The Crimean War of 1853-1856 in the light of the "memorial turn": reflecting on the book by the English historian Orlando Figes "Crimea. The Last Crusade"

Karagodin Andrey Vasil'evich PhD in History Senior Lecturer, the Department of Source Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119992, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Lomonosovskii Prospekt, 27 k.4, aud. E445 avkaragodin@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

 Today, when the escalated international tensions are accompanied by unprecedented information "noise", in the flow of which reliable data are mixed with propaganda manipulations, it seems very timely to update the historical memory of the confrontations between Russia and Europe of past eras. After all, as the outstanding Russian historian N.M. Karamzin wrote, "nothing is new under the moon:// what is, was, will be forever.//And before blood flowed like a river, // and before man wept, // and before he was a victim of fate, // hope, weakness, vice" ^[10].

So, it is interesting to recall the Crimean War of 1853-56. Now half-forgotten by society, this war was of great importance for the fate of the continent and was considered the main conflict of the century before the outbreak of the First World War. The "eastern question" underlying the Crimean War, the fate of the Ottoman Empire inhabited by representatives of different faiths, was, according to many historians, only a reason for the conflict to begin. Its real reason was the intensified rivalry between Russia and the West for participation in the fate of the continent as a whole, full-fledged defense of their interests. The results of the war, which ended in 1856 with the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty, did not satisfy either side. The Crimean War also became the first "total war" in history, accompanied by a large-scale humanitarian crisis: at least seven hundred thousand soldiers died in battle or from diseases. The casualties among the civilian population were large-scale.

 In Russian historiography, three stages of understanding the Crimean War can be distinguished. They are united by the unconditional recognition of the heroism of the Russian army, but the causes and driving forces of the conflict were interpreted in different ways.

As the historian and writer V.X.Kondaraki wrote in a multi-volume book published on the centenary of the annexation of Crimea to Russia in 1883, one of the volumes of which was entirely devoted to the Crimean War, "About the Crimean War, which undoubtedly constituted the renaissance of Russia, we can say that it rediscovered before the world that incomparably valiant spirit of courage, reason and the steadfastness of her sons, which is characteristic of a great warlike people and of which no nation can be proud with such absolute right. In our opinion, the loss of the battlefield has nothing to do with the nation if it remains indifferent, considering the success of the enemy an accidental trick.... the martial greatness of the people consists in preserving in all circumstances the spirit of cheerfulness with the consciousness of their advantages and not humiliating themselves with cowardice in a desperate situation. And since the Russian people have always lived in these beliefs, this nation will remain invincible as long as it preserves this sacred heritage of its ancestors and honors the one power as a divine gift, as the soul of the people, as a banner of glory, as a fulcrum"^{[11, vol. 5, p.4]}. The pre-revolutionary historical literature attributed the military failures of the Crimean War, as a rule, to the mistakes of individual military leaders and the "vicissitudes of military happiness."

In Soviet historiography, the Crimean War was also recognized as one of the largest historical events of the nineteenth century, but it was emphasized that it vividly revealed the contrast between the greatness of the people who performed an unforgettable feat in the fight against foreign invaders and the ineffectiveness of tsarism. V.I. Lenin's phrase is known that the Crimean War "exposed all the rottenness and impotence of serfdom Russia" ^{[14, vol. 20, p. 173]}. According to the author of the book about the Crimean War published in 1956 (by the centenary of the end of the war) in the popular science series of the USSR Academy of Sciences by I.V.Bestuzhev-Lada, "the aggressive plans of tsarism and the ruling circles of England and France failed in this war; the glaring vices of the military systems of tsarism, bonapartism and the English oligarchy were revealed. But at the same time, this war showed what a great force is the people who stood up to defend their homeland from foreign invaders, what amazing courage and combat skills ordinary people are able to show, even put by the backwardness of their country and the incompetence of the supreme command in extremely difficult conditions of struggle" ^{[2, p.5]}. Guided by Marxist-the Leninist paradigm, Soviet historiography, represented by the works of E.V. Tarle and other historians ^{[20, 13, 4]}, emphasized the backwardness of the Russian state in comparison with its opponents, much more economically developed. Emphasis was placed on the essence of the Crimean War from the point of view of class theory, socio-economic causes, peculiarities of international relations, military and technical aspects of Russia's failures, etc.

