by Riazanovsky
Russian Foreign Policy, 1905-14
Like the other powers, Russia stumbled into the First World War. The tsarist government contributed its share to international alignments, tensions, and crises, and in the fateful summer of 1914 it decided to support Serbia and thus resort to arms. Yet its part of the celebrated "war guilt" should not be exaggerated or singled out. Russian ambitions and eagerness for war were no greater than those of other countries, while Russian preparedness for an armed conflict proved to be less. The empire of the tsars took no part in the race for colonies overseas which constituted an important aspect of the background of the First World War. Russian interests and schemes in the Balkans and the Near East were paralleled by those of Austria-Hungary and eventually also to some extent by those of Germany. The Pan-Germans were authentic cousins of the Pan-Slavs; and - a point which Fay and many others failed to appreciate - it was the German government, not the Russian, which enjoyed widespread popular support in its own country for a strong national policy. The fatal conflict erupted first between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and both states can be charged with a responsibility for its tragic outcome which preceded Russia's. Even the early Russian mobilization found its counterpart in the Austrian. Besides, it deserves to be noted that in the summer of 1914 only Austria-Hungary, of all the powers, desired war, although it thought merely of a quick destruction of Serbia, not of a continental conflagration.
In the course of a personal meeting shortly before the opening of the Portsmouth Peace Conference, Emperor William II of Germany talked Nicholas II into signing a defensive alliance, known as the Treaty of Bjorko. However, that agreement proved to be stillborn, because leading officials in both governments expressed strong objections to it and especially because France refused co-operation and held Russia to its obligations under the treaty of 1891-94. The years that followed the Russo-Japanese War witnessed an alienation of Russia from Germany, a virtual breakdown of Russo-Austrian relations, and at the same time a further rapprochement between Russia and France as well as the establishment of an Anglo-Russian Entente. The agreement with Great Britain, signed on August 31, 1907, was a landmark in Russian foreign policy, for it transformed a relationship of traditional and often bitter hostility into one of cordiality. That result was achieved through compromise in those areas where the interests of the two countries clashed: in Persia, Russia was assigned a large sphere of influence in the northern part of the country, and Great Britain a smaller one in the southeastern section, while the central area was declared neutral; Russia agreed to consider Afghanistan outside its sphere of influence and to deal with the Afghan ruler only through Great
Britain, Great Britain in turn promising not to change the status of that country or interfere in its domestic affairs; both states recognized the suzerainty of China over Tibet. Because Great Britain and France had reached an agreement in 1904, the new accord marked the emergence of the Triple Entente of France, Russia, and Great Britain, poised against the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. On the Russian side, the Entente meant an effective military and political alliance with France and only a vague understanding with Great Britain. Yet, as already indicated, that understanding represented a major reorientation of Russian, as well as British, foreign policy, and it helped to group Europe into two camps. It should be added that the alignment with France and Great Britain gained in popularity in Russia in the years preceding the First World War. It attracted the support of liberals, of many radicals, of business circles closely linked to French and British capital, and also of numerous conservatives who veered toward Pan-Slavism or suffered from tariff wars with Germany and objected to tariff arrangements with that country as detrimental to Russian agriculture.
Alexander Izvolsky, the Russian minister of foreign affairs from 1906 to 1910, not only made an agreement with Great Britain, but also developed an active policy in the Balkans and the Near East. In fact he, his successor Serge Sazonov who headed the ministry from 1910 to 1916, and their various subordinates have been described as a new generation of Russian diplomats eager to advance Russian interests against Turkey and Austria-Hungary after a quarter-century of quiescence. To be sure, as early as 1896 the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, Alexander Nelidov, had proposed to his government that Russia seize the Straits, but that proposal was never implemented. Izvolsky devised a different scheme. In September 1908, in Buchlau, Moravia, he came to an agreement with the Austrian foreign minister, Count Alois von Aehrenthal: Russia would accept the Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which Austria had been administering according to a decision of the Congress of Berlin; Austria-Hungary in turn would not object to the opening of the Straits to Russian warships. Austria-Hungary proceeded to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina before Russia could prepare diplomatically the desired reconsideration of the status of the Straits - a betrayal of the mutual understanding, according to Izvolsky, but not according to Aehrenthal. Betrayed or not, Russia was left holding the bag, because other powers, especially Great Britain, proved unwilling to see Russian warships in the Straits. The tsarist government experienced further humiliation when it hesitated to endorse the Austrian coup but was finally forced to do so after receiving a near-ultimatum from Germany.
The years following the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina witnessed repeated tensions, crises, and conflicts in the Balkans and the Near East.
Like Austria-Hungary and Russia, Germany also pursued a forward policy in that area. William II visited Constantinople and made a point of declaring his friendly feelings for Turkey and the Moslems; German interests pushed the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad railway - a project they had initiated as early as 1898 - and more German military experts came in 1913 to reorganize the Ottoman army. Two important Balkan wars were fought in 1912 and 1913. First Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro combined to defeat Turkey and expand at Turkish expense. Next, the victors quarreled and the Bulgarians suffered a defeat by the Serbians, the Greeks, and the Montenegrins, as well as by the Rumanians and by the Turks, who resumed hostilities to regain some of their losses. The Balkan wars left a legacy of tensions behind them, in particular making Bulgaria a dissatisfied and revisionist state and further exacerbating the relations between Austria-Hungary and Serbia.
