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The Empire and Nationalism at War
Russia’s Great War and Revolution
Vol. 1, bk. 1 Murray Frame, Boris Kolonitskii, Steven G. Marks, and Melissa K. Stockdale, eds., Russian Culture in War and Revolution, 1914–22: Popular Culture, the Arts, and Institutions (2014) Vol. 1, bk. 2 Murray Frame, Boris Kolonitskii, Steven G. Marks, and Melissa K. Stockdale, eds., Russian Culture in War and Revolution, 1914–22: Political Culture, Identities, Mentalities, and Memory (2014) Vol. 2 Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen, eds., The Empire and Nationalism at War (2014) Series General Editors: Anthony Heywood, David MacLaren McDonald, and John W. Steinberg
THE EMPIRE AND NATIONALISM AT WAR
EDITED BY ERIC LOHR VERA TOLZ ALEXANDER SEMYONOV MARK VON HAGEN
Bloomington, Indiana, 2014
Each contribution © 2014 by its author. All rights reserved. Cover design by Tracey Theriault.
Cover: Artillery Troops in the Caucasus, Istoriia Rossii do 1917 goda, http:// russiahistory.ru/kavkazskij-front-pervaya-mirovaya-vojna/.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The empire and nationalism at war / edited by Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen. pages cm. -- (Russia’s Great War and Revolution ; v. 2) Summary: “In this multiauthor collection historians examine the nature, ambitions, and limitations of empire and the role these played in the First World War. The volume further analyzes how and why the war facilitated the rise of national movements across Eastern Europe, bringing about the downfall of centuries-old monarchies and engendering the establishment of vulnerable successor states.”--Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-89357-425-3 1. World War, 1914-1918--Political aspects. 2. World War, 1914-1918--Diplomatic history. 3. Imperialism--History--20th century. 4. Nationalism--History--20th century. 5. World War, 1914-1918--Russia. 6. World War, 1914-1918--Europe. Eastern. 7. Russia--History, Military--20th century. 8. Europe, Eastern--History, Military--20th century. 9. Russia-Politics and government--1894-1917. 10. Europe, Eastern--Politics and government--20th century. I. Lohr, Eric. II. Tolz, Vera. III. Semyonov, Alexander. IV. Von Hagen, Mark, 1954D523.E55 2014 940.3’47--dc23 2014036823
Slavica Publishers Indiana University 1430 N. Willis Drive Bloomington, IN 47404-2146 USA
[Tel.] 1-812-856-4186 [Toll-free] 1-877-SLAVICA [Fax] 1-812-856-4187 [Email] [email protected] [www] http://www.slavica.com/
Contents
From the Series Editors .........................................................................................vii Acknowledgments ................................................................................................. xv Ronald Grigor Suny Introduction: Bringing Empire Back ............................................................. 1 Mark von Hagen The Entangled Eastern Front in the First World War .................................. 9 Joshua Sanborn War of Decolonization: The Russian Empire in the Great War ............... 49 Alexei I. Miller The Role of the First World War in the Competition between Ukrainian and All-Russian Nationalism .................................................... 73 Eric Lohr War Nationalism ............................................................................................. 91 ȱĴ Central Asia (1916–20): A Kaleidoscope of Local Revolutions and the Building of the Bolshevik Order .............................109 Andrei Cusco Nationalism and War in a Contested Borderland: The Case of Russian Bessarabia (1914–17) .................................................137
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CONTENTS
Borislav Chernev Ukrainization and Its Contradictions in the Context of the Brest-Litovsk System ...............................................................................163 Ilya V. Gerasimov What Russian Progressives Expected from the War ................................189 Sergey Glebov Postwar Russian Eurasianism’s Anticolonial Critique of Eurocentrism and Modernity ..................................................................217 Tomas Balkelis Memories of the Great War and the Polish-Lithuanian Ěȱȱȱ .....................................................................................241 Vera Tolz Modern Russian Memory of the Great War, 1914–20 .............................. 257 Notes on Contributors ......................................................................................... 287
From the Series Editors
Origins of the Project Since its inception in 2006 Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–22 has taken shape through the collaboration of an international community of historians interested in the history of World War I’s understudied eastern theater. Timed to coincide with the centenary of the Great War—and, by extension, the revolutions it helped unleash—this series responds to several developments in the historiography of the Russian Empire, its Soviet successor, and the Great War as a whole. During a century of scholarly and popular discussion about the First World ǰȱȱȄȄȱȱȱȱĚȱȱĴȱȱĴȱȱ after 1991. In the former USSR, the war stood in the shadow of the revolutions of 1917 and the subsequent Civil War that resulted in the formation of the Soviet Union; most of all, it was eclipsed by the apotheosization after 1945 of the ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱ¢ȱȱ£ȱ ¢ǰȱȱȱęȱ moment in Soviet history. As a result, the First World War appeared as the ęȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȬȱ¢ǰȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ the laws of history. Non-Soviet scholars, often hampered by restricted access to archival collections, downplayed the Russian war experience for other reasons. Specialists in the history of the late empire or early Soviet order tended ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴǯȱ Western historians often focused on the war experience of their own states— most often Britain and its imperial possessions, France, or Germany—or on a welter of issues bequeathed by the outbreak of the war in 1914 and the peacemaking in the years following 1918. These issues included most notably the vexed question of Germany’s “war guilt,” encoded in Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty, which has continued to provoke a lively and contentious discussion in the intervening 100 years. The disintegration of the Soviet Union by the end of 1991 cast the history of ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱěȱǯȱȬȱȯ particularly for military and international history—became relatively accessible to post-Soviet and Western scholars. As important, opportunities opened quickly for collaboration and dialogue between historians in Russia and their colleagues abroad, fostering new research and interpretations that would have been impossible or inconceivable before the late 1980s. Likewise, the
The Empire and Nationalism at War. Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2014, vii–xiii.
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FROM THE SERIES EDITORS
dramatic changes of the era led scholars inside and outside the former USSR to re-examine long-held assumptions about the Soviet state and its origins, accompanied by renewed debate over the viability of the Russian Empire as it adapted to the challenges of modernity. As part of this general re-evaluation, Russia’s Great War became a subject of study in its own right. By the early 21st century, the war years came to be seen as what Peter Holquist termed “a continuum of crisis.” Rather than an abrupt rupture between juxtaposed imperial and Soviet orders, the war now appears not just as a powerful force of disruption, but also a period of intense mobilization—as in the other combatant states—that produced the modes and the “gaze” of statecraft, mass culture, and social control often associated with the totalitarian/authoritarian states of the interwar and Cold War years. Such practices include the nationalization of economies, the increasing application of technology to surveillance, reaching farther than before into the “private” sphere, but also such issues as displaced or refugee populations, racialized nationalist ideologies, and the development of such means as mass propaganda in support of building a utopia in our time. All of these contexts have been brought into sharp focus by the centenary of the Great War. This occasion has engendered a great deal of scholarly and ȱ ǰȱ Ĵȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ¡ǰȱ ȱ memorials that will, over the coming years, mark the milestone anniversaries ȱȱĚȂȱ¢DZȱȱ ȂȱȱȱȱȱȱŗşŗŚȱȱ¢ȱȬ ments enshrined in the historical memories of the combatant states. All of the one-time enemies will honor the millions of dead, wounded, incapacitated, ȱȱ¢ȱȱęȱȃ ȱȱȱȱ ǯȄȱȱȱęȱǰȱȱ will take part in these rites of commemoration. At the end of 2012, the Russian Federation declared 1 August the annual “Day of Remembrance for the VicȱȱȱȱȱȄȱǻȂȱȱ£ȱȱȱ¢Ǽǰȱęȱ observed in 2013. Similarly, having long been consigned to the margins of the dominant narratives on the First World War, Russia’s part in and experience of the Great War has become the focus of a substantial body of new scholarship. This series forms part of that new contribution to the international underȱȱȱĚǯ If the concept behind Russia’s Great War and Revolutionȱ Ěȱ ȱ trends in the historiography on the war’s meaning for Russian history, its form draws on earlier examples of the sort of international collaboration that have become increasingly possible since the late 1980s. Each of the general editors and many members of the editorial collective had participated in similar partnerships, albeit on a smaller scale. Such projects included two volumes on Russian military history that enlisted the best specialists from the international community. Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe edited The Military and Society in Russia (Brill, 2002), while Reforming the Tsar’s Army (2004), edited by Bruce Menning and David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, appeared with the Woodrow Wilson International Center and Cambridge University Press in 2004. Other participants in this project had taken part in two other similar
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collections. In 2005, Routledge published The Russian Revolution of 1905: Centenary Perspectives, co-edited by Jonathan Smele and Anthony Heywood. That year also saw the publication by Brill of volume 1 of The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero; volume 2 came out two years later. Both were overseen by Menning, Schimmelpenninck, and John W. Steinberg. Each of these collections provided instructive examples of how to organize ȱȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Russia’s Great War and Revolution. Aims Recognizing both the growing scholarly interest in Russia’s Great War and the occasion presented by the successive centenaries of the First World War and the Russian revolutions, the editors of this collection have sought to ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěǯȱ ¢ǰȱ they have oriented this collection toward several audiences. For those in the ¢ȯǰȱȱȱȱȯ ȱěȱȱȱ of edited collections, varying in format and approach, that will provide a ȄȄȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęǯȱȱȱĚȱȱ¡ȱ¢ȱ interests and debate, these materials will by default indicate those topics and ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ structure, periodization, and approach taken in their respective volumes. As a consequence, depending on the topic covered, some volumes provide a largely narrative treatment of events—for instance, military operations and engagements—or of developing issues, as occurs in the volume on international relations. Others, most often dealing with the “home front” or Russia ȱȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱ¡ȱęȱǰȱǰȱ or regions. In addition to addressing our academic communities, the editors seek also to engage non-professional readers in the general public, including secondary school students. To this end, as a supplement to the books in this series, the larger editorial collective have created a dedicated website with such supȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ǰȱ ȱ ęǰȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ Further, the editors plan to house on the web-site special sections devoted to ȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ in developing school and lesson plans. Finally, alongside its appearance in book form, the series will also be available on the internet through the Project MUSE scholarly database. Readers with access to that platform will be able to conduct searches in and download entire books or individual chapters as ¢ȱǯȱ ȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Great War and revolutions, the MUSE edition will provide instructors with ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱęȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱ valuable research resource for their students.
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Conceptualization and Organization ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Russia’s experience of the “long” Great War, spanning the First World War, the revolutions, and the Russian Civil War. Editors have sought to cover all ȱęȱȱȱȂȱ¢ȱȱŗşŗŚȮŘŘǰȱȱȱȱȱ¡Ȭ pertise permits, under a series of thematic rubrics. These cover a wide range of subjects, including the experience of the soldiers involved, as well as of the urban and rural populations on the “home front”; the course of international relations, both formal and non-governmental; the implications of war and revolution for the empire as a polity incorporating a broad variety of national and confessional populations bound to the imperial “center” by distinctive administrative and legal regimes; and the impact of prolonged “total war” on the cultural, religious, and intellectual life of the region. Looking outward beyond the territories of the Russian Empire/USSR themselves, other volumes address the perspectives of the Central Powers during the Great War, the effects of war and civil war in Siberia and the Far East, the lengthening “arc of revolution” through the peripheries of the former empire and beyond to ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ ȱŗşŗŝǰȱǰȱę¢ǰȱȱ repercussions of total wars and revolution on ideas about and performance of gender, sexuality, and the sphere of intimacy in Russian society. Of course, ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȃȄȱȱȱĚȱǰȱȱ otherwise stated, the territory and populations housed within the boundaries of the Russian Empire in 1914. ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȃȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ comprehensive narrative history of the war, nor is it meant to serve as an encyclopaedia of issues, events, and persons associated with the war and revolutions. Rather, it seeks to provide clear representation of current scholarly interests and debates, while indicating areas in need of more research. Thus, ȱ ȱęȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ war or the Civil War. Likewise, many areas of international relations remain uncovered, not least the formation of policy-making institutions in the successor states to the Russian Empire. Those interested in the revolutionary ȱ ȱęȱȱȃ ȂȱȄȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ than would have been the case for much of the late 20th century, while the peasantry and Russia’s regions have begun to receive comparatively greater Ĵǯ As noted previously, an underlying aim of this series is to encourage furȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱĜ¢ȱȱȱȱǯȱ Thus, despite the increasing prevalence of the “imperial turn” in our historiography, the impact of the war, revolutions, and Civil War in Russia’s imperial borderlands has only begun recently to command the interest that it warrants. By the same token, like their counterparts for the history of other countries,
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specialists on 20th-century Russia have yet to delve deeply into the manifold aspects of religion and religiosity in the wartime Russian Empire, from popular or folk religion and religious practice, through the high politics of spiritual ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ religious philosophy that had begun to run so strong during the “Silver Age.” Finally, throughout the long process that led to the appearance of this series, the editorial teams have sought to avoid the imposition of an explicit interpretive agenda, in the interests of conveying a sense of current areas of debate and consensus in our historical literature. Thus, while the periodization of 1914–22—i.e., the years spanning the Russian Empire’s entry into war through two revolutions, civil war, and the formation of the Soviet state— has taken hold with many historians, others continue to maintain that such ȱȱȱĚĴȱȱ ¢ȱȱęȱȱŗşŗŝȱȱȱ consequences for the area’s subsequent history. In the interest of providing as ȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȱȱȃȱȱ¢ǰȄȱȱȱȱ a variety of interpretations and periodizations, inviting readers to draw their ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱěǯȱ Process From the beginning, editors have viewed Russia’s Great War and Revolution as a truly global project, incorporating perspectives from historians across Europe, North America, Russia, Asia, and Australia. In addition to the subject Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȃȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ composition of the editorial teams that oversaw the production of each volume. Each of these groups included members from North America, Russia, and the United Kingdom or continental Europe. Where the contents required it—for instance, in the book dealing with Asia, scholars from elsewhere joined the editorial team. In the interests of reaching the broadest possible international audience, the editors agreed on English as the language for the series, with the intention of publishing a parallel Russian-language edition when feasible. The chapters in these volumes consist both of submissions in response to a widely circulated open call and invited contributions. Papers were selected ȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ȭǰȱ then evaluation by the full editorial board. Throughout, editors strove for the greatest possible inclusiveness, with the result that the articles in the series represent a broad variety of scholars, ranging from graduate students through all ranks of the academic cursus honorum. The project and its publication took shape through a series of editorialboard meetings that began at the University of Aberdeen in the summer of 2008. A meeting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison the following summer resulted in agreement on the thematic areas to be addressed by separate volumes, in addition to provisional topical headings for each volume. At ȱ¢ȱȱŘŖŗŖǰȱȬȱęȱȱȱȱȱ
for each volume, leading to a public call for papers the following autumn. From that point forward, editors pursued submissions, while project representatives participated in the presentation of project overviews and draft articles at the annual conventions of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), the Study Group of the Russian Revolution, the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES), the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, and the 2010 Stockholm meeting of the International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES). The chapters contained in the volumes comprising Russia’s Great War and Revolution have undergone an intensive multi-stage review process, overseen collectively by the 30-odd members of the full editorial board. The publisher also solicited a peer assessment of the project description and design; the resulting review yielded important and helpful suggestions, as did consultation with the project’s advisory board. Next, editorial teams for individual volumes jointly assessed contributions. To ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱ for publication, the editorial board adopted a two-tier review exercise. Editorial teams were paired according to areas of overlapping interest or approach. Each of the teams would read and critique the contents for the other’s volume, followed by a general discussion involving the entire editorial board. Finally, after the completion of revisions, that volume’s editorial team sent it on to the general editors, who solicited anonymous ȱ ȱȱęȱ ǯȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ critiques or suggestions from these last reviews, the general editors subĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǯ Acknowledgments ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱǰȱ ȱȱęȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ and institutions. The editorial board owes a special debt of gratitude to Alice D. Mortenson from Minneapolis, Minnesota for her unstinting support of and generosity to this undertaking, not least through the Alice D. Mortenson/Petrovich Chair of Russian History. This resource proved indispensable in making possible several successive editorial ǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱ ȱȱ ǰȱ¡ǰȱ ȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱ¢ǯȱ His contributions helped ensure the success of the summer editorial meetings at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012. Both donors also made possible many of the translations in the collection. ȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ęȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, through the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, the College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the
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Principal’s Interdisciplinary Fund to facilitate our inaugural board meeting ȱ ȱ ȱ ŘŖŖŞȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ŘŖŗŚǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hosted the 2009 and 2012 editorial-board meetings; Nicole Hauge played a key role in arrangements ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǯȱ ȱǰȱ ȱęȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ¢Ȃȱ¢ȱȱȱȱĜȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ History at Uppsala University in Sweden gave us the use of their facilities and meeting-space in the summer of 2010, providing an excellent and hospitable environment for our discussion. Many of the home institutions of the editorial board also contributed travel costs and meeting-space for the compilation of several volumes in this collection; some helped underwrite some translation costs as well. Several other groups and institutions played an important role in the gestation of this series. The Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, particularly Associate Director William Pomeranz, has actively supported the project since its outset. Grants to support our editorial meetings were provided by the British Academy, BASEES, and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. The German Historical Institute in Moscow ¢ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Ĵȱȱȱ Ȭ man. The Study Group on the Russian Revolution served as an important venue for the development of many of the chapters, particularly from British and European contributors, that appear in these volumes. George Fowler and Vicki Polansky of Slavica Publishers have proven the ideal partners in this ¢ȱ ǰȱ ěȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ǰȱ ¡¢ȱ ǰȱ professionalism, and rigor, all of which have made the production process run with an enviable dispatch and smoothness. Finally, the editorial board expresses its heartfelt thanks to more than ŘŖŖȱ ǰȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ǰȱ ěǰȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Russia’s Great War and Revolution. At the risk of tautology, it must be said that ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱǯȱȱěȯȱ patience with an extended production schedule—allowed us to present our readers with strong evidence for the enduring importance and complexity of this eight-year span in the history of Central and Eastern Europe and Asia, the consequences of which continue to shape our world in ways that we are still witnessing. Anthony Heywood David MacLaren McDonald John W. Steinberg June 2014
Acknowledgments
Many cooks made this book. It began with the ambitious initiative of John Steinberg, Tony Heywood, and not long after, David McDonald. They generously provided the means and facilities for conferences in Aberdeen and Madison, where this volume and others took shape. Alexander Semyonov organized and funded a conference in St. Petersburg with the support of the Smolnyi Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University, and National Research University-Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg. Thanks to Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevic for her good work on many fronts. This book has taught us that transnational projects are not easy, even ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱȱěǯȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱĴȱȱ ȱȱȱĴȱȱ have built productive new relationships and begun conversations that will continue in the years to come. I think that this project shows that communities of Russian and American scholars working on Russian history are coming together in new and more regular ways. That bodes well for the future of our ęǯȱ Eric Lohr Washington, DC
Introduction: Bringing Empire Back Ronald Grigor Suny
Even if one does not buy into the Leninist concept of World War I as an “imperialist war,” it appears evident that it was a war of empires. Within each of the warring empires subject peoples found opportunities to act independently, to make choices about loyalties and identities, either with the polities in which they had lived or following nationalist intellectuals and activists into uncharted waters. On the Eastern and Caucasian Fronts four empires and a cluster of smaller nation-states began the war, which concluded with the ȱȱȱȱȱ£ȱ ȱȬǰȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱ ¢ǰȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱęȱ ȱĴǯȱȱȱȱ had predicted, empires fell apart, and the imperialist war metastasized into ȱ ǯȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȱȬ ȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱěȱȱ liberals, conservatives, and socialists to hold the old empires together, albeit with a new political order. At a macrohistorical level World War I was the moment when interimperial rivalries led to the collapse of continental empires in Europe. World War II ȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱǯȱ ȱȱȱȱ domesticate nationalism even though they resorted to the most brutal forms of ȃęȄȯǰȱȱǰȱȱǯȱȱ¡ȱȱ ȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱěȱȱǰȱȱ¢ȱ ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ¢ǰȱȱǰȱȱ encouraged the aspirations of ethnicities. Nationalities—Jews, Poles, Armenians, Ukrainians, and Romanian-speakers—straddled imperial borders and ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢¢ȱȱęǯȱ ȱȱȱȱ Bessarabia, as Andrei Cusco demonstrates, self-styled nation-states like Romania played the same game of enticing the subjects of rival states to its side. How imperial authorities constructed nationality, how they imagined and ęȱȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱ ȱȱ¢¢ȱ and how they would treat particular people. Because Bessarabian peasants were Orthodox, Russian authorities considered them likely to be loyal to the empire, while Germans, Jews, and intellectuals were suspect. The Empire and Nationalism at War. Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2014, 1–7.
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Following the collapse of empires and the foundation of new nationstates, the principal explanation for the rapid transformation of European geography had borrowed from the teleology of the nationalists and depicted the triumph of nations as an irresistible assertion of a natural process. Nations were modern, empires antiquated, and the two were incompatible, ȱ ¢ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵǯȱ ȱ more recent writings a number of historians—among them Aviel Roshwald, Mark von Hagen, Eric Lohr, and Alexei Miller—have shown that rather than empires consistently repressing nationalist impulses, they often contributed ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ world war. Empires were not about to give in and give up to nationalism but were determined to use such sentiments instrumentally to further their ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ reminds us, “The prewar war aims of the future belligerents were in large measure directed at rearranging imperial borders at the expense of their rivals.” The long disputed and unresolved Eastern Question was a trigger that unbalanced the balance of power in Europe, and ambitious politicians ȱ ȱ¡ȱȱęȱȱ ȱȱȱ¢ǯȱȱ ȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱĴȱǰȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ that healthier and more vigorous powers could take advantage. Not only imperial governments but also famished nationalists prepared for what they hoped would be a banquet of spoils. At the imperial level the war might be imagined as sibling rivalries, a brutal contest of cousins, but a slight change of focus from the ministries of ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ more subterranean processes were at work that would ultimately undermine the existing state structures. Beyond the walls of diplomatic salons were the mobile worlds of food supply, labor migration, and the intricate interconnections of what had already become a globalized capitalist economy. All that was solid was melting into air once again. Some analysts believed that integrated markets would render war impossible, but others, like Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, were convinced that the current stage of capitalism would make Ěȱȱȱǯȱ The prewar years, and even more so the war years, were moments when reimagining maps was in the air. Borders were both sacred and manipulable. New homelands were being conceived for “nations” that were still cohering around national myths, common languages, and articulated histoǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ Ȭ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ę¢ȱ winner-take-all, zero-sum-game competition. Peoples who were in the way had to be removed—Jews, Ajars, and Armenians—and running roughshod
INTRODUCTION
3
ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ę¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ races were superior to others. Existing nation-states and stateless nations had their own ambitions—to expand their territory, regain ancient lands, or even the capital, Constantinople or Vilnius, of a long-deceased imperial state. On the Left socialist internationalism collapsed before patriotic concerns, with notable exceptions—the martyred Jean Jaures in France, the Bolsheviks and internationalist Social Democrats in Russia, and the Bulgarian “Narrows”— who would have to wait until war weariness would resurrect transnational ȱ Ĝǯȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ national boundaries, and coreligionists inspired by God and Country killed each other with a sense of just cause. Notoriously empires did not limit their borders to the national composition of desired territories. They were promiscuous in expanding for whatever reason seemed appropriate. Sometimes strategic concerns were paramount; at other times consolidation of the “nation” might be deployed. Russian rulers, ȱȱȱȱȱȃĴȱȄȱȱȱȱȱȱ of the Russian people, were anxious (in the words of General Aleksei Brusilov) to “take back” Galicia, “which despite its being a constituent part of Austria-Hungary is a Russian land, populated, after all, by Russian people.”
ȱȱȱęȱȱ¡ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱ recovery of the territory of its own herrenfolkǯȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱ their campaigns into Caucasia, discovering the Turkic connection with the local “Tatars” (Azerbaijanis). When convenient, however, the imperialist claims could be made on religious or state security grounds. The vision of many nationalists that understandably has seen empires ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ on nation building, which were particularly visible through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Even more palpable was the generation of nationalisms by the wartime policies of the great landed empires of Europe. Wilhelmine Germany and its Austrian allies promoted the fortunes of Ukrainians in a move to detach the western borderlands of the Romanov empire from the Ȃȱ ǯȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ independent Azerbaijan. The Central Powers recruited prisoners of war as potential nationalist opponents of imperial Russian rule, while the Russian ȱěȱĴȱȱ£ȱȱȱȱȱȬ ¢ȱ into armed units. In a clear case of unintended consequences the formation of a Czechoslovak Legion under one Russian government led to events a few years later that helped to initiate the Russian Civil War against another. Future ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ à£ȱÙȱȱ ȱ£ȱ Tito, served time in Russian military camps.
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RONALD GRIGOR SUNY
ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ Ĵȱ to exploit the rivalry between Germany and Russia. Poles dreamed of war between the powers that had partitioned their country over a century before. Georgian nationalists sought German assistance in their drive for ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ orientation. Nation-states proliferated late in the war and at its conclusion but, as Joshua Sanborn points out, not as ethnically homogeneous as proposed in the slogan of national self-determination but as “new multinational states.” One might go as far as to point out that national liberation ended up in the formation of mini-empires disguised as nation-states. Certainly in postwar Poland, with its inclusion of vast lands in which Ukrainians, Belorussians, Germans, and Jews lived, “making” a Polish nation meant assimilation of some, e.g., the Slavic peoples, and the exclusion of others, e.g., Jews and Germans. War and the undulations of the fronts meant the weakening of state power in the peripheries of the empire. Precisely where the national composition of the population was least like that of the central parts of the warring states, there the imperial powers had the least dominion over their subjects. This was most evident in the Polish lands and Right-Bank Ukraine, in Galicia, and in eastern Anatolia. Once the revolution brought down the Romanov empire, the South Caucasus, Finland, Ukraine, and the Baltic region rapidly slipped from under central Russian authority. ȱȱ ȱ¢ȱěȱȂȱǰȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱęǰȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ “refugee.” Ethnicity could be advantageous in some instances, as when one ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȄȱ Ĵǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ other times, for example, when a new occupying power appeared that saw you as a disloyal foreign national. Eric Lohr proposes that a special, contingent form of nationalism, which he calls “war nationalism,” sprung up in the fog ȱ ǯȱ ȱȱęȱ¢ȱȱęȱȱȱ¢ȱ¡ȱȱȱȱ Jews from lands it had occupied and stood by while Cossacks and Poles looted the stores and homes of Jews. Tens of thousands of Germans living in Russian ȱěȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱ more intensely as Germans than as the Russian subjects they had been. Such permissive violence and enforced discrimination only sharpened the ȱ ȱȱȱȱǰȱ¢ȱȱȱĴȱ£ȱȱ Russia’s western borderlands. The lands contested by rival empires had been Ĵęȱȱ ȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ were fought over long before they became the “Bloodlands” that some have argued were the result of particular dictatorial regimes.
INTRODUCTION
5
Looking at the Great War as an early phase of decolonization, as Joshua Sanborn suggests, opens the question of how liberating was national selfdetermination. Those who proclaimed that right, like Lenin, hoped that the great imperial state would somehow hang together as the continent moved from capitalism to socialism. War and revolution, however, led to new forms of imperial power, and in the vast landscape of Central Asia a colonial counȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱĴǯȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ forces that promoted subordination to the center. Tashkent Communists ę¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱęȱȱǯȱȱȱȱ ȱ broken between “bandits” and Reds, but ultimately Moscow considered the ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱ¢ǯ ȱęȱȱȱȂȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱ expedience, opportunity, and physical force than by decisions made by nation£ȱǯȱǰȱȱ¡ǰȱȱęȱęȱ¢ȱ ȱ the Russian Empire, in which they had lived for over a century. In the year of revolution, 1917–18, when socialists dominated local politics, national activists sought autonomy within a federal democratic state. But with the Bolshevik victory in Petrograd and the collapse of the Russian economy, nationalists made a desperate choice to unite with the Romanian state. Lithuanians were torn between a Russian and a German orientation. Their principal enemy, the Poles, dominated Vilnius and other cities and had ambitions to include the traditional Lithuanian capital in their resurrected state. After losing Vilnius to Poland in 1920, Lithuanian nationalism focused on recovering the treasured city, even though its population was heavily Polish and Jewish. The Soviets returned Vilnius to Lithuania in 1939, but at a high price—occupation. Ukraine, as Boris Chernev shows, secured its independence from Russia by subordinating the new republic to the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk, ȱ ęȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȬȬ ȱ Ĵǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ukraine, and German and Austrian soldiers guaranteed the country’s limited sovereignty. Now that the nationalists had a Ukraine, they had to make more complete Ukrainians—to promote the Ukrainian language and integrate the Russian-speaking cities into the new Ukrainian state. Under the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, as well as under the Hetmanate and the Austriansponsored “Red Prince,” Wilhelm von Habsburg, moderate programs of Ukrainization were carried out, laying a foundation for later Soviet indigenization policies. For Chernev the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a positive step in the history of Ukrainian state building. For Russian nationalists (and for ȱ ȱ ¢Ǽȱ Ȭȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ěȱ
6
RONALD GRIGOR SUNY
Bolshevik regime. The treaty is still seen as proof that European imperialism has always been anxious to weaken Russia by stripping it of its borderlands. Before and during the First World War Russian political analysts debated the future contours of their multinational state. Ilya Gerasimov illustrates the variations in Russian liberal thought around the question of how imperial continuity might be reconciled with national self-determination. Liberal intellectuals, most notably the leader of the Kadet Party, Pavel Miliukov, generally supported the war aims of the Russian Empire. Miliukov advocated expansion of the empire to include all of Poland and the eastern provinces ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ and Armenians under the scepter of the tsar. But he not only linked empire to nation in his design but also favored Russian conquest of Constantinople and the Straits as essential for the empire’s future. Other visions for maintaining Russia as an empire came from Russians’ familiarity with British historical writing on the British Empire. Former Social Democrat turned liberal Petr Struve was enamored of the British model, as he understood it from his reading of the historian John Robert Seeley. Maksim Kovalevskii, a principal leader of the Progressive Bloc, also saw the British Empire (or at least a well-scrubbed idealized version of that empire) as a model for Russia. The imperialist visions of leading Kadets and Progressives contrasted with that of the journalist Maksim Slavinskii, who advocated that Russia develop a nationality policy that recognized the full cultural development of the peoples within the empire while simultaneously promoting a universal imperial citizenship for all subjects of the empire. Slavinskii’s precocious ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ and a French-style civic citizenship without any acknowledgment of ethnicity, on the other. The Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevskyi spoke of Russia as “an empire of nations” (imperiia narodov) that in the future needed to grant national-territorial autonomy to the various subject peoples. The ȱ ȱȱ ȱ ȱȱǰȱȱȱęȱȱȱ favor of nations as the political form of the future and condemning empires to history’s dustbin. Even with the fall of the tsarist empire and the Bolshevik proclamation of national self-determination and federalism as the basis for the Soviet state, Russian theorists continued to imagine forms of imperial ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ¢ȱ Glebov provides a guide through the thickets of Eurasian thought in the postwar period. Disempowered émigrés proposed a fundamental unity of ȱ£ȱȱȱěȱ ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ ȱȱȱȱęǯȱ
INTRODUCTION
7
War, one would think, is indelibly etched in people’s memories. But Tomas Balkelis reveals that World War I has faded from Lithuanian national ¢ǰȱ ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱĚȱ ȱ Poland remain vivid. The Great War seems also have been erased from Rusȱȱȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱ£ȱȱǯȱȱĜȱěȱȱ constructing historical memory are hard at work in Putin’s Russia. Victors in World War II, Russians are seen as victims of World War I and the Russoȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŘŖǯȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ themes of victimhood, always popular means to mobilize a people against another, to counter accusations that Russians have been perpetrators of atrocities. To relativize the Polish narrative about the Katyn massacres during ȱȱ ǰȱȬȱȱȱȱȱę¡ȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱŗşŘŖǯȱȱȱ term “genocide,” which too many journalists and scholars use promiscuously, has been applied to the case of the POWs in Poland. While the Russian side implied that Katyn was revenge for the deaths of Russian POWs in 1920, the ȱȱȱ ¢ȱ ȱȱȱÙȂȱ¢ȱȱȱǯ ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱǻ¢ȱȱŗşşŖǼǰȱȱěȱȱȱ people under the Communists were detailed, in the Putin-Medvedev years (from 2000) the brutalities of Stalinism were de-emphasized. Around 2010 the Kremlin decided to reinvigorate commemoration of the Great War. By seeing 1914 as the more important point at which Russia stepped on the world stage, 1917 and all that could be pushed into a shallow memory hole. The Putin government shifted from equating Russia and the USSR to a new narrative sharply distinguishing the two. A return to the perspectives of the Yeltsin decade, the light shines again on imperial Russia and leaves the 70 years of Soviet Power in the dark. It may be that Lenin will still have the last word. If Struve learned about empire from J. R. Seeley, Lenin acknowledged that he learned about imperialism, a newly coined word, from J. A. Hobson. Appalled by the ferocity as well as the stupidity of the war, he tried desperately to understand it from his Marxist perspective. The war was imperialist—annexationist, predatory, plunderous, a war for the redivision of the world, the partition and reparation ȱǰȱȱȱĚǰȱȱȱęȱǯȱ¢ȱ ȱ ȱȱ ěȱ ȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȬ guinary engagement of empire and nations that brought down centuries-old monarchies and established vulnerable successor states continues to defy ¢ȱ ¡ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ȱ Ĝȱ any longer, but the road to understanding, as this collection shows, requires a renewed appreciation of the nature, ambitions, and limitations of empire.
The Entangled Eastern Front in the First World War Mark von Hagen
ȱ¢ȱĚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǻhistoire croisée) as a framework for considering the issues of nation and empire at the core of the contributions to this volume. My examples mostly come from the zone of interaction between the Russian, German, and Austrian Empires, but analogous (and mutually related) developments occurred in the Caucasus, in Turkestan, in southeastern Europe, and elsewhere. Although the Eastern and Western Fronts were entangled in themselves, I highlight in this essay features of the Eastern Front that distinguished it from the Western, both for the contemporaries who experienced the war and for the outcomes of that ȱȱȱǯȱ ȱȱěȱȱȃȄȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱ our colleagues, who, instead of entangled, might as readily use the terms interconnected, intertwined, interrelated (and all those adjectives without the ę¡ȱinterȬǼȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱĴȱȱȱȬ nections between nations, peoples, states, and within them. Finally, I suggest that entangled histories can also embrace what I in earlier essays have called the “mobilization,” “internationalization,” and “militarization” of ethnicity during the war.1 War and Entangled Histories The approach of entangled history, which overlaps with transnational and international history but also can embrace subnational and regional histories, has mostly been engaged with peacetime cultural and intellectual transfers, borrowings, adaptations, and other interactions among and between states.2 Ȳȱȱ ǰȱȃȱ ȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ Empire,” in ȬȱȱDZȱĚȱȱȱǰȱǯȱĴȱǯȱȱ and Jack L. Snyder (London: Routledge, 1998), 34–57. 1
2 Ȳȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ ȱǰȱȱ notably Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Penser l’histoire croisée: ȱ ȱ ȱ ·Ě¡·ǰȄȱ Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales 58, 1 (2003): 7–36; in ȱȱȃ¢ȱDZȱ ȱ·ȱȱȱȱȱĚ¡¢ǰȄȱ
The Empire and Nationalism at War. Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2014, 9–48.
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MARK VON HAGEN
This essay considers some of the possibilities of adapting the “entangled histories” approach to a major world war. A focus on war suggests starting with militaries, but modern warfare had been evolving in the direction of ȱȱȱěǰȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱǰȱȱ “total war,” which for him entailed the fusion of what had been understood as separate civilian and military spheres in the wake of the industrial revolution and the ways that revolution helped to transform modern warfare. ěȱȱȱȱȱȃȄȱ£ȱȱȱȱȱȱ resources of a warring state, and the First World War came closer to realizing that military utopia than humanity had ever known; it appears, importantly, that his vision of total war was at least partly shaped by his own role as chief ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ regime for territory covering roughly today’s Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ ȱ¢ǯȱěȱ and Hindenburg then adapted the model they felt had worked so well for the occupation regime back to the German homefront.3 Fearing the overuse of ȱȱȱȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱěȂȱȱȱ an entangling of the civilian and the military spheres, which had been kept relatively more separate in the prior century. All the key developments of the war proceeded in interaction with the enemy through copying and responding to challenges. This included advances in military technology from poison gas to tanks to aerial warfare and trenches, as well as the economic blockade and propaganda. Well before the outbreak of hostilities in the summer of 1914, the soonto-be-belligerent powers were entangled with one another in myriad ways. Those entanglements helped shape the unfolding of the war and contributed to its intensity and destructiveness. I shall focus on developments in imperial ¢ǰȱȱǰȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȬ ¢ǰȱȱĴȬ man Empire, and Serbia, as the powers that grappled with each other along History and Theory 45, 1 (February 2006): 30–50. Entangled history has also seen important gestures from historians of Russia and Germany. See Andreas Kappeler, ȱ ȱ ȱ DZȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2012); and Philipp Ther, “The Transnational Paradigm of Historiography and Its Potential for Ukrainian History,” in A Laboratory of Transnational History: Ukraine and Recent Ukrainian Historiography, ed. Georgiy Kasianov and Ther (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009), 81–114; and Ther, “Deutsche Geschichte als transnationale Geschichte: Überlegungen zu einer Histoire Croisée Deutschlands ȱĴǰȄȱComparativ 13, 4 (2003): 156–61. ȲȱȱěǰȱMy War Memories, 1914–1918, 2 vols. (London: Hutchinson, ŗşŗşǼDzȱ ěǰȱ The Nation at War, trans. A. S. Rappaport (London: Hutchinson, 1936); Martin Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship: The Politics of the German High Command ȱ ȱȱěǰȱŗşŗŜȮŗşŗŞ (New York: Croom Helm, 1976). 3
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
11
what would become known as the Eastern Front.4 These polyethnic and multiconfessional empires had become increasingly entangled with the ethnic and religious minorities of their rival empires in the decades prior to the war; during the war the severing of these entanglements often turned violent.5 Of course, these powers were also entangled in various ways with their western allies and enemies, most notably, Britain, France, Italy, and eventually the United States. Still, the intensity of relations among the powers of the ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱĚȱȱȱ ȱěȱȬ odization. Rather than 1914–18, for most of the societies on the Eastern Front the state of war extended all the way to 1922/23. When the war in the east—which turned in many places to civil wars fought by and between newly created states—ended, the pressures and constraints of the various entanglements ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱęȱȱȱȱ populations than was the case in the west. Prewar Military and Diplomatic Entanglements The four eastern empires, as well as most of the relatively newer nations of the borderlands of those empires, were created in the process of dynastic marriages and wars of conquest and annexation that left large national and confessional minorities in various places in the complex ethno-confessional demographic structures of these states. Moreover, the borders that these wars and marriages created left ethnic and confessional communities split among two and sometimes more empires. Jews, for example, lived primarily ȱ ¢ǰȱȬ ¢ǰȱȱĴȱǰȱȱȱȱDzȱ Poles were shared among Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, Ukrainians ȱ ȱ ǻ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ Ǽȱ ȱ Ȭ Hungary (where they were known as Ruthenians); Armenians were shared ȱȱĴȱȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ lim peoples on the southern borders of Russia and the northern borders of the Ĵȱȱȱǯ6
Ȳ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȂȱȃȄȱȱȱ ȱ ȱȱȱ British and French, and even the American, perspectives, we should remember that from Petersburg and Moscow, the Eastern Front was, instead, the Southwestern and Northwestern Fronts. 4
5 Ȳȱ ǰȱEthnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia and the Middle East, 1914–1923 (London: Routledge, 2001). 6 Ȳȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢DZȱ ȱ ȱ Essay,” in Imperial Russian Foreign Policy, ed. Hugh Ragsdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), especially 322–56.
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ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ 19th century by the Holy Alliance and the Concert of Europe, in which the autocratic emperors sought to contain the threat of liberal and nationalist revolutions in their colonial frontiers. During the “springtime of nations” in Central Europe in 1848–49, Russian Emperor Nicholas I sent his army to save the Austro-Hungarian army and the Habsburg dynasty when it crushed a Hungarian uprising that was calling for revolution in Budapest. Later in the same century, however, that alliance came unraveled after the Crimean War and the Congress of Berlin that “revised” Russia’s gains during the RussoĴȱȱȱŗŞŝŝȮŝŞDzȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ as unreliable allies and even threats to Russian power. The rise of Germany in ȱ ȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱ¡ȱȱǰȱǰȱȱ then France, but Russia too felt increasingly threatened by a rising Germany and began to disentangle itself from the Central European monarchies and signed a new agreement with France. Still, the Romanovs, like most of the ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ě ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ 18th century, Catherine II was a German (from Schleswig-Holstein); later tsars married German princesses, including the last tsarina, baptized Aleksandra, but born as Alix of Hesse. Whereas obeying a foreign monarch on the throne was more politically acceptable in the more cosmopolitan 18th century, by the ȱŗşȱ¢ǰȱȱȱ ȱęȱȱȱȱȱ of treason in the tsarina, her favorites, and the Baltic Germans in the imperial Ĝȱȱȱȱ¢ǯȱ The prewar war aims of the future belligerents were in large measure directed at rearranging imperial borders at the expense of their rivals. This had long been one of the aspects of the “Eastern Question,” the dragging ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ ȱȱȃȱȄȱȱȱ ȱę¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱęȱȱĴȱ¢ǰȱ ȱȬ derland peoples (Randvölker) longed for liberation from the Russian yoke and might be expected to form a part of the Ĵ of German economic and political dominance that was clearly the preferred alternative and also, coincidentally, part of the medieval Germanic inheritance.7 In this sense, Russia, in German eyes, was another “sick man” of Europe waiting to be “relieved” of its borderland peoples. But Austria-Hungary might also qualify as yet another “sick man” awaiting some cataclysmic end; this was the view of many Czech, Croat, and Hungarian nationalists in the late empire, the view of some Ȳĵȱ, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York: Norton, 1967), 122–26, 132–54, and chap. 5. 7
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
13
Austrian Germans, and probably not far from the view of the Russian military and diplomatic elites. Although Russia had a treaty of alliance with France, the ties with the German military remained strong. The Russian military reform of 1874 was shaped by War Minister Dmitrii Miliutin’s admiration for the Prussian army, ȱ ȱ ěǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęǯȱ ǰȱ when the rise of the new German Reich became more and more evident, it ȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱěȱ ȱȱȱȂȱ primary enemy in case of the expected war.8 One example of the close though troubled relationship was the special post of the “military plenipotentiary” (Militärbevollmächtigte) to the tsarist court and an equivalent posting to the court of Kaiser Wilhelm, who had revived this interimperial line of communication ȱŗşŖŚǯȱȱĜǰȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȬ ȱǰȱȱȱȬȱ¢ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱǯȱDzȱȱĜȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱǰȱȱ to the Foreign Ministry nor even to the military hierarchy.9ȱ ȱĴȱǰȱȱ relationship between the imperial highnesses might have averted the war in 1914, but disentanglement ultimately prevailed over entanglement in RussianGerman relations. Another example of the special relationship between the two imperial cousins, Nicholas and Wilhelm, were their honorary commands and those of their closest male relatives in the armies, and in particular in the guards regiments, of the other’s army. The Russian grand duke and the sovereign wore the uniforms of honorary colonels in German regiments. Kaiser Wilhelm II was honorary colonel in the Vyborg Regiment. On the eve of the war, the grand duke Nikolai Nikolaevich visited his cousins in Germany for the regimental holiday of the imperial German unit in which he was enrolled as commander. The grand duke participated in this show of German-Russian dynastic bonds, even though he was a Francophile and despised his German relatives.10 One further illustration of these Eastern Front entanglements is ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěǰȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ŗşŗŚǰȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ ¢ǰȱ ȱ £ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ãĵǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ luncheon at the Neues Palais in the German capital to honor the birthday of
Ȳȱȱǯȱǰȱ ǯǰȱ¢ȱȱ ȱȱǰȱŗŜŖŖȮŗşŗŚ (New York: Free Press, 1992). 8
Ȳȱ ȱ ǯȱ Ȃȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ŗŜŚŖȮŗşŚś (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), 262–64. 9
ȲȱǰȱFor Faith, Tsar, and Fatherland: The Life of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich ȱǰȱŗŞśŜȮŗşŘş (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, forthcoming).
