There are a number of persistent myths in our history, which often do not correspond to real facts. One of these myths is associated with the so-called Crimean War, in which Russia in 1853-1856. first encountered the united forces of the Western world. It is officially believed that Russia lost this war. But is it really so?
Historical reference. The cause of the Crimean War was the clash of interests of Russia, England, France and Austria in the Middle East and the Balkans. Leading European countries sought to divide Turkish possessions in order to expand their spheres of influence and sales markets. Turkey sought to take revenge for previous defeats in wars with Russia.
One of the main reasons for the emergence of military confrontation was the problem of revising the legal regime for the passage by the Russian fleet of the Mediterranean straits of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, enshrined in the London Convention of 1840-1841.
The reason for the start of the war was a dispute between the Orthodox and Catholic clergy about the belonging of the "Palestinian shrines" (Bethlehem Temple and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher), located on the territory of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1851, the Turkish sultan, incited by France, ordered the keys to the Bethlehem temple to be taken from the Orthodox priests and given to the Catholics. In response, Russia, breaking off diplomatic relations with Turkey, occupied the Danube principalities, and as a result, Turkey declared war on October 4, 1853.
Fearing the growing influence of Russia in the Balkans, England and France in 1853 concluded a secret agreement on a policy of opposing Russia's interests and began a diplomatic blockade.
The first period of the war: October 1853-March 1854 The Black Sea squadron under the command of Admiral Nakhimov in November 1853 completely destroyed the Turkish fleet in the bay of Sinop, taking prisoner the commander-in-chief. In the ground operation, the Russian army achieved significant victories in December 1853 - it crossed the Danube and threw the Turkish troops far back. In the Caucasus, Russian troops won a major victory at Bashkadylklar, frustrating the Turks' plans to seize Transcaucasia.
England and France, fearing the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, in March 1854 declared war on Russia. From March to August 1854, they launched attacks from the sea against the Russian ports on the Addan Islands, Odessa, the Solovetsky Monastery, Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka. Attempts at a naval blockade were unsuccessful.
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In September 1854, a 60-thousandth landing was landed on the Crimean peninsula with the aim of capturing the main base of the Black Sea Fleet - Sevastopol.
The first battle on the Alma River in September 1854 ended in failure for the Russian troops.
On September 13, 1854, the heroic defense of Sevastopol began, which lasted 11 months. By order of Nakhimov, the Russian sailing fleet, which could not resist the enemy's steam ships, was sunk at the entrance to the Sevastopol Bay.
The defense was led by admirals V. A. Kornilov, P. S. Nakhimov, V. I. Istomin, who died heroically during the assaults. The defenders of Sevastopol were L. N. Tolstoy, surgeon N. I. Pirogov.
Many participants in these battles earned the fame of national heroes: the military engineer E. I. Totleben, General S. A. Khrulev, sailors P. Koshka, I. Shevchenko, soldier A. Eliseev.
Russian troops suffered a series of setbacks in the battles of Inkerman in Evpatoria and on the Black River. On August 27, after a 22-day bombardment, an assault on Sevastopol was undertaken, after which Russian troops were forced to leave the city.
On March 18, 1856, the Paris Peace Treaty was signed between Russia, Turkey, France, England, Austria, Prussia and Sardinia. Russia lost its Black Sea bases and part of its fleet …
After the era of the Napoleonic wars, Russia was the only empire in the world that did not have territorial claims to any of its neighbors and did not intend to further expand its borders, which was directly stated in the 1920s. XIX century. in a series of international treaties. This position did not mean geopolitical concessions throughout the "rest of the world" and the Crimean War became a "defensive" attempt by Russia to maintain its influence in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
The Crimean War was the largest, after the era of the Napoleonic Wars, a military conflict of world significance in the 19th century, which has every right to be called a proto-world war, since it directly or indirectly involved political regimes that controlled, geographically and politically, more than half of the globe with appropriate material and human resources.
Hitler's predecessors
The war, which, by inertia, continues to be called Crimean in our country (and in the West - Eastern) and thus unwittingly narrows the scale of psychological perception of events, by no means was confined only within the designated geographical framework, but was waged practically throughout the Russian sea, and, in part, land borders, having a huge theater of military operations from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean, from the Black Sea to the Caucasus, where, over vast expanses, dozens of geographical points of the Russian Empire were attacked (namely, the Aland Islands, Abo, Sveaborg, Kronstadt, Solovetsky Islands, Kola, Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka, Odessa, Kinburn, Berdyansk, Genichesk, Yeisk, Mariupol, Taganrog, Novorossiysk, Anapa, Fanagoria, Evpatoria, Balaklava, Sevastopol, Kerch and dozens of other points).
