Despite occasionally being branded as 'Asiatic' in the West, senior officials at the Choristers' Bridge[185] shared an outlook common throughout the European diplomatic corps. Often educated by foreign tutors, speaking French more easily than their native tongue, and sharing the same aristocratic tastes as their colleagues in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, the elite that shaped Russian diplomacy consciously identified with a cosmopolitan European upper strata that often still valued class over nation. Indeed, other Russians occasionally criticised the Foreign Ministry as an alien preserve, and not without reason. Because of the rarefied skills required of an ambassador, most important a familiarity with the social milieu of foreign courts, tsarist diplomats often bore distinctly non- Slavic surnames, such as Cassini, Stackelberg, Tuyll van Serooskerken, Pozzo di Borgo and Mohrenheim.
While Russia was an integral member of the continent's exclusive club of great powers, its foreign policy did exhibit some distinctive features. Contemporary Western observers were often struck by the concentration of authority in the hands of the sovereign. It was not unusual even in parliamentary regimes for the monarch to be closely involved in diplomacy. Great Britain's Queen Victoria was an active player in her kingdom's foreign affairs, while Hohen- zollerns and Habsburgs often took an even stronger part in such matters. But right up to the reign of Nicholas II, Russia's tsars saw the relations of their empire with other nations as their exclusive preserve. Even the Fundamental Laws of 1906, which established the Duma, declared, 'Our Sovereign the Emperor is the supreme leader of all external relations of the Russian state with foreign powers. He likewise sets the course of the international policy of the Russian state.' The statute explicitly forbade legislators from debating
foreign policy, a provision unknown in any other European constitution at the
time.[186]
This did not mean that Romanovs were reluctant to delegate authority to their foreign ministers. When the Choristers' Bridge was headed by a trusted and competent individual, as it was duringmuch ofthe nineteenth century, that official naturally came to exercise a great deal of influence on tsarist diplomacy. One indication ofthe minister's prestige was the fact that Russia's highest civil service chin (level on the Table of Ranks), chancellor, was typically bestowed on only distinguished holders of that post. Prince Gorchakov once explained, 'in Russia there are only two people who know the politics of the Russian cabinet: The emperor, who sets its course, and I, who prepare and execute it'.[187] Nevertheless, as in many governments, the foreign minister's authority could be eclipsed by others. This was particularly true during Nicholas II's reign, when at various times Finance Minister Sergei Witte or a shadowy group of imperial intimates had a much stronger say in Russian diplomacy.
Even when the Foreign Ministry was firmly in charge of the empire's relations with other states, it did not always speak with one voice. Officials at the Asian Department, which had officially been established in 1819 to deal with Eastern states (including former Ottoman possessions in south-eastern Europe), had a very different outlook on the world than their colleagues who dealt with Western and Central Europe. Unlike the latter, who tended to be well-born, cosmopolitan dilettantes, the Asian Department was largely staffed by ethnic Russians, often with special training in Oriental languages. Caution and aristocratic etiquette were alien to its modus operandi. Acting as a semi- autonomous institution, the Asian Department at times conducted a policy at odds with the broader lines of tsarist diplomacy. This had particularly unfortunate consequences in the Balkans, where more enthusiastic patriots like Count Ignat'ev could frustrate his minister's efforts to defuse tensions.
Despite the autocratic nature of the tsarist regime, by the second half of the nineteenth century public opinion increasingly began to play a role in Russian diplomacy. As throughout Europe, the development of an assertive press and the rise of nationalism began to involve educated Russians in what had hitherto been regarded as the sovereign's exclusive preserve. During Nicholas II's reign, the St Petersburg daily Novoe vremia (the New Times) had an authority roughly analogous to The Times. Read at the Winter Palace and at the Chorister's Bridge, Novoe Vremia advocated a pro-entente line, largely reflecting the sentiments of most literate Russians. The creation of the Duma, an elected legislature, in 1907 further involved civil society in foreign policy. Although according to the Fundamental Laws, deputies could not discuss such matters, they nevertheless used their right to approve the Foreign Ministry's annual budget to impose their views on its policies. The relatively liberal Izvol'skii understood the importance of a favourable public and was careful to court the Duma's more moderate members.
But the most dramatic feature of nineteenth-century tsarist diplomacy was its relative success, at least until 1894. During the eight decades that followed the Congress of Vienna, Russian foreign policy displayed a remarkable degree of consistency and, with two major exceptions in the Near East, it achieved the empire's principal geopolitical objectives. It was only under Nicholas II, when impatience and excessive ambition replaced realism, that the achievements of earlier Romanovs came undone.
The navy in 1900: imperialism, technology and class war
NIKOLAIAFQNIN
At the turn of the twentieth century the Russian navy was in a difficult position. Traditionally, its main theatre of operations was the Baltic Sea. Since the first halfofthe nineteenth century Russia had been the leading naval power among the countries bordering on this sea. Its main enemy had been the British. The Royal Navy could easily block Russian access to the open ocean by patrolling the Sound, in other words the passage between Denmark and Sweden. As was shown in both the Napoleonic and Crimean wars, not only could it also blockade Russian ports and thereby stop Russia's seaborne trade, it could also mount a realistic threat against Kronstadt and the security of St Petersburg, the imperial capital.[188]
From the early 1880s a new threat emerged on the Baltic Sea as newly united Germany began to build its High Seas Fleet. To some extent this was a worse danger than the British navy had been, since a German fleet enjoying superiority over Russia in the Baltic theatre would be able to operate in conjunction with Europe's most formidable land forces - in other words the German army. Given the right circumstances, joint operations by the German army and fleet could pose a major threat to the security of Russia's capital and her Baltic provinces.[189]
Meanwhile the situation in Russia's second theatre of maritime operations, namely the Black Sea, was also difficult. In the early twentieth century 37 per cent of all Russian exports and the overwhelming majority of her crucially important grain exports went through the Straits at Constantinople. On these exports depended Russia's trade balance, the stability of the rouble, and therefore Russia's credit-worthiness and her ability to attract foreign capital. The Ottoman government could block this trade at any time by closing the Straits.
As was shown in the Crimean War, in alliance with a major naval power the Ottomans could also allow in foreign fleets which could blockade and capture Russia's Black Sea ports. So long as the weak Ottoman regime controlled Constantinople and the Straits it was unlikely to use its geopolitical advantage against Russia except in wartime. But the Ottoman Empire was in steep decline. In the decades before the First World War it was a recurring nightmare for the Russians that a rival great power might come to dominate the Straits either directly or by exercising a dominant influence over the Ottoman government. Should there arise any immediate threat of Ottoman collapse, the Russians were determined at least to seize and fortify the eastern end of the Straits in order to deny access to the Black Sea to the navies of rival great powers.[190]
185
Because of its location near a bridge that was traditionally used by members of the Imperial Court Choir on their way to sing at the Winter Palace's chapel, the Russian Foreign Ministry was given this nickname.
186
M. Szeftel,
187
In Baron B. E. Nol'de,
188
See e.g. on the Crimean War: Andrew Lambert,
189
On the early growth of the German navy, see L. Sondhaus,
190
On the broader context, see M. S. Anderson,