10
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MARK VON HAGEN
the Russian tsar.11 Militaries also engaged in joint exercises and thereby got to know their counterparts personally, often forging bonds that would be crucial once hostilities commenced. Militaries typically prepare for future wars by seeking to know as much about their potential rivals as possible and adapting their organizations to those perceived threats. Each of the great powers had developed intelligence services that employed hundreds of professionals who tried to penetrate those areas of states’ policies that those states most wanted to keep secret from their rivals.12 The German imperial elites’ global ambitions put them primarily in rivalry with their British and French neighbors, but Austria ¢ȂȱĚȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ¢ȂȱĴȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Dzȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ was above all directed at Russia and Serbia.13 Russia’s war games simulated Ěȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ȭ ¢Dzȱ Ȭ ¢ȱ ¡ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Dzȱ ¢ȱ ¡ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱǰȱ ȱ¢ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĚǯȱȱ the eve of war, two of the soon-to-be-rivals mounted trials against spies and ǯȱ ȱŗşŗřȱȱȱǰȱȱ¡ȱ ȱěȱĜȱȱȱ Austro-Hungarian army, shot himself after being charged with passing along secret plans for wartime deployment to the Russians. A very public charge of espionage that started in 1912 in Russia ended in the death by hanging of a Russian colonel, Sergei Nikolaevich Miasoedov, early in the war (1915) on ȱȱȱȱȱęȱǯ14 In some sense, diplomats are by their professional training and mission agents of entanglement, and the diplomatic corps of the four empires that would soon face each other on the Eastern Front were—not surprisingly—very entangled before the outbreak of war. Much of their entanglement focused on the Balkans, which had engaged foreign ministers, ambassadors, and a whole ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȲĵȱǰȱWar of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914, trans. Marian Jackson (New York: Norton, 1975), 402. 11
Ȳȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ ǰȱȱǯȱǯȱ¢ǰȱKnowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), especially Norman Stone’s chapter on “Austria-Hungary,” 115–36; Holger H. Herwig, “Imperial Germany,” 62–97; and William C. Fuller, Jr., “The Russian Empire,” 98–126. On war plans, see Paul M. Kennedy, ed., The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880–1914 (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1979).
12
Ȳ ȱǯȱǰȱ ǯǰȱPlanning for War against Russia and Serbia: Austro-Hungarian and German Military Strategies, 1897–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
13
Ȳȱǯȱǰȱ ǯǰȱThe Foe Within: Fantasies of Treason and the End of Imperial Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).
14
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
15
a good illustration of entangled relationships, above all with Germany and ǰȱȱȱ ȱȱĴȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱ embassy to the Vatican. Austria-Hungary’s foreign minister at the outbreak of the war, Count Leopold Berchtold, was summoned back to Vienna to assume his new post from St. Petersburg, where he had been ambassador since 1906 and had served in the embassy there since 1903. He replaced Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, who, similarly, had been ambassador to St. Petersburg in 1899 and was summoned back to Vienna from Russia.15 The Russian foreign minister in 1914 was Sergei Sazonov; he had been summoned from Rome in 1910, where he served as chief of diplomatic mission to the Vatican. His predecessor, Aleksandr Izvolskii, had served in the Vatican, Belgrade, Munich, Tokyo, and Copenhagen before returning to St. Petersburg in 1906.16 Although the careers of Germany’s foreign ministers, known as state ȱ ȱ ȱ ěǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ future Eastern Front co-belligerents, there were some similar stories, nota¢ǰȱȱȱ ĵǯȱ ĵȱȱ¢ȱĚ¢ǰȱȱȱȱȱ 1918, but his career is illustrative of several levels of entanglement. He rose ȱȱ ȱ¢ȱǰȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱĴ·ȱȱ St. Petersburg, was appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm II to the restored position of Fluegeladjutant, which gave him more direct access to Wilhelm and Nicholas II than either the Russian or German ambassadors had. The other “entangled” biography among German state secretaries was that of Richard von Kühlmann, who served in 1917–18 and led the German delegation to the negotiations in Brest in 1918. Kühlmann had been born in Constantinople and was serving as ambassador there when he was summoned back to Berlin.17 In short, these biographies remind us that there were many people in decisionȱȱ ȱȱęȱ¡ǰȱȱȱǰȱȱ the countries that would soon be their allies or enemies in the oncoming war. Economic Entanglements ȱěȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱĚ ǰȱ all made for a complex set of prewar border-crossings of goods, people, and 15 Ȳȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱǯȱ ¢ǰȱAristocratic Redoubt: ȱȬ ȱȱĜȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱǻȱ¢Ĵǰȱ DZȱȱ University Press, 1999).
ȲǯȱǯȱǯȱǰȱRussia and the Origins of the First World War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983).
16
Ȳȱ ǰȱ The German Diplomatic Service, 1871–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). 17
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technologies. Businesses, too, had their own “intelligence” services that ȱ ǰȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ęȱ also employed thousands of workers in foreign cities and regions who gathȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ home companies to help make business decisions about investments. Labor ȱȱȱȱĚ ȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱȱȱ eastern empires westward. In addition, nearly all the empires experienced migration of labor from poorer colonial borderlands to urban centers that contributed to the ethnic and confessional diversity of the major cities in the borderland regions. In Germany, immediately after the outbreak of war, the Prussian War Ministry forbade all foreign seasonal farm workers and those working in German industry from returning home. These foreign workers were largely Russian and Austrian Poles and fewer Austrian Ruthenians, who had been migrating to Germany for the last half century. On the eve of the war, Germany depended on roughly 1.2 million foreign workers, with half a million in agriculture and 700,000 in industry. Congress Poland was the main source of such labor, but, with the outbreak of war, was now enemy territory. ȱȱȱ ȱȱ¡ȱȱǰȱȱ ȱĴȱȱ labor migration were partially restored; by September 1917 nearly 600,000 foreign Polish workers were once again helping to keep the German economy running, though a new labor force was discovered in prisoners of war, the overwhelming majority of whom also came from the Russian Empire.18 Similarly, Austria-Hungary and Russia made use of large populations of foreigners or “outsiders” in their labor-short economies, above all prisoners of war and refugees. In the three imperial capitals, Berlin, Vienna, and Petrograd, these agricultural labor shortages led to food shortages which became a major factor in the discrediting of the regimes’ authority and quickly led to the overthrow of the monarchies and the liberal regimes that followed.19 Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Poland and Austria-Hungary, see Ulrich Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880–1980: Seasonal Workers, Forced Laborers, Guest Workers, trans. William Templer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 9–85; for the army’s ban on return, 87. See also Klaus J. Bade, “Vom Auswanderungsland zum ‘Arbeitseinfuhrland’: Kontinentale Zuwanderung und ausländerbeschäftigung in Deutschland im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert,” in ǯȱǯȱ DZȱãȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱŗşǯȱ ǰȱǯȱȱǻęDZȱ Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 1984), 2: 458–62.
18
Ȳȱ ¢ȱȱǰȱȱ ȱ ǯȱ ǰȱThe First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1918 (London: Arnold, 1997), 272–96; on Berlin, see Belinda J. Davis, ȱȱDZȱǰȱȱȱ¢¢ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); on Vienna, see Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge: 19
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
17
Russia’s economy on the eve of the war was very tied to the world economy through extensive foreign trade and investment. In the last two decades of the old regime, foreign investment made up nearly half of all new capital formation, and “in 1914 foreigners held at least 40 percent of the total nominal capital of corporations operating in Russia.” German capital accounted for 20 percent ȱȱȱȱDzȱȱŗşŗŚȱŘŝśȱȱȱȬȱęȱ with 80.5 million rubles capital “were founded under German law and owned entirely by German subjects. In addition to the foreign investment, Russian ęȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ management and administrative positions.20 Already before the war, Russian merchants and industrialists had begun to complain about the competition they faced in the foreign involvement in the Russian economy. Beyond the impressive role of German and Austrian capital in Russia, trade with Germany made up nearly half of its total foreign trade. A large part of Russia’s exports went to their markets through the Black ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ Russia’s access to markets was shut down and contributed to calls for the Russian capture and “reconquest” of Constantinople as a war aim of not only the ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Government that assumed power after the abdication of the tsar in 1917. Cultural, Religious, and Ideological Entanglements ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ ȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ international scholarly societies and their journals and other media outlets. ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ but many subjects of the Russian Empire had deep admiration for German culture and scholarship. That admiration turned to indignation and outrage ȱ ȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȃȱȱȱ World of Culture” on 4 October 1914, in which they defended “Germany’s just cause in the desperate struggle for existence which has been forced upon the nation.”21 Cambridge University Press, 2004); for Petrograd, see Lars T. Lih, ȱȱ¢ȱ in Russia, 1914–1921 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); and Barbara A. Engel, “Not by Bread Alone: Subsistence Riots in Russia during World War I,” Journal of Modern History 69, 4 (1997): 696–721. ȲȱǰȱNationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 56. 20
Ȳ ûȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭǰȱ Der Aufruf “An die Kulturwelt!” Das Manifest der 93 und die Anfänge der Kriegspropaganda im Ersten
21
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War and peace were not always at the center of intellectual collaborations. Germany is thought to have led Europe in its cultivation of militarism,22 with ȱ ȱȱǰȱĜǰȱȱĴȱǰȱȱǰȱȬ Ȭ gary, Serbia, Turkey, and even France were not immune and can be considered to have nurtured militarist cultures to one degree or another. Paramilitary youth organizations, on the model of the Boy Scouts or the widely popular “falcon” (sokol) movements in Central and Eastern Europe, combined nationalism, social Darwinism, and other ideas to shape ideals of masculine virtue for war and empire. Another type of movement that transcended national borders and was often seen as a threat to the military and political leadership was a series of pan-movements, the most important of which were pan-Germanism, panSlavism, and pan-Turkism. Zionism, which had its origins in our entangled lands, also appealed to Jews across imperial borders and worldwide to address the question of Jewish minorities and their treatment in the absence of a Jewish homeland. At another level, however, nearly every new state in Europe, most of them in the east and southeast, nurtured variants of these larger panmovements that expressed dissatisfaction with current international borders and advocated often irredentist or annexationist politics. The model here was ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ǯȱ But such ambitions were clear in Serbia for a greater Serbia, and in Greece, which felt itself still thwarted in its potential for national greatness, as did Bulgaria, Romania, and other “greater” movements.23 These were variants of nationalism discontented with the current international arrangement of states and populations.24 In contrast, the peace movement had strong advocates not only among the major churches, but also among liberal and socialist parties and the emerging
WeltkriegȱǻĴDZȱ£ȱȱǰȱŗşşŜǼǰȱŞŗȮŗŖŚǰȱŗŜřȮŜŚDzȱȱȱǰȱ “Wissenschaft und Militarismus: Der Aufruf der 93 ‘An die Kulturwelt’ und der Zusammenbruch der internationalen Gelehrtenrepublik im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in ĵȱ ȱ śŖȱ ǰȱ ed. William M. Calder II, Helmut Flasha, and Theodor Lindken (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985), 649–719. ȲȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱŗşȬ¢ȱ ȱ politics, see Volker Berghahn, DZȱȱ ¢ȱȱȱ ȱǰȱŗŞŜŗȮ 1979 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982).
22
Ȳȱȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱŗŞŖŚȮ 1920ȱǻĴDZȱ¢ȱȱȱǰȱŗşŝŝǼDzȱȱȱǯȱ ǰȱȱȱ Wars, 1912–1913: Prelude to the First World War (London: Routledge, 2000). 23
24
Ȳ ǰȱEthnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires.
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
19
women’s movement.25 Political movements also created international networks that convened regular congresses to address problems of the working class, revolution, or imperialism as the source of war.26 Even antiwar and socialist movements, however, helped shape images of enemies and friends; for examǰȱ ȱȱ¢ȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱ an oppressive autocratic empire, and a major obstacle to European progress. When war was declared in July 1914, the German Social-Democrats, as did their counterparts in Vienna, rallied quickly to a “defensive” war against Russian aggression.27 If we turn to entanglements in the worlds of religion, the Vatican was an example of an international organization that also maintained ties to its repreȱȱȱDzȱȱȱȱĚȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ with large Catholic populations, including the large minorities in Germany and Russia, but also the Greek Catholic congregations in Eastern Europe and ȱȱȱȱǰȱ¢ȱȱȱĴȱ rule. The Habsburg emperor continued to insist on his role as protector of these Christians (and Vienna maintained close ties with the Vatican), as did the Orthodox Russian tsar in regard to Orthodox Christians. The sultan in Istanbul, in his role as caliph of the Islamic world, also claimed his role as protector of Muslim minorities wherever they resided.28 ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ empires were also intertwined with more determined ecumenical projects of reuniting the Eastern and Western Christian churches under the pope or ȱ¡ȱȱǯȱȱȱȱȱęȱ Ȳǯȱ ǯȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ The History of Peace: A Short Account of the Organised Movements for International Peace (London, 1931); and Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and a World without War: The Peace Movement and German Society, 1892–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 25
ȲȱǰȱInternational Socialism and the World War (New York: Anchor Books, 1969); Georges Haupt, Socialism and the Great War: The Collapse of the Second International (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); and James Joll, The Second International, 1899–1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). 26
Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ Die Nation ȱ ěȱ ȱ DZȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Weltkriegȱǻ ãĴDZȱȱǭȱǰȱŘŖŖŘǼǰȱŗŗŝȮŘŘǯȱ
27
28 Ȳȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ£ȱ Wessel, “Religion, Politics and the Limits of Imperial Integration—Comparing the
ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȄȱ řřŝȮśŞDzȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ǰȱ ȱ Azmi Ozcan, “Imperial Legitimacy and Unity—The Tradition of the Caliphate in the ĴȱǰȄȱřŝřȮŞŚǰȱȱȱComparing Empires: Encounters and Transfers in the Long Nineteenth Centuryǰȱǯȱ ãȱȱȱȱȱ ȱǻ ãĴDZȱ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012).
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also developed large followings during these years; one local example of importance is that of the Greek Catholic metropolitan of Lemberg,29 Andriy Sheptits´kyi, who sought to end the centuries-long division between Rome ȱ¢£ȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ¡ȱȱ Catholicizing Russians. Sheptits´kyi, a Polish-Ukrainian nobleman who had a seat in the Viennese parliament and was a leader of the Ukrainian (Ruthenian) movement in Austria-Hungary, saw his Greek Catholic Church, itself a hybrid institution between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, as the natural instrument ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȄȱ ǻȱ ȱ ȱ Ǽȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ his project. ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ imperial elites is their treatment of what was emerging as a Ukrainian national movement. The Austrian authorities in Galicia were much more accommodating to “their” Ukrainians, or Ruthenians, than were the Russians; Ruthenians had their own political parties, but could also vote and run for election in non-Ruthenian parties at the provincial sejm level and in Vienna at the Reichsrat.30 On their side, the Russians sought to highlight the injustices done to those Galician or Carpathian Russians, as the Russians insisted on calling the Ruthenians; these Ruthenians were at their core part of the tribes of ancient Rus´ that had been lost to Polish Catholic and later Austro-Hungarian Catholic conversion from their “true” and “original” Orthodox faith and from the Great Russian language by the polonization of their culture. These people, again from the point of view of Russian nationalists, were by no means Ukrainians, but long-lost Russians who were eagerly awaiting liberation from the yoke of Ȭ ¢ȱȱȃęȄȱ ȱȱȱǯȱǰȱȱ the Russian side of the border, the Ukrainian language had been banned in the second half of the 19th century, a ban that was lifted as part of the 1905 ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ¢ǯȱ ȱ ȱ language was seen as a dialect of Russian, the region was referred to as the southwestern provinces, and the only Ukrainians who were recognized were ȃĴȱǰȄȱ ǰȱȱ ȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ “Russian” family and not seeking independence, or even autonomy. Ȳȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǯȱ ȱ referred to the city as Lemberg, the Russian occupying forces redubbed it L´vov; the Polish national armies restored an earlier Lwów, and the Ukrainian republic in 1918 translated it to L´viv. 29
30 Ȳ ȱǯȱ¢¢ǰȱȃȱȱȱ ȱȱȱǰȄȱȱEssays in Modern Ukrainian History, ed. Peter L. Rudnytsky (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1987), 315–52.
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
21
In southeastern Europe, the Kingdom of Serbia schemed to realize Serbian nationalists’ vision of a Greater Serbia and sought the “liberation” of their fellow Serbs and other southern Slavs, notably Croats and Slovenians, from Habsburg rule. Croatian nationalist activists in the Austro-Hungarian empire ȱȱěȱȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĚȱ ȱ their politics were shaped by Austro-Hungarian ideas and practices. The Serbian army had a spy network that was linked to terrorists in lands claimed as part of “Greater Serbia.” One of those connections, Gavrilo Prinkipo, was in turn tied to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914.31ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱŗŞŖŞǰȱȱ sought to rearrange the ethno-demographic borders of their empire by trying to Turkicize Armenians, Kurds, and Greeks among others.32 Wartime: Coerced Disentanglements, New Entanglements ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱĴǰȱȬ paigns, and combat, historians often overlook a large part of the experience of war that involves much more long-term entangling and disentangling than do moving armies. In a provocative essay on wartime Russia, Joshua Sanborn urges us to “analyze soldiers and civilians on the same plane” and proposes to do so in the “social and temporal space of ‘violent migrations.’” Sanborn ęȱȱȃęȱ ȄȱȱȱȃȱȄȱȱȱ£ȱȱ soldiers into an army that reached a total by the end of the war of nearly 15 million men. Sanborn refers to these soldiers as “migrants” (and acknowledges that “they have rarely been treated as such by historians or sociologists”). Sanborn’s concept of “violent migrations” also encompasses occupation regimes, refugees, and prisoners of war.33 He asserts that these “violent miȱ ¢ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ and emboldening the state that helped direct and manage them.” Finally, he argues “that the violent migrations of the Great War laid the preconditions for civil war by producing a toxic combination of a desocialized population and an ambitious political and military elite.”34
31
ȲȱǰȱThe Road to Sarajevo (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966).
Ȳȱǯȱ¢ǰȱĴȱDZȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ Russian Empires, 1908–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
32
Ȳ ȱǰȱȃĴȱȱDZȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Russia during World War I,” Journal of Modern History 77, 3 (June 2005): 294.
33
34
Ȳ ǯǰȱŘşŘǰȱŘşŚǯȱ
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Sanborn’s argument could be made for the other belligerent powers as well. I label Sanborn’s “violent migrations” as “forced disentanglements.” Aviel Roshwald highlights an array of “wartime spheres of nationalist experimentation and improvisation” in military occupation zones in the politics of exile and in the formation of volunteer legions. These were initially not ȱȱȱȱȱȱȃęȱȱȱȱȱ the nationalities problems within the imperial polities. But as the imperial ęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱŗşŗŝȮŗŞǰȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ǯȄ35 The version of entangled histories that I outline here allows us to revisit the experiences of those who lived through these experiments in comparative empires, whether as POWs, refugees, exiles, or occupied subjects. Occupations as Forced Entanglement Occupations are the mostly unplanned consequences of military operations, though occasionally they are part of prewar or wartime war aims and the subject of negotiations to bring an end to war. Occupations on the Eastern Front were far more expansive geographically and longer in duration than the German occupations of Belgium and parts of France on the Western Front.36 The German and Austro-Hungarian occupations of large parts of the Russian Empire and Serbia and the corresponding occupations of parts of Austria ¢ǰȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ allies also created the conditions for years of wartime entanglement between ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ǯȱ Vejas Liulevicius argues that the experience of German troops and civilian ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȃę¢ȱȱĴȱȱȱȱ part of the postwar generation toward the Slavic and Jewish East.”37 Ober Ost was the largest compact area of German occupation; it included parts of today’s Lithuania, Belarus, and territory contested at one time or another
Ȳ ǰȱEthnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires, 116.
35
Ȳ ȱǯȱ £ǰȱThe Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia, 1914– 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 9. Gumz reminds us that “by 1918, the Habsburg Empire had come to occupy nearly 400,000 square kilometers of territory containing 20 million people.”
36
Ȳȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Ober Ost took its name from the title of the Supreme Commander in the East, Oberbefehlshaber Ost.
37
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
23
by Poland and Ukraine.38 The German occupation regime was particularly exploitative of the region’s economic resources, above all agriculture and forestry. Labor shortages, in part due to the Russian army’s forced evacuation and scorched-earth policies, led to labor conscription for local citizens; Germans also began using POWs and refugees on military farms and in new industries that the Germans started. Above all, the military utopia of total war ȱ¡ȱȱĚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ activity. Verkehrspolitik, a system regulating movement and communication, stressed documentation; every native over the age of ten was to be issued perȱęȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱǯȱ Of course, it was over a population of Lithuanians, Poles, Belarusians, Jews, and Baltic Germans that Ober Ost ruled. And it is here that German policies, in the name of “integrating the region into the German political-cultural realm” also “institutionalized ethnic identity in Ober Ost to an unprecedented degree.”39 To the East the occupiers brought the 19th-century understanding of “German work” and Kulturarbeit, culture work. Non-German nationalities were encouraged to publish their own newspapers in their native languages. ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱǰȱ especially at the primary level. Like most other areas of life, education too was devastated by the Russian evacuation; whole schools evacuated out of the invasion zone. Russian teachers especially were suddenly absent, opening spaces for enterprising native cultural activists who had long wanted to introduce schools in their indigenous languages. The Germans portrayed themselves once again as great benefactors and as restoring Kultur to a land bereft of it thanks to Russian barbarism. The German administration thereby entered into a very risky area of ethnic competition. This was done—very consciously—partly to counter the former Russian practice of banning or limiting publication and education in the local minority languages. But it also inadvertently gave rise to ethnic ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱęȱȱȱȱ autonomy. In the end, Liulevicius concludes that the administration was too small to achieve these ambitious goals. But the German experiment in supporting the nationalist movements in these regions of the Russian Empire went much further than did the policies of their Austro-Hungarian allies, who,
Ȳȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱǰȱ see two excellent recent surveys: Theodore Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial DZȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱǰȱŗŞŜřȮŗşŗŚ (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996); and M. D. Dolbilov and A. I. Miller, eds., Zapadnye okrainy Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006).
38
Ȳ ȱȱǰȱWar Land on the Eastern Front, 118.
39
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as Gumz argues, wanted to preserve the Habsburg Empire, not revolutionize their enemies.40 Similar to Liulevicius’s assertion that the “Easterners” sought to create the ideal militarized state in Ober Ost that they could never achieve on the home ȱǻȱȱěȂȱȃȱȄȱȱȱǼǰȱȱȱȱ Habsburg army in Serbia tried to recreate or “resurrect,” in Gumz’s words, “the Empire that it wanted, but at home it could not.”41 Indeed, Gumz sees the occupation as sharpening the contrast between home front and occupied ¢ǯȱȱȱȱěȱ ȱ ȱȱ ȱ occupation was the army’s “protecting” Serbia from civilian bureaucrats who wanted to plunder it to feed the starving home front. Austria-Hungary was ȱęȱȱ ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱ ¢ȱ was doing against Russia. Indeed, Gumz contrasts Germany with AustriaHungary, which “remained hesitant about a fundamental reordering of international relations in Europe.”42 Ultimately, Gumz argues, the Habsburg army was still a largely premodern and anational institution that, for its own reasons, was also doomed to failure against the “modern” forces of nationalism, including German nationalism. Moreover, the “ferocity with which the army went about denationalizing Serbia ȱ ȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱĚ¢ȱ ȱȱ¢ǰȱȱ¢ȱ moved backward into a bureaucratic-absolutism rooted in the Habsburg past.”43 The army felt it had to wage “a war of counterrevolution inside and outside the Empire’s borders.”44 What this “denationalizing” involved was based on an understanding that the Serbian people had been misled by their radical nationalist political elites; those elites were to be arrested and removed from society in internment camps; thereby their national politics was to be eradicated in the name of Habsburg centralization.45
40
Ȳ £ǰȱResurrection and Collapse, 3–6, 34–43.
Ȳ ǯǰȱŘřśǯ
41
42 43
Ȳ ǯǰȱŗŖǯ
Ȳ ǯǰȱŘřŚǯ
44
Ȳ ǯǰȱŗŗǯ
ȲȃȱȱȱȱȱȄȱȱȱȱȱȱŘȱȱ £Ȃȱ DzȱȱȱȃȄȱ ȱĜȱǰȱȱ ¤ȱ¤ǰȱ¢ȱDZȱ ȱȱȱȱ ¢ȱȱȱ ȱĜȱǰȱŗŞŚŞȮŗşŗŞ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
45
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
25
Russian, German, and Austrian Occupations of Galicia and Ukraine ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěǰȱ ȱ Durnovo, warned the tsar in a famous memorandum in February 1914 that the annexation of Galicia would be “obviously disadvantageous to us.” For “together with a negligible handful of Galicians, Russian in spirit, how many Poles, Jews, and ukrainized Uniates we would receive! The so-called Ukrainian, or Mazeppist movement is not a menace to us at present; but in this movement there undoubtedly lies the seed of an extremely dangerous Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ¢ȱ ȱ quite unexpected proportions.”46 One way of reading his advice was to avoid entanglements in the ethnic minority relations of the Habsburg lands, but his advice fell on deaf ears when, a few months later, the tsar and grand duke announced a key war aim to be “the emancipation of peoples from foreign yokes.”47ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȱ Ȭ ȄȱȱȱȱȃěȱȄȱȱǰȱȱǰȱȱȱ Austria-Hungary. The Ukrainian national movement there was understood ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ Dzȱ ǰȱ ȱ “true” Ukrainians were those Galician Russophiles who saw their future in annexation. ȱȱĴǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȬ lished international law. Austrian courts were allowed to continue working to enforce Austrian laws, but now in the “name of the Russian emperor,” inȱȱ ȱ£ȱ ǯȱȱĜȂȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ out of the Russian treasury. However, this approach did not last long. Nikolai ǰȱȱȱȱȱ ȱěǰȱȱȱǰȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȄȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ Dzȱ after all, he noted, prominent Jews, Germans, and Hungarians among these Ȳǯȱǯȱ ǰȱǯǰȱDocuments of Russian History, 1914–1917 (New York: The Century Company, 1927), 3–23. Most of this section is adapted from my book, War in a European DZȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱǰȱŗşŗŚȮŗşŗŞȱǻĴDZȱ University of Washington Press, 2007); see also the more comprehensive study of Russian policy in occupied lands in two books by A. Iu. Bakhturina, Politika Rossiiskoi Imperii v Vostochnoi Galitsii v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2000); and her Okrainy Rossiiskoi Imperii: Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie i natsional´naia politika v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–1917 gg.) (Moscow: ќѠѠѝђћ, 2004). 46
Ȳ ǰȱDocuments of Russian History, 1. The commander of the Southwestern Front, ȱȱǰȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȃȱ are entering Galicia, which, despite its being a constituent part of Austria-Hungary, is a Russian land, populated, after all, by Russian people.” Brusilov’s order is cited in M. K. Lemke, 250 dnei v tsarskoi Stavke: Vospominaniia, memuary (Minsk: Kharvest, 2003), 199. 47
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ĜȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱ ȱǯȱ ȱȱ noted that Austrian courts conducted their business in the local languages of the nationalities, something that departed from Russian practice. When Ianushkevich insisted that only Russian be used in the courts, Justice Minister Ivan Shcheglovitov reminded Ianushkevich that most of his proposals would seriously violate international law; but in the end Ianushkevich got most of what he wanted. The introduction of the Russian language predictably produced confusion for the Polish judges, lawyers, and others who dominated the legal profession. Ianushkevich and other generals were empowered to impose their occupation policies by the law of 16 July 1914 on military zones. This law, which set the outlines of martial law, decreed the supremacy of military commanders over civilian authorities not only in the zones of occupation but in vast swaths of territory behind the front lines, and including the capitals in Moscow and Petrograd.48 ȱȱĜȱĚȱ ȱȱȱȬ ȱ¢ȱ and thereby confronted the ruling Russian authorities with a dilemma, ¢ǰȱ ȱȱęȱȱĜȱȱěȱȱȱȱǵȱ ěȱĜȱ ȱ¡ȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ help from the civilian bureaucracy of neighboring Russian provinces in the southwest. The principle that the Russian authorities proclaimed from the ȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȃęȄȱȱȱȃȱȱȱȱ Carpathians to Kamchatka.” These were the principles of the Russian nationalist parties in late imperial Russia; those parties, including the Nationalist Party, the Octobrists, and the Union of Russian People, were strongest in the ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȃĴȱ Ȭ sians.”49ȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱĜȱ ȱȱȱěȱ ȱȱ¢ǯȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱęȱ real experience of these ostensibly “long-lost” lands of Rus´ for these Russian nationalists-imperialists. In the occupation regime, then, is another blurring of imperial boundaries, when the national imperialism of right-bank Ukraine ȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȬ ȱȱȱȱȱęǯ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěǰȱ ȱ Ianushkevich, a notorious anti-Semite and Russian nationalist, despite his ancient Polish lineage; Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (as commander in ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ǼDzȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ Ȳȱ ǰȱ ȃ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ŗşŗŚȮŗşŗŝDZȱ ȱ ȱ ęǰȄȱJahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, N.F., 22, 3 (1974): 390–411.
48
ȲȱǰȱGentry Politics on the Eve of the Russian Revolution: The Nationalist Party, 1907–1917 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1980).
49
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
27
ern Front, most notably General Brusilov. Also important were Foreign Minister Sazonov and other ministers in Petrograd, notably Justice Minister Shcheglovitov and Agriculture Minister Krivoshein; but, like the Habsburg occupation of Serbia and the German occupation of Ober Ost, so too the Russian army operated with few civilian limitations; indeed, this occupation regime might well be seen as the original “dual authority” that was the context of imperial government wartime dysfunction. The occupation governor-general, Count Georgii Bobrinskii, set as his aim the integration of the newly occupied territories into the Russian state, a policy that was already in violation of ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ fate of occupied territories and populations. Bobrinskii’s occupation regime ȱȱȱȱȂȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱ and observe Austrian law.50 Spymania was a pervasive feature of the occupation regimes and spread backward from the front to the interior of Russia. The military authorities introduced a security regime that was intended to control the movement of people, goods, and ideas in and out of the military zones with a system of passes—similar to the Verkehrspolitik of Ober Ost. They claimed broad authority over censorship and detention of suspected spies and other politically unreliable persons. An extensive system of surveillance was set up to keep track of large groups of less unreliable persons. The most obvious targets were Germans and those who might be perceived as harboring sympathies toward the German and Austrian cause. Soon, the suspicion of German and Austrian citizens in Russia spread to Russian subjects of German origin, a dangerous development that cast into doubt the loyalties of not only highȱ¢ȱĜȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱǰȱ Aleksandra, a German princess before she married Nicholas II.51 The important ȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱȃĚȄȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ in the Russian high command is a vivid illustration of the transformation of the prewar dynastic ties into seeking out “inner enemies,” but also how genȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȃȱ enemies.” Jews were another target group in the search for “politically unreliable” persons. Galician Jews enjoyed legal equality in the Habsburg empire, so it was assumed, not without reason, that they would be hostile to Russian rule, Ȳȱ ȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ ȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱŗşŗśǯȱ See his “Otchet vremennogo voennogo general-gubernatora Galitsii po upravleniiu kraem za vremia s 1-go/IX. 1914 g. po 1-go/VII. 1915 g.,” Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA) f. 2003, op. 2, d. 539, ll. 1–26. 50
51
ȲǰȱNationalizing the Russian Empire, chaps. 2–3.
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MARK VON HAGEN
under which Jews still lacked many rights. Many Galician Jews had indeed ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Dzȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ęȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȱ ǰȄȱ here translated as Ukrainian peasants.52 On the pretext of a threat of widespread espionage on the part of largely Jewish merchants and suppliers to the military, the commander of the Southwestern Front banned the entry of any more Jews into the war zone and also banned their movement from ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ units, especially forts, refusing to accept Jewish soldiers sent as replacements. Linked to spymania, these open expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment in the frontline zone and occupation spread back to the rear and the capitals. And ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱĚȱ ȱȱ ȱȱ ǰȱ so too Russian Jews were treated similarly to “Austrian” Jews in Galicia and later Bukovina. Other important population groups, primarily Slavic peoples, presented more complex challenges for the occupation authorities. Because of the grand duke’s proclamation of the possibility of a united Poland under Russian protection following the victorious outcome of war, the Ministry of Foreign ěȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ the civilian population of Galicia, as well as the POWs, many of whom were Slavs.53 However, the Russian military suspected Poles of espionage and deported thousands of Polish priests and members of Polish political parties out of the rear zones of the Southwestern Front, The Galician Ukrainians, or, in the eyes of the Russians, Galician “Russians” who had been torn away by decades of pernicious Austrian and Polish campaigns from their allegedly historic faith and language, were central to ȱ¢ȱǯȱȱȱȱęȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȬ language newspaper, Karpatskaia Rus´ (Carpathian Rus´), that had been closed by the Austrians. Russian reports indicated that up to 40,000 Ruthenians had been arrested by the Austrians at the very start of the war for their political leanings. Moreover, the internment of some 30,000 Ruthenians, or Ukrainians, ȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȬ cesses of the Russian government. The guards, mostly Hungarian, mistook
Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱ ǰȱ see the memoirs of S. An-skii, The Enemy at His Pleasure: A Journey through the Jewish Pale ȱĴȱȱȱȱ , trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002).
52
Ȳ¡ȱǰȱȃȱȱȱǰȄȱȱRussian Diplomacy and Eastern Europe 1914–1917, ed. Dallin et al. (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1963), 1–77.
53
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
29
ȱȱȱȱ¢£ȱȱ ȱȱ ȱĴȱ atrocities against the interned civilians.54 Russophile activists now had the imperial might of the Russian occupation behind them to begin to enact their vision of the national-imperial order in Galicia and Bukovyna. General Brusilov assigned Vladimir Bobrinskii, a cousin of the governor-general of occupied Galicia and leader of the pan-Slav movement,55 to free all those political prisoners in Austrian jails who had ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ by the Russian authorities to help monitor Galician organizations for any “separatist” proclivities; military censors were also ordered to keep track of “separatist views.” This referred above all to the politics of the Greek Catholic, or Uniate, Church and the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (ULU), a group of expatriate Ukrainian activists from Russia and their Galician Ukrainophile allies in Lemberg; on the eve of the war, the Union proclaimed that, in the event of war, they would cast their lots with the Central Powers in the aim of “liberating” Ukraine from Russian despotism. With the outbreak of war, the ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ in Vienna, from where it waged a propaganda campaign for the Ukrainian cause in the capitals of the Central Power belligerents as well as in the neutral states of Europe.56 The entire Ukrainian movement in both Russia and Galicia ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱĜȱȱȱȱ ȱȱǰȱǰȱȱ traitors. Repressive measures against the Greek Catholic Church and coerced conversions to Orthodoxy eventually turned many Galician Russophiles and potentially neutral Galician peasants against the Russian occupation. In ȱȼȦǰȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱĚǯȱ ȱĚȱ ȱȱȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ side, and Moscow and Russian Orthodoxy, on the other, but also involved Ȳȱǯȱ ¢ǰȱǯǰȱTalerfgofskii Al´manakh: Promaiatnaia kniga avstriiskikh zhestokostei, izuverstv i nasilii nad karpato-ruskim narodom vo vremia vsemirnoi voiny 1914–1917 gg. (L´vov: Izdanie “Talergofskogo komiteta,” 1924–34); and Voennye prestupleniia Gabsburgskoi monarkhii, 1914–1917 gg.: Galitskaia Golgofa, bk. 1 (Trumbull, CT: P. S. Hardy, 1964). 54
Ȳȱ ǰȱȼȱȱ££ǰȱŗŞŜŞȮŗşŚŜDZȱ, ed. T. Manuchina (Paris: YMCA Press, 1947), 253.
55
Ȳ ¢ȱ ¢ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ŗşŗŚȮŗşŗŞȄȱ ǻǯǯȱ thesis, Carleton University, 1993). For the ULU’s own report of its propaganda and subversive activities, see “Bericht über die organisatorische, literarisch-informative ȱ Ĥ§ȱ §ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ [ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ûȱ ȱ ȱ September–Dezember 1914, Zusammenstellung der Kosten, 16 December 1914,” in ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŗŚȮŗşŘŘǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ û, ed. Theophil Hornykiewicz (Philadelphia: Ferdinand Berger Printing House, 1966), 1: 170–89.
56
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a third important actor: the Polish Catholic Church. The Polish Catholic hierarchy resisted the autonomy of the Greek Catholics, which they saw as part of a de-Polonizing measure emanating from late imperial Russia; the Polish Catholics also fought against the perceived threat of Orthodoxy. The Austrian authorities had supported the Ukrainophile movement in Galicia and Bukovyna to counter both the rise of the Polish nationalist movement and the Old Ruthenian Moscophiles with their supporters in Russia, led by Vladimir Bobrinskii. Tsar Nicholas II appointed Russian archbishop Evlogii to supervise the Orthodox population of Galicia. Evlogii had long taken an interest in the “Ukrainian separatists” and was a particularly virulent opponent of the Greek Catholic or Uniate church.57 On the other side was the metropolitan of Galicia and archbishop of Lemberg, Andriy Sheptits´kyi, a leading advocate of the Austrian solution for Ukraine, who saw the war as a chance to “return” Russia to its “true” Catholic faith. On the outbreak of war, Sheptits´kyi delivered a sermon to the faithful of Galicia in which he declared that “Our Emperor is waging war against the Muscovite tsar. This war is being fought over us, because the Muscovite tsar cannot bear the fact that we in the Austrian Empire are free regarding questions of nationality or faith; he wants to deprive us of this freedom and place us in chains.” The Galician governor ordered copies of the sermon to be posted throughout the province. As Vienna began making plans to evacuate Galicia, Minister-President Stürgkh ordered the army high command to persuade the clergy to depart with the army, especially Count Sheptits´kyi, “because he above all faces a personal threat from the Russian ǯȄȱ ȼ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěǰȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ martyrdom or persecution.58 Just before the Russian armies arrived in Lemberg, Sheptits´kyi had a meeting with a high-ranking representative of the Austrian Foreign Ministry in which they discussed possible occupation plans. Sheptits´kyi drafted a memorandum to the emperor with plans for the military, social-legal, and religious aspects of an autonomous Ukraine, with Russian Ukraine annexed to Austrian Galicia, under the Austrian emperor.59 This document was inȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ promised to deliver Sheptits´kyi dead or alive to the Ministry of Interior. For Ȳȱ Ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ Put´ moei zhizni. 57
ȲEreignisse in der Ukraine, 2: 424–26.
58
59 Ȳȃȱ ȱ ûȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ §ǰȱ £Ȭ rechtlicher und kirchlicher Hinsicht mit dem Ziel ihrer Loslösung von Russland,” in Ereignisse in der Ukraine, 1: 4–16.
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
31
much of the Russian military and political elite, Sheptits´kyi was the lynchpin of a vast axis of evil that went from the Vatican in Rome, through the emperor in Vienna to Sheptits´kyi in Lemberg/L´vov. General Brusilov accordingly arrested the metropolitan, together with his entourage, and incarcerated them in the Russian interior in a penal monastery that held heretics and schismatics. As soon as military sources learned of Sheptits´kyi’s arrest, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister began soliciting the Holy See to intercede with the Russian authorities to secure the metropolitan’s release. The Vatican went so far as to propose exchanging for the metropolitan a Russian Orthodox priest who had been found guilty of high treason before the war. ȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱDzȱȱȱ Government released Sheptits´kyi and arranged for his evacuation to Sweden, from where he eventually made his way back to Lviv.60 For Sheptits´kyi and the bishops who were arrested and deported together with him, their prewar entanglements had become the source of their harsh treatment as enemies of both the Russian state and the Orthodox hierarchy. Evlogiii took the elimination of his main rival in Galicia as a signal to take a much harder line on conversions, thereby adding an intense religious Ěȱȱȱǯȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱȱȱ ¡¢ȱȱȂȱȱȱȱȱĚȱ ȱȱȱ Russian forces in the summer of 1915 out of fear that they would be persecuted by the reoccupying Austrian forces or their fellow parishioners. The German and Austrian Occupation in Ukraine/Galicia In an ironic restatement of the Russian army’s slogans of the summer of 1914, the German chancellor proclaimed to the Reichstag that “we, with our allies, have liberated almost all Galicia and Poland, we have liberated Lithuania and Courland from the Russians.” After pushing out the Russian army and thousands of refugees, the Germans and Austrians set up two separate occupation administrations, the German one headquartered in Warsaw and the Austrian one in Lublin, each occupation regime navigating among its own Ěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱ some future for Ukrainians/Ruthenians.61 The Austrian ambassador in Berlin favored a proposal to create a separate crownland made up of East Galicia 60
ȲEreignisse in der Ukraine, 2: 427–31.
Ȳ ¢ȱ ȱ ěǰȱȃȱȱȱȱȱȱ Ȅȱǻǯǯȱǯǰȱ ¢ȱȱĴǰȱŗşŜŝǼDzȱȱǰȱȃȱȱȱãȬ ungarischen Ruthenenpolitik 1914–1918,” Jahrbücher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, N.F., 14 (1966): 539–50; Oleh S. Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution in World War I (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970).
61
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and Bukovyna that met favor with some Ukrainians. The Austrian Foreign Minister, however, blocked these plans out of fear of antagonizing the Polish elites. The Germans were willing to accept an Austrian Poland as long as the Germans were recognized as the real master of the “independent” state. The ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱȱĴȱȱ than the Austrians for their ambitions of statehood. Thus, the Austrians and Germans were drawn into the nation-building politics of both the Ukrainians and the Poles.62 ȱ ǰȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ borderland peoples from the Russian Empire, were eager to support Ukrainian ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Dzȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ German support for the League of Russia’s Foreign Peoples, which brought together representatives from Russia’s Jews, Muslims, Georgians, Poles, Baltic Germans, Finns, and Ukrainians.63 Although the Germans were deeply involved in occupation policymaking, they left the 1915–16 occupation of Ukrainian lands largely in Austrian hands (in sharp contrast to their domination of the later German-Austrian occupation of 1918). The new Austrian governor general, Major General Erich Freiherr von Diller, declared that the Ukrainian language would be ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ěȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȄȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱĜȱȱȱȱȱȱ the Ukrainian language. Union for the Liberation of Ukraine activists also appealed to the Austrians to uphold the international Hague conventions (in contrast to the recent Russian occupation policy) and to defend religious freedom and tolerance. They asked for the restoration of the Greek Catholic Church—which the Austrian authorities agreed to—though this proved difęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ parishes under Russian pressure or with Russian encouragement. The Austrian high command ordered the reintroduction of Ukrainian language in Ukrainian schools. This led to a wave of private school openings with teachers Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ǯǰȱ ȱ ĵȱ ȱ Ukraine 1918: Historischer Kontext. Forschungsstand, wirtschaftliche und soziale Fragen ǻ £DZȱȱ£ȱãȱȱȱȱȱȱ Ěȱȱ ǰȱ 2008); and Dornik et al., Die Ukraine zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft 1917–1922 (Graz: Leykam, 2011).
62
Ȳȱ Ĵǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ãȱ ǰȱ ŗşŗŜȮŗşŗŞDZȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ Deutschlands antirussischem Propagandakrieg unter den fremdvölkern Russlands im ersten Weltkrieg (Helsinki: Finnische Historische Gesellschaft, 1978). The German Foreign Ministry assigned a Baltic German, Baron Bernhard von Uexkuell, to organize the League.
