RUSSIA, THE LAST EUROPEAN EMPIRE?

European Empires

  An Empire or a Commonwealth?

Империя или Содружество народов?

Un impero o una comunità di popoli?

 Un empire ou une communauté de Peuples?

Ein Kaiserreich oder eine Voelkergemeinschaft?

To the extent that Bolsheviks had resumed war against occupying foreign forces (Russia, German Army, Freikorps, Baltic, Polish, Ukrainian Asiatic, Czech nationalists, Anglo-Americans, Japanese), they gave the impression they were fighting for the salvation of the Russian Empire (irrespective from the monarchic or republican form of the same).

The same happened with World War II and even with the Cold War, where the strength of the Soviet empire seemed, under certain points of view, to vindicate the loss of the Russian Empire. And also, after so many years, it appears that the idea of a “Russian Empire”, something larger than Russian nationality, is still on the agenda (for instance, in the Russian Media). In fact, already present days Russian Federation (“Rossijskaja Federacija”) is larger that simply the Russian “Nation” (“Ruskaja Nacija”). The Russian People (“Ruskij Narod”) is larger than Russia Federation, and the so-called Sovietic citizens (“Sovietskie grazhdane”) are a further concept than the “Russian People”. Moreover, independently from any contrary political will, Russia still exerts a, direct or indirect, influence on the whole of a larger “post-Sovietic space”. So, we can say that, whilst Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, German and Italian empires have disappeared, the Russian still exists, even if in a different form.This situation is not very different from the British “Commonwealth” and the French “Francophonie”.

At the beginning, the connection between the new Bolshevik Russia and the Russian Empire was not clear at all. In fact, the “Trip in the Armored Train” of Lenin, as well as the Treaty of Brest-Litowsk, which are the founding events of the success of the Bolshevik movement, were based on a paradoxical deal with the German Empire, whereby Russia would have accepted the creation of new Republics (Finland, Poland more the Balts, Belarus’, Ukraine and Transcaucasia), in the areas occupied by the German Armies, where local nationalists had declared their independence under German sponsorship.

Secondly, it seemed ominous that, after about half a century of rhetoric of self-determination by nationalities, from the side of the socialist movement worldwide, precisely in the “Fatherland of Socialism” the nationalities would have been repressed. Thirdly, it was necessary to recover at least a part of those nationalist leaders which had exerted the power during German occupation, some of them being Marxist. Fourth, most of the Republics did not constitute a “nation” in the Western sense of the word, because they were inhabited by dispersed ethnic entities, including, inter alia, Russians, Germans and Jews.

So, in any case, it was necessary, for managing local administrations, to create a sufficiently consistent local interfaces in the Republics. According to Marxist rhetoric, to create local national bourgeoisies, which were conceived to be similar, from one side, to the Westerns national bourgeoisies, and, from another side, to what the fledging ruling classes of the Republics purported to be.

Stalin, also being himself a Transcaucasian Revolutionary (half Georgian, half Ossetian), was chosen to solve the “nationalities problem”. In reality, the implementation of the Treaty of Brest-Litowsk was not simple, and, for a certain period - corresponding, roughly speaking, to the Russian Civil War -, the Republics remained substantially independent, even if occupied, from time to time, by different, Russian and foreign, armies.

In all that period, the relationships of Russia with other Eastern European Countries (especially Baltic countries, Poland, Ukraine, Rumania, Georgia and Armenia) where heavily influenced by the different situations created in the new bundle of Republics, as well by their evolutions following to independence, civil war, Russian-Polish War, “Dekulakization”, Ukrainization, Russification, 2^nd World War, changes of administrative borders, end of the Soviet Union.

TURKS FROM YAKUTIA TO KOSSOVO

The first Turkish State had its center in Altai.

Центр первой турецкой держави находился на Алтае

Il centro del primo Stato turco si trovava nell' Altai

Le centre du premier état Turc se trouvai sur l' Altai

Das Zentrum des ersten tuerkischen Reiches befand sich auf dem Altai

We can consider the Turkish and Mongolian invasions as a last phase of the “Migrations of Peoples”. Both Turks and Mongols have their origin in Greater Mongolia, which stretches from present-days Beijing to the Altai mountains in Russia, from Dunhuang, at the China-Xinjang border, up to the whole Baykal area, in Russian Siberia. The “Sacred Mountains” of both Turks and Mongols (Orhon, Ogodon, Kunlun) lie in the present-days “Buriatian Mongolia” a Republic which is member of the Russian Federation.

