The Sleepwalkers (46 page)

The most striking feature of Russian Balkan policy in 1911–12 was the weakness of central control and coordination. Stolypin's assassination on 18 September 1911 plunged the system into disarray. The premier had been dead for just ten days when the Italian government issued its ultimatum to the Ottoman government. The new premier, Vladimir Kokovtsov, was still finding his feet. Sazonov was abroad between March and December 1911, convalescing from a serious illness. In his absence, Assistant Foreign Minister Neratov struggled to stay abreast of developments. The reins of ministerial control slackened. The result was a fracturing of Russian policy into parallel and mutually incompatible elements. On the one hand, the Russian ambassador to Constantinople, N. V. Charykov, attempted to exploit the Ottoman Empire's predicament in order to negotiate improved conditions for Russian shipping in the Turkish Straits.
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As the Libyan crisis unfolded, Charykov proposed to the Ottoman government that Russia guarantee Turkish possession of Constantinople along with a defensible Thracian hinterland. In return, the Ottoman government would grant the Russians free passage for warships through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus.
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At the very same time, Nikolai Hartwig, minister in Belgrade, pursued a very different line. Hartwig had been trained within the Asiatic Department of the Russian foreign ministry, a sub-culture characterized by a preference for assertive positions and ruthless methods.
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Since his arrival in the Serbian capital in the autumn of 1909, he had been the champion of an active Russian policy on the Balkan peninsula. He had made no effort to conceal his Austrophobe and pan-Slav views. Andrey Toshev, the Bulgarian minister in the Serbian capital, was doubtless exaggerating when he claimed that ‘step by step [Hartwig] took into his own hands the actual direction of the [Serbian] kingdom', but there is no question that Hartwig occupied a position of unrivalled influence in Belgrade's political life.
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Hartwig's popularity at the court of Tsar Nicholas II and the general lack of vigorous control or scrutiny from St Petersburg meant that, as the chargé d'affaires at the Russian mission in Belgrade ruefully noted, he was relatively free to elaborate his own extreme views, even when these conflicted with the official signals emanating from the ministry. He had ‘secured such a position that he could give the Serbs his own version of the steps Russia was about to take'.
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While Charykov explored the possibility of a lasting rapprochement with Constantinople, Hartwig pushed the Serbs to form an offensive alliance with Bulgaria against the Ottoman Empire. He was in an excellent position to coordinate these efforts, since his old friend Miroslav Spalajković, who had virtually lived at the Russian mission during the scandal of the Friedjung trial, had accepted a posting as the Serbian minister in Sofia, where he helped to smooth the path towards a Serbo-Bulgarian treaty. In addition to pressing his arguments upon the Serbian government, Hartwig plied Assistant Minister Neratov with letters insisting that the formation of a Balkan League against the Ottomans (and, by implication, Austria-Hungary) was the only way to secure Russian interests in the region. ‘The present moment is such,' he told Neratov on 6 October 1911, three days after the Italian shelling of Tripoli, ‘that both states [Serbia and Bulgaria] would be committing the greatest offence against Russia and Slavdom if they showed even the slightest vacillation.'
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Sazonov thus faced a choice between irreconcilable options when he returned from his convalescence abroad at the end of 1911. He elected to disavow Charykov. The Ottoman government were told to disregard the ambassador's overtures and Charykov was recalled from his post a few months later.
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Sazonov claimed that he was punishing his ambassador for disregarding his instructions, jumping over ‘all the barriers' set by St Petersburg and thereby ‘making a mess of things'.
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But this was a smokescreen: Charykov had secured Assistant Minister Neratov's backing for his proposals, and he was certainly not the only Russian envoy making policy on the trot – Hartwig was a far worse offender in this respect. Sazonov's real reason for disavowing the ambassador to Constantinople was his concern that the moment was not yet ripe for a renewed Russian initiative on the Straits.
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In December 1911, on his way back from his convalescence in Switzerland, Sazonov had learned from Izvolsky and from the Russian ambassador to London, Count Benckendorff, that pressing the Straits question directly would place relations with France and Britain under strain. British attitudes were a particular concern, because the winter of 1911–12 saw the re-emergence of tensions over the Anglo-Russian settlement in Persia. The worse these tensions became, the less likely it was that Britain would adopt a benevolent view of Russian objectives in the Straits question. Meanwhile, Russia's lukewarm support for France's Moroccan adventure in the spring and summer of 1911 had loosened the link to Paris. The French government was in any case reluctant to see the Russians gain improved access to the Eastern Mediterranean, which they regarded as their own sphere of interest. Most importantly of all, the immense scale of French investment in the Ottoman Empire made Paris deeply suspicious of any Russian initiative that looked likely to compromise its financial health. At a time when the bonds holding the Entente together appeared relatively weak, potentially divisive proposals on an area of such strategic importance as the Turkish Straits were inopportune. For the moment, in other words, Sazonov was obliged to prioritize the cohesion of the Entente over Russian interest in improved access to the Straits.