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returning to Galicia and Bukovyna from evacuation. The most important goal of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, a German-Austrian declaration of support for Ukrainian statehood along the lines of what they had proclaimed for Poland, was doomed to disappointment. No such proclamation was issued before the next Russian invasion. ȱęȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱĴȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱ¡ȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱ¢ȱěȱȱǯȱǰȱȱȱȱ the entanglements also changed over time with the serial deportations, arǰȱ ¡ǰȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ example, the removal of the entire upper hierarchy of the Greek Catholic ǰȱȱĚȱȱ ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱĴǰȱȱ of Poles and other Ukrainians who found themselves on the wrong side with the new authorities. The arrest of Metropolitan Sheptits´kyi helped move the new pope, Benedict XV, to intercede with the Russian authorities to release their distinguished prisoner (in vain) but also later to step up the Vatican’s own wartime ambitions of winning back the “schismatic” churches in the East. In 1916 he instituted a prayer for such a reunion, and in May 1917 established a new organ, the Sacred Congregation of the Oriental Church, whose jurisdiction included all “uniate” churches but also the “schismatic” or Orthodox churches as well. For the Vatican, a Russian victory portended the Russian conquest of Constantinople, which they viewed as a dangerous prospect for the emergence of a Vatican on the Bosphorus, and they found their interests more than ever closely tied to those of the last Catholic emperor in Vienna.64 ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱěȬ ȱȱȱȱȱŗşŗŜȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱ¢ȱȬȱȱ¢ȱ the former Russian viceroy of occupied Galicia, Georgii Bobrinskii, and also a rethinking of occupation policy in the Foreign Ministry, where a “VaticanSlavic Department” (quickly renamed the “Special Political Department”) had been established in 1916.65ȱȱǰȱȱĜȱȱȱ ȱȱ acknowledge Ukrainian national spokesmen (and even brought a grudging use of the work “Ukrainian” in a reply from the court to a Ukrainian nobleman in ĵǼǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱ Ȳ ȱǯȱǰȱȱ ȱDZȱȱȱǻŗşŗŚȮŗşŘŘǼȱȱȱȱȱ ǻDZȱ ě¢ȱǰȱŗşşşǼǰȱşŖȮşŗǰȱŗşśȮŘŖŖDzȱȱ ȱǰȱThe Eastern Politics of the Vatican (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981).
64
65 Ȳȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ¢ȱ ȱǰȱȱǯȱ ǯȱǰȱImperiia Romanovykh i natsionalizm: Esse po metodologii istoricheskogo issledovaniia (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006), 173–89.
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ȱęȱȱȼDzȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱĜȱ government language, the governor general could “also permit the use of local languages if recognized as necessary.”66 This second occupation also overlapped with the outbreak of revolution in Petrograd. The Provisional Government took the unprecedented act of appointing an ethnic Ukrainian and spokesman for the Ukrainian movement, Dmytro Doroshenko, as regional commissar for occupied Galicia and Bukovyna. These new concessions toward the Ukrainian movement did not, however, guarantee smooth relations with the emerging counter-power in Kyiv, the Ukrainian Central Rada. But it was the liberals and moderate socialists in the Provisional Government who also reluctantly approved the “Ukrainianization” of the Russian army—a dramatic step away from the Old Regime practices of the autocracy.67 The next German-Austrian occupation came in March 1918 as part of the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between the Central Powers and the Ukrainian delegation from the Rada government, the Ukrainian People’s Republic. For Germany, and especially Austria-Hungary, the Brest Treaty was a “bread peace” (), dictated by worsening hunger in Vienna and other Central European cities. Even the Habsburg occupation involved ruthless exploitation of the peasants to deliver grain to the front. But the treaty also brought a dramatic new change in Ukrainian politics with the recognition of a Ukrainian state by all the Central Powers and several neutral countries as well.68 Comparing the Russian and German-Austrian occupations of this region ěȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱ ȱ experience in Serbia. But all occupiers became increasingly entangled in the ¡ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ jected their ambitions across imperial borders, and all the occupations had ȱěȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ their enemies. 66
ȲǰȱPolitika Rossiiskoi Imperii, 217, 223–24.
Ȳȱȱ ǰȱȃȱȱ¢ȱĜȱȱȱȱȱDZȱ Konstantin Oberuchev in Revolutionary Kyiv,” in “Tentorium Honorum: Essays Presented to Frank E. Sysyn on His Sixtieth Birthday,” ed. Olga A. Andriewsky et al., special issue, Journal of Ukrainian Studies 33–34 (2008–09): 171–97; and “The Russian Imperial Army and the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement in 1917,” The Ukrainian Quarterly 54, 3–4 (Fall–Winter 1998): 220–56. 67
Ȳȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱĴȱ¢ȱ of Ukraine’s status coming out of the Brest negotiations, Stephan M. Horak, The First Treaty of World War I: Ukraine’s Treaty with the Central Powers of February 9, 1918 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1988).
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Another War Experience: POWs Thanks to historians and memoirists, we now know more about the experiences ȱ ǰȱ Ĝǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ in conditions of hardship and shortages, mutual incomprehension and often hostility. A comparison of the situation of soldiers and civilians under occupation with those of two other large groups of displaced persons—refugees and prisoners of war—can reveal how new forms of entanglements shaped their lives over the wartime years and beyond. Germany, Russia, Ȭ ¢ǰȱȱȱĴȱǰȱ ȱȱȬȱȱȱȬ nitude of the economic, social, and political challenges posed by these large groups of uprooted humanity. With each additional year of war, the standard of living of all these groups fell even faster than the already alarming decline of civilians in the cities and countryside. And whereas soldiers could be heroes if they fought bravely and were recognized, POWs and refugees were seen largely as victims whose memory was not deemed worthy of commemoration. Nowhere were refugees’ or POWs’ burial grounds made into sites of national mourning and pilgrimage. But the experiences of these two populations of forcibly displaced persons provide further evidence of the working out of pre ȱ ȯȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȯȱ ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱǯȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱ Eastern Front remained highly mobile, this front produced far more refugees ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱǯȱȱěȱ during the war shaped the end of the empires on the Eastern Front and their transformation into new and remade states forged out of nationalist politics and new forms of irredentism and expulsions of those deemed to be alien to the new states. Partly for space reasons, I will omit here a discussion of refugees, a topic with a still underdeveloped but already very suggestive literature,69 and focus more on prisoners of war, an area of my own research. POWs The largest group outside of the subjects of occupation to live under foreign rule was prisoners of war. One of every eight veterans to re-enter civilian society after the war had been a POW, and their story is another prime site of imperial entanglements. A Russian historian of Russian POWs in German and Ȳȱ ǰȱA Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). For refugees in Vienna, see Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 4–5, 8, 62 192, 237–38; and David Rechter, “Galicia in Vienna: Jewish Refugees in the First World War,” Austrian History Yearbook 28 (1997): 113–30. 69
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Austro-Hungarian camps titles her work “the other war experience,”70 but it remains one that has not been an integral part of the history of World War I until relatively recently. An estimated 8.5 million men were taken captive during the First World War; 6 million of these were captured on the Eastern Front. As such, captivity was a quintessential experience for soldiers serving in the Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies. Most POWs were captured during the 1915 spring and summer campaigns on the Eastern Front. About 3.4 ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ǻȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ęȱ ȱ mobilized); more than 99 percent of those POWs were held in German and Ȭ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Bulgaria. On the other side, 2.77 million Austro-Hungarians were interned, accounting for more than one-third of the total number of men mobilized during 1914–18.71 All belligerent states used POWs for agricultural and factory labor.72ȱĜȬ cers were exempt from such obligations and were supposed to be treated ¢ȱȱȱȱȂȱ ȱĜǰȱĚȱ ȱȱȱȱ and status. As with so many other aspects of this war, the POW problem was not anticipated in its scale and longevity. The sanitary conditions in the ȱ ȱDzȱ¢ȱȱȱęȱȱǰȱȱ ȱǰȱĚ£ǰȱǰȱ¢¢ǰȱǰȱȱ¢ȱȱ out. Death from disease was the highest cause of mortality in the camps. In addition to providing labor around the camps, POWs were quickly called to make up for labor shortages, above all in agriculture, but increasingly ȱȱȱȱȱ ǯȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱ war concluded, “By the end, it was impossible to imagine any large-size enterprise, either industrial or agricultural, that did not make use of POWs.” Ulrich Herbert also concludes that “on the whole, the employment of more than one million POWs in German agriculture and industry, more and more of whom were working at skilled jobs, was a substantial economic plus for the Reich war economy, one that became ever more important as the war went on.” Of those million-plus POWs in German custody in August 1916, 45 percent Ȳȱ ǰȱ ȃDrugoi voennyi opyt”: Rossiiskie voennoplennye Pervoi mirovoi voiny v Germanii, 1914–1922 (Moscow: Novyi khronograf, 2010).
70
Ȳȱĵȱȱ ȱǰȱ ȱĵȱȱDZȱȱȱ Kriegsgefangenen in Österreich (1914–1921), Militärgeschichte und Wehrwissenschaften 7 (Bonn: Bernard & Graefe, 2005); Reinhard Nachtigal, Russland und seine österreichischungarischen Kriegsgefangenen (1914–1918) (Remshalden: Greiner, 2003); Georg Wurzer, ȱ ȱȱĴ§ȱȱȱȱȱȱǻ ãĴDZȱȱǭȱȱ unipress, 2005).
71
Ȳȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱ POWs were not employed in military production or at the front.
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worked in agriculture, 20 percent in industry, another 6 percent worked in camp service, and 16 percent worked in “areas behind the lines.”73 All POWs felt the decline in the German and Austrian economies as a consequence of the naval blockade by Britain and the soaring costs of continuing the war. Their rations declined weekly, and they were conscripted for labor with greater frequency. This put them at the mercy of their employers, some of whom treated them with empathy, but others of whom saw them as enemies who deserved the worst permissible treatment. Much of what was true for Germany also held for Russia and AustriaHungary, the other two states with large populations of POWs. According to Rachamimov, “During the summer months, when the agricultural season ȱȱ ȱȱȱǰȱȱȬȬęȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱ empty (except for NCOs and invalids who could obtain exemptions) and the prisoners were sent in small or medium-sized groups to estates and peasants’ farms.” At the peak of employment, 1.64 million POWs were split 2:1 between agriculture and industry (mostly road construction and mining).74 The consequence of this large-scale employment of POWs in the economies of the Eastern Front states was an unprecedented familiarization of the POWs and their employers with one another’s work cultures, but also with their cultures more generally. For example, of the more than a million POWs working in agriculture, nearly one-third worked with peasants on small farms, where they were often under the supervision of their peasant employer, and ȱ¢ȱǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱ their hopefully temporary home. Many even married local women, and these couples faced very uncertain futures at the end of the war. Austro-Hungarian Ĝȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ women or intended to do so as a mark of potential disloyalty.75 Russian POWs likewise became acquainted with, lived with and even married German women, and had children with them. German nationalists enlisted the church and police in their campaigns to prevent “immoral” contacts between German women and representatives of enemy states. Women could face arrest for six months for “Russian love.” Finally, when Germany signed the Brest Treaty with Bolshevik Russia, the legal persecution of German women mar-
Ȳȱ ǰȱHitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich, trans. William Templer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 16–17.
73
ȲȱǰȱPOWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 89–92, 108. 74
Ȳ ǯǰȱŗŖşȮŗŖǯ
75
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ried to Russian POWs was temporarily suspended.76 The fate of these tens of thousands of “mixed” marriages and their children was the subject of negotiations between the Eastern Front powers for many years after the end of hostilities. Many women were also abandoned by their POW husbands at the end of the war, when they returned to their homelands and, in many cases, their wives and families there. The fear of POWs “going native” echoed the ȱȱ ȱĜȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Ost, and this predicament is certainly familiar to historians of the British and French Empires as well. Nation-Building in POW Camps In general, it seems to me that our work, despite great obstacles and the fact that we had before us an entirely unconscious element, which had lived under the yoke of spiritual slavery, which was not without its consequences, still we have done a lot by this time. Above all, the growth of national consciousness. The soldiers’ slang has more or less given way to the Ukrainian national language.… Now no one, not even our worst enemy, can not know, as it was at the beginning, that Ukraine and Ukrainians exist, even if they have no interest in taking part in [building that Ǿǯȱ ȱȱęȱȱȱȱȬȱȱ ¢ȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȃȄȱȱȃĴȱ Russian” that they will know that this name is an insult to them. — Dr. Vasyl Symovich, 31 May 191577
Dr. Vasyl Symovich, a Galician professor who evacuated to Vienna after the outbreak of war, wrote a report after he visited a POW camp in Freistadt, Lower Austria, that had been specially designated as a “Ukrainian” camp. His story is a vivid example of how POWs became enmeshed in the entanglements 76
ȲǰȱȃDrugoi voennyi opyt,” 141–46.
Ȳȱ ǻzvit) of Dr. Vasyl Symovich, 206–07. This, and several hundred pages of reports, were photocopied and stored in the archives of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Arts and Sciences in New York. The title of the manuscript is: “Fraishtadtska resDZȱ ɇȱ ¢Ȭ£ȱ ¢¢ȱ ȱ ȼ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŗŚȮŗşŗŞȄȱ ǻȱ Freistadt Republic: A Memorial-Book of the Great Days of Struggle in the Years 1914– 1918).
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of the Eastern Front powers, with one another, and with the ethno-confessional minorities of their enemies through the seemingly contradictory policy of encouraging and supporting nationalist and separatist movements while insisting on the continued integrity of their own empires. The most enthusiastic of the belligerents in this imperial anticolonialism (directed, of course, only at the minorities of the enemy’s empires) was Germany, with AustriaHungary always cautious about any further destabilization of the empire’s constitutional order that might upset the interethnic peace. Russia’s elites warily groped toward this revolutionary nationalist politics in 1917 after the February Revolution. Russia, Germany, and Austria all separated out enemy POWs by nationality. ȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱĚȱȱȱȱ the presumably “oppressed peoples” of the Russian empire. Germany’s Foreign Ministry supported a host of émigré nationalist groups from the Russian ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ ĵȱȱ ȱȱ ȱ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢Dzȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ Vienna, Berlin, and Constantinople. The League of Foreign Peoples of Russia published newspapers to publicize Russian injustices and to call for the liberaȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴǯ78 These radical visions of reordering the maps of the world mitigated against the Old World order of the Hague Conventions. One outcome of the German gamble with revolution was Vladimir Lenin’s ȱȱȱȱ ĵȱȱȱȱŗşŗŝǯȱȱȬ ȱ¢ȱ is the creation of national POW camps in Germany and Austria-Hungary for Russian soldiers from the national minorities or, as the Germans called them, the borderland peoples (Randvölker). With time, the German and Austrian camps had Polish, Jewish, Tatar, other Turkic, and Georgian “national” organizations, each of them claimed and led by one or more expatriate associations who had won the approval of Berlin and Vienna. Among the earliest of these national POW camps was designated for Ukrainians. The key organization that promoted this ethnic separation was the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, which was made up of Ukrainian activists who were exiles from Russia in Austrian Galicia as well as Galician Ukrainians who sought the ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȄȱ ǯȱ ǯȱ Symovich was sent to the Freistadt camp by the Vienna leaders of the Union to set up “enlightenment work.” Most POWs spent 3–4 years in captivity and were overwhelmingly illiterate and semiliterate peasants aged 25–39. Remarkably, the German auȲȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ Ĵǰȱ Die Liga der Fremdvölker Russlands. Most of the documents of this organization were published in French, as the Ligue des nationalités allogènes de Russie.
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thorities and the Ukrainian activists came together in wanting to raise the cultural level of these semiliterate peasants. The Germans wanted to inculcate ȱĴȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ¢ǯȱ They provided funds for and encouraged educated Germans to organize cultural life in the camps, much as they did in their occupation regime in Ober Ost. Cultural life was understood to mean reading rooms, theater and musical troupes, soldier newspapers, sport clubs, and religious services (with prayers for the tsar and for the two enemy emperors!). The curriculum featured German language lessons and lessons in the political and cultural history of Germany. Russian and Ukrainian socialists, including the Bolsheviks and Social ǰȱȱȱȱȱěȱ¢ȱȱȬ war and anti-imperial propaganda against Russia. The tactical alliance with ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǻǼȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ Ȭ gling defeatist propaganda into the Russian Empire through the frontline regions. It also is evidence of entanglements between Lenin and the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine that the historians and archivists of both sides have subsequently denied.79 The Ukrainian activists, most of whom were also socialists, imported their traditions from early 20th-century Russian Ukraine, a network of rural cooperatives and literacy houses called Prosvita (Enlightenment). These houses taught the basics of reading and writing, with an admixture of practical advice for peasants about modern farming methods, but also a full dose of Ukrainian history and literature in Ukrainian language. Many of the Ukrainian activists were teachers, so this adult education role was nothing new for them; others came from careers in journalism, so they were able to ȱ ȱȱȱȱȂȱ ȱȱǯȱȱȱĜȬ cials also organized physical exercise and some sports teams for the POWs to ¢ȱȱȱȱęȱȱ¢ǯ A common feature of POW-camp life and another example of the unusual entanglements that their predicament illustrated was the constant medical inspections and visits by delegations of nurses from the POWs’ home countries but arranged by neutral countries. One of the few regular lines of diplomatic communication that were maintained after the outbreak of war and the Ȳ¢ȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱǯȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ channeled funds to Lenin. See his Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary (Chicago: Henry ¢ǰȱŗşŜŚǼǰȱŗŜşȮŝŖǯȱ ȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱȱ Bachyns´kyi complained about “social sections” that Russian POWs had formed. He claimed that these were nothing but a cover for SD [Menshevik] organizations which, ȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱǯȱ¢ȼ¢ȂȱĴȱ ǻŗśȱȱŗşŗŜǼǰȱȱ ȱǰȱŗŘǰȱęȱŘŝǯ
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closing of enemy embassies in all the belligerent states was the negotiations, in neutral Copenhagen and Stockholm, over the fate of POWs.80 These visits highlighted the entangled relationships between enemy states, their exile naȱ£ǰȱȱȱĚȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱǯȱȱŗȱ January 1916 the Russian Red Cross nurse Romanova visited Freistadt camp in Lower Austria as a member of the Danish mission. Her visit gave rise to ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ĵǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱĜȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȱ motives of the nurse: “She came less to orient herself about the bodily wellbeing of the POWs than to ascertain their disposition and above all to conduct political propaganda.” And, although precautions were taken before her visit to conceal any blatant evidence of propaganda work, Romanova was ready to ȱȱȱǯȱ ȱȱ ȱǰȱȱȱĴȱ secret of the contempt with which she held all those who allowed themselves ȱȱĚȱ¢ȱȱȬȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ couraged sympathy for Ukrainian separatism. Not a few POWs reacted with ¢ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱ were instructed to indicate whether they were “healthy, sick, or wounded” when they were taken captive. They also suspected that the visit of the nurse was above all to determine who the “disloyal” POWs were. Everything suggested that Romanova’s intention was to intimidate the Ukrainian POWs and thereby undercut the propaganda work of the Austrians. In her own report on her visit to the Austro-Hungarian POW camps, Romanova held fast to her impressions from the Freistadt encounters, where ȱ ȱ ȱ śǰŖŖŖȱ ȃĴȱ ǯȄȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȱ Ȭ Russian propaganda in the camps and about the good living conditions of ȱȱȱǯȱȱȱȱȱĚǰȱȱ DZȱȃȱȱ language was eliminated; lectures were held about Mazepa and newspapers with revolutionary content were published.” Although she acknowledged “some results,” she felt they were relatively small.81 National Legions, POWs, and Imperial Anticolonialism ȱȱ ȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ tian POWs were to be granted the right to join special military units and ȲǰȱPOWs and the Great War, 123. Peter Pastor, “Introduction,” in Essays on World War I: Origins and Prisoners of War, ed. Samuel R. Williamson and Pastor (New York: Social Science Monographs, Brooklyn College Press, 1983), 115. 80
ȲȂȱȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȱǰȱKriegsgefangenschaft an der Ostfront 1914 bis 1918: Literaturbericht zu einem neuen Forschungsfeld (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), 135–37.
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participate in future military operations against Germany and AustriaHungary. This idea appears to have been ignored until spring 1917.82 Perhaps the best-known consequence of this type of thinking was a proposal from the leaders of the small Czech colony in Russia to create a volunteer Czech company, the druzina, already in late August 1914. The original idea was to use the druzina as a reservoir of future administrators who would manage what would be a future liberated Czech land. This company became a formal unit of the Russian army. This initiative had the blessing of the tsar ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ failed to make the expected breakthrough into Hungary and then Bohemia and Moravia during the Carpathian Winter War, the druzina became a small intelligence-gathering unit positioned opposite Czech units in the Habsburg army. Eventually a Czechoslovak Legion was raised in 1917 that would spark the Russian Civil War in May 1918, when they were making their way home ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęǯȱ ȱ £ȱ ȱ ę¢ȱ ȱ from Vladivostok in September 1920 and became the core of the Czechoslovak army.83 Another similar venture undertaken by the Russian authorities was the organization of a South Slav Legion to “liberate” their brethren groaning under the Habsburg yoke.84 Constantinople Mission The “Constantinople Action” (as Austrian diplomats dubbed it) provides a last ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ ȱ ěȱ has called the “Ukrainian adventure of the Central Powers” and what Aviel Roshwald might include as one of the “new geopolitical frames of reference and arenas of action” for nationalist experiments.85 Although it failed before it even got launched, the plan envisioned bringing together the POWs in the Austrian Freistadt POW camp with the recently formed volunteer Ukrainian
82
Ȳȱȱ ǰȱȃȱ ȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱ¢ǰȄȱřŚȮśŝǯ
ȲȱǰȱPOWs and the Great War, 115–20; J. F. N. Bradley, The Czechoslovak Legion in Russia, 1914–1920 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1991); Josef Kalvoda, “Czech and Slovak Prisoners of War in Russia during the War and Revolution,” in Essays on World War I, 215–38.
83
84 ȲǰȱPOWs and the Great War; Ivo Banac, “South Slav Prisoners in Revolution Russia,” in Essays on World War I, 119–48. 85 Ȳȱ ¢ £ǰȱ ȃȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ Ȭ gebiet: Konstantinopler Aktion. Oktober–November 1918,” in Ereignisse in der Ukraine, ŗDZȱŗŚŚȮśşǰȱŗŝŝȮŝŞǰȱŗşŗȮşśDzȱȱȃ¡ȱȱ¢ǰȄȱ ȱǰȱǯȱŞǰȱęȱŝǯ
THE ENTANGLED EASTERN FRONT
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legion, the Sich Sharpshooters,86 in a plot to join with Turkish soldiers to “liberate” the Kuban region from Russian rule. The assembled national legions ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱĴȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ summon a revolutionary movement in Ukraine. This came early in the war, in October and November 1914, and appeared to be largely the instigation of the Germans and their undersecretary of state, Arthur Zimmermann, one of the leading “revolutionaries” in the German Foreign Ministry, whose views helped to shape those of the “revolutionary emperor,” Kaiser Wilhelm II. Zimmermann informed the German ambassador in Constantinople, Freiherr
ȱȱǰȱȱřȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ uprising in the Caucasus against Russia. But even the state secretary himself, Ĵȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ ȱ ȱȱ ȱȃȱȱ revolution” in Poland and Ukraine, “as a means of warfare against Russia,” ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ Ȃȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ Ȭ tween Russia and Germany and Austria-Hungary.87 On the Austrian side, ȱȱĜȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱěǯ This remarkable scheme had one of its multiple origins in a report from ULU member Oleksandr Skoropys-Zholtukhovs´kyi, a Russian Ukrainian exile in Vienna, that 700 Kuban Cossacks had been arrested by Russian ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȄȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ the Central Powers, another Union “delegate,” Marian Melenevskyi, also a Russian Ukrainian, had visited Constantinople, where he informed Turkish political and military circles about the situation in Russia, made contacts with ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱȱȱĴȱǰȱ including a Georgian leader and a veteran of the Georgian legion that took part in the revolution in Persia. This Georgian came to Austria and visited the Ukrainian POW camps and began talks with the Union and the Young ȱĴǰȱȱ ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Muslim Turkic-Tatar Population of Russia. The Union delegates came to an agreement with Enver Pasha in October 1914 and made a request to Vienna to approve the formation of an expeditionary corps of 500 Ukrainians, of whom 400 were to be recruited from the Sich Sharpshooters and 100 Russian Ukrainians to be recruited from the POW camps. This request is part of the Central Powers’s decision-making that led to the separation of Ukrainians from the general camp population. The 86 Ȳȱ ¢ £ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȄȱ ȱ Ereignisse in der Ukraine, 129–43. 87 Ȳǰȱ Germany’s Aims, 120–26, 132–54. Other German advocates of annexation and collaboration with Ukrainians included Friedrich von Schwerin, administrative president of the Prussian district of Frankfurt on the Oder, and Dr. Erich Keup.
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Ukrainian legionnaires were to be recruited in Bukovyna (not under Russian occupation) and to travel in civilian clothing through Romania (having declared provisional neutrality in the war) to Constantinople. Also part of the scheme was to foment an insurrection among the sailors of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The Freistadt camp was designated as the primary holding point for Russian Ukrainian POWs; orders were given to transfer 1,000 POWs from Hungarian camps to Austria. Special care was advised to select volunteers who could be trusted to keep the entire mission secret, as well as to select Austrian and Russian Ukrainians who could get along with one another. A representative from the Union and one from the Ukrainian National Rada would be sent to the Bukovyna Commander, Colonel Fischer, to make the selections from the Sharpshooters. ȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȃȬȄȱ military action was none other than Count Stanislaw Szepticki, an Austrian ȱ ěȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱǯȱ ¢ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱĜȱȱ command in Turkey, so that the “this terrain is not only left to the Germans.” Szepticki agreed to his appointment. Hoyos also expressed his concern about pursuing this action and felt under considerable pressure from the Germans; his own opinion was that any revolution that might bring down the Russian colossus would only bring unwanted instability in the end (for the Habsburg Empire as well). He confessed to occasional skepticism about the outcome of such an adventure, but felt it was his duty to support the German allies. By mid-November, Hoyos reported to Pallavicini that the German advisor ȱȱĴȱ¢ǰȱ ȱĴȱȱȱǰȱ ȱ ȱȱ dispatching 50,000 Turkish troops to the north Caucasus to raise a rebellion among the Cherkes (Kabardinians) and Kuban Cossacks. All these schemes came to an abrupt end when Enver Pasha, Liman von Sanders, and Pallavicini concluded that although all of them were in agreeȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȬ mans did not control movement in the Black Sea, meaning the defeat of the ȱ Ěȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ into the war. In the end, the Turks also objected to placing Turkish soldiers under an Austro-Hungarian commander and had serious misgivings about Muslim Turks collaborating with Orthodox Christian Kuban Cossacks in any uprising.88 And so concluded this remarkably entangled scheme to wage nationalist revolutions in Russia with the help of Ukrainian Sharpshooters and Russian POWs in Austrian camps. Ȳȱ ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŗŚȱ ȱ £Ȭȱ ȱ Ĵ§ǰȄȱJahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, N.F., 14 (1966): 362–66.
88
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Legacies of an Entangled Front: Some Concluding Thoughts ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȬȱ ȱȱęȱȱ acknowledgment of the new Bolshevik state in Russia and the governmentin-temporary exile of the Central Rada in Ukraine by all the Central Powers: ¢ǰȱȬ ¢ǰȱȱĴȱǰȱȱǯ89 The victors in Versailles could not bring themselves to any similar recognitions of Bolshevik Russia or the next government in Ukraine, that of the Directory, and so ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱŗşŗşǯȱȱȱĴǰȱȱȱ ȱȱĴȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱǰȱ who continued to wage war against Turkey until the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. What the Versailles peacemakers did achieve, however, was the “disentanglement” of an independent Poland from its three former imperial masters, but a Poland that also had undetermined borders to the north, east, and south, ȱȱĴǰȱȱ ¢ȱȱȱ ǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ 1921 following the Russian-Polish-Ukrainian wars, by which time Moscow had reconquered much of the Russian Empire, including most of Ukraine and Belarus. Out of the war on the Eastern Front also came a new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, carved out of lands of Austria, Hungary, ȱ¢ȱȱĴȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱǯȱ This postwar outcome of the entanglements of the Eastern Front was vastly ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ other states, though France and Britain were quite busy creating mandatestates in the Middle East. Moreover, no other states outside the Eastern Front were subjected to the minority provisions of the League of Nations, another ȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱ ȱǯ90 Other legacies of these Eastern Front entanglements include the large populations of prisoners of war and refugees on the Eastern Front, relative again to the Western Front. The repatriation of both populations and their return home kept the pariah states of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bolshevik Russia, and Turkey entangled as they negotiated conditions for transportation, for relief on the way home, and for legal status. These populations contributed to the radicalization of politics in their place of forced temporary residence and when they returned home as well. On the Eastern Front, a series of new states, which is to say nearly all the states on the Eastern Front, faced the immediate tasks of Ȳ ǰȱ First Treaty of World War I;ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȬĴǰȱ ȱ Ĵȱ DZȱ ȬǰȱȱŗşŗŞȱ(New York: W. Morrow, 1939). 89
ȲȱǰȱDefending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 90
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ȱȱ ȱǯȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱ POWs still held in the camps; this was true even for short-lived governments during the Civil War on the territory of the former Russian Empire; for example, the White Army was in competition with Hetman Skoropads´kyi’s representatives from Ukraine over “Russian” prisoners of war in German and Austrian camps. The Bolsheviks, in turn, recruited tens of thousands of ȱȱȂȱǰȱȱ ǰȱȱęȱȱȃȄȱ against the forces of “international and domestic counterrevolution.” Although Bolshevik Russia was the most radical outcome of the dynamic of destruction on the Eastern Front, Russian-inspired soviets appeared in other cities for brief periods in the turmoil of the end of the world war. Already ȱŗşŗŝȱȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱěȱȱ the social-democratic politics in Germany and the Habsburg Empire, above all, where the majority Social Democrats faced left-wing splinter groups that called for a peace without annexations and social and political change at home. All those cities were major capitals of the entangled Eastern Front: in Budapest a Hungarian Soviet Republic was declared in March 1919 under Béla Kun, a former Russian POW; in Munich, a Bavarian Soviet republic, and workers’ and soldiers’ soviets in Berlin and Hamburg; a Western Ukrainian Soviet republic in Lviv; short-lived soviets in Riga, Tallinn, and Helsinki, and elsewhere. One of the responses to these short-lived victories of the revolutionary left was the mobilization of the radical right. The dynamics of this right-left civil war varied from country to country but shared, on the right, a more exclusive nationalism coupled with “historic” inner enemies, above all Jews.91 Of course, the war on the Western Front also helped to transform the societies, economies, and politics of Britain, France, and Belgium, but those ȱȱěȱȱȱěȱǯȱ Another important legacy was the prominent role of military heroes and ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ empires on the Eastern Front. Many of the states that emerged from the rubble of the war on the Eastern Front had presidents who had been commanders of ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱǰȱ £ȱÙǯȱ Former commanders in the Russian Imperial Army became president of interwar Finland (Gustav Mannerheim) and interwar king of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Alexandar). Out of the wartime Austro-Hungarian army and the armed struggle against Béla Kun’s Soviet regime in Budapest emerged the Ȳ ěȱ ¢ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ DZȱ ǰȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Formation in Eastern Europe, 1914–1923,” in Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, ed. Peter J. Potichnyj and Howard Aster, 2nd ed. (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1988); and his “War and the Twentieth-Century State,” Daedalus 124, 2 (Spring 1995): 155–74. 91
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Hungarian regent, Admiral Horthy. The German generals in charge of Ober ǰȱěȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ dictatorship from 1916 on, and Hindenburg would be elected president of the ȱȱǻȱȱěȱ ȱȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱ Front, but an Austrian). General Wilhelm Groener, who was the chief German ¢ȱĜȱȱȱŗşŗŞȱȱȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ his emperor, Wilhelm II, to abdicate, much as his Russian counterparts did with their emperor, Nicholas II, nearly two years earlier. General Alekseev had overseen the occupation of Austrian Ukraine as commander of the Southwestern Front in 1914–15, a front that was also Groener’s temporary home in 1918. Bolshevik Russia represents another twist of this narrative, but Leon Trotsky, creator of the Red Army and architect of its Civil War victories, also played a crucial role in creating a militarized Soviet state, culminating in his advocacy of labor armies in 1920, itself a legacy of widespread wartime labor conscription of civilians, POWs, and soldiers when deemed necessary. This Ĵȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ France, Britain, or the United States after the war. So what, can we say, by way of preliminary conclusion, about the value of the “entangled histories” approach to the study of the Eastern Front in ȱ ȱ ǵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ social and identity boundaries as well. Modern wars, at least, are the most violent intrusions of institutions, cultures, and societies in the lives of other human communities across some perceived and real boundaries. Prewar entanglements help us understand the dynamic of destruction during the war and the revolutions and civil wars that followed it, but also challenge us to see alternatives to war in those same prewar entanglements and to do this ȱ ¢ȱ £ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȬȬ¸ȱ modern and cosmopolitan cultures that were one expression of those prewar entanglements. Here, Habsburg Nostalgie is probably the most pronounced and persistent such romanticizing, but similar tendencies can be observed ȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱ ǯȱ £Ȃȱ observations about the conservative character of the army might be extended to another important institution of late imperial Austria-Hungary, namely Ȭ¡ǯȱȱȱ¢ǰȱĴȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ the empire together by acknowledging in their social-democratic future cultural concessions to the empire’s nationalities. It was based on Habsburg norms of constitutional reform and gradual change, but it likewise tried to tame nationalism by conceding the appeal of nationalism. These sorts of political fantasies and programs lived on after the war as well.
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Without doubt, the prewar entanglements were characterized by considerable tensions, whether economic competitions, military rivalry, national and international territorial ambitions, or ethnic political mobilization, but ȱ ȱȱěȱǰȱ¢ȱȱ ȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱǯȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȬ plex, often contradictory (some would say hypocritical) rearrangement of the ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱĴȱȱ Versailles, Brest-Litovsk, Lausanne, and elsewhere that, in the end, appeared ȱȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ and shaped the interwar conjuncture in profound ways. Finally, entangled history reminds us to “listen” to the multiple voices in these empires and naȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĜȱ choices that were more often than not shaped by others and by historical networks, connections, and, yes, entanglements. And, to return to an earlier observation, we as historians can try to make sense of the “Great War” by turning to the “native” comparative imperiologists who lived in and between the rival empires and other states that fostered imperial ambitions.
War of Decolonization: The Russian Empire in the Great War Joshua Sanborn
It is a curious fact that we have no term other than revolution to describe the end of the Russian Empire. When the British Empire collapsed, it was called “decolonization,” and the same was true for the French, Dutch, Belgian, and Portuguese Empires. But that word is almost never used in reference to Russia.1 This is not simply an oversight. Many comparative works on decolonization ¡¢ȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱ ¢ȱȱȱ¡ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ endings, especially those of land empires, those that exercised imperial control over “white” people, or those that ended before World War II. Thus for John Springhall, “‘decolonization’ usually means the taking of measures by indigenous peoples and/or their white overlords intended eventually to end external control over overseasȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ Ȳȱȱ¡ǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȃ£ȱȱȱȱ Empire” in reference to the events surrounding World War I and the Revolution. See Stephan M. Horak, The First Treaty of World War I: Ukraine’s Treaty with the Central Powers of February 9, 1918 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1988), 57. This is not to say that no one has ever noticed similarities before. For instance: “The struggles of the Eastern European peoples during that period are, however, in many ways similar to the struggles of the newly emancipated colonial and semicolonial peoples of our time.” M. K. Dziewanowski, ȱ ÙDZȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ŗşŗŞȮŗşŘŘȱ (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1969), ix. Ronald Grigor Suny mentions “Soviet decolonization” and argues that “for Russian liberals decolonization meant the end of legal discriminations … but not recognition of ethnic distinction or political autonomy.” Ronald Grigor Suny, “’Don’t Paint Nationalism Red’: National Revolution and Socialist Anti-Imperialism,” in Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then, ed. Prasenjit Duara (London: Routledge, 2004), 176–98. Terry Martin also views the events surrounding the Great War and Revolution as related to decolonization, as when he observes that Bolshevik revolutionary strategy was to “assume leadership over what now appeared to be the inevitable process of decolonization.” Terry Martin, ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ DZȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ŗşŘřȮŗşřş (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 1. In composing this essay, I have used material originally published in Joshua A. Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). It is reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. For permission to reuse this material, please visit http://global.oup.com/uk/academic/rights/permissions/. 1
The Empire and Nationalism at War. Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2014, 49–71.
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formal political rule by some new kind of relationship.”2 Martin Shipway is ȱ¡ȱȱȱǰȱĴȱȱȱ£ȱȃȱȱ dated back to the disastrous loss of the 13 American colonies,”3 but he decides ultimately to locate “decolonization precisely at the level of event, or more precisely in a ‘twenty years crisis’ (to borrow E. H. Carr’s label for the interwar period) from 1945.”4 Similarly, Prasenjit Duara insists that it is necessary to exclude “pre-twentieth century independence movements in the Americas” ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ and Africa. Decolonization, for him, “refers to the process whereby colonial powers transferred institutional and legal control over their territories and dependencies to indigenously based, formally sovereign, nation-states.”5 The collapse of the Russian Empire is simply missing from the larger literature on decolonization. This essay proceeds from the premise that the collapse of the Russian Empire was, like other imperial collapses, including those of the Habsburgs ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ £ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ further that the destruction of empires was not simply a byproduct of the peace conference. It was a multistage process that took place over the whole duration of the war. The Great War was a war of European decolonization. ȱ¢ȱȱ£ȱěȱȱȱȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȱ ȱ £ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱĚǯȱǰȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and the Middle East, regions in which the Russian Empire was heavily invested. Ȳ ȱǰ Decolonization since 1945: The Collapse of European Overseas Empires (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2001), 2–3. Emphasis in original. 2
Ȳȱ ¢ǰȱDecolonization and Its Impact: A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 4. 3
4
Ȳ ǯǰȱşǯ
Ȳȱǰȱȃ DZȱȱ£ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Ȭ tieth Century,” in Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then, ed. Duara (London: ǰȱ ŘŖŖŚǼǰȱ ŗȮŘǯȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ęǰȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ clude an essay from his University of Chicago colleague Ronald Grigor Suny on nationalism during the Russian Revolution. Suny, however, did not himself use the term “decolonization” in his essay, as his focus was largely on debates within the Communist Party on nationalities questions. Indeed, he skips over the years 1914–17 entirely in his presentation. Other than Suny’s essay, virtually the only treatment of decolonization in Russia is one chapter in Muriel Chamberlain’s work. That chapter largely treats the end of the Soviet Union. World War I is elided, and only brief mention is made of the independence of Poland and the Baltic states in the interwar period. M. E. Chamberlain, Decolonization: The Fall of the European Empires, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999), 93–115. 5
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“Decolonization” is perhaps an awkward term to use for Russia, since the areas of the empire that ultimately gained independence (Finland, Poǰȱ ȱ ȱ Ǽȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ǻȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ĴǼǯȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ǰȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ the middle of the 19th century there was a consistent conceptual distinction drawn between the Asian parts of the empire (which were understood to be “colonial” and “colonized” in a straightforwardly European sense) and the European parts, which were seen as “ethnically or socially distinct peripheries or borderlands.”6 Thus, we are faced with the apparent problem that the areas that “decolonized” by gaining independence were the very regions that were least considered “colonial” by Russian imperial administrators. One solution to the problem of “decolonization” in a “peripheral” space would therefore be to use an ungainly term like de-peripheralization or de-imperialization to describe the process. Nevertheless, I believe that the best term to use remains “decolonization,” not only for the Russian Empire’s Asian territories but for its European ones ȱ ǯȱ ȱȱęȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǯȱ Authors refer to “British decolonization” both when the process dealt with Ĵȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ gained independence.7 Western European empires were as diverse in their ȱȱĴǰȱ¡ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ǰȱȱȃȄȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱĜȱȱęǯ8 The Russian Empire was not sui generis. Neither, we may posit, was the way it ended. It ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱ£ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ or empire. Thus, if an empire is a relationship of political control imposed by Ȳȱ ǰȱ ȃȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ DZȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ Never Was but Might Have Been,” Slavic Review 69, 1 (Spring 2010): 138–39. For a recent study of an explicit colonization project, see Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia’s Empire in the South Caucasus (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); see also Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Abby Schrader, and Willard Sunderland, eds., ȱȱȱ¢DZȱȱ£ȱȱȱ ¢ȱ(London: Routledge, 2007). 6
ȲǰȱȱǰȱȱŘřȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ěȱȱȱȱ Louis, eds., £ȱȱȱ DZȱȱȱȱ ǰȱŗşŜŖȮŗşŞŖ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). Anthony Low brings both of these types of colonies into the same framework in his essay in the volume: Anthony Low, “The End of the British Empire in Africa,” in ibid., 36. 7
Ȳȱȱȱȱȼȱȱȱ£ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱęȱȱ¢ǯȱȱȱ ǰȱȃȱȱȱȱȁ ȱȂDZȱȱȱȱ£ǵȄȱSlavic ReviewȱŜşǰȱŗȱǻȱŘŖŗŖǼDZȱŗŞŜǯȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱ one recent work ran to 119 pages of text (“The Ministry of Asiatic Russia,” 125 n. 13). 8
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ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱěȱ¢ȱȱȱȱǰ9 then decolonization is the process by which that relationship comes to an end, ȱȱȱĴȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱǯ Likening the decolonization process in Eastern Europe to the processes described by the slew of scholars working on Africa and Asia does not, of course, mean that these events were identical. The issue of race, though not entirely absent from developments in Eastern Europe (and certainly not absent from imperial relationships in the Caucasus and Central Asia), was indeed less central than it would be during the conjuncture of decolonization that followed World War II. We can understand why racial issues might be seen as an essential feature of decolonizing processes for a scholar like Springhall, not only because of the role race played in strategies of domination, but also because of the way it linked the “wretched of the earth” across state boundaries as they pursued liberationist strategies. As we shall see, when decolonizing actors reached across borders in Eastern Europe, they did so on the basis of a ȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱĜ¢ǯȱ¢ǰȱȱ¢ȱ¢ȱ well be the case that the psychological trauma experienced by the subaltern ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Empire in Europe. At present, though, we cannot be sure, because these cases of empire, decolonization, and postcolonialism have not been systematically compared. Bringing the Russian case into the same analytical frame by using the same analytical terms will allow for exactly this sort of investigation. Using the term “decolonization” may also help those focusing on Eastern European history to see the events during the period of the Great War and ȱȱȱ ȱǯȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱ of the recent scholarship on decolonization is that it must be analyzed as a multiactor and multistage process rather than as a single moment in time. If we treat Eastern European decolonization in the same way, we will quickly see that we must look at more than the end of the war and Versailles. This has not yet been done. For instance, though few historical events have generated the volume of literature that the events of the summer of 1914 have, no ȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱĴȱȱȱ£ȱȱȱȱȱ the Sarajevo assassination or the July Crisis. Indeed, scholars have generally ignored the dynamic of decolonization even for the later stages of the Ěǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱ ȱȱ process became virtually impossible to miss. Erez Manela’s recent book is a ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ and Asia, which prompts him to link the upsurge of anticolonial rhetoric to
9
Ȳȱǯȱ¢ǰȱEmpires (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 19, 33.
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the “Wilsonian Moment” in late 1918 and 1919.10 Serbia, Poland, Ukraine, and Ireland are mostly missing from his story. These lacunae are particularly striking given the centrality of empire to the literature on World War I. That debate has focused largely on the dynamic of competitive imperialism between the Great Powers. The question ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĚǯȱȱȱǰȱȱȱĴȱ has been paid to developments in Berlin, Paris, and London than to those in the Balkans, where the crisis developed.11 This shift of focus north and west was understandable not only for historiographical reasons (having to do with the pressing demand of assigning blame for the war) but also for good historical ones. Most statesmen and later historians assumed that a massive war between the Great Powers would be fundamentally rooted in the massive ȱĚȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱ ǯȱȱȱȱ ¢ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ would be anything more than that. Thus, European diplomats in July 1914 normally treated the crisis as one between the imperial powers. They declared war and ordered military mobilizations in August within the context of the imperial system that had governed their actions for the previous century. But wars are frequently about many things at once, and great wars are almost by ęȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȱ¢ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ control as such, not just about which empire would do the controlling. This aspect of World War I was present from the very beginning of the war, and it developed rapidly over the following years. Just as thinking about decolonization in addition to imperialism allows us to see the events of the war in a new light, so too does this model give us new insights into developments normally classed as the “rise of nationalism” in Eastern Europe. Again, the study of nationalism in Eastern Europe has long occupied an important part of the war literature. In particular, studies of the Habsburg Empire in the period before and during the war regularly discuss the restiveness and political aspirations of particular ethnic groups, and many conclude that the multiethnic empire was ultimately untenable
Ȳ£ȱǰȱThe Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
10
Ȳȱȱ¡ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ǰȱ see Annika Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (Harlow, UK: Longman, 2002).
