Government and foreign policy in Russian empire from Cambridge history of Russia, volume 2

1

P. A. Zaionchkovskii (ed.), Dnevnik gosudarstvennogo sekretaria A.A. Polovtsova, 2 vols.

(Moscow: Nauka, 1966) vol. I, p. 315.

2

For good basic reference texts see: A. Turgeva, Vysshie organi gosudarstvennoi vlasti i upravleniiaRossii IX-XXvv. (Moscow: S-ZAGS, 2000); D. N. Shilov Gosudarstvennie deiateli Rossiliskoi Imperii, 1802-1917 (St Petersburg: European University Press, 2003); O. Chusti- akov(ed.), GosudarstvenniistroiRossiiskoiImperiinakanunekrusheniia(Moscow: Izd. MGU, 1995); J. LeDonne, Ruling Russia: Politics and Administration in the Age of Absolutism, 1762­1796 (London: Princeton University Press, 1984); G. Mironov, Istoriiagosudarstvarossiiskogo XIX vek (Moscow: Nauka, 1995); M. Raeff, 'The Bureaucratic Phenomena of Imperial Russia', AHR 84 (1979); G. Yaney, The Systematization of Russian Government (Urbana: Uni­versity oflndianaPress, 1973). P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Pravitel'stvenniiapparatsamoderzhavnoi RossiivXIXv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1977).

3

See: W B. Lincoln, Nicholas I: Autocrat of All the Russias (London: University of Indi­ana Press, 1977) and The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy and the Politics of Change (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1990); L. N. Viskochov Imperator Nikolai I (St Petersburg: Izd. SPbU, 2003).

4

H. W. Whelan, Alexander III and The State Council (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982); D. T. Orlovsky, The Limits of Reform: The Ministry of Internal Affairs in Imperial Russia, 1802-1881 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).

5

Quoted in Whelan, Alexander III, p. 39.

6

Whelan, Alexander III, pp. 39-40.

7

P. Dukes, The Making of Russian Absolutism 1613-1801 (Longman: London, 1982). p. 122.

8

S. V Makarov SovetMinistrovRossisskoilmperii 1857-1917 (St Petersburg: Izd. SPbU, 2000), p. 41.

9

T. C. W BlanningJosephII (London: Longman, 1994); R. Hatton, Louis XIV and Absolutism (London: Macmillan, 1976); M. Deon(ed.), LouisXIVparlui-meme. (Paris: Gallimard, 1991).

10

Yaney, Systematization of Russian Government, p. 307.

11

J. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1990), p. 16. See also R. Huang, 1587. A Year of No Significance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).

12

J. Dull, 'The Evolution of Government in China', in P. Ropp (ed.), The Heritage of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). On Ming government see above all C. Hucker, 'Ming government', in D. Twitchett and F. Mote (eds.), The Cambridge History ofChina, vol. VIII, Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

13

Quoted in J. McGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 412-13.

14

'Dnevnik Kuropatina', KA 2 (1922): 57-8.

15

R. McKean, The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-1917 (London: Macmillan, 1977); W. Mosse, 'Russian Bureaucracy at the end ofthe Ancien Regime: The Imperial State Council', SR (1980): 616-32; D. Macdonald, United Government and Foreign Policy in Russia, 1900-1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); R. Sh. Ganelin, Rossiiskoe Samoderzhavie v 1905 gody (Leningrad: Nauka, 1991); A. P. Borodin, Gosudarstvennii Sovet Rossii, 1906-1917 (Kirov: Vytka, 1999).

16

V Kokovtsev, Iz moegoproshlego (Paris: priv. pub., 1933), pp. 282-3.

17

See e.g. R. Wortman, Scenarios of Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), vol. II, part 3; Lieven, Nicholas II.

18

The literature on Wilhelm is immense; for guidance see C. Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II (Harlow: Longman, 2000), pp. 262-5, J. C. G. Rohl, The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); On Franz Josef,see e.g. S. Beller, FrancisJoseph (Harlow: Longman, 1995) andJ.-P. Bled, FranzJoseph (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

19

On senior late-imperial officials, see D. Lieven, Russia's Rulers Under the Old Regime (London: Yale, 1989): chapter 1 surveys the literature on the Russian bureaucracy.

20

A. Verner, The Crisis of Russian Autocracy: Nicholas II and the 1905 Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 46.

21

The relations between zemstvos and the centre are best described in T. Fallows, 'The Zemstvo and Bureaucracy', in T. Emmons and W S. Vucinich (eds.), The Zemstvo in

22

S. F. Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia., 183 0-1870 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 45.

23

R. E. Jones, The Emancipation of the Russian Nobility 1762-1785 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 182.

24

Mironov, 'Local Government in Russia', 200.

25

J. W Daly, Autocracy under Siege: Security Police and Opposition inRussia 1866-1905 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998), p. 9. Weissman quotes a much lower figure of 47,866 police at the beginning of the twentieth century from a Police Department report: N. Weissman, 'Regular Police in Tsarist Russia, 1900-1914', RR 44,1 (1985): 47. The figures are difficult to interpret as it is not clear whether several categories, such as night watchmen and other patrolmen, are included.

