Maurycy Mochnacki

On the south-eastern policy of the St. Petersburg government

By means of an external invasion, by virtue of an internal struggle, be it in Prussia or Austria, the Polish provinces do not only deliver the whole of Germany to the power of the Emperor of all Russia and extend his influence far to the west of Europe, but also, due to their geographical location, have become the core of his state. Let us imagine a Russia from the shores of the Arctic Sea to the Tauric Penninsula, without Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia, Ukraine and the eight Vistula provinces, i.e. a Russia that the Uprising of 29 November resolved to leave to the Tsar for the benefit of Europe and for his own salvation. Alongside such a Russia, let us imagine a Poland made up of the above-mentioned parts, well governed, well armed, independent and powerful, in close alliance with Austria and Prussia, or with just one of these states. In such a situation, which for a short time before the night of the twenty-ninth was not a chimera, would no break occur from St. Petersburg to Odessa and would not communication stop somewhere? Would what was held together by force, what autocracy devoured, but did not dissolve, stay together even for one moment within this monstrous enormity, in a union that is against nature? The fact that inhabitants of Tobolsk and Kamchatka, that Swedes, inhabitants of Courland, Muscovites, Kyrgyz people, Kabardians, Cossacks, Tatars, Circassians, Bashkirs, from the Irtysh River to Terek and Kuban are all currently subjugated to the same master, is the result of the disastrous mistakes due to which our own cause failed last year. Between Poland and other, even the remotest parts of Russia, there are relations worthy of consideration as regards the composition of the state, especially in administrative, commercial and military terms. The colossus has incorporated the acquisitions which have brought it into Europe, the venerable Jagiellonian legacy which binds its disparate parts into a certain, albeit irregular, whole, and allows the giant to move, be it from north to east or from centre to west, and to spread with a stronger drive and a more stable direction. Our country transmits the tsars' power from the north to the east and south of the country. Through Poland (precisely imagine the position of the taken Polish governorates) Moscow puts pressure on Turkey and effectively influences all the eastern and southern occupied territories. In this political body the mass of our land is like a heart in terms of blood circulation. It is the heartbeat, the pulse of the new north.

Today's Russian borders stretching so far into the south, with ports and settlements on the Black, Caspian and Azov Seas, do not yet constitute a perfectly developed system of Russian governance in these parts. Rather, it should be regarded as a contour outline, only roughly and almost haphazardly marked out. The final goal of these borders, which have already entangled the Sultan in a web of doom, is Constantinople. Let no one think that there is no logic in these conquests. Putant enim qui mari potitur, eum rerum potiri [For they think that he who controls the sea can control all things]. This truth is well understood by the St. Petersburg government. In order to consolidate its political influence in Europe, expanded by land conquests, in this second century of its growth Russia must become as much of a power on the sea as it is today on the land. To achieve this, it has to conquer Turkey. This is the path laid out for Moscow already by Peter I'si policy. But no step can be taken on this road without Poland. There are indeed things that great powers need. Great masses of land cannot do without great masses of water, just as people and animals cannot do without air. Either Moscow will disappear from the ranks of the greatest powers, or it will reach this goal. There is no middle path. Many writers have wondered: is it possible to deal with the Sultan the same way Russia once dealt with the Polish King Stanislaus Augustusii , and with Turkey the same way as with Poland and Georgia iii? In Britain and France they regard this as a fantasy. But the growing influence of Moscow in Greece, and the exclusive, unrestricted influence in Moldavia and Wallachia are the best indications of the consequences that will in time result from this systematic shaking of the Ottoman Porte and constantly striking at it like a fortress weakened by a long siege. In 1790, after the occupation of Crimea, the Kuban River separated Moscow from Turkey. The great importance of this river is due to the great strait which connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov and flows inland as far as Anapa, where the Caucasus ends almost on the very bank, so that the defensive line is concentrated here at a single point. Today Turkish cannons do not thunder over the Kuban. The crescent has been replaced by Moscow's eagles. Moreover, the mountain ranges connecting Georgia with this new acquisition have become its formidable fortress. In the case of danger Persia will not give any help to the threatened sultan; not even to make a diversion, after it had lost Dagestan and Shirvaniv, where important military positions strengthen and connect all Moscow’s acquisitions in these areas. Finally, Moscow, supported by a strong pillar at the estuary of the Kura River, has secured exclusive navigation on the Caspian Sea.

