179. As communicated in December 1911 to British professor Bernard Pares: “Papers Communicated by Professor Pares, December 23, 1911,” in Lieven, British Documents on Foreign Affairs, VI: 185–8 (at 187).
180. Goriachkin, Pervyi russkii fashist.
181. McDonald, “A Lever Without a Fulcrum,” 268–314.
182. Fascism would flourish in the Russian emigration. See, among a wide literature, Markov, Voiny temnykh sil. An ardent anti-Semite, Markov (the younger of two Duma brothers) became a Nazi.
183. Rogger, Jewish Policies, 190.
184. Daly, Watchful State, xi (citing I. Blok, “Poslednie dni starogo rezhima,” in Gessen, Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, IV: 13).
185. The regime “was in a precarious position,” explained one former deputy interior minister. “In normal times no government should use methods employed by revolutionists, for in its hands such methods become double-edged weapons.” Gurko, Features and Figures, 437.
PART II: DURNOVÓ’S REVOLUTIONARY WAR
1. It had taken rule-of-law Britain from 1832 until 1912 to effect a transition from greatly limited suffrage (propertied men) to universal manhood suffrage.
2. John Channon, “The Peasantry in the Revolutions of 1917,” in Frankel, Revolution in Russia, at 117.
3. Kurzman, Democracy Denied.
4. Zinaida Gippius’s diary entry in August/September 1915: “The right—they understand nothing, they are going nowhere, and they refuse to let anyone else go anywhere. The center—they understand, but they are going nowhere, and wait (for what?). The left—they understand nothing but are going like the blind without knowing whither or to what ultimate aim.” Siniaia kniga, 32.
5. “Nashi tseli” [unsigned], Pravda, April 22, 1912, in Sochineniia, II: 248–9.
6. Souvarine, Stalin, 133.
7. PSS, XLVIII: 162.
8. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 820–1.
9. It was issued as a separate pamphlet the next year (St. Petersburg: Priboy, 1914); a much revised version appeared in Sochineniia, II: 290–367. See also Fel’shtinskii, Razgovory s Bukharinym, 10.
10. There were some fifty-five revolutionaries just on the Moscow okhranka payroll as of April 1912. Smirnov, Repressirovanoe pravosudie, 101–3.
11. Wolfe, “Lenin and the Agent”; Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek, 254; Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “Deposition in the Case of R. V. Malinovsky: Protocols of 26 May 1917, N. A.,” in Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 35; Elwood, Roman Malinovsky.
12. Luchinskaia, Velikii provokator Evno Azef; Geifman, Entangled in Terror. After being exposed as an okhranka agent in 1909, Azev escaped to Germany, where he was imprisoned until 1917 and died the next year, apparently of kidney disease.
13. “Vystuplenie N. I. Bukharina,” 78. In the British novelist G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), seven anarchists, code-named for the days of the week, plot to blow up the Brighton Pier, but every one turns out to be a police agent.
14. Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek, 194.
15. Smith, “Monarchy Versus the Nation.”
16. Russian foreign ministry personnel were far removed from the roiling social hatreds Durnovó feared. Gurko, Features and Figures, 481–562 (commenting, inter alia, on A. P. Izvolsky and S. D. Sazonov).
17. Durnovó to Plehve, in D. N. Liubimov, “Sobytiia i liudi (1902–1906 gg.)” (RGALI, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 39, l. 461).
18. Novoe vremia, April 26, 1912; Aldanov, “Durnovó” 39–40; Lieven, “Bureaucratic Authoritarianism.” Durnovó’s civil service record (RGIA, f. 1162, op. 6, d. 190, l. 82–109) can be found in Al’manakh: Iz glubiny vremen, 1995, no. 4: 151–65. See also Borodin, “P. N. Durnovó”; Shikman, Deiateli otechestvennoi istorii; and Glinka, Odinnadtsat’ let v Gosudarstvennoi Dumy. Stolypin and Durnovó became enemies nearly from the moment of their acquaintance in 1904. Ascher, P. A. Stolypin, 48–9.
19. “Durnovó stood out among the statesmen of that epoch, including Witte, for his great fund of information, his independent ideas, his courage in expressing his opinion, and his statesmanlike understanding of events,” according to his deputy, Vladimir Gurko. Gurko, Features and Figures, 413–5.
