The postcolonial philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak states that while Kant's readers understand his philosophy as universal speculation about humanity, he drew a line between the savages and the people of reason: "The subject as such in Kant is geopolitically differentiated" (Spivak 1994: 26). Indeed, "Why should men exist?" is a different question from "Should men live in Tahiti or in Siberia?" In Kant's logic, living in places like Konigsberg, being sociable, and making use of their reason, men could realize the purpose of their existence. But in places such as Yakutsk, unsociable men could not understand themselves and, therefore, had no purpose. However, people always travel to places like Yakutsk in search of furs, oil, or diamonds. So the next question would be: in these inhospitable but profitable places, which men should live - natives with no purpose, or whites with it, or both, in some sort of hierarchical order?
Konigsberg
In this part of the world, the Middle Ages started fiercely but ended quietly. Founded by a monastic order of Teutonic Crusaders, Konigsberg became the center of hostilities between the Germanic,
Baltic, and Slavonic peoples. But then, the Northern Crusade, the fur trade, and, finally, the Hanseatic league were all exhausted. Throughout the eighteenth century, several northern wars ended in Russian triumphs (Frost 2000; Scott 2001). More than anywhere else, Russians combined military conquest of this area with the absorption of local elites. Starting with Peter I, the Romanovs recruited their spouses and successors from the Baltic coast. In the early years of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which opened in 1725, four out of five of its presidents came from the University of Konigsberg (Kostiushev and Kretinin 1999).
During the Seven Years War (1756-63), the Russian state annexed eastern Prussia. The war followed fervent pan-European negotiations that historians call, with some justification, a "diplomatic revolution" (Kaplan 1968). When the war started, increasingly bizarre events occurred in Konigsberg. In 1757, the Russians came close to its gates but retreated for no apparent reason: the poor health of the Empress, Elizabeth of Russia, was the reason for hesitation, though this was a state secret (Anisimov 1999). While the Prussians celebrated this turn of events, Elizabeth recovered, arrested the top Russian commander, and sent the troops back. Meanwhile, the Prussian king, Frederick the Great, was busy protecting his capital, Berlin. With the Russians near its gates, Konigsberg accepted the same deal as Riga had in 1710: the city became a part of the Russian Empire and escaped massacre. Annexing eastern Prussia, the Russian Empire turned it into its province "forever." On 24 January 1758, the officials of the city took an oath to the Russian Empress.
Winston Churchill called the Seven Years War the very first world war. Its imperial context is well established (Anderson 2000; Schumann and Schweizer 2008). Starting with the attack of the young George Washington on a fort in French Canada, the war extended into the Old World. While England and France were fighting over colonies overseas, other powers were struggling for colonies in Eastern Europe. A true product of the Empire, the Russian army featured many Baltic Germans in its leadership. Its infantry was mostly Russian, and its omnipresent light cavalry included the Kalmyks, Bashkirs, and Cossacks, who fought under their native commanders. Frederick the Great explained the power of the Russian assault by "the number of Tartars, Cossacks, and Kalmyks that they have in their armies" (Wolff 1994: 171). Later, Kant considered the "Kalmuckians" as a separate race along with Negroes and (Native) Americans (2007b: 92), a highly unusual racial classification based on his personal experience with the Kalmyks in Konigsberg.
