The World beyond the West: Perspectives from Eastern Europe 9781800733534

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The World beyond the West

New Perspectives on Central and Eastern European Studies Published in association with the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Marburg, Germany Series Editors Peter Haslinger, Director Heidi Hein-Kircher, Head of the Department Academic Forum Decades after the political changes that accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe remains one of the most misunderstood parts of the world. With a special focus on the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary, New Perspectives on Central and Eastern European Studies investigates the historical and social forces that have shaped the region, from ethnicity and religion to imperial legacies and national conflicts. Each volume in the series explores these and many other topics to contribute to a better understanding of Central and Eastern Europe today. Volume 3 The World beyond the West: Perspectives from Eastern Europe Edited by Mariusz Kałczewiak and Magdalena Kozłowska Volume 2 Heritage under Socialism: Preservation in Eastern and Central Europe, 1945–1991 Edited by Eszter Gantner, Corinne Geering, and Paul Vickers Volume 1 Rampart Nations: Bulwark Myths of East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism Edited by Liliya Berezhnaya and Heidi Hein-Kircher

The World beyond the West Perspectives from Eastern Europe

 Edited by

Mariusz Kałczewiak and Magdalena Kozłowska

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2022 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2022 Mariusz Kałczewiak and Magdalena Kozłowska

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kałczewiak, Mariusz, editor. | Kozłowska, Magdalena, editor. Title: The World beyond the West: Perspectives from Eastern Europe / edited by Mariusz Kałczewiak and Magdalena Kozłowska. Description: New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2022. | Series: New Perspectives on Central and Eastern European Studies; volume 3 | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2021039720 (print) | LCCN 2021039721 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800733527 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800733534 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: East Europeans—Attitudes. | East Europeans—Travel. | East Europeans—Politics and government. | Europe, Eastern— Foreign relations. | Europe, Eastern—Emigration and immigration. | Public opinion—Europe, Eastern. Classification: LCC DJK48.5 .W67 2022 (print) | LCC DJK48.5 (ebook) | DDC 947.0009/04—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021039720 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021039721

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-352-7 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-353-4 ebook

Contents

Introduction Mariusz Kałczewiak and Magdalena Kozłowska

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Part I. Affirming and Contesting the Empire Chapter 1 Constructing Aziatchina: An Apology for Perceived Own “Emptiness” in Russian National and Imperial Discourses, 1828–1918 Batir Xasanov Chapter 2 Involuntary Orientalists: Polish Exiles and Adventurers as Observers of the Kazakh Steppe and the Caucasus Curtis G. Murphy Chapter 3 “These Sufferers, Constantly Lamenting Their Bitter Fate”: The Image of the Mountain Jews in the Writings of Joseph Judah Chorny and Ilya Anisimov Mateusz Majman

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Part II. Creating the Other: Travel and Migration Chapter 4 The East-West Dichotomy Disrupted: Triangulation and Reflections on the Imperial View in Hungarian Perceptions of North America Balázs Venkovits Chapter 5 Negotiating Empires: Eastern European Jewish Responses to the Expulsion of Jews from Palestine to Egypt in 1914–15 Jonathan Hirsch Chapter 6 From Exotic Adventure to Victimization to Estrangement: Imagining “Africa” through the Eyes of Czechoslovak Travel Writers (1950s–80s) Barbora Buzássyová

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Part III. Representations and Fantasies Chapter 7 Land Flowing with Milk and Honey: Polish Maritime and River/Colonial League’s Depictions of South America Marta Grzechnik

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Chapter 8 Between Postimperial Expansion and Promethean Mission: Africa and Africans in Interwar Polish Colonial Discourse Piotr Puchalski

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Chapter 9 Eastern Promises: Romanian Responses to the War in Vietnam Jill Massino

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Afterword Magdalena Kozłowska and Mariusz Kałczewiak

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Index

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Introduction



Mariusz Kałczewiak and Magdalena Kozłowska

In the 1930s a Russian-Jewish female doctor named Sara Brojdo was working in a public hospital in French Morocco. Ewa, a Polish-Jewish women’s monthly, ran a feature on Brojdo’s career in North Africa and placed its female emancipatory message with a peculiarly East European–flavored perspective on the Orient. Ewa argued: “After a few years in Marrakech, a beautiful city at the foot of the Atlas in which one lives . . . under the constant threat of typhus, Dr. Brojdo was finally moved . . . to Casablanca, where life now assumes almost European forms, where one cannot complain about the lack of European comforts.”1 To Ewa it was natural that Brojdo should feel more at ease in the European-style Casablanca than in Marrakech, a city that in Brojdo’s narrative represented the most primitive and backward aspects of Arab lives. The magazine continued: “Dr. Brojdo . . . goes every day to the hospital where she manages to continue her work for these poor, miserable and unenlightened people. . . . Medical work is difficult among patients who are so difficult to accustom to the most basic cleanliness, whose stories about their disease and its symptoms are so far removed not only from matter-of-factness but from the simplest adherence to the truth.” Arabs and Moroccan Jews are portrayed here as disease prone and entirely different from Dr. Brojdo, who is the embodiment of European reason, hygiene, and civilization. Brojdo’s perspective on North Africa illuminates how in the early twentieth century Eastern Europeans established discursive constructions about the non-Western world to boost their own identity and status within the evolving world hierarchies. By constructing this binary opposition between “unenlightened” Moroccan patients and “enlightened” Eastern European women, Ewa inscribed its upper-class Polish-Jewish readership into the dominant Western supremacist discourses on Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. In this context, Brojdo’s intersectional marginality as a Jewish woman from Eastern Europe faded away. This volume brings together contributions discussing how, over the past two centuries, Eastern Europeans have conceptualized themselves within

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the social and cultural matrix of their relations with lands and people outside this region and beyond the West. In analyzing how diverse East European actors, from travelers and businesspeople to lobbyist groups, have related to developments outside Eastern Europe, this collection at once expands our understanding of the region’s history and moves beyond the essentialist labeling that has defined the region as passive concerning global developments in the last two hundred years. By focusing on both Russia— which exerted its imperial power over the East European lands and nations that it dominated throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—and the countries under its political domination, such as Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, as well as minority groups within these larger political entities, this volume speaks both of hegemonial and marginal experiences. In that sense, this volume offers both a geographic and ethnic/status-related multiperspectivity. The contributions in this collection give the margins (both those of Europe and those within East European societies) a voice and interweave those voices into a fabric of both regional and global connections. Our emphasis is on historical studies, which complement the literary examinations that are definitely more numerous in the scholarship, especially in the case of countries other than imperial Russia. The World beyond the West connects regional developments with global processes and phenomena. We argue that the East European condition, shaped by its self-perceived and externally ascribed peripherality, inbetweenness, and Otherness, has defined the way this region has shaped its relations with lands and people outside Europe. The goal of this volume is to reexamine how we think about discourses and practices in which Eastern Europeans have related to racial and ethnic diversity, Orientalism, colonialism, exoticization, and ethnic Othering. We do not include voices speaking of how Eastern Europe has positioned itself toward the West, focusing instead on lands and people (in the Middle East, Central Asia, Latin America, and Africa) that shape the region’s hierarchies and linkages by significant ambivalence and complexity. While the first studies of Orientalism were limited to the French and British Empires (a fact that has its roots in Edward Said’s classic 1978 study), newer studies have also looked at Central (imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary) and Eastern Europe as producers and reproducers of Orientalist content and Orientalist hierarchies.2 The homogeneity of Orientalism has now been definitively dismantled, and Central and East European Orientalism, less bound up with colonialism and fertile concerning the scientific discourse within Oriental studies or travel literature, has become prominent, revealing a rich subfield of literary, historical, and cultural studies. Following Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence, we suggest that diverse East European actors learned

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how to claim belonging to Western cultural capital, which allowed them to imagine themselves as being on a par with Western dominators. In that sense, Eastern Europeans used Occidentalism in the way defined by Fernando Corornil; that is, shaping an Occidental sense of self and defining Occidental values as superior while simultaneously enacting Oriental Othering of people whom they perceived to be “more Oriental.”3 Eastern Europe as approached in this volume is a diverse conglomerate of concepts, identifications, and contesting visions. Its borders and characteristics are vividly discussed not merely as geographical landmarks but also as loaded terms that established hierarchies and asymmetries between various parts of the world. Eastern Europe’s ambivalent status is discussed here above all in the context of Orientalism. Since Western Europe often defined itself as the embodiment of the Enlightened West and reduced Eastern Europe to its opposite, the East European case elucidates how cultural hegemonies are at work within not only regional but also global history. This has been eloquently argued by Larry Wolff, who recreated the process of defining Eastern Europe in the period of the Western Enlightenment, or by Maria Todorova, who showed how the West reduced the Balkans to “semi-European” and “semi-civilized.”4 While Western Europe ascribed civilizational inferiority to Eastern Europe as a whole, Western discourse-shaping actors have also attributed specific stereotypical “Eastern” characteristics to individual countries. One very helpful instrument for understanding how these processes work is imagology, a discipline examining discourses on images of nations. Imagology, by looking at both hetero-images and self-images, offers a perspective on examining and explaining the discourse around difference.5 Imagology has been a productive field in showing how East European countries were excluded from “Europeanness,” displaced to the margins of Europe, and, last but not least, shifted in mental maps further toward the Asian Orient.6 In speaking of Eastern Europe’s linkages to lands and people outside of it, we shall delineate the region precisely. Political and geographic lines were redrawn after 1989, and while some scholars define Eastern Europe in a broader sense (usually as all the formerly communist countries),7 others prefer to add a middle region, East-Central Europe (which does not include the post-Soviet countries),8 and some place Russia as a separate geographic and cultural entity.9 Before the political reconstruction of Europe in 1918, diverse areas of what is understood as Eastern Europe were shaped by various imperial regimes (the Russian, Ottoman, Habsburg, and Prussian Empires). Historian John M. Roberts noted that “Europeans have long been unsure about where Europe ‘ends’ in the east. In the west and to the south, the sea provides a splendid marker . . . but to the east the plains roll on and on and the horizon is awfully remote.”10 Historically, Eastern Europe has of-

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ten been identified with “Slavia,” which underlined the linguacultural division of Europe into Slavic, Germanic, and Romance language spheres. We understand Eastern Europe instead more broadly to include all of Russia’s territory during its imperial era.11 Before 1939, Eastern Europe was characterized by an ethnic diversity unknown in the West, with “titular” groups often perceiving the “nontitular” ethnic minorities as “alien” and even subjecting them to social exclusion or forced assimilation. The ethnic tensions that shaped much of East European history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries contributed to the further Othering of the region as chaotic and violent, detached from what was perceived as “European” at the time. In particular, revolutionary and later Communist Russia was conceptualized as fundamentally different from the democratic and capitalist West. In-betweenness and marginality are central terms in discussing the location of Eastern Europe. Homi Bhabha refers to the “in-between” spaces as “terrain[s] for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself.” These “interstices”—overlaps of domains of difference—are fora for negotiation of cultural values and community interests.12 Eastern Europe has been defined by a constant production and reproduction of such overlaps of simultaneous belonging to the East and to the West. As Stuart Hall noticed, “the West produced many different ways of talking about itself and ‘Others.’” 13 In the Western discourse, the notion of Eastern Europe has been shaped at least in part by a discourse of Othering and questioning of the region’s full belonging to the West. Both east European ideas of selfhood and Western ideas of Eastern Europe’s deficiency and inferiority have defined it as an “in-between” space. In this context we find the term “margins” very useful for discussing Eastern Europe’s ambivalent status. Margins are defined by their distance from the center, by their weaker resonance, by their dependence and fragility. We not only define East European “marginality” within the binary division of Eastern and Western Europe but also draw attention to “derivate marginalities” within Eastern Europe, i.e., the perspective of those marginalized within specific countries (Jews or exiles, to give two examples14). The relationship of margins to metropolises is not solely a unidirectional one, however, in which the former are constituted by the latter; the margins can also influence “their” centers. Approached from the marginal perspective, the center gains a new face. Eastern Europe’s self-perceived and externally ascribed peripheral situation and imaginary encouraged scholars of postcolonial studies to examine the region’s history and literature through this lens.15 As Tomasz Zarycki has suggested, since any discourse on Eastern Europe and its dependent position in respect of the Western core will result in reproduction

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of Orientalist stereotypes, the postcolonial approach can offer a reflexive perspective for deconstructing the Orientalist dynamic.16 Since the eighteenth century, Eastern Europe has been increasingly defined as the less developed part of the continent, where instead of the “West European” values of democracy, reason, and moderation, primitive barbarism, repressive politics, or belligerent chaos reigned supreme. Easternness and Westernness were conceptualized as dichotomous, inherently different, and conflicting.17 This binary, patronizing attitude was reinforced during the Cold War, when Europe’s East and West were attracted to the two poles of a political conflict. Consequently, Eastern Europe has been identified in the West with the same values as the “actual” Orient (the Middle East or North Africa). Rethinking East European perspectives on this phenomenon enables researchers to question these established dichotomies. Both prepartition Poland (before 1772) and imperial Russia (1721–1917) developed a network of relationships with the “neighboring Orient.” For several hundred years the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth bordered the Ottoman Empire and was involved in the process of cross-border cultural exchange. Imperial Russia developed a means of colonizing “its” Orient by conquering and managing the Crimea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia. In that sense, both Poland and Russia were simultaneously “perpetrators” and “victims” of Orientalist debates on Easternness, and both emerged as complex case studies that afford us better insight into the intricacies of European Orientalism. Thus we postulate, echoing Madina Tlostanova and Yulia Komska, a “decolonization” of the perception of Eastern Europe18 in order to bring a halt to identification of the region through this narrow, dichotomous lens. In the last thirty years an impressive body of scholarship concerning Russian Orientalism has been produced.19 There has also been extensive research demonstrating that Russian Orientalism mirrored the way in which West Europeans sought to research and describe the Orient. This was especially visible in the so-called Silver Age (1890s–1917) among the Russian cultured elite, in its art scene, and in Orientology circles. The relationship between Russia and its “internal Orients” (the Crimea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia) informed the discussion about the Russian national identity, its own “Easternness,” and its degree of belonging to Europe. Yet most studies focusing on Russian Orientalism leave aside the role of ethnic minorities in establishing systems of cultural hierarchies within the Russian Empire. In our collection, the contributions of Mateusz Majman on Mountain Jews and Russian academia, and of Curtis Murphy on Polish exiles in the nineteenth-century Caucasus and Kazakhstan, enrich the discussion on the ways in which subordinated groups engaged in Russian debates concerning the empire’s ethnic diversity.

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In-betweenness also characterized the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe and the Jewish encounter with global developments. Most studies of east European Orientalism include no reference to the role of Jews within the workings of Orientalism or to the emergence of linkages and dependencies between Eastern Europe and the Orients (including Russia’s aforementioned internal “Orients”). By the same token, studies concerning Jewish involvement in colonialism and Orientalism tend to focus on German, British, or French Jews rather than Jews from Eastern Europe.20 East European Jews at the turn of the twentieth century continued to be excluded from the “right” of involvement in Orientalism, colonialism, and exoticization and seem to be perceived only as passive victims of antisemitism and pogroms who either suffered in barbaric Russia or fled the region. At the same time, Jews were Orientalized across Europe, presented as a foreign and Asian (hence Oriental) element within the Christian continent.21 Some members of the East European Jewish cultural elite absorbed Orientalism as part of a broader idealization of “Westernness” or “modernity” and practiced it themselves.22 We argue that Jewish history in Eastern Europe and the history of Eastern Europe’s global linkages were interconnected. As Jonathan Hirsch convincingly shows in his contribution on the East European Jewish encounter with Egypt, East European Jews revealed there the structural firmness of the imagined cultural superiority that they had assumed in Eastern Europe despite being members of a discriminated ethnic minority. In this volume we argue that Eastern Europeans have forged and maintained a complex network of relations with lands and people both outside the immediate region and outside the West. Many of these connections came about as a result of emigration following military or economic crises in Eastern Europe. In our volume this is exemplified by the East European Jewish immigrants to Palestine who found themselves refugees in Ottoman Alexandria, or the Polish exiles in the Kazakh territories and the Caucasus who capitalized on the ethnographic knowledge they had obtained and joined the imperial Russian mission civilisatrice. In their writings about Kazakh or indigenous Caucasian populations, Russian and Polish travelers, merchants, exiles, and researchers were quick to leverage the identification with whiteness that in their eyes represented power and civilization and positioned them closer to the colonizing power center. In the study of East European Orientalism and self-Orientalisms, scholars have focused on internal East European Orients, meaning areas bordering on Eastern Europe yet through the process of Othering defined as Oriental spaces. This refers to the Crimea, the Caucasus, and Siberian and Central Asian lands within the Russian Empire. While this process of “internal Othering” is an important seat of East European Orientalism, our volume seeks to combine this approach with research into the relations between Eastern Europe and lands that were not part of the same political structure.

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Ethnic Othering—understood as transforming a difference into an Otherness that then became the salient characteristic of the Other—has developed as a central term in the study of travel writing.23 Our volume inquires to what extent ideas of Otherness were formed differently in Eastern Europe than in the West. This aspect issue is particularly visible in the post– World War II context. When the French and British Empires collapsed and dozens of countries in Asia and Africa gained independence, the Soviet Union and its satellites embarked upon a period of engaged involvement with former colonies of these Western countries. A particularly useful notion here is the “Second World,” understood as the communist camp, which lies between the “First” and “Third” Worlds. Eastern Europe thus engaged in the production of knowledge concerning the “Third World” and developed economic and political ties with Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This new era, described by Adam Kola as “socialist postcolonialism,” allowed Eastern Europeans to shape discourses of analogy between their experience and the experiences of the decolonized countries.24 Examples include parallels drawn between the economic devastation in Poland following World War II and that caused by the disastrous wars in Indochina, Vietnam, and Korea, or the perception of Soviet-influenced East European countries as colonized and dependent in a way similar to African or Asian states. By drawing on analogies between the “Second” and “Third” Worlds, Eastern Europeans established new patterns of forging Otherness, different from those that originated in the colonialist West, and visibly marked their presence within the global order. In our volume, Barbora Buzássyová and Jill Massino provide a perspective on the tensions between propaganda and the sense of shared experience using case studies from Czechoslovakia and Romania. We suggest that in order to better comprehend the complexity of the East European experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it is important to look at a wider spectrum of relations with “non-Europe” rather than to limit the research perspective to the study of Orientalism. This can be achieved by observing two conditions. First, it is important to explore how Eastern Europeans produced knowledge about, researched, explored, and narrated lands and peoples located outside the Orient, the West, and their own region. Second, the relations between Eastern Europe and these countries should be explored in a broad context encompassing both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and should go beyond the “hyper-Orientalist” period of the turn of the twentieth century. For although Latin America attracted hundreds of thousands of East European migrants (both Jews and peasants), this continent remains outside the scientific scrutiny concerning East European involvement in shaping cultural and civilizational hierarchies. Its presumed “Europeanness,” especially that of Argentina, Brazil, or Uruguay, have made it more difficult to define as a

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region of Orientalist or colonialist fantasies. This has led to relatively few studies examining how Eastern Europeans conceptualized this region. The contributions of Marta Grzechnik (on the interwar era) and Balázs Venkovits (on the second half of the nineteenth century) in our collection reveal Latin America as a key region for thinking around Eastern Europe’s linkages with global developments and develop our awareness of the mechanisms of its encounter with foreign lands and peoples. While Poles did not define Latin America as “Oriental,” they did conceptualize it as a space for Polish expansion, betraying the East European interest in being on the strong side in a world shaped by symbolic violence. This volume addresses several specific issues with the hope of bringing them into the scholarly discussion. One of them is “fantasies of greatness.” In using the term “fantasy” after Suzanne Zantop, we want to focus on two important aspects of Polish colonial stories: their purely whimsical and abstract character, and their sexual connotations linking erotic fascination with the Other with the urge for power and control.25 East European expansionism, we shall argue, was shaped by very real phenomena within the Russian Empire, but also by unrealized fantasies. Polish colonial expansion might seem to be a notion at odds with the country’s poverty and relative weakness following World War I, but such projects speak of the very real discourses of injustice, lack of compensation, or disadvantage that circulated after 1918 in many East European countries.26 The complexities of these Polish “fantasies’’ are clearly visible in the contributions of Piotr Puchalski and Marta Grzechnik. These scholars, who look at Poland in the interwar years, suggest that the postimperial condition of the newly reunited country after 1918 motivated both researchers and politicians to claim a more prominent place for it within the Western world, which in many respects was defined by colonialism. Whereas Polish relations with the world outside Eastern Europe have usually been studied from the literary angle, our collection places this issue within the historical developments of interwar Europe.27 And where most travelogues inform us about their authors’ personal relationships with the lands they explored, the Polish research expeditions scrutinized by Grzechnik and Puchalski offer a perspective of organized and structured link-building between Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.

The Contributions Our book is divided into three parts. Part I, “Affirming and Contesting the Empire,” introduces readers to some of the new concepts shaping the discussion on Russia’s Europeanness and Asianness. Further, this part focuses on “peoples on the margins” of the Russian Empire, above all Poles and Jews

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who themselves contributed to the adoption of an Orientalist gaze in respect of groups that were identified to be even farther from the center. Thus we suggest that the research tradition of studying “internal Orientalisms” in Eastern Europe, which has focused on studies of learned societies with a history of contribution to mainstream Western culture and perceived as elites (see Vera Tolz or David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye) should be complemented by attention to “peoples on the margins” of the empire. The chapter by Batir Xasanov, “Constructing Aziatchina: An Apology for Perceived Own ‘Emptiness’ in Russian National and Imperial Discourses, 1828–1918,” discusses the term Aziatchina, coined in the early nineteenth century, when intellectual circles of Russian society were preoccupied with positioning their homeland vis-à-vis Europe. The chapter acknowledges the importance of Aziatchina and the prevalence of concepts relating to “emptiness” in the intellectual mapping of the Russian empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Xasanov shows that from the second half of the nineteenth century Aziatchina was used by Russian imperial thinkers to claim that Russian colonization was nothing more than the nonviolent absorption of “empty” spaces or territories. In chapter 2, “Involuntary Orientalists: Polish Exiles and Adventurers as Observers of the Kazakh Steppe and the Caucasus,” Curtis G. Murphy looks at the numerous ethnographic accounts of the peoples living along the Russian Empire’s Central Asian and Caucasian borderlands produced by Polish freedom fighters turned exiles. Murphy’s chapter adds a new dimension to our focus on looking at the Other by analyzing these encounters between members of different suppressed groups in the Russian Empire. Murphy argues that Polish observers of Eurasia broadly shared the assumptions and solutions of the Russian civilizing mission rather than subscribing to some notion of a common anti-imperial front. The chapter explores how assumptions about race played an immense role and how the imperialist view of Caucasus highlanders and Kazakh nomads proved influential. In chapter 3, “‘These Sufferers, Constantly Lamenting Their Bitter Fate’: The Image of the Mountain Jews in the Writings of Joseph Judah Chorny and Ilya Anisimov,” Mateusz Majman explores two little-known works portraying the Mountain Jews written in Russian by emancipated Russian Jews in the second half of the nineteenth century. Both works were pioneering contributions to what was then the emerging Russian Oriental studies field. They are not examples of classical Orientalization, yet they strongly influenced the formation of the image of the Caucasian Jews in late nineteenth-century Russian society. Majman’s work illuminates how Jews engaged in the production of scholarly knowledge within Russian Caucasiology and shows how their status as knowledge producers influenced their writing.

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Part II, “Creating the Other: Travel and Migration,” addresses the interplay between space and the sense of superiority. This section comprises chapters that focus scholarly attention on reconfiguring yet another conceptual template related to Orientalism. Not only has scholarship historically privileged study of travel accounts from the West, but it has also, and more significantly, passed over minorities’ testimonies. This section explores how membership of an ethnic minority/citizenship of a colonized country shaped the discourse of difference and led (or did not lead) to the process of ethnic Othering. What happened to the power hierarchy when Eastern Europeans related to lands that could not be essentialized as “Oriental” or simply areas where Polishness or Hungarianness was not immediately identified with privilege? What was the role of Jewishness in the accounts of migrants and travelers? Balázs Venkovits’s chapter, the fourth in the volume, “The East-West Dichotomy Disrupted: Triangulation and Reflections on the Imperial View in Hungarian Perceptions of North America,” argues that Hungarian travelers in Mexico represented both the privileged West and what some perceived to be a backward periphery. To define their status, they needed to position themselves between the dominant culture and their native home one (Hungarian culture). Therefore, they adapted the vocabulary of Western travel writers and wrote in a style reflecting the imperial view and colonial discourse despite the fact that they were not colonizers in these regions and that their own country was often depicted by travelers from the West in analogously simplistic and negative ways. Jonathan Hirsch, in chapter 5, “Negotiating Empires: Eastern European Jewish Responses to the Expulsion of Jews from Palestine to Egypt in 1914– 15 ” explores the events of the winter of 1914/15, when more than ten thousand Jews, the majority of them of East European origin and subjects of the Russian Empire, were expelled to British-occupied Egypt. Hirsch focuses on the refugee crisis that occurred in the Middle East from the perspectives of East European Jewish observers. His research illuminates that the expulsion of Russian-Jewish settlers from Palestine to Egypt strengthened acceptance of Western cultural supremacy over the East among some prominent Zionist activists. Hirsch shows eloquently how Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky imagined East European Jews as actors within the British colonial project and argued for separation between Jewish immigrants from Poland or Russia and the native Arab population. In chapter 6, “From Exotic Adventure to Victimization to Estrangement: Imagining ‘Africa’ through the Eyes of Czechoslovak Travel Writers (1950s–1980s),” Barbora Buzássyová examines the discourse of representation of “Africa” adopted by Czechoslovak travel writers during the period when socialist Czechoslovakia was reopening to the rest of the world.

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She shows that such travelogues often not only served a “transnational” function of familiarizing the domestic readership with the outside world but also responded to “national” needs for positive self-representation of socialist Czechoslovakia. Buzássyová illustrates, for instance, how the language and visual designs of internationalist campaigns embedded traditional dichotomies between “white saviors” and “helpless black victims.” Part III, “Representations and Fantasies,” foregrounds the focus on “colonial fantasies” and political ambitions, which still have not been explored comprehensively with regard to Eastern Europe. Two texts discuss post1918 Poland’s colonial plans and examine the tension between the images of Poles as champions of independence movements on the one hand and envisioned colonizers on the other. Jill Massino’s chapter adds another layer of medial representation in the process of shaping popular Romanian perceptions of the Vietnam War. Chapter 7, Marta Grzechnik’s “Land Flowing with Milk and Honey: Polish Maritime and River/Colonial League’s Depictions of South America,” shows how South America became a forum for Poland’s colonial fantasies. She scrutinizes texts written by members of Polish research expeditions to Brazil and Peru and places them within the context of exoticization and susceptibility to subordination. Grzechnik investigates the shaping of the image of the continent, its nature, and its native inhabitants and the supposed role of Polish citizens there. For instance, Polish peasants, identified in Eastern Europe by both the Polish cultured classes and external actors as primitive and passive, in Latin America were transformed in the eyes of the Polish interwar elite into conquerors and pioneers, as Marta Grzechnik convincingly argues in her chapter. Furthermore, this chapter illustrates that the Polish colonial discourse also needs to be conceived as stories of sexual conquest and surrender. In “Between Postimperial Expansion and Promethean Mission: Africa and Africans in Interwar Polish Colonial Discourse” (chapter 8), Piotr Puchalski continues the investigations into the various forms of colonial discourse that supported Polish interwar policies in Africa. As Puchalski suggests, this discourse ranged from championing Western imperialism to supporting indigenous anticolonial independence movements. Puchalski’s article examines diverse types of sources, ranging from diplomatic correspondence to travel literature, and demonstrates continuities and changes within Polish conceptions of Africa and dreams of empire. He argues that, depending upon their geopolitical and diplomatic prerogatives, visiting Polish writers imagined their compatriots in Africa as either colonialists or anticolonial agents, redeploying their particular perspective as a formerly partitioned nation looking to expand in Angola, Liberia, and elsewhere.

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Jill Massino’s “Eastern Promises: Romanian Responses to the War in Vietnam” (chapter 9) analyzes official representations and popular perceptions of the Vietnam War in Romania during the mid-1960s. She investigates the complex relationship between socialist ideology, the imagined Other, and the attention shift. She also focuses on personal reflections to illustrate the degree to which state media shaped popular understandings of the war and the way in which Vietnam became part of the everyday imaginary in Romania. Mariusz Kałczewiak is senior research associate and lecturer at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Mariusz holds a PhD in history from Tel Aviv University (2017). His first book, Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture, was published in 2020 by Alabama University Press and won the 2020 Best Book Award from the Latin American Jewish Studies Association. Mariusz’s academic interests include masculinity studies, Latin American studies, Yiddish studies, and Eastern European studies. Magdalena Kozłowska holds a PhD in Jewish studies and an MA in cultural studies from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. She works as an assistant professor at the University of Warsaw. She researches the social history of Jews mainly in the interwar period. She is the author of the monograph on the Bundist youth movement Świetlana przyszłość? Żydowski Związek Młodzieżowy Cukunft wobec wyzwań międzywojennej Polski (Kraków, Budapest: Austeria 2016). Her scholarship has appeared in East European Politics and Societies, Aspasia, Middle Eastern Studies, and Jewish Culture and History. Notes 1. Zofia Kramsztyk, “Ciche bohaterki,” Ewa 23 (1930): 4. 2. Izabela Kalinowska, Between East and West: Polish and Russian NineteenthCentury Travel to the Orient (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004); Robert Born and Sarah Lemmen, eds., Orientalismen in Ostmitteleuropa: Diskurse, Akteure und Disziplinen vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2014); Wolfgang Kissel, ed., Der Osten des Ostens: Orientalismen in slavischen Kulturen und Literaturen (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012); Charles D. Sabatos, Frontier Orientalism and the Turkish Image in Central European Literature (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020); Jana Domdey, Gesine Drews-Sylla, and Justyna Gołąbek, eds., Another Africa? (Post-)Koloniale Afrikaimaginationen im russischen, polnischen und deutschen Kontext (Heidelberg: Wiener Universitätsverlag, 2016).

INTRODUCTION

13

3. Fernando Coronil, “Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories,” Cultural Anthropology 11, no. 1 (1996): 51–87. On Occidentalism, see also James G. Carrier, Occidentalism: Images of the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Couze Venn, Occidentalism and Its Discontents (London: University of East London, 1993); Couze Venn, Occidentalism: Modernity and Subjectivity (London: Sage Publications, 2000); Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies (New York: Penguin, 2004). 4. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 5. Manfred Beller and Joseph Theodoor Leerssen, eds., Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters: A Critical Survey (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007). 6. See for example: Barbara Korte, Eva Ulrike Pirker, and Sissy Helff, eds., Facing the East in the West: Images of Eastern Europe in British Literature, Film and Culture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010); Laura Laurušaitė, ed., Imagology Profiles: The Dynamics of National Imagery in Literature (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018). 7. See, for example, Uilleam Blacker and Alexander Etkind, eds., Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 8. See for example: Irina Livezeanu and Arpad von Klimo, eds., The Routledge History of East Central Europe Since 1700 (London: Routledge 2007). It is worth noting that some historians prefer to use the term “Central Europe” to define this region. For instance, the revised and expanded edition of Paul Magosci’s Historical Atlas of East Central Europe, which first came out in 1994, was republished later under the title Historical Atlas of Central Europe because “articulate elements in many countries of this region consider eastern or even east-central to carry a negative connotation and prefer to be considered as part of Central Europe.” See Paul Magosci, Historical Atlas of Central Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), xiii. The evolution of the term “Central Europe” is defined in Larry Wolff, “The Traveler’s View of Central Europe: Gradual Transitions and Difference in European Borderlands,” in Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands, ed. Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 23–41. 9. See, for example, Mark Beissinger and Stephen Kotkin, eds., Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 10. John M. Roberts, The Triumph of the West (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1985), 145. 11. The Russian internal policies of the time justify our choice. Cf. Jeff Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865–1923 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 12. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 1–2. 13. Stuart Hall, “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power,” in Formation of Modernity, ed. Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben (Cambridge: The Open University, 1992), 275–320.

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14. Studies show that a perspective similar to that taken in our volume was also embraced by Muslims living in eastern Europe; cf. Mary C. Neuburger, The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 12–13. 15. See, for example, Maria Janion, Niesamowita Słowiańszczyzna (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2006); Janusz Korek, ed., From Sovietology to Postcoloniality: Poland and Ukraine from a Postcolonial Perspective (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2007); Dariusz Skórczewski, “Postkolonialna Polska: projekt (nie)możliwy,” Teksty Drugie 1–2 (2006): 100–12; Claire Cavanagh, “Postcolonial Poland,” Common Knowledge 10 (2004): 82–92. 16. Tomasz Zarycki, Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe (New York: Routledge 2014), 3. 17. See Alexander Maxwell, The East-West Discourse: Symbolic Geography and Its Consequences (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011); Rita Aldenhoff-Hübinger, Catherine Gousseff, and Thomas Serrier, eds., Europa vertikal: Zur Ost-West-Gliederung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2016). 18. Madina Tlostanova, Gender Epistemologies and Eurasian Borderlands (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 4; Yulia Komska, “Introduction,” in Eastern Europe Unmapped: Beyond Borders and Peripheries, ed. Irene Kacandes and Yulia Komska (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018), 6. 19. Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini, eds., Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Kalpana Sahni, Crucifying the Orient: Russian Orientalism and the Colonization of Caucasus and Central Asia (Bangkok: White Orchid Press, 1997); Michael DavidFox, Peter Holquist, and Alexander Martin, eds., Orientalism and Empire in Russia (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2006); Yelena Andreeva, Russia and Iran in the Great Game: Travelogues and Orientalism (New York: Routledge, 2007); David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010); Vera Tolz, Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Michael Kemper and Stephan Conermann, The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies (New York: Routledge, 2013); Amartya Mukhopadhyay, India in Russian Orientalism: Travel Narratives and Beyond (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2013); Alfrid K. Bustanov, Soviet Orientalism and the Creation of Central Asian Nations (New York: Routledge, 2015); Denis Volkov, Russia’s Turn to Persia: Orientalism in Diplomacy and Intelligence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Epp Annus, Soviet Postcolonial Studies: A View from the Western Borderlands (New York: Routledge, 2018). 20. Ivan D. Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, eds., Orientalism and the Jews (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 2005); Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel, eds., Colonialism and the Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017); David S. Koffman, The Jews’ Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019) 21. Johan Gottfried Herder, Adrastea (Leipzig: n.p., 1802), 146. 22. Mariusz Kałczewiak. “Anticolonial Orientalism: Perets Hirshbeyn’s Indian Travelogue,” In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies (July 2019): https://ingeveb.org/arti

INTRODUCTION

23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

15

cles/anticolonial-orientalism; Magdalena Kozłowska, “East Sees East: The Image of Jews from Islamic Countries in the Jewish Discourse of Interwar Poland,” Middle Eastern Studies 54 (2018): 114–27. Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis, eds., Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008); Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins, Reading National Geographic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Sara Mills, Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism (London: Routledge 2003); Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge 1992); Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Urs Bitterli and Ritchie Robertson, Cultures in Conflict: Encounters between European and Non-European Cultures, 1492–1800 (Redwood, CA: Stanford University Press 1989). See Adam Kola, Socjalistyczny postkolonializm: Rekonsolidacja pamięci (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2018). Concerning the Czechoslovak case, see Jan Záhořík, Jan Dvořáček, and Linda Piknerová, eds., A History of Czechoslovak Involvement in Africa: Studies from the Colonial through the Soviet Eras (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2014). Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 3. For the Polish case, see Marek Arpad Kowalski, Dyskurs Kolonialny w Drugiej Rzeczpospolitej (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2010). Much research has been devoted to Jan Potocki’s travelogues. Several edited volumes dealing with Eastern European Orientalism include only literary studies. The cultural and social history of Polish Orientalism remains underresearched. For instance, in Der Ost des Ostes: Orientalismen in slavischen Kulturen und Literaturen (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012), Eastern Europe is equated with “Slavia,” and Slavic languages are unconvincingly established as the defining feature of the region (as if language played any role in shaping Orientalism).

Bibliography Aldenhoff-Hübinger, Rita, Catherine Gousseff, and Thomas Serrier, eds. Europa vertikal: Zur Ost-West-Gliederung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert [Vertical Europe: On the East-West structure in the 19th and 20th centuries]. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2016. Andreeva, Yelena. Russia and Iran in the Great Game: Travelogues and Orientalism. New York: Routledge, 2007. Annus, Epp. Soviet Postcolonial Studies. A View from the Western Borderlands. New York: Routledge, 2018. Beller, Manfred, and Joseph Theodoor Leerssen, eds. Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters: A Critical Survey. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. Beissinger, Mark, and Stephen Kotkin, eds. Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

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Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Bitterli, Urs, and Ritchie Robertson, eds. Cultures in Conflict: Encounters between European and Non-European Cultures, 1492–1800. Redwood, CA: Stanford University Press 1989. Blacker, Uilleam, and Alexander Etkind, eds. Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Born, Robert, and Sarah Lemmen, eds. Orientalismen in Ostmitteleuropa: Diskurse, Akteure und Disziplinen vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg [Orientalisms in East Central Europe: Discourses, actors and disciplines from the 19th century to the Second World War]. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2014. Bracewell, Wendy, and Alex Drace-Francis, eds. Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe. Budapest: CEU Press, 2008. Brower, Daniel R., and Edward J. Lazzerini, eds. Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Buruma, Ian, and Avishai Margalit. Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies. New York: Penguin, 2004. Bustanov, Alfrid K. Soviet Orientalism and the Creation of Central Asian Nations. New York: Routledge, 2015. Campbell, Mary B. The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. Carrier, James G. Occidentalism: Images of the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Cavanagh, Claire. “Postcolonial Poland.” Common Knowledge 10 (2004): 82–92. Coronil, Fernando. “Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories.” Cultural Anthropology 11, no. 1 (1996): 51–87. David-Fox, Michael, Peter Holquist, and Alexander Martin, eds. Orientalism and Empire in Russia. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2006. Domdey, Jana, Gesine Drews-Sylla, and Justyna Gołąbek, eds. Another Africa? (Post-) Koloniale Afrikaimaginationen im russischen, polnischen und deutschen Kontext [Another Africa? (Post-)colonial Africa imaginations in the Russian, Polish, and German context]. Heidelberg: Wiener Universitätsverlag, 2016. Hall, Stuart. “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power.” In Formation of Modernity, edited by Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, 275–320. Cambridge: The Open University, 1992. Herder, Johan Gottfried. Adrastea. Leipzig: n.p., 1802. Janion, Maria. Niesamowita Słowiańszczyzna. [Uncanny Slavdom]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2006. Kalinowska, Izabela. Between East and West: Polish and Russian Nineteenth-Century Travel to the Orient. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004. Kalmar, Ivan D., and Derek J. Penslar, eds. Orientalism and the Jews. Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 2005. Kałczewiak, Mariusz. “Anticolonial Orientalism: Perets Hirshbeyn’s Indian Travelogue.” In geveb (July 2019). Accessed 7 April 2021 from https://ingeveb.org/articles/anti colonial-orientalism. Katz, Ethan B., Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel, eds. Colonialism and the Jews. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.

INTRODUCTION

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Kemper, Michael, and Conermann, Stephan. The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies. New York: Routledge 2013. Kissel, Wolfgang, ed. Der Osten des Ostens: Orientalismen in slavischen Kulturen und Literaturen. [The East of the East: Orientalisms in Slavic cultures and literatures]. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012. Koffman, David S. The Jews’ Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019. Kola, Adam. Socjalistyczny postkolonializm: Rekonsolidacja pamięci. [Socialist postcolonialism: Memory reconsolidation]. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2018. Komska, Yulia. “Introduction.” In Eastern Europe Unmapped: Beyond Borders and Peripheries, edited by Irene Kacandes and Yulia Komska, 1–28. New York: Berghahn Books, 2018. Korek, Janusz, ed. From Sovietology to Postcoloniality: Poland and Ukraine from a Postcolonial Perspective. Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2007. Korte, Barbara, Eva Ulrike Pirker, and Sissy Helff, eds. Facing the East in the West: Images of Eastern Europe in British Literature, Film and Culture. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. Kowalski, Marek Arpad. Dyskurs Kolonialny w Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej [Colonial discourse in the Second Polish Republic]. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2010. Kozłowska, Magdalena. “East Sees East: The Image of Jews from Islamic Countries in the Jewish Discourse of Interwar Poland.” Middle Eastern Studies 54 (2018): 114–27. Kramsztyk, Zofia. “Ciche bohaterki” [Silent heroines]. Ewa [Eve] 23 (1930): 4. Laurušaitė, Laura, ed. Imagology Profiles: The Dynamics of National Imagery in Literature. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. Livezeanu, Irina, and Arpad von Klimo, eds. The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700. London: Routledge, 2007. Lutz, Catherine A., and Jane L. Collins, eds. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Magosci, Paul. Historical Atlas of Central Europe. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002. Maxwell, Alexander. The East-West Discourse: Symbolic Geography and Its Consequences. Bern: Peter Lang, 2011. Mills, Sara. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism. London: Routledge 2003. Mukhopadhyay, Amartya. India in Russian Orientalism: Travel Narratives and Beyond. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2013. Neuburger, Mary C. The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992. Roberts, John M. The Triumph of the West. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1985. Sabatos, Charles D. Frontier Orientalism and the Turkish Image in Central European Literature. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020. Sahni, Kalpana. Crucifying the Orient: Russian Orientalism and the Colonization of Caucasus and Central Asia. Bangkok: White Orchid Press, 1997.

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Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David. Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Sahadeo, Jeff. Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865–1923. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Skórczewski, Dariusz. “Postkolonialna Polska: projekt (nie)możliwy” [Postcolonial Poland: An (im)possible project]. Teksty Drugie [Second texts] 1–2 (2006): 100–112. Tlostanova, Madina. Gender Epistemologies and Eurasian Borderlands. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Tolz, Vera. Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Venn, Couze. Occidentalism and Its Discontents. London: University of East London, 1993. ———. Occidentalism: Modernity and Subjectivity. London: Sage Publications, 2000. Volkov, Denis. Russia’s Turn to Persia. Orientalism in Diplomacy and Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Wolff, Larry. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. ———. “The Traveler’s View of Central Europe: Gradual Transitions and Difference in European Borderlands.” In Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands, edited by Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz, 23–41. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Záhořík, Jan, Jan Dvořáček, and Linda Piknerová, eds. A History of Czechoslovak Involvement in Africa: Studies from the Colonial through the Soviet Eras. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2014. Zantop, Susanne. Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997. Zarycki, Tomasz. Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2014.

PART I



Affirming and Contesting the Empire

CHAPTER 1

Constructing Aziatchina An Apology for Perceived Own “Emptiness” in Russian National and Imperial Discourses, 1828–1918



Batir Xasanov

In June 2009 David Knowles, a professional translator specializing in Russian to English work, asked for help on the ProZ.com website, an “online community and workplace for language professionals.”1 He wanted advice on how best to translate the unusual Russian word Aziatchina (i.e., “Asianness” or “Asiaticness”) that has no meaning beyond the Russophone world. He had encountered this word in the process of translating an interview by a Central Asian artist, who likewise wondered where the notion of Aziatchina had come from.2 The translator’s question sparked an emotionally intense online debate, which quickly crossed the boundaries of currently acceptable ways of discussing human communities. Even ardent adherents of the concept Aziatchina in the forum understood that this was a problematic word. These advocates made it clear that it was not feasible to retain the term Aziatchina or its direct translations into English, even if it was accompanied by clarifications. According to them, many readers at first glance “will see China in the second part of this neologism.”3 Secondly, readers might unjustly think about India, China, and other Far East countries, i.e., societies that in their view had “their ancient rich culture”4—and yet Aziatchina did not refer to them.5 What is this Aziatchina, and to what region and society or societies does it refer? In spite of some slight disagreements, all participants in this discussion, with obvious native Russophone background, were quite familiar with this word; they understood it and clearly knew what this barely translatable term is supposed to mean and what it does not. All of these commentators agreed that Aziatchina has a negative connotation. To con-

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vey this, they used such words and concepts as barbarity, savagery, cultural backwardness, lack of civilization, illiteracy, lacking in culture, backwater/ backwoods, extreme conservatism, brutality, ruthlessness, heartlessness, tyranny, despotism, utter submissiveness, arbitrariness, etc. However, they rejected “evil” as a synonym of Aziatchina, since in their view that quality requires some intent, meaning that it is a product of intellectual activity, which they categorically disassociate from the term.6 Starting with A Dictionary of the Russian Language, Compiled by the Second Section of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (published 1891–95) and Morits Mikhelson’s (1825–1908) Big Explanatory-Phraseological Dictionary (published 1896–1912), the term Aziatchina regularly appears in Russian etymological dictionaries.7 All of them provide quite similar definitions of the word. Moreover, Mikhelson’s dictionary stresses that this word designates something that is “opposed to European customs.”8 A recent dictionary, from 2011, that describes Aziatchina as an outdated term, mentions the word Kyrdymbyrdymshchina as its synonym.9 According to this dictionary, Kyrdymbyrdymshchina derives from Kyrdym-byrdym, an imitative word that sounds as if it comes from a Turkic language,10 and which indeed sounds Turkic despite it having no actual meaning. This identification of Aziatchina with the regions populated by the Turkic peoples also appeared in the aforementioned discussion.11 One prominent discussant even tried to link Aziatchina to Islam, but not Islam as a whole (which according to her “is a flower of human thought, a diamond in a crown, one of the roads to God”12); rather, she considered it in a way that connected to how it was practiced in the region.13 She also refuted the suggestion of another commentator to include the Caucasus in the definition of Aziatchina, claiming that “the Caucasus has nothing to do with ‘Aziatchina’ and Asians.” Thus, she limited Aziatchina to the four Turkic republics of Central Asia, namely Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which she dissociated from other forms of the Orient (i.e., the Near or the Middle East and the Far East). Apparently, she even intentionally omitted Tajikistan from her list of countries on the grounds that Tajiks are an Iranian people.14 Certainly, the image of Aziatchina as it is presented in this discussion is facilitated by the Soviet and post-Soviet experiences, including the influx of Central Asian labor migrants to Russia following the collapse of the USSR, while the word Kyrdym-byrdym is a relatively recent neologism of the last few decades. Nevertheless, the origins of Aziatchina go back to the early nineteenth century, when the intellectual circles of Russian society were preoccupied with positioning their homeland vis-à-vis Europe. By the end of the imperial period the word was already well established in the Russian language. For instance, the ideologists of the Bolshevik revolution used Azi-

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atchina in their ideological writings in a manner that presupposes their audience’s understanding of it. In 1905 Lenin depicted Russia as “covered by the contradiction between ‘culture’ and the Aziatchina, between Europeanism and the Tatarshchina.”15 In this passage Lenin synonymizes Aziatchina with Tatarshchina, a term derived from the ethnonym of the Turkic people, the Tatars. Before the final establishment of Soviet rule in the 1920s, the name Tatar in Russian was not limited to the Crimean, Siberian, and Volga Tatars but rather used as a generic term for all Turkic peoples with the sole exception of the Ottoman Turks, who were referred to as Turks.16 In other words, Lenin’s expression demonstrates that in the early twentieth century the association of Aziatchina with the Turkic peoples was already firmly established. The subsequent experiences of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries only refined this term rather than substantially altering its meaning. This chapter will try to answer the question posed by the aforementioned Central Asian artist and explain how the concept of Aziatchina emerged and has evolved. Considering the fact that Aziatchina implies lack of culture, lack of progress, lack of compassion, lack of independent thinking as well as freedom of choice, lack of rationalism, and ultimately some intellectual impotency and even an empty or meaningless existence rather than position of something, it is equated and embodied in a notion of “total emptiness.” In other words, it suggests physical emptiness, which is a fitting description of steppes (i.e., depopulated territories, few enduring architectural structures, uncultivated lands, etc., as well as an abstract and metaphorical void as described above). This concept of “total emptiness” developed from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) perception of history, which he formulated in his fundamental work Lectures on the Philosophy of History.17 As early as the late 1820s, Russian intellectuals embraced Hegel’s dichotomy between East and West and his division of peoples into historical and unhistorical.18 The notion of Aziatchina and the related concept of “emptiness” were based on these dichotomies. This chapter begins with a brief literature review of recent studies on Russian Orientalism and Oriental studies, none of which, however, acknowledges the importance of Aziatchina and the prevalence of concepts relating to “emptiness” in the intellectual mapping of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It then turns to a theoretical background that is essential for understanding the “emergence” of the “emptiness” concept and the construction of Aziatchina. The theoretical part is followed by a summary of Hegel’s views on “civilization,” “culture,” “history,” and the “state” as a source of the concept. Finely, the article studies the development and establishment of the “emptiness” concept in Russian imperial and national thought from 1828 until 1918 by examining the writings of the most prominent Russian cultural figures of the period.

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However, before starting our analysis, it is important to note that the online debate mentioned at the opening of this chapter also highlighted some of the interesting specificities of the contemporary Russian that started to develop simultaneously with the term Aziatchina. As our linguistic analysis demonstrates, there appears to be a clear differentiation and even opposition between the “Orient”/East (Vostok) on the one hand as something exotic but often positive and Asia with its frightening “emptiness” and largely negative connotation on the other. Taking into account this peculiarity of the Russian language, the chapter will try to preserve this distinction.

Theoretical Framework For Russian studies in Europe and the United States, the beginning of the third millennium was marked by a debate on the nature of Russian colonialism from the beginning of the nineteenth century up to, as well as including, the Soviet period. This debate was first held on the pages of the journal Kritika and was subsequently published as a separate volume under the title Orientalism and Empire in Russia.19 This publication was followed by numerous articles and several books on the same topic. Prominent among them were: Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration by David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye;20 Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods by Vera Tolz;21 Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience by Alexander Etkind;22 and The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies, edited by Michael Kemper and Stephen Conermann.23 While developing a range of different, complex arguments, these works mainly argued, one way or the other, that, while being unsure of their own European/“Occidental” identity, Russian intellectuals and Orientalists tended to depict the “Orient” in a more favorable and empathic manner than their West European counterparts.24 Conversely, this chapter argues that, although this might be true for the “Orient” that lay beyond the borders of Imperial Russia and for the cultural and religious traditions and practices that came from those regions (e.g., China, India, the Middle East, etc.), the situation with Russia’s “own” non-European peoples and their traditions is far more complicated. The founders of modern Russian national thought did not try to understand the “Orient” on its own terms, especially not the Turco-Mongolian one, but rather imagined it based on their perception of their own backwardness in relation to the “Occident.” From their appearance in the early nineteenth century, these intellectuals were mainly preoccupied with the reasons for what they perceived to be Russian backwardness vis-à-vis Europe.25 Ini-

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tially, it was Russia’s own perceived backwardness that was often described by them as a historical and cultural “emptiness” (pustota). Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, Russian intellectuals began attributing this perceived backwardness to the consequences of the “Tatar yoke” of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, when Rus was ruled by Mongol khans. From that time onward the notion of the “Tatar yoke” as the main source of most of Russia’s misfortunes became a leading leitmotif in Russian national and historical writing. According to this notion, the historical and cultural “emptiness” of the Russian people was inherited from the Tatar or the TurcoMongol oppressors of the Golden Horde that had turned Russia away from the European course of development, which it had been following before the Mongol invasion. This article’s attempt to deconstruct these perceptions of Russian intellectuals is informed by Alexei Yurchak’s concept of “imaginary elsewhere,” developed in his seminal book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More.26 For the Russians historically, Yurchak argues, the most prominent example of “imaginary elsewhere” has been the “Imaginary West.” According to him, these “imaginary worlds” were produced locally and existed only at times when the real prototypes of that elsewhere could not be physically encountered.27 In his writing on the “imaginary elsewhere” of late socialism, Yurchak compares it to а mysterious world called the Zone in the popular Soviet science fiction novel, A Roadside Picnic (Piknik nа obochine). The novel was written in 1972 by the famous Soviet writers, the brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, and in 1979 the internationally renowned film director Andrei Tarkovsky shot a film version of it called Stalker. According to Yurchak, the “Zone did not imply any concrete ‘real’ territory; it referred to а certain imaginary space that was simultaneously internal and external to [the ideological discourse of ] late-socialist [i.e. late-Soviet] reality.”28 Yurchak even provides an interesting account of how in the late-Soviet reality the “Imaginary West” met and even merged with the imaginary world of Aziatchina, which, in contrast to the external territorial space of the former (the “Imaginary West”), existed within the borders of the USSR. He writes: In the 1980s, the clowns from the famous troupe Litsedei made their audiences roll in the aisles with laughter by remarking that, in reality, zagranitsa [i.e., abroad] did not exist; foreign tourists on the streets of Soviet cities were dressed-up professional actors, and foreign movies were shot in a studio in Kazakhstan.29

However, it appears that Yurchak is not aware enough of the existence of “Imaginary Asia” in the Russian and the Soviet realties. As a result, he does not interpret the phenomenon of the merging of these two imaginary worlds and leaves it much unexplained.30

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This chapter argues that Yurchak’s analytical framework is applicable to other periods of Russian history and that “Asia,” particularly the nonEuropean borderlands of the Russian Empire, was also an “imaginary elsewhere” for Russian intellectuals and historians in the two imperial capitals of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Like the “imagined West,” this “imagined Asia” also played a major role in framing discourses of Russian identity, history, and culture. It will be argued in this chapter that, despite the fact that Central Asia, Siberia, and especially the Pontic-Caspian steppe were physically within reach for Russian cultural figures of the late nineteenth century, they remained intellectually unattainable for most of them. The already existing prejudices toward the Turco-Mongolian peoples in Russian national discourse prevented those intellectuals from fully immersing themselves in the local lives of those regions, instead turning them into an “imaginary elsewhere.” In other words, those intellectuals could stay and even live in Russia’s “Asia” and communicate with some representatives of the Turco-Mongolian peoples, yet they would still be unable to fully grasp and properly appreciate the internal dynamics in those societies. Most importantly, the actual interactions with local communities and societies had only a limited impact on the Russian intellectuals’ self-perception. Like Yurchak’s late socialist “Zone,” late imperial Central Asia, the PonticCaspian steppe, and Siberia were simultaneously accessible and unattainable to the Russian intellectuals. Yurchak argues that “the Imaginary West” was neither explicitly outlined or described in the Soviet Union as а coherent “territory” or “object,” nor referred to by the name Imaginary West. However, а diverse array of discourses, statements, products, objects, visual images, musical expressions, and linguistic constructions [like the mentioned Kyrdym-byrdym in the recent imagination of Aziatchina] that were linked to the West by theme or by virtue of their origin or reference, and that circulated widely in late socialism, gradually shaped а coherent and shared object of imagination—the Imaginary West.31

The same is also true regarding the image of Aziatchina or the so-called “nomadic Asia,” i.e., the domain of the Turco-Mongolian peoples, in Russian national thought. Aziatchina did not have any specified borders, it was rarely designated by this name, and it had several synonyms. Nevertheless, like Yurchak’s “Imaginary West,” Aziatchina was, and remains, an ideological construction of imagination that seemed obvious to the creators and consumers of Russian imperial thought. In many respects this Aziatchina was the very opposite of the imaginary world that was created at the same time and was even more prominent in Russian thought—the “West,” whose imagining by Russian intellectuals began more than a century before the period analyzed by Yurchak.

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The antagonism between these two “imaginary worlds” appears in the very first discussions of Russian identity in the early nineteenth century. The state restricted and, in some cases, even forbade visits to the space that members of the Russian imperial elite and later Soviet citizens identified with the “Imaginary West” and perceived as the source of progress and abundance. Simultaneously, the same state facilitated the movement and even exile of its subjects and citizens to the territories that the Russian public associated with Aziatchina—the realm of backwardness and “total emptiness.” Even if some members of the Russian elite wanted to visit the “nomadic Asia,” they usually did not know local languages and traditions. Therefore, failing to properly engage with the local population and often failing to even communicate with them, many did find that “emptiness.” Michel Foucault’s concept of “discursive formation” that Yurchak utilizes in his analysis of the construction of the Soviet “Imaginary West” is also applicable to studying the emergence of Aziatchina.32 Foucault develops the notion of “discursive formation” by examining the modern understanding of “madness” as а form of “mental illness.” According to Foucault, thinking about madness as an illness was a notion that originated between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Western Europe without its being commonsensical or explicitly justified. He argues that this designation of madness was a result of diverse and not essentially consistent statements, enunciations, voices, and assumptions in a wide variety of discourses such as medical, religious, legal, those related to citizenship, and so forth. Foucault defines this diverse range of statements, concepts, enunciative modalities, and thematic choices that coexist in а certain historical period and concern а particular subject, but one that is neither organized into а singular unified discourse on the subject nor limited to shared commonsense understandings of it, as a “discursive formation.” According to him, these statements, enunciations, and thematic choices may be produced by diverse authors in different voices and may involve things spoken and unspoken, supported and rejected, compatible and inconsistent with each other. And yet, this “discursive formation” contains coherent regularities and principles of organization as а result of which certain concepts and understandings become gradually shaped within it.33 This is true regarding Aziatchina. Even though this “imaginary world” was mainly developed in Russian imperial thought, it was also formulated in a variety of other discourses that existed during this period in the multiethnic Russian Empire. Whereas the main concern of Russian intellectuals was Russia’s relations with the West, this concern also affected their perception of Russia’s “own Asia” and particularly their imagining of Aziatchina. Most of those intellectuals perceived Aziatchina as an integral part of the “Russian national mentality,” namely as its non-European and therefore negative component.34

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The reason for such a view was the specific origin of Russian statehood. In contrast to European empires, which began as political entities in Christendom, the Russian Empire was a vassal of what scholarship defines as an Asiatic, “pagan” and later Muslim empire—the Golden Horde. Moreover, the Russian Empire in its colonial expansion across the Eurasian landmass took over the Turco-Mongolian nomadic populations who were identified in Europe, as well as by Russian intellectuals, with the Golden Horde. Thus, in comparison with the European empires, whose conflict with indigenous populations mainly started as a result of modern colonial expansion into their regions, the Russian state had a prolonged, often conflictual, yet particularly entangled, relationship with the regions that Russia eventually colonized. This circumstance served as the basis for the creation of the “Imaginary Turco-Mongolian Orient” that is examined in this chapter.

European Views of the “Orient”: Hegel’s Perception The origins of modern Russian national self-perception, as with the Orientalism examined by Edward Said, can be traced back to the Napoleonic expeditions.35 Russia’s war with Napoleonic France served as a trigger for Russian intellectuals to start imagining their country in national terms, as it led to broader direct contact between Western Europe and the Russian Empire. In this respect it is worth noting the proverb attributed to Napoleon, “Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar,”36 which first appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century. From that point onward, inquiry into Russia’s interactions with the Turco-Mongolian peoples turned into a central theme in the emerging Russian national thought. In the light of rising national ideas, European colonialism, and Russia’s perceived backwardness, Russian intellectuals started to exhibit in their writings a deep feeling of inferiority and a sense of “historical-cultural emptiness.”37 Therefore, before dealing with the Russian image of the Turco-Mongolian peoples, it is appropriate to elaborate on the Western European scholar who left the deepest imprint on Russian imperial and national thought of the studied period: Hegel.38 Hegel firmly believed in a purposeful direction of world history that aimed to accomplish God’s plan for humanity. The German philosopher insisted that by the careful analysis of history it is possible to identify God’s intent, which, according to him, was the growth of human freedom, dignity, and worth and ultimately the establishment of the kingdom of God.39 In his search for God’s plan, Hegel argues that “the History of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the beginning. . . . Here rises the outward physical Sun, and in the West it sinks

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down.”40 In other words, the discovery of divine and human rights started in Asia, but the search was fully realized only in Western Europe. Based on this assumption, Hegel identified six nations—i.e., stages—that, according to him, were blessed by God to make their contribution to world civilization and thereby to assist in bringing humanity to progress: China, India, Persia (including ancient Egypt and Judea), ancient Greece, Rome, and the Germanic World.41 These nations discovered the divine on different levels, from the very primitive to its culmination: “Nature Religions”—Daoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and more advanced Zoroastrianism, and religion of Egypt; “Religions of Humanity”—ancient Greek religion, Judaism, and Roman religion; “Consummate Religion”—Christianity. According to Hegel, this progress in discovering the divine was also accompanied by a rise in human dignity, freedom, and morality. This rise was expressed in the development of governmental rule from “Oriental” despotism through Greek democracy and Roman republicanism to European monarchy.42 In other words, each of these stages in the discovery of the divine corresponds to the level of development of a particular society, and it also indicates its intellectual abilities. This model led Hegel to the conclusion, which was probably inspired by the notion of vacuum domicilium (vacant land) borrowed from the seventeenth-century English colonial philosophy of John Locke (1632– 1704),43 that there were historical nations and unhistorical ones. For Hegel, historical nations begin only with the ancient Greeks, as they managed to overcome “blind obedience” to despots and natural powers. The Asian people that Hegel mentions in his stadial model he classifies as unhistorical and claims that they have already completed their role in God’s plan and will not achieve any further progress, their destiny being future extinction. Hegel finds affirmation for his view in one of the central Buddhist concepts—the concept of “emptiness” (Śūnyatā), which he erroneously interprets in a nihilistic manner as “nothingness.” This notion allows him to conclude that not only are those Asian peoples outside history but they also worship “nothingness”/“emptiness,” which in his view is the main reason for their “depravity” and which is also diametrically opposed to Christianity.44 We will find echoes of these views in the writings of many Russian cultural figures and intellectuals.

Russian Self-Perception and the “Turco-Mongolian Orient” The first Russian intellectual to portray Russia in a Hegelian manner as a tabula rasa was one of the founding fathers of Russian philosophical thought, Pyotr Chaadayev (1794–1856).45 Chaadayev belonged to the Rus-

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sian nobility with an obvious Turco-Mongolian origin. Based on Chaadayev’s surname, George Vernadsky concludes that he was a descendent of Chaghatai (1183–1242), the second son of Genghis Khan.46 However, other historians only mention the Turco-Mongolian origin of Chaadayev’s family without any specific connections to Genghis Khan.47 Whatever the truth, it appears that Chaadayev was well aware of his “Asiatic” roots, since he mentions the Turco-Mongolian peoples with a degree of empathy and even portrays them as superior to Russians, as a “historical nation.” Chaadayev’s position appears unusual in the context of Russian or Western European thought of his time. In one of his late remarks, of 1855, in which he objects to the idealization of the Slavic peoples by the Russian Slavophiles, he writes: You wish to create a Slavic world; why would the Tatars not think of creating, in turn, a Tatar world? Compare the past destinies of the two races and you will see that the Tatars have more chance of success than you. As conquerors and as founders, they have provided their proofs. Mohammedanism, it is true, has no more life and so long as they [the Tatars] will be Mohammedans they could not reappear on the world scene with brilliance, but one fine day let them convert to Christianity and you will see! A curious future is promised to the universe! Two hemispheres, the Slavic hemisphere and the Tatar hemisphere. Pan-slavism and Pan-tatarism henceforth become the two governing ideas of humanity.48

This passage repeats the idea of an association between religion and intellectual abilities (or disabilities) of a particular society. Nevertheless, it also suggests that Chaadayev’s self-identification was that of a Christian Tatar and that his personal background at least partly accounts for his position as an outsider in the Russian intellectual community. As a member of the Russian nobility, Chaadayev enjoyed a Europeanstyle education, which was highly appreciated by the Russian elite at that time. In 1808 he entered Moscow University, where he continued his acquaintance with the works of German philosophers such as Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. In 1812 he left the university and joined the Russian army in its war against Napoleon. He marched with the Russian army into Paris and returned to Russia in 1816, only to leave it again in 1823 to travel in Europe for an additional three years. Upon his return to Russia in 1826, Chaadayev was accused of active participation in the Decembrist revolt of 1825 but was acquitted due to his absence from Russia during the uprising. This unpleasant experience triggered him to write, characteristically for the time in French, his famous eight Philosophical Letters. In the first letter, dated from 1828, the only letter that was published (in 1836) during Chaadayev’s lifetime and which provoked a scandal for the editor of the periodical that published it, including his exile to Northern Russia,49 Chaadayev states:

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Even in the realm of science, which is universal, our history is linked to nothing, explains nothing, proves nothing. If the barbarian hordes which turned the world topsy-turvy had not crossed the land we inhabit before invading the West, we would barely have furnished one chapter to world history.50

In 1837, a year after his ill-fated attempt to publish his Philosophical Letter, he repeats his idea about the unhistorical character of the Russian nation in his Apology of a Madman and claims that “in his land Peter the Great found only a blank sheet of paper, and he wrote on it: Europe and the West; since then we [the Russians] belonged to Europe and to the West.”51 Although Chaadayev was unable to publish his writings during his lifetime, with the exception of the single letter mentioned earlier, it seems that his close friends were well aware of his position. It is likely that the abovequoted passage from Chaadayev’s letter triggered Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) to start working on his article “On the Miserable Condition of Russian Literature” in 1834. In this article, which Pushkin left uncompleted, the poet accepted Chaadayev’s perception of the Russians as an unhistorical nation but justified it by blaming the Mongol invaders as bearing the main responsibility for this situation. Moreover, he used the Mongol invasion to account for Russia’s “historical burden” of serving as the guardian of Western European civilization: Russia was determined by a lofty mission. . . . Its vast plains absorbed the Mongol power and stopped their invasion at the very edge of Europe, the barbarians did not dare to leave an enslaved Russia in their rear and they returned to the steppes of their own Orient. The developing enlightenment [in Europe] was saved by an exhausted Russia . . . The clergy, spared by the amazing shrewdness [smetlivost’] of the Tatars, alone—during two dark centuries—nourished the pale sparks of the Byzantine enlightenment. In the silence of monasteries, monks kept writing their uninterrupted annals. In their letters, bishops conversed with princes and boyars, comforting their hearts in difficult times of temptation and hopelessness. But the inner life of the enslaved people did not develop. Tatars were not Moors. By subjugating Russia, they did not bring it any algebra or Aristotle.52

Later in 1836, after receiving the Russian translation of Chaadayev’s first Philosophical Letter, Pushkin wrote a letter to Chaadayev in which he repeated the same idea. Responding to Pushkin’s remarks, Chaadayev argues that the Tatar domination was a “great thing” for Russia and that it “caused more good than bad for” the Russian people.53 In the battle over the minds of members of the future generations of Russians, Pushkin’s position won, and it was his interpretation of the relationship between the Russians and the Turco-Mongolian peoples that

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became canonical in Russian thought. According to this interpretation: (1) the Mongol invasion turned Russia away from the European Enlightenment—which Russia began to engage with and adopt after being Christianized by Byzantium—and prevented Russia from taking an active part in European cultural developments; (2) without Russia’s self-sacrifice, which prevented the nomads from spreading their barbarity and atrocity into Europe, there would be no European civilization with its enlightenment; and (3) the “Orient” is not a monolith but, as outlined in Hegel’s theory, consists of two elements: the “semihistorical” element, which brought some important knowledge to Europe (such as the “Orient” of the Moors), and the “unhistorical” element, namely the Asia that only brings destruction and which Russia had the misfortune to deal with. In contrast to the majority of other Russian intellectuals who wrote about the East-West dichotomy, Pushkin had some acquaintance with the “Orient” and “Asia,” including that of the Turco-Mongolian. In addition to his visits to the Caucasus and the Crimea in 1820, which mainly formed his perceptions of the “Orient,” he also visited the Turkish town of Erzurum in 1829, which had just been conquered by Russia. On his way to Erzurum he met a Kalmyk family. In his account of this meeting, he even admits that he was attracted to a Kalmyk maiden, which prompted him to write the famous poem titled “Kalmychke.”54 In 1833 Pushkin further traveled to the Volga-Ural region, where he encountered Kazakhs and even became acquainted with their oral literature.55 However, these occasional encounters with Kalmyks and Kazakhs did not alter his preconceived perceptions of the Turco-Mongolian nomads. The same is true of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81), who made a further important contribution to the construction of the notion of Aziatchina and Russian popular imaginings of the Turco-Mongolian peoples. Among Russian intellectuals of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Dostoevsky had the most prolonged and probably the most intimate relations with the perceived realm of Aziatchina, apart from Chaadayev, with his genealogical ties. In 1850 Dostoevsky was accused of reading and distributing banned literature and was sent to a prison in Omsk for four years, after which he was conscripted for military service in Semipalatinsk for an additional five and a half. During this period, Dostoevsky unavoidably had contact with local Turk-Mongolian populations, witnessing their traditional way of life. Moreover, shortly after his release in 1854 from prison in Omsk and before his move to Semipalatinsk, he managed to get acquainted and even to develop a close friendship with the Kazakh princeling and scholar Chokan Valikhanov.56 Despite the fact that Dostoevsky was fourteen years older than Valikhanov, the writer became fascinated by the young Kazakh scholar, and in their correspondence they declared their love for one other.57

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Whatever his warm relations with and appreciation of Valikhanov were, it did not prevent Dostoevsky from writing “Geok Tepe: What Is Asia to Us?” (Geok-tepe: Chto takoe dlia nas aziia?) in 1881, the last year of his life. In writing this essay, Dostoevsky was inspired by one of Russia’s last offensives in Central Asia, the Siege of Geok Tepe Fort, in present-day Turkmenistan. Despite the fact that the siege ended with the massacre of all the Turkmen males captured in the fortress,58 Dostoevsky praises this victory and concludes that Russia should be more involved in Asian affairs than in European ones. He goes even further and becomes the first Russian author to accept the idea of the Napoleonic idiom that equated Russians with Tatars. Nevertheless, he does not reject the desire of the Russians to be European. Dostoevsky’s arguments about Russia’s relationship to Europe and Asia were formulated after the experience of the Crimean War, when Russia’s relationship with Western Europe was at its lowest ebb in the nineteenth century. Dostoevsky thus writes: They [the Europeans] will never believe that we are capable of participating with them in further destinies of their civilization. They have seen in us enemies and upstarts. . . . In Europe we are but parasites and slaves, but to Asia we shall come as masters. In Europe we are only Tatars, but in Asia we shall appear as Europeans. Russia is not only Europe but also Asia. Perhaps even more of our hopes lie in Asia than in Europe. Yes, and perhaps even more than this. In our future destiny Asia will perhaps be our principal solution.59

According to this interpretation, Russia is not merely located geographically between East and West, as had been largely accepted prior to Dostoevsky, but is also seen as situated between them in time.60 For him, Aziatchina symbolizes Russia’s past, while Europe represents its future. This new interpretation resulted in a shift from the idea of Russia’s historical burden of defending European civilization from Aziatchina to that of Russia bringing civilization to the “Asiatic barbarians.” Ultimately this shift not only justified Russia’s further expansion into Asia but even demanded it for the sake of the “Asiatic barbarians.” The notion of the civilizing burden of the Russian endeavor in Asia gains further development in the political essay on “The Great Game” by Russian sociologist and publicist Sergei Iuzhakov (1849–1910).61 In Anglo-Russkaia Raspria (The Anglo-Russian collisions), an essay of 1885, Iuzhakov elaborates Pushkin’s reading of the Hegelian idea of the dual nature of “Asia.” He vaguely combines this idea with an ancient Zoroastrian belief in the eternal struggle between the god Ahura-Mazda and his people of Iran against the destructive spirit Ahriman and his creation—the people of Turan (i.e.,

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the Turco-Mongolian peoples). On the foundation of these ideas, Iuzhakov proclaims that there exist two opposite “Orients”: (1) “the old, cultured Orient of Ahura-Mazda” that consists of Asia Minor, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, India, Indochina and China—this is the “Orient” that is familiar to the West European empires and attracts them with its wealth; (2) “the wild nomadic Asia of Ahriman” that lays in the steppes and the deserts of Central Eurasia. According to Iuzhakov, this is the “Asia” that the Slavic peoples have been destined to deal with from the early days of their history. In contrast to the “cultured Orient,” the “nomadic Asia” “strives to dominate the whole world i.e. to [spread] universal devastation (vsemirnomu opustosheniiu) and barbarization.”62 This aggressive nature of Aziatchina forced Russia to expand farther to the east to protect its new domains, thus leading to the creation of the Russian Empire. Moreover, Iuzhakov argues that Aziatchina is one of the main reasons for the “Oriental depravity” that Hegel writes about. Recent Russian colonization, he adds, and “pacification” of Central Asia and the elimination of the Aziatchina threat “will permit Ahura-Mazda’s Asia . . . to join the universal progress, created by Western [European] peoples.”63 He concludes that this is the hidden burden of Russia that is not understood by Western European nations.64 This and similar ideas reflect the notion that Russian colonialism is of different nature to West European colonial conquests and more favorable toward the “Oriental peoples”; the only issue is: who are those “Oriental peoples” that Russian colonization is supposed to be favorable toward? In the decade following the subjugation of Central Asia, the “nomadic Asia” lost its topicality, and focus moved from an ethnocultural definition of “Ahriman’s Asia” to a more racial perception of the “yellow peril.” This also transformed the concept of Aziatchina and blurred its association with the Asiatic steppes for a while. The military successes of the Japanese in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 frightened the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyev (1853–1900) and inspired him to write his most famous apocalyptic poem, “Pan-Mongolism,” which in its topic echoes Chaadayev’s Pan-Tatarism.65 Solovyev’s role in defining the popular image of Aziatchina does not end here. On the eve of his death, in 1900, Solovyev published his philosophical work War, Progress, and the End of History: Three Discussions (Tri Razgovora o Voine, Progresse i Kontse Vsemirnoi Istorii) in which he coined the very concept of “emptiness” as a tool for studying nonEuropean cultures. In this work he speaks about a sect of Russian Old Believers called “Hole-drillers” or “Hole-worshippers” (Dyromolyayai) in the eastern provinces of the Russian Empire. According to Solovyev, those Hole-drillers drilled a hole in their hut and worshipped it by praying into it.66 While criticizing the Hole-drillers’ religious beliefs and particularly objecting to them being regarded as Christians, Solovyev claims:

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Even supposing that these moralists in their very human weakness feel an irresistible desire to sustain their beliefs as well as their own “reason” by some historical authority, why, I ask, do they not look in history for another [figure] who shall be a more suitable representative [than Jesus]? There has for a long time been one waiting for such recognition—the founder of the widely-popular religion of Buddhism. . . . The sacred books of the Buddhists do really proclaim hollowness [emptiness] (pustota), and to make them fully agree with the new teaching of the same matter they would require only a little simplification in detail. On the contrary, the Scriptures of the Jews and Christians are filled and permeated throughout by a positive spiritual message which denies both ancient and modern emptiness, so that to be able to fasten the teaching of this latter [Hole-drillers’ religion] to any of the statements taken from the Gospel or the Prophets it is necessary, by hook or by crook, to tear away such a statement from its natural connection with the whole of the book and the context. Whereas, on the other hand, the Buddhist “suttee” supplies whole masses of suitable parables and legends, and there is nothing in those books inimical in spirit to the new teaching.67

Those lines are noteworthy because they precisely demonstrate the process of imagining Aziatchina, in this case the Buddhist religion, by comparing it with negatively perceived elements of Russian culture (e.g., Old Believers) rather than studying the Asiatic societies on their own terms. Solovyev was the first Russian intellectual to use the term “emptiness” explicitly. By doing this he turned the concept of “emptiness” as a main characteristic of Aziatchina from a fluid idea into a term. The term is intended to strengthen his message of warning about the Asian threat that confronts Europe. Almost the same view was held by one of Russia’s most famous poets of the early twentieth century, Alexander Blok (1880–1921). In his poem, The Scythians, which he wrote in January 1918 during the revolutionary aftermath as a warning to Europe to accept communism and which he dedicates to Solovyev, Blok identifies Russians with Scythians—an early pastoral nomadic people of the Pontic-Caspian steppe and Crimea—and presents them as sharing characteristics of both the Europeans and the Mongols. This poem begins with a threatening declaration to the Europeans that simultaneously places the Russians in a position of having superior knowledge to both the Europeans and the TurcoMongolian nomads.68 Blok continues threatening the Europeans by declaring that the Russians would return to their Asian roots that he depicts in a most horrifying way as an ever-devastating Asiatic “emptiness” or simply Aziatchina.69 He concludes it with reaffirmation of Russia’s monopoly on knowledge about Aziatchina and its unique ability to understand “Occidental” cultures, as well as “Turco-Mongolian emptiness,” that lie outside of history and civilization.

