歐亞帝國的邊境 下：衝突、融合與崩潰，16-20世紀大國興亡的關鍵

The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands

by Alfred J. Rieber, 李易安 (Translator)

來自邊境的警告

你知道嗎？從19世紀初到20世紀中葉為止，無數戰爭與世界危機，全都爆發於帝國的邊緣。從波羅的海到日本海之間，克里米亞戰爭、甲午戰爭、日俄戰爭、一二次世界大戰、國共內戰以及韓戰，皆爆發在這些邊境熱點，甚至冷戰的開始與結束也是如此。



歷史悠久的大帝國

近五百年來，歐亞大陸上曾有過五個大帝國，哈布斯堡王朝、俄羅斯帝國、鄂圖曼帝國、伊朗帝國以及清帝國，他們在不斷變動的軍事邊境上進行擴張，並以戰爭、外交和文化手段彼此對抗，而受統治的臣民也努力維繫自身文化、捍衛自主權。這些帝國的統治相當實際且有彈性，懂得利用征服、移墾、改宗與收編菁英來讓帝國延續。不過，既然各大帝國能在歐亞邊境上彼此對抗好幾世紀，又為何在進入二十世紀後，短短十年間一一崩解？



轉型失敗的後果

在波羅的海東岸及南岸地區、多瑙河中下游地帶、東歐大平原、高加索地峽、外裏海地區及內亞草原，帝國在這些邊緣交錯之地遭遇軍事上的失利，各自開始進行無數改革。為了維持統治，帝國開始接受西歐的憲政思想、軍事改革、文化實踐和經濟滲透，也建造超越族群的帝國意識型態，但接受新思想的人民卻無法再認同帝國的統治和制度，最終導致它們都在一九一一年至一九二三年間因為革命和戰爭而相繼瓦解。



生活在帝國的邊緣

有帝國就有邊緣，我們生活的臺灣，也長期處於帝國的邊緣，從明、清到中國皆可說是如此。在邊緣地帶有文化交流，更有許多文明衝突，在一次次的軍事征伐裡，不見得能促使族群的融合，而可能把各具特徵的族群區隔開來。舊帝國已經在上世紀崩解，新的無形帝國仍在繼續，邊緣究竟等同於失去資源，或是更具彈性與生存力，都值得我們從前人的經驗一一驗證。

Genres: History

484 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2014

About the author

Alfred J. Rieber has been teaching and writing Russian and Soviet history for more than fifty years. He was a participant in the first year of the Soviet-American cultural exchange in 1958-59 and has returned to the Soviet Union and Russia many times to lecture and conduct archival research. He began teaching at Northwestern and then moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he taught for twenty–five years and chaired the History Department for ten years, now holding the title of Professor Emeritus. For the past twenty-two years he has taught at Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary where he was also chair of the History Department for four years, and upon retirement was elected by the university Senate as University Professor Emeritus. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and Columbia University. In 1966 he was awarded the E. Harris Harbison Prize of the Danforth Foundation as one of the ten best teachers in the U.S. He has won additional teaching awards at Penn and CEU where he was elected professor of the year by the entire student body in 1997 and 1998. The American Philosophical Society awarded him the Henry C. Moe Prize in 1985.

