The First World War doomed the efforts of these
two empires to reform their institutions, modernise
and solve tensions within. The outcome of
war was revolution not evolution. For half a
century their rivalry and conflicts in the Balkan
cauldron had, at times by a narrow margin, been
adjusted without resort to force until the breakdown
of 1914. The circle of conflict in this one
region of Europe then spread to engulf the whole
continent.
As the world entered the twentieth century there
was a big question mark over the largest Western
state, the Russian Empire. The total size of
Russia’s population remained ahead of the US.
But in industrial development Russia lagged
behind the Western world. It was what would
be termed today a vast underdeveloped country,
stretching from the European frontiers with
Germany and Austria-Hungary through the
Middle East and Asia to the shores of the Pacific
Ocean. The only nation larger than Russia was
China, which in 1900 seemed on the verge of disintegration.
Would Russia also disintegrate in the
new century? Would revolution sweep away the
Romanov dynasty, or would Russian autocracy
prevail and continue to send the largest army in
the world to conquer more and more territory
and continue to incorporate more and more
nationalities into the Russian Empire? Russia possessed
all the resources of iron and coal to turn it
into a major industrial power. How would its
neighbours be able to resist Russian expansion as
it modernised?
Russia’s potential threat to the interests and
security of the countries surrounding it hung over
them all, and increased in proportion to the actual
growth of Russian power in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
By 1914 around 100 distinct national peoples
had been incorporated into Russia. This made it
the largest and most varied multinational empire.
Government was highly centralised and absolute
loyalty to the tsar was demanded of every national
group. The predominant Russian people, the
largest single population group by far, believed in
the superiority of their culture, their orthodox
form of Christianity and the superiority of Slavs.
The tsar sought to impose Russification on the
other peoples and to suppress other religions. The
Orthodox Church also formed a pillar of the tsar’s
autocracy and justified it as ordained by God. The
most persistently persecuted minority were the
Jews, who were deliberately made scapegoats for
the ills besetting Russia. Anti-Semitism and discrimination,
and even persecution of Jews, were
endemic throughout Europe, but most virulent in
Russia. Liberal and progressive European opinion
was shocked and offended by the tsarist regime’s
treatment of the Jews.
It is difficult to look objectively at the history
of Russia during the period of the last tsar’s rule,
1894 to 1917, knowing what followed. Was the
development of Russia in the reign of Nicholas II
a kind of blind alley bound to lead to collapse and
revolution and the triumph of the Bolsheviks, or
was it already on the road to reform and change
before the outbreak of the First World War? An
affirmative answer to the question of fundamental
change can most confidently be given when
industrialisation is considered. Rapid acceleration
in the growth of the Russian economy began
some forty years later than in the US. Growth was
uneven during the period 1890 to 1914, rapid in
the 1890s when it more than doubled, was
checked by a serious depression during the early
years of the twentieth century, then from 1910
onwards resumed rapid expansion until the war.
Not before 1928 would the Soviet Union again
reach that level of production and so recover from
war, revolution and civil war. Industrialisation was
purposefully promoted by the state and masterminded
in the 1890s by Sergei Witte, the minister
of finance. He recognised that to maintain
its status as a great power, Russia must break
with past traditions and catch up with its rapidly
industrialising European neighbours. A protective
tariff (1891), a stable currency linked to gold, and
high interest rates attracted massive foreign
capital, especially from France, and encouraged
capital formation in Russia. The expansion of railways
had a widespread and stimulating effect on
industrial growth. Besides the small workshops,
which in 1915 still employed two-thirds of all
those employed in industry, there had also developed
large-scale and modern industry. The statistics
set out in the table below give some
indication of Russian economic growth.
It must also be remembered that population
growth was very rapid during these years so that
the increase calculated per head of population was
much less impressive. But because Russia was so
large, its total production ranked it in world terms
by 1913 the fifth industrial power after the US,
Germany, Great Britain and France.
In 1913, in comparison with the US, Russia
still lagged far behind. It was also behind
Germany and Britain, but Russian output became
comparable to that of France and Austria-
Hungary in a number of leading industries. With
a population four times as large as that of France,
Russia only achieved roughly the same total
industrial production. All these figures on the one
hand show Russia’s great progress since 1890
compared with earlier decades, while on the other
hand they reveal that in comparison with the US,
Germany and Britain, it remained backward and
the gap was still wide.
Even in 1914 Russian society remained overwhelmingly
rural. Precise classification is extremely
difficult as many workers in factories retained
their ties with their village and returned seasonally
at harvest time. But not less than 50 per cent of
the population were peasants, or muzhiki, who led
a hard life, close to subsistence and dependent on
weather and harvests. Religion was their solace
but was less a reasoned Christianity than ritual and
superstition. More than half the peasantry were
illiterate. Oppressed, the muzhiki symbolised the
Russian masses revering the tsar as father and
autocrat, yet, when driven by hunger and deprivation,
resorting to violence and destruction. Those
peasants recently forced by destitution into the
crowded tenements or factory barracks of St
Petersburg and other industrial centres to work,
even lived separated from their families. At the
heart of the problem of a Russia seeking to modernise
and move into the twentieth century lay this
vast peasantry. It was mainly on their heads too
that the burden of industrialisation had to be
placed, because they provided a cheap labour force
and generated the necessary surplus of wealth
which made investment in new and expanding
industries possible. Exports of agricultural produce
had to provide the greater part of capital to
pay for all that the state spent on the huge army,
on administration and on industry. In the early
twentieth century the heavily burdened peasantry
was ripe for large-scale violent protests. In town
and country sporadic violence was to turn into the
explosion of 1905.
