Colonial Aspects in Russian History
Several years ago a new Russian historical journal Ab Imperio hosted a discussion of
colonialism in modern Russian history. Participants debated the question whether Russia
should be placed into the category of the colonizers, or else it should be considered itself as
an object of Western colonization. This paper was provoked by this discussion and aims to
offer an answer to the problem that it raised.
Colonial problematique lies at the very basic of modern Russian history. Russian
monarchs of the 18th century spared no effort in order to become part of the European states
system and get recognition as enlightened rulers. Their ambitious military, political and
cultural agenda offers the first instance of “westernization” understood as conscious
adaptation of Western technology and cultural forms by a society that originally did not
participate in their creation. Started by Peter the Great, this westernization had as its most
important result the internalization of the maxims of the rational and orderly government as
well as forms of polite sociability by the elite elements of the society1. Insofar as the process
of westernization had as its goal the production of a new subject out of Russian population, it
can be viewed as a variation of cultural colonialism, which nevertheless lacked the formal
political subordination to Europe, which functioned as cultural metropole for the Russian
“colony.” “Internal colonization project” allows placing Russia with such more classical
examples of the objects of modern colonialism as India or Egypt. At the same time, Russia
was an empire in which a westernized elite sought to establish control over the population of
the outlying territories using the adopted Western technology and political ideas as a means
of and legitimization for imperial dominance. This outward colonialism, as has been argued
in its turn falls into “organic colonialism” representing a natural response of an agriculturalist
society to the challenges of the open steppe frontier and classical colonialism, which took
place in Central Asia, and which gives ground for classifying Russia together with other
modern colonial powers such as Britain and France.
Russia’s “Internal Colonization” Project
By virtue of early started westernization Russia escaped a colonial domination by
foreign power(s), yet the policies of the 18th and 19th century Russian monarchs towards their
subjects allow speaking of an “internal colonization project.”2 Before the age of nationalism
producing various ethnic ontologies idealizing the peasant as the supreme embodiment of
nation, the absolutist rulers and political elites of Central and Eastern Europe tended to view
their peasants as “barbarians” or “children” and therefore as the object of a never ending
civilizing process. Operating within this conceptual universe, Russia’s ruling class portrayed
itself as the champion of European enlightenment thereby seeking to acquire and maintain
cultural hegemony over all the peoples that were within the horizon of Russian expansion.
For Russian monarchs and imperial elite the acceptance of semi-orientalizing discourse of
Eastern Europe was, at the same time, a means of escaping it and a condition of both their
independence vis-à-vis the western European powers and of their political dominance over all
segments of Eastern European population that still remained “uncivilized” no matter their
formal social status. Other Eastern European nobilities either had to merge into the imperial
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, 369-370. Raeff, “Transfiguration and
Modernization: The Paradoxes of Social Disciplining, Pedagogical Leadership, and thee Enlightenment in the
18th century Russia.” in Idem, Political Ideas an Institutions of Imperial Russia, 1994, 341.For the social
practices of courtly etiquette and ceremony and their political effect see Norbert Elias, Court Society. Translated
by Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983, 78-116.
2
Alexander Etkind, “Fuko i imperskaia Rossia: distsiplinarnyie praktiki v usloviakh vnutrennei kolonizatsii,”
166-191.
1
1
elite or else be relegated to the status of the “uncivilized” together with the masses of Eastern
European peasantry.
Russia’s internal colonization project was inextricably connected with the attempts of
the 18th – early 19th century rulers to imitate German Politzeistaat. The phenomenon of wellordered police state reflected the expansion of the traditional scope of government “from the
passive duty of preserving justice to the active task of fostering the productive energies of
society and providing the appropriate institutional framework for it.”3 On the practical level,
the transformation of the nature of government was reflected in an increasingly meticulous
regulation of all aspects of life and activities of the subjects of a territorial ruler by means of
police ordinances (called Landes und Polizeiordnungen in German speaking areas of Central
Europe), embracing such diverse areas of human life as personal behavior, public order, fireprotection, sanitation, taxation, charity, husbandry or house building. All these disparate
elements composed the domain of police (Polizei),4 which provided the essence of the new
type of government called well-ordered police state (Polizeistaat),5 finding its theoretical
expression in the late 17th –18th century doctrines of cameralism6 and its practical realization
in the territorial states of the 18th century German rulers.
