Afghanistan, which the Enghshregard as the protecting wall of their IndianEmpire. At every forward movement of theRussians, they protested or endeavored tosecure guarantees against a new advance ortried to gain for themselves some new strategicpoint that would strengthen their position.They were not always successful. After thefirst siege of Herat by the Persians, in 1840,the English made the conquest of Kabul. Theirarmy was driven out by an insurrection, andtotally annihilated while retreating (1841).If, to save their honor, they afterwards recap-

(0 Colonel Mallesson, The Russo-Afghan Question,1864. Sir Henry Rawlinson, Later Phases of the Cen-tral Asia Question, 1875. Kouropatkine, Les confinesanglo-russes (translated from the Russian by G. leMarchand), Paris, 1879. P. Lessar, La Russie etV Angleterre en Asie Centrale, Paris. Marvin, The Rus-sians at Merv and Herat, etc.

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FURTHER CONQUESTSupon Penjdeh. While on the waj^ thither,he was attacked by the Afghans at Kushk.He slew five hundred of their men, capturedtwo of their flags and all their artillery (March30, 1885). Then the English commissionerswithdrew, charging Komarof with having beenthe aggressor. Great Britain was much irritated.Gladstone, who had the Egyptian Soudan andthe Upper Burmah wars on his hands, calledupon Parliament for subsidies. The beliefwas general that a war was about to ensuebetween ' ' the whale and the elephant. ^ ' ThenEngland calmed down, and accepted the explan-ation of the Russians, that the fight at Kushkwas the result of a ^' mistake.^' In 1885 and1887, she agreed to the Russian occupationof Merv, Penjdeh, Kushk, and the ZulfikarPass. The Russians were now within onehundred and twenty kilometres of Herat,known for so long a time as the ^^key of theIndies. 'The question of the settlement of ..the bound-

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FURTHER CONQUESTSready assistance of the French authorities,succeeded much better. Thus was Russianinfluence, in close harmony with French influ-ence, estabHshed ahnost upon the British Nile.In 1898, the Russian Colonel, Artamonof, withsome Abyssinain troops, endeavored to meetMajor Marchand,who was moving upon Fashoda,and to reinforce him on the great river.L The English alternate between doubting andbelieving that these expansive movements ofRussia by way of the Caucasus, by way ofTurkestan, and by way of the Pamirs, are alldirected towards one goal, the very one thatthe Czar Paul proposed to the first ConsulBonaparte in 1800; Alexander I. to the EmperorNapoleon (1807); and General Duhamel toNicholas I. (1855), and the ardent Skobelef tohis government. To many intelligent English-men, the goal of so much effort can be no otherthan the conquest of India. Now that thefrontier of the Russian Pamir is not more thantwenty or thirty kilometres from the kingdom

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FURTHER CONQUESTSof Cashmere, and now that Kushk, the ter-minus of the Turkestan railroad system, is onlyone hundred and twenty kilometres fromHerat, the problem of invading India is infi-nitely more easy than it was in the time ofBonaparte and Paul I. Why have the Rus-sians spent so much money and blood in theconquest of the impoverished and barbarousnations of those sandy deserts and almost inac-cessible mountains, if they did not have beforethem, as a recompense for their sacrifices,what Paul I. called ''all the riches of theIndies."A recent historian of Russian expansion,^

Alexis Kjause, reviewing all the hardshipsendured by Russia and the thankless task thatshe has assumed, adds, "On its own account,the conquest of Central Asia is worthless. Itis not done in ignorance, but by carefullythought-out design, as part of a programme,

(}) Alexia Krause, Russia in Asia, a Record and aStudy, London and New York, 1899.

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FURTHER CONQUESTSthe execution of which its possession willassist. The capture of the khanates wasattempted, not as a pathway towards thecoveted Persian Gulf, but as a road whichwould lead to the Panjab and all that is beyond.And now that preliminary steps have been com-pleted, the serious undertaking is about to bebegun." J

James MacGahan, one of the best informedmen on Eastern affairs, wrote from the shoresof the Oxus in 1876: ''The Russians are steadilyadvancing towards India, and they will, sooneror later, acquire a position in Central Asiawhich will enable them to threaten it. ShouldEngland be engaged in a European war, then,indeed, Russia will probably strike a blow atEngland's Indian power.''

