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The Caucasus. Chapter 5. Reform and revolution. Even after that, resistance remained stubborn in the western Caucasus, among the Circassian people, who for centuries had lived as loose Ottoman vassals, secure in their upland fastnesses
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The Caucasus
By the late 18th century, Russia had finally conquered the north coast of the Black Sea and begun to mobilize the abundant agricultural and commercial potential of the southern Ukrainian plains. The whole Caucasus and Transcaucasian region became an area of vital strategic interest, as a buffer zone against the Persian and Ottoman Empires. It was, however, exceedingly problematic territory, depicted in Greek mythology as the edge of the world. Peoples of very different lifestyles, ethnic origin, languages, and religions lived close to one another, though often separated by towering mountain walls. Some were traders, some transhumant nomads, some cultivators of vineyards and olive groves, some warring mountain tribesmen regularly feuding with each other. Some lived in semi‑ feudal petty kingdoms, others in more loosely articulated tribal confederations.
South of the highest range, the medieval Christian kingdom of Georgia, surrounded by Muslim powers, had fragmented into numerous smaller principalities but was beginning to revive again, and looked to its Christian big brother Russia for protection. To offer it, in the late 18th century Russian engineers built the Georgian Military Highway across the Caucasian massif to send armed convoys southwards. That highway needed its own protection from the mountain peoples living along its course. Providing that protection involved Russian armies in a half‑ century of destructive and costly warfare. As far as possible, Russian administrators proceeded by gaining the allegiance of tribal elites, and by exploiting their conflicts with one another, as they had done elsewhere. For military reconnaissance and patrol work, they relied on Cossacks, operating from bases at first on the plains north of the Caucasus, then later in the highlands.
Increasingly, Russian strategy aimed to eliminate clans that opposed them by mounting raids against them, destroying their habitat in the forests, then their settlements, and deporting them. This policy naturally aroused ferocious hostility against both the Russians and their native allies, especially in the eastern Caucasus, among the peoples of Dagestan and Chechnia. Resistance crystallized around the Sufi brotherhoods known as tariqat. Their adherents would adopt a discipline of silent prayer and meditation to prepare them for unyielding battle against the infidels. For several decades, they were led by a series of imams, of whom the most tenacious was Shamil, known as ‘commander of the faithful’. He achieved unity by invoking Islam: his proclamations were directed against ‘unbelievers’ and ‘hypocrites’ rather than Russians as such. Under such leadership, the local tribes learned to suspend their feuds and unite to wage skilful and agile guerrilla campaigns, descending to storm Russian forts and outposts, then melting swiftly back into the mountains and forests. Slowly and painfully, the Russians devised a counter‑ insurgency strategy, but it was not till 1859 that they finally captured Shamil.
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Even after that, resistance remained stubborn in the western Caucasus, among the Circassian people, who for centuries had lived as loose Ottoman vassals, secure in their upland fastnesses. The Russians decided the only way to overcome their defiance was to physically displace them and resettle their lands with immigrants. In the end, during the 1860s, between one and two million Circassians were deported in appalling conditions to the Ottoman Empire, in whose successor territories their descendants still live today. This was the first great mass deportation of modern times. Russians achieved the mastery over the Caucasus at which they had aimed, but at the cost of alienating and embittering most of the peoples who lived there – a legacy that still has its destructive effects today.
Chapter 5
Reform and revolution
Reform
Defeat in the Crimean War removed the veto on radical change: it had become unavoidable. Russia had succumbed to two industrializing nation‑ states, and most reformers assumed that Russia must become one too, even though that required unsettling changes to its social structure. Westerners and Slavophiles had different conceptions of what was needed, but both felt it essential to give ordinary Russians a greater stake in the affairs of their country.
Above all, they both agreed on the need to abolish serfdom. Yet serfdom was the keystone of the empire’s social and economic structure: removing it was extremely problematic. The dilemma was expressed by one landowner: ‘To free the peasants without land is impossible, but to expropriate the landowners would be extremely unjust. ’ Not only unjust, but also unworkable, since one could scarcely deprive the ruling class of the principal source of its income. Yet peasants deprived of land would certainly not feel they had any stake in the system, and could easily become dangerously discontented.
The Emancipation Edict of 1861 was thus inevitably an unsatisfactory compromise. Landowners retained much of their land, especially in the south, where it was fertile and valuable. Peasants were awarded holdings which were usually smaller than those they had previously held; moreover, they were required to pay for land they thought they already owned in instalments over half a century. Nor were they set free as full citizens, but till they had paid off their debt were tied to a land commune, where as before joint responsibility was the norm. Since the landowner’s administrative and judicial powers were abolished, those communes, and the purely peasant institution above them, the volost (township), gained more powers than they had ever possessed before. The volost court was to apply not statute law, but local custom as interpreted by peasant elders. Peasants thus remained a segregated social estate.
It is remarkable that such a far‑ reaching measure could be carried out at all in opposition to the interests of the ruling class. It was a vindication of the power of the much‑ criticized autocratic state, which alone could rise above the interests of all social classes.
One of the main reasons for abolishing serfdom was to create a non‑ serf army, in which all adult males would have the duty to serve, and in which a reserve could be built up without endangering rural security. War Minister Dmitry Miliutin pushed through that reform in the Military Conscription Act (1874), and insisted that all new recruits should take literacy classes. He also stipulated that officers should be professionally trained: he abolished the Cadet Corps and introduced so‑ called Junker Schools where non‑ nobles could qualify. After Miliutin left the post, however, the Cadet Corps were revived and literacy training was dropped. The chance to reforge the army as a ‘school of nationhood’, which is what Miliutin intended, was lost. Only in the First World War was that aim suddenly revived, but far too late to effect the necessary changes of mentality and organization.
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The abolition of serfdom necessitated further reforms, to redistribute the functions which had previously belonged to the nobility. Local government was now entrusted to zemstvos and municipalities, elected assemblies dominated by the nobility and property owners, but with some representation from other classes, including peasants.
Other reforms were intended to create civil society on a ‘Western’ model. Censorship was eased, to facilitate open discussion of social problems. Education at all levels was expanded, and was opened to all social estates. Most controversial of all, the judicial system was totally reformed. In criminal cases, trained lawyers were to represent the accused, while juries drawn from ordinary citizens and peasant officials would decide the verdict. Proceedings would be open to the public and the press, and judges were to be independent and irremovable. In a sense, this was the first serious limitation on autocracy, since it implied that law, as determined by courts, was the highest authority – that laws in fact were written for governments as well as for subjects. It was certainly difficult to combine it with autocracy, as a sensational case demonstrated in 1878. Vera Zasulich, a young revolutionary, shot and wounded General Trepov, Governor‑ General of St Petersburg. No one denied that she had attempted murder, but to applause in the courtroom, the jury acquitted her on the plea of her lawyer that she had ‘no personal interest in her crime’, but was ‘fighting for an idea’.
Autocracy remained unchanged, however: as she left the courtroom, Zasulich was re‑ arrested. Furthermore, when Interior Minister Valuev proposed having elected zemstvo representatives in the State Council, the empire’s highest advisory chamber, Alexander replied that he opposed a constitution, not because it would restrict his authority, but because it would lead to the dissolution of Russia. The recent Polish rising greatly troubled him; he feared giving non‑ Russian elites a serious voice in the empire’s highest institutions.
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