Agrarian Empire: Ottoman Comparisons

Attempting to fit the history of tsarist empire into a comparative imperial frame­work is a difficult but rewarding task. Given the number and variety of empires which have existed in history, the attempt to break them down into discrete groups is inevitable.

Russia fits most easily into the admittedly very broad group of agrarian empires. All agrarian empires faced the difficulty of controlling vast territories in the face of pre-modern communications. Richard Pipes shows how gigantic size, sparse popu­lation, and hostile climate made this challenge even more severe in the Russian case than in those of most agrarian empires over the millennia. Unlike mercantile empires or empires that derive most of their revenues from tribute or plunder, an agrarian empire needs to wring the surplus that sustains its institutions and high culture from peasant farmers. This was the case in Russia, where right down to 1917 the great ma­jority of the empire's population were peasants. Shmuel Eisenstadt argues that a key to the power and endurance of an agrarian empire was the survival of large numbers of independent peasant farmers outside aristocratic control and under the direct ad­ministration of the state. As already noted, this fits the Russian case: when emanci­pation from serfdom finally came in 1861, more than half of the peasant population were actually not private serfs but dependents of the state or the Romanov family.^[2270]

In an agrarian empire the ruling elite is largely made up of landowners, military and civil officers, and clergy.

The category of “agrarian empires” is necessarily very broad. In certain respects, Russia seems likely to fit more snugly into the subgroup of agrarian empires which existed in its own era, in other words, from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Among these empires the most useful comparison, not surprisingly, is with the Ottomans. The two Eurasian empires to a great extent faced the same chal­lenge of growing European power. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Romanov Empire met this challenge more successfully than the Ottomans. In their efforts to create a European-style professional army, both the Romanovs and the Ottomans faced the opposition of outdated military units that were useless in war but politically influential because they were deployed in the imperial capital and were linked to powerful and often deeply conservative religious and social interests.

To some extent, the story of Russia's rise and the Ottomans' decline needs to focus on the war of 1768-1774, which was of decisive importance. Nevertheless, longer- term structural factors were also vital. Perhaps the two most important factors in Russian success and Ottoman failure in the second half of the eighteenth century were, on the one hand, the Russians' willingness to welcome European ideas and personnel, and on the other, the tight integration of local elites into the tsarist state's military, fiscal, and administrative machine. The comparison is, however, static and therefore unfair. If one goes back to the sixteenth century, the Ottoman system reveals many of the same strengths which powered Russian success in the eight­eenth. Perhaps the subsequent Ottoman failure to adapt their model in good time was owed in part precisely to its earlier success. This supposition might even be supported by Russia's own subsequent experience. The eighteenth-century Russian system of mobilizing resources in the cause of imperial power was formidable and ruthless. This successful tradition of authoritarian mobilization undoubtedly in­hibited the introduction in the nineteenth century of reforms which might have drawn state and society together by allowing elected representatives of the social elites to participate in government and legislation. The resulting alienation of these elites from the regime was an important element in tsarism's demise.

So too were other legacies of earlier success. The Russian military-fiscal machine and the Russian variant of serfdom on which it rested outlasted any equivalent in Europe and were also notoriously arbitrary and ruthless.

In both the Russian and Ottoman cases, ruling families which started as the down-to-earth leaders of crude warrior bands on the edge of civilization became the monarchs of vast empires and the protectors of great religions and high cultures. Imperial pomp and power linked to religious legitimation raised the two dynasties far above their humble beginnings. Dynastic legitimacy was crucial to their empires' survival. Christian monogamy necessitated a very different system of succession to the one based on the Ottoman harem. Succession to the Russian throne in the eight­eenth century was by a dangerously unstable combination of selection by the pre­vious monarch and coup d'etat. The Romanov dynasty came close to dying out. The best that can be said about this system was that it produced Catherine the Great. After her death Russia reverted to male primogeniture, which ensured stability but risked incompetence on the throne.

This was all the more dangerous because the Russian tradition expected the mon­arch to exude power and to play a decisive role in government. Though individual ministers blessed by the tsar's sanction might at times dominate policy, Russia never had a true institutional equivalent of an Ottoman grand vezir or a German chan­cellor. Statesmen who attempted to play such a role were usually condemned by colleagues, public opinion, and the autocrat himself. As the business and machinery of state became ever more complex in the nineteenth century, the tsar-autocrat's task became increasingly unbearable. The late tsarist state was in many respects more complex and interventionist than most of its European contemporaries: this is true of the whole gamut of state activity, from economic development at one extreme to the necessarily murky operations of the security police at the other. Complex tasks required the establishment of specialist ministries whose coordination became ever more necessary and difficult. No individual, and certainly no individual chosen by hereditary chance, could hope to play the role of chief coordinator and source of policy for decades on end. But a monarch who believed this task to be his duty could stop any minister from doing the job. A grand vezir with a politician's training and temperament would have been a very useful addition to the efficiency of Russian government. Unlike the tsar-autocrat, he would also have been transitory and ex­pendable, thereby posing less of a threat to the regime's legitimacy.^[2272]