What would have happened had the army's loyalty disintegrated, with most of its other ranks refusing to obey orders or even joining the revolution? A spiral ofradicalisation would have occurred similar to that which happened in France in 1789, but it would have been more radical and more rapid. There was no chance that Russia's liberal leaders of the Kadet Party would have been able to control or channel this process. Unlike in the French Revolution, socialist doctrines and revolutionary socialist parties now existed, and indeed had put down deep roots in the Russian intelligentsia. In their determination to eliminate gentry landowning most peasants were unconscious socialists, and many workers were attracted to the socialist vision articulated by the revolutionaries. Mayhem would have been at its worst in the non-Russian areas: the Trans-Caucasus slipped largely beyond the government's control even as things turned out in the winter of 1905-6. Had the regime fallen, the process of disintegration would have gone further, with social revolution quickly taking on the additional aspect of inter- ethnic war. Elsewhere, movements for full-scale independence would only have developed in Poland and perhaps Finland, but in other non- Russian areas there would have been demands for varying degrees of local autonomy. Inevitably extremes of revolution would have caused a counter-revolutionary response, as indeed happened in 1905-7 when there was widespread support for the so-called Black Hundreds. If this process of domestic conflict had been allowed to reach its denouement it is very difficult to know when it would have stopped or which forces would ultimately have emerged victorious.
But in reality, external forces were certain not to allow a disintegrating Russia to decide its own fate and their intervention would probably have been decisive, at least in the short run. The leadership in intervention would almost necessarily have to come from Germany since it was a neighbouring power and had Europe's most formidable army. It is true that the German Chancellor, Bernhard von Bulow, dreaded having to intervene. He recalled the effect of foreign intervention in 1792-93 in uniting French nationalism with the revolution and pushing the latter to extremes. He knew too that intervention on behalf of counter-revolution in Russia would be deeply unpopular with German socialists. But the hands of Bulow and other European leaders were almost certain to be forced as Russia spiralled towards anarchy and socialism. Presumably no Russian regime in peacetime would have taken the suicidal path of repudiating debts and thereby inviting foreign intervention. But as revolution spread, the economy crashed, and capital fled, Russia would have been forced to default on its international obligations. Pre-1914 capitalists and the great powers that supported them had a tough response to defaulters. The pressure of foreign bondholders on their governments to protect their investments by backing the re-creation of a stable non-socialist regime in Russia would have been intense, especially in France, the country most affected. The thought of the German army spearheading intervention in Russia in order to protect French bondholders might have caused some unusual Franco-German solidarity for a time but in Paris this would have been far outweighed by fear that Russian power, the guarantee of French security and the European balance, was gone for the foreseeable future.
Default would spark some version of foreign intervention but the spreading violence against foreign persons and property in Russia would likely result in more immediate and drastic action. Even as it was, in the winter of 1905-6 the British consul in Riga (to take one of many possible examples) was howling for Royal Naval landing parties to protect British subjects in what we now call Latvia. Here above all, however, it would be the Germans who must lead. There were far more ethnic Germans in Russia than there were French, English, Italians or Austrians. Many of these Germans were subjects of the tsar. The most prominent were the landowning, business and professional elites of the Baltic provinces. Many of the Baltic landowning nobility in particular possessed powerful connections in Berlin. At the height of the Russian Revolution of 1905 Emperor William II told Professor Schiemann, the best-known professional middle-class Balt in Berlin, that if the tsar fell and anarchy spread in the Baltic provinces then the German army would intervene. Of course the Kaiser's promises were not government policy but in this case it is hard to see how any German government could have stood aside as ethnic Germans in neighbouring provinces were stripped of their property, saw their manor houses burned over their heads and in many cases were killed. This was already happening in the Baltic provinces but the process was stopped in its tracks by the brutal intervention of punitive Russian military expeditions from early 1906. Had the Russian monarchy fallen and its army disintegrated then arson, mayhem and murder would have become near universal and German military intervention surely unavoidable.
What would have been the result of foreign intervention? Would it, as in France in 1792-93, have led to an alliance of radicalism and nationalism in the revolutionary cause? Maybe, but it is very hard to imagine Russian property-owners allying themselves with any socialist regime committed to their expropriation. Perhaps the Russian counter-revolution would have allied itself to foreign intervention as Franco did in 1936, for all the nationalist ideology at the core of his counter-revolutionary cause. Possibly a better parallel is with Russian intervention in Hungary in 1849. The dominant ideology of Russian conservatism by 1900 was nationalism, and the Russian elites were imbued by a strong commitment to their country's power, status and honour. If restored to power on German bayonets their humiliation would have been extreme. Perhaps like Austria after 1849 a conservative Russia would have turned on its German saviour, astonishing the world - in the words of Felix Schwarzenberg - by its ingratitude.
But one must not forget the traumatic impact of Russia's collapse and German intervention on international relations in Europe and on the European balance of power. The Russian ambassador in London in 1903-16, Count Alexander Benckendorff, believed that the result of Russian disintegration and German intervention would probably be an immediate Franco-British alliance and very possibly a European war soon after. It is impossible to say whether he would have been proved correct. The one certain point is that it would have taken Russia significantly longer to recover from disintegration and foreign intervention than it actually took to restore Russian power after 1906. In that period Germany's relative power would have been greatly enhanced. If a Russian recovery was combined with nationalist anti-German frenzy (of which there was a good deal in 1906-14 even without foreign intervention) then the temptation for Berlin to seize the opportunity and go to war in order to ensure its hegemony in Europe and its security for the foreseeable future might have proved irresistible. At which point the reader might ask whether this scenario differs greatly from what actually happened. War did after all come in 1914. The key difference would have been that in my counterfactual narrative Germany almost certainly would have won the war.