The year 1905 marks a turning point in the
history of Russia. The peasantry looted and burnt
the countryside and appropriated the landlords’
land. The immediate reason was the loss of
authority suffered by the tsarist autocracy during
the Russo-Japanese War. Violence also flared in
St Petersburg and the towns. The defeat of the
Russian armies in China and the despatch of
the Russian fleet to the bottom of the ocean
by the Japanese at the battle of Tsushima in May
1905 weakened the hold of the autocratic tsar
and his ministers.
The capital, St Petersburg, became the scene
of violence and brutal repression. It was the enigmatic
leadership of a charismatic priest, Father
Georgei Gapon, who had initially worked for the
tsarist regime, that led to bloodshed. As trade
unions were forbidden in Russia the tsarist
authorities developed an ingenious scheme to
provide a safety valve for industrial grievances and
a link with the government workers. Associations,
carefully guided in their loyalty to the tsar and led
by reliable supporters of autocracy were promoted.
One of these associations, formed with
the blessings of the Ministry of the Interior, was
Gapon’s in St Petersburg. Gapon proved an
unreliable supporter. He organised a mass strike
and in January 1905 the whole of industrial St
Petersburg was shut down by strikes. On what
became known as Bloody Sunday, 22 January, he
led to the Winter Palace a huge demonstration of
workers, their wives and children, perhaps as
many as 200,000 in all, dressed in their Sunday
best, to seek redress of their grievances from the
tsar. At the Narva Gate the head of the procession
was met by Cossacks, who charged with
drawn sabres at the masses before them, maiming
and killing indiscriminately; soldiers fired into the
crowd. Killing continued all morning. Several
hundred, possibly as many as 1,000, innocent
people perished. The spell of a beneficent tsar was
broken. The tsar would never entirely recover his
authority or the faith and veneration of the masses
who had seen him as their ‘little father’.
Throughout the borderlands – Poland, the
Baltic, Finland and the Caucasus – there followed
widespread unrest and insurrection. To the
earlier victims of assassination now, in February
1905, was added another illustrious victim, the
Grand Duke Sergei, the tsar’s uncle. Terrorism,
strikes, student agitation and a rioting peasantry,
together with the defeated and demoralised army
and navy, added up to a picture of Russian autocracy
in complete disarray. The prospect of disaffected
armed forces on which autocracy relied was
a spectre reinforced in June 1905 by the celebrated
mutiny of the battleship Potemkin in
Odessa harbour. Russian autocracy had reached a
critical point: the tsar could go on shooting and
follow a policy of harsh repression or seek to
master the situation by some timely concession
and reform. He chose the latter, though at heart
he remained a convinced, unbending autocrat.
Yet, from the low point of his reign in 1905
to the outbreak of the war nine years later the tsar
managed better than many would have foretold
at the outset. For a short while he placed the able
Sergei Witte in charge of the immediate crisis.
Witte had a true, if cynical appreciation of the
problem of governing the empire. ‘The world
should be surprised that we have any government
in Russia, not that we have an imperfect government’,
he remarked in July 1905. Witte was convinced
that chaos would follow if the tsar’s rule
was allowed to fail; the nationalities and the conflict
of classes would tear Russia apart. Autocracy
was the only answer to lawlessness and dissolution.
Faced with so much popular opposition,
Witte saw clearly enough that the tsar must either
now resort to repression far more bloody than any
that had preceded or put himself at the head of
the ‘reform’ movement and limit its scope. Above
all the tsar must stop drifting in a sea of indecision.
Witte’s personal inclination was for the
maintenance of undiluted autocracy but he recognised
that this was not likely to succeed, and the
tsar had neither the nerve nor the stomach for
total repression. The tsar gave way to those who
argued that a form of constitutionalism should be
introduced. A renewed wave of strikes in October
overcame his final resistance. The outcome was
the October Manifesto of 1905.
In the previous February, Nicholas had declared
that he would call into being a consultative assembly,
to be known as the Duma. In August the
complicated method of election was announced
which allowed as little influence as possible to the
disaffected workers. Now the October Manifesto
promised to bring to life a genuinely parliamentary
body with whom the tsar would share power. No
law would be promulgated without the consent of
the Duma.
These promises made no impression on the
workers who had spontaneously formed themselves
into soviets, or workers’ councils. In St
Petersburg and Moscow they openly called on the
army to come to the side of the revolutionary
movement. But the loyalty of the army to the tsar
was never seriously in doubt, the soviets were dispersed,
their leaders arrested, and gradually during
1906 in town and country the tide of revolution
passed.
