adversary’s tactlessness to stir up the press against him and his cause.… My personal behavior may also partly account for the transformation of American public opinion. I took care to treat all the Americans with whom I came in contact with the utmost simplicity of manner. When traveling, whether on special trains, government motorcars or steamers, I thanked everyone, talked with the engineers and shook hands with them—in a word, I treated everybody, of whatever social position, as an equal. This behavior was a heavy strain on me as all acting is to the unaccustomed, but it surely was worth the trouble.”
Maneuvered by Witte into the role of villains, the Japanese envoys had difficulty in pressing all of their demands. Finally Nicholas—knowing that Japan was financially unable to continue the war—told his Foreign Minister: “Send Witte my order to end the parley tomorrow in any event. I prefer to continue the war, rather than to wait for gracious concessions on the part of Japan.” Komura, who had come as victor, accepted a compromise.
Lunching after the conference with President Theodore Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, Long Island, Witte described the meal as “for a European, almost indigestible. There was no tablecloth and ice water instead of wine.… Americans have no culinary taste and … they can eat almost anything that comes their way.” He was “struck by … [Roosevelt’s] ignorance of international politics.… I heard the most naive judgments.” Nor did Roosevelt care much for Witte. “I cannot say that I liked him,” said the President, “for I thought his bragging and bluster not only foolish, but shockingly vulgar when compared with the gentlemanly restraint of the Japanese. Moreover, he struck me as a very selfish man, totally without ideals.”
Returning to Russia, Witte was pleased with himself. “I acquitted myself with complete success,” he wrote, “so that in the end the Emperor Nicholas was morally compelled to reward me in an altogether exceptional manner by bestowing upon me the rank of count. This he did in spite of his and especially Her Majesty’s personal dislike for me, and also in spite of all the base intrigues conducted against me by a host of bureaucrats and courtiers whose vileness was only equalled by their stupidity.”
In fact, Witte had handled the negotiations brilliantly; “no diplomat by profession could have done it,” said Alexander Izvolsky, who was soon to become Russia’s Foreign Minister. Nicholas received the returning hero on his yacht in September 1905. “Witte came to see us,” wrote the Tsar to his mother. “He was very charming and interesting. After a long talk, I told him of his new honor. I am creating him a Count. He went quite stiff with emotion and then tried three times to kiss my hand!”
Tsushima abruptly ended Russia’s “Holy Mission” in Asia. Beaten and humiliated by the Japanese “monkeys,” the Russian giant staggered back toward Europe. In Berlin, as he watched events unfold, the Kaiser was not displeased. With a sullen, defeated army, no navy and a disillusioned, embittered people, the Tsar was no longer a neighbor to fear. William assumed that he still possessed Nicholas’s friendship. He soothed the Tsar, reminding him that even Frederick the Great and Napoleon had suffered defeats. He strutted in the loyalty he had shown to Russia by “guarding” Russia’s frontier in Europe—presumably from his own ally, Austria. Now, stepping smoothly over the ruins of the Far Eastern adventure he had done so much to promote, the Kaiser reverted to his original purpose: breaking the Russian alliance with France by seducing Nicholas into a new alliance of autocrats between Russia and Germany.
This last spectacular attempt by the Kaiser to manipulate the Tsar was the episode at Bjorko on the coast of Finland in July 1905. It had its immediate origins in the international furor arising from the incident at Dogger Bank. The British press, loudly advocating that the Royal Navy prevent German steamers from coaling the Russian warships, had driven the Kaiser to frenzy. Nicholas replied to a letter from William by saying, “I agree fully with your complaints about England’s behavior … it is certainly high time to put a stop to this. The only way, as you say, would be that Germany, Russia and France should at once unite to abolish Anglo-Japanese arrogance and insolence. Would you like to lay down and frame the outlines of such a treaty? As soon as it is accepted by us, France is bound to join as an ally.”
William was overjoyed and feverishly began to draw up the treaty. The following summer, the Kaiser privately telegraphed the Tsar, inviting him to come as a “simple tourist” to a rendezvous at sea. Nicholas agreed and left Peterhof one afternoon without taking any of his ministers. The two Imperial yachts,
“Should you like to sign it,” said the Kaiser casually, “it would be a very nice souvenir of our interview.”
Nicholas signed and William was jubilant. With tears of joy, he told Nicholas that he was sure that all of their mutual ancestors were looking down on them from heaven in ecstatic approval.
Upon returning to their respective capitals, both Emperors received unpleasant shocks. Von Bulow, the German Chancellor, criticized the treaty as useless to Germany and threatened to resign. The deflated Kaiser wrote his Chancellor a hysterical letter: “The morning after the arrival of your letter of resignation would no longer find your Emperor alive. Think of my poor wife and children.” In St. Petersburg, Lamsdorf, the Russian Foreign Minister, was aghast; he could not believe his eyes and ears. The French alliance, he pointed out to Nicholas, was the cornerstone of Russian foreign policy; it could not be lightly thrown aside. France, said Lamsdorf, would never join an alliance with Germany, and Russia could not join such an alliance without first consulting France.
Eventually William was informed that, as written, the treaty could not be honored. The Kaiser responded with an impassioned plea to the Tsar to reconsider: “Your Ally notoriously left you in the lurch during the whole war, whereas Germany helped you in every way.… We joined hands and signed before God who heard our vows. What is signed is signed! God is our testator!” But the Bjorko treaty was never invoked, and the private Willy-Nicky correspondence soon dwindled away. Thereafter, the Kaiser’s influence over the Tsar also faded rapidly. But Nicholas’s eyes were opened late. By 1905, he had lost a war and his country was rushing full tilt into revolution.
CHAPTER NINE
1905
THE “small victorious war” so ardently desired by Plehve, the Minister of Interior, was over, but Plehve did not live to see it. Vyacheslav Plehve was a professional policeman: his most spectacular piece of work had been the rounding up of everyone involved in the plot which killed Alexander II. Appointed Minister of Interior in 1902 after his predecessor had been killed by a terrorist, Plehve was described by a colleague as “a splendid man for little things, a stupid man for affairs of state.” As Minister, he permitted no political assemblies of any kind. Students were not allowed to walk together on the streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg. It was impossible to give a party for more than a few people without first getting written permission from the police.
Russia’s five million Jews were a special object of Plehve’s hatred.* In a bitter cycle of repression and retaliation, Russian Jews were driven in numbers into the ranks of revolutionary terrorism. Under Plehve, local police were encouraged to turn a blind eye toward anti-Semites. On Easter Day, Plehve’s policy led to the most celebrated pogrom of Nicholas’s reign: a mob running wild in the town of Kishenev in Bessarabia murdered forty-five Jews and destroyed six hundred houses; the police did not trouble to intervene until the end of the second day. The pogrom was condemned by the government, the governor of the province was dismissed and the rioters tried and punished, but Plehve remained in power. Witte bluntly told the Interior Minister that his policies were making his own assassination inevitable. In July 1904, Plehve was blown to pieces by an assassin’s bomb.
Plehve’s death did not destroy his most inventive project, a workers’ movement created and secretly guided by the police. The movement was led by a youthful St. Petersburg priest, Father George Gapon, who hoped by his efforts to immunize the workers against revolutionary viruses and strengthen their monarchist feelings. Economic grievances were to be channeled away from the government in the general direction of the employers. The employers, understandably touchy, were persuaded in turn that it was better to have an organization watched and controlled by the police than to leave the workers to the dangerous blandishments of clandestine socialist propagandists.