When the heir to the Habsburg throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, was assassinated by Serbian patriots on June 28, 1914, and Austria delivered a crushing ultimatum to Serbia, the Russian government decided to support Serbia - the alternative was another, and this time complete, defeat in the Balkans. With the alliances operating almost automatically, Germany backed Austria-Hungary, while France stood by Russia. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, Germany on Russia on August 1 and on France on August 3. The German attack on Belgium brought Great Britain to the side of France and Russia on August 4. Europe entered the First World War.
Russia in the First World War
From the summer of 1914 until its collapse during the months that followed the overthrow of the imperial regime in 1917, the Russian army fought tenaciously and desperately under most difficult circumstances. The improvised offensive into East Prussia, which opened the hostilities and helped France at the most critical moment, ended in a shattering defeat of the Russians in the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. This offensive, General Michael Alekseev's epic retreat in Poland in 1915, the repeated offensives and counteroffensives in Galicia, and heavy fighting in numerous other sectors of the huge and shifting Eastern front cost the Russians enormous casualties. Quickly the Russian army ran out of its supply of weapons and ammunition, and for a period of time in 1915 up to 25 per cent of Russian soldiers were sent to the front unarmed, with instructions to pick up what they could from the dead. Although later the Russian supply improved, the Russian forces remained vastly inferior to the German and the Austrian in artillery and other weapons.
The Allies could help little, for the German navy controlled the Baltic, and approaches through the Black Sea were
cut off when Turkey joined the Central Powers in the autumn of 1914. The so-called Gallipoli campaign of the Allies, which aimed to break the Turkish hold on the Straits, failed in 1915. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in October 1915 to help crush Serbia. The Rumanian entry into the war on the side of the Entente at the end of August 1916 led to a catastrophic defeat of the Rumanians and served to extend the Russian front. Yet the Russian troops went on fighting. In fact, they generally outfought the Austrians, and they also scored successes on the Caucasian front against Turkey. More important, in spite of many defeats and the necessity of retreating, they continued to force Germany to wage a major war on two fronts at the same time. As a British historian put it: "Despite all defects and difficulties, the Russians fought heroically, and made a decisive contribution to the course of the war." In the field of diplomacy, devoted during those years to the prosecution of the war and the formulation of war aims, the Russian government made a striking gain when in the spring of 1915 Great Britain and France agreed to the Russian acquisition of Constantinople, the Straits, and the adjoining littoral at the peace settlement. Italy, which joined the Entente at the end of August 1916, acquiesced in the arrangement.
While the Russian command made its share of military mistakes, the political mistakes of the Russian government proved to be both greater and more damaging. Nicholas II and his ministers failed to utilize the national rally that followed the outbreak of the war. In fact, they continued to rely on exclusively bureaucratic means to mobilize the resources of the nation, and they proceeded to oppress ethnic and religious minorities in the areas temporarily won from Austria as well as in home provinces. In particular, they failed to make the necessary concessions to the Poles. Russian defeats, the collapse of Russian supply, and the utter incompetence of the war minister, General Vladimir Sukhomlinov, as well as of some other high officials, did lead, to be sure, to certain adjustments. The Duma was finally called together in August 1915 for a short session, Sukhomlinov and three of his colleagues had to resign, and the government began to utilize the efforts of society to support the army. These efforts, it should be added, which were led by public figures and industrialists such as Guchkov, had developed on a large scale, ranging from work in the Red Cross to widespread measures to increase production of military materiel. The Zemstvo Union and the Union of Towns, which joined forces under the chairmanship of Prince George Lvov, and the War Industry Committee, led by Guchkov, became especially prominent.
But the rapprochement between the government and the public turned out to be slight and fleeting. Nicholas II would not co-operate with the newly created, moderate Progressive Bloc led by Miliukov, which included
the entire membership of the Duma, except the extreme Right and the extreme Left, and which won majority support even in the State Council. Instead he came to rely increasingly on his wife Empress Alexandra and on her extraordinary advisor, the peasant Gregory Rasputin. Moreover, in spite of the protests of ten of his twelve ministers, the sovereign unwisely took personal command of the armed forces, which had been commanded by his relative Grand Duke Nicholas, leaving Alexandra and Rasputin in effective control in the capital. Thus a narrow-minded, reactionary, hysterical woman and an ignorant, weird peasant - who apparently made decisions simply in terms of his personal interest, and whose exalted position depended on the empress's belief that he could protect her son from hemophilia and that he had been sent by God to guide her, her husband, and Russia - had the destinies of an empire in their hands. Ministers changed rapidly in what has been described as a "ministerial leapfrog," and each was more under Rasputin's power than his predecessor. Eventually, after Rasputin's assassination, one of them claimed communion with Rasputin's spirit! That assassination, long and gruesome, took place at the end of December, 1916. It was engineered by a leader of the extreme Right, a member of the imperial family, and another aristocrat related to the imperial family by marriage, who each tried to save the dynasty and Russia. As the year 1917 began, there were rumors of a palace coup that would restore sanity and leadership to the imperial government. But a popular revolution came first.
