|
|
|
Book Review
| William C. Fuller, Jr., The Foe Within: Fantasies of Treason and the End of Imperial Russia, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Pp. 286. $39.95 (ISBN 978-0-8014-4426-5).
|
| In The Foe Within, William Fuller investigates the trumped-up prosecution of the police and intelligence officer S. N. Miasoedov and his one-time patron, Minister of War V. A. Sukhomlinov, in 1915 and 1916–17 respectively. Fuller argues that these cases constitute the culmination of Imperial Russia's spy mania that rose to a feverish pitch in the wake of a steady stream of battlefield defeats in the First World War. Meticulously researching the available sources (some key sources, such as those of German intelligence, have unfortunately been destroyed long ago) for the two cases, he concludes that both these convicted traitors, although corrupt and sometimes derelict in their duty, were entirely innocent of working for the Central Powers. He concomitantly establishes how the causes of the Russian military setbacks in the First World War were, rather than the result of treason or superior generalship on the German side, due to a combination of unrelated circumstances. These included the strong antagonism between government and Russian society, the unexpected length of the war, as well as the mediocrity, incompetence, and self-serving attitude of the tsar and his entourage, government ministers, bureaucrats, much of the Russian military brass and Duma politicians (especially Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and A. I. Guchkov are taken to task). Chance played its role, too, for there were several moments during the battling that the Russians seemed poised to inflict a decisive military blow upon their opponents but failed to capitalize on the opportunity. Ultimately, continued defeats, accompanied by a staggering number of casualties, eroded the brief patriotic upsurge Imperial Russia experienced in August 1914. |
1
|
|
Fuller shows clearly how the authorities' attempt to rally the people behind the flag was problematic in the multi-ethnic tsarist empire, and how unscrupulous politicians and the yellow press turned to appeal to the least edifying trait of nationalism, its exclusivist side. They scapegoated the large Jewish and German minorities (both numbering several million people) as traitors to the Russian cause, applying Bismarck's strategies of singling out the enemy within, which had proved so successful in mobilizing the Germans behind his national project in the 1870s and 1880s. To their misfortune, Miasoedov (whose wife was Jewish) and Sukhomlinov had close ties to both communities and thus, too, presented convenient targets to single out as causing Russia's military woes. As Fuller suggests, however, accusing senior members of the government of duplicitous ties with the enemy and his supposed fifth column of treasonous ethnic groups was a two-edged sword, for it begged the question of how such alleged traitors could have been appointed to their high positions in the first place; rather than improving the standing of the tsarist regime, both trials further eroded public confidence in the government. The book shows once again how the rule of law in Imperial Russia always remained a contested organizational principle. Whereas major judicial reforms during the 1860s had modernized Russia's legal system, the government wielded a variety of options that violated the operation of an independent judiciary, not in the least the sustained state of emergency (in force almost uninterruptedly between 1881 and 1917) in most parts of the empire and the principle that the autocrat (and therefore the government) stood above the law. Miasoedov and Sukhomlinov were tried in new-fangled ad-hoc courts that had been beforehand instructed by political authorities to render a guilty verdict. |
2
|
|
This reviewer found little in the book upon which Fuller could have further improved. Perhaps some of the detail of his forays into the actual military developments could have been summarized, while the question of who should bear most blame for the outbreak of war is only tangentially related to the book's topic (116–19), and occasionally statements appear in the text that appear added for rhetorical effect and are not substantiated by evidence (for instance on drinking habits, 38, 42). Also, the spelling is Hindenburg, Nietzsche, Buchanan, and Lavr Kornilov, rather than what the book provides. Finally, although this may result from the contamination of this reviewer's mind with conspiracy theories, given the disappearance of most Wilhelmine documents relevant to the German intelligence network in Russia and the general secretive nature of intelligence work (Miasoedov's stint as a sort of personal counter-intelligence agent for Sukhomlinov in the War Ministry before 1914, who strictly orally reported to the minister, thus left no trace), the tiniest of possibilities remains that Fuller's tragic heroes were engaging in supplying Russia's enemies with classified information, even if any concrete documentary evidence is lacking (which possibility the author, who is utterly precise in wielding the evidence, admits throughout). But those are trifles. The Foe Within is a remarkable work, written with verve and capturing the reader's attention throughout. It may be read with profit by all with an interest in Russian history, military history, and the history of World War One. |
3
|
| Kees Boterbloem
|
| University of South Florida |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|