From Tsars to Commissars: Continuities in Russian Modern Diplomatic History with Persia and Japan Christopher Hansford

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COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

FROM TSARS TO COMMISSARS:

CONTINUITIES IN RUSSIAN MODERN DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

WITH PERSIA AND JAPAN

CHRISTOPHER HANSFORD

A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2014

Christopher Hansford defended this thesis on April 21, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were:

Jonathan Grant Professor Directing Thesis

Michael Creswell Committee Member

Edward Wynot Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... iv INTRODUCTION ...... 1 TURKMENCHAY AND THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN RIVALRY ...... 10 THE TRANS-CONTINENTAL AFFAIR ...... 47 FROM THE KREMLIN TO KHOMEINI ...... 77 TOKYO TROUBLES ...... 90 CONCLUSION ...... 98 REFERENCES ...... 101 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 103

iii

ABSTRACT

The recent resurgence of the Russian Federation into international politics has caused a great stir in the capitals of Western Europe, the United States, and those of the former Soviet

Union. When looking to the behavior of the Russian state, it is critical to understand the historical and geopolitical perspective from which they are operating. To relate to this contemporary context, it is best to understand the Russian position in the geo-political arena and how that position largely remained cemented from the Imperial Tsarist to the Soviet periods.

АТtС long standТng tТes and contests betаeen RussТa, PersТa/Iran, and Japan, tСese tаo “Eastern” nations will be the central focus of this study, along with how Russian policy objectives, behaviors, and decisions were or were not impacted by the Russian Revolution of 1917. With an understandТng of RussТa’s place tСrougС sucС a vТolent and dвnamТc polТtТcal sСТft, tСТs studв aims to contribute to the historiography while adding modern relevance and understanding to the patterns of Russian diplomatic behavior.

INTRODUCTION

Studies of the foreign relations of the Tsarist Russian Empire and the later Soviet Union often take the perspective of Russian dealings with the powers of Europe.1 Such a perspective does not take suffТcТent notТce of RussТa’s vastness, dТversТtв of eбperТences, and tСe range of

RussТa’s polТtТcal and СТstorТcal reacС. SpannТng from tСe BaltТc to tСe PacТfТc and from tСe frozen expanses of the Kara Sea in the north to the shores of the Caspian in the south, Russia in both her Imperial and SovТet daвs аas tТtanТc. RussТa’s great territorial reach and the diversity of neighboring states that came with it are the focus of this study. Breaking away from the typical western orientation on Russian foreign policy and diplomatic history, this study examines the continuities and changes present in Imperial and then Soviet Russian dealings with what were her most politically and internationally dynamic neighbors: Persia and Japan.

The selection of these two non-western Russian neighbors was not an arbitrary one, and the maturity of Russo-Persian as well as Russo-Japanese relations merits examination. Foremost,

Persia and later the Islamic Republic of Iran have represented a significant power and influence in the Middle East, as well as Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. While Persian rulers and people were not always the holders of such influence, the Great Powers that clashed over the fate and alignment of Persia brought this territory of mountains, desert, and coastal basins to the fore of international affairs and the attention of leaders the world over. Japan in contrast has traditionally represented somewhat of an exotic element of the affairs of European powers. Yet

Russian territory stretched to the shores of the Sea of Japan making Russia the only European power with a coast that directly faced Japan. The end of Japan's isolation in the 1850s opened a

1 Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (New York: Kodansha International, 1994); Karl Ernest Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and Race for Empire in Central Asia (Rev. paperback ed. New York: Basic Books, 2006); William C Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914 (New York: Free Press, 1992). 1

new frontier for trade and diplomatic challenges. As Russian influence expanded eastward following the disastrous Crimean War, tensions and trade in Russo-Japanese relations were destined to escalate. Vibrant and at times turbulent, relations between Russia and Japan would continue into and through the 20th Century leaving the state of Russo-Japanese relations as one of central importance to Russian leadership in Imperial Saint Petersburg and later Soviet Moscow.

Japan also played a critical role in the final years of the Russian Empire as the belligerent of Asia that humbled the Tsar's forces in war during 1904. While this conflict and its repercussions have been thoroughly discussed by many scholars2, continued Russo-Japanese interactions, into the Soviet period would have a profound impact on the affairs and global standing of both states. While no such study currently exists in the English-language historiography, this examination holds value for our modern perspectives. Especially as technological changes brТng tСe аalls our “global vТllage” doаn, and tСe relatТve dТstances between states decrease, understanding the currents of these previous relations, their continuities, and their shifts over time can be insightful when examining the region today as well.

With these conditions in mind, this study frames Russo-Iranian relations from the Treaty of

Turkmenchay in 1828 until the Russian intervention in Afghanistan in 1979. In the case of

Persia, the Treaty of Turkmenchay brought to a close the definitive Russo-Persian War of 1826-

1828. This conflict, begun for reasons of Persian national pride and their military attempts to retake the Caucasus from Russian imperial control, would be the finial military clash between the Russian and Persian Empires. The peace treaty, whose terms heavily favored the victorious

Russians, would help to define the subordinate role the Persian state would play for the

2 Andrew Malozemoff, Russian Far Eastern policy, 1881-1904, With Special Emphasis on the Causes of the Russo- Japanese War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958); Geoffrey Juke, The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905. (Oxford: Osprey, 2002);Denis Warner, The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905 (London: Frank Cass, 2002); Barbara Jelavich, St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1814- 1974 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974). 2

remainder of the 19th century. Furthermore, the conflict and its settlement carried many of the consistent themes and actors that would color Russo-Persian relations for the remainder of the century. The Treaty of Turkmenchay also marked the beginning of a Russian imperialist-era that, begun during the reign of Nicholas I would stretch almost a century until the overthrow of

Nicholas II.

With regards to Japan, this study covers from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the signing of the Soviet peace accord with Japan in 1956. It should be noted however that a preponderance of the attention paid to Japan will center on the period prior to the outbreak of the First World War, and in the inter-war period as Soviet-Japanese relations following the American occupation of

Japan in 1945 were nonexistent until the mid-1950s and even then did not normalize for another decade. In dealing with the interactions of Russia, Japan, and related foreign powers, the opening of Japan to foreign trade during the Meiji Restoration in 1868 is perhaps the most appropriate, and the only logical point from which to begin this study with. It is at this point that

Japan entered the global stage for the first time in a modern context, and it is by this time that, still fresh from their defeat in the Crimea, the Russian Empire was looking to expand its realm of trade and influence. While there is evidence of strong Russian attempts at trade prior to the end of Japanese isolation, these had proven futile and interactions between the two states remained exceptionally limited. The Meiji Restoration time period also corresponds to a change in Russian influence and strength on the shores of the Pacific. While Russian territory had reached the

Pacific in the 17th century, the signing of the Treaty of Peking provided Russia which a substantial, and more temperate coastline on the Pacific. This new territory also saw the construction of a new major Russian port on the Pacific, Vladivostok. Vladivostok opened onto the Sea of Japan and would see much of the commerce and conflict between the two empires for

years to come. Thus, beginning from 1868 the Russian Empire was both on the rise in the Orient and gripped with desires to modernize and expand its sphere of influence. Simultaneously, the

Empire of Japan was breaking into the global diplomatic and economic community as a regional player with global aspirations.

Russian policy-makers saw a vastly different set of political and diplomatic realities than when they looked to the West. It is with these stark differences in mind that Persia (later Iran) and Japan were selected for examination of as key components of Russian foreign relations.

While states such as China and those of Central Asia (when they enjoyed sovereignty) did have complex relations with Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, Japan and Persia had numerous conflicts and diplomatic exchanges with Russian policy-makers that had impacts around the world continuing to the present day. The comparative analysis focuses on economic, diplomatic, and military interactions, all of which comprised the international relations history of the states and powers in question. To focus on exclusively or to ignore any of these factors would be to deny substantial dimensions that have and will continue to color state interactions.

The primary sources utilized for this study consist mostly of British archival sources published in the British Documents on Foreign Affairs series. Monographs on Russian, Persian, and Japanese foreign policy make up the bulk of the secondary sources consulted. While German and American foreign policy primary sources were also consulted, the British Documents on

Foreign Affairs series was also the most insightful. They did however present a unique distortion of events with biases to the British perspective. This study does its best to offset these biases in its use and interpretation of these sources in its narrative. To be direct, in many circumstances the documents referenced and consulted for this study of British origin inaccurately interpreted

Russian intentions, and often implied a far more expansionist agenda that Russian policy and

other later sources ever bear out. While these interpretations are critical to understanding British behavior and reactions, if taken at face value, tСeв аould dТstort tСТs studв’s ТnterpretatТons and understanding of Russian behavior in more paranoid British orientation. The author has made a conscious effort to critically analyze and to correlate these primary sources with American primary source documents, or related monographs.

The present historiographical landscape that examines both tsarist and Soviet foreign policies, their goals, and behaviors is decidedly limited. While some scholars have made the argument that Soviet Premier Josef Stalin was in fact an imperialist tsar draped in the mantel of

Soviet communism, a point this study concurs with, few have directly compared tsarist and

Soviet international relations especially in regard to Persia or Japan.3 At its core, the scholarly issue this study seeks to address revolves around the question: Was Soviet foreign policy in

Persia and Japan largely a continuation of Tsarist era activities or was Soviet foreign policy as radical a departure as its domestic policies were from the pre-1917 government? The key point in understanding the major continuities this study has uncovered is the invariability of the Russo-

Persian and the Russo-Japanese geo-political positions. While regimes in St. Petersburg /

Moscow, Tehran, or Tokyo may have changed, the position and strategic interests of these states largely remained cemented, thus directing the course of their foreign policies. While this is not the entire explanation, this geo-political stability does account for much of the policy goal consistencies this study examines.

In terms of the present historiography, Barbara JelavТcС’s 1974 entrв St. Petersurg and

Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy 1814-1974 is the only English-language monograph that directly examines and compares the foreign policies of the tsarist and the Soviet periods. In

3 Simon Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).

this work Jelavich pulls the reader through both the major continuities and disconnects while

СТgСlТgСtТng tСe “remarkablв successful” nature of tsarТst dТplomacв Тn tСe 19th century, and the stability and power that the Soviet regime was eventually able to build upon and continue from the tsarist period.4 This monograph, largely grounded in Russian relations to the west is the closest existing entry to this study, and one this study recognizes with a great deal of respect. In the cases of both Russo-Persian, and Russo- Japanese relations, the remaining contributions, regardless of their thesis or origin deal only with one of these bi-polar relationships, the Great

Game in Asia, or only one political era in Russia. While these contributions, as a collective are all integral to this study, there exists no major work in the English historiography that has either the scope or chronological spread of this work, and therefore is an area that begs for further study.

The historiography of first region that requires attention is that of the Russo-Persian relations. While technically a central part of the so-called “Great Game”, tСere eбТsts a unТque regional set of scholarly literature that deals exclusively with Russo-Persian relations, either in the imperial or soviet periods. The major journal entries and monographs that define this historiography largely fall into one of three schools and categories; those being framed as economic studies, Russian exile contributions, and diplomatic histories. To begin with, most of the economic studies rely predominantly on Persian state documents, and what few tsarist trade and commercial records escaped the October Revolution, along with some British approximations and analysis.5 While these studies do relate to the political and international diplomatic dealings of the two states, great attention is given to trade figures, rates of exchange, the impacts of diplomacy on commerce, and the roles of state banks in internal politics. These

4 Jelavich, 443-448 5 Marvin Entner, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828-1914.(Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1965); Martin Sicker, The Bear and the Lion: Soviet Imperialism and Iran (New York: Praeger, 1988) 6

monographs are exceptionally useful for their commentary on the developing economic consciousness of the tsarist regime in the mid-19th century, and also for the direct economic context they provide for diplomatic and even military actions in the Russo-Persian dialogue.

While these economic studies often reference, or include aspects of the Great Game of diplomatic maneuvers between Russia and Britain, another aspect of the relevant historiography deals directly with Anglo-Russian diplomatic sparring in and over the fate of Persia.6 As a major and well covered topic of diplomatic history, the Anglo-Russian Great Game has a well- developed scholarship and provides excellent insight to diplomatic tactics, and perceptions that

Russia and Britain had of one another. It is precisely these perceptions that drove policy, and also shaped the outcomes in Persia for nearly a century. Finally, and of relatively little interest to this study, are the Russian exile contributions to the Russo-Persia historiography. While many

Russian officials and retirees fled Russia following the October Revolution, their contemporary publications largely were aimed to paint their version of history and provide little objective insight into Russian policy in Persia. They are a uniquely crucial component however in the context and basic narrative of Russian behavior and the major contributors therein.7 These contributors are also uniquely helpful in the Russo-Japanese historiography for the supporting details and narrative that they provide.

As the relationship between Russia and Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries has been remarkably rocky, the bulk of this historiography revolves around the Russo-Japanese War, its causes, impacts, and major players.8 A smaller, but more relevant component of the scholarly

6 Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (New York: Kodansha International, 1994); Evgeny Sergeev, The Great Game, 1856-1907: Russo-British Relations in Central and East Asia (Washington D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center Press / Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). 7 Sergei Witte, The Memoirs of Count Witte (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1990). 8 Andrew Malozemoff, Russian Far Eastern policy, 1881-1904, with special emphasis on the causes of the Russo- Japanese War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958); Geoffrey Juke, The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905. (Oxford: Osprey, 2002) 7

landscape is the limited coverage of Russo-Japanese relations prior to the outbreak of war and the decades of peace that preceded 1904.9 While this study does not wish to dwell wholly on the dynamic and exciting Russo-Japanese conflict, it still remains a critical part of the diplomatic history of these two powers, and served as a major break in both Russian Asiatic expansion and the legitimacy of the tsarist autocracy. It should also be noted that a vast majority of the present historiography that is unrelated to the Russo-Japanese War is largely dated, and clearly suffers from a lack of Russian contemporarily accessible sources. While these works do lend themselves to supporting part of the pre-war narrative, it is disappointing that this study was unable to rely on such monographs to bring Russian primary source materials into the discussion and narrative.

Finally, the largest historiographical component that this study both recognizes and draws upon concerns the scholarship of the Anglo-Russian Great Game. Regarded by most scholars as an expansive and defining geo-political diplomatic conflict of the 19th century, the Great Game in

Asia has received extensive and exhaustive coverage. This scholarly attention has largely come in two forms, that with portrays Russian aggression and expansive imperialist goals from the

British perspective, and more conservative approaches that paint Russian behavior in a more limited and realistic light. This study concurs with the latter perspective.10 Regardless of their perspective, these monographs nearly all have a strong basis in primary source materials and cover in great detail the narrative of affairs that occurred between London and St. Petersburg over Central Asia and on a global scale. While both perspectives are vital to shaping an overall understanding of Russian involvement in the Great Game, most of the more recently published

9 Patrick G. March, Eastern Destiny Russia in Asia and the North Pacific (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996); George Buchanan. My Mission to Russia and Other Diplomatic Memories (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1923); George Alexander Lensen The Russian Push Towards Japan: Russo-Japanese relations, 1697-1875 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959).

10 Aleksey Lobanov-Rostovski,. Russia and Asia.(New York: Macmillian, 1933); Rouhollah K Ramazani.. The Foreign Policy of Iran; A Developing Nation in World Affairs, 1500-1941 (Charlottesville :University Press of Virginia, 1966). 8

works fall into the latter category of perspective.11

This study, drawing on various aspects of the existing historiography and a range of primary sources will argue that the continuities both in goals and practices between the tsarist and soviet periods are clear in terms of foreign policy, and that geographical and geo-political conditions outweigh the political ideological differences in the regimes. This case will be most evident in Persia where goals and methods for Russian diplomatic efforts will, outside of some starkly aggressive revolutionary instances, have stunningly consistencies from the mid-19th

Century through to the late 20th. This study will also present clear evidence that the regional and global roles of states, their clashes or interest, and the pairings of rivals do not necessarily change or go away as a result of regime change with Russia, Persia, and Japan as the case study nations herein. Finally, this study will recognize the discrepancies in the diplomatic continuities, as in the days immediately after the Russian October Revolution, and during the turbulent regime of Josef

Stalin. It is the hope of this study to not only provide insight and context for Russian diplomacy, but also allow its readers to make relevant and contemporary connections to regimes coming out of political shifts and evaluating their position in the global diplomatic arena.

11 Evgeny Sergeev, The Great Game, 1856-1907: Russo-British Relations in Central and East Asia (Washington D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center Press / Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013); Nasrollah S. Fatemi. Diplomatic History of Persia, 1917-1923: Anglo-Russian Power Politics in Iran (New York: Russell F. Moore, 1952).

TURKMENCHAY AND THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN RIVALRY

The arc of history and Russian interactions with Persia has been a long one. A deep history of commerce, conflict, and conversation exists between these two diverse peoples with a shared past of rich stories and diplomatic intrigue. Contact and diplomatic procedures between the Russian Empire and the Persian state can be traced back to the middle of the 17th century when Russian Cossacks acting outside of Muscovite control raided into northern Persia. It would not be until the late 18th and early 19th centuries that Russia and Persia would diplomatically collide in substantially meaningful ways. Affairs between the Romanov state and that of the successive Persian regimes always existed under at least an air of tension, though not usually outright conflict. The roots of such tensions grew out of the strategic location of the Persian state between British India, and the warm waters of the Persian Gulf. With the constant and expansionary interests of the Russian Empire isolated from both of these prizes to the north,

Persia would come to be the focus of a great deal of vigorous policy from Russia. Persian territorial integrity and sovereignty would long come to suffer from Russian territorial and economic expansion southward.

The first major issues to erupt between the Russian and Persian Empires involved their respective boundaries around the Caspian Sea. These boundaries were established largely though

Russian conquests into the area in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. With the Napoleonic

Wars heating up in Western Europe, both Russian and Persian autocrats (Tsar Alexander I and

Mohammad Khan Qajar respectively) looked to the Caspian Sea region, and the parts of the

Caucasus that remained outside of Ottoman control in the east for expansion and acquisition.

These territories (comprising modern Georgia, Azerbaijan, and parts of eastern Armenia) had previously existed as frontier to which the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Russia all laid various

claims, and posed the perfect loosely defended territory for expansion and conquest by Persia and Russia.

Persia struck first into this unincorporated land, and following a campaign of terror and assassination against his regional rival and local chieftains in opposition to his rule, Mohammad

Khan Qajar moved troops into the region in the closing years of the 18th century. This move was aimed to secure his interests in the north of Persia and act as a counter to Russian movements southward. In 1804, fighting broke out between Russian forces and Persian garrison forces in strongholds in Armenia. These clashes were the direct result of both Persian antagonism and

Russian raids against Persian strongholds by local commanders acting largely without direct oversight from St. Petersburg. With Russian attention having been largely focused westward as a result of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleonic France, fighting would drag on for over nine years and would eventually result in the first boundary treaty between Persia and

Russia. With Russian victory in the conflict, the boundaries laid out in the Treat of Gulistan in

1813 heavily favored the Russian Empire, providing Russia the Caucasian territories of modern

Georgia and Azerbaijan with a final border line south of Baku. The Gulistan treaty also eliminated all Persian military traffic and commercial presence in the Caspian Sea, thereby effectively turning the entire body into a Russian lake dominated entirely by Russian naval patrols and commerce. It was this clash and Persian humiliation that set the stage for the final

Russo-Persian War and the beginning of this study's focus.

With defeat by Russia and a chaotic domestic political and economic situation, the

Persian Empire had to rely heavily on foreign trade and state subsidies to operate properly and to manage the territories it claimed. A majority of this foreign aid came from Britain as well as

British state trading concerns based in nearby India. These interests on both the state and

regional level were characteristically alarmed by Russian advances southward, and they acted to encourage the Persian leadership to retake the lost territories in the Caucasus and to oppose

Russia militarily when the opportunity to do so presented itself. The British Foreign Office, and many Persian leaders rightly saw continued Russian dominance in Georgia as a springboard for additional expansion at the price of Persian independence and territory. Therefore, with British financial support and a hardline regime in Tehran, Persian forces challenged and assaulted

Russian garrisons in Transcaucasia in 1826. These attacks were an attempt to revoke many of the

Russian advances solidified by the Gulistan treaty. Due to tactical and logistical inferiority,

Persian forces, despite having made early progress northwards were unable to ensure long-term success. Following a Russian counter-attack that pushed as far south as the regional capital of

Tabriz, Persia was once again forced to accept terms of peace dictated from St. Petersburg.

