Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905.1914

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914Author(s): Gregory VitarboSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Winter, 2007), pp. 682-701Published by: The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20060379Accessed: 04/06/2009 07:20

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Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer

Corps, 1905-1914

Gregory Vitarbo

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the visionary Russian war min

ister Dmitrii Miliutin concluded that the key to modernizing the army was

to create a patriotic, civically conscious soldiery in service to a unified,

equally patriotic nation. Although this ideology of a united army and so

ciety, "the nation in arms," was believed to underpin the military might of

such powers as Germany and France, it was a quite radical prescription for

Russia itself. Like other reformist bureaucrats, Miliutin saw his work as

part of a broader "nation-building" project within the tsarist empire; the

Universal Service Statute of 1874 was to establish the dual foundations of

this project. Over time, the legislation was intended to bridge the social,

political, and cultural divide between what were in effect the two nations

of Russia?a small westernized elite and a mass of peasants?as well as to

equalize obligations and opportunities between the dominant Russian na

tionality and the numerous non-Russian peoples of the empire.1 Nevertheless, the triptych of war, defeat, and revolution in the years

1904-1906 demonstrated that Miliutin s far-reaching reforms, themselves to an extent diluted by his more conservative successors, had yet to achieve

their desired results. The perceived revolutionary tendencies of reservists,

coupled with numerous mutinies involving regular units, provided a jarring

counterpoint to the myth of the loyal Russian peasant-soldier.2 Moreover, the violent unrest that had swept non-Russian areas of the empire called

into question Miliutin's vision of cultural and political assimilation via mil

itary service. As such, concerns regarding the relationship between na

tionality, patriotism, and civic duty became even more pressing in tsarist

military circles in the post-1905 period. Such concerns were directed not only toward the soldiery, but toward

the imperial officer community itself. In the decade following 1905, the

War Ministry embarked upon an ambitious attempt to formulate a com

prehensive nationality policy for the officer corps. The project sought to

establish service quotas for each nationality according to its percentage of

I would truly like to thank the many people who helped me prepare this article, including

William Rosenberg, Paul Werth, Ronald Grigor Suny, Mark von Hagen, Dominic Lieven,

Joshua Sanborn, Eric Lohr, and especially my gracious colleagues in the Department of

History and Political Science at Meredith College: Michael Novak, Daniel Fountain, and

William Price.

1. Concerning Miliutin's vision and the enormous difficulties involved in implement

ing it, see Robert F. Baumann, "Universal Service Reform and Russia's Imperial Dilemma,"

War and Society 4, no. 2 (September 1986): 31-49; Forrest A. Miller, Dmitrii Miliutin and the

Reform Era in Russia (Nashville, 1968); and P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Voennye reformy 1860-1870

godov v Rossii (Moscow, 1952).

2. See Alan K. Wildman, The End of the Imperial Russian Army: The Old Army and the Sol

dier s Revolt (Princeton, 1980), 3-40; and John Bushnell, Mutiny amid Repression (Bloom

ington, 1985).

Slavic Review 66, no. 4 (Winter 2007))

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914 683

the empire's overall population; its professed goal was the preservation of

the numerical, and thus spiritual and cultural, predominance of Ortho

dox, ethnic Russian officers. Yet the attempt to fashion an officer corps at once truly "imperial" and "Russian" via quotas exposed fluid and compet

ing ideals and traditions regarding paradigms of service, loyalty, and iden

tity among tsarist officers; in turn, such efforts raised broader questions about the relationship between army, nation, and empire. The project's brief history thus provides fresh perspectives on the intersections between

military reform, nationality policy, and imperial ideology under the tsarist

regime, offering new insights into the wider nexus of military moderniza tion and political, social, and cultural development in the last years of the

Russian empire. It further illustrates the suggestive linkages between the Russian experience and contemporary pan-European trends concerning military practices, nationality politics, and cultural ferment.

As Theodore Weeks observes, in the late imperial period tsarist offi cialdom "found itself forced to deal with an issue quite foreign to its con

servative and dynastic mentalit?: nationality."3 Recent studies have exam

ined the vagaries of tsarist nationality policy and the experience of non-Russian peoples within the empire,4 while related works have sought to explore, in both historical and theoretical terms, the meanings of state,

empire, and nation under the tsarist autocracy.5 Yet the issue of national

ity was a particularly complicated one for the army. As Mark von Hagen notes, sentiment regarding nationality "is one of the most elusive aspects of late imperial military culture to document; evidence is scant and con

tradictory and invariably filtered through the experiences of World War I, the Revolution, and the Civil War."6

3. Theodore Weeks, "Defending Our Own: Government and the Russian Minority in

the Kingdom of Poland, 1905-14," Russian Review 54, no. 4 (October 1995): 550. 4. John Slocum, "Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy?'The Evolution of the Category

of 'Aliens' in Imperial Russia," Russian Review 57, no. 2 (April 1998): 173-90; Theodore

Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western

Frontier, 1863-1914 (DeKalb, 1996); Andreas Rappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic

History, trans. Alfred Clayton (Harlow, 2001); Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen, eds., Af

ter Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires (Boulder, Colo., 1997); D. Brower and E. Lazzerini, eds., Russia's Ori ent: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917 (Bloomington, 1997).

5. See, for example, Mark von Hagen, "The Russian Empire," in Barkey and von Ha

gen, eds., After Empire, 58-72, and especially the ambitious work of Ronald Grigor Suny: Suny, "The Russian Empire," in Barkey and von

Hagen, eds., After Empire, 142-54; Suny, "Ambiguous Categories: States, Empires, and Nations," Post-Soviet Affairs 11, no. 2

(April-June 1995): 185-96; and Suny, "The Empire Strikes Out: Imperial Russia, 'Na tional' Identity, and Theories of Empire," in Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin, eds.,

A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (New York, 2001 ). See also Peter Gatrell, "Ethnicity and Empire in Russia's Borderland History," Historical

Journal 38, no. 3 (1995): 715-27; and Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (New Haven, 2001).

6. Mark von Hagen, "The Limits of Reform: The Multiethnic Imperial Army Con

fronts Nationalism, 1874-1914," in David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and Bruce W.

Menning, eds., Reforming the Tsars Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution (New York, 2004), 34.

