The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I and Revolution

448 Pages·2015·16.476 MB·English

by  Dominic Lieven

Praise for The End of Tsarist Russia
Winner of the the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize
Finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize
An Amazon Best Book of the Month (History)
“Lieven has a double gift: first, for harvesting details to convey the essence of
an era and, second, for finding new, startling, and clarifying elements in*
familiar stories. This is history with a heartbeat, and it could not be more
engrossing.” —Foreign Affairs
“Lieven presents Russia's road to war and revolution as a classical tragedy—a
fate driven by the character of both the country and its rulers__[He] recov­
ers a world that has been lost.” —The Wall Street Journal
“The notion that Russia, lying at the periphery of Europe, was at the center of
things infuses Dominic Lieven’s masterly new view of World War I.”
—The Boston Globe
"Lieven's interpretation is the result of his own heroic research endeavors in
newly available Russian foreign ministry archives. But his insights are more
than professional; they are personal. . . . His stimulating book, deeply
researched yet written with all the bravura of his aristocratic forebears, con­
vinced this reviewer at least.” —Financial Times
“Not just one of the greatest historians on Russia, but also a great writer.”
—Antony Beevor, The Independent (London)
“A finely-wrought and compelling account of Russia's final decade of peace­
time before a continuum of war and revolution that stretched well into the
1920s, and arguably beyond. It is the story of a disaster, which, while it loomed
ever larger on the horizon, was never an inevitability.” —History Today
“Deeply researched, highly valuable in its focus on Russia, and unfailingly
well-written: more proof of Lieven's profound knowledge of the Russian
empire.” —The Spectator (London)
“The End of Tsarist Russia is a book of immense scholarship and engaging
readability.” —David Reynolds, author of The Long Shadow
“Valuable... Gives insight into why Russia was so unprepared for a war that
ultimately resulted in a near-century of agony for its people.”
—The Washington Times
"This is a great book by a great historian filled with riches—not just about the
end of Tsarism and the Revolution, but offering thè most original of all recent
accounts of the outbreak of war in 1914. It has uncanny internal knowledge
of the state apparatus, terrific explanatory power and judgment—and such
narrative power that I found it hard to put down.”
—John A. Hall, professor of comparative historical sociology,
McGill University
“Based on newdocumentation from the Moscow archives, Lieven uses the larger
backdrop of growing international tensions to examine the role of the Tsar and
his close advisers in the escalating crisis without downplaying the responsibility
of the decision-makers in Vienna and Berlin. Readers who, after two years of
vigorous debate among historians, are looking for a judicious assessment will
find this book absorbing as well as indispensable in their teaching and research.”
—V. R. Berghahn, Columbia University
“The fullest and most nuanced picture we have of Russia's halting but in the
end determined entry into the First World War. This book supersedes all
previous ones on the subject.”
—Geoffrey Hosking, emeritus professor of Russian history,
University College London
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE END OF TSARIST RUSSIA
Dominic Lieven is a senior research fellow at Trinity College,
Cambridge, and a fellow of the British Academy. He previously
taught Russian Studies at the London School of Economics for
thirty-three years. His last book, Russia Against Napoleon, won
the 2009 Wolfson Prize for History and the Prix Napoleon. He
divides his time between Cambridge, England, and Japan.

