AT THE GATES OF CONSTANTINOPLE

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AT THE GATES OF CONSTANTINOPLE
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bet | 25/43 | Sana | 22.11.2020 | Hajmi | 0,7 Mb. | | #12762 |
24. AT THE GATES OF CONSTANTINOPLE
On April 24, 1877 Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire... There had been many wars between Russia and Turkey in the last few centuries, as Russia slowly but steadily expanded south, first towards the northern coast of the Black Sea, and then on towards the Straits and Constantinople herself. But the aim of this war was not expansionist: its aim was to rescue the Orthodox Christians of the Balkans, who were suffering persecution at the hands of their Turkish overlords.
The conflict really began in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where, as Andrew Wheatcroft writes, "a series of disconnected incidents, beginning with strident Muslim resistance to the plan that a new Orthodox cathedral being built in Sarajevo would tower over the sixteenth-century Begova mosque, sparked violence. From 1872 onwards there was resistance to Ottoman tax-gatherers, with peasants arming themselves and taking refuge in nearby Montenegro. The local authorities responded, as they usually did, with a knee-jerk brutality: by 1876 hundreds of villages had been burned and more than 5,000 Bosnian peasants killed. Soon the contagion of rebellion began to seep into the Bulgarian provinces. The threat of a general uprising seemed imminent.
"Every piece of revolutionary propaganda and each intelligence report read served to bolster the fear. Was the government in Constantinople to disregard the terrorist threats made by the Bulgarian revolutionaries? The insurgents wrote: 'Herzegovina is fighting; Montenegro is spreading over the mountains and coming with help; Serbia is ready to put its forces on the move; Greece is about to declare war; Rumania will not remain neutral. Is there any doubt that death is hanging over Turkey?' In July 1875, at Nevesinje in Herzegovina, the clan chiefs had met and thrown down a challenge to the Turks. One declared: 'Ever since the damned day of Kosovo [Polje, in 1389] the Turk robs us of our life and liberty. Is it not a shame, a shame before all the world, that we bear the arms of heroes and yet are called Turkish subjects? All Christendom waits for us to rise on behalf of our treasured freedom... Today is our opportunity to rebel and to engage in bloody fight.' This guerilla war, in Harold Temperley's view, led directly to the revolt in Bulgaria and all that followed. It was a cruel war on both sides. The first things that the British Consul Holmes [in Sarajevo] saw as he entered Nevesinje were a Turkish boy's head blackening in the sun, and a bloody froth bubbling from the slit throat of a young Turkish girl..."331
The Turks replied in kind. When the Bulgars rebelled in the town of Panagyurishte the Turkish irregulars known as "Bashi Bazouks" unleashed a savage wave of reprisals that left about 12,000 dead. Many were martyred precisely because they refused to renounce their Orthodox faith for Islam. 332
In July, 1876 Serbia and Montenegro declared war on the Turks... "'This time we have to avenge Kosovo!' said Montenegro's Prince Nikola. ‘Under Murad I the Serbian empire was destroyed - now during the reign of Murad V it has to rise again.'"333
Western governments at first dismissed reports of atrocities against the Orthodox populations, preferring to believe their ambassadors and consuls rather than The Daily Telegraph. Disraeli dismissed public concern about the Bulgarian atrocities as "coffee-house babble". And when a conference was convened in Constantinople by the Great Powers, it failed to put any significant pressure on the Turks.
Opposition to Disraeli's policy of inaction was now mounting. In September, 1876 Gladstone, his great rival, published The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East: "Let the Turks now carry off their abuses in the only possible manner, namely by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mindirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall I hope to clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned." Disraeli, on the other hand, ascribed the violence to the activities of the secret societies, which he said were on the side of Serbia. "Serbia declared war on Turkey, that is to say, the secret societies of Europe declared war on Turkey, societies which have regular agents everywhere, which countenance assassination and which, if necessary, could produce massacre." Then Disraeli and his cabinet, supported by Queen Victoria, decided that if the Russians took Constantinople, this would be a casus belli.
