Introduction: Constructing the last argument of tsarism

A mere ten years separated Russia's disastrous engagement with Japan from the cataclysm of European war. But this decade was associated with some profound changes in Russia's body politic and economic conditions. To embark on war in 1914 was to mobilize social and political forces very different from those that operated in 1904; to engage in armed conflict was not only to unleash larger and more sophisticated armaments and personnel upon the enemy, but also to call upon the resources of a more developed industrial economy. After 1905, and for the first time, Russia possessed an embryonic parliamentary regime. To the extent that the Duma exerted limited control over defence appropriations, the tsarist government had to take parliamentary opinion into account when formulating defence policy. Whether, in wartime, the Duma would behave as a pliant instrument of the regime, or as the focal point of broader social tensions, remained to be seen. Another major change involved the system of land tenure. The government of P. A. Stolypin embarked on a thorough reorganization of land tenure, in an attempt to recast the relationship between peasantry and the state, by making it possible for peasants to jettison communal strips of land for individual, enclosed plots, thereby strengthening a sense of property in land and other agricultural assets. On the international stage, Russian diplomacy committed the country more firmly than before to the alliance with France, holding out the prospect that Russia could share the burden of defence with at least one partner.