CRIMEA: THE FIRST EAST-WEST CONFRONTATION

Crimean War

Deep-Rooted Reasons for Hostility

Глубоко засевшие причины враждебности

Profonde ragioni di ostilità

Des raisons d'hostilité profondement enracinées.

Tiefgreifende Feindlichkeitsgruende.

The cultural confrontation among Slavophiles and Westerners, can be utilized as a background scenario of Russia’s cultural and political life up to the Soviet Revolution. The reformist “Russian Thinking” around Černyševskij and Herzen, comes out of a Westerner background, whereby the reforms are seen as a partial imitation of Western Europe or of America. On the contrary, most of the literary, and/or musical, and/or pictorial productions (such as Dostojevsk’s, Tolstoj’s, Ciaikowsky’s, Serov’s, Nestorov’s, Rerih’s, Malevič’s, Strawinsky’s) are deeply rooted in the Slavonic tradition.

The strengthening of the hold of the Russian Empire on its Asiatic territories (Caucasus, but also Central Asia and the Artic Regions) had increased the interest of Russian intellectuals for the Asiatic Roots of Russia (the Scythians, the Tatars, the Finns, the Persians, the Turks), but also their sympathies for the subjected peoples, whose origins, histories, traditions, languages, were investigated at that time.

Russia was defined more and more as a “Eurasiatic” reality. “Asiatic” subjects enter into the repertory of artists, such as Shagané, Hadij Murat, the Fire Bird, Shahrazade, the Finnish folklore of the North.This attention is not much different from the praise of Mohicans by Fenimore Cooper, or the one of "strong men" of East and west by Kipling, and, fimnally, the participation of Ann Besant both to the induistic revival and to the independence struggle of India.

But also the idea of a community of destinies between Russia and Europe remained at that times strong, albeit Russia felt not be  well understood , and even to be rejected, by Europeans.

Many made an effort to become more European, for being better accepted, as in the case of the Occidentalist, or of social reformers like Caadajen. Others, like Ivanov-Razumnik (who converted to Catholicism as suggested by De Maistre), stressed that Europe needed Russia. He launched the idea of “Europe’s two lungs”, an idea which will achieve so large a resound after having been adopted by John Paul II himself.

The conflict between “Slavophiles” and “Occidentalists” will be synthesized, finally, after the October Revolution, by Blok, who, in his Panmongolizm, will submit, to Europeans, a dramatic alternative: either to accept, brotherly, the Russian as a part of the European family of people, or to find them hostiles, allied with “the Mongolic World” (now, we could think of China and of Islam).

During the XIX Century, Russia did not abandon the “Greek Project” (i Megàli Idèa”), albeit the independence of Greece was not achieved thanks to Russia (or, at least, not thanks to Russia alone); the newly independent Greece became open, besides Russian influences, also German and English connections.

The peak of anti-Russian feelings was reached between the 1848 Revolution and the Crimea War. Russia had intervened, upon request of the Austrian Emperor, in Hungary, for stopping the liberal and nationalistic unrests.Moreover, the Croatian Ban Jelacic, the Ruthenian  peasants and the Bohemian Pan-Slavists    had all supported the Emperor against the revolutionary, so causing all together the suppression of the revolts in the Austrian Empire. From this fact, Marx and Engels draw the pretext for a violent attack against the "peoples without history", responsible, first of all, to have supported the Russian and Austrian Emperors against the revolutionary movements. In 1853, there were not only the left-wing extremists, but also the bourgeois liberals governments of France and of England to be worried of the momentum gained by Imperial Russia by its presence in the Balkans  (including the occupation of Wallachia and Moldavia) and its support to Balkanic nationhoods.

The "Crimean War" consisted, in reality, in a vast encirclement of Russia by British, Franch, Austrians Turks and Sardinians, which took place along the Danube, in Ucraine, Crimea, Caucasus, the Baltic, the White Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The adhesion of the Kingdom of Sardinia was unequivocally motivated by the will of the liberal Cavour Government to join the liberal cohalition of Western constitutional monarchies, abandoning the traditional Russian friendship. The conservative opposition, led by Count Thaon de Ravel, refused to vote in favour of the war. The latter contributed heavily to the self-consciuosness of Russia, to the weakening of Austria, to the assertiveness of the Balkanic countries and to the strenthening of national feelings in Caucasian nationalities.

The Western alliance pretended from Russia the acceptance of some points, what Russia refused to do:

1. Russia was to give up its protectorate over the Danubian Principalities;
2. It was to abandon any claim granting it the right to interfere in Ottoman affairs on behalf of Orthodox Christians;
3. The Straits Convention of 1841 was to be revised;
4. All nations were to be granted access to the River Danube.

At the end of the war, these points were accepted by Russia only partially, and never fully complied with.

Wallachia and Moldavia, formerly under a strong Russian influence, united under the name of Romania, into a new state, where French and Italian influences are decisive, up to the point that the same Rumanian language is “purified” from many of the preceding Slavonic influences, so that the heritage of the Romans is put in the forefront.

Russia interests concentrated on the Slavonic peoples of the Balkans, such as Bulgarians and Serbians, which Russia helped in their efforts to become independent from the Turkish Empire. These efforts, which were at the origin of the “Balkanic Wars”, contributed to creating the background for World War I. 

Of course, not just Russia, but the whole system of powers of the Europe of that time, are equally responsible for the Balkan Wars and for the subsequent World War II. It has to be remarked that the Russian Tsars were active in the diplomatic scene, for fostering a movement for Peace and Disarmament (the Hague Congress for Peace was promoted by Tsar Nicolas II).

The policy of the Russian Empire in that period is rather contradictory. In fact, it had to manage too many contradictory tendencies. From one side, Russia was a very powerful, cultivated, and even rich, country, whose rates of growths were higher than the ones of Western Europe. From another point of view, riches was very unequally distributed, and this created strong social contrasts. The land reforms carried out at the end of the XIX Century, whilst fostering industrialization,also as a consequence of the Crimean War, had not solved the problem of a sound farming class.

The Tsar swinged between the tough defense of traditional autocracy and timid tentatives of reforms in the direction of a parliamentary monarchy, from avant-garde initiatives in the field of internationalism, such as the Hague  Congress, to military escalations, such as the ones in the Balkans.

The policy of Russia-bashing from the side of western goverments and intellectuasls went on. The fact that, contrary to what happened in France, Italy and Austria, liberal reforms had not been implemented during the largest part of the XIX Century were explained, as always, by the innate autocratic spirit of Russians. However, as always, many of the faults identified by polemists in Russia were, or false, a shared with many other European countries.

As an example, the myth, according to which the Russian Empire had to be considered as the main enemy of nationalities in Eastern Europe is not correct. It is true that a strong conflict arose since the beginning with Poles, who did not accept the partial autonomy role of the Kingdom of Poland. It is also true that the Empire forbade the Ukrainian language and the transliteration, into Latin characters, of Baltic languages. However, also Prussia and Austria had annexed large parts of Poland, where they had suppressed any form of autonomy, whilst Russia had been even helpful with Belorussian and Lithuanians, for asserting their own nationhood, after long centuries of dominance of the Polish language, aristocracy and clergy.Not to speak of the violent repression, by England, of Irish autonomy.