On the contrary, if Jewish philanthropists bought up and forgave as much as the OPDA as possible, in exchange for the right to settle in Palestine as Ottoman subjects, it could prove a major boon to the Sultan.
Let There Be Peace in the Great European Plain: A History of Teutons and Slavs in the 19th Century.
- Thread starter Zrttr
- Start date
On the contrary, if Jewish philanthropists bought up and forgave as much as the OPDA as possible, in exchange for the right to settle in Palestine as Ottoman subjects, it could prove a major boon to the Sultan.
Still, I don't think getting leniance from its European credors would seem a worhwhile exchange for the Ottomans. Bringing in Jews will definitely make the Arabs made to the point controlling the territory becoming impossible for the Sultan. The Levante also witnessed an economic ressurgency after WWI in our world due in large part to Jewish immigration, but Britain chose to limit arrivals because they feared an imbalance between Arabs and Jews would cause Arabs to gith even harder for independence. Furthermore, considering the high levels of anti-Semitism in Russian Empire, I don't think Constantinople would want to give the Arabs reason to hate Jews, since that would endear them in the eyes of St. Petersburg.
ACT 3
ACT 3:
Mitteleuropa: The German Dream, by Fritz Fischer.
Mitteleuropa: The German Dream, by Fritz Fischer.
The shift from Realpolitik to Weltpolitik represented more than just a schism between an emperor and his chancellor; it marked a tectonic shift in the way Germany and the Germans saw themselves and how they wanted the world to see them. From a state that simply wished to secure its position in the center of the continent, to one that yearned for the same status of global power held by France and Britain. The allure of colonization didn’t have the same sway over Bismarck that it had over the rest of the German establishment, though, which led to his political demise and set in stone the bellicose future of Europe.
The idea of the White Man’s Burden, disseminated by popular writers such as Rudyard Kipling in a time of growing literacy, emboldened Europeans to barge into foreign nations and disrupt local ecosystems of power, since they saw these actions as necessary for the triumph of civilization over barbarism. This feeling was corroborated by how obscenely cheap colonization was, with the greatest expense often being clashes with other colonial powers (the British managed to control India with no more than 20,000 men stationed in the subcontinent at all times). As a whole, European colonialism in the late 19th century can be broadly divided under three categories: financial, strategic or pride driven. A good example of an economic colony was the Dutch East Indies, which provided a protected market for the Netherlands’ goods as well as exclusive rights to the trade of certain cash crops. A strategic colony, on the other hand, offered control over a resource or location that allowed the metropole to expand its sphere of influence, with one such case being the Philippines for the US. However, nothing was as mindboggling as a pride motivated colony, like western Sahara for the Spanish, which was justified under the banner of “civilizing” natives that I already mentioned.
Yet, because Bismarck denied direct support from the German state to the country’s colonial efforts, Germany was largely left out of this race for colonies, as well as some other newly born European powers like Italy. Even the colonies that Germany did manage to acquire were either strategic or pride related; none of them was profitable quite like the Cape Colony or French Indo-China. However, because the increasing complexity of industrial processes caused the need for raw materials and consumer markets to grow rapidly, this stance couldn’t be maintained forever. Bismarck’s doctrine of making Germany first and foremost a balancer of the European system denied the German Empire the ability to seek objectives of its own, since it had place those objectives beneath peace in priority. Ultimately, that would be his downfall, and it was showcased spectacularly in the Berlin Conference over the fate of the Congo.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s square-like shape combined with its general lack of navigable rivers meant that all colonial powers converged at the same time in the center. The Congo soon became the most prized possession in all of Africa, due its central geography and cornucopia of natural resources, especially rubber. Thus, the African jungle instantly became Germany’s ultimate colonial goal. German states had meddled with colonialism previously, such a Frederick William’s efforts to involve Germany in the African slave trade with the Brandenburgisch-Afrikanische Compagnie (Brandenburg African Company), but never to the extent of gobbling up a swath of land the size of the Congo. Getting it would be a major boost to Germany’s prestige and, rather obviously, no longer having to import those raw materials from foreign colonies would help the country's industry significantly. Arguably, the only reason why British industry could still compete with the German one was because of the system of Imperial Preference.
