From the very beginning of the First Serbian Uprising, Karageorge conducted an active foreign policy. In September 1804, St. Petersburg received the Serbian “grand embassy,” headed by Archpriest Mateja Nenadovic, one of the leaders of the rebellion. Russian Foreign Minister, Adam Czartoryski, received the Serbian delegation coldly and told Karageorge’s messengers to resolve their issues directly with Turkey, although he did promise Russia’s diplomatic support. Generally speaking, relations between Russia and Serbia during this period were placed at the mercy of international alliances, which Russia joined and abandoned, constantly changing the vector of its foreign policy. In particular, after the defeat of the Russian-Austrian army at Austerlitz, Russia signed a peace treaty with Turkey that impeded the provision of active assistance to Serb rebels. Only in 1806 did Russia begin engaging in active hostilities against Turkey.
From the Dniester to the Danube an army was deployed under the command of General-Field Marshal Mikhelson, who immediately sent Major-General Ivan Isaev as a representative to Karageorge. Isaev immediately felt sympathy for the rebels, sent enthusiastic communiques to his command, and even participated directly in hostilities. Simultaneously, the rebels achieved unprecedented success by taking Belgrade and several other Turkish fortresses and thus completely removing the Turks from central Serbia. In May 1807, the first detachment of the Russian army under the command of Isaev entered Serbian territory. It only numbered a thousand men, however, but it was still large enough to cause panic among the Turks. On May 17, Isaev’s detachment met Voivod Milenko Stojkovic’s Serbian squad, and together they managed to defeat the Turkish army near the village of Stubnik, after which they besieged the fortress of Negotin, where a large Turkish garrison was located.
The first victory of joint Russian and Serbian forces filled the leaders of the rebellion with optimism, and they began to believe that they would henceforth be able to rely on Russian military assistance. At the end of June, an emissary of Alexander I, Marquis Paulucci, arrived at the Serbian camp outside of Negotino, which served as confirmation of this optimistic belief. The outcome of the negotiations was the so-called Karageorge-Paulucci Convention, which fixed in writing the hopes placed by Serbs on Russia. The Serbs virtually recognized Russia's sovereignty over them and asked the emperor to appoint a governor who would help to organize a government and write a constitution. The first paragraph of the convention states, “Above all, the Serbian people’s first desire is to be under the patronage of His Imperial Majesty Alexander the First. The people of Serbia respectfully request that His Imperial Majesty appoint a capable ruler quickly, who could set things right for the people, allocate the land and develop a constitution according to the Serbian people’s liking.”
The appointment of Russian officials in Serbia was arranged, as was the sending of Russian military garrisons and commanders to Serbian fortresses. Russian military experts and trainers were to help create a Serbian army, Russian doctors to outfit hospitals and technical experts to spur industrial production, which was to be directed primarily at military purposes. Had the convention been ratified by Alexander I and began to be fulfilled, Serbia, for all intents and purposes, would have turned into a Russian colony. Typically, such forms of assistance were not imposed on the Serbs; on the contrary, the Serbs insisted on the greatest possible integration with Russia, right up to official incorporation into the Russian Empire.
This is not surprising when we bear in mind the previous history of relations between the two countries. The Serbs did not represent the existence of a Serbian territorial formation independent from Turkey (principality or region) that was outside the orbit of the Orthodox Russian empire. We see a stable geopolitical vision that traces back from the first Serbian Metropolitans’ appeal to Ivan III until the 19th century. It is no accident that the convention almost word for word repeated the Kievans’ appeal to the Varangian princes: “Our country is great and plentiful, but there is no order in it.”
It is difficult to say how relations between Russia and Serbia would have evolved if the Convention had entered into force. Unfortunately, further developments showed that Alexander I had no intention of implementing the expectations of the Serb rebels. At the same time as Paulucci’s stay in Serbia, the Russian envoy, Lashkarev, held talks with emissaries of the Turkish sultan in Slobodzeya. The recent Peace of Tilzit that Napoleon had concluded made France and Russia allies and destroyed the Russian-Austrian anti-Turkish coalition. Under the terms of Slobodzeya peace with Turkey, all parts of the Russian army left Serbian territory, thereby enabling the Turkish garrisons to return. The only thing guaranteed to the Serbs was the personal integrity of those who took part in the uprising, including Karageorge and other commanders.
