Abstract
The Solovetsky Monastery’s resistance fit seamlessly with the Czarist government’s wartime propaganda efforts. Russian writers mocked Britain and France for calling themselves Christian, “worrying about the abolition of slavery,” and “writing laws that prohibit the cruel treatment of animals” while entering into an “unrighteous alliance with the enemies of Christ (the Muslim Ottoman Empire).”1 News of the incident was “carried into every part of Russia,”2 and contemporary Czarist publications emphasized that it was “impossible to make up” facts including absence of any deaths among the small seagulls covering the monastery’s yards.3 Archimandrite Alexander, though, freely embellished the details of his monastery’s encounter in his official report and during a personal audience with Nicholas I.4 The Russian prelate neglected to mention that the first shots fired by the English were warnings that came nowhere near the monastery’s Holy Gates and instead claimed that the Miranda and Brisk were frigates mounting about 120 guns instead of their actual total of 31.5 Alexander also added poetic details such as the timing of the last British round, which allegedly hit just after a bell had signaled the beginning of a service of the Kazan Mother of God.6
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Notes
William Hepworth Dixon, Free Russia (London, UK: Hurst and Blackett, 1870), 201. See also, for example, L’Invalide Russe (August 1, 1854), 757.
Ruslan A. Davydov and Gennadii Pavlovich Popov [Russian language], Defense of the Russian North in the Crimean War: Chronicle of Events (Ekaterinburg, Russia: UrO RAN, 2005), 74.
Vladimir Burov [Russian language], Almanac Solovetsky Sea,” No. 3 (2004), Letter 1, Pgs. 1–3 [July 22, 1854 ].
ADM 1/5631 CAP O57 [July 19, 1854] (NA), reprinted in Andrew Lambert, “The Royal Navy’s White Sea Campaign of 1854,” in Bruce Elleman and S. C. M. Paine, eds., Naval Power and Expeditionary Wars: Peripheral Campaigns and New Theatres of Naval Warfare (New York: Routledge, 2011), 36.
Alexander A. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims: Being an Account of a Sojourn in the White Sea Monastery and a Journey by the Old Trade Route from the Arctic Sea to Moscow (London, UK: Wells, Gardner, Darton, 1893), passim.
Yevgeny Viktorovich Tarle [Russian language], Crimean War, vol. 2 (Moscow and Leningrad/St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1950), chapter 8, section 1, p. 2.
Fond 410, Opis 2, File 915, Pg. 11 [August 12/24, 1854] (RGAVMF) and Georgii Zakharovich Kunzevich [Russian language], “About the Defense of Kola Town from the Enemy in 1854.” Publication of the Imperial Society of History and Ancient Russian Studies under the Moscow University (1906), 8.
Claude de Laguérenne and Jean Pierre Kernéis, “Le Voyage Autour du Monde du Pharmacien Ren é -Primevé Lesson.” Revue D’Histoire de la Pharmacie, Vol. 76, No. 279 (1988), 420.
John M. Tronson, Personal Narrative of a Voyage to Japan, Kamtschatka, Siberia, Tartary, and Various Parts of the Coast of China in HMS Barracouta (London, UK: Smith, Elder, and Company, 1859), 105.
Winfried Baumgart, ed., Akten zur Geschichte des Krimkriegs (AGKK): Englische Akten zur Geschichte des Krimkriegs, Band 2 [11. Dezember 1853 bis 1. Dezember 1854] (Munich, Germany: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2006), No. 435, Pg. 715.
Ruslan A. Davydov [Russian language], “‘We Should Come Back to a Frigate Without Feeling Disappointed:’ British Troop Landings at Kuzomeni on July 16th and the Activities of Rural Resistance,” Ushakovsky Readings: Scientific Materials from the Inter-Regional Conference in Memory of Professor I. F. Ushakov (MGPU: Murmansk, Russia, 2005), 127–134.
Winfried Baumgart and Martin Senner, eds., Akten zur Geschichte des Krimkriegs (AGKK): Englische Akten zur Geschichte des Krimkriegs, Band 3 [3. Dezember 1854 bis 9. September 1855] (Munich, Germany: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1994), No. 550, Pg. 827.
Paul Knaplund, “Finmark in British Diplomacy, 1836–1855,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 30, No. 3 (1925), 482.
Jens Petter Nielsen, “The Russia of the Tsar and North Norway. ‘The Russian Danger’ Revisited.” Acta Borealia, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2002), 81.
Baumgart and Senner, eds., Akten zur Geschichte des Krimkriegs (AGKK): Englische Akten zur Geschichte des Krimkriegs, Band 4 [10. September 1855 bis 23. Juli 1856] (Munich, Germany: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1988), No. 302, Pgs. 540–541.
Ivan I. Kaivarainen [Russian language], “Russian-Swedish Relations in the Years of the Crimean War and Finland.” Issues of History of the European North (1974), 144.
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© 2015 Andrew C. Rath
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Rath, A.C. (2015). Kola, Blockade, and Advances in Naval Medicine. In: The Crimean War in Imperial Context, 1854–1856. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137544537_6
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