With the need for compromise pressing, the
tsar soon showed his true colours. There were
four meetings of the parliamentary assembly: the
Duma of 1906, the second Duma of 1907, the
third from 1907 to 1912, and the last from 1912
to 1917. In the first Duma, a new party emerged,
the Constitutional Democratic Party, or Kadets as
they were known. They were moderate and liberal
and hoped on the basis of the October Manifesto
to transform Russian autocracy into a genuine
Western parliamentary constitutional government.
Together with the moderate left, they outnumbered
the revolutionary socialists, who had
mostly boycotted the Duma, and the ultraconservatives.
But the tsar would have nothing
to do with a constitutional party or their leader
Pavel Miliukov. After the short second Duma,
which saw a strengthening of revolutionary socialists,
the tsar simply changed the electoral rules,
ensuring tame conservative majorities in the third
and fourth Dumas.
The opportunity of transforming Russia into a
genuinely constitutional state by collaborating
with moderate liberal opinion was spurned by the
tsar. As long as Nicholas II reigned, genuine constitutional
change on the Western model was
blocked. In 1917 the liberals as well as autocracy
would be swept away by the forces of revolution.
Yet, before the war the actual hold of the various
revolutionary socialist parties over the urban
workers and the peasants was tenuous. Therein
lies the extent of the lost opportunity to modernise
and transform Russia while avoiding the
terrible violence which after 1917 accompanied
that process.
Despite the undoubted political repression and
reactionary policies of the tsar and his ministers,
there was also a genuine effort made to tackle
some of Russia’s basic problems and so to cut the
ground from under the widespread discontent. In
1906 the tsar entrusted power to a ruthless but
able man, Peter Stolypin, as chairman of the
Council of Ministers, a position he held until his
assassination in 1911. Stolypin lived up to his reputation
as a ‘strongman’, and through draconian
measures such as military court martials executed
hundreds and smothered revolutionary agitation.
There were also, of course, revolutionary attacks
on government officials whose victims equally ran
into many hundreds killed and wounded. Stolypin
launched a war on terrorism. He suppressed the
rights of the nationalists; the Jews again particularly
suffered, associated as they were in the tsar’s
mind with sedition and socialism.
It took no great discernment to recognise that
something needed to be done to help the peasantry.
In November 1905 the peasants’ redemption
payments for the land they farmed were
cancelled (as from 1907). This made it possible
for a peasant to become the legal proprietor of
the land. But as most of the land was held within
the organisation of a village commune (mir), his
freedom was still heavily circumscribed. The
change Stolypin aimed at was a transformation of
the existing communes into a whole new class of
peasant proprietors, each farming his own land,
not in strips as before, but consolidated into one
viable farm.
The independent well-to-do peasant proprietors
were already a phenomenon, especially in
western Russia. The purpose of the land reform
associated with Stolypin’s name was to increase
their number in all parts of Russia. Legislation
passed in 1906, 1910 and 1911 facilitated the
redistribution of land within the commune and
gave the right to the peasant to secede from the
commune and claim the land he farmed. How
successful did these reforms prove? The problem
of Russian agriculture was gigantic, due to overpopulation,
lack of capital, lack of knowledge and
simple peasant resistance to change. It has been
calculated that by 1916 about 2 million households
had left the communes and set up their own
farms. It was no more than a beginning, but a
significant one. But since by 1916 more than 80
per cent of the land was already being farmed by
peasants, redistribution of land by taking it away
from the larger landlords and the Church could
no longer solve the continuing problem of land
hunger caused by overpopulation. The peasantry
was being divided between the richer, the poorer
and the landless peasants driven into the towns to
swell discontent there. Rapid industrialisation
promoted by the state, the spread of education,
political agitation and the continuing increase of
the population all produced severe social tensions.
Nicholas II was quite unequal to the Herculean
task of ruling Russia. He was more and more
dominated by his wife, Empress Alexandra,
devoted but equally narrow-minded, and she in
turn was influenced by the ‘magic’ of Rasputin,
whose spiritual healing was alleviating the agonies
of their son, the sick tsarevitch.
Yet, by the eve of the 1914 war a succession
of energetic ministers such as Witte and Stolypin
had brought about some change. Higher agricultural
prices and reforms did benefit rural Russia
and pacify the peasants, but in the towns the standard
of living of the workers did not improve.
Workers had gained limited rights to form trade
unions. Bad conditions and an increasing political
awareness that change was necessary and possible
led after 1900 to strikes. The only answer
the government knew was repression, which
reached its horrifying peak in the Lena goldfields
in 1912 when the troops killed 170 miners
striking for higher wages. The years 1913 and
1914 saw a renewal of massive strikes especially
in St Petersburg and Moscow and, significantly,
they became increasingly political.
Faced with these internal disorders, the tsar
and his ministers had to weigh, during that fateful
July of 1914, the question of war and peace.
Would war release a patriotic spirit that would
drown the voice of revolution or would it spark
off the great upheaval? The tsar’s agonising over
the fateful mobilisation order indicates vividly
how he was fully aware that he might be signing
the death warrant of his autocratic rule, perhaps
his dynasty. Certainly, during these last critical
weeks, decisions which required the utmost coolness
of judgement were being taken under the
daily tensions of unrest much more immediate
and severe than those facing the kaiser in Berlin.