11
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as a modern state.12 In this reading, the rise of nationalism put such intense pressure on imperial states that those states were forced to take ever more desperate measures to contain them. The war deferred these aspirations for independence, but when the imperial states went down to defeat, nationalist groups deployed Wilson’s language of self-determination to gain political recognition in Paris. This stress on the agency of nationalist politicians is not so much wrong as incomplete. It overemphasizes the early formative processes of developing ethnic consciousness and overvalues the role of the articulate and published promoters of the national idea. Above all, however, the model of national liberation is problematic because it is founded on the assumption that the process is primarily one of moving from colonial dependence to national sovereignty and that therefore the primary struggle is between the nation seeking liberation and the empire that seeks to maintain control. This general framework is not robust enough to explain the complicated political and military processes that historically have led to independence, ȱȱȱ ¢ȱĚȱȱ¢ȱȱęȱ ȱȬ ported co-nationals and by deep engagement with regional and global powers ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱěǯȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ in the events in Eastern Europe in World War I, where multiple imperial states supported anti-imperial movements in the borderlands of their enemies.13 The ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱĴȱȱ¡ȱ ¢ȱĚȱǰȱȱ¢ȱęǰȱȱȱȱ of national independence. Indeed, the outcome of decolonization in the short term was not the establishment of ethno-national states, but the creation of new multinational states. This was the case not only for the Soviet Union but also (as the names suggest) for Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, ǰȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ state of ethnic Poles. It is true that virtually every political movement interested in decolonization over the past century adopted the national idiom, and this choice of idiom had powerful consequences for political beliefs and political practices everywhere it was deployed. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between the core political processes of decolonization and the national ideology that imperfectly structured those political interactions.
Ȳȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱŘŖȬ¢ȱǯȱȱȱŘŗȬ¢ȱ example, see Robin Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy: From Enlightenment to Eclipse (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), vii, 400–01.
12
Ȳ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ especially Michael A. Reynolds, ĴȱDZȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱ and Russian Empires, 1908–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
13
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ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ Ĵȱȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ garding the causes and consequences of the war were established before comȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ 20th century. Hindsight, as historians know perfectly well, is never actually 20-20. Still, the capacity to take the long view is one of the great advantages that historians enjoy over the people who lived through historical events, and it is one that we should employ in this case. Over the course of the 20th century, we have had ample opportunity to see the emergence of nationalist movements and the collapse of imperial rule. These historical processes took place on a continental scale in the wake of World War II, and when discussing events in Africa and Asia commentators regularly discuss them both in terms of national liberation and through the lens of decolonization. In the Americas and Europe, where anti-imperial independence movements took place earlier in the modern era, however, the concept of decolonization is deployed less often. It is worth asking, therefore, whether the revolutions and rebellions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the Americas and the rise of new states in the wake of World War I in Europe were decolonizing movements before their time. ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ logic of decolonization. Phase 1 is the imperial challenge stage. In this formative period of decolonization, certain members of colonized communities build anti-imperial political movements that have the capacity to grow in their legitimacy and authority in the region in question. It helps, but is not necessary, for a corresponding movement to be developing in the metropole that casts doubt on the usefulness or morality of the imperial project.14 Nationalism has historically been a powerful contributor to these calculations of legitimacy and authority in both the metropole and the periphery in the modern era, but again it is not logically necessary. It also helps if the imperial state sees a ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ¢¢ȱȱȱě¢ȱȱȱȱ under its rule, either as a result of economic crisis, military defeat, or some other event. Phase 2 is the state failure stage. I use this commonplace political science term regarding modern nation-states15 a bit against the grain here to remind us that decolonization necessarily entails the removal, eclipse, withdrawal, Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ Anthony Pagden, ȱȱȱȱDZȱ ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱǯȱ 1500–c. 1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
14
15 Ȳȱ ǯȱǰȱȃȱǰȱȱǰȱȱDZȱȱȱ Ȭ tors,” in State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror, ed. Rotberg (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 1–25.
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or failure of the imperial state. Of course, state failure is a phenomenon that applies well beyond the sphere of imperial states, and it is not conceptually subordinate to the process of decolonization. Though much of the literature on failed states concerns nation-states, not empires, it remains useful because it reminds us of the importance of state capacities, the delivery of public goods, and the supreme importance of security for the functioning of modern societies and economies. That literature also reminds us just how complex and fragile the organism of the modern state really is.16 Revolutionaries frequently imagine that they can simply take over the apparatus of the state, seize the ȃȱǰȄȱȱ ȱȱȱȱĜǰȱȱȱ the bureaucracies function as they desire. They are always disappointed. ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱĜȱǯȱ They are also systems of personalized networks of power and of routinized ¢ȱȱǯȱ ȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱęȱ¢ȱȱȬ pacity to legitimate and control violence. As a result, independence requires the demise of one set of personalized networks, the end of habitual authority and submission, and the delegitimization and loss of control over violence before a new “state” can be built. Of course, there need be no causal relationship between imperial challenge and state failure. State failure does not need to be brought on by antiimperial revolutionaries. Imperial states can self-destruct, either knowingly or unintentionally, and they can be destroyed by other empires. So too can they dissolve among a multitude of competing projects. It is often the case, as Frederick Cooper has noted in regard to Francophone Africa in the late 1940s, that the political projects pursued by colonized peoples are not those of independence, but are rather of integration, or of federalism, or of any Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱ ȱȱȱ ȱȱ extensive, varied, and interesting literature on state failure. There are many views ȱ ȱ ȃȱ Ȅȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱĴȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȃǰȄȱ “failing,” “failed,” or “collapsed” state. As we will see below, it was all of these at one ȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱěȱȱǯȱ A useful summary of the recent literature that takes proper notice of the regional ȱȱȱȱȱȱěǰȱȃȱȱȱȱȱǰȄȱ Review of International Studies 37, 3 (July 2011): 951–72. A reminder that the very notion of state failure depends on a normative (and contested) view of what constitutes a state is Stein Sundstøl Eriksen, “‘State Failure’ in Theory and Practice: The Idea of the State and the Contradictions of State Formation,” Review of International Studies 37, 1 (January 2011): 229–47. This is particularly useful to keep in mind when dealing with old empires rather than the younger nation-states that form the bulk of the cases normally studied by those interested in state failure. On state fragmentation, see Jieli Li, “State Fragmentation: Toward a Theoretical Understanding of the Territorial Power of the State,” Sociological Theory 20, 2 (July 2002): 139–56.
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number of other permutations of power. We now know that this phase of accommodation in Africa was rapidly overtaken by events and that full independence would come quickly. This was not apparent at the time, however. “It is hard to tell,” Cooper writes, whether these African activists knew that their project of increased integration “was a logic whose time would be short.”17 Much the same can be said regarding Polish, Finnish, and Ukrainian activists during the First World War as well. The outcome of the failure of the imperial state is, if not inevitable, at least predictable. With the collapse of previous legitimating mechanisms for violence, the scope for “violent entrepreneurship”18 is greatly enhanced. Aspirants for power, wealth, or pleasure can create or utilize organizations of violence in the period of open and violent competition that accompanies the ȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱǯȱȱȱ£Ȭ tions may be formal military units, but they are just as frequently loosely organized paramilitary units or even what are best described as gangs. The ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱǰȱ¢ȱěȱǰȱ since the role of violence in the economy, hidden, legitimated, and routinized under successful states, now assumes a much more prominent role, tilting the economic balance towards those expert in violence and away from those expert in managing capital, engaging in commerce, or performing peaceful labor. This shift toward non-productive extraction and the crippling of existing economic systems is never good for general prosperity. At the same time, the rise of the class of violent entrepreneurs transforms social relations. Fear and insecurity lead many citizens to withdraw from public spaces and social interactions and many others to evacuate zones in which conducting a normal life has become nearly impossible and exceedingly dangerous. Thus the phase of imperial state failure frequently leads to a social disaster ȱȱ£ǯȱȱȱȱǰȱĚȱȱǰȱȱȱ ȱ£ȱȱǰȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱ rapidly dwindling resource base of economic goods and political support. As poverty spreads and whatever social or state institutions responsible for providing relief or health care crumble, famine and pestilence often make their presence felt. These, in turn, destroy social relations even more, as neighbors hoard food, hospitality carries risk of mortal illness, and desperate people sever their social ties with their fellow townspeople or villagers in order to ȲȱǰȱAfrica since 1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 49.
17
Ȳ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ ume on violence in the Russian economy during the 1990s. Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).
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seek a place where things are not so bad. Unless arrested quickly, this social disaster phase can lead to an apocalyptic death spiral, as the experience not ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴǰȱȱȱȱ places like Congo and Somalia in our own time. Formal independence most often comes at some point during the state failure stage, though it may come earlier, even prompting the state failure described above. It may also happen later, well into the phase of social disaster. Independence certainly does not cure all of the ills of the decolonizing process. Indeed, it frequently makes things worse. As a result, though it makes ȱȱȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱȱȱȱĜȱ independence, I will argue here that we should understand independence more as an important way station in the course of events than a teleological conclusion.19 Imperial Challenge ȱ ȱȱǰȱȱȱęȱȱȱ¢ȱ ¢ȱȱȱȬ esting dynamic of imperial challenge on the eve of World War I was taking place in the Balkans. Decolonization there was certainly more advanced than it was elsewhere on the continent. One may argue that the July Crisis was so explosive precisely because an aggressive bid for regional hegemony on the part of a brash young nation coincided with a high-stakes imperial showdown between the Great Powers. Less potent imperial challenges were occurring throughout the Russian Empire as well. Showing this process of decolonization across the entire breadth of the Russian Empire requires more than an article, of course, especially if one includes Russia proper as one of the areas undergoing decolonization in those years. I will focus more narrowly here on the regions of Finland, Poland, and Ukraine, not because Central Asia and the Caucasus were not participants in the decolonizing process, but precisely because scholars have been more reluctant to see European Russia as a colonial space than they have been to see Asia in the same way. Decolonization was certainly occurring in Central Asia and the Caucasus during the years of the Great War, as ȱĴȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱǯȱ ǰȱĴȱȱȱȱ work described the imperial crisis in Turkestan as part of a more general imperial crisis that corresponds with the model of decolonization I proposed above: “The break-up of empire everywhere gives rise to the delegitimization of its institutions and functionaries, to the rise of local powers who are, in practice, autonomous, to rivalries surrounding these powers, and to sharp ȱĚǰȱ¢ȱ ȱȱĚȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ 19
ȲȱȱǰȱAfrica since 1940, xi, for a similar argument.
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of an economic crisis.”20 Just as it was occurring in Turkestan, so too was it happening in the “periphery” that constituted Russia’s European borderlands. As was the case throughout the empire, the imperial challenge stage in the western empire had begun prior to the war, but this challenge remained too ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱęȱ ¢ǯ In Poland, the empire was challenged from the very moment of the partitions, but the experience of the disastrous 1863 rebellion had transformed the anti-imperial project. On the one hand, the tepid response of the Polish peasantry to upper-class calls for revolt led to a growing awareness that nationalism had to be popularly based in order to succeed. This impulse led to the establishment of political parties in the 1890s that proclaimed Polish independence as their main goal and sought to engage Poles of all classes in the national project.21 On the other hand, the quick and brutal suppression of ȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱěȱ ȱȬ ropole and periphery was a political fact of consequence. Romantic calls for doomed displays of valor in the cause of liberty were looked upon with an increasingly gimlet eye. This combination of revolutionary desire and pragmatic patience was ȱ¡ȱ¢ȱȱ ǰȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱ and National Democratic Party, in the text of the Program of the National League in 1903: 1. The main political goal, resulting from the situation of our nation, is the gaining of independence and the creation of an independent Polish state. 2. The present condition and situation of our nation do not provide the conditions necessary for either an armed or a diplomatic action in the Ĵȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǯ22 ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ views within the Polish national movement over which circumstances would warrant a bid for power. Most famously, shortly after the start of the Russo ȱȱȱŗşŖŚǰȱ à£ȱÙȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȲȱĴǰȱRevoliutsiia naoborot: Sredniaia Aziia mezhdu padeniem tsarskoi imperii i obrazovaniem SSSR, translated from Italian by Nikolai Okhotin (2003; repr., Moscow: Zven´ia, 2007), 12. 20
Ȳȱȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱŗŞşŘǰȱȱȱȱȱǻȱȱ ŗŞŞŝǼȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱŗŞşřȱȱȱěȱȱȬ tional Democratic Party in 1897. 21
ȲȱȱȱǰȱRoman Dmowski: Party, Tactics, Ideology, 1895–1907 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1980), 80.
22
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Socialist Party to ask for assistance in starting a rebellion. Just as quickly, Dmowski rushed across three continents to plead with the Japanese to refuse Ùȱȱǰȱ¡ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱǯ23 All parties, however, were agreed that the optimal time for open agitation for Polish independence would be a war between the partitioning powers.24 For Eastern European nationalists, the Great War was a war of decolonization even before it began; it was a dreamed-of moment that allowed them to hope that they might see independence in their lifetimes. This was not only a Polish desire. We can see the same calculation present among Finnish nationalists as early as 1844: In order that resistance be soundly based and achieve the results for which we strive, it must have a political direction—it must be a resistance of the sword. If this sort of resistance were now to be employed, it would inevitably lead to the destruction of Finland, i.e., the opposite ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱǯdzȱ ȱȱȱȱěȱ ȱ merely as preparation for revolt, not in the sense that we would be ȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱěǰȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ advantage of any opportunity. The Russians will sooner or later come to blows with the Turks, who will receive support from the Kirghiz, the Tatars and the whole of the Caucasus. Poland only awaits such an opportunity to take up arms. At that moment we too will cry destruction to the Muscovite from the Finnish morasses. But until that time I believe that we must refrain from all forms of uproar.25 This sentiment did not dissipate with time. Yrjö S. Yrjö-Koskinen reminded his colleagues in October 1901 in the midst of the Finnish conscription crisis that “we, despite our rights, are inevitably the weaker party, and that we must strive for a tolerable compromise if we do not wish to imperil the position, even the very existence of the Finnish people.”26 Needless to say, Finnish nationalists did not speak with one voice on this or other questions, but the Ȳ ǯǰȱŗŗŝDzȱȱǯȱǰȱNation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and ęȱȱȱȱǰȱŗŞŜřȮŗşŗŚ (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), 115.
23
24
ȲǰȱRoman Dmowski, 79.
25 ȲĴȱ ·ǰȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ǯȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ ŗŞȱ ȱ ŗŞŚŚǰȱ ȱ Finland and Russia, 1808–1920: From Autonomy to Independence. A Selection of Documents, ed. D. G. Kirby (London: Macmillan, 1975), 40.
ȲãȱǯȱãȬ ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȬ tion law, in ibid., 88. 26
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specter of imperial suppression loomed large even for those more radical and activist than Yrjö-Koskinen. The revolution of 1905 gave hope to many of those radicals, in Finland as elsewhere. On 9 April 1905 a group of oppositionists met in Geneva to call for constitutional change in the empire. The Finnish Active Resistance Party was joined by the Socialist Revolutionary Party (Russia), the Polish Socialist Party, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the Georgian Federalist Revolutionary Socialist Party, the Latvian Social Democratic Party, and the Belorussian Socialist Gromada in calling for a constituent assembly to transform the polity on the basis of “democratic and republican principles.” Notably, neither Polish nor Finnish radical nationalists planned to participate in this future assembly, since they insisted that they should hold their own constituent assemblies to decide their own (presumably independent) fates.27 Of course the outcome of the revolution, with its combination of electoral opportunities and savage repression of those who continued to rebel, dashed these hopes entirely. The prospects for Ukrainian nationalists were even grimmer. As elsewhere, activists formed a series of organizations in the 1890s. The radical Taras Brotherhood was founded in 1891, but the police rolled it up just two years later. In 1897, the General Ukrainian Non-Party Democratic Organization was ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ ǰȱȱȱŗşŖŖǰȱȱęȱȱ political party in the empire was instituted—the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party.28 The Revolutionary Ukrainian Party soon split between those who favored national independence as the primary goal and those who sought social revolution above all. As the list of signatories to the Geneva Program ȱȱǰȱȱĚȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ and organizations was common in the period throughout Eastern Europe. Socialist parties such as the Bund (1897) and the Russian Social Democratic Party (1898) were formed at the exact same time as the nationalist groups ȱǰȱȱȱ ȱęȱȱȱȱ ȱ these organizations. As Robin Okey perceptively remarked in his study of the Habsburg Empire, the overlap was probably greater for citizens than it was for squabbling revolutionaries: “[a]t the popular level nationalism was ȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱȱȱȱǯȱ ȱ ȱȱ possible for ‘the masses’ of contemporary parlance to prioritise social issues ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȄ29 The period 27
Ȳȱ ȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱǯǰȱŗŖŖȮŖŗǯ
ȲȱȱǰȱA History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 402. 28
Ȳ¢ǰȱThe Habsburg Monarchy, 397. See here also Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA: 29
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between 1905–08 saw many of these socialist/nationalist parties become open ȱȱęȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱŗşŖśȱ nor the subsequent hesitant engagement with electoral politics demonstrably strengthened the Ukrainian nationalist movement. As Robert Magocsi has ǰȱ Ȭȱȱȱ ȱȃě¢ȱȱěȱȱ Ȭ ing with and educating the population at large in a Ukrainian national spirit,” and they remained on the “fringes” of politics and society in the Ukrainian lands as a result.30 Thus, sober calculations of the relative armed might of nationalist groups and the mighty Russian Empire always ended with the same depressing result. Nationalists still had years of work to do even to convince their conationals of a shared project, much less the need for a violent uprising. And even if they succeeded in their cultural work, could they defeat the Russian ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ǵȱȱǰȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱŗşŖśȱȱ proven able to defend itself against independence movements, and both the Russian state and the Russian military had strengthened in the intervening years. Nationalists could not achieve their ends on their own. All they could hope for was a major war between the great empires of Central and Eastern Europe. State Failure Though many nationalists anticipated that the Great War would be a war of decolonization, none of them foresaw exactly how that process would unfold. Mainly, they thought that the removal of imperial control would either occur due to military defeat and the occupation of their lands by another power or that independence would be won at the negotiating table upon the conclusion of the war. Their task, as a result, would be to choose the winning side, to force wartime concessions, and to ensure that promises were kept at the ȱȱȱ¢ǯȱÙȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ £ȱȱȱ ȱ ȱȃ¢ȱěȱȱȄȱȱ ȱȱȱȬ quered, he also recognized that “the partitioning powers would have much greater power and authority amongst my countrymen than I should.”31 He ¢ȱȱȱ¢ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱ to win independence by force as to masculinize the Polish public: ‘“I wanted ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴ¢ȱǰȱȱȱȱ Stanford University Press, 1993). ȲǰȱA History of Ukraine, 407. See also Alexei Miller’s essay in this volume.
30
Ȳ à£ȱÙǰȱȱȱ à ǰȱŗşŘŘǰȱȱ ȱǰȱThe Memories of a Polish Revolutionary and Soldier, trans. and ed. D. R. Gillie (1931; New York: AMS, 1971), 185.
31
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secretly in corners by well brought-up children. I wanted Poland, who had Ĵȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱȂŜřǰȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ of her own soldiers.”32ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃ ȱĴǯȄȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱ¢ȱȱȱ ǰȱȱ his men to Kielce. The response, however, was tepid. The only “Poles” who ȱȱ ȱĚ ȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱ ȱǰȱ ȱȱ marched with them to serve precisely this purpose. The wise townspeople of Kielce stayed inside, well away from the dangerous provocation, and Russian ȱȱȱÙȱȱȱȱǯ33 It was neither Polish nationalists nor occupying German armies who dealt ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Nicholas II, who declared martial law in all territories west of the Dnieper River and other territories as far east as St. Petersburg on 29 July 1914.34 All Ĝȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱ Headquarters (Stavka) rather than to their ministerial chiefs in the capital. The intent, plainly, was to streamline chains of command in the area and to ensure that military needs were given priority for the duration of the war. When Nicholas signed the decree, he apparently still envisioned taking the top position at General Headquarters himself, but within days he had bowed to the logic of appointing his cousin, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, instead. This ĝȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ as well. The decree immediately gave ultimate authority to a body (General Headquarters) that did not yet exist. It would be two weeks before General
ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱDzȱȱȱǰȱȱĜȱ reported to heads of the regional military districts instead.35 Even when Genȱ ȱ ȱǰȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ the titanic and rapidly developing clashes with the Central Powers rather than ȱȱȱȱǯȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱĜȱ was created under the leadership of Prince N. L. Obolenskii. He was assigned
32
Ȳ à£ȱÙǰȱĴȱȱȱ ǰȱŜȱȱŗşŗŜǰȱȱǯǰȱŗŞŜȮŞŝǯ
ȲȱǰȱGod’s Playground: A History of Poland, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 2: 382.
33
Ȳ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢DZȱ ȱǰȱȃ¢ȱ Occupation and Social Unrest: Daily Life in Russian Poland at the Start of World War I,” in ȱ ȱ ȱ DZȱ ȱ ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ¢, ed. Golfo ¡ǰȱ ȱ ǰȱȱ ȱěȱǻ ȱDZȱȱǰȱŘŖŗŖǼǰȱ 43–58.
34
Ȳȱǯȱ ǰȱȃ¢ȱȱȱȱȱǰȱŗşŗŚȮŗşŗŝDZȱȱȱ ęǰȄȱJahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 22, 3 (1974): 390. 35
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ȱĜǰȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱȱǯȱȱ¡ȱȱ ȱȱ charge of a territorial expanse larger than Germany.36 The replacement of the ministerial structure of the empire with a handful ȱĜȱ ȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ streamlining to those who believed that the new system would eliminate the bureaucratic obstacles that could hinder the prosecution of the war. Ultimately, however, the decision to impose martial law on such a large area appears simply to have been not thought through carefully. Or rather, it was initiated by ȱ ȱ¢ȱĴȱȱȱ ȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱ war.37 These men appear to have believed that after the declaration of martial ǰȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱěȱĜȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ but ultimately functioning as they had before the war. In some ways and in ȱǰȱȱ¡ȱ ȱǯȱȱĜȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ not instantly dematerialize in all places at once. But the decree of martial law had broken the machine of imperial goverǯȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱĜȬ ȱȱȱȱǯȱ ȱȱęȱǰȱ¢ȱȱĜȱĚȱȱ ȱ£ȱȱȱ ȱǯȱĜȱȱȱ¢ȱȱǰȱĴȱȱ Ĵȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ¢ǰȱ¢ȱ packed up their things and evacuated to Warsaw. Gendarmes and other Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ěǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱęȱ¢ȱȱȱ ǰȱĚȱȱ¢ȱ as well, sometimes disguising themselves as women in order to do so.38 ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱĜȱȱȱȱ ǵȱ ȱ ȱȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ civilian administration for another month. It was not local military commandȱǰȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱĴȱȱ the war. If they interacted with local towns and villages at all it was with the purpose of exploitation, not governing. The answer was either that no one was governing or that local notables, most of them Polish nationalists, took control.
36 Ȳȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ DZȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Russia, 1914-1915” (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska, 1972), 11–14.
Ȳǯȱ ǯȱǰȱ250 dnei v tsarskoi stavke: Vospominaniia, memuary (Minsk: Kharvest, 2003), 2: 265.
37
Ȳ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǻ Ǽȱ ǯȱ Řŗśȱ ǻ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǼǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱŗŜŝǰȱǯȱŗŗȱǻȱĴȱȱ ȱȱȱ Warsaw governor general, 6 August 1914).
38
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ȱÙÙ ǰȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ the declaration of war and stayed for three weeks. They arrested the captain of the police and disarmed and dispersed the rest. With the old civilian police ǰȱ¢ȱ¢ȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ and after the German occupation. Russian military forces did no policing either. For most of the Polish border region, the only Russian army presence was a detachment of Cossacks that had 80 kilometers to patrol, and they had Ĵȱȱȱȱ ȱȱěǯ39 In towns spared foreign occupation, ȱ ǰȱȱȱĜȱǰȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱȱ ¢ȱ ȱȃȱĴȄȱȱȱȱȱȱěǯ40 The new bodies of self-governance struggled mightily. Due to prewar repression, they ȱȱ¡ȱȱȱĴǰȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱ were overwhelming.41 Still, they did their best to create military hospitals, ȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱęǰȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱǯ42 ¢ǰȱ¢ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱ¢ȱǰȱȱ¢ȱ ȱ completely helpless in the face of two marauding armies. Soon, hoping to coordinate solutions and resources, and also seeing a political opportunity, ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȃȱȱĴȄȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ war zone.43 Despite reluctance from the imperial authorities, Dmowski’s party led the way in forming this new Polish national body.44 Needless to say, this transformation was not the result of a long-term nationalist strategy. It was instead an opportunistic response to the surprising fact that the imperial ȱȱ¢ȱȱ Ĵ¢ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱ border regions. What of those cities and towns placed under martial law that were not (at ȱȱęǼȱȱȱǵȱ ȱȱȱ ȱ ȱěȱȱ ȱȱȱǯȱ¢ȱĜȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ posts, but governance began to change for the worse. Much of the blame here can be laid upon General Headquarters, which did not pair humility with the scarce resources it devoted to the task of civilian governance. Instead, it Ȳ ȱǰȱȱĴȱȱ ȱȱǰȱŘŘȱȱŗşŗŚǰȱ ȱ f. 215, op. 1, d. 167, ll. 21–22ob. 39
40
Ȳ ǯ
Ȳȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱȱǰȱĴȱȱ ȱ governor general, 22 August 1914, GARF f. 215, op. 1, d. 174, ll. 172–73.
41
ȲÙȱǰȱȱĴȱȱ ȱȱǰȱřŖȱȱŗşŗŚǰȱ ȱǯȱ 215, op. 1, d. 167, l. 26.
42
43
Ȳ ȱǯȱŘŗśǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱŗŝŚǰȱǯȱŗŝŘȮŝřǯ
44
ȲǰȱGod’s Playground, 2: 380–81.
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ȱȱĴȱȱ ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱǯȱȬ agement by General Headquarters was most obvious in terms of its economic policies. To be fair, the war quickly generated economic problems that even ȱȱȱĜȱ ȱȱȱĜ¢ȱǯȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱĴȱ ȱȱȱĴǯȱ ǰȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ěǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ of the many areas in which bad policies imposed upon occupied territories caused equally pernicious results when adopted far from the front lines. This process started early. On 26 August, the Tarnopol governor (Chartorizhskii) ȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱȱȱȱȱȃęȱ and unscrupulous raising of prices” was forbidden and would be punished ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱřŖŖŖȱǯ45 On 17 September Count Bobrinskii, the governor general of [occupied] Galicia, published a broader economic decree intended to solve some of the problems mentioned by Chartorizhskii. Among other provisions, Bobrinskii tried to ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ę¡ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ řŖȱ kopecks for every Austrian crown (a rate that established a much stronger ruble than the market had done) and by promising punishment for those who ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃ¢ȱ ¢Ȅȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ę¡ȱ ȱ established by municipal authorities.46ȱĜȱȱȱ¡ȱȱ would become a familiar feature of wartime life, as this crude mechanism for ȱ ȱĚȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱ£ȱȱ¢ȱ deep into the heart of the country as well. This system of price controls was a failure. It was a recipe for shortages (which soon followed), for the expansion of a black market (which duly occurred), and for repressive measures to deal with all of the above. So we see a rapid process of state weakening in areas threatened by enemy ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ government further from the lines. The disaster of the Great Retreat in 1915 would accelerate these processes, dramatically and fundamentally in those regions occupied by the Germans, but also in the regions that formed the new ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱ¢ǯȱȱ ȱĚȱȱȱǰȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ
Ȳȱ¢ȱȬȱȱǻ ǼȱǯȱŘŖŖśȱǻ¢Ȭ Political and Civilian Administration of the Supreme Commander), op. 1, d. 12, l. 27 (mandatory directive issued by Chartorizhskii, 26 August 1914).
45
Ȳ¢ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱȱǰȱŗŝȱȱ 1914, RGVIA f. 2005, op. 1, d. 12, l. 16.
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martial law zone, as the political system spun wildly about in the last year and a half of Romanov rule.47 Still, for much of the empire, including Finland and Left Bank Ukraine, the process of state failure was much less pronounced up until the moment of the February Revolution, when the imperial state as such collapsed. Some radical activists had seized upon the war as their long-awaited moment to strike. Finnish nationalists appealed to the Germans to open a front on Finȱ¢ǯȱ ǰȱ ¢ȱěȱȱȱŘŖŖȱ¢ȱȱȃȱȱ them to carry out military tasks in the event of an active advance into Finland or a Finnish uprising.”48 This was the preferred mechanism of most of the ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȃȄȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ groups from enemy empires. The Russians formed a Czech Legion. There were Polish Legions on both sides of the front. And the same held true for Ukraine.49ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱěȱ the outcome of the Great War, but they would come to play a more important role in developing paramilitarism in the cusp years between war and civil war, and they would later serve as the basis of many national mythologies. In no way, however, were these legions or the political groups that supported them strong enough to seriously destabilize the empires they fought against. Thus Finland shared the political experience of Russia proper in that state failure was to occur as a result of the Revolution. In this respect it was disȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĚǰȱȱ ȱȱǰȱ ȱěȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱęȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ ǯȱ ȱǰȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱ Revolution that was the decisive moment of state failure. The governor general ȱǰȱȱȱȱĚǯȱ ȱȱ¢ǰȱȱ ȱȱ ȱȱĴǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱĜȱ ȱ¢ȱȱ some units went on a marauding binge.50 As elsewhere, the crippling of the imperial state brought violence more immediately than liberation to the Finnish people. The initial political steps Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ DZȱ ȱ ȱ Retreat of 1915 and the Transformation of Russian Society,” forthcoming in the volume of this series dedicated to Russia’s Home Front. 47
Ȳȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱǰȱŘŜȱ ¢ȱŗşŗśǯȱ ȱFinland and Russia, 138–39.
48
Ȳ ȱ ǰȱȃȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȄȱ Middle Eastern Studies 34, 4 (1998): 177–200; Oleh S. Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–1918 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971), 15.
49
Ȳǯȱ ¢ȱǰȱ ǯǰȱFinland and the Russian Revolution, 1917–1922 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1958), 13. 50
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of Finnish politicians were hesitant. Mostly, they demanded autonomy rather than independence. As the scale of the Russian collapse became clearer and the Great Russian obtuseness of the liberal leadership of the Provisional Government became more frustrating, Finnish revolutionaries became less restrained. Nevertheless, no forcible measures were taken to assert Finnish independence until after the Bolshevik Revolution. Even the Law on Supreme ȱȱȱ ¢ȱŗşŗŝȱ ȱȃȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱ parliamentary democracy than a bid for full independence.”51 Still, it would ȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱě¢ȱȱ¢ȱȱ in 1917. The formal status of independence and of Finnish sovereignty was not yet resolved, but authority was dwindling away. Strikes turned into violent clashes not only in the cities but in the countryside as well, where farmers in some instances were forcibly prevented from milking their cows, and stabbings and shootings were commonplace.52 ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȯȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȬĚȱ ǯȱȱĴȱȬ gan with the imposition of martial law, developed over the course of the Great Retreat, and then culminated in the February Revolution. It was in 1917 that the crisis of authority and governance already experienced by communities in frontline areas metastasized into a failure of the state on an empire-wide scale. Social Collapse ȱȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱęȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱĴȱȱěȱ¢ȱȱȬ out the former empire. Families displaced from their homes by the Great ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ¢ǰȱǰȱĚ£ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ impoverished communities, taking young and old alike. And then there ȱȱęǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȃȄȱȱȃȄȱȱȱȱȱ local and intimate basis throughout the years that followed the Revolution. ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ and requisitioning teams, and daily acts of brutality came to condition the Civil War experience. There is plainly no space here to catalog all of these manifestations of social disaster. What I would like to stress instead is that the process of decolonization produced conditions ripe for civil war, and that Ȳȱ ¢ǰȱA Concise History of Finland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 159.
51
ȲǰȱFinland and the Russian Revolution, 14.
52
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civil wars are precisely those most likely to be accompanied by deep and lasting social disaster. There is now a substantial political science literature ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ of social disaster such as mass migration and economic ruin. Most of these argue that violence and the resulting lack of security cause the catastrophic ȱȱȱěȱȱǰȱȱȱȱ ¢ȱǯ53 ȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ǰȱȱęȱ ȱęȱȱ¢ȱ¢ȱȱ¢ȱǯȱȱ ȱȱȱęȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱǯȱ ȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱ persuade the Germans to push the Russians out of Finland and then, when ěǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȱ ǯȄȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱǻ£ȱ¢ȱȱęȱ brigades, just as the Polish police in 1914 had been, to avoid suspicion) and ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǯȱ ȱ ¢ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ not just from the right but also from the center and even parts of the left.54 At the same time, Red Guard units were created in a parallel fashion to those ȱȱǯȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱ¢ȱ support from Germany, while the Red Guard received similar patronage from the Bolsheviks in Petrograd after the October Revolution. Each side accused the other of treason to the Finnish people and downplayed its own entanglement with imperial powers. It was the formal establishment of Finnish indeȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȃȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ¢ȱ ȱ ȱǰȱȱŗşȱ ¢ǰȱȱ ȱȱĴȱȱ place in Viipuri that would quickly escalate into a short but brutal civil war that brought both German and Russian troops into action before the “Whites” emerged victorious. ȱ ǰȱ ǰȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱȱȱǰȱȱǯȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȬ cation of the tsar, politicians in Kiev, not even to speak of the rest of the country, had divided into three major groups: those who supported the Provisional Government, those who immediately formed soviets, and those who established a base of Ukrainian nationalism in the Central Rada.55 These Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ “Refugees and the Study of Civil War,” Civil Wars 9, 2 (June 2007): 127–41; on the durability of social pathologies after civil war, see Nazih Richani, “State Capacity in Ěȱ ĴDZȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȄȱ Civil Wars 12, 4 (December 2010): 431–55.
53
54 55
ȲǰȱFinland and the Russian Revolution, 16.
ȲǰȱA History of Ukraine, 501.
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forces warily engaged with one another until the summer, when the Rada proclaimed autonomy (not yet independence) on 23 June 1917, spooking the Provisional Government and, more broadly, Russian liberals not yet ready to give up on the idea of a Great Russia. To a much greater degree than elsewhere, the disintegration of the Russian army in the aftermath of the failed Kerensky ěȱěȱȱȱȱǯȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ was a largely successful push to create ethnic units of Ukrainians, but above ȱȱȱȱȱȱĚȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ countryside, linked up with peasants looking to seize land and burn manor houses, and generally made violence the political coin of the day. By the time the October Revolution came, Ukraine was successfully paramilitarized. Violence ¡ȱ¢ǯȱȱęȱȱ ȱȱȱǰȱȱ by February, the Red Army had established an upper hand, capturing Kiev and executing thousands of their enemies.56 At the same time, however, delegates from the Rada were successfully concluding peace negotiations with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk, which would bring the support of the German army to bear. These troops pushed out the Bolsheviks, but they stayed only until the broader armistice in November. Needless to say, political violence on an even greater scale erupted then. ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ¢ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ promised autonomy or independence at the end of the war, but ever since 1915, it had been subject to military occupation by the Germans. Though formal ȱ ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱě¢ȱȱȬ ȱȱȱ¢ǰȱ ȱ à£ȱÙȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ informed the German occupation authorities that they should leave Warsaw before their lives were endangered. The Germans took his advice, but again the immediate outcome of independence was six wars over the following two ¢ǰȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ¡ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Ĵȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱȱȱŗşŘŖǯȱȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱÙȂȱȱȱŗşŘŜǯȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱěȱ during the process of decolonization. Conclusion As the Polish-Ukrainian-Soviet War of 1919–20 demonstrates, the process of decolonization in Eastern Europe was marked by the conjuncture of many ěȱȱȱȬȱ¢ǯȱ ȱȱǰȱȱȬ colonization shared many of the same features that the African and Asian Ȳ¢ȱ¢ǰȱDZȱȱȱȱȱ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 73.
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decolonizing movements did. Just as Shipway wanted to locate decolonization “at the level of event,” so too should historians of the Great War in Europe. There was obvious cross-fertilization between nationalist movements (and indeed between imperial states) in the region prior to the war, and the war itself was an extremely complicated dance between imperial states looking to destabilize one another and political movements desperate for help but unsure of the outcome of the war. Germany and Russia were the main imperial actors ȱȱǰȱȱȱ ȱȱĴȱ¢ȱȱȱ as well. The literature on decolonization was focused for a time on competing “metropolitan” and “peripheral” accounts of the end of empire. One of the reasons for the popularity of works that focus on “process” or “the event” is surely that this strategy allows historians to work their way out of this historiographical dead end. It has proven more productive to examine the interplay between not just “the” periphery and “the” metropole, but between multiple peripheries and metropoles at the moment of imperial crisis.57 Only this sort of complex account will do justice to the events in Eastern Europe (and elsewhere, notably the Middle East) in the years of the Great War. It was a striking conjuncture, not just due to the fact that the lands in question were being overrun by a titanic imperial clash, but also because the rise of radical socialism cut across these national projects, leading some towards internationalism at the same time others were focused on national prerogatives and boundaries. The success of the Bolsheviks and the survival of the Soviet project during World War II ensured that when the next great wave of decolonization came, it too would be marked by a three-dimensional struggle along nationalist, socialist, and imperialist lines. In this and many other important ways, the decolonization of Europe was a part of the same “event” as the decolonization of Africa and Asia.
Ȳȱ ȱ Ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȃǽǾȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ wide, the sun never set upon its crises. The historian who studies any of these crises in isolation does so at his peril, for their consequences tended to interlock.” Gallagher, “Nationalisms and the Crisis of Empire, 1919–1922,” Modern Asian Studies 15, 3 (1981): 355–68. 57
The Role of the First World War in the Competition between Ukrainian and All-Russian Nationalism Alexei I. Miller
The western borderland of the Russian Empire was a laboratory of nationalisms over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was here that the empire faced its earliest and most powerful challenge—from Polish nationalism. It was also here that the empire began to utilize nationalist tools in its own policy, however haphazardly. Russian nationalism emerged as an ideological current that was independent yet enmeshed in imperial structures, in large part as a response to the problems of the western borderlands.1 It was here that Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Belarusian nationalisms emerged in the crucible of Russian-Polish competition during the second half of the ŗşȱ¢ǯȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ ȱǯȱȱęȱǰȱ¢ȱ on a small yet substantive corpus of studies, discusses the situation in the Ukrainian lands on the eve of the war. The second part deals with the period of the war itself; it is an essay that aims to address certain queries that have remained largely overlooked in the scholarly literature. I am merely posing questions and proposing hypotheses from the perspective of a historian ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ¢ȱ¢ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱ assumptions, my own included, under scrutiny with the aim of bringing the ȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱǯ ȱȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ ment of the various nationalisms in the western borderlands, it is vital to have a clear understanding of the circumstances on the eve of the war. However, we ȱȱ ȱȱĜȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ aspects of the situation in the region in question have remained understudied. Furthermore, there is a strong tendency in national historiographies to overemphasize the strength of nationalism in the imperial borderlands. In their goals and methods Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Belarusian nationalisms remained almost exclusively cultural movements until 1905. In the Ȳȱ ǯȱ ǯȱ ǯȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȄȱ ȱ Nationalizing Empires, ed. Stefan Berger and Miller (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014), 309–68. 1
The Empire and Nationalism at War. Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2014, 73–89.
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wake of the 17 October Manifesto, a number of political parties prioritized ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱ Ĝ¢ȱ ȱ espoused the ideals of a federation. Some of these parties had candidates elected to the First and Second State Dumas.2 However, the surge of nationalist party activity from 1905 to 1907 subsided thereafter, partly due to increased administrative pressure and an inability to mobilize mass support. For example, the number of Ukrainian periodicals, although quite large in 1906, had fallen drastically by 1908.3 The only remaining newspaper, Radaǰȱěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ĜDzȱ ȱ ¢ȱ Ěȱ only thanks to one big sponsor.4 ȱĚȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ anti-Polish measures the government introduced after the January Uprising of 1863, but it remained quite important nonetheless. Polish activists failed to establish lasting cooperation with the Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Lithuanian national movements. Thus, the Poles remained the quintessential “other” for the smaller borderland nationalisms. After 1907, Russian nationalism developed most actively in the southwestern territories, in the area of present-day Ukraine. The idea of the all-Russian ȱ ȱȱȱȱĴȱ¢ȱĴȱǯȱǰȱ ǰȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ circles addressed as “Mazepists” (mazepintsy), variously took the position of enemy in the southwestern territories, depending on the circumstances.5 The main struggle for identity in this region was between Russian nationalists ǻĴȱǼȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȬ ǯȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȃĴȱǰȄȱ while the peasants favored the term khokhols.6 Ȳȱǯȱǯȱȱȱǯȱ ǯȱǰȱǯǰȱZapadnye okrainy Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006). 2
Ȳȱǯȱ ǰȱȃȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱǰȄ in Rethinking Ukrainian History, ed. Ivan L. Rudnytsky and John-Paul Himka (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1981). 3
4
Ȳȱȱŗşŗŗǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱŘǰŖŖŖǯȱ ȱȱȱřǰŖŖŖȱǯȱ
ȲȱȱȱȱȬȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ¢DZȱ M. B. Smolin, ed., Ukrainskii separatizm v Rossii: Ideologiia natsional´nogo raskola (Moscow: Moskva, 1998); Smolin, ed., “Ukrainskaia” bolezn´ russkoi natsii (Moscow: Imperskaia traditsiia, 2004). 5
Ȳȱ ǰȱȃ£¢ǰȱ¢ǰȱ¢DZȱ¢ȱȱȱȬ arkhii Rossiiskoi imperii,” in Rossiia–Ukraina: Istoriia vzaimootnoshenii, ed. A. I. Miller, 6
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Governmental organs actively supported Russian nationalists, especially during the tenure of Petr Stolypin, when the number of such organizations in the cities and in the countryside rose steadily. For instance, the membership of the Union of the Russian People in Volhynia far exceeded 100,000 on the ȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱĚȱȱ¡ȱ¢ȱȱȱ the peasants. Large Russian nationalist organizations that united the wellěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ alists (KCRN), established in 1908 under the patronage of Stolypin, was ¢ȱ¢ȱĚȱ¢ȱŗşŗŖǰȱȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ State Dumas. Soon, the KCRN began to lay claim to the overall leadership of Russian nationalist organizations in the empire, citing, among other things, its successes in election campaigns. Its leader, Anatolii Savenko, wrote as early as 1908 that while Great Russian guberniiaȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Palace almost exclusively Russian nationalists. While Great Russian Moscow and St. Petersburg are the mainstays of the revolution, the ȱȱĴȱȯ ȯȱȱȱȱȱȬȱȱ movement.7 This point of view was considered perfectly legitimate on the eve of the war. The memorial to Stolypin unveiled in Kiev in 1913 in front of the opera house, where he was murdered in 1911, was inscribed with the late prime minister’s DZȱȃ ȱę¢ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ the west of Russia will not fade and that it will soon shine on all of Russia.” Combined with tough administrative pressure exercised by the government, the strong presence of Russian nationalists in the area led to a dramatic drop in representation for non-Russian nationalists in the Duma. The recent publication of several important works on the history of Russian right-wing nationalism notwithstanding, the phenomenon remains understudied.8 This is especially true of the history of Russian right-wing naȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȱǯ V. F. Reprintsev, and B. N. Floria (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul´tury, 1997); A. Kotenko, O. Martyniuk, and A. I. Miller, “Maloross,” in “Poniatie o Rossii”: K istoricheskoi semantike imperskogo perioda, ed. Miller, D. Sdvizhkov, and I. Shirle (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012), 2: 392–443. Ȳǯȱ ǯȱǰȱȃ DZȱȱȱŗŖŖȬȱȱȱ£ȱ ǰȄȱKievlianin, 16 November 1908. 7
Ȳ ǯȱ ǯȱ ȼǰȱPravye partii v Rossii, 1911–1917 (Moscow: RќѠѠѝђћ, 2001); S. A. Stepanov, Chernaia sotnia v Rossii: 1905–1914 gg. (Moscow: Izd-vo VZPI A/o “Rosvuznauka,” 8
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Over the course of the entire postrevolutionary period, and especially after 1907, the Kadets (Constitutional Democrats) had to seek support from the peripheral nationalists in the borderlands in their struggle against the Russian nationalist right. An aspect of this tactic—in a certain sense the price the Kadets had to pay—was support for the reorganization of the empire according to the principle of national autonomy. However, the alliance of Kadets and borderland nationalists was purely one of convenience. The two sides ȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱ ȱ refused to countenance federative ideas. In these circumstances, the Kadets ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ had no realistic chance of implementation. The tactic employed by Kadets in the Duma—dealing with the threat of radical borderland nationalism by making moderate concessions—faced unrelenting opposition from the right. To this end, during a discussion of the Ukrainian question in February 1914, Kadet leader Pavel Miliukov stated, “Be afraid of Dontsov! If you carry on with this policy, there will be hundreds, thousands, millions of Dontsovs.”9 Kiev Club of Russian Nationalists (KCRN ) leader Savenko, who was Miliukov’s main right-wing opponent in this debate, warned that the Ukrainian movement represented a “serious, genuine threat to the unity of the Russian Empire.” On the question of the recognition of Ukraine as a separate nation, distinct from Russia, Savenko noted: “Once a people is [recognized as] distinct, it should, according to the dominant idea of the century, enjoy the right to self-determination; it must have its own cultural-national and political existence.” He called for non-interference in the government’s struggle against the Ukrainian movement and insisted ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱ ȱ Ukrainian movement as divisive for the “one, unitary, 100-million strong people.” He further emphasized that the loss of the non-Orthodox, non-Slavic (inorodcheskie) borderlands would not be nearly as dangerous to Russia as the splintering of the Russian nation.10 Right-wing nationalists gladly brought peasants to the Duma, who criticized “Ukrainiandom” on behalf of the entire
2005); I. V. Omel´ianchuk, Chernosotennoe dvizhenie v Rossiiskoi imperii (1901–1914): ę (Kyiv: MAUP, 2009). See also the politically engaged but informative work by A. D. Stepanov and A. A. Ivanov, eds., Chernaia sotnia: Istoricheskaia entsiklopediia 1900–1917 (Moscow: Institut russkoi tsivilizatsii, 2008). Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ nationalism. 9
Ȳ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ £¢ǰȱ ȱ ǯȱ ęȱ ¢, pt. 2 (St. Petersburg, 1914), cols. 901–15, 927–33.
