Aytac Yurukcu, PhD Candidate, Department of Geographical and Historical Studies, Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland. ayurukcu@uef.fi
War's Impact on the Decline of Empires: 1877-1878 The Russo-Turkish War’s Nationalistic Effects on the Balkans and Baltic Region
Wars are not fought only by military means. War news, which has been shaped by the media and journalists, attracts a large audience and often deeply engages people both emotionally and intellectually. My paper investigates the Russian-Ottoman War (1877-78) and its effects on minorities within the Russian Empire, as well as related effects with far-reaching consequences in the Balkans and Baltic region. The current study attempts to understand the identity periods of the minorities, Estonians and Finns, at the local, national, and imperial levels. It drew on a wide range of identity literature and, in particular, on the notion of "nation as an event" developed by Brubaker (1996). The event here is the war of 1877–78. It builds on research that engages with the emergence and alteration of identity at times of war (Anderson 1991; Hastings 1997; Colley 2009) by considering the impact of war on local identities, cultural milieus, and intelligentsia.
From the early 17th century until the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the two empires fought nine times. The war of 1877-78, with its far-reaching consequences in the Balkans and Caucuses, was, however, the only media war covered by journalists from Russia, Turkey, and Balkan nations. In addition to these empires and European powers, Estonia and Finland followed this war more closely than ever since the Estonians and Finns participated in the war as part of the Russian Imperial Army. This war, which involved the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern Orthodox-Pan-Slavic coalition (several Balkan minorities such as Romanians, Serbs, Montenegrins, and Bulgarians) of the Russian Empire, has a special meaning in shaping national identity and in the Finnish and Estonian perspectives because the war experiences became a part of the evolving idea of a separate state.
Most scholars have ignored the question of how local identities and media are linked to national patriotism and imperial mobilizations during wartime, and the research promises to uncover important general and specific findings as well as contribute to an understanding of the local, military, and media histories of the Russo-Turkish war in Estonia, Finland, and the Baltic region. For this conference paper, firstly, the main objective of this study is to comprehend and determine the evolution of war events and news through an examination from a historical, political, and media perspective. Secondly, another important goal is to investigate the outcomes of the Russo-Turkish war in a specific socio-cultural-political context, established internal and external relations of minorities, the tone of publications during the war, war news representing styles, and their effects on ordinary readers and public opinion.
I collected relevant research materials, including Estonian and Finnish soldiers’ diaries, letters, news, and reports about the war. Based on the research objectives, this research seeks to answer the following questions: How did the war news, soldiers’ diaries, and reports about the war in these nations depict and convey the war to the common reader and to the public? Why are rhetorical/illustrative, propagandistic, and persuasive arguments used in these nations, and how did contextual representations influence readers and public opinion? How did this war, with its propagandistic and persuasive arguments, influence soldiers’ knowledge about their identity and national development? The Grand Duchy of Finland as an autonomous minority on behalf of the Russian Empire, how might encounters with minorities seeking independence from imperial rule, like the Ottoman Empire, have affected the soldiers' attitudes toward war and nationalism, and later the entire Finnish population in the autonomous Finnish region of the Russian Empire, and how were these effects received in the Finnish society's sense of nationalism? What did Finns and Estonians compose? When and where were their works published? How have academics viewed Estonian soldiers and their diaries?