How had the tsar allowed Russia to be brought
to so dangerous an international position in 1914
when what Russia most needed was peace?
Despite facing enormous problems at home,
Russia’s ambitions to expand did not slacken.
Having reached the borders of China, Russia
made a bid to dominate Manchuria. China was at
the mercy of the European powers who acquired
strategic outposts and dominated its trade, Britain
first and foremost. The disastrous Boxer rising of
1900 gave another blow to the ramshackle structure
to which the Manchu dynasty had declined
and further opportunities to the Europeans to
seize more of its land. This time the Russians took
the largest bite, seeking to detach Manchuria.
This brought it into conflict with the growing
Japanese power and alarmed Britain. Japan and
Britain drew together in an alliance in 1902
and Britain paid the price of agreeing to support
Japanese ambitions in Korea. The outcome was
war between Japan and Russia in 1904 which the
Japanese famously won the following year, a giant
step in the growth of a new power in the Pacific.
Russia was checked in eastern Asia and turned its
interests back to the Balkans. To free its hand
it reached an imperial settlement, in the Middle
East and on the frontiers of India, with Britain
in 1907.
Russia’s statesmen tried to act in cooperation
with the Habsburg Empire, at first carving up
their spheres of interest. But in 1908 cooperation
broke down. The Austrians owned two Turkish
provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina which they
had already occupied since 1878.
In 1908 the Balkan fire was lit. The ‘Bosnian
crisis’ marks a turning point in the relations of the
powers before 1914. Slav Serbia, resenting the
annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, appealed to
Russia for support; Austria relied on Germany.
No one was ready to fight but good relations
between Austria and Russia were at an end. Also
ended was the Austro-Russian understanding to
settle their imperial rivalries in the Balkans. Now
they intrigued against each other and the fuse
leading to war in 1914 was lit.
Other European nations with their own ambitions
added to the breakdown of stability in the
Balkans. The Ottoman Empire was attempting to
reform itself after the Young Turk revolution of
1908. But Turkey was weak. Italy attacked
Turkey in 1911 and annexed Tripoli. The small
Balkan states, equally greedy, wanted Turkish territory
in Europe and were ready to fight each
other over the spoils.
Turkish weakness, Balkan nationalism and the
rivalry of Austria and Russia destabilised southeast
Europe.
At first the Balkan states went to war against
Turkey. The Balkan League of Serbia, Bulgaria,
Greece and Montenegro attacked the Turks in
October 1912 and defeated them. As a result of
the war Serbia greatly increased its territory, to
the alarm of Austria. All the great European
powers stepped in to supervise the peace and
Russia had to agree to Austrian demands limiting
Serbia’s gains.
But hardly had the question been settled
in London in May 1913 when the members of
the Balkan League fought each other. Bulgaria
now attacked Serbia and Greece; Montenegro,
Romania and Turkey joined Serbia and Greece in
attacking Bulgaria. Bulgaria was forced to make
peace and yield many of its gains from the first
Balkan war.
The conflicts of the Balkan states would have
mattered comparatively little outside their own
region of the world, but for the effects on Austria-
Hungary and on Russia. There was little consistency
about Russian policy in the Balkans. Strong
Pan-Slav feelings motivated Russia’s ambassadors
in the Balkans and these were backed by sections
of public opinion within Russia. But the official
line taken by Sergei Sazonov, Izvolsky’s successor
at the Foreign Ministry in St Petersburg, was
caution. The result of the Balkan wars was to
weaken Russia’s position as well as Austria’s. For
Russia the future appeared full of uncertainties in
the Balkans. The eventual alignment of the individual
Balkan states, with Austria-Hungary and
Germany on the one side and Russia and France
on the other, was unpredictable. Only Serbia was
still Russia’s firm ally and that was not for love of
Russia but due to its enmity of Austria-Hungary.
These uncertainties made the Russians much
more nervous about the future of the Straits of
Constantinople. They were not only vital strategically
but, with the upsurge of the Russian
economy, they also formed an increasingly
important link in the chain of Russia’s trade with
the rest of the world. Three-quarters of its grain
exports were shipped from the Black Sea through
the Straits, and grain constituted some 40 per
cent of Russia’s total export trade. The Russians
wished the Turks to remain the guardians as long
as they did not fall under hostile influence until
the Russians were strong enough to control
them. Germany now had become a double threat:
as Austria-Hungary’s ally and, since 1909, as
Turkey’s ‘friend’. The appointment of a German
general, Liman von Sanders in November 1913
to command the army corps stationed in Constantinople
greatly alarmed St Petersburg. Russian
protests this time worked. General von Sanders
was promoted to the rank of field marshal, which
made him too grand merely to command troops
in Constantinople.
On the plus side for the Russians was the attitude
of the French who in 1912 strongly revived
the Franco-Russian alliance. But Russian policy
would in the end be dictated by Russian interests.
Until Russia’s military reorganisation was completed,
and while still faced with strikes and unrest
at home, Russia wanted to avoid war. That was
still the view of the Council of Ministers called to
debate the question in January 1914, just a few
months before the outbreak of war.
