The religious dimension of the Crimean War

In his book, Crimea: The Last Crusade, Orlando Figes argues the Crimean War's ideological underpinnings were religious. 

 

French Catholic opinion feared Russia wanted to spread the Orthodox ‘heresy’ across Europe and called for a ‘holy war’ against Russians and Greeks in defence of Catholicism.

The Turks viewed the Crimean War as a jihad to regain land around the Danube, Black Sea and Caucasus humiliatingly lost to the Russian infidel in the last 80 years.

While Russia, a Byzantine formation, saw it as its right and duty, ‘its divine mission’, to crush the Ottoman empire, retake Constantinople and redeem its brethren, both Slav and Orthodox, living under Muslim yoke.

British Protestants saw Orthodoxy as ‘semi-pagan’, the Russians as modern Attilas whose hordes threatened Western civilisation while the Greeks – seen as collaborating with Russian imperialism against Turkey – were ‘a besotted, dancing, fiddling race’.

British Protestant distaste for Orthodoxy, the view that Orthodox Christians weren’t really Christians at all, justified fighting on the side of Muslim Turkey against Christian Russia.

For British Protestants, Orthodox Christians were best off under Turkish rather than Tsarist rule. Protestants felt more affinity to austere Islam than Orthodoxy and Turkish rule also gave British missionaries more chance to convert Orthodox Christians to Protestantism.

Some British Protestants even hoped to convert the Turks, encapsulating the liberal imperialist belief, still around today, that the barbarian once exposed to the self-evidently superior ways of the West will give up his culture for the more advanced one being offered to him.

Catherine the Great, the Greek Plan and the fate of Constantinople

After the Russo-Turkish War (1768-74) which ended with Russia, at the expense of the Ottoman empire, significantly expanding its territory and influence southwards towards Crimea and the Black Sea, Catherine the Great invited Greeks to colonise the newly conquered regions, which became known as New Russia.

Having humiliated the Turks, the next stage in Russian imperial ambitions was to complete the dissolution of the Turkish empire by dividing it between the Russian and Habsburg empires and restoring a Byzantine state boasting Constantinople as its capital.

The latter would be a Greek-dominated country led by a Romanov emperor – Catherine’s grandson, Constantine, fulfilling the prophecy that the reviver of the Byzantine empire would have the same name as the first Roman ruler of the City – i.e. Constantine the Great – and its last Roman ruler – i.e. Constantine Palaiologos – and who would make sure his realm was subservient to Moscow and served Russian interests.

The first test for this ‘Greek Plan’ was the Orlov Revolt (1780-81), in which Russia inspired, with men, materiel and money, a rebellion among Greeks in the Ottoman-occupied Peloponnese and Crete that aimed at establishing an independent Greek state loyal to Moscow. But the revolt was half-baked, Russian aid too meagre, and the Greeks were left to fend for themselves, suffering, as a result of the suppression of the uprising, massacres not just in the areas where the revolt had erupted but anywhere Greeks resided in the Ottoman empire.

Nevertheless, with the ultimate defeat of the Ottomans in the wider Russo-Turkish war, the Greek Plan survived and crystallised in the 1780s. Cities founded or re-founded on territory taken from the Ottomans in the Crimea and New Russia were given Greek names – Kherson, Yevpatoria, Mariupol, Stavropol, Odessa, Sevastopol, etc – in preparation for the region’s new Greek inhabitants and the state they were going to form. Greeks – escaping Turkish reprisals for the Orlov revolt – began new lives in Russia, many becoming important merchants and high-ranking diplomatic and military figures in Russian imperial service.

Another chance for the Russians to realise Catherine’s Greek Plan came about with the Russo-Turkish War (1787-92), when the Turks sought to reverse losses in the Black Sea a decade earlier. Again, the Turks were humiliated but the Russians never pressed their advantage to take Constantinople and were content with further Pontic concessions.

As European politics became dominated by the French revolution and the grandiose schemes of Napoleon Bonaparte for European hegemony, Russia turned its attention away from the disintegrating Ottoman empire and became more embroiled in the continental theatre.

By the time the Eastern Question reared its head again, the Greeks – now inspired as much by the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions – were less inclined to see autocratic Russia as their saviour. Moreover, by the 1840s, Britain and France were no longer prepared to allow Russia a free hand in precipitating the collapse of the Ottoman empire and taking over its remnants and went to war on behalf of the Ottomans to prevent further Russian expansion towards the Mediterranean.

While the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War (1853-56) provided respite to the Ottoman empire, its demise remained inevitable, except now, with an independent Greek state established in 1830 and the Megali Idea coming to dominate Greek irredentist thinking, Greece and Russia found themselves in competition for territories to be taken from Turkey, with Constantinople being the prize bone of contention.