26

Velychenko has recently challenged the view that Russia was 'undergoverned' by arguing that valid comparisons should be made between the levels of staffing in Russia with European colonies rather than with West European states, but his argument, although stimulating, cannot disguise the serious undermanningofinstitutions and of police forces in European Russia or in towns in the empire which can legitimately be compared with towns elsewhere in Europe: S. Velychenko, 'The Size of the Imperial Russian Bureaucracy and Army in Comparative Perspective', JfGO 49, 3 (2001): 346-62.

27

S. F. Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia 1856-1914 (Berkeley: Univer­sity of California Press, 1999), pp. 36-40.

28

B. Mironov, 'Bureaucratic or Self-Government: The Early Nineteenth Century Russian City', SR 52, 2 (1993): 249.

29

Well described in M. F. Hamm (ed.), The City in the Late Imperial Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), especially in the chapters on Kiev by Hamm and Odessa by F. W Skinner. See also M. F. Hamm, Kiev: A Portrait, 1800-1917 (Princeton University Press, 1993) and V A. Nardova, 'Municipal Self-Government after the 1870 Reform', in B. Eklof,J. Bushnell and L. Zakharova, Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 181-96.

30

J. H. Bater, 'Some Dimensions of Urbanization and the Response of Municipal Government: Moscow and St Petersburg', RH 5, 1 (1978): 46-63.

31

Skinner, 'Odessa and the Problem of Urban Modernization', in The City in Late Imperial Russia, p. 236.

32

The operation of noble assemblies is described in Hartley, A Social History of the Russian Empire, pp. 92-6.

33

For the operation of this court see J. M. Hartley, 'Catherine's Conscience Court: An English Equity Court?', in A. Cross (ed.), Russia and the West in the Eighteenth Century (Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1983), pp. 306-18.

34

Sankt-Peterburg Filial Instituta russkoi istorii, St Petersburg, Fond 36, d. 478, f. 16, report by A. R. Vorontsovfrom Olonets guberniia; also citedinJ. M. Hartley, 'Philanthropy in the Reign of Catherine the Great: Aims and Realities', in R. Bartlett and J. M. Hartley (eds.), Russia in the Age of Enlightenment: Essays for Isabel de Madariaga (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), p. 181.

35

Hartley, A Social History of Russia, p. 138.

36

J. M. Hartley, 'The Boards of Social Welfare and the Financing of Catherine II's State Schools', SEER 67, 2 (1989): 211-27.

37

S. F. Starr, 'Local Initiative in Russia before the Zemstvo', in Emmons and Vucinich, The Zemstvo in Russia, pp. 5-30.

38

A process most clearly described in K. E. McKenzie, 'Zemstvo Organization and Role within the Administrative Structure', in Emmons and Vucinich, The Zemstvo in Russia, pp. 31-78.

39

McKenzie, 'Zemstvo Organization', p. 44.

40

Galai, The Liberation Movement, p. 32.

41

The relationship is described most fully in D. Atkinson, 'The Zemstvo and the Peasantry', in Emmons and Vucinich, The Zemstvo in Russia, pp. 79-132.

42

McKenzie, 'Zemstvo Organization', p. 45.

43

J. Brooks, 'The Zemstvo and the Education of the People', in Emmons and Vucinich, The Zemstvo in Russia, p. 243.

44

N. B. Weissman, Reform in TsaristRussia. The State Bureacracy and Local Government, 1900­1914 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981), p. 32.

45

Brooks, 'The Zemstvo and the Education of the People', p. 249.

46

Recent research on one province has supported this view: G. Weldhen, 'The Zemstvo, Agricultural Societies and Agricultural Innovation in Viatka Guberniia in the 1890s and 1900s', in V E. Musikhin (ed.), Viatskomu Zemstvu 130 let. Materialy nauchnoi konferentsii (Kirov, 1997), pp. 25-31.

47

This process is described by R. Manning in 'Zemstvo and Revolution: The Onset of Gentry Reaction, 1905-07' and R. D. MacNaughton and R. T. Manning, 'The Crisis of the Third ofJune System and Political Trends in the Zemstvos, 1907-14', in L. H. Haimson, The Politics of Rural Russia 1905-1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), pp. 30-66, 184-218. On the fate of Stolypin's proposed reforms after 1906 see P. Waldron, Between Two Revolutions: Stolypin and the Politics of Renewal in Russia (London: University College Press, 1998), pp. 77-99.

48

See A. H. Brown, 'S. E. Desnitsky, Adam Smith and the Nakaz of Catherine II', Oxford Slavonic Papers, ns, 7 (1974): 42-59.

49

R. D. Givens, 'Eighteenth-Century Nobiliary Career Patterns and Provincial Govern­ment', in W. M. Pintner and D. K. Rowney (eds.), Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratiza­tion of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 122.