684 Slavic Review

In particular, despite Miliutin's vision, ongoing attempts to reconcile

the demands of the nation in arms paradigm with the existing social and

political structure of the empire proved difficult. Throughout the late im

perial period non-Russian ethnic and national groups continued to oc

cupy an anomalous place due to "certain facts of life in the Empire. Many

inorodtsy were far from ready for assimilation and Russia lacked the means

to bring about rapid change in their social situation."7 Various groups re

mained exempt from conscription altogether, others were subject to cer

tain restrictions or enjoyed special status, while efforts to either create spe cial "native" units, raised via voluntary recruitment, or to integrate them

into the regular army remained haphazard and limited.8 As such, the sta

tus, role, and future of various non-Russian, non-Orthodox nationalities

remained a pressing question in an empire that had only expanded since

the promulgation of the Universal Service Statute.9

Regarding issues of nationality among officers, a different set of dy namics prevailed. The multiethnic, multireligious officer corps had long

occupied a crucial place, structurally and ideologically, within the edifice

of the regime. Officers cultivated enduring traditions regarding their

prominent status, the unique bond between tsar and military servitor, and

the role of the army in establishing and maintaining the empire as a great

European power. Notable among these traditions was the role of the offi cer corps in serving as a mechanism of assimilation and imperial integra tion for non-Russian nationalities and elites.10 At the same time, it is a tru

ism that Russian officers received little indoctrination in monarchist,

nationalist, or any other unifying ideology. Peter Kenez concludes that

"officers possessed no sense of belonging to a common institution," while

"concern for their loyalty was purely negative and preventive."11 William

Fuller has argued that what he terms the "negative corporatism" of the

tsarist officer corps provided only a "fictive unity."12 Whatever positive for

7. Robert F. Baumann, "Subject Nationalities in the Military Service of Imperial Rus

sia: The Case of the Bashkirs," Slavic Review 46, nos. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 1987): 502.

8. See again Baumann, "Universal Service Reform and Russia's Imperial Dilemma"

and "Subject Nationalities in the Military Service of Imperial Russia." See also Baumann,

"Universal Service Reform: Conception to Implementation, 1873-1883," in Schim

melpenninck van der Oye and Menning, eds., Reforming the Tsars Army, 11-33.

9. See P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Samoderzhavie i russkaia armiia na rubezhe XIX-XX stoletii,

1881-1903 (Moscow, 1973) ; Joshua Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscrip

tion, TotalWar, and Mass Politics, 1905 -1925 (DeKalb, 2003); von Hagen, "The Limits of Re

form," 34-55; and J. E. O. Screen, "The Finnish Army, 1881-1901: A National Force in a

Russian Context," Slavonic and East European Review 70, no. 3 (July 1992): 453-76.

10. Von Hagen, "The Limits of Reform," 37. See also J. E. O. Screen, "The Entry of

Finnish Officers into Russian Military Service, 1809-1917" (PhD diss., University of Lon

don, 1976) ; John Armstrong, "Mobilized Diaspora in Tsarist Russia: The Case of the Baltic

Germans," in Jeremy R. Azrael, ed., Soviet Nationality Policy and Practices (New York, 1978),

63-104; and Hans-Peter Stein, "Der Offizier des russischen Heeres im Zeitabschnitt zwis

chen Reform und Revolution (1861-1905)," Forschungen zur osteurop?ischen Geschichte 13

(1967): 351-63. 11. Peter Kenez, "A Profile of the Prerevolutionary Officer Corps," California Slavic

Studies 7 (1973): 131,156. 12. William C. Fuller Jr., Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881-1914 (Prince

ton, 1985), 26-29. John Bushneil describes in even harsher terms a purely negative and

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914 685

mulations of service existed were largely framed around particular regi ments or other subgroups within the army, while an officer's loyalty was

professed to the tsar himself, not to the "nation," empire, or state.

As noted, the events of 1904-1906 graphically exposed the fragility of imperial unity and identity, with rebellion among the soldiery and vio

lent unrest among minority nationalities. Defeat and revolution also had a

profound effect upon the officer community's sense of self, fractured

though it was. Looking inward, the army itself had been rent by perceived

disloyalty among fellow officers, with reservists and Poles singled out for

particular blame. Looking outward, many officers saw a regime that had

seemingly abandoned them on the field, while the civilian public first ques tioned and then violently repudiated their service. The proper interpreta tion and response to all of these events became a regular topic of debate

within the military press.13 Historians have traditionally argued that only a

small group of elite officers engaged larger questions regarding the nature

of the army and its relationship to the society and polity of imperial Russia.

But broader segments of the officer community now began to do so.

In his wide-ranging analysis of the army's responses to such challenges of "nation-building," Joshua Sanborn focuses upon the conceptual para

digms with which officers confronted the multifaceted "dilemma of di

versity" the empire presented them. He argues that prevailing attitudes

toward non-Russian minorities, situated within evolutionary paradigms of

historical development and a fundamental belief in the assimilating and

"civilizing" powers of Russian culture, were increasingly becoming in

flected with racialist, Social Darwinist, and Marxist conceptual categories then popular in western Europe. As such, categories of nationality and

class were gradually challenging the importance of those of estate and re

ligion, while increasing tensions between "ethnic" and "civic" nationalists

within the army.14 Analyzing post-1905 conscription policies, Sanborn ar

gues that, as a result, the army leadership, as it had since 1874, "preached (and believed in) the long-term goal of the multiethnic nation while prac

ticing short-term imperial policies of ethnic discrimination."15

When applied to the officer community itself, however, the paradigms Sanborn describes raise unique questions. Reformers recognized the po

tentially subversive implications of the "nation at arms" model within an

imperial setting, while the dictates of both civic and ethnic nationalism

clashed with the dynastic ethos that had traditionally governed the officer

corps. In his excellent survey of the nationality question and the military,

often violent caste mentality directed at a public deemed innately hostile toward the mili

tary and its values. Bushnell, "The Tsarist Officer Corps, 1881-1914: Customs, Duties, In

efficiency," American Historical Review 86, no. 4 (October 1981): 753-80.

13. For just a few examples of the various and multifaceted critiques of the army, the

officer corps, and society at large, see M. Krit, "Podgotovka ofitserov," Voennyi sbornik, no. 8 (1914): 35-54; A. Dmitrevskii, "Ideal ofitsera," Voennyi sbornik, no. 7 (1912): 1-10; and L. Evdokimov, "Patriotizm v

poniatii narodov," Voennyi sbornik, no. 4 (1914): 127-42.

The progressive military journal Razvedchik contributed such articles as B. Zboromirskii, "'Natsional'naia armiia,'" Razvedchik, no. 1075 (7June 1911): 356.

14. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation, 63-75.

15. Ibid., 71.

686 Slavic Review

von Hagen notes the resulting cognitive dissonance. Officer memoirists

asserted that with the exception of Jewish soldiers and Polish officers, dis

crimination was nonexistent and "the national question as such did not

really exist" within the army; at the same time, regulations severely re

stricted the service conditions of Polish officers, while rising pan-Slavist and Russian nationalist attitudes increasingly alienated heretofore loyal groups such as the Baltic Germans.16

Finally, the October Manifesto, with its guarantees of civil rights, per sonal freedoms, and legal equality had dramatically transformed the

broader context of the relationship between state and society, autocracy and citizen. Military servitors were thus compelled to reexamine the place of the army within this new political order and to redefine the relation

ship between officer, regime, and the civilian public.

