Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tishkov, Valery. (1997). Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame. London: Sage.
JEREMY SMITH
At the end of the nineteenth century the huge Russian Empire extended from western Poland to the Pacific Ocean, from the Kola peninsula in the Polar Sea to the Caspian Sea and to Central Asia. It comprised regions with different climate, soil, and vegetation and a heterogeneous population with different economies, ways of life, and cultures. Among its inhabitants there were adherents of Christianity (of the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Armenian variants), Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Shamanism. In ethnic terms, Orthodox Eastern Slavs (Russians, 44%; Ukrainians, 18%; and Belorussians, 5%), which officially were considered as three branches of one Russian people, predominated with two-thirds of the total population. Nevertheless Muslims, mostly speaking Turkic languages (11%), Poles (7%), Jews (4%), and dozens of other groups represented strong minorities and (with the exception of the Jews and other diaspora groups) majorities in their core regions.
The tsarist government never formulated a consistent nationalities policy. The policies toward the non- Russians of the empire were of great diversity according to its heterogeneity and the respective time period. Before the beginning of the age of nationalism (i.e., in Russia before the nineteenth century), even the term nationality is highly questionable. In the premodern period, national and ethnic categories were not considered important by the tsarist government. Russia was a supranational empire marked by the official term Rossyskaya im-peria, distinct from the ethnic term russkaya (Russian). Its main concerns were the loyalty of all subjects to the ruler and their social/estate status.
In the historiography on tsarist nationalities policies, these distinctions have not always been kept in mind. Historians of the non-Russian nationalities have drawn a rather uniform picture of an oppressive, colonialist, assimilationist, and nationalist policy that from the very beginning consciously aimed at destroying national cultures and identities. On the other hand the imperial Russian and later the Soviet historiography (after 1934) and some of Russian historiography after 1991 usually idealized tsarist rule and its “mission civilisatrice” among non-Russians. In Western historiography there are also controversies about the long-term aims of tsarist nationalities policies. One group advocates a general goal of cultural Russification, at least since the reign of Catherine II; others differentiate between epochs and peoples and usually restrict the term Russification to the short period between 1881 and 1905.
Although during the Middle Ages most Rus principalities, especially the city republic of Novgorod, had comprised non-Slavic groups (Karelians, Mordvins, Zyryans/Komi, etc.), it was the conquest of the Kazan Khanate in 1552 by Ivan IV that laid the ground for the polyethnic Russian empire and for a first phase of tsarist nationalities policies. In the war declared to be a crusade against infidels, the Russian troops killed or expelled all Tatars from their capital, and priests began to baptize Muslims by force. Violent protest movements of Tatars and Cheremis (Mari) were suppressed by military campaigns.
The broad resistance, however, caused a fundamental change of policies towards the population of the former Khanate. The tsar’s main goals-the
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maintenance of stability and loyalty and economic profit-were served better by pragmatism than by force. So the missionary efforts among Muslims and animists were stopped for more than a century. Moscow now guaranteed the status quo not only of the religions, but also of the land and duties of the taxable population (together with the Tatar tax, yasak) and of the landed property and privileges of the loyal noble Tatars. Many Muslim Tatars were co- opted into the imperial nobility, which already since the fifteenth century had included Tatar aristocrats. Muslim Tatar landowners were even allowed to have Russian peasants as their serfs, whereas Russian nobles were strictly forbidden to have non-Christian serfs. So in opposition to the majority of Russian peasants, enserfed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Tatar, Mordvin, Chuvash, Cheremis (Mari), and Votiak (Udmurt) peasants remained personally free “yasak men” (yasachnye lyudi) and later state peasants. The lands owned by the Tatar khan and Tatar nobles who were killed or had fled to the East were occupied by the Russian state, Russian nobles, and peasants. They settled in significant numbers in the southern and southeastern parts of the former Kazan Khanate, where, as early as the end of the seventeenth century, Russians outnumbered the native peoples. The towns of the Khanate were also populated by Russians, and the trade and culture of the Muslim Tatars were ruralized.
The two lines of military repression and of pragmatic flexibility following the submission of the non-Russian population served as a model for Russian premodern nationalities policies. Tsarist policies were based on cooperation with loyal non-Russians and a retention of the status quo, regional traditions, and institutions. This facilitated the transfer of power and the establishment of legitimacy. In order for non-Russian aristocrats to be co- opted into the imperial nobility, they needed to have a social position and a way of life that corresponded to that of the Russian nobility. So, among the elites of the Siberian native peoples, who were subjugated by force during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, only a small group of western Siberian Tatars became nobles. Nevertheless, Russian officials sought cooperation with the chieftains of Siberian tribes, who became heads of the local administration and had to guarantee the delivery of the yasak. The main aim of Russian policies towards the Siberian native peoples was the exploitation of furs, especially the valuable sable. With a pragmatic policy the government tried to further these economic goals. The shamanist religion was not persecuted, and missionary efforts of the church were not allowed. However, the regional administrators and the Russian trappers, Cossacks, merchants, and adventurers often did not obey these instructions, and they committed numerous acts of violence against the native peoples.
After the conquest of Kazan and of Astrakhan (1556), Russia gained control over the Volga valley and began to exert pressure on nomadic tribes. Leaders of the Nogai Tatars, the Bashkirs, and (from 1655) the Kalmyks swore oaths of loyalty to the tsar, which were interpreted by Moscow (and by the imperial and Soviet historiographies) as eternal subjugation of their tribes and territories. From the perspective of the steppe nomads, however, these oaths were only temporary and personal unions that did not apply to other clans or tribes. These different interpretations caused diplomatic and military conflicts between the sedentary Russian state and the nomad polities.
Similar problems of interpretation occurred in the case of the Dnieper Cossacks who swore allegiance to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1654. The Russian government regarded the agreement of Pereyaslav as a voluntary submission and the definitive incorporation of Ukraine into Russia; in the late Soviet Union it was labeled as voluntary reunion of Ukraine with Russia. For Bohdan Khmel-nytsky and his Cossacks (and for many Ukrainian historians), however, it was only a temporary military alliance and a temporary Muscovite protectorate. In 1667 Ukraine was divided between Russia and Poland-Lithuania, and its Eastern part on the left bank of the Dnieper (with Kiev on the right bank) became part of the Muscovite state. The so called Hetmanate of the Dnieper Cossacks retained much autonomy within Russia, with its sociopolitical structure under the rule of an elected het-man and its independent army guaranteed. As in the case of the loose protectorates over some of the steppe nomads, military- strategic concerns seem to have been decisive for the cautious policy of the Russian government.
The pattern of pragmatic flexibility that dominated tsarist “nationalities” policies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was fundamentally altered by the Westernization of Russia promoted by Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725). The goal of transforming Russia into a systematized, regulated, and uniform absolutist state based on the Western European model and the adoption of the Western concept of a European “mission civilisatrice” in the East left no room for special rights and traditions of
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non-Russians. In 1718 cooperation with Tatar Muslim landowners was ended, and they were required to convert to Christianity. The majority of them, remaining faithful to Islam, lost their (Russian) peasants and were degraded to state peasants or merchants. Following the example of Western missions, the majority of animists of the Volga- Ural region and of Siberia were converted to Orthodoxy during the first half of the eighteenth century. Although conversion was enforced with the help of economic pressure and violence, the majority of the Muslims reacted with fierce resistance. In the 1730s and 1740s the Russian army subdued the Muslim Bashkirs in the