Almost simultaneously with the withdrawal of Russian troops from Serbia, Konstantin Rodofinikin, an official from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Asian Department, arrived in Belgrade. Rodofinikin, the first Russian statesman to have a multi-year official mission in Serbia, had an incredibly contradictory personality. He was a Greek by descent, which had led Karageorge and his allies to fear falling under the influence of the Greeks who had been sent by the Turks. He was accepted without enthusiasm, as evidenced by a report filed by Field Marshal Mikhelson in St. Petersburg: “Serb deputies have asked that Alexander I of his own will appoint a ruler, but in order to expedite the matter, they agree to accept Rodofinikin.”
Rather than engage in “arranging” the Serbian government, which is what he had been sent to Belgrade to accomplish, Rodofinikin immediately overwhelmed Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the leadership of the Danube army with letters in which he vehemently criticizes Karageorge and calls on Russia to deny him any support. With respect to Rodofinikin’s legislative activity, Soviet historians evaluated it as a “clumsy attempt by the Asian Department of the emperor’s officials in Serbia to impose a class system alien to local conditions (introduction of a nobility, the transfer of power to the “state Senate,” etc.).” Alexander I did not approve Rodofinikin’s written draft for a Serbian constitution, and, in general, appears not to have valued very highly the mission in Serbia. In 1810, General Egor Gavrilovich Zuccato arrived in Belgrade, taking over as the Russian representative due to Rodofinikin’s “the complete failure to negotiate with the Serbs.”
Blame for the failure of the first Russian diplomatic mission in Serbia should not, of course, fall on Rodofinikin personally. Rather, it should be placed on Russia in general, which had little in the way of adequate understanding as to the situation in Serbia and the aspirations of the Serbs. Resonance between Russia and Serbia, as evident from the time of Ivan III until Peter the Great, had been irrevocably lost by the time Alexander I was in power. At the time of the First Serbian Uprising the interests of Russia's imperial rulers in the Balkans did not center on defending the oppressed Slavic Orthodox population from the “ungodly Hagarenes,” but rather on ensuring the fragile peace through complex diplomatic intrigue. Time has shown the ineffectiveness of this tactic.
The resumption of hostilities between Russia and Turkey in 1809 brought about several victories in the history of Russian-Serbian military relations. Russian troops under the command of Isaev, dedicated to the liberation of Serbs, crossed the Danube and successfully stormed the Turkish fortress at Kladovo. Then, during joint actions by Serbian rebels, the Turkish army was driven back to the city of Nis. This was as far as the Austrian army had been able to reach during the Austro-Turkish wars. In 1810, General Egor Zuccato, already mentioned, was sent to Serbia. General Zuccato, who had proven himself quite well during Suvorov’s Italian campaigns, crushed the Turkish troops at the fortresses of Birza-Palanca and Prahovo, and is later rewarded with the Order of St. Anne I. He also came up with the idea of forming an order of Cossacks from the irregular Serbian cavalrymen, calling them literally the “Serbian Cossacks.” General Zuccato died on August 10, 1810 as a result of a Turkish grenade blast.
It is obvious that the Russian military mission in Serbia, despite its particularities, proved far more successful than the civilian mission. By 1811, the Russian authorities, it seems, had begun to realize the benefits that the traditionally pro-Russian Serb position could bring Russia. Petersburg began to take into account the specific demands of the Serb rebels, as well as some of the particular qualities of the Serbs’ national identity. By the spring of 1812, the liberated territory of Serbia consisted of the entire Belgrade pachalik, including the fortresses that had been cleared of Turkish garrisons, as well as six districts from the neighboring areas. At the time, the Serb rebels did not lay claims to large territories. Karageorge declared himself the sole ruler of Serbia and solved the problem of internal opposition. In theory, the next natural step was the proclamation of the autonomous principality of Serbia, under Russia’s protection, on the model of Moldavia and Walachia. This did not come to pass, however.