The project to formulate a comprehensive nationality policy for tsarist

officers was a direct response to such pressures, yet it was essentially that? a response. One can cite Sanborn to argue that the efforts of the army in

this regard were relatively proactive and visionary. Nevertheless, military institutions are in general inherently conservative organizations, and the

power of tradition, custom, and inertia exercised a potent influence. The

resulting bureaucratic history of the nationalities project itself speaks to

the complexity and difficulty of the issues involved.17 Initiated in 1905

within the jurisdiction of the Main Staff, the project ultimately dragged on

for eight years through various administrative departments of the army. The actual task of drafting the requisite new regulations was given to spe cial commissions, first under the chairmanship of General Frolov and

then under General Dukmasov and their various subcommittees. Yet

memoranda and reports were consistently and extensively rewritten, re

flecting difficulties and tensions regarding both fundamental principles and the mechanics of implementation. Moreover, particularly in the early

phases, a larger sense of urgency and haste prevailed due to justifiable fears of the attitude that the newly established Duma might adopt toward

such a project. Lastly, once the Dukmasov Commission had finished its

work, the results were deemed so unsatisfactory that the entire project was

subjected to comprehensive review and revision. These very difficulties,

however, attested to the political, social, and cultural imperatives that

complicated efforts to define the relationship between military service, national identity, and political loyalty.

A Main Staff memorandum of October 1905 summarized the primary issues and goals at stake regarding the initiation of the nationalities pro

ject.18 It emphasized the need to protect the status of the officer corps as

an imperial and Russian institution, while reconciling the corps with the

new legal and political realities, such as the manifesto on equality of citi

zenship and the ukaz on freedom of confession issued in December 1904.

16. Von Hagen, "The Limits of Reform," 44-45.

17. The materials and correspondence regarding this project are found in the Rossi

iskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA), f. 400, op. 15, dd. 2501, 2805.

18. Memorandum dated October 1905, no. 148. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2501,11. 6-8;

see also RGVIA, f. 2000s, op. 2, d. 324,11. 92-110.

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914 687

Specifically, the memorandum referred to existing restrictions on the ser

vice of various groups of non-Orthodox officers. In place since 1888, these

regulations limited the overall representation of such officers within

the army, as well as severely restricting service opportunities for them

both in their home regions and in technically sensitive branches such as

the engineering corps.19 Recognizing that such restrictions no longer answered the "general spirit" of the times, the memorandum asked rhe

torically whether and to what degree a new set of restrictions should be es

tablished within the army "for military servitors belonging to one or an

other nationality."20

Correctly anticipating criticism that such efforts would certainly violate the very "general spirit" they had just recognized, the authors of

the memorandum took as their underlying rationale and defense a fun

damental principle: the unique nature of the military community. As the

memorandum asserted, the army had historically comprised "a corpora tion, substantially differing from others, both in the tasks assigned to it

and in the bases of organization conferred upon it." Thus, regarding the

question of the overall composition of the officer corps and specific rights of service for its members, the Main Staff proposed "an entirely special

provision: advantage in all respects for persons of the native [korennogo]

population of the empire," and certain restrictions for those belonging to

other nationalities.21 Specifically, the memorandum proposed percentage ratios as the basis for such restrictions.

The larger assumptions and goals that were to govern the nationalities

project were thus made clear from the beginning. The army's unique sta

tus justified exceptional measures to maintain its integrity and mission, even if such measures seemingly violated prevailing norms of social equity and political justice. Indeed, throughout the documentary record of the

project, a recurring theme was the explicit recognition that specific poli cies, even imperial ukazy, should apply differently, or not apply, to the mil

itary; in turn, military policies were in no way to be construed as relevant to other institutions. Moreover, the assertion that the army must remain

essentially Russian?russkaia?was, as the memorandum implied, at least one interpretation of the "nation at arms" paradigm. If "Russia" consti

tuted the dominant nation within the empire, so too should its people and

"spirit" dominate the army, especially the officer corps. Regarding the non-Russian nationalities, the proportional linkage of population per

centages and quotas within the officer corps was also presented as "fair":

less service than warranted by their numbers would be shirking, more

would be potentially dangerous. Tellingly, the term rossiiskii rarely ap

peared in the documentary record of the project. Such assumptions and assertions betrayed anxiety as well as confi

dence, however. As John Slocum notes, the results of the imperial census

of 1897, published from 1898 to 1905, called into question the very "dom inance" of the Russian nationality; only by including Ukrainians and Be

19. Acopy of the restrictions of 1888 is preserved in RGVIA, f. 2000, d. 2501,11. 38-44.

20. Ibid., 1. 6.

21. Ibid., 11. 7-8.

688 Slavic Review

lorussians could "Russians" be considered a majority of the population.22 The formal recognition of such a large percentage of non-Russians within

the empire would thus provide an undercurrent of urgency to the na

tionalities project. Yet, the subsequent work of the Frolov and Dukmasov

commissions would also bear witness to Weeks' assertion that "Russian of

ficialdom, without fail, insisted that the majority of the state's population (some two-thirds of the total) was 'Russian'" and behaved accordingly.23

The goal of the nationalities project would be to institutionalize and pre serve this essential "Russianness"; no one asked what would happen with

the next census.

If the army leadership saw its working assumptions and larger goals as justified, the commissions themselves were nevertheless faced with

serious obstacles in translating restrictions based upon the fairly clear

principle of religious confession into regulations founded upon the more abstract principle of nationality. Again, invaluable context is pro vided by Slocum; he makes several salient points regarding the evolution

of the meaning and use of the term inorodtsy in both formal administra

tive application as well as public parlance. First, the term evolved fitfully over time, flexibly serving the varying needs and exigencies of the state

and its officials. Moreover, he emphasizes that a term initially framed

with a view toward religious difference took on a more overtly linguistic and ethnic cast in the later years of the empire. Finally, he notes the

"slippage" of the application and content of terms designating those

non-Russian and/or non-Orthodox, both in public discourse and even

in administrative practice, as the years went on; there was increasing confusion over who exactly were inorodtsy, why they had been desig nated thus, and what that should connote in terms of political and social

participation in the empire.24 The evolution of the nationalities project bore witness to such broader

trends. In a memorandum prepared for War Minister Aleksandr Rediger in May 1906, the Main Staff declared the initial draft project created by

General Frolov's commission unsatisfactory. 25 The suggested restrictions

upon non-Russian nationalities were deemed excessively expansive and

harsh, the language of the various proposals was judged overly general and imprecise, and several key issues remained unresolved. In a larger and revealing point, the memorandum questioned directly whether such

a broad issue as the military service of various nationalities, concerning as

it did the entire populace of the empire, could be resolved by military leg islation alone. If so, however, the memorandum judged the Frolov draft a

starting point only; a thorough and detailed reworking of the nationalities

project was necessary, based in part upon the relevant experience and

policies of other European powers such as Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain.26 Lastly, the memorandum suggested that over

22. Slocum, "Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy?" 186. The actual percentage of

Great Russians was 44 percent; Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation, 11.

23. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia, 195.

24. Slocum, "Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy?" 173-76.

25. Memorandum dated 12 May 1906, no. 83. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2501,11. 49-50.

26. Russian military agents abroad were to collect the requisite information.

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914 689

sight of this work be given to a new commission charged with producing, not general proposals, but actual draft legislation.