50

J. M. Hartley 'Bribery and Justice in the Provinces in the Reign of Catherine II', in S. Lovell, A. Ledeneva and A. Rogachevskii (eds.), Bribery and Blat in Russia. Negotiating Reciprocity from the Middle Ages to the 1 990s (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 48-64.

51

See J. Keep, 'Light and Shade in the History of the Russian Administration', Canadian Slavic Studies 6,1 (1972): 2-3 and Hartley, 'Bribery and Justice in the Provinces', pp. 55-62.

52

D. A.J. Macey, 'The Land Captains: A Note on the Social Composition 1889-1913', RH16 (1989): 351.

53

R. G. Robbins, Jr, The Tsar's Viceroys: Russian Provincial Governors in the Last Years of Empire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 37.

54

R. G. Robbins, 'Choosing the Russian Governors: The Professionalisation of the Guber­natorial Corps', SEER 58, 4 (1980): 600.

55

See J. M. Hartley, 'Russia and Napoleon: State, Society and the Nation', in M. Rowe (ed.), Collaboration and Resistance in Napoleonic Europe: State Formation in an Age of Upheaval, c. 1800-1815 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 186-202.

56

Porter, The Zemstvo and the Emergence of Civil Society, p. 239.

57

am very grateful for the financial support of the British Academy in carrying out the research for this chapter.

1 S. Iu. Vitte, Vospominaniia. Memuary (Moscow: AST, 2000), vol. I, p. 724.

58

See P. G. M. Dickson, Finance and Government under Maria Theresa 1740-1780 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), vol II, chapters 1 & 2 for an account of Habsburg financial difficulties.

59

S. M. Troitskii, Finansovaia politika russkogo absolutizma v XVIII veke (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), p. 221.

60

I. de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981), p. 470.

61

'Ob uchrezhdenii osoboi komissii o sokrashcheniem raskhodov', 30 December 1878, RGIA, Fond 560, op. 22, d. 160, ll. 12-13.

62

A. Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer and the Knout (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985), pp. 336-7; W Pintner, 'The Burden of Defense in Imperial Russia, 1725-1914', RR 43 (1984): 248-9.

63

'Finansovaia politika v period 1861-1880 gg.', Otechestvennye zapiski (1882), no. 11, pp. 1-3.

64

A. P. Pogrebinskii, Ocherki istorii finansov dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (XIX-XX vv.) (Moscow: Gosfinizdat, 1954), p. 176.

65

See P. Gatrell, Government, Industry andRearmamentinRussia, 1900-1914: The Last Argument ofTsarism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 152-5. Gatrell suggests that the proportion of Russia's national income devoted to military expenditure was almost twice as heavy as for the more economically developed countries of Britain, France and Germany.

66

'Komitet o sokrashchenii raskhodov po ministerstvam: voennomu, morskomu, inos- trannykh del i vedomstvam: pochtovomu, putei soobshchenii i dukhovnomu. 1835', RGIA, Fond 1172, op. 16, d. 1, ll. 54-7.

67

'Komitet finansov. Po zapiske Ministra Finansov o finansovykh merakh: uvelichenie dokhodov; sokrashchenie raskhodov; svod rospisi. 1861', RGIA, Fond 563, op. 2, d. 144, ll. 2-5. The War Ministry was able to suggest savings of only 881,000 roubles, out of a total annual budget of more than 90 million roubles.

68

D. A. Miliutin to A. A. Abaza, 29 May 1879, RGIA, Fond 1214, op. 1, d. 23, l. ia.

69

'Doklad Predsedatelia Osoboi Komissii A. A. Abaza s kratkim otchetom o deiatel'nosti Osoboi Komissii', 11 June 1879, RGIA, Fond 1214, op. 1, d. 26, ll. 32-4.

70

Pogrebinskii, Ocherki, pp. 154-5.

71

M. Friedman, Kazennaiavinnaiamonopoliia, 2 vols. (St Petersburg: Pravda, 1914), vol. II, p. 236.

72

O. Crisp, Studies in the Russian Economy Before 1914 (London: Macmillan 1976), p. 109.

73

'Zapiska o merakh, mogushchikh povesti k znachitel'nomu sokrashcheniiu raskhodov po vedomstvu Ministerstva Iustitsii', 1879, RGIA, Fond 1214, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 21-2.

74

B. Eklof,Russian Peasant Schools. Officialdom, Village Culture and Popular Pedagogy, 1861­1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 89-90.

75

J. P. LeDonne, 'Indirect Taxes in Catherine's Russia. I. The Salt Code of 1781', JfGO 23 (1975): 188.

76

'Osoboi komitet dlia pazsmotreniiu predstavlennogo Ego Velichestvu ot neizvestnogo obzora finansovoi chasti v Rossii, 1841', RGIA, Fond 1175, op. 16, d. 1. 118.

77

V L. Stepanov N. Kh. Bunge. Sud'ba reformatora (Moscow: Rosspen, 1998), p. 369.