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Conclusion The concept of “emptiness,” which originated in English colonialism in North America and traditional Buddhist philosophy, made its way through the European mistranslation into Russian imperial thought where it received its new meaning in regard to different peoples colonized by the Russian Empire. The ultimate result of this reinvention was the formation of the notion of Aziatchina (and its synonym Tatarshchina). From the 1830s onward, Russian intellectuals used the “emptiness” concept to forge images of both Russia and the Turco-Mongolian peoples, with Pushkin playing a key role in developing the dominant view of Turco-Mongolian peoples in the Russian intellectual tradition. If at an early stage those intellectuals used this concept to explain what they perceived to be Russia’s backwardness in comparison to Europe, the Russian intellectual elites started to use it from the second half of the nineteenth century, when Imperial Russia subjugated Central Asia, to justify this subjugation and even to urge further colonial expansion. At the same time, the concept of “emptiness” was used by Russian imperial thinkers to claim that Russian colonization amounted to a nonviolent absorption of “empty” spaces or territories. Batir Xasanov is a last-year PGR student in Russian studies at the University of Manchester. His dissertation examines the formation of new self-perceptions among Buryats and Kazakhs from the 1830s to 1917. The study concentrates on the extent to which these new perceptions developed through interaction between the remnants of the Chinggisian ideology and the image of the nomads as lacking history and culture in the Russian imperial, national, and scholarly discourses. Batir completed his postgraduate and undergraduate studies at Tel Aviv University. His MA thesis focused on the use and abuse of Genghis Khan’s figure in Kazakh national and historical discourses in the Soviet and the post-Soviet periods. Notes 1. ProZ.com, retrieved 19 October 2019 from http://proz.com. 2. “aziatchina—English translation: eastern barbarity,” ProZ.com, retrieved 19 October 2019 from https://www.proz.com/kudoz/russian-to-english/art-arts-craftspainting/3289937-азиатчина.html. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid.

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7. Slovar’’ russkogo iazyka, sostavlennyi vtorym otdeleniem imperatorskoi akademii nauk [A dictionary of the Russian language, compiled by the second section of the imperial academy of sciences] (Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia Akademiia nauk, 1891), vol. 1, s.v. “Aziatshchina”; Bol’shoi tolkovo-frazeologicheskii slovar’ Mikhel’sona [Mikhelson’s big explanatory-phraseological dictionary] (Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia Akademiia nauk, 1896–1912), s.v. “Aziatshchina,” retrieved 19 October 2019 from https://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/michelson_old/166; see also, Polnyi slovar’ inostrannykh slov, voshedshikh v upotreblenie v russkom iazyke [A complete dictionary of foreign words that are used in Russian language] (Moscow: Tipografiia T-va I.D. Sytina, 1904), s.v. “Aziatshchina,” retrieved 19 October 2019 from https://dic .academic.ru/dic.nsf/dic_fwords/6665; Tolkovyi slovar’ Ushakova [An explanatory dictionary of Ushakov] (1935–1940), s.v. “Aziatchina,” retrieved 19 October 2019 from https://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ushakov/737802; Istoricheskii slovar’ gallitsizmov russkogo iazyka [A historical dictionary of gallicisms in the Russian language] (Moscow: Slovarnoe izdatel’stvo ETS, 2010), s.v. “Aziatchina,” retrieved 19 October 2019 from https://gallicismes.academic.ru/905; Slovar’ sinonimov russkogo iazyka: Prakticheskii spravochnik [A dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language: A practical guide] (Moscow: Russkii iazyk, 2011), s.v. “Aziatchina,” retrieved 19 October 2019 from https://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/dic_synonims/1878. 8. Bol’shoi tolkovo-frazeologicheskii slovar’ Mikhel’sona, s.v. “Aziatshchina.” 9. Slovar’ russkogo argo, s.v. “Aziatchina”; Slovar’ sinonimov, s.v. “Aziatchina.” 10. Slovar’ russkogo argo, s.v. “Kyrdymbyrdymshchina,” retrieved 19 October 2019 from https://russian_argo.academic.ru/5905; Slovar’ russkogo argo, s.v. “Kyrdym-byrdym,” retrieved 19 October 2019 from https://russian_argo.academic.ru/5904; Slovar’ sinonimov, s.v. “Kyrdymbyrdymshchina,” retrieved 19 October 2019 from https://dic .academic.ru/dic.nsf/dic_synonims/69244; Slovar’ sinonimov, s.v. “Kyrdym-byrdym,” retrieved 19 October 2019 from https://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/dic_synonims/ 69243. 11. “Aziatchina—English translation: eastern barbarity.” 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. In this instance it is interesting to note that one discussant in this forum named “IronDog,” in a response to other participants, insisted that “this word and its usage has a lot to do with the split personality of the ‘Russian soul’ and psychic complexes of the Russian intelligentsia (obscure to the outsiders) and very little to do with Islam and the actual culture of Asia.” 15. Karl A. Wittfogel, “The Marxist View of Russian Society and Revolution,” World Politics 12, no. 4 (1960): 501. 16. Valeriy Anatoliyovych Bushakov, “Etnonim ‘tatar’ vo vremeni i prostranstve” [The ethnonym “Tatar” in time and space], Qasevet 1, no. 23 (1994): 24–29. 17. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001); Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, vol. 1: Manuscripts of the Introduction and the Lectures of 1822–1823 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 18. Ana Siljak, “Between East and West: Hegel and Origins of the Russian Dilemma,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no 2 (2001): 335–58.

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19. Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, and Alexander Martin, Orientalism and Empire in Russia (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2006). 20. David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 21. Vera Tolz, Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 22. Aleksandr Etkind, Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011). 23. Michael Kemper and Stephan Conermann, The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies (London: Routledge, 2011). 24. Nathaniel Knight, “Grigor’ev in Orenburg, 1851–1862: Russian Orientalism in the Service of Empire?” Slavic Review 59, no. 1 (2000): 74–100; Nathaniel Knight, “On Russian Orientalism: A Response to Adeeb Khalid,” Kritika 1, no. 4 (2000): 701–15; Vera Tolz, “European, National, and (Anti-)imperial: The Formation of Academic Oriental Studies in Late Tsarist and Early Soviet Russia,” Kritika 9, no. 1 (2008): 75–81; Tolz, Russia’s Own Orient, 5–6, 168–73, passim; Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism, 199–240. 25. Emanuel Sarkisyanz, “Russian Attitudes toward Asia,” Russian Review 13, no. 4 (1954): 245–54. See also: Viatcheslav Morozov, Russia’s Postcolonial Identity: A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 26. Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 27. Ibid., 159. 28. Ibid., 160–61. 29. Ibid., 159, emphasis added. 30. For another example of insufficiently interpreted Aziatchina in Yurchak’s book see, ibid., 261, 263. 31. Ibid., 161. 32. Ibid., 161–62. 33. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge: And the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. S. Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 31–39. 34. On the idea of the “savage within” in the late Russian imperial discourse, see Marina Mogilner, “Racial Psychiatry and the Russian Imperial Dilemma of the ‘Savage Within,’” East Central Europe 43, 1–2 (2016): 99–133. 35. Edward Wadie Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, [1979] 1994), 87–88. 36. “Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar,” The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 5th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), s.v., retrieved 13 March 2013 from http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199539536.001.0001/ acref-9780199539536-e-1921. 37. Alexander M. Martin, “The 1812 War and the Civilizing Process in Russia,” in Russia and the Napoleonic Wars, ed. Janet M Hartley, Paul Keenan, and Paul Dominic Lieven (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 228–42; Vera Tolz, Inventing the Nation: Russia (London: Arnold, 2001), 76–81. 38. Siljak, “Between East and West,” 335–58; Alexandr H. Erygin, Filosofiia istorii Gegelia i russkaia mysl’ XIX veka [Historic philosophy of Hegel and the Russian thought

CONSTRUCTING AZIATCHINA

39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51. 52.

53. 54.

39

of the nineteenth century] (Rostov-on-Don: Southern Federal University [IuFU] Press, 2012); Aleksandr I. Volodin, Gegel’ i russkaia sotsialisticheskaia mysl’ XIX veka [Hegel and Russian socialist thinking of the nineteenth century] (Moscow: Mysl’, 1973); Oleg Iu. Sumin, Gegel’ kak sud’ba Rossii: Istoriia russko-sovetskoi filosofii i filosofiia russko-sovetskoi istorii [Hegel as Russia’s fate: A history of Russian-Soviet philosophy and the philosophy of Russian-Soviet history] (Krasnodar: Educational Krasnodar Municipal non-governmental organization “Glagol,” 2005). Siljak, “Between East and West,” 339. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 121. Erygin, Filosofiia istorii Gegelia i russkaia mysl’ XIX veka, 65–87. Mario D’Amato and Robert T. Moore, “The Specter of Nihilism: On Hegel on Buddhism,” Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies 12 (2011): 28–35; Siljak, “Between East and West,” 339–42; Erygin, Filosofiia istorii Gegelia i russkaia mysl’ XIX veka, 65–87. Barbara Arneil, John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 107–31; John Douglas Bishop, “Locke’s Theory of Original Appropriation and the Right of Settlement in Iroquois Territory,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27, no. 3 (1997): 311–37. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 186–87, 391. Andrzej Walicki, “Russian Social Thought: An Introduction to the Intellectual History of Nineteenth-Century Russia” Russian Review, 36, no. 1 (1977): 7; William Leatherbarrow, “Conservatism in the age of Alexander I and Nicholas I,” in A History of Russian Thought, ed. William Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 107–8. George Vernadsky, A History of Russia, vol. 3: The Mongols and Russia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953), 384–85. Peter Ia. Chaadaev, Philosophical Works of Peter Chaadaev, ed. Raymond T. McNally and Richard Tempest (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 8–9; Nikolai A. Baskakov, Russkie familii tiurkskogo proiskhozhdeniia [Russian surnames of Turkic Origin] (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 223–24. Chaadaev, Philosophical Works, 249. Chaadaev, Philosophical Works, 8–13; Walicki, “Russian Social Thought,” 6–8. Peter Ia. Chaadaev, “Letters on the Philosophy of History,” in Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology, ed. Marc Raeff (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), 167, emphasis added. Chaadaev, Philosophical Works, 104. Alexander S. Pushkin, “O Nichtozhestve Literatury Russkoi” [On the miserable condition of Russian literature], in Sobranie Sochinenii A.S. Pushkina v Desiati Tomakh [A. S. Pushkin’s complete works in ten volumes], vol. 6: Kritika i Publitsistika, ed. Dmitrii D. Blagoi (Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo Khudozhestvennoi Literatury, 1962), 407–8. Chaadaev, Philosophical Works, 189, 296n15. Maksim I. Shapir, “O nerovnosti ravnogo: Poslanie Pushkina ‘Kalmychke’ na fone makroevoliutsii russkogo poeticheskogo iazyka” [On the equality of unequal: The Pushkin’s message to “Kalmychke” (Kalmyk maiden) on the background of the macroevolution of the Russian poetic language], in Tekst i kommentarii: Kruglyi stol k

40

55.

56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65.

66.

67. 68. 69.

BATIR XASANOV

75-letiiu Viacheslava Vsevolodovicha Ivanova [Text and annotations: Round table for the 75th anniversary of Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov], ed. V. N. Toporov (Moscow: Nauka, 2006), 403–17. Kalzhan Nurmakhanov, Ukrainsko-kazakhskie literaturnye sviazi: Sobranie kriticheskikh i literaturnykh zametok [Ukrainian-Kazakh literary connections: A collection of critical and literary remarks] (Alma-Ata: Kazgoslitizdat, 1961), 117. On Valikhanov, see B. Khasanov, “The Concept of ‘Emptiness’ and the Politics of Identity among the Turco-Mongolian Peoples in the Russian Empire, the 1830s– 1917” (PhD diss., University of Manchester, forthcoming). Michael Futrell, “Dostoyevsky and Islam (and Chokan Valikhanov),” Slavonic and East European Review 57, no. 1 (1979), 16–31. Richard A. Pierce, Russian Central Asia, 1867–1917: A Study in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press 1960), 40–42. Fyodor Dostoevsky, cited in Sarkisyanz, “Russian Attitudes toward Asia,” 248. Mark Bassin, “Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space,” Slavic Review 50, no. 1 (1991): 1–17. Sergei N. Iuzhakov, Anglo-Russkaia Raspria: Nebol’shoe predislovie k bol’shim sobytiiam. Politicheskii etiud [The Anglo-Russian collisions: A small preface to big events. A political study] (Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia Tovarishchestva Obshchestvennaia Pol’za, 1885). Iuzhakov, Anglo-Russkaia Raspria, 50. Ibid., 56. Ibid., 46–56. Susanna Soojung. Lim, “Pan-Mongolians at Twilight: East Asia and Race in Russian Modernism, 1890–1921,” in Race and Racism in Modern East Asia Western and Eastern Constructions, ed. Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 161–66; David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 214–16. Vladimir Soloviev, War, Progress, and the End of History, Including a Short Story of the Anti-Christ: Three Discussions, trans. Alexander Bakshy (London: University of London Press), xx; Vladimir S. Solov’ev, “Tri Razgovora o Voine, Progresse i Kontse Vsemirnoi Istorii” [War, progress, and the end of history: Three discussions], in Solov’ev V.S.: Sochineniia v 2 Tomakh [V. S. Solo’vev’s complete works in two volumes], eds. A. F. Loseva and A. V. Gulygi (Moskva: Mysl’, 1988), 2:636–37. Soloviev, War, Progress, and the End of History, xxiv–xxv; Solov’ev, “Tri Razgovora o Voine,” 639, emphasis added. Alexander Blok, “The Scythians,” trans. Robin Kemball, Russian Review 14, no. 2 (1955): 118. Ibid., 120.

Bibliography Arneil, Barbara. John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Baskakov, Nikolai A. Russkie familii tiurkskogo proiskhozhdeniia [Russian surnames of Turkic Origin]. Moscow: Nauka, 1979.

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Bassin, Mark. “Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space.” Slavic Review 50, no. 1 (1991): 1–17. Bishop, John Douglas. “Locke’s Theory of Original Appropriation and the Right of Settlement in Iroquois Territory.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27, no. 3 (1997): 311–37. Blok, Alexander. “The Scythians.” Translated by Robin Kemball. Russian Review 14, no. 2 (1955): 117–20. Bushakov, Valeriy Anatoliyovych. “Etnonim ‘tatar’ vo vremeni i prostranstve” [The ethnonym “Tatar” in time and space]. Qasevet 1, no. 23 (1994): 24–29. Chaadaev, Peter Ia. “Letters on the Philosophy of History.” In Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology, edited by Marc Raeff, 160–73. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966. ———. Philosophical Works of Peter Chaadaev, edited by Raymond T. McNally and Richard Tempest. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. D’Amato, Mario and Moore, Robert T. “The Specter of Nihilism: On Hegel on Buddhism.” Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies 12 (2011): 24–49. David-Fox, Michael, Peter Holquist, and Alexander Martin, eds. Orientalism and Empire in Russia. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2006 Erygin, Alexandr, H. Filosofiia istorii Gegelia i russkaia mysl’ XIX veka [Historic philosophy of Hegel and the Russian thought of the nineteenth century]. Rostov-on-Don: Southern Federal University (IuFU) Press, 2012. Etkind, Aleksandr. Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience. Cambridge: Polity, 2011. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge: And the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. S. Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1972. Futrell, Michael. “Dostoyevsky and Islam (and Chokan Valikhanov).” Slavonic and East European Review 57, no. 1 (1979): 16–31. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Vol. 1: Manuscripts of the Introduction and the Lectures of 1822–1823. Translated by Robert F. Brown and Peter Crafts Hodgson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011. ———. The Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree. Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001. Iuzhakov, Sergei N. Anglo-Russkaia Raspria: Nebol’shoe predislovie k bol’shim sobytiiam; Politicheskii etiud [The Anglo-Russian collisions: A small preface to big events. A political study]. Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia Tovarishchestva Obshchestvennaia Pol’za, 1885. Khasanov, B. “The Concept of ‘Emptiness’ and the Politics of Identity among the TurcoMongolian Peoples in the Russian Empire, the 1830s–1917.” PhD diss., University of Manchester, forthcoming. Kemper, Michael, and Stephan Conermann, eds. The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies. London: Routledge, 2013. Knight, Nathaniel. “Grigor’ev in Orenburg, 1851–1862: Russian Orientalism in the Service of Empire?” Slavic Review 59, no. 1 (2000): 74–100. ———. “On Russian Orientalism: A Response to Adeeb Khalid.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 4 (2000): 701–15. Leatherbarrow, William. “Conservatism in the Age of Alexander I and Nicholas I.” In A History of Russian Thought, edited by William Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord, 95–115. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

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Lim, Susanna Soojung. “Pan-Mongolians at Twilight: East Asia and Race in Russian Modernism, 1890–1921.” In Race and Racism in Modern East Asia, edited by Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel, 153–75. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Martin, Alexander M. “The 1812 War and the Civilizing Process in Russia.” In Russia and the Napoleonic Wars, edited by Janet M Hartley, Paul Keenan, and Paul Dominic Lieven, 228–42. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Mogilner, Marina. “Racial Psychiatry and the Russian Imperial Dilemma of the ‘Savage Within,’” East Central Europe 43, 1–2 (2016): 99–133. Morozov, Viatcheslav. Russia’s Postcolonial Identity: A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Nurmakhanov, Kalzhan. Ukrainsko-kazakhskie literaturnye sviazi: Sobranie kriticheskikh i literaturnykh zametok [Ukrainian-Kazakh literary connections: A collection of critical and literary remarks]. Alma-Ata: Kazgoslitizdat, 1961. Pierce, Richard A. Russian Central Asia, 1867–1917: A Study in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960. Pushkin, Alexander S. “O Nichtozhestve Literatury Russkoi” [On the miserable condition of Russian literature]. In Sobranie Sochinenii A.S. Pushkina v Desiati Tomakh. Vol. 6: Kritika i Publitsistika [A. S. Pushkin’s complete works in ten volumes], edited by Dmitrii D. Blagoi, 407–13. Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo Khudozhestvennoi Literatury, 1962. Said, Edward Wadie. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, [1979] 1994. Sarkisyanz, Emanuel. “Russian Attitudes toward Asia.” Russian Review 13, no. 4 (1954): 245–54. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David. Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Shapir, Maksim I. “O nerovnosti ravnogo: Poslanie Pushkina ‘Kalmychke’ na fone makroevoliutsii russkogo poeticheskogo iazyka” [On the equality of unequal: The Pushkin’s message to “Kalmychke” (Kalmyk maiden) on the background of the macroevolution of the Russian poetic language]. In Tekst i kommentarii: Kruglyi stol k 75-letiiu Viacheslava Vsevolodovicha Ivanova [Text and annotations: Round table for the 75th anniversary of Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov], edited by V. N. Toporov, 403–17. Moscow: Nauka, 2006. Siljak, Ana. “Between East and West: Hegel and the Origins of the Russian Dilemma.” Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 2 (2001): 335–58. Solov’ev, Vladimir S. “Tri Razgovora o Voine, Progresse i Kontse Vsemirnoi Istorii” [War, progress, and the end of history: Three discussions]. In Solov’ev V.S.: Sochineniia v 2 Tomakh [V. S. Solo’vev’s complete works in two volumes], edited by A. F. Loseva and A. V. Gulygi, 2:635–762. Moskva: Mysl’, 1988. Soloviev, Vladimir. War, Progress, and the End of History, Including a Short Story of the Anti-Christ: Three Discussions. Translated by Alexander Bakshy. London: University of London Press, 1915. Sumin, Oleg Iu. Gegel’ kak sud’ba Rossii: Istoriia russko-sovetskoi filosofii i filosofiia russko-sovetskoi istorii [Hegel as Russia’s fate: A history of Russian-Soviet philosophy and the philosophy of Russian-Soviet history]. Krasnodar: Educational Krasnodar Municipal nongovernmental organization “Glagol,” 2005.

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Tolz, Vera. “European, National, and (Anti-)imperial: The Formation of Academic Oriental Studies in Late Tsarist and Early Soviet Russia.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 9, no. 1 (2008): 53–81. ———. Inventing the Nation: Russia. London: Arnold, 2001. ———. Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Vernadsky, George. A History of Russia. Vol. 3: The Mongols and Russia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953. Volodin, Aleksandr I. Gegel’ i russkaia sotsialisticheskaia mysl’ XIX veka [Hegel and Russian socialist thinking of the nineteenth century]. Moscow: Mysl’, 1973. Walicki, Andrzej. “Russian Social Thought: An Introduction to the Intellectual History of Nineteenth-Century Russia.” Russian Review 36, no. 1 (1977): 1–45. Wittfogel, Karl A. “The Marxist View of Russian Society and Revolution.” World Politics 12, no. 4 (1960): 487–508. Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever, until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.

CHAPTER 2

Involuntary Orientalists Polish Exiles and Adventurers as Observers of the Kazakh Steppe and the Caucasus



Curtis G. Murphy

In 1863, a few years after returning from a two-year expedition to support the Circassian tribes in their conflict with the Russian Empire, Teofil Łapiński (ca. 1826–86) published in Hamburg a two-volume ethnographic and political study of the peoples of the North Caucasus, Die Bergvölker des Kaukasus und ihr Freiheitskampf gegen die Russen (The highlanders of the Caucasus and their struggle for liberty against the Russians). Meditating on his own unsuccessful mission to rally the Caucasus highlanders into a total war with Russia that would, he had hoped, lead to the overturning of Russian rule both in the Caucasus and in Poland, Łapiński predicted a grim future for the peoples of the empire’s Eurasian frontiers: “The penetration of Russians to the East will be even more dangerous. . . . The hordes of Kazakhs, Kalmyks and Tungus along the border with China will in the greater part be sedentarized, baptized, Russified, and conscripted into the army.”1 The ability of Russians to Russify the natives of Central Asia, Łapiński theorized, primarily rested on the Russians’ racial similarity to the nomadic peoples of Eurasia. “The brutal art of denationalization and Christianization . . . which fails to yield results in Poland, Little Russia (Ukraine) and certain parts of the Caucasus where Indo-Europeans live, achieves spectacular results in the East, proving further the unity of the Muscovites with the Turanian Race,” a reference to Franciszek Duchiński’s (1816–93) Turanian racial theory that distinguished between the Europeans, including Poles and Ukrainians, and Turanians, peoples of the east in which Russians were grouped.2 Łapiński took some comfort in the connection he perceived between the Circassians and the “Aryan” race of Europeans, which would, he predicted, make them uniquely resistant to conquest by Russia.3

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Polish freedom fighters and returning exiles from Siberia furnished the European reading public with numerous ethnographic accounts of the peoples living along the Russian Empire’s Eurasian borderlands, with a particularly rich selection of texts concerning the Kazakhs and Caucasian peoples appearing in the 1860s.4 As Łapiński’s text indicates, most such accounts focused on the resistance of natives to Russian oppression, highlighting where possible the cooperation of Polish freedom fighters with non-Russians in a common struggle “for our freedom and yours.”5 The Polish contribution to anti-imperial resistance in Russia remained peripheral in practice, the subject of myth and exaggeration rather than substance, but Russian officials and military officers contributed to this myth in almost equal measure, seeing Polish conspiracies across the Eurasian frontier and finding in Polish collusion and betrayal a convenient justification of military setbacks or native disturbances.6 Łapiński’s text also demonstrates, though, that Polish authors viewed the various subjects of the Russian Empire in unequal terms, in some cases promoting a given group’s resistance to Russia and in other cases accepting without concern Russia’s civilizing mission in the East. Just as Polish imperial subjects were categorized by both Russians and émigré activists as potential revolutionaries, so did Polish writers impose upon other non-Russians the categories of freedom fighter or imperial slave. While the Caucasian highlanders often feature as collaborators in a common struggle, the anti-imperial rebellions of the Kazakhs typically evoked limited sympathy or validation. Ethnographic texts could originate from ardent anti-imperial rebels or imperial administrators serving terms of exile, but both sides of the divide followed a similar logic in categorizing a given ethnicity’s loyalty to Russia. Observation played a minimal role in comparison to assumptions about racial qualities, noble savage virtues, and the productiveness of analogies with the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s own wild easterners—the Cossacks and Tatars of Ukraine. Accounting for these categories, as well as the purpose and limitations of the texts, one finds that Polish observers of Eurasia broadly shared the assumptions and solutions of the Russian civilizing mission rather than subscribing to some notion of a common anti-imperial front. Unlike the objects of their ethnographic accounts, Poles, as self-proclaimed representatives of European, white civilization, could easily cross the threshold between colonized subject and representative of European domination, for which reason the psychological and cultural chasm separating Poles from potential Eurasian allies always remained much more formidable than the supposedly insurmountable national divide between Polish revolutionaries and Russian administrators.

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Creating a Russian Black Legend When reading the ethnographic and biographical accounts of Polish exiles and freedom fighters, one must consider that the authors primarily aimed to arouse European indignity against Russian treatment of the Poles and to present the Russian Empire in the worst possible light. Rufin Piotkowski’s (1806–1872) My Escape from Siberia, published in Polish in 1860 and translated into English in 1863, serves as an exemplary model of this genre, in which descriptions of non-Europeans—often cursory and poorly informed—primarily add local color to the author’s tale of Russian cruelty and heroic escape.7 In the 1850s and 1860s, influential members of the British and French ruling classes subscribed to extreme Russophobia, creating receptive audiences for tales of tsarist oppression and Polish heroism. As Sarah Badcock observes, the Russian system of penal exile to Siberia was perhaps no crueler than the punitive regimes of France and Britain,8 but Russia chose to punish educated, articulate noblemen, who broadcast the “barbarity” of Siberian punishment to the European reading public, creating a Black Legend to which Polish exiles eagerly contributed. European indignity was particularly aroused by the empire’s punishment of Polish nobles as if they were common criminals. The story of Polish aristocrat Roman Sanguszko (1800–1881), who was forced to march to Siberia in chains for participating in the November Uprising of 1830, caused one British author to thunder, “But perhaps the blackest and most cowardly action committed by Nicholas in his persecution of the Poles, and certainly one of the most cruel actions committed by a ruler in the history of Europe, was his condemnation of Prince Roman Sanguszko as a felon.”9 The purpose of blackening the Russian Empire complicates Polish texts on Eurasia, for in attempting to discredit Russia in European eyes, Poles inevitably drew upon “Orientalist” imagery as a means of demonstrating the non-Europeanness and hence illegitimacy of Russian rule. As Alexander Korczak, a Polish adventurer in the Ottoman Empire, wrote to the proPolish British politician Lord Dudley Stuart (1803–54), “Moscow carries the genius of destruction brought from the Mongolian steppes.”10 Comparisons to Mongols and the “Asiatic” tyranny of “Muscovy” abound in Polish accounts. In part these images were inherited from the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, whose citizens counterposed themselves—the mythical, freedom-loving Sarmatians (a term that included Poles, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians)—against the hordes of Moscow. In the nineteenth century, an émigré scholar in France, Franciszek Duchiński, sought to superimpose a scientific legitimacy on this distinction while simultaneously negating Russia’s claim to rule over Ukrainians on the basis of common ethnicity. Duchiński proposed in an 1861 book, Les origines

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slaves: Pologne et Ruthénie (The Origins of Slavs: Poland and Ruthenia) that Muscovites—Russians—were not part of the Slavic family at all. Unlike the Indo-European Slavs, including Poles and Ukrainians, Russians belonged to the Turanian race that included Turks and other nomadic peoples, the primary characteristic of which was willing submission to absolutism. Since Turanians emerged from a nomadic group, according to Duchiński, Muscovy could easily gain the loyalty of nomads, a reason for Łapiński to contrast the settled highlanders with the nomads of the steppe.11 In attempting to establish the alienness of Russia and counter the Russian Empire’s claim to rule over Ukraine (in which Polish nobles remained the most privileged group) on ethnolinguistic grounds, Duchiński’s theory provided a compelling weapon, but such notions interfered with a second goal of arousing European indignity at Russia’s barbaric treatment of the empire’s peoples. Łapiński, as we have seen, circumvented this problem by presenting the Circassians a priori as Indo-European. In another means of arousing sympathy for a chosen group, practiced by all Polish authors on the Caucasus, the highlanders were described as only nominally Muslim and sympathetic to Christianity. Incidentally, Russian ethnographers working on the side of the empire frequently underestimated their non-Russian subjects’ attachment to Islam and openness to Christianization.12 When discussing Kazakhs, though, writers often simply saw the hordes of Moscow with little sympathy for the group’s plight as a conquered people. Thus, Adolf Jabłoński (1825–1887), writing under the pseudonym Julian Jasieńczyk in Dziesięć lat niewoli moskiewskiej (Ten years of Muscovite slavery), published in Leipzig in 1867, warns his (presumably European) readers in alarmist and dramatic language: The spirit of the Batus, Tamerlanes, and Chinggis Khans has not vanished. Instead of the quiver it wears the imperial purple and has ascended the old throne. Through lies, bayonets and gold it has joined the great European family, but it sees beyond its borders: there, millions of brother Kalmyks, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Chinese, Bukharans, and Persians vegetate in indolence, remembering their past deeds as legends; they await only a leader and a slogan. Just wait until the Petersburg Chinggis Khan reminds them by bayonet of their old rights, gathers them to himself, and in an instant, this entire mass of wild hordes will crash into you, your rich cities, your seats of power, and your factories, transforming them by fire and sword into deserts.13

Łapiński used the Cossacks of Siberia—“a mix of Tatars, Turks, Bashkirs, Tungus, Kazakhs, Turkmen, Kalmyks, and a few Muscovites”—as an example of the Russian Empire’s ability to assimilate fellow Asians into a loyal group of borderland settlers. Most émigré writers, though, considered Cossacks potential collaborators in anti-imperial revolution, conflating Rus-

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sian Cossacks with the Zaporozhian Cossacks of Ukraine, who waged a series of independence struggles against Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The émigré conspirators in Paris insisted to foreign backers that Polish expeditions to the Caucasus could inspire a revolt of the “freedom-loving” Cossacks, a project promoted by Istanbul agent Michał Czajkowski (1804–86), who styled himself a descendant of the Zaporozhian Cossacks of Ukraine and wrote a number of Cossack-themed novels in his youth.14 Sympathetic presentations of nomads in Polish accounts typically serve to highlight the cruelty of Russian officials and the contrasting gentleness and civility of Polish exiles working “involuntarily” as imperial administrators. Jabłoński’s colorful language continues in discussing the punitive missions of Russian officials against a Kazakh rebel, Yeset Kotibarov (ca. 1807–88), whom he misnames Iskieda Tinbarew. Following the brutal Russian reprisals, “a large patch of steppe, already little populated, became a giant cemetery, and Moscow, instead of trying to populate it, true to its wild origins, oppresses and destroys everything it encounters in its partitioning path.”15 A biography of exiled conspirator and later participant in the January Uprising of 1863 Zygmunt Sierakowski (1827–63), published in Lemberg in 1894, contrasts the cruelty of Russian officials, who oppressed and harassed the Kazakhs out of pure malevolence, with the nobility and gentleness of Sierakowski. According to the account, when Sierakowski was stationed at Fort Perovsk (Kyzylorda), the local Kazakhs requested that he and not the Russians serve as administrator and tax collector due to his greater sympathy and honesty.16 Adolf Januszkiewicz (1803–57), in his posthumously published diary from 1846, discussed below, creates in his colleague, Wiktor Iwaszkiewicz (ca. 1806–60), perhaps the perfect image of the “good Pole.” According to Januszkiewicz, the Kazakhs were genuinely puzzled by Iwaszkiewicz’s kind and humane behavior after years of mistreatment and abuse by Russians. One Kazakh supposedly asked Januszkiewicz about Iwaszkiewicz, “Is he joking? Or is he really so kind? This is the first Russian official who does not scream, call out, does not station Cossacks with whips around his yurt to drive us away. We have never seen and cannot imagine such a Russian official.”17 Such contrasts served to remind both specifically Polish and more generally European readers that Poles stood for nobility, freedom, and justice, even if compelled to serve as agents of empire. Accounts of Polish sympathy supported the notion of a common antiimperial struggle, which became a cornerstone of the Polish émigrés’ diplomatic propaganda. Following the suppression of the 1830 November Uprising in the Congress Kingdom of Poland, a group of prominent émigrés settled in Paris under the leadership of Prince Adam Czartoryski (1779–1861), whose residence—the Hotel Lambert—came to designate

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the larger undertaking of restoring the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth with European backing. Agents of the Hotel Lambert lobbied France and Britain to support the Polish independence cause in part by referencing the Polish freedom fighters’ support for other oppressed peoples of the Russian Empire. Stories of Polish exiles deserting the Russian army to join the Circassians and, later, Imam Shamil’s (1797–1871) uprising in Dagestan and Chechnya buttressed the belief, expressed as early as 1834, that a common front between Polish military deserters and independent mountaineers could spark a general anti-Russian uprising among the Tatars and Cossacks. Taking advantage of the Ottoman Empire’s hostility to Russia, the émigrés established a permanent presence in Istanbul, which became the point of departure for a series of expeditions to the Circassians and, it was hoped, to Shamil, intended to coordinate the expected army of runaway Poles with the highlanders.18 There are also scant reports that some Poles even joined Kazakh rebel Kenesary Kasymov’s (1802–47) midcentury uprising, a myth that became incorporated into Ilyas Yesenberlin’s (1915–83) Soviet-era novel about Kenesary and, more recently, the 2016 film Amanat.19 Polish-Circassian cooperation in the nineteenth century, as limited as it was, played a role in legitimizing Józef Piłsudski’s (1867–1935) interwar foreign policy of Prometheanism, as well as the postcommunist Polish Third Republic’s diplomacy in the Caucasus.20 In reality, the number of Polish participants in all such anti-imperial enterprises remained limited to a self-selecting group of revolutionaries, but the émigré plans presumed the sympathy of eventual cooperation of Poles serving in the Russian army or living in Central Asian exile. Plans regarding such potential collaborators massively overestimated both the number of such exiles (fifteen thousand Polish soldiers were thought to be stationed in the Caucasus) and the interest of self-identified Poles in embracing the cause, but such plans and pressures cast a shadow of conspiracy on all Polish administrators as Russian officials imagined potential Polish-native conspiracies on all corners of the empire.21 As a result, even Poles who served loyally and embraced the empire’s colonial ambitions remained subject to suspicion and police supervision. Outside of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, though, dedicated revolutionaries tended to abandon their commitment to universal liberty in favor of cooperation in the service of European civilization, even if delivered by Russian bayonet. Prior to his execution for participating in the 1863 January Uprising, for example, Zygmunt Sierakowski had advanced within the Russian bureaucracy on the strength of his exemplary service during the 1853 campaign against Khoqand. Even if contemporaries described Sierakowski as a gentler and more humane official than the typical Russian, no one suggested any contradiction between his imperial service and subsequent anti-imperial rebellion.22

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Involuntary Orientalists and Agents of Empire on the Kazakh Steppe The mass arrest in 1833 of exiled Poles in Orenburg and Omsk on suspicion of conspiracy with the Kazakhs against the empire exemplifies the conflicting pressures of imperial service and anti-imperial agitation on Polish administrators in Russian service. Educated Poles began appearing in the Orenburg and West Siberian general-governorships after 1824, the year an alleged student conspiracy was discovered in the Vilnius Educational District. A secret society at the University of Vilnius, the Philomaths, caught the attention of the tsarist government for their supposed revolutionary aims, though the members were primarily interested in art and literature. Nonetheless, the investigating committee led by Nikolai Novosil’stov (1761–1838) soon uncovered an apparently massive conspiracy against tsarism that reached across the whole district. Among those arrested and sentenced to exile were two teenage students in a gymnasium at Kroże (Kražiai, Lithuania), Jan Witkiewicz (1808–39) and Wiktor Iwaszkiewicz, both of whom supposedly belonged to a clandestine organization called the Black Brothers. Seven years later, this group of exiles was joined by a new wave of political prisoners condemned for participating in the 1830 uprising.23 Orenburg and Omsk (seat of the West Siberia general-governorship) served as the two administrative capitals of the Kazakh steppe, housing the principal imperial institutions for administering the Kazakh hordes (zhuzes) under the control of Russia. Between 1822 and 1824, a series of reforms transformed the administration of the Kazakh steppe; in place of dubiously loyal khans in charge of the Junior and Middle Hordes, the empire imposed a series of administrative divisions based around fortresses. In each division, the nomadic Kazakhs would answer to a sultan chosen by themselves but approved and paid by the Russian government. Sultans now had administrative responsibilities, for which Russian officials attached to their retinue answered. For such reforms, the empire desperately required educated and reliable officials who could master the Turkic languages of the steppe, and many Polish exiles, including Witkiewicz and Iwaszkiewicz, found opportunities for rehabilitation and career advancement.24 The two former Black Brothers both proved capable language students, and they soon received significantly more responsibilities than twentyyear-old convicted revolutionaries would have the right to expect in other circumstances.25 Though both Witkiewicz and Iwaszkiewicz transitioned from youthful rebellion to imperial administration, neither escaped the suspicion of sympathy for the enemies of Russian rule. In 1833 the two Black Brothers

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found themselves locked in prison as part of the mass arrest of exiles provoked by the denunciation of a conspiracy between Polish exiles and the Kazakh elite. A Uniate priest in Omsk, Zygmunt Sierociński (1798–1837), and his fellow prisoner Roman Sanguszko had allegedly held several meetings with Kazakh sultans, including the father of the famous Orientalist Chokan Valikhanov (1835–65). At these meetings, Sierociński supposedly discussed preparations for escape to Bukhara, though some versions suggest a joint Kazakh-Polish plan to seize the city by force and begin a revolution from Siberia. Sierociński was executed, while Sanguszko managed to secure transfer to the Caucasus, but the same conspiracy affected the Black Brothers in Orenburg, though ultimately the military governor and “good Russian” of Polish exile lore, Vasilii Perovskii (1794–1857), determined that the denunciations had been fabricated by unreliable witnesses. The nineteenth-century historian V. A. Potto (1836–1911) described the result as proof of Perovskii’s sound mind and rationality. The Soviet historian Vladimir D’iakov (1919–95), though, suggested on the basis of inconsistencies in the testimony, which he later published, that Witkiewicz in particular had been planning to escape with the help of the Kazakhs.26 Whatever may have been his private opinions, Witkiewicz served the empire loyally from his release in 1833 to his mysterious death in 1839, demonstrating in his official correspondence and his memoir on Bukhara a perspective of imperial boosterism and civilizational superiority reminiscent of his superior, Perovskii, whose personal adjutant he soon became. In any case, a potential conspiracy between Kazakhs and Poles suffered both from a lack of enthusiastic participants as well as from logistical and organizational obstacles, of which the Russian Empire should have been perfectly aware. In the first place, escape into the Kazakh steppe presented almost impossible difficulties in terms of provisions; most explorers described traveling to the semiarid plains and deserts, with infrequent and largely saline water sources, as comparable to undertaking a voyage at sea.27 Moreover, European escapees ran the risk of being intercepted by Kazakhs or Turkmen and sold into slavery at the bazaars of Khiva, Khoqand, or Bukhara. In the best-case scenario, Kazakhs under Russian authority might apprehend escapees and return them to Orenburg in exchange for gifts or medals, which the Russian government happily distributed as a reward for loyalty.28 Witkiewicz himself played a role in distributing these tokens of imperial favor, as he relates in his account of a trip to Bukhara undertaken in 1836. Witkiewicz supposedly dictated this account to Vladimir Dal’ (1801–72) after returning from a mission to retrieve a Cossack family, which had been abducted during a Kazakh raid across the line of fortifications ringing the steppe, and his account betrays no support for the anti-imperial sentiments of the various subject peoples of Russia. Perovskii instructed Witkiewicz to

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join a caravan leaving Orenburg for Bukhara to retrieve this family, believed to be held by tribes pasturing near the Syr-Dar’ia river. The mission, in view of Witkiewicz’s linguistic talents, also included information-gathering and propagandizing loyalty to Russia. Perovskii’s instructions stipulated, “We need a diligent and educated official, who can view everything with enlightened and dispassionate eyes, who can through gentle nudges and advice direct the Kazakhs towards loyalty to the government and submission to the laws, as well as towards peaceful actions vis-à-vis their neighbors.”29 Among other instructions, Perovskii ordered Witkiewicz to warn the Kazakhs against sheltering runaway prisoners, as well as to undermine the influence of “the Asiatics,” meaning Khiva and Bukhara, whose agents “provoke the Kazakhs to disobedience, and . . . in teaching them Islamic religious tenets, arouse hatred towards Russians and encourage their capture and enslavement.”30 As with Łapiński’s Circassians, Perovskii’s Kazakhs had remained untouched by Islamic “fanaticism” and therefore appeared as potentially more friendly and loyal to imperial interests. Weather and other factors forced Witkiewicz’s mission off course, necessitating a sojourn to Bukhara in order to survive the winter; his party remained in Bukhara for forty-five days, after which Witkiewicz managed to locate the Cossack family and return home. In his report, Witkiewicz embraced his role as an agent of a civilizing empire. The account first discussed the oppression inflicted upon the Kazakhs by Khiva and their enmity toward the Russian Empire. He predicted, “If we were to stand with firm feet on the Syr-Dar’ia, there is no doubt that Khiva would be destroyed.” Witkiewicz then proceeded to propose an expedition to destroy Khiva, mentioning its weak defenses and disorganized system of government. Witkiewicz’s advice foreshadows (and likely influenced) the infamous expedition to Khiva undertaken by Perovskii in 1839, when a series of storms and poor logistics resulted in an abortive mission that claimed the lives of many Russians, Kazkahs, and camels.31 Describing the same event in his memoirs, Jabloński imputes the failure of the expedition (which he himself did not personally witness) to the arrogance of the empire and the incompetence of the Russian general leading the effort, thus offering another entry in his catalogue of needless suffering inflicted by the Russian Empire.32 Several decades later, the American traveler Eugene Schuyler (1840–90), recalling the abortive 1839 campaign in a history of the region, mentions that several Russians blamed the disastrous decision to conduct the campaign in winter to the machinations of a Polish “chief of staff,” a reference to one of the generals on the campaign who meant to ensure the failure of the expedition as revenge for Russian policy in Poland.33 The service of Witkiewicz, it seems, could never overcome the presumption that Poles remained committed to the irredentist cause.

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Nonetheless, Witkiewicz’s entire text demonstrates unapologetic boosterism for colonialism and the Russian civilizational mission. In his description of Bukhara, terms such as “disorder” and “filth” frequently make an appearance, as do alleged conspiracies against the author’s life as a “Russian” operative. Witkiewicz’s description of Bukhara also shows the limited possibilities of cooperation between Poles and non-Russians. The report mentions two escaped prisoners serving in Bukhara, including a Pole named Tadeusz Michalski who had fled Orenburg only to be captured by Kazakhs and sold to the Kushbegi (interior minister) of Bukhara. Michalski had converted to Islam and become a carpenter and metal worker, even gifting the khan two cannons. Another escapee, a Tatar, had deserted the Russian army in 1831 to fight with the Polish rebels in Lithuania. Captured again and sent to Orenburg, he managed to escape by stealing a horse and fleeing into the steppe. When Witkiewicz met him, this Tatar was serving in the khan’s army and dreamed of leaving for elsewhere. Rather than sympathy for a fellow confederate, though, Witkiewicz uses this story as an example of the problem of Tatars fleeing Orenburg into the steppe, where they—unlike Poles and other Europeans—often found shelter. Witkiewicz proposed that Tatars should not serve on the Orenburg line but should be deported into the interior of Russia whence they would not be able to escape.34 Witkiewicz’s report concludes with a recommendation to reward certain Kazakhs who had assisted him in reaching Bukhara and locating the Cossack family. By the time the Russian bureaucracy had approved the resolution and found the necessary fifty silver rubles, Witkiewicz had moved on to further adventures for the empire in Afghanistan and Persia. It thus fell to the other Black Brother, Iwaszkiewicz, to deliver these rewards from his post in the steppe.35 Like Witkiewicz, Iwaszkiewicz had made his career on the Kazakh steppe, transferring from the army to civilian government first in Orenburg, then in Omsk, where he married an Orthodox woman and fathered six children (all baptized as Orthodox). His knowledge of the Kazakh language and nomadic customs proved invaluable to the Chancellery of Siberian Kazakhs, which managed the territories of contemporary Central and Eastern Kazakhstan. Iwaszkiewicz served on the commission until at least 1860, receiving periodic promotions and continual praise from his superiors despite the fact that he remained under secret police surveillance.36 Iwaszkiewicz never collected his thoughts or experiences in a systematic way, but his friend Adolf Januszkiewicz, an exiled participant of the 1830 uprising, publicized the former’s activities in a diary kept in 1846 along with an extensive series of correspondence, released posthumously in Paris in 1861 as The Life of Adolf Januszkiewicz and his Letters from the Kazakh

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Steppe. The circumstances of the diary originated from the greatest challenge to Russian rule on the steppe in the nineteenth century, the revolt of “Khan” Kenesary from 1837 to 1847. Kenesary led a series of attacks on Russian garrisons, primarily in response to the reforms of 1822 and 1824 that had abolished the title of khan (Kenesary claimed the title, but the Russian officials consistently corresponded to him using the lesser designation of “sultan”) and established administrative divisions complete with Cossack fortress deep in the steppe. Variously described as a malcontent rebel, a national-liberation hero, and a feudal reactionary—depending on the historiographic era—Kenesary waged an incessant guerilla war against the poorly equipped tsarist government by exploiting the still valuable nomadic advantage, the ability to disappear into the seemingly barren steppe when pressed. At different times, clans from all three zhuzes supported him, and the self-proclaimed khan subjected those reluctant to support his cause or provide supplies to retribution sanctioned by Kazakh customary law, barymta (Rus. baranta), meaning the seizing of livestock or horses in order to force a settlement. Though checked by the counterattacks of Russian forces and their Kazakh sultans, Kenesary remained undefeated until he was murdered in 1847 by the Kyrgyz, to whom he had fled to appeal for assistance.37 Januszkiewicz showed little approval for his fellow revolutionary. Censorship may have played a role, since much of Januszkiewicz’s writings originated as correspondence that necessarily passed through the hands of the police, but the author’s repeated references to the cruelty of Russian officials suggest a mental rather than political barrier.38 Januszkiewicz and Iwaszkiewicz participated in a military mission to the eastern steppe and Semirech’e (the area around present-day Almaty) to pacify Kenesary and receive the submission of the senior zhuz. The author evinced a certain sympathy for the Kazakhs under Russian administration, but he also inserted frequent reference to the “lethargy” and lack of industry of the Kazakhs, as well as the primitiveness of Kazakh customs and justice, particularly with regard to women. In fact, Januszkiewicz reserved his highest praise for the Kyrgyz, whom he calls “the manliest of the Kazakhs [sic!]” and “true confederates of Marat,” a reference to their supposedly more republican and virtuous character.39 Januszkiewicz, though, never encountered the Kyrgyz personally, so his appreciation seems to be based more on his own mythologization than observation. Kenesary, in contrast, mostly appeared in the text as a kind of ominous, destabilizing force; Januszkiewicz compared the Kazakh leader to the Numidian king Jugurtha (c. 160–104 bce) and the Algerian anticolonial warrior, Abdelkader (1808–83), both of whom failed to prevent imperial conquest.40 Januszkiewicz did inquire of a female Kazakh bard, who lamented in verse how the sultans had sold her

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people out to Russia for gold, whether she could sing about Kenesary. Her response is that she did not know a song, “but she was obviously lying. The elders had warned her not to sing all her songs about Russians.”41 One of the reasons that neither Januszkiewicz nor Iwaszkiewicz could sympathize with Kenesary’s goals and complaints related to the rebel’s practice of barymta, which the Russian reforms of 1822 and 1824 had classified as a crime. Like many Russian authorities, Januszkiewicz and Iwaszkiewicz fundamentally misunderstand barymta, which they viewed as a kind of lone wolf cattle theft and a symbol of the steppe’s disorder. In one episode, Januszkiewicz describes an evening with the Kazakhs of Semipalatinsk, where Iwaszkiewicz acted out a scene of barymta in a kind of kabuki play. The performance ended with Iwaszkiewicz pointing at one of the Kazakhs and dramatically stating “This is the thief!” much to the delight of onlookers who wanted to know how he guessed. Januszkiewicz muses that predicting the culprit had been simple, “since every Kazakh has either stolen horses or thought about it.” In another episode, Januszkiewicz describes the guide appointed to lead their party from Ayagoz to Semirech’e as typical of those “who spent their early years in barymta.”42 Januszkiewicz’s friend from exile and frequent correspondent Gustaw Zieliński (1809–81) portrayed barymta similarly in his poem Kirgiz (published in Leipzig, 1847), a piece of Romantic exotica reminiscent of Alexander Pushkin’s (1799–1837) Gypsies, in which an elder biy’s (judge’s) youthful exploits of barymta come back to haunt him in the form of an escaped prisoner bent on revenge.43 Januszkiewicz’s views on barymta drew heavily on the Russian Empire’s most famous authority on Kazakhs, Aleksei Levshin (1797–1879), whose ethnographic study enjoyed enormous currency in Russian academic circles, though Chokan Valikhanov claimed that Levshin fundamentally misunderstood Kazakh society. Levshin, for example, promoted the notion that Kazakhs remained nominally Muslim and, more importantly, constituted a wild, ungovernable people. Januszkiewicz found Levshin’s views highly relevant and, in a critique of Zieliński’s draft poem Stepy (The steppes), urged his friend to read Levshin and correct his misconceptions.44 When Zieliński published the poem in 1857, he showed himself to have taken his friend’s advice and cited Levshin when discussing barymta as a symptom of disorder and backwardness: “The Kazakhs have all the bad habits of people, who have not shaken themselves out of wildness . . . a characteristic feature of their customs is barymta, which is the night-time stealing of a herd of horses. At one time, barymta had the appearance of a certain kind of legalized vengeance, which compensates for the lack of laws and justice.”45 Barymta, though, as Paolo Sartori and Pavel Shabley have recently argued, served as a vital instrument in keeping order and forcing parties to come to agreement. Russian officials found themselves compelled to sanc-

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tion barymta on the Syr-Dar’ia steppe in order to maintain order and balance among the Kazakh tribes.46 Ironically, the practice of seizing another’s property to compel a recalcitrant party to return to court was an accepted part of the legal system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a practice known as zajazd and canonized in Adam Mickiewicz’s (1798–1855) famous epic poem, Pan Tadeusz. Januszkiewicz himself, even if he could not have read his friend’s work from exile, grew up on the estate of the famously wealthy and powerful Radziwiłł princely family, whose various members were no strangers to the practice of zajazd. One might think that Januszkiewicz would have displayed some sympathy for an analogous practice, but the mental barrier separating his European civilization from the wild East proved too strong.47 On the Kazakh steppe, Januszkiewicz could choose to embody the rational standards of his empire rather than associate himself with those disorderly customs, which had provided a pretext for the same empire to annex his homeland.

Orientalists by Exigency in the Caucasus If the steppe nomads remained backward and barbaric, the Caucasus highlanders initially presented themselves in the minds of Poles as virtuous freedom fighters uncorrupted by modernity, while Shamil stood tall as a Cato-like figure of justice and morality to whom all should submit. As with Januszkiewicz’s Kyrgyz, though, the cult of Shamil among Polish émigrés largely stemmed from the fact that, despite numerous expeditions, no one seems to have actually met the most famous anti-Russian leader or experienced his regime.48 Those Poles who joined the Circassians, mostly intending to travel from the Black Sea coast to Shamil, left a record of the highlanders they did encounter broadly similar in assumptions and categorizations to those writings about the Kazakh steppe. In 1846, while Januszkiewicz was en route to Semirech’e, the second in a series Polish missions landed on the shores of Circassia in the hope of sparking a broader antiRussian uprising by combining the Circassians with the Chechens under Shamil’s leadership. Exiles in Paris had observed the numerous resources that Russia had to expend on pacifying the Circassians since the 1830s, and the presence of Polish exiles in the Caucasus army—never as many as assumed—seemed to offer an opportunity to create a combined army of highlanders and Polish deserters. Sefer Bey (+1860), an exiled Circassian chief in Istanbul, stoked the ambitions and plans of Adam Czartoryski and his agent in Istanbul, Michał Czajkowski, in the hope of exploiting the prince’s connections in France to secure his own return (presumably to power as well as to home).49 When, in the 1840s, the Chechen religious leader Shamil

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declared a holy war against Russia, the project of sending a Polish mission to the Caucasus in order to coordinate the activities of the highlanders with the still-theoretical Polish deserters took on new urgency. Czartoryski expressed his hope that a joint mission of Poles and Circassians could provoke a general uprising among the Don and Kuban Cossacks—presumed to be sympathetic to Poland because of the Cossacks’ historic “love of liberty”—as well as the Tatars, Georgians, and other subjugated peoples of Russia.50 In a letter to one of the Polish agents, Kazimierz Gordon (+1847), dated 17 May 1846, Czajkowski even expressed hope of convincing Shamil to take leadership over the Karbardians, Tatars, Kazakhs, and other “Muslim and pagan peoples.”51 As may be anticipated, the results of the serial expeditions undertaken from 1844 through 1847 by three different Polish officers, like the later mission of Łapiński in 1857–59, produced meager results. As Przemysław Adamczewski has recently shown, Poles did not desert from the Russian army in greater numbers than any other group, and in fact most Poles continued to serve the Russian Empire loyally in the hope of gaining promotion and establishing a career.52 Many of those who did desert, as the Polish agents admitted, ended up not in the multinational, anti-imperial army but as household slaves of wealthy Circassians. Perhaps most problematic of all, Poles lacked a clear understanding of the culture, language, and outlook of the various Circassian tribes. In particular, émigré agents assumed that the Circassians, perceived as a monolithic entity, had the same aim as Shamil and that the two groups should unite in a common, anti-imperial front. Ludwik Zwierkowski (alias Lenoir, 1803–60) and Kazimierz Gordon, who spent 1844–47 in sequential missions, soon learned of the enormous diversity of customs, practices, and ideas among the Circassian tribes, and both were surprised to discover that no one in Circassia was particularly enthusiastic about combining forces with Shamil. In fact, several of Shamil’s representatives in Circassia had been murdered by Circassians for attempting to subject them to the imam’s rule.53 Ironically for a group nominally committed to the establishment of liberty, the Poles’ greatest frustration with the Circassians came to be these tribes’ unwillingness to submit to Shamil and accept a unified structure of command. When the first missions began in the 1840s, Czajkowski attributed to the Circassians the same simple piety, Spartan virtue and commitment to liberty, that he imagined to dwell in the heart of the Cossacks. In an appeal to the Circassians composed prior to Gordon’s departure for the Caucasus in June 1846, Czajkowski began with bizarre, religiously charged language, perhaps reflecting his assumptions of the group’s primitivity: “Tsar Nicholas is Satan’s disciple and a servant against God. Many nations have succumbed to the temptations of Satan and permitted the tyranny of the

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Muscovites to come to them.”54 Proceeding from prophetic language to the civic republican vocabulary of the old commonwealth, Czajkowski warned his listeners that the tsar would not seek open confrontation but would corrupt the Circassians’ virtue through trade and manipulation, inducing them to sacrifice freedom for material comfort. The letter concluded with an exhortation to unite with all the other peoples of the Caucasus, sermonizing that “your strength is in your unity and in obedience to a single leader.”55 One wonders what the Circassian listeners thought when hearing such rhetoric; from Lenoir’s earlier report of an abortive mission from 1844 to 1846, we know that the Circassians of Ubykhia, where Lenoir landed, reacted skeptically to the appearance of Polish freedom fighters on their shores. In a dispatch from August 1844, Lenoir described a meeting held with the local bey of Eski-Zara after his landing. The bey had posed a series of practical questions concerning the funding of the mission and the length of the Poles’ commitment. He observed, in Lenoir’s words, that charlatans (perhaps reference to British adventurer David Urquhart [1805–1877], who also briefly took up the cause of the Circassians56) frequently found their way to Circassia, many claiming to be the sons of royalty or extraordinary ambassadors later disavowed by embassies; these adventurers, the unnamed bey continued, brought little money and imposed significant human and material costs on the region. Lenoir tried to assure the assembled Circassians that the massive desertion of Poles would add significant resources, but the question may have been a bit uncomfortable to a representative of a cash-poor, privately financed venture. As Czartoryski himself admitted, “Love of the patria and liberty are our main resources.”57 In any case, Lenoir was not primarily interested in the Circassians; he, like his successors, hoped to reach the legendary Shamil. The difficulty of the journey to Chechnya from Circassia, made virtually impossible due to the Russian occupation of the plains, not to mention the indifference and even hostility of the Circassians to such a mission, prevented Lenoir’s plan, and an injury forced him to return to Istanbul in April 1846. His successor, Gordon, fared no better and in fact spent most of his tour as a virtual hostage of Kieranduk, the local notable whom Polish authorities hoped would become Shamil’s analogue in Circassia. Kieranduk prevented Gordon from traveling under pretext of the custom of hospitality, but in fact he hoped that Gordon would provide metallurgical and arms-manufacturing services, as he later claimed Czajkowski had promised.58 Meanwhile, Gordon’s other host and supposed collaborator, Hassan, openly admitted that he furnished information to the Russians in exchange for money, a practice mimicked by most members of his family. When Gordon, who claimed that the Russians had placed a 2,000-ruble bounty on his head, confronted Hassan about his actions, Hassan allegedly responded, “Yes, I tell the Russians

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everything, but I am also your friend and I do not do anything stupid.”59 Gordon, like seemingly all subsequent adventurers, never reached Shamil; in fact Kieranduk murdered him, either because Kieranduk was a Russian agent or, more probably, because Gordon had conducted a romantic liaison with his host’s wife.60 Before his tour was abruptly concluded, Gordon— completely dependent on an unreliable dragoman and short of cash—had already become disillusioned with his mission and “allies”: “I have learned that I cannot completely trust the Circassians. Today they say one thing, tomorrow another. One has to be extremely careful not to lose all one’s money to them.”61 Cognizant that their presence in the Caucasus among the Circassians could be useful to émigré authorities in terms of producing knowledge for future agents, both Lenoir and Gordon authored ethnographic reports about the Circassians. The reports contain some geographical descriptions of the region along with discussions of the tribal divisions in Circassian society. Most notably, both authors agreed that Islam among the Circassians remained relatively weak and superficially observed. In fact, it seems that Shamil was partially responsible for spreading Islam, often in a manner not to everyone’s taste. There was some suggestion that the Circassians had originally been Christian and that many, particularly in the south, would look favorably on Christian missionaries. Gordon for example, helpfully explained that “Islam has made great progress in this territory, but the Circassians are not intolerant as they do not know how to reason about religion.”62 Similar to Łapiński’s later classification of the Circassians as freedom-loving Indo-Europeans, Gordon’s distancing the Circassians from popular understandings of Islam aimed to create the most positive image possible, particularly to those funding the enterprise. Unsurprisingly, the reports contained a great number of Oriental stereotypes about the Circassians, many of which appear almost verbatim in Januszkiewicz’s descriptions of the Kazakhs. The Circassians in Gordon’s telling were brave and just, but also ignorant and avaricious; they lacked order and had no conception of fixed, reasoned ideas. Only the Russian invasion had united the disparate tribes and aroused the Circassians from lethargy. “The Circassians, thus animated, could move towards civilization, liberty, order, and the good of humanity, or towards vandalism and the tyranny by which Moscow is animated.”63 More curious for revolutionaries aiming to restore the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Gordon employed the term Rzeczpospolita (commonwealth, republic) in a negative sense when describing the Circassians. “This is a Rzeczpospolita in the true meaning of the term; there is not a common meeting point. In such a country, I doubt that Kieranduk can achieve the same level of notoriety as Shamil in Chechnya.” In another passage, he editorialized, “This is a Rzecz-

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pospolita, where it is extremely difficult to keep a secret or operate in a concentrated manner.”64 Earlier, Lenoir had observed that Shamil issued instructions to forbid the enslavement of Polish deserters; he later lamented that Shamil’s authority could not be enforced in Circassia as in Chechnya and Dagestan. Czajkowski, who quickly tired of Gordon’s complaints (and blamed his agent for not practicing metallurgy when requested), had instructed Gordon to convince the Circassians to submit to unconditional acceptance of Shamil’s power, but it seems that the Circassians preferred their Rzeczpospolita.65

Conclusion In 1860, shortly after returning to Istanbul and a few years prior to the publication of Die Bergvölker des Kaukasus, Łapiński submitted a curious memorandum to the Russian consulate. This voluntary, anti-Russian freedom fighter, who had spent years living among the Circassian tribes, unexpectedly delivered a proposal to the Russians on the most effective way to conquer Circassia. He suggested that the Russian government try to turn certain, more sympathetic tribes to Christianity while instituting repressive measures against the Islamic clergy. He further proposed that the peoples of Circassia should be given a choice of voluntarily disarming themselves or resettling to the interior of Russia. The memorandum effectively supported a campaign of terror, forced exile, and colonization, backed by statistics on the size and productivity of Circassian villages. The memorandum concluded, “We can only consider this land occupied and subjugated when the tribes have been exiled or disarmed and the banks of the Black Sea have been settled by Russian colonists.”66 Łapiński’s biographer, Jerzy Łątka, admits that the existence of this memorandum casts a disturbing pall over his subject, as such a document clashed significantly with Łapiński’s lifelong animosity toward the Russians. Łątka proposed as an explanation that Łapiński may have been trying to goad the Russians into a total war that would finally have united the Circassians.67 Perhaps, though, Łapiński’s sudden and singular transformation into a Russian agent could be explained not as an individual, psychological crisis but rather as a momentary dissolution of the largely imaginary barrier separating anti-imperial adventurers from agents of empire. The categories of “virtuous Pole” and “Asiatic Russian,” much like the distinctions between “freedom-fighting highlander” and “servile nomad,” functioned more as preexisting templates than as reflections of observed reality. Underneath these categories, Russian officials, Polish administrators, and Polish revolutionaries shared a largely instrumental, essentializing, and indeed im-

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perialist view of Caucasus highlanders and Kazakh nomads, in which the observers stood for European order and enlightenment. The borderland peoples of the empire, in this view, could be categorized in terms of their convenience for the advancement of a given cause. Common references to ancient Rome and mythologized interpretations of the Ukrainian Cossacks served as bases for comparison and justification. In point of fact, there is little difference between suggesting that Circassians and Tatars be forcibly relocated or that all Circassian tribes should submit to a foreign despot like Shamil. The first suggestion, though, due to the nature of the audience, had a chance of implementation; the second betrayed desperation and frustrated hopes. In both cases, though, the author assumed that the needs and desires of a given group should yield to interests of their external cause. Łapiński’s memorandum thus reveals a brief moment when the carefully constructed antemurale separating the “freedom-fighting revolutionary” from the “agent of empire” disappeared, leaving unchanged a view of Eurasian frontier peoples as passive or, at best, insufficiently obedient, objects in a larger conflict. That Łapiński soon returned to anti-imperial activities suggests that crossing over this wall and returning to the other side posed little difficulty for self-defined representatives of European civilization. Curtis G. Murphy is assistant professor of European history in the Department of History, Philosophy and Religious Studies at Nazarbayev University in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. He received his PhD from Georgetown University in 2011 with a focus on East European and Russian history. He is the author of From Citizens to Subjects: City, State, and the Enlightenment in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). Notes 1. Teofil Łapiński, Die Bergvölker des Kaukasus und ihr Freiheitskampf gegen die Russen [The highlanders of the Caucasus and their struggle for liberty against the Russians] (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1863), 2:242–243. See also the Russian translation: Teofil Lapinskii, Gortsy Kavkaza i ikh osvoboditel’naia bor’ba protiv russkikh (Nal’chik: El’-Fa, 1995), 2:433–37. 2. See: M. V. Leskinen, “Turganskaia teoriia Fr. G. Dukhin’skogo i ee kritika v kontekste skladyvaniia kontseptsii ‘velikorusskosti’ v rossiiskoi nauke” [The Turanian theory of F. G. Dukhin’skii and its criticism in the context of the development of the ‘Great Russian’ concept in Russian social science], Slavianskii al’manakh [Slavic almanac] 1–2 (2016): 164–180. 3. Łapiński, Die Bergvölker, 2:246; 1:1–13. 4. In addition to those texts treated here, see Bronislas Zaleski, La vie des Steppes Kirghizes [Life on the Kazakh steppes] (Paris: J. B. Vasseur, 1865); Jakub Gordon (Maksimilian Jatowt), Soldat, czyli sześć lat w Orenburgu i Uralsku [A soldier, or six

62

5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

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years in Orenburg and Uralsk] (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1865); Adam Suzin, “Wycieczka w stepy kirgiskie odbyta w 1834 roku” [A journey to the Kazakh steppes undertaken in 1834], Zesłaniec [The exile] 29 (2007): 74–92. This idea goes back at least to the period of Pugachev’s revolt of 1773–74. See Franco Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1768–1776: The First Crisis, trans. R. Burr Litchfield (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 155–63; Andrzej Nowak, Jak rozbić rosyjskie imperium? Idee polskiej polityki wschodniej (1733–1921) [How to break up the Russian Empire? The ideas of Polish Ostpolitik] (Warsaw: Gryf, 1999). For the Soviet view, see G. C. Sapargaliev and V. A. D’iakov, Obshchestvenno-politicheskaia deiatel’nost’ ssyl’nykh poliakov v dorevoliutsionnom Kazakhstanie [The social and political activities of exiled Poles in pre-revolutionary Kazakhstan] (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1971). For an indication of this, see Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Respubliki Kazakhstana [Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan] (hereafter TsGARK), f. 396, o. 1, d. 1506 (On Resettling Polish Political Exiles from Tobolsk to Petropavlovsk, 1869), 2–2r; see also Przemysław Adamczewski, Polski mit etnopolityczny i Kaukaz [The Polish ethnopolitical myth and the Caucasus] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo IS PAN, 2019), 285–90. Rufin Piotrowski, My Escape from Siberia, trans. E. S. (London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1863); Rufin Piotrowski, Pamiętnik z pobytu na Syberyi [A memoir from a sojourn in Siberia], 3 vols. (Posen: n.p., 1860). Sarah Badcock, A Prison without Walls? Eastern Siberian Exile in the Last Years of Tsardom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 18–20. Ludwik Krzyżanowski, “Joseph Conrad’s “Prince Roman: Fact and Fiction,” Polish Review 1, no. 4 (August 1956): 22–62. Biblioteka Książąt Czartoryskich [The Princes Czartoryski Library], manuscript [ms.] 5437 (Materials Concerning the Caucasus, 1833–1848), 112. Franciszek Duchiński, Les origines slaves: Pologne et Ruthénie [The origins of Slavs: Poland and Ruthenia] (Paris: F. Didot, 1861), 24–32; Leskinen, “Turganskaia teoriia,” 169–71. See Ian C. Campbell, Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazakh Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731–1917 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 49–53. Julian Jasieńczyk (Adolf Jabłoński), Dziesięć lat niewoli moskiewskiej [Ten years of Muscovite slavery] (Leipzig: n.p., 1867), 367. Łapiński, Die Bergvölker, 1:13–14; Michał Czajkowski, Kozaczyzna w Turcyi: Dzieło w trzech częściach [Cossackdom in Turkey: A work in three parts] (Paris: L. Martinet, 1857), 123–27; A. A. Prigarin and D. V. Sen’, “Panslavizm Mikhala Chaikovskogo i istoriia kazachestva v Osmanskoi imperii” [Mikhail Chaikovskii’s Pan-Slavism and the history of Cossackdom in the Ottoman Empire], in Poliaki v Rossii: Istoriia i sovremennost’ [Poles in Russia: History and the present] (Krasnodar: Kubanskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2007), 147–60. Jasieńczyk, Dziesięć lat, 371–76. Ludwik Stuś, Ludzie i wypadki z 1861–1865: Obrazki z powstania [People and circumstances from 1861–1865: Images from the insurrection], vol. 1 (Lemberg: Gubrynowicz i Schimdt, 1894), 129, 132. A similar reputation followed Józef Os-

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17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

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mołowski, who never played any role in revolutionary activity. See Pavel Shabley and Paolo Sartori, Eksperimenty imperii: Adat, shariat, i proizvodstvo znanii v kazakhskoi stepi [Experiments of empire: Adat, Shariah, and the production of knowledge of the Kazakh steppe] (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2019), 216–20. Żywot Adolfa Januszkiewicz i jego listy z step kirgiskich [The life of Adolf Januszkiewicz and his letters from the Kazakh steppes] (Paris: J. Claye, 1861), 261. Adamczewski, Polski mit, 135–64; Ludwik Widerszal, Sprawy kaukaskie w polityce europejskiej w latach 1831–1864 [Caucasian affairs in European politics from 1831 to 1864], 2nd edn. (Warsaw: Neriton Press, 2011). Il’ias Esenberlin, Kochevniki: Istoricheskaia trilogiia [Nomads: A historical trilogy], trans. M. Simashko (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literature, 1983). Part 3, “Khan Kene,” features a Polish exile, named “Iosif Gerburt.” Prometheanism began as a plan to weaken the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union by encouraging the numerous non-Russian populations to revolt; Piłsudski’s policy mainly aimed at Ukraine, but representatives of the Caucasus and the Turkic peoples of Central Asia also variously embraced the idea in the 1920s and 1930s. See Etienne Coupeaux, “De la mer noir à la mer baltique: La circulation des idées dans la ‘triangle’ Istanbul-Crimee-Pologne,” [From the Black to Baltic Seas: The circulation of ideas in the Istanbul-Crimea-Poland Triangle]. Cahiers d’études sur la méditerranée orientale et la monde turco-iranien [Papers for the study of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Turco-Iranian world], no. 15 (1993): 107–19; Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 40–59. BC, ms. 5438 (Caucasus Documents, 1844–1846), 11–22; O. V. Matveev, “Poliaki v ukrepleniiakh Chernomorskoi Beregovoi Linii v 1830–1850-e gg” [Poles in the fortifications of the Black Sea coast frontier, 1830–1850], in Poliaki v Rossii: Vekhi istorii [Poles in Russia: Landmarks of history] (Krasnodar: Kubanskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2008), 98–100. V. A. D’iakov, “Materialy k biografi i Sigizmunda Serakovskogo” [Materials for a biography of Sigizmund Serakovskii], in Vosstanie 1863 g. i russko-pol’skie revoliutsionnye sviazi 60kh godov: Sbornik statei i materialov [The 1863 uprising and Russian-Polish revolutionary connections of the 1860s: A collection of articles and sources], ed. V. D. Koroliuk and I. S. Miller (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960), 63–124. Władysław Jesiewski, “Stowarzyszenie Czarnych Braci w Krożach na Litwie i kazachstańskie losy jego członków” [The black brothers club of Kroży in Lithuanian and the Kazakhstani fate of its members], in Polacy w Kazachstanie: Historia i współczesność [Poles in Kazakhstan: History and the present], ed. Stanisław Ciesielski and Antoni Kuczyński (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1996), 81–95; Sapargaliev and D’iakov, Obshchestvenno-politicheskaia deiatel’nost’, 29–69. G. B. Izbasarova, Kazakhskaia step’ Orenburgskogo vedomstva v imperskikh proektakh i praktikakh pervoi poloviny XIX veka [The Kazakh steppe in the jurisdiction of Orenburg in imperial projects and plans of the first half of the nineteenth century] (Moscow: I P Lysenko, 2018), 72–157. Ibid., 245–77. V. Potto, “Ssyl’nye poliaki v Orenburge” [Exiled Poles in Orenburg], Istoricheskii Vestnik, [Historical gazette] 38 (1889): 584–606; Władimir Djakow and Aleksei

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27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

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Nagajew, Partyzantka Zaliwskiego i jej pogłosy (1832–1835) [The partisan activity of Zaliwski and its echoes (1832–1835)], trans. Maria Kotowska (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1979), 63–213, 219–62. Campbell, Knowledge and the Ends of Empire, 16–23; Alexander Morrison, The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 83–112 See, for example, TsGARK, f. 4, o. 1, d. 1566 (On rewarding Iurdykbaev for returning run-away soldiers Voitovich and Kazmerchyk, 1833), 1–5. TsGARK, f. 4, o. 1, d. 317, (On the mission of Praporshchik Vitkevich to the Kazakh steppe, 1835–1837), 9. Ibid., 10–11. “Zapiska sostavlennaia po rasskazam Orenburgskogo lineinogo batal’ona No. 10 praporshchika Vitkevicha otnositel’no puti ego v Bukharu i obratno” [Notes composed from the accounts of Vitkevich, praporshchik in the no. 10 Orenburg Line Battalion, regarding his journey to Bukhara and his return], in Zapiski o bukharskom khanstve [Accounts of the khanate of Bukhara] (Moscow: Nauka, 2014), 103–55. Jasieńczyk, Dziesięć lat, 330–40. Eugene Schuyler, Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara and Kuldja, (New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 1876), 2:330; Morrison, Russian Conquest of Central Asia, 92. “Zapiska Vitkevicha,” 27–29. TsGARK, f. 4, o. 1, d. 317, pp. 31–31r. TsGARK, f. 345, o. 1, d. 534 (On the supervision of chinovnik Ivashkevich, a member of the Black Brothers society, 1855–1857), 1–10; f. 345, o. 1, d. 548 (On Assessor Ivashkevich’s request to reinstate his hereditary noble status, 1857–1860), 1–17. See V. Z. Galiev, “Istoricheskii ocherk” [Historical Sketch], in Natsional’no-osvoboditel’naia bor’ba Kazakhskogo naroda pod predvoditel’stvom Kenesary Kasymova (Sbornik dokumentov) [The national liberation battle of the Kazakh people under the leadership of Kenesary Kasymov (a document collection)], ed. M. K. Kozybaev (Almaty: Gylym, 1996), 11–20; E. Bekmakhanov, Kazakhstan v 20–40 gody XIX veka [Kazakhstan in the 1820s–1840s] (Alma-Ata: Qazaq universiteti, 1992). On censorship of Januszkiewicz’s letters, see TsGARK, f. 374, o. 1, d. 61 (Instructions from the head of the gendarmes about the correspondence of political prisoners, 1847), 2–3. Before the twentieth century, Russian and European sources referred to the Kazakhs as “Kirgiz” or “Kirgiz Cossacks,” while modern-day Kyrgyz usually received the appellation of “Kara-Kirgiz,” meaning “Black Kirgiz.” Żywot Adolfa Januszkiewicza, 59, 69. Ibid., 270. Ibid., 44–45, 108–9. Gustaw Zieliński, Kirgiz: Powieść [Kazakh: A tale] (Leipzig: E. Ł. Kasparowicz, 1847). Campbell, Knowledge, 50–53; Adolf Januszkiewicz, Listy z Syberii [Letters from Siberia], ed. Halina Gerber (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 2003), 262–63. Gustaw Zieliński, Stepy: Poemat [The steppes] (Posen: Księgarnia J. K. Żupańskiego, 1856), x–xii.