10
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Ĵȱȱ¢ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ Russian nation.11 In general, the western borderlands were an unstable equilibrium before the war. Local authorities could not realistically hope to “uproot” non-Russian nationalists, yet they were not willing to compromise. In the years before the Ěǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ pressure with active propaganda. The immediate, existential, and inevitable ȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȬ ter’s contemporaneous activist literature. For instance, the key activist of the Ukrainian movement in Kiev, Yevhen Chikalenko, wrote the following ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ŗşŖşDZȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ǽomoskovleny] to such an extent that only a small percentage of the population has any interest in Ukrainiandom whatsoever.… All cities and towns in Ukraine are thoroughly ęǯȄ12 He also wrote to his associate Petro Stebnitsky in St. Petersburg: “what we can achieve now with a few thousand [rubles] will be impossible to ȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱęǰȱȱ ȱȱ ȱǯȄ13 The widespread idea that the war eliminated barriers for the already steadfast Ukrainian movement is untenable. In this essay, we cannot assess ȱ Ĵȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Orthodox populations throughout contemporary Ukraine. We can only note that the struggle between all-Russian and Ukrainian nationalisms (as well as the even weaker Belarusian version) did not have a predetermined outcome. ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ favor of all-Russian nationalism, while the non-political, non-national masses remained an object of this struggle.
Ȳ ȱǯȱǰȱȱǰȱDZȱȃȱȱȱȱ propaganda because we never have and never will consider ourselves non-Russian. Regardless of how cleverly the accommodating Miliukovs try to push us towards a ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Great Russians, are, for all intents and purposes, Russians.” Gosudarstvennaia duma, III £¢ǰȱȱ ǯȱęȱ¢, pt. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1910), col. 3081. “We are Russians, and no one has the right to say otherwise,” asserted Matvei S. Andreichuk, peasant MP from Volhynia. ȱǰȱ ȱ£¢ǰȱȱ ǯȱęȱ otchety, pt. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1910), col. 1280.
11
Ȳȱ ǰȱ Shchodennik, 1: 1907–1917 (Kyiv: Tempora, 2004), 47–48 and 281–82.
12
Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ Listuvannia, 1901–1922 roki (Kyiv: Tempora, 2008), 72.
13
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The Beginning of the War ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ in imperial patriotism and Russian nationalism. The dimensions of mass political mobilization of the military-patriotic type are still understudied.
ǰȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱ politics in general and, in this context, in nationalist sentiment, among rural as well as urban populations.14ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱěȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱęȱ¢ȱȱȱ war enhanced the rise of Russian nationalism. ȱ ȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱǯȱȱȱȱǰȱ administrative persecution increased sharply—many periodicals and local centers of the Ukrainian cultural organization Prosvita were shut down, and several activists, including Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, were sent into exile. Some national activists sought to demonstrate loyalty to the empire, partly in the hope of evading repression, partly in order to win concessions from the government at the end of the war in the event of Russian victory.15 On the other hand, the war created an atmosphere of grave uncertainty. For the separatist-minded borderland nationalists, it became not so much an impetus for increased pragmatic action, as a spur of the imagination that fed fanciful plans about their respective nation’s place in the postwar reorganization of Europe. In the early autumn of 1914, the Russian army occupied East Galicia, including L´vov/Lemberg. The annexation of Galicia had been one of the key Russian aims before the war, especially for irredentists who described the ȱȱȱȱȱȱȃęȱȱȱȼȱȱǯȄȱȱȱ same time, Russian nationalists expected the occupation of Galicia to undermine the Ukrainian movement. For example, when outlining Russia’s aims in the forthcoming war in 1912, Petr Struve emphasized the need to “reunify and reunite within the empire all parts of the Russian people,” i.e., annex “Russian Galicia,” asserting that the incorporation of Galicia was necessary for
Ȳȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȃȱ £ȱ ȱ ŗşŗŚȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Nation: A Reexamination,” Slavic Review 59, 2 (Summer 2000): 267–89; Sanborn, Drafting the Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (DeKalb: ȱ ȱ¢ȱǰȱŘŖŖŘǼDzȱĴȱ ǯȱ¢ǰȱȃ ǰȱǰȱȱ Citizenship: The Russian Adult Education Movement and the First World War,” Slavic Review 59, 2 (Summer 2000): 290–315.
14
ȲȱĚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȬ ticular preferred loyalty to the empire as the “lesser evil.” 15
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ȱȃȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱ¢¢ȱȱȱȱĴȱ Russian tribe has created the ugly, so-called ‘Ukrainian question.’”16 By the time of the Russian occupation, Galicia had already become subject to harsh Austrian governmental measures. More than 10,000 Ruthenians the government suspected of pro-Russian sympathies had been deported to the concentration camp Talerhof. Altogether during the war more than 20,000 people passed through Talerhof and another camp at Teresienstadt, which ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ were executed.17 Simultaneously, the Austrian government created the ęȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ (Ukrains´ki Sichovi Stril´tsi), which swore loyalty to Austria-Hungary on 3 September 1914. In turn, the Russian occupational authorities shut down all Ukrainian periodicals. They also arrested and deported to Russia a substantial number of Greek Catholic priests, including Metropolitan Andryi Sheptitskyi.18 Altogether, nearly 2,000 people were subject to administrative deportation to the central provinces of Russia.19 ǰȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Ȭěȱȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȯ ȱ analyzing present and potential loyalty, imperial structures viewed ethnic identity as an important, if not paramount, factor. In a situation characterized by intense competition between various nationalist projects and the simultaȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ęǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȃ¢Ȅȱȱ of identity by all means and bolster “loyal” ones at the same time. The Setbacks of 1915–16 and Their Consequences The western borderlands of the Russian Empire became the main theater of military operations on the Eastern Front during the First World War. Following the German breakthrough at Gorlice-Tarnów in May 1915, the Russian army Ȳǯȱǯȱǰȱȃȱȼȱȱȱ£ǰȄȱRusskaia mysl´, no. 1 (1912): 65–86.
16
17 ȲǯȱǯȱǰȱTerezin i Talergof: K 50-letnei godovshchine tragedii galitsko-russkogo naroda (Moscow: Soft-izdat, 2001).
Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱǯ
18
Ȳȱ¡ȱęȱȱ ǯȱȱȱȱȱ ȱǰȱȱȱȱ the Russian civil administration in Galicia, mentions 1,962 persons who were exiled to Russia. See A. Iu. Bakhturina, Politika Rossiiskoi Imperii v Vostochnoi Galitsii v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2000), 193.
19
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ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ Galicia, which it had occupied in 1914, but a substantial part of the western borderlands of the empire as well. These defeats left no trace of the patriotic fervor of the early days of the war. The sudden shifting of the front eastwards had important consequences for the development of the nationalisms of the western borderlands. Researchers have pointed out several factors that led to the mobilization of ethnicity during the war.20 Among these, the phenomenon of mass refugees ȱȱęȱȱǯ21 Some people evacuated on their own, while others were forced against their will. Many Russian nationalists, most importantly ȱĴȱȱȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱĜǰȱȱȱ ȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȱ nationalist organizations. Understandably, Austro-German occupation authorities did not leave Russian nationalists much freedom of action. At the ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ Ěȱ ȱ Ȭ tures emerged among non-Russian refugee groups from the Baltic, which subsequently played an important role in national movements. The Central Powers created a new administrative structure in the occupied ǯȱȱęǰȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȬ ȱ control. To this day, there are no in-depth studies of Vienna’s occupation policy in this region. Even the latest volume edited by Austrian historians offers virtually nothing on the subject.22 Thanks to Vejas Liulevicius, we know more about German occupation policy, especially that of Ober Ost, which conȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵǯȱ ȱ ¢ȱ studied Ober Ost ¢ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱěȱ the development of borderland nationalism. The new administration carried out an ethnic categorization. Ober Ost civil servants put together an Atlas of the Division of Peoples of Western Russia, claiming it demonstrated that ”the state-structure, which before the war was considered a uniform Great Russian empire, is to a large extent formed out of territories of independent ethnicities, who do not stand closer to the Muscovite nature than to us.”23 Ȳȱȱȱ ǰȱȃȱ ȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱ¢ǰȄȱȱPostȱȱDZȱĚȱȱȬ, ed. Barnet R. Rubin and Jack L. Snyder (London: Routledge, 1998), 34–57.
20
Ȳȱ ǰȱA Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). 21
ȲȱȱȱǯǰȱǯǰȱDie Ukraine zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft 1917–1922 (Graz: Leykam, 2011).
22
Ȳȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 117. 23
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The German authorities’ language policy sought primarily to create a vocabulary of administrative and government terms for the local vernacular. Schools were organized according to the principle of nationality, i.e., on the basis of native tongue. However, the Germans soon began introducing German ȱȱȱȱǰȱ¢ȱĚȱȱĴȱȱȱȬ alist activists to open new schools. In addition, laws entered the books as soon as they were published in German. The Russian language was excluded from both the administration and the public sphere generally. ȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱȱ ǰȱȱȱĚȱȱǯȱ¢ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱ surprised to discover the existence of the Belarusian people and amazed at the underdeveloped state of Belarusian culture and sense of national identity. However, the occupation authorities soon came to the conclusion that ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ŗşŗŜǰȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ identity through cultural policy.24 In general, the Germans tried to play the role of tutors and leaders of the local peoples in Ober Ost. To this end, they devised school curricula that were supposed to foster respect for Germany and German culture as an “elder power.” As Liulevicius points out, “cultural policy was in fact the military state’s nationalities policy, bracketing native cultures in German institutions imposed from above: press, schools, and work rooms.… The German concept for ‘education,’ , was taken to its literal meaning, of ‘forming.’ As a ȱȱȱĜȱǰȱȁȱȱȱǰȱ ȱȱ and no one else.’”25 “The Kultur Program of Ober Ost dzȱęȱȂȱȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱǰȱę¡ȱȱ¢ǯdzȱ ȱȱ ¢ȱ ȱȱęǰȱǰȱȱȱǰȱȱǯȄ26 The activity of the German occupation administration in the western borderlands of the Russian Empire was an aspect of a new German geopolitical vision of this space as part of a Ĵ that would have Germany as its dominant center.27 Local activists were now trying to adapt their visions of the future to the emerging geopolitical reality by imagining the place for their groups in German-
24
Ȳ ǯǰȱŗŘŗǯ
25 26
Ȳ ǯǰȱŗŘŘǯ
Ȳ ǯǰȱŗŚřȮŚŚǯ
27
ȲȱǰȱĴ (Berlin: Reimer, 1915).
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dominated Eastern Europe.28 Vienna had its own plans for the resolution of the Ukrainian question, which are yet to be the subject of a thorough analysis. ȱ ¢ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ transferred to Russian Ukraine. Among other things, they set up schools with young, educated female teachers that had been recruited from Galicia. POW policy was another important factor in the rise of nationalism in the western borderlands. Approximately three and a half million soldiers from the tsar’s army had been captured.29 POW camp administration paid special Ĵȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ¢ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱǯȱȱ ȱȱȱ Ukrainian POWs were located in Rastadt and Salzwedel, and the Austrian camp was in Freistadt.30 They housed up to 400,000 people. Functionaries ȱȱȱ£ǰȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Liberation of Ukraine, conducted propaganda activities, taught the Ukrainian language, and published Ukrainian periodicals. Approximately 40,000 of the more responsive POWs were organized in Ukrainian formations with a special military uniform. In his forthcoming study based on the archives of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, Mark von Hagen describes, among other things, the Ĝȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ¢Ȭ ing to single out Ukrainians among the general mass of POWs, due to the fact that the term “Ukrainian” meant nothing to the vast majority. Propaganda work among POWs also took place in Russia. In 1916, the authorities established a Special Political Section of the Ministry of Internal ěǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ the Austro-Hungarian army.31ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ¤ȱ ¤ȱ stresses the important role of POW camps in the dissolution of the Habsburg Ȳȱǰȱȱ¡ǰȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ prince to become king of Lithuania. See more in Dolbilov and Miller, Zapadnye okrainy Rossiiskoi imperii, 415–16. 28
29 Ȳǯȱǯȱ ǰȱVoennye usiliia Rossii v mirovoi voineǰȱŘȱǯȱǻDZȱȬȱɇ¢ȱ izdatelei, 1939). Golovin’s estimate is the highest; alternative estimates come up with ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯ See Rossiia v mirovoi voine 1914–1918 gg. (v tsifrakh) (Moscow: Tsentral´noe statisticheskoe upravlenie SSSR, Voenno-statisticheskii otdel, 1925).
Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ the Russian Interior Ministry, Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Imperii (AVPRI) f. 135, op. 474, d. 26.
30
31 Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ¢ǰȱȱ¡ȱ ǯȱǰȱ The Romanov Empire and Nationalism: Essays in the Methodology of Historical Research (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008), chap. 7.
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Empire.32ȱ¢ȱȱȱŗşŗŜǰȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱĴȱȱȱ Ukrainian camps in Germany and Austria-Hungary, having correctly assessed the level of threat they posed to Russian policy in the western borderlands. ȱ ǰȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ camps in Russia, and in Ukrainian camps in Germany and Austria: in Russia, ȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢¢ȱȱȱǰȱ who had by that time developed national (Czech, Slovak, etc.) identity, while ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱěȱ was on shaping certain national identity. ȱ ŗşŗŜǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ debated making concessions to the Ukrainian movement in order to bring some of its leaders over to Russia’s side. This was a notable development. As the position of the Ukrainian movement became stronger in the territories under the control of the Central Powers, Petrograd was forced to acknowledge this factor in its own policy. This resulted in a number of symbolic concessions to the Ukrainian movement, which sought to demonstrate the willingness of the authorities to come to terms with Ukrainian leaders who remained loyal to the ǯȱȱ¢ȱȱȱŗşŗśǰȱȱȱȃȄȱȱȱȱęȱ ȱȱĜȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ DZȱ ȃȱ Majesté m’a donné l’ordre de vous remercier ainsi que le groupe d’Ukrainiens réunis en Suisse pour les sentiments expimés dans votre télégramme” (His Majesty has ordered me to thank you as well as Ukrainians gathered in ĵȱȱȱȱ¡ȱȱ¢ȱǼǯ33 In 1916, there were plans to open two Ukrainian high schools and organize a visit by the heir to ȱǰȱȱ¢ȱȱĴȱȱ¢ǰȱǰȱȱ ǰȱ in case of a new occupation. Draft recommendations for policy towards the Uniate Church, prepared by the Special Political Department of the Ministry ȱ ȱ ěǰȱ £ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ measures.34 SPO also prepared lists of Ukrainian politicians, including those in Galicia, who could be induced to come over to the Russian side, if they were convinced that only Russia could unite all the Ukrainian lands. The support the Central Powers gave to the Ukrainian movement thus had the knockȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱǯȱȱ ȱ nothing new in this tactic; as early as the 1840s–60s, the authorities showed Ȳ ¤ȱ¤ǰȱ¢ȱDZȱȱȱȱȱ ¢ȱȱȱ ȱĜȱ Corps, 1848–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 32
Ȳȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ǻǼǰȱ ŘŚȱ ȱ ŗşŗśǰȱ ȱ ǯȱ ŗřśǰȱ ǯȱ 474, d. 27, l. 12. 33
34
ȲǰȱThe Romanov Empire and Nationalism, chap. 7.
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leniency towards Ukrainian nationalists in order not to drive them over to the Polish side.35 The years 1915–16 saw a serious shift in relative strength in the struggle between the All-Russian and Ukrainian nationalisms. During the evacuation of Galicia, more than 100,000 locals who had collaborated with the Russian administration or sympathized with Russia joined the retreating Russian army.36 Soon, the majority of activists from Russian nationalist organizations had to leave the part of the western borderlands the Central Powers had occupied. The new occupation authorities dismantled the organizational structure of Russian nationalism in these territories. At the same time, Berlin and Vienna ¡ȱȱȱȱęȱȱ ȱȬ oping the organizational structure of the Ukrainian movement. Russian military setbacks, the retreat of the army, and the measures German and Austrian occupation authorities took helped undermine the prestige Russia enjoyed among the non-politicized part of the local population, particularly the peasantry. 1917: Collapse of the Imperial Center and Nationalization of the Army With the fall of the monarchy in February 1917, three new and powerful mobilizing factors for borderland nationalists emerged. First, even at this time the monarchy remained the legitimate imperial center for a substantial part of the traditionally-minded peasantry, including the 100,000-odd peasant members of the Union of the Russian People in Volhynia. This conventional source of legitimacy and loyalty was now lost. Second, the weak Provisional Government called for the formation of a new administration in the countryside, without, however, suggesting clear principles of organization or making its stance on autonomy and/or federation ǯȱȱȱȱ ȱȱĚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ had been curtailed, this provided regional actors with a new opportunity for political action.
Ȳȱ¡ȱ ǯȱǰȱThe Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century (Budapest: Central European University Press), 2003.
35
Ȳ¡ȱ ęȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŗśȱ ȱ ŗŖŖǰŖŖŖȱ ȱ ȱ Galicia were concentrated in Volhynia. By autumn 1915, 40,000 Galician refugees were reported to be in Kursk guberniia. In August 1915 every day 3,000 Galician Ruthenians were coming to Kiev by train. See I. V. Kuchera, Dobrovilna i prymusova migratsiia naselennia Schidnoi Galichyny v roky Pershoi svitovoi viiny, vyp. 19 (Kyiv: Gileia, 2009), 10–16; O. Serdiuk, “Bizenstvo v Ukraini pid chas Pershoi svitovoi viiny,” in Problemy ȱ¢ȱ Ȯȱȱǯ (Kyiv: Instytut Istorii Ukrainy, 2002), 4: 111–32. 36
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¢ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ led the High Command to propose its nationalization. Following an order by Commander in Chief General Lavr Kornilov, the ukrainization and belarusization of the army corps commenced. Kornilov hoped that this would shield ȱ¢ȱȱȱĚǰȱǰȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȬ measure to the actions of the Central Powers on the Ukrainian and Belarusian ǯȱȱěȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ territory, whereas Belarusian ones appeared primarily on the Romanian and ȱǰȱ ȱ¢ȱ ȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ from playing the active role ukrainized units played. Pavlo Skoropads´kyi, the hetman of Ukraine in 1918 and a loyal imperial general in 1917, recalled in 1919 how he was tasked with the ukrainization of his corps: I told Kornilov that I had just been in Kiev, where I observed Ukrainian activists. They made a negative impression on me. The corps could potentially become a major factor in the development of Ukrainiandom ȱȱȱȱȱdzǯȱ ȂȱȱĴȱ towards this issue revealed his lack of knowledge and understanding. ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱĴǰȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱ one should treat tactfully and without exploitation the sincere national sense the Ukrainians possessed.37 Skoropads´kyi was convinced that there was no pressing need to take such a step in the summer of 1917, and he tried to make the danger of ukrainizing the army evident. However, the disciplined general still carried out Kornilov’s directive, which soon resulted in Skoropads´kyi becoming the hetman of Ukraine under German protection. The creation of national units had huge consequences for Ukraine, Belarus, and Bessarabia, especially after the Bolshevik coup. The period of revolutionary crisis transformed the army from a supporter of the old regime to an independent actor. In all empires undergoing crisis, the army leadership uses their units, usually the last organized force, to contain the situation in a more limited territorial sphere, often in support of the national idea, once they Ȳȱȼ¢ǰȱSpohady, kinets 1917–hruden´ 1918 (Kyiv: Institut ukrains´koi ęȱȱ££ȱǯȱǯȱǯȱ ȼȱȱ¢ǰȱŗşşśǼǰȱŜŚǯȱ Skoropads´kyi recalled the following about his youth and family: “We understood Ukraine as a glorious national past which, however, had nothing to do with the present. In other words, there were no political plans for the restoration of Ukraine. My whole family was deeply devoted to the Russian tsars, while also emphasizing that we were ȱ ȱȯ ȱ ȱĴȱȱȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱ¢ȱ expression went.” Skoropads´kyi, “Moe detstvo na Ukraine,” in Spohady, 387. 37
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realize the old regime is beyond salvation.38 This became especially important after October 1917, when the legitimate center of power in the empire vanished irretrievably. The considerable number of Russian nationalists of all shades who collaborated with the government of Hetman Skoropadskyi is the best ĜȱȱȱĴǯȱ In 1918, many desperate anti-Bolshevik Russians were dreaming about the German occupation of Petrograd as the only possible salvation. The Germans ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱĚȱ¢ȱǰȱȱěȱ and Ober Ost ȱȱěȱȱ ȱ¡ȱȱ ěǰȱ¢ȱ entertained the notion of marching on Petrograd, deposing the Bolsheviks, and sponsoring a pro-German, conservative Russian government. But they had managed to occupy the entire Donetsk basin and establish Ukrainian authorities there.39 At the beginning of the war, the competing governments threw away the previous conventional limitations. The macrosystem of continental empires in Europe’s east had remained internally stable for a long time because they did not strive to destroy one another. In fact, they needed each other to deal with the heritage of the partitions of the Polish Commonwealth.40 However, over the course of the war, which quickly assumed the guise of a life-and-death struggle, the empires actively played the ethnic card against their adversaries. They encouraged separatism inside the enemy states and introduced repressive measures against disloyal or suspect ethnic groups among their own subjects. These factors took on a special meaning in Ukraine and Belarus, in the ¡ȱȱȱȱ ȱěȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ¢¢ǯȱ New Major Players—the Soviets and Poland Until 1918, the main question facing political activists in the national borderlands was ascertaining which country would win the war; and after October Ȳ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ army as the “glue and solvent” of the imperial system. I would qualify this by saying that the army does not become a force of dissolution as long as there is hope for the preservation of order on an imperial scale. Having lost this hope, however, the army takes on the role of organizer of the new regime in the separate regions of the ȱǰȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȬǯ
38
Ȳȱ ȱ ǰȱ Donetsko-Krivorozhskaia respublika: Rasstreliannaia mechta (Kharkiv: Folio, 2011). 39
Ȳȱȱȱ¡ȱ ǯȱǰȱȃȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ in the History of Contiguous Empires on the European Periphery,” in Imperiology: From Empirical Knowledge to Discussing the Russian Empire, ed. Kimitaka Matsuzato (Sapporo: Slavic Research Center at Hokkaido University, 2006), 11–24.
40
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ŗşŗŝǰȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ the framework of German hegemony in Eastern Europe. When it became evident that Germany, too, would be defeated, national movement leaders quickly turned to the Entente. Unlike Russia and Germany, the Entente could not control Eastern Europe directly. However, Entente leaders were in ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ counting on the fall of the Bolsheviks from power and the restoration of Russia. Consequently, in 1918 the world war in these spaces was gradually transformed into a series of civil wars distinguished by their class or ethnic ǯȱȱȱȱĚȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱ over territories they considered to be their rightful ethnic patrimony (L´viv/ Lwów, Wilna/Vilnius). The same is true of Kiev, which had passed from hand to hand 14 times during the Great War and revolutionary wars. In 1918–19 it was often various Ukrainian warlords who claimed the city. The experience of the weak and unstable Ukrainian states in the western and central parts of the country (from the hetman state of Skoropads´kyi and Petliura’s Directorate to the West Ukrainian People’s Republic) shows that the mobilizing potential and organizational capacity of Ukrainian nationalism was rather limited. Characteristically, Nestor Makhno was able to win considerable support from the peasantry without utilizing the Ukrainian theme as a chief ideological concept. These peculiarities are typical of a situation in which the empire withdraws from its peripheral territories as a result of the collapse of the ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬȱǯȱȱ ȱ¢ȱĴȱ about the development of nation building in the east and south of presentday Ukraine—in the regions of Kharkiv, Donbass, and New Russia during the period under consideration. Once in control (1918), the Bolsheviks instituted a reign of terror in Ukraine against the Russian nationalists.41 It was precisely Russian nationalism and the social forces behind it that the Bolsheviks considered their main enemy up to the late 1920s.42 We can say that the all-Russian version of national identity, which was a key element of Russian nationalism during the imperial period, became “orphaned” with the fall of the Russian Empire. Many achievements ȱȱęȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱȱ logic of the Soviet project of territorialization of ethnicity43 and korenizatsiia
Ȳȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱǯ
41
ȲȱǰȱȃȱȱȱDZȱȱ£ǰȄȱPostȱě 23, 2 (2007): 156–83.
42
Ȳȱ ǰȱThe Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). 43
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(indigenization).44ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ȭ gions in the Caucasus, Steppe, and Central Asia was proclaimed wrong, and ¢ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱǰȱ ȱȱ ȱ brutal repressions as foes of Soviet power, which the majority of them truly were. The Orthodox Church and clergy, who were also important elements of Russian presence in the peripheral regions, remained targets of systematic repression throughout the interwar period all over the USSR. In the western borderlands the Bolsheviks completed the dismantling of the legacy of imperial policy and prewar Russian nationalism by discarding the concept of a ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ Ĵǰȱ ȱ ȱǯȱȱȱȱȱȱŗşŘŜȱȱȱȱȃĴȱ Ȅȱǰȱȱ¢ȱȃȄȱȱȱȱȱęǯ45 The terms “Russian” and “Great Russian” became synonymous. The Bolsheviks ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ of the former Romanov Empire. As a quasi-national state, Soviet Ukraine received a “national territory,” a Soviet Ukrainian national identity, and the infrastructure of a Ukrainian national culture. The Polish-Soviet War of 1920 was a struggle for control of Eastern Europe between two new major players, in which Ukrainian forces played a strictly subordinate role. We can characterize the interwar period as a cold ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ÙȂȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ principle treated Ukraine as a single element in a vast, geostrategic struggle.46 However, the struggle of large empires for control of Eastern Europe, which placed particular importance on Ukrainian policy, resumed in 1939.47 The view presented above does not contradict the facts historians already ǯȱ ǰȱȱȱȱĜȱȱȱȱȱȱ of the proposed interpretation of events. We can merely formulate the main theses as questions. Can we consider the situation on the eve of the Great ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱĴȱȦ Ȭȱȱȱȱȱȱǵȱ ȱȱǰȱ Ȳ¢ȱ ǰȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ : Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
44
Ȳ ǯȱ ȱ ǽ Ĵȱ Ǿǰȱ ȱ DZȱ Ȧǰȱ ŗŞŜŖȮŗşŚŖ (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2010).
45
46 ȲǰȱȱĜȱȱ; Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
Ȳȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ĵȱ 1918 und 1941/42ȱǻDZȱĴȱ ĵȱǰȱŘŖŖśǼǯȱ 47
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the question—“To what extent was the Ukrainian movement of the First World War period the product of the policies of warring empires that also ȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱǵȄȯȱ¢ȱ legitimate. Who played the crucial role in the struggle between the Ukrainian and all-Russian projects—local nationalist movements or the mighty empires ȱȱȱȱǵȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ nations are to a large extent the product of imperial competition during the ȱǵȱȱ
War Nationalism Eric Lohr
The Bolshevik Party seized power and began to implement its vision of ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ 1918, the Bolshevik leaders began to use the term war communism (voennyi kommunizm) to capture the mix of motives driving their policies. Historians have argued ever since over the degree to which ideology or the pragmatic drive to mobilize forces and resources for war was the primary motive for nationalization, requisitions, monetary policy, and a whole series of crucial policies and practices that proved to be foundational for the new Bolshevik state.1 However, there is broad consensus that the two motives were inextricably intertwined in a powerful synthesis, and the term war communism has proven to be a durable concept that has framed the way we think about the early Bolshevik state and its policies. The policies of 1918–21 are almost never ¢ȱȱȱȃȄȱ ȱȱęȱȱȃ ǯȄȱȱ¢ȱ proposes that a comparable term is needed to think about nationalisms in the Russian Empire during World War I: war nationalism.2 Why “War Nationalism”? It is on the face of it somewhat puzzling that war does not have a more central place in the theoretical literature on nationalism. The two most cited theoretical works of the last few decades share a bias toward long-term developments that 1 Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱǰȱȱ Silvana Malle, The Economic Organization of War Communism, 1918–1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Ȳȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ nationalism with adjectives: “Russian Economic Nationalism during World War I: Moscow Merchants and Commercial Diasporas,” Nationalities Papers 31, 4 (December 2003): 471–84; “Politics, Economics and Minorities: Core Nationalism in the Russian Empire at War,” in Comparing Empires: Encounters and Transfers in the Long Nineteenth Centuryǰȱǯȱ ãȱȱȱȱȱ ȱǻ ãĴDZȱȱǭȱ Ruprecht, 2010), 520–31. 2
The Empire and Nationalism at War. Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2014, 91–107.
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create the social, intellectual, and conceptual preconditions for the emergence ȱ ȱ ȯ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ nationalism actually emerges and wins. We all know the story according to Gellner and Anderson. Whether it is maps, censuses, and print capitalism making it possible to imagine the modern nation or industrialization creating an imperative for isolated illiterate peasants to communicate in a modern industrial language, the emphasis is on developments that make the modern nation conceivable and actionable. This developmental bias was hardly invented by Gellner and Anderson. Hroch’s three-stage approach too sees ȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ ęȱ ȱ ęǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ culture to demand autonomy or a state. Hroch, Deutsch, and others see the social changes of modernization and the rise of a middle class as key longterm preconditions for the rise of nationalism.3 There is a certain parallel to the old story of the origins of communism. When social forces ripen, when there are enough workers, consciousness will ȱȱ¢ȱǰȱȱĚȱ ȱǰȱȱȱȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃ ȱ Ȅȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ǰȱ Ĵȱ equal stress on the imperatives of mobilizing for war and thus downgrading the developmental story of the social origins of revolution. “War nationalism” can serve the same heuristic purpose. Less prominent theories that see nationalism as an “event,” and nationality as an external characteristic or ordering principle ascribed to people without ȱȱȱ ȱ¡ȱȱĴȱȱȱȱ ȱ nationalism as the result of long-term developments and nationality as a category that builds up gradually in peoples’ psyches and identities. Rogers Brubaker sees such events—most often state collapse and/or war—as capable of bringing a “sudden and pervasive nationalization of public and even private life,” and nationality itself “as something that suddenly crystallizes rather ȱ ¢ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ¢ȱ Ěȱ ȱ precarious frame of vision and basis for individual and collective action rather than as a relatively stable product of deep developmental trends in economy,
Ȳ ȱǯȱǰȱNationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationalityȱ ǻǰȱ DZȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ Technology; New York: Wiley, 1953); Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ (London: Verso Editions/NLB, 1983); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983); Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). 3
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polity or culture.”4 In this spirit, Joshua Sanborn has productively called the Russian Empire’s World War I a “mobilizational event,” an unprecedented mobilization of the economy, army, and ethnic and political communities within the empire.5 The term war nationalism pushes in these directions, toward thinking about nationalism (and “nationality”) not as the natural end result of longdeveloping trends, but rather, as contingent upon a sudden rupture. Indeed, a case could be made for a broader term and concept of sudden nationalism. This would include the important cases of state and empire collapse, which often is a result of war, but not always. But this essay limits itself to the narrower, but still very large, task of making the case for war nationalism. While most theories of nationalism have focused on the preconditions for the national moment, the concept of “war nationalism” brings the focus to the war, to the moment when nationalism was mobilized. This approach is consonant with, and is also indebted to the pathbreaking work of Mark von Hagen that put the war-induced “mobilization” of ethnicity at the center of analysis of nationalisms at the end of the imperial era.6 Two key features of “war nationalism” deserve special note: the spatial aspect and the institutional aspect. Spatially, the war was focused in the Ȳȱ ǰȱ Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 19–20. Another important contribution that puts the dynamics of sudden mobilization of nationalism at the center of the concept is Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). In the introduction, Beissinger discusses deeper problems in nationality studies regarding ex post teleology that privilege long gestation versus waves of mobilization in extraordinary circumstances. The growing literature on transnationalism, anationalism, entangled histories, and other alternatives to the world of national identities also bolsters approaches to nationalism as contingent upon a mobilizational context. For example, see Tara Zahra, “Imagined DZȱȱ ěȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ¢ǰȄȱSlavic Review 69, 1 (Spring 2010): 93–119; Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor, eds., Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2004); Jörn Leonhard and Ulrike von Hirschhausen, eds., Comparing Empires: Encounters and Transfers in the Long Nineteenth Centuryȱǻ ãĴDZȱȱǭȱǰȱŘŖŗŖǼǯ 4
5 Ȳ ȱǰȱȃȱ£ȱȱŗşŗŚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱDZȱ A Re-Examination,” Slavic Review 59, 2 (Summer 2000): 267–89. In his essay, Sanborn stresses that all these mobilizations occurred within a single “national” framework that included the entire expanse of the Russian Empire and all its communities. In ȱ¢ǰȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱ£ȱěȱȱ ȱȱ empire (and without), often against each other. 6 Ȳȱȱ ǰȱȃȱ ȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ Empire,” in ȬȱȱDZȱĚȱȱȱǰȱǯȱĴȱǯȱȱ and Jack L. Snyder (New York: Routledge, 1998), 34–97.
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western borderlands of the empire, and episodically, in occupation zones in
ǰȱĴǰȱȱ ȱ¢ǯȱ ¢ǰȱȱ ȱȱ£ȱ ȱ ȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱěǯȱȱĜȱ in the western borderlands had been heavy-handed at times, but scholars ȱ£ȱ¢ȱȱ¢ȱ ȱ Ȭȱȱ¢ȱěȱ rulers who coopted elites, chose sides, and arbited solutions to problems during peacetime. When the war came to their region, tools they had not used became available, and control over those tools and ultimate decision-making ¢ȱȱȱĴȱ ȱȱȱ¡ȱȱ ȱ decades of accumulated knowledge and connections with local communities ȱ¢ȱĜȱ ȱĴȱȱ ȱǰȱȱ¢ǰȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱęȱȱ ȱ a war. The result was a quantum leap in the stakes and level of violence to war nationalism. Several scholars have recently done excellent work on the operation of Russian occupation regimes in these regions,7 detailing the multiple ways in which the military imposed nationality on the populations, stimulated ethnic ȱ ȱ Ěǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ǰȱ and Ukrainians, imposed a radical Russian nationalist regime under Count Bobrinskii, allowed Archbishop Evlogii to take over the Orthodox hierarchy ȱȱȱ ȱȱǰȱȱĴȱȱ¢ȱ¢ȱȱ schools in Galicia. Whether we call the region the front zone, the area under military rule, a “colonial space” (as Sanborn proposes in his article in this volume), or borrow the concept of “war land” from Vejas Liulevicius’s study of German perceptions of the region, it is important to incorporate the spatial element into the concept of war nationalism. One should not, of course, simply say that war nationalism happened where the war happened. The mobilizations for war and the nationalizing impacts of war were felt throughout the entire empire, but the most violent and extreme expressions of war nationalism were concentrated in the war zones.8ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ to another key spatial aspect: the desocializing impact of millions of people Ȳǯȱ ǯȱǰȱOkrainy Rossiiskoi imperii: Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie i natsional´naia politika v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny. 1914–1917 gg. (Moscow: ќѠѠѝђћ, 2004); and Bakhturina, Politika Rossiiskoi imperii v Vostochnoi Galitsii v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2000); Alexander Prusin, £ȱȱDZȱǰȱ¢ǰȱ and Anti-Jewish Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005); Mark von Hagen, ȱȱȱȱDZȱȱȱȱ Plans in Galicia and Ukraine, 1914–1918ȱǻĴDZȱ¢ȱȱȱǰȱŘŖŖŝǼǯ
7
ȲȱǰȱWar Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Joshua A. ǰȱ ȃĴȱ ȱ DZȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ during World War I,” Journal of Modern History 77, 2 (June 2005): 290–324. 8
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moving into foreign environments. He complements Peter Gatrell’s work on refugees moving to the interior and several works on Russian forces in foreignoccupied territories by applying the same concept to the army itself, treating soldiers as migrants. Anecdotally, soldier memoirs are full of references to the foreignness of the western borderlands and the impressions many had of crossing into a foreign land when crossing into the lands of Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belarusians, and others. The intensity of movement ȱ ȱȱȱěȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱĚȯ¢ȱ ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ quite free rein from their commanders to loot and intimidate. Institutionally, one of the key features of “war nationalism” was the role of the army in turning nationality issues into violent war issues. Daniel Graf ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ arrangement on the outbreak of World War I which, in contrast to other countries, granted the army nearly unlimited control over a vast swath of the empire. All military circulars, declarations, and orders were made obligatory ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ territory including Poland, the Caucasus, Petrograd, the Baltic provinces, Finland, and large parts of Central Asia and Siberia.9 At the highest level, army headquarters (stavka) coordinated civilian affairs. By October 1914, it became clear that the tasks of civilian rule were complex and extensive, and a special section of army headquarters was set up to coordinate policies toward civilians (the Military-Political and Civilian Administration of the Commander in Chief). This institution was given wide ȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱǯȱȱȱȱȱ had no power to overrule army headquarters unless it gained the support of the tsar himself to intervene. One of the most important powers over civilians granted to the military was the nearly unlimited authority to deport ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱęȱȱȱȃȱȱ spying.” No evidence was required for such deportations (not even a military
Ȳȱ¢ȱǰȱȱȱ ǰȱȃȱȱȱȱ DZȱ¢ȱ ȱ in Western Russia, 1914–1915” (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska, 1972). The introduction to opis´ 1 in Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA) f. 2005 (Voenno-politicheskoe i grazhdanskoe upravlenie pri verkhovnom glavnokomanduiushchem) contains a description of the delineation of army powers in civilian rule. See also appendix 2 to Polozhenie o polevom upravlenii voisk v voennoe vremia (Petrograd: Voennaia Tip. Imperatritsy Ekateriny Velikoi, 1914); Vladimir Rozenberg, Sovremennye pravootnosheniia k nepriiatel´skim poddannym: S prilozheniem uzakonenii po etomu predmetu (Petrograd, 1915); and Iu. N. Danilov, Rossiia v mirovoi voine 1914–1915 gg. (Berlin: Slovo, 1924), 103. 9
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court order). The army made extensive use of these powers.10 Moreover, the army exercised broad powers to requisition (demand goods or properties with payment) and sequester (take properties for state or army use without formally changing ownership).11 Military rule established a debilitating biȱȱ ȱȱȱȱěǰȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ rule of law was suspended. We have seen above several ways in which the ¢Ȃȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱȱĚȱȱ imposed national identities on the civilian populations it encountered. Peter Gatrell’s work on refugees provides a good example of how the rupture of the war could suddenly transform the landscape of social and national identities. Gatrell reminds us that social history is not necessarily about evolving social structures, making the point in a more sophisticated way than can be summarized in a few sentences that the “refugee” was a social and identity category that was suddenly created by the war and for millions of people trumped all their prior statuses and identities.12 Among other things, his detailed analysis shows how the event of sudden refugeedom often led directly to the mobilization of national communities. Displaced Poles were ȱȱȱȱȱĜȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ ȱȱ turned away if they could not prove their Polishness. German farmers from Ukraine were forced from their homes and found themselves billeted in Volga German communities thousands of kilometers away who practiced ȱěȱ¢ȱȱȱǻȱǼȱȱȱȱȬ ferent mutually incomprehensible dialects. Jews from widely disparate backgrounds were forced to meet and rely upon each other. Millions of refugees came into physical contact. Mobilized into national communities in their ȱ ȱ Ĵǰȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȃȄȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ǰȱ ȱǰȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ ȱȱȱȬ come the leaders of national movements and new independent states in the interwar period.13 Whether they wanted to or not, refugees were categorized, Ȳ¢ȱȱȱŗşŗŚǰȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ that would deprive foreigners of the right to trial if accused of spying. The bill was discussed in the Duma in June 1914, but was not passed before the war. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA) f. 1276, op. 10, d. 106, ll. 1–21.
10
11
Ȳ ȱǯȱŘŖŖśǰȱǯȱŗȱǻǼǯ
Ȳȱ ǰȱA Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 141–70.
12
Ȳȱ ǰȱȃȱȱȱȱǰȱŗşŗŚȮŗşŗŝDZȱȱȱ and Social Identity,” in Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914–1921, ed.
13
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grouped, and forced to face their hardships with their co-ethnics. In short, war nationalism hit them after they were displaced. Nationality was for many of them an unwanted and sudden imposition, ascribed to them from without, not the realization of their true selves. For refugees, imposed nationality was largely cultural and ethnic. For millions of others, war imposed painful choices that few could have desired regarding “nationality” in the sense of formal state membership, i.e., citizenship. Quickly after the war began, the Russian Empire (along with most of the other belligerents) began to intern male enemy subjects who owed military service in the countries of their citizenship. This straightforward military action gradually expanded to a massive campaign to permanently root out enemy subject foreigners from the Russian economy and society. The army led a series of mass deportations that cleared enemy subject men, women, and children from the entire area under military rule (both near the front and from the capital cities). The civilian government, under sharp pressure from the army command, followed with a comprehensive set of measures to liquidate the extensive participation of foreign citizens from enemy countries in the imperial Russian economy. First thousands of small businesses and partnerships owned in whole or in part by enemy subjects were closed, then stockholdings in major corporations were liquidated. Lands belonging both to enemy citizens and to Russian subjects of German descent were expropriated according to a series of laws beginning in February 1915. These measures were driven in part by pressure from the army command for action, in part by a press campaign and popular movement driven by an interesting variant of what I have elsewhere called Russian “core nationalism,” but might also be called “war nationalism.”14 At the center of this campaign was the idea of using the war as an opportunity to employ radical tools like mass deportation, nationalization, and popular violence to bring about a sudden radical shift of ownership and control over the economy from Germans, Jews, and foreigners to ethnic Russians and other “core” groups in the empire. What distinguished this nationalistic campaign from prewar agitation toward the same end was the radical nature of the tools ȱȱȱǯȱ ȱȱŗşŗřȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ¢Ĵȱ of Jewish businesses in the Polish regions of the Russian Empire,15 in 1914–15, Edward Acton, Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, and William G. Rosenberg (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 554–64; and Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, especially 195–97. ȲǰȱȃǰȱǰȄȱśŘŖȮřŗǯ
14
Ȳȱ £ ǰȱȬ ûȱ£ȱŗŞŞŗȮŗşŘŘDZȱȱȱ£ȱ ȱ des Antisemitismus in Osteuropa (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1981), 106–20.
