Lieven D. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume 2: Imperial Russia, 1689-1917
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Foreign policy and the armed forces
Turkestan
7
together with the Kazakh Steppe, this troika of Islamic fiefdoms
had prospered as transit points for caravans traversing the Great Silk Road
in an earlier age. However, they had long since degenerated into internecine
strife, and now seemed to derive the bulk of their wealth from raiding overland
commerce and taking Russian subjects as slaves.
The final defeat of Shamil in 1859 and the ‘pacification’ of the Caucasus
had freed a large army for action elsewhere. At the same time, martial glory
in Central Asia promised to restore some lustre to Russia’s badly tarnished
military prestige. In 1860 tsarist troops began to engage the Khanate of Kokand.
The first major city to fall was Tashkent, which a force led by General Mikhail
Cherniaev took in 1865. Three years later General Konstantin von Kaufmann
marched through the gates of Tamerlane’s fabled capital of Samarkand and
within short order Kokand and Bokhara submitted to Russian protection.
Finally, in 1873 Kaufmann also subdued the remaining Khanate of Khiva. Rather
than being annexed outright, Khiva and Bokhara were made protectorates and
retained internal autonomy under their traditional rulers.
During the Central Asian campaigns, Prince Gorchakov sought to reassure
the other European powers that his sovereign’s Asian policy was largely defen-
sive and aimed primarily to establish a border secure against the restive tribes
beyond. In an oft-quoted circular of 1864, Prince Gorchakov stated:
The position of Russia in Central Asia is that of all civilised states which find
themselves in contact with half-savage, nomadic populations . . . In such cases,
it always happens that interests of security of borders and of commercial rela-
tions demand of the more civilised state that it asserts a certain dominion over
others, who with their nomadic and turbulent customs are most uncomfort-
able neighbours.
He went on to promise that Russia’s frontier would be fixed in order to avoid
‘the danger of being carried away,as is almost inevitable, bya series of repressive
measures and reprisals, into an unlimited extension of territory’.
8
London remained unconvinced by Gorchakov’s logic. Many of its strate-
gists feared that the Russian advance into Central Asia threatened India, and
until the early twentieth century, halting what appeared to be Russia’s inex-
orable advance on ‘the most splendid appanage of the British Crown’
9
was
7 Not to be confused with Eastern Turkestan, as the Islamic western Chinese region of
Xinjiang was then known.
8 A. M. Gorchakov, memorandum, 21 November 1864, in D. C. B. Lieven (ed.), British
Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print
(University Press of America, 1983–9), part I, series A, 1,p.287.
9 G. N. Curzon, Russia in Central Asia in 1889 and the Anglo-Russian Question (London:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1889), p. 14.
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a prime directive of Whitehall’s foreign policy. To the British, this conflict
came to be known as the Great Game, whose stakes, in the words of Queen
Victoria, were nothing less than ‘a question of Russian or British supremacy
in the world’.
10
Like the Cold War waged in the latter half of the twentieth
century between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Great Game
involved very little direct combat between the adversaries. Instead, the con-
flict was largely waged through proxies and involved considerable intrigue and
espionage. Count Nesselrode aptly described the rivalry as a ‘tournament of
shadows’.
11
The Pamir Mountains, at the intersection of Turkestan, Afghanistan, British
India and Xinjiang, marked Imperial Russia’s furthest advance into Central
Asia. As long as tsarist territory abutted onto small, independent fiefdoms such
as the khanates, Russian armies pressed forward. By the 1890s, its borders had
reached those of the more established states of Afghanistan and China. In the
case of the former, England’s interest in maintaining buffers between Russia
and India effectively precluded further advances, and the borders remained
fixed.
Alexander II’s dramatic conquests in Asia marked the culmination of a pro-
cess that had begun over three centuries earlier with Ivan IV’s storm of the
Khanate of Kazan. Because these lands were contiguous to Russia’s own terri-
tory, because the advance seemed so inexorable and because it was carried out
by a somewhat exotic autocracy, Western contemporaries often imputed sin-
ister motives to tsarist expansion. Yet Russian imperialism in Asia was nothing
more than a manifestation of the global European drive to impose colonial
hegemony over nations with less effective armed forces, a process that had
begun in the era of Christopher Columbus.
As with the broader phenomenon of modern imperialism, there have been
many explanations for Alexander II’s small wars. These include an apocryphal
testament by Peter the Great, orthodox Marxist logic involving Central Asian
cotton fields, and the German historian Dietrich Geyer’s hypothesis about
a ‘compensatory psychological need’ as balm for the wounds inflicted on
national pride by the Crimean debacle.
12
Perhaps the most creative conjecture
was offered by Interior Minister Petr Valuev in 1865, ‘General Cherniaev took
Tashkent. No one knows why or to what end . . . There is something erotic
10 D. Fromkin, ‘The Great Game in Asia’, Foreign Affairs (Spring 1980): 951.
11 M. Edwardes, Playing the Great Game: A Victorian Cold War (London: Hamish Hamilton,
1975), p. viii.
12 Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy, 1860–
1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 205.
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about our goings on at the distant periphery of the empire. On the Amur, the
Ussuri, and now Tashkent.’
13
Whatever its parentage, it is clear that the push into Asia under Alexander
II did not follow some nefarious master plan. Much of it was carried out
by ambitious officers eager to advance their careers, even to the point of
insubordination. When successful, Oriental conquest often brought glory and
imperial favour. At the same time, tsarist diplomats remained attentive to the
wider international implications of Russia’s actions on the frontier. Thus,
after a ten-year occupation of the Ili River valley in Xinjiang, ostensibly to help
suppress a Muslim rising against Qing rule, Russiareturned part of the territory
to China according to the Treaty of St Petersburg on 12 (24) February 1881.
Meanwhile, the prospect of British aggression, not to mention its increasing
economic burden, had already led the emperor to sell his North American
colony of Alaska to the United States in 1867.
In Europe, the first priority of Alexander II’s diplomacy was to extricate
his empire from its Crimean isolation. Even as the Peace of Paris was being
negotiated, there were overtures from the French Emperor Napoleon III for
a rapprochement with his former combatant. In September 1857 the two
sovereigns met in Stuttgart and informally agreed to co-operate on various
European questions. The Franco-Russian entente was motivated by mutual
antipathy to Austria. Alexander II felt deeply betrayed by Vienna’s decision
to back his enemies during the Crimean War, while Napoleon III hoped to
diminish Habsburg influence in Italy, where that dynasty’s possessions were
becoming increasingly tenuous.The dalliance came to an abrupt end, however,
when the Catholic Second Empire emotionally supported a second Polish
revolt against tsarist rule in 1863.
Prussia’s Protestant King Wilhelm I, whose subjects also included Poles,
harboured no such sympathies for the Catholic insurgents. As the rising
gained momentum, he sent a trusted general, Count Albert von Alvensleben-
Erxleben, to St Petersburg to offer his kingdom’s military co-operation. The
resultant Alvensleben Convention of 27 January (8 February) 1863 was not a
major factor in restoring order. Yet it provided an important boost to Russian
prestige and helped Gorchakov head off efforts by Paris, London and Vienna
to intervene in the crisis. Over the coming years, Berlin also proved to be the
most stalwart supporter of the foreign minister’s efforts to repeal the Black
Sea clauses. Prince Gorchakov finally succeeded in this ambition in 1870, dur-
ing the confusion of the Franco-Prussian War. In return, Russia maintained a
13 Petr Aleksandrovich Valuev, Dnevnik, ed. P. A. Zaionchkovskii, 2 vols. (Moscow: Izd. AN
SSSR, 1961), vol. II, pp. 60–1.
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benevolent neutrality during Prussia’s campaigns against Austria of 1866 and
France four years later. Tsarist diplomacy thereby helped Wilhelm I realise
his dream of uniting Germany into an empire in 1871, a development whose
strategic implications soon became apparent to the Russian General Staff.
The two autocracies were bound by more than pure self-interest. Ideol-
ogy and dynastic ties (Wilhelm I was Alexander II’s uncle) also helped foster
cordiality between the Romanovs and the Hohenzollerns. As a couple the
union was relatively harmonious. The efforts of the new German Empire’s
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to establish a m
´
enage
`
a trois with the Habsburgs
proved less successful. Endeavouring to secure Germany’s eastern flank, Bis-
marck negotiated a Dreikaiserbund (three emperors’ league) in 1873. Neither
an alliance nor a formal treaty, the coalition was nothing more than a vague
statement of intent to co-operate along the lines of the old Holy Alliance.
Too much had changed in the intervening decades for a full restoration of
pre-Crimean solidarity between the three empires. Whereas in the first half of
the nineteenth century Russia had been the continent’s dominant power, after
1871 Germany had a more valid claim to that distinction. More important, the
two junior partners had very divergent aims in the Balkans. When forced to
choose, Berlin invariably favoured Teutonic Vienna over Slavic St Petersburg.
Alexander II’s reign ended, as it had begun, with a major setback in the
Near East. Russia’s fourth war with Turkey in the nineteenth century erupted
over another anti-Turkish rising among its restive Slavic subjects in 1875. Harsh
repression in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria horrified the Christian pow-
ers, but there was considerable reluctance to become involved once again in
a Balkan conflict. For the first time, public opinion in Russia was also making
an impact on tsarist policy, as Pan-Slavs noisily agitated in the press for mili-
tary support to emancipate the sultan’s Orthodox subjects. Gorchakov, now
close to his eightieth birthday and in failing health, tried to head off a con-
frontation through the Dreikaiserbund, but more bellicose passions among his
compatriots and the Porte’s refusal to compromise forced Alexander’s hand.
Despite some misgivings, the tsar declared war on Turkey on 12 (24) April
1877. After an unexpectedly arduous march through the Bulgarian highlands,
in February 1878 Russian troops reached San Stefano, virtually at the gates of
Constantinople.
As in 1829, the Ottoman capital was for the taking. However, on this occa-
sion it was the threat of British intervention, underscored by the presence
of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Squadron at anchor in nearby Turkish
waters, that discouraged Russian troops from completing their advance. Count
Ignat’ev, now ambassador to the Porte, therefore negotiated an end to the
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conflict with the Treaty of San Stefano on 19 February (3 March) 1878. Although
it halted the fighting, the agreement failed to placate London or Vienna. Most
alarming to them was the provision of a large Bulgarian state, presumably a
Russian satellite, which would dominate the Balkans. Within a few months
the European powers met in neutral Germany to negotiate a more acceptable
settlement.
The Treaty of Berlin, concluded on 1 (13) July 1878, satisfied none of the
signatories, least of all Prince Gorchakov. While the new pact yielded some
territorial gains in the Caucasus and in Bessarabia, Russians regarded it as a
humiliating setback. Gorchakov declared that Berlin was ‘the darkest page
of [his] life’.
14
Much like the Congress of Paris twenty-four years earlier,
St Petersburg once again found itself diplomatically isolated. But this time
there was a different scapegoat. Bismarck, who had hosted the powers as
‘honest broker’, bore the brunt of Russian resentment because of his failure
to support his partner. In the coming years Alexander II would nevertheless
instinctively look back to Germany for a new combination, culminating in a
secret Three Emperor’s Alliance in 1881. But over the longer term the damage
to Russo-German relations proved to be irreparable.
Alexander III, who became emperor upon his father’s assassination in March
1881, clearly understood the need to keep his realm at peace. A senior diplomat
described the priority of the new tsar’s foreign policy as ‘establishing Russia
in an international position that will permit it to restore order at home, to
recover from its dreadful injury and then channel all of its strength towards
a national restoration’.
15
Under his foreign minister, Nikolai Giers, Alexander
III’s diplomacy even more steadfastly pursued a course of recueillement. Tsarist
caution even extended into Central Asia, where the threat of a confrontation
in 1885 with Britain at Panjdeh on the Afghan border was quickly defused.
Although his contemporaries regarded him as reactionary and unimaginative,
Alexander III achieved his goal, and during his thirteen-year reign Russian guns
remained at rest.
The most dramatic development of Alexander’s comparatively brief rule
was a definitive break with Germany in favour of a military alliance with
France, which he ratified on 15 (27) December 1893. Despite the tsar’s ideo-
logical distaste for French republicanism, there were many sound reasons for
the new alignment. Relations with the Hohenzollerns had already taken a
14 In David MacKenzie, The Serbs and Russian Panslavism, 1875–1878 (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1967), p. 327.
15 V. N. Lamsdorff, ‘Obzor vneshnei politiki Rossii za vremia tsarstvovaniia Aleksandra
III’, GARF, Fond 568,op.1,d.53,l.1.
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distinct turn for the worse in the late 1880s over a German grain tariff and
a boycott of Russian bonds. The rift between the two autocracies became
inevitable when in 1890 Germany’s new Kaiser Wilhelm II offended Alexander
by refusing to renew a secret promise of neutrality, the Reinsurance Treaty.
There were also dynastic considerations. Whereas Alexander II’s fondness for
his uncle, Kaiser Wilhelm I, had sustained friendship with Berlin, Alexander III
had married a princess of Denmark, which still bore the scars of defeat by Prus-
sia four decades earlier. But the basic reason for the Franco-Russian alliance
was geopolitical logic. Russian generals understood that the German Empire,
aggressiveand militarily powerful, posed the most serious threat to its strategic
security. Furthermore, Berlin’s growing intimacy with Vienna seriously com-
plicated St Petersburg’s position in the Balkans.For its part, France also smarted
from its more recent humiliation by German arms. To the Third Republic,
alliance with Russia seemed the best guarantee of support in a revanchist
war.
When Alexander III died in 1894 (of natural causes), contemporaries com-
memorated him as the ‘Tsar Peacemaker’ (Tsar’ mirotvorets). With the excep-
tion of a few short-lived monarchs in the eighteenth century, he was the only
Romanov whose reign had been unsullied by war. Alexander was also faithful
to a nineteenth-century diplomatic tradition that favoured consistency, caution
and stability. Despite setbacks in the Crimea and at Berlin, over the past eighty
years St Petersburg had largely steered a steady course in its international
relations. During the reign of the last tsar, Nicholas II, the empire entered into
distinctly stormier waters.
Decline and fall
Young and relatively unprepared to assume the responsibilities of autocrat,
Nicholas was also subject to a much more restless and contradictory tem-
perament than his immediate ancestors. The clearest sign of the unsettled
diplomacy that characterised Nicholas’s reign is the simple fact that, whereas
three foreign ministers had served since 1815, no less than nine men held the
post between 1894 and the dynasty’s collapse in 1917.
16
However, to be fair
16 Although Nesselrode had held the post jointly with Capodistrias from 1816 to 1822.
Nicholas II’s foreign ministers were: N. K. Giers (until 1895), Prince Aleksei Borisovich
Lobanov-Rostovskii (1895–6), Nikolai Pavlovich Shishkin (acting minister 1896–7), Count
Mikhail Nikolaevich Murav’ev (1897–1900), Count Vladimir Nikolaevich Lambsdorff
(1900–6), Aleksandr Petrovich Izvol’skii (1906–10), Sergei Dmitrievich Sazonov (1910–
1916), Boris Nikolaevich St
¨
urmer (1916), Nikolai Nikolaevich Pokrovskii (1916–17). Of the
nine, two, Lobanov-Rostovskii and Murav’ev, died in office.
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to this oft-maligned monarch, the turn of the twentieth century was a time
of fevered instability throughout much of Europe, ultimately leading to a
catastrophic world war that also claimed three other imperial houses.
The first decade of Nicholas II’s rule was dominated by events on the Pacific.
Much as the continuing decline of Europe’s ‘sick man’, Ottoman Turkey,
continued to attract the involvement of more vigorous powers, China, the
sick man of Asia, increasingly also became the object of foreign ambitions
at century’s end. The immediate catalyst was the Qing military’s defeat in a
war with Japan over Korea during the first year of his reign. After debating
the merits of joining Japan in ‘slicing the melon’ of China or supporting the
Middle Kingdom’s territorial integrity, Nicholas’s ministers opted for the latter.
Together with Germanyand France, Russia pressed the Japanese intoreturning
the Liaotung (Liaodong) Peninsula, with its strategically important naval base
of Port Arthur (L
¨
ushun), near Peking.
The tsarist intervention against Tokyo in 1895 set in motion a chain of events
that led to a disastrous war with the Asian empire within a decade. Like the
Crimean debacle half a century earlier, confrontation with Japan was neither
inevitable nor desired. However, bickering among his councillors, both offi-
cial and unofficial, severely hampered Nicholas’s ability to pursue a coherent
policy in the Far East. At first, the tsar benefited from Peking’s gratitude by
concluding a secret defensive alliance with the Qing on 22 May (3 June) 1896.
In August of that year he secured a more concrete reward in the form of a
1,500-kilometre railway concession through Manchuria, which considerably
shortened the last stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway then nearing comple-
tion. Then, toward the end of 1897 the new foreign minister, Count Mikhail
Murav’ev, tricked his master into seizing Port Arthur shortly after the German
navy had taken another valuable harbour in northern China, on Kiaochow
(Jiaozhou) Bay. While Nicholas’s move did not technically violate the pre-
vious year’s agreement, it effectively killed the friendship with the Middle
Kingdom. At the same time, by acquiring the very port that its diplomats had
forced Japan to hand back to China in 1895, Russia aroused the unyielding
enmity of the Meiji government.
The more immediate cause of the Russo-Japanese War was the tsar’s reluc-
tance to evacuate Manchuria, which his troops had occupied in 1900 in concert
with an international intervention to suppress the xenophobic ‘Boxer’ rising
in north-east China that summer. Although Russia had formally pledged to
withdraw its forces from the region in spring 1902, it failed to live up to the
final phase of the agreement, scheduled for autumn 1903. Japan had already
become alarmed when Nicholas appointed a viceroy for the Far East two
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months earlier, an action that seemed to signal a stronger tsarist presence on
the Pacific. On 24 January (6 February) 1904, Tokyo recalled its minister to
St Petersburg and two days later Japanese torpedo boats launched a surprise
nighttime raid on Russia’s Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur.
The combat itself eventually became a war of attrition involving increas-
ing numbers of troops in Manchuria. As the fighting wore on, Russian public
opinion began to oppose the distant war. An attempt to regain the initia-
tive on the waves by sending the powerful Baltic Fleet around the world to
the northern Pacific ended catastrophically when much of it was sunk by
the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Straits of Tsushima in May 1905. Humili-
ated at sea, unable to halt the adversary’s advance into the Manchurian inte-
rior, financially exhausted and beset by revolutionary unrest on the home
front, Nicholas readily accepted an American offer that summer to medi-
ate an end to the conflict. Thanks to the brilliant diplomacy of the for-
mer finance minister, Sergei Witte, who headed the tsar’s delegation to the
peace talks in New Hampshire, Russia’s penalty for defeat was comparatively
light. Nevertheless, the Treaty of Portsmouth, which was concluded on 23
August (5 September) 1905, marked an end to Nicholas’s dreams of Oriental
glory.
As in 1855, the consequences of Russian military failure abroad had a major
impact on politics at home. Facing mounting opposition from nearly all ele-
ments of society, in October 1905 the tsar announced the creation of an elected
legislature, the Duma, and broader civil rights. While this concession did not
convert the empire into a full parliamentary democracy, it did impose impor-
tant limitations on the autocracy’s prerogatives. More important, Nicholas’s
October Manifesto appeased many of his critics, thereby bringing his realm
much needed domestic quiet.
Over the coming years, Foreign Minister Aleksandr Izvol’skii resolved most
of the outstanding quarrels with other powers in East and Inner Asia. Thus
on 21 June (4 July) 1907 he authorised an agreement with Japan, which, along
with a treaty in 1910, recognised respective spheres of influence on the Pacific.
More important, Izvol’skii also responded favourably to a British proposal
to negotiate an end to the long-standing Asian rivalry. According to the
Anglo-Russian Convention of 18 (31) August 1907, the two signatories accorded
London influence over Afghanistan and southern Persia, while St Petersburg
won dominance in Persia’s more populous north. Although the pact did not
entirely end the Great Game, it did much to improve relations between its
two players. The convention also facilitated France’s goal of forming an anti-
German Triple Entente.
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Russia’s rebuff in the Far East redirected its attention back to the Near
East. By now a number of Orthodox monarchies had gained independence
from the Ottoman Sultan, while control over his much-diminished European
inheritance was becoming increasingly tenuous. Meanwhile, the bacillus of
nationalism had also begun to infect Austria-Hungary, whose Slavic minori-
ties were becoming increasingly restive as well. Among the Dual Monarchy’s
subjects most vulnerable to separatist tendencies were Serbians, Croatians
and Slovenes, many of whom yearned to join the Kingdom of Serbia into a
‘jugoslav’ or South Slavic federation. Belgrade, which was closely aligned with
St Petersburg, naturally did little to discourage such aspirations. As a result,
relations between Austria-Hungary and Serbia grew increasingly strained in
the twentieth century’s first decade. By the same token, the Eastern Question
continued to be a source of friction between the Habsburgs and the Romanovs.
It was against this backdrop of mutual suspicion that Izvol’skii similarly
attempted to fashion a deal with Russia’s Balkan antagonist. In September
1908, the tsar’s foreign minister secretly met with his Austrian counterpart,
Count Alois von Aerenthal, at Buchlau Castle in Moravia. Accounts of the
conversation between the two men differ, but their discussion focused on
trading Austrian consent in re-opening the Turkish Straits to Russian warships
in exchange for Russian recognition of the former’s rule over the former
Ottoman provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Thinking that he had scored a
brilliant diplomatic coup, Izvol’skii instead was horrified when Aerenthal soon
publicised his consent to the Bosnian question without mentioning the Straits.
Berlin’s quick pledge of support for Vienna effectively forced the chastened
official to accept the count’s fait accompli.
Izvol’skii’s ‘diplomatic Tsushima’ eventually led to his replacement as for-
eign minister by the relatively ineffectual Sergei Sazonov. But the Bosnian
Crisis also had more serious consequences. On the one hand, Austria’s absorp-
tion of a province with a large Serbian population inflamed nationalist pas-
sions in Belgrade. Meanwhile, Aerenthal’s apparent duplicity along with
German bullying over the matter only further aroused Russian hostility to
the Teutonic partners. Along with other growing international stresses and
strains, this animosity helped to divide the continent into two mutually hos-
tile coalitions, pitting the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary
against the Triple Entente of France, Britain and Russia. Armed conflict
between the two groups was by no means inevitable. Nevertheless, preserving
the peace grew increasingly complicated.
Over the next few years, the Balkans would be convulsed by a number of
other crises, including two regional wars between 1911 and 1913. Both conflicts
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were localised as the powers largely kept to the sidelines. But when in June 1914
a Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated Archduke Franz-Ferdinand,
the heir to the Habsburg throne, during a visit to the Bosnian capital of Sara-
jevo, Vienna was provoked into drastic measures against Belgrade. Despite
determined efforts over the next month among the continent’s chancelleries
to head off a clash, in late July negotiations gave way to ultimata, mobilisations
and finally the outbreak of the First World War.
With the possible exception of Austria-Hungary, which hoped for an isolated
campaign to crush Serbia, none of the combatants sought a confrontation in
July 1914. Nicholas was particularly reluctant to take up arms. Although his
military had largely recovered from the recent defeat in East Asia, he knew
that it was still no match for the Central Powers. Nevertheless, the tsar and
many of his ministers were even more fearful of the penalty of not supporting
Serbia, its partner, against an assault by the Dual Monarchy. Within the past
forty years Russia had twice been forced to yield to Austria in the Balkans,
at Berlin in 1878 and over the Bosnian question in 1908. A third capitulation
might irreparably harm the empire’s prestige, with fatal consequences for the
Romanovs’ standing as a great power.
The start of war did not end tsarist diplomacy. At first, much of Sazonov’s
attention was directed to securing the agreement of his allies for acquiring
German and Austrian territory in a peace settlement. When Turkey entered
the conflict on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914, the minister
quickly began to focus on the Straits.Already in early 1915 he gained the consent
of Britain and France for Russian control of the passage. Of course, to realise
its expansive ambitions in Central Europe and the Near East, Russia needed
to defeat its enemies. After two Russian armies were routed in East Prussia in
August 1914, the likelihood of victory became increasingly remote. And a year
later Poland and part of the Baltic provinces were in enemy hands. Although
by 1916 tsarist forces had managed to stabilise their positions, once again the
home front ultimately decided the outcome of the Russian war effort. Severe
economic dislocation in the cities and poor political leadership severely discred-
ited the dynasty, ultimately resulting in Nicholas’s abdication in March 1917.
The character of tsarist diplomacy
More than in any other era, between 1815 and 1917 Russia was firmly
anchored in the European state system. As one of the founders of the
Concert of Europe, St Petersburg fully subscribed to the values that
shaped thinking about international relations on the continent. If anything,
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