The Treaty of Turkmenchay, signed in 1828 finally eliminated all Persian administrative and military presence in the Caucasus and established the Russo-Persian border south of the region along the line of the Aras River (the feature that now defines the modern Azerbaijani-

Iranian and Armenian-Iranian borders). This treaty also made effective in international agreement the right for the growing Russian domination of the remaining Central Asian khanates and humiliated the Persian Shah with war reparations. Turkmenchay reaffirmed the moratorium on all Persian military and commercial traffic in the Caspian Sea, effectively crippling Persian control of international trade in the north and providing conditions that would seem to allow

Russian domination in those markets. It was argued by Russian historian Prince Aleksey

Lobanov-Rostovski that the economic provisions and the political implications of the

TurkmencСaв treatв marked “tСe begТnnТng of RussТan economТc and polТtТcal penetratТon [of

PersТa].”12

With Persian influence and political activities in the north largely obliterated by

Turkmenchay the stage was set for Russian and British interests to clash in and around Persia.

While British emissaries and commercial activities continued to ply the Qajar throne and dominate affairs in the south of the country, Russian control in the north opened the way for their economic domination of trade in and around the Caspian Sea. These conditions left little doubt in

1830 who held the superior position in Persia, but the question of who would exploit these conditions was another matter entirely.

Russian expansionism, and continued military adventures to bring the final Central Asian khanates under Romanov control greatly alarmed British agents and policy makers from London to Calcutta. With British India under the control of the British East India Trading Company in this period, the prospect of growth in Russian commercial interests and trading ventures in northern Persia and the steppe of Central Asia not only alarmed the company administrators for economic reasons, but it also raised the possibility of further Russian inroads towards an assault on India itself. British policy would not tolerate such a threat under any circumstance. Persian loyalists, alarmists in Britain, anti-Russian officials in British India, and allies of the Persian throne all decried the blatant advantages the Turkmenchay treaty and its accompanying

Commercial Treaty granted the Russian merchant class operating in Persia. But they could do little to alter the situation as Russia had smashed the Persian armies in the field and promised

British support in letters and monies failed to translate into support in war. Thus, in the international arena Persia found itself largely prostrate before Russian economic and military expansion. It is at this point however, that we see the true failures of Russian foreign policy to

12 Lobanov-Rostovski, 52 13

capitalize on these conditions.

These circumstances and Russian military domination in the north of Persia did not translate into a comfortable and easy economic high ground for Russian commodities and trade interests around the Caspian and into Persia itself. With the infrastructure of 1830's Persia little different from that of 1630's Persia, the act of getting Russian goods to market, and extracting profits from those markets was a difficult one indeed. Furthermore, with many of the territories to the north-east of the Caspian Sea still under the control of unruly khanates in this period, and many of the ports and markets around the Caspian, especially in Persia proper, barely deserving the name, Russian inroads were a rocky proposition under the best of circumstances. With raТlаaвs not comТng to RussТa untТl tСe 1870’s, trade from Moscoа to TeСran аould take аeeks by riverboat, trade caravan, and merchant cog to even reach the Persia ports in the south Caspian

Sea13. Without any Russian state backing for major merchant ventures, Persian depots and ports lacking even basic storage, offloading, or transportation infrastructure, the ability of what few

Russian traders there were to make a place for themselves at the Persian trade blanket was painfully limited.

In the years following Turkmenchay and the collapse of most of the legal barriers for

Russian trade into Persia, net trade returns to Russia from Persian markets were down sharply.

While net returns on Russian trade into Persia had spiked shortly after the war (1828-1830), these can be attributed to the cutting off of all previous European trade via the Ottoman Empire and market compensation towards Russian producers as the only major viable supplier of goods.

By 1839, Russian trade dropped to less than 20 per cent of the trade value from 1830 while superior and more easily delivered European goods poured into Persia from the south and the more developed ports there. With little additional state intervention and nearly no interest on the

13 Entner, 2. 14

part of the Russian monarchy under Tsar Nicholas I to push for conditions that would substantially alter the trade balance, Persia sold more commodities, materials, and products to

Russia then vice-versa until 1900. While Russian goods did continually, if slowly gain a larger and larger market sСare Тn PersТa from tСe 1850’s onаards, RussТa largelв faТled to eбploТt Сer position to enjoy economic domination in Persia.

This economic disinterest verging on ineptitude by the Russian throne appeared more starkly in the duty and customs arrangements brought about by the commercial provisions of

Turkmenchay. Under the Commercial Treaty the customs rates between Russia and Persia were dropped to 5% of the value of traded goods.14 While this should have allowed easy access for

Russian goods into Persia without the concern of repressive or barrier tariff rates, the reality bore quite surprising benefits for Persian merchants seeking to move goods into the newly occupied

Russian Caucasus and Southern Russia. Instead of selling solely Persian goods into Russia,

Persian merchants would move European goods across the border at a lower rate than seen in

European Russia and were therefore able to offer stiff resistance to domestically produced

Russian goods in Russian territory. Such activities became so regular and expected, that the nortСern PersТan cТtв of TabrТг came to be knoаn as a maУor center for tСТs “re-eбport” actТvТtв into Russia.15

As the pervious trade figures indicate, Russian merchants gained little advantage from the duty conditions the Commercial Treaty created. To further minimize the influence of the small and independent Russian trade concerns that tried to ply their goods into northern Persia, the

Persian state soon reduced nearly all of its import tariffs to 5%, thus eliminating this Russian trading advantage. This Persian move left large European trading monopolies like the British

14 Ibid., 13. 15 Ibid 15

East India Trading Company and other consolidated European concerns in a clear position of economic advantage in a territory that, on paper, should have been entirely subject to Russian economic expansion and domination.

Such trade conditions and economic realities clearly reflected either a disinterest or an inability on the part of the Russian state to break into the Persian market and to engage in the type of economic imperialism Britain, France, Belgium, and the other major trading states of

Europe pursued. Instead, Russian leaders in this era did not think or act on the basis of economic interests in the realm of diplomacy and foreign policy as their western European counterparts did. In the case of Persia and Russian economic interests, Russia never acted on the state level to take advantage of the strongly preferential circumstances the Turkmenchay treaty granted to them. The reasons for this failure lay in the nature of the international and diplomatic motives found in Russia under Tsar Nicholas I and those involved in the policy directives of the Asiatic

Department.

Nicholas I reigned in Russia during the Second Russo-Persia War, and it was his Foreign

Ministry and Asiatic Department that drafted the terms of the Treaty of Turkmenchay. Nicholas I, long known to history as a political hardliner and cultural conservative, was not the type of leader to take interest in or expend energy on economic adventures and market penetration into

PersТa. NТcСolas I consТdered СТs empТre's strengtС Тn Тts mТlТtarв and аСere СТs empТre’s boundaries reached on the map. The ideas of soft diplomacy and economic penetration were simply not in the statecraft toolbox of Nicholas' Russia. The case of Persia and Turkmenchay demonstrates for this study that while the Russian Empire was able to create opportunities for itself through state initiative, it lacked the private capital and the state interest needed to capitalize on much more than land acquisition and direct taxation. This failure to exploit

opportunities on the economic level not only demonstrated where the priorities of the state lay, but also to highlighted the backwardness and obsolescence of the Russian diplomatic worldview when held in comparison to the economic and military powerhouses of Britain and France in the immediate post-Turkmenchay years.

It is key to note that the Russian Empire, both under Nicholas I and to some degree his successor Alexander II, took little interest in supporting Russian merchants and manufacturers in the Persian marketplace itself. They did take interest in the use of technology, military conquest, and infrastructural improvements to bring more direct Russian control both to Persia and the khanates of Central Asia. These moves show a key difference in the ideas of diplomacy and foreign influence between the tsarist state and its European counterparts. Seeming to lack both an understanding and an interest in economic affairs as a part of Russian diplomacy and influence, the state diplomatic and governing apparatus failed to quickly hobble Persia through the same economic yoke that states like Great Britain had used to lash India and parts of Africa to British economic interests. Russian emphasis on military conquest and territorial control pushed Persia into conflict with Britain, and smashed the final Central Asian khanates east of the Caspian Sea following the Crimean War in the mid-1850's.

With British foreign policy considering any further Russian direct military penetration or occupation of Persia as a direct and intolerable threat to British interests in India, the gains of

Turkmenchay were all that the Russian state would be able to enjoy in terms of Persia proper for the foreseeable future. In an attempt to circumvent these restrictions to their military influence

Russian agents in Persia, through promises of economic and military support pushed Persia into war with the British ally Afghanistan in late 1856.16 The promises of Russian agents, acting on directions from St. Petersburg, prompted a Persian military expedition to capture the Afghan city

16 Sicker, 16. 17

of Herat in 1856, in direct violation of the existing Anglo-Persian Treaty. Russia sought to have the Shah occupy Afghanistan to allow for greater Russian military infiltration of the territory.

This was a policy that the Qajar throne was happy to indulge as the retaking of Herat would open the way to reestablishing Persian control of Greater Khorasan. Seeing this move quite clearly,

British forces took the Persian assault as a casus belli and promptly landed a military expedition in southern Iran via the Persian Gulf ports over which they already enjoyed nominal control.

With Persia in no military or economic position to oppose direct intervention by British forces, the Shah was forced to accept British terms for an Armistice in 1857. Unlike the Russians who largely failed to take great economic advantage of their defeat of the Persian throne, Britain made no such missteps. The Treaty of Paris of 1857 saw Persian troops forced to withdraw from

Afghanistan and the Persian Shah forced to recognize some of the smallest territorial boundaries

Persia had ever known. The conflict also cemented a British economic presence in southern

Persia that would continue to expand for years to come.

With their gambit to use Persia as a proxy crushed by Britain, the Russian Empire desired to reestablish its authority and expand its national strength in other ways and territories. The last khanates of northern Persia, or what is now Turkmenistan, were to bear the brunt this redirection of tsarist aggression and its expanding influence. Here there existed several fragmented and weak khanates left over from the Mongol World Empire that consisted of Turkmen tribal confederacies and city-state governments. Furthermore, there existed in the now Russian annexed Caucasus a militant religious offshoot from the Dervish order of Nakshbandiyya that raided Russian trade convoys and military patrols in support of a local agenda. 17 With both of these groups posing as easy targets for the blunt axe of the Russian military, the Russian Empire attacked militarily on both fronts, to the political and influential chagrin of Persia. While Russia summarily crushed

17 ibid 18

Muslim resistance and incorporated the Caucasus into the Russian Empire in 1864, the last of the

Central Asian khanates were a separate and more internationally exciting issue.

With a show of military strength in the Caucasus, the Russian Empire was further emboldened to infringe against the khanates of Central Asia. Persia had continued to enjoy a measure of influence and control in Central Asia even after the Turkmenchay settlement, through the stationing of Persian troops, the placement of administrators, and levying of tributary payments. As these khanates lacked major centers of either production or capital, they were not any match for the strength of even a humbled Persian throne. By the 1860's with the crash efforts towards modernization of state and military functions in Russia following the Crimean embarrassment, these Central Asian khanates were in even less of a position to oppose Russian incursions.

Just as Britain and Western European powers would expand their influence with the placing of trading posts and supporting military garrisons in the Far East and Africa, the Russian

Empire expanded its influence into Central Asia and the extremes of northern Persia by placing lines of forts and defensible military garrisons in and around the Turkoman steppe.18 These moves not only brought the projectable power of the Russian military to the Syr Darya river valley, but also began to roll back the last vestiges of Persian influence northwards in Khorasan.

These Russian inroads did not occur without opposition however. The Turkmen tribesmen of

Khiva and the other Central Asian khanates of Bukhara and Kokand fought vicious campaigns of raids, ambushes, and assaults on Russian lines of supply and military fortifications as they cropped up deeper and deeper into the Turkoman steppe. Here again, we can see a Russian emphasis on the bayonet and the soldier as a foreign policy tool rather than any sort of the economic and political arrangements that defined major components of European expansion.

18 Sicker, 14. 19

Through direct military intervention, the 1860’s аould see tСe fall of tСe cТtТes of

Chimkent and Tashkent and the surviving khanates of Bukhara, Kokand, and finally Khiva reduced to Russian protectorates by 1873. These moves, that were accurately characterized by

British War Office observers as “protectТon folloаed bв ТncorporatТon”19 saw Russian influence expand, but with little meaningful benefits for those back in St. Petersburg, or the Russian state as a whole. With these advances in mind, the concerns of Britain and the Persian state about

Russian ambitions against Persia and even India became more and more alarmist in nature.

Despite these concerns, and the large swaths of territory that the Russian Army had brought to heel, Russia gained little from these advances in terms of power or economic prosperity. Despite capturing Tashkent, regarded as one of the greatest commercial cities in Central Asia and a major jumping off point for trade into Persia, Russian industries and traders saw little to no further penetration into or control over Persian markets. The only marked economic advantages Russia began to enjoy in these Central Asian territories was a relative domination of copper and iron based manufactured goods bв tСe late 1860’s as tСese RussТan goods began comТng more and more into the Central Asian markets. Such trade however, was merely a drop in the proverbial bucket when compared to the type of revenue British interests gained from Persian and Indian markets.

As Russian forces and fortifications continued to expand in Central Asia and began to wholly eclipse Persia from the north, Persia began to become cemented as a buffer territory between the conflicting spheres of Russia and Britain. With both powers remaining diplomatically tense and practically hostile following the Crimean War, as their respective imperial borders continued to grow closer and closer together with Russian expansion, Russian

19 Kenneth Bourne, David Gillard, and Paul Preston (.eds.) British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Britain, Russia and Central Asia, 1879-1907 (Frederick, MD: Univ. Publ. of America, 1985), 1. (Hereafter referred to as BDFA) 20

relations to Persia began to take on a far more competitive and aggressive posture. While the state of diplomatic affairs between Turkmenchay and tСe earlв 1870’s could best be descrТbed as military intimidation and economic neglect, the last decades of the 19th century saw the first flickers of competency from Russia in terms of her own economic interests; especially when those interests ran counter to those of Britain.

Bв tСe earlв 1870’s RussТa Сad onlв Уust begun to enУoв tСe fruТts of tСe IndustrТal

Revolution and railroads had not yet begun to assist in Russian penetration of Persia. While

Russian merchant traffic and steamships had come to dominate the Caspian Sea ports with the assistance of imperial state subsidies, little else had changed economically for Russia in northern

Persia. Nearly no new inroads had been made by Russian interests or the Russian government.20

Britain on the other hand, had already secured from the Persian throne large railway and telegraph infrastructural concessions in 1863 and 1865 that, at Persian expense, allowed Britain to construct rail lines from southern Persia and its border with British India into the Persian interior. These not only cemented British influence and economic domination in the south of the country, but also threatened Russian influence in the country. With British telegraph wires connecting Persia more directly to Europe, the dearth of reliable communications in the northern

Russian sphere of influence became all the more obvious and detrimental for Russian policy towards Persia.

To counter this, the Russian state began breakneck construction of railways into the

Caucasus and across Central Asia. Under the reform minded Tsar Alexander II, these and other

Russian advances in military doctrine and industrial capacity began to push toward the Persian frontier and impact Russian relations with Persia itself. While rail infrastructure did not fully reach to the Persian border in the early stages of this expansion, the rate at which commerce,

20 Entner. 17. 21

communications, and troops could move in these areas began to accelerate. At the same time,

Russian diplomats across Europe and in Persia worked to agitate against further British influence in the territory by labeling British advances as provocative and dangerous for regional peace.

Russian agents in Persia also worked to push the weakened nation away from its policy of so- called “equТlТbrТum” tСat aТmed for a balance of Тnfluence and concessТon betаeen RussТa and

Britain.21 Russian diplomats and agents tried to convince the Persian Shah that they alone could offer protection from British subjugation and that Persia should, as the tribes and khanates of

Central Asia had, become a protectorate of the Russian Empire.22

Despite these efforts, Britain, fresh off of its military whipping of the Persian state was able to pressure the Shah into granting a major rail and mining concession to Baron Julius

Reuter, a British subject and regional power-player.23 These concessions threatened to undermine the still limited economic and infrastructural penetration of Russian interests and drew strong protests from Russian diplomats across Europe and in Persia. It was at this stage of Russo-Persia affairs, and only under the reform minded Tsar Alexander II, that Russia finally began to take great interest in the economic as well as the military and political elements of its diplomatic relations to Persia.

It is at this juncture that we see a definitive shift in the nature of Russo-Persian relations and a cementing of Russian interest in matters of economics and the implications of economic imperialism. It is also with the circumstances of the Reuters Concession, that this study can conclude that Russia had at last come to tangle with both Persia and her political rival Britain, on the same economic footing that she had previously ignored. Diplomatically inept, the Persian

21Ramazani., , 65 22 Morgan Schuster,. The Strangling pf Persia: A Story of the European Diplomacy and Oriental Intrigue That Resulted in the Denationalization of Twelve Million Mohammedans : a personal narrative (New York: Greenwood, 1968), 66. 23 BDFA: Central Asia, 1879-1907, 220-224. 22

Shah Nasir al-Din was called to St. Petersburg in May of 1873 and given a severe dressing-down by Russian Foreign Minister Prince Gorchakov.24 Under this barrage of Russian threats and protestations, coupled with cold receptions many other European powers had given to his concessions to Britain, the Shah was left with little choice but to revoke the Reuter concession.

This choice was made all the more clear when Russian agents, acting under the authority of the

Russian Foreign Ministry agitated the Persian ulama into direct opposition of the Shah and his concession.25

As British influence both politically and economically has expanded in southern and central Persia following the Anglo-Persian War, Russian influence and power saw its first real challenge in Persia since Turkmenchay. Furthermore, the post-Crimean War foreign policy strategy of agitating Britain through Russian advances in Central Asia and northern Persia had now been turned on its head. No longer was Russia in the dominant position, or even seen to be in the dominant position as was the case following Turkmenchay. Now, Russia was on the defensive in Persia; fighting to curtail British advances both politically and economically. The struggle was made all the more difficult for Russia since Britain enjoyed an environment in southern Persia more receptive and less resistant to their form of imperial infiltration and domination. Russia on the other had continued to be confronted with the rugged terrain, disgruntled local populations, and the difficult economic conditions of northern Persia that had been cemented by decades of Russian neglect and failure to capitalize on economic and infiltration opportunities. To add to Russian woes, Britain was able to offer the Persian Shah a higher quality and quantity of industrialized goods and infrastructural improvements than Russia ever could hope to match. Long railroads to support core to coast trade and transport, telegraph

24 Entner, 18. 25 BDFA Central Asia, 1879-1907, 237. 23

services and networks that could reach to India or Europe, and mineral extraction methods, far more efficient than Russian examples (all of which were granted as part of the Reuters

Concession) were the major prizes to be had from Britain for Persian cooperation.

These circumstances and the realist influence that clearly remained on the minds of the

Persian leadership from the Anglo-Persian boondoggle left Russia on the defensive in terms of its foreign policy to Persia. No longer could Russia use Persia as a space and agent to agitate the

British, to feint designs on India, or to upset European intentions in the Middle East. Now the impetus and initiative was held by Britain, and from this point forward Russian policy in Persia was not one about imperial expansion, but one aimed at rolling back the progress and advantages enjoyed by Britain while reinforcing Russian holdings in the region. It was perhaps through these tests of resolve and competence that this period can be seen as one where the best and most adept

Russian foreign policy actions towards Persia to date were enacted. The blunders of the post-

Turkmenchay situation and Russian failures to capitalize on economic advantages would start to become a thing of the past as Russia and her foreign policy initiatives were reformed along with the rest of the Empire under Tsar Alexander II.

The defeat of the Reuters Concession only marked the beginning of Russian difficulties and challenges in Persia. Then secret British communications revealed that not only was Britain actively seeking a reductТon of RussТan Тnfluence Тn PersТa bв tСe earlв 1860’s, but tСat members of tСe PersТan government Сeld “deep fear” tСat “predomТnant Тnfluence [аas] eбcersТгe[ed] at

TeСran bв tСe RussТan Ambassador.”26 This influence was the result of Russian imperial policies that had humbled Persian foreign policy and allowed for the garrisoning of Russian troops across northern Persia, and even in the capital of Tehran. It was these conditions that the British Foreign

Office continued to note with extreme alarm. While these garrisoning Russian forces were

26 BDFA: Central Asia, 1865-1878, 418. 24

technically in Persia to provide assistance and training to Persian forces, they were also uniquely poised to threaten the Persian autocracy should the need arise. George Curzon of Britain would note “TСe onlв PersТan troops of any value in the capital are the so-called Cossack regiments, under Russian officers, and in the event of political convulsion it is doubtful whether they would not prefer tСe countrв of tСeТr unТform to tСe countrв of tСeТr bТrtС.”27 From this remaining foothold, the Russian Foreign Ministry worked feverishly in the years following the Anglo-

Persian War not only to stem the tide of British successes and advances, but to secure previous

Russian gains.

