Tudor Vladimirescu and the Balkan Emancipation Movements

Figures and Tables

Tudor of Vladimiri and the Romanian Threshold of Modernity

Sorin Alexandrescu

Figure 1: Semiotic Diagram of the Interactions Between Tudor Vladimirescu, Other Political Forces, and Social Groups

Transylvania in 1821: Collective Mentalities and Historical Facts

Ioan Bolovan

Figure 1: Interinstitutional Communication in 1821

1821 in the Danubian Principalities: Depictions in Greek School History Textbooks

Angeliki Mouzakiti and Maria Dimasi

Table 1: School History Textbooks Secondary Education Twentieth Century

Table 2: Persons Mentioned in the High School History Textbooks

Table 3: Alexander Ypsilanti: References (Positive, Neutral, Negative)

Introduction

Cristian Ploscaru and Cosmin Mihuț

The emancipation movements of the Balkan Orthodox peoples (1804–1822) followed a paradoxical historiographical trajectory: historians attributed to them a remarkable cultural and ideological unity, shaped by the influence of the Western Enlightenment and the birth of the modern ‘intelligentsia’.¹ At the same time, however, the political individuality of these movements—Serbian, Greek, Romanian—prevailed over other possible forms of solidarity that might have been expected from older historical ties and common, or at least compatible, interests.² A similar situation is apparent with regard to external influences: a prevailing influence of the French and Austrian Enlightenment at the cultural level³ and a predominant impact of the Russian Empire at the political level.⁴ No less, the political and personal relations between the three emblematic leaders of these emancipation movements, Alexander Ypsilanti, Miloš Obrenović and Tudor Vladimirescu, were typically revealed as contrasting, opening a new stage of ethno-national tensions in the history of relations between these peoples at the dawn of the modern era.⁵

The historiography of the cultural origins of Balkan nationalism is far too vast to be summarized in an introduction of a thematic volume. The main idea advanced by the most influential historians reflects the influence of cultural and political elites—particularly the Moldo-Wallachian boyars and the Phanariots in the latter case—by the ideas of the Enlightenment, French encyclopedic rationalism and Central European Aufklärung. This process unfolded within the historical context of the existence of a post-Byzantine religious and cultural commonwealth, which facilitated the dialogue and spread of new ideas.⁶ This conclusion sparked interesting debates in the historiography of recent decades involving the complicated relationship of the Orthodox Church with Enlightenment ideas⁷, the low level of development of secular education, and the cultural and social autonomy of the intelligentsia.⁸

It is important to note that the Balkan Orthodox peoples lived in the Ottoman Empire where Islam played a key role at the political, legal and institutional levels. This empire also experienced a deep crisis of resources and institutional coherence⁹. The Ottoman central authorities proved to be less and less able to ensure order and justice, to effectively resolve conflicts between provincial communities and local Muslim rulers.¹⁰ In this context—shaped by the pressures of lost wars with the Russian Empire, the spread of Western ideas, the expansion of international trade, and Russia’s pan-Orthodox propaganda—only fear for the Sultan’s secular legitimacy remained of the old Pax Ottomanica.¹¹

Attempting to explain the dynamics of this complex and contradictory historical context, historians preferred two distinct ways of approaching the phenomenon of the Balkan Orthodox peoples’ emancipation. The first path emphasized the cultural dimension—the transformative power of Enlightenment ideas, which connected the Balkan Orient to Western Europe, its values, and its models in an unprecedented way—while giving priority to the processes of acculturation and European synchronization.¹² The other direction insisted on the political dimension, often appealing to ethical criteria in an attempt to justify the autonomist political choices of the leaders of the Serbian, Romanian or Greek revolutionary movements, defined as ‘national’.¹³ On the other hand, in recent historiography and from a new methodological approach, older issues related to the cultural history of the Balkans Orthodox peoples have been revisited, emphasizing the importance of the Greek diaspora or of the Serbian and Romanian scholars living in the Habsburg Empire, in line with the perspectives of ‘new cultural history’.¹⁴ In other words, to better understand the national trajectory taken by forms of rebellion—haidouks, pandurs, klephts, and armatoles—around 1800, this new historiographical approach calls for an in-depth analysis of the role of external actors—such as the intelligentsia, bourgeoisie, clergy, and officials and dignitaries serving the Habsburg and Russian Empires—as catalysts for the emergence of a political discourse of emancipation, both modern and religious at the same time.¹⁵

