Esper Ukhtomsky
Prince Esper Esperovich Ukhtomsky, Эспер Эсперович Ухтомский was a poet, publisher and Oriental enthusiast in late Tsarist Russia. He was a close confidant of Tsar Nicholas II and accompanied him whilst he was Tsesarevich on his Grand tour to the East. He was the first significant outside collector of Tibetan art, whose collection is now in museums in St. Petersburg.
Family
Ukhtomsky was born in 1861 near the Imperial summer retreat at Oranienbaum. His family traced their lineage to the Rurik dynasty, and had been moderately prominent boyars in the Muscovite period. The Ukhtomsky family claimed to be direct descendents of Rurik the Viking, the semi-legendary founder of Russia.His father, Esper Alekseevich Ukhtomsky had been an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy during the Crimean War, and had served during the siege of Sevastopol. He went on to establish a commercial steamship company with routes from Saint Petersburg to India and China. After the death of his first wife in 1870 when Uktomksy was only 9 years old, he married 1874 Karin Etholène, the daughter of Adolf Arvid Etholén, who was the Russian governor of Alaska. He died 1885 in Montreux, Switzerland. His mother, Yevgeniya Alekseevna Greig, was descended from the Greigs, a long line of admirals of Scottish origin, notably Samuel and Alexey Greig. One of Esper's relations, Pavel Petrovich Ukhtomsky, served as a vice-admiral of the Pacific Squadron in the Russo-Japanese War.
Early life
Esper was privately educated by tutors during his early years, and travelled to Europe on numerous occasions with his parents. As a teenager, he was notably Slavophile in his politics and he published his first poem in the Slavophile journal Rus edited by Ivan Aksakov. Over the years, his poetry was published in such journals as Vestnik Evropy, Russkaia mysl’, Niva, Sever and Grazhdanin. He received his secondary education at a Gymnasium and went on to read philosophy and literature at the University of Saint Petersburg. He graduated in 1884, winning a silver medal for his master's thesis 'A Historical and Critical Survey of the Study of Free Will.' It was during this period that he began to dabble in poetry, which was published in a number of Russian periodicals. A romantic, mystical figure with a deep interest in the occult and a strong sense of aristocratic aestheticism, Ukhtomsky became interested in the subject of Asia as an young man, becoming convinced that Russia's destiny lay in the East. Ukhtomsky combined his interests in the occult, aestheticism and Asia with a very firm ultra-conservatism that was implacably opposed to any changes that might threaten the absolute monarchy presided over by the House of Romanov.He got a job in the Interior Ministry's Department of Foreign Creeds, and travelled to Eastern Siberia to report on the Buryats. He then went on to travel as far as Mongolia and China, reporting on frictions between Russian Orthodoxy and Buddhism. Ukhtomsky became fascinated with Buddhism, declaring in a report his admiration for "the humane creed of Gautama Buddha, second only to Christianity". During his time in Buriatia, Ukhtomsky visited 20 Buddhist monasteries which all recognized the authority of the Bogd Khan in Urga and ultimately the authority of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa, Tibet. To resolve the dispute, Uktomsky went on to visit the Bogd Khan in Urga and from there he went on to Beijing to meet senior Buddhist clerics.
Asianist
He also took note of the effects of Alexander III's policies of Russification. Historically, Russianiness as defined by the Russian state was not in terms of language or ethnicity, but rather in terms of loyalty to the House of Romanov with those loyal to the Romanov family being Russian. Thus, the Russian state had been very tolerant of Buddhism with the Empress Elizabeth extending state support for the Buddhist clergy of the Kalmyks and the Buryats in 1741 in exchange for their loyalty. During the reign of the Emperor Alexander III Russianness started to be redefined in terms of the Russian language and culture together with the Orthodox faith, which stained the loyalty of previously loyal peoples such as the Kalmyks and the Buryats. Ukhtomsky would later write reports criticising the overzealousness of the local Orthodox clergy in attempting to win converts, and expressed tolerant views regarding Russia's non-Orthodox faiths. Ukhtomsky had mystical notions about Buddhism, which he combined with his belief in the myth of the "White Tsar", which led him to the original definition of Russianness that saw those as loyal to the Russian state as Russian, regardless of what their language or religion was. In one of his reports, Ukhtomsky argued that Buddhist peoples such as the Buryats and the Kalmyks "instinctively" had "an inner link with the people of far-away North". Ukhtomsky criticised the policy of Russification and argued for the loyalty of the Buddhist clergy towards the Russian empire, blaming all of the difficulties in Buddhist-Orthodox relations on the Orthodox Archbishop of Irkutsk, Veniamin. Ukhtomsky had a very strong state-centric version of Russian nationalism that saw the loyalty to the monarchy as the epitome of Russianness, and his vision of a tolerant Russian empire was intended to strengthen the empire, not weaken it as his reactionary critics contended.Ukhtomsky's Asianist ideology was grounded in a type of romantic conservatism common among the Russian upper classes at the time. As one historian noted: "In an age when Tsarist prerogatives were perennially under siege by calls for European style reforms such as parliaments and constitutions the Asianist ideology provided an attractive argument for maintaining the autocratic status quo". Uktomsky sincerely believed that in Asia the Russian Emperor would finally find subjects worthy of him unlike much of the Russian intelligentsia, peasantry and working class who were forever challenging the status quo. Ukhtomsky believed in the notion originating in Russian folklore of the "White Tsar" as the natural ruler of Asia who would unite the East against the West.