In the immediate aftermath of the revocation of the Reuters Concession in 1873, Russian

Foreign Minister Prince Gorchakov pressured the Persian Shah into granting an equally lucrative and influential concession to a Russian noble by the name Baron von Falkenhagen, a request that was granted in 1874. The terms of this concession would have allowed for the Russian construction and control of a railroad between the cities of Aras and Tabriz.28 This Falkenhagen

Concession was aimed not only to set back British economic influence within the Russian state, but also to place Russia in a better position for future negotiations with the Persian throne. Had the concession been carried out to completion, the main body of the Russian rail network, that by

1874 was beginning reaching down into the southern Caucasus would be linked with the

Falkenhagen lines running between the major trading and government hubs of northern Persia.

This would also have opened the door for Russia to oppose the British in offering the Persian state access to European markets and lines of communication to the main body of Europe. Not only would the concession bring Russian rails to the cities of northern Persia, the Persian state agreed in the articles of the Concession to purchase a massive quantity of Russian manufactured

27 Sicker, 17. 28BDFA: Persia 1856-1885, .296.

rolling stock, thereby strengthening Russia heavy industry.29 With the Persian government granting full tax exemption to the Russian rail interest and extensive economic guarantees to the

Russian state and Russian backed economic interests, this concession forced Britain to expend political capital over protestations and fierce opposition to arrangements that they themselves had just defended for their own countrymen but a few months before. While the Falkenhagen

Concession was eventually revoked in a similar manner to the Reuters Concession, this incident highlights two newly present aspects of Russian policy in this period toward Persia; economic intelligence and diplomatic cunning. Not only had Russian foreign policy organs used state influence and power to support the economic endeavors of its own subjects, but it had also arranged for British economic gains to be reversed and for their diplomatic capital to be spent fighting perceived Russian gains. While both British and Russian concessions were eventually revoked, this diplomatic exchange of fire can, and should be seen as a Russian victory. The status quo in Persia was largely maintained, previous Russian gains remained in place, and aggressive

British advances were halted. This Russian defensive action also put a damper on British ambitions to cut Russia entirely out of the Persian scene.

After the battle over concessions, the Russian Empire was clearly set on a policy of frustrating British expansionist objectives and stalwartly defending Russian gains and her sphere of influence in northern Persia. With the Russo-Anglo Great Game still in full swing, and the rivalry between St. Petersburg and London as hot as ever since the Crimean War, British attention turned to the omnipresent symbol of Russian influence in Persia; the presence of

Russian armed garrisons across northern and central Persia. While Britain had previously enjoyed the privilege of stationing a detachment of her own officers in Persia for the purpose of training and supporting the Persian military, these men had been expelled due to earlier Anglo-

29 Ibid, 297. 26

Persian military tensions in 1838 and had not returned since that time. While British officials had discussed the logistics and practicality of returning a detached corps of officers to Persia in 1859, due to disagreements over the terms and salaries for these men, nothing ever came of these efforts. The issue was revisited in 1868 when Persian officials requested the British government to supply a small cadre of training officers from Persian forces. This request also corresponded with a large request by the Persian state for modern British service rifles for its armed forces following their disastrous performance in recent years. Despite these requests from Persia, issues over pay, and British concerns over Russian retaliation against the Persian throne left the issue unresolved yet again.30

As of 1870, Russia remained both the only foreign power to have a military presence in the country (not counting the British expeditionary force landed during the Anglo-Persian War) and the only power to have its military forces stationed in the Persian capital. While the capital detachment were technically Persian troops under Russian command, as it was highlighted earlier, the loyalty of these troops to the Persian crown was highly suspect. In a final attempt to offset this Russian monopoly on military affairs and influence in Persia, the British government concocted and received approval from the Shah in 1874 to dispatch a small officer cadre to

Tehran, at British expense. This group consisted of a commanding field officer (suggested to be at the rank of Colonel), an executive officer, six additional junior officers (specifically two artillery and four infantry officers), a medical officer, ten senior non-commissioned officers, and a pharmacist.31

Once news of these officers was relayed to Russia, she logged a formal protest with the

Shah that he and his government had violated their existing arrangement in accepting foreign

30 Ibid, 312-321. 31 Ibid, 321. 27

military officers into the country. The Persian government, having been plied with British commercial goods and promises of military hardware, rejected Russian objections on the grounds that the officers were to be paid for entirely by the British government and that Persia was simply acting as their host. While these men did not represent a major garrison, nor any sort of practical fighting force to challenge Russian garrisons in Persia, they clearly represented a conduit of British military influence on the Persian state, an arrangement that was intolerable to the agitated and defensive Russians.

Despite Russian efforts to chastise and bribe the Shah, the British military mission was there to stay, and with the clash of Russian defensive and British expansionary policies in the economic and political zones a period of equilibrium rose in the affairs in Persia. With this idea of balancТng tСe demands and benefТts of relatТons аТtС botС poаers, tСe SСaС’s government worked to create a series of policies, concessions, and arrangements where both Russian and

Britain would receive equal advantage. This position however was supported by neither the

British nor the Russians. Russia especially was opposed to British gains of any kind regardless of how they were compensated or given equal concessions by Persia. During the reigns of Russian

Tsars Alexander II and III, any substantive British progress or concession in Persia was seen as an assault on the precarious Russian hold in northern Persia and Central Asia. As the trend of defensive and obstructionist Russian foreign policy in Persia would continue, any substantive

BrТtТsС gaТns аould be met аТtС condemnatТon bв tСe Tsar’s ForeТgn MТnТster, but also bв demands for equal concessions or privileges to be extended to Russia. While the latter part of

Russian diplomatic strategy and tactics played into Persian efforts for equilibrium, Russian obstructionism would begin to drive a wedge between Tehran and St. Petersburg, souring relations to nearly toxic levels over time.

One of the major British attempts that Russia took a strong stand on was the 1888 issue of tСe Karun RТver CommercТal NavТgatТon ConcessТon. TСe Karun, PersТa’s onlв calm and navigable river moves between the Persian Gulf and runs northward into the western interior.

This major conduit of trade and communication allowed British merchants to move European goods farther into the Persian interior than more quickly and easily than ever before. This enraged Russian officials, who were deeply concerned that such economic penetration would allow for British goods to compete more easily with Russian goods in their traditional sphere of trade and influence in the north of the country.32 These concerns became all the more grave when

Britain began to lobby for the rights to build and control a rail line from the head of the Karun directly into the Persian capital. Not only was the city itself within the Russian sphere of influence and thus the proposal was a direct affront to that sphere, the combination of a river and rail network would allow cheap British goods (and possibly troops) to flow directly from the

British dominated Persian Gulf deep into the Persian interior and towards the Russian border.

Furthermore, it was clear to Russian officials that this proposed trade conduit under British control was aimed at diverting the flow of Persian goods southwards toward the ports on the

Persian Gulf and away from the caravans and rail networks that crossed the border in the Russia herself, thus depriving Russia of useful foreign trade and goods.33 These created wholly unacceptable conditions, and so trade and tsarist foreign ministry officials vehemently contested the maritime and rail arrangements with the Persian government, even going so far as to imply a seizure of Persian territory south of the Caspian Sea to secure Russian interests.

Struggling to maintain its policy of equilibrium to balance the influences of the two imperial states, the Shah granted and sustained the British project on the Karun, but scrapped any

32 Ramazani, 68. 33 BDFA: Persia 1856-1885, 344-345. 29

future British rail projects in 1889 by granting the belligerently obstructive Russia a monopoly on all future rail construction for Persia. This arrangement also granted Russian industries a monopoly on Persian purchases of rolling stock, telegraph infrastructure, and railroad maintenance. These industries and the merchants that utilized Russian trade infrastructure were fТnallв startТng to see real fruТts from tСe reformed RussТan government’s Тnterest Тn economТc affairs in its foreign policy.

It is at this juncture that the vitality and competency of the new Russian foreign policy agenda in Persia began to have direct effects on the previously Russia-adverse nature of business and trade situation between the two states. Previously, the economic situation of Russian merchants and manufacturers desiring to sell their wares in Persia or who worked in markets that

Persia impacted, had received little, if any support from the Russian state. As previous Russian foreign policy did little to support Russian business interests in Persia (or allow them to capitalize on the terms of the Turkmenchay treaty), the Russian balance of trade with Persia was decТdedlв Тn tСe SСaС’s favor up untТl tСe end of tСe centurв.34 Not only was this trade deficit a major sign of failed economic penetration of Persia by earlier tsars, it was a continuing obstacle for RussТan trade Тnterests. FТnallв bв tСe 1880’s tСe RussТan state under Tsars Aleбander II and

III actively began to support its merchants and economic interests with their Persia foreign policy. This shift can be clearly seen when it comes to how Russian imported Persian goods.

As previously discussed, due to Persian exploitation of the Turkmenchay Treaty and its linked Commercial Pact, more competitively priced Persian or British goods via Persia were able to enter the Russian Empire at low duty rates and easily compete with Russian domestic goods.

This advantage was also an economic soft spot that Russian negotiators and diplomats would continually threaten to choke off when pushing for the recall of concession to British interests or

34 Entner,, 8. 30

demands for concessions to Russia. With the securing of the 1889 railway concession, the three major aspects of Russian foreign policy in the post Anglo-Persian War years can be clearly seen as manifest. Primarily, the affair highlighted Russian attention to British economic and political aggression in Persia and a fierce effort on the part of the all parts of the Russian state apparatus to block those British inroads. Secondly, increasing Russian attention to their own economic and commercial interests in Persia had started to become more than words, but real and concrete government action. The securing of a new Russian rail concession in Persia coupled with previous government sponsorship of rail construction into the Russian controlled Caucasus showed the new and clearly decisive interest the Russian state had taken in supporting its merchantry. The Russian state finally understood, that its interests not only lay with the fortunes of its armies in the field, but also at the marketplaces where its merchants traded and in the banks where its state funds were secured and loaned.35 Such railroad projects not only helped bring

Russian goods to Persian markets with greater speed and security, but also in greater quantities than ever seen before. Finally, the acquisition of the Persian rail concession shows a Russian state that continued its attention to maintaining its sphere of dominance in Persia both my political as well as new economic means. While this third policy facet had always been a part of

Russian policy following Turkmenchay, the revitalization of this effort, the investment of state capital to support infrastructural projects, and the vigorous defense against British advances shows that Russia was looking to continue exercising its power not only as in imperial force with clear zones of influence, but also one that improved and capitalized on such zones outside of its own imperial borders.

With these three distinct features of Russian foreign policy in Persia, we can argue that by this period, following the diplomatic and policy reforms of Tsar Alexander II, Russian foreign

35 Ibid, 10-11. 31

policy had finally begun to operate on the same level as its traditional European rivals and counterparts. No longer were great mistakes being made in Persia. Economic fortunes were beginning to reverse in favor of Russia, with Russian trade truly taking hold in the northern territories. As Imperial troops and officers remained garrisoned across north and central Persia, the ability of Russia to exert pressure on the Shah had not been this strong since the terms of the

Turkmenchay treaty were dictated. With the signing away of the 1889 railway concession, the

Russian presence in Persia had truly taken on all of the traditional trappings and policies of

European imperialism.

The 1889 railway concession also serves to highlight just how aggressively the Russian military and Foreign Ministry were working to consolidate their hold on the conquered khanates of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and their sphere of control in northern Persia. With British domination of the seas and European rails and telegraph lines already stretching farther and fartСer across tСe eartС’s surface, eбtendТng tСeТr polТtТcal and economТc reacС аТtС everв mТle of wire and set of track, Russia was undertaking a crash program to bring the relative distances between the various points of her empire closer together. While this aggressive program of track laying and infrastructural construction was seen by many the British Foreign Office as a sign of

Russian aggression and continued designs to expand their rule.36

The issue of Persia was one of Russia consolidating its hold, and stripping away what autonomв and poаer аas left Тn tСe SСaС’s Сands аТtСout eбpandТng RussТan terrТtorТal claТms and inflaming British paranoia.37 To accomplish this, Russia would not only maintain her military and commercial presence in Persia, but continue to push for greater and greater concessions in their sphere of control while simultaneously eroding the last vestiges of Persian

36 BDFA: Central Asia, 1879-1907, 153-154. 37 Buchanan, 169. 32

sovereignty. With major rail construction undertaken with Russian capital, rolling stock, rails, and supervision around Ashkabad, Kuchan, Tehran, Meshed, along the Afghan Frontier,

Nasirabad, through Khorasan, and across the Caucasus, these lines of control would need new goods and contracts to make them economically and politically viable. While Persian imports of

Russian grains products, iron, copper, leather, and especially dry goods had more than doubled, and in some cases quadrupled since 1844 along these lines, Russian interest moved towards acquiring Persian goods at better rates and finally closing the gaps that allowed for Persian and ersatz-British goods to infiltrate Russia itself and compete successfully with her own domestic products.38

To accomplish this, Russia had already consolidated its control in Khorasan and driven off a majority of British commercial interests. In the mid-1880’s the construction of rail lines not only cheapened Russian goods, but also gave them a logistical advantage over the interloping

British. By 1888, the construction of the Russian Trans-Caspian Railway from the Caspian Sea ports to Merv, Samarkand, and Tashkent coupled with increased tariffs, prejudicial inspections, and other policies had severely withered the vitality of British and other European economic interests and influence in Central Asia and Russian controlled Persia. These efforts, combined with policies enacted by Tsar Alexander II in 1877 that required deposits to be paid to the

Russian state equal to the value of any goods reportedly destined for Persia that aimed to pass through Russian territory or via Russian rails, served to dramatically reduce this legal loophole in trade that was injuring domestic Russian interests.39 While these deposits were returned upon the exit of the goods from Russian territory, this restricted the flow of trade from smaller European trading concerns, as well as drastically reduced competition for Russian goods in Russia through

38 Entner, 10-11. 39 ibid 33

these faux transitory goods. To add to this control at home, in 1887 and 1889, Russian Prince

Dolgoruky of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs secured a series of banking concessions for Russia in northern Persia that allowed for them to establish their own banks and aggressively control the flow of loans and currency, as well as support Russian rail construction. With the financial groundwork laid in this new era of Russian economic and military imperialism, Russia was confronted again with Persian efforts to maintain equilibrium between Russia and Britain. The

ShaС’s government granted a separate bankТng concessТon to Reuter of Britain in 1899 as well, thus allowing him to recoup his previous financial losses and to establish the Imperial Bank of

PersТa to manage tСe PersТan state’s loans and debt to BrТtaТn.40 While Russian officials bristled at this Persian concession, there was little protest as it had little to do with either Russian affairs or their control in northern Persia. The Russian Asiatic Department had far more important issues on which to spend its time and political capital.

While Russia had come to control the major means of transport and communication in northern Persia, as well as have a firm hand in its fiscal and banking infrastructure, Russia needed to obtain Persian commodities and resources at better rates than it had since

Turkmenchay. Despite the cutting off of foreign transitory goods to Russian controlled Persia as well as the crippling of British commercial ventures in the north of the country, even in 1889 the balance of trade was still in the favor of Persia. To finally rectify this issue, utilizing the influence granted by the presence of a Russian bank in Persia, and the loans that institution had made to the Persian throne, agents of the Asiatic Department negotiated a readjustment of the duties and trade terms on Persian goods entering Russia. This reduced their unit price and locked down control of several concessions on the harvesting and sale of fruits, nuts, and other such

40 Ramazani, 68. 34

Persian produce for Russian interests.41

As Russia pushed toward the eventual goal of the total economic and political subversion of the Persian state, the use of banking and loans began to take center stage. With the issues of basic commerce dealt with by 1890 and the Russian government enjoying the access and lines of control its railroad and metaled road network offered, the exploitation of the financial position of the Russian central bank in Persia started to take shape. Unlike the banking concession offered to

Reuters just a year earlier, the Russian bank had no shareholders or invested parties whose interests it needed to protect. Without these limiting factors, and with Russian state sponsorship removing the need to either turn a profit nor make fiscally sound lending decisions the Russian controlled banking system was able to make wildly irresponsible loans to the Shah, his government, governors, critical officials, religious clerics, as well as to invest in economically unviable, but politically necessary construction and management.42 By gaining a substantial stake in Persian state debt, the Russian Foreign Ministry was able to wield greater and greater influence to influence and even dictate Persian state policy and regional decisions, further still coopting their national sovereignty and the power of the Shah to rule independently.

Despite this situation of increased Russian influence and debt control, their influence was by no means absolute in regards to Persian decision making. To highlight this, in 1890 after a series of British attempts and even the direct involvement of the aging Queen Victoria, Nasir al-

Din Shah granted Major G. Talbot a sweeping concession on the exporting and sale of Persian tobacco. Talbot, a retired British military officer and government patron saw given, through the sponsorship of the British Foreign Office a fifty year concession as the sole exporter of all

Persian tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, and related tobacco products. The company that Talbot would

41 Entner.,10. 42 Ramazani,.68. 35

charter would also be granted the sole right to purchase Persian tobacco and tobacco products thus eliminating any competitors in the domestic market of Persia as well. This exclusive right also came with exception from all Persian customs duties, fees, and taxes as well as measure permitting the Talbot monopoly to engage in price fТбТng to tСe determent of PersТa’s largelв poor and unorganized tobacco growers.43 This wholly unfair arrangement not only brought the ire of the Russian Asian Department, Foreign Ministry, and Russian merchants who dealt in

Persian tobacco, but a groundswell of domestic Persian resistance since this arrangement

Тmpacted tСe tаo maУor tвpes of PersТan tobacco crops; botС “tumbaku”, a PersТan plant used for water-pТpes and predomТnantlв domestТc consumptТon, and “toontoon” a tradТtТonal tobacco plant recognized for its uses in cigars and cigarettes.44 With Russian imports of Persian toontoon tobacco products valued in the millions of rubles, and other European powers like France,

Germany, Belgium, and Italy all having a stake in the Persian tobacco market, a concerted diplomatic effort was made to reform or revoke the Persian concession to the Talbot company.

While the initial public reaction of Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov was to aggressively denounce the concession and call for its utter revocation, he simultaneously worked to quietly gather support from a more conciliatory and less confrontational conclusion to the affair. The more moderate of the Russian approaches to the situation eventually prevailed as a far more moderate effort was well received in the governments of Europe, especially in Vienna and Paris.45 Russia rallied many of the other concerned European powers to press both the

British government and the Shah to make the Talbot firm an international affair with shareholders and investment prospects from all the concerned states. While this arrangement would still permit the Talbot enterprise to maintain its monopoly in exports with its fifty year

43 BDFA: Persia 1886-1907, 78-102. 44 Ibid. 79 45 Ibid. 36

exclusive arrangement and rights, the economic benefits and profits would be spread outside of

Britain and allow Russian, French, and German merchants especially to have a continued stake in the trade. While British and other European officials seemed open to such a compromise, one that Russia would stand to benefit from in as much as she would largely preserve her national stake in Persian tobacco affairs, the impact of this arrangement on the Persian people themselves would undo both Russian and British aspirations.

In what many scholars of modern Iranian national history have regarded as the first modern example of national awakening in the Persian territory, rural subsistence tobacco farmers, merchants, clerics, as well as western political commentators rose up to decry the impact of the concession and the price degradation that would accompany it.46 Regardless of international involvement in the Talbot company, the firm would still be the only entity allowed to purchase Persian tobacco for both export and domestic consumption. This in turn gave the company the monopolistic power to reduce purchase prices and set unlivable rates for Persian merchants who were now compelled to deal with the Talbot company system as a middleman in all purchases and sales. This arrangement was poised to drive many habitually struggling and destitute agricultural workers and small-plot farmers over an economic and sub-subsistence precipice. With the idea of Persians being forced to purchase a Persian domestic product from a foreТgn monopolв, PersТan leaders and tСe people alТke decrТed Сoа tСe SСaС Сad “for a comparatively insignificant personal profit, needlessly and recklessly saddled his long-suffering subУects and аТtС an Тntolerable burden.”47 With open protests and assaults on government officials in Tabriz, Isfahan, Tehran, Shiraz, and with a powerful faction of clerics petitioning the

Shah to revoke the concession (they also strongly implied that failure of the Shah to cooperate

46 Edward Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (Reprint, Boston: Adamant Media Corporation, 2007), 50- 52. 47 Ibid. 57 37

would lead them to call for Russian intervention), the Shah was left in an untenable and not wholly unfamiliar position.48 With protest and pressure from nearly every corner, and with the

British unable to offer any remedy to his situation, the Shah was forced to annul the concession in early January of 1891.

