ALEXANDER BITIS. Russia and the Eastern Question: Army, Government, and Society, 1815-1833. New York: Oxford University Press. 2006. Pp. xv, 542. $120.00

Abstract

Studies of Russia's relations with the Ottoman Empire and Iran tend to focus on diplomacy, while others examine Russia's military doctrine and wartime performance. Alexander Bitis succeeds in integrating both sets of concerns into a single narrative. The period covered here saw consequential developments, including wars between Russia and both of its southern neighbors as well as the Russo-Ottoman Treaty of Hünkâr Iskelesi (1833), which caused exaggerated alarm in Europe, especially Britain, about Russian expansionism. Although the main interpretations presented in this book are largely in keeping with the scholarship of the past generation, the author's research in Russian as well as British archives enables him to present fresh evidence to buttress his points. One of the book's strengths is its examination of debates among high-ranking Russian military officers about how to fight the Ottomans. The prevailing view at the highest levels was that there are rationally derived laws of warfare that apply in all settings, at all times. In contrast, some officers in Russia's Second Army, based in the southern part of the country, argued for the importance of the particular, the need to know not only specifics of geography but also the way a foe's culture shapes his mentality and thus his behavior in combat. Underlying this practical disagreement among men who had fought wars and expected to fight again is an epistemological debate on the relative significance of the universal and the specific that continues to this day among scholars as well as policy makers. Bitis sides with the Second Army officers. Yet in presenting their views, he does not consider one essential issue: what if the assessment of a specific foe is based on faulty information and biases? He reports, without questioning, Colonel I. P. Liprandi's stereotype of Ottoman soldiers as characterized by Muslim fatalism, superstition, fanaticism, and panic.