Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “IMPERIALISM”

QUADFLIEG, THE RUSSIAN POLICY OF EXPANSION,
1774-1914

The Russian Policy of Expansion, 1774-1914, by Dr. Franz Quadflieg, Berlin, 1914.

“In the meantime, by the Kuwait treaty, Britain has transferred her differences with Russia on the Turkish issue to Armenia and Asia Minor; Russia is working secretly in Armenia; France is hankering after Syria, and Germany is after territorial acquisitions on the Euphrates. Thus for another century, probably with short intervals, the Turkish question will continue to agitate Europe, and Russian diplomacy will have to devote more attention to South Asia. Russia’s gigantic expansion policy in Asia means that her future, too, lies on the seas; without a strong and freely-moving navy there can be no Russian Asia; passage through the Sea of Marmara is the more important for Russian naval policy because in 1905 Russia again lost her favourable position in Eastern Asia” (p. 96).

“Even after the partition Treaty of August 7, 1907, the above-mentioned projects could be carried out without violation of the treaty provisions. The 1907 treaty divided Persia into three parts, viz., Russian and British spheres of influence, and a zone common to both powers. The British and Russian governments undertook not to acquire any concessions of a political or commercial nature in the respective spheres of influence, and not to assist such acquisition by their own nationals or those of third states. The whole of northern Persia, i.e., north of the line Qasri—Shirin—Esfahan—Yazd—Khakh up to the intersection of the Persian-Afghan-Russian frontiers is reserved for Russia, while Britain will exercise her influence in the East, i.e., southeast of the Bandar Abbas—Kerman—Birjand—Gazik line” (p. 134).

“The final act of Anglo-Russian policy was the conclusion of the Anglo-Turkish agreement by Hakki-Pasha in London in 1913; we shall have to return to it in connection with Russian policy in Asia Minor. Under it Britain obtained the terminal portion of the Baghdad railway, Basra-Baghdad, i.e., another link of the Cyprus-India line. Furthermore, Turkey gave up the Kuwait Sultanate, which indeed was always only loosely dependent on Turkey, and was now to become a vassal state of Britain. This means that the entire South-West coast of the Persian Gulf from the mouth of the Euphrates to the Straits of Hormuz becomes British” (p. 135).

“Russian policy in Persia has been less successful than British because Britain can threaten Persia from the sea” (p. 136).

“Latterly Russia has reverted to her earlier policy of engineering revolts, i.e., is again using the Armenians to instigate revolts in the Turkish areas, though, of course, so far not much can be said about this. Britain, on the other hand, made use of the 1913 Balkan disorders to carry out peaceful reforms, so that Russia should not have any grounds for intervention; should, however, such intervention prove necessary, it would be the duty of Britain, since Turkey has promised her to introduce reforms. Under the Kuwait treaty, Britain guarantees the Sultan his Turkish possessions in Asia for forty years. She thus acquires the right, in the event of attempted Russian conquests, again to act as Turkey’s protector and oblige the Russians to return possible acquisitions. In return, Turkey promises to carry out reforms in Armenia, Anatolia and other Asia Minor areas with a partially Christian population” (pp. 146-47).

“‘Accordingly, Britain has guaranteed Turkey’s territorial integrity for forty years, and under present conditions this is important in relation to Russia, which is engaged in subversive activity in Armenia’—writes Rohrbach”^[1] (p. 147).

“The construction of a communications network, consisting of railways, waterways and military roads, shows that Russia does not consider the South-Asian problem settled. On the contrary, this construction programme suggests that at the appropriate time arms will decide who is to be the sole ruler of South Asia” (p. 171).

“Already in 1903 Prince Ito urged a Russo-Japanese alliance, since unity would be bound to make partition of the Chinese Empire considerably easier and give everyone concerned a proper share” (p. 173).

“The Russo-Japanese treaty of July 17 (30), 1907, testifies to the new trend of both Russian and Japanese policy. Britain was thus isolated and the value of the Anglo-Japanese alliance was greatly diminished” (pp. 173-74).

