The Russian Origins of the First World War The Russian Origins of the First World War Sean McMeekin The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts • London, Eng land 2011 Copyright © 2011 by Sean McMeekin All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data McMeekin, Sean, 1974– The Russian origins of the First World War / Sean McMeekin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-06210-8 (alk. paper) 1. World War, 1914–1918—Causes. 2. World War, 1914–1918—Russia. 3. Russia—Foreign relations—1894–1917. 4. Imperialism—History— 20th century. 5. World War, 1914–1918—Campaigns—Eastern Front. 6. World War, 1914–1918—Campaigns—Middle East. I. Title. D514.M35 2011 940.3'11—dc23 2011031427 For Ayla Contents Abbreviations ix Author’s Note xi Introduction: History from the Deep Freeze 1 1. The Strategic Imperative in 1914 6 2. It Takes Two to Tango: The July Crisis 41 3. Russia’s War: The Opening Round 76 4. Turkey’s Turn 98 5. The Russians and Gallipoli 115 6. Russia and the Armenians 141 7. The Russians in Persia 175 8. Partitioning the Ottoman Empire 194 9. 1917: The Tsarist Empire at Its Zenith 214 Conclusion: The October Revolution and Historical Amnesia 234 Notes 245 Bibliography 289 Acknowledgments 303 Index 307 Maps The Russian Empire on the Eve of World War I 8 The Polish Salient 18 The Peacetime Deployment of Russia’s Army Corps 20 The Initial Mobilization Pattern on the Eastern Front 83 Russian Claims on Austrian and German Territory 91 “The Straits,” and Russian Claims on Them 132 Russia and the Armenians 167 Persia and the Caucasian Front 187 The Partition of the Ottoman Empire 206 The Eastern Front 219 Abbreviations ATASE Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etüt Başkanlığı Arşivi (Archive of the Turkish Gen- eral Staff). Ankara, Turkey. AVPRI Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Imperii (Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire). Moscow, Russia. BD British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914. 13 vols. BOA Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivleri (Ottoman Government Archives). Sultanah- met, Istanbul, Turkey. DDF Documents diplomatiques français (French Diplomatic Documents). Third Series (1911–14). 41 vols. GARF Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Government Archive of the Russian Federation). Moscow, Russia. HHSA Haus- , Hof, und Staatsarchiv (Diplomatic Archives of the Habsburg Em- pire, [Austria- Hungary]). Vienna, Austria. HS “Hoover Stavka.” Collection “Russia Shtab Verkhovnogo Glavno Koman- duiushchego” (Stavka, or Russian Military Headquarters), Hoover Institu- tion Archives, Stanford, California, United States. IBZI Internationale Beziehungen im Zeitalter des Imperialismus. Dokumente Aus den Archiven der Zarischen und der Provorischen Regierung (International Relations in the Age of Imperialism. Documents from the Archives of the Tsarist and Provisional [Russian] regimes). 8 vols+. KA Krasnyi Arkhiv (The Red Archive). Secret Documents from the Tsarist Ar- chives, especially the running “diary” of the Imperial Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 106 vols. ix x l Abbreviations KP Konstantinopol’ i Prolivyi. Po sekretnyim dokumentam b. Ministerstva inos- trannyikh del (Constantinople and the Straits, According to Secret Docu- ments from the Former Ministry of Foreign Affairs). 2 vols. KW Kriegsarchiv Wien (Austrian Military Archives). Vienna, Austria. OAU Österreich- Ungarns Aussenpolitik von der bosnischen Krise 1908 bis zum Kriegsausbruch 1914 (Austria- Hungary’s Foreign Policy from the Bosnian Crisis of 1908 to the Outbreak of the War of 1914). 9 vols. PAAA Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (Political Archive of the Imperial German Foreign Ministry). Berlin, Germany. PBM Peter Bark Memoirs. Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Li- brary. Columbia University, New York, United States. PRO National Archives of the United Kingdom. Kew Gardens, London, United Kingdom. Although it has been several years now since the Public Record Office was renamed the National Archives, for the sake of tradition, and to preserve common currency, I refer to it in this book as the PRO. QO Archives of the Quai d’Orsay (the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Paris, France. RAT Razdel Aziatskoi Turtsii. Po sekretnyim dokumentam b. Ministerstva inos- trannyikh del (The Partition of Asiatic Turkey, According to Secret Docu- ments from the Former Ministry of Foreign Affairs). RGVIA Rossiskii Gosudarstevennyi Voenno- Istoricheskii Arkhiv (Russian Govern- ment Military- Historical Archive). Moscow, Russia. TRMV Tsarskaia Rossiia v mirovoi voine (Tsarist Russia in the World War). Secret Documents from the Former Ministry of Foreign Affairs. VSHD Vincennes. Service