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43Хартли Д. Волга: история самой великой реки России УДК 930.85
THE VOLGA: A HISTORY OF RUSSIA'S GREATEST RIVER
J. Hartley
j.m.hartley@lse.ac.uk
London School of Economics and Political Science London, Great Britain
Abstract. J. Hartley's book is a study of the Volga River, probably the first fully reveal of its vital place in the history of Russia. The Volga River played a decisive role in the history of the peoples that are now the part of the Russian Federation, and united the lands through which it flows. In the published section, the history of Russia is studied through the Volga from the seventh century p.d. to the present day. The material is: historical research, the author's own impressions, works of art, literature, and material culture.
Keywords: Volga, Russian history, Russian Empire, Russian literature and art.
For citation: Hartley J. The Volga: a History of Russia's Greatest River. Journal of Russian Studies. 2021;2(1):57-72.
Why write a history of the river Volga? The main reason, of course, is that it is one of the great rivers of the world, along with the Nile, the Mississippi, the Yangtse and the Amazon. It is the longest river in Europe at 3,530 km, although not the longest in Russia of course, and the river basin the largest in Europe providing along with its major tributaries the water and drainage for the most populous part of European Russia. The sheer size and volume of the river has always im-
©Hartley J., 2021
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pressed travelers from Russia and abroad and is still a great draw for tourists from all over the world.
There were other reasons, however, why I wanted to write a history of this river for a non-specialist English speaking readership. It had to be a domestic history of Russia to balance the fact that much of Western more popular scholarship concerns the relationship of Russia with the West, and its rise to Great Power status in the eighteenth century and the threat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War period. I wanted to show how important the river was in the history of Russia, both for trade and also for the evolution of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union. It was also very important to show that the Russian Empire was a multi ethnic and multi religious state, in Europe as well as in Asia. When Ivan IV conquered Kazan and Astrakhan he acquired for the first time a large non ethnically Russian and non Christian population. The middle and lower Volga regions became a testing ground for the way in which the Russian state asserted its control over non Russian regions. Finally, the Volga became a cultural 'icon' for Russia: the image of the Volga evolved over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but has become a symbol of Russianness and Russian (and Soviet) identity.
I could not write a book on the Volga without seeing it properly. I had seen the river at Uglich and Iaroslavl earlier on a cruise from Moscow to St Petersburg. My first act before writing this book was to tale a cruise, in late 2017, from Astrakhan to Nizhnii Novgorod, which called at Volgograd, Saratov, Samara, Kazan and Cheboksary. That was important for me to appreciate the sheer size of the river, the difficulties of communication across it and the ethnic diversity of towns like Astrakhan and Kazan. I then had three splendid trips to Kazan, during which I worked in the archives, visited many parts of the town and took trips from Kazan to Bolgar, Sviiazhsk and Ioshkar Ola. I should like to record my thanks to the Federal University of Kazan and my friends in Kazan
who made this both possible and enjoyable, I also visited Tver' in September 2018, from whence we visited the source of the Volga. My last visit was to Ulianovsk and Kazan in November 2019. It was important for me to see the Volga in different seasons, if only to explain to an English language readership that the river could be frozen for up to five months of the year.
I structured the book both chronologically and thematically. There are two introductory chapters covering the period before 1552, 10 chapters on the imperial period (divided into two sections: Violence and Control on the River; Life and Identity on the River) and 5 chapters on the Soviet and post Soviet period. But throughout I have tried to show not simply what happened on the Volga but also how people lived on the river, whether that was in the Khazar and Bolgar states or during modernisation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries or under collectivisation in the 1930s or during the Second World War, and whether it was in a village or a major town like Kazan.
