Franz Ferdinand, Der Erzherzog-Thronfolger by Theodor von SosnoskyReview by: R. W. Seton-WatsonThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 8, No. 22 (Jun., 1929), pp. 222-225Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4202379 .

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222 THE -SLAVONIC REVIEW.

made of its various measures. All this is to the good. But what is even more important, is the general tendency in the more r_cent period to let the country do more and more for itself. This is noticeable even in the sacred sphere of education. It is much more noticeable in the treatment accorded to the cooperative movement. There are many of us who see in Russian Cooperation the best hope of the future but who think it essential that, if this hope is to be realised, coopera- tion must be based on operation, that is on individual initiative of the cooperators themselves. In this respect, as Professor Harper shows, there has been a very real change of policy; and the coopera- tors, who now enjoy the special favour of the Government, are being more and more encouraged to act for themselves and among other t-hings to control their own elections. Much has been written as to the capacity of the Soviet Government for admitting of evolution; and perhaps there is nothing of more importance and also of more promise than the comparatively recent direction which the author indicates. It is not necessary to quarrel over whether this gives everything that we should desire for Russia; it is a tendency which we should welcome as being in the right direction.

BERNARD PARES.

Franz Ferdinand, Der Erzherzog-Thronfolger. By Theodor von Sosno- sky. Munich and Berlin (Oldenburg Verlag), I929. 9 Mk. pp. 255.

IT is strange that we should have had to wait so long for a serious biography of Francis Ferdinand. For not merely was his murder the prelude to the greatest tragedy in history, but during the previous decade he had been one of the most enigmatic and interesting figures in Europe, and speculation had been rife as to the possible effects of his succession to the Habsburg throne. Yet apart from a " Fest- schrift " full of adulatory platitudes, compiled on his fiftieth birthday, and an occasional libel in some foreign journal, there was little or no material available about him before the war; and the book published in I925 by his private secretary, Herr Nikitsch-Boulles, is very slight and uncritical.

Herr von Sosnosky was well qualified for the task, for he was a wholehearted adherent of that " Great Austrian " idea which " F. F." personified, and yet retained enough critical faculty to realise some of his hero's limitations and the acute dangers which would have instantly confronted him as Emperor. It is interesting to note that the Arch- duke himself had indicated Herr von Sosnosky as a suitable biographer -on the strength of his books and of a critical article in Der Greif; Francis Ferdinand, it should be added, though he hated to be crossed, and could be extremely brutal and overbearing, none the less listened to criticism if only it was presented in the right way, and liked the men of his entourage to have opinions of their own, instead of merely

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REVIEWS. 223.

playing the courtier. This explains the great influence exercised over him by Colonel Brosch, the chief of his Militarkanzlei, and again by Baron Conrad, the Chief of Staff.

Herr von Sosnosky, then, has made the fullest possible use of the sources available, but it is a disappointment to find that the only unpublished material to which he has had access is Francis Ferdinand's early correspondence with his stepmother. It is no exaggeration to say that the publication of the Archduke's political papers would be in the general interest of Europe; but there does not seem to be the slightest immediate prospect of this.

The author is probably quite right in describing " F. F." as the strongest and most marked personality in the Habsburg family since Joseph II. In this book we get a vivid survey of his character-passion- ate, touchy, masterful, with soaring ambition and unbending will, utterly indifferent to popularity, suspicious of the motives of others and with a poor opinion of human nature: less accessible than most Habsburgs, but devoted to a narrow circle of friends, gay and charming when he- chose, simple in his personal habits and a hater of all pose. The two dominating factors in his life were his perfervid belief in Austria and her destinies, and his devotion to his wife and children; and indeed the best proof of his strength of character lies in the fact that he overcame the immense obstacles to a morganatic marriage, without ever entertaining the idea of renouncing the accession, as so many would have wished him to do. He was bent on having both, and in the end he overrode even Francis Joseph's reluctance. Thenceforward nothing could be more charming than his family life, and the reader's attention is specially drawn to the letters to the Archduchess Maria Theresa, full of overflowing happiness and, gratitude. These very human documents should serve as a correction to the unfriendly- interpretations so often put upon his character.

The book contains a very just estimate of the Archduke's attitude to the Church, to Francis Joseph, to Hungary, to the nationalities, to Germany and Italy. It is inade clear that, strong Catholic as he was, he was never inclined to become a tool of the Church, and that his open attack on the " Away from Rome " movement was due to a clear perception of its political identity with " Away from Austria." His intense dislike of the Magyars was due to an instinctive feeling -which events after his death justified up to the hilt-that Magyarisa- tion was sapping the foundations of the Habsburg Monarchy, alike in home and foreign policy. It was not so much personal sympathy as far-sighted statesmanship that led him to favour justice for the non-Magyars; and it is literally true that his death robbed them of all hope from within and threw them into the arms of their compatriots outside. Herr von Sosnosky states this quite clearly (p. 63, etc.)) but seems unable or reluctant to draw the logical conclusions.