When the European powers gathered at Berlin to discuss the issue, though, Bismarckian politics proved unfit for the task. As it turned out, Realpolitik was marvelous at denying Germany’s opponents the chance to alter the status quo in a way that harmed the Teutonic nation, but it was also very inefficient at bringing about changes that benefitted it. The diplomatic game Bismarck played to pit Great Powers against one another couldn’t be emulated in the African setting, where the German Empire’s effective occupation was little greater than Portugal’s. There were also constant arguments about whether or not the British and French had greater right to the land due to their long-standing presence in the continent. He had spent way too much time worrying about the possibility of Germany being engulfed in a major European war and not enough trying to win it a place in the sun, as Bernhard von Bülow put it. Whereas, if the Germans had sought stakes in the African continent as early as the 1870’s, now the Congo would be theirs. Or, at least, that’s what most Germans thought when the best deal they could get in 1888 amounted to the territory going to King Leopold of Belgium.
By then, the Belgian monarch had spent years lobbying and scheming for that end. For the sake of his own wealth, he had made several incursions into the Congo that could be used as leverage in the Berlin Conference. He knew full well that no Great Power could achieve its ambitions in the Congo without angering the other ones, and thus surrendering the territory to a third party would be the best solution available, especially if this third party was an individual and not a state as was the case with him. The French, British and Germans allowed King Leopold to have the Congo under the very explicit clause that all European powers would be allowed to trade with the Congo Free State equally.
Although the solution of giving the large swath of African land to King Leopold may have saved from Germany the humiliation of being backed into a corner during the negotiations, it was still not the outcome it wanted. Considering the vast empires already under the control of London and Paris, there was an expectancy at Berlin that the Congo would be left to the Germans, which didn’t come true and bred a lot resentment. Therefore, the Berlin Conference would remain the darkest stain in Bismarck’s career, proving that, despite being a genius of continental politics, his Realpolitik had to give way to a new, bolder form of foreign policy. This feeling of righteousness and the need to achieve the status of a global power would thoroughly shape the outlook of Wilhelm II.
The Scramble for Africa, which ensued the Berlin Conference, further displaced the Iron Chancellor in German politics, as he lost ever greater clout due to Germany’s relatively puny colonial empire. Few could remember his successes in politically isolating France and strengthening the Dreikaiserbund by the end of the 1880’s, when a new Kaiser came to power. Bismarck still argued that actually owning colonies was pointless as long as Germany could freely trade with holdings of other countries. Instead, he believed that energy should be spent cementing the country’s position in the European scene. Surprisingly, Kaiser Wilhelm II shared some of that sentiment, as he had grown obsessed with guaranteeing stability in Central Europe, i.e., denying the Poles any sort of autonomy. However, unlike the chancellor, he did not believe in compromising to achieve that goal. Brash and prone to outrage, the Kaiser had big dreams for Germany and concocted megalomaniac war plans to achieve those goals of supremacy in Asia, Africa and sometimes even the Americas.
Most historians blame the third emperor of Germany for the polarization that led to the Weltkrieg. In Heligoland, in Morocco, in the Anglo-German Arms Race... The Kaiser repeatedly doubled down on his unrelenting campaign to increase German influence around the globe. Although he did work his hardest to and ultimately succeeded at maintaining a three-power bloc in the form of the League of the Three Emperors, which was Bismarck’s ultimate goal, he completely ignored the wide ring of anti-German and anti-Russian alliances built around that very same three-power bloc. Had Bismarck remained in the position of Reichskanzler, most people speculate that he would have realized Germany and Russia had antagonized so many nations throughout the world that building an alliance between St. Petersburg, Berlin and Vienna was no longer enough to prevent war.
The idea of the White Man’s Burden, disseminated by popular writers such as Rudyard Kipling in a time of growing literacy, emboldened Europeans to barge into foreign nations and disrupt local ecosystems of power, since they saw these actions as necessary for the triumph of civilization over barbarism. This feeling was corroborated by how obscenely cheap colonization was, with the greatest expense often being clashes with other colonial powers (the British managed to control India with no more than 20,000 men stationed in the subcontinent at all times). As a whole, European colonialism in the late 19th century can be broadly divided under three categories: financial, strategic or pride driven. A good example of an economic colony was the Dutch East Indies, which provided a protected market for the Netherlands’ goods as well as exclusive rights to the trade of certain cash crops. A strategic colony, on the other hand, offered control over a resource or location that allowed the metropole to expand its sphere of influence, with one such case being the Philippines for the US. However, nothing was as mindboggling as a pride motivated colony, like western Sahara for the Spanish, which was justified under the banner of “civilizing” natives that I already mentioned.
