A history of Russia

A few weeks after making peace with Persia, Russia declared war on Turkey. This conflict marked the culmination of an international crisis which had begun with the rebellion of the Greeks against their Turkish masters in 1821, the so-called Greek War of Independence. The Russian government vacillated in its attitude toward the Greek revolution for, on one hand, the Russians sympathized with the Orthodox Greeks and were traditionally hostile to the Turks, while, on the other hand, Russia was committed to the support of the status quo in Europe. Moreover, the Greek crisis had unusually complicated diplomatic ramifications and possibilities. Other European powers also found it difficult to maintain a consistent policy toward the struggle of the Greeks against the Turks. Acting more firmly than his brother, Nicholas I tried, first with Great Britain and France, and then on his own, to restrain Turkey and settle the Balkan conflict. On October 20, 1827, in the battle of Navarino, the joint British, French, and Russian squadrons destroyed the Egyptian fleet that had been summoned to help its Turkish overlord. But it was not until April 1828 that the Russo-Turkish hostilities officially began. Although the Porte proved to be more difficult to defeat than the Russian emperor had expected, the second major campaign of the war brought decisive, if costly, victory to the Russian army and forced the Ottoman state to agree to the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829.

That settlement gave Russia the mouth of the Danube as well as con-

siderable territory in the Caucasus; promised autonomous existence, under a Russian protectorate, to the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia; imposed a heavy indemnity on Turkey; guaranteed the passage of Russian merchant ships through the Straits; and, incidentally, assured the success of the Greek revolution, which the tsar continued to detest. But in spite of these and other Russian gains embodied in the treaty, it has often and justly been considered an example of moderation in international affairs. The Russian emperor did not try to destroy his former opponent, regarding Turkey as an important and desirable element in the European balance of power. In fact, the decision to preserve the Ottoman state represented the considered judgment of a special committee appointed by Nicholas I in 1829 to deal with the numerous problems raised by the defeat of Turkey and the changing situation in the Balkans. And the committee's report to the effect that 'the advantages offered by the preservation of the Ottoman Empire in Europe exceed the inconveniences which it presents,' received the Russian sovereign's full endorsement.

The revolution in Paris in July 1830 came as a great shock to the tsar, and its impact was heightened by the Belgian uprising in September and by unrest in Italy and Germany. Nicholas I sent a special emissary to Berlin to co-ordinate action with Prussia and, although the mission failed, assembled an army in Poland prepared to march west. When the regime of Louis-Philippe was promptly accepted by other European governments, the Russian emperor still withheld official recognition for four months and then treated the new French ruler in a grudging and discourteous manner. The revolution of the Belgians against the Dutch similarly provoked the anger of the Russian autocrat who regarded it as another assault on the sacred principle of legitimacy and, in addition, as a clear violation of the territorial provisions of the Treaty of Vienna. Once again failing to obtain diplomatic support from other powers, Nicholas I had to subscribe to the international settlement of the issue, which favored the rebels, although he delayed the ratification of the Treaty of London for several months and did not establish regular diplomatic relations with the new state until 1852. It should be added that the early plans for a Russian military intervention in western Europe might well have been realized, except for the Polish revolution, which broke out late in November 1830, and which took the Russian government approximately a year to suppress.

Patriotic Poles had never accepted the settlement of 1815, which represented to them not a re-establishment of their historic state but the 'Fourth Partition of Poland.' They resented any link with Russia. And they hoped to regain the vast Lithuanian, White Russian, and Ukrainian lands that Poland had ruled before it was partitioned. Although Nicholas I observed the Polish constitution much better than Alexander I had, tension increased in Warsaw and elsewhere in the kingdom. Finally in 1830, as revolutions

spread in Europe, Warsaw rose against the Russians in late November. The commander-in-chief in the kingdom, Grand Duke Constantine, failed in the moment of crisis, and before long Russia lost all control of Poland. Poland, therefore, had to be reconquered in what amounted to a full-fledged war, because the Poles had a standing army of their own that rallied to the national cause. Still, although Paskevich's Russian troops first entered Warsaw nine months later and although more time was required to destroy patriotic detachments and bands in dense Polish forests, the outcome was never in doubt. In addition to their weakness in comparison to the Russians, the Polish nationalists did not keep the strong support of the Polish peasants, and they rashly tried to carry the struggle beyond their ethnic borders where the population would not support them.