He does not finally clear up the Archduke's attitude to Trialism and constitutional reform, but he prints in full the long memorandum-

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224 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

drafted by Colonel Brosch, containing a plan of action to be adopted after accession. This appears to have corresponded very closely with Francis Ferdinand's views at the time; but of course he was not finally committed to it, and his views were almost certainly still fluid when he died. One thing is certain: he saw the dangers of Dualism, believed in creating a strong central government, on lines not incompatible with federalism, and was determined to push through a reform of the Hungarian Constitution in the period of six months which might legally elapse between accession and the need for taking a coronation oath. The means through which this was to be attained was universal suffrage, followed by elections in which the Magyar methods would be ruthlessly turned against them and the new Parliament dominated by representatives of the non-Magyars and the working classes. At a pinch he was prepared to postpone his oath, on the very plausible ground that the constitutional laws of Austria and Hungary were in conflict on vital points, and that unless they were harmonised, he might be called on to take two quite contradictory oaths. He appears also to have favoured the proclamation of German as the language of state, the erection of a Bosnian Kingdom and the creation for his wife of the special status of " Consort."

There is one curious omission. A number of authentic anecdotes are quoted to illustrate the Archduke's violent outbursts and strange behaviour in his last few years; but there is no indication of the mortal disease of which these were the symptoms.

The last third of the book, dealing with the murder, is on a much lower level, though there is a clear and accurate description of the actual outrage, supplemented by the reports of Count Harrach and other eye-witnesses. Herr von Sosnosky takes for granted the complicity of the Serbian Government, slurs over the movement among the youth of Bosnia and other Southern Slav provinces of Austria- Hungary and treats the ringleaders of all the various outrages as merely creatures of the " Black Hand." The inconsistency of this position is apparent in the case of Gacinovic, the leader of " Young Bosnia"; if he was a mere tool of Belgrade, why did he live in Lausanne and choose Toulouse as a rendezvous with other conspirators?

And is Herr von Sosnosky unaware of Gacinovic's relations with Trotsky and other revolutionaries in Switzerland ? In repeating (p. I88), without the faintest proof, the charges of complicity against the Russian Government and its military attache in Belgrade, Colonel Artamonov, he is doubtless unaware of the " alibi " provided by the letter of Hartwig to Artamonov, which I published in Number i8 of the Slavonic Review (p. 7IO). Again, he takes for granted, without a shadow of proof, that Dimitrijevic-Apis revealed his plots to his military chief the Voivode Putnik-forgetting altogether that Putnik was caught by the outbreak of war at an Austrian watering-place, which makes his complicity utterly incredible-and to Pasic and the Crown Prince-forgetting that " Apis " had for some time been the

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REVIEWS. 225

declared enemy of the former and on bad terms with the latter. Similar criticism could be made on other points of detail. For instance, he dishes up, without wholly committing himself to it, the legend that the Freemasons inspired the murder and the Great War; and he calls Ernest Denis, the French historian of Bohemia, " a Gallicised Czech!" (p. I99). This is on a par with the comic legend, widely believed by Austrian clericals, that the Harmsworth family is Jewish!

Despite these blemishes, Herr von Sosnosky's book deserves to be widely read.

R. W. SETON-WATSON.

KOLCHAK.

Doopros Kolchaka. Edited by K. A. Popov, Tsentrarkhiv. Gosizdat. Leningrad, I925.

WHEN Admiral Kolchak had been driven back, first from the Volga to the Urals and then in rout from the Urals to Irkutsk, he was there handed over by the Czech legions to a local oppositional government which had arisen in Irkutsk during his retreat. This government refused the Czechs passage unless Kolchak was delivered to them. The Czechs were very critical of Kolchak and had throughout been in constant friction with him, but the incident has left a most disagree- able memory, and how the French General Janin, sent to Siberia to help Kolchak, who had at one time actually claimed to be the commander of his army, could authorise this action will remain a mystery.

As the Red Army drew nearer to Kolchak, the Irkutsk government which consisted of Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries gave way to a revolutionary committee which was frankly Bolshevist. On the last day of its existence, it opened an interrogation of Kolchak, covering the whole of his career. This the revolutionary committee continued, without any change in the composition of the examining commission, and the publication under review is the verbatim report, first issued with several inaccuracies by the emigrant Archive of the Russian Revolution in Berlin and here republished in its accurate form by the Soviet Government, under the editorship of K. A. Popov, who presided throughout at the examination,

Popov on the commission expressed the Bolshevist view and was therefore considerably more hostile to Kolchak than his more moderate colleagues, one of whom was a Menshevik and two Social Revolution- aries. He took but little part at the outset; and in the early stages- the examination lasted from 2I January to 6 February, 1920-the principal questioner was one of the Social Revolutionaries, Alexeyevsky, who was fair and courteous throughout. It is only close to the end that one can feel an impending tragedy. Kolchak's rearguard, under the best of his Generals, Kappel, had held together and was still on

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