As the conservatives feared, Russia’s reliance on foreign capital had political consequences, intensifying the pressures on the Imperial Government to come to terms with its own society—that is, to liberalize. Investors everywhere have little tolerance for political instability and civil unrest, and when threatened with them, either withhold capital or demand a risk premium. Every internal crisis, especially if attended by popular disturbances, led to the fall in the price of Russian state obligations, forcing the government to pay higher interest. In consequence of the Revolution of 1905, Russian bonds floated in Europe the next two years had to be heavily discounted. Foreign investors preferred that the Imperial Government operate in a lawful manner and with public support institutionalized in a parliament. Thus by reaching out to the parliamentary democracies for capital, Russia became susceptible to influences promoting parliamentary forms of government. Quite naturally, the Ministry of Finance, the main agent in these fiscal operations, became a spokesman for liberal ideals. It did not quite dare to raise the slogans of constitutionalism and parliamentarism, but it did press for curtailing bureaucratic and police arbitrariness, respect for law, and extending equality to the ethnic minorities, especially the Jews, who were a major force in international banking.
Thus the requirements of the Treasury drove the Russian Government in the opposite direction from that demanded by its ideology of autocratic patrimonialism and urged on it by conservative bureaucrats. A government whose philosophy and practices were under the spell of patrimonial absolutism had no alternative but to pursue economic policies that undermined such absolutism.
The Russian army was, first and foremost, the guarantor of the country’s status as a great power. Witte had the following to say on the subject:
In truth, what is it that has essentially upheld Russian statehood? Not only primarily but exclusively the army. Who has created the Russian Empire, transforming the semi-Asiatic Muscovite tsardom into the most influential, most dominant, grandest European power? Only the power of the army’s bayonet. The world bowed not to our culture, not to our bureaucratized church, not to our wealth and prosperity. It bowed to our might …71
The military establishment was to an even greater extent than the bureaucracy the personal service of the autocrat, if only because the Tsars took a very personal interest in the armed forces and favored them over the bureaucracy, whose interference and pressures often annoyed the Court.72 All the trappings and symbols of the military, beginning with the oath sworn by officers and soldiers, were filled with the patrimonial spirit:
In the military oath, which had to be renewed upon the death of every sovereign, inasmuch as it was sworn to the person [of the ruler], the Emperor appears solely as the Autocrat, without the Fatherland being mentioned. It was the mission of the military to safeguard “the interests of His Imperial Majesty” and “all the rights and privileges that belong to the Supreme Autocracy, Power and Authority of His Imperial Majesty.” The swearer of the oath committed himself to defend these prerogatives whether they already existed or were still to be acquired or even claimed—i.e., “present and future.” [In the oath] the state was treated simply as the Emperor’s command [
With a standing army of 2.6 million men, Russia had the largest military establishment in the world: it was nearly equal to the combined armies on active service of Germany and Austria-Hungary (1.9 and 1.1 million, respectively). Its size can be accounted for by two factors.
One was slowness of mobilization. Great distances aggravated by an inadequate railroad network meant that in the event of war Russia required much more time than her potential enemies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, to bring her forces to full combat strength: in the early years of the century, Russia’s mobilization was expected to take seven times as long as Germany’s.*