philosophy under Russian rule
The eighteenth-century military revolution was indecisive in Eastern Europe (Frost 2000); although the Russian Army employed the latest artillery inventions, it still relied on light cavalry and ethnic troops. Even the Russians perceived these oriental regiments as exotic and fearsome. The young officer, Andrei Bolotov was shocked to see the "strange," "half-naked," "horse-eating" troops massacring German villages for the sake of the Russian crown (1986: 124). The Kalmyks were allowed to loot the old Prussian arsenals; armed with medieval helmets and sabers, they probably looked ridiculous. Those were the last years of their service to the Russian Empire; in 1771, the Kalmyks left the Russian steppes for China in a mass exodus (Khodarkovsky 1992: 182). The Cossacks were equally unhappy. In 1773, they started a large anti-imperial mutiny in the Urals, which was led by Emelian Pugachev who fought as a Cossack in eastern Prussia. The general who finally defeated and arrested Pugachev also started his career there in Prussia. Bolotov (1986: 125) saw the summary execution of Prussian non-uniformed combatants who were captured shooting the Russians. Two were hanged publicly; eleven had their fingers cut off by Russian soldiers. Later, Bolotov attended Pugachev's execution in Moscow. For him, orientalizing the part helped to rescue the whole, which was the overall feeling of his and his peers' Europeanness:
Everywhere was devastation, arson, and burglary. . . . The cruelty and barbarism of our Cossacks and Kalmyks was against all the rules of war. . . . Nothing was seen in all these places but fire and smoke and the greatest ferocity and dishonor to the female gender. . . . These actions of our Cossacks and Kalmyks gave us little honor because, having heard of their barbarity, the European nations imagined that all our army was this way. (Bolotov 1986: 123)
The Russian armies and their allies made quick successes against Frederick. Berlin was taken and overrun by Russian and Austrian troops in 1760. Bolotov (1931: 2/34) heard that journalists in Berlin were supposed to run the gauntlet for writing "bold and hurtful things" about Russians, but they received an eleventh-hour reprieve. In any case, Berlin suffered more than Konigsberg; Frederick was on the verge of suicide. Nobody doubted that once the Russian crown had annexed eastern Prussia, it would remain a part of the Empire, and locals would have to adjust to the new order.
The brief colonization of Konigsberg, with its Teutonic glory and enlightened university, was an outstanding event. But the situation changed spectacularly with the death of Empress Elizabeth in January 1762. Her heir, Peter III, adored Frederick the Great and all things Prussian. In no time, Peter pulled Russia out of the Seven Years War and signed a separate peace with Frederick. The scale of the change in St. Petersburg surprised everyone. Officially, Konigsberg became a Prussian city again in August 1762. The Russians were preparing the general withdrawal of troops from Prussia when Peter III was dethroned by a conspiracy that was led by his wife, Catherine. The Russian governor, who was still stationed in the city, issued a declamation about his return to power. The story seemed to take yet another turn, but Catherine the Great decided against a new war and withdrew the troops from Prussia. After the long and victorious war, Russia had made no gains. The bloody series of events turned out to be entirely senseless.
Intrigue and Melodrama
Centuries later, Hitler hoped for a repeat of Frederick's miraculous survival when the Soviet troops encircled Berlin. Historians have ceaselessly debated the causes and results of those mid-eighteenth- century events that shaped Europe. The Cambridge historian, Herbert Butterfield, called this series of diplomatic and military events "intrigue and melodrama"; it was more intense than at any other time in European politics, "the last two decades excepted," he wrote in 1955. Butterfield believed that Russia was the main culprit behind the conspiracy against Frederick the Great, but the philosopher-king did not understand this fact even after the war ended, and nor did historians: "The attention of historians suffered a lapse in regard to those things which related to Russia" (Butterfield 1955: 162, 158). In the later writings of the German historian and theorist, Reinhart Koselleck, a sense of shock still surrounds the Seven Years War. Koselleck compared the events at the start of the war with the German-Soviet pact of 1939, but he characterized the events at its end as "historically matchless." Writing in 1968, he used the whole episode to illustrate the role of chance in history (Koselleck 2004: 118, 124). Later historians agree that the chief players all featured an extraordinary "talent for the unexpected" (Schweizer 1989: 179, 217; Palmer 2005: 150). Unknowable factors such as secret diplomacy, personal chemistry, and rulers' health, played decisive roles in this confrontation of absolutist regimes. For those who observed the war from within Konigsberg, it was stripped of any understandable meaning. If historians are still running out of metaphors when confronting these events in Prussia, what could the citizens of Konigsberg, who did not know a fraction of what we today know about their war, think about it and about their ability to understand it?