Indeed, as the Ottoman empire entered its death throes in the Great War and Constantinople seemingly up for grabs again, Russia vetoed Greek participation in the British-led Gallipoli campaign, which aimed to knock Turkey out of the war by capturing its capital, in case Greece got its hands on the City before Russia.

Gallipoli turned into a disaster for the allies while Russia’s internal fissures widened under the strains of the war with revolution and civil war being the result. Thus, at the end of the Great War, Russia was in no position to press its perennial claims against the Turks and indeed, after the Bolsheviks emerged as rulers of Russia, the communists wasted no time in abandoning aspirations to Turkish territory and partnering with Mustafa Kemal’s Turkish nationalists, who they regarded as kindred spirits in fighting Western imperialism. As such, the Russian communists provided the Turkish nationalists with gold and weapons to overturn the Treaty of Sevres and thwart Greek and Armenian gains in Thrace, Asia Minor, Transcaucasia and the Black Sea and the turning of Constantinople into a Franco-British protectorate.

Eleftherios Venizelos and Greece In Her True Light

Greece In Her True Light is an interesting document published (in English) in 1916, which consists of several memoranda and speeches by Eleftherios Venizelos putting forward the case for Greece’s entry into WW1 on the side of the Allies. It describes the deals Venizelos was prepared to make to secure the maximum advantage to Greece’s national interests, which in this case meant the expansion of the Greek state into Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace and Cyprus. Venizelos’ policy of supporting Britain and France as a means to secure Greek expansion was opposed by King Constantine and other rightist forces in Greece, led by Dimitrios Gounaris.

Just a few points going through the document, which can be read here.

Initially, at the outbreak of WW1, Venizelos’ concern is to prevent Bulgaria – which had never accepted the treaties that ended the Balkan wars in 1912-13 – from joining the German and Turkish axis and threatening first Serbia and then Greece. In order to secure either Bulgarian neutrality or, better still, Bulgarian support in attacking Turkey, Venizelos was prepared to offer, in exchange for Allied backing for Greek demands in Asia Minor, the handing over to Bulgaria of Kavala and Drama in Eastern Macedonia.

Venizelos makes clear that Greek expansion into Asia Minor is not just a matter of creating a Greater Greece, but also protecting the lives of Ottoman Greeks who are already being targetted in a campaign of extermination, similar to the one already suffered by the Armenians. Venizelos adds that the policy of genocide is one the Turks are being encouraged to adopt by Germany.

Venizelos argues that if Greece had participated in the Gallipoli campaign, as requested by the Allies, then that campaign, to capture Constantinople, would have succeeded. He makes clear that Russian objections to Greece participating in the capture of Constantinople – Russia regarded Greece as a rival to claims on Constantinople – would have been overcome by France and Britain.

Venizelos accuses the obstructionist King Constantine of not only admiring Germany, but of desiring German victory in Europe, which would allow the king to sweep away the parliamentary system in Greece and establish a more monarchical system of government.

Venizelos mentions the British offer to cede Cyprus to Greece. Anti-Venizelists argued that such a concession was trifling and not worth Greece entering the war on the side of the British; but Venizelos insists that the addition of Cyprus to Greece would be a significant advance of Hellenism, especially in conjunction with other acquisitions in Thrace and Asia Minor.

It’s worth pointing out that the publication of the document – in English – was intended to convince Allied audiences that Venizelos, not Constantine, represented the ‘true’ Greece. Constantine’s pro-German neutrality was, of course, an outrage to the Allies and, indeed, in Canada and Australia, there were anti-Greek riots (aimed at Greek immigrants). 

On Russia, Greeks and the Byzantine Empire

Below is an article by Dmitry Shlapentokh on how some recent Russian films are reflecting that country’s ideological and foreign policy preoccupations, its relations with Asia and the West. One of the films mentioned is The Fall of an Empire – the Lessons of Byzantium, which was written and presented by the prominent Russian cleric Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov who, apparently, is Vladimir Putin’s spiritual father. (The film is widely available on youtube, and above is the first part).

The film purports to explain why the Byzantine Empire collapsed, and it does this, largely, by pinning the blame on the West, which was not only perfidious and avaricious but also espoused decadent political and philosophical ideas that were exported to the Byzantines, who stupidly consumed them. Tikhon implicitly refutes any notion that Byzantium was an expression of Hellenism and, indeed, points to the re-emergence of Hellenism and Greek national consciousness as critical factors undermining the Orthodox Christian and multi-ethnic nature of the Empire. The Russian priest bemoans ‘Greek arrogance’ and its dalliance with the paganism of the classical past, which Tikhon says alienated Byzantine Slavs.

As Shlapentokh’s piece indicates, Tikhon’s film is less a serious attempt to understand Byzantine collapse and more an effort to draw a crude parallel between the malaise of contemporary Russia and that of Byzantium in decline and to warn Russian viewers that unless they confront their own social and moral turpitude and resist the influence of the decadent West, then Russia will go the same way as Byzantium.

