In a memorandum of February 1914 P. N. Durnovo, a former Minister of Internal Affairs, implored the emperor to avoid war with Germany. The Kaiserreich, he argued, was a natural ally, joined by imperial ties of blood and by conservative principles and institutions; it was the alliance with democratic Britain and France that was unnatural. Moreover, the strains of war might topple the fragile order reconstructed from the shambles of 1905. But Durnovo was more prescient than persuasive: within months the government found itself helplessly sucked into the whirlpool of war.
Above all, it feared another diplomatic defeat in the Balkans, not simply out of sympathy for Balkan nationalism, but because of the volatile domestic situation. After decades of high-stakes gambling, in 1908 Russia had suffered a humiliating defeat when Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina and then reneged on a promised quid pro quo. Russia seemed to be losing its long quest to dominate the Ottoman Empire and Black Sea. Russian policy was also driven by its desire to recover great-power status, by its fear of Germany’s growing economic and military might, and by its strategic and diplomatic commitments to France and Britain. And, like the other powers, Russia was unduly deferential towards strategic planning and the general staffs, the ideology of the offensive, and the illusion that war could be localized and won quickly. None imagined the trench warfare, the carnage, the destruction of élites and empires, or the profound domestic upheavals that the ‘Great War’ would bring.
Declaration of war in Russia evoked a moment of ‘patriotic union’, symbolically captured on film that showed Nicholas bowing before several hundred thousand loyal subjects who had massed to sing ‘God Save the Tsar’. Unity proved ephemeral: military defeats and domestic strains rekindled the smouldering social and political conflict. Although Russia did not fare badly against Austria and Turkey, by early 1915 German divisions had dealt a string of shattering defeats. Russia’s stock of ammunition and weapons was perilously low; neither domestic production nor imports could satisfy the gargantuan demand of this first modern war. As morale plummeted, the army replaced a decimated officer corps with young officers from lower social ranks—non-aristocrats who had minimal training and little authority over peasant soldiers. By early 1915 one high official declared that Russia could only pray to her patron saints and rely upon her vast spaces and the spring mud to slow the relentless German advance. Failing the divine intercession of saints and mud, Russia needed ‘total war’—a complete mobilization of resources, human and material.
War, however, proved particularly difficult for Russia, one reason being that the ‘crisis was at the top’—a mutual alienation that divided state and ‘Society’ (professional and economic élites), which had rejected state tutelage and demanded a role in running the country. The war gave centrist parties a splendid opportunity to demonstrate their patriotism and, simultaneously, to exploit the alliance with democratic France and Britain and the wartime crisis in order to extort concessions from the state. Such ambitions reinforced Nicholas’s tendency to distrust ‘Society’, to select weak ministers, to heed his wife’s inept advice, and to reassert the inviolability of autocratic power. Within a few months the ‘patriotic union’ had dissipated; the rancour of prewar politics and recrimination resumed in full force.
To mollify the opposition, however, in mid-1915 Nicholas agreed to replace the most odious ministers with men enjoying the confidence of ‘Society’. These gestures, together with new military débâcles, only redoubled the Duma’s determination to extract political concessions: in August 1915 centrist Duma parties formed the ‘Progressive Bloc’ to press long-standing demands—above all, for a government ‘responsible’ to the Duma. Confronted by a hostile majority in the Duma, appalled by his ministers’ readiness to compromise, Nicholas prorogued the Duma and assumed personal command of the army, relinquishing power to chosen viziers, his unstable wife, and an unsavoury entourage that included the dissolute ‘Grishka’ Rasputin. Military defeat, political incompetence, personal stubbornness, and an adamant refusal to share political power or even consider the question negotiable—all this gradually dispelled the mystique of the Romanov dynasty and even fuelled suspicions that Nicholas and Alexandra were themselves traitors.