The Habsburg Empire had been a formidable
European power for more than four centuries.
Was its disintegration in the twentieth century the
inevitable consequence of the two most powerful
currents of modern history: nationalism and
industrialisation? These threatened, respectively,
the common bond of loyalty which the nationalities
composing the Dual Monarchy felt for the
dynasty and the acceptance of an existing social
order. In many ways industrialisation and nationalism
were contradictory forces in Austria-
Hungary. The large market of the empire and free
trade within it helped industrial progress; socialism,
which grew with industrial expansion, also
called for an allegiance that cut across the ethnic
differences of nationality. Nationalism, on the
other hand, was divisive and threatened to break
up the empire. But nationalism contained the
seeds of conflict within itself. There could be no
easy agreement in a part of Europe where the
nationalities were so intermingled as to what
precise national frontiers should be drawn, or
who should form the majority in a state or which
peoples must acquiesce in remaining a minority.
There would be conflicts and tensions however
matters were arranged and the majority of the
emperor’s subjects felt ‘better the devil we know’.
There was much to be said for the supranational
solution which the Habsburg Monarchy represented.
Multinational states break apart when the
central power is weakened beyond the point of
recovery. This did not happen in the Habsburg
Empire until 1915. In defeated Russia, Lenin
and Trotsky were able to restore the authority
of the central power through civil war, but no
such Habsburg recovery was possible in 1918.
Nevertheless, it took four years of devastating war
to break Habsburg power and the cohesion of the
Monarchy.
It has frequently been claimed that central
power had been eroded half a century earlier with
the constitutional settlement of 1867. But the
settlement stood the test of time when judged by
central European standards. The greatest threat
to the Monarchy was Hungarian independence.
After 1867 there was no longer a serious possibility
of this. The extensive rights which the
Magyars were granted in the historic kingdom of
Hungary reconciled them to the unity of the
empire under the personal link of the emperorking.
For the Magyars the continuation of the
empire meant that the entire power of the
Monarchy was available to defend their position
against external and internal enemies.
The settlement of 1867 granted to each half of
the empire its own government with control of
internal affairs; this included, importantly, powers
to decide what rights were to be conceded to the
other nationalities living within the jurisdiction of
the kingdom of Hungary and Cis-Leithania, as the
Austrian half of the empire was officially called.
But the central power of the empire remained
strong and real after 1867. Finance, foreign affairs
and military matters remained the responsibility of
the imperial ministries in Vienna, whose ministers
were chosen by the emperor. The emperor was
commander-in-chief of the imperial army. In
another important way this unique imperial constitution
actually strengthened central power. The
democratic constitutional trend of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries could not be entirely
halted in the empire. But franchise concessions
were granted for the separate parliaments sitting in
Vienna and Budapest. In Austria the year 1907
saw the introduction of manhood suffrage. The
Magyars refused to accept any substantial reforms.
But the Hungarian parliament exercised much
more real power over the Hungarian government
than the Austrian over the Austrian government.
There existed no parliament for the empire
as a whole that could influence or control the
crucially important joint imperial ministries.
Indirect parliamentary influence was in theory
provided for by the system of the ‘delegations’,
representatives of the Austrian and Hungarian
parliaments meeting separately and together (in
theory) to deal with questions affecting the joint
ministries. In practice, what concerned the delegations
mainly was finance, customs, commercial
policy and the contributions to the common
budget to be paid by Austria and by Hungary.
These questions were settled, after much wrangling
based on obvious self-interest, for ten years
at a time. The emperor’s ‘reserved’ powers in
foreign and military affairs remained virtually
absolute through his choice of ministers and
refusal to take notice of any parliamentary disapproval.
His power would not have been so completely
preserved in the twentieth century, and
with it a strong central power, but for the dualism
of the empire and, therefore, the absence of a
single imperial parliament. Consequently, imperial
policies in war and foreign affairs were conducted
by just a handful of men. These included
the heads of the three joint ministries, with the
minister of foreign affairs presiding; on important
occasions the prime minister of Hungary, who
had a constitutional right to be consulted on
questions of foreign policy, and other ministers
were invited to join in the discussion.
Among some of the Slavs, dualism was seen as
a device for excluding the Slav majority from
their rightful and equal place in the empire. By
dividing the empire, the Magyars and Germans
constituted the majority, each in their own half.
The majority of the 21 million Slavs (approximate
1910 figures) in the empire as a whole were thus
turned into minorities.
The ‘Slavs’ were not unified in religion, social
structure or tradition. The rivalries and hostilities
between them were at least as important as their
supposedly common interests. The Magyar–
German compromise of 1867 led to parallel small
compromises within each half of the empire. In
Austria, the Polish gentry were given privileges
at the expense of the Ruthenes; the Czechs
were from time to time allowed special rights; but
Serb, Croat and Slovene cultural development
was restricted. The struggle between Germanspeaking
Habsburg subjects and the other nationalities
was bitter at the local level and in parliament,
but it was not, as in Hungary, systematic
government policy. In Hungary, the Magyars
allowed a special status to the Croats but
excluded the Slovaks and Serbs and Romanians
from any share of power or from exercising
autonomous rights.
