Vestnik Kavkaza together with Vesti FM is implementing the National Question project, trying to figure out how different nations, different governments solved issues at different times, including problems among different nationalities. Today historian, candidate of pedagogic sciences Marat Safarov is in the studio together with presenters Vladimir Averin and Gia Saralidze.
Safarov: Ekaterina II is maybe the only Russian ruler, monarch who was specially engaged in the nationalism issue. Maybe this played a role in public education. Maybe her lack of stereotypes that were inherent in the Romanovs (she still formally belonged to the family). Maybe she was trying to reconcile nationalist feeling, its political weakness at the first stage. The Bashkir uprising, certain instability and wildness in the Tatar khanate environment, the accession of the Crimean Khanate to Russia. All these events put the matter of the internal east on the agenda.
Saralidze: How did Ekaterina II focus special attention on the nationalism issue?
Safarov: There was the establishment of spiritual administrations, spiritual gatherings – the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly for the Tatars and Bashkirs, the Crimean Taurian meeting. These were not just formal bureaucratic institutions, Ekaterina II actually legalized the Muslim religion in Russia, believing that it was better for the religion to be under supervision and it would be officially controlled, rather than if it were some kind of freestyle movement with the ideology of opposition to the regime. Foreign policy also played its role. Clashes with the Ottoman Empire in the late 18th century influenced the Muslim peoples of Russia, and it was necessary to take the initiative. The Turkish sultans were impossible to be perceived as the Caliph of the Faithful, so it was necessary to make sure that the Russian Muslims had their own muftis. And they appeared.
Averin: In fact, today’s structure was founded by Ekaterina II?
Safarov: Yes, it is no accident the Ufa muftis, for example,Talgat Tajuddin [Chairman of the Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims, the Supreme mufti of Russia - VK], always appeals to the history of the 18th century.
The Crimean elite actually had equal rights with the nobility. It was a very liberal course, but very deep. In many cities such as Bakhchisaray, Karasubazar (current Belogorsk) Ekaterina prohibited immigrants from settling. These cities remained purely Crimean. It was a so-called ‘‘manual control’’. The ideas belonged to Potemkin, who was an ‘‘effective manager’’. But the empress defined the ideological course herself.
Descendants always focused on such major personalities as Peter I and Ekaterina II. The course of this inertia, the policy of appeasement, lasted for a long time, almost all the XIX century with different nuances up to Alexander III despite the Caucasian war and Turkestan’s accession. However, the policy of appeasement and pragmatism in the national matter was laid by Ekaterina II. It is no coincidence that Tatars still call her the ‘‘Grandma-queen."
Saralidze: What kind of work was carried out with western provinces?
Safarov: In a bit different way because there was no experience of interaction with the Catholics. The relations with Islam were easier. It did’t pose a threat to the dominant religion separated by a large barrier. Ekaterina II took frictions between Orthodoxy and Catholicism into account. She engaged in deep religious issues, secularized lands, took monasteries away, transferring them into social property.
But at the end of her reign, relation with Catholics were well. The poles were well integrated into the elite, especially in the officer's elite. Despite the uprising, they organized during the XIX century, due to restrictions to use the Polish language, they were sufficiently equitable nation.
The territory of the Polish province was economically developed, and nobody struggled against the Catholic Church. The ‘‘manual control’’ was used by Ekaterina II. An invitation of different peoples played its role and to populate the areas , which were received after accession of the Black Sea region. It becomes clear after recalling the experience of the German domination of Biron using the era of Anna Ioanovna that Ekaterina was a Russian empress. It did’t invite the Germans to the elite, but she knew her people and their hard-working. Ekaterina II invited them as skilled, experienced farmers to fertile lands of the Black Sea. There were German colonies existed up to World War II. Bulgarians, all Balkan Christian peoples and even Albanians were invited there because Ekaterina II knew they were good gardeners, farmers in general and they inhabited these lands and learnt very quickly.
Averin: What does "invite" nations to populate these new Russian lands mean? Didn't it increase the possibilities of collisions?
Safarov: The pragmatism of Ekaterina II was in the fact that it was necessary to develop lands which had been tumbleweeded places for military actions for centuries. Despite their fertility, before that, no one risked living there, because the hostilities between Russia and the Crimean Khanate took place precisely on this space. But Crimean Khanate became a part of Russia when Turkey's claims to the Black Sea region were gone, it was necessary to somehow develop these lands, not leave this space empty.
Ekaterina realized that the Great Russian peasants were not suitable for the role of colonists. So Russia entered a course of patronage of Balkan Christian nations, which would strengthen in the 19th century, and at the same time resolved its political and economic problems.
These nations, despite war, despite serfdom in Russia, perceived it as one of the few stable countries in the world. Caught between Turkey and Russia, they chose Orthodox Russia and willingly resettled. And the state stimulated it. The state realized that there would be more benefits from them than from the Black Sea region, which may create some problems there.
