#20 Understanding Colonialism: Russian Colonisation: Another Special Case
Colonisation in the 19th and 20th centuries:
Russian Colonisation: Another Special Case
Understanding Russian colonisation
Unlike European Colonisation after 1492, and American invasion (both North and South), Russian expansion over during roughly the same period needs to be understood in different terms. Russia was an ancient feudal society right through until the 1917 revolution. The character of her expansion and colonisation reflected this fact. In this blog, I compare Russia’s imperial expansion mainly with the USA, the only other land colonisation of the period.
Russia
Two massive new land empires were created after 1492 - empires created almost entirely from land invasions on existing settled populations - the Russian and the American. All the others were formed from European invasions of foreign lands, far away from the dominant power. Russia and the USA, by contrast, were land empires. But beyond that similarity – that is, the process of invading and colonising a huge landmass and a multitude of diverse peoples - there was little in common. It is useful to compare these two examples to illustrate the character of both invasions and settlements.
Ever since the USA came onto the world stage in the 20th century, both empires have become deadly enemies. It seems easy to put this down to a difference of systems, communist and capitalist: the USA leading the way towards free markets and privately-owned enterprise, the Soviets aiming to provide new models for developing economy and fairer distribution after 1917. But the enmity between these two great powers did not end after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia had been considered an enemy state by many of the major colonising powers throughout the 19th century, and right up to the present time. There seems to be no adequate explanation for constant enemy status, even if we consider market forces.
Russia has been perceived by the European colonising powers and then by the USA as an existential threat for at least 200 years. In the 19th century, the Romanov Empire became the epitome of Russian power and aggression as she expanded into Ukraine, extended her hold on Siberia, knocked on the gates of China, and humbled Poland and Lithuania in the west. By defeating Napoleon in the early 19th century, Russia became the strongest power in Europe. She also became a sea power in the north Pacific, and while she suffered defeats in the Crimea and at the hands of Japan in 1904, she did not lose territory.
Her weakness was that she had not made the transition economically and politically to capitalism. When she was confronted by the demands of total war in 1914, the old regime collapsed after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The Soviet Union, as it was then named, was then invaded by the western powers, which included the USA, Britain and France, in the ‘Wars of Intervention.’ The 1917 revolution was followed by six more years of war and intense suffering. But the new political powers in Moscow provided the changes at all levels of society needed for the transformation of the Russian empire and its peoples into the new industrial world exemplified by its competitors. Simply put, the 1917 Russian Revolution provided the necessary conditions for the empire to enter the world of education, science and industrial growth to compete with the rest of the non-colonised world of Europe and the USA.
Russia had withstood consistent attempts to dismantle her state. She has been invaded twice; first by Napoleon and then by Hitler in June 1941. In both cases, Russia was able to withstand superior armed forces, but only after punishing battles and the loss of huge numbers of soldiers. The USA attempted to seriously weaken Russia after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Although that story is ongoing as tensions between the USA and Russia continue, the USA has failed in these attempts and a strong leader, Vladimir Putin, is still in the process of resuscitating Russia.
The Russian Empires
The Russian state had been expanding from its Moscow base for hundreds of years. The historian Philip Longworth examines Russian expansion from as early as 850 AD.
The Russian state continued to expand over 1000 years in fits and starts, all the way through to 1917 when the state exploded in revolution.
Moscow and the early Russian people were land-based. They had the Baltic, with the Poles and Scandinavians to the north; to the west were the Hapsburgs and the rest of Europe and to the south the Ottomans, the Cossack people and the Black Sea. The Russians have always been aware of threats and alliances in all directions; security involved pushing out in all directions. Imperial growth had always hinged on military power.
Before 1917, Russia was in most respects a 'pre-capitalist state' led by an ancient monarchical system unsuited to the capitalist world. Like so many of the ancient empires of the 19th century – such as the Ottomans and the Chinese - seeing the violently expanding European powers, they attempted small pockets of capitalist industrialisation. In essence, Russia remained a pre-capitalist world.
In 1640, the English had decapitated their monarch. In 1789, the French had done the same; and then finally in 1917 the Russians forcibly removed theirs. Revolution was a necessary condition for the immense changes required to move towards a capitalist order. Before the revolution, despite many changes inside Russia and its empire, it had remained a more or less feudal society where position was a matter of birth rather than ability. The USA, by contrast - after the settlers had freed themselves from their colonial masters - had been ruled by elected politicians, a system suited to the needs of private property and the dynamics of constant change.
The Russian empire covered a huge territory, with many diverse languages and cultures. Distances from Moscow were vast, and communication between the centre and its outposts might take months. Very often peoples’ ways of living were not disturbed if they accepted Russian sovereignty and willingness to pay taxes. The variety of people and the conditions they lived in that were colonised was very mixed. In some cases, the people were living in what we may consider Stone Age conditions, and in others, they were well organised and were trading long distances. In sharp distinction from the USA, the colonising Russians did not attempt to destroy the people they came across.
