Geopolitical Rivalries
The external context was crucial, as was always the case in modern Russian history. If the most basic reason for Russia's emergence as a European great power in the eighteenth century was her formidable military-fiscal state and the quality of her leadership, also vital was the configuration of interstate relations in Europe.
Of the five great powers, only Russia had no invariable enemy. She was therefore in a position to exploit Anglo-French and Prusso-Austrian rivalry. The fall of Napoleon represented Britain's victory over France in the “Second Hundred Years' War” and ushered in a century in which Anglo-French enmity could not always be taken for granted. The Crimean coalition showed just what consequences this could have for Russian ambitions and security. Still worse were the implications of German unification in 1871, the subsequent explosive growth of the German economy, and the Austro-German alliance of 1879. Instead of being able to play the two German powers off against each other, Russia now faced a united Germanic bloc on its immense and vulnerable western border. This bloc was not simply an alliance between two states rooted in Realpolitik. It was also based on ethnic and even to an extent ideological solidarity, not least against what was increasingly perceived as a common Slav threat. In the twentieth century, Russia was to shatter itself in conflicts first with this Germanic rival and then with an Anglo-Saxon alliance also rooted not just in common geopolitical interests, but also in ethnic and ideological solidarity.[2266]One Russian answer to this challenge was the attempt to form and lead its own Orthodox or Slavic bloc of states. From the time of its wars with the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth-century, St. Petersburg had sought to win the Orthodox peoples of the Balkans to its side. In the nineteenth century, the emphasis partly shifted from religion to ethnicity, in other words, from common Orthodoxy to common slavdom.
Alexander I's two key advisors on foreign policy before 1812, Prince Adam Czartoryski and Count Nikolai Rumiantsev, were both advocates of Russian leadership of varieties of a pan-Slav alliance. From 1815 down to 1917, Russian enthusiasm for Slavic causes waxed and waned, above all in line with foreign policy priorities. Enthusiasm reached its peak in the two decades after defeat by the Anglo-French coalition in the Crimea, only to lose ground in the 1880s after disappointment over the results of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 and anger at what was perceived as the ingratitude of the Balkan peoples for the sacrifices made by Russia for their liberation. After 1905, however, the humiliating defeat of Russia's policy in East Asia and a sense of vulnerability to growing Austro-German pressure reawakened interest in Slavic solidarity. The problem was, however, that in comparison to the Germans and Anglo-Saxons, in reality there never was much Slavic solidarity. Most serious was the enmity between the Russians and Poles, Europe's two largest Slavic peoples, but even shared Slav and Orthodox identity did not stop bitter Serb-Bulgarian rivalry. Moreover, even if greater Slav solidarity had existed, the Slav peoples could not equal the power of the Germanic ethnic bloc, which stood at the forefront of European economic and cultural modernity. Still less could the Slavs match the colossal resources of the English-speaking world.[2267]In addition to these weaknesses, the cause of Slavic solidarity risked dragging Russia into conflicts with the Germanic world over issues divorced from essential Russian interests. In 1914 Russia found itself acting as guarantor of a Serb government which it could not control and whose longer-term goals included the unification of all Serbs, and possibly all south Slavs, under the rule of Belgrade. When Vienna used the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand as an excuse to end this threat, a European war ensued which destroyed the Russian Empire.
Though military setbacks and economic problems contributed to the monarchy’s fall, its key cause was the regime’s loss of all legitimacy among the Russian urban population and Russia’s civil and military elites. The non-Russian peoples played little role in the fall of the Romanovs in March 1917. But the monarchy’s disappearance resulted in the disintegration first of the state, and then of the empire. From Finland to the Caucasus, the whole European borderland split off from the Great Russian core. In theory independent, these new states were in fact German dependencies. This reflected not just the immediate military context but also long-term geopolitical realities in the region.In 1917-1918 all the long-held nightmares of Imperial Russia’s rulers were realized. It is arguable that if the Germans had not brought the United States into the First World War on the very eve of Russia’s disintegration, then the way would have been open to the creation of a German indirect empire in east-central Europe and with it German hegemony on the continent. Without Ukraine’s population, heavy industry, or agriculture, early twentieth-century Russia would have ceased to be a great power, at least for a time. In Russia’s absence, a self-sustaining European balance of power was impossible. Without American intervention, the British and French could never have defeated Germany or reversed the verdict of Brest-Litovsk. Whether Berlin would have made good on this possibility to establish a lasting domination of east-central Europe is an open question. Military victory is merely the first stage in the creation of empires. Political consolidation is often harder and requires more skill. Wilhelmine Germany was hardly noted for its pursuit of a coherent and realistic grand strategy combining military power with political finesse. The British had difficulties in re-stabilizing their existing empire in Ireland, Egypt, and India in the wake of the war. The Germans would certainly have faced even greater difficulty in building a new imperial order in eastern Europe. In the event, defeat on the western front deprived them even of their chance. With Germany’s defeat, Russia was able to restore its dominion over its most important borderlands and in time to rebuild a great imperial power in a new Soviet guise.[2268]