THE HISTORY OF SOCHI: ALEXEI ERMOLOV, THE DECEMBRISTS, AND GENOCIDE

At the beginning of the 20^th Century John Baddeley, a British adventurer, wrote the first comprehensive narrative about Russia’s conquest of the Caucasus in English, and in it he spent a great deal of time discussing the tenure of Alexei Ermolov as Caucasus Commander-in-Chief from 1816 to 1827. In his description of Ermolov, Baddeley seems torn between relying upon the traditional Russian portrait of “the Proconsul of the Caucasus” (as Grand Prince Konstantin Pavlovich dubbed him) and his own sense of human decency. For example, after repeating the Russian claim that, owing to his military prowess, uncompromising determination, and harsh yet fair dealings with the Caucasus peoples, Ermolov was remembered long after all the other Caucasus commanders had faded into obscurity, both by the Russians and the natives, Baddeley presents another interpretation:

If . . . his name and fame still linger in the memory of the mountaineers of Daghestan and Tchetchnia when those of most of his contemporaries and successors have already been forgotten, it must be admitted that this survival is due not merely to his commanding personality or actual accomplishment, but in part, at least, to the calculated cruelty of his methods — methods, unhappily, too generally characteristic of Russian warfare, morally indefensible, but possessed of undoubted advantages in dealing with Oriental peoples . . . campaigns conducted on the good old plan with fire and sword—the devastation of crops, the sacking of villages, the massacre of men and the ravaging of women—gave a lesson they thoroughly understood and fully appreciated.[i]

Just a few paragraphs later, Baddeley conveys Ermolov’s theory of civil administration:

Yermoloff was wont to insist that the word of a Russian official should be sacred, so that the natives might be led to believe it more firmly than the Koran itself; and to the extent of his power he enforced good faith on either side.[ii]

Setting aside the question of how someone could “enforce” good faith, how anyone could expect a people to believe the word of, or have good faith in a man who led his troops on a rampage of pillage, rape and slaughter against them is a puzzle Baddeley never solves. However, it does give us a glimpse into the incoherence of the Russian narrative concerning Ermolov.

Russian historian Mark Bliev attempts to explain Ermolov’s behavior, apparently aware that someone who took a close look at his actions in the Caucasus would judge them to be genocidal:

One shouldn’t think that A. P. Ermolov nurtured the idea of genocide. This had neither practical nor ideological reasons for the commander-in-chief. The conversation here should concern the cruel “rules” for the conduct of war, with the help of which A. P. Ermolov thought he could not only accomplish his goals but also bring peace to peoples who were being torn apart by internecine fighting.[iii]

Like Baddeley, Bliev ignores the contradiction, which seems rather obvious, in the idea that peace can be brought to people by subjecting them to cruelty on a massive scale. Of course, Bliev also fails to understand that genocide need not have a practical foundation: as just one example, Stalin’s deportation of the Chechens and others during World War II diverted urgently needed troops and resources from the front while serving no military purpose. As for Ermolov’s ideological reasons for committing genocide, they will be discussed shortly.

Such was Ermolov’s apparent mentality that not only did he consider his brutality justified because of his “higher” motivations, but the people whom he slaughtered, robbed and raped should have understood he was doing it for their own good and been thankful. “Ermolov and his close associates,” Yakov Gordin writes,

truly believed themselves to be paladins of ‘peace, prosperity and enlightenment,’ which they were bringing to a kingdom of barbarity and cruelty [ . . . ] Ermolov could be cruel, but he was cruel in the name of enlightenment and prosperity, he shot and hanged people–sometimes by their feet—in the name of progress for this edge of the empire, for its people.[iv]

Baddeley, who was only a traveler writing his impressions and not a professional historian, ultimately finds the truth beneath this implausible theory:

The Russian General Erckert says of Yermoloff, “he was at least as cruel as the natives themselves.” He himself said: “I desire that the terror of my name should guard our frontiers more potently than chains or fortresses, that my word should be for the natives a law more inevitable than death.

Condescension in the eyes of Asiatics is a sign of weakness, and out of pure humanity I am inexorably severe. One execution saves hundreds of Russians from destruction, and thousands of Mussulmans from treason.”

