历史的回响 一战前的俄罗斯

Dominic Lieven’s stated reason for this contribution to the centenary literature on World War I is to place Russia “where it belongs, at the very center” of the war’s history. Certainly the war proved to be at the center of Russian history, leading to revolution, dictatorship, repression and more war.

多米尼克·利芬(Dominic Lieven)称，自己这部关于“一战”百年文献的著作，目的是把俄罗斯放在这场战争的历史“应有的位置，也就是它的核心”。当然，这场战争也被证明位于俄罗斯历史的核心，为这个国家带来了其后的革命、独裁、压迫与更多战争。

But Mr. Lieven, a well-respected British scholar of Imperial Russia, makes the convincing case that World War I was really about the struggle of Russia and Germany for territory, status and influence in Eastern and Central Europe, in which the fate of Ukraine — shades of today — played a central role. At the end, Russia and Germany both lost, leading to a peace in which neither played a constructive part, and making a second conflict likely.

利芬是一位备受尊敬的英国学者，专门研究沙皇时期的俄国。他给出了令人信服的证据，表明“一战”其实是关乎俄罗斯与德国在东欧与中欧就领土、地位及影响进行的一系列斗争，其中乌克兰的命运（与如今的情况颇有类似）扮演了关键角色。最后，俄罗斯与德国都成了输家，在其后的和平之中，双方都没有扮演建设性的角色，并且为其后的第二次冲突埋下伏笔。

In giving Russia’s side of the story — as he did in his well-received study of an earlier war, “Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814” — Mr. Lieven punctures the popular Western image of a reactionary autocracy stumbling into a suicidal war through misguided Slavic nationalism. There is that, to be sure, but his Russia is also a vast empire and an economic powerhouse in the making, where a fledgling civil society and influential press often contributed to nationalist passions while a counterintuitively capable aristocratic elite wrestled with legitimate questions of where Russia’s national interests lay in the complex and rapidly changing world of the early 20th century.

利芬的《俄国与拿破仑的决战：鏖战欧罗巴，1807-1814》(Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814)一书从俄罗斯的立场出发讲述俄法战争的历史，备受好评，在这本新书中也是如此。在一般西方人的印象里，俄罗斯是个反动的独裁政府，由于误入歧途的斯拉夫民族主义，跌跌撞撞地发起了一场自杀式的战争，利芬对这个观点做出了批评。诚然有着这方面的因素，但俄罗斯也是一个巨大的帝国，是发展中的强大经济体，刚刚起步的公民社会与颇具影响力的媒体经常鼓动国家主义热情。与此同时，和人们的直觉不同的是，俄罗斯的贵族精英极具能力，在世界形势极度复杂和快速变化的20世纪初，他们要为涉及俄罗斯国家利益的正当问题而斟酌。

Mr. Lieven’s empathy with the well-born men who ran Russia and its foreign policy under Emperor Nicholas II may be explained in part by his own descent from an illustrious family of Baltic aristocrats — one of whom, Prince Alexander Lieven, makes a delightful cameo appearance in the book as chief of the Naval General Staff from 1911 to 1914, who “liked to work with his pet monkey perched on his shoulder.”

利芬对沙皇尼古拉二世治下出身高贵的俄罗斯统治阶层，乃至他们的外交政策怀有共鸣，或许部分是由于他本人就出身于波罗的海贵族中的一个显赫家族——家族中的亚历山大·利芬王子(Prince Alexander Lieven)也在这本书中有过令人愉快的客串出场，他于1911年至1914年担任海军总参谋长，“工作时喜欢让自己的宠物猴子蹲在肩膀上”。

But it would be wrong to dismiss Mr. Lieven’s portrayal of the imperial elite and its role as solely the product of his heritage. On the contrary, his intimate familiarity with the Russia he describes and his extensive study of the letters, diaries and books of the chief actors in Russia’s descent “towards the flames” — many not hitherto accessible to historians — are what render this work so authoritative and readable.