Other Englishmen pretend to believe thatthe hypothesis of a conquest of India ''is toopreposterous to be entertained. It wouldinvolve the most terrible and lingering war theworld has ever seen. On the day that a Rus-

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FURTHER CONQUESTSpresent moment, the Czar Nicholas II. seemsmuch more interested in expansion in theFar East than in any movement towards thesouth of Asia.

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THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA INTHE FAR EAST.'The Opening of SiberiaValue of SiberiaChinese WarsSettlements on the PacificChinese CessionsVladivostockRussian In-fluence AT Pekin.The eastward expansion of Russia tiirough

the solitudes of Siberia and among its barbar-ous tribes began about the close of the six-teenth century, immediately after the conquestof the Tartar czarates of Kazan and Astrakhan.It was betv/een the years 1579 and 1584 thatthe Cossack, Irmak Timofevitch, fleeing fromthe punishment of the law and the wrath ofthe Czar, Ivan the Terrible, with a handful ofbrigands like himself, Russians, Cossacks, Tar-tars, German and Polish prisoners of war, to

(1) Krahmer, Russland in Asien, vol. iii. Sibirien unddie grosse sibirische Eisenbahn, vol. iv. Russland inOst-Asien, Leipzig, 1897, 1898. Legros, La Siberie,Paris, 1899.

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RUSSIA IN THE FAR EASTthe heroic fort of Albasin was to be razed;and the frontier between the two empires wasdefinitely fixed as it continued to be observedby both countries down to the treaties of 1858.On their side, the Russians renounced furtherforcible encroachment and settlement on Chi-

nese territory; but they did not renounce theirefforts to gain a foothold by commerce, reli-gious mission work, and diplomacy in the MiddleKingdom, and even in Pekin itself. The Rus-sians that had been made prisoners at Albasin,or in battles at other places, had been taken tothe capital of the empire. Some of them hadestablished themselves there as artisans ormerchants; others formed the Russian guardof the "Son of Heaven.'^ At Moscow it wasknown that these men were well treated atPekin, but that they had neither church norpriest of their religion. Peter the Great resolvedto send an embassy to Pekin to secure satisfac-tory concessions on this point. This, indeed, wasthe object of a mission entrusted to Eberhard

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RUSSIA IN THE FAR EASTYsbrand, who reached Pekin in 1693, and thereobtained what the Czar wished. In 1721,Tsmailof was despatched to the Chinese capitalto secure from the Emperor Kanghi the privi-lege of establishing there a permanent Russianlegation. He gave the Bodgy-Khan a letterfrom the Czar and left M. de Lange as chargtd'affaires; but the latter ahnost immediatelyafter Tsmailof's departure was dismissed bythe Chinese court. In 1727, a treaty thatsecured greater commercial privileges for theRussians was signed at Kiakhta. In 1806,Golovine, another envoy, was sent to Pekinwith a view to obtaining the free navigation ofthe Amur River. This mission failed; never-theless the position of Russia in the AsiaticEast was continually growing stronger. In1807, they had annexed the peninsula of Kam-tchatka. In 1847, Count Nicholas Muravief,who was to win the surname of Amourski,became governor of Eastern Siberia, and sethimself to develop and strengthen the colony.