78

RGIA, Fond 1175, op. 16, d. 1, ll. 17, 25 and 28-9.

79

'Komitet finansov, zasedaniia 2, 13, 16, 20 & 23 dekabria 1861', RGIA, Fond 563, op. 2,

d. i44, ll. 52-66.

80

S. L. Hoch, 'The Banking Crisis, Peasant Reform and Economic Developmentin Russia, 1857-1861', AHR 96 (1991): 796.

81

D. Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930 (London: Longman, 1999), pp. 283-8 sum­marises the arguments.

82

'Ob otyskanii denezhnykh ressursov na sluchai voiny', 1830-1, RGIA, Fond 563, op. 2, d. 21, ll. 3-5 & 14.

83

'O sredstvakh k pokrytiiu raskhodov po sluchaiu voiny', February 1856, RGIA, Fond 563, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 2-6.

84

'Po predstavleniiu Ministra Finansov o khoziaistvennom i finansovom polozhenii Rossii, 30 ianvaria i860', RGIA, Fond 563, op. 2, d. 115, ll. 6-13.

85

For example, it was suggested to the Ministry of the Imperial Court that its buildings department be abolished, that the ministry's Committee on St Isaac's Cathedral be disbanded, since the cathedral was now complete, and that the Imperial Theatres be placed in private hands. The ministry rejected all these proposals and argued that any expenditure on the court should remain outside audit and control by central government. RGIA, Fond 563, op. 2,d. 115, II, 13-16. 'Zhurnal Komiteta Finansov, 4,11,18 & 25 noiabria i86i'.

86

'Zhurnal komiteta finansov, 29 sentiabria 1866', RGIA, Fond 560, op. 22, d. 120, ll. 23-5. Reutern's original report is published in Shepelev (ed.), Sud'by Rossii, pp. 114-59.

87

'Komitet finansov. O sredstvakh dlia pokrytiia defitsita po gosudarstvennoi rospisi na i868g.', RGIA, Fond 563, op. 1, d. 16,1.1.

88

Stepanov, Bunge, p. 369.

89

P. G. Ryndziunskii, 'Gil'deiskaia reforma Kankrina 1824 goda', IZ 40 (1952): 110-39.

90

Bowman, 'Russia's First Income Taxes', p. 277.

91

I. A. Mikhailov, Gosudarstevennye dolgi i raskhody Rossii vo vremia voiny. Fakty i tsifry (Petrograd: Pravda, 1917), p. 132.

92

P. N. Miliukov, Gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo Rossii v pervoi chetverti XVIII stoletiia i reforma Petra Velikogo (St Petersburg: Tip. M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1905), esp. pp. 471-91.

93

Kahan, The Plow, p. 332.

94

See A. I. Engelgardt, Letters from the Country, 1872-1887, trans. C. A. Frierson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), for one of the main examples of this 'literature of social lament'.

95

See S. Plaggenborg, 'Tax Policy and the Question of Peasant Poverty in Tsarist Russia i88i-i905', CMRS 36, i-2 (i995): 58.

96

J. Y. Simms, 'The Crisis of Russian Agriculture at the End of the Nineteenth Century', SR 36 (1977): 377-98 is the starting point for this discussion.

97

For more detailed discussion and a full bibliography see Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: the Struggle for Power 1671-1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Reinhard Wittram, Peter der Grosse. Czar und Kaiser (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1964).

98

Rassuzhdeniekakiezakonnyeprichinyego tsarskoevelichestvoPetrpervyi tsar' ipovelitel'vserossi- iskii . . . k nachatiiu voiny . . . imel (St Petersburg, 1717); repr. P. P. Shafirov A Discourse Concerning the Just Causes of the War between Sweden and Russia: 1700-1721, ed. W Butler (Dobbs Ferr, NY: Oceania Publications, 1973).

99

N. G. Ustrialov, Istoriia tsarstvovaniia Petra Velikogo, 5 vols. in 6 (St Petersburg, 1858-63), vol. VI, p. 347.

100

S. M. Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, 15 vols. (Moscow, 1960-6), vol IX, pp.

366-77.

101

The nobles' revolt took an impressive toll of progressive statesmen of the age. Catherine was merely intimidated. Joseph II was ruined. Frederick II took refuge in cynicism and realpolitik. Friedrich Struensee was brutally executed. GustavIII was assassinated. Gustav Adolf IV was persuaded with a knife at his throat to abdicate. The Marquis de Pombal was tried for treason and banished. Carlos III of Spain sacrificed the Marques de Esquilache to the demands of the angry crowds; and Louis XVI surrendered Chancellor Maupeou.

102

V A. Bil'basov, Istoriia Ekateriny Vtoroi, 3 vols. (1, 2, 12) (Berlin: Gottgeiner, 1896-1900), vol. I, pp. 473-4.

103

A. V Khrapovitskii, Dnevnik (St Petersburg: Tip. M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1874), p. 4. My thanks to John Alexander for this reference.

