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Expansion Of Russia

Дата публикации: 04 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) HISTORY →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1188914196


Through marriage, inheritance, a lack of natural borders, an aggressive military policy, and great rivers that transversed huge expanses of land, Russia expanded from the environs of Moscow to become the largest and longest-lasting multinational empire in the world. The bulk of expansion came through wars, but there was always a strong current of natural expansion away from the autocratic center by social outcasts, adventurers, and merchants. Russian expansion was always cyclical, moving into a void, being pushed back, then recovering lost territory.


Muscovy

The Grand Duchy of Muscovy was but one of several successor states of the Mongol Golden Horde claiming the right to dominate the steppes. Moscow conquered the Volga basin and the Baltic coast, and laid claim to Siberia in the sixteenth century. Russia's fortunes ebbed during the "Time of Troubles" as Sweden and Poland seized the western gains in the Baltic and Ukraine. The seventeenth century witnessed a constant struggle with Poland and Sweden to regain lost lands, and with the southern cossack bands to capture the Ukraine and the mouth of the Don River at Azov.

In 1654, Russia supported the Ukrainian Bogdan Khmel'nitskii in his struggle with Poland; as a result, under the Truce of Andrussovo (1667), Moscow gained the left bank of the Dnieper as far as Moscow. Kiev and Smolensk were granted to Russia for limited time periods, but Moscow reneged and never gave them back. In its disputes with Sweden, Russia temporarily regained three Baltic ports in 1658, but they were returned to Sweden (Treaty of Kardis, 1661).

Muscovy was more successful expanding eastward into Siberia. Here there was no systematic policy, rather the gradual movement of settlers and fur traders. But exploration soon brought Russia into conflict with China. The resulting Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), in which Moscow ceded the Amur Valley to China, stabilized the border with the Manchu dynasty for the next two centuries. In 1650 Semen Dezhnev reached the Kamchatka Peninsula, which projects from the Asian mainland between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea and Pacific Ocean.


Peter the Great (1689-1725)

Under Peter the Great, Russia became the premier Baltic power and made gains against Turkey. The 1700 Treaty of Constantinople granted Moscow naval ports and the right to a fleet on the Black Sea. A second war with Turkey ending in 1711 forced Peter to abandon the fleet, but Russia retained Azov on the Don. The Great Northern War (1700-21) broke the back of Swedish power in the Baltic. Russia captured the Baltic coast and founded a new capital at St. Petersburg (1703). The peace treaty (Treaty of Nystadt, 1721) ceded Livonia, Estonia, part of Karelia, Vyborg, and the Baltic coast all the way to Riga to Russia in exchange for the return of Finland to Sweden. A war with Persia temporarily acquired Baku on the Caspian, but it was lost in 1732.


Post-Petrine

Peter's immediate successors focused their attention east and south. In 1728, Virus Bering located the Northeast Passage; thirteen years later, Russian sailors discovered and claimed Alaska. Sailing farther south, Russia twice unsuccessfully (1739, 1809) sought to open Japan to foreign trade. Short wars with Turkey (Treaty of Belgrade, 1730) and Sweden (Treaty of Abo, 1743) brought minor territorial gains.


Catherine the Great (1762-96)

Catherine confronted the Ottoman Turks and Poland. The First Russo-Turkish War (Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, 1774) ceded to Russia strategic points in and near the Crimea and part of the Black Sea coast. Catherine's annexation of the Crimea in 1783 led to a Second Russo-Turkish War (Treaty of Jassy, 1793), gained additional fortresses and the Black Sea coast to the Dniester River, and opened the grain belt of the Ukraine to the sea. Catherine transformed Russia into a European power through its participation (with Prussia and Austria) in the partitioning of Poland, Under the First Partition (1772), Russia acquired White Russia and all the territory to the Dvina and Dnieper rivers. The Second Partition (1793) added most of Lithuania and the western Ukraine. Following Kosciuszko's unsuccessful rebellion (1794), the three states absorbed the rest of Poland's lands. Catherine took the remainder of Lithuania and the Ukraine and the Duchy of Courland in the Baltic. Poland ceased to exist.


Wars of Revolution and Napoleon

Catherine's successors were involved in the wars against France to maintain the status quo in Central Europe and suppress revolutionary currents, while nibbling away at the borders of Russia's other neighbors. The Russian-American Trading Company, founded in 1799 to administer Alaska, was granted the right to make discoveries north of 50 degrees latitude and to claim lands for Russia. This led to the establishment of Fort Elizabeth, Hawaii, in 1804 and Fort Ross, California, in 1812. Both ventures ultimately failed because of foreign opposition and events in Europe that distracted Russian attention from them.