Moscow's troops crossed the Balkans. Diebitschv camped near Istanbul. Catherine'svi grandson achieved what had seemed impossible before. What, then, prevented him from taking Constantinople? “Our intervention”, the French and British ministers would reply. But what if one of the tsars regards the conquest of Turkey as a means of breaking out of the constraints of any future intervention? Only then will the consequences of partitioning Poland, the Porta's natural ally, be felt by Britain on the Mediterranean sea. The fact that the British do not believe in the likelihood of the Indian expedition, which is inextricably linked with all Moscow's intentions against Turkey, and that they do not believe in the likelihood of the emancipation of the East Indies, does not prevent Moscow from seriously considering this expedition, which Napoleon by no means considered delusional. St. Petersburg did not believe in the Polish revolution, neither did Don Miguelvii of Warsaw a few days before the twenty-ninth of November, and yet the same Diebitsch who spent the night near Istanbul lost his Trans-Balkan laurels in the fields of Grochów. It is natural to every great enterprise that from afar, but only from afar, it appears impossible. Great expeditions, huge military and political undertakings are as if in an inverse relationship with colossal works of architecture. The latter, hard to see from a great distance, gain in size as one approaches; the former diminish as one comes closer; that is, they are easier in actuality than as a distant undertaking. Probably it was more difficult for Napoleon to cross the sea guarded by the British fleet and conquer Egypt than it is today to conquer Turkey; and if Britain opposed this conquest, to force her to make peace in the East Indies.

The question is: if that glorious, great and chivalrous Commonwealth of the Crown, Lithuania and Ruthenia, that Poland of the Jagiellons and Báthoryviii, which a year ago we undertook to resurrect and for which so much Polish and Muscovite blood was shed along the Vistula and Narew rivers, were revived, would the Muscovite tsar, the successor of those tsars who served the Tatar khans, Batu-Khan’six governors, ever dare to plot such extensive plans and contemplate such far-reaching conquests? Now there are compelling reasons for the idea of the conquest of European Turkey, which the Muscovite government perfectly understands and which it has all the power and will to take into account. First of all: the gravity, the pressure of this immense power, according to the laws of nature, must follow the course of navigable rivers from north to south. The most beautiful provinces of Moscow, both European and Asian, are in the south. The produce from these settlements can be traded far more favorably (because of the natural state of communication) on the Mediterranean than on the Baltic Sea. Secondly, the reason this is not the case in Russia is the unnatural, eccentric location of the capital. St. Petersburg, founded by a decree, is a leech that sucks out the vital fluids of the entire state. At this point the harmful and dangerous centralization of all power, administration, court, wealth, causes the circulation of blood in the veins of the giant to take place in the direction that is opposite to the nature of things, from the more fertile and better endowed environments to deserts and steppes, from a temperate climate towards ice and snow. St. Petersburg, built by art all at once, populated by decree, keeps the whole of Russia in an artificial and, as it were, apoplectic state. Reasonable policy dictates that the government should stop this great exertion and constant internal compulsion. In order to develop the state in the right direction and in the future, which the policy of Tsarskoye Selo never ceases to focus on, to direct its spread more naturally, the government should move the capital city southwards. The charms of the eastern-southern skies for the refined court, the delightful climate, are the least important motives compared to the higher matters of state, which Moscow can no longer neglect with impunity. Thirdly: St. Petersburg, as is well known, was founded not only for reasons of trade, but also with a view to developing maritime power, which the trade of a great country can by no means do without. This is what prompted Peter I to place the capital at the extremities of Russia in a place so unhealthy and infertile, in a place closer to the springs than to the navigable points of those rivers which facilitate trading the country's produce. So far, however, his great ambitions have not been fulfilled. The Muscovites have no rival in the Baltic Sea, but this sea is surrounded by land and only navigable for half a year. Moscow's great ships, idle for six, seven or sometimes nine months, are now a burden to the country. They never sail on the ocean. On the Baltic there is no training of seamen and ship's service staff. In order to fulfill the political testament of Peter I, that is: “to secure land acquisitions by sea power”, a really extensive sea space is needed. It is not pride, not an idle whim, but overwhelming political considerations that urge every tyrant to effectuate on the Mediterranean what could not be done on the Baltic. Everything in these parts holds a powerful attraction to the tsars. There is a certain power in the location of Constantinople, as this city alone postponed the fall of the declining eastern empire. Here the central, most prosperous provinces of Moscow would immediately enter into direct connection with the rich markets, the trade with the entire west. From here it would be so easy to establish land trade routes with the whole east! It would be so easy to develop merchant establishments in Trebizond, Erzurum, in Mosul, Basra, Baghdad, in Khiva, Balkh, Bokhara, in Samarkand! The British conducted profitable trade on the Caspian Sea with the cities of Bokhara and Samarkand until the middle of the last century. But Moscow forced the British company to leave Astrakhan. If Istanbul were captured by Moscow, this entire trade would be completely taken over. Now a considerable number of Moscow merchants annually visit the bay of Kuljuk on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. From here, Russian caravans go to Khiva and Bokhara through the Turkoman country. The Russian consul Gamba recently regarded the dominance of British trade as a detriment to Europe. He maintains “that a considerable part of the Asiatic trade will regain its former route, which is shorter and more advantageous, because it will not depend on the exclusive British company!”

