Grant and Temperley's Europe in the Twentieth Century 1905-1970

Arthur James Grant, H.W.V. Temperley, Agatha Ramm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317872412
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Weltgeschichte

This introductory survey covers all aspects of the period when Britain was transformed into an industrial, urban society, with political power in the hands of the middle class.

Chapter 1

THE TROUBLED YEARS, 1905–12

Volume One of this book ended at the point where Europe was already divided into two camps. On one side was the Austro-German Alliance. On the other was the Franco-British Entente. Italy was attached to Austria-Hungary and Germany by the Triple Alliance and to Britain and France by common interests in the Mediterranean and North Africa, which she had safeguarded by agreements with them and assurances to them that the Triple Alliance would not mean war on Italy’s part against either of them. The system remained to be completed by the Russo-British Entente. This did not come into existence until 1907.

Nothing could be done with Russia in 1905, for she was just emerging from revolution. Her defeat at the hands of Japan was the prelude to this revolution. She had been defeated militarily in the battle of Mukden (March 25, 1905) after a period of trench warfare which might, but did not, warn Europe what to expect in Flanders in 1914–18; navally in the battle of Tsushima (May 27, 1905); and diplomatically in the apparent uselessness of the alliance with France (1893) and in the harsh peace treaty, the Treaty of Portsmouth (September 5, 1905). But defeat in the Crimean War was just as decisive. It had been followed by reform and not revolution. The explanation why this time revolution forestalled reform is partly that the autocracy was both weaker and more rigid and partly that blind protest was now mixed with liberal and socialist ideas which gave a vision, in their different ways, of what they wished to achieve to those who demanded change. The revolution was, however, repressed before it was completed. The ultimate outcome, therefore, was in effect a further spate of reform. So that we are faced with a second question: why did the liberal Russia which emerged from the Revolution fail to survive. Before we turn to this second question we must make good the explanation we offered in answer to the first.

The autocracy ceased under the last Tsar, Nicholas II (acceded 1894), to command the whole range of matters that effective government now required it to do. Indeed, Nicholas II, though he knew much of foreign policy, knew little or nothing of other subjects. He saw everything in personal terms. His qualities of natural intelligence, charm and affection he applied to his family and immediate circle. Even for a landowner his range was circumscribed; for an autocratic ruler in the twentieth century it was narrow in the extreme. To govern Russia effectively now required a command of economics, an understanding of the educated, well-to-do but not landed, middle class, with its liberal ideas, some notion of urban working-class life with its social problems and the new doctrines of social democracy, and an acquaintance with peasant aspirations and the peasants’ version of socialism. Abstract ideas were unpalatable to Nicholas II and he made no assessment of the importance of these things let alone had firsthand experience of them. His ordinary good abilities were insufficient. Since he had no notion of the importance of these things he could not appoint, as William I had appointed Bismarck, men who did understand their importance and could so identify themselves with the country as to be able to express its needs in their personalities and, in those terms, satisfy them. Nicholas II had three Ministers of the Interior within one year (1904–05). The first, Pleve, was assassinated; the second, Prince Svyatopolk-Mirski, recognised he was not up to the work and resigned; the third, Bulygin, was an official who did not even try to rise to the occasion. The Government allowed patent abuses and evils to persist, and still to persist, unremedied; the governed had greater opportunities, more education, a better understanding of how the state worked and how it should work than fifty years before. To the governed inefficiency, the burden of taxation, inequalities of wealth, were less and less acceptable; in the armed forces harsh discipline and no reward, not even victory, caused protest; in the countryside the poverty and land-hunger of a growing population caused attacks on the landlords; in the cities rising prices and falling wages caused strikes. On the side of the Government, persistent failure caused a weakening of all authority everywhere. Pressure from the gentry and liberal middle class was the first to make itself felt. In November 1904 a congress of Zemstva (elective Councils for local government in the countryside, see Volume One, pp. 301, 349) representatives demanded representative institutions at the centre in mild and generalised language. Nicholas temporised. After the congress was over the members continued their campaign with mounting impetus. The League of Liberation (Volume One, p. 348) adopted the eleven theses of the Zemstva movement as part of their programme too. Working-class protest followed. At the end of the month there was a one-day strike in Baku. Next, a strike at the Putilov works, outside St. Petersburg, was organised in protest against the dismissal of workers belonging to the trade union founded by a certain priest called Gapon. The strike spread to other works. Gapon led a deputation from the strikers to petition the Tsar at the Winter Palace. The assembled strikers were fired upon by the troops. This was the massacre of Bloody Sunday, January 22, 1905. The result was a general strike in St. Petersburg and sympathetic strikes in some seven other cities. In February serious peasant riots began. They sometimes took the form of the burning of landlords’ property, sometimes of the expulsion of the landlords. The Grand Duke Sergei, the Tsar’s uncle, was assassinated. Bulygin promised an elective, consultative assembly for all Russia. Peasant riots and strikes continued to spread and minor trades were affected. In June 1905 the sailors of the Potemkin mutinied. Intellectuals of all shades of opinion now took a hand. There were further congresses of the members of the City Councils and the Zemstva, deputations to the Tsar and discussions of draft constitutions. During the summer riots and strikes quieted, but revived in September. There were mutinies among the troops returning from Manchuria and in October a great railway strike accompanied by a fresh general strike in St. Petersburg. The first Soviet of workers was formed in St. Petersburg that month; others followed. It was made up of members of the strike committees. It had 562 elected members, who appointed an executive committee. Its members were workers but also representatives from the Men-she vik, Bolshevik and the Socialist Revolutionary Parties. Trotsky was one of the leaders. In December the police risked arresting them and the Soviet was dissolved by the troops. It had lasted fifty days. In Moscow, then Russia’s second city, a general strike was now declared and there were for twelve days intermittent armed clashes between the police and the strikers, before the strikers were finally crushed by the troops.

