Gregory Lauder-Frost

Almost finished reading Dominic Lieven’s book The End of Tsarist Russia. Have to say I am disappointed. It is essentially an apologia for Russia entering The Great War. I suppose I should have expected a Russian (even one living abroad) to write a pro-Russian book. (The Slavs are brilliant at shoring up their patriotic positions! But they are for obvious reasons not good reference books.)

But Lieven’s is the usual anti-German, anti-Austro-Hungarian rant, trying to say, on behalf of Russia “it’s not our fault”! He glosses over the French connexion and fails to record the Franco-Russian alliances from 1891 onwards, and how the French wanted war against Germany (revenge for their defeat in 1871); glosses over the simple fact that similar to Britain giving a blank cheque to Poland in 1939, Russia did precisely the same thing to Serbia, which encouraged the fanatics just as Britain had shored them up in Poland.

He then raves on about how the Germans should have forced the hand of Austria-Hungary, a great and prestigious power, whose heir to the throne, plus his wife, had been brutally gunned down in the street by Serbian assassins sent by the Black Hand, in which organisation the Serbian government were covertly involved. He fails to address the precise details of the Austrian position on this as given in the Austrian Red Book, and what any other great power would have done in the circumstances. He also suffers from the old Russian paranoia that everyone wanted to invade Russia. In fact there is no evidence whatsoever that anyone wanted to invade Russia.

The opposite is true: Russia had offensive plans to invade Galicia and East Prussia on several fronts. In addition they had vast loans from the French one condition of which was the laying of new railway lines to the frontiers to enable faster troop deployments. Whilst his access to some of the private papers in the Russian archives is good, this access was always available to scholars, even under the Bolsheviks who were keen to show that the Russians were in it up to the neck; in addition, it only gives the position of the Russians. He fails to consult and cite the vast volume of The Kautsky Papers containing all the German Diplomatic papers, ciphers, memos, telegrams, letters, meetings, etc., leading up to the outbreak of war where it is abundantly clear the Germans did not want a war and were falling over themselves to avoid it, being the very last country to mobilise.

So basically he is just another Versailles historian, but from the Russian perspective. Maybe he should have read Count Max Montgelas’ excellent 1925 book The Case for the Central Powers, before he wrote this. Germany had absolutely nothing whatsoever to gain from a European war.