Imperial Designs, Postimperial Extremes: Studies in Interdisciplinary and Comparative History of Russia and Eastern Europe 9789633866269, 9789633866276

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Tables
Introduction: The Rieber Momentum in Historiography
Chapter 1 Forests, Navies, and Entangled Empires: Timber Export and Territorial Governance in Russia in the Eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Century
Chapter 2 The Projects of Cossack Reform in the Russian Empire (1810s–1840s): Unification versus Flexibility
Chapter 3 The Russian Army and the Ottoman Empire: Military Reform and Eastern Crisis
Chapter 4 Wartime Mobilization of Ethnicity, Shifting Loyalties, and Population Politics in the Borderlands of Nationalizing Empires: Reshaping Bessarabia and Bukovina, 1914–1919
Chapter 5 Painting Dogs into Racoons: Entertainment and Culture in the Gulag
Chapter 6 The Jewish Exodus to the Balkans, 1933–1938
Chapter 7 Weathering the Storm, Toppled by the Storm: North Korea’s Non-Transition Compared with the Transition of Romania and Albania, 1989–1991
About the Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Imperial Designs, Postimperial Extremes

Imperial Designs, Postimperial Extremes Studies in Interdisciplinary and Comparative History of Russia and Eastern Europe

Edited by Andrei Cus‚co and Victor Taki

Centra l Europea n Universit y Press Budapest–Vienna–New York

Copyright ©2023 by the contributors Published in 2023 by Central European University Press Nádor utca 9, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher. ISBN 978-963-386-626-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-963-386-627-6 (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cuș co, Andrei, editor, author. | Taki, Viktor, editor, author. Title: Imperial designs, postimperial extremes : studies in interdisciplinary and comparative history of Russia and Eastern Europe / edited by Andrei Cuș co and Victor Taki. Description: Budapest ; Vienna ; New York : Central European University Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023034558 (print) | LCCN 2023034559 (ebook) | ISBN 9789633866269 (hardback) | ISBN 9789633866276 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Imperialism--Russia--History--19th century. | Territory, National--Russia--History--19th century. | Borderlands--Russia--History--19th century. | Rieber, Alfred J.--Influence. | Russia--History--1801-1917. | Russia--Territorial expansion--History--19th century. | Russia--Boundaries--History. | BISAC: HISTORY / Europe / Eastern | HISTORY / Modern / General Classification: LCC DK189.7 .I47 2023 (print) | LCC DK189.7 (ebook) | DDC 325/.347--dc23/eng/20230811 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023034558 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023034559

For Alfred J. Rieber, mentor and scholar.

C on t e n ts List of Tables.......................................................................................................... ix Introduction: The Rieber Momentum in Historiography............ 1 Andrei Cușco and Victor Taki Chapter 1

Forests, Navies, and Entangled Empires: Timber Export and Territorial Governance in Russia in the Eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Century��� 17 Marina Loskutova Chapter 2

The Projects of Cossack Reform in the Russian Empire (1810s–1840s): Unification versus Flexibility�������������������������������� 47 Andriy Posunko Chapter 3

The Russian Army and the Ottoman Empire: Military Reform and Eastern Crisis����������������������������������������������� 76 Victor Taki Chapter 4

Wartime Mobilization of Ethnicity, Shifting Loyalties, and Population Politics in the Borderlands of Nationalizing Empires: Reshaping Bessarabia and Bukovina, 1914–1919����� 112 Andrei Cușco Chapter 5

Painting Dogs into Racoons: Entertainment and Culture in the Gulag��������������������������������148 Oksana Ermolaeva Chapter 6

The Jewish Exodus to the Balkans, 1933–1938������������������������������������ 193 Bojan Aleksov

Contents

Chapter 7

Weathering the Storm, Toppled by the Storm: North Korea’s Non-Transition Compared with the Transition of Romania and Albania, 1989–1991���������������230 Balazs Szalontai

About the Contributors�����������������������������������������������������������������������������267 Index��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������271

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List of Tables

Table 1.1. Table 1.2. Table 5A.1. Table 5A.2. Table 5A.3. Table 5A.4. Table 5A.5. Table 5A.6. Table 5A.7. Table 7.1.

Total number of voyages and their destinations from the Russian ports on the Baltic������������������������������������������� 25 The number of voyages with timber on board from the Russian ports on the Baltic, 1710–1820��������������������� 28 The Entertainment Network, The NKVD White Sea–Baltic Combine and Camp, second half of the 1930s��� 188 Population statistics, The NKVD White Sea–Baltic Combine and Camp at the end of the 1930s��������������������������� 189 Inflow into the BBK party organization, January 1–December 31, 1940���������������������������������������������������� 189 Rejections of applications for membership of the BBK party organization, January 1–December 31, 1940������ 189 The BBK party organization’s territorial structure (detailed breakdown), January 1941������������������������ 190 Data on the study of the short course of the history of the VKP (b) by the BBK personnel (as of March 1, 1940)���� 191 BBK guards’ (VOKHR) clubs (data as of January 1941)������ 192 Internal and external factors influencing transition and non-transition in North Korea, Romania, and Albania������� 263

Introduction: The R ieber Momentum in Historiography Andrei Cușco and Victor Taki

T

he editors of conference-based collective volumes usually confront the challenge of synchronizing the often diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives of individual contributors. Our task in this introductory chapter is both easier and more difficult. It is easier because the contributors to this volume had the same doctoral supervisor—Alfred J. Rieber—and were educated at the same place—Central European University (CEU)—in just over two decades. This shared formative experience gives us the opportunity to undertake the more ambitious task of presenting the contributions to this volume as a continuation of the historiographic momentum generated by Alfred Rieber’s exceptionally long and fruitful scholarly career. The double benefit of this exercise consists in rendering our individual research more reflective as well as building up the collective conscience of historians specializing in Eurasian history, a field whose staggering complexity makes such collective conscience all the more necessary. Alfred Rieber’s early interest in Eurasian history was sparked by Owen Lattimore’s pioneering works on the inner Asian frontiers of China, published in the early 1940s,1 which pushed him, as a young scholar, to think about the impact of these frontier zones on Russian foreign policy. Eventually, this interest would produce his famous essay entitled “Persistent Factors in Russian Foreign 1 Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (New York: American Geographical Society, 1940).

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Policy,”2 which linked the traditional topic of Russia’s relative backwardness with respect to the West with the challenge of managing its porous multiethnic frontiers. At the same time, the context of the early Cold War should be taken into account while trying to understand Rieber’s early scholarly endeavors. Stalin died literally “yesterday” for someone who, like Rieber, was a doctoral student specializing in Russian history in the second half of the 1950s. It seems only fitting that Rieber’s doctoral dissertation focused on Stalin’s foreign policy and, specifically, on his relations with the French Communist Party.3 Rieber’s subsequent scholarly career can be seen as a gradual and successively more complex exploration of the increasingly deeper and ever broader long-term roots of the mid-twentieth-century “struggle for supremacy in Eurasia.”4 Rieber’s early interest in the historical roots of Stalin’s policies in the borderlands produced his decades-long engagement with what can be called the imperial Russian project.5 At the core of this problem was the issue of Russia’s economic backwardness with respect to the West and the attempts of Russian imperial rulers and elites to overcome it. One of Rieber’s first steps in this direction was a long essay on the politics of Russian autocracy that prefaced a collection of the letters of Alexander II to his viceroy in the Caucasus Prince A. I. Bariatinskii.6 This essay famously argued that the necessity of military reform in the wake of the Crimean War was a major factor behind both the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and other Great Reforms, which enabled the transition to the principle of quasi-universal short-term military service. From this moment onward, Rieber’s inquiries into the nature of the imperial Russian project would be conducted at the intersection of political and social history, a field that generated important insights over the course of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It is noteworthy that Rieber refused in principle to sacrifice the political history to the social one (or vice 2 Alfred J. Rieber, “Persistent Factors in Russian Foreign Policy: An Interpretive Essay,” in Imperial Russian Foreign Policy, ed. Hugh Ragsdale (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1993), 315–359. 3 Alfred J. Rieber, Stalin and the French Communist Party, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962). 4 Alfred J. Rieber, Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 5 These studies, published over the course of several decades, have recently been reedited in Alfred J. Rieber, The Imperial Russian Project: Autocratic Politics, Economic Development and Social Fragmentation. Foreword by Yanni Kotsonis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017). 6 Alfred J. Rieber, “The Politics of Emancipation,” in The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A.I. Bariatinskii, ed. Alfred J. Rieber (The Hague: Mouton, 1966).

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versa). Instead, he proceeded on the assumption that the political, the social, or the cultural have no existence outside concrete human groupings, the study of which should necessarily draw on the perspectives and methodologies of different types of history. The practical outcome of this approach was Rieber’s research on different “interest groups” in nineteenth-century Russia and the specific inflection that they gave to imperial policies.7 His primary focus was on the “Moscow Entrepreneurial Group” that brought together people of the traditional Old Believer merchant background and the Slavophile ideologues of gentry origin who tried to influence the course of imperial policies, in particular, in the domain of the railroad construction in the second half of the nineteenth century.8 By virtue of its unique economic and military-strategic importance, railroad development was a key policy area in the second half of the nineteenth century, in which the rivalry between different ministries was further complicated by the clash between the Moscow entrepreneurs and other interest groups such as the Saint-Simonian engineers and the economists associated with the Ministry of Finance.9 Rieber’s study of nineteenth-century interest groups provides a connecting link between the research of his fellow historians on the politics of boyar clans and aristocratic networks in early modern Russia and the investigation of the Soviet and post-Soviet institutional rivalries that has preoccupied the political scientists specializing on USSR and Russia.10 It 7 Alfred J. Rieber, “Interest Groups in the Era of Great Reforms,” in Russia’s Great Reforms, 1856–1881, ed. Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1994), 58–83; Alfred J. Rieber, “Bureaucratic Politics in Late Imperial Russia,” Social Science History 2, no. 4 (Summer 1978): 399–413. 8 Rieber, The Imperial Russian Project, 105–128. 9 See Alfred J. Rieber, “The Rise of Engineers in Russia,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique 31, no. 4 (October–December 1990) and Rieber, The Imperial Russian Project, 165–198, respectively. 10 For the discussion of the boyar clans in pre-petrine Russia, see Nancy Shields Kollmann, Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345–1547 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987) and Robert O. Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613–1689 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). For the politics of aristocratic networks in the eighteenth century, see Brenda Meehan-Waters, Autocracy and Aristocracy: The Russian Service Elite of 1730 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982); David L. Ransel, The Politics of Catherinian Russia: The Panin Party (New Haven and London: Yale University press, 1975); and many studies of John LeDonne, among which one could perhaps single out his Absolutism and the Ruling Class: The Formation of Russian Political Order, 1700–1825 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). For interest groups during the Soviet period, see Gordon Skilling and Franklyn Griffith, eds., Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971) and Jerry F. Hough, “‘Interest Groups’ and ‘Pluralism’ in the Soviet Union,” Soviet and Post Soviet Review 1 (1981).

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thereby enables one to identify the long durée of Russian social-political history defined by the existence of an autocratic or authoritarian ruler maneuvering between several competing elite clusters. To place Rieber’s nineteenth-century interest groups alongside the early modern aristocratic clans and the late-Soviet and post-Soviet elite formations is not to deny the specificity of the vastly different intellectual and cultural settings of the early modern period, the nineteenth century, and the Soviet times. In fact, such a comparison precisely helps to better understand this specificity. The nineteenth-century interest groups were more deeply marked by ideological differences compared to both the early modern aristocratic networks that were still little differentiated ideologically and the Soviet institutional rivalries that were submerged under the rigidly controlled ideological discourse.11 Apart from advancing our understanding of the nineteenth-century Russian imperial project, Rieber’s research during these decades made several crucial contributions to social history proper. Social historians of Russia confronted the same challenge that faced their colleagues in other geographical fields—that of relating concrete historically existing legal categories of a given country to the more abstract and universal concepts produced by sociological reflection (both Marxist and non-Marxist). In the case of Imperial Russia, the debate developed largely around the notion of estate (soslovie) and its related terms (sostoianie).12 Historians discussed, in particular, whether the legal estates of imperial Russia constituted “real” social groups and whether the estate principle of social organization was giving way to alternative social forms. Rieber’s first major contribution to this discussion was his monograph Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia, the very title of which indicated his wise decision to stir the middle course between legal-historical and sociological categories in the description of the concrete realities of the past.13 Rieber’s definitive attempt to overcome the limitations of 11 For a discussion of the ideology of the Slavophile entrepreneurs associated with the Moscow Entrepreneurial Group, see Rieber, The Imperial Russian Project, 79–104. 12 For a key discussion of this issue, see Gregory L. Freeze, “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm in Russian Social History,” American Historical Review 91, no. 1 (February 1986): 11–36. A useful summary of the historiographic debate around soslovie can be found in Michael Confino, “The ‘Soslovie’ (Estate) Paradigm: Reflections on Some Open Questions,” Cahiers du Monde russe 49, no. 4 (October–December 2008): 681–699. 13 Alfred J. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982).

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both approaches took the form of his famous essay on late imperial Russia as a “sedimentary society.”14 The essence of its thesis can be summarized as follows: each subsequent round of reform undertaken by the Russian rulers in their effort to resolve the problem of Russia’s backwardness with respect to the Western countries generated new social forms. These forms, however, did not replace the older ones but rather emerged above and/ or alongside them as new “sediments” of an increasingly complex social structure. As was the case of Rieber’s contributions to the study of the imperial Russian project, his insights into Russian social history help connect the debates around social estates as the organizing element of the imperial society to the discussion of the social processes that took place during the Soviet period. Rieber’s reflection in fact constitutes a counterpart to Moshe Lewin’s similarly imaginative description of social realities of the first postrevolutionary decades. Whereas Rieber’s metaphor of the “sedimentary society” helps explain how the flux generated by periodic reform efforts crystallized into the highly complex social structure of the late imperial Russia, Lewin’s description of the early Soviet period as a “quicksand society” does the exact opposite, that is, it shows the consequences of the explosion of 1917 that set into perpetual motion those of the imperial social “sediments” that it did not destroy.15 The issue of the interest groups and the broader question of the imperial Russian project and its social legacies explored by Alfred Rieber over the course of his entire scholarly career find further elaboration in the contributions to this volume. Marina Loskutova continues Rieber’s inquiry into the interaction between the government and entrepreneurs by taking a closer look at the management of Russian forest resources and its impact on timber exports in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Victor Taki explores the ideological rivalries among the Russian military men in the context of the military reform of 1874 and the Eastern Crisis. Andriy Posunko builds upon Rieber’s concept of the “sedimentary society” to demonstrate the limits of the transformation of the Cossacks into an estate in the course of the nineteenth century. Finally, Oksana Ermolaeva’s discussion of the cultural 14 Alfred J. Rieber, “The Sedimentary Society,” Russian History 16, nos. 2–4 (1989): 354–376. 15 Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 221.

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practices in the Gulag in the late 1930s reveals, among other things, the process of recrystallization of social hierarchies, which opened a new cycle of social “sedimentation” after the revolutionary upheaval of the preceding period. This volume, however, seeks to continue and expand not only Alfred Rieber’s multivectored exploration of the imperial Russian project and its social consequences but also his pioneering research on the complex frontier zones in which Russia clashed with its imperial rivals. Perhaps in no other case is Rieber’s astonishing breadth of scholarly interests and versatility in navigating across various scales of historical analysis as obvious as in his long-term preoccupation with the contested frontiers and borderlands of the Eurasian continental empires.16 As in so many other cases, the “struggle over the borderlands”17 became a recurring—and increasingly complex— topic to which Rieber repeatedly returned throughout his career. Placing the Russian Empire at the center of the interacting web and system of competing imperial polities dominating the Eurasian landmass from the early sixteenth century until at least 1914—and even beyond—Rieber realized early on to what extent matters of imperial security and stability—and even imperial imaginaries, ideologies, and governing strategies—were intertwined with the drive to control the outlying regions of these imperial polities, which he later referred to as “complex frontiers.”18 This interpretive framework was based on a concept of frontiers as dynamic, mutable, shifting, always under construction, as a zone (or, significantly, a “shatterzone,” as Rieber put it in later years) characterized by multiethnicity, religious diversity, unstable loyalties, overlapping and contradictory models of governance, and an uneasy balance between long stretches of peaceful coexistence and bloody military clashes. In a conceptual comparative article published in 2003,19 foreshadowing his later two-volume 16 For a compelling formulation of Rieber’s approach to the comparative history of the Eurasian empires, see “Sravnivaia kontinental’nye imperii,” in Rossiiskaia imperiia v sravnitel’noi perspektive: Sbornik statei, ed. Aleksei I. Miller (Moscow: Novoe Izdatel’stvo, 2004), 33–70. 17 Alfred J. Rieber, “Struggle over the Borderlands,” in The Legacy of History in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, ed. S. Frederick Starr (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), 61–92. 18 See, for instance, Alfred J. Rieber, “The Comparative Ecology of Complex Frontiers,” in Imperial Rule, ed. Alexei Miller and Alfred J. Rieber (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004), 178–210. 19 Alfred J. Rieber, “Changing Conceptions and Constructions of Frontiers: A Comparative Historical Approach,” Ab Imperio, no. 1 (2003): 23–46.

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magnum opus on the struggle for the Eurasian borderlands from the sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century,20 Rieber talked about a “triptych of Turner iconography,” with Turner’s controversial “frontier thesis” serving as the base.21 In one of the most stimulating interpretations of American history, Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932) argued that the moving Western frontier profoundly shaped American society and institutions. Alongside Turner’s vision of the “moving frontier,” the “flanks” were represented, on the one side, by “a different spatial concept linked to the rise and consolidation of the centralized state that developed out of the French experience,” while, “on the other side …, a third panel represents the symbolic geographies, that is the construction of imaginary borders on the basis of normative evaluations of the ‘Other.’”22 It was in the late 1990s and the early 2000s that Rieber fully developed what could confidently be viewed as an alternative (although also complementary) scheme to these three interpretations of the frontier as a longterm phenomenon. Rejecting the traditional geopolitical and civilizational approaches to the history of Eurasia, Rieber instead proposed a more flexible and inclusive “geo-cultural model” of the “complex frontier regions” and the “struggle over the borderlands,” which privileged the macro-scale of comparison and what might be called “inter-imperial entanglements.”23 Fully explicated and applied in his two-volume work mentioned above (published in two installments in 2014 and 2015, with World War I serving as a conventional divide), it aims to encompass and account for both the broader agendas of the state structures dominating the “Eurasian” landmass in the late modern period and for the local population’s negotiation with the “centers of power” (a term Rieber prefers to the traditional “core” as more dynamic and precise). This framework thus emphasizes not only the contested character of the “borderlands,” but also the crucial importance of these areas for imperial preservation, survival, and collapse. The “complex frontiers thesis” also allows the depiction of the “borderlands” of the Eurasian continental empires as “relational categories” that 20 Alfred J. Rieber, The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands: From the Rise of Early Modern Empires to the End of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Rieber, Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia. 21 Rieber, “Changing Conceptions and Constructions of Frontiers,” 25. 22 Rieber, “Changing Conceptions and Constructions of Frontiers,” 25. 23 Rieber, The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands, chapter 1 (“Imperial Space”), 5–78.

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were constructed by the imperial bureaucrats (and intellectuals) in order to achieve not only tangible goals of space management but also symbolic aims of legitimization of the imperial polity.24 It is remarkable how Rieber successfully combines an impressive comparative breadth—his subject matter spans, almost seamlessly, the five imperial polities of the Romanovs, the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, the Safavids/Qajars in Persia, and Qing China—with an ability to “zoom in” onto particular case studies, while constantly keeping in mind the central place and significance of the Russian state as the pivotal element connecting the seven major “complex frontiers” or “shatterzones”25 that he maps, literally and figuratively, stretching from the Triplex Confinium in the Western Balkans as far as Xinjiang, that is, Lattimore’s “Inner Asia.” The intellectual feat that underpins Rieber’s efforts to “re-read” the history of the modern(izing) Eurasian empires as a story of “struggle over the borderlands” presupposes redefining Russian history from a macro-regional, global, and transnational perspective. It also, however, raises the question of continuity and long-term “persistent factors”26 (also a phrase coined by Rieber) beyond the 1917 divide. Alfred Rieber’s abiding interest in Stalin as a “man of the borderlands”27—and, consequently, in the long-term structural conditions impacting the Soviet leader’s foreign and domestic policy, subject to the constraints of “the struggle for supremacy in Eurasia”—is a convincing example of how Rieber, as a scholar, not only redefined the field of Russian history but also pushed it toward new questions and directions. One particular dimension of “imperial legacies”—or, rather, one of the constitutive elements of imperial state-building projects—tackled in this volume and directly relevant for Alfred Rieber’s scholarly endeavors is the issue of population displacements, (forced) migrations, and population politics in modern Eurasia. Rieber saw large-scale population movements (whether long-term or sudden, whether defined by slowly developing nomad24 Rieber, The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands, 5–78. 25 For a slightly different—but essentially complementary—approach to the shatterzones of empires in the Eurasian space, see Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz, eds., Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). 26 Rieber, “Persistent Factors in Russian Foreign Policy.” 27 Alfred J. Rieber, “Stalin, Man of the Borderlands,” American Historical Review 106, no. 5 (December 2001): 1651–1691. See also Rieber, Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia, 9–42.

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sedentary patterns of coexistence or by state-designed campaigns of forced relocations and violent deportations) as one of the essential parameters and defining features of the Eurasian imperial experience. He himself contributed a seminal edited volume to the debate, entitled Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939–1950,28 while also being highly sensitive to and interested in the significance of these processes in many of his other works. Population displacements and the wider implications of the increasingly violent and exclusionary “population politics” practiced by modernizing empires (in Europe and beyond) and by their successor nation-states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century29 are prominent features of the ideas Rieber elaborates in his article “Civil Wars in the Soviet Union.”30 He further builds on and expands his argument, in particular, in the second volume of his work on the struggle for Eurasian borderlands, devoted to Stalin’s drive for hegemony in Eurasia.31 Population politics is customarily associated with the “dark side of modernity,” but was in fact practiced by authoritarian and liberal regimes alike, at least starting from the late nineteenth century. Far from being an aberration or distortion of the modern project, population politics was actually constitutive of its core elements of social control, rational governance, and state interventionism. In Central and Eastern Europe, in particular, the violent dimension of population politics and the exclusionary policies it entailed was especially conspicuous during the first half of the twentieth century. Even before the Holocaust, the massive deportations and population displacements occurring on the Eastern front during World War I,32 the 28 Alfred J. Rieber, ed., Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939–1950 (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000). 29 For other comprehensive approaches relating to the concept of population politics and its practical applications in Russia and Central/Eastern Europe, see Peter Holquist, “To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia,” in A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Terry Martin and Ronald G. Suny (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 111–144 and Maria Sophia Quine, Population Politics in Twentieth-Century Europe: Fascist Dictatorships and Liberal Democracies (London: Routledge, 1996). 30 Alfred J. Rieber, “Civil Wars in the Soviet Union,” Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 129–162. 31 See Rieber, Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia, 243–282. 32 Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens During World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999/2005).

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forced and large-scale “population exchanges” in its aftermath,33 the massive scale of Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, or the ambitious “repatriation” policy of ethnic Germans to the Third Reich ­pursued by the Nazis proved to what extent forced migrations and the accompanying violence were a direct consequence of various inflections of population politics. The modern Eurasian empires and their successor states were, as Alfred Rieber has also shown, enthusiastic participants and/or crucial “laboratories” for testing these intrusive and radical strategies of population management.34 The line between ethnic cleansing and voluntary migration was indeed difficult to draw in many cases, while almost all states in the area enthusiastically engaged—admittedly, to different degrees—in projects of “purifying” the nation from disloyal or “alien” elements. This volume not only pursues and builds upon Alfred Rieber’s interpretive insights and conceptual models of “complex frontiers,” interimperial rivalry, and forced population displacements/population politics (as shown, for instance, in Victor Taki’s analysis of the significance of military statistics in late nineteenth-century Russia, in Andrei Cușco’s case study of Bessarabia and Bukovina during World War I, or in Bojan Aleksov’s pioneering essay on Jewish refugees in Yugoslavia and Greece before the Anschluss), but also interrogates the limits of comparison in the broadly understood Eurasian context (as demonstrated by Balazs Szalontai’s fascinating parallel analysis of the apparently unlikely “triad” of Romania, Albania, and North Korea and their diverging trajectories after the Soviet collapse in 1989/1991). Many of the insights customarily associated with the “spatial turn,” the nexus between state policies and violence during times of crisis, or the pros and cons of applying a comparative lens of interpretation to the imperial experience have been addressed, in one form or another, in Rieber’s monumental scholarly output. This volume is, in itself, the best proof of Alfred Rieber’s seemingly limitless capacity for inspiring his disciples to further explore and refine the research avenues he had suggested earlier. Marina Loskutova’s approach resonates with Rieber’s research on merchants and entrepreneurs in nineteenth-century Russia. The common dimension is that of interaction between government bureaucracy and the 33 Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell, eds., Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (London: Anthem Press, 2004). 34 Rieber, The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands, 532–614.

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entrepreneurial milieu. Rieber focuses on a consolidated entrepreneurial group that had a distinct ideology—the nationalist and Slavophile-leaning Moscow merchants—who attempted to project their views onto government policies. Loskutova’s contribution offers a mirror image of this situation, with a central government agency—the Admiralty—attempting to establish control over territory and resources. When this attempt failed, the government officials instead relied on territorially embedded entrepreneurs who combined local knowledge with the skills necessary to manage forest resources. Loskutova’s chapter thereby represents an interesting insight into the Russian dimension of the role of entrepreneurship in the emergence of modern territorial statehood and colonization. It reveals the features that Imperial Russia shares with the early modern colonial empires, where entrepreneurial groups and commercial companies played a similarly crucial role in state-building.35 Her study illustrates the persistence of the early modern practices and the limits of the modern state’s efforts to render the territory and its resources legible and transparent for the bureaucratic gaze.36 When read together with Rieber’s study of merchants and entrepreneurs in late imperial Russia, Loskutova’s chapter demonstrates the persistence of the blurry line between the modern state’s institutional framework and certain informal networks and interest groups. Andriy Posunko’s contribution addresses the projects of Cossack reform in the Russian Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Russian rulers faced the double challenge of reducing the costs of the inordinately large standing army and of sustaining the military qualities and loyalty of the Cossack hosts. Posunko demonstrates that an attempt to resolve these issues by reorganizing both the regular troops and the Cossack hosts into military settlements met with strong opposition not only from the rank-and-file Cossacks but also from their commanders, who insisted on adjusting the concept to the local realities. He 35 The literature on the role of entrepreneurship in the rise of the early modern state in general and its warmaking aspect in particular is vast. See, among other studies, David Parrott, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Jeff Flynn-Paul, ed., War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2014); and Joël Félix and Anne Dubet, eds., The War Within: Private Interests and the Fiscal State in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018). 36 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).

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then analyzes the elaboration of the 1834 Don Cossack Statute, which further demonstrated the ability of the local actors to defy imperial attempts at systematization and uniformization. Although the statute increased central control and helped to build up the loyalty of the rank-and-file Cossacks by restraining the privileges of the Cossack elite, it was only selectively applied to other Cossack hosts of the empire and, more fundamentally, it never turned the Cossacks into a consolidated estate. The chapter thus builds on Alfred Rieber’s essay Politics of Autocracy—a seminal discussion of the military reform in relation to Russia’s social structure—as well as on his concept of “the sedimentary society,” which represented a powerful contribution to the historiographic debate on the problem of estate in Russian social history. Victor Taki’s chapter discusses the Russian military perspectives on the Ottoman Empire between the Crimean War and the Eastern Crisis. The chapter likewise draws on Rieber’s Politics of Autocracy to provide an overview of the military aspect of the Great Reforms that followed Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War. Next, it addresses the place of population within the discipline of military statistics that became a major instrument of both military reform and Russian empire-building during this period. The chapter demonstrates that the experience of the “pacification” of the Northern Caucasus in the late 1850s and early 1860s made the confessional and ethnic composition of the Eastern Balkan population an integral part of Russian thinking about future confrontations with the Ottoman Empire. This thesis is illustrated by an analysis of the plans of mass mobilization of the Balkan Christians that were proposed by several Russian generals following the outbreak of the Eastern Crisis in 1875. Although the Russian War Ministry and the Main Staff did not fully subscribe to such plans, their own preparation for the war of 1877–1878 reveals the readiness to take into consideration the confessional and ethnic composition of the population in the prospective theater of military operations. Andrei Cușco’s chapter, building on his previous research, focuses on the interplay between the mobilization of ethnicity, population politics, and shifting loyalties in Eastern Europe during World War I. He approaches these broader issues by a direct comparison between two “Russian-Romanian” borderlands—Bessarabia and Bukovina—during wartime and its aftermath. Cușco argues that the impact of the war was deeply transformative for the 12

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entire region. It generated new dynamics both on the macro-level of the main imperial players and on the “middle level” of different imperial provinces and their populations. The comparison between Bessarabia and Bukovina is relevant insofar as the war brought fundamental changes to these regions’ earlier perceptions as loyal and “quiet” backwaters. The war not only introduced new and radical methods of governance applied by the two rival empires, but it also intensified ethnic mobilization on the ground. This was a direct consequence of state policy, being fueled by the heightened sensitivity toward ethnicity as the defining feature of entire population groups. On the one hand, the chapter taps into a growing and fascinating field of research that emerged during the last two decades. Cușco’s approach is directly indebted to Alfred Rieber’s fundamental contributions to the wide-ranging comparative studies of the Eurasian borderlands from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. On the other hand, Cușco approaches wartime developments in Bessarabia and Bukovina by tracing the concrete shifts in ethnic hierarchies, governing strategies, and collective loyalties on the ground. He focuses on significant ethnic groups in both provinces (the Bessarabian Romanian-speaking population, the Bessarabian Germans, or the Romanian community in Bukovina) whose status and collective identifications were directly shaped by the war. This narrower regional comparison could become a fruitful starting point for juxtaposing the Russian and Habsburg/Austro-Hungarian “models” of population politics and ethnic mobilization. The escalating mutual radicalization of population politics in the borderlands was amply illustrated by the developments in Bessarabia and Bukovina. Oksana Ermolaeva’s chapter applies a social and cultural history approach to the Soviet Gulag experience by focusing on the activities of the Cultural-Educational Section of the Gulag during the 1930s and early 1940s. The author discusses in depth the case of the White Sea–Baltic Combine, the section of the Gulag responsible for building the White Sea–Baltic Canal. The entanglements between the primary propaganda role of the CulturalEducational Section and the subsidiary—but rather revealing—cultural activities in the camps are at the center of Ermolaeva’s analysis. Without minimizing the suffering of the prisoners and their status as outcasts (especially in the case of “political” detainees), Ermolaeva shows that the camps were indeed a “microcosm” of Soviet society. First, the strategies of “cultural construction” pursued by the Stalinist state encountered the same basic 13

A n d r e i C u ș c o a n d V i c t o r Ta k i

dilemmas in the camps they had earlier met outside them, that is, competing definitions of kulturnost, mass illiteracy, lack of resources, rampant incompetence, geographical and educational imbalances, the aspiration toward social control versus its chaotic application on the ground, and the like. Second, the chapter focuses on the fundamental difference between the privileged center and the periphery of the “Gulag archipelago.” Ermolaeva shows how various constituencies within the Gulag (the inmates, the guards, and camp personnel) were involved in artistic patronage networks, supported by high state and party authorities. Ermolaeva’s text uncovers, on the one hand, the rigid social hierarchies in the camps, clearly delineating “political” inmates from common criminals. On the other hand, Ermolaeva argues that the cultural-educational measures implemented by the Cultural-Educational Section also had a productive dimension, contributing to the abandonment of old social norms and to the creation of new Soviet values. This peculiar version of “Soviet subjectivity” stemmed from the interaction of people from varied social and cultural backgrounds, who were forcibly socialized within and confronted the harsh reality of the forced labor camps. The chapter by Bojan Aleksov, which is inspired by Alfred Rieber’s pioneering works on the history of forced migrations and large-scale population displacements in Central and Eastern Europe before and after 1939, is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of the author’s recently published book, Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933–1945, focusing on Jewish refugees in the Balkans in the 1930s and during World War II. The chapter shows how the Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were initially welcomed (or at least tolerated) in Yugoslavia, which enjoyed a specific (indeed, almost unique) experience of state policies favorable toward the Jews, contrary to most other European countries at the time. Yugoslavia also had a thriving Jewish communal life, allowing its relatively small Jewish community to show enormous solidarity and sacrifice in caring for the refugees. This relative tolerance toward Jewish refugees (especially during their first wave of emigration from Germany after 1933) lasted longer in the Balkans than elsewhere. Few newcomers permanently settled in Yugoslavia, while others felt trapped there because they saw their Balkan journey only as a brief interlude before reaching their final destination overseas. The chapter analyzes the individual trajectories, experiences and perceptions of German Jews arriving in the Balkans while looking at the effect of their arrival upon the Yugoslav Jewish community. It discusses the Zionist Hachshara (training farm) in 14

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Golenić, Croatia, the first attempt at semiorganized emigration. Aleksov’s chapter reassesses the dynamics of Jewish emigration to Yugoslavia between 1933 and 1938 and the refugees’ estimated numbers, challenging the current historiography. It also tackles the Jewish refugees’ everyday experiences and survival strategies in the Yugoslav environment. Aleksov concludes that, despite the rising anti-Semitic tendencies in Yugoslavia between 1936 and 1938, the country still issued permits for Jewish refugees until 1938–1939. It was only after the Anschluss, when Jewish emigration turned into desperate escape, that Yugoslavia ceased to be a safe haven for the refugees. The chapter authored by Balazs Szalontai focuses on the comparative analysis of three countries of the communist bloc (North Korea, Albania, and Romania) that, while featuring the most authoritarian versions of communist regimes before 1989, had very different trajectories following the collapse of the communist systems in Eastern Europe and in the USSR. The contribution examines those domestic and external factors that led to the collapse of the Romanian and Albanian communist regimes in 1989–1990 and that enabled the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to survive the shock effect of the East European transitions and the subsequent economic crisis. It compares the three countries in terms of three dimensions: socioeconomic, symbolic, and international. It concludes that North Korea’s survival resulted from the combination of multiple factors that distinguished the country from both Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Romania and Ramiz Alia’s Albania (though less so from Enver Hoxha’s Albania): the regime’s unusually repressive nature; the low cohesion of the underprivileged social groups; the leadership’s unwillingness to initiate either a political liberalization or a confrontational austerity program; the scarcity of alternative national symbols that could have been juxtaposed to the state’s own symbols; the absence of an earlier, noncommunist nation-state; China’s post-1991 support; North Korea’s strong military capabilities; the U.S. and South Korean governments’ focus on North Korea’s denuclearization, rather than democratization; and the North Korean elite’s fear of a scenario in which a transition would lead to the DPRK’s absorption into the Republic of Korea. The chapter also explains why Romania’s transition was more violent than Albania’s. The wide range of directions taken by the essays in this volume provides a sort of “snapshot” of the impressive chronological dynamics of Rieber’s uniquely long and productive career. In a way, this volume in itself could 15

A n d r e i C u ș c o a n d V i c t o r Ta k i

remind a reader familiar with Rieber’s work of late imperial Russia’s “sedimentary society,” in the sense that each of these contributions echoes and builds upon a particular vector that Rieber pursued at a given stage of his scholarly journey. Rather than chase ephemeral and ever-changing historiographical fashions, we aim at transforming this complex trajectory into a rich and stimulating mosaic of various approaches and types of history practiced by his disciples. Our fundamental assumption is that, contrary to Thomas Kuhn’s famous thesis defining the history of science as a succession of revolutionary paradigm changes, the discipline of history develops through gradual accumulation. This process is impossible without a peculiar form of “collective consciousness” of the professional community of historians, sustained by and based on a retrospective vision that embraces the historiographic momentum. As should be abundantly clear by now, much of this momentum was already present in Alfred Rieber’s works prior to the mid-1990s. However, the unique environment of the CEU was decisive in transforming this ongoing dynamic into a historiographic practice of growing complexity.

16

Ch a p t e r 1

Forests, Navies, and Entang led Empires: Timber Export and Territoria l Governance in Russia in the Eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Centur y Marina Loskutova

O

n October 4, 1798, Charles Whitworth, the British minister-plenipotentiary to the Russian court, informed the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs William Grenville about a new matter of emergency arising in the relations between the two empires.1 A fortnight earlier, on September 21, the Russian tsar, Paul I, had signed a decree banning all timber exports from his country.2 The country’s timber trade was put on hold at the moment when about 150 British merchant ships had been waiting to be loaded in St. Petersburg. Minister Whitworth expected more complaints would pile up once the news reached him from other Russian ports. This was much more than a blow to 1 The National Archives, Kew, the United Kingdom (TNA). FO 65 (Foreign Office and predecessor. Political and other departments. General correspondence before 1906. Russian Empire)/41 (Letters and papers from Sir Charles Whitworth and Consul Shairp at St. Petersburg to the Secretary of State with Drafts, October 3, 1798–December 31, 1798). 2 It was September 10, 1798, according to the Julian calendar: “About the Prohibition on Felling Naval Woods in the State-Owned Estates,” in Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (PSZ), Sobranie pervoe/1st collection, vol. 25, no. 18659, 367.

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the interests of the British timber merchants—the embargo threatened the British defense potential, as in the course of the two preceding centuries, the English and, later, the British naval stores had become increasingly dependent on deals, battens, and masts coming from the Eastern Baltic and White Sea regions.3 Indeed, in less than two weeks, on October 20, 1798, the British Admiralty addressed a letter to Lord Grenville urging for a diplomatic intervention in order to let the timber harvested in Russia be safely transported to the British shipyards.4 Whitworth did what he could. In the autumn of 1798, he managed to secure a minor concession from the Russian emperor allowing for the embargo not to be put in force before the next navigation season, while in spring–early summer of 1799, responding to repeated requests from the Whitehall, he negotiated a new deal with Paul I: the Russian emperor permitted 1,450,000 balks of timber that were contracted for the British Admiralty to cross the Russian western border at Brest-Litovsk on the Western Bug and at Jurburg (presently Jurbarkas in Lithuania) on the Niemen.5 While Whitworth was at pains to solve this problem—on top of his many more pressing worries concerning the British and Russian military operations in the Mediterranean, the proposed landing of a joint expeditionary corps in the Netherlands against the French, and the intrigues of the Austrian ambassador—a lieutenant commander of the Russian navy, named Baptiste Drako, was struggling his way through the woods and marshes of the Luga district, some 80 miles to the south from the Russian capital. His task was to map and describe the state forests of the St. Petersburg province and to inventory the trees suitable for shipbuilding. In June 1798, Drako presented the first part of the forest atlas he compiled to the Admiralty, and his work met the emperor’s personal approval. The copies of his maps were sent to naval officers working on the same commission in other provinces of the Russian Empire as an example to follow, while Drako carried on with working on the second part of his work, completing it in 1803.6 3 Robert G. Albion, Forests and Sea Power. The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy. 1652–1862 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926); James Davey, “Securing the Sinews of Sea Power: British Intervention in the Baltic 1780–1815,” International History Review 33, no. 2 (2011): 161–184. 4 TNA. FO 65/41. 5 TNA. FO 65/42; the Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv; RGIA), fond (collection) 1594, opis’ (inventory) 1, delo (file) 16, listy (folia) 110–115, 152–168v. 6 RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 30.

18

Forests, Navies, a nd Enta ng led Empires

These two episodes have been occasionally noted by scholars writing on Russian export trade, forest management, and cadastral mapping, yet so far historians have always treated them separately, as belonging to two different narratives. The first one construes the mission of Baptiste Drako as a manifestation of state agency—the major force shaping the history of Russian ­forests and forestry from the early decades of the eighteenth century. The second narrative concerns the personality of Paul I and the ups and downs of Russian-British relations in the tumultuous age of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Europe. Historians dismiss the 1798 ban on timber exports as an impulsive measure imposed by the tsar known for his erratic behavior or read it as a sign of the general drift in Russia’s foreign policy under Paul I toward an alliance with the French against the British.7 Indeed, we know that Paul I authorized the embargo shortly after his return from Kazan’ province, where he visited some oak plantations intended to provide his navy with shipbuilding timber. Reportedly, the emperor was infuriated by the appalling state of the plantations.8 In 1799, the Russian emperor commanded the seizure of all British ships and goods in his ports, while in 1800, Minister Whitworth was spreading “vile” rumors about Paul I’s insanity, for which Paul promptly expelled him from the country.9 This perspective, however, does not acknowledge the pace with which the Russian-British relations were changing at the time: when Paul I succeeded Catherine II in November 1796, Whitworth was ecstatic about the prospects opening up at the start of the new reign, and as late as summer 1799, he was still fairly optimistic about the potential for cooperation with Russia, although he acknowledged that, in the meantime, he was powerless to lift the embargo on the timber trade. It is also worth noting that even if general restrictions on trade with Britain were repealed almost immediately after Alexander I’s ascension to the throne, in March 1801, the timber embargo was not lifted in St. Petersburg and Archangel’sk—a fact entirely overlooked by historians.10 7 E. M. Lupanova, Istoriia zakreposhcheniia prirodnogo resursa. Lesnoe khoziaistvo v Rossii 1696–1802 gg. (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Evropeiskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge, 2017), 310–312. 8 A. V. Skorobogatov, “Vizit v Kazan’ imperatora Pavla I,” Ekho vekov, nos. 1–2 (2001): 202–208. 9 For Whitworth’s role in Paul’s assassination, see James J. Kenney, “Lord Whitworth and the Conspiracy against Tsar Paul I: The New Evidence of the Kent Archive,” Slavic Review 36, no. 2 (1977): 205–219. 10 “About the Permission to Release Timber from the Ports of St. Petersburg and Archangelsk,” June 16, 1811, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 31, no. 24724, 813.

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In this chapter, however, I am not concerned with the reassessment of the Russian trade policies and the history of international relations. What I propose instead is to connect two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that is a complex history of resource exploitation and territorial governance in Eastern Europe. Historians of forest management in the region should not focus exclusively on the Russian state and its institutions but should also acknowledge the presence of another powerful extraterritorial force, namely the Russian overseas export trade in timber and related forest products. This force began to leave its imprint on East European landscapes well before the Russian state managed to make its woods “legible” or governable. I argue that the rise of state territorial control in the Russian Empire, especially the control over those territories that contained strategic natural resources, could not be separated from the concerns and anxieties about the growing inclusion of these territories and resources into global trade networks. The spread of the British “timber frontier” to the Eastern Baltic11 prompted the Russian imperial administration to reform its institutions and practices in order to establish a greater territorial presence and to begin transforming the vast wooded spaces of Eastern Europe into visible, managed, and policed “places.” This process was very far from completion even by the mid-nineteenth century, as systematic cadastral mapping of the stateowned forests and their territorial reorganization into neat rectangular plots crisscrossed with glades started on a large scale only in the 1840s. However, I argue that the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a crucial period for the crystallization of new approaches to territorial governance in the Russian Empire. To prove this thesis, first, I am going to examine the available data on the Russian export timber trade in the eighteenth–early nineteenth century. I will show how twice, in the course of the eighteenth century, a considerable increase in timber exports from certain areas culminated in the Russian embargo on export timber trade—an embargo that the Russian government justified by quoting the scarcity of forest resources. Second, I will trace how the fear of timber shortages prompted the Russian state administration to launch fact-finding missions and forest surveys in order to increase the visibility and “legibility” of wooded areas, and how in 11 For the concept of “timber frontier,” see Christian Lotz, “Expanding the Space for Future Resource Management: Explorations of the Timber Frontier in Northern Europe and the Rescaling of Sustainability during the Nineteenth-Century,” Environment and History 21 (2015): 257–279.

20

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the early years of the nineteenth century these missions were transformed into more permanent institutional forms of forest management. The Russian Export Timber Trade in the Eighteenth–Early Nineteenth Centuries and Its Impact on the Forests of the Eastern Baltic In the seventeenth century, the Eastern Baltic emerged as the main supply area of shipbuilding timber for the two leading naval powers of that age— England and the Dutch Republic.12 With the annexation of a strategic stretch of the Baltic littoral from Vyborg to Riga in the course of the Great Northern War (1700–1721), Russia emerged as an active player in this lucrative trade, in which earlier the country could participate only through the mediation of Sweden. In the years between the Great Northern War and the Napoleonic Wars, the Baltic trade was occasionally disrupted by military hostilities of a lesser magnitude: the wars between Russia and Sweden in 1741–1743 and in 1788–1790, the Seven Years’ War, and the period of armed neutrality in 1779–1783. However, it was only on two occasions—in the mid-1750s and in 1798—that the Russian government imposed a timber embargo. The ban on timber exports introduced in 1754 became operational only in 1756.13 By that time, the Russian government reduced its full scope of action to St. Petersburg, Narva, and Pernau, while Riga and Vyborg were permitted to export, albeit under certain conditions14 (the embargo did not concern at all Russian exports from the White Sea area). The government lifted these restrictions in 1762–1764,15 after Catherine II’s ascension to the throne and the end of the Seven Years’ War. Remarkably, both in the mid1750s and in 1798, the Russian government justified the embargo by citing an alleged scarcity of forest resources. While, on the whole, the plains of Eastern Europe were still abundantly endowed with woods in the mid-nineteenth century—the period for which 12 Michael North, “The Export of Timber and Timber By-products from the Baltic Region to Western Europe, 1575–1775,” in From the North Sea to the Baltic: Essays in Commercial, Monetary, and Agrarian History, 1500–1800, ed. Michael North (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing 1996), 1–14. 13 The Senate’s decree from June 22, 1754, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 14, no. 10248, 170–171. 14 The Senate’s decree from May 27, 1755, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 14, 372–374; The Senate’s decree from March 7, 1756, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 14, 520–521. 15 The Senate’s report approved by Her Majesty on May 13, 1762, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 15, 1001–1005.

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we do have fairly reliable statistical data—it is still worth considering if, in the course of the eighteenth century, timber exports from the Baltic ports could actually have resulted in a perceptible contraction of the wooded area in certain provinces or districts or, perhaps, in a depletion of tree species needed for naval construction. Indeed, there are some data indicating that the destruction of woods within the confines of the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century proceeded faster than it happened in the first half of the nineteenth century.16 However, unfortunately, the reconstruction of a sufficiently detailed picture for this period seems nearly impossible, as the Russian administration of the era did not undertake systematic cadastral surveys of its forests. Still, it is worth having at least a general understanding of the dynamics of export timber trade in the region. Even these data, however, are not readily available. For the purpose of this chapter, I have opted to use the Sound Toll Registers (STR)—an exceptionally detailed record of the toll collected by the Danish crown from the ships passing through the Sound Straits from the Baltic to the North Sea and the other way around between the late fifteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries. In 2009–2017, the STR records were digitalized and are now freely available as an online database, which some historians of European trade in the early modern and modern periods have already used in their research.17 For anyone set on reconstructing Russian export trade, the principal problem with this source is, of course, the fact that it reflects only those ships from the Russian Empire that left the ports on the Baltic and were heading for certain destinations beyond the confines of the Baltic Sea. In other words, the shipping between Russian and Swedish, Danish, or German ports on the Baltic does not appear on the records, and neither does the trade across the land border with Prussia, 16 M. A. Tsvetkov, Izmenenie lesistosti Evropeiskoi Rossii s kontsa XVII veka po 1914 god (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo AN SSSR, 1957), 123–133. 17 Sound Toll registers online. Available at: http://www.soundtoll.nl (Accessed March 2, 2023). See also Pavel Demchenko, “Destination Unknown: The Geography of Baltic Shipping and the Registration System of the Sound Toll Registers in the Eighteenth Century,” International Journal of Maritime History 32, no. 2 (2020): 479–489; Ragnhild Hutchison, “The Norwegian and Baltic Timber Trade to Britain 1780–1835 and Its Interconnections,” Scandinavian Journal of History 37, no. 5 (2012): 578–599; and Nathan Gallagher, “A Methodology for Estimating the Volume of Baltic Timber to Spain Using the Sound Toll Registers: 1670–1806,” International Journal of Maritime History 28, no. 4 (2016): 752–773. Michael North used the Sound Toll registers for his reconstructions of the Baltic timber trade before the records were digitalized: North, “The Export of Timber and Timber By-Products,” 1–14.

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Forests, Navies, a nd Enta ng led Empires

Austria, and other German principalities, as well as the trade on the Black, the Azov, and the White Seas. The absence of the Black Sea and the Azov Sea ports should not really concern us here as timber was a scarce resource in the steppe zone, and therefore Russia did not export timber to Europe from these ports. However, a substantial amount of timber was floated along the Niemen, the Western Bug, and the Vistula from the lands of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth that the Russian Empire annexed in 1772–1795 toward the Prussian ports of Memel (Klaipeda) and Danzig (Gdansk). These exports are therefore missing from our estimations. The lack of data on the trade between Russian Baltic ports and Lubeck is also regrettable, as it seems that fairly substantial amounts of exported timber went along that route.18 Therefore, one should keep in mind that the actual volume of timber exports was always higher than the one calculated from the STR database. As for Archangelsk, on the White Sea coast, in the eighteenth century, the city remained an important entrepôt for trade between Russia and Western Europe, even if its significance had considerably decreased after the end of the Great Northern War. Situated at the mouth of the Northern Dvina, Archangelsk traded in timber and other forest products (pitch and tar, potash) that were harvested from pine and larch woods from a vast area stretching down south to Vologda and the northern districts of Kostroma province. Export timber trade in the city was often farmed out to Dutch and British entrepreneurs, although some local merchants, such as the Bazhenin family, had also firmly established themselves in this business. At the same time, Archangelsk was also the site where, from the early eighteenth century, the Russian Admiralty had been constructing ships for the Baltic fleet. There is some evidence that at least on certain occasions it was concerned about the competitive pressure that the export timber trade exerted on the forest resources of the region, even if the potential harvesting area could extend for many hundreds of miles away from the port and the dockyards, along the banks of the Northern Dvina, the Onega, and Mezen’ Rivers and of their tributaries. Indeed, in 1764, at the urging of the Admiralty, the Russian Senate set up a special commission to investigate the activities of timber merchants in the region who, as the Admiralty alleged, had been harvesting timber 18 For example, a report from Vyborg concerning all ships that left this port with timber on board in October 1798 mentions six ships that left for England, two ships that left for Lubeck, and one ship that left for an unidentified Prussian port. See RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 16, ll. 41–44.

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beyond the territories allocated for their use, and therefore were encroaching on the naval forest resources. Yet, ultimately, the commission and the Senate supported the interests of the export trade by declaring that each of the ­parties could exploit vast areas for timbering, and these allocated zones overlapped in no way. Later on, in the 1780s, one of the largest export timber trade enterprises on the White Sea coast, belonging to a British merchant, William Home, went bankrupt and was purchased by the Russian government, which thus became directly involved in this lucrative business.19 It is indeed very unfortunate that we lack the sources to reconstruct the dynamics of export timber trade from this port and, therefore, can focus exclusively on the Russian timber trade from the Baltic ports. The other problem presented by the STR database is that timber exports consisted of a great variety of specific products. Moreover, the units by which Danish customs officers measured and counted these goods also varied considerably. For these reasons, I abandoned the idea of calculating the actual volume of timber exports; instead, I have decided to make some estimations concerning the dynamics of traffic, that is, to calculate the number of ship voyages from the Russian Baltic ports across the Sound Straits featuring loads of timber on board. Therefore, I counted only those voyages in which at least one of these timber products was recorded among the merchandise (with variations in spelling): bjælker (balks), brædder (boards), bugspryd (bowsprit), dehler (deals), holt (wood, unspecified), legter (laths), klapholt (clapboard for barrels), masten (masts), planker (planks), skibstaenger (ship beams), sparrer (spars, heavy timber), spirer (spears, wooden spikes), vognskud (wainscot logs). I examined the STR database for the years from 1710 to 1820 in order to cover the whole period from the moment when the Russian Empire conquered the Baltic littoral from Vyborg to Riga up until the moment when the traffic between the Baltic and Western Europe began to recover after the disruption caused by the Napoleonic Wars. While I have considered all major ports of the region—St. Petersburg, Riga, Reval (Tallinn), Vyborg, Narva, and Pernau (Pärnu)—I have not examined Windau (Ventspils) and Libau (Liepaja)—the ports of the Duchy of Kurland, which the Russian Empire annexed only in 1795—as well as the Prussian ports. The results of my calculations are presented in the Tables 1.1 and 1.2. 19 RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 1–2v; f. 1594, op. 1, d. 7, ll. 24–27.

24

25

1 0

Russian ports on the White Sea

Unknown

5730

1

South America, the Caribbean, Africa outside the Mediterranean, and Asia

Total

1

North America

29

Ports on the Baltic and the Danish Straits

308

201

German and Danish ports of the North Sea

The Mediterranean

264

The Atlantic coast of France, Spain, and Portugal

117

3311

Britain

Norway, Island, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands

1497

100.00%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

5.4%

2.0%

0.5%

3.5%

4.6%

57.8%

26.1%

St. Petersburg

The Dutch Republic

1710–1755

11087

2

0

3

0

50

235

495

255

919

3255

5873

1

0

0

0

0

5

93

16

162

996

4571

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.1%

1.6%

0.3%

2.8%

17.0%

78.2%

Narva

0

0

0

0

8

0

1

3

171

95

1064

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.6%

0.0%

0.1%

0.2%

12.7%

7.1%

79.3%

Vyborg

100.00% 5844 100.00% 1342 100.00%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.5%

2.1%

4.5%

2.3%

8.3%

29.4%

53.0%

Riga

486

0

0

0

0

0

16

0

8

15

11

436

0

0

0

0

0

61

9

10

14

13

432

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

11.3%

1.7%

1.9%

2.6%

2.4%

80.1%

Reval

(Continued)

100.00% 539 100.00%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

3.3%

0.0%

1.6%

3.1%

2.3%

89.7%

Pernau

Table 1.1  Total number of voyages and their destinations from the Russian ports on the Baltic

26

407 156 311

1046 252 10

1 1

German and Danish ports of the North Sea

Ports on the Baltic and the Danish Straits

Norway, Island, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands

The Mediterranean

North America

South America, the Caribbean, Africa outside the Mediterranean, and Asia

Russian ports on the White Sea

Unknown

18347

2339

The Atlantic coast of France, Spain, and Portugal

Total

12246

Britain

0.0%

0.0%

0.1%

1.4%

5.7%

1.7%

0.9%

2.2%

12.7%

66.7%

8.6%

St. Petersburg 1578

The Dutch Republic

1756–1795

19499

6

0

6

2

643

517

994

1343

2334

5993

7661

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

3.3%

2.7%

5.1%

6.9%

12.0%

30.7%

39.3%

Riga

3850

0

0

0

0

24

2

308

47

108

1172

2189

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.6%

0.1%

8.0%

1.2%

2.8%

30.4%

56.9%

Narva

3073

1

0

0

0

92

2

8

195

997

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

3.0%

0.1%

0.3%

6.3%

32.4%

41.9%

15.9%

Vyborg 1288

490

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.1%

1.6%

3.9%

3.9%

41.0%

5.9%

43.7%

Pernau

1154

0

0

0

0

1

18

45

45

473

68

504

433

0

0

0

0

2

76

89

71

60

35

100

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.5%

17.6%

20.6%

16.4%

13.9%

8.1%

23.1%

Reval

27

215 98 150 152 695 22

1 0

German and Danish ports of the North Sea

Ports on the Baltic and the Danish Straits

Norway, Island, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands

The Mediterranean

North America

South America, the Caribbean, Africa outside the Mediterranean, and Asia

Russian ports on the White Sea

Unknown 0.0%

0.0%

0.3%

8.3%

1.8%

1.8%

1.2%

2.6%

6.0%

75.4%

8348

1

1

5

23

172

319

539

739

1017

3716

1816

0.0%

0.0%

0.1%

0.3%

2.1%

3.8%

6.5%

8.9%

12.2%

44.5%

21.8%

Riga

839

0

0

0

2

1

5

86

20

5

506

214

Source: The STR database. Available at: http://www.soundtoll.nl.

8419

504

The Atlantic coast of France, Spain, and Portugal

Total

6352

Britain

2.7%

St. Petersburg 230

The Dutch Republic

1796–1814

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.2%

0.1%

0.6%

10.3%

2.4%

0.6%

60.3%

25.5%

Narva

611

0

0

0

0

48

7

2

33

72

399

50

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

7.9%

1.1%

0.3%

5.4%

11.8%

65.3%

8.2%

Vyborg

572

0

0

0

1

0

2

61

17

284

147

60

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.2%

0.0%

0.3%

10.7%

3.0%

49.7%

25.7%

10.5%

Pernau

156

0

0

0

3

0

22

45

15

3

25

43

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

1.9%

0.0%

14.1%

28.8%

9.6%

1.9%

16.0%

27.6%

Reval

Marina Loskutova

Table 1.2  The number of voyages with timber on board from the Russian ports on the Baltic, 1710–1820 St. Petersburg

Riga

Narva

Vyborg

Pernau

Reval

1710

0

7

0

0

2

1

1711

0

17

0

1

0

0

1712

0

23

0

0

0

0

1713

1

44

0

0

0

0

1714

0

16

0

0

0

0

1715

0

60

0

4

0

0

1716

1

64

0

4

0

0

1717

3

21

0

6

0

0

1718

3

56

1

14

3

0

1719

1

48

10

16

4

0

1720

0

66

24

26

7

1

1721

0

50

59

26

1

0

1722

1

66

58

36

5

0

1723

3

65

33

17

1

0

1724

0

61

92

16

0

1

1725

2

86

143

20

0

1

1726

3

82

136

35

0

0

1727

4

63

140

25

1

1

1728

3

48

151

20

4

0

1729

6

56

111

17

3

0

1730

21

74

174

26

6

2

1731

15

77

206

26

4

0

1732

13

72

284

42

4

3

1733

4

91

275

39

2

1

1734

2

95

252

38

3

0

1735

1

118

174

42

3

0

1736

17

102

100

82

6

1

1737

33

85

169

67

5

1

1738

32

113

228

42

7

1

1739

12

97

164

35

7

0

28

Forests, Navies, a nd Enta ng led Empires

St. Petersburg

Riga

Narva

Vyborg

Pernau

Reval

1740

14

50

104

13

11

0

1741

40

108

140

21

11

0

1742

14

149

151

24

21

1

1743

17

125

222

34

24

0

1744

1

112

119

33

19

1

1745

1

91

148

25

25

0

1746

2

120

92

21

13

0

1747

9

131

95

23

24

0

1748

3

119

59

36

38

2

1749

5

160

140

41

38

0

1750

13

180

190

46

16

0

1751

14

184

160

49

26

0

1752

11

220

164

43

45

1

1753

44

215

171

50

15

2

1754

43

265

165

48

14

0

1755

39

212

136

56

2

0

1756

33

201

1

61

0

0

1757

10

164

0

34

0

1

1758

25

197

43

30

0

0

1759

29

196

72

40

8

2

1760

27

198

2

42

5

0

1761

13

183

4

41

0

0

1762

10

147

39

33

6

0

1763

28

244

87

89

9

0

1764

56

267

104

75

7

0

1765

115

253

97

84

12

1

1766

71

275

124

83

9

1

1767

104

235

83

64

8

0

1768

121

246

103

93

8

0

1769

207

299

90

89

13

0

1770

202

271

88

67

11

0

1771

201

270

73

78

16

1

(Continued) 29

Marina Loskutova

St. Petersburg

Riga

Narva

Vyborg

Pernau

Reval

1772

163

267

67

84

33

1

1773

217

277

68

117

28

0

1774

218

236

65

81

34

1

1775

174

235

57

60

45

1

1776

242

208

65

95

34

0

1777

257

235

63

86

32

0

1778

120

224

48

82

18

0

1779

188

208

37

76

9

0

1780

174

196

35

41

11

0

1781

267

143

1

33

0

0

1782

92

242

9

58

14

1

1783

187

296

52

133

18

1

1784

242

190

81

124

12

1

1785

232

224

114

108

17

1

1786

310

250

100

124

12

1

1787

274

288

120

111

24

0

1788

342

218

117

118

14

1

1789

294

172

114

91

25

1

1790

320

176

125

44

17

0

1791

435

175

186

87

21

0

1792

448

219

163

95

21

2

1793

418

233

49

49

6

0

1794

353

304

104

48

10

0

1795

336

189

13

24

9

1

1796

469

231

54

64

20

0

1797

311

232

74

63

7

0

1798

386

207

51

40

5

0

1799

151

16

1

0

0

0

1800

145

242

57

41

5

0

1801

234

152

27

46

10

0

1802

232

260

73

56

17

0

1803

333

246

50

70

15

1

(Continued) 30

Forests, Navies, a nd Enta ng led Empires

St. Petersburg

Riga

1804

55

269

1805

91

241

1806

142

254

1807

35

1808

Narva

Vyborg

Pernau

Reval

45

50

12

2

68

54

31

0

82

48

18

6

104

36

33

6

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

1809

0

1

0

0

0

0

1810

0

3

1

0

0

0

1811

1

1

1

0

0

0

1812

1

0

0

0

0

0

1813

14

10

7

0

1

0

1814

267

135

31

33

18

3

1815

266

199

43

68

4

9

1816

151

201

64

34

8

2

1817

339

150

38

59

13

4

1818

296

190

44

80

11

7

1819

265

214

61

46

14

5

1820

198

173

21

46

6

4

Source: The STR database. Available at: http://www.soundtoll.nl. The STR data fully confirm the fact that in the eighteenth century, if we speak about the zone beyond the Sound Straits, Russia principally traded with Britain and the Dutch Republic. In the early decades after the Great Northern War, the Russian trade from the Baltic ports was oriented mainly toward Dutch destinations. The only exception was trade from St. Petersburg, which was geared toward Britain from the start. By the late eighteenth century, however, the British destinations overtook the Dutch ones everywhere except in Reval, where the Dutch still dominated,20 and in Pernau, where (unexpectedly) the biggest share of voyages were directed toward the Atlantic ports of France, Spain, and Portugal. In other words, 20 Michael North has already noted that, by the mid-eighteen century, the Baltic timber trade reoriented from the Dutch Republic to Britain: North, “The Export of Timber and Timber By-Products,” 1–14.

31

Marina Loskutova

the STR database confirms the well-established historiographical position that, at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain was the main consumer of Russian timber exports. Therefore, the 1798 embargo first and foremost threatened British interests, although it could also damage Britain’s main maritime rivals. The annual number of ship voyages from Russian Baltic ports with timber on board varied substantially. The dynamics were not always synchronous across these ports, and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to explain all the oscillations. However, one clearly sees a substantial increase in the timber trade following the end of the Great Northern War, while for the later decades, one can discern a few major periods of decline. The first of these crises occurred during the Seven Years’ War. Narva suffered the most, but it also affected Riga, Vyborg, and other Russian ports. The second one happened during the period of armed neutrality (1780–1783). The last crisis, of a far greater magnitude and longer time span, began exactly in 1798. The STR data graphically demonstrate that the 1798 embargo did indeed lead to a near zero traffic of timber in the 1799 navigation season. Once the embargo was lifted in 1801, the Russian export timber trade started rapidly recovering. However, as soon as Russia joined the continental blockade of Britain in 1807, the traffic collapsed again and resumed only in 1815.21 Apart from helping us identify the major crises in the timber trade, the STR data also reveal the periods of growth and the changes in the relative standing of different ports within the region. Before the middle decades of the eighteenth century, the Russian export timber trade centered mostly on Narva, Riga, and Vyborg—the cities that were actively trading with Western Europe in the seventeenth century and even earlier. Unlike Pernau and Reval, Riga and Narva commanded substantial systems of inland waterways, while Vyborg fell somewhere in-between these two groups. This factor undoubtedly explains why the volume of maritime traffic from Reval, Pernau, and Vyborg was many times smaller than from Riga, Narva, and St. Petersburg, the last of which emerged as an important port during the mid-century decades. In the eighteenth century, Riga, which is conveniently located at the estuary of the Daugava (Western Dvina) River, was the biggest Russian port of 21 In his recent research, James Davey argues that the British expedition against Denmark in 1801 as well as the wars against Denmark and Russia in 1807–1812 were motivated, on the British side, by the need to control the supply of timber from the Baltic. See Davey “Securing the Sinews of Sea Power,” 161–184.

32

Forests, Navies, a nd Enta ng led Empires

the Eastern Baltic. A member of the Hanseatic League in the Middle Ages, Riga fell to Russian rule during the Great Northern War, in 1710. However, before the second (1793) and the third (1795) partitions of Poland, a major part of the Daugava’s course was beyond the borders of Russia, effectively meaning that, in the eighteenth century, timber that had been exported from Riga did not really originate in the empire but was harvested in the woods of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Not surprisingly, even if timber exports from Riga were increasing between 1710 and the 1760s, they caused no fears of timber scarcity in the Russian Empire. Narva, which is located on the southern coast of the Finnish Gulf, on the border between Estonia and Ingria, displayed a different dynamic. I argue that it was the overexploitation of the woods in the hinterland of this port that resulted in the introduction of the 1754 embargo. The town had been a major hub for Russia’s trade with Western Europe since the sixteenth century, when, for a few decades between 1558 and 1581, Narva belonged to the Muscovite state. In 1704, Peter I regained this strategic outpost from Sweden, and once its maritime trade resumed, the volume of traffic through Narva remained very high until the mid-century decades. The system of local waterways enabled the merchants of Narva to harvest timber from a substantial area extending along the banks of the Narva River, Lake Peipus, and the Velikaya River, up to the Russian border with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Unlike Riga or St. Petersburg, however, Narva could offer only timber and flax for export (in this respect, Narva resembled Pernau or Vyborg—ports that traded almost exclusively in timber and in related forest products). After the end of the Great Northern War, timber exports from Narva grew massively, surpassing even exports from Riga. They reached their peak in the late 1730s, after which the figures began abruptly declining, and in the 1750s the timber trade in Narva suffered a major crisis, from which it was never able to recover completely. These data, which I have obtained from the STR records, make perfect sense when examined against some other sources concerning trade and timber harvesting in this city and its hinterland. Indeed, in the 1730s, Narva timber merchants and timber millowners attracted considerable attention from the Russian imperial administration. First, in 1731, the Russian government raised the tariffs that had been originally set after the end of the Great Northern War on timber exported from 33

Marina Loskutova

Narva.22 Then, in 1736, a certain Anna Kramer, who owned a timber mill in this city, petitioned to grant her exclusive rights for harvesting timber along the Narva River, Plyussa River (also flowing to the Finnish Gulf on a roughly parallel course to the Narva), and the Plyussa’s tributaries. The Russian Senate allowed Anna Kramer to cut and process up to 27,000 trees a year, while the merchants of Narva were redirected to the Luga River and its tributaries, where they could harvest 72,000 pine trees and 50,000 spruce trees annually.23 In 1738, the Senate had to consider another petition from the Narva merchants who had the right to cut woods along the Luga and export timber abroad. This group of export traders was evidently alarmed that some newcomers wished to join their ranks and insisted on their exclusive rights to operate in the designated area, which the Senate obligingly ­confirmed. Just a few months later, the Russian government temporarily prohibited exporting certain kinds of timber from Narva, evidently taking the side of one group of timber traders against the other.24 The decrees testify to a growing competition for forest resources in Narva and its immediate vicinity during the years when the export timber trade was at its peak. A decade later, however, the Narva merchants and timber millowners petitioned the Russian government anew, wishing to prolong their timber harvesting rights that they had obtained for the banks of the Luga River. The merchants and millowners also sought the Senate’s protection against their competitors, the landowners of the nearby Novgorod province. Their dispute concerned timber harvesting along the banks of the Plyussa. The Senate, however, rejected these claims on the grounds that the woods in these river basins had already been considerably depleted. Instead, the Senate reminded the Narva merchants that they had already been granted permission to cut timber for export in the area of Lake Samro, Lake Peipus (Chudskoe), and Lake Pskovskoe.25 The most interesting aspect for my analysis is the geographic distribution of timber harvesting mentioned in these documents: in the 1740s, when timber trade in Narva had passed its peak and the downward trend emerged, the zone of intensive timber harvesting started to shift away from the coast of the Finnish Gulf and the port of Narva to the inland areas. 22 23 24 25

The Senate’s opinion approved by Her Majesty on July 14, 1731, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 8, 516. The Senate’s decree, May 21, 1736, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 9, 833–834. The Senate’s decree, September 6, 1738, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 10, 605–608. The Senate’s decree, March 10, 1749, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 13, 20–24.

34

Forests, Navies, a nd Enta ng led Empires

The Narva area was not only the region that provided timber for export, it was also the one where the Russian Admiralty cut wood for naval construction (the shipyards themselves were located in St. Petersburg and its twinport Kronstadt). Admittedly, shipbuilding on the Baltic in the 1740s and the early 1750s was still rather modest. Nevertheless, the Russian Admiralty evidently felt that its timber resources in the region had been endangered by the export trade. In 1751, it dispatched a certain captain Kostomarov to Narva to examine the state of forests in the region and to give his opinion about the idea of banning harvesting and exporting timber from the city. Kostomarov discovered that local entrepreneurs had been operating on a scale considerably exceeding the limits set for them by the Russian government. His opponents in Narva, however, managed to obstruct his inspections in the woods and timber yards, and at the same time appealed to the College of Commerce in St. Petersburg, which supervised trade and manufacturing in the empire. This strategy was effective up to a point, as Kostomarov was recalled to the capital of the empire where he failed to present conclusive evidence.26 However, it was in the aftermath of these events that the Russian Senate, acting upon the Admiralty’s urgings, imposed the 1754 ban on timber exports from Russia’s Baltic ports. Even if the pressure on forest-generated resources created by the export trade in Narva must have diminished in the second half of the eighteenth century, following the decline of timber traffic from this city, there is still some evidence that the depletion of forests in the coastal areas of the region pushed local merchants to explore more remote areas. Thus, in 1769, a group of townspeople from Narva petitioned the government to allow them to float some timber along the Velikaya River. This timber, as they claimed, had been rightfully harvested on the Polish territory. The Senate, however, consulted the map and suspected that the entrepreneurs had been cheating: the border with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth prior to 1772 was running along the watershed, and even the upper course of the Velikaya, as well as its tributaries, was still within the confines of the Russian Empire.27 This petition demonstrated a further shift of the timber harvesting area deeper and deeper into the mainland: in the late 1760s, the timber merchants from 26 The Russian State Archive of the Navy (RGA VMF), f. 212, op. 1, d. 44. 27 The Senate’s decree, November 11, 1768, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 18, 1015–1017.

35

Marina Loskutova

Narva were already operating to the south of Lake Pskovskoe, while the Narva, Luga, and Plyussa Rivers had already disappeared from any governmental decisions taken in relation to Narva. This fact confirms the impression that the woods in the coastal areas, which had been harvested in the 1730s, were already becoming depleted by mid-century. If the overexploitation of woods in the Narva hinterland was likely to have triggered the 1754 embargo, a dramatic increase of timber exports from St. Petersburg during the reign of Catherine II might well be connected to the drastic measures taken by Paul I in 1798. The system of canals constructed in 1703–1709 linked the new capital of the Russian Empire with the Upper Volga region, and thus created the technical means for delivering timber, as well as other heavy loads, from a very large and far-flung geographic area. In the course of the eighteenth century, St. Petersburg had been rapidly developing its merchant harbor facilities. However, as the STS data suggest, it was only in the 1760s that the port of St. Petersburg started gaining significance. Yet, the growth during the reign of Catherine II was indeed so conspicuous that, by the 1770s–1780s, St. Petersburg had certainly surpassed Riga in terms of the number of ships departing in one navigation season and had replaced Narva as the second-most important Russian timber entrepôt on the Baltic. From the 1760s on, however, the Russian Admiralty also increased its demands on timber, as it started building more men-of-war and ships of a bigger tonnage at its yards in St. Petersburg and Kronstadt. The dynamics of the export timber trade from St. Petersburg, coupled with the trend in Russian naval construction in the same area, strongly suggest that, in the last two decades of the century, the interests of export timber merchants and their clients abroad, mostly in the Dutch Republic and Britain, must have begun to clash with those of the Russian Admiralty. Unlike Narva, St. Petersburg had access to a much larger area for timber harvesting: since the early decades of the eighteenth century, the Admiralty docks in St. Petersburg regularly received valuable oaks from the woods of the Central Volga region, which were floated through the Vyshnevolotskaya system of canals to Lake Il’men, the Volkhov River, the canal along the southern bank of Lake Ladoga, and the Neva River.28 The same waterway system 28 RGA VMF, f. 212, op. 1, d. 26; op. 6, d. 48; op. 11, d. 88; op. 11, d. 210; op. 11, d. 363; op. 11, d. 715; op. 11, d. 810.

36

Forests, Navies, a nd Enta ng led Empires

also carried commercial traffic and therefore provided export traders with access to woods that were located many hundreds of miles away from the Russian capital. Does it mean that the interests of the Admiralty and those of the export timber trade from St. Petersburg actually clashed on the ground? The very size of the area that potentially could provide both the Russian Admiralty and the export trade with timber seems to discourage any historian from attempting to reconstruct the potential landscape transformation and detect a suspected contraction of the wooded region. The lack of sources—maps and plans that would reflect the spatial distribution of forests as well as of any statistical information on the matter—seems to be another factor that makes reaching this objective impossible. However, once we realize that the absence of data concerning vast areas in the imperial hinterland is evidence in itself, we may begin to discern the workings of the booming export timber trade and its impact on the Russian management of forest resources. Scouting for Shipbuilding Timber in Russia in the Eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries and the Limits of Territorial Control The first legal regulations and institutions of forest management in the Russian Empire emerged in the early eighteenth century as a result of the efforts made by Peter I and his successors to establish Russia as a maritime power.29 Therefore, for the most part of the eighteenth century, the Russian Admiralty was the only agency of the state that collected information on the woods and timber and thus created some rudimentary forms of forestry administration. Unlike in Britain, the Russian Admiralty did not rely on commercial contractors but directly harvested timber for its own needs. Prior to the reign of Catherine II, the Admiralty could fell trees anywhere in the empire, regardless of the legal ownership of the woods. From the early decades of the eighteenth century, there are many decrees (ukazy) that reserved certain territories along the floatable rivers for the exclusive use of the Admiralty.30 These areas were entrusted to the care of special officers, 29 Lupanova, Istoriia zakreposhcheniia prirodnogo resursa. 30 For example, the decree of January 10, 1714, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 5, 76. The decree announced from the Senate, January 19, 1720, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 6, 119; The decree of September 22, 1720, in PSZ,

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characteristically named Waldmeister, following the German fashion. If one attempts to reconstruct the geography of these protected areas, one will see that they were mostly located in the vicinity of the new capital, with its shipyards—along the banks of the Neva River, the Volkhov River, and Lake Il’men in Novgorod province, but also in the Middle Volga region, especially in the Kazan’ province, that supplied the Admiralty with oaks—the most desired tree species for the construction of the ship’s frame.31 While studying the legislation that regulated the creation of these p­ rotected (zapovednye) areas, we need to realize a profound terminological ambiguity. Just like in English, “woods” (lesa) could mean both a ­specific tree species and a wooded area. Therefore, one should not imagine that the Russian state administration actually attempted to control a specific territory: the boundaries of these reserved areas were never clearly specified. Instead, the imperial administration was rather trying to reserve valuable species in certain loosely defined zones. The number of Waldmeister appointed to supervise these areas was also extremely small.32 Characteristically, the few forest “maps” that the Admiralty commissioned in the 1730s and 1740s never drew any boundaries nor recorded the landownership rights: they rather testified to the existence of the needed tree species on the banks of floatable rivers.33 It was Catherine II and her administration that substantially modified this system on a number of levels. First, Catherine, following her broader policy on transforming the Russian dvorianstvo into a corporate estate similar to the European nobility, explicitly prohibited any felling, for the needs of the Admiralty or other governmental agencies, in the woods of the noble landowners. By launching, in 1765, the General Land Survey (General’noe mezhevanie), she not only declared these woods to be an absolute private property of their noble owners but also made a clear move to establish their exact boundaries on the ground. Second, in line with her attempts to empower the provincial administration, in the 1780s, Catherine II transferred the supervision of the protected wooded areas to the provincial level.34 1st collection, vol. 6, 240. 31 For the details on the varieties of ship timber, see Albion, Forests and Sea Power, 3–38. 32 Lupanova, Istoriia zakreposhcheniia prirodnogo resursa. 33 Consider, for example, a map of the woods in Starorusskii uezd of Novgorod province. RGIA, f. 1933, op. 1, d. 111. Available at: https://www.prlib.ru/item/681500. 34 Lupanova, Istoriia zakreposhcheniia prirodnogo resursa.