Public opinion was also demanding action in Russia. As Sir Geoffrey Hosking writes, "Army officers, society ladies and merchants formed Slavic Benevolent Committees which called meetings, collected money, and began to send volunteers to fight for the Serbian army. Dostoevskii... preached war against the Turks as a means of achieving 'eternal peace'. The authorities decided they could not condemn these efforts out of hand, and allowed Russian officers and men to take leave and volunteer for the Serbian army: among them was Fadeyev's friend, General Mikhail Cherniaev, who soon became an emblematic hero for the Panslavs."334
But Cherniaev's support was not enough to save the Serbs335 In two months' fighting, the Serbs lost 5000 dead, and the road to Belgrade was left wide open... Only Russian threats to the Porte saved Serbia: in February an armistice was signed returning the situation to the status quo ante.336
The Russians were now faced with a dilemma. Either they committed themselves officially to war with Turkey, or the cause of the liberation of their brothers under the Turkish yoke, for which every Russian peasant prayed in his daily prayers, would be lost. In November, 1876 the Tsar spoke of the need to defend the Slavs. And his foreign minister Gorchakov wrote that "national and Christian sentiment in Russia... impose on the Emperor duties which His Majesty cannot disregard". Ivan Aksakov then took up the Tsar's words, invoking the doctrine of Moscow the Third Rome: "The historical conscience of all Russia spoke from the lips of the Tsar. On that memorable day, he spoke as the descendant of Ivan III, who received from the Paleologi the Byzantine arms and combined them with the arms of Moscow, as the descendant of Catherine and of Peter... From these words there can be no drawing back... The slumbering east is now awakened, and not only the Slavs of the Balkans but the whole Slavonic world awaits its regeneration.”337
However, not all were in favour of the campaign. One of those was Lev Tolstoy; he expressed his opposition in the epilogue to Anna Karenina. In spite of the extreme popularity of the novel as a whole, “not all readers,” writes Rosamund Bartlett, “relished the epilogue. Levin’s disparaging remarks about the Balkan Question and the Russian Volunteer Movement were highly contentious, and ran exactly counter to those of Tolstoy’s great rival Dostoyevsky… Although Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy never met, they were, of course, aware of each other, but were natural antipodes who found many shortcomings in each other’s work. As a journalist, it was more or less incumbent upon Dostoyevsky to deliver a verdict on Tolstoy’s novel, and after much prevarication he finally came out in print with an opinion of Anna Karenina in early 1877. Tolstoy, however, never returned the compliment of publicly commenting on any of Dostoyevsky’s fiction, remaining, as always, aloof.
“To begin with, Dostoyevsky was generous with his praise of Anna Karenina. He was particularly enthusiastic about Levin as literary character, and he devoted several pages to the novel in the February issue of his Diary of a Writer, the independent monthly journal he had started up in 1876 to explore the character and destiny of the Russian people. But when he read the epilogue he lambasted Levin for being egocentric, unpatriotic and out of touch with the Russian people. He took a dim view of Levin’s claim that the Russian people shared his lack of concern for the predicament of the Balkan Slavs, and took strong exception to his declared unwillingness to kill, even if it resulted in the prevention of atrocities. It is here, of course, that we meet in embryonic form the idea of non-resistance to violence which would lie at the heart of the new religious outlook which Tolstoy would develop over the next decade. People like Tolstoy were supposed to be our teachers, Dostoyevsky concluded at the end of his lengthy tirade, but what exactly were they teaching us? Needless to say, Dostoyevsky did not receive a response either in 1877 or in the years leading up to his death in January 1881. But Tolstoy made up for that by spending the next thirty years of his long life doing little else but answering that very question…” 338
On April 24, 1877 Russia declared war on Turkey, “but more”, argues Hosking, “to preserve Russia’s position in the European balance of power than with Panslav aims in mind. At a Slavic Benevolent Society meeting Ivan Aksakov called the Russo-Turkish war a ‘historical necessity’ and added that ‘the people had never viewed any war with such conscious sympathy’. There was indeed considerable support for the war among peasants, who regarded it as a struggle on behalf of suffering Orthodox brethren against the cruel and rapacious infidel. A peasant elder from Smolensk province told many years later how the people of his village had been puzzled as to ‘Why our Father-Tsar lets his people suffer from the infidel Turks?’, and had viewed Russia’s entry into the war with relief and satisfaction.”339
