Prussia, Relations with

PRUSSIA, RELATIONS WITH

Tracing Russia's relations with Prussia is complicated by the fact that Prussia only slowly took shape as a nation. A reasonable starting point is during the reign of Peter the Great and the Great Northern War fought with Sweden for supremacy in northern Europe. King Frederick I sympathized with the Russians but could not afford financially to open hostilities; he moreover was distracted by the wars to his west involving most of Europe against Louis XIV of France. In 1714, Prussia felt compelled to enter the Northern War when Charles XII of Sweden attacked the fortress of Stralsund on Prussia's border. At the end of the war, Prussia, with Russia's blessings, acquired both banks of the lower Oder River and the first-class port city of Stettin.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, relations deteriorated considerably. Frederick II embarked on a major war with Austria for Silesia. The Russian Empress, Elizabeth, sided with Austria and her armies inflicted severe defeats on Prussia in 1758–1759. Upon her death in 1762, Peter III ascended to the throne and as a great admirer of Frederick, withdrew Russia from the war. Partly as a result of this move, Peter was soon assassinated and replaced by Catherine the Great. Catherine and Frederick, with the collusion of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, were able to agree on taking territory from the extraordinarily weak state of Poland. The result was that by 1795, Poland ceased to exist to the aggrandizement of the three powers. Henceforth, Russia and Prussia would have a mutual interest in the suppression of the Poles.

The Napoleonic wars drew Russia and Prussia closer, both being the victims of Bonaparte's ambitions. When Prussia signed an alliance with Napoleon in 1812, King Frederick William III assured Emperor Alexander I, that, if war came, Prussia's participation would be purely nominal. The next year, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain pledged not to conclude a separate peace with France. At the Congress of Vienna, Russia and Prussia supported their respective claims to Poland and Saxony, something that provoked an alliance of Britain, Austria, and France. The crisis passed when Russia accepted about half of Poland and Prussia took two-fifths of Saxony. One of the most important consequences of the Napoleonic wars was a conviction on the part of the Prussians that they owed their national survival to Russia.

The Polish issue flared again in 1830, this time in revolution. After some negotiations, Emperor Nicholas I launched a full-scale invasion. The Poles appealed without success for Austrian aid but they knew there was no point looking to Prussia. As Russian arms triumphed, Poles who fled into Prussia were disarmed and returned to Russian forces.

At the same time the "eastern question," that is, the fate of the Ottoman Empire in Europe, became central to Russian foreign policy. This led eventually to the Crimean War but Prussia played little role in the initial stages of the affair. Nicholas went so far in 1833 as to inform the Prussians that they need not concern themselves with Near Eastern matters.

However, the revolutions of 1848 strained the relations between Berlin and St. Petersburg. Nicholas was the ultimate supporter of legitimacy and he was irritated when King Frederick William IV retained the constitution he had accepted, Nicholas believed, under duress. Nicholas also disliked his brother-in-law's sympathy for the national aspirations of German liberals. The animosity came to a head in 1848 over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. These two states rebelled against Danish rule and sought admission into the German confederation. Prussia sent its army to drive out the Danes and Nicholas saw this as an affront to the order established by the Congress of Vienna. He threatened war if Prussia did not speedily withdraw its troops. By 1850, the matter was settled and the Danes enjoyed a complete victory. Even worse, Nicholas and Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria forced Prussia to drop its proposal for a Prussian-led union of the German peoples.

The Crimean War did much to ease this antagonism. Of all the powers, Prussia was the only one who did not actively fight or criticize the Russians. On the other hand, all but Austria went to war with Russia. If conflict should flare between Prussia and Austria, the former could reasonably assume Russia's position would not be a repeat of 1850. Such was the thinking of Prussia's new minister president, Otto von Bismarck. While serving as Prussia's ambassador to St. Petersburg, Bismarck went out of his way to ingratiate himself with his hosts. In 1863, the year after Bismarck came to power in Berlin, he actively cooperated with the Russians in repressing yet another Polish uprising.

When he provoked war with Austria in 1866, he did not even need to consult the Russians beforehand so certain he was of their support.

In 1868, two years before Bismarck completed the unification of Germany through a war with France, he ensured himself of Russian support. Specifically, Alexander II promised that if Prussia and France went to war, he would mobilize 100,000 men on the Austrian border to ensure that Vienna could not intervene on the side of France. Thus Russia played an important role in the Prussian-led unification of Germany. And Russia would pay a high price for this in 1914–1918.

See also: germany, relations with; great northern war; poland; seven years' war; vienna, congress of; world war i

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Hugh Phillips