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ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 12 ( 2023/1 ) |
THE FRANCO-RUSSIAN ALLIANCE (1891-1894) AND THE LIBERAL PUSH TO CZARIST RUSSIA
RENATA GRAVINA*
Summary
The article is a brief excursus on the triggers of the Franco-Russian alliance. The defensive agreement between France and Russia made possible for both to overcome an international isolation. But, especially for Russia, the alliance resulted in a general modernisation, as well as a beginning of a constituent institutionalisation looked upon favourably by the exponents of Russian political liberalism, whose march for freedom would have an apotheosis in the two-year period between 1905 and 1907. The Franco-Russian alliance dissolved within the interweaving of war and revolution known to recent historiography as the continuum of crisis of mobilization and violence. Franco-Russian’s unresolved ambiguity among defensive, economic and cultural-ideological principles led on both sides to an irreconcilable coexistence of patriotic and liberal thrusts, particularly with the onset of World War I. Despite this, at the turn of the 19th century the Franco-Russian alliance became a vehicle for the living expression of Russian liberal thought.
Key Words: Franco-Russian Alliance; Russian Liberalism; 1905’s Russian Revolution.
Introduction: a Pact Against International Isolation
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, the Franco-Russian diplomatic alliance, concretely defined between
1891 and 1894, was realized. After centuries of either cultural and
geopolitical mutual prejudices (Roccucci, 2020), the need to break out of the
isolation shared by France and Russia led both nations to reshape their
collective mentalities. In the years between the 18th and 19th centuries,
indeed, a Russophobia and Francophobia had involved most members of the French
and Russian intellectual elites. Besides, the alliance was an agreement required
by the French search for an anti-Germanic ally (Nolde, 1936), and by the
simultaneous exigency on the Russian side for a financial guarantor who could economically
help the Empire in the great process of industrialization it intended to
undertake. Affected by the Triple Alliance (1882), France realised that it was
reduced to impotence. The consequences of the disastrous campaign of 1870,
within the French defeat in Sedan, and the victory of Bismarck's Prussia, had
eliminated any possibility of change in the French status quo. Any
aspiration to change would have resulted in the repression of the armies of the
Triple Alliance. On the other side, Russia, even though not directly threatened
by the Triple, was aware that the Alliance was German-driven (Einaudi, 1897) and
therefore opposed to Russian hegemony.
The Franco-Russian
alliance appeared on the international horizon as, at the same time, the culmination
of a history of mutual projections between France and Russia, and the beginning
of a coercive bond also based on mutual diplomatic blackmail. Indeed,
since the military agreement of August 1892, France was economically bound as a
creditor to the Russian debt, and Russia as an anti-Germanic ally (Manfred,
1959).
The Franco-Russian Alliance and the Cultural hendiadys
‘Needless
to say, France has had no other purpose since the fall of Bismarck than to
always support Russia's policy’ (Einaudi, 1897).
The truce
marked by the Franco-Russian
alliance represented a real renewal in international relations between the two
nations (Carrère d’Encausse, 2019). France, according to the hendiadys formulated
in the Age of the Enlightenment had interpreted Russian society as an innocent 'young population' (Valle, 2012), and,
conversely, as a spectre of 'barbarism' in the context of the general European
progress. After the Crimean War, in particular, the orientations of French
intellectuals and travellers had mostly been fuelled by the belief in the
Russian ‘danger of expansionism' (Laruelle, 2004:242) and a widespread
apprehension about Russia as a model of autocratic despotism (Valle, 2012). During
the nineteenth century, the majority of French intellectuality had, so, lined
themselves up with the general Russophobic propaganda advocating a firm
opposition to Russian expansionist aims (Laruelle, 2004:247); although, in truth, even the deepest
scientific France remained divided between Russophobia and Russophilia.