The Dukmasov Commission thus undertook direction of the project late in 1906. Throughout its subsequent work, commission members con

tinually referenced the professed yet elusive goal of reconciling the na

tionalities project with the new realities of the post-October Manifesto or

der; failure to do so had been identified as the primary fault of the Frolov

draft. As the journals of their deliberations attest, however, they were be

set by the same difficulties.27 As a necessary first step to any comprehensive reforms, the commission first undertook a detailed review of the existing

religious regulations of 1888. It quickly discovered, however, that these

regulations were not a product of any coherent design or guiding princi

ples. Instead, like so much of tsarist legislation, they were largely the result

of administrative routine and bureaucratic inertia. In fact, the commission was forced to admit that the restrictions had originally not been drafted on

the basis of religion at all (with the exception of Muslims), but against the

threat of political separatism. Specifically, they had originally been applied to Polish Catholic officers, those persistent thorns in the imperial side, and

had only gradually been extended to other minority religions.28 General

Dukmasov went so far as to note that "only as a result of an editing error in

several headings" in the text of these regulations could they even be con

sidered restrictive measures according to religion. Nevertheless, commis

sion members voted overwhelmingly in favor of the necessity of retaining restrictions upon "nationalities and non-believers added to the empire by the labors and blood of the native Russian population."

29

In its quest to preserve what it termed the "national character" of the

army, however, not the least of the commission's difficulties was how to

define precisely what constituted nationality. A lack of specific criteria in

this regard was recognized as another major fault of the Frolov draft, yet even in the commission's own deliberations and reports the terms nat

sionaV nost'', narodnost', and plemia were variously used to denote nation

ality. A special "subcommittee on the national [plemennom] composition of the army and indications of nationality" was thus duly appointed to

study the matter in depth. As its formal report made clear, the subcom mittee's efforts met with mixed success, yet they provide a striking illus

tration of Slocum's charting of the elusive and changing criteria used to

distinguish Russian and non-Russian.30 The subcommittee first sought to

investigate the composition of the army by nationality, using data from the census of 1897, as well as actual rates of military service among various

groups, as a guide. In addition to collecting statistical information re

garding those nationalities subject to general conscription, it also pro vided a breakdown of the empire's population by native language and

27. The journals covered numerous meetings of the commission during the period December 1906-January 1907. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,11. 140-52.

28. For more on the vexing Polish question, see Robert Edelman, Gentry Politics on the

Eve of the Russian Revolution: The Nationalist Party, 1907-1917 (New Brunswick, 1980), and

Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia.

29. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,11. 140-41.

30. Ibid., 11. 64-68.

690 Slavic Review

identified those provinces with small Russian populations.31 This infor

mation was to aid the subcommittee in its more difficult task: to establish

criteria by which a subject's nationality could be determined.

The subcommittee's final numbers were clear and precise?an ideal

army of 82 percent Russians, 7 percent Poles, 3 percent each Lithuanians

and Turko-Tatars, 2 percent Germans, 1 percent each Armenians and

Finns?but its report emphasized that due to prevailing strategic, geo

graphic, economic, and logistical realities, such exact percentages would

be impossible to enforce at every level and unit of the army. Maintaining such percentages within the officer corps itself would be "incomparably easier," but even then the report recommended observing a general rule

of no fewer than 75 percent Russians per unit instead of "pedantic preci sion" in this regard.

The actual process of defining and distinguishing these various na

tionalities was even less precise. The subcommittee identified language,

religion, and native region as primary markers of nationality, although each indicator was recognized as problematic in and of itself. Even in the

case of the Russians, whose "spirit" was to imbue the officer community as

a whole, nationality was recognized to be both more and less than ethnic

ity. For example, the subcommittee suggested that Moldovans and "other

Slavs" be counted as Russians; certain Finnic peoples, Turko-Tatars of the

Volga region, and other groups who were "significantly Russified" should

also be considered Russian.32 The criteria for regarding an individual or his

family as "Russified" or otherwise assimilated were themselves imprecise? cited as proof was a century or more of dwelling in the central provinces,

long use of Russian in the home, schooling in Russian institutions, and so

on? but there was simply a recognition that certain groups were obviously "Russian," while others were just as obviously not. In effect, the subcom

mittee invoked an interpretation akin to the U.S. Supreme Court's defini

tion of pornography, concluding that they would simply know a Russian

when they saw one. Yet, as evidence of enduring attitudes, the subcommit

tee assumed that conversion to Orthodoxy meant Russification.

If efforts to define the dominant nationality were so problematic, other nationalities were often no less difficult to categorize, particularly in

light of the sheer diversity?in terms of geography, culture, religion, and

level of "civilization"?presented by the various imperial minorities. In

the end the subcommittee's report recommended language spoken at

home and long-term place of residence {rodina) as the primary markers

of national identity, yet suggested that other relevant factors and evi

dence, such as religion, be considered as well. In exceptional circum

stances, family name or, occasionally, external features (in the case of

Mongols, Jews, or Armenians) could also be used. The report recognized

31. The statistical findings were

subsequently codified as separate bulletins for refer

ence. Ibid., 11. 112-19.

32. Recent work has demonstrated that these officers may well have been unduly op timistic in their appraisals of their "assimilated" brethren. See again, for example, Brower

and Lazzerini, eds., Russia's Orient, and Paul W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission,

Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia's Volga-Kama Region, 1827-1905 (Ithaca,

2002).

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914 691

that in practice the determination of an officer's nationality would pro ceed on a case by case basis, using documentation and personal evidence

provided by the officer in question. In cases of doubt the subcommittee

recommended that the issue be resolved by a committee, rather than by a

sole commander.33 When presented with these recommendations, the

larger commission was not entirely satisfied but, like the subcommittee, saw no way to improve greatly upon them.34

Even assuming that nationality could be determined successfully, the

commission found that more prosaic matters of implementation, includ

ing issues of staffing and oversight, raised a myriad of problems. For ex

ample, a recurring question was whether to codify the restrictions and nu

merical percentages into formal legislation or simply to enforce them

through informal control of appointments and promotions. The com

mission ultimately ruled in favor of codifying whatever policies were even

tually adopted, arguing that surreptitiously manipulating personnel poli cies would be both unfair and offensive to the dignity of serving officers

and would give rise to a host of difficulties in the future.35 Other such

questions were raised. What to do about the status of the allegedly perni cious Jews, an issue that indeed motivated and occupied much of the com

mission's deliberations? Was it sufficient to maintain quotas for the officer

corps as a whole, or should separate units also directly reflect the correct

nationality percentages? It was quickly recognized that such a staffing

policy would represent, in terms of administration and logistics, a bu

reaucratic nightmare. Even successful implementation would present un

welcome difficulties. For example, the earlier Main Staff memorandum

criticizing the Frolov draft had noted that with the shift from restrictions

based upon religion to those based upon nationality, a 20 percent com

plement of Catholic officers would be reduced to just 6 percent Poles, pos

sibly resulting in a marked shortage of officers.36

Finally, particularly sensitive was the question of whether additional

restrictions should be imposed for the highest command positions. In its

deliberations, the commission ultimately decided against formal restric

tions, although it explicitly reaffirmed a guiding principle of the 1888 reg ulations: "to maintain the true spirit of patriotism in the army, it would be

necessary for the higher ruling personnel not only to know the language, customs, ways, and way of life of the numerically dominant nationality

[plemeni], but for them to descend for the most part, if not exclusively, from that same nationality [and] be imbued with a realization of the need to introduce all other nationalities into the life and spirit of the dominant

nationality."37 In the end the Dukmasov Commission distilled all of these concerns

into a comprehensive draft project that incorporated several fundamen

tal proposals.38 For the empire's constituent nationalities, the principle of

33. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15., d. 2805,11. 67-68.