Russian motives varied, of course. Their expansion in part was designed to bring glory to the emperor or empress. In 1740, for instance, they brought a wider ethnic mix of their peoples to St Petersburg to celebrate New Year’s Day. Lapps, Finns, Tatars from Central Asia, and Tungus from Siberia came together with their reindeer, dogs or camels for a great Russian feast.
There was a continuous need for recruits for the Russian armed forces. Each conquest provided young men for their military needs. By the time Peter the Great died in 1725, Russia had an army of 200,000 men. The army increased in numbers thereafter, and by 1740 had risen to 240,000. Of this number 120,000 were regulars. In addition, they controlled 50,000 irregular troops or Cossacks. Russia was able to expand its territories as well as protect what had already been gained was due to this standing army. They developed an engineering school for the army and a navigation school for the navy.
Successful farmers provided taxes for the central Russian treasury. Where possible, they exploited mineral resources in the 18th century in the south. The Russian army protected trade routes: silks from Persia; rubies, gold and lapis lazuli from India; and numerous products from China. Down through the ages, many such strong centralised regimes have found many benefits in the protection of traders and the routes along which they travelled. The Russian Empire had always had a mass of such routes, with traders moving from China, India and Persia, the centre of global economic activity, until the 19th century. There was no comparable trade in the Americas once the Aztecs from Mexico and the Incas from Peru had been annihilated.
Russian expansion was feared throughout Europe. At no point in time did the Russians have to compete for 'foreign' territory and trade to the East against the other nations of Europe. Only after Japan industrialised and started looking for lands with iron and coal at the end of the 19th century did Russia need to defend territory. Russia faced resistance from their western flank from Europeans and Ottomans peoples and monarchies. The Crimea war in 1851 was intended to support the Ottomans and to stop Russia moving to threaten Constantinople. The British, in the middle of the 19th century, stopped Russian expansion from both south and east. The 19th-century Afghan wars 1841 and 1871 waged by the British, for instance, were intended to stop Russian expansion into India proper. Whether Russia ever had any intention to invade India, we may never know.
Russian colonial expansion across the heartland of Europe and Asia has a long history, but they were distance-wise a long way from that of the rest of the European colonial powers. Before rail, road, and air transport, communication was by horse, donkey, camel, dhow or on foot. Muscovites were European in origin, and the European monarchies of old intermarried and retained close relationships. Therefore, Russia had been able to buy European armaments. The Russian royal court spoke French and followed French fashion. But despite all this, Russian colonial expansion was free of English, French or Dutch competition. Above all else, they were relatively free of the ideology that drove Europeans: racialism. This did not mean that Russians did not possess ethnic preferences, but race and racialism as a colonial ideology, as already described in previous blogs, was different.
Russian invaders considered themselves Orthodox Christians, and distinct from Catholics or Protestant Christians. They were able to colonise non-Christians and leave existing belief systems alone, but someone willing to take on Russia Orthodox Christianity was able to join the Russian administration. This is not to argue that Russian colonisation was benign or without violence; the opposite is true. Rather, when compared to the colonisation of north or south America or of India, Russian colonisation was of a different order of violence and exploitation.
Suggested Reading on Russian History
Due to the antagonism that Russia has experienced from the West over at least the last 200 years, all accounts have a bias which authors may or may not admit. The 1917 revolution increased the variations of bias. On the Left, a range of opinions arose around different leaders, from Lenin to Trotsky and others. Every writer after 1917 was either deeply antagonistic to the revolution or took up one or other of the positions of the Left. When investigating this period of history it is paramount you understand your author, as these opinions in English remain with our writers today. Not surprisingly, the 1917 Revolution has received extensive coverage in books, articles, film and comment; likewise, as has the Cold War and Russia post-1991. These divisive opinions have also affected Russian historians writing in English. Despite wide-ranging books on Russian history, there has been more interest in the investigation of the Russian psyche than in their long colonial history.
The best I found were these:
Philip Longworth, Russia's Empires: Their Rise and Fall from Prehistory to Putin, John Murray 2006.
After that there is:
Geoffrey Hosking, Russian History: A Very Short Introduction, OUP Oxford 2012.
For those who wish to read synoptical accounts of Russian history and colonialism:
Harry Magdoff, The Age of Imperialism: The Economics of U.S. Foreign Policy , Monthly Review Press 1969. See Russia's Eastward Expansion.
Wikipedia provides a range of short synopses on different aspects of Russian colonial expansion which are worth reading.
Copyright Notice. This blog is published under the Creative Commons licence. If anyone wishes to use any of the writing for scholarly or educational purposes they may do so as long as they correctly attribute the author and the blog. If anyone wishes to use the material for commercial purpose of any kind, permission must be granted from the author.
We take for granted today the boundary lines which divide countries. Those borders set in 1884 had little rationale but continue to have long-term consequences. 80 years after being divided, the new countries were provided with relative Independence. This was partially due to their struggles against colonial rule and partly due to the decision taken by the USA to have economic access to the world. They all kept the boundaries created during colonialism.