104

Robert E. Jones, 'The Nobility and Russian Foreign Policy, 1560-1811', CMRS 34 (1993): 159-70, and Robert E. Jones, 'Opposition to War and Expansion in Late Eighteenth Century Russia', JfGO 32 (1984): 34-51. Quotation in Walther Mediger, Moskaus Wegnach Europa: der AufstiegRusslands zum europaischenMachtstaatim Zeitalter Friedrichs des Grossen (Braunschweig: Goerg Westermann Verlag, 1952), pp. 108, 295.

105

Odessa, foundedin 1794, was in 1900 the thirdlargest city in Russia(excluding Warsaw), the conduit of 45 per cent of the foreign trade of the Russian Empire, including 40 per cent of the grain trade. Patricia Herlihy, Odessa: AHistory, 1794-1917 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986); I. M. Kulisher, Ocherk istorii russkoi torgovli (St Petersburg: Atenei, 1993); S. A. Pokrovskii, Vneshniaia torgovlia i vneshniaia torgovaiapolitika Rossii (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnaia kniga, 1947).

106

The following account is quite contrary to more traditional ones, and I have no space here to elaborate it and document it. See Hugh Ragsdale, 'Russia, Prussia, and Europe in the Policy of Paul I', JfGO 31 (1983): 81-118.

107

D. A. Miliutin, Istoriia voiny 1799 goda mezhdu Rossieii Frantsiei v tsarstvovanie imperatora Pavlal, 2nd edn, 3 vols. (St Petersburg: Imperatorskaia akademiia nauk, 1857), vol. II, pp. 553-8, vol. III, pp. 444-5.

108

Russkii arkhiv, 1874, no. 2, columns 961-6.

109

F.-G. de Bray, 'La Russie sous Paul I', Revue d'histoire diplomatique 23 (1909): 594-6.

110

R. E. McGrew, Paul I of Russia, 1754-1801 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), p. 16.

111

McGrew, Paul, pp. 276-7.

112

McGrew, Paul, pp. 17, 320.

113

Adams to Secretary of State, 31 January 1801; US National Archives, Record Group 59.

Emphasis added (HR).

114

Alexander to Budberg, 9/21 April 1801; Vneshniaia politika Rossii XIX i nachala XX veka, ed. A. L. Narochnitskii et al., 8 vols. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1960-1972), vol. I, p. 19.

115

W H. Zawadzki, A Man of Honour: Adam Czartoryski as a Statesman of Russia and Poland, 1795-1831 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), p. 36. P. K. Grimsted, The Foreign Ministers of Alexan­der I: Political Attitudes and the Conduct of Russian Diplomacy, 1801-1825 (Berkeley: Univer­sity of California Press, 1969), pp. 44, 46, 47. A. Gielgud (ed.), Adam Czartoryski: Memoirs and correspondence with Alexander I, 2 vols. (Orono: Academic International Press, 1968), vol. I, pp. 95-8. Alexander to Czartoryski, 1/13 April 1812; Vneshniaia politika Rossii, vol. VI, p. 351.

116

P.K.Grimsted(ed.),'Czartoryski'sSystemforRussianForeignPolicy:AMemorandum', California Slavic Studies 5 (1970): 19-91.

117

F. Ley, Alexander letla Sainte-Alliance (Paris: Fischbacher, 1975), p. 32.

118

N. K. Shil'der, Imperator Aleksandr Pervyi: ego zhizn' i tsarstvovanie, 4 vols. (St Petersburg: Suvorin, 1897-1898), vol. III, pp. 41-2. Emphasis added (HR).

119

One of the most striking documents on the virtues ofRussian foreign policy as well as the continuity of it between 1796 and 1856 was the long instruction for Tsarevich Alexander Nikolaevich composed in 1838 by Nesselrode's assistant, Baron E. P. von Brunnow, an assistant to Foreign Minister Karl Nesselrode, 'Aperfu des principales transactions du Cabinet de Russie sous les regnes de Catherine II, Paul I et Alexander I.' Sbornik russkago istoricheskago obshchestva, 148 vols. (St Petersburg: Tip. M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1867-1916), vol. XXXI, pp. 197-416. It is a frank condemnation of the acquisitiveness of Catherine and an endorsement ofthe moral qualities ofthe policies of Paul and Alexander. At the other end of the political spectrum of the age was the outlook of Viscount Castlereagh and the British policy that he represented: 'When the Territorial Balance of Europe is disturbed [Great Britain] can interfere with effect, but She is the last Government in Europe, which can be expected, or can venture to commit Herself on any question of an abstract Character. . . . We shall be found in our place when actual danger menaces the System of Europe, but this Country cannot, and will not, act upon abstract and speculative Principles of Precaution' (P. Langford, ModernBritishForeignPolicy: The Eighteenth Century, 1688-1815 (New York: St Martin's, 1976), p. 238).