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Therefore, the two decades that were immediately preceding the 1798 embargo were exactly the period when the Admiralty faced a dramatic reduction of the space on which it could scout for ship timber. Also, it lost much of the control over the areas that had already been allocated for this purpose, while, at the same time, the Admiralty was still responsible for the very process of harvesting and delivering timber to the yards. A glaring gap in the documentation concerning the state of the woods and the process of their harvesting in the archives of the Admiralty for the 1780s and 1790s is indicative in itself. In this period, the upper ranks of the Russian Navy clearly had a very vague understanding of the situation on the ground, while the dockyards on the Baltic and the White Seas certainly did not lower their demands for timber. This was the context in which Paul I ascended to the throne in November 1796. In just a month’s time after Catherine II’s death, Paul I decided to dispatch some experienced naval officers to the provinces in order to examine all the woods owned by the crown and to describe and map them.35 The time of his decree is indicative in itself: it demonstrates that, a year and a half before his visit to the oak plantations in Kazan’ province, Paul I was already very concerned about the woods that provided his navy with ship timber. Simultaneously, he ordered the direct administration of the Admiralty to be restored to the state forests.36 The officers appointed for this mission were no cabinet thinkers; they had been serving on the Russian men-of-war on the Baltic, but their previous careers show no indication that they had any experience in forest management or cadastral surveys.37 The Admiralty provided them with specific instructions prescribing them to inspect the state of woods in a province, to identify and calculate the tree species valuable for shipbuilding (oak, elm, ash, maple, and pine), to measure the distance between the groves of these species and the floatable rivers, and to produce forest descriptions and maps. The instructions required them to start this work from those forests that had already been exploited by the Admiralty but to proceed later to the unexploited but potentially valuable wooded areas. In a few years, when the corps of forestry officials had been installed, a new decree considerably expanded 35 The decree of February 27, 1797, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 24, 497–498; RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, dd. 2 and 3. 36 Decree given to the Senate, November 18, 1796, in PSZ, 1st collection, vol. 24, 7–8. 37 RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 4–8, 18–19.

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the scope of these missions: acting together with provincial forestry officials, the naval officers were to demarcate the areas that would be reserved for exclusive use by the Admiralty, as distinctive from the rest of the state forests, which would still be available for the domestic needs of local peasant communities.38 The rhetoric of the instructions strongly suggested that these missions were meant to provide a comprehensive picture of all state-owned woods in the empire, even those in the Urals and some parts of Siberia. However, once we look into these officers’ reports to the Admiralty, we glimpse a very different reality. Consider, for example, the routes taken by Lieutenant Commander Goremykin and Lieutenant Commander Ternovskii who worked in the Vyborg province in 1798–1801.39 The localities they visited were situated mostly along the coast of the Finnish Gulf or along some floatable rivers to the west of Vyborg. The officers obviously neglected to inspect quite a number of crown forests in the province. Indeed, just a year later, in 1802, when the Russian Senate was investigating some allegations against the Vyborg provincial administration, among other things it considered the evidence of illegal production of tar and woodcutting in the crown forests that were located far away from the itineraries followed by Goremykin and Ternovskii.40 Baptiste Drako was one of those 30 naval officers whom the Admiralty sent to carry out forest surveys between 1796 and 1797. He was “of Greek extraction,” a bachelor, and had been serving in the Russian Navy since 1775.41 Typically, the Admiralty dispatched one officer per province: Drako was entrusted with mapping and describing the crown forests in the province of St. Petersburg. A small team including a sailing master, a carpenter from the navy yards, and a clerk assisted him on this mission. Even if Drako and his team did not have to travel many hundreds of miles away from the Russian capital, the distances he had to cover were still enormous, and the terrain was rough. (In one of his reports, he particularly commended his assistant, a corporal Elizar Egorov, who “each day walked with me ten or fifteen versta 38 RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 3. 39 The province encompassed the Finnish-populated territories to the northwest from St. Petersburg up to the border with Sweden, as established by the Peace Treaty of Abo in 1743. After the Russian-Swedish War of 1808–1809, a major part of this province was integrated into the Grand Duchy of Finland, as a part of the Russian Empire. For details of Goremykin’s and Ternovskii’s mission, see RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 25. 40 See RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 368. 41 RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 2, l. 7v.

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through swamps and bogs”.)42 Drako’s mission brought exemplary results: he produced a two-volume atlas of the state forests in St. Petersburg province43 that received the emperor’s approval. Perhaps for this reason, this mission is one of the best-documented cases. Drako might have actually visited and surveyed all state-owned forests in St. Petersburg region (even that is uncertain), yet he never produced a comprehensive map that would show the location of the woods—that is, their geographic position within a broader territory in relation to some well-known landscape features, such as major towns, roads, rivers, or lakes. Instead, he made a long series of local plans that conveyed a lot of information about the landscapes within the boundaries of the state domains—hamlets located on the land officially designated as a “treasury-owned wooded plot” (kazennaya lesnaya dacha), streams and small lakes, and local roads. However, the territory outside of these bounded properties of the imperial treasury was literally a blank space. These maps provided fairly detailed information on the actual size of wooded areas and on the types of species growing there, yet they evidently made sense only to those who had already been familiar with these domains on the ground. They contained virtually no information on how to reach these woods from St. Petersburg or from elsewhere, on who lived or owned land nearby—nothing on the larger world beyond the confines of these state-owned wooded areas. It seems that, for a viewer located in St. Petersburg, Drako’s maps had mostly an emotional appeal: these neat, beautifully drawn images literally made these faraway woods visible. If the landscape on these maps looked ordered, subordinated to the penetrating gaze of imperial bureaucracy, Drako’s reports from his voyages prove this impression to be wrong. In fact, the officer had to spend a disproportionate amount of time on establishing the exact boundaries of the state-owned forests on the ground. On more than one occasion, he had to deal with the unauthorized appropriation of the state possessions by the local gentry, not to mention the cases where a wooded area had not yet been officially demarcated, while the forest in question remained legally in the joint ownership of the state and of a few gentry families. The peasants from nearby villages also considered these forests as their own—to the point that, once or twice, Drako even encountered new villages that 42 RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 30, l. 59. 43 RGIA, f. 380, op. 29, dd. 17, 18, 19, and 20. See also https://www.prlib.ru/item/681498.

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had resettled to a state forest without bothering to seek permission from the state officials (the local inhabitants still practiced slash-and-burn agriculture). These encounters graphically demonstrate the extremely limited scope of territorial governance in the Russian Empire at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. State power was still patrimonial, maintained and exercised through personal contacts, and not inscribed upon the territory through institutions and material features of the landscape. Drako was traveling through a terrain where woods were difficult to penetrate, boundary landmarks were shifting or nonexistent, and provincial treasury chambers had no cadastral maps or were unwilling to show them to outsiders. No wonder that Drako’s fellow officers did not really follow their instructions to the letter and limited their efforts to the most immediate tasks. They designated some parts of state-owned woods as “protected groves or woods” (zapovednye roshchi, zapovednye lesa), thus reserving them for the needs of the navy. Also, they identified and marked specific trees in other areas, in this way also reserving them for naval construction. Acting this way, these officers merely reproduced the standard practices of the Admiralty, as these had been established in the early decades of the eighteenth century. For harvesting timber, the Admiralty established its regional offices in Kazan’, on the Middle Volga (a region famous for its oaks); Archangelsk on the White Sea; and Ruotsinsalmi (Kotka) and Reval (Tallinn) on the Baltic. Each year, in winter, these offices dispatched their commissioners to the provinces to supervise the harvesting operations. The commissioners took with them carpenters, their apprentices, and also some men called obyshchiki (searchers) and oblashchiki (tree-climbers)—people who would scout the woods looking for particular trees suitable for shipbuilding. As naval construction required some timber with very specific characteristics (especially for masts and ship frames), obyshchiki and oblashchiki had to scout large areas. For this reason, they preferred to work in small parties, simultaneously exploring several locations. Once trees had been felled, carpenters would inspect and reject some of them as unfit for the purpose. The trees had to be cut and delivered by sleds to the nearest floatable river in winter. However, often the locally recruited workers failed to complete the operation on time, and the trunks were hence left in the woods, under the super42

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vision of local peasant communities, until the next harvesting season.44 The documents in the Admiralty’s archives concerning the eighteenth century reveal virtually nothing about the selection of the exact localities for harvesting timber. This fact is telling in itself: it was the commissioners and their teams, these “searchers” and “tree-climbers,” who had the actual, informal local knowledge of the terrain and who effectively made the decisions. This knowledge obviously remained oral and was transmitted informally, through personal communication; thus it remained unavailable to the upper echelons of the Admiralty. The same practice of harvesting also obviously resulted in massive losses of timber and in the overexploitation of the woods that, once upon a time, had been identified as promising for harvesting.45 At some point, when a whole area seemed to be depleted of suitable trees, the regional office of the Admiralty or its headquarters in St. Petersburg initiated a search for new woods that could be reserved for the naval construction needs. The marine officers whom the Admiralty dispatched in 1796–1797 were following these practices, even if their instructions mandated them to carry out a comprehensive cadastral survey of the state-owned woods. At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the upper echelons of the imperial bureaucracy were evidently unhappy with this system as it gave them virtually no information concerning the processes on the ground. The Admiralty, staffed with high-ranking officers who had firsthand experience with the British Navy, was happy to abandon its responsibility for the state-owned woods and the harvesting operations.46 This almost happened in 1802, when the emperor Alexander I passed over the responsibility for forest management to the newly established Ministry of Finance. However, the next few years clearly demonstrated the crux of the problem. The expectations were that the Ministry of Finance would be able to plan the whole timber harvesting operation, on the basis of maps and statistical tables, from its headquarters in St. Petersburg. It would specify the exact localities for felling as well as the precise number and species of trees, while the commissioners of the Admiralty and the foresters in the provinces would 44 RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, dd. 560 and 561. 45 We may add that it also worked toward diminishing the social tension caused by harvesting operations: local peasants and landowners obviously profiteered by pilfering the unfit or simply spoilt parts left in the woods. 46 See Admiral Chichagov’s proposal concerning the supply of timber for the navy: RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 560, ll. 1–12.

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merely execute these orders.47 This scheme, however, worked only on paper. The Admiralty, relieved from its former responsibility of identifying potential timber supply areas, dramatically increased its requests: while in the last years of the eighteenth century the Admiralty felled about 800,000 puds of timber per year,48 in 1801, it claimed that it needed 1,800,000 puds, and in 1807 its demands grew up to 4,250,000 puds.49 The Ministry of Finance had barely started appointing its own forestry officers in the provinces. It could rely only on the maps and descriptions transferred to its archives from the Admiralty’s headquarters, but these maps and descriptions, as we have seen, were far from presenting a “panoptic” vision of the state-owned forests. Instead, they were rather able to highlight the “opacity” of the terrain for a bureaucratic gaze. Of the 30 naval officers dispatched to the provinces in 1796–1797, only Baptiste Drako produced a detailed and more or less comprehensive atlas of the state forests within a given province. Even his work, as we have seen, required some alternative sources of information if the St. Petersburg bureaucracy wished to plan the timber harvesting operations on its own. Very soon, these problems became apparent for all the state agencies involved, and the Admiralty had to revert to its standard practices of timber supply that relied on traveling commissioners and on their teams, equipped with local knowledge and contacts, while the Ministry of Finance was building a network of its own forestry officials on the provincial and district levels and gradually accumulating more statistical and cartographic data on the state-owned woods. Conclusion In his seminal monograph on the “administrative ordering of nature and society,” James Scott started his masterful tour de force with the case of the eighteenth-century German “rational” forestry.50 The new “forest sci47 RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 560, ll. 21–37; d. 561, ll. 130–179. 48 Approximately 13,000 tons. A pud is equal to 16.38 kg. 49 The Admiralty estimated that it would amount to 20,000 felled trees and would suffice for 45 ships of the line with supporting frigates and other vessels, plus all the oar ships of the Baltic fleet: RGIA, f. 1594, op. 1, d. 560, l. 12. However, the number of ships of the line, frigates, and galleys constructed in 1801–1805 was well below 45. 50 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).

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ence” was geared toward the interests of the state and its fiscal institutions. It simultaneously modified landscapes and, at the same time, created its “virtual reality”—a panoply of maps and cadastral surveys that made these forests “legible” and “transparent” for a bureaucratic gaze. Scott’s monograph obligingly springs to mind once we think about the voyages of Baptiste Drako and look for an appropriate interpretative framework. However, Andre Wakefield has also cautioned us against taking German cameralism—and “forest science” was a subspecies of cameralist thinking—at face value.51 A set of theoretical prescriptions on state management, even supplemented with maps and statistical tables, did not necessarily correspond to the actual administrative practices. The very act of initiating a cadastral survey does not, in itself, make the land or its people “legible” for the central government. Instead, a more careful reading of surveys, maps, and statistical tables might reveal exactly the “opacity” and “illegibility” of the terrain for an external observer. This chapter started with a question about the connections between the ups and downs of the Russian export timber trade in the eighteenth century and the administrative reforms of the imperial forest management. As I have been able to demonstrate, the two moments when the Russian government imposed a ban on the export timber trade coincided with a massive increase of these exports from Russian ports on the Eastern Baltic, a fact that could easily engender a fear of timber scarcity. Whether these mounting timber exports actually led to landscape transformations and to the depletion of wooded areas is impossible to establish on the basis of the data accumulated by various branches of the Russian bureaucracy, principally by the Admiralty that was in charge of timber harvesting. Therefore, at the moment it is impossible to ascertain whether timber scarcity was real or imagined. At the same time, however, the very lack of information concerning this strategic resource, caused by a very limited capacity to “see” from St. Petersburg what was actually happening many hundred miles away, in some remote forests, pushed the state administration to dispatch fact-finding missions, like the one carried out by Captain Kostomarov in the 1750s or the large-scale forest survey initiated by Paul I in 1796–1797. However, even this last undertaking failed to achieve the expected results. Baptiste Drako was the only offi51 Andrew Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

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cer who actually produced a forest atlas of the province to which he had been dispatched. In a few years, when the Ministry of Finance took over the task of managing the state-owned forests from the Admiralty, it launched its own survey of these woods and, soon enough, was able to identify quite a number of new forested areas that had been the property of the state treasury and had not even been recorded by the naval officers in the late 1790s.52 The plans to reorganize timber harvesting for the navy by making it a carefully designed operation, which would be directed from St. Petersburg, on the basis of statistical tables and forest maps failed spectacularly. Nevertheless, at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the fears of timber shortage, generated by mounting exports and by the “opacity” of forest landscapes and timber harvesting practices for the bureaucratic “gaze,” did not fail to produce a lasting institutional impact. The dramatic reorganization of the forestry administration within the Russian Empire, initiated by Paul I, continued after his death. Its most important measure consisted in creating the offices of provincial and district foresters (named Forstmeister, following the German model), whose first responsibility was to inspect the state-owned forests, to collect statistical data on them, as well as to authorize and oversee timber harvesting. It would take a few decades, however, before these cadres would be capable of carrying out comprehensive forest cadastral surveys. Before that stage, which, within the European part of the country, began only during the 1840s, timber harvesting in the woods of the empire—for the needs of the navy, for local consumers, or for export trade—proceeded with little administrative supervision. This situation, in itself, could generate, under certain circumstances, a fear of timber shortages.

52 RGIA, f. 379, op. 4, d. 64. The Ministry of Finance initiated its survey in 1814.

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Ch a p t e r 2

The Projects of Cossack Reform in the Russian Empire (1810s–1840s): Unification versus Flexibility Andriy Posunko

S

everal important factors influenced the evolution of the Russian military—and of the Cossacks as part of it—in the early nineteenth century. First, it was the experience of wars with Napoleonic France and the reassessment of the functions that various types of troops had to fulfill in the new era of warfare. Second, it was a matter of expenses, since the Russian treasury struggled mightily in order to finance the biggest army in Europe. The coincidence of these two factors led the Russian military and civilian officials to reassess the importance of the Cossack hosts and to search for ways to preserve and perpetuate them. On the one hand, the need to perpetuate Cossackdom, in turn, led to the recognition of the existing problems facing Cossack units: the passing of frontier in some areas; the growing population and the shortage of arable lands; the corruption of Cossack elites. On the other hand, the long-lasting war in the North Caucasus and the need to use the Cossacks for their traditional roles acted to prevent some of the more radical reform projects from being implemented. After 1810, Alexander I and his advisers experimented with a number of options for creating settled self-supporting military units in order to lessen the financial burden and to regularize the organization of the armed forces.

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Due to the diversity of local conditions in various provinces of the empire, officials in different regions attempted to solve the problems in different ways. In the Pontic Steppe and its neighboring areas, it is possible to single out several trajectories that developed as the result of both regional peculiarities and personal experiences of officials who were working on the reorganization of local Cossack units. The most extreme and, in many respects, the most utopian way was Arakcheev’s pet project of military colonies. This approach involved the creation of a new social category: military colonists, who would take on the responsibilities of both farming and regular military service with little cost to the state. As with the majority of reform projects, the goal behind the establishment of colonies consisted in improving the material condition and welfare of the soldiers. In a manifesto published on the occasion of victory in the war, dated August 30, 1814, the emperor promised well-deserved social security to soldiers.1 Concerns for suffering caused by the recruitment of peasants into the regular army and promises to ease it were voiced in other charters and decrees as well.2 The aim of establishing military colonies was to reduce the burdens of those settled in them. Military colonists would become a separate economically self-sustainable military estate while providing a reservoir of manpower, with the colonists’ children serving as replacements for their parent after his term of service ended. Immediate practical concerns, however, were not the only issue. Alexander I sought to institute an enlightened policy reminiscent of his grandmother Catherine the Great’s vision of the welfare state. Military colonists were ­supposed to receive access to state-sponsored healthcare and education. The education of the peasant colonists was envisaged as a model for the transformation of Russian society more broadly. First, the colonies were to be a step toward the creation of economically sound property-owning peasant households, a development of the Edict on Free Farmers (Ukaz o vol’nykh khlebopashtsakh) of sorts. At the same time, military colonies could embody the moral transformation of the society dictated by Alexander I’s spiritual mys1 Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (PSZ), Sobranie pervoe/1st collection (1649–1825), vol. 32, no. 25671. 2 PSZ, vol. 34, no. 26803; vol. 32, no. 26843; vol. 35, no. 27512.

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ticism.3 Had the colonies functioned, they would have transformed Russian society not just in terms of creating another social category but also by offering influential examples to follow—be it the colonists’ skills and entrepreneurship or their exercise of Christian moral virtues. Besides their impact on Russian society in general, the military colonies were intended to solve a number of problems accumulated during the course of the previous decades of difficulties within the Cossack hosts. Officers serving in military colonies would not be local landowners, thus preventing a number of possible abuses of authority. Further, the training imposed in the military colonies, in theory, would be the same as the one imposed on the regular regiments. This meant that a soldier would be trained as a lifelong member of the martial estate; in contrast to a peasant recruit tempted to desert at the earliest possible moment. In this sense, the problem of the steppe frontier closure could be at least partially solved, if not by reforming the Cossack hosts, then by the creation of a parallel structure with partially overlapping functions. The term military colonists (voennye poseliane or voennye poselentsy) was not original and had been used previously to denote various categories of military servitors: Cossack-like irregulars, single homesteaders (odnodvortsy), land militia, settled units, and the like. Besides the practical experience of having settled military servitors in the Russian Empire, Arakcheev must have been familiar with several texts treating this problem. One of them was Paul I’s note “Thoughts on the State in General...” that proposed to focus primarily on the defensive position of four Russian armies ranged against the European powers—Sweden, Prussia, and the Habsburgs. All other regiments were to be assigned permanent garrison duties in the regions. Paul I also proposed to completely abolish conscription and to use soldiers’ children as replacements, and this would mean in practice the establishment of a sep3 For more on economic life of military colonies, see Konstantin Mikhailovich Iachmenikhin, “Voennye poseleniia v Rossii: Administrativno-khoziaistvennaia struktura” (Doctor of Sciences diss., Moskovskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet imeni M. V. Lomonosova, 1993). On the potential creation of a propertyowning social group, see Richard Pipes, “The Russian Military Colonies, 1810–1831,” Journal of Modern History 22, no. 3 (1950): 205–219. On the spiritualist interpretation of the military colonies project, see Andrei Zubov, “Razmyshleniia nad prichinami revolutsii v Rossii: Tsarstvovanie Aleksandra Blagoslovennogo,” Novyi mir, nos. 7–8 (2005). For the contemporaries’ notes on the potential of colonies to transform the society as a whole and to speed up the civilization process of Russia, see Robert Lyall, An Account of the Organization, Administration and Present State of the Military Colonies in Russia (London: A. & R. Spottieswoode, 1824).

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arate social category of hereditary military servitors.4 A similar idea of abolishing conscription and creating self-sufficient military estates—in terms of both financing and manpower—was also voiced by Prince Shcherbatov and General Zakhar Chernyshev in the late eighteenth century.5 However, in Arakcheev’s vision, the structure of the military colonies would change: instead of loosely organized communities of Cossacks or single homesteaders (odnodvortsy) living in the borderlands, the military bureaucracy would tightly control the life of these new military colonists. It is unknown, however, whether Arakcheev was the author of this idea, or a coauthor, together with Alexander I, or whether the idea of military colonies initially belonged to Alexander I with Arakcheev being responsible just for the implementation. Nevertheless, already in late 1815–early 1816 active consultations on the highest level were held on the issue. Records of these consultations shed some light on Arakcheev’s opinion not only of new colonies but also of Cossacks. At some point during the discussion, Alexander I proposed to take the organization of Cossack regiments as the basis for military colonies along the Western border, similar to the existing Cossack hosts. Arakcheev, however, was skeptical. In his view, there was no danger of predatory raids from Europe—the justification for the existence of Cossacks on the frontiers since ancient times. Without persistent warfare, such colonists would quickly become de-facto peasants, virtually eliminating military elements from their lives. Arakcheev’s view prevailed, and in the end, he was given full authority to create and manage the military colonies.6 Opponents to Arakcheev’s approach in the design of military colonies, such as Barclay de Tolly, likewise appealed to the example of the Cossacks. Barclay’s premise was that Cossack-style units settled along the Western border who were living without the stimulus of frontier warfare would quickly degenerate as a military force. Yet, Barclay’s conclusions were the opposite of Arakcheev’s. He insisted that Cossack-style settlements continue to exist along the “wild” frontiers and argued that settled regular units on the European border were simply unnecessary.7 Thus, both the proponents and 4 Iachmenikhin, “Voennye poseleniia v Rossii: Administrativno-khoziaistvennaia struktura,” 57. Paul’s note “Rassuzhdeniia o gosudarstve voobshche” was submitted to Catherine II in 1774; however, it did not receive any favorable reaction. 5 M. M. Shcherbatov, Neizdannye sochineniia (Moscow: Sotsekgiz, 1935), 64–83. 6 Otdel rukopisei Rossiiskoi national’noi biblioteki (OR RNB), f. 859, karton 31, no. 17, ll. 53–55. 7 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA), f. 405, op. 1, d. 507, ll. 1–68.

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the opponents of military colonies took the Cossacks as an organizational model for their projects. In a further development of his plan, Arakcheev proposed the creation of regimental districts: areas exempted from the general provincial administration and, for the time being, isolated from outsiders. The colonies were to be composed of roughly equal numbers of regular soldiers and peasants; in theory, they had to be economically self-sufficient. In peacetime, soldiers would share houses with peasants and would work in the fields or engage in other rural trades. In wartime, peasants would continue to work, thus providing sustenance for the soldiers, and maintaining their dependents—an imperial version of social security. Both peasants and soldiers would be given the same training as regular army men—the only exception being at harvest time, when there was a demand for extra manpower. Finally, the children of military colonists would be recruited for other units, thereby creating a distinctive martial estate.8 From this perspective, the system aimed to not only reduce the army expenditures but also solve problems similar to those faced by the Cossack units during the passing of the frontier, namely the necessity of substituting a regular military training for the traditional fighting qualities bred by irregular and often savage frontier warfare. The envisioned existence of two categories of colonists—soldiers in service and peasants working to supply them—may remind one of the system of Cossack service, where several households supplied a Cossack during the campaign. However, the burden of support had now shifted. If four households were usually expected to supply one Cossack in the late eighteenth ­century, in the military colonies one household had to supply one or even more soldiers. Such economic pressure imposed heavy burdens and harsh conditions of life on the colonists. However, being a project of enlightened bureaucrats, the military colonies were to receive generous state financing in order to become viable in the long term. In the end, historians debate whether military colonists struggled heavily under cruel and inhumane exploitation or lived even richer lives than the average peasant or Cossack.9 8 Janet M. Hartley, Russia, 1762–1825: Military Power, the State, and the People (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2018), 190–208; John Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia 1462–1874 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 275–306. 9 For the first perspective, see Vladimir Aleksandrovich Anan’ev, “Voennye poseleniia v Rossii (1810– 1857)” (Candidate of Sciences diss., Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, Leningrad, 1989). For the second, see Zubov, “Razmyshleniia nad prichinami.”

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Four primary areas of military settlement were established in Novgorod, Khar’kov, Kherson, and Ekaterinoslav provinces, each occupied by ten or more regiments. It is important to note that only the Novgorod settlements were under the direct supervision of Arakcheev. General Vitt commanded the southern cavalry settlements, and his management did not always coincide with Arakcheev’s plans. Estimates vary with regard to the total number of colonists and the scale of the experiment. Official War Ministry statistics give the number of soldiers and officers as 160,000 in 1825. Other numbers, both higher and lower, have been proposed as well.10 Still, behind the noble intentions and an appealing façade, there were several problems with the implementation of the project. Among them was the style of rule of Arakcheev himself, who was known as a strict disciplinarian with a strong impulse to impose uniformity. Another factor was the general militarization of the Russian administration in this period. Yet another one was the overzealous performance of local functionaries. All these factors contributed to the resentment felt by both peasants and soldiers in their new colonist status. As a nonmilitary population, the peasants resisted the attempt at militarization. For their part, the soldiers resented work obligations. Having started from the need to educate, administrative rule evolved into full-fledged control over colonists’ lives. Even marriages were being arranged by a supervising officer, which added up to the impression that the military colonies were no different from serfdom in the end. Making matters worse, broader elements in Russian society resented the idea of military colonies. Conservative nobles feared the new colonists becoming a new pillar of the autocracy, marginalizing the nobility as a loyal military estate. The liberals emphasized the cruel exploitation and severe punishments that existed in the military colonies. The peasants feared the forced loss of their traditional communal lifestyle and an uncertain future—even if, according to the official imperial propaganda, the colonist status was beneficial for them. The fact that many colonists themselves did not accept their new status led to both passive resistance and open revolts. An additional problem was that economic gains from colonists’ labor did not outweigh the costly initial investments required to set up and run the 10 Hartley, Russia, 1762–1825, 191.

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colonies.11 Finally, Arakcheev, as one of the main proponents of the colonies, fell into disfavor with the new tsar, Nicholas I, for his indecisiveness in crushing the Decembrist Revolt. In the end, the grand project of military colonies turned into another dystopian experiment. During the reign of Nicholas I, the colonies were reorganized into supply bases for the regular regiments, while Alexander II abolished them altogether a year before the general emancipation of serfs. There was little future for a hereditary martial estate in an era of the nationin-arms and a military reform that would introduce universal conscription. In the same way as the officials’ experience with the Cossacks had influenced the development of the military colonies project, the experiences of organizing the colonists may well have had an effect on future legislation on the Cossacks. Moreover, while the plan to turn the military colonists into a closed military estate instilled with dynastic loyalty—a praetorian guard of sorts—failed, the same idea was not discarded completely. It was later successfully applied to the Cossacks, who, due to nineteenth-century transformations, evolved from the frontier brotherhoods, once proud of their independence, into one of the pillars of the regime that fell only with the end of autocracy itself. Arakcheev, however, was not the only administrator of military colonies, and only the northern infantry districts were under his direct supervision. The settlement of troops in Khar’kov, Kherson, and Ekaterinoslav provinces was entrusted to General Ivan Vitt, commander of the Settled Cavalry in the south.12 Arakcheev faced fierce opposition from Vitt in orga11 On the perception of colonies by contemporaries, see Anan’ev, “Voennye poseleniia v Rossii,” 54–96 and Hartley, Russia, 1762–1825, 207. For a concise introduction to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century historiography on colonies, see K. M. Iachmenikhin, “Voennye poseleniia v russkoi dorevoliutsionnoi i sovetskoi istoriografii,” Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, 8, no. 3 (1985): 63–71; and Iachmenikhin, “Voennye poseleniia v Rossii: Administrativno-khoziaistvennaia struktura,” 12–48. Even authors considered as representatives of ofitsial’no-okhranitel’nogo napravleniia such as Modest Bogdanovich or Nikolai Shil’der were critical of the colonies for a number of reasons: costly investments, questionable efficiency, cruel exploitation, alienation of colonists from other social groups of the empire, and so on. For instance, see N. K. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr Pervyi: Ego zhizhn’ i tsarstvovanie, vol. 4 (St. Petersburg: Izdanie A. S. Suvorina, 1898), 28–40. The overcritical reaction of contemporaries led to the black legend of Arakcheev and military colonies as the most inhumane place in the world. A balanced evaluation of military colonies requires further research. 12 Ivan Osipovich Vitt, a Russian cavalry general and an agent of political police, had a bad reputation both in the eyes of contemporaries and historians. Bagration, for instance, called Vitt a “liar” and a “doubledealer.” Even Konstantin Pavlovich, the brother of the emperor, in his letter to the Head of the General

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nizing cavalry districts along the same lines as the infantry districts of the Novgorod area. As differences in opinion arose between Arakcheev and Vitt, Alexander I supported Vitt and allowed him to submit his projects directly to the throne.13 In general, Vitt agreed with Alexander I and Arakcheev on the potential benefits of military colonies and even stressed that, in his opinion, they were the optimal mode of military organization—which, of course, could be interpreted as flattery.14 Still, the main object of disagreement concerned the method of implementation. Vitt recognized the peculiarity of the region under his command and proposed certain differences in detail to better adapt Arakcheev’s project to the reality of the steppes. According to Arakcheev’s plan, state peasants and regular soldiers were to be settled into villages emptied of their former inhabitants who would be resettled elsewhere, while the new settlers would be expected to build additional necessary infrastructures themselves. Vitt, however, proposed to use existing Cossack households as the material base and the Cossacks themselves as manpower, thus converting local Cossacks into military colonists. What could be the rationale for such a project? The use of the existing Cossack settlements would ease the burden on the treasury since there would be no need to build new settlements or to resettle the population. Not starting from scratch and using Cossack households—already adapted for the military service from an economic perspective—would also allow colonies to become economically sound much quicker. For example, the colonies Staff Dibich, was critical of the commander’s character: “General Vitt is a scoundrel, there was no such wretch before him in the world. Law, religion, honesty do not exist for him ... this is a man ... worthy of a hanging.” According to Vigel’, Vitt was a master of disguise, and yet it was only at Austerlitz that, being a cavalry colonel, “he was not able to pretend bravery and had to ... disappear.” For more on Vitt in the eyes of contemporaries, see Anan’ev, “Voennye poseleniia v Rossii,” 90–97. Furthermore, according to Lotman, “Vitt, the person dirty in all senses, nursed far-reaching ambitious plans. Knowing about the secret society ... he considered whom it will be more profitable to sell—the Decembrists to the government or ... the government to the Decembrists. On his own initiative he spied on A. N. and N. N. Raevskii, M. F. Orlov, V. L. Davydov and sold all of them in the decisive moment.” See Iu. M. Lotman, A. S. Pushkin. Biografiia pisatelia. Roman “Evgenii Onegin.” Kommentarii (Saint Petersburg: Iskusstvo, 1995), 90. Nevertheless, Alexander I favored Vitt and appointed him as the commander of the southern settled cavalry. Still, it was not the only task assigned to Vitt. In 1819, Vitt received special instructions to also observe Kiev, Volyn’, Podolia, and Kherson provinces and to use his own agents for this. Another noteworthy fact regarding Vitt is that in 1812 he commanded irregulars called to serve in the Little Russian-Ukrainian Cossack Host that was raised in a manner similar to that of other militias. 13 RGVIA, f. 405, op. 1, d. 509, ll. 2–3. 14 RGVIA, f. 405, op. 97, d. 26, ll. 608–612.

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under Arakcheev’s supervision became self-sustainable only in the 1830s, some two decades after their creation. By contrast, the southern colonies achieved stability in the first years of their existence. Established in 1817, they were economically self-sustainable already in 1820.15 Self-sustainability in this context meant not only providing equipment and the housing of troops but also reducing the need for further state investment in the colonies’ infrastructure. The transformation of Cossacks can also be considered as an attempt to solve numerous accumulated problems within the Cossack hosts, including the lack of adequate training necessary to c­ onduct warfare in the nineteenth century, the widespread evidence of corruption and abuses of the Cossack elites, and an impoverishment of the rank-and-file Cossacks. Still, in proposing to convert Cossacks into colonists, Vitt maintained certain reservations. For instance, he emphasized the foreign origins of the Bug Cossacks. For Vitt, these Moldavians and Bulgarians—people he called the Bug Cossacks—were extremely individualistic, to the degree that even two brothers could never get along living in one house.16 In comparison, as per Arakcheev’s plan, up to four extended families inhabiting one household were expected to peacefully coexist. On the one hand, Arakcheev’s model drew on the traditional patterns of extended peasant families living under one roof. On the other hand, it further increased the number of such families by putting together at least one family of peasants and one family of soldiers.17 So, Vitt continued, it would be extremely difficult to find a uniform pattern whereby both former volunteers, with their individualistic character 15 For a comparison of the economies of southern and northern military colonies, see Iachmenikhin, “Voennye poseleniia v Rossii: Administrativno-khoziaistvennaia struktura,” 309–385. Besides these, there were some experiments with military colonies in 1810; however, these lacked continuity to enable one to judge the time required for them to become economically stable. 16 Emphasis on the foreign origins of Bug Cossacks is a recurring trope in the perception of officials shaped, presumably, by earlier petitions. Still, taking into account Potemkin’s transfer of local Ukrainian peasants into the Bug Cossack units, one may assume that the percentage of Eastern Slavic peoples in the unit was far from negligible. 17 A useful illustration of this point is provided in Hartley, Russia, 1762–1825, 196. In the Chuguev area in 1822, the Pavlenko household comprised the head of the household with his wife and two children; his brother with his wife and their two children; the widow of a neighbor and her four children; as well as another family—this meant the hut was shared by four families with 21 members. The entire household owned only one horse and one plow. Another family in the same colony—the Bondarevs—had 18 people in 1826 and also included a neighbor’s family lodged with them in addition to another soldier’s wife (soldatka).

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and local Ukrainians, quite accustomed to living in extended families, could inhabit the same colonies or even the same houses. Khioni interprets this episode as Vitt’s attempt to warn his superiors of the danger of future Cossack disturbances and, in a certain sense, to limit his responsibility for causing them. According to Khioni, the main causes of Cossack unrest after their transformation into military colonies were economic in nature.18 Due to previously granted privileges, the Bug Cossacks could be considered among the wealthiest farmers in the region, able to supply not only their own communities but also the market. Conversion into military colonists, with their drills and overarching military regulations, would certainly destroy traditional household economies—not to mention another obligation of the colonists, namely, the virtually permanent quartering of regular cavalry soldiers, whose horses were expensive to maintain as well. It might be added that the transformation of the Bug Cossacks into military colonists constituted the final stage in the abolition of benefits that had initially been promised to the Moldavian and Bulgarian volunteers. Vitt’s project expressed criticism of Arakcheev’s views on land use as well. In Arakcheev’s vision, all the land of a colony was to be distributed evenly between households. In Cossack lands, on the one hand, such a division would deliver a serious blow to the Cossack elites and the economically sound middle households. On the other hand, the poorest of Cossacks, lacking the required number of plowing animals, plows, and other agricultural necessities, would not be able to farm their individual lots efficiently. Heavy plows were in use in the region, which meant that colonists without oxen would most certainly have to use their warhorses in agriculture. The exhaustion of horses, in turn, would diminish the military efficiency of the unit. These factors made sponsoring of the poorest households from the treasury quite expensive. Accordingly, it was decided that the poorest Cossacks were to work in construction and infrastructure. Vitt drew attention to other points of Arakcheev’s project that were impossible to implement in the steppe. For instance, it was barely possible to maintain three horses per household in the south due to the high price of oats in that region. The same was true of wood and construction materials— 18 I. A. Khioni, “Bugskie kazaki i ikh bor’ba protiv feodal’no-krepostnicheskogo gneta: Posledniaia chetvert’ XVIII—pervaia chetvert’ XIX vv” (Candidate of Sciences diss., Odesskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet imeni I. I. Mechnikova, 1973), 171–176.

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if Arakcheev planned to settle four families in one house, constructing such large buildings was impractical in the south with its scarce forests and high prices for wood. In sum, Vitt’s project is a viable illustration of how local conditions influenced imperial policies. Vitt’s approach was not only to adapt Arakcheev’s grand project to the peculiarities of the climate and the character of the local population, it was also a potential way to solve problems accumulated in the Cossack hosts, especially the smaller ones. If in Novgorod Arakcheev could conduct his experiment in social engineering as he wished, in the frontier region there still were plenty of possibilities of escaping imperial control not only by crossing the border but simply by hiding in the underpopulated areas. Therefore, Vitt had to be extremely careful not to destroy preexisting household economies. Historically, only the Bug and Chuguev Cossacks—as well as some Cossacks from Little Russia—were transformed into military colonists. As for the regular army, around one-sixth of the regular troops were settled by the end of Alexander I’s rule, which amounted to some 160,000 soldiers.19 Projects, however, existed to transform not only many more regulars— almost the entire army—but also parts of the Black Sea Cossack Host.20 In the end, such projects were abandoned, among other things, due to the Cossacks’ response to such forceful changes of status—even if these changes were made with benevolent intentions in mind and for the Cossacks’ own good. The Bug Cossacks rebelled immediately, in 1817, as many of them preferred traditional—even if mythical—freedoms over the military regulation of every aspect of everyday life. There were petitions and complaints, desertion and flights, in addition to various forms of everyday resistance. Finally, the empire resorted to coercion: the revolts were suppressed, while the Cossacks were forced to reconfirm their oath of fealty. Coercion was effective especially if sparingly used and applied to smaller hosts. Yet, in larger traditional Cossack communities, like the Don or the Black Sea hosts, it was hardly possible. First, their Cossack population was 19 The thesis that one-third (or more) of the army was settled stems from improper calculations, as it took into account the entire population of colonies, women and children included. For more on approximations of the military colonies’ population and the difficulty of determining the exact number, see Iachmenikhin, “Voennye poseleniia v Rossii: Administrativno-khoziaistvennaia struktura,” 90–91. 20 The Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv; RGIA), f. 1409, op. 1, f. 34, d. 88; RGVIA, f. 405, op. 2, d. 1995, ll. 1–14; f. 846, op. 16, d. 17628, ll. 10–12.

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dozens of times more numerous and clung fiercely to their traditional lifestyle. Second, the empire itself wanted a loyal military community able to supply military force and not a barren land. Vitt recognized this and, on the question of Don Cossacks, favored gradual reform in order to limit abuses and bolster efficiency, while avoiding unrest.21 Even so, if the imperial administration had to tread slowly and carefully when reforming large Cossack communities like the Don host, more rapid and more coercive ways were also an option—especially when dealing with smaller hosts. If the grand proposals for reform by Arakcheev and Vitt represent one extreme in transforming Cossacks into a new social category, another plan was advanced by Prince Illarion Vasil’chikov, head of the State Council (Gosudarstvennyi Sovet).22 Vasil’chikov was so skeptical about the reform of the Cossack service that he can be considered either a proponent of only a limited reform or an opponent of reform altogether. The rationale behind such a position was that the empire would reap the benefits from the lasting conflict between various Cossack factions—even if Cossacks were to retain only some useful functions in the empire.23 Given the potential for conflict between Cossack commoners and Cossack elites, the central government had the option of employing the classic tactic of divide and conquer to achieve its ends. One approach to carry this out was to ally with the elites and to suppress dissension among the commoners. Another way was to take up the mantle of protector of the rank-and-file Cossacks against abuses by their commanders. Both of these options could not only improve Cossack military qualities but would also bolster imperial legitimacy among the Cossacks, even if in completely different ways. Finally, imperial officials could delay their intervention, exploiting existing conflicts within the Cossack hosts. Even if this third option would weaken Cossack units in general and decrease their usefulness for the empire, it nevertheless would prevent Cossacks from forming a unified opposition to imperial policies. Playing on conflicts between commoners and elites was a typical style of borderlands management. Having been successfully employed by the Russian Empire toward the Little Russian and 21 RGVIA, f. 405, op. 6, d. 392. 22 Illarion Vasil’evich Vasil’chikov was a cavalry general, a trusted aide of Nicholas I and, in 1838–1847, the head of both the Committee of Ministers and the State Council. 23 S. G. Svatikov, Rossiia i Don, 1549–1917: Issledovanie po istorii gosudarstvennago i administrativnago prava i politicheskikh dvizhenii na Donu (Belgrade: Izdanie Donskoi Istoricheskoi Komissii, 1924), 279.

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Zaporozhian Cossacks in the mid-eighteenth century, it was actively used by other contemporary governments that faced the problem of integration of frontier martial societies as well. The Commander of the Caucasus Corps Aleksei Ermolov also submitted projects for limited reform. While he acknowledged that issues harmful to Cossacks survived in the administration of the hosts, he still favored a limited reform reflecting his interest in the Black Sea Cossacks, who continued to live and to fight on the open frontier. After the Treaties of Bucharest in 1812 and Adrianople in 1829, the Ottomans finally withdrew their protectorate over Caucasian tribes, and hence the Russian Empire could advance further into the Caucasus. While some local tribes were eager to accept the Russian protectorate, the pacification of others lasted into the 1860s. Consequently, the Caucasus remained an open frontier at the time when the Don and New Russia became de facto internal provinces and Bessarabia was a more or less stable borderland. In a situation of continuous warfare, the Black Sea Cossacks were strengthened primarily by ­state-directed colonization, whereby the government transferred tens of thousands of people both between social categories and between regions. In the situation of persistent warfare, Ermolov’s projects of the new Statute for the Black Sea Cossacks were much more moderate than, for instance, Aleksandr Chernyshev’s Don Statute. They focused only on streamlining the administration of the Cossacks and relieving the overloaded Cossack courts, which were practically paralyzed by numerous unresolved cases. According to Ermolov, a more comprehensive reorganization of the Black Sea Cossacks had to be postponed.24 Aleksandr Chernyshev proposed a more balanced approach that avoided the extremes of social engineering and complete inaction. An officer of the light cavalry, Chernyshev had first-hand experience with Cossack regiments and proposed preserving and strengthening the existing Cossack units through a series of statutes, or legal documents, which covered all areas of Cossack life.25 Cossack legislation was finally brought in accordance with the all-imperial one and the “Cossackdom” (kazachestvo) was effectively 24 RGIA, f. 1150, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 4–15. 25 For comparison: at the time when Chernyshev’s committee was working on a 200-page statute for Don Cossacks covering all spheres of their life, Ermolov’s draft statute was shorter and included only a set of general recommendations regarding the work of the Host Chancellery and courts.

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formalized as a separate social category within the empire. Tightened control of Cossack life by imperial officials was to prevent abuses of Cossack elites and the impoverishment of the rank-and-file. As one observer noted, Chernyshev in fact transformed the Don Cossack Host into a military colony no different from those of Arakcheev.26 Tactically speaking, however, Chernyshev and his associates disguised this similarity by unveiling it as a “codification of customary law,” paying at least lip service to Cossack traditions, and masterfully exploiting conflicts between different factions within the Cossack society. In this way, they sought to insulate themselves against Cossack revolts and the outrage of the liberal public opinion alienated by the alleged cruelty and failure of Arakcheev’s colonies. On September 21, 1818, Andrian Denisov, the ataman of the Don Cossacks, approached the emperor asking for the establishment of a special commission to codify the laws of the Don Cossacks. He rehearsed the familiar arguments of earlier reformers in outlining the problems shared by other Cossack units as well: abuse by the local nobility, who settled personal serfs on the communal land; lack of proper legislation, as the existing amalgam of customary and imperial law was too cumbersome to use; impoverishment of Cossacks, which only grew in the aftermath of the recent victory. Alexander I approved Denisov’s request on May 29, 1819, and the committee for the codification of Cossack law was established. It had to gather all the laws related to the Don Host—which had been published in various forms, at different times, under various circumstances—and then to draft a new statute (polozhenie) on the administration of the host and present it to the tsar.27 The new statute had to be prepared in a year; yet, such a momentous task required much more time and resources from imperial administrators. Denisov’s request and Alexander I’s permission to do so can be considered a turning point in the history of not only the Don Cossacks but also other irregular units of the empire. While Denisov was the formal head of the committee, two officials from St. Petersburg were to assist him and his aides in properly bringing the local law in accordance with the imperial legislation. These were General 26 The words of N. Krasnov cited from Bruce Menning, “A.I. Chernyshev: A Russian Lycurgus,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 30, no. 2 (1988): 214. Also see this work for another reconstruction of the Don Statute preparation. 27 PSZ, vol. 26, no. 27819; Andrian Denisov, “Zapiski donskogo atamana Denisova,” Russkaia starina 12, no. 3 (1875): 457–480.

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Aleksandr Chernyshev, who was by this time the emperor’s adjutant, and Senator Vasilii Bolgarskii, the representative of the Ministry of Justice.28 There is no indication of Chernyshev’s prior agreements with Alexander I, but yet, evidently, Chernyshev arrived in Novocherkassk, the Don ­capital, with a firm commitment from the throne to support an undertaking, which would far exceed Denisov’s codification expectations. The comprehensive reforms to be imposed by St. Petersburg faced the resistance of several groups representing different categories of the Don population. Members of the ­former Don elite (starshina), who by this time had been successfully incorporated into the all-imperial nobility (dvorianstvo), might well have feared retribution coming from the imperial center for all their previous offenses, such as the appropriation of the communal land. Besides, there also were traditionally minded elites—perfectly represented by Ataman Denisov himself— who were not hostile to the idea of reform but yet would prefer to limit the influence of outsiders not versed in local customs. Lower-level administrators and functionaries might well have feared getting caught in the professionally fatal crossfire between local elites and representatives of the tsar. Common Cossacks were rather unpredictable as well, known for their moody behavior and clinging to centuries-honed traditions. Finally, one should not discount the peasant population of the region—originally foreign, yet at this point counting some 160,000 persons.29 These were serfs of local nobles ­settled on the previously communal land, which the nobles had privatized by various means. Thus, the imposition of the will of the imperial center by way of a comprehensive reform, rather than a modest codification attempt, was quite a risky undertaking due to the different, and often opposed, interests of various local groups. To successfully cope with this challenge, Chernyshev and Bolgarskii made land reform a matter of principle from the very beginning of the committee deliberations. This was a tactic for securing the favor of common Cossacks, who had witnessed vast communal lands being appropriated by the nobles. Chernyshev even invited the rank-and-file to voice their grievances 28 Bolgarskii was the governor of Viatka in 1804–1808, and in 1823, he went on to become a member of the Senate. As the inspecting senator, he clashed with many Don elites over their liquor monopoly—which could be considered either as a fight against malefactors or as an attempt to exploit them for his own benefit. Though he was known as the protégé of Chernyshev, Ermolov considered him the greatest of robbers. 29 Menning, “A.I. Chernyshev: A Russian Lycurgus,” 205–206. Estimates of peasant population follow ­Svatikov, Rossiia i Don, 275.

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against officers who had unjustly appropriated plots of communal (stanitsa) land originally intended for common use.30 The formation of the committee in 1819 can also be seen as a turning point in imperial policies toward the Cossacks. Although previously the empire either sided with Cossack elites or masterfully exploited and further ignited existing conflicts, it now took up the mantle of the protector of the commoners against the abuses of local elites. Such an alliance of common Cossacks and the imperial administration not only could win popular support for Chernyshev’s reform but also meant completely new types of imperial legitimacy in the Cossack-populated borderlands. Nevertheless, those local noblemen who opposed Chernyshev’s program became isolated from both their imperial patrons and the mass of the Cossack population. The irony here lies in the fact that the Don nobles themselves owed their existence to previous imperial support and to the various decrees recognizing their elevated status over their Cossack brethren. To cement and further cultivate the popular favor, Chernyshev pressed the committee into adopting new regulations on cash subsidies for Cossacks in active service. With Chernyshev being in close contact with the emperor and the War Ministry, the proposal was quickly approved and implemented. Instead of receiving a forage allowance for a second horse, each Cossack in active service would now receive a payment of 90 rubles.31 In the autumn of 1821, the committee moved to St. Peterburg, having collected the necessary historical, statistical, and legal data from the Don region. After another year and a half of semi-regular sessions, Chernyshev forwarded a complete draft to the State Council—the institution responsible for the review of the proposed legislation. At this point, Illarion Vasil’chikov, for unclear reasons, emerged as a defender of the large Don landholders— those who feared the upcoming reform most of all. Although Vasil’chikov was not in a position to block the enactment of the new statute, he could delay its submission to the emperor by composing a lengthy commentary on the specific, minute points in the draft in order to prolong the discussion and to call into question the rationale behind different aspects of the proposed 30 RGVIA, f. 331, op. 1, d. 15, ll. 88–90. 31 N. F. Dubrovin, Sbornik istoricheskikh materialov, izvlechennykh iz Arkhiva Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva kantseliarii, vol. 9 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Vtorogo Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E.I.V. Kantseliarii, 1897), 57–61, 77–80.

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legislation. Vasil’chikov was able to drag out the discussions on the forthcoming statute well into late 1825. Only by autumn did all members of the State Council receive the final draft of the proposed legislation formulated, nevertheless, in accordance with Chernyshev’s vision.32 In contrast to the urgency of the initial call for reform, more than 15 years passed until the official enactment of the statute. In the meantime, the untimely death of Alexander I, the Decembrist Revolt, wars with Persia in 1826–1828, with the Ottomans in 1828–1829, and the Polish Uprising of 1830, all distracted the attention of the officials and drained the empire’s resources. Another reason for the delay was the need to find a reasonable solution to the land problem, which was becoming ever more pressing due to abuse by local nobles and rapid population growth. Finally, great efforts by Chernyshev’s subordinates were required to survey the Don and compile data on the landholding patterns that would be introduced by the tsar’s enactment of the reform—a task that required dozens of surveyors well into the 1830s.33 Despite all these difficulties, the statute was ready for submission to Nicholas I in the spring of 1835. The emperor was generally satisfied with the work done and signed the statute on May 26, 1835, adding some corrections. Although these corrections were relatively minor, they dealt with both the essence of the statute and its form. As for form—that is, specific wordings—in one of the statute drafts the Don administration was called government (pravitel’stvo). On this, the emperor commented that the word was misused: the government is the emperor himself (pravitel’stvo est’ Ia), which is why local administrations were to be renamed “the Host administration” (nazyvat’ dolzhno Voiskovym Pravleniem). Similarly, in the para32 For the reconstruction of this episode, see Menning, “A.I. Chernyshev: A Russian Lycurgus,” 210–212. Vasil’chikov’s position could stem either from his previously held views described above or from something else. 33 Speaking of other causes for delays, the following anecdote that nevertheless illustrates the opposition of the Don elites regarding the comprehensive reform is worth a mention. In August 1826, as the new tsar was crowned, Ataman Aleksei Ilovaiskii submitted a petition to the emperor in which he questioned the rationale behind the reform project and was critical of Chernyshev’s initiatives. Unfortunately for ­I lovaiskii, the tsar had no time to study the petition and immediately passed it to Chernyshev, who just happened to be close by. In a few months, in June 1827, Ilovaiskii was forced to retire from his position as the ataman, and Dmitrii Kuteinikov, a supporter of Chernyshev, took up this position. On Kuteinikov taking the office, see N. I. Krasnov, “Dmitrii Efimovich Kuteinikov, Ataman Voiska Donskago, 1827– 1866,” Russkaia starina 13, no. 5 (1875): 41–43; Svatikov, Rossiia i Don, 298.

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graph on the ammunition of guards regiments, Nicholas I eliminated the phrase “uniform and armament depend on the tsar’s discretion” (obmundirovanie i vooruzhenie zavisiat ot Vysochaishego usmotreniia): as per Nicholas I, everything in Russia depended on the emperor’s will, which is why this wording made no sense. As for more substantial notes, Nicholas I had some remarks on the recruitment and accounting of officers. Besides, he revoked the projected prohibition on the use of ovens between May and September. Initially, it was envisioned as a fire-safety measure; yet, the tsar decided that it would be too “uncomfortable” (stesnitel’no) for Cossacks. Finally, the draft project mentioned the punishment for the regiments that “would not uphold the standards of service” (pokazhut sebia predosuditel’no). Nicholas I was sure that there would be no such regiments in the Don, and hence there was no need to include this sentence in the statute.34 The official inauguration of the statute took place on January 1, 1836, with two Senators, Bolgarskii and Kniazhnin, presiding over the festivities in Novocherkassk dedicated to the announcement of the new legislation.35 The statute consisted of 190 pages and comprised 30 chapters—not including separate regimental instructions. It organized and regulated on a comprehensive basis the most important aspects of Cossack administration, economy, and military service. The statute covered practically all aspects of Cossack service for the empire: it confirmed the mandatory military service of Don Cossacks; introduced new regimental staff tables; and brought clarity into the system of recruitment. According to the statute, each Cossack had to be ready for service and to maintain his own weapons, equipment, and horses. While the same was traditionally true for Cossacks—equipping and supplying themselves—by the early nineteenth century, this was no longer the only option. The distribution of firearms among Cossacks was regulated, and there were separate requirements for Cossacks serving in the guards units and the like. The statute also stipulated the number of units that the Don Cossacks were to provide: 54 army regiments, two guards regiments, one artillery battery, a separate squad serving at arsenals, and 100 military artisans (mas34 RGIA, f. 1150, op. 2, d. 1a, l. 47v; d. 11 ll. 31–416. 35 PSZ, Sobranie vtoroe/2nd collection (1825–1881), vol. 10, no. 8163. See Svatikov, Rossiia i Don, 311–313, for a description of the senators’ visit to the Don and the reception they were given by the common Cossacks.

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terovye kazaki). To man such a force, the Cossacks were required to serve in three cycles, that is, only one-third of the eligible Cossacks were enrolled in active service at any given time, and the men were rotated after two or three years. The statute increased the number of noncommissioned officers in Cossack units to improve control and command, thus increasing the military efficiency of Cossacks. The statute conserved and formalized several existing practices regarding the rotation of men between units, rules for conducting local censuses, recording and accounting of the host’s manpower, and preparation of young Cossacks for service. The Statute of 1835 legally confirmed the principles of personal military service; the use of hired substitutes was strictly forbidden. This was to prevent the numerous misdeeds stemming from the richer Cossacks hiring the poorer ones. Such a practice had long been considered a serious problem in the eyes of imperial officials since the substitutes were often considered to be of extremely low quality, not proficient with weapons, and sometimes barely fit for service in general. At the same time, the statute permitted and further clarified the status of the so-called Cossack Merchant Society (Torgovoe Obshchestvo Kazakov), which was composed of 500 especially rich Cossacks whose merchant activities were deemed more beneficial, both to the host and the empire, than their military service. These Cossacks were allowed to pay a tax instead of serving personally. In addition, the statute exempted from military service only the clergy and the Kalmyk herdsmen who were engaged in an economically important profession in the society—they provided light cavalry troops. Besides, the prohibition against hired substitutes could not always be enforced in practice, and local officials were sometimes forced to tacitly accept them. The statute also centralized procedures for equipping Cossacks for service. Ammunition was to be made in the host workshops or purchased by the host as a whole. Further steps were outlined to standardize artillery and small arms calibers. As a precautionary note, rifles were stored in stateowned warehouses and were handed out to Cossacks only for the time of active service. While numerous clauses of the statute regulated Cossack military obligations, due attention was also paid to local administration and the functioning of the courts. Following the bureaucratic standards of that time, even minor procedural details were prescribed and regulated. The territory 65

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of the Don was reorganized into eight districts: seven Cossack districts (okrugi) and separate “nomad grounds” (kochev’e) for the local Kalmyks. Paying lip service to the Cossack traditions, the new obligation of the ataman was to supervise the proper implementation of entitlements and benefits granted to the host. The ataman was the head of both Cossack military and civilian administrations, while the once-powerful Cossack assembly (krug) was barely mentioned and was retained only for ceremonial purposes. The power of the ataman became, both practically and formally, similar to the power of governors. Civilian administration in general became quite similar to the administration of neighboring provinces, with the term “province” replaced by “host.” The Don Statute went hand in hand with other legislative acts clarifying and further formalizing the status of Cossacks in the Russian Empire. The reform of the War Ministry in 1835 subordinated Cossacks only to the Department of the Military Colonies (Departament Poselennykh Voisk). If Cossack hosts were under the double supervision of both civilian and military authorities previously, since 1835 they reported only to the War Ministry. A bit earlier, in 1832, the Code of Law was published, which listed Cossacks as a special category of the rural population (sel’skie obyvateli) bringing, finally, at least some official recognition of Cossack status, even if it could be unpleasant for the Cossacks themselves. In 1837, the Cossacks of Little Russia were subordinated to the Ministry of State Domains (Ministerstvo Gosudarstennykh Imushchestv), finally denying them Cossack status (which had been contested since the mid-eighteenth century) and converting this large and ambiguous group into state peasants.36 The Statute of 1835 was the first imperial legislation to embrace all areas of Cossack life, replacing scores of decrees, charters, and instructions. Thus, the preparation of the statute involved cooperation between various ministries and offices on an unprecedented scale. Naturally, the War Ministry got the upper hand; however, even the Ministry of Public Enlightenment (Education) and the Holy Synod gained their points as well.37 36 On Cossacks’ place in imperial administration in this period, see Robert McNeal, Tsar and Cossack, 1855–1914 (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 7, 94. On the Hetmanate case, see Zenon Kohut, Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s–1830s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 37 RGIA, f. 1150, op. 2, d. 1a, ll. 25–33. While the primary work on the statute was done by the War Ministry and Ministry of Justice, other ministries were consulted on specific topics they had the expertise in.

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For the time being, the Statute of 1835 dealt only with the Don Cossack Host, but statutes for other irregular units were already in the working stage. Until their completion, however, certain paragraphs of the Don Statute were applied to other hosts. For instance, in March 1835, the Commander of the Caucasus Corps Grigorii Rozen contacted the War Ministry asking for current regulations regarding drunkenness and immoral behavior of Cossack officers.38 The ministry’s response cited the articles of the Don Statute. Although the statute had not been approved by the emperor yet, it was still referred to as a source of law. Besides, in this case, clauses of the Don Statute project were being applied to the Black Sea Cossacks. As the author of the statute, General Chernyshev, remained at the top of the military hierarchy during the reign of Nicholas I, he was in a position to reform other Cossack units in accordance with his own vision—speaking of this, it was quite an achievement to be able to please two emperors of different characters. Thanks to Chernyshev, already in 1823, the commission to create a new statute for the Orenburg Cossacks was established, while in 1835 the committee for revising the Statute of the Black Sea Cossacks began its work.39 These statutes were completed and published as laws in 1840 and 1842, respectively. Later statutes, based on the Don model, were introduced to the Danube Host in 1844, the Astrakhan’ Host in 1845, the Caucasus Line Host in 1845, and the Sibir Line Cossacks in 1846.40 As for the newly established units, they were organized according to this preexisting template; the Don Statute influenced the organization of Tobol’sk, Irkutsk, and Enisei Cossack regiments as well as of the Transbaikal Cossack Host regiment. There is some question as to whether the spread of the Don Statutes can be interpreted as unification. The striking similarities in the text of these documents have led some researchers to argue that these statutes contribFor instance, both the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and the Holy Synod were consulted regarding the education of Don Cossacks. It is noteworthy, however, that even by January 1835, the project ignored certain aspects of the all-imperial legislation. The Minister of Public Enlightenment complained that even the most recent drafts of the Don Statute ignored the Statute on Secondary Schools (gymnasiums) issued in 1828 and, for instance, allowed individuals without a university degree to teach in a gymnasium situated in the land of the host. 38 RGVIA, f. 405, op. 6, d. 133. 39 To be more precise, the work on the new Statute for the Orenburg Cossacks started in 1818 on the initiative of the local administration. The initial draft, however, was discarded, and the final statute version was based on the Don Host Statute. 40 PSZ, 2nd collection, vol. 15, no. 14041; PSZ, 2nd collection, vol. 17, no. 15809.

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uted to the uniformization of Cossack military service and to the creation of a separate Cossack estate. The series of statutes based on Chernyshev’s legislation for the Don Cossacks can be treated as the empire’s response both to new challenges in warfare and the numerous accumulated problems in the administration of Cossack units. Thanks to these statutes, almost all hosts of the empire gained unified status as well as unified legislation with only minor differences, stemming more from the current host size and purpose and less from its previous traditions. Bruce Menning calls Chernyshev the “Russian Lycurgus” for all his legislative activities and for bringing order into the Russian military estate.41 Indeed, one should not underestimate the difficulty of sorting out centuries of edicts, charters, and instructions and bringing them into accordance with the existing imperial law, while presenting them as codifications of Cossack customary law. That is, not to mention, the actual spread of the laws over practically all Cossacks of the empire in all their diversity. From this perspective, the achievements of the 1830s were truly impressive. Following this reasoning, one can admit that although the reign of Nicholas I was often portrayed as a period of stagnation and reaction, this period was also a culmination of the Russian monarchy’s enlightenment program, which included bringing order into the most ambivalent spheres of borderland management and to its disorderly frontiers. The militarization of administration that happened during Nicholas I’s rule can thus be treated as a form of rationalization in a society where the rule of law was traditionally weak if existent at all. However, the limitations of the statute and the accompanying legislation should likewise be acknowledged. First of all, several distinctions among the Cossacks did remain. Not all Cossack units received statutes based on the one adopted for the Don host. Bashkir and some other non-Russian (inorodtsy) irregulars were too small, thus making the Don regulations inapplicable to them. Peculiarities of the Siberian Cossacks stemmed from the fact that they were basically settled regular troops. There were too few Azov Cossacks; besides they served primarily in the navy and not in the army. This made the regulations of Cossack service carefully prescribed by Chernyshev and his supporters barely applicable to them as well. Other Cossack units, such as the 41 Menning, “A.I. Chernyshev: A Russian Lycurgus,” 219.

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Ural host, were heavily involved in campaigning in the mid-­nineteenth century, and hence it was impractical to undertake their reorganizations for the time being. As for those units that got new statutes, the Don Statute was not mechanically duplicated and applied to the group. Imperial officials spent decades surveying the land of the hosts so as to take into account—at least ­nominally—their economic conditions and traditions. From this perspective, the number of statutes, adopted in the 1830s and the 1840s, suggests that although important steps were taken toward unification, officials displayed a degree of flexibility in balancing the unifying elements with the need to adapt to local peculiarities.42 Attention to these peculiarities is important since there is a vast difference between the enactment of the legal document and its implementation and practical use. A number of Cossack hosts had already been organized based on the Don Host model before the statute with its legislative unification even came into existence. This is, however, only the formal side of the story, since in practice the internal life of the Cossack hosts was barely regulated at the turn of the nineteenth century. The same argument can be applied to the post-1835 period: by that point, the Cossacks were already controlled by imperial officials in many spheres; their atamans were appointed; and the internal organization of the hosts was approaching the standards of the imperial law step by step. However, if one takes into account the time required to actually implement the statutes of the 1830s–1840s and the obstacles to it ranging from the slow pace of printing enough copies to the inertia of the local officials, one could argue that, in the end, not much changed in the lives of common Cossacks with the adoption of these statutes. The degree to which statutes practically influenced the life of Cossack settlements deserves further attention and investigation in its own right. Speaking of flexibility, the range of initial reform projects proposed by imperial officials once again illustrates the complexity of the problems that defied one simple solution. Even Arakcheev, Alexander I’s close advisor— the “vice-emperor”43 or the “grand vizier”44 in the words of both (envious) 42 For instance, the requirement to maintain horses of certain quality and in certain numbers, characteristic for many Cossack hosts, would be impractical (if at all possible) in Kamchatka. 43 Svatikov, Rossiia i Don, 283. 44 Michael Jenkins, Arakcheev: Grand Vizier of the Russian Empire (New York: Dial Press, 1969).

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contemporaries and modern researchers—did not have exclusive control over the settled units. The autocracy was flexible enough to test different approaches at the same time: Chernyshev’s codification attempts for the Don, Vitt’s conversion of the Bug and the Little Russian Cossacks into military colonists, Arakcheev’s attempt to create the same colonies from scratch and so on. Diverse experiments in different regions of the empire perfectly highlight the nature of imperial rule and the constant effort to adapt to the local circumstances of different borderlands. Despite the multiplicity of reform proposals, none of which succeeded in being fully adopted or long maintained in the face of opposition, tsarist officials continued to wrestle with the problem raised by the changes in the character of the frontier and the nature of warfare in the nineteenth century. Hampered in their attempts to emulate the European concept of mass armies by the existence of serfdom, and bound by their own conservative inclinations, Russian officials sought to impose a uniform structure on Cossack units by bringing them into line with regular forces. Furthermore, the timeframe for the practical application of these statutes was quite limited. On the one hand, numerous corrections, clarifications, explanations, and modifications followed from the ministerial officials almost immediately after the adoption of each statute. On the other hand, the decision to build on closed martial communities could be only temporary. As Russia moved toward universal military conscription, Dmitrii Miliutin’s new reform statute of 1874 was imposed upon the Don host and eventually on all the rest. Thus, the Don Statute was practically used for less than 40 years, while other host statutes were used for even less. Finally, the Cossacks were not transformed into a single Cossack estate. Instead, each Cossack host received its own statute whereby it retained its individual character, a special designation, and a direct link with the monarch. Autocracy’s ostensible respect of traditions was maintained, and different Cossack hosts were regulated by different settlements—just as before.45 In this sense, if the reforms of imperial legislation were an important move toward making Cossacks an efficient military force, they were not the only tools used by the empire. 45 For more on this bond between the Cossacks and the throne, see McNeal, Tsar and Cossack, 1–5 and Philip Longworth, “Transformations in Cossackdom 1650–1850,” in War and Society in East Central Europe, ed. Gunther Rothenberg and Béla Király (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1979), 404–405.

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Other steps were undertaken to strengthen the Cossack loyalty toward the Romanov dynasty. Solemn bestowing of military banners to Cossack units or recruiting Cossacks into the guard had been established practices, and these continued throughout the nineteenth century. In 1827, the title of the ataman of all Cossack Hosts was added to the collection of titles of the Romanov Dynasty and bestowed upon the heir to the throne (tsesarevich). At first glance, one may say that this was simply a tactic to appease the Cossacks by means of their special status in the Russian Empire. Still, it can also be treated as a concept of autocracy being shaped by its frontiers. In her work, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective, Karen Barkey notes thus: In many ambiguous ways, empires experience in some transitional populations the simultaneous potential for both legitimation and opposition. That is, dissent can sometimes help further legitimate the imperial order; opposition that wants to be incorporated into empire can bring legitimacy to empire.46

This notion is also applicable to Cossack communities. If Potemkin’s adoption of a similar title can be seen either as subjective fascination with all things Cossack or a move to destabilize the Polish Commonwealth, the adoption of the ataman title by the tsesarevich was a perfect public demonstration of how successfully the Romanov Dynasty had won over the proverbially fractious Cossacks. Furthermore, apologists for the dynasty strove to create a myth of the special loyalty of Cossacks. The history of Don Cossacks written by Vladimir Bronevskii was published in 1834, suspiciously close to the publication of the upcoming Don Statute. Moreover, Bronevskii was among the first to imagine the Cossacks as an honorable martial estate of the empire—­ perfectly in accordance with the empire’s needs of that time and in the midst of Chernyshev’s legislative activities.47 46 Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 157–158. 47 Vladimir Bronevskii, Istoriia Donskago Voiska (Saint Petersburg, 1834). Bronevskii was a nobleman from Smolensk. In 1805–1833, he served in the navy and actively participated in the Russo-Turkish wars. As a historian, he is also known for his memorandum on the Second Archipelago Expedition and for his notes on the Tavrida region. For the development of Bronevskii’s thesis in the imperial historiography, see K. K.

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As a result of—or maybe even contrary to—the imperial attempts to domesticate the Cossacks, many of them considered themselves privileged, compared to the majority of the population, due to, among other things, their imagined pact with the tsar. The Cossacks served him as faithful warriors and expected to be justly rewarded. This was, however, not just a matter of the Cossack imagination, but a reciprocal link: the personal bodyguard of Alexander II during the days when he was hunted by revolutionaries was composed of mounted Cossacks, while Nicholas II was wearing the uniform of the Kuban’ Cossacks at the time of his abdication. In the end, the bond between autocracy and Cossackdom assumed great importance in the imperial structure, even if the imperial version of the Cossack myth was conceived only in the mid-1830s. Similarly, the notion of Cossackdom as a coherent social or legal category in the Russian Empire should be carefully reconsidered. Well until the ­mid-1830s, the legal framework used for defining Cossack status was vague, leaving many alternative possibilities while allowing for different understandings and competing interpretations. In practice, this vagueness could lead to the same unit at the same time being considered Cossack in some documents and non-Cossack in others. This offers another illustration of the complexities of borderland management as there was no encompassing legislation to regulate the life of Cossack communities. However, this did not stop the College of War officials from using “Cossackdom” as an umbrella term that covered almost any irregular. However, there also were the regularized Cossacks, who further complicated an already complex picture. In addition, the term “Cossackdom” was widely used to denote temporary units—be they foreign volunteers or locally raised militias. The status of the people who served in these units was far from secure and was often regulated by separate decrees that could have little in common with the promises made to the volunteers at the stage of recruitment. These arbitrary transfers of populations to and from Cossackdom illustrate not only the fluidity of the Cossack category but also the (in)stability of other estates. All this also brings up the question: did the situation change in the 1830s with all the work done by Chernyshev, Speranskii, and other imperial legisAbaza, Kazaki: Dontsy, Ural’tsy, Kubantsy, Tertsy: Ocherki iz istorii i starodavniago kazatskago byta v obshchedostupnom izlozhenii, dlia chteniia v voiskakh, sem’e i shkole (Saint Petersburg: Izd. V. Berezovskii, 1899).

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lators, and did the Cossacks become an estate of the empire in the end? The answer to this question would depend upon what one means by the term “estate.” In Russian legislation, the term “estate” (soslovie) was used rather interchangeably with “condition” (sostoianie), “rank” (chin), and “title” (zvanie); besides, soslovie could also be used synonymously with uchrezhdenie (institution), which is, in fact, quite a different term. Furthermore, given that these terms included numerous categories within themselves, it is not surprising that the applicability of the estate paradigm to the history of the Russian Empire has been a topic of many hot debates.48 For instance, Elise Wirtschafter, focusing on the “people of various ranks” (raznochintsy), brought attention to the fluid and mutable boundaries between various social categories.49 In contrast, Michael Confino drew attention to the competing categories of estate and social groups and whether they were mutually exclusive. According to Confino, the term “estate” is not helpful for the description of the numerous and diverse social groups in the Russian Empire; yet, even so, they should not be completely abandoned as analytical categories.50 Pushing against Confino’s thesis, David Ransel suggested rejecting the term “estate” as a structuralist category and its replacement with the functionalist concept of corporations. According to Ransel, historical writing operating with the concept “estate” artificially fragments social reality, and presents society in the form of isolated units, which obscures the relational influences between social groups.51 Robert Johnson, on the contrary, considered estates as useful approximations—even if they were heterogeneous in themselves.52 Elaborating on this perspective, Alison Smith focuses on burghers and concludes that sosloviia meant both everything and nothing to contemporaries who constructed social reality themselves, while the state was only adapting to it.53 Nevertheless, 48 The start of the soslovie debate is associated with a seminal article by Gregory Freeze, “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History,” American Historical Review 91, no. 1 (1986): 11–36. 49 Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, Structures of Society: Imperial Russia’s People of Various Ranks (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994). 50 Michael Confino, “The ‘Soslovie’ (Estate) Paradigm: Reflections on Some Open Questions,” Cahiers Du Monde Russe 49, no. 4 (2008): 681–699. 51 David Ransel, “Implicit Questions in Michael Confino’s Essay: Corporate State and Vertical Relationships,” Cahiers Du Monde Russe 51, nos. 2–3 (2010): 195–210. 52 Robert Johnson, “Paradigms, Categories, or Fuzzy Algorithms? Making Sense of Soslovie and Class in Russia,” Cahiers Du Monde Russe 51, nos. 2–3 (2010): 461–466. 53 Alison Smith, For the Common Good and Their Own Well-Being: Social Estates in Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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even taking into account recent revisionist trends, the term “estate” did carry specific meaning not only of an object of administrative decrees or a set of legal rights and duties but also in terms of self-perception and self-regulation of social groups. In this vein, what were the essential features of Cossacks as a social category in the post-1835 Russian Empire? In the nineteenth century, the Cossack hosts finally became an instrument of imperial rule—a form of both spatial and social organization similar to a peasant community or a Jewish kagal. Still, even after the unifying reforms of the 1830s, the Cossacks were far from being a homogenous group in at least two senses. First, Cossackdom included nobility, clergy, merchants, and the rankand-file Cossacks. Consequently, all these subcategories within Cossackdom intersected with the non-Cossack groups: Cossack elites had much in common with other nobles; Cossack clergy with the clergy of other regions, and so on. From this perspective, Cossacks, as a category, can be treated a bit separately from the imperial social structure, while perfectly mirroring the broader society. In this sense, one may conclude that Cossack nobles, Cossack clergy, and Cossack merchants were separate estates on their own or that—as was often the case—that Cossacks could be representatives of two estates at the same time. Second, even in the 1830s, there was no such thing as an all-encompassing legislation for Cossacks in general. Specific Cossack hosts were regulated by separate charters, decrees, and statutes. Presumably, this was the effect of autocracy’s tactical appeal to tradition, flattering Cossacks with their special connection to the monarch, and, thus, it resulted in the elevation of Cossack status over the masses of common peasantry. Further, when compared to other estates of the empire, this feature attains greater importance. Peasant communities were not regulated separately in each district, while the noble assemblies had a common basis in the imperial legislation, even though the local peculiarities were also recognized. From this perspective, one can argue that each host was an estate of its own. In the end, unified allimperial Cossackdom as a single estate did not emerge at all—the peculiarities of separate units heavily influenced their life even after reforms brought a certain degree of unification to Cossack administration and military service. Consequently, the term “estate” may not be the best term to characterize the situation, keeping in mind the heterogeneous nature of Cossack 74

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hosts and the existence of semi-estates within Cossackdom itself. At the same time, paying tribute to the historiographical tradition and having no widely acknowledged alternatives, I would not discard the concept of the Cossack estate altogether when speaking of late imperial Russia either. On par with “estate” (soslovie), “Cossackdom” (kazachestvo) can be another useful approximation—provided it is applied sparingly and its limitations are acknowledged. Furthermore, the story of the Cossacks’ legal inclusion into imperial society culminated just two decades before the Great Reforms that weakened the estate structure of the empire. With these reforms, soslovie lost its original meaning and was subsumed under new and often contradictory terms.54 The same reforms also questioned the rationale behind the prolonged existence of a military caste in the era of universal military conscription.55 Nevertheless, the persistence of separate and loyal military estates until the very fall of the monarchy itself supports the thesis that, in the case of the Russian Empire, a heterogeneous legal system—a system that does not move toward general citizenship and civil society, with various social groups being governed by separate legislations—was completely viable for the integration of borderlands into the imperial society, even if it did not correspond to the standards of Western Europe.56

54 A fitting metaphor was used by Alfred Rieber who called the Russian imperial society “the sedimentary society,” where relics of different eras coexisted, acquired new layers, and complexly interacted. Alfred Rieber, “The Sedimentary Society,” Russian History 16, nos. 2–4 (1989): 353–376. 55 Another debatable question is whether Cossackdom can be considered an anachronism in the late nineteenth century. For instance, on the one hand, Gunther Rothenberg and Robert McNeal saw no future in the military caste on the eve of the twentieth century. On the other hand, looking at the larger picture, one should not simplify military developments as leading inevitably toward universal conscription. In discarding such a teleology, one can observe that, after the mass armies of the mid-twentieth century, many countries shifted to professional armies, while the role of private military companies and subcontractors has grown immensely in the hybrid conflicts of today—offering a parallel with the military entrepreneurs of the early modern period. 56 For more on this heterogeneous legal system, see the overview of Mikhail Dolbilov’s conference presentation by Alexander Semyonov in Rossiiskaia Imperiia v sravnitel’noi perspektive, ed. Alexei Miller (Moscow: Novoe Izdatel’stvo, 2004).