There is considerable secondary literature on the Volga, in Russian and English, which I have used including the valuable seven volume History of the Tatars since Ancient Times, published by the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan. I have used primary sources where I can. I have drawn heavily on traveller accounts, starting with Ibn Fadlan who met Vikings on the Volga on his mission to the Bolgar ruler in the tenth century, and then using the many British and other foreign accounts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries where the travellers were fascinated in particular with the extent and variety of goods traded on the Volga and the multi ethnic composition of towns like Astrakhan and Kazan and the fair at Nizhnii Novgorod. I have used literature in its broadest definition - from popular songs and legends about Cossack rebels on the Volga to formal odes presented to
Catherine II, nineteenth century novels, poetry and plays and contemporary literature (including the Tatar writer Guzel Yakhina). This book is not intended to be a scholarly study of archival material, but I have drawn on archival material from Samara, Iaroslavl' and, most of all, from Kazan. That archival material illustrates in particular the reality of life on the Volga in the imperial period including: the conflicts between converted Orthodox Tatars and Muslim Tatars; the economic activity of Old Believers; the participation of Tatar merchants in administration in Kazan; conflict over education in the late nineteenth century.
There are four main themes which run throughout the book, and I will illustrate each theme with particular reference to Kazan. They are:
For trade and commerce;
As a meeting place of different peoples, ethnicities, religions, and cultures;
In conflict and Empire/Soviet state building;
For the evolution of Russian and non Russian culture and identity.
The Volga in Trade and Commerce
The river Volga was always crucial for trade and commerce. The capital of the early states, Khazar and Bolgar and the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, were situated on the river for that very reason. Vikings sailed down from the north in search of silver coins and furs. Goods came mainly from the south and the east and included grain, furs, timber, salt, silver, tea and spices. In the eighteenth century a complex network of canals was constructed so that goods could come up the Volga is far as St Petersburg and then be exported overseas. In the nineteenth century the fair at Nizhnii Novgorod attracted traders from all over the world, from China to Manchester. The railways both undermined and enhanced Volga trade, but served to divide as well as unite
the people on both banks of the river until the construction of railway bridges. The last chapter of the book looks at the impact of the massive hydroelectric stations on the river in the Soviet period. The flow of the Volga can now be controlled, but I end the book by discussing the on going ecological problems which have ensued.
Foreign visitors to the Volga were fascinated by the multi ethnicity of the trading communities of Volga towns. Astrakhan was the most diverse, with separate quarters, and legal institutions, for Persians, Indians, and Armenians as well as Russians. But the composition of Kazan also fascinated visitors. Others see very mixed: Baron Haxthausen, the German scientist and agriculturalist, visited the bazaar in Kazan in the mid nineteenth century and found 'Russians, Tatars, Tcheremiss, Vo-tiaks, Mordvins etc. there was much noise and running about, and many stout, ugly women, and good looking men'1. Other towns in Kazan gu-bernii also had different quarters for different ethnic groups. In 1858 it was estimated that over 10,000 Tatars lived in the small town of Chistopol (granted status as a district town within Kazan province in 1781)2. The lifestyle of Tatar merchants, and the extent to which this not only differed from Russian merchants but could be characterise as 'Asiatic' also intrigued visitors. In the mid nineteenth century the traveller Edward Turnerelli found that in wealthy Tatar houses 'the sofas, chairs, and tables are placed around the room according to the European fashion' but that rich Tatar ladies in Kazan lived a life of luxury and idleness in what he regarded as an oriental manner:
A rich Tatar woman, hardly has she left her bed, when she begins her daily task of painting her face rouge and white; then she clothes herself in gaudy vestments of gold and silver texture, puts on
1 Haxthausen August von. The Russian Empire; its People, Institutions, and Resources, translated by Robert Fairie. London, 1854. Vol. 1. P. 329.
2 Istoriia Tatarskoi ASSR. Kazan, 1955. Vol. 1. P. 237.
her various ornaments, rings, necklace, bracelets et etc.; and this done, she throws herself on the soft Turkish sofa, on which she almost lies buried3.
Kazan was a great trading town and port but Russians and Tatars also came into contact in villages, and in this book I emphasise the contacts between Russian and non Russian peasants. In practice, Tatars and Russians lived in the same villages on the Volga, but usually only when the Tatars had converted to Christianity. The village of Alkeevo in Chistopol uezd was home to 151 Tatars and 60 Russians in the eighteenth century and the nearby village of Mamykovo was home to 182 Russians and 42 Tatars4, but these were almost certainly converted Tatars. Dr Tomachev travelled through Kazan province in the middle of the nineteenth century. He reported whether the village was populated by Russians, Tatars or converted Tatars, but noted villages where Muslim and converted Tatars lived together. In one Tatar village he recorded 7 Muslim families and 7 'Tatar Christians'5. But Tatars also peddled goods in the countryside and there is evidence that Russian peasants adopted some of the foodstuffs, agricultural implements and clothing of their neighbours. The Marquis de Custine remarked in Nizhnii Novgorod province in the 1840s that: Some of the peasants in this part of Russia wear white tunic shirts, ornamented with red borders: the costume is borrowed from the Tartars6.
