162 • 10 EUROPEAN INTERESTS AND IMPERIALISMchurch. When Constantinople fell, Russia became the greatest Greek Or¬
thodox country and declared Moscow the "Third Rome." A Muscovite
prince married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor. Their descendants,
Russia's czars, sometimes sought to gain control of Constantinople (which
they called Czargrad) and restore the power and prestige of Greek Ortho¬
doxy to the level of Roman Catholicism. Besides, many Orthodox Chris¬
tians lived under Ottoman rule, mainly in the Balkans. Austria captured
some of them in the early eighteenth century, but the Habsburgs, being
Catholic, were unsympathetic. Mother Russia would be a better protector
for the Serbs, Bulgars, Albanians, Romanians, and Greeks seeking freedom
from Muslim rule, for they were nearly all Orthodox. So, when Catherine
the Great defeated the Ottomans in 1769-1774 and thus could set the
terms of the peace treaty, she secured Ottoman recognition of Russia's right
to intervene diplomatically on behalf of Orthodox Christians living within
the Ottoman Empire. The wording of this Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji is
ambiguous, but Russians claimed later that it set a precedent for relations
between Russia and Turkey (as the Ottoman Empire came to be called by
the Europeans).
Later on, the Russians maintained that they had something else in com¬
mon with many of the sultan's Balkan subjects—namely, that they were
Slavs. The term Slav denotes membership in a language group. Russian
and Ukrainian are Slavic languages; so, too, are Bulgarian, Serbian, and
Croatian. During the nineteenth century, some Balkan peoples espoused a
kind of nationalism called pan-Slavism that aimed to unite within a single
state all peoples speaking Slavic languages. Russia, the largest Slavic coun¬
try, claimed to be its leader. The Ottoman Empire feared the divisive effect
of pan-Slavism as much as it had Russia's earlier sponsorship of the Or¬
thodox Christians. But pan-Slavism also threatened such European neigh¬
bors as Prussia and Austria with their many Polish subjects, and thus
Russia had to mute its pan-Slavism when it wanted to placate those pow¬
ers. Indeed, many Russian officials preferred upholding Ottoman integrity
and friendly ties with the other European powers over unity with Ortho¬
dox Christians or their Slavic cousins.
In the nineteenth century, Russia's drive toward the sea, leadership of
the Orthodox Christians, and encouragement of pan-Slavism combined at
times to produce an aggressive Middle East policy. Russian troops entered
the Balkans during the 1806-1812 conflict, the Greek war for indepen¬
dence in the 1820s, the 1848 Romanian uprising, the 1853-1856 Crimean
War, and the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War. In the last of these struggles,
Russian troops came to within 10 miles (15 kilometers) of Istanbul and