THE END B
TSARIST
R U SSIA
THE M ARCH TO WORLD
WAR I AND REVOLUTION
Dominic Lieven
PENGUIN BOOKS
To my teachers Leonard Schapiro and Hugh Seton-Watson
PENGUIN BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, an
imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2015
Published in Penguin Books 2016
Copyright © 2015 by Dominic Lieven
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First published in Great Britain under the title Towards the Flame:
Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia by Allen Lane, an imprint
of Penguin Random House UK
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA AVAILABLE
ISBN 9780670025589 (he.)
ISBN 9780143109556 (pbk.)
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Set in Warnock Pro with Marquee and Octane LT Com
Design and Map Illustrations by Daniel Lagin
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Ix
NOTE xili
LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS xv
INTRODUCTION 1
chapter I« A World o| Empires 17
chapter 2t The Russian Empire 46
chapter Si The Decision Makers 91
chapter 4i The Emergence of the Triple Entente, 1904-9 182
CHAPTER St Crisis Follows Crisis, 1909-13 225
CHAPTER < 1914 291
1
chapter 7i The July Crisis 313
chapter Si War, Revolution, and Empire 343
vlil CONTENTS
AFTERWORD 365
LIST OF AiRREVIATIONS 369
NOTES 371
INDEX 419
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
in writing this book, I have incurred many debts. First, I wish to extend my
deep gratitude to Trinity College, Cambridge, which provided me with a
very happy home while I was researching and writing this book.
Next, I would like to thank my research assistants: above all Ella Sagi-
nadze in St. Petersburg and Natalia Strunina in Moscow. Ella not only per­
formed hugely valuable work for me in the State Historical Archive in St.
Petersburg but also secured most of this book’s photographs. Natalia did
great work on my behalf in Moscow’s libraries and archives but also ferried
me craftily around the city’s hospitals when archival work had almost killed
me off. I must also thank Yuri Basilov, who did research for me in the archive
of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, and Martin Albers and Jerome
Greenfield, who ferreted out useful information for me in Britain.
My stay in Moscow was helped immensely by the hospitality of the Sim­
mons family and of Vasili Kashirin: to them too great thanks. The draft chap­
ters were read by Professors Bruce Menning and David Schimmelpenninck
van der Oye. My book would have been far inferior without their advice.
Bruce Menning also shared with me many of his unpublished articles and his
immense knowledge of the Russian army before 1914 and its preparations
for war.
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I also have to thank the many archivists who made my research possible:
above all the staff of the Foreign Ministry Archive in Moscow, who went far
out of their way to help me, but also Professor Serge Mironenkos splendid
staff at GARF, also in that city. The military archive in Moscow was the foun­
dation for my last book and made a big contribution to this one too. Also not
to be forgotten are the friendly and helpful archivists at the naval archive in
St. Petersburg, the French military archive, and the British National Archives.
I owe special thanks to the immensely helpful staff at the Bakhmeteff Archive
of Columbia University in New York. My thanks are also due to the libraries
in which I worked in London, Moscow, and Cambridge.
During my time in Moscow, I sustained a growing litany of medical prob­
lems. I would not have surmounted them and finished my research without
the support of my wife, Mikiko Fujiwara.
Mrs. Elizabeth Saika and Dr. Sophie Schmitz, granddaughter and great-
niece of a key figure in my book, Prince Grigorii Trubetskoy, were immensely
generous and helpful in sending me unpublished work about their grandfa­
ther. Sophie Schmitz kindly sent me the PhD dissertation that she herself had
written about him, and Elizabeth Saika provided me with both unpublished
family documents and photographs. I am very grateful to both of them.
Apart from Elizabeth Saika, the following people and institutions kindly
supplied me with photographs for this book: the publishing house Liki Rossii
and its director, Elizaveta Shelaeva; the Central State Archive of Cinema and
Photographs in St. Petersburg; Alexis de Tiesenhausen; and the Krivoshein
family. I am grateful to all of them for their help.
My publishers, Melanie Tortoroli in New York and Simon Winder in
London, not only commissioned and encouraged me to write this book but
also read it with great skill, providing me with extremely good advice that
improved the structure and presentation considerably. At Penguin in London,
I should also like to thank Richard Duguid and Marina Kemp and in partic­
ular Richard Mason, my copy editor. Very great thanks are also owed to my
agent, Natasha Fairweather.
The historians who have worked around this theme and from whose ideas
I have benefited are too numerous to thank individually, but special mention
must be made of Professor Ronald Bobroff, who came to my rescue by pro­
viding me with a copy of a key document that I could not find in the archive.