Grigory Rasputin was spending the summer of 1914 in Siberia with his wife and children when on the afternoon of June 29 [1] he was stabbed in the abdomen by a former prostitute named Khioniya Kozmishna Guseva. “I’ve killed the Antichrist!” she screamed as she was mobbed by angry villagers. Rasputin staggered back into his house clutching his entrails in his hand. He was critically ill for ten days but a skilled doctor and his own enormous physical strength finally pulled him through. One cynic remarked on his survival that, “the soul of this cursed muzhik was sewn on his body.” [2]
One day earlier and thousands of miles away the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated in Sarajevo. As the events of the next month drifted towards war Tsar Nicholas maintained an almost casual indifference to the gathering threat. After all, “the German emperor had frequently assured him of his sincere desire to safeguard the peace of Europe.” Rasputin was recovering in his bed in Siberia and fully alert to the danger, one of the few people who accurately foresaw the coming disaster. He sent a letter to Nicholas coached in his mystical, prophetic style, “A terrible storm menaces Russia … Woe, disaster, suffering without end … Do not let fools triumph. Do not let them do this thing.” Nicholas did not respond and continued with his summer activities.
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28 and began the bombardment of Belgrade the next day. Nicholas signed the orders for partial mobilization along the Austro-Hungarian frontier on July 29 and general mobilization on July 30 with great reluctance at the urging of foreign minister Sazonov. “Think of the responsibility you advise me to take,” he declaimed, “It would mean sending hundreds of thousands of Russians to their deaths.” Also on July 30, Austria-Hungary declared general mobilization. Germany delivered an ultimatum to Russia, demanding a halt to her mobilization, on July 31 and then declared war on its expiration. When Empress Alexandra learned the news she fled to her bedroom weeping, “War! And I knew nothing of it! This is the end of everything!”
The Essay on Czarist Regime Nicholas War Russian
Nicholas I and Nicholas II both struggled with similar uncertainties of a possible revolution. Both came to a conclusion with a strong resemblance, and yet at the same time remained drastically different when their rule ended. While the names may suggest that Nicholas I was the father of Nicholas II, Nicholas I was actually Nicholas II's great granduncle. The summarized history of their terms ...
These are the events that actually occurred. But let us suppose that Rasputin had not been gravely wounded in the attack. He would surely have returned to St. Petersburg as the war crisis grew and used his considerable influence to try to avert it. The German born Empress Alexandra was completely under his sway by this time and could have been worked into a state of near hysteria. One or the other of them might have prevailed on Nicholas to show a greater degree of restraint at the moment of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. Although there is a certain sense of inevitability in the month’s fatal chain of events it remained true that only the Tsar could order the mobilization of the Russian army. If the Tsar had held back then Germany and in turn France must have also.
There is a precedent for imagining that this might have been possible. In 1913 at the outbreak of the Second Balkan War, Nicholas was warned of the danger of war with Germany by his advisers. “All is in the will of God,” he responded. Rasputin’s own response was much more alarmist, “Let the Turks and foreigners eat each other. They are blind, and this is their misfortune … Fear, fear War.” One newspaper credited Rasputin with having preserved the peace in 1913. So did Alexandra who reminded her husband, “He always said the Balkans were not worth fighting over.”
Rasputin’s influence over Tsar Nicholas was again at work in 1915. Out for revenge over a perceived threat to his own position, Rasputin manipulated the Tsar into believing that the Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich, commander of the army, was lying about the state of the army as a pretext for forcing the abdication of the Tsar. According to Rasputin the reports from the Grand Duke of food shortages were fabricated to create an excuse for him to retreat. He would then occupy Petrograd [3] and take over the government. In fact the Russian army was reeling back through Poland under the shock of a major German offensive. After a late night drinking session with Rasputin the Tsar dismissed the Grand Duke from the army command, sent him to an obscure post in the Caucasus, and took over the command of the army himself.
The Essay on World War I Austria Russia Serbia
From 1871- 1914 Austria's empire was falling apart. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a leader for Austria. A Serbian in Bosnia shot him to death. What had happened is that he was in Bosnia, since he had just taken over it, and he went to his first meeting with the crowd. When he was there someone threw a grenade at him and he managed to hit it into the crowd. He was going to the other side of town ...
There are three questions then to be asked. Did Rasputin have sufficient influence in the Russian court that he could have deterred Nicholas from committing Russia to the defense of Serbia? Was Nicholas sufficiently powerful that he could have blocked the Russian mobilization order if he chose? And would Russia declining to back Serbia have broken the chain of events that led to the outbreak of a general European war? I will suggest there is a very good chance that had Rasputin been in St. Petersburg at the crucial time he could have persuaded Nicholas to his point of view. In that situation, given the centralization of power in the Russian government, Nicholas could almost certainly have prevented Russia from committing any act that would have been provocative to Germany. And in turn if Russia were reluctant to enter the war, Germany would not have been compelled to enter in the defense of Austria-Hungary and thus France would have had to hold back whether she wished to or not. Then Austria-Hungary would have proceeded to subjugate Serbia and one more of the “powder kegs” in the Balkans would be defused.
Given the web of alliances and tensions in Europe it is often hard to imagine that a general war could have been forestalled indefinitely but warfare had been contained to the Balkans in 1913 and a number of earlier crises had passed peacefully. Russia had watched from the sidelines while Austria-Hungary had absorbed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909 and had not asserted herself when Bulgaria threatened Serbia in 1913. Russia’s response to the crisis of 1914 was much more a matter of her national pride than any vital interests in Serbia. Russia could have acquiesced in the chastisement of Serbia without any injury to herself. The next great European crisis, wherever it would be, might have been years in the future with every chance that diplomacy could again prevail.
The Term Paper on Term Cause Russia Tsar Russian
Explain How Long And Short-term Causes Contributed To The March 1917 Revolution 2) Explain how long and short-term causes contributed to the Bolshevik Revolution. (10) In March 1917, the situation for the Russians had become desperate and the workers wanted political changes as well as food and fuel. In Petrograd (as St. Petersburg had been renamed to avoid any German connection), 40, 000 workers ...
[1] Or June 16, 1914 in the Russian old calendar.
[2] All quotations are from “Rasputin, The Saint Who Sinned”, Brian Moynahan, 1997, a fascinating account of one of the strangest figures in modern European history.
[3] Petrograd was the less German sounding, wartime name for St. Petersburg.
