"...medieval castle town at the confluence of the Pripyat and the Pina. Jagow commented in his memoirs on his aversion for Pinsk; even in late February, the air around the famed Pripyat Marshes was clammy, the people "had the mad look of a hard, hungry winter in their eyes," and he noted that "something simply feels different when one has crossed over from Germany into Russia, especially once one has left Congress Poland behind". Jagow was of Prussian nobility but he was a man of the Altmark, rather than east of the Oder; this was very much not his type of country. It was not the first time Jagow had journeyed to Russia, of course, but he had typically made his way to St. Petersburg by boat or train, avoiding places like Pinsk on the periphery of the heavily Jewish, agrarian and impoverished Pale of Settlement. But this was no typical trip to Russia - this one was done by secret.
Gottlieb von Jagow was a competent but unspectacular foreign minister who got on well with the Kaiser and not quite as well with Fürstenburg, but yet his name is on the two most important policies of Germany in the prewar period - not just the Jagow-Malcolm Concordat firmed at Hamburg in February 1916 which divided Portuguese Austral-Africa between them and settled all Anglo-German colonial disputes, but also the Pinsk Protocol, also known for some time as the Jagow-Sazonov Treaty for the two men chiefly instrumental in signing it. Sergei Sazonov, the canny and experienced Russian foreign secretary, met Jagow in Pinsk and entertained him with grouse hunting, traditional Byelorussian dance, and excellent brandy; he also negotiated both public and secret protocols for a deal between Germany and Russia that would fundamentally shape geopolitics in Europe for the next decade.
While Jagow's trip to Pinsk was a secret, the terms of the final March 3rd [1] agreement between Berlin and St. Petersburg on the Polish border were not. In publicly released terms, the two governments signed a treaty re-stipulating their support for the current Polish border between Germany, Russia and Austria (Austria may not have been a party to this but was widely known to agree), and created for the first time a firm regulation of Polish and Jewish immigration and emigration across this frontier that would create a formal structure for German gastarbeiter on Junker farms for the farming and harvest season. It thereafter also minorly adjusted bilateral tariffs on raw and finished goods going in both directions to try to alleviate the economic damage wrought by trade wars such as in 1903, 1909 or 1911, and opened Russia to more German goods than previously, increasing trade between the two states even as protectionists on both sides of the border angrily grumbled.
On its face, then, the agreement forged at Pinsk in February 1918 and signed on March 3rd by Fürstenburg in the Kaiser's presence was wholly unremarkable, the kind of standard maintenance diplomacy conducted constantly in prewar Europe. But as he put his pen down, the Eisenprinz was well aware that he was signing something else, something much more profound, without the knowledge of anyone else but a small circle of men..."
- Fürstenburg: The Quarter Century Rule of Germany's Iron Prince
"...public clauses 1-8. However, there were additional, secret clauses numbering 9-27 - these were the meat of the treaty, and dramatically reshaped German strategic planning.
Germany had since 1868 been generally aware that French revanchism was strong and that Austria was thoroughly frustrated by the Hohenzollerns pipping them to dominance in the German-speaking lands, and the secret Iron Triangle agreement - which had no known expiration date to German diplomats or general staff planners - had made this a formal sandwiching of Germany in between these two powers. German hopes for a formal treaty with Russia had been extinguished with the Bear's humiliation by Turkey in the Bulgarian mountains in 1877, and they had instead settled for a sequence of renewed "reinsurance treaties" over the following forty years that diplomats reissued bilaterally every two to three years, almost like clockwork. In the meantime, Germany had forged strong enough relations with Vienna to make the Habsburgs - whom Heinrich in particular held in high esteem for historical reasons - reluctant to fully support French saber-rattling, and for brief windows in the 1890s after the Bangkok Crisis and the early 1900s, France and Germany had indeed enjoyed a "Grand Detente" in which they cooperated, formed closer cultural and economic bonds, and greatly lowered the temperature on European tensions.
Part of Germany's calculus, of course, was that they did not entirely trust Russia, even though relations had always been warm and they could (and did) cooperate on the question of suppressing Polish nationalism. The greatest fear of German policymakers, especially those who were not East Elian Junkers who admired Russia's autocracy, was of a general war with France and Austria in which Russia then jumped in to acquired more territory - say, Posen and the Memelland, perhaps - and take advantage of Berlin's weaknesses. This fear had been particularly acute circa 1908, when Germany and Russia found themselves on opposing sides of the Chinese conflict, and though Reinsurance was renewed, it never quite alleviated Berlin's worries.