Serbia once again proved a bargaining card in the political games of the Great Powers. In anticipation of Napoleon’s imminent intervention in Russia, Alexander I sought to make peace with Turkey as soon as possible in order to save the territories outside Russia that were directly adjacent to the empire’s borders (Moldavia) instead of yielding even more distant territories to the Turks. Under the terms of a peace agreement between Russia and Turkey that was signed in Bucharest on May 5, 1812, Serbia was eventually to be granted autonomy, which was to be negotiated separately with Turkey. The fortifications that had been raised by Serbs with Russia’s participation during the war were to be destroyed, and the Turkish garrisons were to be returned to the fortresses that existed prior to the war. On June 24, 1812, Napoleon's army invaded Russia. By August, Russian troops had completely withdrawn from Serbian territory. The Serbs, under the terms of the Bucharest peace, had only to passively await the return of the Turkish garrisons.
In anticipation of growing anti-Russian sentiment, Petersburg sent to Serbia a prominent Russian military figure and diplomat, Count Marko Ivelich, a Montenegrin by birth from the Bay of Kotor. Ivelich had no particular responsibility in the Balkans, although he was given a virtually impossible mission – explaining to the Serbs why Russia had abandoned them and returned to the arrangement that had previously existed, thus keeping Serbia in Russia’s orbit. It is surprising that Ivelich was able to perform the task. As a result of his activities, the Assembly adopted Serbia’s oath of eternal loyalty to Russia, and a solemn address was sent to Alexander I.
Unfortunately, Ivelich’s pledges were unable to prevent the Turkish offensive. Despite the the Serb rebels’ heroic resistance, by September 1813, the Turks had occupied the entire territory of Serbia that had been liberated during the uprising. On September 25, the Turks took Belgrade, and after twelve days the Turkish army gained full command of Serbia, which endured all forms of looting, murder and violence. These twelve days reversed all the achievements of the First Serbian Uprising; the country was literally filled with blood. With regard to Russia’s position in the defeat of the First Serbian Uprising, there is, alas, nothing to be proud of. By 1813, the skeleton of Napoleon's army had been destroyed, and the fighting had moved into Central Europe, where Prussia, Austria, Britain and Sweden had formed an anti-Napoleon coalition. In this situation, Russia could easily have afforded to move at least a small portion of its troops to the Balkan borders with Turkey, send military observers with broad powers to Serbia, as well as take other similar measures. The twelve-day carnage could have been avoided completely had Russia taken greater involvement in the fate of the Serbs. The Russian emperor, however, was too passionate about pursuing Napoleon and establishing a new European coalition to think about the periphery of Serbia. Unfortunately, the Serbs were remembered only after the Battle of Leipzig when changing something was no longer possible – Serbia had been ravaged, and the leaders of the rebellion had fled.
The history of Russia’s participation in the First Serbian Uprising is literally woven with contradictions. There was the failure of Rodofinikin’s “constructive” mission, and there was the success of Ivelich’s “outreach” mission. There were the battles won by Isaev’s and Orurk’s detachments against superior Turkish forces, and there was the hasty withdrawal of Russian troops from the newly-won positions simply to please diplomatic circles in Petersburg. On the one hand, there were hundreds of Russians who lost their lives for Serbia’s freedom, from General Zuccato to the Cossacks and ordinary soldiers whose names have not been preserved by history. On the other hand, there were tens of thousands of Serbs killed during the twelve-day massacre, which occurred solely due to inattention on the part of the Russian government. The main result of these events was a decline in the Serbs’ confidence in the Russian Empire. Russia, of course, remained a beacon for Serbia in terms of education, culture and spiritual affairs. In the effectiveness of Russian military intervention, however, the Serbs had no confidence. Nor could they have hope in mercy on the part of the Russian emperor. The next major Russian military action in Serbia dates was in 1876. An entire generation had to change in order for there to be restored Serbian confidence in Russian military support.