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46. Sartori and Shabley, Eksperimenty imperii, 222–23. 47. Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz, trans. Kenneth R. Mackenzie (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1992), 303–69. 48. Karol Kalinowski claimed to have met Shamil and served alongside a few deserters from the Russian army after his own abduction from the Russian army, but Kalinowski had no connections to the Hotel Lambert. See Karol Kalinowski, Pamiętnik mojej żołnierki na Kaukazie i niewoli u Szamila [Memoir of my military service in the Caucasus and captivity with Shamil], ed. Przemysław Adamczewski (Warsaw: Dialog, 2017). 49. BC, ms. 5437, 5–8, 153–59. 50. BC ms. 5438, 49–84. 51. Ibid., 217. 52. Adamczewski, Polski mit, 299–310. 53. Łapiński, Die Bergvölker, 1:268–80. 54. BC, ms. 5438, 161–62. 55. Ibid., 167–68. 56. See Charles King, “Imagining Circassia: David Urquhart and the Making of North Caucasus Nationalism,” Russian Review 66, no. 2 (April 2007): 238–55. 57. BC, ms. 5438, 30–31, 62. 58. Ibid., 252. 59. Ibid., 269–70. 60. BC, ms. 5439 (Caucasus documents, 1847), 244; Adamczewski, Polski mit, 146–48. 61. BC, ms. 5438, 280–81. 62. Ibid., 415. 63. Ibid., 417. 64. Ibid., 255, 272. 65. Ibid., 94–95, 212. 66. Akty sobrannye Kavkazkoi arkheograficheskoi komissei [Documents collected by the Caucasus Archeographic Commission] (Tiflis: Tipofrafiia Glavnago Upravlenia Namestnika Kavkaza, 1904), 12:846–50. 67. Jerzy Łątka, Romantyczny kondotier [A romantic condottiere] (Wrocław: Śląsk, 1988), 125–27.

Bibliography

Archival Sources and Manuscripts Biblioteka Książąt Czartoryskich [The Princes Czartoryski Library] (BC), manuscripts 5437, 5438, 5439. Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Respubliki Kazakhstana [Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan] (TsGARK) f. 4, o. 1, d. 317; d. 1566. f. 345, o. 1, d. 534; d. 548. f. 374, o. 1, d. 61. f. 396, o. 1, d. 1506.

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Published Primary Sources Akty sobrannye Kavkazkoi arkheograficheskoi komissei [Documents collected by the Caucasus Archeographic Commission]. Vol. 12. Tiflis: Tipofrafiia Glavnago Upravlenia Namestnika Kavkaza, 1904. Czajkowski, Michał. Kozaczyzna w Turcyi: Dzieło w trzech częściach [Cossackdom in Turkey: A work in three parts]. Paris: L. Martinet, 1857. Duchiński, Franciszek. Les origines slaves: Pologne et Ruthénie [The origins of Slavs: Poland and Ruthenia]. Paris: F. Didot, 1861. Gordon, Jakub (Maksimilian Jatowt). Soldat, czyli sześć lat w Orenburgu i Uralsku [A soldier, or six years in Orenburg and Uralsk]. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1865. Januszkiewicz, Adolf. Listy z Syberii [Letters from Siberia]. Edited by Halina Gerber. Warsaw: Czytelnik, 2003. Jasieńczyk, Julian (Adolf Jabłoński). Dziesięć lat niewoli moskiewskiej [Ten years of Muscovite slavery]. Leipzig: n.p., 1867. Kalinowski, Karol. Pamiętnik mojej żołnierki na Kaukazie i niewoli u Szamila [Memoir of my military service in the Caucasus and captivity with Shamil]. Edited by Przemysław Adamczewski. Warsaw: Dialog, 2017. Łapiński, Teofil. Die Bergvölker des Kaukasus und ihr Freiheitskampf gegen die Russen [The highlanders of the Caucasus and their struggle for liberty against the Russians]. 2 vols. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1863. Piotrowski, Rufin. My Escape from Siberia. Translated by E. S. London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1863. ———. Pamiętnik z pobytu na Syberyi [A memoir from a sojourn in Siberia], 3 vols. Posen: n.p., 1860. Schuyler, Eugene. Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara and Kuldja. 2 vols. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 1876. Stuś, Ludwik. Ludzie i wypadki z 1861–1865: Obrazki z powstania [People and circumstances from 1861–1865: Images from the insurrection]. Vol. 1. Lemberg: Gubrynowicz i Schimdt, 1894. Suzin, Adam. “Wycieczka w stepy kirgiskie odbyta w 1834 roku” [A journey to the Kazakh steppes undertaken in 1834]. Zesłaniec [The exile] 29 (2007): 74–92. Zaleski, Bronslas. La vie des Steppes Kirghizes [Life on the Kazakh steppes]. Paris: J. B. Vasseur, 1865. “Zapiska sostavlennaia po rasskazam Orenburgskogo lineinogo batal’ona No. 10 praporshchika Vitkevicha otnositel’no puti ego v Bukharu i obratno” [Notes composed from the accounts of Vitkevich, praporshchik in the no. 10 Orenburg Line Battalion, regarding his journey to Bukhara and his return]. In Zapiski o bukharskom khanstve [Accounts of the khanate of Bukhara]. Edited by N. A. Khalifin. Moscow: Nauka, 1983. Zieliński, Gustaw. Kirgiz: Powieść [Kazakh: A tale]. Leipzig: E. Ł. Kasparowicz, 1876. ———. Stepy: Poemat [The steppes]. Posen: Księgarnia J. K. Żupańskiego, 1856. Żywot Adolfa Januszkiewicz i jego listy z step kirgiskich [The life of Adolf Januszkiewicz and his letters from the Kazakh steppes]. Paris: J. Claye, 1861.

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Secondary Works Adamczewski, Przemysław. Polski mit etnopolityczny i Kaukaz [The Polish ethnopolitical myth and the Caucasus]. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo IS PAN, 2019. Badcock, Sarah. A Prison without Walls? Eastern Siberian Exile in the Last Years of Tsardom. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Bekmakhanov, Ermukhan. Kazakhstan v 20–40 gody XIX veka [Kazakhstan in the 1820s–1840s]. Alma-Ata: Qazaq universiteti, 1992. Campbell, Ian C. Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazakh Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731–1917. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. Coupeaux, Etienne. “De la mer noir à la mer baltique: La circulation des idées dans la ‘triangle’ Istanbul-Crimee-Pologne” [From the Black to Baltic Seas: The circulation of ideas in the Istanbul-Crimea-Poland Triangle]. Cahiers d’études sur la méditerranée orientale et la monde turco-iranien [Papers for the study of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Turco-Iranian world], no. 15 (1993): 107–19. D’iakov, V. A. “Materialy k biografii Sigizmunda Serakovskogo” [Materials for a biography of Sigizmund Serakovskii]. In Vosstanie 1863 g. i russko-pol’skie revoliutsionnye sviazi 60kh godov: Sbornik statei i materialov [The 1863 uprising and RussianPolish revolutionary connections of the 1860s: A collection of articles and sources], edited by V. D. Koroliuk and I. S. Miller, 63–124. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960. Djakow, Władimir and Aleksej Nagajew. Partyzantka Zaliwskiego i jej pogłosy (1832– 1835) [The partisan activity of Zaliwski and its echoes (1832–1835)]. Translated by Maria Kotowska. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1979. Esenberlin, Il’ias. Kochevniki: Istoricheskaia trilogiia [Nomads: A historical trilogy]. Translated by M. Simashko. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literature, 1983. Galiev, V. Y. “Istoricheskii ocherk” [Historical Sketch]. In Natsional’no-osvoboditel’naia bor’ba Kazakhskogo naroda pod predvoditel’stvom Kenesary Kasymova (Sbornik dokumentov) [The national liberation battle of the Kazakh people under the leadership of Kenesary Kasymov (a document collection)], edited by M. K. Kozybaev, 11–20. Almaty: Gylym, 1996. Izbasarova, G. B. Kazakhskaia step’ Orenburgskogo vedomstva v imperskikh proektakh i praktikakh pervoi poloviny XIX veka [The Kazakh steppe in the jurisdiction of Orenburg in imperial projects and plans of the first half of the nineteenth century]. Moscow: I P Lysenko, 2018. Jesiewski, Władysław. “Stowarzyszenie Czarnych Braci w Krożach na Litwie i kazachstańskie losy jego członków” [The black brothers club of Kroży in Lithuanian and the Kazakhstani fate of its members]. In Polacy w Kazachstanie: Historia i współczesność [Poles in Kazakhstan: History and the present], edited by Stanisław Ciesielski and Antoni Kuczyński, 81–95. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1996. King, Charles. “Imagining Circassia: David Urquhart and the Making of North Caucasus Nationalism.” Russian Review 66, no. 2 (April 2007): 238–55. Krzyżanowski, Ludwik. “Joseph Conrad’s “Prince Roman: Fact and Fiction,” Polish Review 1, no. 4 (August 1956): 22–62. Łątka, Jerzy. Romantyczny kondotier [A romantic condottiere]. Wrocław: Śląsk, 1988.

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Leskinen, M. V. “Turganskaia teoriia Fr. G. Dukhin’skogo i ee kritika v kontekste skladyvaniia kontseptsii ‘velikorusskosti’ v rossiiskoi nauke” [The Turanian theory of F. G. Dukhin’skii and its criticism in the context of the development of the ‘Great Russian’ concept in Russian social science]. Slavianskii al’manakh [Slavic almanac] 1–2 (2016): 164–81. Matveev, O. V. “Poliaki v ukrepleniiakh Chernomorskoi Beregovoi Linii v 1830–1850-e gg” [Poles in the fortifications of the Black Sea coast frontier, 1830–1850]. In Poliaki v Rossii: Vekhi istorii [Poles in Russia: Landmarks of history], edited by A. I. Selitskii, 22–31. Krasnodar: Kubanskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2008. Morrison, Alexander. The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Nowak, Andrzej. Jak rozbić rosyjskie imperium? Idee polskiej polityki wschodniej (1733– 1921) [How to break up the Russian Empire? The ideas of Polish Ostpolitik]. Warsaw: Gryf, 1999. Prigarin, A. A., and D. V. Sen’. “Panslavizm Mikhala Chaikovskogo i istoriia kazachestva v Osmanskoi imperii” [Mikhail Chaikovskii’s Pan-Slavism and the history of Cossackdom in the Ottoman Empire]. In Poliaki v Rossii: Istoriia i sovremennost’ [Poles in Russia: History and the present], edited by A. I. Selitskii, 147–60. Krasnodar: Kubanskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2007. Potto, V. A. “Ssyl’nye poliaki v Orenburge” [Exiled Poles in Orenburg]. Istoricheskii Vestnik, [Historical gazette] 38 (1889): 584–606. Sapargaliev, G. C., and V. A. D’iakov. Obshchestvenno-politicheskaia deiatel’nost’ ssyl’nykh poliakov v dorevoliutsionnom Kazakhstanie [The social and political activities of exiled Poles in pre-revolutionary Kazakhstan]. Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1971. Shabley, Pavel, and Paolo Sartori. Eksperimenty imperii: Adat, shariat, i proizvodstvo znanii v kazakhskoi stepi [Experiments of empire: Adat, Shariah, and the production of knowledge of the Kazakh steppe]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2019. Snyder, Timothy. Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Venturi, Franco. The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1768–1776: The First Crisis. Translated by R. Burr Litchfield. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Widerszal, Ludwik. Sprawy kaukaskie w polityce europejskiej w latach 1831–1864 [Caucasian affairs in European politics from 1831 to 1864]. 2nd edn. Warsaw: Neriton Press, 2011.

CHAPTER 3

“These Sufferers, Constantly Lamenting Their Bitter Fate” The Image of the Mountain Jews in the Writings of Joseph Judah Chorny and Ilya Anisimov



Mateusz Majman

In memoriam of Dr. Yuri Murzakhanov (1959–2020)

Introduction The “long nineteenth century” (1789–1917) has been a time of both profound disappointment and great enthusiasm for the Russian Jews. It also marks the development of the specific Jewish cultural manifestation of modernization, the Haskalah, or the Jewish Enlightenment.1 The Haskalah developed first in Germany and then in the Russian Empire, which, after 1815, had the largest concentration of Jews in the world.2 The origins of the Russian Haskalah date back to the reign of Nicholas I (r. 1825–55), who showed support to the maskilim (enlightened ones) in their struggle against Jewish Orthodoxy. In the 1840s, his minister of education, Sergey Uvarov (1786–1855), developed a network of state-sponsored Jewish schools that were supposed to offer general education in addition to the Jewish education in the spirit of the Haskalah.3 Uvarov was convinced that the tsar’s Jewish subjects could be Russified in the same way that Napoleon I (r. 1799–1814, 1815) had brought French Jews into modernity.4 The project, however, turned out to be relatively ineffective, consequently causing a definite cultural and political split in Jewish society that “steadily deepened with the consolidation of the forces of conservatism on the one side and of modernity on the other.”5 The accession to the throne of Alexander II (r. 1855–81) marked a new era in the history of the Haskalah. The liberal character of the new regime

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contrasted strongly with the reactionary policies of Nicholas I that, for instance, limited the ability of Jewish university graduates to enter state service and introduced compulsory military service for Jews.6 In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Jews were allowed to enter secondary schools and institutions of higher learning,7 and those deemed “useful” by the authorities, i.e., university graduates, wholesale merchants, etc., were exempted from the obligation to live within the Pale of Settlement.8 Nonetheless, these reforms affected only a small part of the Jewish population (including the maskilim) rather than Russian Jewry in general.9 Thus, the 1860s were a decade of rapid Russification and secularization of the earlier maskilic intelligentsia, accompanied by an increasing degree of identification with the Russian culture.10 The reign of Alexander II saw the renaissance of neo-Hebrew culture, the development of Jewish scholarship and Hebraic studies, and the establishment of the Jewish educational and civic associations.11 The end of the Russian Haskalah came with the tsar’s abrupt death followed by the reign of his son Alexander III (r. 1881–94) and later his grandson Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917). Under the rule of Alexander III, sixtyfive anti-Jewish laws were promulgated; under Nicholas II, fifty.12 In the years 1881–82, a wave of several hundred pogroms erupted across much of the Pale of Settlement. The response to these events was the mass emigration of Russian Jews to the United States, as well as the transformation of the idea of rejecting emancipation and assimilation in favor of autonomous national renewal into a mass Zionist movement, followed by emigration to the Land of Israel.13 The illusions and efforts of the maskilim to create what could be called a “neutral society” have come to an end.14 Benjamin Nathans points out that the state ceased to occupy a central place in the maskilic mindset: “In the wake of the pogroms, its role there was starkly inverted: no longer an ally of progress among Jews but an opponent; no longer a bulwark against mob violence but rather its instigator.”15 In hindsight, the Haskalah encouraged and allowed some young Russian Jews to leave the traditional insularity of towns and shtetls through secular education, vocational training, and exposure to the culture and languages of their countrymen.16 For some insular Jews, these changes enabled social advancement and, at least, partial absorption into the ranks of recognized members of the Russian society. Their active participation in the culture of the surrounding society allowed Jewish presence in academic fields and circles they were previously absent from and resulted in the development of several novel areas of focus. The term “Haskalah” is usually associated with the scholarly West European methods of Wissenschaft des Judentums (Jewish/Judaic studies), which dealt with Jewish cultural and intellectual life, applying the ideals of academic disciplines, such as philology and history, to the study of Jews

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and Judaism. However, the Haskalah also led to the situation where, for the very first time, the intellectually liberated Russian Jews demonstrated non-religiously motivated interest in their history and ethnography that went beyond the scope of the European Jewish civilization. Although currently largely forgotten outside of Russian and Israeli academia, Joseph Judah Chorny17 and Eliyahu (Ilya) Anisimov remain two of the most prominent representatives of this movement whose interdisciplinary scholarly interest in the North Caucasus Mountain Jewish communities produced works of paramount significance for contemporary scholars. In the Russian Empire, the emergence and expansion of the Haskalah were associated with increased interest of the scholarly community in the hitherto little-known groups, the so-called non-European or non-Ashkenazi Jewries.18 The Jewish population inhabiting the outskirts of the empire, namely the Georgian, Bukharian, and Mountain Jews, were among the most scrutinized.19 Living on the borderlands of the Russian Empire, the Mountain Jews differed significantly from the Ashkenazi Jewish majority. Alternately known as the Juhuro, they are an ethnolinguistic group, initially dwelling in the current territories of Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and Kabardino-Balkaria, speaking different dialects of Juhuri—a language of Southwest Iranian origin. A growing interest in ethnography in nineteenth-century Russia encouraged the study of this unique Jewish community and resulted in the production of several noteworthy publications between the 1860s and 1880s. Although coming from different backgrounds, both Joseph Judah Chorny and Eliyahu (Ilya) Anisimov targeted the same research group within the same geographical scope and employed similar multidisciplinary research methodology based on the collection of ethnographic material, as well as oral histories and documents. There are, however, some key differences that cannot be omitted: Chorny did not speak Juhuri, whereas Anisimov was a native speaker. Moreover, unlike Anisimov, Chorny initially carried out his research independently and spontaneously, not at the request of any academic institution. The fundamental difference that so far has not been adequately discussed lies in their use of the Orientalist perspective. Strongly present in the works of Chorny, it was sharply criticized by Anisimov, who himself did not manage to avoid subconscious use of the “Orientalizing gaze.”

Russian Orientalism in the Nineteenth Century Both Chorny and Anisimov lived and created during the period of an increased Russian interest in the Caucasus and widespread Orientalization20 of its inhabitants. Recent academic scrutiny in the aforementioned process led to the development of what might be called “Russian colonial and post-

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colonial studies.”21 It is, however, essential to note that most publications in this field seem to present the North Caucasus as a homogeneously Muslim cultural area, bypassing the native Mountain Jewish community and ignoring the complexity of the region’s ethnic diversity.22 Since the second half of the nineteenth century, the Caucasus served as Russia’s own Orient, representing a semicivilized space in the Russian imagination.23 It was thematized not only by leading Russian literary figures, such as Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), Mikhail Lermontov (1814– 41), and Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), but also in the press and in academic studies written after the annexation of these territories to the empire.24 The growing interest in the dwellers of the Caucasus prompted the Russian administration to adopt new approaches that recognized the empire’s diversity as a vital aspect justifying Russia’s conquest of the region.25 Mikhail Vorontsov’s Caucasus Viceroyalty (1844–54) became a starting point for flourishing Oriental studies and especially Caucasiology. The newspaper Kavkaz (Caucasus) was established on Vorontsov’s initiative in 1846.26 The next important step was taken by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society when it opened the Caucasus Department in 1851, which began to publish Zapiski Kavkazskogo otdela Imperatorskogo geograficheskogo obshchestva (Notes of the Caucasus Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society). The plurality of languages in the Caucasus became an object of fascination for Russian linguists and ethnographers keen to research the various vernacular languages of the region’s indigenous peoples. The main driving force behind the founding and development of modern Russian Oriental studies was Viktor von Rosen (1849–1908).27 Vera Tolz argues that his work defined the national boundaries of contemporary Russia as the area, to which Russian Orientalists should direct their immediate attention, studying Russia’s own Orient—i.e., the Caucasus and Central Asia.28 The Russian awareness of ethnic diversity in the Caucasus increased significantly in the second half of the nineteenth century. Ethnographers strove to provide detailed descriptions of the peoples under study, avoiding using all-encompassing denominators such as gortsy (highlanders) or tuzemtsy or urozhentsy (natives).29 Among the pioneers of this research was linguist and ethnographer Vsevolod Miller (1848–1913), who was experienced in the studies of Indo-Iranian languages and folklore as well as the Ossetian and Judeo-Tat (Juhuri) languages. Based at the University of Moscow, Miller was a future mentor and tutor to Ilya Anisimov.30 The development of Russian Oriental studies in the second half of the nineteenth century contributed to the emergence of the first works on the subject of the Mountain Jews, initially published in journals such as Kavkaz and Ha-Karmel (Mount Carmel).31 The Mountain Jews became an object

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of interest however not only for the Russian Jews but also for non-Jewish Russian scholars, linguists, Orientalists, and Caucasiologists. Against this background of burgeoning scholarship, Joseph Chorny wrote the first full monograph devoted to the Mountain Jews that became a groundbreaking work.

Joseph Judah Chorny and His Work Joseph Judah Chorny was born on 20 April 1837 (or 1835) in Minsk into a Haskalah-oriented family.32 He received a solid traditional Jewish education in a kheder33 and a Jewish public school, simultaneously learning Russian and German.34 At the age of nineteen, he went to Odessa, where he studied in an agricultural school for a short period.35 After abandoning the originally envisioned career of an agronomistoenologist, Chorny began to work as a teacher, leading a lifestyle typical of a young Jewish maskil. He was deepening his knowledge of the Hebrew language, frequenting theaters, and expanding his social circle.36 Chorny moved to Rostov-on-Don and afterward traveled to the Caucasus for the first time in his life.37 To this day, the exact motives of his decision remain unclear. However, as Mordechai Zalkin points out, leaving Rostov for the town of Temir-Khan-Shura (now Buinaksk in the Republic of Dagestan) was motivated by the curiosity of the future traveler as well as the prospect of employment in a local school.38 In this respect, Chorny can be considered a pioneer among the maskilim of his generation who showed little interest in the Caucasus. In the late summer of 1862, Chorny arrived in Tamir-Khan-Shura, and from then on his life revolved around teaching, writing, and ethnographic research. Beginning in 1863, he published numerous articles in Hebrew periodicals exploring the world of the Mountain Jews—their lifestyle, culture, and challenging legal, economic, and social status.39 In later years, he extended his interests to the Jewish communities of Persia, Bukhara, and Georgia. After two years spent in the Caucasus, Chorny decided to pause his academic work and to obtain financial support for further research. During his trip to Saint Petersburg and then to Western European capitals, he turned to the newly established Obshchestvo dlia rasprostraneniia prosveshcheniia mezhdu evreiami v Rossii (Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia, OPE) and the Alliance Israélite Universelle, requesting financial assistance for his survey. Eventually, he received the support from an unexpected source—the Russian government—which became interested in his current reports regarding the ethnic-social structure of the Caucasus.40 Chorny’s studies, published mainly in the journal

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Kavkaz, attracted the attention of the minister of the interior, Mikhail Loris-Melikhov (1824–88). After receiving letters of recommendation for local authorities, Chorny continued his travel for another ten years. In 1875, after returning from his journey, he endeavored to publish his studies on the Jews of the Caucasus but failed to raise the necessary funds. He resumed the life of an explorer for another four years, returning at the end of 1879 to Odessa, where he died the next year, shortly after his forty-third birthday.41 He bequeathed his manuscripts to the OPE, who then commissioned their edition to Abraham Harkavy (1835–1919). They were published in 1884 with a brief biographical introduction and Harkavy’s notes under the title Sefer ha-Massa’ot (Book of travels).42 The most notable of Chorny’s studies is the article titled “Gorskie evrei” (The Mountain Jews), published first in 1870 in the third volume of Sbornik svedenii o kavkazskikh gortsakh (A collection of information on Caucasian highlanders). In his study, Chorny combined geographical, historical, and ethnographic approaches with a method now known as participant observation. His research provides the reader with a piece of unique information on the Mountain Jews that influenced not only the Eastern European Jewish consciousness but also the views of its non-Jewish Russian-speaking readers. A year earlier, in a short article published in 1869 titled “Gorskie evrei Terskoi oblasti” (The Mountain Jews of the Terek Oblast), Chorny focused mainly on the history, ethnicity, and legal status of the Mountain Jews. This text is steeped in opinions emanating with an Orientalizing view on this “half-wild” and “forgotten nation,” as he refers to the Juhuro at the article’s very beginning.43 The author puts a great emphasis on the calamitous position of the Jewish population in the period before the Russian invasion. It is worth noting that Chorny relies only on oral stories, without providing any sources of information. He expresses an implicit dislike toward the Muslim population, which stands out particularly when compared with the later work of Ilya Anisimov. Writing about the Murid War years (1817–64), Chorny emphasizes that one of its effects, besides the persecution of the Jewish population, was mass migration. As a result of the war turmoil, the Mountain Jews became “sufferers, constantly lamenting their bitter fate, inevitably accustomed to all kinds of misfortunes connected with the alien yoke, and indifferent to the blows of fate.”44 The liberation, according to Chorny, was brought only by the Russian conquest of Chechnya and Dagestan. The new authorities began to make efforts to improve the economic situation of Jews, increase their education, ensure religious freedom, and normalize legal status. Chorny noted, however, that although set to improve the Mountain Jews’ quality of life, the Russian authorities perceived them as backward, intim-

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idated, and helpless, who were lucky enough to find themselves under the protection of the tsarist regime. Another work of Chorny’s, “Gorskie evrei,” was a result of his first twoyear journey through the North Caucasus. The publication begins with a description of the living conditions of the Mountain Jews. Chorny described their housing in great detail, paying particular attention to Caucasian hospitality, including nuances such as individual beverages and dishes consumed both daily and on solemn occasions. In the very first paragraph of his work, the author emphasizes that “the Mountain Jews . . . differ very sharply from all their European compatriots in the mores and customs that they borrowed from their mountain neighbors,” calling them simultaneously his “fellow tribesmen.”45 Although Chorny considers the Juhuro as Jews, it is apparent that his perception of their customs, beliefs, traditions, and entire material culture is written from the standpoint of an outsider, contrasting the European (Russian) Jewry and Caucasian Jews. His writing is, therefore, often a bit critical or even resentful. He draws attention to the dirt and disorder prevailing in some homes, as well as coldness, which the locals do not seem to be concerned with.46 Chorny sees the residences owned by the wealthy Mountain Jewish merchants as “decent European houses.”47 Their owners receive the European visitors in a part of the house tailored to Western taste and needs. At the same time, they still dwell in traditionally furnished rooms with additional space, kunatskaia, intended to entertain the mountain guests. I believe it to be an early attempt to partially adapt to the dominative Russian colonial norms while maintaining Caucasian traditions. Writing about hospitality, which he sometimes perceives as exaggerated, Chorny notes that it is not only an Asian, Muslim, and pagan custom, but also a biblical act (Genesis 18:1–8), long forgotten by the European Jews, and somehow preserved in its original form in the Caucasus. Assuming the First Temple origins of the Mountain Jews, Chorny fits into the external antiquity discourse, emphasizing the ancient roots of non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities, brought earlier by, e.g., Abraham Firkovich (1786–1874).48 Despite attributing to Caucasian Jews a glorious lineage dating back to the First Temple period, Chorny repeatedly emphasizes their Asian character and argues their inferiority to Ashkenazi Jews, hence highlighting the profound contrast between the “white” Ashkenazi Jews (being closer to the Russian and European elites) and the “black” Others—the Mountain Jews. A manifestation of such differences can be seen, for example, in their passion for adding enormous amounts of garlic to the traditional dishes, which makes them inedible for an unaccustomed European. This accusation may come as a surprise considering that garlic and onion, with their

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specific strong aromas, were essential ingredients the cuisine of Ashkenazi Jews.49 Another manifestation of the alleged Asianness is how Mountain Jews feast: It is challenging for a European person to get used to their dishes and the way they are cooked because highlanders eat in a very unclean manner. In general, I noticed that they give food in a plate that has not been washed for several weeks, with the remnants of previous dishes accumulated one on top of the other. . . . Besides, they touch each dish with their hands, and although many prosperous ones have spoons and forks, they still eat as previously out of habit. For the most part, all their foods smell of sweat, which is disgusting to an unaccustomed person.50

Chorny took thorough notes on the wedding customs and the “typical” maternity cycle among the Juhuro women, followed by the onomastics of male and female names, liturgical rites, and houses of worship. Unlike the modern reader, the author is not surprised by the early nuptial age of the Mountain Jews (twelve to thirteen years for girls, a few years more for boys). Such early marriages were not uncommon among Ashkenazi Jews at that time; they were also allowed in the Talmud, hence the lack of its explicit criticism.51 Chorny even approaches the issue of polygamy quite reservedly, since it fits his discourse of antiquity. He points out that “according to the law of Moses polygamy was not prohibited, and therefore the Mountain Jews, according to the law and custom of their ancestors, and also following the example of those Muslim tribes among whom they live, have more than one wife, but not more than three.”52 The kind of uncritical attitude of the author is tremendously atypical for the majority of the maskilim of his generation who criticized arranged marriages, juvenile weddings, and other practices resulting, in their opinion, from the thoughtless adherence to religious principles by Ashkenazi Jews. Furthermore, numerous maskilim fall victim to this type of tradition; thus, their criticism has sometimes taken rather zealous forms. Chorny might have been more distant in this regard since the customs of the Mountain Jews could be justified in his eyes by their “ancient roots” and the fact that they fit well into his discourse of antiquity. The next section focuses on the ethnocultural closeness of the Mountain Jews to other Caucasian nations, their national character, language, literacy, and educational system. The quality of Chorny’s linguistic method is dubious at the very best. Despite his lack of even basic knowledge of Juhuri, he writes and translates multiple words and phrases inaccurately or incorrectly. Presumably, his knowledge of biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, acquired during his religious education and maskilic self-formation, proved helpful in understanding some of the expressions present in Juhuri.

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Typically for a maskil, Chorny criticizes the shallow level of education of the Caucasian rabbis and the impact of such weak leadership on the nation’s overall low intellectual level. Referring to his meeting with Rabbi Ya’akov Yitzhaki (1846–1917), Chorny regrets that although he met all the Mountain Jewish rabbis in their places of residence, only one, the chief rabbi in Derbent along with the rabbi’s father, is “aware of the teachings of the Talmud, its laws and the establishment of the Jewish religion, [is] familiar with new Jewish literature, and even know[s] the Russian grammar. In other places, the rabbis either know Jewish law very unsatisfactorily, or they know almost nothing about it.”53According to Chorny, this state of degradation of the Mountain Jewish “intellectual” elites affected the whole society and was mostly responsible for the community’s inferiority, manifested by its appalling level of illiteracy, widespread lack of education, and unwillingness to open up to novel knowledge.54 Some future “rabbis” studied in the yeshivas of Ukraine and Lithuania, but they didn’t know Russian, Yiddish, or Hebrew as they came to the European part of the empire. They were therefore excluded twofold—from the group of full-fledged (Ashkenazi) Jews in particular and from Russian society in general. As a result of such circumstances, they lacked the right tools and time to master any knowledge of religion or history, not to mention modern literature or Jewish philosophy. While Chorny understands the stalemate of an aspiring mountain rabbi’s opportunities, he also notes that despite staying in Europe they return to their homeland “without any education, without any success in science and will remain there as a semi-wild highlanders as they were before.”55 Although the rabbis still enjoyed remarkably high status in the general Jewish community, their isolation from the people kept them from alleviating their distress. Chorny contrasts a typical Caucasian synagogal school—neglected, dirty, gloomy, where students make notes, according to Muslim tradition, sitting on the ground with paper on their knees—with an idealized vision of European institutions: bright, clean, and with a higher methodological level.56 This vision is especially similar to the descriptions of Jewish kheder in the works of contemporary literary figures, who often emphasized the coarse character of such an environment and regarded the melamdim (plural of melamed [teacher]) as ignorant. When writing about their oral lore, Chorny tends to vastly simplify and often generalize, presenting the Mountain Jews as people who spend their days idly sitting in front of their houses, smoking pipes, telling stories, and daydreaming.57 This way of presenting the Juhuro as simultaneously nontypical Jewish and nontypical Russian was intended to, once again, emphasize their Otherness in the eyes of his readers, as well as to make the authorities aware of the need to develop a particular policy directed toward this ethnic group. Chorny’s criticism is utterly in line with Haskalic

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vision of new Jewish elites rooted both in Jewish and Russian/European (ergo secular) tradition. He reveals their limitations, lack of education, and aboriginal culture. He does not, however, simultaneously try to argue that the Mountain Jews should zealously adopt the Russian culture, recognizing the ancientness of their customs as valuable. Nonetheless, Chorny refuses to accept their inability to implement any modern ideas. The penultimate chapter contains the author’s observations on Juhuro eschatology, folklore, and legendary past. Chorny describes the Mountain Jews’ perception of death, soul, and otherworld and retells folk traditions and legends that reveal these ideas. Speaking of the diseases prevalent among the Mountain Jews, Chorny notes that the majority of them were caused by their dusty narrow streets, cramped and dirty dwellings, and inadequate housing for the climate. As before, from the standpoint of an “enlightened,” educated European, Chorny criticizes the Caucasian superstitions, such as faith in a range of good and evil spirits, idols, and demons (associated primarily with the world of nature); attraction to sorcery and magical ceremonies; and the penchant to place trust in fortune tellers, village healers, and uneducated feldshers, these “semi-wild Asians.”58 The author is also quite reluctant toward the Mountain Jewish women, an attitude that can be seen mostly in the description of mourning and funeral rites, where he describes their laments and screams as hysterical, incomprehensible, and alien to what he knows from his previous experience.59 Chorny appears to treat Mountain Jewish women as quarrelsome, gossiping, overly emotional, maybe even vulgar, but still good-natured and hard-working. Neither does he seem to perceive the possibility that Mountain Jewish women could ascend the educational ladder. His view does not differ significantly from that presented by most researchers of his generation, the pre-emancipation era, when women, not only those of Oriental nations, were given a secondary role. Chorny’s work deserves recognition due to his unique perspective: although himself a maskil, he did not follow the traditional line of maskilic views. In response to the pressures of the Orthodox establishment, his generation of maskilim consciously searched for new social and cultural values. They believed that a rejection of traditional order dictated by the religious establishment was crucial for the community to become more modern and enjoy a higher status as an, at least partly, integrated subgroup of the Russian society. Chorny’s critique was innovative: rather than directing it against his Jewish environment, seeking to overthrow the kahal establishment (a board that was chosen to run a Jewish community), he argued for reform among a different group—the Mountain Jews. He believed that a change in the traditional sociocultural structures had the potential to end

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their spiritual and intellectual stagnation as well as isolation from both the modern world and the Russian society. Although throughout the 1860s the Jewish intelligentsia was engaged mainly in the discussion regarding the possibility of reforming the existing structures, by the end of the 1870s it became apparent that radical Haskalah had reached a dead end. The vehement criticism voiced by its proponents against both moderate Haskalah and the traditional way of life was incapable of offering solutions to improve the lives of the masses of Russian Jews. Within a year of Chorny’s death, all hopes of a government-backed reform movement turned to ash. At the end of the 1870s, the Russian government once again showed that it had no intention of granting Jews equal rights, crushing the expectations of the Russian Jewry in general and especially of the maskilim. The work of Eliyahu (Ilya) Anisimov, although less than two decades younger than Chorny’s, represents, therefore, a different era of Russian Orientalism and reflects other trends among the Jewish intellectual elite.

Eliyahu (Ilya) Scherebetovich Anisimov and His Work Anisimov was born on 29 May 1862 in the village of Tarki in the TemirKhan-Shura District of Dagestan.60 His father—Scherebet Nisim-oglu (?–1906)—was known as one of the most educated Caucasian rabbis of his time. He was the first Mountain Jew to study in the famous Volozhin Yeshiva.61 After returning to Dagestan, he served as a rabbi, first in Tarki, and then in Temir-Khan-Shura.62 Having received a good home education, Anisimov was accepted in September 1882 to the sixth grade of the realnoe uchilishche—a secondary school without instruction in classical languages—in Temir-Khan-Shura. Interestingly, even before the official start of his education, Anisimov published two short essays entitled “Caucasian Jews-highlanders,” which appeared in 1881 in the Jewish Razsvet (The dawn) newspaper.63 After passing the final exams with the highest grades, in 1883 he underwent an additional one-year course in the Stavropol Gymnasium.64 Despite being already engaged, Anisimov managed to persuade his parents to let him continue studies in Stavropol. In the summer of 1884, immediately after graduating from the gymnasium, Anisimov left for Saint Petersburg for a seemingly official purpose to accompany his relative Yosif (Osip) Zinovievich Osipov, a merchant of the Second Guild, on a business trip.65 Having received letters of recommendation written by Osipov, Anisimov traveled to Moscow, where he was accepted to the preparatory department of the

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Imperial Moscow Technical Secondary School. In May 1885 he managed to get a job as a tutor in a family whose members were acquaintances of Vsevolod Miller—a pioneer of Russian Caucasiology. Two years earlier, during his journey to Kabarda, Miller came into contact with the Mountain Jewish community in Nal’chik, and, alongside Maksim Kovalevsky (1851– 1916), he included his description of the local Jewish colony (evreiskaia kolonka) in the Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe).66 In later years, Miller became a pioneer of research into the morphology and phonetics of the language of the Mountain Jews, which he named Judeo-Tat. He published several scholarly books and articles on this subject, as well as the very first Juhuri learning textbook.67 After reviewing Anisimov’s reports in Razsvet, Miller invited him to become an associate of the Ethnographic Department of the Society of Devotees of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography, which he had headed since 1881.68 On 31 October 1885, Anisimov delivered his inaugural lecture to members of the society, in which he presented demographic data and a description of the customs of the Mountain Jews. It was soon published in the newspaper Nedel’naia khronika Voskhoda (Weekly chronicle of the sunrise) and met with great interest of Russian Orientalists.69 In subsequent lectures in 1886, Anisimov discussed in detail the economic structure and wedding customs of Caucasian Jews.70 In March 1886 he was elected a fellow of the society on account of his recognized academic activity.71 At the suggestion of Miller, who was impressed by the talent and insight of this young engineerto-be and also aware of the benefits of his knowledge of the languages, culture, customs, and geography of the Caucasus, the Imperial Moscow Archaeological Society instructed Anisimov to travel to Dagestan to collect historical and ethnographic material concerning the Mountain Jews.72 It is important to note that Anisimov did not experience any persecutions or limitations caused by anti-Jewish laws implemented by the tsarat. The Mountain Jews were recognized as a “Caucasian nation,” i.e., they possessed all the legal rights that were vested in the indigenous mountain population. Similar to Bukharian and Georgian Jews, they experienced more favorable treatment than the rest of the Russian Jewry forced to live in the Pale of Settlement.73 Furthermore, before 1917, Jewish pogroms and even antisemitism itself were alien to the North Caucasus due to the relatively small numbers of the scattered Jewish population and the large degree of their assimilation with the local Muslims. The closest analogy is to be found in the locals’ hostile attitude toward Armenians. In a sense, in the North Caucasus, the Armenians substituted for Jews as an incarnation of evil. After the Revolution, traditional Armenophobia began to decline and was replaced by growing Judeophobia. Then, the first victims of the increasing antisemitism were the Mountain Jews.74

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Anisimov arrived in Dagestan in June 1886. First, he went to TemirKhan-Shura, where he met with the chief rabbi of Southern Dagestan, Khizgil Mushailov (1853–1913) who persuaded him to publish his first articles.75 Mushailov, together with the chief rabbi of Dagestan, Ya’akov Yitzhaki (married to Ilya’s paternal aunt Hasido), presented Anisimov with their notes recording the legends and stories about the origin and history of Caucasian Jews, which Anisimov used later in his monograph.76 Anisimov visited eighty-eight towns and villages situated in the Dagestan and Terek oblasts, as well as in Elisabethpol and Baku governorates of the Caucasus Viceroyalty.77 He investigated everyday life and collected statistical information about his compatriots. During the trip, Anisimov kept a diary in which he described in detail everything that he heard and saw. In October 1886, Anisimov prepared a report on his trip, emphasizing that the Mountain Jews, like many other highland communities of the Caucasus, did not become an object of adequate academic research. Having outlined in detail the route of his three-month-long journey and providing statistics on the Jewish population in the spots he visited, Anisimov wrote: Everywhere I tried to collect old written documents; I was questioning about the mode of life, occupations, rites, customary law, and works of folk art. Everywhere they looked at me as at their own, with confidence, since I spoke local languages, Tat or the so-called Mountain Jewish and Tatar (Azerbaijani), and they did not hide from me any aspects of their life.78

After his return to Moscow, Anisimov gave a series of lectures that were met with broad appeal, both in the Russian and Jewish press.79 Finally, eight years after Chorny’s death, in 1888, Ilya Anisimov, the first Mountain Jew ever admitted to a Russian university, published the material he had collected in the form of a monograph Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy (Caucasian Jews-highlanders). Shortly after its release, it gathered positive reviews in the Russian press, highly appreciating its value and contribution to modern Russian historiography and Oriental studies. The book is probably the most significant monographic study on the ethnography and history of the Mountain Jews carried out in the prerevolutionary period. Its uniqueness lies not only in Anisimov’s background but above all in his workshop and research skills, which allowed him to conduct longterm, thorough field research and gain a vast amount of ethnographic and historical material. Anisimov’s work is an extensive monograph of over 150 pages, divided into four chapters, and dedicated to his mentor, Vsevolod Miller. Already in the introduction readers learn that they will be dealing with work different from the one proposed by Chorny. Anisimov begins with an open, constructive critique—several pages long—of the former work’s shortcom-

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ings. He emphasizes the difficult postwar political and social situation of the Mountain Jewish communities and that of the whole North Caucasus in general at the moment of Chorny’s arrival in 1862. Anisimov argues that, along with the low moral condition of the people exhausted by years of conflict and their apparent hostile attitude toward Russian or European Jews, the aforementioned circumstances limited, if not prevented, the ability to report any accurate data.80 Chorny’s research is thus counterfactual and, according to Anisimov, based on a case study examination of several auls and hearsays.81 Despite his critique of Chorny’s sources, Anisimov reached similar conclusions regarding the behavior of the Mountain Jews. Writing about his tribesmen, Anisimov draws attention to their extreme fanaticism and prejudices, as well as to the suffering and disadvantages brought by strict observance of religious traditions. In the vast majority of cases he writes about the Mountain Jews in the third person—“they,” “their religion,” “their ancestors,”82—yet at the same time he refers to them affectionately as his “brothers/fellows” (sobrat’ia), “compatriots” (sootchestvenniki), and “co-religionists” (edinovertsy).83 In doing so, the author tries to maintain the objectivity and distance required from a scholar who is also a member of the group he examines. Concurrently, when writing on commission and from a Russian colonial perspective, he does not want to be entirely associated by Russian-language readers of his work, mainly highly educated non-Jews, with a group of backward tsarist subjects of still unclear origin and different legal status. Later in the text, Anisimov seems to identify with the ethos of the Juhuro but not with their beliefs, religion, or traditions. Similarly, Chorny preferred to be identified with the enlightened Jewish community of Odessa rather than with the provincial world of religious Jews from Minsk while staying in the Caucasus. “Mountainous” women were subject to Orientalization in Anisimov’s work. The author shows remarkable sensitivity to their situation in describing their living experience, notably unusual for a man of his generation born and raised in a traditional religious Caucasian family. He writes: In a mountainous woman, we see a constant toiler of the family. All the difficult work in the household is assigned to women, and they do not have free time for that idle contemplation of nature and empty dreams that men so often engage in. . . . There is no end to their daily labors. . . . In general, speaking of toil, they do not expose themselves to men at all, and every wife, daughter, or mother is considered the better mistress and skilled worker, the more and more tirelessly she works.84

According to the author, the difficult position of unmarried girls and adult women in the Mountain Jewish community does not differ from the other Eastern groups. However, this sensitivity to social problems and environ-

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mental pressures has little bearing on his further statement, in which he Orientalizes the Mountain Jewesses by ascribing typical Eastern characteristics/attributes to them, claiming that “they are bashful, timid, and extremely ignorant, but at the same time they are strictly chaste and hard-working.”85 Although Anisimov followed Chorny in his critique of religious fanaticism, his work is also an example of a reversed Orientalizing-Orientalized gaze. Due to his Caucasian background, he was able to include elements of the Mountain Jews’ perception of the Ashkenazim. His publication distinguishes two significant causes for the Mountain Jews’ dislike of Ashkenazim, to whom they refer by the phonetically distorted form eshgenezi.86 The first is the fact that, as the author puts it, the better-educated and progressive European Jews “do not adhere to the ancient rites of the Talmud and for that reason, they are treated by the Juhuro as apostates from the true faith.”87 This is a noteworthy example of the reversed OrientalizingOrientalized view. Followers of the same faith for centuries divided into two separate groups, dwelling hundreds of miles apart, speaking two completely different languages, begin to live next to one another. On one side are the Mountain Jews who were unprivileged, mostly illiterate, acquiring lower social capital; on the other, Ashkenazi Jews—better educated and wealthier, embodying the colonizing power of the Russian Empire, unwanted in most of the region. Nonetheless, at least according to Anisimov, the Mountain Jews do not feel in any way inferior to the Ashkenazim. Quite the opposite—they look down on them. Views typical of a Haskalah-period author become visible later in the work. At the beginning, Anisimov points out that the Mountain Jews had highly opposing views on European education, and even the Jewish education permeated their society only to a small extent.88 The author identifies such a hostile view of Ashkenazi Jewry and European education as the expression of Mountain Jewish fanaticism caused by complete ignorance and fear that the Mountain Jewish children will become apostates, similar to Russian Jews. Anisimov agrees with Chorny about the low level of education and high illiteracy among the Mountain Jews.89 He points out the issues related to the incompetence of rabbis and teachers, outdated teaching methods, and schools that do not provide students with appropriate working conditions. One the one hand, Anisimov criticizes the traditional hierarchy of the mountain community, including the delegation of the role of spiritual leaders to uneducated rabbis and religious slaughterers and the subordinate position of women. On the other hand, he tries to maintain an objective approach by seeking the reason for this condition not only in the archaic social structure but also in the difficult economic situation of the society, which inhibits its progress.90

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Anisimov identifies the second significant cause for the local animosities as the practice of the Ashkenazis nicknaming the Mountain Jews as byki (bulls), which began after the conquest of the Caucasus when many Ashkenazi soldiers settled in the region’s towns. Byk is perceived as a derogatory term, referring to alleged rudeness of the Juhuro. It is probably a Slavicization of the Yiddish bok (male goat). The growing tension between the two groups almost led to a pogrom on Ashkenazi Jews by the Caucasians in Temir-Khan-Shura; the conflict arose when the Mountain Jews alleged that the Ashkenazis were deliberately selling unkosher meat to them, which Anisimov describes in detail in the text.91 Unfortunately, he does not give the exact date of this event, writing only that it took place “recently.”92 Following, Anisimov directly addresses Chorny’s work and accuses him of numerous inconsistencies and oversights. Several accusations concern Mountain Jewish traditions, such as hospitality, polygamy, and blood feud, which the European Jews lack. Chorny sees their sources in the patriarchal heritage, omitting the fact that these are all-Caucasian customs that were adopted from local nations and not the other way around.93 Anisimov also accuses Chorny of fundamental methodological flaws in the collection of historical sources, such as ignoring materials that could prove the collective history of the Mountain Jews and other Caucasian peoples. The author appends a separate table in which he collects and corrects all the words and phrases that were inaccurately or incorrectly translated by Chorny as a result of his unacquaintance with the Juhuri language.94 Anisimov finishes his critical remarks with the only favorable comment about Chorny’s work: as an amateur traveler, Chorny presented a compelling testimony of the Mountain Jews’ everyday life, collected statistical information, and, undoubtedly, introduced Russian Jewish readers to the life and customs of their fellow believers, “abandoned by fate in a wild country between wild tribes.”95

Conclusion Chorny and Anisimov present two thoroughly different perspectives, neither of them being an example of classical Orientalization since the authors do not represent the Russian people in the ethnic sense of the word, nor do they represent the imperial elites. They were written in the period of growing interest in Oriental studies that influenced both scholars. However, their background determined the tone of their work. Chorny’s semiacademic research consisted in crossing a cultural border boundary and entering the hidden exotic place. Anisimov’s study gave him the opportunity to return to a familiar environment and cultural context that he un-

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derstood. It is challenging to determine whether Chorny’s or Anisimov’s studies had a significant impact on the formation of a modern national consciousness among the Mountain Jews; however, they certainly allow us to revisit Russian Orientalism in a more self-reflexive way. Mateusz Majman is a research associate at Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Scholarship Fund and a doctoral candidate (Jewish history and culture) at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. His research interests include oral history, collective memory, and cultural identity. His dissertation focuses specifically on Holocaust memory in Mountain Jewish communities in contemporary Russia and Israel. He analyzes topics such as culture of remembrance, national identity, commemoration, and memory politics in the context of migration.

Notes Funding for the present chapter was entirely provided by the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Scholarship Fund. I want to express my gratitude to Professor Mordechai Zalkin for his unique lectures that I could attend while studying in Stockholm and for his research on the Haskalah in Eastern Europe, including the article dedicated to Joseph Judah Chorny, which became an inspiration for my work. My acknowledgments for helpful and insightful comments and suggestions of different versions of the manuscript are to Aleksandra Jakubczak, Gabriela Fesnak, and Irena Skrzypczak. 1. Haskalah literally, comes from the Hebrew word sekhel, meaning “reason” or “intellect,” and the movement was based on rationality. It encouraged Jews to study secular subjects, to learn both the European and Hebrew languages, and to enter fields such as agriculture, crafts, the arts, and science. The maskilim (followers of the Haskalah) tried to assimilate into European society in dress, language, manners, and loyalty to the ruling power. 2. The approximately 5.2 million Jews counted in 1897 in Russia’s first empire-wide census easily outnumbered the rest of European Jewry (roughly 3.5 million). See “Population,” Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), 13:889–92. 3. See David E. Fishman, Russia’s First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov (New York: New York University Press, 1995). 4. Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1: 1350–1881 (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 188. 5. Erich Haberer, Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 9. 6. Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 27–29, 208–9, 371. 7. In 1853 there were only 159 Jews enrolled in Russian gymnasiums (1.3 percent of the student population). Their numbers quickly climbed to 552 (3.2 percent), 2,045 (5.6 percent), and 7,004 (12 percent) in 1863, 1870, and 1880 respectively; Louis

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8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

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Greenberg, The Jews in Russia: The Struggle for Emancipation, 1772–1917, vol. 1: 1772–1880 (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), 83. By comparison, the number of Jewish students was 15 (0.6 percent), 129 (3.2 percent), 247 (5 percent), and 1,856 (14.5 percent) in 1840, 1865, 1876, and 1886 respectively; Mark Kosven, “K voprosu o vysshem obrazovanii russkikh evreev (istoriko-statisticheskie materialy)” [To the question of the higher education of Russian Jews (historical and statistical materials)], Evreiskaia Zhizn´ 7 (July 1904): 167–73. The territories of the Russian Empire in which Jews were permitted permanent settlement. Although large in size and containing areas of dynamic economic growth, the Pale was considered the greatest legal restriction imposed on the Jews of the empire. Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 50–77. Haberer, Jews and Revolution, 12. Polonsky, Jews in Poland and Russia, 439. Victoria Mochalova, “Jewish Studies in Russia in the Post-communist Era,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 10, no. 1 (2011): 119–33. Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 23. Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 8. Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770–1870 (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 42–56. Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 195. The Yiddish term for town, shtetl, commonly refers to small market towns in preWorld War II Eastern Europe with a large Yiddish-speaking Jewish population. Name transcribed after Singer, Isidore, et al., eds. (1901–1906). “Chorny, Joseph Judah.” The Jewish Encyclopaedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1903), 4:44–45. Other variants include Cherny, Chernyi, Tsharny, Tsherni, et al. The term “Ashkenazi Jews” (pl. Ashkenazim) refers to the descendants of the Jews who immigrated to northern France and Germany around 800–1000 and later to Eastern Europe. In reference to the Mountain Jews, I deliberately avoid using the marked categories of “Sephardi,” “Mizrahi,” “Oriental,” and “Eastern,” because, as Harvey Goldberg points out, the meanings and cultural associations of these terms have shifted historically and still arouse much controversy and ambiguity. See Harvey E. Goldberg, “From Sephardi to Mizrahi and Back Again: Changing Meanings of ‘Sephardi’ in Its Social Environments,” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 15, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 165–88. There are many definitions of North Caucasus in existing literature. For the present chapter, I have adopted a rather broad definition of the region, based on the administrative-territorial structure of the Russian Empire when these territories were part of the Caucasus Viceroyalty. Due to several territorial reforms carried out in its area between 1801 and 1917, I shall avoid a detailed description of individual governorates, oblasts, and okrugs. Defined as an intellectual and ideological process, resulting in the portrayal of indigenous Caucasus people as the exotic Others who will always remain a perpetual foreigner in the Russian cultural imaginary. See Alexander Etkind, Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011); Dominik Gutmeyr, Borderlands Orientalism or How the

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22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

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Savage Lost His Nobility: The Russian Perception of the Caucasus between 1817 and 1878 (Vienna: Lit Verlag, 2017), David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). The only reference to the Mountain Jews can be found in the work of Dominik Gutmeyr, who, discussing the correspondence of military personnel stationed in the Caucasus during the Russo-Ottoman, quotes a letter written by Major-General Aleksei Smekalov who extolled the Mountain Jews’ bravery and especially highlighted the contribution of one of the Mountain Jewish commanders, Aron Izmailov. Even so, the Mountain Jews’ existence seems to be just a footnote in the history of the Caucasus. See Gutmeyr, Borderlands Orientalism, 219. Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 114. See Leah Michel Feldman, On the Threshold of Eurasia: Revolutionary Poetics in the Caucasus (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018). Gutmeyr, Borderlands Orientalism, 149. Ibid. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism, 186–89. See Vera Tolz, Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Gutmeyr, Borderlands Orientalism, 157. Dan Shapira, “‘We Are a Very Ancient People’: The ‘Antiquity Discourse’ among the Jews of Northeastern Caucasus, Georgia, and Central Asia,” in Studies in Caucasian, Georgian, and Bukharan Jewry: Historical, Sociological, and Cultural Aspects, ed. Golda Akhiezer, Reuven Enoch, and Sergei Weinstein (Ariel: Ariel University, Institute for Research of Jewish Communities of the Caucasus and Central Asia, 2014), 23–24. See I. A. Slivitskii, “Kavkazskie evrei,” Kavkaz, 25 February 1853, 21–35; “Kavkazskie evrei,” Ha-Karmel, 13 July 1862, 7–8; 20 July 1862, 9–10. The date 1835 occurs in various sources, e.g., in Isidore Singer et al., eds. (1901–6). “Chorny, Joseph Judah,” The Jewish Encyclopaedia (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1903), 4:44–45. However, Mordechai Zalkin gives the year 1837. See Mordechai Zalkin, “Ha-mizrach mitbonen ba-mizrach: Yosef Yehuda Tsharni ke-sochen haneorut ha-yehudit ba-kehilot ha-yehudit be-Kavkaz” [East meets East: Joseph Judah Chorny as the agent of the Jewish Enlightenment in the Caucasian Jewish communities], in Ha-Maskil ba-‘et ha-zot: Sefer ha-yovel le-Mosheh Pel ’i; Ma’amarim be-Haskalah, sifrut ‘Ivrit ve-limude ha-Yahadut [The Maskil in our time: Studies in honor of Moshe Pelli; Articles on Haskalah, Hebrew literature, and Jewish studies], ed. Ze’ev Gerber, Lev Hakak, Shmuel Katz (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz haMeuhad, 2017), 136. Kheder (room) was the most widely accepted and elementary educational framework among East European Jewry since the Middle Ages. Zalkin, “Ha-mizrach mitbonen,” 137. Ibid., 138. Ibid., 139. Ibid., 140. Ibid., 141, 144.

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39. For Chorny’s Hebrew-language press articles, see Ha-Magid, 15 April 1863, 4; HaMagid, 29 April 1863, 4; Ha-Magid, 29 July 1863, 3; Ha-Magid, 11 November 1863, 4; Ha-Magid, 27 January 1864, 3; Ha-Magid, 10 February 1864, 4; Ha-Magid, 27 July 1864, 4; Ha-Magid, 15 February 1866, 4; Ha-Melits, 9 August 1866, 5; Ha-Magid, 12 September 1866, 4; Ha-Magid, 26 June 1867, 6; Ha-Magid, 11 September 1867, 4; Ha-Magid, 1 April 1868, 4; Ha-Magid, 29 April 1868, 4; Ha-Magid, 26 August 1868, 4; Ha-Magid, 23 September 1868, 3. 40. Zalkin, “Ha-mizrach mitbonen,” 146. 41. Ibid., 151. 42. Yosef Yehudah ben Yaakov ha-Levi Tshorni, Sefer ha-masa’ot be-erets Kavkaz uva-medinot asher me-’ever le-Kavkaz u-ketsat medinot aherot be-negev Rusya mi-shenat 5627 “ad shenat 5635 [Book of travels in the land of Caucasus and Transcaucasia and a few other countries in Southern Russia from the year 5627 to the year 5635] (Saint Petersburg: Ha-Hevrah “le-harbot Haskalah etsel Yehude Rusya,” 1884). 43. Iosif Iuda Chorny, “Gorskie evrei Terskoi oblasti. Kratkie istoricheskie svedeniia 1869,” [The Mountain Jews of the Terek Oblast: Brief historical information, 1869], in Sbornik svedenii o Terskoi oblasti [A collection of information on the Terek Oblast] (Vladikavkaz: Tipografia Terskago oblastnago pravleniia, 1878), 9. 44. Ibid., 11. 45. Iosif Iuda Chorny, “Gorskie evrei” [The Mountain Jews], in Sbornik svedenii o kavkazskikh gortsakh [A Collection of Information on Caucasian highlanders] (Tbilisi: Izdanie Kavkazskogo gorskogo upravleniia, 1870), 1 (45). 46. Ibid., 4 (48). 47. Ibid. 48. Shapira, “We are a Very Ancient People,” 21. 49. Chorny, “Gorskie evrei,” 7 (51). 50. Ibid., 6 (50). 51. Ibid., 26 (70). 52. Ibid., 28 (72). 53. Ibid., 12 (56). 54. Ibid., 13 (57). 55. Ibid., 14 (58). 56. Ibid., 14–15 (58–59). 57. Ibid., 15 (59). 58. Ibid., 20 (64). On Mountain Jewish superstitions, see “Verovania, obychai, obriady” [Beliefs, customs, ceremonies], in Gorskie evrei. Istoriia. Etnografiia. Kul’tura [The Mountain Jews: History, ethnography, culture], ed. Iosif Begun (Jerusalem: DAAT and Znanie, 1999), 233–55. 59. Ibid., 21–22 (65–66). 60. “Anisimov Ilya” in Evreiskaia entsiklopediia: Svod znanii o Evreistve i ego kul’ture v proshlom i nastoiashchem [Jewish Encyclopedia: collection of knowledge about Jewry and its culture in the past and present] (Saint Petersburg: Obshchestvo dlia nauchnykh evreiskikh izdanii Brokhaus-Efron, 1908), 582. 61. David Maggid, Evrei na iuzhnikh okrainakh Rossii: Evrei na Kavkaze (Istoricheskie ocherki) [Jews in the southern reaches of Russia: Jews in the Caucasus (historical

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62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67.

68.

69.

70. 71. 72. 73.

74.

75.

76. 77.

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essays)] (Saint Petersburg: Khudozhestvenno-graficheskoe atel’e i pechatnia M. Aivovarskogo, 1917), 28. Ibid., 28. The second weekly Razsvet was published in Saint Petersburg from September 1879 to February 1883. See Ilya Anisimov, “Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy” [Caucasian Jews-highlanders], Razsvet, no. 18, 30 April 1881, 709–13; Razsvet, no. 24, 12 June 1881, 948–52. TsIAM, f. 372, op. 2, d. 956, 6. Ibid., 14. Vsevolod Miller, “V gorskikh obshchestvakh Kabardy” [In the mountain societies of Kabarda], Vestnik Evropy 2, no. 4 (1884): 540–88. See Vsevolod Miller, Materialy dlia izucheniia evreisko-tatskogo iazyka. Vvedenie. Teksty. Slovar” [Material for the study of the Jewish-Tat language. Introduction, texts, dictionary] (Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 1892); Vsevolod Miller, Ocherk fonetikii evreisko-tatskogo narechiia [Essay on the phonetics of the Jewish-Tat dialect] (Moscow: V. Gatchuk, 1900); Vsevolod Miller, Ocherk morfologiii evreisko-tatskogo narechiia [Essay on the morphology of the Jewish-Tat dialect] (Moscow: V. Gatchuk, 1901). Trudy etnograficheskogo otdela Imperatorskogo Obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii pri Moskovskom universitete [Proceedings of the Ethnographic Department of the Imperial Society of the Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography at the Moscow University] 18/2/8. Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1888, 20. Ilya Anisimov, “Doklad v etnograficheskom otdele Moskovskogo Obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii” [Lecture at the Ethnographic Department of the Moscow Society of the Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography], Nedel’naia khronika voskhoda [Weekly chronicle of the sunrise], no. 45, 10 November 1885, n.k. Trudy etnograficheskogo otdela, 20. Ibid., 19. TsIAM, f. 454, op. 2, d. 88, 46–47. See Begun, Gorskie evrei, 57–68; Ekaterina Norkina, “Power and ‘Native’ Jews: The Russian Imperial Bureaucracy and Mountain Jews in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century,” East European Jewish Affairs 41, no. 3 (2011): 137–56; Yuri Murzakhanov and Ekaterina Norkina, “Pravovoe polozhenie nal’chinskikh gorskikh evreev (vtoraia polovina 19—nachalo XX v.)” [Legal status of the Nalchik Mountain Jews (second half of the 19th—early 20th century)], Kavkazologiia 3 (2020): 129–39. See Lyudmila Gatagova, “Caucasian Phobias and the Rise of Antisemitism in the North Caucasus in the 1920s.” Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 36, no. 1 (2009): 42– 57; Begun, Gorskie evrei, 189–202. Boris Kaloev, V. F. Miller—kavkazoved: Issledovaniia i materialy [V. F. Miller— Caucasologist: studies and materials] (Ordzhonikidze: Severo-osetinskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1963), 143. Ibid., 144. Il’ia Scherebetovich Anisimov, Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy: Sbornik materialov po etnografii, izdavaemyi pri Dashkovskom Etnograficheskom Muzee [Caucasian Jews-

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78.

79.