Russian autocrats starting with Peter the Great sought to imitate the well-ordered police
state of German territorial rulers.7 The primary goal of Russia’s internal colonization project
was the production of a new subject through “enlightenment”, which took the form of social
disciplining by means of the institutions and practices of general police. The introduction of
compulsory service for the nobility exposed it to the disciplinary practices of the well-ordered
police state in a number of social spaces such as the army, civil administrative bodies,
schools and cadet corps as well as the court. Imposing a service requirement upon nobles, the
government also claimed the right to subject them to cultural “reeducation,” which was in
fact a form of social disciplining. An almost forceful inculcation of European dress habits and
forms of sociability (Petrine assemblies) often subjected the noble bodies to a discipline,
which was no less rigorous than military one.8 As in the Western and Central Europe, a
corollary of this disciplining was the establishment of state monopoly on physical violence,
seeking to sublimate violent and uncontrolled passions into orderly and civilized intercourse
founded on the rules of politeness.9 Although the cumulative effect of these disciplinary
practices was the formation of the common westernized noble culture, none of the mentioned
spaces secured the projection of the modernization effect beyond a small privileged stratum.
Mark Raeff, “The Well-Ordered Police State and the Development of Modernity in Seventeenth- and
Eighteenth-Century Europe: An Attempt at a Comparative Approach,” in American Historical Review, Vol. 80,
1975, 1226.
4
Reinhold August Dorwart, Prussian Welfare State before 1740. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press,
1971, 14-15. The word polizei originates from the French word polir (“to establish good order”)
5
There is a disagreement about the correct translation of this term into English. While Raeff and the majority of
scholars use the term “well-ordered police state,” other scholars, like Dorwart, Prussian Welfare State, 3
indicate the failure of the literal translation as “police state” to account for the important function of public
welfare, performed by the government, and insists on translating it as “welfare state.”
6
Tribe, 17. Keith Tribe, “Cameralism and the Science of Government,” in Journal of Modern History, Vol. 56,
No. 22 (Jun., 1984), 271.
7
On the well-ordered police state model in reforms of Peter the Great see Syromiatnikov, Reguliarnoie
politseiskoi gosudarstvo Petra Velikogo. Moscow, 1943; E. V. Anisimov, The Reforms of Peter the Great:
Progress through Coercion in Russia. Translated with an introduction by John T. Alexander Armonk, N.Y. :
M.E. Sharpe, 1993, 217-243, and Mark Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change
through Law in the Germanies and Russia 1600-1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 181-218.
8
For the social practices of courtly etiquette and ceremony and their political effect see Norbert Elias, Court
Society. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983, 78-116.
9
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, 369-370. Raeff, “Transfiguration and
Modernization: The Paradoxes of Social Disciplining, Pedagogical Leadership, and thee Enlightenment in the
18th century Russia.” in Idem, Political Ideas an Institutions of Imperial Russia, 1994, 341.
3
2
In fact admission to some of these spaces (court, cadet corps) was conditioned on the noble
status, whereas others (officer corps, civil service) allowed upward social mobility, but
maintained the boundary between noble and popular cultures. Still others (religious
elementary schools, seminaries and university) targeted mainly non-noble elements, but their
effect on the vast mass of the peasantry was likewise limited.10
Great resistance of the traditionalistic culture to the expansion of the scope of
government in Russia explains the peculiarity of Russian variant of the well-ordered police
state. Largely unable to build upon a willing cooperation of the traditional corporate bodies
whose social cohesiveness was proportionate to the degree of their traditionalism (the
Cossacks, the streltsy, old believers’ groups among the peasants and urban dwellers), Peter
had to proceed either by their brutal repression or by their forceful reformation
(trasformation, transfiguration).11 This not only emphasized transformative aspect of the wellordered police state, but also limited the effect of new practices and institution to small
privileged social strata leaving huge segments of Russian society out. Another factor that
accounted for the individuality of the Russian experience was the timing of Peter I reforms.
They occurred at the very end of the first stage of development of the well-ordered police
state in Central Europe, characterized by reliance on existing corporate bodies. Despite the
revolutionary aspects of his westernization program, Peter I had to rely on traditional if
forcefully transformed social institutions such as the nobility and the clergy, building upon
the Muscovite tradition of the state service.12 However, as the century progressed, the
development of well-ordered police state in Russia and Central European diverged. With the
introduction of Cameralist sciences into the German University curriculum and the formation
civil bureaucracy embodying the ethos of general interest and rational organization, the wellordered police state in Central Europe entered the new stage of expansion, this time often at
the expense of the traditional estate autonomies. Conversely, Peter I’s successors, most
notably Catherine II found it possible to pursue cameralist policies only through reconsolidation of estate structure. Although it made Russian version of well-ordered police
state less effective, it also accounted for its peculiarity irreducible to Western and Central
European variations.13
Reflecting the reinforced concern of the government with the police all over Europe,
Catherine II’ legislation of the 1770s and 1780s produced a peculiar version of well-ordered
police state irreducible to either French or German sources,14 in which police functions had to
be performed not by the new cameralist trained bureaucracy, but on the newly re/formed
semi-autonomous social groups. While Catherine II’s Charters for the Nobility and Towns
(accompanied by the designed, but never introduced Charter for the State peasants) had the
appearance of consolidating traditional social estates at the moment when these were about to
crumble in the West, the social institutions that they sought to create differed markedly from
medieval autonomous corporations. The estate institutions created by Catherine the Great
10
Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia, 59-62.