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Ch a p t e r 3

The Russian A rmy and the Ottoman Empire: Militar y Reform and Eastern Crisis Victor Taki

A

lexander II’s ascension to the throne in February 1855 and the conclusion of the Crimean War a year later brought about a major change in the history of the Russian Empire and its military organization. The two decades that followed came to be known as the Great Reforms, which included the emancipation of the Russian peasantry from serfdom in 1861, the creation of the modern judiciary, and the introduction of elected district and gubernia administration (zemstva) in 1864 as well as the municipal reform of 1870.1 While these reforms had a lasting impact upon Russian politics and society, their initial rationale arguably involved rendering the Russian social structure compatible with modern military organization 1 There is a vast historiography of the Great Reforms both in Russian and in English. See, most importantly, P. A. Zaionchkovsky, The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia, trans. and ed. Susan Wobst; intro. Terrence Emmons (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1978; first Russian edition: 1960); Terrence Emmons, The Russian Landed Gentry and Peasant Emancipation of 1861 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1968); Terrence Emmons, The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-Government (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982); L. G. Zakharova, Samoderzhavie i otmena krepostnogo prava v Rossii, 1856–1861 (Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1984); W. Bruce Lincoln, The Great Reforms; Autocracy, Bureaucracy and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1990); and Ben Ekloff, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova, eds., Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855–1881 (Bloomington, IN: Indian University Press, 1994).

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based on universal military service and a system of national reserves.2 This explains why the military reform of 1874 was the last one to be implemented even though military modernization was always at the top of the agenda for the tsar and his associates.3 The military reform of 1874 was the product of a generation change in the Russian high command and military administration. The commanders of Nicholas I—Paskevich, Menshikov, Gorchakov, Liders—were veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, and all of them were older (and sometimes considerably so) than the tsar himself, who was almost 60 when he died. By contrast, the notable military figures of Alexander II’s reign belonged to the next generation of officers, who were the first to receive a higher military education at the Imperial Russian Academy of General Staff created in 1832. This was certainly the case of Dmitrii Alekseevich Miliutin and Nikolai Nikolaevich Obruchev, who will figure so prominently in the pages that follow. A closer look at the intellectual background of these officers is necessary in order to grasp some of the problems that preoccupied the leading military men in the era of Great Reforms.4 These people represented a new type of Russian officer, whom one can call military intellectuals. In contrast to the morally conscious and versa2 See Alfred J. Rieber, “The Politics of Emancipation,” in The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinskii, 1857–1864, ed. Alfred J. Rieber (The Hague: Mouton, 1966), 14–57. 3 On Russia’s military reform, see P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Voennye reformy 1860–1870 godov v Rossii (Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1952); Bruce W. Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets: Imperial Russian Army, 1861–1914 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992), 6–50; William C. Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600–1914; and Robert F. Baumann, “Universal Service Reform,” in Reforming the Tsar’s Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution, ed. David Schimmelpennick van der Oye and Bruce Menning (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 11–33. 4 On Miliutin, see P. A. Zaionchkovskii, “D.A. Miliutin. Biograficheskii ocherk,” in Dnevnik D. A. Miliutina 1873–1875, ed. P. A. Zaionchkovskii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia biblioteka SSSR. Otdel rukopisei, 1947), 1:5–73 and Forrestt A. Miller, Dmitrii Miliutin and the Reform Era in Russia (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968). On Obruchev, see O. R. Airapetov, Zabytaia kariera “russkogo Mol’tke”: Nikolai Nikolaevich Obruchev (1830–1804) (St. Petersburg: Aleteia, 1998). The traditional perception of Miliutin and his associates as the authors of Russia’s military reform has recently been challenged. See Frederick W. Kagan, The Military Reforms of Nicholas I. The Origins of Modern Russian Army (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 244–251, who argues that Nicholas I and his war minister, A. I. Chernyshev, confronted essentially the same predicament of a vicious manpower policy imposed upon them by Russia’s social organization, while their proposed solutions (indefinite furloughs, greater emphasis on military administration), short of the abolition of serfdom, anticipated the introduction of universal military service and of the military districts during the 1860s and 1870s. Kagan’s thesis challenges the historiography of the Russian military reform in the same way in which W. Bruce Lincoln’s work, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825–1861 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1977), challenged the historiography of other reforms.

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tile—but also amateurish—representatives of the Russian military intelligentsia of the early 1800s, the military intellectuals who came of age around the middle of the nineteenth century were more firmly focused on the army and the problems that confronted it. The military service that used to be one of the markers of noble status became for them the main source of identity. Systematic military education helped them compensate for the relative lack of combat experience during a period (1815–1853) that witnessed no major European war. This type of education also helped define the comprehensive and systematic manner in which these officers formulated the various problems confronting the army. Higher military education effectively turned them into scholars whose research into military history, statistics, logistics, tactics, or strategy was always the basis of policies that they formulated and implemented during the 1860s and the 1870s. This chapter explores the intellectual background of this new generation of Russian military men and their perspectives on Russia’s traditional rival, the Ottoman Empire, during the post-Crimean period. It begins by examining the discipline of military statistics, which emerged during the 1850s and the 1860s as the main tool of both reform and empire-building. Military statistics reflected a growing appreciation of the role of population as both a factor of relative strength and weakness of a country’s army as well as a potential challenge that it could confront in a given war theater. Confirmed by the experience of the war in the Northern Caucasus, this assumption became common to both the Russian military reformers and their critics during the 1860s and the 1870s, thereby influencing their responses to the Eastern Crisis of 1875–1878. The population factor figured prominently in both the proposals of some Russian officers to ignite a “national war” among the Balkan Christians as well as in the actual war planning of the Russian Main Staff at the time of the Eastern Crisis. The Development of Military Statistics in the Post-Crimean Period In the early nineteenth century, “statistic” was a branch of political science that focused on the collection, classification, and discussion of facts pertaining to the condition of state and community. In contrast to “political arithmetic” that dealt with quantitative data, “statistic” provided qualitative 78

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descriptions. With time, the discipline began to acquire its more modern quantitative character in response to the growing desire of European governments to turn the population in general and specific groups within it into the objects of policy.5 The task of singling out such groups on the basis of economic activity, way of life, or language became the task of the transformed science of statistics during the 1830s and 1840s, a period that one scholar characterized as the age of “statistical enthusiasm.”6 Military statistics, which developed during the same period, proceeded from the assumption that population was an important factor of both the overall military strength of a country and of military operations in a specific theater of war. The earlier focus of the staff officers on the armed forces of a country gave way to their concern with a much broader range of factors contributing to the nation’s military might. In the definition of Miliutin, who effectively introduced military statistics into the curriculum of the Imperial Russian Academy of General Staff in 1847, the “currently existing military forces of a state” were not limited to the “armed forces,” but included “all means that a state has at its disposal to assure its external security or to achieve its political goal by the force of arms.” According to Miliutin, military statistics thereby had to “embrace virtually the entire composition of the state (sostav gosudarstva) and consider all of its elements from the military point of view, that is, taken in relation to the means of conducting a defensive or offensive war.”7 Alongside territory and political organization, the “elements of the state” included population, its numbers, distribution, level of well-being, and moral characteristics. All these characteristics of the population defined not only the size of the military forces but also their essential qualities and, in addition, indicated to what extent the government could rely upon the cooperation of the people and the loyalty of the army in the case of war.8 5 Peter Holquist, “To Count, to Extract and to Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia,” in A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Terry Martin and Ronald Suny (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 111– 145, esp. 112–113. 6 Jan Hacking, “Biopower and the Avalanche of Printed Numbers,” Humanities in Society 5, nos. 3–4 (1982): 281; Olivier Rey, Quand le monde s’est fait nombre (Paris: Stock, 2016). 7 D. A. Miliutin, “Kriticheskoe issledovanie znacheniia voennoi geografii i voennoi statistiki,” Voennyi zhurnal, no. 1 (1846): 176–177. 8 Miliutin, “Kriticheskoe issledovanie znacheniia voennoi geografii i voennoi statistiki,” 179, 183.

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Although Miliutin’s own military statistical study was devoted to Prussia and Germany,9 the primary focus of the early Russian practitioners of this discipline was the Russian Empire itself. Ever since the 1830s, the officers of the Main Staff had been composing and updating military statistical descriptions of Russia’s European provinces and the neighboring territories.10 The novelty introduced by Miliutin and his associates and disciples consisted in elaborating uniform criteria for the execution of military statistical surveys as well as making the latter an important means of the military reform that Miliutin pursued following his appointment as the war minister in 1861. Beginning in 1863, the Military Scientific Committee, with Miliutin’s disciple Obruchev as the executive secretary, made information gathering a constitutive part of reform. This reform involved separating army command from military administration and supplies, and it resulted in the division of Russia into 14 military districts. The more precise and reliable data collected by the General Staff officers in the post-Crimean period helped the new war minister to overcome the formidable opposition that he encountered in his efforts to move the Russian army closer to a system of reserves and universal military service. In turn, Miliutin’s efficient use of statistics in lobbying for the interests of his ministry and his proposed reform stimulated other Russian ministries to intensify statistics-gathering efforts of their own and similarly use them for the defense of their institutional interests.11 One of the problems that plagued Russia’s military statistical effort during the middle decades of the nineteenth century was the absence of a clear definition of strategic objectives. In order to be really effective, data gathering and analysis had to be informed by a shared understanding as to which country represented Russia’s most likely adversary and the biggest security threat.12 Despite the frequency of the Russian-Ottoman Wars in the pre9 D. A. Miliutin, Pervye opyty voennoi statistiki. 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografia voenno-uchebnykh zavedenii, 1847–1848). 10 David Rich, “Imperialism, Research and Strategy: Russian Military Statistics, 1840–1880,” Slavonic and East European Review 74, no. 4 (1996): 624. These studies were published as Voenno-statisticheskie obozrenie Rossiiskoi imperii. 17 vols. (St. Petersburg: Department General’nogo Shtaba, 1848–1858). See also David Rich, “Building Foundations for Effective Intelligence: Military Geography and Statistics in the Russian Perspective, 1845–1905,” in Reforming the Tsar’s Army, ed. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and Bruce W. Menning (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 168–188. 11 Rich, “Imperialism, Research and Strategy,” 633–634. 12 Rich, “Imperialism, Research and Strategy,” 635–636.

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ceding century and a half, the crisis-ridden Ottoman Empire could not be such a country, as the Crimean War had demonstrated only too clearly. The uncertainty disappeared only after the emergence of Germany as the greatest European power in 1871. Germany’s potential threat to Poland, the Western borderlands, and even the Russian core lands was demonstrated in a memorandum that Obruchev submitted to the Secret Strategic Conference of March 1873.13 Obruchev’s memorandum helped Miliutin overcome the final hurdle to his proposed introduction of “universal” military service, which took place in 1874, thereby fulfilling the objectives of the military reform that Miliutin had pursued since 1861. With the final definition of Germany as Russia’s greatest security threat during the 1880s, the criteria for data collection in military statistics finally became clear, making possible the elaboration of Russia’s first general mobilization plan in 1887.14 Despite its focus on the European part of the empire, Russian military statistics played an important role in empire-building on Russia’s eastern peripheries as well as in the policies that St. Petersburg pursued with respect to its southern and eastern neighbors. The graduates of the Imperial Russian Academy of General Staff played a prominent role in the Imperial Russian Geographical Society founded in 1845 and joined the expeditions that it organized into Siberia, the Urals, Tian-Shan Mountains, Northern China, and Tibet.15 Some of their surveys literally charted the course of Russia’s territorial expansion. For example, Miliutin’s disciple M. I. Veniukov personally explored the course of the Ussuri River and thereby helped the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia N. N. Muraviev (Amurskii) annex the Primorie region. A. I. Maksheev, another one of Miliutin’s students, combined his surveys of the Aral Sea and the Syr Daria River with construction of forts and the participation in the military expeditions against the Central Asian khanates of Kokand and Khiva in the late 1840s and the early 1850s.16 In 1867, after the Russian conquest of Tashkent and the creation of 13 N. N. Obruchev, “Soobrazheniia ob oborone Rossii. Strategicheskaia zapiska,” January 19, 1873, Nauchno-issledovatel’skii otdel rukopisei Rossiiskoi gosudarstvennoi biblioteki (NIOR RGB), f. 169, Karton 37, d. 4. 14 Rich, “Imperialism, Research and Strategy,” 636–638. 15 Rich, “Imperialism, Research and Strategy,” 627. 16 A. I. Maksheev, “Opisanie Aral’skogo moria,” Zapiski russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, no. 5 (1851): 30–61. On Maksheev, see Alex Marshall, The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1800–1917 (London: Routledge, 2006), 46–66.

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the Turkestan province, Maksheev went there to undertake a geographic, ethnographic, and statistical survey of this territory.17 Practitioners of Russian military statistics had their greatest policy impact in the Northern Caucasus where Miliutin had his baptism of fire in the late 1830s and to which he returned in 1856 as the chief of staff for the Caucasian Viceroy A. I. Bariatinskii.18 The Crimean War revealed the precariousness of the Russian hold on the Caucasus, caused by the anti-Russian resistance of the mountain tribes led by Imam Shamil. In the words of the veteran of the Caucasian War Colonel Rostislav Andreevich Fadeev, the bulk of the 270,000-strong Caucasian corps was tied up in the resisting Shamil’s forces, leaving the remaining troops barely sufficient to confront the Ottomans in Asia Minor and certainly insufficient to oppose the expedition corps of the Western allies.19 The demilitarization of the Black Sea stipulated by the Paris Peace Treaty exposed the Russian littoral and made the tsarist military authorities fear communications between the British and Shamil as well as the mountain tribes of northwestern Caucasus.20 In 1857, Miliutin came up with a plan of pacification of the rebellious region through the policy of systematic expulsion of the natives from their habitats in the mountains and their resettlement in the lowlands. This was tantamount to recognizing that the native population in its entirety, rather than particular armed groups, represented a security challenge to the Russian Empire. Accordingly, the proposed solution was demographic rather than purely military: the hostile population was to be replaced by Cossack settlements, which Miliutin designated as the “Russian element.” Approved by the tsar in 1858, the plan was put into operation by the commander of the Western Caucasian defense line Lieutenant-General N. I. Evdokimov, whose troops between 1860 and 1864 burned and otherwise destroyed native settlements forcing at least over 400,000 tribesmen to resettle on the plains of Kuban and Stavropol regions or emigrate to the Ottoman Empire.21 17 A. I. Maksheev, “Geograficheskie, etnograficheskie i statisticheskie materialy o Turkestanskom krae,” Zapiski russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, no. 2 (1871): 1–60. 18 Miliutin’s early experience in the Caucasus led him to write a study of the 1839 campaign. See D. A. Miliutin, Opisanie voennykh deistvii 1839 goda v Severnom Dagestane (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia voennouchebnykh zavedenii, 1850). 19 R. A. Fadeev, Shest’ desiat let Kavkazskoi voiny (Tiflis: Voenno-pokhodnaia tipografiia Glavnogo Shtaba Kavkazskoi Armii, 1860), 58–60. 20 On the latter, see Fadeev, Shest’ desiat let Kavkazskoi voiny, 137–138. 21 Holquist, “To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate,” 116–119. On the expulsion/emigration of Muslims in the post-Crimean period, see Marc Pinson, “Demographic Warfare: An Aspect of Russian and

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The essence of this war was best expressed by Fadeev. Located on the shore of a European sea that connected it to the entire world, the Western Caucasus, according to Fadeev, “could only become firmly attached to Russia if it was turned into a Russian land.”22 In Fadeev’s opinion, there was no hope of “changing the feelings of a barbarian people numbering half a million, which had always been independent, hostile, armed, defended by an inaccessible geography and exposed to constant influence of all the interests inimical to Russia.”23 Fadeev frankly admitted that the war conducted in order to turn the region into a “Russian land” had caused “desperate resistance” and therefore required “annihilating a considerable part of the Trans-Kuban population in order to force the other part into unconditional surrender.”24 The last four years of the Caucasian War consisted, in Fadeev’s definition, in chasing the West Caucasian mountaineers from their wilderness and their replacement by Cossacks, whose settlements were “meant not just to crown the region’s subjugation,” but “served as one of the main means of conquest.”25 The challenge of overcoming the resistance of warring inhabitants in a mountainous region made the Russian officers interested in how other European powers dealt with cases of staunch native resistance to conquest. They became particularly interested in the response of the French army to the guerilla warfare waged by Abdel Kader in Algeria during the 1830s and 1840s. According to Fadeev, both the Russians and the French encountered “amidst the corrupt states of the Asian world” two peoples who “equaled the Europeans in courage,” while the wilderness in which they lived “rendered the superiority of regular weapons fruitless by making it impossible

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Ottoman Policy, 1856–1864” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1970); Willis Brooks, “Russia’s Conquest and Pacification of the Caucuses: Relocation Becomes Pogrom in the Post-Crimean Period,” Nationalities Papers 23, no. 4 (1995): 675–686; Alan W. Fisher, “Emigration of Muslims from the Russian Empire in the Years After the Crimean War,” in A Precarious Balance: Conflict Trade and Diplomacy on the Russian-Ottoman Frontier, ed. Alan F. Fisher (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 1999), 171–191; Brian Glynn Williams, “Hijra and Forced Migration of Muslims from Nineteenth-Century Russia to the Ottoman Empire,” Caheirs du Monde Russe 41, no. 1 (2000): 79–108; and V. O. Bobrovnikov and I. L. Babich, eds., Severnyi Kavkaz v sostave Rosskiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2007), 128– 132, 155–183. R. A. Fadeev, “Pis’ma s Kavkaza,” in Gosudarstvennyi poriadok. Rossiia i Kavkaz, ed. R. A. Fadeev (Moscow: Institut russkoi tsivilizatsii, 2010), 179. Fadeev, “Pis’ma s Kavkaza,” 183–184. Fadeev, “Pis’ma s Kavkaza,” 184. Fadeev, “Pis’ma s Kavkaza,” 184–185.

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to advance in closed ranks.”26 In his quest for alternatives to the difficult and largely fruitless Russian expedition against Shamil’s headquarters at Akhulgo in 1839, Miliutin was the first to become interested in the French plans for military settlements in Algeria in the early 1840s.27 The study of the French experience became systematic in the wake of the Crimean War when several graduates of the Imperial Russian Academy of General Staff traveled to Algeria to compose military statistical descriptions of the region and overviews of the French policies there.28 The Russian War Ministry continued to pay considerable attention to the situation in the Ottoman Empire in the post-Crimean period. The Russian military agent in Constantinople V. A. Frankini supplied Miliutin’s predecessor as the war minister, N. O. Sukhozanet, with reports on the settlement of Muslim emigres from the Caucasus and Crimea in the Ottoman domains. Frankini mentioned the interest of the Porte in settling the emigres in European Turkey, “where the Muslim population is very sparse and much inferior to the Christians.” According to Franchini, “the Caucasian Tatars [sic] constantly refused to comply with this desire of the Ottoman government.”29 Except for a very small number of those who agreed to settle in Dobrogea, the great majority preferred Asia where they had spread out along the entire coast and even in the Anatolian interior toward Sivas and Karpout. Frankini also noted that the Crimean Tatars “[had] accepted the offer of the Ottoman government and the majority of them are settling today in European Turkey, for the most part in Bulgaria, in the environs of Adrianople, Varna, and Dobrogea.” Despite the high mortality rate among the emigres, Frankini believed that the Crimean Tatars would “be able to make use of the lands that the Ottoman government accorded to them,” since they were “more industrious and less poor than the Tatars of 26 Fadeev, “Pis’ma s Kavkaza,” 153. 27 D. A. Miliutin, “O sredstvakh kolonizatsii (prigotovitel’nye mery k priniatiiu pereselentsev’—vypiski iz statei o kolonizatsii Alzhira pomeshchennykh v Moniteur Algerien i Spectateur militaire,” 1842, NIOR RGB, f. 168, Karton 18, d. 17, l. 4. 28 A. I. Berens, “Kabiliia v 1857 godu,” Voennyi sbornik, no. 5 (1858): 121–172; A. I. Maksheev, “Ocherk sovremennogo sostoiania Alzhirii,” Vestnik russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, no. 3 (1860): 13–50; L. F. Kostenko, Puteshestvie v Severnuiu Afriku (St. Petersburg: A. Transhel, 1876); A. N. Kuropatkin, “Ocherki Alzhirii (Statia pervaia). Verbliuzhii oboz,” Voennyi sbornik, no. 2 (1875): 273–297; A. N. Kuropatkin, Alzhiriia (St. Petersburg: V. A. Poletika, 1877). 29 Frankini to Sukhozanets, November 15, 1860, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA), f. 450, op. 1, d. 64, l. 104rev.

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the Caucasus.” Of all the emigrants, only the Crimean Tatars benefited the Ottoman Empire, according to the Russian military agent.30 Frankini also monitored the attitudes of the indigenous Muslim and Christian populations of European Turkey. In May 1860, he reported the massive recruitment of Bosnian irregulars (bashi-bazouks) and the difficulty of the Ottoman government in doing the same in Albania.31 Frankini noted that the Porte “could count only on the fanaticism of the bashi-bazouks” in suppressing a possible uprising of Slavs and Greeks, and he “shuddered to think of the excesses that will take place in case a conflict occurs.”32 At the time of the Greek uprising in Crete six years later, the Russian agent noted that “the state of spirits in the Turkish provinces … was very hostile towards the government.”33 With the exception of the Bulgarians, whom Frankini described as “a passive people who have got used to the yoke,” all the other Christians, whether Orthodox or Catholic, “Greeks, Myrdites, Herzegovinians, Bosnians, would be ready to make common cause against the Turks.” According to Frankini, “in all these provinces one finds the seed of deep, radical, irredeemable discontent that lacks only a spark to explode,” while in Albania and Herzegovina, “the authority of the government [already] does not extend beyond the walls of the forts, blockhouses and fortified places occupied by the troops.”34 Apart from Frankini’s reports, the War Ministry’s main sources of information on the Ottoman Empire were the military statistical studies of Russia’s southern rival that was prepared and published by the officers of the Main Staff. These studies reveal the mounting interest of the Russian military men in the ethnic composition of the empire of the sultan in general and of European Turkey in particular. As a result, traditional evocations of Muslim-Christian antagonism came to be combined with references to the overwhelming ethnic diversity of the sultan’s domains. This diversity figured as yet another aspect of the weakness of the Ottoman population base, a subject that had attracted the attention of the Russian military observers even 30 Frankini to Sukhozanet, November 15, 1860, RGVIA, f. 450, op. 1, d. 64, l. 104v. On the emigration of Crimean Tatars, see Mara Kozelsky, “Casualties of Conflict: Crimean Tatars during the Crimean War,” Slavic Review 67, no. 4 (2008): 866–891. 31 Frankini to Sukhozanet, May 10, 1860, RGVIA, f. 450, op. 1, d. 64, ll. 58–58v. 32 Frankini to Sukhozanet, May 10, 1860, RGVIA, f. 450, op. 1, d. 64, ll. 58v–59. 33 See Frankini’s report of May 10, 1866, RGVIA, f. 450, op. 1, d. 78, l. 37. 34 See Frankini’s report of May 10, 1866, RGVIA, f. 450, op. 1, d. 78, l. 37v.

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before the Crimean war. Thus, Colonel A. V. Lavrentiev, a graduate of the Imperial Russian Academy of General Staff, authored the military survey of the Ottoman Empire (published in 1862) that not only provided data on the numerical strength of each particular subject people of the Porte but also evaluated the relative size of the broader Turkic, Slavic, Semitic, and GreekLatin “families.” In the author’s estimation, the members of the first group amounted to only one-third of the empire’s entire population, and constituted only one-eighth of the inhabitants of European Turkey.35 The data on the religious composition somewhat spoiled the reassuring effect of the reassessment of Ottoman demography on the basis of ethnicity and race. Like so many observers before him, Lavrentiev pointed to religious divides as a major factor of the weakness of the Ottoman Empire, and yet, he did not fail to recognize that the same divides reduced the strength of the Ottoman subject peoples, in particular, the Slavs. The majority of the Slavs of Bosnia and Herzegovina “unfortunately [belonged] to the most fanatical followers of Islam,” while the total number of Muslim Slavs, in Lavrentiev’s estimation, amounted to over half a million or one-twelfth of Turkey’s Slavic population. Added to some 2.1 million Turks and more than a million Muslim Albanians, the Muslim Slavs brought the pool of potential Ottoman loyalists in European Turkey to one-fourth of the entire population, while the Catholic-Orthodox religious divide reduced Russia’s possible sympathizers there to just over two-thirds of all inhabitants.36 This group of potential supporters was further weakened by the fact that “the egoistical interests of the ethnically Greek Orthodox clergy often led it to act in support of the Muslim government.” In Lavrentiev’s appreciation, “all this produces a melee of interethnic relations (mezhduplemennykh sootnoshenii) the clarification of which is difficult to foresee, particularly since one cannot expect religious indifferentism and a clear manifestation of ethnic tendencies from an ignorant population living at a low stage of civilization.”37 Whereas Lavrentiev focused on the moral-political attitudes of the Christian and Muslim population, others adopted a more objective approach 35 A. V. Lavrentiev, “Ocherki vooruzhennykh sil evropeiskikh gosudarstv. Turtsiia,” Voennyi sbornik 23, no. 2 (1868): 292. 36 Lavrentiev, “Ocherki vooruzhennykh sil evropeiskikh gosudarstv,” 297. 37 Lavrentiev, “Ocherki vooruzhennykh sil evropeiskikh gosudarstv,” 296. See also A. V. Lavrentiev, “Po Nizhnemu Dunaiu,” Voennyi sbornik, no. 10 (1871).

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and tried to arrive at the best possible estimation of the actual numbers of the various religious and ethnic groups. In the works of such authors, politics took the form of denunciation of what they considered to be the Ottoman statistical misrepresentations, the goal of which was to present the Muslims as having a greater share of the total population of European Turkey than they in fact did. Needless to say, in doing so, these authors often went to the opposite extreme and unduly overestimated the number of Christians in general and specific ethnic groups thereof in particular. The most authoritative of these was the chapter on the Ottoman Empire in the Military-Statistical Collection compiled by Obruchev in the late 1860s. As the goal of his attack, Obruchev chose Salageddin-bei’s statistical compendium and exposed discrepancies between the latter and the generally respectable works by Jean Henri Abdolonyme Ubicini as the products of the Ottoman author’s self-serving fantasies.38 According to Obruchev, the 3.5 million growth in the number of the European Muslims, as suggested by Salageddin-bei, “had nothing to do with the natural movement of population,” and the Circassian emigration (amounting to 595,000 people between 1855 and 1866 according to official Ottoman data) could explain only a fraction of this increase.39 In the end, Obruchev noted that despite their different estimations of the absolute numbers of the Turks in Europe, Western authors agreed that overall “the Turkish tribe … is rapidly declining.”40 The Russian author used the reports of the British consul in Danubian Bulgaria Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Neale and his counterpart in the Adrianople province Henri Blount to illustrate the decline of the Turkish population in these two regions where the Turkish settlement “is the most developed and exists in compact masses.”41 Obruchev attributed this demographic decline to a system of military recruitment that fell only upon the Muslims, the wasteful manner in which the Porte conducted its wars, as well as the “inter38 N. N. Obruchev, ed., Voenno-statisticheskii sbornik na 1868 g, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg: Voennaia tipografiia, 1868), 181. 39 Obruchev, Voenno-statisticheskii sbornik,182. On the settlement of the Circassians in the Eastern Balkans, see Marc Pinson, “Ottoman Colonization of the Circassians in Rumeli after the Crimean War,” Etudes Bakaniques 3 (1973): 71–85; and Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830–1914. Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, WI: Wisconsin University Press, 1985), 65–70. 40 Obruchev, Voenno-statisticheskii sbornik, 219. 41 In Neale’s estimation, the number of Muslims in the Danubian Bulgaria declined by some 100,000 people between 1847 and 1857, when it amounted to some 430,000 people: Edward Neale, “The Province of Bulgaria,” Social Science Review 3 (1865): 147–148.

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nal lifestyle of the Osmanli,” their “lack of moderation in the pursuit of the physical pleasures,” “apathy towards regular healthy work,” and the “disgusting vices” reigning among the upper classes.42 As was the case in other areas of military statistical work of the Great Reforms period, the study of the Ottoman Empire lacked a sense of purpose. Whatever the strengths and the weaknesses of the data that the Russian ­military men collected, it remained of limited usefulness as long as the objectives of Russia’s “Eastern policy” remained undefined. Following the conclusion of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1856, Russia lost its exclusive protectorate over the Danubian principalities, which it had tried to extend to the entire Orthodox community of the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the Crimean War. The severe limits imposed by the peace treaty on Russia’s coastal defenses and naval force on the Black Sea greatly reduced the threat that the tsars had earlier represented to the sultans. According to Chancellor A. M. Gorchakov, Russia was “composing itself” in the post-Crimean period and maintained a correspondingly low profile in the affairs of European Turkey for about 15 years. After 1864, the Russian ambassador to Constantinople N. P. Ignatiev had to confront the difficult issues posed by the Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869 and the Greek-Bulgarian Church Schism of 1870–1872 in a way that would not compromise Russia’s prestige within the community of Orthodox coreligionists that was increasingly plagued by internal tensions.43 It took a major crisis within the Ottoman Empire and the mounting pressure of Pan-Slavism at home in order to make the Russian government in general and the War Ministry in particular come up with a definitive policy toward European Turkey. The foregoing discussion demonstrates that Russian military reform and the development of Russian military statistics in the middle decades of the nineteenth century were in many ways associated with the person of Miliutin. Admittedly, both phenomena were too complex and comprehensive to be viewed as the work of one man, however able and energetic he might be. Nevertheless, Miliutin’s personality can be seen as their most characteristic expression. To recapitulate: both the reform and the development 42 Obruchev, Voenno-statisticheskii sbornik, 220. 43 Thomas A. Meininger, Ignatiev and the Establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate, 1864–1872 (Madison, WI: The Department of History, University of Wisconsin, 1970). On Ignatiev, see V. M. Khevrolina, Rossiiskii diplomat graf Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 2004).

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of military statistics were the products of a new generation of Russian officers born in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Their education and, in some cases, subsequent teaching at the Imperial Russian Academy of General Staff turned these people into intellectuals who viewed research as a means to formulate and solve the problems that confronted Russia’s army, its broader military organization, and, ultimately, Russian society itself. They shared the assumption that the military forces of a country were not limited to its standing army, and instead represented the sum total of its territory, political system, and population, including the latter’s moral qualities, principles of social organization, and economic activities. In this perspective, the army had to be a natural expression of the society that it was supposed to defend, and an increase in the national military might ultimately depended on demographic growth and socioeconomic development. Criticism of Reform, Pan-Slavism, and the Eastern Crisis However important Miliutin’s disciples and associates at the War Ministry and the General Staff might have been to Russia’s military organization in the second half of the nineteenth century, they were not the only significant group. The Russian army in the mid-1800s was too complex for that. Alongside the intellectually impressive military professionals, it included more conservative and/or radical elements who would not fail to be critical of the main direction of Russia’s military transformation. Apart from the representatives of the older generation still active in the immediate postCrimean period (N. O. Sukhozanet, A. N. Liders), this group included people of the same age as Miliutin and his younger associates who played a dissident and yet remarkable role in Russian military history of the 1860s and 1870s. Some of these people (M. G. Cherniaev, M. D. Skobelev) were of petty noble origin while others descended from prominent and even aristocratic families (A. I. Bariatinskii, N. P. Ignatiev, R. A. Fadeev). Their educational background was likewise mixed and included some graduates of the Imperial Russian Academy of General Staff (Cherniaev, Skobelev) alongside others who owed their promotion to alternative educational paths and distinguished service in the Caucasus (Fadeev). Their common denominator was weariness with the academic and administrative approach of Miliutin, personal adventurousness, and a populist Pan-Slavic public posture that 89

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often placed them at loggerheads with the conservative foreign policy of Chancellor Gorchakov and the sober-minded approach of the war minister. Whereas the Main Staff officers involved in the military reform and military statistics can ultimately be seen as the disciples of Miliutin, the dissenters lacked a single mentor and mastermind and thus hardly represented a single party. Nevertheless, many of their attitudes and ideas found expression in the work of R. A. Fadeev, who became the most important intellectual opponent of the war minister in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Born to a distinguished noble family, Fadeev was a dropout of an artillery school who compensated for his lack of systematic education with broad reading, natural inquisitiveness, and an imaginative writing style. Having distinguished himself through his service in the Caucasus, Fadeev became a member of A. I. Bariatinskii’s suite at the crucial stage of the Caucasian War in the late 1850s and the early 1860s. Charged with the task of writing the first semiofficial account of the Caucasian War, Fadeev sympathetically commented on Miliutin’s activities as Bariatinskii’s chief of staff. Fadeev’s subsequent Letters from the Caucasus (1865) likewise justified Miliutin’s plan for the massive expulsion of the natives of the Western Caucasus and their replacement by Cossacks. Upon retiring from military service in the rank of major-general, Fadeev turned to journalism. In 1867, he published a study of the Russian armed forces in the Russian Messenger that revealed both the assumptions he shared with Miliutin and a highly critical perspective on the pre-reform Russian army that owed much to the Slavophile criticism of “the Petrine period of Russian history.” Just like Miliutin, Fadeev defined “national forces (narodnye sily)” as the “sum total of the moral, political and material power of nations.”44 According to him, in order to be effective, the military organization had to “correspond to the social order” of a nation and “represent its actual, living social relations in all their naturalness.” Inasmuch as the national forces had to be “a reproduction of the nation,” the issue of military reform became “a question about the nation itself, its spiritual and material foundations” and thus “a political question that entered the sphere of public consciousness.”45 Having thus justified a public examination of Russia’s military development, Fadeev proceeded to criticize Russia’s pre-reform mil44 R. A. Fadeev, “Vooruzhennye sily Rossii,” in Sobranie sochinenii R.A. Fadeeva, vol. 2, part 1 (St. Petersburg: V. V. Komarov, 1890), 6. 45 Fadeev, “Vooruzhennye sily Rossii,” 9.

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itary organization for its lack of a native basis and attempts to imitate the old Prussian model that had revealed its inadequacy already at Jena in 1806.46 According to him, a million-strong standing army that “placed into a hereditary military estate any person it once touched … burdened the people much more than it could protect them.”47 Although Fadeev praised the military reform for overcoming the most evident shortcomings of the Petrine system,48 he was increasingly critical of the social transformation of the Russian officer corps and of the tendency of the military administration to sideline the army.49 In a series of articles published in the journal The Russian World in 1874, he attacked the reform of the military educational institutions, which thereby lost their exclusively noble character and began to admit people of all social backgrounds who met the educational requirements. According to Fadeev, the educational reform was tantamount to “a fundamental reordering of the Russian army,” whereby the officer corps lost its erstwhile noble character and came to be filled with the sons of petty civil servants and seminary dropouts who lacked the moral qualities necessary for an officer.50 Fadeev also criticized the introduction of universal military service that further diluted the noble leadership and increased the “all-estate character” of the army. He considered obligatory military service unnecessary for all social groups in view of Russia’s populousness, yet argued for making it mandatory among noblemen, who had become increasingly reluctant to serve alongside officers of lowly origin.51 The essence of Fadeev’s proposed measures consisted in “replacing the present artificially nurtured command hierarchy of the Russian forces by a natural hierarchy” that had its roots in Russian social organization. Turning “each Russian nobleman into a born officer of a national force” (prirozhdennyi ofitser narodnoi sily) was, according to Fadeev, a precondition of the transformation of the former “recruit army” into “a Russian people organized for battle” (ustroennyi dlia boia russkii narod).52 46 47 48 49

Fadeev, “Vooruzhennye sily Rossii,” 23–24. Fadeev, “Vooruzhennye sily Rossii,” 25. Fadeev, “Vooruzhennye sily Rossii,” 27. R. A. Fadeev, “Russkoe obshchestvo v nastoiashchem i budushchem (Kem nam byt?),” in Sobranie sochinenii R.A. Fadeeva, vol. 3, part 1, 127. 50 Fadeev, “Russkoe obshchestvo v nastoiashchem i budushchem,” 116. 51 Fadeev, “Russkoe obshchestvo v nastoiashchem i budushchem,” 129–132. 52 Fadeev, “Russkoe obshchestvo v nastoiashchem i budushchem,” 136.

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Reminiscent of the conservative utopia of the Slavophiles, Fadeev’s attack on Miliutin’s policies and the Great Reforms more broadly coincided with the surge of Pan-Slavic sentiments among the Russian educated society.53 Although the title of the Russian Pan-Slavism’s most original thinker had been retrospectively attributed to N. Ia. Danilevskii, who published his Russia and Europe in 1869, Fadeev’s Opinion on the Eastern Question of the same year had greater contemporary resonance and represented a highly original counterpart to his writings on Russia’s domestic policies.54 In contrast to the majority of contemporary commentators who viewed the “Eastern Question” as the problem of the Orthodox and Slavic population of the Ottoman Empire, Fadeev considered it part of the broader Slavic question defined by the struggle between Russia and the German powers for influence over the Slavs of Eastern Europe.55 For Fadeev, as for the majority of the Russian Pan-Slavists, this struggle was pregnant with the possibility of another war between Russia and a European coalition. In contrast to the majority opinion, Fadeev considered Austria-Hungary and Prussia rather than Britain to be Russia’s main opponents. This meant that the question could not be solved through yet another war with the Ottomans, but required a frontal battle with the Germans on the middle Danube.56 Fadeev thus suggested preparing for a war with Austria-Hungary and Prussia much before Obruchev arrived at the same conclusion in his memorandum submitted to the Secret Strategic Conference of March 1873, which became one of the starting points of Russia’s strategic planning during the 1880s.57 By virtue of their shared focus on Russia’s western frontier, Fadeev and Obruchev had little to say about the Ottoman Empire until the outbreak of the Eastern Crisis in 1875 challenged each of them to come up with a 53 On the Slavophiles, see Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). On Russian Pan-Slavism, see B.H. Sumner, “Pan-Slavism,” Russia and the Balkans, 1870–1880 (London: Achron Books, 1960 [1938]), 56–80. Hans Kohn, Pan-Slavism: Its History and Ideology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1953); Frank Fadner, Seventy Years of Panslavism in Russia: Karazin to Danilevskii (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1962); Michael Petrovich, The Emergence of Russian Panslavism, 1856–1870 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985). 54 R. A. Fadeev, “Mnenie o Vostochnom voprose,” in Sobranie sochinenii R.A. Fadeeva, vol. 2, part 2. 55 Fadeev, “Mnenie o Vostochnom voprose,” 302–303. 56 Fadeev, “Mnenie o Vostochnom voprose,” 293. 57 “Soobrazheniia ob oborone Rossii. Strategicheskaia zapiska,” January 19, 1873, NIOR RGB, f. 169, op. 1, Karton 37, no. 4, 28 ll.

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plan of action. The uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina of 1875 followed by the uprising of April 1876 in Bulgaria and the Serbian-Ottoman War of the same year caused a big resonance in Russian society and drew the attention of Russian military men.58 Many of them would join the Serbian army as volunteers; others considered different actions in support of the Slavic coreligionists. The first to come up with a concrete proposal for arming and raising the Bulgarians was Major-General I. K. Kishelskii. An ethnic Bulgarian who had studied in Russia on a stipend established by Nicholas I, Kishelskii entered Russian military service following the outbreak of the Crimean War. He participated in the defense of Sebastopol as a commander of a detachment of Russian chasseurs (okhotniki i plastuny) and later took part in the “pacification” of the North Caucasus. Since then, he served as Russia’s “secret agent in the affairs of Turkey’s Christian provinces,” in the testimony of the War Minister Miliutin.59 In January 1876, Kishelskii authored the “Temporary Project for the Organization of an Uprising in Bulgaria for Independence and Freedom of Life” that represented a collection of organizational and tactical principles addressed to the Bulgarian volunteers. Kishelskii noted that the Bulgarians were the only people of European Turkey that did not have “their military language, their libraries and military statutes,” which could help them be “successful on the battlefield.” Writing before the Ottoman suppression of the Herzegovinian uprising, Kishelskii argued that the Bosnian and Herzegovinian Serbs were successful against the Turks not only due to their personal courage, but also due to their familiarity with the Serbian military statutes. Accordingly, the author’s goal was to “render the Bulgarian brothers familiar with the military art.”60 Kishelskii argued that the best initial strategy against the Ottoman regular troops and the bashi-bazouks was to remain dispersed in the mountains, which would in turn force the Ottomans to disperse their forces and would 58 For a study of Russia’s role in the Eastern Crisis from the diplomatic history perspective, see Sumner, Russia and the Balkans. For the interaction between public opinion and tsarist foreign policy during the Eastern Crisis, see Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy, 1860–1914 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 65–86. 59 D. A. Miliutin, Dnevnik D. A. Miliutina 1873–1875, ed. P. A. Zaionchkovskii, 4 vols. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia biblioteka SSSR, Otdel rukopisei, 1947–1950), 2:41. 60 I. K. Kishelskii, “Vremennyi proekt organizatsii Bolgarii za samostoiatel’nost’ i svobodu zhizni,” January 30, 1876, NIOR RGB, f. 327, op. 1, Karton 56, d. 14, l. 1.

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weaken them. This strategy was also necessary in order to protect “hundreds of thousands of women and children” from “Turkish fanaticism.” Just as the Turkish population was likely to hide in fortresses or in the vicinity thereof, Kishelskii suggested hiding the masses of Bulgarian families in places specially prepared by the heads of the volunteer detachments. As they retreated into the mountains, the inhabitants of the villages had to take with them life essentials, food, and church utensils.61 With the gradual multiplication of the volunteer detachments, Kishelskii envisioned the formation of three “people’s armies” (narodnye armii). Two of them would occupy the Danubian Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia, respectively. The third or Western army would operate in the territory extending to Niš and the borders of Serbia and Bosnia in the north, Albania in the west, and Thessaly and the Mediterranean in the south.62 In early April 1876, Kishelskii met Miliutin in order to convey the “sad news” regarding the situation in Bulgaria. Kishel’skii argued that Bulgaria was worse off than other provinces of the Ottoman Empire because the Muslim minority there was armed whereas the Christian majority was unarmed and “feared total annihilation.” Miliutin advised Kishelskii to retain his conationals from premature uprising and temporize until the situation around Bosnia and Herzegovina becomes clear. “Should the question be decided by force of arms,” argued Miliutin, “Bulgaria had to be the last to join in.”63 However, Kishelskii pursued his project and actively participated in the collection of funds for the Bulgarian militia. In June 1876, he asked Miliutin to release from the Odessa customs a load of rifles purchased for Bulgarians several years previously.64 Having retired from the Russian service, Kishelskii left for Serbia, which had just declared war on the Ottoman Empire, in order to organize the Bulgarian detachments on Serbian territory and lead them into Bulgaria. Despite Kishelskii’s ardent Bulgarian patriotism, not all of his conationals in Russia supported his plan. Thus, the governor of the Southern Slavic 61 Kishelskii, “Vremennyi proekt organizatsii Bolgarii za samostoiatel’nost’ i svobodu zhizni,” January 30, 1876, NIOR RGB, f. 327, op. 1, Karton 56, d. 14, ll. 8v –9. 62 Kishelskii, “Vremennyi proekt organizatsii Bolgarii za samostoiatel’nost’ i svobodu zhizni,” January 30, 1876, NIOR RGB, f. 327, op. 1, Karton 56, d. 14, ll. 11v –12. 63 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:41. 64 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:50. In July 1876, the Russian government agreed to turn a blind eye on the shipments of ammunition to the Serbs: Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2: 56.

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Boarding School (Iuzhnoslavianskii pansion) in Nikolaev, Todor Minkov, wrote that anyone who read or heard Kishelskii’s projects “would think that they are written in a madhouse.”65 In the end, Kishelskii’s plan was thwarted by M. G. Cherniaev, another retired Russian general, who famously, but inefficiently, commanded the Serbian army during the Serbian-Ottoman war of 1876.66 Cherniaev represented a paradigmatic example of an adventurergeneral; his capture of Tashkent in 1865 triggered the Russian conquest of Central Asia.67 Dismissed from his post in Turkestan in 1866, Cherniaev temporarily retired from military service to become the editor of the periodical The Russian World, which published Fadeev’s criticisms of Miliutin’s military reform. Having established connections with the Moscow Pan-Slavists led by I.S. Aksakov, Cherniaev became an enthusiastic supporter of the Slavic cause during the Eastern Crisis and accepted the invitation of the Serbian Prince Milan to head the Serbian army in June 1876.68 According to the hostile Miliutin, Kishelskii’s project was the victim of Cherniaev’s personal ambitions. Cherniaev supposedly seized on Kishelskii’s idea of Bulgarian militia as a way to become a Bulgarian hospodar. However, Cherniaev killed the project upon learning that Bulgarians had contacted Fadeev, his erstwhile associate-turned-competitor, with a proposal asking him to become their military leader.69 Having fallen out with Cherniaev and seeing no chance that his proposed principles would ever guide Russia’s internal or foreign policy, Fadeev left for Egypt in 1875 to act as a military advisor to the Khedive, whom he expected to clash with the Porte one day. Following the outbreak of the Eastern Crisis, Fadeev returned to Russia, actively joined the Slavic cause, and attempted to influence the direction of Russian foreign policy in a series of memoranda. In one of these pieces, submitted to the Deputy Foreign Minister N.K. Girs in May 1876, Fadeev outlined what he considered to be the right strategy for Russia on the Eastern Question. As so many of his Russian contemporaries, 65 T. N. Minkov to (the Russian consul in Bucharest) D. F. Stuart, October 29, 1876, in S. A. Nikitin et al., eds., Osvobozhdenie Bolgarii ot turetskogo iga. 3 vols. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1961–1967), 1:474. 66 See Kishelskii to Miliutin, October 8, 1876, in Nikitin et al., Osvobozhdenie Bolgarii, 1:444–448. 67 On Cherniaev, see David MacKenzie, The Lion of Tashkent: The Career of M.G. Cherniaev (Athens, GA: Georgia University Press, 1974). 68 David MacKenzie, The Serbs and Russian Pan-Slavism, 1875–78 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967). 69 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:97.

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Fadeev considered the Ottoman Empire to be terminally ill, pointing to the recent coup d’état in which Abdul-Aziz I was replaced by Murad V, the collapse of Ottoman finances, and the weakened state of the Ottoman army. According to him, the formally dominant Muslim element in European Turkey was rapidly diminishing in numbers and becoming so impoverished that they “had long had to sell their pistols and scimitars to buy their daily bread.” The Muslim population of Asia Minor was similarly burdened with taxes and exhausted by military draft, and “will not move a finger on its own to sustain Turkish dominance in Europe.” In Fadeev’s appraisal, the balance of internal forces of the empire had shifted decisively from the centripetal to the centrifugal: In the south the numerous Arabian people strives to liberate itself from the yoke and, by way of the leading sheikhs, asks the khedive to raise the Arabian banner. In the north, a million and a half Muslims (not counting the neutral Albanians) have to keep in check ten million Christians. In the middle, the Turks of Asia Minor want to get rid of the hated privilege of military service for the maintenance of a multiethnic state that they do not care about.”70

While all the other powers could “deal only with the Ottoman government,” Russia alone, in Fadeev’s opinion, was “in close connection with internal living forces of the [Ottoman] Empire, its particular peoples who have become cumulatively more powerful than the official Porte.” In these conditions, Russia’s real interest, in Fadeev’s opinion, consisted in preventing any diplomatic interference into the “Turkish strife.” Given Russia’s advantage over other European powers, diplomatic noninterference would effectively exclude “everyone, but Russia” from deciding the Eastern Question.71 Fadeev suggested galvanizing the anti-Ottoman rising of the Greeks in Epirus, Thessaly, and Western Macedonia as well as in the Balkan Mountains as this would distract the Ottoman forces and make them “unable to oppose the regular forces of Serbia, Montenegro and the Greek Kingdom for a very long time.”72 In parallel, the Russians had to encourage the Khedive to pur70 M. A. Domontovich, ed., Osoboe pribavlenie k opisaniiu russko-turetskoi voiny 1877–78 gg. na balkanskom poluostrove, vyp. 1 (St. Petersburg: Voenno-uchebnaia komissiia pri Glanom Shtabe, 1899), 46. 71 Domontovich, Osoboe pribavlenie k opisaniiu russko-turetskoi voiny, 49. 72 Domontovich, Osoboe pribavlenie k opisaniiu russko-turetskoi voiny, 51–52.

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sue “the creation the Arab kingdom” and “the termination of the secular authority of the sultan” by means of “the Russian party” that Fadeev claimed he had created in Egypt. According to Fadeev, unhampered access to southern seas had to be the main goal of Russian policy in the Eastern Question, because the larger part of the Russian population lived in the southern part of the country (between the Oka River and the Black Sea). From the point of view of Russian PanSlavism, Russian presence in the Dardanelles was all the more central because the power that controlled the straits would inevitably “directly influence the fate, organization as well as internal and external relations of the peoples (plemena) who would break out of the Turkish yoke.”73 In contrast to his Opinion on the Eastern Question, Fadeev argued that Russia’s control of the Dardanelles was worth allowing Austria to “decide for the time being the organization of the neighboring Turkish provinces as she wanted.” It mattered little whether Austria “split them into small possessions, took some of them under her guidance or even direct authority—the greater the Austrian oppression is felt in these countries the better it will be for us in the nearest future.”74 This solution would also be “least disturbing” for Germany, with which Fadeev suggested concluding an alliance in order to thwart the formation of an anti-Russian coalition.75 Complemented, if possible, by a FrancoRussian agreement securing the French interests in the Mediterranean, the Russian-German alliance would leave Britain without an ally on the continent, whereupon Russia could “move the Turkish Christians for a general uprising” and capture the Dardanelles.76 Just as Kishelskii’s projects were criticized as being harebrained by the more sober-minded of his fellow Bulgarians, Fadeev’s proposals too received a similar evaluation by Miliutin. The war minister considered Fadeev a “windbag and a schemer,” no doubt because of the many critical pieces that Fadeev had earlier written on the subject of military reform.77 Miliutin described Fadeev’s plan of a Russian expedition to the Dardanelles, despite the presence of the British fleet at Bezik Bay, as “a chimerical proposal reminiscent 73 Domontovich, Osoboe pribavlenie k opisaniiu russko-turetskoi voiny, 53–54. 74 Domontovich, Osoboe pribavlenie k opisaniiu russko-turetskoi voiny, 55. 75 Domontovich, Osoboe pribavlenie k opisaniiu russko-turetskoi voiny, 50. 76 Domontovich, Osoboe pribavlenie k opisaniiu russko-turetskoi voiny, 60–61. 77 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:36–37, 108.

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of delirium.”78 The war minister similarly dismissed Fadeev’s view of the Egyptian Khedive as a potential supporter of the Slavs in their struggle with the Porte. At the same time, Miliutin noted with surprise and bewilderment that Fadeev’s plan was received by the tsar “with some sympathy,” which undoubtedly encouraged the Pan-Slavist general to persist in the advocacy of his approach to the Eastern Question. In October 1876, Fadeev submitted another memorandum to the Head of the Main Staff F. L. Geiden in which he offered a more detailed justification for provoking an uprising of the Ottoman Christians.79 In the five months that had elapsed since Fadeev submitted his memo to Girs, the Serbian army had been effectively defeated, while the Russian and the European public became apprised of the April Uprising in Bulgaria and its brutal suppression. The disappointing performance of the Serbs and the martyrdom of the Bulgarians forced the Russian Pan-Slavists to shift attention from the ­former to the latter for the rest of the Eastern Crisis. Fully in line with this tendency, Fadeev viewed Bulgaria as “the center of all Russian interests,” a country that defined the fate of Constantinople and the straits. At the same time, Fadeev argued that these interests could not be attained by purely military means “without an energetic rising of the Bulgarian people that has to be prepared in advance.”80 Fadeev insisted on a speedy Russian occupation of Bulgaria. Unless surprised by a quick strike, the Ottomans would be able to offer staunch resistance, which would complicate Russia’s position with respect to the European powers. However, such a staggering blow was impossible without the Bulgarians. According to Fadeev’s calculations, the Ottomans were capable of concentrating up to ten divisions on the Danube, supported by the armed inhabitants in the fortresses. Even if a superior Russian force were able to promptly overwhelm the Ottoman army and force the sultan to accept the desired conditions, it would still be dealing with the Porte and not with the scattered Muslim population that represented, in the opinion of Fadeev, “the stumbling stone of the Eastern Question.”81 In the likely 78 Ibid., 53–54. 79 R. A. Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” in Bolgarskoe opolchenie i zemskoe voisko. K istorii grazhdanskogo upravleniia i okkupatsii Bolgarii, v 1877–78–79 gg., ed. N. R. Ovsianyi (St. Petersburg: “Khudozhestvennaia pol’za,” 1904). 80 Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 103. 81 Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 107.

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case of staunch resistance on the part of the Ottomans, the Russian troops would have to stay concentrated and advance “along the well-trodden road past Shumla to Adrianople,” without spreading its detachments and penetrating into the interior of the country. As a result, five-sixths of Bulgaria would remain “untouched by the Russian campaign” at a time when “the Muslim population is organized as an army keeping in check completely unarmed Christians.”82 Fadeev feared that “on the day of the conclusion of peace it will turn out that the greater part of Bulgaria is loyal to the sultan and petitions to stay under his benevolent rule,” which will immediately be supported by “Europe that is always ready to juggle the cards in the Eastern Question.” For this reason, argued Fadeev, “a fundamental change in the internal way of life of Bulgaria” was impossible “without the rising of the Bulgarian people throughout the entire country.”83 According to Fadeev, the entire Ottoman force would be engaged by the Russian army, which would leave the maintenance of the existing order in vast areas located away from the operational line in the hands the Muslim population. One therefore had to assign as much force for the provocation of the uprising as was necessary in order to overcome the armed Muslim inhabitants, and yet this force had to be spread wide and live off the land without thinking of its base and operational line. Fadeev defined this force as something in “between the real battle troops and partisans.” In contrast to the partisans who “swoop and gallop away,” the detachments suggested by Fadeev had to “swoop and stay” before moving on. At the same time, they had to be a “regular” and sizable force given the large numbers of the Muslim inhabitants and the necessity to cover entire country from the Russian operation line in the east to Bitol in the west.84 Fadeev pointed to the inevitable weakening of Russia’s western frontier should additional Russian troops be charged with occupying Bulgaria. He also argued that Russian troops were inadequate for this task: despite their loyalty to Russia, the Bulgarians, in Fadeev’s opinion, “remembered only too well earlier invasions and promises … following which the Turks settled scores with them.” Finally, were the Bulgarians to remain “passive onlookers of our struggle with the Turks,” Russia’s proclamation of Bulgarian inde82 Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 107. 83 Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 108. 84 Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 109.

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pendence would appear “a purely military measure that does not prove in the least the vitality of the people itself.”85 For all these reasons, claimed Fadeev, only the Bulgarians themselves are able to raise the Bulgarian banner successfully and with full significance for the world as well as carry it around the country. Only they can prevent the mass slaughter of Christian villages that one has to expect once the military operations begin. In this case, the war will become easier for us through the distraction of the Turkish forces and our intentions will become a fait accompli by the day of the final treaty.86

Fadeev suggested that the Bulgarian squads had to be organized promptly, even before the war was declared. In his opinion, this was a relatively easy task. Fadeev pointed to the reports of the Bulgarian committees according to which an unlimited number of Bulgarian volunteers could be attracted from Romania and from the right bank of the Danube. Together with the majority of 5,000 Bulgarian volunteers assembled in Serbia as of October 1876, the Bulgarian force could reach 20,000. Fadeev suggested assigning Russian soldiers, NCOs, and officers on leave, as well as all Bulgarians who were currently serving in the Russian army to the task of training the new force.87 Armed with the Chassepot rifles purchased by Fadeev with the financial assistance of the Moscow Slavic Benevolent Committee, this force had to be “sufficient for the liberation of the vast country between the Danube and the mountains as well as the capture of the Balkan gorges without the distraction of the Russian army which will go down its usual war road.”88 Fadeev believed that “timely capture of the Balkan Mountains by armed rebels supported by the regular Bulgarian regiments” would deprive the Ottomans of the opportunity of maintaining their main defensive line between Varna and Shumla. Following this success, it would be easy to “double or even to quadruple the Bulgarian 85 86 87 88

Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 110. Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 110. Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 111. Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 111.

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troops and move them in the very center of the southern part of the country to Philippopolis and Tatar Bazardzhik—the centers of the recent Bulgarian uprising.”89 According to Fadeev, the benefits of preparing a large Bulgarian force in advance would not end with the conclusion of the war and the acquisition of independence for Bulgaria. The latter would “assume its rights with a ready army, and a “Russified one” at that. Russian cadres among the members of the militia who would settle in Bulgaria after the war could counteract “anti-Russian propaganda that constantly, even if uselessly, besieges this tormented country” as well as provide the Bulgarian troops with the ready non-commissioned officers in the likely case of a new confrontation.90 Russian War Planning in 1876–1877 However critical he might have been of Fadeev, War Minister Miliutin himself was increasingly convinced of the inevitability of war and thus of the necessity to prepare for it. In February 1876, after the news of the suppression of the Herzegovinian uprising and the formation of the SerbianMontenegrin alliance reached St. Petersburg, Miliutin, for the first time, approached Alexander II on the question of possible preparations for war. The tsar decisively rejected the idea out of fear that any preparations would be interpreted as signs of Russian aggressiveness and told the Serbian and the Montenegrin princes not to count on Russia’s help.91 However, Miliutin was increasingly skeptical of the possibility of resolving the question of the Ottoman Christians through diplomatic pressure on the Porte and the goodwill of the sultan and his ministers. He attributed the crisis to “the complications inherent in the very form of the Muslim state” that could only be resolved by a “complete political and social overhaul”: one had to “cut the Gordian knot.”92 In late March 1876, Miliutin conferred with Obruchev on the need to elaborate several alternative plans of mobilization in response to “the most 89 Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 112. 90 Fadeev, “Bolgarskoe delo v Turetskoi voine,” 112. 91 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:18. 92 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:24.

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probable eventualities” and “different political circumstances.”93 At the end of June 1876, the war minister questioned the principle of noninterference, given the support rendered to the Ottoman Empire by England and AustriaHungary as “Turks and Circassians [were perpetrating] revolting atrocities in Bulgaria, killing armless and defenceless population by the thousands.”94 Amidst the talks about Russia’s unpreparedness for war, Miliutin presented to the tsar the reports of the Mobilizational Committee of the Main Staff that showed that “despite numerous shortcomings remaining in our military organization, the Russian army was ready for war as never before.”95 In July, Miliutin noted that Serbia had organized partisan detachments and a “national war” (narodnuiu voinu).96 In the spring and summer of 1876, Alexander II continued to fear that a war with the Ottoman Empire could lead to the formation of another antiRussian coalition. At the same time, the tsar’s growing sympathies for the Slavic cause manifested themselves in the permissions granted to the Russian officers to take leave from the army in order to join the Serbian army as volunteers. Among the many officers who took advantage of this permission, there were several Muslims from the tsar’s suite led by a son of Imam Shamil. Miliutin reported, skeptically, the latter’s promise “to assemble a band (shaiku) of Circassians for actions against the Turks.”97 In September, following the defeat of the Serbian forces under the command of Cherniaev and the Porte’s unwillingness to accept Britain’s official demand for an armistice, Alexander II abruptly changed his attitude and no longer considered impossible either a break in Russian-Ottoman relations or an outright war.98 Miliutin gave the green light to the Main Staff for the elaboration of a plan of war. Obruchev played a key role in this process. Already in mid-1870s, he wrote an overview of the European Turkey as a potential war theater for the Imperial Russian Academy of General Staff. This overview summarized the available military-statistical knowledge of the region, evaluated the experience of the past Russian-Ottoman Wars, and identified the best strategies 93 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:34. 94 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:52. 95 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:52. 96 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:54. 97 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:62. 98 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:77.

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for future confrontations.99 Obruchev may have consulted the manuscript of I. P. Liprandi’s surveys from the 1840s and the 1850s since in his own memorandum, he followed the latter’s subdivision of the Danubian Bulgaria, noting the barrenness of the Dobrogea steppe, the difficult terrain, and the war-ready Muslim population of the Deli-Orman forest as well as the predominantly Bulgarian population of the western part of the region and their strong national sentiment.100 He also observed that the trans-Balkan territories represented a more hospitable terrain for the Russian army because of their predominantly Bulgarian population as well as greater availability of food and fodder.101 As to the possible operational line for the Russian army, Obruchev consciously departed from the strategic choices made by the Russian command in 1828–1829.102 He rejected the shortest route to Constantinople by way of Eastern Bulgaria that had been taken by the Russian troops 50 years earlier. He pointed to the bareness of Dobrogea, “the bellicose, fanatical population” of the Deli-Orman as well as the difficulty and limited benefits of taking Shumla and Varna, all of which was confirmed by the negative experiences of 1828–1829.103 By contrast, the route across Central Bulgaria, although longer, had the advantage of circumventing Shumla and “cutting across a country sympathetic to us.”104 The westernmost route, which was the longest, offered similar advantages, as it would bring the Russian troops to the valley of Maritsa by way of Sofia, where their appearance would have “such an impact upon the moral state of the Turks and the population of the peninsula that would guarantee the success of the campaign.”105 99 See N. N. Obruchev, “Vyderzhka iz litografirovannoi zapiski generala Obrucheva, sostavlennoi dlia Nikolaevskoi Akademii General’nogo Shtaba,” in Sbornik materialov po Russko-turetskoi voine 1877–1878 g. na Balkanskom poluostrove, vol. 9 (St. Petersburg: Voennaia tipografiia, 1898), 1–37. Obruchev’s memorandum can be dated by his reference to the upcoming connection of the railroad networks of Russia and Romania which occurred in 1875. 100 “Vyderzhka iz litografirovannoi zapiski,” 9–10. On Liprandi’s surveys, see Victor Taki, “From Partisan War to Ethnography of European Turkey: The Balkan Career of Ivan Liprandi, 1790–1880,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 58, no. 3 (2016): 257–285. 101 “Vyderzhka iz litografirovannoi zapiski,” 18–21. 102 On the Russian-Ottoman War of 1828–1829, see Alexander Bitis, Russia and the Eastern Question: Army, Government, Society, 1815–1833 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2006), 274–325. 103 “Vyderzhka iz litografirovannoi zapiski,” 30. 104 “Vyderzhka iz litografirovannoi zapiski,” 31. 105 “Vyderzhka iz litografirovannoi zapiski,” 32.

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Obruchev’s memorandum contained an early formulation of the strategy that the Russian army would adopt; however, the final war plan was the product of collective thinking that examined alternative possibilities. Following the outbreak of the Eastern Crisis, other Russian officers came up with their ideas on the best strategy to adopt in a war against the Ottoman Empire. The most original of them belonged to the Russian ambassador in Constantinople N. P. Ignatiev. Yet another graduate of the Imperial Russian Academy of General Staff, Ignatiev switched to the diplomatic track early on and made a spectacular career for himself that included highly successful missions to the Central Asian khanates and China. This earned him promotion to the rank of major-general and eventually an appointment as the Russian envoy (and later ambassador) to the Porte. Not unlike Fadeev, Ignatiev combined Pan-Slavic sympathies with opposition to the conservative policy line of his ministry pursued by Chancellor A. M. Gorchakov. In contrast to Fadeev, he had a considerable (though by no means decisive) influence on the emperor. Ignatiev’s first published work was a review of the history of the RussianOttoman Wars composed during his studies at the academy on the eve of the Crimean War. In it, the future ambassador contrasted the enormous losses of the Russian armies to disease in the European theater of war with the remarkable success of the small army of Prince I.F. Paskevich in Asiatic Turkey in 1828–1829.106 Since then, Ignatiev had become convinced that in the future the Russian army should focus its efforts on the Asian theater. During his diplomatic service in Constantinople, Ignatiev “used every opportunity” to convince the officers of the Main Staff dispatched to Turkey by the Caucasian Viceroy of the necessity to concentrate on the Asian frontier of the Ottoman Empire “a force capable of promptly obtaining startling and decisive results.”107 Apart from climatic considerations, Ignatiev’s proposals had far-reaching demographic implications, which were well expressed by the sympathetic Miliutin. In late July 1876, the war minister supported the suggestion 106 N. P. Ignatiev, Vzgliad na postepennoe izmenenie v obraze deistvii russkikh voisk protiv turok (St. Petersburg: Veimar, 1852), 14. 107 “Zapiska [I .P. Ignatieva] o voennykh silakh i voennykh planakh Turtsii. Chernovik i Kopia,” The Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv; RGIA), f. 1561, op. 1, d. 36, l. 1.

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of Ambassador Ignatiev and Colonel A. S. Zelenoi to concentrate the troops of the Caucasian corps on the Ottoman border near Alexandropole “in order to keep in the Asiatic Turkey at least part of the Ottoman troops and those semi-savage hordes that were going to rush into the Balkan Peninsula against the poor Slavs.” Miliutin’s only regret was the fact that opposition to this idea from the Caucasian viceroy Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich had made the Russians lose time, so that “all the Asian scum has already fallen on the Balkans.”108 Besides the unwillingness of Mikhail Nikolaevich, Ignatiev’s idea also encountered counterarguments from other Russian officers. One of them was Colonel N. D. Artamonov, who had surveyed European Turkey in the late 1860s.109 In May 1876, Artamonov composed a memorandum ­summarizing the experience of the previous Russian-Ottoman Wars and suggested the most advantageous strategic choices. For Artamonov, the resolution of the Eastern Question equaled the abolition of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, which is why the Asian theater of war could have only secondary importance.110 Artamonov fully shared Ignatiev’s concern about the perilousness of the Danubian and Balkan region for the Russian troops; yet, his proposed solution consisted in securing the quickest possible strike across the Balkans to the Ottoman capital.111 Artamonov reproduced verbatim Obruchev’s earlier considerations on the preferability of the operational line across the middle part of the Danubian Bulgaria and stressed the perils of engaging the Ottomans in the fortress warfare on the lower Danube. As so many Russian authors before him, Artamonov pointed to the difficulty in capturing the Ottoman fortresses. Although they usually failed to follow the principles of modern fortification, Ottoman fortresses, according to Artamonov, would attract all Muslim inhabitants from the environs, “of whom all those capable of carrying arms were soldiers who would daily 108 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:61–62. 109 See N. D. Artamonov, “Perechen’ dorog v Evropeiskoi Turtsii sniatykh v 1867 i 1869 gg. kapitanom Artamonovym,” in Sbornik materialov po Russko-turetskoi voine 1877–1878 g. na Balkanskom poluostrove, 9:37–38. 110 N. D. Artamonov, “Zapiska general’nogo shtaba polkovnika Artamonova o naivygodneishem v strategicheskom otnoshenii sposobe deistvii protiv turok,” in Osoboe pribavlenie k opisaniiu russko-turetskoi voiny 1877–78 gg. na Balkanskom poluostrove, vyp. 4, 52–53. 111 Artamonov, “Zapiska general’nogo shtaba polkovnika Artamonova o naivygodneishem v strategicheskom otnoshenii sposobe deistvii protiv turok,” 40–41.

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appear on the walls.” Imbued with “the spirit of struggle against the infidels,” the Muslim inhabitants constituted “the most important force of defence” of the Ottoman fortresses, which made it particularly important to “shake their morale.”112 Since the Ottoman Muslim population was both brave and prone to panic, Artamonov argued that the desired result could be achieved by sudden surrounding and massive bombardment. Here again, the earlier failure of the Russian commanders to supply the besieging troops with sufficiently strong siege artillery served as an a contrario confirmation of Artamonov’s thesis.113 Obruchev attached Artamonov’s memorandum to his own first draft of the campaign plan submitted first to Miliutin and subsequently to the tsar in October 1876.114 Under the impact of Ottoman suppression of the April Uprising, Obruchev defined the war aims as “wrenching from the dominance of the Turks that country (Bulgaria) in which they have committed so many atrocities.” Although Russian championship of the rights and interests of Orthodox coreligionists had long figured as one of the leitmotifs of Russia’s Eastern policy, Russian war planning rarely took the actual security of Christians into consideration. In contrast, Obruchev did just that when he insisted that the “extreme rapidity of the Russian operations” was essential to “[saving] the Christian population” that was the object of Russia’s intercession.115 Taking into consideration “the bitter experience of the previous war,” Russia had to avoid fortress warfare. Having quickly crossed the Danube, the Russian army ought to “get beyond the Balkans” in a single coup and “take only those fortified places that were absolutely necessary for securing [its] rear.” Obruchev recommended employing numerous Cossack cavalry, which alone was able to endure the shortage of fodder in Bulgaria and, at the same time, secure a “quick and more or less scattered (razbrosannyi) occupation of the country.”116 Obruchev also rearticulated his earlier arguments in favor of the operational line across the more western parts of Bulgaria. In previous “Turkish” 112 Artamonov, “Zapiska general’nogo shtaba polkovnika Artamonova o naivygodneishem v strategicheskom otnoshenii sposobe deistvii protiv turok,” 58. 113 Artamonov, “Zapiska general’nogo shtaba polkovnika Artamonova o naivygodneishem v strategicheskom otnoshenii sposobe deistvii protiv turok,” 59–64. 114 Miliutin, Dnevnik, 2:92–93. 115 N. N. Obruchev, “Sobstvennoruchnaia dokladnaia zapiska,” October 1, 1876, in M. A. Gazenkampf, Moi Dnevnik, 1877–78 (St. Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1908), Prilozhenie 1. 116 Obruchev, “Sobstvennoruchnaia dokladnaia zapiska,” 2.

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wars, he argued, the Russian army would cross the Danube in the lower course and besiege the powerful fortresses of Rushchuk, Silistria, Varna, and Shumla. Only in 1829 did the Russians manage to get beyond this quadrangle of Ottoman strongholds, cross the eastern Balkans, and occupy Adrianople. However, on that occasion their army kept close to the Black Sea coast and was supported by the Russian fleet, which was no longer there in the 1870s due to demilitarization of the Black Sea in the wake of the Crimean War. The insecurity of the littoral apart, Eastern Bulgaria, argued Obruchev, was to be avoided because of the preponderance here of the Turkish and émigré Circassian population “capable of stubborn resistance.” The Russian strategist suggested occupying with a secondary force only the Galați bent on the lower Danube and “conducting the main operations on the middle Danube and in central Bulgaria.” Here the river went farthest into Turkey, which would place the Russian army at the shortest distance from its goal. An operational line across the middle Danube would allow the Russian army to render prompt assistance to the Bulgarian population east, west, or south as well as to coordinate its actions with the Serbian and Montenegrin forces.117 The only similarity between Obruchev’s approach and that of the planners of the earlier “Turkish” campaigns was the assumption that the Asian front was clearly secondary. In contrast to Ignatiev, Obruchev argued that an expedition into the depth of Anatolia was costly while the occupation of the frontier territories could not have a decisive impact upon the Ottomans in view of the distance that separated the Caucasus from Constantinople. For this reason, Obruchev suggested limiting Russian goals here to the occupation of Kars and Batum and concentrating the bulk of the available Russian forces in the European theater. Mindful of the role that Austria played in aborting Russia’s Danubian campaign in 1854, Obruchev suggested making provisions for the formation of a Galician army, “should Austria join the British policy.”118 Dated October 1, 1876, Obruchev’s plan presupposed the launching of the military operations that same fall and their completion within two or three months. The advantages of catching the Ottomans unprepared during the time of the year when they were least disposed to fight would out117 Obruchev, “Sobstvennoruchnaia dokladnaia zapiska,” 3. 118 Obruchev, “Sobstvennoruchnaia dokladnaia zapiska,” 4–5.

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weigh the difficulties of such a campaign. However, the element of surprise that could allow Russia to achieve its goals in European Turkey with limited forces disappeared in the midst of the diplomatic negotiations of the fall and winter. Ignatiev, who represented Russia at the Constantinople Conference of December 1876, informed the Russian headquarters in Kishinev of the growing Ottoman effectives in Europe, their improving quality and organization, as well as the preparation of the Ottoman fortresses in the northeastern Balkans.119 By the time the Constantinople Conference ended unsuccessfully, the Ottomans relocated their forces from defeated Serbia and Montenegro to the Danube and the Asian frontier, and they mobilized not only the regular troops (redif ) but also the land militia (moustafiz), so that “virtually all the able-bodied Muslim population was armed and called to the colors.”120 Upon returning to St. Petersburg in February 1877, Ignatiev declared that “the favorable moment for a decisive strike had been irrevocably lost.”121 Unemployed in either the military or diplomatic capacity and yet present at the headquarters as the personal adjutant of Alexander II, Ignatiev continued to express his opinion on various matters. In particular, he submitted a memorandum to the war minister in which he once again tried to draw the attention of the Russian military to the necessity of concentrating efforts on the Asian theater of war. In contrast to the Danubian army, which had to cross Romania and the Danube before it entered Ottoman territory, Russian troops in the Caucasus could enter Turkey immediately after the declaration of war, which “could not fail to have an impact both on the Ottoman government and the population of the country.” According to Ignatiev, the fact that the Muslims constituted the majority of the population of the Asian war theater was an advantage. The Russian invasion would thereby have “a much greater influence upon the dominant element of the Ottoman Empire” than an invasion on the European theater, where the Muslims were fewer in number than the Christians. The forces of the sultan consisted primarily of their Asian subjects, which was why the desired result could be easily achieved by threatening “the source of their power” than by challenging them in Bulgaria.122 119 “Zapiska [I. P. Ignatieva] o voennykh silakh i voennykh planakh Turtsii,” RGIA, f. 1561, op. 1, d. 36, ll. 1v –2. 120 Zapiska [I. P. Ignatieva] o voennykh silakh i voennykh planakh Turtsii,” RGIA, f. 1561, op. 1, d. 36, l. 2v. 121 Zapiska [I. P. Ignatieva] o voennykh silakh i voennykh planakh Turtsii,” RGIA, f. 1561, op. 1, d. 36, l. 4v. 122 Zapiska [I. P. Ignatieva] o voennykh silakh i voennykh planakh Turtsii,” RGIA, f. 1561, op. 1, d. 36, l. 6.

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Ignatiev also argued that the triumphs of the Russian troops in Asia were likely to have a greater impact on Europe and, especially on England, where “concerns about the routes to India trampled any other consideration.” While they were unable to stop the advance of the Russian army to Erzurum and Sivas, the British “could always count on Austria-Hungary and the jealousy of the other great powers to restrain our hand in Europe.” Once they entered the Asian provinces, Russian Caucasian troops would attract the Ottoman reserves and facilitate the Russian operations on the Danube. According to Ignatiev, this represented the best means of “defending the Caucasus” and “preventing the Turks and the English agents from raising the uprising of our mountaineers and intriguing among our Transcaucasian Muslims.”123 Ignatiev argued that it would be wrong to limit the numerous Caucasian corps to secondary operations in Kabulistan (as was the intention of the Caucasian Viceroy Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich). According to Ignatiev, the goal of the war in Asia was to “beat and disperse the Ottoman forces in Armenia, penetrate Anatolia and, by a decisive movement to Sivas (and even beyond, should it be necessary), force the sultan to demand peace and have his friends and counselors to pressure him to submit to our demands in order to save his empire from definitive collapse.”124 Although the Main Staff found Ignatiev’s reported figure of 600,000 mobilized Ottoman troops exaggerated, Obruchev realized that the limited Russian force envisioned in his October plan could no longer quickly occupy Bulgaria and capture Constantinople. After all the preparations that the Ottomans had the time to make over late fall and winter, the realization of these goals could be secured only if the Russian forces in the European theater were doubled to allow a full-fledged army of some 100,000–120,000 to make a breakthrough across the Balkans and another one of comparable size to secure its rear in the Danubian Bulgaria.125 The choice of operational line across the middle Danube into central Bulgaria remained the same, yet Obruchev suggested that the army assigned to operate in the Danubian Bulgaria not only occupy Babadag and besiege Rushchuk but also make forays into Dobrogea and Deli-Orman, control the Slivno and Gabrovo passes across the Balkans, and, possibly, even attack Shumla. 123 Zapiska [I. P. Ignatieva] o voennykh silakh i voennykh planakh Turtsii,” RGIA, f. 1561, op. 1, d. 36, l. 6v. 124 Zapiska [I. P. Ignatieva] o voennykh silakh i voennykh planakh Turtsii,” RGIA, f. 1561, op. 1, d. 36, ll. 7–7v. 125 Obruchev, “Soobrazheniia na sluchai voiny s Turtsiei vesnoi 1877 goda,” in Moi Dnevnik, Prilozhenie 4:3–6.

