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Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)

The Russo-Turkish War (Turkish: 93 Harbi, lit.'War of '93', named for the year 1293 in the Islamic calendar; Russian: Русско-турецкая война, romanizedRussko-turetskaya voyna, "Russian–Turkish war") was a conflict between the Ottoman Empire and a coalition led by the Russian Empire which included Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro.[14] Fought in the Balkans and in the Caucasus, it originated in emerging 19th-century Balkan nationalism. Additional factors included the Russian goals of recovering territorial losses endured during the Crimean War of 1853–1856, re-establishing itself in the Black Sea and supporting the political movement attempting to free Balkan nations from the Ottoman Empire.

The Russian-led coalition won the war, pushing the Ottomans back all the way to the gates of Constantinople, leading to the intervention of the Western European great powers. As a result, Russia succeeded in claiming provinces in the Caucasus, namely Kars and Batum, and also annexed the Budjak region. The principalities of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, each of which had had de facto sovereignty for some years, formally proclaimed independence from the Ottoman Empire. After almost five centuries of Ottoman domination (1396–1878), Bulgaria emerged as an autonomous state with support and military intervention from Russia.

Conflict pre-history[edit]

Treatment of Christians in the Ottoman Empire[edit]

Article 9 of the 1856 Paris Peace Treaty, concluded at the end of the Crimean War, obliged the Ottoman Empire to grant Christians equal rights with Muslims. Before the treaty was signed, the Ottoman government issued an edict, the Edict of Gülhane, which proclaimed the principle of the equality of Muslims and non-Muslims,[15] and produced some specific reforms to this end. For example, the jizya tax was abolished and non-Muslims were allowed to join the army.[16]

Konstantin Makovsky, The Bulgarian Martyresses, a painting depicting the atrocities of bashibazouks in Bulgaria.

Konstantin Makovsky, The Bulgarian Martyresses, a painting depicting the atrocities of bashibazouks in Bulgaria.

Two Hawks by Vasily Vereshchagin, showing two Bashibazouks held captive by the Bulgarian and Russian army.

Two Hawks by Vasily Vereshchagin, showing two Bashibazouks held captive by the Bulgarian and Russian army.

Bashi-bazouks, returning with the spoils from the Romanian shore of the Danube. 1877 engraving.

Bashi-bazouks, returning with the spoils from the Romanian shore of the Danube. 1877 engraving.

Bashi-bazouks' atrocities in Bulgaria.

Bashi-bazouks' atrocities in Bulgaria.

Civilian casualties[edit]

Atrocities and ethnic cleansing[edit]

Both sides carried out massacres and an ethnic cleansing policy during the war.[85][86]

In popular culture[edit]

The novella Jalaleddin, published in 1878 by the novelist Raffi describes the Kurdish massacres of Armenians in the eastern Ottoman Empire at the time of the Russo-Turkish war. The novella follows the journey of a young man through the mountains of Anatolia. The historical descriptions in the novella correspond with information from British sources at the time.[146]


The novel The Doll (Polish title: Lalka), written in 1887–1889 by Bolesław Prus, describes consequences of the Russo-Turkish war for merchants living in Russia and partitioned Poland. The main protagonist helped his Russian friend, a multi-millionaire, and made a fortune supplying the Russian Army in 1877–1878. The novel describes trading during political instability, and its ambiguous results for Russian and Polish societies.


The 1912 silent film Independența României depicted the war in Romania.


Russian writer Boris Akunin uses the war as the setting for the novel The Turkish Gambit (1998).

Battles of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78)

Ottoman fleet organisation during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78)

Batak massacre

Romanian War of Independence

Harmanli massacre

History of the Balkans

Provisional Russian Administration in Bulgaria

Monument to the Tsar Liberator

The Turkish Gambit

Serbo-Russian March

Allen, William E. D.; Muratoff, Paul (1953). Caucasian Battlefields. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Argyll, George Douglas Campbell (1879). . Vol. 2. London: Strahan.

The Eastern question from the Treaty of Paris 1856 to the Treaty of Berlin 1878 and to the Second Afghan War

Crampton, R. J. (2006) [1997]. A Concise History of Bulgaria. Cambridge: . ISBN 0-521-85085-1.

Cambridge University Press

(1876). Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. London: William Clowes & Sons. OL 7083313M.

Gladstone, William Ewart

(1879). The Russian Army and its Campaigns in Turkey. New York: D.Appleton and Company. Retrieved 19 July 2018 – via Internet Archive.

Greene, F. V.

von Herbert, Frederick William (1895). . London: Longmans, Green & Co. Retrieved 26 July 2018 – via Internet Archive.

The Defence of Plevna 1877

Hupchick, D. P. (2002). The Balkans: From Constantinople to Communism. Palgrave.  1-4039-6417-3.

ISBN

Jonassohn, Kurt (1999). . Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-2445-3.

