Catherine’s Crimea: Geopolitics and Imperial Messianism

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Annabel Hou

The Birch Journal, Spring 2024, pp. 17-21.

Despite her desire to be perceived as an enlightened despot who championed individual liberty and collective well-be- ing, Catherine II (1762-96) possessed an immense appetite for imperialist expan- sion and built her foreign policy primar- ily on territorial acquisition and political authority. Like the rulers before her, she turned toward religion to justify her reign and, although the concept of ‘Moscow, Third Rome’ [Moskva, Tretii Rim] had already emerged in the early 16th century, Catherine was first to morph this theology into state doctrine. Indeed, Catherine’s late rule assumed an increasingly messianic character, in which she saw the Russian Empire as the rightful heir to Byzantium and the Russians as the ‘chosen people’ who would protect and bring justice to the world. In the early 1780s she thus developed a plan to weaken the Ottoman Porte, Russia’s long-standing rival: conquer Constantinople and partition the Ottoman Empire (or at least its dependencies) and establish a new Greek Orthodox state in Crimea, effectively “restoring Byzantium.” Such an ambitious vision came to be known as the “Greek Project.” The first critical task of Catherine’s messianic 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 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 of an opportunity for Catherine to ignore: control over the Crimean peninsula promised her geopolitical security and a clear path for messianic empire-building.