80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

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highlanders: A collection of materials on ethnography, published at the Dashkov Ethnographic Museum] (Moscow: Dashkovskii etnograficheskii muzei, 1888), 10–11. Protokoly zasedanii Obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii [Protocols of the meetings of the Society of the Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography] 60, no. 1 (Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1887), 24; Anisimov, Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy, 9–10. “Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy I. Sh. Anisimova” [Caucasian Jews-highlanders by I. S. Anisimov], Russkaia Mysl’, no. 9, September 1888, 437–39; “Evrei-gortsy (Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy Il’i Anisimova)” [Jews-highlanders (Caucasian Jews-highlanders by Ilia Anisimov)], Voskhod, January–February 1889, 92–110. Anisimov, Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy, 2. An aul is a type of fortified village encampment in the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Southern Ural regions. Anisimov, Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy, 2. Ibid., 5, 8. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 96. Ibid., 3. Ibid. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 64. Ibid., 3–5. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 6–7. Ibid., 7.

Bibliography

Unpublished Sources Tsentral’nyi istoricheskii arkhiv Moskvy (Central Historical Archive of the City of Moscow, TsIAM), Moscow, Russia Fond 372—Imperial Moscow Technical Secondary School Fond 454—Imperial Moscow Archaeological Society

Primary Published Sources Protokoly zasedanii Obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii [Protocols of the meetings of the Society of the Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography] 60, no. 1. Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1887. Trudy etnograficheskogo otdela Imperatorskogo Obshchestva liubiteleiest estvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii pri Moskovskom [Proceedings of the Ethnographic Depart-

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ment of the Imperial Society of the Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography at the Moscow University]. 18/2/8. Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1888.

Encyclopedias Encyclopedia Judaica. Vol. 13, edited by Cecil Roth and Geoffrey Wigoder. Jerusalem: Keter, 1972. Evreiskaia entsiklopediia: Svod znanii o Evreistve i ego kul’ture v proshlom i nastoiashchem. [Jewish Encyclopedia: collection of knowledge about Jewry and its culture in the past and present]. Saint Petersburg: Obshchestvo dlia nauchnykh evreiskikh izdanii Brokhaus-Efron, 1907–13. The Jewish Encyclopaedia. Vol. 4, edited by Isidore Singer et al. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1903.

Newspapers Ha-Karmel Ha-Magid Ha-Melits Kavkaz Nedel’naia khronika voskhoda Razsvet Russkaia Mysl’ Vestnik Evropy Voskhod

Secondary Sources Anisimov, Il’ia Scherebetovich. Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy: Sbornik materialov po etnografii, izdavaemyi pri Dashkovskom Etnograficheskom Muzee [Caucasian Jewshighlanders: A collection of materials on ethnography, published at the Dashkov Ethnographic Museum]. Moscow: Daskhovskii etnograficheskii muzei, 1888. Authier, Gilles. Grammaire juhuri, ou Judeo-tat, langue Iranienne des juifs du caucase de l’est: Bibliotheque Iranienne. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2012. Begun, Iosif, ed. Gorskie evrei: Istoriia. Etnografiia. Kul’tura [The Mountain Jews: History, ethnography, culture]. Jerusalem: DAAT and Znanie, 1999. Chorny, Iosif Iuda. “Gorskie evrei” [The Mountain Jews]. In Sbornik svedenii o kavkazskikh gortsakh [A Collection of information on Caucasian highlanders]. Volume 3, 1(45)–44(88). Tbilisi: Kavkazskoe gorskoe upravlenie, 1870. ———. “Gorskie evrei Terskoi oblasti. Kratkie istoricheskie svedeniia 1869” [The Mountain Jews of the Terek Oblast: Brief historical information, 1869]. In Sbornik svedenii o Terskoi oblasti [A collection of information on the Terek Oblast], edited by Nikolai Blagoveshchenskii, 309–14. Vladikavkaz: Tipografia Terskago oblastnago pravleniia, 1878.

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Dauber, Jeremy. Antonio’s Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. Etkind, Alexander. Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011. Feldman, Leah. On the Threshold of Eurasia: Revolutionary Poetics in the Caucasus. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. Fishman, David E. Russia’s First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov. New York: New York University Press, 1995. Gatagova, Lyudmila. “Caucasian Phobias and the Rise of Antisemitism in the North Caucasus in the 1920s.” Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 36, no. 1 (2009): 42–57. Goldberg, Harvey E. “From Sephardi to Mizrahi and Back Again: Changing Meanings of “Sephardi” in Its Social Environments.” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 15, no. 1 (2008): 165–88. Greenberg, Louis. The Jews in Russia: The Struggle for Emancipation, 1772–1917. Vol. 1: 1772–1880. New York: Schocken Books, 1976. Gutmeyr, Dominik. Borderlands Orientalism or How the Savage Lost His Nobility: The Russian Perception of the Caucasus between 1817 and 1878. Vienna: Lit Verlag, 2017. Haberer, Erich. Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Kaloev, Boris. V. F. Miller—kavkazoved: Issledovaniia i materialy [V. F. Miller—Caucasologist: studies and materials]. Ordzhonikidze: Severo-osetinskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1963. Katz, Jacob. Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770– 1870. New York: Schocken Books, 1978. Kosven, Mark. “K voprosu o vysshem obrazovanii russkikh evreev (istoriko-statisticheskie materialy)” [To the question of the higher education of Russian Jews (historical and statistical materials)]. Evreiskaia Zhizn´ 7 (1904): 161–75. Maggid, David. Evrei na iuzhnikh okrainakh Rossii: Evrei na Kavkaze (Istoricheskie ocherki) [Jews in the southern reaches of Russia: Jews in the Caucasus (historical essays)]. Saint Petersburg: Khudozhestvenno-graficheskoe atel’e i pechatnia M. Aivovarskogo, 1917. Mahler, Raphael. Ha-hasidut ve-ha-Haskalah [Hasidism and Haskalah]. Merhavia: Sifriat Po’alim, 1961. ———. Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment: Their Confrontation in Galicia and Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985. Meir, Jonatan, ed. Gilgulav shel megaleh sod: Kuntres divre tsadikim le-Ribal ve-Yosef Perl [Words of the Righteous: An anti-Hasidic satire by Joseph Perl and Isaac Baer Levinsohn]. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2004. ———. Imagined Hasidism: The Anti-Hasidic Writings of Joseph Perl. Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 2013. Miller, Vsevolod. “V gorskikh obshchestvakh Kabardy” [In the mountain societies of Kabarda]. Vestnik Evropy 2, no. 4 (1884): 540–88. ———. Materialy dlia izucheniia evreisko-tatskogo iazyka: Vvedenie. Teksty. Slovar’ [Material for the study of the Jewish-Tat language. Introduction, texts, dictionary]. Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 1892.

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———. Ocherk fonetikii evreisko-tatskogo narechiia [Essay on the phonetics of the JewishTat dialect]. Moscow: V. Gatchuk, 1900. ———. Ocherk morfologiii evreisko-tatskogo narechiia [Essay on the morphology of the Jewish-Tat dialect]. Moscow: V. Gatchuk, 1901. Mochalova, Victoria. “Jewish Studies in Russia in the Post-communist Era.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 10, no. 1 (2011): 119–33. Murzakhanova, Yuri, and Ekaterina Norkina. “Pravovoe polozhenie nal’chinskikh gorskikh evreev (vtoraia polovina 19—nachalo XX v.)” [Legal status of the Nalchik Mountain Jews (second half of the 19th—early 20th century)]. Kavkazologiia 3 (2020): 129–39. Nathans, Benjamin. Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Norkina, Ekaterina, “Power and ‘Native’ Jews: The Russian Imperial Bureaucracy and Mountain Jews in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century.” East European Jewish Affairs 41, no. 3 (2011): 137–56. Pinkus, Benjamin. The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Polonsky, Antony. The Jews in Poland and Russia. Vol. 1: 1350–1881. Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010. Redmond, Varvara. “Gendernaia rol’ gorskikh evreek (po materialam etnograficheskikh istochnikov XIX veka.” [Gender roles of the Mountain Jewish women in the ethnographic sources of the nineteenth century]. Tirosh: Trudy po iudaike, slavistike, orientalistike 19 (2019): 233–52. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David. Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Segal, Moses H. A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927. Shalem, Vitaly. “Judeo-Tat in the Eastern Caucasus.” In Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present, edited by Benjamin Hary and Sarah Bunin Beno, 313–56. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2018. Shapira, Dan. “‘We Are a Very Ancient People’: The ‘Antiquity Discourse’ among the Jews of Northeastern Caucasus, Georgia, and Central Asia.” In Studies in Caucasian, Georgian, and Bukharan Jewry: Historical, Sociological, and Cultural Aspects, edited by Golda Akhiezer, Reuven Enoch, and Sergei Weinstein, 20–34. Ariel: Ariel University, Institute for Research of Jewish Communities of the Caucasus and Central Asia, 2014. Slezkine, Yuri. Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. Tolz, Vera. Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Tshorni, Yosef Yehudah ben Yaakov ha-Levi. Sefer ha-masa’ot be-erets Kavkaz uvamedinot asher me-’ever le-Kavkaz u-ketsat medinot aherot be-negev Rusya mishenat 5627 “ad shenat 5635 [Book of travels in the land of Caucasus and Transcaucasia and a few other countries in Southern Russia from the year 5627 to the year 5635]. Saint Petersburg: Ha-Hevrah “le-harbot Haskalah etsel Yehude Rusya,” 1884. Zalkin, Mordechai. “Ha-mizrach mitbonen ba-mizrach: Yosef Yehuda Tsharni kesochen ha-neorut ha-yehudit ba-kehilot ha-yehudit be-Kavkaz” [East meets East: Joseph Judah Chorny as the agent of the Jewish Enlightenment in the Caucasian

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Jewish communities]. In Ha-Maskil ba-‘et ha-zot: Sefer ha-yovel le-Mosheh Pel’i; Ma’amarim be-Haskalah, sifrut ‘Ivrit ve-limude ha-Yahadut [The Maskil in our time: Studies in honor of Moshe Pelli; Articles on Haskalah, Hebrew literature, and Jewish studies], edited by Ze’ev Gerber, Lev Hakak, and Shmuel Katz, 135–59. Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuhad, 2017.

PART II



Creating the Other Travel and Migration

CHAPTER 4

The East-West Dichotomy Disrupted Triangulation and Reflections on the Imperial View in Hungarian Perceptions of North America



Balázs Venkovits

Introduction The nineteenth-century perceptions of North America in Hungarian travel writing were not only shaped by the experiences gained during travels in the region but also by two other factors: the positioning of Hungarians in the East-West/Center-Periphery dichotomy (and their self-perceived and externally ascribed peripherality and in-betweenness) and the dominant image of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. Both of these served as lenses through which the other countries of the area (Mexico and Canada) were seen and presented. During the nineteenth century, the United States functioned as a developmental model and a reference point against which other nations were measured, often establishing hierarchical relations of superiority and inferiority. At the same time, as a result of Hungarians’ identification with the West during their travels in the region, the “Eastern gaze” was often strongly influenced by an overriding “Western gaze” as a result of adapting the strategies and writing styles of Western travel writers. This was further complicated by Hungary’s special position both as a colonized country (in the Habsburg Empire) fighting for its autonomy and one with a quasi-colonial attitude toward minority cultures. Such influences and complexities are clearly visible in the case of Mexico, while the US image is also palpably dominant in depictions of Canada during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 This chapter investigates Hungarian conceptualizations of North America, focusing on depictions of Mexico, in view of the dominant represen-

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tations of the United States. In the period between the Hungarian War of Independence (1848–49) and the turn of the century (the era under scrutiny in this chapter), a growing number of Hungarians from various backgrounds and with diverse purposes visited the Western Hemisphere. The great majority of Hungarian travel writers to North America often saw the region through the lens and filter of the United States, and thus travel writing often involved a process of triangulation as opposed to pure binary oppositions usually encountered in travel writing.2 Countries like Mexico were often depicted in an inter-American context, using triangulation involving the Self (Hungary), the Other (Mexico), and the other Other (the United States), thus creating a special contact zone of three cultures. The triangulation often applied by Hungarian travel writers is similar to the method used by mariners.3 “Navigators relate an unknown position to the known location of two others by mapping an imaginary triangle. The triangle then yields coordinates for the unknown position based on the distance from and angle of the other two.”4 When traveling in a less developed country, Hungarian travelers tended to identify with the West and wanted to be seen as belonging to the West, and thus they wrote accordingly. This also meant the adaptation of Western vocabulary and depictions, including the use of such concepts as masculinity and femininity to express hierarchical relations of superiority and inferiority. This is in line with those mentioned in the introduction to this volume as well, that is: “diverse east European actors from travelers through to businesspeople to lobbyist groups, have related to developments outside Eastern Europe.” While Mexican society and even Mexican men in particular were often described as feminine, the United States (and not the home country) appeared as a masculine savior, bringing civilization, industry, and order into the region. Such use of terminology, however, was further complicated by the way Hungarian travelers identified themselves. They often struggled with positioning their own nation in the East-West and centerperiphery dichotomy that also became apparent when they traveled to and wrote about other parts of the world. Influencing forces shaping the images of foreign lands included the perception of the Hungarian past, present, and future, the peculiar position of the country in East-Central Europe, and the way the nation was seen by foreigners, especially those coming from the West. This was crucial when Hungarians traveled in the Americas as they had to reflect on their own situation in this dichotomy, explain their role as travel writers, and express their opinion of the continent and their own country (even if only indirectly). As a result of such identification, several questions emerge about Hungarian descriptions of this non-European part of the world: Did Hungarians travel as representatives of the West/the Center (the way they

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wanted to be seen) or as those of the periphery (the way they were often perceived)? Did they copy the voice characteristic of Western European travelers whose texts shaped their views of the Americas before even visiting, or did they assume a voice of their own that was in many ways contradictory to the imperial discourse that had also targeted and criticized Hungary? To answer these questions, I focus on the already mentioned two key issues influencing Hungarian views of “the rest” of North America, the repercussions of the East-West dichotomy and the overtly dominant image of the United States, primarily through the image of Mexico in Hungarian travelogues from the second half of the nineteenth century.

The East and West in Hungarian Travel Writing To understand Hungarian perceptions of the non-European world, we first need to apprehend the Hungarian attitudes to travel and its importance in Hungarian history. As Irina V. Popova Nowak claims, “In terms of travel abroad, Hungarian accounts outlined two geographically and symbolically polar destinations: travels to the West that were travels to the future, and travels to the East that were travels to the past.”5 Hungarian travelers since Friar Julian’s journey in 1235 (to find the Magyars who remained in the eastern homeland) often traveled east to find the roots of Hungarian culture and language and thus to explore the Hungarian past. Travel to Western Europe and the United States (the West), especially during the Reform Era in Hungary (from 1825 to 1848), was seen as a form of education, and the countries in these regions were often perceived as possible models for Hungary in terms of politics, technological development, and economic modernization, thus representing, for many, a possible future avenue for the country. Many of the most influential nineteenth-century Hungarian travel writers clearly perceived travel and travel writing as a means of learning about such models, of seeking alternatives for Hungary’s future development. István Széchenyi, considered one of the greatest statesmen in Hungarian history, himself stressed this as he “believed that travel was crucial for a country undergoing the process of reform and in need of developmental examples.”6 Such examples were to be found in the West, and by this time this meant not only Western Europe but more and more the United States also. Meanwhile, in their travel accounts, Hungarians often positioned themselves in line with the cultural/geographical dichotomy of East and West: wanting to belong to the West but often perceived as belonging to the East, to the less developed and less civilized part of Europe and the world. Thus when traveling, Hungarians often tried to pose as representatives of the

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West, while they had to realize that Hungary was depicted by Western travelers as backward and “as a country overflowing with riches, ‘which the Natives are too idle or too awkward to make themselves masters of.’”7 Thus Hungarians were often caught between East and West, both in terms of their own travels and in regards to the perception of their native land by foreigners. This attitude was further complicated in the second half of the nineteenth century with Hungary’s special position within the AustroHungarian Empire.8 Thus the question of identity shaped, among other factors, their perception of the Americas also, with the United States playing a key role as the representative of the West in the hemisphere. The West exerted its influence partly as a developmental model to be followed but also in the sense of providing information about the Americas. As Hungarian travelers consulted accounts written by French, German, English, and other scholars and travelers, these books often served as key sources of information, reference points, and examples on how to write about non-European parts of the world. Thus in many cases Hungarians adapted the vocabulary of Western travel writers, composing in a style resembling the imperial view and colonial discourse despite the fact that Hungarians were not colonizers in these regions and their own country was often depicted by these Western countries the same way (emphasizing its backwardness). Once in North America, instead of criticizing such an imperial view, they mostly identified with the colonial discourse and the views of the Western countries (seeing Mexico, for example, as a country lagging behind and “awaiting” Western intervention). If there was no identification, they still positioned themselves in relation to the Western tradition and the imperial depiction of “backward” countries.

Foreign Perceptions of Hungary Shaping Hungarian Perceptions of the World Before discussing how Hungarians perceived and presented North America in their travel accounts, it is worth examining briefly how Hungary and Hungarians were depicted in Western travel writing up to and during the period under scrutiny, as this had an influence on travelers’ selfperception and the way they examined foreign lands and people. Similarly to other regions, early travelers to Hungary were mostly representatives of the upper class or were diplomats, merchants, and adventurers traveling through or staying in Hungary. With changes in transportation, travel, and society, other groups joined in (scholars, those traveling for personal reasons, tourists) and contributed to the development of the image of Hungary abroad in terms of its society, economy and geography. According to Thomas Kabdebo, “Those that left memoirs and travel-notes behind, the

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most numerous and the most observant seem to have been the English.”9 It was during the Turkish occupation that Hungary became an especially interesting subject for travelogues and was often presented as the bulwark against the Turks.10 Later, the country and its people became less fascinating politically, and travel writing on Hungary entered what is sometimes referred to as its “eighteenth-century slumber.” Even though less attention was paid to Hungary at this time, several notable figures visited and wrote about Hungary, and their texts also provided reference points for later travelers (including well-known authors such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Robert Townson). In the first half of the nineteenth century, however, the country became historically and socially exciting again, initiating the “golden age of travel to Eastern Europe.”11 Its bondage to, and civic dependence on, Austria (seriously opposed only once by Hungarian Jacobins, who paid for it by decapitation) was being reformed year after year in front of the very eyes of foreign witnesses. Entrepreneurs became more hopeful for new industrial and trade prospects, and the land became inviting for the foreign financier and interesting for the tourist.12

Travelers of the time stressed how little people knew about Hungary and were eager to fill in the gap. François-Sulpice  Beudant, a French traveler whose work was published in English, also noted the imperfect knowledge about this remote and unvisited region,13 while the English traveler Richard Bright stated that Hungary was “placed beyond the usual circuit of the traveller’s observation.”14 Thus these travelers also acted as pioneers in the region, offering firsthand accounts for their readers and thus shaping the image of Hungary: “Travel across Hungary ceased to be a part of the trip to Europe and acquired its own value and attraction.”15 The first half of the nineteenth century thus boasts a list of influential travel writers; Beudant and Bright have already been mentioned, but others including Julia Pardoe, Michael J. Quin, John Paget are also included among the best-known authors. While at first the focus seems to have been mineralogical,16 general (business) interest gradually grew that necessitated a minute mapping of the country. Western travelers writing about Hungary in the first half of the century, although generally sympathetic toward the country according to George Bisztray, often struggled with positioning the nation within the usual binaries of East-West, Civilized-Uncivilized, Center-Periphery: The experiences reported in Western travel narratives expressed a sense of uneasiness over Hungary’s civilizational ambiguity. The international visitors could not classify Hungary in simple terms of barbarity or civilization, and thus called it a region/country in transition.17

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The Western idea of a country overflowing with riches but not explored properly by the locals; the low quality of transportation, accommodation, and health facilities; and perceptions of an outdated social structure resulted in a generally gloomy portrayal of a backward country with unexploited potential and resources. The initial negative attitude was also influenced by the “discouraging tales” Western travelers often heard in Austria about conditions in Hungary18 and the inconveniences of travel there.19 These negative impressions were often coupled with a sense of superiority as well. For example, the Dutch Jan Ackersdijck’s evaluation of the quality of Hungarian accommodation is a case in point: “We were wondering why a capital city did not offer better dining facilities. The probable reason is that higher civilization and refined taste have not conquered Hungary yet.”20 All in all, this comment reveals an attitude similar to those toward other areas of the world often deemed uncivilized, underdeveloped, and barbaric by Western travelers (see, for example, the case of Mexico below). Thus, anything judged to be out of line with their own civilization served as proof for the uncivilized status of the country visited. This could include the lack of safety, poor travel conditions, or the population’s inability to make proper use of the resources of their own country, the latter providing justification for the presence of Western engineers, settlers, and businessmen (referred to as the “capitalist vanguard” by Mary Louise Pratt21), as it is the “purported backwardness [of the population] that legitimates [their] interventions in the first place.”22 Thus it provided an opportunity for foreigners (from the West) to bring civilization and development, to exploit the natural resources, and to improve the country. Even though Bisztray refers to this wave of travelers as the “friends of Hungary” for their general sympathy (with some explicit admirers like Paget), overall Hungary is not presented as a country civilized in the Western sense of the word. This often was contrary to how Hungarians wanted to perceive their own country: “Western travelers and public opinion viewed Hungary as a passage to Constantinople and to the East. On the contrary, Hungarians, especially the Hungarian liberals who represented the gentry, saw their country as moving westwards, since Hungary was geographically a part of the continent and had a tradition of independent statehood, which were considered inherent ‘Western’ attributes.”23 This self-perception and the influence of Western depictions of Hungary prove to be central when visiting and writing about other parts of the world, as Hungarians had to reflect on this contradiction between foreign and self-perceptions. This meant (for example, when visiting Mexico) that they had to choose either to identify with a country in the periphery, acknowledge the similar status of the nation with their home, and position themselves in opposition to the

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Western discourse or, to the contrary, to assume the “Western gaze” and behave as a traveler from the West (possibly even disregarding the similarities between Hungary and the foreign country described). This dilemma is clearly illustrated by the Hungarian travel accounts about Mexico written in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Travels to the Americas: US Dominance in Perceptions and the Basis of Triangulation North America plays an important role in the history of Hungarian travel writing and the United States is especially central in terms of the number of Hungarians traveling to the country, as well as the scholarly attention devoted to texts written about the nation. The image of the United States propagated in travel accounts (especially in the nineteenth century) strongly shaped the perceptions of the rest of the Americas, thus serving as a lens through which the continent was seen and as an example against which the rest of the region could be measured in terms of development, politics, or social issues. The combination of the influence of the US image and the Hungarians’ perceptions of themselves in the East-West dichotomy shaped the image of Mexico. During the nineteenth century, the United States attracted the attention of several groups of people (including travelers, immigrants, politicians, armchair travelers, and adventurers). Politically, they were interested in the mechanics of democracy, equality, and freedom that some of them hoped could be used as a possible model for Hungary as well (see especially Sándor Bölöni Farkas below and the Reform Era, Hungarian revolutionaries, and Lajos Kossuth visiting the United States, etc.). Rapid (urban) development, internal improvements, the prison system, freedom of religion, and other topics all attracted the attention of European travelers who were eager to share their experience in the United States. These were coupled with signs of economic prosperity exemplified by the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, including a transportation, communication, and market revolution, all of which attracted millions of immigrants coming to the country looking for new opportunities and a new life. In the first part of the nineteenth century, the United States was discussed in superlatives in Hungarian travel accounts as a model of progress and development that should be followed (by Mexicans and Hungarians among others).24 Prior to this period, “the Hungarian public received only scarce, indirect, and belated information about the U.S. from random newspaper articles, encyclopedias, or translations of foreign travelogues, geographical or historical works.”25 During the 1830s this changed:

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Hungarian national awakening in the political, economic and cultural fields aroused an interest in the United States as a newly emerging young nation, which had gained independence from colonial status in the glorious War of Independence, a country that had established an equalitarian democratic regime and made a remarkably rapid progress.26

Some of the Hungarians began to look at the United States as a model to be followed in their struggle for independence and progress, partly due to published travelogues of the time. The first, and probably most influential, Hungarian travelogue on the United States, published in 1834, had a great impact on political thinkers of the age and on the development of the favorable image of the United States in Hungary. Sándor Bölöni Farkas’s Útazás Észak Amerikában [A journey in North America (i.e., the United States)] established the image of the United States in Hungary as that of a “promised land” and a land of unlimited opportunities.27 Other Hungarians publishing after Bölöni wrote in a similar style and reinforced an image of the United States as the economic and political land of opportunities, describing the country with “reverent admiration.”28 Bölöni’s publication became one of the most popular books of its time in Hungary and was published twice within two years. The United States was seen at the time as a rapidly developing and changing country, a model for modernization, and improvement and travel accounts became “textbooks of political and economic progress, a treasury of democratic ideas frequently quoted in political debates in Parliament and at county level.”29 Hungarians were impressed by the progress they witnessed, such as internal improvement, the rapid growth of American cities, and the underlying hard work and resulting prosperity of the population. US citizens were introduced as the restless, hardworking Yankees, who were practical and creative. This kind of depiction is well illustrated by the following excerpt from another influential travel account of the time published by Ágoston Haraszthy in 1844: The American lives twice as long as others and does a hundred times more; the American wakes up early, and as soon as he is up he starts doing his business whatever that might be. He has breakfast with haste, and not to lose precious time, meanwhile, he reads the papers, and finishing within a few minutes, returns to his work. The time for lunch arrives; everyone appears on time at the sound of the bell, sits at the table without saying a word and the entire lunch ends within maximum twenty minutes; at restaurants, travelers might see three or four hundred men sitting down for lunch but after 15 minutes, only two or three of them can still be seen.30

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This overtly positive Hungarian attitude was partly in line with the general depiction of the United States: interest in the social and political “experiments,” the physical beauty of the country, the rapid progress taking place in terms of the economy and technology, and the national character of Americans. Due to the different position of Hungarian travelers and Western writers, however, there was a difference in travel accounts of the country in certain respects. As Oscar Handlin claimed, comparisons between the United States and the mother country involved different considerations in the case of travelers who were not English and “who were therefore not blinded by the assumption of common descent.”31 Some of the Western, mostly British, voices, besides acknowledging the great development and positive aspects of US life, were often more critical than Hungarians. Several Hungarians also became American citizens and wrote their reports back to Hungary with a new identity that also emphasized the greatness of their new home. Hungarians were rarely critical of the United States, and this was certainly the case when Hungarians, following a journey to the Latin American country, decided to write about Mexico and compare it with the United States. In the final part of the nineteenth century, Hungarians’ admiration of the United States had become mixed with a degree of disillusionment that already emphasized the negative aspects of immigrant life in the country. This tendency was accompanied and influenced by several issues, including new immigration to the United States and new attitudes toward the emerging great power of the New World as a result of a mass exodus (more than one million immigrants) from Hungary. Hungarian travel writing on the United States experienced its heyday between 1893 and 1908, and Tibor Glant concludes that although critical voices became more emphatic, the myth of the land of opportunities still survived in both a political and, especially, an economic sense.32 This was even more obvious when contrasted with other countries in the hemisphere. Triangulation reflected Hungarians’ identification with the West and the fact that they tried to pose as Western travelers. They could not use their home country as a direct point of comparison with Mexico when talking about the latter’s backwardness and its lack of progress, and this required the assumption of a new identity that enabled them to write similarly to Western travelers—without expressing any sympathy with Mexicans or admitting any similarities between the status (or treatment) of Mexico and their home country. This attitude reveals the true influence of the imperial/ colonial discourse: it shaped the perceptions of noncolonizing countries as well as representatives of countries who had no direct colonial interest in a region.

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The Other North America: Mexico and Triangulation For a long time, Mexico was not the center of attention in Hungary, and most of the information about it reached Hungary from Western European sources. Based on these, the first wave of Hungarian travelers was familiarized with a backward (and inferior) Mexico, characterized as having a lazy population and lacking in progress; at the same time, in the already published and influential Hungarian travel accounts of the United States, they were introduced to a superior northern neighbor in terms of culture, society, and technology. Thus it was an especially intriguing question how Hungarians would position themselves once they started visiting and writing about Mexico. Many of them reinforced the former Western images about the American country, emphasizing the backwardness of the country and the superiority of the United States rather than creating an independent image of Mexico and assuming any identification with the country. The United States was what many Hungarians wanted their country to become, but they were afraid that Hungary would “sink into” being another Mexico instead. Posing as representatives of the West and not the East, Hungarians identified with the United States (and not Mexico), reflecting this dilemma. The first significant group of Hungarian travel writers to Mexico (after Jesuit missionaries) were former revolutionaries who had to leave Hungary after the failed War of Independence in 1849. Two of them, Károly László (1815–94) and János Xántus (1825–94) lived in the United States before visiting Mexico (as US citizens already), while the third one, Pál Rosti (1830–74) also traveled in the United States before his Latin American journey. The first two clearly identified with their new home, while Rosti (a representative of the Hungarian nobility) accepted the views of higher levels of society in Western Europe. In all three cases, the Hungarian references (the third part of the triangle) were included to bring the familiar closer to the reading audience, but Mexico rarely appeared independently and was often contrasted with the United States. Despite the fact that they were revolutionaries who had fought for their country’s independence and against its quasi-colonized status, once in Mexico, they identified with the colonial attitude and did not express sympathy with Mexico living in the shade of a great power. To the contrary, they often emphasized the need for US intervention in the area. Inter-American triangulation was most obvious in László’s letters sent to Hungarian newspapers (especially Vasárnapi Újság) concerning the Mexican population: while Mexicans, and Natives in particular, were represented as lazy, uncivilized, uneducated, and feminine, US citizens were seen as industrious, diligent, civilized, and masculine. In an inter-American

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context, the United States always occupied a superior position. This superiority manifested itself in the descriptions of the population, of technological development, and László’s view of the future of Mexico. Once arriving in Mexico, László completely identified with the Western, particularly US and imperial, attitude toward the country and its population. He did not leave his Hungarian identity behind, but he also often identified himself as an American (a US citizen). The United States takes a superior position in comparisons and provides a model for both Mexico and Hungary; thus the image of Mexico is not painted only in terms of binaries between mother country and the unfamiliar land but emerges instead in a triangle where Hungary and the United States both serve as reference points. Hungary seems to occupy a middle position (transition?) between the United States and Mexico, and when the discussion centers on the future of Mexicans, Hungary is completely missing, while the US serves as the major reference point. For László, the most obvious manifestation of the difference between the United States and Mexico was in terms of technological development. While he identified Mexico with nature and wilderness (see his letters about the dense forests, waterfalls, and exotic animals),33 László wrote about industry and technological development in the United States. He called attention to the lack of technological improvement in Mexico on several occasions (“There is not a single plow in this province nor a cart”34) and compared Mexico unfavorably to its northern neighbor in his letters: “When these rough and clumsy [Mexican] wheelbarrows passed the road building company’s nicely painted North American carts it was interesting to notice the great difference between the two structures and I thought to myself: if the steam engine had not been in use by now, when would these folk invent it?”35 It is the result of such a contrast, together with the view of the population, that entailed the necessity, in László’s opinion, of foreign, especially US, intervention and assistance in Mexico’s development. The future of Mexico depended on the United States in László’s letters: the hard-working North Americans will flock into this area; they will dig up the treasures hidden in the “fat” plains and rocky mountains, will bring them to the surface, and the wilderness of today that is not aware of its wealth will be turned into a rich, civilized, industrious country and may be annexed to the United States, which is the wish of the majority of those in the United States, in fact a plan that can hardly be concealed.36

The United States occupies a superior position in Xántus’s writings as well, similarly to László’s and other travelers’ accounts of the time. A triangular reference is also present here: Mexico is caught between the two reference points of Hungary and the United States. Hungary serves as an

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example in many cases, again, to bring the unfamiliar closer to the reading audience. Although Xántus does not explicitly deal with US politics or US views on expansion, several sections of his book reveal his attitude toward the role of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. The best example is presented when Xántus describes La Paz after his arrival: In the evening of May 7 we arrived at La Paz, the capital of the peninsula and the seat of the government and bishopric. Its population is not yet 10,000 but it is steadily growing for its harbor is the best and safest in the entire Purple Sea. With the exception of the harbors of Constantinople and New York, there is hardly another in the world that can accommodate as many ships as the one at La Paz. . . . It requires no prophet to state with certainty that in a few years La Paz will be one of the most important cities on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.37

Xántus claims that changes are needed to exploit these opportunities and continues: “Such a change can only come about at a snail’s pace, as long as the peninsula belongs to the Mexican Republic, for flourishing commerce in Mexico is unimaginable.” Mexico is often depicted as a politically unstable country (which it really was at the time), and this volatility resulted in its inability to govern itself successfully according to Xántus. If . . . the peninsula should become the property of the North American Union, which is only a matter of time, for it will inevitably happen before long, then La Paz will become one of the main depositories of American industry. . . . Furthermore, due to its geographical location, La Paz could become for the North American Union what, for example, St. Helena, Gibraltar, Malta, or Bermuda constitute in the hands of the British.38

In this respect, Xántus seems to identify with the Southern, expansionist approach and emphasizes the significance of “progress” above all. This is especially remarkable in the case of a former revolutionary fighting against Austrian dominance in Hungary. Once in Mexico, similarly to László, he begins writing more like a colonizer, adopting the colonial voice, a superior position. Neither can, however, assume such a position as Hungarian; instead, they identify with the United States and express no sympathy with Mexico, a country fighting against negative depictions and US dominance. The identification with the Western gaze is clearly present in the case of another group of Hungarian travel writers, the ones who participated in Maximilian von Habsburg’s Mexican venture (1864–67), a true imperial undertaking. French intervention in 1861 and the subsequent ascent of Maximilian von Habsburg, younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph, to the Mexican throne in 1864 affected the development of Hungarian perceptions of Mexico in several ways. Due to Habsburg involvement and the

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fact that 1,047 Hungarian participants also accompanied the new emperor to Mexico as part of the Österreichisches Freiwilligenkorps (Austrian Volunteer Corps), there was a growing interest in both contemporary events in Mexico and the country in general. More attention was devoted to this American nation than ever before: Mexico was “put on the map” in Hungary, and as many of the Hungarian participants shared their experiences during the adventure or after their return home, more accounts were published than in the previous period. In these texts, a more independent image of Mexico evolved that was less dependent on that of the United States, but they failed to leave behind the former racist writing style and view of Mexico as an inferior nation. This was due to the fact that they entered the country as members of an imperial army and used travel accounts partly to justify their presence.39 Ede Pawlowszki (1834–[?]), for example, presents a dual image of Mexico (which is similar to the one projected by Xántus and László two decades before): he often emphasizes the beauty of nature and the abundance of the country in terms of flora and fauna, while this image is contrasted with the unfavorable perception of people who cannot live in peace, who are not ready and are incapable of living a civilized and modern way of life. It is unlikely, writes Pawlowszki, that people of this “state abundant in all gifts of nature” could enjoy the blessings of peace for a long time.40 The imperial view is clearly discernible: Pawlowszki repeatedly emphasizes the superiority of the invading army,41 claiming that Maximilian went to Mexico to help, but the population was simply not capable of recognizing how he could improve the status of the country. If we are looking for the real cause of reemerging turbulence since the independence of Mexico, we can find it first and foremost in the ancient crudity and ignorance of its diverse population, and especially in the lack of discipline in the military, which has brought so much misfortune to one of the most beautiful countries of this world.42

Travel writing is often used in an imperial context to show that “certain territories and people require and beseech domination,” using vocabulary depicting concepts like “‘inferior’ or ‘subject races,’ ‘subordinate peoples,’ ‘dependency,’ ‘expansion,’ and ‘authority.’”43 As Edward Said claimed, imperialism was not only a territorial battle but also a narrative conflict over who gets to control representation: The main battle in imperialism is over land, of course; but when it came to who owned the land, who had the right to settle and work on it, who kept it going, who won it back, and who now plans its future—these issues were reflected, contested, and even for a time decided in narrative.44

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This is reflected in Pawlowszki’s book as well. The imperial voice is used by Hungarians in a similar fashion as Pawlowszki presents the Mexican venture as a civilizing mission and sets out to justify the presence of the imperial army in Mexico. Intervention was not only necessary from a European perspective but was supposed to be beneficial for the locals as well, even if they did not/could not realize this. The obvious reason for the failure of the imperial venture, in Pawlowszki’s view, was the low status and ignorance of the population; “good imperial institutions” fell and were ineffective not because they were not suitable for Mexico but because people were not capable of understanding them: The Emperor has attempted several times to inform Mexicans about the wealth of the country, to get them used to work, and to create rules and laws fitting for a civilized country; however, Mexicans prefer a lazy and easy life, and this is exactly the main reason why the Empire was destined to fall as the good institutions did not find enough patronage and persistent support in the country.45

The country could have become a paradise, according to Pawlowszki, were it not for the people living in it.46 Such a writing style reveals a full identification with the colonizer’s imperial view and racist ideas rooted in feelings of superiority. For László and Xántus it was the United States that could create order in the country, exploit resources, and modernize it; for Pawlowszki it was Maximilian and an enlightened, European-style monarchy that could have brought consolidation for Mexico. With the execution of Maximilian, however, Mexicans were left on their own again: “Juárez only achieved one thing, as a result of the Emperor’s execution, Europeans will not rush to interfere in their matters to put them to the right course and to bring them to their senses.”47 The failure of the imperial project left a clear mark on Pawlowszki’s perceptions and travel account on Mexico. In none of these cases do we find reflection on possible parallels between Mexican and Hungarian history, no sympathy is expressed toward Mexico and the status of the country, and there is no recognition of the fact that Mexico and Mexican people were treated in Western travel writing similarly to Hungary and Hungarians (as seen in the first part of this chapter). Instead, a colonizer’s view is assumed by representatives of a country in a colonized position in many respects. The only example from the period attempting to criticize this imperial view and the Western gaze that both Hungary and Mexico were subjected to came from a Hungarian immigrant to Mexico called Jenő Bánó (1855– 1927), who also arrived from the United States after becoming disappointed in the country due to the lack of opportunities he had found there.

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His writing is still influenced by the two dominant perceptions already mentioned; however, in this case, both of these are turned upside down: the US becomes a threat, and a position is taken against the West, projecting a call against imperial powers. While the United States still serves as a third reference point when using triangulation, it is not presented as a masculine savior of feminine Mexico or a model to be followed without reservations anymore but as a threat to Mexico’s unique culture and national identity. Such an attitude is also shaped by the similarities perceived by Bánó between Mexican and Hungarian history in terms of continuous struggles against great powers. Thus the US image is still dominant, it still serves as a reference point, and the Western gaze continues to be crucial, but the Western powers are now criticized due to their treatment of other countries and peoples. Bánó’s novel approach toward Mexico was influenced by numerous circumstances. First and foremost, his status as an immigrant in Mexico during the Porfiriato affected his attitude toward the representation of the country in a crucial way. He knew that a favorable account could help the realization of his plans in the county (gaining government support), thus he had been planning publication of his experience from an early stage of his stay in the New World.48 In his writing, Bánó gradually demolishes former negative images; he does not present Mexico as inferior, and he places a strong emphasis on the future rise and development of the nation. Instead of the United States, he emphasizes opportunities for immigrants in Mexico. Bánó believed that both Mexico and Hungary were misrepresented by Western, imperial powers. “It is obvious that we are deceived at home,” writes Bánó, calling attention to the malevolence of Europeans toward both his home country and his adopted new home. While the discussed Hungarian travel writers often identified with the imperial view of Western travelers and depicted Mexico as the periphery, Bánó rebels against such an approach. The European imperial view is criticized and ridiculed throughout the accounts: “This is what we are like here in Mexico, wild and heartless, and also, as they like to think in Europe, completely uncivilized.”49 Bánó expresses his frustration with the attitude of imperial powers, their lack of knowledge and interest in Hungary. This leaves its mark on his thinking, and once he sees Mexico being treated the same way as Hungary, he feels sympathetic and defends Mexico and Mexicans. Such a relationship and sense of common fate had not been expressed in Hungarian travel writing before. Bánó even draws questionable parallels between Hungarian and Mexican history: while Mexicans were oppressed by the Spanish and have lived under the influence of the United States, Hungary lived under foreign rule

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for centuries and now also suffers in the shadow of the Habsburg Empire. “Similarly to us, Hungarians, who suffered under foreign influence for centuries, they also felt the Spanish yoke on their necks for hundreds of years”; Bánó then adds: “Just like we, after getting rid of our handcuffs, would like to enjoy the hardly-won freedom and we are looking for the love and respect of foreign nations, the Mexican is also content with freedom and strives to win the esteem of foreign countries.”50 Bánó raises his voice to defend Mexico while also commenting on his home country’s status within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He objects, for example, to the indication on US maps that Hungary is only a “province” of Austria and to how the two countries appear in the same color.51 The letters published in his first book and various sections of other publications reveal Bánó’s opposition to coexistence with the Austrians as a result of the Compromise of 1867: “I like the King as the Apostolic majesty of Hungary, I consider his being holy and invulnerable; however, I do not like the union.”52 The key feature of travel writing studies manifests itself in this case also: we learn just as much about the author’s opinion of his own country as the foreign country visited. Bánó believes that Hungary loses its national character and identity as a result of the Compromise; it cannot enjoy national celebrations or express a sense of national belonging while the imperial symbol of the double-headed eagle always looms over the country. Hungary should not give in to foreign powers, and Bánó clearly expresses his opinion: “Long live the homeland! Long live independent Hungary!”53 Similarly, he demands fair treatment for Mexico and emphasizes the significance of preserving the unique identity (and independence) of the country. The former rulers, the Spanish, are not presented as heroes, their reign was characterized by destruction and genocide.54 At the same time, US influence is also seen as harmful, unlike in the cases of László and Xántus. It is not a model to be followed anymore; it has become dangerous for the Mexican national character, just like Austria’s rule over Hungary has done: [Mexicans] do not like the North Americans, and still the neighbor’s influence expands day by day; but in my humble opinion, this with time can pose a threat for this young state that has just started to flourish and which as an independent republic is destined to a great role. If, however, they would unite with North America, the country would lose its originality, special characteristics, and nationality among the Anglo-Saxons—as it happened in California, New Mexico, and Texas—and it would be degraded to a secondary position within this enormous body.55

While László and Xántus perceived US influence and occupation as desirable for Mexico and Pawlowszki justified European intervention, Bánó considers foreign, especially US, influence to be dangerous, just as he be-

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lieves in the same with regard to Austria and Hungary. In line with this, the Mexican-American War, for example, is not presented as a natural step benefiting the “manifest” expansion of the United States and the progress of the newly acquired region but is seen as a huge loss for Mexico. American soldiers are depicted as murderers, while Mexicans are heroes fighting for their country: “Happy is the nation that has such children.”56 Bánó even defends Mexico from US expressions of superiority.57 One cannot but think that this is also a defense of Hungary against similar attitudes. Bánó’s description of Mexico serves as a possible platform for commenting on problems of the home culture just as the defense of Mexico from malevolent Western voices is used to make remarks on Hungary’s similar treatment.

Conclusion The perception of Mexico by Hungarians visiting North America was shaped by two key influences. The image of the United States was clearly dominant—the travelers discussed in this chapter either saw the country as a model or as a possible threat, but in both cases the country was measured against its northern neighbor in a process of triangulation. The perceived position of their own country in the East-West dichotomy also prejudiced Hungarians’ view of the Americas and how they presented the people living there. They either identified with the Western gaze completely, disregarding their East-Central European background, or, as with Bánó, they raised their voice against the imperial view. In both cases they used the same coordinate system defined by the United States and the Western gaze as key reference points. This meant the adaptation of colonial vocabulary and attitudes, even if it seems to contradict Hungarians’ own historical experience and status. This necessitated the reevaluation of Hungary’s own position and created hybrid travel accounts building on Western vocabulary but rooted in Eastern experience. Such conclusions also mean that in the case of studying Hungarian (and East-Central European) travel writing, scholars may rely primarily on Anglophone research findings on travel accounts written by Western travelers. These provide a strong frame of reference, as Hungarians also positioned themselves in relation to such travelers and initiated a discourse with texts published by them. They also stand witness to the power of the colonial discourse, as the images, attitudes, and hierarchies projected there clearly also influenced perceptions by noncolonial travelers. However, such theories and concepts need to be refined to properly adapt them to our own regional context. To further explore these issues, we need more international scholarly cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe (where joint

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projects are often made more complicated due to language gaps) to see if such trends are also present in other countries of the region. Meanwhile, the analysis should also be extended to other countries and areas visited by East-Central Europeans to explore the influence of the Western gaze on the Eastern one in a broader geographical and cultural milieu. Balázs Venkovits, PhD, is assistant professor in American studies, Institute of English and American studies, University of Debrecen (Hungary). His broader academic interests include migration studies, travel writing, nineteenth-century Hungarian travel accounts on North America, Hungarian immigration to Canada, and US-Hungarian relations. He teaches courses on American civilization, history, travel writing, and translation. His Hungarian monograph on the perception of Mexico and the United States in Hungarian travel writing was published in 2018 and he has presented at conferences and published articles in the above topics internationally. He is currently working on his book on Hungarian emigration to North America.

Notes 1. In this chapter I focus on Mexico; for further information on perceptions of Canada in this context, see, for example, Balázs Venkovits, “Záródó kapuk, új lehetőségek: Magyar kivándorlás Észak-Amerikába a 20. század elején,” [Closing gates, new opportunities: Hungarian emigration to North America at the beginning of the 20th century]  Aetas Történettudományi Folyóirat  [Aetas journal of history] 33, no. 1 (2018): 131–43. 2. Whether such US dominance was present in the case of other countries from Central and Eastern Europe is also a question future research needs to answer. 3. I found the metaphor of such triangulation in David J. Vázquez’s book on narrative strategies for Latino identity and use it here because it aptly describes the process of Hungarian travel writing on Mexico as well. See David J. Vázquez, Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 4. Ibid., 3. 5. Irina V. Popova-Nowak, “The Odyssey of National Discovery: Hungarians in Hungary and Abroad, 1750–1850,” in Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe, ed. Wendy Bracewell and Alex DraceFrancis (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008), 211. 6. Quoted in ibid., 199. 7. Ibid., 215. 8. Mónika Szente-Varga, “Latin American Studies in Austria and in Hungary, 1790s– 1945,” in In Search of Other Worlds: Essay towards a Cross-Regional History of Area Studies, ed. Katja Naumann, Torsten Loschke, Steffi Marung, and Matthias Middell (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2018), 215–51.

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9. Thomas Kabdebo, “Travellers to Hungary: Blackwell’s Predecessors,” The Maynooth Review 9 (1983): 32. 10. Jennifer Speake, Literature of Travel and Exploration (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003). 11. Ibid., 369. 12. Kabdebo, “Travellers,” 33. 13. F. S. Beudant, Travels in Hungary in 1818 (London: Sir Richard Phillips, 1823). 14. Richard Bright, Travels from Vienna through Lower Hungary; with Some Remarks on the State of Vienna During the Congress in the year 1814 (Edinburgh: Archibald, 1818). 15. Popova-Nowak, “Odyssey of National Discovery,” 222. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 214. 18. George Bisztray, “The World Visits Hungary: Reflections of Foreign Travellers, 1433–1842,” Hungarian Studies Review 33, nos. 1–2 (2006): 1–16. 19. For a longer overview of the conditions of transportation in Hungary, see Balázs Venkovits, “A Changing Experience of Transport, Travel, and Mobility: The Transatlantic Crossing to the United States in 19th-Century Hungarian Travel Writing.” Történeti Tanulmányok 22 (2014): 222–39. 20. Bisztray, “World Visits Hungary,” 37. Emphasis added. 21. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992). 22. Ibid., 152. 23. Popova-Nowak, “Odyssey of National Discovery,” 218. 24. This overview is based on my PhD dissertation “‘We Are Clearly Deceived at Home’: Inter-American Images and the Depiction of Mexico in Hungarian Travel Writing during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” University of Debrecen, 2014. 25. Anna Katona, “Hungarian Travelogues on Pre–Civil War America,” Angol Filológiai Tanulmányok 5 (1971): 52. 26. Ibid., 51. 27. Sándor Bölöni Farkas, Utazás Észak-Amerikában (Kolozsvár: Ifj. Tilsch János, 1834). For the English version, see Sándor Bölöni Farkas, Journey in North America, 1831, trans. and ed. Arpad Kadarkay (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 1978), 128. 28. Other major books include the following, among others: Ágoston Haraszthy, Utazás Éjszakamerikában [Journey in North America] (Pest: Heckenast Gusztáv, 1844); Károly Nendtvich, Amerikai utazásom [My American journey] (Pest: Heckenast Gusztáv, 1858); Francis Pulszky and Theresa Pulszky, White, Red, Black: Sketches of American Society in the United States during the visit of their guests (New York: Redfield, 1853); Xántus János, Levelei Éjszakamerikából [Letters from North America] (Pest: Lauffer és Stolp, 1858). 29. Katona, “Hungarian Travelogues,” 57. 30. Haraszthy, Utazás Éjszakamerikában, 2: “Az amerikai kétszer tovább él, mint más ember, és százszor többet tesz, mint más, azaz, az amerikai korán kel, s mihelyt fen van, mindjárt dolgához fog, legyen az bármi; legnagyobb sietséggel reggeliz, s hogy azalatt hasztalan ne mulaszsza idejét, evés közben hirlapot olvas, s ezt néhány percz alatt végezvén, ismét foglalatosságához lát. Jő az ebéd ideje; ekkor mindenki pontosan megjelenik a harang-jelszóra, asztalhoz ül minden beszéd nélkül, és leg-

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31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36.

37.

38. 39.

40.

41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

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feljebb húsz perczig az egész ebédnek vége, s vendéglőben nem ritkán lát az utas magával három-négyszáz férfit asztalhoz ülni, de 15 percz mulva alig lát közülük kettőt, hármat.” Oscar Handlin, This Was America (New York: Harper, 1949), 2.. Tibor Glant, “Dualizmuskori Amerika-kép, utazási irodalom és paródia” [Images of America during the period of Dualism, travel literature, and parody], in Essays in Honor of György Novák, ed. Zoltán Varga (Szeged: JATE Press, 2012), 79–99. “László Károly levelei Amerikából XIII” [Letters of Károly László from America XIII], Vasárnapi Újság, 23 and 30 September 1860. “László Károly levelei Amerikából II,” Vasárnapi Újság, 30 January 1859. “László Károly levelei Amerikából VI,” Vasárnapi Újság, 24 July 1859: “midőn ezen durva, otromba talyigák az utcsináló társulatnak Északamerikából hozott festett csinos kocsijaik mellett mentek el, érdekes volt nézni a nagy különbséget a két mű között, s gondoltam magamban: ha a gőzmozdony már használatban nem volna, mikor találná azt fel ezen nép?” “László Károly levelei Amerikából V,” Vasárnapi Újság, 19 June 1859: “akkor a szorgalmas északamerikaiak csődülni fognak ide. A kövér rónákban s a sziklás hegyekben rejlő kincseket fel fogják túrni, napfényre fogják hozni, s a most gazdagságát nem ismerő vadont gazdag, mívelt, szorgalmas országgá fogják változtatni, s talán az Egyesült Államokhoz csatolni, mi az Egyesült Státusiak nagy részének forró ohajtása, sőt alig titkolható terve.” János Xántus, Utazás Kalifornia déli részeiben [Travels in Southern California] (Pest: Lauffer, 1860). For the English version, see János Xántus, Travels in Southern California (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976). 128. Xántus, Travels in Southern California, 129. This was an important period in travel writing in other countries as well; see, for example, Jürgen Buchenau, Mexico Otherwise: Modern Mexico in the Eyes of Foreign Observers (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005). Ede Pawlowszki, Miksa császár mexikói szerencsétlen expeditiójának leírása: Kiváló tekintettel Queretaro 70 napig tartó ostromára; Mexikói élet; Utazási élmények. [The description of the unfortunate expedition of Emperor Maximilian in Mexico: With special attention to the 70-day siege of Queretaro; Life in Mexico; Experiences of a journey]. Budapest: Rudnyánszky, 1882, 4. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 10. “Ha az újra meg újra előfordult zavargásoknak, melyek Mexikót önállósága óta feldúlták, valódi okát keressük, azt mindenekelőtt sokszinű lakosságának ősi nyerseségében és tudatlanságában találjuk fel, különösen pedig a szoldateska fegyelmezetlenségében, mely a világ ezen egyik leggyönyörűbb országára annyi szerencsétlenséget árasztott.” Buchenau, Mexico Otherwise, 9. For more information, see Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), xii–xiii. Pawlowszki, Miksa császár, 14: “A császár sok próbát megkisérlett, hogy a mexikóiaknak az ország gazdagságáról felvilágosítást adjon, hogy őket a munkásságra szoktassa, és hogy civilizált országhoz illő rendszabályokat és törvényeket teremtsen; de a mexikóiak inkább szeretik a henye és könnyű életet és éppen ebben rejlik annak

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46. 47.

48.

49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

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főoka, hogy a császárságnak buknia kellett, mert a jó intézmények nem találtak az országban elegendő pártfogásra és kitartó támogatásra.” Ibid., 142. Ibid., 143: “Csak egyet ért el vele Juarez, hogy a császár elítélése következtében nem egy hamar fog az ő dolgukba valamely európai ember avatkozni, hogy a jó útra térítse és észre hozza őket.” Jenő Bánó, Úti képek Amerikából [Images of a journey in America] (Budapest: Franklin, 1890), 131, 198. For a detailed study of immigration propaganda in Mexico during the Porfiriato and Bánó’s role in it, see Balázs Venkovits, “Migration, Travel Writing and Propaganda: Hungarians in Porfirian Mexico,”  IdeAs: Idées d’Amérique Online. 6, Automne/Hiver 2015. Institut des Amériques. Bánó, Úti képek, 186: “Ilyenek vagyunk mi itt Mexikóban, vadak és szívtelenek, és azután meg, mint Európában gondolni szeretik, teljesen műveletlenek.” Ibid., 79–80: “Éppen úgy, mint mi magyarok századokon át görnyedtünk idegen befolyás, idegen iga alatt, ők is századokon át érezték a spanyol jármot nyakukon, s mint mi magyarok megszabadúlva a bilincsektől, élvezni kívánjuk a nehezen kivívott szabadságot s keressük az idegen nemzetek szeretetét és becsülését: a mexikói is teljes mértékben örül szabadságának s igyekszik az idegen nemzetek szeretetét s becsülését elnyerni.” Ibid., 20. Ibid., 192. Such statements seem to be unique in Hungarian travel writing on the Americas and show that Bánó clearly broke away from Hungary. Ibid., 114: “Éljen a haza! Éljen a független Magyarország!” Jenő Bánó, Mexico és utazásom a trópusokon [Mexico and my journey in the tropics] (Budapest: Kosmos, 1896), 58. Bánó, Úti képek, 96: “az észak-amerikaiakat nem szeretik és mégis ezek befolyása napról-napra terjed, pedig ez szerény véleményem szerint, idővel veszélyt hozhat ezen most szép virágzásnak induló fiatal államra, mely mint önálló köztársaság nagy szerepre van hivatva, de ha egyesülne Észak-Amerikával, az angol-szászok között elvesztené eredetiségét, jellegét s nemzetiségét,—mint a hogy elvesztette California, Új-Mexikó s Texas—s ezen nagy testben nagyon is másodrendű tényezővé sülyedne.” Ibid., 98: “Boldog az a nemzet melynek ily gyermekei vannak!” Bánó, Mexico és utazásom, 90.

Bibliography Bánó, Jenő. Úti képek Amerikából [Images of a journey in America]. Budapest: Franklin, 1890. ———. Mexico és utazásom a trópusokon [Mexico and my journey in the tropics]. Budapest: Kosmos, 1896. Beudant, F. S. Travels in Hungary in 1818. London: Sir Richard Phillips, 1823. Bisztray, George. “The World Visits Hungary: Reflections of Foreign Travellers, 1433– 1842.” Hungarian Studies Review 33, nos. 1–2 (2006): 1–16. Bölöni, Farkas Sándor, Utazás Észak-Amerikában. Kolozsvár: Ifj. Tilsch János, 1834.

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———. Journey in North America, 1831. Translated and edited by Arpad Kadarkay. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 1978. Bright, Richard. Travels from Vienna through Lower Hungary; with Some Remarks on the State of Vienna during the Congress in the Year 1814. Edinburgh: Archibald, 1818. Buchenau, Jürgen. Mexico Otherwise: Modern Mexico in the Eyes of Foreign Observers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Glant, Tibor. “Dualizmuskori Amerika-kép, utazási irodalom és paródia” [Images of America during the period of Dualism, travel literature and parody]. In Essays in Honor of György Novák, edited by Zoltán Varga, 79–99. Szeged: JATE Press, 2012. Handlin, Oscar. This Was America. New York: Harper, 1949. Haraszthy, Agoston. Utazás Éjszakamerikában. [Journey in North America]. Pest: Heckenast Gusztáv, 1844. Kabdebo, Thomas. “Travellers to Hungary: Blackwell’s Predecessors.” Maynooth Review 9 (1983): 31–48. Katona, Anna. “Hungarian Travelogues on Pre–Civil War America.” Angol Filológiai Tanulmányok 5 (1971): 51–94. Pawlowszki, Ede, Miksa császár mexikói szerencsétlen expeditiójának leírása: Kiváló tekintettel Queretaro 70 napig tartó ostromára; Mexikói élet; Utazási élmények. [The description of the unfortunate expedition of Emperor Maximilian in Mexico: With special attention to the 70-day siege of Queretaro; Life in Mexico; Experiences of a journey]. Budapest: Rudnyánszky, 1882. Popova-Nowak, Irina V. “The Odyssey of National Discovery: Hungarians in Hungary and Abroad, 1750–1850.” In Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe, edited by Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis, 195–222. Budapest: CEU Press, 2008. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992. Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Speake, Jennifer. Literature of Travel and Exploration. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003. Szente-Varga, Mónika. “Latin American Studies in Austria and in Hungary, 1790s– 1945.” In In Search of Other Worlds: Essay towards a Cross-Regional History of Area Studies, edited by Katja Naumann, Torsten Loschke, Steffi Marung, and Matthias Middell, 215–51. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2018. Vázquez, David J. Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Venkovits, Balázs. “A Changing Experience of Transport, Travel, and Mobility: The Transatlantic Crossing to the United States in 19th-Century Hungarian Travel Writing.” Történeti Tanulmányok 22 (2014): 222–39. ———. “Migration, Travel Writing and Propaganda: Hungarians in Porfirian Mexico.”  IdeAs: Idées d’Amérique. Online. 6, Automne/Hiver 2015. Institut des Amériques. ———. “Záródó kapuk, új lehetőségek: Magyar kivándorlás Észak-Amerikába a 20. század elején.” [Closing gates, new opportunities: Hungarian emigration to North America at the beginning of the 20th century]. Aetas Történettudományi Folyóirat  [Aetas journal of history] 33, no. 1 (2018): 131–43.

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Xántus, János. Utazás Kalifornia déli részeiben [Travels in Southern California]. Pest: Lauffer, 1860. ———. Travels in Southern California. Translated and edited by Theodore Schoenman and Helen Benedek. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976.

CHAPTER 5

Negotiating Empires Eastern European Jewish Responses to the Expulsion of Jews from Palestine to Egypt in 1914–15



Jonathan Hirsch

Under the title “Who Are Our Refugees?” the Odessa-born Zionist activist Vladimir Jabotinsky spoke at a conference at the Université Populaire Libre of Alexandria in February 1915 in front of a local Jewish audience. He addressed the “marvelous achievements” of the Jewish chalutzim (pioneers) in Palestine and urged financial and political support for them and their cause.1 The occasion for the event was a refugee crisis that started on 19 December 1914, when the first 690 Palestinian-Jewish deportees reached the port of Alexandria. Only weeks before, shortly after entering World War I, the Ottoman government had abolished the capitulation agreements and issued an ultimatum for non-Ottoman subjects in Palestine (and Syria) to naturalize or face evacuation as enemy aliens.2 In the course of the winter of 1914–15, more than ten thousand Jews, the majority of Eastern European origin and subjects of the Russian Empire, were expelled to British-occupied Egypt. The Alexandrian bimonthly La Revue Juive d’Egypte reported in detail on the alarming events that unfolded before the city’s Jewish community. The report insisted that cooperation between local Jewry, the Egyptian government, foreign consuls, and international Jewish organizations was urgently required.3 Hence, a quickly formed refugee council, consisting of members of the local Jewish community and Jews from Palestine, was elected to negotiate between the different actors and to alleviate the hardship of the refugees.4 Realizing that the magnitude of the events exceeded the means of the local community, the head of the community, Edgar Suarez, and the chief rabbi of Alexandria, Raffaello Della Pergola, appealed to Sultan Hussein Kamal for assistance. The chief editor of La Revue Juive, Ugo Farfara,

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expressed gratitude for their intervention and for how the Egyptian authorities “most beneficially” mitigated “the needs of so many unfortunates” by transforming governmental buildings, such as hospitals and stations, into refugee shelters and providing for their basic needs.5 However, the events in Alexandria that unsettled the city over the course of 1915 provide another perspective on the refugee crisis that extends beyond the local context and connects with other Jewish voices and the competing imperial politics of the British, Ottoman, and Russian Empires. Since most of the Palestinian refugees in Alexandria were of Eastern European origin and repeatedly faced threats of immediate repatriation to Russia and forced military draft by the Russian authorities, the Jewish press in Eastern Europe showed great interest in reports of the events. The successful interventions of local Egyptian actors, such as Suarez or the president of the Jewish community of Cairo, Moïse Cattaui, ultimately prevented the attempts of the Russian consul to exercise power over “his” subjects. However, the creation of the so-called Zionist Mule Corps in March 1915 and later the Jewish Legion under the belligerent leadership of Jabotinsky seem to have changed how some journalists and writers viewed the refugees.6 They underwent a transformation from passive victims of a cruel war to zealous Zionist combatants shaping their own fate and that of the Jewish nation. This chapter focuses on the perspectives of Eastern European Jewish observers of the refugee crisis that occurred in the Middle East in 1914–15. First, I analyze the account of Vladimir Jabotinsky and his fantasies of a Jewish legion capturing Palestine. Thereafter, the first-person report of the refugee crisis by the journalist Hirsch Loeb Gordon and other newspaper articles from the Jewish press broaden the scope of perspectives. A striking feature that emerges in these very different accounts of Eastern European Jews writing on the expulsion of Jews from Ottoman Palestine is their adoption of Orientalist assumptions. Drawing on the works of Raz-Krakotzkin, I show how Eastern European Jews are seen in those writings as emissaries of European civilization in Palestine—void of “Oriental” features and transformed into a civilized Western nation. However, the assumption that Jews are (Western) Europeans is frequently challenged by their encounters with non-European Jews in Egypt. In the second part of the chapter, I make a closer examination of the troubling and precarious relationship between Eastern European Jews and the Russian Empire that emerges in the accounts. With the help of the concept of emigrant colonialism, I set the Zionist activities of the Eastern European Jews in Palestine in relation to Russia’s own imperial ambitions in Ottoman lands. Thus I aim to explore common ground and collaboration as well as the limitations caused by conflicting interests. Finally, I show

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how the concept of emigrant colonialism is limited precisely because of the Orientalist assumptions I explore in the first part. The complex entanglements of Jews as subjects and objects of the varied colonial fantasies of the British, Russian, and Ottoman Empires in the midst of the turmoil of the world war set the stage for the study’s inquiry into the “Eastern gaze.” That is to say, it aims to unveil features of Orientalist discourse distinctive to those Eastern European Jewish voices.

The Jews as a Western People: The Colonial Fantasies of Vladimir Jabotinsky Jabotinsky’s Alexandria lecture on Jewish refugees and their Zionist efforts to colonize Palestine was only a minor incident in his meddling in Egypt and the Middle East. Upon hearing that the Ottoman Empire had entered the war, Jabotinsky traveled first to North Africa and then to Egypt to report for Russian newspapers. In his memoir-like book on the Jewish Legion in World War I, he elaborates his condescending view of the Ottoman Empire as an anachronism in a modern era of nation-states (“Turkey wasn’t a country, but a sad misconception”).7 Moreover, Jabotinsky boasts that his journalistic work in Constantinople had already in 1909 brought him to the conviction that “where the Turk rules neither sun may shine nor grass may grow, and that the only hope for the restoration of Palestine lay in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire.”8 As a strong advocate of nationalist ideas such as the right of self-determination, reinforced by recurring pogroms in his hometown of Odessa as well as in Russia in general, Jabotinsky clearly favored Jewish immigration to Palestine over a dispersion to the West. The looming end of the Ottoman Empire aroused his hopes for Jewish national autonomy in Palestine. Jabotinsky rejected positive attitudes toward the empire, which were phrased in a language of mobilized biblical narratives that aimed to express fraternal relationships between Oriental people (“Uncle Ismael”), as romanticism from “our (Jewish) sentimental idiots.”9 Here, he addressed other Zionist voices, such as those of Ben-Gurion and BenZvi who at that time still advocated for good relations with the Ottoman government. Jabotinsky leaves no doubt of his understanding of the Jewish people as a Western nation and of his imperialist conception of the Jewish settlement in Palestine as part of a Western civilizing mission: “Ismael isn’t our uncle. We belong, thank God, to Europe; two thousand years we have helped to create the Western culture. With the ‘Orient’ we have nothing in common.”10 Reiterating Max Nordau’s speech at the Zionist Congress in 1909, he instead repeats: “We belong to Palestine, to expand the [ethical] boundaries of Europe to the Euphrates. The Turk is our biggest threat.”11

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Before I continue with Jabotinsky’s perspective, I want to recall some reflections on Jewish participation in the discursive field of Orientalism that are useful for this study.12 Raz-Krakotzkin has convincingly argued that Western European emancipation debates revolved around Jewish Otherness and their “Oriental nature.” The question was whether the Jews’ Oriental qualities were subject to change or whether they were inherent: their Otherness was never questioned.13 This Orientalizing debate affected Jewish responses and self-perceptions in such a way that they continued to situate the Jew on a spectrum between Europe and the Orient and “produced continuous tension and led to varying responses, be they ‘assimilationist’ or ‘subversive.’”14 Zionist discourse, in particular, adopted Orientalist assumptions, such as the claim that the Jews are a biblical, Semitic people and that reeducation is necessary to eradicate Oriental notions of the Ostjude. The secularization of the Jews and the way a modern Jewish nation was imagined as a reborn, ancient Hebrew people in their Altneuland reflected an uncompromising attempt to assimilate into “the Western narrative of enlightenment and redemption.”15 The affirmation that they were the Europeans of the Orient, where their promised homeland was located after all, and equally the Westerners of Eastern Europe, where the majority of the Jewish population lived, reflected the desire to assimilate and paradoxically arrive in Western Europe as a civilized nation among the nations.16 Jabotinsky’s statements provide a good example of this conflicting conception of the Jewish people as a Western people belonging to the Middle East and the denial of anything Oriental: above all, the denial of the rights of the Arab population, their history, and their relationship to the land and region. However, in his dichotomic East-West divide, the place of the non-European Jew and potential commonalities with the Oriental remain obscure. Nevertheless, the issue resurfaces later, in light of troubling ambiguities. Before arriving in Egypt, Jabotinsky investigated the possible effects in French-colonized North Africa of Turkey’s declaration of jihad, the “holy war,” and especially whether the Muslim public would side with the Ottoman Empire and revolt against the French occupiers. He notes that “it is inadvisable to interview a Muslim”; instead, one “chooses clever Jewish merchants, [local] Sephardic Jews” as intermediaries, since they supposedly know better what truth is concealed behind the lies the Arabs tell.17 The praised mediation talent of the Sephardi elite—resulting from cultural proximity—is highlighted again during Jabotinsky’s stay in Egypt. There, the Russian consul Petrov tried forcefully to draft all Russian-Jewish subjects from the group of Palestinian refugees for the Russian army. However, Jabotinsky recalls how Edgar Suarez, head of the local Jewish community,

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successfully intervened with the English colonial governor of Alexandria and prevented their repatriation.18 Jabotinsky openly reveals that Petrov’s view of the refugees as human resources for Russian military interests precipitated his own idea “to form a Jewish legion and to propose to England to make use of it in Palestine.”19 This would, he claims, turn the misery of his compatriots into a fortune for the Jewish national movement. Nonetheless, Jabotinsky’s attitude toward his non-European coreligionists was certainly not unequivocally positive. Commonalities they shared with the Arabs were likewise “the real potential source of trouble” since they “had themselves grown up in an Oriental environment,” as he notes during the Palestine campaign of 1917–18.20 The problem for him seems to be that they—unlike the Ashkenazi Jews of the battalion—“did not dislike the Arab; on the contrary, they knew him, were friendly with him, and spoke his language . . . they greet one another and kiss in true Oriental fashion; they go into a café, have drinks together.” The closeness of the Sephardi-Arab Jew to non-Jewish Palestinian natives provokes suspicion and fear of disloyalty in Jabotinsky. Above all, it reminds him of the Oriental features of the Jew, which call for segregation and reeducation to convert him into a (Western) European. In his reflections on World War I and anticipating Zionist policies of separation, Jabotinsky advocates the necessity for the Jews in Palestine not to “establish closer contact with the natives, [since] the closer we approached the less hope there was of peace”21 Jabotinsky reiterates his appreciation of these and other colonial practices in several pieces for the Eastern European Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew presses. In his writings on Egypt, he primarily endorses British colonial rule and expresses a longing for assimilation into the West. This goes hand in hand with his vision to employ the British imperial connection to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The fact that Egypt was equally home to a thriving Jewish community of about fifty thousand and shelter for another ten thousand Jews from Palestine is hardly acknowledged, and, despite their relief efforts and their activation of transnational support networks, Egyptian Jewry does not find a noteworthy space in Jabotinsky’s coverage of the events. In contrast, his delight in British colonialism is elaborated at length in an article he wrote for HaTzfira, a renowned Hebrew newspaper printed in Warsaw, after leaving Egypt in the spring of 1915.22 In it, Jabotinsky criticizes the former colonial practice of the “invisible hand” and praises the declaration of Egypt as a British protectorate with the beginning of the war, which enforced complete colonial rule and detached the country from its Ottoman legal legacy. He admires colonial rule as presented by Lord Cromer, consul-general of Egypt from 1883 to 1907: “Thirty years ago Egypt was a country of despots and exploitation, now Egypt is a rich and developing country: even its peasants are rich.” Jabotinsky determinedly accepts Cromer’s comparison of the Egyptians to children who

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need direct guidance during their “coming of age” and embraces his policy to prevent national insurgencies.23 Regarding the refugee situation in Egypt, Jabotinsky alludes to a “competition between consulates from different countries, each of which aspires to bring under its authority each citizen of the refugees.” Echoing Israel Zangwill’s proposal of the Jews as colonial agents for Britain, Jabotinsky laments that the English linger as inert bystanders to the happenings in the region, and he presents for the first time his as yet sketchy thoughts about a Jewish battalion in the English army: “If only England wanted, it could acquire here some thousands of [Jewish] volunteers [for its army].”24 His apathy toward imperial Russia, whose consul tried eagerly to draft the Russian-Jewish subjects to the army, and his clear preference for the British army reflect his faith in the superiority of the Western imperial powers. He anticipated the soon-to-be enforced British mandate in Palestine, which would guarantee the establishment of a Jewish national home. Thus, Jabotinsky relished Western imperial politics and hoped for the protection of the Western imperial powers in return for the extension of the “civilizing mission” to a military conquest of Palestine by a Jewish legion under the British flag. His writings are imbued with Orientalist assumptions; the Western Orientalist East-West divisions are reproduced in his thoughts on Arabs as Orientals and Jews as Europeans. Hence, the native Middle Eastern Jew needs first to be separated from his Oriental environment and reeducated before he can be incorporated into the imaginary of a new European Jew who redeems the deserted land of Palestine and converts it into Eretz Israel. Nevertheless, Jabotinsky’s plans to establish a Jewish battalion inside the British army did obtain all but unanimous approval within the Jewish world. Critical voices in the Jewish press predominantly denounced Russia’s war undertakings and Jabotinsky’s military fantasies. At times, criticism of British imperial politics was also raised, which makes it possible to consider the different imperial ambitions of Britain and Russia in the Middle East and Zionist aspirations in Palestine.25 I discuss this in the final part of this chapter. In the following, I present reactions to Jabotinsky and the refugee crisis in Egypt. This serves to further reveal the tensions created by the reification of Orientalist assumptions and the exclusive orientation toward the West.