While external powers deeply suspected that Russia had a hand to play in the popular unrest and the fermentation of clerical rebellion in Persia, there exists little direct evidence to support this claim. Such behavior however should not be considered outside the realm of possibility considering such tactics were well used by the Russian Asiatic Department in the past to pressure the Shah. Further account should also be given to the great debts to the Russian bank in Persia that clerics, and regional powerbrokers had previously accepted and the influence and means that these debts granted Russian agents in Persia. With obvious Russian discontent to any sort of victory on the part of British agents, the means, motive, and opportunity for Russian agents to stir up Persian rebellion are all quite clear, though no direct evidence has been discovered for this study. Despite this, these conditions should be noted and the implications for future Russian influence should be regarded at least as a viable threat on the part of Russian foreign policy towards Persia from this point forward.

The Persian state did not escape from the Talbot Tobacco Concession without serious injury to its prestige, national tranquility, and state coffers. With an initial demand from the now functionally stagnant Talbot Company, forwarded by the British Foreign Office to the Shah amounting to £650,000 plus unspecified interest, the Persian state was faced with a sum it could clearly not pay.49 Despite the fact that negotiation between the Shah and British resulted in a total indemnity cost of £500,000, the Persian state had no practical means to cover this sum alone and

48 BDFA: Persia, Britain, and Russia 1886-1907 ( Frederick, MD: Univ. Publ. of America, 1985) 78-80 49 Ibid, 86-87. 38

a British bank loan with a six per cent rate of interest was required just to keep the Persian state fiscally solvent. Exploiting this monetary crisis in the Persian Treasury, Russian agents approached the Shah requesting additional banking concessions for them under the general auspices of working to help maintain Persian solvency with Russian assistance. The Shah, paralyzed by not only the potential power wielded by a disgruntled Russia, but also the precariousness of his own banking circumstances, agreed to Russian demands. This opened the way for a direct branch operation of the Central Bank of Russia to be opened in Persia, and for easier Russian credit to be extended both to the Persian state and its officials, a snare that both the state and its officers were quick to thrust themselves. By 1900, influence through debt to

Russian banks, and by extension, the Russian state had been secured with most of the Persian rulТng elТte. АСТle tСТs sСould аas not an “offensТve” move bв RussТa and tСerefore keepТng Тn line with her reformed foreign policy trend of this area to secure, harden, and exploit the control she already enjoyed, moves by both Russia and Britain began to push the Persian state past the point of being seen as an a independent or sovereign state. By the end of the reign of Alexander

III, careful and purposeful Russian constriction of the Persian state had left northern Persia a

Russian protectorate in nearly all but name and the Shah a token leader whose ability to act contrary to, or even independent of Russian interest was practically nil.

The reigns of Alexander II and III saw Russian foreign policy towards Persia evolve from the narrow minded and economically inept territorial conquests that had preceded them into a decade’s long era of economТc penetratТon, Great Poаer dТplomacв, Тnfrastructural advances, and administrative reforms and refinements. By the end of the 19th century, Russia was clearly a dominant player not only in its north Persian bastion, but also into the halls of the central government and a power that seemed to have the ability to insight domestic unrest at will. This

position of influence had been gained through a conservative policy of economic expansion, a new competency and grasp of international commerce, and a continued Russian military presence across Persia. These policy points not only brought Russia into the diplomatic arena with much the same set of tool as her British and European rivals, but also with the might of the

Russian army and the single-mindedness and power of a total autocracy. Unlike Britain whose policies were sometimes confined by capitalist market constraints and the demands of it

Parliament, Russia suffered no such yokes to her designs on Persia. Without carving out more land from the Persian rump, a shot being fired since Crimea, or compromising her domestic tranquility, Russia had reduced Persia from a regional power and empire who ruled over territorial protectorates immediately following the Turkmenchay Treaty, to a morally corrupt, fiscally compromised, and military indefensible state whose sovereignty was a clear matter of debate. This was the international and diplomatic situation inherited by Tsar Nicholas II, and one he would utterly bungle.

Nicholas II brought another and final age of changes in Imperial Russian and Persian relations. Nicholas inherited a foreign policy with Persia and Britain that had been one of conservative economic gains, no major territorial clashes, and careful manipulation of lending markets to coopt power from the Persian regime. In the year of his assertion, George Curzon the famous diplomat, then Viceroy and Governor-General of India characterized the British position as well as that of the Persian state as outlandishly bleak.

Persia, so long as it remains under the present Shah, is incurably rotten, and there is not one of his sons who would not, in all probability, be a change for the worse. Patching up so crazy a vessel is an almost hopeless attempt. Sooner or later it will founder. Only as it has some useful timbers and a valuable cargo, there will be salvage worth looking after.50

With this damning appraisal of the Persian state and leadership, Lord Curzon goes on to note that

50 BDFA: Persia 1886-1907, 151. 40

in this dire situation, upon the death of the sitting Shah, then Nasr-el-Din, it would be entirely possible for Russian to rightly annex the north of the country with little to no contest. Instead of advocating British opposition to such expansionism, as the Russian position was both clearly superior and enjoyed the means to carry out such an annexation, Curzon suggested no opposition. Rather, he argued that the British state merely inform Russia that, should the latter annex northern Persia, the former would move to annex the south of the country.51

With the British supposition that Persian governmental and political collapse was only a matter of time, and policy discussions centering on the carving up of the Persian state corpse, the power of the Russian position in 1896 could not be any more clear. Despite this, and an ensuing coup in Russian financial control over Persia, the attention of Nicholas II was directed to the Far

East, Korea, and Japan, rather than towards Persia.

Under the reign of Nicholas II, Russian domestic issues began to bleed over into its foreign policy more than ever before. Under these conditions, Russian attention began to focus on Korea and the Empire of Japan (a situation covered in a later chapter). Under the direction of influential ministers like Vyacheslav von Plehve, Russian foreign policy aimed to roll back

Imperial Japanese influence in Asia and secure the northern Korean Peninsula, specifically the

Yalu basin and surrounding territories for Russian gains. As this policy recklessly devoted materials and state resources to an arena likely to provoke war with Imperial Japan, Russian exploitation and domination in the Persian arena began to slacken.

While the system of military occupation, economic command, and fiscal control that had been constructed previously continued to function effectively, British weakness in the region and the weakness of the Persian state went largely unattended by Russian officers and officials under

Nicholas II. The ability of Russian interests to remain stable in this era of stagnation was a result

51 ibid 41

of the resiliency of the economic imperialist regime that left the ruble a major currency in the

Persian state. Russian state interests controlled railways, road systems, telegraph networks, banking alliances, factories in most major Persian industries, warehouses, wholesaling establishments, and insurance corporations. Russian troops were stationed in nearly every major

Persian city and trading town. It is during this period, that continued Russian attention and renewed aggression likely could have seen the fall of the Persian state under Russian annexation, instead Persia, like the rest of the region marinated in mediocrity and a decrepit regime.

The opening of the Trans-Siberian Railroad across Russia in the waning years of the 19th

Century brought the reach of Russian troops and the attention of the Tsar to the wilds of Siberia, and the lures of material riches in the Far East. Even with this new frontier for Russian exploitation and imperial bungling, the issue of Persia remained one where developments could be seen from St. Petersburg and London. While these developments were largely ignored in St.

Petersburg, and saw less attention then they had previously been due in London, the diplomatic affairs of Russia continued to be carried out in the remains of the Persian Empire. These developments came along their previously established lines of imperial control and influence acquisition, namely the banks, in the markets, and in the court of the Shah. In 1900, with the

Persian Treasury once again at the breaking point from bad investments, canceled concessions, and mismanagement, the crown was forced to borrow £2,400,000 worth of rubles, British pounds, and lines of direct credit from the Russian Central Bank.52 With British attention and resources tied up in South Africa and the quickly exploding Boer crisis, Persia was left with few options but to sink farther and farther into the Russian political orbit. Unfortunately for Russian interests, this advantage was not exploited through attention or active policy decisions in

Moscow. Instead, the status quo was maintained in Persia despite British inattention and Persian

52 Ramazani, 72. 42

financial dependency.

Of all the Russian advantages and developments in Persia, it is perhaps the 1900 loan that best represents the strength of the imperialist system that was in place, and the competency of the officers and officials left in the country to carry out this policy, despite their neglect by St.

Petersburg. Under the terms of the 1900 loan, dictated by Russian bank officials with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the loan would be given to the Persians at a remarkably reasonable rate of five percent interest; one that any profitable bank with investors could never offer to such a risky borrower state. The Russian loan conditions also required that the funds obtained by Persia be used to pay off her other foreign loans, chiefly those to Britain that were a result of the bungled tobacco concession. Not only did this cut off British influence over Persian actions through the debt, it also secured the Russian Central Bank as the only agency to who the

Shah would approach for credit. This situation would be further exploited the follow year when the Shah, who had spent his time traveling across Europe rather than managing his collapsing state, required additional Russian loans. Under terms of these contracts, the Persians agreed that

Russia would act as their sole national creditor until at least 1912, granting Russia a total monopoly on Persian debt and overwhelming influence in the management of her internal affairs.53

To add to shrinking British influence in Persia, the eruption of the Boer War between

1899 and 1902 brought British attention, military strength, and government resources away from

Central Asia and towards the African continent. Under these circumstances, Russian officers and officials on the ground in Persia were not only able to gain a total monopoly on Persian state debt and financial activities, but also a military monopoly by enjoying a standing Russian army of over 55,000 officers and enlisted men station in Persia and the nearby Trans-Caspian territories

53 Ibid 73 43

by 1901.54 This position as the regional hegemon would come to be broken with the Russian

Revolution of 1905 and the crippling of Russian foreign power and influence from the disastrous

Russo-Japanese War.

As tsarist attention was continually directed to tСe Far East and toаards RussТa’s groаТng internal problem, Persia came to become both a political backwater and an international relations side show. Far from the main event that Persia represented in Russian foreign policy during the heady years of the Great Game, now Persia was an arena slowly sinking into obscurity just as

Russia was poised to triumph and potentially annex a large swath of the decaying empire. With the pending collapse of the Czarist regime under the constraints of the First World War and domestic upheavals, it is at this point that this study marks the definitive end of vigorous and vital Czarist foreign policy behaviors in terms of Persia. From this point it can be seen just how these relations progressed, the forms they took, and the character these relations had overall. The tsarist foreign policy experience following the Turkmenchay treaty reveals a slowly shifting paradigm, along with a core competency and vitality that is often denied to Russia in the historiography of the late tsarist years.

Despite Russian failings in many aspects of her foreign policy; Europe, Crimea, the Far

East, and the Balkans, Persia must be seen as a shining exception to this understanding. While the early days of Russo-Persian relations in the post-Turkmenchay years should be characterized by blunt Russian aggression and a lack of economic finesse and subtlety, these circumstances would not remain stagnant. By the reign of Alexander II, and certainly Alexander III, Russia had employed some of her best and brightest foreign policy agents to shape and define her fate in

Persia with every dimension of statecraft that foreign policy titans like Bismarck would be familiar with. Economic, political, military, and cultural ties were all exploited by Russia in the

54 BDFA: Central Asia 1879-1907, 350. 44

mid to late 19th Century and into the 20th, to carve for herself a weak and receptive Persia that could at best, by 1904 be regarded as a Russian satellite, if not a soon to be protectorate.

It is with these terms that this study concludes that Russo-Persian relations, at least during the tsarist period act as a beacon of competency and vitality in a regime long regarded by much of the historiography as one on an inevitable spiral towards collapse.55 Despite the incompetence and neglect of the Nicholas II regime, the system of trade, infrastructure, management, banking, influence, and militarism that had been built over the preceding decades remained largely intact and highly functional until the tsarist regime itself collapsed under the weight of the February

Revolution. Furthermore this study concludes that Russian interactions with, and over Persia were not aimed at a larger global scheme of conquest and expansion, but rather that they were targeted to create for themselves a patron state in trade and policy, much as their European counterparts enjoyed the world over. To characterize Russian diplomatic objectives in this period as anything other than defensive, and within the realm of behavior of other European states would be to treat Russia differently hand than any other European power. To emphasize this point, the failure of Russia to ever actually annex Persia outright should be noted. With her state attention drawn more to the east, Russia was quite content to develop Persia as both a patron and satellite nation, as Germany did with Austria, and Britain and France had done with many of the smaller states of Eastern Europe.

It is from this Russian turn to the East that this study will now continue. As Persia and the affairs of Central Asia began to pass into history, the tsarist regime focused in on what it saw as the prizes of expansion in Korea and Manchuria. For nearly as long as Russia had held relations with Persia, she too had dealt with the major powers of the Orient. By the end of the 19th

55 N.N Sukhanov, The Russian revolution, 1917: a personal record (Moscow: 1922); "Fall of the tsarist state." StudyMode.com. 05, 2011. Accessed 05, 2011. http://www.studymode.com/essays/Fall-Of-The-Tsarist-State- 699423.html; Lobanov-Rostovsky, 54. 45

Century, clearly the most powerful of these was Imperial Japan. With a land empire that subjugated Koreans and Chinese alike, and a state policy designed for expansion, Japan and

Russia were set on a collision course in the early 20th Century. How these states got to this point, and where their relations developed from there is now where this study shall devote its attention.

Far removed from the political maneuverings and deft policy decisions that were characteristic of many of the Persia issues previously discussed, the nature of Russo-Japanese relations would lurch from one failure and crisis to another with little love lost between these rival powers in between. Furthermore, unlike Russian designs to humble Persia into the role of a patron state,

Russia and Japan, especially in the years before the Second World War dealt with each other as direct rivals, a situation far removed from the Russo-Persian paradigm.

THE TRANS-CONTINENTAL AFFAIR

With the linear distance from the tsarist capital of St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea to the

Imperial Japanese capital of Tokyo running more than a staggering 4,700 miles, relations between Russia and Imperial Japan had not only economic and political differences to contend with, but also the perceptual distortions of distance and starkly different cultures. With Japan largely closed off to the rest of the global community until the Meiji Restoration in 1869, relations between the island empire and Russia largely did not exist prior to this point. While the

Japanese polТcв of Sakoku or “natТonal ТsolatТon” restrТcted all foreТgn ТnteractТons and trade to a small select port territory and almost wholly excluded Imperial Russia, this did not dissuaded attempts by Russian trading expeditions. With Russo-Japanese documented contact dating back to 1697, the possibility of opening trade with the island nation posed a tempting opportunity for

Russia in the early 19th Century.56 It Тs tСТs era of “fТrst ТmpressТons” which is critical in understanding how the post Meiji Restoration affairs between the two empire developed.

Since 1778, at least three Russian trade and military expeditions arrived and landed in

Japan attempting to both open trade and to take a survey of the situation on the ground there. In every recorded instance, these attempt failed utterly and Russian agents were never able to do more than agitate Japanese officials and sour what preliminary relations there were. Russian attempts to circumvent not only Japanese cultural traditions as well as the Dutch trade monopoly in Japan resulted in harsh rebuffs of Russian advances and Dutch protestations. Russian agents lacked both the leverage and understanding to do more than blunder about and offend their

Japanese hosts. In 1804 the Japanese shogunate outright denied the requests of Russian

Ambassador Rezanov for both official recognition and trading rights with the Japanese mainland.

56 Lensen, vii 47

This rebuffing not only sent the message that Japan refused to recognize the status of Rezanov to negotiate on behalf of Russia, but also that Russia had any ability to trade or interact with Japan itself.57

The worst examples of these failed expeditions led to the looting and destruction of

Japanese villages by Russian naval officers and shipboard soldiers. The incidents, whose circumstances are corroborated by numerous primary sources, occurred between 1806 and 1808 and were directed by the rejected Ambassador Rezanov. Under his direction, Russian warships landed assault partТes on tСe Japanese Тslands of “SagСalТen and tСe KurТles”. TСese raТds resulted in numerous Japanese civilian casualties, the burning of several fishing villages and the extreme alarm of the Japanese shogunate in Kyoto.58 Far from the diplomatic coup the Czarist government had wanted from its initial interactions with Japan, these raids, regardless if there was tsarist approval or not (these is no evidence there was) deeply soured Japan to the Russian

Empire and sent a clear message that Russia was a belligerent threat to Japanese interests and security.

With the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the Meiji Emperor opened up Japan to broader foreign trade and political interactions. While geographically, Russia represented the closest physical trading partner, she held perhaps the weakest position of any major European power in terms of gaining access to Japanese markets and political circles. Not only had Russia carried with itself the soiled mantel of a belligerent aggressor from the Rezanov raids, but in the

1860’s, RussТa onlв Сeld tСe fledglТng port of VladТvostok as Тts outlet onto tСe PacТfТc. TСТs port and developing naval base not only was frozen over and therefore inaccessible for part of the year, but it also had only been founded at the beginning of the decade. The coastal village of

57 Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830. (Revised ed). (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969), 136. 58 Ibid 136-137 48

Vladivostok therefore lacked any developed overland supply routes and was, at best, a Russian outpost on the Pacific. When compared to the large and capable trading fleets of Britain, the

United States, France, and Belgium, Russia was, at best a second-rate party to these early years of trade and diplomatic engagement.

Vladivostok’s severe clТmate, sparse local populatТon, lack of a relТable local food supplв, and inadequate defenses gave the Russian state a very weak foundation upon which to build.

This weak foundation also led to a general perception in St. Petersburg that the Far East on the

Pacific was an economically unviable locale. This perception in turn created a cycle where the development of new infrastructure, and the growth of local populations was retarded and therefore continued the perception of the area as weak and unviable. To additionally compound this predicament, Russia lacked any serious naval defense assets in the theater. What little they did have was based in either Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka or Nikolaevsk on the Amur, both infrastructural and logistical backwaters. Due these ports shortcoming and the nuclei of

Vladivostok, Russian war and commerce vessels in the Pacific were dependent on Japanese docks, coaling stations, and supply ports to sustain themselves until 1886.59 As a result, Japanese leadership saw Russia as both an aggressor and a weak partner that offered little in terms of trade or mutual support when compared to her regional and global competitors.

This situation was even further reflected in the meager trade between Russia and Japan which, up until 1870 was valued at less than ¥50,000.60 An overwhelming majority of this trade

аas Japanese tea and commodТtТes аСТcС, bв tСe mТd 1870’s Сad been dТverted to more stable and more cost effective European traders. As Japan opened up to foreign trade and cultural experiences, Russia was still a state on the diplomatic outside gazing in. As a result, Russia and

59 Malozemoff, 5 60 Ibid. 8. 49

the Asiatic Department turned its attention to China, Korea, and the rest of continental Asia. With

Japanese resistance to Russian advances, hostilities still lingering from prior transgressions, and fierce Japanese distrust, Russia would clearly be left to engage with Japan not as an economic satellite or regional partner, but as a competitor, rival, and on occasion a blood enemy. This dynamic is in stark contrast to RussТa’s ТmperТal and pseudo-colonial affairs with Persia as were previously discussed. Instead, in the Far East Russia would not enact her expansionist agenda upon Japan, but with and against her on the Asian mainland. The first move that began to define this new relationship of parallel imperialist expansion in Asia would fall in the still disputed island of Sakhalin that lies in the northern Pacific and south of the Sea of Okhotsk.

In 1855, with the rising interests of both Russia and pre-Meiji Japan coming into conflict, it became necessary for the two states to attempt to define their respective national borders and zones of military control. As neither state had enjoyed formal diplomatic relations with the other, the new accord would not only delineate national boundaries, but also mark the formal beginning of mutual recognition and diplomatic relations. These preliminary negotiations resulted in the

Treaty of Shimoda that partially defined the maritime and island holdings of the two states. The terms of the treaty however did not properly address the large island of Sakhalin and would therefore open the way for clashes and skirmishes between Russian and Japanese settlers and small scale military units on the island for two decades. Following the Meiji Restoration, Russia and Japan returned to the bargaining table as the issue of the settlement and control of Sakhalin threatened to escalate and drive the two into more direct conflict. To settle this, the first major agreement was made in 1875. The Treaty of St. Petersburg marked the first formal accord between the tsarist empire and the Meiji Emperor, and laid out in precise terms Russian control of Sakhalin and Japanese control of the Kuril Island chain south of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

From the Japanese perspective, it was hoped that this additional clarification and documented renouncing of prior claims would help to curtail Russian expansion into the Pacific61. While this arrangement did largely settle this issues of the Kurils and Sakhalin at the time, those island grouping would reemerge as points of contention in the not-too-distant future.

