Vladimir Lambsdorff

Count Vladimir Nikolayevich Lambsdorff (Russian: Владимир Николаевич Ламсдорф, "Lamsdorf", OldStyleDate|6 January|1845|25 December|1844ndash OldStyleDate|March 19|1907|March 6) was a Russian statesman of Baltic German descent who served as Foreign Minister in 1900ndash 1906, a crucial period which included the Russo-Japanese War and the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Early career

Like so many other Russian diplomats, Lambsdorff was trained in the Alexander Lyceum in St. Petersburg. At the Berlin Congress he was in the retinue of Prince Alexander Gorchakov, the Chancellor of the Russian Empire. In 1884 the young diplomat was present at the meeting of Alexander III of Russia, Wilhelm I of Prussia and Franz Josef of Austria in Skierniewice and Kroměříž.

Gorchakov's successor, Nicholas de Giers, singled out Lambsdorff as his protégé and prospective successor. During the 1880s, he was a vocal supporter of the Three Emperors' League but shifted his views after Bismarck's resignation in 1890. In 1897 he was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister. There was a fair degree of continuity in policies when he succeeded Mikhail Muraviev three years later.

Foreign Minister

Lambsdorff's main concerns revolved around the Eastern Question and the proposed administrative reform of the Ottoman Empire. In late 1902 he personally visited Belgrade, Sofia and Vienna to discuss the Balkan impasse with Nikola Pašić, Hristo Tatarchev, Agenor Maria Gołuchowski, and their monarchs. In September 1903 he accompanied Nicholas II to Vienna and Mürzzuschlag. Rather surprisingly for a Russian politician, Lambsdorff was anxious to prevent the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the face of Slavic nationalism and emphatically condemned the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising and other activities of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. Even more surprisingly, he was sympathetic to the Zionist cause, as promoted by Theodor Herzl. [Friedman, Isaiah. "Germany, Turkey, and Zionism 1897-1918". Transaction Publishers, 1997. ISBN 0765804077. Page 116.]

The main event of Lambsdorff's tenure in office was the Russo-Japanese War, but the minister cannot be accused of having precipitated the conflict by his policies. On the contrary, he proposed to relinquish Russia's impractical ambitions in Korea in order to safeguard her interests in Manchuria. He viewed Pacific politics as something of a sideshow and was steadily sidelined by the jingoist hard-liners from the military. In terms of Far Eastern politics, Admiral Aleksey Abaza exerted more influence on the Tsar, to whom he had direct access in his capacity of chairman of the semi-official Committee on Far Eastern Affairs. As a result of Abaza's activities, Russia reneged on her promise to evacuate Manchuria by 1902, and events continued their downward spiral to war, with Lambsdorff seemingly resigned to its inevitability.

During and after the war, Lambsdorff was to a large degree overshadowed by the stronger personality of his close associate, Count Sergey Witte. Together they negotiated the Treaty of Portsmouth, only to learn, upon their return to St. Petersburg, that the Tsar had secretly signed a friendly agreement with the Kaiser. It was owing to their efforts that the projected Russian-German alliance against Britain never came into effect. This earned Lambsdorff the enmity of both German government and press. If the Tsar had not listened to the arguments of Witte and Lambsdorff, "the whole history of Europe and of the world could have been different". [Quoted from: Mombauer, Annika; Deist, Wilhelm. "The Kaiser: New Research on Wilhelm II's Role in Imperial Germany". Cambridge University Press, 2003. Page 119.]

When eventually relieved of his duties in 1906, Lambsdorff prided himself on having maintained a position equidistant from both Potsdam and Buckingham Palace. He compared Russia's standing in Europe to "that of a rich bride which none wanted to see fall into the arms of another".Quoted from: White, John Albert. "Transition to Global Rivalry: Alliance Diplomacy and the Quadruple Entente, 1895-1907". Cambridge University Press, 1995. Page 84.] Lambsdorff's decidedly cool attitude to both British and German empires was demonstrated by his handling of the Dogger Bank incident and the Treaty of Björkö.

Personality

Lambsdorff was described by his contemporaries as a "leisurely, well-bred man of good society... with a very high forehead and a soft affable manner". He never married and fathered no children. Rumors about his sexual orientation were often exploited by his enemies to undermine his authority at court. A characteristic excerpt from Suvorin's diary: "The Tsar calls Lamsdorf "madame" and promotes his lover Savitsky within the ranks of the count. Lamsdorf boasts that he spent thirty years in the corridors of the Foreign Ministry. As he is a homosexual and all men are for him sluts, he thus spent thirty years in a bordello". [Quoted from: Alexander Poznansky. "Tchaikovsky's Last Days: A Documentary Study". Oxford University Press, 1996. ISBN 019816596X. Page 5.] At his resignation, Lambsdorff was admitted into the State Council of Imperial Russia but chose to spend the few remaining months of his life on the Italian Riviera, where he died (in San Remo) at the age of 62.

References