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Imperialism in Slavic and East European History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

O. Halecki
O. Halecki*
Affiliation:
Fordham University
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Extract

From the Dawn of history all Slavic peoples and in general the peoples of Eastern Europe have suffered more than any others from aggressive imperialism. It was against them that the notorious Drang nach Osten of the Germans was directed, particularly dangerous when backed by one of the successive Reichs. It was Eastern Europe with its predominantly Slavic populations which always was the first and sometimes the only victim of a long series of Asiatic invasions through the open gate between the Urals and the Caucasus. And though the Ottoman Turks at the height of their power reached as far as German and even Italian borderlands, they conquered exclusively and threatened chiefly Slavic and East European countries. Finally, these same countries used to be the first affected when Venice or Sweden played the part of great powers.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , February 1952 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1952

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References

1 The New York Times editorial of June 28, 1951, which favorably commented upon a statement by Mr. Dean Acheson about Russia's expansion, was criticized in a letter to the Editor signed by twelve Russian exiles, including Mr. Alexander Kerensky. One of the signatories, Professor Michael Karpovich, had published a few weeks earlier two articles in the New Leader, where the same points are developed in detail. The letter in defense of Russia's foreign policy was answered in a series of other letters to the New York Times written in July and August by the Ukrainian leaders, Professor Lew E. Dobriansky (answered in turn by Mr. Kerensky; see also Dobriansky's reply in the Ukrainian Bulletin, September 1, 1951), Professor N. Chubaty, and Mr. Panas Fedenko; by Professor Samuel Sharp, of the American University; and by the chairmen of the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian Consultative Panels, cooperating with the National Committee for a Free Europe.

2 An important contribution to such a discussion appeared in the American Slavic and East European Review as early as October, 1948 (VII, No. 3, 197–213); that article by Philip E. Mosely on “Aspects of Russian Expansion,” though dealing chiefly with the Soviet Union, included some general characteristics of earlier developments.

3 Adinolfi, Gaetano, “Les griefs et les susceptibilités de la Russie vis-à-vis des peuples occidentaux,” Les Cahiers de Bruges, No. 2 (June, 1951), 41–51 Google Scholar.

4 Moret, A. and Davy, G., Des clans aux empires (Paris, 1–3)Google Scholar.

5 See my comments in The Limits and Divisions of European History (London and New York, 1950), p. 52.

6 Dvornik, F., The Making of Central and Eastern Europe (London, 1949), Chapter VGoogle Scholar; see also his “Conclusions,” pp. 264–66, on the policy of the Jagellonian dynasty.

7 See Kohn, Hans, The Idea of Nationalism (New York, 1944), p. 570.Google Scholar

8 Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum, II, 80. In that frequently quoted sentence the words about Russia are preceded by a rejection of any claims of the Teutonic Order apud Rutenos.

9 Čerepnin, L., “Dogovornye i dukhovnye gramoty Dmitrij a Donskogo,” Istoričeskie Zapiski, XXIV (1947), 225–66Google Scholar. See the comments by Paszkiewicz, H. in Teki Historyczne, IV, No. 4 (October–December, 1950), 187–97Google Scholar.

10 Akty otn. k'istorii Zapadnoj Rossii, I, No. 50, 62–65.

11 Presnjakov, A. E., Obrazocanye Veliko-russkago gosudarstva (St. Petersburg, 1918)Google Scholar.

12 Kerner, R. J., The Urge to the Sea (Berkeley, 1942), pp. 67 ffGoogle Scholar.

13 A contemporary copy of that appeal is the oldest document preserved in the series Russica of the State Archives in Vienna (Fasc. 1a). There is no reference to it in Uebersberger, H., Oesterreich und Russland sett dent Ende des XV Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 1906)Google Scholar.

14 Kirchner, W., “A Milestone in European History: the Danish-Russian Treaty of 1562,” Slavonic and East European Review, American Series III, No. 2 (August, 1944)Google Scholar, blaming Ivan III for having shown “little comprehension of Russia's destiny in the Baltic” (p. 39) has overlooked that earlier alliance with Denmark and goes too far in calling the treaty of 1562 “the first ever to be peacefully negotiated by Russia with one of the great powers of western Europe which was based on complete equality” (p. 44).

15 See, for instance, G. de Reynold, “Le Monde Russe” (La Formation de l'Europe, Vol. VI), particularly the remarks on p. 119 about the contrast between the “first” and the “second” Russia.

16 Vernadsky, G., Kievan Russia (New Haven, 1948)Google Scholar: Chapter II, “The imperial plan and its failure 878–972” (Section one, “Dreams and Realities”); Chapter VIII, “The Russian Federation 1139–1237.”

17 Vakar, N. P., “The Name ‘White Russia,’ ” American Slavic and East European Review, VIII, No. 3 (October, 1949), 201–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 That idea is discussed in the first issue (February–March, 1951) of Veda, the “Kryvian (White Ruthenian) Scientific and Literary Magazine,” published by the Francis Skoryna Kryvian Scientific Society, in Brooklyn, New York.