“In these words,” says Potto, “we have his whole system . . . in his hands the former system of bribery and subsidies gave place to one of severe punishments, of harsh, even cruel, measures, but always combined with justice and magnanimity.” Politically, it is difficult to see where justice came in, but in this respect Russia was only doing what England and all other civilised States have done, and still do, wherever they come in contact with savage or semi-savage races. By force or by fraud a portion of the country is taken, and, sooner or later, on one excuse or another, the rest is bound to follow.^[v]

Somewhat resigned to the reality of the situation, Baddeley sees Russia’s invasion and conquest of the Caucasus as no worse than Britain’s conquest of India (although again he seems to miss the irony of calling the invading nations “civilized” and their victims “semi-savage races.”) Referring to Biblical passages used by the British, Americans, and other colonial powers to justify their conquest and slaughter of “pagan” peoples, Baddeley concludes his remarks with a welcome condemnation of this mentality:

It comes then to this, that if once we allow Russia’s claim to exact submission and obedience from the tribes; if, further, we admit the right of man to play the part of Providence in punishing the innocent with the guilty, and both alike with the utmost severity, then Yermoloff’s justification is complete. Yet a tolerance so wide would vindicate not his misdeeds alone but the crimes of a Tamerlane, and, failing a reversion to Old Testament ideas of man’s duty to man, Christianity must ever reprobate the one and the other.[vi]

A man of the 20^th Century whose study of Russia and the Caucasus was published the same year as the Hague Regulations, Baddeley ultimately sees through the rationalizations of imperialists such as Ermolov and condemns them.

Alexei Petrovich Ermolov is remembered in popular culture unambiguously as one of Russia’s greatest heroes, “the idealization of the Russian man,”[vii] whom Potto lauds as “the first to embark upon the proper path of relations with the Caucasus peoples—a military path, a path of open warfare, the conclusion of which Russia could have no doubt.”[viii] After serving in the Persian campaign of 1796 at the age of 20, he was unjustly imprisoned and exiled by Emperor Paul, only to return and become one of the great heroes of the Napoleonic Wars. Assigned to the Caucasus in 1816, he established the “Ermolov system,” based upon his famous metaphor of the Caucasus as a fortress that must be taken bit by bit, which was the foundation for the ultimate conquest of the region. He was cruel in warfare, but only to replace despots with enlightened Russian rule for the benefit of the repressed majority. His simple ways created tremendous loyalty among his officers and soldiers, whom he addressed as “comrades.” For his connections with the Decembrist uprising of 1825, he was again unjustly punished, removed from his command in 1827, but was remembered long after he retired as the “conqueror of the Caucasus.”

While it is true that Ermolov served in the Persian campaign and was (most likely) unjustly imprisoned, the rest of the popular narrative is a product of spontaneous and deliberate myth-making that bears little resemblance to reality. His “exile” was spent in the town of Kostroma, 200 miles from Moscow, where he devoted most of his time to studying Latin and reading the works of Tacitus, Titus Livius and especially Julius Caesar.[ix] He did indeed serve in the Napoleonic Wars, as did many other generals, but his service was no more spectacular than his compatriots and not worthy of special distinction.[x] Even the often-repeated detail of his calling his officers and soldiers tovarishch (comrade), used as evidence of his democratic ideals, overlooks the fact that in the 19^th Century tovarishch meant “helper” when used in a military context and was a normal form of address for a superior officer toward his subordinates.[xi]

While these examples are common enough in the creation of cultural heroes and are fairly innocuous, the portrait of Ermolov in his role as commander-in-chief of the Caucasus is significant not only for the image it created, but also for the facts it conceals. According to Potto, when recommending Ermolov for appointment, Defense Minister Alexei Arakcheev cautioned that “Ermolov’s appointment would be very unpleasant for many people because he quarrels with everyone.” [xii] Perhaps this was one of the reasons Ermolov coveted the appointment of Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasus: he would be virtual tsar over a kingdom far away from the Russian capital, where no one could contradict him. Once there, he carried out his “plans” without consultation, debate or examination. However, while Arakcheev’s assessment of Ermolov’s relations with others was certainly accurate, the rest of the above quote is debatable, particularly the comment about his unselfishness. While it may be true that he was “incorruptibly honest, simple, even rude in his habits, and of Spartan hardihood,”[xiii] Yakov Gordin notes Ermolov’s “boundless love of glory and superlative opinion of himself” and certain belief “in his right to a great destiny.”[xiv] This should come as no surprise, given his passion for Julius Caesar and other Roman military historians. Ermolov fancied himself in the mold of Caesar (and, of course, Napoleon), and was playing the role of the great conqueror, loved by his troops and feared by the enemy.