In post-Soviet historiography, there has been a departure from hypercritical assessments of the "rotten tsarist regime", a desire to reach the level of a multidimensional and balanced historical explanation. According to O.R. Airapetov, published in 2017, "the author is far from wanting to blame Emperor Nicholas or the "treacherous Albion" or anyone else for everything that happened. History of foreign policy... sets before us the task of explaining the fact in its broad historical context. In this case, this means the need to take into account a variety of factors that influenced the development of events: ... diplomatic, military, financial history of events, decision-making process, political interests and opportunities of the main participants in the process. A clear and clear understanding of what Russia could and could not achieve in these conditions, an attempt to explain the steps that were taken by the imperial government — these are the tasks set for this work" ^{[1, p.5]}.

However, neither pre-revolutionary, Soviet, nor post-Soviet Russian literature paid special attention to the memory of the Crimean War, the existence in the public consciousness of the image of war in various periods of history, the representation of this memory in the sources of historical memory created over the past century and a half.

The fact that the Crimean War has been pushed to the periphery of public consciousness and historical memory today may be both a consequence and a reason for the lack of research of this kind.

Speaking about the foreign historiography of the Crimean War, Russian historians have traditionally pointed out as its main drawback the subjectivity of assessments and the emphasis on purely military history. According to I.V.Bestuzhev-Lada (1956), "the Crimean War was created in the West....a whole mountain of literature, undeservedly praising the French Emperor Napoleon III and the English Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, but obscuring the most important thing - the heroic feat of the peoples of Russia and, above all, the Russian people defending their homeland... The ruling circles of London and Paris could in no way allow the history of the Crimean War to appear before readers in its true form... the distortion of the history of the Crimean War in bourgeois historical literature was explained in different countries for various reasons, but everywhere with the same goal — to strengthen the prestige of the ruling circles of this power" ^{[2, p.5]}.

It is curious that the Western historiography of the Crimean War received similar criticism in a recent (2011) monograph by the English historian Orlando Figes, who writes: "The Crimean War has become mainly the lot of British military historians, and often not professionals, but amateurs, constantly retelling the same stories (the attack of the Light Brigade, the mistakes of British commanders, the exploits of nurse Florence Nightingale), practically without discussing either the religious origins of the war, the history of the Eastern question, the specifics of Christian-Muslim relations in the Black Sea region, or the influence of European Russophobia, without a fair assessment of which it is difficult to understand the true meaning of the conflict" ^{[21, pp. 17-18]}.

On the book dedicated to the Crimean War by O. Fayges "Crimea. The Last Crusade", from where the above quote is taken, it makes sense to dwell in more detail: after all, this is the first book by an authoritative English historian translated into Russian (it was published in Russia in 2021). 

Meanwhile, Professor O. Figes of Birkbeck College, University of London, is the author of several voluminous monographs on the history of Russia in the XIX and XX centuries. ^{[24, 25, 26, 27, 28]}. Popularity and authority were brought to him by the award-winning book "National Tragedy. History of the Russian Revolution, 1891-1924" (1996) ^[24]. The originality of this work lies in the fact that Figes pushes the chronological framework of revolutionary events, departs from the traditional depiction of the revolution as a confrontation of political forces and considers it as a complex interweaving of social factors and "individual tragedies". Narratives about the storming of the Winter and the Kronstadt mutiny are supplemented by an analysis of the socio-economic contradictions that developed in pre-revolutionary Russia, and several biographies are superimposed on top - Maxim Gorky, Prince Lviv, General Brusilov, peasant activist Sergei Semenov, which are "conducted" through these dramatic decades. This monograph by Fages is sometimes recognized as "the most important book of Western historiography about the Russian Revolution" ^[8], and the proposed historiography simultaneously in three planes – political narrative, analysis of structures and vicissitudes of individual destinies – is now considered the "gold standard" of historical science ^{[23, p. 291]}.

