A Short History of Russia

by Mary Platt Parmele

In 1831 the brief struggle was ended, and Europe had received the historic announcement, "Order reigns at Warsaw." Not only Warsaw, but Poland, was at the feet of the Emperor. Confiscations, imprisonments, and banishments to Siberia were the least terrible of the punishments. Every germ of a Polish nationality was destroyed—the army and the Diet effaced, Russian systems of taxes, justice, and coinage, and the metric system of weights and measures used in Russia were introduced,—the Julian Calendar superseded the one adopted all over the world—the University of Warsaw was carried to Moscow, and the Polish language was prohibited to be taught in the schools. Indemnity and pardon were offered to those who abjured the Roman Catholic faith, and many were received into the bosom of the National Orthodox Church; those refusing this offer of clemency being subjected to great cruelties. Poland was no more. Polish exiles were scattered all over Europe. In France, Hungary, Italy, wherever there were lovers of freedom, there were thousands of these emigrants without a country, living illustrations of what an unrestrained despotism might do, and everywhere intensifying the desires of patriots to achieve political freedom in their own lands.

Nicholas, as the chief representative of conservatism in Europe, looked upon France with especial aversion. Paris was the center of these pernicious movements which periodically shook Europe to its foundations. It had overthrown his ally Charles X., and had been the direct cause of the insurrection in Poland which had cost him thousands of rubles and lives; and now nowhere else was such sympathetic welcome given to the Polish refugees, thousands of whom were in the French army. His relations with Louis Philippe became strained, and he was looking about for an opportunity to manifest his ill will. In the meantime he addressed himself to what he considered the reforms in his own empire. He was going to establish a sort of political quarantine to keep out European influences. It was forbidden to send young men to Western universities—the term of absence in foreign countries was limited to five years for nobles, three for Russian subjects. The Russian language, literature, and history were to be given prominence over all studies in the schools. German free-thought was especially disliked by him. His instincts were not mistaken, for what the Encyclopedists had been to the Revolution of 1789, the new school of thought in Germany would be to that of 1848. So from his point of view he was wise in excluding philosophy from the universities and permitting it to be taught only by ecclesiastics.

The Khedive of Egypt, who ruled under a Turkish protectorate, in 1832 was at war with his master the Sultan. It suited the Emperor of Russia at this time to do the Sultan a kindness, so he joined him in bringing the Khedive to terms, and as his reward received a secret promise from the Porte to close the Dardanelles in case of war against Russia—to permit no foreign warships to pass through upon any pretext. There was indignation in Europe when this was known, and out of the whole imbroglio there came just what Nicholas and his minister Nesselrode had intended—a joint protection of Turkey by the Great Powers, from which France was excluded on account of her avowed sympathy for the Khedive in the recent troubles.

The great game of diplomacy had begun. Nicholas, for the sake of humiliating France, had allied himself with England, his natural enemy, and had assumed the part of Protector of an Ottoman integrity which he more than anyone else had tried to destroy! There were to be many strange roles played in this Eastern drama—many surprises for Christendom; and for Nicholas the surprise of a crushing defeat a few years later to which France contributed, possibly in retaliation for this humiliation.

The Ottoman Empire had reached its zenith in 1550 under Suleyman the Magnificent, when, with its eastern frontier in the heart of Asia, its European frontier touching Russia and Austria, it held in its grasp Egypt, the northern coast of Africa, and almost every city famous in biblical and classical history. Then commenced a decline; and when its terrible Janizaries were a source of danger instead of defense, when its own Sultan was compelled to destroy them in 1826 for the protection of his empire, it was only a helpless mass in the throes of dissolution.

But Turkey as a living and advancing power was less alarming to Europe than Turkey as a perishing one. Lying at the gateway between the East and the West, it occupied the most commanding strategic position in Europe. If that position were held by a living instead of a dying power, that power would be master of the Continent. No one state would ever be permitted by the rest to reach such an ascendency; and the next alternative of a division of the territory after the manner of Poland, was fraught with almost as much danger. The only hope for the peace of Europe was to keep in its integrity this crumbling wreck of a wicked, crime-stained old empire. Such was the policy now inaugurated by Russia, Great Britain, Austria, and Prussia; and such in brief is the "Eastern Question," which for more than half a century has overshadowed all others in European diplomacy, and more than any other has strained the conscience and the moral sense of Christian nations. We wish we might say that one nation had been able to resist this invitation to a moral turpitude masked by diplomatic subterfuges. But there is not one.

Although the question of the balance of power was of importance to all, it was England and Russia to whom the interests involved in the Eastern Question were most vital. Every year which made England's Indian Empire a more important possession also increased the necessity for her having free access to it; while Russian policy more and more revolved about an actual and a potential empire in the East. So just because they were natural enemies they became allies, each desiring to tie the other's hands by the principle of Ottoman integrity.

But daily and noiselessly the Russian outposts crept toward the East; first into Persia, then stretching out the left hand toward Khiva, pressing on through Bokhara into Chinese territory; and then, with a prescience of coming events which should make Western Europe tremble before such a subtle instinct for power, Russia obtained from the Chinese Emperor the privilege of establishing at Canton a school of instruction where Russian youths—prohibited from attending European universities—might learn the Chinese language and become familiarized with Chinese methods! But this was the sort of instinct that impels a glacier to creep surely toward a lower level. Not content with owning half of Europe and all of Northern Asia, the Russian glacier was moving noiselessly,—as all things must,—on the line of least resistance, toward the East.

The Emperor Nicholas, who comprehended so well the secret of imperial expansion, and so little understood the expanding qualities within his empire, was an impressive object to look upon. With his colossal stature and his imposing presence, always tightly buttoned in his uniform, he carried with him an air of majesty never to be forgotten if once it was seen. But while he supposed he was extinguishing the living forces and arresting the advancing power of mind in his empire, a new world was maturing beneath the smooth hard surface he had created. The Russian intellect, in spite of all, was blossoming from seed scattered long before his time. There were historians, and poets, and romanticists, and classicists, just as in the rest of Europe. There were the conservative writers who felt contempt for the West, and for the new, and who believed Russia was as much better before Ivan III. than after, as Ivan the Great was superior to Peter the Great; and there were Pushkin and Gogol, and Koltsof and Turguenief, whom they hated, because their voice was the voice of the New Russia. Turguenief, who with smothered sense of Russia's oppression was then girding himself for his battle with serfdom, says: "My proof used to come back to me from the censor half erased, and stained with red ink like blood. Ah! they were painful times!" But in spite of all, Russian genius was spreading its wings, and perhaps from this very repression was to come that passionate intensity which makes it so great.