The revolution, however, was really brought to an end by the October manifesto, as it was called, which granted Russia an elective parliament to be elected on a fairly wide franchise. At the same time Witte, whom we have seen modernising Russia in the nineties, was appointed Prime Minister. The first parliament, or Duma, sat for three months. In it the so-called progressive bloc had a majority. It was made up of the Cadets (a word made from the initial letters of the Russian for Constitutional Democrats) under Milyukov, Prince Lvov, of whom we shall hear again, and Peter Struve, of whom we have heard already in Volume One. They had 77 seats. Allied to them were the Octobrists under Guchkov. This group was prepared to let the autocracy continue on the basis of the manifesto and the limited consultative powers which it gave to the Duma. To its right were extreme conservatives; to its left the Socialist Revolutionaries and a few Social Democrats. The progressive bloc had the support of the leaders of the Universities and the professions. ‘Their political success depended upon one of two conditions, if not both: either support from the autocracy to help to build orderly freedom from above, or the support of the socialist parties behind whom stood some of the peasantry and proletariat.’¹ Progressive reform failed because they never had either, let alone both, of these conditions, for long enough to do anything. They have been blamed for bringing on the crisis too soon. The Cadets and the Octobrists faced the Tsar with a demand for a Government which had the confidence of the country and appealed to the nation for support. The Tsar dismissed the Duma. The year 1905 had closed with the issue of a new electoral law restricting the franchise, and 1906 opened with the election of the second Duma. When it met the Cadets were seen to have lost their strength. The Octobrists had made the most gains. The Socialist Revolutionaries still had 34 seats. So even this Duma could show itself too independent for the Tsar to understand it. He dissolved it on June 16, 1907, and together with the dissolution edict issued a new electoral law which excluded the peasant electors and the Socialist Revolutionaries they voted for. The third Duma of 1907–12—it lasted its legal term—was totally unrepresentative. The Cadets lost heavily and had now only 54 seats; the Social Democrats had 17 seats and the Socialist Revolutionaries, now hidden under the name Tru-dovniks (Labourists), with 16 seats, just survived. The Octobrists were now the strongest party on the left (154 seats) but the parties of the right who had fought the elections with Government subsidies were strong too (127 seats). Nevertheless by the time of the fourth Duma, 1912–14, in which the Cadets (58 seats) played a useful role in contact both with the Government and the Socialists, Russia had a real parliamentary life: among a limited section of the population, it is true, and mostly the same classes who expressed themselves through the Zemstva and the City Councils. A more liberal regime obtained in relation to the Universities and the Press. Whether this liberal Russia would survive or not, depended upon reforms of a social and economic kind.