The Pinsk Protocol was important to Jagow for this very reason - the need to remove the chance of Russian intervention in a war in Central Europe, which though seeming highly remote in early 1918 was nonetheless a real risk what with Austria's destabilization and tensions rising between Vienna and Rome over the Milan Magyars, as well as French rearmament on land and sea and their increasingly bellicose posture in the Far East. Something was coming, perhaps not soon, but it was best to be prepared. As such, the secret clauses of the treaty did more than just renew the old Reinsurance but rather enhance it - the renewal would be for ten years, through 1928, for starters, giving both Germany and Russia a decade of breathing room on their borders.
Russia had her own priorities, though, and the Treaty did much to resolve them. Having split most of southern Africa with London since the last Reinsurance Treaty was renewed in early 1915, and with Britain's attentions in India and Ireland now much quieted, Russia quite understandably was concerned about how close, exactly, Berlin now was to her age-old rival in the Great Game over Asia. Germany's concessions in the Pinsk Protocol did much to alleviate her worries; Jagow pointed out that Russia had no interests in Africa directly and that with the exception of China, there were no overlapping Russo-German disputes in East Asia. With this in mind, Germany proceeded with three key planks: it pledged not to intervene in the event of a new war in China unless Qing forces, then cabined to Manchuria, arrived within a hundred kilometers of the Yangtze or Shanghai at its mouth; it put in writing that Germany would support Russia against Japan or France in the event of tensions of Korea and that it regarded Korea as being in the Russian sphere of influence; and it agreed to support Russian "peripheral interests" in the "space between the Black Sea and Tibet," meaning that any Russian actions in, say, Persia or Afghanistan would enjoy German neutrality in any and all cases, regardless of what Germany may have agreed to with Britain. Lastly, Jagow inserted a final clause guaranteeing German support for the independence of Orthodox Ethiopia, which Russia was increasingly concerned lay exposed to Italian ambitions in the Horn of Africa.
This treaty was a massive boon for Russia, cementing the post-1908 status quo in Asia and allowing both parties to enjoy bilateral relations with Japan with the independence of Korea fully secured; Sazonov correctly predicted that in the event of war, they had just driven France out of the Orient "without firing a bullet." But Germany had a price, too, though one that would at the time appear much less favorable - Russia agreed not to intervene in any conflict "within Europe" against Germany, regardless of how many powers were involved, and signaled approval of "minor" border adjustments in Germany's favor following a successful war but which maintained that "no major revisions of the balance of power can be pursued by either party without the consensus of the other Great Powers." This was partially aimed at Asia as well, to stop Russia or Britain from carving up China, but was intended by Russia to stop Germany from radically shifting the Austrian map and by Germany to prevent Russia from marching in and seizing Galicia and thus seizing the initiative in the whole of the Balkans. Reading between the lines, it essentially told Germany that while Russia clearly considered a postwar Austria to be a sphere of interest of Germany, more imperialist ambitions would have to be aimed westwards - at France and Belgium.
Sazonov returned to his peers in St. Petersburg a champion of diplomacy - Russia had gained massively in Asia, critically at a time when France’s star seemed to be fading and tensions with Persia were rising, and had given up very little in Europe for it, acquiescing to seeing Austria hobbled without completely destabilizing the Balkans. Any ambitions in Europe could now wait with Russia satisfied that her interests were at least somewhat protected in the long term. Pinsk remained one of Sazonov’s great prides to his deathbed.
Reactions in Germany were more mixed amongst the small circle with whom the secret terms were shared. Conservatives reared on romantic stories of the Teutonic Knights and who dreamed of a grand Eastern colonial empire all the way to the Volga - and who believed, as Russia began to industrialize, that an apocalyptic showdown between the German and Slavic civilizations would be inevitable - were aghast, especially as it seemed to foreclose upon maximalist territorial possibilities in Austria. Heinrich was more favorable and in this sense protected his Foreign Secretary. He saw the territorial agreements as simply formalizing what he already understood to be true - the other Great Powers would vehemently oppose aggressive German expansionism and invite diplomatic and even military intervention to oppose it - and instead noted that German hands were essentially free in Africa and Southeast Asia, forever, thanks to this deal. It was also critical to note that Jagow had done something few could have imagined - with his two treaties, he had essentially foreclosed on the likelihood of British or Russian entry into a future war and done both in a way favorable to Germany rather than France. The two powers that served the greatest threat to Germany were not just sidelined - they were sidelined thanks to German initiative and collaboration.
Ironically, the Pinsk Protocol when combined with Malcolm-Jagow made war more likely than less so, by removing guardrails from German diplomatic options. Germany had bought itself ten years of peace with Russia and an indefinite similar understanding with Britain - roadblocks to a more belligerent stance in the face of French provocation was now gone, and many of the circle of hawks around the Emperor and Chancellor wanted to take full advantage, and indeed they did within months of Pinsk’s signing. The clock to the eruption of war was now definitively ticking…”
- The Central European War
[1] This date in 1918 and the use of Pinsk which is close to a certain other town in Belarus are done with maximum irony in mind