Among other things, the film is an interesting insight into anti-Greek Slav prejudices and a warning to many Greeks (including me) who are susceptible to Russophilia.

A projection of Moscow’s mindset, by Dmitry Shlapentokh
Russia’s relations with the Asian people, as projected in recent movies, provides important insight not just about Russian domestic but also foreign policy, including Moscow’s view of the current conflicts in the Middle East.

Since the end of Vladimir Putin’s first term as president, the Russian movie industry has produced several historical movies on Asia and Russia’s relations with the Asian people. Most have had broad public responses, indicated by heated debates in cyberspace.

A movie about Genghis Khan, Mongol, created in 2007 and directed by Sergei Bodrov, was one of the most prominent. It dwelt on Khan’s extraordinary life, rising from an unknown man, even a slave at certain times of his early life, to became the creator of a huge empire.

His extraordinary brutality, even by the criteria of his time, was overlooked, as well as Khan’s descendents’ conquest of Russia. The emphasis was on Khan’s vitality, energy, talent and extraordinary will. In the movie, the East has positive implications whereas the West has a negative image.

In 2008, on the eve of Putin’s passing his presidential scepter to Dmitry Medvedev (at least formally), a new movie, The Fall of an Empire – the Lesson of Byzantium, created by Archimandrite Tikhon, allegedly Putin’s confessor, was shown on the official government TV channel, indicating its paramount ideological importance.

The movie dealt with history and the end of the Byzantine Empire, clearly identified here with Russia. While having a lot of similarities in its overall ideological framework with that of Mongol, Tikhon’s movie has much less pleasing images of the East than Bogrov’s work. The movie has decidedly anti-Western overtones.

According to this movie, the West is sly and deceptive; and one should not trust Western smiles and handshakes. Still, the most dangerous factor is not Western duplicity or even the fact that Western crusaders devastated Constantinople in 1204, but the corrosive influence of Western culture, which weakened the Byzantium Empire.

Still, there was not much hope in the East, and it was the Ottoman Turks who finally overtook Byzantium in 1453, leading to the disappearance of the indigenous Orthodox population.

Finally, last year, the movie The Horde, sponsored and funded by the Russian Orthodox Church, was brought to the screen with an entirely new image of the West. The movie dealt with the Golden Horde, created after Batu (Batyi), Genghis Khan’s grandson conquered Russian lands in the early 13th century. The rule of Batu and his descendants is usually called in Russian historiography the ‘Mongol/Tatar Yoke’, and the movie’s producer followed this traditional line.

The image of Tatars here is extremely negative: they were identified as brutal, sadistic, dirty, and with no moral restraints. One Tatar Khan, the protagonist of the movie, even contemplated an incestuous relationship with his mother.

Westerners emerge here as implicit allies of Russia, plainly because they were treated as badly as Russians; and, with all of their cultural/religious differences from Russians, they are closer to Russians by culture and habits. What is the broad implication of these movies and the evolution of the image of the West and East?

And why should anyone outside of Russia give any significance to these movies? This is quite important for understanding the nature of not just the internal evolution of Russian society.

Throughout most of Putin’s tenure, Moscow’s relationship with Washington was tense; and recently Moscow became at odds not just with the US, but also with most Europeans over the conflict in Syria. Still, despite the deterioration of Moscow’s relationship with both Washington and Brussels, the opposite process took place among the Russian public.

It’s true that the rest of Russians’ lost their excitement about the US – quite strong in the beginning of Gorbachev’s era – a long time ago. Yet, their interest in West and Central Europe and the desire to follow European footsteps grew as time progressed.

This process also corresponded with the increasing hostility between ethnic Russians and Muslims of various ethnic origins, including those who are citizens of the Russian Federation. As a result, the West, especially Europe, emerges in the mind of most ethnic Russians if not as friendly but at least a neutral force. In any case, the West is seen as much less of a threat than the Asians, mostly Muslim Asians. This view has a direct implication for Moscow’s foreign policy.

The mainstream media usually points to Moscow’s support of Damascus, ignoring the fact that Moscow’s relationship with Teheran actually worsens as the Syrian Civil War rages. Moscow continues to deny Tehran’s request to send S-300 missiles despite the 2007 contract and a recent Tehran law suit in an international court.

The Bushehr nuclear plant – still operated mostly by Russian personnel – has stopped working, and Iranian questions about nature of the problems were left without a response. Nor has Moscow responded to Israel’s tough statement that S-300 missiles would be immediately attacked by Israel if they are, indeed, delivered to Syria.

All of this indicates that, while defending its national interests, neither the Kremlin nor the majority of ethnic Russians – similar to the protagonists of The Horde – are anxious to join the East in a full-fledged alliance to confront the West, including the US. And these views should be taken into account both in Washington and Brussels, especially at a time when Western military power is clearly showing its limits.

Dmitry Shlapentokh’s article originally published here.