This study researches how the Catherine the Second, who was the empress of the Russian Empire in the second half of the eighteenth century, did active work under her reign in the Eurasian Continent and how her achievements have influenced up to the p ...
This study researches how the Catherine the Second, who was the empress of the Russian Empire in the second half of the eighteenth century, did active work under her reign in the Eurasian Continent and how her achievements have influenced up to the present. Germany which is currently leading the European Union and Russia which is also a leading power in Asia recently came into a serious conflict with each other on the matter of the Crimea and Ukraine.
Looking back into the past, the person who is responsible for the present problems of the two countries seems to be no less a person than the empress herself. In the second half of the eighteenth century Frederik the Second, the king of Prussia, was eager to expand his territory to the eastward and did not mind fighting wars with neighboring countries. And Catherine II. likewise pursued the aim of expanding her empire expecially to the west-and southward, and therefore a collision of the interests of the two countries was inevitable. However the empress cleverly avoided the conflict and solved the problem, and she contributed to the development of the relationship of the two countries and to diffusion of german culture to Russia. She also carried wars against Turkey(the Ottoman Empire) and acquired territories including the Crimean Peninsula and annexed them to the Russian Empire. She further divided Poland and became the leader in Eurasia during her reign. In the history Germany and Russia have sometimes entered into a friendly relation and sometimes came into a conflict, but the empress had a resourceful mind to keep checks and balances between the two countries.
Catherine II. was born as a german princess and, recommended by Frederik II. of Prussia, came to Russia to become the wife of Grand-prince Peter in 1741. The Grand-prince himself was also a prince from Germany and the nephew and heir of the Empress Elisabeth of Russia who was unmarried and had no children. Thanks to the marriage of the two persons who were from Germany, the empress showed a favorable attitude to Prussia for a while, but finally she showed hostility towards it and, as the ‘Seven-years-War’ between Prussia and Austria broke out in 1756, Russia stood on the side of Austria and sent 30 thousand russian soldiers to the front and defeated the Prussian army in August 1757 and occupied a part of Eastern Prussia. After a few years however the empress died, and the Grand Prince Peter ascended to the throne and was announced as Peter III. But he was a silly emperor and pushed ahead with the pro-prussian policies so that the Russian aristocrats and folk were dissatisfied with him. His wife Catherine who was afraid of this situation staged a coup d'tat and became the empress herself in the 28. June, 1762.
On the throne she carried ambivalent policies very carefully and quickly. On one hand she followed the pro-prussian policy of her dethroned husband and returned the occupied Eastern Prussia to the Prussian King Frederik II. who had been once her sponsor, but on the hand she refused to ratify the cooperation treaty between Russia and Prussia which had been concluded by Peter III. and Frederik II. With these ambivalent policies she was able to achieve her goals of repaying the favor of the prussian king on one hand and calm the anger of the russian folk on the other. Thereafter she declared the ‘Manifest der Empress Catherine of the 22. July 1763’ in order to encourage foreigners to come into Russia. At that time Russia had a vast territory which was partially acquired through wars with neighbouring nations but not yet inhabited and developed. So the empress wanted to let foreigners to come into the inner Russia, especially into the regions of the Volga River, build towns, develop them and form a barrier against the Asian folks who threatened the russian borders. For this purpose she promised the immigrants many privileges such as tax exemption, military exemption, freedom of religion, support of travel expenses, protection of property rights and so on. As soon as the immigration policy was announced, thousands of Germans applied for the immigration. This policy was carried regularly from 1764 and lots of Germans especially from the countries of southern Germany like Hessen, Rhien-Hessen, Pfalz, Würtemberg, Baden Elsas, Bayern which were impoverished through wars and whose inhabitants were suffering under lots of small Territorialstaats. Lots of inhabitants of these regions had no hope for living in Germany. They dreamed of a new life in the vast territory of Russia and left their homeland with ships over North Sea and Baltic Sea and arrived in Saint Petersburg, and they moved from there further to the Volga district, or they traveled along the Danube River and arrived to the Black Sea and from there they moved further over Odessa, Crimea, Caucasus and reached Russia. Especially the immigrants in the Volga area were given the privileges to keep their mother tongue, namely the german language and the pattern of their german culture. In less than tens of years the districts that had been undeveloped were well developed and enjoyed the success and prosperity thanks to the diligency and efforts of the immigrants, and more and more Germans came into the inner Russia and contributed to the maintenance of their culture in those areas. In the first ten years they also suffered owing to failure of crops but could be engaged in other jobs than agriculture and as time went on, they could improve their situation and enjoy the prosperity. But in 1773 there occurred a revolt of peasants led by a Kazak named Pugatschow, which caused serious damages not only to the Russians, but also to the Volga Germans. However, one of the reasons for the revolt was that a large-scale immigration of foreigners including Germans caused trouble with neighbouring tribes like Kazaks or Kirghizes who were engaged in stock-farming there. So viewed objectively, the pro-german immigration policy of the russian government resulted in depriving the neighbouring tribes of their living spaces.