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Obruchev’s updated plan can be seen as a partial return to the patterns of Russian strategic planning during the earlier wars, inasmuch as it presupposed active operations on the lower Danube and in the quadrilateral of the Ottoman fortresses. Obruchev once again recognized the dangers of fortress warfare and acknowledged that the dispersion of the Russian forces between Silistria, Shumla, and Varna made the campaign of 1828 largely futile. Nevertheless, he believed that the Rushchuk-Varna railway line constructed at the time of the Crimean war made a difference by enabling the transportation of heavy artillery to Shumla and Varna.126 As in the fall of 1876, Obruchev viewed the Asian theater as a secondary one; yet, he concurred with Ignatiev that the Caucasian army would similarly have to be doubled if the capture of Constantinople from the European side proved to be impossible (e.g., if the British intervened decisively). In this case, the realization of the war goals could be achieved only by “the destruction of the land possessions of Turkey in both Europe and Asia,” which necessitated the advance of the augmented Caucasian army deep into Anatolia.127 The impossibility of effectively doubling its forces in the European theater led the Russian army to pursue a strategy that was closer to Obruchev’s original suggestions of October 1876. The lack of coordination between different Russian detachments after their successful crossing of the Danube on June 10, 1877, fatally undermined Obruchev’s goal of rapidly occupying trans-Balkan Bulgaria and protecting the Christian population. As a result, Obruchev’s strategy designed to maximize the security of the coreligionists had the opposite effect of making the Bulgarian population more vulnerable to the reprisals of the Ottomans. An unsuccessful pursuit of Obruchev’s plan also turned out to be a factor that increased the vulnerability of the local Muslim population. Transferred to the Asian theater on the insistence of his enemy, the Commander-in-Chief Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, Obruchev had no control over the implementation of the strategy in Europe that he had helped design and thus hardly bears responsibility for these unexpected outcomes. In Obruchev’s thinking, the Orthodox Christian population figured as potential victims who had to be protected while his choice of operational 126 Obruchev, “Soobrazheniia na sluchai voiny s Turtsiei vesnoi 1877 goda,” 6–7. 127 Obruchev, “Soobrazheniia na sluchai voiny s Turtsiei vesnoi 1877 goda,” 8.

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line in principle minimized the contact between the Russian army and the masses of the Muslim population of the Eastern Balkans. In other words, Obruchev hardly envisioned raising the Bulgarians for a national war against the Muslims, which was advocated by Kishelskii and Fadeev. At the same time, Obruchev’s war planning, similar to the contributions of Artamonov and Ignatiev to this process, reveals the much greater role that the population factor played in Russian strategic choices in 1876–1877 than was the case of either 1828–1829 or 1853–1854. For all the differences of style and perspective, the Russian war planners at the time of the Eastern Crisis were not unlike the Pan-Slavist generals in recognizing the importance of the inhabitants of the war theater in the military and political outcomes of the confrontation. Reflecting the mounting role of population in contemporary military statistics, Russian war planning in 1876–1877 in turn had a major impact on different religious and ethnic groups of European Turkey during and after the Russian-Ottoman War of 1877–1878.

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Ch a p t e r 4

Wartime Mobilization of Ethnicit y, Shifting Loya lties, and Population Politics in the Borderlands of Nationa lizing Empires: Reshaping Bessarabia and Bukovina, 1914–1919 Andrei Cușco

Introduction: Conceptual Framework and the State of the Art

T

he emphasis on the interplay between the mobilization of ethnicity, population politics, and shifting loyalties in Eastern Europe during World War I is at the center of a growing field of research developing throughout the past two decades. Among the many contributions defining this dynamic field—and shaping the conceptual framework of my project—several authors in particular have fundamentally transformed the way in which World War I and the conflagration’s impact on East European societies are understood. Peter Holquist has, first, questioned the traditional chronology and conceptual framework used for interpreting Russia’s early-­ twentieth-century “continuum of crisis” and, second, insisted on the impor112

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tance of the “all-European” and wartime context for the assessment of the dynamics of violence and state-society relationships that allowed its unprecedented scale displayed throughout the Russian Revolutions and the civil war period.1 Holquist emphasized the wartime roots of mass deportations and forcible displacements customarily associated with the policies of totalitarian regimes. The author also observed that “total war was made possible by the fact that society restructured itself in order to make it possible to continue the war.”2 Far from representing a mere outside imposition on the empire’s social fabric, the war mobilization of economy and society had profound consequences on redrawing the lines of the conceivable and the feasible in imperial policies. Similar to other European states engaged in modern warfare, Russia was forced to apply highly interventionist practices in order to secure adequate support for the war effort. Beyond the coercion exercised in the economic and narrowly social sphere, the government also began to regard the multiethnic structure of the empire in different terms. Despite the prewar intimations of a nationalizing policy, the imperial bureaucracy never pursued a consistent practice of ethnic categorization before the outbreak of the war. In another crucial contribution regarding the pan-European context of population politics and its Russian/Soviet inflections, Holquist noted that the “idea of extracting ‘elements’ of the population first became conceptually and practically possible only with the rising concern throughout the nineteenth century for a realm termed ‘the social’ and with the emergence of technologies for measuring and acting upon this realm.”3 Thus, far from being an aberration or distortion of the modern project, population politics was actually constitutive of its core elements of social control, rational governance, and state interventionism. However, the view of populations as “social aggregates” and the resulting “technologies of rule” were initially applied in the extra-European, colonial realm and were brought back to Europe—with a vengeance—during World War I, which “removed the previous geographic and conceptual limits on the use of violence.”4 1 Peter Holquist, “Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism? Russia in the Epoch of Violence, 1905–1921,” Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 627–652, esp. 636–640. 2 Holquist, “Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism?,” 639; unless otherwise specified, all italics in original. 3 Peter Holquist, “To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia,” in A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Terry Martin and Ronald G. Suny (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 111–144, here 125. 4 Holquist, “To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate,” 124–125.

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Eric Lohr has insightfully shown how a combination of the prevalence of nationalistically minded elements in the highest echelons of the Russian army and of ostensible considerations of strategy and security prompted the military authorities to initiate violent population displacements throughout the front zone ultimately aimed at “nationalizing the Russian Empire.”5 Lohr “has established beyond doubt that the war witnessed a shift from the “traditional” imperial politics of assimilation to the more “modern” style of categorical exclusion”6 and has, moreover, juxtaposed “military and civilian thinking and practice.”7 The role of the military should not be underestimated in this context, since the whole territory of the “Western borderlands” (including Bessarabia) was subject to the administration of the Imperial High Command, according to the War Statute of July 1914. Lohr argues that “the War Statute deeply exacerbated a long-standing defect of the Russian political system, namely that different parts of the administration pursued conflicting policies without an institutionalized means to resolve their differences and provide a “united government.”8 Beyond the usual lack of coordination among central government agencies, the persistent disagreements and reluctance of the civilian authorities to implement the radical measures advocated by the military point to the persistence of a more traditional bureaucratic ethos in their midst that did not discriminate against Russian subjects according to ethnicity.9 Nevertheless, the war did have important repercussions on the civilian administration as well. First, the insistence of the military on the application of an exclusionary and violent “population politics” gradually penetrated the elements of civilian bureaucracy. The civilian government—prompted by the example of the army high command, but also responding to severe shortages of labor force in the rear of the front—resorted to previously untapped tactics of drafting traditionally exempt populations in the later phases of the war. 5 Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens During World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 6 Peter Gatrell, Review of Eric Lohr’s book, Cahiers du Monde Russe 44, no. 4 (2003): 3 (online). 7 Gatrell, Review of Eric Lohr’s book. 8 Eric Lohr, “The Russian Army and the Jews: Mass Deportation, Hostages, and Violence during World War I,” Russian Review 60 (July 2001): 404–419, here 407–408. Lohr also provides a map depicting the territorial jurisdiction of the War Statute. 9 On this topic, see also Aleksandra Bakhturina, “Military and Civilian Governance in the Western Borderlands of the Russian Empire during the First World War,” Russian Studies in History 55, nos. 3–4 (2016): 254–276.

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As Joshua Sanborn convincingly argues, the decision to draft the Central Asian Muslim population not only broke with the long-standing imperial tradition of appeasing and tolerating local customs and enforcing barriers between inorodtsy (aliens) and Christian subjects of the empire but was also “fateful” in the sense of triggering the spiral of violence that ultimately led to the horrors of the civil war.10 The researcher also stresses the massive population displacements (both planned and unplanned) that occurred during the first two years of the war throughout the territories under military authority and the severe social dislocation they engendered. The complex processes of socialization taking place within the army units, as well as, increasingly, between the military and the displaced civilian population go a long way into explaining the final “unraveling” of the social structure of the empire that reached its climax once the last “bastion of social cohesion,” represented by the armed forces, broke down under the strain of revolution and military setbacks in 1917.11 Drawing on and expanding these conclusions in his later book, Sanborn proposed a new reading of the war in the East as an “imperial apocalypse.” He interpreted the Russian imperial collapse as “a process of decolonization that occurred over the course of the Great War” and “consisted of three phases: (1) imperial challenge, (2) state failure and (3) social disaster.”12 Second, the new attitude toward “population politics” should be placed within the larger context of the heightened interventionist role of the state. In Russia, however, the dynamics of the relationship between state and society had important peculiarities. Following the shock of the violent events of 1905, a large part of the educated society turned to the state as the sole instrument that was capable of restraining the destructive energy of the masses while at the same time instructing them in their new role as citizens. The ideal of the liberal elements of the political spectrum envisaged a powerful and modern state that could overcome Russia’s perceived backwardness.13 10 Joshua A. Sanborn, “Unsettling the Empire: Violent Migrations and Social Disaster in Russia during World War I,” Journal of Modern History 77 (June 2005): 290–324, here 318–320. 11 Sanborn, “Unsettling the Empire,” 320–322. 12 Joshua A. Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 243, but also chapters 1 (“Outbreak of War”) and 6 (“Decolonization”). 13 Peter Holquist, “La société contre l’Etat, la société conduisant l’Etat: la société cultivée et le pouvoir d’Etat en Russie, 1914–1921,” Le Mouvement Social, no. 196 (July–September 2001): 21–40, here 24.

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The autocracy clearly did not fit into this scheme, due to both its reluctance to collaborate with members of “society” and the generally conservative, even stifling, social policies of the monarchy, which were aimed either at blocking the integration of the masses into the political sphere or at using their political loyalties instrumentally. This unequal relationship changed with the onset of World War I, which “engendered new types of political rationality” and “suggested new horizons for the state” and its representatives.14 More significantly, the war ended the autocracy’s monopoly on social and political action. Following Michael Geyer’s model of the “para-statal complex,” Holquist argues that in Russia a peculiar “para-statal” complex emerged, forming itself under the aegis of the state, but simultaneously undermining the autocratic state through its harsh critique of the state’s incompetence and ineffectiveness in dealing with the war effort. In other words, it “raised itself against the autocracy that ostensibly governed the state and was formed under the influence of the critiques by anticipation of the liberal society.”15 The necessities of modern warfare radically altered the political atmosphere and rendered the oscillating course of government policy, caught between rival groups of the bureaucracy, more inadequate than ever. The division of authority and the implicit rivalry between the increasingly vocal representatives of the liberal educated society (grouped in the Zemgor16 and other associations), the military, and the imperial court not only frequently fragmented the central decision-making but also provided the conditions for the increasing alienation of the elite from the dynasty and the emperor, who lost his traditional role of arbiter and policy coordinator. Finally, Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz spoke about the “shatterzone of empires”17—a space in which, before 1914, four great imperial polities ruled over and competed for diverse populations, being confronted with the challenges of modernity and nationalism. The Russian Empire—sim14 Holquist, “La société contre l’Etat,” 25: “La guerre engendra de nouveaux types de rationalité politique,”  “suggéra de nouveaux horizons pour l’État.” 15 Holquist, “La société contre l’Etat,” 28: “se dressa contre l’autocratie qui dirigeait ostensiblement l’État et se forma sous l’influence des critiques par anticipation de la société libérale.” 16 Zemgor (United Committee of the Union of Zemstvos and the Union of Towns) was a Russian aid and relief organization created in 1915 to assist the government with coordinating the war effort. 17 Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz, eds., Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), esp. 1–20.

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ilarly to its Habsburg and German rivals—faced the challenge of “domesticating” nationalism and channeling its potential to fit its own purposes. The question of the relative “nationalization” of the Russian Empire’s population in the initial phase of the war thus acquires fundamental importance. The first phenomenon to be considered in this context is interimperial competition. The role of this kind of rivalry has been recently explored, among others, by Alexei Miller, who advanced the view that the collapse of the “macro-system” of Eurasian continental empires during World War I was largely a self-inflicted catastrophe.18 The elites of the Russian, Habsburg, Ottoman, and German Empires are thus portrayed as consciously breaching the former conventions of interstate relations in the region and as trespassing the boundaries of their “rational behavior” in the process. Miller stresses that it was World War I that finally destroyed this system of interacting composite states. In a subsequent synthetic work that he coedited with Stefan Berger, dealing with a comparative analysis of “nationalizing empires,” Miller further emphasizes this point: “In the course of the war, the neighboring empires—Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany—that had previously been extremely reserved about playing up the ethnic card in their interrelations … were now fully involved in promoting ethnic separatism in the enemy camp.”19 His more general conclusion—directly relevant to the analysis of the two case studies I focus on, although based on Eric Lohr’s insights—was that “ethnic and religious affiliation was turning into an important factor in the evaluation of [the] population’s loyalty.”20 There is plenty of empirical evidence on the creation of national military units or on the financing of nationalist organizations by war adversaries in order to undermine internal stability and counter the propaganda of enemy powers.21 It is also certain that local officials 18 The general argument focusing on the “entangled” history of the Eurasian continental empires, which resulted in a specific macro-system during the nineteenth and early twentieth century (in the context of the different potential scales of approaching the history of the Russian Empire) is developed in Alexei Miller, “Between Local and Inter-Imperial: Russian Imperial History in Search of Scope and Paradigm,” Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 5, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 7–26, esp. 18–20. 19 Stefan Berger and Alexei Miller, eds., Nationalizing Empires (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2015), 363. 20 Berger and Miller, Nationalizing Empires, 364. 21 Bessarabia was one of the cases involved, as will be argued in more detail below. The Ukrainian case is, of course, even more interesting.

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were keenly aware of such dangers even in border provinces that were not strictly part of the war zone.22 While Miller’s scheme might be criticized for drawing too much attention to the interimperial rather than the imperial/nation-state rivalry,23 his point that the imperial framework was crucial for the development and consolidation of ethnic nationalisms in the borderlands must be retained. The degree of “nationalization” of the Russian masses by the summer of 1914 and later during the first phases of the war is, in itself, a contentious point. The interpretive differences stem not so much from the available data as from the contested definitions of nationalism used by different authors. The predominantly rural nature of the empire’s population, as well as the uncertain “nationalizing” effect of the imperial army, seems to indicate a weak impact of national motives on most Russian subjects’ self-awareness (in apparent contrast to the Habsburg/Austro-Hungarian Empire). In any case, even if the war is usually viewed as a formative period in terms of “nationalizing the masses,” the 1914 prewar situation is treated differently. Joshua Sanborn, for instance, argued for a reconsideration of the question of the Russian nation in wartime, asserting that “the national political form does not require agreement or loyalty, either between segments of the population or between citizens and the regime,” since “the nation by definition opens up this space of contestation.”24 The author then relied on Rogers Brubaker’s model of “nation-ness as event” to insist that “nationness is both an event that suddenly crystallizes and one that is the product of deep developmental trends.”25 Despite Sanborn’s clarification concerning his preference for a “kinetic” interpretation allowing for a preliminary buildup of potential energy, his conclusion remains somewhat disconcerting. His insistence on the fallacy of the link between the emergence of “nationness” and the urban environment should be taken into account, but I believe he is overstating the 22 Alexei Miller, “Pochemu vse kontinental’nye imperii raspalis’ posle Pervoi Mirovoi voiny?” [Why Did All the Continental Empires Collapse after World War I?]. Available at: http://www.polit.ru/article/2006/04/11/miller2/ (Accessed May 20, 2023). 23 This criticism is certainly valid in the Bessarabian case, where Russia had to deal with the irredentist claims not of a fellow-imperial, but rather of a national state. However, the processes at work might be very similar, and thus Miller’s thesis should not be, in itself, discarded. 24 Joshua Sanborn, “The Mobilization of 1914 and the Question of the Russian Nation: A Reexamination,” Slavic Review 59, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 267–289, quotation on 282. 25 Sanborn, “The Mobilization of 1914,” 282.

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case for a peculiar “peasant nationalism.” The “national framework” that the peasants used in their public dealings with the government might as well be a typical example of discursive influence “from above.” Rather, World War I should be seen as an “inflection point” that provided the conditions for activating the “potential energies” of the broader self-identification of the peasantry. More importantly, the author acknowledged the different directions into which emerging projects of nation-building were pointing, due to the conflicts between elements of the Russian bureaucracy. Thus, one could agree with the argument that “the real barriers to nation-formation … were the conservative state officials who feared an active populace and scuttled plans for formal incorporation of peasants into national political structures whenever they could.”26 However, even such an interpretation presupposes the existence of a measure of coherence within the Russian bureaucratic apparatus that I think Sanborn exaggerates. The conflicts linked to the most effective principle for mass mobilization were in fact related to the much deeper division on the question of the nature and spatial configuration of the “Russian nation” itself. This can be clearly gauged from the example of A. N. Kuropatkin—one of the most prominent military figures during the last decades of the imperial regime. Kuropatkin’s position toward the Russian nationalist project was itself far from coherent. Thus, during his tenure as the Russian Minister of War, Kuropatkin submitted a report to Nicholas II in which he argued against the annexation of East Prussia and Galicia to the Russian Empire, viewing these regions as a sort of “East European Alsace-Lorraine.” During World War I, however, his opinion changed completely. In a report reflecting on “Russia’s borders as a result of the 1914–15 war,” he advocated the annexation to Russia of Eastern Galicia and of those parts of Hungary and Bukovina with a majority “Russian” population. His main argument on this issue referred to the “unification of the Russian tribe [plemeni].”27 Kuropatkin’s ostensible complaint concerning the crisis of traditional legitimizing criteria (“devotion to the Tsar … and Fatherland”) referred not so much to the pre-national, dynastic overtones of these notions, but primar26 Sanborn, “The Mobilization of 1914,” 284. 27 A. Iu. Bakhturina, Okrainy Rossiiskoi Imperii: Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie i natsional’naia politika v gody Pervoi Mirovoi voiny (1914–1917 gg.) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004), 123–124.

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ily to their nationalist reinterpretation whose perceived failure he regretted.28 This is one of Sanborn’s main failings in his otherwise fruitful discussion of the emerging problem of integrating Russian subjects into a modern community during wartime. Though attentive to the “vertical” social stratification of the Russian populace (in the sense of rehabilitating the peasantry as a subject as well as an object of potential nation-building), this focus on the “Russian peasantry” ignores the “horizontal” fault lines between ethnic groups in the imperial borderlands that were activated after 1914. The picture becomes even more complex once one takes into account the observation of one of Sanborn’s critics who argued that the author “underestimate[d] the degree to which nation, empire, and class pulled in different directions from 1916,” leading to an increasing social polarization along the lines of discrete and opposed political “languages.”29 In fact, such developments could be identified even in earlier phases of the war, at least starting from the “Great Retreat” of the Russian armies in the summer of 1915, and are thus a general feature of the whole period. The extent to which the government and the public were trying to forge an “ideal community” by inculcating an awareness of the common war effort or by creating a cult of heroes and exceptional feats also remains a contentious issue. Recent investigations have argued that Russia equaled its cobelligerents in constructing a whole infrastructure of memory and commemoration in order to foster a feeling of common belonging and state cohesion among the population.30 The author remarks that “honoring, rewarding, and commemorating the nation’s soldiers was a way to sidestep vexing differences in the multinational state and bring all together on common ground.”31 This “common ground,” however, mostly remained an unattainable ideal due to the fundamental differences in the attitudes of military and civilian 28 Sanborn, “The Mobilization of 1914,” 284. 29 Eric Lohr, “Russian Economic Nationalism during the First World War: Moscow Merchants and Commercial Diasporas,” Nationalities Papers 31, no. 4 (December 2003): 471–484, quotation on 471. 30 Melissa K. Stockdale, “United in Gratitude: Honoring Soldiers and Defining the Nation in Russia’s Great War,” Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 459–485. 31 Stockdale, “United in Gratitude,” 484. For a cogent criticism of Stockdale’s position, see Alfred J. Rieber, “The Problem of Social Cohesion,” Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 599–608, esp. 603–604. While admitting that these projects represented “the last attempt of the autocracy to forge a unified, national community,” Rieber concludes that “many problems remain in developing the idea that the Russian Empire was moving toward a generally accepted definition of citizenship” (604).

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officials toward the participation of the peasant masses in the Great War. Far from perceiving the soldiers in the Russian army as (potential) citizens, some of the highly placed military commanders regarded them as unfit for modern warfare because of their parochial interests and lack of understanding of “the idea of fighting for Russia.”32 Despite the unprecedented scale of the public’s involvement in wartime developments and the huge impact of mass population movements on destabilizing the social fabric of the empire, the bulk of the population concerned was indeed relegated by the central authorities to a passive and subordinate role. The incapacity of the imperial state to impose its integrative projects upon a restive population (and its success in promoting highly exclusionary practices of ethnic discrimination) proved ultimately fateful for the survival of the imperial regime and for the upheavals that plunged the empire (and especially its borderlands) into a maelstrom of confusion and violence. The obsession with loyalty, security, and the significance of the ethnic factor in this equation had a deeply transformative effect on the previously “unremarkable” borderlands of Bessarabia and Bukovina. The Bessarabian Case: Changing Ethnic Hierarchies and Lukewarm Mobilization of Ethnicity In the initial period of the war, the “nationalizing” trends in central policies led to certain shifts in the local hierarchy of ethnicity in Bessarabia. This applied not only to the German colonists of Southern Bessarabia, who were unequivocally included in the category of “enemy aliens” alongside other ethnic German communities of the same type in Southern Russia, but also to the Romanian-speaking peasants and, partially, intellectuals who were suspected of harboring pro-Romanian sentiment. However, the case of the Bessarabian Romanians was peculiar in comparison with other collectively targeted ethnic groups. The imperial authorities had a differentiated 32 See the discussion by Stockdale (that significantly undermines her argument) of the bitter disagreement between Chief of Staff of the General Headquarters General N. Ianushkevich and Minister of Agriculture A. V. Krivoshein. While Ianushkevich expressed his deep skepticism with regard to the existence of any “national feeling” among the peasant conscripts and soldiers, Krivoshein, joined by the other ministers, strongly objected. Disagreement on such fundamental issues is symptomatic. See Stockdale, “United in Gratitude,” 472–474. Ianushkevich’s “xenophobic nationalism” did not preclude him from having little faith in effective mobilizing factors, beyond purely material incentives.

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view of the local population in terms of loyalty and its potential for “separatism.” That is, they believed that various social groups among the Bessarabian Romanian-speaking population had very different levels of reliability and loyalty to the empire. The authorities found only a small group of local intelligentsia to be prone to separatism. At the same time, the peasant masses and most of the local landowners were considered quite reliable imperial subjects. This complex heterogeneous perception of the local population contrasts with the wartime perception of groups defined as “enemy aliens” in the Romanov Empire (first of all, the Germans and Jews) or in the Habsburg Empire (particularly, the Ruthenians/Ukrainians). In these cases, a much more essentialist and homogenous perception of these ethnic/linguistic/cultural groups was present. Thus, the gradual imposition of nationalizing categories upon the subjects of the Russian Empire was neither smooth nor straightforward in the Bessarabian case. The local population was traditionally regarded as staunchly loyal to the throne and the Russian state, while its closeness to the Great Russians stemmed from its adherence to the Orthodox Church and the fact that it shared the economic benefits of the all-Russian market.33 The peasant masses also seemed to be willing recipients of and recruits for the right-wing ideologies espoused by promonarchic and extremist organizations (e.g., the Union of Russian People, which was quite successful in attracting sizeable numbers of peasant activists to join its ranks). In connection with the weakening of the traditional bases for legitimacy stressing dynastic motives, a growing feeling of uneasiness and apprehension gripped the Russian authorities in Bessarabia. The invocation of the threat of “separatism,” which was uttered only sporadically throughout the prewar years 33 The confessional/religious factor should not be underestimated when assessing the “nationality policies” of the Russian Empire during World War I. This factor clearly played a central role in the policies of the Russian occupation authorities in Galicia, especially during the first phase of the Russian military control over the region in 1914–1915. Despite the predominant “national” framework and the rhetoric of “restoring national unity” and reaching Russia’s “natural ethnographic borders,” the practical problem posed by the strength of the Uniate Church became a sore point for the Russian occupation authorities. It also uncovered the differences in approach between a part of the military authorities and the interventionist strategy pursued by Archbishop Evlogii. For a detailed discussion of the “confessional policy” of the Russian Empire in occupied Eastern Galicia, see Bakhturina, Okrainy Rossiiskoi Imperii, 167–208. On the “war of faiths” and the respective role of Archbishop Evlogii and Metropolitan Sheptits’kyi during the Russian occupation of Galicia, see Mark von Hagen, War in a European Borderland: Occupations and Occupation Plans in Galicia and Ukraine, 1914–1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), 37–42.

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(e.g., during the 1863–1864 Polish revolt), now acquired an immediacy that was hardly conceivable before. This was obviously the case before Romania’s alignment with the Entente powers when Bessarabia became vulnerable militarily and was included in the zone administered directly by the Russian army. The exceptional status of the province placed the Russian administration under strain, which was complicated by the massive presence in the region of other obvious candidates for “enemy alien” status: the Germans and the Jews. Thus, Bessarabia became the object of a nationalizing policy that transcended the realm of discourse and affected the practice of governing the imperial borderlands. Following the declaration of war in late July 1914, Bessarabia, along with other border provinces, immediately entered the sphere of the military administration, according to the imperial decree of July 17/30, 1914, proclaiming the general mobilization. This decision was enforced starting on July 18/31, 1914, when the War Statute became effectively operational, subordinating all the civilian authorities in the province to the military leadership of the South-Western Front.34 Following the general policy of the Russian imperial authorities, the German and Austrian subjects residing in Bessarabia were the immediate targets of repressive measures. The military authorities instructed the Bessarabian civilian administration to treat the German subjects liable for military service as “enemy aliens,” equating their status to that of prisoners of war (POWs).35 At the same time, the German consul was expelled from Kishinev.36 On August 4/17, 1914, a total of 140 German and Austrian subjects recently expelled from various Bessarabian towns and villages were transferred by train to Odessa, from where they were further moved to Kherson for temporary internment.37 In the meanwhile, on the contrary, the Russian military authorities transferred a number of Austrian POWs to Bessarabia. Significantly for the emerging propaganda war between the belligerents, some of these POWs (presumably of Slavic origin) requested Russian citizenship. For example, on September 11, 1914, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) informed the governor of Bessarabia that the emperor per34 “Bessarabskie gubernskie vedomosti” [Official Bulletin of the Bessarabian Gubernia], Kishinev, no. 80, July 20/August 2, 1914, 1; “Kishinevskie Eparkhial’nye vedomosti” [Official Bulletin of the Kishinev Diocese], nos. 29–30 (1914): 336. 35 Arhiva Națională a Republicii Moldova (ANRM), f. 297, op. 1, d. 269, l. 20. 36 ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 269, l. 20. 37 “Bessarabskaia Zhizn [Bessarabian Life],’” year XI, no. 180, August 5/18, 1914, 3.

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sonally thanked a group of 450 Austrian POWs interned in Bessarabia for expressing their desire in acquiring Russian citizenship. This wish was apparently granted, and the prisoners were set free.38 In late August 1914, following the initial successful Russian offensive against Austria-Hungary, resulting in the temporary occupation of Galicia and Northern Bukovina and the establishment of a Russian civilian administration in Galicia, an important transfer of cadres occurred. The vice-governor of Bessarabia, S. D. Evreinov, was “detached” to Czernowitz to fill the position of Bukovinian governor.39 This was hardly the only instance when Bessarabia served as a reservoir of cadres for the occupied Austrian territories. For instance, in late 1914, the Russian authorities started a campaign to recruit teachers for the educational institutions in the newly occupied Bukovina. On December 3, 1914, the curator of the Odessa Educational District (comprising Bessarabia) sent a circular letter to his subordinates in the region, forwarding the request of the military authorities to recommend a prominent and experienced high school teacher who “should be of Russian origin, but should also be fluent (at the theoretical and practical level) in Romanian (Moldavian).” This candidate was to be installed as inspector general of the schools in the recently established Czernowitz gubernia.40 The director of Boys’ Gymnasium Nr. 3 in Kishinev, Artamon Artem’ev, recommended for this position Alexandru G. Gobjila, an instructor of Greek and Latin at that institution, who “speaks Moldavian fluently, and also possesses reading and writing skills in this language.” However, the director remarked that Gobjila “is probably not of Russian origin, but rather an ethnic Moldavian.”41 In his own report submitted to the director on December 11, 1914, Gobjila declared that he had a good knowledge of “the local Moldavian language and, also, is fluent in Romanian at a theoretical level, i.e., he is able to read and write in this language.”42 The sources do not indicate whether he was indeed nominated for this position, but they do point to the growing relevance of ethnicity in this context and, up to a certain degree, to the inversion of ethnic hierarchies caused by the war. 38 39 40 41 42

ANRM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 9442, l. 379. ANRM, f. 6, op. 5, d. 815, l. 2. ANRM, f. 1862, op. 25, d. 1058, l. 292; ANRM, f. 1772, op. 9, d. 60, l. 219. ANRM, f. 1772, op. 9, d. 60, l. 220. ANRM, f. 1772, op. 9, d. 60, l. 221.

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The nationalizing elements in the Russian official rhetoric and policy in Bessarabia became even more prominent in the second half of 1915, during and immediately after the Great Retreat, when the Russian authorities became ever more insecure about their control of borderland areas. In a synthetic report drafted by the Chief of the Bessarabian Gendarmes’ Office Colonel Konstantin F. Nordberg43 in late October 1915, the tendency to perceive the local situation in terms of shifting ethnic hierarchies was obvious on several levels. First, the specter of an emerging Moldavian/Romanian “national movement” in Bessarabia resurfaced in this report. Since Romania’s position in the war was still doubtful (despite the growing proEntente sentiment there), the possibility of an open conflict between Russia and Romania remained open. In this context, the chief of the Bessarabian Gendarmes’ Office emphasized the “peculiarity of the Bessarabian gubernia—namely, the national Moldavian question, which until now has elicited scant, or, better to say, almost no attention, since the population of this nationality is considered to be rather loyal. This is undoubtedly true.”44 He described the peasant masses as inert, not affected by “Russian patriotism,” but nevertheless economically attracted to the Russian Empire, which guaranteed greater material well-being in comparison with its Romanian rival. Nordberg astutely noted the crucial role played by “the events of 1905” and the 1912 anniversary in the nurturing, “among the local intelligentsia,” of a group that strives toward “cultural self-consciousness of the Moldavians,” or, as they are called more often nowadays, “Romanians.”45 The novel development that provoked Nordberg’s apprehension consisted in the “propaganda within the peasant masses,” which intensified during the war. The war had a destabilizing influence as well, since it “created certain illusions of a sepa43 A small caveat is necessary here. One should, of course, take into account that Nordberg, as his family name suggests, was of German origin. His assessments should be approached with caution. It is entirely possible that his struggle against “Romanian separatists,” discussed below, was simply a strategy for personal survival and a demonstration of loyalty in the context of the prevailing anti-German policies. Besides local pro-Romanian “separatism,” Nordberg also fought, before Romania’s entry into the war, not only against the Ukrainian movement in Bessarabia, but also against Austro-Hungarian “intrigues.” For more details, see Vasilii B. Kashirin, “Tainaia voina na Prute: Bessarabskie zhandarmy protiv mazepintsev, potemkintsev i avstro-germanskoi razvedki,” Rodina. Rossiiskii illiustrirovannyi zhurnal, no. 3 (2015): 106–109. However, corroborated with other contemporary sources, Nordberg’s report seems to provide an accurate image of the dominant perceptions of ethnicity by the local authorities in late 1915. 44 Report of the Chief of Bessarabian Gendarmes Office, Colonel K. F. Nordberg, dated October 31, 1915. ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, ll. 6, 9, here l. 9. 45 ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, l. 9. Quotation marks in original.

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ratist character” among these rebellious intellectuals.46 Commenting on its general weakness, the official observed that this movement “ha[d] a certain reflection” on local society.47 Thus, the “nationalizing” logic was compelling the Russian authorities to view the Bessarabian developments increasingly in terms of a “borderland question.” The threat of “separatism” or “Romanian irredentism” was mostly a mental construct of insecure imperial officials that faced new challenges in a multiethnic context that could no longer be perceived in premodern terms. The weak, but growing, articulation of the local educated society also created the premises for the extrapolation of the rather moderate, culturally oriented grievances of the Moldavian “intelligentsia” into a full-fledged “separatist” project. Second—and more significantly—the local chief of the Bessarabian Gendarmes’ Office provided a synthetic comparative analysis of ethnic loyalties and attitudes that were reshaped by the war. At the outset, Colonel Nordberg emphasized the “exceptional specificity of the Bessarabian gubernia,” which was due, in his opinion, both to its borderland position and to the composition of its population, thus making the situation in Bessarabia radically different from the developments in the empire’s internal provinces.48 The population was apparently worried by the constant rumors regarding the possibility of a Romanian or Austro-German invasion of Bessarabia; however, far from strengthening its loyalty to the empire, these fears only exacerbated the ethnic particularism and “egotism” stemming from the heterogeneous multiethnic structure of the local population and fueled by the “national question.”49 Nordberg then proceeded to present the attitude of each ethnic group since the war’s outbreak. Not surprisingly, he characterized the “Moldavian peasants” as uneducated, passive, indifferent, and only interested in their narrowly understood personal well-being (no mention was made of Russian patriotic feelings in their midst). This “nationally indifferent” image contrasted with the much more ambiguous perspective on the position of the Bessarabian Germans, hitherto staunchly loyal subjects of the tsar. Nordberg observed the “reserved and reluctant” attitude of the German colonists toward the requests and orders 46 47 48 49

ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, l. 9. ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, l. 9. ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, l. 1. ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, ll. 1–2.

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of the local authorities. Although he admitted that, early during the war, the Germans were keen to prove their loyalty to the empire by “donating significant amounts of money to the Red Cross and to the Russian army,” their position later shifted in an ominous direction.50 Recently gathered information even purportedly pointed to the “fact that some Germans hope for the coming of the German troops, and then they will take their revenge on the surrounding population which, in general, exhibits hostility towards them.”51 This passage not only provided a fascinating picture of the transformations within the ethnic German community itself—which would result in their growing nationalization as the war drew to a close— but also, predictably, shifted the blame to the group itself rather than invoking the exclusionary policies of the government that made this community the target of indiscriminate repression. By contrast, the Bulgarians presumably changed their attitude from initial hostility to the war—in connection with the economic losses they had suffered—to a much more favorable position toward the demands of the Russian authorities as they were “gripped by fear” after Bulgaria’s joining the Central Powers.52 The “Russian” (i.e., Great Russian and Ruthenian/Ukrainian) peasantry inhabiting the southern and northern Bessarabian districts was viewed, despite its wartime “suffering”—including as a consequence of the temporary Austrian occupation of the northern Khotin district—as “pervaded by patriotic feelings.”53 Last but not least, the Jews figured prominently in the report, but not so much as another ethnic group affected by the war. Rather, the prewar lens of anti-Semitic stereotypes prevailed, as they were viewed as an essentially “untrustworthy element,” both from a political and economic perspective. The Jews were portrayed as “unsatisfied” by the “liquidation” of the Pale of Settlement, as controlling the local press (a constant trope of Russian antiSemitic discourse), as economic parasites, war profiteers, and draft dodgers.54 However, the overall picture still emphasized their political unreliability and their “anti-government attitude,” displaying a striking continuity with the prewar anti-Jewish discourse. Certainly, it was difficult to expect a high50 51 52 53 54

ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, l. 2. ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, ll. 2–3. ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, l. 2. ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, l. 3. ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, ll. 5–6.

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ranking gendarme officer to take into account the large-scale forced population displacements and the immense pressure that the Jews were subject to throughout the front zone. Still, Nordberg did not fail to mention that the Jews’ strong anti-Russian feelings were also fomented by the knowledge they had acquired about the “social status of Jews in Galicia and Austria.”55 Even in this highly biased assessment of the dynamics of ethnicity in Russian Bessarabia by late 1915, the revolutionary impact of wartime developments could not be ignored. Even though I emphasized, above, the changes in the perceptions and discourses regarding ethnic hierarchies and loyalties, the impact of concrete policy shifts was also beginning to be felt in Bessarabia during the later phases of the war. Returning to the case of the Bessarabian Germans, one should note that, following the promulgation, in February 1915, of the law and regulation concerning the forcible sale and confiscation of landed property previously belonging to persons of German, Austrian, and Hungarian origins residing in Russia’s border provinces,56 the land in the possession not only of German subjects but also of ethnic German colonists began to be forcibly sold at special auctions. As a consequence, until December 1, 1916, according to the data provided by the MVD, the total area of the land previously belonging to Germans that had been sold at auctions amounted to 54,000 desiatins.57 At the same time, the deportation of Bessarabian Germans proceeded apace. Although the majority of the community remained untouched, several villages of German colonists were deported in corpore.58 The sale of landed properties of the Bessarabian Germans did not cease even in early 1917. Thus, on January 20/February 2, 1917, an auction was organized at the headquarters of the Bessarabian Provincial Board. Seventeen landed properties of the Bessarabian Germans were sold on this occasion. The bulk of this land was purchased by the Bessarabian branch of the Peasant Land Bank.59 The forcible land sales and confiscations ceased only with the February Revolution. 55 ANRM, f. 297, op. 1, d. 312, l. 7. 56 “Polozhenie Soveta Ministrov o prekrashchenii zemlevladeniia i zemlepol’zovaniia avstriiskikh, vengerskikh i germanskikh vykhodtsev v pokranichnykh mestnostiakh.” For more on this campaign, see Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, 66–83, 95–96. 57 “Bessarabskaia Zhizn,’” year XIV, no. 8, January 10/23 1917, 4. 58 ANRM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 9783, l. 2. 59 “Vânzarea moșiilor nemțești” [The Sale of German Estates], Cuvînt Moldovenesc, year IV, no. 8 (208), January 25, 1917, 4.

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Most German colonists were saved in the nick of time from dispossession and impoverishment. However, a peculiar situation emerged in Bessarabia in 1917: some colonists preserved their property, while others lost their land and livelihood. The “nationalization” of the Bessarabian Germans (or at least of some representatives of their elites) reached a new stage in early 1918, in the favorable geopolitical context of the ephemeral military hegemony of the Central Powers on the Eastern Front and the signing of the Treaty of BrestLitovsk. Just as Bessarabia was on the brink of union with Romania, one of the Bessarabian German national activists, the Lutheran pastor Immanuel Winkler, who had been elected chairman of the “Union of Russian Citizens of German Nationality,”60 submitted a memorandum to the leadership of the German Empire on March 2, 1918. Anticipating the postwar reconfiguration of borders in the region, Winkler advocated an ambitious—albeit utopian—project of creating a separate German autonomous territory on the Black Sea coast.61 According to the memorandum, this autonomous region (to be eventually incorporated into Germany) should have included Southern Bessarabia, a part of the Kherson gubernia (without Odessa) and the Crimea. In order to establish a “flourishing German colony on the Black Sea and on the Danube,” Winkler formulated the following initiatives (bearing an unmistakable mark of population politics): (1) engaging in a series of population exchanges meant to homogenize the ethnic structure of the region, and (2) pursuing certain policies that would secure the economic domination of ethnic Germans in the area. The population exchange was invoked, in particular, in the case of Southern Bessarabia. This exchange would have “transferred” the region’s Bulgarians into Dobrogea, while the Romanians were to be relocated to Central Bessarabia. The prospect of German economic hegemony referred, in particular, to the Crimea, 60 This organization was established in Odessa in March 1917. 61 For more details on the shifting loyalties of the Bessarabian Germans in this period and, in particular, for the analysis of this project, see Svetlana Suveică, “Negotiating Loyalty. The Bessarabian Germans from the Russian Empire to the Romanian Nation-State (1917–1919),” in Mutter: Land—Vater: Staat. Loyalitätskonflikte, politische Neuorientierung und der Erste Weltkrieg im österreichisch-russländischen Grenzraum, ed. Florian Kührer-Wielach and Markus Winkler (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2017), 135–152; Flavius Solomon, “Reglementări postbelice în mișcare: Un memoriu din anul 1918 pentru o au�tonomie germană în nordul Mării Negre” [The Postwar Settlement in Motion: A 1918 Memorandum in Favor of Establishing a German Autonomous Region in the Northern Black Sea Area], Archiva Moldaviae 12 (2020): 145–161.

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where, in Winkler’s view, “the Tatar cannot cope with the current economic struggle.”62 The ethnic mobilization of the previously loyal and passive Bessarabian German community was a direct result of the policies of ethnic exclusion and targeted persecution enthusiastically promoted by the Russian wartime authorities. The frustration and mistrust that gradually accumulated during the war galvanized the Bessarabian Germans into direct political action in a way that was hardly imaginable—let alone feasible—before 1914.63 The demise of the imperial regime in March 1917 and the new opportunities created by the opening up of the political space throughout the former empire had an immediate effect on Bessarabia. The major cleavage that emerged at this time concerned the priority of the national or social aspect of the revolutionary transformation. Similar to other borderlands of the Russian Empire and with a much greater intensity than was the case in 1905, the clash between the nationalizing and socializing agendas determined the broad lines of the political debates from March 1917 until March 1918. In fact, the local Bessarabian “voices” that emerged within the insecure postimperial space mostly used the language of “autonomy.” This topos could, however, be framed in starkly different terms depending on the context of its utterance, the target audience, and the intended outcome. Thus, in early April 1917, the program of the Moldavian National Party (MNP; the most outspoken organization on the subject of national grievances) claimed the “broadest autonomy” for Bessarabia in the administrative, judiciary, ecclesiastical, educational, and economic fields. The grounds invoked for the region’s new status stemmed from the precedent of the early-nineteenth-century autonomist experiment, but also invoked the principle of “national selfdetermination.”64 The claim of a Moldovan historian that the leaders of the MNP evolved from a “confederative scenario” toward a much more limited 62 Politisches Archiv des Auwärtigen Amts (PA), R 22865. Cited in Solomon, “Reglementări postbelice în mișcare,” 146. 63 For more on this subject, see Alfred Eisfeld, “Deutsche Autonomiebewegungen in der Ukraine und in Westsibirien, 1917–1918,” in Deutsche in Rußland und in der Sowjetunion, 1914–1941, ed. Alfred Eisfeld, Victor Herdt, and Boris Meissner (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2007); Victor Herdt, ed., Zwischen Revolution und Autonomie: Dokumente zur Geschichte der Wolgadeutschen aus den Jahren 1917 und 1918 (Köln: Ver�lag Wissenschaft und Politik, 2000). 64 Ion Calafeteanu and Viorica Moisuc, eds., Unirea Basarabiei şi Bucovinei cu România, 1917–1918 [Bessarabia’s and Bukovina’s Unification with Romania, 1917–1918] (Chișinău: Hyperion, 1995), 26.

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vision of “national-regional autonomy” seems doubtful, at best.65 In fact, the leaders of this organization oscillated between competing models of relationship to central power for the whole of 1917. The radicalization of the initially moderate autonomist program derived from the uncontrollable dynamics of the Russian political scene. It can be argued that, as long as the hope of the restoration and consolidation of a stable government at the center persisted, local Bessarabian leaders were securely anchored in the realm of the imagined space of the Russian state. This did not mean that the impact of federalist thought and a “contamination” by the mental models of restructuring of political space devised in the Habsburg Monarchy was negligible. In fact, the federalist model was, apparently, dominant among the Moldavian politicians at the time. The criteria for the future organization of the federal relationship were, however, hotly debated. A compromise had to be reached between the ethno-national principles promoted by the ideologues of the MNP and the territorial criteria preferred by the representatives of the other ethnic groups who feared the potential transformation of multiethnic Bessarabia into a “Moldavian” nation-state. Thus, during the discussions preceding the convocation of the local assembly (Sfatul Ţării), constituted through the co-optation of the representatives of local institutions, professional corporations, and estates, Kishinev’s mayor, Aleksandr Schmidt, who adhered to the group of “popular Socialists,” asserted: “I know that you [Moldavian “separatists”] desire to create a nation-state in Bessarabia. This is the dream of the whole 19th century, but it failed in Great Russia, and you want to institute a nationstate here, in Bessarabia, which is so similar to Russia from the ethnographic point of view.”66 Here the clash between the vision of unitary Russian statehood and the restructuring of the former empire along ethno-national lines seems obvious. Still, such an opposition would be quite misleading. Local “nationalism” was anything but assertive and did not fundamentally challenge Bessarabia’s belonging to the symbolic sphere of the Russian space.67 65 Gheorghe Negru, Ţarismul şi mişcarea naţională a românilor din Basarabia [The Tsarist Regime and the National Movement of the Romanians from Bessarabia] (Chișinău: Prut International, 2000), 83. 66 Negru, Ţarismul şi mişcarea naţională a românilor din Basarabia, 96. 67 The most relevant aggregation of statistical data reflecting the actual political preferences of the Bessarabian population in late 1917 can be extracted from the partial results of the elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly held in Bessarabia on November 26–28, 1917. Unfortunately, no systematic statistical analysis of these results is available at this point. The most reliable data can be found in the synthetic

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The process of “nationalization” of a part of the Bessarabian intellectuals was fraught with ambiguities until the very eve of the decisive events of 1918 leading to the region’s integration into Romania. Starting in late 1917, geopolitical factors undoubtedly played the most prominent role in this momentous shift in the region’s political landscape. Among these, one should emphasize the immediate threat of impending chaos and social disaster, the declaration of autonomy and then the independence of the Ukrainian state, and, most significantly, the disappearance of any legitimate government in the eyes of the Bessarabian elites after the Bolshevik seizure of power. However, for the purposes of this chapter, I would focus only on another fundamental catalyst of the mobilization of ethnicity in Bessarabia after March 1917: the prominent role played by the “Moldavian” military units in the nationalization of local politics. Partly as a result of the policy of introducing “national units” in the Russian army promoted by the Provisional Government and partly as a consequence of the self-organization of the soldiers’ committees under the circumstances of the anarchy prevailing throughout the Romanian Front, the political awareness of the Bessarabian-born soldiers and officers sharply increased in the context of 1917. The Russian imperial army provided the hitherto absent envitables compiled by L. G. Protasov, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel’noe sobranie: Istoriia rozhdeniia i gibeli (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1997), 363–366. According to the incomplete data for the Bessarabian electoral district, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SRs) received 112886 votes (from a grand total of 349,000 tallied votes), that is, 32.35%; the “popular socialists”—1367 (0.39%); the Mensheviks—4179 (1.2%); the Bolsheviks—28,614 (8.2%); other generic “socialists”—10,797 (3.1%); the Kadets—19,050 (5.4%); various “national lists”—49,018 (14%—no ethnic breakdown is available); “rightist” groups—6317 (1.8%); and various unnamed “others”—116,467 (33.3%). However, beyond establishing several general trends, like the dominance of the SRs, these figures are not representative for the general population, due to their partial coverage and to the significant share of the “others” category. Presumably, the latter rubric comprised the votes received by the local Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies (363). For a fuller picture, one might aggregate these figures with the data for the “Romanian Front,” which included a significant number of soldiers dislocated in Bessarabia. This information might provide additional clues to the electoral trends in the region. Out of a total number of 1,125,603 votes, the SRs received 670,047, that is, 59.5%, the “popular socialists” —4,000 (0.35%), the Mensheviks—36,485 (3.27%), the Bolsheviks—173,728 (15.43%), other generic “socialists” —188,760 (16.75%), the Kadets—20,956 (1.86%), and various “national lists” —31,623 (2.8% —no ethnic breakdown is available) (366). These figures differ from those often invoked by Moldovan historiography, according to which the SRs had allegedly won around 60% of the vote, the Bolsheviks—around 20–25%, while the MNP—around 2.2%. It is clear that these data should be significantly revised and nuanced, even if the general contention that local nationalism was rather weak remains true. The elections could be held only in certain Bessarabian towns and villages. They were marred by the growing social disruption and anarchy: Negru, Ţarismul şi mişcarea naţională a românilor din Basarabia, 97.

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ronment for mass political inclusion. Aside from being attracted by the revolutionary parties’ propaganda, the first signs of a national agenda among the troops were apparent as early as the spring of 1917. Intensified by the contact with the Romanian prisoners from the Austro-Hungarian units, a lively campaign among Bessarabian soldiers stationed in Kiev and Odessa got underway. In this respect, the developments in Bessarabia are similar to the Ukrainian case, where the increasing “nationalization” of the troops and the creation of national army units were pursued by both the Russian Empire and the Central Powers. As in Ukraine, these forces proved fateful for the outcome of the political struggle after the collapse of the imperial regime.68 The impact of the politicization of the military soon reached Bessarabia proper. Though the first articulated political programs were formulated at earlier assemblies of the cooperative movement, the peasants and the local teachers during April and May 1917, the decisive steps for the legitimization of local autonomy and the convocation of the local assembly (Sfatul Ţării) were taken during the Moldavian Military Congress held in Kishinev on October 20–27, 1917. On this occasion, the profound rifts between the nationalizing and socializing priorities of the different groups in the military became apparent. The final resolution of the congress, which was in fact a compromise between the rival factions, declared Bessarabia’s allegiance to the project of a Russian federative democratic republic of which the territory was to be a constituent part. The concrete terms of Bessarabia’s “political and territorial” autonomy were to be deferred until the convocation of the Russian Constituent Assembly. Thus, the framework for political legitimacy still had its source in the presumable representative body of a renewed and “democratic” Russian statehood.69 One should emphasize that even as late as December 1917, when the former political space of the Russian Empire was in full turmoil, the majority of the Bessarabian elites were rather reluctant to accept the possibility of the “Romanian solution” and wanted to preserve their newly won agency even at the risk of being engulfed by chaos. The 68 A detailed and illuminating discussion of the various occupation policies and changing political regimes in Ukraine during 1917 and 1918 can be found in Hagen, War in a European Borderland, 87–114. 69 For a detailed account of the ethnic mobilization of the newly established “Moldavian” military units, see Dinu Poștarencu, Basarabia în anii Primului Război Mondial [Bessarabia during World War I] (Chișinău: Editura Lexon Prim, 2019), 191–195, 255–258.

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political vision of Bessarabian policymakers still rejected nationalism as a realistic option for the postimperial context. The situation only changed radically in the first days of January 1918. From the perspective of the Bessarabian elites (both “old” and “new”), Romanian military intervention in Bessarabia was essentially a matter of political (and physical) survival. The fear of chaos and anarchy was linked, on the one hand, to the disintegrating Russian army that was retreating in complete disarray through Bessarabia on its way to the Russian interior.70 The situation became uncontrollable in late December 1917 and early January 1918 when the feeble attempts of Sfatul Ţării and the newly installed local government—the Council of Directors-General— to restore a semblance of discipline and order abysmally failed. On the other hand, the government’s authority was contested in Kishinev and the other major cities by the Soviets, which increasingly fell under the sway of the Bolsheviks. During the first days of January 1918, the main city of the region was effectively controlled by Bolshevik paramilitary units or Bolshevized troops of the local garrison.71 Thus, the summoning of the Romanian troops was the only acceptable solution not only for the local Bessarabian notables but also, at least in the short term, for the anti-Bolshevik Russian forces and for the German armies that asserted their military hegemony on the Eastern Front. The Romanians themselves initially did not use any national arguments to justify their entry into Bessarabia, specifically emphasizing the “law and order” dimension.72 Ultimately, it was the harsh geopolitical reality of postimperial collapse and the evolution of international politics that forced the Bessarabian elites to negotiate a compromise with the Romanian government in March 1918 (the “Act of Union” voted by Sfatul Ţării on March 27, 1918). The terms of Bessarabia’s integration into Romania were, however, rejected by the Romanian government in November 1918, preparing the ground for the difficult “nationalization” of the region as a part of interwar Greater Romania. 70 On the chaotic and anarchic situation on the Romanian Front, mainly caused by the Bolshevization of Russian troops and their disorderly retreat to the East through Bessarabia, see Glenn E. Torrey, The Romanian Battlefront in World War I (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 265–270. 71 Iziaslav E. Levit, God sud’bonosnyi: Ot provozglasheniia Moldavskoi Respubliki do likvidatsii avtonomii Bessarabii (noiabr’ 1917 g.–noiabr’ 1918 g.) (Chișinău: Tipografia Centrală, 2000), 151–216. 72 Levit, God sud’bonosnyi, 216–220, 251–252.

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The Case of Bukovina: Russian Occupation, Repressive Population Politics, and Uncertain Loyalties Unlike Bessarabia, Bukovina (and the neighboring region of Galicia to the northwest) became one of the major battlefields in the clash between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian forces after the outbreak of war. In fact, the region was occupied by the Russian troops three times: from October to November 1914 (when the Russians were briefly repelled by Austrian forces), from November 1914 to February 1915, and again from June 1916 to August 1917. In late August and early September 1914, the Russian army occupied the provincial capital, Czernowitz, and the northern part of the area. Initially, the local multiethnic population displayed a high degree of loyalty toward the Habsburg Monarchy. During the autumn of 1914, voluntary self-defense battalions and the troops mobilized from among local gendarmes (organized by the provincial gendarme chief, Colonel Eduard Fischer) engaged in a guerilla war against the Russian occupiers. This phenomenon has been labeled as “small war” in Austrian historiography. With the support of the local population, the Austrian forces resisted the Russian advance until the very end of 1914. Loyalty, however, was also “boosted” by certain repressive measures taken by the Austrian authorities. The Austrian troops arrested substantial numbers of people they regarded as Romanian or Old Ruthenian nationalists. Moreover, during their retreat, they shot fleeing peasants they suspected of treason. Austrian investigations later estimated the number of those shot at between 18 and 42 people.73 Similar to Bessarabia, Bukovina was an ethnically diverse region, featuring Ukrainians (Ruthenians), Romanians, Jews, Germans, Poles, and Hungarians among its major communities, with Orthodoxy as the dominant denomination. The autonomous Church of Bukovina was headed by Metropolitan Vladimir Repta, who was under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Russian occupation forces were apparently encouraged by this fact, hoping for swift success in the establishment of the Russian civilian administration in the region and for a “harmonious” collaboration with the local population. One of the most active Russian officials 73 Mariana Hausleitner, Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina—Die Durchsetzung des nationalstaatlichen Anspruchs Grossrumäniens 1918–1944 (Munich: Verlag R. Oldenbourg, 2001), 84.

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on the ground, the Foreign Ministry’s attaché to the Southwestern Front, Court Chamberlain Valer’ian Nikolaevich Murav’ev (whose ideas and views proved essential for the brutal and violent policies pursued by the Russian army toward the Jews, as I show below), noted in this regard: “One can feel here [within the Church] a new link between us and them, in particular during the conversations with the priests. Here, they especially highlight the liberatory character of the war, even though the general population is not yet completely certain about the durability of our conquest and is thus afraid to express itself openly.”74 However, these hopes for a favorable attitude of the local population toward the Russian occupation authorities proved to be unfounded. This hostility of the local—particularly urban—population was due, not least, to the violent and brutal governing strategies applied by the Russian administration during the first occupation. The attempt to establish a functional Russian civilian administration met with only partial success, as military clashes continued throughout the area. As mentioned above, the former Bessarabian vice-governor, S. D. Evreinov, was appointed as the head of the regional civilian authorities, being subordinated directly to the Galician Governor-General Count Bobrinskii. One of the first measures taken by Evreinov in his new capacity was to disband the municipal council of Czernowitz and to arrest and deport the city’s former mayor, Salomon Weisselberger (who was of Jewish origin), as well as a number of other prominent local figures, such as the Young Ruthenian deputy Spenul and the editor-in-chief of Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung, Philipp Menczel. Moreover, Metropolitan Repta had been pressured to conduct a prayer service for the Russian tsar on September 18. He had only agreed to do this after his rather bureaucratic demand for a formal order in writing had been granted by Governor Evreinov.75 Nevertheless, these repressive and coercive measures were accompanied by a host of other decisions adjusting (if not completely overturning) the traditional ethnic hierarchies in the region. Following the disbanding of the Czernowitz municipal council, the governor appointed a new city administration, placing at its head the prominent Romanian activist Temistocle 74 Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Imperii (AVPRI), f. 135, op. 474, d. 163, l. 6v. 75 “Aus schwerer Leidenszeit—Die Vorgänge in Czernowitz während der russischen Okkupation,” Neue Freie Presse, November 24, 1914, 4–5.

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Bocancea. This choice signaled the intricate entanglements between the politics of occupation and foreign policy priorities that would become crucial for the Russian strategy in Bukovina. The Russian government sought to placate its potential Romanian ally, in particular during the first phase of negotiations regarding Romania’s possible entry into the war on the side of the Entente. As Romania insisted on acquiring Southern Bukovina, inhabited by a Romanian majority, and expended considerable energy on the delimitation of the future Russian-Romanian border during the postwar settlement, the Russian government’s friendly attitude toward the province’s Romanians was a clear display of goodwill meant for the authorities in Bucharest. V. Murav’ev, the above-mentioned representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Bukovina, suggested to his superiors to instrumentalize Romania’s interest in Southern Bukovina. He believed that, in case the Russian troops would be forced to retreat from the areas inhabited by Romanians, the army should hand over power to the local Romanian notables. In his view, this decision would leave the Austrians between a rock and a hard place, since they would have to suppress the “independence, achieved in all but name by the Bukovinian Romanians.”76 Although it did not happen after the end of the first Russian occupation, in February 1915, this scenario did play out, in part, after the Russian military forces retreated from Bukovina in the summer of 1917. On this occasion, Southern Bukovina was left under the control of Russia’s Romanian allies, basically in accordance with the demarcation line agreed upon by Romania’s treaty with the Entente of August 1916. However, even during the existence of the Russian-Romanian alliance, Bukovina remained a contested territory, at least in the imaginaries produced by wartime Russian nationalism. A fascinating example in this regard is the case of Dmitrii N. Vergun, a Galician-born Russian nationalist activist, Pan-Slavist writer, and member of the Special Section (Osobyi Otdel) of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.77 An ardent supporter of Galicia’s 76 AVPRI, f. 135, op. 474, d. 163, l. 30v. 77 For more on this organization and its impact upon the wartime nationalizing ideology and policy of the Russian Empire toward the Ukrainian population of Austria-Hungary (notably of Galicia and Bukovina), see Alexei Miller, “Zaveshchanie obshcherusskoi idei: Memorandumy Osobogo Politicheskogo Otdela MID tsarskomu, vremennomu i bol’shevistskomu pravitel’stvam,” in Imperiia Romanovykh i natsionalism. Esse po metodologii istoricheskogo isssledovaniia (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2009), 241–273.

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and Bukovina’s annexation to the Russian Empire, Vergun also served as the vice-president of the “Russian-Galician Society,” the main propaganda center dealing with the “Galician Question” during the war. On the occasion of Romania’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente, Vergun drafted a “resolution of the Russian-Galician Society” regarding “Romania’s frontiers with Austria.”78 The essence of his position on Bukovina was that “the reunification of the entire Russian Bukovina with the rest of Russia should be achieved at whatever cost.”79 In this context, Vergun appeared to be one of the few Russian public figures to use the designation of “Green Russia” (Zelenaia Rus’) for the territory of Bukovina, thus marking its belonging to the Russian national space. While attempting to construct a coherent Russian nationalist discourse on Bukovina, he rejected outright any possible territorial concessions in Romania’s favor as a consequence of the ongoing negotiations about the future border demarcation. Vergun asserted that, besides Russia’s historical rights over the province, the empire also possessed “two other fundamental rights: 1. The democratic right of the common Russian blood and 2. The right stemming from the blood we had spilled in order to take Bukovina back from Austria.”80 Consequently, the envisaged RussianRomanian border on the Prut River was unacceptable for Vergun. In a number of later articles and memoranda on the “Bukovinian question” drafted in the fall of 1916, Vergun fervently advocated a “permanent alliance” between Russia and Romania (with the latter obviously playing second fiddle). He still insisted that a division of Bukovina between the two states should not be allowed, emphasizing that the continued “foreign domination” over even a small part of the “Russians” of that area would create an issue similar to the previous situation in Galicia, producing a new Ukrainian “Piedmont” that would cast doubt over the unity of the Russian national body.81 In another polemical article, although admitting the possibility of Romanian control over a part of the province, Vergun bluntly concluded that “the Romanians have no right to demand, either from an ethnographical or from a cultural point of view, the inclusion of these Russian [i.e., Ruthenian] districts into 78 The Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv; RGIA), f. 909, op. 1, d. 427. 79 RGIA, f. 909, op. 1, d. 427, l. 1. 80 RGIA, f. 909, op. 1, d. 427, l. 1. 81 RGIA, f. 909, op. 1, d. 7, l. 2.

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the future Greater Romania.”82 Combining the rhetoric of “historical rights” with pragmatic arguments, Vergun’s pronouncements are an excellent illustration of the blurred lines and close entanglements between the competing imperial actors’ domestic and foreign policy in wartime. Despite the encouraging signals sent by the newly installed Russian administration to the Romanian community in Bukovina, the local clergy had a very reserved (if not outright hostile) attitude toward the occupiers. This attitude stemmed, among other things, from the barely concealed interest displayed by the highest Russian church authorities toward the vast land holdings and assets belonging to the local church and managed by the Ecclesiastical Fund of Bukovina.83 When the Russian troops were forced to temporarily retreat from Bukovina, in October 1914, the local population enthusiastically welcomed back the Austro-Hungarian army, while Metropolitan Repta, partially compromised by his (unwilling) collaboration with the occupiers, left Czernowitz and transferred his residence to Vatra Dornei, situated on Austrian-controlled territory in Southern Bukovina. Even if the Austro-Hungarian administration only reluctantly welcomed the Metropolitan in his self-imposed exile, harboring suspicions about his actions during the Russian occupation, this astute move allowed him to remain within his diocese and, at least theoretically, to further claim jurisdiction as the Orthodox Metropolitan of all Bukovina.84 However, despite his clever strategy, Archbishop Repta’s consent to hold a mass for the Russian emperor’s well-being in September 1914 came back to haunt him four years later. In late August 1918, with the Austrians back in control, the major newspapers in Czernowitz, acknowledging the Metropolitan’s “predicament” under Russian rule, nevertheless condemned him and his deputy, Manastyrski, for having “succumbed to compliance in times of serious ordeal.” The positions of Repta and Manastyrski had become untenable, and the emperor finally dismissed both of them.85 The Russian government’s attempt to pursue, in Bukovina, an occupation policy similar to the radical strategy of national integration, ethnically tar82 83 84 85

RGIA, f. 909, op. 1, d. 9, l. 1. AVPRI, f. 135, op. 474, d. 165, l. 10. Bakhturina, Okrainy Rossiiskoi Imperii, 156–157. “Zum Wechsel in der Leitung der griechisch-orientalischer Bukowinaer Erzdiözese (Vom Tage),” Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung/Czernowitzer Tagblatt (Gemeinsame Kriegsausgabe), August 31, 1918, 2.

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geted repression, and forced conversion applied in Galicia failed, but only up to a point. Certainly, both the ethnic makeup and the religious landscape in Bukovina were significantly different from the Galician context. Two other factors differentiated the situation in the two neighboring Austrian provinces. First, the civilian authorities in Bukovina had a much weaker position in comparison with the military, which held the upper hand. No powerful figures equivalent to Count G. Bobrinskii or Archbishop Evlogii, who were able to impose their own radical transformative agenda in Galicia, emerged in Bukovina. The second factor, as discussed above, was Romania’s position. As Aleksandra Bakhturina highlights, the Russian “policy in Bukovina almost entirely depended on the Russian policy towards Romania. Control over Bukovina was particularly important precisely for supporting Russian influence in Bucharest.”86 As emphasized above, the foreign policy dimension and the fact that Russia had to compete for Bukovina not with an adversary but with a potential (and then actual) ally—Romania—forced the Russians to frequently follow a more pragmatic approach toward the local Romanians (if not toward the “Ukrainophile” Ruthenians or the Jews). While all this should be kept in mind, it did not mean that the Russian occupying authorities shied away from radical measures or even from occasional extreme brutality. In fact, just like Galicia (if less systematically so), Bukovina became one of the testing grounds for the new and violent version of wartime Russian population politics. Several Russian officials dispatched to Bukovina held the dubious distinction of pioneering figures in the field. One eloquent example concerns the Gerovskii brothers, Alexei and Georgii. They were well-known Pan-Slavists and Russian nationalists (of Bukovinian descent) who figured prominently in the infamous “Hungarian treason trial” in Marmaros-Sziget (today Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania), held before the war, during which they were accused of pro-Russian agitation and arrested by the Habsburg authorities. Interestingly, Count Bobrinskii, the famous Pan-Slavist activist and the future governor-general of Galicia during the war, appeared in court for their defense.87 After the Russian occupation of Bukovina, the Gerovskii brothers became close collaborators— and, apparently, chief ideologists—of the new Russian administration in 86 Bakhturina, Okrainy Rossiiskoi Imperii, 157. 87 “Hungarian Treason Trial—Dramatic Appearance of Count Bobrinsky at Marmaros Sziget,” New York Times, February 22, 1914.

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Czernowitz. Alexei Gerovskii served as Governor Evreinov’s personal secretary and was widely regarded as the “evil genius” behind the abuses perpetrated under Russian rule and the climate of fear, rape, extortion, denunciations, arrests, anti-Semitic violence, and deportations that quickly became a daily routine.88 When the Russian occupation troops reached the Romanian-inhabited town of Kimpolung (Câmpulung), Alexei Gerovskii expressed his disappointment at the cool reception the Russian “liberators” were given by “the Romanians,” adding that “the Romanian government and the Romanian people supported the Russians and that the Romanian clergy had no reason to be loyal to Austria, since they had been oppressed enough.” However, these musings did not spare the town from being plundered by the Russian army.89 The Gerovskii brothers continued to promote their Russian nationalist agenda during the second Russian occupation of Bukovina, starting from June 1916, insisting on the incorporation of the entire region into the Russian Empire. However, their career ended abruptly after the February Revolution, when they were put under arrest. An even more revealing example of the complex intertwining between the structural foundations for ethnic-based violence and the impact of the personal factor is the case of the (already mentioned) representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bukovina and one of the most ardent advocates of extreme repressive measures against the local Jewish population, Valer’ian Murav’ev. The role of senior military officials like Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich or his chief of staff, General Nikolai Ianushkevich, in supporting and fomenting a radical vision of population politics in the war zone, and particularly on the occupied territories, has been thoroughly documented.90 However, the initiatives of less-prominent officials (enthusiastically supported by their superiors) proved just as consequential in this respect, given the fact that “Antisemitism totally pervaded [the Russian] General Headquarters,” while “for General Ianushkevich, the antisemitic 88 Such assessments can be found in the collected correspondence from occupied Bukovina containing detailed descriptions of life under the Russian administration: Hugo Schulz, ed., In den Karpathen und im Buchenland (Der österreichisch-ungarische Krieg in Feldpostbriefen, vol. 2) (Munich: Müller, 1916), 196–319. 89 Kapuscinski m.p. (Landesregierungsrat), Russeninvasion in Kimpolung in der Zeit vom 6. Jänner 1915 bis 5. Februar 1915, z.Zl. 4068/M.I. ex 1915, Vienna, February 10, 1915/KÜA (1915), Karton 36, fasc. 20.421. 90 See, for example, Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, 17–22.

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program was an end in itself.”91 After his arrival in Czernowitz in late September 1914, Murav’ev immediately immersed himself in the intricacies of the local ethno-political landscape. Arguing for a favorable and “tactful” policy regarding the Romanian community (for reasons outlined above), Murav’ev persistently attempted to persuade his superiors to approve harsh repressive measures against the Bukovinian Jews. His view of this community as untrustworthy and deeply hostile to Russia was exacerbated by wartime paranoia, leading to recommendations along these lines: “We should take the most severe repressive measures toward those individuals—primarily Jews—who during our retreat openly mocked Russia and now persecute our supporters.”92 Moreover, in two reports submitted in late November 1914 and early January 1915, covering the “Austrian atrocities” presumably perpetrated during the recent Russian retreat from Bukovina, Murav’ev further insisted on the pernicious activities that the local Jews had engaged in, concluding that “the peasants expect from us liberation from the Jewish yoke.”93 Murav’ev’s views and policy recommendations served as the basis for the order issued by Ianushkevich on January 22, 1915, which approved the deportations and hostage-taking that would continue for the next six months and would leave an indelible mark on the entire region. Nevertheless, Murav’ev’s opinions “became significant not due to his institutional position, but due solely to the support his views received from Emperor Nicholas II.”94 After the Russian retreat from Bukovina in February 1915, the tsar issued an order, in March, instructing his subordinates that “those nationalities that are hostile to us will have to answer for atrocities … against the Slavic and Romanian population of Bukovina. This threat ought to be implemented immediately upon the occupation of even a portion of Bukovina, as soon as the atrocities which have been perpetrated are discovered.”95 The policy of “preemptive 91 Peter Holquist, “The Role of Personality in the First (1914–1915) Russian Occupation of Galicia and Bukovina,” in Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History, ed. Jonathan DekelChen, David Gaunt, Natan M. Meir, and Israel Bartal (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 52–73. 92 AVPRI, f. 133, op. 470 [Kantseliariia ministra], 1914, d. 367, l. 74. Cited in Holquist, “The Role of Personality,” 63. 93 AVPRI, f. 133, op. 470 [Kantseliariia ministra], 1914, d. 367, l. 74; italics in original. 94 Holquist, “The Role of Personality,” 64. 95 S. G. Nelipovich, “Naselenie okkupirovannykh territorii rassmatrivalos’ kak rezerv protivnika: Internirovanie chasti zhitelei Vostochnoi Prussii, Galitsii i Bukoviny v 1914–1915,” Voenno- istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 2 (2000): 60–69. Cited in Holquist, “The Role of Personality,” 65.

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reprisals” against perceived hostile ethnic groups in Galicia and Bukovina reached its height in the spring of 1915. However (and rather tellingly), this policy of targeted ethnic persecution was not repeated during the second Russian occupation of the area in 1916–1917, which points to the salience of the personal factor and to the fact that the directives of the military high command for the persecution of Jews and the Russian officials’ condoning of anti-Semitic violence were crucial in the unleashing of this terror campaign. The issue of collective loyalty and the politicization of ethnicity reemerged once the Austrian troops returned to the province in the spring of 1915. The general image that the Austrian administration in Bukovina reported to Vienna was that of a staunchly loyal population. This optimistic picture was only occasionally marred by unfortunate exceptions, as the acting governor Erzdorf reported in February 1915.96 Likewise, a general report based on the wartime correspondence between Ruthenian-speaking POWs and their relatives painted a rosy picture of the wide-ranging feelings of loyalty among the inhabitants of the northern, “Ruthenian,” area of Bukovina: “What seems striking initially in the correspondence from this area is the general surfacing of national consciousness—but in the Austrian, loyal (kaisertreu) context—as well as the extremely low effectiveness and impact of the Russophile propaganda.”97 However, this picture of widespread loyalty to the throne did not preclude the Austrian authorities from resorting to a series of repressive measures. After the retreat of the Russian troops in February 1915, a large number of people were arrested and transferred to the Talerhof internment camp. During two treason trials in Vienna in 1915 and 1916, 30 Russophiles from Galicia and Bukovina were sentenced to death.98 Some local officials, moreover, like the above-mentioned Colonel Eduard Fischer, advocated more decisive measures against local Russophiles, on the one hand, and warned about the escalating danger of nationalist Romanian 96 Josef Erzdorf, Situation in der Bukowina, Zl. 722/K Präs., Kolozsvár, February 12, 1915/OeSTA/KA/ KÜA (1915), Karton 34, fasc. 18924. 97 K.u.K. Major Theodor Primavesi, Bericht des Leiters der Zensur-Abteilung für Kriegsgefangenen-Korrespondenz (Ruthenen in der Bukowina und dem angrenzenden Gebiete der Waldkarpathen), Vienna, June 20, 1915, Austrian State Archive, War Archive (Kriegsarchiv)/Armeeoberkommando/Gemeinsames Zentralnachweisbüro (AOK/GZNB), 18–19. 98 The sentences, however, were commuted to life imprisonment and the prisoners were all released in 1917. For more on this, see Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 466.

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propaganda (aided and abetted by the Russians, albeit for pragmatic purposes), on the other.99 After the second Russian occupation, in late 1917, in a curious “mirror image” of the report submitted by his Bessarabian counterpart, Nordberg, two years earlier, Colonel Fischer drafted a document reflecting on the loyalty question in Bukovina along ethnic lines. He concluded that the Romanian nationalist intelligentsia had actively supported antiMonarchy forces, while the Romanian-speaking peasants had largely maintained their loyalty for pragmatic reasons, mostly for the sake of stability. Fischer emphasized that, after the Russian Revolution, the Russophile (Old Ruthenian) tendency had all but disappeared, and the Ruthenian peasantry mostly followed the example of the Romanian peasants, even though the developments in Russia did attract some adherents in their midst. While all the Germans had remained “trustworthy” and loyal, as had the Jewish civil servants, it was striking—given the harshness of the Russian anti-Semitic policies—that Fischer had a more skeptical attitude toward the Jewish community as a whole, claiming that many Jews had done well during the occupation and had even provoked the envy of those Jews who had fled to the West.100 These assessments provoked the energetic rebuttal of the Jewish MP Bruno Straucher, who argued, first, that more than 90% of the Jewish population had fled Bukovina before the second Russian invasion in June 1916 and, second, that the Jews of Bukovina had generally maintained their “flawlessly loyal attitude” (ihre tadellose loyale Haltung).101 This complex picture of uncertain and changing loyalties is directly relevant to the wider issue of the specificity and peculiarity of the Habsburg wartime policies toward enemy aliens, interned civilians, and untrustworthy ethnic groups. While no systematic direct comparisons have been made between the approaches followed by the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires in this regard, recent analyses of the Habsburg case have rejected 99 For more details, see H. F. van Drunen, “‘A Sanguine Bunch.’ Regional Identification in Habsburg Bukovina, 1774–1919,” PhD Dissertation, Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR), Amsterdam, 2013. Available at: https://dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=b050d774-ec51-401f-8eda-ffb85b33c048 (Accessed March 15, 2023). 100 Erich Prokopowitsch, Das Ende der österreichischen Herrschaft in der Bukowina (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1959), 16–17. 101 Präsidium des k.k. Ministeriums des Innern, Verhalten der Bukowinaer Juden während der russischen Invasion; Eingabe des Reichsratsabgeordneten Dr. Straucher und Genossen, 8246 MP, Vienna, November 30, 1917/Romanian National Archives (ANR), f. “Guvernământul Bucovinei,” MI, folder 84/3.

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the earlier consensus of a more “lenient” Habsburg model of population politics.102 As Stibbe astutely notes—highlighting the similarities between the common underlying rationales and strategies of the entangled imperial policies in wartime Eastern Europe—the wartime strategy regarding enemy aliens “implied a xenophobic-nationalist (re)mobilisation of the Monarchy, ending the open policy of the pre-war era,” while the military’s interactions with purportedly “hostile, disloyal or treacherous populations” in the borderlands turned the latter into “victims of an imperialist mistrust of internal national movements,” in the process “replac[ing] traditional notions of ethnic impartiality and Gerechtigkeit … with very narrow definitions of patriotic loyalty and a more or less open discrimination against particular national groups.”103 To use a rhetorical question, how different is this picture, essentially, from the image conveyed by Peter Gatrell and Eric Lohr in the Russian case? While violence was undoubtedly applied on a much broader scale and much more systematically and ruthlessly in the Romanov Empire, one can only agree with Stibbe’s conclusion that “there was also a transnational dynamic of internment and related brutalities, which the Habsburg Empire, like other warring states, clearly contributed to.”104 It would be an error to “normalize” the Russian case in any way—the intensity of Russian “war nationalism” was indeed unparalleled in its practical consequences— but it would be equally wrong to portray Russia as somehow exceptional in the context of wartime population politics. Instead of a Conclusion: The Opportunities and Limits of Comparison This study raises a number of methodological questions concerning the use of comparison as an analytical tool. First, there is the issue of the different scales of (asymmetric) comparison. As already suggested, one possible level 102 See, for example, Matthew Stibbe, “Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees: Internment Practices in the Habsburg Empire, 1914–1918,” Journal of Modern European History 12, no. 4 (2014): 479–499. The author argues that “Austro-Hungarian policies are a key part of the story of First World War internment, not simply a dull or inconsequential echo of policies pursued elsewhere” (483). In this respect, see also Matthew Stibbe, “Introduction: Captivity, Forced Labour, and Forced Migration during the First World War,” Immigrants and Minorities 26, nos. 1–2 (March/July 2008): 1–18. 103 Stibbe, “Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees” 497. 104 Stibbe, “Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees,” 498.

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would be the juxtaposition of the Russian and Habsburg/Austro-Hungarian “models” of population politics and ethnic mobilization (to the extent such “models” can be identified). A related question concerns the interimperial entanglements during wartime. On the one hand, these entanglements could be approached from the narrower perspective of direct borrowing and emulation of governing strategies and visions by the belligerents, as well as by looking at the mutual radicalization of the politics of ethnicity under the impact of the corresponding practices of the adversary, especially in areas under military occupation. On the other hand, the prewar and wartime historical experience of the Russian-Romanian borderlands can be interpreted in terms of various entanglements, followed by violent and brutal processes of disentanglement, accelerated by the war and its aftermath, which defined the transition from the imperial to the postimperial order. In the concrete cases of Bessarabia and Bukovina, this also meant that the two regions were integrated into the same nation-state after 1918, which had to confront rather different imperial legacies and ethnic hierarchies in the two provinces. Another relevant comparative dimension is the wider regional framework that underwent dramatic shifts during the war, when the developments in Bukovina became intricately linked to the Russian designs on Galicia and to the Russian government’s foreign policy calculations involving Romania. Conversely, especially after the collapse of the imperial regime, Bessarabia found itself immersed in the complicated combination of revolutionary turmoil, the ephemeral military hegemony of the Central Powers, state collapse (both in the Russian and the Romanian case), and the emergence of new (albeit short-lived) regional players—namely, the Ukrainian nation-building project—that fundamentally changed the “rules of the game.” Finally, to what extent are the two regions, in themselves, methodologically legitimate “objects of comparison,” given the differences in their respective prewar imperial settings (if one perceives these settings as a kind of “starting points”)? In my view, Bessarabia’s and Bukovina’s prewar trajectories as imperial provinces were broadly comparable, even if not quite similar. Both regions emerged ex nihilo, with no clear territorial precedents before their annexation to the Russian (1812) and Austrian (1775) Empires, respectively. Both were multiethnic and multicultural areas subject to systematic policies of state-sponsored colonization. Both regions had a roughly similar proportion of Romanian-speaking populations, thus increasing the possibil146

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ity of ethnic manipulation during wartime, but also enhancing the significance of transborder ethnic ties with the Romanian Kingdom during international crises. The structural differences were, certainly, no less salient. The status of the elites, the role of the Orthodox Church, the degree of political participation, and the patterns of identity politics were the main differentiating factors in the two cases. The war radically altered this previous situation, giving rise to new loyalty patterns and ethnic hierarchies. Another important reason for comparing Bessarabia and Bukovina is that the former was not directly occupied during the war (albeit indirectly affected by the conflagration), while the latter witnessed a period of enemy occupation. This difference is a crucial factor pertaining to the intensity of the war experience. Despite the importance of structural factors and of the policy shifts at the level of central decision-makers, I also seek to tackle the role (not to abuse the ubiquitous concept of agency) of concrete personalities who, on certain occasions, shaped policy to a surprising extent, especially under the conditions of institutional conflict, elite rivalry, or outright chaos that prevailed during and after the war. Be they imperial administrators, nationalist activists, local revolutionaries, or the anonymous soldiers contributing to the unraveling of the empire, these people took full advantage of—and fell victim to— the dynamics of transformation and destruction that changed these previously “quiet” borderlands beyond recognition.

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Painting Dogs into R acoons: Entertainment and Culture in the Gulag Oksana Ermolaeva

Introduction: “Cultural Colonization” in the Gulag as a Research Subject1 Here he is, almost flying around the circle lightly. He freezes, and then goes back into a fast dance tempo. Another man, almost an elderly, can’t resist, jumps into the circle, swirling around in the dance just as cheerfully and briskly. All are dancing or clapping hands to the rhythm: Georgians, Uzbeks, Russians; Comrade [Lazar] Kogan, the head of the ­construction, applauds and, getting into the spirit, goes into a little dance himself, followed by the other Chekists … The lezginka gives way to the hopak and “Barynya” … Now everyone is dancing, dances alternating with songs.2

This picture of the general merriment of Soviet Chekists and their prisoners—incidentally, recorded by the latter—comes from the rally of the White Sea–Baltic Canal builders that took place on August 25, 1933, in 1 This research was accomplished under the aegis of the Research Fellowship from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, Germany. 2 Perekovka, no. 58 (August 25, 1933).

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Dmitrov. The meeting, which was called up by the OGPU3 Main Camp Administration (Gulag) and lasted for several days, was attended by the model workers of the canal—engineers, technicians, Cultural-Educational Division staff, and rank-and-file canal builders. It was dedicated to the celebration of the opening of the first Stalin canal—the White Sea–Baltic Canal and the beginning of the construction of the second—the MoskvaVolga Canal—under the slogan, invented then and there, in between singing and dancing—“Now it is the Moskva that flows along the Kremlin; we will make the Volga flow there!”4 Soon enough that episode would be forgotten, and many of its participants, including journalists, writers, and Chekists— and even the deputy head of the gulag, the construction head of both the White Sea–Baltic Canal and, until August 1936, the Moskva-Volga Canal, Lazar Kogan—would be executed. However, along with the enormous lies that accompanied the birth of Stalin’s hydrotechnical dictatorship, this episode, full of song and dance, is a fitting entry point into the world of gulag entertainment. Using the term “entertainment” in relation to the gulag is fraught with apparent contradictions, since the gulag camps were primarily about exploitation, coercion, and death. However, scholars have proved long ago that within the Soviet “conquest of nature” during Iosif Stalin’s period, the communist infusion of revolutionary enthusiasm, packed in the form of Soviet culture, into forced labor practices was regarded as a major instrument in colonizing and conquering nature as well as in the simultaneous transformation of humans and the environment to fit the dominant vision of holistic socialism.5 Thus, suffering and death coexisted with a stubborn Soviet 3 The Soviet-era Cheka (originally VCHEKA, an acronym derived from the Russian words for the AllRussian Extraordinary Commission for Combatting Counterrevolution and Sabotage), established in December 1917, and charged with counteracting the “counterrevolution and sabotage,” was reorganized in 1922 as the State Political Directorate, or GPU, of the NKVD of the RSFSR. In 1922, the USSR was created, with the RSFSR as its largest republic. The GPU became the OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate) under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR. 4 Perekovka, no. 58 (August 25, 1933). 5 For such discussions, see Andy R. Bruno, The Nature of Soviet Power. An Arctic Environmental History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Paul R. Josephson, Nikolai Dronin, Ruben Mnatsakanian, Aleh Cherp, Dimitry Efremenko, and Vladislav Larin, An Environmental History of Russia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Douglas Weiner, Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Russian and East European Studies) (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000); Steven A. Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011); Duccio Colombo, “Sbornik o Be-

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insistence not only on the “farce of correction” by the means of short-lived perekovka (reforging) policies, making the gulag a truly unique system,6 but also with the “social and cultural construction,” which implied long-term plans of introducing and maintaining cultural institutions in the respective regions.7 Not only propaganda but also entertainment was deemed an important component of Bolshevik cultural policies in the camps. This not only channeled Soviet ideology and Russian culture to boost the fulfillment of production output plans but also envisaged the creation of a cultural order in which the prisoners and their guards would receive some kind of common education and share in Russian high culture and Soviet culture that would serve as a unifying force for all Soviet citizens. The second layer of significance of the above-mentioned occurrence is that it marked an important milestone in propagandistic and cultural policies of the gulag. The year 1933, when this carnival in honor of the presupposed hydrotechnical triumph took place, was also the final year of the first stage of the Bolsheviks’ cultural project in the forced labor camps—namely, the perekovka. The term, voiced during the rally (slet), hailed this process of rehabilitating inmates as a major Soviet triumph, along with the canal construction—a fait accompli of human nature transformed through redemptive and glorious labor, also inscribed in Soviet literary works, newspaper articles, and theatrical plays of the time.8 Among other things, first, it presupposed a desire of the prisoners, especially common criminals, to be involved with amateur art. While the tradition of popular amateur performances dates back to prerevolutionary times, particularly to the end of the nineteenth century, the term got imbued with new significance in the Soviet period. “Self-activity” (samodeyatelnost) was claimed by the Soviet trade union movement as the embodiment of the spirit lomorkanale: Velikaia stroika Stalinskoi literatury,” Slavica Tergestina (2002): 231–243 ; Inna Klauze, “Music and ‘Re-education’ in the Soviet Gulag,” Torture 23, no. 2 (2013): 24–33; Alan Barenberg, Rethinking the Gulag: Identities, Sources, Legacies (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022); and Alan Barenberg and Wilson Bell, “New Directions in Gulag Studies: A Roundtable Discussion,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 59, nos. 3–4 (2017): 1–20. 6 Barnes, Death and Redemption. 7 National Archives of the Republic of Karelia (NARK), f. P–690, op. 6, d. 19, l. 495. 8 In addition to popular works, such as the collective volume on the White Sea–Baltic Canal titled Belomoro-Baltiiskii Kanal imeni Stalina: Istoriia stroitel’stva and Nikolai Pogodin’s play The Aristocrats (both published in 1934), a large number of newspaper articles and several propagandistic documentary films devoted to the forced labor camps were created in the 1930s.

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of an autonomous working class and its values.9 Second, it resulted in the policy of treating thieves and repeat offenders as “social allies,” granting them multiple privileges. By the mid-1930s the appeal to the creative energy of the prisoners in the form of literary and other kinds of amateur activity, so prominent at the time of the canal construction10 and praised during the rally, was over, as were the attempts at mass involvement of ordinary criminals in the cultural life at the camps.11 Nick Baron relates the actual end of “reforging” policy with [People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs] G. Yagoda’s order of April 2, 1936, aimed at placing cultural-educational work in the camps entirely at the service of production.12 The “reforging” policy yet again became a crucial subject of the central gulag apparatus party meeting in December 1938, where it was openly chastised and condemned in the final resolution of the meeting.13 During the second half of the 1930s, amateur art remained an important propagandistic instrument in the camps, mainly in relation to the camps’ hired staff and the guards, coexisting with other forms of Soviet propaganda and with the newly created professionalized entertainment networks. This time, it was mostly political prisoners, and not criminal offenders, who were actively involved in these activities, albeit unofficially and simply for the reason that without their skills and education, multiple professional and amateur clubs would become dysfunctional.14 Thus, from 1934 onward, by replacing the “reforging” culture with its amateur shows staged by prisoners, a new era of the Soviet ideological and 9 Lynn Mally, Revolutionary Acts: Amateur Theater and the Soviet State, 1917–1938 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 23. 10 Regular literary and theatrical contests among the White Sea–Baltic Canal prisoners organized by the Cultural-Educational Divisions (KVO) are especially interesting in this respect. For example, in June 1932, a contest organized by the Perekovka newspaper included such categories as the best story, the best essay or feuilleton, and the best repertoire of smaller literary forms (“live newspaper,” sketches, etc.) There were 60 works sent to the commission consisting of the Cultural-Educational Division staff. The majority of the works presented were written in the style of short stories, very much reminiscent of those collected in the volume Belomoro-Baltiiskii Kanal. 11 An itinerant brigade of criminal offenders, prostitutes, and thieves under Igor Terent’ev (a gifted director, active in the “Left” art in Russia, 1892–1937) performed at the end of 1932 or early 1933 in Povenets. It was also known as the “Comrade Firin Propaganda Brigade” (named after a high-ranking chief of the gulag, S. G. Firin). The texts of their sketches were provided by their stage director and by poets from among the convicts; later the brigade was transferred to the Moscow-Volga Canal project. 12 Nick Baron, “Production and Terror: The Operation of the Karelian Gulag, 1933–1939,” Cahiers du Monde Russe 43, no. 1 (2002): 139–180. https://doi.org/10.4000/monderusse.8487. 13 The Central Archive of Social-Political History of Moscow (TsAOPIM), op. 3, d. 176, l. 2. 14 NARK, f. P–865.

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cultural experiment started—the epoch of institutionalized dramatic theatrical culture. In approaching this second, institutionalized stage of the history of gulag entertainment and culture, the current research focuses on the spatial component, namely, on the differences between the gulag centers and the gulag peripheries, proposing a case study of the propagandistic and cultural endeavors in a particular northwestern gulag enterprise, the White Sea–Baltic Combine and Camp of the NKVD (1934–1941). Recent interpretations emphasize that the gulag was the product of a state with a utopian vision aiming to control society but with little actual capacity to realize its ambitions when faced with such unprecedented challenges to resource development as the factors of climate and geography, as well as great distances between its enterprises and population centers.15 Extending this perspective, the current chapter presents a detailed investigation of the camp propaganda and entertainment by comparing cultural developments at the Combine and the camp center (Medvezhyegorsk) and at its peripheral subsections.16 The current work argues that the interpretation of the gulag’s “cultural colonization” impact largely depends on the geographic location and significance of a particular forced labor site. While the most typical and mainstream forms of Soviet propaganda as such were steadily rejected, ignored, and sabotaged in the camp centers and on their peripheries not only by the prisoners but also by the camp administration and the hired staff, the entertainment industry, in its various forms, was gradually developing at the camp centers and was well received by the majority of the gulag inhabitants. At the camp peripheries, however, these endeavors were doomed from the outset. By the end of the 1930s, the Combine center located in Medvezhyegorsk hosted a wide variety of cultural and intellectual events, including in its central theater. Run by the prisoners and suffering from multiple problems, deficiencies, and crises, stemming from its “camp” nature, it nevertheless acquired immense popularity in the region. Later, transferred from the gulag jurisdiction to that of the Karelian Republic and staffed with the recently freed pro15 Barenberg, Rethinking the Gulag. 16 Due to the space limitations of the current chapter, some “cultural-educational” activities of the Combine are left out, such as elementary schooling campaigns among the hired staff, the children, and the prisoners, undertaken by the Combine’s administration in the 1930s. Accordingly, the special settlements, a unique social and cultural space within the gulag, are not considered in the chapter, which mainly focuses on the forced labor camp aspect of the gulag.

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fessionals, it became a major artistic center. Outside of Medvezhyegorsk, the “cultural colonization” of the gulag, in the form of propaganda and entertainment, frequently remained an empty shell. Peripheral enterprises of the Combine remained sites of the prisoners’ death and survival amid inhuman exploitation; they also witnessed the degradation and corruption of their hired staff, conforming to the vision of the camps promoted by many gulag scholars.17 On top of the failure of the gulag’s “cultural colonization” project to “civilize” its camp peripheries, the “Great Terror” of 1937–1938 contributed to a further onslaught of the culture of the professional criminals, densely concentrated at the remote camp sites in the Northern areas of the country. For decades to come, criminal culture and jargon, as the only alternative left, permeated the social and cultural space of the “gulag peripheries.”18 This chapter seeks to make use of a varied source base to explore how propaganda and entertainment closely intertwined with each other at the ground-level of particular gulag sites. Therefore, this analysis is based on a broad range of primary and secondary materials. The chapter relies on the collections of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI), the Central Archive of Social-Political History of Moscow (TsAOPIM), the National Archives of the Republic of Karelia (NARK), and the Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Karelian Republic. The project also uses materials from the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution, and Peace (Stanford University, United States). Propaganda and Entertainment at the White Sea Combine and NKVD Camp: The Case of Medvezhyegorsk The White Sea–Baltic Combine (BBK), created after the completion of the White Sea Canal in 1933, on the basis of the White Sea–Baltic Camp (BBLag), positioned itself as an exemplary gulag enterprise and as a major colonizer in the region. The exploitation of the canal and the natural resources 17 Golfo Alexopolous, Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). 18 With the exception of the special settlements, which in certain gulag locations presented a different social and cultural picture, much more responsive to Soviet values and culture. See Oksana Klimkova, “Special Settlers in the Soviet Union,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 8, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 105–139.

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surrounding it, with the assistance of the camp’s networks and special settlements, became its primary task. During the years of its existence (1933– 1941), apart from timber felling, the Combine was engaged in industrial production and construction, having constructed several industrial enterprises in Karelia. The number of employed workers as well as the productive output of the Combine far exceeded that of the “civilian” Karelian economy. For example, while the industrial sector of the Karelian economy employed 5,000 workers in 1925–1926, by 1932, this number reached 23,000. At the Combine, the number of workers varied from 50,000 upward. The Combine comprised around 20 territorial sections (otdeleniia), stretching from southern Karelia to Murmansk, each subdivided into camp points (otdel´nye lagernye punkty) and mobile labor “columns” for prisoners working at different locations within a district, in addition to a ­number of “special settlements” for kulak exiles. The Combine also administered a youth colony at Nadvoitsy and a state farm (sovkhoz) near Povenets. Some of these sections, for example Segezhstroy, were at times directly subordinated to the NKVD Gulag Administration in Moscow. The structure of the central Combine administration in Medvezhya Gora (later renamed Medvezhyegorsk) was also based on Solovki Special Purpose Camp (SLON)’s organization,19 and comprised 22 departments in 1935 (increasing to 36 in late 1939), each of which was represented by a subdepartment within each section. The administration employed both free workers and prisoners: in the first (Medvezhyegorsk) section, for example, 129 out of 200 employees were prisoners.20 The Combine boasted its own train, aircraft, and its own permanent court, called “the Permanent Session of the Supreme Court of the Karelo-Finnish SSR at the White Sea–Baltic Combine.”21 As the camp’s reports demonstrate, during the 1930s the number of prisoners varied from around 75,000 to 85,000.22 This figure was still smaller than the number of prisoners involved in the earlier canal construction: in summer of 1932, the camp housed over 126,000 prisoners. By January 1, 1939, the number of the camp’s prisoners increased to 86,567; out of this number, 19 Solovetskie lageria osobogo naznacheniia. 20 Baron, “Production and Terror,” 139–180. 21 V. G. Makurov, ed., Gulag v Karelii: sbornik dokumentov i materialov 1930–1941 (Petrozavodsk: Karel’skii nauchnyi tsentr, 1992), 104. 22 Makurov, Gulag v Karelii, 138.

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those sentenced for “counterrevolutionary” crimes (mainly for espionage, terrorism, wrecking, and high treason) amounted to 29,706 (35%). The camp’s composition was a paradox, since, for some reason, the Combine was exempt from a special Soviet order that banned the expulsion of recidivists and “especially dangerous counterrevolutionary prisoners” to the camps located in the threatened Soviet borderlands and vulnerable locations, to which Soviet Karelia belonged in the 1930s, due to its geopolitical position. Prisoner transfers from one camp to another (po etapu) as well as internal transfers resulted in constant fluctuations in the overall number of prisoners. By July 8, 1938, the Combine hosted 28,083 special settlers in the 21 special settlements, for the most part constructed by the deportees themselves. The national composition of the settlers was marked by a high level of diversity, but Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Chuvash, Poles, Mordvins, and Germans predominated.23 From the outset, the Combine developed far-reaching plans of “cultural colonization.” According to the plan for Combine capital investments, dated 1934, from the entire budget of 54,064.4 thousand rubles, “social and cultural construction” spending amounted to 2,594.5 thousand rubles. This figure represented almost half of the investments into industrial construction as such, which totaled 5,721.5 thousand rubles.24 The reality looked much more modest, however: according to the financial report of the White Sea– Baltic Combine for 1936, dated March 26, 1937, in 1936, out of a total expenditure within the BBK of just over 12 million rubles, only 323,000 rubles were spent on educational and cultural work (equivalent to 2.7%).25 In 1937, the total capital investment plan for the Combine’s enterprises (i.e., excluding the more important felling and construction activities) was 586,000 rubles (in 1936 prices), of which a mere 15,000 rubles were allocated to educational and cultural work in the factories (2.7%).26 Nevertheless, by 1937 the White Sea–Baltic Combine’s educational-cultural network aimed not only at transmitting the Soviet ideology and culture but also at entertaining its laborers, at least on paper, extended to the remotest outskirts of the enterprise (Appendix 1). 23 Makurov, Gulag v Karelii, 146. 24 NARK, f. P–690, op. 6, d. 19, l. 495. The priorities were directed toward funds for boosting transport infrastructure (23,547.5 thousand rubles allocated) and “resettlement” (11,319.4 thousand rubles). 25 GA RF, f. 9414, op. 1a, d. 844, l. 34; Baron, “Production and Terror,” 139–180. 26 Baron, “Production and Terror,” 139–180.

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As a Combine center, Medvezhyegorsk hosted the Central Theater; a “cinematic-photographic sector;” a museum of the BBK; a pavilion exhibiting paintings of the “local artists;” a symphony orchestra and multiple bands; the camp’s “radio newspaper;” the newspapers Perekovka (Reforging),27 Stalinskaia trassa (Stalin’s Route), Stakhanovets Segezhstroia (The Stakhanovite Worker of Segezha Construction Trust), and Yunyi stroitel’ (Young Construction Worker); as well as the journals Belomorsko-Baltiiskii Kombinat (White Sea–Baltic Combine) and Pod znamenem Belomorstroia (Under the Banner of Belomorstroi).28 Multiple mobilization campaigns, eagerly supported by the female community assistants’ (obshchestvennitsy) movement, became typical for Medgora 29by 1937. Enthusiastic wives of some of the Combine’s administrators and of the armed guards organized regular “campaigns” and exhibitions aimed at raising the hygiene standards at the guards’ quarters, households, kindergartens, schools, and clubs.30 While Perekovka targeted prisoners, Stalinskaia trassa was issued every other day by the Political Section of the Combine and addressed the free workers, the camp’s staff, and the local population. Even mentioning the prisoners and their labor was banned there. But, since its major subject remained daily life at the camp subsections, where the “camp” and “noncamp” contexts became indistinguishable, the editors did their best to present a polished version of the camp reality. They mentioned the prisoners’ last names without adding “z/k” (inmate) to them, or simply called them “Stakhanovites” or “workers.”31 A network of smaller newspapers and “wallnewspapers” functioned in the individual subsections of the Combine. The central library of the Combine became an “exemplary gulag library.” At the beginning of 1936, the number of volumes there amounted to 50,000, while the number of readers reached around 35,000. Daily visits that ranged from 100 to 200 in 1935 sometimes exceeded 300 in 1936 (although the library was not equipped with a reading room). Despite the fact that from the mid-1930s the majority of newly arrived books and exhibitions were related to Soviet propaganda, visitors still preferred Russian and European classics. 27 In addition to Perekovka, the prisoners were supposed to receive the central newspapers—Izvestiia, Moskovskaia pravda, and Leningradskaia pravda—through a subscription network. 28 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 21 (1936). 29 A shorter and an informal name for Medvezhyegorsk, which was frequently used by the contemporaries. 30 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 2/8, l. 19. 31 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 15 (1936).

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According to the analysis of the library cards of the users, published in Stalinskaia trassa in 1936, the most popular works were those by Victor Hugo, Daniel Defoe, Jules Verne, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Theodore Dreiser; the satires of Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov, and Mikhail Zoshchenko; as well as the works of Ilya Ehrenburg, Alexey Novikov-Priboy, Vyacheslav Shishkov, Alexey Tolstoy, and Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak.32 The Central Library hosted regular exhibitions, their subjects ranging from the “life and creative work of favorite writers” (Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Nekrasov) to “antireligious” themes. The library also boasted a large, albeit not very popular, database of “writings relating to the Stakhanovite movement.”33 In 1937, with the “Great Terror” in full swing, the library offered to the population of Medvezhyegorsk a variety of concerts, performances, and literary evenings, devoted, among other things, to Alexander Pushkin’s days (Pushkinskie dni). The Central Theater of the White Sea–Baltic Combine: An Exemplary Case of “Gulag’s Cultural Colonization” The creation of the Central Theater of the White Sea–Baltic Combine, the most cherished cultural institution in the Karelian Gulag, was a spontaneous act, initiated by the “counterrevolutionary” prisoners, who, prior to their arrest, had belonged to the cultural elite of the country. Its history started from the appearance of the Solovki Theater, in the spring of 1923.34 It staged productions that had been already banned in the country at large. For example, the operetta Harlem Secrets, repeatedly staged at Solovki, had been excluded by the Soviet censors from the repertoires of the best Soviet theaters as an “obscene farce.”35 One of the theater’s first satirical sketches was openly directed against the prisoners’ exploitation, mocking the work supervisors, usually recruited from the prisoners of Georgian origin. It started with a stage trick: the actors, disguised as Georgians, waving sticks, rushed from the stage onto the auditorium. They imitated dragging performing actors to the work storm (udarnik). The trick looked so credible that the public believed it. Some of 32 33 34 35

Stalinskaia trassa, no. 13 (1936), 4. Stalinskaia trassa, no. 4 (1938), 4. N. V. Kuzyakina, “Za Solovetskim Predelom,” Teatral’naia zhizn’, no. 10 (1993). M. M. Korallov, ed., Teatr Gulaga: Vospominaniia, Ocherki (Moscow: Memorial, 1995), 18.

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the petty criminals rushed to hide, and the camp chief, Eikhmann, stood up and shouted indignantly: “Who allowed the udarnik? To hell with rabsila [workforce]!” Two theatrical troupes of the early Solovki: “Trash,” established on February 28, 1925, and the theater of “Our Own” created in April 1925, performed a popular hit of those years “At Night Marseille Is All Astir,” and they borrowed dancing numbers from the repertoire of the “Bat” and the “Crooked Mirror,” the best prerevolutionary cabarets. Soon they were attacked for the banality of their couplets, for low artistic standards, and for indulging the tastes of the bourgeois spectator. This happened partly because the theaters of miniatures, satire, and the like were not amenable to state control, even though the texts were checked before performances. It was impossible to predict the emcee’s responses, the behavior of the actors, and the reaction of the audience: all this aroused suspicion. The main reason for closing down “Our Own” (the theater of the prison camp folklore, an artistic group of criminals) was that its participants “kept cultivating their own habits, jargon and ethics,” thereby corrupting the actors and the spectators. In 1929, the main part of the Solovki professional troupe moved to Kem, to become the Solovki camp’s Central Theater. The audience also changed, now mainly consisting of the clerks and officers of the board’s expanding administrative offices and the town’s free population. In 1931, it offered a concert performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin to the accompaniment of a symphony orchestra conducted by Alexander Kenel, as well as the scene between the Pretender and Marina from Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. It produced satirical plays such as The Inspector General by Nikolai Gogol, The Swindler by Vasily Shkvarkin, and The Soufflé by Boris Romashov. Among other things, it staged vaudevilles in the style of Princess Turandot, as staged at the Vakhtangov Theater.36 With the establishment of the Board for the Construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal in Medvezhya Gora (an earlier name for Medvezhyegorsk), the theater moved there. Its creation reflected a broader tendency since several of the gulag’s major theaters were created in 1933–1934. The second wave of the creation of professionalized musical and dramatic gulag culture took 36 N. V. Kuzyakina, Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995), 99.

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place at the end of the 1930s and in the early 1940s, when new drama and musical theaters appeared at the large campsites. This wave was related to the artistic intelligentsia, for the most part, sentenced according to the 58th article of the Soviet Criminal Code (the so-called political crimes), who started to arrive in camps in large numbers.37 Yet again, the new camp artistic centers were created on the prisoners’ initiative and financed through the camps’ budget. Yet again, most of the Solovki troupe relocated, this time from Kem to Medvezhyegorsk. In 1934, on the first night of the week, the theater staged a drama; on the second, an opera; and on the third, an operetta. On the fourth night, one could watch a ballet; on the fifth, the stage was given over to the symphony orchestra; and on the sixth, to a sketch and variety show, while on the seventh a new film was shown.38 The Solovki Theater remained active well into the 1930s. Headed by Alexei Kurbas, it staged dramas and operettas, featured three orchestras, two troupes (dramatic and operatic), a concert brigade, a gypsy band, and a propaganda brigade.39 These transfers and structural changes were accompanied by the evolution of the Karelian Gulag Theater from a “local” ­theater in the Solovki tradition—when the theater, apart from its other functions, presented satires on camp life and work—to the “state” theater of Medvezhyegorsk. As any other central camp theater, patronized by the regional NKVD elites,40 and especially during the first years of its existence, the Central Theater of the White Sea–Baltic Combine, headed by Dmitry Uspensky and Yakov Rapoport, largely depended on the tastes of its patrons. Uspensky held the post of the White Sea–Baltic Camp’s chief from July 2, 1933, to 37 For example, during the rehearsals of La Traviata in Maglag, it was discovered that the male voices in the choir were lacking. The theater patron Alexandra Gridasova (the wife of the Dalstroy chief) calmed down the stage director: “Don’t worry, we are just expecting an entire Estonian capella from Tomsk.” Sometimes an entire troupe was eliminated, as it happened with the Rustaveli Theater in Tbilisi in 1937, in which case all male performers, involved in the investigation, were shot, and only three female members of the troupe were sentenced to camp imprisonment. The same refers to the staff of a Polish jazz band. After the German invasion of Poland, they fled to the Soviet Union with their musical instruments, only to be arrested by the Soviet border troops and transferred to a labor camp. Korallov, Teatr Gulaga, 34, 76. 38 Kuzyakina, Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp, 121. 39 Yu. Brodsky, Solovki: dvadtsat’ let osobogo naznacheniia (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002). 40 Korallov, Teatr Gulaga, 8.

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July 10, 1936. Rapoport’s (the Combine’s chief from 1933 to 1935) tastes were shaped when he was a student at the Derpt (Tartu) University in Estonia and were largely influenced by the Estonian Vanemuine Theater, a typical European urban theater, producing everything from psychological drama to operetta, opera, and concerts.41 During the 15 years of the existence of the major theaters at the Karelian Gulag, at Solovki, and at the White Sea–Baltic Combine, they represented nearly all artistic forms ever known to the Russian stage; however, changes in the repertoires reflected their gradual shift “to the right” just as it happened to the repertoires of all the major Soviet theaters. From the mid-1930s, Soviet culture (also frequently referred to as “Stalinist culture”) repudiated its earlier iconoclasm and the avant-garde, replacing it with neoclassicism (reverting to Russian classical heritage) and socialist realism. The a­ vant-garde, prerevolutionary cabarets, cafés-chantant, as well as farce (balagan) intermingled with folk art (songs, dances), and the pathos of the Soviet agitation (agitka) was forgotten. More and more space was given to the plays of Russian and Soviet playwrights (primarily Alexander Afinogenov, Alexander Korneichuk, Vasily Shkvarkin, and Viktor Gusev). By the end of the 1930s, the theater’s administration started to display a particular interest in young indigenous Soviet playwrights. Following the broader trends of artistic life in the country, it staged plays composed by Jewish, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, and Baltic playwrights. The widespread Soviet policy of “bringing the author closer to the theater” coincided with the call for creating the theater’s indigenous repertoire. Thus, in 1939 the troupe staged the play At the Outpost in close collaboration with its author, the young Karelian writer Sergey Norin. Nevertheless, the Combine’s Central Theater’s concerts in the mid-1930s still displayed a motley collection of genres, combining classical ballet with musicals, operettas, opera arias, gypsy and folk dances, and theatrical plays.42 Such a varied composition of performances resulted from the mixed character of the gulag artistic troupes and combined musical comedy, drama, and operetta. In 1936 alone, the theater staged several famous operas, such as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, Carmen by Georges Bizet, The Wedding 41 Kuzyakina, Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp, 109. 42 Arkhiv Nauchno-Prosvetitelskogo Tsentra “Memorial” (Archive of the Scholarly and Information Center ‘Memorial’), Moscow, Russian Federation , f. 2, op. 1, d. 72, l. 7.

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by Lantern-Light by Jacques Offenbach, and Verdi’s Rigoletto, La Traviata, Otello, and Tosca. The all-time favorite operetta in the Combine’s Central Theater, as well as in all other camp theaters in the 1930s, was Imre (Emmerich) Kálmán’s Die Csárdásfürstin (traditionally known in Russia as Sylva). His Countess Maritza, Die Bajadere, and The Circus Princess were also regularly performed, along with Rudolf Friml’s Rose-Marie. Early Soviet operettas, such as Wedding in Malinovka (first staged in 1937), immediately acquired immense popularity in the camps. It adapted the Viennese style to the Russian village setting, thus producing a variation on derevenskaya operetta, or “rustic Viennese.”43 Regarding theatrical plays, the troupe regularly staged The Inspector General by Nikolai Gogol, A Profitable Position by Alexander Ostrovsky, and Krechinsky’s Wedding by Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin, The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky, and the most popular Soviet plays, such as Aleksandr Korneichuk’s Platon Krechet, Viktor Gusev’s Glory and Comrade’s Wife, and Lyubov Yarovaia by Konstantin Trenev. First performed in the Maly Theater in 1926, Lyubov Yarovaia became one of the most well-received Soviet plays in the camps during the second half of the 1930s, due to its lively action taking place during the civil war in the provinces and also through its portrayal of a Manichean world of good and evil.44 Apart from its regular artistic performances, the Central Theater played movies three times a day, offering a variety of popular Soviet and foreign films, such as The Great Waltz (1938, released in the USSR in 1940), The Invisible Man (1933, released in 1935), Professor Mamlock (1938), and City Lights (1931, released in 1940); it also hosted carnivals, “festivals of the kolkhoz youth,” and masked balls.45 The quality of artistic productions of the Central Theater’s troupe was praised by its visitors, including by prominent musicians. The Central Theater was the first to stage in Karelia such well-known operas as The Marriage of Figaro and Eugene Onegin.46 The latter’s performance, on March 5, 1936, at the first anniversary of its premiere, attracted more than 6,000 spectators.47 43 State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), f. 9414, op. 1, dd. 1441, 1435. 44 Mally, Revolutionary Acts, 97. 45 Stalinskaia trassa, 1936, 1937, 1940. 46 NARK, f. P–865, op. 2, d. 1/2, l. 8. 47 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 27 (1936), 4.

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The overall number of spectators increased from 149,403 in 1936 to 216,419 in 1938.48 While in 1937 the theater still offered productions of world-famous dramas, comedies, vaudevilles, and variety shows, the ideological pressure and increased surveillance aimed at enforcing a “clear political line in serving the Soviet spectator” became more and more intense.49 Creative differences in the artistic council, which was responsible for the selection of the repertoire, became more pronounced. The council within the Combine as well as in the camp theaters consisted of eight to ten members, including the chief of the Political Section, the editor of the local newspaper, and the prisoners from the theatrical troupe. Interventions of and pressure from the chief of the local Cultural-Educational Division and by an NKVD officer from the Combine’s Third Section increased during the rehearsals.50 The worsening of the political situation in the country, the increasing ideological pressure, and the search for “enemies of the people” influenced Soviet theatrical productions from 1937 onward. Pushed by the gulag administration, activists from the Cultural-Educational Division, and cultural instructors, the directors indulged in didactic and ideologically charged popularizations of Russian and European classics. Such pieces evoked criticism even in the forced labor camp context. Spectators complained about the decreasing quality of the performances, while the local critics insisted that, despite the principal aim “to convey to the public the social message, engraved in the work according to the canon of Soviet realist art,” the classics were to remain classics, and any “overplaying” or altering of the text in order to comply with ideological demands utterly spoiled the impression created by the production.51 The review of Paméla Giraud (by Honoré de Balzac), staged in October 1937, stated thus: To what extent does the play belong to its author if the text has been totally altered by the stage director? Despite the relatively decent first three acts, one can hardly include the name of Balzac [even followed by 48 Makurov, Gulag v Karelii, 136; Stalinskaia trassa, no. 2 (1939), 4. 49 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 8/43, ll. 95–99. 50 Korallov, Teatr Gulaga, 18, 48. 51 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 23 (1937), 4.

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a note “edited for stage by Zagorsky”] into the program. The stage director made Balzac endlessly dwell on social inequality and the “unification of the toiling masses,” following the language of an outdated wall newspaper or of the long forgotten Blue Blouse [a genre of propagandistic theatrical performances staged in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s] ... The end of the play, when the protagonist turns out to be a rascal, and the maid and lackey, together with the old Giraud couple, proclaim the “solidarity and unity of the working class,” has nothing to do with Balzac and with the original text of the play.52

Despite these changes and revisions of the repertoire of the Central Theater from 1937 on, a number of plays remained intact, including The Duel by Leonid and Pyotr Tur; Poverty Is No Vice, The Servant of Two Masters, and A Simple Girl by Vasily Shkvarkin; as well as the operas Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, The Tsar’s Bride, Carmen, and Tosca. The Duel was performed 30 times, while Eugene Onegin was staged 42 times.53 Despite the difficulties relating to the repressions in the theater sphere, the yearly number of productions increased. From January to May 1941 alone, the theatrical troupe performed in 89 productions. Manning the Gulag Theater: HR Policies in the Forced Labor Context In the 1930s, as in any other prominent gulag theater, prisoners made up a large part of the artistic troupe, including the stage director, the orchestra conductor, the assistant director of operatic productions, as well as most of the actors, singers, ballet artists, musicians, and production designers.54 The difference was that the majority of theatrical institutions in forced labor camps were headed by individuals without any professional training and with only elementary or no education, the majority of them being the 52 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 109 (1937), 4. 53 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 2 (1939), 4. 54 A document called “The Record of the Used Prisoner Labor Force of the Combine’s Central Theater” from March to April 1936 reveals that, apart from the cleaning staff, seven orchestra musicians, and twenty actors, all the others were prisoners, including the director of the theater, three concertmasters, two stage directors, two assistants to the stage director, ten orchestra musicians, and thirty actors. NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 1/6.

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Cultural-Educational Divisions’ chiefs or political instructors. This policy corresponded to the main mission of the position of director—“to provide a theater with proper ‘ideological and political guidance.’”55 By contrast, from 1933 to 1939—nearly for the entire duration of its existence—the Central Theater of the Combine was managed by the first Russian emcee, an experienced stage director of minor theatrical forms, and an author of operetta librettos, Alexei Alexeev (Livshits) (1887–1985). He was convicted to an eight-year term under a nonpolitical article. Discarding his lawyer’s diploma, he had started his career before the revolution, in the cabaret theaters of Odessa, Kiev, and St. Petersburg. Appearing in Medvezhyegorsk in 1933, he recruited a permanent artistic troupe of motley composition, including some experienced performers from the best theaters of the country. The majority of the professional actors came from Moscow and Leningrad and were sentenced either on charges of “corruption of the army and the navy” (homosexuality) or of “involvement in counterrevolutionary organizations,” according to article 58 of the Soviet penal code.56 Among the prominent dramatic stage directors who worked in the Central Theater in the 1930s were Sergei Taneyev (a relative of the well-known prerevolutionary composer Alexander Taneyev), Igor Alander, Alexei Larionov, assistant stage director Vladimir Tsekhansky, who had worked with a team of documentary filmmakers in Moscow, and other professionals. Ivan I. Vovk, a talented chief stage designer, received a ten-year prison sentence in 1929. For several years, he worked in Medvezhyegorsk, as did the Leningrad artist and gifted cartoonist Mikhail M. Molodiashin. The theater orchestra was maintained at a high level by Boleslav S. Pshibyshevsky (a relative of the Polish writer Stanisława Przybyszewska), who before his arrest had worked in the arts sector of the People’s Commissariat of Education in Moscow, but also by Raisa Evers, Leonid Teplitsky, and Pavel Grinberg. Excellent professional singers 55 Studies of other camp theaters in the 1930s display the staggering ignorance and illiteracy of their administrators and, consequently, a high turnover of the administrative personnel. In the theater of Ukhta, for example, during the first five years of its existence, ten directors were fired for drunkenness, “liaisons with the prisoners, and incompetence.” Among them were a metalworker, a camp guard, an NKVD sergeant, a typist, a Chekist, and “an adventurer.” A. N. Kaneva, Gulagovskii teatr Ukhty (Syktyvkar: Komi kn. Izd., 2001), 52–53. 56 Kuzyakina, Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp, 123.

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were available, such as Elly Rosenstrauch, Sonia Tuchner, Leonid Privalov, and others.57 Such a composition reflected a broader trend: a large part of Soviet musical and dramatic culture was moving to the gulag. In the theater of Ukhtpechlag (opened in 1936, patronized by the Ukhtpechlag chief, Iosema Moroz), a symphony orchestra appeared the same year, headed by an ex-­ conductor of the Bolshoi Theater turned prisoner, V. Kaplun-Vladimirskii.58 To staff the troupe of a newly established theater, the gulag headhunters searched for musicians, actors, and artists among the prisoners in the barracks, even on the remotest peripheries of the camp subsections. That is how the camp orchestra found Boris Shiffers and Boris Krein, a violinist and a conductor from the Bolshoi Theater; Oleg Rassadin, a pianist from Moscow; and a number of graduates of the Moscow and Berlin conservatories.59 Singers belonging to the Mariinsky Theater in Leningrad, the Moscow Opera Theater, and also from the Central Radio Broadcasting soon joined the Ukhtpechlag theatrical troupe, along with several talentless and useless NKVD informers, who were impossible to get rid of later.60 The head of the main club of the Administration of the North-Eastern Camps, the nobleman Oleg Dolgorukov, had graduated from the Los Angeles Conservatory.61 Karlag boasted famous concerts of singers from an Italian vocal school and featured pianists educated in Paris, which attracted all the NKVD staff from the nearby regions.62 Even a private tailor of King Michael of Romania served as the costume designer for operatic performances in several of the gulag camps in 1943. There was a certain uniqueness to the gulag theatrical culture, in comparison with the “mainland” Soviet theaters, as reflected in the Central Theater’s life. Surveillance and attempts at total control over the work and daily life of the performers coexisted with a relative freedom of artistic production and a unique synergy between the professional and amateur artistic forms, 57 NARK, f. P–865. 58 Kaneva, Gulagovskii teatr Ukhty, 24. 59 Kaneva, Gulagovskii teatr Ukhty, 126. 60 Korallov, Teatr Gulaga, 47. 61 A. G. Kozlov, Ogni lagernoi rampy: iz istorii lagernogo teatra 1930-kh–1950-kh godov (Moscow: Raritet, 1991), 35. 62 Memorial, f. 2, op. 1, d. 72, l. 18.

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which were strictly divided outside of the gulag. In the camps, the same cultural projects, organized by the prisoners who had been professional artists, due to the lack of professionals, eagerly encompassed amateurs,63 including ordinary delinquents, thus conforming to a peculiar, distorted form of the Soviet “reforging” dream. For a prisoner, a position in the Central Theater was always shaky and insecure, with informal relations and personal biases playing a primary role. Alexei Kurbas, who staged rather bold productions, without any outward negative consequences,64 was later dismissed from the position of director of the Central Theater because of the personal dislike and rivalry between Alexeev and Kurbas. The prisoner actors had their own production output plan. They went on regular concert tours, mainly performing not only in the schools of the special settlements (such as Pindushi and Nadvoitsy) but also in pioneer camps.65 Surveillance and meticulous rules of daily life permeated the communal living conditions of the performers. At the beginning of the 1930s, the barrack for the actors also housed the staff of the Perekovka newspaper, which included prominent literary figures, philosophers, and scientists. Later the actors moved to a special dormitory. According to its “rules of residence,” men and women resided separately, with no contact allowed. Self-appointed monitors were responsible for maintaining the strict regime and had to report on any deviations from it.66 According to the rules, any failure to conform to the orders of the monitors resulted in expelling the guilty from the dormitory and in sending them back to the camp. But even the monitors were frequently accused of neglecting their duties. Moreover, up to 1937 most of the troupe engaged in outward resistance to the regulations and in passive withdrawal from ideological pressure.67 63 Sergey Vasil’evich Zhbankov and Fyodor Oskarovich Peltzer, permanent artists of the troupe, were registered as “state employees” on their camp cards. The former, a club worker and coordinator from Ukraine, was imprisoned for five years on the basis of article 116. The latter, a German from Moscow and an actor belonging to the amateur drama circle, was also sentenced according to a nonpolitical article of the Soviet penal code. After an early release, on March 13, 1938, he left the Combine for Kazan. 64 Kuzyakina, “Za Solovetskim Predelom,” 30. 65 Makurov, Gulag v Karelii, 136; NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 2/10, ll. 22, 27. 66 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 2/9, l. 44. 67 At the end of 1937, the actors were yet again transferred en masse to the camp subsection. On December 7, 1937, an order was issued proclaiming that, “since too much time is spent on the way to the actors’ workplace (from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.), the rehearsal hours should be switched to the interval 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.” NARK. F. P–865, op. 1. d. 2/9. ll. 4, 7.

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Underfinancing, which became a pressing issue due to the cuts in the theater’s budget in the second half of the 1930s, aggravated the tensions between the director, who “spoke Bolshevik,” and most of the troupe. Attempts at compromise were followed by threats and punishments in the form of reprimands, loss of workdays counted toward an early release, detention in the camp punishment cell, and expulsion and reassignment of the culprits to general labor tasks. Most of the reprimands and punishments were based on denunciatory reports drafted either by colleagues from the troupe or by the armed guards.68 The serving Combine’s chief, in his order from May 13, 1937, characterized the atmosphere within the theater as extremely “unhealthy.” However, he did not have in mind the denunciation culture, prevalent among the lower-ranking theater employees. What he meant was “mutual unauthorized assistance” and responsibility, “covering up each other’s misdeeds, and resistance to the camp’s and general Soviet regulations,” prevalent within the troupe as such.69 It was no less revealing that the majority of the hired actors adopted this model of behavior, displaying no more enthusiasm in relation to the Soviet ideological demands and rules than the prisoners did. This fact can be partly explained by their low income. In 1937, a monthly salary of a hired actor amounted to just 350–500 rubles.70 In Alexeev’s words, At the meetings they claim their best intentions to provide all possible financial and moral support to the theater, but in reality, they not only fail to do so, but tend to spoil everything, to aggravate every problem, as though they are playing some roles from The Lower Depths in real life.71

While underfinancing, intrigues, as well as issues with discipline, the regimen, and obeying the norms of Soviet ideology did not disrupt the theater’s functioning, dismissals within the theater during the “Great Terror” 68 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 2/9, ll. 3, 4, 7, 51. 69 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 5/26, l. 34. 70 Some artists received a monthly salary of up to 250 rubles, which equaled the salary of a secretary, a guard, or a cleaner within the gulag system at that time. The salary of a concertmaster was 450 rubles; that of the hired director of the Central Theater amounted to 797.50 rubles (688.85 rubles with tax deduction). Even these poor salaries were not paid on time. In February 1937, the administrators were still struggling to pay the salary debts for the years 1934–1935. At the same time, under the pressure of the Combine leadership, a campaign was launched to “cut the theater expenses as much as possible.” NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 2/9, ll. 22, 24, 32. 71 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 2/9, l. 22.

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of 1937–1938 seriously undermined the quality of its artistic productions. In a similar vein to what was going on in the theatrical institutions of other camps,72 several very prominent artistic figures of the Central Theater were executed, with many others being dismissed and sent to the “general works.”73 By mid-1938, just 33 actors from the previous 73 remained in the troupe. From this number, only 12 actors were qualified professionals, while 10 others were amateur beginners, with some of them having come from amateur activity circles, while the rest were on stage for the first time. As a result, the best operas of the previous year, such as Tosca and The Tsar’s Bride, were removed from the repertoire: the dismissals of actors previously employed in leading roles were concurrent with the inability to replace them.74 Newer productions, such as Friendship, Guilty Without Fault, Paméla Giraud, and the like also fell out of the repertoire, and there was no chance of staging them because of “the absence of actors for leading roles.” The ongoing work on the plays The Year 1918, Port Arthur, The Inspector General, Woe from Wit, and Quiet Flows the Don was interrupted. Instead of the planned 15 to 18 theatrical productions, only two—The Servant of Two Masters and Poverty Is No Vice—were actually staged. The rehearsals took place “under extremely difficult conditions, since they were accompanied by the basic training for the newly recruited actors.” The administrators complained that “there is not a single pretty girl, nor a single more or less good-looking man who could play a Komsomol member.”75 To solve this problem, the Combine’s chief periodically initiated campaigns for recruiting new actors from the prisoners’ ranks within the remotest camp subsections. He also attempted to attract civilians by offering them increases in their monthly salaries.76 The NKVD theatrical patronage in the White Sea–Baltic Combine was less prominent. The other camp theaters, especially those in remote northern 72 In 1937–1938, in the theater of Ukhta (the center of Ukhtpechlag), during the inspections of the theater, several “counterrevolutionary conspiracies” and multiple regime violations were revealed. A number of artists were shot, and more than 60 prisoners (z/k members) of the artistic troupe were sent to the common work camp or transferred to other camps. In the Magadan Theater, the search for “enemies of the people” also exerted a significant influence on the theater’s functioning and on the actors’ lives. Kaneva, Gulagovskii teatr Ukhty, 45–46; Kozlov, Ogni lagernoi rampy, 23. 73 Common, or “general” works meant unqualified labor of the prisoners, amounting to exhausting physical labor. 74 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 2/9. 75 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 8/43, ll. 95–99, 118. 76 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 8/43, l. 100.

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locations, openly reflected the art tastes of their NKVD “masters.” The latter competed with each other, as did the prerevolutionary art patrons. During their visits to the neighboring camps, they took with them not only their large escort but also the troupes of their “court” theaters. The NKVD bosses of Vorkutlag, Pechorlag, Intlag, and Sevzherdorlag regularly gathered in the city of Syktyvkar under the pretext of discussing the results of the socialist competition and exchanging their work experience. Very brief formal discussions were followed by a theatrical performance of a private theater and by an informal closed banquet with the actors.77 Dignitaries, both domestic and foreign, were invited to attend the performances of camp theatrical troupes. For example, in May 1944, such a performance was staged in the Magadan “camp theater” for the U.S. Senator (and future U.S. President) Harry S. Truman during his visit to Kolyma.78 While at its beginnings the Central Theater’s performances partially reflected the preferences of the patrons, with time it increasingly resembled a state theater. No data exist on its “appropriation” by and any interference with its functioning on the part of the local Combine and of the camp bosses. Most probably, this situation was related to the fact that the Combine in general was a much less autonomous gulag unit than the enterprises located in the remote northeastern outskirts of the country. The contradiction between its location on the territory of the Karelian ASSR, which belonged to the “high-danger zone” along the Soviet Western “border belt” during the 1930s, and the fact that it nevertheless hosted some “especially dangerous” categories of prisoners explains why the Combine and its subordinate structures were not as autonomous as some of the other gulag enterprises in the northeastern regions of Russia. The subsequent Combine chiefs—Zaven Almazov (1936–1937) and Mikhail Timofeev (1937–1941)— left no evidence of their interest in art patronage. Accordingly, the Combine’s “court rules” were much simpler. In most of the gulag theaters, the prisoners’ performances were never followed by applause, and the actors’ names were never mentioned in the theatrical reviews. In the Magadan Central Theater, as well as in others, the seats were assigned according to the camp hierarchy. The performance started only after 77 Kaneva, Gulagovskii teatr Ukhty, 113. 78 Kozlov, Ogni lagernoi rampy, 69.

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the camp chief had arrived. If he was absent, his seat and the seats reserved for his family remained vacant.79 In the Combine’s Central Theater, only one rule was strictly followed: the first two rows were reserved for the hired staff, while the rest of the seats could be assigned to anyone, including the prisoners. The final phase in the evolution of the Central Theater of the White Sea– Baltic Combine—namely, its transformation into an “ordinary” Soviet theater—occurred at the very end of the 1930s. In 1939, the Cultural-Educational Division initiated a reorganization, which included the dismissal of all the prisoners from the drama and opera troupes, and their release to the peripheral camp clubs.80 The resulting high rates of personnel turnover thus led to a second crisis in the theater. While some of the actors stayed on a contract basis, the general inability of the administration to compensate for the loss of qualified personnel yet again resulted in the cancellation of several operatic productions.81 The process of replacing the prisoner actors and musicians with contractbased staff at the end of the 1930s reflected a broader tendency within the gulag. The camp theater of Ukhta, for example, featured just a few hired actors from 1934 to 1939. In 1942, 30 members of the troupe were already employed on a contract basis. The administration actually forced a number of actors to stay even after their release by “attaching them to the camp” (prikreplennye).82 However, as early as 1940, under the pretext of the “drive for saving/economy,” the Combine administration issued an order that banned the practice of employing non-prisoner actors in the camp theater. In an attempt to save the Medvezhyegorsk Theater, in January 1941 it was handed over to the newly created Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic as a Musical Comedy Theater. The emaciated troupe was based in Petrozavodsk when the war broke out in June 1941. The actors formed a concert brigade and turned up in Solovki. By then, the prisoners had been removed from their lodgings to provide room for a naval cadet school and for the construction of a naval base.83 The repertoire of the Republic’s Musical Comedy Theater remained 79 Kaneva, Gulagovskii teatr Ukhty, 86. 80 NARK, f. P–865, op. 35, d. 2/4, l. 104. 81 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 5/26, l. 1. 82 Kaneva, Gulagovskii teatr Ukhty, 80. 83 Kuzyakina, Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp, 128.

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the same as that of the Central Theater. Productions of musicals, Viennese rustic-style operettas, and comedies coexisted with operas and dramas.84 During the prewar season of 1940–1941, seven other theaters existed in Karelia, three of which—the Republic’s Theater of Russian Drama, the Finnish Drama Theater (these two still exist), and the Petrozavodsk Puppet Theater—were located in Petrozavodsk. In addition, the Sortavala and Vyborg Drama Theaters were opened in 1940. The remaining two— Kondopoga Theater (set up in the summer of 1938) and Segezha Theater— were mobile collective farm theaters. The quality of the repertoires in these institutions reflected a lack of professionals and the absence of home bases. In 1941, ostensibly for reasons of “weak artistic leadership and absence of first-rate actors in the troupe,” the Segezha Theater was merged with the Kondopoga Theater.85 After the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Central Theater was one of the two institutions (along with the Kondopoga Theater) that were not evacuated but continued to perform in Karelia. Many of the released artists, conductors, and composers from Leningrad and Moscow, either being afraid of losing their NKVD protection or for other reasons, remained there on a contract basis even after their release. This was the case of Leonid Teplitsky. Unable to receive a registration in Leningrad upon his liberation in 1933, he returned to Karelia, and, from June 1, 1935, he was employed as the chief conductor of the Karelian Republic’s Symphony Orchestra, affiliated with the House of National Culture (later the Karelian State Philharmonic). He was one of the creators and the main conductor of the Karelian folk band Kantele and of the Petrozavodsk music school. He taught there from the time it was founded, in 1938, until his death, educating an entire generation of Karelian composers and creating a number of productions for symphonic and brass bands, particularly on Karelian and Finnish folkloric themes. Raisa Zherebtsova (Evers), a student at the Leningrad Conservatory and, as a camp inmate, an assistant to the conductor and the choirmaster, during a three-year term, turned up at Medvezhyegorsk in 1935. She was sentenced according to articles 58–10 and 58–11 of the Soviet penal code (“counterrevolutionary propaganda” and “participation in counterrevolu84 Stalinskaia trassa, 1941, 4. 85 E. Melent’ev, “Dal’she byla voina…,” Karelia, no. 60 (2001).

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tionary organizations”). Between 1936 and 1938, she staged the operas The Queen of Spades, The Tsar’s Bride, Tosca, Cavalleria rusticana, and Pagliacci at the Central Theater.86 Upon her release, she remained in the Combine’s Central Theater as a contract-based conductor and stage director. By June 1941, when the NKVD Central Theater was transferred to Petrozavodsk and renamed the Republic’s Musical Comedy Theater, she had staged the operettas Sylva, Rose-Marie, Wedding in Malinovka, and Kholopka. Soon afterward, she was invited to work as a musical director in the Solovki House of the Fleet and stayed in Solovki until her death, in 1977.87 Similarly, Yakov Khusid, upon his release, stayed in his position as the chief theatrical director of the Central Theater.88 At the end of the 1930s, the Combine leadership proclaimed the Central Theater to be a major success of the Soviet cultural colonization project, asserting that, with its assistance, the Combine had managed to “deeply integrate the local proletariat into Soviet cultural life.” Amateur Art and Sport Clubs in Medgora Apart from creating professional institutions, the Soviet “gulag tour of culture” of the 1930s took the form of “amateur artistic activity,” conceived by the communist leaders as an important means for the proper “class-conscious” education of the hired staff, especially of the guards, working in forced labor institutions.89 An ambitious, but obviously utopian plan for education, culture, and entertainment, elaborated by the gulag for the Combine and Dmitlag90 guards in the first half of the 1930s, presupposed their total involvement in the amateur musical bands in a matter of just a few months.91 86 After the end of her prison term, she was sentenced to exile in Kazakhstan. However, on the day of her release, in 1938, contrary to the NKVD order, she was taken from the railway station to the theater, to direct a performance of The Queen of Spades. 87 G. A. Igumnova, “L’dy Solovkov: portrety i sud’by,” Solovetskoe more, no. 3 (2004). 88 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 8/43, l. 109. 89 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 11/55, ll. 98–100. 90 Dmitrovlag, Dmitlag, DITLag, or DITL was the largest colony of the OGPU-NKVD concentration camps. It was built for the construction work on the Moscow-Volga Canal named after Joseph Stalin (since 1947, the Moscow Canal) in the north of Moscow and the Moscow region in 1932–1938. The number of prisoners involved in building the canal reached 200,000 people. Available at: https:// topos. memo.ru/en/node/60. 91 NARK, f. P–865, op. 2, d. 7/32, ll. 98–100.

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The Medvezhyegorsk House of Defense—constructed for hosting official functions but serving primarily for the entertainment of the guards of the Security and Regimen Section of the Combine—regularly staged various performances of amateur troupes performing Russian folk songs, “eccentric music,” acrobatic tricks, and poetry declamation.92 Amateur contests among the armed guards took place on Soviet holidays, such as the Red Army Day, and featured “minor forms of artistic production”: songs, ditties, dances, poetry recitations in addition to guitar, mandolin, balalaika, and accordion performances.93 “Evenings of amateur art,” hosted by the Medvezhyegorsk Park of Culture and Recreation and featuring a variety of bands, attracted the hired staff from the Combine’s subsections. On one occasion, in the summer of 1937, for example, they performed Hungarian and gypsy dances, the dances “Metelitsa” and “Bulgaresco,” with accordion accompaniment, and also the tango, and foxtrot, choreographed to the songs “Nochen’ka” and “Mel’nik” (composed by Alexander Dargomyzhsky). A performance of a string orchestra from Pervomaysky settlement, consisting of 28 musicians, presented contemporary Soviet music, including “A Song about Stalin and the Civil War,” and Isaak Dunayevsky’s marches. Other bands performed various Russian composers’ works, from Mikhail Glinka’s “Kamarinskaya” to folk dances, such as the hopak or ditties from Povenets (a settlement of the Combine and the White Sea–Baltic Canal administrative center). The event closed with the performances of the local choirs from Povenets and Gabselga.94 The two most prominent armed-guard artistic troupes that appeared in Medvezhyegorsk in the spring of 1938 were called “The VOKHR (Armed Guards) of the White Sea–Baltic Combine Orchestra” (conductor Ivan Zhedulov) and “The Band of Red Army Song and Dance” (band leader N. A. Eremeev). The first orchestra, the VOKHR (Armed Guards) of the White Sea–Baltic Combine Orchestra, consisting of 35 musicians, focused on a classical repertoire, performing pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Anton Rubinstein, Léo Delibes, Modest Mussorgsky, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, along with the compositions of its conductor, Ivan Zhedulov.95 For example, the concert 92 93 94 95

Stalinskaia trassa, no. 64 (1938), 4. Stalinskaia trassa, no. 19 (1936), 4; no. 64 (1938), 4. Stalinskaia trassa, no. 83 (1937), 4. Stalinskaia trassa, no. 84 (1937), 4.

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performed in the Medvezhyegorsk Park of Culture and Recreation on June 30, 1937, consisted of three parts. During the first section, the band played the overture from The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini, the mazurka from the ballet Coppelia by Léo Delibes, pieces from The Swan Lake, and the entr’acte for the fourth act of Carmen by Georges Bizet. During the second and third sections, some lighter musical pieces were performed, starting with “Le Toréador et l’andalouse” by Anton Rubinstein.96 The local critics remained unfavorably disposed toward the first band’s director, Zhedulov, blaming him for “shameless and outrageous plagiarism.” They referred to the playbills, which always contained “the obscure name of “Zhedulov,” reading “Mussorgsky, Zhedulov, Beethoven, and others,” while Zhedulov’s compositions as such contained nothing but a “motley collection of musical themes from all more or less well-known musical pieces.”97 The second musical troupe, the Red Army Song and Dance Band, put together spontaneously in just two weeks, included 15 amateur musicians. Paradoxically, just like the Armed Guards of the White Sea–Baltic Combine Orchestra, this troupe consisted mainly of prisoners.98 They gave lively performances in Medvezhyegorsk, mainly relating to folk motives and to current Soviet music. The concerts of April 30 and May 1, 1938, included a cento (litmontazh) called “The First of May.” During the second part of the concert, the troupe performed the songs “Metelitsa,” “Suliko,” and some ditties.99 Despite its initial success, this band was short-lived, and in 1940, when no financial means were allocated for its operation, it was dissolved.100 The Combine as well as other major Soviet gulag enterprises101 boasted of well-equipped sports utilities: stadiums, football fields, tennis courts, and volleyball grounds. With regular donations to the sports programs increasing by the end of the 1930s, the Combine’s hired staff and the camp’s armed guards attended football and volleyball clubs, located in Medgora.102 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 76 (1937), 4. Stalinskaia trassa, no. 84 (1937), 4. NARK, f. P–865, op. 2, d. 7/32, ll. 87–89. Among the shortcomings of the performance, the reviewer noted the absence of choreography and an extremely poor musical accompaniment. With the exception of two pieces, only the accordion and the piano players could participate in the performance. 100 NARK, f. P–214, op. 1, d. 27, l. 69. 101 Steven Maddox, “Gulag Football: Competitive and Recreational Sport in Stalin’s System of Forced Labor,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 19, no. 3 (Summer 2018): 509–536. 102 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 11/53, ll. 10–16; Stalinsksaia trassa, no. 93 (1937), 3.

96 97 98 99

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However, it was the OSOAVIAKhIM events103 and the biathlon and marksmanship circles that gained increased popularity in the region, where climatic conditions made the practice of summer sports, such as football, problematic. At the end of the 1930s, marksmen’s contests and ski races remained the most popular recreational activities of the camp’s armed guards not only in Medvezhyegorsk but also in several centers of the larger Combines’ industrial projects.104 The camp staff repeatedly won first prizes in the region, and the winners joined the gulag team, composed of the best athletes from different camps, to participate in the contests among the different NKVD directorates.105 At the remote outskirts of the Combine, due to the lack of available infrastructure and poor transportation systems, such sports clubs were absent. Soviet Propaganda on the Peripheries of the Combine: Plans versus Reality While the effectiveness of Soviet efforts at transmitting culture and entertainment in the forced labor context decreased when moving from the center of the Combine to its periphery, up to 1941 the Soviet propaganda left most of the prisoners and the hired staff indifferent. The reports from other camps submitted to the central apparatus also revealed that both forms of propaganda—political propaganda (politmassovaya rabota) and propaganda related to production themes, such as Stakhanovite labor or “shock work,” and “socialist competition” (proizvodstvenno-massovaya rabota)— were rarely implemented properly. These did not lead to any results in the camps, thus remaining a failure, with the prisoners and the guards alike almost totally unresponsive to it. The first variety, in the form of political study clubs, discussions, and public readings of newspapers and magazines (the so-called chitki), including “antireligious propaganda,” up to 1941 (when it was replaced with patriotic topics and pathos), targeted mainly the hired staff and the guards and, for the most part, was simply ignored.106 The sec103 OSOAVIAKHIM (Union of Societies of Assistance to the Defense and Aviation-Chemical Construction of the USSR) was a Soviet paramilitary society, created on January 27, 1927. It was the precursor to DOSAAF (Volunteer Society for Cooperation with the Army, Aviation, and Navy).  104 GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 25, ll. 54, 199. 105 GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 40, l. 7. 106 GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 1432, l. 65.

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ond type, replacing the previous “reforging” campaign for the prisoners and aimed at involving the prisoners in the “Socialist competition” through special “labor contracts,” for the most part, existed only formally, on paper.107 When treated seriously by the camp administrations, it had deplorable consequences. At the Combine enterprises, inspections of the prisoner brigades involved in the Socialist competition regularly revealed upward distortions of production statistics (pripiski) and the presence of large numbers of debilitated prisoners among the participants. In their zeal to “overfulfill the quotas” and to win the “Socialist competition,” the camp administrators regularly sent seriously sick and even dying prisoners off to work, disregarding the ensuing increase in prisoner mortality rates. The infiltration of Soviet political culture into the Combine’s community—a major task of its Political Section—became a problematic and painful endeavor. As of January 1, 1937, the Combine’s District Party Committee comprised 24 Primary Party Organizations (PPOs) and 13 primary party committees (i.e., one unit for each territorial section, lespromkhoz, and division of guards), totaling 342 party members, 131 candidates, 390 Komsomol members, and no less than 8,342 pioneers (almost all the children of labor settlers were automatically enrolled). By January 1941, the number of candidate members increased to 376, the number of party members to 442, with a total of 818 people.108 As a rule, the Combine engineering and technical staff, the physicians, and the administrative elite of the remote subsections expressed little desire to join the communist ranks, contrary to the employees of the Third Department, the political instructors of the guards, the commanders of armed guards units (VOKHR), and the instructors belonging to the Political Section. Despite this numerical growth, the Political Section chiefs repeatedly complained about the empty, formal attitude of the party leadership toward increasing the communist membership of the Combine. Empty-worded, formal, semiliterate, and ignorant recommendations were compounded by lengthy procrastinations in the application review process, which sometimes exceeded four months, and by the almost total absence of interest on the part of the majority of the candidates. As it turned out, most of them were 107 GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 1435, l. 9. 108 GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 97, l. 8.

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dragged into the official political culture, and some even against their will.109 In January 1941, 70% of the candidates were listed as “with overdue standing” (prosrochennyi stazh), and most of them as so-called eternal candidates, with the usual waiting time varying from five to ten years. Treated by the Combine party leadership as “second-class individuals,” they often plunged into criminality, “backwardness,” and “oblivion.”110 In 1940, for example, apart from the directorate, only at the second largest Combine enterprise—Segezhstroy—the study of the Short Course of the History of the Communist Party included quite a large number of communists. The further from the administrative center the enterprise was, the lesser the seriousness with which political education was treated. Moreover, as a survey by the Combine’s communists revealed, the majority stumbled at the first two chapters, while the rest of the chapters were covered by just a few members of the Combine’s staff (Appendix 1, Table A5.6). Through its Cultural-Educational Division, in the 1930s, the Combine authorities, following instructions from the center, undertook repeated, albeit, in their majority, unsuccessful attempts to combat drunkenness, regimen violations, “cohabitation with the prisoners,” low morale, despondent “moods,” and the frequent suicides of the hired staff at its peripheries. Armed guards, including communists and Komsomol members, represented the most vulnerable group in this respect.111 Along with the emphasis on amateur artistic activity, including regular performances (smotry) of the amateur artistic circles of the battalions within the already mentioned “House of Defense” in Medvezhyegorsk, the Political Section of the Combine designed a program aimed at “civilizing” the guards and “raising their cultural and educational level” through the so-called Lenin corners. These small installations, placed near the headquarters of the armed guards’ detachments, were supposed to offer a wide range of pastimes: collective readings of classic literature, games, clubs, excursions, lectures on a variety of subjects ranging from politics to geography to botany.112 A similar plan, elaborated in the Combine’s Political Section, apart from military and political training, presupposed the creation of multiple clubs, including 109 GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 97, l. 8. 110 GARF, f. 9414, op. 4, d. 97, l. 18. 111 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 10/51, ll. 40–43. 112 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 12/58, l. 53.

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several devoted to track and field athletics, Russian, German, math, algebra, geometry, economics, and physical geography, but also featuring marksmen’s contests in the special camp subsections.113 The communists within the Political Section of the Combine strove to assist the Cultural-Educational Division in the ideological indoctrination of the hired staff by arranging lectures on various subjects relating to party history, the basics of MarxismLeninism, and philosophy.114 They also fulfilled the function of surveillance. Multiple reprimands issued by the Combine’s Political Section in 1939–1940 ranged from “selling Trotskyite books” to the concealment of “Trotskyite biases,” or of untrustworthy “social origins,” but also included “deviations from the class line,” “drunkenness,” “debauchery,” and “low morals” (bytovoe razlozhenie) of their peripheral colleagues.115 Lengthy ski tours through the Combine settlements and camp subsections, organized by the armed guards’ (VOKHR) headquarters, became an important and popular indoctrination tool. For example, a ski journey for the armed guards in 1940, encompassing 49 destinations, resulted in the creation of nine “defense clubs” (oboronnye kruzhki) and 15 “bases of support.” Nine lectures on Vyacheslav Molotov’s latest speech, eight on Zhdanov’s speech on the creation of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, and 14 lectures on various defense and physical culture themes were held.116 A monthly plan of “social work with the masses” in Kondopoga’s platoon of armed guards included a lecture called “A History of the Paris Commune,” rehearsals of the play Under the Wild Apple Tree and of Anton Chekhov’s comedies The Proposal and Suspicious Love. Instead, as the subsequent inspections noted, the guards preferred to “indulge in violations of the military and labor discipline, in the form of drunken orgies.”117 The political propaganda plan involving the camp guards of the Letnerechenskiy platoon for January 1941 included lectures titled “The Doctrine of the Origins of Christmas and Its Perils,” “The Military Confrontation between England and Germany,” “The Creative Works of Saltykov-Shchedrin,” and several 113 NARK, f. P–214, op. 1, d. 27, l. 72. 114 GARF, f. 9414, op. 3а, d. 10, l. 56. 115 GARF, f. 9414, op. 3а, d. 1, l. 10. 116 GARF, f. 9414, op. 4, d. 97, l. 13. 117 NARK, f. P–214, op. 1, d. 108, l. 74.

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theatrical performances, which purported to “fill every day, every free minute of the guards’ spare time.” However, subsequent inspection reports on this, as well as other Combine sites, commented upon the absence of any social and cultural services.118 Many of the Combine subdivisions, plunged into misery and deprivation, did not even pretend to have a semblance of any cultural-educational activities.119 The lack of resources at individual camp subsections, which were still tasked with the burden of “competing” for the production output, was made worse by the shortage of qualified personnel, the ruthless exploitation of the prisoners, the dominance of common criminals, and the resistance—on the part of the camp administrators and the Cultural-Educational Division instructors—against any cultural or educational undertakings. The isolation of the camp subdivisions, due to great distances and poor logistics, became a widespread excuse for the local Cultural and Educational Divisions when submitting faked and hopelessly belated reports “on the cultural-educational work.”120 The high personnel turnover at the Cultural and Educational Division made even the slightest efforts at cultural activity futile. For example, in the mid-1930s, in one of the camp subsections, in the course of just one-and-a half months, seven cultural instructors were removed from their positions. Yulii Margolin, an ex-prisoner of the White Sea–Baltic Combine, noted in his memoirs: “A job in the camp, in general, is for losers, and the culturaleducational service is the worst.”121 At the Combine’s peripheries and separate subsections, amateur musical bands for armed guards, if existing at all, were extremely short-lived, especially after 1940, when, following the introduction of the 12-hour workday for the prisoners, the guards’ workday increased to 15 hours.122 The quality of the clubs and libraries network (klubnaya i bibliotechnaya rabota) in the Combine became a nuisance, as did the meager collections of peripheral Combine libraries. The readers (or the editors) frequently wrote complaints to the Stalinskaia trassa publishers. In 1938, while the Central 118 NARK, f. P–214, op. 1, d. 108. ll. 14, 226. 119 NARK, f. P–865, op. 2, d. 1/2, ll. 120, 85. 120 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 11/55, l. 247. 121 Yulii Margolin, Puteshestvie v stranu Z/K (New York: Izd-vo imeni Chekhova, 1952). 122 NARK, f. P–214, op. 1, d. 27, l. 73.

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Library’s collection increased to 321,067 items,123 the overall number of books in the 21 libraries within the labor settlements amounted to just 8,500 items.124 The users of the peripheral libraries at the Combine regularly complained that they had to keep the same books for more than two years because the library “was always closed.” The librarians of the Combine Central Library bore responsibility for providing its local branches with literature,125 where they sent either propagandistic brochures or “unreadable” works belonging to third-rate Soviet writers.126 The clubs of the armed guards’ platoons also received exclusively propagandistic literature, and almost never featured informative newspapers.127 At some peripheral Combine libraries, any new item arriving there was immediately used for playing cards. Only during the first ten days of July 1935, 152 freshly made card sets were confiscated at a separate Combine camp subsection.128 The only exception from this gloomy picture was the Solovki library. The history of its collection dates back to the 1920s. By 1927, the holdings of the Solovki library amounted to more than 30,000 volumes. Their major part was brought from the library of the Butyrka prison. In 1925, following the petition of the local camp authorities, the OGPU sent there several confiscated private and commercial book collections. Lazar Kogan, who was responsible for reviewing the books as a censor, fulfilled his duties superficially so that the camp library handed over several books that had been already banned in the USSR, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons, the works of Konstantin Leontyev, Russia and Europe by Nikolai Danilevskii, and the like.129 Drama circles, embroidery and dancing clubs, automobile fan circles, which were thriving at Medgora, were not viable on its outskirts owing to 123 From this total number, political books amounted to 94,057 items, the fiction collection amounted to 61,003 items, the number of books on technical subjects was around 65,846, and the “other” books category amounted to 100,162. The number of regular users was 17,574. 124 Makurov, Gulag v Karelii, 149. 125 From January to May 1938, they sent around 17,020 items to the periphery. Makurov, Gulag v Karelii, 149. 126 From a collection of 18 titles, sent by the Central Library in February 1936, 10 pertained to the Stakhanovite movement. The rest, apart from the works of Alexander Pushkin and Nikolay Dobrolyubov, were authored by almost completely unknown Soviet writers. Stalinskaia trassa, no. 19 (1936), 4. 127 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 11/55, l. 20; d. 2/8, l. 16. 128 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 19 (1936), 4. 129 M. M. Rozanov, Solovetskii kontslager’ v monastyre. 1922–1939. Fakty-Domysly-“Parashi.” Obzor vospominanii solovchan solovchanami (New York: Izd-vo avtora, 1979).

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the lack of lodgings, instructors, funding, and technical supplies. As a result, one of the most frequently repeated headlines in Stalinskaia trassa, by the end of the 1930s, became: “there is no culture on the periphery!”130 The peripheral camp press remained a “headache” for the gulag Cultural and Educational Division bosses. According to inspection reports by officials from the central gulag apparatus, the “meaningless” contents of wall newspapers in some of the subdivisions of the Combine amounted to “unscrupulous gossiping,” “libels about local officials,” and soon became an arena for settling personal scores. As the inspectors noted, “due to their vulgar and bureaucratic language, crude lexical and grammar mistakes, most of the articles in the newspapers published by the Combine are unreadable.”131 The wall newspapers in most of the Combine’s sections as well as in other camps were also deemed “primitive” or “unacceptable” for the most part. This fact could be partly explained by the inherent limitations of their contents: the publication of articles, headlines, and slogans relating to political issues, as well as portraits of the leaders of the party and the Soviet government on front pages, including editorials (peredovitsy), was banned in the wall newspapers aimed at the prisoners. The same restrictions applied to any texts “criticizing the actions of the camp administration.” Thus, most of the camps’ wall newspapers, as well as the ­regular press, limited their contents to “information on the production process or on various social themes, castigating shirkers or speculators of prisoners’ clothes (promotchiki), and praising shock workers (otlichniki proizvodstva). With the exception of two major Combine newspapers published in Medgora, the poor literacy of the editors and journalists alike “was irrevocably spoiling” the rest of the Combine press and its visual propaganda: posters, slogans, and different announcements. An article in Stalinskaia trassa, published on March 6, 1939, called the White Sea–Baltic Canal administrative center, Povenets, a “nursery of illiteracy,” castigating the announcements posted at the local club, at the public service organizations, and at the Komsomol organization of the canal as “ridiculously ignorant.”132 Swearing, camp jargon, and crude lexical and grammar mis130 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 83 (1937), 4. 131 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 19 (1939), 3. 132 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 33 (1939), 3.

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takes penetrated most of the Combine press, both directed at the prisoners and at the hired staff.133 The Combine’s Cultural-Educational Division attempted to organize contests for the “best family,” “the cleanest household,” as well as to promote labor contracts between children and their parents employed in the industry. According to a report issued in the summer of 1936, the competition for the “best family” turned out to be a complete failure. Only three schools from the Combine settlements applied to participate. The teachers’ visits undertaken in the framework of this project remained unproductive due to the “insufficient preparatory work,” with the exception of the Pindushi settlement, where the school administration had managed to get over 200 children involved in schooling activities. School councils met irregularly, and Komsomol councils “never displayed any initiative of improving the life of their children and of the local residents.”134 There was one exception to the gulag’s failure to transmit and instill Soviet propaganda, culture, and entertainment to its peripheries—the cinema. Under the aegis of the Combine, “mass culture” in the form of cinematic and radio installations was introduced in the region during the 1930s. Despite constant problems with electricity and technical supplies, already in 1936 many camp subsections boasted stationary motion-picture installations in the local clubs, attracting the camp prisoners, the hired staff, the local inhabitants, and schoolchildren.135 In the 1930s, watching movies became a favorite pastime for all of the BBK inhabitants, and one of the few features of “Bolshevik culture,” which, being an excellent distraction from the gloomy reality of everyday life, was welcomed by the gulag populace. The political activists among the Combine’s leadership manipulated the interest of the public in cinema by attracting workers into the clubs on the pretext of watching a movie and then turning this activity into a communist propaganda seminar. They placed guards outside the club so that no one would leave, causing discontent and open protests on the part of the workers. Such cases frequently resulted in “counterrevolutionary propaganda” charges and in the opening of criminal proceedings according to article 58. The protocols of the eyewitnesses’ accounts and testimonies of such cases 133 NARK, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 1436, ll. 82, 194. 134 NARK, f. P–630, op. 1, d. 87/717, ll. 11–14. 135 NARK, f. P–865, op. 35, d. 3/14, l. 163.