但如果以此便认为，利芬为帝国贵族阶层乃至其角色所描绘的画像是由他的出身所决定的，那就大错特错了。与此相反，为这部作品赋予权威性与可读性的，是他对笔下俄罗斯世界深切的熟稔；是因为他大量研究了在俄罗斯“堕入火焰”这一进程中的主角们的书信、日记和书籍（其中很多如今已经无法为史学家们所见）。

In Mr. Lieven’s telling, the primary cause of the war was “the conflict of interests, fears, and ambitions created by the decline of the Ottoman and Austrian empires.” The crises this generated could have been resolved only through the collaboration of the rising German and Russian states. But that was neither simple nor obvious at the time in St. Petersburg, torn among the imperatives of ensuring access to Black Sea ports through the Straits; sustaining a Slavophile “mission” to the Balkan Slavs; managing the costs of a vast land empire; and balancing dynastic links to Germany against fears of its rising power.

在利芬的叙事中，这场战争的首要原因是“由奥斯曼帝国与奥匈帝国的衰落所引起的利益、恐惧与野心的冲突。”这些冲突所诱发的危机只能靠着崛起的德国与俄罗斯的合作才有可能得到解决。但在当时，圣彼得堡要攫取黑海海峡，以此获得通往黑海港口的通路；要对巴尔干半岛的斯拉夫人维持亲斯拉夫的“使命”；要维持庞大内陆帝国的开销；一方面恐惧德国崛起的势力，一方面又要与它保持动态平衡的关系，在这种情况下，与德国合作并不容易，形势并不清晰。

“The options open to Russia were difficult, and there were powerful and rational arguments to justify the foreign policy adopted by Petersburg,” Mr. Lieven writes. As someone who also has Russian roots, I found his portraits of the men from the “nest of the aristocracy and gentry” who made or disputed that policy — like the foreign ministers Aleksandr Izvolsky and Sergey Sazonov, or the diplomat-journalist Prince Grigorii Troubetskoy — among the most interesting passages of the book. Contrary to the notion of self-serving noblemen leading Russia to disaster, these men, as portrayed by Mr. Lieven, “were far from stupid” and generally decent. They were also, as he makes clear, closely linked by class, rank and often marriage to the aristocratic elite that predominated in most European governments.

“俄罗斯所面临的选择非常艰难，圣彼得堡就外交政策展开过高效而理性的讨论，”利芬写道。他在书中描述了那些参与制定或讨论政策，“出身贵族与上层的人”，诸如外交大臣亚历山大·伊兹沃斯基(Aleksandr Izvolsky)和塞吉·萨佐诺夫(Sergey Sazonov)以及外交官兼记者格里高利·特鲁贝特斯科伊王子(Prince Grigorii Troubetskoy)等人，作为同样有着俄罗斯血统的人，我觉得他为这些人描绘的肖像是全书中最有意思的部分之一。人们通常认为，是自私自利的贵族引导着俄罗斯走向灾难，与此相反，利芬笔下的这些人“远非愚蠢之辈”，并且大都非常正派。他写道，通过阶级、阶层乃至联姻，这些人同统治着大多数欧洲政府的贵族精英们有着紧密的联系。

Nicholas II, in Mr. Lieven’s telling, is also more complex and sympathetic than the hapless monarch of Western lore. The subject of another earlier Lieven study, Nicholas is “above all else a Russian patriot,” steeped in the ideology of a unique communion between Orthodox czar and people, caught between equally dangerous demands for reform and status quo.

利芬写道，尼古拉斯二世也比西方人心目中那个不幸的末代君主要复杂得多，富于同情心得多。利芬早年曾经专门研究过尼古拉斯，说他“首先是个俄罗斯爱国者”，笃信东正教沙皇与人民之间存在独一无二的联系，在同样危险的改革与维持现状二者之间左右为难。

Mr. Lieven’s ability to empathize with the different forces of the old order isn’t limited to the elites. The book is liberally sprinkled with personal asides like this one: “Personally, my sympathies are with the soldiers: I too would have been deeply unwilling to sacrifice my life for the Straits.” I particularly liked the brusque dismissal of popular myths about the power of the holy wanderer Rasputin: “Grigorii Rasputin’s influence on policy was grossly exaggerated then and has been ever since.”