The European theater was stable, though, and of little use to a great conqueror destined for glory. This is why Ermolov sought the appointment in the Caucasus. “For the generals,” Vladimir Lapin writes, “the activity of diplomats, who were creating post-Napoleonic Europe, essentially meant farewell to their hopes of receiving further rewards.”[xv] Asia’s military backwardness would make victory and glory easy. Even before he arrived in the Caucasus, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief wrote, “We can’t take a step in Europe without a fight, but in Asia entire kingdoms are at our service.”[xvi] Ermolov reveled in his overwhelming firepower against which his opponents, particularly the mountaineers of Chechnya, Dagestan and Circassia, were powerless to combat: “It is very interesting to see the first effect of this innocent means [cannons! W. R.] on the heart of man, and I learnt how useful it was to be possessed of the one when unable all at once to conquer the other.”[xvii] In his quest for personal glory, Ermolov chose adversaries (victims might be a more appropriate term) who stood no chance against his superior weaponry, and employed levels of brutality and inhumanity as yet unseen in the Caucasus to achieve his goal; and while the popular legend portrays him as an unqualified success, a close examination renders an entirely different picture.

It was Ermolov who established the ideology through which successive Russian commanders justified their increasingly ruthless actions against the Circassians. While a full study of Ermolov’s ideology is beyond the scope of this book, a brief look at his relation to political theorists of his day shows that he did indeed have a genocidal mindset, despite Bliev’s claim to the contrary. In addition to clarifying the connection between Ermolov and the later perpetrators of the Genocide of 1864, such an examination also reveals one of the earliest stages of the formulation of the genocidal mindset that found its fulfillment in the bloody 20^th Century. At the same time, the methods Ermolov employed both in the Northeastern Caucasus and Circassia—forced starvation, leaving whole communities homeless to perish from exposure and the use of terror to force communities to flee their homeland—would not only be the primary methods Nikolai Evdokimov employed in the Genocide of 1864 but also the standard practices of the Turks, Stalin, and many other perpetrators of genocide.

In his approach to the Caucasus peoples, Ermolov was either inspired by or thought similarly to Pavel Pestel, leader of the southern branch of the Union of Salvation, who became famous in Russian history as the Decembrist. One of the myths about Ermolov was that he was dismissed from his position in the Caucasus for his role in the Decembrist uprising. While, as will be discussed shortly, he was dismissed for other reasons, Ermolov’s name was in fact found on a list of potential supporters of the Decembrists, meaning that the conspirators must have found him amenable to their ideas, which are delineated in Pestel’s treatise Russian Justice, written in the early 1820s. In this text, Pestel rejects the notion of federalism in favor of a unified Russian state and forced russification of the peoples living within its borders. Patrick O’Meara forwards the possibility that Pestel derived his ideas from Enlightenment thinker Destutt de Tracy, “who urged that a state’s strength ultimately depends on its integral character.” Any autonomy within one or more of the parts of a state whatsoever “renders the state vulnerable no matter how strongly united such parts may be.” Therefore, O’Meara concludes:

Pestel’s overarching concern was that the new government should make one Russian people out of all those which inhabited the territory of the republic throughout which ‘the Russian language alone should hold sway.’ The very names of all other tribes and peoples should be obliterated and united under ‘the one common Russian designation.’ [emphasis mine; W. R.][xviii]

Pestel also proposed complete subjugation of the Caucasus and deportation of those who continued to resist:

Considering that all previous experiences have unquestionably demonstrated the impossibility of turning these peoples to peace through friendly and gentle measures the Provisional Administration is authorized to:  (1) Conquer definitively all these peoples in the lands north of the border that is to be established between Russia, Persia, and Turkey.

[ . . . ] After pacification, the peoples are to be given the same organization as Russia. The peoples who cannot be pacified are to be resettled in the interior of Russia, and Russians are to be settled in the Caucasus to russify this area.[xix]

It is interesting that even at this early date Russian intellectuals, students of the Enlightenment, had already conceived of the notion of mass deportation of peoples from the Caucasus. The destruction of the Circassian nation in the 1860s, as well as Stalin’s deportations of the Cossacks in the early 1920s and a dozen small nations toward the end of World War II, was already a central element of the program of the first Russian “republican” movement. Also noteworthy is Pestel’s mention of “friendly and gentle measures,” repeating the fictional justification that would be used all the way until 1864. As the overwhelming majority of measures used by the Russians up to this point were massacres, destruction of homes and food, and forced starvation, it’s difficult to understand to what Pestel is referring.