The unprecedentedness of the Crimean epic, among other factors, lay in the fact that the main goals of the war on the part of the coalition opposing Russia were not only to limit Russian geopolitical influence, but to directly dismember Russia: transferring Finland and the Aland Islands to Sweden; Austria - Moldavia, Wallachia and Bessarabia; Turkey - Transcaucasia and Crimea; Prussia-Courland, Estland and Livonia, the restoration of the Polish kingdom (with the lands of Ukraine and Belarus), the creation of an independent (from Russia) "Circassia", etc. Russia, in fact, cut itself off from the Black and Baltic seas and lost its influence in the Balkans and the Middle East …
It was these strategic plans that were developed by the British Cabinet of Ministers, headed by Lord Palmerston. This British politician called his plan "the perfect ideal of war." It should be noted that Napoleon, for example, did not plan to partition Russia, hoping, unlike the Western strategists of the mid-19th century, to make it “only” an obedient ally, following in the wake of his own “French-European” policy …
The dispute over the holy places in Palestine was not at all a pretext, but one of the main reasons for the Crimean War, given the factor and level of religious consciousness of Russian society of that era, which placed special eschatological and messianic aspirations on the war, which were already followed by military and economic aspirations. And the goal of Russia (at least officially declared by it) - the preservation of the previous status of the Holy Places - was fully achieved, and, what is important, formalized, and exists to this day (!).
The Crimean War was not a clash, as indicated in the overwhelming majority of educational and popular science publications, Russia with England, France, Turkey and Sardinia, which joined them, which also leads to a serious, when looking at the map of the world, "visual-psychological" delusion in the perception of events. It was a confrontation between the largest empires of the globe: the Russian Empire, on the one hand (without allies), and the British Empire, which covered almost half of the world, “over which the sun never set”; The French Empire, which had numerous colonies in almost all parts of the world; The Ottoman Empire, which occupied vast areas from the Balkans to modern Ethiopia and from Gibraltar to the Persian Gulf.
Thus, in the Crimean War, Russia was opposed by three powerful empires with resource and human potential many times greater than its capabilities. The state of Sardinia (which does not exist now), participating in a hostile coalition and thus "asserting itself" in the international arena, should also be taken into account, since at that moment it owned Northern Italy - the most economically developed part of the country and put it on the "Eastern Front "15,000 soldiers. It should be noted that the growing Prussia (which soon united the German lands) was preparing to enter the war (against Russia); Sweden, which dreamed of a historic revenge after its own geopolitical failure in the 18th century, and the Austrian Empire (saved several years before the Crimean War from collapse by Russian troops who suppressed the Hungarian uprising),It was also practically at the zenith of its power and concentrated on the border with Russia (in Galicia and Transylvania) a huge army for a possible invasion.
Accordingly, in the armies of the powers opposing Russia there were representatives of dozens of peoples and ethnic groups from all over the globe: in addition to the British (with the Scots and Irish), the French and the Turks, there were Moroccans, Libyans, Egyptians, Tunisians, New Zealanders, Australians, etc., as well as a lot of volunteers from all over the world (mainly Poles, Hungarians, Croats). Note, in fairness, that foreign "soldiers of fortune" were in the ranks of the Russian army (as, for example, the Argentine general Benigno Villanueva).
During the Crimean War, Russia also confronted its internal enemies: the highlanders of the Caucasus who had become more active, with the support of the British, who, in addition to "ordinary" hostilities, tried to seize Yekaterinodar, as well as the Crimean Tatars, who (then for the first time) committed what in the 20th century would be called " an act of collective betrayal”, i.e. who provided support to the occupation forces in Crimea …
Was Russia backward?
For about a year, the troops of the three empires with colossal losses storm a medium-sized Russian city (Sevastopol), lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers, occupy half (!) Of it and declare it … the greatest (?!) Success (after which, in honor of the victories won, they begin to enter toponymy of European cities, Russian names: Alma Bridge, Sevastopol Boulevard in Paris, etc.). At the same time, in Transcaucasia, the obviously weakest Russian units crush the superior Turkish forces, capturing Kars and Bayazet, thereby reducing military operations into a confident "combat draw." All naval operations (raiding and landing) of the Allies along the perimeter of the Russian maritime borders ended in failure. Many ships of the allies were blown up by Russian mines.
It is quite indicative that the governments of the countries of the anti-Russian coalition, their high military commanders did not even think to “build on success” by heading further to Russia”, since the most desperate and belligerent heads in the West understood the suicidal nature of this step. In addition, having exhausted their mobilization potential by the summer of 1855, the allies are taking rather risky measures: the British, for example, are reducing the garrisons of Malta and Gibraltar, and are also preparing to send part of the troops from India to Russia, which threatened to weaken the most important geostrategic directions and internal unrest in the subordinate territories …
The factor of the military-technical backwardness of Russia, which is often exaggerated in historiography, and, due to this, its unpreparedness for a large-scale war, to some extent, took place: in Russia there really was a lack (not by the fact of availability, but by the required number) of steam ships, rifled weapons (which were in sufficient quantity, but they were armed, in view of, obviously, errors of the then logistics, exclusively internal garrisons, which is one of the mysteries of the war). But in the specific realities of the war, these shortcomings were significantly leveled, since in many respects the military-tactical and strategic thought did not go far from the level of the era of the Napoleonic wars (combat formation and deployment, maneuvering, attack and defense formations, etc.).