Besides, the
Russian Empire had also nurtured a more than ambivalent feeling of attraction
and repulsion towards France, seen as the homeland of freedom and a secularised
and corrupt nation as well (Cassina, Venturi, 2008). The idea of an unwholesome
France was especially argued in the mystical and accusatory writings of the
exponents of the Russian religious Renaissance who had seen the spread of
'rationalist consciousness' and the 'separation from the state'
(отшепенство
от
государства) like
those hidden reasons for the triumph of Russian anarchy (Проблемы
идеализма, 1902; Vĕhi, 1909). The the co-existing
duality aspect of admiration and terror felt by both representatives of
Franco-Russian European elites seems particularly relevant in explaining the
highly contradictory policy perpetrated by each nation. Apart from the
political agreement, one of the characteristics of the Franco-Russian alliance
was that it constituted an ideal and mutual pact actually realised also by
individual personalities who nourished and self-fulfilled their conviction of
acting in concert with each other. The political faith in the rightness of the prosecution
of such a Franco-Russian mission
was carried forward above all by the Russian wing, and in particular, by the
exponents of the liberal area. Russian liberals were mostly convinced that they
had found in France a true shore to bring Russia into the fold of the
democratic powers (Маклаков,
1947). Conversely, the French, even those invested with an idealistic afflatus,
remained much more faithful to French governmental patriotism. Including
individual diplomats, French were much more influenced by a political realism
concerning the real fate of Russia in the waning parable of the Russian Empire (Leroy-Beaulieu,1990).
The Impetus for Russian Liberalism
The Franco-Russian agreement turned
into a deep economic bond of dependence, particularly of Russia on French
credits. Precisely because of that, France, in order to ensure the solvency of
its ally, took an interest in Russian institutional stability (Long, 1975). French
President Georges Clemenceau demanded a constitutionalisation of the Russian
debt, the idea being that new loans would have to be officially recognised by
the government (Berelowitch, 2007:379). Especially to the delight of Russian
reformists, the Franco-Russian agreement indirectly became a lever to force the
autocracy to proceed more expeditiously on the path of institutions or, at
least, towards what Weber described as a a kind of pseudo-liberal process
(Weber, 1906). The alliance gave also a broad impetus to the formation of the Russian
liberal environment. For their part, Russian liberal politicians, such as
Vasily Maklakov, Peter Struve (Rosenberg, 1974), pondered that through the alliance,
a liberal Russia would be able to express itself. Such a free Russia, with an external
support, thus, a libertarian impetus from France, would have induced the
autocracy to start the process of institutional reform (Leontovitsch, 2012).
Besides, the institutional reform dream was the same that had been
demanded by exponents of Russian constitutionalism and liberalism throughout
the 19th century (Gravina, 2022:38). It is no coincidence that the main liberal journal, Освобождение,
was published in Stuttgart and later in Paris (Gravina, 2022:45). From the
Liberation Union, indeed, it emerged the main nucleus of the unique future
Russian liberal party: Конституционно-демократическая
партия (Gravina, 2022:51).
Moreover, the movementist exponents of the Liberation Union maintained a close
relationship with European reformism (Франк, 1956). In particular, this was the case with philosophers such as Nikolai
Berdyaev, Peter Struve, Sergei Bulgakov former legal Marxists turned to
idealism, and among the promoters of the Liberation Union in 1903.
Between 1905 and 1907, within the framework of the Franco-Russian
alliance, Russia's 'original' 'liberal drive' had been consummated. On 17
October 1905, the Tsar had signed the manifesto that acceded to the
centuries-old desire for fundamental rights (a degree of civil liberty - Гражданская
свобода) and a parliament. The
representatives of the institutions believed that they would finally be able to
draw up political proposals to be discussed in the assembly, because 'without
the approval of the Duma in Russia no laws could be enacted'. According to Vasily Maklakov,
'autocracy capitulated' when in '1905' Russia had entered into a
'constitutional regime', because the 'edifice' that would be based on the
principle of 'national sovereignty' was born. However, despite the fact that
the political regime had formally changed, the Tsar and his collaborators
regarded it as 'null and void' (Leroy-Beaulieu, 1990).
The Mobilisation of Social Forces
According to Renouvin, the utilisation of human capital and energies to assist the war effort during the conflicts that swept across Europe was matched by an autonomous organisation of social forces into various forms of representation. Human capital was combined as well as with the emergence of new political parties and a massified public opinion (Renouvin, 1962). As the alliance with France was in the process of consolidation, there had been a strong mobilisation of social forces in Russia; a shift of human forse induced by both the military alliance and the national process of militarisation and modernisation of Russia. The social mobilisation in Russia led on the one hand to the birth of political parties and workers' soviets, and on the other to a deepening of that process of radicalisation that from 1905, due to the explosive coexistence of modernity and backwardness, inaugurated the Russian revolutionary era. The shift of social forces stimulated by the alliance with France, manifested its dark side through the unlimited expansion of nationalist and pacifist social movements that began to represent a factor of instability not foreseen at the beginning of the Franco-Russian agreements (Gravina, 2022: 76). Renouvin calls deep (or side) forces what he considers to be the structuring factors that determine the foreign policy of states, whether it be geography, demography, nationalism, or economic conditions (Guieu, Sanderson, 2012:169-178). Among the effects of the huge social forces displacement occurred because of the Franco-Russian alliance, it happened, for example, a process of resistance to international capitalism which saw the newly formed Franco-Russian relationship as merely the perpetuation of the dominance of financial interests. In this case the alliance had created the deep forces as a self-produced internal enemy.