The Turks are a very broad group of peoples, where most of the nationalities of present-days Siberia and of the Central Asiatic Republics, more Tatarstan, Gagauzia and Azerbaidjan belong, the Turkmenes living in Iran and Iraq, more, obviously, the Turks living in Turkey and in the Balkans. It seems that some American Indians also speak Turkish languages. According to some sources (the “Continuity Theory”), Turks have never moved from these areas, where they have been present, in a form or in another, since Pre-history, creating a great number of empires (“Blue Turkish” Empire, Bulgarian Empire, Uighur Empire, Magyar Kingdom, Seldjuk Empire, Othoman Empire, Timurid Empire, Mughal Empire, Safawid Empire).

According to Slavophiles, and, especially, Eurasiatists, Turkish tradition constitutes an important part of Russian tradition.

Because of the presence of Turks in the Balkans since the XIV Century, and, especially, for having conquered Constantinople, Turks may be considered also as an integral  part of European Identity.

The history of Turkish peoples started with the “Blue Turk” Empire, in the 6^th Century after Christ, and with the graved inscription of Minister Tonyükük, where the decision of the Turks was clearly expressed to keep out of China, remaining in their northern steppes.

The presence of Turkish peoples (Bolgars, Chazars, Cumans and Pechenegs) in Russia was strong since the Middle-Ages. The “Poem of Prince Igor”, the most well-known Russian Middle Ages epos, is devoted to a battle between the Princes of Kievskaja Rus’ and the Pechenegs Polovcí. Its structure and many details hint to a tight interconnection between the worlds of Kievskaja Rus’ and the one of Pechenegs, which result to have had family ties between each other. In the Balkans, the Pechenegs (Besenjoek) were present (in present-days Romania), fought in Hungary’s Civil war in 1043, and partially settled in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Turkmenes were the first Turks to arrive belonged to the so-called “Emirates” of Western Anatolia in the 13^th Century, a civilization which constituted an exceptional introduction to the Turkish Byzantine cultural synthesis. In that period, Tamerlane destroyed the Seldjuk Empire and defeated also the Ottoman Sultan. Shortly later, the Ottoman power resurrected, and the Turks were able to make conquests in Thracia, as well as to challenge all Christians princes of the Balkans. In the famous battle of Kosovo Polje, the Turks defeated the Christian several princes. From that moment, their advance in Europe was no more containable. At a later stage, they took over the heritage of the Mongol rule in Russia and connected, to their Sultanate, Bessarabia, Ukraine, Crimea, Ciscaucasia  and Caucasus.

The Southern part of Russia, as well as Ukraine and Moldova, were deeply influenced by the presence of the Ottoman Empire, which was an active player in Ukraine’s politics from XV^th to the XVIII^th Century, both through the direct control of Southern Ukraine and Caucasus, and in its satellite Crimean Khan. I.a., the most influential Empress of the Ottoman Empire, Roxolana (Harüm Sultan, who inspired also to Süleiman the Magnificent, the nicest love poetry of Ottoman literature), was an Ukrainian, as it is hinted by her nickname, which, in Latin, indicates the inhabitants of Ukraine (from a name of an ancient Scythian tribe).

The wars of Poles, Austrians and Russians for delivering Europe from the Turkish control constitute an important part of European history, and even of the first projects of European unification. The migrations of the Cossacks between Poland and Russia may be explained to a large part as a direct consequence of the Turkish question. The links between Russia and the Balkans have a strong connection with Turkey: the Crimea War was a part of the “Ottoman Question”. Many of present-days disputes (Bosnia, Kosovo, Crimea, Caucasus) come out from this heritage.

EURASIATISM: A PROPHETIC MOVEMENT

Von Ungern-Sternberg

Between Asia's Revenge  and Theocracy

Между реваншом Азии и теократии

Fra rivincita dell' Asia e teocrazia

Entre revanchisme asiatique et théocratie

Zwischen asiatischem Revanchismus und Theokratie

The ambiguous role of Scythians, who, as observed already by Herodotus, were partially a wild warlike people of the steppes, and, from another side, an integral part  of the European family of peoples, was broadly utilised as a metaphor for describing the Russian people itself. A literary circle was created under the denomination “the Scythians” by authors like Blok and Ivanov-Razumnik. Blok’s poem “Skify” summarised this point of view.

Blok’s “Skify” includes a quotation of Soloviov’s “Panmongolism”,devoted to the same subject: 

“Pan Mongolism! The name is monstrous 

Yet it caresses my ear

As if filled with the portent

 Of a grand divine fate.  