The politics of ‘Austria’ and of Hungary also
diverged in other respects in the twentieth century.
In Austria one striking development was the emergence
of a socialist party led by Victor Adler which
gained a sizeable parliamentary following in 1907.
Austrian politics were marred by the antics of the
German nationalists and the anti-Semitic Christian
Socialists inspired by Karl Lueger. Conflicts between
nationalists in Austria frequently paralysed
parliament. The industrialised and prosperous
Czechs demanded autonomy. The Germans in
Bohemia sought to keep the Czechs in an inferior
national status. The focus of the struggle was over
the official use of language. When the emperor’s
ministers made concessions with the Czechs, the
Germans refused cooperation with the government
and when concessions were made to the
Germans the Czechs went into bitter opposition.
In any case parliament was regarded by the
emperor as no more than an ‘advisory body’.
The introduction of manhood suffrage in
Austria in 1907 was intended to break the nationality
deadlock. For a brief time the Social Democrats
sat together, irrespective of national origin,
whether German or Czech. It did not last. From
1908 to 1914 the old nationality conflict reasserted
itself with as much vehemence as before.
The conflict of the national parties reduced the
parliament in its splendid and imposing building in
Vienna to impotence. With such a record, parliamentary
government could win little respect
among the population as a whole.
In Hungary, extensive franchise reforms were
blocked by the Magyar gentry as likely to undermine
Magyar predominance. Relations with the
non-Magyar nationalities remained bad down to
1914. Repression was the only policy consistently
adopted. Hungarian politics revolved around
largely unsuccessful attempts to modify the compromise
of 1867 so that the Magyars could gain
greater control over the army. But this was fiercely
resisted by Franz Josef, who threatened force
against any Hungarian government or parliament
seeking to tamper with the royal prerogatives.
When now we marvel at the continued resilience
of the Habsburg Empire, despite national
and constitutional conflicts, which seemed to
increase rather than diminish during the last years
of peace, we tend to overlook one question. Who
had anything to gain from driving the conflict to
extremes and threatening the Habsburg Empire
with disintegration? Not the Magyars, not the
Germans, nor the Poles, who enjoyed greater
liberties under Austrian than Russian and German
rule; not the Jews, whose talents transformed
cultural Vienna; not the Czechs who believed
their own security necessitated the empire; not
even the majority of Serbs and Croats in the
annexed provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Everywhere the mass of the peasantry was
attached to the Habsburg dynasty. Agitation for
independence, whether of Czech or southern
Slavs, was largely the work of a minority among
the more educated. The great majority of Franz
Josef’s subjects wanted the empire to continue
even though they differed so bitterly on the kind
of empire they wanted. Meanwhile the dynasty
and its central power, the imperial civil service and
administration, and the imperial army all carried
out their duties sustained by the common consent
of the great majority of the people.
Franz Josef had won the affection of his subjects
simply by always having been there. His family
misfortunes bravely borne, his simplicity and
honesty, and pride in his robustness in very old
age combined to make him the most respected
and venerated monarch in Europe. And all this
despite the fact that he had made war on his own
subjects in 1849 (Hungary) and had lost all the
wars in which Austria had engaged since his accession
against Italy, France and Prussia. It was a
remarkable achievement.
During the last years of the nineteenth and
during the early twentieth century, the empire
emerged as a modern state. In Hungary the
administration was virtually Magyarised. This
applied also to the judicial administration. But the
country enjoyed a high reputation for justice,
with admittedly the important exception of what
were seen as ‘political’ offences. The kingdom of
Hungary was Magyar: patriotism meant Magyar
patriotism; dissent from this view was treated
harshly. But, despite this fierce attempt to
Magyarise the nationalities on the peripheries of
the kingdom, the policy met with little success;
the nationalities preserved their identities. In the
Austrian half of the empire the governments
sought to arrive at settlements between Germans,
Czechs and Poles acceptable to all sides.
That the empire was, largely, so well governed
was in no small part due to an incorruptible and,
on the whole, intelligent and fair-minded bureaucracy
of civil servants and jurists. It is true that
in the Austrian half of the empire the Germans
constituted some 80 per cent of the civil servants
though by population they were entitled only to a
third. The much better education of the Germans
accounts for some of this predominance. In
Hungary deliberate Magyarisation led to more
than 19 per cent of government service being in
Hungarian-speaking hands. In the central imperial
administration the Germans also played the major
role, with more than half the civil servants
German-speaking. But one can certainly not speak
of a totally German-dominated imperial administration.
In the principal joint ministries of the
empire, Franz Josef ensured that the three common
ministers never came from the same half of
the Monarchy. The senior Foreign Ministry was
held in turn by a Saxon German, a Hungarian,
an Austrian German, a Pole, a Hungarian and an
Austrian German.
The economic development of the empire that
was disappointingly slow in the latter part of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries implies a
comparison with western and northern Europe.
But the empire’s centre was in the Balkans, the
grain-producing Hungarian plain. Within the
empire lay regions such as the Czech provinces,
which achieved a development comparable to the
most advanced areas of Europe.