Yet, because Bismarck denied direct support from the German state to the country’s colonial efforts, Germany was largely left out of this race for colonies, as well as some other newly born European powers like Italy. Even the colonies that Germany did manage to acquire were either strategic or pride related; none of them was profitable quite like the Cape Colony or French Indo-China. However, because the increasing complexity of industrial processes caused the need for raw materials and consumer markets to grow rapidly, this stance couldn’t be maintained forever. Bismarck’s doctrine of making Germany first and foremost a balancer of the European system denied the German Empire the ability to seek objectives of its own, since it had place those objectives beneath peace in priority. Ultimately, that would be his downfall, and it was showcased spectacularly in the Berlin Conference over the fate of the Congo.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s square-like shape combined with its general lack of navigable rivers meant that all colonial powers converged at the same time in the center. The Congo soon became the most prized possession in all of Africa, due its central geography and cornucopia of natural resources, especially rubber. Thus, the African jungle instantly became Germany’s ultimate colonial goal. German states had meddled with colonialism previously, such a Frederick William’s efforts to involve Germany in the African slave trade with the Brandenburgisch-Afrikanische Compagnie (Brandenburg African Company), but never to the extent of gobbling up a swath of land the size of the Congo. Getting it would be a major boost to Germany’s prestige and, rather obviously, no longer having to import those raw materials from foreign colonies would help the country's industry significantly. Arguably, the only reason why British industry could still compete with the German one was because of the system of Imperial Preference.
When the European powers gathered at Berlin to discuss the issue, though, Bismarckian politics proved unfit for the task. As it turned out, Realpolitik was marvelous at denying Germany’s opponents the chance to alter the status quo in a way that harmed the Teutonic nation, but it was also very inefficient at bringing about changes that benefitted it. The diplomatic game Bismarck played to pit Great Powers against one another couldn’t be emulated in the African setting, where the German Empire’s effective occupation was little greater than Portugal’s. There were also constant arguments about whether or not the British and French had greater right to the land due to their long-standing presence in the continent. He had spent way too much time worrying about the possibility of Germany being engulfed in a major European war and not enough trying to win it a place in the sun, as Bernhard von Bülow put it. Whereas, if the Germans had sought stakes in the African continent as early as the 1870’s, now the Congo would be theirs. Or, at least, that’s what most Germans thought when the best deal they could get in 1888 amounted to the territory going to King Leopold of Belgium.
By then, the Belgian monarch had spent years lobbying and scheming for that end. For the sake of his own wealth, he had made several incursions into the Congo that could be used as leverage in the Berlin Conference. He knew full well that no Great Power could achieve its ambitions in the Congo without angering the other ones, and thus surrendering the territory to a third party would be the best solution available, especially if this third party was an individual and not a state as was the case with him. The French, British and Germans allowed King Leopold to have the Congo under the very explicit clause that all European powers would be allowed to trade with the Congo Free State equally.
Although the solution of giving the large swath of African land to King Leopold may have saved from Germany the humiliation of being backed into a corner during the negotiations, it was still not the outcome it wanted. Considering the vast empires already under the control of London and Paris, there was an expectancy at Berlin that the Congo would be left to the Germans, which didn’t come true and bred a lot resentment. Therefore, the Berlin Conference would remain the darkest stain in Bismarck’s career, proving that, despite being a genius of continental politics, his Realpolitik had to give way to a new, bolder form of foreign policy. This feeling of righteousness and the need to achieve the status of a global power would thoroughly shape the outlook of Wilhelm II.
The Scramble for Africa, which ensued the Berlin Conference, further displaced the Iron Chancellor in German politics, as he lost ever greater clout due to Germany’s relatively puny colonial empire. Few could remember his successes in politically isolating France and strengthening the Dreikaiserbund by the end of the 1880’s, when a new Kaiser came to power. Bismarck still argued that actually owning colonies was pointless as long as Germany could freely trade with holdings of other countries. Instead, he believed that energy should be spent cementing the country’s position in the European scene. Surprisingly, Kaiser Wilhelm II shared some of that sentiment, as he had grown obsessed with guaranteeing stability in Central Europe, i.e., denying the Poles any sort of autonomy. However, unlike the chancellor, he did not believe in compromising to achieve that goal. Brash and prone to outrage, the Kaiser had big dreams for Germany and concocted megalomaniac war plans to achieve those goals of supremacy in Asia, Africa and sometimes even the Americas.