After the First Serbian Uprising, relations between Russia and Serbia did not develop very successfully, and certainly not in Serbia’s favor. Such was the situation right up until the end of Alexander I’s rule. Under the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, the Balkans once again found itself in the center of Russian attention. The Peace Treaty of Adrianople, following the outcome of Russo-Turkish war of 1828-1829, obliged the Sultan to grant autonomy to Serbia and approve Miloљ Obrenovic, who led the rebels after the death of Karageorge, as the supreme ruler. In 1830, the sultan declared the Hatt-i Sharif (Noble Edict of the Rose Chamber), which recognized the territories liberated during the First Serbian Uprising as an autonomous principality. Obrenovic became the prince, and in the event of his death, authority was to be transferred to his descendants. Therein lies the origins of the modern Serbian state and its first ruling dynasty.
It should be noted that with respect to state structure, the principality of Serbia continued to depend largely on Russia. After several unsuccessful attempts to oblige Prince Miloљ to adopt a constitution, an aide to Nicholas I, Prince Vasily Dolgorukov, arrived in Belgrade. He was charged with the “constructive” mission that had been defeated during the time of Rodofinikin. In 1837, Miloљ Obrenovic published an ordinance that had virtually been written upon dictation from Dolgorukov. The ordinance outlined the main provisions of the constitutional project. First of all, it restricted the economic permissiveness of the prince and his circle who had robbed the population, which was made up of almost as many Turks as Serbs. Landholdings owned by Turks were also liquidated. In Serbia, European standard were established, corporal punishment abolished, pensions introduced for civil servants and an analogue of the Russian Table of Ranks was put in place. Serb peasants were personally free, and landownership in the country was not imposed. Russia also insisted on limiting the power of the prince’s Council, which was modeled on the Government Council during the First Serbian Uprising . We can conclude that the nation-state that Russia imposed on Serbia against the will of Miloљ Obrenovic was more liberal than in the Russian Empire itself.
In 1838, the first foreign consulates opened in Belgrade. The British opened the first, followed by the French and the Russian, the latter of which was headed by Gerasim Vaschenko, Russia’s first permanent diplomatic representative in Serbia. Vaschenko reported to Petersburg that Miloљ Obrenovic had no intention of fulfilling the part of the constitution that limits the power of the prince and obliges him to convene a state council. Miloљ Obrenovic attempted to arrange a coup, relying on the British consul, although Vaschenko’s opposition blocked Miloљ in his palace and forced him to renounce power in favor of his son Michael (April 1, 1839). In recognition of Vaschenko’s removal of the ambitious and unpredictable authoritarian ruler, the government in Petersburg elevated his status from simply Consul to Consul-General in the Balkans. In 1843, the Russian representative office is headed by Danilevsky, the father of the famous philosopher and pan-Slavic ideologue, Nicholas Danilevsky. Then Tumansky, the former consul in Iasi and a friend of Pushkin’s from Chisinau, is named Consul-General, although Russian influence on the Serbian princes had become a thing of the past. Moreover, in 1853, the prince and the government declared a boycott against Tumansky and his attempts (unsuccessful) to counter the increasing influence of France. Unable to withstand the shame, Tumansky, a fairly old man anyway, died from a heart attack. The outstanding scientist and diplomat Vlangali (1860-1863) was able to resurrect the prestige of the Russian consulate in Serbia. The influence of the Russian consul was further expanded under Shishkin (1863-1875).
For all the complexity of political relations between Russia and Serbia in the 1830s to 1850s, in the field of culture Russia remained the main point of reference for the Serbs. In 1846, Prince Alexander appealed to Emperor Nicholas I with a request to send Russian educators to Serbia, referring, of course, to the experience of Suvorov and Kozachinsky. The following year, the Russian teachers Verdish and Rudinsky arrived in Belgrade. At the seminary of St. Sava in the Serbian capital Verdish began teaching biblical geography, and Rudinsky offered instruction in Russian and Church Slavonic. Milicevic, one of their students, recalled that “only from the lips of these two teachers, especially Rudinsky, we heard a clear and pleasant Russian language.” Whereas Suvorov and Kozachinsky had acted almost in an atmosphere of a cultural vacuum, by the time Verdish and Rudinsky arrived in Belgrade, there was a considerable number of educational institutions – a vocational school (opened in 1838), school of engineering (1846), military academy (1850), and a school of agriculture (1853). Nevertheless, the emergence of Russian teachers had a tremendous impact on the cultural situation in the country.
In 1855, Alexander II became the Russian emperor. The first years of his rule were generally characterized by a significant liberalization in Russian society and a more balanced foreign policy. The latter included the appointment (in 1856) of Alexander Gorchakov as the empire’s Minister for Foreign Affairs. The new vision of the situation in the Balkans, which prevailed in Russia due to Gorchakov, was that Serbia should finally liberate itself from Turkey on its own. Russia’s mission was to help the Serbs create an efficient army as well as to equip it. By 1867, under pressure from Russia, all Turkish military garrisons were withdrawn from Serbia. Also, Turkey was forced to allow Russia to deliver arms and ammunition to Serbia through Romanian territory. The Russian empire made several major cash loans to Serbia for military and civilian needs. Russian military instructors were constantly in Belgrade, and members of the Russian General Staff came several times to review the Serbian army.
Of critical importance for Russia’s Balkan policy was the growing and increasingly popular ideology of Slavophilism. By the end of the 1850s Slavophiles had moved from merely talking in Moscow literary salons to creating Slavic committees that were primarily oriented toward supporting the liberation of Slavs living under Turkish authority. In 1860, Khomyakov, Pogodin, Aksakov and Beliaev – all prominent Slavophiles – sent the Serbian prince a lengthy letter with assurances of profound sympathy for the Serbian people and a willingness to make every possible effort to help develop Serbian science and culture, as well as to help secure Serbia’s final independence from Turkey. The Serbian authorities did not take the Slavophiles’ assurances seriously, considering them instead to be nothing more than nice words. Russia was entering a different era, however, one which was radically different from the time of Emperor Alexander I, wherein the views of long-lived Serbian political actors like Miloљ Obrenovic were formed. Public opinion and civic organizations had started to become a critical factor in Russia’s political life, as demonstrated by the Serbo-Turkish War of 1876.
By the end of the 1870s, Slavophilism had become the most influential ideology in Russia, especially in military and diplomatic circles. Slavophile views were openly declared by the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Alexander (the future Alexander III). The head of the Asian Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Stremouhov, Russia’s Ambassador in Istanbul Count Ignatiev and Ambassador Novikov in Vienna, as well as the Russian consuls in Belgrade, Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Rijeka, Mostar and Shkodra were all active Slavophiles. The Slavophiles in the Russian Foreign Ministry were not satisfied with the careful policies pursued by Chancellor Gorchakov. Resting on the authority of Ignatiev and the tacit support of Grand Duke Alexander, they began pushing the Serbian government for a war with Turkey, promising that the Serbs “needed to hold out for exactly two months,” during which time the Slavophiles would swing public opinion in such a way that the emperor and Gorchakov would be forced to support Serbia.
In 1875, a rebellion erupted in Turkish Bosnia, which quickly spread to Montenegro and Bulgaria. On June 18, 1876, Turkey declared war on Serbia. Despite the fact that the Russian Foreign Ministry officially did not approve of Serbia’s actions, thousands of Russian volunteers rushed to the principality. According to official data, 3,000 Russian nationals arrived in Serbia, including 700 officers. Slavic committees throughout Russia had begun to collect donations for the Serbian cause. At the end of June, General Mikhail Chernyaev, the hero of Turkestan and the owner of the Slavophilic newspaper Russky Mir, arrived in Serbia. Chernyaev took Serbian citizenship and became chief of the Serbian army. Other Russian officers commanded all of the large military formations.