XXXII
THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIA FROM THE "GREAT REFORMS" UNTIL THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1917
The last sixty years of Imperial Russia are not only in themselves a period of great historical interest: they are significant for other countries and other periods. The pattern of this period in Russia has repeated and is repeating itself elsewhere. It is not only in Russia, and not only in Europe, that the impact of the nineteenth- or twentieth-century West on a backward country has caused distortions and frustrations, has released revolutionary forces. New countries have been drawn into the world capitalist economy, into the rapid exchange of goods and ideas. The loss of centuries has to be made up in a few years. Improved communications, public order and sanitation increase population faster than output. The impoverished masses become more impoverished. The new ways create a new intelligentsia. The shrieking contrast between the old and the new drive a part of the intelligentsia to revolutionary ideas, and if political conditions make this necessary, to conspiratorial organization. The force which keeps such societies together is the bureaucracy. It holds the power, the privileges and the means of repression. From it and through it come such reforms as are permitted. It is outwardly impressive. It weighs heavily on the backs of the people. But like cast iron, though heavy it is also brittle. A strong blow can shatter it to pieces. When it is destroyed there is anarchy. Then is the moment for a determined group of conspiratorial revolutionary intellectuals to seize power.
H. SETON-WATSON
Whether the general well-being of the peasantry had shown improvement or decline - whether there had been within the peasant mass a tendency to draw together or to draw apart - still, as the day of revolt approached, there was no doubt of the existence in the countryside of a morass of penury sufficiently large, an antithesis between poverty and plenty sufficiently sharp, to give rise to whatever results might legitimately be bred and born of economic misery and economic contrast.
ROBINSON
Who lives joyfully, Freely in Russia?
NEKRASOV
The "great reforms" made a division in the economic and social development of Russia. Even if we disregard the peculiar Soviet periodization, which considers Russia as feudal from the late Kievan era until the eman-
cipation of the serfs and capitalistic from the emancipation of the serfs until 1917, the crucial significance of the "great reforms" must still be emphasized. In particular, these reforms contributed immensely to the economic changes and the concomitant social shifts which characterized the empire of the Romanovs during its last five or six decades and culminated in its downfall.
Every social class felt the impact of the "great reforms" and of their aftermath. The gentry, to be sure, remained the dominant social group in the country. In fact, as already indicated, both Alexander III and Nicholas II made every effort to strengthen the gentry and to support its interests. Court circles consisted mainly of great landlords. The bureaucracy that ran the empire was closely linked on its upper levels to the landlord class. The ministers, senators, members of the State Council, and other high officials in the capital and the governors, vice-governors, and heads of various departments in the provinces belonged predominantly to the gentry. With the establishment in 1889 of land captains to be appointed from the local gentry, Russia obtained a new network of gentry officials who effectively controlled the peasants. A year later the zemstvo "counterreform" greatly strengthened the role of the gentry in local self-government and emphasized the class principle within that government. In the army most high positions were held by members of the landlord class, while virtually the entire officer corps of the navy belonged to the gentry. The government supported gentry agriculture by such measures as the establishment in 1885 of the State Gentry Land Bank which provided funds for the landlords on highly favorable terms.
Nevertheless, the gentry cl
ass declined after the "great reforms." Members of the gentry owned 73.1 million desiatin * of land according to the census of 1877, 65.3 million according to the census of 1887, 53.2 in 1905 according to a statistical compilation of that year, and only 43.2 million desiatin in 1911 according to Oganovsky's calculations. At the same time, to quote Robinson: "The average size of their holdings also diminished, from 538.2 desiatinas in 1887 to 488 in 1905; and their total possession of work horses from 546,000 in 1888-1891, to 499,000 in 1904-1906 - that is, by 8.5 per cent." Although the emancipation settlement was on the whole generous to the gentry, it should be kept in mind that a very large part of the wealth of that class had been mortgaged to the state before 1861 and that, therefore, much of the compensation that the landlords received as part of the reform went to pay debts, rather little remaining for development and modernization of the gentry economy. Moreover, most landlords failed to make effective use of their resources and opportunities. Deprived of serf labor and forced to adjust to more intense competition and other
* A desiatina equals 2.7 acres.
harsh realities of the changing world, members of the gentry had little in their education, outlook, or character to make them successful capitalist farmers. A considerable number of landlords, in fact, preferred to live in Paris or Nice, spending whatever they had, rather than to face the new conditions in Russia. Others remained on their estates and waged a struggle for survival, but, as statistics indicate, frequently without success. Uncounted "cherry orchards" left gentry possession. The important fact, much emphasized by Soviet scholars, that a small segment of the gentry did succeed in making the adjustment and proceeded to accumulate great wealth in a few hands does not fundamentally change the picture of the decline of a dominant class.