"There was indeed considerable support for the war among peasants, who regarded it as a struggle on behalf of suffering Orthodox brethren against the cruel and rapacious infidel. A peasant elder from Smolensk province told many years later how the people of his village had been puzzled as to 'Why our Father-Tsar lets his people suffer from the infidel Turks?', and had viewed Russia's entry into the war with relief and satisfaction."340
However, the Russians had to reckon, not only with the Turks, but also with the western great powers, and especially Britain... "British interests in the Balkans," writes Roman Golicz, "derived from wider economic interests in India via the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1858 the British Government had taken direct control over Indian affairs. Since 1869 the Suez Canal had provided it with a direct route to India. Britain needed to secure the shipping routes which passed through areas, like Suez, that were nominally Turkish."341
Or rather, that was the theory. In fact, Russia presented no threat to British interests in India. Rather, the real cause of British hostility to Russian expansion was simply visceral jealousy - the jealousy of the world's greatest maritime empire in relation to the world's greatest land-based empire. As Selischev writes: "If Palmerston unleashed the Crimean war, then Disraeli was ready to unleash war with Russia in 1877-78, in order, as he wrote to Queen Victoria, to save the Ottoman state and 'cleanse Central Asia from the Muscovites and throw them into the Caspian sea.'"342 Palmerston himself commented once that "these half-civilized governments such as those of China, Portugal, Spanish America require a Dressing every eight or ten years to keep them in order". "And no one who knew his views on Russia," writes Dominic Lieven, "could doubt his sense that she too deserved to belong to this category."343
In the spring of 1877 the Russian armies crossed the River Prut into the Romanian Principalities. Then they crossed the Danube, scaled the Balkans and after a ferocious campaign with great losses on both sides conquered Bulgaria. Then they seized Adrianople (Edirne), only a short march from Constantinople…
In January, 1878 Serb and Bulgarian volunteers flocked to the Russian camp. The Russians were now in a similar position to where they had been in the war of 1829-31, when Tsar Nicholas I had reached Adrianople but held back from conquering Constantinople because he did not have the support of the Concert of Europe. Now, however, the Concert no longer existed, and the commander-in-chief of the Russian armies and brother of the Tsar, Grand Duke Nicholas, wrote to the Tsar: "We must go to the centre, to Tsargrad, and there finish the holy cause you have assumed."
He was not the only one who clamoured for the final, killer blow: "'Constantinople must be ours,' wrote Dostoyevsky, who saw its conquest by the Russian armies as nothing less than God's own resolution of the Eastern Question and as the fulfillment of Russia's destiny to liberate Orthodox Christianity.
"'It is not only the magnificent port, not only the access to the seas and oceans, that binds Russia as closely to the resolution... of the this fateful question, nor is it even the unification and regeneration of the Slavs. Our goal is more profound, immeasurably more profound. We, Russia, are truly essential and unavoidable both for the whole of Eastern Christendom and for the whole fate of future Orthodoxy on the earth, for its unity. This is what our people and their rulers have always understood. In short, this terrible Eastern Question is virtually our entire fate for years to come. It contains, as it were, all our goals and, mainly, our only way to move out into the fullness of history.'"344
However, there were powerful reasons that made the Russians hesitate on the eve of what would have been their greatest victory. First, and most obviously, there was the fierce opposition of the western great powers, and especially Britain. The entire British Mediterranean Squadron was steaming towards the Dardanelles, dispatched by Disraeli as British public opinion turned "jingoistic":
We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men, and we've got the money too;
We've fought the bear before, and while we're Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.
Under the influence of this threat, the Russians agreed not to send troops into Constantinople if no British troops were landed on either side of the Straits... Then, on March 3, at the village of San Stefano, just outside Constantinople, they signed a treaty with the Turks, whereby the latter recognized the full independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro. "The Treaty also constituted Bulgaria as a tributary principality of Russia; it required a heavy financial indemnity from Turkey; it gave to Russia the right to select a port on the Black Sea; it opened up the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus at all times to Russian vessels; it obtained full rights for all Christians remaining under Turkish rule; and it gave Bessarabia to Russia in exchange for the corner of Bulgaria known as Dobruja."345
In little more than 20 years the Russian defeat in the Crimean war had been avenged. It was a great victory for the Orthodox armies...
