The Twilight of Russian Empire

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William Anthony Hay, The Twilight of Empire. Before revolution was a ruinous war. What led Russia into the conflagration. Wall Street Journal, Aug 30, 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-twilight-of-empire-1440796313
(book review on Dominic Lieven, The End of Tsarist Empire. The march to World War I and revolution. Viking, Aug 18, 2015)

Quote:

"In the years before World War I, both Anglo-American rapprochement and Germany’s alliance with Austria-Hungary were grounded in cultural affinity. Russian ties with Slavic and Orthodox peoples, by contrast, triggered foreign conflict with little compensating advantage. The country’s Slavophile movement, which linked patriotism with a mission to protect fellow Slavs, fueled confrontation with Ottoman Turkey and, later, Austria. Russia’s economic vitality relied on exports through the Black Sea, but the trade there was hostage to disruptions in the Balkans. The result, for Russia, was the intensification of a decline that was already under way. And 'no political regime or society,' Mr Lieven notes, 'manages decline easily.'

"The czarist autocracy and the forced labor of serfdom had made Russia one of the great 18th-century empires of Eurasia. But after 1815, Russia failed to match the growth of great-power rivals to the west.

"Then, suddenly, defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 nearly overthrew the czarist regime.  Russian politics revolved thereafter around whether and how far to pursue a Western path of liberalization. * * * There was too little flexibility in a system that desperately needed to bend away from absolutism and gradually change its shape. * * * Russia had an unworkable governing structure.

choi

Note:
(a) The review, Mr Hay, is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University.
(b) "Alexander III, not a liberal in any sense, had warned his foreign minister in 1887 that ;if we lose the confidence of public opinion in our foreign policy, then all is lost.' ”

Alexander III of Russia (1845-1894; reign 1881-1894; highly conservative and reversed some of the liberal reforms of his father, Alexander II [assassinated in 1881]; eldest son was future Nicholas II [born 1868])

(c) "During Nicholas’s reign, three chairmen of the council of ministers—Serge Witte, Petr Stolypin and Vladimir Kokovtsov—sought a path by which Russia might adapt without further upheaval. As Mr Lieven shows, all were pragmatic modernizers. Witte envisioned a natural alliance of French capital and German technology with Russian resources. Kokovtsov believed that Russia, with an empire vast enough to occupy its people for generations, had the least need of any power for an expansionist policy abroad. Stolypin went further, calling anything but a 'strictly defensive policy' the mark of 'an insane government' and likely to put the dynasty at risk. None of these men, however, had a voice in the 1914 crisis."
(i) Sergei Witt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Witte
(1849-1915; "was called upon by the Tsar to negotiate an end to the Russo-Japanese War. He was sent as the Russian Emperor's plenipotentiary * * * Witte is credited with negotiating brilliantly on Russia's behalf. Russia lost little in" Treaty of Portsmouth; author of the October Manifesto [qv] of 1905, a precursor to Russia's first constitution [of 1905]; 1st Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire Nov 6, 1905-May 5, 1906)
(ii) Pyotr Stolypin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Stolypin
(1862-1911; 3rd Chairman of Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire 1906-1911; shot by a revolutionary)
(iii) Vladimir Kokovtsov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Kokovtsov
(1853—1943; 4th Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire 1911 - Jan 30, 1914)

(d) "Austria’s control over Galicia, a hotbed of Ukrainian nationalism, allowed it to threaten one of Russia’s most vulnerable—and vital—territories. After all, Ukraine’s industry and agriculture underpinned Russia’s claim to great-power status."
(i) Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Galicia_and_Lodomeria
(a crownland of the Habsburg Monarchy since the First Partition of Poland in 1772 [when the land] was carved from the entire south-eastern part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth [and made into a kingdom within Austria-Hungary  (1867-1918)]; The name "Galicia" is the Latinized form of Halych[, a city in present-day Ukraine]; This historical region in Eastern Europe is divided today between Poland and Ukraine)
(ii) Russia–Ukraine relations  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–Ukraine_relations
(From the mid-17th century Ukraine was gradually absorbed into the Russian Empire, which was completed in the late 18th century with the Partitions of Poland)

Ukraine was part of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in whose partition, most of Ukraine went to Russia and some to Austria. (After Mongols totally destroyed Kiev in 1240, Ukraine became independent for the first time in 1991 when Soviet Union collapsed.)
(iii) The book review hints of Austria-Hungary's looming over Ukraine.  However, actually it was not Austria-Hungary, but Ukraine nationalists. See Ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine
(section 2.5 19th century, World War I and revolution: Austrian Galicia, under the relatively lenient rule of the Habsburgs, became the center of the nationalist movement)