Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Maps
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 World Wars: Definition and Causes
- 2 The European Wars: 1815–1914
- 3 Serbia
- 4 Austria-Hungary
- 5 Germany
- 6 Russia
- 7 France
- 8 Great Britain
- 9 Japan
- 10 The Ottoman Empire
- 11 Italy
- 12 Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece
- 13 The United States
- 14 Why Did It Happen?
- 15 On the Origins of the Catastrophe
- Appendix A Chronology, 1914
- Appendix B Dramatis Personae
- Appendix C Suggested Readings
- Index
6 - Russia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Maps
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 World Wars: Definition and Causes
- 2 The European Wars: 1815–1914
- 3 Serbia
- 4 Austria-Hungary
- 5 Germany
- 6 Russia
- 7 France
- 8 Great Britain
- 9 Japan
- 10 The Ottoman Empire
- 11 Italy
- 12 Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece
- 13 The United States
- 14 Why Did It Happen?
- 15 On the Origins of the Catastrophe
- Appendix A Chronology, 1914
- Appendix B Dramatis Personae
- Appendix C Suggested Readings
- Index
Summary
Austria will, in the perhaps not too distant future face a choice between two paths: either fundamental reconstruction of the state structure on the basis of federation of the different nationalities, or a desperate struggle aimed at the final confirmation of the predominance of the German-Hungarian minority over all the other peoples in the Empire. … At a given moment, especially if Germany were disposed towards this, the warlike tendency might come out on top in Austria-Hungary, and its supporters are already pointing out that war is perhaps the only way out of insoluble internal difficulties.
G. N. Trubetskoi to Nicholas II, January 1914Imperial Russia bore a special burden for the origin of the Great War. This was an idée fixe in both popular understanding and academic thought for half a century after the outbreak of that war. During the July Crisis, German policy attempted to manage the unfolding of events in such a way as to make German mobilization, when it came, appear to be the consequence of Russia's prior declaration. In the 1920s, German scholarship and diplomatic publication (no less so than French or even British) “documented” the crisis in terms that explained (i.e., cautiously justified) its entry into the war. The interests of the young and militant Soviet regime, however, lay in discrediting the actions of its tsarist and bourgeois predecessors.
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- The Origins of World War I , pp. 188 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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