Catherine II. started to devide Poland cooperating with Frederik II. of Prussia who was eager to expand his territory. She also had an aim of expanding her own territory and of being a strong leader in Europe and Asia. Russia cooperated with Prussia and Austria and divided Poland in three times, and finally the kingdom of Poland vanished and the territory of the Russian Empire became larger. The empress was not satisfied with it, but she carried Russian-Turkey War(1768–1774) and defeated Turkey (Osman Empire) and acquired South-Ukraine, North-Caucasus and Crimea. From now on she no more read the countenance of the prussian king but pushed ahead with her own expanding aims without being bothered. The reason why Catherine II. decided to occupy the southern region of Osman Empire was because she wanted to rebuild the Byzantine Empire which had been overthrown in the 15th. century by Osman Empire and to enthrone his grandson as an Emperor in Constantinople. Therefore she definitely refused the proposal of Frederik II. that Russia, Prussia and Turkey(Osman Empire) should ally with each other. She carried on war against Turkey and acquired abidingly Crimea and the wide regions of Black Sea through Freedom of Jassy in 1792. With this result she might have been confident of her plan to expand the trade of Russia towards the Black Sea regions and to restore the Byzantine culture which she believed to be the root of the western culture. Although the empress accepted eagerly the philosophy of enlightenment from her early years, she failed to realize it in her policy. Instead she sent young Russians to Germany so that they could learn there new thoughts and modern sciences, and she also invited many famous german scholars to Russia. There were distinguished men such as the humanist Herder and the mathematician Euler and other scientists and historians among them. She supported that the advanced culture and science of Germany may be diffused into Russia. She also patronized western art. But on the other hand, she let the german immigrants in Russia not to be mingled with Russians but live separated in their own colonies, so that a harmonious relationship between the Germans and Russians could not be established. As time passed, the Germans had a higher standard of living than the Russians, which led to serious consequences that the Russians hated german immigrants and finally, in the 20th century, the descendants of the german immigrants had to be discriminated or to leave Russia. The number of german colonies in Russia was 304 with 100 thousand immigrants in the first years of immigration, while there were more than 6 thousand colonies in 1914, and more than 2.4 million Russian Germans in Russia on the eve of the First World War. But during the First-and Second World War the Russian Germans were more seriously discriminated and lots of them were purged or deported to internal exile and forced labor in Siberia and Central Asian areas.
At the time of the reunification of October 1990, Germany was supported by the policy of Soviet Union and carried therefore a pro-russian policy for a few years thereafter and expecially placed emphasis, cooperating with Russia, on increasing economic support to Russia in order to help the Russian Germans. And according to the german 'Grundgesetz'(fundamental law) lots of Germans were able to return to the german homeland of their ancestors. However the number of the returning Germans was too large to be accepted in Germany and they became too heavy a burden to the country. In 2011 the number of the Russian Germans in Germany reached 2.5~2.8 million, but they have at present as many difficulties as other immigrants in adjusting themselves to the german standard of living and suffer an identity crisis. And it is notable that the high number of Russian immigrants' self-segregating in certain neighborhoods hinders their social integration. Many of them have nowadays problems with crime, poverty and unemployment and so on. They say that they feel so discriminated when the native Germans regard them as "Economic migrants"m and them many of them prefer to return to Russia. At present the german government has difficulties with problems of refugees and Ukraine. Besides since the crisis of Crimea and Ukraine in 2014 Germany has been in the hostile relationship with Russia. Looking back to the history of the two countries, it is inevitable to conclude that the policies of Catherine II. definitely seems to have been the cause of emergence of those problems, namely she had annexed those territories by force and distorted, through immigration policy, the spread of population in those regions, which caused today the serious conflicts of nations in those regions. As the relationship of Germany and Russia has not yet got out of a tight conflict situation, there are gradually appearing several other opinions in Germany which are insisting that Germany should search for a solution in the german-russian bad relationship. There are in reality politicians and citizens who wish an improvement of that relationship. Therefore there are tasks which lie ahead of the leaders of the two countries that they also should look back to their past history and make their best efforts to find out a solution of improvement. Russia has, as a more multiracial nation than Germany, also have suffered long enough of conflicts of minority races and immigrations. By the way, german Chancelor Merkel expressed the importance of Catherine II. as a strong leader to win through these difficult times and saw the empress as her role model, while President Putin also recognized the leadership and the political achievements of the empress in the Russian Empire and expressed officially his hope for a friendly cooperation of the two countries with the symbol of this person in the future. The common interest for and respect to the empress seems therefore to be a good sign as a fundament for a future dialogue of the two leaders, but it is yet ambiguous what they each really imagine of the role of the empress. So in my opinion, it very important and meaningful that the two leaders meet up with each other as soon as possible and frankly discuss the merits and faults of the political and cultural heritages of the empress and find out a positive conclusion that may help both to restore the friendly relationship of both countries and solve together the present problems of Ukraine and Russian Germans. The development of the relationship of the two countries is also important to Korea, as Russia announced a "New East Policy” a few years ago in order to develop the Siberia and Far East area through the economic cooperation with Korea as well as with Europe, in which particularly relationship with the economically strong Germany is inevitable. The Korean government also announced the "Eurasia Initiative”project in 2013 which plans to get over the past disputes and discontinuity and to make a peaceful and prosperous Eurasian continent. Therefore Korea has to realize this fact and analyze the problems of german-russian relationship earnestly and also search possibilities that may helpful to counteract the effects of their relationship. I hope that this study would help people in other areas too, including scholars and politicians that are interested in the Eurasian situations and politics. I will also make efforts to continue my study in the future. And at the university where I have been lecturing German culture since many years, I would further inform the students who are also very much interested in the German history and culture and extend their attention and knowledge.