On the basis of the army’s triumph in the Caucasus, in November 1861 Miliutin was appointed Minister of War on Bariatinsky’s recommendation to the Tsar. Once the Edict of Emancipation had been passed, Alexander felt the time had at last come to push through the military reforms. The legislative package presented by Miliutin to the Tsar built upon his earlier plans. The most important piece of legislation (passed only in 1874) was the introduction of universal conscription, with military service declared compulsory for all males at the age of 20. Organized through a territorial system of military districts for the maintenance of a peacetime standing army, the new Russian system was similar to the modern conscript armies of other European states, although in tsarist Russia, where government finances were inadequate and class, religious and ethnic hierarchies continued to be felt in the application of every policy, the universal principle was never fully realized. The main emphasis of Miliutin’s legislation was on military efficiency but humanitarian concerns were never far behind in his reform. His fundamental mission was to reshape the army’s culture so that it related to the peasant soldier as a citizen and no longer as a serf. The army schools were modernized, with greater emphasis on the teaching of military science and technology. Elementary schooling was made compulsory for all recruits, so that the army became an important means of education for the peasantry. The military justice system was reformed and corporal punishment was abolished, in theory at least, for in practice the Russian soldier continued to be punished physically and sometimes even flogged for relatively minor infringements of discipline. The army’s culture of serfdom continued to be felt by the common soldier until 1917.
The Crimean War reinforced in Russia a long-felt sense of resentment against Europe. There was a feeling of betrayal that the West had sided with the Turks against Russia. It was the first time in history that a European alliance had fought on the side of a Muslim power against another Christian state in a major war.
No one resented Europe more than Dostoevsky. At the time of the Crimean War, he was serving as a soldier in the fortress of Semipalatinsk in Central Asia following his release from a Siberian prison camp, to which he had been exiled for his involvement in the left-wing Petrashevsky circle in 1849. In the only published verse he ever wrote (and the poetic qualities of ‘On the European Events of 1854’ are such that one can see why this was so), Dostoevsky portrayed the Crimean War as the ‘crucifixion of the Russian Christ’. But, as he warned the Western readers of his poem, Russia would arise and, when she did so, she would turn towards the East in her providential mission to Christianize the world.
Unclear to you is her predestination!
The East – is hers! To her a million generations
Untiringly stretch out their hands … .
And the resurrection of the ancient East
By Russia (so God has commanded) is drawing near.43
Having been defeated by the West, Russia turned towards Asia in its imperial plans. For Bariatinsky and the War Ministry, the defeat of Shamil in the Caucasus was to serve as a springboard for the Russian conquest of the independent khanates of Central Asia. Gorchakov and the Foreign Ministry were not so sure, fearing that an expansionist policy would set back their attempts to mend relations with the British and the French. Caught at first between these opposing policies, in 1856–7 the Tsar moved towards the view that Russia’s destiny lay in Asia and that only Britain stood in the way of its fulfilment. Deeply influenced by the climate of mutual suspicion between Russia and Britain after the Crimean War, it was a viewpoint that would define Russia’s policies in the Great Game, its imperial rivalry with Britain for supremacy in Central Asia.
The Tsar was concerned by the growing presence of the British in Persia following their victory in the Anglo-Persian War of 1856–7. By the Paris Treaty of March 1857, the Persians withdrew from Herat, the north-western Afghan city they had occupied with Russian backing in 1852 and 1856. From his correspondence with Bariatinsky, it is clear that Alexander was afraid that the British would use their influence in Tehran to install themselves on the southern shores of the Caspian. He shared Bariatinsky’s gloomy prediction that ‘the appearance of the British flag on the Caspian would be a fatal blow not only to our influence in the East, not only to our foreign trade, but also to the political independence of the [Russian] Empire’.
