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The Russian Protectorate in the Danubian Principalities: Legacies of the Eastern Question in Contemporary Russian-Romanian Relations - Victor Taki
- University of Wisconsin Press
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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...