Most historians blame the third emperor of Germany for the polarization that led to the Weltkrieg. In Heligoland, in Morocco, in the Anglo-German Arms Race... The Kaiser repeatedly doubled down on his unrelenting campaign to increase German influence around the globe. Although he did work his hardest to and ultimately succeeded at maintaining a three-power bloc in the form of the League of the Three Emperors, which was Bismarck’s ultimate goal, he completely ignored the wide ring of anti-German and anti-Russian alliances built around that very same three-power bloc. Had Bismarck remained in the position of Reichskanzler, most people speculate that he would have realized Germany and Russia had antagonized so many nations throughout the world that building an alliance between St. Petersburg, Berlin and Vienna was no longer enough to prevent war.
The Build Up to the Second Great Patriotic War, by Yevgeny Tarle
The aftermath of the Serbo-Bulgarian War may have been a very unstable time for Austria-Hungary politically, but it also paved the way for the strengthening of the alliances relied on by the country to secure its existence [1]. When Franz Joseph was forced to concede to Bismarck’s demands of neutrality in the conflict, the Österreich’s status of Great Power was stripped for the entire world to see. Although not a surprise to anyone, having the rug pulled from under them so abruptly pushed the Austro-Hungarians to recognize that they were no longer one of those who choose music, but of those who dance to it. To any diplomat in charge of Austria-Hungary's foreign affairs at the time, the answer would have been the same: walking away from the League of the Three Emperors would result in encirclement by Italy, Serbia, Russia and Germany and the end of the Hapsburg dynasty that had become a staple of European politics.
Still, that didn’t mean all matters were settled. Franz Joseph I, despite being an autocrat and extremely conservative, showed time and time again a high level of temperance during his rule, even when others decried his actions as cowardly or unworthy of the great nation that Austria was supposed to be. He did so in 1853; knowing full well that not joining the Crimean War would stain Vienna in the eyes of the world and result in Prussia unifying Germany, the emperor still chose to stay out of it because of the frail state of the country after the Hungarian uprising in 1848. So, he did the same thing when a telegram from Berlin warned him about Bismarck’s ultimatum. Even if some didn’t want to recognize it before, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was in Russia and Germany’s pockets and Emperor Franz Joseph acted accordingly. Against his decision, rose an array of people who reached back to past losses in wars, such as the Deutscher Krieg, to claim that the failure in bringing Serbia into the Austro-Hungarian sphere of influence was just part of a trend of weakness in the government, a weakness that had to be cleansed by the fires of war.
Although he would only become a serious contender to the throne in 1889, after the suicide of a relative, and the heir apparent in 1896, after the death of his father, the young Franz Ferdinand's firm support for the first camp would prove an invaluable asset as the discussion heated in the 1890’s. The second camp had many supporters among the higher echelons of the Austro-Hungarian armed forces, who, truth be told, held unrealistic expectations about the effectiveness of their army, which was ill-equipped and backwards when compared to the German or French ones. The people who believed that the Austro-Hungarian Empire should regain its glory through war, such as Conrad von Hötzendorf, found a disproportionate amount of support in Hungary. That’s because, almost non-intentionally, this discussion about foreign policy became associated with the ethnic struggles inside Austria-Hungary itself. The Iron Ring that sprung up a couple of years earlier to defend the rights of Slavs throughout the empire had a natural synergy with the more isolationist and reformist faction in the argument. Once this alignment between the pro-minority and isolationist spheres became apparent, with even Eduard Taaffe voicing his support for a less imperialistic Austro-Hungarian foreign policy at a certain point, Hungarian politicians began to floc around Hötzendorf. Hungary’s half of the empire had more muddled borders between the ethnic groups than Austria, and Hungarians were terrified of groups like Serbs, Croats, Slovaks and Romanians seeking independence, to the point of enacting severe Magyarization measures. During the decade that followed the Serbo-Bulgarian War, the Austro-Hungarians went through what some dubbed a “strategic retreat”. Essentially, the plans to become a hegemon over the Danube River Basin were halted, and the country began deferring to Russia in regional affairs that would previously have been handled autonomously.