Hirsch Loeb Gordon’s Shattered Dream of an Old-New Homeland Several voices inside the Yiddish press reacted to Jabotinsky with agitated repudiation. Criticizing him for jeopardizing the lives of thousands of Jews, Der Tog reports on the front page the account of “a Palestinian who got

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expulsed from Eretz Israel and has spent a long time with the Jewish refugees in Egypt.”26 The anonymous report frames the emergence of Jabotinsky’s plan as part of a game of imperial politics that saw the refugees as mainly human resources for various war ambitions. After an initially warm welcome by the authorities and different consuls, “the Russian consul demanded from the Russian Jews that they would be repatriated in order to ‘defend the fatherland.’ Many Jews have tried to refuse this by explaining that they couldn’t go back to Russia and that they consider Palestine as their homeland.”27 The report ends by lamenting that, even though many goodwilled Zionists openly oppose his project, Jabotinsky is already on his way to England “to advocate his plan to conquer Palestine.” A notable eyewitness account of the refugee crisis in Palestine and Egypt was penned by Hirsch Loeb Gordon (1896–1969). After breaking with the Yeshiva world, the Vilna-born journalist and Russian subject wrote for the Warsaw-based journals HaTzfira (Hebrew) and Der Moment (Yiddish) before emigrating to Palestine in 1914, only to be deported in the same year to Alexandria.28 There, he met Jabotinsky and joined the Jewish battalion within the British army. After the end of his deployment in Gallipoli, he emigrated to New York and reported his experiences in a series of articles from October 1915 to January 1916 in the Yiddish daily Der Tog.29 Notably, Gordon’s adventurous journey in the Middle East fostered his academic explorations of the region and its history after the war.30 Gordon starts his account with a detailed portrayal of the expulsion from Palestine, subtitled “true pictures from the latest Diaspora.”31 In flowery words and biblical language, he describes the nature of Palestine, void of its Arab population, preceded by a quotation from the Psalms: “At the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, we also cried in our memories of Zion.” The expulsion from the Holy Land is engraved into Jewish collective memory: the khurban (destruction) of the ancient past is invoked by the destruction and national catastrophe of present-day Palestine during the world war. In a seemingly realized version of Altneuland’s European-like new Jewish capital of Palestine, the future Tel Aviv, crowds “from all over Palestine” are waiting in Herzl Street “at the doors of Rothschild’s strolling gardens.”32 In contrast, existential fear is evoked by Gordon’s description of the uncivilized inhabitants of the Orient who “will send us into the deserts of Haran where the wild Bedouin clans will do with us whatever they wish.”33 Facing deportation for refusing Ottoman naturalization, the frightening fate of those waiting is framed again in biblical images: “What does the commander of Jaffa say? To Haran, to Egypt?” These two destinations signify extinction versus rescue.34 Unwilling to detach the present scenery from the scriptural narrative, Gordon sees the ready escape to Egypt by his fellow Jews as a betrayal of the promise that they would and should in-

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habit the land.35 He expresses doubts and second thoughts about the “happiness” of the people around him when they heard the decision that they could depart for Egypt: “[I feel] I live in Moses’ generation and I see the dance around the Golden Calf.” In the subsequent article, he describes the events on the boat from Palestine to Egypt and his reflections on leaving the desired homeland in a similar ambivalent, torn way: “A lot of joy and pain, and shouts of luck and bad luck . . . between hope and despair.”36 At nightfall, when observant “Jews gathered in minyanim (quorums) to pray Mincha and Maariv,” thanking God for the bad and for the good, the nonbeliever Gordon turned away from the scene and looked instead from the ship to the Palestinian shores. There, he saw an armed Jewish watchman in the darkness of a vineyard who seemed to look at him with eyes “full of poison, full of hate,” asking: “For what reason didn’t you stay here, you traitor?” Gordon’s many biblical references in the text propose a reading of this scene in the light of Isaiah 21:11 (“Watchman, what of the night?”), which entails messianic expectations that dispersion will finally end, according to traditional rabbinic exegesis. Likewise, the Zionist adaptation of this trope is evoked to predict the imminent return of the Jews to their biblical homeland; yet, in Gordon’s scene, the departure implies the ultimate reversal of the promise. This account of betrayal reflects his frustration and despair, caused by insight into the powerlessness of the Jews in Palestine and of the secularized redemption theology of Zionism. As Raz-Krakotzkin noted, secular Zionism cannot be separated from theology: the search for an “authentic” new Jewish culture (a counterculture to Diaspora Judaism) produced an updated interpretation of biblical myth and its Rabbinic messianic exegesis.37 Gordon’s repeated usage of biblical tropes (such as the Golden Calf image to depict a fundamental betrayal of Zionist providence) reveals the dependency of seemingly secular Zionist thought on biblical traditions as the grounding for its claims of authenticity. However, a return to tradition due to the failed promise of secularism to supersede religious practices is of no avail for Gordon: “Very weak is the prayer. . . . God listens but doesn’t answer.”38 In the second part of his report on the journey, he depicts a layover in Beirut, where some “rich Arab Christians, who belong to foreign, enemy nations” entered the ship together with “some dozens of Sephardi Jews.”39 In this context, a fear of extermination, as in the previous reference to Haran, is hinted at: “[Those Sephardi] French protégées . . . were already sent by the Turkish regime deep into the countryside, into the deserts” but could manage to escape “with a lot of baksheesh [bribery].” Gordon argues that the reluctance expressed toward the Turkish call for naturalization during the war arose since “many of us . . . were afraid of the hunger and of the mil-

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itary draft.”40 The escape to Egypt seemed to be, for many, a temporary rescue, with the prospect to “come back to Palestine after the war.” However, he notes that even this strategy could not prevent many from encountering a similar fate to that of the soldiers of the Zionist Mule Corps when they “were later sent to the war in the Dardanelles and have found their early deaths in the rocky cliffs of the peninsula Gallipoli.”41 As in many of the articles surveyed for this study, the local non-European Jewish actors involved in relief work are often obscured from the narrative. Gordon does not seem to relate much to them, except for in a side note acknowledging the engagement of the Alexandrian chief rabbi Della Pergola and “Egyptian [Jewish] society” in general. His view on nonEuropean Jews is, however, revealed in his otherwise positive description of the refugee camp Gabari, which is depicted by him, due its Eastern European character, as “a Jewish shtetl . . . on the way to the old biblical Na Amon.” The diversity of the camp produced intergroup tensions that he presents in the following way: In food matters, clashes happened between the Sephardis and the Ashkenazis and also between old and young. The Sephardis were not able to stand the Ashkenazi food and have compelled with scandalous drama a separate kitchen. . . . The Sephardi element . . . has been very scandalous—most of them Arab Jews, [they] possessed all the finest characteristics of the Ishmaelites: They used to have bloody brawls every night and also used to attack each other with knifes. Also, there happened to be thefts every day that very often were found later in the Sephardi rooms.42

He emphasizes that due to these clashes a separation of European and non-European Jews was established: “All Sephardi Jews have been put together in a special camp made only for them, the camp Governora[te].”43 The articulation of a need to separate non-European Jews from the Eastern European shtetl in Alexandria foreshadows their doubtful integration into the Zionist vision of a new Hebrew culture in Palestine. The report then quickly returns to his main issue: the Russian consul’s plot against the refugees and the subsequent creation of the Zionist Mule Corps. Gordon captures the atmosphere among the expelled as a feeling of helplessness, of being at the mercy of the imperial forces. He frames the situation as “Between Hammer and Anvil”: between “Mother Russia,” the “wild Turkish regime,” and “capitalist England,” who rules with the colonial strategy of “respect him, suspect him.”44 The tense situation in the camps came to a boiling point when most refugees refused Russian repatriation, which led to a series of intimidations and the threat of criminal prosecution: “If you don’t go to Russia . . ., they said, then you will be counted as a criminal, a deserter. We will arrest you and

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drag you with force to the ships . . . [and bring you back to] Russia where you will get your sentence.”45 While they were waiting for their verdict, Gordon continues, the committee under Jabotinsky’s auspices (“suddenly they are interested in our cause”) negotiated the refugee’s seemingly only resort in the situation: enlistment in the British army under a Jewish unit. Criticizing the political maneuvering of the committee, Gordon summarizes the climax of the tense atmosphere in Alexandria: “With our young lives in their hands, they could realize the bloody adventure of the Jewish legion.”46 He also accuses Jabotinsky for his incitements against the Turks. The dissemination of the fake news that the Turks were planning to call for jihad and “death to the Jews” is labeled by Gordon as pogrom agitation that does not reflect the reality in the Middle East: “He speaks about pogroms, but until now no pogroms ever happened in Palestine!”47 What Gordon does not mention, maybe out of ignorance, is that the local Jewish community, under the leadership of Edgar Suarez, negotiated at the highest political level in Egypt. Thus, they brokered an alternative to the establishment of a Jewish combat unit that resembles quite closely Gordon’s proposed vision. He ends his coverage by suggesting a (temporary) integration of the refugees into Egyptian society as a skilled workforce independent of the financial support of foreign consuls instead of participation in the war; this alternative indeed became reality for most Palestinian Jews in Egypt between 1914 and 1919. He concludes that “the adventure proved to us how dangerous it is to entangle our national interests in an international conflict.”48 The following section focuses on how precisely such entanglements of Jewish nationalism with international politics and the adoption of Orientalist discourse significantly shaped how Jews envisioned their national homeland in Palestine and responded to events such as the refugee crisis of 1914–15.

Russian-Jewish Policy in Ottoman Palestine as a Special Case of Emigrant Colonialism The two cases I have presented above showed Jabotinsky’s and Gordon’s discomfort when confronted with the non-European Jew who has not yet been converted (“civilized”) in their eyes into a modern (Western) European Jew. The built-in dichotomies and the striking imbalance of power in the discourse around West and East were in many cases not challenged by Jews from Western and, as shown, Eastern Europe. On the contrary, they were often reproduced in Jewish self-identifications and in the desire to assimilate into the West while divesting themselves of negative “Oriental” characteristics. Jabotinsky’s repeated self-proclamations of Jewish Europe-

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anness are an example of the desire to integrate into Western European culture. Gordon’s exhaustive use of biblical language and tropes equally partakes in an Orientalist discourse, in that he accepts parts of its premises. In the foreground stand his descriptions of a self-Orientalized Jewish life in Palestine based on a Zionist version of biblical myth divested of religious practice to create an “authentic” Jewish national culture. While he acknowledges the powerlessness of the Jews in Palestine in their struggle between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, he parallels traditional Jewish theology and Zionist ideals and hence unveils a redemptive theology as the basis of Zionist ideology. In contrast, this powerlessness is exactly what Jabotinsky tries to overcome in his militant ideology, which sought, in the turmoil of war, for the British Empire as a promising companion to achieve the national goal of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Moreover, I want to propose that a closer look into the Zionist liaison with the Russian Empire before World War I helps to broaden understanding of Jewish participation in Orientalist discourse and its consequences. The advent of Zionism at the end of the nineteenth century occurred in a period of increasingly violent Eastern European nationalism and mass emigrations from Central and Eastern Europe.49 Concurrently, colonialism reached another height when Western European empires divided the African continent among themselves at the Berlin Conference in 1884−85. The notion that the political situation in Europe should not be understood separately from the developments in the colonies became more widely accepted with the so-called “imperial turn.”50 Its application in Jewish studies facilitated new explorations of Jewish encounters with empires.51 The case of imperial Russia highlights that the Jews’ conceived ethnoreligious difference made their integration into the Russian Empire undesirable at a time when the empire itself was struggling with modern concepts of the nation based on narrow self-definitions.52 Colonial practices that reach back to the end of the eighteenth century, such as displacement and the restriction of free movement, can be inferred from the history of the “Pale of Settlement”: an Eastern European territory for Jewish resettlement.53 Later, starting from the 1890s, imperial Russia began to legalize and boost Jewish emigration, for example, by allowing the Jewish Colonization Association to create a network of offices in the empire.54 Policies that encouraged Jewish emigration from Russia to Palestine reveal ambiguities toward the Jews: emigration offered a promising solution to the “Jewish problem” at home and promoted the prospect of influence in the Ottoman Empire.55 However, Zionist maneuvering within Orientalist discourse and the aspiration to become a nation among (Western) nations further complicated the already tense relationship with imperial Russia. That the frail connection of the Jewish settlers in Palestine to their Russian homeland was con-

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voluted, framed by racial hierarchies, and eventually exacerbated during the war is hinted at in Gordon’s articles. First, he bemoans the lost unity of the political community of Palestinian Jews, again in idealized biblical terms: “In Palestine, a Jew is Jew and not more . . . all Jews get biblical, historical attributions there.”56 In Egypt, on the contrary, political reality is enforced by different passport regimes, “which divide Jews back into French, Russian and other [so that] each consul got ‘his’ Jews.” Then, suddenly, he contradicts this seeming Jewish unity in Palestine when presenting imperial Russia’s prewar political tactics: In Palestine it was different: if the Russian consul did something, then only for the good. The Russian consul often supported the Jews against the Turkish power. The support of the Russian consul for our rights in Palestine has yet not been for our sake only, . . . but for the Russian ambitions for a Russification of Palestine and to give the Russian (cultural) element a wide and free development within the holy land. . . . In Egypt, where we have lost our mission as porters of Russian culture into Palestine, our standing at the Russian consul got lost immediately and he spoke to us very differently. In our entire community, he only saw human material for the enemy canons.57

Russia has a long history of imperial ambitions within Ottoman lands, but its colonial aspirations in Ottoman Palestine are understudied. Existing research sees a growing influence primarily through Russian Orthodox religious institutions during the nineteenth century.58 Realizing the consequences of the mass departure of their subjects and their being late to the race for colonies, authorities in the Russian (and Austro-Hungarian) Empire started to consider how they could channel emigration in a way that would benefit their interests. One prospect was the establishment of autonomous settlements within existing empires or occupied territories that would maintain ties to their homeland. Scholars like Choate and Zahra have proposed that this benefit-oriented, directed emigration— in contrast to Western settler colonialism—be envisioned as “emigrant colonialism.”59 Against this background, which intertwines emigration and colonial fantasies in the age of European colonial domination of the world, early Zionist efforts to colonize Palestine, particularly the Second Aliyah from 1904–14, can be viewed as a form of emigrant colonialism that emerged in Eastern Europe after 1880. Startled by rising antisemitism and existential fears caused by recurring pogroms, Zionists envisioned a national regeneration and social transformation in an old-new homeland that was to be created in Palestine. However, the idea of this homeland—based on the ideology of return as opposed to that of colonial expansion—contradicted Eastern European colonial agendas.

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Several Zionists tried to advertise their settlement movement as beneficial to existing colonial efforts. Examples range from East to West, the most prominent probably being Israel Zangwill, who not only whitened world Jewry but also proposed the Jews as colonial agents for a civilizing mission at the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903: “If Britain could attract all the Jews of the world to her colonies she would just double their white population . . . we could create a colony that would be a source of strength, not only to Israel but to the British Empire . . . a colony that would co-operate in extending civilization from Cairo to the Cape.”60 In addition, the need for separation from the native population—also encouraged by colonial officers and Zionists, as seen in Jabotinsky’s fantasies of an iron wall—was once more framed by racial hierarchies and anxieties that the Jews in Palestine would assimilate with the Arabs.61 Varied accounts from the Jewish press by Eastern European Jews, such as Gordon, point to a role for Russian subjects as emigrant colonialists and hence as tools to strengthen Russian interests in Ottoman Palestine. Only weeks after the expulsion of Palestinian Jews started, the Russian-Jewish émigré journalist Israel Zioni wrote a sharp article in the Yiddish press about possible reasons for Russian support of the refugees.62 Rhetorically asking why Tsar Nicolai and his consul in Alexandria were paying allowances to their Jewish refugee subjects and supporting them with nourishment while millions of Jews within Russia were displaced and suffering hunger and pogroms, he claims to reveal “an ugly political interest of the government in Petrograd . . . [in which] expulsed Jews from Jaffa are a cheap tool for an infamous plot . . . against Turkey.” Russia’s imperial ambitions are said to be known to include a desire “to set foot in Eretz Israel for a long while.” In addition to religious interest in the “Holy Land” (hinting at the attraction for the Russian Orthodox Church), Zioni hints at the strategic geography of Palestine “between the three continents Europe, Asia and Africa” with the potential “to become the center of world trade,” which he sees as the ultimate reason why Russia “wants to exploit its Jews and therefore it protects them.”63 Israel Zioni’s account (as his name suggests) exemplifies a Zionist view of the Russian Empire. During the Second Aliyah, thousands of Jews fleeing from Russian pogroms and the reactionary consequences of the failed revolution of 1905 settled in Palestine in the hope of establishing benevolent relations with the Ottoman Empire. However, up until the war, most Jews kept their Russian documents and did not naturalize to become Ottoman citizens: one reason was surely to avoid the military draft, as Zioni and Gordon mentioned. Additionally, the emigrants potentially sided with the presumably stronger empire that would in return grant extraterritorial rights and protection inside Ottoman lands. However, the “Russification of

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Palestine” equally followed internalized features of Orientalist European discourse, including its racial hierarchies, and motivated Zionist political decision-making. The quarrel between the Ottoman and Russian Empires served the settlers as a ground to maneuver to execute their own political vision of a Jewish homeland in Eretz Israel. This was a strategy that reached its limits when the war broke out and hostility escalated into open military conflict. The concept of emigrant colonialism provides a way to think beyond the disastrous relationship of the Jews to the Russian Empire in the heartland, where pogroms, displacement, and ongoing violence brought into question the continuity of Jewish life. The aim of the Zionist movement was also to overcome those atrocities that—envisioned as Russian colonial practices grounded on racial hierarchies—created anticolonial moments in the struggle for national independence. At the same time, positive registers of colonial politics, such as protection and support in foreign territory based on capitulation treaties, were apparently well accepted by the emigrants in exchange for a Russian civilizing mission in Ottoman Palestine. The concept of emigrant colonialism makes it possible to understand Russian interests in supporting Russian-Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine as steeped in colonial fantasies that crumbled during the war when leverage turned into costly liabilities and emigrant emissaries became refugees that had to be supported and provided for in Alexandria.64 Additionally, after the end of the war, Zionist activists fully emancipated themselves from Russia, whose future as an empire became uncertain after the revolution of 1917, and turned entirely to the West: to Britain and, increasingly, to the United States.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have traced features of Orientalist discourse in the writings of Eastern European Jews concerning the expulsion of non-Ottoman subjects from Palestine to Egypt in the winter of 1914–15, and I have examined hints of the relationship of the Russian-Jewish emigrants in Palestine to their former imperial homeland. The analysis of press reactions suggests that the expulsion of Russian-Jewish settlers from Palestine to Egypt solidified Zionist Eastern European Jews’ acceptance of Western cultural supremacy over the East: both Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The distress that followed the Ottoman entry into the war forced Jews in Palestine who did not hold Ottoman papers to explore new strategic avenues that included a position in the power realms between West and East, Europe and the Middle East. In a time when emerging Jewish international politics

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were severely debilitated by divided nationalist dreams during World War I in Europe, Jabotinsky imagined Jewish participation in British colonial politics. He proposed the establishment of a Jewish Legion that would conquer Palestine and extend the empire’s civilizing mission via a Jewish national home with a Western orientation, backed by imperial forces. The troubling position of the non-European Jew and the anxiety that Westernized Jews could “regress” due to close contact with the “true Oriental” inhabitants of the land led to Jabotinsky’s advocacy of a tight separation and constant education of his fellow coreligionists. This anxiety, fostered by racial hierarchies, not only reflects his internalization of Western Orientalist discourse, in that he acknowledges the precarious position of the Jew between West and East, but also foreshadows Zionist politics of separation in Israel up until today. Hirsch Loeb Gordon’s repeated mobilization of biblical tropes for people and the land reflected Zionist discourse that self-Orientalized the Jew in its striving for a new, authentic, Hebrew culture void of religious practice and the displeasing features of the culture of the Jewish Diaspora. In the second part of this chapter, I explored the concept of emigrant colonialism that helped to link Russia’s imperial ambitions and the Zionist desire to create a Jewish national home in Palestine within the framework of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. A comprehension of Russia’s enforcement of colonial practices (such as the colonization of new territories, displacement, restriction of movement, and physical violence against Jews in the “Pale of Settlement”) while fostering Jewish emigration to Palestine offers a perspective beyond the solution of the “Jewish problem” in the heartland. The support and protection of Russian emigrants in Palestine reveals Russia’s ambition to increase its influence in Ottoman lands. At the same time, the Jewish struggle for national independence points to anticolonial features in light of Russia’s policies inside its borders. The beginning of World War I marks a turning point in Jewish-Russian relations. The expulsion to Egypt turned the Russian emigrant colonialists into refugees in need of subsistence. These events cut the ties between Russia and the Zionist emigrants who refused to repatriate to an empire they no longer accepted as their homeland. At the same time, connecting the two arguments of this chapter, the emancipation from the Russian Empire cannot be understood apart from the realignment with Western powers during the war that was primarily an outcome of Western Orientalist discourse. The Eastern European Jewish perspectives presented in this chapter share many features of Western Orientalist discourse. Nevertheless, the simultaneously Orientalist and Orientalizing position of the Jew revealed his or her precarious place between the imagined West and the colonial world that was to be overcome by turning away from Russia and realigning with Western powers.

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Jonathan Hirsch is a PhD student at the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies in Berlin as well as at University Potsdam. His project examines historiographic efforts of the Jewish community in Egypt during the interwar period. His research interests include modern Jewish history, Jews in colonial societies, Jewish-Muslim relations, religion, and secularism in the modern nation-state.

Notes 1. Anonymous, “Une Conférence,” Revue Israélite d’Egypte—Historique, Philosophique, Littéraire, no. 3, 15 February 1915, 35. The lecture was given in Italian, the lingua franca of the city’s middle class. 2. For the capitulations, treaties, and extraterritorial rights, see Alexander De Groot, “The Historical Development of the Capitulatory Regime in the Ottoman Middle East from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries,” Oriente Moderno 83, no. 3 (2003): 575–604. 3. Ugo Farfara, “Pour Les Juifs Russes Expulsés,” Revue Israélite d’Egypte—Historique, Philosophique, Littéraire, no. 1, 15 January 1915, 11. Ugo Farfara, “Les Réfugiés— Notes et Impressions,” Revue Israélite d’Egypte—Historique, Philosophique, Littéraire, no. 2, 31 January 1915, 13–16; no. 3, 15 February 1915, 25–28; no. 4, 28 February 1915, 41–45. 4. The Refugee Aid Committee consisted of V. Naggiar, J. Aghion, Dr. Cohen, J. Picciotto, S. Mani, A. Entebi, M. Margelit, and the Palestinian staff of HaKarmel (Wine) Company Alexandria: I. Ettinger, S. Gloskin, S. D. Levontin and D. Yudelowitz. For a colorful description of the events and the committee, see the memoirs of David Yudelovitz, “Goley Eretz-Israel beMitzrayim,” MiYamim Rishonim (Tel Aviv: Shoshoni, 1934/35). 5. Alexandria’s population included about twenty thousand Jews who were suddenly faced with ten thousand Jewish refugees. Buildings converted into refugee camps included the Old Governorate building, Mafrouza, the former quarantine hospital of Gabbary, municipal buildings in Chatby, and the Wardian station. Cf. Yudelovitz, “Goley Eretz-Israel.” 6. The participation of 560 untrained volunteers as a designated Jewish unit within the British army came to be known as the “Zionist Mule Corps.” They delivered supplies and ammunition in the Battle of Gallipoli, also known as the Dardanelles campaign. Cf. Martin Watts, The Jewish Legion and the First World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2004), The Zion Mule Corps: 20–47. 7. Wladimir Jabotinsky, Die jüdische Legion im Weltkrieg (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1930), 7. 8. Ibid., 6. 9. Ibid. For the ambivalent relationship between Russian-Jewish immigrants in Palestine and the Ottoman Empire, see Abigail Jacobson, “Praktikot shel Netinut veNe’emanut le’Imperia: Tnu’at hahitothmanut,” in Zionism and Empires, ed. Yehouda Shenhav (Tel Aviv: Van Leer Institute Press/Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 2015), 159–82.

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10. Jabotinsky, Die jüdische Legion im Weltkrieg, 8. 11. Ibid., 9. 12. The exploration of this field is indebted to Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978). 13. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Zionist Return to the West and the Mizrahi Jewish Perspective,” In Orientalism and the Jews, ed. Ivan D. Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 163. See his analysis of the Dohm-Michaelis debate in the 1780s in Germany. Both agreed upon the backwardness of the Jews: the question was whether it was acquired or inherent, and hence whether they were capable of integration or would be forever alien to European nations. Cf. Jonathan Hess, “Sugar Island Jews? Jewish Colonialism and the Rhetoric of ‘Civic Improvement’ in Eighteenth Century Germany,” Eighteenth Century Studies 32, no.1 (Fall 1998): 98. 14. Raz-Krakotzkin, “Zionist Return,” 163. 15. Ibid., 166. Connections to ancient cultures via claimed continuous heritage date back to the Renaissance in Europe yet culminate in the notions of modern nationstates, such as in nineteenth-century Germany. Cf. Thorsten Föten and Richard Warren, eds., Graeco-Roman Antiquity and the Idea of Nationalism in the 19th Century (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016). 16. In that sense, the Zionists, as the strongest opponents of assimilation, shared assimilatory desires and tendencies. 17. Jabotinsky, Die jüdische Legion im Weltkrieg, 9. 18. Ibid., 15–16. The event shows the questionable accuracy of legal categories, such as repatriation, see also ibid., 7. Cf. Sarah A. Stein, Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). In addition, the futility of Russian attempts to conscript Russian Jews is exemplified here, as local Egyptian Jewry repeatedly intervened successfully, which also contradicts the theory that the creation of a Jewish legion was the only choice for the refugees. In this regard, it is interesting to note that in most Eastern European Jewish sources the role of local Jews as successful brokers of Jewish interests is unacknowledged. Note also that the English governor Lord Kitchener, from 1914 also war minister of Britain, opposed a Jewish legion as an unwanted “exotic” battalion. Jabotinsky, Die jüdische Legion, 63. 19. Ibid., 20. 20. Ibid., 202. 21. Ibid. As early as 1923 he strongly encouraged a secure Jewish colonization of Palestine separated from the local Arab population “behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.” Vladimir Jabotinsky, “O Zheleznoi Stene” (The iron wall), Razsviet, 4 November 1923, emphasis added. English translation retrieved 31 December 2019 from http://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf. Proximity between the Arab Jews and the non-Jewish Arabs of the Middle East had to be avoided, at times even with material walls, to prevent a “(re)orientalization” of the Jews. Likewise, Arthur Ruppin encouraged separation for fear that the Jews in Palestine would assimilate with the Arabs. Cf. Yfaat Weiss, “Central European Ethnonationalism and Zionist Binationalism,” Jewish Social Studies 11, no. 1 (Autumn 2004): 106–7.

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22. Vladimir Jabotinsky, “HaShilton HaAngli BeMitzrayim,” HaTzfira, 13 April 1915, 2. 23. His perspective on the Middle East and its inhabitants was not restricted to cherishing an admiration of British colonial practices in Egypt. As early as January 1915, he reported the war politics in Palestine and Egypt for HaTzfira. Condemning the war atrocities of the “barbarian Turks” in Palestine and Syria, he does not fail to mention that the German military officers would not agree with the Turkish politics of ethnic cleansing in the Levant, upholding the image of the civilized Western power. Vladimir Jabotinsky, “BeSuriah, Palestina veMitzrayim,” HaTzfira, 27 January 1915, 2. Similar incitements against the alleged Turkish plan to kill nonMuslims in Palestine can be found in the following article: Vladimir Jabotinsky, “Mesaviv haMilkhama,” HaTzfira, 26 February 1915, 2. 24. Jabotinsky, “BeSuriah, Palestina veMitzrayim,” 2. The article was published in January 1915 shortly after his arrival in Egypt. The Jewish battalion was established in March of the same year. 25. Cf. ambiguous voices on British colonial politics: Shin. “England, Egypten un der heiliger Krieg,” Der Tog, 30 December 1914, 5; Alexander, “Die allweltlikhe Intriges vos haben fershklaft Terkey—Wie Russland mit England haben seit hunderten Jahren Intrigirt in Asiatishen Terkey,” Die Wahrheit, 12 December 1915, 4; Alexander, “Die Kluge Politik von di Englender in Mitzrayim,” Die Wahrheit, 27 December 1915, 4–5. In comparison, articles on Russian war politics with regard to the Middle East are mainly negative and full of criticism: Die Redaktzia (S. V.), “A Russisher General-Konsul wegen Eretz-Israel un Yuden,” Der Moment, 12 February 1915, 2; Anonymous, “Di Seelen-Tragedye fon Russish-Yiddishe Soldaten—2 Dokumenten wegen der shoyderlikhe yiddishe Lage in Russland,” Die Wahrheit, 5 March 1915, 5; Anonymous, “Di Meldung Fun Di Russische Konsulaten in Mitzrayim,” Der Moment, 4 June 1915, 2. 26. Anonymous, “Jabotinsky will Yiddish Armee Zu Helfen Nehmen Palestina,” Der Tog, 4 May 1915, 1. 27. Ibid. 28. Cf. Yivo Archive, retrieved 31 December 2019 from http://www.yivoarchives.org/ index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=32879. 29. The campaign started on 17 February 1915 with a failed attack by the Entente powers on the Ottoman forts at the entrance of the Dardanelles. The subsequent attempt to land on the Gallipoli peninsula from April 1915 to January 1916 cost 250,000 casualties on both sides and ended with withdrawal. The 560 untrained volunteers of the Zionist Mule Corps were sent there in April to deliver supplies and ammunition. Watts, Jewish Legion, 20–47. 30. He held six academic degrees, including Semitic languages and Egyptology, and also wrote literary works in Yiddish and Hebrew. Cf. D. Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah le-halutse ha-yishuv u-vonav, vol. 11, p. 3852, 1961, retrieved 31 December 2019 from http://www.tidhar.tourolib.org/tidhar/view/11/3852. 31. Hirsch Loeb Gordon, “Fon Yarden Zum Nilus—Emesse Bilder fon’m letzten Galus,” Der Tog, 5 October 1915, 4. 32. Ibid. 33. The anxiety concerning being sent into the desert evokes echoes of the Armenian genocide that started in April 1915. It is possible that rumors about deportations

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35.

36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

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were already in the air some months earlier. Alternatively, he confounded the events in retrospect with the news of events that started to appear in the press in the summer of the same year. Cf. Anonymous, “Armenians Are Sent to Perish in Desert; Turks Accused of Plan to Exterminate Whole Population People of Karahissar Massacred,” New York Times, 18 August 1915, 5. Gordon mentions the avoidance of the military draft as a main reason not to become Ottoman. I explore further extraterritorial rights and privileges as possible reasons in the last part of this chapter. Cf. Jacobson, “Praktikot,” for further explanations, such as bureaucratic obstacles or high costs. In Zionist thought, emigration from Palestine was seen as a form of national treason since it challenged the teleological narrative in which arrival in the Promised Land represented the end of exile and displacement. Hirsch Loeb Gordon, “Fon Yarden Zum Nilus—Emesse Bilder fon’m letzten Galus,” Der Tog, 14 October 1915, 5. Raz-Krakotzkin, “Zionist Return,” 167. The cultural framework that the Zionists wished to actualize and uncover was an “authentic” Jewish culture, as opposed to the exilic life, described in Orientalist terms as fossilized, backward, and irrational. Additionally, the conditions of the refugees in Egypt were favorable, so the Zionists feared that Egypt, “the first exile,” could turn into a biblical Goshen (Ussishkin): a permanent, comfortable dwelling place for the Jews. Cf. Nurit Govrin, “P’gishatam shel Goley Eretz-Israel ‘im Mitzrayim vehaKehila haYehudit ba beMilkhemet-ha’Olam haRishona,” Pe’amim 25 (1985): 74. Gordon, “Fon Yarden Zum Nilus,” 14 October 1915, 5. Hirsch Loeb Gordon, “Fon Yarden Zum Nilus—Emesse Bilder fon’m letzten Galus,” Der Tog, 22 October 1915, 5. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. The biblical narrative of Ishmael son of Abraham and brother of Isaac signifies non-Jewish Muslim Arabs. Note also the seemingly synonymous use of Sephardi and Arab Jews for non-Ashkenazi Jewry. Farfara’s report in La Revue Juive does not mention reasons for the separation, and Yudelovitch does not refer to it. Hirsch Loeb Gordon, “Zwishen Hammer Un Amboss,” Der Tog, 18 November 1915, 5. Hirsch Loeb Gordon, “Zwishen Hammer Un Amboss,” Der Tog, 10 December 1915, 5. As well as the fear of war, Gordon also hints at the political involvement of Jews in the Russian revolution of 1905 and their subsequent escape to Palestine, which would guarantee incarceration or execution upon return to Russia. The rising Russian pressure upon the refugees is manifested in the creation of a new camp (“Cinema”) for men aged eighteen to forty-five years old. Hirsch Loeb Gordon, “Der Yiddisher Legion—Di Geshikhte un Kritik Fon Der Blutiger Aventoyr,” Der Tog, 6 January 1916, 5. Ibid. For a similar accusation that the Zionist corps was damaging to the Jews in Palestine and that “Turkey is not loathing the Jewish settlement and has also never been and will hopefully never be an enemy of the Jewish people,” see Anonymous, “Jabotinsky—An Opfer Fon Krieg,” Yiddishes Tageblatt, 14 November 1915, 4.

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48. Hirsch Loeb Gordon, “Der Yiddisher Legion—Di Geshikhte un Kritik Fon Der Blutiger Aventoyr,” Der Tog, 10 January 1916, 4. 49. Between 1880 and 1914, around two million Jews left imperial Russia, mainly to move to the United States. Cf. Eric Lohr, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 83–114. 50. Cf. the seminal essay by Ann L. Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Ann L. Stoler and Frederick Cooper (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 51. Cf. Ethan B. Katz, Lisa M. Leff and Maud S. Mandel, eds., Colonialism and the Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017). For a fruitful encounter between Jewish studies and postcolonial studies, see also Aamir Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). 52. In the second half of the nineteenth century, among varied nationalization processes, a hegemonic Russian nationalism with Pan-Slavic designs emerged (yet citizenship became a prospect only in 1905–17). Malachi Haim Hacohen: Jacob & Esau: Jewish European History Between Nation and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 33. 53. The Pale of Settlement was established under Catherine the Great in 1791 as a project to colonize newly occupied territories by the Black Sea. Nicolas I further reduced the territory of permitted settlement within the Pale in 1827–35. In 1881, any new Jewish settlement outside the Pale was prohibited by the “temporary laws.” Cf. John D. Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1885–1881 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 54. Tara Zahra, “Zionism, Emigration, and East European Colonialism,” in Colonialism and the Jews, ed. Ethan B. Katz, Lisa M. Leff, and Maud S. Mandel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 172, 177. 55. Ibid., 177. 56. Hirsch Loeb Gordon, “Zwishen Hammer Un Amboss,” Der Tog, 18 November 1915, 5. 57. Ibid, emphasis mine. 58. Research mainly revolves around Russian-Turkish conflicts in the Balkans. See Victor Taki, Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016). For Palestine, see Elen Astafieva, The Russian Empire in Palestine: A Look Back at the Origins of Russia’s Near Eastern Policy, 1847–1917 (Paris: Centre d’études des mondes russe, caucasien et centre-européen—CERCEC, 2016). For Russian Orientalism, see Kerstin S. Jobst, “Where the Orient Ends? Orientalism and Its Function for Imperial Rule in the Russian Empire,” in Deploying Orientalism in Culture and History, ed. James Hodkinson and John Walker (Rochester, NY: Camden House: 2013), 190–208. David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 59. Zahra, “Zionism, Emigration,” 167. Mark Choate, Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). As emigration and colonial fantasies came to be intertwined, Central and Eastern European empires

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61. 62. 63. 64.

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started to expand their consular networks, banks, schools, and other institutions to maintain ties and protect their citizens abroad. Quoted from Meri-Jane Rochelson, “Zionism, Territorialism, Race, and Nation in the Thought of Israel Zangwill,” in The Jew in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Culture: Between the East End and East Africa, ed. Eitan Bar-Yosef and Nadia Valman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 150. On Jews, race, and whiteness, see Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998). Zahra, “Zionism, Emigration,” 172. Israel Zioni, “Der Tsar, der Egyptisher Sultan un Seyre Yiden,” Der Morgen Journal, 24 January 1915, 5. Ibid. For an exploration of the tenuous meaning of extraterritoriality in the quickly changing legal world of the early twentieth century, as empires collapsed and a new regime of borders and national belonging emerged, see Stein, Extraterritorial Dreams.

Bibliography

Primary Sources Alexander. “Di allweltlikhe intriges vos haben fershklaft Terkey—vi Rusland mit England haben seit hunderten jahren intrigirt in Asiatishen Terkey” [The all-world intrigues that enslaved Turkey—How Russia and England have intrigued in Asian Turkey for hundreds of years]. Die Wahrheit, 7 December 1915, 4. ———. “Die kluge politik fon di Englender in Mitsrayim” [The smart politics of the English in Egypt]. Die Wahrheit, 27 December 1915, 4–5. Anonymous. “Une Conférence” [A conference]. Revue Israélite d’Egypte—Historique, Philosophique, Littéraire, no. 3, 15 February 1915, 35. ———. “Di Seelen-tragedye fon Rusish-Yiddishe soldaten—2 Dokumenten wegen der shoyderlikhe yiddish lage in Rusland” [The soul tragedy of Russian Jewish Soldiers—2 documents on the dreadful Jewish situation in Russia]. Die Wahrheit, 5 March 1915, 5. ———. “Jabotinsky wil Yiddish armey tsu helfen nehmen Palestina” [Jabotinsky wants the Jewish army to help take Palestine]. Der Tog, 4 May 1915, 1. ———. “Di meldung fun di Rusishe konsulaten in Mitsrayim” [The announcement of the Russian consulate in Egypt]. Der Moment, 4 June 1915, 2. ———. “Armenians are Sent to Perish in Desert; Turks Accused of Plan to Exterminate Whole Population; People of Karahissar Massacred,” New York Times, 18 August 1915, 5. ———. “Jabotinsky—An opfer fon krieg” [Jabotinsky—a war offer]. Yiddishes Tageblatt, 14 November 1915, 4. Die Redaktsia (S. V). “A Rusisher General-Konsul wegen Erets-Israel un Yuden” [A Russian general consul on Eretz Israel and Jews]. Der Moment, 12 February 1915, 2. Farfara, Ugo. “Pour Les Juifs Russes Expulsés” [For expelled Russian Jews]. Revue Israélite d’Egypte—Historique, Philosophique, Littéraire, no. 1, 15 January 1915, 11.

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———. “Les Réfugiés—Notes et Impressions” [Refugees—notes and impressions]. Revue Israélite d’Egypte—Historique, Philosophique, Littéraire, no. 2, 31 January 1915, 13–16; no. 3, 15 February 1915, 25–28; no. 4, 28 February, 41–45. Gordon, Hirsch Loeb. “Fon Yarden tsum Nilus—emese bilder fon’m letsten Galus” [From Jordan to Nile—truthful pictures from the last exile]. Der Tog, 5 October 1915, 4; 14 October 1915, 5; 22 October 1915, 5. ———. “Unter fremde himeln—Palestiner flikhtlinge in Mitsrayim” [Under the foreign skies—Palestinian refugees in Egypt]. Der Tog, 3 November 1915, 5. ———. “Tsvishen hammer un ambos” [Between hammer and anvil]. Der Tog, 18 November 1915, 5; 2 December, 1915, 5; 10 December 1915, 5. ———. “Der yiddisher legion—Di geshikhte un kritik fon der blutiger aventoyr” [The Jewish Legion—the history and critics of the bloody fuss]. Der Tog, 6 January 1916, 5; 10 January 1916, 4. Jabotinsky, Vladimir. “O Zheleznoi Stene” [The iron wall]. Razsviet, 4 November 1923, 1. ———. “BeSuriah, Palestina veMitzrayim” [In Syria, Palestine, and Egypt]. HaTzfira, 27 January 1915, 2. ———. “Mesaviv haMilkhama” [Around the war]. HaTzfira, 26 February 1915, 2. ———. “HaShilton HaAngli BeMitzrayim” [The English rule in Egypt]. HaTzfira, 13 April 1915, 2. Shin. “England, Egypten un der heiliger krieg.” [England, Egypt, and the holy war]. Der Tog, 30 December 1914, 5. Zioni, Israel. “Der Tsar, der Egyptisher Sultan un Seyre Yiden” [The tsar, the Egyptian sultan, and their Jews]. Der Morgen Journal, 24 January 1915, 5.

Secondary Sources Astafieva, Elen. The Russian Empire in Palestine: A Look Back at the Origins of Russia’s Near Eastern Policy, 1847–1917. Paris: Centre d’études des mondes russe, caucasien et centre-européen—CERCEC, 2016. Retrieved 31 December 2019 from https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01293323v2. Brodkin, Karen. How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998. Choate, Mark. Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. De Groot, Alexander H. “The Historical Development of the Capitulatory Regime in the Ottoman Middle East from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries.” Oriente Moderno 83, no. 3 (2003): 575–604. Föten, Thorsten, and Warren, Richard, eds. Graeco-Roman Antiquity and the Idea of Nationalism in the 19th Century. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016. Govrin, Nurit. “P’gishatam shel Goley Eretz-Israel ‘im Mitzrayim vehaKehila haYehudit ba beMilkhemet-ha’Olam haRishona.” Pe’amim 25 (1985): 73–101. ———. “The Encounter of Exiles from Palestine with the Jewish Community of Egypt during World War I, as Reflected in Their Writings.” In The Jews in Egypt: A Mediterranean Society in Modern Times, edited by Shimon Shamir, 177–91. Boulder, CO: Westview Press: 1987.

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Hacohen, Malachi Haim. Jacob & Esau: Jewish European History between Nation and Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Hess, Jonathan. “Sugar Island Jews? Jewish Colonialism and the Rhetoric of ‘Civic Improvement’ in Eighteenth Century Germany.” Eighteenth Century Studies 32, no.1 (Fall 1998): 92–100. Jabotinsky, Wladimir. Die jüdische Legion im Weltkrieg. Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1930. Jacobson, Abigail. “Praktikot shel Netinut veNe’emanut le’Imperia: Tnu’at hahitothmanut.” In Zionism and Empires, edited by Yehouda Shenhav, 159–182. Tel Aviv: Van Leer Institute Press/Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 2015. Jobst, Kerstin S. “Where the Orient Ends? Orientalism and Its Function for Imperial Rule in the Russian Empire.” In Deploying Orientalism in Culture and History, edited by James Hodkinson and John Walker, 190–209. Rochester, NY: Camden House: 2013. Kalmar, Ivan D., and Derek J. Penslar, eds.  Orientalism and the Jews. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005. Katz, Ethan B., Lisa M. Leff, and Maud S. Mandel, eds. Colonialism and the Jews. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. Klier,  John D. Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1885–1881. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Lohr, Eric. Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Mufti, Aamir. Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Nathans, Benjamin. Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Patterson, J. H. With the Zionists in Gallipoli. London: n.p., 1916. Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon. “The Zionist Return to the West and the Mizrahi Jewish Perspective.” In Orientalism and the Jews, edited by Ivan D. Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, 162–81. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005. Rochelson, Meri-Jane. “Zionism, Territorialism, Race, and Nation in the Thought of Israel Zangwill.” In The Jew in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Culture: Between the East End and East Africa, edited by Eitan Bar-Yosef and Nadia Valman, 144–60. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David. Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Stein, Sarah A. Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Stoler, Ann L., and Frederick Cooper. “Between Metropole and Colony.” In Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, edited by Ann L. Stoler and Frederick Cooper, 1–56. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Taki, Victor. Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire. London: Routledge, 2016. Tidhar, D. Entsiklopedyah le-halutse ha-yishuv u-vonav, vol. 11, 1961. Retrieved 31 December 2019 from http://www.tidhar.tourolib.org/tidhar/view/11/3852.

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Watts, Martin. The Jewish Legion and the First World War. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2004. Weiss, Yfaat. “Central European Ethnonationalism and Zionist Binationalism.” Jewish Social Studies 11, no. 1 (Autumn 2004): 93–177. Yudelovitz, David. “Goley Eretz-Israel beMitzrayim.” MiYamim Rishonim (Tel Aviv, 1934/35). Zahra, Tara. “Zionism, Emigration, and East European Colonialism.” In Colonialism and the Jews, edited by Ethan B. Katz, Lisa M. Leff, and Maud S. Mandel, 166–92. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.

CHAPTER 6

From Exotic Adventure to Victimization to Estrangement Imagining “Africa” through the Eyes of Czechoslovak Travel Writers (1950s–80s)



Barbora Buzássyová

Introduction Nearly three decades ago, Arjun Appadurai coined the term “mediascapes” to define the space where “image-centered, narrative-based accounts of strips of reality” produced by private or state interests circulate freely to give a form to “imagined lives, their [domestic recipients’] own as well as those of others living in other places.”1 Although originally intended to convey the current processes of cultural globalization, I find Appadurai’s idea of “imagined lives” a useful point of departure for understanding the flows of images and their effects on peoples’ self-made conceptualizations of the world (and their individual selves), also in Socialist contexts. Using the Czechoslovak travel accounts on Africa as the lens, this chapter aims to demonstrate how the representations of Africa distributed by travelogues created a sort of hidden “metadiscourse” that allowed the racial hierarchies to circulate unconsciously between the public spheres and shape the individuals’ mental maps of “Africa” while outwardly still claiming the egalitarian principles and brotherhood. It explores to what extent the literary representations of Africa in socialist settings were “decolonized” of stereotypical images implanted by predominantly Western-based imagery of the nineteenth century. As will become clear, the symbolic language of Czechoslovak travel writings did not become color-blind. The text thus will illustrate in what ways the Czechoslovak discourse reproduced the racialized symbolism and in effect helped to accelerate the Czechoslovaks’ identification with European-based concepts of “whiteness.” Finally, it contextualizes these discursive strategies against the background of the

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Czechoslovak policymakers’ efforts to mobilize the national commitment to socialist regime. I argue that the literary representations of Africa and Africans enabled Czechoslovaks to perceive their own socialist culture as superior to the “developing” South but at the same time equally superior to the morally corrupted West. After all, in Marxist cosmology the ultimate triumph of socialism was stretching westward as well as southward. Given these circumstances, I suggest that imposed discursive constructions helped to forge a unique strategy of how to reconcile the “in-betweenness” inherited in the label “second world”2—to negate the externally imposed peripherality of the Eastern European region by reaching toward the areas perceived as “more peripheral.” This dynamics is encompassed in the concept of modern socialist “missionaries,” personified by the work of socialist experts distributing the values, know-how, and technological advances of socialism to African peoples under the rubric of socialist internationalism.3 Nevertheless, before moving to the main subject of this chapter, I must first properly historicize the solidarity campaigns with “the poor victims of imperialism” in the global politics of the Cold War and situate the new wave of Czechoslovak-African encounters within the larger framework of North-South cultural patterns. It was not until the appointment of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (1894–1971) as the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s that “third world” came into the spotlight of Eastern European foreign policy. By the early 1960s, in commitment to Khrushchev’s new strategies of “active foreign policy” and “peaceful coexistence,” the Eastern European leaders were quick to search for new economic, political, or cultural connections with the emergent African and Asian postcolonial states. Although covered in the ideological armor of the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle and socialist internationalism these diplomatic maneuverings were motivated by truly national interests, seeking international recognition and domestic legitimization of the communist leadership or securing access to the nonsocialist markets.4 But however cynical the application of the internationalist doctrine might have been, it represented a powerful propagandistic tool in the world divided by Cold War binaries. Following the new strategy, party theorists represented Czechoslovakia as an anti-imperialist, racism-free place, contrasting it with the neocolonialist and racist West. However, at the beginning of this new courtesy to African leaders, the Eastern European governments, despite the enthusiasm, had to cope with the rather limited knowledge of the vast areas of the Global South. In this respect, Czechoslovakia represented an exception among the socialist states. Due to its economic links with the states in North Africa and the South African Union that dated back to the interwar period, Czechoslovakia was (at least initially) considered a spear-

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head of Soviet influence into the continent.5 Besides the interwar economic relations, there already existed a tradition of Christian missions as well as scientific expeditions to the African continent undertaken by Czech travelers and ethnologists during the period of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.6 In order to make sense of socialist representations of Africa, it is necessary to describe this historical background a little further. The Slovak Africanist Viera Vilhanová’s study on the images of Africa in the Slovak national press offers an intriguing insight into Slovak understandings of Africa at the turn of the twentieth century.7 According to her findings, Slovak enlightened intelligentsia were rather well-informed about the contemporary knowledge on Africa, although their conceptualizations were modeled mostly on the travel and scientific texts published abroad. Interestingly, Vilhanová argues that the articles about Africa were rather impartial, and she even points out the occasional critical commentaries on existing slave relations. The journalists usually embarked on the Christian values and abolitionist postulates, such as in the following commentary on the revolutionary events in Africa from 1889: “The black sons of Africa painfully experience the inhumanity of slave traders. . . . The heart of every man is hurt when he witnesses how brutally the blacks are treated by faithless people, who do not consider them even human but as senseless animals, and yet, even those are our neighbors, and even those we should love as we do ourselves.”8 The part and parcel of the contemporary discursive strategies against slavery was the usage of emotion-tinged language and heartbreaking images of the life of slaves: “There is no poorer creature in the world than black slave,” emphasizing that “also the wretched Black is God’s creature and our brother.”9 However, it appears that the antislavery narrative was based instead on Christian-Muslim antagonism, as it completely overlooked the European engagement in the slave trade and portrayed the Muslim states in the African North as the main initiators of the whole business. Moreover, it needs to be stressed that the tone and overall standard of these journalistic accounts depended on the genre and target audience of the concrete periodical. The more mass-centered it was, the more sensation-based were its contents. The barbaric nature and distinctiveness of Africans’ habits, such as polygamy, variety of religions, and magic rituals, were usually underscored as characteristic of “Africanism” and suggested as explanations of physical and cultural difference from Europeans. The newest advancements of European racial science thus seemingly affected the Slovak popular understanding of Africans, rendering the racial prejudice as well as inducing the mixture of exoticism and pity. With regard to Vilhanová’s findings, it could thus be concluded that the image of Africa in the Slovak press at the turn of the twentieth century was shaped mostly by

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observations from outside, and local journalists were simply mimicking the Western discussions on coloniality, including the abolitionist outcry. As far as the literary and scientific works on Africa published in this era are concerned, they were rather scarce and largely marked by colonial discourse. By way of illustration, probably the most well-known traveler and ethnologist of the era, a Czech named Emil Holub (1847–1902), was in 1880 praising the missionary expeditions and imperial rule as the only means for civilizing the “disgraceful colored servants” who were utterly controlled by “animal instincts.”10 However, in the changing global realities generated by the events of World War II, the old rhetoric was no longer considered politically desirable and had to be “decolonized” of the epistemic clichés of the bygone era.11 The literary representation of “exotic dark continent” as a passive object of examination needed to be refashioned in modern terms of solidarity, portraying the new African allies as active agents in the global struggle against imperialism. This study aims to assess to what extent this ambition was successful. Since the debut of the groundbreaking volume Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe,12 edited by Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis, the phenomenon of Eastern European travelogues captured the attention of scholars from many scientific disciplines. Aside from Early Modern travel accounts, the recent focus on the functions of travel writings during the Cold War era proved to be a fertile ground for investigation. To name the most relevant contributions, Martin Slobodnik’s analysis of Czechoslovak travelogues on China in the 1950s introduced to these discussions a concept of “antiOrientalism” by which he conceived a deliberate effort to suppress the exoticizing perspectives in order to mobilize solidarity and promote the principles of proletarian internationalism.13 Similar reasoning pursues Slovak literary scientist Robert Gafrik, who examined the Slovak travelogues on India.14 However, with regard to my survey I argue that the Czechoslovak discourse on Africa was, despite the uniform ideological base, built on slightly different narrative strategies than discourses on the Far East and India. The peculiar position of “Africa” in the European imagination could perhaps explain why I found far more common intersections with findings provided by Nemanja Radonjić in his intriguing study of travel writings on Africa published in socialist Yugoslavia.15 In the following text I will draw primarily on his symbolical division of this period into the phases of Afrooptimism and Afro-pessimism that considerably shaped the discourses on Africa on cultural as well as political levels. The political scientist Debbie Lisle, in the introductory chapter to the volume The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing,16 referred to travel accounts as the unique artifacts of popular culture through which it is possible to trace the pro-

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cesses of production of widespread assumptions about the power relations between domestic and external sites. Drawing heavily on Foucauldian discourse analysis, Lisle demonstrates the function of travelogues to organize the world by reflecting on the affirmed discourses and to forge that world into incontrovertible reality while still maintaining their alleged detachment from the power discourse of “serious” politics.17 However, what makes the Czechoslovak travel writings such a noteworthy case is that their public effect was in direct opposition to the official discourse they were supposed to perpetuate.

Setting Among the authors of the selected travelogues we could find, besides political journalists, are former technical experts and Czechoslovak scientists who decided to (or were asked to) share their firsthand work experience in distant lands with the Czechoslovak public. Some of them, such as Miroslav Levý (1933–?), who worked as an interpreter in a group of Czechoslovak mechanics for Air Guineé, immigrated to the West after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968. Others, like former journalists Pavla Jazairiová (1945) and Věra Šťovíčková (1930–2015) of the Czechoslovak broadcast service for Africa, were dismissed from their positions in the Czechoslovak broadcast service after 1968 as their regular journeys abroad and abundant contacts with foreigners appeared suspicious for the new leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (hereafter KSC). Concerning the selected sample of travelogues, it appears that the works written by political journalists published almost exclusively by Nakladatelství politické literatury (Publishing house of political literature)—renamed Svoboda in 1966—which was founded and controlled by the Central Committee of the KSC, prevailed during the Afro-optimistic phase of the early 1960s. Nakladatelství politické literatury had a license to publish works on sociopolitical and ideological-theoretical issues in Czechoslovakia. From the 1970s onward, the travel accounts written by former experts grew in number, although the works by former journalists appeared occasionally. Moreover, the spectrum of publishing houses in this period widened to Orbis, controlled by the Ministry of Culture, which was responsible for advertising Czechoslovakia abroad and publishing and popularizing scholarly literature. In 1978, the list was joined by new publishing house Panorama, which specialized in nonfiction, travelogues, and children’s literature. Concerning the facts, we could conclude that the travel texts of this period were products of state-directed campaigns, although the possibility of personal motivation to write could not be completely overruled.

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Metaphors of Color and Racial Politics Any debate on the power of linguistic symbolism could not go by without a short excursus into the field of literary studies. There, much ink has been spilled on the topic of transcultural encounters, especially concerning the modes of representing cultural difference. A tendency to “Other” features perceived as a deviation from domestic patterns together with a notion of stereotypical reoccurrence of some features constituting certain inherent characteristics of a particular group of people reach long into the history. A useful toolkit of how these literary representations could be deconstructed and critically examined is offered by imagology, a method for analysis of the textual strategies of ethnic/national stereotypization. Joep Leerssen, in his introductory chapter to the volume on cultural construction of national characters, argues that the images of national/ethnic characterization are most effectively perpetuated and distributed through the literary media because of their intertextual topicality.18 By the habit of repetition, the tropes reach the quality of established conventions that become the key points of reference in decoding the individual encounter with cultural/ethnic “other.” Moreover, some stereotypical images are not necessarily linked to a particular nation but rather have a character of “moral polarities,”19 through which we could specify the oppositions such as Northern-civilized versus Southern-sensuous or Western-active versus Oriental-passive. To analyze the rather complex positioning of the Czechoslovak population toward the “nonwhite others,” one needs to decode the whole matrix of culturally conditioned metaphors encrypted in the language. Frantz Fanon (1925–61), the pioneer of postcolonial thinking and a psychiatrist, speaks about himself in his famous work Black Skin, White Masks as being literally “woven out of a thousand details, anecdotes and stories”20 made up by the white men, which created a “myth of a Negro.” Thus, in his argumentation Fanon focused on the role of language in the process of demonization of the Black color in the Western vocabularies: “The torturer is the black man, Satan is black, one talks of shadows, when one is dirty one is black— whether one is thinking of physical dirtiness or of moral dirtiness.”21 Or, “Blackness, darkness, shadow, shades, night, the labyrinths of the earth, abysmal depths, blacken someone’s reputation; and on the other side, the bright look of innocence, the white dove of peace, magical, heavenly light.”22 For Fanon, this myth became embedded in Western civilization by means of what he calls “unreflected imposition of culture,”23 reproduced for centuries by symbolic meanings related to the concepts of “Blackness” and “whiteness.” But how could we bridge the concepts related to the experience of the great imperial empires with the country that never had any colonies and

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that often claimed to have a history of “subalternity” within the larger structure of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? A useful guideline for answering this question could give us a brief insight into Czechoslovak treatment of “the closer others,” the Romani or Gypsies who constituted the ethnic neighbors of Eastern European peoples for centuries. Thus, in the following I try to draw a parallel between the stigmatization of Roma communities in Eastern Europe and discriminatory practices against the “Blacks” in America and Western Europe. Echoing Fanon’s ideas about the demonization of Black color, I argue that the tradition of “ethnic Othering” of Roma equipped the majority population with a collection of symbolic constructions that later also facilitated the application of similar imagery on the African peoples. The tradition of exclusionary practices toward Roma in Europe has a long history. Since their arrival to Europe in the fourteenth century, they were broadly identified with Islamic threat, referred to as heathens, Saracen, Tatars, or Gypsies24 based exclusively on the tone of their skin color. These were coupled with the other moral qualifiers that singled out the Roma as “carriers of plague and traitors of Christendom.”25 After World War II, the ideological motto that all other identities should dissolve in the all-encompassing category of class led the Eastern European governments to adopt the politics of full assimilation of Roma populations. In the eyes of state authorities, the Roma represented an obstacle in the way to build socialism, and thus they invested a lot of effort to reduce their “backwardness.” However, the policy of assimilation meant nothing less than ethnic/ cultural elimination. According to Ian Law’s account, besides the allocation of low-paid unskilled jobs to and forced resettlement of Roma families (accompanied by expressions of deep aversion on the part of government officials), the most striking discriminatory practices included the new sterilization schemes against Roma women who were in several cases denied access to financial incentives in order to reduce birth rates.26 Such actions only reinforced the existing tension that culminated after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, when the racialized stereotypes against the Roma were fully displayed in popular stances as well as mainstream media, identifying them as criminals, disease carriers, and an economic burden for Czech and Slovak society.27 The stigmatization of Roma communities in the postSoviet era serves as an emblematic example of a strong affinity to the idea of “whiteness” and popularity of racialized categories in Czechoslovak (or in broader sense Eastern European) cultural/national imagination. The crucial difference in assessing the “classic” racism and anti-Roma racism is that the so-called “Gypsy problem” was never recognized in racial terms but rather as a result of social and economic factors. This conceptualization allowed the author of the article “Černá moc” (Black power),

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published in Czechoslovak periodical Reporter in 1966, to disavow the popular tendencies to equate the “Gypsy problem” in Eastern Slovakia with the “Black issue” in the United States by the following argument: The main cause of [the Gypsy problem] is that gypsies refuse to integrate into the major population or are incapable of doing so despite the fact that our society provides them with all conditions to do so, they do not want to forsake the migratory lifestyle and acquire the work ethics or are incapable of doing so. The problem of Blacks in America is the exact opposite: they struggle to achieve integration, which is being denied to them, they struggle to be offered the options to integrate, and they have proven many times that they are competent to make their living as a part of the American nation as do all other minorities.28

This excerpt demonstrates how the “educable Blacks” could be juxtaposed with “uneducable Roma” without a slight hint to understanding this opposition in racial terms. Anikó Imre, in an attempt to historicize the whiteness and ethnocentric nationalism in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, recognizes this rather problematic reading of racism in the region in consequence to the fact that in the Eastern European languages, politics, and social sciences, the notion of “race” overlaps with that of “ethnicity.”29 This rejection of differentiating between “race” and “ethnicity” (whether conscious or unconscious) allows us to see racism as a phenomenon exclusive to colonial and imperial narratives while overlooking the continuation of oppressive actions against racialized groups in domestic milieus.30 And yet, when we take a closer look at the central story lines of Czechoslovak travel accounts, they are driven by the idea of socialist apostles dispatched to do a noble duty of reducing the Africans’ “backwardness.” Another clue for understanding how the racialized imagination and official antiracial politics could coexist in practice is provided by the conceptualizations of the “race” category in Soviet anthropology. The work popularizing the “newest advancements in Soviet ethnography,” written by Nikolaj Nikolaevič Čeboksarov (1907–80) and his wife Irina Abramovič, was originally published in 1971 and translated into Czech in 1978. What makes this book remarkable is not that it reaffirmed the triangular classification of races (mongoloid, negroid, and europid) or the mandatory rejection of hierarchical relation between them but the way the authors connected the “dynamism of races” with the cultural activities and lifestyle in the concrete natural habitat, i.e., with the dynamism of social development.31 As an example they used the anthropological differences between individual castes in the Indian caste system. Putting forward the argument of historical invasion into the region of Indo-Aryan tribes that subsequently subdued the local population and denounced them to lower sta-

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tus, the authors claimed that the “upper castes” contain the higher rates of “europid elements.”32 Such a statement appears particularly contradictory to a reference, appearing a few pages later, to the severe criticism of a USbased article published in Newsweek in 1969 discussing the genetic differences between the races. In the work we found many sections discussing the biological differences between the races, long passages enumerating the human races, and even chapters explaining the process of inheritance of racial attributes. All this demonstrates how vividly the term “race” operated in the jargon of Soviet social sciences and what precise divisions were drawn between the individual groups. A rejection of racism did not apparently disqualify it as a category for denomination of difference between the peoples.33

Construction of Hierarchical Relation: “Poor” Africa and Life-Saving Socialism Immediately at the airport we detected a strange smell. It reminded us of a mixture of rot, dirt, and sweat. We could also smell the mud and salt from the near sea. Later we stopped to notice this smell of Africa, it became an inseparable part of the continent.34

Canadian historian Quinn Slobodian introduced the concept of “socialist chromatism” in an attempt to grasp the transformations of racial discourse in East Germany. Focusing on the visual repertoires of the internationalist campaigns he observed that despite the official anti-racism, East German authorities continued to rely on skin color and other markers of phenotypic difference as well as folkloric stereotypes to demonstrate the spectrum (and scope) of internationalist solidarity. According to Slobodian’s argument, this mode of representation of global diversity at times verged on reproducing the concepts of white supremacy.35 With this in mind, I examine the dynamics of textual representations of “Africa” to illustrate the figurative repository of racialized discourse in Czechoslovakia. When the African continent reappeared in the Czechoslovak strategic plans in the mid-1950s, the most popular travelogue available (reprinted in several editions and even adjusted to the age of the readers) was Afrika snů a skutečnosti36 (Africa of dreams and reality), written by Czechoslovak travelers Jiří Hanzelka (1920–2003) and Miroslav Zikmund (1919) and first published in 1954. In the collection of reportages, the authors documented their long journey from the north to the south of Africa, already initiated in 1947. Though the proclaimed objective of the expedition was to “dis-

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cover new Africa, freed from all illusions and obsolete representations,”37 the choice of emotionally tinged language and the concern with cultural extravagance of the African lifestyle deepened the traditional stereotypes instead of pointing out the new realities supposedly characteristic for new independent African states. These narrative tendencies are especially apparent in portrayals of tribal life and folk culture, where authors failed to avoid implications of carnality and even erotic subtexts: “A well-built, muscular black man was dangling in ecstasy . . .,” which continues as, “Their sweaty bodies were glowing in the gleam of fire, as if they were made from metal.”38 The sensual images were typically followed by indirect links to evil and the wicked nature of the natives: “They looked like little devils in the gleam of fire, naked, black, with buttocks and shoulders gleaming dimly.”39 Moreover, certain passages hinted the animal or sometimes inhuman disposition of African people: “After all, the dancers’ faces became deprived of human expression, the bodies wincing in ecstasy . . . as if the short decades which followed the arrival of the first Europeans into the region were melted in boiling blood.” Or, “Grinning teeth, bloody-looking eyes, a mouth letting out irregular screeches—it was not just a dramatic spectacle for tribal chieftain, the Blacks from all around and a group of Whites.”40 These evocative demonstrations of folkloric difference, though perhaps made with intention to capture the interest of the readers and familiarize the specificities of African culture to the general readership, also diffuse a different signal. Adapting the classic developed/underdeveloped dichotomies, the text offers the counterimage of Czechoslovakia as an advanced country, ready to export its economic and cultural developments to those “in need.” This scheme was further reinforced by recurring references to the “long sleep of African peoples,” implying the need of external incentive that would stimulate the process of awakening as well as the full development of their hidden potential: “It was one of the most shocking views we experienced during our expedition through the dark continent. But at the same time it was one of the most beautiful views of the vibrant strength of African people, the people whose great future still sleeps deeply below the ground.”41 While these narratives could be partially ascribed to the mental conventions of the previous decade when the Czechoslovak public was only just recovering from the cultural isolationism of the Stalinist period, the travelogues and socioeconomic compendiums on Africa of the 1960s, published to lessen a  gap in popular knowledge of Africa at the direct urge of the party, also failed to abandon the romanticized language and rather patronizing narrative. In the foreword of Tvář černé Afriky42 (The face of Black Africa), written by Josef Šup (1910– 80) under the pseudonym J. K. Šustr in

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1963, the author addresses Africa as a fragile and sensitive child, alluding to the old tropes of the unknown and dependent world: “The face of black Africa, the face which past is still wrapped in several thick veils, is calling for a sensitive and caring touch of historians. . . .”43 Besides, the publication is full of black-white contrasts between the “parasitic colonialism” causing the “remarkable backwardness in elementary education and culture” and the Socialist block as the “factor of liberation.”44 With regard to everpresent references to poverty, backwardness, and illiteracy as phenomena typical for “new Africa,” it seems that the Czechoslovak perceptions to a large extent drew on the nineteenth-century rationales of “civilizing missions,” which were merely rebranded to a “socialism will lead us from the darkness” formula. Similar imagery also invokes a travelogue published in 1962 by Stanislav Budín (1903–1979, originally Bencion Bať) titled Probuzený svetadíl: Včerejšek a  dnešek Afriky45 (The awakened continent: Africa of yesterday and today). As the title suggests, the central motives revolve around “awakening” from “a long sleep or apathy,” a feature portrayed as characteristic of African people: “Only in the second half of twentieth century, a vast African continent was awakened from a decade-long sleep and became an agent of history. . . . People of Africa will join for the first time a flow of human civilization.”46 In other words, only after the removal of colonialism and the incorporation of Socialism will Africa reach the realm of civilization. Allusions to internally conditioned “delayed development” are accompanied by a motive of gratitude that all African peoples were expected to show to socialist states. For Budín, the very existence of the socialist system led to denunciation of colonial relations, and, moreover, “[it] compels the imperialists to treat underdeveloped countries in a more decent manner.”47 In fact, African states “owe their independence to the birth of the world socialist system,”48 which, simply speaking, means no less than that “Africa” became the “agent of history” only because of the interference of socialist states. A crucial shift in understanding “Africa” is shown in Budín’s interpretation of African underdevelopment, which he attributed to the “humid tropical climate.” He thus came up with socialist variation of “environmental determinism” typical for Western colonial thinking of the late nineteenth century.49 According to his observation, “A dense vegetation and abundance of animals in savannas detracted from work and discouraged from development of agriculture as everything necessary for human nutrition was granted by nature, without a least human effort.”50 The source of African “backwardness” was thus conditioned not only externally, via intrusion of colonialism and slavery, but also by inner characteristics of the continent.