“Shortly after the Russo-Japanese agreement Britain concluded with Russia the convention of August 7, 1907, by which Russia renounced, for the time being, any further penetration in Afghanistan” (p. 174).

“The Russo-Japanese policy of rapprochement had its continuation in the treaty of July 4, 1910, which closely resembles a defensive alliance” (p. 219).

“It was broadened by a supplementary treaty of May 7, 1911. The two states pledged themselves to respect each other’s spheres of influence in Manchuria and repel any foreign interference, in return for which Japan gave Russia complete freedom of action in Mongolia” (p. 220).

“In line with the May 7, 1911 treaty, Russia now raised the question of Mongolia. Basing themselves on the revolution and the fact that the Chinese immigration policy, by which peaceful settlers were followed by military contingents, violated the existing treaties between the Manchus and the Khalkha tribes, the Mongolian princes proclaimed the independence of their region. Russia hastened to recognise the independence of Mongolia, although she had done nothing to contribute to its realisation” (pp. 220-21).

“Though the semblance of Chinese overlordship remained, the Russian press was not far off the mark in asserting that Mongolia had become a Russian protectorate. Russian diplomacy had achieved the same results as in Korea prior to 1904. This time, having an agreement of Japan, Russia may be more fortunate than she was then, when she had to combat Japanese resistance” (p. 221).

“The only question is whether China can reorganise herself. China is a compact mass of 300 million people who love their country and are not a little embittered by its treatment at the hands of foreigners. The 1911 revolution ended in the removal of the Manchus. Thereby China accomplished her first task—the overthrow of foreign rule—which she had so often and so unsuccessfully attempted. Will Yüan Shih-kai or someone else be the re-maker of China? Once awoken, China will be a more dangerous opponent of Russian expansion than Japan, and Prince Ukhtomsky was quite right when he said: ‘China will regenerate herself through her own forces, as has so often happened in the many thousand years of her history, more slowly but perhaps more permanently than Japan, and then the question will no longer be Russia or Japan, but Russia or China’” (p. 222).

“The guiding motive of Russia’s nineteenth-century Balkan policy was control of the Turkish areas, whether by their constitutional inclusion in the Russian Empire, or by dominion, on the basis of international law, over Turkey herself, or over a federation of Balkan states formed out of the Turkish Empire. Such dominion could be converted later into constitutional imperial rule.

“However diverse Russia’s final aims in Central and South Asia, including Asia Minor, may have been in specific periods, they can be reduced to a single formula. The final aim is to bring the states concerned—Armenia with Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and the adjacent small states—under Russian influence, then under a Russian protectorate and ultimately incorporate them in the Russian Empire” (pp. 227-28).

“Russia has temporarily renounced Korea and part of Manchuria, but she has made a rapprochement with the Japanese in order the more surely to incorporate Mongolia and Northern Manchuria in the empire. By cleverly exploiting the special political and social relations which have always existed between Mongolia and the dominant state, China, this policy appears, with the consent of the Japanese government, to be achieving its aim. And from this it follows that in Eastern Asia, too, Russia is consistently working to a well-devised plan of expansion, which may be modified according to circumstances but remains essentially unaltered, the aim being direct domination of the vast territories right up to the Chinese Wall and supremacy in Eastern Asia....

“It can therefore be concluded that the basic idea of nineteenth- century Russian policy was the creation of a world empire, that is, a state whose final frontiers are not determined by any of the decisive factors that go into the formation of a state. The frontiers aimed at coincide neither with nationality, language, race, nor even—what is certainly less often taken into account—religious boundaries. Nor are they determined by physical features, and therefore do not everywhere coincide with natural geographical boundaries” (pp. 230-31).

“‘World empires,’ says Sering, ‘have always monopolised the earth, the source of all material wealth.’ The modern world empires, Russia, Great Britain and America, go further. They have expanded, or seek to expand, their empires over all zones, not in a literal sense, but in such a way that everything the earth can yield will be produced within the bounds of their empire. Great Britain has already done that. Occupying a quarter of the inhabited surface of the globe, there is nothing, as Chamberlain proudly declared at the conference of colonial Prime Ministers, that cannot be produced in one or another part of the far-flung empire. Russia and America, if they succeed in realising their plans of world empire, will seize the next two quarters of the world and be in the same favourable position as the British Empire” (p. 234).