Despite the eventual collapse of the treaty arrangements, these first accords go a long way to helping to characterize how Russian and Japanese relations would play out in the future and precisely what roles both parties would play. Instead of looking at Japan as a non-entity or as a state whose power was to be coopted by Russian aggression, Russia clearly saw Japan as a regional player with whom her policies would need to address and to a large degree, respect.

While Russia was a clearly more powerful state, her presence in the Pacific was a limited one, and one that even the then under-developed Japan would be able to fiercely contend should a crisis arise. Unlike with Persia, where borders had been dictated and shaped by the fates or war, in the initial stages of Russo-Japanese relations, both states saw the need to recognize and formally address the movements of the other at the bargaining table, not at the tip of the sword.

While these diplomatic relations would continue in earnest, the expansionist spheres of influence of both Russia and Japan continued to move closer and close together, now on the

Asian mainland. During this period, while Russia was fighting to forge a strong foothold on the

Pacific and with Japan undertaking a crash program of industrialization and modernization,

China was mired in foreign manipulations, weak leadership, and internal unrest. Japan had continued to eye the deteriorating strength of China as an opening for invasion and annexation since the Meiji Restoration. Meanwhile Russia, who bordered China and Korea, looked to the two territories as potential solutions for her shortcomings in the Far East. While trade in China was fiercely competitive with other European powers, Korea, then known as the Kingdom of

61 March, G. Patrick. Eastern Destiny Russia in Asia and the North Pacific (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996) 63 51

Great Joseon and a tributary state to Imperial China posed a tantalizing and virgin diplomatic opportunity for Russia. As foreign trade with Korea was previously nonexistant, Russian ministers saw the food, material, and labor resources of Korea as a solution to their weaknesses in Vladivostok and the rest of the Russian Pacific coast. In 1874 the Russian Minister of

CommunТcatТons, K.N PosТet remarked “as tСe Primorsk and Amur regions suffer from a lack of grain, cattle and labor, it is necessary to have close relations with Korea, which has all of tСese.”62 With Korea forcibly opened to major foreign trade by Japanese warships in 1876 (Qing

China had previously restricted such trade as it controlled Korean foreign interactions), the

Russian Asiatic Department moved to establish trade and diplomatic relations with the Korean state much on the same types of terms it had with Persia, that of a weak and unaligned state

Russia wished to see move into its orbit and upon which it wished to impose certain degrees of economic imperialism.63

These objectives were partially accomplished in July of 1884 when Russia followed the example of Japan, France, the United States, and Britain by signing a treaty of friendship and commerce with the peninsular state. While this treaty did not radically change Russian trade with

Korea, it opened the way for smoother Russo-Korean trade relations, further diplomatic overtures, and for the military and civilian enclaves of Russia in the Pacific to use Korea as a trading and supply base. While Russia remained a non-aggressive power that sought to gain influence and prestige with the Korean state, this soft-handed approach was dictated by both the position of Korea, but also the type of issues with Japan, China, and Europe the Russian leadership foresaw should they chose to move more aggressively on Korea. As Russia began to

62 Malozemoff, 15. 63Ernest Mason Satow, and George Alexander Lensen. Korea and Manchuria between Russia and Japan, 1895- 1904; the observations of Sir Ernest Satow, British Minister Plenipotentiary to Japan (1895-1900) and China (1900- 1906) (Tallahassee: Diplomatic Press, 1966) 2 52

use Korea as a supply depot for Vladivostok, Amur, and the Russian Pacific Squadron, Japan and her ally Britain began to react to this new stability and source of strength for Russia in the

Pacific. Both believed Russian interest in Korea was a gateway to invasion and Russian occupation of Korea and perhaps Manchuria as a while. These suspicious were supported by the large number of Russian state-controlled periodicals and publications from the period did openly discuss and posit that Russia could choose to use military or state action to exact control over

Korea and to expand from the Amur River basin64. Despite these suspicions and periodicals, no direct evidence to support this alarmist view can be found from the Russian side or from what primary documents this study has utilized, or those utilized by secondary works that this study consulted. In fact, during a conference to more definitively define Russian foreign policy towards Korea and the Far East in 1888, the chief of the Asiatic Department I. A. Zinoviev successfully advocated for the precise opposite.

The acquisition of Korea not only would give us no advantages but would be accompanied by a considerable number of disadvantageous consequences. Being a very poor country, Korea cannot be for us a profitable commercial market, especially in view of the absence of industries in our own possessions on the Pacific....Situated on the flank of Manchuria, Korea, under certain conditions, could be transformed by us into an important strategic base, but the advantages of this base lose their significance because of the disadvantages and difficulties which are connected with its defense. Korea is too remote from the centers where we command sufficient armed forces....Finally, the acquisition of Korea would disturb our relations not only with China but also with England, [and Japan] which also has certain designs in that country. 65

While relative Russian trade values with Korea remained low as a result of the poverty of the Korean state, Russia has secured for itself a quasi-breadbasket in the Pacific to support its colonies, outposts, and military operations. Korea also offered Russia warm water ports through which trade could flow all year round and then move into the peninsula and on to Pacific Russia.

64 BDFA: Japan and North-East Asia, 1860-1878 (Frederick, MD: Univ. Publ. of America, 1985), 13. 65 Malozemoff, 16-17. 53

It was these Russian advances that Japan eyed with increased suspicion and distrust. Despite these advantages, Russia had failed to secure Korea as a client state, largely due to Russian political and economic weakness in the Pacific. This state of affairs left Russia was a foreign base of support and supply, but one to which Russia held neither the sole, nor even largest seat at the table of governance and trade. Instead, Russia was forced to compete with the regional power of Japan, a state that would continue to develop into one seen in St. Petersburg as a diplomatic rival and regional adversary. It was with this position of Japan that Russia continued to shape and plan her policies in regards to the Far East and the Pacific coast.

As Russian diplomatic interactions with Japan had, up to this point been largely centered around national settlement conflicts, and with Russian agents having done nothing whatsoever to dissuade Japanese beliefs in inherent Russian aggression, Japan clearly looked to Korea as a new piece that Russia was seeking to line up to oppose Japanese interests. Despite this, Japan remaТned RussТa’s largest tradТng partner Тn tСe PacТfТc, tСougС tСe term “largest” Тs relatТve sТnce no quantity of trade in Pacific Russia amounted to any great or internationally substantial sum.

This trade was a result of Russian interest in Japanese goods and the need for Russian ships both armed and not, to rely on foreign shipyards in Japan for most of their repair, supply, and support needs until 1886. It should also be noted that in contrast to Japanese and British concerns,

Russian trade and economic influences in Korea during this period were exceptionally limited.

Official estimates from the period suggest that Russian merchants in the region numbered less than ten, while thousands of Japanese and hundreds of American and European trade brokers flooded into the country66. With these figures in mind, it is clear that despite Japanese suspicions,

Russia lacked the interest and the ability to aggressively move against Japan or to pose a serious threat to her regional interests. Russia on the other hand correctly viewed Japan at this time as a

66 Ibid. 17. 54

regional power and a state against whom she could clearly not wage a war to mitigate Japanese influence. Instead, while Russian strength on the Pacific was still weak and decentralized,

Russian officials and diplomats clearly understood that Russian policy in regard to the Pacific, would need to not only take Japan into account, but respect Japanese intentions and policy as well to a limited degree. It would even be appropriate to characterize Russian policy towards

Japan as both passive and neglectful. Japan was largely ignored and few major diplomatic undertakings were made prior to the 1880s. When Russia did interact directly with Japan, she did so with an air of passivity and acceptance of Japanese intentions. That was, until Russia could bring the might of her armies, administration, industry, and massive population to bear on the Pacific coast and attempt to back up her more serious diplomatic and political interest with the power of the imperial state.

Before Russia could bring the might of her empire to the Pacific and begin to push policy for Korea, China, and Japan, as she had for Persia, Russia needed the lines of infrastructure and communication that would stretch the vast distance. By 1880, while rail lines were being forged across European Russia and down into the Caucasus, the vast wilderness of Siberia, Kamchatka, and Okhotsk were devoid of anything but the most rudimentary transportation methods. The

Russian fleet and her commerce vessels in the region needed to sail thousands of miles around

Africa to reach St. Petersburg and the vastness of the Siberian forests had no roads or telegraph lines to speak of. What outposts Russia did have in the Far East remained out of touch in times of crisis, and difficult to develop and maintain due to long lines of supply. To rectify this state of relative Russian weakness, initial plans for a railway that would connect Central Russia, Siberia, and the Russian Pacific began to germinate within the Сall so tСe Tsar’s government.

With a vast majority of Russian Siberian and Pacific settlements and military outposts

based around rivers and coastal positions, steamboat and river barges had been the predominant mode of local travel, with connections to western Russia only existing through the pack animal trails that stretched across hundreds of miles of Siberian forest. The implementation of a rail line would, for the first time, connect Central Russia with her Pacific outposts in a way that allowed for relatively rapid transit of men and goods. Such a conduit of transportation would also allevТate PacТfТc RussТa’s dependencв on agrТcultural products and commercТal goods from Japan and Korea. It would furthermore allow for a substantially increased Russian military presence in the Pacific and the logistical support of a naval station and coaling base. With Russian failures to utilize Japan and Korea as reliable coaling stations, and with Britain blocking Russian attempts to establish major Russian maritime supply bases in China, this rail project represented the dawn of a new age for Russian policy in the Pacific.

To enact this attempted expansion and to bring a more vigorous and assertive character to

Russian policy in the Far East, the Russian state began to call for designs and plans for a rail line across Siberia to the Pacific, and begin to use the Russian fleet more aggressively to show the

Russian flag in more diverse ports, including those regarded as Japanese or British strongholds.

In regards to the railroad, beginning in the mid-1880’s tСe RussТan TransportatТon MТnТstrв and the Asiatic Department solicited designs for the rail project, and eventually brought the whole of the Russian state to support the development of the project. Previously, state entities had opposed sucС constructТon due to tСe аeakness of tСe RussТan posТtТon Тn tСe east, claТmТng tСat “TСe Тdea of covering Russia with a railway network not just exceeds any possibility, but even building the railway from Petersburg to Kazan must be found untТmelв bв several centurТes”67 Such thinking had finally given way with new ministers calling for a railroad to spur expansion in Asia, not to

67 ых // ы ч-хч К щя. ы.20 – М., 1925 56

come as a result of such expansion by the 1880s. While the government had rejected previous domestic and foreign private petitions for city-to-city rail construction in the territory, this new project called for an uninterrupted line from European Russia to the Pacific coast. By 1891 the project, under the direction of Russian Finance Minister Sergei Witte was underway and plans to run a full and uninterrupted rail line from Vladivostok to Moscow were beginning to take shape.

In tСe mТd to late 1880’s, as efforts to rallв state support for Тnfrastructural constructТon pushed ahead, the Russian state began to increase its military, and more specifically its naval presence in the Pacific. With the detailing of several cruisers, heavier warships, and foreign designed torpedo boats to their bases in the Pacific, the Russian flag began to fly in more places and more aggressively than even before.68 As Russia modernized her port at Vladivostok to better support and maintain the Pacific Fleet, Russian warships visiting Japan and other foreign ports increasingly came to be seen as political and diplomatic actions rather than ones of logistics and supply. Beginning in 1885, Russian vessels began to pursue a progressively more aggressive form of gunboat diplomacy with Korea despite the clear and present concerns of Britain and especially Japan. It was at this time that Russian warships would suddenly arrive in undefended or lightly held Korean ports and loiter there, or berth for supplies.69 While these was not overt hostility from this behavior, the message to Korea and Japan was clear; the Imperial Russian

Navy was a presence in the region, and one that had the ability to project force wherever it chose to. This pressure was almost entirely directed towards Korea, and as the decade entered its final years, and as the Russian presence on the Pacific increased, so did her diplomatic pressure against Korea.

While the Asiatic Department had previously treated Korea with a soft hand given

68 BDFA: Korea, the Ryuku Islands, and North-East Asia, 1875-1888 (Frederick, MD: Univ. Publ. of America, 1985) 255. 69 Ibid. 57

Russian weakness and Japanese strengths in the Pacific, as Russian populations, military infrastructure and supply routes all expanded in tСe late 1880’s, tСe polТcв began to cСange.

Russian policy began to chafe more and more against the designs and interests of Japan in the

Pacific. As Russia saw Britain as a rival in the global theater, Russia began to see and treat Japan as a true rival in the Asiatic theater. Japan, previously a power Russia was forced to respect and avoid conflict with, was now one to whom Russia wanted to clearly demonstrate her national strength and will. One of the first major volleys in this new and more aggressive era of Russo-

Japanese diplomacy came in June of 1885 when Russia demanded access to and occupation of the Korean port of Lazareff (now in North Korea and known as Wonsan) from the Korean throne.70 This came at a time when Britain and Japan had gained for themselves similar access to

Korean ports and operated both military and commercial enterprises from those locations.

Shortly following the Russian demand, and as British forces were actively occupying

Port Hamilton (a base on now Komnundo Island, South Korea) , Russian forces landed in the port via warship and steamer, and raised the Russian flag in several locations. While this occupation was short lived and never recognized as legitimate, Russia had bared her teeth.71 The message to Britain and Japan was clear, Russia intended to have influence in Korea, regardless of how Japan or Britain might feel regarding that influence. It is this intention that would now define Russo-Japanese relations until the fall of the tsarist Empire. No longer was Russia relegated to a backseat in the realm of Asiatic politic. Now she wanted to use her military and her might to have protect her interests and expand her sphere of influence, despite how that

аould rub agaТnst Japanese ТntentТons. From tСe late 1880’s onаards, Russia and Japan were set in the roles of regional rivals who were constantly distrusting and sizing up each other for

70 Ibid, 290-291. 71 Ibid, 296-297. 58

conflict. With the seeds of this distrust having long been planted in the Japanese state mindset,

Russian contempt for the Japanese and their perceived racial inferiority was a complex that all too easily supported Russian arrogance in this new theater of international affairs.

To support this new frontier of potential expansion and conflict, the completion of the

Trans-Siberian Railroad would be crucТal to maТntaТnТng and eбpandТng RussТa’s Сold Тn tСe

Pacific. Just as Russian rails had brought greater Russian control and imperialistic influences to

Persia, so too did Russia plan to use this new and vital conduit to bring their dominance and state power to the shores of the Pacific to begin to check Japanese and British interests there. While the concept of a railroad to the Pacific was decades old, by the time that construction began in earnest in 1891, Russia had already begun to escalate her level of involvement and state aggression in the Asiatic theater. With rails pushing from both the Pacific port of Vladivostok and from Moscow, the two building parties would forge forward on an infrastructural project larger and more costly than any the Russian Empire had previously undertaken. Easily slated to be the longest railway in the world, the Trans-Siberian would be forged with military conscripts,

Asiatic convict labor, and a vast outpouring of state funds.

Unlike all other rail lines of the period, the Trans-Siberian was a clear and demonstrative article of Russian foreign policy, designed clearly and entirely as a link between European

Russia, and her outposts on the Pacific. The rail line avoided most major cities and settlements along its path, eliminating its use as a regional transportation pathway, it was forged directly though the Russian wilderness as a true and direct conduit between Asia and Europe. As other powers in Asia looked on, they saw the growing reach of the Russian Trans-Siberian as the direct representation of Russian expansionary interests. This specter of Russian expansionism would soon fall on Korea, the weakest of all the political players in Asia, and on that Russia, Britain,

and Japan all held interest in controlling. It аas Сere tСat RussТa’s eбpansТon on tСe PacТfТc would come, and it was here that the Japanese Empire would, with force of arms come to confront Russian interests and dangerously undermine the power of the Russian state.

As Korea had been broken open for international trade and influence by Japan over a decade earlier, Korea soon became the intermediary state through, and over which the international powers of the region vied for control. It is in this arena, that this study would note strong similarities between the late Russian approaches to imperialism in Persia, with those efforts in Korea. Furthermore, the way and attitudes with which Russia treated Britain in the

Persian theater were largely duplicated here in the Korean instance. The first clear example of these similarities can be seen in the way that Russia approached Korea on economic grounds.

While Russia had, and to some smaller extent continued to rely on Korea as a center of trade through which Russian Pacific outposts could locally supply themselves, after a period of growth in Siberian agriculture most of the food and material resources required by Pacific Russia came from domestic sources after 1896.72 As Siberian agricultural and industrial production increased markedly after 1893, Korea began to be seen as an outlet for Russian goods and a weak state that Russia could attempt to ply diplomatically and economically. To do this, Russian trade agents began to receive greater state support to establish themselves in Korea, and a formal

Russian diplomatic mission was received in Seoul in 1884. It was at this time, that Russia discovered a Korea already awash in Japanese and British influences, and an arena far more difficult that Persia to break into.

In tСe begТnnТng of tСe 1890’s, as RussТa moved to forge new and stronger connections to

72 П С. В.3: С чх . (араул: Изд-в ГУ, 2001), 158-164 .

its Pacific coast, she was confronted with a Korea who was in financial debt to Japan, occupied in places by both Japanese and British troops, and used as an economic hub for regional

European, Chinese, and Japanese trade interests. To break into this market, Russia attempted to establish trading concessions from the Korean state for domestic agricultural products, as well as the control and Russian occupation of at least one major port (a status that Britain already enjoyed). This issue, as highlighted by the aforementioned 1885 incident with Port Lazareff, continued to be a policy point that Russia would push with the Korean state. As Russian commercial ties in Korea steadily increased in the early 1890s, it would ultimately be the Empire of Japan that would act far more decisively to secure her state interests in Korea.

The outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War in August of 1894 signaled that Korea was the primary focus of Japanese foreign policy attention, and a sphere in which the Japanese state would tolerate few setbacks. As a result of an uprising in southern Korea that saw the introduction of Chinese troops to the peninsula, Japan landed a security force of over 8,000 troops in an attempt to secure her interests in Korea and to provide leverage for reforming the

Korean state to a more pro-Japanese posture. This landing was denounced both by the sitting

Korean King and also by the Chinese state who demanded Japanese withdrawal. Following a

Japanese coup in Seoul that seized the Korean king and much of his government, the Japanese imposed a new, more pro-Japanese government in Korea and used that regime to call for the forced expulsion of Chinese forces. When the war officially broke out between China and Japan, the fierce energy that Japan had previously expended on modernizing her nation, its military, and its industrial capacity would be displayed for the world as she continuously outclassed China in nearly every engagement on both land and sea. Following the occupation of Korea by Japan, and

Japanese assaults into Chinese Manchuria, and on Chinese Formosa, Japan forced the Chinese

Qing Dynasty to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, a treaty so unbalanced towards the victorious

Japanese, that it required Russian, German, and French intervention.

The Treaty of Shimonoskei that ended the First Sino-Japanese War granted independence to Korea (though clearly under Japanese occupation and influence), Japanese annexation of the island of Formosa, and parts of the Liaodong Peninsula to the north-west of Korea that included the fortified coastal outlet of Port Arthur. Furthermore, Japan forced China to agree to a staggering war reparation of seven and a half thousand tons of silver (contemporarily worth several billion US dollars) in an attempt to both financially cripple China and give Japan regional hegemony as a fiscal power. These staggeringly aggressive Japanese gains looked to undermine nearlв all of RussТa’s polТcв obУectТve botС Тn Korea and Тn tСe PacТfТc polТtТcal theater as a whole. It is under these circumstances, that another policy parallel to Persia can be seen from the

Russian foreign ministry.73 Just as Russia helped rally international opposition to the Reuters

Concession in Persia, Russia diplomatically forged herself with her traditional rival Germany, and аТtС France to condemn tСТs Japanese eбploТtatТon, and to roll back some of Japan’s monumental gains.