15
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the Russian army forced the expulsion of half a million Jews from the region and tolerated Cossack and local Polish looting and theft of Jewish property ȱȱȱǯȱ¢ȱĜȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱęȱȱȱ such large corporations as the main electricity supplier to Kiev and Warsaw— ¢ȱȱ ȱȱ ȱęǯ16ȱȱ¢ĴȱȱDzȱȱ killing, expelling, and expropriating are war nationalist. Prior to the war, the Moscow Merchant Society and the Progressist bloc in ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱěȱ and other measures to promote ethnic Russian business, hoping to tilt the competitive balance toward Russians in the central regions of the country and away from foreigners and commercial diaspora minorities that were more prominent in other regions.17 Their proposals were rarely enacted by a government that put the priority on rapid modernization and usually took the side of the cosmopolitan free trade–oriented Association of Industry and Trade.18 During the war, new groups like the “Society of 1914,” a speȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȄȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱȱȱ£ȱ¢Ĵȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱ foreigners and recently naturalized ethnic Germans.19 Their war nationalist agitation was a key factor in pushing the government to pass laws forcing the liquidation of enemy subject–owned businesses. It also spurred one of the biggest worker actions of the war, a violent three-day riot and strike against German and foreign businesses in Moscow in May 1915.20 An illustration 16
Ȳ ¢ȱȱȱȱǻ ǼȱǯȱŘŗśǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱŘśŖǰȱǯȱŘȮřŖǯ
17 Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ Russian business, see Thomas C. Owen, Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855–1905 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Alfred Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982).
ȲȱȱǰȱRussian Industrialists in an Era of Revolution: The Association of ¢ȱȱǰȱŗşŖŜȮŗşŗŝ, ed. Thomas C. Owen (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997).
18
Ȳȱ Promyshlennaia Rossiia, a journal that included articles by many leading liberal and moderate economists with essays on ways to promote an economically independent Russia during the war years, and the journals Russkaia budushchnost´ and ȱȃŗşŗŚȱȄDZȱȼȱȱȱ£ȼȱȱ££ȱ. I. Kh. Ozerov, Na novyi put´! K ekonomicheskomu osvobozhdeniiu Rossii (Moscow: Tip. A. I. Mamontova, 1915); Zadachi, programma i deiatel´nosti torgovo-promyshlennogo otdela Obshchestva 1914 goda v 1915 godu (Petrograd: Rassvet, 1916). 19
Ȳȱ ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ DZȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŗśǰȄȱ Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4, 3 (Summer 2003): 607–26; Iu. I. Kirianov, “’Maiskie besporiadki’ 1915 g. v Moskve,” Voprosy istorii, no. 12 (1994): 137–50.
20
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ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ nationalism can be seen in one detail. Prior to the war, the Moscow Merchant Society subsidized the publication of a comprehensive list of all Austrian and German subjects and immigrants from the two countries who had become Russian subjects three or fewer generations earlier.21 The purpose was to £ȱȱ¢Ĵȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǯȱȱ ȱ¢Ĵȱȱŗşŗřȱ ȱȱ¢ȱěȱȱȱĴǯȱ ȱ¢ȱŗşŗśǰȱ the same lists were carried around town and used by the riot organizers to direct their violence, looting, and destruction, resulting in the most costly pogrom in Russian history in terms of monetary damages. The government ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȱ¢ȱĜǰȱ Feliks Iusupov, showed his sympathy for the rioters and used the argument of popular demand to push the tsar to expand the program of deportations and internment of enemy subjects. The government turned in an ever more radical direction. For decades prior to the war, the government had gone to great ȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱǯȱ ȱȱ Ȭ year wartime campaign, by late 1917, it had liquidated 33 major corporations ȱȱ ȱȱȱ ǰȱȱŘǰŖŖŖȱȱęǰȱȱ śşȱȱȱęDzȱ¢ȱȱęȱ ȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱ in the war. 22 The contrast between nationalism and “war nationalism” is also stark in the case of the German colonists. There was a long prewar history of nationalistic agitation against the rapidly growing share of arable land owned or leased by German farming communities, especially the ones in Volhynia ȱȱȱȱĴǯȱ ȱȱǰȱ ȱȃȄȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ęȱ ǯȱ Along with credit and loan networks without parallel in neighboring Slavic communities, these three things combined to create a powerful engine for ȱȱȱȱȱĜȱȱǯȱęȱȱȱ allowed the German communities to buy and lease land from less prosperous neighbors and rapidly increase the amount of land held by their communities—even while Germans emigrated in large numbers to the United States in search of more land. Novoe vremia and a long line of publicists wrote
Ȳ ȱ ȱ ȱ ę¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŗŚȱ DZȱ £ȼȱ Ȭȱ ȱ ȱ ¢Ȭ¢ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ęȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ǰȱȱ¢ȱȱ kupecheskoi i remeslennoi uprave na 1914 g. Posviashchaetsia vsem korennym russkim silam goroda Moskvy (Moscow: Russkaia Pechatnia, 1915), 6. 21
22
ȲǰȱNationalizing the Russian Empire, 166–73.
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angrily about the need for government intervention.23 Some limits were placed on German immigration and rights to purchase new lands, but the rules were ¢ȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ acquisitions. Especially after enacting the Stolypin land reforms, the regime ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ȭ ȱ ȱ Ĝ¢ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ right would move in the opposite direction.24 But add the adjective “war” to this nationalist agenda, and everything changed dramatically. Already in December 1914, the Russian army singled out male German colonists for mass deportation from the ten Polish provinces. The governor general of Warsaw estimated that 200,000 German men owning ŘŖǰŖŖŖȱȱȱ ȱȱěǯ25 But he also encouraged troops executing the order to “facilitate” the departure of the families of deportees “since this is desirable for state interests.”26 In what way could this facilitate ȃȱ Ȅǵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ DZȱ ȱ ȱ free up the landholdings of the colonists for redistribution to Russians. This motive was so strong that, after a bit of internal correspondence, the army command decided to exempt urban Germans from the mass deportation orders. Only German colonists were to be forcibly expelled en masse. The military eventually hit on the idea of preserving these lands as a reward to be given to soldier heroes at the end of the war, but in the midst of the chaotic mass expulsions of German colonists from Poland, the Council of Ministers stepped in with a law that even the most extreme prewar nationalists would have seen as extreme and unrealistic in peacetime. On 2 February 1915, the tsar signed a law that declared the expropriation of lands owned or leased by enemy subjects or by certain categories of Russian-subject Germans within the ten Polish provinces (Privislenskii krai) and a band of territory extending 160 kilometers to the interior of the empire’s western and southern borders
Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Novoe vremia, published as A. Rennikov, Zoloto Reina: O nemtsakh v Rossii (Petrograd: A. S. Suvorin, 1915).
23
Ȳȱǰȱȱȱ ȱDZȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱŗŝśŗȮŗşŗŚȱ(Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1993); Dietmar ĵǰȱDie “deutsche Frage” im Schwarzmeergebiet und in Wolhynien: Politik, Wirtschaft, Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǻŗŞśŜȮ 1914)ȱǻĴDZȱ£ȱȱǰȱŗşşřǼDzȱ ȱǰȱFrom Privileged to Dispossessed: ȱȱ ǰȱŗŞŜŖȮŗşŗŝ (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988). 24
25
Ȳ ȱǯȱŘŖŖśǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱŘŞǰȱǯȱŞŚȱǻ¢ȱȱ ǰȱŗŗȱ ¢ȱŗşŗśǼǯ
Ȳ ȱǯȱŘŗśǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱŚŜŖǰȱǯȱŘŗȱǻ¢ȱȱȱȱǰȱŗŜȱ ¢ȱ 1915). 26
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from Finland to the Caspian Sea.27 Later laws extended the zone much deeper to the interior of the empire. In addition to these formal programs, there is evidence that Cossacks and locals looted and stole German colonist property during and after the forced expulsions.28 To the extent that the German colonists had a political role in the late empire, it was as a small conservative bloc in the State Duma, mostly in the moderate-conservative Octobrist party. The last thing most German farmers wanted was a radical nationalization of their lives. Yet, once dispossessed and displaced, many were driven to politics and emigration to Germany to join a country that their ancestors had abandoned for the promise of land or religious freedom in the Russian Empire.29 In many ways, the contrast of prewar and wartime was not so sharp for Jews as it was for Germans. The waves of pogroms that swept through the Pale in 1881–82 and again in 1902–07 were marked by extreme and increasing brutality. The tsar and government fostered anti-Semitism through discriminatory policies and by allowing or even funding the publication of hate speech bordering on outright incitement to commit pogroms. The protofascist Union of Russian People received government favor, and perpetrators of pogrom violence were rarely punished. Yet, there are several important points of contrast that distinguish the wave of “war pogroms” from earlier pogrom waves in ways parallel to the contrast between nationalism and war nationalism. ȱęȱȱȱȱ¢ǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ sus among scholars in the last couple of decades that high-level government Ĝȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱǯ30 The government 27
Ȳȱ£ǰȱ£ǰȱ£ɇ ȱȱ, 25.
28 Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱęȱ generalizations about the role of violence can be asserted. An eyewitness to the German deportations from Volhynia claims fairly extensive violence by Cossacks ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¡ǯȱ ȱ ûǰȱ Die Flüchtlinge von Wolhynien: Der Leidensweg russlanddeutscher Siedler, 1915–1918 (Plauen: GüntherěǰȱŗşřŝǼǯȱȱ¢ȱǰȱȱ¢ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ¡Ȭ tensive violence: Waldemar Giesbrecht, “Die Verbannung der Wolhyniendeutschen, 1915/1916,” Wolhynische Hefte 3 (1984): 43–97; 4 (1986): 9–97; 5 (1988): 6–62.
Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ an example of this process. Jakob Stach, Schicksalsjahre der Russlanddeutschen: Erlebnisse ȱȱǰȱŗşŗŜȮŗşŘŘ (Bonn: Stiftung Ostdeutscher Kulturrat, 1983). 29
ȲȱȱȱȱȱȂȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ ity for pogroms in the Russian Empire before World War I, see John D. Klier and Shlomo Lambroza, Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 315.
30
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more often saw pogroms as volatile and dangerous expressions of popular violence, and as such generally tried to restrain or prevent them.31 In contrast, the wave of pogroms during the war (concentrated in the period of the 1915 retreat of the Russian army) was largely initiated and conducted by Cossack units in the army. Where pogroms occurred, Cossack army units usually iniȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ their power to order expulsions of Jews as a means to loot. In some cases, Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ them access to carts, and beat and robbed them as they departed. Most important in creating the framework for the pogrom wave was the army’s extensive program of mass expulsions and deportations of Jews, Germans, and foreigners from areas under military rule, leaving all these populations vulnerable to looting.32 The civilian authorities were appalled and spoke ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ forced mass expulsions, creating a wave of refugees, countless logistical and ęȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ But nearly the entire area of legal Jewish residence came under military rule during the war, and they felt helpless to intervene. 33 The wanton violence of Cossacks and army commanders who allowed them to loot, murder, and molest Jewish populations at or near the front can hardly be seen as driven by a coherent nationalist ideology or motive. The violence was indiscriminate and could also target German-, Polish-, and even Russian-occupied populations that they came across. To a certain degree, Jews were simply the most vulnerable and had the longest tradition of becoming targets of Cossack looting without consequence. That said, a case can be made that the war powerfully structured the context for pogrom violence, combining in a volatile mix with patriotic-nationalist mobilization. It can be Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱŗşŖśȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱěȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱĜȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ facilitating pogroms. See Shlomo Lambroza, “The Pogroms of 1903–1906,” in Pogroms, 234–47. 31
32 Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȃ¢ȱ dokumenty o Rossiiskoi Armii i evreiakh vo vremena Pervoi mirovoi voiny,” Vestnik evreiskogo universiteta, no. 8 (26) (Moscow, 2003): 245–68. For an important recent study, see Semion Goldin, “Deportation of Jews by the Russian Military Command, 1914– 1915,” Jews in Eastern Europe 41, 1 (2000): 40–73.
Ȳȱ ¢ǰȱ Prologue to Revolution: Notes of A. N. Iakhontov on the Secret Meetings of the Council of Ministers, 1915 ǻ ȱěǰȱ DZȱȬ ǰȱŗşŜŝǼǰȱśŜȮ 74; ȱȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ¢DZȱȱǯȱǯȱ ȱ (Zapisi zasedanii i perepiska) (St. Petersburg: RAN, 1999), 169, 204–05, 211–12. 33
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ȱȱȱ ȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ lack of structured meaning characteristic of the prewar pogroms. The key to explaining this phenomenon is the socioeconomic position of Jews as a commercial diaspora.34ȱȱȯȱȱȱęȱȱ the reality—that Jews held positions in commerce, banking, industry, small business, insurance, and trade in numbers far exceeding their proportion in the population as a whole added a serious socioeconomic dimension to al¢ȱ¡ȱȬ ȱĴǯȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ national awareness, the competition of non-Jewish populations for these positions added a sharp new element to an old problem. The tensions were by no means simply along a Russian–Jewish axis. In fact, they were sharpest in the Polish parts of the empire, where an intense ȱȱ¢Ĵȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ Democratic Party shortly prior to the war. Similar developments were evident in the Baltics, Ukraine, and other areas as well.35ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ well before 1914 and were more closely connected to the pressures of modernization than war. The mobilization of the country, however, introduced several new elements that changed the dynamic. Most importantly, it suddenly transformed the foreign and German commercial diaspora populations of the empire from privileged minorities into enemy aliens. While Jews were Russian subjects and thus not targeted by the laws on enemy subject properties, the perception that the Jews were the most suspect enemy population in the empire was well established. Articles in the press, denunciations, petitions, bureaucratic memos, and the correspondence of army commanders all freely mixed the language of “German dominance” (zasil´e) with that of “Jewish dominance.” The very public plan to redistribute the land of deported Germans to “core” national groups created a strong sense that the property of the forcibly expelled minorities in the front zone was unprotected. The war nationalist mobilization against commercial diasporas created a new context for pogroms. As a result, while the 1915 pogroms invariably Ȳȱǰȱȃȱȱȱȱȱȱ DZȱ ȱȱ and Commercial Diasporas,” Nationalities Papers 31, 4 (December 2003): 471–84; Heinz Dietrich Löwe, Antisemitismus und reaktionäre Utopie: Russischer Konservatismus im Kampf gegen den Wandel von Staat und Gesellschaft, 1890–1917ȱǻ DZȱ ěȱȱ Campe Verlag, 1978); Löwe, The Tsars and the Jews: Reform, Reaction and Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia, 1772–1917ȱǻǰȱ ĵDZȱ ȱȱǰȱŗşşřǼDzȱ and Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
34
35 ȲȱǰȱFrom Assimilation to Antisemitism: The “Jewish Question” in Poland, 1850–1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), 165–68; Golczewski, Ȭ ûȱ£ȱŗŞŞŗȮŗşŘŘ, 106–20.
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started because of Cossack and army presence, they also were more national and more part of a nationwide mobilizational context than any previous wave ȱǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱěȱȱ the war context brought to pogroms. They increasingly became conceived as a means to a larger war nationalist end. The pogroms were closely linked to the targeted mass expulsions of Jews, Germans, and foreigners from the front £ǯȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢Ȭ ordered expulsions, gave a sense that the policies in the front zone were more than temporary expedients or aberrational acts. They appeared to be closer to a program of permanent demographic change in the region, intended not only as an expulsion of unreliable populations, but also (most clearly for the ǼǰȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱ permanently remove them from the population. The wartime pogroms and ȱ¡ȱȱęȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ radical property redistribution and demographic change in the western borderlands of the empire. ȱ ȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ Russian, Ukrainian, and other communities far to the interior of the empire. The early army orders directed Jews to leave all areas under military rule. This left only a narrow band of territory in three Ukrainian provinces that was both within the Pale and outside the area under military rule.36 Those ȱ ¢ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱŚȱȱŗşŗśȱ ȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ ȱ¡ȱ from the front. In the following year and a half, roughly 40 percent of all Jewȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ tense new nationality issue to hundreds of towns and cities throughout the ȱ ǻ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ¢Ǽǯȱ ȱ ȱ ethnic violence in several national and historical contexts reveals that violence tends to be concentrated in areas of large-scale and rapid in-migration. It is likely no coincidence that some of the worst excesses of the 1919 pogroms that ȱ¢ȱŗŖŖǰŖŖŖȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱĚ¡ȱ during the war had been the greatest. The frequent insinuations and open declarations in the press and from the army that Jews were being expelled as ȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱǯ37 36
RGVIA f. 1759, op. 3, d. 1422, l. 7; RGVIA f. 1932, op. 12, d. 67, ll. 35, 40, 43. This included only areas east of the Dnieper River in Ekaterinoslav, Mogilev, Chernigov, Poltava, and Taurida (not including the Crimean Peninsula).
37
See Hans Rogger, “Conclusion and Overview,” in Pogroms, 314-62. Edward H. Judge makes a similar point in his “Urban Growth and Anti-Semitism in Russian
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ȱ ęȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ¢ȱęȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ ǯȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱ¢ȱ authority over prisoners of war and quickly began to use that authority to pursue war nationalist aims. Early in the war, Slavic, Italian, and Alsatian ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱ facilities in European Russia.38 Already in August 1914, the Russian military approved the formation of Czech ethnic military units out of Hapsburg POWs in Russian camps and discussed the formation of South Slav, Slovak, Polish, Latvian, and Finnish units as well.39 Armenian volunteer units collaborated ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱĴȱǯȱȱ the process of actually forming and deploying ethnic units within the Russian ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ŗşŗŝȱ revolution,40ȱȱěȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ prisoners and targets of sanctions against enemy aliens in the empire. Slavic and Orthodox groups received full exemptions from internment and most of these measures. The nationalization of POW policies certainly did not take ȱ ȱ ȱ Dzȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ policies in Germany, and especially in Austria-Hungary. The Central Powers early in the war embraced a broad propaganda campaign aimed at stimulating national rebellions against the Russian Empire (accompanied by atȱ ȱ £ȱ ··ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭȱ contacts and spur uprisings).41 Austria led the way in the creation of ethnic units and allowed the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine to act openly in the Austrian camps, mobilizing Ukrainians into separate camp communities and eventually, into military units. These policies were war nationalist. Before Moldavia,” in Modernization and Revolution: Dilemmas of Progress in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Judge and James Y. Simms, Jr. (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1992), 43–57. For a recent review of the pogroms in Ukraine, see Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 109–40; Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 146; Cherniavsky, Prologue to Revolution, 56–72. ȲȱǰȱPOWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 93.
38
Ȳȱ ǰȱȃȱ ȱǰȄȱŚŖǯ
39
Ȳȱ ǰȱ POWs and the Great War, 115–22. Rachamimov estimates that from 1914–18, 40,000 Czechs and Slovaks volunteered to serve in the Czech Legion, about 16 percent of the total Czech and Slovak POW population. Three-quarters were recruited after February 1917.
40
Ȳȱ Ĵǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ãȱ ȱ ŗşŗŜȮŗşŗŞDZȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ Deutschlands antirussischen propagandakrieg unter den fremdvölkern Russlands im ersten Weltkrieg, Studia Historica 8 (Helsinki, 1978).
41
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ȱ ǰȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ either side of the border. Ukrainians began to establish contacts with each other across the border, and governments—especially after the conclusion of the Franco-Russian alliance—began to take actions that undermined the ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱǻȱȱ than Polish nationalism). For example, the Russian government sent secret subsidies to its perceived Rusyn allies in Galicia42 and frequently intervened in Anatolia on behalf of Christian Armenians and Greeks. But there was a great deal of constraint and continued cooperation, grounded in a century of close cooperation and shared interest in preventing nationalism from rising to challenge imperial legitimacy. The dueling declarations at the outbreak of war promising autonomy or more to the Poles undermined this from the start and all the policies discussed above undermined it further. By 1917, imperial regimes were organizing prisoners by ethnic criteria and giving them guns. The ȱĚǰȱȱȱǰȱǰȱǰȱȱȱ ethnic units would go on to play crucial roles in their respective drives toward establishing nation-states. Historians have found some analogies between national mobilizations of Ukrainian peasants into reading clubs, Czechs and Latvians into cycling clubs, and other mobilized national communities in the prewar decades and the creation of mobilized and militarized national movements toward the end of World War I. But without “war” the most important element of these “nationalisms” was missing. When nationalisms burst onto the scene in 1917–18, they took violent, militarized forms that had as much to do with the experience of war as the accumulated experiences of the decades ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱȱȱȱȱĚȱǰȱȱȱ£ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ£ȱǯȱȱěȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱ a martial adjective to the term “nationalism.” This essay has proposed a few arguments for deploying the concept of “war nationalism” to think about nationalism during World War I. The concept would be even more applicable to the era of the Civil War, when Polish, ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ Whites, Reds, anarchists, and greens—and the mobilization of society for war, for building communism, and for nationalism went to its furthest extremes. But that task remains for another day or another author. Likewise, one might extend the concept of war nationalism in the spirit of Rogers Brubaker and Josh Sanborn to make a point about national identity being predominantly a product of the mobilizational context. A good metaphor would be the POWs who found themselves faced with a stark choice between continued Ȳȱ ¢ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢DZȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Russia 1904–1912” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1991).
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imprisonment or becoming mobilized, armed representatives of a national movement. There was a degree of voluntarism to that choice, but only within highly unique circumstances only possible in the context of the war. Likewise, young Jewish men and women in the western borderlands may have dreamed about saving money to enter Russian universities and careers, as increasing numbers were doing on the eve of the war. But instead of moving toward greater assimilation into imperial Russian society, they found themselves suddenly Ĵȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯ43 ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ĵǯȱ Poles in the post-1905 order could turn to the Polish circle in the Duma for ȱȱȱȬȱ¢ȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱ the scepter of the tsar, or simply a policy of peaceful development within the empire. Instead, they found themselves mobilized into ethnic units on both sides of the front. The examples are legion of the ways in which nationality was suddenly thrust upon millions of individual lives by the context of war. In short, I propose that “war nationalism” and “war nationality” can help us overcome the developmental bias in thinking about nationalism and promote war and extraordinary mobilizational context to at least 50 percent of the terms and concepts we use to refer to nationalism and nationality during the ¡¢ȱȱȱȱęȱȱ ǯȱ
43 Ȳȱ ȱ¡ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ assimilation and accommodation of ethnic groups in all-imperial society, see Anders Henriksson, “Nationalism, Assimilation and Identity in Late Imperial Russia: The St. Petersburg Germans, 1906–1914,” Russian Review 52 (July 1993): 341–53; Christoph Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1900–14: The Modernization of Russian Jewry (Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 1995); Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Jews in the Russian Army, 1827–1917: Drafted into Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). If Petrovsky-Shtern is right, the army itself was becoming a means to Jewish assimilation into a broader imperial society and citizenship; during the war it became the main instigator of violence against Jews, even as Jewish soldiers continued to serve in its ranks.
Central Asia (1916–20): A Kaleidoscope of Local Revolutions and the Building of the Bolshevik Order Marco Buttino
This article deals with Central Asia as an internal colony of the former tsarist empire in the period from the rebellion of 1916 through the end of the Civil ǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱęȱȱȱ ȱȱ immigrant Russian population and the native inhabitants. A crisis of the colonial economy led to widespread famine and a desperate struggle for survival. Chaos, violence, and hunger spread throughout Central Asia. Conditions were worst in the recently annexed southern regions, which formed Turkestan, where the local population’s involvement in the administrative system and the colonial economy were weakest. I will argue that the revolutions ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱĴȱ¢ȱȱ groups to re-establish order and defend themselves in a situation that was becoming increasingly threatening. I argue that the principal objective of the Bolshevik Revolution in Turkestan was to maintain the dominant position of the Russian colonial minority and prevent decolonization. While the soldiers who took power in Tashkent proclaimed themselves revolutionaries and were recognized by the central Bolshevik government, they were, in fact, the perpetrators of a colonial counterrevolution. This thesis builds upon widely held views expressed by political leaders at the time1 and historians writing in the period immediately following the 1 Ȳ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ of 1919 as a member of a commission sent by Moscow, argued that in Turkestan the Revolution was the use of force by the Russian minority seeking to defend its supremacy in the colony. Apropos of the February Revolution, Safarov wrote that “the Russian Revolution in Turkestan rapidly acquired this fatal colonialist tendency” and, in an analysis of the October Revolution in Tashkent and the direction the Bolsheviks and revolutionary socialists gave it, he wrote that although it was thanks to them that the moderates had been defeated, “at the same time, politically, this strengthened the colonizing nature of new Soviet power in Turkestan.” Georgii Safarov, Kolonial´naia revoliutsiia: Opyt Turkestana (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izd-vo, 1921), 62, 70. The Musȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ę¢ȱ ȱ Safarov’s, also felt that the Russian revolutionaries, albeit divided by deep-seated
The Empire and Nationalism at War. Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2014, 109–35.
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Civil War.2ȱ ǰȱȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱĴǯȱ ȱȱȱ dynamics of imperial collapse re-emerged in the years following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Adeeb Khalid’s in-depth analysis of the activities and positions of Muslim political organizations in Turkestan shows that the Russian population rallied together to defend its dominance and assert its supremacy when the food crisis struck.3 Daniel Brower examines the ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ was continuity between Russian colonialism and early Bolshevik practices.4 ěȱ Ȃȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ spearheaded the Bolshevik Revolution there and how this process was connected to the struggle for food supplies once shortages occurred.5 I will build on these arguments to suggest that both the “revolution” in Tashkent and the numerous “revolutionary” power grabs that occurred throughout ȱ ȱ ŗşŗŝȱ ȱ ŗşŘŖȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ rooted in the region’s colonial order. To understand the nature of these ȃǰȄȱ ȱȱȱ£ȱěȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ that they all were fundamentally reactions to chaos, famine, and the spread of violence.6
rivalries between them, were united in the defense of their interests, while the local ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱěȱǰȱȱȱȱ an end to Russian colonialism. See Turar Ryskulov, Revoliutsiia i korennoe naselenie Turkestana: Sbornik glavneishikh statei, dokladov, rechei i tezisov (Tashkent: Uzbekskoe gosudarstvennoe izd-vo, 1925). Even the leaders of the Communist Party in Moscow understood the positions of the local Communists and in 1919 accused “old Communists” of chauvinism, taking measures to oust them from the Party. 2 Ȳȱ¢ȱȱȱŗşŘŖǰȱ £ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĚȱȬ alism caused. P. G. Galuzo, Turkestan-koloniia: Ocherk istorii Turkestana ot zavoevaniia russkimi do revoliutsii 1917 goda (Moscow: Izd-vo Kommunisticheskogo universiteta trudiashchikhsia Vostoka, 1929).
Ȳȱ ǰȱThe Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 245–79. 3
Ȳȱ ǰȱTurkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London: Routledge, 2003), 152–75. 4
Ȳ ěȱǰȱȱȱ¢ȱȱǰȱŗŞŜśȮŗşŘřȱ(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 187–228. 5
Ȳȱ¢ȱȱLa rivoluzione capovolta: L’Asia centrale tra il crollo dell’impero zarista e la formazione dell’USSR (Naples: L’ancora del mediterraneo, 2003), translated into Russian as Revoliutsiia naoborot: Sredniaia Aziia mezhdu padeniem tsarskoi imperii i obrazovaniem SSSR (Moscow: Zven´ia, 2008).
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ȱ¡ȱȱȱȱȱĚǰȱǰȱȱǰȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱ convey the prevalent atmosphere at the time. Readers will thus note that when groups used the terms revolution and revolutionary to describe themselves, I follow their lead, even though they would also—often more accurately—be described as “colonial” or “anticolonist” or “nationalist.” It was primarily among the Russians that the Revolution developed, and it was they who sought support from Petrograd in the hope that it would be possible to preserve the unity of the former empire, even on a new basis. During the years of the Civil War, divisions emerged among the Russian revolutionaries that had formed the local Bolshevik Party; there was a split between the old guard, now accused of defending colonialism, and interpreters of Lenin’s political line. Members of both factions called themselves revolutionaries. In addition, representatives of the local Muslim community also joined the Bolshevik Party and became ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ¢ǯȱȱǰȱ ȱȱ ȱ¢ȱěȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ obtain favors (for example, prisoners of war and Armenian nationalists). Still others—colonists who rebelled in the name of a true revolution based on local soviets—joined the heterogeneous revolutionary alliance even though they ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ escape the ambiguity the frequent use of the term revolutionary by all parties involved is to consider each case in the context in which it occurred. ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱȱęȱǯȱ The detailed analysis of local events will make it possible to identify the decisions and strategies that might go otherwise unnoticed. I will consider ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¡ǯȱ ȱ approach will enable us to avoid the misunderstandings present in the ways in which the spread of the Revolution through the territory of the former empire has been interpreted. ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Central Asia on the basis of whether they supported the Reds or the Whites in the Civil War. The Revolution considered from above, in Petrograd, by the ¢ǰȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱ that were judged either revolutionary or counterrevolutionary depending on ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȂȱǯȱ ȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱĴDZȱȱ ȱȱ for actors with conservative purposes to side with the revolutionaries, and vice versa. A second misunderstanding involves the meaning of revolutionary ideas. As the Revolution spread from Petrograd to the far reaches of the empire, the
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Bolsheviks expected their program to retain its original meaning. However, ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱǯȱȱȱ¡ȱȱěȱȬ ings on revolutionary actions and political slogans. Phrases such as “all power to the workers’ councils” or “land to those who work it” meant one thing in ȱȱȱ¢ȱěȱȱȱǯȱȱȱȱ ěȱȱĚȱǻǰȱǰȱȱȱǼǰȱȱȱȱ ěǰȱȱȱ¢ǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ actors that moved in substantial autonomy on a local level. It is also necessary to acknowledge that the periodization of the revolu¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱǯȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱěȱ focus than one examining regional or empire-wide ones. Historiography, especially Soviet historiography, often underestimates the importance of these ěȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ general level (that of the former empire) or one that is valid for the central regions (Petrograd and Moscow), in spite of their inconsistency with the events taking place in peripheral areas. The overthrow of the imperial order in Central Asia presents an outstanding example. This event did not occur in October 1917, but in 1916, and was the result of a mass revolt of the region’s native population. The aim of this paper is to analyze the multiplicity of contrasting local “revolutions” that took place in Central Asia; it will focus on the situations that best illustrate and exemplify this complexity. It will describe revolts and the local dictatorships that came to power and, after the arrival of the Red Army in 1920, were incorporated into the Bolshevik Revolution. However, before dealing with the multiplicity of local situations, we need to relate them to the wider context in which they unfolded. The Context of Central Asia’s Revolts and Revolutions ȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱ ȱ ȱȱĚ¡ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱ¢ǯȱȱȱȱ uprisings of 1905–07 in European Russia, the need to calm protests and alleviate the shortage of land spurred the central government to encourage mass emigration to the east, even though administrators in Central Asia advised caution. Administrators initially warned that they would not be able to negotiate land agreements with the native populations without the ȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ȱ ¢ǯȱ ȱ ȱ Ě¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ĚȬȱ ǯȱ ȱ ŗŞşŜȱ ȱ ŗşŖśǰȱ ŘřŚǰŖŖŖȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ in the Region of the Steppes, while between 1906 and 1915 a further 885,000
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ǯȱ ȱǰȱȬȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱ mountainous Semirech´e region bordering on China; in this region alone, the population of Cossacks and colonists, which in 1897 had been 67,000, had risen to 225,000 in 1914.7 Administrative warnings about the unsustainability of further immigration were swept to the side by this wave of colonization. ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ¢ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ cities and villages, hoping somehow to gain access to a plot. Abandoned by the authorities, they sought to obtain the land the local population used for grazing animals. The situation was most critical in Semirech´e, where colonists Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ Ȃȱ ȱ and blocked their access to streams.8 World War I exacerbated existing tensions, and in 1916 the native population revolted. It was this uprising and its repression that marked the end of the tsarist colonial order, as will be seen in the next section. The famine that followed was also a consequence of colonization and war. In the regions of Turkestan inhabited by sedentary populations, in Fergana ȱǰȱ¡ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱ a simultaneous drop in the growing of food crops. Native workers were ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ Ȃȱ ¡ȱ ǰȱ while the land cultivated by colonists was devoted to growing cereal crops, especially in the regions of Aulie-Ata and Semirech´e. The colony was still unable to grow enough wheat for its needs. Production outstripped deȱ ȱ ȼǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ areas in Turkestan because there were no rail links. The war had halted the construction of the Tashkent–Vernyi railway, and the cereal crop from the area of maximum production was inaccessible. It became increasingly necessary to have wheat shipped from European Russia and the northern areas of the Region of the Steppes, which were also colonized by Slav peasants. During the war, Petrograd needed grain supplies for the army and reduced shipments to the colony in 1917; beginning in the autumn of the same year, no further goods arrived in Turkestan, and famine began to spread through the region. In November 1917, the Cossacks in Orenburg severed the railway lines that crossed the Region of the Steppes and reached Tashkent. With only brief ȲȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱStatistiko-ekonomicheskii obzor Kirgizskoi SSR (Orenburg, 1923), 228; Sel´sko-khoziaistvennyi obzor Semirechenskoi oblasti za 1914 g. (Vernyi, 1915), 109; P. G. Galuzo, ¢ȱȱȱȱ £ȱȱŗŞŜŝȮŗşŗŚȱ gg. (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1965), 226; I. I. Mainov, Materialy po zemel´nomy voprosu v aziatskoi Rossii, 3: Semirech´e (Petrograd, 1918), 22–23. 7
8 Ȳȱȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱȼǰȱȱȱǰȱStalinismo di frontiera: Colonizzazione agricola, sterminio dei nomadi e costruzione statale in Asia central, ŗşŖśȮŗşřŜ (Rome: Viella, 2009), 33–86.
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exceptions, there would be no rail connections for the next two years. The railway that ran from the Caucasus to Turkestan was also blocked. Turkestan no longer had any hope of obtaining aid from outside. Food shortages became ǰȱȱȱǯȱȱěȱ ȱǯȱ ȱŗşŗśȱȱ 1920, there was a 25 percent drop in population, from 7.1 million to 5.3 million people. The nearly 2 million people who died were all members of the native population, mostly seminomadic Kazakhs and Kirghiz.9 The Nomad Revolt of 191610 At the beginning of the summer of 1916 a prikaz (command) the tsar sent to ȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱ¢ǯȱȱȱ ȱ instructed to conscript members of the local population, formerly exempt from military service, drafting all men between the ages of 19 and 43 to serve in the ¢Ȃȱ ȱĴǯ11 About 390,000 people were subject to conscription.12 The prikaz had been issued at the worst possible moment, the beginning ȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱȱĴȱȱ ȱ ¢ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱęǯȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱvolost´ (administrative district) ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝȱ not compile lists of eligible conscripts. When their petitions were not met, ¢ȱȱȱĜǯȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ stop the revolts, which continued for one month. The seminomadic Kazakh and Kirghiz tribes in the Region of the Steppes also revolted. Their revolt was more radical and violent, and lasted until the end of the summer. The rebels’ strength depended in part on the relative weakness of the colonists’ villages, where, in the months before the uprising, nearly all arms had been requisitioned for use by the army and most of the men had been drafted and sent to the front.13 In many of the recently established villages, ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¡¢ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ 9 Ȳȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȃ¢ȱȱȱȱȱ and Depopulation in Turkestan, 1917–1920,” Central Asian Survey 9, 4 (1990): 59–74. 10 Ȳȱȱ¡ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ ǰȱRussia’s First World War: A Social and Economic History (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2005), 188, 192. 11 Ȳȱȱ¡ȱȱȱprikaz, see A. V. Piaskovskii and S. G. Agadzhanov, eds., Vosstanie ŗşŗŜȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱ £DZȱȱ (Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1960), 25–26.
Ȳǯȱǯȱȱȱǯȱ ǯȱǰȱȱŗşŗŜȱȱȱ £DZ Prichiny, kharakter, dvizhushchie sily (Alma-Ata: Izd-vo Nauka Kazakhskoi, 1977), 73.
12
Ȳǯȱ ǯȱǰȱTashkent v period trekh revoliutsii (Tashkent: Gosudarstvennoe izdvo UzSSR, 1957), 125.
13
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to work their farms. The Cossack stanitsyȱ ǻĴǼȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ Ĵȱ situation and less at risk. Their farmsteads were more solid, and their loyalty to the empire had been rewarded with less onerous conscription. They were therefore able to defend themselves from the nomads and in some cases even ȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱȱȱȱȱěȱȱǰȱ ȱ¢ȱ then expropriated for themselves. The epicenter of the clashes was Semirech´e. At this time, it was inhabited by seminomadic Kirghiz tribes and a substantial Russian immigrant population. After several of them were killed by the rebels, Turkestan-born administrators were cowed by the spread of the protests and chose not to cooperate in compiling lists of draft-eligible men. Grounds for cooperation with the colonial administration no longer existed. Kirghiz farmhands working for ȱȱȱĴȱĚǰȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȂȱȬ stock with them, and returned to their auls (encampments), where they would be protected by fellow tribesmen.14 Repression ensued. The task fell to General Aleksei Kuropatkin, the new governor of Turkestan, who had arrived in Tashkent at the beginning of August 1916. Kuropatkin believed that to restore order the government had to arm the colonists; create Cossack, reservist, and conscript military units from Semirech´e; send in military reinforcements from Tashkent; intimidate the Kirghiz; requisition the crops of those Kirghiz ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ĚDzȱ ȱ Ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱDzȱȱ ȱĚȱ £ȱ to cross the border into China.15 In Semirech´e, Kuropatkin mobilized soldiers, integrated divisions with volunteers, gave the troops arms stored in army ǰȱȱȱȱĚǯȱ ȱȱǰȱȱȱȱ of bearing arms were organized in druzhiny (detachments), while the farmers ȱ ȱęȱ¢ȱǰȱȱ ȱȱ¡ȱȱǯ16 What transpired ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱȱȱǯȱȱěȱ ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ Russian high command, and in part driven by the independent actions of the ǯȱȱȱȱȱ ȱĚȱȱ ȱǯȱ¢ȱ sought safety by heading into the mountains to escape to China.17 ȲKrasnyi arkhiv, no. 16 (1926): 63, 72.
14
Ȳ ȱǯȱǰȱȱȱȱŗşŗŜȱȱȱȱ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954), 115–17.
15
16
Ȳȱȱ£ǰȱȱŗşŗŜȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱ £ǰ 375. .
Ȳǯȱǯȱȱȱǯȱǯȱ¢ǰȱȱŗşŗŜȱǯȱȱ £: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe sotsial´no-ekonomicheskoe izd-vo, 1937), 103–30; Sokol, ȱȱȱŗşŗŜǰ 129–37.
17
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The revolt, and to an even greater degree its repression, left the population weary and exhausted. Colonists’ losses in Semirech´e alone numbered 2,000, ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ ǯȱ¢ȱȱȱęȱ ȱȬ stated, and wheat yields plummeted, which meant that there was a drastic drop in surpluses that could be sold in city markets. Losses among the seminomadic population were one hundred times higher (over 200,000), and most of their livestock was lost.18 This was the outcome of Central Asia’s great revolt. It marked the end of Russian colonialism as it had existed until this time, but with the defeat of the rebels the path was cleared for the new and more aggressive colonialism that developed between 1917 and 1920, the years of the Civil War and famine. 3. Tashkent: The Russians’ Revolution Russian colonial society was the protagonist of a revolution—if we wish to ȱȱȯ ȱȱȱŗşŗŝǯȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱěȱȱȱȱȬ ulation’s revolution; in fact, it was opposed to it. To understand why and how this situation emerged, we will focus on the colony’s most important city, Tashkent. The majority of Russian immigrants to cities in Central Asia were soldiers, ¢ȱ ǰȱĴȱ ȱȱȱĴȱǰȱȱǯȱ¢ȱȱ in the “new city” districts, in a world apart from that of the local populations, whose customs they barely understood and whose language they were unable to speak, but with whom they were in constant contact. Indigenous workers had constructed the buildings in the new city and were the household help in ȬěȱȂȱǰȱȱȱȱȱ£ȱ ȱȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱ ǯȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ĝǰȱ also included representatives of the local population. Relations between the Russians and the city’s local population began to deteriorate in the early months of World War I, due to a steep rise in the cost of living accompanied by an increase in food prices. Russian families, the group that bore the brunt of conscription into the army, were impoverished, and their mistrust of Sart Ȳ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ in several sources: Tsentral´nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respubliki Uzbekistana (TsGARUz) f. i-1044, op. 1, d. 5, l. 248; Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA) f. 400, op. 1, d. 4546, ll. 380–380ob.; Piaskovskii and Agadzhanov, ȱ ŗşŗŜȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ ȱ £ǰȱ 88–90, 415–16; Galuzo, Agrarnye otnosheniia, 157; I. Chekaninskii, Vosstanie kirgiz-kazakov i kara-kirgiz v Dzhetysuiskom ǻȼǼȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ŗşŗŜȱ (Kzyl-Orda, 1926), 115–19, 123; T. R. Ryskulov, ȱ£ȱȱ£ȱȱŗşŗŜȱ (Kzyl-Orda, 1927), 61–62; Sokol, ȱȱȱŗşŗŜǰȱ159. 18
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and Uzbek bazaar merchants turned into sharp open social tensions. Early ȱŗşŗŜǰȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱęȱȱȱǯȱȱȱ protest against the merchants, groups of Russian women went into bazaars in Tashkent and overturned and looted stalls. The women were soon backed by their husbands; the disorders spread and lasted several days. The city authorities, including the governor general himself, intervened to calm the protestors and managed to stop the violence, but only provisionally. The revolts of the women (bab´i bunty) of Tashkent were not isolated episodes; analogous events occurred in other cities along the railways.19 After the tsar’s abdication, the Provisional Government entrusted the task ȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ Muslims. It seemed as though the future being built for Turkestan would not be colonial. ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ Duma in Tashkent. The Russian inhabitants of the city were alarmed by the government’s openness towards the Muslims, which many considered a dangerous surrender, and they were concerned about the increasing activism of Muslim political organizations. When elections were held at the end of July, the local population voted for political groups formed by local people. The Slavs, a numerical minority, were defeated, and the Jadids (moderate Muslim reformers who had shown their willingness to work with the Provisional ȂȱĴȱȱǼȱ ȱ¢ȱ¢ȱǰȱ ȱȱ ¬ȱ ¢ȱǻ¢ȱȱǼǰȱȱȱȱ£ȱȱ was less active in the narrowly political sphere, triumphed. The administration of Tashkent thus came under the control of the representatives of the local population.20 ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ Ěȱ the Russians, apart from the economic crisis, was the Muslim majority in the local administration and the unwillingness of the government in Petrograd to support them. Meanwhile, the Constituent Assembly elections were approachǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱěȱȱȱȱ the city Duma elections. The colonists feared that this would signal the end of Russian domination, and, perhaps, even of a Russian presence in the colony. ¢ȱ ¢ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ǯȱ ȱ Ĵȱ trading still going on was in the hands of local merchants. On 10 September, the day Muslims were celebrating the Kurban Ait (one of their most important Ȳ £ǯȱǯȱ ȬŚŜŗǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱŗŞŘŚǰȱǯȱŗŖȮŗŖǯǰȱŗŘȮŗŘǯǰȱŘśǰȱřŘȮřśǰȱřŞȮŚŗǰȱŚśȮŚśǯǰȱ 49, 50–55ob; f. I-461, op. 1, d. 1796, ll. 4, 6–6ob.; Turkestanskii kur´er (Tashkent), 3 and 13 March 1916; Turkestanskie vedomosti (Tashkent), 3, 6, and 12 March 1916.
19
Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ǰȱThe Politics of Muslim Cultural ReformǰȱŘŜŗDzȱĴǰȱLa rivoluzione capovolta, 185–90. 20
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ȱ ¢Ǽǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ alleged Muslim speculators hiding food supplies. Thousands of soldiers then ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ Ĵǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ zation would assume power, and forced government representatives to leave ȱ¢ǯȱȱ¢ȱĴȱ ȱǯȱȱ ȱȱȱ avant garde: Petrograd would have to wait another two months. In fact, the revolutionaries had to backtrack when military divisions loyal to the Provisional Government arrived from Russia. When the revolution triumphed in Petrograd, a Revolutionary Soviet took power in Tashkent, led by an ad hoc “Bolshevik and Maximalist faction” (the Bolsheviks of Turkestan did not have a party organization of their own yet), and the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) of Turkestan was founded. The Tashkent revolutionaries followed the model of the Soviet government in Petrograd and asked to be recognized by the Party as the local Soviet power. The ȱȂȱęȱȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȬ sian revolutionaries and that they would not accept representatives of the indigenous population because they had no proletarian organizations. The “revolution” restored power to a Russian minority dictatorship.21 A few months later, in February 1918, the revolutionary powers demonstrated their might with a military expedition against the city of Kokand, where an autonomous Muslim government backed by politically moderate Russian groups had been formed. The Moderate Muslim Revolutions The new Tashkent government established itself as the defender of the centralizing revolutionary dictatorship. In contrast, Muslim political forces gen¢ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Government’s program, the empire would become a democratic federation. The autonomous government in Kokand was an expression of this position. It represented an alternative to revolutionary power in Turkestan, a coalition of Muslim political forces open to the moderate Russian parties that continued to back democratic elections for the Constituent Assembly.22 On 13 December, the day Muhammad’s birthday was being celebrated, a mass demonstration in Tashkent cheered the announcement that an autonomous government had 21
ȲǰȱKolonial´naia revoliutsiia, 69–70.