In the West, O. Fayges' book "Natasha's Dance" (2003) is also well known, in which the author explains to the Western audience the dualism of the Westernized elite and the "deep people" defining the imperial period of Russia's history through the Tolstoy metaphor in the title. In the most recent work by O. Fayges "The Europeans" (2019)  the relations of the writer and nobleman Ivan Turgenev, pianist Polina Viardot and her husband, entrepreneur Louis Viardot are used by Figes as an illustration of the formation of a cross-border "European culture" by the second half of the XIX century. According to the authors of a recent review, this work reflects current historiographical trends: "a new narrative", "the history of representations" and "a new biographical history" ^[19].

O. Fages' book "Crimea: The Last Crusade" was published in England in 2011. At the beginning of his work, the author draws the reader's attention to the rich English historiographical tradition of studying the Crimean Campaign (works by A. Taylor, E. Lambert, F. Kagan, K. Ponting, D. S. Curtiss, etc.). Nevertheless, the monograph is postulated by the author as the first comprehensive study, for which the sources of all the opposing powers were involved; Figes speaks of his intention to consider the war from all sides, to identify its geopolitical and socio-cultural causes, which, according to the author, they have traditionally been underestimated by historians.

The book is not accidentally given the subtitle "The Last Crusade". Scrupulously describing both the prehistory of the war and its course, and especially the reaction to it in the public opinion of the West, quoting newspapers, letters and diaries of those years, Figes again, as in a book about the Russian Revolution, works on several levels at once, demonstrating, in addition to the actual course of hostilities, how the Crimean War It was covered in the Western press (for the first time in history, news was delivered directly from the scene of the incident by reporters and photographers to the world capitals) - in particular, it quotes pamphlets and cartoons on how "the Russian tyrant threatens the world order", and "brute force" – "rules" and "values" of the enlightened world.

According to Fages, for England and France, the war against Russia, which began because of a dispute between Catholics and Orthodox about the ownership of Christian shrines in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and was justified by the protection of the Ottoman Empire from the "Russian threat", became a convenient reason to solve their foreign trade and domestic political tasks. The British were concerned about the expanding rivalry with Russia in Central Asia, and also used the war to promote their trade interests in the eastern Mediterranean. For Napoleon III, the war was an opportunity to regain France's political influence on the continent. At the same time, on the part of Western countries, the real causes of the war were covered by the rhetoric of a high-flown crusade "in defense of freedom and European civilization from barbaric and despotic Russia, whose aggressive expansion allegedly posed a real danger not only to the West, but also to the entire Christian world" ^{[21, p.19]}. at the height of the war, in 1854 in Paris, a book of cartoons by 22-year-old Gustave Dore "The History of Holy Russia", in which the entire past of Russia, from Rurik to the Battle of Sevastopol, is depicted as a cartoon circus tent stretching for centuries. This work, characterized by experts not as "history", but as a deliberate "parody of history", nevertheless, was a huge success with the public (and was withdrawn from sale as soon as peace negotiations began)^{[3, 6]}. A large-scale Russophobic campaign was also launched in the English press.

It was the deep Russophobia of Europe and especially of England," says Figes, "that became a fundamental factor in the Crimean War. This Russophobia, an irrational fear of Russia as a country (to quote Figes) "wild, aggressive and by its very nature aggressive, but at the same time cunning and insidious in order to gain trust and use "invisible force" against the West" ^{[21, p.11]}, dominated, according to the author, in the minds of The "enlightened society" of the Old World for centuries, intensified after the revolutions of the thirties and forties that swept through Europe, was warmed up by the Polish uprising, peaked during the Crimean War, but did not go away after it, safely stepping into the twentieth century: it is enough to recall the times of the Cold War.