The result was another tragedy for Poland. The Polish constitution of 1815 was replaced by the Organic Statute of 1832 that made Poland 'an indivisible part' of the Russian Empire. The Statute itself, with its promises of civil liberties, separate systems of law and local government, and widespread use of the Polish language, remained in abeyance while Poland was administered in a brutal and authoritarian manner by its conqueror, the new Prince of Warsaw and Nicholas's viceroy, Marshal Paskevich. The monarch himself carefully directed and supervised his work. The estates of the insurgents were confiscated; Polish institutions of higher learning were closed; the lands of the Catholic Church were secularized and the clergy given fixed salaries. At the same time, Poland was forced more and more into the Russian mold in legal, administrative, educational, and economic matters. The most striking steps in that direction included the subordination of the Warsaw school region to the Russian Ministry of Education in 1839, the abolition of the Polish State Council in 1841, and the abrogation of the customs barrier between Russia and Poland in 1850. The Russian language reigned in the secondary schools as well as in the administration, while a stringent censorship banned the works of most of the leading Polish authors as subversive.

A Russification more thorough than in Poland developed in the western and southwestern provinces, with their White Russian and Ukrainian peasant population and Polonized landlord class. Even prior to the insurrection of 1830-31 the government of Nicholas I had moved toward bringing that territory into closer association with Russia proper, a process connected with the emperor's general penchant for centralization and standardization. After the suppression of the revolution, assimilation proceeded swiftly under the direction of a special committee. Rebels from Lithuanian, White Russian, and Ukrainian provinces were denied the amnesty offered to those from Poland. It was in this territory that the Orthodox Church scored its greatest gain when, in 1839, the Uniates severed their connection

with Rome and came into its fold. In 1840 the Lithuanian Statute was repealed in favor of Russian law. Because the landlords represented the Polish element, Nicholas I and his assistants changed the usual policy to legislate against their interests. They went so far as to introduce in some provinces 'inventories' which defined and regularized the obligations of the serfs to their masters, and in 1851 to establish compulsory state service for the gentry of the western region. Thousands of poor or destitute families of the petty gentry were reclassified as peasants or townspeople, some of them being transferred to the Caucasus.

But while the Russian government fought against Polish influence, it showed equal hostility to budding Ukrainian nationalism, as indicated by the destruction of the Brotherhood of Cyril and Methodius and the cruel punishment of its members, including the great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.

Relative stabilization in Europe was followed by new troubles in the Near East. Denied Syria as his reward for help given to the sultan of Turkey in the Greek war, Mohammed Ali of Egypt rebelled against his nominal suzerain and, during the year of 1832, sent an army which conquered Syria and invaded Anatolia, smashing Turkish forces. The sultan's desperate appeals for help produced no tangible results in European capitals, with the exception of St. Petersburg. Nicholas I's eagerness to aid the Porte in its hour of need found ample justification in the political advantages that Russia could derive from this important intervention. But such action also corresponded perfectly to the legitimist convictions of the Russian autocrat, who regarded Mohammed Ali as yet another major rebel, and it supported the Russian decision of 1829 favoring the preservation of Turkey. On February 20, 1833, a Russian naval squadron arrived at Constantinople and, several weeks later, some ten thousand Russian troops were landed on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus - the only appearance of Russian armed forces at the Straits in history. Extremely worried by this unexpected development, the great powers acted in concert to bring Turkey and Egypt together, arranging the Convention of Kutahia between the two combatants and inducing the sultan to agree to its provisions. The Russians withdrew immediately after Orlov had signed a pact with Turkey, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, on July 8, 1833. That agreement, concluded for eight years, contained broad provisions for mutual consultation and aid in case of attack by any third party; a secret article at the same time exempted Turkey from helping Russia in