Finally, who will not understand that as the capital of the tsars the port of Constantinople would soon become the largest naval armory in the world? The forests of Asia Minor, whose oaks are better than those of England, the iron of the Caucasus, the hemp of Sinop and Trabzon, famous for its length and strength, would soon supply the shipbuilding workshops of the heirs of Peter I. A laborer on the Black Sea is cheaper than in the whole of Europe. Steam engines, naturally capable Greek and Muscovite seamen under the orders of expert officers from North America, who would secretly welcome a new naval power in old Europe: these are the main features of a picture of a perhaps near future, not to believe in which it is probably convenient, but after all that Moscow has accomplished in the last fifty years it is not very safe and not very wise.

If anyone who lived in Europe before Peter I, for example in the time of Ivan Vasilevichx, had had a vision of Moscow as it is today, he would probably have been called a visionary or a charlatan. And yet, it is no farther from that Moscow to today's Moscow than it is from today's Moscow to what it may be, what it must be in an even shorter time, or else crumble under its own weight. The great masses of land seem to have a poetic imagination. We see something fantastic in the growth of all political monsters. Is it not strangely inspiring, this feeling of extraordinary material power coming from the omnipotence of the tsars, which ceaselessly puts pressure on the outside, this particular constitution of the government, which, in order not to collapse, must constantly intoxicate the Muscovites with new conquests as with a narcotic drink, this political gluttony of Russia, which seeks to devour everything around it? We can call it the instinct of magnitude or the eternal law of savagery; it is certain, however, that the magnetic-electric imagination of northern absolutism is most effectively fuelled by the southern sky, the magical nature of the East, the ruins and monuments of old fame, the Mediterranean Sea. Cet empire, says Bonaldxi about Moscow, place sur les confins de l'Europe et de 'Asie, pèse à la fois sur toutes les deux, et depuis les Romains aucune puissance n'a montré une plus grande force d'expension. Il e nest ainsi dans tout état où le gouvernement est éclairé et le people barbare, et qui réunit l'extrême habilité du moteur à l'extrême docilité de l'instrument [“This empire, located on the borders of Europe and Asia, weighs on both at the same time, and since the Romans no power has shown a greater force of expansion. This is the case in any state where the government is enlightened and the people barbaric, and which combines the extreme skill of the engine with the extreme docility of the instrument”]. It is indeed a power made up of only two elements: physical force and what puts that force in motion. Governed to excess, Moscow is not a nation, but only a country; not a community, but only an instrument. Risky ventures are undertaken either because of great riches or because of their opposite, extreme poverty. If Moscow is in the latter category, nothing is difficult for the tsars of the north. They have hitherto behaved like pirates in the lands of Europe and Asia, but in order not to lose what they have acquired, one of them will sooner or later become a pirate on the sea.

The article O polityce wschodnio-południowej gabinetu petersburskiego (On the south-eastern policy of the St. Petersburg government) was published in Pamiętnik Emigracji Polskiej on July 8, 1832; reprinted from Maurycego Mochnackiego pisma rozmaite: oddział porewolucyjny, Poznań 1863, pp. 75-82.