In
the context of the Franco-Russian alliance and the possible expansion of
Russian liberalism, the mobilisation of social forces became an instrument for
the maximum expansion of social radicalism, as it induced polarisation. Indeed,
the mobilisation was initially a factor for the more autonomous organisation of
society, but later the consequences of this mobilisation escaped the control of
the parties and the government and became an appendage to the easy unleashing
of anarchy, one of the aspects most feared first by the Tsar but later also by
the exponents of the Russian Constitutional-Democratic Party and in general by
all moderate forces who would rather seek a compromise with the monarchy and
not a revolution.
The Double Level of the Franco-Russian Alliance
The
Franco-Russian relationship was structured on levels which did not always
converge: on the one hand the financial and institutional entanglement that
became more and more complex. The Russian ally, from the war with Japan in 1904
onwards, was less and less able to guarantee political and economic stability.
On the other hand, by the formation of mixed circles, it was, conversely,
strengthened a cultural relationship. Those Franco-Russian
cultural circles (Берберова,1997) lived
a deep mutual debate on the process of Russian liberation compared to that of
the French revolution (Berelowitch, 2007). This latter debate on the
iconography of the French Revolution, in turn, split into two branches, one recalcitrant,
and the other emulative. For Russian opponents of French mythology, like
Nikolai Berdyaev, did not look favourably on the Franco-Russian alliance; a
capitalist, anti-statist, secularist alliance, such as they saw unfolding
before their eyes. The 'French revolution and its decadence were conceived by
the Russian orthodox or Uniatist Francophobes as chastisements from God', as the
unveiling of secularisation, and the witness of the 'bourgeois enslavement of
the human spirit'. According to the Russian francophobes, as unhappy
consciences (Cassandras) of the secularisation process that had affected Europe,
starting in France and spreading to imperial Russia, the final outcome of the
revolutionary process in France was being the affirmation of 'philistinism' (Бердяев,
1918: 355-160). The
emulators of French libertarianism were, conversely, mainly the political
exponents of the Конституционно-демократическая
партия (Tchoudinov, 2008). Jules
Patouillet stated that intellectual relations often prevailed over political
ones (Patouillet, 1919:41). The watershed for Franco-Russian relations was
1905. Indeed, in the aftermath of the First Russian Revolution, Russian and
French liberals and socialists no longer looked at the other side only as an
economic-military factor, but found themselves allies in the march towards
freedom. After 1905, the process of cultural rapprochement that originated between
the elites thanks to the alliance, generated Franco-Russian
common political objectives in defence of the 'European liberation movements' (Берберова,1997).
The Franco-Russian Alliance in the Context of the World War
The
Franco-Russian alliance in the combination of war and revolution that swept
through Europe and the international community especially after 1914 determined
what Holquist called the continuum of crisis (Holquist, 2002: 1-11). The
difficult entry into the world conflict, an eventuality that both France and
Russia tried to avert, nonetheless redetermined a new and stronger imbalance in
the alliance. By the start of the world conflict, Russian and French patriotism had
taken priority over the universal principles of freedom affirmed by the French
Revolution. Thus the political-financial aspect and reciprocal blackmail once
again prevailed over cultural relations. The II War war affected the cultural
sphere of the alliance, somewhat previously safeguarded and separated from the
political and economic plan, due to the formulation of a genuine war propaganda
(Forcade, 2016). In fact, after 1914 a patriotic and nationalist wave led to
such propaganda on both sides, that the libertarian cultural alliance between
the countries was downgraded in relation to the need for victory in the
European war. French militarist and patriotic rhetoric, in particular, became
evident when Russia was swept up in the fatal whirlpool of war and revolution.
The crack in the reliability of the Russian ally on the French side became
evident in 1915, and more definitively, from February 1917 onwards (Foch, 1931). Precisely because of the combination
of war and revolution at home and abroad, Russia was unable to hold the eastern
front firm (Golovin, 1931). This was viewed with the greatest apprehension by
diplomats, the military and the French government, despite the different
solutions attempted to remedy this deficiency (Gravina, 2022: 69; 137).
