|
| |
The Russian Empire
From: London School of Economics and Political Science
| By:
Dominic Lieven |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
 The Russian empire, from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century, was one of the largest and most successful of the European empires. Yet it remains one of the most unusual empires, shrouded by questions that rest on the very definition of empire itself and how tsarist Russia fits that definition. Can the Soviet Union be classified as an empire? If so, was it closer to an aristocratic-dynastic empire or an empire of nation--in this case, the Russian nation? In an interview with Fathom, Dominic Lieven, professor of Russian government and the author of Empire, considers the debates, and where Russia and the Soviet Union fit into the comparative study of empire. |
 | |
| Dominic Lieven discusses the problem of defining the Russian empire. | |
Fathom: When did the Russian empire begin, and what are the key features of its expansion? |
Dominic Lieven: Deciding when an empire begins depends in part on deciding what you mean by empire. Nonetheless, most people think of the Russian empire as having begun in the mid-sixteenth century, because that was the first time they conquered large areas which were Muslim and were therefore culturally alien to the great Russian population. However, with the Russian case in particular, there is a major problem, because before they conquered the Muslim areas they had absorbed large amounts of what we today call Belarus and Ukraine: East Slav Orthodox areas. In that case, is Russia being imperialist absorbing alien peoples, or is it, as the tsars claimed, just reabsorbing what were essentially Russian areas? For them, Russia was defined by being Orthodox and East Slav. Once again, you come back to ambiguity. To some extent, the debate is anachronistic. If you talk about the sixteenth century itself, people simply were not worried about what was an empire and what was a nation. They had no conception of a nation in our contemporary sense, as defined by language and ethnicity. |
 | |
| Dominic Lieven on the role of the tsars and aristocracy in building the empire. | |
Fathom: How important was the role of the tsars and aristocratic elites in creating the empire? |
Lieven: The empire was created by a dynasty and by the aristocratic ruling class, who in a real sense were the main stakeholders in the polity. It was an exceptionally successful empire in its own terms and in terms of the dynasty's interests and the interests of the aristocratic class. After all, it started off as a rather small polity in an entirely marginal area of the world where agriculture was poor and the only truly valuable commodity was fur, and it ended up controlling almost a sixth of the world's land surface. So it was a hugely successful mechanism for territorial expansion at a time when the acquisition of territory and land was the obvious way of maximising both the power of the state and the wealth of the aristocracy. |
 | |
| Dominic Lieven compares the Russian empire with other great empires. | |
Fathom: How does the Russian empire contrast with other great empires such as the British empire and the Austrian empire? |
Lieven: Every empire is different. If you are going to put the Russian empire into categories, this is an aristocratic dynastic empire, much more than it is the empire of a nation. The Russian nation as such does not control the tsarist state. The tsarist state is an aristocratic dynastic state whose rulers do in most cases think of themselves as Russians. But they have their own very specific conception of what Russia means, and it is very hard to argue that their empire was in most ways of great benefit to ordinary Russians since, as is the case with many empires, the way in which this empire expanded was largely by exploiting the mass of the Russian population, who were, after all, for much of the empire's history, serfs. So it is a complicated issue. |
That is what makes studying the Russian empire interesting. Because, although in one sense, for instance, it is very different from the British empire, in another sense it is similar. These were fundamentally Christian European communities. They were the two communities on the periphery of Europe. They were vital as regards the expansion of European power and culture globally. They were the largest and in many ways most successful of the European empires, although you would have to count the Spanish in the same league as well. It was by no means coincidental that these were people on the periphery of Europe. It was much easier to expand from the periphery of Europe than from the centre. |
 | |
| Dominic Lieven discusses whether the Soviet Union could be seen as an empire. | |
Fathom: When did the Russian empire come to an end? |
Lieven: Asking when the Russian empire comes to an end is even more complicated than when it begins. Of course, the Romanov empire, the old monarchical dynastic aristocratic empire, ends unequivocally in 1917. Then you get the whole question of whether the Soviet Union is an empire and whether it is a Russian empire, and what being a Russian empire might or might not mean, and that is a complicated question. It is one which causes a great deal of argument and bad blood. There are many Russians who would argue that the mass of the Russian people did not benefit at all from Soviet global power or Soviet rule over the non-Russians. On the contrary, they would argue that the Russians subsidised the rest of the empire and the power of the Soviet state, that actually the Soviet regime suppressed and distorted many aspects of Russian culture. Alexander Solzhenitsyn would say that. |
There are others who would argue, on the contrary, that the empire was both rooted in great Russia, that certainly in its last decades most of its leading cadres were Russians, and that it did appeal to certain elements of Russian culture and tradition and to a Russian sense that this state, this empire, made them a great power and made them count in the world, gave them a major geopolitical and cultural influence. Therefore, to an extent, this was their empire and they did identify with it. So it is a difficult issue. The one point that is clear is that the rulers of the Soviet Union were not in any sense responsible to the Russian political nation. They were not elected by that nation and they did not conceive of themselves directly as serving the interests of the Russian nation. In that sense, there is a distinction between them and, let us say, the Dutch or the French or the British empire in 1900, where there is a very clear distinction between a ruling metropolitan nation and overseas colonies which are not formally part of that nation, don't enjoy political rights and of course are also just geographically divided or of a different colour. |
The Soviet Union is only to some extent imperial if you are thinking of it in terms of empire as we tend to think of empire in Western Europe. It is a curious mixture between a modern European tradition of empire and another tradition of empire, which in some senses has more in common with the Ottomans and with the great religious and bureaucratic empires of ancient and mediaeval times. That is, I think, one reason that looking at the Soviet Union from a comparative imperial perspective is rather interesting. It does actually combine all sorts of diverse types of empire, and of course it has much in its history which is sui generis. |
|
| |