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Counterimage: Socialist Mentors Being aware of travelogues’ ability to shape our understanding of the world, we find that travel accounts in the socialist Czechoslovakia seem to pursue two simultaneous strategies. Aside from a rather self-apparent function of conceptualizing the foreign places to domestic contexts, they also reflected and distributed the Czechoslovak state’s desired self-conceptions. Vis-à-vis the images of pitiful but knowledge-craving Africans are thus posed depictions of heroic Czechoslovak experts, who, though often suffering extreme hardship and discomfort during the “missions,” never gave up and instead fulfilled what was considered their “socialist duty.” By way of illustration, Emil Choleva, a former agricultural expert dispatched on an agricultural training mission to Ethiopia in 1960, describes his fellow workers as follows: “They are not any special heroes. They are just common people, with strengths and weaknesses but proud of their homeland which sent them abroad. . . . It is the [their] first independent pioneering work, highly responsible, which is done in completely different conditions [than those known at home]. . . . [But] The small group of Czechoslovak citizens did not get discouraged by difficulties.”51 And indeed, it was nothing but the socialist values that equipped them with capabilities to succeed in this important task: “The strength of collective, the sense of responsibility to complete the task assigned by our socialist fatherland and a genuine effort to help the Ethiopian people, these were the qualities which enabled us to overcome all obstacles.”52 There were also no scruples made about the goal of the Czechoslovak experts’ activities in Ethiopia, which are summarized in a rather straightforward manner: “Our experts came to Ethiopia in order to teach people in one backward province how to operate the modern agricultural machines, people who were unable—during the three thousand years of their existence—to master even the use of a plough.”53 Reading over these lines, the parallel between the Christian missions of past centuries and the noble duty of “spreading the socialist word over the uncivilized lands” by new legions of socialist crusaders becomes rather obvious. However, the heroization of Czechoslovak experts sometimes exceeded this solely paternalistic tone by ascribing to experts even “divinelike” powers of “agents of mending/restoring the past,” who will sweep out all the damages caused by the former imperial oppressors. Speaking of Czechoslovak doctors in Guinea, Miroslav Levý portrays their errand there as follows: “At that time, nobody in Guinea was more needed that they were. . . . After winning independence, they came to Guinea to help to fix the past, in part at least.”54 The Czechoslovak experts were thus viewed as an integral part of the grand historical process of civilizational progress,

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pursuing the ideas of overcoming the barbarism set up by Enlightenment and the exploitive mechanism of imperialism that should culminate in the final triumph of socialism occupying the highest position in the hierarchy of cultures. The travel writings were thus also pursuing the inner political goals by depicting Czechoslovak manpower, technology, and expertise as highly praised and admired abroad, which could both justify the reality of the socialist regime and mobilize domestic support. Another facet of the Czechoslovak discourse on Africa includes publications written in response to increasing numbers of racially biased incidents between Africans and local students. Though it is disputable whether Od Limpopa k Vltavě55 (From Limpopo to the Vltava River), published in 1963, is a travel account per se or not—the author, communist journalist Jindřich Lion (1922–2012), never crossed the Czechoslovak borders—he tried to use this weakness as a major advantage, appealing to discover Africa “through the eyes of Africans, from perspectives so far undiscovered by the whites.”56 Drawing on the personal life experiences of the twelve African students studying in Czechoslovakia at that time, he set a goal to inform the readers about “the Africans’ opinions on our specific problems in Czechoslovakia” and “to explain the mysteries of black traditions that were not yet elucidated by travel writers,” which should result in adopting of a “new outlook on black continent.”57 When we take a closer look at the narrative that guides all chapters, it becomes clear that in many ways it drew on hierarchies between the preexisting concepts of “developed” and merely “developing.” The interviewed African students are referred to as “descendants of pitiful farmers and slaves,”58 and Czechoslovak students are appealed to treat them with understanding as the “representatives of the peoples who once richly attributed to the world culture and who now, with the help of new, young intelligentsia, aspire to become equal partners on the path toward the global progress.”59 In one story, the accusations of foreign students due to a lack of gratitude are supposed to be wiped out by constant references to altruistic and generous behavior of Czechoslovak citizens who willingly donate clothes, strollers, and toys to a newborn child of a young African couple, who, in return, carefully display their touched and grateful reaction.60 However, such images had a double effect—on the one hand they presented the feeling of solidarity as a standard quality of all Czechoslovak citizens, but on the other hand they (probably unconsciously) portrayed Czechoslovakia as a charitable organization, and African students were understood as being in need of one. Moreover, the publication also mirrored a subtle tendency not only to educate foreign students in terms of professional preparation but also to make them internalize a “correct ethical code” as well as so-called “pro-

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gressive values.” The publication contained many passages calling against polygamy and religious superstitions, among them: “I will not have four wives as a majority of older generations have,” a student speaks, “only one who I will love for all four. She must have the same progressive opinions as I do therefore we will have a civil marriage only.”61 The moral reeducation was thus seemingly a part of Czechoslovak programs to foreign students directed at gaining self-control over their (envisaged) sexual instincts and abrogating obsolete customs. Against this background, it comes as no surprise that despite the publication’s original intention of fixing the mutual relationships and informing Czechoslovak students about “the past, the fate and true living conditions” of African students at Czechoslovak universities, students actually renounced it for “depicting Africa as a dirty and degenerate continent,”62 which was emphasized by visual documentation attached to the publication. The African students argued that such a portrayal only underscored the negative perceptions of Africa instead of reducing them.

Effects: Continuity of Character Typologies Given the context of ethnographic representations of Africa and its inhabitants that were circulating in the public spheres, I find it constructive to illustrate the ways in which they could have affected the racialized thinking in practice. In particular I draw attention to the foreign students’ character typologies elaborated by officers from the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior. At the internal meeting titled “To the problem of foreign students” summoned in June 1961 by the Foreign Department of the Ministry of Interior, African students63 were discussed in the following manner: “In general we could describe students from Africa as the ones who are childish, hypersensitive—they preserve some of their traditions and habits. Algerian students are on principle deceitful and cunning.”64Another report from the foreign department further commented on African students’ behavior as such: “These students are very sensitive, every little incident understood as a racial discrimination (especially Africans), they suffer from inferiority complex. On the other hand they are hot-tempered, but when treated well they can be honest and devoted.” In police reports, African students were characterized as the “biggest provocateurs” who initiated the “largest numbers of conflicts.” Moreover, according to another information report on foreign students, the most frequent crimes the African students were accused of included blackmail, spreading venereal diseases, alcoholism, initiating street clashes, and arranging marriages with Czechoslovak women with intention to emigrate.65 The list of supposed crimes of African

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students related to sexual behavior corresponded to established topoi of African men as sensual and animal symbols who (in more abstract terms) represented a threat to European men. Despite the egalitarian slogans echoed in internationalist campaigns, the mixed marriages were not welcomed. Although this tendency was no longer justified by biological reasons, pragmatism dictated it—as the state would lose a precious labor force, the party authorities did not hesitate to count on preexisting racial stereotypes as an effective measure against interracial marriages. For illustration, the author of one secret police document recommended that all marriage-craving women should be told that they would gradually have to “sleep with all the husband’s brothers, which is a consanguineous duty [in Africa].”66 These examples suggest that the idea of African men as lascivious continued to shape perceptions of CzechoslovakAfrican interactions, and a narrative of African “lack of culture” was often used as leverage to prevent intimate relations.

Revisiting the African Image during the Second Development Decade From time to time, I meet an African on the streets of Prague. He is a stranger here the same way we were strangers in the midst of the bush. The people pass by him carelessly, he carelessly passes by. I want to cross the street and tell him that I was in Africa.67

In the introduction to this chapter I outlined travelogues not only as cultural products but also as political acts, which to a large extent interact with the social and political contexts of their time. The nature and rhetoric of Czechoslovak solidarity campaigns were no different. The later decades signaled the turn of writing interest to the regions of Northern Africa that reappeared on the horizon of Czechoslovak geopolitics with unprecedented intensity. Following the outbreak of economic stagnation of the socialist block in the mid-1970s, Czechoslovak policymakers shifted their strategic focus and strengthened the political, economic, or cultural ties with the oil-producing countries of the South and many capitalist countries of the West in order to secure more profitable foreign policy. In the changing global circumstances, the cooperation with the states of sub-Saharan Africa was considered a “purely humanitarian” form of “onesided aid.” Although the cultural contacts with politically friendly but economically unimpressive countries did not completely wane, the statistics speak for themselves—in 1980 the largest cohorts of Czechoslovak experts were dispatched to Libya, Algeria, Egypt, and Nigeria, which have a rep-

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utation of being the biggest oil-producers on the continent.68 Apparently, the travel texts seem to follow the pragmatic path foregrounded by the new Czechoslovak-African policy. The new realistic line was epitomized even in the travelogues’ titles, such as Afrika překvapení a ukvapení69 (Africa of surprise and inconsiderateness) by Václav Opluštil, and clear divides were made between the previous decade and the present, as in Josef Hotmar’s (1933) Afrika prvni generace70 (Africa of the first generation) and Stanislav Štěpánek’s (1909–?) Afrika sedmdesátých let71 (Africa in the seventies). However, the calls for reform of Czechoslovak representations of “Africa” were already voiced during the late 1960s, when Czechoslovakia experienced a short period of profound intrastate reorganization later known as the Prague Spring. These new demands were reflected especially in the language and imagery of the upcoming generation of travelogues. Věra Šťovíčková articulated this mental shift in the preface of Prostor pro naději (The space for hope), published in 1967: At bottom, we did not know her [Africa], we were not ready for her—for Africa struggling for independence. We measured her wishes by our needs and her acts by our feasibilities, her passions and hatreds we interpreted according to our experience. We treated Africa in a traditional way, we saw her as she never was in reality: divided by invisible boundaries from the colonial era. In our imagination she was borderless; we understood every reaction against colonial oppression as primarily progressive, every bond with the former metropolis we interpreted as a step back. Facts that did not fit our picture were simply overlooked. ”72

In this surprisingly critical remark, Šťovíčková hinted not only at the unexpected effects of Czechoslovak preconceptions of “Africa” but also at the incapacity to reconcile the African reality or even the direct denial of it. The former images were just the products of political utopia that at the end of the 1960s got to the blind alley. It is worth noting that despite the official party line, the effectiveness of current models of Czechoslovak policies to Africa as well as the established practice of representation already were occasionally questioned during the 1960s. In 1965, a thematic issue of the cultural periodical Plamen titled “Třetí svět—hrozba nebo naděje?” (Third World—a threat or a hope?) brought about several essays of Czechoslovak cultural figures on the topic of Czechoslovak-African encounters. The foreword, written by aforementioned journalist Věra Šťovíčková, reveals another vista to the question of Czechoslovak positioning between “Africa” and “Europe.” Hinting at the African “anti-racist racism,”73 she puts forward the idea of Czechoslovaks being “pushed” toward the identification with “white Europe” by blackwhite polarities held by African peoples:

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We came to Africa in the time when Africans started to lead the struggles not only on political or economic front but when they also struggled for themselves; the more they tried to throw away invisible shackles imposed by former metropolises the more willing they were to define their identity by contrast to the European—the member of the white race and by that I mean whosoever European . . . those who came from socialist countries were treated simply as Europeans and were equated to other Europeans coming from, let’s say, metropolises—a human to human, a state to a state that both lie outside Africa and belong to—the rich.74

Whereas the allegorical repertoire of travel writings published during the 1960s was full of enthusiasm, motives of awakening, and references to vibrant powers of a young “black continent” that would fully develop with the compassionate guidance of socialist countries, the cultural representations of Africa in the later era were dominated by pessimistic commentaries complemented by the traditional tropes of North-South charity. Authors’ personalized, emotion-tinged evaluations almost disappeared from the language of travelogues, replaced instead by rigid and distanced documentarylike descriptions. The authors often hinted at the unstable and turbulent character of the continent, concluding that “Africa is far from being a simple continent, but rather is a very complicated one,” in which “not everything is as rosy and romantic as it appears on the first sight.”75 “Estrangement” represented another strand of the changed imagery of Africa, a concept alien to the former narratives. The central storyline that guides Pavla Jazairiova’s work is the image of two separated worlds/cultures that are unable to comprehend one another: “Besides, they don’t like us. Because of the past, because of the present. They call us tubab—the white, and many times we had a feeling that they consider us as something so incomprehensible, something that thinks and acts so strangely that it’s pointless to try to understand it.”76 To intensify the sense of alienation, she usually invokes the traditional tropes of the unknown, the alien, and the obscure, not dissimilar to Hanzelka and Zikmund’s suggestive depictions of tribal culture. Proclamations such as “We felt as if visiting some other world, sitting next to some alien creatures who were strange—so strange we felt as if we were hosted by the squirrels or wild birds”77 appeared frequently. Customarily, the passages depicting the mental and cultural barriers were backed up by the pity-inducing images of omnipresent poverty, diseases, and unkempt children. Concerning the abovementioned examples, we could conclude that the representations of Africa in the later decades oscillated between the exoticized picture of a primitive, incomprehensible, and alien world untouched by the greed of civilization and clearly negative portrayals of Africa as a still-dependent continent unable to take care of itself without assistance from the outside.

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Conclusion Pondering over the pile of Czechoslovak travel accounts on Africa, we see several reappearing motives. The narrative strategies of exoticizing the African tribal culture while simultaneously accentuating the eminence of socialist experts’ endeavor to “uplift” the barbaric, though eager, lands later shifted to disillusioned depictions of incompetent and alien “Africa.” Both of these perspectives furnished the schematic and generalizing vocabularies that constructed the Global South in the Czechoslovak imagination. In many ways, Czechoslovak travel writers merely adapted the preexisting Western-based geo-cultural concepts of “culturally superior” white civilization vis-à-vis the crude (though independent) Africa still in need of guidance and protection from its own incompetence. The tendency to use the dire social conditions in Africa as a mirror of Czechoslovak cultural and technological advancements apparently developed in two directions. First, it demonstrated the moral superiority of the socialist world over the capitalist and its cultural superiority over the formerly colonized regions. Second, the constant references to phenotypic difference and folkloric contrasts drew the clear-cut borders between the naive concepts of “us” and “them,” which resulted in helping to embed the assumption that the core of Czechoslovak notions of cultural identity has nothing to do with “Blackness.” The venture that started as a propagandistic urge to contrast socialist countries to the West thus eventually resulted in the final affirmation of the North-South binary not only in foreign politics but also in mass imagination. The idea to construct the narrative of Czechoslovak-African proximity dissolved in the changing global environment epitomized in the Eastern European “turn to Europe”78 in the late 1980s, which accelerated the Czechoslovak identification with “Europeanness” and “white culture.” The existing ethnographic conventions and ever-present images of phenotypic difference between Africans (or nonwhites in general) vis-à-vis Czechoslovaks then conveniently equipped the masses with rationales and a symbolic repertoire to “Other” anyone who does not fit the domestic patterns. I argue that the labeling of Africans as alien and primitive, later even as an expensive vestige79 of the former commitments, laid the groundwork for the smooth shift toward the postcommunist ethnocentric racism that broke out in the Eastern European region after 1989. Barbora Buzássyová is a PhD candidate at the Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. Her dissertation project explores the changing patterns of educational aid programs between Czechoslovakia and sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s–80s, with special focus on Czechoslovak experts’ activities within international aid projects sponsored by UNESCO. Recently she contributed a chapter titled “Repositioning of

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Czechoslovak Educational Strategies to the ‘Least Developed Countries’: The Rise and Decline of University of 17th November” to Socialist Educational Cooperation and the Global South, edited by Ingrid Miethe and Jane Weiss (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020). Notes 1. Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2-3 (1990), 299. 2. The origins of the “three worlds” model of geopolitics reach back in the mid-twentieth century, when it was coined to delineate the various actors in the Cold War. The authorship of the term “Third World” is generally credited to French demographer Alfred Sauvy, who in 1952 applied it to differentiate the sociopolitical conditions of new African and Asian postcolonial states from Western capitalism (construing the “First World”) and Soviet socialism (that together with Eastern European countries represented the “Second World”). 3. The concept of socialist internationalism has its origins in the First International (International Workingmen’s Association, 1864–76), when it was conceived to define a movement countering colonialism and imperialism. With the rise of the Bolshevik government in 1917, the concept developed into “proletarian internationalism” calling upon the proletarian forces across the globe, and after World War II the formation of the Socialist block refashioned it to “socialist internationalism.” In the Czechoslovak setting, the political brochure published in 1973 specified it as an “international alliance of revolutionary forces at various stages of class struggle,” which qualified for “assistance of socialist countries to international struggle of working class and national-liberation movements and at the same time also mutual assistance and cooperation on the building and defense of socialism.” See Jaroslav Kaše, Proletářský a  socialistický internacionalismus v  teorii a  praxi [Proletarian and socialist internationalism in theory and practice], (Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1973), 13. For many researchers it was nothing but a catchy slogan justifying the political interventions of the Soviet Union in Eastern European state affairs. But although perhaps cynical in nature, it induced the sense of joined anti-imperialist struggle between the socialist states and their “Third World” allies. 4. See James Mark and Peter Apor, “Socialism Goes Global: Decolonization and the Making of a New Culture of Internationalism in Socialist Hungary 1956–1989,” Journal of Modern History 87, no. 4 (2015): 852–891; Zoltán Ginelli, “Hungarian Experts in Nkrumah’s Ghana: Decolonization and Semiperipheral Postcoloniality in Socialist Hungary,” in “Refractions of Socialist Solidarity,” special issue, Mezosfera 5 (2018); on the topic of Hungarian solidarity with the Arab world, see Eszter Szakács, “Propaganda, Mon Amour: An Arab ‘World’ through Hungarian Publications (1957–1989),” Mezosfera 5 (2018); on the concept of solidarity in East German context, see Toni Weis, “The Politics Machine: On the Concept of Solidarity in East German Support for SWAPO,” Journal of Southern African Studies 37, no. 2 (2011): 351–67. 5. On the interwar contacts between Czechoslovakia and Africa, see Jaroslav Olša Jr., “Českoslovenští diplomaté v  černé Africe, 1918–1955: Počátky budování sítě

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československých zastupitelských úradů na jih od Sahary” [Czechoslovak diplomats in black Africa, 1918–1955: The beginnings of Czechoslovak diplomatic network southwards from Sahara], Mezinárodní vztahy 40, no. 2 (2005): 90–105. Probably the most well-known personage out of the pre–World War I generation of Czech travelers, Czech doctor and ethnologist Emil Holub undertook two ethnographic expeditions to Africa, the first in 1872 and the other in 1883. The experiences from the first journey he described in the volumes Sedm let v jižní Africe I  and II [Seven years in South Africa I and II] first published in 1880. Another famous Czech traveler and geographer, Antonín Stecker, mapped the countries of northeastern Africa during the expedition in 1878–83, and in 1888 he organized a lecture series on Africa in Czech lands. Anthropologist and former missionary Pavel Šebesta focused his scientific interest on the pygmy peoples in the Congo. Besides his scholarly work, Šebesta was also a rather profound travel writer, and between the 1920s and the 1940s he published several travelogues on his African adventures: Z přítmí pralesa [From the shadows of wildwood, 1927], Svítání nad pralesem [The dawn above the wildwood, 1929], V tropických pralesích [In the tropical jungle, 1935], Mezi trpaslíky a negry [Between the dwarfs and negroes, 1940] and Tajnosti tropického pralesa [The secrets of the tropical jungle, 1947]. Viera Pawliková-Vilhanová, “Obraz Afriky v slovenskej spoločnosti v devätnástom a začiatkom dvadsiateho storočia” [The image of Africa in the Slovak society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries], in Sondy z dejín v strednej a východnej Európe, ed. Květoslava Kučerová (Bratislava: Veda, 1991), 145–66. “Poľovka na otrokov v Afrike” [The slave hunt in Africa], Vlasť a svet 4, no. 6 (1889): 92. Cited in: Vilhanová, “Obraz Afriky v slovenskej spoločnosti v  devätnástom a začiatkom dvadsiateho storočia,” 161. Ibid. Emil Holub, Sedm let v Jižní Africe: Příhody, výzkumy a lovy na cestách mých od polí diamantových až k řece Zambezi (1872–1879) [Seven years in South Africa: The stories, explorations, and huntings on my journey from diamond fields to Zambezi River (1872–1879)], (Prague: Ottovo nakladatelství, 1880), 114. See, for example, Robin Derricourt, Inventing Africa: History, Archeology and Ideas (London: Plutopress, 2011); Peter Hulme and Russell McDougall, Writing, Travel and Empire: Colonial Narratives of Other Cultures (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007); Ali Behdad, Belated Travellers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994); Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992); Stephen Clark, Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit (New York: Zed Books 1999). Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis, Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008). Martin Slobodnik, “Socialist Anti-Orientalism: Perceptions of China in Czechoslovak Travelogues from the 1950s,” in Postcolonial Europe? Essays on PostCommunist Literature and Cultures, ed. Dobrota Pucherová and Robert Gafrik (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 299–314. Robert Gafrik, “Representations of India in Slovak Travel Writing during the Communist Regime (1948–1989),” in Pucherová and Gafrik, Postcolonial Europe? 283–99.

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15. Nemanja Radonjić, “From Kragujevac to Kilimanjaro: Imagining and Re-imagining Africa and the Self-Perception of Yugoslavia in the Travelogues from Socialist Yugoslavia,” Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju 23, no. 2 (2016): 55–89. 16. Debbie Lisle, The Global Politics of Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 17. Lisle, Global Politics, 12. 18. Joep Leerssen, “Imagology: The History and Method,” in Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters, ed. Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen (Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2007), 26. 19. Ibid., 29. 20. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Plutopress, 1986), 111. 21. Ibid., 189. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., 191. 24. Ian Law, Red Racism: Racism in Communist and Post-Communist Contexts (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 37. 25. Ian F. Hancock, “The Roots of Antigypsyism: To the Holocaust and After,” in Confronting the Holocaust: A Mandate for the 21st Century, ed. G. Jan Colijn and Marcia Sachs (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997). 26. Law, Red Racism, 45. 27. Ibid., 46. 28. HU OSA 300–30–3:58, ‘Černá moc’ [Black power], 1966, Reportér, no. 17, 27–29. 29. Aniko Imre, “Whiteness in Post-socialist Eastern Europe: The Time of the Gypsies, the End of the Race,” in Postcolonial Whiteness: A Critical Reader on Race and Empire, ed. Alfred Lopez (New York: State University of New York Press, 2005), 83. 30. Ibid. 31. Nikolaj Nikolajevič Čeboksarov and Irina Abramovna Čeboksarovova, Národy, Rasy, Kultury [The nations, races, cultures] (Prague: Mladá Fronta, 1978), 132. 32. Ibid., 136. 33. For more on how the category of “race” operated in socialist contexts, see Quinn Slobodian, “Socialist Chromatism: Race, Racism and the Racial Rainbow in East Germany,” in Comrades of Color. East Germany in the Cold War World, ed. Quinn Slobodian (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015); Alena K. Alamgir, “Racism Is Elsewhere: State-Socialist Ideology and the Racialisation of Vietnamese Workers in Czechoslovakia,” Race and Class 54, no. 4 (2013): 67–85. See also Kate A. Balwin, Beyond the Colour Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002). 34. Miroslav Levý, Na deváté rovnobežce [On the ninth parallel] (Prague: Orbis, 1967), 11. 35. Slobodian, “Socialist Chromatism,” 25–26. 36. Jiří Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund, Afrika snů a  skutečnosti I–III [Africa of dreams and reality I–III] (Prague: Orbis, 1954). 37. Ibid., III:157. 38. Ibid., III:84. 39. Ibid., III:89.

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40. Jiří Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund, Afrika snov a  skutočnosti: Výber pre mládež [Africa of dreams and reality: The selection for youth] (Prague: Mladé letá, 1957), 193. 41. Ibid.,193. 42. J. K. Šustr, Tvář černé Afriky [The face of black Africa] (Prague: Nakladatelství politické literatury, 1963). 43. Ibid., 69. 44. Šustr, Tvář černé Afriky, 70. 45. Stanislav Budín, Probuzený světadíl: Včerejšek a dnešek Afriky [The awakened continent: Africa of yesterday and today] (Prague: Orbis, 1962). 46. Ibid., 5. 47. Ibid., 345. 48. Ibid., 6. 49. See Mary Gilmartin, “Colonialism/Imperialism,” in Key Concepts in Political Geography, ed. Carolyn Gallaher (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009). 50. Budín, Probuzený světadíl, 19–20. 51. Emil Choleva, Etiopská dobrodružství [The Ethiopian adventures] (Prague: Nakladatelství politické literatury, 1965), 5, 128. 52. Ibid., 32. 53. Ibid., text on the cover. 54. Levý, Na deváté rovnobežce, 297. 55. Jindřich Lion, Od Limpopa k Vltavě [From Limpopo to Vltava river] (Prague: Svobodné slovo, 1963). 56. Ibid., text on the cover. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., 9. 59. Ibid. 60. Lion, Od Limpopa k Vltavě, 24. 61. Ibid., 59. 62. National archives of the Czech Republic (hereafter NAČR), fond University of 17 November (USN), box 207, inv. no. 347. The case of F. Chibeza. Proclamation of Rhodesian students written to USN (Případ F. Chibezy. Sdělení rhodézkých studentů, které napsali USL) 1964. 63. For more on the complicated pattern of coexistence between foreign students and Eastern European citizens, see, for instance , Edward Omeni, “Troubling Encounters: Exclusion, Racism and Responses of Male African Students in Poland,” Cogent Social Sciences 2, no. 1 (2016); Sara Pugach, “African Students and the Politics of Race and Gender in the German Democratic Republic,” in Slobodian, Comrades of Color, 131–56; Marta Edith Holečková, “Konflikní lekce z internacionalizmu: Studenti z ‚třetího světa’ a jejich konfrontace s českým prostředím (1961–1974)” [The conflict lecture on internationalism: The students from the “third world” and their confrontation with the Czech environment (1962–1974)], Soudobé dějiny 20, no. 1-2 (2013): 158–77; Julie Hessler, “Death of an African Student in Moscow: Race, Politics and the Cold War,” Cahiers du monde russe 49, no. 1-2 (2006): 33–34. 64. Security Services Archive in Prague (hereafter ABS), fond OB-HK, inv. no. 229, Minutes of the meeting on the problem of foreign students (Záznam o  porade k problematike ZS), 22. 6. 1961.

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65. ABS, fond OB-HK, inv. no. 229, Orientation report. Foreign students in CSSR (Orientačná správa. Zahraniční študenti v ČSSR, vydala 2. správa MV, 2. odbor, 4. oddelenie), Mai 1961. 66. ABS, fond OB-HK, inv. no. 229, Minutes of the meeting on the problem of foreign students (Záznam o porade k problematike ZŠ), 22. 6. 1961. 67. Pavla Jazairiová, Setkání v Buši [The meeting in bush] (Prague: Panorama, 1981), 237. 68. NAČR, fond KSČ—Ústřední výbor 1945–1989, Gustáv Husák, box 802, inv. no. Federální ministerstvo zahraničních věcí, Review of Czechoslovak technical aid (Přehled o čs. bezplatné hmotné a technické pomoci poskytnuté v roce 1980 a za 6. pětiletku celkem rozvojovým zemím), 1981. 69. Václav Opluštil, Afrika překvapení a ukvapení [Africa of surprise and inconsiderateness] (Prague: Svoboda, 1969). 70. Josef Hotmar, Afrika první generace [Africa of the first generation] (Prague: Mladá fronta, 1976). 71. Stanislav Štěpánek, Afrika sedmdesátých let [Africa in the seventies] (Prague: Rudé právo, 1981). 72. Věra Šťovíčková, Prostor pro naději [The space for hope] (Prague: Svoboda, 1967), 9. 73. Frantz Fanon, Psanci této země [The wretched of the earth] (Prague: Tranzit, 2014), 139. 74. Věra Šťovíčková, “Třetí svět—hrozba nebo naděje?” [Third world—a threat or hope?], Plamen 7, no. 11 (1965): 10–11. 75. Ctibor Votrubec, Afrika [Africa] (Prague: Svoboda, 1977), 5. 76. Jazairiová, Setkání v buši, 34. 77. Ibid. 78. Dina Iordanova, “Are the Balkans Admissible? The Discourse on Europe,” Balkanistica 13 (2000), 1–35. See also John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987). 79. Charles Quist-Adade, “From Paternalism to Ethnocentrism: Images of Africa in Gorbachev’s Russia,” Race and Class 46, no. 4 (2005): 79–89.

Bibliography Alamgir, Alena K. “Racism Is Elsewhere: State-Socialist Ideology and the Racialisation of Vietnamese Workers in Czechoslovakia.” Race and Class 54, no. 4 (2013): 67–85. Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2-3 (1990): 295–310. Baldwin, Kate A. Beyond the Colour Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Behdad, Ali. Belated Travellers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994. Budín, Stanislav. Probuzený světadíl: Včerejšek a  dnešek Afriky [The awakened continent: Africa of yesterday and today]. Prague: Orbis, 1962.

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Bracewell, Wendy, and Alex Drace-Francis, eds. Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008. Čeboksarov, Nikolaj Nikolajevič, and Irina Abramovna Čeboksarovova. Národy, Rasy, Kultury [The nations, races, cultures]. Prague: Mladá Fronta, 1978. Choleva, Emil. Etiopská dobrodružství [The Ethiopian adventures]. Prague: Nakladatelství politické literatury, 1965. Clark, Stephen. Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit. New York: Zed Books, 1999. Derricourt, Robin. Inventing Africa: History, Archeology and Ideas. London: Plutopress, 2011. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Plutopress, 1986. Gafrik, Robert. “Representations of India in Slovak Travel Writing during the Communist Regime (1948–1989).” In Postcolonial Europe? Essays on Post-Communist Literature and Cultures, edited by Dobrota Pucherová and Robert Gafrik, 283–99. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Gilmartin, Mary. “Colonialism/Imperialism.” In Key Concepts in Political Geography, edited by Carolyn Gallaher, 115–23. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009. Ginelli, Zoltán. “Hungarian Experts in Nkrumah’s Ghana: Decolonization and Semiperipheral Postcoloniality in Socialist Hungary.” In “Refractions of Socialist Solidarity,” special issue, Mezosfera 5 (2008). Retrieved 17 October 2018 from http:// mezosfera.org/hungarian-experts-in-nkrumahs-ghana/. Hancock, Ian F. “The Roots of Antigypsyism: To the Holocaust and After.” In Confronting the Holocaust: A Mandate for the 21st Century, edited by G. Jan Colijn and Marcia Sachs Littel, 19–49. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997. Hanzelka, Jirí, and Miroslav Zikmund. Afrika snů a skutečnosti I–III [Africa of dreams and reality I–III]. Prague: Orbis, 1954. ———. Afrika snov a skutočnosti: Výber pre mládež [Africa of dreams and reality: The selection for youth]. Prague: Mladé letá, 1957. Hessler, Julie. “Death of an African Student in Moscow: Race, Politics and the Cold War.” Cahiers du monde russe 49, no. 1-2 (2006): 33–63. Holečková, Marta Edith. “Konflikní lekce z internacionalizmu: Studenti z ‚třetího světa’ a  jejich konfrontace s  českým prostředím (1961–1974)” [The conflict lecture on internationalism: The students from the “third world” and their confrontation with the Czech environment (1962–1974)]. Soudobé dějiny 20, no. 1-2 (2013): 158–77. Holub, Emil. Sedm let v Jižní Africe: Příhody, výzkumy a lovy na cestách mých od polí diamantových až k řece Zambezi (1872–1879) [Seven years in South Africa: The stories, explorations, and huntings on my journey from diamond fields to Zambezi River (1872–1879)]. Prague: Ottovo nakladatelství, 1880. Hotmar, Josef. Afrika první generace [Africa of the first generation]. Prague: Mladá fronta, 1976. Hulme, Peter, and Russell McDougall. Writing, Travel and Empire: Colonial Narratives of Other Cultures. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. Hutchinson, John. The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism. London: Allen and Unwin, 1987. Imre, Aniko. “Whiteness in Post-socialist Eastern Europe: The Time of the Gypsies, the End of the Race.” In Postcolonial Whiteness: A Critical Reader on Race and Empire,

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edited by Alfred J. Lopez, 79–102. New York: State University of New York Press, 2005. Iordanova, Dina. “Are the Balkans Admissible? The Discourse on Europe.” Balkanistica 13 (2000): 1–35. Jazairiová, Pavla. Setkání v Buši [The meeting in bush]. Prague: Panorama, 1981. Law, Ian. Red Racism: Racism in Communist and Post-Communist Contexts. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Leerssen, Joep. “Imagology: The History and Method.” In Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters, edited by Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen, 17–32. Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2007. Levý, Miroslav. Na deváté rovnobežce [On the ninth parallel]. Prague: Orbis, 1967. Lion, Jindřich. Od Limpopa k Vltavě [From Limpopo to Vltava river]. Prague: Svobodné slovo: 1963. Lisle, Debbie. The Global Politics of Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Mark, James, and Peter Apor. “Socialism Goes Global: Decolonization and the Making of a New Culture of Internationalism in Socialist Hungary 1956–1989.” Journal of Modern History 87, no. 4 (2015): 852–91. Olša, Jaroslav, Jr. “Českoslovenští diplomaté v  černé Africe, 1918–1955: Počátky budování sítě československých zastupitelských úradů na jih od Sahary” [Czechoslovak diplomats in black Africa, 1918–1955. The beginnings of Czechoslovak diplomatic network southwards from Sahara]. Mezinárodní vztahy 40, no. 2 (2005): 90–105. Omeni, Edward. “Troubling Encounters: Exclusion, Racism and Responses of Male African Students in Poland.” Cogent Social Sciences 2, no. 1 (2016): 1–23. Opluštil, Václav. Afrika překvapení a ukvapení [Africa of surprise and inconsiderateness]. Prague: Svoboda, 1969. Pawliková-Vilhanová, Viera. “Obraz Afriky v  slovenskej spoločnosti v  devätnástom a začiatkom dvadsiateho storočia” [The image of Africa in the Slovak society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries]. In Sondy z dejín v strednej a východnej Európe, edited by Květoslava Kučerová, 145–66. Bratislava: Veda, 1991. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge, 1992. Pugach, Sara. “African Students and the Politics of Race and Gender in the German Democratic Republic.” In Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World, edited by Quinn Slobodoan, 131–56. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. Quist-Adade, Charles. “From Paternalism to Ethnocentrism: Images of Africa in Gorbachev’s Russia.” Race and Class 46, no. 4 (2005): 79–89. Radonjić, Nemanja. “From Kragujevac to Kilimanjaro: Imagining and Re-imagining Africa and the Self-Perception of Yugoslavia in the Travelogues from Socialist Yugoslavia.” Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju 23, no. 2 (2016): 55–89. Slobodian, Quinn. “Socialist Chromatism: Race, Racism and the Racial Rainbow in East Germany.” In Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World, edited by Quinn Slobodian, 23–39. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. Slobodnik, Martin. “Socialist Anti-Orientalism: Perceptions of China in Czechoslovak Travelogues from the 1950s.” In Postcolonial Europe? Essays on Post-Communist

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Literature and Cultures, edited by Dobrota Pucherová and Robert Gafrik, 299–314. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Štěpánek, Stanislav. Afrika sedmdesátých let [Africa in the seventies]. Prague: Rudé právo, 1981. Šťovíčková, Věra. Prostor pro naději [The space for hope]. Prague: Svoboda, 1967. Šustr, J. K. Tvář černé Afriky [The face of black Africa]. Prague: Nakladatelství politické literatury, 1963. Szakács, Eszter. “Propaganda, Mon Amour: An Arab “World” through Hungarian Publications (1957–1989).” Mezosfera 5 (2018). Retrieved 12 July 2018 from http:// mezosfera.org/propaganda-mon-amour/. Votrubec, Ctibor. Afrika [Africa]. Prague: Svoboda, 1977. Weis, Toni. “The Politics Machine: On the Concept of Solidarity in East German Support for SWAPO.” Journal of Southern African Studies 37, no. 2 (2011): 351–67.

Part III



Representations and Fantasies

CHAPTER 7

Land Flowing with Milk and Honey Polish Maritime and River/Colonial League’s Depictions of South America



Marta Grzechnik

The idea of Poland seeking colonies might seem surprising. It is, after all, a country that itself suffered long periods of foreign domination. Between 1795 and 1918 there was no independent Polish state, its territory having been divided between its more powerful neighbors Russia, Prussia (later Germany), and Austria. Poland had itself thus been subject to policies and practices that could be considered to some extent colonial, both when it came to political and economic dominance and to the sphere of ideas. The process of inventing Eastern Europe as a culturally and intellectually inferior part of the continent, its Orientalization, as described by Larry Wolff in his well-known study,1 coincided with Poland’s downfall. By the time the country regained independence, this invention had become rooted in the ways of thinking about Europe, reinforced by the discursive creation of the Eastern European as inferior (even racially, as shown, for example, in Kristin Kopp’s interesting study of Germany’s Wild East2) and—as argued in the introduction to this volume—excluded from “Europeanness.” From this comes the region’s marginality and in-betweenness. It is the space of overlapping concepts and identities of the West and the East, the space that is in the constant need to affirm its own identity. The colonial aspirations that appeared in interwar Poland show one aspect of this affirmation. They were conceived, as Piotr Puchalski points out in his contribution to this book, within the context of the contemporary world order: the understanding that a modern, European state was one possessing colonies. It was an ambition to escape the margin and join the Western European core on the core’s own terms, a “fantasy of greatness” that was supposed to secure for the newly independent country a place within the Western world.

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This chapter deals with the ways South America fitted into these ambitions. This will be shown using three cases: one relating to settlement of Polish emigrants and two relating to Polish participation in production of knowledge. The first case concentrates on reports from Paraná by Kazimierz Głuchowski, and the other two pull from reports of separate expeditions: a 1928 Polish research expedition to Peru and a 1934 mountaineering expedition to the Andes. All three cases were connected with the activities of an organization called Maritime and River League—later Maritime and Colonial League—either in the sense that the actors involved were close collaborators of the league or that they at least published in its journals, especially Morze (Sea). Rather than concentrating on the actions themselves (the expeditions and the settlement, including attempts at establishing long-lived, organized colonies), which have been discussed elsewhere,3 I will concentrate on conceptualizations of South America and South Americans, and Poles in relation to them, and the ways in which these conceptualizations could serve as building blocks in the Polish colonial ambitions. The analysis of the cases presented here gives insight into discursive practices that were adopted to help construct the envisaged colonial empire and, more importantly, the image of Pole as a pioneer and explorer that would support such imperial ambitions. In doing this, the chapter invites the reader to rethink the Eastern European margins, and more precisely the ways in which Eastern Europeans—Poles in this particular case—sought to overcome their own marginality by positioning themselves in relation to race, colonialism, Western knowledge production, and their own place in the global hierarchies. It asks what images of the world outside they painted and what these images showed about themselves. In examining the modes of knowledge retrieval and production, instead of the classic Orient and Orientalism, I look at how the relation was shaped with regard to another non-Western space, perceived as “premodern” (see Puchalski in this volume): South America.

The Maritime and River/Colonial League and the Emigration Question The first issue of the journal Morze was published in 1924. The title was not a coincidence. The sea was central for its publishers and authors, and it was very widely understood: the journal dealt not only with questions of maritime policy, development of ports, shipping, and the navy but also the world that could be reached via the sea. The popular metaphor pictured the sea as Poland’s gateway, thanks to which it could see and reach the whole world. It is telling, too, that the journal was published by the organization that at the time of its first publication was called the Maritime and

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River League (Liga Morska i Rzeczna, LMiR), but soon, in 1930, it changed its name to the Maritime and Colonial League (Liga Morska i Kolonialna, LMiK) to reflect its ambitions of acquiring for Poland overseas territories— its own colonies. Attaining independence after World War I did not bring an end to Poland’s problems and challenges. The state and its institutions, its industries, infrastructure, economy, and not least the nation itself had to be created either from scratch or from very different parts—the three former partitions. This was a difficult and costly task, made even more difficult by the global and local economic crises that plagued the interwar period. Additionally, some actors, including the LMiR/LMiK, identified overpopulation as a serious problem, resulting in unemployment.4 This problem was expected to be solved by emigration. Other potential solutions were not deemed satisfactory by the LMiR/LMiK: industrialization was expensive and took time (although some efforts in that direction were taken, especially the construction of the seaport in Gdynia and the Central Industrial District [COP]); land reform also took time, especially given the fact that it went against the interests of the country’s elite (and, as a result, was not achieved until after World War II). Economic emigration was not, of course, a new phenomenon in the context of the interwar period. People had emigrated from the Polish territories throughout the nineteenth century—mostly to other European countries, but also overseas, especially to the United States, Canada, and Brazil. In the 1890s immigration to Brazil from the Polish territories under Russian and Austro-Hungarian domination had been so great that it was given a name: “Brazilian fever.”5 Over ninety-five thousand Poles immigrated to Brazil in the period 1890–1914, 37 percent of whom ended up in the state of Paraná.6 In the late 1920s the LMiR estimated that over seven million Poles lived abroad and a further two hundred thousand emigrated every year.7 “And are these masses properly used for the benefit of the nation?” Morze asked, and immediately answered: no, they were instead working for the benefit of other countries.8 It was in this context that the LMiR took up the colonial question. Acquiring colonies was, in the league’s understanding in the 1920s and the early 1930s, connected to emigration. Its official statute and program from 1930 included as one of its three goals (besides making use of access to the Baltic Sea and connecting the whole of Poland to the sea by waterways) “acquiring areas for free expansion of the many thousands of Polish citizens leaving the country every year, binding them with the State with economic ties, obliging them to further productive work for the Nation, and not, like today, for foreign nations and countries.”9 This was the point that spoke about the league’s colonial ambitions, but it also revealed how the colonial ambitions were understood at that point: as organization and concentra-

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tion of emigration in a way that would allow Poland to retain ties to emigrants and use the fruit of their work. This was the answer to the problem of “losing” people and their work through emigration. Apart from organization and concentration, the league also sought to redefine how one thought about the emigrant. In 1928 some of its members who were especially concerned with the issue of emigration founded a branch called Union of Colonial Pioneers (Związek Pionierów Kolonialnych). The name suggests the direction of this redefinition: emigrants were to become pioneers. The union (and the league in general) did not want to “see the outgoing workers as bums and deserters from under the Polish banner, but as soldiers who are, each and every one of them, bearers of Polish national dignity, Polish effort, Polish culture.”10 In line with this, the picture of the Polish emigrants was painted as “first-rate settler material”: hard-working, persistent, and tough. This applied not least to the Poles settled in South America, to whom the LMiR/LMiK and other colonial and emigration activists in Poland in the 1920s and 1930s paid special attention. They were especially interested in Paraná, but also other regions, such as Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina (also in Brazil), Misiones in Argentina, and La Montaña in Peru—the territories to which Poles had emigrated. The organization and concentration of emigration would be, it was argued, attained in the easiest way by making use of the already existing concentrations of Poles abroad. The pioneering aspect was present in the LMiR/LMiK rhetoric not only when it came to the topic of emigration but also, in fact especially, when it came to exploration and knowledge production. The league’s ambition was to shape the Polish mentality into that of conquerors and pioneers. To quote the obituary of its director, General Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer (1889–1936), it was to “fight Polish dawdling, and to reforge the Polish psyche in the fire of competition with the world’s most powerful nations,” and to create “a new, pioneering type of Pole, conqueror of seas and oceans, mosquitos and malaria.”11 The “gateway to the world”—the sea—was to inspire Poles to become explorers and discoverers, participating in the knowledge production of the Western world. By this they could hope to secure Poland’s place in the global hierarchy, to escape its marginal position, and affirm its identity as part of the West. The cases presented below show how these ideas were expressed in LMiR/LMiK’s publications.

Polish Settler against Brazilian Nature At the head of the Union of Colonial Pioneers stood Kazimierz Głuchowski (1885–1941), colonial and emigration activist. Głuchowski had been, in the early 1920s, the Polish consul in Curitiba, the capital of Paraná in Brazil,

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and during his work there he often met with Poles who had settled in the area. In 1928 Morze published five texts by him, in which he described his memories from travels around Paraná. Traveling across the state as part of his duties, he would often visit settlements dominated by Poles and stay at farms run by them. His accounts were written in a literary, slightly archaic style that made them sound like tales to be passed on around campfire or fireplace. The dominating motif of his texts was the dichotomy between the Polish settler and Brazilian nature, and the meeting between them was usually presented in military terms: as struggle and conquest. The parts of the forest that had already been cleared for farming were depicted as “conquered.” For example, during a trip to Irati, a town in Paraná inhabited by Polish immigrants, Głuchowski mused on how the landscape around him had been impassable forest just twenty years earlier. But then, Polish settlers started arriving from other parts of Brazil: And then sawmills started their struggle with the forest. The forest withdrew, thinned under the attackers’ strikes, it paled and receded. The sawmills were followed by colonists, along the railway lines: they bought the land off “caboclos” and smaller landowners. . . . And so Irati grows, as always here in Paraná based on the fundaments of our colonist’s labor and toil.12

The farmer was therefore transformed into a soldier, conqueror, pioneer. One of Głuchowski’s texts about Paraná is even called “Chłopzdobywca”—“Farmer-conqueror.”13 The South American nature was, to Głuchowski, harsh and hostile, but also monotonous, especially on the steppe.14 He often complained about the heat and humidity, from which only the evening gave some respite, and only in the evening he seemed to be able to find the landscape aesthetically pleasing: “Meanwhile, we climbed to the top. A wide view stretched before us. In the shadow of the falling night, heaps of wavy hills appeared, covered with blue forest, above which mysterious umbrellas of mighty pine trees rose like Jewish candlesticks, their branches spread out towards the heavens, floating on the horizon.”15 It is an example of a promontory description, a rhetoric device identified by Mary Louise Pratt. Pratt pointed out that in many descriptions of European journeys in non-European spaces there occur descriptions of a view of the surroundings in which the landscape is aestheticized and put in relation of submission to the seer, who, in turn, imbues it with meaning and value, just as a painter or art critic gives meaning and value to a painting.16 The landscape was rendered familiar to the Polish reader by comparisons to known objects (e.g., umbrellas and Jewish candlesticks), but at the same time it retained a sense of wonder: the umbrellas were mysterious, the trees mighty, their branches spread toward the heavens, and the whole scene was engulfed in the shadows of the evening. The South American nature was thus shown as exotic but not com-

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pletely alien, and it could be mastered by the Polish pioneer: the depictions conveyed the idea of a “monarch-of-all-I-survey” scene, as described by Pratt.17 This took a quite literal form when Głuchowski’s companion, the Polish émigré farmer Pan Szymon, in a moment after they had taken in the view from the hill, “raised in the seat and circled with a whip as wide an arch as an arm could embrace” and declared that all that could be seen from there—“a wide stretch of the forest, more than four heirs in Płock had together”—belonged to him.18 Elsewhere, the mountainous landscape was compared to the landscape of Polish Podhale,19 and a village church in the colony of Santa Candida reminded Głuchowski of churches in Poland.20 But at the same time, the nature in the mountains was “topsy-turvy” (lakes and marshes on mountaintops, no springs on the slopes),21 and greenery around the church was of a different kind than in Poland. Even the sun shining above the church was “as if astonished by the children’s fawn heads, the girls’ bright braids and the farmers’ flaxen moustaches.”22 It was, of course, the author, not the sun, who was astonished, seeing people of Slavic features and dressed in Polish peasant dress in the Brazilian landscape. Their faces, hair, and dress were described with many adjectives. Women were also compared to Polish poppies and cornflowers.23 The Polish settlers appeared as transplanted from Poland into the Brazilian landscape, so different than in Poland, but which they had conquered, tamed, and transformed into their own land. The land did not only become their own, but also Poland’s. Hence the constant reminders about how visually Polish they still looked, even after years spent in Brazil—second-generation immigrants were even described as such. The sermon in the church in Santa Candida, summarized by Głuchowski, praised ancient Polish values and warned against abandoning the Polish roots and the Polish language in favor of Portuguese, songs sung during the Holy Mass were addressed not just to the Virgin Mary but specifically to the Virgin Mary of Częstochowa and of the Gate of Dawn in Vilnius, called Queen of Poland.24 More interestingly, the owners of Polish farms and settlements were compared to the founders of the Polish state in a comment Głuchowski made in the account of his visit to Pan Szymon’s farm: Looking out into the courtyard, I mused about the old, Piast times. I seemed to have been transported into the times of An Ancient Tale. On the vast forest glade, the peasant has settled down and taken the woods into his possession. He cuts them down slowly, handing them over to culture, he multiplies various goods; and he continues to take over the wilderness, going like a wave he satisfies his insatiable hunger for land. Today here, beyond the Ocean, just as a thousand years ago on the banks of the river Warta. And always equally rapacious and strong.25

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References to the founding of the Polish state were unmistakable to every reader of Morze: Piasts were the first medieval dynasty to rule over the Kingdom of Poland, and An Ancient Tale (Stara baśń in Polish) was a popular historical novel from 1876 by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–87). Its plot was based on the old Polish foundation myths: it revolves around political struggle in the region of Greater Poland, on the banks of the river Warta, the core of the earliest Polish state, and the coming to power of Piast, the legendary founder of the dynasty, in the ninth century. The message of the passage was that, just as the Piasts had been a millennium ago, the Polish settler in Paraná was to be the founder of a new Poland, but overseas. “And here we also build a piece of Poland from day to day,” Pan Szymon said.26 To which one of his neighbors added: “Our power is from the land. Our spirit is from Poland.” “Long live Poland!” The silence of the forest was broken by a thunderous cry of all those present. “Long live Poland!,” the hills echoed a hundred times, “Long live Poland!,” came back from the wall of the forest.27

It is difficult to say whether Głuchowski actually heard the settlers say these words or whether they were his own invention, especially since his accounts were crafted with much attention to literary language and composition, not to mention they were published several years after the events took place (the story of the visit to Pan Szymon’s farm bears the date of July 1925, and it was published in March 1928). The message, however, is powerful: Poland as the seat of the spirit and the source of power merges with the land on which, and of which, the words are spoken, among whose hills and forests her name echoes. The Brazilian nature had been a worthy opponent in this struggle to build a new Poland—it had put up a fight. Stories of the beginnings of the Polish settlement were always stories of hardship, of difficult beginnings, which the settlers had to overcome before they could enjoy the current prosperity. By extension, the settler who had managed this must have been hardworking, persistent, and strong—and so he always appeared in Głuchowski’s texts. Pan Szymon and his sons, for example, were compared to strong oak trees and tall Brazilian pines (again, combining a European and a Brazilian reference).28 Hunger for land was a recurring motif in Głuchowski’s tales of the Polish settlers in Brazil and was given as the trait that enabled the conquest, that stopped them from giving up the fight when it became difficult. It seemed inevitable to Głuchowski that nature eventually had to give in to the forces of culture, civilization, and progress, represented by the Polish pioneer. That is why all the stories he told in his articles were stories of suc-

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cess: after initial hardships, they eventually prevailed and were rewarded with the fruit of their work. Another LMiR/LMiK author and traveler in Paraná, Bohdan Teofil Lepecki (1901–66), noted a farmer’s wife’s words that made it seem as if the new homeland literally became a land flowing with milk and honey: “And do you think that we want for milk or cheese or butter? And honey we also have enough of, more than we can eat. . . . A different life, sir, than in the old country.”29 The local people were in these descriptions treated as part of nature. They were called caboclo, “wild Brazilians,” “forest Brazilians,” or simply “wildlings” (dziki), and they appeared without any further identification. Their unity with nature was underlined for example by comparing them to the weather: “This weather is like a caboclo’s mood,” a Polish coachman quoted by Głuchowski complained, “One moment he is all sweetness and light, the next he grabs his revolver, and then again is ready to drink with you and call you a compadre.”30 Seeing a house on the way, the same coachman commented: “A shabby shack stood here until recently, a caboclo lived in it together with dogs, pigs and fleas.”31 In this description there seems to be little difference between the caboclo and the animals with which he lived. The caboclo was never presented as a person, an individual—he was rather a threshold figure at the border between civilization (what had already been conquered by the settler) and nature (what remained to be conquered).32 Apart from the local Brazilians not being clearly distinguishable from the nature around them, these comments also told the readers something else about them: that they were moody, disorganized, and lazy. They appeared in stark contrast to the Polish settler. While he was hardworking and steadfast, the caboclo was inconsistent; while the Polish settler brought order and tidiness, the caboclo remained in a state of disorder and shabbiness. The shabby shack where the caboclo had lived with his animals, for example, was, by the time of Głuchowski’s journey past it, transformed into a newly renovated house with a “quite smart” stable and surrounded by orderly patches of flowers and vegetables, provoking the author’s comment that “for certain no caboclo lived here.”33 The Polish settlers in Głuchowski’s story had come to a land that had not been cultivated, that the Brazilians had not been able to cultivate, because of their lazy and inconsistent nature. Głuchowski’s interlocutors criticized the locals’ approach to agriculture and breeding of animals, deeming them ineffective and irrational.34 The Brazilians were, in their views, even unable to judge time and distances accurately—for example, a remark from a passing local that half a mile still remained to the destination was followed by a comment from Głuchowski’s companion, Pan Franciszek: “And what would a ‘forest man’ know about distance! Such caboclo’s half a mile can last until the morning.”35 These dif-

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ferences in approach led to conflicts, to the point that “the ‘wildlings’ cannot stand us,” as one of the farmers concluded with pride.36 The contrast between the Polish settlers and the local population was also visual. The former were described with adjectives referring to bright colors. Their hair and moustaches, for example, were “flaxen” (lniane), “bright” (jasne), “fawn” (płowe), as in the description of the parishioners of the church of Santa Candida, quoted above. The Brazilians, on the other hand, if their appearance was described at all apart from their general shabbiness, had dark and tanned faces. For example, a caboclo at the train station in Irati was seen “in spurred shoes, in an ample cape and a hat, from under whose prominent rim looked a black, tanned face (czerniała opalona twarz).”37 The conclusion from these descriptions was that the locals, just like the nature itself, had to withdraw and eventually disappear in the face of progress, order, and rationality brought by the Polish pioneer: “The Sesame is now open,” Głuchowski declared during one of his trips, comparing the Brazilian nature to a fairy-tale like treasure vault, whose treasures had not been used before: “Our peasant opened it to culture with his strength, bringing beyond it a new tomorrow. And the ‘wildlings’ will no longer hide behind it. The desert country is being populated, life wakes up and work blossoms.”38 The paradox of the land at the same time being an unpopulated desert and the hiding place of “wildlings” followed from the “myth of emptiness,” one of the bases of European colonial expansion. As James M. Blaut discusses, in the colonizer’s mindset “the landscape of the non-European world is empty, or partly so, of ‘rationality,’ that is, of ideas and proper spiritual values.”39 There is another dimension to this conquest, in which it appears as sexual rather than military. The Brazilian landscape was compared to a treasure vault that was opened by the Polish settler; it was also personified as female: the town of Guarapuava, for example, was depicted as “the queen of the steppe,” sleeping and dreaming of better, careless times, before the Polish settler had come and conquered it.40 Many authors (although not Głuchowski himself ) repeatedly wrote about “virgin” jungle or forest. The male settler, strong as an oak and tall as a pine, was the hero who woke the passive land from its dream and impregnated it with civilization and progress, filling its earlier emptiness, uncovering its treasures and giving meaning and order to it. The hitherto barren land was made fertile, flowing with milk and honey, after the settlers’ conquest. Although taking place in the twentieth century, these images recall the sixteenth-century imagery of the discovery and conquest of America, as analyzed by Louis Montrose and Anne McClintock, in particular their discussion of Jan van der Straet’s drawing of Vespucci’s discovery of America.41 In this case the land, personified as submissive fe-

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male, was “roused from her sensual languor by the epic newcomer,” while Vespucci’s arrival was “destined to inseminate her with the male seed of civilization, fructify the wilderness and quell the riotous scenes of cannibalism in the background.”42 Perhaps the only significant difference was that instead of cannibalism of the sixteenth century, the Polish settler of the twentieth was destined to quell the chaos and disorder of the “wildlings.” Attempts at modernization undertaken by Brazilians themselves were mocked: a journey by train was jokingly described as being submitted to torture, the locomotive driver as unskilled and probably more used to herding horses and mules, and a train station as engulfed in an apathic, languorous atmosphere.43 The construction of railways in Brazil was supposedly a whim of a nation wishing to ape other civilized nations: “Why would a peasant need a watch? Why would this amiable nation need a railroad?”44 Not only individual “forest Brazilians” but also Brazilians in general, and the state of Brazil itself, were unable to introduce order: Brazilian administration was ineffective and its officials open to bribery.45 The only time Głuchowski described a Brazilian in positive light was on the occasion of his visit to “esteemed Colonel Queiroz,” the greatest landowner in Paraná. Queiroz was “a man of iron work, rarely found in Brazilians,” an elegant old man of dignified manners, well read and thoroughly educated, contrasting with the primitive background of his modest (surprisingly so, given his enormous fortune) household.46 These positive impressions noted down by Głuchowski were immediately put in a European frame of reference: not only did the colonel’s appearance and bearing reflect “the old culture of conquerors of the sea, the tradition of the heroes of The Lusiads,”47 but he was also rumored to have a trace of German blood in his veins.48 Queiroz was critical of his own country (“Poor Brazil,” he lamented, speaking to Głuchowski, “She has the motto ‘Order and progress’ in her coat of arms. But where is in fact order and progress here?”49) and praised the Polish settlers as his true successors, heirs to his life’s work (“This tomorrow belongs to them, not to my sons. They will build a new Paraná, not our political sons”50). Quoting these words, Głuchowski suggested that the Polish settlers had a blessing of Brazilians themselves—at least those whose opinion mattered, the heirs of the heroes of The Lusiads—for the endeavor of building New Poland in Brazil.

Knowledge Production Another capacity in which Poles went to South America, and wrote about their experiences, was as scientists and discoverers. Here, the esteemed precursor was Ignacy Domeyko (1802–89), a geologist and explorer of

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Chile, where he spent the latter part of his life.51 The encyclopedia of Polish travelers and explorers, compiled by a LMiR/LMiK writer Stanisław Zieliński, praised him not only as a scholar but also as an educator who taught Chileans how to use knowledge and science: As a Chilean scholar and citizen, he played a leading role in the country, and rendered invaluable service as Chile’s most prominent researcher; his geological and mineralogical research and discoveries made it possible to expand the mining industry and make the republic independent of foreign countries and contributed to the enrichment of Chile; Domeyko not only studied and discovered, but also taught Chileans how to benefit from scientific discoveries, while at the same time making a significant and effective effort to improve education and culture in the country.52

The LMiR/LMiK was always keen to promote knowledge about Poland’s past and present explorers, travelers, and pioneers. They were supposed to become household names and serve as proof that Poland’s traditions in exploration had been long, backing Poland’s ambition to be considered equal to other Western nations in this respect. Between January and June 1928, a Polish research expedition to Peru took place. Its aim was not strictly scientific. The context was once again that of emigration: the expedition was sent on behalf of the Polish government to examine the potential territories for Polish settlement, as a result of a concession received by Poland from the Peruvian government.53 One of the members of the expedition was Dr. Aleksander Freyd (1897–1940). Freyd was an expert on tropical medicine (one of those “conquerors of malaria” of which Orlicz-Dreszer dreamt) and later the head of the league’s Section of Tropical Hygiene set up in 1930, and he became a member of the Geographical Society in Lima. After his return from the expedition, he gave a lecture that was broadcast on Polish Radio and published in Morze. He also published a book titled Patologia Amazonii Peruwiańskiej (Pathology of the Peruvian Amazon), in which he described health conditions for potential Polish settlers in Peru. The text published in Morze, called “Dwa dni wśród trędowatych nad Amazonką” (Two days among the lepers on the Amazon), was his account of the expedition—which he himself described as “a tale from Arabian Nights”54—and in particular a short trip he made to a leper colony in San Pablo, between Iquitos and the Brazilian border. In his text, Freyd underlined several times the pioneering aspect of his travels: for example, when sailing a boat on the Ucayali river with his companions, he pointed out that their boat Janka was the first ship to ever sail on Peruvian waters under the Polish flag.55 The LMiR/LMiK was, equally as in colonial expansion (if not more), interested in the promotion of Polish maritime policy and fleet, and

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its authors never neglected to point out cases of Polish ships and boats, and the Polish flags on them, as ambassadors of Poland on the world’s oceans— or, in this case, rivers. But an even more pioneering aspect was connected to the means by which Freyd reached San Pablo. Traveling there from Iquitos, where the Polish expedition was based at the time, was not an easy task, due to difficult terrain and scarce communications. Finally, he was allowed to use an army hydroplane, piloted a Lieutenant Cornejo. Freyd was extremely excited to learn that nobody had ever flown a plane across the Peruvian Amazon. “I will be first, then!” he exclaimed to himself the night before setting off, ignoring the fact that it was not actually him who would be piloting the plane. “My wildest boyhood dreams will come true! Who of us did not dream in our youth about unknown countries, about new discoveries, about places nobody had ever seen before . . . !?—about an enchanted carpet gliding over forests and rivers . . .”56 The plane, compared to a magic carpet in another reference to Arabian Nights, was otherwise seen as a tool of modernity, and Freyd himself appeared at the same time as the hero of a fantastic tale and as a modern variation of his childhood heroes. Instead of caravans, sailboats and their own feet, which they had used, he, a man of his modern age, used the most technically advanced means of transport available. The thoughts of being the first came back during his journey, and his excitement seemed to even increase when he, for a moment, was visited by “bad, but beautiful” thoughts: when he imagined the plane crashing down. This image he painted to the readers very vividly indeed: “The broken machine hangs on strangely tangled and twisted vines, like a huge butterfly in the collector’s net; around it the gathered elders of the forest— monkeys, reptiles, jaguars—debate, discuss the event, wonder . . .”57 The scene reads as if taken out of an adventure novel, probably similar to those Freyd had read in childhood and which had fueled his “wildest boyhood dreams” of exploration. Freyd spent several paragraphs on poetic descriptions of views from the plane (he also took photographs, which Morze reproduced next to his text) in an extreme case of a promontory description. The European “explorer” was the first to lay eyes on the land from that particular vantage point, and he did it thanks to technological advancements of the Western world: a real force of progress. His mastery over the territory, over the difficult terrain that he would have otherwise had to cross in a much more strenuous way, was thus complete. He truly could feel as if he were the monarch of all he surveyed. But Freyd (and his pilot) were, of course, not the first humans in this area, even if they were in fact the first ones to cross it by plane. Freyd observed the locals in their small boats—a contrast to his own machine—

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who, seeing the plane flying above, paddled away in all directions. This awe of the plane among the locals even intensified after his arrival at the leper colony: when Freyd wanted to start examining the ill, they were reluctant to approach him. They had, he explained, expected the arrival of a European doctor; however, they had been convinced he would arrive by boat or ship: “And here he literally falls from the bright sky on a strange yet obedient bird. Admiration, shock, horror, amazement—it crossed all possible boundaries. As I already mentioned, simple people usually did not know about the existence of airplanes at all.”58 The contrast between these “simple people” Freyd met in the Peruvian jungle and himself, who could control the “strange bird” (again, conveniently ignoring the fact that he was not actually piloting the plane) could not be starker. The awe and amazement he caused inflated him, in this story, to almost godlike proportions. In the colony, gazes followed him, “intrusive, begging, persistent,” expressing, he imagined, the hope: “Maybe this one at last?!—After all, he is from Europe, and they are wise there. . . !”59 As a doctor, he brought to the colony modernity and progress, not only in the form of the plane, but also European medicine, the only hope for the sick. Thus, he appeared as a “white savior” (he even called himself so, perhaps ironically: “The poor sick were waiting for their idealized savior for days”60), further amplifying his godlike image. As a man of science, Freyd traveled to the leper colony to measure and study: he examined the patients, noted their medical histories, photographed the “interesting cases.” He also described the colony’s layout and organization, with its division into the “healthy” and “sick” sections (the latter separated from the outside world by three fences of thick barbed wire, with one gate that only the apothecary and the visiting doctor were allowed to cross) and the blocks within the “sick” section arranged according to the stage of the disease. This was, to Freyd, related to the patients’ contact with what he called “civilization” (towns and cities with access to Western medicine) and with their race. The least sick (“the colony’s aristocracy”) had been fortunate to live close enough to civilization, therefore the disease was recognized early and the treatment could start before it had advanced too far. Here, the company was “very interesting and slightly international. Several Peruvians, two Brazilians, one Portuguese, one Spaniard.”61 Freyd noted some of their names and shared their sad stories with compassion: for example, he wrote of a mother whose baby had been “mercilessly” taken away from her at birth (so that it would not be infected), and he described one “Don Miguel R.,” who drew Freyd’s attention by his “exceptionally intelligent face.” He had once been a director of a department house in Paris and owner of a fortune, and his life’s story—i.e., his ending up in the colony—to Freyd, was “a great tragedy.”62 The sickest patients in the last block, on the other hand, were “people from deep forests, Indians and Mestizos.

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They reported to the ambulatory in Iquitos already in the last periods of their illness. Therefore, they resemble some nightmare visions rather than people.”63 In the text they were treated as not much more than “nightmare visions.” Instead of names and life stories, the reader could only learn about their deformed appearance, summarized: “Wretched shreds of human body.”64 Freyd was sympathetic to the sick, although his sympathy, and his interest, seemed to be greater for the people in the first section than for those in the last. Regardless, the two days he spent in San Pablo could not be of real help to them, and it is clear that Freyd organized the trip mainly out of scientific curiosity, as he was driven to find research material, especially given the colony’s isolation: he could be sure that few other Western researchers of tropical disease had access to this material. By his plane travel he mastered the Peruvian landscape; by his research he could hope to contribute to conquering the disease. Setting his trip in the context of the LMiR’s plans of settlement of Poles in Peru, Freyd started his text by calming down readers who might come under impression that the settlers were to be sent into areas ridden with leprosy. He assured that the areas taken into consideration for Polish settlement were far away from the ones where most cases of the disease were found. But even more, his whole story painted an image of him and others like him, representatives of Western science, exercising complete control over the sinister disease: it had been classified, measured, photographed, and put behind barbed wire in neatly organized blocks. What he called “civilization” gave immunity against its worst forms, which only seemed to touch “Indians and Mestizos,” people living outside of this “civilization.” Therefore, potential Polish settlers had nothing to fear. The aspects of being the first, and of science and progress overcoming nature, are recurring motifs in travel accounts. One other example I would like to discuss here was written following a 1934 expedition to the Andes. The expedition was organized by the Polish Mountaineering Association (Polskie Towarzystwo Tatrzańskie) under the LMiK’s patronage. It was the first to ascend the peak of Mercedario65 in the Cordillera de la Ramada range and the first to ascend the Americas’ highest mountain, Aconcagua, from the eastern side (over what is now called, in honor of the expedition, the Polish Glacier), as well as a number of smaller peaks and glaciers. The expedition’s chronicler was Wiktor Ostrowski (1905–92), a traveler, mountaineer, and photographer. Apart from a book Wyżej niż kondory (Higher than condors), he published two texts in the LMiK’s journals: a shorter one in Morze and a longer, more thorough one in Sprawy morskie i kolonialne (Maritime and colonial matters).

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Right from the start, the desire to be the first was presented as the driving force behind the expedition. “Why the Andes?” Ostrowski asked at the beginning of his article in Sprawy, and then immediately went on to explain that “mountaineering is a sport of space and . . . exploration. The exploratory factor plays a decisive role in mountaineering: to be where no one has been before, to climb a peak hitherto unclimbed, to explore an unknown land!”66 The expedition went to the territory described as “terra incognita” and a “blank space,” made even more blank by the fact that all the available maps turned out to be useless—“fantastical,” as the author concluded.67 When the mountaineers faced the prospect of following in somebody else’s footsteps—in Uspallata they heard that an Italian expedition was on its way to ascend Aconcagua via the “traditional,” southwestern route—they simply decided to take the hitherto unused eastern route: “We didn’t want to, we couldn’t be imitators, we couldn’t repeat what had just been done!”68 A local captain’s claim that the eastern slope was impossible to climb just seemed to fuel the explorers’ enthusiasm. Mapmaking, according to Anne McClintock, is a form of conquest—it purports to reproduce the truth about nature in scientific exactitude and objectivity: “As such, it is also a technology of possession, promising that those with the capacity to make such perfect representations must have the right of territorial control.”69 Ostrowski and his colleagues were charting the terrain in numerous ways during their expedition—not only in the literal way but also through gathering meteorological and geological data, taking measurements (for example, they took measurements of Mercedario’s altitude—incorrect, as it later turned out70) as well as physiological data about their own bodies’ reaction to altitude. Ostrowski also took photographs. They marked the terrain as their own by visible signs, like a flag driven into a discovered land: a cairn at the top of Mercedario, an ice-axe at the top of Aconcagua (after removing one left by the Italian expedition just a few hours before). The accumulation of knowledge, this “technology of possession,” was described by Ostrowski as “the noblest fight between man and nature in order to get to know our Earth.”71 Ascending Mercedario was to him part of the “victorious march of man exploring his own Earth”72—he thus took possession of the Earth in its entirety in the name of mankind, which marched for victory against the unknown and unexplored. The language of struggle and conquest was ever present, as was the conviction that progress would, eventually, prevail. Just as in the case of Dr. Freyd’s conquest of space by means of the modern invention of airplane, in this case modern technology was also the key. The expedition namely carried special equipment, designed and constructed especially for this purpose by one of its members, engineer

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Adam Karpiński. It included special lightweight tents and climbing shoes integrated with crampons, which, thanks to their construction, helped avoid frostbite.73 Here were Polish technological innovations enabling the progress of science. Thanks to them—and his own determination—Ostrowski could eventually stand on the peak of Aconcagua, stretch his gaze in awe and wonder all the way to the Pacific Ocean, another monarch of all he surveyed, and declare: “You really felt . . . that you had everything under you!”74

Conclusion Although the three cases discussed here were certainly not the only ones of the LMiR/LMiK dealing with South America, they reveal how the image of the continent, of its nature, and of its native inhabitants was shaped in its discourse. Several common threads can be discerned in these descriptions. The settlers, Aleksander Freyd, and the mountaineers were all depicted (or depicted themselves) as the vanguard of Western civilization, extending its boundary into new areas. No other civilization existed on the other side of the boundary—in the Eurocentric narrative, according to which there was no civilization other than Western civilization, those who did not belong to it were either marginalized or treated as part of nature. In other texts in Morze the readers could learn, for example, about the special connection that “nature’s children, Indians, born in nature” had with the jungle, that enabled them to find their way through it, an ability that a “civilized man” did not possess.75 And it was nature that was the actual opponent against which man—Polish man, settler, scientist, mountaineer—with his strength, order, progress, and technology fought, and won. The LMiR/ LMiK’s colonial program was, in the eyes of its creators, a modernizing one; it was meant to shape Poles into active participants in the Western world’s development and progress. Possessing colonies was not seen as the only sign of modernity (see Puchalski in this volume), but the participation in knowledge production was as well. By depicting themselves as pioneers and men of science, they were attempting to escape their own marginality and in-betweenness and affirm their identity as men of the Western core, distinct from “wildlings” and “nature’s children.” Because the Polish language, unlike English, uses separate words to denote “man” as “member of humankind” (człowiek) and “man” as “human male” (mężczyzna), some of the excerpts quoted here do not originally sound as unambiguously male-centric as in the English translation. But the texts are still dominated by men—in terms of authors, subjects, and symbolism. The obsession with being the first, the language of pos-

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session, the imagery of penetrating the “virgin forest, where everything is hostile, treacherous and mysterious,”76 of retrieving the hitherto untouched treasure, of waking the passive land from its dream and bringing to it the “ideological and technological instruments of civilization, exploration and conquest,”77 such as Western rationality and order, medicine, planes and hi-tech equipment, all paint the picture of the conquest as not only military but also sexual. Knowledge about the non-European world was limited in Poland at the beginning of the twentieth century.78 As Małgorzata Omilanowska points out, the LMiR/LMiK’s publications, problematic as they were, at least conveyed some knowledge.79 But it was Orientalized knowledge. South America and South Americans appeared in them as an area and people outside of civilization, unable to create order and progress without the help of Europeans such as Poles. It thus supported the LMiR/LMiK’s colonial aspirations by shaping in the readers a colonial and pioneering mindset, conveying images of lands either already subjugated to the Polish farmer’s will or waiting for him, lands whose inaccessibility could be overcome by technological progress and the determined spirit of the readers’ compatriots. Poland appeared as already taking part in the discovering, conquering, and settlement of South America. The reality was, however, rather different. Attempts to establish a longterm, organized Polish settlement in South America were not successful. Already in 1930, Lepecki wrote in Morze about “defeated pioneers.” They abandoned the forest and moved to cities, where they suffered from disease, fell into poverty, and despaired. He deemed them “people of weak character, discouraged by adversity, defeated by life.”80 Paradoxically, one of the reasons for this defeat was the enthusiastic, romantic tales of the Polish pioneers transforming South American forests into lands flowing with milk and honey, which failed to warn off adventurers and economic migrants expecting quick profit, those not ready for the hard work that this transformation required. Marta Grzechnik is assistant professor at the Institute of Scandinavian and Finnish Studies, University of Gdańsk. She is a historian with research interests in the Baltic Sea region and Northern Europe, borderland studies, regional history, and colonial history. She obtained her PhD from the European University Institute, Florence, in 2010. In 2012–16 she was a postdoctoral researcher in the program “Baltic Borderlands: Shifting Boundaries of Mind and Culture in the Borderlands of the Baltic Sea Region” at the University of Greifswald; in 2018–19 she was German Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University.