An instance of Austria-Hungary submitting to the Russian will was when King Alexander I of Serbia became of age to rule. In the previous year, the young monarch had entertained the idea of implementing a coup d'État not only to come to power before reaching maturity, but also to abolish the liberal constitution and bring back the conservative one from 1869. This would be practically an attack upon the ex-members of the People’s Radical Party who had been ruling the country since King Milan I abdicated in the wake of the Serbo-Bulgarian War. Such a time of uncertainty would prove the catalyst to bring Russia and Austria-Hungary together in order to make sure the Balkans didn’t go down a path of chaos. The Austro-Hungarian stance of cooperation was corroborated by Russia’s foreign minister at the time, Nicolay Giers, who had long sought to guarantee peace for the Russian Empire through an array of accords, treaties and pacts with foreign governments. To Giers, the greatest danger about Serbia was a Piedmont-Sardinia situation repeating itself, with the tiny state playing the Great Powers against each other to make room for its own irredentist ambitions. If Alexander I was able to do that, he would 1) threaten Bulgaria’s ambitions by being its most powerful neighbor, thus displeasing the Russians, and 2) definitely try to take Bosnia-Herzegovina, which represented the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s last shred of imperial pride.
Therefore, Giers and Count Gustav Kálnoky, who was the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister at the time, hashed out a deal to present a united policy towards Serbia. The coup couldn’t be avoided, but once the young monarch was in power, both Austria-Hungary and Russia lobbied for the maintenance of the liberal constitution of 1886, since they saw it as a counterbalance to the power of the king. It is worth noting that the irony of an autocratic Tsar allying with an absolutist Emperor to prevent a coupist King from ending a liberal constitution was not lost on the political commentators of the time, who satirized the case mercilessly. With Russian and Austro-Hungarian support, the very same politicians who Alexander intended to deprive of power were able to resist his attempt to bring back the constitution of 1869. Such an early blow to his power plan would result in Alexander I remaining mostly a figurehead monarch throughout his reign, in spite of his often-autocratic ambitions. However, St. Petersburg and Vienna’s efforts to undermine a return to Obrenović autocracy did not mean that they would favor a change in dynasty. Although the two halted the growth in power of Alexander I for fear of Serbian expansion, it was a common belief in both the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires that a Karađorđević king couldn’t be controlled. That’s why, when unsatisfaction began to brew in the Kingdom of Serbia due to the monarch’s choice of wife and the danger of rebellion presented itself, the Tsar and the Emperor intervened as they did.
How Modern Russia Came to Be, by Anna Pankatrova
Tsar Alexander III is one of the most controversial figures in the history of Russia. To Russians, be they Great, Little or White, he’s generally seen is one of the great emperors of history, to whom much of the modern Russian identity is attributed. To most members of minoritary groups, he’s regarded as only a few steps below the devil himself in wickedness. After all, it’s not a coincidence that his most known alias is Kat (Polish for executioner or butcher). It is almost impossible to detangle the political trajectory of the fourteenth Emperor of Russia from his minister, Sergei Witte, though. The Tsar’s social policies and the Prime Minister’s economic ones largely defined modern day Russia to the same degree as Peter I’s reforms during his time, since they kick started the process of industrialization and built the modern Russian identity. However, Witte only became an important figure later in the 1890’s, since Alexander’s first order of business was to quash dissidence and make sure that his father’s fate didn’t befall him too.
Alexander III became emperor in 1888, after a group of radical liberals successfully killed his father. Although he had previously shown reactionary and hyper conservative tendencies during his time as Tsarevich, his ascension to Tsardom sent him even further to the extreme of the political spectrum. Reportedly, his vision for the Russian Empire was at the same time conservative and revolutionary, not to keep things the same, but to change them in a way that strengthened core Russian values even more. The interactions between the German and Russian empires would play a key role in that vision. Like Wilhelm II, the Tsar was extremely distrustful of ethnic minorities, even more so than his predecessors. He was very disapproving of the rights and independence given to certain regions of his empire, believing that reducing the strength of St. Petersburg’s grip over regions like Poland and Finland would lead to unrest and chaos. He sought to further degrade the Uniate Church, seizing almost all of its property over the course of his reign, and pushing the Orthodox Church towards expansion in the vacuum created. His time as Tsar is considered by most the height of the “Russian Inquisition” as a result. His biggest contribution, though, would defnitely be the first steps of “Пэчворк Политика”, or Patchwork Politics.
