Russian Diplomats Nikolai V. Charykov and Vassili N. Strandtmann on the Reasons for the Failure of the Russian Plan to Create a Balkan Federation

Abstract

In Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, a new strategic line in relations with the Ottoman Empire was being developed. The urgent task of Russian diplomacy was to prevent the participation of the Ottoman Empire on the side of Russia’s opponents in a possible war. Unfortunately, Russian diplomacy failed to cope with this task. Diplomatic documents attest to the existence of a Russian plan to create a Balkan Federation under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire. Russia’s efforts in this regard intensified after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. In 1910, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was developing a plan for the possible unification of the Balkan states into a single Balkan Federation led by the Ottoman Empire. Serbia played an important role in the implementation of this program. This idea was developed by Nikolai V. Charykov, the Russian ambassador to Constantinople from 1909 to 1911. Russian diplomacy sought to smooth out the contradictions in the Balkans and normalise the relations of the young states with the Ottoman Empire. In 1911, the Russian Envoy to Constantinople, Charykov, negotiated with the Turkish leadership on the Russian-Turkish treaty, which, in particular, included the question of the Balkan Federation. This episode in Russian-Turkish relations went down in the history of diplomacy as the “Charykov demarche.” The formation of the Balkan Union and the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 meant the failure of the Russian model of peaceful coexistence of the Balkan states as a confederation, including the autonomy of European Turkey. The reasons for this failure were discussed in their memoirs by two Russian diplomats Nikolai V. Charykov and Vassili N. Strandtmann, who gave years of diplomatic service in the Balkans, and who remained living there after escaping from revolutionary Russia.