Restraint or Self-Restraint of Russia: Nicholas I, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, and the Vienna System, 1832–1841

Abstract

observers have often considered Russia to be persistently expansionist, especially during the reign of Nicholas I (r. 1825-55). When Russian warships entered the Bosporus in 1833, to leave five months later with a Russo-Ottoman treaty of alliance, the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, they helped to turn the British foreign secretary, Viscount Palmerston, into a Russophobe.1 This view of Russia's habits, whether attributed to geography, political system, or culture, survives to the present day. To Richard Pipes, Russian expansionism seems ;not a phase but a constant'.2 Similarly, John P. LeDonne, who sees an eighteenth-century 'expansionist urge that would remain unabated until 1917', argues that any apparent self-restraint should be attributed to containment: 'There is no greater misreading of Nicholas Ps foreign policy than to see it dominated by the pursuit of honor, by respect for treaties and the determination to maintain the status quo.'3 If this is a misreading, it is a common one. For more than a hundred years, it has been acknowledged that Russian policy had shifted by the late 1820s from partitioning the Ottoman Empire to preserving the Ottoman dynasty under St Petersburg's thumb.4 The more interesting question is why. Paul W. Schroeder has recently challenged the notion that the European states' self-restraint during the Vienna system can be explained by the operation of a balance-of-power system. Neither Britain nor Russia, he