利芬对旧秩序中的不同势力都能产生共情，而且不仅仅局限于精英阶层。这本书中亦有着大量的个人化旁白，诸如：“我个人同情那些士兵们：换了我也绝对不会愿意为黑海海峡而牺牲生命”。关于神圣游荡者拉斯普京的权力，利芬也严厉地驳斥了流行的神话，“格里高利·拉斯普京(Grigorii Rasputin)对政策的影响力从那时起乃至其后被大大夸张了”，我特别喜欢这一段。

This book is not, however, always an easy read for the general reader, who may at times become lost in the thickets of names, arguments and events. And only fellow historians are likely to fully appreciate how Mr. Lieven disagrees with them, since he often does not identify them. But for anyone interested in the First World War, the effort is well worth the exposure to a side of the war that is often given short shrift in Western histories.

不过，这本书对于普通读者而言并不总是轻松易读，读者有时会迷失在错综复杂的人名、辩论乃至事件之中。只有历史学家同行们才有可能真正欣赏利芬与他们不一致的地方，因为他总是不把自己视为他们当中的一员。但是任何对“一战”感兴趣的人来说，读这本书是值得的，可以看到通常被西方历史一笔带过的战争一方的情形。

Inevitably, an account of European maneuvers and passions on the eve of cataclysm prompts a search for contemporary parallels, especially when issues like the fate of Ukraine are described as pivotal, and the main protagonists — Russia and Germany — are again at the center of European politics. Mr. Lieven acknowledges the echoes, but he is quick to note that Angela Merkel’s Germany is very different from Kaiser Wilhelm II’s; Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not Nicholas II’s; Ukraine does not hold the key to Russian imperial power; “and Europe is no longer at the center of the world.”

对于那场大灾难前夕欧洲各国的谋略与激情的描述，不可避免地会令人想到当今局势，特别是乌克兰的命运，在那本书中被描述为关键问题，而书中的两个主角——俄罗斯与德国——如今又位于欧洲政治的中心。利芬承认这种历史的回响，但他很快指出，安格拉·默克尔(Angela Merkel)领导下的德国与德皇威廉二世(Kaiser Wilhelm II)领导下的德国有着极大不同，弗拉迪米尔·普京(Vladimir Putin)的俄罗斯也已经不再是沙皇尼古拉斯二世的俄罗斯；乌克兰不再是俄罗斯皇权的关键；而且“欧洲也已经不再是世界的中心”。

Yet some of the forces that Mr. Lieven describes behind Russian policies and politics — messianism coupled with a sense of inferiority, backwardness coupled with brilliance and great wealth, the vastness of the land and the determination of the rulers to be recognized as a great power — are all very much on display in Putin’s Russia.

但是利芬笔下俄罗斯政策与政治背后的力量——弥赛亚主义加民族自卑感、倒退势力加上卓越的才华与巨大的财富、广大的土地与拥有极大权力的领导人——这一切仍然在普京治下的俄罗斯具有重要的一席之地。

Mr. Lieven sees more worrisome parallels in Asia. On the last page, he writes that he conceived and wrote the book at his home on a Japanese mountain, and thinking about the dangers of geopolitical brinkmanship and strident nationalism in east Asia “is not a comforting experience.” Hopefully discomfort will prove to be the worst of it this time around.

利芬认为亚洲也有同样的令人不安之处。在本书的最后一页，他写道，自己是在日本山地的家中构思并写作这本书的，他认为，在东亚，地缘政治边缘政策的种种危险与甚嚣尘上的民族主义“并不是令人愉悦的体验”。只希望违和感就是这个时代最糟的事情吧。

THE END OF TSARIST RUSSIA

《沙皇俄国的末日：向“一战”与革命进军》

The March to World War I & Revolution

(The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I & Revolution)

By Dominic Lieven

多米尼克·利芬 著

426 pages. Viking. $35.

426页。Viking出版社。35美元