Petr Durnovo Analysis

Petr Durnovo, a member of the Tsar Nicholas II’s state council of senior advisors, offers a portrait of tsarist society and predicts social upheaval as the result of the difficulties of war with Germany. In his Memorandum of February 1914, he begs the Tsar not to go to war with imperial Germany and thoroughly describes to him what the outcome may be if war was to erupt between the two nations.
Durnovo’s memorandum was interesting on two accounts. It was a brilliant prophetic statement on the possible collapse of the Russian monarchy as a result of a war with Germany, as well as its attempt to persuade the Tsar that Russia’s best interests including the advance of war lay with realizing that the “English orientation of our diplomacy is in essence profoundly wrong”(p.44) and that therefore the proper course lay with a rapprochement with Germany.
Durnovo feels that because of the signing of the Anglo-Russian accord, (following the Russo-Japanese war) has put Russia in a messy...