20. McDonald, “The Durnovó Memorandum.”
21. Lieven, Russia and the Origins, 5.
22. Durnovó also understood that the war would not be quick, and he foresaw which camps Italy, Turkey, and the Balkan states would join, and how even Japan and the United States would play a role. Durnovó’s memorandum was found among the papers of Nicholas II by the Bolsheviks, and Evgeny Tarle published a version of it in 1922: “Zapiska P. N. Durnovó Nikolaiu II.” See also Tarle, “Germanskaia orientatsiia i P. N. Durnovó.” In full in English translation: Golder, Documents of Russian History, 3–23. Witte had allowed himself to communicate with Nicholas II in brusque terms about the military defeat during the Russo-Japanese War. Dillon, Eclipse of Russia, 294–5 (purporting to quote directly from a copy of a letter Witte gave him).
23. Lenin, Detskaia bolezn’ “levizny” v kommunizme (Petrograd, 1920), reprinted in PSS, XLI: 3–90 (at 10).
24. Even before the outbreak of the war, in 1913, widespread fear gripped elites that “the specter of 1905 would once again become a reality,” reported M. F. von Kotten. Korbut, “Uchet departamentom politsii opyta 1905 goda,” 219. In April 1914, Count V. V. Musin-Pushkin summed up the mood at court, writing to his father-in-law that “the most bourgeois circles are becoming revolutionary, and it is worse in the provinces than in the capital. Absolutely everyone is discontented.” The count added that “what is most stupid and annoying is that there are no basic reasons for discontent.” Cherniavsky, Prologue to Revolution, 12–3.
25. M. O. Gershenzon, in Shagrin and Todd, Landmarks, 81; Paleologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs, III: 349–50.
26. In fact, neither the British nor the French were confident in the endurance of a Russo-German antagonism, because no essential interests divided St. Petersburg and Berlin. But in Russia, the leading Germanophiles—Witte and Durnovó—were no longer in positions of power sufficient to influence Nicholas II. A decline in pro-German sentiment in St. Petersburg served as the background for Durnovó’s February 1914 memorandum. Lieven, “Pro-Germans”; Bestuzhev, Bor’ba, 44–6.
27. Fischer, War of Illusions, 334–6.
28. Durnovó’s former deputy noted that his boss “could not fathom the psychological depths of the people.” Gurko, Features and Figures, 415.
29. “Governing a state is a harsh business,” Durnovó had explained in late 1910. “Justice itself yields to the demands of higher state interests . . . The tsar has to be terrible [awesome] but gracious, terrible first and foremost and gracious afterwards.” Gosudarstvennyi Sovet: stenograficheskii otchet, sixth session, December 17, 1910, col. 595; Lieven, “Bureaucratic Authoritarianism,” 395, n25.
30. Lieven, Russia’s Rulers, 277–308.
31. “The heir’s illness, the empress’s irritability, the sovereign’s indecisiveness, the appearance of Rasputin, the unsystematic character of general government politics,” recalled Alexander Naumov, another rightist in the State Council, “all this forced honest and serious public officials to ponder the current state of affairs and to look warily upon an indeterminate future.” Naumov, Iz utselevshikh vospominanii, II: 214–5 (includes the Durnovó quote).
32. Years later, in the emigration, the story would be told that the tsar had invited Durnovó to take up the reins of government as prime minister. “Your Highness,” Durnovó is supposed to have demurred, “my system as head of the Government or minister of internal affairs cannot provide quick results, it can only show itself after a number of years, and these years will be a time of utter rumpus: dissolution of Dumas, assassinations, executions, perhaps armed uprisings. You, Your Highness, will not be able to take these years and y
ou will remove me; under such conditions my being in power would bring nothing good, only harm.” The idea that Durnovó would try one more time to win over Nicholas II and then decline an invitation to take charge is beyond fanciful. Still, the fanciful quote attributed to him does reflect how he and others had, essentially, lost heart. Vasil’chikov, Vospominaniia, 225; Lieven, Russia’s Rulers, 229–30.
33. Mal’kov, Pervaia mirovaia voina, 99.
34. Mendel, “Peasant and Worker.” Mendel was commenting on Leopold Haimson, whose influential article argued that revolution in Russia was inevitable, because of a dual social polarization: between workers and the rest of society, and between educated society and the autocracy. Haimson, “Problem of Social Stability.”
35. Dan, Origins of Bolshevism, 399. Originally published in Russian (1946), on the eve of the emigre Dan’s death in New York.