Our volume, which brings together some of the papers presented at the international conference An ‘Epoch Threshold’? The Year 1821 in the History of South-East Europe, at Bicentennial (Iași, September 23–25, 2021), is placed at the intersection of these historiographical trends, using the concept of ‘epochal threshold’ from a methodological point of view in the analysis of the 1821 moment. An episode of special significance in the Balkans’ transition to modernity and in the nation-building process of this region, the events that unfolded in Moldavia and Wallachia in 1821—subjected to intense and fertile historiographical controversies from the years immediately following—have not yet exhausted their explanatory potential.¹⁶ Associated with the concept of revolution even from that time or, more recently, described as a ‘secessionist movement’ of the Balkans Orthodox peoples from the Ottoman Empire,¹⁷ the events triggered by the uprising led by Tudor Vladimirescu in Wallachia and the Etairia movement in Moldavia were defined as an ‘epoch threshold’, according to the inspired words of Romanian historian Paul Cornea.¹⁸ Conceptualized by the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg as a significant landmark of an ‘almost imperceptible transition’ between two historical epochs, the notion of ‘epochal threshold’ can provide the necessary openness to a substantial debate, detached from historiographical canons and stereotypes¹⁹. Why is this the case? Because it takes into account the multiple ways through which the local factor (political elite or fighters) has absorbed, filtered and adapted the discourse of emancipation from various internal and external sources to its own interests, ambitions and goals. The 15 studies included in our volume are placed in this thematic and methodological horizon and seek to analyze the features of the transformations that took place at the cultural and political level, to reconstruct some episodes in the cultural history of politics²⁰ taking into account the discursive practices and forms of solidarity characteristic of this period of transition.

The first part (Tudor Vladimirescu: A Lesser-Known Personality of the Balkan Uprisings) provides a generic introductory framework to the ideological and political tendencies manifested in Moldavia and Wallachia that placed the leader of the Romanian uprising at the crossroads of conflicting internal and external networks of power and interests²¹ Starting from the relationship between discourse and narrative, analyzed within a semiotic articulated network, Sorin Alexandrescu (Tudor of Vladimiri and the Romanian Threshold of Modernity) locates Tudor Vladimirescu at the center of a matrix formed by the various historical groups involved: the native boyars, Phanariots, Etairia, ‘common people’ and men-at-arms (‘mercenaries’), but also at the frontier between a localism specific to the Ottoman political order in the early nineteenth century and a new modern geography of identity, expressed in Wallachia through the concept of the ‘Romanianization of quotidian’. In the second study of the section, Cristian Ploscaru (Tudor Vladimirescu: A Political Biography) proposes a narrative of Tudor Vladimirescu’s political biography that unfolds around two reference points. The first concerns the nature of Vladimirescu’s relations with the power factors that were to play a central role in 1821, traced over time and in terms of the crystallization of certain political strategies of the group of Wallachian great boyars who wished to restore the native reign and of the Etairia central leadership and cells from Bucharest and Iași.²² The second is represented by Russia’s political position, both before the Tsar’s decision to disavow Etairia and the appointment of Scarlat Callimachi as new ruler of Wallachia became public acts, and afterwards, because Russia’s attitude was a determining factor in the political stance of the forces involved.

The second part (Challenges of Culture and Identity) groups together sequences of cultural history, more precisely discursive expressions of a political culture that was itself at an ‘epochal threshold’, open to some ideas of the European Enlightenment, but still faithful to traditional political thought.²³ The cultural orientation toward rationalism and historicism is evident in the narrative configuration of the first three studies, but also reflects the persistence of entrenched forms of political legitimacy. Critical thinking present in the writings of some important Moldo-Wallachian scholars of the 1821 uprisings period, the main subject of Raluca Alexandrescu’s study (Paths of Early Modernity in Wallachia Around 1821) illustrates the rationalist objectification of the medieval conceptions about history, society and politics, but also the criteria used in the selection of new political ideas compatible with what these scholars were beginning to define as progress and civilization. The religious, cultural and political geography of Europe in the perception of Romanian texts around 1821 reveals its contrasts at the level of images, representations and symbols in Laurențiu Vlad’s study (‘Enlightened Europe’ and ‘Turkish Europe’ in the Perception of Romanian Scholars), contrasts between the enlightened Europe with its culture and sciences and the Europe of a political and social order still difficult to understand, unfamiliar to the Moldo-Wallachian in comparison with the Ottoman Orient. The cultural and historical connection between the political order of classical Greco-Roman Antiquity and the desire for the liberation and integration of the Balkans into the civilized world, as the historical responsibility of the West, is revealed by Lia Brad Chisacof (Emperor Trajan and the 1821 Revolutions), through content analysis and comparison (with other contemporary texts) of an unpublished Greek manuscript, with multiple meanings for the historical memory and the imagery of political geography of the Southeastern Europe.

