Abstracts
Russia as an Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Imperial and Colonial Concepts and Practices of the Russian Elite
By now, nearly all historiographies on European empires are dominated by topics of postcolonialism. However, while most historians elaborate on the hybridity of colonial identities and policies, with regards to the Russian Empire there still is a debate in how far the concept of colonialism fits to Russian tsarist reality at all, and it how far colonialism was an accepted fact in imperial Russia itself.
Even if there can be no doubt that an institution such as a Colonial Office could not have been imagined in the eighteenth century, it is the underlying thesis of the forthcoming book from which this paper was drawn that it is precisely the period starting with Peter I and ending with Catherine II in which a new policy evolved. From an analytical point of view this policy is to be called a colonial policy. By investigating how Russian governments of the eighteenth century developed civilizing policies of a colonial nature towards its eastern and southern regions, the arguments of the paper challenge previous positions that have underlined the exclusively self-directed civilizing processes of Russia spearheaded by Peter I and his successors. According to former views, in the eighteenth century no differentiation was made between civilizing the Russian-speaking population and civilizing non-Russians; both endeavors were seemingly rooted in one and the same underlying discourse. In addition, Russia’s imperial experience has often been limited to a process of “internal colonization.” However, by using the term “internal colonization” to also describe the appropriation of foreign cultural realms, the significance of an expansive, and in this sense “externally” directed, colonization practice for Russia is utterly ignored.
Drawing on the work of Jürgen Osterhammel, the arguments of the paper are based on the following three key criteria defining colonialism in a modern sense: 1) the attempt to exert external control over a society and alter it to match the needs and interests of the colonial rulers; 2) the expectation that the colonized shall acculturate to European values and customs; and 3) a specific attitude of cultural superiority from which a universal reformative mandate is derived or justified.
Through a rough outline of three realms of policy, it can be demonstrated how Russian governements of the eighteenth century developed imperial political strategies that not only differed from those of the preceding centuries but also ushered in civilizing policies of colonial nature. These strategies address religion, economic practices and lifestyles, and territory.
Peter the Great’s missionary policies were not religious policies in a narrow sense of the term. Instead, they marked the transition from a policy of conquest to one of civilization, which intended to educate the “foreign” subjects of the state in the “correct” set of beliefs and canon of values. This perspective offers insights into deeper threads of continuity running through the imperial policies of Peter I, his immediate successors and of Catherine II. The profound shift only becomes fully comprehensible when one understands the Petrine attacks on the belief and value systems of non-Christians as merely the first component of a policy of civilization that began with religion, but then in the following decades was extended to many other areas, including way of life and economic practices. The commonalities even between the two “great” tsars thus become evident; neither wished to tolerate indigenous peoples living according to their customs but instead demanded far-reaching cultural transformations.
Although Catherine II took a more tolerant approach to non-Christian religions, she did not completely forgo localized missionary campaigns. She also viewed conversion efforts as opportune, especially when they served as instruments for the consolidation or legitimation of power. It was only a small step from civilization strategies in the realm of religion to those in the realm of economics and ways of life, and the one led into the other.
It is in fact possible to trace a direct line of continuity between missionary efforts and offensives to settle nomadic peoples. However, the offensives launched by the Russian government to settle nomadic populations differed substantially from region to region and were oriented towards the respective needs of the Russian administration. In the southern part of the empire, the Petersburg central governement as well as local governors saw the nomadic Kalmyks, Bashkirs, and Kazakhs as immediate threats to Russian interests. Both the central governement as well as local officials became increasingly convinced of the need to effect enduring changes in the economy and lifestyle of the nomads – and they acted accordingly. By no means did this sentiment first emerge with the reign of Catherine the Great; rather, it took shape in the late 1730s and intensified under tsarina Elizabeth through the end of the 1750s. Catherine the Great merely made use of existing discourses as well as ongoing offensives, which she developed and expanded upon.
The third shift in imperial politics to be discussed here shortly addresses territory. In historical scholarship, the impression long persisted that the expansion of the empire to the south and east largely occurred as a continuously expanding and more or less peaceful colonization process, which was dictated by natural conditions. The physical production and violent “structuring” of space and the violent order imposed on certain territories on the part of the Russian elite have received little attention. However, in fact, the outstandingly successful expansion asserted by the Russian elite to the south and southwest of the empire was closely linked with a practice through which new territory was constantly appropriated. This pertains to a strategy, unique among empires in the world, of systematically using fortification lines as an imperial means of occupying land and imposing colonial rule.
By using these lines for encircling non-Russian peoples, the tsarist government no longer intended just to protect Russian settlements. The fortifications and the encirclement were intended to prevent the flight of conquered peoples and hinder anti-tsarist alliances. Above all, the Bashkirs, Volga Kalmyks, and Kazakhs of the Small Horde—and later the Kabardians and Nogais Tatars—in the northern Caucasus were robbed of their existence and driven into poverty by being cut off from their most fertile grazing areas.
Thus, over the course of the eighteenth century, Russian governments developed a comprehensive civilizing mandate out of strategies used to civilize individual populations. Not all of these strategies could be discussed in the context of the paper. Tsarist administration stealthily and covertly hollowed out the power structures of indigenous peoples in order to replace them with Russian institutions. Russian elites discovered the taking of indigenous hostages for the purpose of serving as conveyers of Russian civilization. They gradually displaced indigenous customs through the introduction of Russian traditions, and in some regions they even attempted to marginalize indigenous languages through the use of the Russian language.
If one uses the characteristics proposed by Jürgen Osterhammel in his widely recognized definition of colonialism, then the Russian empire clearly meets the criteria that would allow it to be described as a colonial empire in terms of its rule over non-Christian peoples. The self-directed civilizing processes of Russia, spearheaded by Peter the Great, should not hinder historians to recognize the emergence of discourses and practices of externally directed civilizing processes. Introducing the term colonialism for parts of Russia’s eighteenth century imperial policies shapes our understanding for the concepts and strategies of Russia’s elites.
Moreover, it reduces the seemingly unique character of the Russian Empire that was partly attempting to fuse nation and empire. It instead places Russia in the eighteenth century among other European colonial empires of the era and opens up the floor for postcolonial studies focusing not only on the nineteenth but also on eighteenth-century Russia.
Finally, when talking about the Enlightenment in Russia, what firstly comes to mind is Catherine II and her correspondence with Voltaire and other philosophers. But this paper shifts the focus on another aspect of the reception of the Enlightenment in Russia. This aspect, the emergence of a sense of cultural superiority, coincides exactly with the period in which colonial policies were implemented. The feeling of superiority implies a kind of political thinking in categories of difference – within a state a differentiation between “us” (a projected relatively homogenous core group) and “others”. In the Muscovite Empire of the seventeenth century such a feeling of superiority among the Russian elite towards their culturally foreign subjects can hardly be found. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, the Russian elite adopted ideas of the early Enlightenment in western Europe centering around the notion of civilization and expressing their emerging sense of superiority towards non-Russian peoples in the south and east. The reception of the Enlightenment in Russia should thus from here on include the important and consequential imperial dimension, which laid the foundation for the civilizing missions of the nineteenth, twentieth, and maybe even twenty-first centuries.
– Ricarda Vulpius, Freie Universität Berlin
This project was subsequently published as a monograph: Die Geburt des Russländischen Imperiums. Herrschaftskonzepte und –praktiken im 18. Jahrhundert. Beiträge zur Geschichte Osteuropas. Köln, Weimar, Wien, 2020.
Back to the contents page.