36. Hosking, Russian Constitutional Experiment. For an update, see McKean, “Constitutional Russia,” and the response by Peter Gatrell (82–94). A civil society is impossible in an illiberal political order, but scholars continue to imagine a civil society in tsarist Russia, focusing on the existence of associations, which enjoyed few civil protections and little influence on the state. Walkin, Rise of Democracy; Bradley, Voluntary Association; Ely, “Question of Civil,” 225–42.
37. Shelokhaev, Politicheskie partii Rossii.
38. Holquist, “Violent Russia,” 651–2.
CHAPTER 5: STUPIDITY OR TREASON?
1. Rech’, December 13, 1916, translated and reprinted in Golder, Documents of Russian History, 154–166 (at 164).
2. Tikhomirov, “Nuzhny li printsipy?,” 69.
3. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 56.
4. “The Kaiser sent me packing like a lackey,” the embittered ex-chancellor wrote. Later, Bismarck exacted a form of revenge, choosing as his epitaph, “a loyal German servant of Kaiser Wilhelm I.” Steinberg, Bismarck, 454–5, 463, 480. The kaiser’s dismissal of Bismarck was reminiscent of Nicholas II’s handling of Witte.
5. Kennan, Fateful Alliance.
6. Offer, The First World War, 324–30. The United States was third in international trade at 11 percent: Kennedy, Over Here, 298.
7. Steinberg, Yesterday’s Deterrent.
8. Quoted in Paul Kennedy, “The Kaiser and Weltpolitik: Reflexions on Wilhelm II’s Place in the Making of German Foreign Policy,” in Rohl and Sombart, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 143–68 (at 155). See also J. G. Rohl, “Introduction” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes: A Character Sketch of Kaiser Wilhelm II,” in the same volume (1–62); Hull, Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II; and Hewitson, “The Kaiserreich in Question.”
9. Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar.
10. McClelland, German Historians and England; Sontag, Germany and England; and Conrad, Globalisation and Nation.
11. Quoted in Ronaldshay, Life of Lord Curzon, III: 117.
12. Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 360.
13. The literature on the general causes of war has in many ways developed out of the Great War example. Blainey, The Causes of War; Howard, The Causes of Wars. Alas, the political science literature on the causes of war entered a cul-de-sac some time ago, from which it has not fully emerged: Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War.” More helpfully there is Jervis, Perception and Misperception.
14. Gatrell, The Tsarist Economy, 31–2.
15. Stone, The Eastern Front, 42; Knox, With the Russian Army, I: xix.
16. Fischer, War of Illusions, 400; Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War, 181. “Russia grows and grows,” noted Germany’s civilian chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg. “She lies on us like a nightmare.” See also Pollock, Creating the Russian Peril; and Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke. Britain’s shipbuilding industry built warships at twice the speed and half the cost of Russia’s, but Britain bore the self-assigned burden of dominating the world’s sea lanes. Gatrell, Government, Industry, and Rearmament.
17. Wohlforth, “The Perception of Power”; John C. G. Rohl, “Germany,” in Wilson, Decisions for War, at 33–8.
18. Halevy, The World Crisis, 24–5; see also Crampton, “The Balkans,” 66–79.
19. Fay, The Origins of the World War, II: 335; Albertini, Origins of the War of 1914, II: 74–88; Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo; Vucinich, “Mlada Bosna and the First World War,” 45–70; Zeman, The Break-Up, 24–34; Remak, Sarajevo; MacKenzie, Apis, 123ff. Back on June 3, 1910, Bogdan Žerajić (a twenty-two-year-old Serb) had tried to kill Kaiser Franz Jozef; twelve days later, Žerajić had attempted to kill the then governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina General Marijan Verešanin. Having failed, Žerajić killed himself.
20. Mark Cornwall, “Serbia,” in Wilson, Decisions for War, 55–96.
21. Trotskii, Sochineniia, XVII/1: 190.
22. Franz Josef’s aggressive stance, to some, recalled British behavior in the Boer War fifteen years earlier when London, fearing loss of its grip across southern Africa, invented concentration camps and sought to annihilate the “uppity” Afrikaner population on the Cape. Lieven, “Dilemmas of Empire,” 187.
23. Wandruszka, House of Habsburg, 178.
24. Austria’s decision making has been judged severely (Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery, 521; Williamson, Austria-Hungary, 211). But for a shrewd defense of Austria-Hungary’s gamble, see Schroeder, “Stealing Horses,” 17–42. When Britain declared war on August 3, 1914, within four minutes British commanders in the Far East knew, via telegraph.