More importantly for the subject at hand, Pestel’s proposal, which would be labeled no less than ethnocide today, finds its reflection in Ermolov’s ideas about the Caucasus. As Potto explains:

With the appearance of Ermolov in the Caucasus . . . the passive and ineffective politics of palliative methods of giving gifts to our enemies was replaced by active politics which didn’t have as its goal a temporary and fragile peace, but rather total victory, complete subjugation of the hostile lands. [ . . . ] He looked upon all the peaceful and hostile tribes of the Caucasus mountains, if not as already under Russian rule, then sooner or later destined to be, and in any case he demanded unconditional obedience from them.[xx]

Baddeley summarizes Ermolov’s ideology in similar terms:

Yermoloff’s central idea was that the whole of the Caucasus must, and should, become an integral part of the Russian Empire; that the existence of independent or semi-independent States or communities of any description, whether Christian, Mussulman, or Pagan, in the mountains or on the plains, was incompatible with the dignity and honor of his master, the safety and welfare of his subjects. On this idea was based the whole of his policy, every one of his administrative measures, every movement of the troops under his command, and to the end thus clearly set up in his own mind he from the beginning devoted himself heart and soul.[xxi]

Ermolov’s goal was to conquer and assimilate the peoples of the Caucasus, using every weapon at his disposal. His initial target was the South Caucasus, which was intended to serve as a base for further expansion into Iran and ultimately India. The North Caucasus, which offered little material benefit, had to be conquered because it was a barrier between Russia and its newly acquired territories south of the Caucasus mountains. Again, Potto’s explanation is typical of Russian historians:

Russia could no longer turn away from its influence upon the tribes living in the Caucasus mountains. It had already permanently established its rule in the South Caucasus, a role that was nearly forced upon it by historical circumstances, by the terrible fate of the Christian peoples of this area. But between native Russia and this far-off borderland lay a single path of communication across an isthmus between two seas occupied by the Caucasus range, populated by unconquered tribes who blocked the path through the Caucasus mountains with every means at their disposal. Obviously, if Russia’s rule of the South Caucasus was to be permanent, it was necessary to compel the peoples occupying the Caucasus lands not to interfere with communications through those lands. And if the system of peace and gifts didn’t achieve this goal, then one path remained for Russia, the path of war, regardless of how many victims it would demand [ . . . ]. [Emphasis mine; W. R.][xxii]

The North Caucasus was of no use to Russia per se, but only stood as an impediment to their free travel to the Christian lands of Georgia and Armenia. As such, the land was valuable but the people themselves were of no consequence; hence, Potto concludes with an apparent justification for genocide. Of course, the fate of “Christian” Georgia in Russian hands was nothing to envy: under Tsitsianov the members of the Georgian royal family were either exiled or hunted down and killed (the queen was beaten), and Georgia was converted into a Russian province. By 1804, mass revolts against Russian rule had already begun, demonstrating what the Georgian people thought of their “liberation” at Russian hands.[xxiii] If this was the Russians’ method of dealing with a Christian nation they were purportedly protecting (the real reason was Georgia’s mineral wealth and strategic location),[xxiv] what did that mean for the Muslims of Chechnya, Dagestan, and Circassia?

Ermolov’s ideology, and in fact the ideology of the majority of Russian historians concerning the Caucasus, can be further revealed by looking at the way in which they portray Ermolov’s predecessor, Nikolai Rtishchev. During his tenure as commander-in-chief (1811-1816) Rtishchev endorsed a Kabardian delegation that travelled to St. Petersburg to negotiate, facilitated the concessions that the Russian government authorized and brought some stability to Kabardia. He allowed the Kabardians across the quarantine line to trade in Cossack towns and reinstated their rights (suspended by Tormasov) to exploit the salt fields in the Caucasus.[xxv] He worked closely with Kabardian Pshi Kuchuk Janhote to establish peaceful relations between the Kabardians and the Ossetians, who had been forced by the Russians to migrate to Kabardia (a fate that the Ossetians would suffer repeatedly throughout the 19^th Century).[xxvi] During Rtishchev’s rule hostilities slowly decreased, although by no means stopped altogether, and the Commander-in-Chief was not averse to employing so-called “punitive raids” along with his more humanitarian efforts.[xxvii]

Despite his contributions to peace between Russia and Kabardia Rtishchev, recipient of the Orders of St. Anne, St. George and Alexander Nevsky, is described by Potto as “undistinguished in decisiveness of character, remarkable service, or military gifts.”[xxviii] In his memoirs, Ermolov (incorrectly) blames Rtishchev’s policies, particularly his approval of the Kabardian delegation, for encouraging “raids, murders, and banditry” by the Kabardians.[xxix] In considering this apparently unjust assessment, Baddeley conjectures that, in the same way that Tsar Alexander I’s “abhorrence of unnecessary bloodshed” caused him to be “impugned as weak and visionary,”