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demonstrated totally indifferent attitudes on the part of the Combine’s contracted workers toward the Soviet regime and toward the local communists alike.136 In the first half of the 1930s, radio sets were installed in the prisoners’ and hired workers’ barracks in the majority of the camp’s lagpunkty (camp subsections) and settlements. Regular broadcasts included not only concerts of Soviet composers’ works, poetry recitations, political lectures, and operas transmitted from the Bolshoi Theater137 but also daily lectures given by the Institute of Mass Extracurricular Training of the party activists affiliated with the Central committee of the Soviet communist party (TsK VKP(b)). These lectures covered subjects relating to party issues and governmental politics.138 In the remote sections of the Combine, the phone connection was established only at the end of 1939, and it was immediately used by the Combine’s Political Section for transmitting propaganda, which, in contrast to the cinema, did not become a popular pastime for the majority of the Combine’s hired staff.139 The mass closure of radio transmitters, from the onset of the Winter War in November 1939, against the background of the “underdevelopment of the press,” yet again cut the Combine peripheries off from the center in terms of propaganda as well as entertainment.140 The year 1937 was marked by the disappearance of almost all cultural and religious alternatives to the official Soviet propaganda and cultural policies within the gulag. Until 1937, due to a relatively mild regimen, some of the prisoners could not only freely leave the camp zones, but could also secretly preserve and practice their traditions and religions.141 The Solovki prison camp, for example, had an intense and rich religious and intellectual life until 1937, in many respects resisting Soviet official discourse and poli136 At the same time, these cases reveal that the usual pastimes and aspirations of the Combine’s contract workers and ex-prisoners hardly extended beyond drinking. It is interesting that these workers, having lived in the same barracks for many years, addressed each other by nicknames, such as “Vas’ka,” “Kuz’ka,” and so on. During the interrogations, they could not even remember the real surnames of their friends/ neighbors, or even pretended to have never known them. Arkhiv Ministerstva Vnutrennikh Del Respubliki Karelia (Arkhiv MVD RK), op. 01, d. 1149. 137 Margolin, Puteshestvie v stranu Z/K, 253; Stalinskaia trassa, no. 4 (1938), 4. 138 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 27 (1936), 4. 139 NARK. F. P–865, op. 35, d. 2/4, ll. 61, 68. 140 GARF, f. 9414, op. 4, d. 97, l. 16. 141 NARK, f. P–865, op. 1, d. 2/8, ll. 31, 76.

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cies through bringing to the public cultural productions and works that had already been banned in the country at large.142 The “Great Terror” of 1937–1938 led to the execution of many imprisoned members of the Russian intelligentsia detained at the Solovki prison camp, including of prominent Russian religious leaders, along with many spiritual leaders coming from the ranks of the prisoners detained in the Combine. Since the official Soviet “cultural colonization” project was still ineffective at the camps’ peripheries, in the case of both the prisoners and the hired staff alike, and since all other alternatives disappeared after the Terror, this void was soon filled with the only option left that was not deemed a serious danger for the camp administrations and for the Soviet regime—that is, the specific culture of professional criminals. Having exterminated those who, by virtue of their sole existence, provided an alternative to the Soviet “cultural construction,” the camp authorities became powerless in the face of the dissemination of the “camp” habits, cultural practices, and folklore of the criminals. From 1937 onward, many Soviet cultural-educational institutions situated on the outskirts of the Combine, such as the club in the Kyargozero ­settlement, instead of serving as citadels of Soviet culture, became open outposts of criminality. The club opened rarely, and always around 10–11 p.m. Various bandits and hooligans broke in, “terrorized the youth, and instigated fights.” Similar occurrences regularly happened in the clubs of other Combine subsections, for example, in Shoivani and Povenets.143 The criminal cases registered in connection to the incidents that took place during such occasions—instances that frequently ended in violence—shed light on how communication between the criminal clans and the local inhabitants was established. Instead of the absent Soviet cultural activists, the criminals took the initiative at kolkhoz youth parties, singing criminal (blatnye) songs and organizing their own performances.144 This is not to say that the 142 For example, during the Solovki concerts, Sergei Rachmaninoff was played under the guise of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, not to speak about the endless private literary and artistic evenings and discussions devoted to the Soviet intellectuals and to works of art rejected by the Soviet authorities. In 1937, after the extermination of most of its intelligentsia, Solovki ceased to exist as a prominent cultural center and was turned into a special regime prison (STON). I. I. Chukhin, Karelia—37: ideologiia i praktika terrora (Petrozavodsk: Petrozavodsk State University, 1999), 133. 143 Stalinskaia trassa, no. 92 (1937), 3; Stalinskaia trassa, no. 11 (1938), 2; Stalinskaia trassa, no. 47 (1938), 4. 144 Arkhiv MVD RK, op. 01.

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gulag bosses did not try to change this state of affairs. Even after the “reforging” policy was officially abandoned, the “club-based activity” (Klubnomassovaya rabota), apart from motivating the inmates for labor, was primarily targeted at pursuing “the fight against criminal traditions and habits”; however, similar to many other Soviet initiatives, this project turned out to be ineffective. The criminal culture incorporated, to some extent, the Bolshevik rhetoric in the course of its invasion of the cultural landscapes on the peripheries of the forced labor camps, in different corners of the country, by the end of the 1930s. For example, during the mass rebellions and disturbances of juvenile delinquents at the White Sea–Baltic Camp, in 1937–1939, this form of mass resistance occurred under fascist slogans, combining Bolshevik pathos with fascist rhetoric. According to a report on one such revolt, the juveniles, armed with whatever they could find, locked themselves inside the barrack and shouted: “Long live Hitler,” “Heil Hitler,” “To hell with Stalin.”145 Receiving such alarming and somber reports from the localities, in the winter of 1939, the NKVD called for the revival and intensification of the work of the Cultural-Educational Division in the camps. An order issued on January 14, 1939, claimed that the “utter decay” of the cultural-educational services in all the large camps resulted from certain “conscious attempts of the corrupted Gulag bosses to liquidate the Cultural-Educational Division in the camps.”146 However, having reviewed the reports from the camps dating from the first half of 1941, the chief of the Political Section of the gulag still noted that “the cultural-educational service was being ignored and distorted, in every possible way.”147 Later, the criminal culture, nurtured, maintained, preserved, and shaped by the camps, in the course of several mass amnesties during the 1950s, penetrated the Soviet Union at large. Paradoxically, a couple of decades earlier, it was already indirectly welcomed by the leaders of the Soviet state. Even in the 1930s, during several concerts in the Kremlin, the famous Soviet singer Leonid Utesov sang some songs of the professional criminals upon Stalin’s request. 145 Arkhiv MVD RK, f. 73, op. 1, d. 1468. 146 GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 21, l. 59. 147 GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 1432, l. 26.

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The thieves presented and performed their own music and poetry in the barracks. These cultural forms were embedded in their own peculiar traditions of “amateur artistic activity.” The powerful criminal leaders and thieves arranged their own “concerts” in the thieves’ barracks (shalmany). Although the “programs” of such performances greatly varied, they almost always featured a gypsy (‘mora, obviously coming from the German “Mohr” or Spanish “moro”), including the obligatory tsiganochka dance.148 The heritage of the gulag-created criminal culture is deeply engraved in the cultural landscapes of several Russian regions, including Karelia. In the 2000s, a number of popular paperback bestsellers, cast in the genre of the criminal/prison folklore ballads, were sold in large numbers in most bookstores, resulting in a rather profitable business enterprise.149 Conclusion As a typical and powerful gulag institution, the White Sea–Baltic Combine housed people of various political, social, and cultural backgrounds. Through a network of cultural-educational institutions and services, it embarked upon a Soviet “tour of culture”—a project within the “gulag cultural colonization.” Starting from the prisoners’ “reforging” program at the beginning of the 1930s and similar to many of the Bolshevik initiatives, it resulted in a plethora of unintended consequences. Both in the reality of the gulag enterprises of the Russian north and in the minds of the camp authorities, the theme of “cultural colonization” may have been secondary or even nonexistent. However, this aspect occurred and should not be ignored. It was displayed, among other things, in the form of the gulag professional and amateur theatrical and artistic institutions. These were approved and sanctioned by the gulag authorities, being created mostly by the imprisoned professionals and patronized by the NKVD regional elites. In the 1930s, the Central Theater of the Combine provided not only its hired staff but also the prisoners and the special settlers with entertainment opportunities and with a wide range of cultural activities, many of which it had inherited from the rich cultural and intellectual life of 148 Korallov, Teatr Gulaga, 107. 149 B. K. Sedov, Znakhar’ (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2002–2007).

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the Solovki prison camp during the 1920s. The close proximity to Leningrad and Moscow ensured that its “forced labor contingent” included academics, intellectuals, and artistic troupes that presented professional performances. However, the camp’s social and cultural life was primarily concentrated in the Karelian Gulag capital and the center of the Combine, namely, Medvezhyegorsk. This mirrored a broader gulag trend: at the administrative centers, the theaters, and other cultural institutions, were financed through the camps’ management, in addition to the related cultural, intellectual, and sports events that were easily accessible to the local population. The same was true of the inexpensive tickets for the regular theatrical performances.150 Moreover, an officially organized musical life within the gulag during the 1920s and the 1930s was not only a “gray zone” for the prisoners who were actively involved in it, although they were, for the most part, underappreciated or even completely concealed, and, at worst, they were sometimes subjected to physical and psychological torture. This cultural activity was also a way out of the “spiritual gulag.” In the smaller camps’ subsections, however, the working and living conditions of the prisoners and of the majority of the hired staff were abominable. A few kilometers away from the administrative centers of the gulag, people struggled to survive physically and mentally. Apart from the rare “artistic tours,” cultural and social life there was nonexistent, while the Soviet propaganda was absent or ineffective. These activities were replaced with sheer survival strategies, degradation, misery, terror, and imposition of the culture and habits of the camp criminals.151 The absence of adequate transportation infrastructure and the remoteness of these locations, which were situated far away even from the camp centers, along with the severe climatic conditions aggravated further the social and cultural isolation of the smaller gulag islands within the archipelago. This macabre picture presents a clear contrast to the special settlements, which, as the existing studies emphasize, remained much more responsive to the Soviet “tour of culture.”

150 Kaneva, Gulagovskii teatr Ukhty. 151 For a recent discussion of the camps’ criminal culture, see Mark Vincent, Criminal Subculture in the Gulag: Prisoner Society in the Stalinist Labour Camps (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

187

142

Libraries

1

Portable movie theater

188

Radio centers

14

3

0

20

0

0

0

Folk bands

Newspapers

Wall papers

Automobile fans’ club

Embroidery clubs

Choirs

Source: Stalinskaia trassa, 1936–1938.

0

no data

Symphonic orchestra

Radio sets

no data

2

Amateur activity ban

Mute movie theaters

0

Theater

no data

140

Red Corners

Mobile libraries

54

4

0

0

no data

0

no data

0

no data

21

no data

2

0

no data

21

20

21

1

1

1

1

2

1

2

no data

no data

1

no data

2

1

no data

1

2

2

5

1

1

no data

2

4

2

1540

49

25

5

6

1

400

164

162

77

active

active

active

inactive

active

active

active

active

active

active

active

active

active

inactive

some active

inactive

some active

Camp subsections Special settlements Medgora Overall number Functionality

Clubs

Entertainment type

Table 5A.1  The Entertainment Network, The NKVD White Sea–Baltic Combine and Camp, second half of the 1930s

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Table 5A.2  Population statistics, The NKVD White Sea–Baltic Combine and Camp at the end of the 1930s Population type

Year

Approximate number

Prisoners

1937

77,278

Combine sections (otdeleniia)

1938

14

Special settlements

1938

23?

Special settlers

1938

28,083

1937–1938

4,000–5,000

1938

3,864

Combine’s hired staff Approximate number of VOKHR guards

Sources: V. Makurov, “Belomoro-Baltiyskyi kombinat v Karelii. 1933–1941,” in Novoe v izuchenii Karelii (Petrozavodsk, 1994), 139–140; Stalinskaia trassa, 1936–1938; N. Baron, “Production and Terror: The Operation of the Karelian Gulag, 1933-1939,” Cahiers du Monde Russe 43, no. 1 (2002): 139180. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4000/monderusse.8487. Table 5A.3  Inflow into the BBK party organization, January 1–December 31, 1940 Komsomol members Nonmembers Overall Joined the VKP (b) as members

50

19

69

Joined the VKP (b) as candidates

117

15

132

Applications rejected for candidates

18

3

21

Applications rejected for members

4

2

6

Source: GARF, f. 9414, op. 4, d. 97, l. 7. Table 5A.4  Rejections of applications for membership of the BBK party organization, January 1–December 31, 1940 Reason

Unprepared

Obscure social origins

Slanderer Criminal Violations Total of Soviet legislation

Candidates

15

3

1

1

1

21

Members

6

none

none

none

none

6

Source: GARF, f. 9414, op. 4, d. 97, l. 8. 189

Oksana Ermolaeva

Table 5A.5  The BBK party organization’s territorial structure (detailed breakdown), January 1941 Ground level party organizations VKP (b) members Candidates

Total

Segezhlag

39

32

71

1st Medgora subsection

26

37

63

7th Vygozerskoe subsection

26

25

51

14th Pudozhskoe otdelenie

45

46

91

16th OKLP

28

31

59

22nd Volozerskoe otdelenie

18

34

52

4th Vanzozersky OLP

4

8

12

Povenetssovkhoz

3

9

12

12th V. Vygskoe otdelenie

14

16

30

Kemskoe OLP

6

11

17

10th Petrozavodsk otdelenie

9

17

26

Polginsky OLP

4

6

10

Source: The protocol of the meeting of the leading economic activists (aktiv) of the party organization of the BBK, held on January 28–29, 1941. GARF, f. 9414. op. 4. d. 97, l. 16.

190

191

Engaged in self-study Visited clubs Members Candidates Nonparty Members Candidates Nonparty 82 30 135 8 14 20 10 7 none none 11 1 18 15 6 2 9 20 72 30 38 6 7 1 18 8 15 1 10 94 22 7 none 2 2 5 17 21 20 none 6 1 20 14 21 none 4 4 12 18 none none 1 none 5 1 none none 2 2 6 10 none none none 1 15 7 46 none 1 57 5 6 31 1 5 1 13 11 39 1 8 2 11 11 12 1 6 3 9 7 3 6 7 13 5 6 6 1 4 1 8 4 2 1 none 2 12 4 60 2 none 27 3 2 none 1 3 12 360 220 444 29 100 256

Source: GARF, f. 9414, op. 4, d. 97, l. 7.

BBK Directorate 3rd Department 1st Medvezhegorskotdelenie Segezhstroy 5th New Vygsky otdelenie Onezhskoe otdelenie 14th Pudozhskoe otdelenie 21st Shalskoe otdelenie 16th OLP Belomorsk port Kem otdelenie Urosozero otdelenie Vygozerskoe otdelenie Vodorazdelnoe otdelenie Volozerskoe otdelenie Verkhe Vygskoe otdelenie Pushsovkhoz DOK Nadvoitsi otdelenie Petrozavodskotdelenie Total

Ground level party organization 289 29 70 154 146 39 65 63 31 10 17 126 49 74 44 45 23 17 105 21 1,409

Overall

Table 5A.6  Data on the study of the short course of the history of the VKP (b) by the BBK personnel (as of March 1, 1940)

Pa inting Dog s into R acoons

Oksana Ermolaeva

Table 5A.7  BBK guards’ (VOKHR) clubs (data as of January 1941) Club title

Number of clubs Number of visitors

Current affairs club

87

14,261

Shooting club

56

4,762

Air and Chemical Defense (PVKhO) club

48

3,690

General education club

32

2,535

War correspondent club

25

1,090

Drama club

10

1,233

Automobile club

7

1,141

Source: GARF, f. 9414, op. 4, d. 97, l. 13.

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Ch a p t e r 6

The Jewish Exodus to the Ba l kans, 1933–1938 Bojan Aleksov

T

he Jewish flight to the Balkans in the 1930s was shaped by the interplay between the Jewish responses to anti-Semitism in Germany (and later Austria), and the political and economic reality in the Balkan countries as potential emigration destinations. Recently, David Jünger illuminated how the dynamic within the Jewish community in Germany, the situation in Palestine, and disagreements among the leading Jewish political organizations influenced emigration or led to its rejection or postponement.1 Despite all the alarm bells, the unprecedented nature of developments in Nazi-ruled Germany over a number of years provoked mixed responses. The political opponents of the Nazi regime, and the Jews as those most affected, were, for the most part, left to confront their fate on their own. Therefore, the first wave of fugitives from Germany, many of whom were Jewish, was caused by political rather than racial persecution. In addition, Jewish university staff, state employees, and journalists were dismissed, and many of them sought 1 David Jünger, Jahre der Ungewissheit: Emigrationspläne deutscher Juden 1933–1938 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016); David Jünger, “Beyond Flight and Rescue: The Migration Setting of German Jewry before 1938,” Jahrbuch des Dubnow-Instituts. Dubnow Institute Yearbook 16 (2017): 173–198. See also Fritz Kieffer, Judenverfolgung in Deutschland—eine innere Angelegenheit? Internationale Reaktionen auf die Flüchtlingsproblematik 1933–1939 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003); Abraham Margaliot, Between Rescue and Annihilation: Studies in the History of German Jewry, 1932–1938 (Jerusalem: Mekhon Le’o Beḳ, 1990) (in Hebrew); and Eliahu Ben-Elissar, La Diplomatie du IIIe Reich et les Juifs (1933– 1939) (Paris: Julliard, 1969).

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jobs and safety elsewhere. After 1935, many chose to leave Germany because they were in breach of the Nuremberg racial laws by being married to those categorized as Aryans. There were also those whose property was sought after and who became targets if they refused to surrender it under unfavorable conditions. Eventually, the most vulnerable group turned out to be the so-called Ostjuden, the Polish-born Jews and their children—even if the children were born in Germany.2 Given the variety of targets and the different degrees of threat, emigration from Germany after 1933 was chaotic, but it was primarily an individual, or, at best, a family decision. Their decisions to emigrate or flee, and their potential destinations, depended upon individual circumstances, networks, and information circulating at the time. This is reflected in the story, or rather stories, told here about the initial period of Jewish exodus to southeastern Europe. This chapter not only looks at individual trajectories, and singles out experiences and perceptions of German Jews arriving in the Balkans, but it also examines the effect of their arrival upon the host countries, especially on the Yugoslav Jewish community. It also introduces the Zionist Hachshara (training farm) in Golenić in Croatia, the first attempt at semiorganized emigration. Finally, it sketches the escape paths of some prominent Jewish refugees, not because they merit more attention than others but because this information was easier to find, and, in some instances, became reflective of wider experiences. Yugoslavia as a Destination Yugoslavia and the Balkans were not sought-after destinations, although historically Jews played an important social, cultural, and economic role in the region. Moreover, in the 1930s they faced relatively little or no discrimination there compared to other parts of Europe. Yet, the Balkan countries were poor, and there were few if any opportunities for employment or business without some previous family or other connections (the primary reason for German Jewish refugees to head that way) being there. In the 1930s, as elsewhere in Europe, states did not look after refugees, and the issue was usually left to the local Jewish community. At that time, a vibrant Jewish life 2 During the Weimar Republic period (1919–1933), only about 16,000 of the roughly 100,000 Ostjuden were judged to have qualified for citizenship. Wm. Laird Kleine-Ahlbrandt, Bitter Prerequisites: A Faculty for Survival from Nazi Terror (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2001), 19.

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existed in a few larger Balkan cities, such as Salonika (Thessaloniki), Zagreb, Belgrade, and Sarajevo, although there were also a few smaller towns with significant Jewish populations, such as Bitola in the south or Osijek and Subotica in the north. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia—established after World War I out of Serbia and Montenegro as well as other previously Ottoman and Habsburg lands (now Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia)—occupied the largest part of the Balkan Peninsula, and it formed a transitional area between central Europe, the Mediterranean ports, and Palestine. With other routes for escape from Germany becoming increasingly difficult, expensive, and restrictive, Yugoslavia, alongside Greece, turned into a major transit country for the refugees, while some of them remained or became stuck there. Those who reached Greece were usually able to proceed further. Only a few went to remote Albania, although their numbers drastically increased in 1938 when all other options became inaccessible. Although Jews had been living in the Balkans since ancient Roman times (Romaniots), most arrived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, after the Sephardi Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal and settled in what was then the Ottoman Empire, which welcomed them. Whereas the Sephardim spoke Ladino, the German-speaking (and later Hungarian-speaking) Ashkenazi Jews had been gradually settling in the northern areas—reconquered from the Ottomans by the Habsburg Empire from the end of the eighteenth century onward. The biggest influx occurred after the Agreement of 1867, cementing Austria-Hungary as a composite state. A great majority of Jews had migrated to Croatia only a few decades before World War I, after the Croatian nobility allowed such settlement, and especially after 1873 when Jews were granted full equality before the law.3 Some engaged in the wood or agricultural trade on the lands of that very same nobility, and were consequently viewed negatively by the exploited population. Others worked in liberal professions, but they were nevertheless often perceived with suspicion and seen as “German” or “Hungarian” by the predominantly Slavic local population. A similar situation unfolded in Bosnia and Herzegovina after its 3 Agneza Szabo, “Židovi i proces modernizacije građanskog društva u Hrvatskoj između 1873. do 1914. Godine,” in Dva stoljeća povijesti i kulture Židova u Zagrebu i Hrvatskoj, ed. Ognjen Kraus (Zagreb: Židovska općina Zagreb, 1998), 142–155 (146). Also, Melita Švob, Židovi u Hrvatskoj Migracije i promjene u židovskoj populaciji (Zagreb: Židovska općina Zagreb, 1997).

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occupation by Austria-Hungary in 1878, when thousands of Ashkenazim moved in to find jobs in the imperial administration or new business opportunities. They too encountered a different reaction from the locals compared to that enjoyed by Sephardi communities, which for centuries had been part of the urban fabric of the Ottoman Balkans. This distinction continued well into the interwar period, when the Ashkenazim or Te(u)descos (literally “Germans” in Ladino) were sometimes negatively viewed, especially compared to the well-integrated Sephardim.4 When anti-Semitism first emerged in Sarajevo, it had a distinct anti-Ashkenazi slant, and the Ashkenazim were considered foreign, not only by local Slavs but also by the local Sephardim.5 The Sephardim also waged a sort of class warfare against the more affluent Ashkenazim, putting into doubt their allegiance to Yugoslavia. The newly established country could not erase the huge differences in political culture and cultural background between the former Habsburg and Ottoman lands. Comparing Zagreb and Belgrade in the late 1930s, British journalist Lovett Fielding Edwards noted: Also, the[ir] Jews are different: in Zagreb they are Ashkenazi, the familiar Yiddish-German speaking type of Central Europe, noisy, exuberant and numerous; in Belgrade they are mostly the more aristocratic Sephardi, Spanish speaking, more restrained and not easy to distinguish from those about them.6

The Jewish refugees also distinguished between what Ludwig Biró described as autochthonous Serbian Jews, and Croatian Jews, who were culturally Austrian or Hungarian. Sarajevan Jasha Levi claimed that they were simply two different tribes, only designated by others as one and the same.7 4 Francine Friedman, Like Salt for Bread. The Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 270– 273, 349–352. 5 Emily Greble, Sarajevo, 1941–1945: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Hitler’s Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 38. 6 Lovett Fielding Edwards, Profane Pilgrimage: Wanderings through Yugoslavia (London: Duckworth, 1938), 283. 7 Ludwig Biró, Die erste Hälfte meines Lebens. Erinnerungen eines Grazer jüdischen Rechtsanwaltes 1900– 1940 (Graz: Droschl, 1998); Jasha M. Levi, The Last Exile: Tapestry of a Life (Plainsboro, NJ: BookSurge, LLC, 2009), 34, 60.

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Notwithstanding these impressions, by the 1930s the vast majority of Yugoslav Jews spoke (Serbo) Croatian and were well-integrated.8 The Sephardim, as described by Harriet Freidenreich, the foremost researcher into Yugoslav Jewry, enjoyed amicable relationships with their neighbors, particularly with Serbs, who appreciated their support for Serbia before and during World War I. The Belgrade and Sarajevo Sephardim voted for the ruling Serb-dominated parties, and their later tribulations were often linked to their association with Serbs.9 There was a similar situation in other postOttoman Balkan countries featuring strong cultural, social, and economic ties between Jews and non-Jews. However, in the interwar period, the Jews were also transforming into a more self-aware minority. They preserved their own religious, as well as social and political, representation while at the same time accepting the national identity of the majority society through acculturation and language integration. By the 1930s, members of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities coexisted peacefully in Yugoslavia and frequently intermarried, despite the latter sometimes feeling sidelined.10 Time and again, the Jewish leadership expressed their loyalty to, and satisfaction with, Yugoslavia, whereas anti-Semitism in other countries, such as Poland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Romania was condemned.11 There was even speculation that Yugoslavia, like fascist Italy, was interested in the mandate on Palestine, based on its exceptionally good relations with its Jewish citizens, and its support for the Zionist project and the Balfour Declaration. Still, Jews made up a very small portion of Yugoslavia’s population. Compared to well over half a million ethnic Germans, there were only 68,405 Jews (39,010 Ashkenazim, 26,168, Sephardim, and 3,227 Orthodox in six smaller Hungarian-speaking communities in the north), according 8 Szabo, “Židovi i proces modernizacije,” 146. 9 Harriet Freidenreich, “Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Interwar Yugoslavia: Attitudes toward Jewish Nationalism,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 74 (1977): 53–80. For the consequences of the pro-Serb orientation of Sephardi Jews, see Nadège Ragaru, “Nationalizing the Holocaust: ‘Foreign’ Jews and the Making of Indifference in Macedonia under Bulgarian Occupation (1941–1944),” in The Holocaust and European Societies: Social Processes and Social Dynamics, ed. Andrea Löw and Frank Bajohr (London: Palgrave, 2016), 105–26. 10 Loker Cvi, “Sarajevski spor i sefardski pokret u Jugoslaviji” [The Sarajevo Dispute and the Sephardic Movement in Yugoslavia], Zbornik Jevrejskog istorijskog muzeja 7 (1997): 72–79; Ivo Goldstein, Židovi u Zagrebu (Zagreb: Novi Liber, 2004), 339–376. 11 Sonja Dujmović, “Uzajamna lojalnost—državna politika i jevrejstvo Sarajeva u međuratnom periodu,” Prilozi 48 (2019): 129–176 (160–161).

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to the last prewar census conducted in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1931. With several hundred acquiring citizenship each year, and increased immigration of Jews (including, but not only, refugees), it is safe to assume that there were closer to 80,000 Jews on the eve of World War II, making up 0.5% of Yugoslavia’s 15.5 million population. In terms of languages used, occupation, wealth, integration, and political views, Yugoslav Jewry reflected, if not exceeding, Yugoslav diversity as a whole. The largest communities were in Zagreb (10,000 to 12,000), Belgrade (10,000 to 11,000), and Sarajevo (9,000), where they represented 6.5%, 3.5%, and 10.5% of the population, respectively. In terms of social structure, most were middle class, with a few rich individuals and some destitute communities, especially in the southern region of Macedonia. It is among those poor communities that immigrants to Palestine, Chile, and North America were recruited at a steady but rather insignificant pace of a couple of hundred per year. Almost 40% of those employed were merchants, 25% were in state employment, around 13% were artisans, and 8% belonged to liberal professions. Jews were especially well-represented among lawyers and doctors.12 There was also a notable difference in wealth and occupation patterns between the much poorer Sephardim in former Serbian and Ottoman territories, and the Ashkenazim of the former Austro-Hungarian provinces, who mostly belonged to the middle and upper classes and excelled in trade. While there is no direct link between anti-Semitism and Jewish emigration in the early 1930s, most studies recognize the impact of the peculiar sociopolitical and ideological climate, including local anti-Semitism. Compared to other European countries, anti-Semitism in the Balkans was seen as marginal or nonexistent, for example, by Benbassa and Rodrigue in their seminal historical overview.13 Through the legal, administrative, and schooling policies of the state—and the activities of the respective Jewish communities in both Greece and Yugoslavia—a notion of a particular Greek and Yugoslav Jewish identity emerged in the 1920s. The Salonikan Jewish community, the largest in the Balkans, was nevertheless targeted by ultra12 Harriet Pass Freidenreich, The Jews of Yugoslavia: A Quest for Community (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1978), 65–67; Melita Švob, Židovska populacija u Hrvatskoj i Zagrebu. Available at: https:// archive.jpr.org.uk/download?id=3671 (Accessed December 5, 2021). 13 Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, Les Juifs des Balkans: Espaces judeo-iberique, XIV–XX siècles (Paris: La Découverte, 1993), 274–275.

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nationalist groups of refugees from Asia Minor, who swelled the town after the Greek-Turkish population exchange. They accused Jews of disloyalty due to previous pro-Ottoman or pro-Bulgarian attitudes and in connection with the mass support of communists among the younger Jews, most notably in the context of the so-called Campbell affair in 1931.14 However, before the rise to power of the Nazis in 1933, there were only isolated instances of antiSemitism, and relatively few problems reported by the Jewish community in Yugoslavia. This situation was described by Zdenka Novak, born Steiner, in 1919, into a German-speaking family in Zagreb: The political system in Yugoslavia was tolerant and Jews were free to practice their rites: we stayed home from school during our holidays, after the prayers we gathered in front of the synagogue. I cannot remember any resentment against us, any sign of anti-Semitism, at least not openly.15

Throughout the interwar period, the great majority of Jews expressed deep loyalty to the king and the royal family, and they supported the idea of Yugoslav unification. Two foreign ministers of the kingdom, Momčilo Ninčić and Vojislav Marinković, both close to the monarch, were descended from assimilated Ashkenazi Jews. The Law on the Jewish Religious Community in Yugoslavia, passed on December 13, 1929, was a major historical breakthrough “written with golden letters in the history of Yugoslav Jews,” as celebrated in Osijek. The law formalized the full equality of Jews with other confessions and spurred a significant increase in the activities of most Jewish communities in the country.16 The curriculum of Jewish religious instruction was widened to include the customs, history, and language of the Jews, and it was successfully managed by the Union of Jewish Religious Communities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, as a state-recognized organization. This organization also elected the Great Rabbi, who enjoyed equal rights and honors to the three other leaders of the main religious (Orthodox and Catholic Christian and Islamic) communities. The state paid the rabbi’s 14 The so-called Campbell district was a poor area where Jewish refugees of the 1917 Salonika fire had been resettled and which was targeted in 1931 by anti-Semitic gangs of Greek nationalists. K. E. Fleming, Greece: A Jewish History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 97–99. 15 Zdenka Novak, When Heaven’s Vault Cracked: Zagreb Memories (Braunton, Devon: Merlin, 1995), 14. 16 Zlata Živaković-Kerže, Židovi u Osijeku (1918–1941) (Osijek: Židovska općina, 2005), 45.

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large salary, he was addressed as Eminence, and during his tours of inspection, in accordance with national custom, the nine provincial governors had to kiss his hand. The Zagreb community, and a few others belonging to former Austria-Hungary, objected to the centralized character of the Union. While it had a similar size to Belgrade’s, the Zagreb Jewish community contributed more than double to the central budget and also engaged in various ad hoc collections. Only due to the overpowering Zionist majority was a compromise reached. Zionist help was needed again throughout the 1930s when the Zagreb community objected to the Union being headquartered in Belgrade. Later, Sephardi communities objected to Shime Spitzer as head of the Union, from 1936 onward, but his role in caring for refugees soon overshadowed these concerns. An early sign of anti-Semitism, or a bad omen of things to come in Yugoslavia, might have been perceived in relation to the mass migration of Polish Jews in the mid-1920s. While there was a steady stream of Jewish migrants toward Yugoslavia throughout the interwar period, in 1925 the Zagreb police headquarters raised an alarm, and soon the Interior Ministry requested an inquiry from all local police authorities with the aim of identifying and reporting on what seemed to be a mass wave of Polish immigrants.17 The responses revealed both the nature of this immigration and the reactions to it. The most virulent anti-Semitic response came from the mayor of Senta/Szenta, close to the Hungarian border, which was one of the centers of the Satmarer Hasidim Orthodox Jewish community, better known as Zenta Yidden.18 Altogether, there were between 700 and 1,000 newcomers in Senta and its surroundings in 1925–1926, with some heading to other Orthodox Jewish communities in nearby Ada, Kanjiža, Subotica, Bačka Petrovo Selo, and further afield to Ilok (these few communities did not join the Union of Jewish Communities described above). A further 78 Polish Orthodox Jews were recorded as arriving in Zagreb during that year. They were mostly merchants and craftsmen, but also included a cantor, an engineer, a dental technician, students, housewives, and so on.19 The investigation showed the increased migration from Poland to be short-term, family-based, and sectarian. The anti-Semitic responses on behalf of some 17 Archives of Yugoslavia, Belgrade (AJ)-14 (Ministry of Interior), 38-120-140, 584. 18 AJ-14, 38-120-140, 632. 19 AJ-14, 38-120-140, 633.

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authorities, and the attempts to curtail the Jewish migration, mostly via the Yugoslav Embassy in Warsaw, typical of the interwar attitude to the so-called Ostjuden throughout Europe, were eventually halted, and Yugoslavia would not impose any legal obstacles to Jewish migrants until 1938. In 1930, for example, 657 Yugoslav citizenships were granted to Jews (plus several hundred for family members). At least a couple of hundred of those were granted to Polish, Russian, Hungarian, Czech, Austrian, and Romanian Jews.20 The government actively encouraged wealthy Jewish industrialists to move to Yugoslavia, as in the cases of Wilhelm Löbl, and later Vilko Larič and Franz Mautner in Maribor.21 Yet, acquiring citizenship remained a long and difficult process, and many of the 4,882 Jews recorded as having foreign citizenship in 1931 only had residence permits.22 Yugoslavia’s main migrant group was the so-called White Russians, fleeing the Bolsheviks. More than 50,000 Russian migrants passed through Yugoslavia, and approximately 35,000 settled there in the 1920s, including several hundred Jews.23 Yugoslavia had taken a leading part in sheltering and giving protection to the refugees from Russia, given the close political, cultural, and historical ties between the two countries and their royal families. Less well-known, but significant for our topic, is another group who fled to Yugoslavia—over 3,000 Austrian Nazis came there after their failed July putsch of 1934.24 Despite the official Yugoslav anti-Nazi stand, they encountered a friendly welcome, especially from the members of Yugoslavia’s large German minority—the so-called Volksdeutsche. Most of them found refuge in Maribor, Osijek, Varaždin, Bjelovar, Slavonska Požega, and Zagreb, all of them places with a significant German population and situated near the bor20 AJ-14, 37-114-119. The list of persons who obtained citizenship in 1930, 522–542. 21 Hannah Starman, “Twice Disowned by Slovenia?: The Holocaust, Postwar Trials of Jewish Textile Manufacturers, and a Six-Decade Quest for Justice,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 32, no. 2 (2018): 173–206 (175). 22 In 1938, there were 3,082 Jews with foreign citizenship. See a detailed report on the citizenship application of Desider Hof in Goldstein, Židovi u Zagrebu, 329, and data on 494. 23 Miroslav Jovanović, Doseljavanje ruskih izbeglica u Kraljevinu SHS 1919–1924 (Belgrade: Stubovi kulture, 1996); Miroslav Jovanović, Ruska emigracija na Balkanu (1920–1940) (Belgrade: Čigoja, 2006). The only study of the Jewish segment of Russian migration is an article on Russian Jewish artists that settled in Belgrade, see Milenko R. Vesnić, “Jevreji na srpskoj pozorišnoj sceni tokom 19. i 20. Veka,” Zbornik Jevrejskog istorijskog muzeja 7 (1997): 210–231. 24 Dušan Nećak, Die österreichische Legion II: Nationalsozialistische Flüchtlinge in Jugoslawien nach dem mißlungenen Putsch vom 25. Juli 1934 (Aus dem Slowenischen von Franci Zwitter) (Vienna: Böhlau, 1996).

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der, but also featuring significant numbers of Jewish refugees. Austrian Nazi refugees stayed with relatives or in internment camps funded by the Yugoslav and German governments, which also provided them with German passports and organized a series of transports that would take them to Germany in 1935. Most Volksdeutsche belonged to the so-called Donauschwaben, colonized by the Habsburg Empire in the late eighteenth century along the Danube, although for centuries Germans had also inhabited the Slovenian regions of Carinthia, Styria, and Carniola in the north of Yugoslavia, on the border with Austria (and, from 1938, the German Reich). Long years of Nazi propaganda turned certain powerful German minority organizations in Yugoslavia, such as the Kulturbund, into the most important vehicles of anti-Semitism, which identified Jews with the Yugoslav regime and its ruling ideology.25 In 1935, in the town of Vršac, where Germans made up one-third of the population, the local Kulturbund organized public gatherings to pray for all the Jews to drown in the Red Sea.26 There were numerous incidents caused by the celebration of Hitler’s birthday in some towns, such as Maribor, provocative visits by German consuls, and so on.27 Besides local incidents and fights among youths, a number of Yugoslav Germans and German citizens were arrested for spying, but the German government and the German Embassy often intervened on their behalf, managing to release those detained or to halt expulsions. The British Foreign Office reported several incidents and arrests that spread from Slovenia, where most proNazi demonstrations took place, to Vojvodina and Belgrade itself.28 The Nazification of the Kulturbund German minority organization was a special concern for the American Embassy, which reported that Germany directly financed anti-Semitic publications, newspapers, and political organizations, such as the Yugoslav fascist Zbor.29 As many Yugoslav and Croatian Jews supported the Yugoslav government, they were also an easy target for radicalized Croatian nationalists, who in the 1930s increasingly looked to Nazi Germany for ideas and support. Meanwhile, some Serbian nationalist circles 25 For the German minority in Yugoslavia, see Karl Bethke, (K)eine gemeinsame Sprache: Aspekte deutschjuedischer Geschichte in Slavonien 1900–1945 (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2013) and Zoran Janjetović, Nemci u Vojvodini [Germans in Vojvodina] (Belgrade: Inis, 2009). 26 Ivan Singer, My Father’s Blessing: My Salvation (Sydney: Singer Consulting, 2002), 10–11. 27 AJ-334 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Reports of the Political Department 1939–1940), 16–41. 28 FO Annual Report 1938, Yugoslavia, British Library, London (BL), IOR/L/PS/12/119, PT I, 31. 29 Goldstein, Židovi u Zagrebu, 442.

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connected Jews with the Croatian national project, being envious of Zagreb developing into the biggest industrial and commercial center of Yugoslavia, with its Jewish bourgeoisie playing a significant role in the process. Finally, and most paradoxically, Jewish refugees were identified with the Germans from whom they had escaped, even being reported to police as “suspicious Nazis.”30 Something similar was happening with German-speaking Jews in Italy, who were a target of anti-German vitriolic attacks among the citizens of Germany’s closest ally.31 Nevertheless, initially, the plight of Jews and anti-Semitism were marginal issues in a country finding itself in dire straits of recession and slowly coming out of the personal rule, or dictatorship, established by King Alexander I Karađorđević in 1929 to prevent Yugoslavia from sinking into an ethnic conflict between the Serbs and the Croats, deemed two “tribes” of the same Yugoslav people by the official state ideology. How Many Jews Fled to Yugoslavia? Well-established data refer to 37,000 Jews who fled Germany in 1933 to Yugoslavia. Thereafter, the numbers went down to between 20,000 and 25,000 a year until 1938.32 Initially, most German Jews (over 70%) traveled to other European countries, with between 4% and 9% going overseas, and 19% leaving for Palestine. Yet, from 1936–1937 the destinations changed, as European countries closed their doors to Jewish migrants. Then, up to 60% of German Jews emigrated overseas (to North and South America, China, and so on), and only 20% to 25% stayed in Europe, with around 15% emigrating to Palestine. As Jünger showed, based on a multitude of sources, this initial emigration was often not viewed as permanent but was seen only as a temporary flight until Hitler’s demise and a future return to the German homeland.33 Political opponents of Nazism were most threatened, so the initial wave saw many left-oriented Jews leave, along with some Aryans fearing prosecution for their communist or anti-fascist activities. How many of them ended up in the Balkans is impossible to ascertain accurately. Most 30 Biró, Die erste Hälfte meines Lebens, 284. 31 Branko Polić, Vjetrenjasta klepsidra (Zagreb: Durieux, 2004), 237. 32 Jünger, Jahre der Ungewissheit, 59. 33 Jünger, Jahre der Ungewissheit, 59–61.

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earlier surveys of the Holocaust estimated a number of 7,000 refugees stranded in Yugoslavia in 1941, without providing any sources.34 The socalled Loewenherz report of the Viennese Jewish Kultusgemeinde in 1941 listed 1,644 Austrian Jews as having fled to Yugoslavia. Yet, as Schneider notes, this is the lowest possible estimate, as it does not include any Jews who went to Yugoslavia illegally or on their own.35 In 1939, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the “Joint”) estimated about 2,000 Jewish refugees in Yugoslavia when it sent a small sum of money ($4,300) to aid the Zagreb community.36 The Joint numbers are slightly lower than those published by the Union of Jewish Communities in May 1939, when it recorded 624 foreign Jewish families in Yugoslavia, with 2,182 individuals, and another 450 single Jewish refugees.37According to Koljanin, almost all of the 3,000 refugees who found themselves in Yugoslavia in 1941 perished.38 Historians who have previously worked on the topic more specifically, such as Voigt, Ristović, Völkl, and Gruenfelder, all drew their information from a report by Aleksandar Klein, the Zagreb Jewish community’s refugee aid administrator, according to whom over 55,000 Jews fleeing from the Nazis passed through Yugoslavia between 1933 and 1941, with around 1,000 still in the country when it was attacked on April 6, 1941.39 While Klein’s short manuscript gave a persuasive narrative about an important aspect of Jewish history, of which the Jewish community was proud, it was written entirely based on his memory. It was never subjected to critical analysis, although historians Menachem Shelah and Raul Hilberg accused Klein of coopera34 Kurt R. Grossmann, Emigration: Geschichte der Hitler-Flüchtlinge 1933–1945 (Frankfurt a.M.: Europäische Verlaganstalt, 1969), 233. This is then replicated in Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Atlas of Jewish History (London: Routledge, 1994) and Martin Gilbert, Atlas of Jewish Civilisation (New York: Macmillan, 1990). 35 Gertrude Schneider, Exile and Destruction: The Fate of Austrian Jews, 1938–1945 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 154. 36 Yehuda Bauer, My Brother’s Keeper: A History of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee 1929– 1939 (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1974), 269. 37 The American Jewish Yearbook 41 (1939–1940): 325–326. 38 Milan Koljanin, “The Yugoslav Jews in World War Two,” in Jewish Youth Societies in Yugoslavia, 1919– 1941, Catalogue of the Exhibition, Jewish Historical Museum, Belgrade, May 9, 1995 (Belgrade: Jevrejski istorijski muzej, 1995), 87–89 (87). 39 Katrin Völkl, “Die jüdische Gemeinde von Zagreb—Sozialarbeit und gesellschaftliche Einrichtungen in der Zwischenkriegszeit,” Münchner Zeitschrift für Balkankunde 9 (1993): 105–54; Anna Maria Grünfelder, Sustigla ih Šoa—Strani židovski izbjeglice u Jugoslaviji (1933.-1945.) (Zagreb: Srednja Evropa, 2018); Ristović, “Unsere” und “fremde” Juden; Klaus Voigt, Zuflucht auf Widerruf: Exil in Italien, 1933– 1945, vols. 1–2 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, c. 1989–c. 1993).

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tion with the Ustaša before his flight to Switzerland in 1942.40 Klein himself authored other reports operating with much smaller numbers.41 Of similar value is the report by Dragutin Rosenberg, who escaped to Switzerland one year after Klein, during which time he was de facto president of the Jewish community in Zagreb.42 Klein’s and Rosenberg’s manuscripts remain important records, but they are more valuable rather as reflections on the authors’ political and personal roles within Zagreb’s Jewish community. Given the circumstances in Yugoslavia, especially during the war, their knowledge of the situation of the refugees beyond Zagreb is very questionable. Other official reports differ greatly in their figures. The Report for the Jewish Central Information Office in 1937 listed 300 refugees from Germany, and a further one mentioned 120 refugees working on the Hachshara, on the Golenić estate.43 The Berlin lawyer and writer Gerhard H. Wilk, who spent time in Zagreb as a refugee and wrote a memorandum describing the situation there to Jewish aid organizations in Paris and London, listed only 600 Jewish refugees left in 1938, and around 50 who had established themselves or their businesses in the country. Finally, Wilk also reported on about 100 refugees without any status and documents, as their German passports had expired and they could not obtain others.44 The Jewish Yearbook similarly estimated that there were about 1,000 refugee Jewish families in Yugoslavia at that 40 Raul Hilberg in The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Harper, 1961), 457. Accusations against Klein are based on the report of the German Police Attaché in Zagreb, SS Obersturmbannführer Helm, also used at the Nuremberg trials, where Helm admits that Klein was carrying out important purchases for the Ustaša government in Italy and Hungary during the war. See Report of Ostuf. HELM, Police Attaché in Zagreb, and Report of the German Embassy at Zagreb to the German Foreign Office concerning the progress of the “Solution of the Jewish Question” in Croatia, dated April 18, 1944, Reference Number: 1655/2429, the Wiener Holocaust Library. Klein claimed he was arrested by the Ustaša and sent to Budapest to obtain funds in foreign currency from the Joint, which secured his release. See Session 46, 6, 5–6. Available at: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-046-04.html (Accessed December 5, 2021). 41 Klein reported in June 1934 that the Zagreb Jewish community registered 800 refugees from Germany, out of whom only 200 remained in Yugoslavia (Židov, June 15, 1934). In “Židovska emigracija u Zagrebu” (Židov, September 4,1936), Klein claimed that there were only 400 Jews in the entire Kingdom. 42 Rosenberg’s report to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) New York, in Joint Archives, SM 66 Yugoslavia/General, 1939–1944. Published in Zdenko Levental, Auf glühendem Boden: ein jüdisches Überlebensschicksal in Jugoslawien 1941–1947: mit den Berichten Dragutin Rosenbergs über die Lage der Juden in Jugoslawien an Saly Mayer als ehemaligen Präsidenten des Schweizerischen Israelitischen Gemeindebundes und das American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, ed. Erhard R. Wiehn and Jacques Picard (Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre, 1994). Rosenberg disappeared after the war. 43 Report on the Position of Jews in Yugoslavia, Wiener Holocaust Library, 3000/7/1/1/27, 5. 44 Wilk’s Memorandum is reproduced in Grossmann, Emigration, 21–22.

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time, but the international Jewish aid organization HICEM was assisting 1,000 Jews in Zagreb alone.45 Marija Vulesica recently questioned the figures of refugees circulating for decades in historiography, contrasting the figure of 55,000 refugees that were said to have fled through or to Yugoslavia (as per Klein) with other official figures of around 8,000 for the first two years (1933–1934), after which the numbers dropped sharply until late 1938, leading her to scale down her own estimate to only 1,000 refugees between the two waves.46 During this period, many German Jews were actually in transit as Halutzim, traveling through Yugoslavia in order to reach the ports of Sušak and Split or the Italian ports of Fiume and Trieste, only remembering the thick Balkan forests on their train journeys.47 It is possible that they were not counted and that, as Vulesica argues, Jewish officials diminished the number of those staying during the 1930s in order not to provoke more anti-Jewish sentiment than was already rife.48 Yugoslavia and all the Balkan countries suffered disproportionately long and delayed effects of the Great Recession, and incoming Jews could be used as scapegoats to take the blame for everything, from taking locals’ jobs to living on social aid. However, it is also possible that the numbers were inflated after the war to emphasize and point out the work of some of the Jewish activists. The two main Jewish communities in Belgrade and Zagreb often clashed, including over the care for refugees, so it is very unlikely that any one activist could have a complete and credible overall picture. What is clear, however, is that the numerous personal names on the files of Jewish communities, and especially in the records of international Jewish aid organizations, such as HICEM, rarely coincide with the hundreds of people whose personal narratives and interviews about their refugee experience in Yugoslavia I found. To put it simply, most people discussed here do not figure in any files, as many, maybe even a majority, did not ask 45 The American Jewish Yearbook 40 (1938–1939): 308–309; HICEM archive in USHMM, f. 1430 (1933– 1941). 46 Marija Vulesica, “Yugoslavia as a Hub for Migration in the 1930s: Local Zionist Networks and Aid Efforts for Jewish Refugees,” Jahrbuch des Dubnow-Instituts (Dubnow Institute Yearbook) 16 (2017): 199– 220, 207. 47 Jackie Renka, “Errinerungen an die Kindeit in München und die Emigrationsjahre,” in Die Erfahrung des Exils, ed. Andreas Heusler and Andrea Sinn (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015), 130–133 (131). 48 Marija Vulesica, “Formen des Widerstandes jugoslawischer Zionistinnen und Zionisten gegen die NSJudenpolitik und den Antisemitismus,” in Jüdischer Widerstand in Europa 1933–1941, ed. Julius H. Schoeps, Dieter Bingen, and Gideon Botsch (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2016), 89–105 (99).

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for aid directly and were not included in the official figures, indicating that the number of Jewish and other refugees who passed through Yugoslavia in the 1930s must be much higher than any contemporary reports estimated. Although there is no evidence for the widely circulated figure of 55,000, it is likely that the number of refugees was in the tens of thousands. The exact figure may never be established, and only studies of individual communities have some chance of providing some reliable data. Among the hundreds of Jews who registered in Yugoslavia as refugees from Germany in 1933, most found shelter in the country’s two largest cities, Belgrade and Zagreb.49 Others found their way to smaller northern Yugoslav towns where German was widely spoken, and they settled there mostly through family connections. This was the case of the family of Margarete Stern (née Hirsch in 1925, in Fürth, Bavaria), who arrived in Yugoslavia by train via Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and settled with an aunt who had married in Maribor.50 Nevertheless, these were small numbers for a country that had already seen years of a huge influx of refugees or economic migrants.51 As elsewhere in Europe, the burden of caring for those who could not support themselves fell almost exclusively upon the Jewish community.52 In the summer of 1933, the Union of Jewish Communities responded to the first wave of German refugees, ordering all communities to collect money, food, and other forms of aid, a task that was successfully completed by August.53 The Union opened a soup kitchen, organized lessons for refugee children, assisted with advice, and, in case of emergencies, provided financial support. Because Zagreb experienced the biggest influx of refugees, the Union approved the formation of a special Committee for Refugees, headed by Dr. Makso Pšerhof/Pscherhof, the vice-president of the Zagreb Jewish community, with Aleksander Klein as secretary. Furthermore, from mid-1934, the Zagreb Refugee Aid Committee also took up communication 49 La Situation Economique des Minorites Juives (Paris: Congrès Juif Mondial Départment Economique, 1938), 315. 50 Margarete Stern, My Story (London: Association of Jewish Refugees [AJR], 2018), 25. 51 In 1933, there were 118,273 foreign citizens in Yugoslavia, 52,389 workers or business owners, and 65,884 family members. 52 There were no other organizations offering aid to refugees at that time. Goldstein could not find any confirmation that the Catholic Church, especially Zagreb Archbishop Stepinac, supported the Jewish refugees, as is often claimed in his biographies and in other publications (Židovi u Zagrebu, 409). 53 Živaković-Kerže, Židovi u Osijeku (1918–1941), 86.

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with HICEM and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, with Klein acting as their representative for Yugoslavia. The committee also maintained close contact with the Relief Association of German Jews in Berlin. Besides the Jewish refugee aid committee, Zagreb had another committee created to care for non-Jewish political refugees from Germany, headed by Vladimir Pfeifer, a prominent trade unionist, and later one of the first victims of the Ustaša regime.54 Other Jewish communities and organizations, such as WIZO (the Yugoslav branch of the Women’s International Zionist Organization) began collecting aid, clothes, books, and toys for children. Further aid was distributed by the six Yugoslav B’nai B’rith lodges. As already emphasized, the approach whereby no refugee, whether temporary or permanent, was to become a burden on public funds was common throughout Europe. While the influx of German Jewish refugees was not the greatest test for the newly created Yugoslavia, it certainly was for its recently united Jewish community. The report by Klein on the Zagreb Refugee Aid Committee, discussed above, is unclear about how effective the committee was in registering, let alone assisting, those who arrived at localities situated beyond major urban centers. The Jewish community could employ only very few refugees, usually as rabbis.55 Smaller towns and their Jewish communities, such as Dubrovnik, historically the oldest continuous Jewish settlement in the country, found it harder to grapple with refugees. With only 24 paying out of a total of about 120 members in the 1930s, Dubrovnik repeatedly complained to the Union in Belgrade that they were disproportionately burdened by the demands for assistance from the newly arrived.56 It was even more difficult to maintain a cordial and cooperative relationship with the authorities. Soon after the first wave of arrivals, a delegation of Yugoslav Jews paid a visit to Foreign Minister Bogoljub Jevtić, who pledged that Yugoslavia would welcome Jewish refugees.57 Yet, no one could predict how long the issue would 54 “U Zagrebu je osnovan odbor za zbrinjavanje emigranata iz Nemačke,” Politika, December 31, 1933, 4. 55 One of them, Lazar Margulies, served in the new art nouveau synagogue in Bjelovar, in Croatia. See Mladen Medar, “Prilog istraživanju povijesti Židova u Bjelovaru,” in Radovi Zavoda za naučnoistraživački i umjetnički rad, 1 (Croatia: Gradski muzej Bjelovar, 2007), 164–168 and Mirjam Rajner, Fragile Images: Jews and Art in Yugoslavia, 1918–1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 295. The Margulies family fled via Ljubljana to Italy, where they survived. 56 Bernard Stulli, Židovi u Dubrovniku (Zagreb: Jevrejska općina Zagreb, 1989), 80–81. 57 Olivera Milosavljević, Savremenici fašizma 2: Jugoslavija u okruženju, 1933–1941 (Belgrade: Helsinški odbor, 2010), 117.

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persist. At that time, Britain, for example, was largely seen as a port of transit as far as refugees were concerned, allowing a stay of somewhere between four and twelve weeks. The Board of Deputies of British Jews feared that many of the refugees would represent the professional classes, with little prospect for jobs and the potential for stirring up anti-Semitism in the country.58 This fear emerged in Yugoslavia, too, albeit with a different twist. Already in November 1933, a member of the Senate of the Yugoslav Parliament, Dr. Ivan Majstorović, questioned the decision of the government to accept 350 German Jewish families, condemning anti-Semitism, but also insisting that German or Ashkenazi Jews represented the “pan-German Kulturträger mission in the Balkans,” that they tended to associate with authoritarian regimes, had no respect for local people and traditions, and, as already demonstrated in France, could become a security threat in the border areas.59 As proof, Majstorović cited the magazine of Jewish refugee intellectuals in Amsterdam, Die Sammlung, which explicitly stated its aim to become the “hub of German culture abroad.” Interior Minister Živojin Lazić admitted that asylum was granted to some Jewish refugees, but he argued that it was not indefinite, and that most Jews wanted to emigrate to Palestine or further away. Among initial arrivals, according to the minister, only 200 were currently staying, while 600 had already emigrated. He added that among those remaining, there were wealthy people who would invest in Yugoslavia and help connect the country to Western markets. Finally, Lazić insisted that it was a long-standing state tradition to accept émigrés, regardless of their faith, which is “an honor for Yugoslavia, our culture and humanity.”60 Yugoslav Chief Rabbi Dr. Isak Alkalaj, the only Jewish member of the Senate, followed in the debate, praising the speech of the interior minister as a reflection of “the great soul of the Yugoslav people,” and providing further details on the minister’s figure of only 200 refugees. He asserted that 93 individuals were being sponsored by the Jewish community, while a further 109 were wealthy enough. Alkalaj closed the Senate debate by insisting that Jewish loyalty to Yugoslavia, both from Sephardim and Ashkenazim, would remain beyond any doubt, even if there were thousands of newcomers.61 58 Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933–1948 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 18–28. 59 Milosavljević, Savremenici fašizma 2, 120. 60 Cited in Milosavljević, Savremenici fašizma 2, 121. 61 “Yugoslavia and Exiled Jews,” Manchester Guardian, December 1, 1933, 13.

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Indeed, most new arrivals in Yugoslavia waited for affidavits or tried to obtain visas to emigrate to the Americas, while only a minority aimed to make Yugoslavia their new home. At the same time, Greece turned into a key transit point for illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine, with the number of Polish Jews soon overtaking those of German ones. When the Greek government bowed to British pressure to curb this traffic originating from Athens, it continued unabated from the Aegean islands, as reported in 1934–1935.62 Some transports were held or blocked, such as the steamship Velos, with some 400 Polish Jews on board, who were prevented from disembarking between Jaffa and Haifa in 1934 and then forced to return to Piraeus. This prompted the deputy inspector-general of the BritishMandate Palestinian police to come to Athens, where Velos was detained, to investigate illegal immigration.63 Yet the transit continued, and Jews from Poland were sent to Palestine from Athens on another, Romanian vessel. In the meantime, a major debate ensued among Yugoslav Jews about whether the refugees should stay or emigrate further. Leading Zionists, such as Aleksandar Licht, insisted that aid for the German Jewish refugees should not dissipate into simple philanthropy and insisted that it was essential for every Jew to understand that Eretz Yisrael was the only territory where it would be possible to permanently accommodate them, presenting this view as both a moral and an economic/practical solution.64 Another leading Yugoslav Zionist, Lavoslav Šik (Schick), also tried to persuade German refugees to emigrate to Palestine, and lamented that their women were “particularly aggrieved when it is suggested to them that they leave Europe and retreat to uncultured Asia.”65 Both Zionists condemned the refugees for not being sufficiently aware of their Jewish identity, and for still seeing themselves as members of the German nation, wishing to return to Germany. The Jewish Central Information Office’s report on Yugoslavia reasserted that very few 62 FO Annual Report 1935, Greece, BL IOR/L/PS/12/156, 11. 63 FO Annual Report 1934, Greece, BL IOR/L/PS/12/156, 13. The report does not mention what happened to the remaining 100 migrants (presumably they landed illegally). 64 Marija Vulesica, “‘What Will Become of the German Jews?’ National Socialism, Flight and Resistance in the Intellectual Debate of Yugoslav Zionists in the 1930s,” in Catastrophe and Utopia: Jewish Intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Ferenc Laczó and Joachim von Puttkammer (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018), 45–70 (64). 65 Biró, Die erste Hälfte meines Lebens, 326; Vulesica, “Yugoslavia as a Hub for Migration in the 1930s,” 206.

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refugees emigrated in order to create a new life in Palestine.66 Condemning the “assimilatory” ways of German Jews, the Yugoslav Zionist press went along, expressing surprise that many German Jews (just like many respectable Germans) did not share the Yugoslav outrage about the rise of Nazism.67 Narrative sources corroborate some, if not all, of these accusations and misunderstandings. Viennese author Fischer ridiculed the behavior of Germanassimilated Jewry, describing his grandfather and his friends as “the most entrenched, Iron-Cross-decorated members of the Association of Jewish exfront-line-veterans of 1914–1918 … who haven’t the brains of a flea.”68 Others tried to explain this attachment to German culture. Imre Rochlitz from Vienna described the incredulous reaction of many Jews toward the German anti-Semitic laws, including members of his own family. He described them as susceptible to the very same anti-Semitic prejudices to which they eventually fell victim, often despising the unassimilated Jews: Why should they persecute us? The various accusations of the Nazis did not seem to fit us: We were not rich, we did not exploit Gentiles, we certainly were not international conspirators, financiers, or Zionists, our culture was Germanic, we spoke Hochdeutsch without an accent and we didn’t even have big noses. They could not possibly mean us; surely their hostility was directed against the Jews of other cultures and nationalities.69

Thus, it should not come as a surprise that for the vast majority of German Jews in Yugoslavia, as stated by a number of interviewees and testimonies, Palestine was not an option. Common to recollections of both “bourgeois” and socialist-leaning refugees from Germany and Austria was that they described themselves as secular, insisting that they went to the synagogue on the high holidays only, and never celebrated a Friday evening or 66 Report on the Position of Jews in Yugoslavia. 67 Dina Katan Ben-Zion, “Polemics with Nazism in the Newspapers Zidov and Jevrejski Glas in Yugoslavia, 1935–1941, ” Yad Vashem Studies 21 (1991): 287–314; Vulesica, “Formen des Widerstandes,” 89–105. 68 Wolfgang Georg Fischer, Lodgings in Exile, trans. by Inge Goodwin (London: Owen, 1979), 112, 190. Fischer spent only a couple of years in Yugoslav exile (1938–1940) as a child before his father managed to get a business visa to go to London, while he returned with his non-Jewish mother to Vienna. 69 Imre Rochlitz, Accident of Fate: A Personal Account, 1938–1945 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011), 20.

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Seder night at home, as recalled by Werner Reich.70 Ruth Gutman and her husband George, medical doctors from Vienna, were diehard socialists, and she remained true to this “faith” throughout her life, despite her later horrifying war experience.71 Ilse Strauss recalled: “Chanukah was, for me, just another children’s party organized by the community where I only remember that we all got a hot cup of cocoa each year.”72 In the light of the assimilationism of German Jewry, the Yugoslav Zionist press reported little about the plight of Jewish refugees and instead, according to a survey by Goldstein, fostered a sense of optimism and hope right until the destruction of the Jewry in Yugoslavia, despite existing differences in opinion and approach.73 Yet, as Vulesica demonstrated, for Yugoslav Zionists too, Palestine was far away, both geographically and politically. Their ostensibly Palestine-directed nationalism strengthened their position versus those Jews who supported Serbian or Croatian nationalist forces, and it allowed them to assert their leadership within Yugoslav Jewry. Darko Suvin (Schlesinger/Šlesinger) described the Zagreb Zionist women’s organization as social rather than political, comparing it to a bridge club.74 One of its members, Sara Raisky, perceived it as a bourgeois club, supporting Zionism as a noble, but not as a practical idea to follow in terms of moving to Palestine.75 Furthermore, Zionism was rejected by Orthodox Jews entirely, but very little is known about their separate community, as no official records of their activities survived.76 While all parties and associations with an explicitly nationalist orientation were banned in Yugoslavia in 1929 in order to ease interethnic ten70 Interview with Werner Reich, the Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection. 71 Ruth Gutman, “Through Hell with a Guardian Angel,” Manuscript typewritten in Haifa in 1990, Leo Baeck Institute Memoir Collection (ME 1184), 56. 72 Ilse Strauss, Unpublished Memoir 4413, Wiener Library, London, 8. 73 Ivo Goldstein and Slavko Goldstein, The Holocaust in Croatia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), 52–75. 74 Darko Suvin, “Slatki dani, strašni dani. Iz Memoara jednog skojevca, dio 1,” Gordogan (Zagreb) 6–7 (2008/2009): 15–18 (28). 75 Sara Raisky, La Matassa: Ovvero la signora delle tredici picche (Trieste: Mgs Press, 2010), 68–69. 76 Pavel Deutsch, the son of Orthodox community leader Josef Deutsch, an Austrian-born industrialist, wrote that his father and their community organized aid for refugees arriving in Zagreb and also sent packages to other Orthodox families in Poland, Austria, and Germany. Deutsch was deported to, and died in, Jasenovac camp in the first year of the war. See “Deutsch, Josef,” in Židovski leksikon, an online project of the Zagreb cultural association Miroslav Šalom Freiberger. Available at https://zbl.lzmk.hr/.

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sions, the Zionists were able to continue their work, as the Jews were recognized not as a national, but as a religious, minority.77 Although the General Zionists, headed by Aleksandar Licht, clearly commanded the support of the majority of the Jewish communities, and were able to maintain their leadership position until 1941, two further factions emerged during the 1930s: the Poale Zion (Workers of Zion) and the Revisionist Bethar movement.78 In addition, particularly in Bosnia, there was a strong Sephardic movement that was close to the Zionist philosophy in principle, but which demanded a special status for the Sephardim, their history, and culture.79 Notwithstanding criticism of German Jews as assimilationists, many contemporaries contested the widespread Zionist appeal among Yugoslav Jews. Zagreb B’nai B’rith President Mavro Kandel claimed that the Balkan Jews accepted Zionism more or less along political lines, rather than as a nationalist movement aimed at the unification of all Jews and their emigration into one Jewish state.80 This is most evident in the lack of enthusiasm for Zionist activities relating to Palestine, as most Jews and Jewish organizations clearly focused on Yugoslav issues, and even more on the local issues concerning their own Jewish communities.81 The project of building and settling a Yugoslav farm in Palestine failed, and many of these early emigrants returned. Eventually, only around 1,000 Jews emigrated to Palestine from or via Yugoslavia in the 1930s, with half of them being refugee Jews and the other half mostly coming from the impoverished town of Bitola/Monastir.82 As Freidenreich concluded many years ago, few Yugoslav Jews felt the need to emigrate, given their country’s generally good treatment of the Jews.83 The 77 Vulesica, “Yugoslavia as a Hub for Migration in the 1930s,” 209. 78 Interviews with Francis and Eili Ofner, the Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection. 79 Vulesica, “‘What Will Become of the German Jews?,’” 51. 80 Manfred Lahnstein, Massel und Chuzpe. Wie Blanka und Rudolf den Holocaust überlebten (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2004), 97; Biró, Die erste Hälfte meines Lebens, 327–332. 81 Dujmović, “Uzajamna lojalnost,” 150–153. 82 In fact, of the 490 Yugoslav Jews who emigrated to Palestine in the 1930s, the Monastirlis accounted for 429. The Monastirlis emigrated in much greater numbers to the United States and to Latin American countries and in the 1930s, increasingly to Belgrade and Zagreb. See Mark Cohen, Last Century of a Sephardic Community: The Jews of Monastir, 1839–1943 (New York: The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, 2003), 151. According to the Palestine Office report, 1,076 people emigrated to Palestine from Yugoslavia in the period 1933–1939, with half of them being Halutzim from Germany and other countries trained at the Golenić Hachshara. See “Palestinski ured o svome radu, ” Židov 23, no. 50, December 8, 1939, 6. 83 Freidenreich, Jews of Yugoslavia, 71–72, 179–180.

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situation was similar in Greece, with fewer than 3,000 Greek Jews emigrating to Palestine in this period.84 The Zagreb ethnologist and psychologist Vera Stein-Ehrlich publicly intervened in the often one-sided debate in the Zionist press with a series of articles criticizing the view that German Jewish refugees should immediately travel to Palestine in order to build the Jewish state there. She deliberately used different and peculiar terminology, describing the Jewish refugees as emigrants who were trying to keep their pride and to fight their social decline. Stein-Ehrlich also criticized Yugoslav Jewish welfare associations for continuously saying that they had to do something, but hardly doing anything at all, and for accusing the new arrivals of provoking anti-Semitic attitudes by worsening the economic situation and stubbornly speaking German. Instead of constantly condemning the refugees for lacking Jewish consciousness and sticking to German culture, Stein-Ehrlich appealed to Yugoslav Jews to help the refugees unconditionally, without judging them. She warned against the adoption of a vocabulary reminiscent of economically determined anti-Semitism, which was actually part of the Nazi ideology, and insisted that migration to Palestine could not be the solution for this entire generation, as building a state there would be a lengthy process. Stein-Ehrlich’s more coherent and realistic approach, which she developed both as a woman who met refugees in real-life situations and as an academic, downplayed the political issues of Zionism, and instead pleaded for empathy and understanding for the emigrants, emphasizing solidarity and willingness to help, which could be seen as a lesson relevant for our contemporary approaches to issues of migration.85 However, Vera and her sister Ina were dismissed by the mainstream in the Jewish community as Femmes savantes.86 Despite these clear differences, the advent of the refugees awakened a sense of Jewishness among many in the well-integrated Jewish community of Yugoslavia.87 By the mid-1930s, some of the conflicts between var84 Fleming, Greece, 106. 85 Vulesica, “‘What Will Become of the German Jews?,’” 67–68. Communist-Zionist Ina (Juhn-Broda) and her sister Vera Stein were daughters of Adolf Ehrlich, a Zagreb construction entrepreneur, and brother of a famous architect, Hugo Ehrlich. After the war that made them both widows, Ina became a translator of South Slavic literature into German in Vienna, and Vera Ehrlich-Stein became a scholar and pioneer ethnologist. 86 Polić, Vjetrenjasta klepsidra, 9. 87 Interviews with Francis and Eili Ofner; Novak, When Heaven’s Vault Cracked, 38.

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ious political orientations were overcome, compromises were made with the Revisionists, and the Zionists clearly triumphed over the assimilationist generation of their fathers. On a more practical level, in 1934, the Zionists founded their Central Office for Social and Productive Aid, the aim of which was to persuade both Yugoslav and foreign Jews, the younger ones in particular, to prepare for future life as well as for manual and agricultural jobs, in Palestine.88 Some money for the Hachsharas in Yugoslavia was allocated by the Council for German Jewry, although the Jewish refugees in Yugoslavia were not among their priorities.89 A year before, Viktor Gutmann, a baron, decorated Austrian war veteran, and scion of probably the wealthiest Jewish family in Yugoslavia, lent part of his enormous Golenić estate to the Zagreb branch of the youth Zionist organization Hechalutz for young German Jews to work in agriculture, mostly in tending cows and other domestic animals.90 The main goal of the Hachshara in Golenić was to educate and prepare Jewish youth for the hard, pioneering work of building a Jewish state in Palestine. Golenić hosted 278 youngsters from 1933 to 1936, but most of them came from Poland and Lithuania, with only a few Yugoslav Jews (from the impoverished Sephardi community of Bitola). Among the few German Jewish trainees was Elfriede Blanari from Hamburg, who came in 1934 and, after several years, managed to emigrate to Palestine and later to the United States, while her parents, who remained in Hamburg, perished.91 She was joined in 1937 by the young Zionist activists Herbert Lewin from Osterode in East Prussia and Alfred Rosettenstein from Frankfurt an der Oder.92 In 1937, a few more German Jews came to Golenić as a way to escape concentration camps or prisons, as was the case with Ernesto Kroch and his friends, 88 Vulesica, ‘“What Will Become of the German Jews?,’” 65. 89 Council for German Jewry, Report for 1938 (London: Steler & Young, 1939), 15. 90 Viktor Gutmann and his family were arrested by the Ustaša Police in February 1943, but they were later released due to the personal intervention of Adolf Eichmann, and they fled to Italy (see The Adolf Eichmann Trial—The District Court Session 47, part 1, 3. Available at: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/ people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-047-01.html [Accessed December 5, 2021]). After the war, Baron Gutmann was arrested by the new communist regime on charges of collaboration with the Nazis, sentenced to death on November 23, 1945, and executed. For more on the Gutmann family, see Hrvoje Volner, Od industrijalaca do kažnjenika “Gutmann” i “Našička” u industrijalizaciji Slavonije (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2019). 91 From Project Stolpersteine Hamburg. Available at: http://www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de/en.php? MAIN_ID=7&BIO_ID=1392 (Accessed December 5, 2021). 92 Interview of Herbert Lewin by Tanja Eckstein, Vienna, November 2002. Available at: http://www.centropastudent.org/node/78294 (Accessed December 5, 2021).

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Lothar and Käschen (Uri?) from Breslau, as well as Georg and Walter from Leipzig. While eagerly performing their agricultural tasks, the German newcomers interfered with the Zionist political education, by spreading communist ideas. With their love affairs, they also interfered with the common fake-marriage practice among the members, put in place in order to make better use of British Palestine certificates, which were more easily available to couples.93 As a result, Kroch’s group was then transferred to nearby Pusta (estate) Marićevac, which was run by socialist Zionists, the Hashomer Hazair (Ha-shomer ha-Za’ir). In the 1930s, Hashomer became the most active and attractive organization among the Yugoslav Jewish youth, and the Yugoslav police became alarmed because of what it viewed as a “communist-suspect Zionist organization.”94 Indeed, when the Germans invaded in 1941, those associated with Hashomer and another youth group, Tehelet Lavan, crossed en masse over to the Yugoslav communist youth movement and became the backbone of the resistance.95 The illegal Communist Party of Yugoslavia also managed to infiltrate the Boy Scouts, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and other organizations that had a strong appeal among German refugees.96 Hashomer was so profoundly secular that rabbis, too, despaired of these young Jews, calling them goyim for associating with Jewishness only by tradition, rather than by religion.97 It ran another agricultural Hachshara near Jagodnjak in Baranja, close to the Hungarian border, on the lands of the Pisker family, with 54 participants, and there were two smaller maritime Hachsharas (Hachshara jamit), where several young men learned to become fishermen or handle boats. These were set up and functioning near Sušak, from 1938, and in Vela Luka, on the island of Korčula, from 1937. The Golenić Hachshara continued unabated until the Nazi occupation, so one can assume that after the Anschluss its numbers rose further. In addition, there was another short-lived Hachshara in 93 Ernesto Kroch was sentenced to prison in 1934 as a communist when he was only 17 years old. He came out of KZ Lichtenburg in 1937 and fled to Yugoslavia. Ernesto Kroch, Exil in der Heimat—Heim ins Exil (Frankfurt a.M.: dipa-Verlag, 1990), 79–84. 94 Teodor Kovač, “Something about Ha-shomer Ha-Za’ir and Its ‘Nest’ in Novi Sad,” in Jewish Youth Societies in Yugoslavia, 1919–1941, 71–78 (73). 95 The D(j)ord(j)e Hajzler interview is available in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection. Available at: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn513556 (Accessed December 5, 2021). 96 Ernst Pawel, Life in Dark Ages: A Memoir (New York: Fromm International, 1995), 71. 97 Levi, The Last Exile, 34.

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Lipovac, near Daruvar, while the Revisionist Betar had a couple of its own camps in Slavonia and near Sarajevo.98 A stay in the Hachshara was not only remembered as providing for young people without legal status or wealth a chance to enjoy what many claimed to be the best years of their lives but also as offering an opportunity to emigrate to Palestine illegally. Herbert Lewin recalled how, in the spring of 1939, their passports were taken to Prague, where a Jewish consul from Ecuador promised to stamp the passports with Ecuadorian entry visas on the condition that they later get rid of them. Apart from the youngsters from Golenić, there were another 500 Jewish Halutzim from Czechoslovakia who had the same Ecuadorian visas. When they reached Sušak on the Adriatic (a Yugoslav port town next to Rijeka-Fiume), they slept for a week on straw bags in the local synagogue, being fed by the local Jewish community, and waiting for the Czechoslovak group to arrive. Eventually, the police chief of Sušak was bribed so that they could clandestinely board the Greek boat Galilea, where they were hidden in the machine room. The Czechoslovak group arrived by train in sealed carriages directly to the port. On the boat, hundreds slept in narrow bunk beds on three levels. The air was so bad that Lewin preferred to be awake as a guard, and to take care of a live cow, which they had on board as provision. After three days, they slaughtered the cow, and Lewin continued guarding the meat.99 On the seventh day, Galilea entered English waters near Palestine and then, under cover of night, they landed in groups of 25. The Greek sailors rowed the lifeboats, and the Haganah (Defence; Zionist paramilitary group in the interwar Palestine) people waited on the shore. Despite these examples to the contrary, most aid was sought, and most support received, through unofficial channels, about which we know very little. We know that assistance for travel came from one of the wealthiest and most influential Zagreb businessmen, Vladimir Radan (name changed from Aladar Rechnitzer), who was also Greece’s honorary consul, and who secured Greek visas for refugees in transit.100 Another prominent industrialist, Aleksandar Ehrmann, was Portugal’s consul and acting consul for Brazil 98 Goldstein, Židovi u Zagrebu, 372, 484. 99 Interview with Herbert Lewin for Centropa, November 2002. Available at: https://www.centropastudent.org/cs/node/62334 (Accessed May 25, 2018). 100 “Radan, Vladimir,” in Židovski leksikon.