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Notes 1. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). 2. Kristin Kopp, Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012). 3. E.g., Michał Jarnecki, “Fantastyka polityczna czy konieczność? Portugalska Afryka, Nikaragua, Boliwia i Ekwador w polskich planach kolonialnych” [Political fantasy or necessity? Portuguese Africa, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador in Polish colonial plans], Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria Nowa, no. 36 (2010): 92–105; Michał Jarnecki, “Peruwiańska porażka i próba jej naprawy: Wokół polskich międzywojennych koncepcji emigracyjnych i kolonialnych” [The Peruvian failure and the attempt to repair it: On Polish interwar concepts of emigration and colonialism], Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria Nowa, no. 44 (15 December 2014): 102–32; Piotr Puchalski, “Polityka kolonialna międzywojennej Polski w świetle źródeł krajowych i zagranicznych: nowe spojrzenie (1918–1945)” [The colonial policy of interwar Poland in the light of domestic and foreign sources: A new perspective (1918–1945)], Res Gestae 7 (31 March 2019): 69–76. 4. This overpopulation discourse was often antisemitic, or xenophobic in general, as it singled out Jews (and ethnically non-Polish minorities mostly inhabiting the country’s eastern regions) as those who were “excess” population. In the LMiK’s rhetoric, however, this aspect did not appear until the second half of the 1930s. 5. On the Polish nineteenth-century immigration to South America, see Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840–1920 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019). 6. Ibid., 158. 7. “Związek Pionierów Kolonialnych: Nowa sekcja Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej” [Union of Colonial Pioneers: New section of the Maritime and River League], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 3 (March 1928): 30. 8. Ibid., 30. 9. Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer, Program Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej [Program of the Maritime and Colonial League], 3rd edn. (Warszawa: Instytut Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej, 1933), 6. 10. Kazimierz Głuchowski, “A wszystko dla Polski . . .” [And everything for Poland . . .], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 6 (June 1928): 21. 11. Michał Pankiewicz, “Niezłomny pionier Polski kolonialnej” [The steadfast pioneer of colonial Poland], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej 13, no. 9 (September 1936): 17. 12. Kazimierz Głuchowski, “Bo my, panie, twarde są . . .” [Because we, sir, are tough . . .], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 8 (August 1928): 27. 13. Kazimierz Głuchowski, “Chłop-zdobywca: Z wędrówek po Paranie” [Farmerconqueror: From travels around Paraná], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 4 (April 1928). 14. Ibid., 29.

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15. Kazimierz Głuchowski, “Pan Szymon z boru” [Pan Szymon from the forest], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 3 (March 1928): 36. 16. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1995), 201–5. 17. Ibid., 205. 18. Głuchowski, “Pan Szymon,” 36–37. 19. Kazimierz Głuchowski, “W Górach Nadziei” [In the Mountains of Hope], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 6 (June 1928): 24. 20. Kazimierz Głuchowski, “Przed wiejskim kościółkiem” [In front of the village church], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 10 (October 1928): 28. 21. Głuchowski, “W Górach Nadziei,” 24. 22. Głuchowski, “Przed wiejskim kościółkiem,” 29–30. 23. Ibid., 28. 24. Ibid., 29. 25. Głuchowski, “Pan Szymon,” 39. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 37. 29. Bohdan Teofil Lepecki, “W krainie piniorów” [In the land of Brazilian pines], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej 9, no. 4 (April 1932): 25. 30. Głuchowski, “W Górach Nadziei,” 25. 31. Ibid. 32. See: Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 28. 33. Głuchowski, “W Górach Nadziei,” 25. 34. Głuchowski, “Bo my, panie,” 28. 35. Ibid., 29. Interestingly, Pan Franciszek compared the caboclo to a peasant from the Polish Eastern Borderlands, who was supposedly equally vague in his approach to measurements and distance. 36. Ibid., 28. 37. Ibid. 38. Głuchowski, “W Górach Nadziei,” 24. 39. James M. Blaut, The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History (New York: Guilford Press, 1993), 15. 40. Głuchowski, “Chłop-zdobywca,” 28. 41. Louis Montrose, “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery,” Representations 33, (Winter 1991): 3–7; McClintock, Imperial Leather, 25–30. 42. Ibid., 26. 43. Głuchowski, “Bo my, panie,” 27. 44. Ibid., 27. 45. Głuchowski, “Chłop-zdobywca,” 28. 46. Ibid., 30. 47. The Lusiads, or Os Lusíadas, is a Portuguese epic poem on the topic of the Portuguese voyages of discovery of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in particular Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the route to India, first published in 1572.

192 48. 49. 50. 51.

52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

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Głuchowski, “Chłop-zdobywca,” 30. Ibid., 31. Ibid. Domeyko had also been a member of the Filaret Association, a secret student society founded by Tomasz Zan in 1820 at the University of Vilnius. The most famous member of the association was the Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz. Both Mickiewicz and Domeyko, as well as several of their colleagues, were arrested for their membership in the society. Stanisław Zieliński, Mały słownik pionierów polskich kolonialnych i morskich: Podróżnicy, odkrywcy, zdobywcy, badacze, eksploratorzy, emigranci—pamiętnikarze, działacze i pisarze migracyjni [Little dictionary of Polish colonial and maritime pioneers: Travelers, explorers, conquerors, researchers, explorers, emigrants—diarists, activists, and migration writers] (Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej, 1933), 84–85. A detailed account of Polish attempts to colonize parts of Peru can be found in Jarnecki, “Peruwiańska porażka,” 106–7. Aleksander Freyd, “Dwa dni wśród trędowatych nad Amazonką” [Two days among lepers on the Amazon River], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 11 (November 1928): 26. Ibid. Ibid., 27. Ibid., 28. Ibid., 29. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. It was not until 1968 that archaeological evidence was found of earlier human presence on Mercedario. Wiktor Ostrowski mentioned it in the afterword to the second edition of his book, admitting that it meant that he and his colleagues had not been, in fact, the first humans to ascend the mountain. Wiktor Ostrowski, Wyżej niż kondory [Higher than condors], 2nd edn. (Warszawa: Sport i Turystyka, 1970), 192–93. Wiktor Ostrowski, “Polski atak na Andy” [Polish attack on the Andes], Sprawy morskie i kolonialne 1, no. 1 (1934): 141; ellipsis in the original. Ibid., 142. Ibid., 149. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 27–28. Wiktor Ostrowski, “Polska wyprawa w Andy” [Polish expedition to the Andes], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej 11, nos. 8–9 (August 1934): 12. They overshot by eighty meters, claiming that Mercedario was the second highest peak in the Americas, while it is actually the eighth highest mountain in the Andes. Ostrowski, “Polski atak na Andy,” 141. Ibid., 146. Ostrowski, “Polska wyprawa w Andy,” 13.

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74. Ibid. 75. Stanisław Przyjemski, “Zabłąkanie” [Getting lost], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej 12, no. 1 (December 1935): 19. 76. Ibid. 77. Montrose, “Work of Gender,” 4. 78. Anna Nadolska-Styczyńska, Ludy zamorskich lądów: Kultury pozaeuropejskie a działalność popularyzatorska Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej [Peoples of the overseas lands: Non-European cultures and the popularizing activities of the Maritime and Colonial League], Prace Etnologiczne (Wrocław: Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze, 2005), 15–17. 79. Małgorzata Omilanowska, “Propaganda wizualna ‘Polski morskiej’” [Visual propaganda of “Maritime Poland”], in Polska nad Bałtykiem: Konstruowanie identyfikacji kulturowej państwa nad morzem 1918–1939 [Poland on the Baltic Sea: Building the cultural identity of the state on the sea 1918–1939], ed. Dariusz Konstantynów and Małgorzata Omilanowska (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo słowo/obraz terytoria, 2012), 10. 80. Bohdan Lepecki, “Wśród pokonanych pionierów” [Among the defeated pioneers], Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 7, no. 11 (November 1930): 27.

Bibliography Blaut, James M. The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York: Guilford Press, 1993. Freyd, Aleksander. “Dwa dni wśród trędowatych nad Amazonką” [Two days among lepers on the Amazon River]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 11 (November 1928): 26–30. Głuchowski, Kazimierz. “Pan Szymon z boru” [Pan Szymon from the forest]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 3 (March 1928): 36–39. ———. “Chłop-zdobywca: Z wędrówek po Paranie” [Farmer-conqueror: From travels around Paraná]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 4 (April 1928): 28–31. ———. “A wszystko dla Polski . . .” [And everything for Poland . . .]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 6 (June 1928): 21. ———. “W Górach Nadziei” [In the Mountains of Hope]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 6 (June 1928): 24–26. ———. “Bo my, panie, twarde są . . .” [Because we, sir, are tough . . .]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 8 (August 1928): 27–30. ———. “Przed wiejskim kościółkiem” [In front of the village church]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 10 (October 1928): 28–30. Jarnecki, Michał. “Fantastyka polityczna czy konieczność? Portugalska Afryka, Nikaragua, Boliwia i Ekwador w polskich planach kolonialnych” [Political fantasy or necessity? Portuguese Africa, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador in Polish colonial plans]. Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria Nowa, no. 36 (2010): 92–105. ———. “Peruwiańska porażka i próba jej naprawy: Wokół polskich międzywojennych koncepcji emigracyjnych i kolonialnych.” [The Peruvian failure and the attempt to repair it: On Polish interwar concepts of emigration and colonialism]. Sprawy

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Narodowościowe. Seria Nowa, no. 44 (December 2014): 102–32. https://doi.org/ 10.11649/sn.2014.008. Kopp, Kristin. Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. Lepecki, Bohdan. “Wśród pokonanych pionierów” [Among the defeated pioneers]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 7, no. 11 (November 1930): 26–27. Lepecki, Bohdan Teofil. “W krainie piniorów” [In the land of Brazilian pines]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej 9, no. 4 (April 1932): 23–26. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995. Nadolska-Styczyńska, Anna. Ludy zamorskich lądów: Kultury pozaeuropejskie a działalność popularyzatorska Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej [Peoples of the overseas lands: Non-European cultures and the popularizing activities of the Maritime and Colonial League]. Prace Etnologiczne. Wrocław: Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze, 2005. Omilanowska, Małgorzata. “Propaganda wizualna ‘Polski morskiej’” [Visual propaganda of “Maritime Poland”]. In Polska nad Bałtykiem: Konstruowanie identyfikacji kulturowej państwa nad morzem 1918–1939 [Poland on the Baltic Sea: Building the cultural identity of the state on the sea 1918–1939], edited by Dariusz Konstantynów and Małgorzata Omilanowska, 8–17. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo słowo/obraz terytoria, 2012. Orlicz-Dreszer, Gustaw. Program Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej [Programme of the Maritime and Colonial League]. 3rd edn. Warszawa: Instytut Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej, 1933. Ostrowski, Wiktor. “Polska wyprawa w Andy” [Polish expedition to the Andes]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej 11, nos. 8–9 (August 1934): 12–13. ———. “Polski atak na Andy” [Polish attack on the Andes]. Sprawy morskie i kolonialne 1, no. 1 (1934): 141–53. ———. Wyżej niż kondory [Higher than condors]. 2nd edn. Warszawa: Sport i Turystyka, 1970. Pankiewicz, Michał. “Niezłomny pionier Polski kolonialnej” [The steadfast pioneer of colonial Poland]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej 13, no. 9 (September 1936): 16–17. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge, 1995. Przyjemski, Stanisław. “Zabłąkanie” [Getting lost]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej 12, no. 1 (December 1935): 19–21. Puchalski, Piotr. “Polityka kolonialna międzywojennej Polski w świetle źródeł krajowych i zagranicznych: Nowe spojrzenie (1918–1945).” [The colonial policy of interwar Poland in the light of domestic and foreign sources: A new perspective (1918–1945)]. Res Gestae 7 (31 March 2019): 68–121. Ureña Valerio, Lenny A. Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840–1920. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019. Wolff, Larry. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.

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Zieliński, Stanisław. Mały słownik pionierów polskich kolonialnych i morskich: Podróżnicy, odkrywcy, zdobywcy, badacze, eksploratorzy, emigranci—pamiętnikarze, działacze i pisarze migracyjni [Little dictionary of Polish colonial and maritime pioneers: Travelers, explorers, conquerors, researchers, explorers, emigrants—diarists, activists, and migration writers]. Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej, 1933. “Związek Pionierów Kolonialnych: Nowa sekcja Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej” [Union of Colonial Pioneers: New section of the Maritime and River League]. Morze: organ Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej 5, no. 3 (March 1928): 30.

CHAPTER 8

Between Postimperial Expansion and Promethean Mission Africa and Africans in Interwar Polish Colonial Discourse



Piotr Puchalski

For a long time, Polish colonial discourse has been either reduced to a curious historical footnote or attributed to nationalism and antisemitism.1 This is not to say the last two phenomena played little role in Polish colonial ambitions; however, the historiography of Poland deserves a proper “colonial turn” that will encourage more nuanced and fully dimensional examinations of Polish interactions with imperial spaces and peoples. After all, such engagements exemplified broader European attempts to address contemporary demographic shifts, economic modernity, and the growing turn toward global governance in the twentieth century. But instead, the scholarship has only benefited from what one might term a “postcolonial turn,” whereby historic Polish lands such as Galicia are viewed as objects of some form of colonial exploitation, either from within (at the hands of their Polish elites) or from the outside (at the hands of foreigners).2 Indeed, the postcolonial lens should be integrated into a larger historical toolkit used to interpret nineteenth-century Polish engagements in Africa, as the partitioned status of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth frequently encouraged Polish writers, scientists, and anthropologists to propose supposedly better modes of colonial expansion overseas.3 For Poland’s “coloniality” (dreams of expansion) and “postcoloniality” (inferior status) can be represented as a serpent eating its own head (ouroboros): one constantly influenced the other. This Janus face of what some call Polish “colonialism”—although I refrain from using this term, which obfuscates more than it clarifies—did not change much in the interwar period.4 Between 1918 and 1939, the postimperial condition of the reborn Polish state still served as a justification

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for a series of colonial initiatives in Africa.5 In this chapter, I examine the ways in which Polish colonial discourse supported—and sometimes contradicted—the newly independent state’s colonial policies. I argue that political and economic circumstances at home inspired the interpretation of Polish actions in Africa either as morally acceptable, given Poland’s postimperial status, or as anticolonial—and not too rarely as both. I refer to the latter interpretation as Promethean colonialism, meaning that during a brief period of time, the Poles supported selected national aspirations in Africa, usually to advance their own interests.6 I demonstrate that by adjusting their discourse about Africa to these fluctuating colonial policies, Polish writers and activists wishing for their formerly partitioned nation to expand in Angola or Liberia could not formulate a coherent colonial ideology.

Races to Modernity The Polish state that was forged in World War I and survived the subsequent series of uprisings and border wars faced numerous problems, at least insofar as its leaders defined them as such. According to the 1921 census, Poland’s population was about twenty-seven million strong but only Polish-Catholic in about two-thirds, whereas 14.3 percent identified as Ruthenians or Ukrainians, 7.8 percent as Jews, 3.9 percent as Germans and Belarusians, respectively, and 0.2 percent as “local” people.7 In addition to enduring ethnic conflicts that resulted from this much diversity in an aspiring nation-state, large segments of Poland’s population suffered longterm health effects and economic deprivation.8 It took Polish governments many years to smoothen the differences between the four different political, legal, and economic systems from which the country was patched together.9 Likewise, it took a long time to address the postwar inflation and unemployment amid domestic infighting that brought about Józef Piłsudski’s coup d’état in May 1926.10 Making reconstruction more difficult was also a revisionist neighbor in the west, Germany, which wished to destroy Poland economically under Gustav Stresemann long before its military annihilation at the hands of Adolf Hitler.11 Instead of identifying it as a spontaneous offshoot of nationalism, one should place the reemergence of colonial ideas in interwar Poland in the context of other attempts to address the pathologies of the new state. One such attempt was channeling emigration—considered a “necessary evil” that stemmed from unemployment and destitution—into colonial expansion. In 1918, the group that called itself “colonial” the earliest was the Polish Colonial Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Kolonialne, PTK), which

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worked to “take care of emigration [wychodźtwo] and to channel it into a consciously creative movement for the benefit of the country and its citizens.”12 This task dated back to late nineteenth-century Galicia, where the leaders of the PTK’s institutional predecessors had worked to channel peasant emigration to particular areas in South America, especially the southern Brazilian state of Paraná.13 According to Polish nationalists such as Kazimierz Warchałowski, the supposedly “premodern” environmental conditions of Paraná and the neighboring regions enabled Polish-speaking peasants to escape assimilation into local communities, to turn into proper Polish patriots, and to become Polish economic and political agents.14 This concept of channeling emigration implied, of course, a primordial character of the Polish nation—considered Catholic and agricultural—but it was ironically also an enterprise that generated modern economic and political units, connecting the Polish lands to the other side of the globe.15 At the same time, in 1918 a more commerce-oriented association of sailors and maritime activists called “Polish Banner” (Polska Bandera) was created to administer Poland’s inland waterways. One year later, the statute of this association, now known as the Polish Sailing League (Liga Żeglugi Polskiej), was extended to promote the development of infrastructure and merchant marine along Poland’s newly acquired Baltic coast. In 1924, the league was renamed Maritime and River (Liga Morska i Rzeczna, LMiR), and in 1930, Maritime and Colonial (Liga Morska i Kolonialna, LMiK). Increasingly, the LMiR not only lobbied the government to build ships and expand the port facilities at Gdynia but also encouraged Polish merchants to undertake worldwide investments.16 By the end of the decade, Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer, a charismatic general and Józef Piłsudski’s right-hand pretorian, assumed control of the LMiR’s subsection called the Union of Colonial Pioneers (Związek Pionierów Kolonialnych, ZPK) and imbued the entire institution, now clearly a state ally, with a colonial ethos.17 In the early 1920s, journalists had suggested that Polish merchants should establish trading outposts in Cameroon or Liberia.18 However, it was the ZPK—whose founding members included initial enthusiasts of “colonial” emigration to South America—that first made resonating calls for Polish penetration into Africa, identified as “areas [tereny] for the free expansion of the many thousands of Polish citizens.”19 Polish elites began to view colonies as a prerequisite for modernity. Back in 1923, the French, preoccupied with administrating their new colonial acquisition of Cameroon, had used indirect channels to offer their possession of Madagascar to Warsaw.20 The Polish government declined the proposition, stating its inability to effectively rule its own countryside, let alone any foreign lands.21 By 1930, however, the LMiR/LMiK explained Poland’s need for colonies precisely as stemming from the country’s socioeconomic backwardness. In the first place, colonies under some form of Polish rule

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would connect Polish emigrants “economically to the State, forcing them to further work for the Nation, as opposed to working for foreign nations and states.”22 Instead of serving as a living symbol of the Polish state’s failure to stop its citizens from leaving its borders, emigrants turned into colonists would become agents of a “worldwide Poland” and would transform it into a “materialist,” or modern nation.23 In addition to mobilizing emigrants, the LMiK’s leaders dreamed of a Poland acquiring colonies for economic exploitation in Africa, where the Polish industry would purchase raw materials such as tobacco or cotton at rates lower than those imposed by privileged Western intermediaries. Since Poland suffered from a dearth of hard currency, the argument proceeded, the little capital that was available had to be spent to finance imports instead of further factories.24 Moreover, in his notes published after his death, Orlicz-Dreszer suggested that this situation suited “foreign capital that rules [our] cities and that has set up pumps to suck out a usurer’s profits from [our] industrial enterprises for use abroad.” He called Poland itself a “colony” of the West, suggesting that the country would only escape its colonial status by turning into an empire; the choice was thus between remaining colonial and becoming imperial.25 At the same time, echoing older Polish memoranda issued at the Paris Peace Conference, Orlicz-Dreszer’s collaborators repeated the claim that Poland was entitled to reparations for the German occupation in the form of a certain share of the Reich’s former colonies.26 The LMiK’s postimperial argument for colonial expansion was clearly self-serving, but the logic behind it was not altogether divorced from the intellectual foundations of the interwar world order.27 In line with the international understanding that colonial dominion should no longer be unilateral and unconditional, Polish leaders decided to petition the League of Nations and relevant great powers for mandates or joint condominiums.28 While wishing for Poland to enter the era of modernity, the LMiK and its allies thus made reference to contemporary ideas concerning global governance. At this stage, in line with Lord Lugard’s “dual mandate” and other internationalist ideas, most Polish writers viewed Africans (murzyni) as cheap labor and “big children” whom Europeans would raise and educate together.29 At the same time, however, the Poles also worried about their European neighbors.

Against Teutons and Communists in Africa In tandem with the first Polish calls for colonies came the first expeditions to Africa that explored the locations in which human and financial capital was to be located. In turn, just as Halford Mackinder’s concept of the

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“world island” penetrated the educated circles of Europe, the Polish desire for expansion in Africa expressed in accounts from these expeditions echoed a particular geopolitical consciousness.30 Polish leaders did not use the term “geopolitics” but understood the relationship between geography and politics in terms of Poland’s position between Germany and Russia.31 While looking to drag Poland into modernity thanks to African resources, the country’s colonial lobby also wished to escape the geopolitical dilemma of being locked between these two great powers by relocating some of its production powers overseas.32 In order to meet this objective, the LMiK embraced the geopolitical concept of “Eurafrica,” appealing to the Portuguese and French for European solidarity.33 At the same time, however, the quest of colonial expansion still entailed struggling against the Germans and Russians overseas, which was reflected in colonial travel writing. In the 1920s, the Polish animus against the Germans and Russians translated into expressions of support for the French Empire, which Polish elites considered to be the great power capable of both containing Germany in Europe and stopping the spread of Soviet-sponsored communism in Africa. In 1926, for example, one of Poland’s most popular writers, Ferdynand Ossendowski (1876–1945), led an expedition to the region of the Niger and Chad Rivers in French West Africa “to predict the form of [its] participation in the progress of civilization and in the fate of humanity.”34 In his report from the journey, Ossendowski offered a mild critique of European interventionism in the “environment of colored peoples,” lamenting the negative effects of constructing an irrigation system and a canal on the Niger River. He identified such interventionism with social and civilizational decay, discerning the role of communism therein: I prefer to burn under the ominous sun of tropical Africa, to be eaten by mosquitoes, termites, and biting flies, to be sick with yellow fever and dysentery, to endure difficulties and dangers, rather than to see the insanity of Europe falling into an unhealable confusion, in which bolshevism, egotism, as well as personal and social immorality grow like disgusting mushrooms upon a decaying tree.35

Ossendowski worried that too much technological progress would bring a communist revolution to Africa. At the same time, the Polish traveler admitted that “it was France, which treats natives [murzyni] as its citizens, that has made the biggest progress toward humanitarian policies.”36 He also observed that certain “politically conscious” Africans embraced the Wilsonian notion of national self-determination, marrying it to local beliefs in magic in order to widen its appeal among their brethren.37 Still, Ossendowski was critical of Africans, viewing them as culturally inferior because of their alleged cannibalism and alleged opposition to medicine stemming from the harsh climate and environment.38

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Ossendowski noted another important intellectual phenomenon in the colonial world: the growing influence of communism and its marriage to nationalism. It was in this context that he interpreted the Berber uprising against Spanish and French colonial rule in Morocco, calling it a “PanIslamic uprising of international significance” that, with the help of the Soviets, would spread to other parts of the colonial world.39 At the same time, Poland’s other leading colonial traveler, Mieczysław Lepecki (1897–1969), transmitted a more nuanced interpretation of the anticolonial uprising in the Riff region of Spanish Morocco. Dispatched to the Maghreb by the semiofficial military newspaper Polska Zbrojna in 1924, Lepecki observed both the energetic leadership of Spain’s “dictator” Miguel Primo de Rivera, in command of unenthusiastic soldiers, and the military prowess of the “Moroccan nation” under the “intelligent Arab” Abd el-Krim.40 He described Berbers as “blood-thirsty” and “bellicose” because of their poverty, and disparaged them for murdering and enslaving their prisoners-of-war, but also pointed out that, in that respect, these Muslims merely mimicked the “civilized and cultured Teutons [Germans].”41 The alleged Soviet role in the Riff was too unclear for Lepecki, a Polish military officer, to reduce the Berbers to Soviet marionettes or to fully embrace the Spanish and their French allies. Despite Lepecki’s more ambiguous reports from Morocco, the mainstream public opinion in Poland did not seem too concerned with the fate of Riffian tribes. One journalist called their fight an example of the “perennial struggle of the oppressed against violence” but expressed more concerns for the Polish soldiers of the French Foreign Legion fighting against them.42 Furthermore, Michał Waszyński’s film Sound of the Desert (Głos Pustyni, 1932), a Riff-inspired “talkie” made in consultation with Ossendowski, pitted a dashing Polish officer (Adam Brodzisz) against a wild Muslim renegade sheikh (Eugeniusz Bodo) in northwestern Africa. In a symbolic manner that underlined the impossibility of romance between Poland and colonial Africa, the sheikh’s wife (Nora Ney) seduced the Pole but eventually betrayed the location of his unit to her husband.43 In the 1920s, the anticolonial struggles of Africa’s nations and tribes did not earn much sympathy in Poland, especially as the country’s leaders started to call for its own colonies. Geopolitical considerations also determined the selection of Portuguese Angola as the first target of Polish expansion in Africa. In 1929, the Union of Colonial Pioneers (ZPK) dispatched Franciszek Łyp to Angola, where this former Polish-Brazilian emigration leader was to look for settlement possibilities for Polish farmers.44 According to Kazimierz Głuchowski, the ZPK’s president, and Tadeusz Romer, the Polish envoy in Lisbon, Angola was an appropriate destination for colonial expansion because Portugal needed European settlers. Moreover, the argument continued, the Portu-

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guese faced pressure from both British capitalists and Germans interested in reentering Africa, which made them welcome to immigration to Angola only from countries that seemed less politically motivated.45 In effect, Łyp and other colonial writers positioned the Polish farmers settling around the mission of Quipeio in Huambo province as model colonists loyal to Lisbon. The community was imagined as potential producers of cheaper raw materials for the Polish industry and was also promoted as a frontier outpost of European “culture.”46 Appropriately, while identifying the high plateau of Angola as a region suitable geopolitically due to its proximity to ports and railways, Łyp classified the local Bantu people, in a matter-of-fact tone, as little more than cheap labor.47 His fellow colonial expert sent to Angola for the same purpose, Jerzy Chmielewski, was likewise excited about the abundance of natives (murzyni) for plantation work and mocked Bantu men for their alleged laziness, inferior mental faculties, and barbaric patriarchy.48 Still, the explicitly superior discourse about Africans expressed during the so-called “colonial action” in Angola was not reproduced by all Polish travelers to this part of the continent.

An Impossible Escape: The Writing of Kazimierz Nowak The Polish globetrotters traversing the “Dark Continent” (as they often called Africa) independently of Polish colonial projects made more nuanced remarks about it in their personal writing. Still, despite their often critical tone, these travelers could not escape their own postimperial Polish sensibilities reminiscent of the LMiK’s discourse. One of them was Kazimierz Nowak (1897–1937), born in the Galician town of Stryj. In the 1920s, Nowak worked as a journalist and photographer in Poznań while developing his passion for biking. In 1931, to support his family amid the Great Depression and fulfill his childhood aspirations, the amateur cyclist embarked on a monumental journey. He was to ride, walk, and sail around most of Africa and to submit accounts and photographs from his quest to illustrated magazines such as Przewodnik Katolicki [Catholic guide], Ilustracja Polska [Polish illustration], and Światowid [Svetovid].49 In addition, Nowak sent letters to his wife. In Poznań, Maria Nowak received intimate messages in which Kazimierz’s critique of colonialism and Europeans, moderate in his public utterances, came forth more strongly. In November 1931, Nowak took a train to Rome and reached Libya from the Italian coast. For the next five years, the amateur cyclist walked and biked in a north-south loop across Africa, from Algiers and Tunis to Johannesburg and Cape Town, exploring the diverse region between Sudan, Nigeria, Belgian Congo, Angola, and the Rhodesias. He traversed wastelands,

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deserts, and rainforests, choosing “the least frequented and the wildest paths” that took him from one “island of civilization” to the next.50 Civilization was, in fact, at the center of the cyclist’s attention. After Maria had advised him to write less about it for the Polish press, Nowak responded that, although Poland was not interested in the matter—“We don’t have colonies, and even though we want to, nobody will give us one”—circumventing the subject was impossible: “It is almost the only topic—the impact of our civilization on the life of the African and on Africa.”51 Despite Poland’s in-between status as a European nation without colonies, Nowak could not escape the topic. In his official accounts, Nowak suggested that he was escaping Europe to witness another, altogether different world. Around Easter 1932, writing from the Marada Oasis in Italian Cyrenaica, the cyclist admonished Europe’s “hypocrisy and chauvinism” represented by the whirring car engine, reedy gramophone, clinking glass, and pretentious clothing exported to Africa.52 In a letter to Maria from July 1934, in reference to the growth of European totalitarianisms, the cyclist also admonished the hypocrisy of Christian Europeans pitying Africans while giving way to “paganism refined by education and progress” in Europe.53 For Nowak, imagining the continent’s past in a romantic way, Africa was better than Europe, because the African did not wear a paramilitary uniform.54 Furthermore, Nowak’s reports described the negative socioeconomic impact of the European presence in Africa. In the late fall of 1933, for example, the cyclist described the gold-mining region near Elisabethville (today’s Lubumbashi), a prosperous city in the Belgian Congo. He underlined the moral depravation of European miners and Asian human traffickers in the area, observing that “twelve- or thirteen-year-old black girls from the local villages were sold by their own parents to serve as sexual slaves, passing from one pair of hands to the next in the mines only to end up in a brothel: This is the reality of the civilization and Europeization of Africa!”55 Despite this identification of European (and Asian) crimes, Nowak’s sympathy for Africans still seemed related to his longing for their lost exoticism, writing that “natives are being herded into reservations and enclosed settlements as their original, pretty villages disappear” and that “Japanese rags and other clothes collected from the dustbins of the West” replaced their traditional clothing.56 Rendering Africans as exotic, Nowak could never quite transcend certain boundaries and, in fact, his sympathy sometimes turned into genocidal thoughts. Disappointed with the persistence of indigenous Congolese to copulate with one another despite their fatal infliction with syphilis and leprosy, Nowak exclaimed in a letter to Maria: “If I were the master of this land, I would poison these infected worms—for are they people?”57 At other times, however, Nowak attempted to transcend

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his European heritage, associating it increasingly with extreme nationalism and capitalism. He wrote to Maria in March 1934: “I love Poland, my native tongue, and, as a Pole, I consider myself to be a Polish citizen, but as a human being I feel to be a son of the entire earth, which God created for all people—regardless of race, tribe, or nation.”58 Still, notwithstanding this universalist message, Nowak strongly subscribed to one aspect of Western culture: Catholicism. Despite misgivings about the Catholic hierarchy, the Polish cyclist was deeply religious, praying and spending the night in many Catholic churches and monasteries for both mass and hospitality.59 Moreover, Nowak could not escape taking a position in particular political debates. In another letter to his wife, he disparaged a friend of his for supporting Poland’s Sanacja government, called himself apolitical, and expressed support for the economic left, but not communism.60 Nowak’s attitudes toward Europe and its socioeconomic discontents informed his perception of Polish colonists encountered along the way and of Polish colonial aspirations vis-à-vis Angola. He disliked many of his countrymen living in Africa for their elitist behavior and for attempting to become model European imperialists. In January 1933, Nowak was disgusted with a Pole who helped him cross the Congolese border due to the man’s “aristocratic mannerism of beating poor Africans in my presence.”61 He informed Maria that one could not stomach the company of Polish intelligentsia in Africa for their mistreatment of indigenous people.62 In another letter, Nowak distinguished between simple Polish immigrants and the “intelligentsia saving money while preying on Africans.”63 He wrote to Maria that “Angola was the most backward country in Africa but could be a paradise,” and that “it almost hurts that I cannot describe what I experience since the Poles (and Łyp first among them) would attack me.”64 In the Polish press, Nowak argued that Łyp painted the future of Polish settlement in “rainbow colors” and that it was likely the wealth of the neighboring Belgian Congo that had attracted him and others to Angola: “The best Polish farmer is a helpless amateur on the Angolan plateaux.”65 All in all, Nowak was rather critical of the LMiK’s activities in Africa, but his nonetheless paternalistic attitude toward Africa was not altogether divorced from its ethos.

Diplomacy and Colonial Discourse During Nowak’s five-year-long journey around Africa between 1931 and 1936, the Polish “colonial action” in Angola collapsed as Salazar’s government, in reaction to the rise of German colonial revisionism, made it more difficult for all Europeans to settle and invest in Portuguese posses-

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sions.66 However, the dashing of Polish colonial hopes in Angola happened as Africans themselves began to lobby Warsaw to change its geopolitical approach toward Africa, forcing a corresponding shift in official Polish colonial discourse. In the mid-1930s, the leaders of Liberia and Ethiopia, the last independent states in Africa, encouraged Warsaw to abandon its strategy of unequivocally supporting Western imperialism for the sake of a more independent approach. Liberia, ruled at the time by descendants of emancipated African American slaves residing in the capital of Monrovia, was in danger of becoming a Western mandate due to its leaders’ unpaid debts to the United States and oppression of the indigenous Kru tribes in the interior.67 The Ethiopians, on the other hand, stood in the way of Mussolini’s territorial expansion in East Africa, and were about to be punished for their previous defeat of the Italians at Adwa (1896).68 Facing hostility from both democratic and revisionist powers, Liberian and Ethiopian diplomats desired Poland’s limited economic and political engagement in their respective countries to serve as counterbalance and deterrent to Western encroachment.69 Starting in 1933, the government of Liberia used the services of a Haitian Pan-Africanist named Léonidas Sajous to negotiate for Poland’s economic help and diplomatic support in the League of Nations.70 Warsaw agreed to render the second service but deferred the first task to the LMiK to cover its tracks.71 In April 1934, Janusz Makarczyk (1901–60), a former consul in British Palestine now representing the LMiK, and Clarence Simpson, Liberia’s secretary of state, signed a preliminary agreement to ratify a “Treaty of Friendship” between the two countries, which gave Poland a series of economic privileges in the so-called “Black Republic,” including tariff-free trade and settlement rights.72 By August, a secret annex to the treaty was signed whereby Liberia bought a batch of Polish weapons while Poland was allowed to build airports, mine precious metals, control river trade, and create an indigenous police force as a basis for its future army in Liberia.73 While striking these deals, however, Warsaw was also using a Polish financial expert working for the Monrovia regime to assume control over its debt as well as encouraging Kru tribes to topple the AmericoLiberian government altogether.74 Polish commentators interpreted the Liberian act of lobbying their country to adopt the role of a colonial protector as a confirmation that perhaps the Romantic idea that Poland was a “Christ of Nations” was true after all. Moreover, Polish journalists understood that Polish agents took full advantage of the situation to pursue what I call Promethean colonialism, given its similarity to the policies that some of the same Piłsudskiites, for example Tadeusz Schaetzel, pursued in the Soviet Union.75 One “A.Mir,” for example, called Makarczyk “Poland’s [Thomas Edward] Lawrence,” in a reference

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to the British officer responsible for orchestrating the transformation of the Ottoman Empire’s Arab parts into Western mandates. As the Polish negotiator of the “Simpson-Makarczyk treaty,” Makarczyk accomplished the “first positive acquisition of the Polish state” in colonial affairs. Furthermore, “A.Mir” reported that Léo Sajous had announced during a banquet in Warsaw that Liberia trusted Poland since the latter had “itself experienced the bitterness of captivity, knows what foreign occupation means, and has as its motto ‘for freedom yours and ours.’”76 The Polish journalist interpreted the Haitian’s statement as a sign that “colored people wished to see in a Pole not a hated oppressor but a protector, a powerful friend” and as a manifestation of Poland’s “moral power, which we must use properly.”77 The necessity of dealing with Africans—or at least with Liberia’s “cultured” elites—as with equals forced a change in Polish discourse. Makarczyk, for example, defended Liberia’s statehood as a noble endeavor of “free gentlemen of color,” expressed respect for certain indigenous cultures, and excused pathologies such as slavery as mere customary practices that Europeans could not view from their own perspective.78 At the same time, however, Poland’s “Lawrence” was condescending toward indigenous Liberians. At the end of his memoir from the “Black Republic,” Makarczyk inserted a narrative that resembled a malaria-induced nightmare about a white man walking through the jungle, writing that, in contrast to his feet-dragging black porters, “the white man [Makarczyk] . . . walks fast and steadily, the helmet weighs him down more and more, his body shivers, and only his legs keep moving without his will playing a role; legs that found their rhythm.”79 Moreover, Makarczyk depicted himself as not only stronger but also morally superior: his disease-stricken local guide, Momogri, supposedly failed to express any gratitude for being carried back to the coast.80 In fact, Promethean colonialism required a hierarchy in which Polish colonists stood higher than ordinary Liberians, and it was such contradictions in colonial thinking that catapulted Poland out of Liberia. Washington, aware of Warsaw’s growing influence in Monrovia, took advantage of every scandal that exposed the Polish ambitions vis-à-vis what was in effect a US sphere of influence. Furthermore, the poor economic performance of the Polish plantations—established to gather military intelligence rather than to generate produce—meant that Monrovia, having benefited from Poland’s assistance in Geneva and some of its sound economic advice, did not wish to continue the special relationship. By 1938, the Polish mission in Liberia was over.81 In the meantime, Ethiopia’s strategy of lobbying Poland for engagement was quite similar to Liberia’s and elicited a similar change in discourse among Polish diplomats. In the spring of 1934, Emperor Haile Selassie himself confided to a Polish economic envoy that Addis-Ababa would welcome

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establishing closer ties with Warsaw, placing “complete trust in Poland.”82 By November, Selassie’s agent in Cairo, Georges Ibrahim, a “translator of Ethiopian languages” at the Coptic Christian Patriarchate, approached Alfons Kula, the Polish enjoy, to express the same opinion. Kula reported to Warsaw that Ibrahim offered Poland a series of commercial and settlement privileges and stated that Poles could advise the emperor in military and political matters as representatives of a state “non-engaged in an active policy of territorial-colonial expansion.”83 Kula suggested that “for the stateless nations of the East, or for those whose sovereignty is only hypothetical, Poland is the only European power that . . . can assist them without posing a threat of colonial extermination to them.” At the same time, of course, the Polish envoy discerned benefits in that assistance: “Abyssinia is the only gigantic area where Poland could still lay its hands.”84 Responding to overtures from Liberia and Ethiopia, Polish journalists and diplomats now viewed Africans as objects of self-interested rescue. Poland’s military intelligence orchestrated a sale of weapons to Ethiopia and, once the Italian invasion was already underway, obtained proof that Mussolini’s soldiers used mustard gas against Ethiopian civilians.85 By 1936, however, Poland’s foreign minister, Józef Beck (1894–1944), had become disinterested in helping Ethiopia and unwilling to endanger his relationship with the Italians, still viewed as potential allies against the Germans.86 Nevertheless, the Italian invasion and Western nonintervention helped persuade Beck that “the current colonial system, which above all consists of metropoles drawing profits from their colonial possessions, is in the stage of breaking down” and that Poland stood “before the increasingly self-imposing imperative of searching for new forms of solving the colonial problem in other ways.”87 In consequence, Beck decided to use colonial demands as a diplomatic instrument in negotiating for certain political and economic goals. In September 1936, the foreign minister officially declared Poland’s interest in colonial affairs in order to pressure the League of Nations to reintroduce a more liberal system of international commerce (barter trade) and to eliminate migration barriers. After these efforts had failed, Beck continued to issue colonial demands in bilateral relations with Britain and Germany, sometimes to distract Hitler’s attention from Europe and to redirect London’s appeasement efforts toward Africa.88 Furthermore, making calls for colonies also functioned as a way to communicate to the French that Poland was ceasing to be a client state and was aspiring to the role of an equal partner, also in the colonies.89 The diplomatic function of Beck’s colonial ambitions—especially the new attitude toward France—was reflected in Polish colonial writing and the ways in which it was received abroad. In 1936, Ossendowski’s former travel companion, Jerzy Giżycki, published a set of recollections from

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French colonies in Africa, attacking local white “caciques” and describing French colonial rule as decadent.90 Since the administration of French Sudan had hired Giżycki in 1928 as a photographer and since the Polish traveler was said to have executed the task “impeccably,” this came as a surprise.91 The Quai d’Orsay wrote that Giżycki “mercilessly attacks the methods of French settlement and demands a new distribution of colonial lands.”92 The French interest in the memoir also stemmed from the fact that it had been translated into German and referenced in Nazi colonial propaganda.93 The author of a French analysis of the book, drafted in March 1936, pointed out that Giżycki now described France’s colonial methods in West Africa as absurd and its personnel as unable to fulfill the promises of a “civilizing mission.”94 In response to an open letter from a French journalist asking him to condemn Giżycki, the Polish ambassador in Paris underlined the Polish government’s alleged inability to censor the writer.95 The contrast between Ossendowski’s earlier account of French colonialism—written at the time of a stronger Polish-French anticommunist alliance—and Giżycki’s critical discourse was stark and suggested the interdependence between Polish politics and colonial discourse.

Conclusion While employing colonial demands as diplomatic instruments, Warsaw was far from completely abandoning colonial expansion. Instead, in early 1937 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs devised a “ten-year colonial plan,” whereby Polish entities would inject capital into strategic locations where raw materials would be produced and commercial agents trained.96 The politically unstable region of southeastern Africa—including the Union of South Africa, Portuguese Mozambique, and the Rhodesias—was identified as the most appropriate for such infiltration.97 This final approach to colonial expansion was reminiscent of the first “colonial action” in Angola, where Polish settlers had attempted to thrive economically alongside other Europeans. If Africans now appeared in the internal diplomatic reports concerning the Polish efforts in Mozambique, they were once again mentioned as a source of cheap labor and statistical figures.98 At the same time, a separate “ten-year settlement plan” was designed for South America, where emigration was to be channeled to further reinforce and expand the Polish communities in the Brazilian-Argentinian-Paraguayan borderland.99 This confirmed that a strictly “colonial” expansion was to be an expansion of great capital that required indigenous labor, which reduced Africans to mere numbers in official Polish colonial discourse.

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The purpose of this chapter has not been to deemphasize racism or nationalism inherent in different forms of Polish colonial discourse. Instead, it has intended to demonstrate that such writing reflected Polish domestic and international considerations for expansion in Africa, whether it was support for the French Empire against indigenous communism or clandestine injection of capital. The official form of discourse appeared more nuanced if the political strategy required making concessions to Africans in line with what I have called Promethean colonialism. But independent colonial writing that referenced the Polish ambitions—Kazimierz Nowak’s letters—reflected domestic and international Polish qualms, too. In both cases, Poland’s postimperial status and colonial aspirations combined to produce contradictory narratives corresponding to a colonial in-betweenness, or simultaneous “coloniality” and “postcoloniality.” While interesting and revealing of the Polish interwar psyche, this conflicted discourse could not generate a coherent ideology that could sway either Europeans or Africans to the Polish colonial cause. Piotr Puchalski is an assistant professor at the Pedagogical University of Kraków in Poland, where he works at the Department of Contemporary History. His historical interests include Polish, French, British, and American diplomacy, Western colonialism, totalitarian regimes, and modern ideologies.

Notes 1. Studies that identify nationalism and antisemitism as the driving factors behind Polish colonial aspirations include Grażyna Borkowska-Arciuch, “Polskie doświadczenie kolonialne” [Polish colonial experiences], Teksty Drugie [Second texts], no. 4 (2007): 15–24; Paul N. Hehn, A Low Dishonest Decade: The Great Powers, Eastern Europe, and the Economic Origins of World War II, 1930–1941 (New York: Continuum, 2002); Taras Hunczak, “Polish Colonial Ambitions in the Inter-war Period,” Slavic Review 26, no. 4 (1967): 648–56; Joseph Marcus, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919–1939 (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1983); Tara Zahra, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World (W. W. Norton & Company, 2016). 2. See, for example, Bogusław Bakuła, “Colonial and Postcolonial Aspects of Polish Discourse on the Eastern ‘Borderlands,’” in From Sovietology to Postcoloniality: Poland and Ukraine from a Postcolonial Perspective, ed. Janusz Korek (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2007), 41–59; Clare Cavanagh, “Postcolonial Poland,” Common Knowledge 10, no. 1 (5 December 2003): 82–92; Janusz Korek, ed., From Sovietology to Postcoloniality: Poland and Ukraine from a Postcolonial Perspective (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2007); Lucy Mayblin, Aneta Piekut, and Gill Val-

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4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

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entine, “‘Other’ Posts in ‘Other’ Places: Poland through a Postcolonial Lens?” Sociology 50, no. 1 (February 2016): 60–76. Maria Rhode, “Zivilisierungsmissionen und Wissenschaft: Polen kolonial?” [Civilizing missions and science: Colonial Poland?], Geschichte und Gesellschaft [History and society] 39, no. 1 (2013): 5–34; Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840–1920 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019). The ambiguity of Polish attitudes toward the (post)colonial world also comes across in recent studies of the Polish role during the Cold War: Piotr H. Kosicki, “The Catholic 1968: Poland, Social Justice, and the Global Cold War,” Slavic Review 77, no. 3 (2018): 638–60; Małgorzata Mazurek, “Polish Economists in Nehru’s India: Making Science for the Third World in an Era of De-Stalinization and Decolonization,” Slavic Review 77, no. 3 (2018): 588–610. One scholar using the term “colonialism” without qualification in relation to the Polish ambitions is Tara Zahra: Tara Zahra, “Zionism, Emigration, and East European Colonialism,” in Colonialism and the Jews, ed. Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 166–92. Marta Grzechnik has hinted at this phenomenon: Grzechnik, “The Missing Second World: On Poland and Postcolonial Studies,” Interventions, 28 March 2019, 1–17. I derive the term from interwar Prometheism, a set of policies pursued by the Polish military intelligence in the Soviet Union. In the East, Piłsudski’s agents worked to create a coalition of European nationalities whose uprisings would cause Lenin and Stalin’s empire to implode along national lines. Concerning Prometheism, see Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Marek Kornat, ed., Ruch prometejski i walka o przebudowę Europy Wschodniej (1918–1940): Studia i szkice [The Promethean movement and the struggle for the reconstruction of Eastern Europe (1918–1940): Studies and sketches] (Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN, 2012). Pierwszy powszechny spis Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 30 września 1921 roku [The first universal census of the Republic of Poland from 30 September 1921] (Warsaw, 1927), 56. Percentage calculations from Patrice M. Dabrowski, Poland: The First Thousand Years (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014), 232. For example: Robert Blobaum, A Minor Apocalypse: Warsaw during the First World War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017); Bartosz Ogórek, Niezatarte piętno? Wpływ I wojny światowej na ludność miasta Krakowa [Permanent mark? The effect of World War I on the population of the city of Kraków] (Kraków: Universitas, 2018). Apart from Habsburg Galicia, where the Polish gentry enjoyed autonomy, the lands that comprised interwar Poland had been under foreign administration: Great Duchy of Poznań (German), West Prussia (German), Upper Silesia (German), Kingdom of Poland (Russian, then briefly German). In addition, the lands that became Poland’s eastern provinces, such as Polesie, had been under Russian administration but under different conditions than the Kingdom of Poland. Andrzej Garlicki, Przewrót majowy [The May Coup] (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1987); Mariusz Wołos, O Piłsudskim, Dmowskim i zamachu majowym: Dyplomacja sowiecka wobec Polski w okresie kryzysu politycznego 1925–1926 [On Piłsudski, Dmowski and the May Coup: The Soviet Diplomacy toward Poland during the period of political crisis 1925–1926] (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2013).

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11. Jerzy Lukowski and W. H. Zawadzki, A Concise History of Poland, Cambridge Concise Histories (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 237; Adam Zamoyski, The Polish Way: A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and Their Culture (New York: Hippocrene, 1995), 347–50. 12. Wychodźca [Emigrant], 14 May 1922. 13. Jerzy Mazurek, Kraj a emigracja: Ruch ludowy wobec wychodźstwa chłopskiego do krajów Ameryki Łacińskiej (do 1939 roku) [The country and emigration: The peasant movement and the emigration of peasants to the countries of South America (until 1939)] (Warsaw: Biblioteka Iberyjska, 2006), 119–40. 14. Kazimierz Warchałowski, Do Parany: Przewodnik dla podróżujących i wychodźców [To Parana: Guidebook for travelers and emigrants] (Kraków, 1903). 15. Piotr Puchalski, “Polityka kolonialna międzywojennej Polski w świetle źródeł krajowych i zagranicznych: nowe spojrzenie (1918–1945) [The colonial policy of interwar Poland in the light of domestic and foreign sources: A new look (1918–1945)],” Res Gestae 7 (2018): 69–76. 16. Tadeusz Białas, Liga Morska i Kolonialna 1930–1939 [Maritime and Colonial League 1930–1939] (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1983), 11–26. 17. Przemysław Olstowski, Generał Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer [General Gustaw OrliczDreszer] (Toruń: Adam Marszałek, 2000), 334–40. 18. Jan Zajączkowski, “O źródło surowców dla Polski [For a Source of Raw Materials for Poland],” Wychodźca, 27 August 1922; Mieczysław Bohdan Lepecki, “O przyszłość naszego wychodźtwa i własne kolonie [For the future of our emigration and our own colonies],” Wychodźca, 4 May 1924. 19. Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer, Program Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej [Program of the Maritime and Colonial League] (Warsaw: Liga Morska i Kolonialna, 1932), 6. 20. Kazimierz Warchałowski, “Przyczynek do historii polskiej akcji kolonizacyjnej [Introduction to the history of Polish colonization action],” Morze, no. 9 (1932): 24–26. 21. Transcript of the 233rd Session of the Legislative Sejm, 10 June 1921, 28–38, RPII/0/233, Biblioteka Sejmowa. 22. Orlicz-Dreszer, Program Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej, 6. 23. Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer, “Patriotyzm gospodarczy” [Economic patriotism], in Na nowe drogi [To new roads] (Warsaw: Liga Morska i Kolonialna, 1935), 5–6, 14–19. 24. See Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer, “Zarys akcji kolonialnej i kolonizacyjnej polskiej na terenach Ameryki Południowej oraz francuskich kolonii afrykańskich [Sketch of the Polish colonial and colonizing action in South America and French African colonies],” January 1932, 2/8/6/72-1, Akta Grupowe 1932–1939, Prezydium Rady Ministrów w Warszawie, Archiwum Akt Nowych (hereafter: AAN). 25. Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer, “W poszukiwaniu idei [In search for an idea],” Morze, no. 1 (1937): 4–5. 26. Leon Bulowski, Kolonie dla Polski [Colonies for Poland] (Warsaw, 1932). 27. Concerning the colonial order emerging in the interwar period, see Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 28. “Sprawozdanie MSZ: Działalność w sprawach kolonialnych i emigracyjnych (fragmenty) [Report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Activity in colonial and emigration affairs (fragments)],” 20 December 1933, doc. 372, in Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1933 [Polish documents on foreign policy 1933] ed. Wojciech

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Skóra and Piotr Długołe˛cki (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2015), 833–40. See Frederick Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (London: Blackwood and Sons, 1922). It should also be noted that, while promoting the presence of its faithful in Africa, the Catholic Church, in line with its internationalist missionary teaching, disagreed with this premise of Africa being used to accelerate Poland’s modernity. In fact, it was the Europeans, including Poles, that the Holy See charged with introducing corporatist modernity to Africa. See Ryszard Dobrowolski, “Obraz Afryki w świetle katolickich czasopism misyjnych i publicystyki w Polsce lat międzywojennych [The image of Africa in the light of Catholic missionary magazines and publications in interwar Poland],” Przegląd Socjologiczny [Sociological review] 27 (1975): 179–218. See Alfred W. McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), 27–59. See Maciej Górny, Kreślarze ojczyzn: Geografowie i granice międzywojennej Europy [The drawers of fatherlands: Geographers and the borders of interwar Europe] (Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN, 2017). The most important works in the Polish field of geopolitics include Wacław Nałkowski, Poland as a Geographical Entity (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1917); Eugeniusz Romer, Poland, the Land and the State (New York: American Geographic Society, 1917). See Andrzej Szczerski, “Kolonializm i nowoczesność: Liga Morska i Kolonialna w II Rzeczpospolitej” [Colonialism and modernity: Maritime and Colonial League in the Second Polish Republic], in Polska & Azja: Od Rzeczpospolitej Szlacheckiej do Nangar Khel; przewodnik interdyscyplinarny [Poland & Asia: From the nobles’ republic to Nangar Khel; An interdisciplinary guide], ed. Max Cegielski (Poznań: Fundacja Malta, 2013), 43–66. See Leon Radzikowski, “Eur-Afryka,” Morze, no. 4 (1931): 22–24; Benjamin J. Thorpe, “Eurafrica: A Pan-European Vehicle for Central European Colonialism (1923–1939),” European Review 26, no. 3 (2018): 503–13. Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski, Wśród Czarnych [Among Blacks] (Lwów: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1927), 3. Ibid., 110. Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski, Niewolnicy Słońca [The slaves of sun] (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Polskie, 1927), 231. Ossendowski, Wśród Czarnych, 204. Ibid., 201. Ibid., 239. Mieczysław Bohdan Lepecki, U wrót tajemniczego Maghrebu [At the gates of the mysterious Maghreb] (Warsaw: Księgarnia Biblioteki Dzieł Wyborowych, 1928), 39–41. Ibid., 56, 70. Stanisław G., “Polacy na froncie marokańskim [Poles on the Moroccan Front],” Wychodźca, 4 October 1925, 3–6. Michał Waszyński, Głos Pustyni [Sound of the desert], 1932. Franciszek Feliks Łyp, Marzenia o ziemi pod równikiem: Wspomnienia z lat 1913– 1935 [Dreams of a land at the equator: Reminiscences from the years 1913–1935] (Warsaw, 1972), 34–35.

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45. Kazimierz Głuchowski, “Akcja kolonialna Ligi Morskiej i Rzecznej [The colonial action of the Maritime and River League],” Morze, no. 12 (1928): 27–29; Tadeusz Romer to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 16 August 1935, 65010/1.3, Poselstwo (Portugal), Hoover Institution Library & Archives (hereafter: HILA). 46. Rita Zilberman, “Se o Imigrante Polaco e Bom Ou Não Colono Para Angola [Is a Polish immigrant a good settler in Angola],” July 1932, 65010/3.6, Poselstwo (Portugal), HILA. 47. Franciszek Feliks Łyp, Wysoki płaskowyż Angoli: Sprawozdanie kierownika ekspedycji polskiej do Angoli w roku 1929 [The high plateau of Angola: Report of the head of the Polish expedition to Angola in 1929] (Warsaw: Naukowy Instytut Emigracyjny, 1930), 115. 48. Jerzy Chmielewski, Angola: Notatki z podróży po Afryce [Angola: Notes from a journey in Africa] (Warsaw: M. Arcta, 1929), 28–31. 49. Łukasz Wierzbicki in Kazimierz Nowak, Across the Dark Continent: Bicycle Diaries from Africa 1931–1936, ed. Łukasz Wierzbicki, trans. Ida Naruszewicz-Rodger (Poznań: Sorus, 2017), 11–22. 50. Ibid., 23–24. 51. Letter from 5 January 1934 in Kazimierz Nowak, Kochana Maryś! Listy z Afryki: Kongo Belgijskie—Ruanda—Urundi, Rodezja Północna i Południowa, Związek Południowej Afryki [Dear Maryś! Letters from Africa: Belgian Congo—Rwanda— Urundi, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Union of South Africa], ed. Dominik Szmajda (Poznań: Sorus, 2015), 2:338. 52. Nowak, Across the Dark Continent, 62. 53. Letter from 27 July 1934 in Kazimierz Nowak, Kochana Maryś! Listy z Afryki: Zwia˛zek Południowej Afryki, Afryka Południowo-Zachodnia, Angola, Kongo Belgijskie [Dear Maryś! Letters from Africa: South Africa, South-West Africa, Angola, Belgian Congo], ed. Dominik Szmajda (Poznań: Sorus, 2016), 3:103. 54. Letter from 27 July 1934 in ibid., 3:104. 55. Nowak, Across the Dark Continent, 179. 56. Ibid., 180. 57. Letter from 7 February 1933 in Nowak, Kochana Maryś! (2015), 2:34. 58. Letter from 1 March 1934 in ibid., 2:404. 59. Letters from 2 January 1934 and 29 January 1934 in ibid., 2:331, 364–65. 60. Letter from 21 July 1934 in Nowak, Kochana Maryś! (2016), 3:98–100. 61. Letter from 15 January 1933 in Nowak, Kochana Maryś! (2015), 2:21. 62. Letter from 26 February 1933 in ibid., 2:52. 63. Letter from 22 May 1933 in ibid., 2:147. 64. Letter from 31 December 1934 in Nowak, Kochana Maryś! (2016), 3:221. 65. Nowak, Across the Dark Continent, 260. 66. Puchalski, “Polityka kolonialna międzywojennej Polski,” 84. 67. Adell Patton, “Liberia and Containment Policy against Colonial Take-Over: Public Health and Sanitation Reform, 1912–1953,” Liberian Studies Journal 30, no. 2 (2005): 40–65; Ibrahim K. Sundiata, Brothers and Strangers: Black Zion, Black Slavery, 1914–1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). 68. A. J. Barker, The Civilizing Mission: A History of the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935– 1936 (New York: The Dial Press, 1968); Angelo Del Boca, The Ethiopian War, 1935–1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969); Anthony Mockler, Haile

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84.

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Selassie’s War: The Italian-Ethiopian Campaign, 1935–1941 (New York: Random House, 1984). See Clarence Lorenzo Simpson, The Symbol of Liberia: Memoirs of C. L. Simpson (Diplomatic Press and Publishing Company, 1961), 191; Haile Selassie, My Life and Ethiopia’s Progress, 1892–1937: The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie, trans. Edward Ullendorff (Oxford University Press, 1976), 1:173. French Minster of Colonies to Quai d’Orsay, 5 May 1934, 68CPCOM/6, Série KAfrique, Correspondance politique et commerciale, Archives diplomatiques de Paris (hereafter: ADP); French Minister of the Interior to Louis Barthou, 4 June 1934, 68CPCOM/6, Série K-Afrique, Correspondance politique et commerciale, ADP; Feliks Kopczyński, Liberia: Zarys geograficzno-opisowy [Liberia: A geodescriptive outline] (Warsaw: Biblioteka Służby Geograficznej, 1936), 129. Teodor Cybulski, “Notatka dla Pana Ministra w sprawie Liberii [Note for the minister concerning Liberia],” 8 October 1934, A.11.49/3, Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych (hereafter: MSZ), PISM. Agreement between the LMiK and Liberia, 28 April 28, 1934, 2/470/2/5, Konsulat Honorowy RP w Monrowii, AAN. Cybulski, “Notatka dla Pana Ministra w sprawie Liberii.” Teodor Cybulski, “Plan akcji liberyjskiej [Liberian action plan],” 14 September 1934, A.11.49/3, MSZ, Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum. Op. cit. 6. A. Mir., “Legenda o ‘polskim Lawrence’” [The legend of “Polish Lawrence”], Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny [Illustrated daily courier], 4 January 1937, 3. Ibid., 4. Janusz Makarczyk, Liberia, Liberyjczyk, Liberyjka [Liberia, Liberian, Liberian] (Warsaw: Główna Księgarnia Wojskowa, 1936), 5–18. Ibid., 102. Ibid., 104–9. Piotr Puchalski, “The Polish Mission to Liberia, 1934–1938: Constructing Poland’s Colonial Identity,” Historical Journal 60, no. 4 (December 2017): 1071–96. Bohdan Wojewódzki’s report from dinner with Haile Selassie, 4 May 1934, 2/322/5368, MSZ, AAN. Alfons Kula, “Raport Chargé d’affaires a.i. poselstwa w Kairze o możliwościach nawiązania stosunków polityczno-handlowych z Etiopią” [Report of the chargé d’affaires at the legation in Cairo about the possibilities of establishing political and trade relations with Ethiopia], 22 November 1934, doc. 308, in Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1934 [Polish documents on foreign policy 1934], ed. Stanisław Żerko and Piotr Długołęcki (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2014), 717. Ibid., 718–19. Beyond Ibrahim, it was also a Łódź-born Jewish scholar and Revisionist Zionist sympathizer, Jacques Faitlovitch (Faitlowicz), who used similar arguments to persuade Warsaw to ratify the “treaty of friendship” with Addis-Ababa, which had been signed in Paris on 26 December 1934. See 2/322/5366, MSZ, AAN. Telegram from Alfons Kula to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 11 April 1935, 2/322/5368, MSZ, AAN; Intelligence reports, 1935, I.303.4.1886, Oddział II Sztabu Generalnego, Centralne Archiwum Wojskowe Wojskowego Biura Historycznego.

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86. Józef Beck, “Notatka naczelnika Wydziału Organizacji Międzynarodowych: Instrukcja ministra spraw zagranicznych dla delegata przy Lidze Narodów w sprawie konfliktu etiopskiego” [Note by the head of the Department of International Organizations: Instruction by the minister of foreign affairs to the delegate to the League of Nations regarding the Ethiopian Conflict], 22 July 1935, doc. 229, in Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1934 [Polish documents on foreign policy 1934], ed. Stanisław Żerko and Piotr Długołęcki (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2017), 522. 87. “Niepodpisana notatka na temat możliwości uzyskania kolonii przez Polskę [Unsigned note on the possibility of Poland obtaining a colony],” 18 June 1936, doc. 155, in Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1934 [Polish documents on foreign policy 1934], ed. Stanisław Żerko and Piotr Długołęcki (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2011), 238 88. Puchalski, “Polityka kolonialna międzywojennej Polski,” 97–107. 89. Magnus Brechtken, “‘. . . La Géographie demeure’: Frankreich, Polen und die Kolonial- und Judenfrage am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkriegs” [“. . . La Géographie demeure”: France, Poland and the colonial and Jewish questions on the eve of World War II], Francia: Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte [Francia: Research on Western European history] 25, no. 3 (1998): 29–60. 90. Jerzy Giżycki, Między morzem a pustynią [Between the sea and the desert] (Warsaw: Biblioteka Polska, 1936). 91. Fousset, Lieutenant-General of French Sudan to Governor-General of French West Africa, 2 August 1934, 61COL517, Direction des Affaires politiques, Ministère des Colonies, Archives nationales d’outre-mer (hereafter: ANOM). 92. Jacques Stern, Minister of Colonies, to the Minister of the Interior, 1936, 61COL24, Direction des Affaires politiques, Ministère des Colonies, ANOM. 93. François Poncet to Yvon Delbos, 7 July 1936, 5, 61COL1040, Direction des Affaires politiques, Ministère des Colonies, ANOM. 94. “Analyse d’un ouvrage intitulé ‘Biali i Czarni’ (Blancs et Noirs) de M. Giżycki, edité à Varsovie par la Librairie Gebethner et Wolff et vendu à Paris par sa succurs le 123 Boulevard St-Germain [Analysis of a work entitled ‘Biali i Czarni’ (whites and blacks) by M. Giżycki, published in Warsaw by Gebethner and Wolff and sold in Paris through its branch at 123 Boulevard St-Germain],” March 1936, 2, 61COL24, Direction des Affaires politiques, Ministère des Colonies, ANOM. 95. “A propos de ‘Blancs et Noirs’” [On “whites and blacks”], La Dépêche coloniale illustrée [Illustrated colonial dispatch], 24 March 1936. 96. “Projekt 10 letniego planu kolonialnego” [Draft of a 10-Year Colonial Plan], 1937, 2/322/9585, MSZ, AAN. 97. Jan Kozielewski, “Ekspansja polska w Afryce [Polish Expansion in Africa],” 28 March 1939, 2/322/9737, MSZ, AAN. 98. Kozielewski, “Załącznik No. 2. Mozambik” [Enclosure no. 2 Mozambique], 28 March 1939, 2/322/9737, MSZ, AAN. 99. “Projekt 10 letniego planu kolonialnego [Draft of a 10-year settlement plan],” 1937, 2/322/9585, MSZ, AAN.

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Makarczyk, Janusz. Liberia, Liberyjczyk, Liberyjka. [Liberia, Liberian, Liberian]. Warsaw: Główna Księgarnia Wojskowa, 1936. Nowak, Kazimierz. Kochana Maryś! Listy z Afryki: Kongo Belgijskie—Ruanda—Urundi, Rodezja Północna i Południowa, Związek Południowej Afryki [Dear Maryś! Letters from Africa: Belgian Congo—Rwanda—Urundi, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Union of South Africa]. Edited by Dominik Szmajda. Vol. 2. Poznań: Sorus, 2015. ———. Kochana Maryś! Listy z Afryki. Związek Południowej Afryki, Afryka PołudniowoZachodnia, Angola, Kongo Belgijskie. Edited by Dominik Szmajda. Vol. 3. Poznań: Sorus, 2016. ———. Across the Dark Continent: Bicycle Diaries from Africa 1931–1936. Edited by Łukasz Wierzbicki. Translated by Ida Naruszewicz-Rodger. Poznań: Sorus, 2017. Orlicz-Dreszer, Gustaw. “Patriotyzm gospodarczy” [Economic patriotism]. In Na nowe drogi [To new roads], 3–19. Warsaw: Liga Morska i Kolonialna, 1935. ———. Program Ligi Morskiej i Kolonialnej [Program of the Maritime and Colonial League]. Warsaw: Liga Morska i Kolonialna, 1932. Ossendowski, Ferdynand Antoni. Niewolnicy Słońca [The slaves of sun]. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Polskie, 1927. ———. Wśród Czarnych [Among Blacks]. Lwów: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1927. Pierwszy powszechny spis Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 30 września 1921 roku [The first universal census of the Republic of Poland from 30 September 1921]. Warsaw, 1927. Selassie, Haile. My Life and Ethiopia’s Progress, 1892–1937: The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Selassie. Translated by Edward Ullendorff. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press, 1976. Simpson, Clarence Lorenzo. The Symbol of Liberia: Memoirs of C. L. Simpson. London: Diplomatic Press and Publishing Company, 1961. Skóra, Wojciech, and Piotr Długołe˛cki, eds. Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1933 [Polish documents on foreign policy 1933]. Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2015. Warchałowski, Kazimierz. Do Parany: Przewodnik dla podróżujących i wychodźców [To Parana: Guidebook for travelers and emigrants]. Kraków, 1903. Waszyński, Michał, dir. Głos Pustyni [Sound of the desert]. Warsaw, 1932. Żerko, Stanisław, and Piotr Długołe˛cki, eds. Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1936 [Polish documents on foreign policy 1936]. Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2011. ———. Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1934 [Polish documents on foreign policy 1934]. Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2014. ———. Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1935 [Polish documents on foreign policy 1935]. Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2017.

Books, Articles, Dissertations Bakuła, Bogusław. “Colonial and Postcolonial Aspects of Polish Discourse on the Eastern ‘Borderlands.’” In From Sovietology to Postcoloniality: Poland and Ukraine from a Postcolonial Perspective, edited by Janusz Korek, 41–59. Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2007.

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movement and the emigration of peasants to the countries of South America (until 1939)]. Warsaw: Biblioteka Iberyjska, 2006. Mazurek, Małgorzata. “Polish Economists in Nehru’s India: Making Science for the Third World in an Era of De-Stalinization and Decolonization.” Slavic Review 77, no. 3 (2018): 588–610. McCoy, Alfred W. In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017. Mockler, Anthony. Haile Selassie’s War: The Italian-Ethiopian Campaign, 1935–1941. New York: Random House, 1984. Ogórek, Bartosz. Niezatarte piętno? Wpływ I wojny światowej na ludność miasta Krakowa [Permanent mark? The effect of World War I on the population of the city of Kraków]. Kraków: Universitas, 2018. Olstowski, Przemysław. Generał Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer [General Gustaw OrliczDreszer]. Toruń: Adam Marszałek, 2000. Patton, Adell. “Liberia and Containment Policy against Colonial Take-Over: Public Health and Sanitation Reform, 1912–1953.” Liberian Studies Journal 30, no. 2 (2005): 40–65. Pedersen, Susan. The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Puchalski, Piotr. “Polityka kolonialna międzywojennej Polski w świetle źródeł krajowych i zagranicznych: nowe spojrzenie (1918–1945).” [The colonial policy of interwar Poland in the light of domestic and foreign sources: A new look (1918–1945)] Res Gestae 7 (2018): 68–121. ———. “The Polish Mission to Liberia, 1934–1938: Constructing Poland’s Colonial Identity.” Historical Journal 60, no. 4 (December 2017): 1071–96. Rhode, Maria. “Zivilisierungsmissionen und Wissenschaft: Polen kolonial?” [Civilizing missions and science: Colonial Poland?]. Geschichte und Gesellschaft [History and society] 39, no. 1 (2013): 5–34. Snyder, Timothy. Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Sundiata, Ibrahim K. Brothers and Strangers: Black Zion, Black Slavery, 1914–1940. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Szczerski, Andrzej. “Kolonializm i nowoczesność: Liga Morska i Kolonialna w II Rzeczpospolitej” [Colonialism and modernity: Maritime and Colonial League in the Second Polish Republic]. In Polska & Azja: Od Rzeczpospolitej Szlacheckiej do Nangar Khel; Przewodnik interdyscyplinarny [Poland & Asia: From the nobles’ republic to Nangar Khel: An interdisciplinary guide], edited by Max Cegielski, 43–66. Poznań: Fundacja Malta, 2013. Thorpe, Benjamin J. “Eurafrica: A Pan-European Vehicle for Central European Colonialism (1923–1939).” European Review 26, no. 3 (2018): 503–13. Valerio, Lenny A. Ureña. Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840–1920. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019. Wołos, Mariusz. O Piłsudskim, Dmowskim i zamachu majowym: Dyplomacja sowiecka wobec Polski w okresie kryzysu politycznego 1925–1926 [On Piłsudski, Dmowski and the May Coup: The Soviet Diplomacy toward Poland during the period of political crisis 1925–1926]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2013.

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Zahra, Tara. The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. ———. “Zionism, Emigration, and East European Colonialism.” In Colonialism and the Jews, edited by Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel, 166–92. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. Zamoyski, Adam. The Polish Way: A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and Their Culture. New York: Hippocrene, 1995.

