Catherine the Great’s Crimea: Geopolitics and Imperial Messianism

Despite her desire to be perceived as an enlightened despot by her Western neighbors, Catherine II possessed an immense appetite for imperialist expansion, and built her foreign policy primarily on territorial acquisition and political authority. In the early 1780s, she developed a plan to weaken the Ottoman Porte, Russia’s long-standing rival: conquer Constantinople, partition the Ottoman Empire (or at least its dependencies), establish a new Greek Orthodox state in Crimea, and restore Byzantium, an ambitious vision that would come to be known as the ‘Greek Project.’ The first critical task of Catherine’s Greek Project was to seize Crimea, which was strategically important due to its geographical proximity to the Ottoman Empire, its connections to the Mediterranean Sea via the Black Sea, and its significant population of Orthodox Christians, whom she sought to defend under Orthodox Christian rule. Claiming this territory and setting the stage for further developments in her Greek Project was too attractive an opportunity for Catherine to ignore: control over the Crimean peninsula promised her geopolitical security and a clear path for messianic Russian state-building.

Since the late 15th century, the Crimean state had been under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, an arrangement that allowed the former to maintain a sufficient degree of internal autonomy while acknowledging the sovereignty of the latter. As a vassal state, the Crimean Khanate frequently provided military support to the Ottomans, most notably in their campaigns against the Russian Tsardom and Empire. These devastating, large-scale invasions of Russia’s southern steppe culminated in the Russo-Turkish wars of the late 16th to late 17th century. After the first major Russo-Turkish War, the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca forced the Ottomans to grant Russia southward expansion into the Black Sea region and recognize the independence of the Crimean Tatars. The Turks were utterly humiliated by this loss of territory and prestige. The Crimean Khanate had been considered a valuable ally against the Russian Empire, but now Ottoman territorial holdings and regional influence were exhausted. However, they were not the only ones upset with this concession. On the one hand, Tatar submission to the Ottoman Porte had caused discord and disputes; on the other, the reorganization of Crimea into a free state only exacerbated the “disturbances, losses, and difficulties for [Russian] troops.” Due to fears of Russian despotism, many Crimean Tatars were unwilling to accept forced independence. Crimea remained a thorn in Catherine’s side, firstly because of its internal instability and enduring enmity toward the Russian Empire; and notwithstanding this, because of its strategic geopolitical importance, which she could not harness even after military victory. Persisting domestic power struggles made the southern steppe an even more volatile territory– pillages, lootings, and raids continued into Russia until Catherine finally felt “compelled to take stern measures…. [against] the harmful mob of Zaporozhian Cossacks” in 1783 and safeguard her position against both the Ottoman Turks and Crimean Tatars. This decision was echoed by her advisor, Grigory Potemkin, who affirmed that Crimea’s location on the northern coast of the Black Sea made it a strategic buffer zone– the peninsula’s rugged and mountainous terrain would grant a degree of security for Russia’s vulnerable southern territories and the greater population of the Novorossiia guberniia. Overall, taking Crimea allowed Catherine to neutralize the potential threats posed by the Crimean Khanate, and gave Russia a formidable geographic barrier against future aggressions from the Ottoman Empire.

Although securing Russia’s southern borders was certainly attractive for Catherine II, the most decisive factor of her annexation of Crimea was maritime geopolitics. Potemkin repeatedly stressed to Catherine the significance of naval security, assuring that “navigation on the Black Sea [would] be free” if the peninsula were seized by Russia. Previously, the Ottoman Porte controlled the Turkish Straits (the Dardanelles and Bosporus connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean) and limited the size, armament, and number of Russian vessels permitted in the water at any time. With such difficulty entering and leaving these Black Sea ports, Russian ships were hindered from asserting its naval presence and fully participating in maritime commerce. However, Russia emerged as a leading Black Sea power after gaining access to Crimea and the Turkish Straits, which provided Catherine with significant precedence in any geopolitical maneuver she chose to make– it was now within her jurisdiction to regulate the flow of goods, to restrict the movement of naval forces between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and most importantly, to “blockade the Turks, to feed them or to starve them.” The Black Sea also addressed the most crucial priority of Russian geopolitics: warm deepwater ports. Although Peter the Great had opened Russia up to the Baltic Sea in 1703, these ports and waterways suffered subzero temperatures and froze during the long winter months, thereby limiting accessibility and operational capacity, and compromising Russian military security. Total control over the Crimean coast’s warm water promised Catherine direct sea-based trade with Western European countries, a launching point for a naval fleet, and global power projection. In 1785, Potemkin built the fortress of Sevastopol’, a palpable manifestation of Crimea’s unique role as an intermediate space between Russia and its neighbors. This port city would also become the hub of Catherine’s new Black Sea Fleet. For a landlocked country largely isolated from Western development, the Crimean peninsula’s synthetic character of both the coastal and continental relieved Russia of mere inland sedentarism, effectively opening a gateway to the trade and international networks of littoral dynamism.