Averin: How were the "invitations" sent? Through embassies? Through word of mouth?
Safarov: All mechanisms were used. An important mechanism was the church. For many centuries, Russia patronized quite poor churches of the Balkans and even Constantinople. Although the Patriarchate of Constantinople continued to call itself universal, the churches received money from Russia. Churches were a source of information, a source of Russia's influence in the Balkans.
As for the Balkan peoples, the contacts were primarily through the church line. The diplomatic channel could not be used – many peace agreements that were signed after the bloody Russian-Turkish wars determined factors of intervention or non-intervention of states in each other's interests.
Just like the Turks had an interest, which was characterized by their influence on the Muslim peoples of Russia, not on the Caucasian peoples yet, but at least on Tatars, Bashkirs and Crimean Tatars, Russia had views on Orthodox Balkan peoples.
The church was greatly limited in lands conquered by the Ottomans, but nevertheless it had a certain freedom of interaction.
There were no problems at all with the Germans, they came to Russia through almost the entire 18th century, the vector just changed to simple farmers, ploughmen.
It is only now that we are talking about Germany as the leading country in the European Union, but Germany formed in the second half of the 19th century. And in the era of Ekaterina, her homeland and all other German lands were scattered, small principalities, often in conflict over various trivial matters. There were Bavaria, Austria, Prussia, but there were also small ones. That is why Germans were interested in seeking stability.
Ekaterina pursued this course throughout her reign – in the framework of a multi-ethnic state, which she still positioned as an Orthodox state, she resolved the nationalism issue. For a long period of time, this course was maintained on inertia.
Averin: So Ekaterina did not require to change religion, but were there some additional tax revenues for non-Orthodox people?
Safarov: The authorities just did not support their structures financially. The communities themselves had to do it. Orthodoxy, after the synodal reform of Peter the Great, became the state religion, and economically, all the property of the church was taken over by the state. The church was deprived of property rights, but was fully subsidized by the authorities. This was not the case with Islam or with other communities. They had to support themselves. Muslim education was not subsidized by the government, only when patron-capitalists appeared did the dawn of madrassas began.
Saralidze: When does the change of course occur, which was set by Ekaterina the Great while resolving the nationalism issue?
Safarov: At first, there were non-radical deviations from the course, for example, during the era of Nicholas I. Nicholas I did not want to specifically start some counter-reform, but his overall cast-iron policy led to a certain tightening. It was Alexander III who dramatically changed the course. He was a majestic, strong, powerful man, with his own agenda. He started counter-reforms, and imposed restrictions on the nationalism issue. He was influenced by his teacher, a person much closer to him than his own father, the Procurator of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev – an extremely conservative man. He had all the information about the nationalism issue in Russia because of his position, he knew Islam quite well. The main idea of a new course was to integrate the peoples quickly and seriously, including without consideration of their own faith. Significant restrictions on the activities of these spiritual administrations began.
Averin: Was this policy influenced by new developments in Europe, the fear of separatism?
Safarov: The national intelligentsia begins to form, national entrepreneurship, with its own agenda and with some specific gripes with the government already. If previously loyalists met monarchs, bowing from the waist, then now a different period started – a period of demands for certain rights, a period of ferment, which subsequently led to the appearance of nationalist parties. Therefore, of course, the old man Pobedonostsev, and emperor Alexander III based their actions not only on nationalism, believing that it is necessary to deal with the nationalisn issue.
However, they resolved the nationalism issue in such a way that the result was the opposite, it got out on the surface. By the revolution of 1905, some nations had created their own parties. For example, Armenians and Muslim peoples, Poles were in very serious ferment, despite the fact that they were trying to subdue them in the 19th century, the growth of Jewish political identity began. That is, the course of Alexander III did not lead to a significant deterioration of the situation. But his powerful hands could still maintain the empire, and Nicholas II, who was greatly influenced by his wife, more than by government officials, including Pobedonostsev. Awareness of Pobedonostsev and his encyclopedic mind are amazing, but pragmatism was not typical for him. If there were situations with the nationalism issue somewhere, then, according to Pobedonostsev, they could be dealt with only by force.
Saralidze: Is the thesis about the fact that the national liberation movement, as they say in the Soviet historiography, was one of the components of the 1917 revolution true?
Safarov: These movements were very serious. But they were painted and strengthened by socio-economic factors. Some by land, some by lack of schools, some by pale of settlement, which no one was going to abolish, and only the provisional government abolished it for Jews. (By the way, the pale of settlement was made by Ekaterina).
Some had separate gripes, not within the context of the nationalism issue, but related to status, education, economic inequality, to the fact that peoples could not move around the empire. All of this contributed to the fact that national issue became one of the leading revolutionary issues at the beginning of the 20th century.
