Russia полностью

The Tsar’s ill-judged patronage of the adventurer Captain Bezobrazov and his Korean Timber Company had helped to lead Russia into confrontation with Japan; ³⁹ his support for the dissolute hypnotist Grigorii Rasputin was to help discredit the monarchy itself. This is not to suggest that all members of the imperial family shared Nicholas’s faults. Grand Duke Mikhail proved to be more open-minded and in touch, and it was thanks to Grand Duke Aleksei that an air ministry was formed and 77 aircraft were in service by 1913. ⁴⁰ It is true that the problems of governing the Empire in Nicholas’s reign were more complex than before, and the pressures greater. But it is also true that, partly because of deficiencies in his private chancery, Nicholas was out of touch with all but a very small stratum of his subjects and yet under the illusion that he understood them. Moreover, he was temperamentally unsuited to running the Empire, unwilling to delegate authority to those who were, and often unwilling to take their advice. Although fundamentally decent and well-meaning, he was a poor judge of men, and intellectually limited. Uxorious to a fault, he was much influenced by a wife whose judgement was even worse than his. He obstinately played the part of autocrat, but erratically, and he evidently failed to understand many of the issues on which he took decisions. ‘A fish’, it is said, ‘begins to rot from the head,’ and the proverb applies to Imperial Russia.

Some of the consequences had already been noted. They had been seen in the war with Japan, when, although the armed services performed with their usual steadiness and courage, command had been poorly co-ordinated and the logistics inadequate. They had been seen in 1905, when, due to confusion or misjudgement, troops fired on peaceful demonstrators passing near the Winter Palace, precipitating a revolution. They were seen in a series of questionable appointments and decisions; and when Russia went to war in 1914 they were seen in ever sharper form. The decision to go to war may have been virtually impossible to avoid, but clear warning of the consequences had been given.

Six months before the war began, Petr Durnovo, a member of the State Council and a former police chief and minister of the interior, wrote a long memorandum to the Tsar. It reflected a thorough grasp of the relevant facts, and the analysis was acute. There were two power blocs in Europe, he argued, and Russia was allied to the wrong one. Russia’s vital interests did not conflict with Germany’s. Furthermore, if Russia fought Germany and won it could gain nothing useful as a result, whereas ‘those territorial and economic acquisitions which might prove really useful to us are only located in places where our ambitions may meet opposition from England.’ War with Germany, he warned, would bring disaster. ‘The main burden of the war will … fall on us,’ and Russia was unprepared for this. Its war industries were ‘embryonic’, so that its arms and munitions supplies were insufficient. Its strategic railway system was still inadequate, and there was insufficient rolling stock to cope with ‘the colossal demands that will be made upon it in the event of a European war’. Then there was the question of cost:

There can be no doubt that the war will require expenditures that exceed Russia’s limited financial resources. We shall have to turn to allied and neutral countries for credit, but this will not be advanced for nothing. The financial and economic consequences of defeat … will unquestionably involve the total disintegration of our economy. But even victory promises us extremely unfavourable financial prospects.

The social and political consequences of war (and here the expert on subversion spoke) would be ‘mortally dangerous for Russia … no matter who wins’. A social revolution would break out in the defeated country, which would ‘spread to the country of the victor’, and ‘any revolutionary movement will inevitably degenerate into a socialist movement’. The liberal democrats in the Duma had no support among the people, who ‘do not seek political rights, which they neither need nor comprehend. The peasant dreams of obtaining a free share of somebody else’s land; the worker of taking over all the capital and profits of the manufacturer. Beyond this, they have no aspirations.’ Defeats and disasters would be blamed on the government; the army would be too demoralized to maintain law and order. In brief, Russia would probably be defeated, and defeat would bring anarchy. But so too would victory, albeit by another route. ⁴¹

Events were to follow his first alternative scenario, and it proved accurate in every particular.