34. Ibid., 11. 150-51.

35. Ibid., 1. 144.

36. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2501,1. 49.

37. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,1. 150.

38. Ibid., 11. 90-112.

692 Slavic Review

proportional representation within the officer corps, based upon the per

centages enumerated above, would be established. More important, these restrictions were to be applied to all nationalities, both those previously unaffected by the religious restrictions (such as Lutherans) and those not

subject to general conscription, such as certain Muslim peoples in Central

Asia and the Caucasus. As a measure of extra caution, it was proposed that

national minorities be restricted from service in their own homelands and

surrounding provinces and that existing restrictions on their service in

"sensitive" areas?including the engineering and technical services, fortress units, teaching institutions, and the Cossack hosts?be extended.

Further, nationalities were grouped and graded according to their politi cal reliability, with the most unreliable, such as Poles and Armenians, sub

ject to extra restrictions during service. Language and place of familial

residence were to be the primary markers of national identity, as well as

religion when appropriate. Lastly, in recognition that even officers an

swered to a higher power than God, tsar, and country, Russian officers

married to Poles or Armenians and stationed in the homelands of these

nationalities were to be counted among these suspect groups.39

Regarding implementation, it was decided not to extend the restric

tions down to the level of students in the cadet corps, but to uphold them

for those seeking entry into the higher military academies. Stringent re

strictions would apply to the staffs of all educational and administrative in

stitutions. Nationality quotas would be applied down to the level of the

company as far as was practical, with the general proviso that Russian of

ficers represent no less than 75 percent of a unit's complement. Finally,

separate additional restrictions would be maintained for staff officers and

particularly for positions of command, starting at the company level. All

of these proposals were to respect the project's guiding imperative that "in

order to ensure the safety, unity, and security of the state the army should

be strictly national, that is Russian [russkoiu] "40

However, the commission's draft project received particularly harsh

criticism when forwarded to the Main Staff in early 1907. In a draft mem

orandum prepared for War Minister Rediger, the authors commented

acidly that the commission had essentially ignored the principles of the

October Manifesto and its fundamental guarantees of the rights of citi

zenship and religion. The memorandum also criticized specific proposals

regarding further restrictions upon inorodtsy officers and their appoint ments once in service, the extension of restrictions to the manifestly loyal Germans, and the inadequate criteria for defining nationality, which were

deemed "more than shaky." In a larger sense, the memorandum noted that

there were many non-Russians serving in high posts of responsibility who

were excellent officers, yet would now be subject to arbitrary restrictions.

Most damningly, the memorandum emphasized that the commission "had

39. In fact, worries regarding the personal virtue of Russian officers were directly linked to the perceived failings of Russian masculinity, specifically

an inability to deal with

feminine influence. See William C. Fuller Jr., The Foe Within: Fantasies of Treason and the End

of Imperial Russia (Ithaca, 2006). I thank an anonymous reviewer of this article for this

point. 40. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,1. 91. Emphasis in the original.

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914 693

allowed itself to be guided by political considerations," particularly in its

harsh appraisals of the Finns and Armenians, and had forgotten that the

existing restrictions had only been imposed out of "extreme necessity" and

with "narrowly utilitarian goals."41 As such, the Main Staff concluded that

the nationalities project in its present form was unacceptable. It thus rec

ommended that the draft be forwarded to the various military district com

manders, as well as the heads of the various administrative institutions, for

comment and revision. A heavily redacted, somewhat softened version of

the memorandum was subsequently approved by War Minister Rediger.42 The replies given by these commanders, some of whom convened

their own commissions to study the issue in depth, provide some of the

most compelling reading in the record.43 Although almost all claimed

agreement with the overall goal of the project ("a truly Russian army") a

host of criticisms were raised.44 These criticisms both echoed and ampli fied concerns that the Dukmasov Commission itself had raised, as well as

the negative assessments provided by the Main Staff. In particular, the

commanders pointed to those same tensions between criteria of national

ity, expectations of loyalty, and models of duty that had bedeviled the

commission's work.

Regarding the fundamental motivations behind the project, at least

two commanders agreed with the Main Staff and questioned the wisdom

of instituting even stricter restrictions at a time when citizenship and free

dom of religion had only just been granted; they too wondered whether

such legislation was not a violation of the letter, and certainly the spirit, of

the new political order. The report of the Main Artillery Administration

noted pointedly that as equality of nationality, no less than freedom of re

ligion, "was a necessary element of civil liberty in general," it made little sense to substitute a new set of restrictions for the old.45

A number of commanders further remarked upon numerous poten tial difficulties in implementation, difficulties that were sure to result in cases of both individual injustice and harm to the army as a whole. Not

surprisingly, numerous respondents commented on the unsuitability of

the criteria and procedures for defining nationality; they were, as the

commission itself recognized, imprecise, subjective, and not appropriate for every case.46 Fearful of potential abuses, the staff of the Warsaw mili

tary district observed that "many officers absolutely Russian in spirit [po dukhu] are found in the army. Yet by formal definitions it would be nec

essary to number them among the non-Russians."47 The staff thus sug

41. Memorandum dated February 1907, no. 62. Ibid., 11. 165-67.

42. Memorandum dated 28 February 1907, no. 70. Ibid., 11. 171-73.

43. Such was the case with the Odessa, Priamur, and Caucasus military districts.

44. Report of the Vilensk military district, dated 29 May 1907, no. 1569. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,1. 207.

45. Report dated 21 June 1907, no. 17957. Ibid., 11. 258-62.

46. Such criticisms were included in the reports of the Priamur and Warsaw military districts, as well as those of the Main Military Medical Administration and the Main Ad

ministration of the Cossack Host.

47. Report dated 16June 1907, no. 1612. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,11. 230-32. In

contrast, the Vilensk military district agreed with the use of language as a

primary marker

of nationality, noting that to consider as non-Russian those officers with non-Russian

694 Slavic Review

gested instead that the regimental officers' societies be the ones to control

appointments to their unit, as was done in Germany, while commanders

would monitor the overall percentages of inorodtsy. Its report noted that

this would certainly be a more reliable mechanism to achieve the desired

goals: the officers' society "will more easily have an understanding of an

officer's nationality and way of thinking."48 In this regard the German of

ficer corps was often cited in admiration as a homogenous body that

maintained its strictly aristocratic Prussian ethos without any exclusionary laws whatsoever, both by successfully assimilating the middle classes to

this ethos and through the power of the officer societies.49 The implica tion, of course, was that the Russian officer corps lamentably possessed

no such organic, unifying ethos. It is noteworthy in this sense that little

mention was made of two alternative models of reference: the multina

tional Habsburg officer corps and the Young Turk movement in the Ot

toman army.50

Other commanders suggested that interviews with a potential officer's

friends, family, and future comrades would be able to provide a truer pic ture of that elusive identity of nationality. Several reports suggested that

regardless of the criteria used, an officer's nationality should be deter

mined once and for all upon entry into service, and his respective rights and restrictions made clear to him.51 This would preclude potential mis

understandings and indignities in the future course of his career.