3 Turnerelli Edward. Russia on the Borders of Asia, Kazan, Ancient Capital of the Tatar Khans, London, 1854. Vol. 2. Pp. 17, 30.
4 Alishev S. Kh., Istoricheskie sud'by narodov Srednego Povolzh'ia XVI - nachalo XIX v. Moscow, 1990. P. 110.
5 Tolmachev N. A. Putevye zametki N. A. Tolmacheva o zhizni i byte krest'ian Kazanskoi gubernii v seredine XIX v. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov. Kazan, 2019. Pp. 72.
6 Custine A. -L. -L. de. The Empire of the Czar. London, 2nd edn, 1844. Vol. 3. P. 187.
The Volga as the Meeting Place of Different Peoples
The river Volga attracted traders and settlers from all over Russia and beyond (and not just from the east - German settlers were encouraged to settle in the Saratov by Catherine II in the 1760s). The population of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan were primarily Tatar but also comprised Chuvash, Kirghiz and Kalmyks. The middle and lower Volga regions became the great meeting place where Russians and non Russians fought each other, traded, and often co existed. I wanted to stress for the English speaking readership that European Russia was and still is home to many non ethnic Russians. I have tried to focus on how people lived - in towns, villages and on the river but particularly on how different ethnic groups related to each other. When I discuss the Civil War, collectivisation and the purges I have made use of sources and memoirs by and about non ethnic Russians to show for example, the impact of requisitioning and collectivisation on Tatar, Mari and Chuvash villages and the impact of the purges on non ethnically Russian politicians and intellectuals.
Catherine II, as we know, saw Kazan was the border of her Empire between Europe and Asia. 'I am in Asia' she wrote to Voltaire. She further enthused that 'there are in this town twenty diverse sets of peoples who in no way resemble each other'. 7 She made a point of visiting the Tatar quarter in the town where a public holiday was held in her honour. In what seems to modern reader to be a rather grotesque event, representatives of different ethnic groups - Tatars, Chuvash, Mordvins, Udmurts, Mari - were presented to her and her entourage at the governor's house in national costume and danced for her8.
7 Sbornik Imperatoskogo Russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, St. Petersburg, 1872. Vol. 10. P. 204.
8 Ibneeva G. B., 'Puteshestvie Ekateriny II po Volge v 1767 gody: uznavanie imperii'//Ab imperio. 2, 2000. P. 100.
A key way in which the Russian government tried to assert control over its new territorial acquisition was in policies of forced conversion to Orthodoxy, in waves from the second half of the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. To me, this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the history of the Volga, because it reveals the almost obsessive occupation of the government authorities with the reconversion of even a few individuals to Islam in the nineteenth century. According to the legislation of 1756, Tatars were only allowed to retain or build mosques in villages which were exclusively populated by Muslim Tatars and where the Tatar inhabitants numbered between 200 and 300 males. It also demonstrates the ways in which different peoples interacted, with both violence and sometimes with a degree of sensitivity, and the human cost of resettlement and conflict. It is also the area where I have made use of the rich resources of the archives of the Republic of Ta-tarstan in Kazan.
To give just a couple of examples of displacement caused by the fear of reconversion: some 1,200 converted Tatars who had reverted to Islam were resettled from Chistopol district in 18439. In 1860, Muslim Tatars from the same district were resettled because of their allegedly 'fanatical beliefs'10. The human costs of these conflicts can be seen from particular cases. In Kazan province in 1873, the local teacher of a school for converted Tatars, reported on the pressure ('tyranny' as one of the victims put it) put on his pupils from Muslim Tatars in the same or neighbouring villages, including from parents and close relations. He presented a number of personal testimonies, including that of a fourteen year old boy who had been sworn at and beaten by his parents and by other relatives in order to try to persuade him to reconvert to Islam. Crowds of Muslim Tatars had put pressure on Christian Tatars attend-
9 Natsional'nyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstana (hereafter NART), fond 1, opis' 2, delo 399 , Chancellery of the Kazan' Governor, 1843.
