Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / The Romanovs and the Russo-Japanese War Disaster
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the Romanovs' ambitions — Peter's window to the West, Catherine's Greek Project, the push into Central Asia. But there's one war that really exposed how brittle the empire had become by the early twentieth century, and it's one Nicholas II probably should never have started. Luna: The war with Japan, right? I know the basics — Port Arthur, the sunken fleet — but I've never really understood why they thought they could win. Lucas: Exactly — the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. And to understand how it started, you have to look at the scramble for influence in Manchuria and Korea. After the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Japan had forced China to cede the Liaodong Peninsula, but Russia — along with Germany and France — pressured Japan to give it back. Then Russia promptly leased the same territory from China, built the Chinese Eastern Railway across Manchuria, and started eyeing Korea as well. Luna: So Russia basically stole Japan's prize and then acted surprised when Japan got angry. Lucas: Pretty much. There was this whole ideology in Russian court circles called Zheltorossiya — 'Yellow Russia' — a dream of expanding into Manchuria and Korea. The tsar's interior minister, Vyacheslav Plehve, supposedly said Russia needed 'a short, victorious war' to head off revolution. So when Japan launched a surprise attack on Port Arthur on the night of February 8th, 1904 — before a formal declaration of war — they weren't entirely wrong about Russian intentions. Luna: A short, victorious war — that phrase always comes back to haunt them, doesn't it? Lucas: It really does. But Japan's attack was devastating. They crippled the Russian Pacific Fleet at anchor. The commander of the port, Admiral Stepan Makarov, was a talented officer, but he went down with his flagship in April when his battleship Petropavlovsk hit a mine. After that, the Russian fleet basically stayed bottled up in Port Arthur, and the Japanese army laid siege to the fortress. Luna: And this is where it gets really grim for Russia, isn't it? Months of siege, tens of thousands of casualties. Lucas: The siege of Port Arthur lasted from August 1904 to January 1905. The Russian commander, General Anatoly Stessel, surrendered the fortress after a series of bloody assaults, even though the garrison still had ammunition and food. He was later court-martialled for cowardice. Meanwhile, on land, the Russian commander in Manchuria, General Alexei Kuropatkin, kept feeding troops into battles like the one at Mukden in February and March 1905 — the largest land battle before World War One, with over half a million men engaged. The Russians lost and retreated, but it wasn't a decisive Japanese victory either. Luna: Hearing that name Kuropatkin — he's one of those generals who just seems to lose battles without ever quite being destroyed. Lucas: He was cautious to a fault, and the tsar kept interfering from St. Petersburg. But the real disaster came at sea. The tsar had sent the Baltic Fleet — renamed the Second Pacific Squadron — all the way around Africa and Asia to relieve Port Arthur. It was an epic journey, over 18,000 miles, and it took seven months. Along the way, they had the Dogger Bank incident — they fired on British fishing trawlers in the North Sea, mistaking them for Japanese torpedo boats. That nearly brought Britain into the war. Luna: I remember that — it's one of those absurd historical moments that sounds like a comedy sketch except people died. Lucas: Exactly. And when the fleet finally reached the Tsushima Strait in May 1905, Admiral Togo's Japanese fleet was waiting. In a single day, the Japanese sank or captured almost every Russian ship. Only a handful escaped. The commander, Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, was wounded and taken prisoner. It was the most decisive naval battle since Trafalgar. Luna: And that pretty much ended the war, didn't it? Russia couldn't continue after Tsushima. Lucas: They couldn't. By that point, the war was hugely unpopular at home. The cost in lives and money was enormous, and the defeats fuelled the 1905 Revolution — you know, Bloody Sunday happened in January 1905, while the war was still going on. So Nicholas II agreed to peace talks brokered by President Theodore Roosevelt, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for it. The Treaty of Portsmouth was signed in September 1905. Russia gave up its lease on Port Arthur and the southern half of Sakhalin Island, recognised Japan's interests in Korea, and evacuated Manchuria. Luna: So Japan emerged as a major power, and Russia's prestige took a massive hit. But the war also showed the world that a non-European power could defeat a European empire. Lucas: Absolutely. And it had huge consequences for the Romanovs. The war drained the treasury, discredited the military, and stoked revolutionary unrest. It's no exaggeration to say the Russo-Japanese War was a dress rehearsal for the collapse of the dynasty in 1917. Nicholas II never really recovered from it. Luna: It's almost like the empire's fragility became visible to everyone — including its enemies. Lucas: And that's something we see again and again in Romanov history. The gap between the image of power — the double-headed eagle, the Fabergé eggs — and the reality of a state that was overstretched, underfunded, and ruled by a tsar who believed in autocracy but couldn't manage a modern war. Luna: It makes you wonder what would have happened if Nicholas had avoided the war altogether. Lucas: It's one of those great counterfactuals. But he didn't, and the empire paid the price. You know, if you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you might have noticed that we never run ads or sponsorships. That's by design — we want these conversations to feel like two people talking, not a commercial break. But the show does cost money to produce — research, hosting, transcription — and it's all supported by listeners like you who chip in a couple of dollars a month. If you've gotten something out of these episodes, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Even a small amount genuinely helps keep these going. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to make sure the show stays independent and ad-free. Lucas: Exactly. So back to the war — one detail I love is the peace treaty itself. The Russian delegation was led by Sergei Witte, the former finance minister, who managed to negotiate surprisingly favourable terms for Russia, given the military situation. He convinced Roosevelt and the Japanese that Russia could continue fighting if pressed, so Japan backed off its demand for a huge indemnity. Witte returned to St. Petersburg as a hero, but Nicholas II still distrusted him — he was too capable, too popular. Luna: So the tsar couldn't even fully embrace a diplomatic victory. Lucas: Right. Witte was made a count, but soon sidelined. And the war's aftermath included a wave of patriotic chauvinism in Japan and a sense of humiliation in Russia that fed into the revolutionary movements. The Russian army and navy were demoralised, and the government had to borrow heavily from France to rebuild. It set the stage for World War One — and for the final act of the Romanov story. Luna: It's amazing how much hangs on a single decision: to go to war or not. Lucas: And that decision was made by a man who genuinely believed that God had chosen him to rule. Nicholas II wrote in his diary the night before the war started — he was calm, at peace with his conscience. He thought he was defending Russia's honour. Instead, he set in motion the chain of events that would end his dynasty. Luna: There's a tragic irony in that — the tsar who wanted to preserve autocracy ended up destroying it. Lucas: Well, and that's the story we'll keep following. Next time, we might look at the 1905 Revolution itself, or the Duma experiment, or maybe the final years under Nicholas and Alexandra. But for now, I think this war gives us a clear lens on how the Romanovs' grip on power was slipping long before the guns of August 1914.