Durnovo’s memorandum was prescient. On the other hand, can we, in all fairness, state that Russia could have easily avoided that war? The Germans took it for granted that a war with Russia was inevitable and they wanted it sooner rather than later. According to British historian Norman Stone, a concern of the German military was the pace of military reforms in Russia. The German Staff was confident of victory as long as war broke out before 1917. The Germans were worried that by 1917 Russia would reach military parity with them. In other words, Germany was waiting (and hoping) for a pretext to start a war before too late.

WWI, of course, was a disaster to the Russian Empire. Despite Germany’s superb army, however, the war at the Eastern front proved to be much harder than the Germans anticipated. As Stone writes, between August 1914 and November 1916 Russians killed more German soldiers than the Brits and French combined. Moreover, Russia inflicted even more casualties on the Austrian-Hungarians.

“In 1914 he anticipated the outbreak of a European war, the Russian Empire’s defeat by the Central Powers, and the Central Powers’ defeat by the western powers.”

Of course Piłsudski had to believe this, because only this chain of events would result in an independent Poland.

Also worth mentioning the Russian general Aleksei Brusilov. He was the first general to formulate effective offensive tactics to the new reality of trench warfare.

Through circumstances and/or herd-like thinking certain decisions become completely unthinkable at certain points to everybody but the irrelevant fringe. I wonder if the thought of keeping Russia neutral was that unthinkable before WWI. Would Durnovo have been considered an irrelevant lunatic for saying that Russia was unprepared for the kind of war that was about to start? If there was a real debate about neutrality in high circles in Russia, then Nicholas’s decision to go to war would cast him in a pretty bad historical light. Not nearly as bad a light as the Bolsheviks’ of course, but bad enough.

About the pic – I just searched for “sorcerer with sword” or something like that in Google. Didn’t know he was Hennet or had anything to do with Dungeons and Dragons. Though, using the War Nerd’s trademark symbol might have been more accurate / amusing.

Cheers
Igor, AU

IMHO, this text is an extended illustration of the thesis (also in your very first paragraph) – “we don’t know what the WW III will be, however there is a historical evidence that the consequences of the future war most likely will be worse than most of us can even imagine or ever plan for today” .

Cheers
Igor

I’d say it was pretty clearly political considerations!

Durnovo was a conservative monarchist who, though out of power in 1914, had spent twenty years cycling through the highest levels of the Imperial government — he’d been an appeals judge, national Chief of Police, and director of Posts and Telegraphs for the whole country. His tenure as Minister of the Interior was short but action-packed — basically he was responsible for managing the reaction (in both the specific and broad senses) to the 1905 Revolution.

So this was a very, very politically savvy guy. He was going to know exactly who and what he could freely criticize (the Duma and “intellectuals” were fair game) and who he couldn’t (the Czar, most of the current crop of Ministers).

Also, Durnovo was very much a political realist. Look at that long discussion of the relationship with Germany! He’s basically saying “yeah, the Germans are screwing us over in our trade relations. What do you expect? That’s not malice, it’s more like water flowing downhill. Suck it up; the political relationship is more important.” He wanders a bit away from pure realism in his discussion of Britain — you can tell that he just absolutely hates liberalism and the idea of a constitutional “figurehead” monarchy — but even there he tries to couch his arguments in realist terms, i.e. how the post-1907 rapprochement with Britain was detracting from Russia’s security (example: Persia) rather than adding to it. So even where his conservative ideology was clearly affecting his thinking, he at least tried to work around it.

Final point: my understanding is that this memo was intended for the eyes of Nicholas II himself, and that it did eventually reach him. How Durnovo managed that I do not know, but good for him.

Thanks for the shout-out, BTW.

Oh, and… Hennet the (human, male) sorceror?

Doug M.