Suchergebnisse

In the summer of 1986, I spent a month working very successfully in the archives of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Istoriko-diplomaticheskoe upravlenie, Ministerstvo inostrannykh del), and both the relative rarity of the experience and the significance of the materials preserved there warrant a brief report. Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossii (AVPR) is administered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, unlike the records of all other prcrevolutionary ministries, which are held by state archives under Glavnoe arkhivnoe upravlenie pri Sovctc ministrov SSSR.I was doing research on the Greek project of Catherine II, the notorious scheme whereby she planned to share with Joseph II the partition of the Ottoman Empire and perhaps to reestablish the old Greek or East Roman Empire under her grandson Constantine. The materials I read consisted primarily of St. Petersburg's diplomatic correspondence with Paris, Vienna, and Constantinople during the 1780s. I had prepared for the research in Moscow by working in the analogous correspondence of the Archives du Ministére des Affaires étrangéres (Quai d'Orsay) in Paris and the Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv in Vienna during preceding summers. In Moscow, I was given a generous abundance of material to read, including twenty-nine volumes of the correspondence with Paris, thirty-three volumes of correspondence with Vienna, and eight volumes of correspondence with Constantinople. Much of the material was invaluable, and some of it was entirely new to historical research. The quality of the information, however, was far from uniformly distributed.

Hugh Ragsdale, Montmorin et le "projet grec" de Catherine : une révolution dans la politique étrangère de la France.
A la veille de la Révolution, la politique étrangère traditionnelle de la France consistant à dresser une "barrière à l'Est" se désagrégeait aussi vite que la puissance financière et militaire française et à cause de ce déclin. En 1787, le comte de Montmorin procéda à un réexamen de la politique française et fit à Saint-Pétersbourg une proposition radicale d'alliance, "même aux dépens des Turcs". Cette offre visait plusieurs objectifs : 1. amener Saint-Pétersbourg à expliquer les visées de la politique de la Russie ; 2. restreindre si possible les vues de la Russie sur les Turcs ; 3. avoir sa part des dépouilles de l'Empire ottoman si les plans de partage de Catherine ne pouvaient être repoussés. Ironie du sort, l'Ancien Régime français fut contraint, en raison de sa faiblesse, de reformuler sa diplomatie russe d'une manière qui annonçait la politique que Napoléon I, en position de force, allait poursuivre.

The national archives of Denmark and Sweden have engaged Soviet archives in extensive and probably unique exchanges of copied materials. These two archives consequently hold substantial quantities of Soviet archival records, records sometimes of extraordinary value, which in some cases are scarcely accessible in any other part of the world, including the Soviet Union. Approximately 40 percent of the holdings of Soviet documents in the Danish National Archive come from the Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossii. The fact that it is very difficult to gain access to this institution considerably enhances their importance. The Swedish holdings are similar.The Russian documents in both archives were acquired in two phases, and phase one was common to both. In 1928, archivists and historians from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden formed a joint Scandinavian committee for the exploration of the Russian state archives (Den Nordiske Faelleskomite for Udforskning af de russiske Statsarkiver).

Napoleon Bonaparte used a variety of means of appealing to the Russians When he needed them, as he often did. He asked Alexander I for an interview before the battle of Austerlitz, a request which Alexander must later have regretted turning down. He marched to Friedland and Tilsit for the inauguration of the Grand Empire two years later. And in 1812 he pursued them all the way to Moscow, only to be eluded.But the occasion of his earliest overtures to the Russians, therapprochementwith Tsar Paul during the winter of 1800-1801—an arrangement in which Albert Sorel found all the "grands projet et les grandes rȇveries" of Tilsit—though often remarked, has remained little understood. The Russians had withdrawn from the Second Coalition, but they had not reestablished diplomatic relations with France.