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RUSSIA IN THE FAR EASTHe perceived that it would have no future ifpossession was not secured of the chief riverand the richest province of the region, that is,of the Amur and of Manchuria. The river wasstill so incompletely known that the GrandChancellor Nesselrode declared to the EmperorNicholas that its outlet was inaccessible. In1848, a Cossack expedition, under Vaganof,perished without the escape of a single personto tell the tale. Two years afterwards CaptainNevelskoi discovered that Saghalin is really anisland, separated from the mainland by thechannel or strait of Tartary, and, in the courseof his exploration, came upon the mouth of theAmur, entered it in a small boat, and plantedthe Russian flag on its banks; proclaiming tothe natives that the country belonged to the''White Czar" at St. Petersburg. The GrandChancellor was terrified at NevelskoV's audacity;he already saw hunself at war with China; heinsisted that the daring captain's action be dis-countenanced, but the Emperor replied: ''When

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RUSSIA IN THE FAR EASTdestroyed a part of the military establishmentsand of the infant marine. This blockade, bythreatening to starve out the colony, onlyhastened a decision upon the part of Muravief,who had need of Manchuria to furnish food forhis colonists. Its annexation was already anaccomplished fact, when, in 1857, AdmiralPutiatin dropped anchor in the Gulf of Pechiliand proposed to the Chinese Emperor, in con-sideration of Russia's armed intervention inthe Taiping rebellion, the cession of Manchuria.China's only reply was a vigorous protestagainst Russian encroaclmient. War seemedinmainent between the two empires. Fortu-nately for Russia, just at that time came theAnglo-French expedition and the march of thealliqg upon Pekin. The Russians profited bythis event to complete the annexation of thecoveted territory. The Czar sent a fleet intothe Chinese waters, and the Celestials did notrelish having a third European power to dealwith. By the Treaties of Aigun and Tientsin

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RUSSIA IN THE FAR EASTin 1858, they granted to Russia the entire leftbank of the Amur, the entire territory betweenthat river and the ocean as well as its tributarystream, the Ossuri, the bay on which there was,in time, to rise the fortress of Vladivostock,with its prophetic name (Dominator of theEast). These newly acquired lands formedtwo provinces, the Amur Province and theMaritime Province. By the Treaty of Pekin, in1860, China ceded to Russia the region adjacentto the lakes Balkash and Issik-kul; the boundaryline between Manchuria and Siberia was re-adjusted, and the Russians were granted theright to trade in all parts of the empire. Fifteenyears more, and Russia obtained from Japanthe abandonment of the latter's rights overSaghalin in exchange for the North Kurile Isles.For nearly thirty years the boundary between

China and Russia remained as agreed upon inthe treaties of 1858 and 1860. But alreadythe commercial and political activity of theRussians was overstepping it. They had estab-

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RUSSIA IN THE FAR EASTlished themselves in large numbers in thecities of Chinese Manchuria,in Kiakhta,Mukden, Kirin, and Tsitsihar, the residence ofthe mandarin-governor. The navigation ofthe Ossuri and the Sungari Rivers fell whollyinto their hands. The steamships of the AmurCompany put Russia in rapid communicationwith Japan and San Francisco. ''ScientificMissions'^ traversed China in all directions.At Pekin the Russian colony acquired a con-tinually greater importance and the ambas-sador of the Czar wielded more influence atcourt than the representatives of any otherEuropean power. His open handed liberalitywon him the favor of the courtiers, the man-darins, and the generals. In all the sea andriver ports, the colonies of Russian merchantsmultiplied, and these seemed to live on betterterms with the native population than thetraders of other foreign nations. On thearrival of the Czarovitch, in 1891, he washonored with a series of royal entertainments.

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COREAEast were threatened with failure. She could

I not allow either Wei-hai-Wei or the peninsulaof Liao-tung, with the harbors that she hadso long coveted, to remain in the hands of theJapanese. Should she do so, she would see

! herself relegated to the ports of Siberia and1 Northern Manchuria, closed by ice for a partof the year, and her hope of unfolding her colors

: in the seas of the Far East taken from her.She could not permit that the influence oftriumphant Japan should be substituted atPekin for her own influence, already datingback a century or more. It was necessary,at any cost, even should it mean war, to pre-vent the provisions of the Shimonosaki Treatybeing carried out. She was successful inenlisting the cooperation of two states which,although antagonistic to each other, hadreasons for keeping the good-will of Russia.These three powers:Russia, France and Ger-many,formed what might be called "ATriple AUian

Documents

The Expansion of Russia - Alfred Rambaud 1904