MERRITT ABRASH

Alexander II, Gorchakov and Great Britain, 1875-1878: A Study in Motivation

Anglo-Russian relations during the Eastern crisis of 1875-1878 have been studied from several angles, but the motivations of states- men have always been treated as a marginal matter. "Russia" sought one goal and "Great Britain" another; policy was something put into effect by "governments" and reflected "forces" such as public opinion and geopolitical urges; statesmen were executors of tradition- al "national policies" whether they intended to be or not. Maybe so. But moments came when individual statesmen had to make final decisions, and consciously chose one course of action in preference to another. Russian armies would march when Alexander II gave the word, and not until then. Disraeli said "no" to the Berlin Memo- randum; it was within his power to say "yes," which was indeed what other British statesmen would have said in his place. This type of decision can be isolated from motivation only if it can be shown that for each country there was a "larger policy" with which motivation inevitably aligned itself. But this is exactly what is ruled out by a study of the personal attitudes of Alexander II and Gorchakov toward Britain and Turkey. Had the Emperor and his Chancellor been so inclined, they would have had no difficulties with Russian opinion in going to war with Tur- key any time after mid-1876, an dthis could have been made diplo- matically feasible by an Austro-Russian agreement with frankly predatory designs on the Ottoman Empire. Instead, the two Russian statesmen proved reluctant to pursue Russian gains towards the Straits and desperately anxious to avoid the confrontation with Britain which such gains were likely to produce. Many historians ,. are aware of these personal preferences, but few have considered the motivations behind them in print.'

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Alexander II, an emotional gentleman with a limited ability to keep his feelings under control,2 was markedly influenced by senti- ment in his attitude toward Britain. On a purely political level he had no reason to feel anything but hostility, since Anglo-Russian relations during the first twenty years of his reign consisted of major crises every seven years or so-, Polish revolt, repudiation of clauses, Eastern crisis-with wrangling over Central Asia to fill in the intervals. Yet the Emperor displayed a persistent sentimentality toward Queen Victoria. He had visited England while still Tsarevich, in 1839, and to judge by Victoria's diary the two of them spent a

1. Historical treatments of Alexander II's personal motivations during the 1875-1878 crisis fall into three categories. General diplomatic histories either ignore his motivations or extrapolate from his overt reactions to specific diplomatic problems. Rene Albrecht-Carrie, in A Diplomatic History of Europe since the Congress of (New York, 1958), mentions Alexander once in ten pages on the Eastern crisis (pp. 167-177). A. J. P. Taylor, in The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918 (Oxford, 1954), and William L. Langer, in European Alliances and Alignments (New York, 1950), make only disconnected references to the Emperor's views, largely based on standard diplomatic sources. Studies focused on the 1875-1878 crisis itself contain little hard evidence of Alexander's motivations, although some of the authors, such as B. H. Sumner, obviously know a great deal about this subject. Yet Sumner's monumental Russia and the Balkans, 1870-1880 (Oxford, 1937) provides no insight into the Emperor's underlying attitudes toward Britain and Turkey. David MacKenzie, in The Serbs and Russian Pan-Slavism, 1875-1878 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1967), clearly understands Alexander's personal views (p. 92, for example), but touches on . them only in passing. Biographies of the Emperor show real interest in motivation, of course, but do not settle the question. S. S. Tatishchev, in Imperator Aleksandr II, ego : zhizn' i tsarstvovanie, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1903), and E. M. Almendingen, in The Emperor Alexander II (London, 1962), come to conclusions similar to those in this article, but it is not always certain where the authors' sympathy for the Emperor ends and critical evaluation begins. The most objective study, W. E. Mosse's Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia (New York, 1962) I arrives at a mixed verdict-the Emperor hoped for a peaceful outcome almost I to the last moment, but decided on war "in cool deliberation" rather than under pan-Slav pressure (p. 132)-but indicates little of the evidence upon which this is based. j Gorchakov, as a person rather than a diplomat, has received so little attention from historians that his motivations must be determined largely on the basis of diplomatic materials, in which personal views are naturally subordinated to j policy requirements. Nevertheless, the arguments with which the Chancellor sup- I ported or (usually) protested policies during the crisis reveal a consistent per- sonal position. 2. Alexander's penchant for weeping is evident from many first-hand observa- tions. Most compelling is the Dnevnik (, 1947-50) of his War Minister, Dmitrii A. Miliutin, who noted numerous occasions when the Emperor gave way to tears. Once, while telling Miliutin and others that several times on the eve of important events he had dreamed of his father Nicholas embracing and blessing him, Alexander began crying and "was so moved that we left the room to let him calm down." Ibid., II, 182.