[Rtishchev’s] unwillingness to resort to harsh measures, his attempt to win over the natives by justice and kindness, found no favor with the men of [General Alexander] Souvoroff’s school. Yermoloff treated them with scorn and condemned them in no measured terms, with the result that his predecessor has ever since been stigmatized as both weak and incapable.[xxx]

Baddeley is correct to a point, but the difference between Rtishchev and Ermolov is more fundamental. Rtishchev still saw the Kabardians as people, and as people he was willing to negotiate with them and strive for a modus vivendi. Ermolov, like Pestel, saw the peoples of the North Caucasus as impediments to the Russification of the region. He applied what Richard Rubenstein would call the concept of a “superfluous people” to the Circassians as in a more extreme fashion than the previous generation: they were unneeded and in the way of progress and so had to be eliminated.[xxxi] While his predecessor Tsitsianov found it desirable to drive the natives off the most valuable land, Ermolov saw no value in the very existence of the natives and did all he could to decrease their numbers.

Before his assault on Kabardia, Ermolov spent several years trying unsuccessfully to destroy the Chechens and Dagestani peoples, employing methods that would be used against the Kabardians with devastating results. In his comprehensive study of Russia’s conquest of the northeastern Caucasus, Moshe Gammer notes that “Ermolov was well within the existing consensus” in his use of violence as the main tool in controlling the Caucasus, and that “[i]f he exceeded it, he did so only in the severity of his measures, in the amount of force he used, and in his brutality and cruelty.”^[xxxii] This is of course correct; in fact, Bulgakov was at least as brutal than Ermolov. In the context of this study, however, two points could be added. First, Ermolov’s prestige legitimized the barbaric tactics that led to Bulgakov’s dismissal. The lack of any meaningful response by the Emperor to Ermolov’s acts assured subsequent commanders and their troops that no acts of cruelty or barbarity would lead to negative consequences. Not that Alexander, and even Nicholas I, didn’t try to restrain Ermolov when his brutality exceeded all boundaries of humanity.^[xxxiii] However, these reproaches never led to the sort of investigation that ended General Bulgakov’s career. Rather, Ermolov’s officers received honors for their massacres.

Second, while in all his strategies—forced migration, colonization, exploitation of conflicts within individual nations, false promises, massacres of civilians—Ermolov followed patterns established by his predecessors, he did so in a more comprehensive, aggressive, and calculated fashion. For example, Cossacks had been taking Circassian and Chechen lands to build their stanitsy for over a century, but the natives were simply driven further into the mountains, not destroyed. Ermolov used colonization as part of an overall scheme to gradually eliminate the indigenous population. The first victims were the Chechens: in late 1817 Ermolov enacted a plan to occupy the Sunja River valley and build a new fortress in order to drive the “hostile” Chechens into the mountains, supposedly in order to starve them into submission, while allowing the “peaceful” Chechens to remain in their homes.[xxxiv] Having accomplished this first stage of forced migration, in May 1818 he requested permission to drive out the “peaceful” Chechens, who he claimed:

call themselves peaceful [ . . . ] hiding behind the mask of favorable disposition toward us, [but] they are the most dangerous to us, for being our closest neighbors they know the state of our affairs and, when the time is right, invite the hostile [Chechens] to raid us, then hide them with all their ability, assist them, and sometimes participate in the raids.[xxxv]

Ermolov’s true plan was to drive all the Chechens into the mountains, where their numbers would be reduced by the harsh conditions there. If his subsequent actions in Kabardia are any indication, he would have most likely committed genocide against the survivors had he been given sufficient troop strength.[xxxvi] In order to portray the peaceful Chechens as “dangerous” Ermolov used Tsitsianov’s strategy of offering them conditions they couldn’t accept, i.e. complete and unconditional submission as Russian subjects. The difference is that, once rejected, Tsitsianov conquered the people in question and subjugated them to Russian rule while Ermolov, seeing the Chechens as expendable, simply drove them into the mountains “to join the rest of the bandits from whom they differ in name only, and in this case the all the land will be at our disposal.”[xxxvii] Ermolov’s words are echoed in General Rostislav Fadeev’s comment concerning the Genocide of 1864 that “the state needed the Circassians’ land, but had absolutely no need of them.”[xxxviii]

---

Posted by Walt Richmond at 1:42 PM