The empire provides great contrasts between
comparative wealth and stark poverty. Agricultural
backwardness and an increasing population
condemned the peasants of Galicia to
continuous poverty. Large-scale emigration was
one consequence. (The empire’s population grew
from 46.9 million in 1900 to 52.4 million in
1910.) In Bohemia, and in upper and lower
Austria, agriculture, as well as industry, turned
these regions into the most prosperous in the
empire. In Hungary the owners of the great
landed estates led the way to the introduction of
better farming methods. The central Hungarian
plain became one of the granaries of Europe. The
imperial customs union, freeing all trade within
the empire, opened up to Hungary’s agriculture
the market of the more industrialised Austrian
half of the empire.
In the twentieth century Austria-Hungary
achieved a fast rate of industrial growth in the
favoured regions. Nevertheless, the empire as a
whole lagged far behind the more advanced western
and northern European nations. Regional
variations were as marked in industrial as in agricultural
development. The most successful agricultural
parts of the empire were also the most
industrially advanced: upper and lower Austria,
Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia and Hungary
proper. Industrialisation had made little impact in
Galicia, Dalmatia or Transylvania. In 1911, textiles
and clothing, tobacco and foodstuffs, together
with wood, leather and paper accounted for nearly
two-thirds of the Austrian half of the empire’s
industrial output. But imperial policies of free trade
within the empire tended to maintain these
regional differences of progress and backwardness.
On the other hand, it needs to be remembered
that without state aid in the development of the
railways, without good administration and internal
peace and security throughout the empire, the economic
conditions of the people would have been
far worse than they actually were.
It is remarkable that the empire, beset by so
many problems internally, backward in economic
development and also poor, achieved a high reputation
in the arts and was acknowledged to be one
of the great powers of Europe. The Monarchy’s
universities were second to none, the musical, literary
and theatrical life of Vienna, Budapest and
Prague, and the renown of Freud and Liszt and
Strauss, were celebrated throughout the Western
world. The Monarchy’s status as a great power
had been diminished, it is true, but not extinguished
by defeats in the nineteenth-century continental
wars that created united Italy and
Germany. In 1900 the empire was still considered
one of the foremost military powers of Europe, a
bulwark against the possibility of the Russian or
German dominance of south-eastern Europe. The
territorially large Habsburg Empire was thus a
major element in the pre-1914 European balance
of power whose disappearance, the other powers
felt, would create grave new problems.
Actually the empire’s military capacity was overrated.
The perennial lack of funds was one reason
for its weakness. Another unique problem was
that it was largely officered by German-speaking
Austrians and a smaller number of Hungarians; the
troops themselves were composed of all the
nationalities and spoke in many languages. Even
worse was the incompetence of the general staff.
Only in the two years before the war of 1914 was
the army increased to a potential wartime strength
of 1.5 million men. Military and economic weakness
made the Monarchy’s foreign ministers
cautious and conservative.
There is a shape, logic and consistency to
Habsburg foreign policy in the nineteenth
century with its emphasis on the importance of
tradition and of dynastic rule and its opposition
to nationalism. The loss of the Italian provinces
was therefore seen as a particularly heavy blow.
If the neighbours of the Habsburg Empire,
Romania and Serbia, followed the example of
Piedmont in the wars of Italian unification, justifying
their efforts by an appeal to the right of
national self-determination, then the Habsburg
Empire must disintegrate altogether. Serbia cast
in the role of Piedmont was the nightmare vision
that drove the emperor and his ministers to stake
the future of the empire on the field of battle in
July 1914. But they also recognised that the real
threat had not been Piedmont but Piedmont in
alliance with France in 1859 and with Prussia in
1866. The real threat in 1914 was felt to be not
Serbia but Serbia in alliance with Russia.
Security and integrity are basic objectives of
any state’s foreign policy. But the great powers of
pre-1914 Europe also considered it axiomatic that
they should possess spheres of influence and control
beyond their own state frontiers. In the nineteenth
century the Habsburgs were forced to
abandon their traditional role of influence first in
the Italian and then in the German states. By the
twentieth century the only ‘frontier’ left open was
the Balkan. Not to suffer a third defeat on this last
frontier was seen as a matter of vital importance
for the future of the empire.
With the decline of the Ottoman Empire in
Europe the future of the Balkan peoples, divided
and intermingled in religious beliefs, in tradition,
in culture and in socio-economic structure, preoccupied
the European great powers. But the
Balkan states pursued policies of their own and
were locked in rivalry over the disposition of the
still Turkish or formerly Turkish lands.
Once Russia had recovered from defeat in the
Far East, the attention of St Petersburg reverted
to the Balkans and a rediscovery of Russia’s Slav
mission. A much more active Russian policy now
coincided with a new period of Ottoman weakness
caused by the internal upheavals of the
Young Turk movement (1908 to 1910). It also
coincided with the growing ambitions and rivalries
of the Balkan states, themselves casting covetous
eyes on Macedonia and other territories still
ruled by the Turks. The Balkans were becoming
a powder barrel. Austro-Russian cooperation
might have contained these tensions. Instead,
Russia’s ambitious ministers at the various Balkan
capitals were adding to the growing turmoil. The
turning point came in 1908–9.