Although Alexander III didn’t coin the term or turn the policy into an official one of the Russian Empire, he still set the basis for it. Due to being a multi-ethnic empire, with only a little over two thirds of it being some form of Russian in the 1897 census, various areas of the country enjoyed some level of autonomy from the central government. Tsar Alexander not only believed in keeping his autocratic power, but expanding it to these quasi-autonomous regions. The prime target for him was, of course, Poland. The aftermath of the March Uprising saw something akin to a migrant crisis, as about 200,000 Polish people left because of worsening economic conditions and fear of mistreatment from the government. Most of these fled to the New World, especially the US, which gave rise to the infamous and powerful Polish lobby of the nation. However, they also left behind unoccupied job posts in their home towns. Most of these were filled by Russians, thus compounding the process of settlement that the government had been doing in eastern Poland by seizing land from Polish citizens.
The wildfires of 1882 had their sparks lit in the Suwałki Governorate, and in an ironic but still predictable manner, the area was also the stage for the beginning of Patchwork Politics. In 1890, the population of the governate’s capital, Suwałki, became of ethnic Russian majority, as a result of a process of persecution against Polish business owners and civil servants. The decrease in Polish presence in Suwałki was mostly because of Polish emigration, but also because of Jewish Pogroms, but talking about said pogroms is ahead of topic. Alexander III used this as an opportunity to alter the status of the governorate as a whole. Officially, Suwałki remained a part of Congress Poland, but it effectively worked as just another Baltic province of the Russian Empire. A common maxim in Poland at the time states, “autonomy from an autonomous state apparently takes away your autonomy”. This confusing resolution is the origin of the name Patchwork Politics, as Suwałki became an autonomous province of an autonomous province. This would be the case with multiple other towns and cities in Poland over the next few decades, as the Tsars carefully knitted Polish territories together and apart. Piece by piece, patches of Poland were subject to colonization, and once they reached a big enough Russian population, the government in St. Petersburg made it an effective part of the Russian Empire. The Okhrana also played a large role in this, since it instigated clashes between Russians and Poles as a way to justify some of these land grabs. In a manner, it’s similar to how bits of Ireland were gradually settled by people from Great Britain and resulted in the large protestant population of Ulster.
Throughout the entire process, there was great interaction between the German and Russian governments. For example, in 1893, Alexander III pushed a bill, in collaboration with Berlin, to hold Polish citizens accountable for the actions of relatives abroad, especially in Germany, which resulted in thousands of arrests and deportations. Also, German institutions often helped Russian ones in tracking down Polish political refugees and bringing them back to Russia to face proper trial. Under the watchful gaze of Witte, many of these prisoners would be sent to Siberia and other remote regions of the empire, to perform forced labor in the expansion of Russia’s railway system. Speaking of Witte, relationships beyond the government level between Germany and Russia were highly accentuated by his reforms.
Although he favored for an industrialization of Russia with French capital in the beginning of his career, circumstance would force Witte to make do with Marks instead of Francs. There were even some upsides, such as the increased cooperation between the German and Russian empires allowing him to make the terms of the commercial treaty signed in 1894 even more favorable to Russia. Also, despite the fact that French banks were better stablished in the market, a smaller colonial empire to invest in and a larger economy overall meant that German institutions had about 10 billion marks in Russian FDI’s by 1910. Witte’s infamous obsession with infrastructure, being responsible for overhauls to the railways of Odessa and the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, contributed a lot to turn Russia into a powerful economy, as it made the country a major agricultural exporter. Several books have been written about the struggles of movements like Blut und Boden in a time when Russian foodstuffs were overtaking German marketplaces, but that’s beside the point of this one. Furthermore, deeper ties between Germany and Russia helped Witte persuade the Tsar on one of the most contentious topics of the time: education.
