Nesselrode, the Tsar’s cautious Foreign Minister, tried to pour cold water on this revolutionary strategy, and his caution was shared by most Russian diplomats. In a memo to the Tsar on 8 November, he argued that the Balkan Slavs would not rise up in large numbers;j that inciting revolts would make Europe suspicious of Russia’s ambitions in the Balkans; and that it was a dangerous game to play in any case, for Turkey too could stir revolts by the Tsar’s Muslims in the Caucasus and the Crimea.7
But Nicholas would not be diverted from his goal of a religious war. He saw himself as the defender of the Orthodox faith and refused to be dissuaded from his mission by a Foreign Minister whose Protestant background diminished his standing on religious matters in the Tsar’s opinion. Nicholas saw it as his sacred duty to free the Slavs from Muslim rule. In all his manifestos to the Balkan Slavs he made it clear that Russia was fighting a religious war for their liberation from the Turks. On his instructions, his army commanders donated bells to churches in the Christian towns and villages they occupied as a means of winning popular support. Mosques were converted into churches by the Russian troops.8
The Tsar’s religious fervour became entangled in the broader military calculation – foremost in the more tactical thinking of Paskevich – that the Balkan Christians might provide a cheap army and plentiful resources to fight the Russian cause. By 1853, Nicholas had moved much closer to the Slavophiles and the pan-Slavs, who had a number of patrons at the court as well as the support of Barbette Nelidov, the long-term mistress of the Tsar. According to Anna Tiutcheva, the daughter of the poet Fedor Tiutchev and a lady-in-waiting at the court, the ideas of the pan-Slavs were now openly expressed by the Grand Duke Alexander, the heir to the throne, and his wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna. On several occasions she heard them say in conversation that Russia’s natural allies were the Balkan Slavs, who should be supported in their fight for independence by the Russian troops once they had crossed the Danube. Countess Bludova, another pan-Slav at court, urged the Tsar to declare war on Austria as well as Turkey for the liberation of the Slavs. She passed on many of Pogodin’s letters to the Tsar in which the pan-Slav leader called on Nicholas to unite the Slavs under Russian leadership and found a Slavic Christian empire based in Constantinople.9
The Tsar’s notes in the margins of a memorandum by Pogodin reveal much about his thinking in December 1853, when he came closest to embracing the pan-Slav cause. Pogodin had been asked by Nicholas to give his thoughts on Russia’s policy towards the Slavs in the war against Turkey. His answer was a detailed survey of Russia’s relations with the European powers which was filled with grievances against the West. The memorandum clearly struck a chord with Nicholas, who shared Pogodin’s sense that Russia’s role as the protector of the Orthodox had not been recognized or understood and that Russia was unfairly treated by the West. Nicholas especially approved of the following passage, in which Pogodin railed against the double standards of the Western powers, which allowed them to conquer foreign lands but forbade Russia to do the same:
France takes Algeria from Turkey, and almost every year England annexes another Indian principality: none of this disturbs the balance of power; but when Russia occupies Moldavia and Wallachia, albeit only temporarily, that disturbs the balance of power. France occupies Rome and stays there several years in peacetime:k that is nothing; but Russia only thinks of occupying Constantinople, and the peace of Europe is threatened. The English declare war on the Chinese,l who have, it seems, offended them: no one has a right to intervene; but Russia is obliged to ask Europe for permission if it quarrels with its neighbour. England threatens Greece to support the false claims of a miserable Jew and burns its fleet:m that is a lawful action; but Russia demands a treaty to protect millions of Christians, and that is deemed to strengthen its position in the East at the expense of the balance of power. We can expect nothing from the West but blind hatred and malice, which does not understand and does not want to understand (
Having stirred the Tsar’s own grievances against the West, Pogodin encouraged him to act alone, according to his conscience before God, to defend the Orthodox and promote Russia’s interests in the Balkans. Nicholas expressed his approval:
