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The Sunday Times (London)
January 1, 2012 Sunday
Edition 1; National Edition
Who really started the first world war?
A bold study pinpoints Russia's role in the outbreak of the 1914-18
war in Europe
by ORLANDO FIGES
THE RUSSIAN ORIGINS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR by SAM MCMEEKIN Harvard £22.95 pp344
As any schoolchild knows, the first world war began when the
assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 was used by the
Austrians to punish Serbia and by the Germans to pick a fight with
Russia, whose growth they feared. In this scenario, what Bismarck had
once called a "damn fool thing in the Balkans" engulfed the entente
powers in a war to stop the expansionist ambitions of Germany, the
power most responsible for the conflict.
But as Sean McMeekin argues in this bold and brilliant revisionist
study, Russia was as much to blame as Germany for the outbreak of the
war. Using a wide range of archival sources, including long-neglected
tsarist documents, he argues that the Russians had ambitions of their
own (the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, no
less) and that they were ready for a war once they had secured a
favourable alliance with the British and the French.
The tsarist archives show that the Russians had been mobilising their
forces for several days before Germany declared war on August 1. They
did so at the risk that it would trigger the beginning of hostilities,
because the Germans could not wait for them to mobilise.
The German Schlieffen Plan was counting on their greater speed to
concentrate their forces in the west and defeat the French in time to
turn them round against the "Russian steamroller" before it was moving
against them from the east. They could not afford a two-front war.
Historians have portrayed Russia as a junior partner in the entente
cause, sacrificing troops in East Prussia to help the British and the
French by diverting German forces from the Western Front. But as
McMeekin reminds us, two-thirds of the Russians were deployed against
the Austrians in Galicia, where they were fighting for specifically
tsarist aims: the extension of Russia's "natural" frontier to the
Carpathians and the conquest of Polish lands in Silesia.
>From Galicia, the Russians looked towards the annexation of
Constantinople and the Black Sea straits. Nicholas II wanted to
achieve what Nicholas I had failed to do in the Crimean war: expel the
Turks from Europe and liberate the Slavs from Islamic rule. McMeekin
is dismissive of any pan-Slav aims on Russia's part. He rightly
focuses on the strategic importance of the straits to Russia's naval
defence of its vulnerable Black Sea borders and to its commerce with
the world. But he might have made a little more of Constantinople's
historic and religious role in Mc an pa st sde Bl co mo h the Russian
imperial consciousness.
>From the 18th century, the Russians dreamt of turning it into the
capital (Tsargrad) of an Orthodox empire built upon the ruins of
Byzantium.
They had little chance of getting the straits on their own (the Turks
had German dreadnoughts at their disposal). But the Russians managed
to persuade their allies to fight for them on their behalf - without
promised Russian help - in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
As McMeekin shows, the absurd logic of the British was to give the
Straits to the Russians in exchange for a non-binding promise by the
tsar not to invade Persia in his war against the Turks. Gallipoli was
the sacrifice the British made to protect the route to India. They
were still playing the Great Game.
The Russian advance into Asia Minor was unstoppable. They were soon in
Persia, where the British had to accept them anyway, if only, McMeekin
suggests, to prevent the greater threat of "some new Germanophile
Islamic regime that might declare war in British India".
McMeekin's final chapters chart the Russian campaigns in Persia and
the Caucasus. He details how the Russians armed the Armenian
resistance to the Turks in Eastern Anatolia - a thinly veiled policy
of Russian imperial expansion that helped to bring about the Armenian
"genocide", the systematic deportation and killing of about 1m
civilians by the Turks in 1915.
By the spring of 1916, the Russians had made so much headway into Asia
Minor that they were able to secure allied support (the Sykes-Picot
agreement) for their long-desired partition of the Ottoman empire. The
Russian empire stood to gain European Turkey and the straits, Eastern
Anatolia and Persian Azerbaijan, more than it had dreamt of getting in
the 19th century.
But then came the 1917 revolution and the collapse of the Russian
military. Here McMeekin lets his mistrust of the Russians spoil his
excellent archival work. He argues that the provisional government
carried on the tsarist policy of capturing the Straits, but, in fact,
it soon renounced all territorial gains and pledged to fight only for
the defence of the revolution and Russia's prewar boundaries.
Yet even this was not enough to stop the rot in the army. After the
October revolution, millions of soldiers demobilised themselves,
forcing the Bolsheviks to sue for peace on humiliating terms. With the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia ceased to be a significant power in
Europe. Its gamble on war had failed disastrously.
January 1, 2012 Sunday
Edition 1; National Edition
Who really started the first world war?
A bold study pinpoints Russia's role in the outbreak of the 1914-18
war in Europe
by ORLANDO FIGES
THE RUSSIAN ORIGINS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR by SAM MCMEEKIN Harvard £22.95 pp344
As any schoolchild knows, the first world war began when the
assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 was used by the
Austrians to punish Serbia and by the Germans to pick a fight with
Russia, whose growth they feared. In this scenario, what Bismarck had
once called a "damn fool thing in the Balkans" engulfed the entente
powers in a war to stop the expansionist ambitions of Germany, the
power most responsible for the conflict.
But as Sean McMeekin argues in this bold and brilliant revisionist
study, Russia was as much to blame as Germany for the outbreak of the
war. Using a wide range of archival sources, including long-neglected
tsarist documents, he argues that the Russians had ambitions of their
own (the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, no
less) and that they were ready for a war once they had secured a
favourable alliance with the British and the French.
The tsarist archives show that the Russians had been mobilising their
forces for several days before Germany declared war on August 1. They
did so at the risk that it would trigger the beginning of hostilities,
because the Germans could not wait for them to mobilise.
The German Schlieffen Plan was counting on their greater speed to
concentrate their forces in the west and defeat the French in time to
turn them round against the "Russian steamroller" before it was moving
against them from the east. They could not afford a two-front war.
Historians have portrayed Russia as a junior partner in the entente
cause, sacrificing troops in East Prussia to help the British and the
French by diverting German forces from the Western Front. But as
McMeekin reminds us, two-thirds of the Russians were deployed against
the Austrians in Galicia, where they were fighting for specifically
tsarist aims: the extension of Russia's "natural" frontier to the
Carpathians and the conquest of Polish lands in Silesia.
>From Galicia, the Russians looked towards the annexation of
Constantinople and the Black Sea straits. Nicholas II wanted to
achieve what Nicholas I had failed to do in the Crimean war: expel the
Turks from Europe and liberate the Slavs from Islamic rule. McMeekin
is dismissive of any pan-Slav aims on Russia's part. He rightly
focuses on the strategic importance of the straits to Russia's naval
defence of its vulnerable Black Sea borders and to its commerce with
the world. But he might have made a little more of Constantinople's
historic and religious role in Mc an pa st sde Bl co mo h the Russian
imperial consciousness.
>From the 18th century, the Russians dreamt of turning it into the
capital (Tsargrad) of an Orthodox empire built upon the ruins of
Byzantium.
They had little chance of getting the straits on their own (the Turks
had German dreadnoughts at their disposal). But the Russians managed
to persuade their allies to fight for them on their behalf - without
promised Russian help - in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
As McMeekin shows, the absurd logic of the British was to give the
Straits to the Russians in exchange for a non-binding promise by the
tsar not to invade Persia in his war against the Turks. Gallipoli was
the sacrifice the British made to protect the route to India. They
were still playing the Great Game.
The Russian advance into Asia Minor was unstoppable. They were soon in
Persia, where the British had to accept them anyway, if only, McMeekin
suggests, to prevent the greater threat of "some new Germanophile
Islamic regime that might declare war in British India".
McMeekin's final chapters chart the Russian campaigns in Persia and
the Caucasus. He details how the Russians armed the Armenian
resistance to the Turks in Eastern Anatolia - a thinly veiled policy
of Russian imperial expansion that helped to bring about the Armenian
"genocide", the systematic deportation and killing of about 1m
civilians by the Turks in 1915.
By the spring of 1916, the Russians had made so much headway into Asia
Minor that they were able to secure allied support (the Sykes-Picot
agreement) for their long-desired partition of the Ottoman empire. The
Russian empire stood to gain European Turkey and the straits, Eastern
Anatolia and Persian Azerbaijan, more than it had dreamt of getting in
the 19th century.
But then came the 1917 revolution and the collapse of the Russian
military. Here McMeekin lets his mistrust of the Russians spoil his
excellent archival work. He argues that the provisional government
carried on the tsarist policy of capturing the Straits, but, in fact,
it soon renounced all territorial gains and pledged to fight only for
the defence of the revolution and Russia's prewar boundaries.
Yet even this was not enough to stop the rot in the army. After the
October revolution, millions of soldiers demobilised themselves,
forcing the Bolsheviks to sue for peace on humiliating terms. With the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia ceased to be a significant power in
Europe. Its gamble on war had failed disastrously.