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in Zagreb, and he helped secure visas to those countries for many Jews.101 Portugal generally allowed entry to wealthy applicants. Businessman Artur Marić (Mayer) was Albania’s consul general in Zagreb, and his brother Milan, also one of the country’s most prominent businessmen, was Turkey’s honorary consul. Both had connections that assisted their friends and family.102 A number of other individuals aiding refugees were recorded, such as Valerija Saucha (née Schrenger), who was married to a German and housed a number of refugees. Her privileged status became especially important later, during the war. After the war, she submitted the list of refugees who had stayed with them and returned the latter’s property that they were keeping.103 The politically active Yugoslav Jewry also assisted the refugees by taking Nazi proclamations and threats seriously.104 The Jewish press vehemently condemned anti-Semitism, both in Germany and in the rest of Europe, as well as in its own country. Jewish activists and writers called for action, as well as boosted Jewish honor and self-confidence. Every instance of anti-Semitism in Yugoslav political life or media was attacked, and every attempt was made to prevent the discrimination against Jews that was so prevalent in Europe at the time. While the attempts to boycott German goods had no impact, the frequent calls to help the Reich’s and Czechoslovak Jews secured the Yugoslav government’s support until mid-1938, and even later, and allowed access to many funds, both collected inside the country and received from American and international Jewish organizations.105 The remarkable, indeed unique situation and attitude of the Yugoslav Jewry in Europe in the 1930s is illustrated by an incident that took place in Sarajevo in 1934, on the occasion of a guest performance by the Berlin Jewish choir Hanigun, led by Chemjo Vinaver, following their very successful concerts in Belgrade and Zagreb. When a group of 15 young Ustašas tried to interrupt the concert, throwing eggs and yelling against “Communist Jews,” the local Sarajevo Jews swiftly responded, beating up the Ustašas and keeping them tied up until the police came and arrested them. Eventually, the Ustaša provocateurs were not only 101 Marko Fak, “Aleksandar Ehrmann (1879–1965), veleindustrijalac i mecena (skica za portret),” Radovi, Zavod za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu 41 (2009): 334–335. 102 “Marić, Artur (Mayer),” in Židovski leksikon. Artur was killed at the beginning of the war in unclear circumstances, and his sister was killed after not evacuating from Rab camp. 103 “Saucha, Valerija,” in Židovski leksikon. 104 Vulesica, “‘What Will Become of the German Jews?,’” 62. 105 Vulesica, “Formen des Widerstandes,” 98.

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beaten but sentenced to between 10 and 20 days in prison.106 This incident was followed by a similar one involving two Sarajevo Jews beating up a man who said that Hitler did well to expel the Jews.107 Beyond the Jewish community, there were also visible public reactions and interventions throughout Yugoslavia on behalf of Jews in Germany and German Jewish refugees. Already on May 21, 1933, there was a solidarity demonstration for Jews in Germany held in Zagreb. Protests followed in Belgrade, Dubrovnik, and other towns.108 The PEN Congress held in Dubrovnik in June 1933, the first occasion for the global literary elite to voice their protest against Nazism, echoed through the Yugoslav press and impacted the country’s intellectuals, despite leaving the PEN association divided.109 Klaus Mann repeated the same message during his tour of Yugoslavia that summer. The town of Skoplje staged Fromental Halévy’s opera La Juive, whereas Belgrade hosted concerts of Jewish composers or Jewish history lectures. All major newspapers, such as Politika, Pravda, Vreme, and Hrvatski dnevnik, reported regularly on antiSemitic incidents in Germany and elsewhere, and they condemned racism unequivocally. Prominent politicians, including those of the ruling Yugoslav Radical Party and the main opposition leader Vladko Maček of the Croatian Peasant Party, castigated anti-Semitism. They were joined by public figures, university professors, and Belgrade sportsmen, who advocated the boycott of the Berlin Olympics because of the persecution of Jews in Germany.110 The Belgrade University choir, Obilić, boycotted their planned tour of Germany in 1936, with other leftist student organizations also prominent in staging solidarity actions and public events. In 1935, Yugoslavia banned several organizations of its German ethnic minority for their anti-Semitic statutes that prohibited marriage to Jews or the acceptance of Jewish children in their schools. Yugoslav courts also regularly meted out sentences for anti-Semitism.111 106 Goldstein, Židovi u Zagrebu, 425. However, the Ustaša youth in Zagreb managed to interrupt the premiere of the play Jews by the Russian writer Eugen Csirikov the following year. 107 Dujmović, “Uzajamna lojalnost,” 164. 108 Jünger, Jahre der Ungewissheit, 140, points to German diplomatic reports about these protests. 109 On the PEN Congress, see Jean-Michel Palmier, Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America (New York: Verso, 2016), chapter 6. Suzanne McIntire, Speeches in World History (New York: Facts on File, 2009), 328. 110 Milan Koljanin, Jevreji i antisemitizam u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji 1918–1941 (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju 2008), 346. 111 “Yugoslavia Bans Spreading Anti-Semitic Propaganda,” American Jewish World, December 13, 1935, 9; “Yugoslavian Nazi Convicted,” American Jewish World, September 18, 1936, 34.

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Everyday Life In terms of the actual lived experience of German Jewish refugees, it is important to stress that it was rather easy to reach Yugoslavia initially. Author and journalist Erich Kuby came with his Jewish girlfriend Ruth by bicycle from Hamburg.112 Others flew or drove, such as the Reichs from Berlin, who, in December 1933, also brought their German maid to Zagreb. Wilhelm Reich decided to emigrate from Berlin to Yugoslavia because he had spent part of World War I in occupied Serbia as an Austro-Hungarian cavalry captain and had befriended some local people.113 Most other early refugees came by train, and some, especially later, came on foot. This was the case of Salman Stemmer, born Solly Eigner in a Sanzer Hasidim family in Nuremberg in 1916. Salman first fled to France with his family in 1933. After the murders of Yugoslav King Alexander and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou in Marseille in 1934 in a plot organized by fascist Ustašas, the French authorities ordered all sans-papiers (people with no official identity papers) to leave. His parents left by boat to Palestine, whereas Salman, who had a Polish passport, went by foot or hitchhiked. After some time in Italy, Salman crossed into Yugoslavia by foot and hitchhiked to Zagreb.114 While entering Yugoslavia was easy, a life in exile was not, especially for the deprived among the refugees. In 1934, the tax base for the Reichsfluchtsteuer, or emigration tax, from Germany was increased by over 400%. First introduced in 1931 in Weimar Germany, and conceived as a fiscal deterrent against capital flight, the Reichsfluchtsteuer meant that hardly any of the wealthier refugees could come to Yugoslavia (as the Union tried to reassure the Yugoslav authorities). Available testimonies confirm that the issue of economic survival dominated the everyday life of most refugees. 112 Kuby published his war experiences later in the works Demidoff; oder, von der Unverletzlichkeit des Menschen (Demidoff; or, On the Invulnerability of Mankind, 1947), Nur noch rauchende Trümmer (Nothing but Smoking Ruins, 1959), and his magnum opus, Mein Krieg (My War, 1975). 113 Interview with Werner Reich. Reich’s recollections were also published in William V. Rauscher, Holocaust Survivors Werner Reich and Helbert Nivelli (n.p.: 1878 Press Co., 2015), 50. 114 Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR), Refugee Voices, Interview 116: Salman Stemmer, February 19, 2006, Manchester, Transcript, 9–22. Salman was first sent by Zagreb Zionists to Golenić Hachshara, before moving in with Hasidim in Senta for another four years. Salman left for Bulgaria just before the Nazi invasion, and eventually boarded a boat that took him to Palestine in 1941.

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The non-Jewish press occasionally showed an interest in the refugees, and described the circumstances in the Belgrade Headquarters of the Union of the Jewish Communities in 1934 as appalling: In the corridors, one can hear only German, as émigrés, sharing the same miserable destiny, find their only entertainment in confessing to each other. Or daydreaming about immigrating to countries they know nothing about. Many are still in summer suits, worn out shoes, unshaved and unkempt.115

The Belgrade Jewish community ran a self-service cafeteria nearby, with funds provided by a local Jewish donor. Other community members brought shoes, clothes, and other items. The community also provided temporary accommodation, housing 40 people in fairly miserable conditions. These makeshift conditions were justified by claiming that the refugees did not want to stay in Belgrade. Still, the Belgrade Jewish community reported spending 30,000 dinars (about 600 dollars) a month to cater to the refugees. In addition to Belgrade and Zagreb, Yugoslavia’s biggest coastal town of Split and nearby resorts housed many refugees desperately awaiting an opportunity to board a ship going overseas. Some were so poor that they stayed on the premises of its Jewish community. The local wealthy Stock family proved most generous, and they not only helped with donations but also hired refugees to work in their cement factory.116 Turning to the stories of the refugees themselves, however, we encounter many who do not recall any assistance being offered, as recorded by Ernst Pawel, born in 1920 in Breslau, who came with his family from Berlin to Belgrade in 1933: In any event, we faced a double threat—starvation on the one hand and, on the other, expulsion as undesirable aliens without visible means of support. No relief organization of any kind existed in Belgrade at the time, nor did the Jewish community offer any assistance.117 115 The report from newspaper Vreme, cited in Milosavljević, Savremenici fašizma 2, 118–119. 116 Duško Kečkemet, Židovi u povijesti Splita (Split: Jevrejska općina, 1971), 174–175. 117 Pawel, Life in Dark Ages, 52.

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Among the first to arrive in Zagreb in December 1933 was Rudolf Lewy, a pharmacist from Berlin.118 According to his memoir written shortly after the war, for the next four and a half years, Rudolf and his wife were stuck without any possibility of emigrating, obtaining visas from foreign embassies, or receiving any kind of assistance from the Jewish organizations active in Zagreb at the time. Eventually, he was advised by the representative of Lloyds in Zagreb to emigrate to Colombia, which did not present any entry problems, but was not a desirable destination. The greatest help came from the director of Zagreb’s Parasitological Institute, who helped Lewy find work informally for over two years. Eventually, with a certificate from the director of the institute, Lewy persuaded Colombia’s consul general in Genoa to issue them visas, as his expertise as a “parasitologist” would be helpful for the development of agriculture in Colombia. According to Lewy, throughout this period, HICEM in Paris and other Jewish refugees in Zagreb advised against emigrating to Colombia, which was thought to be malaria ridden. Fortunately, they decided against this advice, and they left Zagreb just in time as the Anschluss further undermined the Jewish refugees’ situation throughout Europe. Irene Fisher came to Belgrade with her mother Helene from Warsaw in 1935 as a young girl. Helene opened her own clothing business, found a Serbian partner and lover, and, according to Irene’s testimony, the mother and daughter integrated successfully, experiencing no anti-Semitism whatsoever.119 Irene enrolled in a German school, and as a ballet student, she performed for the Yugoslav Crown Prince. Irene’s privately owned German Citizens’ School in Belgrade saw the number of its pupils more than double between the school years 1933–1934 and 1938–1939, reflecting the two biggest waves of émigrés from Germany and Austria.120 In fact, the intake of pupils in this Belgrade school jumped from 20 in 1931–1932 to 124 just 118 “Unsere Emigration nach Kolumbien: 1938–1952,” Unpublished Memoir 4353, Wiener Library, London (compiled in Berlin in 1962, based on a shorter piece written in Bogota in 1950 “Unsere Emigration nach Jugoslawien, Dezember 1933 bis Juli 1938”). Overall, the author had no good memories of his years in the Zagreb exile, whereas he was pleased with his success in Colombia. 119 Irene Binzer, “Segment#: 1.” Interview. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, 1999. Available at: http://vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=30262&returnIndex=0# (Accessed May 25, 2018). 120 Tables in Ranka Gašić, Beograd u hodu ka Evropi. Kulturni uticaji Britanije i Nemaćke na beogradsku elitu 1918–1941 (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2005), 228. Unfortunately, the author misattributes these data. Statistical data in AJ, 66-2636-2334.

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before the war, in 1940–1941, with many more attending only temporarily, indicating that there were more refugees than ever admitted by officials. In places such as Maribor, with over 30% of German speakers, Jewish children initially enrolled in German-language schools, but over the years this choice became more and more difficult due to the peer pressure from children who were members of the Volksdeutsche community, which was already thoroughly Nazified by the mid-1930s.121 While many refugees wanted their children to continue their education in German, for instance, at the German school affiliated with the Evangelical Church in Zagreb, after a while most Jewish children switched to regular local schools, as, for example, Paul (Shaul) Hirsch from Brno, Werner Reich from Berlin, and others, as described in their recollections. The German language was universally hated in Yugoslavia because of Nazism, and young Jewish refugees did not want to stand out, as did their parents. Renate Reich cut her braids, too, in order not to be associated with the unpopular Germans.122 With the help of their peers, they adapted quickly to the new language and environment, as children and young people usually do, whereas their parents struggled. Enrolment of Jewish refugee children in Yugoslav schools continued until 1941 owing to decisions being taken locally, mostly by individual school principals. It was the same in Greece where refugee children picked up the language with ease, but parents’ nerves, strained by the traumatic events and by anxiety about the future, limited their ability to take in the new language, as testified by Rudolf Rosenbaum in Athens.123 The real difficulty proved to be finding work and earnings. Yugoslavia’s economy depended upon the output of its agricultural produce, ore, bauxite, and wood, which was largely exported in an unprocessed state. Combined with the effects of the prolonged depression, the country provided few outlets for skilled labor. Some refugees tried registering their own businesses or acquiring contracts to represent foreign companies in order to placate the authorities.124 Others worked illegally. Women were more willing to take on menial and low-paid jobs just to survive or to provide for their husbands and 121 Stern, My Story, 26. 122 Rauscher, The Death Camp Magicians, 59; Suvin, “Slatki dani, strašni dani. Iz Memoara jednog skojevca, dio 1,” 39. For a similar atmosphere in Ljubljana, see Lisa De Curtis, Unpublished memoir written in 1980 in New York, Leo Baeck Institute Archives Memoir Collection (ME 883), 48. 123 Rudolf Rosenbaum, The Diaries, 1938–1946 (New York: Silver Press, 2017), 39. 124 Interview with Werner Reich.

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families. Irene Binzer Fisher’s mother Helena immediately took on work as a dress- and hat-maker in Belgrade to support herself and her young daughter.125 Gertrude Najmann, almost 50 when released from the concentration camp in 1942, stayed in Belgrade to work as a maid in a doctor’s household, carrying coal up the stairs from six in the morning, followed by all the other chores filling an 18-hour working day.126 Barely 15, Ernst Pawel had to work to support his family because, paradoxically, as a minor he did not need a work permit. He became an apprentice at one of Yugoslavia’s largest publishers, Hungarian-born Jew Geca (Geza) Ko(h)n. Pawel could not hide his contempt for Kon, blaming him for lack of solidarity in helping the poor coreligionist refugees: Geca showed up at the Ashkenazi synagogue on the high holidays, but otherwise avoided any involvement in the affairs of the Jewish community, rightly fearing that it might cost him some money. Giving a job to a poor refugee youngster, on the other hand, was the sort of thing that made him feel like a philanthropist.127

As an apprentice, Pawel complained that he was paid the equivalent of only six dollars a month for a six-day, 60-hour week, which barely covered his and his parents’ rent. For him, it was too little pay for working in Belgrade’s biggest foreign literature bookshop, which stocked an eclectic collection of French, German, and English literature, classical as well as current, and which was headed by another refugee, Herr Blumenthal, who had previously run a Frankfurt bookshop that had been taken over by the Nazis.128 At a closer look, however, it becomes evident that Geca Kon paid 15-year-old Ernst Pawel no less than an average monthly salary in Yugoslavia at the time. Rather than being a blemish on Geca Kon’s personality, this episode illus125 Binzer, “Segment#: 1.” 126 Gertrude Najmann, Die Reise nach Palästina, Eva Mills Papers, Weiner Library, London, 1816/115. 127 Pawel, Life in Dark Ages, 56. 128 Pawel, Life in Dark Ages, 61. In 1941, like most of the Belgrade Jews, Geza Kon and his entire family were murdered. For more details on the fate of Geza (Geca) Kon, see Velimir Starčević, Knjiga o Geci Konu (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1992); Christina Köstner, “Das Schicksal des Belgrader Verlegers Geca Kon,” Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich 1 (2005): 7–19; and Christina Köstner, “Bücherraub am Balkan: Die Nationalbibliothek Wien und der Belgrader Verleger Geca Kon,” in Jüdischer Buchbesitz als Raubgut: Zweites hannoversches Symposium, ed. Regine Dehmel (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 2006), 96–106.

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trates the clash of expectations and cultures between German Jews and the Yugoslavs, even when the latter were Jewish. Fischer comically described the conflicts and lamentations of some refugees about rented accommodation in Zagreb, especially of those originating from “the old Austrian underworld of lodgers, furnished tenants, ill-shaven bachelors, barely tolerated sharing of lavatories, and other horrors of a region permanently on the dark underside of the world of sun and success, not acknowledged by the bourgeoisie.”129 The challenges faced by career-oriented men were described by a Munichborn mathematician, Michael Golomb, who completed his doctoral dissertation in 1933 at the Friedrich Wilhelm Universität (now Humboldt Universität) in Berlin. Sudden political developments altered his career expectations and made Golomb search frantically not for a country that would offer him the best chances for advancing his mathematical development but for one that would allow him in at all. The deep economic depression led to high unemployment rates in all the developed countries, with borders closed to foreigners who were seeking work. Golomb belonged to the most threatened group, because, although he was born in Germany, he was a Polish citizen, as his parents were immigrants who could never acquire German citizenship. With a Polish passport, he had no chance of being admitted anywhere except for Yugoslavia, where his sister had moved after marrying a Yugoslav citizen. Golomb received a visitor visa, which was valid for two months, and came to Belgrade in October 1933, with the vague hope of establishing himself there or of traveling further, to a country of his choice. Instead, as Golomb wrote, he was trapped in Yugoslavia for five and a half years.130 Unable to obtain a job as a mathematician, Golomb moved from Belgrade to Zagreb, living from one resident permit to another. These permits were acquired through the intervention of various influential citizens and officials. Even worse, he was forced to go undercover with the support of some friends and charity organizations. To survive, he tutored students in mathematics and Hebrew, socialized with local leftist intellectuals, and wrote reviews and articles for journals in Germany and in Belgrade. In 1938, his fiancée, Dagmar, came up with the idea of writing to Bertrand Russell to seek help for getting a British visa. Russell replied, but he could not help. 129 Fischer, Lodgings in Exile, 115. 130 Michael Golomb, “Terror and Exile and a Letter About It,” Topological Commentary 4, no. 1 (1999). Available at: http://at.yorku.ca/t/o/p/c/71.htm (Accessed December 5, 2021).

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Instead, he directed Golomb to American Quakers. Eventually, Golomb obtained affidavits and was granted an American visa, while also managing to successfully smuggle his 9-year-old brother from Germany to Yugoslavia, in 1938.131 In a reverse instance of Orientalist/Balkanist discourse, Golomb summed up his experience: I will always cherish the wonderful people who befriended me in Yugoslavia, and I will never forget the beauty of the country … Zagreb had a fine opera, theatre, a concert hall, and some good museums. There were excellent restaurants serving Viennese as well as Balkan cuisine. The local wines were quite good. I particularly liked the outdoor cafes, where you could drink your coffee and eat a dish of delicious ice cream and read European newspapers provided by the management. I liked sitting there and watching the corso, that Mediterranean custom in which masses of people of all ages stroll up and down window shopping, conversing, ogling, flirting, and kissing.132

At the same time, Golomb only had bad words for the authorities, who extended his permits only temporarily. Strict residence policies frustrated many refugees like Golomb. Most affected were those unable to make a living or a life for themselves in exile, and those without savings. Some contemplated going back to Germany, and some actually did so.133 For those who believed that exile would be temporary, Yugoslavia was conveniently close for the planned return. Others apparently held a naive belief that Hitler’s rule would soon end. False optimism notwithstanding, for most refugees, everyday life turned into a constant struggle to survive and to remain legally abroad, even if the Balkans was not their preferred option. Pawel remembers the Police Prefect who made his family cringe and plead for every threemonth residence permit: “‘This is the Balkans,’ my father reminded me; the Stone Age, as far as he was concerned.”134 Educated, well-to-do immigrants 131 Golomb eventually obtained a visa and emigrated to the United States, where he later joined the Department of Mathematics at Purdue University. See “Obituary of Michael Golomb.” Available at: http:// www.math.purdue.edu/math-news/math/news/2008/obituary-of-michael-golomb.html (Accessed December 5, 2021). 132 Golomb’s recollections were published in Laird Kleine-Ahlbrandt, Bitter Prerequisites, 69. 133 Pawel, Life in Dark Ages, 52. 134 Pawel, Life in Dark Ages, 53.

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from big European capitals were disgruntled by the fact that a poor Balkan country about which they knew next to nothing imposed restrictions on them. Emotional turmoil as the ever-present consequence of their uncertain status seemed to hurt the most. For Pawel, it was a crushing burden of guilt; for others, an overwhelming feeling of despair and hopelessness. The most fragile succumbed. Pawel recalls a certain Weissbart(h), a middle-aged bachelor and former music critic in Munich, with whom he spent hours playing chess in Belgrade’s Hotel Royal, the preferred hangout for refugee Jews, as it was located across from the main building of the Belgrade Jewish community. An enormously learned person, a born teacher capable of conveying a passion for books and the arts, Weissbart, like the rest of the refugee crowd, had absolutely nothing else to do. What further distinguished Weissbart from the rest, and raised many eyebrows, was that he was openly homosexual. In January 1935, Weissbart took a lethal dose of barbiturates, being among the first of the refugees to commit suicide. In the letter he left behind, Weissbart explained that the plebiscite in the Saarland region robbed him of his last glimmer of hope for a decent, democratic Germany. Weissbart was buried as he had requested, without ceremony of any kind, in a remote corner of Belgrade’s New Cemetery, somewhere in the no-man’s-land between Christians and Jews, in a spot where he belonged, according to Pawel, who was among the 100 or so mourners, coming entirely from the Belgrade refugee colony. Even if not respected while he was alive, Weissbart’s act awoke in all of them the worst fears of what was yet to come.135 Indeed, Weissbart was followed by Kurt Tucholsky, a celebrated writer and journalist, who took his life while in his Swedish exile the same year. Walter Benjamin, Stefan Zweig, and countless other less-known Jewish men and women in exile, facing humiliation or deportation, chose the same tragic path. Further contributing to the anxiety of hundreds of refugees was the fact that the police had them placed under surveillance for their alleged links to German communists and/or the Comintern, as in the case of Ernest Kroch and cabaret artist Oscar Kanitz.136 Jewish refugees were also of inter135 Pawel, Life in Dark Ages, 59–61. 136 AJ-14, Kartoteka (Card Index of Suspicious Persons) lists, among others, 246–249 Kac Dr Leopold, communist in Austria crossing the border to Yugoslavia in 1935; 246–271 Kleinhaus, 1939 financing communist bureau, from Antwerp; 246–272 Klaus Lehmann (involved in refugee aid, important agent, surveyed from June 5, 1939); 246–273 Klein (agent of Comintern); 246–274 Klein Theodor—German communist; 246–275 Klumpp Heinrich—German communist; 246–276 Kachl or Kochl Herman, Ger-

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est to Zagreb’s German Consulate, which, for example, instructed film and theater producer Fritz Schönherr, who stayed in Zagreb with his partner, the famous German actress Trude Hesterberg, to report on anti-Hitlerism among the refugees.137 In 1937, the Jewish Central Information Office (founded by Alfred Wiener in Amsterdam in 1933, which moved to London in 1938) produced a survey of the position of the Jews in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The survey noted the rise of anti-Semitism following the murder of Yugoslav King Alexander I, who was regarded as a great protector and friend of the Yugoslav Jewry. This tendency was most evident in the German-backed journals Balkan and Erwache. Jewish mediation, as the report stated, was no longer able to suppress these tendencies. The most troubling event, however, was the appointment of the Slovene Catholic priest Korošec as the minister of the interior. While the Yugoslav government had shown itself to be tolerant toward the refugees, Korošec was associated with a series of expulsions (revocations of residence permits), which the Association of Yugoslav Jewish Communities nevertheless succeeded in halting. The report concluded that “a recrudescence of anti-Semitic propensity is doubtlessly to be noticed and that the Government does not interfere with it as energetically as the murdered King Alexander did, but so far no serious danger is to be seen for the Jews.”138 Yugoslav Jewish officials intervened several times with the newly powerful Prime Minister Stojadinović, the interior and justice ministers, as well as other officials against the publication of not only the “Protocols of the man merchant, suspicious; 246–277 Koitkevich—Comintern; 246–278 Komora Hugo, French; 246– 279 Kok Andrics Leo, Dutch agent of the Third International; 246–280 Komossa Hermann, German communist; 246–281 Kraus; 246–282 Kritzer Heinz, German communist; 246–284 Kutschka Konrad, German communist; 246–285 Kun Bela, German communist; 246–287, Köblös Elek-Aleksandar, Hungarian communist; Kraus Ferenc, Edo, Lea-pharmacist; 246–297 Kanitz Dr Oskar, German Jew, strict surveillance in 1939; Kanitz Olga Sara, Kanitz Barbara Sara, in Sarajevo, surveillance 1939; 246–345 Kirschner Rudolf, Jewish merchant born in 1910 in Germany..., expelled in 1938 as suspicious and spy; 246–668 Lichtenstein Max, German communist (1933); 246–689 Leyser Ervin, together with above; 246–691 Letzen Elsa (1940); 246–692 Leonnardt Lotte, German communist (1933); 246–700 Lehrer Kaspar, German communist (1933); 246–743 Lebenstein Vilhelm; 246–1580 Stela Bencin, Romanian Jew (1937); 246–1581 Sigmund Steiner (1936); 246–1582 Greta Schladinger (1937); 246–1583 Stal Valter Herman (1940); 246–1590 Vecker Kurt, German communist (1933); 246–1594 Vatzlavick Georg, German communist (1933); 246–1596 Vitfogel Karl, German communist (1933); 246–1597 Voitel Johann (1933); 246–1599 Veinte August (1933); 246–1600 Veindl Karl; 246–1630 Veningerholz Konrad (1936); 246–1964 Windholz Natan (1937). 137 Grossmann, Emigration, 333–334. 138 Report on the Position of Jews in Yugoslavia, 2–6.

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Elders of Zion” but also the anti-Semitic articles of the newspapers Balkan, Mlada Hrvatska, Erwache, Sturm, and so on.139 The prime minister and other Yugoslav officials resolutely denied any support for anti-Semitic ideas, but a detailed press analysis shows their gradual rise from 1936 onward, and especially after 1938.140 Nevertheless, Yugoslavia continued to issue or renew residence permits for refugees until 1938–1939, that is, much later than most other European countries. Similarly, permits were also issued on the basis of business ownership or investment in existing businesses (the amount needed was not fixed), enabling residence for family members, rather than on the basis of work permits.141 According to official reports issued by Jewish organizations, most refugees eventually managed to travel further and settle somewhere else permanently.142 As German troops annexed Austria on March 11, 1938, as a result of the so-called Anschluss, the lives of Austrian Jews and anti-fascists turned into a struggle for survival almost overnight. Yugoslavia, bordering Austria, emerged as one of the primary destinations for thousands of refugees. From 1938 on, escape became the most important individual survival strategy adopted by persecuted Jews and others. The mass pogroms of German Jews on Kristallnacht later that year persuaded even the most optimistic, or conformist, Jews to flee. The following year, they were joined by the Jews of Czechoslovakia and Poland as a consequence of the Nazi occupation and attacks against their countries. Every subsequent wave of refugees was more and more desperate, with most crossing into Yugoslavia illegally, before some of them proceeded further to Greece, Albania, and elsewhere. From 1938, the Jewish refugees had to rely almost exclusively on illegal border crossings, counterfeit documents, bribes, conversions, fake marriages, and other wellknown refugee strategies to survive and increase their chances for escape.

139 Goldstein, Židovi u Zagrebu, 433. 140 Milosavljević, Savremenici Fašizma 2; Koljanin, Jevreji i antisemitizam. 141 AJ-14 (Ministarstvo Unutrašnjih Poslova Kraljevine Jugoslavije), 36-113. 142 Wilk’s Memorandum, in Grossmann, Emigration, 21–22.

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Weathering the Storm, Toppled by the Storm: North Korea’s Non-Transition Compared with the Transition of Romania and A lbania, 1989–1991 Balazs Szalontai

Introduction

N

orth Korea is still ruled by a highly repressive one-party regime that was neither fatally affected by the collapse of the Soviet bloc nor brought down by the devastating famine of 1994–1998.1 Pyongyang’s ability to overcome all odds was all the more surprising because the North Korean political system did not rely on Chinese- or Vietnamese-style reforms for survival. Since the breakdown of the command economy in the early 1990s, North Korean society has undergone a profound transformation, but the political superstructure hardly, if at all, followed suit. It is fairly tempting to attribute the survival of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)to the uniqueness of North Korean political 1 This chapter was previously published as Balazs Szalontai, “Weathering the Storm, Toppled by the Storm: North Korea’s Non-Transition Compared with the Transitions of Romania and Albania, 1989– 1991,” Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 33, no. 1 (June 2020): 243–277.

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culture. Indeed, a number of scholars did create such sui generis models of explanation, arguing that the special political and ideological characteristics of the regime set North Korea apart from every other communist system.2 In contrast, some other authors, being less in favor of sui generis explanations, sought to identify the causes of North Korea’s non-transition by creating various comparative models. For instance, Cheng Chen and Ji-Yong Lee stressed that “the North Korean regime under Kim Il-Sung and later Kim Jong-Il, instead of being an anomaly that cannot be compared to any other regimes, shares a number of key institutional similarities with communist Romania under Ceauşescu.”3 While the sui generis models tended to revolve around a single major factor (such as the element of race-nationalism), the comparative models were usually based on the method of multifactor analysis. That is, their authors explained the peculiar development of the DPRK by a unique combination of various domestic and external factors, instead of regarding the individual factors as unique.4 Despite their different angles, the two approaches partially resembled each other in the sense that both were prone to simplify, rather than analyze in depth, the cases with which they contrasted North Korea. For example, several authors who compared North Korea with Romania (e.g., Cheng Chen, Ji-Yong Lee, and Marcus Noland) considered the domestic policies of the two leaderships largely alike and attributed the contrast between Ceauşescu’s downfall and the DPRK’s survival mainly to external factors (such as the absence or availability of Chinese assistance). 2 The thesis of North Korean uniqueness was presented from a variety of radically different angles. See, among others, Bruce Cumings, “Corporatism in North Korea,” Journal of Korean Studies 4 (1982– 1983): 269–294; B. R. Myers, The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2010) and Jonathan D. Pollack, No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2011), 25–42. For a theoretical overview of the sui generis thesis, see Aidan Foster-Carter, “Can North Korea’s Second Succession Succeed?,” Korea Review 2, no. 1 (May 2012): 38–62. 3 Cheng Chen and Ji-Yong Lee, “Making Sense of North Korea: ‘National Stalinism’ in Comparative-Historical Perspective,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 40 (2007): 460. 4 See, among others, Daniel Byman and Jennifer Lind, “Pyongyang’s Survival Strategy: Tools of Authoritarian Control in North Korea,” International Security 35, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 44–74; Victor D. Cha and Nicholas D. Anderson, “A North Korean Spring?,” Washington Quarterly 35, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 7–24; Marcus Noland, “Why North Korea Will Muddle Through,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 4 (July–August 1997): 105–118; and Park Hyeongjung, “Political Changes in North Korea: What Is It, What Has Happened, and What To Expect?,” International Journal of Korean Unification Studies 13, no. 1 (2004): 145–174.

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In this chapter, I sought to create a model of analysis that would not overemphasize either the differences or the similarities between the compared countries. To devote sufficient attention to the details, the conditions of transition and non-transition were examined in three spheres: the socioeconomic dimension, the symbolic dimension, and the international dimension. I compared North Korea with Romania and Albania—those communist states whose pre-transition conditions were relatively the most similar to the DPRK’s sociopolitical situation. By the 1980s, Romanian and Albanian domestic policies were far more repressive than the practices of the other East European systems, and the leaderships’ restrictive economic policies caused living standards to decline to a particularly low level. The regimes’ ideological intolerance was reinforced by a strong dose of nationalism, as they were only partly—or not at all—dependent on the USSR, and at certain times they adopted a sharply critical attitude toward Moscow. In light of these shared characteristics, several scholars (e.g., Andrei Lankov, Cheng Chen, and Ji-Yong Lee) lumped them together with North Korea under the label of “national Stalinism.”5 Still, in 1989–1990 neither Romania nor Albania could escape the fate of the Soviet-reliant “people’s democracies.” No matter how hard Ceauşescu and Ramiz Alia tried to shield their regimes from the domino effect of the East European transitions, they were unable to preserve the one-party rule in the same way as Kim Il Sung did. This chapter seeks to explain this dramatic divergence between the North Korean and Romanian/Albanian historical paths.6 5 For a comprehensive analysis of “national Stalinism,” see Vladimir Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) and Andrei Lankov, Crisis in North Korea. The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005). 6 For additional comparisons between the DPRK, Romania, and Albania, see Kildong Kim, “Reassessing North Korea’s Sustainability through the Lenses of Path Dependency” (Ph.D. diss., Seoul National University, 2015); Elidor Mëhilli, “Defying De-Stalinization: Albania’s 1956,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 4–56; Park Jeong O, “Would Romanian Style Revolution Be Possible in North Korea?,” East European & Balkan Studies 30 (2012): 217–237; Alin Sămuşan, “Partnership across the Socialist Camp: Romania, North Korea and the Beginning of the National Way in Building Socialism,” Journal of East European and Asian Studies 4, no. 2 (November 2013): 248–259; Steven Saxonberg, Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Greg Scarlatoiu, “The Role of the Military in the Fall of the Ceausescu Regime and the Possible Relevance for a Post-Kim Jong-il Transition in North Korea,” KEI Exchange, Korea Economic Institute, February 2009; and Helga Turku, Isolationist States in an Interdependent World (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009). A particularly insightful comparative analysis can be found in Esther Kim, “A Society of No Popular Resistance: How Kim Il Sung Made It When Communist Romania and Albania Failed” (Ph.D. diss. in progress, Yonsei University).

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While this chapter covers North Korea more extensively than Romania and Albania (and thus its method of analysis may be defined as an asymmetrical comparison), it also pays strong attention to the individual characteristics of the latter two countries, instead of lumping them together as a “control group.” For instance, the peculiarities of the Romanian situation were contrasted not only with North Korea but also with Albania, because in this trilateral comparison, the truly unique elements of the North Korean political system were more visible than they would have been in a model that enumerated only the common elements of the Romanian and Albanian cases. Among others, the concept of “national Stalinism” needs to be substantially refined, since state-sponsored nationalism appeared in considerably different forms in Romania, Albania, and North Korea as far as the appreciation or rejection of pre-communist historical and cultural traditions was concerned. Since the inclusive or exclusive nature of state-sponsored cultural nationalism could greatly facilitate or hinder the survival of a noncommunist counterculture, the specific form of “national Stalinism” adopted by a regime would also influence the likelihood of transition or non-transition. Due to space constraints, my analysis is focused on the factors that enabled the North Korean leaders to withstand the immediate shock caused by the fall of the East European regimes, rather than providing a comprehensive explanation of the DPRK’s consistent stability during the 30 years that have passed since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Thus, the chronological scope of this chapter is confined to the late 1980s and early 1990s, at which time certain features of the current North Korean scene (such as widespread corruption, ubiquitous private entrepreneurship, and a steady trickle of outmigration) were not yet present. The Scene From the perspective of political repression and the potential of domestic opposition, the evolution of the North Korean, Romanian, and Albanian communist regimes progressed through several phases, oscillating between convergence and divergence. In 1956, each of the three supreme leaders— Kim Il Sung in the DPRK, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej in Romania, and Enver Hoxha in Albania—faced opposition from a group of party leaders inspired by Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization, but all of them managed to 233

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retain their post and avoid rehabilitating the victims of their earlier show trials. They were fairly aware of the similarity of their situation and even discussed it with each other. Of the three countries, only Romania experienced an outbreak of popular unrest (a student protest in Timișoara), and only Gheorghiu-Dej refrained from using executions during the suppression of intraparty dissent. The events of 1956 foreshadowed that these three states would not undergo any long-term political liberalization in the subsequent decades.7 In the early 1960s, the three leaderships again followed similar courses by distancing themselves from Khrushchev’s USSR, drawing closer to China, and laying increasing stress on nationalism in economy, culture, and historiography, but in the sphere of domestic politics, Romania started to diverge from the other two countries. In the last years of Gheorghiu-Dej and in the early Ceauşescu era (1962–1970), the Romanian leaders released the majority of their political prisoners, dismantled the labor camps, considerably liberalized intellectual life, and (after Dej’s death) rehabilitated the victims of the earlier show trials.8 These measures had no counterparts in Albania and the DPRK, where the system of labor camps remained largely intact. Nor did Albania and North Korea pursue a rapprochement with the West as energetically as Romania did in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1970s and 1980s, a partial reconvergence occurred between North Korean, Romanian, and Albanian domestic policies. Inspired partly by his June 1971 visit to Pyongyang, Ceauşescu reinforced party control over society and made ultranationalism a core element of propaganda. By the mid1970s, he had expelled the last members of Dej’s “old guard” from the leadership, created an extravagant personality cult, and increasingly involved his family in politics, grooming his son Nicu for succession. Ceauşescu’s commitment to heavy industrialization and his post-1981 austerity program produced an adverse effect on living standards, triggering recurrent worker protests. Starting in the mid-1970s, North Korea and Albania also underwent a downward economic spiral and a decline in living stan7 Lankov, Crisis in North Korea, 89, 121–173; Johanna Granville, “Temporary Triumph in Timişoara: Unrest among Romanian Students in 1956,” History 93, no. 309 (January 2008): 69–93; Johanna Granville, “True Grit: Gheorghiu-Dej and Romanian Exceptionalism in 1956,” Canadian Journal of History 46 (Winter 2011): 585–617; Mëhilli, “Defying De-Stalinization,” 4–56. 8 Dennis Deletant, Ceauşescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965–1989 (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), 52–54; Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons, 173–200.

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dards. Both party elites were hit by a series of purges generated by external crises and domestic succession struggles (North Korea in 1967–1969 and 1976–1977, Albania in 1973–1982). By the early 1980s, both Kim Il Sung and Hoxha managed to install their chosen successors (Kim Jong Il and Ramiz Alia). At the same time, differences continued to exist. In contrast with North Korea and Albania, the victims of Ceauşescu’s high-level purges were sidelined without being jailed or executed. Hoxha, who disapproved of the dynastic practices of Kim and Ceauşescu, selected a nonrelative to succeed him as supreme leader of the Party of Labor of Albania (PLA). The Albanian succession process started barely four years before Hoxha’s death, whereas the succession of Kim Jong Il was confirmed 14 years before his father’s death. While Romania did not undergo such a military buildup that occurred in the DPRK and post-1968 Albania, the latter regimes did not face any domestic opposition comparable to the Romanian worker protests.9 In the end, however, the differences between the three states outweighed their similarities. Of the three regimes, only the DPRK survived the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Despite the country’s deepening economic crisis, the leaders of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) did not encounter any public opposition nor did they initiate any major personal changes. While the drastic reduction of Soviet support compelled them to adopt a more flexible attitude toward South Korea and Japan, their response to the East European transitions was of a wholly negative nature.10 In contrast, both the Romanian and the Albanian regimes fell victim to the East European democratization process. Ceauşescu’s attitude to the transition wave was just as hostile as Kim Il Sung’s, but his inflexibility ultimately undermined, rather than saved, the regime. On December 16, 1989, protests erupted in Timișoara and soon spread to Bucharest. Ceauşescu’s decision to use military force caused him to lose the support of both highranking officers and rank-and-file soldiers alike. Captured on December 22, the fallen leader and his wife were hastily tried and executed by the newly proclaimed National Salvation Front, whose leaders included such former 9 Adrian Buzo, The Guerilla Dynasty: Politics and Leadership in North Korea (London: I.B. Tauris, 1999), 80–130; Deletant, Ceauşescu and the Securitate, 68–106, 322–385; James S. O’Donnell, A Coming of Age: Albania under Enver Hoxha (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 72–78, 83–90, 216–217. 10 Buzo, The Guerilla Dynasty, 163–203.

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communist cadres as Ion Iliescu and Silviu Brucan. In May 1990, the Front won the first multiparty elections by taking two-thirds of the vote.11 Despite the highly repressive nature of the Albanian regime, its collapse turned out to be less violent than the Romanian revolution. Following Hoxha’s death (April 11, 1985), Ramiz Alia, seeking to revitalize the economy and alleviate Albania’s isolation, softened the dogmatic policies of his predecessor. Instead of gaining the trust of the population, this cautious relaxation of control inspired an outbreak of protests (December 1989–January 1990). The demonstrations ultimately compelled Alia to legalize independent parties and hold multiparty elections. In the Constitutional Assembly elections of March 1991, the PLA won two-thirds of the seats, but in the March 1992 parliamentary elections, the opposition’s Democratic Party (DP) gained a victory.12 In sum, neither the similarities nor the differences between North Korea, Romania, and Albania were of a constant nature. In certain phases of their development, the three regimes were more alike than in other periods. Judging from the dramatic contrast between post-1990 North Korea and Albania, even long-term structural similarities did not necessarily lead to analogous outcomes. Thus, the survival or collapse of the three regimes cannot be satisfactorily explained if our analysis is confined to the events of 1989–1990, but a generalization based on their long-term features might be equally misleading. The Socioeconomic Dimension Popular discontent over socioeconomic problems (e.g., forceful agricultural collectivization, abusive labor conditions, low wages, abrupt price rises, and persistent food shortages) played a major role in the mass protests that erupted in the various East European countries in 1953, 1956, 1970, and afterward.13 Thus, it is worth examining whether problems of this kind existed in the DPRK at the time of the East European transitions, and if they did, how the authorities coped with them. 11 For an overview, see Dragoş Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution of 1989. Culture, Structure, and Contingency (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică, 2010). 12 Miranda Vickers, The Albanians. A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 210–223. 13 For an overview, see Grzegorz Ekiert, The State against Society. Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996) and J. C. Sharman, Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).

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Indeed, the North Korean economy entered a period of latent crisis as early as the mid-1980s. The agricultural sector had reached the limits of extensive development. Since the North Korean industry could not produce specialized machinery suited to the small parcels of farmland, the mechanization of agriculture was largely confined to tractors and trucks. The irrigation system was badly hit by the country’s power shortages, the decline of harvest yields caused a deterioration of food supply, and the state had to use a part of its strategic grain reserve to fill the gaps. In response to these problems, the authorities allowed peasants to breed animals on their small household plots and to sell them on the food markets, but they refused to increase the size of the plots, and they siphoned off the resources of the collective farms. Consequently, rural youth did their best to move to the cities, and the agricultural sector was troubled by labor shortages.14 At the same time, the urban industrial sector also faced serious obstacles to growth. As early as 1977, the Hungarian Embassy in Pyongyang reported that “most construction projects (plants, apartments) have stalled because of a shortage of building materials … Due to the shortage of energy and materials, work activity management has deteriorated, accompanied by a decline in work discipline. Instructions are being increasingly disregarded.”15 The Hungarian diplomats who visited Ch’ŏngjin in 1983 described the impact of the persistent power shortages as follows: The majority of factories and plants do not operate; the workers, in reduced numbers, do [only] maintenance work in the cold factory halls, plagued by a shortage of raw materials … The insufficient voltage damages facilities of substantial worth. Observance of safety regulations is extremely lax. On the one hand, the objective conditions are missing; on the other hand, the natural defensive reactions of the people, tired, underfed, and underslept as they are, have become dampened. According to the experiences of the Soviet technical experts, serious accidents are common.16

14 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, December 15, 1986, Hungarian National Archives (Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, MNL), XIX-J-1-k [Administrative Documents of the Foreign Ministry], Korea, 1986, 60. doboz, 81, 17194/1986. 15 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, June 1, 1977, MNL, XIX-J-1-j [Top Secret Documents of the Foreign Ministry], Korea, 1977, 78. doboz, 142, 003806/1977. 16 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, December 8, 1983, MNL, XIX-J-1-k, Korea, 1983, 73. doboz, 81–20, 30310/1983.

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Exhaustive working conditions, combined with the persistent food shortages, made an adverse impact on the morale of the population. Apathy, weariness, and frustration became increasingly common, but it generated passive and individualized noncompliance, rather than active and collective resistance, and the occasional criticism targeted the “inept” lowerlevel cadres, rather than the top leadership. These social attitudes reflected a peculiar combination of feelings. On the one hand, distrust permeated society so deeply that ordinary citizens were fearful of being denounced even by their closest relatives; on the other hand, the population continued to hold Kim Il Sung in high esteem, not the least because Kim showed awareness of the various economic problems and periodically reprimanded the local cadres for their faulty practices. Still, the extent of one’s loyalty to Kim Il Sung may have varied by age group. In May 1975, a North Korean worker confidentially explained to a Polish diplomat that while the young generations had been thoroughly indoctrinated, about 30% of the elderly could not be regarded as unconditional followers of Kim Il Sung—presumably because they retained alternative memories from the past.17 At the same time, indoctrination could not prevent the emergence of youth delinquency, and nonpolitical urban youth gangs proved remarkably persistent, but this problem seems to have been confined to the cohorts below the conscription age.18 North Korean society was also divided by vertical inequalities. The discriminative nature of the state-imposed sŏngbun system, which classified the population into ascribed status groups, created considerable discontent, yet the same system also posed formidable obstacles to any form of collective resistance. Any sort of political opposition could easily lead to demotion to a lower-status group and to a collective punishment imposed on one’s entire family (a practice reflected in the fact that the estimated number of political prisoners held in labor camps reached 150,000–200,000, that is, 0.6–0.7% of the population), while one’s favor17 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, May 31, 1975, MNL, XIX- J-1-j, Korea, 1975, 84. doboz, 2, 003918/1975; Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, June 16, 1976, MNL, XIX- J-1-j Korea, 1976, 81. doboz, 1, 003879/1976; Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Annual Report, June 14, 1977, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1977, 78. doboz, 142, 003806/1977 18 Helen-Louise Hunter, Kim Il-song’s North Korea (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), 77–80; Andrei Lankov, North of the DMZ. Essays on Daily Life in North Korea (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), 99–100.

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able conduct occasionally earned a limited upgrading. These conditions reinforced cohesion within the privileged strata (who had a stake in preserving the status quo) but weakened it within the middle and lower strata. University students, a potentially rebellious group in many communist countries, were selected exclusively from the elite, whereas the most discontented groups (the “hostile classes”) were banished to remote areas.19 Finally, the steady expansion of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) and the increasing length of military service (a minimum of 3–5 years) hindered the emergence of open unemployment, kept the potentially restless young adult men under control, and thus dampened social tension. In 1992, KPA manpower stood at 1.01 million, that is, 4.5% of the population and one-fifth of working-age men.20 In the 1990s, the KPA’s growing prominence seemingly confirmed the leadership’s claim that the country’s economic woes had been caused mainly by external threats (Soviet abandonment and U.S. sanctions), rather than governmental mismanagement. The widespread acceptance of this official narrative reflected not only the population’s near-total isolation (e.g., the authorities consistently blocked any unauthorized news about the East European transitions or the famine) but also the fact that the disintegration of the ration system and the discontinuation of industrial production was a gradual, unplanned, and erratic process, rather than a purposeful and recognizable austerity policy. Devoid of power and raw materials, plants simply ceased functioning without formally dismissing their employees. Workers and schoolchildren were still required to attend their workplaces and schools, but they did little save cleaning or sleeping. Long accustomed to food and energy shortages, ordinary citizens could not easily discern the unusual gravity of the post-1991 crisis and hoped against hope that the government would eventually manage to resuscitate the ration system. Since people’s livelihood depended primarily on their rations, rather than on their minuscule wages, wage strikes were unlikely to occur, not least because workers could not exert 19 David Hawk, The Hidden Gulag. The Lives and Voices of “Those Who are Sent to the Mountains” (Washington, DC: U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012), 25–41; Hunter, Kim Il-song’s North Korea, 3–9. 20 Taik-young Hamm, Arming the Two Koreas: State, Capital, and Military Power (London: Routledge, 1999), 136, 145–146.

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pressure by disrupting production in their factory if the latter’s operation ground to a halt anyway.21 The economic problems the Ceauşescu regime encountered in the 1980s had much in common with the difficulties the DPRK faced in the same period, but the Romanian leadership tackled them in a markedly different way. Anxious to finance its massive investments in heavy industry, coal mining, and construction projects, the state stepped up agricultural exports and reduced food imports. These policies increased the burden on the already strained rural sector. Rapid urbanization created rural labor shortages, whereupon the authorities mobilized soldiers for agricultural and construction work.22 These practices generated discontent within the armed forces, yet the role of the military remained too limited to offset the adverse trends in the civilian sector. In 1989, its troop strength stood at 180,000 (0.77% of the population), and compulsory service was 9–16 months.23 To repay the country’s ballooning external debt, Ceauşescu launched an austerity program that targeted popular consumption, rather than industrial investments. Apartment complexes were subjected to regular electricity and heating cuts to provide electricity for factories. Ordinary citizens were pressured to work overtime with no compensation, compelled to queue for rationed food, and found it increasingly difficult to drive their cars. By 1989, the government managed to repay the debt, but since this aim had been achieved at the expense of living standards, the austerity program fatally undermined the legitimacy of the regime.24 The fact that Ceauşescu implemented these hardline policies after a relatively long period of economic development, partial political liberalization, and improving living conditions (1964–1976) further aggravated state-society relations. In the earlier phase of the Ceauşescu era, the population had become increasingly accustomed to consumerism, intellectuals 21 Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2009), 59–61; Sandra Fahy, Marching through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 22–42, 104–106; Hawk, The Hidden Gulag, 25. 22 Cornel Ban, “Sovereign Debt, Austerity, and Regime Change: The Case of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Romania,” East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 26, no. 4 (November 2012): 757–760; Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution, 156–171. 23 Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution, 378–380; Scarlatoiu, “The Role of the Military in the Fall of the Ceausescu Regime,” 3–4. 24 Ban, “Sovereign Debt, Austerity, and Regime Change,” 760–764; Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution, 165–172.

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were exposed to Western cultural influences, and a colorful counterculture emerged among youth.25 When the austerity program deprived Romanian society of these gains and frustrated its rising expectations, discontent was bound to increase.26 At the same time, Ceauşescu could not fully reverse the results of de-Stalinization. Repressive as the regime was in the 1980s, it did not reinstate the Stalinist labor camp system or the practice of political executions. The combination of these factors created an explosive situation, for the leadership became less and less able to prevent the eruption of protests by means of intimidation. Until December 1989, the authorities responded to the recurrent strikes and demonstrations (Jiu Valley, 1977; Motru, 1981; Maramureș, 1983; Cluj and Turda, 1986; Iaşi and Braşov, 1987) either with minor concessions or with nonlethal violence—an approach that neither satisfied the population nor deterred further protests.27 The participants of the worker protests were fully urbanized workers who relied solely on their wages for survival, and therefore had no alternative but to fight back if the state reduced their wages, cut their bread rations, or raised work quotas. Consequently, resistance was concentrated in those geographical areas that attracted the largest number of internal migrants (like the Jiu Valley, Braşov, and Timişoara). In the face of the austerity program, workers held Ceauşescu personally responsible for their predicament. In Braşov, demonstrators chanted the slogan “Down with Ceauşescu!”28 The ossified leadership could neither initiate reforms nor make Nicu’s dynastic succession a fait accompli. The aging Ceauşescu and his wife represented a political culde-sac and became the focus of public anger. Following the post-1978 discontinuation of Chinese aid, the Albanian leaders also faced a grave socioeconomic crisis, but their reaction considerably differed from the measures taken by Ceauşescu. Pressing ahead with their program of heavy industrialization, they relied mainly on mineral and energy exports, and therefore the economy was hit hard by the 1986 oil price collapse and the droughts that deprived the hydropower stations of water. Following a period of stagnation (1981–1985), GDP growth rates became 25 Madigan Fichter, “Rock ’n’ roll Nation: Counterculture and Dissent in Romania, 1965–1975,” Nationalities Papers 39, no. 4 (July 2011): 567–585. 26 Ban, “Sovereign Debt, Austerity, and Regime Change,” 762; Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution, 151–152, 170–171. 27 Deletant, Ceauşescu and the Securitate, 93–101, 167, 249–253. 28 Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution, 345–359.

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negative in 1986–1990.29 Facing these problems, the Albanian leaders did not raise state revenues or cut expenditures at the expense of the population but rather tried to avoid the aggravation of state-society relations. In 1986–1990, investments were focused on creating jobs for the rapidly growing population. To keep factories in operation and food prices low, state subsidies to industry and collective farms nearly tripled, creating a massive fiscal deficit. Still, job creation could not keep pace with demographic growth, and factory wages barely exceeded the minimum cost of living. Food shortages became increasingly grave, not least because the post-1982 collectivization of livestock adversely affected the rural sector. By the late 1980s, it was beyond the government’s capabilities to solve the interlocking problems of rural underemployment and urban unemployment.30 It may appear surprising that the highly repressive and intensely militarized Albanian regime made more efforts to avoid an open state-society conflict than Ceauşescu did. After all, in 1986 Albania (a country of 3.02 million inhabitants) still held 1,204 political prisoners, the labor camps remained in operation until 1991, the families of political prisoners were often subjected to internal deportation, and military manpower constituted 1.4% of the population.31 However, in the mid-1980s, the changing composition of the party elite prepared the ground for a cautious liberalization. Hoxha’s death was preceded by massive purges, and he selected Alia as his successor as late as 1981. Consequently, neither Alia nor his conservative rivals were in a deeply entrenched position. Facing international isolation, the precariously united leadership could hardly afford a confrontation with the population. In February 1989, Alia gained the upper hand over the conservatives and initiated a certain relaxation of the public atmosphere. State shops started to sell antennas capable of receiving Italian and Greek broadcasts, which raised popular awareness of the East European transitions. The gov29 Hungarian Embassy to Albania, Report, December 12, 1983, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Albania, 1983, 20. doboz, 2-10, 004645/1/1983; Gramoz Pashko, “Problems of Economic and Political Transition in Albania, 1990–1994,” in Problems of Economic and Political Transformation in the Balkans, ed. Ian Jeffries and Alin Teodorescu (London: Routledge, 1996), 64–67; Per Sandstrom and Orjan Sjoberg, “Albanian Economic Performance: Stagnation in the 1980s,” Soviet Studies 43, no. 5 (1991): 932–941. 30 Pashko, “Problems of Economic and Political Transition,” 64–67; Elez Biberaj, Albania in Transition: The Rocky Road to Democracy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 27; Marta Muço, Economic Transition in Albania: Political Constraints and Mentality Barriers (Tirana: University of Tirana, 1997), 11–16. 31 Femi Sufaj and Ajet Shahu, “Penal Sentences during 1945–1991 in Albania,” SEEU Review 4, no. 2 (2008): 77–90.

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ernment announced an amnesty for certain political prisoners, but its economic measures remained of a superficial nature, and thus urban food supply did not improve.32 This combination of economic discontent and weakening political control created an explosive situation, but not in the same way as it occurred in Romania. Whenever Alia faced an outbreak of protests, he eventually opted for making concessions. These piecemeal concessions lessened the risk of a major bloodshed but emboldened the impatient population to demand more radical changes.33 The first demonstrations occurred in late 1989 (i.e., shortly after the start of liberalization) and reached massive proportions in the winter of 1990– 1991. The strikes of the Berat textile workers, the Valias coal miners, and other laborers were triggered by their dissatisfaction with their extremely low wages and unhealthy working conditions.34 Since social welfare benefits were wholly wage related, workers had a strong motivation to demand immediate wage raises.35 Among youth, who comprised over 50% of the population, there were growing concerns about the prospects of unemployment.36 Discontent was particularly strong among those university students whose career prospects were constrained by the fact that they were not “cadre children.” In reaction to the long dominance of southerners (Tosks) in the party leadership, northerners (Ghegs) were overrepresented among the student leaders, though the regional factor did not dominate the transition process as profoundly as it would shape Albanian politics in 1992–1997.37 In the last analysis, it seems that the contrast between the DPRK’s survival and the fall of the Romanian and Albanian regimes may be at least partly attributed to the unusually repressive nature of the North Korean 32 Hungarian Embassy to Albania, Report, July 12, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Albania, 1989, 7. doboz, 2-20, 003223/1989; Vickers, The Albanians, 213. 33 Fatos Tarifa, “Albania’s Road from Communism: Political and Social Change, 1990–1993,” Development and Change 26 (1995): 140. 34 Michael Schmidt-Neke, “Albania,” in European Labor Unions, ed. Joan Campbell (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), 5–6, 11; John Walton and David Seddon, Free Markets & Food Riots: The Politics of Global Adjustment (Cambridge, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 317–319. 35 Muço, Economic Transition in Albania, 15. 36 Hungarian Embassy to Albania, Report, July 12, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Albania, 1989, 7. doboz, 2-20, 003223/1989. 37 Biberaj, Albania in Transition, 64–65; O’Donnell, A Coming of Age, 114; Klarita Gërxhani and Arthur Schram, “Albanian Political-Economics: Consequences of a Clan Culture,” Journal for Institutional Innovation, Development and Transition 4 (2000): 5–14. I am indebted to Ana Lalaj for informing me about the social composition of Albanian university students.

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regime (e.g., the sŏngbun system, the reservation of higher education for the elite, the system of labor camps and collective punishments, the extremely high level of militarization, and the population’s near-complete isolation from the world). Notably, in Albania, where the labor camps remained in operation until 1990, there were no street demonstrations until the leadership softened its control, whereas in Ceauşescu’s Romania, where repression was less extreme, worker protests became a recurrent phenomenon long before 1989. Still, the stability of the North Korean political system did not depend solely on its stronger control mechanism but also on the absence of certain factors that weakened the Romanian and Albanian regimes. First of all, the post-1980 North Korean party elite was more stable than the Romanian and Albanian leaderships. The KWP leaders consistently refrained from political liberalization, Kim Jong Il’s succession process was completed long before Kim Il Sung’s death, and the dictator did not launch new purges after 1977. In Romania, Ceauşescu’s post-1971 shift from liberalization to a hardline policy generated discontent, and the issue of succession remained wholly unresolved. In Albania, Alia’s succession process and the last intraparty purge were carried out only a few years before Hoxha’s death, and Alia’s post-1989 shift to liberalization emboldened the population to demand more radical changes. Second, North Korea’s regional disparities (e.g., the contrast between the privileged status of Pyongyang and the government’s increasing neglect of the northeastern provinces) seem to have been less clear-cut than the Romanian and Albanian regional disparities, which were reinforced by cultural differences and/or massive labor migration flows.38 Similarly, the lower strata of North Korean society lacked sufficient cohesion to confront the state in the same way as the Romanian and Albanian workers did in 1977–1987 and 1990–1991, respectively Third, the relationship between economic crisis, state response, and societal impact was of a considerably different nature in the three countries. In Romania, Ceauşescu openly subordinated the population’s interests to the strategy of heavy industrialization and debt repayment. Since the decline 38 Balázs Szalontai and Changyong Choi, “Immunity to Resistance? State-Society Relations and Political Stability in North Korea in a Comparative Perspective,” North Korean Review 10, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 65.

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in living standards resulted from a deliberate government policy, the austerity program generated near-universal discontent. Consequently, the fall of Ceauşescu was a very brief but violent process. In contrast, Alia tried to pursue heavy industrialization without directly confronting society. When these incompatible aims plunged the state into a fiscal crisis, he reacted to the rising discontent by making piecemeal concessions. Thanks to this approach, Albania’s transition turned out less violent than Romania’s. In North Korea, the spontaneous process of deindustrialization did not pit the state and society against each other in such a clear-cut way as Ceauşescu’s austerity program provoked resistance. On the contrary, it created a sauve qui peut situation in which individualized survival strategies, rather than collective action, became predominant. The Symbolic Dimension The view that state-sponsored nationalism has played a major role in the survival of the DPRK has been expressed by a number of scholars (e.g., B. R. Myers, Young Chul Cho, and Jin Woong Kang), who emphasized that Kim Il Sung’s legitimacy was based primarily on his (real and fabricated) nationalist credentials and that the regime’s xenophobic propaganda about Japan and America was aimed at perpetuating a siege mentality.39 These observations were certainly accurate in many respects. Facing diplomatic isolation, the North Korean leaders did actively use nationalist propaganda to counter both Gorbachev’s glasnost and South Korea’s growing influence.40 Still, the specific features of North Korean nationalism need further investigation, because the Romanian and Albanian leaders made similarly energetic efforts to employ nationalism as a substitute for political liberalization. In the 1960s, they rejected the Soviet-centered conception of “socialist internationalism” and depicted their predecessors and/or intraparty rivals as unpatriotic individuals. Their historiography stressed a continuity with the 39 B. R. Myers, “North Korea’s State-Loyalty Advantage,” Journal of International Affairs 65, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 2011): 115–129; Young Chul Cho, “North Korea’s Nationalist Discourse: A Critical Interpretation,” Korea Observer 42, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 311–343; Jin Woong Kang, “North Korea’s Militant Nationalism and People’s Everyday Lives: Past and Present,” Journal of Historical Sociology 25, no. 1 (March 2012): 1–30. 40 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, May 26, 1988, MNL, XIX-J-1-k, Korea, 1988, 58. doboz, 811, 5653/1988

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ancient Dacian and Illyrian civilizations, and it created a heroic image of the embattled nation. Such appeals to national sentiments certainly enhanced their domestic legitimacy.41 In the end, however, nationalist propaganda failed to ensure the survival of the Romanian and Albanian regimes. In 1986–1989, Ceauşescu deliberately incited xenophobia to mobilize the population behind his anti-reformist platform, but to no avail.42 To explain this divergence between North Korea and the two East European party-states, we need to examine which elements of national identity were cultivated by the respective regimes, which alternative national symbols (if any) continued to exist in popular consciousness, and whether the state-co-opted symbols retained a potential of autonomy. Notably, the East European protest movements of 1953–1956 often used national symbols (e.g., the statues of Józef Bem and Sándor Petőfi; patriotic songs and poems like “Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła” and “Nemzeti dal”; and the national flag from which the superimposed communist coat of arms was ripped out) to mobilize the population and juxtapose their legitimacy to the illegitimacy of the Soviet-imposed communist regimes. The effectiveness of these symbols lay in the fact that they remained widely known under communist rule (as the authorities sought to coopt and manipulate them, instead of prohibiting them), yet they were sufficiently distinguishable from the regime’s own imagery.43 When comparing North Korea’s state-sponsored nationalism with Eastern Europe, neither an analogical model nor a model of binary opposition would be fully accurate because the symbolic sphere of North Korean nationalism has undergone a multiphase transformation since the establishment of the DPRK. In 1945–1954, the North Korean leaders—just like their 41 Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001), 73–82; Bernd J. Fischer, “Enver Hoxha and the Stalinist Dictatorship in Albania,” in Balkan Strongmen: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of Southeast Europe, ed. Bernd Jürgen Fischer (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2007), 258–263; Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons, 32–35; Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauşescu’s Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 116–133. 42 Michael Shafir, “Xenophobic Communism—The Case of Bulgaria and Romania,” World Today 45, no. 12 (December 1989): 211. 43 Jan C. Behrends, “Nation and Empire: Dilemmas of Legitimacy during Stalinism in Poland (1941– 1956),” Nationalities Papers 37, no. 4 (2009): 457–458; Martin Mevius, Agents of Moscow: The Hungarian Communist Party and the Origins of Socialist Patriotism 1941–1953 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 87–88, 202–212, 249–260; Sharman, Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe, 72–73, 81–83.

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East European comrades—cultivated a sort of “selective nationalism” which stressed the traditions of Korean resistance against foreign invaders (e.g., Qing China, Japan, and America) but which was carefully pruned of any anti-Russian or anti-Soviet aspects. For instance, in July 1950 the authorities created the Order of Yi Sunshin (modeled upon the USSR’s Order of Suvorov and Order of Nakhimov) for navy commanders, and the history textbooks published in 1954 effusively praised the military genius of the admiral. In contrast, in 1955–1956 the leadership’s favorable reassessment of certain Korean cultural and historical themes (like the Sirhak Movement) was combined with the curtailing of Soviet cultural influence, as Kim Il Sung used autocratic nationalism to enhance his legitimacy, sideline his intra-party rivals, and shield the DPRK from the impact of Soviet de-Stalinization.44 In 1967–1975, when Kim Il Sung purged many anti-Japanese guerrillas and began to install Kim Jong Il as his successor, the nature of North Korean nationalism underwent yet another transformation. This time, the growth of Kim’s cult was accompanied by a decreasing emphasis on Korean traditions. Designed to make the Kim family the sole object of veneration, the new textbooks started to downplay the significance of such previously glorified national heroes as Ŭlchi Mundŏk and Yi Sunsin.45 Typically, the 567-page monograph titled Modern History of Korea (1979) devoted only 17 pages to the period of 1884–1926 (i.e., the years before Kim Il Sung’s appearance on the historical scene), and none of the Korean politicians active in this era was presented in a favorable light. Actually, many of them were not even mentioned by name; instead, the book frequently quoted Kim’s statements about the depicted events.46 Public space was completely dominated by the ubiquitous Kim Il Sung statues, whereas statues of other historical or cultural figures were conspicuous by their absence.47 Kim Il Sung’s efforts to create a tabula rasa were facilitated by the fact that the creation of the DPRK had not been preceded by the prolonged existence of a modern, noncommunist nation-state. Due to the utter weakness of the late Chosŏn state, the proclamation of the Great Han Empire (1897) 44 Lankov, Crisis in North Korea, 56–59, 176; Dong-bae Lee, “Portrayal of Non-North Koreans in North Korean Textbooks and the Formation of National Identity,” Asian Studies Review 34, no. 3 (2010): 359. 45 Lee, “Portrayal of Non-North Koreans,” 351, 359. 46 Kim Han Gil, Modern History of Korea (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1979), 7–24. 47 Hungarian Ministry of Education, Report, December 15, 1975, MNL, XIX-J-1-k, Korea, 1976, 38. doboz, 1258/1976.

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occupied a far less prominent role in the post-1945 Korean nationalist discourse than the various resistance movements, which in turn were in competition with each other. In effect, Kim’s legitimacy as an anti-Japanese fighter was defined at the expense of those nationalist figures “whom Seoul has claimed for its own legitimizing purposes.”48 The close connection between Christianity and South Korea’s anti-communist nationalism induced the North Korean authorities to adopt an extremely intolerant attitude toward the local Christian communities. Following the Korean War, neither organized Christian churches nor ordained priests remained in the DPRK.49 During a visit to Hungary (February 1972), Deputy Premier Pak Sŏngch’ŏl criticized his hosts for allowing priests to hold church services, and emphatically declared: “In our country, there are no churches; in our country, people can hear no other voice but that of the Party.”50 In 1988, the authorities opened three Christian church buildings in Pyongyang, but these churches served only propaganda purposes.51 Actually, the flag, anthem, and other national symbols of the North Korean state were more conducive to distinguish the DPRK from the ROK than to express an all-Korean national identity—an impact reinforced by the careful cultivation of regional identities (e.g., the creation a standard language based on the P’yŏng’an dialect and the glorification of the northern Koguryŏ kingdom at the expense of the southeastern Silla state).52 Furthermore, national symbols have been increasingly overshadowed by the symbols associated with the Kim family. Played far less frequently than “Kim Ilsŏng changgunŭi norae,” the national anthem has lost much of its significance.53 In a certain respect, these developments reversed the emergence of modern nationalist ideas in the late Chosŏn era that brought about a “shift 48 Andre Schmid, Korea between Empires, 1895–1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 72–80, 253–256. 49 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, December 4, 1954, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 6. doboz, 5/cb, 001142/1955. 50 Hungarian Foreign Ministry, Memorandum, March 4, 1972, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1972, 60. doboz, 146, 00394/5/1972. 51 Wi Jo Kang, Christ and Caesar in Modern Korea. A History of Christianity and Politics (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 161. 52 Ross King, “North and South Korea,” in Language and National Identity in Asia, ed. Andrew Simpson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 211–215; Leonid A. Petrov, “Restoring the Glorious Past: North Korean Juche Historiography and Goguryeo,” Review of Korean Studies 7, no. 3 (2004): 237–242. 53 Lankov, North of the DMZ, 37–39.

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from patriotism based on loyalty to the king to a nationalism based on popular sovereignty.”54 In effect, North Korea became “Kim Il Sung country” and “Kim Il Sung nation.”55 Compared to his guerrilla past, Kim’s post-1955 defiance of the Kremlin constituted only a secondary source of his legitimacy. In contrast, Ceauşescu’s legitimacy was based more on his divergence from the policies of the earlier Romanian communist leaders, and on Bucharest’s growing independence from Moscow, than on his pre-1944 activities. In essence, he was presented as a ruler more committed to the Romanian national cause than the pre-1952 “Muscovite” leaders and less conservative than Gheorghiu-Dej.56 In Ceauşescu’s Romania, state-sponsored nationalism eventually became nearly as xenophobic as in North Korea but it was of a more eclectic nature. The temporary liberalization of the 1960s boosted the selective republishing of the works of pre-1944 Romanian writers, and the manipulative incorporation of earlier cultural and political figures into the national pantheon continued in the 1970s and 1980s. In many cases, the authorities willingly disregarded the rightist and anti-Semitic disposition of an individual as long as he was a staunch nationalist. The most extreme examples were Marin Preda’s novel Delirul (1975), which portrayed Ion Antonescu (Romania’s wartime dictator) in a relatively favorable light, and Eugen Barbu’s chauvinistic articles that harped upon the Jewish origin of the “Muscovite” communist cadres.57 Similarly, the authorities tacitly recognized the Orthodox religion as an element of Romanian national identity.58 Leader-centrism was a dominant element in both North Korean and Romanian historiography, but in different ways. In Romania, the cult of the 54 Henry H. Em, “Minjok as a Modern and Democratic Construct: Sin Ch’aeho’s Historiography,” in Colonial Modernity in Korea, ed. Gi-Wook Shin and Michael Robinson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), 342–343. 55 Myers, “North Korea’s State-Loyalty Advantage,” 118; Cho, “North Korea’s Nationalist Discourse,” 319–325. 56 Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Ceauşescu against Glasnost,” World Affairs 150, no. 3 (Winter 1987–1988): 199–201. 57 Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, 75–78; Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism, 112; Radu Ioanid, “Romania,” in The World Reacts to the Holocaust, ed. David S. Wyman (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 238–239. 58 Simina Bădică, “‘I Will Die Orthodox’: Religion and Belonging in Life Stories of the Socialist Era in Romania and Bulgaria,” in Ageing, Ritual and Social Change: Comparing the Secular and Religious in Eastern and Western Europe, ed. Peter Coleman, Daniela Koleva, and Joanna Bornat (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 43–66.

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supreme leader usually coexisted with secondary cults around noncommunist figures. In the 1950s, the authorities erected busts of Nicolae Bălcescu (the leader of the 1848 Wallachian revolution) in most towns, and by the end of the decade, they favorably reevaluated Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza, who had established the first modern Romanian nation-state in 1859. Under Ceauşescu, the regime’s propaganda used the glorification of earlier strong rulers (like Burebista, Michael the Brave, and Stephen the Great) as building blocks to boost the cult of the dictator, whose era was presented as the culmination of the achievements of his monarchical predecessors. Only the politicians of the post-1866 period were portrayed as largely insignificant or negative figures, lest they pose an implicit competition to the cult of Ceauşescu.59 Under such conditions, the population remained fairly aware of the distinction between the Romanian nation-state (an entity created in 1859, long before the communist takeover) and the communist regime (a secondary, superimposed entity). By creating the aforesaid secondary cults, the authorities themselves ensured that the alternative national symbols did not disappear from popular consciousness. This is how it could happen that during the 1987 worker protests in Braşov, and then again in December 1989, demonstrators promptly used “Deşteaptă-te române” (the anthem of the 1848 Wallachian revolution) as a mobilizing symbol, juxtaposing it to the regime’s imagery. Appealing to the heroic traditions of the nation and condemning the “barbaric tyrants,” the song constituted a powerful expression of popular sovereignty, a declaration of the people’s ability to take their fate into their own hands. Another patriotic song sung by the demonstrators was “Hora unirii,” the anthem of the 1859 union between Wallachia and Moldavia. The national flag with a hole in the center (whence the superimposed communist coat of arms was torn out) became yet another mobilizing symbol of the revolution.60 In Albania, the legitimacy of the Communist Party was rooted in its wartime anti-fascist resistance, which the authorities presented as the latest manifestation of the nation’s long historical struggle for freedom and independence.61 In practice, this narrative boosted state-centered nationalism, 59 Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, 215–223. 60 Deletant, Ceauşescu and the Securitate, 148, 252; Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution, 88–89, 94, 103. 61 Lefter Kasneci, Steeled in the Heat of Battle: A Brief Survey of the History of the National-Liberation War of the Albanian People (1941–1944) (Tirana: Naim Frashëri Publishing House, 1966), 3–5.

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rather than ethnic nationalism, because the communist partisans rejected the unification of Albania and Kosovo—an idea advocated by fascist Italy and the anti-communist National Front.62 Due to Hoxha’s rigid adherence to Stalinism, the Albanian version of state-sponsored nationalism was less inclusive than Ceauşescu’s. The dictator considered Albania’s religious heterogeneity an obstacle to national unity, and in the late 1960s, he wholly suppressed the country’s Catholic, Orthodox, and Islamic institutions.63 While he did create two “museum cities” (Berat and Gjirokastër) to preserve the nation’s cultural heritage, these were located in southern Albania (where the communist partisans had enjoyed the strongest support), whereas northern cities were rebuilt in a socialist realist style because Hoxha considered northern Albania’s Catholic and tribal traditions a manifestation of reaction and backwardness, rather than a source of pride.64 Nevertheless, the regime’s official narrative was still sufficiently inclusive to create secondary cults around pre-communist national heroes and cultural luminaries. For example, in September 1959 the leadership instructed officials to erect statues of Skenderbeg, Naim Frashëri, Ismail Qemali, Bajram Curri, Andon Zako Çajupi, Avni Rustemi, and Migjeni (Millosh Gjergj Nikolla), and “familiarize the population with the names of the national heroes.”65 The selection of these figures reflected the state-sponsored glorification of the Albanian National Renaissance (Rilindja Kombëtare, 1831– 1912), which had culminated in the creation of an independent Albanian nation-state. For instance, Ismail Qemali, the first premier of independent Albania, was portrayed as a “great patriot.”66 Just like in Romania, the Albanian protests showed the demonstrators’ rejection of the regime’s imagery and their familiarity with alternative symbols. In January 1990, demonstrators in the northern city of Shkodër attempted to topple a Stalin bust, whereupon the authorities saw 62 Robert C. Austin, “Greater Albania: The Albanian State and the Question of Kosovo, 1912–2001,” in Ideologies and National Identities. The Case of Twentieth-Century Southeastern Europe, ed. John Lampe and Mark Mazower (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004), 242–244. 63 O’Donnell, A Coming of Age, 138–140. 64 Jonathan D. Eaton, “Trauma and Recovery: Re-signifying Communist-Era Sites of Memory in Contemporary Albania” (M.A. thesis, University of Toronto, 2011), 28–31. 65 Hungarian Embassy to Albania, Report, October 1, 1959, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Albania, 1945–1964, 5. doboz, 5/c, 006096/1959. 66 Kristo Frashëri, The History of Albania: A Brief Survey (n.p.: Tirana, 1964), 148–153, 165–179; Portrait of Albania (Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House, 1982), 52.

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it advisable to dismantle the monument, and later they removed Stalin’s name and statues from all public places. Emboldened by this precedent, in February 1991, protesters singing “Për mëmëdhenë” (a militant song of the National Renaissance) destroyed Hoxha’s statue in Tirana.67 Memories of the National Renaissance probably inspired the first opposition newspaper, Rilindja Demokratike (Democratic Renaissance), too. Religious identity, long suppressed under Hoxha, became yet another mobilizing symbol when, during Alia’s cautious political liberalization, the authorities released a few imprisoned Catholic priests. On November 4, 1990, one of them (Simon Jubani) held a public mass in Shkodër—at the request of a crowd of several thousand believers but in violation of the state’s still-existing prohibition. In response, Alia relegalized religious worship, whereupon the next mass in Shkodër attracted tens of thousands.68 In the last analysis, it seems that the peculiarities of North Korean nationalism did contribute to the regime’s stability, but in a way different from B. R. Myers’ thesis. In Myers’ opinion, “an ethno-nationalist state can link itself in the public mind with the race and thereby maintain class-transcending support even through difficult times.”69 The ethno-racial nature of North Korean nationalism did distinguish the DPRK from Albania (where the communist leaders promoted state-centered nationalism, rather than ethnic nationalism) but less so from Ceauşescu’s Romania (where the leadership’s strong commitment to ethnic nationalism led to Soviet-Romanian disputes over Bessarabia and the forced assimilation of the ethnic Hungarian minority). Thus, the contrast between North Korea’s survival and the fall of the Romanian and Albanian regimes may be attributed to the following factors. First of all, the creation of the North Korean regime was nearly simultaneous with liberation from colonial rule, without any officially recognized precedent in the form of a modern, noncommunist nation-state. In contrast, the establishment of the Romanian and Albanian nation-states had occurred well before the communist takeovers, and the communist regimes were willing to acknowledge the importance of this historical step. Thus, the 67 Biberaj, Albania in Transition, 34, 46; Vickers, The Albanians, 218–219. I am indebted to Ana Lalaj for informing me about the use of this song as a mobilizing symbol. 68 Luisa Chiodi, “Mass Migration, Student Protests and the Intelligentsia Popullore in the Albanian Transition to Democracy.” COSMOS Working Papers 2012/2 (Florence: European University Institute, 2012), 32–33; Kenneth Roth and Jemima Stratford, “Albania,” News from Helsinki Watch, April 19, 1991, 2–3. 69 Myers, “North Korea’s State-Loyalty Advantage,” 118.