25. Newton, Lord Lansdowne, 199.
26. Lieven, Russia and the Origins, 77–80. Nicholas may have been influenced not only by Durnovó and the ill-starred Russo-Japanese War but also by the widely discussed book of the Russian-Polish banker Iwan Bloch, Budushchaia voina, 6 vols. (St. Petersburg: Efron, 1898). The concluding sixth volume was translated into English as The Future of War in Its Technical, Economic, and Political Relations: Is War Now Impossible? (New York: Doubleday & McClure, 1899).
27. Ropponen, Die Kraft Russlands; Fuller, “The Russian Empire,” 110–20.
28. Immediately after the war began, the Russian foreign minister pressured Serbia to cede the territory of Macedonia (to Bulgaria). Paleologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs, I: 22–23 (entry for July 23, 1914).
29. Albertini, Origins of the War of 1914, II: 352–62; Lieven, Russia and the Origins, 139–51; Spring, “Russia and the Coming of War,” 57–86. Albertini, among the general accounts, stands out for having thorough knowledge of Russian sources.
30. Turner, “The Russian Mobilization in 1914,” 252–66; Geyer, Russian Imperialism, 312–3; Sazonov, Vospominaniia, 248–9 (Sazonov was foreign minister). For the relevant documents, see “Nachalo voiny 1914 g.: podennaia zapis’.”
31. Hans Rogger, “Russia in 1914.” Alexandra, in a letter to Nicholas, fantasized that the war had “lifted spirits, cleansed the stagnant minds, brought unity in feelings,” and called the war a “healthy war in the moral sense.” Pares, Letters of the Tsaritsa, 9 (September 24, 1914). On Nicholas II’s public announcement of the war from a balcony of the Winter Palace, see Vasilyev, Ochrana, 36.
32. The paper added: “Here begins the second Great Patriotic War.” Gatrell, Russia’s First World War, 18. On the press drumbeat for war in 1914 in both Germany and Russia, see Fischer, War of Illusions, 370–88. “Why is it that in general, war is evil but this war alone is somehow good?” wrote Zinaida Gippius, the St. Petersburg poetess, in her diary in August 1914. Gippius, Siniaia kniga, 12.
33. As John LeDonne observed, “These were not the goals of a political establishment that had lost its nerve and was mesmerized by the German danger.” To be sure, as Boris Nolde rightly observed, Russia’s imperialist war aims had not driven the decision for war, but emerged after the war had begun. That emergence, however, did not occur out of the blue. Retrospectiv
ely, one of the chief culprits, former Russian foreign minister Aleksandr P. Izvolsky, attempted an exculpation of Russia, arguing that only fears of German hegemony in Europe had motivated Russia’s actions. LeDonne, Russian Empire and the World, 366–7; Boris Nol´de, “Tseli i real’nost’ v velikoi voine,” 81–6; Izvolsky, Memoirs, 83.
34. “Having so long resisted war for fear of social repercussions,” one scholar writes, “the Russian government now entered it for the same reasons.” McDonald, United Government, 207.
35. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan. See also Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive, chapters 4–5; and Sagan, “1914 Revisited.”
36. Forster, “Dreams and Nightmares: German Military Leadership and the Images of Future War,” 343–76 (esp. 360, 365, 372); Herwig, “Germany and the ‘Short War’ Illusion,” 688; Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive, 112, 122–24; Howard, The First World War, 28–9; Offer, “Going to War in 1914.”
37. Lambert, Planning Armageddon. One of Schlieffen’s arguments for the necessity of a lightning victory had been the supposed impossibility of sustaining a war of attrition given the new economic constraints of war. Albertini, Origins of the War of 1914, III: 369ff.
38. Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 214–18.
39. Ambassador Prince Karl Max Lichnowsky to Berlin, August 1, 1914, in Die deutschen Dokumente zum Kriegsausbruch, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte, 1922), III: 66; Albertini, Origins of the War of 1914, III: 171–8, 380–6; Berghahn, Imperial Germany, 282–3. On the kaiser’s worry and restraint, see Stevenson, Cataclysm, 21–35.
40. Tuchman, Guns of August, 99 (quoting von Moltke’s memoirs).
41. Nicolson, King George V, 328–9 (citing Grey’s note, from the Royal Archives); Young, “The Misunderstanding of August 1, 1914.”
Stalin, Volume 1 Page 110