The author will take the liberty of claiming that the differences between smooth-bore and rifled weapons of that era did not give special advantages to rifled weapons with possible effective shooting (from weapons of both types) by a maximum of 150-200 meters, differing only in the aiming scheme. The notorious thesis that Russian (smooth-bore) rifles fired at 600 steps, and British fittings at 1200, which was one of the decisive factors of the war, with all the obviousness of tactical and technical data, does not stand up to criticism due to the physical impossibility of shooters to hit targets on such distances (if this is not an elephant hunt in the desert, but a struggle on rough and dug terrain). The Russian artillery of that time was at a quite decent level, as was the science of land-underground and sea mine warfare.
During the war years, the Russian army did not collapse and did not flinch, but, on the contrary, showed itself as an exceptionally combat-ready, professional and well-coordinated community (as opposed to the thieving Russian commissariat), which possessed high moral and psychological stability, including high losses, which was not observed in the armies of opponents, where there was a high percentage of "deviators" and deserters. " Less than a third of the Russian troops took part directly in the battles, forced to cover the borders in the southeast, northwest, and other directions, protecting the country from possible invasions. As noted by the researcher of the topic A. V. Kukharuk: "the mobilization potential of the Russian Empire made it possible, despite the losses, to deploy an army of almost two million."
By the end of the war, the number of mobilized and drafted into the people's militia (which practically did not take part in hostilities) was more than three times higher than the numbers in the initial period of the war. The "quality" category - "Nikolaev soldier" - has become synonymous with the highest training, discipline and an example of worthy execution of military duty. “The war was lost,” noted the historian O. R. Airapetov, “but without colossal defeats. The lessons of the war … were taken into account, having carried out the military reform of DA Milyutin in the French manner, as a result of which everything that was good in the Nikolaev army was destroyed "…
The only thing we have lost is in the so-called information war. It is curious that the brightest and most organizing public opinion in Europe in the "necessary" direction, articles, brochures, etc. were written then not at all by Europeans, but by Turkish intelligence officers under the cover of journalists in Belgium: Rustem-bey and Said-bey. All of them with the necessary information and subsidies himself the Minister of War of the Ports Ali Reza Pasha. Western public opinion was presented with a brightly and talentedly sketched “collective portrait” of Russia as a European and world monster, allegedly pursuing everything “advanced” and “progressive” …
Themselves declared defeat
The financial and economic situation of Russia during the war years, even though it seriously worsened, did not look catastrophic, as, for example, in Turkey, which finally “sat down” on foreign loans and, as a result, lost its financial stability and foreign policy independence. The economies of England and France were equally affected and there were signs of internal turmoil; Moreover, the armies of these countries have never known such a number of deserters as during the years of the "victorious" Crimean War, which is not surprising, given the colossal difference in the moral and psychological motivation of the opposing sides.
Despite the rather modest result of the war for the opponents of Russia, fixed by the Paris Peace Treaty (and numerous disputes in later historiography about the real and imaginary winners), the phenomenon of the Crimean War also lies in the peculiar perception of its events by the "Russian - Soviet - Russian" society, which throughout For more than a century and a half, most of it is convinced that the Crimean epic is nothing more than a severe and humiliating defeat caused by the negative factors mentioned above …
For the Russian society of the 19th century, already accustomed to the constant (with rare exceptions) victories of the Russian army over the past 150 years and still in the euphoria of the last triumph of 1812-1815, very controversial, from many points of view, a loss in the Crimean campaign meant shock and a real tragedy, which, for many, consisted in the impossibility of "embedding" the Crimean "construction" into this collective victorious mentality.
Paradoxically, Soviet society is also picking up the "baton" of the negative perception of the Crimean events, but on new ideological grounds that asserted the depravity and unviability of the old system and "directively" saw patterns in its military defeat - which in itself for many years excluded the very possibility of objective consideration events.
Alas, modern Russian society, despite the many facts brought to the attention today, contradicting the stable "defeatist" theory, continues to be in a state of the former moral and psychological inertia of thinking regarding the views on the conduct and results of the Crimean War.
The popular definition of V. I. Lenin, who repeated, in general outline, the theses of Engels (then - a military observer of British (!) Newspapers) that the Crimean War showed the "rottenness and impotence" of Tsarist Russia, unfortunately remains, as before, “Colorful” and stereotyped in the general description of the conflict. Although, in fact, Russia managed to withstand quite adequately in a fierce battle with the strongest powers in the world; preserve the status quo of the Holy Places in Palestine and obtain acceptable proposals for peace from utterly exhausted and demoralized enemies …