19 Papée, F., Polska i Litwa na przełomie wieków średnich, I (Cracow, 1904)Google Scholar, discussing the situation in Lithuania during the last years of Casimir's reign, has a chapter entitled “War in Time of Peace.” In his posthumous work, Aleksander Jagiellończyk (Kraków, 1949), the struggle against Russia under Casimir's son and successor is described in detail.

20 In my history of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, Dzieje Unit Jagiellońskiej (Cracow, 1019–1020), these requests, beginning as early as 1486 (I, 433), and the problem of Polish assistance before the Union of Lublin, received special attention.

21 Kuczyński, S. M., Ziemie czernihowsko-siewierskie pod rzadami Litwy (Warsaw, 1936)Google Scholar, has explained very well the whole background, but goes too far in trying to prove the Ukrainian character of the upper Oka basin.

22 Typical of that trend is Eckardt, H. v., Ivan the Terrible (New York, 1949)Google Scholar.

23 Well shown by Vernadsky, G., Political and Diplomatic History of Russia (Boston, 1936), p. 188 Google Scholar.

24 Even in the most objective and informative works of M. Lubavskij the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is always called “Litovsko-Russkoe Gosudarstvo,” parallel to the “Moskovsko-Russkoe Gosudarstvo.”

25 The original of that (unpublished) message of October 7, 1563, is preserved in MS. 307, pp. 193–94, of the Czartoryski Archives in Cracow.

26 See Lehovich, Dimitry V., “The Testament of Peter the Great,” American Slavic and East European Review, VII, No. 2 (April, 1948), 111–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 A. Bilmanis, the author of many books and articles which have reinterpreted the history of Livonia from the point of view of the Latvian people, has also discussed the “Grandeur and Decline of the German Baits,” Slavonic and East European Review, American Series III, No. 4 (December, 1944), 50–80.

28 Sumner, B. H., Peter the Great and the Ottoman Empire (Oxford, 1949)Google Scholar.

29 Inalcik, Halil, The Origin of the Ottoman-Russian Rivalry and the Don-Volga Canal (1568), (Ankara, 1947)Google Scholar, Extrait des Annales de l'Université d'Ankara.

30 Lutostański, K., Les Portages de la Pologne et la lutte pour l'indépendance (Lausanne, Paris, 1918), p. 57 Google Scholar, reprinted from the official memorandum of the Russian Government of March 9, 1773, published in London in 1774.

31 See the excellent comments of Lord, R. H., The Second Partition of Poland (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1915), p. 42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Ibid., pp. 185–87; see also Dembiński, B., Polska na przełomie (Lvov, 1913), pp. 427–37Google Scholar.

33 They were small but had a lasting significance. The fact that in 1807 the district of Białystok was ceded to Russia was stressed by Stalin at the Yalta Conference (see Stettinius, E. R., Roosevelt and the Russians [New York, 1950], p. 154 Google Scholar), and also by Churchill in his speech of February 27, 1945, in which he defended the Yalta agreement before the British Parliament, as proof that the Curzon line, which left that district to Poland, was a very moderate claim of Russia. And the fact that the district of Tarnopol was ceded to Russia in 1809 and remained under her rule until 1815 left the impression that, after all, at least some part of Eastern Galicia had belonged to Tsarist Russia.

34 See the most recent discussion of Pan-Slavism by Thomson, S. H., “A Century of a Phantom—Panslavism and the Western Slavs,” Journal of Central European Affairs, XI, No. 1 (January–April, 1951), 57–77 Google Scholar.

35 Kann, R. A., The Multinational Empire (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, passim.

36 Black, C. E., “Poznan and Europe in 1848,” Journal of Central European Affairs, VIII, No. 2 (July, 1948), 191–206 Google Scholar.

37 Some very instructive examples can be found in Black, C. E., The Establishment of Constitutional Government in Bulgaria (Princeton, 1943)Google Scholar.

38 Full text in Filasiewicz, St., La question polonaise pendant la guerre mondiale (Paris, 1920), pp. 151–53Google Scholar.

39 See the most recent discussion by Manning, C. A., Twentieth-Century Ukraine (New York, 1951), pp. 40–41 Google Scholar.

40 Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. 1919: The Paris Peace Conference, II, 424–25 (Paderewski's appeal of January 4, 1919) and 427–29 (Colonel W. R. Grove's report of January 9, 1919).

41 This is the title of a book by M. Sayers and A. E. Kahn, published in New York in 1946 and widely distributed in this country.

42 Dziewanowski, M. K., “Piłeudski's Federal Policy 1919–1921,” Journal of Central European Affairs, X, Nos. 2–3 (July, October, 1950)Google Scholar.

43 This is the approach of Schlesinger, R., Federalism in Central and Eastern Europe (New York, 1945)Google Scholar, Part IV, “Federalism in the USSR,” but even he has serious reservations to make.

44 See the remarks of Black, C. E., “Diplomatic History: the Soviet Approach,” American Slavic and East European Review, VII, No. 3 Google Scholar, particularly 276 and 286, in a review-article about the Istorija diplomatii, ed. by Potemkin, V. E. (Moscow, 1941–1945)Google Scholar.

45 Most recently by Seton-Watson, Hugh, The East European Revolution (New York, 1951), p. 375 Google Scholar.