Fedor Dostoevskii, excerpt from "Constantinople Must Be Ours!"
Like many Russian writers of the nineteenth century, the great novelist Fedor Dostoevskii (1821-1881) was also a political thinker and commentator. As a young radical, he associated with the so-called Decembrists and dabbled in Western ideas and values. Despite arrest for sedition and a death sentence that was commuted to hard labor in Siberia, Dostoevskii underwent something of a conversion-in-exile to the pro-Russian values espoused by the so-called "Slavophiles." By the 1870s he had become an ardent spokesperson for pan-Slavicism and a polemicist for Russian expansion into Turkey. His 1876-77 articles on these themes are said to have influenced Tsar Aleksandr II. They also helped induce young Russians to volunteer in droves for semi-covert, anti-Turkish activities in concert with the Serbians. The text below is excerpted from Dostoevskii's Dnevnik Pisatelia (Diary of a Writer), reprinted in his Sobrenie Sochinenii, vol. 11 (St. Petersburg, 1895), 73-85
1. What metaphysical reasons does Dostoevskii think will sooner or later deliver Constantinople to Russia?
2. What concrete reasons does he offer for immediate Russian involvement in the region?
3. Why does he suggest that ordinary Russians would be outraged by further ethno-religious strife in the Balkans?
4. Are there any similarities between Dostoevskii's views and recent Russian arguments for intervention on behalf of Orthodox Serbs in the former Yugoslavia?
"Once Again on the Subject that Constantinople, Sooner or Later, Must be Ours"
March 1877.
Yes, the Golden Horn and Constantinople... all this will be ours.... To begin with, this will come to pass of its own accord, precisely because the time has come. And even if the time has not yet arrived, indeed it is already at hand; all signs point to this. This is the natural solution, the word of nature herself, so to speak. If it has not occurred before now, it has been precisely because the time was not yet ripe.... No matter what happens there -- whether peace or new concessions on Russia's part -- sooner or later, Constantinople will be ours....
Yes, it must be ours. Not only because it is a famous port because of the Bosporos Straits ("the center of the universe," "the navel of the earth"). Not only from the standpoint of the long-understood need for the tremendous giant that is Russia to emerge (at last) from his locked room -- in which he has already grown up to the ceiling -- into the open spaces, where he may breathe the free air of the seas and the oceans....
Clearly, [Slavic-Greek disputes] can be avoided only by timely firmness by Russia on the Eastern Question, and by her steadfast pursuit of the great traditions of our ancient, centuries-old Russian policy. We must yield nothing in this matter -- for no consideration whatsoever --regardless of what kind of Europe may result. For us this is a matter of life and death. Sooner or later, Constantinople must be ours, if only to avoid the serious and unpleasant church schisms so likely to arise among the young and inexperienced peoples of the East, and which have been demonstrated by the recent dispute between the Bulgarians and the ecumenical Patriarch (which ended so badly). (1)
Once we take possession of Constantinople, nothing like this can occur again. The peoples of the West, jealously following every step Russia has taken, at this moment still do not know (and do not suspect) all these new, as yet visionary, but all too possible future arrangements. If they should learn of them now, they would not understand them and would not attach any special significance to them. However, they will only grasp them fully and attribute significance to them when it is already too late. The Russian people understand the Eastern question as the liberation of all Orthodox Christendom, as the great future of a united church. Should they observe, on the contrary, new dissensions and new discord, they will be quite outraged. It is possible that any new solution of the matter would profoundly affect them and their whole mode of existence, especially if in the final analysis it should assume a predominantly ecclesiastical character. For this reason alone, under no circumstances can we relinquish or weaken the extent of our centuries-old participation in this great question. Not just the splendid port connects Russia so closely with the solution of this fateful question. Not just the route to the seas and the oceans, and not even the unification and rebirth of the Slavs.... Our task is much deeper, immeasurably deeper. Indeed, Russia is also indispensable and inevitable to all Eastern Christendom, both to the future destiny of Orthodoxy on earth and to its unity. Our people and their rulers have always understood this to be so....
In brief, this dreadful Eastern Question constitutes almost our whole future destiny. Therein lie, as it were, all our problems, and what is most important -- our only exit into the completeness of history. Therein lie also our final conflict with Europe and our ultimate union with her, but only upon new, mighty and fruitful foundations. Oh, how can Europe at this time grasp the fateful, vital importance to us (alone) of the solution to this matter? In a word, no matter what may be the outcome of the present, perhaps quite indispensable diplomatic agreements and negotiations in Europe, nevertheless, sooner or later, Constantinople must be ours, even if it should take another century!
This all of us Russians must always and steadfastly bear in mind. This is what I wanted to announce, especially at the present European moment....
Note:
(1) The Bulgarian Church went its own way in 1870, renouncing the ecclesiastical authority of Constantinople and forming the so-called Bulgarian Exarchate (essentially a national Church). A series of sharp ethno-religious clashes between Greeks and Bulgarians then began in areas of Macedonia. The Greek side sought to retain control of the Slav-speaking populations there, the Bulgarian to gain it.
Unattributed translation, revised (syntax clarifications, re-punctuation, note, etc.) by Jon Bone.