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35 The Rus­ sian Pro­ tec­ to­ rate in the Da­ nu­ bian Prin­ ci­ pal­ ities Leg­ a­ cies of the East­ ern Ques­ tion in Con­ tem­ po­ rary ­ Russian-Romanian Re­ la­ tions Vic­ tor Taki In 1890, the ­ soon-to-be ­ leader of the Ro­ ma­ nian Lib­ eral Party, Dim­ i­ trie Alex­ an­ dru ­ Sturdza, pub­ lished a book­ let ti­ tled Eu­ ropa, Rusia ¸si ­ România, in which he pre­ sented his coun­ try as the ­ avant-garde force of Eu­ ro­ pean civ­ il­ iza­ tion in the up­ com­ ing strug­ gle with the mass of ­ Slavic peo­ ples mo­ bi­ liz­ ing ­ against Eu­ rope under the Rus­ sian scep­ ter.1 Cit­ ing dif­ fer­ ent sta­ tis­ ti­ cal ­ sources, the bro­ chure cal­ cu­ lated the com­ par­ a­ tive ­ strength of the two op­ pos­ ing ­ forces and at­ tempted to an­ tic­ i­ pate the out­ comes of the fu­ ture con­ fron­ ta­ tion ­ between East and West. The maps chart­ ing the geog­ ra­ phy of this con­ fron­ ta­ tion con­ sti­ tute per­ haps the most inter­ est­ ing as­ pect of this small book. The King­ dom of Ro­ ma­ nia to­ gether with the pre­ dom­ i­ nantly eth­ ni­ cally Ro­ ma­ nian lands of the Rus­ sian and the ­ AustroHungarian Em­ pires con­ sti­ tuted an “ad­ vance bas­ tion” pro­ trud­ ing well into the mass of ­ Slavic peo­ ples and con­ nected to ­ Sturdza’s “for­ tress Eu­ rope” by the Hun­ gar­ ian and Aus­ trian isth­ mus. To the north, sep­ ar­ ated by the mass of west­ ern Slavs, lay a flank ram­ part in the shape of East­ ern 36 Victor Taki Prus­ sia, the Bal­ tic prov­ inces of the Rus­ sian Em­ pire, and Fin­ land. An­ other bul­ wark lo­ cated to the south con­ sisted, ­ rather un­ ex­ pect­ edly, of ­ Greece and Tur­ key, which ­ Sturdza did not hes­ i­ tate to place to­ gether de­ spite the dra­ matic con­ fron­ ta­ tions that the two had under­ gone in the nine­ teenth cen­ tury, and the even more trau­ matic ones that were still to come.­ Sturdza’s im­ a­ gined geog­ ra­ phy thus split the Eu­ ro­ pean con­ ti­ nent along a much more en­ tan­ gled line than the one Wins­ ton Church­ ill drew ­ between Stet­ tin and ­ Trieste half a cen­ tury later. Had ­ Sturdza the pos­ sibil­ ity to ­ travel 120 years into the fu­ ture, he would un­ doubt­ edly be happy to see his op­ ti­ mis­ tic ex­ pec­ ta­ tion of “Europe’s” vic­ tory in its con­ fron­ ta­ tion with Rus­ sia con­ firmed. The “fron­ tier of civ­ il­ iza­ tion” has been ­ pushed well east­ ward, while the west­ ern and south­ ern ­ Slavic peo­ ples who pre­ vi­ ously ­ nearly en­ cir­ cled the “Ro­ ma­ nian bas­ tion” have been ­ largely in­ cor­ po­ rated into “the for­ tress.” ­ Sturdza’s only pos­ sible cause for con­ cern would be the un­ stable state of the erst­ while south­ ern flank, where Tur­ key cur­ rently en­ gages in eco­ nomic coop­ er­ a­ tion with Rus­ sia. In the late nine­ teenth cen­ tury, the pros­ pect of a ­ Russian-Ottoman coop­ er­ a­ tion in­ deed ­ seemed un­ nat­ u­ ral and un­ re­ alis­ tic, but this was (and still is!) even more true of ­ Sturdza’s pro­ posed idea that Tur­ key and ­ Greece to­ gether could form a “ram­ part”­ against some ex­ ter­ nal as­ sai­ lant. The fact that ­ Sturdza was ca­ pable of iden­ tify­ ing such a force in­ di­ cates his ten­ dency to con­ ceive of the East­ ern Ques­ tion as sub­ or­ di­ nate to the issue of ­ Slavic unity and ul­ ti­ mately of­ Russia’s re­ la­ tion to Eu­ rope. ­ Sturdza ­ shared this ten­ dency with the Rus­ sian ­ Pan-Slavist writ­ ers Ros­ tis­ lav An­ dree­ vich Fa­ deev and Ni­ ko­ lai Ia­ kov­ leich Dan­ i­ levs­ kii, whose works he cited and whose vi­ sions in some re­ spects con­ sti­ tuted a mir­ ror image of his own ideas.2 The fact that the Rus­ sian writ­ ers and the Ro­ ma­ nian au...

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