Ibid., 38-40.
12
The 18th century ecclesiastical policies offers a good illustration of making traditional institutions serve
“modern goals.” The abolition of the patriarchate and the creation of the Holy Synod on the model of civil
colleges turned the Orthodox Church into an extension of the government apparatus and burdened it with a
number of the secular function, such as civil education, philantropy (hospitals and hospices for veteran soldiers
and workers), and supervision/monitoring the activities of the common people. Raeff, Understanding Imperial
Russia, 62-63, Freeze, Russian Levites. Posmotret’ snosku na knigu o konfessionalizatsii v knige Millera o
zapadnykh okrainakh
13
Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia, 42.
14
The question of Catherine’s imitation of foreign models was addressed in the discussion between Mark Raeff,
Isabel de Madariaga, Edward L. Keenan, and James Cracraft in Slavic Review, Vol. 41, No., 4. (Winter, 1982)
611- 638, particularly the contrasting positions of Raeff and De Madariaga who emphasized, respectively,
German and French sources.
11
3
were specially designed to perform disciplinary functions and sought to achieve the
disciplinary effect through “policing by proxy.”
Alongside with the definition of the estate privileges of the nobility and the burgers, the
charters also outlined the functions and duties of noble and town assemblies placing them
within the general hierarchy of delegated authority and policing. The personal enlightenment
of the sovereign, which was a necessary assumption in the age of enlightened absolutism,
guaranteed the choice of the most enlightened representatives of the elite as viceroys in the
provinces, while the latter, in turn performed the civilizing function in respect of provincial
nobility. The gubernia institutions (noble assemblies and custodian boards) were designed as
civilizing milieu and institutional means to check the arbitrariness of individual serfowners in
respect of their serfs. Giving the nobility exclusive right to own serfs Catherine II viewed the
pomeshchiks as a variation of state officials, who by virtue of their personal enlightenment
were to perform the police functions over the ignorant peasantry. At least ideally then, the
pomeshchiks, even after they retired from military or civil service, still continued to perform a
variation of public office.15 Finally, the authority in the villages was based on the cooperation
between seigniorial agents and peasant elders, which corroborated with the functioning of
peasant commune.16 In this system, the conference of political authority in accordance with
personal enlightenment of the individual (the monarch, the viceroy, the landlord, the peasant
patriarch) was counterbalanced by the disciplinary effects of surveillance and regulation
through impersonal collectives (noble and town assemblies, the peasant commune).17 The
paternalistic model of authority thus coexisted with disciplining in and by social groups in an
ambitious project of internal colonization.18
It goes without saying that this is but a description of the ideal logic of the system.
Needless to say, the overwhelming majority of pomeshchiks failed to be up to the
expectations of the empress engaging into the worst kind of abuses, the provincial noble
assemblies existed precariously, the viceroys and governors frequently turned into veritable
despots as deed the village authorities producing a nightmare of late serfdom period wellknown from classical Russian literature. And yet the analysis of the ideal order of the system
is important for it reveals the functioning of power and regime of its legitimacy in Russia iin
the course of more than a century between the death of Peter the Great and the abolition of
serfdom. Internal colonization project never turned Russia into a European country, but,
paradoxically, this apparent failure did not contradict the character of the undertaking.
Moreover, the principal incompleteness of Russian variation of the “enlightenment project”
became the major organizing factor of Russian history, which after Peter can be viewed as a
succession of various modernization impulses. These different variants of the “enlightenment
project” might have been formulated in explicit opposition to each other, but all of them
tended to view Russia in quasi-colonial terms and tended to perpetuate ad infinitum of the
teacher–pupil relationship lying at the basis of any discourse of civilizing mission. What
mattered was not the final result of the educative process, but constantly changing content of
“enlightenment” that conditioned the perpetuation of the quasi-pedagogical and quasicolonial authority structure.