“The other path, specifically relating to Germany, is described by Schmoller as follows: ‘We do not want to pursue, nor will we pursue, a chauvinistic world-power policy. We shall not embark on unlimited expansion of our navy and sea power, but we want to expand our trade and industry sufficiently to be able to live and support a growing population; we want to defend our colonies and if possible acquire somewhere an agricultural colony for Germany; we shall everywhere oppose exaggerated predatory mercantilism and a division of the world among the three world powers— Great Britain, Russia and North America—which strive to exclude all other states and at the same time destroy their trade.’ But this second path can now only be adopted, with any prospect of success, by a few Great Powers” (p. 237).

“Britain has always been the friend of the weaker power,^[2] in order to bring down the stronger to a level that is no longer dangerous for her. First of all she allied with Holland to destroy the power of Spain, then with France to put an end to the rule of the Netherlands at sea, then she supported Frederick the Great to be in a better position to dismember France’s colonial empire; in the same manner she allied with Japan to counteract the threatening growth of Russian power in East Asian waters; today she has become France’s or Russia’s friend so as to he able to destroy Germany’s position as a naval power; she will become Germany’s ally as soon as she has nothing more to fear from the German navy, either because the latter will be destroyed, or because Germany will voluntarily give up competing with her. And then her next opponent could prove to be the tsarist empire” (p. 246).

The following table illustrates the progress of Russian railway development (p. 239):

“The central European states—Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy—joined hands against the aggressive tendencies of Russian and French policy. This alliance has persisted for a long time because there can only be minor points of dispute between its three members; such disagreements exist only between Austria and Italy, since Austria still has an Italian-speaking population on the frontier with Italy. And this antagonism is intensified by the intrigues of Italian irredentists in Trieste and the Italian Tyrol. The conversion of this very loose international union into a firmer one cannot, therefore, be dismissed out of hand. We thus have the beginnings of a European association of states. Without any aggressive designs, three great European states have joined together to counter the attack of Slavism or, more precisely, the encroachment of Russia and of the small Slav Balkan states that follow Russia’s lead” (pp. 248-49).

“The unity of the European continental powers, so necessary in face of the world powers, Britain and Russia, who are joined by a third, the United States of America, with its pan-American aspirations, which have made notable progress since the Monroe Doctrine, is in this way being frustrated. As long as the European states remain disunited, these three powers can go further in dividing up the rest of the world. The Anglo-Russian struggle in Asia showed that these two powers almost alone came into consideration, the other European states playing a very secondary role. As pointed out above, throughout the century Russia has, with short intervals, enlarged her empire first in one place and then in another. Equally, too, no decade has passed without Britain expanding her mighty empire, beginning with the occupation of Malta in 1800 and continuing up to the conquest of the Boer Republic in 1900. While Russia and Britain divided the non-European world between them, the North Americans have specially reserved for themselves the entire American continent as an object of conquest. Hence the Russian policy of conquest appears as merely the counterpart of British imperialism and North American pan-Americanism. Although outwardly differing in their individual aims, they all have the same ultimate goal—an independent world state cut off from the outside world by a high tariff wall. The movement to build world states began in the nineteenth century; in the twentieth century it will be the central feature of foreign policy. This tendency will manifest itself in the expansion of the leading powers and in the association of the smaller countries and those who arrive on the scene too late, i.e., in an association of the European states with the exception of Britain and Russia. Chamberlain’s statement in his Johannesburg speech of January 17, 1903, will be confirmed: ‘The day of small kingdoms with petty jealousies is past, the future is with the great empires’” (pp. 254-55).

Notes

^[1] Münchner Neueste Nachrichten No. 280, April 4, 1913.—Ed.

^[2] Quadflieg’s italics.—Ed.