Witte argued that, in order to industrialize and catch up with other Great Powers, the Russian Empire would need educated personnel, without whom proper industrial development would be curtailed. Over the next few years, thousands of Russians would be sent west to study in German universities about topics like science, military, art and religion. Many important figures of modern Russian history were part of this project, like Aleksandr Kolchak. Most Tsars in history, and even Alexander III at a certain point in his life, would have thoroughly disagreed peasants need to learn anything besides agriculture, even if they were no longer serfs. However, just as Vladimir I looked to Byzantium to better his own empire, Alexander saw in Germany something to be emulated. He saw how the teaching of Hochdeutsch pried regions like Bavaria away from the Austrian cultural sphere, and closer to Prussia. Alexander believed he could do the same, but with the White and Little Russians. By the mid 1890’s, Russo-German relations were closer than ever, which would drastically change the predicted outcome of a series of conflicts in Belle Époque Europe.
[1] Previous entries in this thread already mentioned this dilenma faced by Austria-Hungary. Sometimes the same topic will be talked about in different in-universe books. That is by design, since I'll sometimes want to give different perspectives on a subject or go deeper into it.
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So, like OTL, Wilhelm II will try to have Germany getting its "place to the Sun" and will antagonize every non-German and non-Russian power doing so.
And, in Austria-Hungary, it seems Cisleithania is roughly more inward-thinking due to not wanting to lose it all while Transleithania is more aggressive to prevent Slavs and Romanians to split the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen. Moreover, no one has really any interest to see the Karađorđević dynasty taking over Serbia.
Russia is the most interesting bit: the use of "Great, Little or White" as prepositive adjectives to "Russian" seems to signal Ukraine and Belarus saw autonomist movements crushed and their nations integrated to Russia as much as Bavarians are to Germany. Moreover, internal colonization efforts might make any nationalism even harder: difficult to do uprisings when half of the population is Russian, apart if it's to make the Empire more liberal. And I'm sure the educative system will push even harder Russian language to the exclusion of any other, and that, once Russian universities become mature enough, studying abroad will be discouraged; speaking of studying abroad, German colleges might turn into political opposition hubs, with Koenigsberg printing houses (like OTL) trying to preserve Baltic languages while Breslau and Berlin might welcome clandestine libraries to Russia?
Given what you said about the Polish loibby in the USA, I don't think the USA will ever be friendly with the Dreikaiserbund.
How will react the historically loyalist Baltic barons at seeing German marginalised in the Baltics? Likewise, the Fennoman-Svecoman conflict might become even more acute if Russian colonists are introduced, especially if Sweden protests against the treatment of Swede-speaking populations, among them the nobility the czar used to administrate. And the situation might become even more hot in Central Asia, especially if the government tries to push conversions to Orthodox Christianity.
Russia and Germany becoming even closer might, in addition to education, have interesting effect on German banking and Russian industry: the former might push for the preservation of the Dreikaiserbund to preserve its capital invested in Russia while the latter might differently evolvee compared to OTL. OTL, one third of the French capital was invested in Russia and lost on 1917; TTL, 50% available capital for elsewhere, such as France and the colonies, might have interesting effects.
And, in Austria-Hungary, it seems Cisleithania is roughly more inward-thinking due to not wanting to lose it all while Transleithania is more aggressive to prevent Slavs and Romanians to split the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen. Moreover, no one has really any interest to see the Karađorđević dynasty taking over Serbia.
Russia is the most interesting bit: the use of "Great, Little or White" as prepositive adjectives to "Russian" seems to signal Ukraine and Belarus saw autonomist movements crushed and their nations integrated to Russia as much as Bavarians are to Germany. Moreover, internal colonization efforts might make any nationalism even harder: difficult to do uprisings when half of the population is Russian, apart if it's to make the Empire more liberal. And I'm sure the educative system will push even harder Russian language to the exclusion of any other, and that, once Russian universities become mature enough, studying abroad will be discouraged; speaking of studying abroad, German colleges might turn into political opposition hubs, with Koenigsberg printing houses (like OTL) trying to preserve Baltic languages while Breslau and Berlin might welcome clandestine libraries to Russia?
Given what you said about the Polish loibby in the USA, I don't think the USA will ever be friendly with the Dreikaiserbund.