Known as the Triple Intervention for the three major states that joined to enact it, Russia diplomatically brought Germany and France to apply diplomatic pressure upon Japan to exchange the annexation Japan had received of the Liaodong Peninsula, in exchange for a greater monetary concession from China. Despite the fact that -this concession presented no glaringly immediate threat to German or French interest in the Pacific, both states obliged Russian requests so as to prevent Japan from gaining direct territorial holdings on the Asian mainland, and near the Russian Pacific border. With the support of this multi-national diplomatic coalition,

Russia was able to threaten Japan with war, with the support of two of the largest other European

73 Witte, 227 62

Powers and thereby force Japan, who while capable of defeating China was in no position to oppose Germany, France, and Russia simultaneously, conceded to the Triple Intervention and renounced their claim Liaodong Peninsula in exchange for roughly an additional thousand tons of silver from Qing China.74 Here, just like in Persia two decades prior, Russia used her international gravitas to bring in additional and interested European parties to roll back the gains of a Russian foreign policy rival. Such was clearly the behavior of a competent and well managed foreign policy apparatus as the cooperation of Germany and France, together, did not come easily for the support of Russian interests given the lost standing rivalry and conflict between the two.

In conjunction with the terms of the Triple Intervention, Germany, France, Britain, and

Russia did then collude to various degrees to offer the clearly bankrupt Chinese state, loans and financial support so that it could make good on the reparations terms forced upon her. These loans brought greater Russian influence to the Chinese state, and secured for France and

Germany the pretext to occupy various ports and economic centers on the Chinese mainland.

Again, in direct parallels to her diplomatic behavior in Persia, Russia had maneuvered a weak regional power into a position where it opposed a Russian rival at the cost of being forced to accept a substantial Russian state loan. While the terms of the Chinese loan were such that it was backed through French investment schemes, Russian state banks were the primary granting parties to the loan, and to whom the Chinese state would be ultimately responsible for its repayment.75 These conditions granted Russian financiers and state interests greater influence in

Chinese state policy, and opened up avenues for German, French, and British occupation of

Chinese trade ports. It furthermore granted Russia the opportunity she had long desired, the

74 BDFA: Sino-Japanese War and Triple Intervention, 1894-1895 , 417. 75 Ibid 399-400 63

ability to more directly impact and interact with the Korean state.

Following the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese conflict, Korea was granted its independence from China practically at the point of Japanese arms. With Japan having occupied the peninsula early in the conflict, its fate as a sovereign state was relatively secure from that point on. Under international pressure however, Japan did not attempt to annex Korea directly at tСe аar’s conclusТon. RatСer, Japan opted to grant Korea full sovereТgntв outsТde of QТng CСТna, and her own control over policy issues, both foreign and domestic in nature. This, coupled with a standing Japanese presence in the country of both a military and economic nature, placed the post-war Korea firmly within the Japanese sphere of influence. Despite Russian gains in the north with the Japanese surrender of the Liaodong annexation, Russian policy makers pushed for greater Russian influence and economic concessions in Korea. It was these efforts that would be the focus of Russo-Japanese relations for the next decade, and it is over Korea that the two powers would eventually go to war.

With Russian financial intrigues in China granting Russia as much influence and power as she dared grab, Korea was to be the next logical target. Again, as in Persia a combination or

Russian diplomacy and pressures would be applied in attempts to pull Korea into the Russian sphere of influence, and away from Japan. The first major step in the process was accomplished in 1894 when, following total Korean independence from China, the Russian state offered to assist the Korean throne in modernizing their army and training a fighting force capable of dealing with any and all internal Korean unrest. This process was very well received by the sitting Korean monarch, Empress Myeongseong (regent for Emperor Gojong) who held deeply anti-Japanese aims and saw Russia as an agent of salvation from ever increasing Japanese influences in Korea. By 1896, just prior to the establishment of the Korean Empire, Russian

military advisors were present in the Korean capital and were directly responsible for the training and partТal equТppТng of tСe “rabble аСТcС does dutв as soldТers” аСo аould tСen be responsТble for Korean internal security.76 With Russian ties increasing to the Korean regime, Japan was dealt nearly intolerable setbacks as Korea, as state for whom Japan had little respect, pulled itself closer and closer into the orbit of Russia. This situation was made all the more unacceptable to

Japan when, in 1897, Russian forces landed in the southern Korean port of Pusan, directly adjacent to Japan, and began to establish a military encampment to drill both Russian and Korean troops, but also to establish a Russian coaling and supply base in Korea. This move was a direct affront to Japanese interest, not only since it allowed Korea to gain closer ties with Russia, but also because the Japanese maintained their own coaling station in the Pusan area. The presence of Russian troops in both the capital and the key port of Pusan was hailed openly by the Korean

Emperor аСo аas “alarmed bв tСe presence of tСe Japanese” especТallв after pro-Japanese agents assassinated his wife and regent the year before.77 Just as in Persia, the furnishing of accommodations and pay for these officers was furnished by the host state, that in this instance being the Korean throne. With a total of 159 officers, men, specialists, and medical personnel assigned to the Russian training mission, cost to the Korean state was approximately $89,720 per year.78 A considerable sum, especially when considering the $3,000,000 debt to Japan that the

Korean state had been saddled with since 1895.79 While Russia would attempt to transfer Korean state debt, just as it had done with Persian debt to Britain, it would be ultimately unsuccessful and be forced to settle for military and diplomatic influence in Korea without major economic ties. The Russian military situation in the territory was fast to improve however when Russia,

76 BDFA: Japan and North-East Asia, 1890-1899, 224-225. 77 Ibid, 255. 78 Ibid, 257. 79 Ibid, .225. 65

suddenly and without warning moved to occupy the Liaodong Peninsula that Japan had finally evacuated.

Immediately following the Japanese evacuation of the Laiodong in 1897, as had been arranged by the terms of the Triple Intervention, Russian forces crossed the Pacific frontier and took up roughly the same positions their Japanese rivals had weeks before. With the Chinese state indebted to Russia, and with Japan kept at bay though the cooperation of Germany (who received Russian support for German forces to land in China), and France (who opposed

Japanese expansionism and came to favor the terms of the new peace arrangement), Russian forces were able to land in force and extract a lease on the Liaodong Peninsula, and the fortified center of Port Arthur for themselves without a single shot being fired. Despite Japanese outrage at this blatant Russian opportunism and expansionism, there was little left that Japan could do to oppose them. With rebellion fermenting in Formosa and international disapproval for her handling of the Sino-Japanese War, (especially the sinking of an unarmed British merchantman during the conflict and the killing of a German military advisor to China) Japan was left with little recourse. It is exactly this situation and the Russian hand in creating it that represents not only the skill and competency of the late-Czarist Foreign Ministry, especially the one left behind following the death of Tsar Alexander III, but also defines the relationship between Russia and

Japan. It is at this point, with Russian forces occupying Port Arthur, and Japan consolidating her new holdings that Korea once again becomes the focus of both Russian and Japanese attentions.

With Russia now strategically straddling the peninsula from the north, and with Japanese policy makers seething over Russian coopting of their perceived war gains, Korea is placed in the center of these two, now deeply bitter rivals.

With the Korean dynastic leadership wholly in the Russian camp, the continued Japanese

military and commercial presence in Japan was under direct Russian threat. With Russian occupation of Port Arthur in December of 1897, the Russian Empire had gained a well- established and fortified port to not only base her navy, but also her Asiatic trade, south of the icy waters of Vladivostok. This new port also gave Russia a new base in close proximity to the

Korean national border from which her policies could be directed, and influence applied to China or Korea. It was from that point that Russia suggested, for the first time, the establishment of

Russian protectorate over Korea in direct opposition to Japan. While the Korean Emperor was so friendly with the Russian state that he took refuge in the Russian Mission following the assassination of his wife, he did not desire to relinquish the new independence and power he has just so recently been granted through Japanese belligerence. Despite Russian insinuations to the

Korean throne that a joint Anglo-Japanese armada and occupation force might move against

Korea, the Emperor held firm and politely declined Russian inquires about establishing the

Korean protectorate. Despite this setback, the Korean Emperor remarked in the days following the Russian occupation of Liaodong and Port Arthur that he hoped that ties between Russia and

Korea аould groа “tТgСter and stronger”80.

These Russian moves inflamed Japanese officials as well as public sentiment across the

Japanese Empire. It was clearly seen in Japan that Russian annexation of the Liaodong was a stab in the back of Japan, a great trick Russian officials had planned at the time of the Triple

Intervention, and a loss of Japanese honor with Russia pilfering Japanese war gains. It was however at this crucial juncture of Russian expansion and Japanese outrage that both parties seemed to come to a diplomatic solution to their impasses in Korea. As was characteristic of the

Foreign Ministry of Tsar Alexander III and early Nicholas II eras, following Russian gains, diplomatic overtures were made to secure those gains and to forestall any possible conflict.

80 Ibid, 299. 67

Signed by representatives of both the Russian and Japanese governments in1898, the terms of the diplomatic accord formally bound both parties to recognize the others rights and standing influences in Korea, and that no further attempts would be made by either to upset either the military or the fiscal situation of the Korean state without consultation of the other party.81 With these terms in place, the Russo-Japanese tensions over Korea began to relax. As the Russian state disassembled the beginnings of a Russo-Korean Bank it had begun to charter, the Japanese state moved to withdraw a fraction of their troops and paramilitary police from Korea, and to cease their state sponsored harassment of Russian merchants in Korea. Finally, and most crucially, both states bound themselves to recognize the independence of Korea, and pledged not to assail that independence at any future point. As tensions finally began to evaporate in Korea, Russia moved to consolidate her hold in the region and to bind these new gains more directly to the Russian

Empire.

To assuage European concerns over the Russian occupation of Port Arthur and the wintering of the Russian fleet there from 1897 to 1898, Russia declared that the port and territory would naturally be open to all foreign trade and visits from ships of any flag.82 It was from this point that Russia refocused her energies internally and on the completion of the Trans-Siberian

Railway. As the rail project had moved forward, Russian grain exports from Siberia had steadily increased.83 As the usefulness of the Trans-Siberian line became more apparent with each mile of track laid, the Russian Foreign Ministry, acting through its Minister to China sought to expand the Pacific railhead of the line to incorporate the new Russian occupied territory of Port Arthur, and the Liaodong Peninsula under the guise of supporting foreign trade into Russia.84 It was

81 Ibid, 351. 82 BDFA: Japan and North-East Asia, 1898-1906 (Frederick, MD: Univ. Publ. of America, 1985), 1-4. 83 П, 158-164 . 84 Malozemoff, 121. 68

through this Minister that Russia aimed to purchase a right of way for a rail line to connect from

Vladivostok through Chinese Manchuria into the newly occupied territories of Liaodong. These efforts, following Russian moves into Liaodong were aimed at shoring up these new gains and solidifying the Russian hold on their much coveted stronghold at Port Arthur. By connecting the new port stronghold to the rest of the Russian Far Eastern rail network, regional traders who already favored using Port Arthur due to the guaranteed revenue the Russian Far Eastern squadron and base garrison provided, would then be able to access the wider Russian Far Eastern market. Furthermore, and more important to Japan, connecting Port Arthur to the rest of the

Russian rail network would allow for the bulk of the Russian Army to move down the partially completed Trans-Siberian Railway and assail Japanese interests in Korea and China. This circumstance, was exactly what Russian ministers and general had desТred sТnce tСe 1870’s, but also one that Japan saw as an unacceptable threat to their position in Korea. Despite prior

Russian assurances, changes in the Japanese government and the movement of the Russian Far

Eastern squadron to Port Arthur made old hostilities did not die easily in Tokyo. Japanese leaders, most specifically the War Minister in consultation with the British Minister to Japan saw these Russian reinforcements to Port Arthur in conjunction with the affront to the Russian seizure of the territory as the openings moves to a full Russian move against the whole of Korea.85 This

Japanese paranoia became all the more exacerbated by the refocusing of Russian Far Eastern policy in 1900 towards a more definite policy of reinforcing their previous gains and securing rail lines through Chinese Manchuria. This policy of retrenchment and reinforcement was approved by the vast majority of the Asiatic Department as its member were typically conservative and believed that the securing of new rail connections in Manchuria and the

RussТan Far East аould gТve RussТa “a free Сand Тn tСe Far East and taker Сer proper place on tСe

85 Ibid 69

sСores of tСe PacТfТc”.86

Russian policy with China had become all the easier to implement as a result of the

Chinese weakness and the need for Russian intervention during the Boxer Rebellion of 1899.

Russia was able to expand on the right of way and construction rights it had gained from China in 1896 for Chinese Eastern Railway, and develop a new line that would directly connect

Vladivostok, the greater Trans-Siberian Railway, and the new stronghold at Port Arthur as well as the rest of the Russian occupied Liaodong Peninsula. By 1902 Russia had begun to station substantial bodies of troops along the Chinese Eastern Railway to deal with local Chinese raiders. These forces, seen in St. Petersburg as a defensive measure and one in line with their policy of retrenchment was seen by Japan as further expansion by a belligerent Russia. With

Russian troops in Korea, Chinese Manchuria, and Liaodong, Japanese leaders were becoming increasingly convinced that only direct conflict could halt the Russian advance and secure

Japanese interests on the Asian continent.

In an attempt to secure their international interests and prevent a repeat of the Russian international alliance from the Triple Intervention, in 1902 Japan moved to further her long standing ties of friendship with Britain, and forged the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, a defensive measure that would have brought British aid to Japan should she enter war with Russia and

Russia receive European aid. This maneuver largely limited the likelihood of British entanglement in a Russo-Japanese conflict, but also eliminated the possibility of Russia bringing

Germany or France to her aid militarily, as she had diplomatically in 1895. This diplomatic coup caught the Russian Foreign Ministry, now permeated with the less competent appointees of

Nicholas II off guard and without a great deal of recourse. Russian policy makers, still seeing their new 20th Century policy objectives in Asia as defensive rather than offensive, failed to fully

86 Ibid,123. 70

grasp the level of tension with Japan, nor the implications of Japanese animosity leading, eventually to open conflict by 1904, and the ultimate failure of Russian policy in the Far East.

With Russian failures to mitigate Japanese anger, and a blindness to see how their actions in the region since the occupation of Liaodong offered Japan a relatively legitimate casus belli,

Russian domestic disharmony began to play a greater and greater role in shaping Far Eastern policy, especially in the mind of its chief architect, Sergei Witte. As Witte and the other Nicholas

II appointees began to act in the Far East in response to tensions and sentiments in European

Russia, this agenda would finally crash the Russian ship of state against the growing reef of

Japanese militarism and anti-Russian resentment.87

In a final attempt at diplomacy, Japanese diplomatic agents in St. Petersburg delivered to tСe Tsar’s government, terms for tСe basТs of negotiations on Manchuria, Korea, and the placement of Russian and Japanese troops in the region in July of 1903. Despite a Russian counter-proposal and negotiations that lasted into January of 1904, Russia refused to recognize

Japanese authority in Korea and therefore strongly indicated future expansionary designs therein.

While this situation was largely organized by Tsar Nicholas II and some select ministers aiming to restore Russian domestic tranquility with a victorious foreign war, Ministers familiar with the

Far East such as Sergei Witte denounced such moves as foolhardy and reckless given the incomplete nature of Russian logistical supply lines and garrisons on the Pacific Coast. This final breakdown in diplomacy convinced the last remnants of resistance within the Japanese state that war with Russia was an inevitability, and one that needed to be enacted under Japanese impetus.

This decision, thought impossible my the Russian Foreign Ministry highlights just how inaccurate Russian views of Japan were, and how far the Foreign Ministry had fallen since its

87 David MacLaren McDonald. United Government and Foreign Policy in Russia, 1900-1914. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 28. 71

diplomatic coup in the Triple Intervention.

While Russia still believed that a war with Japan that the Tsar now wanted, due to domestic unrest, could be started and fought on her terms, Japan initiated the conflict on

February 8th, 1904. With fast and decisive strikes at the Russian forward operating garrison and

Asiatic Squadron at Port Arthur, Russian plans for the Pacific were quickly crippled. For over a year and a half, Russian forces were stuffed down the still incomplete Trans-Siberian Railway and into the battlefields of Manchuria, Port Arthur, and Liaodong. Just as Japan had done with

China, Japanese forces outclassed their numerically superior Russian opponents and nearly every turn. Instead of a war with Japan breaking open Korea for Russian interests and permanently securing Manchuria as a territory within the Russian sphere of influence, Russian diplomatic maneuvers of the last three decades where tramped by the onrushing advances of Japanese forces on both land and sea.

Despite expending extraordinary efforts to combat the Japanese, incomplete Russian lines of supply, command incompetency, and overall war strategy doomed the Russian Far Eastern policy. This disaster was finally culminated with the utter destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet at the devastating Battle of Tsushima. With Russian land forces in retreat on nearly every front, the bulk of her naval assets from both the west and the east sunk beneath the waves of the

Pacific, and social unrest across the Empire at its worst in more than a century, the Tsar and his ministers were finally forced to admit defeat at the heads of their regional rivals in Asia. This defeat and the mismanagement of Russian foreign policy after the death of Alexander III had not only led to a rolling back of nearly all Russian territorial, political, and economic gains since the

1880’s, Тt also tСreatened to undo tСe verв basТs of RussТan autocracв. АТtС rТots breakТng out Тn

European Russia, with army forces refusing to obey marching order, with the defection of naval

unТts Тn tСe Black Sea, and аТtС tСe collapse of natТonal prТde Тn AsТa, tСe Tsar’s state аas Тn grave peril, a peril entirely of its own making.

In the final analysis of the tsarist Era’s Far Eastern polТcв, tСe makТng and breakТng poТnts of tСТs polТcв are paТnfullв clear. Under tСe dТrectТon of Tsar’s Aleбander II and III, RussТan policy and diplomacy was enacted with a skilled hand. Gains were made progressively while an understanding of the international nature of Korea, and especially China during the 19th Century was clearly observed. Russian policy goals in this era of building, did build off of one another logically and with a clear and steady rhythm. This era culminated directly following the death of

Alexander III with the compilation of the Triple Intervention. Russia, as the clear leader of an international alliance of her own design was able to not only counteract Japanese war gains, but also maneuver herself into a position for future growth and success with both Korea and Japan.

The summoning of such a decisive international group speaks volumes to the capabilities and competency of the Russian Foreign Ministry as well as the Asiatic Department assembled under

Alexander III.

These measures and policies did truly begin to crumble, and eventually collapse during, and as a result of the reign of Nicholas II. Under Nicholas II, many ministers and seasoned agents within the Foreign Ministry moved out of state service due to age or the appointment of

Nicholas favorites. This left both an experience, and a policy gap between the new and old guards in the vital policy apparatus. Continued and rapid expansion became the order of the day in Asia, nearly every day. Russian objectives were no longer domestically managed with any real degree of respect or even attention to Japan, rather Japan was looked upon as a regional paper tТger at аСose eбpense, RussТan gaТns could and sСould come. TСТs neа “understandТng” and

“unТfТcatТon” of government policy while delivering successes like the Russian occupation of

Liaodong, and a Russian rail network in Chinese Manchuria dangerously angered Japan, a state with whom Russia had never truly mended any political fences.88

The resulting conflict that Russia clearly staggered into without proper preparation rolled back nearly every Russian Far Eastern Policy victory of the past several decades. Russian influence in Korea evaporated, the crucial outpost and naval base at Port Arthur was in Japanese hands, Russian forces were expelled from Manchuria, leaving the Chinese Eastern Railway well outside of Russian reach, and Russian supply lines from Asia to its base and trade port at

Vladivostok were severed. To perhaps further underscore the disaster of the Far Eastern Policy under NТcСolas II’s leadersСТp, rebellТon and revolutТon splТt RussТa apart Тn 1905, brТngТng about a quasi-legislature, elections, and nearly toppling the entire autocratic system, all from a botched war in Asia. This failure also catapulted a new era of Japanese aggression and unbridled expansion and influence in Korea and China, largely at Russian expense.89

With these two eras of Far Eastern Policy in mind, the nature of how Russia saw and interacted with Japan on the diplomatic stage in this period comes into decisive focus. Unlike with their other crucial non-European neighbor Persia, Russian policy saw Japan as a regional player in the Asiatic theater whose policy objectives were respected, or at least recognized in the implementation of Russian policy during the reigns of Alexander II and III. Russian relations with Japan should not be regarded as parallel to Britain however. Despite the regional rivalry between Russian and Japan, Russia had the ability to decisively assail Japanese objectives and behaviors with international cooperation and consensus, a tool of diplomacy Russia largely lacked against Britain, at least on the same scale. The result of this scenario left Russia and Japan in an interesting no-mans-land of diplomacy. While the overall strength and power of the Russian

88 Ibid, 77. 89 BDFA: North-East Asia after the Russo-Japanese War 1905-1914 (Frederick, MD: Univ. Publ. of America, 1985) 126-130. 74

state was vastly superior to that of Japan, Russia had few options to wield that power in the remote reaches of the Pacific. For Japan, Russia represented an increasingly dangerous and unreasonably expansionist power who, for the sake of Japanese hegemony in North-East Asia would need to be dealt with. From the Russian perspective, Japan only represented a major diplomatic and political obstacle due to its distance and the relative weakness of Russian on the

Pacific coast. These circumstances resulted in a type of regional rivalry unfamiliar to Russian relations, and one that would eventually be bungled so badly that the whole of the Russian

Empire would show signs of strain.