At the same time as he disassociated himself from Charykov's initiative, Sazonov supported Hartwig's pro-Serbian and leaguist policy on the Balkans, as a means both of countering Austrian designs and applying indirect pressure to the Ottomans. But the Russian foreign minister was careful to avoid challenging the Ottomans in a way that might alienate the western Entente partners. The desire to exploit the opportunities opening up on the Bosphorus had to be balanced against the risks of acting alone. He encouraged the Italians in their hit-and-run raids on the Dardanelles, even though these were likely to trigger a Turkish closure of the waterway that would severely disrupt Russian commercial traffic. Sazonov told the British and the French that his aim was to draw Italy into a Balkan partnership; as he told Sir Charles Buchanan, the British ambassador in St Petersburg, he saw in the Italians ‘a valuable counterpoise to Austria'; in reality he hoped that the Italian raids might at some point offer the Russians an excuse for demanding that their own warships be granted access.
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It was essential, Sazonov told Izvolsky at the beginning of October 1912, that Russia not ‘present herself as rallying and unifying opposition to Turkey'.
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Sergei Sazonov

Sazonov also supported and sponsored the emergence of the Balkan League. He had been an exponent of League policy since coming to office and claimed to be inspired by the vision of half a million bayonets forming a rampart between the central powers and the Balkan states.
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His motives in sponsoring the formation of the Serbo-Bulgarian alliance treaty of March 1912 were both anti-Austrian and anti-Turkish. The treaty stated that the signatories would ‘come to each other's assistance with all of their forces' in the event of ‘any Great Power attempting to annex, occupy or temporarily to invade' any formerly Turkish Balkan territory – a clear, if implicit, reference to Austria, which was suspected of harbouring designs on the Sanjak of Novi Pazar.
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Sazonov knew perfectly well that the Balkan peninsula was likely to become highly unstable in the aftermath of the Libyan War. It was essential, he believed, that Russia remain in control of any resulting conflict. The terms of the Serbo-Bulgarian treaty accordingly assigned to Russia a coordinating and arbitrating role in any post-conflict settlement. A secret protocol stipulated that the signatories were to advise Russia in advance of their intention to wage war; if the two states disagreed on whether or when to commence an attack (on Turkey), a Russian veto would be binding. If an agreement over the partitioning of conquered territory proved elusive, the issue must be submitted to arbitration by Russia: the decision of Russia was binding for both parties to the treaty.
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The alliance thus looked likely to serve as a valuable tool for the pursuit of Russian interests.
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Yet some doubts remained. Past experience suggested that the Balkan League Russia had helped to create might not prove obedient to the promptings of St Petersburg. Disagreement on this point had led in October and November 1911 to a bitter feud between Hartwig, who favoured an aggressive Balkan League policy, and A.V.Nekliudov, the Russian minister in Sofia, who worried that the resulting alliance would slip out of Russian control. Nekliudov had a point: what if the two signatory states did in fact agree on the feasibility and timing of an attack? In that case, the Russian treaty veto would be meaningless (this is indeed what happened). And what if the two signatories recruited other neighbouring states – Montenegro and Greece, for example – to their coalition without consulting St Petersburg? This, too, happened: Russia was informed of, but not consulted about, the secret military articles attached to the alliance; St Petersburg's objections to the inclusion of Montenegro and Greece were disregarded. The League threatened to slip out of control even before it had come fully into being.
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When the Balkan tiger leapt out of its cage in October 1912, Sazonov made demonstrative but largely gestural efforts to restrain it. The Russian ambassador in London was informed, on the one hand, that he should not consent to any proposals that involved Russia collaborating with Austria.
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At the same time, the League states were warned that they could not count on Russian assistance.
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These admonitions must have sounded strange to Serbian and Bulgarian ears, given the encouragement both states had received from Russia to make common cause against the Turks. Milenko Vesnić, the Serbian envoy to France, recalled a meeting with Sazonov in Paris in October 1912, just as the war was beginning. Speaking before a group of French officials at the Quai d'Orsay, Sazonov told Vesnić that he believed the Serbian mobilization had been an ‘ill-conceived démarche' and that it was crucial that the war be contained and brought to a swift close. Irritated but undaunted, Vesnić reminded Sazonov that the Russian foreign ministry had had ‘full knowledge of the agreement struck between Serbia and Bulgaria'. Embarrassed – French officials were present! – Sazonov replied that this was true, but that it applied only to the first treaty, which was ‘merely defensive' – a dubious assertion, to say the least.
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Russian diplomacy was playing two roles – instigator and peacekeeper – at the same time. Sazonov told Sofia that he did not object to a Balkan war as such, but was concerned about timing: a Balkan war might trigger broader consequences, and Russia was not yet militarily ready to risk a general conflagration.
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The confusion generated by Sazonov's own ambivalent messaging was compounded by the enthuasiastic warmongering of Hartwig and the Russian military attaché in Sofia, who both encouraged their respective interlocutors to believe that if things did go wrong, Russia would not leave the Balkan ‘little brothers' to fend for themselves. It was reported that Nekliudov, the Russian minister in Sofia, ‘wept' for joy when the Serbo-Bulgarian mobilizations were announced.
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But what if Russian Balkan policy, instead of furthering Russian designs on the Straits, were to place them at risk? The political leadership in St Petersburg could live with the idea that the Straits would remain for the time being under the relatively weak custodianship of the Ottomans, but the notion that another power might put down a root on the banks of the Bosphorus was utterly unacceptable. In October 1912, the unexpectedly rapid advance of the Bulgarian armies on the Chataldja line in eastern Thrace – the last great defensive works before the Ottoman capital – alarmed Sazonov and his colleagues. How should Russia respond if the Bulgarians, whose wilful king was known to aspire to the ancient crown of Byzantium, were to seize and occupy Constantinople? In that event, Sazonov told Buchanan, ‘Russia would be obliged to warn them off,' for, he added rather disengenuously, ‘though Russia had no desire to establish herself at Constantinople she could not allow any other power to take possession of it'.
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In a letter to Nekliudov that was copied to the legations at Paris, London, Constantinople and Belgrade, Sazonov deployed the familiar argument that a Bulgarian seizure of Constantinople would turn Russian public opinion against Sofia.
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An ominous warning was issued to the Bulgarian minister in St Petersburg: ‘Do not enter Constantinople under any circumstances because you will otherwise complicate your affairs too gravely.'
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Only the blood-soaked collapse of the Bulgarian advance on the Chataldja line of fortifications saved Sazonov from having to intervene in a manner that might have unsettled the allied powers.