Edgar Melton, “Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia, 1750-1830,” in The Journal of
Modern History, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Dec., 1990), 675-708.
16
Stephen L. Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control in Russia. Petrovskoie, a Village in Tambiov. Chicago
University Press, 1986.
17
For the general discussion of the functioning of the collective in social disciplining in Russia see Oleg
Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia. A Study of Practices. Berkeley, Calif. : University of
California Press, 1999.
18
Alexandr Etkind, “Fouko i Impersakia Rossia. Distsiplinarnyie praktiki v usloviakh vnutrennei kolonizatsii.”
Oleg Kharkhordin (ed.) Mishel Fuko i Rossia. SPb.: Evropeiskii Universitet v Sankt Peterburge: Letnii Sad,
2001, 166- 191.
15
4
[…]
The decline of the provincial nobility’s role in internal administration, signified the
disintegration of the hierarchy of delegated authority and “policing by proxy”, which was
characteristic of late 18th century Russian version of well-ordered police state. At the same
time, consolidation of central ministries and bureaucratization of local government for several
decades was paralleled by preservation of the paternalistic authority of the landlords and
consolidation of peasant commune and its social disciplining functions. However, the
preservation of the seigniorial authority of the landed nobility coupled with the diminution of
their participation in imperial administration as landed nobility produced a legitimization
crisis, which is conventionally known as the problem of serfdom and its abolition.19 Indeed,
since the noble in his local capacity of a serf master was no longer deemed enlightened
enough to perform important administrative functions in local administration, the legitimacy
of his authority over the serfs immediately became questionable, positing the problem of
peasant emancipation.
The consolidation of ministries and formation of central bureaucracy during the reign of
Nicholas I was inextricably connected with crystallization of such an attitude to the peasant
question paving the way for emancipation.20 Putting an end to the paternalistic authority of
the landlords, the peasant reform of 1861 removed another link in the chain of delegated
control and policing that allowed for some residual contacts between the noble “society” and
the traditional world of the peasants. A privileged landowner, who did not perform any
service and at the same time alienated a substantial part of what they consider “their” land,
manifestly lacked legitimacy in the eyes of the peasants. Significantly limiting its scope of
responsibility, post-1861 government failed to adequately respond to this legitimization
crisis. In comparison with the 18th century concept of government, which presupposed
rational regulation of the whole society, the architects of the “Great Reforms” defined their
responsibility in much narrower terms. As a result, the reforms of the 1860s stopped at the
boundaries of peasant commune: new institutions of local self-government (the zemstvos)
were not involved in the social regulation of the peasantry, while the legal reform of 1860s
left the peasant society regulated by common law. In stark contrast to the main task of
enlightened government, which Speranskii defined as “bringing closer of the ages of the parts
of the society”21 the Great Reforms of the 1860s and 1870s in fact widened the gap between
the “modernizing” Russia on the one hand, and peasant society on the other, aggravating the
already existing desynchronization of the social development that bore its tragic fruits in the
early 20th century.
Steppe Frontier and Organic Colonialism
Another major aspect of colonial experience in Russian history was related to the
exeistence of open steppe frontier in the South-East. The vast expanses of steppe arching the
northern Black sea region from the Danube to the Caucases and the Urals were for centuries
the domain of the nomadic societies as well as the theatre of the confrontation between the
In the words of V. Kliuchevskii, Sobranie sovienii v vos’mi tomakh. Vol. V. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo sotsial’noekonomicheskoi literatury, 1958, 141, the nobility “lost its main political justification” already with the
Manifesto of 1762, which relieved it from compulsory service requirement. However, in so far as the masses of
the nobility continued to serve and played an important role in the army and the administration, the legitimacy
crisis remained latent. Its aggravation coincided with the the formation of bureaucratic ministerial government
in the first half of the 19th century paralleled by the decline of the role of the provincial nobility in local
administration.
20
Lincoln, Bruce, W. In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia's Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1861. DeKalb :
Northern Illinois University Press, 1981.
21
Speranskii, “Filosofskie razmyshlnia o prave i gosudarstve” in Rukovodstvo k poznaniiu zakonov, SPb.:
Nauka, 2002, 194.