The other two studies of the section deal with sequences of the history of political culture in the neighboring areas of Moldavia and Wallachia inhabited by Romanians (Bessarabia and Transylvania), whose relevance must be associated not only with the politics of the Great Powers to which they belonged, the Russian and Habsburg Empires, but also with the identity manifestations proper to an ‘epochal threshold’: religious solidarities in contrast with ethnic and political adversities, within the same Orthodox ‘world’. The first, written by Mihai-Bogdan Atanasiu and Cristian Ploscaru (Surprising Biographies: Two Descendants of a Moldavian Boyar Under the Greek Revolutionary Banner), reconstructs some biographical landmarks of the Cantacuzino Deleanu brothers, who were raised and educated in Russia, but remained in contact with their relatives and estates in Moldavia, also involved in the political life of Bessarabia after the annexation to Russia (1812) and who became extremely attached to the Greek cause in 1821, in a manner exemplary for the identity typologies of many Orthodox with Balkan origins and Greek intellectual background, in the service of Russia. The second one, written by Ioan Bolovan (Transylvania in 1821: Collective Mentalities and Historical Facts) analyzes the echoes and reactions provoked in Transylvania by the events taking place in Moldavia and Wallachia, highlighting the manifestations of Orthodox solidarity and the mental attitudes toward popular revolt as a legitimate form of social and political protest.

The third part (Local Conspiracies and Great Power Politics) includes studies with a narrative configuration closer to what Pierre Nora called le retour de l’événement, not only as a return to factual history, but also to turning points, crises, clashes of power and interests, and their meanings,²⁴ being oriented toward the critical and contextual research of some relevant information or episodes of the uprisings in Romanian Principalities and their consequences, from a historical and historiographical perspective. In his paper, Sergiu Iosipescu (1821 in the Romanian Principalities: Historical Interpretations and Realities) offers a thorough comparative confrontation of some historiographical theories about the character of the Romanian political movement of 1821 (especially Andrei Oțetea’s famous theory) with overlooked or misinterpreted documentary data and facts on the basis of which he formulates interesting and provocative conclusions: the veracity of contemporary accounts of the events of 1821 should be assessed in terms of the accuracy of the facts presented, confirmed by reliable documentary sources, not in accordance with how well they fit (or do not fit) with the narrative logic of one theory or another; Russia’s involvement in the outbreak of the 1821 uprisings should be analyzed in relation to its policy toward the Ottoman Empire in previous years and not on the basis of later attitudes (the disavowal of the uprisings and the acceptance of Ottoman military intervention in the Principalities) dictated by new political circumstances.

In a suggestive thematic continuity, the study by Vlasis Vlasidis and Costas Chalkis (Spreading Fake News during the 1821 Revolution) addresses the question of the credibility of some narrative sources about the 1821 uprisings from a different methodological perspective, of the political relevance and discursive significance of some information that circulated intensely and was later considered by historians as mere inventions, or in today’s language ‘fake news’. Centered around the idea of political solidarity of the Balkan Orthodox peoples subject to a ‘pagan’ Empire and the more or less rational conviction in support of Russia, this ‘fake news’ played a role worthy of historians’ attention in the political mobilization and ethical judgment of people’s attitudes toward the events. Alexandru-Florin Platon’s study (‘La Révolution de la Grèce n’est qu’accidentelle …’: An Unknown Version of Prince Gheorghe Cantacuzino’s Account of the Action of the Etairia in the Romanian Principalities) brings to attention an important narrative source about the Etairia and its action in the Principalities, analyzing an unknown version of Gheorghe Cantacuzino Deleanu’s memoirs, based on a critical investigation of the text and its comparison with other known versions. The conclusions reached reflect the ambivalent identity of the individual under study, which was not unusual for the period. They also confirm Gheorghe Cantacuzino Deleanu’s highly critical stance toward the organization of the revolutionary enterprise, the motivations and conduct of some of its leaders, and Russia’s attitude, which fell short of full support for a movement it had encouraged and protected during the preparatory phase of the insurrection.