Reviews

[Scott McScotty · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the outset, Rieber begins with the main argument that most conflicts originate in the borderlands of empires and his work is divided cogently into subsections that follow the ideologies, instruments of national power, borderland dynamics, and crises of the Eurasian powers from the 16th century through WWI. The bulk of his discussion includes the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Qing, Safavid, and British empires. Prussia and later the German empire was included as a peripheral mention in the contestation for the Eurasian borderland within the book. Not given its own subsections, Rieber limits Prussian and German interaction to the late 18th century partitions of Poland, the influence of Baltic Germans in Russian society and foreign policy decisions, and the German intervention during Russia’s Civil War and Intervention.
Rieber focused on three main overall themes throughout the work, which included the complexity of state-building Eurasia, persistence of problems that geographical and cultural diversity posed to the rulers and the ruled in their different aspirations, and the variety of responses – reform, repression, revolt – that they devised to resolve these problems. This work serves as a launch point for his comprehensive research of the Soviet Union’s unique experience in the borderlands, Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia. Having read this book previously, this provided me with a full understanding of these three overall themes applied to the Russian Empire as well as the Soviet Union.
The author outlines two types of frontiers as they relate to great powers of the time, an inner cultural frontier faced toward the center and an outer inherently unstable military frontier facing territories occupied by rival powers. As my research and career focus lies with the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and present day Russian Federation, my attention was drawn to concepts relating to these entities throughout the reading. Rieber describes the outer inherently unstable military frontier of the Russian Empire in great detail. The work includes Russia’s wavering policy of pan-slavism and being champions of Orthodoxy, mixing religious (orthodox), national (Great Russian), and Ethnic (Slavic) elements in various combinations throughout the 18th and 19th centuries to secure its foothold in the borderlands of Serbia, Galicia, South Caucasus, Crimea, Bessarabia, the Kresy, and Trans-Caspia (Central Asia).
While WWI spelled the end of the imperial era, Rieber argues that the new nation-states found roots in the previous empires. The dynastic idea was dead, replaced with the concept of leaders or a secular ruler. Their legitimacy and power was now derived from political theology and personal charisma, but ideological regimes had roots in imperial past. New rulers adopted some of the same techniques of nationalizing their rule over ethnic populations, as in Stalin’s idea of “nationalist in form socialist in content”, borrowed in part from Austro-Marxists.
Rieber divides imperial institutions into the military, bureaucracy, and ruling elites. He describes these as the supporting elements to the imperial ideology. Imperial institutions are described as a three-part strategy of varying weights based on the borderland issue at hand. There is an evolution of imperial rule consisting of concessions and bargaining alternating with coercion and repression. The reactions by groups in the borderlands ranged from armed resistance through passive acceptance to active cooperation with authorities. The military, bureaucracy, and local ruling elites were exercised according to the specific issue at hand. Until the mid-19th century, the Russian military was utilized extensively and performed excellently, serving as mediator to the Prussian-Habsburg rivalry, clearing Ottoman Turks from the northern black sea, establishing a Russian presence on the Danube River (allowing influence in Balkans), and expelling the Ottomans and Iranians from the South Caucasus. Russia utilized the German local elites to integrate the Baltic littoral successfully in the 18th century. The center gave privileges and language rights to German landowners (Baltic Barons) and gave them access to ruling elite. Peter I also encouraged their commissioning into the Russian officer corps.
Rieber succinctly provides his view on why Russia was one of the more effective empires in the ruling of numerous frontiers. He offers that the ascendency of Russia in controlling the borderlands is due to four main reasons; the creation by Peter the Great and continuation of Catherine II of the ability to rapidly move and finance military actions, the general success of the cooption of elites (except the Poles), extensive colonization in the Pontic Steppe, Trans Caspia, and Inner Asia, and a reforming tradition that enabled the ruling elite to restore control and rebuild its military and financial institutions after internal revolts (as in Poland), and defeats in the Crimean and Russo-Japanese Wars
Portions of Rieber’s work dwells on areas extensively researched previously by others. In the portions of the work where Rieber describes the relations between the British and Russian empires, his writing does not offer much beyond what has been expansively provided in Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game, with Hopkirk’s work being referenced throughout the section.
Rieber’s final chapter on post-imperial legacy draws comparisons between imperial and post-imperial policies in the borderlands. He comprehensively describes the objectives of these policies - assimilation, resettlement, expulsion - and the responses of minorities, which ranged from accommodation to resistance. His description of the interplay among the Russian, Habsburg, and Ottoman empires in the Balkans offers an extensive look into a region, which is seldom expanded on when discussing major Russian foreign policy.
This work is meticulously written and is an excellent complement to Rieber’s subsequent book on Stalin. At over 600 pages of research, he succinctly outlines the struggles between the continent’s major imperial powers. This book offers any scholar of Eurasian history a nearly all-encompassing overview of the most hotly contested spaces in Eurasia, which still persist today among nation-states born from empires.