19
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latter and the agriculturists societies situated to the north. For millennia the nomadic waves
from Central Asia dominanted the sedentary societies situated on the rims of the steppe, their
military superiority resulting from greater numbers and mobility allowing to concentrate all
available force at one place. Constant raids seriously depleted sedentary population. 22 The
contacts with the agriculturalists that followed conquest gradually contributed to the
sedentarization, loss of mobility and military discipline until the disintegrating empire was
overrun by a fresh wave of nomads and the cycle repeated itself. 23 The protracted character
of this conflict that had to do ultimately with the basic incompatibility of the economy, polity
and culture of the nomadic and sedentary societies. Whereas the sedentary societies were in
need of cultivating new fallow land to support the minimal population growth under the
conditions of an extensive economy, the nomadic societies were in need of the pastures that
supported the herds – the backbone of the steppe economy.24 The continental empires or the
political structures of the agriculturist societies developed and expanded territorially in the
process of prolonged and painstaking struggle with the nomads and geography that was on
the latter’s size. Slow agriculturalist colonization effected under the protection of defense
lines, Cossack formations and alliances with some nomads against the others was an
“organic” response of a sedentary society to the challenges of the open steppe frontier and
ultimately an act of modernization. What distinguished “organic colonialism” from the
classical one, was the fact that it was taking place along the porous frontier, which
represented a zone of permanent interpentration and interaction of the sedentary and nomadic
societies, in which there was no place for the contrasting identities of the colonizers and the
colonized.
Before and after the conquest of Kazan’ Muscovite rulers were fully conversant in the
language of the steppe politics. Among other things, it meant concluding peace treaties with
the nomads (Shert’) exchanging hostages (amanat) and paying gifts. 25 Yet, the aim of the
Muscovite rulers was to break rather than perpetuate the pattern of steppe politics. That is
why, despite the fact that in the 16th and the 17th centuries the empire continued to
communicate with the nomads in the language of the steppe, the Muscovite rulers
increasingly tended to reinterpret the phenomena of shert’, amanat and exchange of gifts in
terms of the nomads’ pledge of loyalty and submission, thereby transforming cultural and
religious distance into a political relationship of dominance and dependency. 26 In the 18th
century the process was intensified by Russian elite’s adoption of the Western identity that
assumed civilizational inferiority of the nomads and eventually resulted in the replacement of
the political language of the steppe by the vocabulary of protectionism and mission
civilizatrice. Henceforth, the nomads were treated as unreliable and ungovernable subjects
who are to be preferred to the sedentary agriculturist population. The steppe was either
22
According to some calculations Russia lost 150000 through nomadic raids in the first half of the 17 th century
alone. Michael Khodarkovskii, Russia's Steppe Frontier. The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002, 17-22.
23
William McNeill, Europe’s Steppe Frontier, 1500-1800, pp. 6-7.
24
Traian Stoianovich, Russian Domination in the Balkans in Taras Hunczk (ed), Russian Imperialism from Ivan
the Great to the Revolution. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Ruthgers University Press, 1974 201-202.
25
On the ideological aspects of conquest of Kazan see a classical debate between Jaroslaw Pelenski, «Muscovite
imperial Claims to the Kazan Khanate,» in Slavic Review, 1967, 4, pp. 559-576., and E. L. Keenan, Jr.
“Muscovy and Kazan: Some Introductory Remarks on the Patterns of Steppe Diplomacy”, in Slavic Review,
1967, 4, pp. 548-558. In Keenans’ view at the basis of Moscovite-Tatar relation at this point was not an “end of
the land’s independence,” but “a change at the sovereign’s level” whereby there was yielding to the tsar “of all
the rights and prerequisites of the khans” and “keeping, however, the traditional status and emoluments of the
princes of ‘land’ untouched.” Ibid. p. 557. Moscovite tsar inherited the contractual relationship between the
“land” i. e. local nomadic aristocracy and trading dynasties and the khan.
26
Khodarkovskii, Russia's Steppe Frontier, pp. 60-68.
6
perceived as already “empty” space open to colonization or had to be emptied to that end.27
The fundamental changes in the ecology of the steppe frontier resulted from a complex of
measures adopted by the Russian government, many of which were not original and had been
earlier tested by the Habsburg authorities on the Danubian frontier.