How will react the historically loyalist Baltic barons at seeing German marginalised in the Baltics? Likewise, the Fennoman-Svecoman conflict might become even more acute if Russian colonists are introduced, especially if Sweden protests against the treatment of Swede-speaking populations, among them the nobility the czar used to administrate. And the situation might become even more hot in Central Asia, especially if the government tries to push conversions to Orthodox Christianity.
Russia and Germany becoming even closer might, in addition to education, have interesting effect on German banking and Russian industry: the former might push for the preservation of the Dreikaiserbund to preserve its capital invested in Russia while the latter might differently evolvee compared to OTL. OTL, one third of the French capital was invested in Russia and lost on 1917; TTL, 50% available capital for elsewhere, such as France and the colonies, might have interesting effects.
Man, I love your comments. Your analises about Austria is pretty on point, and there are only one or two things I want to add as it relates to the Russian siuation. There is something you have to keep in mind: by 1897, 24% of Russia's population was literate, and the vast majority of that (due to church influence in education) learned to read and write something called Church Slavonic. It was the primary language used by the Russian Orthodox Church in religious occurances and is still used today. Church Slavonic, although it is most similar to Russian out of the East Slavic Languages, has its own quirks and filled a societal role similar to Hochdeutsch (the standard version of German before which the nothern dialect, Plattdeutsch, was more similar to Dutch than to variations spoken in Bayern or Baden-Württemberg). What stopped what happened in Germany from happening to Belarus and Ukraine was largely the Likbez, which accomodated for regional differencies (before the Soviets made it the official name of the regional SSR, Ukraine was used less often than Little Russia even by natives), so the people in those regions learned to read and write in "Ukrainian" and "Belarusian", and Korenizatsiya, which halted much of the process of passive colonization that had been taking place there. Keep in mind as well that, if the Vienna and St. Petesburg are at peace, then Galicia and Ludomeria as well as Transcarpathian Ruthenia, which are closer culturally to Poland than to Russia, would never have unified with the Russian share of Little Russia. The people in those territories always viewed themselves as "Ruthenians" and to this day represent the largest voter opposition to Russian influence in Ukraine, as any election map of the country will show you. In this world, the process of Russfication of Belarus would be completed, with pretty much everyone speaking Russian and Belarusian being a ceremonial language (just like Plattdeutsch in northern Germany today) and the Russification of Ukraine being much more advanced because there would be no Sovies to instate indianization or preserve the quirks of the Ukrainian language in the writing system.
You raise a very interesting point about Finland. Up until the reign of Nicholas II, the Finns had been relatively loyal to St. Petersburg, since the Tsars were so disinterested in the region that they granted it borderline independence. Alexander II and his son were the first one to ponder whether or not they should take away Finland's autonomy for no reason other than autocratic ambition. In truth, the Finns are really at the mercy of everyone else. Without a war happening beween Germany and Russia, they don't have an opening for seeking indepedence. Their best hope when the Tsars begin to take away their autonomy is that some kind of democratic uprising will force them to give away their power and stop Russification of Finland. Obviously, anything that the Russians do to the Finns, they'll do 10 times worse to the Swedes, but Sweden can't do anything about it besides publicly criticize Russia. The Germans of the Baltic provinces are a more interesting case, though. As Russian nationalism picks up (think what a group like the Union of the Russian People would do if the Tsarist autocracy survived), I think the Germans of the empire would come out more or less unscathed because they had a weird but still close and amicable relatioship with the Russian state. A large part of the White Army's leadership during OTL's Russian Civil War came from this region, and even before then people of direct German descent in the Russian Empire played a large role in governance and the military, such as Vitgeft and even Witte himself. Russia was historically very pro-German, and anti-German feeling only grew in our wolrd during WWI. In this, not only are Russians and Germans not enemies, but they're also allies, so Baltic Germans can probably feel safe about their situation. I do not foresee any kind of evictions or persecutions coming their way.
There a few million more Poles living in America, mainly the Midwest, than in our timeline due to the massive emmigration Congress Poland is going through, and these people hate Russians. I mean, they really hate them. And they'll never for anyone who presents an amicable stance towards the ruskies.
As for France, I'll talk specifically about where French investments are going later in the thread, but they'll loose money here in other ways so everything will even out in the end lol.
Yeah, I can't see the suppression of Baltic German when a large German state (and close ally) sits literally next door. Everyone else is in for a bad time though