History

Oct 3, 2016 - The Carls-Schwerdfeger History Lectureship Series featured Dr. Sean McMeekin, Professor of History at Bard College, as its 20th annual lecturer. Professor McMeekin, a specialist on East European and Eurasian history in the early 20th century, spoke about the Bolshevik Revolution in the afternoon and the immediate origins of the First World War in the evening.

The title of McMeekin’s afternoon lecture was “Hostile Takeover: The Bolsheviks Conquer Russia, 1917-1920.” McMeekin began by referring to Richard Pipes, whose history of the Russian Revolution of 1917 caused a controversy in the academic world. Noting that Pipes revisited some of the old polemics surrounding the revolution, McMeekin added that Pipes’ account did not take into account new evidence that emerged after Russian authorities opened up their archives in1991. Using the recently opened archives, McMeekin emphasized the intense debate that surrounded Tsar Nicholas II regarding the outbreak of the Great War and Russia’s role in it once the conflict began. On one side was Grigory Rasputin, an orthodox priest and influential adviser to the imperial couple, who advocated for peace. On the other were wealthy liberal politicians who wanted war in 1914 and who then plotted against the tsar after they believed he had gone soft on it. One victim of their intrigues was Rasputin who was assassinated in late 1916. McMeekin argued that when the liberals ousted Nicholas II in early 1917 and introduced a self-appointed provisional government, the Russian army was still in respectable condition. While the liberals still dreamed of an empire and the provisional government prepared an offensive in 1917, the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin undermined army morale through the use of anti-war propaganda and a bolshevized army unit that set off a frontline mutiny. In the end the Bolsheviks destroyed the Russian imperial army in 1917, but once they gained power late that year, they immediately moved in the other direction. Some 100 people attended McMeekin’s afternoon lecture.

In the evening, McMeekin lectured on “The War of 1914: An Avoidable Catastrophe.” He started with a brief discussion of Barbara Tuchman’s book The Guns of August in which she barely mentioned either the Balkans or the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, as factors in causing World War I. According to McMeekin, her book was a product of the Cold War so she focused on topics such as arms races and Great Power rivalries. McMeekin, on the other hand, argued that the problems in the Balkans and the assassination of the archduke were decisive in causing the conflagration. He provided a detailed account of the Ottoman Empire and its Balkans neighbors in the years just prior to the war as well as the events of July, 1914, to support his case. Emphasizing that unexpected events can inalterably change the course of history, McMeekin stated that Franz Ferdinand’s murder on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, unleashed a set of actions that culminated in a world war just a few weeks later. One key development was an Austro-Hungarian mission to Berlin in early July, where Germany granted a “blank check” of support for quick Austrian military action against Serbia before the other world powers could react; the Austrians, however, failed to tell the Germans that they could not do that since many of their soldiers were on harvest leave. This lack of German-Austrian coordination was again evident later in July, when the Austrians made some pivotal decisions without properly informing their ally, partly out of fear that Germany might pull the rug out from under them in their determination to punish the Serbs militarily. One decision was Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia on July 28 which caught the Germans off guard. When German Chancellor Theolbald von Bethmann Hollweg learned very late on July 29 that British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey had earlier in the day indicated that Britain might be forced to take up arms in case of war in Europe, the news shattered the chancellor’s desperate hope for British neutrality. Bethmann immediately rescinded Germany’s “blank check” to the Austrians and ordered them to go to the negotiating table, but his action came too late since Austria-Hungary had already bombarded the Serbian capital of Belgrade several hours earlier. McMeekin stated that the Germans have much to answer for in the July Crisis, with their violation of Belgian neutrality at the war’s outset in an attempt to outflank the French armies being at the top of the list. He concluded his talk by saying that the Germans in the twentieth century were “very, very good at making war, but really bad at diplomacy.” Approximately 500 people attended the evening lecture, after which McMeekin did a book signing in the foyer of the G. M. Savage Memorial Chapel.