A Short History of Russia

by Mary Platt Parmele

A severe blow had been dealt to Russia. She saw her entire Eastern policy threatened with failure. The permanent occupation of the Liao-Tung peninsula by Japan meant that she had to deal, not with an effete and waning power which she might threaten and cajole, but with a new and ambitious civilization which had just given proof of surprising ability. After vast expenditure of energy and treasure and diplomacy, access to the sea was further off than ever.

Then came a masterly stroke. Germany and France were induced to co-operate with Russia in driving Japan out of Manchuria, upon the ground that her presence so near to Pekin endangered the Chinese Empire, the independence of Korea and the peace of the Orient. So in the hour of her triumph Japan was to be humiliated; the fruits of her victory snatched from her, precisely as the "Berlin Treaty," in 1879, had torn from Russia the fruits of her Turkish victories! Japan wasted no time in protests, but quietly withdrew and, as it is significantly said, "proceeded to double her army and treble her navy!"

As the protector of Chinese interests Russia was in position to ask a favor; she asked and obtained permission to carry the Siberian railway in a straight line through Manchuria, instead of following the Amur in its great northward sweep. The Japanese word for statesman also means chess-player. Russian diplomatists had played their game well. In serving China, they had incidentally removed the Japanese from a position which blocked their own game, and had at the same time opened a way for their railway across that waiting gap in Northern Manchuria.

Just three years after these events Germany, by way of indemnity for the murder of two missionaries, compelled China to lease to her the province of Shantung. Russia immediately demanded similar privileges in the Liao-Tung peninsula. China, beaten to her knees, could not afford to lose the friendship of the Tsar, and granted the lease; and when permission was asked to have a branch of the Russian railway run from Harbin through the length of this leased territory to Port Arthur, humbly conceded that too.

With wonderful smoothness everything had moved toward the desired end. To be sure, the tenure of the peninsula was only by lease, and in no way different from that of Shantung by Germany. There was no pretext in sight for garrisoning the dismantled fort at Port Arthur, but the fates had hitherto opened closed doors and might do it again. And so she waited. And while she waited the branch road from Harbin moved swiftly down to Mukden, and on through the Manchurian peninsula, and Port Arthur was in direct line of communication with St. Petersburg.

In 1900 the anti-foreign insurrection known as the "Boxer war" broke out in China. Russia, in common with all the Great Powers (now including Japan), sent troops for the protection of the imperiled legations at Pekin. Nothing could better have served the Government of the Tsar. Russian troops poured into Manchuria, and the new road from Harbin bore the Tsar's soldiers swiftly down to Port Arthur. The fort was garrisoned, and work immediately commenced—probably upon plans already drawn—to make of this coveted spot what Nature seemed to have designed it to be—the Gibraltar of the East.

The Western Powers had not been unobservant of these steady encroachments upon Chinese territory, and while a military occupation of the peninsula was necessary at this time, it was viewed with uneasiness; but none was prepared for what followed. Before peace was actually concluded, Russia approached China with a proposition for her permanent occupancy of—not the peninsula alone, but all of Manchuria. A mystifying proposition when we reflect that Japan was forced out of the southern littoral of Manchuria because her presence there threatened Korea, China, and the peace of the world. Port Arthur was no farther from Pekin and Seoul than it was five years before, and it was much nearer to St. Petersburg! And as Russia had already made surprising bounds from Nikolaifsk to Vladivostok, and from Vladivostok to Port Arthur, she might make still another to one or both of these capitals.

So limp and helpless had China become since the overthrow by Japan and the humiliations following the "Boxer war," and so compliant had she been with Russia's demands, that the United States, Great Britain and Japan, fearful that she would yield, combined to prevent this last concession, which under this pressure was refused, and a pledge demanded for the withdrawal of troops before a fixed date, which pledge Russia gave. At the specified dates, instead of withdrawing her troops from Manchuria, Russia reopened negotiations with China, proposing new conditions. Garrisons were being strengthened instead of withdrawn. Strategic positions were being fortified and barracks built in rushing haste. At the same time Russian infantry and bands of Cossacks were crossing the Yalu to protect Russian sawmills and other industries which had also crept into Korea. And when the Korean Government protested, Russian agents claimed the right to construct railways, erect telegraphs or take any required measures for the protection of Russian settlers in Korea; and every diplomatic attempt to open Manchuria or Korea to foreign trade and residents was opposed by Russia as if it were an attack upon her own individual rights.

Surprising as this was to all the Treaty Powers, it had for Japan the added sting of injustice. She had been ejected from her own territory, fairly won in war, because her presence would endanger the independence of Korea and the peace of the Orient. She now saw Russia in full occupation of this very territory, and the absorption of Korea itself threatened.

And what was the object of all this scheming? Not more land! Certainly a nation owning more than a sixth of the earth's surface could not be hungering for land! And no doubt Russia would long ago gladly have given one-half of Siberia to the sea in exchange for a few good harbors such as existed on the east coast of Korea. It was that ever-existent thirst for access to the ocean which tempted her into tortuous diplomacy, drawing her on and on, like the hand of fate. Manchuria itself would be unavailing unless she could control Korea, which alone possessed the ocean facilities for which she had struggled since the first year of her existence.