Alexander I, Catherine's grandson, joined the Third Coalition following the crowning of Napoleon as emperor in 1804. Although Alexander was defeated by Napoleon, under the Treaty of Tilsit (1807), the Russian and French empires emerged as the two continental powers: Russia received part of East Prussia while Napoleon carved out the new Duchy of Warsaw from lands taken by Prussia during the Partitions. After a short war, Sweden ceded Finland as an autonomous duchy ruled by Alexander as Grand Duke (Treaty of Frederickshavn, 1809). Russia annexed eastern Georgia in 1801; by the end of the decade Russia had annexed the rest. This action provoked a war with Persia (1804-13) that ended with Persia recognizing Russian rule in Georgia, while ceding Daghestan and Shemakha (Treaty of Gulistan, 1813). Turkey also fought a war over the Georgia gains (1806-12), which ended in a Russian success in 1812. Bessarabia and a strip on the eastern coast of the Black Sea (which put Russia at the mouth of the Danube) were granted to Moscow (Treaty of Bucharest, 1812). Under the Congress of Vienna (1815), Russia retained earlier gains in Finland, Poland, the Ukraine, and Bessarabia. The Duchy of Warsaw was reconfigured as a smaller Kingdom of Poland; with Alexander as king, he accepted a liberal constitution for his new kingdom.


A Century of Peace (1815-1914)

Nicholas I sought access to the Mediterranean by exploiting weaknesses within the Ottoman Empire (the "sick man of Europe") and gains in the Caucasus from Persia. The Russo-Persian War of 1826 gave Russia part of Armenia, including Erevan, and the right to a navy on the Caspian Sea (Treaty of Turkmanchai, 1828). War with Turkey in support of Greek rebels ended with the Russian conquest of the mouth of the Danube and Kars in the Caucasus (Treaty of Adrianople, 1829). In 1833 Russia "defended" the Ottomans against Egyptian rebels by landing troops in the Bosphorus; Russia and Turkey signed an eight-year mutual defense pact and Russia became the protector of Turkey (Treaty of Unkiar Skeliessi, 1833). When Russia, in 1853, suggested partitioning the Ottoman state, Great Britain and France supported Turkey. The 1856 Treaty of Paris forced Russia to cede to Turkey the mouth of the Danube, the Danubian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia, and part of Bessarabia; the Black Sea was neutralized. The United States purchased Alaska in 1867.

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, Russia became increasingly involved in the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Far East. Russia retained territory acquired in Bessarabia and the Caucasus when the Treaty of Paris was rewritten at the Congress of Berlin (1878). Moscow moved into Central Asia with the conquest of Kokand, Bokhara, and Khiva (1865-76) and the annexation of the Transcaspian region in 1881. Russia also turned its attention to China and Japan. Russia exploited a period of civil war to force China to give over the left bank of the Amur River (Treaty of Aigun, 1858) and the Ussuri region (Treaty of Peking, 1860). In 1875 Russia exchanged with Japan the Kurile Islands for the southern half of Sakhalin Island. Russia's efforts to carve out its own sphere of influence in China through coercing the right to build the East China Railway, and a 25-year lease of the southern half of Liaotung Peninsula with Port Arthur in 1897-98, brought Russia into conflict with Japan, leading to a disastrous and humiliating war in 1904. Russia ceded to Japan the lease to Liaotung, part of the railway, and the southern half of Sakhalin Island (Treaty of Portsmouth, 1905).


Conclusion

Russia followed a consciously expansionist policy, but its land expansion only matched the voyages of exploration and creation of overseas colonies by Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany. Russian expansion was cyclical; territories were lost and regained according to the fortunes of war, but expansion was continual. Efforts to gain a readily accessible warm-water port were only successful on the distant Pacific shore; Baltic and Black Sea gains never produced free outlets to the open sea.


-- Dianne L. Smith


FURTHER READINGS


Eversley, G. J. S.-L. 1915. The partitions of Poland. London: T. F. Unwin.

Kaplan, H. H. 1962. The first partition of Poland. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.

Kerner, R. J. [1942] 1971. The urge to the sea; the course of Russian history. The role of rivers, portages, ostrogs, monasteries, and furs. Publication of the Northeastern Asia Seminar of the University of California. New York: Russell & Russell.

Lord, R. H. 1915. The second partition of Poland: A study of diplomatic history. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.

Pierce, R. A. 1965. Russia's Hawaiian adventure, 1815-1827. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

Sumner, B. H. 1951. Peter the great and the emergence of Russia. New York: Macmillan.

------. [1949] 1965. Peter the great and the Ottoman empire. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books.

Опубликовано на Порталусе 04 сентября 2007 года

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