Pursuing the ideal of well-ordered police state in their internal policies the Habsburg
emperors of the second half of the 17th – 18th century and Russian rulers after Peter the Great
applied the same principles to the policies in the frontier zone. 28 Once again the Austrians
pioneered and the Russians followed. The conclusion of the Karlowitz peace treaty in 1699
was accompanied by the first formal border demarcation. If earlier, the institution of the
“Military border” sought to mobilize the local warrior-peasants and herders against seminomadic elements on the other side of the border and match the Ottomans in continuous
border-war, after the Karlowitz peace the Habsburg authorities attempted, and to some
degrees managed, to pacify the frontier areas altogether. The retreat of the Ottomans meant
not only loss of the territory, but also transformation of the ecology of the frontier that for
centuries advantaged the Ottoman supremacy. In a century following the conclusion of the
treaty the territories in the area of the Triplex Confinium were mapped and border signs,
control points, sentry boxes, customs buildings and sanitary cordons started to transform the
physical aspect of the frontier. The purpose of all these installations was to fight the
epidemics that frequently ravaged the Ottoman realms and penetrated into the Habsburg
lands, as well as to place the local and central authorities in better control of the circulation of
people and goods.29 Besides, the Habsburg rulers set up the goal of systematic colonization
aimed to maximize the human and natural resources of the territory and thereby increase the
taxable wealth. Alongside attracting colonists, these measures included land survey,
development of mines and fight with deforestation aiming to protect and maximize the
natural resources of a territory; fiscal census of the population, efforts to improve agricultural
technology, and traditional protection of the peasantry from landlord overexploitation
(bauernschutz); fire protection, sanitation and construction policies aimed to improve the
physical aspect of the local towns.
Similar policies were pursued by the Russian monarchs of the 18th century, most
conspicuously Catherine the Great, whose reign also coincided with the decisive change of
the balance of power in the southern steppe. The ability of the empire to sustain a permanent
modern army through increased taxation that materialized in the early 18th century meant the
end of the millennial supremacy of the nomads. After such an army was created by Peter the
Great, the closure of the steppe became a question of time.30 Earlier methods of crossing the
steppe with the help of defensive lines, deployment of the Cossacks and checking some
nomads with the help of others were overtaken by the objective of total control nomadic
movements and ultimately a radical transformation of steppe ecology through colonization.31
The annexation of the Khanate of Crimea in 1783 meant a major victory of the empire over
27
Willard Sunderland, R. J. Bartlett, Human Capital: The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia. pp. 111-112, N.
D. Polonska-Vasilenko, “The Settlement of the Southern Ukraine 1750-1775,” Annals of the Ukrainian
Academy of Sciences in the USA, Summer-Fall, 1955, New York, 1955.
28
On the well-ordered police state model in reforms of Peter the Great see Syromiatnikov, Reguliarnoie
politseiskoi gosudarstvo Petra Velikogo. Moscow, 1943; E. V. Anisimov, The Reforms of Peter the Great:
Progress through Coercion in Russia. Translated with an introduction by John T. Alexander Armonk, N.Y. :
M.E. Sharpe, 1993, 217-243, and Mark Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change
through Law in the Germanies and Russia 1600-1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 181-218.
29
Mirela Slukan, Cartografic Sources for the History of Triplex Confinium. Zagreb: Hrvatski drzavni arhiv.
Zavod za hrvatsku povijest, 1999, 60-62, 80-81.
30
William McNeill, Europe’s Steppe Frontier, 1500-1800, 130-131.
31
Michael Khodorkovskii, Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
7
the nomads and a turning point in the whole process. A new balance of power in the steppe
changed the policy of the government towards the semi-nomadic elements that it earlier used
as allies against other nomads. Similarly to the Habsburg attempts to transform the institution
of military border, the Russian authorities sought better control of the Cossack formations, or,
failing to do that, abolish them altogether justly viewing them as potentially subversive of the
dominant social relationships.3233 The positive aspect of these policies was agricultural
colonization, which began already in the 1750s, when Russian authorities created the New
Serbia colony in the Ukraine out of the Austrian Serbs, discontent with the attempts of the
Austrian authorities to dilute their dense presence in Voevodina, Banat and southern Hungary
by German colonists. The process intensified in the 1760s, with the campaign of the Russian
government to attract colonists from all over Europe.34 Temporarily interrupted by 1768-1774
Russian-Ottoman war it resumed in the 1770s – 1790s on an even greater scale. Colonization
process entailed massive relocations of the population. The nomads who were unwilling to
change their mode of life and engage in agriculture were driven out. Thus, the number of
Crimean Tatars, who emigrated to the Ottoman Empire after the conclusion of the Jassy
treaty of 1792 reached 100.000-110.000.35
And yet despite the employment of modern technology and population politics in an
ambitious attempt to “tame the wild field,” the colonization of the Pontic steppe at the end of
the 18th century differed markedly from classical colonialism of the later period. The
civilizing mission rhetoric emphasizing the “wilderness“ of the steppe covered a much more
accommodative approach towards the nomadic and semi-nomadic elements. The latter were
actively incorporated into the empire’s new subjects, their military formations were made
part of the imperial army (the Kalmyks and the Bashkirs). The privileged elements of the
local societies were given access to the imperial nobility pending conversion to Orthodoxy,
which was taken as an indication of the political loyalty and the carriers of a number of
important 18th century Russian administrators in the peripheries such as Mokhammed
Tevkliev (serving as the vice-governor of Orenburg in mid 18th century) demonstrate that this
offer was used. Even if the advance of the sedentary society had fatal consequences for the
ecology of the steppe as is demonstrated by the exodus of the Kalyks of 1772, the organic
colonialism of the steppe region still differed markedly from the classical colonialism in so
far as it never created a comparable distance between colonizers and the colonized, but rather
represented a space of their routine interaction along the porous frontier. Unlike the discovery
of the exotic societies on the other side of the ocean, a slow gradual penetration into a terrain
of the steppe defined by the very absence of sharp physical boundaries hardly contributed to
the accentuation of the symbolic boundaries and distances that are characteristic of classical
colonialism.