10 NART, fond 1, opis' 2, delo 1632, Chancellery of the Kazan' Governor, 1860-61.
ing church, telling them that the law now allowed them to reconvert to Islam, blocking their path to church and being abusive and attacking them. Christian Tatars had water and stones thrown at them at the market. The result was that many of the teacher's pupils had indeed reconverted to Islam11. Compromises were, however, possible. In 1897 a religious procession of Orthodox Chuvash peasants in Simbirsk province went through a Muslim Tatar village whereupon the Tatars blocked the road, threw stones and disrupted the procession. The police had to intervene and accompany the procession, although it was reported that the peasants displayed some sensitivity and did not sing as they passed through the village and covered the cross12.
The Volga, Conflict and the Evolution of the State
The Volga was crucial in state building: the desire to control the river was a main cause the basis of the struggles between Khazaria and Kieven Rus, between Khazaria and Bolgar, between Muscovy and the Golden Horde and the Khanate of Kazan and accounted for Ivan IV's determination to conquer Kazan and Astrakhan. The Russian state had to assert control over the middle and lower Volga and did so through a combination of force - the construction of garrisons on the river which became towns, the presence of soldiers, the crushing of Cossack rebels by the end of the eighteenth century the establishment of Russian administrative organs and officials, and the settlement of Russian landowners and serfs, first through monasteries and then by the granting of estates as a reward for service to the state (to Tatar nobles as well as Russians). Russian control was also established through the export of Russian culture, be it through the standardisation of architecture, the
11 NART, fond 1, opis' 3, delo 3068, ll. 17-26ob, Chancellery of the Kazan' Governor.
12 Nikolaev Gennady. 'The World of a Multi-Confessional Village' / / The History of the Tatars since Ancient Times. Kazan, 2017. Vol. 6. P. 614.
opening of theatres, or school syllabuses in which the Russian language was dominant. In the twentieth century, the Volga was at the forefront of major conflicts, in the Civil War and, of course, at the battle of Stalingrad (and Rhzev).
Kazan was subjected to brutal suppression after the conquest of 1552. Russian power was asserted through military and bureaucratic presence, manifested in the construction of the kremlin which dominated the town, and the river. At the same time, the Russian empire always allowed, or encouraged, significant groups of non Russians to have their own institutions, partly in recognition of their separateness but mostly it has to be said because this was a cost efficient way of running lower level administration. In Kazan, Tatars had their own institution, the Tatar ratusha whose records have been preserved for the years 1782 to 1799. It acted as court for disputes over bills of exchange but also serious crimes such as theft and even murder. It also acted as forum where improper behaviour of family members could be judged, including several cases from wives where husbands were accused of drunken behaviour and of insulting, dishonouring or assaulting their wives, which could be used as ground for divorce or as a means to punish and control unruly children 13.
In the nineteenth century, however, it also became a centre of Russian culture and scholarship. By the end of the nineteenth century literacy rates had reached over 50 per cent in major towns like Kazan, but were lower in smaller towns 34 per cent, for example, in Chisto-pol14. Opera houses and theatres presented Russian, European, culture. The young Lev Tolstoy attended concerts, balls and plays in Kazan while he was a student there in the 1840s and particularly admired the actor Aleksandr Martynov who acted in Russian and foreign produc-
13 NART, fond 22, opis' 2, dela 12, 107, 181, 247, 284, 345, 385, 497, Kazan' Tatar ratusha, 1785, 1789.
14. Zorin A. N. Goroda i posady dorevoliutsionnogo Povolzh'ia, Kazan, 2001. P. 136.
tions. Above all, the young Tolstoy enjoyed evenings of so called 'living pictures', that is actors posing in scenes, which were held in the homes of the local nobility15. Edward Turnerelli noted that the theatre in Kazan attracted large audiences, in the mid nineteenth century although he was scathing about the actor taking the part of Hamlet (!) who, in his words, 'would have constituted an admirable ghost, but made a sorry one of the ghost's son'16. The establishment of the University of Kazan in 1804 was indicative of Kazan's special place in the Empire, not only as the dominant city on the middle and lower Volga but also as a bridge between East and West. Students were drawn from all regions of the Volga but also from the Urals and Siberia. The university taught Arabi from 1829 and Mongolian from 1833 and published books in Arabic and Tatar.