The Franco-Russian Alliance as a Universal Struggle
for Freedom
The
Franco-Russian alliance contributed to unleashing the movement of social
forces that invested Russia and Europe in the process of modernisation and
industrialisation.
In the
late 19th and early 20th century the dynamics of deep forces fully involved international relations
(Renouvin, 1959). Within the contradictory manifestations of deep forces,
however, Franco-Russian psychological relations realised that dialectic
of the legacy between European collective mentalities. According to Pierre
Renouvin the season of the Franco-Russian alliance had been the main reference
point for the utopian realisation of freedom in Russia (Renouvin, 1959). The
exponents of Russian libertarianism, and later the representatives of the
constitutional-democratic party (Kadets), saw France as an economic and
political ally and as the iconic term for freedom and democracy they had
lacked. The Russian libertarian idea developed first at home, and then within the
liberal political emigration in Europe (especially in France). The numerous opportunities for
dialogue between diplomats and Franco-Russian associations favoured the
conviction of some Russian liberals, notably Peter Struve and Vasily Maklakov,
that they were united with the French in the common struggle for universal
democracy and the liberation of peoples (Scherrer, 2008). The trust in the French twinship placed by the
Russian side to varying degrees (Carrère d' Encausse, 2019), however, did not
always match the French vision (Tchoudinov,
2008). Certainly, the
common struggle for freedom that had invested the international community in
1905 came to an end in the meshes of patriotism that divided diplomats and
patriots in the name of national interest after 1914.
The perception of an ideal alliance
between France and liberal Russia was not only interpreted otherwise in France
and Russia, but was translated differently by the individual personalities
involved in this diplomatic affair. In this regard, it is interesting to
compare the Russian diplomacy undertaken by actors such as Vasily Maklakov, who
was sent in 1917 to
Paris as ambassador and after October went on to organize the liberal activities
of Russian émigrés and the diplomacy carried out by Joseph Noulens and Stephen Pichon, respectively, French Ambassador
to Russia, and French Foreign Minister in 1917 (Gravina, 2022:137). Liberals, such
as Pichon and Noulens, supported the idea of an all-out fight against
Bolshevism practically until the official recognition of Soviet Russia by the French
government (in 1924) showing the depth of the economic ties that had bound
France and Russia since 1891. Besides, the two diplomats were part of the
network of French shareholders in Russian debt. But the French had neither 'the
intention, nor the power, to help Russia by force to re-establish dominance. Definitely,
Russian liberals sought dialogue and consensus in French liberal circles, but
they were countered by a section of French radical diplomacy symbolised by
d'Anselme and Clemenceau for whom, especially since 1918, alternatives to the
Russian bulwark had to be sought outside Russia because since then it was part
of the 'post-Brest-Litovsk universe'.
Conclusions: the Franco-Russian Alliance
as a Backbone for the anti-Czarist Constitutional Libertarian Movement
As a
defensive, economic, political, cultural pact, the Franco-Russian alliance
represented an important antechamber for the expression of the Russian liberal
idea (Pipes, 2005). To some extent this
was achieved, in particular through a kind of constitutionalisation of the debt
to France by the Russian autocracy.
However, the exponents of the Russian Liberation Union and later the apologists of liberal Russia (Rosenberg, 1974) used the season of the alliance that began in 1891-94 even as a real possibility of establishing a stable relationship with France, as the emblem of the French revolution (Tchoudinov, 2007), and the friendship of free peoples. It was rather on the second point that the misconception of the Russian liberals was more bitter. The negative course of the war on the Russian side induced the French to nurture national patriotism. Moreover, the idealist of a Franco-Russian common stand for freedom had mainly been conducted by Russian and French individual diplomatic personalities. Despite inconsistencies and disagreements, until 1921 (the year of the end the Russian-Polish War) the French supported anti-Bolshevik Russia and the Liberals even in their idealistic fight against Leninist propaganda.
In spite
of the contradictory origin, development and end of the Franco-Russian
alliance, it was a real detonator for the Russian liberal march between 1905
and 1907. The downward parabola of Russian liberalism and the crisis of
confidence on the part of the French ally in Russia's hold on the alliance
basically coincided with the very failure of the hypothesis that a free Russia
could really prevail in Russian Empire.
After
1914 it became clear that the liberal Russian parabola would become dangerously
intertwined with the course of the World War and this made Russian liberals
prey both to radicalism as well as the combination of war and revolution in the
continuum of crisis.
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*Renata Gravina - Fellow in History of Russia, Central and Eastern Europe at Sapienza University of Rome
email: renata.gravina@uniroma1.it
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