An interesting part of Figes' book is also her epilogue, dedicated to the analysis of the social, political and cultural consequences of the Crimean campaign. The author points out that the events of the Eastern War played a significant role in the formation of the Russian national identity, increasing hostility to the West that sided with the Turks and making a significant contribution to the construction of the image of a martyr warrior who sacrificed himself for the Fatherland. The author pays attention to the ideologization and memorialization of the war, the existence of the image of Sevastopol and its defenders in the Russian public consciousness.

O.Fayges' book "Crimea. The Last Crusade", like his other works, is still poorly introduced into the domestic historiographical circulation. In almost the only (but thorough) review of "Crimea" published in Russian literature in 2016, its author A.A.Krivolapov, with a certain degree of criticality assessing the narrative and thoughts of Figes about the course of the Crimean campaign, the causes and consequences of various events of this war, as well as the representativeness of Figes' work with sources and historiography, concludes: "the British professor is more concerned not with the political and military-strategic, but with the cultural, everyday and anthropological aspect of the Crimean War" ^{[12, p. 296]}.

However, the fact that the author of the review seemed rather a disadvantage, today, five years after the review was published, can be presented, on the contrary, and as the dignity of O. Fages' work. The fact is that recently there has been a "memorial turn" in world historical science – a shift of interest from the reconstruction of historical facts to the study of historical memory, images of the past shared by society, otherwise called "places of memory" ^[18].

This term was introduced into historiographical circulation by the French historian P. Nora. From 1984 to 1992, Pierre Nora coordinated the efforts of almost one hundred and twenty historians, most of them French, who were tasked with capturing the "image of France" in one hundred and twenty-eight articles. The work was called "France. Places of memory" ^[22]. The task, which seemed strange to many, was such only at first glance. By the last decades of the XX century, in conditions when modernization led to radical changes in the social structure and to the disappearance of groups - carriers of natural memory, primarily the peasantry, all the foundations of what was called France, which were firmly in the public consciousness, began to disappear. According to P. Nora, "the fear that we would forget our past, that it would disappear, get lost in the bustle of the present, was getting stronger and stronger...these problems are remembered when another "war of memory" breaks out" ^{[5, p.47]}.

P. Nora considered that in such conditions it is necessary to actualize historical memory through the medium of "places of memory". A place of memory, according to P. Nora, is "any significant phenomenon, material or immaterial in nature, which, by a wave of the human will or under the influence of time, has acquired the status of a symbol in the memorial heritage of a particular community" ^{[22, pp.26-27]}. In relation to France, the "place of memory" is the Marseillaise, the French baguette, Joan of Arc, the national tricolor, Burgundy wine, the Gallic cock, and Versailles. In other words, the "place of memory" is a "trace", both speculative and material, with the help of which the connection of the past with the present is established. When this connection is broken, historians should step in, who should study the tradition of memory and reconstruct "places of memory". It is no longer about restoring the history of events, but about reproducing their image in the public mentality, evaluating and re-evaluating their significance; not about the past as it was, but its presence in the present. Thus, through the mutual influence of memory and history, memory is re-actualized, becomes anew a source of comprehension of the past. According to the definition of L.P. Repina, whose name is associated with the reflection of the "memorial turn" in Russian historical science, "shared images of the past in the form of various cultural stereotypes, symbols, myths act as interpretative models that allow an individual and a social group to navigate the world around them and in specific situations of the present" ^{[17, p.5]}.

Today, historical memory research is in favor with historians, including domestic ones, conferences are held, collections are published: let's call at least the collections "Empire and Nation in the Mirror of Historical Memory" (2011) and "The Politics of Memory in Modern Russia and Eastern European countries: actors, Institutions, Narratives" (2020) ^{[7, 15]}. Historians today no longer so much explain the past as "show how ideas about it are formed and function in the present" ^{[9, p.62]}.Updating the memory of past events, emphasizing "places of memory"  it also becomes an extremely effective means of actual foreign and domestic policy of the state, reflection of society about its past, present and future, an instrument for solving political, state tasks transmitted to the public consciousness through the education system, literature, art, and the press. Russian officials are also directly talking about this today ^[16].