In a related sense, echoing the criticism of the Main Staff, the reports noted that artificial restrictions imposed from above, particularly upon

long-serving and high-ranking officers, could do nothing but serve as in

sults to the personal honor and professional dignity of military servitors.

names, or even those who were non-Orthodox, who nevertheless spoke Russian and had

received a Russian education and upbringing, would be "extremely unjust" to those offi

cers and "harmful to the interests of the state." Ibid., 11. 207-9.

48. Ibid., 1. 230.

49. The staff of the Priamur military district also cited the example of Germany to ad

vocate the use of the officers' society in this way. Report dated 10 May 1907, no. 10224.

Ibid., 1. 210. For the German officer corps, see, for example, Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945 (New York, 1964), and Stephen Clemente, For King and

Kaiser! The Making of the Prussian Army Officer, 1860-1914 (New York, 1992). 50. In the words of Istv?n De?k, the Habsburgs sought to reach "beyond nationalism"

and remove this potentially divisive element as far as possible from the structure and ethos

of the Habsburg military. See De?k, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the

Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848-1918 (New York, 1990). It has also been argued that the Habs

burgs succeeded in this endeavor only in a negative sense, cultivating

a loyalty to the person

of the emperor without any larger sense of duty to a Habsburg state, and also failing to meet

the demands of military modernization and efficiency. See Solomon Wank, "The Habsburg

Empire," in Barkey and von Hagen, eds., After Empire, 45-57. Weeks asserts more broadly

that the nationalities "problem" in the Russian empire never reached the political and cul

tural proportions necessary to mandate a Habsburg solution. Weeks, Nation and State in Late

Imperial Russia, 195. Moreover, Habsburg military failures, and their perceived roots in na

tionality policy, were a key factor in the tsarist army's categorical rejection of the Habsburg

officer corps as a model to be emulated. I thank Dominic Lieven for this point. Neverthe

less, both Habsburg and Ottoman policies offer suggestive alternatives to the tsarist army's own frustrating attempts to grapple with the dilemmas of ethnicity and nationality.

51. Report of the Odessa military district, dated 30 May 1907, no. 9948. RGVIA, f. 400,

op. 15, d. 2805,11. 216-22. The report of the Warsaw military district agreed.

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914 695

Such restrictions might even spur political discontent, pushing heretofore

loyal, useful, and productive officers into the camp of political opposition or even separatism. This was indeed perhaps the most prevalent theme in

the various responses. The report of the Kiev military district, while ex

pressing agreement with the project's goals, nevertheless remarked that "it

is impossible to recognize [such] restrictions as just in those rare circum

stances when a completely worthy officer" of non-Orthodox faith would

be denied command of a company or some other post.52 The report thus

recommended maintaining nationality quotas for the army as a whole, but

not for separate units. Other reports adopted a more restrictive interpre tation. The Main Engineering Administration argued that as the primary function of the cadet corps was to provide a loyal and reliable cadre of fu

ture officers, the restrictions according to nationality should logically be

extended to cadets.53 Yet the commission itself had rejected such a step,

perceiving the cadet corps to be a powerful agent of socialization and ac

culturation into both the military ethos and the Russian spirit. Further, just about every commander raised an objection to the pro

posed restrictions on behalf of a nationality they considered solidly loyal and dependable, particularly those who would be subject to restrictions

for the first time. The problem was that few of these pleas for special con

sideration matched. Although some supported the outright exclusion of

the Armenians and Finns from the officer corps, others defended the

Finns, as well as the Latvians, as loyal and productive servitors until the re

cent unpleasantness of 1905.54 Not surprisingly, the status of the Baltic

Germans provoked some of the strongest disagreement in this regard. Several commanders argued that imposing restrictions on such a mani

festly loyal group ("true sons" of Russia, as one report put it), buttressed

by a proud tradition of military service, would constitute both a collective

insult and a measure extremely counterproductive to the interests of both

army and state.55 In contrast, the report of the Main Engineering Admin

istration argued that "despite possible references to their complete loy

alty, attested to by their age-old and devoted service," considerations of fairness and the principles of the legislation itself demanded that the Ger

mans be treated no differently than any other nationality.56 Predictably, the closest points of unanimity among the respondents involved a deep suspicion of Poles and a visceral hostility to Jews, which the Dukmasov

Commission itself shared; the only question was whether to maintain the most severe restrictions upon Jews or to exclude them from military ser

vice entirely, as suggested by the Moscow military district and others.57

52. Report dated 7 June 1907, no. 1383. Ibid., 1. 223.

53. Report dated 1 June 1907, no. 1108. Ibid., 11. 239-58. The reports of the Main Ad

ministration of the General Staff and the Caucasus military district also took this position. 54. For example, the reports of the Turkestan and Odessa military districts advocated

the exclusion of the Finns, while the Warsaw military district noted that many Finnish of

ficers had served honorably and with distinction.

55. Report of the Caucasus military district, dated 30 April 1907, no. 6305. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,11. 196-99.

56. Report dated 1 June 1907, no. 1108. Ibid., 11. 239-43.

57. Report dated 21 May 1907, no. 8358. Ibid., 11. 200-201.

696 Slavic Review

Other commanders questioned this correlation between nationality and loyal service in more pointed fashion, obliquely referring to the fail ures of Russian nation building among its own people. The report sub

mitted on behalf of the commander of the Guards Corps noted that, al

though he agreed in theory with the principle of preserving the unity of

the officer corps' composition "in both national [plemenno] and religious

respects," such a policy would only be successful if "the influx of native

[korennykh] Russians wishing to devote themselves to military service was

significantly greater than the demand." The report noted, however, that

in practice "the love of military service in some non-Russians is stronger than among the native Russian population."58 The baleful influence of an

allegedly pacifist, cosmopolitan elite society, hostile to martial values and

immune to the demands of imperial loyalty, was an all-too-common

lament among tsarist officers.

To buttress this point, the report emphasized that the restrictions on

the Baltic Germans were entirely unnecessary, citing their complete loyalty and impeccable tradition of service, particularly in several of the proud

Guards regiments. This example was used to pose a broader objection. Not

ing that many Baltic Germans remained Germans in name only, the report observed that "military service has always served as the best means for the

Russification [obruseniia] of non-Russians." While it lamented the existing "deficiencies in Russian patriotism," in pointed contrast to the level of na

tional awareness in Germany, the report concluded that such sweeping re

strictions, affecting all nationalities indiscriminately, were mandated nei

ther by the existing situation nor by the necessities of state security. Instead, the report proposed limiting restrictions to certain sensitive posts, and only for manifestly unreliable nationalities.59

Such attitudes were no doubt shaped by the particular atmosphere of

the Guards, that traditional bastion of the imperial service ethos. In fact, in recognition of this special status, the Frolov draft had initially planned to exempt the Guards entirely from the new restrictions. Not surprisingly, concerns regarding the assimilating role of military service figured even

more prominently in the reports of commanders on the frontiers, who were regularly confronted with issues of nationality and thus particularly sensitive to "imperial" concerns. These commanders pointed out with dis

may that the draft legislation proposed to extend restrictions even to

those nationalities not subject to the Universal Service Statute and argued that this would be counterproductive from both a military and an impe rial point of view. The report of the Caucasus military district, com

manded by General Illiarion Vorontsov-Dashkov, noted that the Geor

gians were distinguished by their love of military service and had provided

many brave and devoted officers, while a whole range of Caucasian Mus

lim peoples?Kabardians, Chechens, Tatars?also served willingly as

both excellent officers and soldiers.60 As the extension of universal service

58. Report dated 3 August 1907, no. 1892. Ibid., 11. 270-71.

59. Such concerns were echoed in other forums; see, for example, the article by a

"Russkii Nemets," "Inorodtsy v russkoi armii," Razvedchik, no. 1222 (1 April 1914): 215-17.

60. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,11. 196-99.

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914 697

to such peoples was "only a matter of time," having their own native offi

cers to serve as living examples and symbols of the advantages of military service was thus invaluable.61 This would doubtless contribute to the uni

fication of the various Caucasian Muslim peoples "under the protection of Russian power [derzhavy], tying them to Russia and gradually preparing them for the transition" to general conscription. The report of the

Turkestan military district, commanded by General Nikolai Grodekov, raised similar concerns on behalf of the Turkmen.62 The Caucasus staff

thus concluded that extending the new restrictions would instead only lead to "verbal attacks upon the army and government" and "dissension

and discontent within the officer corps itself." This would hardly con

tribute to the "union [sliianiiu] and unification of the various nationali

ties" of the empire but would instead "further reinforce the hostile atti

tude of these nationalities towards us."63

Finally, all of the above reports emphasized in different ways the pow erful role of honor in defining the behavior and self-perception of tsarist

officers. Yet the proposed nationality restrictions illustrated how difficult

it was in practice to disentangle considerations of honor from those of

duty, function, and service.64 For example, in its report, the Main Admin

istration of the General Staff, alleged bastion of a rigidly professional and

meritocratic ethic, came out strongly in favor of the draft project, endors

ing the most severe restrictions upon minority nationalities.65 The pro

ject's architects, too, sought to justify the nationalities project, perhaps

torturously, on the grounds of professional imperatives, citing the army's fundamental mission of ensuring "the safety, unity, and security" of the

state.66 However, many of the commanders canvassed emphasized that

such seemingly arbitrary restrictions would be perceived very differently

by individual officers of the line.

These commanders thus spoke in different ways to the peculiar ten

sion between professional and what one could call "patrimonial" para

digms of service in the tsarist officer corps. In the former, an officer's sta

tus and identity were framed according to criteria of thorough training, functional specialization, and occupational performance; in the latter,

personal integrity, devotion to the sovereign, patronage connections, or

social status could all serve as integral components of self-identification.

Even the most professional armies never completely succeed in eliminat

ing the influence of such "subjective" factors ostensibly irrelevant to "ob

jective" standards, while William Fuller notes that professional and cor

61. As testimony to such hopes, see the memoir of Konstantin Khagondakov, a Kabar

dian officer from the Caucasus who served in the field during the Russo-Japanese War and

later attended the General Staff Academy; his account provides fascinating insights into

processes of imperial socialization and assimilation within the tsarist officer corps. The

Khagondakov collection is found in the Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Manuscripts Division, of Columbia University.

62. Report dated 5 June 1907, no. 8192. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,1. 229.

63. Ibid., 1. 199.

64. For a larger discussion of these issues, see Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict, 3-46,

192-258, and Bushneil, "Tsarist Officer Corps, 1881-1914."

65. Report dated 29 May 1907, no. 3387. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,1. 215.

66. Ibid., 1.91.

698 Slavic Review

poratist conceptions of role and duty could indeed coexist in any one of

ficer. As the commanders' reports show, however, the conflict between these two paradigms was still especially raw within the Russian imperial

army.67 In sum, the above reports addressed from various perspectives the dif

ficulties inherent in regulating service and engineering loyalty according to rigid formulas and fixed quotas. They emphasized the contradictions

between collectively ascribed and individually assumed identities, be

tween public and private personas, between the influence of domestic up

bringing and the socializing milieu of military life, and between the rights of citizen and subject. The commanders in question realized that the de

mands of fairness and professionalism frequently clashed with those of

national purity, that the socializing milieu of the military might be more

powerful than the influence of birth and family, and that the institutional

interests and traditions of the army might override the regime's broader concerns regarding the new social and political order. As they empha sized, for the individual officer the relationship between duty, honor, and

loyalty resisted simplistic, or collectivist, definitions.

The Main Staff duly submitted a memorandum to the war minister in

July 1907 summarizing these responses. While the staff emphasized gen eral agreement on the project's core goals, it also noted the diverse opin ions and recommendations put forth, deeming many of them impossible to systematize.68 Pointing out that it had no power to revise the work of the

Dukmasov Commission, the staff thus suggested calling a special confer

ence to resolve the problem. A later memorandum to the war minister in

spring 1909, however, noted that the chief of the Main Staff had declined

to call this conference, preferring to leave the matter open pending fur

ther review.69 The project's more ambitious goals were thus temporarily abandoned. The issues involved were eventually recognized to be so diffi

cult and complex that the Dukmasov Commission's work was later trans

ferred to the Lukomskii Commission, whose mandate was to examine the

relationship among nationality, citizenship, and military service for

the army as a whole. Confronted with the same fundamental dilemmas, the

Lukomskiii Commission too was unable to reach any policy conclusions

before the outbreak of war fundamentally altered the entire landscape of

military decision making.70 In the meantime, the regulations of 1888 were to remain in effect, but

the documentary evidence suggests they were not consistently observed.

The army thus issued new temporary regulations in 1913 that explicitly re

verted to the exclusionary principle of religious faith. Once again, these

67. See again Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict. For example, in an age when stereotypes of national character retained broad currency and explanatory power, many Russian offi

cers reflexively rejected the typically pedantic German model of rigid dogma and inter

changeable automatons. See also Bruce W. Menning, Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914 (Bloomington, 1992), 200-21.

68. Memorandum dated July 1907, no. 287. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 2805,11. 278-85.

69. Memorandum dated 18 April 1909, no. 92. Ibid., 11. 344-48.

70. For a detailed examination of the work of the Lukomskii Commission, see San

born, Drafting the Russian Nation, 25-29, 63-74.

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914 699

regulations maintained general limits on non-Orthodox officers and spe cial restrictions upon various nationalities regarding service in technical

units and sensitive branches of the army. On the eve of war, nationality

policy within the imperial officer corps had come full circle.