Genocide and gross human rights violations: in comparative perspective

Kofos, Evangelos (1977). "Από το τέλος της Κρητικής Επαναστάσεως ως την προσάρτηση της Θεσσαλίας" [From the End of the Cretan Revolution to the Annexation of Thessaly]. In Christopoulos, Georgios A. & Bastias, Ioannis K. (eds.). Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, Τόμος ΙΓ΄: Νεώτερος Ελληνισμός από το 1833 έως το 1881 [History of the Greek Nation, Volume XIII: Modern Hellenism from 1833 to 1881] (in Greek). Athens: Ekdotiki Athinon. pp. 289–365.  978-960-213-109-1.

ISBN

Langensiepen, Bernd & Güleryüz, Ahmet (1995). The Ottoman Steam Navy 1828–1923. London: Conway Maritime Press.  978-0-85177-610-1.

ISBN

(1905). The Russo-Turkish War 1877; A Strategical Sketch. London: Swan Sonneschein. Retrieved 8 August 2018 – via Internet Archive.

Maurice, Major F.

McCarthy, Justin (1995). Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922. Darwin Press.  978-0-87850-094-9.

ISBN

Reid, James J. (2000). . Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des östlichen Europa. Vol. 57 (illustrated ed.). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. ISBN 978-3-515-07687-6. ISSN 0170-3595.

Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse 1839–1878

; Shaw, Ezel Kural (1977). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 2, Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808–1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29163-7.

Shaw, Stanford J.

Stavrianos, L. S. (1958). . NYU Press. pp. 393–412. ISBN 978-0-8147-9766-2.

The Balkans Since 1453

. London: Macmillan and Co. 1878. Retrieved 26 July 2018 – via Internet Archive.

The War Correspondence of the "Daily News" 1877 with a Connecting Narrative Forming a Continuous History of the War Between Russia and Turkey to the Fall of Kars Including the Letters of Mr. Archibald Forbes, Mr. J. A. MacGahan and Many Other Special Correspondents in Europe and Asia

. London: Macmillan and Co. 1878. Retrieved 26 July 2018 – via Internet Archive.

The War Correspondence of the "Daily News" 1877–1878 continued from the Fall of Kars to the Signature of the Preliminaries of Peace

Acar, Keziban (March 2004). "An examination of Russian Imperialism: Russian Military and intellectual descriptions of the Caucasians during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878". . 32 (1): 7–21. doi:10.1080/0090599042000186151. S2CID 153769239.

Nationalities Papers

Baleva, Martina. "The Empire Strikes Back. Image Battles and Image Frontlines during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878." Ethnologia Balkanica 16 (2012): 273–294.

online

Dennis, Brad. "Patterns of Conflict and Violence in Eastern Anatolia Leading Up to the Russo-Turkish War and the Treaty of Berlin." War and Diplomacy: The Russo-Turkish War of 1878 (1877): 273–301.

Drury, Ian. The Russo-Turkish War 1877 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012).

Glenny, Misha (2012), The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804–2011, New York: Penguin.

Isci, Onur. "Russian and Ottoman Newspapers in the War of 1877–1878." Russian History 41.2 (2014): 181–196.

online

Murray, Nicholas. The Rocky Road to the Great War: The Evolution of Trench Warfare to 1914. Potomac Books Inc. (an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press), 2013.

Neuburger, Mary. "The Russo‐Turkish war and the 'Eastern Jewish question': Encounters between victims and victors in Ottoman Bulgaria, 1877–8." East European Jewish Affairs 26.2 (1996): 53–66.

Stone, James. "Reports from the Theatre of War. Major Viktor von Lignitz and the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–78." Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 71.2 (2012): 287–307. contains primary sources

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Todorov, Nikolai. "The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Liberation of Bulgaria: An Interpretative Essay." East European Quarterly 14.1 (1980): 9+

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Yavuz, M. Hakan, and Peter Sluglett, eds. War and diplomacy: the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878 and the treaty of Berlin (U of Utah Press, 2011)

Yildiz, Gültekin. "Russo-Ottoman War, 1877–1878." in Richard C. Hall, ed., War in the Balkans (2014): 256–258 .

online

Глазков, В. В.; Копытов, С. Ю.; Литвин, А. А.; Митев, П.; Георгиева, Т.; Колев, В. (2018). Олег Леонов; Румяна Михнева (eds.). . Moscow: Фонд «Русские Витязи». ISBN 978-5-6040157-4-2.

Освобождение Болгарии – Лики Войны и Памяти. К 140-летию окончания Русско-турецкой войны 1877–1878 гг.

Seegel, Steven J (20 February 2024), (PDF), Rhode Island: Brown University.

Virtual War, Virtual Journalism?: Russian Media Responses to 'Balkan' Entanglements in Historical Perspective, 1877–2001

, Digital book index.

Military History: Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)

Sowards, Steven W, , MSU, archived from the original on 15 October 2007.

Twenty Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History

"Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Exploits of Liberators", (in Russian), Kulichki.

Grand war

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The Romanian Army of the Russo-Turkish War 1877–1878

(image gallery) (in Bulgarian), 8M, archived from the original on 13 October 2006

Erastimes

Archived 14 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine

Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878). Historical photos.