CHAPTER 9

Eastern Promises Romanian Responses to the War in Vietnam



Jill Massino

On 8 July 1966, Romania, along with other Warsaw Pact countries, issued a joint declaration demanding an immediate and unconditional end to the bombing of North Vietnam, the removal of all American and allied troops from the South, the closure of US military bases, and the reunification of North and South.1 In the declaration, the Warsaw Pact referred to US operations in Vietnam as “extremely serious war crimes” and a “flagrant expression of imperialism” and pledged “material, moral, and political support to [North] Vietnam.” Moreover, they offered to send military volunteers to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; North Vietnam).2 The declaration, which was drafted at a meeting of the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact in Bucharest, was the boldest condemnation of the war by Eastern Bloc leaders to date and received front-page coverage in the Romanian communist daily, Scânteia (The spark). Issued a week after the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong—bombings that destroyed oil facilities and storage sites and targeted the North Vietnamese navy—the declaration highlighted socialist states’ commitment to anticolonial struggles and support for sovereignty in the Global South (Third World). The declaration was not only bold but also useful—especially for the Romanian leadership. On a basic level, it demonstrated a willingness to assume a strong position in one of the largest conflicts since World War II. Additionally, by condemning US barbarity (i.e., the mistreatment of Northern soldiers, atrocities perpetrated against women, children, and the elderly, the human and environmental impact of chemical warfare) it highlighted Romania’s commitment to peace, human rights, and the Geneva Convention while also offering a moral critique of neocolonialism. As these sentiments were shared by individuals around the globe, Romania’s position on the war had the potential to renew its citizens’ faith in socialism. More broadly, Romania’s engagement in Vietnam illustrated

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Nicolae Ceauşescu’s belief that small and mid-sized states in Eastern Europe could play an influential role in geopolitics and, specifically, the Global South, thereby challenging Great Power hegemony. Finally, like the East German leadership, Ceauşescu recognized that “the propaganda value of the Vietnam War was all too good to be true, and certainly too good to pass up.”3 This chapter analyzes Romanian representations of and responses to the war in Vietnam. Like other recently decolonized countries, Vietnam, particularly a unified Vietnam under communist leadership, was a potential model of alternative development in the Far East.4 Moreover, support for Vietnamese struggles against the United States—and its ally, South Vietnam—reflected the anti-imperialist stance of the Eastern Bloc generally and Ceauşescu’s national approach to communism specifically. Thus, it was a site where Ceauşescu could stake out a position independent of the two superpowers. Importantly, the war also served as a mobilizing agent for some Romanians, eliciting offers of military and professional service to the North. As such, in Romania the global served as a potentially salient legitimizing agent for the local. I focus on the early years of US intervention (1964–68), when Romania assumed one of the strongest positions—within the Warsaw Pact—on the war. During this period US bombing intensified, as did the ground war, due to the near collapse of ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) forces. In response, global outrage and popular mobilization against the war also increased—as did its coverage in Romanian media. Finally, over the course of 1966–67, hundreds of Romanians wrote to the communist leadership requesting permission to fight alongside North Vietnamese forces.5 I draw on official media, particularly reports, op-eds, and personalized accounts from Scânteia and the foreign affairs magazine Lumea (The world). Alongside exposing the hypocrisy of US foreign policy, Romanian media highlighted Romania’s commitment to peace, human rights, and national sovereignty—both in Vietnam and throughout the world. These sources are complemented by letters, penned by ordinary Romanians, to the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (Partidul Comunist Român; PCR). The letter writers convey deep distress over events in Vietnam and reflect the power of state media in shaping popular understandings of the war. They also illustrate the continued significance of antifascism and World War II in Romanian popular memory. As employed here the Eastern Gaze is multidirectional. Its point of origin is Romania, a country located geographically and discursively in the East (i.e., Eastern Europe), but its field of vision is vast, as its gaze is directed both to the East (specifically Southeast Asia) and to the West (specifically the United States). Moreover, this gaze is ideologically inflected as Romania looks

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both to its socialist brothers and sisters in Vietnam and its fair-weather capitalist-imperialist friends in the United States. In its representational form, however, this gaze is monovalent and homophonic: it assumes one meaning and communicates similar messages, albeit through different voices.

Romania and the Global South Romanian engagement with the Global South began in the 1950s in the form of healthcare, humanitarian, and (re)construction initiatives in North Korea and Vietnam.6 This was a two-way street: in the late 1950s Vietnamese specialists were employed at the Reșița factory in Romania, and Vietnamese youth began studying at Romanian universities. Like other Eastern Bloc leaders, Romania’s Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (1947–65) embraced Nikita Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence, predicated on (relative) rapprochement with the West, support for anticolonial struggles, and promotion of socialism in other parts of the globe. A Marxist-Leninist, Dej, like Khrushchev, believed that decolonization was historically inevitable. Accordingly, as capitalism decayed and countries throughout the globe adopted socialist—or at least progressive—approaches to governance and the economy, the entire capitalist-imperialist system would collapse. In the early 1960s, however, Dej and Khrushchev parted ways, and Romania began distancing itself from the Soviet sphere. This was a function of the Sino-Soviet split, during which Romania assumed a neutral position, and Dej’s refusal to participate in COMECON’s Valev Plan, which would have relegated Romania to an agricultural backwater and hampered industrialization efforts.7 This rupture was most explicitly articulated in Dej’s 1964 “April Declaration” in which he proclaimed the equality of all socialist states and their right to embrace national paths to communism. To secure new trading partners and bolster industrialization, Dej looked outside the Bloc, cultivating relations with the West in the aim of receiving loans and technology transfers. While economically beneficial, these efforts, along with a de-Russification campaign, were also designed to legitimize Dej’s rule. During this period, Romanian interventions in the Global South remained modest, especially when compared to those of Yugoslavia, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.8 With the advent of Ceauşescu to power in March 1965, Romania began courting nonaligned countries and actively participated in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Romania’s engagement with the Global South was elaborated through diplomatic accords, trade partnerships, development projects, worker and student

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exchanges, and cultural programs. Through these soft power initiatives, Ceauşescu promoted noncapitalist modes of modernization and national self-determination in the Global South. He also promoted anticolonialism and socialist internationalism, through which he hoped to secure legitimacy, both at home and abroad. Finally, he promoted a particular vision of the Cold War, one based not simply on an East-West or socialist-capitalist conflict but also on the Great Powers versus small and mid-sized states.9 As such, the Global South provided a stage upon which Romanian players could perform—and perhaps even assume—a prominent, if not pathbreaking, role.

Romania and Vietnam While Romania did not take an official stance on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964—the closest the US came to declaring war on Vietnam—with the onset of “Operation Rolling Thunder,” an incendiary bombing campaign initiated by the US in March 1965 against the North, Romanian media increasingly reported on Vietnam.10 Targeting transportation networks, industries, petroleum refineries, and storage facilities in the DRV, the bombings also destroyed portions of residential neighborhoods in Hanoi and Haiphong—the North’s largest cities. Moreover, the campaign included the use of napalm and other toxic substances ostensibly prohibited under the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In response, the Warsaw Pact issued a joint statement in April 1965 against the bombing and the war more generally, and later that year an NLF (National Liberation Front) delegation visited Romania. By this point, Romania had been supplying the DRV with food, clothing, and gasoline, as well as subsidizing the training of Vietnamese engineers, workers, and students in Romania.11 In early January 1966, Romania and the DRV signed an economic accord, through which the countries exchanged goods and Romania provided a loan to North Vietnam.12 Meanwhile, in February 1966, the PCR began financing a permanent NLF mission in Bucharest, and in May of that year Romania sent diplomats to Hanoi, where they traveled incognito for safety reasons.13 The aim of the diplomatic mission was to observe the situation on the ground and coordinate a plan of action, among other socialist countries, in support of the North.14 In July 1966, Warsaw Pact leaders convened in Bucharest for the aforementioned meeting, whose main purpose was to discuss a common system of security in Europe. However, the war in Vietnam dominated the conference, as did the Romanian leadership. The meeting attracted a great deal of attention, both from Romanians, who engaged in peaceful—albeit orchestrated—demonstrations in Bucharest,

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and Western journalists, who flocked to the capital to witness Ceauşescu’s impassioned criticism of US intervention in Vietnam. At the meeting, Romania advocated a coordinated approach to the war among socialist states, including those outside of the Warsaw Pact such as China—a view that met with disfavor by other Warsaw Pact members, particularly the USSR. After extensive debate, leaders issued the “Declaration on US Aggression in Vietnam,” which, as noted, condemned human rights abuses and the destruction of the built and natural environment. The declaration also emphasized socialist states’ crucial role in the “fight for peace, independence, democracy and socialism” and demanded the withdrawal of all US troops and adherence to the Geneva Agreements until free and fair elections, without foreign interference, could be held in Vietnam. This “support” was not simply an abstract slogan: by 1967, Romanian military aid to Vietnam included heavy weaponry and logistical equipment from torpedoes to mobile power generators.15

Hearts and Minds: Shaping Popular Opinion on the War Romanian propagandists sought to influence popular opinion on the war through reportages, op-eds, and personalized stories. These pieces appeared in the “Peste Hotare” (Abroad) and “Viaţa Internaţională” (International life) sections of Scânteia, in the foreign affairs magazine Lumea, in the youth newspaper Scânteia Tineretului (The youth spark), and in the party women’s magazine Femeia (Woman), among other publications. Articles included reports by Romanian and foreign journalists, as well as excerpts from other media sources—Le Monde, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Times, Liberation—and featured perspectives from a range of players around the globe: world leaders and US policymakers, intellectuals and human rights activists, and ordinary citizens. The aim was to convey the impression of a varied and ever-expanding global front in opposition to an “imperialist war.” The war was also covered on Romanian radio and television and featured in exhibitions and film screenings in Bucharest and other cities.16 While these voices were diverse, they were not divergent: their overarching message demanded an immediate end to US intervention in Vietnam and the unification of North and South under a communist government. Vietnam made it into the news well before the bombings of the DRV, however, as articles in newspapers, specialized magazines and journals, and school manuals documented the country’s culture, politics, and people. By the mid-1960s, Romanians would have been familiar with Vietnam’s long history of colonization and Vietnamese perseverance in the face of foreign

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domination. They also would have known about France’s defeat by the Viet Minh in 1954, the provisional division of the country between North and South with the Geneva Accords, and Ngô Đình Diê.m’s corrupt and repressive government in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN; South Vietnam). Readers would have certainly been outraged by Diê.m’s terror campaign, which, according to a 1963 article in Lumea, had killed 140,000 (in Saigon alone), imprisoned approximately 350,000, destroyed hundreds of Buddhist spiritual sites, and consigned millions of peasants to concentration camps.17 Just what transpired in these jails was intimated in a piece, taken from Paris Match, sardonically titled “Images from South Vietnam: Mission Protection.” The caption explained that “‘South Vietnamese patriots’ [i.e., NLF soldiers] were being transported to a torture center by an American soldier, a one-way trip whose final destination is execution!”18 Especially shocking for ordinary readers, though, would have been the ghastly images of Buddhist monks immolating themselves in protest of Diê.m. Yet, even after Diê.m’s “removal,” readers learned that instability and brutality characterized the RVN, evident in the ten coups that transpired there in less than two years.19 These distressing stories were juxtaposed against inspiring portraits of North Vietnam’s leader, Ho Chi Minh, and the millions—both above and below the seventeenth parallel—devoted to building a strong, sovereign nation. Their efforts included fighting in the NLF, providing its forces with food, shelter, clothing, and intelligence information, and a host of other activities that would serve the ultimate goal of national unification under Northern leadership. With the onset of Operation Rolling Thunder in early 1965—the first major act of aggression initiated by the United States—the war received almost daily coverage in Romania. Articles featured the apprehension of Vietnamese civilians and the razing of villages by US and ARVN forces and were often accompanied by images. One, titled “Civilizers,” depicted handcuffed Vietnamese—whether civilian or military is unclear as they are simply referred to as “patriots”—tethered together at the neck by a long rope led by Marines. The accompanying caption sarcastically reads: “An eloquent image of U.S. troops’ civilizing mission in Vietnam.”20 Another piece, euphemistically titled “Cleansing Operations,” featured a photograph of children, one of them holding a toddler, walking down a road after having been expelled from their village (outside of Da Nang) by US Marines— an image, one journalist noted, that epitomized US aggression in South Vietnam. In the same breath, Romanian journalists reminded readers of official US rationale for intervention: “We are sending troops to South Vietnam to defend the people,” “to protect them,” “to guide them on the path to liberty.”21

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Alongside graphic images, Scânteia published speeches by North Vietnamese leaders. In one, the Central Committee of the Fatherland Front of Vietnam referred to US bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong as “a new stage of extremely serious escalation on the part of the American imperialists in their aggressive war in Vietnam,” which, it emphasized, “not only violated the Geneva Accords and international rights, but revealed the wild nature of the American imperialists, hidden behind a smokescreen of ‘peace negotiations.’” 22 By “speaking through” North Vietnamese leaders, Romanian journalists criticized US brutality and highlighted Romania’s commitment to sovereignty without jeopardizing its relationship with the United States. At the same time, they reminded readers that the Northern leadership was not disdainful of all Americans, just President Lyndon Johnson, select policymakers, and certain members of the armed forces. Thus, in 1966 Scânteia published Ho Chi Minh’s New Year’s Day address, in which he condemned “American imperialist leaders who want to prevent real peace though their aggressive acts against the Vietnamese people, who simply want to be independent,” yet also conveyed “the Vietnamese people’s heartfelt appreciation for the American people, who sustain the traditions of Washington and Lincoln.”23 Vietnamese civilians were portrayed not only as hapless victims but also active agents: resilient, brave, and determined people willing to sacrifice their livelihoods—and lives—for national liberation. Articles reported on popular mobilization against Nguyê˜n Cao Kỳ’s “puppet government,” which had been installed in 1965. According to an April 1966 article, support for Kỳ’s military junta was so meager that uprisings had erupted in a number of South Vietnamese cities in what essentially constituted a “second front” of the war. Known as the “Struggle Movement” by its proponents and “the Buddhist Uprising,” by its adversaries, the article claimed that Da Nang, the headquarters of US forces, had become the epicenter of the demonstrations and that barricades had been erected in parts of the city.24 Meanwhile, the author continued, the imperial city of Huê´ was already in the hands of “the people.” Boycotts of the upcoming election in the RVN further underscored the South’s illegitimacy. One article reported that various segments of the population, including Buddhists, Catholics, workers, students, and members of the police and armed forces, regarded the “Saigon government” as nothing more than a “façade” and thus refused to vote for it. Just as popular mobilization against Southern leadership underscored the RVN’s illegitimacy, gains made by the NLF underscored the DVR legitimacy. Additionally, while maps served as visual testaments to how much territory the NLF had acquired, terms such as “freedom fighters” and “patriotic forces” (in reference to the NLF) reminded readers who the true national heroes were, reinforcing solidarity between Romanians and the Vietnamese.

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To a large extent, Romanian reports reflected those in countries with free presses, including the United States. Where Romanian media differed, albeit to varying degrees, was in its coverage of the PAVN (People’s Army of North Vietnam) and the NLF. In addition to overstating popular support for the NLF, Romanian reports omitted the coercion, repression, and violence, including sexual violence that, at times, accompanied NLF recruitment efforts and the “liberation” of localities. Nor was there acknowledgment of the “Hanoi March” of 6 July 1966—just two days prior to the Warsaw Pact declaration—when fifty-two US POWs were forced to walk through the streets of Hanoi, during which they were beaten by an angry mob. Moreover, no mention was made of the South Vietnamese, many of them governmental employees, who were summarily executed by the NLF in the battle of Huê´ during the Tet Offensive in 1968. Depictions of brutality against Vietnamese civilians demonstrated the political and moral hollowness—not to mention criminality—of US intervention; however, this was only part of the story. In a nod toward balanced reporting, casualties on both sides were acknowledged. An image in Lumea featured youthful—read naïve—American GIs with bandaged-up heads and limbs, while one in Scânteia featured a platoon paying respects to their fallen comrades.25 Thus, while journalists condemned the US military for their savagery, they also acknowledged that some soldiers were simply unassuming boys who had been hoodwinked into fighting an imperialist war that had stolen their innocence, health, and, in some cases, life. In addition to providing balance, such stories reminded readers that capitalist imperialism killed its own, too. Firsthand accounts by foreign journalists were also published in Romanian news sources. The article “Witnesses in Vietnam” provided a bird’seye view of the conflict from journalists around the world—Australia, the United States, Britain, France, West Germany, and Sweden. Their visits, over the course of 1965 and during the “savage bombardment of a peaceful population by the U.S. Air Force,” documented efforts to aid the wounded, meetings with North Vietnamese leaders, and trips to regions that had been “liberated” by the NLF.26 According to one journalist, the war poignantly demonstrated the “unbroken will” of the Vietnamese people, as well as the DRV’s commitment to its citizens. Indeed, far from experiencing material deprivation, the journalist noted that in the North “there were no lines for food or any signs of hunger, and some products were even being exported,” illustrating that the DRV could deliver guns and butter.27 While largely exaggeration, this was not total fabrication. Longtime New York Times reporter Harrison Salisbury, who was in the DRV at the time, noted that after a number of bombings, “I could see with my own eyes that the movement of men, materials, food, and munitions had not been halted . . . The traffic

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flowed in and out of Hanoi and Haiphong night after night after night.”28 This was because the North, relying on Chinese soldiers, rapidly cleared bombed-out areas—especially supply routes to the Ho Chi Minh Trail— enabling PAVN troops to travel southward. Additionally, thanks to China and the USSR, the DRV had antiaircraft and other defense measures at their disposal to use against US bombers. On-the-ground reports were filled with stories of Vietnamese resolve and resilience, while pieces about the American home front were replete with outrage and opprobrium. In an interview conducted in Geneva by a Romanian journalist, leading American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. referred to the Vietnam War as a “nightmare” that affected not only Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers, not only Vietnam and the United States, but the entire globe. Lest readers interpret Dr. King’s comments as anti-American, the piece stressed that his opposition to the war was rooted not in hate but love for America, and his hope that the country would one day serve as a moral example for the world. American intellectuals’ opposition to the war was also featured in the press, including images of demonstrations and excerpts of petitions such as the “Declaration of Conscience against the War in Vietnam,” which, Scânteia noted, was “signed by 7,000 people, including intellectuals and scientists.”29 The planned resumption of bombing in early 1966 in particular elicited a raft of public condemnation. In “Put an End to the War in Vietnam,” an open letter published in the New York Times and excerpted in Scânteia, sixty-nine professors claimed the recent escalation of the conflict would “meet the same fate” as the so-called “offensive for peace” that Johnson had promised to launch during his 1964 presidential campaign. Noting that the NLF already controlled three-quarters of Vietnamese territory, signatories called for an end to bombing and immediate withdrawal of American forces.30 Condemnations by public intellectuals and world leaders from philosopher Bertrand Russell to Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi were also reprinted in the press, as were criticisms by US policymakers. However, such denunciations fell on deaf ears: when William Fulbright and sixteen US senators appealed to President Johnson to cease bombings, Johnson responded that as commander-in-chief he had singular responsibility for the direction of the war.31 In addition to highlighting Johnson’s hubris, articles exposed the administration’s hypocrisy, particularly its official commitment to support “national self-determination” and “the rights of all peoples” all the while waging a brutal neocolonial war. Such hypocrisy was on full display in summer 1966 when the United States continued to bomb Vietnam while engaging in peace talks with the North Vietnamese leadership in Paris. American public figures, Romanian readers learned, condemned US intervention in Vietnam not only for its inhumanity, illegitimacy, and hypoc-

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risy but also for its financial toll, as it diverted taxpayer money away from critical domestic initiatives. In a piece reprinted from Newsweek, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Walter Lippmann decried US involvement in Vietnam, claiming that America’s desire to serve as policeman of the world undermined domestic policy, especially the Great Society Project. As a result, he concluded, some Americans continue to experience poverty, and many Black Americans are forced to live in overcrowded neighborhoods. In a declaration published in Scânteia, Senator Robert Kennedy echoed these sentiments, arguing that a two-front war—in Vietnam and against poverty—was unwinnable and that Johnson should withdraw American forces from Vietnam and channel resources into eradicating poverty at home. The belief that the United States needed to get its own house in order and practice what it preached was further reinforced by reports on racial violence. An article titled “Stop the Brutality in Alabama” reported on state troopers’ assault on civil rights activists near Selma in March 1965, during what came to be known as Bloody Sunday.32 Another described racial disparities in the US educational system, including overcrowding of schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods in the North.33 As foreign news, such stories appeared alongside articles about the war in Vietnam, underscoring the hollowness of the United States’ commitment to protect “the rights of all people.” Other articles outlining the costs—political, economic, and moral—of the war excoriated Johnson and his warmongering advisors, who chose pride over people. For this reason, one article concluded, Johnson’s chances of securing reelection in 1968 were slim to none. However, it was not simply Johnson and his cabinet that were to blame but also America’s Cold War policy, which, in the name containing communism, sacrificed the lives of millions—both in the United States and around the globe. Denunciations were often accompanied by photographs of antiwar demonstrations in major US cities. Both Scânteia and Lumea reported on the twenty thousand “March on Washington” on 27 November 1965, organized by SANE, a peace organization. In an accompanying photo, marchers hold posters that read “Respect the Geneva Conventions” and “War Erodes the Great Society.”34 The march, Lumea reported, elicited sympathy strikes in London, Rome, and other European cities, further illustrating the war’s immorality and illegitimacy in the eyes of people worldwide. Lest Romanians think protests were peopled solely by leftist radicals, images illustrated that Americans from all walks of life opposed the war. According to one article, New York City’s “Days of International Protest” march (on 25 March 1966) was led by World War II and Korean War veterans. The veterans, the author reported, were accompanied by individuals

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holding NLF flags and posters that read “National self-determination for the Vietnamese,” “Big factories enrich themselves, while our sons die,” and “Let’s make war against poverty, not against people.”35 Such images underlined the differences between a just war—the war against Nazism, only a generation earlier—and the unjust, neocolonial war being waged by the US government. In some cases, readers were informed, antiwar opposition assumed tragic proportions, such as when thirty-one-year-old Quaker Norman Morrison and twenty-two-year-old Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte immolated themselves in front of the Pentagon and UN respectively in November of 1965.36 Romanian media also featured antiwar demonstrations in other parts of the world. From glass factory workers in Livorno, Italy, exhorting their government to persuade the United States to stop the bombing to antiwar marchers in Argentina, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Austria, such stories lent credence to claims by Ho Chi Minh, the NLF, and Romanian propagandists that US intervention was unjust and inhumane. Finally, ordinary Romanians’ opposition to the war was featured in the news. On 31 March 1965, communist organizations met in Bucharest to express their “concern and deep indignation over the barbaric acts committed by the American interventionist troops through the use of toxic gasses and napalm against an exhausted population that is heroically fighting for the independence and liberty of their country.”37 Among those who spoke at the event were the head of the Writers Union, a professor, a medical student, and a general-colonel of the reserves who was also, incidentally, the vice president of the organization of antifascist veterans. Meanwhile, collective farmers in Craiova, engineers in Bucharest, and teachers in Cluj expressed, in letters published in Scânteia, outrage over US brutality in Vietnam. Additionally, antiwar demonstrations—albeit orchestrated—were held in Bucharest’s Piaţa Universităţii (University Square) in advance of the 1966 Warsaw Pact meeting. In images of the event, protesters pack the square holding signs that read “End American Aggression in Vietnam.”38

Popular Perceptions of the War How did ordinary Romanians view the war in Vietnam? Did communist propagandists succeed in constructing a compelling and convincing imaginary about what was happening on the ground in Vietnam and about how those outside of Romania viewed the conflict? Certainly high-ranking members of the PCR, as well as journalists and those who traveled abroad for work, had access to alternative media sources. So too did Romanians who received correspondence and packages (including foreign newspapers

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and magazines) from abroad. As such, they were able to compare Romanian and foreign coverage of the war. Moreover, given that Scânteia and Lumea presented foreign perspectives on the conflict, excerpting articles and featuring photographs from media sources in other parts of the world, it is likely that Romanians considered Romanian coverage of the war more or less credible—or, for those who were disposed to being especially skeptical of Romanian news, more credible than reports on domestic issues. According to letters to the editor published in Scânteia and Lumea and letters sent to the communist leadership, socialist media shaped, at least in part, the hearts and minds of Romanian citizens. It did so, as previously noted, by presenting diverse voices, though not divergent views, of the war: disarming portraits of a peaceful population and its savage treatment by the world’s most powerful army who justified its acts in the name liberty and freedom; stories of tenacious NLF soldiers and determined ordinary men and women safeguarding their homeland from foreign intruders. At the same time, the NLF’s coercion and repression against neutral or allegedly disloyal civilians was wholly ignored in Romanian media, as was their inhumane treatment of US and ARVN forces. Judging from the letters collected in the archive of the Central Committee of the PCR, the aforementioned media depictions did embolden some Romanians to address the authorities—and even offer their services to the cause. As Emil Enea, a forty-seven-year-old truck driver wrote on 13 July 1966, shortly after the joint declaration was published in Scânteia and Lumea: Reading the text of the declaration on American aggression in Vietnam adopted by the leaders of the communist and workers parties and states participating in the Warsaw Pact, I express my sincere desire to fight alongside the Vietnamese people against the American aggressors. I am fully convinced that the just and sacred fight of the Vietnamese people will lead to absolute victory, and [I] agree to voluntarily go to this country until the final victory of the Vietnamese people is won.39

Enea was not alone in voicing such sentiments. In his letter to the leadership, Ioan Stanciu, a technician employed at a leather factory, referred to the US Army as an “army of extermination.” He also suggested that the international community “prepare a file for the U.S. to be tried by an international tribunal under UN direction.”40 Closing with “I am neither a diplomat nor a politician by profession, but a citizen of the Socialist Republic of Romania and a member of the Romanian Communist Party who is disturbed by the international situation,” he appealed to the state as a party member, concerned citizen, and fellow human being.

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Over the course of 1966–67, a range of individuals—college students, peasants, veterans, unskilled workers, engineers, and medical professionals—wrote to the communist leadership about the war. While the PCR encouraged correspondence with authorities as a form of civic engagement, letters typically focused on personal concerns or domestic policies (e.g., requests for housing or travel visas, denunciations of corrupt officials and incompetent coworkers, complaints about bureaucratic inefficiencies). Thus, although individuals had previously weighed in on matters of foreign policy, based on what is accessible in the archive the war in Vietnam was seemingly the first time they did so extensively.41 In crafting their letters, individuals drew upon various tropes: world peace, freedom, sovereignty, socialist solidarity. These tropes were familiar to most Romanians, mobilized in the early years of socialist consolidation in reference to impending fascist and capitalist-imperialist threats. They were also influenced by principles espoused by the Romanian Communist Party at the time—“peace” and “national roads to socialism”—as well as the 1965 Romanian Constitution in which “respect for national sovereignty and non-interference in the internal matters” of other countries was enshrined.42 Thus Ştefan Fotache, a skilled worker, wrote of his desire to volunteer to fight for the DRV, emphasizing that it would be a “duty and an honor to participate alongside my Vietnamese brothers in the fight against American aggression” because “in the family of socialist countries, of people who love peace and liberty, their victory is our victory.”43 Closing his letter with “Long live the people of the whole world, united in their fight for peace and liberty,” Fotache connected Vietnamese liberation and the unification of North and South to the triumph—and legitimacy—of sovereignty, socialism, and world peace. In addition to socialist parlance, writers employed impassioned language, addressing the authorities from “the depth of their being,” beseeching “with all their heart,” and expressing their “heartfelt desire” to be deployed to North Vietnam.44 As Ioan Gligor, a thirty-six-year-old officer in the reserves wrote: “Along with the communist party, to which I belong body and soul, our entire nation, and peace-loving forces around the world, it is with deep indignation that I view the barbaric attacks committed by the imperialists against the peaceful people of the friendly country of Vietnam.”45 Given Ceauşescu’s status as a maverick during this early period of liberalization (mid- to late 1960s) and his shift away from the Soviet orbit, older individuals, including true believers, may have been drawn to Vietnam because it represented a renewed commitment to socialist revolution. Indeed, it may have restored confidence in the regime after Dej-era repressions. Individuals also might have been compelled by their experiences fighting

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fascism, viewing the struggle against imperialism as a sequel to earlier conflicts. As Bogdan Iacob asserts, “The anti-imperialist solidarity with Korean and Vietnamese peoples echoed local experiences during the Second World War, the construction of socialism at home, and the consolidation of the local revolutionary ethos.”46 This seems particularly plausible for those with past military experience and those who were still affiliated with the military in some capacity. For instance, a major in the army air reserves wrote, “I cannot remain unmoved by the heroic and patriotic Vietnamese forces in their liberation of South Vietnam and the unification of the country . . . I desire, from the depths of my soul, to give my support to this righteous struggle, which will triumph despite the imperialist abuses.47 Meanwhile, fifty-yearold World War II veteran Ion Gănguţ emphasized his fitness—both physical and ideological—to serve as a volunteer, asserting: “The hatred and contempt towards the aggressor . . . strengthens and fortifies me to easily bear the burden and privations of this war, even in the jungle.”48 In addition to military service, Mr. Gănguţ offered a portion of his income to the struggle, writing: “In accordance with my wife, who also works and is raising a child, I agree to donate this month’s salary to the fight of the Vietnamese people.”49 Rather than an extension of earlier military service, the war offered Alexandru Mărculescu the opportunity to fulfill a longstanding goal. According to his letter, Mărculescu had volunteered in 1949 to fight with the communists in Greece—a request that had been rejected because “Romania was only providing Greece with material and moral support.” Having been encouraged to channel his energies into other patriotic endeavors, the war in Vietnam may have aroused Mărculescu’s latent desire to participate in revolutionary struggle or, to use his words, “to be useful, and to make something of my life.’50 In addition to veterans and longtime communist members, younger individuals who had not had the opportunity to participate in a historic conflict were attracted to the prospect of supporting the North. Scholars argue that the war in Vietnam provided socialist states with a basis for renewing ideological struggles and mobilizing a younger generation, with the battle being between socialism and ‘fascistic’ capitalism—a battle that was not only European/Western but global in scope.51 This battle was political, economic, and moral, directed at ending capitalist-imperialist brutality against decolonizing—or recently decolonized—states and, in so doing, exposing the moral bankruptcy of Western “civilizing regimes.” Such aims might have motivated Florian Lucaci, a twenty-one-year-old member of the Union of Communist Youth (UTC), to request permission to “participate with the National Liberation Front alongside the Vietnamese for the happiness and independence of the people.”52 Similarly, in his one-sentence note, Ivan,

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a second-year student at the Institute of Economic Sciences, pledged to “fight alongside the Vietnamese people for their rights and liberty.”53 Since national liberation struggles were part of the school curriculum and covered in the youth magazine Cutezătorii (The daring), young people would have been familiar with depictions of peace-loving Vietnamese attempting to build a new and just society after decades of colonization. These letters may also have been inspired by viewing or participating in antiwar demonstrations, some organized by the UTC. Although more orchestrated and smaller than antiwar demonstrations in Hungary, East Germany, Poland, and Yugoslavia, these protests nonetheless provided youth with a forum for expressing discontent with American operations in Vietnam—or at least learning more about them. Indeed, such protests, alongside Ceauşescu’s national approach to socialism and Romania’s increased engagement with the Global South, might have fostered youths’ feeling that they were “part of a global movement.”54 That said, since mass organizations such as the UTC were expected to have members send correspondence about pressing issues to the authorities, some letters may also have been the product of encouragement or pressure. The vast majority of letters were penned by men—unsurprising given that the declaration made reference to military aid. Nonetheless, a few women felt compelled to appeal to the authorities. Maria Taraş, a twentytwo-year-old worker, wrote of her “desire to support the Vietnamese people by going to Vietnam to fight in the volunteer brigade,” adding, “I want to be alongside the Vietnamese people until the final victory against American aggression.”55 Given that men and women were codified as equals in all spheres of life in the Romanian Constitution and state promotion of women in education and the labor force, it is unsurprising that women, especially younger women, viewed themselves as potentially active participants in struggles for national liberation in other parts of the globe. That said, only a few women wrote to the authorities, most likely because traditional ideas about gender shaped people’s views about women’s roles. Thus, parents as well as male relatives and friends would have discouraged women from writing such letters in the first place. While not all letter writers were interested in engaging militarily in the conflict, they nonetheless offered their services to their “Vietnamese brethren.” Dimitru Băbeanu, a single, thirty-seven-year-old construction engineer wrote: “I place myself at your disposal in the event that you wish to send construction workers to North Vietnam to help rebuild the country destroyed by aircraft. We fight for peace!”56 Similarly, Georgina Enache, a nurse at a children’s hospital in Constanţa, asked to be sent as a volunteer detachment of medical professionals to South Vietnam.57

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Although the impetus for the letters varied, their messages and modes of expression were similar, drawing on prevailing socialist tropes and conveying a sense of outrage and immediacy. More generally, while some authors were motivated by compassion, some a desire for adventure and personal accomplishment, and some by the need to curry favor with the authorities, collectively they demonstrate Romanians’ adeptness in employing solidarity scripts in reference to peoples of the Global South, particularly those fighting neocolonialist forces.

Conclusion By late 1966, Romania was one of the major supporters, among socialist states, of the DRV. However, in this case support was limited to sending munitions and publicizing US and ARVN atrocities, while also glorifying NLF and PAVN victories. Despite requests and even pleas by ordinary Romanians to be sent to fight alongside Northern forces, the Romanian government chose not to send troops. In this respect they were not alone, as no other Eastern Bloc country sent troops either. As such, the Warsaw Pact’s pledge turned out to be an empty promise. There are a number of reasons why. First, committing troops would have undermined the Soviet policy of détente, to which Warsaw Pact powers were officially committed.58 Although Romania could have flouted this policy in its capacity as “maverick,” sending Romanians to fight on unfamiliar terrain using unfamiliar tactics would have been unpopular with the population at large, compromising Ceauşescu’s efforts to secure popular legitimacy. Moreover, Romania could not alienate the United States, which it relied on for technology transfers. Consequently, in late 1966 Romania sought a middle ground, encouraging negotiation among the major players for a cease-fire—an effort cut short by the North’s launching of the Tet Offensive on 30 January 1968.59 It did, however, continue supplying the DRV with economic and military aid. Given these realities, Romania’s declaration in support of Vietnamese reunification under Northern leadership was purposely vague, intended to showcase Ceauşescu’s commitment to national sovereignty and anticolonialism and to challenge the hegemony of the Great Powers. The motivations of the letter writers, on the other hand, are more complex and difficult to discern. Certainly, some used the letters as tools: as a medium for demonstrating fealty to socialist principles and, thereby, ingratiating themselves with the authorities in the hopes of securing certain privileges or services. Indeed, some may have had no desire or intention to fight in Vietnam, but perhaps they believed that offering to volunteer there

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would be professionally or materially beneficial. Others, as members of the UTC, may have been expected to write such letters. Meanwhile, others were seemingly motivated by altruism—a genuine need to help the less fortunate. They were also perhaps motivated by a sense of duty and adventure. Veterans of World War II would have felt this sense of duty, viewing Vietnam as a new arena within which the “struggle for peace” could be waged. Meanwhile, young people might have viewed it as a historic chance to fight against capitalist barbarity, while also offering them an opportunity to see a foreign, distant, even exotic land, where they could do something remarkable, admirable, and memorable. That said, people’s motivations certainly overlapped: a commitment to socialist ideology, humanitarianism, and the need to “make something of oneself ” may have inspired some, while nationalism and a desire to curry favor with the regime and somehow profit influenced others. More generally, these findings reveal that Romanian media shaped—to some extent—popular opinion, and that the state and its citizenry could find common cause around certain issues, particularly national roads to socialism. By focusing readers’ attention eastward and westward, in approval and disapproval, Romanian propagandists sought to foster regime legitimacy and highlight the political and moral superiority of socialism, particularly its nationalist variant. As such, the East (or in this case the Far East) served as a site for affirming Ceauşescu’s rule. As the conflict ramped up after the Tet Offensive, condemnation of US operations in Vietnam and the Johnson administration more generally continued unabated in the Romanian press. However, behind closed doors the Romanian government, with an eye toward securing nuclear technology from the United States, presented a more neutral, conciliatory face, offering to serve as a mediator between the US and North Vietnamese governments. This was part of a larger effort to improve relations with the West, which included recognition of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1967. Meanwhile, Ceauşescu continued playing the role of maverick, albeit closer to home. In 1968 he voiced support for Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring and denounced the Sovietorchestrated Warsaw Pact invasion that ultimately crushed it. Ceauşescu’s “refusal” to participate in the invasion earned him widespread support at home and abroad, even though Romania could not, in fact, be a part of an operation it had been excluded from.60 Although Romania focused, at least for the moment, on the West, Vietnam had not been wholly forgotten: in 1972 the DRV requested the assistance of East European construction workers and engineers in the country’s second reconstruction, a call that Romania, among a number of other socialist states, heeded, and which was featured in the Romanian press.61 More generally, after Ceauşescu’s Africa tour in 1973, the Global

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South figured prominently in Romanian foreign policy initiatives and as a site for renewing the country’s commitment to antihegemonic socialist internationalism. Thus, Romania increasingly traded with less developed countries (LDCs) in Africa and the Middle East, established solidarity funds for decolonizing peoples, and organized worker and student exchange programs. As a consequence, the DRV, along with other parts of the East, fell out of the regime’s gaze and out of the Romanian media’s focus. However, by then Vietnam was already an independent communist state and largely peripheral to Ceauşescu’s strategy of securing domestic legitimacy via the Global South. Jill Massino is associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, where she teaches courses on modern European and comparative history. Her research examines gender, citizenship, and everyday life in socialist and postsocialist Romania. She has published numerous articles and books, including Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe (coedited with Shana Penn; Palgrave, 2009) and Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania (Berghahn Books, 2019). Her current project explores Romania’s relationship with several countries in the Global South during the Cold War.

Notes I would like to thank Bogdan Iacob for his detailed feedback on this chapter. In addition, I thank Adelina Ștefan, Claudiu Oancea, and participants of the UNC Charlotte History Department’s Brown Bag for their helpful suggestions. I use the phrase “war in Vietnam” as it is more neutral than culturally inflected designations such as “Vietnam War,” the referent used by the United States, or “American War,” the referent used by the DRV and many Vietnamese citizens. 1. “Declaraţie cu privire la agresiunea SUA in Vietnam,” Scânteia, 8 July 1966, 1; 5. 2. The declaration was also reported in US media. See “Warsaw Bloc Offers Volunteers to North Viet Nam” Chicago Tribune 8 July 1966, 11. 3. On the war in Vietnam as a source of regime legitimation in East Germany, see Gerd Horten, “Sailing in the Shadow of the Vietnam War: The GDR Government and the ‘Vietnam Bonus’ of the Early 1970s,” German Studies Review 36, no. 3 (2013): 557–78. 4. On Eastern Europe’s engagements with the Global South during the Cold War, see David C. Engerman, “The Second World’s Third World,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 183–211; Tony Smith, “New Bottles for New Wine: A Pericentric Framework for the Study of the Cold War,”

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5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

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Diplomatic History 24, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 567–91; and James Mark, Artemy M. Kalinovsky, and Steffi Marung, eds., Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020). These letters are collected in the archive of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party within the National Archives in Bucharest. As only letters written in 1966–67 have been archived, it is unknown if Romanians wrote the authorities about the war before or after this period. See Arhiva Naţională Istorică Centrală (ANIC), fond, Comitetul Central al Partidului Comunist Român (CC al PCR), Secţia Cancelarie, dosar 184/1966. In 1959, the Romanian government sent a sanitary-epidemiological team (mostly doctors) to work in Hanoi and the Thanh Hóa region. In addition, Romanian construction workers and engineers were sent to Haiphong and Hanoi to help establish cement and metallurgy factories. See Bogdan Iacob, “Paradoxes of Socialist Solidarity: Romanian and Czechoslovak Medical Teams in North Korea and Vietnam (1951–1962),” Monde(s): Histoire, Espaces, Relations 20 (November 2021): 117–140. COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) was the economic organization led by the USSR that included countries of the Eastern Bloc and a number of other socialist countries. The “April Declaration” was published in Scânteia on 23 April 1964. Cezar Stanciu, “Romania and the Third World during the Heyday of the Détente,” Third World Quarterly 39, no. 10 (2018), 1884-85. Elena Dragomir, “The Perceived Threat of Hegemonism in Romania during the Second Détente,” Cold War History 12, no. 1 (2012): 111. On 7 August 1964, the United States Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to “take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.” Operation Rolling Thunder began in March 1965 and continued, with minor pauses, until October 1968. ANIC, CC al PCR, Secţia Relaţii Externe, dosar 187/1966, f. 21-31. “Semnarea unor acorduri economic înte Republica Socailist România şi Republica Democrat Vietnam,” Scânteia, 5 January 1966. “Protocol nr. 5 al şedenţei Prezidiului Permanent al CC al PCR din ziua de 10 februarie 1966,” ANIC, CC al PCR, Secţia Cancelarie (hereafter SC), dosar 15/1966, f. 2; Cezar Stanciu, “Fragile Equilibrium: Romania and the Vietnam War in the Context of the Sino-Soviet Split, 1966,” Journal of Cold War Studies 18, no. 1 (2016): 161–87; and Mircea Munteanu, “Over the Hills and Far Away: Romania’s Attempts to Mediate the Start of U.S.-North Vietnamese Negotiations, 1967–1968,” Journal of Cold War Studies 14, no. 3 (2012): 64–96. “Protocol nr. 25: Stenograma ședinței Prezidiului Permanent alCC al PCR din ziua de 24 mai, 1966.” ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 81/1966, f. 3. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 48/1967, f. 30-31. Arhiva Diplomatică, Ministerul Afacerilor Externe (MAE), Relaţia Culturale, vol. 2/1966, f. 70 and vol. 3/1966, f. 32. In 1965, a “Vietnamese Film Day” was organized in Bucharest featuring the films: Young Soldier, Floating Village, and Spring Comes, Flowers Bloom.

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17. N. Pătrașcu, “Final act de Saigon,” Lumea, 7 November 1963, 7. 18. Scânteia, 5 November 1965, 4. 19. Dimitriu Tinu, “A 10-a schimbare în 16 luni: O noua lovitura de stat la Saigon,” Scânteia, 20 February 1965, 4. 20. “Civilizatorii,” Scânteia, 21 November 1965, 4. 21. “Operaţii de curăţare,” Scânteia, 24 December 1965, 4. 22. “Ce mai ăspra condamnare a agresiunii americane în Vietnam: Declaraţia Frontului Patriei din Vietnam,” Scânteia, 5 July 1966. 23. “Mesajul lui Ho Și Min adresat poporului American,” Scânteia, 3 January 1966. 24. “Între două focuri,” Lumea, 14 April 1966, 4. 25. “Ei nu se vor mai întoarce pe meleagurile lor,” Scânteia, 6 February 1966, 5. 26. Operation Rolling Thunder resumed on 31 January 1966 after a thirty-seven-day pause. 27. “Mărturii despre Vietnam,” Lumea, 1 January 1966, 17–18. 28. Christian Appy, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (New York: Penguin, 2016), 161. 29. “900 de profesori și savanți americani cer încetarea agresiunii in Vietnam,” Scânteia, 26 January 1966, 4. 30. “Puneţi Căpatat Războiului din Vietnam!” Scânteia, 15 February 1966, 4. 31. “Opoziţie în Senat faţă de intensificarea agresiunii în Vietnam,” Scânteia, 30 January 1966, 4. 32. “Noi demonstraţii antisegregaţioniste reprimate de poliţie,” Scânteia, 18 March 1965, 6. 33. “Vrem Să Învăţăm!” Scânteia, 6 November 1965, 6. 34. Scânteia, 28 November, 1965, 4. 35. Carl Marzani “Mulţimi pe Fifth Avenue,” Scânteia, 29 March 1966, 5. 36. “Încetaţi agresiunea!” Scânteia, 18 November 1965, 6. 37. “Solidaritate deplină cu lupta dreaptă a poprului vitenamez,” Scânteia, 31 March 1965. 38. Scânteia, July 1 1966. 39. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 12. 40. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 40-43. 41. A caveat is in order here as other international events such as the war in Korea and the 1956 revolution in Hungary may also have elicited an influx of ordinary correspondence; however, this is not reflected in the existing archival collection or what has been made available to researchers. 42. Nicolae Ceaușescu, Congresul al IX-lea al Partidului Comunist Român (Bucharest: Editura Politică, 1966), 98–9. 43. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 19-20. 44. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 167. 45. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 168. 46. See Iacob, “Paradoxes of Socialist Solidarity,” 118. 47. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 152. 48. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 5. 49. Ibid. 50. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 32.



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51. James Mark, Péter Apor, Radina Vučetić, and Piotr Osęka, “‘We Are with You, Vietnam’: Transnational Solidarities in Socialist Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia,” Journal of Contemporary History 50, no. 3 (2015): 442. 52. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 14. 53. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 18. 54. Mark et al., “‘We Are with You, Vietnam.” 55. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 147. 56. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 46. 57. ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, dosar 184/1966, f. 65 58. Laurien Crump, The Warsaw Pact Reconsidered: International Relations in Eastern Europe, 1955–1969 (New York: Routledge, 2015). 59. See Eliza Gheorghe, “Atomic Maverick: Romania’s Negotiations for Nuclear Technology, 1964–1970,” Cold War History 13, no. 3 (2013): 373–392. 60. Dennis Deletant, “‘Taunting the Bear’: Romania and the Warsaw Pact, 1963–1989,” Cold War History 7, no. 4 (2007): 495–507. 61. “Telegramă no. 033219, Hanoi,” 21 May 1973, ANIC, CC al PCR, SC, 97/1973, f. 46-47.

Bibliography Appy, Christian. American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity. New York: Penguin, 2016. Ceaușescu, Nicolae. Congresul al IX-lea al Partidului Comunist Român. Bucharest: Editura Politică, 1966. Crump, Laurien. The Warsaw Pact Reconsidered: International Relations in Eastern Europe, 1955–1969. New York: Routledge, 2015. Deletant, Dennis. “‘Taunting the Bear’: Romania and the Warsaw Pact, 1963–1989.” Cold War History 7, no. 4 (2007): 495–507. Dragomir, Elena. “The Perceived Threat of Hegemonism in Romania during the Second Détente.” Cold War History 12, no. 1 (2012): 111–34. Engerman, David C. “The Second World’s Third World.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 183–211. Gheorghe, Eliza. “Atomic Maverick: Romania’s Negotiations for Nuclear Technology, 1964–1970.” Cold War History 13, no. 3 (2013): 373–92. Horten, Gerd. “Sailing in the Shadow of the Vietnam War: The GDR Government and the ‘Vietnam Bonus’ of the Early 1970s.” German Studies Review 36, no. 3 (2013): 557–78. Iacob, Bogdan. “Paradoxes of Socialist Solidarity: Romanian and Czechoslovak Medical Teams in North Korea and Vietnam (1951–1962).” Monde(s): Histoire, Espaces, Relations 20 (November 2021): 117–140. Mark, James, Péter Apor, Radina Vučetić, and Piotr Osęka. “‘We Are with You, Vietnam’: Transnational Solidarities in Socialist Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia.” Journal of Contemporary History 50, no. 3 (2015): 439–64. Mark, James, Artemy M. Kalinovsky, and Steffi Marung, eds. Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020.

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Munteanu, Mircea. “Over the Hills and Far Away: Romania’s Attempts to Mediate the Start of U.S.-North Vietnamese Negotiations, 1967–1968.” Journal of Cold War Studies 14, no. 3 (2012): 64–96. Stanciu, Cezar. “Fragile Equilibrium: Romania and the Vietnam War in the Context of the Sino-Soviet Split, 1966.” Journal of Cold War Studies 18, no. 1 (2016): 161–87. ———. “Romania and the Third World during the Heyday of the Détente.” Third World Quarterly 39, no. 10 (2018): 1883–98.

Afterword



Magdalena Kozłowska and Mariusz Kałczewiak

As historians have shown, the conceptual division of Europe and of the world into West and East can be traced to the times of West European Enlightenment. Since the nineteenth century, both terms have been used consciously in France, England, and in German lands.1 Up until then Europe had been rather divided through the North and South axis, with Russia belonging to the first category. The line between the modern and backward, civilized and savage, active and passive, urban and rural drawn visibly in the nineteenth century along the Eastern borders of Prussia resonated on both sides of the division. At the same time, in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, West and East Europeans engaged in discussions on Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This volume does not seek to answer the question about the factual relations of the studied territories to the East/ South but rather aims to underscore the heterogeneous discourses on “the world beyond the West” as conceived in what has emerged as East Europe. Taken as a whole, this collection demonstrates how the metageographical concepts defined the perspective of people living in the studied areas.2 Our principal aim was to recreate how East Europeans located themselves on mental maps dividing the world into meaning-laden parts. Did they want to reassure their fragile Westernness, or did they create new categories? How were the categories they used associated with moral values or certain internal qualities? Did the used concepts evolve over time? Did they overlap with other categories like class or gender? These and other issues are at the heart of this book, which explores Eastern European participation in processes of Othering and Orientalizing the non-European world over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To achieve these goals, we distinguished three areas that were crucial in the argumentation of the contributors. These three fields formed the key nodes for the sections in the book. The first revolves around the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century. The section called “Contesting and Affirming the Empire” explores how the Russian Empire with its politics and institutions influenced the way its sub-

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jects perceived the world. At that time in the West, Russia was perceived as a “land of absence,” described by the qualities it lacked according to the observers and which were seen as crucial to civilization, development, modernity, and freedom.3 Thus Russia became a counterconcept of “the West.” The ideas of less developed and cultured regions within the vast country existed in Russia itself. Interestingly, the chapters in this volume show that despite the ambivalent attitude toward the empire, individuals “from the margins,” namely Polish nobles and Jewish intellectuals, shared the imperialist views and helped to establish internal Russian Orientalist hierarchies. They were not immune to the concepts conceived in the centers of power, and they aspired to be part of it. The partial overlapping of categories of class and culture reinforced the racial differences and Orientalizing discourses. The chapters in our collection help us to track the emergence of Orientalist terms used in Russia and to trace their conceptual evolution. Russian intellectuals, influenced by German thinkers like Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who merged the concept of the West with development and modernity, constructed the concept of Russian empty lands and the notion of the so-called Aziatchina, which again was implying a lack of certain qualities, including culture, progress, compassion, independent thinking, and freedom of choice. Thus, in a certain way the Russian actors replicated the Western image about the entirety of Russia and other Slavic lands. The chapters in our volume demonstrate that the concepts used by intellectuals of the Russian Empire helped them justify the hierarchies and the expansion of the country and that some of them are in use even up until now. The second area of this volume’s discussion concentrates on the notions of mobility and traveling. The section titled “Creating the Other: Travel and Migration” brings the reader’s focus to the East European travelers, journalists, and activists who from the nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries visited the “world beyond the West.” Traveling and writing travel accounts was linked to the idea of (self-)education through travel. It is through these books and articles that most East European readers got the information about the world outside of the region. Authors of chapters included in this part of the collection refer to processes of conceptualizing, respectively, Mexico, Egypt, and sub-Saharan Africa. As our authors argue, East European travelers displayed in their written accounts an impressive array of ideas, aspirations, dreams, and desires. Reading their accounts helps to reconstruct the use of spatial categories and mental maps through the time but also brings the attention to the self-identification of the travelers and migrants who usually perceived themselves as modern and progressive and who positioned themselves vis-à-vis the local population. In that sense, the travel accounts not only inform us about how East Europeans perceived the lands they visited but also offer insights into the intricacies of Eastern

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European self-understanding and the meaning of ethnic Othering in Eastern European contexts. Chapters in this part of the volume define Eastern European travelers as both producers and reproducers of Orientalist knowledge, thus poignantly showing how cultural hegemonies work within the global history. Finally the third area centers on the term “fantasy.” The section “Representations and Fantasies” calls our attention to East European colonial aspirations and popular perceptions of the non-European world. The contributors explore the ways via which the imagined visions became more powerful than measurable and verifiable forms of knowledge and how East European aspirations to serve as the avant-garde of civilization became a means of strengthening nationalisms. At the same time, they also investigate cases that include instances of anticolonialist critique and real compassion toward the underprivileged. The contributions also show tensions between various fantasies about Eastern Europe. For instance, the interwar Polish affiliation to the Western world, which also meant embracing colonialism, was promoted along with the competing concept of Prometheanism that encouraged (very often in a patronizing manner) various populations outside of interest to Poland to revolt. Taken as a whole, the texts in this collection analyze various aspects of East European attitudes toward the Other, and at the same time locate this analysis in broader political, cultural and social contexts. They show that through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries diverse East European actors of various ethnic backgrounds were involved in processes of condescending and dismissing those living “beyond the West,” thus reproducing the Western condescension of East Europeans. The volume offers a unique lens for observing the intertwined histories—showing that East Europeans were not merely targets of Orientalization but also agents of its extension. This collection contributes to the fast-growing international interest in and research on Eastern Europe as a global area, as well as to the region’s place in transregional studies.4 The multidisciplinary approach of conversation and heterogeneous research methods helped our authors to lead a profound discussion on ways that East Europeans described the Other (and themselves) through the time. Apart from their contribution to the study of past East European entanglements with the “world beyond the West,” the nine chapters also provide a conceptual platform for a better understanding of contemporary East European identities. Magdalena Kozłowska holds a PhD in Jewish studies and an MA in cultural studies from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. She works as an assistant professor at the University of Warsaw. She researches the social history of Jews mainly in the interwar period. She is the author of the

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MAGDALENA KOZŁOWSKA AND MARIUSZ KAŁCZEWIAK

monograph on the Bundist youth movement Świetlana przyszłość? Żydowski Związek Młodzieżowy Cukunft wobec wyzwań międzywojennej Polski (Kraków, Budapest: Austeria 2016). Her scholarship has appeared in East European Politics and Societies, Aspasia, Middle Eastern Studies, and Jewish Culture and History. Mariusz Kałczewiak is senior research associate and lecturer at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Mariusz holds a PhD in history from Tel Aviv University (2017). His first book, Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture, was published in 2020 by Alabama University Press and won the 2020 Best Book Award from the Latin American Jewish Studies Association. Mariusz’s academic interests include masculinity studies, Latin American studies, Yiddish studies, and Eastern European studies. Notes 1. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Bernhard Struck, “In Search of the ‘West’: The Language of Political, Social and Cultural Spaces in the Sattelzeit, from about 1770 to the 1830s,” in Germany and “the West”: The History of a Modern Concept, ed. Riccardo Bavaj and Martina Steber (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), 41–54; Ezequiel Adamovsky, “Euro-Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France, 1810–1880,” Journal of Modern History 77 (2005): 591–628 2. Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 3. Adamovsky, “Euro-Orientalism.” 4. Presently there is plenty of interest in these topics, especially in relation to the Cold War struggles, for instance, Rossen Djagalo, From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema between the Second and the Third Worlds, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020); Łukasz Stanek, Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020); a thematic cluster, “Beyond the Iron Curtain: Eastern Europe and the Global Cold War,” ed. Theodora K. Dragostinova and Małgorzata Fidelis, Slavic Review 77 (2018); Theodora K. Dragostinova, The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021).

AFTERWORD

247

Bibliography Adamovsky, Ezequiel. “Euro-Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France, 1810–1880.” Journal of Modern History 77 (2005): 591–628. “Beyond the Iron Curtain: Eastern Europe and the Global Cold War” (thematic cluster), edited by Theodora K. Dragostinova and Malgorzata Fidelis. Slavic Review 77 (2018): 577–684. Djagalo, Rossen. From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema between the Second and the Third Worlds. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020. Dragostinova, Theodora K. The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021. Lewis, Martin, and Kären Wigen. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Stanek, Łukasz. Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. Struck, Bernhard. “In Search of the ‘West’: The Language of Political, Social and Cultural Spaces in the Sattelzeit, from about 1770 to the 1830s.” In Germany and “the West”: The History of a Modern Concept, edited by Riccardo Bavaj and Martina Steber, 41–54. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. Wolff, Larry. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Index

A Aconcagua, 186–88 Africa, v–2, 5, 7, 10–12, 15–16, 18, 122– 23, 132, 140, 142, 144–48, 152–54, 156–69, 190, 193, 196–205, 207–9, 212–13, 215–18, 237–38, 243–44, 246–47 Africans, vi, 11, 145–46, 151, 155–57, 160–61, 196, 199–200, 202–9 Amazon, 183–84, 192–93 Andes, 174, 186–87, 192, 194 Angola, 11, 197, 201–2, 204–5, 208, 213, 216–17 Anisimov, Ilya, v, 9, 69, 72, 74, 81, 89 Appadurai, Arjun, 144, 162 Arab Jew, 124 Arabs, 1, 123–25, 132, 136, 138 Argentina, 7, 12, 176, 231, 246 Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), 222, 226, 232, 236 Ashkenazi Jews, 75–76, 83–84, 86, 124 Aziatchina, v, 9, 21–27, 29, 31–39, 41, 43, 244 B Baltic, ii, 63, 67, 175, 189, 193–94, 198 Baltic Sea, 175, 189, 193–94 Bantu people, 202 barymta (custom), 54–56 Beck, Józef, 207, 215 Berbers, 201 Beudant, François-Sulpice, 101, 115, 117 Blok, Alexander, 35, 40 Bodo, Eugeniusz, 201 Brazil, 7, 11, 175–79, 182 Brazilians, 180–82, 185 Bright, Richard, 101, 115 Brodzisz, Adam, 201 Brojdo, Sara, 1

Budín, Stanislav, 154, 165 Bukhara, 51–53, 64, 66, 73, 87, 93 C caboclo, 180–81, 191 Cameroon, 198 Canada, 97, 114, 175 capitulation agreements, 120 Casablanca, 1 Catholicism, 204 Caucasiology, 9, 72, 80 Caucasus, v, 5–6, 9, 14, 17, 22, 32, 44, 47–49, 51, 56–59, 61–63, 65–67, 71–75, 80–82, 84, 86–90, 92–93 Ceauşescu, Nicolae, 221–25, 233, 235–38 Chaadayev, Pyotr, 29–32, 34, 39, 41 Chad River, 200 Chechnya, 49, 58–60, 71, 74 Chile, 183 Chmielewski, Jerzy, 202, 213 Choleva, Emil, 155, 165 Chorny, Joseph Judah, v, 9, 69, 71, 73, 85, 87, 94 Circassia, 56–58, 60, 65, 67 Circassians, 44, 47, 49, 52, 56–61 civilizing mission, 9, 45, 110, 122, 125, 132–34, 208, 213, 218, 226 colonialism, 2, 6, 8, 14–17, 24, 28, 34, 36, 39–40, 53, 124, 130–31, 136, 139, 142–43, 154, 162, 165, 167, 174, 190, 193, 196–97, 202, 205–6, 208–10, 245 Congo, 163, 202–4, 210, 212, 213, 217, 219–20 Cossacks, 45, 47–49, 57, 61, 64 Crimea, 5–6, 32, 35, 63, 67 Cromer, Lord, 124 Curitiba, 176 Cyrenaica, 203 Czajkowski, Michał, 48, 56–58, 60, 62

250

INDEX

Czartoryski, Adam Jerzy, 48, 56–58, 62, 65 Czechoslovakia, 2, 7, 10–11, 145, 148, 152–53, 155–56, 159, 161–62, 164, 166, 223, 237 D Dagestan, 49, 60, 71, 73–74, 79–81 Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; North Vietnam), 221 Domeyko, Ignacy, 182–83, 192 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 40–41 Duchiński, Franciszek, 46–47, 62, 66 E East-Central Europe, ii, 3, 13, 16–17, 38, 42 Eastern Europe, ii–iii, 1–9, 11, 13–18, 85–86, 98, 101, 113–14, 121, 123, 129–31, 133, 150–51, 164, 167, 173, 190, 194, 209–10, 218, 220, 222, 238, 241, 245–47 Egypt, v, 6, 10, 29, 120–29, 131, 133–35, 137–38, 140–41, 158, 244 Emigrant Colonialism, 121–22, 129, 131, 133–34 Emptiness, v, 9, 21, 23–25, 27–29, 34–36, 40–41, 181 England, 124–26, 128, 137, 140–41, 243 Ethiopia, 155, 205–7, 214, 217 Eurafrica, 212, 219 Eurasia, 9, 34, 44–46, 87, 92

Geneva, 206, 221, 224–27, 229–30 Geok Tepe, 33 Germans, 197, 200–202, 207 Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe, 223, 241 Giżycki, Jerzy, 207–8, 215 Global South, 145, 161–62, 221, 223–24, 235–36, 238 Głuchowski, Kazimierz, 174, 176–82, 190–91, 201, 213 Golden Horde, 28 Gordon, Hirsch Loeb, 121, 125–32, 134, 137–39, 141 Gordon, Kazimierz, 57–61 Guarapuava (Brazil), 181 H Habsburg, 3, 13, 18, 97, 108, 112, 210 Hanzelka, Jiří, 152, 160, 164–65, 167 Haraszthy, Ágoston, 104, 115, 118 Haskalah, 69–71, 73, 79, 83, 85, 87–88, 92–94 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 23, 28–29, 32, 34, 37–39, 41–43, 244 Hitler, Adolf, 197, 207 Ho Chi Minh, 226–27, 229, 231 Holub, Emil, 147, 163 Hotel Lambert, 48–49, 65 Huambo province (Portugal), 202 Hungary, ii, 2, 97–115, 117–18, 162, 167–68, 223, 235, 240–41

F Fanon, Frantz, 149–50, 164, 166 fantasy, vi, 8, 11, 15, 18, 121–22, 125, 131–33, 139, 171, 173, 190, 193–94, 210, 219, 245 France, 28, 46, 49, 56, 86, 200, 207–8, 215, 218, 226, 228, 243, 246–47 French Foreign Legion, 201 French intervention, 108 French West Africa, 200, 215 Freyd, Aleksander, 183–88, 192

I Ibrahim, Georges, 207, 213–14, 219 Imaginary Asia, 25 imperialism, 11, 109, 116, 118, 145, 147, 156, 162, 165, 167, 205, 221, 228, 234 in-betweenness, 2, 4, 97, 145, 173, 188, 209 Iquitos (Peru), 183–84, 186 Irati (Brazil), 177, 181 Islam, 22, 37, 40–41, 47, 53, 59 Istanbul, 48–49, 56, 58, 60, 63, 67 Iuzhakov, 33–34, 40 Iwaszkiewicz, Wiktor, 48, 50, 53–55

G Galicia, 92, 196, 198, 202, 210 Gdynia, 175, 198

J Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 10, 120–26, 129–30, 132, 134–38, 140, 142

INDEX

Januszkiewicz, Adolf, 48, 53–56, 59, 63–64, 66 Jazairiová, Pavla, 166 Jewish press, 81, 121, 125, 132 Jewish refugees, 122, 126, 135 Jews, v, 1, 4–10, 12, 14–17, 35, 69–93, 120–36, 138–43, 190, 197, 209–10, 218, 220, 245–46 Johnson, Lyndon B., 227, 229–30, 237, 239 K Kalmyks, 32, 44, 47 Karpiński, Adam, 188 Kazakh Steppe, v, 9, 44, 50–51, 53, 56, 63–64, 67–68 Kazakhs, 32, 36, 44–45, 47–48, 50–55, 57, 59, 64 Kazakhstan, 5, 22, 25, 53, 61–65, 67–68 Kenesary, Kasymov, 49, 54–55, 64, 67 Khiva, 51–52 Khokand, 64, 66 Kovalevsky, Maksim, 80 Kraszewski, Józef Ignacy, 179 Kru people, 205 Kula, Alfons, 207, 214 Kyrdymbyrdymshchina, 22, 37 Kyrgyz, 54, 56, 64 Kyrgyzstan, 22 L Łapiński, Teofil, 44–45, 47, 52, 57, 59–62, 65–66 László, Károly, 106–10, 112, 116 Lawrence, Thomas Edward, 205–6, 214 League of Nations, 199, 205, 207, 211, 215, 219 Lepecki, Bohdan Teofil, 180, 189, 191, 193–94, 201, 211–12 Lepecki, Mieczysław, 216 Levshin, Aleksei, 55 Levý, Miroslav, 148, 155, 164–65 Liberia, 11, 197–98, 205–7, 213–14, 216–17, 219 Libya, 158, 202 Lion, Jindřich, 156, 165 Lugard, Frederick, 199, 212 Łyp, Franciszek, 201–2, 204, 212–13, 216

251

M Mackinder, Halford, 199 Madagascar, 198 Makarczyk, Janusz, 205–6, 214 Maritime and River/Colonial League, vi, 11, 173–74 Mercedario, 186–87, 192 Mexico, 10, 97–100, 102–3, 105–18, 231, 244 Mickiewicz, Adam, 56, 65, 192 Miller, Vsevolod, 63, 67, 72, 80–81, 89, 92 Misiones (Argentina), 176 Monrovia (Liberia), 205–6 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 101 Morocco, 1, 201 Morze (journal), 174–75, 177, 179, 183–84, 186, 188–95, 211–13, 216 Mountain Jews, v, 5, 9, 69, 71–78, 80–89, 91, 93 Mozambique, 208, 215 Muslims, 14, 80, 201 N Ney, Nora, 201 Niger River, 200 Nigeria, 158, 202 nomadic Asia, 26–27, 34 non-Ashkenazi Jewries, 71 North Caucasus, 44, 65, 67, 71–72, 75, 80, 82, 86, 89, 92 Nowak, Kazimierz, 202–4, 209, 213 Nowak, Maria, 202 O Omsk, 32, 50–51, 53 Opluštil, Václav, 159, 166 Orenburg, 38, 41, 50–53, 62–64, 66–68 Oriental Studies, 2, 9, 14, 17–18, 23–24, 38, 41, 43, 72, 81, 84, 87, 93 Orientalism, 2–3, 5–7, 10, 12, 14–18, 23–24, 28, 38, 41–42, 71, 79, 85–87, 92–93, 123, 136, 139, 142, 163, 166, 168, 174, 246–47 Orlicz-Dreszer, Gustaw, 183, 190, 194, 198–99, 211, 217, 219 Ossendowski, Ferdynand, 200–201, 207–8, 212 Ostrowski, Wiktor, 186–88, 192

252

INDEX

Other, the v, 7–10, 12, 15–16, 86, 95, 98, 104, 106, 114–15, 118, 149, 161, 163, 167, 175, 210, 218, 230, 244–45 othering, 2–4, 6–7, 10, 150, 243, 245 Otherness, 2, 7, 77, 123 Ottoman Empire, 5, 46, 49, 62, 68, 122– 23, 130, 132, 134–35, 139, 142, 206 P Paget, John, 101–2 Palestine, v, 6, 10, 120–22, 124–41, 205 Paraná (Brazil), 174–77, 179–80, 182, 190, 193, 198, 211, 217 Pardoe, Julia, 101 Pawlowszki, Ede, 109–10, 112, 116 People’s Army of North Vietnam (PAVN), 228–29, 236 peripherality, 2, 97, 145 Perovskii, Vasilii, 51–52 Peru, 11, 174, 176, 183, 186, 192 Piasts, 179 Piłsudski, Józef, 49, 63, 197–98, 210, 219 Podhale (Poland), 178 Poland, ii, 2, 5, 7–8, 10–12, 14–18, 44, 47–49, 52, 57, 61–63, 66–67, 85–86, 92–93, 165, 168, 173–76, 178–79, 182– 84, 189–90, 193–94, 196–201, 203–7, 209–12, 214–19, 223, 235, 241, 245 Polish Colonial Society, 197 Polish Glacier, 186 Polish Mountaineering Association, 186 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 5, 45–46, 49, 56, 59, 196 Portugal, 201, 213, 216 Primo de River, Miguel, 201 Promethean movement, 210, 218 Prussia, 173, 210, 243 Pushkin, Alexander, 31–33, 36, 39, 42, 55, 72 Q Quin, Michael J., 101 Quipeio (Portugal), 202 R Republic of Vietnam (RVN; South Vietnam), 226–27 Rhodesia, 213, 217

Riff (region), 201 Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), 176 Romania, 2, 7, 12, 221–27, 231–32, 234–39, 241–42 Romer, Tadeusz, 201, 212–13 Rosti, Pál, 106 Russia, 2–6, 8, 10, 13–16, 18, 22–36, 38–47, 49–53, 55–57, 60, 62–63, 68, 71–73, 85–88, 90, 92–93, 121–22, 125–26, 128–34, 138–42, 166, 168, 173, 200, 243–44 Russian Empire, 5–6, 8–10, 23, 26–28, 34, 36, 40–41, 44–47, 49, 51–52, 55, 57, 62–63, 68–69, 71, 83, 86, 120–21, 130, 132–34, 139, 141–42, 243–44 S Said, Edward, 2, 28, 38, 109, 116, 136 Sajous, Léonidas, 205–6 Salazar, António de Oliveira, 204 San Pablo (Peru), 183–84, 186 Sanguszko, Roman, 46, 51 Santa Candida (Brazil), 115, 118, 176, 178, 181 Schuyler, Eugene, 52, 64 Second Aliyah, 131–32 Semirech (region), 54–56 Shamil, 49, 56–61, 65–66 Siberia, 5, 26, 45–47, 50–51, 62, 64, 66, 68 Sierakowski, Zymunt, 48–49 Silver Age, 5 socialist internationalism, 145, 162, 224, 238 Solovyev, Vladimir, 34–35 South America, vi, 11, 173–74, 176, 188–90, 198, 208, 211, 219 South Americans, 174, 189 Soviet Union (USSR), ii, 7, 22, 25–26, 63, 86, 93, 139, 142, 145, 162, 205, 210, 225, 229, 239 Sprawy morskie i kolonialne (journal), 63, 68, 186–87, 190, 192–94 Štěpánek, Stanislav, 159, 166, 169 Šťovíčková, Věra, 159, 166, 169 Stresemann, Gustav, 197 Stryj (Poland), 202 Sudan, 202, 208, 215

INDEX

Śūnyatā, 29 Šustr, J. K., 153, 165, 169 Syr-Dar’ia River, 52 Széchenyi, István, 99 T Tatar, 23, 25, 30–31, 37, 41, 53, 81 Tatar yoke, 25 Tatarshchina, 23, 36 Teutons, 199, 201 third world, 165, 167 Turkic people, 23 U Ucayali (river), 183 Ukraine, 14, 17, 44–45, 47–48, 61, 63, 68, 77, 209–10, 217, 219 Union of Colonial Pioneers, 176, 190, 195, 198, 201 Union of Communist Youth (UTC), 234 Union of South Africa, 208, 213, 217 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 223 United States, 97, 103–8, 111–14, 206, 212, 219, 221–22, 224–32, 236–38

253

Uruguay, 7 V Valikhanov,Chokan, 32–33, 40–41, 51, 55 Vespucci, Amerigo, 182 Vietnam, vi, 7, 11–12, 221–42 W Warchałowski, Kazimierz, 198, 211 Warsaw Pact, 148, 221, 224–25, 228, 231–32, 236–37, 241 Warta (river), 178–79 Waszyński, Michał, 201, 212 Witkiewicz, Jan, 50–53 X Xántus, János, 106–10, 112, 115–16 Z Zieliński, Gustaw, 55, 64 Zieliński, Stanisław, 183, 192 Zikmund, Miroslav, 152, 160, 164–65, 167 Zwierkowski, Ludwik, 57