Ȳȱ ȱ Ȃȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ government of Kokand, and the internal debate in this government are analyzed by Paul Bergne, “The Kokand Autonomy, 1917–18: Political Background, Aims and Reason for Failure,” in Central Asia: Aspects of Transition, ed. ȱ ĴȬ ȱ (London: Routledge, 2003), 30–44. 22
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been formed. The vast majority of the demonstrators were Tashkent Muslims, but with them there were several thousand Russians who had decided not to back the local Russian revolutionaries. The autonomous government shunned nationalist rhetoric, was open to the participation of Russians opposed to the power of the Tashkent Sovnarkom, and wanted to avoid the danger of an ȃȄȱĚȱȱȱǯȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȬ nated between two members of Alash Orda, the largest party in the Region of the Steppes. In the late imperial period, Alash Orda leaders studied in Petrograd or Moscow and had close ties with the Russian Kadets. It is not surprising that their government was open to the participation of liberally inclined Russians. ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Muslims and the Cossacks took center stage. Alash Orda represented the educated Kazakhs from families of the nomad aristocracy active in commerce and dealings with Russia. They formed an elite united in the conviction that their people’s future depended on their becoming sedentary, abandoning nomadic tribal social organization, learning modern ways of living, and acquiring ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĝǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŗŝǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ to encourage a return to some kind of state order—no longer an empire but a federation. In the short term, their only viable option was to build local ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ territories. A pan-Kazakh congress, held in Orenburg in December 1917 (at the same time as Turkestan’s autonomy was being proclaimed in Kokand) voted in favor of creating an autonomous Kazakh region that was to be called Alash. The principal question discussed both in Orenburg and Kokand was a possible alliance with the Cossacks, who were clashing with the self-proclaimed revolutionary governments that had come to power in Tashkent and Orenburg. It ȱȱȱǰȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ £ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ had illegally seized immediately before, during, and after the 1916 revolt. The Cossacks were therefore seen not as colonists but as potential allies. In Kokand, too, the autonomous government decided that this was the course ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¢ǯȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ who in Orenburg had proclaimed himself military governor of Siberia, and Annenkov, the ataman who ruled the region of Akmolinsk. The two atamans were on the verge of taking control of the entire northern part of the Region of the Steppes.23 ȲǯȱȱĴǰȱThe Kazakhs (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1987), 129–56; Tomohiko Uyama, “The Alash Orda’s Relations with Siberia, the Urals, and Turkestan: The Kazakh National Movement and the Russian Imperial Legacy,” in Asiatic Russia:
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ȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱȱȱȱȱĜȱǰȱȱȱ divisions in Alash, the opening of negotiations with the Bolsheviks and their promise that minorities would be granted self-determination, and the difęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ ¢ǯȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ establish that Alash, like the autonomous government in Kokand, acted in keeping with the policies of the Provisional Government and on the basis of a plan to overcome the old colonial dependency and deal with the chaos that had followed in its wake. Alash supported territorial autonomy, but did not support an anticolonial revolution; its focus was on an emergency--the threat of Russian revolutionaries and the spread of famine. Alash was a prisoner of its alliances until the very end of the Civil War, while the government in Kokand and its political program fell much earlier. In February 1918, Red Guards from Tashkent sacked and razed Kokand, quashing the autonomous government. The same military divisions then moved towards Bukhara to bring the revolution to the Emirate. This time, however, they did not succeed.24 The Armenian and the War Prisoner “Revolutions” The Tashkent revolutionaries allied with a small Russian revolutionary ȱȱȱĴȱȱ ǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ itary garrison. When the empire collapsed, they backed the Provisional Government, and when this also fell, they proclaimed themselves supporters of the Bolshevik Revolution but remained isolated in this Muslim city. The Armenians were a minority that had existed in Kokand for some time; a wave ȱȱĚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Kokand in 1915 and rallied the local community. The Armenians in Kokand saw the Russians as protectors and, like the Russians, tended to view the Muslims and their government as a threat. When the Red Guards arrived, Armenian druzhiny (armed bands) went from house to house, massacring the city’s inhabitants. After Kokand had been destroyed and the Red Guards had ǰȱȱȱ¢ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱ the city. The Armenians had their own national party, the Dashnaksutiun, but
Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts, ed. Tomohiko Uyama (London: Routledge, 2012), 271–87. Ȳȱ ¢ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ǻ Ǽȱ ǯȱ ŗŗŖǰȱ ǯȱ ŗǰȱ ǯȱ ŗŚŗǰȱ ǯȱ ŗŜȮŝşDzȱ
ǯȱ¸ȱȂǰȱRéforme et révolution chez les musulmans de l’Empire russe, 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1981), 233–38; E. Kozlovskii, Za krasnyi Turkestan (Tashkent, 1926), 11; Obshchestvennye nauki v Uzbekistane, no. 7 (1990): 34. 24
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also supported the predominantly Russian Red Guards in Tashkent in order ȱęȱȱȱȱ¢ǯ25 Prisoners of war arrived in large numbers from Tashkent.26 Approximately 30,000 prisoners of war from the Austro-Hungarian army were still held in Turkestan in 1918, while nearly 200,000 had been interned in the region since the beginning of the war. Most of them were living in detention camps where hunger and epidemics were rife. Some had been allowed to leave the camps to work outside, but they rarely found civilian employment, and many of these ȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱǯȱ¢ȱȱ the Red Guards, fought against Dutov in Orenburg at the beginning of 1918, ȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ ǯȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱĴǯȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱǰȱȱ they were allowed to join the Bolshevik Party. In 1919 the prisoners joined the early Russian revolutionaries (discussed above) and Muslim Communists (to be discussed shortly) to comprise the three sections of the Party. Most POWs ȱ Ĵȱ ¢¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȯ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ their homelands. Thus, in 1919, when the Orenburg railway was reopened, albeit for a brief period, most of them left. Of those who remained, some were sent to the Trans-Caspian in the ranks of the Red Guards, where they ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱǰȱ ȱ ȱęȱȱ Red Guards with English support. This once more made it possible for the POWs to reach their homeland. Clearly, there were numerous ways and many reasons why people became revolutionaries or counterrevolutionaries.27 The story of the Czechoslovak Legion, whose members were also prisonȱȱ ǰȱȱȱ¢ȱěǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ sheviks in the spring of 1918, they backed the White Russians and gained control over a large part of the northern Region of the Steppes and Siberia. ¢ȱȱŗşŘŖȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ Vladivostok. ¢ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱĚȱ ȱȱȱ Whites changed allegiance when it was to their advantage. This also happened ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱǯȱȱȱǰȱȱĴȱ ȲĴǰȱ La rivoluzione capovolta, 292–301. The armed units of Armenians would be disbanded the following year on the orders of the Musbiuro, the Party’s Muslim section, headed by Turar Ryskulov, as will be seen in the section that follows (ibid., 358–61).
25
Ȳȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱǰȱ see Gatrell, Russia’s First World War, 183–86; and Eric Lohr, Russian Citizenship from Empire to Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 136–38. 26
27
ȲĴǰȱLa rivoluzione capovolta, 341–48.
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switched support from one side to the other to obtain food. The immigrant Europeans were divided, despite their common interest in defending colonial supremacy and excluding Muslims. The Russian Colonists’ Revolt Given food shortages in Turkestan, the question for the citizens and their Soviet government was how the meager supplies should be collected and distributed, and to whom. For the farmers who grew the food, the question was instead how to keep possession of what they had and avoid starvation. The colonists were initially favorable to the revolutionary government of Turkestan when it was formed in Tashkent. Their satisfaction was even greater ȱȱȂȱęȱȱȱȱȂȱȱȱȱȱ they worked. This Decree on Land, which the Bolsheviks in Petrograd issued and the revolutionary government of Turkestan adopted, was seen in the colony as recognition of the colonists’ right to obtain land. ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ devastating increase in tensions in rural areas. In the colony, the Revolution ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ¢ǰȱȱ¢ȱĴȱ ȱ to be recognized as poor farmers with the right to land, while the indigenous population was to be excluded. The colonists, especially the most recent ǰȱ¢ȱ£ȱ £ȱȱ £ȱǰȱĴȱȱ at risk of starvation. However, it was entirely possible that this tranfer of land ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ food supplies in the region’s cities. The policies on procuring provisions were initially cautious, and sending food to the cities was seen as an exchange of goods between the countryside and the city. The goods the city gave people in the country in exchange for wheat were requisitioned from the city’s merchants. This meant that the consequences of securing supplies weighed most heavily on Muslims, who controlled commerce. It took only a few months for the system to break down, which happened when there was nothing left in the city to requisition. The revolutionaries had no choice but to follow the directives sent from Petrograd and begin to forcibly collect wheat from growers. The farmers were obviously not happy about this turn of events. In the districts of Aulie-Ata and Cherniaev, and in Semirech´e, which together made up the region of Turkestan where ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ for the decree on land ownership quickly disappeared. When it became clear ȱȱ ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱ¢Ȃȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ the country, the farmers defended themselves by countering the city’s power with that of the vlast´ na mestakh (local-level power) of their soviets. The revolt,
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which began in the spring of 1918, continued unabated until the summer, when the rural soviets proclaimed their autonomy from the revolutionary government of Tashkent. At this point, the army was dispatched from Tashkent and ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ęȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǯȱ ȱ Ȭ olution had turned on itself.28 The farmers’ movement was not only directed against the city. It had other targets as well. The vlast´ na mestakh was in fact a means of imposing a ȱȱȱȱǯȱȱĴǰȱ ȱȱȱȱ into the army and were now returning to their villages from the front with guns, were the movement’s armed wing: they forced the Kazakhs, who were already weak from hunger, to hand over food supplies, retaliated in response to their alleged livestock thefts, and drove away the starving people roaming the countryside. Their actions were dictated by hunger in a war for survival. The indigenous population had no means of defending itself: in 1918, a large part of the region’s Kazakhs died of starvation.29 In Semirech´e the Cossacks—who had both weapons and wheat—were concerned only with stopping the spread of chaos and violence. As early as November 1917, they created a military council and reached an agreement with a council of Kirghiz associated with Alash Orda. Their stated objective was to defend themselves from the “actions of Bolshevik thugs,” who were none other than the armed farmers.30 When they were defeated in May 1918 by troops dispatched from Tashkent, they continued their opposition in the northern part of Semirech´e and in alliance with Alash.
28
Ȳ ., 257–61.
Ȳ ȱȱŗşŗŞǰȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱȱ described below, spoke out against what was happening, alerting the authorities to the fact that in some regions of Turkestan half the population had died of hunger. ȱ ȱ £ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ most in the famine (Ryskulov, Revoliutsiia i korennoe naselenie Turkestana, 35–37). In fact, by the beginning of the year, in the country areas around the city, Kazakhs were dying of hunger and famine threatened to spread to the city itself. In March about 50 people in the city died of hunger every day; the following month, there were 26,000 deaths among the Kazakhs in areas around the city. Kazakhs employed by Russian colonists, who therefore occupied a relatively privileged position, were not spared: in the autumn of the same year it was found that a third of them had died. Conditions ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱǯȱȱǰȱȱĴǰȱLa rivoluzione capovolta, 258–61. 29
ȲSemirechenskie oblastnye vedomosti (Vernyi), no. 18 (1918): 3.
30
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The Revolt in Turkestan’s Cotton-Growing Regions: The Basmachi Movement Although indigenous opposition to the dictatorship of the Red Guards in Kokand continued, the form it took changed profoundly: the Muslim politiȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ roots were local. It organized armed bands that came to be known as basmachi (a term meaning “bandits,” used by the Soviets to indicate anyone who employed arms to oppose the Russian Revolution). The basmachi movement is ¢ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱĴȱ and politics. In contrast, my interest lies in examining the relationship of the basmachi with their territory in order to understand how local power was ǯȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱę¢ȱěȱȱȱvlast´ na mestakh ȱ¡ȱȱȱĴǯȱ The most important basmachi ǰȱȱ¢ȱĚȱkurbashi (comǼǰȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ ing, protect resources, and stem the spread of famine. Their principal adversaries were the Red Guard and armed divisions who proclaimed themselves revolutionaries and supporters of the revolutionary council in Tashkent but were actually acting autonomously. Threatened by the spread of chaos, the ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ from colonial order and from revolutionary disorder. For example, we will take a closer look at two kurbashi who controlled the territory of the Fergana valley from 1918 to 1920: Irgashbai and MuhammadAmin-Akhmet-Bek, also called Madamin Bek. Before becoming “bandits,” they had both been division heads in the militsiia, in charge of military divisions responsible for policing the territory. Irgashbai was born in Bachkir, a kishlak (village) in the uezd (administrative district) of Kokand, and in 1917 became the kurbashi of the city militsiia. He already had his own men, but ȱ ȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȱȱ the local authorities. He thus began to exercise his power over the city and the entire uezd, and suppressed other bands that had formed in the period of social breakdown.31 Irgashbai’s role did not change when the leaders of the Muslim national movement decided to create the autonomous government ȱ ǯȱȱȱȱ ȱĴȱ ǰȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱ organizing its defense. Irgashbai was forced to retreat from the city and with the men under his command escaped to his native kishlak, which became his
Ȳǯȱ ǰȱ Krest´ianskoe vosstanie v Fergane (Tashkent: Izd-vo Akts. O-va “Tashkent,” 1927), 22–25.
31
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base of operations. He was well regarded because he respected and practiced Islam and did not seek compromises with the Russians.32 Madamin Bek, born in a kishlak in the uezd of Staryi Margelan, moved to the city in 1917 and became the president of a Muslim workers’ union.33 At the beginning of 1918, he did not let himself be drawn into what was happening in Kokand. Ignoring Irgashbai’s request, he made no move to defend the city and did not take a stand against the Tashkent revolutionaries and their government, all of whose members were Europeans. He accepted the position of kurbashi of the militsiia of Staryi Margelan when a local soviet ran the city’s government but the Tashkent revolutionaries had not yet consolidated their control. His relations with the Russians were good.34 He resigned his position, probably late in the autumn of 1918, when the situation was becoming less secure, and withdrew to his kishlak, located on the outskirts of the city. Some members of the militsiia ȱ ȱǰȱȱȱęȱdzhigit ǻęǼȱ in his band.35 ȱęȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱȱ faithful to their cities’ administrations rather than bandits. Their strength derived from the men and arms that they received from these administrations. ȱŗşŗŞǰȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱĴȬȱǰȱȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ¢ǯȱȱȱĴȱ ǰȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱǯȱ ȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ and thereby undermine their control over rural areas. Many men, left without work when their village economy had broken down, joined small bands. Their ranks swelled as conditions grew worse. Irgashbai and Madamin Bek became the most powerful leaders and imposed their command on the other kurbashi. Since the fundamental issue was control of the territory and access to food, the basmachi not only fought the Soviets but also negotiated with them. Especially during the winter months, some kurbashi sought compromises with the Soviet military garrisons of the cities. They also occasionally switched sides and obtained arms from them. Then, when the circumstances changed, ¢ȱĜȱȱ¢ǯȱ ȱȱȱȱȱę ȱ¢ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȂȱ¢ǰȱ ȱĴȱȱȱȱȬ ǯȱ ǰȱȱĴȂȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ£ȱǯ
32 Ȳȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȼȬȱ ȱ ǻ Ǽȱ ǯȱ ŗŗŖǰȱ op. 3, d. 923, ll. 9–9ob. 33
Ȳ ȱǯȱŘśŞśşǰȱǯȱŘǰȱǯȱŚśǰȱǯȱŗŖśȮŗŖśǯ
34
ȲIbid.
ȲIbid.
35
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A few months after the destruction of Kokand, Irgashbai had about 30 kurbashi under his command. Some of them were leaders of small bands with about 15 men, while others had as many as 200. The bands were stationed ȱěȱȱȱȱȱ ¢ȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ entire uezd ȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱ¡ȱȱĚȱ ȱ Margelan. Command of the bands enabled Irgashbai to gain control over his territory: the dzhigit kept an eye on people’s movements, made it impossible ȱȱȱȱȱȱĴǰȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱ violence and hinder the formation of autonomous basmachi bands.36 Madamin Bek was able to build a local power base in a comparable way, and he consolidated his authority throughout 1919. At the end of the summer, Bek had an army of over 2,000 men and a bodyguard of 200. By the end of the year, he appears to have had between 4,000 and 5,000 men armed with Ěǰȱȱȱ£ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ǰȱ ȱȱ exception of the territory controlled by Irgashbai. The head of Madamin Bek’s ȱȱ ȱȱȱĜDzȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱĜȱȱ¢ȱǯȱ ȱ ǰȱȱȱȱ Ȭęȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱ in such a way that together they made up a network that covered the entire kishlak. Madamin, more cautious than Irgashbai, who had concentrated most of his forces in his own kishlak, preferred his troops to remain mobile within their district. He had a system of protection and a widespread, well-organized ȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱęȱȱ and had spies hidden both in the uezdy and the cities who could keep an eye on all the Red Army’s movements. His administration of the territory was organized along lines similar to those of the local administration in tsarist times, but was subject to no external power. It supervised tax collection and ensured that the bands were supplied with food. Farm crops and animals were taken from farmers, but it appears that they were given payment in return. Stealing from the population was forbidden. The bands had weapons, as well as workshops that repaired them and manufactured cartridges. Members received payment. Farmers could also be involved in operations, but only when needed for defense.37 In the eastern part of the Fergana Valley, it was not only the kurbashi who had military organizations. As early as 1918 the colonists had been actively organizing armed units with the power to defend their wheat stores. Ȳ ȱǯȱŗŖŝśǰȱǯȱřǰȱǯȱřŞǰȱǯȱŗŘȮŗřǯDzȱ ǯȱǰȱȃȬŗǰȃȱCentral Asian Survey 6, 1 (1987): 23; Sh. A. Shamagdiev, Ocherki istorii grazhdanskoi voiny v ferganskoi doline (Tashkent: Akademiia nauk Uzbekskoi SSR, 1961), 60–62.
36
Ȳ ȱǯȱŗŗŖǰȱǯȱřǰȱǯȱşŘřǰȱǯȱşȮşǯDzȱ ȱǯȱŗŗŖǰȱǯȱŘǰȱǯȱřşŘǰȱǯȱŗŖȮŗŚǯDzȱȱǯȱ 110, op. 3, d. 73, ll. 1–4ob.
37
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They created an autonomous local power, as had happened in Aulie-Ata and Cherniaev. When the presence of the basmachi began to be felt and there were clashes with Madamin Bek, the revolutionary government in Tashkent decided to recognize these armed colonists as part of the Red Army, furnish them with weapons, and grant them a status that guaranteed their autonomy. ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ£ȱȱ£¢Ȭ Abad, in the easternmost part of the Fergana plain, agreed to mobilize men between the ages of 17 and 50. This was the birth of the Peasant Army, headed by a military council composed of representatives elected by the villages, which was divided into 10 military units based on territorial divisions.38 The ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱěȱĴȱȱȱ of their enemy, the kurbashi. However, while the Peasant Army was composed of farmers who wanted to defend their stores of grain, the men in the bands of the kurbashi were hunger-stricken Muslim farmers who had been left without ȱȱȱ ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱǯ The alliance between the Peasant Army and the revolutionaries did not last long. In May 1919, Tashkent ordered the army to dissolve its elected military council and subordinate its units to the command of the Red Army ǻ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ Ǽǯȱ ȱ Ȭ sponse, a congress called by the colonists declared that the Peasant Army would recognize only the authority of its own commanders, its soldiers would not hand over their weapons to the Red Army, and they did not intend to take ȱȱȱȃȱǯȄȱ ȱȱ ǰȱ¢ȱȱȱęȱȱȱ ȱ between the Communists and the White Russians.39 In June and July, Monstrov, the military head of the Peasant Army, met with Madamin Bek, and the two negotiated a truce. When the colonists broke with the Soviets, they stipulated a political and military agreement with Bek.40 While remaining the armed wing of local power and continuing to defend their wheat stores—in other words, without in the least changing the objectives of their mobilization or the means used to reach them—the colonists went from the Soviet camp to that of their adversaries. The agreement between Madamin Bek and Monstrov was based on a blueprint for a new government of Turkestan that would widen the Muslims’ ȱȱ ǰȱȱęǰȱȱȱȱȱȬ ship. At the end of the year, the alliance led to the formation of the Provisional
38
ȲǰȱKrest´ianskoe vosstanie v Fergane, 21–25.
Ȳ ȱǯȱŘśŞśşǰȱǯȱŘǰȱǯȱŗŗǰȱǯȱşŝȮşŝǯ
39
Ȳ £ȱǯȱȬŗŝǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱřŚǰȱǯȱřŗŖȮřŗŖǯDzȱǯȱȬŗŝǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱřŚǰȱǯȱřŝŝDzȱ ȱǯȱŘśŞśşǰȱ op. 2, d. 45, ll. 354–55ob.
40
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Government of Fergana, with Madamin Bek as president and Monstrov one ȱȱęȱȱȱȱǯ41 The alliance between the basmachi and the colonists, who until then had been armed rivals in the struggle for the territory and its resources, rested on the fact that the territorial power of the principal kurbashi and the colonists’ vlast´ na mestakh were analogous phenomena. They were means of local deǰȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱĴȱȱȱ control over the territory of Central Asia and the rest of Russia. Their alliance ȱȱȱȱ ȱęȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱ became a member of the Communist Party and the revolutionary government of Tashkent. We must therefore return to Tashkent to understand how the overall political picture was changing. We will encounter a new political revolution. The Muslim Communists’ Anti-Colonial Revolution In March 1919, taking advantage of a short-lived reopening of the railway to Orenburg, the political commissar Petr A. Kobozev traveled from Russia to Tashkent. Party members in Moscow were worried by the fragility of Tashkent’s revolutionary dictatorship and felt that its colonialist leanings could have dangerous political fallout, alienating the Muslim political organizations throughout Russia with which the Bolsheviks urgently needed to build cooperation. Kobozev met with strong resistance from local Communists but managed to impose shifts in policy. The Communist Party of Turkestan was reorganized in three sections: Russian immigrant Communists, prisoners of war, and Muslims. The third of these internal sections is the one that now ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǻȱ Ǽǰȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ was Turar Ryskulov, a Kazakh who had marginally taken part in the 1916 revolt and had then worked for the Soviets organizing shipments of supplies to Aulie-Ata, where he had backed the repressive measure taken against colonists who had opposed grain requisitions. When chosen to head the Musbiuro, Ryskulov was the president of a commission whose mission was to get aid to the starving Kazakhs and Kirghiz.42 Kobozev’s support enabled Ryskulov to strengthen his position and take a stand against colonialism despite the open opposition of the local Communists’ old guard. A cardinal point in the Musbiuro’s policies was the demand that the administrative soviets be reestablished with proportional representation for the local population. ȲǰȱKrest´ianskoe vosstanie v Fergane, 52–101; RGVA f. 25859, op. 2, d. 11, l. 133; RGASPI f. 122, op. 1, d. 251, ll. 37–40. 41
42
Ȳ¢ǰȱRevoliutsiia i korennoe naselenie Turkestana, 70–78.
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In July 1919, Moscow issued a decree that prescribed, exactly as demanded, proportional participation by Muslims (approximately 95 percent of the population of Turkestan) in the local administration. To help put an end to the Russian revolutionaries’ isolation, Moscow appeared to be willing to take real steps to end colonialism. It soon became apparent that its intentions were far ěǯȱ ȱ¢ȱȱ¢ȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱ ȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ crisis. At the end of the year, the Musbiuro prevailed upon the government ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱĴȱ by Kirghiz during the revolt and guaranteed the restitution of lands colonists had illegally taken from them. A special commission was created for the pacięȱȱȼǰȱȱûȱ¢ȱȁǰȱȱȱęȱ in the Jadid movement formerly involved in the government in Kokand and at this time a member of the Musbiuro, was given the task of directing it.43 Equally drastic measures were taken regarding Fergana, where a commission headed by another Jadid, Tursun Khodzhaev, had been sent in April. On the advice of the Musbiuro, the government of Turkestan amnestied the Fergana kurbashi and all the men that had been part of their bands.44 In July, as mentioned above, Irgashbai went over to the Soviets. His bands became divisions of the Red Army. In the same period, the agreement between Madamin Bek and Monstrov was being worked out. In the autumn, ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ implementation of the decree on proportional Muslim participation in local administrative soviets was applied in the region. Nezametdin Khodzhaev, director of the Musbiuro and a former supporter of Kokand’s autonomous government, was chosen to head it. The political shift created a new context ȱȱȱȱĚǰȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ. In November 1919, the Musbiuro, through President of the Fergana revkom ǻ¢ȱ ĴǼȱ £ȱ £ǰȱ ȱ ȱ with Madamin Bek. Meetings with the kurbashi lasted several months, until ȱŗşŘŖǯȱ £ȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Soviet government, but the kurbashi turned him down and asked instead that 95 percent of the arms in possession of the Soviets be handed over to him, as the representative of the Muslims, and that the Soviets recognize the autonomy of the districts in the Fergana Valley. Madamin Bek was willing to 43
Ȳ £ȱǯȱřŜǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱŘŗǰȱǯȱŗŜȮŘŖǯ
ȲTurkestanskii kommunist (Tashkent), 4 May 1919; Izvestiia Ferganskogo Sovdepa (Kokand), 7 May 1919; Musbiuro R. K. P. (b) v Turkestane (Tashkent: Turkestanskoe Gosudarstvennoe izd-vo, 1922), 65–69; Ryskulov, Revoliutsiia i korennoe naselenie Turkestana, 93–95; TsGARUz f. r-17, op. 1, d. 699, ll. 4–4ob.; f. 36, op. 1, d. 17, ll. 217–18.
44
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“recognize Soviet power” on the condition that “Soviet power recognize the sharia,” that his “Muslim army” remain intact in Fergana and not be stationed in Staryi Margelan. The Soviet representatives accepted his demands, stating, however, that there was no place in the army for autonomous divisions and ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱĜǯȱ ȱȬ peared that there had been a complete political about-face in comparison with the Soviet past: the Muslim population had obtained recognition of the sharia and the restitution of its land and livestock. Thousands demonstrated in the streets of Staryi Margelan in favor of the agreement and the end of the war.45 While negotiations with Madamin Bek were proceeding, the Musbiuro drew up a political platform of its own, one that seemed to challenge all of Moscow’s centralistic objectives.46 It contemplated the formation of a “Communist Party of the Turkic Peoples,” the majority of whose members would be representatives of the local population. Ryskulov argued that the Party in Turkestan could not have a “class character” because the people of Central Asia were not divided into social classes and together constituted a “proletarian ȄȱȱȱȱĚȱ ȱǯȱ ȱȱȱȱ to reassure everyone, arguing that he did not want a “sliding toward the Constituent Assembly” and stating that the principle of a revolutionary dictatorship was safe. The Musbiuro then sought to reassure the central Party’s representatives and approved a statute that safeguarded the unity of the Russian Communist Party (RKP), i.e., the Russian Federation’s Party.47 The Communist Party of the Turkic Peoples was established and began operations, although formally it found itself straitjacketed within Moscow’s one-party system. This compromise was inevitable, in perfect synchrony with Sultan Galiev, who in Moscow and Kazan was advocating “Muslim national Communism” and working for the creation of a Muslim army.48 In Ryskulov’s proposal, Turkestan emerges as a State of the Turkic Peoples, defended by its own armed forces that could become a point of reference and political aggregation for much of the Soviet Muslim world.49 This is the myth of ancient Turan, dear to Central Asia’s nationalist movement, the hope that all Muslims of the former empire could be united in a single state. Ȳȱȱ ȱǰȱȱ ȱǯȱŗŗŖǰȱǯȱřǰȱǯȱŝřǰȱǯȱŗřŗȮřŘǯDzȱǯǰȱǯȱ 245, ll. 26–27, 47–48; ibid., d. 251, ll. 17–17ob., 53–56ob., 64–74; ibid., d. 279, ll. 16–22ob., 24, 29–47, 48–51ob., 57–60, 63–63ob., 75–76, 78–83ob., 100–01; ibid., d. 919, ll. 84-86.
45
ȲǰȱKolonial´naia revoliutsiia, 109; Musbiuro R.K.P. (b.) v Turkestane, 73–92.
46 47
ȲIzvestiia (Tashkent), 25 January 1920.
Ȳȱ¡ȱȱȱǯȱȬ¢ǰȱSultan Galiev, Le père de la révolution tiers-mondiste (Paris: Fayard, 1986).
48
49
ȲIzvestiia, 5 February 1920.
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The Party conference closed with the election of an “Interim Central Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȄȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ presented as the Turkestan Party’s sole leadership, was composed of nine Muslims (two of whom were naturally Ryskulov and Nezametdin Khodzhaev) and six Europeans.50ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵǯȱ ȱ Turkkomissiia’s presence at the two conferences in Tashkent seemed to indicate a tacit acceptance of Ryskulov’s policy shift by Moscow. The Turan program had been approved for the future, while in the immediate present a Muslim army needed to be created. Later, it could be understood whether this would be limited to being “part of the sole Red Army and subject to the orders ȱȱȱǰȄȱȱ ȱ Ĵȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ¢ǰȱ or could become an instrument for a true anticolonial revolution.51 The Red Army’s Revolution By January 1920, the Musbiuro understood that for a number of reasons—most importantly the fact that Red Army divisions from Russia were approaching Turkestan—it urgently needed to make its positions explicit. In the Region of the Steppes, conditions had already changed profoundly. In the spring of 1919, the Red Army, commanded by Frunze, had captured Orenburg, thanks to its military strength and to the divisions that had developed between Alash Orda and the White Russian forces. Admiral Kolchak’s White Army had shown so ĴȱȱȱȂȱȱȱȱȱ £ȱȱȱȱ pull out of the alliance and open negotiations with Frunze. Alash switched to the opposing political camp without renouncing its autonomist goals. The political shift in the Region of the Steppes took place only a few days before the Musbiuro’s conference in Tashkent. In March the Red Army made further advances into the Region of the Steppes, and in April captured Semirech´e, put down Cossack resistance, and forced Ataman Annenkov to surrender and Dutov to escape to China. Frunze arrived in Turkestan as the head of a strong, ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ of the Orenburg rail lines, and with it, the promise of an imminent wheat delivery. The Turkkomissiia thus found itself in a new position: it no longer needed to reach compromises to play for time; the moment had come for it to make its positions, worded as orders, clear to Moscow, whose intentions were to bring Turkestan back under its control rather than abandon it to the local population’s representatives, deemed unreliable at best.
ȲPravda of Turkestan, 6 February 1920.
50 51
ȲMusbiuro R.K.P. (b.) v Turkestane, 91–92.
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On the eve of the signing of the agreement with Madamin Bek, the Turkkomissiia turned to Moscow and obtained, only a few days later, a Statute for Turkestan Autonomy that failed entirely to take the Muslim Communist proposals into account. In the Statute, the Communist Party of Turkestan was considered to be merely a local organ of the larger single Party of the entire Russian Federation, and only limited power was granted to the government in Tashkent: defense, foreign relations, railways, postal and telegraph services, ęȱȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱȱ Ȃȱǯȱȱ ȱ to enjoy what was euphemistically called “Soviet autonomy”; contrary to the ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Federation.52 However, it was not only the Russian leadership that was against making agreements with the basmachi. As can easily be imagined, the majority of the Russian population of Tashkent, namely those who saw a return to the colonial order as the only way out of the Civil War, also supported this policy. At the 1 May celebrations in Tashkent, there were demonstrations by Russians against the Turkkomissiia’s ambiguity and Madamin Bek’s expected arrival in the city.53 In Fergana, too, many political authorities and army leaders opposed making concessions to the basmachi, and some openly advocated that all basmachi be shot and that anyone who supported them deserved a similar fate.54 ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ the Turkkomissiia and the ȱ ȱ Ĵǯȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ¢ǰȱ ¢ȱ went to Moscow and met the Party’s top leadership to discuss autonomy for ǯȱȱ ȱ¢ȂȱȱȱĜ¢ȱȱǯȱ The Bolshevik was by now convinced that Turan was nothing more than the dream of a group of nationalistic Muslims who were enemies of the Soviet state. Meanwhile, in Fergana, Madamin Bek had signed the agreement with the Soviets. He was persuaded to sign because he believed that Moscow was moving in the direction indicated by Ryskulov and Khodzhaev, and because Ryskulov had just issued a decree in Turkestan providing for the restitution of Muslim land and livestock that had been requisitioned in 1916. Two days after the signature of the agreement by Madamin, it was announced in Moscow that Ryskulov’s project for the autonomy of Turkestan had been rejected. The decree that established land restitution was suspended. Although it had been envisaged that Madamin Bek and his men would publicly celebrate his submission to Soviet power and his role as the head of the Muslim Army in Tashkent, he never arrived. It seems that the idea had ȲIzvestiia, 24 March 1920.
52
53
Ȳ ȱǯȱŗŝǰȱǯȱŞŚǰȱǯȱŞŞǰȱǯȱŚǯ
54
Ȳ ȱǯȱŗŖŝśǰȱǯȱŘǰȱǯȱŘşǰȱǯȱŘŗǯ
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been vetoed by Frunze. Two months later, Madamin was killed in mysterious circumstances. ȱȱȬȱĴȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱǰȱ ęȱ ǯȱ £ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ former basmachi should be moved out of the region.55ȱ ȱĴȱȱȬ bashi and unleashed the army against unarmed civilians. In the summer of 1920, Red Army divisions began to take hostages in the kishlaks, threatening to shoot them if the basmachi failed to release Russian prisoners within a few hours.56 Following this, negotiations, threats, and violence resumed. The Red Army sought to create and exploit divisions between the Muslims, playing one faction against another, reaching temporary agreements with some, and Ĵȱǯȱ ȱǰȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ¡ȱ ȱȱȱ them of existing rivalries between Kirghiz animal herders and the sedentary Uzbek population, and pass on information about divisions between the kurbashi, so the army could ally with some and violently suppress others. 57 ȱ ȱ ŗşŘŖǰȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ Ĵǰȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěǯ58 Divisions of Turkmen from Khiva and Bukhara, as well as Tatar, Kirghiz, and Sart soldiers from the Fergana Valley, participated in the campaign.59 The Bolsheviks had by this point understood ȱ¢ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱ took it upon itself to involve the Young Bukharans, i.e., local Jadids, in the Ĵǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȬ 55
Ȳ ȱǯȱŜǰȱǯȱŗŘǰȱǯȱŗŝśǰȱǯȱŗŝśȮŞŞǯ Ȳ ȱǯȱŘŝŞǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱřřǰȱǯȱŘǰȱŞDzȱ £ȱǯȱŘśǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱřŗśǰȱǯȱŞŞǯ
56
Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ęǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŘŖǯȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ the early years of the kurbashis’ resistance in Fergana and the local dimensions of their actions. Mentions of this period and this region can be found in J. Castagné, ȱ ȱ (Paris: Ed. Leroux, 1925); Baymirza Hayit, “ȄDZȱ ȱ Kampf Turkestans in den Jahren 1917 bis 1934 (Cologne: Dreisam Verlag, 1992); G. Frazer, “Basmachi I,” Central Asian Survey 6, 1 (1987): 1–73; and “Basmachi II,” Central Asian Survey 6, 2 (1987): 7–42. For a study of political developments in 1920, see Hassan Bülent Paksoy, “Basmachi Movement from Within: Account of Zeki Velidi Togan,” Nationalities Papers 23, 2 (1995): 373–99. Approaching the subject at the local level is indispensible for studying the basmachi, as it makes it possible to understand their local methods of organization, and therefore their relationship with the population, as well as their negotiations with the Soviets and the Soviets’ repressive actions against them. There is a wealth of archival documents on these aspects that has as yet not been fully explored. 57
Ȳȱ ǰȱȃȱȱȱȼdzȄDZȱ ȱȱȱǯȱȬ tal´naia khronika (Moscow: Tsentr strategicheskikh i politicheskikh issledovanii, 2001). 58
Ȳ ȱǯȱŜŝŖǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱśŘǰȱǯȱŞǯ
59
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port for a revolt by members of the emirate’s Muslim population. The Jadid movement in Bukhara accepted this role because it had long been seeking Russian aid to depose the emir. However, it found itself allied with people who had blocked the programs and reforms sought by the Musbiuro, some of whose members were Jadids. The progressive Muslim movement emerged in shreds, while the Muslims’ national revolution was subsequently abandoned when it failed to win the approval of Soviets in Tashkent and Moscow. The capture of Khiva followed. The Turkkomissiia took over the political leadership of the military action and indicated when it was expedient to involve Muslims. In the Khanate of Khiva, the Red Army exploited the conĚȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ £ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Uzbeks, and when the Turkmen tribes rebelled, the army intervened, burning ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱǯȱȱȱǰȱ ȱȱȱ ȱȱǰȱĚȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ desert to Persia.60 ȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱǯȱ ¢ȱ lines were reopened, and wheat began to arrive from Russia; the Fergana ¢ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ęǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŘŖȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ reestablished. In Semirech´e, repressive measures were taken against colonists ȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȃȱȱȱ Ȅȱ ȱȱȱěǯȱȱ a short period in Turkestan fears and expectations surrounded the possible end of Russian colonialism. It looked as if the authorities now intended to activate Ryskulov’s decree on land restitution. But the reform “of land and ȄȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱĜ¢ȱȱȱȱȱ Soviet territory and Moscow was oriented to overcome the confrontation with peasants, including the colonists of Turkestan. In the mid-1920s, Turkestan was divided into national republics, whose borders now divide independent countries. The cooptation of members by their majority nationality groups into the newly created republics’ power structures served to consolidate the regime. Conclusion The local rebellions, revolutions, and counterrevolutions investigated in this essay took place in a context in which the colonial order no longer existed and no new order had yet taken its place. The war had caused famine and exacerbated social tensions to such a point that, with the collapse of the empire, ȱ¢ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱěȱȱ ȱĴȱ against one another: immigrants against the autochthonous population, foodȲ ȱǯȱŜŝŖǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱśŝǰȱǯȱřŗDzȱǯȱŜŝŖǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱśŗǰȱǯȱŘŝřDzȱǯȱŜŝŖǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱśŗǰȱǯȱŘŞřȮ 283ob.; f. 670, op. 1, d. 52, l. 15.
60
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ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ without. Local competing interests prevailed. In the struggle to survive, those who were strong enough took control of territories and their resources; but local power, beset by the chaos that reigned in the region, remained fragile. Everyone was threatened and everyone’s hopes were pinned on a new order, ȱȱ ȱę¢ȱȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱĚǯȱ The revolutionary government of Tashkent, which was supported by Petrograd and had more soldiers and arms than others, was further strengthened by its capacity to rally members of threatened minorities to its defense. This is what occurred when the Armenian minority in Kokand sided with the Red Guard and when prisoners of war joined the Bolshevik Party and were ȱǯȱȱ¢ȱȱĚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ the empire.61 The colonial nature of Central Asia and the presence of an immigrant ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ę¢ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěǯȱ However, the possibility of comparing events in Central Asia with those in other regions of the former empire goes beyond the questions of the Russians’ position, nationalism, and the instrumental use of threatened minorities. The ways the Revolution spread throughout the territory of the former empire are similar, and comparing them is essential for reconstructing, in all their complexity, the changes that took place in those years of crisis and the refounding of the state on a new basis.
Ȳ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¡ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱǯȱ Here, too, it was famine that exacerbated tensions and created division so that the three principal components of the population—Russians, Armenians, and Muslims— armed themselves. The transfer of power to the Soviets was achieved with the use of arms and was supported by Russians and Armenians. They took the city by ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ Armenians went through the districts and massacred the inhabitants. This was in April 1918, only a few days after the violence in Kokand, and the similarities in the ¢ȱȱȱĚȱȱǯȱ ȱȱ ȱȱǰȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ out reprisals against Muslim villages. The mobilization of the Armenians in both Kokand and Baku was in reaction to the 1915 massacre of Armenians in Anatolia. See Ronald Grigor Suny, ȱȱǰȱŗşŗŝȮŗşŗŞDZȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 204–33.
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Nationalism and War in a Contested Borderland: The Case of Russian Bessarabia (1914–17) Andrei Cusco
This essay will explore the impact of World War I on Bessarabia’s image within the Russian and Romanian public sphere, as well as the broader consequences of wartime developments on the mobilization of ethnicity in the local context. The narrative will follow a twofold, sequential structure. On the one hand, the Bessarabian case will be analyzed in the context of the major policy shifts initiated by the Russian central government and military authorities following the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914. On the other hand, World War I triggered an upsurge of interest in the “Bessarabian problem” in the Romanian Kingdom. The central argument of the essay is that World War I changed the nature of imperial policies towards the western borderlands. The increasingly insecure imperial regime at the center introduced a radical transformation of Bessarabian politics and society that accelerated with the imperial collapse in 1917 but really got under way during World War I. I argue that the combined pressures of war, imperial collapse, geopolitics, symbolic competition, and local identity politics accounted for the unexpected outcome that became the only available option in 1918: the uneasy and problematic integration of Bessarabia into “Greater Romania.” Bessarabia within the “Nationalizing” Russian Empire (1914–16) Aside from the dilemmas linked to the radical shift in “population politics” and the growing intervention of the state in the economic and social spheres,1 Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Lohr, “The Russian Army and the Jews: Mass Deportation, Hostages, and Violence during World War I,” Russian Review 60, 3 (July ŘŖŖŗǼDZȱŚŖŚȮŗşDzȱȱ ǰȱȃȱǰȱ¢ȱ¡ǵȱȱȱȱȱȱ Violence, 1905–1921,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4, 3 (Summer 2003): 627–52; Holquist, “La société contre l’Etat, la société conduisant l’Etat: La société cultivée et le pouvoir d’Etat en Russie, 1914–1921,” Le mouvement social, no. 196 (July– September 2001): 21–40. 1
The Empire and Nationalism at War. Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2014, 137–62.
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after the outbreak of World War I the Russian government also faced the challenge of “domesticating” nationalism and channeling its potential to ęȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃ£Ȅȱ ȱ ȱ Russian Empire’s population in the initial phase of the war thus acquires ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ context is interimperial competition. The role of this kind of rivalry has been recently explored, among others, by Alexei Miller, who advanced the view that the collapse of the “macrosystem” of Eurasian continental empires ȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȬĚȱǯ2 The elites of the ǰȱ ǰȱ Ĵǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ consciously breaching the former conventions of interstate relations in the region and as trespassing the boundaries of their “rational behavior” in the process. Dating the origins of this transformation from the disruption of the European concert during the Crimean War, Miller insists that it was World ȱ ȱȱę¢ȱ¢ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱǯȱȱ than following the traditional paradigm, which emphasized the subversive potential of national movements per se, Miller argues that the manipulation of ¢ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱ polities. The presence of ethnically related transborder communities in all the concerned parties warrants further investigation along these lines. In any case, there is plenty of empirical evidence on the creation of national military ȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱ£ȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱ order to undermine the internal stability and to counter the propaganda of enemy powers.3ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱĜȱ ȱ¢ȱ ȱȱȱ dangers even in border provinces that were not strictly part of the war zone.4 ȱ Ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ to interimperial rather than imperial/nation-state rivalry,5 his point that the Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȄȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ ȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱęȱ¢ȱȱȱŗşȱȱ¢ȱ ŘŖȱ¢ȱǻȱȱ¡ȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȬ tory of the Russian Empire) is developed in Aleksei Miller, “Between Local and Inter-Imperial: Russian Imperial History in Search of Scope and Paradigm,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 5, 1 (Winter 2004): 7–26, especially 18–20. Discussion of the reasons for the collapse of this macrosystem can be found in Aleksei Miller, Pochemu vse kontinental´nye imperii raspalis’ posle Pervoi Mirovoi voiny, available at http://www.polit.ru/article/2006/04/11/miller2/ (accessed 16 October 2014). 2
Ȳȱ ȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ ǯȱ The Ukrainian case is, of course, even more interesting. 3
4
ȲǰȱPochemu vse kontinental´nye imperii raspalis´ posle Pervoi Mirovoi voiny.
Ȳȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ with the irredentist claims not of a fellow-imperial but rather of a national state. 5
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imperial framework was crucial for the development and consolidation of ethnic nationalisms must be retained. The degree of “nationalization” of the Russian masses by the summer ȱŗşŗŚȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱ ȱǰȱȱǰȱȱȱ ǯȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ěȱ ǯȱ The predominantly rural nature of the empire’s population, as well as the ȱ ȃ£Ȅȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ weak impact of national motives on most Russian subjects’ self-awareness. In any case, even if the war is usually viewed as a formative period in terms ȱȃ£ȱȱǰȄȱȱŗşŗŚȱȱȱȱě¢ǯȱ ȱ Sanborn recently argued for a reconsideration of the question of the Russian nation in wartime, asserting that “the national political form does not require agreement or loyalty, either between segments of the population or between £ȱȱȱǰȄȱȱȃȱȱ¢ȱęȱȱȱȱȱ of contestation.”6 The author then relies on Rogers Brubaker’s model of “nationness as event” to argue that “nationness is both an event that suddenly crystallizes and one that is the product of deep developmental trends.”7 Despite ȂȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱȃȄȱȱ allowing for a preliminary buildup of potential energy, his conclusion remains somewhat disconcerting. His insistence on the fallacy of the link between the emerging of “nationness” and the urban environment should be taken into account, but I believe he is overstating the case for a peculiar “peasant nationalism.” The “national framework” that the peasants used in their public dealings with the government might as well be a classical case of discursive ĚȱȃȱǯȄȱǰȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȃĚȱ point” that provided the conditions for activating the “potential energies” of ȱȱȬęȱȱȱ¢ǯȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱ ȱȱěȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ȱǰȱȱȱȱĚȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ bureaucracy. Thus, one could agree with the argument that “the real barriers ȱȬȱdzȱ ȱȱȱȱĜȱ ȱȱȱȬ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ national political structures whenever they could.”8 However, even such an However, the processes at work might be very similar, and thus Miller’s thesis should not be, in itself, discarded. Ȳ ȱǰȱȃȱ£ȱȱŗşŗŚȱȱȱȱȱȱȱDZȱȱ Reexamination,” Slavic Review 59, 2 (Summer 2000): 267–89, quotation on 282. 6
Ȳ ǯǰȱŘŞŘǯ
7
Ȳ ǯǰȱŘŞŚǯ
8
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interpretation presupposes the existence of a measure of coherence within the ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ¡ǯȱȱĚȱ ȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱȱ£ȱ ȱȱȱȬ lated to the much deeper division on the question of the nature and spatial ęȱȱȱȃȱȄȱǯȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱ¡ȱȱǯȱǯȱ ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱęȱ during the last decades of the imperial regime. Kuropatkin’s position towards the Russian nationalist project was itself far from coherent. Thus, during his ȱȱ ȱǰȱ ȱĴȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ ȱ he argued against the annexation of East Prussia and Galicia to the Russian Empire, viewing these regions as a sort of “East European Alsace-Lorraine.” During World War I, however, his opinion changed completely. In a report ĚȱȱȃȂȱȱȱȱȱȱȱŗşŗŚȮŗśȱ ǰȄȱȱȱ the annexation to Russia of Eastern Galicia and of those parts of Hungary and Bukovina with a majority “Russian” population. His main argument on this ȱȱȱȱȃęȱȱȱȱȱǽplemia].”9 Kuropatkin’s ostensible complaint concerning the crisis of traditional legitimizing criteria (“devotion to the Tsar … and Fatherland”) referred not so much to the prenational, dynastic overtones of these notions, but primarily to their nationalist ǰȱ ȱȱȱȱĴǯ10 This is one of Sanborn’s main failings in his otherwise fruitful discussion of the emerging problem of integrating Russian subjects into a modern community during wartime. ȱĴȱȱȱȃȄȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱ (in the sense of rehabilitating the peasantry as a subject as well as an object of potential nation-building), this focus on the “Russian peasantry” ignores the “horizontal” fault lines between ethnic groups in the imperial borderlands that were activated after 1914. The picture becomes even more complex once we accept the observation of one of Sanborn’s critics, who argued that the author “underestimate[d] the degree to which nation, empire, and class pulled ȱěȱȱȱŗşŗŜǰȄȱȱȱȱȱȱ£ȱ along the lines of discrete and opposed political “languages.”11 In fact, such ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ starting from the “Great Retreat” of the Russian armies in the summer of 1915, and are thus a general feature of the whole period. Ȳǯȱ ǯȱǰȱOkrainy Rossiiskoi Imperii: Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie i natsional´naia politika v gody Pervoi Mirovoi voiny (1914–1917 gg.) (Moscow: ќѠѠѝђћ, 2004), 123–24. 9
Ȳǰȱȃȱ£ȱȱŗşŗŚǰȄȱŘŞŚǯ
10
Ȳȱ ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ DZȱ ȱ Merchants and Commercial Diasporas,” Nationalities Papers 31, 4 (December 2003): 471–84, quotation on 471.
11
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The extent to which the government and the public were trying to forge ȱȃȱ¢Ȅȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱěȱ or by creating a cult of heroes and exceptional feats remains a contentious issue. Recent investigations have argued that Russia equaled its cobelligerents in constructing a whole infrastructure of memory and commemoration in order to foster a feeling of common belonging and state cohesion among the population.12 The author remarks that “honoring, rewarding, and commemoȱ ȱ Ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ multinational state and bring all together on common ground.”13 This “comȱ ǰȄȱ ǰȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱěȱȱȱĴȱȱ¢ȱȱȱĜȱȱȱ participation of the peasant masses in the Great War. Far from perceiving the soldiers in the Russian army as (potential) citizens, some of the highly placed ¢ȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ for Russia.”14 Despite the unprecedented scale of the public’s involvement in wartime developments and the huge impact of mass population movements on destabilizing the social fabric of the empire, the bulk of the population concerned was indeed relegated by the central authorities to a passive and subordinate role. The incapacity of the imperial state to impose its integrative projects upon a restive population (and its success in promoting highly exclusionary practices of ethnic discrimination) proved ultimately fateful for the survival of the imperial regime and for the upheavals that plunged the empire (and especially its borderlands) into a maelstrom of confusion and violence. Ȳȱ ǯȱ ǰȱ ȃȱ ȱ DZȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ Nation in Russia’s Great War,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7, 3 (Summer 2006): 459–85.
12
Ȳ ǯǰȱŚŞŚǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȂȱǰȱȱȱ ǯȱǰȱȃȱ Problem of Social Cohesion,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7, 3 ǻȱŘŖŖŜǼDZȱśşşȮŜŖŞǰȱ¢ȱŜŖřȮŖŚǯȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȬ ȱ ȃȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęǰȱ ȱ ¢ǰȄȱ Rieber concludes that “many problems remain in developing the idea that the Russian ȱ ȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱęȱȱ£ȄȱǻŜŖŚǼǯ
13
Ȳȱȱȱ¢ȱȱǻȱę¢ȱȱȱǼȱȱȱ Ĵȱȱ ȱȱȱěȱȱȱ ȱ General Nikolai Ianushkevich and Minister of Agriculture Aleksandr Krivoshein. While Ianushkevich expressed his deep skepticism with regard to the existence of any “national feeling” among the peasant conscripts and soldiers, Krivoshein, joined by the other ministers, strongly objected. Disagreement on such fundamental issues is symptomatic. See Stockdale, “United in Gratitude,” 472–74. Ianushkevich’s “xenophobic nationalism” ȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱěȱ£ȱǰȱ¢ȱ purely material incentives.
14
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In the initial period of the war, the “nationalizing” trends in central policies led to certain shifts in the local hierarchy of ethnicity in Bessarabia. This applied not only to the German colonists of southern Bessarabia, who were unequivocally included into the category of “enemy aliens” alongside other ethnic German communities of the same type in southern Russia, but also to the Romanian-speaking peasants and (partially) intellectuals who were suspected of harboring pro-Romanian sentiment. However, the case of the Bessarabian Romanians was peculiar in comparison with other collectively ȱȱǯȱȱȱȱȱȱěȱ ȱȱ the local population in terms of loyalty and its potential for “separatism.” That is, they believed that various social groups among the Bessarabian Romanianȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ¢¢ȱ ȱ the empire. The authorities found only a small group of local intelligentsia to be prone to separatism. At the same time, the peasant masses and most of the local landowners were considered quite reliable imperial subjects. This complex heterogeneous perception of the local population contrasts ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȃ¢ȱ Ȅȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱǻęȱȱǰȱȱ ȱȱ Ǽȱȱȱȱ ȱȬ pire (particularly, the Ruthenians/Ukrainians). In these cases a much more essentialist and homogenous perception of these ethnic/linguistic/cultural groups was present. Thus, the gradual imposition of nationalizing categories upon the subjects of the Russian Empire was neither smooth nor straightforward in the Bessarabian case. The local population was traditionally regarded as staunchly loyal to the throne and the Russian state, while its closeness to the Great Russians was derived from its adherence to the Orthodox Church and ȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȬȱǯ15 The peasant masses also seemed to be willing recipients of and recruits for the right-wing 15 ȲȱȦȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ “nationality policies” of the Russian Empire during World War I. This factor clearly played a central role in the policies of the Russian occupation authorities in Galicia, ¢ȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱŗşŗŚȮŗśǯȱ Despite the predominant “national” framework and the rhetoric of “restoring national unity” and reaching Russia’s “natural ethnographic borders,” the practical problem posed by the strength of the Uniate Church became a sore point for the Russian ȱǯȱ ȱȱȱȱěȱȱȱ ȱȱȱ of the military authorities and the interventionist strategy pursued by Archbishop Evlogii. For a detailed discussion of the “confessional policy” of the Russian Empire in occupied Eastern Galicia, see Bakhturina, Okrainy Rossiiskoi Imperii, 167–208. On the “war of faiths” and the respective roles of Archbishop Evlogii and Metropolitan Sheptits’kyi during the Russian occupation of Galicia, see Mark von Hagen, War in a ȱDZȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱǰȱŗşŗŚȮŗşŗŞ ǻĴDZȱ¢ȱȱȱǰȱŘŖŖŝǼǰȱřŝȮŚŘǯ
NATIONALISM AND WAR IN A CONTESTED BORDERLAND
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ideologies espoused by pro-monarchist and extremist organizations (e.g., the ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ £ȱ numbers of peasant activists in its ranks). In connection with the weakening of the traditional bases for legitimacy stressing dynastic motives, a growing feeling of uneasiness and apprehension gripped the Russian authorities in ǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȃǰȄȱ ȱ ȱĴȱ only sporadically throughout the prewar years (for example, during the 1863–64 Polish revolt), now acquired an immediacy that was hardly conceivable before. This was obviously the case before Romania’s alignment with the Entente powers, when Bessarabia became vulnerable militarily and was included in the zone administered directly by the Russian army. The exceptional status of the province placed the Russian administration under strain, which was complicated by the massive presence in the region of other obvious candidates for “enemy alien” status: the Germans and the Jews. Thus, Bessarabia became the object of a nationalizing policy that transcended ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ borderlands. The link between internal political agendas and foreign policy priorities was of course obvious in other borderlands (or temporarily occupied territories) as well. One of the cases in point concerned Northern Bukovina, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire directly bordering on Bessarabia. The ethnic makeup of this province (featuring Ukrainians, Romanians, Germans, Jews, Hungarians, etc.) confronted the Russian authorities with yet another “nationality policy” conundrum. Although Northern Bukovina, like (Eastern) Galicia, was included in the “ideal map” of Russian national expansion due to its large Ukrainian-speaking population, the actual policies of the Russian military authorities during the shortlived occupation of the territory in the ȱȱŗşŗŚȱěȱ¢ȱȱȱ ȱǯȱȱȱ ĴȱȱȱȂȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ towards the provincial hierarchy of the Orthodox Church and by relying on certain representatives of the local Romanian public as administrators ǻǰȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱ£ ĵȦ©öȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ Romanian). Moreover, the envoy of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Bukovina advocated the transfer of power to elected representatives of the local Romanian population following the likely Russian retreat from the region. Thus, Russian nationality policy in the region was subordinated to the wider ȱȱĴȱȱȱȱǯȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱ population was, on the whole, hostile towards the Russian Empire, the tempo-
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rary Russian authorities pursued a pragmatic policy motivated by their interȱȱȱȱĚȱȱȱȱȱǯ16 Following the declaration of war in late July 1914, Bessarabia immediately entered the sphere of the military administration. This temporary shift in the Ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȃȱ Ĵȱ toward the presence of certain “unreliable” individuals in the province. The ȱȱȃ¢ȄȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĜȱ eyes was not comparable to that of more directly targeted ethnic groups, like Jews or Germans. Nevertheless, the accusation of “Romanophilia” bore much more serious consequences during the years of Romania’s neutrality and uncertain military allegiance than during the immediate prewar period. An important change in the authorities’ perception of internal subversion concerned the spreading of false or pernicious rumors among the civil population of the province and, especially, among the reservists at the time of mobilization. The role of rumors as the most widespread and uncontrollable ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱęȱȱȱȱȱ atmosphere of “war paranoia” and suspicion of foreign espionage.17 One of the most interesting individual examples of such a tendency involves the case of Elena Alistar, a Bessarabian-born activist in the Romanian women’s rights’ movement who was, at the time, a student at the University of Iasi.18 Alistar was accused of spreading rumors about an impending Russian-Romanian war among young reservists who were recruited from her native village. The ȱ ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱĴȱȱȂȱȱȱ 16
ȲǰȱOkrainy Rossiiskoi Imperii, 156–57.
Ȳȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȃȄȱȱȂȱȱȱ to Romania was a constant source of worry for the local authorities even prior to 1914. For example, a “rumor” appeared during the Russo-Japanese War referring to a mysterious delegation of “Bessarabians” which purportedly went to the Romanian king, Carol I, and asked him to have the Romanian troops ready in order to “occupy Ȅȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱǯȱȱȱö©ȱȱȱ Moldova (ANRM) f. 297, op. 1, d. 98, l. 182. Another revealing example is cited by the ȱȱ ȱ ©ǰȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱ Bessarabia during 1912 and 1913 and who registered a “rumor” about the planned marriage of the Romanian prince Charles (the future Carol II) to a Russian Grand Duchess. According to this rumor, Bessarabia would be “returned” to Romania as a “dowry” for the young couple. The source was mentioned by the above-cited report, which annexed an article from the Romanian newspaper Universul of 28 January 1914. See Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. 529, op. 1, d. 26, l. 12. The issue of the impact of such collective “intoxications” is worth investigating further. 17
Ȳȱȱ ȱȱĴȱȱȱȱęȱȱ ȱǰȱȱȱȱ prominent member of Romania’s women’s organizations coming from Bessarabia. She was also the head of the Bessarabian section of the Society of Romanian Women.
18
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ǰȱ ȱȱȱȱǯȱȱęȱȱȱȱ to prove the charges of “subversive antiwar propaganda,” he recommended Alistar’s expulsion from Bessarabia and “other border provinces” for the duration of the war on the grounds of her being “a convinced and extreme Romanophile.”19 Alistar’s activities seemed even more troubling because of her association with a Romanian citizen arrested for suspected military espionage.20 Apparently, this was not the only example, since later in the war a similar decision was issued in the case of Daniil Ciugurean, one of the most ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȄȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ government of the Moldavian Democratic Republic in late 1917 and early 1918.21 The insistence of military authorities on applying radical repressive ȱ ȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱĜǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ and rejected the decision of the chief of gendarmes. This demonstrates how ěȱȱȱĚȱȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱ could lead to unforeseen outcomes even in the security-obsessed atmosphere of the war. By late 1915, the specter of an emerging “national movement” in Bessaȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȃȱ Ȃȱ Ĝǯȱ ȱ Romania’s position in the war was still doubtful (despite the growing proȱ Ǽǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Romania remained real. In this context, the chief of gendarmes emphasized the “peculiarity of the Bessarabian province—namely, the national Moldavian ǰȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱǰȱǰȱĴȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱĴȬ tion, since the population of this nationality is considered to be rather loyal. This is undoubtedly true.”22 He described the peasant masses as inert, not ěȱ¢ȱȃȱǰȄȱȱȱ¢ȱĴȱȱ the Russian Empire, which guaranteed greater material well-being compared to its Romanian rival. Nordberg astutely remarked on the crucial role of “the events of 1905” and the 1912 anniversary in the nurturing, “among the local intelligentsia,” of a group that “strive towards the ‘cultural self-consciousness
Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ŗşȱ September 1914. See ANRM f. 297, op. 1, d. 520, ll. 31–33, here l. 33.
19
Ȳ ǯǰȱǯȱřřǯȱ
20
Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ śȱ Ȭ ȱŗşŗśǯȱȱȱȱȱȂȱȱęȱȱȱ both in revolutionary and “nationalist” propaganda was far more compelling. See ibid., d. 358, ll. 17–18. 21
Ȳȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱȱǰȱȱřŗȱȱ 1915. Ibid., d. 312, ll. 6, 9, here l. 9.
22
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of the Moldavians,’ or, as they call them more often nowadays, ‘Romanians.’”23 The novel development that provoked Nordberg’s apprehension consisted in ȃȱ ȱȱȱǰȄȱ ȱęȱȱȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱȱȱ£ȱĚȱȱ ǰȱȱȱȃȱȱȱ of a separatist character” among these rebellious intellectuals.24 Commenting ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃǽǾȱ ȱ ȱ ĚȄȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǯ25 Thus, the “nationalizing” logic was compelling the Russian authorities to view the Bessarabian developments increasingly in terms of a “borderland question.” The threat of “separatism” or “Romanian irredentism” was mostly a mental construct of insecure imperial Ĝȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ longer be perceived in premodern terms. The weak but growing articulation of local educated society also created the premises for the extrapolation of the rather moderate, culturally oriented grievances of the Moldavian “intelliȄȱȱȱȬĚȱȃȄȱǯȱȱ ǰȱ ǰȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ĜȂȱ ¢ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ from inside Bessarabia as from the Romanian kingdom, where anti-Russian rhetoric exploited the “Bessarabian question” in internal political struggles. ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱ ǰȱ when Romania’s foreign policy options were still open. The “Bessarabian Question” in the Romanian Kingdom (1914–16) Prior to 1914, Romanian educated society and the political establishment showed Ĵȱȱȱǯȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĜȱȱȱ by the Russian monarchy elicited a response from Romania. Aside from the polemics sparked by the 1912 anniversary of the Russian annexation of Bessarabia, the 1905 Revolution provides a good example, though the intensity of the Romanian reaction was much weaker. The situation changed completely after 1914, when the war altered the context of the Bessarabian question and transformed it into a pressing geopolitical issue. Romania’s membership in the Triple Alliance of the Central Powers became increasingly challenged in ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ǯȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ £ȱ ěȱ ȱ the part of the Hungarian state, leading to growing tensions in Transylvania; ȱ Ȭ ȱ Ȃȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ phase of the Balkan wars; changes in the leadership of both major Romanian 23 24
ȲȱǯȱŘşŝǰȱǯȱŗǰȱǯȱřŗŘǰȱǯȱşǯȱȱȱȱǯȱȱ
Ȳ ǯȱ
25
Ȳ ǯȱ
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political parties; and the concurrent growth of Francophile tendencies among the political establishment all constituted major obstacles to the continuation of the previous foreign policy course. Though the Conservative government of Titu Maiorescu and Take Ionescu renewed the alliance treaty with the Central Powers in 1913, Berlin and Vienna were aware that Romania had become an unreliable partner. More ominously, direct negotiations between Hungarian Prime Minister Count Tisza and the leaders of the Romanian national parties in Transylvania failed in early 1914. These negotiations were supported both ¢ȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱĴȱ ȱȱ ǰȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȬ ȱȱĜǰȱ¡ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱ wake of the Balkan Wars. Parallel to these developments, there was a gradual change in Russian-Romanian relations. This change should be analyzed in the context of the overall “normalization” of Russia’s image in Western Europe just before World War I.26 Romanian Francophilia and the pro-Western stance of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov provided a congenial atmosphere ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭȱ Ĝǯȱ ȱȱȱȱ¢ȱěȱȱȱ ȱŗşŗŚǰȱ ȱ ȱ before the Sarajevo murder, when the Romanian king, Carol I, met Nicholas II ȱöǯ27 The uncertainty that dominated Bucharest governing circles ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ěȱ ȱ Ȃȱ international position. At the Crown Council held on 3 August 1914, the overwhelming majority of the country’s active politicians summoned for the occasion rejected the king’s proposal to join the Central Powers and opted instead for “strict neutrality.” In fact, this decision signaled the beginning of a hectic diplomatic campaign that went hand in hand with an intense polemics over the country’s future course in the war. Following the king’s death in September 1914, the supporters of the Central Powers began to lose ground ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ǰȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ campaign and support from both the governing Liberals and the opposition Conservatives. The government chaired (since January 1914) by the Liberal leader Ion I. C. Bratianu hesitated for two more years before bringing Romania into the war on the Entente side in August 1916. This interlude witnessed an open competition of “national priorities,” and it is in this context that the Bessarabian question suddenly acquired a reality and immediacy unknown in the past.
Ȳȱǯȱǰȱȱȱȱ¢DZȱȱȱ£ȱ ȱȱȱȱ Mausoleum (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 237). 26
Ȳȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ óȱ ¦ȱ ǻŗŞśŜȮŗşŚŝǼ [The Great Powers and Romania (1856–1947)] (Bucharest: Albatros, 1996), 155–56.
27
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The region’s “marginality” within Romanian national discourse was overcome on several levels. First, Bessarabia became a potential object of diplomatic ǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ elites to the region as a potential “compensation” for Romania’s adherence to the bloc of the Central Powers. Second, the polemics around Romania’s entry into the war produced several consistent accounts of the importance of the “Bessarabian question” for the Romanian establishment. This kind of literature could be subdivided into three main categories: 1) “policy analyses,” assessing the economic, strategic, and demographic importance of Bessarabia for the Romanian nation-state from a pragmatic point of view; 2) political debates and parliamentary discourses that acquired a wide resonance due to their programmatic nature or to the prominence of the personalities involved (the most visible cases of such publications are the printed versions of the speeches given by Constantin Stere,28 Petre Carp,29 and Take Ionescu in late 1915 and early 1916, as the controversy over Romania’s neutrality came to its apex); 3) travelogues and general accounts of the Bessarabian situation (from the Romanian point of view), in the tradition inaugurated by Nicolae Iorga30 ȱȱ¢ȱȱęȱȱȱ31 and Vasile D. Moisiu.32 The Ĵȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ agenda on the part of the authors in question. Another feature distinguishing ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱ¢ȱ “irredentist” activities of the “Cultural League” and the appearance of other organizations dedicated to reclaiming Bessarabian territory. The human and scholarly resources for such endeavors were mostly provided by Bessarabianborn émigrés.33 However, this period also witnessed an open split between Ȳǯȱǰȱ¦ȱóȱ©£ȱȱǽȱȱȱȱ Ǿȱǻ DZȱöȱ ¦©ȱ ǰȱ ŗşŗśǼDzȱ ǰȱ Discursul D-lui Take Ionescu: Studiu critic [Mr. Take ȂȱDZȱȱȱ¢Ǿȱǻ DZȱöȱ¦©ȱǰȱŗşŗŜǼDzȱǰȱMarele ©£ȱóȱȱ¦ [The Great War and Romania’s policy] (Bucharest: Lumina, 1918). 28
Ȳǯȱȱȱǯȱǯȱǯȱȱ¡©ȱȱ¦ [Romania’s foreign policy] (Iasi: öȱ¦©ȱǰȱŗşŗśǼǯȱ 29
Ȳȱ ǰȱȱ¦ȱÉȱ [The Romanian nation in Bessarabia], ǯȱ ȱ ǰȱ Řȱ ǯǰȱ Řȱ ǯȱ ǻDZȱ ȱ öȱ ȱ ¦ǰȱ 1995–97). 30
Ȳȱǰȱȱ [From Bessarabia] (Iasi, 1908).
31
Ȳȱǯȱǰȱkȱȱȱȱ©£ [News from today’s Bessarabia], with a preface by Dumitru Furtuna (Bucharest: C. Sfetea, 1915). 32
Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ prominent role in the ranks of the “Bessarabian group” and contributed to the anti-
33
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the “Transylvanian” and “Bessarabian” factions within the national-cultural movement. Epitomized by the staunchly pro-Entente Nicolae Iorga and the equally uncompromising Germanophile Constantin Stere, the competition ȱȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱȱȱȱęȱȱ of the war.34 The “Bessarabian question” was debated in the contemporary polemical literature mainly from three intertwined points of view. These perspectives may be subsumed under the labels of the “economic,” “geopolitical,” and “national” arguments. The “economic” argument emphasized the commercial and practical importance of Bessarabia’s acquisition for Romania’s position on the Black Sea. In this sense, direct competition with the Russian Empire in the ȱȱȱȱȱ¡ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱěȱȱǯȱ Russia appeared as Romania’s chief competitor for these raw materials on the Western European market. Conquest of Bessarabia would end Russian control over the mouth of the Danube. The second, “geopolitical” component of the “Bessarabian nexus” was based on the assumption of Russian designs for the control of the Straits and of Constantinople. Aside from the traditional apprehensions of the Romanian establishment, this fear was enhanced in the initial period of World War I due to information concerning secret ȬȬȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ compensations for the Allied powers. The apparent readiness of the French and British governments to recognize the primacy of Russian interests regarding the Straits and the enthusiasm of the Russian public for the conquest of Constantinople were frequently cited as proof of the danger of a Russian victory for the Romanian state. This geopolitical vision was also built on the assumption of the “greatest relative danger” represented by the Romanov Empire in comparison with the Austrian or German monarchies. In the view of the pro-German authors, neither of the Central Powers was interested in weakening Romania. Russia, on the other hand, purportedly viewed Roȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ third dimension of the “Bessarabian problem” referred to the question of national priorities. The pro-Entente faction insisted on Transylvania’s greater Russian polemics with the brochure ȱ (Bessarabia’s Liberation), pubȱȱŗşŗśǯȱȱȱ¡ȱ£©ǰȱ¦ȱ [Greater Romania] (Bucharest: ęȱǯȱ ȱǰȱŗşŗśǼǯȱȱȱ Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ between the pro-Entente and pro-German positions within the Romanian political ȱȱȱȱȱ ȱǻ ȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱ faction), see Lucian Boia, ȃ ęȄDZȱ ȱ ©ȱ ¦©ȱ Éȱ ȱ ȱ ©£ȱ [The Germanophiles: The Romanian intellectual elite during World War I] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2009). 34
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ȱȱȱęȱȱȱȃȱǯȄȱȱ¢ȱȱ for the importance of the two provinces in the image of the “ideal fatherland” left the “Bessarabian faction” in the minority. Its representatives sought to counter this argument by invoking the “integrity of the national body” as the only possible premise of a viable foreign policy. As Stere’s case showed, this competition also involved two opposing visions of Romanian nationalism. What I have called the “pro-Bessarabian” faction was in fact a loose ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ěȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ¡¢ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ foreign policy preferences. Thus, the core of this group was formed, on the one hand, by the “old” leaders of the Conservative Party (P. P. Carp and Titu Maiorescu) and, on the other hand, by the group headed by Constantin Stere (which included the bulk of the kingdom-based Bessarabian émigrés). The most consistent writings of this group were published under the aegis of the “League for Bessarabia’s Liberation,” which acted as a coordinating center for the promotion of the “Bessarabian problem” in the public sphere. Another publishing avenue was the newspaper Minervaȱ ǻ¢ȱ ęȱ ¢ȱȱ ȱ¢Ǽǯȱȱȱȱ Ĵȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ represented by short brochures structured along the lines presented above and propagating either staunch neutrality or immediately joining the Central Powers.35 The polemics over Romania’s position in the war were not limited to the level of pamphlets and poor quality nationalist propaganda. One of the central policy proposals in this respect was drafted by Stere, who became one of the most convincing critics of the majority pro-Entente position during 1915 and early 1916. Stere’s arguments, reiterated with only slight changes of emphasis throughout his involvement in the polemics, could be grouped under several headings that structured his agenda: 1) the “geopolitical” dimension, which insisted on the direct interest of the Russian Empire in the destruction of the Romanian state due to the irrepressible “drive to the south”; 2) the “national” dimension, which emphasized the priority of “national consolidation” and was based on the concept of the “integral national ideal”; 3) the economic 35 Ȳȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ȃȄȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Germany against Russia and insisting on Bessarabia’s annexation are Historicus, De ȱȱȱȱǽ¢ȱ ȱȱǾȱǻDZȱǯǯǰȱŗşŗśǼDzȱ ȱǯȱĴǰȱ ȱ¡©ȱȱ¦ȱóȱȱȱÉȱĚȱ [Romania’s foreign policy ȱȱĴȱ ȱȱȱĚǾȱǻDZȱǰȱŗşŗśǼDzȱȱ ęȱ C. Arbore, ȱ [Bessarabia’s liberation] (Bucharest: Editura Ligei pentru Liberarea Basarabiei, 1915). For a polemical answer, see R. Dinu, ȱ©ȱȱóȱȃȱ ȱȱȱȄȱȱ [A reply to the brochure “Why we need Bessarabia” by Historicus] (Bucharest: Universala Graphics, 1916). A more balanced approach, ĚȱȱȂȱ¢ȱȱ¢ǰȱȱȱȱȱ©ȱ ǯȱ©ǰȱ ȱóöȱö©ȱǽȱȱǾȱǻDZȱ©ǰȱŗşŗśǼǯ
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dimension (less important, but including the familiar motive of economic ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ¡ȱ ȱ ǼDzȱ ŚǼȱ ȱ ȃ£Ȅȱ dimension, which constructed an irreconcilable opposition between Russia, as the embodiment of a hollow “Oriental despotism,” and Germany, as the representative of “European civilization” (both politically and culturally); 5) the “pragmatic” dimension, focusing on Romania’s relative gains in the case of either of the two military camps prevailing. The invocation of Stere’s example brings us to the international dimension of the “Bessarabian Question” in the context of World War I. Bessarabia did not ęȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱęȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱ ǰȱ ȱȂȱ ¢ȱȱȱȱȱęȱȱȱȱȂȱǯȱ However, Bessarabia did surface occasionally in contemporary debates either as a potential base for military operations against Russia or as one of the “national peripheries” whose emancipation might be of interest to Russia’s ǯȱ ȱ ęȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ¢ȱ Ȃȱ Ȭ German circles, but also by anti-Russian émigré organizations. Ukrainian antiRussian émigrés were particularly active in Romania during the neutrality period and entered into direct contact with the pro-German elements grouped around the Bessarabian community in Bucharest. The “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine” (ULU), created in L´viv in August 1914 with the aim of seizing control of Russian Ukraine with the assistance of the Central Powers, very soon extended its operations to Romania. After the Russian occupation of Galicia in the fall of 1914, this organization (comprising prominent Ukrainian nationalists both from the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires) moved its ȱȱȱȱě¢ȱȱȱȱȱ abroad, conducting its activity through its two main bases in Bucharest and Constantinople. In September 1914, the Bucharest branch of the ULU was inȱȱȱȱęȱManifesto, which called for a common struggle of the Ukrainian and Romanian peoples against Russian autocracy. The memorandum was introduced by an “Appeal to the Romanian People” and was ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ ȱ ȱ ··ȱ ęȱ ǯȱ ǯȱ This was not surprising, given the social-democratic political orientation of most ULU members and Arbore’s links with revolutionary circles in the Russian Empire.36 One of the most interesting cases in this respect pertains ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ half of the war. The Constantinople branch of the ULU envisaged a common ȲȱǰȱCȱȱöȱóȱ ȱ©DZȱȱȱȱȱ ȱ ŗşŗŜȱ [Between tsarist Russia and Wilhelmine Germany: An unpublished BesȱȱȱŗşŗŜǾȱǻȬDZȱȱȱ©ȱ©ǰȱ 1996), 60, 99. 36
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¢ȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȱȱ that would land simultaneously near Odessa and in the Kuban with the hope of inciting a revolt among the local population.37 Though nothing came of this, an abortive landing operation of much smaller proportions took place ȱ¢ȱȱŗşŗŚǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱŘŚȱĴȱ cavalrymen in southern Bessarabia (near Akkerman). These were supposed to reach Romania after destroying a part of the Russian infrastructure in Bessarabia. The actual landing took place on Serpent Island, at the mouth of the Danube, and was unsuccessful, since the detachment was immediately captured by Russian forces.38 Bessarabia’s military vulnerability thus drew ȱĴȱȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱ¡ǯȱ The mutual “propaganda war” did leave an important testimony relating to Bessarabia that I will discuss presently. The document in question represented a memorandum drafted by the well-known Bessarabian writer ȱȱ¡ȱǰȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱęȱ Romanian-language newspaper in Bessarabia during 1906–07 and was also editor of the moderate Kadet-oriented daily ȱ ££ȼ since 1903. He moved to Romania after 1912 and became associated with Stere’s circle in ǯȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱę¢ȱ Bessarabian war context, its wider implications should be examined. Nour’s memorandum is a striking example of the mutually subversive propaganda that the belligerent empires used in order to undermine the internal stability of their rivals. In this sense, the thesis of the “trespassing of rational behavior” ¢ȱȱȱ ȱȱęȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱǯȱ The extent to which the Entente and the Central Powers used secret services and their diplomatic missions in neutral countries for espionage and propaganda purposes was unprecedented.39 The “national question,” especially salient in the case of the multiethnic Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires, was understandably exploited by the war rivals for purposes of destabilizing ȱ ¢Ȃȱ ȱ ěǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȭ ȱ “diplomatic front.” Germany’s ostensible war goals, aiming at the eventual ȱȱȱȱȱȃěȱȄȱȱȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȂȱ Ȳ ȱ ǰȱȃȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȄȱ Middle Eastern Studies 34, 4 (October ŗşşŞǼDZȱ ŗŝŝȮŘŖŖǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȬĴȱ ¢ȱ during World War I, see also the excellent book by Michael A. Reynolds, Ĵȱ DZȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ŗşŖŞȮŗşŗŞ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 133–34.
37
38
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Ȳȱȱȱǰȱȱ ǯȱǯȱǯȱ¢ǰȱȃȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ World War,” Soviet Studies 20, 2 (October 1968): 242–48.
39
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western borderlands, presupposed the elaboration of detailed plans for fomenting internal sedition among Russia’s ethnic groups. One of the earliest and most comprehensive designs of such a plan belonged to the Finnishȱ ȱ Ȭȱ ¢ȱ ȱ Ĵěǯȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ŗşŗśǰȱĴěȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱěǯȱȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ and the Caucasus, if well coordinated, would lead to an armed insurrection in Ukraine and thus, eventually, to a revolutionary upsurge throughout the Russian Empire. The author insisted that “assistance in the liberation struggle of these peoples is … much more important than winning the alliance of a certain state, such as, for instance, Romania, through which Russia’s power will certainly be weakened but will never be completely destroyed.”40 The relationship of the disgruntled national activists who emigrated from the Russian Empire after 1914 with the networks of military and diplomatic institutions supervising Germany’s anti-Russian propaganda campaign was ambiguous. Most of these émigrés (with the partial exception of the Poles) ȱ¢ȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ pragmatically advantageous relationship with the Berlin authorities, who provided the resources for various publishing and institutional projects. Such was the case with the so-called League of the Alien Peoples of Russia (Liga der Fremdvölker Rußlands), which was created in April 1916 and operated from ȱȱȱȱ ĵȱȱ ǯȱȱ£ȱȱȬȱ nationalist orientation emerged as a result of the fusion of an earlier “Union of Nationalities” led by the notorious Lithuanian journalist and writer Juozas Gabrys, and of a smaller émigré group headed by the Baltic German Baron Friedrich von Ropp. It was supported and funded by the German Foreign Ministry and became one of the centers of anti-Russian propaganda.41 The ȱ ȱȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȬĚȱ£ȱ ȱȱȱǯȱ ȱȱęȱȱ ȱȱ£ȱȱȱ June 1916 Lausanne Nationalities Conference, which brought together representatives of the Finnish, Lithuanian, Baltic German, Ukrainian, Polish, and other émigré groups in a common project intended to weaken Russia by coordinating their nationalist aspirations. The League’s activity was short-lived and peaked with an appeal to US President Woodrow Wilson calling for the “liberation” of Russia’s oppressed peoples. The practical impact of the League’s
Ȳǰȱ Cȱ ȱ öȱ óȱ ȱ , 91. For a general presentation of Germany’s espionage activity and propaganda campaign against Russia, see 85–93.
40
Ȳ ǯǰȱ ŗŖŖȮŖŘǯȱ ȱ £ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ǰȱ Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Georgians, and Tatars.
41
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ȱ ȱǰȱȱǰȱȱȱȱȱĴȱĚȱȱ few contacts in their homelands.42 The immediate impulse for the elaboration of Alexis Nour’s memorandum came from a manifesto issued by the League in March 1916 that called for the publication of a collective volume on the “national question” in Russia that would include a presentation of the major “nationalities” of the Romanov Empire in a comparative perspective. The planned volume was to be published in the major international languages and distributed in the capitals of the belligerent powers. Ostensibly devoted to the goal of informing European public opinion about the “plight” of the non-Russian ethnic groups in the Romanov Empire, the resulting publication had a barely dissimulated pro ȱ ¢ȱ Ěȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ then by its “translation” into German and French.43 Nour’s memorandum was included as one of the chapters of this collective work and, as such, put Bessarabia on the map of international wartime polemics. The German ambassador to Romania sent the memorandum, dated 15 May 1916, to the German chancellor a month later.44 The relevance of this document stems from two main factors. First, it represented an exceptional example of the “internationalization” of the Bessarabian question before the fall of the Russian imperial regime. After 1917, Bessarabia received an inȱȱȱȱĴȱȱȱȱȬȱȱ controversy. However, the 1916 memorandum apparently was the precedent that pointed to Bessarabia as one of the problematic peripheries of the Russian Empire. Second, it is one of the few examples of the articulation of an image of Bessarabia’s future within the context of the war transcending the narrowly Romanian context. This was obvious on two levels. On the one hand, Nour’s memorandum should be analyzed in the framework of the controversy over the chances for a restructuring of the empire on a federal basis. On the other hand, Nour intended his text to be an ideological appeal for a RomanianUkrainian alliance against the Russian imperial regime. This, of course, depended on long-term German military hegemony in the region, which still Ȳȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ĵǰȱ Die ȱ ȱ ãȱ ǰȱ ŗşŗŜȮŗşŗŞDZȱ ȱ ȱ £ȱ ȱ ȱ Propagandakrieg unter den Fremdvölkern Russlands im ersten Weltkrieg (Helsinki: Studia Historica, 1978).
42
ȲȱǰȱȱǰȱCȱȱöȱóȱ ȱǰȱŗŖşȮŗşǯȱȱęȱȬ ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȬȱǰȱę¢ȱ ȱȱęȱȱȱȱȱ ȱȬ ȱǰȱ ȱ used as one of the documentary sources at the Peace Conference, including on the “Bessarabian question.”
43
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appeared rather plausible in the spring of 1916. It was also predicated upon Romania’s alliance with the Central Powers, the possibility of which was not ruled out until the late summer of 1916. Nour’s position on the question of federalism as a possible alternative to the unitary structure of the Russian Empire is doubly ambiguous. The federalist option was rather popular among the majority of the politically active Bessarabians, who were mostly integrated into the Russian left. This became clear during 1917, when the Romanian “national” option was in the minority and was not seriously envisaged until the collapse of the local authorities in Bessarabia in January 1918. Federalism also had its supporters in Romania, especially within the group of pro-Central Powers intellectuals centered around Stere.45 Nour, however, rejected this option completely, believing that the collapse of the Russian Empire was imminent and that the only conceivable future for its nationalities would be the ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱǯȱ ȱȱęȱȱȱȬ ǰȱ¢ȱęȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱǯ46 The 1916 memorandum was essentially a product of the war context and appeared as a result of the intertwining of external pressures and internal polemics. Nour emphasized the strategic importance of Bessarabia for Romanian nation building, since acquiring this region “secured our [Romanian] future on the Black Sea.”47 Following the tradition of his nationally minded ǰȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱĴȱȱ the Romanian educated public, invoking the absence of any active symbolic opposition on the part of Romanian intellectuals to the occasion of the 1912 ǯȱȱę¢ǰȱȱȱȱȬ£ȱȃȄȱ surrounding the events of 1912 with the much more vigorous reaction to a similar ceremony held by the Austrian authorities in Bukovina. The author remarked that in 1912, the Bessarabians “were not meant to be in Bukovina’s situation of 1875… We, the Bessarabians ourselves, could not produce any ȲȃȄȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱě¢ǯȱȱ ȱȱ from the “Great Austrian” doctrine propagated by the Transylvanian Aurel C. Popovici (envisaging a transformation of the Habsburg Monarchy into a federation along national lines) to a much looser conception of a “Danubian Confederation” with the monarchy favored, at one point, by Stere himself.
45
Ȳ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Ȃȱ ȱ öȱ ¦© in 1915, Nour insisted upon the necessity of an “alliance” with the Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian national movements. He also rejected the persistent accusation that Bessarabia had been transformed into the “Alsace-Lorraine” of Russian-Romanian relations, arguing for the legitimacy of the “right to national self-determination.” See Pavel, Între Rusia öȱóȱ ȱ, 71–78. 46
Ȳ¡ȱ ǰȱ ȃȁȬȂȱ ¦Ȭ©Ȅȱ ǽȱ Ȭȱ ȃȬ Lorraine”], öȱ¦© 10, 4 (April 1915): 117. 47
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ǯȱ¢ȱ ȱǵȱ ȱȱ¢ȱ ȱDZȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱ it, no one could or knew how to do it!”48 Nour thus became one of the more prominent writers on the “national question” in Bessarabia after 1912. The 1916 memorandum, though intended for a foreign audience, can also be regarded as a synthetic expression of an emerging current within Bessarabian political circles that chose nationalism rather than social reformism or federalism as their political credo. The memorandum consisted of nine chapters that dealt with various aspects of Bessarabia’s geography, ancient and modern history, ethnographic makeup, economic situation, political problems, and the prospects for the province’s future following the world war. The text was partially a narrative presentation of the essential data on the province and partially a “policy paper” outlining the author’s vision of Bessarabia’s overall situation in the Russian Empire and the perspectives on Bessarabia’s relationship to a reformed ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ dimension that put the province’s evolution under Russian rule in the context of the policy of the neighboring empires and of other non-Russian peripheries ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ęȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ Bessarabia’s future in the postwar context. Recognizing the usefulness of Russian high culture for the emergence of a well-educated local intelligentsia, Nour advocated a “parting of ways” with the Russian heartland during the foreseeable social upheavals. He based his argument on the priority of speę¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȃȱ Ȅȱ instead of participating in the reconstruction of a federal Russian state whose governing principles on the “national question” would be indistinguishable from those of the autocracy. The distinguishing feature of the 1916 memorandum was the emphatically pragmatic character of the argument and the “policy proposals” the author advanced. This was as much a conscious authorial choice as a necessary adaptation to the requirements of the war context. The populist overtones that were to be expected, given the intellectual environment of the memorandum’s elaboration, were not altogether absent (e.g., the topics of the urban-rural opposition and the extolling of the peasantry’s instinctive “ethnic vitality”). However, they were moderated both by the author’s political preferences and by the immediate propaganda aims of the document. The memorandum lost its immediate relevance following Romania’s entry into the war in August 1916 on the side of the Entente. The Bessarabian “question” temporarily receded from public view, but it was soon to re-emerge in more dramatic circumstances. Reacting against the Russian imperial narrative, Nour’s version of Ȳ¡ȱǰȱȃȱȱDZȱȱȱȱŗşŗŘȱÉȄȱǽĴȱȱ Bessarabia: Bessarabia since 1912], öȱ¦© 9, 7–9 (July–September 1914): 265.
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Bessarabian Romanian nationalism, though still in the minority at the time of the text’s publication, was to prevail due to the complex intertwining of war and revolution during late 1917 and early 1918. (\[VUVT`-LKLYHSPZTVY5H[PVUHS