These continuities and circumstances would not end with the Treaty of Portsmouth and the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Instead, Russian and Japanese relations would continue to conflict in Asia and the terms of these policy conflicts would remain relatively the same. While Japan lacked the reach of a global empire like Britain, Germany, or France, they had a great deal of regional strength in Asia that they would bring to bear against Russia from time to time in the 20th Century. Russia would continue to see Japan as a rival, a party whose interests ran in conflict with those of herself and with whom armed conflict might be required.

Furthermore, as the preponderance of Russian populations, military strength, policy energies, and industry lay in European Russia, the relative weakness of the Russian Pacific has remained somewhat constant since 1903. With these continuities on mind, approaching the era of Russian diplomatic affairs after the October Revolution and the rise of Marxist Bolshevism presents several opportunities and challenges, ones that this study will tackle directly.

Examining the diplomatic affairs of the Soviet Union following the dissolution of the tsarist Russian Empire in regards to Persia and Japan allows this study to grasp the continuities in diplomatic affairs that transcend political ideology, regime change, and economic restructuring.

It is precisely these continuities that allow for a better historical perspective on these new regimes. Despite political or regime changes, some matters of statecraft and diplomatic affairs remain constant. Such an examination will also note the shifts in diplomacy that come with changes in political outlook and ideological objectives following regime change. In regard to

Russia and the later Soviet Union, understanding exactly where party ideology impacted foreign policy, and how that impact shifted policy objectives and behavior can also provide us with a better picture of the regime itself, its goals, and how it perceived the states around it.

FROM THE KREMLIN TO KHOMEINI

In October of 1917, the Bolshevik Party of Russia seized power in St. Petersburg and toppled the sitting Provisional Government, the somewhat legal continuation of government following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the final removal of his autocratic regime. This violent change in regimes in Russia did not however reflect a change in regimes or the geopolitical positions of either Persia or Japan. Despite few major developments in tsarist policy towards Persia during the First World War, the state of the Persian regime was much the same as it was in the first decade of the 20th Century; the Qajar throne was bankrupt, horrifically mismanaged, inept at both domestic and foreign policy, and had surrendered much of its sovereignty to Russia and Britain. This state of affairs left a Persia whose common populace was in relatively the same circumstances as those of Revolutionary Russia, economically oppressed, disenfranchised, and seething with resentment towards a blundering autocrat. These circumstances had only become more exacerbated with Persia was occupied by Russia, the

Ottoman Empire, and Britain during the First World War, bring further economic hardship and military oppression to an already discontented people.

When the warring powers finally withdrew the body of their forces from Persia at the end of the conflict, the only domestic fighting force of any substantial value in the country remained the Russian trained and equipped Persian Cossack Brigade. As the government of the young and tragТcallв portlв AСmad SСāС QāУār largelв faТled to restore publТc order, and confТdence Тn tСe state, the stage was set for a coup and the downfall of yet another autocrat. This growing instability was made all the more severe when the Russian Civil War boiled over into northern

Persia and Bolshevik assistance was brought to likeminded revolutionaries in the collapsing state.

On May 18th 1920, Red Army forces under the direction of War Commissar Leon Trotsky pushed through Russian Transcaucasia and across the Caspian Sea to capture the Persian coast, the trade ports there, and arms stockpiles rumored to be left behind by tsarist forces.90 Having acted on orders from Trotsky and the Bolshevik Central Committee, this invasion represents the first move made by the future Soviet government in regard to Persia, and it was a decisive continuation of the tsarist-era policy of interference and overlord-ship by Russian agents in

Persia. Since the mid-19th Century, Russian influence and control in Persia was a decisive factor in Persian governance and policy. With the collapse of the tsarist regime and the Provisional

Government, the Bolsheviks had few concerns in entering and politically influencing a territory like Northern Persia, long regarded as being within the Russian sphere of influence, practically like a protectorate. With the arrival of Red Army forces, drawn largely from Transcaucasia,

Bolshevik commanders moved to spread their revolution to Persia and fill the clear power vacuum the First World War and collapsing Qajar throne had left the state in.91

These efforts to arm and support domestic Persian communists and anti-monarchists would continue lines of intrigue and Russian intervention in Persian domestic affairs that had long been a pattern in Russo-Persian relations during the tsarist period. For the first time however, the regime in Russia was not aiming to gain favor or influence with the Persian throne.

They were seeking a political revolution, and they were willing to arm and support such a revolution to continue their influence in the region. This came at a crucial juncture in Persian culture and polТtТcal conscТousness, at a tТme аСen “tСe аТllТngness of ТndТvТduals to acquТesce passively in decisions made by traditional authorities was no longer assured”, and аСen tСe

Persia state was largely dysfunctional, Bolshevik leaders believed they could influence a regime

90 1920 'BOLSHEVIK INVASION OF PERSIA.', The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), 20 May, p. 5, viewed 6 April, 2014, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article11474000 91 Firuz Kazemzadeh. The Struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917-1921 (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), 291. 78

change and bring about a Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran beholden to the Bolsheviks, by force.92 It was at this time of Persian domestic crisis that the Red Army chose to arm the non- communist Jangalis rebels who had long opposed the Shah, Britain, and Imperial Russia, and also the Iranian Communist Party, a force of growing if un-tempered strength within Persia.93 By the end of the year, these revolutionaries were preparing for a march on Tehran to overthrow the regime there and secure Russian influence and ideological consistency. It was at this time when

British and Persian monarchists intervened and drove Russian influences from Persia with force of arms. TСТs defeat for tСe SovТet’s ТnterventТon came at tСe Сands of RussТa’s tradТtТonal rТval Тn

Persia, Britain. This rivalry dynamic had not changed as a result of regime change in the Russian heartland and would be one future Soviet leaders would need to continue to deal with, just as their tsarist predecessors had.

As early as 1918, Bolshevik intentions on Persia had been made clear, and were a clear continuation on tsarist lines of interest. Persia continued to be the Russian gateway to India, and unlike during the previous regime when Russian designs on India were purely the stuff of fantasy and a British bugaboo, Bolshevik leaders saw an actual Soviet drive on to India as a necessity of global revolution. According to Bolshevik mouthpiece Konstantin Kroynovsky in 1918:

“IndТa Тs our prТncТpal obУectТve. PersТa Тs tСe onlв patС open to IndТa. TСe PersТan revolution is the key to the revolution of all the Orient, just as Egypt and the Suez Canal are the key to the British domination of the Orient, Persia is the Suez Canal of the Revolution. If we shift the political center of gravity to the revolutionary movement to Persia, the Suez Canal loses its strategic value and importance. For the success of the Oriental Revolution Persia is the first nation that must be conquered by the Soviets. Thus precious key to the uprising of the Orient must be in the hands of Bolshevism, cost what it may. Persia must be ours. Persia must belong to tСe revolutТon.”94

92 Cosroe CСaqùrТ. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920-1921 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), 1. 93 ibid 94 Fatemi, 129 79

Despite the stresses and bloodletting of the First World War, British foreign policy still saw its vital interests in Persia, and that British intervention, to counteract this dramatic escalation in Russo/Bolshevik aggression would be required. With British intelligence reports piling up at the ForeТgn OffТce tСat BolsСevТk forces аere “tamperТng аТtС” and ТnfТltratТng аСat few standing Persian military units were left capable of action throughout 1920, British intervention to secure Persia and to cut off further Bolshevik advances was deemed a necessity.95

Britain still had military forces on the ground in Persia despite a major evacuation following the

Paris Peace Conference in 1918. When Bolshevik forces assaulted into Northern Persia from the

Caspian Sea with destroyers, torpedo boats, and a large contingent of troops, British interest in

Persia demanded a response as did their recent history of greater influence following the collapse of tСe Tsar’s regТme.96 With British forces on the offensive against the Jangali and the Iranian

Communist Party, the Iranian SSR that the latter of these groups had declared was doomed to military defeat. Again, despite the names of the parties involved, and a shift in Russian political

Тdeologв, tСe centurв’s old rТvalrв betаeen RussТan and Britain over influence and power in

Persia remained a constant. It was at this time however, that the large scale use of arms was deciding the balance of this influence, rather than trade and diplomacy. This escalation of tension and the use of direct military action is significant for both how it represented the larger caldron of conflict that the proto-Soviet Union had become, and also how they, in these early days, saw the rifle and the bayonet as their chief tools of international policy and revolution. This clash of empires in Central Asia would not cease with the death of Nicholas II, nor would the strategic and economic value of Persia diminish to either of these two states with the rise of Russian

Bolshevism. With Bolshevik designs on Persia defeated by British imperial strength and the

95 BDFA: Persia I: Jan. 1919-June 1921 (Frederick, MD: Univ. Publ. of America, 1985), 153. 96 Ibid, 160. 80

Qajar regime about to breathe its last, Persia would continue to be a conflict point for diplomatic ambitions from both the east and west in the 20th Century.

SТnce SovТet ambТtТons Тn PersТa Сad been dampened bв tСeТr allТes’ defeat at the hands of

British forces and the anti-communist Persian Cossacks, in August of 1920 Moscow ordered the

Soviet Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs to negotiate a new treaty with Persia in light of the impending defeat of the allies in the country. While the Qajar government and their British backers opposed any such negotiations, after the final Qajar overthrow in a military coup on

February 21st, 1921, the Bolsheviks were quick to formalize diplomatic relations with the new

Pahlavi regime and signed the 1921 Russo-Persian Treaty of Friendship less than a week after

Reza Shah Pahlavi took power in Tehran. This treaty directly referenced the Treaty of

Turkmenchay and annulled its articles in the spirit of a new diplomatic relationship between

Bolshevik Russia, and the ascendant Pahlavi dynasty. The main body of the document outlined provisions that prevented anti-Pahlavi or anti-Bolshevik factions from finding sanctuary in the territory of either party, though it did outline some new commercial provisions for increasing trade between the two parties via the Caspian Sea. No longer to be a Russian lake, the Caspian was now fully open to Persian flagged commercial traffic and their presence in Bolshevik ports, especially Baku was encouraged through later diplomatic measures. While Russian relations to

Persia had been strained, this new treaty can be seen as a continuation of tsarist era arrangements, and a relatively new chapter in Russo-Persian relations. Unlike in the tsarist period, Bolshevik leaders saw their setbacks in Persia as ones they could not afford to attempt to reverse militarily. Instead, they were content to leave the autocratic Pahlavi regime alone in exchange for peaceful relations, and the possibility of future diplomatic opportunities. The treaty further guaranteed a continuation of Russian influence and a limited military presence in

northern Persia, at least until the withdrawal of anti-Bolshevik (i.e British) forces from the whole of the country.97 Following the Treaty of Friendship, the new Soviet Union dedicated its energies to continued influence and power in Persia, but through similar subtle means as their tsarist predecessors had. With the failure of armed intervention, the printing press, trade, and political organizations became the primary tools of Soviet diplomacy with Persia, just as had been the case with tsarist diplomacy.

By 1922, continued Soviet military presences in northern Persia were little more than token garrisons to prevent the possibility of Russian Whites from organizing in the territory, so

Soviet political penetration now depended on developing pro-Soviet sympathies among Persian intellectuals, labor unions, urban populations, and the increasing of revenues from Persian markets. With the formal exile of the Qajar shah from Persia (now to referred to as Iran) in 1925, the new Pahlavi Shah set out to suppress as many of these pro-Soviet factions as possible while leaving Soviet trade relatively in peace. This then forced a change in Soviet policy whereby their political education and indoctrination efforts became more focused on the minority populations near the Soviet-Iranian border such as the Armenians and the Assyrians.98 It was from this point, until the outbreak of the Second World War when Russian influence in Iran suffered its lowest levels in decades. Political and diplomatic respect in the Pahlavi court was relatively minimal, and the trade between the two states continued to decline over the next decade. In direct reflection of this Soviet marginalization, British influence in Iran experienced a unprecedented high with British trade and commercial interests gaining substantial concessions from the Pahlavi throne in exchange for favorable trade conditions, several British-backed loans, and British military aid. Gone were the days of Russian troops running the streets of Tehran, now Soviet

97 Sicker. 45. 98 Ibid, 47. 82

agents were greeted coolly by the Iranian regime, and British agents were given leave to repeatedly interfere with Soviet trade missions and what commercial interests remained. This ebb and flow of Russian fortunes bares a striking similarity to the subtle sparring that went on between British and Imperial Russian interests for the last half century in Iran. Only the outbreak of a second global war would reverse Soviet fortunes and again bring Iran to the fore in the minds of Soviet foreign policy officials.

Throughout the late 1920s and into the 1930s, the Iranian Shah sought to further disconnect his state from the Soviet Union and reduce his reliance on Soviet manufactured goods and minerals. To accomplish this, he strengthened ties to Britain, Germany, the United States, and even Japan hoping to further marginalize Soviet influence and neuter their ability to interfere in Iranian domestic affairs. While these efforts were largely successful the onset of the Second

World War, and specifically the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 would again recast the Iranian relationship with the Soviet Union. As outline in the Nazi-SovТet Pact’s secret protocols, tСe

Soviet Union claimed for itself a sphere of influence and domination that would extend across all of Iran and towards India, a perception that was recognized and assured by the German delegation. Despite this, Iranian ties to Germany remained strong until the German invasion of the Soviet Union thrust Iran into the forefront of the embattled and unforgiving Stalinist regime.

With the war coming to the Soviet Union and away from the battlefields of Western Europe, Iran would again suffer occupation by the belligerent powers and become a pawn in the international scene. With Soviet forces engaged in a life and death struggle to halt the German advance, the possibility of direct Soviet involvement in Iran was relatively nil, however with British and

Soviet interests now aligned for the first time since 1917, the British Foreign Office approached tСe SovТets аТtС an offer sТmТlar to tСe one tСeв Сad floated over fortв вears prТor to tСe Tsar’s

regime, declared British and Russian zones of influence in Iran.99 This potential division of the country and the insinuations it carried for joint military occupation were largely aimed at reducТng tСe capacТtв of “pro-German feelings in [the] Iranian Government as a result of German vТctorТes and of sТgns tСat RussТa Тs becomТng nervous”.100 This offer, warmly received by the besieged Soviet state was ratified into treaty by the Anglo-Soviet Agreement for Mutual

Assistance in July of 1941. While the Soviet Union was still largely incapable of an invasion of the entirety of Iran, with British support, the detailing of a few second-rate divisions was possible for the task.

Prior to the use of military force and acting in concert for the first time, the Soviets and

British jointly demanded that Reza Shah expel all German nationals, diplomats, and technical advisors from the country immediately. Reza Shah, clearly misreading the strength of the Allied resolve ignored their request.101 Ushering in a new age of cooperation totally removed from the policies and behaviors of the Tsarist era, on August 25th, Soviet and British forces entered Iran from tСe nortС and аest so as to “act agaТnst tСe danger created bв СostТle actТvТtТes of Germans

Тn Iran”.102 Therefore, operating under the auspices of the articles of the 1921 Russo-Iranian

Treaty, approximately 90,000 Soviet troops and support personnel moved across the northern border and eventually deposed Reza Shah by September and replaced him with the young crown prince, Muhammad Reza Shah who, with British support, declared a constitutional monarchy that same month.

Now a secure Allied control point, Iran would became a link for the Allies between East and West, acting as both a point of trade and supply between the two, but also as a meeting point

99 Ibid, 56. 100 BDFA: Persia and Afghanistan, January 1940-December 1941 (Frederick, MD: Univ. Publ. of America, 1985), 143. 101 Sicker. 57-58. 102 Alvin Rubinstein. The Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union (New York: Random House, 1966), 183-184. 84

for the major powers. By the final years of the war, American forces had also joined in the occupation of Iran and begun to strengthen their diplomatic ties to the new regime. The Soviets meanwhile had not allowed this opportunity for renewed influence and power projection to be cemented into the post-war years to be lost. Alongside the troops that invaded Iran in 1940, came

Soviet consuls, political officers, and cultural affairs bureaucrats, a preponderance of whom were familiar with Iran and who spoke various levels of Farsi. They established cultural institutions like the Irano-Soviet Society for Cultural Relations, and set about securing as many media and political ties within the country as possible prior to their eventual withdrawal.

Of utmost concern during this period, superseding Soviet interests and cultural and political ties to Iran, was the fate of Iranian oil and which powers would have direct access to in following the end of the war. Despite Soviet overtures early in the occupation, Persian officials turned to Britain and the United States to offer concessions for post-war oil extraction and control of the Persian energy sector. With the Iranian prime minister, Muhammad Saed making it plain that he and his government had no interest in negotiating oil concessions with the Soviets whatsoever, relations between the Soviet and Saed government rapidly deteriorated in 1944.103

By November, Soviet cultural institutions, its propaganda apparatus, and Soviet agents within their zone of Iranian occupation had fermented enough public opposition to Saed, protests, and riots, that Saed was compelled to resign.

While the Soviets still failed to gain any major oil concessions at this point, they continued to tighten their political and military grip in Iran, especially in the north of the country.

Such was the strength of their control and the vigor with which the USSR was undertaking these efforts that the British ambassador in Tehran transmitted in July of 1945 that despite the end of tСe аar “tСere are manв sТgns tСat tСe RussТans are makТng a great effort to obtaТn vТrtual

103 Sicker, 62-63. 85

masterв over [Iran] before tСe moment of evacuatТon.”104 Though such an evacuation was inevitable as British and American forces would not allow for a continued Soviet occupation, the terms and time of the evacuation were being pushed by Moscow to ensure they still held substantial sway in Iran following their withdrawal. To accomplish this, the Soviet Union set out to establish northern Iran as a buffer territory under their influence, much the way that the Tsars had done in the previous century. To compound this, frontier and customs posts on the Irano-

Soviet border were destroyed, the Communist Party of Iran was trained and supplied from the

Soviet zone of occupation, and travel between southern Iran and the Soviet controlled north had been nearly halted since 1943. They further declared the Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan in

TabrТг (part of tСe IranТan state bodв under SovТet occupatТon) and tСe KurdТsС People’s

Republic. These steps signaled to the world that the Soviet Union was establishing a clear zone of influence, if not an outright annexation of northern Iran. Under pressure from the United

States and Britain, Soviet media announced on March 1st, 1946 that beginning the following day,

Soviet troops would begin a full-scale withdrawn from north-eastern Iran, but not the newly established republics to the north-west.105 It was clear that the Soviet Union was holding these territories hostage until an oil concession was granted by the Iranian state. Just as their autocratic forbearers , the Soviets were motivated and dealt in terms of economic concessions from Iran, and were largely disinterested in direct annexation or land gains in the Central Asian state. With this point made clear, and mounting American pressure to resolve the situation, the Iranian government conceded in April to an arrangement that granted the Soviet Union a controlling interest in a joint oil venture in exchange for the total withdrawal of their military from Iranian soil. Thus with their economic interests met and a firm political hold on the affairs of northern

104 Ibid, 67. 105 Ibid, 76. 86

Iran, after five years of occupation Soviet forces withdrew from the whole of Iran on May 9th,

1946.

It was at this point, that cycle of Russo-Iranian relations seems to have been restored to tСe status Тt аas Тn tСe 1890’s. TСe tСreat of RussТan mТlТtarв ТnterventТon Тn IranТan affaТrs аas a constant concern, Russian masters held control of numerous economic and commodities operations in northern and central Iran, and the government in Tehran understood that Russian feelings would need to be taken into account before they acted on most matters. That is to say, that despite the anomalous Soviet intervention, a restoration of 1895 Russo-Iranian relations had largely been achieved, with a return to Irano-Soviet relations being enacted through

“propaganda, border actТvТtТes, and dТplomatТc pressure.”106 Furthermore, a continuity of British predominance in southern Iran was continued with a strengthening of Anglo-Iranian ties due to the heave hand the Soviet Union had used to gain Iranian oil concessions. This situation would however, would continuously swing away from Soviet favor.

