SAN STEFANO, TREATY OF

The Treaty of San Stefano was the agreement marking formal conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. With Turkish forces soundly beaten in the field by the beginning of 1878, the two sides agreed to an armistice at Adrianople on 31 January, followed by formal peace negotiations at San Stefano, a settlement close to Constantinople. There, on 3 March 1878, representatives of Tsar Alexander II (N. P. Ignatiev and A. I. Nelidov) and Sultan Abdul Hamid II (Safvet Pasha and Sadullah Bey, with Mehmet Ali assisting) concluded a peace treaty that heavily favored the victorious Russians.

According to its terms, Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania received their full independence, along with substantial territorial cessions, including northern Dobruja for Romania. Bosnia and Herzegovina were granted autonomy, while a greatly enlarged Bulgaria (with a seaboard on the Aegean) became an autonomous principality, with the right to elect its own ruler, who would be considered a vassal of the sultan. Turkish troops were to be withdrawn from Bulgaria, while fifty thousand Russians remained for at least two years. In the event of future hostilities, neutral commercial vessels retained the right of free trade through the Turkish Straits. Russia received the right to transit ten warships annually through the Turkish Straits. Bessarabia, which had been ceded to Turkish-dominated Romania according to the Treaty of Paris in 1856, reverted to Russian control, while a series of locales along the Black Sea coast and in Asia Minor, including Batumi, Ardahan, Bayazid, and Kars, also went to the Russians. Finally, the San Stefano agreement obliged the sultan to pay an indemnity of 510 million rubles to Russia, to reform Armenian administration, and to grant self-government on the model of Crete to Albania, Epirus, and Thessaly.

This treaty greatly expanded and solidified Russian influence in the Balkans, especially after the creation of an enlarged Bulgaria with a substantial Russian presence. Conditions were now ripe to assure future Russian control over the Ottoman Empire, an eventuality that neither England nor Austria-Hungary was prepared to accept. Moreover, because San Stefano appeared to violate previous international agreements over the Turkish Straits and the fate of "Europe's sick man" (as the Ottoman Empire was called), other European powers, including France, Germany, and Italy, saw their interests and the precarious Balkan balance at stake. Russia, diplomatically isolated and financially exhausted, now faced the prospect of contending with a gathering hostile European coalition. The result was Russian acquiescence to a great-power review of San Stefano's provisions at the Congress of Berlin in June–July 1878, during which the more significant elements of Russia's wartime gains and dictated settlement were nullified. A tenuous peace ensued, but the arrangement outraged Russian and Balkan nationalists of various stripes, fostered mutual Russian-German distrust, and led indirectly to the secret Austro-German Dual Alliance of 1879.

See alsoArmies; Congress of Berlin; Russo-Turkish War.

bibliography

Jelavich, Barbara. St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1814–1974. Bloomington, Ind., 1974.

Sumner, Benedict Humphrey. Russia and the Balkans, 1870–1880. Oxford, U.K., 1937.

Bruce W. Menning