Russia as a Colonial Power
In 1865 Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Petr Valuev wrote in his diary : “General
Cherniaev took Tashkent. Nobody knows what for and whose order he was following, but
there is something erotic in it.” Valuev’s words capture wonderfully the attitude of the
Russian society towards the far away colonial ventures. For a very long time, the energies of
32
Paul Avreh, Russian Rebels, 1600-1800. New York: W. W. Norton&Co., 1976, 5-6.
Zenon Kohut, Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorbtion of the Hetmanate, 1760s –
1830s. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1988, 198-201.
34
Roger P. Bartlett, Human Capital. The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia, 1762-1804. Cambridge University
Press, 1979.
35
Edward Lazzarini, “The Crimea under Russian Rule. 1783 to the Great Reforms,” in Michael Rywkin (ed.)
Russian Colonial Expansion to 1917. Mancell Publishing house, London and New York, 123-141.
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the imperial elite were consumed by the internal colonization project and the struggle to
establish control over the porous steppe frontier leaving practically no possibility for the
serious involvement overseas. There was even a significant element of conscious selfrestriction in all the ventures that threatened with overextension. For a more than a century
and a half after the conclusion of the treaty of Nerchinsk with China of 1689, Russian Empire
made no attempts to establish its control over the Amur river, which was latter essential for
the establishment of definitive control over the Far East. The policy of Nicholas I era
considered it unnecessary and even undesirable to stimulate Russian colonization of the Far
East and the Kamchatka, out of fear that any such activation would provoke the British or the
French appetites. And even after the establishment of Russian control over the Amur valley
and Primorie as well as the beginning of the colonial penetration into Central Asia, Russian
government famously sold its possessions in the Alaska to the United States realizing the
unfeasibility of preserving such a far way possession with so scant resources.
At the same time, the interest for colonial ventures accompanied by a characteristic
colonial modes of thinking was present relatively early on in Russian history. At the
beginning of the 19th century Russian government authorized the creation of the RussianAmerican company drawing on the experience of private British, French and Dutch
companies that constituted the early form of European colonialism in Asia and the New
World. As Konstantin Arsen’iev’s “Outline of the Statistics of Russian State” demonstrated
there was a tendency to regard Siberia as a colony rather than an inalienable part of the
Russian national territory and the epitome of the Russian nation, which it became late in
Russian nationalist discourse. First sircumnavigation undertaken by Crusenstern in 1807 was
late in the century followed by another overseas voyages, which time and again stimulated
the interest in colonial ventures, which sometimes took rather extravagant forms, like the
capture of an enclave in Abyssinia by a Russian Cossack in 1900.
Nevertheless, throughout its history Russia remained a land-based, contiguous rather
than a oversea empire and the most important colonial involvements took place in Central
Asia and the Far East. However, as Valuev’s words might have suggested, there was a new
aspect to these endeavors, distinguishing them from Russia’s “internal colonization project”
and the “organic colonialism” of the steppe zone and at the same time offering possibilities
for comparison of Russia’s policy in Central Asia with the British or French colonialism. In
fact, scholars adopting the narrow definition of colonialism refer to Russia’s empire in
Central Asia as the only ground for calling Russia a colonial power. Indeed, here one finds
exoticism, erotic connotations and the opposition between European science and
enlightenment on the one hand and religious fanticism, despotism and barbarity on the other,
which play important role in the construction of the colonial subject. The distance between
colonizers and the colonized is much more evident here than in the two previous contexts as
local population is represented as an unambiguous other of the imperial administrators and
the military, whose post-Petrine Europe-oriented identity might otherwise have been in deep
crisis marked by the Crimean defeat and the popularity of Pan-Slavic interpretations a la
Danilevskii. In fact, the Central Asian imperial encounter helped Russian to regain a sense of
identity, consumed by the metaphysics of symbolic conflict between Russia and Europe.