In the first weeks of war, the Serbo-Russian army brought a number of major defeats to the Turks, but Chernyaev was unable to consolidate and build on the success. Near Aleksinets the Turkish army issued the Serbs a crushing defeat. Only Russian diplomacy on the part of Count Ignatiev saved Serbia from total defeat. On October 19, the Turks were presented with ultimatum to immediately cease hostilities. Turkey was not prepared for a war with Russia and abstained from further intervention in Serbia. The Serbo-Turkish War of 1876 lasted four months.
General Chernyaev’s failure was connected with an entire number of issues. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not endorse his “adventure,” at least not initially. There was no sense of unity among the Russian volunteers; in fact, some of them even refused to obey Chernyaev’s orders (among the dissenters were the particularly prominent socialist-populists Stepniak-Kravchinsky and Klements). We should also not forget that the Serbian army had virtually no experience in fighting and was not prepared for the war, despite the generous Russian subsidies. Prince Milan Obrenovic blamed Chernyaev entirely for the failed military campaign and at the end of hostilities declared him to be persona non grata, stripping him of his Serbian citizenship. In general, Serbia’s memory of Chernyaev is not a good one, which cannot be said, however, for the thousands of Russian volunteers who made unselfish sacrifices in their attempts to help Serbia. Many of these volunteers remained in Serbia permanently. Up until the establishment of communism in the Balkans these people were revered as national heroes.
We can also not forget the story of Colonel Nikolai Rayevsky, who according to many literary critics was the prototype of Vronsky in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Rayevsky, who volunteered on his own to come to Serbia and willingly joined Chernyaev’s army, died on August 20, 1876 during a battle near the village of Gorny Ardovats. First buried in the nearby monastery of St. Roman, Rayevsky’s ashes were later transported to Russia. At the scene of his death a chapel remains today. According to the Yugoslavian historian, Yugovich, “the real participant in the events and the literary character, Colonel Rayevsky and Count Vronsky, are entwined in the minds of the Serbs as a single personage. Any educated person cannot only where Tolstoy sent his hero to die, but also replays, interspersed with legends, his service in Serbia and his heroic death, as if it had been written as an epilogue to the novel by the author.”
The imbalance between the Slavophilic views held by a large part of the Russian elite and the traditional ruling Euro-centrists disappeared beginning with the reign of Alexander III in 1881. Owing to Prince the pro-Austrian leanings of Milan Obrenovic, however, until 1903 relations between Russia and Serbia were not particularly good. Obrenovic had been disaffected by the division of “Turkish patrimony” following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. In 1878, the principality of Serbia received formal independence from Turkey, and in 1882, Milan Obrenovic, with the support of Austria-Hungary, proclaimed himself to be king. The Serbian ruler’s orientation to Austria was naturally not accepted by Alexander III, who famously said of the period “Russia has no friends, save for Montenegro.” Of all the Balkan countries, only Montenegro remained consistently Russophilic.
In 1889, King Milan Obrenovic, aware of his unpopularity among the people, abdicated in favor of his son, Alexander. The new Serbian king quickly moved closer to the Russian emperor, but he soon became involved in Serbian political intrigues and declined to support the Russophilic platform. In 1903, Serb officers organized a coup, and Alexander Obrenovic was killed. The Serbian Assembly (parliament) invited Peter Karageorgevich, grandson Karageorge, to be the new king. The years 1903-1917 can be considered a period of almost complete mutual understanding and mutual support between Serbia and Russia. Nicholas II, just like his father, held Slavophilic views and was openly sympathetic to Serbia. As a result, King Peter and Prime Minister Nikola Paschich consistently focused on Russia. In the Serbo-Austrian “customs wars” from 1906-1911 years and in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1914 on the question of the territorial ownership of Macedonia, Kosovo and Novopazarski Sandzak, Russia defended the interests of Serbia on the world stage, which was returned by Serbia’s pursuit of policies in the Balkans favorable to Russia.
