Excerpt from “Ukraine, the Lifeblood of Russia: Part II, the East European Crisis and its Solution” by Dr. Eugene Lewicky
From the magazine Der Deutsche Krieg, 1915 issue
The appetite grows as one eats. After Russia, under the reign of Catherine II, finally gained possession of Ukrainian territories on the Black Sea, it immediately thought of further conquests in the Balkans. The orthodox faith was to serve as a pretext. This is how the alleged dream of Peter the Great came about, to erect the three-armed cross on the mosques of Constantinople — that dream which, to this day, does not let the greatest statesmen of the Tsarist Empire sleep peacefully. Of course, the dream has not yet come true. The two-time attempt by Nicholas I failed due to the resistance of France and England, and in the agreement of the great powers of December 5th, 1853, according to which the existence of Turkey should be maintained in the interest of maintaining the European balance, the Russian advance was put to a stop. At that time England was not yet competing with Germany in the East and therefore did not want to allow her freedom of movement in Asia to be taken away or restricted by the Russian occupation of the Straits and Constantinople. The French took the same point of view at that time, with regard to their interests in the Mediterranean Sea. The Crimean War, unfortunate for Russia, had only pushed the realisation of Russia’s dreams further away into the future. The Treaty of Berlin and the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary represented a new and undoubtedly very painful defeat for the Russians in their Balkan policy. Since the last-mentioned treaty, the Danube monarchy has given rise to a powerful competitor to the Tsarist empire, a competitor who knows how to prevent any expansion of Russia’s sphere of power in southern Europe. But the Tsar’s dream of reaching the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles is no passing political chimera, but rather a real aspiration, based on Russia’s international situation, which can hardly ever be abolished by purely diplomatic means. Professor Mitrofanov, in a much-noticed article that appeared in the Preußischen Jahrbücher1 shortly before the outbreak of war, openly demonstrated to the political world the true basis of Russia’s efforts in the Balkans. Russia is striving for Constantinople because the Straits, which can be closed at any time, prevent her from gaining free access to the Mediterranean Sea and are therefore far too restricted in her imperialist policy. As already mentioned, in the realisation of these far-reaching plans Russia found an equal opponent and competitor in the Danube monarchy: for if the path of Russia leads via the Bosporus and Dardanelles to Asia Minor and beyond, the path of the Danube monarchy runs in the same direction via Belgrade or Mitrovitsa to Salonika. Both paths therefore run parallel, without being able to reach their goal — access to the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas — for the time being under the prevailing political conditions.
The opponents in the Balkans are now looking for allies for the time being, with the undeniable intention of possibly weakening the competitor. The upheavals on the Balkan Peninsula, which have taken place at an accelerated pace in recent years, and not least the current war, which sparked a world conflagration and swept almost all of Europe with it, show what results this competitive tactic has led to so far.
If one asks for the real cause from which the complications in Eastern Europe arose and have lasted for almost a century, the answer is self-evident. Only the conquest of the Ukraine and the domination of the Black Sea by Russia brought the expanded Tsarist Empire into the immediate vicinity of the Balkans and directed its power of expansion towards the south of Europe.
Russia’s striving to place the Balkans under her supremacy and to create a free road to the Mediterranean Sea, with all the complications that ensued, constitutes that moment which was added to the complications and efforts in Eastern Europe described in the first chapter and which actually happened only as a result of the distribution of power there, which came to an end for the time being at the end of the 18th century. Logically, therefore, the solution to the crisis that has been going on for centuries can only be found in eliminating the root cause. Cessante causa cessat effectus.2 Muscovite Russia must be pushed back from the Black Sea, and a bar must be put between Russia and the Balkans in the Ukrainian territories. If Russia can be separated from southern Europe by an independent Ukraine like a wedge, then it will turn its entire attention to itself, its internal consolidation and Europeanisation; on the other hand, the Balkan peoples, no longer incited and terrorised by Russia, will breathe a sigh of relief and put their international affairs in order on a national basis.
Germany is no less interested than its ally Austria-Hungary in thwarting Russia’s plans for the Balkans. Given the existing distribution of forces on the European continent, a distribution which appears to be based both on the geographical location and on the national composition of the powers in question, the realisation of the Russian Balkan plans means a permanent and inevitable weakening of the Danube monarchy and, as a result, also entails the weakening of Germany as a political power factor. Germany alone is not only indirectly interested in a thorough solution of the Western European question3 — out of consideration for its allies — but also directly out of consideration for the successes it has already achieved in Asia. Since Kaiser Wilhelm’s journey to Constantinople, Jerusalem and Damascus in 1898, Germany has been active in the Turkish Orient: this new direction in Germany’s world politics is directly connected with the upswing in domestic industry which it has had since about 1902. In the last two decades, Germany has introduced the growth of its own economic powers into the great global affair of economic politics, which entails the necessity of acquiring more and more foreign sales areas. The achievements made by Germany in the Turkish east have now created a completely new situation between the two interested states, England and Russia, which led to rapprochement and a meeting between Edward VII and Nicholas II in the bay of Reval in 1908, which, as is known, followed the agreement of both powers with France. For Germany, therefore, the realisation of Russian (and English) plans in the Balkans and in Asia Minor means that it could be cut off from the Turkish Orient and excluded from Asia Minor altogether, which of course Germany must not allow and most likely will not allow either. On the contrary, Germany must endeavour to bring about a solution to the Eastern European question through the present war, which will ensure free trade with Asia in the long term, and if possible help create a more comfortable route there.
The expulsion of Russia from the Black Sea and the reestablishment of the Ukrainian buffer state thus appear to be the only radical and sensible solution to the East European question for Germany.
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A German language magazine that published topics regarding culture and politics.
Cease the cause, cease the effect.
westeuropäischen Frage