Gendarme of Europe

The gendarme of Europe is an ideological cliche in relation to a state taking on gendarme (police) functions to maintain the necessary, from the position of such a state, rule of law in Europe . In historiography and journalism, it is most often applied to the Russian Empire during the reign of Emperor Nicholas I , as well as to himself ^{[1] [2]} .

In Soviet historiography, expression has traditionally been associated with Lenin's statements. In the article "Events in the Balkans and in Persia," published in October 1908, he writes ^[3] :

A new beating of the Persian revolutionaries by the troops of Nikolai the Bloody is coming. The unofficial Lyakhov is followed by the official occupation of Aderbeidzhan and the repetition in Asia of what Russia did in Europe in 1849, when Nicholas I sent troops against the Hungarian revolution . <...> Then Russia had to play the role of the European gendarme against some, at least European countries.

The article is devoted to the current events of the Bosnian crisis and the Constitutional revolution in Persia . In it, Lenin does not fix the expression solely for Russia and exclusively in relation to its actions in Europe. “The gendarme ” (probably, by analogy with the Gendarme Corps ) any country that takes over the functions of suppressing national and political conflicts beyond its borders becomes its “ gendarme ”. In the same article, he writes "about the vile role of all the allied powers , all the same, as the direct executors of the functions of the gendarme" and about "the reactionaryness of the European governments, which <...> help Russia play the role of the Asian gendarme."

The expression “European gendarme” as an exclusive characteristic of the reign of Nicholas I was consolidated during one of the most important ^[4] for subsequent Soviet historiography, a closed meeting of historians in the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) In the summer of 1944. Among the pressing problems, the issue of balance in historical works and textbooks between the canons of Marxism-Leninism and the disclosure of the history of the past without completely denying everything directly connected with the revolutionary and national liberation movements was resolved. The meeting was supervised by Zhdanov , who, in turn, regularly came with reports and instructions to Stalin . Among the notes made by Zhdanov during such meetings, including the following ^[5] :

"Prison of the Nations" [said] to Stalin and from Lenin.
The colonial [captive] captive [political] politician is not enough to replace the imperialist [political] aggressive policy.
About the gendarme from Lenin.
<...>

There is a summarizing statement about the role of the Russian empire in the suppression of the Hungarian revolution: “ Nicholas I and Metternich are the gendarmes of Europe”, which was included, as an example, in Ushakov’s dictionary on the word “gendarme”. Lenin himself did not write this verbatim, although a quote is attributed to him in the dictionary.

In French, the expression occurs as a definition of a country that performs certain regulatory or protective functions in relation to Europe, without being a part of Europe itself. In this sense, for example, the role of Morocco in regulating the flow of refugees to Europe from Africa is considered ^[6] .