120

For a brief exposition, see Alfred J. Rieber, 'Persistent Factors in Russian Foreign Policy', in Ragsdale and Ponomarev, Imperial Russian Foreign Policy, pp. 351-2.

121

The most prominent use of the term svoboda ruk is in V G. Sirotkin, Duel' dvukh diplomatii (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), but the authors of the first of five projected volumes to appear in a new and unprecedentedly authoritative history of Russian foreign policy also rely heavily on it (in my opinion excessively and without defining it properly): O. V Orlik (ed.), IstoriiavneshneipolitikiRossii:pervaiapolovinaXIXveka (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1995), pp. 27-135 passim.

122

This is the argument of Paul W Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763­1848 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).

123

A. A. Novosel'skii and N. V Ustiugov (eds.), Ocherki istorii SSSR. Period feodalizma. XVIII v. (Moscow: Izd. AN SSSR, 1955), p. 438.

124

Richard Hellie, EnserfmentandMilitary Change in Muscovy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 355.

125

Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven and London: Yale Uni­versity Press, 1998), pp. 68-9.

126

William C. Fuller Jr, Strategy and Power in Russia 1600-1914 (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 45-6.

127

John L. H. Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia 1462-1874 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 145, 165.

128

Walter M. Pintner, 'The Burden of Defense in Imperial Russia, 1725-1915', RR 43 (1984): 252.

129

Fuller, Strategy and Power, pp. 167-73. Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 110-11.

130

Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier, pp. 78, 148; Dietrich Beyrau, Militar und Gesellschaft im Vorrevolutionaren Russland (Cologne and Vienna: Bohlau Verlag, 1984), pp. 347-8.

131

Fuller, Strategy and Power, p. 171.

132

Christopher Duffy, Russia's Military Way to the West: Origins and Nature of Russian Military Power 1700-1800 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 89-90.

133

Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, p. 125; D. G. Tselorungo, Ofitsery russkoi armii-uchastniki borodin- skogo srazheniia. Istoriko-sotsiologicheskoe issledovanie (Moscow: Kalita, 2002), p. 73.

134

Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier, p. 123.

135

Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, p. 137.

136

Arcadius Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer and the Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth- Century Russia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 337, 341.

137

Fuller, Strategy and Power, pp. 96,105.

138

A. A. Kersnovskii, Istoriia russkoi armii, vol. I (repr., Moscow: Golos, 1992), p. 63; John L. H. Keep, 'The Russian Army in the Seven Years War', in Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe (eds.), The Military and Society in Russia 1450-1917 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 200.

139

Duffy, Russia's Military Way, p. 118.

140

Kersnovskii, Istoriia, p. 204.

141

V G. Verzhbitskii, Revoliutsionnoe dvizheniev russkoi armii 1826-1859 (Moscow: Izd. Sovet- skaia Rossiia, 1964), pp. 118-19.

142

Frederick W Kagan, The Military Reforms of Nicholas I: The Origins of the Modern Russian Army (New York: St Martin's Press, 1999), pp. 224-5.

143

Pintner, 'Burden of Defense', 232.

144

Thomas C. Owen, Russian Corporate Capitalism from Peter the Great to Perestroika (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 8-9.

145

Seymour Becker, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia. Bukhara andKhiva, 1865-1924 (Cam­bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 23; Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 211.

146

David Alan Rich, The Tsar's Colonels: Professionalism, Strategy and Subversionin Late Imperial Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 157-8.

147

Bruce W Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 77-8.

148

Julian S. Corbett, Maritime Operations in theRusso-Japanese War 1904-1905,2 vols. (Annapo­lis, Md. and Newport, RI: Naval Institute Press and Naval War College Press, 1994), vol. II, pp. 396-7.

149

John Bushnell, Mutiny Amid Repression: Russian Soldiers in the Revolution of 1905-08 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 76-7,173.

150

William C. Fuller, Jr, Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881 -1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 129-30.

151

Joseph Bradley, Guns for the Tsar: American Technology and the Small Arms Industry in Nineteenth-Century Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1990), pp. 126-7.

152

Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets, p. 14.

153

P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Voennye reformy 1860-1870 godovvRossii (Moscow: Izd. MGU, 1952), p. 106. O. R. Airapetov, Zabytaia kar'era 'russkogo Moltke'. Nikolai Nikolaevich Obruchev (1830-1904) (St Petersburg: Izd. 'Aleteiia', 1998), p. 98.

154

P. A. Zaionchkovskii, SamoderzhavieirusskaiaarmiianaruhezheXIX-XXstoletii (Moscow: Izd. Mysl', 1973), p. 123.

155

DavidR. Jones, TmperialRussia'sForcesatWar',inAlanR. Millet and Murray Williamson (eds.), Military Effectiveness, vol. I: The First World War (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1988), p. 278.

156

Zaionchkovskii, Samoderzhavie i russkaia armiia, p. 119.

157

One aspect of that policy was the state's effort to dissolve the separate Finnish army, and draft Finns under the same regulations that applied to other groups. This initiative was met with stiff resistance. P. Luntinen, The Imperial Russian Army and Navy in Finland 1808-1918 (Helsinki: SHS, 1997), pp. 159-70.