C. A. Stolypin was Prime Minister at the time of the second Duma. He was appointed in July 1906 and remained in office until he was shot in 1911. He was responsible for belated progress in dealing with the land question. There was important legislation in 1906 and 1910. Under the law of 1906 redemption payments (due to the state from emancipated serfs) were to cease from January 1, 1907, and the remaining inequalities between peasant and landowner were abolished. The act did much to create consolidated family farms; for it allowed the peasant to take his share of the land, farmed in common in the obshchina, into private ownership and to consolidate his strips into one compact farm. It allowed the mir, or community of peasants, to abandon the open-field system and to distribute all its land among its members. The act of 1910 was a codifying measure which elaborated procedure for the breakup of the obshchina and stipulated certain cases where the cessation of farming in common might be automatic. Only the War of 1914–18 delayed its total disappearance. But, of course, poverty and land-hunger remained, though a prosperous class of peasantry was coming to the top.

In 1909 there was a second leap forward in Russian industrialisation. It continued into the period of prosperity that marked the prewar years of 1912–14. Social reform, however, did not keep pace with the growing needs of the proletariat. Even in the good year of 1912 ‘the massacre’ in the Lena goldfields (April 4) showed the persistence of social problems. Moreover, Russia’s industrial structure was characterised by intense concentration. Powerful cartels and trusts widened the gulf between distant, anonymous employers and an equally anonymous labour force. Russia was, however, far from being an industrialised country even by the time of the Revolution of 1917. The proletariat of full industrialisation was created in the thirties after that Revolution had supposedly put it into power.

At the time of the fourth Duma Kokovtsov was Prime Minister. By now both Government and Duma were further over to the right. Social reform was out of the question. Only Russian finances, army and navy were reorganised and reformed and her railway network enlarged. Historians write of a Russian revival. Her foreign policy was assertive; her General Staff showed a growing confidence; by 1917 she was to have an army of 1,750,000 men and her finances were so healthy that she would not notice the cost of the increases. There was, however, an ominous revival of industrial discontent and strikes early in 1914. The War of 1914–18 used up the newly acquired strength of the country and liberal Russia foundered under the weight of its unsolved social problems.

