The Forgotten Russian Master Diplomat
Great statesmanship is a rare quality. It requires intellect, perseverance, prudence, a certain amount of ruthlessness, and an understanding of history, geography and human nature. Great statesmen have a knack for understanding the interests of their country and an appreciation of the need for order in the world. Count Sergei Witte, who served as Imperial Russia’s Finance Minister and Prime Minister in the late 1890s and early 1900s, repeatedly demonstrated these traits in his efforts to modernize Russia and save the Romanov dynasty.
Witte, born in Tiflis, Georgia, in 1849, was educated at Odessa University, worked for a private railroad company, and served in the Russian government from 1888 to 1906. In 1911 and 1912, he wrote his memoirs, which were ultimately published (thanks to his widow) in 1921.
In the preface to The Memoirs of Count Witte, his widow noted that Witte’s fear of censorship and worse led him to write the manuscript while abroad; it was kept in a foreign bank under his wife’s name to avoid seizure by his many enemies in Nicholas II’s government. Countess Witte described her husband as “neither a courtier flattering the monarch nor a demagogue flattering the mob.” He was not a Liberal or a Conservative, she wrote, and described himself as “a man of culture.” He placed his country’s interests first, she explained, but had no “sentimental biases” in politics. He loved Russia, she wrote, but was guided by reason alone. Above all, he was a resolute opponent of wars, believing that even military victories harmed the well-being of Russia.
In his memoirs, Witte wrote that throughout his career he remained faithful to Christianity and the Russian monarchy, and early on developed an “independence of judgment and sturdiness of will.” He believed that “the teachings of Christianity will not become effective until mankind learns to execute Christ’s chief commandment, namely that no human being has the moral right to kill other human beings.” As a realist he understood that it would take “many centuries” for this to happen.
As a railroad official, Witte visited Samarkand and was impressed with the vastness and undeveloped natural resources of Central and Eastern Asia. With the full support of Czars Alexander III and Nicholas II, Witte promoted and championed the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, connecting European Russia to Vladivostok.
In 1894, Witte negotiated a commercial treaty with Germany, which he called his “debut on the stage of world politics.” In his memoirs, Witte recalled being told by a German writer that former German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck praised him as a statesman “who knows what he wants and has the character and will power to get it.” “You will see him,” remarked Bismarck, “achieve a great career as a statesman.”
Witte understood and wrote that “[t]he economic wealth and consequently the political strength of a country depend upon three factors: natural resources, capital, and labour, physical and intellectual.” Military adventures, on the other hand, injured Russian finances and credit. His opposition to war was fundamentally based on its negative effects on a country’s finances and domestic political stability. This attitude brought him into frequent conflict with Russia’s War Minister, military leaders, and Nicholas II.
In the 1890s and early 1900s, Witte viewed developments in the Far East with foreboding. The Sino-Japanese War gave Japan a foothold on the Asian continent, he wrote, near Russia’s “sphere of interest.” He believed that a strong but passive China was important to Russian security and that it was “imperative not to allow Japan to penetrate into the very heart of China.” Witte negotiated a secret defensive alliance with China against Japan, while Russia also negotiated spheres of influence in Korea with Japan. He maintained that had Russia adhered strictly to both agreements, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 could have been avoided.
China at that time was a target of other great powers, too. When Germany landed forces on the southern tip of the Kwantung (Liaodong) peninsula in 1897, Russian political and military leaders advocated the seizure of Port Arthur. Witte strongly opposed this move as extremely dangerous and the “height of treachery.” When Nicholas II informed Witte that Russian ships were already on their way to effect the seizure of Port Arthur, Witte remarked to one of the Grand Dukes: “Your highness, remember this day; this fatal step will have disastrous results.” Under the guise of protecting China from Germany, Russia demanded from China Port Arthur, a second harbor, and part of the Kwantung territory. This, Witte wrote, was a “fatal step which eventually brought about the unhappy Japanese War and the subsequent revolution.”
Russian troops, against Witte’s advice, also joined the forces of other great powers in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion, and then occupied parts of Manchuria. In a remarkably prophetic letter to Russia’s Foreign Minister in November 1901, Witte foresaw war with Japan and revolution at home:
It is my profound conviction that unless we remove our misunderstandings with Japan in a peaceful fashion ... we shall not only be under the constant menace of an armed clash with that Power, but we shall also be unable to stabilize our relations with China, who is bound to seek Japan’s support against us. ... An armed clash with Japan in the near future would be a great disaster for us. [Even] a victory will cost us too much and will badly injure the country economically. Furthermore, and that is most important, in the eyes of the Russian people a war with Japan for the possession of distant Korea will not be justified, and their latent dissatisfaction may render more acute the alarming phenomena of our domestic life, which make themselves felt even in peace time.