Having used a very blunt approach to securing sway in Iran, the government in Tehran now saw the Soviet Union as far more of a threat than an ally or partner, certainly a power they would not want to be beholden to. Therefore, despite their acquiescence to the joint Iran Sovneft

Oil Company venture, the Iranian government of Muhammad Reza Shah granted few concessions or took little from the Soviet Union. In fact, with Stalinist policies having so soured relations between Moscow and Tehran, in October of 1955, Iran formally joined the Baghdad

Pact, a defensive Middle East and Central Asian alliance oriented for defense against the Soviet

Union, thereby formally casting the Iranian lot in with the West, and crushing any Soviet hopes at an alliance, military ties, or political alignment with Tehran.

106 Special Evaluation No. 39, 27 July 1950 Possibility of Soviet Aggression Against Iran. In Central Intelligence Agency Online Library. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and- monographs/assessing-the-soviet-threat-the-early-cold-war-years/docs.html 87

Over the next two decades, billions of dollars and pounds sterling in military and economic aid poured into Iran from the west, equipping her with a capitalist economy and one of the most modern military machines in the region. While Soviet intrigue and bribery continued to try and worm its way into the Iranian state, the ties they had established in northern Persia at the end of the Second World War were largely dismantled by an imperial Iranian regime that would brook no domestic opposition to its rule. While communist and Soviet influences would remain alive in Iran, these would be driven underground and become non-factors in the arena of diplomatic relations. The only major victory that the Soviet Union would accomplish with the government of Muhammad Reza Shah in the post-war period would be a 1962 agreement that offered Iranian vows to never allow nuclear arms on their soil to the Soviet Union. While this sвmbolТc gesture dТd toucС off an era or moderate, regТonal cooperatТon betаeen tСe SСaС’s government and Moscow in northern Iran, few real policy or substantive changes in policy or trade between the two.

By the time the Pahlavi Shah was finally driven from power in 1979, relations with the

Soviet Union had remained relatively stagnant over the past two decades. The United States had clearlв enУoвed tСe lТon’s sСare of PersТa dТplomatТc attentТon, and ImperТal Iran аas unquestionably a strong US ally with an infrastructural, transportation, and military largely of

US origin. Furthermore, the SСaС Сad been Сeld Тn poаer tСrougС tСe turbulent 1970’s аТtС US military, intelligence, and financial assistance; key points of policy and friendship the Soviet

UnТon never offered or аere Тnvolved аТtС. АТtС tСe collapse of tСe SСaС’s regТme, tСe basТs for

Russo-Iranian relations changed nearly as dramatically as they had when the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 and attempted a march on Tehran a few years later. With the rise of an Islamic judicial theocracy in Iran, this study is brought to its logical conclusion in regard to that state.

The nature, and the language of Iranian international dialogue radically departs at this point from a century of continuity, and despite a recent return to this continuity, continued narration would prove disjointed. In the final analysis, this study has aimed to shed light on two major points in

Russo-Persia/Iranian relations. Primarily, that of diplomatic and functional competence of the late-Tsarist regime prior to the collapse brought on by Nicholas II, and the dramatic continuity of

Russo-Persian/Iranian relations that threads from the Tsarist to the Soviet period. Despite changes in regime, political ideology, and geopolitical aspirations, the relative affairs of the two states in 1865 and 1965 shared a great many continuities. Military intervention by Russia was largely avoided over diplomatic and economic negotiation and diplomacy. Tehran continued to be a crossroad of diplomatic conflict between east and west, and the ways in which both sides of this rivalry attempted to gain favor and influence also experienced little change. It is through this understanding of continuity in diplomatic relations that scholars should examine how states and people interact over time and through regime changes. Domestic politics seem, at the conclusion, to have little long-term impact on the affairs of states in the so-called RussТan “near abroad”.

With these two conclusions in mind, this study would like to, at last look at the affairs of the

Soviet Union/Russia and Japan in the years following the February Revolution and until the final

American occupation and reformation of the Japanese state. Here, as in Persia/Iran the trails of diplomatic continuity seem to largely transcend political ideology and regime change.

TOKYO TROUBLES

The end of the Russo-Japanese War and the Treaty of Portsmouth was not the final word in the affairs of Russia and Japan in Asia in the 20th century. The war and its settlement set the stage for a new era of rivalry, resentment, and reconquest that pitted the two states against one another on terms not unlike before the bloody struggle. Despite the overthrow of autocracy in

Russia, Japan continued its path as a constitutional monarchy whose executive and ministers acted much the same as Russian autocracy had. With these regimes in mind relations between the two states only soured after the rise of Russian Bolshevism. As Japan was allied with Britain and

France in the First World War, when and Allied Expeditionary Force landed in Russia to purportedly counteract the Bolshevik Revolution, Japan took this opportunity to entirely disembowel what Russian strength and presence remained on the Pacific coast. Unsurprisingly, this deeply poisoned Russo-Japanese relatТons. TСe tаo countrТes’ roles as regТonal rТvals and competitors for influence in Asia remained solid.

In 1918, under the auspices of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Russia Japanese,

American, and British forces landed on the Russian Pacific coast to, somehow, assist anti-

Bolshevik forces in Russia and undo the gains of the February Revolution. While the western powers quickly withdrew a bulk of the forces from the boondoggle, Japan occupied and looted the major Russian ports at and around Vladivostok until 1922. This continued Japanese occupation enraged the Bolsheviks in Moscow but, due to the pressing concerns of the Russian

Civil War, they were largely unable to enact any sort of an expulsion of the Japanese occupation.

When the damaged husk of Vladivostok was eventually occupied by Bolshevik forces at the end of the Russian Civil War in October of 1922, Russian power and influence in the Pacific was practically nonexistent. Bolshevik Russian trade with Japan was nonexistent, and diplomatic

relations between two were both irregular and disjointed. Furthermore, while Bolshevik forces attempted to reestablish control and a military presence in the Pacific, in 1920 Japanese forces had assaulted Russian settlements and occupied the whole of the Sakhalin, discussed previously as a long-standing and current point of contention between Japan and Russia. With Japan triumphant in nearly every arena her leaders desired, the nascent Soviet Union was left with no realistic means to halt by force of arms or international pressure Japanese advances. By 1924, the

Soviets had restored their lost infrastructure in the Pacific and were looking to rectify Japanese aggression and occupation of their territory. To this matter, negotiations were carried out between the two states in Hong Kong for a majority of the year, which resulted in Soviet-Japanese Basic

Convention of 1924. This treaty granted the Soviet Union formal diplomatic recognition by

Japan, normalized political and trade relations, and called for a new commercial and navigation treaty so as to aid in the recovery of their international trade.107 Within the treaty, the Soviet state agreed to abide by the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth per Japanese request; highlighting

Japanese paranoia of Soviet expansionary objectives. Furthermore, the treaty body made clear

Japanese acquiescence to Soviet demands to withdraw from northern Sakhalin the Japanese occupation force that had been there since 1920. While this Convention did not ally or even promote any great quantity of friendship between the two powers, it was the necessary starting point for relations between the two rivals.

Despite Soviet international revolutionary objectives, just as in the Tsarist period, the ability of the Russian leadership to project power to the Pacific and directly challenge the regionally based Japanese was exceptionally limited and therefore was not a realistic goal for the spreading of international communism under Bolshevik direction. Instead, the Soviets and

107 Japan and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - Convention embodying basic rules of the Relations between Japan and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, together with Protocols A and B, Declaration, Exchange of Notes, Annexed Note and Protocol of Signature. Peking, January 20, 1925 91

Japanese entered into a period of cool diplomatic relations and moderately terse dialogue highlighted by an increase in trade and a normalization of trade and commercial laws. The Soviet

Union, as power who clearly needed to reconsolidate itself after the horrifically bloody Russian

Civil War, looked not to Japan, or Korea, or even mainland China to gain strength in the Pacific, instead, as their Tsarist predecessors had, they looked internally to their own state and

Тnfrastructure Тn tСe mТd to late 1920’s so as to Тncrease tСeТr real strengtС, and abТlТtв to proУect strength in the Pacific.

The first major recipient of this attention was the Trans-Siberian Railway. Damaged and heavily used during the Russian Civil War, the railway required substantial repair and improvement to meet even the most basic and regular logistical needs of Soviet citizens and military garrisons in the Far East. With the advent of corrective labor camps (later known as gulag camps) in 1918, the Soviet state was equipped with a fair quantity of penal and slave labor to conduct repairs and improvements on the Trans-Siberian Line.108 These efforts were targeted,

Уust as tСe TsarТst MТnТster АТtte Сad Тntended аТtС tСe lТne’s orТgТnal constructТon, to strengtСen

European RussТa’s tТes to tСe Far East and provТde for tСe rapТd transport of supplТed and mТlТtarв personnel. This effort was largely successful, and by 1932 regular trade was flowing from Asia, through Vladivostok, down the Trans-Siberian, and into continental Russia. This effort also allowed for the rebuilding of a Soviet naval presence in the Pacific and the reestablishment of

Vladivostok as a base of Soviet naval power. While the Soviet fleet continued to be dwarfed by that of Japan, Britain, and even China, Soviet military power was returning to the shores of the

Pacific in similar fashion to the building of Tsarist military strength in the 1870s and 1880s.

During this period of Soviet reorganization, Japan continued to enjoy a brutal and exploitative occupation of Korea, eliminating that state as a sovereign power and solidifying

108 Richard Malt. History of the Trans-Siberian (Seattle, WA: Jupiter Press. 1993), 62. 92

their hold both on the Asian continent, but also in the commodities marketplaces across the

Pacific. To further these goals, Japan also expanded her army and modernized her navy, despite the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty. Furthermore, Japanese policy towards China became increasingly aggressive, almost to the level of European Great Powers at the end of the

Opium Wars of the previous century. This era did not however result in a renewal of open aggression against Russia. While Japan and the Soviet Union were still certainly opposed in long-term policy goals, few conflicts resulted during this period from those conflicts. What few disputes there were had to be settled diplomatically, just as had been the case in the early days of

Tsarist expansion into the Pacific while Russian strength was still low. To highlight this cycle back to diplomacy, long standing Soviet and Japanese disputes regarding fishery rights on the

Soviet Pacific coast were settled in early 1928 with the signing of the Soviet-Japanese Fishery

Accord.109

As the 1920s lurched into the 1930s and the global financial system of lending and commerce collapsed, Soviet strength on the Pacific had largely been reestablished, and

Vladivostok was being transformed into a modern (if seasonally ice bound) port and naval base for the Soviet trade and military fleets in the Pacific. This reestablishment of Soviet strength corresponded, Уust as Тt Сad under tСe Tsar’s regТme аТtС deterТoratТon of relatТons аТtС Japan. As the Soviets and Japanese remained regional rivals in the Pacific, Japan, just as it had done with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance before the Russo-Japanese War, sought international support and protection against the threat of Soviet expansionism. This was accomplished by their signing onto the appropriately named 1936Anti-Comintern Pact, an accord directly and plainly stating its terms as a defensive alliance against Soviet communism and its global objectives. This treaty set off a collapse of Soviet-Japanese relations and the withdrawal of most Soviet diplomatic

109 League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. 80, 342-399. 93

personnel from Tokyo (though this was relatively short lived). This downturn in Russo-Japanese relations was also a result of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria following the Japanese concocted Mukden Incident. With the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, and the establishment of the Japanese stooge state Manchukuo under the nominal direction of Tokyo loyalist Henry

Puyi, Japanese troops were placed on the Russian border, a situation intolerable and extremely disconcerting to the Soviet regime. This Japanese aggression corresponded to a marked build-up of Soviet forces in the Far East and the preparation of a defense against possible, and predicted

Japanese incursion. As diplomatic relations between the two old rivals finally collapsed in 1937 and 1938, credit, trade, and nearly all other commercial activities between the Soviet state and

Japan ceased, with open conflict soon to follow.110

In July of 1938, Japanese troops in occupied Manchukuo launched an incursion into

Soviet territory near Vladivostok, claiming that Soviet forces had tampered with the remote, and therefore difficult to monitor boundary markers. While there is no evidence to support this claim,

Japanese forces of both infantry and armor crossed into Soviet territory, seemingly pressing the resolve of the Soviet state in the Far East. It was exactly this resolve that Japanese commanders and political officials severely doubted. Having received intelligence regarding the weak state of

Soviet forces and border guards by a recent and high-ranking Soviet defector, Japan felt this was the time to press and force a retreat of their long regional rival. The Soviet response to this incursion was remarkably swift and decisive however, if terribly bloody. Soviet forces in the Far

East reinforced their border garrison with additional troops and tanks, and repelled numerous

Japanese assaults with decisive, if costly counter-attacks. Eventually, despite suffering substantially higher casualties, Soviet forces forced a Japanese withdrawal within two weeks and the restoration of the border as defined by the Soviets.

110 Alvin Coox, Nomonhan (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003), 53. 94

This border skirmish, while technically not part of a war signaled the true death of

Soviet-Japanese relations for the next several decades. With Japan on a path of expansionism,

Soviet forces were ideologically incapable of bending to Japanese advances. In a departure however from Tsarist behavior, Russia called on no international aid. While such a call would have likely gone unheeded as the Soviet Union was an international leper, the solidity of the

Stalin regime to deal with this brewing conflict highlights just how inept his state apparatus was in the arena of international affairs when compared to its Imperial Russian predecessor. Leagues away from the international respect and capital needed to rally an international coalition like that of the Triple Intervention, the violation of Soviet borders with blatant Japanese aggression, was met with callous disinterest in European diplomatic circles.

Without any international aid, and with Japan still sensing Soviet weakness, Japanese forces would again cross the Soviet border and attempt to violate Soviet territory in May of 1939 at Khalkhyn Gul with a composite force of the Japanese Sixth Army and Manchukuoan drafted regulars. From May to September various raids, counter-attacks, armored drives, and ambushes played out across the border region of Soviet Mongolia. By the time Japanese forces inside of

Soviet territory were destroyed, captured, or driven out by September, Russian preeminence in

Asia was confirmed, halting all future Japanese plans for assaults into Soviet territory, or further expansion at Soviet expense. This resulted in a de-escalation of Japanese forces on the Soviet border, and a cessation of open hostilities, though a regional rivalry and Soviet resentment would remain firmly entrenched in Moscow.

Despite the signing of a 1941 Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact, at the Yalta conference in

1945, the now clearly victorious Soviet Union vowed to join in the Allied war against Japan folloаТng tСe defeat of HТtler’s Germanв. TСТs move аas clearlв one bв tСe vТctorТous SovТets to

render unto Japan the same reversals and repay the same violations that Japan had casually inflicted on the Soviets following the October Revolution and into the 1930’s. Regardless of Сoа politics, regimes, and diplomacy may have changed the terms of their rapport, the Soviets and

Japanese were still fierce regional rivals whose conflicts did not extend beyond Asia, but were locked in a long game for influence, control, and economic domination of a sphere of influence.

With the defeat of Germany, and the Allied victory all but assured, the Soviets chose to unleash their now primed war machine on their Japanese rivals and reassume control of affairs in continental Asia. While China was mired in its own civil war, Soviet forces thundered across

Manchuria and down into the Korean peninsula before Japan ultimately surrendered to the Allied forces. With a peace treaty not being signed between the Soviet Union and Japan until 1956, all diplomatic relations between the two were terminated until well into the American occupation of the now humbled island nation.

In this intervening decade, the Soviet Union took this opportunity, just as the Japanese had done with the Treaty of Portsmouth, to reshape the balance of power in Asia and to utterly humble their regional rival. Soviet forces quickly occupied all of Sakhalin, as well as the Kuril

Islands, held by Japan since the previous century. Furthermore, the Soviet Union took this opportunity to reshape Korea in its own image and exclude the now locally loathed Japanese from any future interaction with Soviet influence North Korea. While the contemporary stability, sanity, and viability of the Soviet inspired and sponsored DemocratТc People’s RepublТc of Korea is up for debate, what is clear is that, in the same vein as Tsarist Far Eastern Policy ministers,

Soviet officials carved out for themselves a sphere of influence in northern Korea, and created an economic and military partner that was almost entirely beholden to the demands and wishes of

Moscow. Furthermore, the strengthening long term Soviet influence and political capital in Asia.

Japan meanwhile was, as a result of American occupation and the Soviet domination of nearly all of her earlier holdings outside the Japanese Home Islands, reduced to the status of a third rate power and an American satellite. While this development had difficult consequences for the

Soviet Union in the early days of the Cold War, her point had been made, and her policy objectives had been reached.

With Japanese power utterly destroyed, the goals of the Russian state since Alexander III had finally been realized. The Soviet Union enjoyed a strong and vital network of infrastructural points and routes that connected the Soviet Far East with European regions, and sustained the far flung missile fields, naval bases, and population centers on the Soviet Pacific coast. Gone was

Japanese influence on the continent, and triumphant was Soviet aggression and political will.

From Moscow, a sphere of influence had been established over the north Pacific, Korea,

Manchuria, and into mainland China. Japan was finally and utterly marginalized to the point where the relationship between the two states could not be properly or fairly defined as a rivalry.

These goals, if not the overwhelmingly direct means the Soviet Union used to accomplish them were wholly similar to those of the Tsarist system, showing who policy continuities and old rivalries had survived on the icy Russian Pacific coast from the fall of the Tsar to the rise of commissars.

CONCLUSION

This study has aimed to tackle two distinct periods in the history of Russian diplomatic relations, thereby bridging the traditional historiographical divide of either the Russian Empire, or the Soviet Union. An analysis of the clashes and compromises of Russian foreign policy, its goals and ambitions across time and regime have driven this study. By bringing together two divergent and often overlooked areas of study, this thesis hopes to form a contemporarily relevant understanding of the continuities of international politics and the nature of the Tsarist regime.

In the finally summation, two major points of argument stand out. First, the diplomatic and foreign policy arms of the late Tsarist state were not only outstandingly competent, but they achieved more through diplomacy and negotiation than the iron fisted policies of Josef Stalin accomplished in the international arena. Understanding the gross incompetency of Nicholas II and many of the ministers he saw into power, the eras of Alexander II and III brought Imperial

Russia to a point of international standing few other states could have imagined. Despite a weakness in industrial and technological capacity, a society still struggling to emerge from serfdom, and a state economic model that lagged behind her European rivals, Russia was able to spread her influence, trade, and arms from Tehran to Pusan, largely without firing a shot in anger.

It was in these era’s tСat RussТan economТcs eбploded Тnto tСe modern age, RussТan trade surged through a vital network of merchants and supply routes that stretched thousands of miles adding a unique factor to the global commercial equation, and a foreign element to Russian domestic life. Furthermore, Russia was able to rally international support to her banner in times of need, and when her policy objectives could not be fulfilled with Russian strength alone. The most striking example of this cooperation was the Triple Intervention against Japan over the Sino-

Japanese War settlement. Aside from the deft hand required to compile any international coalition to check Japanese advances, Russia was able to bind Germany and France together on the matter. Perhaps the two most bloody and bitter European rivals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Russian diplomats were able to forge their will together for their collective interests, and the benefit of later Russian territorial expansion.

Secondly, this study has highlighted that, despite one of the most radical and dynamic regime changes in political history, the foreign policy objectives and agendas of both the Russian

Empire and the Soviet Union share stunning quantities of continuities when it comes to the two foreign states in question. Political objectives, zones of conflict, state roles, regional players and points of contention, all to one degree or another remained relatively constant in both arenas discussed. While autocracy might have been dead in Russia, and a dictatorship of the people had arisen, the ways that both groups of leaders looked at their non-European neighbors seems to have changed very little. In a contemporary context, understanding exactly how Russia behaves in the long-game, and what impacts, if any, regime change has on the large strokes of foreign policy is as relevant today as it has ever been. With the Russian Federation setting a bold new course in the international arena, and seeming to draw its energies and policies from a mix of

Tsarist, Soviet, and new thinking, this study aims to provide a greater context and points to ponder as this blend of new, old, and exotic Russia pushes forward on the global stage. Setting asТde tСe old mТsconceptТons of RussТa as a poаer “urge[ed] to tСe sea” and as an alТen AsТatТc despotic raider, Russia must be historically and contemporarily understood in her proper contexts.111 These contexts so crucial to future diplomatic discourse are her history as a power, the competency of her regimes, and the continuities of policy through political transitions.

111 Hugh Ragsdale, and V. N. Ponomarev. Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. 1993), 316. 99

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Christopher Hansford, originally of Boxford, Massachusetts graduated from Florida State

University with a B.A in History cum laude in December, 2011. Since that time, under the dТrectТon of Dr. JonatСan Grant, Сe Сas contТnued СТs studТes as a Master’s student Тn tСe

Department of History at Florida State. His work has been received at conferences in both the

United States and abroad, and his work published in two separate scholarly encyclopedias.

103