Something more needs now to be said of Russian foreign policy in this period after the Japanese war. It was in striking contrast to her uncertain search for stability internally. She pursued a policy of forward driving, though it would be more exact to say that her diplomats in Persia and the Balkan states and her military agents in Tibet did so without much co-ordination from the centre. Serbia had undergone a change of dynasty in June 1903 when the last of the Obrenović was murdered and Peter Karageorgevič brought that dynasty back to power. She discarded the alliance with Austria-Hungary and repudiated the political and commercial vassalage to her which had existed since 1881. She went over to Russia. Bulgaria, which had also been hostile, was reconciled to Russia. She was now to build up a clientele of Balkan states opposed both to Austria-Hungary and to Turkey. Rumania alone was pro-German and pro-Austrian for some time longer. Tentative approaches to Britain began soon after the conclusion of the Franco-British Declaration over Egypt and Morocco of April 1904 which, it will be recalled, marked, with another Declaration (on Madagascar) and a Convention (on Newfoundland and West Africa), the beginning of the Franco-British Entente. Russia showed herself forward in assenting to the Khedive of Egypt’s decree which consequential international arrangements, to be made over Egyptian finance, needed. In return she angled for British acceptance of the position she was building up in Tibet. This Britain gave in ambiguous and somewhat noncommittal terms. Britain was more interested in a Russian Declaration similar to the French, that she too would abstain from pressing for the British evacuation of Egypt. This Britain did not obtain. Nor did much come of talk about Manchuria. When approaches were renewed after the Revolution of 1905 they were put on a different and more hopeful basis. At the Persian (Iranian) capital of Teheran Britain and Russia had been rivals for influence and grants of concessions from the Shah for nearly thirty years. Sometimes rivalry had given place to a common policy or the suggestion of one. But rivalry was the dominant note, and there was always pressure upon Britain from the Government of India to keep in mind the importance of communications to India and naval supremacy in the Persian Gulf. When, in 1906, Britain made further approaches to Russia, she asked Russia to state her views about Persia. It was thought wise to put ‘a ring fence’ round the negotiations, that is, to avoid questions in which other European Powers might be concerned, and to take the questions—Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet—where there was Anglo-Russian disagreement, one by one. The British Ambassador in St. Petersburg, Sir Arthur Nicolson, to whose ideas this policy was largely due, managed the negotiations with skill and brought them to a conclusion in Conventions on Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet signed by Russia and Britain on August 31, 1907. They marked the inauguration of the Russo-British Entente. They were precipitated to a conclusion by Britain’s showing that she no longer had a rigid view that the Straits of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles must be kept closed—a view which, as we have seen, had dominated her policy towards Russia and Turkey throughout the nineteenth century. As we shall see presently this was a matter which was to disturb Russia’s relations with Austria-Hungary in the following year. One Convention with Russia divided Persia into three zones; the northern, containing the capital, Britain recognised as Russia’s sphere of influence; the central zone both Powers were to leave free; and in the third zone, whose coast lay on the Persian Gulf, Russia recognised Britain’s predominance. A separate document further safeguarded Britain’s position in the Gulf. By two other Conventions Russia disclaimed any intention of interfering in Afghanistan and Britain any intention of altering the status quo there, and both Powers recognised the sovereignty of China over Tibet and affirmed their intention of maintaining its territorial integrity and not interfering in its internal affairs. It is noteworthy that there was no bargain between Britain and Russia, comparable to that over Egypt and Morocco between Britain and France. Persia stood by itself. The agreement was much more like a drawing of frontiers up to which each would tolerate forward action by the other. It is not, then, surprising that after the Conventions Russia turned away from the Middle East as from the Far East. Her policy concentrated upon Europe and the Balkan peninsula, that is to say, upon a zone dangerous to her relations with both Germany and Austria-Hungary.

For Russia’s ally, France, the troubled years were 1906–10. There were strikes of the miners in the North in March and April 1906, demonstrations in Paris for the eight-hour working day in 1906 and for the six-day week in 1907, strikes of the electricians in March 1907, of workers in the food industries in April 1907 and also in 1907 a rebellion of the wine-growers. There was a strike of builders in 1908 and an attempt at a general strike in 1909. Clemenceau and Briand dealt with strikes by calling in strike-breakers and using the army to protect those at work. Postmen and schoolteachers, who were civil servants, could be dismissed if they intended to strike. Briand hit upon the drastic device of calling up strikers for their military service. Such measures brought the one part of France no nearer to understanding the other—proletarian—part. Since this part was still small no immediate damage was done, but distant consequences were more serious.