158

Zaionchkovskii, Samoderzhavie i russkaia armiia, pp. 121-3.

159

A. I. Panov, Ofitseryvrusskoi revoliutsii 1905-07gg. (Moscow: Regional'naia obshchestven- naia organizatsiia ofitserov 'Demos', 1996), p. 19.

160

Zaionchkovskii, Samoderzhavie i russkaia armiia, pp. 204, 225.

161

Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict, pp. 143-4.

162

E. Iu. Sergeev, 'Inaia zemlia, inoe nebo'. Zapad i voennaia elita Rossii 1900-1914 (Moscow: Institut vseobshchei istorii RAN, 2001), pp. 45-6.

163

Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets, pp. 211-16; Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict, pp. 241-2; Sergeev 'Inaia zemlia', p. 43; J. Sanborn, 'Military Reform, Moral Reform and the End of the Old Regime', in Lohr and Poe, The Military and Society, pp. 514, 524.

164

David R. Jones, 'The Soviet Defence Burden through the Prism of History', in Carl Jakobson (ed.), The Soviet Defence Enigma (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 161.

165

Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict, pp. 49, 63-4.

166

Peter Gatrell, Government, Industry andRearmamentinRussia, 1900-1914: The Last Argument ofTsarism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 129-34.

167

K. F. Shatsillo, Ot portsmutskogo mira k pervoi mirovoi voine. Generaly i politika (Moscow: Rosspen, 2000), pp. 102, 139, 146, 159, 344.

168

Gatrell, Government, Industry and Rearmament, p. 305.

169

Norman Stone, The Eastern Front 1914-1917 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975), p. 211.

170

Shatsillo, Otportsmutskogo mira, p. 340.

171

William C. Fuller, Jr, 'The Eastern Front', in Jay Winter, Geoffrey Parker and Mary R. Habeck, (eds.), The Great War and the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 32.

172

Alan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the Soldiers' Revolt (March-April, 1917) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 96-7.

173

The five Great Powers of the nineteenth century were Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia (after 1871, Germany) and Russia. As one standard textbook explains, 'a Power has such rank when acknowledged by others to have it. The fact ofa Power belonging in that category makes it what has been called a Power with general interests, meaning by this one which has automatically a voice in all affairs' (R. Albrecht-Carrie, A Diplomatic History of Europe since the Congress of Vienna (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), pp. 21-2).

174

In contrast to Prussia, which also took advantage from the Congress of Vienna to make major territorial gains.

175

P. K. Grimsted, The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), p. 277.

176

In Albrecht-Carrie, Diplomatic History, p. 73.

177

In William C. Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia 1600-1914 (New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 222.

178

D. Fromkin, 'The Great Game in Asia', Foreign Affairs (Spring 1980): 951.

179

M. Edwardes, Playing the Great Game: A Victorian Cold War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975), p. viii.

180

Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy, 1860­1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 205.

181

In David MacKenzie, The Serbs andRussian Panslavism, 1875-1878 (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­versity Press, i967), p. 327.

182

V N. Lamsdorff, 'Obzor vneshnei politiki Rossii za vremia tsarstvovaniia Aleksandra III', GARF, Fond 568, op. 1, d. 53,1.1.

183

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), NikolaiPavlovich Shishkin(actingminister 1896-7), Count Mikhail Nikolaevich Murav'ev (1897-1900), Count Vladimir Nikolaevich Lambsdorff (1900-6), Aleksandr Petrovich Izvol'skii (1906-10), Sergei Dmitrievich Sazonov (1910­1916), Boris Nikolaevich Sturmer (1916), Nikolai Nikolaevich Pokrovskii (1916-17). Ofthe nine, two, Lobanov-Rostovskii and Murav'ev, died in office.

184

With respect to the European states, at any rate. Elsewhere, matters could be dif­ferent. Referring to Central Asia, the Foreign Ministry's legal expert, Fedor Martens, argued that international law did not apply to 'uncivilised peoples'. F. F. Martens, La Russie et I'Angleterre dans I'Asie Centrale (Ghent: I. S. van Dooselaere, 1879), pp. 8-19.

185

Because of its location near a bridge that was traditionally used by members of the Imperial Court Choir on their way to sing at the Winter Palace's chapel, the Russian Foreign Ministry was given this nickname.

186

M. Szeftel, The Russian Constitution of April 23,1906 (Brussels: Les editions de la librairie encyclopedique, 1976), pp. 86,127.

187

In Baron B. E. Nol'de, Peterburskaia missiia Bismarka 1859-1862 (Prague: Plamia, 1925), p. 39.

188

See e.g. on the Crimean War: Andrew Lambert, The Crimean War: British Naval Grand Strategy 1853-1856 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990).

189

On the early growth of the German navy, see L. Sondhaus, Preparing for Weltpolitik: German Sea Power before the Tirpitz Era (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997).