The Volga and Culture and Identity
The Volga has a special place in Russian culture and identity. I trace this evolution through in the book from the legends about the taming of the river at Sviiazhsk by Ivan IV, to the formal odes delivered to Catherine II after her visit to Kazan in 1767, where the river becomes 'obedient' to the will of the Empress, to the literature of the nineteenth century where the Volga takes on a special place as the protector of the Russian people. The source of the Volga was sacralised in the late nineteenth century, and has been re sacralised today. That romantic element of the river is extended in the twentieth century to encompass all the Soviet people, through popular films like Volga, Volga. The river is depicted as not only of crucial strategic importance in determining the outcome of the battle of Stalingrad but also as a cherished boundary which the Germans should not defile. The murals at the complex in Vol-
15 Bushkanets E. G. Iunost' L'va Tolstogo: Kazanskie gody. Pp. 79, 89.
16 Turnerelli Ed. Russia on the Borders of Asia, Kazan. Vol. 1. P. 230.
gograd only show Germans crossing the river as defeated prisoners of war. I also look at parallel developments in painting, and at the growth of, Russian, tourism on the Volga.
The river is therefore a key element in the formation of a Russian and then a Soviet identity. But the population of the river were not exclusively ethnic Russians. I make a particular point in the book of looking at the evolution of a Volga Tatar identity, centred in Kazan in the second half of the nineteenth century and epitomised today in the memorial complex at Bolgar and the and the construction of the Kul Sharif mosque inside the kremlin in Kazan. In the late nineteenth century the assertion of Tatar identity manifested itself in the conflict over the teaching of Russian in schools. The Russo Tatar school in Astrakhan, for example, in 1896 97 taught 11 hours of Russian per week alongside 3 hours of Tatar language in the lower and middle classes and 14 hours in the upper class, far more than any other subject17. Many of these discussions were conducted through Tatar newspapers in Kazan, itself an indication of the vigour of debate over religion and education amongst the Tatar educated elite by this time. This book is not a contemporary analysis of the relationship between Tatarstan, and the other republics within the Russian Federation, with the government in Moscow. But I trace the history of Tatarstan from the Civil War through the Soviet and post-Soviet period to the present day.
I was conscious when I wrote this book that the Volga is not only as a Russian river but also a Chuvash, Tatar and Kalmyk river. The extent, and richness, of Russian literature on the Volga in the nineteenth century make it difficult to get a sense of other perceptions. As a Tatar journalist wrote in 1990:
17 Samatova Ch. Kh., Imperskaia vlast' i Tatarskaia shkola vo vtoroi polovine XIX - nachale XX v. Kazan, 2013. P. 232.
One just need to attend history classes at school, when, at the description of the horror of the Tatar Mongol invasion, the whole class turns to look at you; watch films I which glorious Russians perish at the hands of savage Tatar; get used ... to the idea that the Volga is a great Russian river...18
And I, of course, do not know Tatar or Chuvash, and rely on sources in Russian or about Russia. But there are translations of Tatar poetry into English and I was very pleased to be able to include them in this book, to try to create some sense of balance. I will end with this poem by Iffat Tutash (the pen name of Zahida Burnasheva). She was born in the Russian town of Riazan in 1895, and educated at a Tatar girls' school, before working as a journalist and holding several government posts. Her poem 'The Volga' also contains several descriptive features which echo Russian language poems about the river:
To the Volga this heart of mine I compare
For is it not true some resemblance they keep?
Like the Volga my heart is sweeping and wide;
Like the river's strong current it runs so deep.
At sunset the Volga is bathed in pure light;
When illuminated by love, then my heart is the same.
