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The Catacazy Affair and the Uneasy Path of Russian-American Relations by Lee A. Farrow

2022; Ab Imperio; Volume: 2022; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/imp.2022.0097

2164-9731

Olga Tsapina,

American History and Culture

Reviewed by: The Catacazy Affair and the Uneasy Path of Russian-American Relations by Lee A. Farrow Olga Tsapina (bio) Lee A. Farrow, The Catacazy Affair and the Uneasy Path of Russian-American Relations (London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). 216 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-3501-0718-2. The Catacazy Affair and the Uneasy Path of Russian-American Relations by Lee A. Farrow, Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at Auburn University-Montgomery, is a fine complement to her earlier studies, Alexis in America: A Russian Grand Duke's Tour, 1871–1872 (LSU Press, 2014) and Seward's Folly: A New Look at the Alaska Purchase (University of Alaska Press, 2016). This is the first book-length treatment of the long-overlooked scandal of Constantin Catacazy (1828–1890), a Russian diplomat who arrived in Washington in the fall of 1869 only to be recalled two years later. The book is a welcome and important contribution to diplomatic history that has long suffered from academic neglect. The six chapters of Farrow's skillful and expertly researched analysis of the anatomy of the Catacazy affair offer a fascinating case study of the peculiar nexus of international law, politics, commercial litigation, diplomatic culture, social mores, and free speech. [End Page 290] The first two chapters outline the background to Catacazy's mission in the United States. Although this was Catacazy's first appointment as the head of a Russian legation, his previous experience included posts in Rio de Janeiro, Hanover, Lisbon, and Washington DC, where he spent five years in 1851–1856 as secretary to the Russian envoys Alexander de Bodisco and Edouard de Stoeckl. His mission seemed uncomplicated, especially in comparison to that facing his counterparts in Paris, Berlin, and London. The United States and Russia were bound by traditional ties of friendship, and the fifteen-year-long tenure of Catacazy's predecessors was free of controversy, even though it took place in the political turbulence of the antebellum and Civil War era. Within a year, however, the new minister managed to antagonize the State Department, the president, and much of the American public. As Farrow shows, Catacazy's problems were caused in part by the lengthy legal fallout from the Crimean War, namely, the lawsuit brought by one Benjamin W. Perkins. Originating in the murky demimonde of military procurement populated by enterprising and dubiously credentialed individuals, the lawsuit drew into its vortex state and federal courts, the State Department, Congress, the president of the United States, and the Russian government of Alexander II. By the time Catacazy arrived in Washington, the Perkins claim had been dragging on for almost fifteen years, complicating negotiations for the sale of Alaska. The next three chapters follow the genesis and evolution of the Catacazy affair. The new Russian minister took up the Perkins claim with much enthusiasm. Hoping to pressure the American side to decide in favor of his government, he made it a condition for obtaining Russia's support for the United States in its dispute with Great Britain over the Alabama. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish did not appreciate this additional complication in the already difficult and politically sensitive negotiations, especially as he came to suspect that the Russian minister had attempted to manipulate American public opinion by planting false reports (including a forged letter from Ulysses S. Grant to Alexander II) and misleading opinion pieces in American newspapers. An investigation conducted by Hiram C. Whitley (1834–1919), the chief of the United States Secret Service, confirmed Fish's suspicions. Farrow offers a wonderfully engaging in-depth analysis of Whitley's investigation, which revealed, among other things, curious connections between Catacazy and journalists of the New York World, including George W. Adams (1838–1886), the paper's Washington correspondent, [End Page 291] and the gossip columnist Maria Austine Snead (1843–1888), a prolific journalist who wrote under the nom de plume of Miss Grundy. In the meantime, the burgeoning business of society pages made the Russian minister and, more importantly, his beautiful and glamorous wife, into celebrities and turned matters of diplomatic protocol into popular spectacle. This type of publicity affected Fish's catalog of Catacazy's misdeeds, and the Russian...