What Was the Russian Empire’s Relationship with France?
The Franco-Russian Alliance was a military and diplomatic partnership between the French Republic and the Russian Empire that lasted from 1891 to 1917. The alliance was formalised in the Franco-Russian Military Convention of 17 August 1892, ratified in the French parliament in 1893 and in the Russian Council of State in 1894, and was renewed automatically through 1917. The alliance was a decisive factor in the diplomatic realignment of the European state system in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and the alliance shaped the European state system in 1914 (see Williamson, The Politics of Grand Strategy, 1969).
The pre-1891 period
France and Russia had been on opposite sides in the Napoleonic Wars, and the French invasion of Russia in 1812 was a defining moment of nineteenth-century European politics. The post-1815 period was, however, marked by a slow reconciliation. The Russian government, isolated in Europe after the Crimean War and concerned about the growing power of Germany, found that the French Republic was a useful diplomatic partner. The French government, isolated in Europe after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and concerned about the prospect of a German revanchist war, found that the Russian Empire was a useful diplomatic counterweight.
The principal early steps toward the alliance were the visits of the French fleet to Kronstadt in 1891 and the Russian fleet to Toulon in 1893. The Kronstadt visit, in particular, was a striking reversal of the post-1871 French diplomatic isolation; the French fleet was received with full imperial honours, and the Russian public reaction was enthusiastic. The visit marked the de facto entry of France into the Russian diplomatic system, and the de facto entry of Russia into the French (Williamson, 1969).
The 1894 alliance
The Franco-Russian Alliance was established through a series of diplomatic negotiations that culminated in the formal alliance of 27 August 1894 (15 August old style), signed in St Petersburg. The negotiations were conducted by the Russian foreign minister Nikolai Giers, the French ambassador to Russia Théodore de Montebello, the Russian general Nikolai Obruchev, and the French general Raoul de Boisdeffre. The alliance had two components: a political agreement, providing for mutual consultation in case of a threat from a third great power, and a military convention, providing for mutual military assistance in case of attack by a member of the Triple Alliance.
The alliance was a shift in the European state system. France, which had been the principal Russian adversary in the early nineteenth century, was now the principal Russian ally. Russia, which had been the principal French adversary in the post-1815 period, was now the principal French ally. The new alignment made the European state system a two-bloc system: the Franco-Russian Alliance facing the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 1987).
The alliance in action
The Franco-Russian Alliance was tested in the European crises of 1897-1914: the First Moroccan Crisis of 1905-1906, the Bosnian Crisis of 1908-1909, the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911, and the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. In each of these crises, the Franco-Russian partnership acted as a deterrent. The German government, concerned about the prospect of a two-front war, was unwilling to push any of these crises to a general European conflict. The Russian government, concerned about the prospect of a German attack, was unwilling to act without French support.
The alliance also had a substantial economic component. French capital, in particular, was the principal foreign source of investment in Russian industry, railways, and government bonds. By 1914, French investment in Russia totalled about 12 billion francs, of which about 8 billion was in government bonds and the rest in industrial and railway securities. The Russian state, in turn, used the French capital to finance the industrialisation of the 1890s and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway (Gatrell, The Great War and the Russian Economy, 2005).
The First World War
The Franco-Russian Alliance was a central fact of the First World War. The two powers entered the war in August 1914, in fulfilment of their mutual commitments. The French army, in the first months of the war, executed the Plan XVII offensive in Lorraine and the Ardennes, while the Russian army, in fulfilment of its obligation to attack Germany in the east, advanced into East Prussia. The Russian campaign of 1914, particularly the Battle of Tannenberg, was a major French asset: by tying down the German Eighth Army, the Russian advance made the French position in the west more secure.
The alliance was, however, limited by the distance between the two empires and the difficulty of coordinating the two war efforts. The Russian army was supplied largely by the Russian state, with limited French or British support; the Russian state was, in turn, increasingly unable to provide its own army with sufficient munitions and supplies. The Russian military setbacks of 1915-1916, and the Russian political instability of 1916-1917, weakened the alliance. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 3 March 1918 ended the Russian participation in the war, and the alliance was over (Williamson, 1969).
The legacy
The Franco-Russian Alliance shaped the European state system of the early twentieth century, and the alliance’s collapse in 1917-1918 was a central event of the early twentieth century. The alliance was, in addition, an important cultural bridge: French was the principal foreign language of the Russian aristocracy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Paris was the principal European city of Russian cultural life. The Russian Émigré community of the post-1920 period was centred in Paris, and the cultural relationship between France and Russia continued to be a central feature of the post-imperial period (Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon, 2009, on the wider context of the Franco-Russian relationship).
The post-1944 French-Soviet relationship was conducted in a different political framework, but the memory of the Franco-Russian Alliance remained a feature of the bilateral relationship. The French government of the post-1945 period was, in particular, careful to commemorate the alliance, and the 1964 de Gaulle visit to the Soviet Union was a deliberate echo of the earlier diplomatic relationship. The Franco-Russian Alliance, in this sense, was a foundational moment of the modern French-Russian relationship.