Ironically, in the end a good many of the anxieties that underpinned the nationalities project may well have been unwarranted. Examining

Zaionchkovskii's statistical data on the ethnic and national composition of

the late imperial officer corps, Walter Pintner observes that 80-85 per cent of officers in 1903 identified themselves as Russian Orthodox (again,

religion, not nationality, was the basis of ascription), while other groups? Poles, Baltic Germans, Georgians?represented small minorities. His

conclusion: "it is quite clear that the Imperial Russian officer corps was a

Russian show."71 Nevertheless, the history of the nationalities project at

tests to the salience of a noted historian's assertion that the Russians will never solve any of their various "nationality questions" until they solve the

"Russian question" first. In other words, they must decide as a society and

culture whether they wish to be an equal member of a true multinational

polity, to rule as the dominant nationality in an imperial formation, or to

create a unitary

Russian nation-state.72

What he said of the post-Soviet era applies perhaps even more

strongly to late imperial Russia. Military reforms such as the Universal Ser

vice Statute and the nationalities project were part of a broader effort on

the part of leading statesmen and bureaucrats to answer this fundamental

question, by dealing with the challenges of cultural and separatist nation

alism, building a more coherent administrative and legal structure for the

empire, and responding to what they saw as the increasing assaults upon the political and cultural dominance of the Russian people. Yet, as a rule, such efforts only resulted in increased tensions between regime, society, and its component nationalities.73 Such tensions would only become mag nified in the cauldron of World War I.74

These tensions were perhaps most striking, and potentially most

threatening, within the officer community itself. It was here where reali ties most closely, if not perfectly, matched imperial ideology and rhetoric, in its promise of the equality of subjects, opportunities for advancement, and rewards for loyal servitors. As several officers quoted above noted,

military service had traditionally been a primary mechanism in the assim

71. Walter Pintner, "The Nobility and the Officer Corps in the Nineteenth Century," in Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe, eds., The Military and Society in Russia, 1450-1917(Boston,

2002), 250; Zaionchkovskii, Samoderzhavie i russkaia armiia, 96-99.

72. Roman Szporluk, "Dilemmas of Russian Nationalism," Problems of Communism 38, no. 4(1989): 15-35.

73. See again von Hagen, "The Russian Empire," 58-72.

74. See von Hagen, "The Russian Imperial Army and the Ukrainian National Move

ment in 1917," Ukrainian Quarterly 54, nos. 3-4 (1998): 220-56; Sanborn, Drafting the Rus

sian Nation, 74-82, 114-31; Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign

against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, Mass., 2003); Peter Gatrell, A Whole

Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington, 1999) ; Nick Baron and

Peter Gatrell, eds., Homelands: War, Population, and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918-1924 (London, 2004).

700 Slavic Review

ilation of various nationalities in the best and truest sense, transmitting an

ethos of loyalty, an awareness of imperial greatness, and that most cele

brated gift, Russian culture. Nevertheless, the army leadership's concerns

regarding the faithfulness and reliability of its own servitors were only in

creasing and intensifying after 1905. In addition, such concerns were

spreading within the officer community as a whole.

The efforts of the Frolov and Dukmasov commissions testified to this

ambivalence. Fear of minority nationalities and the separatist tendencies

they might bring was certainly a primary motivation in their work. Yet

these commissions also took as their fundamental premise the existence of a "Russian spirit" that, however elusive to define, was nevertheless a

powerful agent of imperial socialization; hence the effort to reconcile

these conflicting convictions by establishing quotas according to the prin

ciple of nationality. Yet these commissions unexpectedly discovered that

their fundamental assumptions regarding the equation of national iden

tity, patriotic loyalty, and military service were rife with tensions.

The commissions' efforts thus provide valuable insights into the rela

tionship between nationalism and military modernization, while also

complicating recent conclusions regarding tsarist nationality politics. As

Weeks and Slocum have argued, tsarist nationality "policy" was essentially

haphazard and reactive in its formulation; as Weeks and Rappeler have

emphasized, it was primarily conservative in its goals and design.75 In par ticular, Weeks argues that the Russian state and its servitors resisted any radical reformulations of patriotism and legitimacy. He concludes that

neither was ever forced "to reconsider their own national/state identity. To the end the Rossiiskaia Imperiia behaved as if it were simply russkaia,"

yet Russian in the prenationalist sense of an ancien r?gime, not in the sense of modern nationalism.76

Yet the deliberations of these commissions demonstrate that Russian

officers, the tsar's most loyal servants, were indeed actively examining and

debating their own "national/state identity." As Sanborn argues, for the

army leadership, nationality polices were at once conservative, regarding short-term application, but essentially transformative, in the sense of

long-term goals of assimilation and nation building. Yet, as he concludes, "the mixture between empire and nation pleased no one and antagonized

everyone," not least Russian nationalists themselves.77 So it was with the

nationalities project. While somewhat more heavy-handed than Miliutin's

policies, it nevertheless represented an attempt to achieve his vision of a

"national" and "imperial" army. Yet while committed to a "national" army, the commissions, and especially those evaluating their work, continually invoked traditional understandings and paradigms of "empire" and the

relationship between Russian and non-Russian peoples. As such, the pro

ject's ultimate failure testifies to the inherent challenges involved in rec

75. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia, 195-99; Slocum, "Who, and When,

Were the Inorodtsy V 173-75; Rappeler, Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History, 247-48,

347-48.

76. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia, 195.

77. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation, 72.

Nationality Policy and the Russian Imperial Officer Corps, 1905-1914 701

onciling western-derived concepts of nation, state, and nationalism with

imperial political traditions and social realities. Acquiring and deploying advanced weaponry, for example, was, if not easy, then usually manage able. In contrast, effecting broader transformations within the autocratic

polity, society, and culture was far more problematic.

Lastly, the brief history of the nationalities project offers insights into

broader processes of modernization in late imperial Russia, as well as pan

European patterns of development. In recent years several historians have

sought to emphasize continuities instead of disjunctures between the

tsarist and Soviet periods, arguing that various Bolshevik policies of state

craft, including surveillance, deportation, and what von Hagen calls "the

mobilization of ethnicity," actually had their antecedents in tsarist prac tices.78 In turn, these practices, brought on by the common demands of

the Great War, closely paralleled the experience and policies of the other

warring European states. Sanborn argues that the roots of such practices must be located even farther back, in the prewar period itself.79

The efforts of the Frolov and Dukmasov commissions support this view

and suggest that concerns of nationality and nationalism affected the of

ficer corps itself more deeply than has previously been assumed. The im

plications were profound. The paradigm of service demanded by the

modern unitary nation-state, embodied in the citizen-soldier, was essen

tially antithetical to the "imperial" tradition of service, framed as it was

around concepts of subject and servitor. Notably, within a multiethnic

polity, efforts at categorization and classification were a necessary prereq uisite to actual state policies based upon nationality, be they policies of pro

motion, discrimination, deportation, or even annihilation.80 The trau

matic mobilizations of the Great War, the 1917 Revolution, and the civil war

certainly accelerated the elaboration and implementation of such policies. Yet the fact that the tsarist officer community had already turned the criti

cal lens of nationality upon itself could not bode well for the Russian army, at least in its imperial guise.

78. Mark von Hagen, "The Great War and the Mobilization of Ethnicity in the Russian

Empire," in Barnett R. Rubin and Jack Snyder, eds., Post-Soviet Political Order: Conflict and

State-Building (London, 1998), 34; Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's

Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002); and Lohr, Nationalizing the Rus

sian Empire. 79. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation, 20-29, 63-74.

80. See Peter Holquist, 'To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate: Population Statis

tics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia," in Suny and Martin, eds., A State of Nations, 111- 44.