San Stefano, Treaty of

SAN STEFANO, TREATY OF

The Treaty of San Stefano, signed March 3, 1878, ended the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878).

On January 31, 1878, with Russian victory over Turkey a foregone conclusion, the belligerents agreed to an armistice at Adrianople, followed by peace negotiations at San Stefano, a village near Constantinople. There, Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev, former ambassador to the Porte, and Savfet Pasha worked out final terms for signature on March 3, the anniversary date of Tsar Alexander II's imperial accession.

Accordingly, Turkey agreed to pay reparations of 1.41 billion rubles, of which 1.1 billion would be cancelled by cession to Russia in Asia Minor of Ardahan, Kars, Batumi, and Bayazid. In the Balkans, Turkey ceded northern Dobrudja and the Danube delta to Russia for ultimate transfer to Romania, in return for Romanian agreement to Russian occupation of southern Bessarabia. With a seaboard on the Mediterranean and an elected prince, Bulgaria remained under nominal Turkish control, while Bosnia and Herzegovina received autonomy. Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro received their independence, along with territorial enlargement. Turkey was obliged strictly to observe concessions for local participation in government that were inherent in the Organic Regulation of 1868 on Crete, while analogous regimes were to be implemented in Thessaly and Albania. The Porte was also to introduce reforms in Turkish Armenia.

The San Stefano Treaty formally went into effect on March 16, 1878, but concerted opposition from Great Britain and Austria-Hungary, together with Russia's growing diplomatic isolation, meant that the agreement remained only preliminary. Indeed, its main provisions subsequently underwent substantial revision at the Congress of Berlin in July 1878.

See also: berlin, congress of; russo-turkish wars; turkey, relations with

bibliography

Jelavich, Barbara. (1974). St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1814–1974. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Oleg R. Airapetov