Session Abstract

In the late 18^th and the early 19^th centuries, a series of Russian victories in the wars against the Ottoman Empire made the Ottoman decline somewhat of a received idea in both Russia and Western Europe. The defeats of the Ottomans were frequently attributed to their stubborn attachment to the traditional institutions and practices of the bygone age of greatness. The Ottoman traditionalism was often contrasted to the westernizing reform of Peter the Great and his successors that brought Russia into the club of the European great powers as well as to the modernizing aspects of the Balkan nationalisms. However, the perceived inability of the Ottoman Empire to adopt modern Western political forms was disproved by the policies of the Tanzimat era (1839-1876). Alongside military modernization, these policies pursued the goal of blending different religious communities into a homogenous and secular body of Ottoman subjects, which would undermine both traditional Russian influence in the Balkans and the emergent nation-building projects in the region. In the meantime, Russia suffered a major reversal in Crimea after another war against the Ottoman Empire turned into a confrontation with a coalition of Western European powers. This further complicated the already ambiguous attitude towards both tradition and modernity that characterized the Russian educated public ever since the beginning of the debates on Russian national identity in the early 19^th century.

This session will demonstrate that, contrary to the widespread assumptions, the Russian observers of the Ottoman Empire did not always associate the Ottoman regime with regrettable traditionalism and did not always perceive the national liberation struggles of the Ottoman subject peoples as redeemably modern. The session will also reveal a deep uncertainty about the merits of tradition and modernity within the Russian society itself. The first paper examines the reaction of the two late 18^th century Russian Orthodox hierarchs to the recent victories over the Ottoman Empire and the ensuing secularization of the traditional religious ties that existed between Russia and Orthodox subjects of the sultans. The second paper explores the writings of Konstantin Leontiev, a Russian diplomat and publicist who reversed the dominant Pan-Slavic perspective on the Ottoman Turkey and offered a sustained defence of traditionalism, both Muslim and Christian, against the leveling influence of imperial and national modernity. The final paper addresses Russian reactions to the efforts of the Tanzimat era reformers to curtain traditional privileges of the Greek Orthodox Church in order to transform the Balkan Christians into the loyal subjects of the Ottoman state.  It demonstrates that whereas the official Russian diplomacy championed the cause of the Orthodox religious community in the Ottoman Empire, the Pan-Slavic public opinion militated in support of political emancipation of particular Balkan peoples.