An accentuated look at the memorial tradition of the Crimean War in the participating countries, proposed by O. Figes in the final chapter of his book "Crimea. The Last Crusade", convinces that in all countries, including Russia, the memory of the war was concentrated on the exploits of ordinary soldiers and talented military leaders, who sometimes acted in unfavorable circumstances, correcting the miscalculations of the high command. However, if in Russia these exploits were carried out in the context of the war for the Fatherland, which, perhaps, was not always conducted effectively, but was unequivocally fair, then in France, Italy, Turkey there were problems with explaining the context of the exploits – therefore the war was soon "forgotten", pushed to the periphery of memory.

But in England, which traditionally sees itself as a "world policeman" who stands "for all good against all bad," the memory of these exploits, on the contrary, was inscribed in a clear explanatory canvas and well preserved.  It is not for nothing that the images and mottos born in England during the Crimean War continue to influence English popular culture for centuries. So, the expression thin red line – "thin red line", born during the battle for Balaclava, became a common idiom and a symbol of the bravery of the English soldier. In Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tommy" (1890), the author calls "a thin red line of heroes" already all British infantrymen. One can also recall two film adaptations of the novel of the same name by James Jones (1962), dedicated to the Battle of Mount Austin, which was part of the Battle for Guadalcanal Island in the Pacific Theater of World War II. In the film "The Thin Red Line" directed by Terrence Malick (1998), American soldiers were played by Sean Penn, Nick Nolte and other popular Hollywood actors. During and after the Crimean War, English schoolchildren were taught that England opposed the "Russian bear", defending freedom and truth from the onslaught of "barbaric" brute force. The idea that "John Bull invariably comes to the aid of the weak, protecting them from tyrants and hooligans" has become part of the propaganda national narrative of Britain.  It was re-adopted during the First and Second World Wars. The rhetoric of the Crimean War is still used in propaganda without any special modifications to this day: suffice it to recall how on February 23, 2022, British Defense Minister Ben Wallis publicly said: "170 years ago, Britain kicked Russia's ass in Crimea, and can repeat it" ^[29].

It is obvious that the memory of the Crimean War of 1853-1856, bearing in mind its consonance with the international agenda, needs to be updated primarily in Russia, where the historical memory of the Crimean War is largely limited today to the borders of Sevastopol, while remaining essentially a phenomenon of a regional nature, although it has the undoubted potential to become a "place of memory" (according to P.Nora) for the whole of Russia. It is not for nothing that an enlightened observer has even a superficial look at the information background accompanying the current aggravation of the international situation causes direct analogies with the propaganda of the Crimean War – to those who naively believe that for the first time in history Russia is accused of allegedly encroaching on the "norms" and "rules" of the world order by its "indecent" actions, it is advisable to look at the editorials of the English press during the Crimean campaign and at the cartoons of Gustave Doret's Russian history from his "forbidden" book to make sure that such invectives are not the first hundred years old.

It would be possible to carry out such an actualization using the methodology of identifying and reconstructing "places of memory" developed by P. Nora. As "places of memory", in his understanding, we could characterize the city of Sevastopol itself, and the fields of former battles surrounding it (Alminskaya Valley, Balaklava, Inkerman), and monuments to Russian and European soldiers erected in the Crimea, now drowning among vineyards, and the iconography of the war captured in fine art, and individual episodes of military glory, and the names of heroes like engineer Totleben and sailor Cats, and Tolstoy's "Sevastopol Stories", and much more. After all, as P. Nora said, "places of memory are nothing but traces preserved in culture.... this could be called a mirror memory if the mirrors reflected not our own image, but something else, because what we seek to discover is a difference, and in the appearance of this difference is a sudden glimmer of an elusive identity" ^{[9, p.38]}.

By studying and updating the memory of important events and processes of the past, professional historians are able to inspire society with the idea that the same events can be told in different ways, and in addition to the truth of historical fact, there is also the truth of historical memory, explanations and interpretations. It is the duty of a professional historian to identify the "living traces" of the past that make memory "speak", making it more lively, open to disputes about the past, and therefore about the present and the future: that's what you think about first of all today, reflecting on O. Fayges' book about the Crimean War.