The other two studies of the section are devoted to the international context, with reference to the diplomatic strategies of the Great Powers, in particular of the United Kingdom and Russia, in the years immediately following the suppression of the 1821 uprisings in the Principalities and in relation to their consequences. Cosmin Mihuț (A Diplomacy of Conciliation? Lord Strangford and the Oriental Crisis of 1821–1822) researched the United Kingdom’s policy toward the 1821 crisis in the Lower Danube. His research was based on reports of the British ambassador in Constantinople, published by Theophilus Prousis, which have not been thoroughly investigated. This diplomatic correspondence, along with other historical sources, reflects a certain ‘diplomacy of conciliation’: the need to maintain dialogue with the Russian Empire in order to avoid another Russo-Ottoman war with unforeseeable consequences; the political turmoil in the United Kingdom over the ‘Greek question’, which had to be managed through skillful diplomacy; and the maintenance of internal stability within the Ottoman Empire, a crucial factor in preserving British superiority in the Eastern Mediterranean. Victor Taki (Russian Policy in Moldavia and Wallachia After 1821: The Role of Dmitrii Vasil’evich Dashkov) analyzes in his study the role of Dmitri Dashkov in the transition from the traditional methods of Russian intervention in Moldavia and Wallachia to a new, more sophisticated approach focused on the institutional and legal reorganization of the internal regime of government in the Principalities, based on a well-structured program of reforms. His experience in diplomatic affairs concerning the Eastern Question, together with his work on codifying legislation in the Russian Empire, likely explains both his contribution to the preparation of the Organic Regulations and the connection between their content and the characteristics of Russian political culture in the early years of Tsar Nicholas I’s reign.

The last section (Assessing and Representing the Past), devoted to historical memory, especially in the institutionalized dimension (official celebrations and school textbooks), provides some explanations for the persistence of a historical image twisted by competing national legitimacies²⁵. Not so much in the sense of a Romanian-Greek dispute over priority in claiming the national character of the 1821 uprisings, but rather in their foundational role for both Romanian and Greek nationalism. The study written by Mircea-Cristian Ghenghea (Tudor Vladimirescu and Romanian Interwar Historiography) provides a reference framework for the management of memory within the historiographical tradition, in the context of the centenary of the revolution and the debates it generated among Romanian historians—from Nicolae Iorga’s ideas about the contrast between the ‘popular’ character of the Romanian Revolution and the ‘aristocratic’ character of the Etairia, to the polemics between Romanian historians who portrayed Tudor Vladimirescu as a ‘national hero’ and Andrei Oțetea, the author of the well-known theory of the anti-Ottoman unity of the 1821 uprisings and of Tudor’s affiliation with the Etairia. In a study focused on Greek secondary school textbooks, Angeliki Mouzakiti and Maria Dimasi (1821 in the Danubian Principalities: Depictions in Greek School History Textbooks) examine the extent to which content on the 1821 uprisings in the Romanian Principalities was aligned with an official and normative discourse on historical memory under state control and whether alternative interpretations of events were allowed. This feature of the ideological management of national memory, stated and exemplified by case studies on the historiography of modern nationalism, is critically analyzed using a quantitative and qualitative statistical study of the information present in school textbooks. To complete this picture, in the last study of the volume, Anastasia Tanampasi (Teaching and Celebrating the Greek Revolution in Romanian Schools in Greece) deals with a particular case of how historical memory is articulated and shaped in the educational context, characterized by the alignment of curricula and textbooks with the demands imposed by the Greek state while appealing to the didactic skills and patriotism of the teachers in Romanian schools in Greece to introduce knowledge, ideas and attachments related to the Romanian national identity.

A sensitive episode in the shared history of two peoples living for centuries under Ottoman rule and of foundational importance for Romanian and Greek modern nationalism, the revolutionary uprising of 1821 cannot be fully understood from a historical point of view without further historical research on the connection between the movement led by Tudor Vladimirescu and the Etairia. Looking retrospectively at the two historiographies, it can be said that the Etairia organization and Alexander Ypsilanti are insufficiently known and lack a substantial presence in Romanian historiography. Likewise, Tudor Vladimirescu and the group of Wallachian boyars are under-researched in Greek historiography. Continuing the tradition of cultural dialogue between the two historiographies, our volume has assumed the role of being a call for closer collaboration on this delicate and important subject. Importantly, this work also provides new and nuanced data, interpretations and perspectives on the personality of Tudor Vladimirescu and the historical role of the uprising that began in Little Wallachia within the political context of the 1821 events in the Romanian Principalities.