Like the waves of the Volga, caressed by the sun.
The flower that grows in my heart is the same19.
18 Quoted in Sergei Kondrashov, Nationalism and the Drive for Sovereignty in Tatarstan, 1988 -92 / / Origins and Development, London and Basingstoke, 2000. P. 64.
19 Historical Anthology of Kazan Tatar Verse: Voices of Eternity, compiled and translated by David J. Matthews and Ravil Bukharev, Richmond, 2000. P. 156.
References
Haxthausen August von. The Russian Empire; its People, Institutions, and Resources, translated by Robert Fairie. London, 1854. Vol. 1.
Istoriia Tatarskoi ASSR. Kazan, 1955. Vol. 1.
Turnerelli Edward. Russia on the Borders of Asia, Kazan, Ancient Capital of the Tatar Khans. London, 1854. Vol. 1, 2.
Tolmachev N. A. Putevye zametki N. A. Tolmacheva o zhizni i byte krest'ian Ka-zanskoi gubernii v seredine XIX v. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov. Kazan, 2019.
Custine A. L. L. de. The Empire of the Czar. London, 2nd edn, 1844. Vol. 3.
Sbornik Imperatoskogo Russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva. St-Petersburg, 1872. Vol. 10.
Natsional'nyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstan. Chancellery of the Kazan' Governor, 1843. Fond 1, opis' 2, delo 399.
Natsional'nyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstan. Chancellery of the Kazan' Governor, 1860-61, fond 1, opis' 2, delo 1632.
Natsional'nyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstan. Chancellery of the Kazan' Governor, fond 1, opis' 3, delo 3068, ll. 17-26ob.
Natsional'nyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstan, Kazan' Tatar ratusha, 1785, 1789, fond 22, opis' 2, dela 12, 107, 181, 247, 284, 345, 385, 497.
Alishev S. Kh. Istoricheskie sud'by narodov Srednego Povolzh'ia XVI - nachalo XIX v. Moscow, 1990.
Ibneeva G. B. 'Puteshestvie Ekateriny II po Volge v 1767 gody: uznavanie impe-rii'//Ab imperio. 2, 2000.
Nikolaev Gennady. 'The World of a Multi Confessional Village' / / The History of the Tatars since Ancient Times. Kazan, 2017. Vol. 6.
Zorin A. N. Goroda i posady dorevoliutsionnogo Povolzh'ia. Kazan, 2001.
Bushkanets E. G. Iunost' L'va Tolstogo: Kazanskie gody. Kazan, 2008.
Samatova Ch. Kh. Imperskaia vlast' i Tatarskaia shkola vo vtoroi polovine XIX -nachale XX v. Kazan, 2013.
Kondrashov S. Nationalism and the Drive for Sovereignty in Tatarstan, 1988 -92 // Origins and Development. London and Basingstoke, 2000.
ВОЛГА: ИСТОРИЯ САМОЙ ВЕЛИКОМ РЕКИ РОССИИ
Д. Хартли
Лондонская школа экономики и политических наук г. Лондон, Великобритания
Аннотация. Книга Дж. Хартли - это исследование реки Волга, вероятно, первое, полностью раскрывающее ее жизненно важное место в истории России. Волга сыграла решающую роль в истории народов, ныне входящих в состав Российской Федерации, объединила земли, по которым она протекает. В публикуемом разделе-история России изучается через Волгу с седьмого века н.э. до наших дней. Материалом стали исторические исследования, собственные впечатления автора, произведения искусства, литературы, материальной культуры. Раскрывается значимость Волги в истории России.
Ключевые слова: Волга, история России, Российская империя, русская литература и искусство.
Для цитирования: Хартли Д. Волга: история самой великой реки России. Российские исследования. 2021;2(1):58-72. (In English)
Хартли Джанет - Лондонская школа Janet Hartley - London School of Eco-экономики и политических наук, г. nomics and Political Science, London,
Автор публикации
Author of the publication
Лондон, Великобритания. E-mail: j.m.hartley@lse.ac.uk
Great Britain.
E-mail: j.m.hartley@lse.ac.uk
Дата поступления 15.01.2021. Принято к публикации 03.03.2021.
