Russia’s Turkish Wars is at once a study in Russian military history and an analysis of how warfare and occupation policies changed in the long nineteenth-century. Drawing upon Russian military and intelligence reports, statistical analyses, and correspondence, Victor Taki illuminates the transforming worldviews of Russian military commanders and politicians as they grappled with how best to prosecute war in the eastern Balkans. From debates and negotiations over scorched earth tactics, mass expulsions, the utility of using local Christian volunteers and irregulars, and the consequences of anti-Muslim violence, Taki shows how Russian military men became major policymakers. The book contextualizes Russian military policy in the parallel narratives of military modernization and modern state-building, exploring how, over a century, successive military campaigns in the Balkans both reflected and shaped military and occupation strategy.

Each of the book’s seven chapters explores the incremental shifts in military thinking, strategy, and policy that eventually culminated in violent population politics of the late 1870s. Following an introductory chapter on the character of Russo-Ottoman wars in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Taki investigates how Russian commanders and Tsar Nicholas I (1825–55) considered the shift from a “war of Kings” to a “war of peoples” to be potentially destructive, preferring to maintain stability by pacifying local Muslim and Christian populations and guaranteeing both groups’ safety and freedom. From the 1830s to the 1850s, these views began to change, and Russian commanders leaned more heavily on the mobilization of Balkan Christians. The shift came incrementally: Ch. 5 shows how in the Crimean War it was an idea that was only intermittently implemented, with some Russian commanders exploiting local Muslim dissatisfaction with Ottoman modernization policies and others stirring up Christian rebellion to their advantage. The Great Reforms, Taki explains, ushered in a new era of both Russian military modernization and pan-Slavism that led to new kinds of policies. When the Russian army invaded Bulgarian lands in the late 1870s, policies varied widely concerning treatment of Ottoman Christians and Muslims and how best to prosecute war (Chs. 6 and 7). In analyzing massacres, mass expulsions, and repression of Muslim civilians, Taki argues that the Russians’ policy “aggravated inter-confessional and inter-ethnic tensions,” but was not the primary driving factor behind it (178). Moreover, he persuasively shows that mass expulsions of Muslims “never became a practical goal for … [Russian] occupation authorities” (210).

What, then, caused such unprecedented levels of mass violence toward Muslims? Taki argues that colonial occupation policies, orientalist attitudes, and the use of foreign Bulgarian Christian militiamen who were unfamiliar with local dynamics in these mixed Muslim-Christian areas led to the expulsion and mass violence of Muslim communities and radical new rifts within Ottoman society. While individual Russian commanders sought to kill Muslims and prevent their return, the Russian army, in Taki’s view, was not solely or even primarily responsible for this policy. This does not mean Taki whitewashes Russian attitudes: he does not shy away from probing Russians’ orientalist, colonialist, and racialized views of Balkan communities, who some commanders saw as “fanatics” (99) and “barbarians” with “bloodthirsty ferocity”(72). He also shows how their policies “aggravated inter-confessional and inter-ethnic tensions” (178).

There is one implausible claim for the Balkan historian, found in the conclusion: “Despite the death and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of eastern Balkan Muslims, neither the war of 1877–78 nor the policies of the Russian occupation authorities in its aftermath fundamentally changed the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional character of the region’s population” (211). This bold argument could only stand if paired with research that counters the extensive literature and theorization on violence in the Balkans, as well as engagement with the robust scholarship in both Ottoman and Balkan history that documents the profound transformations of Balkan societies following the brutal expulsions and massacres of Ottoman Muslims. To this end, Taki’s narrative takes place in the Balkans and is about the Balkans, but it is not a Balkan history; the historiographical debates, sources, and scholarly interventions are primarily in the field of Russian and military history.

Where Taki shines is in teasing out ambiguity and complexity, debunking myths of a singular, uniform Russian army with a mission to elevate Christians and ethnically cleanse Muslims in the service of a pan-Slavic Orthodox union. To this end, Taki sheds new light on the Eastern Question by drawing us into the complex worlds of Russian military commanders and the choices that they made.