The General Election of 1906 brought the Radicals a substantial majority in the Chamber where they had 247 seats. To their left, Millerand and Viviani led a group of independent Socialists and to their left there was now a united Socialist Party, including both Guesde and Jaurès. The Socialists were strong, but the Radicals were stronger, so strong that they could govern, as they had not been able to do in the previous Chamber, without Socialist support. Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) became Prime Minister with the clever and subtle Caillaux as his Finance Minister. Clemenceau had first come to the fore at the time of the Paris Commune, for he had then been Mayor of the 18th arrondissement. In the same year he became a member of the Chamber and for the next twenty years he made a reputation as the great puller-down of Ministries, which he never offered to replace by one of his own. In November 1906 he was at last in power. Expectations were high. Here was his chance to carry through the social programme to which he was committed. He had nearly three years of power, but he achieved nothing except the enactment of the six-day working week. The years were remembered for the oratorical duels between Clemenceau and Jaures. It was an opportunity missed. Yet Clemenceau was to be Prime Minister in another critical period, 1917–20. Briand succeeded Clemenceau without much change.

The General Election of 1910 increased the Socialist representation by 20 seats, but otherwise made little change in the overall balance of parties. Yet the troubled years were over. There was a surprising number of Deputies, who had never sat in the Chamber before, and a complete change of mood. When Caillaux became Prime Minister in 1911, this serious mood was confirmed. He offered a programme of reform, ‘lay, financial and social.’ He fought to introduce an income tax into the tax structure, not changed since the Revolution of 1789. He fell in 1912 without having done anything except weather the Agadir crisis (to which we shall come at the end of this chapter). It was Poincaré who both succeeded in lengthening the period of military service and in introducing income tax. But that belongs to war preparations and the next chapter.

We last saw Germany under its Chancellor, Prince von Bülow (appointed October 1900), embarked on Weltpolitik and the building of a Battle Fleet. She was a powerful, dynamic economic unit but, like a battleship at large on the ocean, incapable of steering steadily along a single, chosen course. This may have been more appearance than reality; for Bülow had an unfortunate effect on foreign policy by his refusal to close options. He gave an appearance both of vacillation and over-reaching ambition. Contemporaries and subsequent historians blamed all the bad decisions in foreign policy upon the sinister influence of Holstein, a permanent official in the Foreign Office since Bismarck’s first year as imperial Chancellor.¹ He was dismissed in 1906 and had been absent through illness at crucial periods in both 1904 and 1905. The responsibility properly belonged to Bülow, who was also, from 1897 until 1907, Reich Foreign Secretary as well as Chancellor (1900–09). But Holstein, as the repository of Bismarckian traditions and a permanent presence in the Office with a somewhat cautious and narrow view, was a convenient scapegoat for the failure, for example, of Germany’s Moroccan policy in 1906.

We saw in Volume One how Germany opened a challenge to the Franco-British Entente by laying a claim to consideration, with the other signatories of the treaty of 1880, should France initiate any change in the status of Morocco. This led to a demonstration of Franco-British solidarity on the one hand and bilaterial negotiations between Germany and France on the other. The latter arose out of a proposal by Germany for a European Conference on Moroc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of maps
• Preface
• Introduction. Marx and Bakunin
• 1. The Troubled Years, 1905–12
• 2. The True Pre-War, 1912–14
• 3. The War, 1914–18
• 4. The Paris Conference and the Treaty with Germany, 1919
• 5. Nation-Making in the New Europe Central Europe
• 6. World Settlement and Nation-Making in the Near, Middle and Far East
• 7. Revolution in Russia and the U.S.S.R. Under Stalin
• 8. The German Revolution and the Weimar Republic
• 9. The Rise and Consolidation of Fascist Italy
• 10. International Co-Operation and Domestic Conflict. Civil War in Spain, Divisions in France
• 11. The Third Reich, 1933–39
• 12. The War of 1939–45
• 13. The Balance Sheet. After The War
• 14. Europe Alone: How Colonial Dependencies Became Independent Countries
• 15. Europe Divided: The Countries of the Eastern Bloc, 1945–68
• 16. Europe United: France, West Germany and the Western Bloc, 1945–70
• Conclusion. Three Problems of the Nineteen-Eighties
• Maps
• Index