While in corrupt Byzantium 

The altar of God lay cooling 

And holy men, princes, people and king

Renounced the Messiah -  

Then He invoked from the East 

An unknown and alien people, 

And beneath the heavy hand of fate 

The second Rome bowed down in the dust.

We have no desire to learn 

From fallen Byzantium's fate, 

And Russia's flatterers insist:

 It is you, you are the third Rome.  

Let it be so! God has not yet 

Emptied his wrathful hand. 

A swarm of waking tribes 

Prepares for new attacks.  

From the Altai to Malaysian shores  

The leaders of Eastern isles 

Have gathered a host of regiments 

By China's defeated walls.  

Countless as locusts 

And as ravenous, 

Shielded by an unearthly power 

The tribes move north. 

O Rus'! Forget your former glory:

The two-headedeagle is ravaged, 

And your tattered banners passed 

Like toys among yellow children.  

He who neglects love's legacy, 

Will be overcome by trembling fear...

And the third Rome will fall to dust, 

Nor will there ever be a fourth.” 

The “Scythic” movement was, under a certain point of view, an anticipation of the Euro

-Asiatist orientation, which saw, in Russia, a particular kind of civilisation, 

sharing, partially, the European Identity and, partially, the Asiatic one.

In fact, the idea of Eurasiatism derived from concrete convergence between exoteric learnings, like the ones of Blavatsky, Rerih and Gurdjev, “White” warlords, like Semionov and von Ungern-Sternberg, and Japanese politicians and military, like Ugaki Kashunige. These theses resembled also the ones of the Japanese historian Shiratori.

Semionov and von Ungern Sternberg tried to create an independent Mongolian power and to restore the Qin Dynasty in China, as instruments for launching a worldwide monarchistic counter-offensive against the forces which were destroying the Chinese, Russian, Turkish, German and Austrian empires. 

It has also to be recalled that the Qin Empire, which had just been dissolved in 1911 but was restored for a very short period in 1917, was a multiethnical empire dominated by the “Peoples of the Steppes” (Manchu, Mongols, Uighurs and Tibetans). For this reason, the paradoxical pretention of von Ungern-Sternberg (a German-Baltic Russian citizen born in Austria), who, being the ruler in Urfa -Ulaan Bator-) , claimed to be a reicarnation of Chingis Khan, was no absurd as it could be considered now. The Dalai Lama himself proclaimed him even as a reincarnation of the God Mahahkala. In any case, in that period, warklords were struggling, in Russia, in Germany, in Hungary as well as in China and in Central Asia, to restore the ancient Empires.

The best known Eurasiatist author was Prince Trubeckoj, who, writing, in the ’30^ies, in Harbin (Manchuria), Sofia and Prague, and following the above suggestions both from Russian and Japanese cultures, emphasized the Mongol and Tatar heritage in Russian identity (“Nasledije Chingis Khana”), challenging the “arrogance” of Western Europeans, who, according to him, had always refused to recognize the dignity of civilisation to the cultures of Eastern Europe and of the steppes. In so doing, Trubeckoj utilized not only the ideas of the Scythic movement, but also the ones of other admirers of the Peoples of the Steppes, like Enver Pasha.

These ideas were not so insulated. They echoed the theories of British and Russian diplomacies, struggling, along the XIX Century, to control Persia and Afghanistan, as the key to the whole Asia. Kiplings work, and the British "inventor" of Geopolitics, Mackinder, thought that those who had the control of Central Asia had the control of the world.

Also today, the followers of Mackinder, such as the American democratic politician Zbygniew Brzerzinski, maintain that the control of Central Asia is pivotal for the control of the World. This has been a focal argument in favour of the wars in Afganistan.  

It is clear that, in general terms,  “Euro-Asiatism” stressed the role of the Peoples of the Steppes in the creation of the Russian identity. The brand “Eurasiatism” has been invoked for covering several different types of cultural and of political discourses, going from a natural, imperial and hegemonic role of Russia in the Eurasiatic continent, to the need of a federation of all peoples of Eurasia, up to simple remembering, to Europeans, of their Asiatic origins, thus challenging “West-European arrogance”, and fostering a dialogue with Eastern cultures.

Today, when several peoples of Asia are in the forefront of  the transformation of world economy, so that the balance of power is shifting eastwords across the Eurasiat Continent, the ideas of Eurasiatists seam to yeald a renewed success.