In the Monarchy, the foreign minister Count
Aehrenthal was a well-known advocate of a policy
of cooperation and agreement with Russia. He
regarded Austria-Hungary as a ‘satiated’ state that
needed no more territories and no more Slavs. But
as a final step of consolidation – almost a technical
consolidation – whose purpose was to regularise
and remove all uncertainty, he wished to convert
the Monarchy’s position in Bosnia-Herzegovina
from that of the permanently occupying power
(since 1878) to one of sovereignty. He was prepared
to pay compensation to the Turks and to
give up the occupation of another Turkish territory,
the strategically important land known as
Novipazar. This withdrawal would also convince
the Russians that Austria-Hungary had abandoned
all thought of territorial expansion. Talks were
arranged with the Russian foreign minister,
Alexander Izvolski. Their famous, and unrecorded,
conversation took place at the castle of Buchlau
in 1908. From the available evidence it seems
clear that the whole basis of these talks was the
intention to strengthen Austro-Russian cooperation.
Izvolski said that Russia would diplomatically
support Austria-Hungary’s wish to annex Bosnia-
Herzegovina. In return he asked for, and obtained,
Aehrenthal’s promise of diplomatic support for a
Russian proposal to the powers to change the rule
of the Straits. Aehrenthal soon after, while Izvolski
toured Western Europe and had not even time to
consult the tsar about the Buchlau ‘bargain’,
announced the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina
to Europe. Izvolski was furious. He had no success
with his attempt to change the rule of the Straits:
Britain rejected the proposal outright. To save
face, Izvolski now claimed he had been tricked by
Aehrenthal.
From here on the threads lead to the catastrophe
of 1914. Out of the breakdown of relations
between Izvolski and Aehrenthal grew the
prolonged Bosnian crisis. Serbia’s nationalist feelings
had been wildly aroused by the Monarchy’s
annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, inhabited
by many Serbs. Russia backed Serbia and was
insistent on ‘compensation’ for Serbia and also
that the Monarchy should submit the whole
question of annexation to a conference of powers.
With the German ally’s support, Aehrenthal
refused both demands. Russia and Britain and
France backed away. Serbia did not. In 1909
Serbia and Austria-Hungary came close to war,
with Russia acting as Serbia’s protector. In reality
neither Russia nor any of the powers were ready
for war in 1909. One cannot help speculating how
different a course history might have taken if
Austria-Hungary had used its superior strength to
defeat Serbia then. As it was, Izvolski drew back.
On Germany fell the odium of having threatened
Russia with a peremptory note that unless it
recognised the annexation at once, Germany
would not hold the Monarchy back from attacking
Serbia. Izvolski could now claim that the
German ‘ultimatum’ forced Russia to give way.
More important, the crisis marked the end of tolerably
good Austro-Russian relations. Were their
Balkan differences really so irreconcilable? The
collision of the two empires was due to miscalculation
rather than deliberate intent. In 1909
Russia was the more aggressive of the two states.
The Russian diplomats in the years after 1909
redoubled their efforts to re-establish Russia’s
damaged prestige among the Balkan states. These
moves coincided with the intrigues and national
ambitions of the Balkan states themselves, whose
policies in the end could not be controlled by the
Russians.
In 1911 the Italians made war on the Ottoman
Empire. This started a new period of continuous
Balkan tensions. In 1912 the Habsburgs believed
that the Russians had inspired a Balkan League of
Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria to
attack Turkey. These states had temporarily buried
their own disputes over Macedonia and other territorial
disputes to grab more lands from Turkey.
Then they, in turn, fell out over the booty in 1913
when Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece and was
itself defeated by a new alliance of Balkan states.
Apart from the certainty of Austro-Serb
enmity, there were no other certainties in the
Balkans during the last years before 1914. Neither
Russia nor the Monarchy could be sure at any
point of crisis which of the other Balkan states
would side with whom. The unhappy consequence
for the peace of Europe was that Russia
and Austria-Hungary felt equally threatened by
the diplomatic intrigues of the other. Russia, with
promises of French support, was both fearful and
active. The Dual Monarchy could never assume
that the German ally would stand behind it. As
for Italy, its alliance was nominal. Italy was
regarded as a potential enemy. So the Habsburgs
felt unsure of the future.
Austria-Hungary’s bitter opponent, Serbia,
had emerged greatly enlarged from the two
Balkan wars. In 1913, by helping to create independent
and friendly Albania, Austria-Hungary
succeeded in checking Serbia’s further expansion
to the Adriatic. This was achieved not so much
by the ‘conference of European’ powers as by the
Dual Monarchy’s own threats delivered to Serbia.
Count Leopold Berchtold, Aehrenthal’s successor
at the Foreign Ministry since 1912, learnt from
these experiences that Austria-Hungary would
have to rely on its own firmness. Behind Serbia
stood Russia. But Franz Josef and his ministers
believed that firm diplomacy could still break the
hostile ring of states and Russia’s manifest design
to encircle the Monarchy, provided Germany
loyally backed the Habsburg Empire. Sarajevo
changed all that.
World History