Historique de la Défense (French military archives). Vincennes, Paris, France. Author’s Note Because the story is told mostly from Russia’s point of view, I have re- ferred consistently in the book to Constantinople, as Istanbul was still called in the pre–World War I and wartime era, even by Ottoman govern- ment of fi cials. Still, I can assure my Turkish friends that when I speak of the city as “Tsargrad” it is very much in Russian-ventriloqual scare quotes. As for the capital of tsarist Russia, it will be referred to as “St. Pe- tersburg” or simply “Petersburg” up to the outbreak of war in August 1914, after which I follow its Russification (and de- Germanicization) to “Petrograd.” (Fortunately, in the current narrative, we do not also have to reckon with Soviet-era “Leningrad.”) With most other cities I have used the contemporary form, with the modern equivalent initially mentioned in parentheses, thus “Adrianople (Edirne)” or “Kharput (Elâzığ).” For Russian- language words, I have used a simpli fied Library of Con- gress transliteration system throughout, with the exception of commonly used spellings of certain famous or frequently repeated names (e.g., Izvol- sky not Izvolskii; Trotsky not Trotskii; Yanushkevitch not Ianushkevich; Yudenich not Iudenich; Yuri not Iurii). I have also left out “soft” and “hard” signs from the main text, so as not to burden the reader. With regard to Turkish spellings, I have generally rendered the “c” phonetically as “dj” (as in Djavid and Djemal) and used the dotless ı xi xii l Author’s Note where appropriate (it sounds a bit like “uh”) to differentiate from the Turkish “i,” which sounds like “ee.” Likewise, I have tried to properly render ş (sh) and ç (ch) to help readers puzzle out pronunciations, even if these letters are really post-1928 concoctions of Atatürk’s language re- forms. It is impossible to be consistent in all these things; may common sense prevail. Until the Bolsheviks switched over to the Gregorian calendar in 1918, Russia followed the Julian calendar, which was thirteen days behind the Gregorian by the early twentieth century. The Ottoman Empire tradition- ally used a modi fied version of the Islamic lunar calendar, with years dated from the time of Mohammad’s exodus from Mecca (hejira) in 622 ad—although it switched over to the Julian version of solar calendar dates in the nineteenth century. Sensibly, Ottoman archives provide transla- tions of the old dates to modern Gregorian ones (e.g., 1332 = 1914, for most months, with solar month-dates also indicated), although Russian archives generally do not so translate. To keep things simple, I have used Gregorian dates consistently throughout the text, with the exception of certain major pre- 1918 dates in Russian his tory, which Russian specialists may know by the “old” dates, in which case I have given both dates with a slash, as in 3/16 August 1914, where 3 is the Julian and 16 the Gregorian date. Finally, a note on 1914- era diplomatic terminology. “Chorister’s Bridge” is shorthand for the Imperial Russian Foreign Ministry, just as “Whitehall” stands for the British Foreign Office (and government). The “Wilhelmstrasse” represents the German Foreign Office (and the Chan- cellery), the “Ballhausplatz” (or, shortened, “Ballplatz”) means the Austro- Hungarian government, “Quai d’Orsay” the French, and “the Sublime Porte” or “the Porte” the Ottoman. I have tried not to overuse these terms, which have something of a cliquish sound about them. Still, to avoid incessant repetition in the text, they do have their place. All translations from the French, German, Russian, and Turkish, un- less otherwise noted, are my own. Essentially the great question remains: who will hold Constantinople? —Napoleon Bonaparte introduction History from the Deep Freeze onsidering the importance of Russia’s war of 1914–1917 for Cthe subsequent his tory of the world—from the collapse of the Otto- man Empire and all that followed in the Middle East to the rise of Com- munism—it is curious how little is widely known today about the think- ing of policymakers in Petrograd during the con flict. It has been fifty years since the publication of Fritz Fischer’s Griff nach der Weltmacht in 1961 (literally “Grab” or “Bid” for World Power, published in En glish as Ger- many’s Aims in the First World War) and, judging by the Fi scher- esque tone of a recent boomlet in popular books on the First World War, his- torians are still in Fi scher’s shadow, massaging the same basic argument about German responsibility for the con flict. Although few scholars ac- cept any longer Fi scher’s extreme thesis that World War I was a premedi- tated “German bid for world power,” histories of the war’s outbreak still invariably focus on decision making in Berlin and, secondarily, Vienna. For scholars