However, the Great Powers were determined to rob Russia of the fruits of her victory by diplomatic means. Dominic Lieven points out that “before embarking on the struggle, Petersburg agreed with Vienna to limit its war aims and offer territorial compensation to the Habsburgs. In 1877-78, spectacular victories brought the Russian army to the gates of Constantinople. In the excitement, the hero of the Russian nationalist and Slavophile camp, Count Nikolai Ignatev, was allowed to ignore the promises to Austria and to impose a punitive peace on the Ottomans. In part, this reflected the weak control over policy exercised by Alexander II and his aging foreign minister, Prince Alexandr Gorchakov. Britain and Austria threatened war unless the terms of the peace were revised. At this point, control over Russia foreign policy was seized by the ambassador in London, Count Petr Shuvalov, who persuaded Alexander II to agree on a compromise with London and Vienna. The terms of this deal were thrashed out at a congress held in Berlin in 1878 under the chairmanship of the German chancellor, Prince Bismarck.
“The events of 1875-78 resonated right down to the First World War in important ways. The crisis revealed the battles over foreign policy within the ruling elite. Petr Shuvalov came from one of Russia’s richest and best-connected aristocratic families. Both in his person and in his policies, he was the epitome of the ‘court’ party. His struggle with Nikolai Ignatev was perceived by much of public opinion as a perfect illustration of how a cosmopolitan Petersburg elite appeased foreign powers at the expense of the national cause. Meanwhile, for foreign observers the chief lesson learned from these years was that nationalist and Slavophile public opinion could push the government into a war that the tsar did not want and could result in policies that risked confrontation with the other powers. No foreign diplomat ever ignored public opinion again or imagined that in autocratic Russia only the emperor and his foreign minister mattered. But the biggest single result of the crisis was the lasting damage it caused to Russo-German relations.
“Ever since Russia had rescued Prussia from Napoleon’s dominion in 1813, the Russo-Prussian alliance had been a constant element in international relations. Alone among the European powers, Prussia had not opposed Russia during the Crimean War. Tsar Alexander II not only remained neutral while Prussia united Germany under its rule but also stopped Austria from intervening on France’s side in 1870. Russia had not gone unrewarded for taking this stance. At the end of the Crimean War, the victorious Anglo-French coalition had imposed a peace treaty on Russian that denied it the right to a navy or land fortifications on the Black Sea coast. This was not just humiliating but also a great threat to Russian security. With France defeated and Britain isolated in 1871, Alexander II took the opportunity to force Europe to accept Russia’s right to rebuild its land and sea defences in the south. Despite this gain, Russian public opinion continued to believe that Prussia-Germany was in Russia’s debt for Russian support both against Napoleon and in the wars of German unification. When at the Congress of Berlin, Bismarck played the role of central chairman and ‘honest broker’, Russian nationalist opinion boiled over. It failed to recognize that Bismarck’s efforts had helped Russia to avoid a potentially disastrous confrontation with Austria and Britain. The raging of Russian public opinion helped to persuade Bismarck to sight the Dual Alliance with Austria in 1879, which committed Germany to defend the Habsburg Empire against Russian aggression.
“Perhaps the break between Germany and Russia would have come in any case. Alexander II might rejoice in the victories over France I 1870-71 of his favourite uncle, Kaiser William I, but his generals immediately saw a united Germany as a threat and began to plan to defend Russia against it. Regardless of government policies, there were deep currents in public opinion pushing toward Germanic solidarity in central Europe. Even leaving these aside, Bismarck had good practical reasons for backing Austria against Russia. Russia was stronger than Austria and might well destroy it in single combat, with dangerous consequences for the European balance of power and internal policies in Germany. Should the Habsburg Empire collapse, Berlin would probably be forced to intervene on behalf of the Austrian-Germans. This might result in a European war. Berlin might even need to absorb the Austrian-Germans into its own empire. Because this would turn the Protestant and Prussian-dominated Reich into a country with a Catholic majority, this was a prospect both Bismarck and all traditional Prussians dreaded…”346
The Congress agreed that all Russian troops should be withdrawn from the area around Constantinople, and Greater Bulgaria was cut down into two smaller, non-contiguous areas. Britain added Cyprus to her dominions. Serbia, Montenegro and Romania were recognised as independent States (on condition that they gave full rights to the Jews), but Serbia and Montenegro lost the acquisitions they had made in the war. Russia gained Bessarabia – to Romania’s intense annoyance. Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to Austria for her “temporary” use. In this way, as Archpriest Lev Lebedev pointed out, a mine was laid at the base of the structure of international relations that would later explode into the First World War…347
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