190

On the broader context, see M. S. Anderson, The Eastern Question (London: Macmil- lan, 1966). On Russian plans, see O. R. Airapetov, 'Na Vostochnom napravlenii: Sud'ba Bosforskoi ekspeditsii v pravlenie imperatora Nikolaia II', in O. Airapetov (ed.), Posledni- aiavoinaimperatorskoi Rossii (Moscow: Trikvadrata, 2002), pp. 158-261.

191

V P. Kostenko, Na 'Orle' v Tsusime (Leningrad: Sudpromgiz, 1955), pp. 14-22.

192

RGAVMF, Fond 417, op. 1, d. 1728,13-ob.

193

V Iu. Griboevskii, 'Rossiiskii flot Tikhogo okeana. Istoriia sozdaniia i gibeli 1898-1905', Briz (2001), no 3: 2. R. M. Melnikov, Kreiser Variag (Leningrad: Sudostroenie, 1975),

pp. 17-19.

194

Griboevskii, 'Rossiiskii flot Tikhogo okeana', Briz (2001), no. 4: 3.

195

On Japanese preparations for the war, see D. C. Evans and M. R. Peattie, Kaigun. Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy 1887-1941 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997).

196

Russian completion rates were very slow by British or German standards, less so by French or Italian ones. See eg. chapter 5 of P. Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy: French Naval Policy 1871-1914 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1987) and the statistics on individual ships in Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1979). In 1911 the Naval General Staff reckoned that it cost 1,532 roubles per ton to build a battleship in Russia, 913 in Britain, 846 in Germany, 876 in the United States and 1,090 in Italy: M. A. Petrov, Podgotovka Rossii k mirovoi voine na more (Moscow: Gos. voennoe izd., 1926) p. 143. Admittedly, this was at a time when Russia was spending heavily to upgrade construction facilities in order to build dreadnoughts.

197

K. F. Shatsillo, Russkii imperialism i razvitieflota (Moscow: Nauka, 1968), pp. 217, 228-9.

198

L. G. Beskrovnyi, Armiia i flot Rossii v nacchale XXv: Ocherki voenno-ekonomicheskogo potentsiala (Moscow: Nauka, 1987), p. 187.

199

For good coverage of these ships in English, see S. McLaughlin, Russian and Soviet Battleships (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003).

200

R. M. Melnikov, Istoriia otechestvennogo sudostroeniia, 3 vols. General ed., B. N. Malakhov (St Petersburg: Sudostroenie, 1996), vol. II, p. 533. On British fears, see e.g. V E. Egorev, Operatsiia vladivostokskikh kreiserov v Russko-iaponskuiu voinu 1904-1905 gg. (Moscow and Leningrad: V-Morskoe izd., 1939), p. 9; Conway's, p. 67.

201

RGAVMF, Fond 421, op. 8, d. 6, l. 356.

202

Beskrovnyi, Armiia iflot, p. 221. On the question of a naval general staff, see the key publication of A. N. Shcheglov, Znachenieirabotashtabanaosnovaniiopytarussko-iaponskoi voiny (St Petersburg: no publ. given, 1905) and the articles by N. Kazimirov entitled 'Morskoi General'nyi Shtab', Morskoi Sbornik 372, 9 (Sept. 1912): 55-82; 10 (Oct. 1912): 57-80.

203

N. B. Pavlovich, Razvitie taktiki voenno-morskogoflota (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1979).

204

Griboevskii, 'Rossiiskii flot', p. 7.

205

Beskrovnyi, Armiia iflot, p. 209.

206

R. Zebrowski, 'The Battleship Potemkin and its Discontents', chapter 1 in C. M. Bell and B. A. Elleman (eds.), Naval Mutinies of the Twentieth Century (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 9-31.

207

The devastating report of Captain Brusilov, the chief of the Naval General Staff, to Nicholas II in October 1906 implicitly acknowledged this and recommended drafting a new law to define sailors' rights and duties: At the basis of this law must be humane principles in accordance with the spirit of the times and the striving to defend the rights of the individual, to the extent of course that this is compatible with the basic principles of military discipline and special circumstances of the naval service' (RGAVMF, Fond 418, op. 1, d. 238, pp. 24-48; the quote is from pp. 42-3).

208

Vice-Admiral Prince A. A. Liven, Dukh i ditsiplina nashegoflota (St Petersburg: Voennaia tip. Ekat. Velikoi, 1914), pp. 86-90. Lieven was at the centre of a group of bright young officers who had done well in the Japanese war and dominated the new Naval General Staff. On the NCO issue and German comparisons, see also P. Burachek, 'Zametki o flote', Morskoi Sbornik 365, 7 (1911): 19-50.

209

Much the best English-language work on the war remains J. S. Corbett, Maritime Oper­ations in the Russo-Japanese War: 1904-1905, 2 vols. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994).

210

Cited on pp. 223-4 of Beskrovnyi, Armiiaiflot.