According to Dostoievskii, “In Europe we are perceived as Tatars, but in Asia we can and
must play the Europeans.”
This brings one to the by know famous debate about the character of Russian
orientalism between Adeeb Khalid, Nathaniel Knight and Maria Todorova on the pages of
Kritika. Whereas Adeeb Khalid asserts the similarity of Russian approach with that of the
French or the British discourse on the Orient analyzed in Edward Said’s book, drawing on
Ostroumov as the example how modern Western science became operationalized in the
service of empire in Central Asia, Night offers a counterexample of Grigoriev working in
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Orenburg and practicing a peculiar “Russian” ethnographical approach towards the subject
peoples, which according to his own analysis of the contemporary ethnography was
significantly different from the “German” ethnographical mainstream of the mid 19th century.
The importance of the opposing perspectives of Khalid and Night transcends the limits of a
rather technical debates for it provides a new dimension to the traditional controversy of the
universality vs. specificity of Russian history – the fact which was perceptively captured by
Maria Todorova in her comments called “Does Russian orientalism have a Russian soul?”.
Now at stake is the question of whether one should place Russia in the category of the
colonizers and thereby inadvertently make another step towards normalization of Russian
historical development, or else one should admit the specificity of Russia’s relationship to
the “Orient” and thus assert the uniqueness of Russian imperial experience under a rather
positive side. (Note that those who tend to demonize Russia loose in both cases. Note also
that in Said’s own appreciation Russian case differed substantially from the French and the
British ones so that he refused to apply the notion of Orientalism to Russian case.)
The analysis of two individual cases used by Khalid and Night to support their
arguments might be revealing. First, there is the difference of their geographical position.
Whereas Ostroumov resides in Tashkent throughout his active life, i. e. at the heart of Central
Asia with all the contrasts that such positioning would reveal in comparison with Central
Russia, Grigoriev spends his life in Orenburg, a Russian outpost in the Eurasian steppe, the
foundation of which marked an important element of the slow intrusion of a sedentary society
into nomadic ecology, which was called above “organic colonialism.” Organic colonialism
Second important difference referred to their position in history. Grigoriev was active mostly
in the 1850s and 1860s , i. e. still before the beginning of Russian colonial penetration in
Central Asia, whereas Ostroumov came to Tashkent in the 1890s and remained there until the
fall of the ancien regime, i. e. during the high day of This brings one too a general conclusion
that the contrasting examples of Grigoriev and Ostroumov do not disprove each other, but
rather illustrate the two important aspects of Russian colonial experience, which are
irreducible each other.
Conclusion
Colonial problematique lies at the very basic of modern Russian history. Russian
monarchs of the 18th century spared no effort in order to become part of the European states
system and get recognition as enlightened rulers. Their ambitious military, political and
cultural agenda offers the first instance of “westernization” understood as conscious
adaptation of Western technology and cultural forms by a society that originally did not
participate in their creation. Started by Peter the Great, this westernization had as its most
important result the internalization of the maxims of the rational and orderly government as
well as forms of polite sociability by the elite elements of the society36. Insofar as the process
of westernization had as its goal the production of a new subject out of Russian population, it
can be viewed as a variation of cultural colonialism, which nevertheless lacked the formal
political subordination to Europe, which functioned as cultural metropole for the Russian
“colony.” “Internal colonization project” allows placing Russia with such more classical
examples of the objects of modern colonialism as India or Egypt. At the same time, Russia
was an empire in which a westernized elite sought to establish control over the population of
the outlying territories using the adopted Western technology and political ideas as a means
of and legitimization for imperial dominance. This outward colonialism, as has been argued
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, 369-370. Raeff, “Transfiguration and
Modernization: The Paradoxes of Social Disciplining, Pedagogical Leadership, and thee Enlightenment in the
18th century Russia.” in Idem, Political Ideas an Institutions of Imperial Russia, 1994, 341.For the social
practices of courtly etiquette and ceremony and their political effect see Norbert Elias, Court Society. Translated
by Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983, 78-116.
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in its turn falls into “organic colonialism” representing a natural response of an agriculturalist
society to the challenges of the open steppe frontier and classical colonialism, which took
place in Central Asia, and which gives ground for classifying Russia together with other
modern colonial powers such as Britain and France.
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