Rising fame and the Grand Tour
Ukhtomsky's activities attracted the attention of the Oriental establishment active in Saint Petersburg, and he was elected to the Imperial Geographical Society and began to advise the Foreign Ministry on East Asian matters. The Emperor Alexander III selected him to be one of his tutors to the Tsararevich Nicholas. Ukhtomsky came to be the leader of a faction known as the vostochniki who promoted the ideology of Eurasianism, arguing that Russia had a special bond with Asia. In common with other vostochniki, Ukhtomsky argued that the military conquest of Asia was unnecessary as he believed that common cultural values already linked Asia to Russia. Ukhtomsky wrote: "Asia, strictly speaking in the full sense, was Russia itself".His expertise in Eastern matters and his high social standing led to him being selected to accompany the Tsesarevich Nicholas on his Grand tour to the East. Nicholas took a liking to Esper Ukhtomsky, writing to his sister that "the little Ukhtomskii...is such a jolly fellow". Instead of visiting Europe on his "Grand Tour", Nicholas advised by Ukhtomsky decided to take his "Grand Tour" mostly in Asia. The "Grand Tour" of 1890-1891 began in Vienna, going on to Trieste, the principle port of the Austrian Empire. From Trieste the Imperial party sailed to Greece and from there they travelled to Egypt. From Egypt, they travelled via the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to India, Ceylon, Singapore, French Indochina, China, and Japan. From Japan, they sailed to the port city of Vladivostok, the "star of the East", where in March 1891 Nicholas formally opened the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad to link Moscow to Vladivostok. From Vladivostok they travelled across Siberia to finally return to St. Petersburg. After returning to Russia in 1891, Ukhtomsky was appointed to the role of court chamberlain, and served on the Siberian Railway Committee. He also began work on his account of the grand tour, entitled Travels in the East of Nicholas II.
The book was written in close consultation with Nicholas II, who personally approved each chapter. It took six years to complete, and was published in three volumes between 1893 and 1897 by Brockhaus, in Leipzig. Despite being expensive at 35 roubles, it still ran to four editions. Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna bought several thousand copies for various government ministries and departments, and a cheaper edition was subsequently printed. The work was translated into English, French, German and Chinese, with a copy being presented to the Chinese Emperor and Empress in 1899 by the Russian envoy.
Ukhtomsky became a close confidant and adviser to the Tsar on matters of Eastern policy and was made editor of the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti in 1895. He used the paper to promote and emphasise the importance of Russian expansionism in the East as a basis of Russian foreign policy, an approach which sometimes drew fire from right-wing colleagues, and those advocating Westernisation. Ukhtomsky turned the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti, previously a liberal newspaper, into a conservative paper that glorified autocracy, which alienated many readers. Under his editorship, the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti took a markedly anti-Western line as he warned in one editorial that to "follow slavishly the scientific road of the West to catastrophes of a revolutionary nature." At the same time, his advocacy of his pan-Asian ideas and his defense of the empire's minorities against the policy of Russification won him many critics on the right. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the reactionary chief procurator of the Holy Synod, censured the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti several times for its criticism of the Russification policy that he favored and for the editorials Ukhtomsky wrote in defense of the Jews and the Poles.
He continued to converse with Nicholas and used his position to advocate Russian intervention in East Asia, but by 1900 Ukhtomsky's influence was waning. In 1893, Ukhtomsky introduced the court in St. Petersburg to Petr Alexanderovich Badmayev, who despite his Russian name was a Buryat. Badmaev was considered in St. Petersburg to be one of the leading Asian experts, but the Finance Minister Count Sergei Witte who initially consulted him came to distrust him, regarding Badmaev as a schemer who was forever seeking the support of the Russian state for his business interests in Asia. By 1895, Badmaev had opened the trading post of Badmaev & Co in Chita with the support of the Russian state, but Ukhtomsky had by this point disallowed him, complaining that Badmaev was more interested in enriching himself than anything else. The War Minister, Marshal Aleksei Kuropatkin wrote in his diary: "I think that one of the most dangerous features of the sovereign is his love of mysterious countries and individuals such as the Buriat Badmaev and Prince Ukhtomsky. They inspire in him fantasies of the greatness of the Russian tsar as the master of Asia. The Emperor covets Tibet and similar places. All this is very disquieting and I shiver at the thought of the damage this would cause to Russia". Ukhtomsky believed that a policy of economic penetration was sufficient to bring the Chinese empire into the Russian sphere of influence and he besides for the Trans-Siberian Railroad, Ukhtomsky sponsored the Chinese Eastern Railroad that linked Manchuria to the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Russo-Chinese bank.
In his writings, Ukhtomsky frequently criticised European imperialism in Asia, writing of his disgust with Western "mercantile" colonialism and the "insidious" promotion of Christianity by Western missionaries which he saw as damaging Asia's spiritual heritage. By contrast, he felt that Russia had a natural "inherent" unity with Asia based on common cultural and historical traditions. Ukhtomsky had ambiguous views about race, most notably putting the inverted commas around the phrases "white race" and "yellow race", which was his way of suggesting that the categories were constructs as opposed to reflecting reality. Ukhtomsky argued that Russia and India had a common racial heritage, arguing that the Russians and the Indians were both the products of a fusion between the Aryan and Turan races, but in his writings on China and Japan, he argued for common spiritual and historical heritage, but never a racial one. As it became apparent after 1895 that Russia and Japan were locked into rivalry over spheres of influence in Manchuria and Korea, his writings on Japan became more hostile as he wrote about a "yellow Asia" that stretched from Japan to Vietnam, and he called the Japanese a "foreign race". The Russian historian Alexander Bukh wrote about Ukhtomsky having "...an almost mystical conception of the Russian monarchy as being revered and respected by all the peoples of Asia". Bukh noted when Ukhtomsky argued for the "sameness" of Russia and China, it was always in juxtaposition to the West. On one hand, Uktomsky argued that it was a common sense of "Asianness" that brought Russia and China together in opposition to the West, but at the same time he argued that "Aryan Russia" was the senior partner to its junior partner "yellow China".