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Romanian and Albanian populations could regard the communist regime as a secondary entity superimposed on a preexisting nation-state, whereas the Korean population was split between two simultaneously emerging, antagonistic nation-states. Second, the most distinctive element of post-1967 North Korean nationalism was not so much a concept of “linking the state to the race” (as Myers suggested) but rather a policy of “linking the nation to the North Korean state.” By suppressing or downplaying alternative national symbols, North Korean propaganda created such an image of the Korean nation that could not be easily juxtaposed to the DPRK state. Under such conditions, the North Korean population lacked alternative mobilization symbols, while the Romanian and Albanian protests could gain inspiration from the widely known national symbols inherited from the nineteenth-century nationalist movements. Third, North Korea’s religious communities were thoroughly suppressed, a situation that had much in common with Hoxha’s Albania but stood in marked contrast with Ceauşescu’s Romania (where the first demonstrations in Timișoara erupted in protest against the planned eviction of an ethnic Hungarian pastor, László Tőkés) and Alia’s Albania (where the release of a few imprisoned priests encouraged Catholic believers to express their faith).70 The International Dimension The first major protest movements that erupted in Eastern Europe in 1953– 1956 were inspired not only by domestic factors but also by external ones. Following Stalin’s death, the new Soviet leadership distanced itself from his repressive practices and compelled the reluctant East European rulers to implement economic and political reforms—a process that weakened their control over society and thus created more favorable conditions for resistance than for the era of Stalinist terror. In the same vein, Gorbachev’s glasnost ultimately facilitated the dismantlement of one-party rule, for the new Soviet leader reduced his support to the East European regimes, and made it clear that the latter could no longer expect the USSR to keep them in power by force.71 70 Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution, 87–89. 71 Mark Kramer, “The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 1),” Journal of Cold War Studies 5, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 184–198.

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Still, it must be noted that the advent of the Gorbachev era brought an increase, rather than a decrease, of Soviet support to North Korea, since the new Soviet leader initially carried on with the post-1983 process of engaging the DPRK. Kim Il Sung’s visits to the USSR (May 1984 and October 1986) brought considerable material benefits to the DPRK. For instance, the Soviet government signed agreements on the construction of a nuclear power plant, a thermal power plant, and two textile factories, and provided the KPA with late-model fighter planes.72 Thanks to the post-1982 Sino-Soviet rapprochement, the DPRK was able to draw closer to the USSR without incurring China’s enmity. In May 1985, Hu Yaobang, then the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, assured Kim Il Sung that China approved of the recent improvement of Soviet-DPRK relations. At the same time, Beijing made efforts to keep up with Moscow in engaging Pyongyang.73 Probably this is why the North Korean leaders initially welcomed Sino-Soviet rapprochement, likening it to the reconciliation of quarreling spouses.74 In contrast, Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing (May 1989) exposed the DPRK to a grave risk of abandonment. Once the two communist powers settled their disputes, they became less interested in playing North Korea off against each other and less motivated to side with Pyongyang against Seoul.75 By that time, both China and the USSR had become increasingly ready to establish economic and political contacts with South Korea. As early as January 1985, the Chinese ambassador to Pyongyang told his Hungarian counterpart that China was determined to participate in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul even in the face of North Korean disapproval.76 In January 1986, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze similarly informed Pyongyang that the USSR would attend the Seoul Olympics, since boycotting it was not a viable option.77 72 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, January 28, 1986, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1986, 88. doboz, 81-13, 001626/1986; Sergey Radchenko, Unwanted Visionaries. The Soviet Failure in Asia at the End of the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 202–203. 73 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, May 30, 1985, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1985, 91. doboz, 8113, 002781/1/1985; Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, October 13, 1985, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1985, 91. doboz, 81-10, 001258/3/1985. 74 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, December 3, 1984, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, China, 1984, 83. doboz, 78-10, 00974/9/1984. 75 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, November 14, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1989, 51. doboz, 81-10, 004358/1989. 76 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, January 28, 1985, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1985, 91, doboz, 81-10, 001258/1985. 77 Sergey Radchenko, “It’s Not Enough to Win: The Seoul Olympics and the Roots of North Korea’s Isolation,” International Journal of the History of Sport 29, no. 9 (2012): 1244–1249.

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From Pyongyang’s perspective, South Korea’s post-1987 democratic transition did not alleviate the problem presented by Seoul’s rapprochement with the DPRK’s communist allies, because, as a Hungarian diplomatic report put it, “the development toward bourgeois democracy does not preclude the American presence and the creation of two Koreas … the consolidation of this policy looks permanent, which means that it is illusory to attach hopes to the possibility of rapid national unification.”78 On the contrary, South Korea’s democratization was soon followed by a HungarianROK agreement to set up permanent missions (September 1988) and to establish ambassadorial relations (February 1989)—a step emphatically supported by the Chinese and Soviet diplomats in Pyongyang. Worse still, in mid-1989, Moscow started to reduce its economic support to North Korea.79 Under such circumstances, the collapse of the East European regimes predictably reinforced the threat perceptions of the North Korean leadership. In July 1989, Foreign Minister Kim Yŏngnam told the Bulgarian ambassador that the Hungarian leaders were seeking to restore capitalism, and he rudely questioned whether Hungarian General Secretary Károly Grósz could be regarded as a communist at all. At a diplomatic reception held on November 12, Deputy Foreign Minister Yi Ingyu summarily attributed the fall of the Berlin Wall to the “sabotage activities of the Hungarian and Polish traitors.” The North Korean leaders evidently concluded that the collapse of the East European regimes resulted from the lack of political control. At another diplomatic reception in November, a North Korean official pointedly declared that the strong rule of “the Great Leader” guaranteed the survival of the socialist system in the DPRK.80 Since Ceauşescu’s fall could not be attributed to a lack of firmness, North Korea preferred to ignore it altogether. From December 18 to 23, Rodong Sinmun conveyed only good news about Romania, then, on December 29, the paper laconically announced the 78 Hungarian Embassy in the DPRK, Telegram, October 23, 1987, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1987, 82. doboz, 82-232, 004914/1987. 79 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, February 13, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1989, 51. doboz, 81-14, 00294/1/1989; Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, November 14, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1989, 51. doboz, 81-10, 004358/1989. 80 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Ciphered Telegram, July 18, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1989, 51. doboz, 81-14, 00294/7/1989; Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Ciphered Telegram, November 13, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1989, 51. doboz, 81-1, 004238/1989; Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, November 16, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1989, 51. doboz, 81-1, 004238/1/1989.

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formation of Iliescu’s government, without any reference to the revolution and Ceauşescu’s fate.81 Fortunately for the North Korean leaders, China continued to provide political and economic support to the DPRK even after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Their approval of the Tiananmen crackdown and the two governments’ shared dissatisfaction with the fall of the East European regimes created a new consensus between Pyongyang and Beijing. To show his solidarity with the DPRK, in November 1989 Deng Xiaoping received Kim Il Sung at the railway station when Kim paid an informal visit to Beijing.82 In December 1990, China supplied North Korea with relief aid worth $300 million. By the early 1990s, Beijing replaced Moscow as Pyongyang’s largest trade partner.83 Pyongyang’s bargaining position vis-à-vis Seoul and Washington was also enhanced by its strong military capabilities, its incipient nuclear capability, and the belligerent reputation it acquired by carrying out such violent actions as the Blue House raid (1968), the P’anmunjŏm axe killings (1976), the Rangoon bombing (1983), and the KAL 858 bombing (1987). In October 1989, an official of the KWP Central Committee emphatically told a Soviet correspondent that “considering the nuclear weapons stationed in South Korea, the DPRK is entitled to develop nuclear weapons of its own.”84 In September 1990, when the USSR recognized the ROK, North Korea renewed its threat to produce nuclear weapons. Seoul and Washington by no means took these threats lightly. In April 1988, the South Korean government offered $900 million to Pyongyang in exchange for a pledge not to disrupt the Seoul Olympics.85 Even in 1993–1994, by which time North Korea could no longer rely on Russian military assistance, U.S. military planners were keenly aware of Pyongyang’s ability to launch a retaliatory attack 81 “Romŭnia Hunedoaradoŭi kyŏngchepalchŏn” (Economic Development of Romania’s Hunedoara County), Rodong Sinmun, December 18, 1989; “Romŭnia kihaeng—Pŭrasyopŭi chŏnpyŏn” (Visit in Romania—Transformation of Braşov), Rodong Sinmun, December 21, 1989; “Romŭnia kukukchŏnsŏnisahŭi wiwŏnchang, che 1 puwiwŏnchang tŭngŭl sŏnch’ul” (Election of President and First Vice-President of Romania’s National Salvation Front Council), Rodong Sinmun, December 29, 1989. I am greatly indebted to Yoo Jinil for collecting and translating these articles. 82 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Report, November 14, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 1989, 51. doboz, 81-10, 004358/1989; Hungarian Embassy to the USSR, Ciphered Telegram, November 30, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, China, 1989, 49. doboz, 78-10, 002327/1/1989. 83 Xiaoxiong Yi, “China’s Korea Policy: From ‘One Korea’ to ‘Two Koreas’,” Asian Affairs 22, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 122–123. 84 Hungarian Embassy to the DPRK, Ciphered Telegram, November 2, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Korea, 51. doboz, 81-4, 004111/1989. 85 Buzo, The Guerilla Dynasty, 177–178, 188.

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against South Korea, and these considerations dissuaded them from carrying out a preventive strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities.86 Preoccupied by these security problems, the South Korean leaders did not put the issue of democratization on their diplomatic agenda. As President Roh Tae Woo put it in a conversation with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker (November 14, 1991), “if we can subdue their nuclear weapons program, then we can hope to stimulate the transition to democracy.”87 The post-1982 trajectory of Romania’s foreign relations showed certain similarities with North Korea. The country’s deteriorating economic situation led to a decline in economic and political cooperation with the West, whereas the Soviet bloc’s share in Romanian foreign trade increased from 34% in 1980 to 57% in 1985.88 These conditions induced Ceauşescu to welcome the post-1982 Sino-Soviet rapprochement, but this process ultimately reduced Romania’s value in China’s eyes. In October 1988, Ceauşescu was given a far more spectacular reception in Pyongyang than in Beijing. Following the visits, a Chinese diplomat pointedly told a Hungarian colleague that the Chinese media, unlike the Romanian press, did not publish Rodong Sinmun’s scathing article on Hungarian-South Korean cooperation. While the Romanian-DPRK communiqué condemned Western interference in Romania’s internal affairs, the Chinese diplomat disapproved of the mistreatment of the Hungarian minority in Romania.89 Romania gradually lost Moscow’s support, too. In May 1987, during Gorbachev’s visit to Romania, Ceauşescu was “terribly offended” when the Soviet leader “spoke publicly about glasnost, about perestroika.” In turn, Gorbachev was very unfavorably impressed with Ceauşescu’s hardline domestic policies.90 Relations with neighboring Hungary took a nosedive in 1986–1989 when Budapest’s complaints about the forced assim86 Joel S. Wit, Daniel S. Poneman, and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 104. 87 From the Department of State to the Embassy in Korea (Secretary Baker’s meeting with President Roh Tae Woo, Record of conversation), November 26, 1991. Accessible in the Digital National Security Archive, The United States and the Two Koreas, Part II: 1969–2010. 88 Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism, 130. 89 Hungarian Embassy to China, Ciphered Telegram, April 26, 1982, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Romania, 1982, 116. doboz, 128-103, 003359/1/1982; Hungarian Embassy to Romania, Report, October 26, 1988, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Romania, 1988, 85. doboz, 128-13, 004326/1988. 90 “Report on Mikhail Gorbachev’s Visit to Romania, June 4, 1987,” Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989, ed. in Svetlana Savranskaya, Thomas Blanton, and Vladislav Zubok (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010), 253–254.

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ilation of the ethnic Hungarian minority induced the Romanian leaders to accuse Hungary of irredentist ambitions. In 1988, Ceauşescu’s policy of “systematization” (i.e., the massive demolition of rural and urban settlements) elicited protests from Western Europe, and in March 1989, the UN Human Rights Commission condemned Romania’s repressive practices.91 Ceauşescu’s threat perceptions were further aggravated by the fall of the East European regimes. In October, Ion Stoian (who would be Ceauşescu’s last foreign minister) told the Chinese leaders that Romania strongly disapproved of the restoration of a multiparty system in Poland and Hungary.92 When the first protests erupted in Timișoara, a city with a mixed Hungarian-Romanian population, Ceauşescu promptly declared that they had been “organized with the consent of member-states of the Warsaw Treaty Organization” (i.e., Hungary and possibly the USSR)—a view that must have greatly influenced his decision to use lethal force against the demonstrators.93 This decision proved fatally counterproductive because the population was no longer willing to give credit to the narrative that Ceauşescu’s rule protected the nation against the “Soviet threat.” Since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (August 1968), Romania’s defense preparations had been directed as much against a possible Soviet intervention as against NATO (with which the country had no common borders). Ceauşescu’s rejection of the “Brezhnev doctrine” initially boosted his popularity, but Gorbachev’s noninterference during the East European transitions deprived him of this source of legitimacy. If compared with Gorbachev’s glasnost, Romania’s independence from the USSR became of a dubious value. Nor could Ceauşescu credibly present the Timișoara protests as a case of Hungarian irredentist subversion since the protests quickly spread from the city’s Hungarian community to the Romanian majority.94 Isolated within the Warsaw Pact, Romania could not expect assistance from faraway China either. In October 1989, Ion Stoian expressed approval 91 Deletant, Ceauşescu and the Securitate, 132–141, 271–272, 313–315. 92 Hungarian Embassy in Romania, Ciphered Telegram, November 17, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Romania, 1989, 74. doboz, 128-13, 004243/1989. 93 Vojtech Mastny and Malcolm Byrne, eds., A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005), 665. 94 Deletant, Ceauşescu and the Securitate, 84–85, 134–148, 267–268; Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution, 88–102, 192.

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of the Tiananmen crackdown and declared that Romania wanted to rely on China, “the last bastion of socialism.”95 However, the Chinese leaders were neither able nor willing to provide assistance to Ceauşescu. On the contrary, they saw the Romanian revolution as a predictable consequence of “Ceauşescu’s violation of basic Marxist principles.”96 In the 1980s, Albania found itself even more isolated than Ceauşescu’s Romania. In response to the breakdown of the Sino-Albanian alliance, Hoxha embarked on a policy of self-reliance and trade diversification, but to no avail. The volume of Albanian-East European trade increased from $170 million in 1978 to $260 million in 1980, but Tirana refused to restore official relations with the USSR, while its rapidly growing trade with Yugoslavia was unexpectedly disrupted by a dispute over Kosovo.97 Thereupon, in December 1982, the Albanian leaders resumed commercial relations with China, but the volume of Sino-Albanian trade, though it reached $30 million by 1986, remained far below the pre-1978 level.98 The Albanian leaders reacted to the East European transitions just as critically as their North Korean and Romanian comrades. In March 1989, the Albanian Institute of Marxism-Leninism held a conference to condemn Gorbachev’s reforms. In response to the collapse of the East European regimes, the Albanian leaders declared that their system, which was neither “revisionist” nor Soviet-imposed, would never follow suit. Quick as they were to attribute the fall of Ceauşescu to his “personal and dictatorial rule,” in mid-1990 they still rejected any external criticism of their repressive practices. By that time, however, the United States, Western Europe, and UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar all made it clear that Albania would not be able to join the “community of nations” unless it dismantled its one-party system.99 In the end, the Albanian leaders decided to fulfill these demands. The impoverished country could not afford to eschew rapprochement with the 95 Hungarian Embassy in Romania, Ciphered Telegram, November 17, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Romania, 1989, 74. doboz, 128–113, 004243/1989. 96 Czeslaw Tubilewicz, “Chinese Press Coverage of Political and Economic Restructuring of East Central Europe,” Asian Survey 37, no. 10 (October 1997): 935. 97 O’Donnell, A Coming of Age, 83–90, 175–177; Vickers, The Albanians, 202–212. 98 Hungarian Embassy to Albania, Report, January 18, 1983, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Albania, 1983, 20. doboz, 2-503, 007/1/1983; Hungarian Embassy to Albania, Report, January 15, 1987, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Albania, 1987, 15. doboz, 2–50, 00461/1987. 99 Biberaj, Albania in Transition, 32–42.

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Western powers but its military inferiority and diplomatic marginalization greatly weakened its bargaining position. As early as 1980, Western Europe accounted for 40% of Albanian foreign trade, and the disintegration of the Soviet bloc further increased Tirana’s reliance on the West.100 In December 1988, Alia told the Cuban ambassador that the Albanian government was strongly committed to cooperating with Greece and Italy. As he put it, “a decisive [factor] in Albania’s foreign policy is that our country belongs to Europe.”101 Actually, the siege mentality cultivated by Hoxha started to erode within his lifetime. While the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia induced the Albanian leaders to launch a massive and extremely costly military buildup (which involved the construction of bunkers everywhere in the country), it also stimulated rapprochement with Greece and Yugoslavia—the same neighboring states that Tirana had previously regarded as its prime enemies.102 In 1981–1985, the Yugoslav-Albanian dispute over Kosovo stimulated further rapprochement with Greece. The authorities even published a massive collection of Hoxha articles about the “traditional friendship” between the Greek and Albanian peoples.103 Greece reciprocated these efforts by renouncing its territorial claims to Albania (1984) and abolishing the formal state of war between the two countries (1987).104 Finally, Gorbachev’s acquiescence in the East European transitions made it clear that the threat of a Soviet invasion no longer existed. In April 1990, Alia expressed readiness to resume diplomatic relations with the hitherto demonized “superpowers”: the United States and the USSR.105 Under such conditions, the extreme militarization and isolation of the Albanian population effectively lost its raison d’être. The slogans of the demonstrating students expressed a strong desire to end this long isolation: “We want Albania to be like the rest of Europe!”106 100 O’Donnell, A Coming of Age, 176. 101 Hungarian Embassy to Albania, Report, January 11, 1989, MNL, XIX-J-1-j, Albania, 1989, 7. doboz, 2–10, 00267/1989. 102 Ethem Çeku, “Kosovo during the Tense Relations between Albania and Yugoslavia in Sixties and Seventies of the Twentieth Century,” International Relations Quarterly 5, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 1–20; Vickers, The Albanians, 193, 197–198, 203–204. 103 Enver Hoxha, Two Friendly Peoples. Excerpts from the Political Diary and Other Documents on AlbanianGreek Relations, 1941–1984 (Toronto: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin Institute, 1985). 104 Stefanos Katsikas, “An Overview of Albania’s Foreign Policy-Making in the 1980s,” Slovo 16, no. 2 (Autumn 2004): 103. 105 Tarifa, “Albania’s Road from Communism,” 140. 106 Piro Misha, “Ambiguities of Being an Intellectual: Contradictions of a Post-Communist Society. The Albanian Case,” Transitions 45, no. 1 (2005): 32.

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In the last analysis, it seems that neither international isolation nor external threat perceptions per se determined the survival or collapse of a regime. All three countries became marginalized by the end of the Cold War, and their leaders invariably adopted a hostile attitude toward the East European transitions. However, the scale and nature of these external challenges varied from case to case. The contrast between North Korea’s survival and the fall of the Romanian and Albanian regimes may be attributed to the following factors. First of all, the DPRK could obtain at least a modicum of assistance from neighboring China, whereas Romania and Albania were unable to rely on Beijing. Due to their geographical proximity to the other East European countries, the Romanian and Albanian regimes could not shield their population from the “domino effect” of the transitions, but the North Korean leaders could gain encouragement from the Tiananmen crackdown, the stability of the Chinese political system, and China’s determination to maintain a foothold in the DPRK. Second, North Korea, unlike Romania and Albania, was both able and willing to pursue a policy of military intimidation vis-à-vis the states that could have pressed it for democratization. This factor induced South Korea and the United States to adopt a cautious attitude toward Pyongyang, which stood in sharp contrast with the strong demands for democratization that the United States and the West European countries raised vis-à-vis Romania and Albania in 1988–1990. Third, the North Korean elite and officialdom had good reason to assume that a possible regime breakdown would not be confined to the replacement of the top leadership but might also involve North Korea’s absorption into the ROK, that is, the complete disappearance of the DPRK as a sovereign state. Their threat perceptions, consistently focused as they were on the United States and South Korea, were reinforced, rather than alleviated, by the weakening of Moscow’s global influence. In contrast, the post-1968 Romanian and Albanian security doctrines were at least partly invalidated by the disintegration of the Soviet bloc. In the latter countries, the cadres could reasonably expect that the fall of their supreme leader and/or the end of a one-party rule would not constitute a threat to the entire elite and to the state as such. Indeed, their ability to retain at least a part of their influence was clearly demonstrated in the elections held in 1990 and 1991, respectively. 261

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Conclusion Neither North Korea nor Romania nor Albania ever had an organized dissident movement (a “mature opposition”) akin to the Polish, Czechoslovak, and Hungarian intellectual groups. In each country, the balance of power— a key concept in transition studies—was far more favorable to the regime than to the actual or potential opposition. By the late 1980s, however, their mounting economic problems and growing diplomatic isolation posed a challenge serious enough to warrant some sort of systemic change. Judging from these conditions, the most likely scenario was a “transition through extrication,” a “transition through perpetuation,” or a “stolen transition.” Indeed, the Romanian events of 1989–1990 were often dubbed a “stolen revolution” or an “unfinished revolution.”107 Despite these common features, North Korea proceeded along a path radically different from the two East European countries. Although the economic and diplomatic challenges it faced were at least as serious as the problems that the Romanian and Albanian leaders encountered in the late 1980s, the DPRK did not experience any transfer of power to extra-elite groups. To explain why the North Korean regime proved more resilient than its East European counterparts, I summarized the findings of my comparative analysis in Table 7.1. I selected a total of 15 internal and external factors to describe the most important features of the examined countries. Since the post-1985 Albanian changes affected a wide range of factors, it was necessary to distinguish between the Hoxha era and the brief epoch of Alia, because lumping them together would have resulted in imprecise generalizations. Table 7.1 suggests that the survival of the North Korean political system may not be satisfactorily explained by a sui generis model that juxtaposes the DPRK with a generalized image of Eastern Europe. North Korea did considerably differ from Ceauşescu’s Romania and Alia’s Albania but less so from Hoxha’s Albania, whereas the various East European regimes were just as different from each other as from the DPRK. Of the 15 factors, 7 were identical in North Korea and Hoxha’s Albania: extremely harsh repressive measures and the suppression of organized church life; the virtual absence of political liberalization and social opposition; attempts to overcome the country’s 107 Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution, 39.

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Korean Empire (1897– 1910)

Dynastic succession accomplished by 1980; violent purges until 1978 but stable leadership afterward

Very intense (camps and executions)

Consistently absent

Energy crisis equally affecting industry, agriculture, and the population; post-1989 decrease in aid

Focus on heavy industry; initial attempts to mobilize the population, later partial inactivity; efforts to obtain aid, no debt repayment

Statehood before communist rule

Leadership

Political repression

Political liberalization

Economic crisis

State reaction to economic crisis

North Korea

263

Focus on heavy industry; attempts to mobilize the population (debt repayment, reduction of consumption)

Debt crisis, rise of oil import prices; energy shortages affect agriculture and the population, rather than industry

1962–1970

Intense but no labor camps or executions

Failed attempt at dynastic succession; nonviolent purges until 1974

Nation-state (1859– 1947)

Romania (1965–1989)

Focus on heavy industry; attempts to mobilize the population (self-reliance), no debt repayment

Post-1978 discontinuation of external aid

Consistently absent

Very intense (camps and executions)

Non-dynastic succession and violent purges (1981–1983)

Nation-state (1912– 1939)

Pre-1985 Albania

(Continued)

Focus on heavy industry; growth of state expenditures to create jobs; efforts to obtain aid

Decrease of energy exports, absence of external aid

1989–1991

Intense (camps and some executions)

Partly divided leadership

Nation-state (1912– 1939)

Post-1985 Albania

Table 7.1  Internal and external factors influencing transition and non-­transition in North Korea, Romania, and Albania

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264

Negative

Insignificant (subordinated Strong to other objectives)

Partial (China)

Strong (both to the regime and the state)

Reaction to the East European transition

External support to democratization

External support to non-transition

External threat perceptions

Strong in 1989 but limited to the regime

Absent in 1989

Negative

Low level of militarization, limited military capabilities

High level of militarization, strong military capabilities

Limited suppression (focus on control)

Strong ethnic nationalism in state ideology; survival of alternative national symbols

Military force

Fusion of ethnic and statecentered nationalism; erasure of alternative national symbols

Political role of nationalism

Absent

Strong

Negative (except the fall of Ceauşescu)

High level of militarization, limited military capabilities

Gradual concessions in 1989–1991

State-centered, rather than ethnic nationalism; partial survival of alternative national symbols

Slightly decreasing but still substantial (North versus South)

Post-1989 opposition (university admissions are not fully limited to the elite; wages are of great significance)

Strong (often both to the Decreasing regime and the state)

Present until 1978 (China)

Insignificant

Negative response to deStalinization

High level of militarization, limited military capabilities

Consistent and intense suppression

State-centered, rather than ethnic nationalism; partial survival of alternative national symbols

Substantial (combined Substantial (North with interethnic tension) versus South)

Consistent and intense suppression

Limited until 1991 (primacy of the capital)

Regional disparities

Recurrent opposition Very limited (1956, 1977, 1981–1989; cohesive worker communities)

Political role of religion

Very limited (university admissions are limited to the elite; wages are of little significance)

Social potential for opposition

Balazs Szalontai

Weathering the Storm, Toppled by the Storm

economic crisis by mobilizing the population, rather than by implementing reforms; a negative attitude toward liberalization in the Soviet bloc; and strong external threat perceptions (affecting both the regime and the state). These common features may also help explain the long-term stability of the two regimes since the aforesaid seven factors were clearly inimical to democratization. In three other factors, the two regimes were only partially similar to each other. Both countries underwent violent high-level purges, but while Kim Il Sung’s last major purge took place long before his death, Hoxha’s last purge occurred at the very end of his rule. Both leaderships launched massive military build-ups, but Albania’s military capabilities remained far weaker than North Korea’s. Finally, the period of modern statehood was only a brief phase in pre-communist Korean and Albanian history, but in Albania, it became a more substantial component of post-1945 nationalist ideology than in the DPRK. Positive correlations between North Korea and the other two East European cases were much less numerous. Save their identical disapproval of the East European transitions, Romania and the DPRK had only four partial similarities. Committed to heavy industrialization, both leaders tried to overcome the crisis without introducing reforms, but Ceauşescu’s austerity program differed from the North Korean situation. Both Kim Il Sung and Ceauşescu sought to implement a dynastic succession, but only Kim achieved his aim. Ethnic nationalism was a major ideological prop for both regimes, but in Romania, alternative national symbols could survive to a far greater extent. In 1989, both leaders were concerned about external threats, but the survival of Romania as a state was not at stake. Positive correlations between the DPRK and post-1985 Albania were limited to two factors (intense repression and disapproval of the transitions), with three partial similarities (heavy industrialization, militarization, and the briefness of precommunist statehood). Hoxha’s Albania had a lower number of positive correlations with Ceauşescu’s Romania than with North Korea—a difference that revealed the long-term impact that de-Stalinization made on the Romanian political system. In contrast, positive correlations between Romania and Alia’s Albania were far higher (six factors) than their similarities with the DPRK. Unable to obtain external support and pressured by the Western powers, they could not deflect the domino effect of the East European transitions, 265

Balazs Szalontai

their disapproval notwithstanding. In both countries, workers were able to stage protests, alternative national symbols continued to exist, and regional or ethnic disparities aggravated the growing socioeconomic discontent. In four other factors, the two countries were only partially similar to each other. Both Romania and Alia’s Albania underwent a phase of liberalization, but not at the same time. Both leaderships pursued heavy industrialization, but they faced different economic problems and handled them differently. Both regimes were preceded by modern nation-states, but this period was far longer in Romania than in Albania. Both countries lacked sufficient military power to deter Western calls for democratization, but in Albania, the militarization of society reached a far higher level than in Romania. Finally, certain important differences between the two countries (e.g., the sharp contrast between Ceauşescu’s harsh austerity program and Alia’s less confrontational attitude) help explain why Romania’s transition turned out to be far more violent than Albania’s. Notably, the six factors in which Romania and post-1985 Albania were similar to each other showed a consistent divergence from the DPRK. Even after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, North Korea continued to enjoy China’s political and economic support, whereas its foreign opponents (the United States and South Korea) were so much focused on dissuading Pyongyang from any aggressive action that they did not place the issue of democratization on their diplomatic agenda. The DPRK never experienced a phase of political liberalization, workers could not pose effective resistance, alternative national symbols became largely marginalized, and regional disparities were less clear-cut than in Albania and Romania. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that these factors played a key role both in the collapse of the two East European regimes and in the survival of the North Korean system.

266

About the Contributors

Bojan Aleksov is Associate Professor of the History of South-Eastern Europe at the University College London. He obtained a PhD in comparative history of Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe at the Central European University, under the supervision of Professor Alfred Rieber, in 2005. A slightly revised version of his dissertation was published in 2006, under the title Religious Dissent between the Modern and the National: Nazarenes in Hungary and Serbia 1850-1914, with the Harrassowitz Verlag. His most recent books are Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933–1945 (Brill, 2023) and Wars and Betweenness: Big Powers and Middle Europe, 1918-1945 (CEU Press, 2020, coedited with Aliaksandr Piahanau). Andrei Cușco is a researcher at the A. D. Xenopol Institute of History of the Romanian Academy in Iași, Romania (since January 2021). He was a lecturer (2009–2016) and an associate professor (2016–2021) at the Department of History and Geography in the “Ion Creanga” State Pedagogical University in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova. He holds an MA (2002) and a PhD degree (2008) from the Department of History of the Central European University. His research interests focus on Bessarabia’s symbolic geography, the competing Russian and Romanian visions of this contested region in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century and the RussianRomanian borderlands during World War I. He coedited six collective volumes and authored over 50 scholarly articles/book chapters, and two monographs. His first book, coauthored with Victor Taki and published at the Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie Press (Moscow) in 2012, discusses the history of Bessarabia as a borderland of the Russian Empire (Bessarabia as a Part of the Russian Empire, 1812-1917). His second book, A Contested Borderland: 267

About the Contributors

Competing Russian and Romanian Visions of Bessarabia in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century, was published at the CEU Press in October 2017. Oksana Ermolaeva received a PhD degree in the history of Eastern and Central Europe from the Central European University in 2007, under the supervision of Professor Alfred Rieber. She was an associate professor at the Institute of History, Political and Social Sciences at Petrozavodsk State University. Her research interests focus on everyday life and cultural practices in the Soviet gulag during the 1930s and early 1940s, as well as on border demarcation and Russian colonization in the Russian North, notably in the Karelian case. She is currently a research editor at the EuropeNow e-journal. She is a finalist of the Fulbright Visiting Researcher Program for the academic year 2023–2024. Also, during the 2023–2024 academic year, she will be a grantee of the Scholars at Risk Program of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung. From October 1, 2023, Oksana will hold the position of Visiting Researcher at the Complutence University of Madrid, Spain (2023–2024). Her most recent publication is “Border Control and Early Soviet Statehood: The Case of the Russian-Finnish Frontier in the 1920s,” Ab Imperio:  Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space 2 (2023): 1–32. Marina Loskutova graduated from St. Petersburg State University in 1991 and completed her MA degree in history at the Central European University, Budapest, in 1994. Professor Alfred Rieber supervised her PhD thesis, which she defended in 2000 at the same university. Her research was focused on the making of the Russian secondary school system in the second half of the nineteenth century. Later on, she worked at the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2013, she moved to the National Research University—Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, where she has been teaching as an associate professor. In the past decade, her research has been concerned with the history of scientific exploration and economic exploitation of natural resources in the Russian Empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She has published in the European Review of History, the Centaurus, and Ab Imperio. Andriy Posunko defended his PhD thesis at Central European University in 2018. His research focused on the social and military history of Cossack 268

About the Contributors

units in the Pontic Steppe region of the Russian Empire. His other publications deal with the peculiarities of irregular military service in Southern Ukraine/New Russia, Bessarabia, and the Caucasus; trans-imperial movement of people, goods, and ideas between Romanov, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires; as well as the ambiguities of social and legal status of the inhabitants in the borderlands contested by these three states. Besides postdoctoral studies at academic institutions, Posunko also worked as a researcher at Dnipropetrovsk National Historical Museum, where, besides duties in heritage management and heritage protection, he continued his research on imperial transformations in the Pontic Steppe region during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He is currently a nonresident Scholar (2022–2023) at Indiana University (IU-Ukraine Program), and, since February 2022, he is a soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Balazs Szalontai is Professor of North Korean Studies at Korea University, Sejong Campus. Having received a PhD in Soviet and Korean history, he has done extensive archival research in Hungary, Mongolia, and the United States. His publications include Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era: SovietDPRK Relations and the Roots of North Korean Despotism, 1953-1964 (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 2005), as well as numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the diplomatic, political, and economic history of North Korea, Southeast Asia, Mongolia, Eastern Europe, and India. His current research is focused on North Korea’s interactions with the various Middle Eastern and North African countries during and after the Cold War (see, for instance, “Courting the ‘Traitor to the Arab Cause’: Egyptian-North Korean Relations in the Sadat Era, 19701981,” S/N Korean Humanities 5, no.1 [March 2019]: 103–136 and “‘This Is Iran, Not North Korea’: Conflicting Images of the DPRK in Iranian Public Discourse,” North Korean Review 17, no. 1 [Spring 2021]: 79–95). Victor Taki earned his PhD from Central European University in 2008. Since then, he has taught at Carleton University, University of Alberta, Dalhousie University, the King’s University, and Concordia University of Edmonton. His research interests include imperial Russia’s Balkan entanglements and the intellectual history of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. His first book, Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire 269

About the Contributors

(based on his postdoctoral research at the University of Alberta in 2011– 2013), was published by I.B. Tauris in 2016. In 2021, CEU Press published his second book, based on his reworked doctoral dissertation, called Russia on the Danube: Empire, Elites and Reform in Moldavia and Wallachia, 18121834. He is currently working on his third book, Russia’s Turkish Wars: The Tsarist Army and the Balkan Peoples in the Nineteenth Century.

270

Index A

Abdel Kader 83 Abdul-Aziz I, Ottoman Sultan (1861–1876) 96 Academy of General (Main) Staff (Russian) 77, 79, 81, 84, 86, 89, 102, 104 Adrianople 59, 84, 87, 99, 107 Afinogenov, Alexander 160 Aksakov, I. S. 95 Alander, Igor 164 Albania 10, 15, 85, 94, 195, 229, 230–242, 244, 250–252, 259, 265–266 Constitutional Assembly 236 Democratic Party (DP) 236 National Front 251 National Renaissance 251–252 Party of Labor of Albania (PLA) 235 regional disparities 244, 264, 266 Albanian Institute of Marxism-Leninism 259 Aleksov, Bojan 10, 14, 193, 267 Alexander I, Russian emperor (1801–1825) 43, 47, 48, 50, 54, 60, 61, 63 Alexander I Karađorđević, King of Yugoslavia (1921–1934) 203, 220, 228 Alexander II, Russian emperor (1855–1881) 2, 53, 72, 76, 77, 101, 102, 108 Alexeev (Livshits), Alexei 164, 166, 167 Algeria 83–84 French colonial policy in 83–84 Russian military traveling to 84 Alia, Ramiz 232, 235, 236, 242, 243, 245, 252, 260, 262 Alkalaj, Dr Isak 209 Almazov, Zaven, White Sea–Baltic Combine chief (1936–1937) 169 Alsace-Lorraine 119 Amsterdam 209, 228

Anatolia 84, 107, 109, 110 Anschluss 10, 15, 216, 222, 229 anti-Semitism 127, 141, 143, 144, 193, 196–200, 202, 203, 209, 211, 214, 218, 219, 222, 228, 229, 249 Antonescu, Ion 249 Arakcheev, Aleksei 48–58, 60, 69, 70 Archangelsk 19, 23, 42 Artamonov, N. D. 105–106, 111 Artem’ev, Artamon 124 Aryans 194, 203 Athens 14, 210, 223 Austria 14, 23, 97, 107, 128, 138, 141, 193, 197, 202, 211, 222, 229 Austria-Hungary (Austro-Hungarian Empire) see also Habsburg Empire, Habsburg Monarchy 92, 102, 109, 117, 124, 195, 196, 200 Azov Sea 23, 68

B

B’nai B’rith 208, 213 Babadag 109 Baker, James 257 Bakhturina, A. Iu. 140 Bălcescu, Nicolae 250 Balfour Declaration 197 Balkans, Balkan Mountains 14, 15, 96, 105–109, 111, 193–196, 198, 203, 209, 226, 267 Baltic timber trade 22, 31 Balzac, Honoré de 162–163 Barbu, Eugen 249 Bariatinskii, A. I., Prince 2, 82, 89 Baron, Nick 151, 189 Barthou, Louis 220 Bartov, Omer 116

I ndex

Bukovina, see also Northern Bukovina and Southern Bukovina 10, 12–13, 119, 121, 124, 135–144, 146–147 Bulgaria 84, 87, 93, 94, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106–110 Bulgarian militia 94–95 Greek-Bulgarian Church Schism of 1870–72 88 The April uprising of 1876 93–94, 98–99 “Turkish atrocities” in 101–102, 106 Bulgarians 55, 85, 93–95, 97–100, 111, 127, 129 Burebista 250 Butyrka, Soviet prison 180

bashi-bazouks 85, 93 Batum 107 Bazhenin family 23 Beethoven, Ludwig van 173, 174 Belgrade 14, 195–200, 202, 206–208, 218, 219, 221, 222, 224, 225, 227 Belomorstroi (Construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal) 156 Bem, Józef 246 Benbassa, Esther 198 Benjamin, Walter 227 Berat 243, 251 Berger, Stefan 117 Berlin 165, 205, 208, 218–223, 225 Berlin Wall 255 Bessarabia 10, 12–13, 59, 112, 114, 121–126, 128–135, 146, 147, 252, 267, 269 Bessarabian Provincial Board 128 Bessarabian Romanians see also Moldavians 13, 121, 122 Southern Bessarabia 121, 129 Bethar, revisionist Zionist movement 213 Biró, Ludwig 196 Bitola/Monastir 195, 213, 215 Bizet, Georges 160, 174 Black Sea 23, 57, 59, 67, 82, 88, 97, 107, 129 Blanari, Elfriede 215 Blount, Henry 87 Bobrinskii, Georgii, Count, Galician Governor-General (1914–1915) 136, 140 Bocancea, Temistocle 136–137 Bolgarskii, Vasilii 61, 64 Bolshevik(s) 132, 134, 150, 167, 182, 185, 186, 201 Bolshoi Theater 165, 183 Bosnia 94, 213 Bosnia and Herzegovina 86, 93, 94, 195 Braşov 241, 250 Breslau 216, 221 Brest-Litovsk 18 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of (1918) 129 Brezhnev doctrine 258 Britain 19, 25–27, 31, 32, 36, 37, 92, 97, 209 Brubaker, Rogers 118 Brucan, Silviu 236 Bucharest 59, 137, 140, 235 Peace Treaty of (1812) 59

C

cadastre and cadastral mapping 19–20 Çajupi, Andon Zako 251 Campbell affair 199 Catherine II, Russian empress (1762–1796) 19, 21, 36–39, 48, 50 Caucasus 2, 12, 59, 67, 82, 83, 84, 89, 90, 107, 108, 269 war in 47, 59, 78, 90 Russian policy in 12, 82, 83–85, 93, 109 Ceauşescu, Nicolae 231, 232, 234, 235, 240–242, 244–246, 250, 257–259, 264, 265 Ceauşescu, Nicu 234 Central Asia 81, 95, 104, 115 Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (TsK VKP(b)) 183 Central Powers 127, 129, 133, 146 Central Theater of the White Sea–Baltic Combine see also Karelian Musical Comedy Theater 152, 156, 157–172, 186 Ch’ŏngjin 237 Chekhov, Anton 178 Chen, Cheng 231–232 Cherniaev, M. I. 89, 95, 102 Chernyshev, Aleksandr 59–62, 67–68, 72, 77 Chernyshev, Zakhar 50 Chichagov, Pavel 43 China 1, 8, 15, 81, 104, 203, 234, 247, 254, 256, 257, 258–259, 261, 264, 266 Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang 255 Cho, Young Chul 245

272

I ndex

Chosŏn dynasty (Korea) 247, 248 Christianity 248 Circassians 87, 102 emigrants to the Balkans 87 emigrants to Anatolia 84 Cluj 241 Cold War 261, 269 complex frontiers 6–8, 10 Confino, Michael 73 Constantinople 84, 88, 98, 103, 104, 107, 109, 110 Conference of 108 Patriarch of 135 Cossacks 5, 11–12, 47, 50, 51, 53–75, 83, 90 Council of Directors-General (Bessarabian government) 134 Crete 85 Greek uprising of 1866–69 in 85 Crimea, the 84, 129 Crimean Tatars 84–85 emigration from Russia 84–85 Crimean War (1853–1856) 2, 12, 76, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 88, 93, 104, 107, 110 Croatia 15, 194, 195, 196, 202, 203, 212, 219 Croats 203, 208 cultural brigade 151, 159, 170 Cultural-Educational Division (KulturnoVospitatelnyi Otdel) 149, 151, 162, 164, 170, 177, 179, 182, 185 Curri, Bajram 251 Cușco, Andrei 1, 10, 12–13, 112, 267 Cuza, Alexandru Ioan, prince of the United Principalities / Romania (1859–1866) 250 Czechoslovakia 207, 217, 229, 258, 260 Czernowitz 124, 135, 136, 139, 141, 142

Delibes, Léo 173, 174 Deli-Orman 103, 109 Delirul 249 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), North Korea 230–238, 240, 245–248, 252–257, 261–262, 265–266, 269 regional disparities 244, 264 regional identities 248 Deng Xiaoping 256 Denisov, Andrian 60–61 Denmark 32 Derpt (Tartu) University 160 de-Stalinization 233, 241, 247, 264, 265 Deşteaptă-te române, Romanian patriotic song and national anthem 250 Dmitlag, Soviet forced labor camp 172 Dmitrov, center of Dmitlag 149 Dobrogea 84, 103, 109, 129 Dolgorukov, Oleg 165 Don Region 12, 57–64, 66–71, 168 Donauschwaben 202 DOSAAF (Volunteer Society for Cooperation with the Army, Aviation, and Navy) 175 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 180 Drako, Baptiste 18, 19, 40–42, 44–45 Dreiser, Theodore 157 Dubrovnik 208, 219 Dunayevsky, Isaak 173 Dutch Republic 21, 23, 25–27, 31, 36

E

East Prussia 119, 215 Eastern Baltic 18, 21, 33, 45 Eastern Crisis (1875–1878) 5, 12, 76, 78, 89, 92, 93, 95, 98, 104, 111 The 1875 Herzegovinian uprising 93 Serbian-Ottoman War of 1876 95 The April Uprising in Bulgaria of 1876 94, 98 Eastern Front (World War I) 9, 129, 134 Eastern Question 92, 95–99, 103, 105 Ecclesiastical Fund of Bukovina 139 economic crisis 15, 235, 241, 244, 263, 265 Ecuador 217 Edwards, Lovett Fielding 196

D

Dacia 246 Dalstroy (Far North Construction Trust) 159 Danilevskii, N. Ia. 92, 180 Danube, river 67, 92, 98, 100, 105–110, 129, 202, 270 Danzig (Gdansk) 23 Dardanelles 97 Dargomyzhsky, Alexander 173 Defoe, Daniel 157

273

I ndex

Egorov, Elizar 40 Egypt 95, 97, 98, 269 Ehrenburg, Ilya 157 Ehrmann, Aleksandar 217–218 Eikhmann, Soviet camp chief 158 Ekaterinoslav Province 52, 53 enemy aliens 9, 114, 121, 122, 123, 144, 145 Entente 123, 125, 137, 138 Epirus 96 Eremeev, N. A. 173 Ermolaeva, Oksana 13–14, 148, 268 Ermolov, Aleksei 59, 61 Erzdorf, Josef, acting governor of Bukovina 143 Erzurum 109 Estonia 33, 159, 160 ethnicity, mobilization of 12–13, 112, 121, 124, 128, 132, 143, 146 Eurasia 1, 2, 6–10, 13, 117 Europe 9, 19, 47, 50, 87, 92, 96, 99, 108, 109, 110, 113, 180, 194, 201, 203, 207, 208, 210, 218, 222, 260 Europe, Central 9, 14, 195, 196 Europe, Eastern see also Soviet bloc 9, 12, 14, 15, 20, 21, 23, 92, 112, 145, 194, 246, 253, 260, 262 Europe, Western 23, 24, 32, 33, 75, 258, 259, 260 European 22, 38, 46, 49, 50, 70, 78–81, 83, 87, 92, 96, 98, 104, 107, 108–110, 113, 156, 160, 162, 198, 203, 226, 227, 229 European Turkey 84–88, 93, 96, 102, 105, 108, 110 Evdokimov, N. I. 82 Evlogii (Georgievskii), Archbishop 122, 140 Evreinov, S. D. 124, 136 external threat perceptions 239, 261, 264, 265

Fischer, Eduard, gendarme chief of Bukovina 135, 143–144 Fischer, Wofgang Georg 211, 225 Fisher, Irene Binzer 222 forest surveys 20, 40, 45 France 25–27, 31, 47, 209, 220 French Communist Party 2 Frankini, V. A. 84–85 Frashëri, Naim 251 Freidenreich, Harriet 197, 198, 213 Friml, Rudolf 161

G

Gabrovo 109 Gabselga, special settlement in the Karelian Gulag 173 Galicia 107, 119, 122, 124, 128, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 143, 146 Eastern Galicia 119, 122 Gatrell, Peter 9, 10, 145 Geiden, F. L. 98 Germany (German Empire) 117, 129, 148, 178, 193–195, 197, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208, 210–212, 213, 218, 219, 220, 222, 225, 226–228 Germans 10, 92, 122, 123, 128, 135, 144, 155, 196, 197, 202, 203, 211, 216, 223 Germans of Southern Bessarabia 13, 126–130 Nazi Germany (Third Reich) 10, 202 Union of Russian Citizens of German Nationality (1917) 129 Gerovskii, Alexei 140–141 Gerovskii, Georgii 140–141 Geyer, Michael 116 Ghegs 243 Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe 233–234, 249 Girs, N. K. 95, 98 Gjirokastër 251 Glasnost 245, 250, 253, 257, 258 Glinka, Mikhail 173 Gobjila, Alexandru G. 124 Gogol, Nikolai 158, 161 Goldstein, Ivo 197, 201, 202, 207, 212, 217, 219, 229 Golenić 15, 194, 205, 213, 215–217, 220

F

Fadeev, Rostislav Andreevich 82–84, 89–92, 95–101, 104, 111 Feuchtwanger, Lion 157 Finland 40 Finnish Drama Theater 171 Finnish Gulf 33, 34, 40 Finnish-Soviet War (Winter War) of 1939 183

274

I ndex

Hechalutz, Zionist organization 215 Herzegovina 85, 86, 94 The 1875 uprising in 93 HICEM, organization assisting Jewish emigration (est. 1927) 206, 208, 222  Hilberg, Raul 204–205 Hirsch, Paul 223 Hitler, Adolf 185, 202, 203, 219, 226, 228 Holocaust 9, 204–205, 212, 213 Holquist, Peter 9, 79, 82, 112–113, 115–116, 142 Home, William 24 Hora unirii, Romanian patriotic song 250 Hoxha, Enver 15, 233, 235, 236, 242, 244, 246, 251–253, 259–260, 262, 265 Hu Yaobang 254 Hugo, Victor 157 Hungary 119, 195–197, 200, 201, 205, 207, 216, 224, 248, 257–258, 267, 269 Hungarians 128, 135, 140, 262 Hungarian Embassy in Pyongyang 237–238, 253–257 Hungarian minority in Romania 252, 258

Golomb, Michael 225–226 Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich 245, 253, 254, 257–260 Gorchakov, A. M. 88, 90, 104 Gorchakov, D. M. 77 Goremykin, Russian officer 40 Gorky, Maxim 161 GPU (the State Political Directorate of the NKVD of the RSFSR) 149, 172, 180 Great Han Empire 247 Great Patriotic War 171 Great Reforms in Russia 2, 3, 12, 75, 76, 77, 88 peasant reform of 1861 2 military reform of 1874 12, 77, 92 Great Retreat (1915) 120, 125 Great Russians 122 Great Terror (1937–1938) 153, 157, 167, 184 Great War see also World War I 115, 120, 121 Greece 10, 15, 195, 198, 210, 214, 217, 223, 229, 260 Greeks 40, 85, 86, 96, 198, 199, 217, 242, 260 Green Russia (Zelenaia Rus’) see Bukovina 138 Grenville, William 17, 18 Grinberg, Pavel 164 Grósz, Károly 255 gubernia (Russian province) 76, 124, 125, 126 Gulag (Chief Administration of Camps of the OGPU-NKVD) 6, 13–14, 148–160, 162–163, 165–167, 169–170, 172, 174–175, 180–183, 185–187, 189, 239, 240, 268 Gusev, Viktor 160, 161 Gutman, Ruth 212 Gutmann, Viktor 215

I

Ianushkevich, Nikolai N., Russian general 121, 141–142 Iaşi 241, 267 Ignatiev, N. P. 88, 89, 104–105, 107–109, 110, 111 Ilf, Ilya 157 Iliescu, Ion 236, 256 Illyria 246 Il’men, Lake 36, 38 Ingria 33 Inner Asia 1, 8 Inorodtsy (aliens) 68, 115 Intlag 169 intra-party purges 235, 242, 244, 263, 265 Italy 197, 203, 205, 208, 215, 220, 251, 260 Italians 165, 206, 242

H

Habsburg Empire, Habsburg Monarchy see Austria-Hungary 8, 13, 49, 117, 118, 122, 131, 135, 140, 144, 145–146, 195, 196, 202, 269 Hachshara, Zionist training farm 14, 194, 205, 213, 215–217, 220 Haganah (Defense), Zionist paramilitary group in interwar Palestine 217 Halutzim, Jewish migrants to Palestine 206, 213, 217 Hamburg 215, 220 Hashomer Hazair, Socialist Zionist organization 216

J

Japan 235, 245, 247, 248 Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, Polish patriotic song and national anthem 246 Jevtić, Bogoljub 208

275

I ndex

Jews 14, 122, 123, 193–219, 224–225, 227–229 Jews, Bessarabian 127–128 Jews, Bukovinian 135, 136, 140, 142–143, 144 Ashkenazim (Ashkenazi Jews) 195–197, 198, 209 Sephardim (Sephardi Jews) 195–197, 198, 209, 213 Jiu Valley 241 Johnson, Robert 73 Joint Distribution Committee, Jewish aid organization 204, 205, 208 Jubani, Simon 252 Jünger, David 193, 203, 219 Jurburg (Jurbarkas) 18

Kimpolung (Câmpulung), town in Bukovina 141 Kishelskii, I. K. 93–95, 97, 111 Kishinev (Chișinău) 108, 123, 124, 131, 133, 134, 267 Klein, Aleksandar 204–206, 207–208 Kniazhnin, Boris 64 Kogan, Lazar, chief (1930–1932) and deputy chief of the Gulag (1932–1936) 148, 149, 180 Koguryŏ 248 Kokand, Khanate of 81 Kolyma 169 Komsomol (All-Union Leninist Youth League) 168, 176, 177, 181, 182, 189 Kon, Geca 224 Kondopoga, special settlement in the Karelian Gulag 171, 178 Kondopoga Theater 171 Korčula 216 Korea 10, 15, 230–240, 244–249, 252–257, 259, 261–263, 265–266, 269 Korean People’s Army (KPA) 239 Korean War 248 Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) 235 Korneichuk, Alexander 160, 161 Korošec, Anton 228 Kosovo 251, 259, 260 Kostomarov, Russian captain 35, 45 Kostroma gubernia (later province) 23 Kramer, Anna 34 Krein, Boris 165 Krivoshein, A. V., Russian Minister of Agriculture 121 Kroch, Ernst / Ernesto 215–216, 227 Kronstadt 35, 36 Kuban (river and region) 82, 83 Kuban Cossacks 72 Kuby, Erich 220 Kuhn, Thomas 16 Kulturbund 202 Kurbas, Alexei, theater director in the Gulag 159, 166 Kurland, Russian Duchy and province (gubernia) 24 Kuropatkin, A. N., Russian general and Minister of War 84, 119 Kyargozero, special settlement in the Karelian Gulag 184

K

Kálmán, Imre (Emmerich) 161 Kandel, Mavro 213 Kang, Jin Woong 245 Kanitz, Oscar 227, 228 Kaplun-Vladimirskii, V. 165 Karelian ASSR see also Karelo-Finnish SSR 152–155, 157, 161, 169, 170, 171, 178, 183, 186, 187, 189, 268 Karelian Republic’s Symphony Orchestra 171 Karelian Republic’s Theater of Russian Drama 171 Karpout 84 Kars 107 Kazan’ (city and gubernia) 19, 38, 39, 42, 166 Kem 158, 159, 191 Kenel, Alexander 158 Khar’kov Province 52, 53 Kherson (city and gubernia) 52, 53, 54, 123, 129 Khioni, I. A. 56 Khiva, Khanate of 81 Khotin, district in Northern Bessarabia 127 Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich 233, 234, 269 Khusid, Yakov 172 Kiev 54, 133, 164 Kim Il Sung 231–233, 235, 238, 244, 245, 247, 249, 254, 256, 265, 269 Kim Ilsŏng changgunŭi norae 248 Kim Jong Il 231, 235, 244, 247 Kim Yŏngnam 255 276

I ndex

L

Mamin-Sibiryak, Dmitry 157 Manastyrski, deputy of Metropolitan Vladimir Repta 139 Mann, Klaus 219 Maramureș 241 Margolin, Yulii 179, 183 Maribor 201, 202, 207, 223 Marić (Mayer), Artur 218 Marić, Milan 218 Mariinsky Theater 165 Marinković, Vojislav 199 Maritsa River 103 Marmaros-Sziget (today Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania) 140 Marseille 158, 220 Marxism 113 Marxism-Leninism 178, 259 mass population movements 8, 113–114, 121, 200 Mautner, Franz 201 Mediterranean Sea 18, 25–27, 94, 97, 195, 226 Medvezhya Gora (later Medvezhyegorsk), center of the Combine administration 152–154, 156–159, 164, 170, 171, 173–175, 177, 187 Medgora 156, 172, 174, 180, 181, 188, 190 Memel (Klaipeda) 23 Menczel, Philipp, editor-in-chief of Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung 136 Menshikov, A. S. 77 Mezen’ River 23 Michael I, King of Romania (1927–1930, 1940–1947) 165 Michael the Brave, prince of Wallachia (1593–1601) 250 Migjeni (Millosh Gjergj Nikolla) 251 Mikhail Nikolaevich, Grand Duke 105, 109 Military Scientific Committee of Russian War Ministry 80 Miliutin, Dmitrii Alekseevich 70, 77, 79–82, 84, 88–90, 93–95, 97–98, 101–102, 104–106 Miller, Alexei I., Russian historian 6, 117–118, 137 Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) (Russian) 123, 153 Minkov, Todor 94–95

labor camps 14, 150, 152, 159, 162, 163, 185, 234, 238, 241, 242, 244, 263 Ladino 195, 196 Ladoga, Lake 36 Lankov, Andrei 232, 234, 238, 247, 248 Larič, Vilko 201 Larionov, Alexei 164 Lattimore, Owen 1, 8 Lavrentiev, A. V. 86 Lazić, Živojin 209 leadership cult 234, 247, 249, 250 leadership succession 231, 234, 235, 241, 244, 263, 265 Lee, Ji-Yong 231, 232 Leipzig 216 Lenin (Ulyanov), Vladimir Il’ich 177 Leontyev, Konstantin 180 Levi, Jasha 196, 216 Lewin, Herbert 215, 217 Lewin, Moshe 5 Lewy, Rudolf 222 Libau (Liepaja) 24 Licht, Aleksandar 210, 213 Liders, A. N. 77, 89 Liprandi, I. P. 103 Lithuania 18, 215 Löbl, Wilhelm 201 Lohr, Eric 9, 114, 117, 120, 141–142, 145 London 205, 211, 228, 267 Los Angeles Conservatory 165 Loskutova, Marina 5, 10–11, 17, 268 Lübeck 23 Luga District 18 Luga River 34, 36

M

Macedonia 96, 195, 197–198 Maček, Vladko 219 Magadan 169 Magadan Central Theater 168, 169 Main Staff (of Russia) 12, 78, 80, 85, 90, 98, 102, 104, 109 Majstorović, Dr Ivan 209 Maksheev, A. I. 81–82, 84 Maly Theater 161

277

I ndex

Modern History of Korea 247 Moldavia 250, 270 Moldavians 56, 124–126, 130–131, 132–133 Moldavian Military Congress 133 Moldavian National Party (MNP) 130–131 Molodiashin, Mikhail M. 164 Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich 178 Montenegro 96, 108, 195 Moroz, Iosema, Ukhtpechlag chief 165 Moscow 11, 153, 154, 164, 165, 166, 171, 172, 187, 232, 249, 254, 255, 256, 267 Moscow Entrepreneurial Group 3–4 Moscow Opera Theater 165 Moscow Slavic Benevolent Committee 95, 100 Moskva–Volga Canal 149, 151, 172 Motru 241 moustafiz (Ottoman land militia) 108 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 173 Munich 225, 227 Murad V, Ottoman sultan (1876) 96 Murav’ev, Valer’ian Nikolaevich 136, 142 Muraviev, N. N. (Amurskii) 81 Murmansk 154 Mussorgsky, Modest 158, 173, 174 Myers, Brian Reynolds 231, 245, 249, 252–253

nationalizing empires 112, 117 nation-states 9, 252, 266 Neale, Edward 87 Nekrasov, Nikolai 157 Nemzeti dal 246 Netherlands 18 Neva River 36, 38 Nicholas I, Russian emperor (1825–1855) 53, 58, 63, 64, 67, 68, 77, 93 Nicholas II, Russian emperor (1894–1917) 119, 142 Niemen, River 18, 23 Nikolai Nikolaevich, Grand Duke, Supreme Commander of the Russian Army (1914–1915) 110, 141 Ninčić, Momčilo 199 NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) 152–154, 159, 162, 165, 168, 169, 171, 172, 175, 185, 186, 188, 189 Noland, Marcus 231 Nordberg, Konstantin F., Chief of the Bessarabian Gendarmes’ Office 125, 126, 128, 144 Norin, Sergey 160 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 258 Northern Dvina, River 23 Novak, Zdenka 199 Novgorod Province 34, 36, 52, 54, 57 Novikov-Priboy, Alexey 157 Novocherkassk 61, 64

N

Nadvoitsy, special settlement in the Karelian Gulag 154, 166 Najmann, Gertrude 224 Napoleonic Wars 11, 19, 21, 24, 77, 89 Narva (city) 24–36 Narva River 33, 34 national identity 197, 246, 248, 249 National Stalinism 232, 233 national symbols 246, 248, 250, 253, 264–266 national traditions 60, 61, 66, 68–70, 183, 209, 233, 247, 250, 251 nationalism 116–119, 131, 212, 231–234, 245–253, 264, 265, 268 war nationalism, Russian 137, 145

O

Obruchev, Nikolai Nikolaevich 77, 80, 81, 87, 92, 101–103, 106, 107, 109–111 Odessa 94, 123, 129, 133, 164 Odessa Educational District 124 Offenbach, Jacques 161 OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate) 180 Old Believers 3 Onega River 23 Order of Nakhimov 247 Order of Suvorov 247 Order of Yi Sunshin 247 Orthodox Church 122, 147 Osijek 195, 199, 201

278

I ndex

Pod znamenem Belomorstroia (“Under the Banner of Belomorstroi”) 156 Poland 33, 81, 197, 200, 210, 215, 229, 258 Poles 135, 155 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 23, 33, 35, 71 political liberalization 15, 234, 240, 244, 245, 252, 262, 263, 266 political repression 233, 263, Political Section (Politotdel) of the Gulag 156, 162, 176–178, 183, 185 political transition 242, 243, 245, 255, 257–266 Pontic Steppe 48, 269 population movements / displacements 8–10, 14, 114, 115, 121, 128 population politics 8–10, 12, 13, 112–115, 127, 129, 140, 141, 145, 146 Porte (Ottoman government) 84–87, 95, 96, 98, 101, 104 Portugal 25–27, 31, 195, 218 Posunko, Andriy 5, 11, 47, 268 Povenets, White Sea–Baltic Canal administrative center 154, 173, 181, 184 Prague 217 Preda, Marin 249 prisoners of war (POWs) 123, 124, 143 Privalov, Leonid 165 Prussia 22, 49, 80, 92 Prut River 138 Przybyszewska, Stanisława 164 Pšerhof/Pscherhof, Dr. Makso 207 Pshibyshevsky, Boleslav S. 164 Pskovskoe, Lake 34, 36 Pushkin, Alexander 157

OSOAVIAKHIM (Union of Societies of Assistance to the Defense and Aviation— Chemical Construction of the USSR) 175 Ostrovsky, Alexander 161 Ottoman Empire 12, 76, 78, 82, 84–89, 92, 94, 96, 97, 102, 104, 105, 108, 195 Christian population 12, 78, 84–87, 96–101, 106, 108, 110 Muslim population 84–87, 94, 96, 98, 99, 103, 105, 106, 108, 110, 111

P

P’yŏng’an dialect 248 Pak Sŏngch’ŏl 248 Pale of Settlement, Jewish 127 Palestine 193, 195, 197, 198, 203, 209–217, 220 Pan-Slavism 88, 89, 92, 97 Paris 165, 205, 222 Paskevich, I. F. 77, 104 Paul I, Russian emperor (1796–1801) 17–19, 36, 39, 45, 46, 49 Pawel, Ernst 221, 224, 226, 227 Pechorlag, Soviet forced labor camp 169 Peipus (Chudskoe), Lake 33, 34 PEN club 219 People’s Republic of Albania, see Albania People’s Republic of China (PRC), see China Për mëmëdhenë 252 Perekovka (“Re-forging”) 150, 156, 166 Perestroika 257 Pérez de Cuéllar, Javier 259 Pernau (Pärnu) 21, 24–33 Persia (Iran) 8, 63 Pervomaysky, special settlement in the Karelian Gulag 173 Peter I, Russian tsar (1682–1721) and emperor (1721–1725) 33, 37 Petőfi, Sándor 246 Petrov, Evgeny 157 Petrozavodsk, capital of the Karelian (A) SSR 170–172 Petrozavodsk Puppet Theater 171 Pfeifer, Vladimir 208 Philippopolis (Filibe, Plovdiv) 101 Pindushi, special settlement in the Karelian Gulag 166, 182 Plyussa River 34, 36

Q

Qemali, Ismail 251 Quakers 226

R

Radan, Vladimir 217 Raisky, Sara 212 Ransel, David 73 Rapoport, Yakov, Baltic–White Sea Combine’s chief (1933–1935) 257 Rassadin, Oleg 165

279

I ndex

Red Army Song and Dance Band 174 Red Cross 127 redif (Ottoman regular troops) 108 Reich, Renate 223 Reich, Werner 223 Reich, Wilhelm 219 Repta, Vladimir, Orthodox Metropolitan of Bukovina 135, 136, 139 Republic of Korea (ROK), South Korea 15, 235, 245, 248, 254–257, 261, 266 Reval (Tallinn) 24–32, 42 Rieber, Alfred J. 1–11, 14, 16, 267, 268 Riga 21, 24–32, 33, 36 Rijeka/Fiume 217 Rilindja Demokratike 252 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai 160 Rochlitz, Imre 211 Rodong Sinmun 255 Rodrigue, Aron 198 Roh Tae Woo 257 Romania, Romanian Kingdom see also Greater Romania 10, 15, 100, 108, 125, 129, 132, 134, 137–140, 146, 165, 197, 230–236, 241, 243, 244–249, 251–253, 255, 257–259, 261–263, 265, 266 National Salvation Front 235 regional disparities 244, 264, 266 Romanian Front 132, 134 Romanov Empire see Russian Empire Romanovs (Russian dynasty) 8, 71 Romashov, Boris 158 Rosenbaum, Rudolf 223 Rosenberg, Dragutin 205 Rosenstrauch, Elly 165 Rosettenstein, Alfred 215 Rossini, Gioachino 174 Rozen, Grigorii 67 Rubinstein, Anton 173, 174 Ruotsinsalmi (Kotka) 42 Rushchuk (Ruse) 107, 109, 110 Russell, Bertrand 225 Russia, Russian Empire, Romanov Empire 6, 11, 12, 18, 20, 22–24, 33, 35–37, 42, 46, 49, 58, 59, 66, 71–76, 80, 82, 114, 116, 119, 122, 125, 130, 133, 138, 141, 145, 267–269 as sedimentary society 5, 12, 75 February Revolution (1917) 128, 141

Peasant Land Bank 128 Provisional Government 132 Russian Constituent Assembly 133 Russian Imperial High Command 114 Russian Revolution 144 Russian timber exports 32 Russians 83, 96, 105, 107, 122, 135, 138, 140, 141, 144, 148, 155, 201 War Statute (1914) 114, 123 Russian-Galician Society 138 Russian-Ottoman war of 1828–1829 63, 103, 104, 110, 111 Russophiles 143 Rustemi, Avni 251 Ruthenians see Ukrainians 

S

Salageddin bei 87 Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail 178 Samro, Lake 34 Sanborn, Joshua A. 115, 118, 119 Sarajevo 218 Saucha, Valerija 196, 198, 217, 218 Schmidt, Aleksandr, mayor of Kishinev (1917–1918) 131 Scott, James 44 secondary cults 250, 251, Secret Strategic Conference of 1873 81, 92 Segezha Theater 171 Segezhstroy, second largest Baltic–White Sea Combine enterprise 154, 177, 191 self-activity (samodeyatelnost) 150 Senta/Szenta 200 Seoul Olympics 254, 256 Serbia 94, 96, 100, 102, 108, 195, 197, 220 Serbs 94, 98, 197, 203 Sevzherdorlag, Soviet forced labor camp 169 Sfatul Ţării, local Bessarabian assembly 131, 133, 134 Shairp, Steven 17 Shamil, Imam 82, 102 shatterzone of empires 6, 116 Shcherbatov, Mikhail 50 Shelah, Menachem 204 Sheptits’kyi, Andriy, Metropolitan of the Uniate Church in Galicia 122 Shevardnadze, Eduard 254

280

I ndex

Shiffers, Boris 165 Shishkov, Vyacheslav Shkodër 251 Shkvarkin, Vasily 158, 160, 163 Shoivani, special settlement in the Karelian Gulag 184 Shumla 99, 100, 103, 107, 109, 110 Siberia 40, 81 Šik (Schick), Dr Lavoslav 210 Silistria 107, 110 Silla, medieval Korean kingdom 248 Sirhak Movement 247 Sivas 84, 109 Skenderbeg (Gjergj Kastrioti) 251 Skobelev, M. D. 89 Skop(l)je 219 Slavophiles 3, 11, 90, 92 Slivno 109 SLON (Solovetskie lageria osobogo naznacheniia), Solovki Special Purpose Camp 154 Slovenia 195, 202 Smith, Alison 73 socialist realism 160 Sofia 103 Solovki Theater 157, 159 Sŏngbun system 238, 244 Sound Straits 22, 24, 31 Southern Slavic Boarding School (Iuzhnoslavianskii pansion), 94, 95 South-Western Front (World War I) 123 Spain 25–27, 31, 195 Special Section (Osobyi Otdel) of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 137 special settlements 154, 155, 166, 187–189 Spenul, Nikolai, Young Ruthenian deputy in Bukovina 136 Spitzer, Shime 200 Split (city) 206, 221 St. Petersburg (Petrograd, Leningrad) 17–19, 21, 24–32, 34, 35–37, 40, 41, 43–46, 60, 61, 81, 164, 165, 171, 187 Stakhanovets Segezhstroia (“The Stakhanovite Worker of Segezha Construction Trust”) 156 Stakhanovite movement 157, 175 Stalin, Iosif Vissarionovich 8, 149, 173, 185

Stalinism 232, 233, 251 Stalinskaia trassa (“Stalin’s Route”) 156, 157, 179, 181 Starorusskii uezd (Staraia Russa district) 38 statistics 52, 176, 189 military statistics 10, 12, 78–82, 88–90, 111 Stein-Ehrlich, Vera 214 Stemmer, Salman 220 Stephen the Great, prince of Moldavia (1457–1504) 250 Stern, Margarete 207 Stibbe, Matthew 145 Stockdale, Melissa K. 120, 121 Stoian, Ion 258 Stojadinović, Milan 228 Straucher, Bruno, Jewish MP in the Austrian Reichsrat 144 Strauss, Ilse 212 struggle over the borderlands 6–8 Subotica 195, 200 Sukhovo-Kobylin, Aleksandr 161 Sukhozanet, N. O. 84, 89 Sušak 206, 216, 217 Suvin, Darko 212 Sweden 21, 33, 49 Switzerland 205 Syktyvkar 169 Syr Daria River 81 Szalontai, Balazs 10, 15, 230, 269

T

Taki, Victor 1, 5, 76, 103, 267, 269 Talerhof, Austrian internment camp in World War I 143 Taneyev, Alexander 164 Taneyev, Sergei 164 Tashkent 81, 95 Tatar Bazardzhik 101 Tatars 155 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr 173 Tehelet Lavan 216 Teplitsky, Leonid 164, 171 Ternovskii, V. I. 40 territorial governance and territorial control 17, 20, 37, 42 Thessaloniki 195

281

I ndex

Thessaly 92, 96 Third Department of the Gulag 176 Tiananmen massacre 256, 259, 261 Tian-Shan Mountains 81 Tibet 81 timber frontier 20 timber scarcity 20, 21, 33, 45 Timișoara 234, 235, 241, 253, 258 Timofeev, Mikhail, White Sea–Baltic Combine chief (1937–1941) 169 Tirana 252, 259, 260 Tőkés, László 253 Tolly, Barclay de, Mikhail Bogdanovich (Michael Andreas) 50 Tolstoy, Alexey 157 Tosks 243 total war(fare) 113 Trenev, Konstantin 161 Trieste 206 Triplex Confinium 8 Truman, Harry S., U.S. President (1945–1953) 169 Tsekhansky, Vladimir 164 Tuchner, Sonia 165 Tucholsky, Kurt 227 Tur, Leonid 163 Tur, Pyotr 163 Turda 241 Turkestan, province of 82, 95 Turner, Frederick Jackson 7

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), see also Soviet Union 3, 9, 15, 161, 163, 180, 185, 232, 234, 253, 254, 256, 258–260 United States of America (USA), see also America 153, 215, 259–261, 266 Ural Cossack Host 69 Ural, mountains 40, 81 Uspensky, Dmitry 159 Ussuri River 81 Ustaša 205, 208, 218, 220 Utesov, Leonid 185

V

Vakhtangov Theater 158 Valias 243 Vanemuine Theater 160 Varna 84, 100, 103, 107, 110 Vasil’chikov, Illarion 58, 62, 63 Vatra Dornei 139 Vela Luka 216 Velikaya River 33, 35 Veniukov, M. I. 81 Verdi, Giuseppe 161 Vergun, Dmitrii N. 137, 138 Verne, Jules 157 Vienna 143, 211, 212 Vienna Jewish Kultusgemeinde (Cult Association) 204 Vistula River 23 Vitt, Ivan 52–58 Vojvodina 202 VOKh (R), militarized (armed) guards’ unit 176, 189 VOKHR (Armed Guards) of the White Sea –Baltic Combine Orchestra 173 VOKHR Department (Security and Regimen Department) of the Gulag 178 Volga River 36, 38, 42, 149 Volkhov River 36, 38 Volksdeutsche 202, 223 Vologda province 23 Vorkutlag, Soviet forced labor camp 169 Vovk, Ivan I. 164 Vršac 202 Vulesica, Marija 206, 212

U

Ubicini, Jean Henri Abdolonyme 87 Ukhta 170 Ukhtpechlag, Soviet forced labor camp 165 Ukraine 133, 269 Ukrainian “Piedmont” 138 Ukrainian State 132 Ukrainians 127, 160 Ukrainophiles 140 Ŭlchi Mundŏk 247 UN Human Rights Commission 258 Uniate Church 122 Union of Russian People, right-wing monarchist organization in the Russian Empire 122

282

I ndex

Vyborg 21, 23, 24, 26–33, 40 Vyshnevolotskaya canal system 36

World War I 7, 9, 10, 12, 112–114, 116, 117, 119, 195, 197, 220, 267

W

X

Wakefield, Andre 45 Wallachia 250 Warsaw 201, 222 Warsaw Treaty Organization 258 Weissbart 227 Weisselberger, Salomon 136 Weitz, Eric D. 116 Western Balkans 8 Western borderlands (Russian Empire) 81, 114 Western Bug, River 18, 23 White Sea 18, 21, 23–27, 42, White Sea–Baltic Canal 148, 149, 173, 181 White Sea–Baltic Combine (BelomorskoBaltiiskii Kombinat, BBK) (1933–1941), Soviet forced labor enterprise 152–160, 168, 170, 173, 174, 179, 182, 185, 186, 188, 189–192 Whitworth, Charles 17–19 Wiener, Alfred 228 Wilk, Gerhard H. 205 Windau (Ventspils) 24 Winkler, Immanuel, German Bessarabian Lutheran pastor and national activist 129 Wirtschafter, Elise Kimerling 73 WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization) 208 worker protests 234, 235, 241, 244, 250

xenophobia 246 Xinjiang 8

Y

Yagoda, Genrikh, chief of the Soviet NKVD (1934–1936) 151 Yi Ingyu 255 Yugoslavia 10, 14–15 , 194–216, 219–221, 223–229, 259

Z

Zagreb 195, 196, 198–201, 203–208, 212–215, 217–223, 225, 226, 228 Zbor, Yugoslav fascist party 104 Zelenoi, A. S. 105 Zemgor (Committee of the Union of Zemstvos and the Union of Towns) 116 Zemstvo (Russian elected local administration) 76 Zhdanov, Andrei Aleksandrovich 178 Zhedulov, Ivan 173, 174 Zherebtsova (Evers), Raisa 164, 171 Zionism 212–214 Zoshchenko, Mikhail 157 Zweig, Stefan 227

283

First, the volume addresses the attempts of Russian imperial rulers and elites to overcome the economic backwardness of the empire with respect to the West. The ensuing rivalry of several interest groups (entrepreneurs, engineers, economists) created new social forms in the subsequent rounds of modernization. The studies explore the dynamics of the metamorphoses of what Rieber famously conceptualized as a “sedimentary society” in the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet settings. Second, the volume also expands and dwells on the concept of frontier zones as dynamic, mutable, shifting areas, characterized by multi-ethnicity, religious diversity, unstable loyalties, overlapping and contradictory models of governance, and an uneasy balance between peaceful co-existence and bloody military clashes. In this connection, studies pay special attention to forced and spontaneous migrations, and population politics in modern Eurasia. “The topic of Russia as ‘empire’ or ‘nation-state’ refuses—unfortunately—to exit the world’s political agenda. That being the case, the diverse but consistently valuable and interesting essays contained in this collection will help scholars in history, political science, and international relations to make sense of Russian and other imperial situations. The volume contains extremely diverse contributions both geographically (from Russia to North Korea to the Balkans) and chronologically (from the early 19th century to the end of the USSR). The connecting thread here is that all of the authors were students of the distinguished professor of Russian history Alfred J. Rieber. Highly recommended.” Theodore R. Weeks, Professor of History, Russia and Eastern Europe, Southern Illinois University

About the Editors

Andrei Cuşco is a Researcher at the A.D. Xenopol Institute of History of the Romanian Academy in Iași, Romania. Victor Taki is Sessional lecturer at Concordia University of Edmonton, Canada. CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY PRESS BUDAPEST – VIENNA – NEW YORK Sales and information: [email protected] Website: http://www.ceupress.com

ISBN 978 963 386 626 9

Imperial Designs, Postimperial Extremes

A

nchored in the Russian Empire, but not limited to it, the eight studies in this volume explore the nineteenth-century imperial responses to the challenge of modernity, the dramatic disruptions of World War I, the radical scenarios of the interwar period and post-communist endgames at the different edges of Eurasia. The book continues and amplifies the historiographic momentum created by Alfred J. Rieber’s long and fruitful scholarly career.

A. CusÇo V. Taki

Imperial Designs Postim p erial

EXtremes

St ud ie s i n I nte rd i s c ipl i n a r y a nd C omp a r at iv e H i s tor y of R u s si a a nd Ea s te r n Eu rop e Edited b y A ndr ei CusÇo and Vic t or Tak i

Cover Design Sebastian Stachowski

Imperial_maple.indd 1

2023. 10. 20. 8:53:24