Catherine II’s success in obtaining control of the Black Sea region was a testament to her ambition of enhancing the Russian Empire’s influence and reputation on the world stage. She seized Crimea not merely apropos of the peninsula’s geopolitical importance, but also its symbolic implication for her messianic expansionist ideology, in which she deemed Russia a beacon of civilization and enlightenment. Her characterization of the Russian Empire as the defender of mankind, and her sense of “[obligation] before God, before [her] empire, and before all mankind” related directly to her Greek Project and vision of a ‘Third Rome,’ in which she tasked the Russian Empire with preserving Orthodox Christianity and Greek culture on a global scale. Catherine emphasized a universalist messianic role for Russia, underscoring her deep commitment to the idea that she was divinely appointed to lead Russia and advance its interests, and that she was responsible for the well-being and progress not only of her subjects but of the world’s subjects. After defeating the Ottomans in 1774 and annexing Crimea nine years later, Catherine finally established a viable path to Constantinople. By taking Crimea, which had historical ties to Byzantium and thus a substantial Orthodox Christian population, Catherine sought to consolidate Russia’s position as the heart of Orthodoxy and the spiritual heir of the Byzantine Empire, which was seen as the true continuation of the Roman Empire in the East. Crimea’s significant Greek cultural and religious influence also allowed Catherine to incorporate foundational elements of Greek civilization into the Russian cultural landscape and identity, further reinforcing her vision of Russia as the rightful successor to Byzantium. Catherine believed herself to be the appointed guardian of Orthodoxy– by extension, she believed that her southward expansions were justified in the eyes of God. Indeed, she was to bring peace and enlightenment to Crimea precisely through Christian rule. During her tour around Crimea in 1787, she wrote a series of letters to literary critic Melchior von Grimm, illustrating the former backwardness of cities such as Kherson and Bakhchisarai. She portrayed the Russian Empire as the mother of civilization, having transformed the region, “where at the time of the [Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca] there was hardly a hut, into a flourishing town and countryside.” By highlighting the emptiness and virginity of Crimea, Catherine emphasized its potential for cultural and intellectual growth, a blank canvas for Greek scholars, artists, and intellectuals to resurrect the spirit of Byzantium. For example, Catherine praised Potemkin’s construction efforts in Sevastopol’, comparing it to “the fantasies of the Arabian Nights.” She effectively depicted the peninsula as underdeveloped and barbaric before Russian intervention, which upheld the messianic narrative of Russia’s global civilizing mission: that Russian imperialism was not merely about conquering territories, but about saving these regions from the damnation of prehistory.

Crimea seemed to answer all of Russia’s most critical civilizational questions, political and existential. It had the potential to both dismantle the Ottomans from their pedestal and fulfill the historical and cultural destiny of the Russian Empire. Thus, Catherine II’s annexation of Crimea in 1783 was decisively predicated not only by the geopolitics of border and maritime security, but also by her self-proclaimed spiritual duty to protect and advance Orthodox Christianity. Despite her voracious palate for imperialism, Catherine’s Greek Project ultimately failed to come to full fruition. Nevertheless, her annexation of Crimea and southward expansion granted Russia immense status in southeastern Europe and would become the fundamental pillars of Russian-Eurasian geopolitics and eschatological state-building ideologies to come.