ARTICLE: Gallipoli, the Russian Perspective

Sergei Sasonov was 53 years old when the war broke out, and had been Nicholas II’s Foreign Minister since October 1910. He wrote his account of the war just prior to his death in 1927. By then, Russia was no longer an imperial power but part of the Soviet Union. Sasonov’s account, of course, is entirely suggestive, but I think it’s important to say that he was writing outside Russia when he penned his memoirs. He lived his last years in exile in France, and died at Nice.

When we talk about him, it’s usually to try and drill to the bottom of his part in the July Crisis and the chain reaction of summer 1914. Today, however, I wanted to use him for something else, and that’s to present a Russian perspective on the future of Turkey and specifically on the doomed Dardanelles campaign of 1915. Because though Britain and France embarked on that failure, Russia and Turkey were old enemies, and access to the Black Sea, and then the Dardanelles straits beyond was the former’s only chance of decent ocean access in the west that wasn’t frozen in for part of the year…

An 18th Century French map showing the route through the straits, across the Sea of Marmara and to the Black Sea.